The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Dr. Steiner: What is now weighing upon my soul is the class schedule. It cannot remain as it has been. I very much regret it was not possible for me to see and hear more of the school. However, during the relatively long period when I was at the school nearly every day, I got a certain impression. This class schedule cannot remain as it is because it causes too much fragmentation and dispersion of our efforts and is, therefore, not rational. Of course, we can make a change only after we are clear about the direction of the change. For if today’s meeting is to be really fruitful, you must say everything you have to say about the subject. I do not mean you should speak only about the class schedule, as that will be the final result. What we need is for each individual member to completely say what he or she has to say. Let us begin with that.

A teacher wants more weeks for mathematics and physics in the eleventh grade.

Dr. Steiner: We cannot do that without bringing it into harmony with everything else. We first need an overview of modern languages in the various classes, as that definitely cannot remain as it is and everything else is connected with that.

A teacher wants to divide modern language instruction in the 8b class. A colleague would take the beginners and the class teacher the more advanced students.

Dr. Steiner: We cannot divide the classes in just any way we want. We can do that only if we approach the problem radically, so that we form groups according to ability. That is something we need to do, otherwise we will have an endless extension of the class schedule. The class schedule has taken on an impossible form. Only if we base our pedagogical methods entirely upon the development and understanding of human beings, can we achieve what is possible. It is easier to ruin what is good than it is to turn around what is bad. The bad is not so far away as its counterpart. It is certainly true, don’t you agree, that the class schedule is a monstrosity?

A teacher wants to have Greek and Latin class immediately after main lesson in the higher grades and to have it for two periods.

Dr. Steiner: That would be good, particularly if you gave it some color. You could handle the more formal things in one period and in the other, reading. In that case, it would be better to have two hours, one after the other.

It is not possible to maintain Greek and Latin unless we allow the children to decide, beginning at some grade, whether they wish to have French and English or Greek and Latin. That is something we need to do. We need to work toward enabling the children to pass their final examinations. We can’t do that other than by allowing them and their parents to decide whether they want to have Greek and Latin or French and English. Since we begin French and English in the first grade, there is no doubt we can offer some repetition of it for those older children who want Greek and Latin, if they desire that. Nevertheless, we must undertake this division.

A teacher: In what grade would this division occur?

Dr. Steiner: The desire to take Greek and Latin is the same as the desire to take the final examinations. The way things are today, we would have hardly any reason to offer Greek and Latin in the normal way, if we did not have students who want to work toward their final examinations and who also should have the benefits of the Waldorf School method.

A teacher: The students need French because it is included in the examination.

Dr. Steiner: Since we start teaching languages at the very beginning of elementary school, it would be sad if we could not repeat some of the instruction at a higher grade for those students who need to have Greek and Latin. We need to determine what we can eliminate from review. We cannot continue with things the way they are now. The class schedule is a monster and pedagogically incorrect.

A teacher proposes forming a group of beginners and a group of more advanced students for all the seventh and eighth grades. The way they are now grouped for modern language instruction, not much progress can be made.

Dr. Steiner: Elsewhere you find that the less capable children are left behind in the higher grades. You find that even in the elementary schools. Since we do not do that, we need to find another way. You will always have children who are more capable together with other children who are less capable. Those children who are unable to do the work disturb the class because they are bored. We must be somewhat more organized in our work. The first thing we can say is that they begin Greek and Latin in the fifth grade and that goes on to the ninth, tenth, and eleventh grades. Therefore, in the fifth and sixth grades, we must have all four languages, or at least Latin [and the modern languages]. That is how it must remain. Beginning in the seventh grade, and for all the following grades, those who have decided to take Latin and Greek as their main language and French only as a review will not be able to participate in handwork. They cannot take English then.

In the fifth and sixth grades there will be English and French and Latin or Greek as an elective. In the seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, and eleventh grades, they will only have a review of French, and those who do not take Latin and Greek will have their regular instruction in French and English.

Many teachers say that two hours is not enough for foreign language in the upper grades.

Dr. Steiner: That is why it would be good to group the classes. Of course, we cannot put those children who have absolutely no French or English together with those who wish to take the final examinations. But, what we are talking about are elementary school children, and they don’t take final examinations. So, where is the problem?

A teacher proposes a way of forming groups.

Dr. Steiner: That will not change anything for those taking Greek and Latin. Beginning in the seventh grade, the French review will take the place of handwork. Under these circumstances it must be possible for those who take Greek and Latin to have those classes immediately after main lesson.

A teacher: Couldn’t we wait until eighth grade to begin that?

Dr. Steiner: If we remain with the same number of class hours, then five years is certainly not too few for Greek and Latin. Since we will be using the handwork time for a review of French, we could offer more French for those students taking Latin and Greek. We could drop English in the seventh grade. However, if we offer an English class through the first six grades, then I would like to know how anyone could claim that the children would not learn enough English. If we teach English from the first through sixth grades, how could that possibly be too little? At most, the children might forget some things, but they will certainly not have learned too little if they have had English for six years. Normally, English is not taught more than six years. It is not more progressive to teach it from the age of twelve to sixteen. Then, it is more difficult than for the smaller children. If we teach it with some fire, if the instruction does not fall asleep, six years will be enough. That is the best time for it. They no longer have Latin, it would be only one year more at an unfavorable time.

A teacher: Could we offer a review of English?

Dr. Steiner: There could be at best a desire, for some occult or non-occult reason. That is something we could determine for the children. Such things could be done. However, we must first bring the class schedule into an acceptable form. We can do that only when we do not overfill it.

A teacher: A review of French would require many more hours for the students.

Dr. Steiner: That is not necessarily so. We would take the French periods from handwork. We would considerably limit the handwork class. We cannot continue to allow handwork to be as extensive as we have, because the class schedule would then become monstrous. We need to significantly decrease the amount of handwork instruction.

A teacher: Should we keep the same number of hours for Greek and Latin?

Dr. Steiner: For now we would remain with four periods per week. Now we should look at things from another perspective. If we want to bring the Latin and Greek classes into order, then we need to look at them differently. We could say that those students who have Latin and Greek in grades seven through eleven also have main lesson, and then Latin and Greek.

The next thing we need to look at is music. What is the situation there?

The music teacher: They have instruction in singing, choir, and orchestra, but not everyone comes to orchestra.

Dr. Steiner: Is that also in the morning? Couldn’t we reorganize the class schedule so that those children who have Latin and Greek would have main lesson from 8:00 until 10:00 or 11:00? Then they would have Latin and Greek four days a week directly afterward, or twice a week for two periods. In that case, we could take some time from other subjects in the morning. What would be the situation then? Could you teach more singing and eurythmy in the morning?

A eurythmy teacher: I would like to have the morning.

Dr. Steiner: You would not need to teach one hour of eurythmy and then an hour of tone eurythmy. It would be better to teach two hours of eurythmy, otherwise we will get lost. We need to be firmer in our plan. We need to get rid of this haphazard, whimsical way of working.

We would then have two hours of eurythmy, four hours of Latin and Greek, and also main lesson. Then we have voice and music. We still have the possibility of choir and orchestra. The music teacher: I have the feeling that the ninth grade needs more instruction in musical theory.

Dr. Steiner: I do not think it would be too much if you were to do that. We still have the problem of choir. That is something you should do separately. It would be possible to do singing in the mornings, and choir and orchestra in the afternoon. Thus, in the morning we would have main lesson, Latin and Greek, eurythmy, and voice. In the afternoon, we would have choir and orchestra. Those who have French and English should learn that while the others are learning Latin and Greek, so that things remain together. Handwork and gymnastics could be in the afternoon for the higher grades. In this way, we can create a class schedule.

If possible, we should teach gymnastics in the afternoon. Gymnastics is not exactly a time for resting. It is not good to group gymnastics with the other subjects. We could have two classes in the gym at the same time. I need to speak with the gymnastics teachers about the method. I have only made brief mention of that. In gymnastics, it is always possible to do the exercises so that two large groups can be formed. Recently, it was quite good to have gymnastics outside. It was clear that the boys cannot really control their bodies, that their arms dangle. The boys’ control of their bodies has clearly suffered from having had no gymnastics for three years. We cannot deny that.

When they have some free time, the children in the upper grades should perhaps find some work for themselves. We still have the question of religious instruction to consider and also shop. These are all things that need to be done in the afternoon. Art can also be done in the afternoon.

A teacher: The children have asked if they are required to learn stenography.

Dr. Steiner: There are a number of reasons why it should be required. Stenography only begins in the tenth grade. We could change things so that they have stenography for one period a week in the afternoons, but it would be required. It would be quite good if the children learned stenography.

The shop teacher: We wanted to teach shop in blocks, but the afternoons would not be enough.

Dr. Steiner: We need to see how things go with a proper plan. This has become urgent, and we must do that first. We will probably need a second teacher for that class, but we will have to have it in the afternoon.

The shop teacher: I do not want to drop the block approach. It has been very effective.

Dr. Steiner: You will find a way to continue instruction in blocks. If we do things so that main lesson comes first, then Latin and Greek second, and eurythmy and voice third, and that we do the other subjects in the afternoon, we can divide our time. We can put stenography where it fits. In connection with the other things, I think we could achieve our ideals so that main lesson is in the first two hours. Then I would certainly follow that with languages from 10:00 until 12:00. That does not fill every day, so we can also consider something else. The Independent Religious Instruction does not cause any difficulties in connection with the class schedule. It is still possible, with the exception of religious instruction, to have main lesson, languages, voice, and eurythmy in the morning for the lower grades.

The easiest thing would be to have handwork class in the afternoon, but it might be possible to exchange voice with eurythmy, so that the children do not have the same teacher every afternoon, although I do not think that would be the best thing to do. How many hours of handwork do we have? We have nineteen classes, so how many hours is that? If we have to divide classes, they should at least be in the same period. Then, it would not affect the class schedule. Because things are divided in a completely arbitrary way, without thought, we have an arbitrary class schedule. If eighth grade is divided, the same teacher should teach both sections. The class schedule has no firm contours.

A eurythmy teacher: We have divided nearly all the classes.

Dr. Steiner: We should hold the divided classes at the same time, otherwise the children will not be occupied. If the language teachers do not see that, we will be here all night long. If we divide a class in a subject, the children still need to have it at the same time. Any changes in the class schedule must be made in a meeting where I am present. Of course, we can relax things where there is a justifiable need, but we certainly cannot form the whole school irrationally. Do we really have to divide things so much? A eurythmy teacher: The classes are too large. It is hardly possible to work when there are more than thirty-two children.

Dr. Steiner: We need to divide them among the various teachers, but to hold the classes at the same time. Just give the other teachers the students they would like to have, and so forth. That can certainly be done, but it does need to be done. We are gaining a bad name because we are moving away from the spirit of the curriculum because of the class schedule.

What are you doing in orthopedic eurythmy? Is that also in the afternoon? I just wanted to know. It would be better to call it “eurythmic orthopedics” [curative eurythmy]. “Orthopedic eurythmy” has a little taste of “fallen angel” to it. Contradictio in adjecto [a contradiction in terms].

Now we have thirty-eight hours of handwork. The divided classes have to be given at the same time. That would be sixty-two hours. Why would it not be possible to stay with our plan? They need to be divided among four afternoons. These sixty-two hours could certainly be done in four afternoons.

A teacher: We can only do sixteen hours per afternoon.

Dr. Steiner: I only wanted to know how many hours we have and that is sixty-two. We could have four hours each of the four afternoons. In the best case, that would be sixteen hours, or forty-eight. We need to save fourteen hours. In order to do that, in the future we will have to teach the first four classes for two hours, one after the other, and for the remaining classes, one hour. We need to limit things somehow. We would then have twenty-two hours for the four lower grades. How many groups are there in the fifth through eleventh-grade classes? That would be twenty-one hours so that we now have forty-three hours. That is absolutely possible.

Those who want more time for practice could do that as an elective. If it is acceptable to the parents, we could add an elective. What happens in these handwork classes is a kind of recreation. They need to do the least there. The fact that there are schools that have four periods of handwork is a situation impossible for us. We’re not holding a school for girls here. If we were to go into such things, then it would be impossible for us to make a class schedule. We need to keep to an orderly schedule, so it is better when we don’t give in to such things. There is also a desire to have three times as many eurythmy periods, but we can only divide things upon an objective basis. No one would say that more would not be learned in two periods than in one. Even though there is an hour too little of handwork class, for arithmetic, we only have a quarter of the time that we need. It is just as justifiable to say that we need four times as much time for arithmetic as it is to say that we have one period too little for handwork. We could not give the children what they need to be human beings if we used that argument for everything. It is not used in connection with arithmetic. You could gain some time in the handwork class if you were to present it more efficiently and the children learn that they do not need a complete period to do everything. They could also use an extra half-hour in arithmetic. Our instruction needs to be efficient, as I said at the beginning.

Now I think that we have covered all the subjects.

A teacher: One of the religion groups needs to be put into the afternoon, since otherwise we would need one more teacher for religion.

Dr. Steiner: The number of teachers that the faculty can provide for teaching religion has been reached, partially because of time. We do not have anyone in Stuttgart.

A younger teacher: I would like to give that class.

Dr. Steiner: You would need to be here longer. You cannot do that. Perhaps it would be possible later if you still feel called to do it. For now, you have not been in Stuttgart and in the school long enough. It would not be possible.

(Speaking to Miss Röschl) If you did not already have seventeen hours, I would ask you to do it, but I am afraid to do so because of your hours.

(Speaking to another teacher) I was so dissatisfied with your instruction that I cannot take on the responsibility for it. You’ll have to excuse me, but after the disappointment you gave me, I just spoke bluntly, but after I observed your instruction, I really cannot take over the responsibility. Teaching religion is a very responsible position.

A teacher: I would like to give a class in religion.

Dr. Steiner: Perhaps in five years, if you work diligently until then. You need to live into such things. You cannot go into them without taking on the full responsibility. Imagine what it would mean if religious life were to flame up in you. Religious life needs to be kindled, and that can occur in many ways. How about you, Mr. Wolffhügel?

A teacher: I don’t think that is possible.

Dr. Steiner: I think you would be able to find your way to it. I need to be objective about this, and I think I could take on the responsibility if you and Mr. Baumann were to do it.

A teacher: I would need to prepare for both classes.

Dr. Steiner: Much preparation is necessary, as well as enthusiasm. I think that Mr. Wolffhügel is anxious in regard to the services. The religion class is something that needs to fit you, but the way you understand teaching, I think it would. My only question is whether you would be overburdened.

It would be best if it were somebody from school, but it can be somebody from outside. It is sad that it cannot be one of us. It is also strange that no one feels called to do this. I certainly value Dr. E. very highly for scientific things, but I would never give him a class in religion. No, I would not do that, but he is quite aware of how highly I value him.

It is difficult for Dr. R. (a theologian outside the school) who cannot even handle his own children. One who actually needs to be handled with the best level of pedagogy is beaten. If the boy remains in the school there for a half year, he will be ruined for life. The teacher beats him. His mother went to the teacher and wanted to speak with him. She began by saying to the teacher, “I do not want to speak to you as a teacher, but as a mother to another human being.” He replied with, “I will not allow you to speak to me as a human being.” She then went to the school director and told him about that. He told her, “Well, if you want to speak to a teacher in our school as a human being, then you cannot expect to be treated in any other way since that is a personal affront.”

That reminds me of something that happened once with a Russian woman at the German-Belgian border. She was returning from London to St. Petersburg. She got through Holland and at the German border she wanted to act like a Russian. The border control officer came to her and said that she would have to take her luggage down and she asked, “It’s so heavy, could you perhaps help me?” He replied with, “Help? Who do you think I am? Do you think I am a human being? I am a royal Prussian official and not a human being. If you were to go down to the market place, I would certainly offer to help you and carry your luggage, but here I am a royal Prussian official and I cannot help you get it down.”

Mr. Boy would be quite good, but he has not been here long enough to give religion instruction. You need to have been in anthroposophy longer in order to give the Independent Religious Instruction.

Who is speaking here in Stuttgart? H. would have the spirit and everything, but he does not have the temperament to be a teacher. He is also unknown among the anthroposophists. The groups are very large and we need to group them differently until we find someone. Today, it would only be beating our heads against the wall. What we see here are the symptoms of our overall difficulties. Now that we have all these institutions, the Waldorf School and the Association for Independent Cultural Life, we are in a situation where we actually need experts. We need experts in various areas. What is important in teaching is that the right person be at the right place. Under certain circumstances, seen purely externally, the teaching might not even look very good, but the personality as such is extremely important in this kind of teaching. There might be someone among the physicians. I could immediately accept that young man, N. There are also some among the theologians that I could easily trust to do this. I would never give G. a teaching position. Someone who writes such bad articles is certainly not destined to be a good Waldorf teacher.

A teacher: He has some good qualities.

Dr. Steiner: I met him recently. He is a nice young man, but he can’t do anything. There is no subject in which he could become a teacher. He knows really nothing about any subject, and that is the problem. He could never take over teaching a class, nor can he do something in any of the higher grades.

A teacher: He thinks that he will be coming to the Waldorf School as a teacher.

Dr. Steiner: No one would claim that he would become a Waldorf teacher if, when he is asked about what he can do, he replies German literary history.

A teacher: He misunderstood.

Dr. Steiner: His plan to go to Freies Geistesleben arose only after I had turned him down. I only told him that there is nothing available until Easter. I did not say that something would be available for him afterward. It would not be possible to say less. We will have to find another way.

A teacher: If I am to now change the class schedule, a change in the distribution of the teachers will not be necessary except for the consequences in regard to the parallel groups, will it?

Dr. Steiner: A change in the faculty will not be necessary if we do not decide to group things in languages differently than we already have. All the language classes could be at the same time, but they would be distributed on different days. We will have to have all the language classes at the same time, but not every class will have language from 10:00 until 11:00 every day.

There are two possibilities: either we will have language class for the whole school on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday from 10:00 until 12:00. We will have, for instance in the second grade, six hours of languages, thus, there are three days with two hours of language each day. They would be from 10:00 until 12:00 and would be held in the regular classroom. Right now, Mrs. E. has five other language periods in other classes on Monday through Saturday. It would still be possible to have just as many classes of language, but with other groups of students. We could do the main lesson as such from the first through eleventh grades, but now we would be able to group the students differently. Then, we would only have the same number of language classes, but they would be divided differently. It would not be possible to carry out such a radical change pedantically, and you would still have two or three weaker students.

A teacher: We would have to have an overview of which students that would be. We need to make a list divided into three levels.

Dr. Steiner: For the time we can leave it as it is. That is something we cannot do now. That can only be done at a time when I can be here for a few days. For now, you need to continue so that the language instruction remains with the same teachers.

The remaining voice lessons can be done in the afternoon. You can still give stenography from 12:00 until 1:00. The main thing is that we generally remain with what we have discussed, that the main instruction be given between 8:00 and 12:00. That is all there is now concerning the class schedule.

Are there any questions that have come up in regard to the things that were decided? That is the reason why we are here together.

There is a further question in connection with dividing a class for language instruction.

Dr. Steiner: We do not want to extend these divisions as they are ruining the organization of the school.

A teacher: Both classes have French at the same time.

Dr. Steiner: I do not wish to continue this division. I would like to hire Tittmann if we had enough money.

If we can get the proper control over the situation, that would bring about a major change. We must gain a fundamental control over the situation. A strong change will have an effect upon the main subjects, even upon the children’s attitude. The children will see that they need to take a number of things seriously. We will not be able to change that if we do not have a firm class schedule. It might be good if some of you who were interested would sketch the class schedule.

There is something else that I would like to come back to and that I am really very sad about, namely, K.F. We cannot do as we had planned. He is coming back. He is collapsing. He is getting sleepier, paralyzed.

Several teachers talk about K.F. and that he is falling behind.

Dr. Steiner: The problem is physiological. I would like to come back to my proposal that we put him in the other class because I think he would be shaken up a little there. We do not need to cure the metabolic residues that are causing the depression. He is a good and kind boy, but he cannot act differently. I do not expect very much of him. I do not think he will want to take Latin and Greek, and in particular I want Mr. X. to work with him. I am doing this not because I believe that he should [not] come back to you (the present class teacher), but because I believe that because of his metabolism, he needs this pedagogically. If you really want to have him with you, I would not take him away, but I would like to try it.

I would prefer if he had only men for teachers. Today, his father told me how he gets around his mother. He is really quite clever. I would like him to have only men as teachers and that he is not taught by a woman during the two periods he has in the morning. On the other hand, I also do not want to break your heart. The class teacher: I like him so much.

Dr. Steiner: Nevertheless, I would like to have him taught by someone else. If you do not want to let him go, well, that is your right, and I will bow to it. However, if we can find some means of helping him pedagogically, then we should do that.

The class teacher: I will send him to the other class on Monday.

Dr. Steiner: The change is something important for the boy, and you will get used to it.

The class teacher: I have had him for three years now.

Dr. Steiner: That is just it. I think the boy needs a change. I have known him for a long time, since he was born. His entire person is deteriorating. It is a continuous deterioration that is quite shocking. For that reason, I would like to do something that is important for him at this decisive moment. He is in danger of going insane.

(Speaking to the new class teacher) You need to work with him. You should not allow him to be undisturbed in any period. Shake him up. You need to work with the boy so that his attention is artificially aroused, as otherwise he will further deteriorate. He needs to know why he is coming into the other class and to understand that we want the change so that he will pull himself together. You need to make it clear to him in the same way as someone who finds himself in a foreign location. It needs to be a significant event for him. He has these things from his mother, but more strongly. The things that live in the bodies of the parents move into the souls of the descendants, particularly such illnesses that are connected with the residues of the metabolism. They lead to the formation of small tumors. I do not dare to tell how dangerous that is. It is a very dangerous thing. His sister has the same astral type as he.

The school inspector will look at the remedial class. He will also look at the handwork class, but there we have less to fear than when he goes into the remedial class. He will not understand anything about crocheting. He is well intentioned and would like to give a good report. He is certainly well intentioned toward the school. He has the same opinions as Abderhalden about the fact that there is so much dust in the gymnasium and for that reason gymnastics is unhealthy.

I have also given some consideration to arithmetic in the various classes. I would like you to arrange the instruction so that you continue to teach new material in blocks, but that there are two half hours of arithmetic review in the normal main lesson. That is something we need to do everywhere, including the upper grades.

A teacher asks whether the mathematics teacher should also give the review classes for the upper grades, when another teacher teaches the main lesson.

Dr. Steiner: I don’t see why that would be necessary. If the faculty is an organism as I have always thought, then I see no reason for that. Why shouldn’t the teacher who is giving chemistry also give the review? You need to know what every one of you is doing. If all the teachers know what the others are doing, then that will not be necessary. I do not see why we should go into a subject teacher system. I think it is desirable that you can do that. I once had a mathematics teacher who did not recognize one single plant when we went on a school excursion. He knew a lot about mathematics and physics, but had no understanding of anything else. He didn’t know anything except Bohemian, German, physics and mathematics.

These are things we need to do. We need to come to a point where the teaching of mathematics is as it is in the eighth grade. That is what I have to say about the classes I have seen.

You see, we need to emphasize that the children can do something, that they actually learn, and that emphasis is almost entirely missing. You pay too little attention to that. In the upper grades, you have fallen into lecturing, and the instruction is mere sensationalism. They listen, but they don’t work inwardly, and for that reason cannot do enough. That is something that is becoming apparent in the little continuation school in Dornach. Those boys and girls are quite interested in what is presented, but they cannot do it. In other areas, too, we should be careful that they know something and remember it. You can often see it in the way they behave during the Socratic method, which is often not done very well. From the way they behave, you can see they have not properly taken what they are learning into their souls. For that to happen, you must have much greater interest and understanding for the echo the class reflects back to you. That is especially true for the higher grades. The fourth grade already shows a lack of inner participation. They need to participate inwardly. Don’t you also feel the children are learning too little? Tell me what you think. What is the problem in your opinion?

A teacher: We have talked a lot about this, but it is not so easy to break a habit.

Dr. Steiner: On the one hand, you lecture too much, but there is also another important problem. When you develop something in the class through the Socratic method, you fall prey to an illusion. You ask obvious or unimportant questions. The majority of your questions are unimportant. You do not tell the class what they need to learn and then reverse the teaching so that five minutes later, you ask them to tell you about it. You only ask obvious questions. It is important that you turn the instruction around during the period, so that the same thing appears several times in various forms and the students then have to participate in it. You also fail to introduce things that point back to earlier times in a way that would eliminate obvious or trivial questions. In truth, you have not overcome lecturing. Often, you have the illusion that you have overcome it, but you simply continue to lecture and ask trivial questions. You must eliminate this triviality and not give into illusions.

A teacher asks about dividing the classes for art.

Dr. Steiner: We want to do that next year. I have to admit I am somewhat against dividing music classes, but we will need to do it if we want more artistic development to occur. Perhaps in the twelfth grade we could institute an artistic-humanistic and business- oriented division. It is really too early to do that now. It would be wonderful to have an artistic middle school, but of course, the leaders would have to be artists. That is not something we can do at the drop of a hat, but we should keep the division of the school in mind.

A teacher asks about vertical and slanting handwriting styles.

Dr. Steiner: As long as people continue to write with the right hand, it is not desirable to use vertical handwriting. Vertical handwriting is unnatural for the human organism. Handwriting does not need to lie on the line, but it does need to give an artistic impression. Vertical handwriting does not give an artistic impression. I once explained that there are two ways of writing. In the one case, there are people who write automatically and do not use their eyes. They make their body into a mechanism and write directly from their wrists. Penmanship trains this kind of writing. I once knew a man who had to make the letters from a circle when he wrote. He went around in circles. Then there is also artistic writing, where you write with your eyes, and the hand is simply the organ that carries it out. It is not possible to develop vertical handwriting mechanically from the wrist. It would always be slanted handwriting, and thus, vertical handwriting is justifiable as an artistic method. This involves a judgment of taste, but it does not meet an aesthetic requirement. It is never beautiful and always looks unnatural, and for that reason is never justified. There is no real reason for vertical handwriting.

A teacher: I have children who are used to writing vertically. Why should they write at a low angle?

Dr. Steiner: You can’t accomplish such a thing by simply saying, “I will now teach slanted handwriting.” You cannot do that. You can only work toward no longer having any children who write vertically, but in the upper grades, you cannot pressure them too much.

A teacher: K.L. in my fourth-grade class writes vertically.

Dr. Steiner: With him, you could try to get him to gradually use a more slanted handwriting, so that the lines are not vertical, but the whole of his writing is artistically vertical.

A teacher: In my fourth-grade class, I do writing exercises while teaching natural history.

Dr. Steiner: You can do that. You should just make sure you do not contradict the block instruction, but keep it as a continuous exercise. It is the same as with arithmetic.

A teacher: Should I continue giving handwriting instruction in my first-grade class when I am teaching arithmetic?

Dr. Steiner: We will have to look at that.

It is, of course, desirable that you try to get the children to learn to write themselves. From our perspective, they should be able to write at least a little when they are about eight years old. We need to remember that we must bring them to where they would be in a normal elementary school.

A teacher: I have an English girl in my 6b class who does not understand German.

Dr. Steiner: You need to make her parents aware that they need to bear the consequences. Of course, you will need to allow her time to learn German.

A teacher: She has been here since September.

Dr. Steiner: She could not learn enough German in six weeks, but she should be past that by spring. You need to tell them that they will have to bear the consequences, but there is no reason why we should not accept children who cannot speak German.

A teacher asks about reading material for the fourth grade and about fairy tales.

Dr. Steiner: It would be a good idea if the Waldorf teachers would work on creating decent textbooks that reflect our pedagogical principles. I would not like to see the current textbooks in the classroom. It would be somewhat destructive to put such reading books in the classes. There are, of course, collections that are really not too bad. One such collection is by a Mr. Richter. It is a collection of sagas. It is neither trivial nor beyond the children’s grasp. Even in Grimm’s fairy tales, you always have to be selective, as there are some that are not appropriate for school.

A teacher mentions a book of sagas.

Dr. Steiner: What do you know about the things in it? If it contains Gerhardt the Good, then it is good. That is something you can use appropriately for the fourth grade. It even has some good remarks for teachers. Gerhardt the Good is wonderful reading material for that age. I discussed it from an anthroposophical perspective in a lecture in Dornach.

A teacher: The children also enjoy ballads.

Dr. Steiner: We need to make a good collection of ballads, otherwise people will think Wildenbruch is a poet. Some people say that there is a poet, Wildenbruch.

A teacher: Could we also use the book of legends in the third grade?

Dr. Steiner: You will need to tell them. In fourth grade they can read it themselves. In the third grade, let them read it only after you have told it.

A teacher asks about reading material for the fifth grade.

Dr. Steiner: There is nothing that has not been made boring. Try a few of the Greek sagas by Niebuhr. His book is not very new, but perhaps the best. Maybe a little too long, but well written.

A teacher: K.P. in the fourth grade is growing weak.

Dr. Steiner: Since when? Who had him earlier? In such things, we need to help him therapeutically. An iron cure, as I described this morning, could be given to him with the help of his parents. You don’t need to say anything more than that he is suffering from a hidden form of weak blood, and that he should take an iron cure. The school doctor should take over the problem. In that way, it can be properly overcome.

You always need to be clear about the case. Concerning K.P., use the kind of iron you get when you make an extract of chamomile root. There, you have iron in a proper balance with sulfur, calcium, and potassium. There is iron in the root of the chamomile. Do it that way. Do not use a tea, but make an extract by boiling the root.

A teacher asks about a girl in the tenth grade who is often absent because school is too strenuous for her.

Dr. Steiner: That is an illness in the soul. You should give her belladonna.

A teacher: Would a calming curative eurythmy exercise be good?

Dr. Steiner: You could do that to support the effects of the belladonna. Do you do curative eurythmy exercises with the children?

A teacher asks about a student in the 2b class.

Dr. Steiner: You should treat him through curative eurythmy, according to the principles that have been given for people who cannot walk.

A teacher: P.U. should also go into the remedial class.

Dr. Steiner: You should treat him as someone who cannot stand up. He is trying to keep himself from falling.

A teacher: P.Z. in the 4b class causes disturbances and makes unnecessary remarks.

Dr. Steiner: Aside from treating him through curative eurythmy, perhaps you could retell something he does, and in the course of telling it, you make it absurd. Try to include a similar remark in a story, where someone who makes such a remark gets totally soaked or something else happens. He should not immediately recognize what you want. You can interest him in such things. With such boys, it often happens that they have irregular brain function for a time, and that the astral body is not properly connected to the brain. Such children are then taken over by a little demon. That lasts for only a short period, but you have to do something about it. You could work with him through curative eurythmy in the same way as with someone who cannot walk. There is more discussion about Z. who has left.

Dr. Steiner: This is actually interesting. He actually falls into a short, rhythmically pathological state. He suddenly writes two lines sloppily and the remainder of the time is quite orderly. One, two, three, four, five words written orderly, and before, one word sloppily. Then, orderly again. The boy is not quite normal, that is the problem. He lacks attentiveness. He can do more than he shows, and you can see that from his handwriting. It would be a good idea if you were to write that his handwriting shows he can do more, but due to lapses in attention, he does things sporadically and worse than he needs to do them. These are like little epileptic fits that then pass.

A teacher speaks about D. in the second grade who feels he cannot do anything about it when he misbehaves.

Dr. Steiner: You should pay attention to him until he is nine years old. Until then, you need to treat him very lovingly. Perhaps you could have him do a number of symmetry exercises, so that he recognizes that he is making errors in writing. Afterward, he will become better.

If there is nothing more, we can close the meeting. I would like to again ask you to remember the difficulty we have gotten into and discussed, and also to take into account that we must not make a fiasco of the Waldorf School. That would be a terrible blow.

We need to take our work very seriously. Everyone is looking at us. We need to do things as seriously as possible. I am convinced that the more we return to the perspective of the first and second seminar courses, the better we can bring the true spirit into our work. I held the second course in order to bring the spirit into the Waldorf School. We need to take that up again so that the proper spirit is here. We may not allow ourselves to go. We certainly must bring fire into our teaching. We must have enthusiasm. That is absolutely necessary, but often lacking. We must do that, otherwise, with our method that depends so much upon the individuality of the teacher, it will be far too easy to fall into a way of working counter to our principles. The school inspector said that with normal teaching methods, average people can be teachers, but with our methods, we need geniuses. I do not think that is necessarily true, but there is something to it. So much depends upon the individual teacher, and we must emphasize and support the individuality of the teacher. The children are not participating enough because we are not bringing sufficient fire into the classroom. There is often a kind of playful element in the instruction that playfully occupies the children, but it is playful in the worst sense. Every teacher should have deep satisfaction upon entering the classroom. Basically, the students in the higher grades are not all that bad.

Have you heard anything about the explanation concerning the expelled students?

He thinks that our methods have brought us so far that we have thrown out a large number of anthroposophical children. This is really a terrible thing. I was actually surprised it was not received with bitterness, and that is what is really bitter, namely, that it was perceived that way. This is something we need to understand from the perspective of the anthroposophical movement. The way you came to me with this terrible document, there is really no difference in this treatment and what some narrow-minded bureaucrat would do. It’s that you really don’t put your soul in it, you lack fire.

A teacher: G.W.A. thought it was unjustified.

Dr. Steiner: You should speak with her, otherwise you will lose more contact with the students. It is so strange that there is so little contact between teachers and students in the upper grades. There is also none in the religion class.

A teacher: People are not satisfied with the explanation printed in the newspaper.

Dr. Steiner: People are speaking about this everywhere in the most detrimental manner. The situation is known everywhere and is being turned into a weapon. There is a whole organization forming around this. The situation is a weapon that can be well forged. Perhaps something like a parent evening would be a way we could make our standpoint clear. We need to find some way of defending the school.

There is really no enthusiasm for the anthroposophical movement. There is no feeling for how it is affected; things are simply accepted with indifference. Within a very short time things have occurred that can cause members to hang the movement, due to a lack of feeling of responsibility.

I held a course for theologians that they promised to treat as a secret. But every day, they write things in letters and, in order to save postage, they give it to someone else to carry across the border where it could easily be taken.

Someone gives information to Dr. S., who carries it only from the clinic to the laboratory, but only a few days later, Kully publishes it in his newspaper in Arlesheim. The movement is being led to the gallows by its own members due to their lack of responsibility. There is so little feeling for responsibility, and that is a very bitter thing.

That has been the case since things became public, and the anthroposophical movement ceased to be an expression of things carried privately in the heart. As soon as things came into the anthroposophical movement that required professionals, something like a kind of mildew grew upon the vitality of the movement. At the moment you put yourself upon a curule chair, enthusiasm wanes.

The faculty needs to publicly justify the expulsion of the students. In spite of the fact that I asked that they only be suspended, things progressed to the point that there was nothing else to be done other than what was done. All contact had been lost. The students were enraged. The situation was grossly mishandled. All this is expressed occultly in the symptoms.

A teacher asks about the justification.

Dr. Steiner: We cannot use the names of the students, but somehow we need to counter what is now being formed as a weapon against us. I thought there would be an opportunity to somehow defend the standpoint of the teachers. You need to look for opportunities where you can say such things.

The cause of the whole uproar was that things were turned around to look as though the teachers had spread some sort of lies about the students. This is connected with the formation of the Students’ Club, and the students felt themselves disparaged. In fact, one such disparagement was added by X. Everything has been stated as though the teachers have done something damaging to the children. It is strange that not all the students are aware of this. It seems impossible that this is not better known. Do the students go around blindfolded? I do not think that is praiseworthy. If these things are not known, the beautiful things will also not be known. I have to admit that in a way this whole affair seems a little strange to me. Basically, it is a symptom of sleepiness.

My dear friends,

Today I would like to bring before you a few important considerations connected with the matters that we have now for a long time regarded as our task. When we reflect on the way in which spiritual science, as here intended, is able to consider and to give answers to the questions of life, we must above all take careful heed to the fact that this spiritual science, and indeed for that matter the whole present and the future time, makes new and different demands on man's powers of comprehension and of thought. He has to think in a different way from what he is accustomed to, in accordance with the habits of thoughts of the immediate past and of the present—especially the habits of thought arising from science and its popularization. You are well aware that all that spiritual science has to say concerning any sphere of life and hence too what it has to say on the social question, indeed especially what it has to say on the social question, is the expression of the results of research—results that have not been obtained on any merely rationalistic or abstract path, but that have been sought and found in the realm of spiritual reality. They can be understood, as we know, with the help of a sound and healthy human intelligence—they can, however, only be discovered when one rises above the ordinary consciousness, such as is comprised within rational thinking, abstract thinking, natural scientific research and so forth—rises above this ordinary consciousness to the Imaginative, Inspired, and Intuitive consciousness. What comes to light on the path of Imagination, Inspiration, and Intuition—this it is, formulated in concepts and ideas that are capable of expression, that fills the content of the science which Anthroposophical research has to give.

We have to accustom ourselves—and this is what makes it so hard for many of our contemporaries to tread the necessary path from the usual thinking of today to the Spiritual Science of Anthroposophy—we have to accustom ourselves to quite a new and different conception of wherein the finding of truth consists. Today men ask so lightly: can this or that be proven? The question is justified of course. But, my dear friends, we have also to look at the question from the standpoint of reality. If we mean: can what the spiritual researcher brings forward be proved in accordance with the conceptions and ideas that we have already acquired, in accordance with the customary ideas which we have imbibed through our education, through our everyday life?—If we mean this, we are making a great mistake; for the results of spiritual research are drawn from reality.

Let me make clear to you by a quite trivial, simple comparison, how the ordinary thinking that runs on purely abstract lines may fall into error. One thought is supposed to follow from another. The error is that if people see: As a thought it does not follow—they concluded that it must be false, while all the time from the point of view of reality it still may be perfectly true. The consequences in reality are not always the same as the consequences in mere thought; the Logic of Reality is a different thing from the Logic of Thought.

In our time, the metaphysical legalistic way of thinking has taken such hold upon men that they are wont to think that everything must be comprehended with the Logic of Thought. But that is not the case. Listen to this, for example. Take a cube measuring—let us say—30 centimeters each way. Now if someone were to say to you: “This cube, measuring 30 centimeters each way, is raised up a meter and a half above the floor”—if you were not yourself in the room where the cube is, you would be able with your pure thought-logic to say one thing: you would be able to conclude from what was said to you: The cube must be standing on something. There must be a table there of the corresponding height, for the cube can certainly not hover in the air. This, then, you can conclude even when you are not present there, even when you have no experience of it.

But now let us suppose: A ball is lying on the cube; something is lying upon it. That you cannot conclude by thinking, that you must see. You must behold it. And yet the ball, too, corresponds to reality. The reality is thus filled with things and entities that have of course a logic in themselves, a logic, however, that does not coincide with the pure thought-logic; the logic of sight is a different thinking from the logic of mere thought.

This necessitates, however, my dear friends, that we should at length learn that we cannot only call proof the so-called logical sequences to which modern thinking has grown accustomed. Unless we learn this, we shall never arrive at a true understanding of things. In the domain in which I have been speaking to you now for some weeks—in the domain of social life, of the structure of human society, many new demands result simply from the fundamental premises that I have set before you concerning the three-fold division of society which will be necessary for the future. One such result is, for example, a quite definite system of taxation. But this system of taxation, once more, can only be found by calling to our help the logic of things seen. The mere logic of thought is insufficient. It is this that makes it necessary that men should listen to those who know something of these things, for when the thing has once been said, then the healthy human intelligence, my dear friends, will always suffice; it can always corroborate and “control” what the spiritual researcher says. The healthy human understanding, however, is something very different from the logic of thought, which is developed especially through the way of thinking that is prevalent today, soaked and steeped as it is in the natural-scientific point of view. From all this you will understand that spiritual science is not intended merely to make us receive a certain collection of ideas and then think that we can handle these ideas much as we would handle information we acquire through natural science or the like. That is absolutely impossible and is not to be imagined for a moment. If we think that we are making a great mistake. Spiritual Science makes a man think in an altogether new way. It makes him comprehend the world in an altogether different way than he has done before, it makes him learn not merely to perceive other things than before, but to perceive in a new way. When you enter into spiritual science you must always bear this in mind, you must be able to ask yourself again and again: Am I learning to look at the world in a new way through my receiving of Spiritual Science—not clairvoyance but Spiritual Science—am I learning to look at the world in another way from what I have done hitherto? For indeed, my dear friends, one who regards Spiritual Science as a collection of facts, a compendium of knowledge, may well know a great deal, but if he still only thinks in the same way as he thought before, then he has not received Spiritual Science. He has only taken up Spiritual Science if the manner, the form, the structure of his thinking has changed, if in a certain respect he has become another man than he was before. And this can only come about through the might and the power of the ideas which we receive through Spiritual Science.

Now if we are to think about the social question, it is absolutely essential that this change, which can only come about through Spiritual Science, should enter our thinking, for only in this light can that be understood to which I directed your attention yesterday. Yesterday I spoke to you of the economists of the schools, the present-day exponents of the theories of economists. I pointed out to you how utterly helpless they are in the face of realities. Why are they so helpless? Because they are bent on understanding with the Natural-Scientific type of thinking something that cannot thus be understood. We shall have to make up our minds to conceive the social life, not with the kind of thinking that is brought up on Natural Science but in an altogether different way. Only then shall we be able to find fruitful social ideas—fruitful in life, capable of realization.

I have already once drawn your attention to a thing that may well have astonished one or another among you; yet it needs to be deeply thought over. I said: The logical conclusion which one will tend to draw from such and such ideas, maybe from a whole “world-conception” are by no means always identical with that which follows from such a world-conception in real life. I mean the following: A man may hold a certain number of ideas or even an entire world-conception. You may envisage this world-conception clearly according to the ideas it contains and you may then perhaps draw further conclusions from it—conclusions which you will quite rightly presume to be logical, you may imagine that such conclusions, which you can logically draw from a world-conception, must necessarily follow from it. But that is by no means the case. Life itself may draw altogether different conclusions. And you may be highly astonished to see how life draws its different conclusions. What do I mean by this? Let us assume a world-conception which appears to you highly idealistic, and—we may assume—rightly so. It contains wonderfully idealistic ideas. You yourself will probably admit only the logical conclusions of your world-conception but if you sink this into another mind, if you take into account the reality of life even where it leads you across the chasms that separate one human being from another—the following may happen: and only Spiritual Science can explain the necessity of such a sequence. You instruct your son or daughter or your pupil in your idealistic world-conception, and they afterwards become thorough scamps and rascals. It may well happen in the reality of life that rascality will follow as the consequence from your idealistic philosophy!

That of course is an extreme case, though one that might well happen in real life. I only wish to bring it home to you that other conclusions are drawn in real life than in mere thought. Hence it is that the men of today are so far removed from reality, because they do not see through such things as these; they are not really willing to bring to consciousness what was formerly done instinctively. The instincts of past ages felt clearly enough that this or that would arise from one thing or another in real life. They were by no means inclined only to presume the consequences that follow by the logical thought. The instincts themselves worked with a logic of their own. But today men have come into a kind of uncertainty, and this uncertainty will naturally grow ever greater in the age of the evolution of the Spiritual Soul unless we make the counterbalance, which is: consciously to receive into ourselves the Logic of Reality. And we do receive it the moment we earnestly consider in its own essence and process the Spiritual that lives and moves behind the realities of sense.

I will tell you a practical case to illustrate what I have just explained in a more theoretic way. It will serve at the same time to illustrate another thing, namely how far we can go wrong, if we merely look at the external symptoms. In my lecture this week, I spoke of the symptomatic method in the study of history. Altogether, the symptomatic method is a thing that we must make our own, if we would pass from the outer phenomena to the underlying Reality.

A Russian author and philosopher of the name of Berdiayeff recently wrote an interesting article on the philosophical evolution in the Russian people in the second half of the nineteenth century and until the present day. There are two remarkable things in this essay of Berdiayeff's. One is that the author takes his start from a peculiar prejudice, proving that he has no insight into those truths, with which you must by now be thoroughly familiar—I mean the truth that in the Russian East, preparing for the Sixth Post-Atlantean Age (the age of the evolution of the Spiritual Life), altogether new elements are on the point of emerging, though today they are only there in embryo. Berdiayeff being ignorant of this fact, his judgment on one point is quite incorrect. He says to himself (and as a Russian philosopher he must surely know the facts), he says: It is strange that in Russia as against the Western European civilizations we have no real sense (especially in philosophy) for what in the West they call the Truth. Russians have been much interested in the philosophy of the West, yet they have no real feeling for it inasmuch as it strives towards “The Truth.” They only take up the truths of philosophy inasmuch as they are serviceable for life, inasmuch as they are directly useful to some conception of life. The Socialist, e.g., is interested in philosophy because he imagines that this or that philosophy will provide him with a justification for his socialism. Similarly the orthodox Believer will interest himself in some philosophy, not, like a Western man because it is the Truth, but because it gives him a justification or a basis for his Orthodox Belief. And so on. Berdiayeff regards this as a great failing in the Folk-Soul of modern Russia. He says: In the West they are far in advance of us. They do not imagine that Truth must follow life; they really believe that Truth is Truth; the Truth is there, and life must take its direction from it. And Berdiayeff actually adds the extraordinary statement (albeit not extraordinary for the men of the present day, who will take it quite as a matter of course, but extraordinary for the Spiritual Scientists) he adds the statement: The Russian socialist has no right to use the expression “bourgeois science,” for bourgeois science contains the truth; it has at last established the concept of Truth, and that is a thing that cannot be refitted. It is therefore a failing on the part of the Russian Folk-Soul to believe that this Truth too can be transcended!

Berdiayeff shares this curious opinion, not only with the whole world of professors, but with all their faithful followers, to wit, the whole bourgeois of Western and Middle Europe, the aristocracy especially so, and the rest. Berdiayeff simply does not know what is now germinating in the Russian Folk Soul, which comes to expression for this very reason in a frequently tumultuous and distorted form. He does not know that in this conception of Truth from the standpoint of life, crooked as it may be today, there lies a real seed for the conception of the future. In the future it will right itself, of that we may be sure. When once what is preparing today as a germinating seed will have unfolded, I mean the directing of all human evolution towards the spiritual life, then indeed will that which men call the “Truth” today have an altogether different form. Today I have drawn your attention to some peculiar facts in this respect. This Truth, my dear friends, will among other things bring to man's consciousness what the men of today cannot realize, that the logic of facts, the logic of reality, the logic of things seen is a very different thing from the mere logic of concepts. And this transformed conception of the Truth will have some other interesting qualities. That is the one thing which you see emerging in Berdiayeff's essay. It is remarkable enough, for it shows how little such a learned author lives in the real trend and meaning of the evolution of our time, which he might well perceive in his own nation above all, but cannot recognize, laboring as he does under this prejudice.

The other thing must be considered in quite a different direction. Berdiayeff, as the whole spirit of his essay shows, witnesses the rise of Bolshevism with great discomfort. Well, in that respect, the one man or the other, according as he is a Bolshevist or the reverse, will say that Berdiayeff is right or wrong. I do not propose to dilate just now upon this question. I will describe the facts, I will not criticize. But this is the important thing: In the sixties, so says Berdiayeff, there was already the tendency to regard Truth and Philosophy as dependent on life, and at that time materialism found entry into Russia. Men believed in Materialism, because they found it useful and profitable for life. Then, in the seventies, Positivism, such as is held by Auguste Comte for example, came into vogue. And after that, other points of view, for example that of Nietzsche, found entry into Russia among the people known as the Intelligentsia. And now Berdiayeff asks the question: What kind of philosophy do we find among the Intelligentsia of the Bolsheviks? For, indeed, a certain philosophy is prevalent among them. But how this particular philosophy can go with Bolshevism, that Berdiayeff is quite at a loss to explain. He simply cannot understand how Bolshevism can regard as its own philosophy—curiously enough—the doctrine of Avenarius and Mach.

And, truth to tell, my dear friends, if you had told Avenarius and Mach that their philosophy was to be accepted by such people as the Bolsheviks, they themselves would have been still more astonished and angry than Berdiayeff. They would have been most indignant (both of them, as you know, are now dead) if they had lived to see themselves as the official philosophers of Bolshevism. Imagine Avenarius, the worthy bourgeois, who of course had always assumed that he could only be understood by people who—well, who wore at any rate decent clothes, people who would never do violence to anyone in the Bolshevist manner, in short, good “respectable” people, in the sense in which one used the expression in the sixties, seventies and eighties. And it is true, if we consider only the content of the philosophy of Avenarius, we are still more at a loss to understand how it happened. For what does Avenarius think? Avenarius says: Men labor under a prejudice. They think: within, in my head, or in my soul or wherever it is, are the ideas, the perceptions, they are there subjectively; outside are the objects. But, says Avenarius, this is not correct. If I were all alone in the world, I should never arrive at the distinction between subject and object. I am led to make the distinction only through the fact that other people are there too. I alone beheld a table, I should never come to the idea that the table is out there in space and a picture of it here in my brain. I would simply have the table, and would not distinguish between subject and object. I only distinguish between them because, when I look at the table with another man, I say to myself: He sees the table, and I too perceive it. The perception is in my head too. I reflect that what he senses I am also sensing. Such are partly theoretical considerations (I will not go into them more fully, you would say: All these things do not interest us) within which Avenarius' thought lives and moves. In 1876 he wrote his book Conception of the World According to the Principle of Least Action. For on such premises as I have here explained to you, he shows how the concepts we have as human beings have no real value, but that we only create them for the sake of mental economy. According to Avenarius, the concept “Lion,” for example, or the concept that finds expression in a “Natural Law” is nothing real, nor does it refer to anything real. It is only uneconomical if in the course of my life I have seen five or six or even thirty lions and am now to conceive them each and severally. I therefore proceed in a more economical way, and make myself a single concept “Lion,” embracing all the thirty. Thus all our forming of concepts is a mere matter of subjective mental economy.

Mach holds a similar view. It was Mach of whom I told you how he once got into an omnibus where there was a mirror. As he got in, he saw a man coming in from the other side. Now the appearance of this man was highly antipathetic to him, and he said to himself: “What a weedy-looking schoolmaster.”—only then did he perceive that there was a mirror hanging there and that he had simply seen himself. Mach tells the story to indicate how little one knows oneself, even in one's external human form how little self-knowledge man has. He even tells of another occasion when he passed a shop window which acted as a mirror and thus again met himself and was quite annoyed to come across such an ugly-looking pedant.

Mach proceeded in a rather more popular fashion, but his idea is the same as that of Avenarius. He says: there are not subjective ideas on the one hand, and objective things on the other. All that exists in reality is the content of our sensations. I, to myself, am only a content of sensation, the table outside me is a content of sensation, my brain is a content of sensation. Everything is a content of sensation, and the concepts men make for themselves only exist for the purpose of economy. It was about the year 1881; I was present at a meeting of the Academy of Sciences in Vienna where Mach gave his lecture on the Economy of Thought, entitled: “Thought as a Principle of the Least Action.” I must say, it made quite a terrible impression upon me, who was then a mere boy, at the very beginning of the twenties. It made a terrible impression on me when I saw that there were men so radical in their ideas, without an inkling of the fact that on the paths of thought there enters into the human soul the first beginning of a manifestation of the super-sensible, the spiritual. Here was a man who denied the reality of concepts to such an extent as to see in them the mere results of a mental activity bent upon economy.

But in Mach and Avenarius—you will not misunderstand my words—all this takes place entirely within the limit of thoroughly “respectable” thinking. We should naturally assume that these two men and all their followers are worthy folk of sound middle-class opinion, utterly removed from any even moderately radical, let alone revolutionary ideas, in practice. And now all of a sudden they have become the official Philosophers of the Bolsheviks! No one could have dreamt of such a thing. Perhaps you may read Avenarius' booklet on the “Principle of Least Action.” It may interest you, it is quite well written. But if you were to tackle his “Philosophy of Experience,” I fancy you would not get very far, you would find it appallingly dull. Written as it is in an absolutely professorial style, there is not the slightest possibility of your drawing even the least vestige of Bolshevism as a conclusion from it. You would not even derive from it a practical world-conception of the most gentle radicalism.

I am well aware, my dear friends, of the objection which those who take symptoms for realities might now bring forward against me. An easy-going, hard-and-fast Positivist, for instance, would say: The explanation is as simple as can be! The Bolshevists took their Intellectuals from Zurich. Avenarius was a professor in Zurich, and those who are now working as intellectual leaders among the Bolsheviks were his pupils. Moreover there was a University lecturer there, a pupil of Mach's Adler, the man who afterwards shot the Austrian statesman Count Stügh. Many followers of Lenin, perhaps even Lenin himself, were well-acquainted with Adler. They absorbed these ideas and carried them to Russia. It is therefore a pure coincidence.

Needless to say I am well aware that a cock-sure hard-and-fast Positivist can explain the whole thing in this way. But did I not tell you the other day how the whole poetic character of Robert Hamerling can be shown to have arisen from the unreliability of the worthy Rector Kaltenbrunner, who forgot to forward Hamerling's application for a post in Budapest, as a result of which someone else got the post instead. If only Kaltenbrunner had not been so slack, Hamerling would certainly have gone as a schoolmaster to Budapest in the 1860's instead of to Trieste. Now if you consider all that Hamerling became through spending ten years of his life on the shores of the Adriatic at Trieste, you will see that his whole poetic life was a result. This was the external fact. The worthy Rector Kaltenbrunner, headmaster of the Grammar School at Graz, forgot to forward his application and was therefore the occasion of Hamerling's going to Trieste. You see, these things must not be taken as realities but as symptomatic of inner things which come to expression through them.

Thus what Berdiayeff conceives in this way—that the Bolsheviks chose as their idols the worthy middle-class philosophers Avenarius and Mach—does indeed take us back to what I said at the beginning of the present lecture: The reality of life, the reality of things seen is very different from the merely logical reality. Of course you cannot deduce from Avenarius and Mach that they could have become the official philosophers of the Bolsheviks. But, my dear friends, even what you can deduce by logic is only of importance as an external symptom. In effect, we only get at Reality by a research which goes straight for it. And in the Reality the Spiritual Beings work.

I might tell you many things which would indeed enable you to perceive it as a necessity, in reality of life, that such philosophies as that of Avenarius and Mach lead to the conclusion of the most revolutionary socialism of our time. For behind the scenes of existence it is the very same spirits who instill into men's consciousness philosophies after the style of Avenarius or Mach, and who instill once more into men's consciousness that which leads on to Bolshevism for example. Only in Logic you cannot derive the one thing from the other. But the Reality of Life performs this derivation. I beg you inscribe this deep into your hearts, for here too you will have something of what I am constantly emphasizing. It is needful to us to find the transition from the mere tangle of logical ideas, within which the people of today in their illusions imagine the realities of life to be imbued, to the true reality. If we look at the symptoms, and know how to value them, the thing does indeed become far more earnest. Here I will draw your attention to something to which another who is not a Spiritual Scientist will not pay so much attention; for he will take it more as a phrase, as something more or less indifferent. Mach, you see, who is a Positivist, and a radical one at that, comes to the idea that all things are really sensations. This doctrine, which young Adler also expounded in his lectures at Zurich, whereby he will undoubtedly have gained many adherents for himself, and for Mach and for Avenarius—this doctrine declares that everything is sensation, and that we are quite unjustified in distinguishing the physical from the psychical. The table outside us is physical and psychical in precisely the same sense as my ideas are physical and psychical: and we only have concepts for the sake of mental economy.

Now the peculiar thing in Mach was that instinctively, every now and then, he withdrew from his own world-conception—from his radical, positivist world-conception. He withdrew a little, saying to himself: These then are the results of truly modern thought. It is meaningless to say that anything exists beyond my sensation or that I should distinguish the physical and the psychical. And yet I am impelled again and again whenever I have the table before me, to speak not merely of the sensation, but to believe that there is something out there, quite physically. And again when I have an idea, a sensation or a feeling, I have not merely the perception of the phenomenon which takes place, but though by my scientific insight I realize that it is quite unjustified—still I believe that here within me is the soul, and out there is the object. I feel myself impelled again and again to make this distinction how does it come about? Mach said to himself: however does it come about that I am suddenly impelled to assume; in here is something of the soul, and out there is something external to the soul. I know that it is no true distinction, yet am I continually compelled to think something different from what my scientific insight tells me.

This is what Mach says to himself, every now and then when he withdraws a little from these things and considers them again. You will find it in his books. And he then makes a peculiar remark; he says: sometimes one has a feeling that makes one ask:—Can it be that we human beings are just being led round and round in a circle by some evil spirit? And he answers: Sometimes I really think so.

I know, my dear friends, how many people will read just such a passage, taking it as an empty phrase. Yet it is truly symptomatic. For here, every now and then, there peers over the shoulder of the human soul something that is real fact. It is indeed the Ahrimanic spirit who leads men round and round in a circle, making them think in the way of Avenarius and Mach. And at such moments Mach suddenly becomes aware of it. And it is the same Ahrimanic spirit who is working now, in the Bolshevist way of thought. Hence it is no wonder, my dear friends, that the logic of realities has produced this result. You see, however, that if we would understand the things of life, we must look into them more deeply. Truly this is of no small importance, especially for the domain of social life, today and in the near future. For the conclusions that must be drawn are not such as were drawn by Schmoller or Brentano, Wagner, Spencer, John Stuart Mill or whoever it may be. No, in the domain of social life, real conclusions must be drawn, i.e., conclusions according to the logic of realities. This is the bad thing, that in the social agitations and movements of today, and in all that they have produced, merely logical deductions—i.e., illusions—are living. Illusions have become external reality. I will give you two examples. The one is already well-known to you, you will only need to see it in the light in which I shall now place it.

The Marxian Socialists (and as I have often told you, this includes almost the whole of the proletariat today), the Marxian Socialists declare, under the influence of Marx: Economic life, economic oppositions, and the class oppositions that arise from them—these things are the true reality. Everything else is an ideological superstructure. What man thinks, what he creates in poetry and art, what he thinks about the State or about life in general, all this is a mere result of his economic mode of life. And for this reason the proletariat of today declares:—We need no National Assemblies to bring about a new social order. For in the National Assemblies there will be the bourgeois folk once more and they will have their say out of their economically-determined bourgeois minds. We have no use for that. We can only do with those who will voice the thoughts of Proletarian minds. It is they who must re-mold the world today. To this end we do not first need to summon National Assemblies. Let the few Proletarians who happen to be on top exercise a dictatorship. They have proletarian ideas, they will think the right thoughts. Not only Lenin and Trotsky in Russia, Karl Liebknecht in Berlin repudiates the National Assembly. He says: After all, it will be no more than a reassembly of the talk-shop—meaning the Reichstag, the Houses of Parliament.

What is the underlying reason, my dear friends? It is the same reason on account of which, in the main, I was driven out of the Socialist Working Men's College in Berlin sixteen years ago, as I told you recently when giving you the history of my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity. In that College I had to lecture among other things on scientific matters; I conducted practical lessons in public speaking. But I also had to teach History. And I taught it in the way in which I assumed, objectively, that it should be taught. This was certainly satisfying to those who were my pupils, and if it could have been continued—if it had not been brought to an artificial end—I know it would have borne good fruit. But the Social-Democratic leaders discovered that I was not teaching Marxism or the Marxian conception of history. Nay more, they discovered that I even did such curious wild things as I will now relate (which incidentally were very well-received by the workers who were my pupils). I said, for instance, on one occasion: The ordinary historian cannot make anything of the story of the seven Roman kings, they even regard it as a myth. For the succession of the seven kings, as described by Livy, shows a kind of rise and decline. Up to Marcius, the fourth, it rises to a kind of climax. Then it declines to decadence in the seventh, Tarquinius Superbus. And I explained to my pupils that we were here going back to the most ancient period in Roman evolution, the period before the Republic, and that the change to the Republic had in fact consisted in this: that the ancient atavistic spiritual regularities had passed into a kind of popular chaos; whereas, in the more ancient period, as we can see quite tangible in the history of the Egyptian Pharaohs, the social institutions contained a certain wisdom, discoverable by Spiritual Science. It is not for nothing that we are told how Numa Pompilius received influences from the Nymph Egeria, to order the social life. Then I explained how men did indeed receive Inspirations for the social institutions which they were to make; and how in truth it was not merely the one monarch following the other as in later times, but these things were determined according to the laws received from the Spiritual World. Hence the regularity in the succession of the Egyptian Pharaohs and even of the Roman kings, Romulus, Numa Pompilius, and so on down to Tarquinius Superbus.

Now you may take the seven principles of man which I summed up in my Theosophy and regard them one after another from a certain point of view. You will find these seven principles in the succession of the Roman kings. Here, at this present moment, I am only hinting at the fact, and among you I need do no more. Nevertheless it is a thing which, rightly expressed, can well be described as an objective truth, throwing real light on the peculiar circumstances which the ordinary materialistic historian cannot understand. Today indeed, the “genuinely scientific” historians simply regard the seven kings as non-existent, and describe them as a myth.

So you see, I really went so far as this. And in other matters, too, I spoke to them in this way. If it is done rightly, it gives the impression of answering to the realities. Still it is not the “Materialistic Conception of History.” For that would mean that we should have to investigate what were the economic conditions in ancient Roman times, what was the relation of the tillage of the soil to the breeding of cattle and to trade and the life; and how the cities were founded, and what was the economic life of the Etruscans, and how the Etruscans traded with the young Roman people; and how under the influence of these economic elements, conditions took shape under Romulus, Numa Pompilius, Tullus Hostilius, and so on, in succession.

You see, even this would not have been effected quite so simply. But here again the true Reality came to my assistance. Of course, such an audience did not consist merely of young people. There were many among them who had already absorbed the Proletarian thought to a considerable extent and who were well-equipped, well-armed with all these prejudices. Such people are by no means easy to convince, even when one is speaking of things remote from their domain of knowledge. On one occasion I was speaking about Art. I had described what Art is, and its influence, and suddenly from the back of the hall a lady cried out, interrupting: “Well, and Verism, isn't that Art?”

So you see, these people were not prone to take things simply on authority. It was a question of finding a way to them; not of finding the way to them by all manner of sly devices, but out of a sense of Reality and Truthfulness. And so it came about that one had to say—not only could, but had to say—“You folk are primed with ideas of the ‘Materialist Conception of History,’ which believes that all things depend on the economic conditions, and that the spiritual life is but an ideology, spreading itself out on the basis of the economic conditions, and indeed, Marx expounded these things with clear and sharp insight. But why did all this come about? Why did he describe and believe all this? Because Marx only saw the immediate and present age in which he lived. He did not go back to former ages. Marx only based himself on the historic evolution of man since the sixteenth century, and here in deed and truth there came into the evolution of mankind an epoch during which over a large part of the world the spiritual life became an expression of the economic conditions, though not exactly as Marx describes it. True, Goetheanism is not to be derived from the economic life; but Goethe was regarded even by these people as a man remote from the economic life.

Thus we might say that this was the mistake, that which held true only for a certain space of time, notably for the most recent time of all, was generalized. Indeed, only the last four centuries could be truly understood by describing them in the sense of the Materialist Conception of History.

Now this is the important thing: We must not proceed by the mere logic of concepts; for by the logic of concepts very little can be said against the carefully and strictly guarded propositions of Karl Marx. We must proceed by the logic of life, the logic of realities, the logic of things seen. If we do so, the following will be revealed. Beneath this evolution which has taken place since the 16th century in a way that can well be interpreted through the materialist conception of history—beneath this Evolution there is a deeply significant Involution. That is to say, there is something that takes its course invisibly, supersensibly, beneath what is visible to the outer senses. This is seeking to come forth to the surface, to work its way forth out of the souls of men; and it is the very opposite of Materialism. Materialism only becomes so great and works so in order that man may rear himself up against it, in order that he may find the possibility to seek the Spiritual out of the depths of his own Being during this age of the Spiritual Soul, and thus attain Self-consciousness in the Spirit. Thus the task is not, as Karl Marx believes, simply to look at the outer reality and read from it the proposition that economic life is the real basis of ideology; but the task is rather this: We must say to ourselves, the outer reality since the 16th century does not reveal the true reality. The true reality must be sought for in the spirit; we must find, above all, that social order which will counter-balance and overcome what appears outwardly or is outwardly observable since the 16th century. The age itself compels us, not merely to observe the outer processes but to discover something that can work into them as a corrective. What Marxism has turned upside down must be set right again.

It is extraordinarily important for us to know this. In this instance the logic of realities actually reverses the mere sharp-witted dialectics of Karl Marx. Alas, much water will have yet to flow down the Rhine before a sufficient number of people will realize this necessity, to find the logic of reality, the logic of things seen. Yet it is necessary—necessary above all on account of the burning social questions.

That is the one example. For the other, we may take our start from some of the things I told you yesterday. I said: It is characteristic how men have observed, ever since Ricardo, Adam Smith and the rest, that the economic order entails this consequence: That in the social life of man together, human labor-power is used like a commodity, brought on to the market like a commodity, treated like a commodity after the laws of supply and demand. As I explained yesterday, this is the very thing that excites and acts as motive impulses in the proletarian world-conception. Now one who merely thinks in the logic of concepts, observing that this is so, will say to himself: we must therefore find an economic science, a social science, a conception of social life, which reckons with this fact. We must find the best possible answer to the question: “Seeing that labor power is a commodity, how can we protect this commodity, labor power, from exploitation?” But the question is wrongly put, wrongly put not only out of theory, but out of life itself. The putting of questions wrongly is having a destructive, devastating effect in real life today. And it will continue to do so if we do not find the way to reverse it. For here once more the thing is standing on its head and must be set upright again, we must not ask: How shall we make the social structure so that man cannot be exploited, in spite of the fact that his labor power is brought on to the market like any other commodity, according to supply and demand.

For there is an inner impulse in human evolution which works in the logic of realities, although people may not express it in these words. It corresponds to reality and we can state it thus: Even the Grecian Age, the Grecian civilization which has come to mean so much for us, is only thinkable through the fact that a large proportion of the population of Greece were slaves. Slavery, therefore, was the premise of that ancient civilization which signifies so very much to us. So much that the most excellent philosopher, Plato, considered slavery altogether as a justified and necessary thing in human civilization. But the evolution of mankind goes forward. Slavery existed in antiquity and as you know, mankind began to rebel against it, quite instinctively to rebel against men being bought and sold. Today we may say it is an axiom: The whole human being can no longer be bought and sold; and where slavery still exists, we regard it as a relic of barbarism. For Plato, it was not barbarism; it went without saying that there were slaves, just as it did for every Greek who had the Platonic mind, nay every Greek who thought in terms of the state. The slave himself thought just the same, it went without saying that men could be sold, could be put on the market according to the laws of supply and demand, though of course not like mere cattle. Then, in a masked and veiled form, the thing passed over into the milder form of slavery which we call serfdom. Serfdom lasted very long, but here again mankind revolted.

And to our own time this relic has remained. The whole human being can no longer be sold, but only part of him, namely his labor-power. And today man is revolting against this too. It is only a continuation of the repudiation of slavery, if in our time it is demanded that the buying and selling of labor-power be repudiated. Hence it lies in the natural course of human evolution for this opposition to arise against labor-power being treated as a commodity, functioning as a commodity in the social structure. The question, therefore, cannot be put in this way: How shall man be protected from exploitation?—assuming as an axiomatic premise that labor-power is a commodity. This way of thinking has become habitual since Ricardo, Adam Smith and others, and is in reality included in Karl Marx and in the proletarian conception. Today it is taken as an axiom that labor-power is a commodity. All they want to do is, in spite of its being a commodity, to protect it from exploitation, or rather to protect the worker from the exploitation of his labor-power. Their whole thought moves along these lines. More or less instinctively or—as in Marx himself—not instinctively, they take it as an axiom. Notably the ordinary run of Political Economists who occupy the professional chairs assume it is an axiom from the very outset, that labor-power is to be treated, economically speaking, on the same basis as a commodity.

In these matters countless prejudices are dominating our life today: and prejudices are disastrous above all in this sphere of life. I am well aware how many there may be, even among you, who will regard it as a strange expectation, that you should spend your time in going into all these things. But we cannot possibly study the fullness of life if we are unable to think about these things. For if we cannot do so, we become the victims of all manner of absurd suggestions. How many an illustration the last four years have provided; what have they not brought forth? One could witness the most extraordinary things: I will only give you one example. Returning again and again to Germany—and in other places it was no different—every time, one found there was some new watchword, some new piece of instruction for the true patriot. Thus, the last time we went back to Germany, once more there was a new patriotic slogan: Do not pay in cash! Deal in checks as much as possible! i.e., do not let money circulate, but use checks. People were told that this was especially patriotic, for, as they thought, this was necessary in order to help win the war. No one saw through this most obvious piece of nonsense. But it was not merely said, it was propagated with a vengeance, and the most unbelievable people acted up to it—people of whom you might have supposed that they would understand the rudiments of economics—directors of factories and industrial undertakings. They too declared: pay in check and not in ready money, that is patriotic!

That fact is, it would be patriotic, but only under one assumption, namely this: you would have to calculate on each occasion how much time you saved in dealing in checks instead of ready money. True, most people cannot perform such a reckoning, but there are those who can. Then you would have to add up all the time that was saved, and come up and say: I have been paying my accounts in checks and have saved so much time, I want to spend it usefully; please give me a job! Only if you did so would it be a real saving. But of course they did not do so, nor did it ever occur to them that the thing would only have a patriotic importance on economic grounds on this assumption. Such nonsense was talked during the last four and a half years to an appalling extent. The most unbelievably dilettante propositions were realized. Impossibilities became realities, because of the utter ignorance of people—even of those who gave out such instructions—as to the real connections in this domain of life.

Now with respect to the questions I have just raised, the point is this: It must be the very aim of our investigations to find out—How shall we shape the social structure, the social life of man together, so as to loosen and free the objective commodity, the goods, the product, from the labor-power? This must be the point, my dear friends, in all our economic endeavors. The product should be brought onto the market and circulated in such a way that the labor-power is loosed and freed from it. This is the problem in economics that we must solve. If we start with the axiom that the labor-power is crystallized into the commodity and inseparable from it, we begin by eclipsing the essential problem and then we put things upside-down. We fail to notice the most important question—the question on which, in the realm of political economy, the fortunes and misfortunes of the civilized world will depend. How shall the objective commodity, the goods, the product, be loosed and severed from the labor-power, so that the latter may no longer be a commodity? For this can be done if we believe in that three-folding of the social order which I have explained to you, if we make our institutions accordingly. This is the way to separate from the labor-power of man the objective commodities, the goods, which are, after all, loosed and separated from the human being.

It must be admitted, my dear friends, that we find little understanding as yet for these things, derived as they are from the realities. In 1905 I published my essay on “Theosophy and the Social Question,” in the periodical Lucifer-Gnosis. I then drew attention to the first and foremost principle which must be maintained in order to sever the product from the labor. Here alone, I said, could we find salvation in the social question, and I emphasized that this question depends on our thinking rightly about production and consumption. Today men are thinking altogether on the lines of Production. We must change the direction of our thought. The whole question must be diverted from Production to Consumption. In detail, one had occasion to give many a piece of advice: but through the inadequate conditions and other insufficiencies, such advice could not really take effect, as one experienced—unhappily—in many cases. And it is so indeed; the men of today, through their faith in certain logical conclusions, which they mistake for real conclusions, have no sense for the need of looking at the Realities. But in the social domain above all it is only the Reality which can teach us the right way to put our questions. Of course people will say to you: Do you not see that it is necessary for labor to be done if commodities are to be produced? That is so indeed. Logically, commodities are the result of labor. But Reality is a very different thing from Logic.

I have explained this to our friends again and again from another aspect. Look at the thought of the Darwinian Materialists. I remember vividly the first occasion—it was in the Munich group—when I tried to make this clear to our friends. Imagine a real, thorough-going follower of Haeckel. He thinks that man has arisen from an apelike beast. Well, let him as a scientist form the concept of an ape-like animal and then let him form the concept of Man. If as yet no man existed and he only had the concept of the ape-like animal, he would certainly never be able to “catch,” out of this concept of the animal, the concept Man. He only believes what [in?] the ape-like creature, because the one proceeded out of the other in reality. Thus in real life men do after all distinguish between the logic of pure concepts and ideas and the logic of things seen. But this distinction must be applied through and through; otherwise we shall never gain an answer to the social and political questions, such as is necessary for the present and the immediate future. If we will not turn to that realistic thinking which I have explained to you once more today, we shall never come to the Goetheanic principle in public life. And that the Goetheanic principle shall enter into the world, this we desired to signalize by erecting, upon this hill, a “Goetheanum.”

In humorous vein, I would advise you to read the huge advertisement that appeared on the last page of today Basler Nachrichten, calling on everyone to do all in his power for the greatest day in world-history which is now about to dawn, by founding a “Wilsoneanum.” True, as yet, it is only an advertisement, and I only mention it in a jocular spirit. Nevertheless, in the souls of men, to say the least of it, the “Wilsoneanum” is being founded pretty intensely at the present moment.

As I said a short while ago, it has indeed a certain meaning that there is now a Goetheanum standing here. I called it a piece of “negative cowardice.” The opposite of cowardice was to come to expression in this action. And it is indeed the case, my dear friends, events are coming in the future—though this advertisement is only an amusing prelude—events are coming which will seem to justify this prophetic action which is being made out of the spirit of a certain world-conception. Though we need not take the half-page advertisement for a “Wilsoneanum” seriously, it is well for us to know that Wilsoniana will indeed be founded. Therefore a Goetheanum was to stand here as a kind of protest in advance.

My dear friends,

In our studies here during the last few weeks we have considered from most varied points of view the great social demand of our age. We have tried to see this requirement of the age against a spiritual-scientific background. In this way alone is it possible for us to gain a true and clear direction, realizing all that lies hidden beneath the outward demand. I shall return to this subject again tomorrow. Today I will insert a kind of interlude, continuing to some extent what we touched upon the other day, and showing how the Spiritual Science which is here represented will relate itself to the inner state of consciousness of our own time and of the near future.

At the end of the last lecture I gave you a few of the main points in this connection. I said: Anyone who has the will to apply that healthy human intelligence which has in fact evolved up till our time, in testing what is brought forward in anthroposophical Spiritual Science, will find this Spiritual Science really able to reckon with the scientific conscience, and with the whole way of thinking of the present age. And this appears so especially when we consider the social questions.

Whenever we deal with one subject or another in this Spiritual Science, we are therefore always in a position to point out that everything that is here brought forward can be subsequently tested, by anyone who wishes to do so, with the thinking—and notably with the scientific thinking—of the present time. We may even go so far as to say that a large number of the attacks to which this Spiritual Science is exposed are due to the very fact that it lends itself so evidently to subsequent corroboration by the scientific conscience of the present and of the near future. This is a fact unpleasant and uncomfortable to many people. Opposition arises just because these things are in agreement with all the scientific requirements of our age. For there is a certain antipathy in many heads, and notably in many hearts, against a spiritual knowledge of this kind. To many people it is inconvenient that something of this kind should arise, capable in all its branches of being subsequently tested and confirmed by the scientific standard of our time. But at the same time, this Spiritual Science reckons with an inner spiritual fact in human evolution at the present time, to wit, that beginning in our time, and more and more distinctly towards the future, new revelations are breaking through the veil of world-phenomena and world events. For a long time mankind has lived in ideas according purely to the senses. Whatever mankind possessed, over and above these ideas, consisted in the last resort of ancient revelations handed down from a time when they had still been endowed with an atavistic clairvoyance—when Wisdom-treasures entered into mankind by quite another path than they will enter in the future. From the Wisdom-treasures corresponding to the ages of the past, one thing and another was preserved; and this was the only wisdom which mankind possessed, and it is so to this day for many people. Indeed, it is so for the Natural Scientists of the present time. If we look more closely we shall find that it is so. But the time is long past when there was any direct and elemental Revelation of such Wisdom-treasures. A certain dimness and darkness entered the earthly evolution of mankind. Direct spiritual revelations ceased. Now, however, a time is beginning when new Revelations are breaking through into the spiritual horizon of mankind—through the veil of outward events. Hence there must be a renewal of many things in our time; in this connection especially we may point to the most important earthly event of all, the Mystery of Golgotha. True it is that the Mystery of Golgotha first gave earthly evolution its real meaning. In soul and spirit, the Earth planet would not be what it is if the Mystery of Golgotha had not taken place upon it. But, my dear friends, it is one thing to speak of the Mystery of Golgotha as a real event that took place, and it is another to speak of the doctrines, the so-called Christian doctrines, that have held sway about it through the centuries. Anyone who fails to see this difference will scarcely find his way into the fundamental requirements of our time.

You may take a thing of ordinary life for comparison. An event that takes place before your eyes is one thing; and what is narrated by two or three people who witnessed it is quite another. That is a familiar fact. So it is, though in a higher, spiritual sense, in this case. Nothing else has become known to man about it through the course of the centuries. But all that has been said about this spiritual event (for such is the Mystery of Golgotha, even though it took place on the physical plane) has still been said from the standpoint of an ancient Wisdom. Even the Gospels, as you may know from my Christianity as Mystical Fact, are written from the standpoint of an ancient Wisdom. That is to say: Men had certain conceptions, derived from ancient Mysteries. More generally speaking, they had certain ideas inherited from very ancient times. In the language of these ideas they clothed what had taken place on Golgotha. Now these ideas belonged to the atavistic period of humanity. To be understood at all, the Mystery of Golgotha had to be clothed in such language. But we today are living in a time when that spiritual way of looking out on the world, which was quite right in ancient times, has become antiquated. New revelations of a spiritual kind are breaking in upon us, albeit men are not yet willing to admit them. The new revelations will gradually become equal in value to the old atavistic conceptions. Hence if we would do justice to the requirements of the age we must be able to speak of the Mystery of Golgotha as a spiritual fact, in the language of the new conceptions. The Christian conceptions too will have to reckon with what is now entering into the evolution of mankind. For Christianity would otherwise remain a collection of ancient, traditional ideas. All that is living in the human being today as the living demands of the age, would pine and die away and find no nourishment if it had to content itself with the old traditional ideas. This is the fundamental requirement to which anthroposophical Spiritual Science wishes to do justice; the new revelations of the Spirit must be made intelligible, and the greatest event on Earth—the Mystery of Golgotha—must be stated in terms of these new revelations.

Now it may be asked—and the question is exceedingly important:—Who are the Beings of the Spiritual World who stand behind the revelations that are breaking newly into human history through the veil of outward phenomena? You know, my dear friends, the succession of the Hierarchies as I have described them in my writings. You know, therefore, how the so-called “Spirits of Personality” stand within the Hierarchies, within the order of the Spiritual Beings. The Spirits of Personality are one stage lower in the hierarchical order than those other Spirits among whom Jahve, for example, is included—namely, the so-called Spirits of Form.

The fact is this:—To the revelations which have come to humanity through the Spirits of Form hitherto, the revelations of the Spirits of Personality are now about to be added, albeit this is taking place as yet only in a preparatory way, not with the mighty power with which the Spirits of Form revealed themselves. If we would seek for a word to describe what the Spirits of Form really are, we can hold to the good old word “Creators.” The Biblical word “Creator” very nearly circumscribes all that we must associate with the Spirits of Form when we bear in mind their influence on man from ancient Lemurian times until today, and on into the future. (For their actions will by no means cease; they will only have to perform them as it were upon another plane.)

Bearing in mind all that we know from Spiritual Science in this direction, we can call the Spirits of Form creative Spirits. To them above all, man as he is, as earthly man, owes his existence. Now hitherto the Spirits of Personality were not creative Spirits. They were Spirits who ordered various matters, working from the spiritual realms. You may read about their activities in my Occult Science. But the time is now beginning when they will have to play their part creatively, in human evolution to begin with. Subsequently, they will also have to play a creative part in the other kingdoms. Evolution does indeed take place among the Hierarchies. The Spirits of Personality are rising to a creative activity. Indeed this points us to a very important secret in the evolution of mankind. Anyone who seeks to comprehend the evolution of mankind, not in the customary, superficial Nature-study of today, but with inner spiritual, scientific impulses of seership, knows that since the beginning of the fifth Post-Atlantean age (of which we have spoken recently from so many points of view) something has begun to die out in man. And with this death—this gradual maiming of something in our human nature—all our progress even in soul and spirit is fundamentally connected.

We, my dear friends, are no longer living human beings, if I may put it bluntly, in the same sense as were the human beings of centuries or thousands of years ago. They had a stronger inner vitality, a stronger force proceeding simply from their bodily nature. In ordinary life man is only aware of death when it appears in its most radical form, in the cessation of earthly life. But as you know from your studies of Spiritual Science, something is continually dying in us, and if this were not so we should have no consciousness. Consciousness is connected with the death of something in our nature. Now this death-process is stronger within us than it was in the first centuries A.D. or in the pre-Christian centuries. That in man which proceeded from the Spirits of Form as the creative Spirits, is beginning to die, if I may put it so, with some intensity a new creative principle must now be instilled into human nature—a creative principle which must now take its start from the Spiritual. The fact is that from our age onwards, creative forces are coming towards us out of the Spirit provided we ourselves do not resist their entry. These are creative forces Spiritual Science seeks to understand. In thought and spiritual vision it seeks to take hold of that which is penetrating towards us from worlds, whose spiritual impulses did not hitherto flow into human evolution. In thought and vision it seeks to take hold of what is entering as a new spiritual essence into the evolution of the age. Such is the Spiritual Science which is oriented in the truly modern sense. It does not come forward like a “programme”—scientific, learned or of whatever kind. No! It comes forward at this moment because the heavens are sending new revelations down to men, and these have to be understood.

Anyone who fails to understand in this sense the task of anthroposophical Spiritual Science would have nothing at all to say if it did not have to herald and proclaim new things—things only now breaking in upon us, revealing themselves from the heavens to mankind.

What then is it that is revealing itself through the veil of phenomena? It is the expression of a new creative principle, brought into the world by the Spirits of Personality. In this connection we must recognize it as the essential characteristic of our age (which began in the fifteenth century A.D.) to develop impulses of personality. The personality, if I may use this trite expression, wants to stand on its own feet, does so more and more as we go forward into the third millennium, when other impulses for the fulfillment of personality will enter in.

Consider carefully, my dear friends, what I have just told you. There, coming towards humanity, is the new revelation from the Spirits of Light, the Spirits of Personality. But over against this, especially since the beginning of the fifth Post-Atlantean age, there stand certain Spirits of Darkness. For as soon as we look behind the veil of the phenomena we see at once how certain ranks of spiritual Beings are confronted by other ones, opposing ones. On the one hand we turn our gaze to the Spirits of Personality revealing themselves as I described them just now; on the other hand we see over against them certain Spirits of Darkness, making themselves manifest, Spirits whose interest it is not to allow that which is to come—the new revelation of the Spirits of Personality—to become effective in mankind. These new Spirits of Darkness find an opportunity to realize their intentions in a certain phenomenon of modern life which I mentioned a few weeks ago, a phenomenon which is unfortunately far too little heeded by present-day mankind.

If in our time we ask, how many men are there on Earth?—the answer generally is: Approximately fifteen hundred millions. The logical consequence would be that only so much work is done by these fifteen hundred millions. But that is not the case. On the contrary, since the beginning of the fifth Post-Atlantean age a new possibility has arisen; for today, beside the fifteen hundred millions of men on Earth of which we generally speak, there are five hundred millions more, reckoned in terms of labor-power.

Through the machines it is so. And if all the machine labor of today were done by men, there would have to be five hundred million men to do it.

You see therefore that human labor on Earth has found, so to speak, a substitute. Something is here that works like human beings and yet does not consist of human beings in flesh and blood. This fact is extremely important for the evolution of mankind, and it is connected with other facts in the evolution of the present time. The five hundred million men who are really not there as men of flesh and blood—all the work that is done by the machines just as though men were doing it—all this machine work gives opportunity for the Spirits of Darkness to realize themselves within our human evolution. And these very Spirits of Darkness are the opponents of the Spirits of Personality who bring with them the new revelations of the heavens breaking in upon us with a new clairvoyance, while on the other hand, arising out of the sub-earthly realms, we have the embodiment provided for the adversaries. For these very adversaries are demonic Spirits, Spirits of Darkness, who can now actualize themselves—albeit not through human beings of flesh and blood; they live and move among us none the less, inasmuch as human forces are being replaced by mechanisms, by machines.

This too lies at the basis of all disharmony in the social life of our time. Not only so, my dear friends, it lies also at the basis of certain errors, certain aberrations of human thinking in our time, which in their turn provide once more the starting-point for social aberrations. For in the course of the last few centuries, human thinking has in a certain respect adapted itself to the mechanistic order. It is permeated, impregnated by conceptions adapted purely to a mechanistic order. In many spheres of natural science—but not only there, in many spheres of actual life, of the social and socialistic life of today—no other ideas are applied than those that are of use to understand the working of machines, but they are really useless for all that goes beyond machines and mechanism. And yet, my dear friends, in the world of manifestation everything has a twofold aspect, and you must not therefore conclude that the mechanistic ideas have slunk into human evolution as an evil thing that ought to be avoided. No, that would be altogether wrong. Dangerous as these ideas are because they give certain Spirits of Darkness the opportunity to arise against the Spirits of Personality who are revealing themselves today; dangerous, above all, as is the mechanistic order from which these ideas are derived, yet on the other hand the very thinking which takes its start from mechanistic ideas is beneficial. For this, my dear friends, is the task of modern time:—Our powers of soul must be equipped with the ideas that live in modern scientific thought and altogether in modern thought. This is the necessary task of modern time. We must permeate ourselves with these ideas and then place them in the service of the new revelation of the heavens. In other words, the mechanical ideas have taught mankind to think in these mechanical conceptions. The ideas of former times always had vaguer outlines. Anyone who traces spiritual history through the course of time will know that it is so. Even when we study keen thinkers like Plato, we find that their concepts have vague, undefined outlines. Man has only been able to educate himself to think in sharp outlines of thought by falling into the one-sided habit of conceiving the world mechanically. These one-sided, mechanical ideas are exceedingly poor in world-content; for at bottom they contain no more than what is dead. Yet they are a remarkable means of education, and this, indeed, we can observe in our time. The truth is that nowadays, only those can think in really sharp outlines who have made certain ideas of Natural Science their own. All other people think more or less vaguely.

Thus mankind has passed through a certain education in sharply outlined thinking. But from this point onward it is necessary to turn to the new revelation of the Spirit, and to conceive the spiritual worlds with the same clarity with which we have grown accustomed to conceive the world of Natural Science. This is what the modern intellectual conscience requires, nor will mankind be able to dispense with this. Without this, mankind will never be able to solve the all-important questions that will arise in the present and in the near future. Clear and sharp thinking trained in the modern, scientific ideas and then applied to the spiritual world as it reveals itself anew; such is the configuration, fundamentally speaking, of anthroposophical Spiritual Science. Such is the character which anthroposophical Spiritual Science wants to have, therefore it reckons with the most necessary requirements of our time. Moreover, for this very reason, it is able to descend from spiritual heights, to grasp what is necessary to the everyday life of man. My dear friends, we must again and again repeat that Spiritual Science wishes to bring new help to human work and human tasks of outer life.

Of the old traditions, things that have come down to us from former times, you may take, for instance, the various religious faiths. True, they still suffice for a number of people in our time; they suffice in fact for those who desire a certain “edification.” Out of the heart of the old religious confessions such people are told about the Divine Kingdoms of Heaven; they are told about what lies hidden behind the veil of sense-phenomena, and they descend thus far:—they preach to men telling them that they should be good, that they should love one another, and so forth. The religious faiths come down into the everyday life just far enough to voice certain moral requirements.

On the other side, men try to gain a vision of the demands of everyday life, which constitutes as it were the other pole of life. They try to gain knowledge of Nature. Well, as you know, it is only in the rarest cases that the parsons or preachers in their Sunday afternoon addresses proclaim Botany or Zoology to mankind from the realms of higher revelation. What they proclaim about the Heavenly Kingdoms does not reach down to Earth. But not only in matters of Science; for other things, too, the immediate demands which surround us every hour, every minute—information is sought in what I called just now “the other pole of life;” hence, there has arisen at this pole a kind of natural scientific thinking concerning the social demands of our time. Think, my dear friends, how the thoughts that men conceive about the needs of everyday life, and the things the parsons proclaim out of the Kingdom of Heaven—think how these two stand outwardly side by side. They are two different worlds; they have no point of contact. Men want to work (or so we may assume), want to have thoughts about their work; and then, when their work is done, they want to hear what there is to be said about Death and Immortality and things Divine. But these are two distinct and separated realms. They do not realize the need to unite them. They want to think about money, capital, credit, labor-power, etc., from one side, and about etherical [ethereal?] ideals from the other side. They do not summon the force of thought to speak out of the sources of what is said about the Spirit, about the life of everyday affairs where God, or the gods, are revealed after all no less than in the other realms. This is the great evil of the present time; this, above all, we must clearly see if we would understand why the present catastrophic time has broken in upon mankind. We need once more a Science which, while speaking of the highest things of the Divine, is able to enter simultaneously into the needs of everyday. For otherwise the needs of everyday will remain in that chaotic order in which you see the Lenins and the Trotskys in our time; while the doctrines which proclaim the secrets of Heaven remain unfruitful for external life, however much they may warm the selfish inner feeling of the heart.

In the future this must not be so. In the future men must not have Sunday afternoon addresses in which they try to get beyond the everyday, seeking mere “edification” or warmth and comfort for their selfish religious needs, and then go out again into the everyday which they regard in a God-empty way, conceiving it not spiritually but with inadequate and superficial thought. The demands which our time is making of us lie indeed within the spiritual realm; and order will not come into our time till men admit that these things which I have now characterized must be taken into account.

A host of other important impulses of our time must be seen in this connection. We are standing in the very midst—not at the end, but I say with full consciousness, in the very midst—of a time of conflict, a time when chaotic events are taking place in human evolution, events from which as I have often said, men ought to learn. Alas! There are so many who have learnt nothing yet from the events of the last four and a half years, whose thinking is still the very same in form as it was four and a half years ago. Events are taking place, my dear friends, which reveal outward humanity—or the life of outward humanity—in conflict and in warfare. True, there was conflict in other epochs of time as well, but the conflict in our epoch has its own peculiar character of which we become aware when we look not merely on the surface but in the depths. For there we see that many things are taking place in the outer world which should really be going on in the inner life of men. You will readily believe that the receiving of the new revelations from the heavens must go hand in hand with a deepened inwardness of human nature. This deepened inwardness will bring with it certain inner conflicts into the souls of men. But the prospect of inner conflicts for the human soul must not give us pessimistic feelings. For it is only out of their conflicts of the soul that men will grow strong toward the future. The man of today who is not yet prepared for this desires his parsons, the representatives of his religious faith, somehow to cloud his vision of what is nonetheless already there subconsciously in his own soul. Let them but warm his soul, let them comfort him, telling him beautiful things of what the Divine Beneficence intends for man—without man's doing anything with real activity himself! My dear friends, in the near future the gods will intend for man that alone for which man himself will lend a hand. Man must pass through inner conflicts of the soul, conflicts that will strengthen him. We have not to look towards a future more comfortable than the past or the present. Specious ideals—which in reality are nothing but modern narcotics—are not the truth. They are more Wilsonism. To speak of ushering in an altogether new age by twice seven points (I know not if the number be mystically intended; if so it is mystical in a bad sense)—that, my dear friends, is a strange form of modern superstition.

For the future, my dear friends, things will by no means be more comfortable in the outer life. For the remainder of earthly evolution mankind will yet have to shoulder far greater discomforts than they dream of yet. Nevertheless, they will shoulder them, for they will be strengthened by inner conflicts of soul—every individual man in his own soul. Looking through the veil of outward phenomena, we behold not a world in which the gods sleep a sleep of legendary peace, each in his bed, or lead a peaceful, happy life such as men have dreamed of—which is indeed none other than a form of laziness!

No! It is not so. When we pierce the veil of phenomena we behold a life of Divine Spiritual, Hierarchical labor; the thing that strikes us first is the great battle which is taking place behind the scene of the physical world of sense—the battle between Wisdom and Love. And man is placed in the midst of this battle. For a long time he has been unconscious of it, in future he must take part more and more consciously in this conflict which is taking place in the world between Wisdom and Love. For Man himself shall be the outcome when Wisdom and Love beat like an eternal pendulum, now towards the side of Wisdom and now towards the side of Love. Only through the rhythmic swinging of the pendulum, not through a sleepy peace, will the future shape itself aright.

In ancient, atavistic times, and hitherto, this battle between Wisdom and Love was being waged in the subconscious depths of the human soul. Down in the depths, my dear friends, where the unconscious instincts are pulsating, there stands the Spirit of Wisdom against the Spirit of Love, and the Spirit of Love against the Spirit of Wisdom. But from our time onward—from the time of evolution of the Spiritual Soul of Consciousness—all this is rising into the conscious life. Man must fight this battle out within himself. Stronger and stronger become the forces which play in human nature on the foundation of this inner conflict of the soul. Today, however, men are still resisting this inner evolution. They divine its coming but they are afraid of it; they have not the courage for this inner conflict. All that is written in the book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment is meant to lead men to fight this inner battle out victoriously. But people find it inconvenient; they shrink in fear; they have not the courage to go through the inner fight. And this, my dear friends, is a characteristic phenomenon of our time. Men will not go through this inner fight; they flee from it; they do not want it yet. And because they will not have it inwardly, it is projected outward. In one of the Mystery Plays I hinted at this fact. This passage, as you know, was written long before the outbreak of the present world-catastrophe of war, but the latter still bears witness to its truth. In it I showed how all the outer conflicts of today are conflicts which have been thrust out of the inner life of man. Conflicts in other ages had a different character, for all these things are changing and undergoing metamorphosis. Now this is what must come: men must receive into their inner life the battles which they now believe themselves obliged to fight externally. A battlefield in the inner life of human souls will be the remedy, the healing for what appears today among men so ruinously. Not till this inner battlefield enters the souls of men can the dread catastrophe which has come among them today be brought to rest. For the outward conflict is simply that which men project outside themselves, because they are unwilling to bring it into their own inner life. All other aspects are a mere semblance; this is the reality.

Here, my dear friends, once more we have a circumstance with which anthroposophical Spiritual Science reckons. It reckons with it inasmuch as it does not merely absorb some antiquated, ancient doctrines, but seeks to bring among men what is making itself felt in the spirit of the present time and of the future—the new revelations from the Heavens. This distinction we must see, otherwise we shall continue to confuse the Spiritual Science here intended with other things to which it by no means belongs. Anthroposophical Spiritual Science cannot be proclaimed in the same way as many things today which in reality belong to the past. Anthroposophical Spiritual Science must speak to the full, clear consciousness of mankind. But in the very moment when we say this we wound the vanity of many people. Do not the people of today believe that they possess extraordinarily clear and enlightened thoughts? Yet in reality they need only look and see what they are doing, especially in spiritual matters, and they would find that their “clear and enlightened thought” is not much to be proud of. The social problem—if you will, the war-problem—of the present time can be solved in no other way than by clear thoughts trained in the way of modern thinking, and then directed to the Spiritual World that reveals itself anew, the world that is coming to us from the good Spirits of Personality. Because this Spiritual Science is so new in this respect, therefore it has for its opponents all those who will not summon up the activity to penetrate into this inner activity of soul; good-will is essentially required.

You see, the very nerve of this Spiritual Science is different from that of earlier spiritual revelations. As I have often said, people in our time who desire knowledge of the secrets of existence will often turn to some antiquated volume containing the teachings of old, atavistic clairvoyance. How blissful many a person is today if he comes across some old book which—unrelated to the modern, scientific consciousness—claims to give information about those things which are essentially unknown to the people of today, but which were known in olden times to those who spoke, for example, of Salt, Mercury and Sulphur. Needless to say, my dear friends, sublime and venerable truths are contained in these antiquated books; but there is evolution in the world, and what was good for former epochs is not good for our own. Former epochs were able to take possession in their own way of what is clothed in such words as “Salt,” “Mercury,” and “Sulphur.” The present time must seek for something new. Spiritual Beings are bringing a new gift towards it, for the healing of mankind. Therefore this new thing must not be left unheeded. And it must be of quite a different kind from the old. There is a fundamental difference between the New and the Old. The Old brought forth a magnificent understanding of the Wisdom of the Universe—an understanding of all that is outside Man. Even the ancient Wisdom-treasure that came down to such spirits as Paracelsus and Jacob Boehme was an understanding of the Universe—deep and penetrating. This understanding of the Universe was then applied in order to understand Man too. Man himself was conceived in terms of the Universe. That is the fundamental character of the ancient Wisdom. How the Spiritual revealed itself in external Nature—how Spiritual Beings in their varied stages revealed themselves through the different elements—all this was seen and understood by the atavistic clairvoyance in a way that is no longer possible to man today. And this was then applied to Man. In great and all-embracing Nature they recognized first of all the life of Planets and Stars, and then the elemental life that lives through the elements through “Salt,” “Mercury,” and “Sulphur.” Thereafter they could ask themselves: How does all this appear in Man? Beginning from the Universe they came to Man.

This is no longer the way for man to find his further evolution in the present and in the near future. Even Jacob Boehme could still speak of Salt, Mercury and Sulphur. We must speak differently; we must take the opposite path, the path of the future. We take our start from Man; we understand first Man, then go on from this understanding of Man to an understanding of the Universe. This is the path I took, for a certain domain of knowledge, in my Occult Science. This is the path which must be taken altogether in the future. We speak not of “Salt;” we speak of that which lives as the retrogressive element of evolution in the human organism—in the nerves and senses system. We understand the nerves and senses system as a descending, retrogressive development. The man of ancient times looked out into external Nature and beheld all that is brought about in the element of “Salt.” Thus he beheld in the world outside what we behold when we contemplate the life of nerves and senses from the standpoint of our Spiritual Science. To understand the outer Universe, the man of olden times beheld in it the world of “Mercury.” We look into the human organism and we find the Rhythm. For all the rhythmic life, as we have often said, is that in man which outwardly is “Mercury.” We look to Man, we look for an understanding of Man, and from this starting point, an understanding of the Universe.

Such is the mighty revelation according to which we have to live in our conception of all spiritual things. In the ancient revelation which proceeded from an understanding of the Universe to an understanding of Man—all the old religions and traditions had their source. They are preserved to this day in antiquated systems, but they can no longer be fruitful for mankind, save by way of historic study, when they enable us to feel this ancient Wisdom with true reverence. In the last resort even the religious faiths of today have the same source. But we are at the beginning of the New, i.e., of the understanding of Man which must expand into an understanding of the world.

Such must be the new path, my dear friends, and it is connected with many things. Take one example:—the way in which we have attempted this building of the Goetheanum. You know how sharply I have said on one occasion or another: It is a calumny to speak of this building as representing symbolically this or that truth. Though indeed in many cases it is not badly meant, nevertheless it is an objective calumny, and after all, those who do not understand our building ought not to speak of it. Look for a symbol in this building—you will not find a single one. Nowhere will you find one. The attempt has been made to create—directly out of the spiritual world—not anything symbolic, but the spiritual Reality itself, insofar as it has hitherto been able to reveal itself. Symbolism is the language in which mankind was spoken to in former times. It lies inherent in the very progress of human evolution, that the old vision through symbols, which worked upon the instincts, should be raised into the full consciousness, where the Reality—the spiritual Reality—is seen.

But this vision of the Reality of the Spirit requires a certain spiritual activity. The contemplation of symbols enabled men to fall asleep, as it were. Thus, as I told you recently, there are freemasons nowadays who say they are very glad that their symbols are not explained to them, for everyone can then think what he likes—a liberty which most of them interpret by thinking nothing at all, and letting the symbols work on them unconsciously. All this has remained over from olden times, and must be transformed into the new way. Symbolism, as you know, plays no essential part in what is here called Anthroposophical Spiritual Science. For in this science we must speak a new language, in a certain sense. Even if, from time to time, we have referred to one symbol or another, these symbols were only borrowed, as it were, to exemplify this or that, or to bring out the agreement between the truths newly discovered which are to serve the new humanity, and those that still survive in an antiquated form from times long past.

Now it lies inherent as it were (what I say will lead us back again tomorrow to our studies of the social life)—it lies inherent in human nature that men invariably rebel at first against what appears as a new thing. And those who consider themselves, so to speak, the guardians and protectors of the old are the greatest resisters. Hence the new, anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science finds its predestined center of opposition among these who look upon themselves as guardians of the old traditions. But this cannot prevent it from going forward on its way which is the necessary and natural way for modern humanity.

There are a certain number of you, my dear friends, who know that in our circles too we have by no means hesitated to set forth the life of symbolism and ritual that has remained from olden times. But we have always done so in a very different spirit. Generally the greatest value is attached, in an antiquated spirit, to the symbolism and ritual itself. To maintain the continuity of human evolution, it is still necessary to establish a connection, as it were, with symbolism and ritual. But in our circles symbolism and ritual have never been presented in any other way than as something that should lead us to the spiritual reality itself and to its immediate incorporation into the living values of our time. Hence it is just in anthroposophical Spiritual Science that we find the explanation of many, nay, in fact, of all the principles of ritual and symbolism, from the past.

We can show by them how mankind received by other paths a Wisdom which in our time is antiquated and out of date. This Wisdom brought man, in a certain sense, into an unfree condition. Today we must set out on new paths of Wisdom. These new paths are inconvenient to many people, and most of all to those who are only anxious to preserve the old and lull mankind to sleep in the old Wisdom-treasures. It is useless to say to a man of forty: “You can become intelligent; you can regain the faculty to learn, but to this end you must return to the age of twenty!” True, if he could return to the age of twenty, he would be capable of learning. But it is impossible. Humanity cannot be screwed back to a former stage. We cannot recommend them to do what was only right and normal for former epochs of the Earth. Yet this is the very thing which many adherents of religious communities and of certain other societies are desirous of spreading in our time. Thus the Old is set up in opposition to that which is really seeking to come among mankind and which alone can lead to its salvation. Therein lies much of what is leading to the catastrophic events of our time.

It is immensely important, my dear friends, to bear this in mind. To be able to be, in the deepest sense of the word, a man who unites himself with that which the new revelations of the Heavens are wanting from the Earth—this is the thing that matters. And if the outer exoteric problems of mankind are not to suffer shipwreck, we simply must have a Spiritual Science in our time, equipped with concepts strong and penetrating enough to bring to consciousness even in the everyday life what is moving the souls of men all the Earth over—albeit in the differentiated ways which I have described.

In future it will no longer do to live on the one hand in the everyday life, conceiving it as a life profane and poor in spiritual content, thereafter to withdraw into the Church or Masonic Temple, letting the two worlds be altogether separate, so that the Church or Masonic Temple has no idea how the outer social life should be ordered, while on the other hand the social life goes on its way without the help of what is striving in the inner life of men, and is kept in the subconsciousness of man by ritual and symbols. In future it will be necessary to speak to the consciousness of men. This fact alone is more important than all our sympathies and antipathies with the old or with the new. For that which must be done must be done out of real insight—it must not proceed from our sympathies and antipathies

You see, my dear friends, the central nerve in the comprehension of the spiritual world today is this: All that comes to us from ancient times must be “inwarded.” The outward must become inward. For it is thereby raised into full human consciousness as something no less holy than it was in former times. This tendency must take place in the modern evolution of mankind. This tendency alone, my dear friends, is the true Christianity of the twentieth century. Against it—against the intentions that are here indicated—all who would merely preserve the Old quite naturally stand opposed. A large proportion of mankind is attached with certain habits of thought and feeling to the Old. They find it more comfortable, for it does not demand a conscious understanding. People find Spiritual Science inconvenient. For they are called upon to understand it, and it can only be understood by making use of healthy, wide-awake, human intelligence, but people would rather not understand. In many respects nowadays there is a striving not for understanding but for non-understanding. Hence it will go on for a long time:—Spiritual Science, such as is here intended, will meet with opposition after opposition. Many of these oppositions are quite well meant, but even they can frequently reverse into the very opposite of a good meaning. And above all, as I have often told you, my dear friends, this Spiritual Science, which wants to tell humanity of highest spiritual things while speaking openly and freely in modern terms of thought, time and again there will arise in opposition those who adhere to the old tendencies—those who incline to the old creeds and Churches, or to ancient Masonic or similar societies of whatsoever kind. These are the natural opponents. as it were. We can understand this opposition, for in this sphere, too, clear understanding is the only right and true aim of Spiritual Science. Here too, there must be no dark and cloudy non-understanding. Indeed modern anthroposophical Spiritual Science need not appeal at all as forming a Society in the old sense of the word, nor need it occasion any surprise that it does not. It has no need to adopt the methods that were taken and are still being taken by the old secret Societies. These old methods are the very ones of which modern humanity is wanting to rid itself. In outer exoteric spheres there is much talk today of getting rid of secret diplomacy—and rightly so, as I believe, altogether rightly. Anyone who has studied history in these domains knows that this very secret diplomacy is none other than the last remains of the methods and ideas of the old secret Societies. Many another thing will have to be transcended. It is strange, my dear friends, what misunderstandings one can experience in this sphere. As you are well aware, I have written an Occult Science. A man whom I have often mentioned to you sent me a manuscript about this Occult Science which began somewhat as follows:—“There can be no such thing as an ‘Occult Science,’ for a Science must necessarily be public. It is a misuse of terms to speak of ‘Occult Science.’ ”—That, of course, is perfect nonsense. For when we speak of “Natural Science” we do not mean a science that is natural but a science of Nature, which has to be achieved of course by mental work. So it is when we speak of Occult Science, we do not mean a science that is perpetually hidden. There is such a thing as a published “Occult Science,” namely, a science of those things which may be called intimate or occult. It is simply an absurd way of picking up words. Nor need we imagine that with the mere publication everything is given. Many a thing which has been exoterically spoken will remain esoteric for a long time yet. Indeed, my dear friends, there are many exoteric books which you can buy anywhere today which are very esoteric for many people (for the sake of politeness I will not say “for most!”). Many a little volume which you can buy for a few pence in a popular edition will represent for a large number of people something extremely esoteric. That therefore is not the point, the thing that matters is the kind of inner union which the human soul has, or is ready to enter into, with these things.

That, my dear friends, is only in parenthesis. The point I really wish to make is that the old and antiquated motif of secrecy must be replaced by something altogether different. The life of Spiritual Science in mankind will indeed be different from what has frequently been cultivated by secret societies and leagues of one kind of another. These “secret” societies can of course be seen through, to the very bottom of their souls; they are by no means secret nowadays for anyone who cares to go into such matters. Nevertheless they maintain the principle of secrecy in a wrongful way. They uphold it in their customs, manner, and conduct. And that is more important than many another aspect. You, all of you, are aware that there are secret societies of one kind or another—Societies arising out of religious faiths, Societies, too, of other kinds—which instruct their members to shape the intercourse of man to man in a special way, and by mysterious methods to carry this or that element into the life of men. Well, my dear friends, it is quite natural that in course of time the most varied shades and colorings of such secret Societies have arisen. Frequently they are at war with one another to the knife, and without doubt they now and then contain features which can justly be attacked. Be that as it may! The thing that lives in a society of human beings who adhere to anthroposophical Spiritual Science does not require to be defended by any such means as are sometimes needed to defend what is connected with secret Societies and with their secret usages. There is absolutely no need to defend by any special art or artifice that which emerges in the anthroposophical Spiritual Movement. I can tell you the very simplest method of defending it. No one need do any more for its defense than to tell the truth and to refrain from lying. Whoever tells the truth about anthroposophical Spiritual Science (and after all, it is the duty of every man to speak the truth)—he is defending it. That I know; this statement can be made. Other defense is necessary for anthroposophical Spiritual Science. For it is the obvious duty of every human being to repudiate what is untrue.

Herein I have drawn your attention to a most important point, for it concerns the very principle of anthroposophical Spiritual Science. This Spiritual Science does not proceed by any tortuous paths. It speaks to man in the same spirit in which Science speaks during our time. Only within the scientific customs of our time it tells what—if I may use the word—the heavens are now and henceforth revealing to mankind. This must be clearly seen, my dear friends, for it implies that Spiritual Science as such, and not the life of the Society, is placed in the foreground. It places the objective truths in the foreground, making the life of the Society only the vehicle to hear them.

A week ago I said that it is necessary to distinguish clearly between anthroposophical Spiritual Science and other things. We must be fully conscious of the distinction, otherwise we shall fall short of a most important element in the present evolution of mankind, and this we must not do, if we honestly wish to devote ourselves to the most needful impulses—these impulses which can bring healing into the catastrophes of the present and of the near future.

One would fain give oneself up to this hope, my dear friends, that a new way of judgment might be found among us—a new power of discrimination for what is now obliged to enter as a quite new thing into the evolution of mankind. We must not confound the antiquated things with that which is endeavoring, out of the fundamental demands of earthly evolution, to bring forth in the present and in the near future what must be brought forward, so that all that which has arisen under the influence of the old things may be replaced by the new.

Take only this one thing: the old Christianity has had nearly 2000 years to evolve. In the first centuries A.D. it was different from what it is today, as everybody knows who studies it. And what Christianity shall now become—that again must be different. Study the last four and a half years: you may take them as an example which shows how the past relics—not of Christianity itself but of a certain Christian conception—have stood the test, or rather, have failed to stand the test in this catastrophic time. So long as we remain in abstract generalizations we can say what we like. That is the characteristic of abstract world-conceptions. They can clothe anything they like in their abstract formulae. It is a very different matter when we come to concepts and ideas such as I explained to you recently; the fundamental Social idea of the future, the three-fold idea—this idea is adapted, as I showed last Sunday, to the reality itself. It is capable of manifold configuration, it expands over the realities of life, for it is adapted to them. With an abstract idea you can no doubt comprise all things; but in relation to a real idea, my dear friends, you can speak as I myself have done to many people to whom I have explained the threefold conception, albeit not as one who is convinced of his own dogmatic system and says: “This is what you must accept, or else everything will go wrong.” Where real ideas are concerned, there can be no such thing as that. I spoke to them quite differently; I said: “You need not believe in these ideas as dogmas at all. Set to work anywhere in the world of reality, and you will see; whenever you introduce these ideas into the world of reality, it will be mastered with their help. Perhaps, when you have done—or even when you have only worked on a small portion of the reality with these ideas—the outcome will be quite different.” I should not be at all surprised if in the execution of these ideas insofar as they refer to the realities, not the one stone were left upon another of the indications originally given. If we do not proceed dogmatically, then we do not hold fast to our programmes like so many people do when they elaborate statutes and programmes for Societies. We only point out what is already seeking to take shape in the reality itself. This, then, is applicable in the reality. Set to work, and it may well be that ideas will emerge quite different from those which were at first set forth. This is the very characteristic of ideas which are true to reality; they change with life itself and life is changing continually. It is not a question of having fine ideas, but ideas according to the reality. These ideas we cannot and should not express in abstract terms; we should try to express them so that they are living and enter livingly into the reality of life. Naturally, then, they are most liable to be attacked by those who love abstractions. This too, my dear friends, is new in anthroposophical Spiritual Science. In Anthroposophy we do not only think new things, but we think in a new way. That is why so many people cannot approach it, they cannot get into this “thinking in a new way.” Yet this is the thing that matters; in this new thinking, we may say, the thought dives down into the reality and we live with the reality. You can prove anything you like with abstractions; with an abstraction, be it even of a God, you can declare as a good and loyal monarchist subject: “The King is appointed by the grace of God.” The present moment has its own teaching, for now he is in turn deposed by the grace of God! With your abstractions you can include the black and the white under the same abstraction. With your abstractions you can say that God is leading to battle the armies of the one side and of the other.

In the striving for reality which lies at the very foundation of anthroposophical Spiritual Science, the point is to replace such abstract life and abstract talk—ruinous as it is for life itself—by true thinking, which accords with the reality, and by a way of speaking which lovingly dives down into the reality of life, and speaks out of the reality itself. We need a thinking which not only thinks different things, but differently than heretofore. Such thinking strives towards the ideal of “not I, but Christ in me,” after the words of St. Paul. For Christ himself sought for the harmony between the outer-human and the inner-human. This must become an ideal in all our human striving.

BEFORE the lecture, Dr Steiner makes some announcements regarding arrangements:

My dear friends!

Before opening today's meeting I must ask your forgiveness for yesterday's unpleasantness about access to the hall and having to wait outside. I do beg your forgiveness for this most annoying incident which, however, was truly the consequence of a whole sequence of misunderstandings. From now on we shall make sure that our friends will find the doors open here half an hour before any meeting. I am also doing my best to have two more radiators put in tonight so that it will no longer be quite so cold in the outer room. It is really difficult in this primitive accommodation to create conditions which are satisfactory for everybody. Please believe me when I say that the conditions are the least satisfactory of all for the Vorstand and myself. Let us hope that we can avoid too much trouble in the coming days.

Now may I ask Herr Stuten to speak. He is going to give us the pleasure of a lecture about the element of music in spiritual life.

Herr Stuten gives his lecture on music and the spiritual world.

After a fifteen-minute break the debate on the Statutes continues. Dr Steiner opens with the following words:

My dear friends! Today once again I shall speak the words which are to give us the foundation for our present work as well as for our continued work outside:

Soul of Man!
Thou livest in the limbs
Which bear thee through the world of space
In the spirit's ocean-being.
Practise spirit-recalling
In depths of soul,
Where in the wielding will
Of world-creating
Thine own I
Comes to being
Within God's I.
And thou wilt truly live
In the World-Being of Man.

For the Father-Spirit of the heights holds sway
In depths of worlds begetting being.

Soul of Man!
Thou livest in the beat of heart and lung
Which leads thee through the rhythm of time
Into the realm of thine own soul's feeling.
Practise spirit-awareness
In balance of the soul,
Where the surging deeds
Of the world's becoming
Thine own I
Unite
With the World-I.
And thou wilt truly feel
In the Soul-Weaving of Man.

For the Christ-Will in the encircling round holds sway
In the rhythms of the worlds, bestowing grace on the soul.

Soul of Man!
Thou livest in the resting head
Which from the grounds of eternity
Opens to thee the world-thoughts.
Practise spirit-beholding
In stillness of thought,
Where the eternal aims of Gods
World-Being's
Light
On thine own I
Bestow
For thy free willing.
And thou wilt truly think
In the Spirit-Foundations of Man.

For the world-thoughts of the Spirit hold sway
In the being of worlds, craving for light.

Now, dear friends, let us once more inscribe the inner rhythm into our souls, the rhythm that can show us closely how these very words resound out of the rhythm of the universe.

The first verse:

Practise spirit-recalling

This is the activity that can be accomplished within one's own soul. It corresponds to what out there in the great universe is expressed in the words:

For the Father-Spirit of the heights holds sway
In depths of worlds begetting being.

The second is:

Practise spirit-awareness

That is the process within, which is answered out there in the universe by:

For the Christ-Will in the encircling round holds sway
In the rhythms of the worlds, bestowing grace on the soul.

The third is:

Practise spirit-beholding

From out there comes the answer:

For the world-thoughts of the Spirit hold sway
In the being of worlds, craving for light.

DR STEINER: We shall now continue our meeting with a discussion of Paragraph 4 of the Statutes. Would Dr Wachsmuth please read Paragraph 4.

Paragraph 4 is read by Dr Wachsmuth:

‘4. The Anthroposophical Society is in no sense a secret society, but is entirely public. Anyone can become a member, without regard to nationality, social standing, religion, scientific or artistic conviction, who considers as justified the existence of an institution such as the Goetheanum in Dornach, in its capacity as a School of Spiritual Science. The Anthroposophical Society rejects any kind of sectarian activity. Party politics it considers not to be within its task.’

DR STEINER: Mr Collison has applied to speak first.

MR COLLISON: Please pardon me, as a very old member, for saying a few words about the Statutes. We have now come to point 4. I believe that it cannot be our intention to improve on these Statutes. Dr Steiner has put so much effort into them and they are truly all-embracing. It seems to me that any debate on the various points should serve the purpose solely of asking any questions there might be about the meaning or the extent of any of them.

(Lengthy applause.)

DR STEINER: Who would like to speak about Paragraph 4?

The suggestion is made that the Statutes should be adopted by acclamation.

DR STEINER: Yes, but I still have to ask whether anybody would like to speak to Paragraph 4. This Paragraph is in the main concerned with the fact that quite soon we shall be presenting the Anthroposophical Society to the world as an entirely public society. And everything that can contain the esoteric element, despite this public character, will be ensured by Paragraph 5 and subsequent Paragraphs.

May I ask once more who would like to speak to Paragraph 4 of the Statutes? There seems to be nobody. So will those friends who are in favour of adopting Paragraph 4 please raise their hands. (They do.) Who is in favour of rejecting Paragraph 4? (No hands are raised.) Paragraph 4 is adopted at the second reading.

Would Herr Wachsmuth please read Paragraph 5 of the Statutes.

Paragraph 5 is read out:

‘5. The Anthroposophical Society sees the School of Spiritual Science in Dornach as a centre for its activity. The School will be composed of three Classes. Members of the Society will be admitted to the School on their own application after a period of membership to be determined by the leadership at the Goetheanum. They enter in this way the First Class of the School of Spiritual Science. Admission to the Second or Third Class takes place when the person requesting this is deemed eligible by the leadership at the Goetheanum.’

DR STEINER: Now, my dear friends, the purpose of this Paragraph is to enable the soul which naturally belongs to the Anthroposophical Society and which can be given to it in the Goetheanum at Dornach, to be given to it indeed in the near future. This Paragraph of the Statutes is intended to make members, or those who still want to become members, conscious of the fact that in the Goetheanum we are given the soul of the Anthroposophical Movement. This will make it possible for the esoteric impulses that ought to be given to the Anthroposophical Society to actually be given to it. We shall make progress if you endeavour to penetrate to the spirit of this fifth Paragraph.

I would only like to say a few things about how I see the constitution of the School of Spiritual Science in Dornach, at the Goetheanum, in the future. Those who have sojourned and worked within the Anthroposophical Society for some time have had the opportunity of realizing quite well that in the matter of advancing in the schooling by stages it will more and more be a question not merely of intellectual capacities, least of all the type of intellectual and empirical schooling customary in the outside world except where absolutely necessary in respect of specialist knowledge. An important role will have to be played by the capacities that lie in the feelings and in those of direct perception of the esoteric and the occult, and by moral qualities and so on. The fundamental feature of what will be at work with regard to the three Classes, which are built on the foundation of the Anthroposophical Society, which in its turn is entirely public—this fundamental feature in the working of the three Classes will be, of course, the spiritual-scientific content. But for this very reason it will be necessary for us to present the working of the School of Spiritual Science before the world in a way that shows how it can inspire the various realms of civilization, of knowledge, of art and so on. Here, too, from the start, we must not allow ourselves to think along any given lines. What is meant by thinking along a given line? To think along a given line would be to say: The School of Spiritual Science must be divided up in accordance with a concept or an idea such as a logical division into the first Section, the second Section, the third, the fourth, the fifth Section and so on. This can be nicely thought out.

What is usually the consequence of such a way of thinking? It is a structure that lies in the realm of Cloud-cuckoo-land. And on top of that, this structure has to be administered! So then you start hunting for suitable people, you look around all over the place for people who have to fit into the first, the second, the third Section, and finally they are somehow juggled in by means of some sort of election or something. Usually what then becomes apparent is that they settle as though into a chrysalis in their particular department in the scheme; they creep into their chrysalis, but no butterfly emerges. So let us not proceed in an abstract way. Let us start by taking the activities that are already going on and put together the Sections out of the existing facts. Let us take what is already there. You see, dear friends, the management of what has to be administered, including what has to be administered in the highest spiritual sense in the different realms, cannot be carried out by just anybody who might be called and who might not even live here permanently. Is it not so that if more is to be done than merely talking about work, if the work itself is actually to be done with full responsibility, then firstly each one doing the work must be constantly available for all the others, and secondly the leadership as a whole must be accessible at any time to those who are responsible. That is why simply out of spiritual empiricism I thought that the School of Spiritual Science at the Goetheanum in Dornach should be led by me with regard to all esoteric matters and that I should be supported in this leadership by those people who have shared spiritually in the work of bringing about the building of the Anthroposophical Movement.

What I am now going to say therefore arises naturally out of the situation in Dornach at the moment. First of all it will fall to me to maintain an overall view and to administer the School as a whole, while also taking on the leadership of the general anthroposophical and pedagogical aspects.

I would carry out the leadership of the other aspects by placing at the head of the different Sections those persons who are in a position, from what has gone before, to run a particular branch of the work of the Anthroposophical Movement.

Out of this there would arise: Firstly—I have mentioned it already—what in France is called ‘belles-lettres.’ I don't know whether the expression is still used. No? What a pity! In Germany they spoke of ‘schöne Wissenschaften’ up to the nineteenth century, and then the term lapsed. The ‘beautiful sciences’, sciences which brought beauty into human knowledge, aesthetics, art. How typical that even in France the expression ‘belles-lettres’ is no longer used!

SOMEONE CALLS OUT: ‘Académie des lettres!’

Yes, but the ‘belles’ has been left out! And it is just this aspect with which I am concerned. We have plenty of sciences, but where are the ‘beautiful sciences’? I don't know what those of you gathered here, especially the younger members, intent on science, think about the matter, but here in Dornach we link up not only with more recent times but also with most ancient past times. Therefore we may, and indeed must, create a Section for the field that in France used to be called ‘belles-lettres’ and in Germany is called ‘schöne Wissenschaften.’ Perhaps we shall have to give it a less unaccustomed name for the world at large, but so far I haven't found one. And once again I have to say that it is perfectly obvious that there is a person here who could not be more suitable as the leader of this Section, and that is our dear friend Albert Steffen who will most certainly do nothing in this realm which is not most eminently suited to the spiritual-scientific Movement as it is intended to take its start here from Dornach. (Lively applause.)

Then there is the realm of the spoken arts together with music and eurythmy. Once again there is a person on whom the choice falls quite naturally, so there is no need for me to say a great deal. My leadership of this realm will be through Frau Dr Steiner as the Section Leader. (Lively applause.)

Another department to be created here is a Section for the natural sciences themselves. You know that our attitude to the natural sciences is such that we seek in them something extremely profound and that it is most urgent for us to metamorphose the way they are treated nowadays into something quite different. You will see from a work of literature which is almost ready at the printer that our dear friend, Dr Guenther Wachsmuth, has devoted himself enthusiastically to this metamorphosis of natural science. Therefore we shall most fruitfully be able to entrust the department for the natural sciences to Dr Guenther Wachsmuth. (Applause.)

In connection with this will be a department which must be cultivated especially carefully because always in times when true spiritual knowledge has been striven for its field has been not so much a chapter of spiritual science as rather something quite organically linked with spiritual science. It is impossible to imagine that in olden times the spiritual vision, the spiritual knowledge given to mankind could have been separated in any way from the medical element. It will be seen in the work which Frau Dr Wegman has been doing with me here, which is soon to be made public, how not only a synthesis but an organic development can arise for a true anthroposophical view of the world. Once more, therefore, it is as a matter of course that the administration of the medical department, the Medical Section, should be conducted through me with the help of the Section Leader Frau Dr Wegman. (Applause.)

Now my dear friends, if you call to mind the old Goetheanum, and if you call to mind the beautiful words spoken about it today by our friend Herr Stuten in his excellent lecture, then you will see that the sculptural or plastic arts, too, have played a great role here. They will have to go on playing this role in future, so we shall certainly need a Section for the Sculptural Arts. You know that for years Miss Maryon has been at my side in carrying out the sculptural arts for the Goetheanum. Most unfortunately she is unable to take part in this gathering as she is suffering from a long illness which has prevented her even from stepping over here to take part. But I hope that after a while, when she is well again, she will be able to devote herself to the work of which I am now speaking. I shall carry out all that needs to be done here by way of sculpture and in the realm of the sculptural arts through the leader of this Section, Miss Maryon. (Applause.)

And there is another person who has marked out her territory in the world so clearly that whenever advice or help is needed in the realm of mathematics and astronomy it comes from her. You, and especially those resident in Dornach, can see from the content of my most recent lectures, including those given here before the last cycle, how necessary it is, especially in the field of astronomy, to go back to the more ancient conceptions. If you consider a small note in my memoires which are now appearing in Das Goetheanum—just at the beginning of the article coming out this evening⁵²—you will see how very profound are the reasons for the motto over Plato's Academy: ‘God geometrizes’. And indeed it is only possible to penetrate Platonic instruction—I am speaking of Platonic instruction and not spiritual-scientific instruction—by means of mathematics. Everything which needs to be put straight in this field must be put straight. And I believe that you will be as enthusiastic as you were in the other cases when I tell you that in the future I shall let this area be tended through Fräulein Dr Vreede as the Section Leader. (Applause.)

My dear friends! If I had divided up these Sections according to ideas, no doubt there would have been others too, but the people would have been lacking here in Dornach who could have seen to what was necessary in accordance with all the fundamental conditions. You may believe me that whereas the Statutes are the fruit of four weeks' consideration, the announcements I have just made are based on the experience of years. So this is how things will have to stand.

Later on, when we come to include the Vorstand in the Statutes, I shall speak on this final point of the Statutes and tell you how I see the relationship between the Collegium of Section Leaders, who administer the School, and the Vorstand, which bears the initiative for the leadership of the Anthroposophical Society.

Now would anyone wishing to speak to Paragraph 5 of the Statutes please do so. (Nobody does.) Mr Collison's words appear to be having a remarkably muting effect!

HERR INGERÖ: Respected friends! Just a brief question: In Paragraph 5 does the statement ‘a period of membership determined by the leadership at the Goetheanum’ refer to an individual period or will it be general?

DR STEINER: It will be entirely individual. You must consider how it will arise. Of your own free will you become a member of the Anthroposophical Society, or you are one already and have been for some time. For most of you sitting here the conditions are already fulfilled. But it also says here ‘on their own application’. This means that you express your will to become a member of the School. And then the leadership of the Goetheanum decides whether this is possible at the present moment or not until some future moment. This is how this matter will be dealt with in practice.

Would anyone else like to speak to Paragraph 5? If not, will those who wish to adopt Paragraph 5 please raise their hands. (They do.) Will those who do not wish to accept it please raise their hands. (Nobody does.) Paragraph 5 is herewith adopted at the second reading.

Please would you now read Paragraph 6.

Dr Wachsmuth reads Paragraph 6 of the Statutes:

‘6. Every member of the Anthroposophical Society has the right to attend all lectures, performances and meetings arranged by the Society, under conditions to be announced by the Vorstand.’

DR STEINER: My dear friends! You may perhaps be brought up short by the clause: ‘under conditions to be announced by the Vorstand.’ I considered it for a long time. I said to myself that the most natural formulation for this sentence would be: ‘Every member of the Anthroposophical Society has the right to attend all lectures, performances and meetings arranged by the Society.’ It could indeed have been left like this. But then in principle we should have been unable to do what unfortunately we do have to do. We would not, for example, have been able to fix the price of tickets for the different events. This is the kind of conditions meant. In fact the thought uppermost in my mind was the price of tickets. It is dreadful, is it not, to have this thought uppermost in one's mind. But it cannot be avoided. For just as human beings cannot live on air alone, so is it also not possible to exist with the Anthroposophical Movement if our idealism does not occasionally reach for our wallet. Other similar conditions might also arise. But I cannot help finding it necessary to lay down in this Paragraph this matter of conditions of entry which refer to the public aspect of the Society. Does anyone wish to speak to Paragraph 6? (Nobody does.) Mr Collison really is a magician! Does anyone want to speak to Paragraph 6? If not, will those dear friends who are in favour of adopting Paragraph 6 at the second reading please raise their hands. (They do.)

Will those friends who do not wish to do so raise their hands. (Nobody does.) Paragraph 6 is adopted at the second reading. (Applause.)

Will Dr Wachsmuth now please read Paragraph 7.

Paragraph 7 is read:

‘7. The organizing of the School of Spiritual Science is, to begin with, the responsibility of Rudolf Steiner, who will appoint his collaborators and his possible successor.’

DR STEINER: I have just been telling you how I see the leadership of the School. And I have nothing more in particular to say to this Paragraph. Will those respected friends who wish to speak to this Paragraph please do so. Does anyone want to speak to Paragraph 7? It seems not. So will those friends who wish to adopt Paragraph 7 at the second reading please raise their hands. (They do.) Will those who do not wish to adopt it please raise their hands. (Nobody does.) Paragraph 7 is adopted at the second reading.

Now will Dr Wachsmuth please read Paragraph 8.

Paragraph 8 is read:

‘8. All publications of the Society shall be public, in the same sense as are those of other public societies. The publications of the School of Spiritual Science will form no exception as regards this public character; however, the leadership of the School reserves the right to deny in advance the validity of any judgment on these publications which is not based on the same training from which they have been derived. Consequently they will regard as justified no judgment which is not based on an appropriate preliminary training, as is also the common practice in the recognized scientific world. Thus the publications of the School of Spiritual Science will bear the following note: “Printed as manuscript for members of the School of Spiritual Science, Goetheanum, ... Class. No one is considered competent to judge the content, who has not acquired—through the School itself or in a manner recognized by the School as equivalent—the requisite preliminary knowledge. Other opinions will be disregarded, to the extent that the authors of such works will not enter into a discussion about them.” ’

DR STEINER: My dear friends! With this I have attempted to put into practice something about which I have been thinking—if you would like to know a definite point in time—since the year 1913 before the laying of the foundation stone of the Gaetheanum. We must be clear about the fact that it is quite likely that a movement such as the Anthroposophical Movement will create a society to be its bearer which in some form smacks of sectarianism. You cannot really blame such people who take part in a society of that kind, for you know how great a tendency towards sectarianism coming from ancient atavistic impulses people still carry within them. Often they do not realize it, but people do bear sectarian impulses within themselves. Thus it has come about that amid what I might call the somewhat tumultuous arrangements for the printing of the cycles something has entered the Society, with regard to the way these matters are dealt with, which does make a sectarian impression. For it is incomprehensible to people in their modern consciousness that it is possible to print a number of copies of something, a number exceeding one hundred, and then to want to hide it within some sort of community. You just can't do this. In some fields it would indeed be fruitful to hide certain things, but it is not carried out. In the year 1888 I once spoke with the well-known philosopher, Eduard von Hartmann,⁵³ whose field concerned the unconscious, about how few people there are who read books about the theory of knowledge, even though 500 and even sometimes 1000 copies are printed. Eduard von Hartmann said that one ought to disseminate not more than 60-70 copies, for there were only 60-70 people who could really understand the theory of knowledge. I am referring to the theory of knowledge which Eduard von Hartmann was just preparing. I believe, though, that in my own little book on the theory of knowledge, The Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethes World Conception⁵⁴—it has just appeared in a new edition—that I have contributed something in this field which everybody can read. However, I do believe that it is not possible to carry out the principle of keeping something secret once it has been put into print. In practice it has proved impossible. After all, we now have a situation in which our enemies are far more quick to speak in public about a new publication than are the anthroposophists themselves. Facts such as these have to be taken into account. We can only make progress with our great aims if on the other hand we take into account this spirit of the age. This spirit of the age cannot tolerate external secrets, but it can quite well tolerate internal secrets. For the really esoteric anthroposophical writings will still remain a very, very great secret for people for a long time to come. And externally we do not need to keep things physically secret if we can keep them private morally by working towards a recognition on the part of the world at large that, as with any other field of knowledge, there are boundaries between experts and non-experts. In dealing with the non-experts it must always be possible for us to point out that their judgment is comparable to the judgment of a peasant on differential calculus. If we work on this basis, we shall after a while—not straight away—succeed in solving the matter of the cycles in appropriate fashion. As I said, I have been thinking about this question for ten years and now a solution had to be found. This moral solution is the only one I can think of. After ‘All publications of the Society shall be public, in the same sense as are those of other public societies’ I want to add ‘The conditions under which one acquires a spiritual training have also been made public, and they shall continue to be presented publicly’. This is to be added in the form of a note in order to avoid the misunderstanding that was pointed out yesterday. I must of course reserve the possibility of perhaps improving the style of the imprint that is to go in the publications. Perhaps after ‘Printed as manuscript for members of the School of Spiritual Science, Goetheanum, ...’ should be added ‘but fully available to everyone’ or something like that. We shall see. It will have to be finalized very soon because the stamp to be used on the cycles that have already been printed, or are about to be printed, will have to be made up so that we can put the whole thing into practice as soon as possible once we have brought the Anthroposophical Society into being through our Conference here. Now, may I ask who would like to speak to Paragraph 8?

DR BÜCHENBACHER: Instead of ‘erkannt’ in the penultimate sentence, should it not say ‘anerkannt’?

DR STEINER: Yes, of course. It's a printer's error.^A

DR BÜCHENBACHER: May I ask whether the cycles which have already been in the possession of members for years are to be treated as publications of the School of Spiritual Science?

DR STEINER: All the cycles. In confronting the consciousness of our time we can do no other than make these measures applicable to all the cycles. This matter will mean that there will have to be a certain amount of piety among members, too. It is not a suggestion that they should sell off the cycles in their possession as quickly as possible to a second-hand bookseller.

FRÄULEIN SIMON: Does this also apply to all the publications similar to the cycles? Will they also have this note imprinted or stamped in them?

DR STEINER: On the whole it will apply only to the cycles and those publications which are equal to the cycles.

HERR WERBECK: What about the national economy course given here? Does that count as a cycle?

DR STEINER: The matter is somewhat different regarding the few works which have not actually been published by me or by the anthroposophical publishing company but which a particular circle has been given permission to print. In one way I am quite grateful to you for giving me the opportunity to speak about this rather vexed question. In the case of these papers it should be a matter of course that they are only to be used by those who have been permitted to do so. This national economy course is one, and the medical course is another, and so on. If they were to be published more widely, the author's rights would have to be returned to me. If we were planning to transform these papers into the form given to the cycles bearing this note, they would have to be returned to me, and they could only be brought out by the Philosophisch-Anthroposophischer Verlag as cycles published bearing this note. The customary author's rights would have to be considered in such a case. Does anyone else wish to speak to this Paragraph?

DR KOLISKO: Regarding what Dr Steiner has just said I should like to say the following: I would be very happy to give the specialist courses, the three scientific courses which Dr Steiner gave in Stuttgart, and also the medical course, back to the Philosophisch-Anthroposophischer Verlag because I am convinced that it would be better if all these publications were to be brought out by the School of Spiritual Science if Dr Steiner has this in mind. This is what I wanted to say about this vexed question.

DR STEINER: Does anyone else wish to speak to Paragraph 8?

HERR LEINHAS: It says here ‘the authors of such works will not enter into a discussion about them’. Does this mean that the intention is that members of the School belonging to a particular Class shall not enter into a discussion with others?

DR STEINER: Yes, of course.

HERR GOYERT: I want to ask whether it is intended that the note to be put in the cycles is also to be put in the copies that are already in the possession of members?

DR STEINER: In the Supplement to Das Goetheanum we shall appeal to members who possess such copies to write this note in their copies themselves. And as regards the copies still in stock, they will all have the note stamped in them. Every cycle, regardless of whether it came into being in the past or is yet to come into being in the future, will bear this note.

DR PEIPERS: Would it not be desirable, in order to avoid misunderstandings, to state in a note that the specialist scientific courses are included among the publications?

DR STEINER: What kind of misunderstanding is likely to arise? You cannot include something ephemeral in a statute. I mean it is impossible to say in a statute: ‘To avoid a misunderstanding’—about something that is obvious, and then expect it to refer, let us say for example, to the medical course. It is obvious that the medical course was given subject to certain conditions. And if it was given subject to these conditions, then, should it be published, it will be returned to me. I find this a matter of course. We should have to include an awful lot in the Statutes that does not belong there if we were to mention all kinds of things which are customary. I do not think this sort of thing belongs in the Statutes.

MR KAUFMANN: In future are we to advise new members to read the cycles even though they do not yet belong to the corresponding Class of the School?

DR STEINER: This is an entirely individual and personal matter. It is of course not possible to issue directives about it. There will be new members to whom it will be quite suitable to recommend the reading of the cycles, since they will be publicly available, and there will be others for whom this advice will not be suitable; the latter will then either abide by the advice or they will read them anyway. I think it is extremely difficult to give directives about this, and I have had some strange experiences in this connection. For instance I made the acquaintance of a branch⁵⁵ which even went to the extent of advising its members whether or not they should read this book or that book. Some people who were already members were not even allowed to read my book Theosophy because it was thought to be unsuitable for them. Well, it was up to these members themselves whether they found the leader of this group to be such an authority that they were prepared to stand to attention even in their souls! Or else they did not. You cannot issue generalized directives.

MADEMOISELLE SAUERWEIN: Will the cycles be published in the accustomed form or will they then be available from bookshops?

DR STEINER: The cycles will be published by the Philosophisch-Anthroposophischer Verlag, but the route by which they make their way to those who possess copies will of course depend on those people themselves. If they want to order them by some means through the book trade—we shall of course not offer terms for them, as the expression goes—if someone wants to order a cycle from a bookseller, we shall have no objection to fulfilling the order. That is quite customary.

FRAU MUNTZ: If outsiders ask us to give them a cycle, should we do so?

DR STEINER: This has hitherto gone on to such an extent that I would not know how it could be prevented. Only by strictly emphasising the public nature of everything can we get beyond what smacks of sectarianism. Is there anyone else who would like to speak to Paragraph 8 of the Statutes? If not, then I shall now put this Paragraph to the vote. Will those friends who are in favour of adopting Paragraph 8 at the second reading please raise their hands. (They do.) Now will those friends who are against it please raise their hands. (Nobody does.) Paragraph 8 has been adopted at the second reading.

Would Dr Wachsmuth now please read Paragraph 9.

Paragraph 9 is read out:

‘9. The purpose of the Anthroposophical Society will be the furtherance of spiritual research; that of the School of Spiritual Science will be this research itself. A dogmatic stand in any field whatsoever is to be excluded from the Anthroposophical Society.’

DR STEINER: It seems to me that the content of this Paragraph is easily understood. I would only like to point out that it is not a repetition of what has been said in earlier Paragraphs but that it is necessary because it states the purpose of the Anthroposophical Society, namely the furtherance of spiritual research, that is in so far as it is cultivated at the School of Spiritual Science in Dornach. And it has to be stressed that anything dogmatic is excluded from the administration of the Anthroposophical Society.

Does anyone wish to speak to this Paragraph 9? If not, will those friends who wish to adopt Paragraph 9 at the second reading please raise their hands. (They do.) Now will those friends who are against it raise their hands. (Nobody does.) Paragraph 9 is thus adopted at the second reading.

Now we come to Paragraph 10. Will Dr Wachsmuth please read out Paragraph 10.

Paragraph 10 is read out:

‘10. The Anthroposophical Society shall hold a regular General Meeting at the beginning of the year at the Goetheanum, at which time the Vorstand shall present a full report with accounting. The agenda for this meeting shall be communicated by the Vorstand to all members, together with the invitation, three weeks before the meeting. The Vorstand may call special meetings and fix the agenda for them. Invitations to such meetings shall be sent to members three weeks in advance. Motions proposed by individual members or groups of members shall be submitted one week before the General Meeting.’

DR STEINER: Does anyone wish to speak to this Paragraph 10? My endeavour has been to say as much as is necessary in the Statutes.

HERR HOHLENBERG: I would like to ask whether this General Meeting has to take place at the beginning of the year or whether another time can be chosen?

DR STEINER: I am not capriciously attached to the beginning of the year if it is enough for you not to have the guarantee of being able to count on a particular time so that the meeting might sometimes be in January and sometimes in December. Would this suffice? We do not want to arrange any of these things in an abstract way and we will try to put out our feelers here and there. If you think it is enough, we can say: ‘The Anthroposophical Society shall hold a regular General Meeting each year at the Goetheanum.’ I only included it because I thought that not stating the time of the meeting would meet with contradiction.

DR KOLISKO: I am in favour of leaving it in.

DR STEINER: Why?

DR KOLISKO: Because after having had many conversations I have come to realize that very many friends attach great value to the meeting taking place at Christmas time when this Christmas Conference itself is taking place.

DR STEINER: Perhaps it would be better to state it as a general wish without including it in the Statutes. Such things can be arranged in a different way.

When we have finished the discussion on the Statutes I shall be announcing to you that the Vorstand—I hope it will still be possible during this Conference—will be presenting you with By-Laws as well. These will include a number of subsidiary points which do not belong in the Statutes. The Statutes should be composed in a way that makes it possible for anybody to read them in about a quarter of an hour, with five minutes to spare in which to think about them. So I am eager to make these Statutes as brief as possible. They must be so short that there is no room in them for any special points. So I think it will be quite alright to leave this out. Does anyone else wish to speak?

HERR DONNER: In connection with this point it would be good to consider whether the national Societies should hold their General Meetings first, before the General Meeting of the General Anthroposophical Society. Would it be practical for this to be done every time?

DR STEINER: It would indeed be quite practical if it could become customary for the national Societies to hold their meetings first, in which they would nominate their delegates for the meeting here, after which they would hold another meeting to report on what had gone on here. This would perhaps be the best custom if it comes about.

MRS MERRY: I do not think three weeks are enough for the invitation.

DR STEINER: Very well, let us say six weeks. I have already said in the Vorstand that it could be six weeks. There is also another sentence to be added. The sentence I want to add here is: ‘A certain number of members, to be determined from time to time in the By-Laws, has the right to request a special General Meeting at any time.’ The possibility for this must also be left open.

HERR LEINHAS: I only want to recommend that the time for calling a special meeting should remain at three weeks; for the General Meeting itself six weeks, for the special meeting a shorter period.

DR STEINER: Very well. Three weeks can be made to suffice for the special meeting. Would anyone else like to speak to Paragraph 10? It seems not. So may I ask those friends who are in favour of adopting Paragraph 10 to raise their hands. (They do.) Please will those who are against it raise their hands. (Nobody does.) Paragraph 10 is adopted.

Will Dr Wachsmuth please read Paragraph 11.

Paragraph 11 is read out:

‘11. Members may join together in smaller or larger groups on any basis of locality or subject. The headquarters of the Anthroposophical Society is at the Goetheanum. From there the Vorstand shall bring to the attention of the members or groups of members what it considers to be the task of the Society. The Vorstand communicates with officials elected or appointed by the various groups. Admission of members will be the concern of the individual groups; the certificate of membership shall, however, be placed before the Vorstand in Dornach, and shall be signed by them out of their confidence in the officials of the groups. In general, every member should join a group. Only those for whom it is quite impossible to find entry to a group should apply directly to Dornach for membership.’

DR STEINER: Does anyone wish to speak on this point? Naturally this point in particular can be explained further in the By-Laws. What is included here need not be said in general. This Paragraph shows how admissions are to be handled and everything else is a matter of general custom, which there is indeed no harm in changing from time to time.

Does anyone wish to speak to Paragraph 11? Seemingly not. So may I ask those friends who are in favour of adopting Paragraph 11 to raise their hands. (They do.) Now will those friends who are in favour of rejecting Paragraph 11 raise their hands. (Nobody does.) Paragraph 11 is thus adopted at the second reading.

Would Dr Wachsmuth now please read Paragraph 12.

Paragraph 12 is read out:

‘12. Membership dues shall be fixed by the individual groups; each group shall, however, submit ... for each of its members to the central leadership of the Society at the Goetheanum.’

DR STEINER: I would now ask you for the moment not to discuss the amount to be inserted here. It will be considered to start with after the Vorstand has made suggestions at the meeting of the General Secretaries tomorrow morning at 8.30. What the General Secretaries consider to be possible and necessary can then be reported at the subsequent meeting of members. I would ask you to accept this Paragraph in its overall sense. Does anyone wish to speak? If not, will those friends who accept Paragraph 12 in this sense please raise their hands. (They do.) Will those friends who wish to reject Paragraph 12 raise their hands. (Nobody does.) Paragraph 12 is adopted at the second reading.

Would Dr Wachsmuth now read Paragraph 13.

Paragraph 13 is read out:

‘13. Each working group formulates its own statutes, but these must not be incompatible with the Statutes of the Anthroposophical Society.’

DR STEINER: Does anyone wish to speak to Paragraph 13?—I think it is as obvious as anything could be. May I then ask those friends who adopt Paragraph 13 to raise their hands. (They do.) Will those friends who wish to reject Paragraph 13 raise their hands. (Nobody does.) Paragraph 13 is adopted at the second reading.

Would Dr Wachsmuth now read Paragraph 14.

Paragraph 14 is read out:

‘14. The organ of the Society is Das Goetheanum, which for this purpose is provided with a Supplement containing the official communications of the Society. This enlarged edition of Das Goetheanum will be supplied to members of the Anthroposophical Society only.’

DR STEINER: I have already spoken about this Paragraph 14 and would now ask those friends who wish to speak to it to do so. Does anyone wish to speak to Paragraph 14?

QUESTION: Will Das Goetheanum be available from Switzerland only?

DR STEINER: We will adopt as a custom whatever will be most practical in the circumstances. An arrangement has already been made with the German section, in whose case it will be distributed from Stuttgart. Obviously we shall do whatever is most practical in any given circumstances.

A SPEAKER: To make things quite clear it ought to say: ‘The organ of the Society is the weekly Das Goetheanum’.

DR STEINER: The weekly. Very well. Does anyone else wish to speak?

HERR GOYERT: If the weekly is changed into a different kind of journal, then this will no longer be correct.

DR STEINER: Let us hope that this will not be the case. Perhaps it will be quite a good thing if we have a means of keeping the weekly journal as it is, and not changing it. Does anyone else wish to speak? If not, will those friends who are in favour of adopting Paragraph 14 please raise their hands. (They do.) Please would those not in favour raise their hands. (Nobody does.) Paragraph 14 is adopted at the second reading.

Now we have to add a fifteenth Paragraph:

‘At the Foundation Meeting at Christmas 1923 the constitution of the Founding Vorstand will be:

Rudolf Steiner as President
Albert Steffen as Vice-president
Frau Dr Wegman as Recording Secretary
Dr Guenther Wachsmuth as Secretary and Treasurer
Frau Dr Steiner as a member
Fräulein Dr Vreede as a member.’

Now I still want to mention that this is to be the Vorstand responsible for the Society but that for all matters pertaining to the leadership of the soul of the Anthroposophical Society, namely the School of Spiritual Science at the Goetheanum, the relevant meetings and consultations shall also be attended by those Section Leaders who are not members of the Vorstand. At the moment all the Section Leaders except one are also members of the Vorstand. Does anybody wish to speak to this point? It says: The total Vorstand is ‘formed’, which is an indication of the fact that it is neither elected nor nominated but that it is a self-evident Vorstand which is designated as a result of the reasons which have been given; it is a Vorstand designated by the facts themselves and receives the ground on which it stands at this Foundation Meeting.

QUESTION: Is it not possible for there to be an accumulation of offices?

DR STEINER: I expressly said yesterday that it will be incompatible for members of the Vorstand to hold other offices in the Anthroposophical Society. For example it is not desirable for one of the members of the Vorstand to be the General Secretary of some group, or for instance the leader of a branch or something similar. Then he can devote himself exclusively to his task. But for the leadership of the School it is naturally necessary to call those who are most suitable. And the leadership of the School is likely for the most part to consist of members of the Vorstand. Therefore in this instance there is an accumulation of offices whereby the Section Leaders will be advisory members of the Vorstand. Does anybody else wish to speak to Paragraph 15? No. Then I would now ask you to give your consent, not by voting in the sense of the votes conducted for the other Paragraphs but with the feeling that you acknowledge the justification of this fundamental manner of leadership of a true Anthroposophical Society. I would ask you to give your agreement that this Vorstand be constituted for the leadership of the Anthroposophical Society. (Long applause.)

DR STEINER: My dear friends, I believe I speak also on behalf of those who stand here beside me, the members of the Vorstand who are not unprepared but more than enough prepared, when I express the most cordial gratitude for your consent and when I give the promise that the leadership of the Anthroposophical Society will be conducted in the sense of its spiritual foundations and conditions.

We are now coming to the end of our meeting. Having completed the second reading, we now come to the adoption of the Statutes as a whole in the third reading. May I now ask, after the discussion of the individual Paragraphs in the detailed debate, whether anybody would like to speak once more about the Statutes as a whole? I only wish to say that I would like to add the following historical note, which was asked for yesterday, after Paragraph 2: ‘The Anthroposophical Society is in continuity with the Society founded in 1912. It would like, however, to create an independent point of departure, in keeping with the true spirit of the present time, for the objectives established at that time.’

This is the note with which we can add what was said on this point yesterday. Now, would anyone still like to speak about the Statutes as a whole? If this is not the case, may I ask those respected friends who are in favour of adopting the Statutes at the third reading to raise their hands. (They do.) Will those who are not in favour please make this known by raising their hands. (Nobody does.)

My respected friends, the Statutes of the Anthroposophical Society are adopted herewith. We shall once again continue with this meeting of members tomorrow morning after Herr Werbeck's lecture. Would you please remain seated for a few more seconds as I have some announcements to make.

Firstly: The next gathering today will be for the eurythmy performance at 4.30 this afternoon. The programme will be entirely new. Secondly: The General Secretaries are requested to meet at 8.30 on Saturday morning, as they did last Tuesday at 2.30, down in the Glass House. I would also request the representatives of the various Swiss branches to be present, as the question already mentioned about the Swiss Anthroposophical Society will be discussed to start with in this smaller circle.

Further: Unfortunately the meeting of members of the school associations for free education in Switzerland cannot take place here in the hall because it is needed for eurythmy rehearsals. There is therefore no room large enough for all the members to participate as listeners at this meeting. The meeting Will take place this afternoon down in the Glass House and in consequence I unfortunately have to ask for the attendance only of the members of the Swiss school association itself and of those friends from non-German speaking countries, that is America, England, France, Spain, Italy, Sweden, Norway, Holland and so on. Alas, the baby has to be chopped in half somewhere, and so, to start with for today's meeting, I would ask those from countries with really weak currencies not to attend. That means all the German members and also, if they cannot find any room, the members from Austria.

Also: It has been drawn to my attention—we never seem to get away from these things—that people should be more careful about what they say on the street, in the tram, or wherever they are staying. It is quite a good thing not to irritate other people by saying all sorts of peculiar things. This is all I am able to say just now. Other things can be said when the Vorstand presents you with some By-Laws. They can be said tomorrow in the members' meeting.

At 4.30 this afternoon is the eurythmy performance. This evening at 8.30 will be my lecture. It will be necessary to have the lecture at 8.30 every evening. And tomorrow morning at 8.30 is the meeting I have announced for the General Secretaries and the members of the Swiss councils. Then at 10 o'clock Herr Werbeck's lecture on the opposition to Anthroposophy, and after a short interval the continuation of this meeting.

• 52. No. 21 of 30 December 1923 on Rudolf Steiner's relationship to geometry. Now Chapter One of Rudolf Steiner The Course of my Life, op.cit.
• 53. Eduard von Hartmann, 1842–1906. Philosophie des Unbewussten. Versuch einer Weltanschauung, (Philosophy of the Unconscious), Berlin 1896. See also Rudolf Steiner The Course of my Life, op.cit. especially Chapter Nine.
• 54. See Rudolf Steiner A Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World Conception. Fundamental Outlines with Special Reference to Schiller, Anthroposophic Press, New York 1940. GA 2.
• A. The difference has no bearing on the translation of this sentence into English.(Tr.)
• 55. See Rudolf Steiner's letters to Marie Steiner-von Sivers of 18 and 20 February 1911 in Correspondence and Documents. Rudolf Steiner and Marie Steiner von Sivers, op cit.

If you travel from here to Basel, take the electric train to Aeschenplatz and then the route to Dornach, you will find there on the neighboring hill a building that is not yet completed but already shows the intentions associated with it, even in its exterior. This building, which is called a free university for spiritual science, is intended to represent externally represent that which is striven for by this spiritual movement, which calls itself: an anthroposophically oriented spiritual-scientific movement.

Now that the building has visibly manifested the existence of such a movement, one can already hear and read many things about the foundations of this spiritual cultural movement. Of course, there are still exceptions to be found, but in general, there are accurate descriptions of these endeavors. On the whole, however, it may still be said today that what is said or written about it in public is quite the opposite of what this movement is really striving for. It is very often described as an unscientific, obscure, and, in the worst sense, mystical movement. It is very often described as if it wanted to oppose this or that, societies, creeds, and the like. In truth, this movement and this Dornach building, the Goetheanum, through which it is represented, wants to serve those longings, those goals, which today often live so unconsciously in the human soul, in the human soul of the broadest masses, which in many respects have not yet found the form to express themselves, but which are connected with all that which should lead present and future humanity out of the cultural chaos, which can be perceived by anyone who is unbiased, and from which everyone who is unbiased must extricate themselves in the present.

If one is to indicate from historical phenomena where, I would say, the main nerve of this movement lies, then perhaps to something that seems quite remote from today's man, that also seems to belong to quite abstract regions of thought and imagination, but which only needs to be developed for the most general and broadest human interests in order to lead us to the very thing that today's culture needs for its renewal, for its rebirth. I would like to point out what Goethe strove for, based on the full breadth and depth of his world view, which is still far from being sufficiently appreciated today. I would like to point out what he strove for as an insight into the living world in contrast to the dead, inanimate, inorganic world.

What Goethe strove for in terms of knowledge was closely connected with his entire spiritual striving, and he drew the best that his world view contains from the contemplation of art, but he extended what he had gained from the contemplation of art to actual scientific knowledge, as he had to view it in the sense of the breadth and scope of his world view. Goethe allowed himself to be influenced, admittedly with regard to the plant world, which was so dear to him, and his contemplation of it, everything that could be available to him in relation to the plant world from the science of his time; but it can be said that nothing that he could find in the science of his time was sufficient to explain the essence of the secrets of this plant world. And so, out of the originality of his nature, he himself turned his comprehensive gaze over the whole plant world, as far as it was accessible to him, over all its forms, and sought a unity out of the diversity, out of the variety of plants. He sought that out of the variety of the plant which he called his primal plant. When you hear the definition of what he meant by his idea, it may seem abstract, but it is not. By his original plant, Goethe meant a unified image, of which every plant, whatever external form it may take, is an image, a unified, ideal, spiritual entity with which one can traverse the plant world and which is revealed, so to speak, in every single plant.

“Such a primal plant - as Goethe wrote from Italy to his friends in Weimar - such a unitary plant, which can only be created in the mind and is nowhere to be seen in the external world, must surely exist - so he said, seemingly abstractly. How else could one know that a single is a plant?

But it matters little what his abstract opinion of these things was. What matters more is that he had the faith, the profound and coherent belief in the essence of things, which is expressed in the following words. He said and wrote about this archetypal plant: “If you have grasped it in spirit, then it must be possible not only to compare and recognize with it the plant forms that are out there in the world, but it must be possible to inwardly and spiritually devise plant forms yourself that, even if they do not exist, could exist.”

This is a weighty and momentous saying. For what does a man, a man of insight, who wishes to grasp such a spiritual idea want? He wants nothing less than to evoke in his soul a thought that can lead him, I might say, to use his own expression, to invent an external reality that can then take shape. He wants to become so inwardly related to what grows in plants, to what grows in living things in general, that he has in his own spirit, in his own thinking, in his own imagination, what is revealed outwardly in growth as power. He wants to immerse himself inwardly with his whole being in the outer world. This striving is much more significant than what Goethe achieved with it in detail. As I said, if we characterize it only in relation to the plant world, which may interest some but not others, and if we characterize it only in relation to the plant world, which Goethe wanted, it may seem abstract to some. But in this kind of spiritual endeavour there is something that can be extended to the whole extent of human knowledge, of the human view of the world.

Then one rises from the contemplation of the individual, insignificant living creature to that of the whole human being, the human being who not only contains, when one ascends to his wholeness, that which today's external natural science observes, which in many ways the materialistic sense of the time regards as the only thing about man, but which encompasses body, soul and spirit.

Goethe started from natural science. What is called anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, on the one hand, starts from Goethe, in that it seeks to develop the kind of world view that processes and allows to be revealed in the spirit that which is as intimately related to reality as Goethe's idea of the Primordial Plant is intimately related to the individual plant; on the other hand, this spiritual movement is in complete harmony with the true scientific attitude of our time, not with some obscure mysticism. And it is in complete harmony with a genuine, honest and contemporary religious endeavor of the human spirit in modern times. In past years, I have often spoken in this place of the fact that anthroposophy, the anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, by no means underestimates the importance of this natural science, with its enormous influence on modern culture. Indeed, it appreciates this natural science much better than many of those who want to stand on the ground of this natural science. Anyone who has not just adopted the popular prejudices about science and believes that they are a true scientist, but who has consciously immersed themselves in what science can achieve for the overall education of the human soul and mind, must say: if science, as it has developed over the past three to four centuries, but particularly in the course of the second half of the 19th century, would fully grasp itself in its own essence, would those who pursue it fully understand their own nature, then this natural science would already proclaim today of its own accord what anthroposophically oriented spiritual science wants to proclaim. This natural science would speak of itself as human soul and human spirit, of that which is of eternal value in the human being.

Why does not natural science do this, although it so conscientiously, with such penetrating methods, penetrates into the outer sensual reality of nature? Why does not this natural science, on the other hand, rise in the same way as Goethe did for the plant world, to such an inner processing of the idea of nature that one becomes one with creative nature itself in one's inner being?

To answer this question, one must look back a little on the historical development of humanity in modern times. In natural science itself, great and powerful progress has been made. We need only go back to the work of Copernicus and Galileo, to see how much our understanding of nature has developed up to the present day. But at the same time, we must consider how little this scientific work was actually completely free in terms of its entire rule, in terms of its entire work within the intellectual life of modern civilization. It was not, because not a unified world view emerged in the course of the more recent development of humanity, which, in addition to free, independent natural science, also tried to penetrate into the nature of the external sense world. In the external sense world there were monopolies, monopolies for the knowledge of soul and spirit. The religious world views continued to retain certain ideas about soul and spirit. And they managed to get the public to admit, more or less voluntarily, that only they had anything to say about the human soul, about the human spirit.

Natural scientists, like other people, were influenced by what I would call a monopoly on knowledge about soul and spirit. And they limited themselves, because they did not dare to ascend from the knowledge of the world to the knowledge of the soul world, to the world of the spirit; they limited themselves to saying: Yes, natural science has its limits; it must limit itself to the sense world alone. A mind such as Goethe's, which was certainly imbued with a reverent religious impulse throughout his life, sensing a divine element in all of nature and in the whole world, always felt the necessity to shape his view of the physical, the , the soul and the spiritual.

But we must consider the situation of natural science, which is to some extent under the influence of the monopoly of knowledge just mentioned. We must consider what natural science can give to man through its own efforts. Then one will understand such a unified striving for knowledge and spirit as was present in Goethe. Those who do not allow themselves to be oppressed, I would say, by the commandment, 'Thou shalt not know soul and spirit', will undergo a spiritual education precisely through the way in which the modern spirit tries to penetrate the secrets of natural science. And this education then gives the stimulus to continue the development of the human spirit to higher levels of development than those that one simply has by being born a human being.

But to understand such stages of development, one needs a certain intellectual modesty. This intellectual modesty is very necessary for the present human being. This intellectual modesty must lead the present human being to say to himself: You are not only a being that may have developed from lower organisms in the process of the evolution of the world order to its present perfection, but you are a being that can develop itself further, has developed itself further in this life; so that the forces that you received at birth can experience a higher and ever higher education.

You see, you have to be able to say the following. You have to be able to look impartially at a five-year-old child holding a volume of Goethe's lyric poems. This five-year-old child will truly not be able to do much with Goethe's volume of lyric poems, at least not what the adult human being knows how to do with Goethe's volume of lyric poems. It will perhaps tear the volume apart or do something else with it. It must first grow up, then it will treat the volume of Goethe's lyric poems in the right way. Its development must be taken into account. For although as a five-year-old child everything contained in the volume of lyric poems is before the eyes of this human being, the possibility does not yet exist for this human being to draw out of this volume of lyric poems everything that could be in it for him. Thus the human being of the present must learn to feel his way in relation to the whole expanse of nature and the world. He must be able to say to himself with intellectual modesty: You stand before nature in such a way that, owing to your present development, it cannot give you what it truly contains within itself; one must be able to assume the possibility of taking one's development into one's own hands, so that, by attaining a higher level of development attain a higher level of development than that which one simply acquires by birth, by then being able to treat what one always has before one, what one believes to recognize - like the five-year-old child who does not yet know what to do with it - in such a way that it reveals to one all the secrets it holds. The very effort that one makes when applying the scientific method today, when applying it intensively, the depth that one penetrates, can lead one to feel that, out of the effort of the spirit, a power is awakened that enables one to undergo such a development. It is truly not due to modern natural science that people are so reluctant to admit that man can undergo development! No, it is due to the pressure that I have just characterized, and which one must only look at without prejudice in order to be able to devote oneself freely to what lies in the scientific treatment of the world itself. Then one will feel that the soul is inwardly awakened precisely by looking at nature in the modern sense, that forces arise in it that were not there before. As a rule, it is precisely today's scientists who do not bring themselves to awaken these forces. But if they could bring themselves to do so, they would be in a position to proclaim what is sought in the problem of the immortality of the soul, the eternity of the human spirit. Scientific thinking and a scientific attitude can lead to an inner awakening of the human spirit. And this can then be continued and systematically developed.

How this is possible, I have often outlined from this place and described in detail in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds?” and in the second part of my “Occult Science”. One can continue in full self-education that which one notices developing through modern scientific knowledge. One can apply to the spirit that which is called meditation, concentration of thought-life, of feeling, of will. One can develop that inner world of ideas to such an extent, or at least the ideas that one applies by observing stars, by working in a chemical-physical laboratory, by observing plants or people or animals externally; one can further develop the inner spiritual power that you apply by devoting your thoughts to such an extent that you only want to live in these thoughts until at least the thought leads the soul to grasp inner connections. You cannot grasp them if you do not allow your soul to develop such inner self-culture. It is possible to awaken an inner soul culture. You can indeed achieve such an awakening so that your ordinary life, which you live out in ordinary science, seems like a sleep from which you awaken. And from this awakening one can observe anew what surrounds one as the world.

That is one thing that the modern human being can undergo. If he applies natural science in the right, I would say Goethean way, he will come to a religious realization, to a real spiritual realization.

But also from the life of the modern human being itself emerges that leads to such a path and, I would say, to a corresponding goal for the future.

Those who look at history superficially, as it is usually presented superficially today, do not have the real history in front of them. One must look more inwardly at the historical life of men. One must be able to compare, for example, how a person in the 9th or 10th century AD was in his entire state of mind, and how a person of the present day is, even if he is a person living in the simplest, most primitive way; for even the simplest person today differs quite significantly from the person of the 9th or 10th century AD. I do not want to go back any further. People are definitely in a state of development. Today, we have to take the word “development” not only in the limited sense in which natural science usually takes it. It must be possible to use it in a much broader sense if one wants to penetrate into the essence of human development.

It must be possible to say that a number of centuries ago, that is, in the centuries I have just mentioned, people were much closer to each other within certain associations. Before this relatively short time, a person was connected to his neighbor through blood or tribal ties. This closeness, which brought people together into associations relatively recently, no longer exists in modern times. If you are unbiased, you can see this everywhere. Modern man is much more closed in on himself; I would go so far as to say that modern man has become much more of a loner in his soul. People in older times did not pass each other by as people in newer times do. People in newer times have become more estranged from each other. But I would like to say that something else arises from a spiritual conscience than arose for people centuries ago. It arises - again one can see it if one looks into one's own soul without prejudice and has a sense for such things, again one can perceive something like an inner voice - it arises as something like an inner obligation: You should now, since you no longer feel close enough to those immediately closest to you through blood or tribal ties, be able to come close to them through your soul development. You should take up his will in a real human love within you. You should not pass him by so that you can live socially with him, but you should be able to take up his will into yours, to make his thoughts your thoughts. You should be able to think, feel and want with his inner soul state in your inner soul state. You should be able to approach him spiritually and soulfully.

Just as engaging with natural science represents a kind of awakening for the soul, a kind of waking up in the ordinary consciousness that one otherwise has in everyday life and in ordinary science, if one only looks at ordinary science correctly, then this ordinary science gives, I would say, inner social duties that awaken more and more in man. It represents something that can be described in contrast to this awakening – I will have to express it somewhat paradoxically now, but some of the truths that must be incorporated into cultural life today must still sound paradoxical – it can be described as a feeling that overcomes us when we feel inwardly: we must be close to our neighbor in spirit and soul, we must live in his will, his thoughts; it is something that feels like losing ourselves in people. This losing of self in our neighbor in his spiritual and soul life, this devotion to our neighbor, is actually the basis of the much caricatured process of social feeling in the present.

And if one says: natural science can awaken us - this feeling, I would like to say, brings about the opposite state of mind, a strange state of mind, if one can only understand it. But just as little as one becomes aware of the awakening from the natural scientific method, just as little does one become aware of this feeling of empathy for one's neighbor. But modern man will be increasingly seized by it. Then, in contrast to the awakening through science, they will feel this like falling asleep, like resting in the surroundings, like the transition of one's own soul into the soul of the other. And just as the mysterious life of a dream awakens, full of life, out of natural sleep, so can awakening come out of this devotion to what is humanly and soulfully alive, which will increasingly take hold of modern humanity more and more as a duty of conscience. It is a kind of sleep in the human environment; but out of it rises something like a dream from natural sleep. And this dream from natural sleep can be compared to what will emerge more and more from the real, not the caricatured social feeling.

This dream will give rise to that which tells the human being: See, by immersing yourself in the will that is developing alongside your will, by becoming one with the thought that develops alongside your thoughts, you know how you are inwardly connected to this person.

Just as Goethe sensed something that was given to him through his idea of the primal plant, which he had to describe as a way of living into the whole power of the plant world itself, so one lives into the living environment of the human world, precisely through the most modern feeling. And again, something awakens in you from this living into the human world, which now arises like a new realization precisely from social life. You feel connected with the being of the other person. You feel as if something in you, as if a dream, is speaking through the being of the other person, bearing witness to you: you were already connected with this person in times gone by.

From this real experience, from this genuinely modern experience, what has already grown for individual favored spirits, such as Lessing, will grow for newer humanity as a real experience, as a real experience. If you want to be pedantic, even if it is in a higher sense, you can say: Lessing, such a person was certainly great, but in his old age, when he was already half demented, he wrote his 'Education of the Human Race' and came up with the crazy idea that humanity lives in repeated lives on earth. But for those who are not pedants but who can really penetrate the development of a man like Lessing, it is quite clear that such a man was only the forerunner for all those who will come to know this peculiarity, this mighty experience, which will arise out of the rightly understood social feeling, will arise out of it, full of life, like a dream; but it will be a dream full of life, not just like dreaming, the having been connected with people whom one meets again in earthly life, the having been connected in earlier earthly lives, with looking at the fact that one will be together with them again in later earthly lives. The experience of repeated earthly lives will develop out of the right social life and feelings of modern man.

Natural science, in its research, has already come to the conclusion that it no longer wants to be purely materialistic, at least in the case of some minds. But when the ordinary natural scientist wants to prove that something lives in man that is spiritual and soul-like, that is not merely an expression of the body, then he does not turn to such phenomena that he can prove, that he can present as one presents phenomena of the laboratory, the clinic and the like, but he turns precisely to the abnormal phenomena of human life. And I would like to say that it has become fashionable to examine the world of dreams, which awakens so mysteriously from its natural sleep, in order to point out how the human being also has a spiritual and a soul element within him. But that means examining everything that arises from the phenomena of suggestion, hypnosis, somnambulism, mediumship, and so on. Here too, it is tempting to confuse anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, which seeks to draw on a sound knowledge of nature and a sound experience of the human world, with that which would like to lean on such phenomena as hypnotism, somnambulism and the like for a real exploration of the human spiritual and soul nature.

We can start from the world of dreams to get a little closer to these phenomena. We can point out how this world of dreams conjures up images before people, into the human soul, in the time between falling asleep and waking up, when the human being is not fully connected to his spiritual and soul life to the resting body. But the one who can properly study this dream world will never answer the question, “What is this dream world?” “This world of dreams is something that takes people beyond their ordinary external daily lives.” – Then, for the unbiased person, it is quite clear that all sorts of things must interfere in this dream world that come only from the lower, animal-like instincts of human nature.

Consider Just consider what a person is capable of doing in a dream, how he tends towards the lower drives, how he often tends towards a life of crime in what he imagines in his dreams. Man must say to himself: he is not transported into some higher spiritual realm when he dreams, but on the contrary, he has descended into the subhuman. Truly, it is a dream itself when people today want to claim, want to claim quite willingly, that in their dreams they are transported into a higher world. No, in a dream we are brought into a lower world than the one we see through our senses. And especially when a person is subjected to the influence of some suitable fellow human being, so that he is placed in the sleep-like state of hypnosis, one can even, I might say, exert irresponsible influences on the person by acting in a kind of sleep-like state. Then he regards a potato as a pear and eats it as a pear, purely because he is being suggested, this idea is being given to him: this potato is a pear. And still completely different things can be given to him! It is only the extreme state, which also otherwise exists as, I would like to say, not a completely permissible state, where one counts on the damping down of consciousness by the other person, and wants to persuade him, I would like to say, to rape ideas. For those who work in the sense of true spiritual science, the question arises: what is the state of mind in which a person is in a dream? What is the state of mind in which a person is when he is in such a hypnotic or mediumistic - which is also similar to a hypnotic state - when he is in such a hypnotic state and can experience such influences from any fellow human being or from other surroundings?

In a hypnotic state, it is indeed possible for thought transfers to occur over long distances; they can be demonstrated and proven experimentally. But the question arises as to what regions a person, with his entire human, physical, mental and spiritual being, is brought when one descends into these regions. One then brings him into a region that is subhuman, that represents the animalistic in man.

In fact, man is being hypnotized down, profaned down into that which plays in him as animalistic. And it is precisely through this that one gets to know the animal in man, which is nevertheless something quite different from the animal in the animal series; but one enters into the region of the subhuman.

In contrast to all that is presented here, the anthroposophically oriented spiritual science referred to here would like to lead to the attainment of the soul-spiritual in man, not by dampening what is already in man in order to seemingly feel something spiritual-soul, but that one develops up what is already there in the sense world to a higher insight by educating thought, will, feeling through meditation, concentration, as it is presented in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds?” Anthroposophical spiritual science aims to lead people beyond themselves, in a healthy way, beyond what is already there in sensory perception and ordinary science.

In this way, it enters into a region that is quite new compared to the external sensory world. This is very important in order to realize that man becomes dependent when he is placed in a hypnotic, a somnambulistic, or a mediumistic state, or even when he merely surrenders himself to the dream-world of fantasy, that he becomes dependent on his outer sensory environment in a way in a way that he is no longer dependent when he surrenders to normal sensory life; when we surrender to sensory life in an awake state, then our will can avert our eyes from something that we do not want to look at, can even pay a little attention to what we hear. In short, we are more powerful through our will when we relate to our surroundings through the senses. What is placed in the freedom of our will, what brings us into a free relationship when we perceive sensually in an awake state, becomes a relationship of compulsion, as it is in animality, when we are subdued in the waking state through hypnosis. In this state we do not discover the soul in man, but that in us which is animalistic and which is otherwise veiled by our free spirituality. What is otherwise veiled comes to the surface and dominates the person. Man is organized down to the animal. Only one does not recognize - since the human being does not behave like the animal, but expresses himself more spiritually - that it is nevertheless a matter of a downward organization to animality. In contrast to this, what anthroposophical spiritual science wants is to raise the human being to a higher level of consciousness, and only through this does one recognize that which presents itself at a lower level of consciousness. For when man develops his spiritual nature as I have described in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds,” then a different relationship to the world also arises. But not the world that presents itself when we are hypnotized or in a mediumistic state, or when we become somnambulant, not the world of our ordinary sensory surroundings presents itself, but a new world, a spiritual world, a world which man has not known before, but which presents itself to him as a real one, just as the outer sense world presents itself to the senses as a real world.

You see, the human being can undergo this development by ascending from the human into a superhuman, just as he descends from hypnosis, from somnambulism, into an inhuman. This development can be undergone, and in this way the human being can ascend to an immediate perception, an immediate experience of the spiritual. In this way, the spirit can enter into human consciousness.

Now one can certainly say that in a book such as this one, “How to Know Higher Worlds,” it is shown which development one must undergo in order to comprehend that the true world, which one gets to know in this way, is the real one, as I have described it. But not everyone can become a spiritual researcher themselves, not everyone can enter this spiritual world themselves so that they can make statements from this spiritual world. However, the one who reaches that development, which, where one knows about the existence of a spiritual, a supersensible world, has always been called the world beyond the threshold of ordinary consciousness, who enters this world, in which he has the spiritual around him as one has the sensual around him for ordinary consciousness, he makes his discoveries in the spiritual. He knows, for example, through these discoveries, that through that which appears today in man, by having him in a hypnotic, somnambulant state, by becoming a medium, his ordinary consciousness is subdued. What appears in man as the subhuman, that in truth represents an earlier stage of human development, and that which today develops as his sensory perception, his intellectual perception, that represents a later stage of development. And even that can be recognized - you can read about it in “Occult Science” - that today, when a person is put under hypnosis, it becomes apparent in an abnormal way how he was in his environment in an evolution of the earth world that lies far behind what geological external science presents to us as the evolution of the earth. One can even learn something about a much more spiritual state of the Earth, in which man also already existed and perceived his surroundings as he perceives his surroundings today when his consciousness is dulled. We recognize something of the past of the earth, which was not as the Kant-Laplace theory presents it, but was as a spiritual-soul being itself, in which man was embedded as a being of the senses. And on the other hand, man of the earthly future will recognize where the earth will be more spiritual again, where man, through his natural condition, will recognize as one recognizes today when one develops the soul further, as I have described it.

These knowledge, although it is a need of the newer, the modern man, will initially, I would say, only be attained by individual people. Individual people will enter into that region of life that lies beyond the threshold of ordinary consciousness. So much is necessary if one really wants to come to these higher realizations. You see, I will give you a simple higher realization. But in this simple higher realization, the one who comes to it sees, for example, what the attainment of higher realizations, the discovery of higher realizations, is actually based on. In the usual story, it is not known today that basically the development of all humanity is just as internally conditioned as the development of the individual human being. Who would not find it ridiculous today if someone were to say: a person who lives to be seven, fourteen, twenty years old and so on is always the result of what he eats and drinks; what he eats causes the child to develop further and further from childhood on, making it an adult. Everyone knows that this is not the case, that a person goes through certain stages of development that even lead to certain leaps in natural development. We have such a clear leap, for example, around the seventh year, when the teeth change. Those who have an understanding of such things know what powerful revolutions take place in the human organism, for example, when sexual maturity occurs; later on, the changes are no longer as clearly and distinctly perceptible, but they are nevertheless present. Something develops in man that springs from the depths of his being. But it is the same for all of humanity. And so it was around the middle of the 15th century of our era that humanity took a leap in its development. The state of mind of people has become quite different. What I have characterized today as the fact that man feels lonely in relation to other people, that he is closed in on himself, that he no longer feels close to people through mere blood relationship as he used to. This growing independence, this becoming personal, has developed in step with the change of teeth, the onset of sexual maturity, in the individual human being, in the individual human organization. So, out of the whole evolution of mankind, something came in the middle of the 15th century. Such knowledge can only come from the spiritual world. And only when one has gained such knowledge, as an inner fact of experience, can one also have an opinion about the realities of repeated earthly lives, about the path of the spirit in human development, about the life of the spirit in natural existence, and so on.

But everything that can be done to arrive at such knowledge can be prepared for through meditation, concentration, and the devotion of thoughts, feelings, and impulses of the will, as described in “How to Know Higher Worlds.” One can develop and then say to oneself, “You are now ready to receive higher knowledge.” But then one must wait. The nature of spiritual science does not allow one to go out and collect knowledge; one can only prepare one's own soul; then one must wait. Then one must, I might say, wait for the moment, which one feels like a gracious effect from the spiritual world; one must wait until the illumination comes. That illuminations from the spiritual world occur in one person but not in another. That is why the truths arise in some people, who must communicate them to their fellow human beings. Even when such simple realizations arise, such as the turning point in the whole development of humanity in the 15th century, one must have become acquainted with them in one's pure soul life today. One must have learned to renounce the forcible conquest of the spiritual world; one must have worked only on the development of the soul in order to prepare oneself to receive the truths. Then they come, come at the appropriate moment. One must limit oneself to accepting them as such individual truths. One must only be clear about one thing: if one wants to draw consequences from them, as some people do, then one only brings forth caricatures of the spiritual world. Let us suppose that some man has made various inner discoveries; he comes to an idea; then he builds a whole system out of it, a system of nature, a system of history, an economic or a social system, or something. Men are not satisfied with making such individual spiritual experiences, but continue to draw their conclusions, building systems upon them. The one who is experienced in the spiritual world only works on his spiritual development so that he is ready to receive what reveals itself to him. Then he again accepts such an individual experience and waits for another to arise. Just as in the external, sensory reality, one must wait for the new experience to approach, one must always be inwardly filled with resignation, through which one can wait until the individual inner realizations arise. Otherwise one often produces figments of the imagination. And because most people only have such hazy fantasies, they think that the laws that come into play only come from fantasies. But in truth, no figments of the imagination arise when a person makes an effort to move forward. Only when he does not make an effort to gain ideas about the invisible does he arrive at figments of the imagination. But only if he strives to let all thoughts and development, all work in the spirit, aim solely at the spirit becoming more and more perfect in its cognitive faculty, then he can get sufficiently far; when he has learned to wait, then the discoveries in the spiritual world present themselves to him through that which is to be communicated in the spiritual world. Man can, of course, come to discoveries himself if his fate, I might say, is favorable in this respect and he learns to wait. But above all, he can come to recognize as truth what spiritual discoverers tell him, and to acquire the judgments through such an inner development that he can also he receives from the other person as the truth.

This is the secret of life that people will live when the spirit becomes their guide in the world of the senses and in the supersensible world. This will be the peculiarity that human coexistence will become more intimate. Today we see an illusory, a misunderstood socialism, we see how people want to work socially, but actually become more and more socially distant from each other. But then, when people realize that they can develop to the point where they can acknowledge what the other person comes to through the intimacies of his inner life, through which he makes spiritual discoveries, then they will be able to enrich themselves spiritually in their lives together. Then one will realize that it is precisely when the spirit will be the guide in the sensory realm of man that the social life will be able to receive its true meaning through this spirit.

If one really wants to consciously cross the threshold, penetrating into spiritual worlds presupposes that one, in a sense, becomes fearless in the face of the experiences of the spiritual world. The ordinary world of the senses allows us, I would say, to be cradled in a certain sense of security. But the one who crosses over from this world of the senses, over the threshold of the spiritual world, into the real spiritual worlds that underlie our world of the senses, experiences the fact that, as it were, the comfortable, firm ground is no longer under him. The spiritual world does not have the same forces of gravity and the like as this world of the senses. Within the spiritual world, man feels as if he were on a surging sea, and the security that one otherwise has through a fixed point of view in the external world of the senses, through ordinary life, this security must be provided by inner strength, through which one steers through the spiritual world.

Furthermore, you must bear in mind that when you enter this spiritual world, you are not initially adapted to it. You are adapted to a world as a human being between birth and death; you are not adapted to that which reveals itself as eternal to human nature when you enter the spiritual world. You are adapted to this world, to the world here. When one enters the spiritual world after having developed in order to enter it, one feels, as long as one is still in the body and has not yet passed through the portal of death, that one is not yet adapted for the whole process of development. One often feels this as a burning pain, I might say. Many shrink from it. Only if one prepares well to experience one thing or the other, can one rise above oneself, can one venture out onto the open sea of spiritual knowledge, on which one must have the guide, the spiritual guide within oneself.

But it is already possible for every person today, if they observe such things as I have presented in “How to Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds », to see from his own conviction, not through reasoning, that what the spirit-discoverers, the modern seers, can really reveal to the world is based on truth and taken from reality.

Human coexistence will result from the fact that we can learn to see when the other person develops the ability to fully recognize what has been discovered. A spiritual coexistence will arise that will provide the basic power for a life that humanity will need in the future, especially if some structures in the social organism are to be overcome that have emerged from old forces and which can only be overcome by new spiritual forces that develop from soul to soul.

Precisely because the spiritual will become a reality for people, precisely because of this people will come closer together. One only has to consider whether a person discovers this or that in the spiritual world; that depends on the way his life is. Isn't it true that a person's knowledge of the external world of the senses differs depending on whether he was born in Europe or America or Asia. In the same way, every person's knowledge of the spiritual world differs, depending on whether he is a spiritual explorer, a seer. The knowledge of the other person, who in turn has different knowledge, is a supplement to his own knowledge. People will know different things from the spirit. But they will be able to complement each other.

In the face of real spiritual knowledge, as it is meant and presented here today, there is truly no shame or anything degrading if one person, in a truly social existence, simply accepts what is transmitted to him from the spiritual world, while another person is able to discover it. There is no need to fear that some man who becomes a spiritual discoverer will shine through immodesty within his community of fellow human beings. On the contrary, anyone who wants to penetrate into the spiritual world must first acquire what I have called intellectual modesty in the corresponding high power, and he knows very well, especially when he begins to know something of the spiritual world, how little he actually knows. There is no danger of those who recognize spiritual things becoming particularly proud. Those who talk about the spiritual world in empty phrases, who talk about the spirit without knowing anything about it, who talk about it through mere philosophical conclusions, they may become proud. But those who penetrate into the spiritual worlds also know how small they are as human beings in the face of this spiritual world, which wants to realize itself through them, and they truly know that they should neither be arrogant nor dogmatic.

Now I would like to mention something else. On the one hand, it must be said that for the sake of the future of humanity, it is necessary today that those who have not yet discovered certain truths listen to those who have discovered them, and that this is by no means shameful, degrading to freedom, it can also be pointed out that even the one who can perhaps recognize to a high degree, who is a seer, learns tremendous things from his fellow human beings. That is the remarkable thing, that in this direction one gains a completely new relationship to one's fellow human beings precisely through seership, precisely through the development of the soul-spiritual. We must not forget that things can reveal themselves even in a simple, elementary way of life. We experience them, we have the sense to penetrate into what, as mysterious soul-spiritual depths, are also revealed, for example, through a child. This gives us cause, if only we do not interpret it symbolically, if only we do not brood over it, but give ourselves to it in love, to recognize spiritually that afterwards, when the seer has exercised such love for the simple, the blessed moment comes for him to recognize something great. And every great, real spiritual seer will be able to tell you about those moments when, not through the interpretation of what he has just seen, but through the actual experience of this power within him, he has subsequently learned something different from some human being, by choosing the spirit as his guide. You get to know a person. What they share with you from their experiences, from their experiences, perhaps as the simplest, most primitive person, leads you into the depths of the soul, if you are able to recognize correctly, to find the right context. You make the discovery that what people experience, what people learn, can lead to a revelation in every person.

Yes, over the whole wide circumference of human beings, when we choose the spirit as our guide to the world of the senses and the supersensible world, every human being can give us something of what he has gained from the world, and something can be revealed in us that is absolutely necessary for his further development. We often notice that people themselves do not apply to their lives with their inadequate powers what they believe they have in their consciousness, in their conscious soul life; they think it is something highly unimportant because people are inadequate to see through their own judgment to see the supersensible. If one looks into the depths of the human soul, if one has acquired the sense in this way, as I have described it today, then, as a spiritual researcher, one can also gain so much in modern natural science, through the way in which natural science works in clinics, in observatories, in chemical and physical laboratories. If we accept what the researchers, with their power of judgment, often understand from their own very inadequate understanding when they describe their work and their results, which they themselves do not really achieve with what they say about it, cannot reveal in its depths, if we accept what we are told about the work in the scientific workshops, then deep natural secrets are revealed to us. And precisely through what spiritual science does in this field, what medicine so often strives for today, what it cannot achieve with its own means, what is connected with what I have described, that medical science and natural science can be fertilized by spiritual science.

But social life will also be able to be fertilized when the spirit can become a guide through the sensual world and into the supersensible world. And there is no need to believe that the religious element, which should be one of the fundamental forces of every human being, will suffer from the knowledge of spiritual life, from the fact that spiritual life is taking hold among us and that the spirit is becoming a guide for people in the world of people! No, quite the opposite is the case. Precisely what the religious denominations themselves have sought, they could not attain to because of the needs that have arisen from healthy scientific life, in that they have preserved old traditions. As a result, they could only achieve what they wanted to create as a belief in the soul and spirit through dogmatic commandments, while in truth, when people come to make the spirit their guide in the world of the senses, they will be at one with their soul life in the spiritual. But people who recognize the spirit, people who live with their ideas, with their perceptions in the spirit, they will also be able to worship the spirit, they will be able to find the way to truly religious worship. Those people who know nothing of the spirit will not be religious people even if they belong to a “word religion.” Those who have the spirit as their guide do not fear that Christianity could be damaged by the spirit being imbued with modern spiritual science. Oh no, those who say that spiritual knowledge should not come because it will undermine religious sentiment and Christianity show themselves to be small. He who truly recognizes the spirit cannot think so little of the power of the Christ impulse, which has been working in the world since the Mystery of Golgotha. He must think much higher. He must think in such a way that he says to himself: Whatever insights may come, the more one penetrates into the spirit, the better one will learn to worship that which can only be elevated in its significance for people by being recognized ever better and better recognized.

Not spiritual science will hinder the real religious development of mankind, but the desire to remain stuck beyond real knowledge and spiritual progress will have a hindering effect on religious development. And it could be that in the not too distant future, many people will realize where the obstacles to religious development actually come from. They will come from the fact that the denominations no longer want to live with what is present in the innermost human being as a need.

You see, I just wanted to show how the spirit can become man's guide through the world of the senses and into the supersensible world. I can only do this in a sketchy way in such a lecture as I was allowed to give here.

Man comes to know that within him which is eternal and immortal, which passes through birth and the gates of death, precisely by developing the spirit within him to which he belongs. He comes to recognize that through his soul and his spirit he belongs to the spiritual world, just as he belongs to this world through his body.

Today, however, the fact that I have characterized is fully alive in the depths of the subconscious. But the one who sees through things today knows that there are many people who long for such a spiritual fellowship; but in people's consciousness this is often not the case. In the broadest circles, I might say, there is still an aversion, an antipathy to such spiritual leadership. But anyone who is inside such a spiritual movement looks at the way in which spiritual movements or even external cultural movements have been met with in the course of the historical development of humanity! And if today one is wholeheartedly attached to the idea that something like the Dornach building, the School of Spiritual Science, the Goetheanum, as an external representative – it is not yet finished, it is only just being built, but hopefully it will be finished in the not too distant future – that something like this should stand as a visible sign of the spiritual movement that I have characterized in today's lecture, then one has to remember history in the face of various disparaging judgments.

Imagine what today's world would look like if, at the time when Columbus wanted to equip a few ships to steer westward into regions of which he truly knew nothing, and which the others knew nothing about either, if the opinion had triumphed. You can read about it in history that this opinion was very much present – that it regarded Columbus's intention as folly, as madness! But in the end, he won. Imagine what would have happened in modern times if it had not been the cleverness of those who refused Columbus's ships that had won, but the “madness” of Columbus that had won. For many people, this madness of Columbus is what anthroposophical spiritual science wants. Even today, for many people it is madness. But this madness does not just include that which is only a spiritual realization; no, this madness includes such a development of the spirit through which one also becomes a truly practical person, through which one becomes such a person that one can practically attack a voyage of discovery into real life. A real voyage of discovery into life is to be inaugurated through that for which this Dornach building is to be the external representative.

Therefore, many people may see madness in what is to be undertaken with it. Those who, through inner insight, have connected their hearts and minds with what is to be a symbol of the beginning of the spirit's guidance in the development of humanity through the sensual world and into the supersensible world, know that out of this “madness” must develop that which many people, and ultimately all people of the civilized world, must seek, so that we may emerge from some of what is sensed by the unprejudiced as chaotic, as cultural confusion, in order to arrive at that which numerous people and numerous souls long for after all, long for more than the contemporaries of Columbus longed for India in his time, long for the light that is to dawn for humanity, so that it can truly strive towards higher cultural goals in humanity.

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.