The Rudolf Steiner Archive

It is still considered in many circles today to be a sign of a particularly enlightened mind to reject the possibility of penetrating into the spiritual, into the supersensible world, through human knowledge. It can be said that in some circles, especially in the scientific way of thinking, a front is already being made against this so-called enlightenment. But however much may be said from this side about spirit and the supersensible world from this or that point of view, it cannot be said that a really satisfactory way into the world of spirit is already being tried or striven for in wider circles.

That there is the possibility of penetrating into the supersensible world, not merely through an indefinite, scholastic belief, but through a genuine and true continuation of that way of thinking which has made modern scientific thinking so great, to penetrate into the supersensible world, that is what anthroposophically oriented spiritual science seeks, which - as I already said here a few weeks ago - is to find its external representation through the Goetheanum in Dornach, as a proof to be presented to the world, to be fathomed through the experience of the spirit.

If I am to explain the path of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science from a different perspective than the one I have already presented in numerous lectures here, I would like to begin today by talking about something that seems rather abstract and perhaps far-fetched to some.

It is no coincidence that the Goetheanum takes its name from Goethe. In a certain respect, Goethe's entire world view, his entire way of thinking, forms the starting point for a more recent spiritual-scientific endeavor. And even if one can say that what one finds in Goethe still presents itself as a beginning, it is perhaps best to illustrate the fundamental principles by starting from certain simple thoughts or ideas of Goethe's. Well known in wider circles, but unfortunately still too little appreciated today, is what Goethe called his metamorphosis doctrine, in which we also find his idea of the primal plant.

By this archetypal plant, Goethe does not mean a simple, tangible plant structure, as a modern natural scientist would say, but rather something that can only be grasped and experienced in the mind. At the same time, however, he means by this archetypal plant something that is not found in any single plant, but that can be found in every single plant in the wide plant kingdom of the earth. He therefore assumes that, I would say, within every plant that can be perceived by the senses there is a primal plant that can be grasped supernaturally and experienced in the spirit.

He also imagines the same, although he has not explained it so clearly, for the others, for the non-plant organisms. And even if Goethe, partly out of his artistic attitude, developed this idea of the primal plant, it must be said that his main aim was to find something scientific in the very best sense through something like the primal plant, something that can be a guide for man as an idea, a spiritual guide through the whole vast world of plants.

When Goethe traveled through Italy to clarify and mature his world view, he once wrote to his friends in Weimar, who were well aware of what he actually wanted with his primal plant, that the image of the primal plant had emerged for him again, particularly in the rich, abundant plant world of Italy. To begin with, in abstract terms – we need not, as we shall see in a moment, adhere to the abstract – to begin with, in abstract terms, he says: such a primal plant must exist, for how else could one find in the whole manifold plant kingdom that each individual being is really a whole plant? – As I said, that is expressed in abstract terms, but Goethe expresses himself about this primal plant in much more definite, much more forceful terms. For example, he says: “When one has grasped this primal plant in one's mind, then one can, from the living image of this primal plant, create images of individual real plants that have the possibility of existing.”

One must only look in the right sense at what is actually being said with such words. Goethe wants to arrive at an idea of the nature of plants in his mind, and he wants to be able to form a spiritual image of a plant from his Primordial Plant. This plant is a single plant, not like a plant that he sees with his senses, but rather, he invents a plant that is added to the plants that exist in the senses. This plant does not exist in the senses, but it would have the possibility of existing in the senses if the conditions were right. What does this actually point to? It points to the fact that man, through his soul, can become so immersed in the sensual reality and, in this immersion in the sensual reality, can experience the spiritual that is within the sensual reality in such a way that he grows completely together with this spirit, which lives and weaves everywhere in nature, creating.

The greatness of Goethe's world view is that it aims at this immersion in reality, and that it is convinced that, to the extent that one immerses in this reality, one comes upon the spiritual reality, so that one spirit of reality, which can then be one's guide through the entire confusing diversity of the sensual world itself.

Now, what Goethe strove for can be extended to the entire world surrounding man and to man himself. Anthroposophically oriented spiritual science has set itself the task of extending this way of thinking to everything that confronts man from outside and from within. It is thus the opposite of all unclear obscurantism, the opposite of all unclear mysticism. It strives for what Goethe claimed for his world view: to delve into the spiritual world with mathematical clarity and transparency.

This spiritual science now feels completely in harmony with modern science, although it goes far beyond the science of modern times. One has only to have passed through this natural science to realize how this spiritual science must spring from this natural science itself. Let us take a look at what this newer natural science is actually striving for. It sees its real goal as finding a knowledge of the things surrounding man, of the mineral, vegetable and animal world, and even of man himself, in which nothing is said about any subjective feelings or ideas of man himself. This natural science, in particular, from its newer point of view, that of experiment, to which it has rightly placed itself as a natural science, seeks to explore nature in such a way that the individual phenomena and processes of nature themselves reveal their essence, their laws, so that man does not weave anything into what he calls knowledge of nature, from what he finds within himself.

This is how what has been presented as natural science for three to four centuries, but particularly in the 19th century, differs from the knowledge of nature in earlier times. Anyone who has studied the way in which nature was understood in earlier times knows that people took what they formed in their imaginations and projected it onto natural phenomena, and to a certain extent they extracted from natural phenomena what they had first projected into them. That this does not happen, that man allows nature to speak to him quite impartially, that is the endeavor of modern natural science.

But one cannot help but let the spirit do the research when researching nature. One cannot help but apply that which one has within oneself as a life of thoughts and ideas, and which is of a spiritual nature, to the context of natural phenomena. Now one can take one of two paths. The ordinary scientific worldview of recent times has taken one path; but anthroposophically oriented spiritual science would like to take the other.

When science develops its ideas, these ideas, which pure as I have described them, are to be gained from nature, then with these ideas, I might say, science can contemplate itself; then it can ask itself: What is the nature, what is the value of the ideas that we apply to external nature? – This is not done by the newer natural science. Modern natural science is limited to discovering everything about nature that does not answer the question: What is the human being actually? That is the characteristic feature of all, one might say, insightful natural scientists, the emphasized point, that they say: Yes, we can explore much about the physical world outside and within us - but this does not answer the question: What is the human being itself? And again and again we must emphasize: in its efforts to understand nature, natural science sets up a picture of the world in which the human being is not included as soul and spirit. Natural science, honestly based on the present standpoint, has no answer to the question of soul and spirit.

The question as to why this is so must be answered historically. Natural science itself does not know why it does not advance to the knowledge of soul and spirit, why it stops despite its admirable results on the outer nature before soul and spirit, why again and again natural scientists arise who say: Yes, if natural science were to speak of soul and spirit, it would transgress its limits. - One believes to speak about nature without prejudice. One does not speak without prejudice, because what has become established over the centuries as a certain way of thinking weighs heavily on natural science, actually on the way of thinking of modern natural science. And this pressure consists in the fact that certain confessional currents have claimed a monopoly on the truths of soul and spirit.

If we go back a few centuries, we find precisely in the period in which modern science had its early days, how religious denominations claim their monopoly on dictating the truths about soul and spirit. In the face of this claim to monopoly, modern science recoiled. Natural science of modern times has penetrated with magnificence into the outer nature; but not because one would have recognized through this penetration into the outer nature that one could not ascend to soul and spirit, one has refrained from this ascent, but because it was so firmly rooted in the unconscious human views that the monopoly claim of the confessional religions must be taken into account. That is why this belief was transformed into an apparent proof that it is impossible to penetrate the soul and spirit.

Anyone who has seriously studied the scientific research methods of modern times, and who has then inwardly processed that that arises as ideas about external nature with the exception of the actual essence of man, knows that the other path, which is taken by anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, must be further pursued into the future of humanity. If natural science understood itself, if it did not live under the pressure hinted at, then, precisely because it strives to be a natural science that disregards the subjective element of the human being, it would come to the Goethean principle of growing together with the spirit that is spread out in the phenomena and facts and beings of nature. And if it understood itself, modern natural science would choose of its own accord precisely that which anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, as a continuation of the natural science direction, must claim for itself.

Indeed, what must be essentially supported is that which can be cultivated through natural science in terms of inner imagination, of thinking power, through careful inner spiritual methods. And it is on the training of such inner spiritual methods that everything through which the spiritual science referred to here wants to find its way into the supersensible, into the spiritual world at all, is based.

Today, people perhaps imagine far too lightly what is meant here by this path into the supersensible world. One thinks that it means something like an inner spinning, a surrender to all sorts of ideas, through which one weaves out all sorts of things that the nature of things should be. One might imagine that this is easy compared to the difficulty of the experimental method or compared to the methods used in observatories and clinics. But if you read something like I have tried to present in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds” or in my “Occult Science”, you will see that it is not just any kind of spinning around in inner ideas, but a strictly lawful, inner soul work of the spirit into the spirit. For true spiritual science can never be the view that one can penetrate into the spirit through external methods of experimentation, but true spiritual science must uphold the view that only the spirit in man can find the spirit of the world.

What man has to accomplish in his inner being, I have often referred to here in these lectures and in my books as meditation, as concentration. Today I would just like to point out that this work of concentration, this meditation work, is a purely inner soul work. But what is the goal of this inner soul work? What is the goal of this work with only the inner soul forces, this devotion to the pure workings of the soul and spirit in the inner being of man?

You know that we perceive the world through our senses as we live in it, and then we process this world. This is also how science works. We then process this world by reflecting on it, by revealing its laws, by forming ideas about it. But you also know that this process of forming ideas leads to something else, to something that is intimately connected with the health of our personal human being. This process of forming ideas about the world is connected with the fact that we can retain impressions of the world, as we say, through our memory, through our power of recollection. People so easily overlook this power of memory, this memory of the human being, because it is something so everyday for them. But that is precisely the peculiar thing about the real pursuit of knowledge: that which is often everyday for people must be understood precisely as that in relation to which the most important, the most significant questions must be raised.

When we perceive the world of the senses, form ideas about it, and after some time seemingly bring these forth from our inner being again, so that we remember events we have experienced, then there is much that is unconscious in these memories, in this memory process. Just think how little you are actually in control of your memory with your will, how little you can command, so to speak, your power of remembrance. Consider above all how little you are able to think of this memory while you are perceiving outwardly. Or is it the case that when a person looks out into the world with his eye, when he hears sounds with his ear, he simultaneously ensures that representations are present that make reminiscence possible? No, for that to happen the human being would have to consciously exercise another power alongside perception and the inner workings of the senses. In reality, this does not happen in ordinary life. I would like to say that memory with its power runs alongside the outer life. But it is the one that works subconsciously, so to speak, that helps determine all life in the outer world of the senses, so that we support this life through our memory through life. This power must be brought up from the unconscious. In other words, we cannot bring up from the depths of our soul what we unconsciously practise in our power of remembrance by merely remembering our experiences, but by trying to bring the power, which we otherwise do not know at all, which, as I said, runs alongside, I have said, to such a conscious clarity as otherwise only the external sensory perception is, by bringing this power up from the subconscious depths and weaving and living in what is otherwise in the subconscious of memory. If we use the power of recollection not for memory, not for remembering, but to make ideas and images that are otherwise only kept alive by the power of recollection consciously present in our mind, we strengthen something in our mind that, when the necessary time comes, allows us to experience a very different awakening from the one we experience every morning. If you consciously work again and again in the way that otherwise only memory works, then you experience something of a new awakening in the soul. One experiences something like the appearance in the soul of a completely different person than the one who otherwise walks through the world of the senses. One cannot reach the spirit through theorizing. Every philosophical argument that wants to reach the spirit through mere reasoning has nothing else in mind than the word or words about the spirit. The spirit wants to be experienced. And it can only be experienced by our raising up what would otherwise remain in the subconscious, in the deeper layers of our human soul, so that it lives in us with the same luminous clarity as what we see through our eyes, what we hear with our ears, and that in this brought-up conscious will lives in such a way as the conscious will lives when I direct the eye from this wall over to that wall, in order to turn the gaze away from what I see here and to look at what I can see there. By availing myself of my senses, the conscious will lives in this availing of the senses. This will must fully penetrate

this inner soul work, then one comes to something that is a continuation of the ordinary soul activity of man, which relates to the ordinary soul activity of man just as the waking day life relates to the life of sleep, from which at most the dream speaks .

That there is something in human nature that can be brought up and becomes a new organ of knowledge, that becomes what Goethe calls the soul eye, the spiritual eye, that is what anthroposophically oriented spiritual science seeks to demonstrate through gradual familiarization with such inner soul work. In this way it will express what natural science is unable to express because it lives under the pressure I have indicated. But this pressure must, because humanity longs for it - one can notice this longing if one is only unbiased enough to do so - this pressure must fall away from the knowledge of humanity.

So you see that anthroposophically oriented spiritual science does not want to be some kind of false mysticism, some kind of obscurity, but a truly genuine continuation of what is known in natural science. And especially those who have enjoyed a scientific education will find it easier to concentrate and meditate on thoughts, because they are accustomed to methods and ways of research that disregard the subjective side of the human being and enter completely into the objective. If we now apply what we have been trained in to natural science, especially to meditation, then we eliminate all human arbitrariness, then we bring something into meditation, into the inner work of the soul, which is an objective lawfulness, like that of nature itself. It is precisely by taking the way of thinking and imagining of natural science into the human being that the chaotic, unclear self-knowledge, which is striven for with many a complicated and wrong mysticism, where one only wants to brood over one's own inner being, is overcome. Working in one's own inner being, which proceeds in every step of this work in the same way that only the most conscientious natural scientist proceeds, by extending his power of judgment over that which unfolds before his eyes or before his instruments, stands in opposition to this uneducated brooding into one's own inner being.

That is one side of it. I would like to say that it is the side that points to the awakening of special powers of knowledge. The ordinary power of memory will certainly not be there in those moments when one wants to explore the spiritual directly, because this power of memory itself has undergone a metamorphosis. It has become a spiritual eye that can perceive the spirit. With the usual conclusions that today's popular logic has, one cannot penetrate to the real spirit. Whoever wants to speak of a real penetration to the spirit must point to the real existing forces that lead to this spirit. And one such real existing force is the power of remembrance. But this power of remembering must be transformed, it must become something quite different. Every other penetration into the spirit leads at the same time into the dark, because human will is thereby eliminated, and with it the most important part of the human being itself. Just as we regard as fantastic what arises from, I might say, organic foundations of our mind, and as we do not call what we have no control over a true memory, so the true spiritual researcher will accept no soul-content for his spiritual research that he does not completely permeate with the light of his will.

So much for one side, the life of imagination, as used in spiritual research. But something else in man can be used and must be used if one really wants to find the way into the supersensible, into the spiritual world. And just as spiritual science has been challenged by the spirit of natural science through the way of thinking of modern times, so on the other hand spiritual science has been challenged by human life in modern times. Anyone who follows the development of the human soul through the last few centuries without prejudice, not with the preconceptions of today's historian, but just without prejudice, can see that a tremendous change occurred in the state of human souls around the middle of the 15th century, admittedly only within the civilized world, but just within this civilized world. It is a mere prejudice to believe, merely by looking at the external historical facts, that a human soul in the civilized world in the 8th or 9th century A.D. had the same inner makeup as the human souls of today. Of course, there are still backward human souls today who more or less still stand on the standpoint of the 8th or 9th century; but they are instructive precisely because they also lead us outwardly back to that time. But on the whole we can say: One need only look at human life in accordance with experience. A tremendous change has taken place, which has become ever more pronounced since the mid-15th century. If we want to describe it in more detail, we have to say that if we go back to that point in time, we find that people's relationship to one another was very different from what it is today and from what unconscious human forces are striving for in the future of humanity. Whatever may be said against it out of certain prejudices, something is being striven for in relation to the relationship between human beings that has its beginning at the time referred to. In earlier times, people were close to one another through blood ties, through tribal ties, through everything that made them related to other people through their organism, or what made them related to other people through the organic connection that manifests itself, for example, in sexual love. Do we not see, if we only want to see, that in place of the old blood relationship, in place of the old clan relationship, the old family relationship, the old tribe relationship, there is more and more that works from person to person in such a way that it passes from the soul, from the willing soul of one person to the willing soul of another person? Do we not see that the development of modern times makes it more and more necessary for man to approach another human being through something quite different from his mere physical organism? We see that since the time indicated, the sense of personality has grown, that the human being has become more and more inward-looking and inward-looking, and thus also more and more lonely and lonely. Since that time, I would say that the human being lives more and more isolated in himself with his soul life. The soul life closes itself off from the outside world. The blood no longer speaks when we are face to face with our neighbor. We must make our inner life active. We must live ourselves over into the other. We must merge spiritually into the other. What may be called the social principle, the social impulse of modern times, is very much misunderstood, especially in those circles that today rightly believe themselves to be socialist. One sees the social impulse emerging, but even today only a few circles know what it actually consists of.

It consists in the fact that more and more in the lonely human being the impulse awakens to live himself over into other people, spiritually and inwardly through his will, so that the neighbor becomes the one who becomes it through our consciousness, not through our blood, not through our organic connection. There we stand face to face with people and have the necessity to live ourselves into them. What we call goodwill today, what we call love today, is different from what was called by that name in times gone by. But by living ourselves into other people in this way, it is as if everything that pulsates in us, that lives in us as will, would take up the will of the other. We enter completely into the other with our soul. We go out of our body, as it were, and enter into the body of the other. When this feeling increasingly takes over, when this feeling, permeated by love, I would say, as modern love of one's neighbor, spreads among people, then something arises from this shared experience of the will, of the entire soul life of the other person, which is a real life experience. Today, many people could already have this life experience if they did not allow it to be clouded by prejudices. Where it occurs, it is rejected with truly unsound reasons. One need only remember a person like Lessing. At the end of his life, when everything that he could produce in the way of human greatness had passed through his soul, he still wrote his “Education of the Human Race,” which culminates in the acknowledgment of the fact of repeated human lives on earth. There are higher philistines, as there are higher daughters, and they have their judgment ready for such a thing. They say: Yes, Lessing was clever all his life; but then he became decrepit and came up with such complicated ideas as those of repeated lives.

But these repeated lives are not a fanciful not a fanciful idea; they are what we experience when we do not stand before another human being merely by virtue of blood relationship or organic belonging, but when we can truly live our way into what lives in his soul. There, in response to what is approaching us, the spirit of one person meets the spirit of another person, and from this arises, as we know from experience, that which can be said: what is forming a bond here for your soul, for your spirit, with the other person, did not come about through this life. What arises in the blood has come about through this life. But what arises in the spirit as a necessity has come about through something that preceded this life. Anyone who really follows the development of modern human life since the middle of the 15th century – it is still shrouded in mystery for the widest circles of humanity – will come to the idea of repeated earthly lives through living with people. And what comes to light then occurs, I might say, like a dream. I say “like a dream” for the following reason: When we fall asleep, we fall asleep into an unconscious. Then, out of this unconscious, this or that emerges as a dream. One can compare this falling asleep into the unconscious with submerging into the souls of our fellow human beings, as I have just characterized it. Then, out of this immersion, I would like to say, not figuratively, but very literally, out of this sleeping into our fellow human beings, something also emerges at first, like the dream of repeated earthly lives, and draws our attention to the fact that something like this must be sought in order to understand life, in order to find the way through the world of the senses. And what shines out like a dream from our social life becomes a complete certainty when we train the human will in the same way as I have described for memory. But just as memory must become a fully conscious power, so the will must, on the other hand, discard what completely directs it in ordinary life.

What then directs our will, our desires, our longings in ordinary life? If our desires did not arise out of the organic life of our body, the will would, so to speak, have nothing to do with them. He who, through experience, has penetrated to the will, knows that this will is based on desire. But we can also detach that which is the actual power of the will from our desires. To a certain extent we do detach it in our social life. But that only draws our attention to what is actually important. We detach it in social life by loving our neighbor, by being absorbed in our neighbor, not desiring him like a piece of meat. We do not love our neighbor out of our desires, but rather it is an application of a desireless will. But this disinterested will can also be developed through a special training. This happens when we do not merely want what can be achieved in the outer world, what one or the other desire is after, but when we apply the will to our human being and his development itself. We can do that. We all too often abandon ourselves to the way life carries us. But even after we have outgrown school, that is, when others are no longer providing the education, we can still practice continuous self-education and self-discipline. We can take our own spiritual being into our own hands, we can set out to achieve this and that. One can resolve, if life has led one in a certain direction up to a certain point, to become knowledgeable in this or that area of life, to transfer one's judgment to another area of life. In short, one can turn one's will around. While otherwise the will always works from the inside out, as desire dominates the outside, the will can be turned around, turned inward. By practising self-discipline through our will, by trying to make ourselves better and better in one direction or another, we apply the actual dispassionate willpower. And what you find in my book How to Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds and in the second part of my Occult Science, aims, in addition to the other thing I have already characterized, to show that man applies such a culture of the will to himself, so that he penetrates more and more, I might say, with his will into himself. But then, when these two forces work together, the power of remembrance brought out of the unconscious, which then seizes the human will, then the human being knows himself inwardly as spirit, then he knows that he has seized the spirit inwardly in a purely spiritual way, then he knows that he does not do this through the organs of the body. Then he knows what spiritual action in the spirit is like, then he knows what it means: soul and spirit are independent of the body.

One cannot prove that the soul and the spirit are independent of the body, because in ordinary life they are not. In ordinary life, the spirit and soul are entirely dependent on the body. But there lives in us another human being who is independent, and we can bring him up from his depths. Only then does that which reigns in man as the eternal reveal itself to us.

You see, there is nothing wrong or complicated about mysticism in this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. It is in it thoroughly that which can be expressed in a completely clear way, but which one only comes to when one really explains it inwardly and does not just say: You shall develop your inner being, you shall look into yourself, you shall find the God in your own nature. In anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, reference is made to very specific forces that are to be disciplined in a very specific way. That is what is important here. In this respect, however, anthroposophically oriented spiritual science is a continuation of modern scientific and social endeavors. In the field of science, one can no longer completely ignore the spirit. And so it has come about that, because one did not want to eliminate the pressure that I characterized at the beginning, one wants to use the same methods with which one, I might say, ducks under the characterized pressure, to also prove today that there is something in man like a spirit, like a soul. And that is what has occurred in those who do not see the whole situation in the cultural development of the present.

We owe all the hopes that are based on certain justified grounds to this striving for the spirit, but which moves in the wrong direction. that are based on certain legitimate grounds, the hopes that many a naturalist has with regard to hypnotism, with regard to the possibility that one human being may suggest some idea to another when their consciousness is dulled. We owe to this quest the hopes that many place in the study of the dream life and the like, and we owe to this quest, to get to the spirit – because man cannot help but seek the spirit after all – the whole error of spiritualism.

What is actually being sought in this area? Well, take something like what happens in the case of hypnotism or mediumship. What actually happens there? There, that which is normal human consciousness, through which man is firmly grounded in ordinary life, is subdued. When a person is hypnotized, that which is his conscious ability in ordinary life is subdued. In a sense, other forces then take effect on the unconscious or semi-conscious or quarter-conscious person, which may come from the person next to him or from others. There, without doubt, all kinds of interesting things come to light. Of course, all kinds of interesting things also come to light through mediumship; but what comes to light is achieved on the basis of a dimming, a lulling of the ordinary consciousness. This is never the aim of the research methods of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. The research method of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science says: Man has advanced in his development to the consciousness that he has in ordinary life through his senses in the waking state; if one wants to recognize something new about man that is beneficial, one should not paralyze this consciousness, one should not dampen it down, but on the contrary, one should develop it further, as I have indicated. One should increase clarity, guide sensory perceptions into the power of memory by applying the will, which otherwise arises only from dull desire, to self-discipline. Because one does not go this way, because one has not the courage and the perseverance for this way, one belittles the will and believes that in this way one will arrive at a knowledge of the soul, of the spiritual in man.

But what does one arrive at by taking away man's other abilities? By putting people to sleep, one arrives at an external way of looking at people that does not show them as spiritual-soul beings, but shows them precisely in their subhumanity, in that which makes them more like animals than they are in ordinary life. It must be strictly emphasized that through all these sometimes well-intentioned research methods, the human being is led down into the subhuman. If I hypnotize someone and give him a potato, but by the power of suggestion make it clear to him that it is a pear, and he bites into the potato with the consciousness of biting into a pear, then I darken his higher consciousness in such a way, I act on him in such a way as is done to the instinct of the animal. The only difference is that even in his subhuman aspects, man is not entirely an animal, but that his animal nature expresses itself in a different way. That is the essential point. And if one seeks to find any kind of thought-transference in a state of sopor or in a diminished consciousness, then one is dealing with an instinctive activity that has been translated into the human, that is to say with something subhuman. Anyone who lumps together what wants to be anthroposophically oriented spiritual science with these things defames anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. For here it is not a matter of leading man down from his ordinary state of consciousness into something subhuman, but of leading him beyond himself, so that the ordinary consciousness continues to have an effect and a higher consciousness is added to this ordinary consciousness.

This is precisely what anthroposophically oriented spiritual science shows through its research method: that the human being we have here in the sense world is based on an animal, subhuman instinct; and this can be evoked and demonstrated by putting ordinary consciousness to sleep. When it expresses itself differently than in ordinary consciousness, the spiritual science just meant here can follow this other expression. It characterizes this other expression, which always takes place in hypnosis, in the mediumistic state, as a subhuman, as a descent into animality. But at the same time it shows that what lives in man as animality is not the same as in the ordinary animal. The method of research of which I have spoken here, as of the spiritual science meant here, knows that what comes to light through such experiments as in hypnotism and mediumship is something that still lives in man today from earlier human conditions. It is precisely because this spiritual science does not arrive at a subjectively colored, but at an objective self-knowledge, that it can gain a judgment about what it actually is that occurs through hypnosis and through mediumship. This is something that does not belong to this earthly world.

If we follow the development of the animal, plant, and mineral kingdoms in the earthly world with the means of spiritual science, and follow it in its relation to man, then we find that man, as he is now, is adapted to the earth precisely because he has his present consciousness. The states of consciousness that occur in sleep, in hypnosis, and in mediumship are not states of consciousness, are not human powers that could arise from man being adapted to the earth; that arises from such an adaptation that was peculiar to man before the earth became earth. And it is precisely through such states that research into the conditions of the earth itself is rejected, but these preceded the present state of the earth.

If one now investigates further how the present state of the earth is connected with the animal and plant world, one sees that man carries something within himself that does not make him appear adapted to today's earthly existence, but that the animal and plant world is adapted to today's earthly existence. From this we can see that man certainly existed in primitive conditions, which, if brought about today, would have nothing but a deadening effect on his consciousness, before the present-day animals existed in their present form. So that we have to say: Man did not ascend from the animal world, but man was, albeit with such states of soul and spirit as we bring up, as they occur in animal-like ways in the characterized states, present before the earth came to this present planetary state.

I cannot go into the details for you today, which you can read about in my books. But I wanted to at least hint that precisely by observing certain things on which hopes are pinned today for knowledge of the present nature of man, a way is shown to gain insight into pre-earthly times and into the nature of man in such times. But in the same way, the fact that we can evoke states of consciousness that lie above the present state of consciousness adapted to the earth indicates how we will live in these higher states of consciousness when the earth is no longer our dwelling place.

These things open up to the inner eye. One cannot say: These things cannot be proved, just as little as you can prove that camels exist. You must have seen them, or someone must have seen them, and then you know that camels exist. In this way one cannot prove the supersensible with the ordinary power of judgment, which is valid only for the ordinary world. One must show how one comes to see the supersensible. From this vision of the supersensible, that which indeed has an effect on the sense world but can never be seen in the sense world itself, arises.

So, of course, it could now be said: Yes, you show us how some people succeed in making the spirit their guide through a supersensible vision through the sense world and into the supersensible world. But can all people see into the supersensible world in this way? The situation is as follows: if you allow the inner training and inner development that I have described in the books already mentioned to take effect in you, and which you undertake for your soul, you will inevitably come to recognize, through your own powers of judgment and your own healthy human understanding, which is then developed, what spiritual researchers can discover in the spiritual world. But just as there are individual researchers in the physical world who investigate one thing or another, and we have to accept what they have found, so in the future development of humanity there will be individual spiritual researchers who investigate this or that in the spiritual world. Whether they can research something depends on whether, in certain moments of life, for which they have been waiting, without their having done anything to bring it about (for one can only become a waiting being through the development of the soul), that which presents itself as a spiritual fact becomes recognizable. One could say, using a religious expression, that this must come about through grace. This grace will intervene for the man as a spiritual researcher just as, let us say, this or that experience in the material world intervenes for one person and not for another. It will be so, because certain facts will always bring individual people from the spiritual world.

In order to bring these facts to light, various things are necessary; it is not only necessary to have gone through what is written in the books mentioned, to be able to fully understand what the spiritual researcher expresses, but something is needed that can be described as a quality of the human being as “fearless” to a very high degree in the face of the spiritual world. People are so reluctant to enter the spiritual world because they are actually afraid of the unknown, as a person is always afraid of the unknown. The spiritual researcher must become fearless. And on the other hand, he must acquire the quality of being able to suffer, to feel pain; because a real discovery from the spiritual world cannot be achieved without a certain pain, without a certain suffering. You will understand that this must be so if you simply imagine that the state of spiritual vision is not adapted to ordinary earthly conditions, is basically just as little adapted as our soul is adapted to our diseased organism, which hurts. If one really places oneself with the developed soul in the facts of the spiritual world, then one is in a world for which one is not initially organized. One penetrates into a world that cuts, that burns. This must be experienced. And one only penetrates to the facts if one really approaches them with the attitude that consists in applying everything that the soul can develop, but that one then waits until, in certain, I would like to say once more, gracious moments, the spiritual facts approach

This should not be imagined as something that approaches one like a fantasy idea, but rather as an experience of a profound intensity in relation to the inner being of the human being. I will just take this simple fact, which I have already mentioned, which can actually only arise through spiritual research today before the human soul, the fact that in the middle of the 15th century the whole human race in the civilized world experienced a turnaround – a simple fact. That it may be stated as a scientific fact can only come from the fact that one has worked on one's soul, diligently worked, not wanting to conquer the spirit by arbitrariness, but by working one has put oneself in an expectant state, until that which reveals itself as such an apparently simple truth has come.

Then something else is necessary. There are people, I am just mentioning the philosopher Schelling or others, who, through special moments of grace, received one or the other impression from the spiritual world. What did they do? They could not be quick enough to build up a worldview when they received an impression from the spiritual world. They draw conclusions from some impression they receive from the spiritual world. They have received an impression, then they make a whole system out of it, a whole worldview. This is what the real spiritual researcher must completely refrain from doing. The real spiritual researcher must stop at this single fact that is revealed to him, and he must wait to see if another fact is revealed to him. For example, if one has become acquainted with the fact that the earth was preceded by pre-earthly conditions in which man already lived, one must not derive a whole scientific system from it about the evolution of the Earth, but must accept such a fact as an isolated, individual fact and allow other equally isolated, individual facts to be approached, so that fact after fact presents itself, more or less comprehensive. But one must wait for each individual fact; that is what matters. Even though spiritual revelations are definitely what underlies spiritual research, these spiritual revelations only occur when the destiny of man predestines him to them. Just as one must not draw conclusions from the northern hemisphere of the earth about what is in the southern hemisphere of the earth, but must research separately what is in the southern hemisphere of the earth, so one must not draw conclusions from one corner of the spiritual world to the other, but must learn to wander around in the spiritual world, to grasp the details in their isolation. From this you can see that people will be given what they can research from the spiritual world; they can indeed learn many things.

Now you could say: Yes, but isn't there a danger that those to whom such spiritual facts are revealed will now become haughty among people, that they will consider themselves special creatures that stand out above the rest of humanity? That is already taken care of. The first thing that must precede real spiritual research is absolute modesty, especially intellectual modesty. Without developing this modesty towards all of humanity, one cannot progress in the field of spiritual research. The spiritual researcher may indeed know how to communicate individual facts from the spiritual world to his fellow human beings, but the fact that he has the grace to communicate something that is revealed to him is at the same time due to the way he approaches his fellow human beings. The spiritual researcher is one who treats even the smallest child with true reverence when it babbles something from the spirit and the soul hidden within man, even if it only asserts itself screaming from a child's throat. The spiritual researcher is glad when he hears this or that from the experience of the individual person. The experiences that people share with him are his school. He completely subordinates himself to it. He knows only one thing: he knows that what people experience, even if they are at the most primitive levels of education, is infinitely valuable, that only what is usually man's power of judgment does not follow from it. If people would judge what they have experienced correctly, they would bring forth treasures of soul and spirit from their inner being and from the depths of their being. It is these that the spiritual researcher looks for. For him, every person is an equal being with sacred mysteries in the soul, except that the consciousness, the power of judgment, sometimes does not correspond to what is in the depths of the soul. Thus the spiritual researcher in particular becomes a modest person because he always has the spiritual equality of people in mind in this regard, and because he knows that he only has what he researches in the spiritual world because he is a human being among humans. Thus he is predestined to work in the spirit for other people, who in turn can develop their souls through meditation and concentration to such an extent that they can receive what the spiritual researcher says.

You may reply that it is not very well organized that people should live side by side in such a way that they should learn from individuals what they can understand but cannot discover for themselves. I can answer that in two ways. One is that this is a fact that has to be accepted like many other facts of life, even if some people might wish otherwise. That is the first thing I can say. But the other thing is that anyone who foresees such a future for humanity, a future in which there are people among us who can see into the spiritual world and reveal intimate matters to people from this spiritual world, so that in this way other people can experience from their own understanding what they can gain in the way suggested, also knows that the most intimate relationships will develop from person to person. And he also knows that it is precisely through this that the social impulses pass from soul to soul and that the real social life is brought about in the spirit, which today one believes can only be achieved through external means. Just think how people will be brought together, how they will present a social structure in their living together, when people will face each other in such a way that one person accepts what the other is investigating as a most important, intimate matter for him. It is precisely in this way that people in the future will come close to each other in the desirable way, that spirit will work in the soul of the next person in the way that has been indicated. Those who can explore the spirit will be felt to be a necessity for other people. On the other hand, the spiritual researcher will also feel that the whole of humanity is rooted in it, without which he cannot live, without which he himself would not have the slightest meaning with his spiritual research.

Even if today the social question has been made into something that is merely understood in an outwardly materialistic way, what is anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, when viewed inwardly, shows that when the spirit becomes the guide through the world of the senses and out of the world of the senses into the supersensible world, the structure is thereby also brought about in the social life of people, through which the human being can become for the human being in the future what he is actually meant to become.

In this way, I have tried to characterize to you today, from a different point of view than in the numerous previous lectures, how anthroposophy attempts to penetrate the spirit and how this penetration is based on developing the inherent powers of the human soul. I have been trying to do this for almost two decades in what I call anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. It is still said in many circles that this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science represents something of a striving for Buddhism or something similar. In my last lecture here, I already hinted at how precisely this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, which works from the essence of the human being, from the present essence of the human being himself, abhores that weakness of people who do not want to strive from what is there, not from what we have acquired in modern natural science, but who want to go to the Orient, to India, for my sake, and take there that which was adapted for a completely different age and no longer fits into our present. We experience it again and again. A few days ago, here in Switzerland, it could be experienced again that people say: Anthroposophism, as they express themselves, also represents some kind of escape to India. When this is said in particular by people who call themselves 'Christian', then I would like to remind these Christians of something that they may know: 'You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor'. Because it is nothing less than bearing false witness against one's neighbor when one speaks of what is meant here as anthroposophical spiritual science, as if it were something obscure, as if it were something for humanity that has become purely passive and the like. Because humanity has become passive, because humanity can no longer come to action through what has been traditionally imparted to it through the centuries, a new spirit must be sought as a guide through the world of the senses and into the supersensible world.

Those who always only speak of warming up the old spirit and loathing, as one loathed natural science at the time of Galilei, that which appears as spiritual science, to them should be said above all, especially when they want to speak from the Christian spirit: Those who take Christianity seriously need have no fear that the Christ Impulse in its true significance, the religious worship of man, will suffer any impairment through any discovery, even if it be a spiritual discovery. On the contrary, religious life will be given a higher radiance by the fact that people will once more know what spirit and soul are, that they will not allow themselves to be dictated to about what spirit and soul are, that they will seek within the soul the way to experience the spirit and the soul. But this is what is striven for in the movement that has its external representation outside in Dornach at the Goetheanum.

The movement strives for that which lives unconsciously as a longing in numerous souls without their knowing it. It will not be possible to extract it from these souls by mere decree or dictate, but it will live in the souls as a striving, even if one were to bring about the actual representation of this striving. For just as man would die if he ceased to absorb new life forces at the age of thirty-five, just as he could not continue to live from that point on if he did not supply himself with new material life forces, so humanity cannot continue to live if it only only wants to assimilate what is old and traditional, if a new spirit does not arise in due time, weaving itself into the evolution of mankind.

For that is what this spiritual science wants to make clear and unambiguous, not obscurantism, not complicated mysticism. That is what it wants to make clear and unambiguous: that the spirit is the living element, the true guide through the world of the senses and into the supersensible world. Without the spirit we become directionless in the world of the senses. But if we develop the spirit as a guide through the world of the senses, then it proves not to be an abstract spirit of ideas alone, but to be the living spirit in us. And then we would have to clip its wings, through which it wants to strive into its actual homeland, into the homeland of the spirit, if we, after having chosen it as a guide through the world of the senses, do not want to ascend through it, through its guidance, into the supersensible world. For the spirit is alive. And if the belief can spread that the spirit, in contrast to matter, is not an independent living entity, what is the cause of this? The only cause is that man has deadened the spirit within him through his will, and so the dead spirit cannot grasp the living spirit. But if the spirit in man is quickened, then the living spirit in man grasps the living spirit in the world.

Das Wesen Der Anthroposophie. (The Nature of Anthroposophy. Lecture given at Elberfeld, Germany, January 24, 1922)

Goethe's observation of human beings and of humanity led him to the following short but comprehensive and significant conclusion that “the most valuable thing about history is the enthusiasm it stimulates.”

We may well be surprised at such a view of historical knowledge, for Goethe was, after all, a person who had deep insight into human life, and yet what he seems to be saying is that it is not the knowledge we acquire about the course of human history that is important, but rather the feelings and enthusiasm that history stimulates. However, the more we feel impelled to go into what is called historical knowledge, the more Goethe's judgment seems to be confirmed. We only need remember that when the catastrophic events began in which the whole of humanity is now embroiled, a number of people—and there were quite a few of them—believed from their reading of history and especially their picture of economic and other material causes in world history, that the war could last four or six months at the most. We have to admit that this conclusion was really not at all stupid. Nor, judging by the historical standards that humanity is accustomed to apply to its own historical evolution, was it in any way shortsighted. And yet, despite this—was this conclusion really founded on what was actually happening?

Let us take as another example what happened to a not insignificant person. It is true that it took place a long time ago, but it can still be mentioned. It concerns a professor of history at a university. This person gave a brilliant inaugural lecture in which he said that a study of the historical evolution of humanity suggested that the European countries would in future form a more or less united family in which there could be all sorts of differences but in which it would become impossible for the various peoples, the members of this great family, to cut each other to pieces. This judgment, the reality of which can hardly be doubted, was made on the basis of historical observation by Friedrich Schiller when he took up his professorship at the University of Jena in 1789. One has the impression that Schiller believed he could arrive at conclusions in his study of history that in a sense rise to a kind of prophecy. Immediately after Schiller had come to this conclusion there followed the events of the French Revolution and all that it brought with it. And if we take everything that has happened up to the present day we find that what even this gifted man had learned from his study of history has been completely disproved by the facts in the most terrible way. We could add hundreds and hundreds of similar examples.

This makes it imperative to take a closer look at what we normally call history and to see how far it really enables us to form judgments about what is going on around us. In such times as ours this is particularly important. History should teach us to recognize what each day brings—and today each day brings a very great deal. Catastrophic events breaking over the whole earth demand judgment from us. We must know what to think of the American West and how it can evolve in the future, and of the Asiatic East. How can we do this if history is regarded in the way we have just touched upon?

Let us take one or two examples by way of introduction to see how a view of history is attained from all the various things that happen in human life. I would like to characterize different aspects of this, starting from the various assumptions that lie close at hand.

At the beginning of our present century, when the events we are now witnessing were being prepared, it happened by what we normally call chance that two men made an historical, all embracing judgment about their country. It is most interesting to study the particular way in which these two looked at history. Although they lived not so far from each other, their two nations are quite different in character. The one is the German historian, Karl Lamprecht, who in 1904 at the invitation of Columbia University in America gave his American listeners his comprehensive judgment about the history of the German nation. The other is Wilson, who at about the same time gave a lecture in which he presented his comprehensive judgment about the American nation. It is interesting to compare these two, and it would be even more valuable to take a third, but the time is too short.—For instance, I can only recommend you to compare what I am saying today with a wonderful statement of Rabindranath Tagore about the spirit of Jesus. If the time allowed us to compare all three we would have a wonderful picture of literary, historical study.

I shall begin with the rather odd views that Karl Lamprecht, the German historian, came to about his own German nation. He has got beyond the merely factual kind of historical observation pursued by Ranke and others, for he sets out to study the inner course of human evolution. He seeks the motivating forces and directs his view to the example of his own nation. I can only give a brief picture of the views that Karl Lamprecht came to, and which he then presented in these lectures at Columbia University. He said that German history can be divided into clearly differentiated epochs according to the inner character of human deeds, of the constitution of the human soul, of the way in which human beings work.

We can go back to a period which came to an end in about the third century A.D. and we find that everything that happened in the German nation at that time arose out of a kind of activity of the imagination which felt itself stimulated to think in symbols and images. Even revered figures and personalities are often presented to the people in images and revered in images. Then there comes a time which is sharply differentiated from this. Whereas in the earlier period it is clear that the imaginative conception of life, which, according to Lamprecht's view, lies at the root of history, leads to the fact that social conditions are organized in a military structure, we see that from the 4th or 5th century to the 11th century it is superseded by a quite different way of thinking and quite different inner motives. In place of the merely comradely sort of life we find a kind of life that is more like a society. And in place of a living in images that always sees images for the things that happen, we have now, thinks Lamprecht, the concept of type. The single, eminent personality is regarded as a type of the times and revered, portrayed and characterized as such from all sides, even in the primitive art that has come down to us.

Then follows a relatively short period, from the 12th to the middle of the 15th century. Lamprecht characterizes this as arising out of all the impulses that were at work when power based on land and obedience evolved out of the old estates and the conditions on them, or being concerned with the way in which the constitution of the soul came to expression in art, with the way men were respected, with the way they acted, and finally with the way knighthood and town life evolved. Lamprecht characterizes it as the time of the conventional conception of life, for at that time life was based on conventions, agreements and a generally fixed way of doing things. For Lamprecht there is then an important break in the historical evolution of the German people which happens at around the middle of the 15th century. He believes that the individual personality that begins to break through for the first time, for the conventional relationships between human beings which are governed by considerations going beyond the merely individual, are no longer uppermost. The individual then enters decisively into historical evolution. Lamprecht shows quite justifiably how something very important begins at this time. Until then, human beings had lived an existence primarily based on deeds, on actions, founded on impulses of the will which arose out of the deepest recesses of the soul, whereas from the middle of the 15th century onward it is the intellect, the understanding, that belongs to the individual personality, that becomes the decisive factor. This lasts until the middle of the 18th century.

What then follows we should call a higher stage of individualism. Lamprecht differentiates it from the earlier period by saying that the age of subjectivism then begins in which a higher kind of understanding becomes particularly significant for human evolution. Lamprecht describes various aspects of this evolution from this viewpoint quite well. He shows, for instance, how the more rudimentary impulses of earlier centuries which prevailed in the relations of the various peoples to each other, turn into a kind of diplomacy based solely on the understanding and intellect. He gives many such examples from many aspects of life. We are still in this age of subjectivism.

From this brief description I have given you can see how an historian tries to explain what happens in history in terms of the nature and evolution of the human being himself. As we shall see in a moment, what Lamprecht put forward is intimately connected with the German way of looking at things. We can see that it is an attempt to use every possible means that are available for reaching a reality which has soul-spirit factors, for penetrating into the real nature of history. But if we then investigate how Lamprecht applies the ideas outlined in his lectures to his detailed description of history, we cannot help feeling bitter disappointment. This is because Lamprecht's views of history never convince us that the efforts he makes in observing certain inner powers of the human soul lead to any sort of convincing result. It is a struggle for a new view of history, but nowhere would we stop and say: Now we can, for instance, really see the inner reasons why the German people have evolved to what they are today. And this question constantly comes to mind when we study Lamprecht's view of history.

Let me compare it with Wilson's view of his own American people. It is something very remarkable, and in order not to be misunderstood I would point out that I am anything but an admirer of Woodrow Wilson. The actual fact of the matter will become clear in further lectures. For the moment I would only mention that my attitude toward Wilson has not arisen during the last six years, for already before the war I expressed my rejection of his approach in a lecture cycle given in Helsingfors in 1913 at a time when many in this country rejected the views expressed in his book, “Only Literature,” which was translated into German, and in his dissertations on freedom—as there were also many in Germany who were deceived and thought he was a great man for reasons which I will not go into now. It is neither chauvinism, that has grown to such proportions today, nor anything other than an entirely objective study of Wilson's approach that leads me to say what I have to say about him.

I have been particularly interested by this parallel phenomenon of Wilson speaking in his lectures about the American people. It is particularly important from one viewpoint because Wilson, when it comes to discovering the virtual factor in viewing a limited phenomenon of historical evolution and in what is needed in order to have some understanding of it, really hits the nail on the head. In this lecture Wilson says that those who live in the east, the New Englanders, do not look at the American people in the right way. And he also describes the quite wrong attitude taken by those living in the south. For he derives the nature of the American and his historical evolution from the events that took place in the 19th century in the center between the west and the east of the North American states when all sorts of people mixed with each other.—Out of their way of life there then arose what Wilson calls the American nation.

It is interesting to see how he succeeds in showing that American history really only begins when those who lived in the east looked toward the west and began to colonize it. Dutch, German, English, French and so on, all came together and formed something that did not come into being through the work of politicians but through those who tilled the land and tended the forests. And then he describes how the three most important political questions of America find their solution under the influence of these conditions. I cannot go into details but would like all the same to state what I think is the important point: the most important questions were those of the attitude of the state toward property, of tariffs and of slavery. All these arose under the influence of these conditions. As far as these conditions are concerned his view of history hits the nail on the head. And there are also further lectures in addition to this one where he speaks about history in general, where he gives his opinion as to how history ought to be studied. And something quite remarkable can happen to anyone viewing things as a whole.

I must say that I find Woodrow Wilson as a thinker and scientist an extraordinarily unsympathetic personality. On the other hand, in another person who has perhaps been too little recognized. I find an extraordinarily sympathetic personality, and this is Hermann Grimm, who applied his historical approach primarily to art, in which, however, his historical ideas are to be found. I have it from him personally because he himself described it to me on many occasions. It lived in him in a wonderfully comprehensive way. On one hand I read in “Only Literature” some of the things that Wilson laid down. On the other, I read what Hermann Grimm said about how history should be studied and how he looked at the evolution of humanity in the light of history. And one comes to the remarkable conclusion that in reading Wilson and Grimm a sentence of Grimm could often be transposed word for word into Wilson's work, and vice-versa. Sometimes there are quite short paragraphs that, from a superficial viewpoint could belong quite well to either of them. Only try to acquire the necessary knowledge, which is quite easy to do in this subject, and you will see the truth of what I say.

How are we to understand this? There is, after all, an enormous difference between these two people and the way they look at history.—There is nothing better than such an example for showing what has to be learned at the present time: that the literal content of a matter is not the whole matter! This is something our age has got to learn, but finds so difficult to learn. For however much our age imagines it lives in reality, it really loves the abstract and theoretical. When they find a few sentences the same with two different authors people are inclined to say that it is the same! The content, the purely literal content, is sometimes quite remote from the actual reality, and however odd this may sound it is proved by this example. For what are we dealing with here? Only the science of spirit can enlighten us, and only the science of spirit can detect the difference between the American historical approach of Woodrow Wilson and that of Karl Lamprecht. The abstract minds of the present time are completely taken in by what Woodrow Wilson says. Now it is not so, but before the war they were taken in. For they do not see the real point. Wilson says many excellent things. But compare them with what Hermann Grimm says, with what Karl Lamprecht says, who perhaps even make great mistakes. What Grimm and Lamprecht say, even when it sounds the same as what Wilson says, is achieved in wrestling with the matter in their souls; it always has the mark of having been permeated by the personality.

For one who is able to see through such things, Wilson's words betray the fact that the personality is possessed by its views. Of course one would have to see the details of the content of his words in the spirit in which it lives in him. Nevertheless, we can see that these things rise up from the unconscious depths of the soul and are not worked over personally by the soul, but simply push through from below. This personality is possessed by what lives below the consciousness.

I certainly do not pass this judgment lightly for I am quite aware that it has far reaching consequences. But I am also aware that it has been arrived at objectively. This is the great difference—on the one hand a personal struggle with truth, on the other a statement of something by which one is merely possessed, where one is more or less an outward medium for something rather indefinite. In this respect Wilson provides a brilliant characterization of his people, one that could hardly be bettered. I must say that some of the statements he makes about the Americans hit home. He says that it is because the American nation has come into being on the basis of work on the land and in the forests that the people have evolved what characterizes them today—the mobility of the eyes, the tendency suddenly to take up bold and adventurous ideas and the tendency to think up plans that can be realized anywhere without much feeling for one's home.

Mobility of the eyes, tendency toward bold, adventurous ideas—these are characteristic of a situation where there is no direct personal struggle, no conscious struggle with the things that are going on, but of a situation where something unconscious plays a part, where the human being is really only more or less a mediator for what is at work. Wilson could offer no greater proof of what he described as American than the history he himself wrote.

I only wanted to show by way of introduction how our view of history is dependent upon the sort of people we are, and how even today historical observation is still largely dependent upon this. I wanted to show how a study of the writing of history itself should enlighten us as to the real nature of the situation.

Now, for example, what is Karl Lamprecht's intention, for he is certainly not possessed by his ideas but, struggles personally for his ideas of history? He wants to introduce a science of soul into history. He wants to understand the historical evolution of humanity on the basis of soul impulses. He is seeking a science of soul applicable to his own times. What does he find? He looks for it in the so called psychologists, in those who investigate the soul. In these psychologists he honestly tried to find something their souls experience within themselves, something that he could then apply to his historical studies. But precisely this made him unsure, and resulted in the fact that there is nothing in his way of looking at history that can offer any convincing satisfaction. Why is this? Because what nowadays is officially pursued as psychology hardly penetrates into the true self, into the real inner soul being of man.

Now the inner soul life of man comes to expression in a quite different way when one is confronted by another person and has to act with him in this situation. And it is on this basis that the historical evolution of humanity proceeds. What proceeds there cannot be viewed in the way that historical research of the present time views it. What has modern historical research grown accustomed to? What has Karl Lamprecht found in the psychologists that can help historical research? He found what has evolved on the pattern of scientific method. And in the 19th century historical research was drawn more and more into a sphere where history is regarded in the same way as nature. The same method of acquiring knowledge, the same kind of knowledge, the same kind of judgment that are used to observe and understand the phenomena of nature were applied to the historical evolution of humanity. Karl Lamprecht sees something significant in applying to his method of looking at history what had led to sure results in natural science.

In this respect too, one can say out of an historical instinct, Hermann Grimm made an excellent observation when he gave his opinion of the famous historian Gibbon. Gibbon, who wrote a history of the decline of the Roman Empire, is an historian who really carries out in exemplary fashion the kind of method suited to studying nature, only he has applied it to history. What really happened here? Hermann Grimm observed quite correctly. Gibbon was a very shrewd, scientific observer of history, but he described all the forces, which he did excellently for the first Christian centuries, all the forces which tend toward decay, which led to the fall of the Roman Empire, which brought to an end the evolution which had been in progress for a long time. Grimm rightly reproaches Gibbon with the fact that something quite different was also happening in the centuries when the Roman Empire was declining, something positive, for the forces connected to the birth of Christianity were entering into historical evolution. These are the forces of progressive evolution, the forces which existed positively alongside the negative forces of decay. They are simply missing from Gibbon's history.

Herman Grimm came to this important observation out of his historical instinct. He did not know the basis for it, for it is only with the science of spirit that we can get to the bottom of such things—the science of spirit whose method works with forces that otherwise slumber in the soul and which will be developed thus enabling the human being really to see into the spiritual. This science of spirit discovers that we cannot grasp the progressive forces of historical evolution bearing the future if we use only the form of knowledge that happens to be excellent for natural science.

What happens when we apply to historical evolution the method that is right for natural science? We find the forces of decay. We find the part of life that becomes dead in historical evolution, in the social life of humanity. If we apply only what our understanding, our ordinary consciousness can grasp, then we find ourselves restricted to studying the impulses of decay. The impulses of growth, of forward evolution, that carry historical evolution in a positive sense, elude this kind of observation. They also elude this kind of observation when we are confronted by real life and wish to take hold of it.

It is shocking that one must say such things, but the present time must learn to grasp things as they really are. Taking care to observe what happens and not to sleepwalk through reality, we should try to get together a parliament or something similar where only people intellectually educated according to the scientific pattern have to vote on what should happen both in social life and in life as a whole; we should create a parliament of people who have fashioned their intellect according to scientific method and let no one else in except those who are fully educated in these things, and you can be quite sure that these people will come to decisions which will very quickly lead the community into decline in every possible sphere. For their way of thinking can be applied only to the forces of decline and decay. It can observe only the declining forces in human evolution. The forces of growth are such that they cannot be comprehended by the powers of our ordinary consciousness. And here I must come back to something that I indicated here several months ago in a lecture about how the unconscious comes to be revealed.

Looked at superficially, this human soul life, in fact human life as a whole, proceeds in alternating states of waking and sleeping. Because we are naturally all very industrious, we are awake two thirds of our lives and are asleep one third. These conditions alternate. But this is not absolutely correct, for what we call sleeping and dreaming also extends to a large extent into our waking life. Our waking life is completely awake only in part. Beneath the surface of our waking life is something that sleeps, even when we are awake. A very significant man, Friedrich Theodor Vischer, had a kind of instinctive feeling for this when he pointed out how closely our feeling life and our passions are related to our dream life. Those who are really able to investigate and observe such things discover that what we experience as our feelings are conscious in us in a quite different way from our perceptions and mental images. For, in fact, we are only really awake in the latter. Our feelings shine through out of the unconscious spheres of the soul just as dreams do. We are not more strongly conscious of our feelings than we are of our dreams; we do not know them as they really are, but only observe their reflection in the sphere of consciousness. We raise our feelings into the waking condition by having them before our minds. We dream the whole day by allowing our souls to be permeated by feelings, and we are asleep inasmuch as we have will impulses and go through the world with such impulses, the motive you know as coming from your will impulses. You know what it is that as perception stimulates the will. How what you want comes about, how your mental images lead to movement in your limbs and hands,—all this proceeds in a sleeping state. We sleep and dream beneath the surface of our normal consciousness.

Having learned to look at the human being in this way, if we then learn to see history as it really is, we become aware of all those actions and impulses at work in the historical evolution of humanity, which are not forces of decay. They come to be recognized as something which the whole of humanity in living together dreams and sleeps. However odd and paradoxical it may sound this will become a most important truth once more, without which there can be no satisfaction in historical research—that the forces carrying humanity forward in its historical evolution do not belong to the normal forces, we use in natural science, for these impulses in history in no way proceed from our ordinary waking consciousness, but proceed from our dreaming and sleeping. This is not a comparison or picture but something real in the deepest sense.

This is why in earlier times, when people were still connected with the life of the spirit in their soul life, even if only unconsciously, they sought their information about social life and historical evolution from a different source than what we call history today. They sought their knowledge in myths, sagas, pictures. And they knew more about the impulses to be found in their own people than can be discovered today purely by means of the understanding that is confined to our ordinary consciousness, and that has provided such magnificent results in science. That is where it belongs.

Now Karl Lamprecht quite rightly observed that a new age began in the middle of the 15th century. But he was not able to make use of this fact. He said that the individual human being then began to be significant, to become intellectual. History really only begins in this age. At first it is studied according to the pattern of science. Of course, we cannot return to the old ways, but the impulses which lie at the root of historical evolution are subconscious.

When a person is possessed by something in the subconscious working in his soul, then something bursts through from the subconscious, as with Wilson, resulting in a brilliant and appropriate observation. But this makes it all the more difficult for someone who is called to be an individuality, an individual soul, to struggle for the truth. It is therefore necessary, especially in this intellectual age, in order to understand social, historical and moral life that something else emerge that can see into the part of the human being that cannot be grasped by our ordinary consciousness, that can see into the part where our ordinary consciousness no longer operates, where we dream and sleep away our normal life.

I have previously described this as imaginative knowledge, inspired knowledge and intuitive knowledge.—This is what looks into the spiritual world, and what can look below the threshold of our consciousness, where the real, true spirit works. The real nature of history, that humanity normally only dreams and sleeps through, can only be called forth if history is studied with the help of imagination and inspiration. In other words, because the real course of history is something that proceeds in the subconscious and does not reveal itself to our ordinary consciousness, it is imperative to apply what I have called the spiritual scientific method,—imagination, inspiration and intuition—to history, to the social, moral and legal life of humanity if we wish to come to know them as they are fundamentally. These facets of reality which first appear before the soul in pictures, in imaginations, must be called forth from the depths of historical evolution. These imaginations must then inspire. Then we shall come upon what is really at work in historical evolution. Attempts in the past such as those of Karl Lamprecht can occasionally come about through instinct, but it can only become truly spiritually enlightened knowledge when history is deepened by the science of spirit.

Now I do not wish to omit contrasting what today is called history with a few historical findings of the science of spirit. I would like to take as my starting point the fact that Karl Lamprecht instinctively divined something I have already mentioned—that a new age arose out of the old around the middle of the 15th century.

If we look with the eye of the seer—if we look with our perceptive consciousness into history, we do in fact find that there is an important turning point that begins roughly about the beginning of the 15th century. Everything that Karl Lamprecht says about subjectivism and the type is of lesser importance than this. Something begins at the turn of the 15th century that is not sufficiently recognized, that brings about a significant and tremendous change in the whole of human life, and which comes to expression most typically in the life of Central Europe. If we go back to the time before this age we find that the configuration, the structure of the human being and his actions are characterized by the fact that his understanding still operates in an instinctive way. In the science of spirit we therefore distinguish the more instinctive rational soul, where cleverness itself is still instinctive. This is superseded around the middle of the 15th century, and not according to the comfortable notion that nature makes no leaps, but is superseded by decided a leap, by a quite different configuration of the human soul. What in the science of spirit we call the consciousness soul which grasps everything through the consciousness, now becomes typical for humanity. And we can grasp what has happened since that time when we recognize that a whole age can be understood only by taking into consideration how this instinctive understanding, this rational soul, began to operate in more or less the same way in the 7th or 8th century B.C., how this understanding molded Greek history, Roman history, Roman law, Roman politics. Thus everything can be grasped only in the light of this instinctive kind of understanding. And we can comprehend what begins to happen around the middle of the 15th century, what is suddenly different in what takes place, only if we know that at that time the consciousness soul began to work.

The consciousness soul has a quite different relationship to reality, for it does not work instinctively from within, but makes the human being think and consider, drawing conclusions and proceeding purely intellectually. It is in this age that we live today. And what we have to study, and what can be observed in every detail, is what this consciousness soul brings to the very foundations of the soul. For the soul life comes to expression quite differently in such people as the Italian or Spanish who still have much that belongs to an older heritage, from such people as the British who have been particularly attracted to the material aspects of life by their geographical situation in evolving the consciousness soul. It is different again in Eastern Europe where there is no natural tendency for the consciousness soul to evolve, where today the evolution of the consciousness soul is slept through. And it is only in the age that will follow this present age of the consciousness soul that those who today are the Russian people will be ready to evolve their particular kind of soul which at the moment cannot be observed at all with the ordinary senses in the people who live in the east of Europe. Today it is imperative to acquire a deeper understanding for what is happening all over the earth. And also a deeper understanding is needed for what is taking place in the individual human being, inasmuch as he belongs to the great dream of history that can be understood only when we can call forth something from the dreaming human soul that cannot be approached with our normal observation: that from the 7th, 8th century until the 14th, 15th century instinctive willing and understanding evolved, and that a great change then comes about, under whose influence we now stand. This is one example.

I will cite another example. At a place such as this, where I have spoken for so many years, I will not shrink from describing the findings of the science of spirit quite concretely for the simple reason that we would not make any progress with the science of spirit if we did not gradually proceed to a description of concrete events.

Normally history draws only upon ordinary observation and ordinary documents for its study of earlier epochs. As I have said previously, the spiritual scientific method is based upon a particular development of powers slumbering in the human soul. It was explained how the soul is led to perceive spheres of life that never manifest themselves in the soul in normal life. Then was shown how the soul can free itself from the body, how it can then pursue knowledge independently of the body. Then the soul begins to utilize forces which, it is true, are present in normal life, but which remain in a slumbering state in the subconscious, the unconscious. Man's real life cannot be grasped by our ordinary powers of knowledge.

Let us take an ordinary phenomenon, but one which leads us deeply into the mysteries of human life, even of ordinary, everyday life. Let us take the fact that we can learn something by heart. In this way we can study how the human memory behaves. Now people usually believe that we master a mental image of what we take in, that we then have it in our consciousness and after a time it rises up again out of consciousness. This superstition is taught by countless psychologists. This is supposed to be science, this superstition that the ideas that we take in wander down into some indefinite sphere, wander about in the unconscious part of the soul, and that when need them they rise up again and appear as memory images. Such a view can only come about because no one has learned how to observe the real life of the soul. In fact, what happens is quite different. At the time we take in a mental image there is in our consciousness only the fact of this taking in. Parallel with this activity is another of quite a different nature that remains unconscious, that slips into the human organization and is responsible for something happening that is quite different from the formation of the mental image. This activity that takes place parallel with the formation of the image is unconscious. The memory is developed unconsciously. Now we have taken in new images. The parallel activity has functioned.

You can get a rough idea of what it is like—the time is too short to provide further proof—by remembering what it is like yourselves. Think of all the various other things you have had to do when learning a poem by heart or when trying to remember things for exams when you really have to cram,—think of all the things you have to do apart from taking in the image in order that the thing sticks! With our consciousness we try to support what happens unconsciously. There is really a parallel activity, and when people strike their foreheads when cramming themselves with what they have to remember, it is all a support for this unconscious activity. The mental image that we take in does not remain; it is temporary. What exists down below and is shaped and prepared there is something that we can perceive inwardly just as we can perceive things outwardly—the mental image is formed anew, it is something different from the original one.

Every time we use our memory the mental image has to be formed anew according to the inner copy. This is the true state of affairs. But the activity on which the memory rests, remains unconscious. Supposing it is drawn up into the consciousness so that we work in it and do consciously what otherwise takes place subconsciously in the parallel activity of forming images,—what have we then? It is the same power that is used when we apply imaginative knowledge. It forms the organism. We penetrate below the thresh-hold of consciousness, we penetrate to a sphere that we constantly exercise in life, but which remains unconscious. And we can always penetrate even deeper. The money then expands. We then acquire the possibility—and here I have to make a rather big leap because I have still to describe further findings—of following historical evolution from a purely spiritual viewpoint and of acquiring insight into the meaning and into the forces existing over the whole earth that carry the evolution of humanity. A number of laws are then revealed that go far beyond that ordinary observation can provide, but which for the first time raise what the human being sleeps and dreams through in his normal historical evolution, into consciousness.

The science of spirit, working with imagination, inspiration and intuition, can reach further back through the expansion of our memory into the memory of humanity so that we are really able to perceive what humanity has experienced. This can come about through the continuation of our own memory. It is true that it is much more difficult to do this than any other kind of scientific work—because we are ourselves deeply involved in it. Then we are able to reach back into earlier epochs of human evolution than the one I have just mentioned, which began in the 7th, 8th century B.C. and continued until the 15th century. We reach back into earlier times than this, into the time which followed what geology calls the ice age and by many geologists is called the flood. We must think of this as having taken place earlier than is normally believed—we go back thousands of years. What we come to then is not an ape-like humanity—this is a scientific superstition—but to a humanity whose soul constitution is quite different to today's. Allow me for once to risk describing in public a finding of the science of spirit. One must approach the science of the spirit without bias if one is not to regard its findings as merely fantastic. We reach back into an ancient epoch of earth evolution, about which we may say the following:

If we look at a human being and observe how he evolves, we see that what has to do with his bodily development takes place in the first years of childhood and in the later years of childhood up to puberty. And if we look still further we note that what develops in our souls goes hand in hand with our bodily development, right into the twenties. But then it stops. Our soul development no longer participates in this bodily development as it does with a child at the change of teeth, in growing and at puberty. The body and the soul then go their own separate ways. This is typical of our development from between the 25th and 30th years until old age—our souls no longer participate in what is developing in the body.

This was quite different in the first age that I will now describe, and which reaches back thousands of years. At that time the soul remained connected with the development taking place in the body until old age. The soul participated in this development right into the fifties and in the decline of the body in a way that today only happens in our childhood years. Because of this, the human being was able to experience something that he can no longer experience. As a matter of course we no longer experience in our souls the decline of our bodily organism. We are already withdrawn from our bodies. What happens in the soul comes to expression in our cultural life, where the soul is no longer dependent upon the bodily organism. At that time in Asia and India the soul-spirit life remained dependent on the life of the physical body until the fifties. This was quite a different kind of experience.

Then came the next epoch of historical evolution, when the dependence did not last so long, for at that time the soul's participation in the life of the body lasted until the forties. Then there was a further epoch when this participation lasted until the middle of the thirties. Here something quite special happened, which was still experienced by the old Egyptians and Chaldeans. And this was, that because the human being begins to decline in the life of the body after the age of 35, they were still able to experience this decline in their souls. Then this age came to an end, which was followed by the age I have already mentioned: the age of Greece and Rome, the effects of which lasted into the 15th century. In their soul life at that time people still remained more or less participants in the life of the body at least into their thirties. No one believes this today because no one really studies with inner personal interest what has come into being through the evolution of humanity. Since the 14th, 15th centuries the age has begun when the human being participates with his bodily life in the spirit-soul life until the end of the twenties. We no longer experience what the decline of human life is. In Greek and Latin times the beginning of the thirties was experienced within the instinctive understanding. At the present time this participation of the bodily life is concluded at the end of the twenties.

You can see that this is a remarkable law of history! As far as soul experience is concerned the age is progressively reduced, its final experience of the body is connected with an ever younger age. This is one of the most comprehensive and important laws of human evolution. Whereas the individual human being always grows older, humanity—if you now carry what I have just said to its logical conclusion—in its experience of the body, becomes younger. This means that it does not experience growing old as a reflex feeling in the soul; it only experiences its effect. But what the soul actually experienced in earlier times was quite different. It had something which enabled a person to look directly into the spiritual world by means of his instinctive knowledge. This must now be achieved again by humanity, only consciously. We have to learn to look into a sphere that cannot be perceived because today humanity can only experience what the body produces up to the age of 27.

I realize it is probably a bit much to speak about this growing younger of humanity, about the non-participation of the soul-spirit in the life of the body. But it does form the beginning of a true knowledge of history. For this true knowledge of history will be concerned with what is otherwise slept through, and we shall be able to understand properly what happens in history when we are able to appreciate such great, all-embracing laws.

I may be permitted to mention a personal experience. Those who have often heard me speak know that I mention personal experiences only if there is a particular reason to do so. It was because I directed my spiritual investigation to such matters that I came to know about what I have just told you—the growing younger of humanity and the influence on humanity due to the fact that the soul-spirit nature only experiences the life of the body in our younger years. That is how I found out about it. And I am quite convinced that anyone else applying the method of the science of spirit will find a law of history, though not of the kind that I characterized at the beginning of the lecture. And so I asked: How old was humanity then in the Greek age in its participation in the life of the body? At that time it continued until the beginning of the thirties. This was a tremendous change. For it is at this age that the human being enters upon a declining development. And in earlier times when he noticed this decline of the body he was granted a special form of spirituality. We study this spirituality when we study ancient wisdom and learning.

I have said that thinking is connected with a declining development. When the soul shared to a very large extent in the declining development of the body, it evolved a particular wisdom. This wisdom became lost in the age which began in the 7th century B.C. and ended in the 15th century. This age—inasmuch as we are interested in it and are still in it—represents the middle of evolution. If a new impulse had not arisen at that time there would have been the threat of a total break in our spiritual connection to the universe. The impulse came. When studying this growing younger of humanity I certainly did not think about such an impulse. That came later, and it belongs to one of the most shattering findings of the science of spirit.

I could see that the general course of human evolution had brought humanity to a crisis where its connection with the spiritual was threatened. What happened in this crisis?—I first came upon it after having found out about its origin. This is important, and I must single it out as a personal experience. I was shown the significance of the Mystery of Golgotha that occurred just in this age: the new impulse that gave humanity a fresh impetus. The Mystery of Golgotha thus finds its place in the historical evolution of humanity in a wonderful way.

Only for special reasons would I ever break what is expressed in the law that one should not use the name of God in vain. The science of spirit certainly leads to the great religious impulses, but I regard it as a duty to allow religious impulses to be cultivated by those who are called to do so. However, I know that what is achieved by the science of spirit also deepens the religious impulses of the human soul. It is precisely the thoughts presented by the science of spirit that can provide a really Christian view of life. But you cannot get people to accept this. They would only reproach us if they found that we have constantly to speak about the great religious content of evolution in a way that does not please them. They also reproach us if we do not do this because we leave it to them, knowing full well that by occupying ourselves with the science of spirit the religious life will certainly be deepened. For they say that the science of spirit, of course, does not talk about Christianity. These are the misunderstandings which are readily thrust into the battle against the science of spirit. We are reproached for whatever we say. If we do not speak about something because we feel that others are called to do this, we are then misunderstood and told that the science of spirit has no Christianity, or whatever it may be.

As I have said, the fact that this event concerning the whole cosmic connections of the universe happens at one particular moment in the evolution of humanity, belongs to the most shattering things that we can experience, especially since in my case—if you will allow me this personal remark—it was an experience quite unsought for.

I only wanted to indicate to you the beginning of a view of world evolution as seen by the science of spirit.

The forces that seek to penetrate more deeply into history have been divined instinctively, especially in our central European evolution. We only have to ask: How does the individual soul participate in this historical evolution? I have mentioned previously how in looking at thinking on the one hand and at the will on the other, we bring to expression in the overdevelopment of the sexual organism something that leads our spiritual-scientific observation to the eternal in the soul, to that which exists in the spiritual world before birth or conception, and which enters through the gate of death. This also leads to something else. The part of us that unites with our physical organism and that comes down from the spiritual world when we are conceived, when we are born, is intimately related—I have already said this today—to the part of us that operates throughout the whole course of our lives and makes us into complete and living human beings, intimately related to what works out of our souls as memory. If we now grasp not only the fact that the thinking can be conceived as inspiration, but also grasp the element that unites with our bodily organism, that flows out of inspiration and accompanies our memory and our growth, then we find that we not only emerge from a spirit-soul existence before beginning this bodily life, and which is united to what we evolve in life, but that within the part of us that goes through death is contained the desire to enter a human life again after the soul has been through a purely spiritual life, and that within this part of us is to be found not only what inspires us, but forms us, which not only comes from a spirit-soul existence before birth, but comes from previous incarnations upon earth.

Imagination, inspiration and intuition provide us with a true idea of previous lives on earth and a justified prospect of future lives on earth. I can only touch upon this for there is insufficient time for a more detailed description. But when we look at individual human life as it proceeds through repeated existences upon earth, we find something in historical evolution that can be grasped concretely. The human being naturally takes part in the various epochs I have described. He lives through the various cultures of the earth and he bears himself as soul from one epoch to the next, taking with him what he has evolved.

In the present epoch, when the consciousness soul is evolved, the human being unconsciously brings with him what he possesses from the previous epoch in which he once lived, and in which the instinctive soul worked instinctively in the understanding, and he now works upon this. Now we can fully grasp what this dream of history consists of, how human souls that live in each epoch work together and return again and again. This idea arose instinctively in the cultural life of Central Europe. But it has never been developed. The science of spirit is called upon to do this.

The pedants or “very clever people”—and I mention this in inverted commas—say: Of course, Lessing managed some wonderful things, but then he grew old and wrote his Education of the Human Race. If one has the necessary mean attitude, it is easy to be so very clever, much easier than being able to penetrate the mysteries of human life as did Lessing. Lessing achieved something immense. He indicated, if only in somewhat amateur fashion, how inner forces guide the evolution of man and of humanity. He says: There was once a time when human beings were educated in a quite particular way. Then there was a time when people were educated differently. Now is the time when self-education begins.—He had a feeling for the successive epochs, just as Karl Lamprecht had. Lessing had a feeling for even more in that he pointed out that the forces of one epoch are taken over into the following epochs by the human souls constantly reincarnating.

Of course it is easy to object to this by saying that human souls do not remember their previous lives. This is the same as saying that a four year old child cannot do arithmetic, therefore the human being cannot do arithmetic. Memory of earlier lives has first to be gained through the kind of knowledge I have referred to previously. Without this knowledge it is not possible to penetrate the sphere that is dreamed as history. This is something that humanity must grasp, for it is intimately connected with the present evolution of humanity.

Tremendous questions are presented to our souls today. One question is: What is the constitution of the human soul like in the east, in our center and in the west? We possess a science of history which, as we saw at the beginning, has gone quite astray. We need a science of history that can penetrate to those deeper forces of the human soul which bring what otherwise only dreams and sleeps, into our consciousness. When imagination and inspiration reach down into our experience of history that otherwise sleeps, we shall realize what it is that works between man and man in our social existence. Then quite different social laws will come into being from the ones of the past few centuries. What then emerges will be quite equal to the demands of life, the demands of reality. People experience history today in an odd way, and in conclusion I would like to give a few examples of this.

A certain J. H. Lambert was born in a South German city in the 18th century. In the 19th century, roughly in the middle of the forties, a monument was erected to him in that city. On the monument is a celestial globe as a sign that this man penetrated the laws of the heavens, as these things were done in the 18th century. Not much is known about this. He penetrated further than is possible with the Kant-Laplace theory. In the 1840's his native city erected a monument to him. A hundred years earlier his father, after several people had pointed out to him that his fourteen year old son was very talented and should be supported, applied for support. The worthy city gave 40 franks, but on condition that the son take himself off and did not return. A hundred years later—such is the course of history—a monument was erected.

Such things happen again and again. You may remember at the beginning of the war, particularly here in this city, I often had occasion to refer to a most significant thinker who once lived here, Karl Christian Planck. I referred to him at that time and had also spoken of him much earlier in my books. Now we see that people begin to take note of him, but not in the way that I meant. If Planck were alive today in conditions that are quite changed, he would express what he said, even in the 1880's, quite differently. Humanity can make use only of what is ardently experienced of reality, and not of what comes from looking back. Because people believe we need a new impetus, they think that a highly gifted and thoughtful person would say the same things today as he said in the 1880's. We honor the memory of such people if we continue to work in their spirit, and if we ask: How would they speak today if they were to speak out of the great spirit out of which they spoke then?

Today the times demand that we grasp what underlies the evolution of humanity, particularly concerning history. Then we shall not hear judgments like those I quoted at the beginning of the lecture. Nor will vague prophecies be uttered. But history will be described in such a way that we confront reality with feeling, which otherwise is only dissipated in dreams; that we confront reality with deeper forces, that we are equal to the demands made upon us. And the demands of the present time are tremendous.

We must know what is stirring in humanity from east to west, what is coming out in the events of today. We must be equal to this reality that is hammering so dreadfully upon our doors. We must take up the laws of history that are not contained in the laws today, laws that penetrate deeper than the purely intellectual, than the kind of understanding that has produced such great results in science, but which cannot grasp the social, political, historical and moral life of man. Goethe felt this. He not only expressed his impressions of the historical knowledge of his time, but he also expressed something that should come to be. What made an impression upon him was the best thing about history is not its abstract laws but the impulses that penetrate into our feelings and our enthusiasm.

By means of imagination, inspiration and intuition it will be possible to unveil what men sleep through. This will sink down into our feelings and enthusiasm. When reality draws toward us and we can approach reality, inwardly permeated by these impulses, we shall not utter prophetic or vaguely mystical statements, but in future our study of history will result in the fashioning of spiritual laws, not such as it has already, but laws which penetrate the human soul to the point of arousing enthusiasm which is equal to and can tackle the situation as it really is.

Not only is what Goethe said at that time true—what can be said today is also true. For today the following holds good: History must generate enthusiasm for the true, real and complete understanding of reality, for it is the best that can be offered to the life of the soul.

The most valuable aspect of history in the future will be the enthusiasm that it generates in the human soul.

It will be more in keeping with the character of a study-evening, such as this, if I do not deliver a regular lecture, but begin simply by offering a few remarks, which may lead on to as wide a discussion as possible of the particular subjects which the different members of the audience may have more especially at heart, and which may seem needful for the further work of propagating the Threefold Social Order.

It has been intimated to me, that an important question at this moment is that of propaganda; a how and through what means the idea of the Threefold Order can best be propagated during the coming months.

Since I was not present at the last study-evenings, it is possible that what I say to-day may be apart from the general context; but this question of propaganda was represented to me as being of particular importance.

Well, it is hardly very profitable, to-day, to discuss the ways and means in which the propaganda of the Threefold Order should be carried on, unless one is prepared to base anything one may propose to do upon the experiences we have actually had up till now. In discussing a subject of this kind, I must really point out once more, that, in face of the general situation throughout the world to-day, it can really not be a question of how one thinks of arranging every detail in one particular concern,—especially not in the economic field. From any measures on a small scale, one can truly no longer hope for much to-day. To-day we should after all be learning to see, that at bottom nothing is to be accomplished except by treating things on a big scale, as I might say. As regards our propaganda,—I spoke of it last time at one of these very study-evenings, and called attention to the fact, that with our propaganda we have met with very interesting experiences. And the dominant note of our repeated experiences was always this: how very difficult it is really today, even in these times of need, to approach men's souls at all with the very thing which in all respects,—spiritual, political, economical,—one must feel to be absolutely needful.

I pointed out last time, how certain proposed plans had failed, and how we were therefore obliged to fall back upon more or less individual enterprises, which, as you know finally concentrated in our business-undertaking, the Kommender Tag. We are quite well aware, that if our propaganda for the Threefold idea does not succeed in making its way through as a whole, this single undertaking can at best be but a very unsatisfying substitute in every respect. For the thing, above all, which is of importance to-day,—and it cannot be too often repeated,—is, that an understanding of the threefold idea, as an active onward-bearing force, should make its way into as many heads as possible. Unless we have a sufficiently large number of people who really understand this Threefold idea, there is no getting on. This understanding applies to many things, let me say. And here I should like to point to a concrete instance.

When we first started our propaganda here, we began, as you know, by working in the way I have just indicated: by trying to win over as large a number as possible of souls with understanding. And the actual questions of economic life too were practically discussed. There is one very definite question of economic life for instance, which was discussed by me not once but many times: and that was the question of price-adjustment. I have often pointed out, that this question of price-adjustment is a cardinal one; that the fact of the matter is simply, that in the economic process there are of course other questions, but that even such questions as wages, and the like, are not the primary ones to be settled; but that these also must be settled on the basis of the price-question; that a quite definite price for any particular article is the only state of things which can be regarded as a healthy one in economic life. In other words: a definite article must be obtainable for a definite price within any particular set of economic combinations; and this must be the standard to which economic relations are adjusted. There can be nothing more unsound that to look upon prices as something that can be put up and down at convenience; and then begins the endless screw, of adjusting the rate of wages to suit the prices, and then putting up the prices again at convenience to suit the wages; if prices rise, then wages rise, and so on ad infinitum. This is laying hold of the whole matter by the wrong end.

In those days I used to take for discussion a concrete question of this kind from the bed-rock of general economics. What was the result? In those days we used to have meetings which were attended for the greater part by working men only. The middle-class circles held aloof, for they thought that we arranged things only to suit the working classes. Well, in short, we met with some understanding amongst the particular circles who, in those days, listened to us. But this understanding completely dried up. The people gradually left off coming. They produced all their old stock-in-trade of questions from the regulation party shibboleths; and then they gradually stayed away; and one of the cardinal questions simply dried up in this way. I am just picking out one example; there are many others that might be quoted. And I cannot help thinking, in comparison, of an occasion I had, not long ago, to talk with a thoroughly practical business man, who is in the thick of business-life under a state-system which is not the German one; and in the course of our conversation it came out, that, simply from his own experience as a practical businessman, he had arrived at the view, that the most important thing to be dealt with is the problem of price-adjustment. Yes! of this—let me say—I am convinced: with people, who are business people, and at the same time can think, one finds no difficulty. I must confess that, so far, I have met with remarkably few people of this description. I have met with business-people who did not think, but who are under the habit of thought, even today, of regarding it as the all-important matter that one is ‘a practical man,’ and that one is ‘a practical man’ when one takes care that the State—or some other institution—thinks for one: one can leave it to them.—This was the way things were done too in Germany during the war; It must be left to the people above, at headquarters; they must know all about it!—And so, as I was saying, I have not met with many as yet, but when one does meet with such people to-day, who are business-men and at the same time can think, they arrive quite infallibly, through their own practical thinking on business matters, to the same results as you find in my Roots of the Social Question.¹ You must not compare my Roots of the Social Question, and test what you find there, with the crazy things in the party-programmes. The party-programmes of the fourteen parties just elected to this impossible Reichstag (it will be a quite impossible conglomeration!) are all alike equally impracticable and impossible. The point about what you find in the Roots of the Social Question is, that it must be compared with a real practice of life, with what the actual facts of life require,—that is to say if one really thinks about actual life, and does not merely go crying the old stock-in-trade and the regulation shibboleths.

But this method of propaganda, as we have seen, makes no headway: the method of really examining what, of course, had to be said on a limited number of pages. For one can't write a whole library off-hand; and it would be only less read than The Roots of the Social Question! But instead of people comparing what is said in The Roots of Social Question with the things one can learn in the factory as a business-man or a practical technician, they go hawking about the old, old party shibboleths and party-programmes; and the real practical thing of which the book is talking, instead of being compared with real practice, is compared with some bee or other, that is buzzing in some particular bonnet, and is supposed to be ‘the practical thing.’

This, then, is the first thing we have to achieve. We must decide to direct our efforts to making people see, that it is really not so easy to settle public affairs. I must say that for me it is a bitter pill, a bitter experience in this respect, that after I tried to write this book at that time from the actual needs of the time, people should now come and demand, that what is written in The Roots of the Social Question should be boiled down into a general mess, and drained off onto a page or two. That is what these people want! They want to have everything laid before them in a couple of pages,—which already in the book is stated as shortly as ever is possible! Or perhaps they would like to have it on a single leaflet for distribution! If you ask me to-day: In what does the trouble lie in our present age? I can only answer: The trouble lies just in this fact, that people can still to-day make such a demand as this; and that they are not willing, even now, to go to the bottom of things. Things that require careful study, they want to have crammed together anyhow on a couple of printed sheets,—such as already have appeared as an abstract of the Roots of the Social Question. So long as this is people's attitude of mind, nothing will be accomplished in the only way in which anything can be accomplished to-day. It is true that I propose very soon to issue a new edition of the Roots of the Social Question, with a special introduction, in which I shall shortly summarise in a couple of pages the contents discussed in the book.² But this is only intended to be used as a sort of preparatory introduction, printed as the beginning, by way of preparation for reading the book in full. But if anyone imagines that he can learn from still fewer pages what it is necessary to understand to-day, it simply means that he has no feeling for the things that have actually to be done to-day. This is the very first thing we have to consider, if we are really in earnest about what we may term the propaganda-question.

Just take this concrete fact, that our weekly paper, the Threefold Social Order,³ has already brought out 49 numbers:—49 numbers. Take these 49 numbers, read them through in succession, and you will see what an amount we have collected together in them of practically all the things which it is more immediately necessary for mankind to know about the Threefold question. We have already issued 49 numbers; and really there is to be found in them all that is more immediately necessary to know. Yet what can we only tell ourselves to-day? People still come to us, asking for information about some point or other. They are always asking for information about this point or that. As a matter of fact we have written these 49 numbers of the Threefold Order, and the whole of the material is for the time being flung away. Doesn't it look as though we should be almost obliged to begin over again from the beginning; to give out No. 1 again just as before, and then all the following numbers, just as they appeared before! Having said really a great deal here, which was thrown to the winds, which never made its way into people's heads at all, are we always expected to find something new to say! Well, they can't after all expect too much—the people outside;—they can't expect us always to be finding something new. What is wanted now, would be to set to work and actually propagate the Threefold idea, as it is. Of course there are any number of things in the way of this; but they all reside entirely in the human will. They reside in the fact, that it is necessary that people's souls to-day should wake up; and that they should take the things seriously which are really in question.

There is one question, for instance, which people to-day invariably seek to evade. But it is the one from which the Roots of the Social Question sets out from the very first, and upon which, practically speaking, the whole of the Threefold propaganda must be based, not in substance, but as regards the way of propaganda: namely, the recognition, that in the so-called ‘social question’ to-day, we most certainly are not dealing with what most people talk about under that name. Most people, in talking about the social question, talk about what should be done with this or that institution, about the systems to be adopted in one or other department. Anyone who talks in this way has absolutely no understanding of what is going on in our present age; for the simple reason, that he does not see, that to-day you might make the most splendid institutions—if that were possible!—and that afterwards, when you have made them, you will soon have exactly the same agitation going on as before. As mankind is constituted at the present day, you may have a party, which for a long while has been in opposition;—take for example the Majority Socialists at the present time: the moment these Majority Socialists come into power, another party forms, of the socalled Independent Socialists. If these were to come into power, a new party again would form in opposition,—the Communists. And if these were to come into power, another new opposition party would soon be in the field. The fact we have to recognise is, that we are not dealing to-day with anything that can be touched by any sort of projects for particular institutions, but that the social question to-day is a human question, a question strictly of human worth and human consciousness. And one sees, what the social question really is, if one looks about one in countries, where everything has not yet crashed, but where the crash is still to come. There one may see, on the one side, the classes who formerly held the reins. These people see so far as that all business is coming to a stand-still: that enormous stocks of goods are piling up in the business-houses; that they have difficulty in making enough to pay their workmen, and are beginning to think, that if things go on in the same way, they soon won't be able to pay them at all; that they also won't be able to get rid of the stock in the warehouses. All this they see so far quite well; but they fancy, that some miracle will come about, and then, in a little while, things will be different. And so they sit waiting for the miracle, in order not to have to use their own brains, and think what ought really to be done. And, standing over on the other side, one sees those people who talk a very different language: namely the broad masses of the working class throughout the civilised world. Of what is going on amongst these broad masses, the first description of people have, nevertheless, not the faintest notion. But in these working-classes there exists a will: a will, that clothes its problems in conceptions, in ideas, which, the moment they are actually realised, will mean the destruction of everything we possess in the form of human civilisation:—ideas that destroy everything, everything,—that sweep everything away. And the leading classes imagine, that in a little while maybe things will have gone back again to the year 1913, or the Spring of 1914, and they will begin again whore they left off at that time;—and that then, amongst these broad masses, they will still find people to come quite willingly, and work again as they used to work in those days.

No! to-day it is no question of institutions with which we have to deal, but a question of human beings. And we have to recognise, that amongst the leading classes for a very long time past there has not been the faintest sign of understanding for the task they had to perform. And do you think, then, that from the masses anything could possibly come, except what we experienced to our horror here in Stuttgart, when we started with our Threefold propaganda?

You must consider, that there were two conditions under which the beginning we made, in April last year, might quite well have been carried further. Under two conditions:—the one would have been, that we should have succeeded, regardless of their leaders, in winning over the broad masses of the working classes to a really understanding conception of life. That was on a very fair road to success. And the next thing would have been, on the other side, if the people with some influence amongst the middle-classes—the bourgeoisie—would have held out a hand, would have shown us some confidence; if they had said to themselves: ‘Here is at least an attempt being made to construct a bridge between the working classes and the others.’—And what actually happened? As you can think, the matter is no easy one to-day; for as to the sort of thing which Stresemann talks, and the like,—or which bears the least odour of any leanings in that direction,—in nothing of this sort will the working classes ever, under any circumstances, place the slightest confidence. But, for all that, we were really in a fair way to appeal to the working classes simply on common-sense grounds; and all that was needed, would have been, that the bourgeoisie on their side should have met us with so much understanding as to say: ‘Alright: we will do our best, and wait and see what you can do. We will admit that amongst ourselves, there are a large number of people who cannot hope to win the necessary confidence, for they have trifled this confidence away; but, by this line of proceeding, it will be possible to bridge the gap.’

But, instead of this, what happened? The people who should have met us with this much understanding, planted themselves down across the path, and declared:iThese people are leading us straight into Bolshevism,—or not far short of it! They are hand-in-glove with the proletariatell Not the least understanding was to be met with on that side. And under these circumstances it then grew too late; so that the leaders of the working class, who should have been left out of it, found it easy to step in and alienate the workers from us again. That is what spoilt the matter for us, and why it came to grief at that time.

But, in the same way, anything we might now do in respect of propaganda, would also inevitably come to grief, if the general kind of view were to be, for instance, as regards the paper: “Yes; but the articles in the Threefold Order are so difficult to understand!”—When anybody says that to me, I look upon it as my duty to tell him, with all politeness (politeness is necessary with such people as a rule); so I politely explain to him, that it is just for this reason,—that people have so long had a tendency to think everything un-understandable which comes from the real practice of life, and have always demanded that one should descend to a lower level when it comes to writing,—that now we find ourselves in trouble. And you—I say—are a representative of the people who have brought us into trouble. And when you demand, that one should write to suit the kind of understanding which passes current with you, you simply show yourself to be a specimen of the detrimentals who have brought us to this present pass. And so long as we are not in a position, (with all due politeness, of course, for the individual instance!),—so long as we cannot find a sufficient number of people with the courage at last to say, ‘A new day will have to come, with new people! There must be a clean sweep of everything to do with these horrible old parties; something quite new must come to life!’—until we can do this, all discussion as to the most effective ways of propaganda is so much talk for the cat! We are not living to-day in an age when anything whatever can be done by little measures; we are living in an age when it is an urgent necessity, that a sufficiently large number of people, holding the same language and the same ideas, should be capable of throwing themselves actively into the thing,—not merely of being ‘quite enthusiastic’ about it.

I think that many of you must be asking himself, why there should be this continual crescendo in the way of speaking; why the words that I myself use, for instance, should grow ever stronger and stronger? Well, for a very simple reason. Only think for a moment: when one has been trying to induce a part of mankind to wake up; when one has taken the practical steps to enable a part of mankind to wake up; and one sees people falling ever more softly and soundly asleep,—then one's voice too grows louder in proportion, then everything one has to say grows proportionately louder, because one feels the instinctive necessity of overcoming the sleepiness of one's fellow-men! And as regards their conceptions of the urgent social questions of the day, we truly cannot say that the sleepiness of our fellow-humanity has grown any less of late. Things are taken up, even in our own movement, from an utterly wrong end. I delivered a lecture recently on the idea of the Threefold Order, and the necessity of placing the spiritual life upon its own footing. And in reply, somebody said in the most good-natured, well-meaning way: ‘Here, amongst us, there is really no occasion to complain of the lack of freedom in spiritual life. We possess a very considerable degree of freedom in our spiritual life. Amongst us, the State really interferes very little in anything we may choose to do as regards our school-system.’—Let me say to you, that people who talk in this way are the very best testimony to the necessity of emancipating our spiritual life. People who still have some sense of how unfree they are, are people for whom one can find much more use. But the people, who no longer have even a sense of their own lack of freedom, who take the State-educational ideas, that have been pumped into their heads, to come from their own inner freedom, and have not the faintest notion of how far this public-educational slavery extends,—these are the people really, who are the drag upon everything. It is a question of taking hold of things by the right end. And people who, without knowing it, take slavery for freedom, are the people who, naturally, hinder us from getting forwards.

One may say, therefore, that the first matter above all, is to recognise, that all mutual understanding has been lost between the broad masses and those other people, whose special task for long years past it should have been, to hold such a language in the world, that these broad masses should not to-day be advocating, in their newspapers and everywhere, the kind of views which they are advocating. I read lately—in another country—the Whitsuntide number of a socialist newspaper. They were the queerest Whitsun articles, that were in it! Everything to do with ‘Spirit’ was rejected altogether, and it was pointed out instead, that the only kind of Spirit is the one which proceeds from the broad masses. Well, one really feels oneself wrought into such a state of mind by such Whitsun articles in a socialist paper of bolshevist tendencies, that one begins to say to oneself: ‘Where can I catch it? where can I hold of it, this “Spirit,” which is coming up like a smoke out of the broad masses?’ And then, when one really sets to work to try and form even some conception, let alone to grasp this Spirit of the broad masses,—then I can only say that one has after all the feeling: It is a far worse superstition, than the kind of superstition which sees a hobgoblin or a fairy in every bush and tree. The men of modern times have no notion really, under what forms of superstition they are living as a matter of fact. And what does it all amount to? Well, you know, it amounts after all to this: that people are much too easy-going to give their minds to the necessity of really building up a new spiritual life.

This is an experience which one has had very thorough opportunities of learning for many years past. Directly one approaches people with any appeal for the necessity of building up a new spiritual life, one finds a certain number of people no doubt, who, in addition to their other occupations in life, can make up their minds,—on Sunday afternoons, or Branch-evenings, or for the time they spend on anthroposophical reading,—to devote themselves to this new spiritual movement. But, as to trying to make any connection between this new spiritual movement and their other occupations in life,—this is something which they cannot make up their minds to do.

But there are numbers and numbers of other people, who come to one and say: ‘After all, what you want, is really what the better sort of Catholics, or the better sort of Protestants, want too. Why there was some clergyman, again, whose sermon from the pulpit was quite in the anthroposophical direction! More or less everything that you are aiming at is to be found in this or the other quarter as well.’—People who would like to make compromises, to the extent of being ready to let Anthroposophy be practically swamped by the sort of thing they are used to,—such people are to be found in plenty. People, who, even in matters that call for resolute will,—such as we spoke of in the public lecture yesterday—nevertheless still follow the principle ‘Wash my fur, but don't wet it by a single drop,’—such people are peculiarly plentiful in these days. And until we find means to put a clear understanding into as many heads as possible, that what is needed before all else is a new spiritual life, a spiritual life that lays hold on everything,—until we find means to do this, we shall get no further. When we have this new spiritual life,—when we no longer have the senselessness of the intellectuals to contend with,—then we shall once more have something that can speak to men in such a way, that the speaking has power to call forth social facts.

If people would but form a conception of what can be done by the power of the Word! Look over the whole civilised world today, whereever you may travel, by train or by motor-car; everywhere you see towns and villages, and in all these towns and villages churches: churches, that have been built. These churches were none of them there, not so very long ago. In the first centuries of our present, Christian era, all over this Europe, now strewn with churches, there was something very different. Yet they were but a small Few, who went out amongst the people,—though indeed amongst a fresher age of man, less given to sleep. And these small Few it was, who through the power of their words gave Europe the face it wears to-day. Had the people, who accomplished this, been of the same type of mind as—say the sample-dozen leaders of our collective 14 parties, probably not so many as a dozen of these churches would have been built. It is the inner power of the spirit, after all, which must create social facts. But then, this inner power of the spirit must find its carriers in men, who really have courage to carry it. And today we simply have to face the fact, that everything, which in those days was founded on its own inner grounds, can only now be maintained in place by measures of force, by prejudice, by custom,—and that, at bottom, it is not possible to maintain it, if people's minds are true and honest;—that a new spiritual life must be set in its place;—that there is no other possible way for us to go forwards, except by setting a new spiritual life in place of the old. Every sort of compromise is an impossibility to-day. And until people recognise that it will be inevitably necessary to put something entirely new in the place of all these old things, but something which shall draw from the spirit the power to create a new social order,—till then, we shall get no further.—And therefore I must say to you, that I regard it, in a way, as a matter of very minor importance, whether all the petty measures of propaganda are discussed in this manner or that,—whether it is done in this manner or that; it may all, from a certain point of view, be very good, or miserably bad: that is not the important matter; the really important matter, as I have said over and over again in our paper, The Threefold Order, is this: that we should find a sufficiently large number of people who will make up their minds to stand out courageously for our ideas, who will make up their minds not for ever to be wanting to drift back into the old grooves.

At the present moment, as you know, we are busy setting on foot the various businesses, collectively comprised under this Kommender Tag. What strikes me more than anything else about it is, that well-meaning people keep coming and saying: ‘Really, you know, that ought to be done quite differently; you ought to call in a specialist; you ought to call in a practical man.’—It is the most pitiable experience one can gb through, if one does for once give in and follow the suggestion. For such a suggestion really implies, that the person wants to import the old unpractical groove-drifting amongst us again. What we need, is not to import the old so-called practical men into our institutions; on the contrary, what we need, is clearly to recognise, that the people who may happen to-day to have the best reputation in any department, and know best how to handle the old routine, are the worst people for our purpose. And the best people for our purpose are those who are prepared to do new work from their own quite inner and spontaneous initiative, and who do not plume themselves in any way on what they have learnt under the old conditions. Unless we leave off pluming ourselves on anything we have attained to under the old conditions, we shall in no case get any further. This is what we must clearly recognise to-day.

And in conclusion I would say to you as regards our propaganda: Let us spread abroad in the first place what we have really been endeavoring to do for more than a year past; and don't let us always try to be over-clever and always want to twist round the attempts that have been made, and give them a different shape again; in order then—excuse the expression!—to lick one's fingers over one's own cleverness, and for ever be repeating: ‘They are so unpractical in everything they start! This ought to be done, and that ought to be done!’

Just reflect for a moment what it means: 49 numbers of the Threefold. Order—of our paper—flung away and come to nothing! And why did they come to nothing? The Threefold Order ought really by now to be so far on, that we could bring it out as a daily paper. Why do I say this? Because as a matter of fact today I can still only take the same standpoint as was expressed in the words I used when we first began this thing, in April and May of last year. Do you imagine that it was a form of speech, that it was a phrase, when I concluded a great number of my speeches in those days with the words: we must make up our minds to do whatever it might be, before it is too late!—For many things it is simply too late to-day. By the paths along which we attempted to do all manner of things in those days, we to-day can obviously get no further. To-day it is not in the least our business to enter into any sort of discussion with the old stock-in-trade arguments whether of the creeds or the parties. Our business today, is to stand firm upon the ground of what we have to say, and to introduce it into as many heads as possible. In no other way shall we get forwards. For as a fact, for many things it is now simply too late. And it may possibly very soon be too late also for other things, which it is still possible to do, namely for the spreading of our ideas,—if we are for ever turning our minds to all sorts of secondary matters, instead of going straight for the main thing, which is to spread our ideas.

I said, that this concern we have founded, the Kommender Tag; can after all be only an unsatisfactory substitute. And why? Simply because we are under no delusions that we can possibly be practical without basing ourselves upon practical actions. We are endeavoring to take an active share in practical business-life; and then people come and ask one: ‘How, exactly, ought one to set up a grocery shop, so as to be as much as possible on the lines of the Threefold Commonwealth?’ Of course, we are trying to found business undertakings in the Kommender Tag; but there it is a case of handling them really practically. And how, is one, for instance, to handle the matter really practically to-day, when one can only tell oneself: If I intend to carry on a particular kind of undertaking, then, in order to carry out the thing rationally, I must have another set of undertakings. For a particular set of industrial undertakings, for instance, I must have a particular set of agricultural undertakings. Well, but can you do it? It is all impossible as things are to-day. The State makes it quite impossible for you to make this particular kind of practical arrangement. So great is the external power of the State to-day. It is not a question of any want of practicality; but simply that the thing is made impossible on the other side by external power.—And therefore those persons, who actually now possess a standing in one or other department of economic business-life, should really not spend their time to-day in discussing subordinate questions, but should discuss together instead, how these various ‘business-estates’ of the Body Economic can make themselves free of the political State and everything involved with it,—how they can manage to slip out of it. So long as the technical experts, so long as all these various people are concerned with nothing but how to make arrangements that may best fit in with the life of the existing State, we shall get no step further;—not till they begin to discuss: How can we get free? how can we establish a really free economic life, where things are not ‘organised’ from above downwards, where, instead of ‘organisation,’ there is ‘association,’ in which the different ‘business-estates’ link up together through the actual course of business?—As yet there is not the first, elementary A.B.C. of this in our practical discussions of the Threefold system, but only the same old talk and the same old tinkering round and round, always with a respectful eye on existing conditions. All this roundabout talk leads nowhere to-day. We must be chary of the people who are for ever saying, ‘But how about this, and how about thatl! for the fact of the matter is, that we shall first be able to begin to discuss things sensibly, when we are a bit further on with the separation of the three systems; when we actually have thrown ourselves so completely into the propaganda for the threefolding of the body social, that a sufficiently large number of people in economic life definitely know: ‘Nothing we can say has any sense, so long as we still continue to reckon on the whole of our economic life being arranged for us by the State. Only in proportion as we manage to get free, will discussion begin to have any sense. Until then, everything we may say is nonsense.’—And, in the same way, there is just as little sense in discussing reforms in the spiritual life, until one is clear, that one can't even begin to converse on the subject, before one is actually living in a free spiritual system. One must at least be fully aware, that so long as one is living in a spiritual system which is dependent on the State, all one may say can have no sense,—that, so long as this is the case, one cannot reform anything.

This, you see, very clearly marks out the point which is the important one: It is a question, not of little things, but of big things; and the more this comes to be recognised, so much more will it be possible to accomplish in the field of practical life.

You will say: ‘What is the use of giving us such a philippic, when what we are asking is, how to carry on our propaganda?’ When you come to think over what I have said however, you will see, that even with what I might call an ‘elevenpence ha'penny propaganda’ (as they say in Austria, where they used to have shops in which every article could be bought for elevenpence halfpenny), that, even so, we shall get no further, so long as, even in our own circles, people discuss every petty detail of ways and means. We shall only begin to get further, when people have hearts and minds for the great motor forces of the world; for it is a question of these great motor forces to-day.

Well, I have said a great deal to the same effect before now, and all in vain;—namely that it is a question of the great motor forces of the world. Still, I shall never grow weary of persisting, in general principle, to decline everything which leans towards the making of compromises to-day. I shall never weary of pointing out, again and again, the necessity of bringing the great world-moving questions of the day really to the comprehension of the very broadest masses of the people. And for this reason too, I always feel myself obliged to deliver the public lectures in the style I did yesterday, and to defy all the over-clever people who say, that one ought to talk more intelligibly to the masses,—meaning as a rule themselves only and their own intellectual niveau. I shall always maintain the view, that it is the people who talk in this way, who are the detrimentals; these are the people whom we have to overcome. And we must come so far as to have the courage to say to ourselves: ‘Yes, indeed! The foundations must be laid of something quite new!’ The truth is—as I wrote lately in our paper,—that the old parties, practically speaking, no longer exist; they only exist any longer as lies and phrases, and are made up of people who, knowing of nothing new, drape themselves with the empty catchwords of the old parties; and all the while, the whole business is nonsense (including what has been going on in these last days), and directly proves how radically something new is needed.

(At the close of a desultory discussion Dr. Steiner concluded as follows:)

It is regrettable that so little has been said about the Threefold idea itself in the course of the discussion, and only about all sorts of other matters. I should like just to bring back the theme a little to the Threefold idea and to the things connected with it. I will therefore pick out several questions that have been raised, and so lead back to the theme of the lecture. One of the questions raised was; What my attitude is—or the attitude of the Threefold idea—towards Syndicalism?

Well, as you know, we have endeavoured, really, to find an attitude towards a great many movements of all kinds. I myself could only say the same about Syndicalism to-day, as I have often said about it before: that in certain circles of syndicalist tendencies one undoubtedly finds a consciousness of how much might be done by means of combining the various business-callings, the various branches of business, and that this, the ‘syndicalist’ idea, might lead in a way to certain fruitful results, at any rate in economic life. All this I am quite ready to acknowledge;—as also, for example, that Syndicalism takes up, in a way, a less slavish position towards the idea of the ‘State,’ than Marxian Socialism does for instance. This I am perfectly ready to acknowledge, and have often acknowledged it before. But all such movements in this direction belong, after all, not to the present day, but to a past one; and only project themselves on into the present day, because the people who adopted the name at an earlier date, have since been incapable of learning new conceptions. One might say really, that the whole set of party-shibboleths have lost their meaning for present-day conditions,—only that the people, who in past days belonged to the things these party shibboleths stand for, have not get made up their minds to label themselves with anything else but old party-shibboleths. Down to the end of 1914, you see, there was still a certain sense in people calling themselves by a party-name, such for instance as v.H.... and L.... still do to-day; but to-day there is no longer any sense in it. And yet people still go on calling themselves by the names of these parties. In the same way, to go on clinging to-day to bye-gone things like Syndicalism, has no real meaning any longer. And so, having made the attempt to approach such people as might be hoped to have brains still plastic enough to get beyond these old party-shibboleths,—so long as the attempt could be made, we made it. But one must learn a little wisdom from the circumstances in this case;—and indeed it is urgently necessary to-day to learn wisdom from circumstances. And therefore I must confess, that to-day I no longer feel any force in the question: What is my attitude towards Syndicalism? I can only assure you, that I have also tried to find an attitude towards Syndicalism; that is to say, I have tried to find people amongst the syndicalists who might be able, by means of a still more plastic brain, to understand the idea of the Threefold Order:—but that too was all in vain. And therefore, to-day, it is necessary to speak as I have spoken to-night, and to say, that our business is to take our stand on the firm ground of the Threefold idea, and not to trouble about anything else. For, what we have to do to-day is, to find a sufficiently large number of people who understand the idea of the Threefold Order; and whether they come to us from this camp or that, from the syndicalist camp, or any other, is to us a matter of complete indifference. We no longer trouble ourselves to-day about what is the attitude of the Threefold idea to the syndicalists; we can wait and see, what attitude the syndicalists will adopt towards the Threefold idea. Anything else would be so much wisdom learnt in vain in the course of the last year; and no one can work effectively to-day who is not capable of learning wisdom.

And then the question was asked: ‘In what way is it proposed to widen out the organisation of the ‘Kommender Tag,’ so that the Threefold movement may spread?’—Well, here, I must really beg you—especially in the question of an isolated case like this,—to bear in sight, that the Threefold idea, in its whole character, is something eminently practical; that we are dealing with something that is concrete, and not floating in a blue haze. The ‘Kommender Tag’ was founded, because it was recognised that the usual bank-system, as it is to-day, has gradually in the course of the nineteenth century come to be a injurious element in our economic life. I pointed this out when I was here last time, at another of the study-evenings. I showed that, more or less from the first third of the nineteenth century on, money has played a similar role in the economic life of modern civilisation, to that of abstract conceptions in our thinking-process: that it has gradually blotted out all concreteness of aim and effort; that it has spread itself like a cloak over the things that must find their expression in economic energies. And therefore it has become necessary to-day to found something, which is not merely a bank, but makes a centre of concentration for economic forces which are both a bank and, at the same time, engaged in concrete economic activity:—to found, that is, something which combines in itself real, concrete economic activities with the organisation of these special branches of economic activity,—in the same way as is done by a bank, where economic activities are included, but abstractly, without regard to the conditions of actual economy. That is to say, a practical attempt is here being made to overcome the injury done by the money-system.

To-day we have seen all sorts of people,—Gesell, [Silvio Gesell, originator of the Free-Money (‘stable money’) movement.—‘Gesell’ in German means ‘fellow.’] and other strange ‘fellows’ in life,—dancing around, and talking about ‘free money.’ Those are the utopians! Those are the abstractionists! What is wanted in reality, is to look at practical life, and learn to see where the centres of injury really lie. And one centre of injury lies in the fact, that the bank-system has taken the economic form that it has to-day. The bank-system in our economic life to-day plays the same part as a man's thoughts in the life of his soul, when he translates everything at once into abstractions, and troubles himself no further about the particular, concrete things which one sees and has to do with, but translates everything into lofty abstractions. A man who translates everything into lofty abstractions,—and that is the majority of people to-day,—never arrives at any real understanding of realities. Abstractions of this kind you can hear today on any Sunday from any pulpit. Abstractions of this kind have no longer anything to do with the actual life of the people who find it so thoroughly happy and comfortable to be lulled away from life in this manner for the space of a Sunday afternoon. And what for the individual souls life this substanceless abstraction is, that flies away to its airy cloud-castles, the same for economic life is the bank-system, that lives in the transaction of money. And so it was possible to make an experiment in little, which, let us hope, will grow into something quite big, and in which things could be so arranged, that the money is brought back as it were into the economic activities, and the economic activities carried up into money; so that money, here, again becomes something which serves to make economic activities more feasible and easier to set in motion. Just as our thoughts are not for the purpose of carrying us aloft into abstract sublimities where we feel happy and comfortable, but of enabling us to set in motion the concrete facts of life; so too, with money, the important thing is to bring it down into actual economic industry, to carry on the different branches of practical economy, and not to sit ourselves down in a bank and transact business, in money:—for money-trasactions in themselves are the most injurious element we have in economic life, in the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century. Here we have then simply a practical idea, taken up and also practically conceived. And until people recognise that it is a case here of quite practically conceiving ideas down into every particular, they will not succeed in understanding the League for the Threefold Social Order.

And now I should like to direct your attention to something which is not unconnected with the general note which I have been endeavoring to strike to-day: to a quarter, namely, which was alluded to by Mr.D.... (i.e. the Jesuits).—And although the cause is one, with which I, truly, will have nothing to do; yet you certainly find things advocated there in a very forceful manner. You may hear continually from that quarter: ‘Thousands and thousands of our followers may fall away; yet, though we should lose thousands and thousands, this matters nothing to us; the thing alone that could matter to us, would be the loss of a single truth!’ You may hear this over and over again from the quarter to which Mr.D.... alluded: ‘Thousands and thousands of our followers may fall away from us; but not a single truth must be let fall!’

Where people speak in this way on behalf of a cause, with which I, truly, will have nothing to do, it is easy to see, that they have here a very forceful manner of propaganda. And this is the thing which is needed7 to have strength to take up the stand, that it matters nothing to have numbers of followers; but that it matters everything to have strength to take our stand on the truths we possess, with no making of compromises, no sidelong glances to one side or another: "Can I get hold of this person? should I make myself agreeable to that person?" That is not what is needed to-day; but what is needed is, that we should win over as many people as possible to the ideas of the Threefold Order,—really not because one is enamoured of the Threefold Order, or because one is set on one's own notions; but because one sees that there is no other may of carrying on further.

Well, it is hardly necessary, I think, to go into the subject raised by Dr.H.... as to the licensed architects,—the State-architects,—and their relations with the legal profession. These are things which were all settled long ago in the most elementary discussions of the League. And you will agree that is quite out of the question, when we are talking on the lines of the Threefold Order, that we should take up a standpoint altogether off Threefold ground. For it would after all, you know, make a curious impression, if when we were talking—say—of the free spiritual life, we were to start a discussion, as to whether it might be advisable, from a certain point of view, to alter the old titles of the heads of the University Colleges and call them "Directors of Studies", or something of that sort! These are all questions which are based on the old forms of the social State. And the same with the State-architects: it really cannot matter, what their relations are with the legal profession; for, the moment one enters upon the Threefold Commonwealth, it is not possible to talk of Government-architects, since one is talking here on the basis of a political State, which is strictly democratic ground, and comprises in its sphere those things in which every full-grown man meets every other full-grown man as an equal; and it really cannot be a question of the line this democratic State would take as regards a person on whom some title is to be conferred, and things of that kind. In short, we must accustom ourselves, altogether, to go rather more into realities.

One meets with so many strange things in life, of which one is so often reminded. For instance, I was in company once with a certain socialistic celebrity—a very sound socialist—and we were discussing a very, very exalted Government official. I held this very, very exalted Government official to be totally incompetent, in fact a hopelessly impossible person; and I said, that I thought really the proper profession for this very exalted Government official would be, to give up his job and take to the business of a road-sweeper. You should just have seen the horror which overcame the socialistic gentleman at the suggestion that this person, with whom he was well-acquainted, could possible become a road-sweeper! Well, of course it was only just an idea; but still it seems to me that this idea was more in the direction of reality than—forgive me for saying!—the one put forward just now in this form, that ‘the gentleman should not look askance at the road-sweeper, nor the road-sweeper at the gentleman. Really, we shall not solve the social question simply by not looking askance at each other! The point of the matter really is, that in our present order of society the gentleman needs the road-sweeper, and so forth,—but, if he merely doesn't look askance at him, the social question will hardly be solved. And whether one plumes oneself on something, or whether one doesn't, are, after all, questions that have nothing whatever to do in reality with the actual business-facts and the grave realities of life at the present day. It really is not the important matter for us to-day, merely to demonstrate to people that the gentleman needs the road-sweeper, and the road-sweeper needs the gentleman. For, in the background, we have still, after all, just a little the notion, that the road-sweeper should remain a road-sweeper, and the gentleman should remain a gentleman, in the position where each happens to be placed to-day; only they should not look askance at each other,—which will certainly be an easier matter for the gentleman than for the road-sweeper! But in my opinion, all these things (which savour rather strongly of moralic acid!) will not help us to a blade of grass to-day; for the urgent matter is not, to-day, that we should merely not look askance at each other, but that we should turn our hands to making things different; and, first and foremost, that we should succeed in coming to an understanding, above and beyond classes. And this understanding will lead to a total reconstruction of the forms of life,—not merely to twisting eyes round from skewness to straightness, but to very different things besides. And if you go through the whole tendency that lies in the Threefold idea, you will see that, here, there can be a question of its leading in actual fact to something which mankind cannot but long for today, in so far as they understand anything of the forces that are striving to realisation in world-history. These are the things upon which we must turn our eyes to-day, and not upon something, which is mere moralising, and yet is linked with those forms of social life which happen to be in force at the present day.

No! to-day we must be clear, that we take our stand on the ground of a new spiritual life, and that we need something that proceeds from this new spiritual life itself. And though in detail the Threefold Movement may have managed things never so badly, yet, nevertheless again and again we must affirm, that this Threefold Movement takes its stand on the ground, that: Only through a change of thinking, only through a transforming of human thoughts and feelings in their innermost depths, can we ever look to reach a better state of things,—and through nothing else.

• 1. Die Kernpunkte der sozialen Frage published in English under the title of The Threefold Commonwealth.
• 2. This Introduction to the 2nd edition of the "Roots of the Social Question" ("Threefold Commonwealth") has appeared (translated) in No. 1 of the present Study Series.
• 3. "Dreigliederung des sozialen Organismus," of which the first number appeared in July 11, 1919, and contains, amongst other things, an article by Dr. Carl Unger giving the history (up to that date) of the Threefold Movement.

Rudolf Steiner: I think this should be a kind of discussion hour again, and I think you will have a lot on your minds. Please feel free to express yourselves in all directions!

Emil Bock: The question of worship is close to our hearts because we cannot create the new form of worship on our own.

Rudolf Steiner: Well, it will of course be necessary to develop some symbolism in this direction, that is to say that in the cultus we have spoken of, we develop individual examples of cultic forms, so to speak. The shaping of the cultus is actually such that one comes to it when one has the prerequisites for it. Of course, it is definitely a matter of becoming accustomed to the pictorial shaping of what one is so accustomed to today, to look at it intellectually. And Mr. Uehli, I believe, said something today, didn't he, about something cult-like, as it is practiced in the Waldorf School. That it is difficult to shape the cultic aspect may be clear to you from the fact that for a long time all cults have been limited to adopting the traditional. All the cultic forms that exist today are actually very old, only somewhat transformed in one way or another. And in the time when humanity lost the ability to create pictorially, in that time, cult was also fought against in a sense. Perhaps it can help you to understand cult if we add a few words to what we said this morning about a very different form of cult.

You know that wherever real community is sought, inner community, that cultus plays a certain role. I only remind you that when the somewhat questionable Salvation Army movement spread, even this Salvation Army movement sought a certain cultus; and it is also known that even the temperance movement has very few cultic surrogates. Wherever the aim is to achieve a true community movement, there the striving for some form of cult is everywhere.

Now, as you know, the Freemasonry movement in modern times is a very extensive community. Isn't it true that this freemasonry movement also seeks to achieve the cultivation of community through cult, and one can say that the freemasonry movement shows how cult must become when it turns into a purely materialistic movement. For actually the freemasonry movement is the materialistic form of a spiritual movement.

You see, the secret of the human essence is essentially part of the rituals and symbols of the Masonic movement. If you want to look at the human being and study the actual essence of the human being in its connection with the world, then today the materialistically minded researcher will tell you: the human being actually only has the same muscle forms, the same bone forms as the higher animals, even the same number of these organic forms – he is a higher developed animal, a transformed animal. That is, after all, what more or less clearly expressed underlies our current knowledge. This realization is immediately dispelled when one considers how humans integrate into the cosmos quite differently [than animals]. The essence of the animal – if one disregards the individual forms of deviation, which are everywhere, after all – the essence of the animal is that its backbone is built on the horizontal. Please do not misunderstand what I mean by this. Of course, an animal can sit up like a kangaroo, and that can seemingly make its spinal column form an angle with the horizontal. But that is not actually required by the organic constitution. Similarly, certain birds, parrots, can have a more or less upright posture; but the animal's plastic structure is not designed to lift the spinal column out of the horizontal. In contrast to this, the essential thing about man is the formation of his spinal column in a vertical direction. Man has thus formed the spinal column in a vertical direction. This gives one of the essential characteristics for distinguishing man from the animal world. You just have to bear in mind that you cannot consider a being in the world in isolation.

You see, when someone looks at a compass needle, it does not occur to him to say that the compass needle takes on a certain direction through that which is only in it, but he says quite naturally that the earth has a magnetic north and south pole, and the compass needle is directed by the whole earth. Only when it comes to the organic does man prefer to explain everything that is in the organism only from the organism itself, and not to relate the human being at all to the whole universe. But the person who sees through things also relates the organism to the whole universe. The fact of the matter is that systems of forces run through the whole universe; some circle the earth horizontally, while others act in such a way that these horizontal forces are interspersed with forces that run in a radial direction, so that the human being aligns his spine with the radial forces. In this way he is integrated into the universe quite differently from the animal, which has its backbone, the most important bodily line, integrated horizontally, that is, parallel to the earth's surface. Now, many other things depend on this.

You see, the human brain, which weighs 1300 to 1400 grams, would, if it were to exert its full weight, immediately crush all the blood vessels underneath the brain. The brain is quite capable of crushing the blood vessels with its weight. Why doesn't the brain crush them? Because the brain is embedded in the cerebral fluid. The cerebral fluid oscillates through the arachnoid space, which is formed by the spinal column on the inside; the cerebral fluid flows up and down under the influence of breathing. The entire brain floats in cerebral fluid. From physics, you may know that a body loses as much weight as the displaced fluid volume weighs, so that instead of weighing 1300 to 1400 grams, the brain exerts a maximum of 20 grams of pressure on the blood vessels. So you see, the human brain is designed not to insist on its heaviness, but to have an uplift, to escape heaviness. This is only possible if the human spine is vertical. In animals, the whole heaviness of the brain presses, and that is because the arachnoid space goes horizontally into the brain. The circulation that is caused takes place in a completely different way.

One must not only look at the structure of the human being, but also at the position in the universe. So that one can say: If one considers the outstanding position of man in the universe, several important lines arise above all. (It is drawn on the board).

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Firstly, the line parallel to the earth's surface, the horizontal. Secondly, the thing that distinguishes humans from animals: the fact that the backbone is vertical to the horizontal. You have drawn two shapes with this: firstly, the horizontal, and secondly, the right angle. If you are aware of the significance of the horizontal line, which basically creates animality, and the significance of the right angle for the placement of man in the universe, then you associate certain ideas with the horizontal line and with the right angle, which can thus become symbols.

Freemasonry, which seeks to characterize the essence of man, has the spirit level and the right angle among its symbols. The other symbols are also modeled on the forces of the universe. How they are modeled on the forces of the universe will become clear from the following consideration.

If we imagine the earth here; man moves on the earth, let us say so, so I will draw it radially, then it is the case that man here has his direction in the vertical and that the way he connects to the center of the earth is a triangle. You have the triangle again as a symbol in the Freemasons' cult. Everything in this Freemasonry is — in the first degree — taken from the configuration of the human being. There you see the formation of symbolism. Symbolism is there where it occurs in its reality, not arbitrarily invented. You only come to the symbolism when you study it in reality. Symbolism is grounded in the universe, it is there somewhere. It is the same with the cult.

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You see, in his temporal life between birth and death, man is constituted in such a way that he has within him the forces that continually kill him. These are the forces that solidify him, that are effective in the formation of the bone system, and that, in their morbid development, can lead to sclerosis, gout, diabetes, and so on. I would say that these forces are found in every human being, as forces of solidification. That is one system of forces. The other system of forces that a person has within them is what continually rejuvenates them. This system of forces is particularly evident when one falls prey to pleurisy, feverish illnesses, in fact, anything that burns a person internally. In the anthroposophical world view, I have called the solidifying forces Ahrimanic forces, and the forces that lead to fever, which are therefore warming forces, I have called Luciferic forces. Both forces must be kept in perpetual equilibrium in the human being. If they are not kept in balance, they will lead the human being to some pernicious extreme, physically, mentally or spiritually. If the feverish and solidifying forces, the salt-forming forces, were not kept in constant physiological balance, then man would necessarily end up either in a state of sclerosis or in a feverish state. If man develops only the powers of understanding, if he is inclined only towards intellectualism, he falls prey to the Ahrimanic; if he develops only the fiery elements, passion, the emotional, then he falls prey to the Luciferic. And so man is always caught between two polarities and must maintain his balance. But think how difficult it is to maintain balance. The pendulum that should be in balance always tends towards a deflection. These three tendencies: the tendency towards balance, the tendency towards warmth and the tendency towards solidification are in man. He must maintain himself upright, so that man can be seen symbolically as a being who continually seeks to maintain himself upright against the forces that continually endanger his life.

This is represented by the third degree of Freemasonry. The Mason who is initiated into the third degree is symbolically shown how man is threatened by three unruly powers that approach him and endanger his life. This is done in different ways. The simplest form is this: a man is presented in a coffin and three assassins creep up who want to kill him. In the contemplation of this threefold danger in which man is immersed, he is taught an awareness that he is in danger of death at every moment and must rise up.

Thus, in this symbolic clothing, man experiences a kind of real cultic action; he experiences something really important in a ceremonial way that is connected with life. And so it is indeed that one must try to get to know life, because then the symbols arise out of life. The dark side of Freemasonry is that although these symbols are used, although rituals are performed – in the first three degrees of Blue Masonry, in high-grade Freemasonry there are many other things – and that this ceremonial is drawn from ancient traditions, but that they are no longer understood. There is no longer any connection with the origins, which I wanted to present to you in a brief sketch. People only look at the ceremony and - and this is the dangerous thing - they get stuck on the ceremony; they are not introduced to the ceremony in such a way as to gain access to the spiritual through the ceremony.

You see, another way in which, relatively late, even as late as the 18th century, one still had a very vivid sense of the pictorial visualization of the secrets of the world, is for example this: If you open some books with pictures that were still in circulation in the 18th century – they were in circulation to make people aware of things that cannot be grasped by the intellect – you will see a picture that keeps recurring: a man with a bull's head and a woman with a lion's head. The man with the bull's head and the woman with the lion's head stand side by side. At first glance, the image is shocking for anyone who does not look at it more closely. But it is indeed the case that we human beings are actually constituted in such a way that we are most perfectly shaped in our physical body. That is where we are actually human. The physical body, as you will find described in my 'Occult Science', is the one that goes back to the oldest foundations; it is the most perfect. The human ether body is shaped like the physical body. If the physical body could be removed from the ether body, it would only adapt to the astral body, then this ether body would probably take on an animal form to the annoyance of many people, because then it becomes the expression of the emotional, the passionate. It is shaped in different ways in different people.

If we regard the male head, the etheric head, as an expression of what lives in the emotional nature, then, taken as a type, as an average, there is something bull-like in the male head. In the female head, as soon as one looks at the ether head, there is something lion-like. These are average forms. One can also feel this morally if one opens oneself to what the nature of woman encompasses, how she is the type of the lion-like. One can feel the bull in the man and feel the lion in the woman.

These are things that seem to be merely figuratively spoken, but they are taken from the supersensible nature [of man]. When the astral body [is considered] taken out of the physical body, it takes on complicated plant forms, and the human ego is a purely mineral, crystal-like being, it is completely geometrically shaped. So that one can say: In form, man is human in the physical body, in the etheric body he is actually animal-like, in the astral he is plant-like and in the I he is mineral-like. When one knows all these things, then one comes to realize how, in an earlier clairvoyant state, people really knew about higher worlds and formed these images from these higher worlds.

Now, this is just to indicate how symbols came into being and how they then traditionally propagated themselves. In our time, it is only possible to arrive at symbols if one delves lovingly into the secrets of the world; and only out of anthroposophy can a cult or a symbolism actually arise today.

You see, it is necessary to start from the elements. The first thing is that one grows into the genius of the language itself. Our language, especially where civilization is at its highest, has taken on a terribly external, abstract form. We speak today without feeling in our speech. You see, our way of speaking today is actually something terribly inhuman, because we no longer live in our language. Take the German word “Kopf”. When we feel it, we also feel how it is completely connected with the round form, with the rounded. On the other hand, the Romance word 'testa' is related to the idea of making a will, bearing witness, establishing something. It comes from a completely different background. And if you feel what is in the two words, you also feel the difference between the Romance and the Germanic element. The Germanic element forms the word from the plastic, the Romance, the Latin element forms it from the soul's manifestations. Take the word 'foot', which is related to 'furrow'; 'pied' is related to 'to set up'. This can be seen throughout the language, and you can feel it everywhere, how the special world feeling actually comes to light in the genius of the language. Consider how strongly the pictorial quality of language was still felt in the time when Goethe was writing. Do you remember the scene where the poodle appears on the stage, following Faust and Wagner, and where Wagner talks about the poodle and says, “he doubts” — by that he means that he moves his tail; with the word “doubt” he expresses the movement of the tail. If you look at what is still alive in the picture and compare it with our abstractions today, you can really feel your way into the pictorial way in which the genius of language has worked, by observing how the word “doubt” contains this wagging, this to and fro.

This is the first element of the pictorial soul life when one lives into the pictorial language. It is really the case that one grows into the pictorial language if one only wants to; and that is already a good education of the soul, to grow into the pictorial language. Today we speak in abstracto, the words no longer mean anything to us. You see, in my homeland a certain kind of lightning that you see in a special way is called “Himmlatzer”. I would like to know how one should not feel the image of lightning in “Himmlatzer”, the word paints it. And so it is also quite possible, if you go more into the dialect-like, into the dialects, to grow even more into the pictorial. One should educate oneself to have the pictorial in language. Today it is sometimes almost impossible to express something that one has because the pictorial quality of language has been lost. Of course, one must disregard all artificially induced things. Anyone who is in any way eccentric will experience what happened to the Falb. He was walking with a friend and speaking animatedly – and stepped into a pool, and thought – pool? — temple! — Of course, one must not be eccentric by seeking external similarities. One must delve inwardly into the imagery of language. Then one will really understand the word “two.” Originally, the “two” was not thought of in terms of adding one and one, but rather the “two” was thought of in terms of dividing one in two. The older way of forming numbers is based on analysis, not synthesis. You can still see this if you take, for example, Arabic arithmetic in the 12th century AD.

An interesting booklet has now been published by our friend Ernst Müller about Abraham Ibn Ezra – I will give you the exact title tomorrow – which deals with numbers and is extremely interesting for understanding the earlier way of forming numbers. If you follow this, you will find, without making any crazy claims, the similarity of the word “two” with the word “doubt”; you will also be led to the suffix “el”. In this way you can find your way into the imagery of language. This is the alphabet of pictorial imagination.

Furthermore, it is about finding your way into the whole complicated way in which, for example, a human being is constructed. I have given some examples today. As I said, if you arrive at real knowledge in this way, the images first arise for the symbolism, and then you come to really understand historical life. Then you also come to be able to imagine cultic acts.

Take the following example. You see, the Greeks did not yet have the possibility of having the concepts completely separate from the things. Just as we perceive colors, the Greeks perceived the concepts in the things; for them, they were perceptions. If we start from this, we really come to understand how humanity has changed since the time of the Greeks. If, for example, one wanted to depict a type of altar that would be more suitable for the Greeks, one would depict it in bright colors. If one wanted to depict an altar that would be suitable for a person who lives more in the modern world, who is not attuned to bright colors (the Greeks did not perceive colors in the way we do), one would have to build it in a more blue color today.

If you want to approach a community with a cult today, you would have to make it extraordinarily simple. A complicated cult would not satisfy people today, so you have to make it extraordinarily simple. Above all, we need an expression of the inner transformation of the human being in the cult everywhere. This inner transformation of the human being, which one could call the pervasion of the human being with Christ, for man is actually not born at all in a state in which he is already permeated with Christ from the outset, as a result of heredity; he must find Christ within himself. This could now be expressed symbolically in the most diverse ways through simple but effective cultic acts.

Let me give you an example: if someone were to formulate a saying, it would consist of seven lines. In the first three lines one would express essentially how the human being still stands under the influence of the conditions of heredity, how he is born out of the father principle of the world. The fourth line, the middle one, would then show how these principles of heredity are overcome by the principles of the soul. And the last three lines would show how, through this, the human being becomes a seer of the spiritual. Now, one could read such seven lines to a community in such a way that one presents the first three lines with a somewhat more abstract, rougher language, then in the middle, the fourth, one transitions to a somewhat warmer language, and the last three lines are presented in elevated language, with a raised tone. And one would have in it a simple cultic act that would represent the becoming-Christed and becoming-spiritualized of the human being.

It is not important that something like this is explained afterwards – that is precisely what should not be done – but it should be made tangible. The image should be felt, and one should act accordingly. So you see how it is possible, after all, to ascend to the cultural. Then one must get a feeling for how everything that relates to the thinking is similar to light, and how everything that relates to love is similar to warmth. Now think what a means of expression you have in language when you can, wherever you wish to express something tending towards the thinking, associate it with light. When you say, “Let wisdom illuminate the human being,” you have said something real. You will feel how the thinking is actually the captured light that becomes a thought. Likewise, when speaking of love, we everywhere use images taken from warmth relationships. If one says, “A common idea spreads warmly over a community of people,” then you have the image of warmth in it, but you have spoken in real terms. Thus, when you feel the inner wisdom of language, you enter into the pictorial realm.

This is one such path, and I will give you very detailed examples later when we meet again. One can even develop modern culture on the basis of these things. Today I just wanted to hint to you at the practical way in which one is actually led. But it is always about our — forgive the harsh expression — emaciated souls. We are not human at all, we have become so dead through materialistic education. Today man feels everything separately. He does not feel at all that his nerves are the receptacle of light, that his nerves are glowing with light. He believes that vibrations are at work. But it is from light that the thought is formed. It is not just an image, but reality, when it is said: “Man is permeated by thoughts”.

This is far too little known, which is why it is not possible to visualize it. But I believe that if you read my book “Die Geheimwissenschaft” (The Secret Science), for example, and immerse yourself in how I present the three metamorphoses of Moon, Sun and Saturn, in order to visualize how it all unfolds in pictures, then you will be able to visualize it all by yourself. If you do not stop at the abstraction or even believe that I have constructed or invented something, but if you feel the necessity that it must be presented in this way, then you already have a school for pictorial imagination. And there is every reason to move on to cultic actions. From what I have presented, one must also acquire a feeling for the inner numerical structure of the universe.

Today, of course, people often laugh when you talk about the number seven or the number three. But these numbers can easily be empirically derived from the universe. I would like to know how anyone can avoid thinking of the number three when they think of a human being. Man is, after all, a threefold being, and if you think about it properly, you come across the number three everywhere. If, for example, you are speaking to a group of children, or to older children, “May the light of your thinking shine through you,” you have not finished speaking until you also say, “May the life of your feeling stir you,” or “permeate you”; and “May the fire of your will empower you.” The elements combine of their own accord, and this then flows over into the form of the ritual. You have to get a feeling for the fact that something is incomplete if you just say, “May the light, your thinking, illuminate you.” It is just like putting up a human head alone. That cannot be, I cannot imagine that someone just puts up the human head, it cannot be like that, something else is needed. So I must also have the feeling when I say: “The light, your thinking, illuminates you,” that is not complete, I must also say: “The life, your feeling, permeates you” and “The fire, your will, empowers you.” If I take only one, I have just as much as if I only have the human head. So you come to think of the other. Then one enters into the self-creative aspect of the world's numerical organization, and so the cultic form arises out of the thing itself:

May the light of your thinking permeate you. May the life of your feeling imbue you. May the fire of your will empower you.

This is, after all, the basis of what Mr. Uehli will have told you today [about the Sunday lesson in the Waldorf school]. It is all there in the formula; it is formed in this way everywhere. It is so difficult to understand when it occurs in life.

You see, if you were to take a piece out of my Philosophy of Freedom, a chapter, it would be almost like cutting off a limb of the human being. It is only intended to be read as a whole, because it is a special form of thinking. It is not a combination of individual parts, it has been allowed to grow. And that can be further developed.

Paul Baumann: Doctor, could you tell us something about the musical element in the cult?

Rudolf Steiner: The situation is as follows: we human beings are placed in the world in such a way that — if I may use a pictorial image (diagram 2 is drawn on the board) — on the one hand we are organized in our heads. This organization of the head is essentially conditioned by the fact that the external world penetrates into it and is inhibited everywhere. Everything that penetrates from the world into the head is actually reflected in the head, and what we perceive outside is the reflection, that is, what we usually have inside in our waking consciousness. And if you take the human body, especially what is made of the eye, but also of the other sense organs, then you find that it all tends to be defined at the back; something is mirrored. On the other hand, the human being develops the bone system, the muscle system and so on. In the case of the head, we actually have the round, closed skull capsule. Then we have the tubular bones, the muscles and so on (see plate 2). The head is actually quite impenetrable for what affects it, just as the mirror is impenetrable for light; that is why it reflects. This is different in what is broadly termed the limb-metabolic-organism; here the world reaches into the tubular bones and muscles, so that one can say: In the head organization everything is repelled, but the limbs absorb, so that actually the processes of the limb-metabolic organism are brought about from outside through the way in which I am integrated into the world organism. Nothing is repelled; it is, as it were, organized through, it is taken in. And that then accumulates, especially in the lungs. The lungs are such an accumulation organ where the external world takes shape. And a second, already sieved accumulation is in the organ of hearing. The organ of hearing is actually a lung at a higher level. Anyone with an eye for it can see even in the structure of the outer ear how it is not formed like the eye. The eye is formed from the outside in. The ear is closed and encloses what is the actual sensory organ. So everything that is visible on the ear is formed in such a way that the human being is formed from two vortices. One of these is thrown back, reflected, and actually returns to itself; the other forms an organism, develops the form, and meets the first, and they then come together here (see plate 2), so that everything that comes from the outside inwards is reflected here and gives the ordinary memory, for example the memory for the images seen. On the other hand, that which builds up the human being is movement, it is movement throughout, it is forms of vibration that run within him. I have told you about the brain water, haven't I? Man is 92% water and only 8% solid; what is solid is only incorporated. The whole is all movement. What organizes the human being out of movement, that organizes him out of the word. Man is truly the Word made flesh in the most literal sense, and this Word made flesh comes together with that which is reflected in it, so that we can say: We are built first of all for the visual, but this is organized entirely for being reflected back; and then we are built for the auditory, for that which forms the human being, for sound formed into words, which then accumulates in listening, which becomes heard sound.

The human being becomes aware of the external world through the direct or the transformed visible. Through that which becomes sound in himself, which becomes musical, the human being is the being who rises from the sphere of the musical and is fertilized by the sphere of the optical, of the visible, so that the musical is indeed that which continues to work in us from the world. We are built through music; our body is an embodied music. This is the case in the fullest sense. And light plays a role here (see Chart 2) and is reflected. This also accounts for the great difference between ordinary memory, which we have in relation to the outside world, where we retain the visual, and musical memory. Musical memory is something quite different – it will also seem wonderful to you – musical memory arises in the opposite way, it arises from the accumulation of the sound that flows through; in this way, the human being throws back his own nature within himself. It is therefore that which works musically in the human being, his very innermost nature.

Now you may think that we place images in some way, whether we place them visibly before people in worship, or whether we evoke the images by speaking, and then we imbue these images with the musical, whether with instrumental music or song. It is nothing other than the fact that, fundamentally, the two main principles of the world are juxtaposed. What the human being is as a creature of light is brought into connection with what the human being is as a creature of sound. And through this, the cult [...] becomes a polarity. Admittedly, this is already the case with the word, and the older cults did not use abstract speech for this reason either, but rather the recitative, which already has something song-like about it. And this recitative, which played such an important role in the ancient sacrifice of the Mass because the Mass was sung, was intended to represent the interpenetration of the luminous with the tonal, so that in the cult the musical that which most essentially internalizes man, that which furthers the mystical element, while the rest furthers that which furthers the pantheistic, the outpouring of man to the universe.

We thus have the possibility, on the one hand, of driving man into expansion through everything luminous and conceptual, and on the other hand, of leading him into contraction, into the absorption of the supersensible through the musical. And while, for example, the non-musical, the luminous in cult is suited to teaching us a sense of the world, the musical is suited to deepening our sense of the I to the point of the divine. The ideal would be to take the luminous to a certain degree and then let it merge into the musical, letting it merge quite organically into the musical. In this way, one would actually have recreated the human being in his constitution through cult.

Gottfried Husemann asks whether the church music of the past, for example Bach, is still needed. Would the new cult not also need a new kind of music?

Rudolf Steiner: It is true that if one is obliged to do something quickly today, then one will revive these older musical things. But it is certainly the case that people can no longer develop an entirely inward relationship to these older forms, just as an adult cannot develop the same life forms as a child. It is absolutely necessary that musical forms be created out of today's feeling. Naturally, one must begin where one has the possibility to do so. You will have noticed that where we do eurythmy and work with music, our friends have already found quite good musical forms out of the musical feeling of today. This will be based on the fact that more and more people will relearn in the musical sphere, just as in the pictorial sphere. There are indeed tentative attempts, which need not be condemned, but one must know that they are just tentative attempts, and the same applies to the musical sphere, for example with Debussy, who lives in the individual note, who lives in the individual tone. But it must not become tone painting. It is the case that more and more will be experienced of what arises in the individual tone as a secret, and then one will seek to analyze the individual tone. Perhaps one will have to expand the scale, insert some tones, but mainly one will enrich by experiencing the character of the individual tone. And thereby special musical possibilities will arise. [To Mr. Baumann:] You also hope that one will then experience melodies in the individual tone? — It is actually the case that you can. There is then a training opportunity. There the anthroposophical musicians will have to meet the others halfway. I am absolutely convinced that anthroposophical musicians will still have a great deal to do, that anthroposophical musicians in particular will have a great mission. Before Wagner, old music was actually at an impasse. But Wagner did not really advance music. He broadened music by bringing a side-current into it. One can see this as great and ingenious, but it is still a side-current. One will have to take up the development of music before Wagner and find there precisely that which can give much to culture. Until then it will, of course, be very good to use older works. There are actually some truly wonderful things there, both in Protestant and Catholic church music. For the modern person, the relationship will no longer be a completely inward one; one will have to try to delve into the musical itself.

Emil Bock asks a question concerning the Quaker movement.

Rudolf Steiner: I have always had the feeling with the Quakers that this is actually a movement that comes specifically from the Anglo-American element. I have not been able to find any significant predispositions in Central Europe for the kind of community building that comes to light in Quakerism. I am not familiar with this endeavour from my own experience and therefore cannot know whether anything fruitful can come of it or not, but I doubt that something similar to Quakerism can arise out of the Central European spirit. You see, the Anglo-American element actually experiences religion in a completely different way than the Central European can experience it. The Central European experiences religion first and foremost in thinking. That is the archetypal phenomenon. It is a mysticism thoroughly illuminated by the intellectual light. This is everywhere, even where very radical religious forms and sectarian aspirations arise. In Central Europe you will find everywhere mysticism illuminated by the light of thinking, while the Anglo-Americans let the religious element be immersed in the instinctive part of man. Of course this appears in different ways, and it would be interesting to investigate somehow from which blood mixtures the Quakers recruit themselves. One must go to the instinctive, blood-related, and there one will find the subsoil. You will see that one will surely find something like an instinctive disposition there, but the Central European never founds anything community-building on instinctive dispositions.

This is really a clear difference between the West, the Center and the East. The West seeks the higher more or less in the subconscious, in the center one seeks it in consciousness, and in the East one seeks it in the superconscious, there one is always looking up. The American especially looks to the earth and expects everything from the earth, the Russian - even more the Asian - actually always looks up. The Central European looks straight ahead. It is already the case that we could end up on dangerous ground in the religious field in particular if we were to imitate the actually Western element. We must not do that in any field. It has caused us great damage in science and leads to rigidity in the religious field in particular. We have to work more with the soul than with the body.

Emil Bock: We have heard that there are already rituals that have been handed out on occasion: a baptismal ritual, a funeral ritual, and an adapted version of a mass. I would like to ask whether there is a possibility that we could get to know such pieces in order to live into them.

Rudolf Steiner: Certainly, these things would be considered as starting points. The funeral ritual came about because a member of our movement wanted such a funeral ritual. Of course, we had to tie in with the usual funeral rituals, but by translating the usual ritual, not lexicographically, of course, but correctly, something essentially different emerged. I would ask for these things back some time and would very much like to use them as a basis for our course consideration. I will simply ask our friend to transcribe them and then perhaps send them here; that is quite possible. In the case of the Mass offering, I initially only gave a translation of the [Catholic] Mass offering, but something new actually emerged. But I only got as far as the offertory with the translation, it is not finished yet. In the Old Catholic service, the Mass is read in the local language. Our friend went so far as to read the Mass in this translation up to the offertory in the Old Catholic service.

Things take time, and we have little time. But all of this can really be made available to you. Of course, it would be necessary to create a new baptismal ritual in particular, because the old baptismal ritual is not entirely suitable because it was always aimed at baptizing adults, and then it was transferred to the child. If you want to baptize children today, a [new] ritual must first be found. Elements for this already exist, which I can also make available to you. The baptismal rituals have grown out of baptisms for adults. When you baptize a child, you are speaking to an unconscious person, and it must be a corresponding action. The child knows nothing about it. We must not go so far as to rebel against infant baptism itself, but many things need to be renewed in the ritual. If you take the St. John's baptism, it is based on the fact that the person was submerged in the water, the adult was submerged. You know that a person can be brought to the point where his earthly life appears to him in a mere tableau. His life appears to him in a kind of tableau, and through this he experiences unconditionally that he belongs to a spiritual world. He has an experience of belonging to a spiritual world. This is actually also expressed in the baptismal ritual. We cannot do that with children. We need a ritual for children that expresses how the child is accepted into our community, and the communal religious supersensible substance that lives in the community must flow over to the child. We must express this in the baptismal rite, and it can indeed be done.

You see, there has been no reason in the anthroposophical movement to develop these things in a concrete way for the simple reason that we wanted to avoid them. There have been more than a few cases where people wanted to introduce such things. I always rejected it for the reason that, of course, it would have killed the anthroposophical movement stone dead from the start. We just had to stick with what was more or less allowed.

Twenty years ago it was more, today it is less the case that the Catholic Church regarded the ritual as its monopoly. We would have been killed on the spot, and so there was little reason to develop the ritual in that direction. The other thing, where the form of a ritual was developed, was interrupted by the war, where one could no longer continue; because as soon as these things would have been continued, one would have been treated as a secret society.

These are the reasons why the ritual side has not been developed within the anthroposophical movement. But it will be possible to develop it in your movement, because it can be regarded as something quite natural for ritual to be developed in a religious movement. Even though Protestantism has a certain horror of the cultic, I still believe that [the necessity of ritual] could be felt again.

A participant: To begin with, Catholics have more sacraments than Protestants. What is the basis for this and what is the actual significance of the ritual of Holy Communion?

Rudolf Steiner: What is contained in Catholic dogma goes back to certain forms of older knowledge. It is imagined that between birth and death, the human being passes through seven stages. First, birth itself, then what is called maturing, puberty, then what is called the realization of one's inner self around the age of 20, then the feeling of not corresponding to the world, not being fully human, that is the fourth. And then, isn't it, the gradual growth into the spiritual. These things have then become somewhat blurred, but one imagined the whole human life, including the social one, in seven stages, and one imagined that the human being grows out of the spirit between birth and death. The Catholic Church does not recognize pre-existence in more recent times. There is only one thought of God, and this growing out of the thought of God is presented in seven stages. These seven stages must be counteracted by other forces. Birth is an evolution, maturing is an evolution, and each form of evolution is counteracted by a form of involution: baptism for birth, confirmation for puberty. Every sacrament is the inverse of a natural stage in evolution. One can say that Catholic doctrine presents seven stages of evolution, to which it juxtaposes seven stages of involution, and these are the seven sacraments, four of which are earthly, namely baptism, confirmation, the sacrament of the altar, and penance. These four are as universal as the physical body, etheric body, astral body, and I. As you go higher, you come to the spirit self, the spirit of life and spiritual people. Just as the shining in from the spiritual world, the last three sacraments are those that go into the social: marriage, ordination and extreme unction. The penetration of the spiritual world is expressed in ordination. So these are the seven sacraments, of which the last are extreme unction, ordination and marriage. They are simply the sacraments of the inverse processes for the natural processes that take place for humans, and the corresponding cultic acts are also set up accordingly.

The concept of the seven sacraments is certainly not arbitrary. What is arbitrary is to limit these seven sacraments to two. This happened at a time when people no longer had a feeling for the inner numerical constitution of the world. It is these things, of course, that make truly serious Catholic priests, especially those in religious orders, such opponents of Protestantism. They all consider it to be a form of rationalism, something that knows nothing. There are genuine spiritualized natures among the clergy – the Jesuits, aren't they, they are prepared – I found one among the clergy of Monte Cassino, Father Storkeman, with whom I also spoke about Dionysius the Areopagite, who showed me the altar where he usually says mass. He spoke to me about his feelings at mass, and you could see that it had nothing to do with the usual confession of the Catholic Church.

And another time, in Venice, there was a patriarch who was a terrible fellow. Another, a younger cleric, preached, and I could see occultly that the one who had preached was truly spiritualized. The sermon was also really very fine. It is precisely through the ceremonial that individuals who stand out show themselves. I also saw one read the mass on the lower ground floor [of a church] in Naples, where I could really see the transubstantiation that underlies the Catholic transformation. It is actually the case that when transubstantiation is performed by a real priest, the host acquires an aura. Now, you may believe that or not, I can only relate it.

There is no need to hold back [saying this]: there is an inner reality to the cult, that is undoubtedly the case. You can see the damage in Catholicism when you see what it has been, and what was lost in the rationalist period. It makes no sense that [Protestantism] took two out of seven sacraments; there is no reason for that.

Emil Bock: May we also ask what the significance of laying on of hands was in the early days of Christianity?

Rudolf Steiner: You must be clear about the fact that humanity has undergone a development and that certain spiritual forces that were present in prehistory are increasingly receding as humanity becomes more intellectual and develops freedom. Certain powers in relation to natural life have definitely declined, and that is why we do not understand many things that are told in biblical history and that mean something quite different from what man associates with them today. I would like to draw your attention to the fact that in modern times, something like Socrates' relationship with his students is viewed in a mean and disgustingly mean way. People talk about a kind of homosexuality, whereas it points to a side of the powers of the soul where something was achieved not only through the word, but also through the presence of Socrates with his students. The human presence meant something to them. It is a disgusting slander of things when today the concepts of homosexuality are applied to these things in Greek culture. And so it is with the touch of the laying on of hands. The hand of a person essentially not only has a feeling meaning, but it also has an emanation, and in earlier times the emanation was stronger, it could have a healing effect. I have often expressed this in lectures in a certain formula: human life is a whole, and childhood belongs together with later life. No person attains the power to bless in later life who is not able to pray in childhood. Anyone who has never folded their hands in prayer as a youth can never hold their hands in blessing. The laying on of hands was simply an initiation process [.. gap in the postscript], what is involved there, is involved in the laying on of hands. That was something that was trained earlier, and the healing effect of laying on hands should definitely be considered. Isn't it true that today's people are no longer in the same situation, they are not encouraged to develop something like that in their youth. Such things were taught in the past, they were a reality once. But it is not out of the question that in a more spiritualized future these things will be taught again. Would you not consider that desirable? — The folding of the hands is a preparation for blessing. Likewise, for example, in older Catholicism it was taught that If you learn to kneel, you will learn to say the 'Dominus vobiscum' in the right way. Do you find that strange? You know how to say the 'Dominus vobiscum', don't you? You learn to say it by kneeling, otherwise it is not as powerful.

A participant: It has been said that the priests in ancient Egypt had an extraordinary position of leadership. We have heard that initiates have led humanity, that they have worked through real thoughts. The question is how this would have to be modified today by the new.

Rudolf Steiner: Yes, it must become new in so far as we must no longer return to this strongly unconscious, atavistic element, but we must go through the much more conscious element, taking more account of the fact that every human being must develop into a personality. Even today in Catholicism, the personality of the priest is completely suppressed. When the stole is crossed, the priest is only a figurant of the church, he is no longer a human being. We must not cultivate this. In the Egyptian priesthood, in particular, much was based on the fact that, as long as the highest priest lived, the others were only allowed to be figurants. Only when he died could another enter. There was always only one. We must exclude all this today.

A participant: What about the priest's vestments?

Rudolf Steiner: The liturgical vestment came about in such a way that one imagined the coloration of a personal feeling in relation to the real, so, for example, one imagined the blessing priest. This naturally gives a very definite coloration of the astral body, and the liturgical vestment is formed accordingly. Isn't it so? When blessing, one's own personality is absorbed into the supersensible world and the blessing is allowed to flow over to the congregation; this gives a blue undergarment and a red outer garment. One simply models the astral body. The same is true for the other acts, for praying and so on. For example, they imagine that one has an outpouring of the spiritual. This can be followed quite precisely: the coloring of the astral body – the priestly robe. The liturgical robe is simply the coloring of the astral body. This could certainly be recreated, and the only question is to what extent humanity is ready to accept something like that again.

I had an excellent Protestant clergyman as a friend who had a great ideal, that is, he had many very beautiful ideals, but among others he had one, and that was the abolition of the Luther skirt. He wanted to go like an ordinary dandy. It embarrassed him that he could not go like a dandy when he was a pastor. Therefore, it was very painful for him not to be able to walk around in this modern, aesthetic man's garment, where one is clamped in two stovepipes. This monstrosity is, of course, regarded today as the only possible garment, and anything else that may arise is considered to be something foolish. The greatest folly is our man's suit. A human race that puts on a tailcoat and a top hat – it is obvious that such a human race cannot have any understanding for cultic vestments. This must be cultivated again in humanity. Perhaps when women can also take up this profession, when female preachers come along, there will be a way to arrive at cultic vestments sooner. Because women will have to do something to get to the pulpit. But today men want to do it like a Swiss speaker. He thought it was right, for example, not to give sermons, but to give speeches while walking back and forth on the lectern with a cigarette in his mouth. That's how he gave his lectures.

That's right. You know that cult robes were not limited to the church, because judges also had cult robes – and if you asked a judge today to put on the old cult robes, he would also remonstrate against it – yes, even the court ceremonial went hand in hand with a kind of cult robe. And finally, at the universities, you still have the rector's robes, which always pass from one rector to the next. In this respect, we just need to change our aesthetic ideas, and that's that.

Yesterday we tried to get to know more precisely the world that surrounds us in such a way that we share it with those who have passed through the gate of death and that we also share it with those spiritual and soul beings that we count among the beings of the higher hierarchies. In this way, we have devoted ourselves to a contemplation that is suitable for opening up to us a part of that reality that plays a part in human life, without man, with his sensory perception and also with his mind tied to sensory perception, being able to know anything about it in his ordinary waking consciousness. Since this world is a reality, a reality that plays a part in the shaping of human life, it is understandable that in the time in which we live, in which man is called more and more, take the general destiny of human development into his own hands, as we have often said, that in such a time a knowledge of these supersensible things also sinks into the human soul. Yesterday we ended our meditation, which, as a meditation on the life of the so-called dead, must be deeply penetrating for each individual human soul, with the suggestion that this is particularly necessary in our time. On the other hand, however, there must also be an urgent need to reflect more closely on such things, such as those we touched on in our meditation yesterday. For in our time even half-awake people, dreaming people, should suspect that extraordinarily important decisions are being formed.

In the course of our discussions, I have repeatedly given hints here and there about what can be said from the sources of spiritual research about the character of modern times, the character of our time itself and the near future. Such things could only be given to present-day humanity, and more or less to anthroposophically minded humanity, in a very cautious way. Just see how much of this can be found in the lectures given in Kristiania many years before these catastrophic events, for the understanding of precisely these difficult, catastrophic times. And perhaps it may also be recalled that at a time when it would have been necessary to point out, in one way or another, the seriousness of the impulses at hand, in the lecture cycle that was held in Vienna in the early spring of 1914 – that is, before the outbreak of our present world catastrophe -–, the way in which social life, the way in which human coexistence in our time is spoken of, I chose a sharp, a strong expression: I spoke at the time in these lectures, which were essentially also about the life of man between death and a new birth, of the fact that something is happening in the moral and social life of the present that can be described as a social carcinoma, as a terrible social cancer. Perhaps one or the other at that time found this to be a strong expression. But perhaps one or the other has since been able to convince himself that the facts speak for it, that such a strong expression was allowed to be chosen at the time.

However, what I already hinted at yesterday is correct and should give us much food for thought: despite all this, despite the fact that it can easily be surmised what serious impulses lie in the lap of our time, humanity today is little inclined to really grasp the seriousness of the phenomena. Today, humanity is far too comfortable for that, far too happy to indulge in those comfortable concepts that can be found in the scientific world view today, because these concepts can be gained from the handrails of external experience, because they do not require much inner effort of the mind and yet they flatter people's vanity so much. But what is necessary is that humanity should wake up, really wake up, to much of what the times demand of us today. This awakening will only be possible if certain underlying facts are no longer regarded as fantasies or dreams but as realities that play a part in our times. And so I have often hinted during our discussions that a significant change has occurred to humanity, particularly in the last third of the 19th century. I have also hinted at these things here in Stuttgart. Today, we want to once again call them to mind from a certain point of view.

I have indicated the fall of 1879 as the turning point in the development of humanity in modern times. If we want to understand this development of humanity in modern times more precisely, we must say that what happened in the last third of the 19th century is only the effect of something that happened in the spiritual world before. It began in the spiritual world in the 1840s. And the time from the forties to the end of the seventies of the 19th century is an important and essential, a significant time. What happened then did not happen on the physical plane; but in the year 1879 the repercussions descended on to the physical plane, and since that time these repercussions have been taking place on the physical plane. They are a kind of reflection of what happened before in the spiritual world. If one is to describe what underlies this, one can say that in a particular field in a particular sphere it is the manifestation of what otherwise happens more often in the development of humanity, and what has always been described by those who were still able to observe such things as a struggle between Michael and the dragon. In the most diverse fields, such struggles of normally progressing spiritual beings of the higher hierarchies against spirits of hindrance and obstruction have taken place. For the cultural development of humanity, such a struggle has taken place in spiritual realms, and in those spiritual realms that are directly adjacent to the earth, in the decades from the 1840s to the end of the 1870s. At that time, in 1879, this battle ended with a victory, if one may say so, of the good powers against certain spirits of obstruction, which at that time - one can put it that way - were thrown down from the spiritual worlds into earthly conditions, so that since then they have been working and weaving in earthly conditions. Within that which is developing in the spiritual evolution of humanity, there are spirits of hindrance that were only overthrown at the end of the 1970s and hurled down into the lower world for the upper world, and now rule in people.

If we look at these spirits of hindrance, these spirits of an Ahrimanic nature, with which the spirits that we can call Michaelic spirits have fought a fierce battle, we have to say that these Ahrimanic spirits had a good significance in past periods of human development, they had their tasks in past periods of spiritual development. These tasks were carried out in such a way that they were guided by good higher spirits. We must not imagine the so-called evil spirits in such a way that we think we just have to flee from them in order to get rid of them if possible. That is namely the best way to attach them to oneself if one wants to get rid of them in an egoistic way; rather, one has to imagine that these so-called evil spirits are also in the service of the wise world order. If they are only placed in their right position, they will perform services that are necessary for the wise world order. And so we can say that for centuries, even for millennia, these ahrimanic spirits have performed the task of dividing human beings into those community contexts that have to do with blood ties. People are connected in their earthly associations in such a way that the bonds of blood also trigger and bring about certain bonds of love. People organize themselves into family, tribal, ethnic and racial contexts. All these things are subject to certain laws of the times. These are directed by beings from the higher worlds. That which humanity has specialized, that which humanity has structured in such a way that this structure is based on blood, was guided by these Ahrimanic spirits, but under the guidance of good spirits.

But now a different era was to begin. As long as human beings were guided by blood, so to speak, they could not take their destiny into their own hands in the way that has been suggested several times. For this it was necessary that the service of these Ahrimanic spirits, as it was, be eliminated from the spiritual world. These spirits initially wanted to continue their activity of dividing people according to blood from the spiritual world; but humanity was to be driven to a more general conception of its entire spirit. What is often said in our field, that humanity is to be understood as a whole on earth, is truly not a cliché, but a modern necessity. And this is based on the fact that a strong, intense struggle has taken place between the Michaelic spirits and the spirits of Ahrimanic nature, which in the past differentiated people according to blood.

This battle has ended with the Ahrimanic entities being pushed down and now prevailing among people. They will cause confusion among people, because that is their intention after this defeat: to cause confusion with everything that can be drawn from all kinds of concepts and ideas related to blood ties and blood relationships. It is particularly important to realize that since the last third of the nineteenth century, these impulses have been active in everything that human beings can achieve here on the physical plane through their thoughts and feelings, and that reality cannot be understood without taking these impulses into account. The way in which certain international relationships and the like are discussed today has been confused by these Ahrimanic spirits, who have been defeated by the spirit of Michael.

I have often mentioned that we can say that we have been in the so-called Michaelic Age since the end of the 1970s. Michael can be seen as the Zeitgeist, which has replaced Gabriel as the Zeitgeist. This means a great deal: Michael as the spirit of the age! The spirits of the age that were present in earlier centuries worked differently than this spirit of the age. The other spirits of the age that influenced the development of humanity in earlier centuries did so more or less in the subconscious. The task of the Michaelic Zeitgeist, which has been working in human affairs since the last third of the nineteenth century, is this: to release more and more in human consciousness itself that which is to take place in the evolution of the earth. This Michaelic Zeitgeist has actually descended and is working on the physical plane of the earth.

There is something connected with all this for our time that is extremely easy to misunderstand. Ours is a very, very ambivalent time. If you describe it so superficially, you could easily call our time merely materialistic. But that is not all; the matter is much more complicated. On the whole, one can say that these more recent times are, in their fundamental character, extraordinarily spiritual, extraordinarily spiritual indeed. And there have never been more spiritual concepts and ideas than those that have been brought to the surface by modern science in the development of humanity. But these concepts, if I may express myself in this way, are abstract. In themselves, in their substance, they are thoroughly spiritual; but they are not suited, as they appear, if they are not properly treated, to express spiritual realities. These concepts of natural science, which are being instilled into all education today, are a very double-edged sword, if I may use this paradoxical simile. They can be used as they are applied by academic science today. In that case they are spiritual, but only in so far as they are applied to the external material world; their spirituality is denied. But these scientific concepts can also be applied in such a way that they serve as material for meditation, that one meditates on them. Then they will most surely lead into the spiritual world. If those who today have a scientific world-picture would not be too lazy to apply their concepts in meditation, then these people with a scientific world-picture would very soon enter into spiritual science. It is not the content of the scientific concepts that is at fault, but the way they are treated. The concepts are subtle and intimate, but people apply them in a materialistic sense. It is not so easy to make this clear in all its details, but we must communicate with each other; therefore we must let many such truths approach us only by reflection, as it were.

Thus people live in concepts, in ideas that are thin, that are, I might say, pure distilled spirit, so that one needs only to apply a strong force to arrive at spiritual science; and these concepts are the ones that are to enter the human development precisely through the Michaelic Age. But they are also the ones who are most confused by the indicated, one can already say, from heaven to earth pushed, in heaven overcome ahrimanic spirits of obstacles. They arise in so many areas where man today believes he is thinking and reasoning quite correctly, but where he is exposed to the confusion of these spirits to a high degree.

It is precisely when considering such a matter that it becomes clear how development actually takes place, let us first stay with humanity. We must bring before our soul a significant law of development, which we have also to consider from other points of view. It is, of course, an extremely superficial way of looking at things to think that events in historical life simply arise from one another in such a way that what happens in 1918 is a consequence of 1917, 1916 and so on. That is a superficial way of looking at it. Things happen quite differently; they happen in such a way that what has happened in the spiritual realm continues to have an effect in the following periods, but in a certain way. You can take any year, let us say for example 1879. Then something happens in 1880 that is determined by the fact that what happened in 1878 is repeated retrogressively. In 1881, in a certain respect, what happened in 1877 is repeated retrogressively, and so on. One can start from any point in the development of humanity, as contradictory as this may seem; one will always find that earlier annual cycles show up in later ones as important impulses. One can therefore expect that, especially in an important period of time, this law will also intervene in the development of humanity with particular clarity and importance.

I have often hinted at this, and have often spoken before these catastrophic events of the important period of 1879, and that it is only the effect of what has been taking place in the spiritual world since the forties. If we now apply this law, which I have just mentioned, we can say the following: 1879 is an important period of time; certain spirits were pushed down who had previously worked in the spiritual world as spirits of hindrance, and from then on worked here on the physical plane among people in a hindering and confusing way. What happened in 1879 is, so to speak, the conclusion of an earlier event that began between 1841 and 1844 and has been taking effect over the decades. If we now take the year 1841, we have the period of struggle in the spiritual world from 1841 to 1879. Those entities, which are under the rule of the spirit, who is called Michael – one could also describe him with another name – they prepared themselves in 1841 to take up the strong, intensive fight in the spiritual world, which then found its conclusion for the spiritual world in 1879. It lasted for thirty-eight years. Now I said: That which happens retrogressively has a retroactive effect in the following period. — Now continue calculating from 1879 for another thirty-eight years: 1917. Just as in 1880 what happened in 1878 repeats itself, and in 1881 what happened in 1877, so in a certain way what took place in the spiritual world in 1841 is repeated in the physical world in 1917 as one of the most important struggles. It is indeed the case that the year 1879 marks a turning point, which shows very energetic impulses forward and backward in the observation. And in a certain way, on the physical plane of 1917, 1918, those things are now repeating themselves that had to take place in the spiritual world in the forties, and which can be described as a struggle of normal, forward-driving spirits against certain spirits of obstruction. This is not a calculation that I have only just made today; rather, many of you know that these events have always been referred to, and that from the point of view of these events, the year 1917 must be seen as an important starting point for subsequent events.

Of course, things must not be viewed in such a way that one says: Well, we have experienced the year 1917. Certainly, one has experienced it; but what the events actually were that took place in that year, only a few people have experienced, since few people are inclined to evaluate them in their waking consciousness. That is what it is all about.

Now, through all these things I wanted to point out that we are indeed living in an important moment in the evolution of humanity, and that it is necessary to take some things more seriously at this point in time than they are taken by the present humanity in its masses. I have already pointed out how particularly necessary it is not to ignore the normal spiritual impulses in our time. As this newer time has developed, what has actually become predominant in it? What has really gained influence in this newer time? What is radiated, I might say, into the whole of general education? Basically, only that which has grown on the coarsest field of the scientific world view. But this coarsest field of the scientific world view has only the power to grasp the dead, the inanimate, never the living, which would be so infinitely necessary in this scientific age. Even today, people still do not want to see the connection between such things and general world events. They do not want to see that the more humanity endeavors to develop only concepts that relate to the dead, they are also destroying social and community life from within. It is necessary to bring scientific concepts into flux and to enliven them in such a way that they can actually be applied to human coexistence, that they are, so to speak, suitable for explaining human coexistence.

The course of development has been this way in these newer, in these most recent times: in what has been accepted as actual science, only those concepts have been formed with which one can comprehend external, dead nature. These concepts were quite unsuitable for grasping human life. But they wanted to use them to grasp human life. And so the official scientists applied these concepts to history, to social science, to social policy, and so on. But these concepts are not useful there, and so there is no useful concept for social life at all. As a result, the social life of the earth has become too much for people to handle, has become what it has become over the past four years. People will have to learn to condense their concepts and also to vitalize them.

What the natural scientists themselves develop is certainly ingenious, useful, and conscientiously methodical, but only for the external world. Today, everyone works in their own field and does not extend the concepts that are developed in any field to the totality of the human world view. Take just one example, and you will immediately understand what I actually mean. The ordinary school physicist who today looks at the magnet needle pointing with one end to the north and with the other to the south, explains to his boys that this constant pointing of the magnet needle to the north and to the south comes from the earth's magnetism, that the earth is also a great magnet; and it would be ridiculous if this school physicist were to seek in the magnet needle itself the forces that cause the needle to point in these directions. He tries to explain it in terms of the properties of the earth; he seeks the cause outside in the cosmos. In this purely dead area, the scientific concepts are still of some use, and one or other of them may still be discovered. Therefore, it does not occur to anyone to say of the magnetic needle that it has the inherent power to always point in one direction. One assumes directional forces from the magnetic north and south poles of the earth. The biologist no longer does this. It does not occur to him to develop a similar concept. The biologist sees the chicken in which the egg is formed. It does not occur to him to ask the same question as the physicist asks about the magnetic needle. The biologist simply says: When the egg is formed in the hen, the cause of the egg formation lies in the hen. If he were to proceed as the physicist does with the magnet needle, he would say: Although the hen is the place where the egg is formed, the cosmic forces are involved in the same way as the cosmos is involved in the magnet needle when the egg is formed. I must go beyond the narrow confines of nature and take what is outside to help. In the chicken there is the place where the egg develops, but the forces come from the cosmos, just as they give direction to the magnet needle from the cosmos.

It is urgently necessary to develop such a concept and to implement it methodically. But in the eyes of the official science of biology it is foolish, fantastic, it is ridiculous, because it has completely lost its way into a blind alley of the dead. This official science cannot even apply the comprehensive concepts to such things, much less can it say anything about how people could live together politically or socially in the right way. How can one hope that something so necessary for humanity could come out of this mere natural scientific world view, namely a revival, a refreshing of these concepts? Especially in the important area of human life, this cannot be. Let us make this clear by looking at a concept that we want to grasp spiritually.

Even the mere observation of the human skeleton shows something extraordinarily important, something, I would say, magnificent. When you look at the human skeleton, you see the head, which is actually only placed on the rest of the trunk skeleton; it is a world of its own. The other part of the skeleton is formed quite differently. If we apply Goethe's theory of metamorphosis, we do indeed get the transformation of the trunk into the main skeleton, but the main skeleton is formed spherically, the head is a reflection of the whole sphere of the world. The other is formed more like a moon. This is something extraordinarily significant and indicates to us that if we want to gain fruitful insights into the human being from his form alone, we must look at something that is already indicated in the form. Our natural science is indeed magnificent, but it is illiterate when it comes to knowledge of the world. It proceeds as someone who does not read the pages of a book but writes on them: A is like this, B is like that — that is, not reading but merely describing the letters. But one must proceed to reading, one must understand, describe the forms of nature not merely as science does, but interpret them in their relationships, in their transitions. Then one comes from reading the forms of nature and natural phenomena to unraveling the meaning of the world. Of course, people who hear something like this today and who, with their thick heads, are completely stuck in illiteracy, find such a thing, when it is said, quite dreadful. Good examples could be given of how something is found to be dreadful that is so far-fetched from the human skeleton, but which can be extended to the whole human organism. Man is a dual nature, and this dual nature is already expressed in the fundamental contrast between the head and the rest of the organism.

If one now, through spiritual science, engages with these two aspects of the dual nature – one could specify further aspects, but that is not the point today – then one can already read something tremendously significant from the mere shape of the human being, if one really engages with it. From a spiritual scientific point of view, it can be seen that this human head undergoes a development from birth through physical life on earth, which now differs from the development of the rest of the organism just as the head already differs in form from the rest of the organism. It is very interesting to observe that this head develops three to four times faster than the rest of the organism. If you look at the rest of the organism, you can call it by a common name, in that it is mainly organized by the heart, so that you then get an opposite between the head organism and the heart organism. This heart organism really develops three to four times slower than the head organism. If we were only heads, we would be old people by the age of twenty-seven or twenty-eight, getting ready to die because the head develops so quickly. The rest of the organism develops four times more slowly, and so we live well into our seventies and eighties. But that does not change the fact that we actually have a head development and a heart development, that we carry these two natures within us. Our head development is also usually fully completed by the age of twenty-eight; the head no longer develops. What then develops is the rest of the organism. It also sends the developmental rays into the head of its own accord. If you are able to observe the shape, the characteristic development of the shape, you could come across confirmation even from external things, even if you cannot come across the thing itself. However, you have to have spiritual knowledge to come across this. But look, who has not looked at a small child and said to themselves when they see it again later: This child only later became so similar to so and so. — This is connected with the fact that the forces of heredity are actually in the rest of the organism. The head is formed entirely out of the cosmos; and only when the forces of heredity work out of the rest of the organism, which happens more slowly, does the physiognomy of the head also resemble the rest of the organism. This is just one example of how external facts can confirm what spiritual science finds. It is important to note that the head develops much faster than the rest of the organism.

You see, knowing this was not so important in the early days when people were more unfree, more directed. In those days, the good spiritual powers took care of things. They effectively established harmony between the pace of head development and the pace of the rest of development. Now the time is coming when people themselves must ensure that such things are harmonized. Therefore, people must be able to understand such things correctly, must be able to deal with them, and they sin against development if they cannot do so. And we have an important area of human life where these things are terribly sinned against. This sin is sporadically expressed today because we have been in it since the last third of the 19th century. It will be expressed in a terrible way if people cannot understand the spiritual impulses. Today they initially express themselves in the following way: No consideration is given to the fact that if a person is to develop normally, something must be given to him that takes into account the fact that his brain development is three to four times faster than that of the rest of the organism. And one area in which this is particularly damaging is that of education and teaching, for the following reasons: Under the influence of the scientific world view, concepts have been developed that have gradually become mere concepts for the development of the head, that do not contribute to the rest of the development, concepts that are acquired at the same pace as the head develops, that cannot be absorbed at the same pace as the rest of the organism develops.

This means an extraordinary amount. Time has gradually developed louder ideas that occupy the head, leaving the heart cool and empty. They come sporadically today, as I said, but the things will increasingly take hold. You can do the test if you can observe life. Because of the dichotomy of the way the head and heart develop, the human being depends on not just developing intellectually in his youth. In youth, the head is the main focus because the other aspects develop more slowly. If we wanted to educate people for the rest of their lives as well as for the head, we would have to keep them in school their whole lives. We can only address the head in school education. But today the head is treated in such a way that it cannot give anything back to the rest of the organism in spiritual and soul terms. The rest of the organism does, of course, give its inherited impulses to the head throughout life, otherwise we would die at twenty-seven, because the head is predisposed to do so. But in return, the head should also give what is cultivated in it. You can see for yourself that today's education does not do this. To prove it, ask yourself: Is it not true that people who receive a school education today only remember what they feel in later life? — Most of the time they do not even do that, but are happy to be able to quickly forget everything. This only means that the rest of the organism observes the formation of the head. If the rest of the organism received from the head the life essence it needs, then one would not only remember in terms of memory, but one would look back on what one's teacher gave one, as on a paradise, to which one thinks back with heartfelt contentment and attachment every hour in later life, into which one plunges again and again and in which one has a source of rejuvenation. It would be a source of rejuvenation if it included education of the heart, not just of the head. Then, throughout his or her life, a person would have something from childhood teaching, from school, for the rest of the organism, which develops four times more slowly, and this would also have an effect on the organism. Today it is only just beginning, and it will get worse and worse. People will become prematurely aged because they will only remember what they have absorbed into their heads, and what has meaning only up to the age of twenty-seven. After that, it remains as useless, remembered memory; and the person ages. He ages inwardly, spiritually, early on, because the formation of the head is not suited to overflow into the four times slower development of the heart.

These things must be taken into account. But if they are to be taken into account, then our school education must become a totally different one, then it must have living concepts instead of the dead concepts that prevail everywhere today. When it comes to a Kant-Laplacean theory, people will always remember it in such a way that they grow old. What is real: the spiritual and soul starting point of our universe, from which the physical has only developed, will, if it is properly incorporated into the teaching material, be a lifelong source of rejuvenation. And it is possible to shape the subject matter, not just by using a methodical approach, but by completely reworking it in the anthroposophical sense, so that throughout one's entire life, there is something that one can recall not just in thought, but that is a lifelong source of continuous rejuvenation. We must consciously work to ensure that people are not old when they are barely fifty years old, but that they can still draw inwardly, spiritually, from what they have taken in during their youth; that they can have a source of refreshment, a refreshing drink from what they have taken in as a child. But then it must be given in such a way that it is not only suitable for the development of the head, but that it is suitable for the development of the whole human organism, which proceeds three to four times more slowly than the development of the head.

To understand such things means to bring to life what are dead concepts for the natural scientist and therefore also for our general education. Do not underestimate the great social significance of what is said here. You might think that this is only important where science in the narrower sense is effective. That is not true. Science has an effect on all of today's education, on the whole breadth of today's human development. These scientific concepts extend even into the Sunday newspapers; and even those who only absorb everything that constitutes their faith today, the real and true faith, from their Sunday newspaper, which they pretend to have towards their church or their office, are infected by science, which can only deliver dead matter, even if this dead matter may be considered in the most spiritual way. These things must be clearly seen through.

So you see: Anthroposophically oriented spiritual science is truly not just something that can satisfy subjective curiosity, but something that has to deeply affect our entire development in time. And again, this intervention in our development in time depends, for our consciousness, which can be trained in anthroposophy, on the recognition of what took place in human development from 1841 to 1879 and to 1917, both supersensibly and sensibly, above and on the physical plane. These things cannot be taken seriously enough. For much, very much, has not been taken seriously in recent times. And the recovery of humanity will have to consist in people again being willing to accept perceptions, ideas, feelings about world development. Just reflect on these things!

If you look back over the past few decades, what has the world's ruling class, with the exception of a few individuals, actually done in terms of world views, major world views? At most, it has allowed natural scientific concepts to be popularized in some way, and has used these natural scientific concepts, which it has allowed to be popularized, to demonstrate all kinds of illustrative things using the means of modern times. If you could somehow announce that something from the natural sciences would be demonstrated with slides, you would attract a great deal of attention and popularity. What has the leading social class actually done with questions of world view in modern times? People were very interested if someone could tell what they experienced as a North Pole traveler or as a Brazilian explorer. It is not to be criticized that one is interested in this. When someone talks about the fact that he has somehow been able to unravel the secrets of the egg germ of the May beetle, one has felt the necessity of listening to such lectures as a well-educated bourgeois of modern times, even if one has dozed off after five minutes, unless a slide has awakened one. But where is the real will to elevate the human idea to a worldview? Where it was present, and it is very characteristic, and everyone is actually forced to reflect on it today, where have there been the most lively worldview debates, the most lively interests in worldview questions for decades? There, where the Social Democrats had their meetings. There, worldviews were formed. This is only unknown in other social classes because they guard against really getting to know human life as much as possible.

But what kind of worldview do the Social Democrats teach? One that only works with the same concepts that are enshrined in the machines; a worldview that only develops views of the world in the mechanical sense: historical materialism, materialist conception of history, materialist conception of human coexistence. You can read about these concepts in every socialist magazine. Most people don't do that, but it would be quite useful to get informed. Those people who have been pushed into the machines, who have nothing to do from morning till night but work, and who, when they come away from the machines in the evening, have to deal with a social institution that is actually a copy of the machine, they have a world view that sees the world as if it were a machine. They have developed a world view that takes no account of individuality and organizes everything around the balancing concept of the dead. There is a very good saying: Death makes everything equal; but one could also say: A worldview that only deals with the mechanical, the dead, also makes everything equal, extinguishes all individual existence, all life. — So all individual existence, all life would be extinguished by the worldview that takes its ideal from the machine. As long as the matter was not serious, one allowed these things to befall one while dreaming, while sleeping, and one behaved in such a way that one rejected all questions of world view and gradually lost touch with all the impulses that can permeate human community life, human educational life in an understanding way. And basically, in more recent times, work has only been done in matters of world view where mechanical concepts were used. Even science, after all, only produced mechanical concepts. If you take Theodor Ziehen's book, which is a model for modern science, and read the final chapters, you will see that he is also one of those who say that natural science cannot come up with concepts that ethics, morality and aesthetics provide; but afterwards concepts are developed which state that everything that is not natural science is only dreamed up. Between the lines, everything that is not natural science is defamed. At the end, Theodor Ziehen says graciously: Concepts such as freedom, ethics, morality and so on must come from other fields; only the concept of responsibility should actually be rejected by real science. Man cannot be responsible any more than a flower can be blamed for its ugliness. — From a scientific point of view, this is absolutely correct if you are one-sidedly grounded in natural science, if you apply mere concepts of the dead. But then you are applying concepts that do not even come to the living, and certainly not to the I.

It is interesting to see how Theodor Ziehen talks about the I. In these lectures, which were written down and then printed so that they capture the tone of the lecture, he says about the I: “Gentlemen, it is a complicated concept, the I; when you think about what you actually think when you hear the little word ‘I’, what do you come up with?

you come? First of all, you think of your corporeality. Then you think of your family relationships. Then you think of your property relationships. Then you think of your name and title - he leaves out the medals - then... well, you think of nothing but such things. And what some psychologists have developed, he says, is just a fiction. Yes, the natural scientist, when speaking about the ego, can also come to nothing but what no human being actually thinks about when they seriously consider the matter, when they consider the ego. But the matter is serious, in that the concepts that have been developed out of the dead must also lead to the killing, the destruction, and the devastation of life. A theory that has been made out of the dead machine as a social world-view theory has a destructive rather than a constructive effect when it is introduced into life. Humanity has not decided to grasp this; therefore, it must experience it in the most extreme way. For what has happened? In the area where sources of tremendous future impulses will once arise, in the East, the theory of the dead, the continuation of the mechanistic world view in social views, in Leninism and Trotskyism, is having a destructive effect.

Consider the matter only very seriously. He who recognizes only the dead, and in man also recognizes only the dead, may he be as great a scholar as Theodor Ziehen, when he speaks about the ego, about responsibility, as Theodor Ziehen does, then his true social interpreter is not he himself — who does not dare to do so — but Lenin and Trotsky are the ones who draw the right conclusion for human society. What Lenin and Trotsky carry out are the consequences of that which is already cultivated by the purely scientific world view. But because this scientific world view makes compromises with that which is not the consequence of this world view, only because of this does it, precisely because it does not draw the conclusion, become not Leninism and Trotskyism.

It is also important, however, that things be taken in the sense of reality. What is not true has an objective effect. Thoughts are realities, not mere concepts. You cannot just say: Even if no one knows about a lie, it still works as a power. That is true, but something else is also true: If a lie exists that is not recognized as a lie, that does not change its effect; it works in the real world as a lie. And no matter how well it is meant, it still works as a lie.

There are already works today - I may have mentioned them here already - which treat the question of Christ Jesus from the standpoint of the correct present-day natural science. Very interesting books, because they proceed uncompromisingly. Above all, a Danish book. There are also others who really express what the present-day psychologist, the present-day psychiatrist, who thinks scientifically, must think about Christ Jesus. What does Christ Jesus become? He becomes an epileptic, a pathological person, a person with a morbid disposition. And the Gospels are interpreted in such a way that one sees in every chapter: they are case histories. Of course, all this is nonsense; but to say that it is nonsense, today only the one has the right to do so who sees through the matter spiritually. The one who accepts today's scientific psychology and psychiatry, from his point of view, this Christ teaching is the right one, because it draws the right conclusion there. And a person who speaks as a modern psychiatrist is still a better person, a truer, a more honest person than the one who accepts today's psychiatry and yet thinks differently about Christ, in the sense of those pastors or priests who also accept science in its entirety and yet make compromises.

A lie has an effect, however piously it is dressed up, for it is a real power. Above all, what is needed today is not to cover up life with compromises, but to face squarely what needs to be faced from certain presuppositions. If today's psychiatrist does not want to see Christ as an epileptic, as a lunatic, which according to today's psychiatry he would be, then he must give up psychiatry as it is developed today; then he must place himself on the ground of spiritual science. If people today were able to place themselves squarely on the foundations of that which can be known, then we would, with what can be known, have the right impulses for what must continue to work.

Recently, a note was slipped into my hand about a book that I was already familiar with, which had, in any case, caused the horror of the lady – because it was probably a lady. The note tells me what Alexander Moszkowski has written. I don't have the book here, but you can see from the slip what the book is about: “Anyone who has ever sat on the benches of a grammar school will find the hours unforgettable when, in Plato, he ‘enjoyed’ the conversations between Socrates and his friends, unforgettable because of the incredible boredom that emanates from these conversations. And one might remember that one actually found the conversations of Socrates heartily stupid; but of course one did not dare to express this view, because after all the man in question was Socrates, the “Greek philosopher”. The book “Sokrates der Idiot” (Socrates the Idiot) by Alexander Moszkowski (Verlag Dr. Eysler & Co. Berlin) does away with this unjustified overestimation of the good Athenian. In this small, entertainingly written work, the polymath Moszkowski undertakes nothing less than to strip Socrates of his philosophical dignity almost completely. The title “Socrates – the Idiot” is meant literally. One would not be mistaken in assuming that the book will still be the subject of scholarly debate.

Of course, today's compromisers will say: Well, we have learned enough that Socrates is a great man, and not an idiot; now Moszkowski comes along and says such a thing! But today it is necessary to have a completely different idea about such a thing. Those who know Moszkowski are aware that he stands on the ground of the scientific world view in the fullest sense of the word, right up to the quantum theory, and that he is therefore on the outermost wing of today's scientific world view. And it must be said that this Moszkowski is a much more honest man than the others, who also believe that they stand on the standpoint of the natural-scientific world-view and yet do not think that they should regard Socrates as a fool who has nothing to say on the concepts important for the world-view; who nevertheless make compromises, depict Socrates as a great man.

The fact is that today things cannot be put right for the simple reason that people do not have the sense of truth to face up to the consequences uncompromisingly in every respect. And anyone who wants to accept Socrates today must not accept the conditions that Moszkowski sets.

But that is difficult today, has been difficult for three to four centuries. Therefore, the matter was left alone until it had developed into what it has become in the last three to four years. Things must be approached at their soul-spiritual core, where their truly deeper impulses lie. It must be faced, which is particularly necessary today, to face the fact that truth and the sense of truth must enter into the souls of human beings! Then the things that are brought into the light of this sense of truth, that are illuminated by the light of this sense of truth, will be able to show their true face. Then one will be compelled to come to spiritual science simply because one sees the true face of things. For the present speaks a lot and speaks urgently, and things can be learned, such as how educational issues and questions of teaching must be studied by spiritual science today. Just as the question of the different pace of head and heart education is important for teaching and education, so there are many questions that are fundamental, important and significant for social life, for historical life, for legal life. We just have to get out of what we have dug ourselves into, out of the terrible belief in authority regarding what the scientific world view alone provides. This is necessary for our time. What the scientific world view calls 'real' provides concepts that can never reach into the realm of human coexistence. Humanity lives under this error today. If you look at things more deeply, you can see this.

That is what I wanted to say to you today. Now, let each one of you draw the conclusion from this that it is important to open our eyes and to illuminate things with the light that we can find from the light of spiritual science itself.

Yesterday I spoke about how our development appears to the Oriental. In many respects, the Oriental sees precisely what is compromising and inconsistent with his naive, intuitive spiritual faculty. And right now there are critical views among outstanding Orientals that are significant and interesting to follow. More and more views are emerging in the Asian East that the Orient must take the further development of humanity into its own hands. These views could be undone if there were more sense for what is proclaimed here as spiritual science! But then this sense must also be a living one; one must not only want to have something interesting in spiritual science, from which one prepares an inner soul voluptuousness, but one must want to have something that permeates one's whole life. And one must be able to see that it is only through the insights of spiritual science that social, moral and legal concepts can truly be grasped. What humanity has conceived under the influence of the scientific world view over the decades has not grown with the spirit that reigns in reality. No, it is at best comparable to those views that today educate people who want to spiritually kill the whole world because they only take their concepts from the world of the dead. Future times, when people will think more objectively about these things again, when the passions that so often guide and direct judgments today will have died down, future times – I am fully convinced that it can be so — will say: One of the most important characteristics of the period around 1917 was that the Weltanschhauung, which is only intended for the head and actually drives people into old age, has become a school-like Weltanschhauung. In the future, perhaps in a distant future, it will be called Wilsonism, in reference to the great schoolmaster from whom a large part of humanity wants to have a socio-political worldview impressed upon them. It is no mere accident that mere school-knowledge, which has nothing to do with the spiritual, has now become one of the most important political factors in the form of Wilsonism. This is an important and tremendously significant symptom of our time. It is just not possible to talk about these things today in a really thorough and comprehensive way that takes everything into account. But from my present allusions you will have gathered how important it actually is to try to understand these things thoroughly, how infinitely important it is to face up to these things not only out of affect, out of emotion, but out of knowledge.

I may have mentioned it here before, but I mention it again because it is important: now it is not difficult to speak out against Wilson within Central Europe; but I can point out how, in a cycle that was held long before these events, when the whole world, including Central Europe, still admired Wilson, I characterized him exactly the same way as I do now. The point is that one approaches the impulses that dominate the present time, which also dominate the present time as errors, from much deeper sources. In our anthroposophical field, our friends had the opportunity to see how, long before there was any external compulsion to see things in the right light, the right thing was pointed out again and again. May these things be better understood in the future than we have decided to understand them in the past! And I would especially urge you to bear this in mind: much of what is coming to light in the field of our anthroposophical science is infinitely better understood than we have so far chosen to understand it. It can penetrate even deeper into the hearts and souls of human beings and be awakened to a more intense life than has happened so far. May it happen! For what happens through it will already be connected with much that can truly be done, not to bring about disaster, but for the good of the future development of humanity, that can be done to make good much that has been neglected and that might perhaps be neglected further if one only listens to that which can be gained outside of spiritual science. Among our friends, too, many have a double bookkeeping of their lives. They have one in anthroposophical studies and books, for the private nourishment of their hearts and souls. The other bookkeeping is for their life outside, where they rely solely on the authority of the natural sciences. Often one does not realize that this is the case; but it is good to be a little conscientious in consulting with one's soul about these things, so that there may be harmony between these two accounts.

Man's life can only be administered in one sense. The spirit must also penetrate the scientific world view. And religious life must also be imbued with the light that can be gained from spiritual science. Take such things as were said and meant here today, and which seemingly lead the considerations of time up to supersensible heights, as they can be grasped in your presentations. Then you will see that anthroposophical education is not only education of the head, that it can also educate the heart for humanity. It is already education of the heart. It already serves all humanity, not just the humanity that might actually die at twenty-seven. It already serves to make people courageous and capable throughout their entire life. Education that fails to take into account the different pace of the development of head and heart will make him old, nervous, disharmonious and torn. Look at life, you will find this confirmed, because life can be a great teacher with regard to the confirmation of what anthroposophically oriented spiritual science brings down from the spiritual heights. Take everything that has been said, especially when it is spoken from such points of view as today, as spoken to your hearts, my dear friends, for the education of our hearts by the spirit of the world; and hold together that which should be the bond that links us together as members of our movement. Let us work together and plan to continue working, each in our own place and to the best of our ability.

First of all, I would like to remind you of something we discussed yesterday, so that we can then proceed to further considerations. Yesterday, I essentially explained that one cannot gain insight into the relationship between the ideal or spiritual and the material in the world, or into the purely causal natural order, without taking into account the nature of human sleep.

We started from St. Augustine's thought that he wanted to experience true certainty about the world in his inner experience. I said that we can no longer base ourselves on this thought for the simple reason that we have to know today that every human sleep refutes this thought. For we could never somehow hold on to the idea that what a person experiences within himself is preserved post mortem, after death, and that what a person experiences within himself is truly eternal, if we had to look at it from the point of view of the time from falling asleep to waking up, as ordinary consciousness today looks at it. The ordinary consciousness of today sees how, during sleep, what is experienced within the human being dawns. But now we said that as soon as a person completes the first step of looking into the spiritual world, he realizes that from the moment of falling asleep to the moment of waking up, what we call the human being's ego and its astral body – that is to say, the human being's actual spirit-soul nature – is so connected from within with the nature of the angels, archangels and archai, as the human being is otherwise connected here during waking life with the animal, plant and mineral kingdoms. Only because man's consciousness is dulled during sleep by the powers opposed to the world is he not aware that during sleep he is connected to the hierarchy of angels, archangels and archai, that they imbue his ego and his astral body with their own being, that they hold and carry his astral body and his ego. And we have explained how three things arise from this connection between human beings and spiritual beings: Firstly, that we have the feeling of personality more or less clearly even in our ordinary consciousness. We know ourselves as an ego. We would never know ourselves as an ego with only what is available to us during waking hours. The feeling of free personality that continues during the day, while we are awake, is a kind of after-effect of what we experience during sleep. This comes from the fact that from the moment we fall asleep until we wake up, we are connected with the angelic being from the spiritual world to which we belong. But the archangelic being, or actually a series of archangelic beings, is also connected with our spiritual soul being. And this is the reason why, when we are awake, we know ourselves as members of the whole of humanity, that we recognize ourselves as human beings on earth.

Every human being actually has an awareness of their free personality, even if it is not entirely clear. The awareness that one is a human being in general is already more shadowy in the background. Yes, certain philosophers, like Fewerbach or even Auguste Comte, have argued that it is a significant discovery for a person to come to feel that they are a human being in general, a member of the whole of humanity. And yesterday we heard Auguste Comte speak of the Great Being; by this he means nothing other than the human being. But Comte speaks from the standpoint of ordinary materialistic science; he does not know what underlies spiritually this consciousness that one is human, which lies in the background of our soul life. One would have no inkling of being a human being if that which is separated from our physical and etheric bodies during sleep were not imbued with the nature of the archangels.

And again, we are imbued with the nature of the archai from the hierarchy of the so-called Zeitgeist (the spirit of the age). But what comes from this remains a rather dark, shadowy consciousness. Indeed, today's humanity does not have it at all if it does not feel part of history, of historical life. The oriental world view has not penetrated to this consciousness of living as an earthly human being at all. This has been the particular task of Western culture: to feel like a historical being, as a being – let us say for ourselves – who belongs to the 19th, 20th century. But the present materialistic consciousness of humanity knows little more than the date and some other external historical data – we will hear shortly how little these actually have any significance for real life. For only spiritual science leads us to recognize how the human soul changes from millennium to millennium, how human beings become different, and how we now look back to ancient times and know that the people of the third post-Atlantic period, the Egyptian-Chaldean peoples, had a very different soul and human condition than we do today. This sense of being at home in the whole development of humanity is an echo of our connection with the archetype, with the arche, during the time from falling asleep to waking up. So that we should know that we are connected with this third spiritual hierarchy from the moment we fall asleep until we wake up. Now, how does our life differ from the moment we fall asleep until we wake up, that is, every day, from the life between death and a new birth? Every evening when we fall asleep, we lay aside, I would say provisionally, our physical and etheric bodies. These remain with us. There we are connected with these entities of the third hierarchy; when we wake up, we return to our physical and etheric bodies. It is different when we can no longer return, when we have died. Then our physical and etheric bodies are apparently handed over to the driving forces of that which is becoming earthly. We know that this is only apparent, as we have recently discussed; but for our experience, our physical and etheric bodies are handed over to the spaces of earth and heaven. During this time between death and a new birth, we not only come into contact with the beings of the third hierarchy, as we do in sleep, but we also come into equally intimate contact with the beings of the second hierarchy, with the exusiai, that is, the Spirits of Form, with the Dynameis, the Spirits of Movement, with the Spirits of Wisdom, Kyriotetes, and also with the beings of the first hierarchy, with the Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones. Just as we, here in our human existence, focus on the world and, in the surrounding world, everything that is contained in the realms of nature appears to us, so we become aware, now not externally but internally, of the intervention of the higher hierarchies between death and a new birth. From a certain point of view, this is essentially the difference between sleep and death in a human being: that during sleep we are actually only indirectly connected with the beings of the third hierarchy, but after death we are connected with the beings of all three hierarchies, up to the highest spiritual beings.

Now, if you hold on to this, you will be able to see how man is placed in the whole universe, how man, as a microcosm, is connected to the whole universe, to the macrocosm. Let us visualize what I have said schematically. Let us say, then, that after death our spirit is inwardly connected with the beings of the third hierarchy, with the beings of the second hierarchy, with the beings of the first hierarchy, just as it is outwardly connected here with the animal, plant and mineral kingdoms, from which it is built. But there is another connection. When you get to know all the things that the beings of the third hierarchy initially work on – they also have other tasks, but we are only ever talking about things in parts, aren't we? The beings of the third hierarchy are individual beings that work individually and also through their work together through their effects, which bring forth something, create something. If you visualize what these entities of the third hierarchy work, it is first of all everything, I say, that happens in the historical life of humanity (see drawing on page 57). You can also grasp the thought in this way: No one knows anything of the reality of the historical life of humanity without having an inkling that what actually constitutes history is not made by human beings, but by the beings of the third hierarchy. The beings of the third hierarchy – angels, archangels, archai – actually make history, and man participates in the work of this third hierarchy by having his consciousness as a personality, his consciousness as a human being, as a historical being on earth, in the characterized way. So that man stands in the world is because these entities make up historical life, and man, in turn, has what he is inwardly and through which he is inwardly connected to historical life from these entities. The external historical life, which is recorded in popular history, which is essentially a fable convenante, is only a reflection of the inner historical life that is created in his development by the beings of the third hierarchy.

Now we may ask: What is the similar task of the beings of the second and first hierarchy, that is, the Exusiai, Dynameis, Kyriotetes, the form spirits, the movement spirits, the wisdom spirits? Yes, they have a much more comprehensive task. We will initially disregard their relationship to humans. You can best imagine this task in front of the soul when you focus on your etheric body. Right, when you start from your self and go inward, you come to your astral body. Through your astral body, you are connected to the historical life of humanity. In turn, the beings of the third hierarchy, who make up the historical life of people, have an effect on the historical life of humanity. But if you go further, if you go down to the etheric body, this etheric body is a very complicated entity. In today's consciousness, man is not aware of much of the complexity that underlies this human etheric body. But you do get a certain idea of what has to work in this ether body when you study “Occult Science in Outline”; there you are shown, in the succession of Saturn, Sun and Moon time, that is, the successive embodiments of our Earth, how this ether body develops from the entire cosmos, and how the beings of the higher hierarchies participate. If we express this in a vivid formula, we can say from a certain point of view: Everything in the becoming of the world that is now more comprehensive, with which our etheric body is just as connected as our astral body is with the historical life of humanity, is created and formed by the beings of the second hierarchy, by the Exusiai, Dynameis, Kyriotetes. So, to illustrate this, I will say: The beings of the second hierarchy create everything that has an effect on the human etheric body.

But this in turn gives rise to something else. When you wake up in the morning and immerse yourself in your etheric body, you actually plunge into the creature of the beings of the second hierarchy. And you also submerge into your physical body. Of this physical body, which is why the being of mystery calls it the temple of man, what the external anatomy and physiology reveal is really only the very, very outermost shell. One can only grasp this tremendous, wondrous structure of the human physical body if one knows that it is the creature of the interaction of the beings of the first hierarchy. When you descend into your physical body upon waking in the morning, you actually descend into the work of the highest hierarchies. So think about how things are distributed in life: here between birth and death, when we are awake, we first descend into our astral body, in which the historical life of humanity is effective. But we also dive into our etheric body, the creature of the second hierarchy, in which much of the cosmos is effective, the etheric life of the cosmos. And we dive into our physical body, which is the creation of the beings of the first hierarchy. And when we live between death and a new birth, we do not live with the creature, but with the creators themselves.

Now you have one of the considerable differences in the life between birth and death and the life between death and a new birth. Here you descend by immersing yourself in your physicality, in all that is a creature of the higher hierarchies. When you die, you descend into the hierarchies themselves. You go from the creature to the creators. That is how things are connected.

And now, looking at what we have just discussed, let us ask: What exactly is our Earth? What geology and other sciences usually explore of our Earth is, after all, only the outer shell. What exactly is our Earth? As you know, we have our physical body in common with the entire mineral kingdom. Because we share our physical body with the entire mineral kingdom, we stand in it in a part of the earth when we are awake. We share our etheric body with the entire plant kingdom, standing in a second link of our earth. We share our astral body with the animal kingdom. We have the I for ourselves. There we stand in the three kingdoms of the earth, and our whole earth actually consists of the three kingdoms. This is the ground, so to speak, on which we stand, not physically, but with our human nature. But this cannot be seen, it remains supersensible. By standing on this ground, its lowest link is the mineral kingdom.

Now you remember from the “Geheimwissenschaft” that the mineral kingdom was not present during the earlier embodiments of our earth; the moon did not yet have a mineral kingdom, nor did the old sun, nor did Saturn. You only need to read about it in the “Geheimwissenschaft”. It was only on the earth, during the fourth embodiment of our earth, that the mineral kingdom came into being. I ask you to take careful note of this. It is a difficult matter, but it is an extraordinarily important one. In a sense, three formations had to precede it before the mineral earth could develop. We call these three formations the three elemental realms; the mineral realm is the fourth. We could also speak in these terms about the earlier embodiments: During the Saturn embodiment of our Earth: first elementary realm; during the Sun embodiment of our Earth: second elementary realm - the beings that were in the mineral realm at that time were earlier in the elementary realm -; during the Moon time - not the present time, the old Moon time -: third elementary realm. As we progress to Earth, the mineral realm arises as the fourth realm. Man carries this within himself.

To stand in the mineral kingdom is to stand in the fourth formation. We carry this mineral kingdom within us; only through this are we actually visible beings. But this mineral kingdom is also the only closed one in us. Only when the earth will have reached its end, when it will have entered into a different embodiment, will man be just as closed in the plant kingdom as he is today in the mineral kingdom. Then he would stand in the fifth formation. So the Earth will come to an end state and will arise anew: Jupiter time; man will then have his relationship to the plant kingdom as he has his relationship to the mineral kingdom today. He will stand in the fifth formation. To stand in the plant kingdom means to stand in the fifth formation.

There will come a new incarnation of our Earth, we call it the Venus incarnation, the Venusian age. Man will then stand for himself in the animal kingdom, not be an animal, but stand in the animal kingdom; as you know, this is different from being an animal. But to stand in the animal kingdom means to stand in the sixth formation. And then comes the conclusion, I would say, the seventh of all becoming. We call it the volcanic embodiment of the earth. Man has then reached the highest level of his education, only then has he become fully human. To stand in the human kingdom means to be in the seventh education, to stand in the seventh education. And in seven educations the life of man is complete.

Let us take a look at the human being today. He stands, as we do, in the mineral kingdom; he does not yet stand in the plant kingdom. When man stands in the plant kingdom, his whole life will be different. He will not feel as a personality, but as he feels today as a personality, he will feel as a human being, he will feel as a member of the whole of humanity. He will, for example, when he once stands in the plant kingdom, find it unbearable that he has a certain degree of happiness when someone next to him is surrounded by misfortune. Today, the human being feels as if he is closed off from other people by a partition. It must be so, otherwise man would never be able to develop his personality. But in the future kingdom of Jupiter, where man will be in the fifth education, it will be different; then it will be an absolutely unbearable thought that one can be happy and the other unhappy next to him, because people do not feel like an organism, as one says in abstracto. Now they do not feel as an organism: but that is an untruth, a deception, a maja. But the time will come when man will stand in the plant kingdom, where he will not find individual happiness tolerable when there is unhappiness next to him.

This thought underlies those spiritualists of whom I spoke to you yesterday. I told you: in the future, the English spiritualists will have to fight a great battle against the entire English popular culture. The flower of this popular culture is utilitarianism; and what this utilitarianism has driven out in Bentbam is essentially the principle that was called the maximation of happiness. This utilitarianism will increasingly fill their thinking. Therefore, only the opposition of the spiritually minded will enable this thinking to become spiritualized. That is the perspective for the future: the spiritually minded will have to overcome popular culture, to overcome it to the point of annihilation. That is why I was able to quote to you that Bentham, who, starting from popular culture, came to the principle that the good on earth consists in the happiness of the greatest number of people, has his most fierce opponents in the spiritually minded people of his own country, who tell him: That is a purely devilish definition, because this definition can only be made if you consider nothing but the mere present. If you think a little about the future of development, you know that the thought is quite unbearable: the happiness of the greatest number, because the opposite would be the unhappiness of the least number, and that would have to be evil. But evil and bliss have nothing to do with each other; for in the future, when man feels that he is in the plant kingdom, he feels that he is a member of the whole of humanity, and this opposite will be an impossibility. Just as today an important organic limb cannot simply be cut out of a human being without the whole human organism perishing, so in the future, when the earth is in the plant kingdom, not one particular group of people will be able to suffer without the whole suffering. That is a certain state of development that is coming. And because Bentham's definition of happiness has no future, only the present, it must be fought against, especially by those who aspire to spirituality.

Yes, why should it be a contradiction when it is said that good is defined by Bentham as the happiness of the greatest number, and evil is defined as the happiness of the least number? It is not an abstract contradiction for the rational mind, but the spiritualist does not think abstractly; the spiritualist thinks concretely. He does not think: What is the opposite of the other? but he thinks of the real that develops and that mostly does not agree with the mere thoughts of people.

And in an even higher degree the individual human being will participate in the whole when he is in the sixth education. And then especially when he is a full human being, a completely spiritualized human being, in the seventh education.

Yes, but we have seen from this that, as we now stand on the firm ground of the earth, we as human beings, insofar as we are creatures, actually only come to the fourth education. We have the mineral kingdom, that is finished. The other kingdoms, as they exist today, will partly perish, and man will develop them in a different way: the plant kingdom, as I have described it. We will not describe the animal and human kingdoms today, but next time.

Thus, today, when man regards himself as a creature standing among other creatures, he stands in the fourth formation. But he extends into the other formations, for we have seen that even in sleep man is under the influence of the third hierarchy. This hierarchy is further than he is, and is already in the fifth formation today, and the other beings are further still. So he extends into the higher levels of formation. I ask you to have the patience to really think through these subtle thoughts, because you now have to make the distinction between thinking of yourself as a creature and thinking of yourself as an independent spiritual being, which you are, for example, in sleep or between death and a new birth. Insofar as you think of yourself here in your physical, in your etheric body, astral body and I, insofar as you think of yourself as a creature on earth, you are in the fourth formation; but you reach into the fifth, sixth and seventh formations. By not living only in your body, but also outside of your body, in sleep or in death, you reach into the other hierarchies, and these other hierarchies are further. We can therefore say: If we regard the earth, with everything on and in it, as a created being, then it has reached the fourth level as a created being, and we have also reached the fourth level with it. But we rise up into the other spheres, into the other elements of formation, because we feel that we are independent personalities, that we feel that we are human, that we feel that we are members of the evolution of the earth, that we know that our etheric body is a creature of the second hierarchy, our physical body is a creature of the first hierarchy.

But the seventh education is not the end. Evolution continues, and by projecting into the higher forms of education, we also project into an eighth form of education, the famous eighth sphere. We can safely say: in a sense, by reaching up to highly developed levels of higher entities, we reach into the eighth sphere of education by standing in the pool of God or the spirit realm – as you like. But we reach into this eighth sphere of education with the finest components of our spiritual being. This reaching into the eighth education is a great secret, but we can still get an idea of a, I would say, very slight, not very intensive reaching into the eighth education, if we imagine the following.

We know that at the center of the earth stands the Mystery of Golgotha. If we look back at this Mystery of Golgotha, as it took place from the year 1 to 33 of our era, in the 747th year since the founding of Rome, it is in the first third of the fourth post-Atlantic period. We speak of the cultural development of humanity into which the Mystery of Golgotha fell, as of the fourth post-Atlantic cultural level. We know that the third post-Atlantean cultural stage was preceded by the Greco-Latin cultural epoch. We are now in the fifth, because the fourth, into which the Mystery of Golgotha fell, ended in the 15th century AD. So we are in the first third of the fifth post-Atlantean cultural period. Now, the human being develops through the cultural periods, but when we describe these cultural periods, we are actually describing something that the human being does not fully experience. You were all embodied in the old Egyptian-Chaldean period, which is the third post-Atlantic period, then again in the Greek-Latin cultural period and in the present one; but you only ever experience the successive time – if things go well, don't they, even if someone lives to be eighty – just eighty years, and in between lies the much longer time that passes between death and a new birth. So of what we describe by describing the successive developmental periods of the earth, the human being only experiences a part.

You could, of course, say: Well, man only experiences a part here in the physical body; but he truly does not live in vain in the physical body: he experiences the world from the point of view of the physical body because he could not experience what he experiences from the physical body between death and a new birth. Whether what a person experiences in the pure spiritual realm between death and a new birth is valued more highly or less highly is not what we wish to discuss today. But it is different from what a person experiences here through his body, and it is very important to take this into account. And it is truly not in vain that man is placed in the world through his body; for he could not experience through his body in the world, always in episodes of the development of humanity as a whole, if he did not have the development of the body. It is a thoroughly false idea to have an ascetic attitude towards the development of the physical body on earth, regarding it merely as the enemy of the higher human being. In truth it is not that, but that which gives man something that he could not attain in any other way. And the man is very much mistaken who despises the life in the body, who regards the body as something low, for it means just a highest, an most important, a most meaningful in the whole life of man. And spiritual science can least of all follow that mysticism or that wrong direction of Christianity – not the right direction, but the wrong one – which despises what it calls the earthly world. Between death and a new birth, the human being experiences the world from a different perspective; he experiences it as he can experience it: now it is not the creatures that affect him through the physical body and etheric body, but the creators themselves. There he experiences something different.

This is why we have the task during our earthly career not only to get to know the world of the senses, but also the supersensible. For the historical life of humanity, which is a result of the third hierarchy, we cannot get to know from the perspective of earthly life. And for our time – I ask you to pay attention to the fact that I say: for our time, because it was not so in the pre-Christian era – for our time it is essential that the human being becomes aware: he must, while he lives here on earth between birth and death, also get to know, if he wants to get to know himself as a historical being, what angels, archangels and archai work as historical life. If we only get to know the world in the way that today's scientists want to know it, if we only get to know the world as history describes it, as if history were made by human beings alone and not by the beings of the third hierarchy, then we only get to know the outermost layers of historical development. Only he gets to know history who is aware that he must, so to speak, contemplate here in the physical body what the beings on earth do between death and a new birth in a completely different way - if I may use the expression, which is only used comparatively - which he gets to know personally, individually, in their heavenly deeds. He must get to know it in its effects on earth in historical life.

'But it was not always like that; that is how it is in the time in which we now live. Above all, it was not like that in the third post-Atlantean period, before the year 747, in the Egyptian-Chaldean period. We know that the whole spiritual life, the whole state of mind of people was different then. Then the supermundane life radiated into the ordinary human life, then man knew, even if he interpreted it differently than we now interpret it in the mythologies: the entities of the third hierarchy worked into his ego and his astral body. He meant the beings of the third hierarchy, called them Osiris or Zeus or Apollo or Minerva or whatever, but he knew: these beings, which he only invented and interpreted in this way – but the invention and interpretation related to these beings – they have an effect. Even if he had not wanted to see them, he would have seen them inwardly, for in those ancient times there was not the same delusion of consciousness as there is today; but there was only the delusion of life, which, as one says, anthropomorphized these figures. But one knew about these figures.

This is also one of the points through which the whole life of people has changed. Today, people in their ordinary consciousness do not know what is playing into their lives. Man was born as a soul being in this third post-Atlantean time, was born again in the fourth post-Atlantean time, and was born again in our time. He does not see what the beings of the third hierarchy bring about as historical life, but he should get to know it, he should really get to know it! Not in its true form, but in mythological form, did the old man get to know it.

Now put yourself in the shoes of such a human soul – there are more incarnations, as you know, but let us consider three consecutive ones: one Egyptian, one Greek, one from the fifth post-Atlantean cultural period – let us put ourselves in the shoes of such a human soul. During the third, during the Egyptian-Chaldean cultural period, it experiences what it could experience through the fact that the entities of the third hierarchy played into life. This had gradually dawned. Some had still experienced it in the fourth, in the Greco-Latin period; many people had still experienced it in an orderly way until the year 333 after the Mystery of Golgotha, then it gradually disappeared; then people had to more and more confine themselves to what is present in the external sense world, if they did not develop inwardly in such a way that they could get to know the spiritual world again in a different way and thus ascend to the entities of the third hierarchy.

And now, when we look at such a soul that is returning, it comes with all that it has absorbed in the third post-Atlantean period, in the Egyptian-Chaldean cultural period. It comes with all that, but let us assume that such a soul refuse to look at the deeds of the third hierarchy in the historical life of humanity in the present incarnation and say to herself: What do I care what the angels, archangels and archai have done; for me, history is what human beings have ever done here on earth. Such a soul does not take into account that in everything that human beings have done on earth, the deeds of the third hierarchy are involved. Let us now assume for the sake of clarity – for some souls it also applies to the fourth, the Greco-Latin period, up to the year 333 – but let us assume for the sake of clarity that such a soul comes over from the Egyptian-Chaldean, from the third post-Atlantean period , from the third post-Atlantean period, it would not need to make any effort to know about the deeds of the third hierarchy, because that came into human life by itself; that is what this soul still carries within it. So we say that this soul was able to process back then, and that is what it carries within it. One could not have said to an ancient Egyptian – he had no real concept of historical life, but he did look to historical life – but one could not have said to him about this historical life: people make history. He would only have laughed, because he saw that the entities of the third hierarchy made history, even if he also presented them in a sensuous way in his own way.

All this is within the present-day human being, but unconsciously, of course; it has descended into the subconscious. Now they believe that history is something that people on earth have made. This gives rise to a strange state of mind, which I ask you to consider very carefully. If we were to look at such a soul in the present, we would say that this soul refuses to place itself in the historical life of humanity in reality; it says: I want to know nothing of the deeds of the archai, the archangels, the angels; I only want to know from external testimonies what people have done since those ancient times. But in this way such a soul cannot develop further; in reality such a soul remains at the point of view at which it stood in the old Egyptian times; it only has the maturity of a soul of the old Egyptian times, it does not allow itself to grasp reality. The angels, archangels and archai have developed further, they have done what could be experienced by humanity since then. Such a soul says: What the hierarchies have already done up there in the spiritual world, I will not get involved in that; I will only get involved in my own abilities. But the abilities are none other than those which she already had during the ancient Egyptian times.

Numerous such souls live in the present, and think of the peculiar situation of such a soul! Until the year 333, a soul could not yet come into this situation, because the spiritual world still extended into it by itself; but now, since that time, souls can be in a strange position: they cannot resist reality, in reality they are naturally in it, in what the angels, archangels and archai do, but they deny this with their consciousness, they only take up in their consciousness that which has been brought about here on earth by people themselves.

This is a case where people as creatures are in the fourth formation, because the fourth stage of formation is everything that happens in a creaturely way. So what men on Earth have done since Egyptian times belongs to the fourth education, but man himself rises above that, and due to the fact that since the year 333 he cannot consciously reach into it at all with his whole being, into what he actually reaches, due to that he even stands with his nature above the seventh level of education, he stands in the eighth level of education. So that today there is the possibility that souls are in fact in the eighth stage of education, but do not recognize it because they do not recognize the activity of the historical life of men through the angels, archangels and archai, but only recognize the fourth stage, so that the eighth sphere remains unconscious in them. This is an extraordinarily important fact.

If a world view arises from this state of mind, what then arises? Man ignores his own reality, he does not admit that he extends into a high spiritual realm, although he really does extend into it, but he only admits that he is in the human realm. This state of mind has only clearly come to light in what I have called the industrial age in recent days. Only the fact that people are immersed in the whole of industrial life has led them to completely ignore the fact that man reaches up into the spiritual world within a world view and only to take into account the external deeds of men. That is something significant. One cannot understand the present if one does not know that there are numerous people today who, with their world view, reach into the eighth sphere, and ignore this fact, that is to say, they bring all the damage to earth that reaching into a sphere of the world brings when one denies its existence. For by denying that he is projecting into the eighth sphere, into the eighth stage of education, he shuts himself out from the good beings of that stage of education and delivers himself into the hands of the Ahrimanic spirit of that stage of education. His thinking becomes, instead of divine or spiritual, Ahrimanic.

When speaking in spiritual scientific terms, one must point to the facts of this world in their truth. And the truth is, for example, that something like the materialistic historical view of Karl Marx, who lived from 1818 to 1883, that Karl Marx's world view is a purely Ahrimanic one. Its secret is based on the fact that only what is materially occurring on earth is recognized, that the way in which the human being's spirituality reaches up into the supersensible worlds is ignored, and that as a result of this ignorance, the human being falls prey to the Ahrimanic powers. For as soon as man excludes his consciousness from the worlds into which he reaches up, he falls prey to the ahrimanic or luciferic, in this case the ahrimanic, powers.

Now, we are faced with the fact that numerous people today advocate a purely Ahrimanic world view, fight for this purely Ahrimanic world view, and thereby also conjure up over the earth all that must come when the Ahrimanic order spreads over the earth instead of the divine order. Bentham's philosophy, of which I spoke to you yesterday, is in the first place an external theoretical expression of this Ahrimanic view of life. Marxism is such an expression, which is also already creative, which is formative, which has an enormous influence. And the indolence of bourgeois life knows nothing about it and has not cared for decades what elements of such world views have developed in the sphere of social life. Marxism is an extreme expression of this. It will continue to have an effect. What at first was only meant to be knowledge will become an event, will actually become reality. Only insight into these things, which in turn forms the will, can help in these matters.

Such truths are drastic, such truths are truly not suitable for mere Sunday sensationalism; such truths are that which is most intimately connected with the whole cultural life of the present day. And much will depend on people's willingness to recognize that which lives in their thoughts in connection with the whole order of the world. For in our time we have entered the cycle of time in which we cannot advance without falling into terrible catastrophes if we do not understand how what takes place in the human being relates to the evolution of the whole cosmos.

Such truths, when they are discovered in the search for truth – you can take my word for it – are initially disturbing. If you have a feeling for the impact of the great truths in the world, you also know the feeling of being disturbed by these great truths. It is not easy to live in the life of truth. Only the superficial might think that it is not disturbing to have to say to oneself: people, a great number of whom believed – and that is also true! – that they honestly strove for the truth, are permeated by the spirit of Ahriman! It strikes at the heart, my dear friends! Therefore, when such truths arise, one tries to come to terms with them. These truths are not there to be let in at one ear and out at the other. Nor are they there to be found in one's lonely meditation and accepted as sensations. These truths are not there for that. One must come to terms with them. One must be able to find how what one knows as world evolution, what is all around one, also agrees with what people judge, that something like that is there.

Anyone who, like me, has seen how many people there are today - now people can see for themselves through external facts - who live by Marxism or Marxism-like views, is faced with the necessity of taking a closer look at these things. One often says to oneself: Perhaps you are an illusionist after all! Of course one need not immediately doubt the whole spiritual world, but with regard to such concrete truths one often says to oneself: Perhaps you are succumbing to illusions after all! — The deep sense of responsibility towards the truth must arise precisely in the face of spiritual truths. Then one seeks to dig deeper and deeper. But there is indeed not a little, but a great deal, a great deal, which provides terrible confirmation of what I have just explained to you as the ahrimanic character of, for example, Marxism or similar world views.

When I spoke here some time ago, I made a certain demand of you. I spoke about the fact that the time as we experience it is actually an illusion, that time is in reality something quite different from how man experiences it, because man does not take time perspectively, I said at the time. Man experiences space perspectively; he sees the more distant trees smaller than the nearby trees. In reality, time is also to be seen perspectively. Events that lie far apart in time are to be seen differently than those that lie close together in time. But this is only the basis for time really being what the researchers of all times have regarded it as: time is the most important medium of human deception. We imagine, for example, that the beings of the higher hierarchies also flow through time as our own soul life flows through time: there is no truth in this. In reality, the essence of the higher hierarchies lies in elapsed times, but they work across from the elapsed times, as one can work across in space from a distant place, for example, through light signals or something similar, to beings in a nearby place in space. Time is not what people see it as, nor is time what philosophers like Kant see it as, but time in its reality is something completely different. And what man sees as reality is also a maja, a great deception. Above all, what we believe to be past remains, because we live in time as a deception. But it remains there; time really becomes something like space. And one looks at past events in the same way that one looks at distant objects in space, if one truly sees. Time is an illusion.

And further, spiritual science knows that the sources of other great illusions in human worldviews arise from the fact that man succumbs to deception with regard to time. If there were many physicists among you, I could express myself here in purely physical terms. I could show you with the help of physical formulas that just as the physicist introduces time - t, as he merely calls it - into the physical formulas, this time is only a number, and thus something quite unknown, not a reality but pure appearance. The only thing that is real is the speed, but the physicist regards this as a consequence of time. Since you are not physicists and probably will not get involved in understanding the matter, I will not go into it further either.

Time is an illusion, that is a profound truth, because time as an illusion underlies many other illusions of life. For example, if you apply time incorrectly in the course of history, you see everything in the wrong light. People in the first three Christian centuries thought that certain things that had happened were over and done with. In reality, they should have thought: the archangel or being from the hierarchy of archai who guided the events of that time is still there; it continues to have an effect in a different way. The past is only an illusion. It is very important for people to realize that time has a perspective character for spiritual reality, that they must be just as mistaken about events in the course of time – while they do not believe this – as they are about events in space if they do not allow for perspective. Consider how great the deception would be if you did not allow for perspective, if you regarded what is far away in space as having the same effect as what is close by. You are looking at a distant mountain. Your health depends to a great extent on the air around you; the air on the distant mountain does not, because if you want it to be beneficial to your health, you have to go there. As soon as we are dealing with reality in life, reality is essentially connected with perspective. But it is the same with regard to time. We live in the present when we do not believe that the more distant events of the past can be weighed as much as the near events. If we look at the Egyptian-Chaldean period in the third post-Atlantic period and only consider what the documents provide and register them as Torengeschichte registers, the fable convenue, which today calls itself history, then we make the perspective mistake. For what people did outwardly during the Egyptian period has no significance at all for today's life, but what the angels and archangels and archai did has significance; but this only emerges in the perspective formed by observation. Therefore, it is a principle, and not only today, when we all have to rediscover these things on the basis of anthroposophy, but in all times it was a principle for all spiritual researchers, that time as such is an illusion, and never was time counted in such a way by a real knower of reality that it was thought to be a truth, that it itself would have been thought of as a true reality.

Now the strange thing came to light, this Karl Marx of whom I have spoken to you, to whom millions swear today, albeit more or less in shades, more or less in formulas - but that's not what . Those who know these things know that thousands of people swear by him, or if they do not swear consciously outwardly, they do so subconsciously. This Karl Marx tried to answer the question: what are the true goods of humanity? What is it really that is achieved in humanity? — He answers the question in an extraordinarily original way, for it has never been answered before; human goods have always been considered in some other way than Karl Marx considers them. What human goods are was considered, let us say, for example, in terms of whether it had to be brought from afar, whether a lot of understanding was needed to find it, or the like. I once tried to make this clear to you by saying: Human labor must also be considered qualitatively; one must generally get involved in the concrete. We consider the elaborate Gotthard Tunnel. No one today who builds something like the Gotthard Tunnel is unfamiliar with differential and integral calculus, and differential and integral calculus is a Leibniz or, if it is better liked in England, a Newtonian - the two were arguing about the honor - invention. So one can say that Newton or Leibniz helped to create the Gotthard Tunnel. Yes, without them it would certainly not have been built! Now, the work of Newton or Leibniz must be evaluated in a completely different way than the work of someone who lays one stone on top of another in the Gotthard Tunnel. This is one way of evaluating human goods, human labor. The theory of the value of human labor, of human life, has taken various forms. Labor, goods of life, have been evaluated from the most diverse points of view, but never as Marx evaluated them. Karl Marx takes up a single element in his theory of value. For him, everything that has value in human life is only valuable because it is condensed time, namely condensed working time. Whether something can be produced in three hours, six hours, or twelve hours is the measure of its economic and global economic value. A large part of Marx's theory, which is so common today that it is possible to see it when someone from the so-called higher classes talks about work from his point of view, is based on this. A real socialist, a worker, stands up and says: “Please look it up in Karl Marx – of course he doesn't have the book with him – please, page 374, you will find this or that there.

One must really know life in order to be able to judge life, otherwise one will be amazed everywhere that this or that happens here or there. What happens happens out of the impulses of the human soul. But if one cares as little as people on earth have cared in recent decades about what has actually been going on at the bottom of the human soul, then one should not be at all surprised when the whole thing finally collapses catastrophically. But I have explained this for a special reason. It is the first time that the original has occurred, that what is only the source of deception has been made the standard of all economic values: time in the form of working hours.

So take this from a higher perspective. People who understand reality have always known that time is an illusion. Now someone comes along and says: But what has value in the world has only as much value as condensed working time is contained in it. Does that not mean in other words that your reality is an illusion and only that which is condensed time has real value? The deception is made into reality right down to the form of time by those who want to be completely materialistic, who want to stand only on the ground of reality, and reality is overlooked.

This is just one example. I could show you numerous things that comfort when one is dismayed by truths that, if one has a heart for the life of humanity, thunder into the mind. But when one then studies the matter in detail, when one looks at the hand of someone like Karl Marx, whose spirit is known to be Ahrimanic, and asks him: How do you proceed in detail? — then it is indeed the case that one comes across the Ahrimanic, and one feels: You may admit such truths to yourself. — I just wanted to give you one example here. It is not easy to have to say: Everything that protrudes into the world anachronistically today does so because people have left the spiritual world, which thus becomes their eighth sphere, and they only perceive the world in material terms. If you take this, then you will feel with all its weight what it means when I repeatedly emphasize: Today it does not matter at all whether a person says something beautiful, something that can be admitted, but what really matters is what comes from what one says or does. I must tell again and again how I have been repeatedly tested – you know I am not saying this out of some silly vanity – to draw attention to the fact that it does not matter what one thinks, but that one sees what effect one's thoughts have. You can have a thought that is absolutely wonderful. But if you have no idea how this thought will work in reality, it can have the opposite effect. I have been trying to make such things clear in various examples for years. For example, at the beginning of the 20th century, I once gave a lecture in which I said – I will now summarize much of what was discussed at the time in a few words, because I just want to illustrate –: Today there are more people who are programmatic pacifists, talking very nicely about the leadership of humanity from their pacifist point of view. Pacifism has never actually assumed such proportions as in this time – so I spoke at the beginning of the century. And that is, I said, a clear sign that we are facing the greatest war of humanity. For people in the past did not think about human interrelations in such an unrealistic way as they have done within these circles, they only went so far as the content of their thoughts, and had so little awareness of the real effectiveness of what lives in the soul that one can only recognize it through the whole world perspective. This is only done in the age in which all the things we have been talking about have been spreading.

How is it that something that is no more than a train of thought, and a very unreal one at that, can set the tone for many people, a thought that can never have anything to do with what is happening? This is Woodrow Wilson's train of thought, Wilsonian train of thought, which is nothing more than Egyptian-Chaldean train of thought, which does not care that there is a spiritual reality in history, but only adds abstract thoughts to each other. It comes from all these peculiarities of our age. A future historiography will have to baptize everything that our time has produced in terms of unreal thoughts that bring about the opposite, in the name of Woodrow Wilson.

That is what is decisive in our world view, what must be decisive, and what must be considered not from today to tomorrow, but from the point of view of the whole of cosmology, from the point of view of being placed in it. He who answers such questions from the point of view that arises out of a complete world-view judges such people as Woodrow Wilson is, not from sympathies or antipathies, but judges as one judges objectively about something. But that is the anachronism, that very many people today cannot get involved in it, because it is uncomfortable to look things in the face. You cannot look things in the face if you do not research them in depth. This must be said of such souls, who today have no connection to historical life: they are souls who ignore what real history has been through the third hierarchy and therefore do not deal with the real impulses when they speak, but basically only with empty words.

This is a fundamental requirement of our time: that we come to terms with it and realize that, even if we have the most beautiful concepts that the human mind can grasp, the most beautiful concepts that are quite sufficient to explore the nature that is spread around us, we will never understand anything about history. For history does not unfold as natural life unfolds; history unfolds as the deeds of spiritual entities. This is what must be added to the other world views. From theocracy, as I described to you yesterday, people emerged by still remembering the old theocratic order during the time of theocracy; then the metaphysical time came, which essentially developed the civil service throughout the world; then the purely materialistic time came, the time of industrialists. This would lead completely into the unreal in relation to the spiritual, if it were not for the counterweight of working one's way back into the real, into the actual, which, however, can only be observed if one can ascend to that which is veiled for man in ordinary life in the present time cycle. We must learn again to speak of supersensible things if we want to speak of history. In the nineteenth century people often spoke of historical ideas. Everyone knows that you can't chop down a tree with ideas, but the followers of Ranke and similar historians believe that the historical life of humanity is brought about by ideas. We must realize that this time, the mere metaphysical time, must also be overcome, otherwise that world view, which is purely limited to the sensual, will become overgrown. Mankind must work towards the spiritual. It can only do so if it first works its way through the field of history, from the apparent succession of events in time to the real event, which, I might say, is so tangible behind the external sensory reality, especially in the case of history. Then, however, one will no longer create social or similar programs based on ideas that relate only to the external life, but one will proclaim one's social programs again based on the revelations of the spiritual world. But the programs that people create today are very, very different from these revelations from the spiritual world.

We will discuss this next time. I will continue these reflections next Friday; they cannot be concluded so quickly.

The times in which we live will be able to suggest to us very clearly how urgently it is necessary for people in our present time to explore the meaning of life. And the meaning of life on earth can never become clear to us if we merely turn our gaze to that which takes place in the world of the senses. For everything that takes place in the world of the senses acquires its deeper meaning only through the fact that the spiritual in this sensual also comes to expression. Our time is a difficult time of trial. And those who are willing to remain loyal and firm to our cause must understand in particular how this time of ours is a difficult time of trial, and how it will only be able to reveal its meaning - again its meaning! - to our soul if we rise to that which expresses itself spiritually even in such difficult events that take place on the physical plane.

In view of the fact that we are looking at fields where the gate of death rises up in countless cases, and in view of the thought that many of our friends have already left the physical plane in large numbers, we would perhaps do well today to turn our attention to what can be said about the world into which a person passes when he passes through the gate of death here. From this point of view — and you know that there are many, many points of view from which we can start our observations — we want to consider life between death and a new birth today.

In our spiritual science, we first try to recognize the human being as he stands before us: we know that he stands in such a way that he unfolds his physical and spiritual sides before us. We know that these spiritual aspects remain supersensible for the physical plane; the spiritual can only reveal itself, announce itself through the physical. And when we look at the human being here on the physical plane in order to understand him in the sense of our spiritual science, we say: First of all, as you know from my book Theosophy, the four main aspects of the human being reveal themselves to us: the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body and the I. From the etheric body upwards, the aspects of human nature are supersensible to physical observation. But we do experience our I and our astral body. We experience them inwardly. We experience them through the fact that we are able to know ourselves as I, even if this I remains invisible and supersensible. In short, one can understand, even if one remains with what only the physical world reveals, why we consider the human being in terms of these four aspects.

Now let us imagine that we can also look at the human being who lives between death and a new birth in a similar way, that it is also possible to speak of members of the human being who is in the process of life between death and a new birth. You know that we hand over the physical body to the elements, to the substances of the earth; the ether body is handed over to the general ether world; after some time, that which is mainly in our astral body, but of which the earthly human being knows nothing, that also dissolves to a certain extent, and the I then goes its way through the world that we are currently experiencing between death and a new birth.

Now we should not believe that the human being who stands between death and a new birth is not an equally differentiated, an equally structured being as the human being here in the physical world. We can also speak of members of human nature between death and a new birth; only then we will have to speak in the following way.

Here, when we look at the human being on the physical plane, the ego appears to us as that which comes to us first, if we may use the expression, as the highest. The physical body is shared with all minerals, the etheric body with all plants, and the astral body with all animals. The I is unique to us. In the spiritual world, the I, which appears to us here as the highest link in human nature, is the lowest link in human nature in the world between death and rebirth. Just as we begin here with the physical body, so in the spiritual world one must begin with the ego, which is shrouded, as if in a mist of the astral, only during the time when the human being passes through the soul world, but which is nevertheless the lowest link of the human being between death and a new birth. And just as we envelop ourselves here when we enter the physical world from the spiritual world through birth or through conception, we also envelop ourselves in the spiritual world, one might say with spirit members. We actually already know the names for these members of the spirit. We just look at them a little from a different angle. When we have passed through the gate of death, we envelop ourselves in the spirit self. This is, of course, a member of human nature that the human being will develop in the future during the Jupiter evolution. What I now call the spiritual self for the world between death and a new birth is not exactly the same as what will develop when the human being progresses from the earth to Jupiter; rather, what the human being will develop on Jupiter will be a kind of external image, a kind of counter-image for the senses of the spiritual essence in which the human being envelops himself when he passes through the time between death and a new birth. It is indeed the case that this link, in which the human being envelops himself when he passes through the time between death and a new birth, can also be described as a spirit self.

In the further course, man then envelops himself in that limb, which can be described as the spirit of life, which in turn is a spiritual counterpart to something that will only arise in the physical process during the development of Venus. And the actual spiritual man is that which develops in man as the spiritual counter-image of that which, in the physical image, man will have in the highest sphere, to which we can still look today, during the volcanic development, in his physical development. So that we can say: As man here envelops himself in the astral, etheric and physical body, so he envelops himself by growing into the spiritual world, into spirit-self, life-spirit, spiritual man.

Now I would like to describe to you in more detail how things turn out from the initiated knowledge, as one might say. You already know half of these things. When a person has passed through the gate of death here, his physical body is given back to the elements of the earth. This release of the physical body is an extremely important one for the life between death and a new birth. Of course, it seems trivial to say that death is actually birth for the spiritual world; but nevertheless it is also a justified word. We just have to get used to making our concepts somewhat flexible, so that we do not cling to our concepts directly to what the earth presents to us. We are accustomed to forming our concepts only according to what the earth presents to us. We must be able to change our concepts. Life in the spiritual world is completely different from life on earth. The spiritual experience that a person has in the spiritual world when he passes through the gate of death is that the physical body falls away from him. This is a momentous, an enormously momentous experience! And the first thing to be said about this experience is that it is completely contrary to the beginning of the spiritual life after death, as the birth of man is to our physical life between birth and death. No man can, after all, look at his birth with the physical power of knowledge of the earth. Man does not experience birth with his physical powers of knowledge here on earth. Just as we do not experience the physical birth, as the human being has no memory – this only begins later – of the events of his birth and how this is right for life on earth and must be so, so it is the opposite for the life between death and a new birth. Because the moment, the instant of, I cannot say dying, but of having died, remains as something that man can look at again and again during the whole process of life between death and a new birth. Just as we never remember the events of our birth in our physical life, just as clearly we have our entire lifetime between death and a new birth in front of us, the moment of death, but from the other side, from the side of spiritual experience, so to speak from the other shore. For the earthly human being, death can, with a certain justification, be a frightening thing. It represents the decay of the physical earthly human being. The opposite is the case when the human being looks back on having died between death and a new birth: Then it always represents the victory of the spirit over the physical, then death represents the most beautiful, the greatest, the most glorious, the most sublime that can be experienced at all. And because a person is able to look at their mortality between death and a new birth, this reflection on mortality is what gives us consciousness after death, so that we know: we have shed our physical body. And that we experience this, that we always have this before us, is given to us by our self-awareness after death, just as we attain our self-awareness here in the physical world by having our physical body.

When we are outside the physical body with our astral body and I from falling asleep to waking up, we have no consciousness of the physical world. When we wake up, we have to physically push into ourselves, and then the consciousness of self can flourish again. Every time we look at death after death, when the whole event, this - speaking from the other side - sublime, beautiful event stands before our soul, then after death the consciousness ignites again and again. It depends entirely on the constant contemplation of this moment. And there is something else connected with this. It is somewhat difficult to talk about these things, because, as I said, there are no corresponding experiences here in the physical world, but one must try to characterize these things as they are. When we look beyond our continued existence after death and consider our dying, then we have above all the feeling, the impression, that where we died, now that we have died, there is nothing, not even space. It is, as I said, difficult to describe, but that is how it is: there is nothing there. And in the external sense: The thing appears magnificent and sublime for the reason that everywhere else a new world is opening up for us. The flooding spiritual world presses in from all sides, but there is nothing there from which we have died out.

Theoretically described, the matter may have something terrible about it, but in the sensation after death it is not terrible. In the sensation after death, it allows a deep satisfaction to well up in the soul. One learns, as it were, to expand into the whole world and to look at something that is like an emptiness in the world. And from this arises the feeling: That is your place in the world, the place that is out of all the vastness, and that is yours. And you get the feeling, precisely from this emptiness, that you have a purpose for the whole world, that every single human existence - you get it initially, of course, as an explanation for yourself - must be there. This place would always be empty if I were not there - so every soul says to itself. That everyone, everyone as a human being, has been assigned a place in the universe, this feeling, this incredibly inwardly warming feeling, arises from this contemplation: that the whole world is there, and that this whole world has been driven out as if from a symphony the single note that one is, and that must be there, otherwise the world would not be there. This feeling arises from looking back at the experience of death. It remains, because it is what primarily gives the sense of self, self-awareness, between death and a new birth.

Then, for a relatively short time — but that is enough — there is still a union with the etheric body. Everything one has experienced in life, even the smallest events, suddenly stand there as in a large life tableau, for days; they remain for days. One has the very intense feeling: the earth on which one has stood so far moves on, but one remains behind, one begins to stand still. One does not go along with the spatial movement of the earth. And in doing so, the life tableau expands.

One does not actually speak when one speaks of a memory of life, because one has memories in such a way that one looks back in time. But that is not the case; it is simultaneous; it is a tableau, it is a moving tableau. Even, as I said, the smallest events extend to that.

Then one separates from this ethereal experience. Then, as one is accustomed to saying, the disengagement of the etheric body takes place. That with which one was connected as the etheric body, one has it, while one previously addressed it as one's inner being, now externally, and it becomes ever larger and weaves itself into - that is actually the correct expression - the spiritual world, into which one has now entered. Only in this spiritual world is the empty space that I have spoken of; that remains empty. And the etheric body weaves itself in all around on the outside, becoming bigger and bigger.

Now, we must be very clear that it would be a mistaken idea – I must confess, I have been convinced in all cases in which I have been able to study this fact, which I am now talking about, intensively, that it would be a mistake – to believe that we would not see what we have woven into the general spiritual world as our etheric body in the time between death and a new birth. We see it forever. We always look at it, it belongs to our outer world. What previously belonged to our inner world in our etheric body now belongs to our outer world. We look at that. And it is important that we can look at it, because through it so much of the spiritual outer world becomes understandable to us as a relationship exists between what we have interwoven and the entire spiritual outer world.

You may remember from the lectures I once gave in Vienna about the time between death and a new birth that I said: First of all, the human being is interwoven in a world that is full of wisdom. While he searches for wisdom here with effort, he is completely immersed in the light of wisdom. And this wisdom, in which he is immersed, overwhelms him. And it would overwhelm him further if he could not weave into it that which he has woven into the wisdom of his etheric body during his lifetime, if he could not weave that into the world. In this way, the tremendous abundance of light in the general world ether is attenuated for him, and he begins to understand what it is that interweaves, ensouls and spiritualizes the world in the general world ether.

Thus we have that which, as it were, falls away from the human being when the human being is taken up into the spiritual world. For of the earthly members of human nature, essentially only the ego and the astral body remain. The physical body has fallen away. What remains is what I have called “the void.” The etheric body becomes subject to the general world ether. The human being continues on his path. For what he now gives up to the cosmic ether as his etheric body, for that he envelops himself in what we have called the spirit self. This is, so to speak, now an outer member. Indefinite ether approaches him; this envelops him with a kind of spirit self.

It is good if we now pause for a moment to consider what remains behind, I would say, in the immediate future: the concept of the human being. We need not speak of this emptiness, because it is of the greatest importance above all for the person himself who has died, who has the experiences I have described. But with the etheric body it is something else. The etheric body itself is objectively woven into what is the general world ether. It is then in this, this etheric body of man.

Now you will find it understandable that, to a certain extent, the etheric body of a person who dies at a young age is somewhat different in the world outside than the etheric body of a person who, so to speak, reaches the normal age limit. Every etheric body naturally has its task, and it cannot arise from what I am about to say that any wish to die early or late can arise from it; that would be a very distorted and false, the most false conception of the matter. But nevertheless, what is to be said now is valid.

When a person dies at a young age, they have an etheric body that could perhaps have still cared for the physical body for decades, could have worked in the physical body. Now, just as little energy is lost in the spiritual world as in the physical world. This means that in the etheric body, which the human being leaves after death, the power is present that could perhaps have supplied the physical body of the human being for decades if the person were in their twenties or thirties. It is no longer in a physical human body; it is out in the world. This can perhaps be most vividly brought home to our souls by an example.

We had a little boy at the building site in Dornach – I have already spoken to some of our friends about this matter – who died in the seventh year of his life due to a tragic circumstance. The boy had fetched food supplies from our canteen that evening, which is located near the Dornach building site, and a strange chain of circumstances resulted in the boy walking out of the canteen and through a reed bed that was next to a path that a fully loaded furniture van was just driving along. And the fully loaded furniture van was knocked over and crushed the boy. It was a very painful thing. Just after the lecture evening, after ten o'clock, we received the news that the boy was not there. There was nothing to be done but to see what had happened to the furniture van. The circumstances were also quite strange. The boy wanted to leave a quarter of an hour earlier and was held back by someone who wanted to go with him. He wanted to go out through a different door; then he would have passed the furniture truck on the right, whereas he was crushed on the left. He had been told to go out through this door, so he was literally sent out. Besides, it is a road where a furniture truck may not have gone for years, and perhaps none will go for years. It was a furniture truck that was exceptionally delivering furniture to one of our members. So they looked for the boy. The furniture van was so heavily loaded and unfortunately tilted that it could not be lifted immediately, because the people who were driving the furniture van had not brought anything with them and simply walked away. They did not want to lift the furniture van until the next day. But now, of course, it had to be lifted during the night, and they found the dead baby underneath.

This little boy had been in the atmosphere of the building for some time. It is true that since that time, soon after that death, the etheric body of that little boy has been woven into the aura of the building. And the person who – and it is certainly not immodest to say this – is involved in the artistic side of the building, as I am, notices how the fertilization comes from the unspent etheric power of the etheric body, which is needed to artistically integrate this or that into the building.

Of course, human selfishness would perhaps prefer to attribute all this only to one's own genius. But it is absolutely the case that even what comes to us from within comes from external spiritual influences. And we can prove these spiritual influences in detail. We are dealing here with the etheric body of a boy who has turned seven years old, who could therefore have still supplied the physical body for another six to seven decades, who, with the tremendously wise building power that is necessary to form the physical human body in an appropriate way, is in the etheric aura of the Dornach building.

And I dare say, with complete certainty, even to artists: the art needed to form the physical body out of the etheric body is much greater than any art that man practices on earth. Man is already the greatest work of art. And all the impulses for forming the physical human body are contained in the etheric body. The artist also brings them out of his etheric body when he creates artistically.

This is just one example; others could be cited in which the capacity of the unspent etheric bodies can be seen. Just this year, dear friends of ours, some of them quite young, have also passed through the gateway of death. And so we see how, especially now, in this time, countless people are passing through the gate of death, in the vigorous age, leaving behind their etheric bodies, which could all have worked on the physical body for decades to come. These etheric bodies, which are still strengthened and invigorated by the fact that they have gone through sacrificial deaths, are present and will be present. And those people who will be in a position in the future, when different things are happening on the European continent than in the present events, who will then live on the European continent, they will live in a spiritual, in an etheric atmosphere in which these unused etheric bodies can be found. And when souls are found here on earth that will have understanding for that which will live spiritually not just as an abstract memory but as real etheric powers – this understanding can only be gained from spiritual science – they will well sense the inspiring powers of these etheric bodies.

And that is one of the feelings that now weigh heavily on our hearts, heavily for the reason that on the one hand we have to look at the enormity that could happen if quite a lot of people could become aware of what is sown by the deaths that are now happening around us due to the great events of the time, while on the other hand the handful of people who can understand these things is still so small. And it could easily happen because of people's lack of understanding of spiritual science due to the materialism that fills all of humanity, that in the future people could continue to live without any trace of an inkling of what arises from death.

We should not allow such a sentence to live in our hearts in any other way than by allowing ourselves, as far as it depends on us, to be completely imbued with such an awareness, to fully absorb this awareness and to do what we can to understand such a thing. I would like to say that we should not just worry about how much materialism there is. We should indeed recognize how much materialism there is on earth, but we should not close ourselves off from the ever-increasing materialistic worldview, but rather do all the more what is incumbent upon us.

So much for what can be said about the etheric-physical. Then the human being progresses further. He has first enveloped himself in a kind of spiritual self that is formed in a slightly different way than everything that is formed when we live here on earth. One could say that the spiritual self is something that comes to us from all sides, and in the midst of which we feel ourselves. Then the human being continues to live in the other covers by simultaneously experiencing, as I have often described, a kind of spiritual regression, by experiencing - but now in a different way than through the mere tableau that has been described - that which acts as a kind of opposite to earthly life. One can realize how the following time passes, after the etheric body has been discarded and we live on with our astral body and with our I, wrapped in the spirit self. This spirit self is a kind of driving force. It leads us back, so that we relive, really go backwards, our last life on earth from death to birth. If, for example, we have said something to someone here on earth that has caused them suffering, we experience such an event from our point of view here on earth in our physical body. We cannot experience it from the point of view of the other person. We would not be able to live in the physical body at all if we wanted to live differently than to experience everything from our own point of view. But let us take the extreme case: we have hurt someone very much with a word that we said out of revenge. What he feels, what he experiences, we do not experience here. In the regression that I am now describing, we always experience what the other person feels as the effect of what we have done. So we live inside the world of effects. We experience what others have gone through with us during our physical life, until we get to the point where we have reached our birth. Then we envelop ourselves with what could be called the spiritual counter-image of what will develop on Venus: we envelop ourselves with the spirit of life.

And our further life is now determined by this spirit of life, which I have described several times. You will find it described from a wide variety of perspectives in the lecture cycle in Vienna on life between death and a new birth. I will describe it here again from a different perspective.

We are thus enveloped, as it were, by the spirit of life. This expresses itself in a certain way, and it is essential that we understand this. The spirit-self first guides us back; the spirit-self is mainly concerned with our being, with our individuality, and it then also leads us further. After it has brought us to our birth, it guides us further along the paths we have to take in the spiritual world.

It is different with what the next shell, the life spirit, now does to us. Here in the physical body we are permeated by the etheric body, which also contains the life ether and everything that gives us life. We are, so to speak, permeated by the etheric body, and we live through this etheric body. Those who have no etheric body cannot live on the physical plane.

When we have discarded our astral body, we know that we are enveloped by this spirit of life. Now we also realize that we were enveloped the whole time while our spirit self was guiding us back. But now we only realize it. We only realize it afterwards, when we have gone through the whole thing, which is called the Kamaloka time. And now we become aware of something very strange: it is only because we are enveloped by this spirit of life that our life between death and a new birth is possible. Because here in the physical body we have to live, I would say within our skin. We cannot do that between death and a new birth in the spiritual world. If we only wanted to live in the spiritual world within ourselves, so to speak, only in a single place in the spiritual world, then we would have to die continuously and would not be able to live. Rather, we have to live with the whole universe. We have to have the whole universe as one great living thing and have to live with it.

Now this could happen in two ways. We could flow out into the whole universe. But if we were to flow out all at once, the consciousness that we have, that I have described, this self-awareness, would also flow out into the nebulous. Rather, we must be moved around in the great, living cosmic organism. Here in our physical body, a limb of ours, let's say the hand, is in a certain place. In the spiritual world, we must always be led around. We must always be carried from one place to another. The spirit of life does that. In this way we leave one place and arrive at the other. This is done rhythmically, so that we always come back to the same place. But we have to be led around in the world. An eventful, a spiritually eventful life arises for us. Here, as physical human beings, we are confined to a single place, with certain exceptions. However, the spiritual is always carried into the physical, and this is how we can move around in the physical plan. This is essentially an Ahrimanic effect, since the spiritual is brought into the physical by Ahriman. But in the spiritual, it is right that we are guided by the entire associated world organism. And in this way we settle in, just as we settle in here on earth in one place, I would say in the whole environment of earthly life. And as we are led from spiritual place to spiritual place in it – you can find more details in my Vienna Cycle – at the same time, the forces we need to prepare our new life on earth are implanted in us, in order to be drawn to earthly life again. For the time between death and a new birth passes in the first half in such a way that we find our way out of earthly life; in the second half we find ourselves again preparing for a new earthly life.

You see, materialism today basically turns everything into its opposite. It will lead people into the most serious errors, and into ones that are not only credible but almost taken for granted. When a personality appears who is as ingenious as Goethe, for example, people take it quite materialistically. A very thick book has been written and published about Goethe, in which all his ancestors that can be found are examined in a materialistic sense, physically and spiritually - but the materialist only assumes bodies - and then it is shown how Goethe got one thing from one ancestor and another from another. Goethe himself said ironically: From my father I have the stature, from my mother the cheerful nature - and so on. Here in Kassel, in a lecture series, I once developed how people take this quite materially by showing how we have inherited everything through the physical inheritance current, especially genius. And I have often said: the matter is absurd, ridiculously foolish, and yet again so credible, because it makes immediate sense to the materialist that certain qualities are enhanced through many generations, so that they then appear to be inherited in the case of genius. The materialist even believes that he is expressing an experience. But he does not express any other experience than that of someone who falls into the water and is pulled out is wet. Of course, the soul passes through all its ancestors in a certain way, and as a result it inherits everything it has drawn out of its ancestors. Just as someone who has fallen into the water is wet, so the person also has the qualities of his ancestors as he passes through the generations. It would be different if the opposite were to be proven, if it were to be proven that the genius that is present is inherited by the descendants: But it is not. People should prove that! But they will probably leave it alone. You examine Goethe's ancestors; but you leave it pretty to go to your son or your grandchildren! Just see if the qualities of genius are inherited by the descendants! There may be cases where the matter is concealed, but there can be no question of an inheritance of qualities of genius to the descendants. If there were, it would be known. But there is no such inheritance of qualities of genius.

But something else is the case. If one tries to trace back a human individuality that enters a physical body at a certain point in time further back - it comes out of the spiritual world, after all - it is the same individuality that now brings together father and mother, that contributes to the fact that father and mother come together to produce it. Indeed, it is already involved further back. It works, so to speak, the whole succession of generations in such an order that in the end two people find each other through whom this one individuality can find its embodiment. The individuality is already involved in what takes place over centuries from ancestors to descendants. However strange it may sound, that is how it is. Goethe had a father and a mother, a grandfather and a grandmother and so on. If we go back centuries, we see that this individuality of Goethe's from the spiritual world already works in such a way that those who ultimately yielded the old Kaspar Goethe and Mrs. Aja always come together. Through the centuries, individuality is already working from the spiritual world; it works into the succession of generations.

It is just the opposite of what is assumed. Man does not inherit what he carries in his soul from his ancestors in the physical sense. Rather, he compiles his ancestors from the spiritual world, from world midnight, which lies in the middle between death and a new birth, so that he can then find those through whom he makes his way into earthly life. That is the mystery that emerges. This is something tremendously significant, and basically actually harrowing. And we see through this that there really is an intimate connection between what happens in the spiritual world and what happens further down in the physical world. And at the same time we see how strangely intertwined our spiritual and soul life is with what happens here, which is just not noticed.

One speaks of the spirit in modern philosophy in a very strange way. There was a professor in Halle who is now regarded as a very important light in the field of philosophy. He published a book, “The Philosophy of the As If,” in which he attempts to prove that such concepts as spirit and soul do not represent reality, but that they are nevertheless useful in man's contemplation of the world. One should not look at a person and say that he has a soul. But now, he moves his hands and speaks, so that one can say: one regards him as if he had a soul. Otherwise, one leaves the soul as a soul. One denies it; one does not care about it; but one regards it as if the person had a soul, as if the soul wanted to achieve all this.

It is a comfortable philosophy, but also a terribly thoughtless one. However, anyone who tries to apply this philosophy in concrete life sees that this “as-if philosophy” is of little use, even as a method. And a person like Fritz Mauthner, who has written a philosophy of language and who traces everything back to language, should actually be viewed from the point of view of this “as-if philosophy”: as if such a person could also have spirit. But if you make this attempt, then this method is not good. You cannot show that he can be viewed as if he had spirit; it cannot be applied. Where there is no mind, it cannot be applied. You know, of course, what I mean. But I only cite this Fritz Mauthner because he is one of those who deny the whole meaning of history altogether and who have most clearly stated, from the standpoint of present-day materialism, that history can never be a science. He says: When a raindrop falls on the earth, we can find the laws of the raindrop scientifically, because many raindrops fall according to the same laws. Then you can compare the individual cases with each other, and you can find the laws. That is what philosophers today believe: that observing many cases and always finding the same thing leads to the individual laws. But in history, things only happen once, the Thirty Years War only once and so on; and therefore the whole of history is only a succession of coincidences for Fritz Mauthner. People in the present day must come to such assertions if they deny the spirit in reality; for history would also be only a sequence of coincidences if that which we have now shown, which works out of the spiritual world and in which people work between death and a new birth, did not have the very effect of what we have now shown, which works out of the spiritual world and in which people work between death and a new birth. We are weaving, so to speak, on what happens here on earth between death and a new birth. We weave only according to those impulses that then come to us from the spiritual world.

It can truly be said: One should not believe that any serious objection to spiritual science can come from any scientific side; because if one compares what today's science can really achieve with spiritual science, then today's science is the best support for spiritual science. One must only approach the matter in the right way.

If we pick up any book today in which a materialistically minded person expresses himself half in terms of psychology, that is, the soul, and half in terms of the body, we find the following. These people seek, as man presents himself, to visualize himself by showing the thinking apparatus - nervous life, brain life. They examine the thinking apparatus and can then really show that when any idea takes hold in us, a brain process occurs. So they say: You see, we can prove to you that without a brain process a thought, an idea, could not be conceived at all; so what do you want with an independent soul? After all, only the thinking apparatus is present!

But they come to something else, these materialistically minded people. If you look through the textbooks in use, you will find that these people point out the thinking apparatus and link all thinking and imagining to the mechanical processes in the brain and nervous system; but they have to deny feeling and will. Feeling and will cannot be explained by physical processes. Therefore, this is simply eliminated. And today, if you open the books, you can find everywhere: People have indeed assumed a will and a feeling from their prejudices, but this is actually a nothing, it does not even exist.

So the natural scientist stops just before feeling and will. Now that we know that thoughts separate from us with our etheric body, it is explained to us that this separated part, which leaves us with our etheric body, also works on our exterior here on earth, the thinking apparatus first sets itself up, and when the thinking apparatus is formed, then thinking comes with the help of the thinking apparatus formed by thinking itself. Feeling and will remain with us in the astral body and in the ego. We carry these into the spiritual world. Not one science forces materialism, on the contrary, real science today justifies our spiritual science everywhere. Today's materialism is entirely dependent on the fact that people have no urge for spiritual life, that they want no sense for spiritual life. Understanding would not be lacking either. For truly, if one opens oneself to what the spiritual researcher is able to give from the spiritual world, even for such chapters as we have allowed to arise before our soul today for the life between death and a new birth: it can be understood, one needs only a finer, more subtle understanding than the rough understanding that today's man often wants to apply to the outer world. But we also live in a time when materialism has reached its peak. The spiritual researcher can even state exactly that the year in which materialism reached a peak was around 1840/41. Since then, it has even been declining somewhat; but the after-effects are, of course, great. But what does materialism mean for the conception of physical human life? The most astute minds of the present are leading people astray into a state that is to be deeply regretted under the influence of materialism.

There is a truly astute man, a criminal anthropologist by profession. He has examined the brains of many criminals. He was the first to find a famous, significant sentence about the brains of criminals, the sentence that in the criminal brain, in the vast majority of cases, the posterior lobe covering the cerebellum is underdeveloped, as is also the case in monkeys. The monkey is distinguished precisely by the fact that it also has a small occipital lobe. This was, of course, a godsend, because it meant that one could say: Aha, this is a throwback to the nature of the ape when a person is criminal; he is born with a too-small occipital lobe!

But just think what an enormous significance this has for the moral life if one is only willing to admit that the human being has a physical body. He must then say: What are you talking about when you speak of responsibility, what are you talking about when you say that you want to improve people morally through this or that education? That is all nonsense. Those who are born with a occipital lobe that is too small, which of course cannot be changed during this life, become criminals; they become criminals out of necessity. And if materialism were true, then this must also be true: we would then not hang people because they have murdered another, but because they have too small occipital lobes! One would only have to admit this: we cannot live in the world at all if we did not admit such things. One cannot be materialistic in this sense if one would not admit: people are hanged because they have too small occipital lobes. Anything else would only be a concealment of the truth.

But is it the truth? We have to speak of the etheric body in the sense that we have done today, that it is still present, that it even increases in size after death and is woven into the general cosmic ether. If we now have a young person who has a occipital lobe that is too small, we cannot make it grow; no physical science will ever achieve that. But we can organize the education in the appropriate way by saying to ourselves: There is also an etheric body present, and a part of the etheric body etheric body that corresponds to the occipital lobe, and through appropriate education we train the etheric body of the occipital lobe, and it is just as effective in life, perhaps even more effective in a certain sense than the physical occipital lobe, because it has to overcome a certain force. And then we derive comfort from our knowledge that the physical shape of our occipital lobe is not the determining factor, but that we can then develop the etheric lobe accordingly in the person whose occipital lobe is too small, by evoking these or those feelings in him when we notice that he has these or those tendencies towards wrongdoing. Then we will be able to save him.

You see, that is the truth. That is the moral side of spiritual science! It is also present. Desolation and bleakness, especially in the moral and ethical sphere, if one only wanted to be true, one would see emerging from the materialistic world view. A consoling possibility to actively intervene in what people become can be seen from what spiritual science can give us. If we only recognize certain tendencies in a person at the right moment, which could lead to criminal acts, then we can use a certain type of education to develop what has a particularly strong effect on this occipital lobe in the ether strongly, and thus weave into the person the power that will continue to live with him between death and a new birth and, especially in the physical, particularly well develops the occipital lobe in the next incarnation. Not only do we help him for this incarnation; we also set the stage for a particularly well-developed brain, which he can then carry through the life between death and a new birth for inclusion in his next physical incarnation.

So spiritual science now practically places us in life. Only it will have to do what goes beyond what is done today. Today, people still think that they have done enough with spiritual science if they have listened for a while and believe that it has had a favorable, uplifting effect on our soul. That is not enough! Spiritual science must enter into all branches of life in practical activity. The fruits of spiritual science must show themselves in all branches of life. Education, which is particularly bleak today because it only starts from what the human being has physically, must be particularly fertilized by spiritual science.

Today there may still be many people who say: You can tell us a lot about spiritual science, but why should we believe in what you are telling us? We can't see it for ourselves. At most, it could be seen by someone who finds their way into the spiritual worlds in a certain way, as described in “How to Know Higher Worlds”. If you say: Above all, I want to see something practically – and in doing so, you think that you can bring the spiritual into the physical world in this way, to see the spirit externally as you see the physical, because you are too lazy to seek the spirit in a spiritual way, then that is a very selfish point of view. And if materialism today is connected with selfishness – it is a world view, after all! – then materialistic spiritism is even more selfish. For materialism at least merely aims to accept only the physical world and then also to satisfy this physical world. But spiritualism wants, first of all, a sensual view of the spiritual world, and secondly, I might say, constant satisfaction, and that in a physical way. But in its lack of clarity it still imagines this physical way as spiritual. In short, it wants to remain in the physical world and yet have something spiritual! It is actually lamentable that our materialism has reached such a level of development as to give rise to the popular belief in spiritualism, which is particularly rife in America. This tendency is to reduce the spiritual to a material level and to view the spiritual and spiritual processes in material terms.

But there are many other ways to recognize that which is on the physical plane as an imprint of the spiritual world. And one of the ways – of course not all of them can be listed now – is to seek the spiritual where it is effective, for example in children, where it is to develop. And that is where education must be enriched. Education will only come to fruition when people develop a sense, a feeling for the spiritual, so that the teacher not only teaches according to all kinds of instructions, but above all starts from observing the developing individuality, seeing what wants to develop out of it. This must be achieved, or rather, must be achieved! And it is good if we remind ourselves, so that we can believe in this struggle, that people in the present are actually terribly short-sighted. They believe that we have come a long way in our time, that we have finally cast off all the childishness of earlier centuries. But it is not true that we have cast off prejudices. All that had to be discarded in order to see the physical plane clearly and to gain freedom was the old atavistic clairvoyance, and that was discarded in its last vestiges not so long ago. The day before yesterday I was able to speak to our dear friends in Hamburg about a special example of this clairvoyance. If you had the opportunity to walk around here, you might be able to find such an example. But I will tell you the Hamburg example; perhaps you can look for a similar one for Kassel yourself.

If the Fall of Man in Paradise, that powerful image that stands in the Bible for the Luciferic seduction of man, is depicted by the painter today, Adam and Eve and the snake are depicted realistically, with the usual snake head. Now we know from our spiritual science that this snake is Lucifer. The physical snake on earth can at most be a kind of symbol for Lucifer, but this physical snake is not Lucifer, nor is the great snake that is coiled around a tree and has an ordinary, common snake head at the top, is not Lucifer. Lucifer is a being that has remained on the moon, a being that naturally cannot be seen with the senses. On the moon, one did not see with the senses; only the earth has produced this sensuality. The earth snake can be seen with the senses. Lucifer, of course, cannot be seen with the senses, he must be seen inwardly. When one looks inwardly, it is an inner feeling. And one senses: Aha, that is the one that in its upper part resembles the human head; after all, it has driven out the eyes: “Your eyes will be opened, you will see,” it is inside the head and still fills the nervous system down into the spinal cord, -— a human head that continues in the snake's body, but all this only conceived ethereally. It would therefore have to be perceived from within. If one wanted to paint Lucifer according to the Bible, one would have to paint the etheric for the spinal cord, and at the top something that is also still etheric, which is not yet physical, the human head. That would be the teaching, if it were put into the picture, of what we have today.

In Hamburg, one can see biblical pictures by the master Bertram, and, as I have just described, the Fall of Man: not an ordinary snake, but a snake with the usual shape, but with a human head. In the 14th and 15th centuries, in the middle of the Middle Ages, the painter painted it that way, that is, they still knew it back then. So you have tangibly proven what the matter is! The painter did not go and paint an ordinary snake, but in those days they still could, because atavistic clairvoyance was still present. It is only in the last few centuries that this has completely disappeared, and it must be regained. There is no other way to regain it than by preparing ourselves to understand the spiritual world through spiritual science.

Those who are wholeheartedly devoted to our spiritual science take it in such a way that they see: It is the most important task of our time that people learn to understand what is in the spiritual world, in order to prepare themselves to be able to look into the spiritual world again, into that which is part of the world around us. How differently we as human beings will go through the world when we know that not only air surrounds us, but that this air is permeated by the weaving not only of the visible world - after all, light is not visible otherwise, but colors are visible - but in the light the dead etheric bodies weave. Natural science and spiritual science will combine in a beautiful way, only spiritual science will be there for all people, since it will bring something to all people.

I believe that in our time it is especially necessary that we urgently feel obliged to let such truths as those we have been able to experience today for the life between death and a new birth enter into our meditation quite often. This too is good material for meditation when we let the beginning of life between death and a new birth, this emptiness that assigns us our place in the world, this instruction of the etheric world, the interweaving of our own etheric body into the etheric world, come before our soul quite often in meditation. This stimulates what lives in us to grow more and more into the direct experience of the spiritual world. And this is already necessary for humanity in the present. One could feel, when one looks at the events of the time, how necessary this living in the spiritual world is for present-day humanity. The present time of trial will only be able to be gone through in the right way if a number of people can feel it faithfully and humanly, what lives in spiritual science and how this spiritual science must prepare the human future.

These are serious signs of the times, and the seriousness is revealed when we reflect on many things that are so close to us. Think, we speak of what should permeate our path with a serious principle: seeking the same in all human souls and through all nations and races. We are right to regard this as a lofty ideal of humanity, but we must not hide from ourselves the tremendous contrast between the life of present-day Europe and this ideal. Can we say that European humanity today is in any way remotely close to this ideal in what it expresses? How far removed it is! And may we – may, I say – regard this ideal as one that we can apply so directly today? Are we not obliged, as Germans, not to deceive ourselves, to be clear about the fact that we cannot even remotely think of realizing such an ideal due to European circumstances? We would do a poor job of fulfilling the mission specifically imposed on us as Germans if we were to simply become absorbed in general, vague ideals today. Time obliges us to develop the specific nature of our Central European character. And with that we may already look at the karma that has grown on us, I might say, in particular.

Just think, when you look at world events today, we have not been managed badly in the sense of these great world events. Karma has brought it about that our movement first belonged to the general theosophical movement. Long before this war showed what it can show to the Germans today, our German movement had completely separated itself from the theosophical one and emphasized how necessary it is that the spiritual movement arises out of the very substance of the German people, a spiritual movement that can carry us and that the other world will also have to carry. We can say that we, as the anthroposophical movement, have felt the English hatred in our particular field for many years before. It has now only increased, because one cannot remain silent there; what has been written about us in recent times by so-called English Theosophists exceeds anything that can somehow still be justified. We may say, therefore, that when we survey the course of our movement, we find our karma also running through our movement in such a way that it is in full agreement with what the great movement in the world indicates to us even today. That our karma led us early enough to emphasize German intellectual life, we may, in all modesty, present as a favorable karma for us, and that anthroposophy has found its center in German intellectual life, we may regard as a kind of shining morning star for our karmic currents. And since, I would like to say, the omens for what is happening in the world have already shown themselves much earlier with us, we can already deduce from this single fact the belief that there is something in our movement of a power for the great general human movement.

Let us learn, my dear friends, to trust the spiritual power that lies at the heart of our movement, trusting that it is one of the best to which our soul can possibly attach itself. Let us live through the full weight and the full significance of thought and feeling and will impulse, the full weight and the full significance of what it means: there must be individual souls who, in the face of the great demands of our time, understand how the spiritual impulses must interact with what must take place in future history here on earth. Let us learn to understand, not only in the abstract, but also in the concrete sense, what the countless deaths that are now flooding the earth mean. Let us learn to understand how faithfully our souls must remain loyal to our movement so that there may be people who can look up in the right way to the sphere where the etheric bodies and the individualities that have made the sacrifices for our time on the great historical field will continue to work and will work together with those who will later tread the earth in times of peace. Let us learn to understand what it means to find the right sense for the fact that a spirituality also permeates that which takes place on the physical plane today, that the confessors of spiritual science are there to turn their minds to that which arises spiritually from the courage and sacrifice of our time. Let us learn to understand in the right sense the words with which we want to conclude our reflections:

From the courage of the fighters,
From the blood of the battles,
From the suffering of the abandoned,
From the people's sacrificial deeds
Will grow spiritual fruit —
Guiding souls, spiritually aware,
Their minds into the spiritual realm.

Compiled by

PAUL M. ALLEN

1.David Friedrich Strauss, Der alte und neue Glaube, The Old and New Faith, publ. 1872. Born in 1808, appointed professor at the University of Zurich, Strauss became a center of controversy, the intensity of which has been likened to that of the Thirty Years' War. This began with the appearance of his Life of Jesus (1835), in which he questioned the sources of the New Testament, and continued with his Doctrine of the Christian Faith (1840). From this time until his death in 1874, Strauss became world-famous as one of the most frank critics of Christianity.

2.Herbert Spencer, The Principles of Psychology, Part IV, Chapter ix, par. 219. Rudolf Steiner consulted the German edition, translated by Dr. B. Vetter and published at Stuttgart, 1882. Spencer, born 1820, an engineer by training, sought to explain “the phenomena of life, mind, and society in terms of matter, motion, and force.” At first strongly influenced by Coleridge, Spencer placed evolution as the first and most universal principle, influencing all the sciences. To him, evolution was synonymous with progress. In his later development, Spencer championed rugged individualism, and became an outspoken opponent of socialism, upholding what he considered the absolute rights of private enterprise against any form of governmental control. Before his death in 1903, Spencer's optimistic view of human progress collapsed, and he fell prey to marked pessimism regarding the future of mankind.

3.Benedictus de Spinoza (Baruch de Spinoza), born 1632 in Holland of a Jewish family that had been exiled from Spain and Portugal. He early showed great powers as a student, and in 1656 was banned by the Jewish community at Amsterdam because of his views. His chief work, which had a lasting influence upon future generations of thinkers, long after the author's death in 1677, is The Ethics, which has recently appeared in a new edition titled The Road to Inner Freedom, New York, 1957.

4.Eduard von Hartmann, Phänomenologie des sittlichen Bewusstseins, Phenomenology of Moral Consciousness, German ed. p. 451. Born 1842, von Hartmann was originally an officer in the Prussian army. Because of an illness, he retired from military service and took up an intensive study of philosophy. In 1869 his Philosophie des Unbewussten (Philosophy of the Unconscious) appeared, and made him famous almost overnight. Of the many other works he wrote, this book remained his most famous. Rudolf Steiner describes a personal impression of von Hartmann, whom he visited in Berlin in 1888 following a philosophical correspondence with him over some years. This account may be found in Chapter IX of Steiner's autobiography. Steiner's Wahrheit und Wissenschaft (Truth and Knowledge), published in this present volume, was dedicated to von Hartmann. The latter died in 1906.

5.In his Atomistik des Willens, Atomic Theory of Will, Ger. ed., Hamburg, 1891, 2 vols. p. 213. Robert Hamerling, the Austrian poet-philosopher was born March 24, 1830. He early showed ability in poetry, and although from poor parentage, the generosity of friends enabled him to attend the gymnasium in Vienna, and afterward the University there. In the revolutionary movements which swept Europe in 1848, Hamerling joined the student legion in the Vienna revolt. The collapse of the uprising in 1849 made it necessary for him to hide for a long time in order to escape arrest. Later he studied natural science and philosophy. In 1855 he was appointed master at the gymnasium in Trieste. Many years of ill health caused him finally to retire on a government pension in 1866. In comparatively comfortable circumstances, Hamerling spent the remainder of his life in his home near Gratz, devoting himself to writing until his death on July 13, 1889. He is referred to as “one of the most remarkable poets of the Austrian school; his poems are full of life and color.” His most popular work was Ahasver in Rom, Ahasver in Rome (1866), with Nero as principal character. Der König von Sion, The King of Zion, (1869) is generally considered to be his masterpiece. In 1888 his Homunculus appeared, and was reviewed with extensive comment by Rudolf Steiner. His Amor und Psyche was published in 1882; his novel Aspasia (1876), described Greek life in the age of Pericles. In 1870 his drama concerning the French Revolution, Danton und Robespierre, was published. Rudolf Steiner commented on this drama in his Speech and Drama Course given in 1924, and in fact, many references to Hamerling and his work appear in books and lectures by Rudolf Steiner, including the latter's autobiography.

6.Die Illusion der Willensfreiheit, The Illusion of the Freedom of the Will, by Paul Rée, publ. 1885, p. 5. Paul Rée (1849–1901) was a German positivist philosopher, known widely as an editor of the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche. Rée met Nietzsche in 1876, as Rudolf Steiner relates in his Friedrich Nietzsche, Fighter for Freedom, p. 159–60. Steiner refers to Rée in the preface to this book, written in Weimar, 1895: “Such an average brain as that of Paul Rée could make no important impression on Nietzsche.” (op. cit. p. 40).

7.Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831). A voluminous literature on Hegel and Hegelian thought exists in English, including biographical studies, translations, and commentaries on his writings. Consult any standard encyclopedia for details.

8.Goethe's Faust, Part I,—

Zwei Seelen wohnen, ach! in meiner Burst,
Die eine will sich von der andern trennen;
Die eine halt, in derber Liebeslust,
Sich an die Welt mit klammernden Organen;
Die andere hebt gewaltsam sich vom Dust
Zul den Gefilden hoher Ahnen.

(Lines 1112–1117)

The translation is that by George Madison Priest: Faust, Parts One and Two, publ. Alfred Knopf, New York, 1941, one of the best of all English translations of this work.

9.monism: the teaching of one ultimate substance or principle, as mind (idealism) or matter (materialism), or of something which is neither of these, but is the foundation of both; the point of view that there is but one reality.

10.dualism: from a philosophical point of view, the theory which maintains that there are but two fundamental and irreducible principles, for example, mind and body.

11.Here Rudolf Steiner speaks of spiritualism in a philosophical sense, and not in the sense of any relationship or communication with the dead as in mediumism, etc.

12.materialism: the philosophical teaching which sees the entire universe, all creation and its activities, including the human mind, as the result of material causes and powers.

13.Johann Gottlieb Fichte. Born in 1762, Fichte studied at Meissen, Pforta, Jena, and Leipzig with the intention of becoming a clergyman. After a teaching position in Switzerland, and enroute to another in Poland, he met Kant, under whose influence he wrote his Study for a Critique of All Revelation. The printer neglected to place his name on the title-page, and people thought the work had been written by Kant. When the true identity of the author became known, Fichte was hailed as a philosopher of outstanding merit. He lectured at Jena, Berlin and Erlangen. In 1807 he was made Rector of the University of Berlin. His death in 1814 occurred when he was at the height of his fame. Rudolf Steiner made extensive reference to Fichte, basing his doctoral thesis (published in enlarged form in the present volume as Truth and Knowledge) on Fichte's scientific teachings, but perhaps his most memorable study of Fichte's life and thought was contained in a public lecture given in Berlin on December 16, 1915: The Spirit of Fichte Present in Our Midst. See also note 77, below.

14.Friedrich Albert Lange (1828–1875), author of Geschichte des Materialismus, History of Materialism, publ. Iserlohn, 1873–5. When professor at the University of Marburg, 1865, Lange issued his study on the workers' question. This made him famous in the circle of students of social problems in Germany at that time. A friend of the working classes, Lange strove for social justice, betterment of labor conditions, and for universal education. His life, marked by his utter sincerity and devotion to his ideals, is an outstanding example of selfless dedication to the well-being of mankind.

15.Karl Friedrich Hieronymous, Baron von Münchhausen (1720–97). In 1785 a little book of 49 pages appeared in London, titled Baron Munchausen's Narrative of his Marvelous Travels and Campaigns in Russia, and an enlarged edition appeared in 1786. A translation into German by G. A. Bürger was published at Göttingen, 1786. Many editions followed in English, and the book was published in numerous languages, illustrated by a number of famous artists. For some time the identity of the author was unknown, but finally it was established that the book was written by Rudolf Erich Raspe (1737–1794), traveler, scholar and professor at Cassel. While at Göttingen, where he was secretary of the university library (1764–7) he made the acquaintance of Freiherr von Münchhausen of Bodenwerder in Hanover. The latter had been in the Russian service, had fought against the Turks, and finally had retired to his estate in 1760, where he became famous for his “tall stories.” Later, Raspe, in poverty in London, recalled the Baron's tales, and wrote the book in English, which appeared in 1785. Tall tales from other sources were added by publishers of later editions, so that the stories as we have them today are really a composite work, for which, however, Raspe provided the original nucleus from his memory of the evenings spent with his erstwhile friend.

16.Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, born Frankfurt a.M., August 28, 1749. Poet, dramatist, scientist, traveler, state minister, etc., author of Faust, Wilhelm Meister, and many other works. Died in Weimar, March 22, 1832. In August 1781 the Grand Duchess Amalia of Saxe-Weimar founded the Tiefurter Journal, the Journal of Tiefurt, to which Goethe contributed at her invitation. When Rudolf Steiner was active as editor of the natural scientific writings of Goethe at the Goethe-Schiller Archives in Weimar, he published proof that the Fragment über die Natur, The Fragment concerning Nature, which had appeared in the Journal of Tiefurt was definitely to be attributed to Goethe (Schriften der Goethe-Gesellschaft, Publications of the Goethe Society, ed. by Bernhard Suphan, Weimar, Vol. VII, 1892, article by Rudolf Steiner). Thus, just 110 years after the Fragment had appeared, Rudolf Steiner showed its importance and its relationship to Goethe's work. In the edition of Goethe's works published by Prof. Joseph Kürschner (1853–1902) (the volumes of Goethe's natural scientific writings edited by Rudolf Steiner), the Fragment appears at the beginning of the essays “On Natural Science in General,” Vol. XXXIV, p. 1. The Fragment appeared in an English translation with notes by George Adams under the title, Nature—An Essay in Aphorisms, Anthroposophical Quarterly, London, Vol. VII, No. 1, Easter, 1932, pp. 2–5. In his Goethe's Conception of the World, Rudolf Steiner describes this Fragment as “the essay in which the seeds of the later Goethean world-conception are already to be found. What is here expressed as dim feeling, later developed into clear, definite thought.” In similar vein, George Witkowski in his well-known biography of Goethe (Leipzig, 1899) describes this Fragment as “the seed from which came all of Goethe's great thoughts about nature.”

17.See Ziehen, Theodore, Leitfaden der Physiologischen Psychologie, Guide to Physiological Psychology, Jena, 1893, p. 171 of the Ger. ed.

18.Pierre Jean George Cabanis (1757–1808), French physiologist. A precocious child, Cabanis was enrolled at the age of 10 in the College of Brives. Later studied in Paris, afterward traveled widely in Poland and Germany. In 1789 he was appointed administrator of hospitals for Paris, and in 1795 became professor of hygiene and history of medicine in the medical school of that city. In 1799 he was made professor of legal medicine and history of medicine. He was an intimate friend of Mirabeau, and attended him as physician in his last illness. He had a deep interest in medical and psychological problems. Active in the cause of the French Revolution, Cabanis was a member of the Council of Five Hundred. Though Napoleon Bonaparte repeatedly offered him governmental positions, Cabanis declined them, since he was a foe of the former's policies. Cabanis died at Meulan on May 5, 1808, principally honored for his contributions to medical science, and especially for his main work, Rapports du physique et du moral de l'homme, a series of papers read to the Institute in 1796–97. The sentence quoted is probably from Cabanis' book, written in 1802, translated into German, 2 vols., 1808, under the title, Verhältnis der Seele zum Körper, Relationship of the Soul to the Body. The thought has also been paraphrased: “Just as the stomach and intestines receive food and digest it, so the brain receives impressions, digests them, and has as its organic secretion, thought.”

19.Renatus Cartesius, Rene Descartes (1596–1650). The father of modern rationalism, soldier of fortune, scholar, pilgrim, traveler, and firm adherent of the Roman Catholic faith. His philosophical work, which has often been summed up in his words, J pense, donc je suis (Cogito ergo sum), “I think, therefore I am,” was given significant impulse by a dream he had on November 10, 1619. This revealed to him the method of philosophical speculation he was to follow, and his subsequent work is said to have stemmed from this experience. An extensive literature on Descartes and his teachings exists in English translation. See any standard encyclopedia for further details.

20.Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling (1775–1854). Often referred to as the Proteus among philosophers, Schelling was noted for his ever-changing alertness and brightness of mind and expression. Goethe (see note 16, above) had a very high regard for him, and spoke of him as “the most congenial philosopher I know.” Schelling had a profound influence among the thinkers of his time, including philosophers of France and England. His last years were dedicated to what he termed “positive philosophy,” radically different from the philosophy of identity, the transcendental idealism, and the pantheistic tendencies of his earlier time. Rudolf Steiner made extensive reference to Schelling in his writings and lectures, on various occasions praising that philosopher's “important inspirations and suggestions for what must afterwards be said by Anthroposophy, directly out of spiritual vision, on many points of Christianity.” Steiner further spoke of Schelling, “who really always made a significant impression whenever he appeared in public—the short, thick-set man, with the extremely impressive head, and eyes which even in extreme old age were sparkling with fire, for from his eyes there spoke the fire of Truth, the fire of Knowledge.” (From a lecture given at Dornach, Switzerland, Sept. 16, 1924) Perhaps Steiner's greatest study of Schelling is to be found in his Die Rätsel der Philosophie, The Riddles of Philosophy, Vol. I, Ch. 7. For English translations of Schelling and further details on his life, see any standard encyclopedia.

21.Blaise Pascal (1623–1662). Known as one of the greatest of mathematicians and physicists, Pascal's tame long ago spread far beyond the confines of his native France. His contributions to the establishment of the mathematical theory of probability, to the science of hydrodynamics, to the study of gravity and the vacuum, and his elaboration of the theory of conic sections have given Pascal a lasting place among the great men of science. As a Christian thinker, his devotion to truth and piety, and his acceptance of mystical experience have made his name revered. His philosophical speculations and deep psychological insight, as well as his remarkable gifts as a writer of French prose have secured him a leading position among philosophers and literary historians. Pascal's Pensées, Thoughts, is one of the great books of the world. For details on Pascal's very eventful and highly interesting life, as well as an account of his fundamental ideas, see any standard encyclopedia.

22.Archimedes (c 287–212 B.C.) Greek mathematician and inventor. He was born at Syracuse in Sicily, and studied at the famous university in Alexandria. Archimedes spent the remainder of his life at Syracuse, where he engaged in constant mathematical research. He is noted for his many mechanical inventions, but his first love was mathematics. His work as a pioneer in mechanics is illustrated by his famous remark, “Give me a place to stand, and I will move the earth!” During the sack of Syracuse by the army of the Roman general, Marcellus, Archimedes was discovered drawing a mathematical figure in the sand beside his garden bench. Deep in meditation upon the problem before him, Archimedes was instantly killed when he was run through the body by a sword in the hand of a Roman infantryman. For details on the life of Archimedes, see Plutarch's Life of Marcellus. A complete, standard edition of the Works of Archimedes with valuable notes by T. L. Heath was issued by Cambridge University Press, 1897.

23.See note 2, above.

24.Spencer, First Principles, Part I, Par. 23.

25.Note by the Translator: Just as in English one generally means by “perception” not only the perceived object but also the act of perceiving it, so too, in German the word Wahrnehmung covers both these meanings. Rudolf Steiner, however, as stated in the text, uses this word in the specific sense of meaning the object that has been perceived, and NOT the process of perceiving it. When he refers to the activity, the word used in the original is Wahrnehmen, here translated as perceiving.

25a.Johann Christoph August Franz, M.D., eye surgeon, born 1807, took his medical training at the University of Leipzig. From Germany he emigrated to England, establishing his practice at Brighton, where he worked for some 30 years. He was the author of writings on medicine, particularly on the use of baths in treatment of illness. Two of his works were written for the public: The Eye and a Critique on the Art of Preserving the Organ, London, 1839, and Memoirs of the Case of a Gentleman Born Blind and Successfully Operated at the Eighteenth Year of His Age. Physiological Observations and Experiments. The latter appeared in Philosophical Transactions, Vol. VI, 1841, pp. 59–68. It is probable that Rudolf Steiner's reference to the man who had been born blind is taken from this second work of Dr. Franz.

26.George Berkeley, (1685–1753), Irish bishop and philosopher. Made a Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin, 1707, he was strongly influenced by the philosophical writings of Descartes, Newton, and Locke. In 1709 his New Theory of Vision appeared, and in 1710 his great work. The Principles of Human Knowledge, was published. In 1712 he visited England and the following year was presented at court by Dean Swift, shortly before the publication of his most popular work, The Dialogues of Hylas and Philonous. Berkeley's literary fame rests upon this latter work, which has been described as “among the finest philosophical writings in the English language” on the basis of its “exquisite facility of style.” In 1728 he emigrated to America, where he lived in Rhode Island for three years, hoping for a government grant of funds for the establishment of a college in Bermuda. His hopes disappointed, he returned to Ireland and shortly afterward was raised to the bishopric of Cloyne. In 1752 he moved with his family to Oxford, where he died suddenly in January of the following year, and was buried in Christ Church.

The reference quoted by Steiner is from Berkeley's Principles of Human Knowledge, Part I, sec. 6.

27.Immanuel Kant, German philosopher, was born in Königsburg April 22, 1724. He entered the university there in 1740, enrolled for the study of mathematics and physics. His studies were interrupted by the death of his father, which left him in poverty. After he supported himself by tutoring for 9 years, the kindness of a friend enabled him to resume his studies, to graduate as a doctor and to qualify as a privatdocent. He occupied this position for 15 years. His lectures widened from physics to include much philosophy. Finally, after unsuccessful attempts, in 1770 he was given the chair of logic and metaphysics at Königsburg. In 1781 his Kritik der reinen Vernunft, Critique of Pure Reason appeared, and in 1783, his Prolegomena. After the appearance of the 2nd edition of the Kritik in 1787, Kant became famous everywhere in German intellectual circles, and his views were regarded as those of an oracle. From 1792–97 he was engaged in a struggle with the government concerning his religious views. In 1794 he withdrew from society, and gave up all teaching except for one public lecture course on logic. In 1797 Kant terminated a teaching activity that had extended over 42 years. He died in Königsburg on February 12, 1804 near the end of his 80th year. Little more than five feet tall, deformed in his right shoulder, his chest almost concave, Kant had a weak constitution. He never married, and followed an unchanging program of activities from youth to old age. For example, he never failed to rise at 5 o'clock, studied for 2 hours, lectured for 2 more, and spent the rest of the morning at his desk. He dined at a restaurant and spent the afternoon in conversation with friends. He then walked for about an hour—a walk which for years followed exactly the same course—studied for 2 hours more, and retired between 9 and 10. He was a prolific reader, especially in history, science, travel, and philosophy. He knew English history and literature intimately, especially in the period of Queen Anne. He read little of Goethe or Schiller, but often re-read Voltaire and Rousseau. He had little interest in nature, and in 80 years never traveled more than 40 miles from his native Königsburg. For further biographical details, works and translations, consult any standard encyclopedia.

28.Otto Liebmann, Zur Analysis der Wirklichkeit, Contribution to the Analysis of Reality, Strassburg, 1880, p. 28. Otto Liebmann (1840–1912) was well known for his writings on Kant's philosophical world-view.

29.Johannes Volkelt (1848–1930), Immanuel Kant’s Erkenntnistheorie, Immanuel Kant's Theory of Cognition, Hamburg, 1879.

30.See note 4, above.

31.Hartmann, Das Grundproblem der Erkenntnistheorie, The Fundamental Problem of a Theory of Cognition, Leipzig, 1889, p. 16–40.

32.Johannes Peter Müller, German physiologist and comparative anatomist, born in Coblentz, July 14, 1801. He studied at the University of Bonn, and was appointed to a professorship in physiology there in 1826. In 1843 he accepted the call to the chair of anatomy and physiology at Berlin University, which position he held with great honor until his death, April 28, 1858. He did much research in physiology, particularly in relation to human speech and hearing. His great work was the Handbuch der Physiologie des Menschen, 1833–40. (The English translation was made by Dr. William Baly, publ. London 1842). This work opened a new period in the study of physiology, and Müller is considered the main figure in the developments in this field in the mid-19th century. In his Handbuch Müller developed an entirely new principle which he called “the law of specific energy of sense substances.” This he expressed as follows: “The kind of sensation following stimulation of a sensory nerve does not depend on the mode of stimulation, but upon the nature of the sense organ. Thus, light, pressure, or mechanical stimulation acting on the retina and optic nerve invariably produces luminous impressions.” It is to this law that Steiner refers at this point.

33.Hartmann, Das Grundproblem, p. 37.

34.Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860), Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung The World as Will and Representation, Four Books, publ. 1819 by Brockhaus, Leipzig. (English translation by Haldane & Kemp, 1883) Ref. Book I, par. 1, Ger. ed. Biographical data and translations of Schopenhauer's works, as well as extensive commentaries on his ideas have been published in English translation. Consult any standard encyclopedia for details. Rudolf Steiner edited a collected edition of the writings of Schopenhauer, 12 vols. with introduction by Steiner, publ. 1894.

35.J. G. Fichte, Die Bestimmung des Menschen, The Vocation of Man, Berlin, 1800, “a book which for richness of content, beauty of style, elevation of thought reminds one of Descartes' Meditations.” (For data on Fichte, see note 13, above.)

36.Note by Rudolf Steiner: Transcendental knowledge, in the sense of this world-view, is a knowledge by means of which—although no direct insight into the thing-in-itself is believed to be attainable—indirect inferences are drawn from the subjective which is known, to the unknown which lies beyond the subjective (Transcendental). The thing-in-itself, according to this view, is beyond the sphere of the directly recognizable world, that is, it is transcendent. However, our world can be transcendentally related to the transcendent. Hartmann's view is called realism because it goes beyond the subjective, the ideal, to the transcendent, the real.

37.See Weygandt, Entstehung der Träume, Appearance of Dreams, 1893. (Reference given by Rudolf Steiner.)

38.See note 34, above.

39.Schopenhauer, op. cit. supra, Book II, par. 18.

40.Note by Translator: The reader's attention is called to the fact that the word Erfahrung is in this context translated as “practical experience” to emphasize the activity of thinking implicit in it, as distinct from the word erleben which also is usually rendered as “experience.”

41.See note 27, above, on Kant.

42.Emil DuBois-Reymond, German physiologist and educator. Born Berlin, November 7th, 1818, in 1836 he entered the University of Berlin, where his teacher was Johannes Müller, above). In 1840 he became the latter's assistant in physiology. His great work was the study of animal electricity, and his famous book was Researches on Animal Electricity, 1848–84. For many years he exerted great influence as a teacher. In 1858, upon the death of Müller, he was appointed to the latter's chair in physiology. In 1851 he had been admitted to the Academy of Sciences in Berlin; in 1867 he became its permanent secretary. His closest friend after Müller's death was von Helmholtz, who also had been a student of Müller. DuBois-Reymond died in Berlin on November 26, 1896. Rudolf Steiner makes many references to his work in lectures and writings.

43.Note by Translator: The reader's attention is drawn to the fact that the word experience, in relation to the kind of mysticism and philosophy of will referred to in this chapter, is translated from the word erleben (as distinct from Erfahrung, see note 40, above) Therefore, what the mystic experiences in feeling and the philosopher of will in the will-element, are experiences which have not been formed into clear representations by the activity of thinking.

44.Thelism—Voluntarism, i.e., any theory which conceives will to be the dominant factor in experience or in the constitution of the world.

44a.Ger. Erlebnisse.—Tr.

44b.Note by Rudolf Steiner: The passage from page 161 to this point was added, or rewritten for the Revised Edition, 1918.

45.See note 4—on von Hartmann.

46.The German text here reads Faktor der Erfahrungen.—Tr.

46a.Note by Rudolf Steiner: A complete catalogue of the principles of morality (from the point of view of metaphysical realism) may be found in Eduard von Hartmann's Phänomenologie des sittlichen Bewusstseins, Phenomenology of Moral Consciousness.

47.Ger. Welterfahrung.—Tr.

48.Immanuel Kant: Theory of Ethics, transl. by Abbott, p. 180. The Critique of Practical Reason, Ch. III. On Kant, see note 27, above.

49.Note by Rudolf Steiner: Ziehen, Theodore, Leitfaden der Physiologischen Psychologie, Guide to Physiological Psychology, 1st ed., p. 207 f.

Concerning the way “materialism” is spoken of here, and the justification for doing so, see the Addition at the end of the chapter.

50.Hartmann, Phänomenologie des sittlichen Bewusstseins, Phenomenology of Moral Consciousness, p. 871.

50a.Hamerling, Atomistik des Willens, Atomic Theory of Will, Vol. II, p. 201. On Hamerling, see note 5, above.

51.Paulsen, System der Ethik, System of Ethics, 1889, partial English transl. 1899. Friedrich Paulsen (1846–1908), German philosopher and educator. Educated at Erlangen, Bonn, and Berlin, where he was made extraordinary professor of philosophy and pedagogy, 1878. In 1896 he followed Zeller as professor of moral philosophy at Berlin. He was a pupil of G. T. Fechner, developing his teaching of panpsychism in his Einleitung in die Philosophie, Introduction to Philosophy, 1892, English transl. 1895. His German Education, Past and Present (English transl. 1907) is well known, as are his writings relative to the philosophy of Kant.

51a.Note by Rudolf Steiner: When Paulsen (p. 15 of his System of Ethics) says, “Different natural dispositions and different conditions of life demand not only different bodily diet but also a different spiritual-moral diet,” he is very near recognition of the truth, but misses the decisive point. Insofar as I am an individual, I need no diet. Dietetic means the art of bringing a particular example of the species into harmony with the general laws. But as an individual I am not an example of a species.

52.proto-amniotes: The original form of the innermost of the embryonic or fetal membranes of reptiles, insects, birds, and mammals. This membrane forms a closed sac surrounding the embryo and contains the amniotic fluid.

53.The Kant-Laplace primordial nebula. Pierre Simon Marquis de Laplace (1749–1827), was a French mathematician and astronomer who, at the age of 24 was named “the Newton of France” for certain of his discoveries. In the years 1799–1825 his great work, the Mécanique céleste, which, as its author stated, “offers a complete solution of the great mechanical problem presented by the solar system,” appeared in 5 volumes, published in Paris. In his second great work, the Exposition du système du monde, Paris, 1796, appeared his statement of his famous “nebular hypothesis,” the origins of which he seems to attribute to Buffon, apparently unaware that Immanuel Kant had at least partially anticipated him in his Allgemeine Naturgeschichte, General History of Nature, published in 1755. Rudolf Steiner's criticism of the Kant-Laplace theory of the primordial nebula may be found in various places in his lectures and writings.

54.Ernst Heinrich Haeckel (1834–1919), German biologist, originally a physician in Berlin, became Privatdozent at Jena, afterward extraordinary professor of comparative anatomy, later professor of zoology, a chair established for him at Jena. This position he occupied for 43 years with intervals for zoological travels to various parts of the world. When Darwin's Origin of the Species appeared in 1859, Haeckel was deeply influenced by it, so that he became “the apostle of Darwinism in Germany.” Among Haeckel's famous books are his General Morphology (1866), Natural History of Creation (1867) and Die Weltraetsel (1899), English title, The Riddle of the Universe, publ. 1901. By his 60th birthday Haeckel had published 42 works of some 13,000 pages, plus many monographs. Rudolf Steiner knew Haeckel personally, and in his autobiography. Chapter 15, Steiner recorded a very interesting and perceptive impression of the great scientist. The “genealogical tree” of Haeckel to which Steiner refers is set forth in its original form in Haeckel's General Morphology and developed in his later writings.

55.Charles Robert Darwin (1809–1882), English naturalist, whose voyage on the Beagle to the Southern Seas, recorded in his Journal of a Naturalist (1837) prepared the way for his famous work On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life, published November 24, 1859. Next in importance among his books. The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication, appeared in 1868. The Descent of Man, published in 1871, dealt with “the origin of man and his history” in the light of The Origin of the Species.

56.Anthony Ashley Cooper, Third Earl of Shaftesbury (1671–1713) and Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibnitz (1646–1716). For data on their lives and philosophical ideas, consult any standard encyclopedia.

57.For data on Schopenhauer, see note 34, above; on von Hartmann, see note 4, above.

58.See von Hartmann's Phänomenologie des sittlichen Bewusstseins. The Phenomenology of Moral Consciousness, p. 866 f. of the German edition.

59.See von Hartmann's Philosophie des Unbewussten, Philosophy of the Unconscious, 7th German ed., Vol. II, p. 290.

60.Hartmann, op. cit. supra. Vol. II, p. 332.

61.Eudaemonism, derived from a Greek word which indicates the condition of being under the protection of a benign spirit, or a “good genius.” In ethics, this name is applied to those theories of morality according to which the main good of man is to be found in some form of happiness. Eudaemonia was one of the keywords in the ethical teachings of Aristotle.

62.German, Erfahrung.

63.Die letzten Fragen der Erkenntnistheorie und Metaphysik, Ultimate Problems of Epistemology and Metaphysics, publ. in Vol. 108, pp. 55 seq. of the Zeitschrift für Philosophie und philosophische Kritik, the Periodical for Philosophy and Philosophical Criticism.

64.For data on Hegel's “universal panlogism,” see any standard encyclopedia.

65.David Hume (1711–1776), Scottish philosopher and historian. Albert Einstein wrote, “If one reads Hume's books, one is amazed that many sometimes highly esteemed philosophers after him have been able to write so much obscure stuff and even to find grateful readers for it. Hume has permanently influenced the development of the best philosophers who came after him.” Among those influenced by Hume may be numbered Immanuel Kant, William James, George Santayana, and Bertrand Russell. Hume's writings and biographical and critical works concerning him and his ideas can be located by consulting any standard encyclopedia.

66.A note on page 71 of the Zeitschrift für Philosophie (Periodical for Philosophy) Vol. 108.

67.Johannes Rehmke, 1848–1930, philosopher. His principal works are Logik oder Philosophie als Wissenslehre (Logic or Philosophy as Theory of Knowledge) and Die Welt als Wahrnehmung und Begriff (The World as Percept and Concept), Berlin, 1880.

68.Karl Julius Schröer was born in Pressburg in 1825. In 1867 he was made professor of Literature in the Technical College of Vienna. In addition to his lectures on the history of German poetry as such, he lectured on Goethe and Schiller, on Walther von der Vogelweide, on German Grammar and Speech, etc. Rudolf Steiner was a pupil of Schröer, and refers to him in detail in his autobiography and in lectures. It was Schröer who recommended Steiner to Prof. Kürschner for the position of editor of Goethe's natural scientific writings. (See note 16, above) Schröer died in Vienna in 1900, and Rudolf Steiner has left an unforgettable word portrait and estimate of him in his Vom Menschenrätsel, Riddles of Man, publ. Berlin, 1916.

69.From July 1884 to September 1890, Rudolf Steiner was active as tutor in the home of Ladislaus (1834–1905) and Pauline (1846–1916) Specht at Kolingasse 19, Vienna IX. He taught their four sons, Richard, Arthur, Otto, and Ernst. Richard Specht (1870–1932) became a well-known author of many works including biographical studies of Gustav Mahler, Richard Strauss, Franz Werfel, Brahms, and Beethoven. Steiner gives details of this pedagogical activity in his autobiography. Chapter VI.

70.Rosa Mayreder (1858–1938), Austrian writer, also known as a painter. Her entire life was passed in Vienna and surroundings. She was the author of a number of popular novels. In addition, she was active in the movement for woman suffrage in Austria, at one time sharing in the direction of the movement itself, and editing its periodical. She wrote the libretto for Hugo Wolf's only opera, Der Corregidor (1896). Rudolf Steiner refers to Rosa Mayreder in his autobiography. Chapter IX.

71.See Johannes Volkelt's Erfahrung und Denken. Kritische Grundlegung der Erkenntnistheorie, Experience and Thinking. Critical Foundation for a Theory of Cognition. Hamburg and Leipzig, 1886. (Johannes Volkelt 1848–1930, philosopher, professor at Leipzig.) See also note 29, above.

72.Grundlinien einer Erkenntnistheorie der Goetheschen Weltanschauung, mit besonderer Rücksicht auf Schiller, publ. in English translation by Olin D. Wannamaker, New York, 1950, under the title, “The Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World Conception—Fundamental Outlines with Special Reference to Schiller.” The first German edition published Berlin and Stuttgart, 1886, revised ed., Stuttgart, 1924, with new Foreword by the author. Other editions: Dornach, 1924; Dresden, 1936; Freiburg i. Br., 1949; Dornach, 1960.

73.Aristotle (384–322 B.C.): Physica Auscultatio, On Nature as Cause and Change, and the General Principles of Natural Science.

74.Raimon Lull (Raymond Lully), (0.1235–1315) Catalan author, mystic and missionary. Born Majorca. In 1266 a series of visions led to a marked change in his life and purpose. Spent 9 years studying Arabic in order to refute the heretical teachings current in his time. At Ronda he wrote his famous Ars Major and Ars Generalis. He made many journeys in France, Italy, North Africa in a burning crusade against the teachings of Mohammedanism. At Bougie, North Africa he was stoned outside the city walls and died on June 29, 1315.

75.biogenesis, the teaching that living organisms come from other living organisms, as opposed to abiogenesis. The author of the modern formulation of “the fundamental law of biogenesis” was Fritz Müller (1864). Haeckel (see note 54, above) called Müller's formulation “the biogenetic fundamental law,” which can be stated briefly as the teaching that in its development from the egg to adult stage, the animal tends to pass through a series of stages which recapitulate the stages through which its ancestry passed in the development of the species from a primitive form. In other words, the development of the individual is a condensed expression of the development of the race.

76.The earliest statement of the law of mechanical theory of heat was formulated by the French physicist, Sadi Nicholas Lèonhard Carnot (1796–1832) in notes written about 1830, published by his brother in the latter's Life of Sadi Carnot, Paris, 1878. Further work in this direction was done by Ségun, Paris, 1839, by Julius Robert Mayer, c. 1842, and by J. P. Joule, who (1840–43) placed the mechanical theory of heat on a sound experimental basis.

Julius Robert Mayer (1814–1878), German physician and physicist, is the discoverer of the law of conservation of energy, which—within limits of the data he obtained from experiments and reasoning—he applied “with great power and insight to the explanation of numerous physical phenomena.”

77.On Fichte, see note 13, above. Rudolf Steiner's Inaugural Dissertation for his doctoral degree before the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Rostock (Defense, beginning of May, 1891; Promotion, October 26, 1891) was titled Die Grundfrage der Erkenntnistheorie mit besonderer Rücksicht auf Fichtes Wissenschaftslehre, usw., The Fundamentals of a Theory of Cognition with Special Reference to Fichte's Scientific Teaching. When the thesis was published in book form, as it appears here in English translation, a Foreword and one chapter were added to the original by Rudolf Steiner. These latter are included in the present translation.

78.John Locke (1632–1704), English philosopher, scholar, chemist, student of meteorology, practicing physician, political advisor, traveler, and author. For details on his life and thought, consult any standard encyclopedia.

79.see reference to Volkelt's book in note 71, above, (p. 20)

80.see note 27, on Kant, above.

81.p. 61 ff. of Kirchmann's German edition of Kant's Kritik. See Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, Introd. to 2nd edition. Sec. vi.

82.Kant, Prolegomena, Sec. v.

83.Kant, Kritik, p. 53 f. of the German ed. Introduction, Sec. iv.

84.Rehmke, Johannes: Die Welt als Wahrnehmung und Begriff, usw., The World as Percept and Concept, etc., Berlin, 1880, p. 161 ff. of the German ed.

85.Refer to title given in note 28, above.

86.Note by Rudolf Steiner: This attempt, incidentally, is one which the objections of Robert Zimmermann (Uber Kant's mathematisches Vorurteil und dessen Folgen, On Kant's Mathematical Notions and their Results) show to be, if not altogether in error, at least highly questionable. (Robert Zimmermann, 1824–1898, was Professor of Philosophy in the University of Vienna, 1861–95. His book on Aesthetics was published in 2 volumes, Vienna, 1870. Rudolf Steiner attended lectures by Zimmermann on fundamentals of ethics at the University of Vienna. Steiner's impressions of this great interpreter of Herbart's aesthetics are contained in the 3rd chapter of the former's autobiography.)

87.Kant, Kritik, Introduction to 2nd edition. Sec. ii.

88.See Kant's Theorie der Erfahrung, Theory of Experience, pp. 90, ff. of the German ed.

89.Kant, Kritik, p. 58, Sec. v.

90.Hermann Cohen (1842–1918), Kants Theorie der Erfahrung, Kant's Theory of Experience, Berlin, 1871, pp. 90 ff. of the German ed.

91.August Stadler (1850–1910), Die Grundsätze der reinen Erkenntnistheorie in der Kantschen Philosophie, The Principles of the Pure Theory of Cognition in the Philosophy of Kant, Leipzig, 1876, p. 76 f. of the German ed.

92.Volkelt, op. cit., p. 21, see note 71, above.

93.Otto Liebmann (1840–1912), Analysis, 1880, p. an ff. (see note 28, above); A. Holder, Kantischen Erkenntnistheorie, Kant's Theory of Cognition, Tübingen, 1874, p. 14 ff.; Wilhelm Windelband (1848–1915) Phasen der Kantschen Lehre, Phases of Kant's Theory, p. 239; F. Ueberweg, System der Logik, System of Logic, p. 380 f.; Eduard v. Hartmann (1842–1906), Kritische Grundlegung, Berlin, 1875, p. 142–172 of the 2nd German ed. (see note 4, above).

94.Note by Rudolf Steiner: Geschichte der neueren Philosophie, History of More Recent Philosophy, 1860, Vol. 5, p. 60. Volkelt is mistaken about Fischer when he says (Kant's Erkenntnistheorie, Kant's Theory of Cognition, p. 198 f.) that “it is not clear from the account by K. Fischer whether, in his opinion, Kant takes for granted only the psychological fact of the occurrence of universal and necessary judgments, but also their objective validity and truth.” For, in the passage cited above, Fischer says that the main difficulty of the Critique of Pure Reason is to be found in the fact that “its basic points rest on certain presuppositions,” which “must be allowed if the remainder is to be valid.” For Fischer, these presuppositions consist in that “first the fact of knowledge is affirmed,” and then analysis reveals the cognitive faculties “by means of which the fact itself is explained.”

95.Gottlob Ernst Schulze (1761–1833), Aenesidemus, Helmstädt, 1792.

96.On Schopenhauer, see note 34, above.

97.On von Hartmann, see note 4, above.

98.Kritische Grundlegung, by Hartmann, Berlin 1875, Foreword, p. 10 of the German ed.

99.Liebmann, Zur Analysis, p. 28 ff. of the German ed. See note 28, above.

100.Kant's Erkenntnistheorie, Theory of Knowledge, Sec. 1.

101.A. Dorner, Das menschliche Erkennen, usw., Human Cognition, Berlin, 1887.

102.Julius Heinrich v. Kirchmann (1802–1884), Die Lehre vom Wissen, The Theory of Knowledge, Berlin, 1868.

103.E. L. Fischer, Die Grundfragen der Erkenntnistheorie, Basic Questions of the Theory of Cognition, Mainz 1887, p. 385.

104.C. Göring, System der kritischen Philosophie, System of Critical Philosophy, Leipzig, 1874, Part I, p. 257.

105.Johannes Müller (1801–1858), see note 32, above.

106.Hartmann's Grundproblem, p. 37 (see note 4, above).

107.A. Döring, article in Philosophische Monatshefte, Vol. XXVI, 1890, p. 390. publ. Heidelberg. Philosophical Monthly.

108.Hartmann, Grundproblem, p. 1. See note 4, above.

109.John Stewart Mill (1806–1873). A stern parent, James Mill taught his son Greek at the age of three, and at seven he studied Plato's dialogues. When he was eight he had to teach his sister Latin. His introduction to the utilitarian teachings of Bentham (the greatest happiness to the greatest number) at the age of fifteen was decisive for his life. His great work, System of Logic, 1843, is the analysis of inductive proof. He was a great champion of human rights, and in the second half of the i9th century his influence throughout Europe was very great. Today it is recognized that—to use Mill's description of Bentham—“He was not a great philosopher but a great reformer in philosophy.” For details on Mill's life and thought, consult any standard encyclopedia.

110.Fichte, Sämtliche Werke, Collected Works, Berlin, 1845, Vol. I, P. 71.

111.For fundamentals of the scientific teaching of Fichte, see his Collected Works, Berlin, 1845, Vol. I, p. 97.

112.Ibid. Vol. I, p. 91.

113.Ibid. Vol. I, p. 178.

114.Ibid. Vol. I, p. 91.

115.Eduard Zeller (1814–1908), Geschichte der deutschen Philosophie seit Leibnitz, History of German Philosophy Since Leibnitz, Munich, 1871–75, p. 605. Eduard Zeller studied and taught at Tübingen, later (1847) becoming professor of Theology at Bern, later (1849) professor of Theology, afterward of Philosophy at Marburg. In 1862 he was made professor of Philosophy at Heidelberg, afterward at Berlin to his retirement in 1895. His masterwork is the Philosophie der Greichen, Philosophy of the Greeks, 1844–52. He was recognized throughout the academic world for his learning and contributions to scholarship, and received many distinctions and honors. His Philosophie der Greichen has been transl. into English by S. F. Alleyne, 2 vols. 1881. In addition, an abridged version prepared by Zeller (1883) also appeared in English in 1896, as did a number of his other writings.

116.Fichte, Sämtliche Werke, Collected Works, Berlin, 1845, Vol. I, p. 94.

117.Ibid. Vol. I, p. 98.

118.Ibid. Vol. I, p. 422.

119.J. G. Fichtes nachgelassene Werke, J. G. Fichte's Posthumous Works, Edited by J. H. Fichte, Vol. I, Bonn, 1834, p. 4 and 16. (Einleitungsvorlesungen in die Wissenschaftslehre, Introductory Studies in the Scientific Teachings.)

120.Note by Rudolf Steiner: See his Christliche Dogmatik, Christian Dogmatics, and edition, 1884–85, the epistemological arguments, Vol. 1. A complete discussion of his point of view has been provided by Eduard von Hartmann; see Kritische Wanderungen durch die Philosophie der Gegenwart, Critical Survey of Contemporary Philosophy, p. 200 ff.

121.opus cit., see note 120, above.

Before I start with today’s topic, I would like to make you aware that today’s discussions are the beginning of a whole series of such discussions, and that basically all subsequent topics this winter could have precisely the same title as today’s topic. The path a human being must take if he wants to attain knowledge of the spiritual world will be explored in the course of the next lectures in relation to the most diverse phenomena of human and scientific life in general and to various cultural personalities of mankind.

Allow me to start with something personal, although this topic, this contemplation, must head, so to speak, in the direction of the most impersonal, most objective Spiritual Science. Yet the path into the spiritual world is such that it must lead through the most personal to the impersonal. Thus in spite of the impersonal, the personal will often be a symbolic feature of this path, and one gains the opportunity to point out many important things just by starting, so to speak, from the more intimate immediate experience. To the observer of the spiritual world many things in life will be symbolically more important than they initially seem to be. Much that might otherwise pass by the human eye, without particularly attracting attention, can appear to be deeply important to someone who wants to study intensely an observation such as the one that forms the basis for today’s examinations. And I can say that the following—which may at first seem like a trifle of life to you—belongs for me to the many unforgettable things on my path of life that on the one hand marked the longing of today’s human beings to truly ascend to the spiritual world. Yet on the other hand, they marked a more or less admitted impossibility of somehow gaining access to the spiritual world by means, that were not only provided by the present, but were also available in the past centuries, insofar as they were externally accessible to man.

I once sat in the cosy home of Herman Grimm. Those of you who are somewhat familiar with German intellectual life will associate much with the name of Herman Grimm. Perhaps you will know the spirited, important biographer of Michaelangelo and Raffael, and might also know, as it were, that the sum of education of our time, or at least of Central Europe, or let’s say it even more narrowly, of Germany, was united in the soul of Herman Grimm. During a conversation with him about Goethe, who was so close to his heart, and about Goethe’s view of the world, a small thing happened that belongs to the most unforgettable things on my path of life. In response to a remark I made—and we will see later how exactly this remark can be of importance in relation to the ascent of man into the spiritual world—Herman Grimm answered with a dismissive movement of his left hand. What lay in that gesture is what I consider, as it were, to be one of the unforgettable experiences on the path of my life. It was supposed to be in relation to Goethe, how Goethe wanted to find the way into the spiritual world in his own way.

In the course of these lectures we will have another talk about Goethe’s path into the spiritual world. Herman Grimm willingly followed Goethe’s pathways into the spiritual world, but in his own manner.

It was far from his mind to enter into a conversation about Goethe, in which Goethe would be seen as the representative of a human being who had really brought down spiritual realities—also as an artist— from the spiritual world and then undertook to embody them in his works of art. For Herman Grimm, it was much more obvious to say to himself: Alas, with the means that we as human beings have nowadays, we can only ascend to this spiritual world by way of fantasy. Although fantasy offers things that are beautiful, great and magnificent and are able to fill the human heart with warmth; but Knowledge, well-founded knowledge was not something that Herman Grimm, the intimate observer of Goethe, wanted to find in Goethe either. And when I said that Goethe’s whole fundamental nature is based on his willingness to embody the true in the beautiful, in the art, and then attempted to show that there are ways outside of fantasy, ways into the spiritual world that will lead you on more solid and firmer ground than fantasy—then it was not the rejection by someone who would not have liked to follow such a path. Herman Grimm did not use this gesture to express his rejection of such a path, but—in a way only those who knew him better would understand—he laid in it roughly the following: There may well be such a path, but we human beings cannot feel a calling to find out anything about it!

As I said, I do not wish to present this here as a personal matter in an importune way, yet it seems to me that just in such a gesture the position of the best human beings of our age towards the spiritual world is epitomised. Because later I had a long conversation with the same Hermann Grimm on a journey that led us both from Weimar to Tiefurt. There he explained how he had freed himself entirely of a purely materialistic view on world events, from the opinion that the human spirit, in the successive epochs, would produce out of itself that which constitutes the real soul-wealth of man. At that earlier time Herman Grimm talked about a great plan that was part of a piece of work that was never realised. Those of you who have occupied themselves with Herman Grimm will know that he intended to write a ‘History of the German fantasy’. He had envisaged the forces of fantasy to be like those of a goddess in the spiritual world who brings forth out of herself that which human beings create for the benefit of world progress. I would like to say: In that lovely region between Weimar and Tiefurt, when I heard these words from a man, whom I, after all, acknowledge as one of the greatest minds of our time, I had a feeling that I would like to express in these words; ‘Today, many people say to themselves: One must be deeply dissatisfied with everything that external science is able to say about the sources of life, about the secret of existence, about world riddles—but the possibility to step powerfully into another world is missing.’

There is a lack of intensity of willingness to realise that this world of spiritual life is different from what man imagines in his fantasy. Many enjoy going into the realm of fantasy, because for them it is the only spiritual realm that exists. About 17 years ago, on the journey to Tiefurt, I met Herman Grimm, who already through his scriptures and many, many other things, had made an impression on me. Facing this personality I remembered just then that, 30 years ago, I had glanced at just the passage in one of Grimm’s Goethe lectures,¹ which he had held in the winter of 1874/75 in Berlin, and where, with reference to Goethe, he spoke of the kind of impression that a purely external study of nature, devoid of spirit, must make on a spirit like his own. Already 30 years earlier Herman Grimm appeared to me to be the kind of human being whom all feelings and emotions urge upwards into the spiritual world, but who, unable to find the spiritual world as a reality, can only perceive it in its weaving and workings as a fantasy. And on the other hand—just because he was like this—he did not want to acknowledge that Goethe himself searched for the sources and riddles of existence in a different realm, not just in the realm of fantasy, but in the realm of spiritual reality.

There is a passage where Herman Grimm speaks about something that must affect our souls today, at the beginning of our contemplations. This passage refers to something which, as I have already indicated, and although its importance cannot be denied by Spiritual Science, is regarded as an impossibility by natural science—or by a worldview that claims to stand on the firm ground of natural science. It is an impossibility not only for feeling and emotion but also for a realisation that truly understands itself. What I mean is the Kant-Laplace theory that explains our solar system as if it were made up only of lifeless, inorganic substances and forces, and as if it had clenched itself out of a giant gas ball. I would like to read to you the passage from Herman Grimm’s Goethe lectures that shows you what this world-view, which is so fascinating, so deeply impressive today, meant for a spirit like Herman Grimm’s:

As much as Goethe here prohibits reason to accept as truth more than one can indeed grasp with the five fingers of a hand, the more he grants license to the poet’s fantasy, to create out of an unconscious, dreaming force pictures of what the spirit wishes to behold. However, he sharply upholds the boundaries between both of these activities. A long time ago, already in his youth, the great Kant-Laplace fantasy about the origin and the future downfall of the globe, had gained ground. Out of the primeval, cosmic, in itself rotating world-nebula—the children learn this at school already—the central drop of gaseous matter forms itself, which later becomes the Earth and, as a solidifying ball in incomprehensible periods of time, goes through all phases including the episode of mankind’s habitation. This ball will finally crash back into the sun as burnt out slag: This is a long, but completely comprehensible process for the audience, that does not require any further external intervention for its implementation apart from the endeavour by some outside power to maintain a constant heating temperature on the Sun.

There cannot be imagined a more futile perspective for the future than the one that is being imposed on us today in this expectation as a scientific necessity. A carrion bone, around which a hungry dog made a detour, would be a more refreshing appetising piece in comparison to this latests excrement of creation—the form in which our Earth would finally pass to the Sun again. The inquisitiveness with which our generation embraces such things and thinks it believes them, is a sign of a sick imagination. Scientists of future epochs will use a lot of astuteness to explain it as a historical phenomenon of the time.

I felt it was necessary to point out such a quote, as basically it is rarely done these days. Today, when the concepts of these world-views have such a fascinating effect, and when they seem to be based so solidly on natural science, little reference is made to the fact that there are, after all, spirits who are deeply connected to the cultural life of our time, and yet relate in such a way out of their whole soul make-up to something about which countless people now say: It is obvious that things are like that, and anyone who does not concede that they are like that is really a simpleton! Yes, already today we see many people who feel the deepest longing to forge links between the soul of man and the spiritual world. But on the other side, we see only a few outside of those circles that are more deeply engaged with what we call Spiritual Science, who are busying themselves with means that could lead the human soul to what could after all be called the land of its longings.

Therefore, when we speak today about ways that are to lead man into the spiritual world, and speak so that what we say applies not only to a tight circle, but is addressed to all those who are equipped with a contemporary education, we still encounter strong resistance in a certain respect. Not only is it possible that what will be presented is regarded as daydreaming and fantasy, but it may also easily annoy many people of the present. It can actually be an annoyance to them because it deviates so much from those ideas that are currently considered valid in the widest circles, and which are the suggestive and fascinating imaginations of people who consider themselves to be the most educated.

In the first lecture it was already hinted at that the ascent into the spiritual world is basically an intimate affair of the soul and is in stark contrast to what is common for the imaginative and emotional life both in popular and scientific circles. Namely a scientist easily makes the demand that to be valid as science today, something has to be verifiable at any time and for anyone. And he will then also refer to his external experiment that can be proven anytime to anyone. It goes without saying that this demand can not be met by Spiritual Science. We are about to see why not. Spiritual Science here means a science that does not speak about the spirit as a sum of abstract terms and concepts, but as something real and of real entities. Spiritual Science therefore must contravene the methodical demands that are currently so easily established by science and world-views: to be verifiable anywhere and at all times by anyone. Spiritual Science very often encounters resistance in popular circles for the reason that in our time, even where there is an inner longing to ascend to the spiritual world, feelings and emotions are penetrated and permeated by a materialistic view.

Even with the best intentions, even if one yearns for the spiritual world, one cannot help but imagine the spirit as in some way material again, or at least imagine the ascent into the spiritual world as somehow connected to something material. That is why most people may prefer that you talk to them about purely external matters, like what they should eat or drink or shouldn’t eat and drink, or what else they should undertake purely externally in the material world. They would much rather do this than be asked to introduce intimate moments of development into their souls. But that is exactly what ascending into the spiritual world is all about.

We now want to try to map out—entirely in line with Spiritual Science’s own view—how this ascent of a human soul into the spiritual world can happen. The starting point must always be a person’s current life situation. A human being, as he is placed in our present world, lives completely and firmly in the external sensory world. Let’s try to become clear about how much would remain in a human soul, if one would disregard the concepts that the outer sense perceptions of the physical world have ignited within us, and that which has entered into us through the outer physical experiences, through eyes and ears and the other senses. And disregard that which is stimulated of sufferings and joys, of pleasure and pain within us through our eyes and ears, and what our rational mind has then combined from these impressions of the sensory world. Try to eliminate all of this from the soul, imagine it away, and then ponder what would be left behind. People who honestly undertake this simple self-observation will find that extremely little will remain, especially in the souls of people of the present time. And it is just so that initially the ascent into the spiritual world cannot proceed from something that is given to us by the external sensory world—it has to be undertaken so that a human being develops forces within his soul, which ordinarily lie dormant in it. It is, so to speak, a basic element for all possibilities of ascent into the Spiritual world, that a person becomes aware that he is capable of inner development, that there is something else in him than what he is initially able to survey with his consciousness.

Today, this is actually an annoying concept for many people. Let’s take a very special person with a contemporary education, for example, what does a philosopher nowadays do, when he wants to establish the full meaning and the nature of Knowledge? Someone like this will say: ‘I will try to establish how far in general we can get with our thinking, with our human soul forces, what we can comprehend of this world.’ He is attempting in his own way—depending on what is momentarily possible for him—to comprehend a world view and to place it before him, and usually he will then say, ‘We simply cannot know anything else, because it is beyond the limits of human knowledge.’ Really this is the most widespread phrase that can be found in today’s literature: ‘We cannot know this!’

However, there is a another standpoint that works in a completely different way from the one just described, by saying: ‘Certainly, with the forces I have now in my soul, which are now probably the normal human soul forces, I can recognise this or that, but here in this soul is a being capable of development. This soul may have forces within it that I first have to extrapolate. I first have to lead it along certain pathways, must lead it beyond its current point of view, and then I will see whether it could have been my fault when I said that this or that is beyond the limit of our knowledge. Perhaps I just need to go a little further in the development of my soul, and then the boundaries will expand and I will be able to penetrate more deeply into things.

In making judgments, one does not always take logic seriously, otherwise one would say: ‘What we can recognise depends on our organs.’ For this reason, someone who is born blind cannot judge colours. He would only be able to do so, if through a fortunate operation he were to become capable of seeing colours.

Likewise it may be possible—I do not wish to speak of a sixth sense here, but of something that can be brought forth from the soul in a purely spiritual way—that spirit eyes and spirit ears can be brought forth from our soul. Then the great event could happen for us—which occurs at a lower level when the one born blind is so lucky to be operated on—so that then for us the initial assumption could become a truth: Around us is a spiritual world, but to be able to look into it, we first have to awaken the organs within us. This would be the only logical thing to do. But, as I said, we do not always take logic very seriously, because people in our time have very different needs than finding their way into the spiritual world when they hear about it. I have already told you that once, when I had to give a lecture in a city in southern Germany, a courageous person, who wrote feature articles, opened his article with the words; ‘The most obvious thing about theosophy is its incomprehensibility.’ We like to believe this man that for him theosophy’s most outstanding characteristic is its incomprehensibility. But is this in any way a criterion? Let’s apply this example to mathematics about which someone would say: ‘What I notice most about mathematics is its incomprehensibility.’ Then everyone would say: ‘Quite certainly, this is possible, but then, if he wants to write feature articles, he should be so good and learn something first!’ Often it would be better to transfer what is valid for one particular subject and apply it correctly to another.

So people have nothing left to do than either to deny that there is a development of the soul—and they can only do this by speaking a word of power—namely, when they refuse to go through such a development, or, alternatively they can immerse themselves into the development of their soul. Then the spiritual world becomes for them an observation, reality, truth. But in order to ascend into the spiritual world, the soul must become capable—not for physical life, but for the realisation of the spiritual world—of completely transforming itself in a certain relation to the form it initially has, and in a certain way becoming a different being.

This could already make us aware of something that has been emphasised repeatedly here, namely, that someone who feels the urge to ascend into the spiritual world, must first and foremost make it clear for himself time and again whether he has gained a firm foothold in this world of physical reality and whether he is able to stand firm here. We have to maintain certainty, volition and sentience in all circumstances that take place in the physical world. We must not lose the ground beneath our feet if we want to ascend from this world into the spiritual one. Doing anything that can lead our character to stand firm in the physical world is a preliminary stage. Then it is a matter of bringing the soul to a different kind of feeling and willing for the spiritual world, than the feeling and willing in the soul normally are. The soul must become, as it were, inwardly a different feeling and willing organism than it is in normal life. This brings us to that which can, on the one hand, initially really place Spiritual Science in a kind of opposition to what is recognised as ‘science’ today. On the other hand, it places Spiritual Science yet again directly next to this science with the same validity that external science has. When it is said that everything that is supposed to be science, needs to be at any time and by anyone verifiable, then, what is meant by this is that what is deemed to be science must not be dependent on our subjectivity, on our subjective feelings, on any decisions of will, will impulses, feelings and emotions that we only carry individually within ourselves. Now, someone who wants to ascend into the spiritual world, must first take a detour through his innermost soul, must reorganise his soul; at first he must completely turn his gaze away from what is outside in the physical world. Normally, a human being only turns away from looking at what is within the physical world when he is asleep. Then he does not let anything enter into his soul through his eyes, his ears, nor through the entire organisation of his senses. But for that he also becomes unconscious and is not able to live consciously in a spiritual world.

It has now been said that it is one of the basic elements of spiritual realisation for a human being to find within oneself the possibility to go beyond oneself. However, this means nothing else than to first let the spirit become effective within oneself. In today’s ordinary human life we all know only one kind of turning away from the physical world, namely when we enter into the unconsciousness of sleep. The contemplation of The Nature of Sleep ² has shown us that a human being is in a real spiritual world during sleep, even if he knows nothing about it. For it would be absurd to believe that a person’s soul-centre and spirit-centre disappears in the evening and newly comes into being in the morning. No, in reality, it outlasts the stages from falling asleep to awakening. However, what for a normal person today is the inner strength to be conscious—even if there is no stimulation of consciousness through sense impressions or through the work of the rational mind —is missing in sleep. The soul life is so turned down during sleep, that the person is unable to kindle or awaken what allows the soul to experience itself inwardly. When the human being wakes up again, events from the outside enter. And because a soul content is gifted to the human being in this way, he becomes conscious of himself by means of this soul content. He is not able to become conscious of himself if he is not stimulated externally, because his human strength is too weak for this, when he is left to himself in his sleep.

Hence the ascent into the spiritual world means an arousal of such forces within our soul that enable it, as it were, to truly live consciously within itself, when it becomes, in relation to the external world like a human being who is asleep. Basically, the ascent into the spiritual worlds demands a spurring on of internal energies, an extraction of forces that are otherwise asleep, that are, as it were, paralysed within the soul, so that man cannot handle them at all. All those intimate experiences that a spiritual researcher must experience in his soul, ultimately aim at what has just been characterised. And today, I would like to summarise something for you about the path that leads upwards into the spiritual world. This has been presented in detail by element, so to speak, by their rudiments, in my book published under the title: How to attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds? ³ But today, I do not want to repeat myself by just presenting you an excerpt from this book. Instead, I wish to approach the issue from a different side, that is what the soul must do with itself to rise up to the spiritual world. One who is interested in this more deeply, can read the details in the book mentioned above. However, no one should think that what was presented in detail there can be summarised here in the same words and sentences. Those who are familiar with the book will not find that it is a summary of what has been said there, but a description of the topic from a different angle.

For a spiritual researcher who wants to direct his steps into the spiritual world, it is extremely important that much of what would lead other people directly to a realisation and a goal becomes for him simply a means of education, an intimate means of education of the soul. Let me illustrate this with an example. Many years ago I wrote a book, The Philosophy of Freedom. As it is out of stock since years, it is currently not available, but hopefully a second edition will appear in the near future.⁴ This Philosophy of Freedom was conceived in such a way that it is quite different from other philosophical books of the present time, which more or less aim by what is written to share something about how things are in the world or how they must be according to the ideas of the authors. However, this is not the immediate aim of this book. Rather, it is intended to give someone who engages with the thoughts presented there a kind of workout for his thoughts, so that the kind of thinking, the special way to devoting oneself to these thoughts is one in which the emotions and feelings of the soul are set in motion—just as in gymnastics the limbs are exercised, if I may use this comparison. What is otherwise only a method of gaining insight, is in this book at the same time a means of spiritual-soul self-education. This is extraordinarily important. Of course this is annoying for many philosophers of the present time, who associate something quite different with philosophy than that which may help a human being to progress a little further—because, if possible, he should remain as he is, with his normal innate capacity to gain knowledge. Therefore, in regard to this book it is not so important to be able to argue about this or that, or if something can be understood one way or another, but what really matters is that the thoughts which are connected as one organism, are able to school our soul and help it to make a bit of progress.

This is also the case with my book Truth and Science. And so it is with many things that are initially supposed to be basic elements to train the soul to rise up into the spiritual world. Mathematics and geometry teach man knowledge of triangles, quadrangles and other figures. But why do they teach all this? So that man can gain knowledge about how things are within space, which laws they are subject to and so on. Essentially, the spiritual ascent to the higher worlds works with similar figures as symbols. For instance, it places the symbol of a triangle, a quadrangle or another symbolic figure before a student, but not so that he will win immediate insights through them, as he can acquire these also by other means. Instead, with the symbols he receives the opportunity to train his spiritual abilities so that the spirit, supported by the impression he gains from the symbolic pictures, ascends into a Higher World. Thus it is about mental training, or, do not misunderstand me, it is about mental gymnastics. Therefore, much of what is dry external science, dry external philosophy, what is mathematics or geometry, becomes a living symbol for the spiritual training that leads us upwards into the spiritual world. If we have let this affect our soul, then we will learn to understand what basically no external science understands, that the ancient Pythagoreans, under the influence of their great teacher Pythagoras, spoke of the universe being made up of numbers because they focussed on the inner laws of numbers. Now let us look at how we encounter numbers everywhere in the world. Nothing is easier than to refute Spiritual Science or Anthroposophy, because from a standpoint, imagined to be superior, one can easily say: There are these Spiritual Scientists again, coming out of their mystic ⁵ darkness with numerical symbolism and say that there is an inner regularity of numbers, and, for example, one has to consider the true foundation of human nature according to the number seven. But something similar was meant also by Pythagoras and his students, when they talked about the inner regularity of numbers. If we allow those marvellous connections, which lie in the relationships between numbers, to affect our spirit then we can train it in such a way that it wakes up when it would otherwise be asleep and develops stronger forces within itself to penetrate into the spiritual world.

Thus it is a schooling through another kind of science. It is also what is actually called the study of someone, who wants to enter deeply into the spiritual world. And for someone like this, gradually everything that for other people is a harsh reality, becomes more or less an external allegory, a symbol. If a human being is able to let these symbols have an effect on him, then he is not only freeing his spirit from the outer physical world, but also imbues his spirit with strong forces, so that the soul can be conscious of itself, even when there is no external stimulation. I have already mentioned that if someone lets a symbol like the Rosy Cross affect him, he can feel an impulse to ascend into the spiritual world. We imagine a Rosy Cross as a simple black cross with seven red roses attached in a circle at the crossing of the beams.

What should it tell us? One who allows it to have an effect on his soul in the right way will imagine: For example, I look at a plant; I say of this plant that it is an imperfect being. Next to it I place a human being, who in his nature is a more perfect being, but even only in his nature. For if I look at the plant, I have to say: In it I encounter a material being which is not permeated by passions, desires, instincts, that bring it down from the height where it otherwise could stand. The plant has its innate laws, which it follows from leaf to flower to fruit; it stands there without desires, chaste.

Beside him lives the human being, who certainly by his nature is a higher being, but who is permeated by desires, instincts, passions through which he can stray from his strict regularity. He first has to overcome something within himself, if he wants to follow his own inner laws as a plant follows its innate laws. Now the human being can say to himself; The expression of desires, of instincts in me is the red blood. In a certain way, I can compare it with chlorophyll, the chaste plant sap in the red rose, and can say: If man becomes so strong within himself that the red blood is no longer an expression of what pushes him down below himself, but of what lifts him above himself—when it becomes the expression of such a chaste being like the plant sap, which has turned into the red of a rose, or in other words; when the red of the rose expresses the pure inwardness, the purified nature of a human being in his blood, then I have before me the ideal of what man, by overcoming the outer nature, can achieve and which presents itself to me under the symbol of the black cross, the charred wood. And the red of the rose symbolises the higher life that awakens when the red blood has become the chaste expression of the purified, instinctive nature of man, which has overcome itself.

If one does not let what is depicted be an abstract concept, then it becomes a vividly felt evolutionary idea. Then a whole world of feelings and emotions comes to life within us; we will feel within ourselves a development from an imperfect to a more perfect state. We sense that development is something quite different from the abstract thing that external science provides us with in the sense of a purely external Darwinism. Here, development becomes something that cuts deep into our heart, that pervades us with warmth, with soul-warmth—it becomes a force within us that carries and holds us. It is only through such inner experiences that the soul becomes capable of developing strong forces within itself, so that it can illuminate itself with consciousness in its innermost being—in the being that otherwise becomes unconscious when it withdraws from the external world.

It is of course child’s play to say; ‘Then you recommend an idea of something completely imaginary, of something entirely made up. But only those concepts which are reproductions of external ideas are valuable, and an idea of the Rose Cross has no external counter-image.’ But the point is not that the concepts we use to school our souls are reflections of an external reality, instead it is about concepts that are strength-awakening for our soul and that draw out of the soul what lies hidden within it.

When the human soul is dedicated to such pictorial ideas, when, so to speak, everything that it normally values as reality now becomes a cause for pictures that are not arbitrarily retrieved from fantasy, but are inspired by reality, just like the symbol of the Rosy Cross, then we say: The human being makes an effort to move upwards to the first stage of knowledge of the spiritual world. This is the stage of ‘Imaginative Knowledge’ that leads us above and beyond what is immediately concerned with the physical world only.

Hence, a human being who wishes to ascend into the spiritual world works in his soul with very particular concepts in a precisely determined way, to let the otherwise external reality affect him. He works in this soul itself. When the human being has worked in this way for some time, then it will be so that the external scientists can tell him: This has only a subjective, only an individual value for you. But this external scientist does not know that when the soul undergoes such a serious, regular training, there exists a stage of inner development when the possibility for the soul to express subjective feelings and emotions ceases completely. Then the soul arrives at a point where it must tell itself: Now concepts arise within me that I encounter like I normally meet trees and rock, rivers and mountains, plants and animals of the outer world that are as real as otherwise only external physical things are, and to which my subjectivity can neither add anything to them nor can it take anything away from them.

So there actually exists an intermediate state for everyone who wants to ascend into the spiritual world, where man is subject to the danger of carrying his subjectivity, which is only valid for himself, into the spiritual world. But man must pass through this intermediate state, for then he reaches a stage where what the soul is experiencing becomes as objectively verifiable—to anyone with the ability to do so—as all things in the outer physical reality. Because, after all, the principle that applies to external science—for something to be regarded as scientifically valid it must be verifiable at any time by anyone—also applies only to one who is sufficiently prepared for this. Or do you believe that you would be able to teach ‘the law of corresponding boiling temperatures’ to an eight-year-old child? I doubt it. You will not even be able to teach him the theorem of Pythagoras. Thus it is already bound to the basic principle that the human soul must be appropriately prepared if one wants to prove something to it.

And just as one must be prepared to understand the theorem of Pythagoras—even though it is possible for everyone to understand it—one must be prepared through a certain soul exercise if one wants to experience or realise this or that in the spiritual world. However, what can be realised, can then be experienced and observed in the same way by anyone who is appropriately prepared. Or, when messages are conveyed from observations of Spiritual Science by those who have prepared their soul for this, such as, that a particular man is able to look back on repeated Earth lives so that these become a fact for him, then it is likely that people will come and say; ‘There he brings us some dogmas again and demands that we should believe in these!’ Yet a spiritual researcher does not approach his contemporaries with his realisations so that people should believe them.

People who believe that we speak about dogmas, should ask themselves, is the fact that a whale exists a dogma for someone who has never seen one? Certainly, it is explainable in this way: A whale is a dogma for someone who has never seen one. Yet spiritual research does not approach the world with messages alone. Neither does it do so when it understands itself; instead it clothes what it brings down from the higher worlds in logical forms. These are exactly the same logical forms with which the other sciences are permeated. Then anyone will be able to verify, by applying a healthy sense of truth and unbiased logic, whether what the spiritual researcher has said is right. It has always been said that a schooling of the soul is necessary for someone wanting to explore spiritual facts by self-searching, whereby the soul must have gone through what is now being described here. But to understand what is being communicated, all you need is a healthy sense of truth and unbiased logic.

Now, if the spiritual researcher has allowed such symbolic terms and pictures to affect his soul for a while, he will notice that his feeling and emotional life becomes completely different from what it was before.

What is the feeling and emotional life of man in the ordinary world like? Nowadays it actually has become somewhat trivial to use the expression ‘egoistic’ everywhere, and to say that people in their normal life are egoistic. I do not want to express it in this way, but prefer to say: In their normal lives people are at first closely tied to their human personality, for example, when something pleases us, yes, especially in relation to things which we enjoy of the noblest spiritual creations, things of art and beauty. The saying, there is no accounting for taste, already expresses that much is connected to our personality and depends upon our subjective stance towards things. Check how everything that can please you is related to your upbringing, in which place in the world, in which profession your personality is placed, and so on, in order to see how feelings and emotions are closely connected to our personality. But when one does exercises of the soul, like the ones described, one notices how feelings and emotions will become completely impersonal. It is a great and tremendous experience when the moment arrives in which our feeling and our emotional life becomes, so to speak, impersonal. This moment comes, it certainly comes, when a human being on his spiritual path, inspired by those who undertake his spiritual guidance, allows the following things to really affect his soul. I will now list some of these things that will affect our whole feeling and emotional life in an educational way if someone allows them to work on his soul for weeks, or months.

The following can be considered. We focus our attention on what we find at the centre of philosophical observations, on the spiritual centre of the human being, the Ego—if we have learned to rise to the concept of Ego—which accompanies all our ideas, the mysterious centre of all experience. And if we continue to further the respect, this reverence and this devotion, which can connect to the fact, that for many is certainly not a fact but a figment of the imagination,—that there is an Ego living within us!—if this becomes the greatest, the most momentous experience to keep telling yourself that this ‘I am’ is the most essential of the human soul, then mighty, strong feelings develop in relation to the ‘I am’, which are impersonal. These lead directly to an insight into how all of the world’s secrets and mysteries that float around us are concentrated, as it were, in a single point—the Ego-point— to comprehend the human being from this Ego-point. For example, the poet Jean Paul ⁶ talks about becoming conscious of the Ego in his biography:

“I will never forget what manifested in me, which I have never told anyone about, whereby I stood at the birth of my self-consciousness, and of which I can tell at which place and at what time it happened. One morning, when I was a very young child, I stood under the front entrance and looked left at the woodshed, when suddenly the inner vision—I am an I—flashed before me like a bolt of lightning from the sky and since then has remained shining; there my Ego had seen itself for the first time and forever. Memory errors are hardly imaginable here, and since there was no extraneous retelling, nothing could be added and mixed into the narrative about an occurrence which took place only within the veiled inner sanctum of a human being—only the novelty lent permanence to these everyday, incidental circumstances.

It is already quite a lot to feel the devotion for the concentrated crowdedness of the world-being at one point, with all the shivers of awe and with all the feelings for the greatness of this fact. Yet, when a human being feels this time after time and allows it to affect him—although it will not enlighten him in regard to all the riddles of the world—it can give him a direction entirely focussed on the impersonal and the innermost human nature.

Thus we educate our emotional and our feeling life by relating it to our Ego-beingness. And when we have done this for a while, then we can focus our feelings and emotions in a different direction and can tell ourselves; this Ego within us is connected to everything we think, feel and perceive, with our entire soul life, it glows and shines through our soul life. We can then study human nature with the Ego as the centre point of thinking, feeling and willing, without taking ourselves into consideration or getting personal. The human being becomes a mystery to us, not we to ourselves, and our feelings expand from the Ego across to the soul. We can then transition to a different kind of feeling. In particular, we can acquire this beautiful feeling without which we are not able to lead our soul further into spiritual knowledge—this is what one would like to call it: The feeling that in each thing we encounter, as it were, an access to something infinite opens up for us. If we let this appear before our soul again and again, then it is the most wonderful feeling. It can be there when we go outside and look at a wonderful nature spectacle: cloud-covered mountains with thunder and lightning. This works greatly and forcefully on our soul. But then we must learn not only to see what is great and powerful there, but we may take a single leaf, look at it carefully with all its ribs and all the wonderful things that are part of it, and we will be able to perceive the greatness and might that reveals itself as something infinite in the smallest leaf, and we will hear and feel as if we were at the greatest spectacle of nature. It may appear to be strange, yet there is something to it, and afterwards one must express oneself grotesquely; it may make a great impression when a human being witnesses a glowing lava flow ejected from the Earth. But then, let us imagine someone looks at warm milk or the most ordinary coffee, and sees there how small crater-like structures form and a similar scenario unfolds on a small scale. Everywhere, in the smallest and in the greatest is access to an infinity.

And if we steadily keep researching, even if so much has been revealed to us, there is still something more under the cover, which perhaps we may have explored on the surface. So right now we are sensing what may result in a revelation of something intensely infinite at any point in the universe.

This imbues our soul with feelings and emotions that are necessary for us, if we want to attain what Goethe has called ‘spirit eyes’ and ‘spirit ears’.⁷ In short, it is a realisation of our feeling life, which is usually the most subjective to the point where we feel ourselves as if we were merely a setting where something is happening—where we no longer consider our feelings to be part of us. Our personality has been silenced. It is almost as if we were painters and stretching a canvas and painting a picture on it. Hence, when we train ourselves in this way, we stretch our soul and allow the spiritual world to paint on it. One feels this from a certain point in time onwards. Then it is only necessary to understand oneself, and in order to recognise what the world essentially is, it is necessary to consider a particular stage in the life of the soul as solely and only decisive.

So indeed what a human being acquires in ardent soul striving becomes the deciding of truth. It is in the soul itself where the decision must be made if something is true or not. Nothing external can decide, but the human being, by going beyond himself, must find within himself the authority to behold or discover the truth. Yes, basically we can say; in this regard we cannot be entirely different from all other human beings. Other people search for objective criteria, for something that provides us with a confirmation of truth from the outside. Yet a spiritual researcher searches within for confirmation of the truth. Thus he does the opposite. If this were the case, one could say in pretence; ‘Things are not looking too good when Spiritual Scientists in their confusion want to turn the world on its head.’ Yet in reality natural scientists and philosophers don’t do anything different from what spiritual researchers are doing, they only do not know that they are doing it. I will provide you with proof of this, taken from the immediate present.

At the last conference of natural scientists, Oswald Külpe ⁸ gave a talk about the relationship of natural science to philosophy. There he came up with the idea that the human being, by looking into the sensory world and perceiving it as sound, colour, warmth and so forth, only has subjective qualities. This is only a slightly different slant from what Schopenhauer said; ‘The world is our conception.’ But Oswald Külpe points out that what we perceive with our external senses, in short, everything that appears to be pictorial is subjective. And in contrast to this, what physics and chemistry say—pressure, the forces of attraction and repulsion, resistance and so on—must be characterised as objective. So in this way we partly have to deal with something purely subjective in our world-views, and partly with something that is objective such as pressure, forces of attraction and repulsion.

I do not want to go further into the criticism that has been voiced, but only want to address the mindset. It seems so terribly easy for a contemporary epistemologist to prove that because we cannot see without our eyes, light could only be something produced by our eyes. But what happens in the external world, it is said, when one ball hits another, those forces which cause resistance, pressure and so on, must be shifted into the outer world, into space. Why do people think that? At a particular point Oswald Külpe gives this away very clearly when he speaks about sensory perceptions—because he regards these as pictures, he says; ‘They cannot push or attract each other, neither can they pressure nor warm each other. They cannot have such and such large distance in space that would allow them to send light through space at such and such speed, nor can they be arranged as a chemist would arrange elements. Why does he say this of sensory perceptions? Because he sees sensory perceptions as pictures that are brought about solely by our senses.

Now I want to present a simple thought to you, to illustrate that the pictorial nature does not change anything. Things do push against or attract one another. When Mr Külpe now observes the sensory perceptions, this world—which supposedly could neither attract nor repel—simply does not face Mr Oswald Külpe as reality, but as a mirror image. Then he really has pictures in front of him. But push, pressure, resistance and anything that is placed into this world as different from sensory perceptions, will in no other way be objectively explained than through the pictorial nature of the sense perceptions. Why is this so? Because when the human being perceives pressure, push and so on, he turns what lives within the things, into sensations of the things. Man should study, for example, that when he says that one billiard ball hits another, what he experiences as the impact force is what he himself puts into these things! And someone who is standing on the ground of Spiritual Science, is not doing anything else. He makes what lives in the soul the criterion for expressing the world. There is no other principle of knowledge than that which can be found through the development of the soul itself. So the others do the same as the spiritual research. But only spiritual research is aware of this. The others do it unconsciously, they have no idea that they do the same at an elementary level. They just remain standing on the very first level and deny what they themselves are doing. Therefore we are allowed to say, Spiritual Science is in no way contrary to other research on the truth: the other researchers do the same, yet they take the first step without knowing about it, while spiritual research consciously takes the steps as far as a particular human soul can take according to its level of development.

Once it has been achieved that our feelings have, in a certain way, become objective, then, what I have already indicated will even more certainly come about, as it is a necessary pre-requisite for progress into the spiritual worlds. This is that man learns to comprehend how to live in the world in such a way that the weaving and living of an all-encompassing spiritual regularity within the spiritual world is presupposed. In daily life man is far removed from such a way of thinking. He gets angry when something happens to him that he doesn’t like. This is quite understandable as a different standpoint must be hard won. This other standpoint consists in saying; we have come from a former life, we have placed ourselves into the situation in which we are now, and have led ourselves to what is now facing us out of the lap of the future. What approaches us there corresponds to a strictly objective spiritual regularity. We accept it, because it would be an absurdity not to accept it. What approaches us from the lap of the spiritual worlds, whether the world admonishes us or praises us, whether joyful or tragic things happen to us, we will accept it as wisdom-filled experience and interweaving of the world. This is something that slowly and gradually must become once more the whole basic principle of our being. When it does, our will begins to be schooled. Whereas prior to this our feelings needed to be reorganised, now our will is transformed, becomes independent of our personality and thereby turns into an organ of perception of spiritual facts.

After the stage of ‘Imaginative Knowledge’, there occurs for man what can genuinely and truly be called inspiration, the fulfilment through spiritual facts. We must always be clear that man can attain the training of his will at a particular stage only, when his feelings are in a certain way already purified. Then his will can connect with the lawfulness of the world and he will exist as a human being only so that those facts and entities which want to appear to him, can erect a wall before him in his will, on which they can depict themselves for him, so that they can exist for him.

I could only describe for you some of what the soul must go through in silent, patient devotion, if it wants to ascend into the higher worlds. In the following lectures I will have much to describe of the evolution of the world history that the soul must experience to rise up into the spiritual worlds. So consider what has been said today as an introduction only, so that through such schooling our feeling and willing life and our complete imaginative life will develop to become bearers of new worlds, so that we will actually step into a world that we recognise as reality, just as we recognise the physical world as a reality of its own kind.

At a different occasion I have already mentioned that when people say,‘You only imagine what you believe to see,’ then it must be replied, that only the experience, the observation can yield the difference between reality and appearance, between reality and fantasy, just as this is also the case in the physical world. You must win the difference by relating to reality. For example, someone who approaches reality with a healthy thinking can distinguish a red-hot iron in reality from one that only exists in imagination—and no matter how many ‘Schopenhauerians’ may come—he will be able to tell both apart, he will know what is truth and what is imagination. Hence, man can orientate himself on reality. Even about the spiritual world he can only orientate himself on reality. Someone once said that if a person only thought about drinking a lemonade, he could also perceive the lemon taste on his tongue. I answered him, ‘imagination can be so strong that someone who has no lemonade in front of him, could perhaps feel the taste on his tongue through the lively imagination of a lemonade. But I would like to see, if someone has ever quenched his thirst with an imaginary lemonade only. Then the criterion begins to become more real. Thus it is also with the inner development of a human being. Not only does he learn to know a new soul-life, new concepts, but in his soul he collides with another world and knows: you are now facing a world that you can describe just as you can describe the outside world. This is not mere speculation, which could be compared with a thought development only, instead it is about the forming of new organs of perception and the unlocking of new worlds that truly stand before us just as real as our external, physical world.

What has been hinted at today is that contemporary circumstances made it necessary to point out that spiritual research is possible. This is not to say that everyone should immediately become a spiritual researcher. For it must always be emphasised that when a human being with a healthy sense of truth and unprejudiced logic allows the information from Spiritual Science to approach him—even if he himself is not able to look into the spiritual worlds—yet all that which arises from such messages can turn into energy and feelings of strength for his soul, even if he at first believes in Haeckelianism or Darwinism. What the spiritual researcher has to say, is suitable to speak more and more to man’s healthy sense of truth, all the more so, as it is connected to the deepest interests of every human being. There may be people who do not consider it necessary for their salvation to know how amphibians and mammals relate to each other, or something like this. But all people must warm up to what can be said on the sure basis of spiritual research: that the soul belongs to the sphere of eternity—insofar as it belongs to the spiritual world, descends at birth into the sensory existence and enters again into the spiritual realm through the gate of death. It has to be for all human beings of profound interest, that the strength, which sinks more and more into the soul, is of a quality that the soul can gain certainty from it to stand in its place in life. A soul that does not know what it is and what it wants, what the essence of its nature is, can become hopeless, can ultimately despair and feel dreary and desolate. Yet a soul that allows itself to be filled by the spiritual achievements of Spiritual Science cannot remain empty and desolate if only it does not accept the messages of Spiritual Science as dogmas, but as a living life that streams through our soul and warms it. This provides comfort for all the suffering in life, when we are being led upwards from all temporal suffering to that which can become comfort for the soul from the share of the temporal in the eternal. In short: Spiritual Science can give man what he needs today in the loneliest and most work-intensive hours of his life due to the intensified circumstances of our time —or, if the strength would want to leave him, Spiritual Science can give him what he needs to look into the future and go energetically towards it.

Hence, Spiritual Science—as it arises from spiritual research, from those who want to undertake steps into the spiritual world—can forever confirm what we want to summarise in a few words that express with sensitivity the characteristics of the path into the spiritual world and its significance for the people of the present. What we want to summarise in this way is not supposed to be a contemplation on the theories of life, but one on remedies, means of strengths, tonics for life:

The Spirit World remains shut to you
Unaware of the spirit in yourself
That shines in your soul
And can uphold light for you
In world depths, on world heights! ⁹

• 1. Herman Grimm: Goethe-Lectures, Berlin 1877, 23rd Lecture, Pages 215 et seq.
• 2. Lecture GA 60 #5, The Nature of Sleep, Berlin, 24 November 1910
• 3. Now published under the title - How to Know Higher Worlds, GA 10.
• 4. The Second Edition of the The Philosophy of Freedom was published not until 1918. At this occasion Rudolf Steiner gave a lecture about the genesis of this book, which is featuring as the sixth lecture of the cycle Historical Symptomatology, Dornach 1942. Newly published in Rudolf Steiner's Letters, Volume 2, Dornach 1953
• 5. This was mentioned in the earlier lecture What is Mysticism?, given on 10 February 1910, as part of The Architect House Lecture Series, 1909/1910, and was printed as part of Paths of Soul Experiences, GA59
• 6. The Works of Jean Paul, Berlin 1865, Volume 16, Page 26 et seq.
• 7. For example in Goethe’s Colour Theory, Goethean Science, edited by Rudolf Steiner, Volume 1, Bern 1947, Pages 107 and 262.
• 8. Oswald Külpe, 1862-1915, Philosopher and Psychologist, Epistemology and Natural Sciences, Lecture given on 19 September 1910 at the 82nd Assembly of German Natural Scientists and Medical Doctors, Leipzig 1910.
• 9. Poem translated by Norbert Mulholland.

This single lecture is the 7th of 11 lectures in the lecture series entitled, Spiritual Science as a Treasure for Life, published in German as, Geisteswissenschaft als Lebensgut. It is also known as, The Evil, and, Evil in the Light of Anthroposophy.

Basically, what we have to deal with today is an ancient issue for mankind: the issue of the origin of wickedness and of evil in the world. And though in our time many people are of the view that, fundamentally, this question cannot be defined any further, yet the human soul feels compelled to bring it up time and again. For this question is indeed not one that rises up to our soul just from theoretical or scientific viewpoints; it is far more of a question that human souls are confronted with step after step in life, because their lives are embedded in goodness, in doing good, but also in evil and wickedness. On the one hand, one might say, the whole history of human thinking and reflection unfolds, in order to fully persuade us that our questions have always been issues for the deeper spirits in human development. On the other hand, we can study significant and prominent thinkers of the nineteenth century and of our time, and we will find that even with these prominent thinkers a halt was called to all philosophy, to all striving towards knowledge, precisely when faced with this issue. So today, we wish to try and consider what arose from the lecture cycle this winter about Spiritual Science, as the basis from which perhaps we can approach some way to finding an answer to the riddle of evil and wickedness. I say advisedly “we can approach,” since I have often expressed that this significant question must be addressed in a wholly particular way: Spiritual Science does not only open that existence to our sight which cannot be reached by external science, but in a certain way it also makes it decisive. And we may perhaps be able to feel about such a question, that it is one that easily throws up the highest questions, as they are usually thrown up, when one is at the start of striving for knowledge in a certain way. That leads to real striving for knowledge, and often it only shows the initial steps on the path, through which one can gradually approach a solution to the major riddles of life.

First of all, permit me to raise one point in advance, that should make clear how deeply this question has occupied the hearts and souls of significant thinkers throughout long ages. We can go far back into human development; but first we would like to refer to thinkers in the last centuries before the foundation of Christianity in Greece: to the Stoics, that group of remarkable thinkers which, following the views of Socrates and Plato, tried to answer this question: how should human beings behave, so that their behaviour corresponds to their deepest being, to their previously prescribed and recognisable purpose? This can be designated as the fundamental question for the Stoics. And as an ideal for humanity, that strove to insert its purpose in the universe accordingly, the ideal of the wise surfaced before the soul vision of the Stoics.—It would take us too far, if we were to exhaustively portray the ideals of the Stoics, and how this all is connected with the general stoical world view. But one point at least must be raised, that in Stoicism an awareness came into play, that human development was going towards an ever clearer and clearer self-aware human being, in order to work upon the human consciousness of the I. This was said in the stoic manner: this I, through which humanity is enabled to insert itself in full clarity in the world, this I, can be darkened, and can at the same time deaden itself; and this deadening happens if a human being allows feeling life to enter too strongly into the surging wave-play of imagination and perception. To the Stoics, if a human being were to allow the clarity of the I to be submerged, to be befogged by the being of pain and emotion, this seemed a kind of spiritual impotence. For this reason, for the Stoics, holding back the pain and emotion within the human soul, and striving for peace and equilibrium, led to freedom from the spiritual impotence of the soul.

We can see what must often be raised here, as the first step on the path to knowledge of the spiritual world, which also consists of this: that the wild waves of the being of pain and emotion, that at the same time create a spiritual impotence, are held back, so that the clarity of soul vision is extracted from the full experiences of the soul. What is here set out as the first steps on the path that leads into spiritual vision, all that swirled around before the Stoics. As regards Stoicism, I have tried to bring to the fore precisely this side of Stoic being in the new edition of my “World and Life Views in the Nineteenth Century,” since it is still only little worked upon in the history of philosophy. In the matter just described, conquering pain, conquering sentiment appeared as an ideal before Stoicism. And that which inserts itself as wisdom in the development of the world, recognises in the meaning of Stoicism, that the development of the world was able to take it up. That world development was also shot through with wisdom, so its wisdom must also reach up into the flowing of cosmic wisdom.

Always, when the question surfaces: how does the human self position itself in the whole structure of the cosmic order?—Another question then arises: how does the cosmic order permit wisdom, (which humanity must assume, if it wants to embed itself into the cosmic order) to unite firstly with that which rules as evil in the widths of world experience, and secondly with what wickedness has set up in opposition to human striving for wisdom in the world?

Now, before the soul vision of the Stoics stood what was later called divine providence. How did a Stoic find himself then, with regard to this assumption of evil and wickedness? Something had already surfaced within Stoics, which even today can be put forward as a kind of justification of evil and wickedness, (if we do not want to penetrate into spiritual science itself, but only go up to the doors to the same). This arose before the Stoics as the need for human freedom. And now they could say to themselves: if a human should strive through his/her freedom towards the ideal of wisdom, the possibility must be offered to him/her also not to strive.

Freedom must reside in striving for the ideal of wisdom. But with this it must be allowed, that one can also remain behind with those features, from which one strives upwards; it must be granted that at the same time one can plunge into the being of sentiment and pain. Then, as the Stoics thought, they plunge down into a kingdom that is not their own human kingdom, but really a kingdom below their true humanity. And to want to reject the wise cosmic order, so that a human can plunge down into such a kingdom that is beneath him/her: doing that is so clever, as if one were to reject the wise cosmic order, since under humanity there is a kingdom of animal, plants and minerals. The Stoics knew that there is a kingdom into which a human being can plunge down, from which his wisdom is far removed: but if he/she can drag himself out of it, but it must be from his/her own free choice, his/her wisdom.

We can see: the concept that many people have who stand before the door to the answers laid out by Spiritual Science about the meaning of evil, already resided in ancient Stoic wisdom; and one cannot say that the grasp of evil as such has shown any real progress in later centuries. At the same time this can emphasise for us, how to go out and encounter a spirit, who was otherwise an exceptionally significant spirit, who lived in the time since the foundation of Christianity and who had a major influence on the forming of Western Christianity: to Augustine. Augustine too had to think over and research the meaning of evil in the world; and he came to a singular expression: that evil and real wickedness hardly exist, but they are simply something negative in that they are the negation of good. So Augustine said to himself: goodness is something positive; but in the end a human being in his/her weakness is not always able to perform it, so that goodness is limited. This limited goodness needs to be explained as something positive, as little as the shadows that are cast forth by the light, need to be explained as something positive. If one were to hear the Church Father Augustine speak about evil, so one might perhaps find such an answer naïve compared with what one might imagine is thinking that has progressed for a few centuries. But how things truly stand with regard to the question of the meaning of evil, can be set out before us, through the answer an erudite man gave precisely the same answer in our time: Campbell, who described the so-called “New Theology” and whose works in certain circles had created a great sensation. He too believes, that one cannot enquire about evil and wickedness, because they show nothing positive, but are simply something negative. We do not wish to get involved in hair-splitting philosophical deductions to refute the viewpoint of Augustine—Campbell. Since, for anyone who can think with an open mind free of prejudice, this response about the simple negativity of evil stands on the same ground as the answer someone might make and says: What then is cold? Cold is only something negative, namely the absence of heat. Therefore, one cannot speak of it as something positive. But if one turns around when it is cold, with no furs or winter clothes on, so one will then feel this negative as something very positive! This image should make it fully clear, how little one straightens things out with this answer that truly does not go beneath the surface, and which indeed even major philosophers of the nineteenth century have given: that with regard to evil and wickedness we have nothing to do with anything positive. It may be that in this regard, we have nothing to do with anything positive; but this “not positive” is precisely as negative as cold is compared with heat.

Now we could put forward a whole group of other thinkers, who through the preparation of their own soul life, one would like to say, came close to what Spiritual Science now has to state. For an example of such, one could put forward Plotinus, the Neo-Platonist, who lived in post-Christian times and still followed the principles of Plato; and with him also put forward at the same time a large number of other thinkers who have thought about evil and wickedness in the world. They tried to make the following clear: that a human being is put together from a spiritual and a material-bodily nature. By plunging down into the bodily, a human being shares in the characteristics of matter, which from the outset creates obstacles and limitations in opposition to the activity of the spirit. In this plunging down of the spirit into matter lies the very origin of evil in human life; but therein also lies the origin of evil in the outer world.

That such a view has not just been considered simply in the heads of individual thinkers as a satisfactory answer to this major question about the significance of evil and wickedness in the world, even though it is greatly widespread, can explain a comment that I will not suppress, because maybe it will make our situation more precisely clear. I will refer to a thinker from an entirely different region: to the significant Japanese thinker, who was a pupil of the Chinese thinker Wang Yang Ming: namely Nakae Toju. For him everything that constitutes experience of the world, consists of two things, of two entities on could say. For him, one entity is this, that he looks up to as to the spiritual, and it permits the human soul to take part in the spiritual: this entity he called Ri. Then he looked at what bodily forms a human being, and which permits the bodily to take part in everything through which is it constructed from matter: and that entity he called Ki. And from the particular juxtaposition of Ri and Ki all beings arose, according to him. For this thinker from the East, who lived in the first half of the seventeenth century, mankind is partly made of Ri and of Ki. But, because the human soul must plunge down with its Ri into Ki in its experience, from Ki the will streams out against it—and with will comes desire. Thus, the human soul in its life is involved in willing and desiring, and so it stands before the possibility of evil.

This thinker from the East, who lived a reasonably short time before us, as was said, in the first half of the seventeenth century, is not far removed from what in Western lands, at the time of Neo-Platonism, of Plotinus for example, one tried to set forth as the origin of evil: humanity's involvement in matter. We shall see later that it is important to refer to this in this way, in order to answer the question of the origin of evil with the involvement of humanity in matter. Precisely this comes to meet us in the most remote circles of human thinking. A thinker of the nineteenth century, who truly was one of its most significant ones, tried to examine evil and wickedness, and I would like to briefly portray the main points of his thinking. He saw in the world around him, part evil, part human wickedness, and he stood before evil and wickedness as a philosopher, who had trained himself in depth about the characteristics of human nature in particular: Hermann Lotze, one of the most significant thinkers of the nineteenth century, whose very significant Microcosm for example, amongst others, described meaningful philosophical works for the nineteenth century. Let us try to call up others before our souls, from amongst our most significant contemporaries, who like Hermann Lotze stood before the issue of evil. He said to himself: evil does not try to deny its existence. How have we attempted to answer the question of evil? For example, it has been said, that evil and wickedness must be there in life; since only through learning how the human soul struggles out of evil, can we be educated. Now Lotze was no atheist, but one who assumed God as living and weaving throughout the world, so he said: how should one then put the idea of education about evil and wickedness? One must assume that God has used evil and wickedness, in order to develop humanity and to elevate it to the free use of its soul. That could only happen, if humans were to organise this inner working for themselves, that is organise our working the way out of evil, and only through this, then learn to recognise one's own true being and its true worth.

Against this Lotze objected at the same time: whoever gives such an answer, does not take account of the animal kingdom first of all, into which in truth not only evil but also wickedness have entered comprehensively. How does cruelty rise up to meet us in the animal kingdom, how does everything, that is taken up in human life, and which can become the most fearsome burden, come to meet us everywhere in the animal kingdom! But whoever wants to lead us to the animal kingdom in this field as regards education, can they not also run into the same animal kingdom issues? So Lotze turned away from the idea of education. In particular he drew attention to the fact that omnipotence of God would contradict this idea of education; since it was only possible then, Lotze thought, to extract the best in a being from the worst: once the worst had been given. But that would contradict the omnipotence of God: first we must work our way out of the worst, at the same time as preparing to be able to build goodness thereupon. So Lotze turns around to say: maybe one should consider more like someone who says that whatever is evil, what is bad, is wickedness. This arises not through the omnipotence of God, nor through the will of any conscious being; but evil is connected with that which exists in the world, in the way for example that the three angles of a triangle that add up together to 180º, are related to a triangle. So, if God wanted to create a world, he must conform to that which is true without him. So any world that he wanted to create is perforce connected with wickedness and evil. So, he must, if he wanted to create a world, prepare evil and wickedness along with it.—Against this Lotze objected: but then we limit what we can properly assume is the working and weaving of a divine being through the world. Since, when one observes the world, then one must say: according to general laws, according to which the appearances of the world can be thought through, it is very likely that it could be thought of without evil and wickedness. If we observe the world, we must say at once, that wickedness contravenes real freedom; so it must be from arbitrariness that freedom was called into being by the divine being.

We could add still other matters that Lotze and other thinkers have said on the problem and riddle of evil—Lotze is mentioned here only as being typical. I will only draw your attention to that to which Lotze came to in the end, because that will be important for us later. So Lotze turned against the German Philosopher Leibnitz, who had written a “Theodysee,” that was a justification of God against evil, and had come to the view that this world, even if it also contained much evil, was still the best possible of all worlds. Because if it was not the best one possible, Leibnitz thought, then either God did not know the best possible world—and that conflicts with his all- knowingness; or else he must not have wanted to create it, which conflicts with his all-goodness; or he must not have been able to do so—and that conflicts with his omnipotence. Now, Leibniz says, since in thought one cannot conflict with these three principles of God, one must assume that the world is the best one possible.—Now against this Lotze objected: in any case one cannot speak of an omnipotence of God, since in the world, where evil exists and the wicked reigns, this would be held to be outflowing from God. Therefore, one must say, as Lotze thought, Leibnitz has limited the omnipotence of God and by doing so won for himself the teaching of the best of all possible worlds.

Now, Lotze thought, there is still a way out. One must say: in general, when we observe the cosmos one can see overall order and harmony; evil and wickedness can only be seen in the details. So Lotze said: but what can a viewpoint give, which depends solely from the vision of humanity? Since about a world, where in general and as a whole, order and harmony command, so as to be able to astound us, and where in details evil and wickedness show themselves as black spots, one could also use the expression: what does it say, when in general and as a whole, order and harmony command in a world, and in details everywhere evil and wickedness is to be found? Here Lotze thought—and this was the culmination of his experience to which we wanted to refer-, one should rather say this one thing: evil and wickedness are indeed in the world. It must be wise that wickedness is there alongside excellence, and evil alongside good; it is just that we cannot see this wisdom. And so we are obliged to accept evil and wickedness beyond the boundaries of our knowledge. It must indeed be wisdom, which is not human wisdom Lotze thought: wisdom we cannot reach and which justifies evil. So Lotze transposed the wise concepts of evil and wickedness into an unknown world of wisdom.

At least I have expressly made these arguments, which for many will seem more or less pedantic, because they show us with what weapons humanity tried to approach the concept of evil and wickedness in philosophical thought, and how here we have found this confession time and again: these weapons have proven themselves to be completely blunt against such an enigma, which we come up against step by step in life; and even as Lotze says, they are completely unsuitable.

Now there is also another thinker, who tried to explore even further than Plotinus did into this, that is, in fact into the underground of being, which can only be reached after a certain development of the soul aimed at uplifting it to higher faculties of knowledge. Such a thinker was Jakob Böhme. And if one approaches Jakob Böhme, one approaches certainly a spirit of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, into which not many nowadays even wish to penetrate, since today he is seen more as a kind of curiosity. Jakob Böhme tried to penetrate into the depths of the world and its appearance up to the point where he felt something like a kind of Theosophy rising up in himself, as a kind of vision of God in his own inner being; and he now tried to make clear to himself, how wickedness and evil are to be pursued into the deepest underground of the world, and how evil and wickedness are not something simply negative, but are in a certain way rooted in the underground of the world and of human existence. Jakob Böhme saw the divine being as something, that in him, as he said—we must first of all become accustomed to his way of expressing himself—one must enter “amicably.” A being that allows its activity to flow out into the world at the same time, could never manage to grasp its own self. This activity must, one would like to say, hit up against something. Basically, each morning in waking up we perceive this to a small degree, and that is what Jakob Böhme put into his imagination. When we wake up, we are in a position so to speak, to unfold our soul-spiritual being to an unlimited extent from our soul-spiritual activity. There we hit up against our environment with our soul- spiritual activity. Through this, that we hit up against our surroundings, we become aware of ourselves. In general, a human being is only self-aware in the physical world, in that he hits up against things. The divine being cannot be such that it hits up against others. It must set up its adversary, or as Jakob Böhme stated in several expressions, its “no” against its “yes” for itself. It must limit its endlessly out-flowing activity in itself. That is…it must “amicably” distinguish, it must at the same time at a certain point create its own opposite on the surrounding circle of its activity; so for Jakob Böhme it was necessary for the divine being, in order to become self-aware, for it to create its own adversary. Now through taking part in the being of a creature, Jakob Böhme thought, not only that which streams out of the diving being, but from what the divine being had to create necessarily as its adversary, wickedness arises: evil above all arose in the world. The divine being set itself up against its own adversary, in order to become self- aware. Therefore, we cannot speak of evil and wickedness, but only of the necessary conditions of the divinity for becoming self-aware. But since creatures arose, and those creatures are not simply embedded in out-flowing life, but take part in the adversary, evil and wickedness have arisen.

Certainly, such an answer cannot be satisfactory to those who attempt to penetrate through spiritual science into the secrets of existence. This is set out here solely in order to show to what depths a sensible thinker goes, if he researches the source of evil in the world. And accordingly, I could also add much that could show us more than what we have found shining back from the world as an answer, when we try and draw close to enigmas, amongst which are wickedness and evil. If we now try and relate to what at the same time arises before us as a confession of one of the most prominent thinkers of the nineteenth century, as a confession by Lotze, we can say something like the following. Lotze is of the view, that there must be such wisdom somewhere, which justifies evil and wickedness. But mankind is limited in its capacity for knowledge; it cannot penetrate to that wisdom.—Are we not standing before, what we have often been forced to mention: that it is a beloved prejudice of our own time, to take our capacity for knowledge as it once was, and to hardly to reflect upon the fact that something could come out of the objects which are in our daily lives; something that could rise above itself, in order to have insight into other worlds, more than the simple world of the senses and the understanding related to the senses? Maybe it has already arisen before us, so that we are unable to find the answers to significant questions such as the origin of evil, because with regard to knowledge that turns to the senses and to the understanding that is related to the sense world, it spirals upwards above and away from this knowledge towards another knowledge. Along the path a way must be found, of which I have often spoken here, a way along which the human soul triumphs over that which is our everyday and usual scientific viewpoint. We have often spoken of the possibility that the human soul struggles to release itself from its bodily nature, that it really can perform a spiritual chemistry, that even releases the soul-spiritual element in mankind from the bodily, just as in outer chemistry, hydrogen is released from water. We have spoken of this: when a human being so releases his/her soul-spiritual nature from the bodily-corporeal one, so that it can rise up to the spiritual and that its bodily nature stands over against the soul-spiritual, so when the soul-spiritual is outside the body and is able to perceive in a spiritual world, then it can see into the depths of the world through direct experience, not within but outside of its body, as far as this knowledge is accessible to him/her. Maybe we should ask ourselves here: what then comes to meet us, when we truly try to walk along this path of spiritual research, the path that has often been described here, and which is set out extensively in my book “How does One Achieve Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?” What are the experiences one arrives at, when one really follows this path, in order to become a participant in super-sensible worlds? Now it will specially interest us, how what we usually call evil in everyday life positions itself on this path. We only need to look somewhat into everyday evil, what people call evil in everyday life. There it emerges, when a spirit researcher begins on his/her path, in order to rise up to soul-spiritual worlds, in order to truly come out of the bodily with his/her soul-spiritual being and to perceive free of the body, that everything that he/she must look back upon as evil, yes even upon imperfection in life, sets the hardest obstacles on his/her path. The most difficult hindrances come from that which one must look back upon as something imperfect. With this I do not want to say that the arrogant teaching follows logically: that anyone who achieves vision in the spiritual world as a spiritual researcher must be called a perfect human being. This should not be understood at all through saying this. But it should be repeated, what was once very forcefully emphasised: that the path to spiritual research is martyrdom in a certain sense, and it is so precisely on the basis that in the moment in which one comes out into the soul-spiritual from the bodily and takes part in the spiritual world, one looks back upon one's life with its imperfections and now knows: you bear these imperfections with you as a comet bears its tail. You bore them in yourself in other lives and must compensate for them in later lives. What you have stepped over until now, without having an awareness of it, now you can see.—This tragic insight into that which we are in everyday life depends on how a human being seeks out the way upwards to the spirit world. If it does not depend upon this, then it is not the true path to the spirit world. Of this act one must say: a certain seriousness of life starts, when one steps up into the spirit world. And if man gains nothing else, at least one conquers this one thing: that one can see one's own evil and one's own imperfections with endless clarity. So, one might say: one conquers an experiential knowledge of evil and imperfection with the very first steps that one takes upwards into the spirit world.

Where does this come from? When we look closer to see where it comes from, we find in this the essential feature of all human evil, so to speak. In my last book “The Threshold of the Spiritual World” I tried to refer to precisely this essential feature of evil, as far as it proceeds outwards from mankind. The common essential feature of all evil is none other than selfishness.—If I wanted to prove this in detail, what I will now set out here, I should have to speak for several hours; but I will only set this out and each person may then follow up for themselves with the further run of thoughts that follow as a consequence. They will also be followed up on in the next lectures, where we shall speak of the “Moral Basis of Human Life.” Basically, all human evil comes forth from what we call selfishness. We shall go and follow through from the smallest details, which we regard as human slip-ups, to the strongest crimes, that are human imperfections and human evil, regardless of whether they are portrayed to us as apparently arising more from the soul or apparently more from the bodily: the common essential feature, that comes from selfishness is universally present. We find the true meaning of evil, when we think of it as bound up with human selfishness; and we find all striving outwards and over imperfections and evil, when we see this striving upwards in the struggle against what we call selfishness. A great deal of careful thinking has been done over some ethical principle or another, over some moral basis or another; but the deeper we plunge into ethical principles and moral foundations, precisely this shows us that selfishness is the common root of all human evil. And so we might say: the more a human being works him/herself free of evil here in the physical world, the more he/she overcomes selfishness.

Now this result leads to another one just behind it; and it is so made one might say, that it is almost oppressive in spiritual investigation, truly oppressive. So what should one then develop, when one seeks to find the way up to the spiritual worlds, to those worlds, that one must look at with the soul- spiritual outside of the body?

When you take this all together, with what I have referred to as soul exercises in the run of these lectures, and which must be used in order to penetrate into the spiritual world, you will find that they run on, in order to strengthen certain soul characteristics, which the soul has in the sense-world, that make the soul stronger and more powerful, so it can set itself up more and more independently. Now what comes out in the physical-sense world as selfishness, that must be strengthened, must be made more intensive when a human being steps up and into the spiritual world. Since only in a strengthened soul, which strengthens those powers in itself that are its very own, which are in its Ego, and are rooted in its I, only such a soul can rise up to the spiritual world. Precisely that which a human must set aside, who wants to appropriate moral principles for the physical world, must be strengthened on the way to the spirit world. A significant mystic made the following statement:

When a rose decorates itself,
It also decorates the garden.

This is certainly true up to certain limits. But in human life selfishness also goes forth, if the human soul is only seen as a “rose” that decorates itself. But for the spirit world, that is perfectly valid. In the spirit world what lies in the expression: “When a rose decorates itself, it also decorates the garden” is present to a higher degree. If the soul rises up to the spirit world, and there it is all the more a useful tool, the more it has been strengthened in itself and has worked outwards on what lies in its inner fullness. Just as one cannot use an instrument that is imperfect, so can the soul itself not use what it has not fully driven out: what lies in it from its I, from its ego.

From this comparison, which takes us away from all facile phrases and leads us into the actual facts that should not be concealed, we now see that this spiritual world stands in relation to the physical sense-world: that the latter must make the former its own task completely. If a human being could only live in the spirit world, then he/she would only be able to develop inner faculties because of the law which must be valid: “When a rose decorates itself, It also decorates the garden”; he/she could not develop those faculties that would bring him/her together with other people, and with the whole world as a benefactor. We must find our abode in the physical world that enables us to overcome selfishness. Otherwise we have no duty to be benefactors in the world, except when we fundamentally educate ourselves away from selfishness, if I may use a trivial expression.

Now the same thing that a spiritual researcher finds to be definitive, namely the strengthening of his/her soul in order to rise up to the spiritual world, that same thing is equally definitive when a human being goes through the gate of death in a natural way, and goes into that world that lies between death and a new birth. There we transpose ourselves into a world, which a spiritual researcher has also reached through his/her soul development. There we must bring the characteristics that the soul has allowed to become strong in itself, which make the sentence true within the soul that runs: “When a rose decorates itself, it also decorates the garden.” In the instant in which we go through the gate of death, we enter into a world, in which our I comes to its highest elevation and strengthening. What we have to do in that world, we will hear in the lecture: “Between Human Death and Rebirth.” Now reference should only be made to this, that in this spiritual world, in essence only that which the soul has itself sent in arrives into this spiritual world, in accordance with what it has experienced in previous earthly lives, in order to structure the following. It must, to the extent that it corresponds to its destiny, primarily be concerned with itself, in the spiritual world between death and a new birth.

When we observe the human soul in this way, then the following appears to us from two different viewpoints. The way how selfishness can be transformed into becoming a benefactor appears in its meaning for the physical-sense world, since this is the large training ground, where the one must come out from the other, so that it may be something of value for the larger circles of existence. And the world between death and rebirth appears to us as that in which the soul must live with more power, and for which the soul would immediately be useless, it were to enter into this world weak and not empowered in this way.

What follows thereupon, that the soul has these two characteristics?

It follows from this, that a human must in fact protect him or herself from that which in one field, in one world is excellent, namely the lifting up of the inner soul into another world so as to somehow use it at the highest level to achieve the spiritual world; but that must be stricken by evil and by the worst, if a human permits him or herself be penetrated by what he/she must live out of as his/her being in the physical-sense world: what is useful to him/her as worthy preparation for the kingdom of the spirit. Thus we must precisely be strong in the spirit between death and new birth, in the strengthening and empowering of our I, with which we can prepare for ourselves such a physical sense being, so that in outer existence, in the acts and thoughts of the physical world we can be as unselfish as possible. We must use our selfishness before our birth in the spiritual world to work upon ourselves; we must look upon ourselves in such a way that we can become unselfish in the physical world, that is to say, moral.

Here, at this point lies everything that one could name as the most valuable for a person who wants to penetrate into the spiritual world. In fact, one must be clear, that one sees one's own evil and imperfection not otherwise than as a shadowy outline, when one is in the spiritual world. That is what shows us, that we must remain connected to the sense world, and how our karma, our destiny must bind us to the sense world, until we have broken through into the spiritual worlds so far that we are able to live not only with ourselves alone, but with the whole world. It shows as if on a screen, how things stand with evil, what is essential in spiritual progress, namely self- perfecting: that must be used on the things of outer life. Trying to make spiritual progress is not something we can allow to cease. That is our duty, far more. And that duty is development for humanity, which is the law for all other living beings. But evil is using directly in outer life, that which is fitting for spiritual development. These two, outer physical life with its morality must necessarily place a second adjacent world, next to that towards which the soul strives inwardly, if we wish to approach the spiritual world.

Now there is something present however, that could appear to be a contradiction. But one would like to say, the world lives in such living paradoxes. It must be said: one must strengthen oneself in the soul; precisely the ego, the I must become stronger in order to penetrate into the spiritual world. But if a spiritual step up were only to develop selfishness, then it would not get very far. But what does that mean? It means: one must enter into the spirit world without selfishness; or rather that one cannot enter without selfishness—which each of us who enters into the spiritual world must painfully acknowledge, so one must have all selfishness so objectively before one, that one sees one's own selfishness, to which one is bound in the outer world. One must also consider how to become an unselfish person using the means of the physical life, because one no longer has the opportunity in the spiritual world to become unselfish, because there one arrives at the strengthening of the soul life. That is only an apparent contradiction. Even when we enter the spiritual world, even when we go through the gate of death into the spiritual world, we must live there with what is present as strength in our inner being. But we cannot achieve this, if we cannot achieve this through selfless life in the physical world. Selflessness in the physical worlds is mirrored as the correct selfishness that raises value in the spiritual world. We can see how difficult the concepts become, as we near the spiritual world. But now one sees at the same time, what human life can involve. So now let us assume that a human being comes through birth into physical being. In that case, it means, that if that being that was in the spirit world before birth or conception, between the last death and the present birth, is clothed in the physical body, then the possibility is present that the person with this, which must at the same time be the life force of the spirit world, pulls through to its physical body unjustifiably; that the soul strays into the bodily, in that it brings down into the physical world that which is good in the spirit world. Then, what is good in the spirit world becomes evil, becomes wickedness in the physical world! That is a significant secret of existence, that a human can bring down what it necessarily needs in order to be a spiritual being, what in a certain sense can be portrayed as its highest being for its spiritual being, into the physical world, and that its highest and best spiritual nature can become the deepest error in the physical sense world.

Through what does evil enter life? Through what is so-called crime in the world?

It is present through the fact that a human being permits his/her better nature, not the worse one, to plunge down into the physical-body, which as such cannot be evil, and to develop those features there, which do not belong in the physical and bodily but belong precisely in the spiritual. Why can we humans be evil? Because we should be spiritual beings! Because we must come into the position, as soon as we live our way into the spirit world, to develop those features, which become bad, if we use them in the life of the physical sense world. If you allow those features which are lived out in the physical world as cruelty, malice for its own sake and others, to be taken out of the physical sense world, and let the soul be penetrated by them and live them out in the spirit world instead of the physical sense world, then there they will take us further, towards perfecting characteristics. That a human being uses the spiritual in the opposite way in the sense world, that leads to its evil. And if he/she could not be evil, he/she could not be a spiritual being. Since the characteristics that can make him/her evil, he/she must have; otherwise he/she could never rise up to the spiritual world.

Perfection lies herein, that a human being learns to penetrate himself/herself through and through with the insight: you should not use the features that make you into an evil human being in physical life, not in this physical life; since as much as you use them here, so much you take away from the empowering characteristics of the soul for the spiritual, so much you need to awaken yourself to the spiritual world. There these characteristics are in their correct place. So we see, as spiritual science shows, that evil and wickedness through their own nature indicate that we must assume a soul-spirit world alongside the physical world. Then why do the human faculties of knowledge of someone like Lotze or other thinkers freeze, when they observe the sense world and say: we cannot penetrate into the origin of evil and wickedness? Because of what is present—a capacity for knowledge that cannot penetrate to the spiritual world—, because it cannot enlighten evil starting from the physical world, because it is a misuse of powers that belong in the spirit world! No wonder also, that no philosopher, who has a viewpoint from the spirit world, can find the essence of evil in the physical sense world! And if one has a tendency to penetrate from here into a further world, in order to find the origin of evil, then also does one not come to any knowledge of outer evil, of that which we encounter as badness and imperfect in the outer world, such as for example in the animal world. So, we must be clear, that evil in human behaviour arises from this, that what for a human being is great and perfect in one world, as soon as it is uprooted into another world, it is changed over into its opposite. But when one considers evil independently of humanity in the world, the evil that flows through the animal world, then one has to say: we must then be clear upon this, that not only beings like humans are present, who through their life, bring down what belongs in the spirit world and there is great, and bear them into another world where it is out of place. Other beings must also exist—and a glance onto the animal world shows us also, that apart from humanity other beings must exist, which in the region, where humanity cannot take its evil, now bear their wickedness and so create evil. That means, that we are led by the knowledge of where the source of wickedness lies, at the same time to recognise that not only can humanity insert itself as imperfect in the world, but also that other beings are there, which can bring imperfections into the world. And so we say that it is no longer incomprehensible, when a spiritual researcher says: the world of animals is basically an outer formation of an invisible spirit; but in that spirit world beings are there, which have done before humanity itself, what mankind now does, in that it inserts the spiritual unjustifiably into the physical world. From this all the evil in the animal world has arisen.

It should be stated today, that people are wrong if they believe one can ascribe the impulse for evil to this involvement in matter, based upon material existence, because the soul is involved in a material existence. No, evil arises precisely thought the spiritual characteristics and through the spiritual possibilities of activity of humanity. And we must say to ourselves: where lies the wisdom in the world order, that wished to limit mankind to this, to only unfold goodness in the sense world—and not evil, as we see through it, as we have seen, that it necessarily must take power in order to go forward in the spirit world? Through the fact that we are a being that belongs both to the physical world and to the spiritual world, and that in us not the imperfection, but the perfection of spiritual law lies, we are placed in a position, like a pendulum, that can swing out to one side; and we are placed in the position to swing out to the other side, because we are spirit beings, which can bear the spiritual into the physical world, in order to realize evil there, as others, beings who perhaps higher than mankind are able to realize evil, which they have borne into the sense world, and which should belong solely in the spirit world.

I know very well that in such a portrayal of the origin of wickedness and evil something has been said today, which can only be enlightening to a small number of human beings, but who live ever more and more into the human soul life. For one will find that resolving the problems of the world overall is only possible, when we think of our world as one with a spiritual basis. Humanity may one day finish with the perfection of the sense world—there is also an illusion about such things; but with the imperfections, with wickedness and evil, it will never come to an end, if it does not want to seek, to what extent this wickedness and evil must be in the world. And one has insight, that it must be in this world, if one says to oneself: evil is only displaced into the physical world. If the characteristics which mankind uses unjustifiably in the physical world, and which there establish evil, were used in the spirit world, so mankind would go forward there.

I have no need to say that it would be entire nonsense, if someone were to draw conclusions from what has just been said: that you portray that only villains move forward in the spiritual world. It would be a complete travesty of what has been said. This is because these characteristics only become evil through their being used in the sense world, and they undergo a kind of immediate metamorphosis if they are used in the spirit world. Whoever wishes to raise such an objection, resembles someone who says: so you maintain that it is entirely good, if a human being has the strength to smash a watch? Certainly it is good if he has that strength; but he does not need to use that strength to smash the watch. If it is used to cure humanity, then it is a good power. And in this sense, one must say: the powers that a human being allows to flow into evil, are only evil in that place; used right in the right place, are they good powers.

It must lead us deep into the secrets of human existence, if one can say: through what is mankind evil? Through its using the powers granted to it for its perfection, in the incorrect place! Through what is wickedness, is evil in the world? Through humans using forces that are lent to them in an unsuitable world.

In our present time one could say at once: for the underlying soul there is a distinct tendency present to incline towards the spirit world. A more precise intimate glance onto the nineteenth century and on up to our present time could teach us this. Against this in the nineteenth century amongst the philosophers there also came into play what has been called pessimism, a world view that immediately looks at the wicked and to the evil present in the world, and draws the conclusion some individuals have already drawn it—, that this world cannot be seen as good overall, that something other is required of mankind, than being led to its end. I will only refer to Schopenhauer or to Eduard von Hartmann, who both saw the solution for mankind, in that they said: an individual can only find his/her salvation in the rise of world processes, but not in a personally satisfying conscious purpose. But I would like to refer to something else: that the soul in the age of matter is imprisoned in materialism, and that in this time the strongest hopelessness must arise towards the world's evils, towards the wicked; since materialism rejects a spiritual world, out of which light shines upon us, to give its meaning to evil and to the wicked. If this world is rejected, it is entirely necessary that this world is hopelessly covered in filth by evil and wickedness in their purposelessness.—I will not refer to Nietzsche today, but to another spirit of the nineteenth century. From a certain viewpoint I also wish to refer to a tragic thinker of the nineteenth century: from the viewpoint that a human being must necessarily live with their time, in that he/she is inserted into their own time. That is a property of our being, that our being finds itself together with the being of our time. So it was only natural that in the latest times, that deeply formed spirits, yes, precisely those who had an open heart for what took place in their surroundings, we deeply gripped by that world description, which only wants to see the outermost appearance of the alpha and omega of world existence. But such spirits can often give in to an illusion, that one can go through the world inconsolably, if one must look into that world existence which must be portrayed as evil—and cannot look up to a spiritual world, in which evil is justified, as we have seen.

A spirit who, I would like to say, went through the entire tragedy of materialism, even though he was not a materialist himself, was Philipp Mainländer, born in 1841. One could call him a follower of Schopenhauer, if one observes things outwardly. In a certain sense he was a deep spirit, but a child of his time, so that he could only look upward to what the material world exposes. Now materialism worked indeed, enormously to imprison precisely the very best souls: we should not be deceived about this. Yes, the humans, who are not concerned with what is around them, what the times and their spirit offer, and who live selfishly in a religious confession that they have once found pleasant, the “most religious” people are sometimes in this point the most selfish of all; they reject any rising above the things which they love, and do not concern themselves about anything else, other than what they know. One can find this answer again and again, if one refers to the tragedy of numberless human beings: yes, cannot old Christianity satisfy souls much more than your spiritual science? Such questions are put by spirits who do not go along with the times and intolerantly reject everything that should penetrate into cultural development for the salvation of mankind.

Philipp Mainländer looked around him, at what outer science, what our time was able to tell him from its materialistic viewpoint, and there he could only find a world filled with evil and mankind involved in wickedness. He could not deny it, since the pressure of this new world view was so strong that it hindered the soul from looking up to a spiritual world. So let us not try and conceal from ourselves here: why do so few people come to spiritual science? That is because, since the pressure of the prejudice of materialism, or as it is called more nobly, of monism is so powerful, it darkens the soul and prevents its penetrating into the spirit world. If the soul is left independent and to itself and is not dulled by materialist prejudice, then it will surely come to spiritual science. But the pressure is large, and from our time on, one can say: it is connected to the epoch, in which one can represent spiritual science before humanity with a few perspectives, because the desire of souls has become so strong, that spiritual science must find an echo in souls. In the second and third thirds of the nineteenth century that echo was unable to be present. Then the pressure of materialism was so strong, that even a soul striving towards the spirit such as that of Philipp Mainländer was held back. And so he came to a unique view: to the view that nothing spiritual can be found in the current world. We have in Mainländer in the nineteenth century a spirit before us, who only did not make a major impression on his contemporaries, because the spirit of the nineteenth century, despite its major progress in material areas, was a superficial spirit. But what a soul must feel in the nineteenth century, that Mainländer felt, even when he stood alone, because in a certain way he felt a kind of spiritual impotence regarding the removal of that which must leave one dissatisfied with a materialistic or monistic world view. One does not need to pick up and read the somewhat thick volume of Mainländer's “Philosophy of Salvation,” but only the reasonably small booklet by Max Seiling, in order to make a judgement about what I am saying now.

Philipp Mainländer looked out into the world, and he could only see under the pressure of materialism, what the senses and understanding portray. But he must assume a spirit world. But it is not there, he told himself; the sense world must be illuminated from itself. And now he came to the view that the spirit world of our ancestors was real, that once there was a divine spirit existence, that our soul was within a divine- spiritual existence, and that the divine existence from a former being has gone over into us, and that our world can only be there, because God had died before that spirit world died before us. So Mainländer sees a spirit world, but not in our world; but in our world he only sees a cadaver loaded with evil and wickedness, which can only be there, so that its destruction can be overcome, so that what led to God and his spirit world to die, should not enter into the destruction of the cadaver into nothingness.—Monists or other thinkers may laugh more or less at this; whoever better understands the human soul and knows how a world view can become the inner destiny of a soul, how the entire soul can adopt the nuances of a world view. He/she knows what a human being must experience, who, like Mainländer, was forced to transpose the spirit world into past times and was only able to see the material cadaver of the same left behind in the current world. In order to resolve the evils of this world, Mainländer had taken up this kind of world view. That he was more deeply involved in his world view than Schopenhauer or Nietzsche, than Bahnsen or Eduard von Hartmann, we can see from that fact that, at the time of finishing his “Philosophy of Salvation” in his fifty-third year, the thought came to him: your strength has been used lovelessly, since you more quickly offer what appears as your salvation of humanity, than when you still used it after the middle of the life in the body. That Mainländer thought with his world view with the deepest sincerity is shown from the fact that he, when he came to this thought: you now use more strength, when you pour out your power into the world and do not concentrate on the body. He really drew the conclusion, which Schopenhauer and the others did not draw, and died through suicide, and that is, a suicide through conviction.

Philosophers and others may look away from such a human destiny: for our time however, such a human destiny is endlessly significant, because it shows us how the soul must live, which can really pierce down into its depths, to that which as longing can resurrect in our time—how the soul can live and confront the problem of wickedness and evil in the world, and have not any vision into the world where spiritual light spreads out and illuminates the sense of wickedness and of evil. It was necessary that the human soul should develop the materialistic capacities for a period. One can also position in a certain future of spiritual life, I would like to say, under a “psycho-biological viewpoint,” a point of view of the soul life, and make clear to oneself, that only when lifted up to the spiritual, does what appears in a physical image, for example in animal beings, become valid for human beings. Certain animals can go hungry for a long time and also are hungry for a long time. Tadpoles for example, can bring about their rapid transformation into frogs through long hunger. Similar behaviour is also shown in certain fishes with long hunger, because back-bone building processes come into play, that make it possible to perform what they have to perform; they are hungry because they hold back the forces, they otherwise take in through taking in nourishment, in order to force a way into another form. That is an image that is suitable for use for the human soul: through centuries it has lived through people constantly talking about the “boundaries of human knowledge”; and even many who believe that they think spiritually, are nonetheless entirely devoted to materialistic imaginations—which are willingly called monistic today because people are ashamed of them—, and even philosophers are devoted to the maxim: human knowledge can do no more than make a halt, when it stands before the greatest riddles. The capacities that led them to everything, had to be trained for a period: that is to say that humanity must undergo a period of spiritual starvation. This was the time of the arising of materialism. But the powers that were held back in souls through this, they will now lead human souls to seek for the way into the spirit world in accordance with a psycho- biological law. Certainly one will find that human pondering had to take the form that we meet up with in Mainländer, who could no longer find the spirit world in the physical world, because materialism had taken him. He was forced to remain before the physical world: there he only had the power to visualise errors, and not that which underlies our world, that indeed gives us the possibility in find something out in our souls, that refers to the future just as the outer world refers to the past. It cannot be denied, that in a certain sense Mainländer was correct: what our world sets out all around us, are the remains of original development. Even present-day geologists have to admit today, that we, in that we wander across the earth, are walking away a cadaver. But what Mainländer could not show, that is, that we, to the extent that we are walking over a dead body, at the same time are developing something in our inner being, which is precisely a seed for the future, as that which is all around us is a bequest from the past. And to the extent that we look into this, what spiritual science is for individual souls, it can resurrect in us, that which Mainländer was not yet able to see, and therefore was forced to doubt.

So we stand at the watershed between two epochs: the epoch of materialism and that of spiritual science. And maybe nothing can prove it to us in such a popular form, as when we, if we correctly understand our soul, must live up against the spiritual epoch, as considering evil and wickedness, when we are able to lift up our sight to the illuminated heights of the spirit world. I have often said, that with such considerations one feels oneself in harmony with the best spirits of all ages, who have longed, as mankind must live in an ever-clearer manner as against the future. If one such spirit, with whom one feels in full harmony, made a remark about the outer sense world, that is like a call for spiritual knowledge, so we should also put together what today has been able to enter into our souls, and this should spark off a kind of transformation of such a remark.

Goethe let something be said in his Faust, that shows how a human being can lose their way away from the spirit. Mankind's distance from the spirit world is set out paradigmatically in a beautiful sentence with the words:

Whoever wants to know and describe the living,
Tries first of all to drive out the spirit,
Then he has the parts in his hand,
Except, sadly! only their spiritual bond is missing.

So, this is how things lie in a certain way for all knowledge of the world. It was the destiny of mankind, to devote itself to parts for a few centuries. But ever more and more one will perceive the absence of the spiritual bond as not only a theoretical deficiency, but as a tragedy of the soul. Therefore, spiritual researchers must today look into the soul overall, which the majority of souls do not know how to do themselves: and catch sight of the longing for the spirit world. And if we set our eyes upon something, such as illuminating the nature of evil and of wickedness, then perhaps we may extend Goethe's remark, in that we take the following as a summary of what was said.

Goethe thought that whoever wants to strive for a world view, should not stop at parts alone, but must see the spiritual bond above all. But whoever approaches as significant a life question as the riddle of evil and wickedness, he should say based on spiritual-scientific foundations, as a summary of his/her persuasion in accordance with his findings:

Whoever does not solve the soul riddle,
Remains in the simple light of the senses;
Whoever wants to understand life
Must strive towards spirit heights!