The Rudolf Steiner Archive

In the middle one of these three lectures there are a number of anthroposophical truths in particular that I would like to develop for you. We shall then see what a great impact on a person's everyday life these particular truths have, and that is what we will talk about tomorrow. Today I just want to draw you attention to some deeper aspects of the being of man.

People very often do not ask the question as to which of man's forces are used to acquire knowledge of supersensible worlds. They try to answer this question merely by saying that there is a possibility of acquiring supersensible knowledge by means of certain forces in man. But what the actual connections are between these forces and man's being, they do not usually ask. That is why so little importance is attached to making knowledge of supersensible worlds really fruitful in ordinary life. It can be said that supersensible knowledge is becoming more and more essential to man, just in our time. In that case it is vital to understand what its connection is with ordinary everyday life.

As you know, the first of the capacities that leads man into supersensible realms is the force of Imagination, the second capacity is the force of Inspiration and the third capacity the force of Intuition. The question now is whether these capacities need concern us at all except in their connection with knowledge of supersensible worlds or whether these capacities have any part to play in the rest of man's life?—You will see that the latter is the case. As my little book Education of the Child in the Light of Anthroposophy tells you, we can see human life running its course in three stages: from birth to the change of teeth, from the change of teeth to puberty, and from puberty till about the twenty-first year. If you do not regard man purely superficially you will be struck by the fact that the nature of man's development is entirely different in the three different seven-year stages. The pushing through of our permanent teeth, as I have often mentioned, is connected with the development of forces that are not merely confined, let us say, to our jaws or their neighbouring organs, but fill our whole physical body. There is work in progress within our physical body between birth and the seventh year, and this work comes to an end with the pushing through of our permanent teeth.

It is obvious that the forces doing this work of developing the physical body are supersensible, isn't it? The perceptible body is only the material in which they work. These supersensible forces, active in the whole of man's organisation during the first seven years of his life, become, as it were, suspended when their purpose has been achieved and the permanent teeth have appeared. At the age of seven these forces go to sleep. They are hidden within the being of man; they go to sleep within him. And they can be drawn forth from your being when you do the sort of exercises I describe in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds as leading to Intuition. For the forces that are applied in the acquisition of intuitive knowledge are the same forces that you grow with at the time of life when this growth culminates in the change of teeth. These sleeping forces that are active within the human body until the seventh year are the forces you use in supersensible knowledge to reach Intuition.

Now the forces that are active from the seventh year to the fourteenth year and go to sleep at puberty in the depths of the body, are drawn forth and form the power of Inspiration. And the forces that in bygone times used to be the source of youthful ideals between the fourteenth and the twenty-first year—it would be too much of an assertion to say that this still happens today—the forces that create organs in the physical body for these ideals of youth, are the same forces you can draw forth from their state of slumber and use for the acquisition of Imagination.

From this you will see that the forces of Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition are not just any old forces got from we do not know where, but are the same forces as those we grow with from our birth to the age of twenty-one. So the forces that live in Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition are very healthy forces. They are the forces a human being uses for his healthy growth and that go to sleep within his body when the corresponding phases of growth are completed.

I have just shown you the connections between the forces of supersensible knowledge and man's everyday existence. Something similar, though, can be said about the forces of man's normal nature, man's nature as it appears in ordinary life. Only there it is not so obvious. A very important force in ordinary life—and we have discussed it many times—is the force of memory. The power of memory is active within us when, as we say, we remember something we have experienced. But, as you all know, there is something peculiar about the power of memory. We have got it and yet we haven't got it. Many a person struggles at some moment of his life to try and remember something that he cannot remember. This wanting to remember but not being able to remember entirely, arises through the fact that the force we use in our souls to remember with is the same force that transforms the food we eat into the kind of substances our body can make use of. If you eat a piece of bread and this bread is transformed inside your body into the sort of substance that serves life, this is apparently a physical process. This physical process, however, is governed by supersensible forces. These supersensible forces are the same forces you use when you remember. So the same kind of forces are being used on the one hand for memory and on the other hand for the assimilation of foodstuffs in the human body. And you actually always have to oscillate a bit between your soul and your body if you want to dwell in memory. If your body is carrying out the process of digesting too well, you may find you will not be able to draw enough forces away from it to remember certain things. There is an inner struggle going on the whole time in the unconscious between a soul process and a bodily process every time you want to remember something. Looking at memory is the best way to understand how absurd it is basically, from a higher point of view, for some people to be idealists and other people materialists. The assimilation of foodstuffs in the human body is doubtless a material process. The forces controlling it are the same as the forces at work in a process of ideas, namely the force of memory. You only see the world aright if you see it as being neither materialistic nor idealistic, but are capable of following up the ideal aspect of what is presented in a material way and following up the material aspect of what is presented as idea. The spiritual quality of a world conception is hot being able to say 'Over there is base materialism, which is for the 'dregs' of humanity, and over here is idealism, which is for the elect—and the speaker usually includes himself among these—but the essential quality of a really spiritual world conception lies in its capacity to take what it has grasped in the spirit and bring it down into material existence so that material existence can be understood and not despised. That is the fallacy of many religious denominations, that they despise material existence instead of understanding it and looking for the spirit within it.

The crux of the matter is really to go into these things, and not, as is still largely the case, to deal in empty phrases where mysticism is concerned. After having as it were shown you how these things can really be gone into, I would now like to bring something of very great importance. When people speak of material existence and supersensible existence they usually speak of them as though material existence were spread out in the world and as though supersensible, non-perceptible existence were somewhere behind or above this. If you imagine you simply have physical-perceptible existence on the one hand and supersensible existence on the other, you will never understand man. There is no way of really grasping man if you look at things from the point of view of the perceptible world versus the supersensible world. In reality it is like this: The world of the senses and the world in which we work and live socially are spread out around us. Let us represent diagrammatically by means of this line this world that is spread out around us (see horizontal line of drawing). You will only have a complete picture of what is actually there in the world if you imagine that there are forces above this line, supersensible forces (red side). We neither perceive these supersensible forces by means of our ordinary senses nor by means of our intellect bound to our ordinary senses. We perceive only what is in the realm of this line.

But there are forces under this line as well. If we actually want to include the whole of the imperceptible or spiritual realm we must speak of subsensible as well as supersensible forces. So we must imagine that there are also subsensible forces here (orange side).

Thus we have the sense world, supersensible forces and subsensible forces. Where does man himself, as an ordinary person, belong? The part of him you see standing in front of you belongs entirely to this line. But supersensible forces from one side and subsensible forces from the other side work into the part of man that belongs to the line. Man is the result of supersensible and subsensible forces. Now which of man's forces are supersensible and which are subsensible? All the forces connected with understanding are supersensible, that is, everything we make use of for understanding. And these are the same forces that also form our head. So we can say that the supersensible forces are the forces of understanding.

Now subsensible forces also work into man. What kind of forces are these? These are will forces. All the will forces, everything in man that is of the nature of will, is subsensible.

An obvious question is where do these subsensible forces, these will forces, come from? They are the same forces as the forces of the planets, that is, from our point of view, the forces of the earth. Yes indeed, the forces of the earth are perpetually working into man. And it is our forces of will that are connected with these forces of the planets, these forces of the earth. The forces of understanding come to us from the world's periphery, and pour into us as it were from outside, from the outside of the planet. The forces of will enter into us from the planet itself. This is how the forces of our own planet earth live within us. The moment we enter birth the forces of planet earth are active within us.

The question now arises as to how this activity is distributed. There is a considerable difference in this respect in the first, second and third stage of life, that is, up till the seventh year, the fourteenth year and the twenty-first year. The will working in us up till the seventh year works entirely from out of the planet's interior. It is very interesting to see spiritual-scientifically that in everything working in the child up till the age of seven it is the forces of the earth's depths that are active. If you want to see an actual manifestation of the forces of the earth's interior, then make a study of everything going on in the child up till the age of seven, for these are the forces from within the earth. To delve down into the earth to find the forces of the earth's interior would be absolutely wrong. You would only find earth substances. The forces that are active in the earth come to manifestation in the work they do in the human being up till his seventh year. And from the seventh to the fourteenth year it is the forces of the encircling air that work in man, forces that still belong to the earth, to the earth's atmosphere. These are predominantly at work in everything developing in the human being between seven and fourteen. Then comes the most important stage of all, from fourteen to twenty-one. At this stage the subsensible passes over into the supersensible. Here a kind of balance is created between the subsensible and supersensible. Now the forces of the earth's whole solar system work at organising the human being.

So we have the earth's interior in the first period of life; encircling air in the second period of life, that is, what the earth itself is embedded in. The forces streaming down from cosmic spaces in so far as these cosmic spaces are filled with our own actual planetary system, up till the twenty-first year. Not until the age of twenty-one does man tear himself away, as it were, from the influences brought about in him from outside by the planets and the planetary system belonging to these.

Please notice that in everything I have referred to as having an influence on man, bodily influences are of course included. They are bodily processes that the forces from the planet's interior bring about up till the seventh year. They are bodily processes that are formed by the circulating air in connection with the breathing and so on between the seventh and the fourteenth year. There is no doubt that they are bodily processes, in fact actual transformations of bodily organs are brought about; everything being connected with man's growing and becoming larger. Thus man grows beyond all this work being done on him by the earth; all this ceases at twenty-one.

What happens then, however? What happens after twenty-one? Up till twenty-one we draw on what comes from the earth and its planetary system in the way we have described. We build up our constitution with the earth's help. Then, after we have reached the age of twenty-one, we have to draw on ourselves. We gradually have to release what we have put into our organism from out of the forces of the planet and the planetary system.

Activities going on in the blood forces always used to ensure that this happened in the past. As you will probably know, man has not learnt to release the planetary forces, himself, after the age of twenty-one. And yet he has been doing so. He did it as an unconscious process. The capacity was in his blood. It was built into him to do it. The important change in our present time—and the present extends over a long period of several centuries, of course—is that man's blood is losing the capacity to release what we have put into the organism in this way, before twenty-one

The important changes taking place in humanity at the present time are based on the waning of the forces in the blood. These things cannot be testified by external anatomy and physiology; to do that they would need to investigate bodies from the tenth or ninth centuries in order to discover that blood was different then. And they would not even have had the chemical tests to do it. But through spiritual science we can know with certainty that man's blood has grown weaker. And the great turning-point when human blood began to grow weak lay in the middle of the fifteenth century.

What are the consequences? The consequences of this are that what we cannot carry out unconsciously any more by means of our blood, we have to carry out consciously. We have to educate ourselves to do consciously what was simply done unconsciously by man's blood in the past. For the strength in our blood is in the process of fading away. What would happen if a time were to come when human beings completely lost hold of their youth, and were unable to draw on their youthful forces, if there were no means of resorting to doing consciously what was once done unconsciously by the blood?

You must not take these things in a purely theoretical way, of course. As theories, they may be interesting, but to take them as theories is not enough. Nowadays they have to be put into practice, for they are connected with the practical matter of the evolution of mankind. They must be put into practice to the point of making us conscious that man's whole educational system has to change. We have to help man to develop a strong, conscious capacity to re-experience later in life, as though with the force of elemental memory, what he has received in his youth.

Everywhere, people are still working contrary to this requirement. For instance they are proud of the visual aids used in primary school education, and they attach great importance to getting down to the mental level of the child as far as possible, and not teaching him anything that extends beyond his mental capacity. They actually rig up calculating machines so that they can teach the children to do all kinds of sums by counting balls. Nothing must go beyond the child's mental capacity. These visual aid lessons get frightfully trivial and trite. It is bound to lead to nothing but commonplace concepts if they avoid giving the child anything beyond its own mental capacity. People who do this, thoroughly overlook an important yet subtle observation of human life.

Supposing a child is taught in such a way that he takes a particular thing in, not because it is absolutely on his own mental level, but because his teacher's warmth of enthusiasm gets passed on to him, and the child takes the thing in because the teacher in his enthusiasm tells him about it. The child takes it in just because it lives in the warmth emanating from the teacher. If the child absorbs something that reaches beyond his understanding, purely because of the infectious quality of his teacher's enthusiasm, he will not yet understand what he has taken in, as people say in superficial life. Yet what he has taken in lives in his soul. At the age of thirty the grown-up will remember what the child took in, perhaps at the age of ten. He re-experiences it. He has become mature now, and he can understand what he is able to release from the depths of his soul; he can understand the thing he was taught purely through the force of enthusiasm, and which he is now able to release from his mature mind. You know, these are the most valuable moments in life, when your mental life does not have to be restricted to what comes to meet you from outside, but you re-experience what you took in in your younger days with inadequate understanding, and which you can now release and absorb with your more mature mind. The more care you take that the child does not just get the sort of lessons where it matter-of-factly takes in what it understands—for that will disappear with the passing years, and neither joy nor enthusiasm will come from it later—the more you will be doing for the person's later development; for lessons taken in purely through the teacher's warmth are life giving when they are re-experienced.

Nowadays this is of particular importance in teaching- In earlier times it was not so important, for in those days the releasing was carried out by the blood, whereas now it has to be brought to consciousness. It certainly makes a difference if you understand the kind of things that are being put to practical use by spiritual science. Because if you understand them in the right way you will find an opportunity somewhere in life of making practical use of them for the good of humanity. In this case, if you understand it properly, you will find an opportunity to make use of the fact that our blood is becoming weak, by attaching all the more importance to the teacher's capacity for enthusiasm.

But people are so little aware nowadays of what is at stake. For standardised education still plays a great part, that is, the kind of education that works with a whole set of standard rules. Education is learnt, how to teach a child is learnt, how to arrange the lesson is learnt. Comparing this with our present day consciousness it would be like learning that man consists of carbohydrates, protein and so on—these are our constituents and they undergo such and such changes inside our body, and we cannot eat before we have understood this; for we do not eat in a physiological sense until we understand it.—I told you once, and you may even have experienced this yourselves—, that you can already come across a thing like this:—You visit someone who has a scale standing beside his plate, and he carefully puts a piece of meat on the scales to find out how much it weighs, for he may only eat a piece of meat of a quite specific weight. Physiology already determines his appetite. But not everybody does it this way yet, thank goodness! It is important to understand that physiology is not part of the eating process but covers other aspects, and that a person can eat without having studied physiology, the physiology of the nutritional process. But we do not take it for granted that we also ought to teach, that is, teach in a living way, without having absorbed standardised education. This standardised education is exactly the same thing to a good teacher as the aesthetics of colour is to an artist. He can have studied aesthetics of colour very well, but he will not be able to paint because of that. The ability to paint comes from an entirely different quarter from the study of the aesthetics of colour. The ability to teach comes from an entirely different quarter from the study of education. The important thing, today, is not to give would-be teachers a seminar of some sort of standardised education that prescribes dogmas, but to give them the sort of thing that makes them become teachers and educators in the same way as people become artists or botanists. It is that the educator has to be born in a person and not that education has to be learnt.

What has to be understood just because of this very change in man's set-up is that education has to be a real art. In the time of transition people were at sixes and sevens as to what to do about education. That is why they invented so many abstract educational systems. The essential thing today, however, is to give people a real knowledge of man, especially if they are teachers. You see, if you possess this real knowledge of man and work out of it with children, a remarkable thing will happen: Let us suppose you are a teacher and have your pupils in front of you. If you are a student of standardised education, the kind that follows the rules, then you will know exactly how you have to teach, because you will have learnt the rules. You will teach according to these rules, today, just as you taught according to these rules yesterday and will teach according to them tomorrow and the day after tomorrow. But if you are the artist kind of teacher you are not nearly so well off. For now you cannot teach yesterday, today, tomorrow and the day after tomorrow according to the same rules, but have to learn from the child afresh each time, how he has to be taught; it must be man's own nature every time that determines what you do. And it is ideal if the teacher can teach the way the child tells him to teach, and can keep on forgetting actual education and has not got a clue about the rules. For the moment the child stands in front of him again he will again be electrified by the growing child and will know what he has to do with him.

You must pay attention to the way things have to be said, to the way things have to be spoken about today. You cannot speak about these things today in such a way that they can be put into so and so many satisfying principles, but you can only speak about them by pointing to something alive, something that cannot be reduced to abstract principles but which is alive and produces ever more life. That is the crux of the matter. That is why spiritual science is needed in actual life today, because spiritual science is not merely for the head but is for the whole of man and releases will impulses. Indeed it ought to enter into many realms of life, so that impulses of will are eventually brought into every sphere of human activity.

I have demonstrated this in one particular realm of life, namely education, and shown how the education of children under the age of twenty-one can be made to bear fruit for later life. People do not receive an education only up to the age of twenty-one, though, for education carries on throughout the whole of life. But this only happens in a healthy way if people learn from one another.

This too was done by the blood in earlier ages of history. When people met in social life they used to learn things from one another unconsciously, some people learning more and others less, according to the way their blood worked. But our blood has grown weak and has lost its power. This activity, too, has to be replaced by more consciousness. People must achieve the art of acquiring relatively more for themselves from other people compared with what they produce from out of themselves. In earlier times it was sufficient to rely on life. The blood did everything. Now it is essential for people really to develop a sense for the other person's being. This will come about as a matter of course if people steer their thoughts in the direction of spiritual science. Different kinds of thoughts are stimulated with spiritual science than without it.

You will not doubt this fact, for the way spiritual science is received by people who do not want to know anything about their thoughts shows that spiritual scientific thoughts are different from thoughts without spiritual science. It is necessary to develop a totally new way of thinking. The kind of thinking we develop when we accustom ourselves to working with supersensible thoughts is the kind of thinking that has an effect on our organism. And when I told you today that memory is the same force that transforms food into substances man needs for his organism you will no longer be astonished to find that other forces can be transformed in man, like for instance the force with which we understand supersensible things being the same one that helps us to know the human being better than we would know him if we had no healthy longing for supersensible knowledge.

You people study what is in my Occult Science, and to do that you have to develop certain concepts that most people would still call 'Utter madness'. A few days ago I got yet another letter from someone studying Occult Science, and he says that nearly every chapter is pure nonsense. You can understand people saying it is pure nonsense. Why, it is quite obvious that they often say it these days. Yet these people who do not put themselves out to accept the kind of concepts that lead to Saturn, Sun, Moon, Jupiter, Venus and Vulcan, and do not get down to developing ideas about a world that is not limited to the senses will also not acquire any knowledge of man. They do not see the human being in the other person but notice at the most that one person has a more pointed nose than the other, and one has blue eyes whereas the other has brown. But they notice nothing of man's inner being that manifests as his soul and organises his body. The same force which enables us to take an interest, and I am not saying now that it enables us to have supersensible occult powers, but the same force that enables us to take an interest in supersensible knowledge also gives us the kind of knowledge of man that we need today.

You can set up the most grandiose social programmes and develop the finest social ideas, but if people shy away from acquiring any knowledge of man and do not see any real humanity in one another, they will never be able to bring about social conditions. They cannot produce social conditions unless they establish the possibility that people can be social. But people cannot be social if they do not see the human quality in one another, but live entirely within themselves. Human beings can only become social if they really meet one another in life, and something passes between them. This is the root of the social problem. Most people say of the social question nowadays, that if certain things were arranged in such and such a way people would be able to lead a social existence.—But it is not like that. If things are arranged like that, social people will be good people in a social sense, and anti-social people will be anti-social with any sort of arrangement.

The essential thing is to make the sort of arrangements that allow for human beings to develop really social impulses. And one of these social impulses is knowledge. But as long as you go on educating people, for instance, with an eye to their becoming clerks or army officers or some other kind of civil servant, you will not educate them to recognise the human quality in others. For the sort of education that is good for becoming a clerk or an officer only helps you to see clerks and officers in other people. The kind of education that makes human beings of people also enables them to recognise people as human beings. But it is impossible to recognise people as human beings if you do not develop a sense for supersensible knowledge. And the realm in which supersensible knowledge is most indispensable is in the art of education. Therefore the natural scientific, materialistic way of thinking has done more damage in the field of education than anywhere else. And here you can experience the most amazing things.

In every department you find well-meaning people today, who want to reform everything, even revolutionise them. But if you talk to these people about these things, something very strange transpires. They will admit quite honestly to a particular conviction about reforming things. Yet one of them who happens to be a tailor will ask you how his existence as a tailor is going to be affected when things change. And another person, who is, let us say, a railway clerk, asks you how his life as a railway clerk is going to suffer when things are changed.—These are only given as examples to show you that people are perfectly in agreement that everything should be changed as long as nothing changes and everything remains exactly the same. The vast majority of people today are convinced that everything must stay exactly the same when it changes. Make no mistake about the fact that the sort of social improvement people long for today is of extremely abstract dimensions. People long for a great deal, but nothing must change where their comfort is concerned.

And this is particularly true where it is a of people taking an inner step into an entirely new situation. Nevertheless the essential thing is that people open themseIves to the possibility of making the transition to thinking in quite a new way about man changing himself in his innermost being.

All sorts of questions arise from these considerations, questions that are absolutely pertinent to life. What we must realise is that we have constructed a deeper foundation for these questions, by saying that although certain forces appear to be of a spiritual-soul nature, they also come to expression in our bodily nature. For the capacity is terribly lacking today, to bring down to a material level what we think of on a spiritual level. Not until we are capable of bringing down on to a material level what we think of as being spiritual shall we be able to grasp the actual nerve of the social question.

Thus it is virtually a matter of aiming towards a way of thinking that really develops a knowledge of man that is at one and the same time a social impulse. A way of thinking based on anything else is not adequate. A mentality based on the life of the state or the life of economics creates clerks and officers. But the sort of mentality we need creates human beings. This can only be the sort of thought life that breaks away from the sphere of economics and the life of the state. That is why our Threefold Social Organism had to happen. We had to show in a radical way that any kind of dependency of thought life on economics or on the life of the state had to stop, and thought life had to be set up on its own basis. Then thought life will be able to give economics and the life of the state what economics and the state cannot give to the life of thought.

That is the important thing, that is what is vital! Whole human beings will only arise again when we work out of an independent life of thought.

In the last lecture the endeavour was made to show how necessary it is for men of the present day to turn the eye of the soul towards spiritual science, to those spheres of existence, of reality, in which the rule of the spirit within human evolution is clearly perceptible to anyone who has the faculty of sight in such regions.

As I said, the middle of the fifteenth century brought with it a complete change in the relation of civilized man's soul to the three Hierarchies next above man, the Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai. Hitherto it has been out of their own interests and impulses that they worked in human evolution. In our times, this connection has come to an end. They have for the moment no interest in continuing to work as before on the evolution of man. They will only enter into a new relationship to us when human beings begin to develop an interest in the spiritual worlds, out of free will and of their own accord. If we would not lose all connection with the spiritual worlds, we must occupy ourselves with them in the near future, for the spiritual beings who have been connected with us so far have of themselves no reason to be further interested in us. We can only arouse their interest anew if out of our own souls we again concern ourselves with the spiritual world, fostering thoughts, sentiments, and impulses of will, into which spiritual forces can flow. The question may and must be asked, how can human beings manage so to concern themselves with the spiritual worlds as to maintain their connection with the higher Hierarchies as the Earth evolution proceeds. The answer may deal with things which apparently have little to do with the question; but we shall see that they do provide the foundation on which we can rebuild onwards into the future our, connection with the spiritual world.

The first thing which we must examine is the effect of the various confessions, the creeds, existing among civilized people. Hitherto they were necessary, to guide the heart and, mind to spiritual realms, but in future they will help to detach man from the spiritual world, unless they admit something entirely new into their efforts. Fundamentally speaking, the creeds of the present day are based on the egoism of man, as we shall realize if we put before our souls one question of such great importance that it forms, and always must form, a touchstone for their views, the question of the immortality of the human soul. We can see, from the way in which this question is generally handled by the creeds, that they appeal largely to man's egoistic instincts. Of course there are deeper foundations for their speech, but these we are not discussing today: as a rule the creeds speak of the “continued existence of the soul after death"—that is, the continuation of the life of the human soul.

To deal with the subject of immortality from this point of view is comparatively easy, for human egotism asserts itself there emphatically. Man simply cannot bear—apart from all truth about the question—the thought of utter extinction at death, so that a certain response is always to be found in man’s soul when "life after death" is mentioned. The treatment generally given today to the idea springs from an egoistic interest in people. They would prefer not to die as souls at physical death. Naturally, the soul's continued existence after death will be assumed in all our future discussions on immortality, but the way in which anthroposophical spiritual science speaks of the continued existence of the soul after death is very far from being accepted by the creeds.

But this also is important: that people of our day must hear a very different language about immortality from that to which they are accustomed. One who discusses the question of immortality should not only speak of life after death, but also of that life which is lived here in the physical world between birth and death. For as you know, this life is also a "continuation"; it is a continuation of the life passed between our last death and that birth through which we are now in the physical world. That is the view which men must learn to hold—that the life here is a continuation of the spiritual life before birth. In the growth of a child from day to day, from week to week, from year to year, we must notice forces from the spiritual world arising from its inner being, forces which have come with birth and work so as gradually to form the being of man as time goes by. In a sense we lift the veil of the God in man when we enter into the life of the child to develop it. Social relations must take on something of a religious impulse permeating the whole of life between man and man. For this the important, the essential thing is an attitude which never forgets that physical life is a continuation of a pre-natal life, of spirit and soul.

Many things will follow on this. For one thing we shall recognize that our real humanity lies in the depths of our being, gradually emerging. I have referred to ancient times of human evolution, known from an anthroposophical standpoint as the first and second post-Atlantean epochs. People in those days were as capable of development right into their old age as only the young are nowadays. A child goes through a physical evolution about its seventh year with the change of teeth; through another metamorphosis when puberty occurs; but after that what goes on in his evolution is outwardly less noticeable. In olden times this was not so; what man went through in soul and spirit expressed itself into much later stages of life. Nowadays old age sets in at seventeen or eighteen, and we are amazed at its evidences. Here is an example: a short time ago, in Stuttgart, at a meeting of the Cultural Committee where present-day education was discussed from the most varied points of view, a young man got up (let us call him "a young man" though he might equally well be called an "old boy"!) who told us we needed instructing about the true ideals of education! He began by uttering some very high-sounding words, then read out the programme of a modern Educational Society. After much stumbling he finally broke down, and, having no more to say, gathered up the threads with "I must there­fore claim to have proved that old age no longer understands its own youth," and went out. I replied that I quite saw we had not understood him, for the simple reason that his speech and behaviour had been those of an old man; he had in fact enunciated as principles, like an ancient grey-beard, the last word in abstractions. Old age, nowadays, means the limit up to which a man can develop. Up to a particular age a person can absorb all sorts of things, and is not ashamed to develop himself. But at about twenty years of age he feels shame at the idea of developing farther. Seldom nowadays do we find people with grey hair and wrinkles welcoming with joy the dawn of each year because each year brings new possibilities of development to the organism and new knowledge, unattainable before, is within reach. At the inconsiderable age of thirty men are ashamed to make themselves capable of development, or to learn anything more. The point is that we should actually retain the possibility, all through life, of rejoicing in the coming year, because each year charms forth the divine-spiritual content of our own inner being in ever new forms.

I want to emphasize this point. We should really and truly learn to experience our life as capable of development not only in youth, but through its whole span between birth and death. For this a new education will be necessary. We elders find that to look back at our own schooldays evokes few pleasant thoughts. We must manage to shape school­days for the children of today so that to remember them will provide an ever new and invigorating source of life. Now this will bring, as you can see, the possibility of opening for mankind real perception of the soul-spiritual within themselves, of experiencing something extending beyond the everyday life which is stirred and stimulated from without.

Other knowledge will be recognized as necessary. There is a secret, intimately connected with the present stage of human evolution, which is not known today. In earlier times, before the middle of the fifteenth century, it was not necessary to take much notice of it, but today it must be reckoned with. This mystery of life is that man, constituted as he is today in body, soul and spirit, every night looks, to a certain extent, at the events of the coming day, but without always carrying that vision over into full day-consciousness. It is his "Angel" who has that clear consciousness. But what is experienced at night in community with that being whom we call the Angel is a pre-vision of the coming day. This is no subject for human curiosity, but a matter for practical life. Only when the feeling of this fact fills our inner being can we make right decisions and bring right thoughts into the course of daily life. Let us assume that a man has something definite to do, say at noon. This that he has to do has already been arranged by his Angel and himself during the preceding night, though the fact is not necessarily kept in consciousness and human curiosity has no part in it. People should be filled with the conviction that during the day they should realize in a fruitful way what they have arranged at night in co-operation with this Angel being.

Much that has happened of late might draw men's attention with almost shattering force to what I have just said. The last four or five years of agony should have taught men that the consciousness of their association with higher beings through the experiences of the night did not, alas! exist. If the feeling had permeated men that their doings in the day were in harmony with the decisions made with their Angels in the preceding night, how different events would have been! These things must be spoken of now, to point out how man must learn to regard this life between birth and death as a continuation of the life of spirit and soul which was his before birth. It must be made known that man in future should be able to experience throughout his whole life the revelation of the Divine in his own being, and that through all his life in the day this vivid consciousness should persist as: "What I do from morning till evening I have discussed with my Angel, while I slept." Men must turn to feelings which are more concrete with regard to the spiritual world than the modern abstractions of various creeds, which at the same time claim that they appeal to unselfish, not to egoistic human instincts. From such feelings will arise that which will provide the necessary relation to the beings belonging to the Hierarchy of the Angels, who will once more be able to interest themselves on our behalf. Men's attitude to the spiritual world must move in this appointed direction.

Yet again we must observe something. The creeds speak much about "God" and "The Divine." What do they really mean? Surely something of which a vague conscious­ness, at least, exists in the soul of man. After all, it is not, what name is given to a thing that matters, but what it means to a man's soul. Men talk of “God" and of "Christ," but all the time they only mean the "Angel"—the Angel to which they turn because they meet a response in their souls. Whatever the creeds may speak of today, whether of God or Christ or other divine being, the substance of the thought only relates to the Angel Beings who are connected with man, the Angeloi. Higher it cannot rise, since people are disinclined to seek any wider relation to the spiritual world than an egoistic one. The relation to the Archangeloi, the Hierarchy of the Archangels, must indeed be sought in another way. Men's interests today must be considerably widened. I will show you how that extension must take place, so that from making response only to the Angeloi, they may rise in their feelings to the Archangeloi.

They must realize that they have passed through terrible experiences all over the civilized world during the last few years. Many have asked about the "causes" of, these events, with mutual imputations of "guilt " and " innocence ": yet we need only look below the mere surface of things and we shall have little interest in all this talk about “causes " and "war-guilt" or " innocence," simply because we can see that what has come up to the surface in these last four or five years is, like waves of the sea, always there, but brought up from the depths to the surface by the forces below. An upheaval of human forces had been going on; one people after another shared in the enormous folly of those years; one could but say: "Some turmoil of elemental forces is surging upwards into view. The sea of human life has become unquiet—What is it?"

We shall never get things clear if we do not connect this fact of humanity's unrest with the whole period we call "history." We must convince ourselves that the armed struggle of the last few years is only the beginning of events which will take place in quite other spheres, but which have never before existed among us in this particular form. We are not at the end of a stage of evolution—only superficial observation could lead to that conclusion—we stand at the beginning of the greatest conflicts, the greatest spiritual conflicts of the civilized world, and we must put forth our best efforts to be equal to them. Increasing opposition is threatened in the soul-attitude of East and West in the near future, for East and West have developed in two quite different directions. If we would see into these things, we must set before our­selves certain phenomena in their deepest, most fundamental form as riddles to be solved.

For decades we have heard repeated in socialist circles holding the Marxian theory, that everything man experiences as art, religion, custom, law or science is just "Ideology " (I have discussed this at greater length in the first chapter of The Threefold Commonwealth). This means that a view which had been developing amongst the middle classes for the last three or four hundred years, but which they were too timid to admit, has been frankly acknowledged by the socialists of the last half-century. They assert that the genuine reality of social life consists in actual happenings; therefore the real lies only in the economic forces. All conceptions of art, religion, custom, science, law, morality, merely form a kind of vapour rising from true reality, and are mere ideology, with nothing but a semblance of reality. The socialists conclude that it is only necessary to change economic life and all other changes will ensue, since everything else—morality, law, religion and so forth—is only an unreal vapour arising from the events in the economic sphere, which is the "only reality."

If, however, the world be considered in no restricted sense but as a great whole, we shall defend this word "ideology " which, but for their timid dislike of facts, the middle classes might have been using for three or four hundred years. They did feel that the economic life was the "only reality" and what displayed itself as science, art or religion was like a vapour; all life was based on this, and it was reserved for their pupils to carry their reasoning to its logical conclusion. Socialists are, after all, only extreme pupils of the middle-class world. This is the view which, forming in the West, reached its climax in the second half of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Other impulses have formed the Eastern view of the world, and an Oriental would say: "I look at what is going on in the external world: I see what my senses convey to me, what I use as an instrument for transforming the world around, what shines down on me from the stars, and what I myself am as to my bodily nature—what is it all? It is Maya! What then is reality, and not illusion? Only what is experienced in the human soul—that is reality!" One who does not translate in terms of a dictionary, but according to the inner meaning, knows that the words "Maya" in the East and "Ideology " in the West mean one and the same thing. For thousands of years the Oriental has regarded the outer world which affects the senses—including economics—as Maya. The Westerner, on the other hand, sees his reality in what for the Oriental is "Maya," and what arises in his soul is for him "Ideology." Both views of the world have developed to a certain point. Talk with the leading men in the socialist parties especially in those places where the first Revolution (known here as the "November " Revolution) has not yet taken place, and it is evident that this revolution altered their ideas somewhat, but not their feelings. You hear the same views as obtained right up to the war, that it is not necessary to con­tribute anything from the will towards trans­forming, revolutionizing the world, but that all that will happen of itself. Something fatalistic has appeared in the West. People are convinced that they need only wait until the means of production are sufficiently developed, and then by a natural metamorphosis all that is concentrated in private capital will pass over into other forms. Thinking of this sort is as sensible as saying: "This room is full of bad air. I cannot breathe. The window could be opened, but I am not going to open it; I am waiting until the air improves of itself."

Fatalism of the West, Fatalism of the East—we know them well. In the East, though not at the very beginning, men fell into complete fatalism, as the philosophy of Maya developed. Every world-philosophy has, in its inner law, the impulse towards fatalism at some time, but we stand today at a point where we must get rid of fatalism. We must pass from mere observation and contemplation to the exertion of will and intention. We must rouse our wills by developing impulses from the truths I have described regarding birth as a continuation of pre-natal life, remaining young notwithstanding white hair and wrinkles, the playing in of the nightly work of the Angel into daily life. Man needs to acquire impulses for his life of will by widening his sphere of interest, by seeing not only what touches his own personal life but what affects the civilized world in manifold forms. Look­ing at the West, to which we ourselves belong, we see the inner world as ideology, the outer world as reality: in the East, ideology, Maya, in the outer world, reality in the inner world alone.  In the interaction of human beings at the present time, we have the task of finding the way of escape from that aspect of these philosophies which has already turned to fatalism. We must look for this way, and we shall only find it if we are in earnest about something which annoys people terribly today.

There was a remarkable example of this once, when my hearers were greatly vexed by something I said in a lecture in a South German town, though it was a truth necessary for the present time. The context of my lecture necessitated the remark that the leading classes of the present day have a decadent physical brain. Such statements are unpleasant both to utter and to listen to, but it is necessary that people should realize this fact. The very people to whom the present con­figuration of our times is due have, in achieving it, acquired a decadent physical brain. It is so, and we are in one sense in the same case as were the people of Europe during the, great migrations and the spreading of Christianity. The Christian impulse came over from the East, by way of Greece and Rome. Naturally the Greek and Roman world was far more highly developed than the. German. The Germans were barbarians. But the brains of the Greeks and Romans were decadent, there­fore the surge of Christianity was not absorbed by them in the same way as it was when it reached the Germans. That is a migration of peoples which went horizontally. today it is "vertical." today a wave of spiritual life is coming from the spiritual world. Just as Christianity was at first reflected from the Greeks and Romans, so the spiritual world is reflected from the bourgeoisie today, and that is decadent. The proletariat are not so yet; they are still able to understand what is meant by the spiritual world. But the others will need preparation through anthroposophy, through that part of the brain which is not yet physical that is the etheric brain. We are at present confronted with the fact that the leading classes are not only menaced with a decadent brain, but with entire decadence, if they do not realize that they must grasp the spiritual view of the world by supersensible means.

The tragedy of the bourgeois system is that it would grasp everything "physically," whereas our task today is to grasp things with the etheric brain, to take spiritual truths into our being. Modern humanity must steer in this direction, and the West must take the lead. Here we must take into account some­thing very important.

Observe the development of language, passing from East to West. Take the German language, today dreadfully misused. If we look back at the language of Goethe, of Lessing, we can see that not so long ago in the very words, through their peculiar quality, it was possible to express what of spiritual life lay within them. today we have dreadfully neglected our language, degraded it into phrases only; but that it can no longer express spirituality is not due to the language alone. The farther West we go as regards language, the more we find in speech, with its tunes and sounds, even with its grammar, a complete rejection of what is really spiritual. From this rejection of the quality of soul and spirit from the Anglo-American idiom follows the mission of the Anglo-American peoples. Their world­ mission consists in this: in learning, maybe instinctively, yet still learning (as they listen to other men, in course of acquiring world dominion), not only to comprehend the sound, but to interpret the gesture of the language, to hear more than the mere physical sound, to hear something which passes from man to man in speech, going beyond the spoken word. That works from etheric body to etheric body. Here lies the secret of the Western languages, that in them the physical tone loses its significance, while the spiritual gains it. It is part of their task to let the spirit filter into speech, not merely to hear physically, but to hear intuitively more than passes over into the sound. In the West, the spiritual must be sought behind language itself.

If we look at the East, we shall notice an ever-increasing urge among the peoples who, as we have seen, sink themselves into their own inner being, not to be bound by the old forms of conception as to "Karma," " Reincarnation," and so forth, but to look out into the world, and in that outer world to perceive something spiritual, even to establish a sort of Philosophy of Nature.

These are only trivial instances through which we can widen our interests from our own personality and our nationality to take in the whole of humanity, saying to ourselves "Here in the West is Ideology, though quite another Ideology from the Eastern one," and seeing how elemental forces are stirred up within earthly humanity as a result, of these antitheses. We learn to take our stand within the whole civilized world, and when we develop such knowledge of our position within it at the same time we build in our souls the means of acquiring feelings which lead higher than the sphere of the Angeloi. Our interests will be so much extended that we shall incline to ideas which ascend to the sphere of the Archangeloi, for all that I have been saying about the opposition of Ideology-Maya, etc., works in its primal force in the sphere beyond that of the Angeloi. We can see from this what is really needful for modern humanity. What will the so-called clever people call anyone who speaks of these things—Maya, Ideology and so forth—as having primal forces which function in the sphere of the Archangeloi? Just a fool, quite naturally, since men are so hide-bound by their acquired spiritual outfit that they feel no concern in the wider interests of mankind. That can only be achieved from a spiritual standpoint, by penetrating into everything which works for the great interests of humanity.

I have given you an idea of how to work up into the sphere of the Archangeloi. It is possible to rise stilt higher, and present-day humanity must learn that also. Our educated classes have, always been taught to look back to Ancient Greece. Young men (and in recent times young women also) have had to go through a certain schooling to absorb Greek culture, and have thus acquired an impulse which was enough to lead them to feel more and more deeply into the Greek world. This has a great significance for our civilization, that in our most important years of development we have learnt what Greece accomplished for the world. The Greeks did otherwise; it never entered their heads to teach their children the Egyptian tongue: they occupied themselves with immediate reality, for which they possessed a clear, sense. We occupy our young people, not with instruction concerning their environment and the impulses of reality, but with those of an olden time. We have no idea what we are really doing. It is not only that we teach our young children (I suppose I should say our "young ladies " and "young gentlemen ") the Greek language: for in a language, in the configuration of its sounds and its grammar, lies also the character of a whole people. In absorbing the Greek language, as is done today, man acquires the same soul-attitude in the world as was held in Greece. There all cultural life was such that only a small top-stratum shared in the culture; the rest were slaves. In Greece no occupation was worthy of a free man but science, politics and—even then in a supervisory capacity agriculture: everything else was a matter for slaves. This is hidden in the language, and when we take Greek culture and language into our own spiritual education, we unite aristocracy with it at the same time. For the Greek it was quite natural to construct his whole social organism in accordance with his intellectual tendency, for in his case that was connected with his blood. There were the ordinary masses: then those people of a higher type, who possessed the higher life of the mind through their blood. This finds expression even in Greek sculpture. Compare the position of nose and ears in the Hermes-type with that of the Zeus- or Athene-type. The Greeks knew perfectly well what they wanted to express when they set the Hermes-type over against the Aryan Zeus-type.

We are permeated with all this more than we think. When we form our views of the world, we really construct ideas still suited to what in the Greeks came through the blood. Our intellectual, our cultural life is saturated with what we absorb from the Greeks. Hellenism intrudes into our times luciferically. Hellenism, in the period which immediately followed it, was metamorphosed into Roman­ism. Compared with the Greeks the Romans were dull, prosaic people, but they did develop other aspects of life. They lived out in an abstract fashion what came to the Greeks from the blood. Unlike the Greeks they made even man into an abstraction, a "citizen of the State." A man, in the Roman sense, is not really "man"; he is a citizen of the State: an incomprehensible thing to the Greeks. To be born a human being did not make him a man, but being registered in some kind of State archives. This sometimes appears today in grotesque fashion. I once had an old friend, sixty-four years of age; one day he said to me that he had saved such and such a sum—he had always been very poor—and that he wanted to marry the love of his youth. He had become engaged at eighteen, but had no money to marry, and the couple had vowed to wait until they could. He returned to his birthplace, now that the way was open, but found that the marriage could not, take place because his community doubted his existence. Years before, the parsonage, with all the parish registers, had been burned down and there was no one alive who could give evidence as to his identity. My friend assumed that his existence was proved by his presence, but he had no "legal evidence." It is true the marriage did eventually take place, but the difficulties had shown him the much greater importance of a "birth-certificate " than of his own personality.

Men then are "citizens." They are what they are in an abstract connection. This view is essentially Roman, as is everything of this sort which we come across in ordinary life. Our education has been taken in hand by the State, which is already abstract, but will become more so under socialist influence. People are not educated today to take their place in the world as free human beings, but to have a professional calling and take their place in that. The State takes young people in hand, not at once, for then they are too “shapeless," so it leaves them for a time to their parents, then, stretching out its talons, it trains them to be useful to it, taking good care that they are so. It gives them an economic life, gives them everything prescribed, and then pensions them off. It means a great deal when a man can assure himself of a pension as well as an income—something substantial, which binds him to the abstract State and affects the rest of his mental attitude. The Roman attitude has passed into men of other times. Say to a man today: "to partake of immortality needs an activity of soul, that thou thyself mayst carry thy soul wide awake through the gates of death"; he will not understand. He has been made wholly un­accustomed to direct his understanding to such a question. Instead of this he is told: "You need only believe in Christ and in what the State does." First he will be looked after by the State, with a pension when he has worked long enough then the Church goes one bit farther; it offers a pension for his soul after death, so that neither in his lifetime need he do anything for his own soul nor when he carries it through the gate of death: A man is "registered " nowadays, and the political essence of Rome, already taken into our own being, will increase.

All sorts of dreadful experiences are possible because of this. Helping with the institution of the Waldorf School at Stuttgart, I have had to look at the various School Regulations. Looking back, I must admit that in the 'seventies and 'eighties of last century, the regulations were very small: they included what had to be studied in each class, the aim and the subject matter being given, but in everything else the teacher was left quite free. Nowadays we get an enormous syllabus with "Official," "Ordinance," written on the first page, and specific instructions as to the manner of teaching. So that what should only work on one living personality from out of another, is set down in rules and orders; it has become "official," it is "decreed "! That is the death of mind and spirit, directly traceable from Central Europe to Ancient Rome. This is the second thing we have absorbed—with Romanism, the politico­legal element.

In addition to this, however, there is some­thing which could not be transplanted from the old life into the new—the economic life, which can only be modern. It is possible to chew the cud of Greek knowledge, to allow the Roman political ideas to influence us, but we cannot "eat" what the Greeks and Romans have eaten. Economic life must be modern. We have gradually woven into our economic life the Greek life of intellect and the Roman life of rights, and our task is to disentangle them again. To understand that these three strata brought out of different epochs have, as it were, been joined together and must be separated means to extend one's interest in time (as, in the East and West in space) down to the present; that means to make ourselves capable of feelings which can raise us to the Archai! How few develop an interest for these things, an impartial interest in how the Zeitgeist (Time-Spirit) acts by thrusting one period into another. I spoke at Stuttgart on the artificial nature of our classical education. It may have been mere coincidence that a few days after there appeared in the papers great announcements signed by all kinds of Zöpfen—professors—(I beg their pardon!) to the effect that a classical education should not be undervalued, seeing that it had contributed to the greatness of the German people, so gloriously displayed in the latter days. This, literally, was to be read as the alleged opinion of educationists in April, 1919—after what happened in October, 1918! And to think that this and other things should be possible in our times!

Unless we reach a stage at which we can see things so as to absorb the impulses which work into our physical world out of the spiritual—unless we realize that man, just as he is connected through his bodily organization with the animal, plant, and mineral kingdoms, is also connected in his spiritual organization with the Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai (Angeloi as the guardians of personal development, Nation Spirits as guardians of development of peoples in space, Spirits of Time as guardians of development through­out the ages)—unless we can understand these things from their spiritual foundations, we can advance no farther. Everything depends on man having courage and force today to look into the spiritual world. We are at the beginning of a hard struggle, in which will be stirred up all the instincts spring­ing from the one half-truth that economic reality is the only reality, that everything belonging to soul and spirit is Ideology; and from the other half-truth that the only reality is the psychic spiritual, all outside it is Ideology, Maya. These contradictions will let loose in human nature such instincts that the spiritual conflict will blaze for long periods in forms of which people at present have no idea. We must grasp this; and, further, learn how we are to raise ourselves, in harmony with our time, to a view of the spiritual world as we conceive it. It is this which the times themselves ordain and demand; to this we must turn our attention.

Good morning, gentlemen! Perhaps you noticed something in particular during the last lecture that would prompt you to follow up with a question?

Questioner: Yesterday, Mr. Seefeld showed me a photograph of snowflakes. The forms come from the universe. It interested me very much; there is a connection. It has already given me food for thought.

Dr. Steiner: I will try to present this to you in context as well, especially since it will then easily lead on from what we discussed last Monday. I have often pointed out that the human being is a very complicated creature. This is not so much apparent from the human being's appearance, but can be seen from the human being's inner life, including the physical interior of the human being. I can point out to you, for example, that in areas in the so-called hot zone, where it is warm for most of the year and only a very short rainy winter alternates with the warmth - say in southern Egypt or India - that people there actually look quite different on the inside than where it is constantly cold, in areas close to the North Pole, for example. Regions close to the North Pole have a great deal of what you just asked about; they have a great deal of the forces that are then expressed in the beautiful forms of snowflakes. So we can say that on Earth we have areas that are strongly warmed and illuminated by the sun, where the sun has a great influence, and we have areas where the sun actually has little influence, where snow and ice prevail. You know that not only snowflakes have beautiful, all kinds of wonderful shapes – snowflakes have, firstly, shapes that resemble a hexagon, but also all kinds of other shapes (see figure $. 52) – but you have certainly also looked out the window in winter when there is ice, when the water freezes that otherwise covers the entire window surface as vapor; then you have seen what wonderful flowers are formed, wonderful figures in which the water is formed. So that we can say: water, which is the basis of snow as well as of ice – because when it gets warm again, both snow and ice melt into water – forms the most beautiful figures when the sun is not quite strong. Of course, they cannot be in the water. Because something that forms its own figure out of itself retains its figure. You all have a figure. But you cannot say of the human figure that you all only have the human figure in pictures, which melts away when the sun comes. That would also be a shame, but it doesn't. The water does not have this figure within itself; it comes from outside. Now let us examine where the water gets this figure from, which causes these beautiful images in both snow crystals and frost flowers. That is the answer to your question. When such a question is posed, it must be possible to address the person as a whole. Now there are two organs in the human being; they are different in a person where the sun has great power throughout the year, as in the hot regions of southern Egypt and India. The inner form of these organs differs in these people from those people where it is cold, so to speak, all year round, where there is always a tendency in nature to form snow crystals and frost flowers, as with the Eskimos. They live up there, wherever snow and ice actually want to be, where water does not melt much. But now let's look at the outside. People will say: Well, people in hot areas may be a little taller on the outside, but the Eskimos are small people. But that is not what makes the difference. The big difference between people in the hot zone and the Eskimos, the people in the cold zone, lies in the difference in the formation of their livers and lungs. The Eskimos have large lungs and small livers in relation to their bodies, and the people in the hot zone have relatively smaller lungs and a large liver. So you see, people in areas where ice flowers and ice crystals form differ from the others in that they have a small liver and large lungs in relation to their bodies. And in people where nature does not tend to form such figures, but where the sun always melts everything, removes everything, there is the peculiarity that they have relatively small lungs and a large liver. Whenever we ask about something in nature, including ice flowers, we must always look at the human being. If you don't start with the human being, you understand nothing in nature, absolutely nothing.

So the thing is this: the liver in humans is a very important organ. If a person had no liver, they would have no bile, because the liver secretes bile continuously. The bile comes from the liver, passes into the gallbladder, from there into the digestive juices, from there into the blood and then passes into the whole body. So we can say: Man has the liver in his right side; from the liver, bile flows out into the gallbladder, from there into the blood, and goes into the whole body. So man actually has his liver to secrete bile.

You may ask why this bile is constantly coming from the liver. Gentlemen, if you had no gall, you would be strange people. It is distributed throughout the body in very small quantities, but it must be in the whole body. If you had no gall, you would be terribly phlegmatic; you would let your hands, arms, and head hang, and it would be unpleasant for you to answer someone's questions and so on. So you would be completely lethargic, phlegmatic people if you had no bile. Man must have bile; the bile must come from the liver. And if the liver is relatively small, then the person is phlegmatic; if the liver is relatively large, then the person has a lot of fire in him, because the bile produces fire. And you see, there can also be too much bile in a person; they can produce too much bile; then they actually feel like hitting out when someone says just a little something to them. In particular, people with a violent temper have a lot of bile flowing out of their liver; a lot of bile flows into the digestive juices and into the blood. So that if you observe inwardly the person to whom you say something or who does not like something that makes a particular impression on him – a lot of bile quickly flows out of the liver and spreads very quickly throughout the body, and he hits you a few times or rants like a trooper. That is what you observe inwardly when a person has too much tendency to secrete bile. But as I said, if he did not secrete any bile at all, he would have no fire at all, but would just flop around as I told you. So you see, the secretion of bile is something that is absolutely essential to a person. I don't know if any of you has tasted bile: it tastes terribly bitter, really poisonous, and a larger amount of bile properly absorbed by the mouth is also a poison. This is related to what I told you last Wednesday. I told you: when a person comes to life, moves, walks, even when he curses and slaps you around a bit, yes, there is so much poison that he has the tendency to produce a lot of the potassium cyanide I told you about. He has to mix that with his blood. I have seen many cases where people have simply developed internal blood poisoning from their anger. One can become so angry, especially when one becomes angry quickly, that one secretes an excessive amount of bile as a result of this anger - actually first a lot of cyan, then bile. Then one gets a terrible toxic mixture in the blood, and that ruins the blood. Wrath can cause terrible blood poisoning. From this you can see how necessary and how harmful something can be for a person, depending on what kind of organ it is in his body. Because everything that happens is connected with the soul again. Anger is something of the soul, the secretion of bile is something physical; but there is nothing in the human being that is not also of the soul and everything of the soul somehow has a physical form.

Let us move on. Now suppose a person is very often exposed to what are often called colds, especially abdominal colds. So a person gets abdominal colds very often; then his stomach says: Yes, I am like an Eskimo, I am like in the coldest region of the earth. - And then it happens that the stomach constantly contracts the liver, so that it is small like an Eskimo's. So if a person has a lot of abdominal colds, then his liver contracts, and then it squeezes out the bile. Bile constantly trickles into the gallbladder and from there into the body.

Now, gentlemen, you have all experienced what is called, for example, overstraining yourself. You lift something that is too heavy for you; then you tear your muscles apart, then you destroy your muscles. If you use too much strength for any organ, you destroy the organ. But that is the case with the liver. If it continues to secrete too much bile, the liver gradually shrinks and becomes ineffective. So most liver diseases that people get arise from the fact that the person has developed a tendency to secrete too much bile due to cold in the abdomen, causing their liver to atrophy. Liver diseases come from cold in the abdomen due to the liver shrinking. Of course, all kinds of other conditions can occur as well. When a person suffers from abdominal colds, the heart does not work properly. Doctors then say that liver diseases come from the heart. But in reality they come from the fact that the abdomen is cold.

But all this – as you can already see from what I have told you – has to do with the sun. Therefore, it is always very good for someone suffering from abdominal colds to expose their lower body to light. The sun cure, for example, is extremely good for this. So we have to say: everything that is connected with the liver is also connected with the sun. Solar activity promotes liver activity. A lack of solar activity disrupts liver activity. It is a very interesting connection between the sun and the liver.

I have always admired the fact that the German language has a word for liver. All other languages don't have such a nice word for this organ in the right side of the abdomen. Because, according to what I have explained to you now, we have to say that the fire, even that which comes to man from the sun, this invigorating firepower, must first be cooked properly in the liver for the human being; the bile must be prepared there for him, which then passes into his body. The sun prepares the bile in the human being. What the human being does there, we call living, and the one who fuels this life can be called a liver. Just as one says: wagon, wainwright, drawing, draftsman, so life is the verb, and liver, the liver - one has only forgotten that this is the case, one says “the liver” instead of “the liver”; actually it is called the liver - that is what gives life! Sometimes language is wonderfully instructive, because in the old folk instincts there was always a knowledge of this, and things were named correctly. The liver is what fires, what invigorates the human being. This is to be said with regard to the liver. Now, if one has a liver in its bile secretion, then one must say: the secretion of the liver is that which is connected with the sun.

Now we turn to the lungs. We have often discussed this and you know it: the lungs breathe. But the lungs drawing in oxygen, breathing, is only part of their activity. The lungs have something else to do. Just as the liver secretes bile, so the lungs secrete what is called mucus. So the lungs secrete mucus. The lungs, like the liver, cannot keep what they have inside. The liver could not fill up with bile; the liver has to release bile into the body. But the lungs have to constantly secrete mucus, constantly secrete mucus. And now it is so that when the lungs secrete mucus, the mucus then goes to all other parts of the body. It goes out with sweat, it even goes into the exhaled air, it goes out with the urine, it goes everywhere, the mucus. But the organ that secretes the mucus is the lung.

If you now examine the air that a person exhales, you will discover something wonderful. You just have to examine the air exhaled from the nose, not the air exhaled from the mouth, which is too irregular; you have to examine the air exhaled from the nostrils.

It is very interesting when someone exhales very slowly. You have to be very careful: if you breathe on a glass plate, something similar to snow will appear in the exhaled breath. You have to do it very carefully, and in such a way that, for example, if you hold your left nostril while exhaling, you only breathe out slowly with your right nostril onto the glass plate in front of you, and then with your left. You have to breathe very slowly, because if you breathe quickly, you smear the whole thing with the breath. You have to breathe very gently and softly. Actually, you have to learn that first. But then it's interesting: when you breathe through one nostril, the exhaled air forms figures on the glass plate, just like snow! The exhaled air is not just a little crumb on it, but a figure. And the really interesting thing about it, I would say, is that if you hold your left nostril closed and breathe out, you get one figure; if you hold your right nostril closed and breathe out, you get a different figure. They are not even the same figures! So we can say: the air from you, from your own person, comes out in figures. It doesn't come out just as a drop, it comes out in figures, and even so strangely that the left nostril gives a different figure than the right nostril.

Now, gentlemen, what is in the exhaled air, which, because it contains water vapor, gives these figures, which evaporate again immediately, but forms these figures, is the mucus that passes from the lungs into the exhaled air. It forms these figures. The mucus, so to speak, sticks the individual, tiny water droplets together into such figures. So that you do not just have the tendency to expel mucus in your lungs in any old shape, but you have the tendency to actually exhale or expel mucus from your lungs in crystals – in crystals! Only these crystals evaporate immediately, dissolve immediately, because they come into contact with the sun.

Just as the bile is related to the liver and the sun, so the lungs and their mucus secretion are related to the moon. We know that the carbon dioxide rises up into the head, as I have told you, and I have shown you that if a person did not send carbon dioxide up into his head, he would become stupid. This tingling carbonic acid, which continuously rises in very small quantities into the head, makes us clever people. We are all so terribly clever people, aren't we! You know, when you drink fizzy drinks, it tingles; that is very noticeable. But humans always produce carbonic acid very weakly. He sends it up into the head. And this tingling in the head makes the head active; that is why he is clever and not stupid. Those people who are really stupid – I don't know if there are any – they have too little strength to combine the carbon with the oxygen and don't send any carbon up, but they combine the carbon with a completely different gas. So a clever person connects the carbon with the oxygen: and that's how sparkling carbonic acid is created. But as I said, those people who are really stupid connect the carbon not with the oxygen but with the hydrogen. So they connect carbon with hydrogen, and that's how this gas is created, which is sometimes found in mines: mine gas, swamp gas. We all send some of this mine gas into our heads; we need it, otherwise we would become too clever. So that we can always remain a little dull, and not be too clever, we also develop swamp gas. But those who become too stupid develop too much swamp gas. In those people who are reasonably clever, the carbonic acid goes to the head. That tingles. And when a lot of marsh gas has gradually accumulated, they become sleepy, then comes sleepiness. This occurs at night, when a lot of marsh gas develops. Only in those who are stupid does the marsh gas also develop when they are awake. So the carbonic acid has to keep rising. But the carbonic acid alone does not do it: the mucus has to go from the lungs to the head. It even comes out through the nostrils in the form of crystals, just as it does in the liver and gall bladder. Now, that will be clear to you from the description I gave on Wednesday.

Just as the liver is related to the sun, so the lungs are related to the moon. Take a look at the moon. The moon is just very different from the sun. When you look at the sun, the sun is round, but it actually spreads its rays in all directions. The sun, which shines on all sides; it flows out in all directions, just as the bile in the human body goes in all directions. One can then compare the sun in its flowing out, in its flowing apart, with the flowing out of the bile. But the moon - yes, gentlemen, when you look at the moon, it always has a very definite shape. The moon is very firm. And in its interior, too, what constitutes the substance of the moon is crystallized, just as our exhaled air forms, which come out of the nose, are crystallized. The moon's effects are at work inside, just as the sun's effects are at work in the liver and gall bladder. The moon's forces are at work in the lungs, and the moon causes this secretion of mucus.

Now we can say: let us go to the hot regions, yes, then the sun is at work. It makes everything melt; people get a lot of fire. Fire, it does not only live in the wrath of anger, but also lives in the beautiful things and in the beautiful wisdom of zeal. People get a lot of fire. If we go to cold regions, then in these cold regions, where the sun does not have the strength to work, where the moon shines in particular on cold nights in the freezing cold, the lungs, which are relatively enlarged, have to work very hard: a lot of mucus is secreted. And those who are not accustomed to this catch cold and secrete too much mucus.

You see, gentlemen, now you also have the cause of lung diseases. The lungs have to secrete a certain amount of mucus, just as the liver has to secrete a certain amount of bile. But just as the liver ruins itself when it secretes too much bile, so the lungs ruin themselves when they secrete too much mucus. This is the case with lung diseases. The lungs are shaken up by what they experience, by secreting too much mucus. So imagine that instead of living in moderately humid air, instead of living in a little humid air, you live in very humid air: then the lungs have to make a very great effort. But when the lungs strain, they secrete mucus. And so, by breathing too much moist air, the lungs begin to strain. And the person coughs when they get lung disease; little by little they cough up their entire lungs when they are too sick.

You can then help the lungs by preparing a certain medicine. You must not use roots for this, but you must use the leaves of plants to prepare a certain medicine. This is the case, for example, with very specific plant species. If you take the juice correctly and prepare certain medicines, you can help the lungs when they are too active. Because such medicines have the property of taking over the lung activity; then the lungs exert themselves a little less. The healing process therefore usually consists of asking oneself: the lung is secreting too much mucus; this is a sign that it is making too great an effort. So what do I do? I look for a plant that has a juice that can take over the lung's activity.

Or I notice that the liver is secreting too much bile: I look for a plant that can take over the liver function. There is, for example, a plant called Cichorium intybus, chicory. If the juice from the root of this plant is made into a medicine and given to a person, then it takes over the liver function, and one can then find that although at first the person does not secrete less bile, and although at first his mental anger does not decrease, but that his liver gradually strengthens again and gradually improvement occurs.

So you help a person by knowing, for example, that the juices of the leaves - not the roots - of certain types of cabbage can take over certain lung activities, and that the juice from the root of Cichorium intybus - it also grows out there, you will all know it, it has such blue flowers - is particularly beneficial for the liver.

So we can say: In hot areas, water melts; warmth, the warmth of the sun dissolves everything. When the sun is less active, when the sun's power diminishes or is weak throughout the year, as in northern areas, the moon becomes all the more powerful. When the direct rays of the sun are not effective, these strange rays of the sun, which are reflected by the moon, are effective. These, however, produce the crystal forms and the ice flower forms. That is very beautiful. We can therefore say: If we have the earth here (see drawing), then we have the hot zone here. The sun's rays have a particular effect on the hot zone. Oh, that is very beautiful how the sun's rays work there! These sunbeams stimulate liver activity. The liver sends bile everywhere, and the bile spreads throughout the body. And when the bile spreads into the feathers of birds or the wings of hummingbirds, for example, it becomes the beautiful colors. That is why hummingbirds glisten in the hot zone because their bile is secreted very quickly and goes into the feathers very quickly.

In cold regions, this does not happen, because the sun has little power there. Instead, the reflected sunlight, the light of the moon, is particularly active, and this light causes the snow to form crystals, and the ice to produce frost flowers. This only happens here when the sun loses its power in winter. But in the regions of eternal ice, at the North Pole or on the high mountains, because the sun also has no power there, because the sun can only develop power in the dense air, these beautiful forms of ice are formed.

We already get a wonderful impression when we look into nature in this way! We get the impression that wherever the sun shines, life appears, life that melts and evaporates, that spreads. Wherever the moon has an effect, shapes and images arise. That is quite an impression that one gets there. And one can only understand these things if one is open to spiritual influences. It is really true that one must say: in the lungs, where man actually produces mucus, the powers of the moon are also at work. And they work in such a way that they do not need direct sunlight, but use reflected sunlight. Therefore, when the lunar forces are predominantly active here in the north, and the sun is inactive, something else happens: the air above becomes such that something that is always in the earth here comes out. For magnetism and electricity are everywhere in the earth. The earth is full of magnetism and electricity. You can see that magnetism and electricity are everywhere in the earth from the following: if you have a telegraph set at a station (diagram), if it is in Dornach, for example, then you have one here, let's say in Basel; you can telegraph to it; but you can only telegraph when there is a wire. Wires must go through the air; only then can you telegraph. But that is not enough if you were to set up a telegraph here and one in Basel, and pull a wire! You could telegraph as long as you like with the button, you would get to Basel, but you have to connect back again, it has to be a closed current. And when you do that, then you can telegraph here, and the signals will arrive there. You know - I only mention this for the sake of completeness - that there is a paper strip wrapped around here, and when a tip presses on this paper strip, either a dot or a dash is created, and when it presses for a long time, and the telegraphic alphabet is then composed of dots and dashes, a -, b----, c-+--. But the strange thing is: you don't need this second wire after all if you run a wire from the apparatus into the ground and put a copper plate in there, and then put another plate there; you can then remove the wire, because there is a connection. Why? Because the earth itself has electricity and the electricity is conducted from one plate to the other. The earth replaces the wire with its own substance. The earth is full of electricity. But when the sun shines on the earth, as at the equator, in the hot area, this electricity, when it wants to come out into the air, is immediately destroyed. The sunlight is a force that extinguishes the electricity. But where the sun's effect is weak, electricity goes up into the air, and you can see it above the earth. You see, gentlemen, the northern lights are the electrical force of the earth, which flows under the influence of the moon's forces. That is why the northern lights are very rare in our regions; but they are frequent, almost always there in northern regions.

This is another point where science reaches a dead end at a certain point. Of course, science today knows that the earth is full of electricity. This science also always looks at the northern lights. But if you read in the books what this northern light actually is, people always believe that it is something that flows from the world into the earth. But that is nonsense, it does not flow in, but flows straight out! What science does with the northern lights is so interesting because it is the same as when someone confuses their debts with their capital. That is the case. It makes a difference in human life when you confuse your debts with your wealth. But science can do it with impunity, it can look at the aurora borealis as something that flows in from the world, while in reality the aurora borealis is something that flows out from the earth. But in the hot areas, it is immediately received by sunlight, and there it is extinguished. In the northern regions, the moonlight is more active when it shines; and when it does not shine, it remains active in the after-effect, and there the northern light, the outgoing electricity, becomes visible. Now, this northern light is particularly strong there because the moon's forces are particularly strong. There is actually a little northern light everywhere, only it cannot be seen because it is weak. In our regions, the aurora borealis, that is, the escaping electricity, is also weak. But in wireless telegraphy it is so strong that it has an effect. What works in wireless telegraphy is the same as what you see glowing in the aurora borealis. There you have the reason. Electricity, together with moonlight, makes the ice flowers and snow crystals. You have to study the northern lights and the moonlight if you want to study the ice crystals, the frost flowers and the snow crystals. Because the power of the sun is less in winter, the power of the moon gets the upper hand and the electricity is less extinguished by us, the snow is formed into such beautiful crystals. It is the moon and electricity together that form the beautiful crystals and cause the frost flowers.

Now, I have already told you, just remember: if someone has too little moon activity, if someone develops too much marsh gas in his head, then, as the vernacular says, he becomes a “Sumser”, that is, a fool. And so he develops too little moon power in himself. Now, what must one have in one's head? One must get everything that comes from the moon, the carbonic acid from breathing, the mucus from the lungs, into the head, that is, a power that constantly wants to form crystals in the head. Snow, gentlemen, wants to form continuously in our heads; we only dissolve it again and again. But it wants to form. Think, gentlemen, you actually all have a very strange organ in your brains. Namely, when Mr. Seefeld showed Mr. Burle these beautiful snow crystal figures, he was interested in them, and he thought to himself: It must be interesting to see what the connection actually is. Yes, Mr. Burle photographed these snow crystals inside himself! It is like taking a very quick photograph, and what arises in a flash disappears again when you exhale through your nostrils. If one could quickly photograph what is going on inside Mr. Burle's head, or in the heads of all of you, one would find the same photographs. They would form such pieces of snow crystals, of ice flowers, window flowers; they could be photographed by your ether heads, and they would be the same! Your head is a very strange thing. If you had such a photographic apparatus, as it does not yet exist - you would have to do it terribly fast, because it always dissolves immediately - you would find: we look in our brain like a pretty piece of snow or a pretty window of ice flowers! It must disappear again immediately, otherwise they would sting us, these sharp crystals, we would not think with them. So that when we look out at the snow, or when we look out at our window flowers, ice flowers, we can say to ourselves: “Gosh, that's the same thing that's going on in our own heads!” – except that it quickly dissipates. All of nature thinks! And in winter, when it gets cold, it really starts to think. In summer, it's just too hot to think. Then it lets the sun scatter and turns it into food and so on. But in winter, when it's cold, thoughts form in the snow and ice. If there were no thoughts out there, we wouldn't have any in our heads either. So you see, it is actually beautiful, this correspondence of nature outside in winter, where nature becomes so clever that it makes visible, external, what is always going on in our heads as our cleverness. We can see everywhere in nature what is going on in ourselves. We just have to understand it in the right way.

Now, all this has a great, practical significance. So, gentlemen, suppose someone gets, let us say, a very specific type of head disease from secreting too little mucus. You can get a head disease from that. If, when someone secretes too little mucus, you give him some silicic acid iron as a remedy, then this silicic acid iron takes over the mucus secretion activity and pushes the mucus up into the head, and you can again cause healing with it. You see, that is the difference between anthroposophic medicine and other medicine, which only ever tries things out. In anthroposophy, you learn that a person who has a certain head disease is too weak to form crystals in his brain, this perpetual formation and decay of frost flowers. Now you have to help him. You can do that with mere silicic acid. If you go up to the high mountains and see the beautiful quartz there, that is silicic acid. It is a beautiful crystal. It has the tendency to form these crystals. If you treat this quartz accordingly, you get the silicic acid preparation that is so effective among our remedies. And this silicic acid preparation is so effective for all diseases that originate in the human head. If the head does not form crystals from within, then it must be helped from the outside by such beautiful crystals, which have such beautifully formed crystal formations within them. But when he stands before his beautiful snow window with the frost flowers in his room like an ox on Sunday when it has been eating grass all week, as our science does, yes, then he also stands with science before the human head; then he can do nothing because he knows nothing about it. All these things show you how science must be deepened through a real knowledge of the human being.

This then naturally extends to the art of education, because one must first know: if one teaches the human being the letters for my sake, it is such a strong activity of the moon that if it is done too much, if it is done incorrectly, it completely erases the crystallization power of the ether head. It is really the case that a person can become even more stupid through much learning, that is, if he does not learn in the right way. It is true. But in order to understand this, we will have something else to discuss next time. It is necessary to know all this.

Good morning, gentlemen! Does anyone have a question?

Questioner: A few lectures ago, the great cosmic world was mentioned; I would like to ask about comets with a large tail. What does that mean?

Dr. Steiner: Well, you see, gentlemen, we have to remember what I have said just recently. I will repeat some of what we said a few lectures ago.

When we look at the human being, we have to say: Two things are necessary for his whole life, namely for his spiritual development. Firstly, that carbon dioxide rises to the head. After all, humans constantly excrete carbon within themselves. Actually, one can say: Man, insofar as he is a solid body, is made of carbon. So humans constantly excrete carbon from themselves. Now, this carbon would eventually become so in us that we would all become black pillars. We would become black pillars if this carbon were to remain. We need it to live, but we have to constantly convert it again so that it becomes something else. This is done by the oxygen. Now, in the end, we exhale the oxygen with the carbon as carbonic acid. There is carbonic acid in our exhaled air. But you need this carbonic acid. It can also be found, for example, in mineral water, and the bubbles inside contain carbonic acid. This carbonic acid, which is not exhaled, constantly rises to the human head, and we need it so that we are not stupid, so that we can think; otherwise marsh gas, which consists of carbon and hydrogen, would rise to the human head. So for thinking we need carbonic acid.

Now, I have already hinted at what we need for our will, for our volition. So let's start with walking, moving our hands, moving our arms – that's actually where this volition begins: we always have to form a compound of carbon and nitrogen and then break it down again. But this cyanide or prussic acid must constantly, so to speak, enter our limbs. It then combines with potassium in the limbs. Potassium cyanide is formed, but this is also immediately broken down again. In order for us to be able to live at all, there must be a constant process of poisoning and detoxification within us. That is the secret of human life: carbonic acid on the one hand, potassium chloride, which is connected to potassium, on the other. With every movement, with every finger, a little cyanic acid is formed, and the thing is then that we dissolve the thing again immediately by moving our fingers. So that must also be there in man.

But everything that must be there in man must also be there in the universe, must somehow be present in the universe. It is now the case that comets have always been examined again. And with comets in particular, I would say, a kind of little story has taken place in the anthroposophical movement. I once gave lectures in Paris and, purely out of inner knowledge, said that there must be some cyanic acid in comets, that cyanic acid is present in comets. Until then, scientists had not yet noticed that cyanic acid is present in comets. But then, shortly afterwards, a comet came along. It was the one you are talking about. And it was precisely on this comet that it was discovered, using the more sophisticated instruments that were available at the time, that the comet material really does contain cyanic acid! So that one can point to this when people always ask: Has anthroposophy predicted anything? Yes, this discovery of cyanic acid in comets, for example, was clearly predicted. It was the same with many other things, but in the case of the comet it was quite obvious. Well, today there is no doubt, even in the natural sciences, that in the atmosphere of a comet, in the comet's air - after all, a comet is actually made of very fine material, it is actually only ether, only air - there is cyanic acid.

Yes, what does that mean, gentlemen? It means that the same thing that we constantly have to produce in our bodies is also present outside in the comet's atmosphere. Now imagine how often I have said here that the egg is formed from the whole universe - so humans, animals and plants are also formed from the whole universe, in that they are formed from the egg. I would like to explain this to you using the example of the human being, so that you can see exactly what these comets actually mean in the whole universe.

Let us start with something historical, which may seem strange to some, but you will see that what you want is best explained by it. Centuries before Christianity was founded, there were ancient people in present-day Greece, the Greeks. The ancient Greeks achieved so much for intellectual life that even today our high school students still have to learn Greek because it is believed that if you learn Greek today, you will become a particularly clever person. Well, the Greeks really did achieve an extraordinary amount for intellectual life. Today, people do not learn Indian or Egyptian, but Greek. By doing so, people want to express that the Greeks have achieved a great deal for intellectual life. The simple fact that we cultivate Greek with our high school students shows this. The Greeks themselves only did Greek with their children, even though they achieved so much for intellectual life.

Now there were two main tribes in Greece that were of particular importance, but which were very different from each other: one was the inhabitants of Sparta, the other the inhabitants of Athens. Sparta and Athens were the two most important cities in Greece. In addition, there were a few others that were also important, but not as important as Sparta and Athens. The inhabitants of these two cities were therefore very different from each other. I will ignore the other differences today, but they were different in that they spoke quite differently. The Spartans always sat quietly together and spoke little. They did not like to talk. But when they did talk, they wanted what they said to have a certain meaning; it should have power over people. But because man cannot always say something meaningful when he babbles, they remained silent when they had nothing significant to say, and always spoke in short sentences. These short sentences were famous throughout the ancient world. People talked about the short sentences of the Spartan people, and those that became famous were often tremendous sayings of wisdom.

It was different with the Athenians. They loved beautiful speech; they loved it when it was spoken beautifully. The Spartans: short, measured, calm in their speech. The Athenians wanted to speak beautifully. They learned rhetoric by speaking beautifully. They did indeed prattle more; not as much as we do today, but they did prattle more than the Spartans.

What was the difference between the Athenian who talked a lot and the Spartan who talked less but meaningfully and powerfully? It was based on education. The art of education is of course little studied today. But what I am saying is based on education. The Spartan boys in particular were educated quite differently from the Athenian boys. The Spartan boys had to do a lot more gymnastics: dance, wrestling, all kinds of gymnastic arts. And oratory, the actual gymnastics of the tongue, was not practiced at all by the Spartans. They let speaking come naturally.

Everything that lies in language is formed through the rest of the human body's movements. You can observe it correctly: if a person has slow, measured movements that are truly gymnastic, then they will also speak properly. In particular, if a person walks with proper steps, then they will also speak properly. Of course, it depends on the child's age. If a person gets gout in old age, it doesn't matter anymore; they have already learned to speak. It depends on the time when one learns to speak. But the Spartans attached great importance to practicing a lot of gymnastics, and they supported this gymnastics by rubbing the children's bodies with oil and smearing them with sand; then they let them do gymnastics. The Athenians also did gymnastics – gymnastics were done throughout Greece – but much less, and they let the older boys do tongue gymnastics, oratory. The Spartans did not do that.

Now, this has a very specific consequence. You see, when those little Spartan boys did their gymnastics with their bodies oiled and rubbed with sand, they had to develop a great deal of inner warmth – develop a great deal of inner warmth. And when the Athenians did their gymnastics, it was something very special for the Athenians. If it had been a day like today and the boys had not wanted to do their gymnastics outdoors with the Spartans, well, that would have been it! The gymnasts, the educators, would have treated those boys properly! When the Athenians had a day like today, so stormy, they gathered their boys more in the interior of the rooms and let them do oratory. But they called them out when the sun shone brightly, when everything sparkled. Then the Athenian boys had to do their gymnastic exercises outside. For the Athenians thought somewhat differently from the Spartans. The Spartans thought: All the movements that boys make must be done from the inner body; it may be stormy and hailing and raging and windy outside, it does not matter. They said to themselves: It must come from within.

The Athenian said differently. He said: We live by the sun, and when the sun wakes us up to move, then we want to move; when the sun is not there, we do not want to move. So said the Athenian, and therefore the Athenians looked at the external solar heat. The Spartans looked at the inner warmth of the sun, the warmth of the sun that man had already processed, and the Athenians looked at the outer sun, which shines beautifully on the skin - the skin is not rubbed with sand, at least not as much as it is by the Spartans, but the skin is supposed to be worked by the sun. That was the difference. And when schoolbooks today speak of the difference between the Athenians and Spartans, the only impression you get is that there must have been something wonderful about why the Spartans were quiet, measured in their speech, and also hardy, while the Athenians practiced the art of oratory, which was then further developed by the Romans. People today cannot practice history and natural science at the same time. History speaks for itself, and science speaks for itself. But if I tell you that the Spartans rubbed their boys with oil and sand and then let them practice their Spartan arts in all weathers, and the Athenians did not rub their boys with so much sand and oil and otherwise practiced their oratory inside the palestra, then you know how this difference between the neighboring Spartans and Athenians was actually brought about by natural facts.

So let us say that when we have the earth (it is drawn) and the sun here: if you look at the sun as it shines and there is the Athenian, then the Athenian emerges; and if you look not so much at the sun as at what the sun has already done in man, and you look at the more inner warmth, then the Spartan emerges from that. You see, there you have history and natural history combined. That's how it is.

Now we can say: When a person ensures that he develops a great deal of warmth within himself, his speech becomes short and measured. Why? Because he turns more to the universe with his whole mind. But if a person allows himself to be illuminated by the sun like the Athenian, then he turns less to the universe with his mind; then he turns more inward with his mind, outward with warmth; the Spartan: inward with warmth, outward with mind. And from reason, the Spartan has learned the language of the universe; it is wise, it has been developed within him. The Athenian has not learned the language of the universe, but only the movement of the universe, because he has abandoned himself to gymnastics in the warmth of the sun.

When we look at what remains of the Spartans today, we say to ourselves: Oh, these Spartans have rendered the wisdom of the world in their short sentences. The Athenians began to express more of the mind that is within man in their beautiful turns of phrase. What the Spartans had in their language has been lost to humanity for the most part; it disappeared in Greece with the Spartans. Man can no longer live with the language of the universe today. But what the Athenians began to do: beautifully winding sentences - it became particularly great in Rome with the art of fine speech. And the Romans at least still spoke beautifully. In the Middle Ages, too, people still learned to speak beautifully. Today, however, people speak terrible sentences. You only have to look at it in detail – well, you could take any other city, but in Vienna, for example, the elections have been going on for weeks: yes, they are not beautifully spoken, but terribly, a whole flood of speeches, but not beautifully! And that is what has gradually become of what was still cultivated by the Athenians, albeit beautifully. It comes from within man. The universe, truly, does not make speeches – but man does! The Spartans did not make speeches; the Spartans expressed in their short sentences how the universe speaks. They looked up at the stars and thought: Man, he runs around in the world and is a busybody. The star moves slowly, so that it does not move slowly now, quickly now, but always evenly. Then the saying arose that has remained for all time: haste with Weile - and so on. The star still reaches its goal! And so the Spartans in particular have learned a great deal from what is out there in space.

And now we can move on to something that I have already noticed in your case: we can move from warmth to light. I would just like to say the following about warmth. Consider that if a person needs to develop a great deal of warmth, then he should become a strong person. And if a person has the opportunity to be in the sun a lot, then he should become a person who talks a lot. Now you only need to take a quick look at geography: go to Italy, where people are more exposed to the sun, and you will see what a chatty people they are! And go to the north, where people are more exposed to the cold: yes, you may despair sometimes – people do not talk because, when you always have to develop inner warmth, it drives away the inner urge to talk. Even here with us it seems almost strange when someone comes from the north; he stands there to speak – yes, he stands there but doesn't speak yet. Not so when an Italian agitator steps onto the rostrum, he speaks even before he gets up there, he is already talking down below. Then it continues, then it just gushes! When a Nordic person, who needs to generate a lot of warmth because there is no external warmth, is supposed to speak: a Nordic person like that, he stands there - you get desperate because he doesn't even start; he wants to say something, but he doesn't even start. It's true: inner warmth drives away the desire to speak, while external warmth fuels the desire to speak. Of course, all this can be transformed by art. The Spartans developed this speaking calm not through art but through their own racial character, even though they were neighbors of the Athenians because they mixed a lot with people coming from the north. Among the Athenians, for example, there were many who came from hot climates and intermarried with the Athenians; this is how they developed their flow of speech. So there we see how even the oratorical person is connected to the sun and warmth. Now let's move on to light.

All we need to do is remember something I have already told you. Think of a mammal. A mammal develops the germ for a new mammal internally. The germ is carried internally by the mother animal; everything happens internally. Take the butterfly, on the other hand. I told you: the butterfly lays the egg, the caterpillar crawls out of the egg, the caterpillar pupates itself into a cocoon, and the sunlight drives the multicolored butterfly out of the cocoon. On the other hand, look at the mammal (it is being drawn), this mammal develops the new animal hidden in its uterus. Here we have two contrasts again, wonderful contrasts. Look at the egg: it is uncovered. When the caterpillar crawls out, the light is already coming. The caterpillar, I told you, goes to the light, spins its cocoon, the shell that it becomes a pupa, after the light, and the light in turn causes the butterfly. And the light does not rest and does not rest, gives the butterfly its colors. The colors are caused by the light; the light treats the butterfly.

Take, on the other hand, the cow, the dog. Yes, the little cub inside the maternal uterus cannot have the external light; it is closed off in darkness from the outside. So it must develop inside, in the darkness.

But nothing that lives can develop in darkness. It is simply nonsense to believe that something can develop in darkness. But what is the story here? I will give you a comparison. One can indeed hope that once the Earth becomes very poor in coal, direct solar heat will be able to be used for heating through some kind of transformation; but today that is just not yet possible, that one uses the heat of the sun directly for heating. Perhaps it will not take much longer before one comes up with how it can be done; but today we use coal, for example. Yes, gentlemen, coal is nothing more than solar heat, only solar heat that flowed to Earth many, many thousands of years ago, was trapped in the wood and stored as coal. When we heat, we bring out the solar heat that accumulated in the earth thousands and thousands of years ago.

Do not think that only coal behaves towards the sun as I have just described! Other beings, too, behave towards the sun as I have just described, and that includes all living beings. If you look at a mammal, you have to say: every little young animal has a mother, who in turn has a mother, and so on. They have always absorbed the warmth of the sun; it is still inside the animal itself, it is inherited. And just as we bring the warmth of the sun out of the coal, so the small child in the maternal womb now takes the sunlight, which is stored there, from within. — Now you have the difference between what arises in the dog or in the cow and what arises in the butterfly. The butterfly goes straight into the outer sunlight with its egg, allowing it to be completely transformed by the outer sunlight until it becomes the colorful butterfly. The dog or the cow are just as colorful on the inside, but you cannot see it. Just as the warmth of the sun is not perceived in coal – it must first be coaxed out – so too, with the higher contemplation of dog and cow, one must first coax out what light is stored up within. There is light stored up within! The butterfly is colorful on the outside; sunlight has worked from the outside. Yes, in the dog or the cow, I would say, invisible light is everywhere inside.

What I have described to you, people today could easily determine with our perfect instruments, prove it in their laboratories, if they wanted to. They should just make a laboratory, completely dark, totally dark, and then they should compare in this laboratory a newly laid egg and a cow or dog germ in its early state, then you would see that the dimming that can occur in the dark room shows this difference that I am describing. And if one were to photograph what one does not see with one's eyes - the eyes are not sensitive enough for that - one would be able to prove that the butterfly egg has the spectrum yellow and the dog and cow egg has the spectrum blue in the photograph. These things, which one can see spiritually - one does not need the external when one can see them spiritually - will still be proved with the most perfect instruments.

Now we can say: the butterfly is formed in the external sunlight, the cow or the dog is formed from the sunlight that is stored internally. Thus we have come to know the difference between warmth, which works externally, which makes a person talkative, the light that works externally, which causes the many colors in the butterfly, and the warmth within, which makes a person silent and measured – the light within a being that gives birth to living young, which must receive the light internally. And now we can move on from there to the subject of our question.

There are also things that a person needs inside, but which he must not develop in excess inside, because otherwise he would die from them. And that includes prussic acid, which is also known as hydrogen cyanide. If a person were to continually produce hydrogen cyanide throughout the day, beyond the little bit that is already there, well, that wouldn't work, that would be too much. A person does produce a little prussic acid in himself, but very little. But he also needs some from outside; he absorbs it with what he inhales. It is not much, but a person does not need more.

Now, gentlemen, this potassium cyanide is not present in ordinary air. If comets did not appear from time to time, this potassium cyanide would not be present in the air. Comets and then these meteors, shooting stars, which, as you know, fly through the air in such great numbers, especially in midsummer, bring down this potassium cyanide. And man actually draws his strength from it. Therefore, people who have become weak in their muscles should be sent into the air, which has not only become fresh from the earth, but has become fresh from the whole universe, which has experienced meteorite influences. And it is the case that people who suffer from what used to be called consumption, for example, who become weak in their muscles and for whom this weakness is particularly pronounced towards spring, are sent in the fall to breathe this air that has been refreshed by the universe. In spring there is nothing that can be done; that is why such people most easily die in spring. You have to take precautions, because you can't really do anything for such people until the fall. When the meteor forces deposit their cyanide with the small amounts of potassium cyanide that come in from the universe during the summer, these people should then, when August ends and fall comes, with their weak limbs, come to areas where summer has deposited its best, namely potassium cyanide. Then their limbs become strong again. So for people you notice this happening to, the next year will be very bad for them, because they become weak, and you should actually take precautions in the spring, when you can't do much with external things. You should say to yourself: When spring comes, I will give such people, depending on how weak they have become, the juice of certain plants, for example the juice of blackthorn. If you store the blackthorn juice – you know the tart, acidic plant – and bring it into the mouth of a person who becomes weak in spring, you can sustain them throughout spring and summer. Why? Well, you see, when you give a person the juice of blackthorn, this blackthorn juice forms all kinds of salts. These go to the head and take the carbonic acid with them. So we tilt the head to help this person through spring and summer. And in the fall we have to take him to an area where he is able to take the other thing, which has to go more to the limbs. Carbonic acid goes to the head; we insert it after the head by introducing blackthorn. If we have been fortunate enough to have brought a person through the summer in this way, we can take him to a suitable area in the fall. He should stay for two or three weeks in such air, which we know has just received meteorical influences. Then it is the case that the person, having been strengthened during the spring and summer, really does regain the strength of his limbs.

Yes, gentlemen, there you have the two effects side by side. There you have the earthly effect, which is actually a lunar effect, the earthly effect in the blackthorn juice, and there you have the cosmic effect in what the comets, and when there is no comet, the shooting stars have left behind – it is the same with them, only small; but there are many – which has an effect from the universe. Just as you basically have nothing earthly in the butterfly with its transformation, but light from the universe, just as you have warmth from the universe, from the sun, in the protected eggs, so you also have human warmth within you, which you must develop inwardly in your substance and which stimulates exactly the opposite of the external warmth.

Thus we can see everywhere how there is an alternation in man, but also how there is an alternation in the whole universe: sometimes things must come from the outside of the universe, sometimes from within the earth or from within man. Now you will say: Yes, certain things are regular; but they cannot alone bring about what they are supposed to bring about. Day and night change regularly; they bring about the one thing that comes from the earth. Now, comets appear more or less irregularly; shooting stars too. And that is also the case. There is no such regularity with shooting stars as with the rest. If an astronomer wants to observe a solar eclipse, he can find the exact time when it begins – that can be calculated –; it belongs to the regular, but does not work from the sun. So he can still go to supper beforehand and still get to the solar eclipse. If he wants to observe the meteoritic swarming of shooting stars at the right time, he has to watch the whole night, otherwise he cannot find them. That is the difference between what comes irregularly from the universe to Earth and what is regular.

Now you can raise an interesting question. You can say: The comets that are connected with the cyan - which is connected with our will in our human being - these comets appear irregularly; one comes soon, then it is long absent. - It always also gives rise to superstition in people; but precisely that which does not always appear makes them superstitious when it comes. In the sunrise and sunset, only the formerly prepared human minds have seen the divine; later, superstitious minds have then dreamed up all sorts of things about comets. You may now ask: Why is it not the case with comets that, just as the sun appears at certain hours of the year in the morning, a comet also appears? Well, if that were the case, if comets could regularly appear and disappear with their tails just as regularly as the sun and moon rise and set, then we humans would have no freedom; then everything else in us would be as regular as sunrise and sunset, moonrise and moonset. And what is connected with this regularity in the universe is also a natural necessity in us. We must eat and drink with a certain regularity, and sleep with a certain regularity. If the comets rose and set with the same regularity as the sun and moon, we could not begin to move arbitrarily, but would have to wait: we would be in a state of rigor; the comet would appear, and we could leave! If it disappeared again, we would fall into a state of rigor again. We would have no freedom. These so-called wandering stars are what give man his freedom from the universe. And so we can say: that which is necessary in man, hunger, thirst in their course, sleep, waking and so on, comes from the regular phenomena; and that which is arbitrary in man, which is freedom, comes from the comet-like phenomena and this gives man the strength for the power that works in his muscles.

In recent times, people have completely forgotten how to look at what is free in a person. People no longer have any sense of freedom. That is why, in more recent times, people have become obsessed with what is only necessity. Now people express their attitudes in their festivals. For example, they have festivals for necessity: Christmas, Easter; but they have dropped the autumn festival, the Michaelmas festival, because it is connected with freedom, with the inner strength of the human being. And so, actually, people study at most the material side of the comets. The other, they say: Yes, you can not know about that. - And on the one hand, you see today that people shy away from freedom; on the other hand, you see that they have no real mind, no reason to study the irregularities in space. If they were not there, then you would have no freedom. So we can say: the Athenians took up what was inside people. That made them talkative. On the one hand, materialism has become terribly talkative. But this also makes it insensitive, dull to everything that can be used to strengthen one's resistance to meteorite influences. That is why Michaelmas is at most a farmers' festival, and the other festivals are something that is related to necessities, although they are no longer as respected as they were in ancient times because people have forgotten the connection with the spiritual world altogether.

In this way, everything becomes transparent. When people understand again how beneficial the influence of the comet is, they will probably remember that they like to celebrate some kind of festival in the fall to have a kind of freedom celebration. That belongs in the fall: a kind of Michaelmas festival, a freedom celebration. People today let this pass because they have no understanding of it at all; they have no understanding of freedom in nature outside, and therefore also no understanding of freedom in man. You see, the honorable Lady Moon and the majestic Lord Sun, they sit on their thrones, they want to have everything measured because they have no right sense for freedom in the universe, in the cosmos. Of course, it must also be. But the comets are the freedom heroes in the universe; they therefore also have within them the substance that is connected with activity in humans, with free activity, with arbitrariness, with the activity of the will. And so we can say: When we look up at the sun, we have in it that which always plays rhythmic games within us, the heart and breathing. If we look at a comet, then we should actually write a poem about freedom every time a comet appears, because it is connected with our freedom! We can say: Man is free because in the universe, freedom also reigns for these enthusiasts in the universe, the comets. And just as the sun mainly owes its nature to the acid character, so the comet owes its nature to the cyanic character.

You see, gentlemen, that's where you come to the nature of comets, and that is an extraordinarily significant connection, as you can see that suddenly there is something in the whole universe that is alive, but that lives in a way that is similar to us humans. So you can also say: the Spartans had more sense for the non-withdrawal from the sun, and that is why they appreciated everything that was connected with the universe - this did not arise from external arbitrariness. And Lykurgos, the lawmaker of Sparta, had iron money made. In the schoolbooks you will find: Lykurgos had iron money made so that the Spartans should remain fine Spartans. That is nonsense. In truth, Lykurgos was instructed by those who still knew these things in Sparta; they told him that comets contain cyanide of iron, and so he had iron minted in Sparta as a symbol of the comets for the money. That was something that arose from wisdom; while other nations were changing over to gold coinage, which expresses that which is more in the sun, the image of the solar life in us.

Thus it is that one sees that in the customs of ancient peoples there is still something more of what they knew of the universe.

Gentlemen, the question that has been asked is:

Is the iris in the eye the mirror of the soul in a healthy and diseased state?

I think the second question can be added, they are probably meant together:

What causes albinism or leukopathy in black people?

If we want to answer this question, we must first take a closer look at the workings of the human eye. The question relates to the fact that certain people can tell whether a person's entire body is healthy or sick by looking at the color of the iris, the colored ring-shaped body in the eye that surrounds the black of the so-called pupil. Not only, as you know, is a person's iris colored blue or black or brown or gray or even greenish brown, but the iris also has lines drawn in one way or another, which are created by fine vessels. So that, just as the general facial expression of one person is different from that of another, the finer structure of this iris or rainbow skin is quite different in different people, and much more different from each other than the actual physiognomy of people is different from each other.

Now we have to go into the structure of the eye a little if we want to talk about such a thing. This is connected with the other question you have asked. Namely, that especially in Negroes, but also otherwise, in non-black people, an abnormal, not quite ordinary skin coloration occurs, which is connected with the special coloration of the iris. This is connected in a certain way. Now this skin color is particularly noticeable in naturally black people, because they are just black, and then they have all kinds of white spots, and are then mottled like a tiger. They are very rarely completely pale and completely white; this occurs very rarely among Negroes, extremely rarely. But such so-called albinos also occur in other races that are not completely black. But this albinism also occurs in white people, in the so-called cockroaches – that's what they're called – they have a very pale skin color, almost milk-white skin color. Then they usually have a light reddish iris, and the pupil, which is otherwise black in humans, is then dark red. I once saw a female cockroach like this who even exhibited herself in all kinds of sideshows and let herself be seen. She had milky-white skin, a red iris or rainbow-shaped pupil, dark red pupils instead of black eye stars, and would then say in an extremely weak voice: “I am all white, have red eyes and see very weakly.” That was true, she saw very weakly.

If we want to get into this matter, we must, above all, study the structure of the eye itself. Over time, I have told you many things about the eye. Therefore, today you will perhaps understand what I have to say. You see, the eye is located inside the very firm bony body of the head. The bone structure of the head bulges inside, and in this bone cavity, which is open towards the brain at the back (see drawing), the eye sits inside. The eye is now first limited from the outside by a hard skin, which is opaque here. The so-called eyeball is limited by the cornea. This skin becomes transparent towards the front, here, where it bulges out a little. Otherwise, one could not approach the light with the inside of the eye if this outer cornea were not transparent. It is called the cornea because it is horny. Inwards from this is a skin, which consists of fine veins. The blood network of the body extends into the eye and also sends very small, fine veins into the eye. So here we have the hard cornea, which becomes transparent towards the front, and then the so-called choroid, which is adjacent to it. The third skin inside is formed from nerves; this is the so-called retina. So I still have to draw a third membrane, the retina. And the retina goes backwards into the brain, as does the choroid, of course. And this is called the optic nerve because it is a nerve substance, it goes to the eye. You know that people say: you feel through the nerves. — So with the optic nerve you see.

Now, the strange thing is that everyone has to admit that, as people say, you can see with the optic nerve everywhere here, except precisely where it enters; there it is blind, you see nothing there! So if someone looks just enough to somehow see out there, or if the nerves around it are diseased and only the spot where the optic nerve enters is healthy, then you still see nothing where the optic nerve enters. Now people say: with the optic nerve you see, it is there for that, that you see. Have you now heard the following? Just imagine: there is a group of workers, let us say thirty workers. Twenty-five of them have to work very hard; they are standing everywhere. And there is a group of five – they won't do it, but I'll assume they do it – these five are allowed to laze around while the others work hard. So we can say: there are the 25 hard-working laborers, and there are five who laze around all the time, sitting on padded chairs and lazing around. If someone were to tell you that the work is being done just as well by the five idlers – or perhaps he can't say that because he doesn't see it, but the work is accomplished by idling – you won't believe it, will you? That is nonsense. But now science teaches us that the optic nerve sees. But precisely at the point where it is most, it sees nothing! It is just as if you were to say: the work is done by what the five loafers are doing. You see, one knows such things—that is precisely the strange thing—one knows such things, but one nevertheless continues to assert quite ordinary nonsense. Isn't it, from the fact that here is the so-called blind spot—that's what it's called—and that you see nothing at all at the point where the optic nerve attaches the most, it is quite clear from this that the optic nerve cannot be what you see with.

The thing is this: there is something in the human body that is very similar to this thing in the optic nerve; namely, your two arms and hands. Imagine picking up a chair. You strain your arms all the way down to your hands. But what connects them stays up there, doesn't it. It's the same with the optic nerve. They are aiming at something that is affected by light, and in the middle it is as it is between the two arm approaches here. But it is not the optic nerve that is affected - because if it were the optic nerve, it would have to see the most of all - but what is affected is something of the very invisible that I have described to you. That is precisely the I, the ego organization. It is not the physical body, not the etheric body, it is not even the astral body; it is the I. And so I have to draw something else in there besides what is already there: there is the invisible I that is spreading out. Only it is not as if there were two such arms, but rather as if the arms were closing and becoming a sphere. We already begin to make a sphere with our hands when we touch something. So there is the supersensible I; it is reaching out there. And what is the nerve for? Yes, gentlemen, the nerve is for this purpose - because it is the work of the invisible human being - that something is secreted. Substance is secreted everywhere, and it remains there everywhere. With the supersensible self, one sees. But the nerve is there to secrete something.

Think of the nonsense that science says, just as if one were to examine the large intestine and what is inside it, and then immediately say, from what is now being excreted from the large intestine, that this is how humans nourish themselves! Just as what is excreted is inside the large intestine, so the nerve substance is excreted here. And this (the blind spot) is then the place where it is excreted the most. What is not needed in the eye is excreted into the brain, then goes further and is excreted at all. You see, this is something that you can easily understand, but about which the most fantastic stories are told to you today. It's just that people don't realize what it means when it is said that the nerve substance is seen or felt or something is perceived. That would be just as if one were nourishing oneself with the contents of the rectum. So you see that this business of the blind spot has no significance for vision, because the optic nerve does not see around it either, only here, where the blind spot is, is where the most secretion occurs. And just as nutrition ends in the rectum, where it is only for excretion, so here too vision ends, because that is where most is excreted, and because it makes no sense for vision to be in the middle.

Imagine you have a stick lying there and want to pick it up with your head! You can't. You have to pick it up with your arm, with your hand, with what is attached at the side. You can't see with your nerve either. You have to see with what is attached.

Now, gentlemen, everything that is there (pointing to the drawing) ends here in a kind of muscle. This muscle carries the lens. This is a completely transparent body. Why transparent? So that you can get to the light. And behind this body here is a thick liquid. In front of it is an even thicker liquid, and in this thicker liquid at the front floats the iris or rainbow skin, which is located here near the veins. It really floats in the liquid and leaves a hole open for the light. This hole appears black when you look into it, because you look through the entire eye to the background, which is black.

This iris is fairly transparent at the front, but at the back it is black. This black skin at the back is quite thin in some people. Because if it is thin, when you look through the transparent part into the black, certain people have blue eyes. And in those with thicker skin here, where you look at the thick back skin at the iris, they have black eyes or dark eyes. We will talk about brown eyes in a moment.

Now, gentlemen, we need to educate ourselves about what it is that causes the skin here, which actually determines the blue or brown or black, to be thicker or thinner in some people. I have already told you: what is called the I, the noblest, supersensible part of the human being, goes into the eye. The I goes into it. The I is more or less strong in different people. Now suppose a person has a very strong ego. You see, such a person is capable of completely dissolving the iron that is in the blood and that he also gets into the eye through this choroid. So someone with a very strong ego completely dissolves the iron, and the result of this is that little iron enters this skin, which is at the very outermost edge of the body, because it is completely dissolved. So little iron enters, and the result of this is that this skin becomes thin. Because it becomes thin, you get blue eyes. Now imagine that a person has a weak ego; then he does not dissolve the iron as much, and the result of this will be that a lot of undissolved iron gets into this skin. The skin becomes thicker because of this undissolved iron and the person gets dark, black eyes. So it depends on the ego whether the person has black or blue eyes.

Now, gentlemen, there is also another substance in the blood: sulfur. And even if the ego can process the iron, it is sometimes still unable to process the sulfur. If the ego lets the sulfur into the skin without processing it, then a yellowish-brown color develops in the iris, and that is how brown eyes come about. And if a lot of sulfur gets into the eyes, then a reddish iris develops. Because of the sulfur shimmering behind it, even the pupil does not turn black. You do not see the black, but the emitted, sprayed sulfur itself makes the pupil dark red. This is the case with cockroaches and humans who otherwise cannot supply their skin with the right color. So you can say: there are people who can inject sulfur into their eyes. The ego can inject it, and this is how the iris gets its special color.

But what goes into the eye in the way of sulfur or iron goes into the whole body, because it comes from the blood. There are only small blood vessels here in the eye. So if someone injects sulfur into the eye, he injects sulfur into his entire skin everywhere. And the consequence of injecting sulfur into his entire skin everywhere is that he does not have his natural skin color at the points where the sulfur has been injected; because the natural skin color comes from the processing of iron. So when a person processes their iron only slightly, but instead spews sulfur, then they get such mottled spots in their skin, and at the same time you can see it in the color of their eyes.

So you see: when you look at this invisible human being that is in every human being, you can understand the human being right down to the material level, right down to the substance. Anthroposophy is not so stupid that it does not understand the material. Materialism does not understand the material. Read somewhere about albinism, what can you read? The one of you who asked me the question will probably have read somewhere: the cause of albinism is unknown! — Materialism always comes to this strange conclusion: the cause is unknown! — because it does not trouble itself at all with those cases where the causes can be found. Of course it is easy to say: There is a red pupil. Yes, but one must know what is actually working inside and what history injects, because the red coloration and the pale coloration of the body comes from sulfur.

Now you can understand what real science is. Imagine you come to a place on earth where something has been worked on; someone looks at it and says: The work is already there, the cause is unknown. He does not care what happened before; that is why he states: the cause is unknown. He does not care that, for example, thirty people have been working there for many days. That is how science does it when it says: the cause of the red coloration of the pupil and the pale coloration of the skin is unknown. — But the cause lies precisely in the I that works in the matter, in the substance.

But from this you can also see that the iris really does contain a true reflection of how the whole body works with iron and sulfur. But take such an albino, such a cockroach; that is actually a kind of disease. There is too much sulfuric work in the body, but the body gets used to it, and it is organized. But now it can happen that this enters the eyes to a much lesser extent. You see, apart from the cockroaches I told you about, apart from the lady who exhibited herself in the show, I have seen many cockroaches. You can always tell that there is something very special about such cockroaches. You can say: There is a cockroach, an albino like this, and it has this peculiar reddish coloration of the iris, pale red, has the dark red coloration of the pupil, has the pale body. If you examine it further, you get from the nature of its body the view that in its case the connection between heart and kidney is particularly weak. He is not only weak in the eyes, he is weak in the connection between heart and kidneys. The kidneys of such a person are supplied with blood with great difficulty, so they work very hard. If he were to deposit the sulfur that he carries throughout his body in his kidneys, he would die as a child. Therefore, he releases the sulfur through the surface of the body – the skin turns white, the eyes turn red – so that the kidneys can work gently. Such albinos have kidneys that work very gently, for example. This can also occur in other people. But if, in people who are not cockroaches (most of them are not cockroaches), some kind of defect occurs in the kidneys, then doesn't it have to show up in the iris as well? What the sulfur and iron do together there is also expressed here. From the nature of the human iris, one can therefore conclude whether there is any damage in the human body. Therefore, if there is a spot here or there in the fine appearance of the iris, which is not actually normal, one can see: there is damage in the body. But, gentlemen, you have to bear this in mind: the human body is a unified whole, and what you see in the iris you would also see, if you were clever enough, if you cut out a small piece of skin and took it out – something would also appear in the skin that would not be normal – or even if you cut the nail of your big toe. There is also a very fine structure that could show if the liver, kidneys or lungs were not working properly, although it is a little different again. So if someone were particularly clever and, instead of examining the iris, were to examine the cut fingernails, for example – it would be much more difficult because it is not as pronounced – they would also be able to recognize the healthy or diseased condition there. It is only noticeable in the eye because the eye is an especially delicate structure, and the delicate is easy to grasp. It is most pronounced in the eye. But you can see that things are most pronounced on the surface of the body. For example, I have rarely seen someone put something on their shoulders when they want to feel a particularly fine material or something like that. If it were the case that it would be more advantageous, we would do something about it, so that when we have to feel something fine, we could free ourselves up there on the shoulder and feel it. But that doesn't help us. We feel it with the fingertips. And at the fingertips we are particularly sensitive to feeling things. There you have the same thing again. If the nervous system were what actually makes up feeling, then we should feel the most where we are close to the brain. But we don't feel the most close to the brain; instead, we feel the most where we are furthest from the brain, in the outermost fingertips, because the I sits most on the surface of the body. What a person is in their inner self can best be recognized on the outermost surface. Therefore, because the eyes are closest to the surface, they can also recognize the most, because the eyes are delicate and far away from the brain.

You may say: The eyes are in the skull and close to the brain. But there are quite a few bones in the way, and where the eye is connected to the brain, where there is no bone, nothing can be seen. So at the fingertips, it is due to the vastness of space that they are particularly sensitive; in the case of the eyes, it is because they are most protected from the brain.

There is something else that is strange. When any lower animal develops its brain, it develops the brain in such a way that the brain leaves the cavity free for the eye, and the eye does not grow out of the brain in that way, but rather it starts from the side and grows into it (it is drawn). The eye grows from the outside, not from the brain; the eye grows into the brain. So it is formed from the outside.

From all this you can see that what is formed on the surface, whether in the skin or in the eye, is connected with the way in which a person is actually most in touch with the outside world. In a person who is always in bed, who cannot use his will for his body, one cannot say that he is developing his ego strongly. In a person who is very mobile, one can say that he expresses his ego strongly. And that which otherwise brings us into contact with the outside world, that is precisely in smelling, seeing and so on, these are the senses. And the eye is just the most delicate sense that brings us into contact with the outside world. So you can say: because the I is particularly strong in these fine veins – there are terribly fine veins in this iris – you can see a lot from this, how the whole I works inwards, whether a person is healthy or sick.

That is the original truth and knowledge that can be gained about this matter. But the fact that I have just described to you is also one of the most difficult, because one must be very thoroughly informed about what such a small irregularity in the iris means if one wants to draw conclusions about a healthy or sick person. I will give you an example. You see, it may be, for example, that in some irises there are dots, dark dots, here or there. These dark dots naturally mean that the person has something that is not there otherwise, if these dark dots are not in the iris. But suppose the person in whom these dark dots appear were a terribly stupid fellow. Then he will have some kind of illness that these dark spots indicate. But in the case of the person with these dark spots, it may also be that in his youth he was overstrained with some kind of learning, had to learn beyond his physical strength. Then, as a result of having used certain organs too much in his youth, he may have developed a certain weaker activity in the eyes, and then these small iron deposits, these very fine iron deposits, can occur as a result of overexertion in childhood. So they can occur as a result of an illness in later life, but they can also occur as a result of overexertion in childhood. Most people think: if I see black spots in the iris, then there must be this or that in the body. But it depends on knowing not only the present life of the person concerned, but especially if you want to recognize something like this in terms of the causes of the disease, you have to go through the whole life of the person with him; you have to let him remember what he has already done here or there in childhood. Thus, what one sees in the iris can point to many things. And to draw conclusions from something like this to something in particular is one of the most complicated forms of knowledge.

That is why it is so outrageous that all kinds of little books are being written today; the things that are written there are usually very short and are called: On Eye Diagnosis. There you get a fifty-page instruction on how to examine the iris. Like this, right? There is the iris classification, there is the pupil, drawn quite schematically, then the disease is indicated; spleen disease is then indicated; lung disease, syphilis and so on. Now the eye diagnostician in question, who is familiar with what is recorded in this way, when he looks at the iris with a moderate magnifying glass, need only refer to his little book; and when he notices what is written where lung disease is written, he states: lung disease! And that is how numerous eye diagnosticians do it today after a study of an hour. They then leave the rest to the little book they have; they just make the diagnosis. Yes, gentlemen, but that is outrageous. Because what is most difficult is to be learned in the easiest way. This does not lead to the acquisition of something valuable, but on the contrary, it damages the whole medical system. And one must distinguish whether someone seriously wants to achieve something in the medical field, or whether someone just wants to make money.

Of course, people are upset about science today; and rightly so, because, according to the example of the optic nerve that I told you about, science actually does not pay attention to what a person really is, but most appreciates the filth of a person, the filth in the eye, for example, which is the optic nerve. Of course, people don't know that, but they feel it and become disgusted by science. This outrage can be understood. But what the eye diagnostician usually does is not better than science, but usually much worse. Science, unsuspecting because of materialism, considers dirt to be the noblest components of the human being. Of course, the dirt is also very necessary, because if it were to remain in the body, it would kill the body very soon; so it is necessary. But science thinks that dirt is the most valuable thing about a person! But that means it is on the path of good and does not just want to make money. It is just blinded. It just has a very large blind spot in its knowledge; but with all that, one must acknowledge the good will. But with these little eye diagnostic devices, one can no longer speak of good will, only of the desire to make money. That is why you always have to ask yourself about all these things: a good truth can underlie any endeavor, but it is precisely the best truths, gentlemen, that are most often misused by the world. You see, it is truly wonderful that in this little iris the healthy and the sick person are both completely reflected. But on the other hand, because the healthy and the sick person are both completely reflected, the iris is also most difficult to recognize in its entirety, and it must be said that anyone who practices eye diagnosis without recognizing the whole person, without really knowing something about the whole person, is practicing nonsense.

And what does it mean to recognize the whole person? You see, we have learned that the human being consists of a physical body, an etheric body, an astral body and the I. So not only do we need to know something about the physical person, but, especially if we are doing eye diagnosis, we also need to know something about the spiritual person. The usual anatomy, which only deals with the corpse, can, under certain circumstances, suffice with what it offers; it can actually offer relatively good things. Even if it does not know that the eye nerve is the dirt of the eye, at least it finds the eye nerve. But the eye diagnostician usually has no idea how the nerve runs, but has his little book of fifty pages and the classification of the iris and diagnoses away, without examining the person. Now, of course, he needs some other little book, again of fifty pages. There is the rubric “lung disease” and the remedy for it. But lung disease is something that can come from many causes. Knowing that the lungs are affected is not enough. The lungs can be affected by digestion. You have to know where it comes from. Many people suffer from lung disease. For many, the lung disease has a wide variety of causes. This is precisely where you have to be extremely careful, because where the most beautiful things are present, there is the most nonsense. How much have I told you in these lessons about the fact that man does not depend only on the earth, but on the whole starry sky. But that is precisely what requires the most complicated insight. You must not do any nonsense with it. After all, the various astrologers in the world today are doing a great deal of fraud and nonsense. It is similar with eye diagnostics as with astrology. There is also something very noble and magnificent underlying astrology; but for those who practice astrology today, there is nothing very noble underlying it. For them, speculation about the wallets of their fellow human beings is usually the underlying basis.

And so you can understand the connection, gentlemen: on the one hand, there are the phenomena that change the entire surface of the human being externally. The person gets pale spots where the skin is otherwise darker; his eyes change color, he is an albino. A certain activity is driven to the surface, diverted from the internal organs. But if the person is not a cockroach, not an albino, then the same things, the outer appearance of the eye, are present in the iris; but the finer structure, the finer arrangement then points to the inside. An albino is not a completely sick person just because he is an albino, but he is only afflicted with a predisposition to disease because he has it from an early age and his physical makeup becomes accustomed to it later.

You see, it is not at all good to call the albino a leukopath. This already indicates, because leukocytes, for example, are certain bodies in the blood, that the blood of such people is different. We do not know the cause. But if the blood becomes paler on the surface, then the general pallor does not occur, but the skin becomes paler on the surface. That is the difference between the disease of anemia, where the blood simply becomes paler on the inside, and leukopathy or albinism, where the blood is pushed more to the surface. So it is the case that in the case of people with anemia, an activity in the interior is not in order. The ego is more active on the surface, the astral body more in the interior. Therefore, all the bodies with which one sees and hears are more pushed to the surface. You need them for the ego. You need your liver in the inner being. And if you felt everything as strongly as your liver does, then you would constantly observe only your inner being and say: Aha, now I have just received a little cabbage soup in my stomach, the stomach walls are beginning to absorb it. It is like a radiance, very interesting. Now it goes through the pylorus into the small intestine; now it goes into the villi that are on the intestinal walls. You would observe all this, and all this, that would be very interesting; but you would not have time to observe the outside world! It is very interesting and there is plenty to observe and in some things much more beautiful than the outside world, but the human being is just quite distracted by it. So in general, what is inside does not come to consciousness; what lies on the surface comes to consciousness. So if someone does not process the iron properly in his inner being, where the astral person is more active, he will become an anemic person. If he does not process the iron properly on the outside, but dissolves it as I have described to you, then he will become an albino - which is very rare - or he will get leukopathy.

So you see, the question I was asked is related to this: albinism comes from an irregular processing of sulfur or iron by the ego. Anemia comes from an irregular processing of iron by your astral body and has more of an effect on the inside of the blood. Thus, if one only understands the human being correctly in what is going on inside him, one can also see which supersensible part of the human being is actually involved. He who properly understands the physical human being also understands the superphysical, the supersensible human being. But with materialism it is just the opposite: he does not understand the supersensible human being at all, and therefore he does not understand the physical human being either.

I will let you know whether I will be back next Wednesday. Perhaps someone will have another question by the next lesson, so that a similar discussion can take place as a result of this question.

[ 1 ] We will continue our study of the Mystery of Golgotha. At the very outset it must be realised that happenings on the Earth are not determined by earthly conditions alone but by the whole Universe. It is difficult for the modern mind to grasp what this means, but without the knowledge that influences pour down unceasingly upon the Earth from cosmic space, no event of human life, however simple, can be understood. I have spoken about this on many occasions and I shall speak of it to-day in connection with the Mystery of Golgotha.

[ 2 ] I told you that the Jews—I mentioned them as the fourth people in the evolutionary process ¹—experienced the reality of the fourth member of man's being, namely the “I,” the Ego. This fourth member, which the Jews conceived to be the divine, innermost core of the human being, they called Jahve. And they saw a connection between Jahve and the universe of stars.

[ 3 ] You know, of course, that Palestine was the birth place of Christianity. Jesus of Nazareth lived in Palestine, in a Jewish environment. The Jewish religion prevailed in Palestine and although the Romans were the political rulers, in those far-off lands they were not in a position to abolish the established religion. Jesus of Nazareth, therefore, grew up in the environment of the Jewish religion.

[ 4 ] It will be easier for you to understand the character of the Jewish religion if I say something about the peoples who were living in Mesopotamia, that is to say, further to the East, namely, the Babylonians, the Assyrians. These peoples were neighbours of the Jews and their religion was connected essentially with the stars—it was a Star Religion. One often ears it said that the Assyrians “worshipped” the stars. They did not worship the stars but the instinctive wisdom of those times enabled them to know much more about the stars than is known nowadays, despite the claims of modern scholarship.

[ 5 ] You may have read in the newspapers recently that this hitherto undisputed knowledge of the stars threatens to collapse as a result of the discovery that the Earth is not surrounded by empty, celestial space but that at a height of 400 kilometres there are solid crystals of nitrogen! It would seem, therefore, that science is finding confirmation of the “crystal heavens” spoken of in Greek antiquity. I mention this merely in parenthesis. Such things may bring home to scholars how little is really known about the world of stars.

[ 6 ] And now imagine a being inhabiting the planet Mars. If such a being were to look downwards without a powerful telescope, he would not see any human beings on the Earth: he would simply see the Earth radiating a greenish light into cosmic space. Yet the Earth swarms with human beings who are in turn connected with Spiritual Beings. And just as the physical forces of the stars have an influence upon the Earth, so too the spiritual forces of the stars have an influence upon the Earth, above all upon man. The ancient, instinctive wisdom of the East revealed the existence of Spiritual Beings in the stars and it was to these Spiritual Beings, not to the physical stars, that men looked with veneration. In this sense the religion in Western Asia in those early times was a Star Religion. It was accepted as a matter of course that Spiritual Beings belonging to Saturn, Jupiter and the other heavenly bodies have a certain influence upon men and upon their earthly life. [ 7 ] Now what the Jews had adopted from ancient religions was the teaching concerning the influence of the Moon; they paid little attention to the other heavenly bodies. Jahve or Jehovah was connected with the spirituality of the Moon. The Jewish religion in its earliest, original form taught that Jahve, or Jehovah, as a living reality within the human “I,” was connected with the spiritual forces of the Moon. [ 8 ] This is not a mere legend, neither is it an idea born of religious superstition; it relates to something of which there is scientific evidence. During the pregnancy of the mother—a period of great importance for earthly existence—when the human being is still an embryo, he is essentially dependent on the Moon. This dependency of the human embryo on the Moon has long been known and the period of pregnancy computed as ten lunar months. It is only comparatively recently that the ten lunar months have been changed to nine solar months. But these ten lunar months, which have rightly been connected with the period of pregnancy, are in themselves an indication that the embryonic human being in the body of the mother is dependent on the Moon. What does this mean? [ 9 ] In its earliest condition after fertilisation, the ovum really contains earthly substance that has been broken down, pulverised, and nothing whatever would arise from it if it were exposed to the influence of earthly forces alone! The development into a human embryo is only able to take place because influences from the Moon play down upon the Earth. It can truly be said that the forces of the Moon lead the human being into earthly life. And so in its veneration of Jahve as a Moon God, the Jewish religion was really pointing to this dependency of the human being upon the forces of the Moon when he is entering earthly existence.

[ 10 ] Now the peoples living further to the East, in Asia—the Babylonians, the Assyrians—recognised other planetary influences as well as those of the Moon. They said, for example: Whether a human being subsequently becomes wise or remains a dullard, depends to a certain extent upon the influence of Jupiter. But the Jews did not concern themselves with these other influences. They venerated the one God—a Moon God. The fact that the Jews turned from many Gods to one God is generally regarded as a great step forward in religious life.

[ 11 ] Jesus of Nazareth heard much of the one God, the God Jahve, for the Jewish religion was all around him and He was instructed in its teachings.

[ 12 ] You can understand why a people who venerated only the Moon God, the God whose influence upon the human being works above all during the period while he is in the mother's body, believed that a man brings the whole of his being with him when he comes to the Earth. And this found expression in the ancient Jahve religion. If an ancient Jew who had fallen sick were asked: Why has this befallen you?—he answered: It is the will of Jahve. If his house had been set on fire and he were asked: Why has your house been burnt?—again his answer would have been: It is the will of Jahve ... He attributed everything to the one God, Jahve, through whose power man is led into the earthly world, and he saw the will of Jahve in everything that happened. Hence there was a kind of frozen rigidity about the Jewish religion. Through the whole of his life a man felt that his existence was determined by what he had brought with him to the Earth.

[ 13 ] Other religious teachings, as well as those of the Jews, came to the knowledge of Jesus of Nazareth. These other religions taught that many heavenly bodies—not only the Moon—have an influence upon the human being. There is an indication in the Gospels of a connection between the Star Religions of the East and the country inhabited by the Jews where Jesus of Nazareth was born. For the Gospels tell of the Wise Men from the East who had seen a star and were led by this star to the birthplace of Jesus.

[ 14 ] The story as it stands in modern versions of the Gospels gives rise to misunderstanding. The truth of the matter is that with their knowledge of the heavenly constellations the Wise Men recognised from the position of the stars that a momentous event was about to take place. And so at the very birth of Jesus of Nazareth we have the indication of a link with the Star Wisdom of Asia, of the East. And this link remained.

[ 15 ] The aim of Jesus of Nazareth was to enable man—while he is actually living on the Earth—to become aware of an inner reality of being, an inner selfhood. The Jews said: Everything comes from Jahve.—But in reality it is only until birth that the influence of Jahve holds sway, and once the human being is born, his life on the Earth is not simply a continuation of the Jahve impulse. The great truth brought by Christ Jesus was that during earthly life man is not like a rolling ball, impelled only by the impetus given by Jahve before his birth, but that he possesses an inner power of will by means of which he can ennoble or debase his own nature, his own personality. This was a truly epoch-making teaching. For the Star Wisdom had been kept very secret; nothing was known of it in Palestine, let alone in Rome. The Star Wisdom had been kept strictly secret and it was therefore profoundly significant that Jesus of Nazareth should have taught: It is not only from the Moon that influences pour down upon man; influences also pour down upon him from the Sun.

[ 16 ] This was a momentous teaching. But such things must not be regarded merely as theories; they must be studied in the light of reality. What is it that the influence of the Moon really brings about while the human embryo still rests within the body of the mother? The being of soul, the being of soul-and-spirit comes from the Moon-sphere and passes into the physical body. Man descends as a soul from the heavens by way of the Moon. When the Jews said: Jahve has an influence upon the human being in the womb of the mother—what did this really indicate? It indicated the view: The soul-and-spirit of man comes from the Moon; there, in the Moon, is the Creator of the soul. The physical, material constitution of man comes from the Earth; but the soul-and-spirit comes from the great universe, entering into man by way of the Moon.—The Jews, therefore, maintained that the soul entered into man by way of the Moon and received its endowments and gifts from the Moon God.

[ 17 ] Jesus of Nazareth taught that in truth man has the soul within him but that the soul can change, can be transformed in the course of his life because he has freedom of will.

[ 18 ] What underlay this teaching of Jesus of Nazareth? This question is profoundly significant and in order to find the answer we must consider the following:

[ 19 ] The Jews are always distinguished in a certain way from other peoples of the Earth. The difference is due to the fact that throughout the centuries the Jews have been brought up in the Moon religion and have refused to recognise any other influence. Real understanding of these things requires a knowledge of certain characteristics of Judaism. There is abundant evidence that the Jews have a great talent for music; but on the other hand they have no outstanding gift for sculpture, painting and arts of this nature. The Jews have a flair for materialism but little aptitude for acknowledging the reality of the spiritual world. And this is because their veneration has always been paid to the Moon and the Moon only; the rest of the super-earthly universe has hardly entered their ken. The Jewish character and the Greek character are in complete contrast. The talent and inclination of the Greeks lay above all in the direction of sculpture, pictorial art, architecture—architecture which embodied the art of sculpture. The Jews have always been, and are by nature, a musical people, a sacerdotal people; they unfold more particularly the inner activity which has its source in the talents bestowed during embryonic life. [ 20 ] At the time when Jesus of Nazareth lived, this tendency was very strongly marked. The Jews one meets in Europe to-day have of course been living among other peoples for a long time, and they have assimilated many traits from them. But anyone of discernment can readily distinguish the fundamental character of the Jews from that of other peoples. As I said, the hearts and minds of the ancient Jews were directed entirely to the Moon God. Therefore they developed the traits which are connected with the Moon, not those which are connected with the Sun. The Sun was completely forgotten. If Jesus of Nazareth had remained a Jew, even He could only have taught a Moon Religion. But a different impulse, a spiritual influence proceeding directly from the Sun entered into him in the course of His life.

[ 21 ] As a result of this, He was “born a second time.” Eastern religions all knew what it meant to be born a second time, but to-day it is nothing more than a tradition and is no longer understood. At a certain moment in His life, Jesus of Nazareth knew that he had been born again, that the soul with which he had been endowed by the forces of the Moon while still within the mother's body had been quickened and filled with new life by the Sun ... And from that moment, He who had been Jesus of Nazareth was known among the initiated as Christ Jesus. It was said: Like all other Jews, Jesus of Nazareth became a man through the forces of the Moon; but because at a certain moment in his life the Sun influence poured into him, He has been born a second time—as CHRIST.

[ 22 ] Obviously, an average man of to-day who cannot take these things in their spiritual sense, will never be able to make anything of them. Having no idea that the human being is united with his soul in the mother's body before birth, he thinks that the soul must come in some way from the external world. And he certainly can make nothing of the teaching that a Sun Being, a second “personality” as it were, entered into Jesus of Nazareth. Just as the first personality enters into the mother's body, so did the Sun Being enter into Jesus of Nazareth as a second personality.

[ 23 ] The words used in the rituals of the Roman Catholic Church make no reference to what I have just told you. But at any celebration of High Mass you will see on the altar the Sanctissimum, the Monstrance containing the Sacred Host, and here (sketch on blackboard) rays are depicted. It is a representation of the Sun and the Moon. The very form of the Monstrance tells us that Christianity originates from a religious conception which, unlike that held by the Jews, recognises not only the influence of the Moon but also that of the Sun. Just as the influence working in the process of the birth of a human being is that of the Moon, so the influence working in Christ Jesus is that of the Sun.

[ 24 ] Having heard this, you may imagine that it is possible for every human being to be born a second time and to receive the influence from the Sun during the course of his life. But the truth is rather different. What happened in the case of Christ Jesus was that the influence streamed directly to the “I,” the Ego. Upon which member of man's being does the Moon influence work during embryonic life? As you know, man is composed of physical body, ether-body, astral body, and the “I.” The Moon influence works upon the astral body: the astral body, of which a man is not normally conscious, is influenced by the Moon. But in Christ, the Sun influence poured into the “I”—the free and independent “I”!

[ 25 ] If the Sun influence had ever worked upon man in exactly the same way as the Moon influence, what would have been the result? Think of the following:—As individuals we have no very decisive influence upon our own birth; our birth dispatches us as it were into the world. If the Sun influence were of exactly the same character as the Moon influence, we should simply receive the Sun influence at, say, the age of 30, and we should have no more say in this than we have in our birth. At the age of 30 we should suddenly become different persons, we should actually forget what we had been doing before that time. Just imagine what it would be like if you were to be going about until your 29th year and then, at 30, were to be born again! After this second “birth” you might come across someone not yet 30, who greeted you as an acquaintance. You would say: I know nothing about you ... I have only been here since to-day and I do not know you. That is what would happen if every human being at the age, say, of 30, were actually to receive the Sun influence. All this may seem very questionable but it is true nevertheless. It has simply been forgotten because history has been so greatly falsified. An exactly similar process was at work in very ancient times, although not in quite as drastic a form as I have described to you now ... In the very distant past, about seven or eight thousand years ago in India, men were like new beings when they reached the age of 30, and they knew nothing about their earlier life. Then the people around took charge of them and sent them to some “official” (I am using a modern term) who told them their names and who they were. This transformation was less and less marked as time went on, but in those olden times it did indeed take place. Even the ancient Egyptians who had reached, say, the age of 50, did not remember back to their childhood but only to their thirtieth year; they were told by the people around them about their earlier life, just as we are told to-day what we used to do when we were babies of one or two years old. History says nothing about this change that has come about in the life of man, but it is a fact.

The last human being destined to receive the direct influence of the Sun was Jesus of Nazareth; for others this was no longer possible. There is a hint about this Sun influence in the Gospels but it is always misinterpreted. The Gospels tell us that when Jesus of Nazareth went to the Jordan to be baptised by John, a Dove descended upon Him from heaven. The Dove is the symbol of the Sun influence, of the Sun Being who entered into Jesus. But He was the last, the very last. The bodily constitution of other men in His day was such that they were not able to receive the Sun influence. Jesus was the last.

[ 26 ] In the ancient East, men could say with truth: The Sun influence comes to everyone in the course of his life, and when this happens he becomes a new being. This could no longer be said in the epoch when Christ Jesus lived, and the priests knew of it merely through tradition, not through their own vision.

[ 27 ] In the ancient past, before the days of the Jews, veneration was paid to the Sun, because the Sun was known to be the source of this all-powerful influence during life. When no such influence was received, men ceased to venerate the Sun. By whom, then, was the Sun replaced? By Christ Jesus Himself! Before the founding of Christianity there had been a Sun Religion in which the Sun itself was the object of veneration. Christ Jesus was the last to receive this Sun influence, and thereafter men could do no other than point to Christ, saying: There, within Him, is the Sun Spirit!

[ 28 ] Herein lies the great and fundamental change. It denoted a sheer revolution in thought to be able to say: Christ Jesus brought down upon the Earth that which was formerly in the Sun. In the first Christian centuries, Christ was always called the Sun and in the Gospels we still find the words: “the Sun, the Christ.” Later on, the meaning was entirely forgotten. At every High Mass the truth is visibly portrayed in the Monstrance; but if anyone says in so many words that what is represented there is a fact, he is denounced as a heretic. For the Christian Church has always considered it dangerous to proclaim truths which have to do with the Stars, and therefore also with the Sun.

[ 29 ] Why is this so? Here again we must go back to the ancient Mysteries and compare them with Christianity. You know that the Mysteries were not open to everyone. I told you about the different stages. The Initiates were known as Ravens, Occultists, Defenders, Sphinxes, Spirits of the People, Sun Men, Fathers.³ These men knew that influences come from the stars and the initiated priests were careful to ensure that the knowledge was in the possession only of those who had actually been received into the Mysteries. For knowledge is a power! True, it is often suppressed ... but when the authority of the priesthood is strong, knowledge is certainly a power.

[ 30 ] The Star Wisdom had, however, been lost. And now came Christ Jesus who brought it to life again—but in a new form—teaching that the Sun God must now have his place upon the Earth. If Christ's teaching had gained the victory, knowledge of the Sun influence and indeed of the ancient Star Religion in its entirety would again have been present in the world. Moreover in the early Christian centuries this was in many ways the case. There was a certain revival of the ancient Mystery teachings. But Christ Jesus had brought about the great and fundamental change in that He placed as a reality before all the world what had previously been guarded as a close secret in the Mysteries. Thereafter it would have been within the reach of all human beings, but no effort succeeded in spreading the knowledge.

[ 31 ] A certain Roman Emperor, Julian, called the “Apostate” tried to introduce the ancient Star Religion once again but he was murdered while on a journey to Persia

[ 32 ] What happened in Rome was this. The Star Wisdom that had in truth been brought again to the world by Christ Jesus was denounced as superstition—and not only as superstition but as a creed of the devil. The very means, therefore, of leading men to a real knowledge of the Spiritual was denounced and practically exterminated. People were expected to believe only in the external, historical event of the presence of Christ Jesus in Palestine—in the form in which the Church proclaimed it.

Consequently the Church became the supreme authority for all believers in the matter of how and what they should think. It was not by way of Rome that real Christianity came to Europe; what Rome brought to Europe was a changed Christianity—a Christianity which accepted only the outer event in Palestine and ignored the whole cosmic setting of that event.

Why did it happen so? [ 33 ] As I told you, Rome originated from a band of brigands who had once gathered together,² and echoes of their mode of life persisted for a very long time. Rome has always striven for power in worldly affairs and in the religious life at the same time. And in the course of the Middle Ages, the Pope took the place ... well, not of the ancient High Priest, the “Pontifex Maximus,” for it was only the name that continued ... the Pope assumed the position that had once been held by the Roman Emperors.

At one period—it was at the beginning of the eleventh century—an attempt was made by a certain German Emperor to achieve something in the same direction as Julian who had been called the Apostate. It is a very interesting story. Henry II was a good and faithful advocate of Christianity and was looked upon as a kind of saint. He reigned as Emperor from 1002–24. In history, too, he is known as Henry “the Saint” and he still figures among the saints named in the breviary of Catholic priests. Henry II was one who wished to point to the ancient wisdom, to preserve for Christianity the conception that in Christ Jesus there had lived the Sun Spirit. He wanted to establish an Ecclesia catholica non Romana, that is to say, a Catholic Church that is not Roman. This attempt was made at the beginning of the eleventh century. Lutherism came considerably later. If Henry II's attempt to establish a “Catholic Church that is not Roman” had succeeded at that time, the whole cosmic setting of Christianity would have come to the knowledge of Europe and through the religious life men would have been led to a truly spiritual science. But Rome conquered—that is to say, semi-religious, semi-imperial Rome. No Ecclesia catholica non Romana came into being and the Ecclesia catholica Romana lived on. The aim of Emperor Henry II had been to separate the Catholic Church entirely from the sphere of worldly dominion.

[ 34 ] It would have been a momentous deed, for if it had succeeded, the subsequent, very widespread persecution of heretics and heresies would never have taken place. Such persecutions are simply the outcome of authority exercised over men's thoughts. But in reality, nobody can have permanent authority over thoughts. Authority over thoughts can only be exercised when a human being is subject to the sway of worldly power, when he is obliged to attend particular schools where certain doctrines are inculcated into him, when he is put into a certain class which influences his point of view, and the like. Thoughts, in reality, cannot be made to submit to authority. No Church could ever have worked harmfully without the help of the worldly dominion to which man is subject as a physical being. For the Church can only teach; the response must come from human beings themselves. That is the principle which Henry II tried to establish. But as I said, the victory was won by Rome—by the ancient, imperial power working in the person of the Pope. The power of worldly dominion was very great in the days of Henry II. And if the attempt to establish a “Catholic Church that is not Roman” had succeeded at that time, the teachings of the Church would have remained apart from the sphere of worldly dominion.

[ 35 ] Fundamentally, the Crusades were pursuing the same aim. It is commonly said that the Crusades were undertaken in the service of Rome, that because the wicked Turks had conquered Jerusalem the pilgrims there could no longer perform their devotions in safety. Then Rome intervened and sent Peter of Amiens out into Europe to preach. Numbers of men were urged to come together in a Crusade to the East, to Jerusalem, and a great band of Crusaders gathered as the result of this preaching under the leadership of Peter of Amiens and Walter the “Penniless.” (Perhaps you can guess why he was called the “Penniless.” He was like all of us here, for we could not raise enough money between us to pay the cost of a crusade to Asia!) But this whole band of Crusaders perished on the way and nothing was achieved.

[ 36 ] Then came others, under the leadership of Godfrey of Bouillon. These men were not in the service of Rome but their aim had certain points in common with that of Henry II. They wanted to do away with the element of worldly dominion. (Dr. Steiner makes a sketch on the blackboard.) Here is Italy, here Greece, here the Black Sea, here Asia, here Palestine, here Jerusalem. The aim of the first real Crusade was that Jerusalem, not Rome, should stand as the centre and citadel of the Christian religion. This was again an attempt to make the Ecclesia, the Church, independent of worldly dominion.

[ 37 ] None of these attempts succeeded. Roman princes and nobles again found their way into the later Crusades. The story can be read in any history book.

[ 38 ] And so this basic principle of Christianity, enshrining the great thought that in Christ Jesus the Sun Force itself was brought down to the Earth and that realisation of this makes every human being free ... “Ye shall know the Truth and the Truth shall make you free ...”—this whole conception has remained in oblivion through the centuries and true Christianity must be discovered again to-day through Spiritual Science. It is not surprising that the representatives of Christianity in the form it has now assumed, oppose the Christianity which genuinely adheres to Christ Jesus and teaches the same realities as He Himself taught. This is what Anthroposophy does. Again it is not surprising that those who only know Christianity in its present form often have an aversion to it. This aversion, however, it not to be laid at the door of Christianity itself. Christianity has brought about tremendous progress in the social life. Slavery was gradually abolished, for one thing. And without Christianity there would have been no science as we know it to-day. Most of the really epoch-making discoveries were made by monks (the air-pump produced by the worthy Burgomaster Guericke von Magdeburg is one of the exceptions). Copernicus was a dignitary of the Catholic Church; and the schools and academies of learning were all dependent upon the monks.

[ 39 ] But something else must also be remembered.—The monasteries were not, at first, welcome in the Church, because the monks had preserved a good deal of the ancient knowledge. Among the monks (only they were not allowed to speak) there did indeed exist knowledge of the ancient Star Wisdom. Ample evidence of this can be found by anyone who looks for it. It was through monasticism, not through any external regime that knowledge of the kind of which I gave you an example in the last lecture, had been preserved and it was not until the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that it was completely swept away. The Middle Ages were by no means as “dark” an epoch as people generally believe. It is only what comes within the range of ordinary observation that is “dark.” In secret there was a great deal of wisdom, only it is not understood to-day.

[ 40 ] We can truly say: The greatest thought enshrined in Christianity is that the Sun Force in all reality came down upon the Earth.

[ 41 ] Not until then did history, as we know it to-day, really come to birth. For whereas in olden times men in the East possessed a glorious Star Wisdom, they attached no value to “history.” Those who were knowers and sages in the East always declared: It is there, in the Heavens, that the act of Creation takes place. They did not concern themselves to any great extent with the life and doings of human beings on the Earth.—True, something in the nature of history appears when the Jews come upon the scene, but it is history that begins with Star Wisdom—for the story of the “seven days of Creation” is pure Star Wisdom. Later on, events become chaotic, a medley. True history—and true history divides the whole process of evolution on the Earth into the pre-Christian and the post-Christian—really begins when Christianity is born.

• 1. See the lectures in the first volume of this series: The Birth of Christianity, and Christianity and the Mysteries of Antiquity.
• 3. See Christianity and the Mysteries of Antiquity.
• 2. See Christianity and the Mysteries of Antiquity; also Hegel's Lectures on the Philosophy of History.

Rudolf Steiner: Good morning, gentlemen! Has anyone thought of a question?

Herr Dollinger: I would like to ask if Dr. Steiner would speak again about the creation of the world and man. There are many newcomers here who have not yet heard it.

Dr. Steiner: It is asked if I could speak again about the creation of the world and of humanity, since many new workers are here. I will do this by first describing the original conditions on the earth, which have led on the one hand to all that we see around us and on the other hand to man.

Now man is really a very, very complicated being. If people think they will be able to understand him by dissecting a human corpse, they are mistaken, for naturally they will not arrive at a real understanding. Just as little can they understand the world around us if all they do is collect stones and plants and look at the individual items. We must be able to realize that what we examine does not show at first sight what it actually is.

You see, if we look at a corpse, perhaps soon after the man has died—he still has the same form, if perhaps a little paler—we can see that death has seized him, but he still has the same form that he had when alive. But now think: how does this corpse look eventually if we do not cremate it but let it decay? It is destroyed; there is no longer anything at work in it that could build it up again; it is definitely destroyed.

The beginning of the Bible is very much smiled at, and indeed justifiably, when it is understood to say that once upon a time some god formed a man out of a clod of earth. People regard that as impossible and naturally they are right. No god can come along and make a human being out of a lump of earth; it would be no more a man than a statue is, however similar the form might be—no more than the mannequin children make can actually walk. So people smile rightly when some divinity is supposed to have made man out of a lump of earth.

That corpse that we were looking at is, in fact, after a certain time just such a clod of earth as it becomes in the grave somewhat decomposed, dissolved. So to believe that a human being can be made out of what we then have before us is really just as great a folly.

You see, on the one hand it is asserted today that it is incorrect to suppose that man could be formed from a lump of earth; on the other hand one is allowed to suppose that he consists of earth alone. If one wants to be logical, then the one is no better than the other. One must be clear that while the man lived there was something in him that gave him his shape and form, and when it is no longer in him he can no longer keep his form. Nature forces do not give him this form; nature forces merely break it apart, they do not make it grow. So we must go back to the soul and spirit of the man, which were really in control as long as he was living.

Now when we look at the lifeless stone outside, if we imagine that it has always been the same as it is today, that is just as if we would say of the corpse that it had always been like that even while the man was living. The stones that we see today in the world outside, the rocks, the mountains, are just the same as a corpse; in fact, they are a corpse! They were not always as they are today. Just as a human corpse was not always what it is now that the soul and spirit have gone, so what we see outside has not always been in its present condition. The fact that plants grow on the lifeless corpse, that is, on the rocks, need not surprise us; for when a human corpse decays, all sorts of tiny plants and tiny animals grow out of it.

Of course, what is outside in nature seems beautiful, and what we see on a corpse when all sorts of parasitic plants are growing out of it does not seem beautiful. But that is only because the one is gigantic in size and the other is small. If we were not human beings but were tiny beetles crawling about on a decaying corpse and could think like human beings, we would regard the bones of the corpse as rocks. We would consider what was decayed as rubble and stones; we would-since we were tiny beetles-see great forests in what was growing on the corpse; we would have a whole world to admire and not think it revolting as we do now.

Just as we must go back to what the man was before he died, so, in the case of the earth and our surroundings, we must go back to what once lived in all that today is lifeless, before indeed the earth as a whole died. Unless the earth as a whole had died there could be no human being. Human beings are parasites, as it were, on the present earth. The whole earth was once alive; it could think as you and I now think. But only when it became a corpse could it produce the human race. This is something really everyone can realize if he will just think. But people today do not want to think. Yet one must think if one would come to the truth.

We have, therefore, to imagine that what is today solid rock with plants growing, and so on, was originally entirely different. Originally there was a living, thinking, cosmic body-a living, thinking, cosmic body!

I have often said here: What do people today imagine? They imagine that originally there was a gigantic mist, that this primeval mist came into rotation, that the planets then split off, that the sun became the center. This is taught to children quite early, and a little experiment is made to show that everything really did start in that way. A few drops of oil are put in a glass of water; one lets the oil swim on the water. A piece of cardboard has a pin stuck through it; then with the pin one makes the cardboard revolve; little oil-drops split off, go on revolving, and a tiny planetary system actually forms with the sun in the center.¹

Well now, it is usually quite a virtue if one can forget oneself, but in this case the teacher should not! When he makes the experiment, he ought then to say to the children: Out there in the universe is a giant schoolteacher who did the rotating!

What it amounts to is thoughtlessness—not because the facts oblige one to be thoughtless, but because one wants to be. But in that way one doesn't arrive at the truth.

We must therefore imagine not that a gigantic schoolteacher was there who rotated the world mist, but that there was something in the world mist itself that was able to move and so on. But there we come back to the living. If we want to rotate, we don't need a pin stuck through us with which a teacher rotates us. That's not for us; we can rotate ourselves. This schoolroom variety of primeval mist would have to be rotated by a schoolteacher. But if it is living and can feel and think, then it needs no cosmic schoolteacher; it can cause the rotation itself.

So we must picture that what today is lifeless around us was once alive, was sensitive, was a cosmic being. If we look further, there was even a great number of cosmic beings animating the whole. The original conditions of the world are therefore due to the fact that there was Spirit within the substance.

Now what is it that underlies everything material? Imagine that I have a lump of lead in my hand, that is, solid matter, thoroughly solid matter. Now if I put this lead on red-hot iron or on anything red-hot, on fire, it turns to fluid. If I work on it still further with fire, the whole lead vanishes; it evaporates, and I see nothing more of it. It is the same with all substances. On what does it depend then that a substance is solid? It depends upon what warmth is in it. The appearance of a substance depends only upon how much warmth is in it.

You know, today one can make the air liquid, then one has liquid air. The air we have in our surroundings is only airy, gaseous, as long as it contains a definite amount of warmth. And water—water is fluid, but it can also become ice and therefore solid. If there were a certain cold temperature on our earth there would be no water, but only ice. Now let us go into our mountains: there we find the solid granite or other solid rock. But if it were immensely hot there, there would be no solid granite; it would be fluid and flow away like the water in our brooks.

What then is actually the original element that makes things solid or fluid or gaseous? It is heat! And unless heat is there in the first place, nothing at all can be solid or fluid. So we can say that heat or fire is what is underlying everything in the beginning.

That is also shown by the research of spiritual science or anthroposophy. Spiritual science shows that originally there was not a primeval mist, a lifeless mist, but that living warmth was there at the beginning, simple living warmth. Thus I will assume an original cosmic body that was living warmth. [See drawing – red.] In my Occult Science I have called this original warmth condition the “Saturn condition”; it has been called this from ancient times, and though one must have a name, it is not the name that matters. It has, in fact, something to do with the cosmic body Saturn, but we will not go into that now.

In this original condition there were as yet no solid bodies and no air, only warmth; but the warmth was living. When you freeze today, it's your ego that freezes; when you sweat today, it's your ego that sweats, that becomes thoroughly hot. You are always in warmth, sometimes heat, sometimes cold, but always in some kind of warmth. In fact, we can still see today that man lives in warmth. The human being lives absolutely in warmth.

When modern science says that originally there was great heat, in a certain sense it is right; but when it thinks that this great heat was dead, then it is wrong. There was a living cosmic being, a thoroughly living cosmic being.

Now the first thing to come about in connection with this warmth-being was a cooling down. Things cool down continually. And what happens when what has been nothing but warmth now cools down? Air arises, air, the gaseous state. For when we go on heating a solid object, gas is formed in the warmth; but when something not yet substance cools down from above downwards, air is formed at first. So we can say that the second condition to come about was gaseous, definitely airy. [See drawing-green.]

In what has been formed, in a certain sense, as a second cosmic body everything is air. There is as yet no water, nothing solid within it; it consists entirely of air.

So now we have the second condition that formed itself in the course of time. You see, in this second condition something else developed along with what was already there. I have called this second condition “Sun” in my Occult Science; it was not the present sun, but a kind of Sun condition, a warm air-mist. The present sun, as I have told you, is not that, nor is it what was originally this second cosmic body. Thus we get a second cosmic body formed out of the first; the first was pure warmth, the second was of an air-nature.

Now man can live in warmth as soul. Warmth gives the soul sensitive feeling and does not destroy it. It destroys the body, however; if I were thrown into the fire my body would be destroyed but not my soul. (We will speak of this more exactly later, for naturally the question needs to be considered in detail.) For this reason the human being could already live as soul during the first, the Saturn, condition. But although man could live then, the animal could not, for in the case of the animal when the body is destroyed the soul element is injured too. Fire has an influence on the soul element of the animal. In the first condition, therefore, we have man already present but not the animal.

When the transformation had taken place to the Sun condition [see drawing], both human being and animal were there. That is the important fact. It is not true that the animals were there originally and that man developed out of them. Man was there originally and afterwards the animals evolved out of what could not become man. Naturally the human being was not going about on two feet when there was only warmth—obviously not. He lived in the warmth and was a floating being; he had only a condition of warmth. Then as that was metamorphosed into an air-warmth-body, the animals were formed and appeared beside man. Thus the animals are indeed related to man, but they developed only later in the course of world evolution.

Now what more happened? The warmth decreased, and as it gradually decreased, not only was air formed but also water. Thus we have a third cosmic body. [See drawing—yellow.] I have called it “Moon” because it was slightly similar to our present moon, although it was not our present moon. It was a watery, a thoroughly watery body. Air and warmth naturally remained, but now water appeared which had not been present in the second condition. After the appearance of water there could be man, who was already there, animals, and, pushing up out of the water, plants. Plants originally grew in water, not in earth. So we have man, animal, plant.

You see, plants seem to grow out of the earth, but if the earth contained no water, no plants would grow; they need water for their growth. There are also as you know, aquatic plants, and you can think of the original plants as being similar to these; the original plants swam in the water. The animals too you must picture as swimming animals and in the former, second condition, even as flying animals.

Something still actually remains of all that was there originally. During the Sun condition, when only man and animal were in existence, everything had to fly, and since the air has remained and still exists, those flying creatures have their descendants. Our present birds are the descendants of the original animals that developed during the Sun condition. However, at that time they were not as they are today. Those animal creatures consisted purely of air; they were airy clouds. Here, later [Moon condition], they had water in them. Today—let us look at a bird. Usually a bird is observed very thoughtlessly. If we are to picture the animals as they existed during the Sun condition, we must say that they consisted only of air; they were hovering air-clouds. When we look at a bird today, we should realize that it has hollow bones filled with air. It is very interesting to see that in the present bird. There is air everywhere in this bird, in the bones, everywhere! Think away whatever is not air and you get an air-being—the bird. If it did not have this air, it could not fly at all. It has hollow bones; within, it is an air-bird, reminding us of former conditions. The rest of the body was built around it in later times. The birds are really the descendants of the Sun condition.

Look at modern man: He can live in the air, but he can't fly; he is too heavy to fly. He has not formed hollow bones for himself like the bird, or else he too could fly. Then he would not just have shoulder blades, but his shoulder blades would stretch out into wings. The human being still has the rudiments of wings up there in his shoulder blades; if these were to grow out, he would be able to fly.

Thus man lives in the air surrounding him. But this air must contain vapor. Man cannot live in purely dry air; he needs fluids.

There is a condition, however, in which the human being cannot live in the air: that is the very earliest human state, the embryo. One must look at these things rightly. During the embryonic time the human germ or embryo obtains air and all that it needs from the body of the mother. It must be in something living.

You see, it is like this: If the human embryo is removed by operation from the body of the mother, it cannot yet live in the air. During the embryonic condition the human being needs to have live surroundings. At the time when man, animal, and plant existed, but as yet no stones or minerals as we have them today, everything was alive and man lived surrounded by what was alive just as now he lives as embryo in the mother's body. Naturally he grew bigger. Think of this: If we did not have to be born and live in the air and breathe on our own, then our span of life would end with our birth. As embryo we could all live only ten moon-months. As a matter of fact, there are such creatures that live only ten months; these do not come to the outer air but get air from within a living environment. So it was with man a long time ago. He certainly grew older, but he never came out of the living element. He lived in that state all the time. He did not advance to birth; he lived as embryo. At that time there were as yet no minerals, no rocks.

If the body of a human being is dissected today, the same carbonate of lime will be found in his bones as you find here in the Jura Mountains. There is now a mineral substance inside the body that was not present in the earlier condition. In the embryo too, particularly in the first months, there is no deposit of mineral; everything is still fluid, only slightly thickened. And so it was during this earlier condition; man was not yet bony, having, at most, cartilage. Of such a human being we are reminded today only by the human embryo. Why cannot the human embryo come immediately out of the mother's body? Because the world today is a different world. As long as the Old Moon lasted—I will now call it the Old Moon, as it is not the present moon but the former state of the earth—as long as the Old Moon period lasted, the whole earth was a womb, inwardly alive, a real womb. There was nothing yet of stone or mineral. It was all a gigantic womb, and we can say that our present earth came forth from this gigantic womb.

Earlier this immense womb did not exist at all. What was it then? Well, in fact, earlier there was something else in existence. Let us just consider what came before. You see, if a human being is to develop in the mother's body, if he is to be an embryo, he must first be conceived. The conception takes place. But does nothing precede conception? What precedes conception is the monthly period in the woman; that is what precedes. A very special process takes place in the female organism that is connected with the expulsion of blood. But that is not the only thing; that is only the physical aspect. Every time the blood is expelled something of a spiritual-soul nature is born at the same time, and this remains. It does not become physical, because no conception has taken place. The spiritual-soul element remains without becoming a physical human body. What for a human being must be there before conception was also there during the cosmic Sun condition! The whole Sun was a cosmic being that from time to time expelled something spiritual. So man and animal lived in the air-like condition, thrust out, expelled by this whole body. Between one condition (Sun) and the other (Moon), it came about that the human being became a physical being in water. Formerly he was a physical being only in air. During this Moon condition we have something similar to conception, but not yet anything similar to birth. What was the nature of this conception during the ancient Moon condition?

The Moon was there, an entirely female being, and confronting it was not a male being, but all that was still outside its cosmic body at that time. Outside it were many other cosmic bodies that exerted an influence. Now comes the drawing which I have already made here.

So this cosmic body was there and around it the other cosmic bodies, exerting their influence in the most varied ways. Seeds came in from outside and fructified the whole Moon-Earth. And if you could have lived at that time and set foot on this primeval cosmic body, you would not have said when you saw all sorts of drops coming in “It is raining,” as one says today. At that time you would have said, “Earth is being fructified.” There were seasons when the fructifying seeds came in from all directions, and other seasons when they matured and no more came in. Thus at that time there was a cosmic fructification. But the human being was not born, only fructified; he was only called forth by conception. The human being came out of the entire Earth-body, or Moon-body, as it was then. In the same way fructification came from the whole cosmic surroundings for animal and plant.

Now later through further cooling there came about a hardening of all that lived then as man, animal, and plant. There, in the Moon condition we still have to do with water, at most, a hardening through the cooling. Here on the earth the solid, the mineral appears. So now we have a fourth condition [see drawing]: this is our earth as we have it today, and it contains man, animal, plant, mineral.

Let us just look at what the bird, for instance, has become on the earth. During this time (Sun condition) the bird was still a sort of air-sack, it consisted of nothing but air, a mass of air floating along. Then during this time (Moon condition) it became watery, a thickened watery thing, and it hovered as a kind of cloud—only not like our clouds but already containing a form. What for us are only formless water structures were at that time forms. There was a skeleton form, but it was fluid. But now came the mineral element, and this was incorporated into what was only water structure. Carbonate of lime, phosphatic lime and so on went the length of the skeleton, forming solid bones. So at first we have the air-bird, then the water-bird, and at last the solid earth-bird.

This could not be the same in the case of man. Man could not simply incorporate into himself what only arose as mineral during his embryonic period. The bird could do this—and why? You see, the bird acquired its air form here (Sun condition); it then lived through the water condition. It is essential for it not to let the mineral come too close to it during its germinal state. If the mineral came to it too soon, then it would just become a mineral and harden. The bird while it is developing is still somewhat watery and fluid; the mineral, however, wants to approach. What does the bird do? Well, it pushes it off, it makes something around itself, it makes the eggshell around itself! That is the mineral element. The eggshell remains as long as the bird must protect itself inwardly from the mineral; that is, as long as it must stay fluid. The reason for this is that the bird originated only during the second condition of the earth. If it had been there during the first condition, it would now be much more sensitive to warmth than it actually is. Since it was not there at that time, it can now form the hard eggshell around itself.

Man was already present during the first condition of the earth, the warmth condition, and therefore he cannot now hold off the mineral while he is in the embryonic stage. He can't build an eggshell; he must be organized differently. He must take up the mineral element from the womb, and so we have mineral formation already in the embryo at the end of its development. Man must absorb some mineral from the womb; therefore, the womb must first possess the mineral that is to be absorbed. So in the case of man the mineral element is incorporated quite differently. The bird has air-filled bones; we human beings have marrow-filled bones, very different from the bones of the bird. Through the fact of our having this marrow a human mother is able to provide mineral substance to the embryo within her. But once the mineral element is provided, the human being is no longer able to live in the womb environment and must gradually be born. He must first have acquired mineral constituents. With the bird it is not a matter of being born, but of creeping out of the eggshell; man is born without an eggshell. Why? Because man originated earlier and therefore everything can be done through warmth and not through air.

From this you can understand the differences that still exist and that can be observed today. The difference between an “egg-animal” and such a being as man, and also the higher mammals, lies in the fact that man is far older than, for instance, the bird species, far older than the minerals. Therefore, when he is quite young, during the embryonic stage in the womb, he must be protected from the mineral nature and may only be given the prepared mineral that comes from the mother. In fact, the mineral element prepared in the mother's body must even for a certain time after birth still be given to him in the mother's milk! While the bird can be fed at once with external substances, man and the higher animals can only be nourished by what the mother's body provides.

What the human being has today in our present Earth condition from the mother's body he had during the previous cosmic condition from the air, from the environment. What he had around him during his whole life was of a milk nature. Our air today contains oxygen and nitrogen but relatively little carbon and hydrogen and particularly very, very little sulphur. They have gone. During the Moon condition it was different; in the surrounding air there were not only oxygen and nitrogen but also hydrogen, carbon, sulphur. That made a sort of milky pap around the Moon, a quite thin milk-pap in which life existed. Today man still lives in a thin milk-pap before he is born! For it is only after his birth that the milk goes into the breast; before birth it is in those parts of the female body where the human embryo is lying. That is an amazing thing, that processes in the mother's organism that belong to the uterus before birth afterwards go to the breast. And so the Moon condition is still preserved in man before he is born, and the actual Earth condition only comes at the moment of birth with the Moon-nature still present in the breast milk.

This is how things connected with the origin of the earth and mankind must be explained. If people do not press forward to a spiritual science, they simply cannot solve the mystery of why a bird slips out of an egg and can at once be nourished with external substances, while a human being cannot slip out of an egg and must come out of the womb to be nourished by mother's milk. Why is it? It is because the bird originated later and is thus an external being. Man originated earlier, and when he was undergoing the Moon-condition, he was not yet as hardened as the bird. Hence today too he is not yet so hardened; he must still be more protected, for he has within him much more of the original conditions.

Since people today on the whole can no longer think properly, they misunderstand what exists on earth as plant, animal, and man. Thus materialistic Darwinism arose, which believed that the animals were there first and that man simply developed out of the animals. It is true that in his external form man is related to the animals, but he existed earlier, and the animals really developed later after the world had gone through a transformation. And so we can say that the animals we see now present a later stage of an earlier condition when they were indeed more closely related to man. But we must never allow ourselves to imagine that out of the present animals a human being could arise. That is a thoroughly false idea.

Now let us look not at the bird species but at the fishes. The bird species developed for the air, the fish species for the water. Not until what we call the Moon condition were certain earlier air-like bird-beings transformed in such a way as to become fishlike—because of the water. To the bird-like beings were added the fish. One could say that the fish are birds that have become watery, birds received by the water. You can gather from this that the fish appeared later than the birds; they appeared when the watery element was there, that is, during the Old Moon period.

And now you will no longer be astonished that everything swimming about in a watery state during the Old Moon time looked fish-like. The birds looked fish-like in spite of flying in the air and being lighter. Everything was fish-like. Now this is interesting: if we look today at a human embryo on about the 21st or 22nd day after conception, what is its appearance? There it swims in a fluid element in the mother's body, and it looks really like a tiny fish! The human being actually had this form during the ancient Moon period and he has it still in the third week of pregnancy; he has preserved it.

You can say, then, that man worked himself out of this Old Moon form, and we can still see by the fish form he has in the embryo how he has worked himself out. When we observe the present world, everywhere we can see how formerly it all had life, just as we know of a corpse that it had life earlier. So today I have described to you the earlier condition of what we now have on earth as mineral. We look at a corpse and say that he can no longer move his legs, his hands, no longer open his mouth or his eyes—everything has become immobile; yet that leads us back to a human state when everything could be moved—legs, arms, hands—when the eyes could be opened. In just the same way we look around us at the corpse of the earth, the remains of a living body, in which man and animal still wander about, and we look back to the time when the entire earth was once alive.

But there is something more. I said that with conception the potentiality of the physical human being is there, and gradually the embryo develops. I also described what happens earlier, the processes in the female organism, what is pushed out in the monthly periods, and how a spiritual element is pushed out too. Now in this process there is always something of the nature of fever, even in a perfectly normal, healthy woman. This is because there is a warmth condition; it is the warmth condition that has been preserved from the ancient first condition that I have in the drawing called Saturn. This fever condition still endures.

One can say that the whole of our evolution proceeded from a kind of fever condition of our earth, which the cooling down finally brought to an end. Most people today are no longer feverish but thoroughly dry and matter-of-fact. Yet even now, when there is something not caused by outside warmth but appearing inwardly as warmth, giving us something of an inward life, now too we have a condition of fever.

So it is, gentlemen: One sees everywhere in the conditions of present mankind how they can be traced back to conditions of the past. Today I have told you how man, animal, plant, and mineral gradually evolved as the entire cosmic body with which all are connected grew more and more solid.

We will speak further of all this—today is Monday—on Wednesday at nine o'clock.²

• 1. “The little Plateau experiment,” worked out by the physicist J.A.E Plateau, 1801 – 1883. Compare the description by Vincent Knauer in his lectures, “The Main Problem of Philosophy,” Vienna and Leipzig 1892: “One of the nicest experiments is the Plateau experiment. A mixture of water and alcohol is prepared, having the exact weight of pure olive oil. Into this is poured a rather large drop of oil. This does not float on top of the liquid but sinks to the middle of it, in the form of a ball. A small disc of cardboard is then perforated in the center by a long needle and lowered carefully into the middle of the ball of oil, so that the edge of the cardboard becomes the ‘equator’ of the ball. The disc is now set into motion, at first slowly, then faster and faster. Naturally the movement is imparted to the ball of oil, and as a result of the strength of the movement, parts of the oil drop away and continue the movement separately for some time, first in circles, then revolving as tiny balls. In this way there arises something surprisingly similar to our planetary system: in the center the largest globe, like our sun, and moving around it smaller balls and rings, like our planets with their moons.”
• 2. This lecture was postponed to Thursday, July 3rd.

My dear friends! There is something that we must do before we can introduce and cultivate worship, and this is something that is not easily understood, especially in Protestant circles, because in these circles religion is not based on worship and what worship stands for is less understood, felt and appreciated. Worship naturally stands as a revelation of the spiritual. Now I assume that what you have either heard directly from me here in discussions that were actually always meant for you in the esoteric sense, or what has come to you from such discussions through others, that this is already bearing on your soul with a certain power, with a certain force, and that you are aware of how seriously this movement must be meant if it is to take place at all. Therefore, under these circumstances, I would like to say what needs to be said today.

In the true sense of the word, churches and religious communities should always be founded out of the spiritual world in accordance with the order of the world. And in essence, churches and religious communities have been founded out of the spiritual order of the world. This spiritual order of the world underlies, of course, everything that appears here on earth as a manifestation of the spiritual, even if, for example, a spiritual mission is not necessarily present in sectarian movements. In the case of a particular sect there may even be the illusion of a spiritual mission, or perhaps the whole justification is more or less conscious or even unconscious. But you will always notice, even in such cases where untruthfulness instead of truth is present, that those who found such a thing usually invoke at least an alleged impulse from the spiritual world. In any case, however, what goes out into the world as a religious community, as it is meant here, must derive the impulse for it from the spiritual world. This must be particularly emphasized for the reason that both the Catholic communities, that is, the Roman Catholic and also the Eastern Catholic communities, and the Protestant communities have failed in this respect, only in two different directions: The Catholic community, which essentially, though transformed beyond recognition, has retained the cultus that is older than Christianity on earth and also older than its present form, the Catholic community has failed by gradually allowing the center of gravity to shift into a secular institution built on external domination, into which, of course, the personal impulses of the individual rulers then always play a role. You only have to go back to the writings of Dionysius the Areopagite to see clear evidence that the community of priests – if I may put it this way, the hierarchy of priests on earth – is intended as an image of the spiritual hierarchy above. It is intended only as an image, and this, according to the view of the early Christian period, precludes the church from exercising power in the sense of a secular imperial principle here on earth. It is true that the Catholic Church has the possibility within itself of placing one or other of its priests in an objective position and of making the cult there or there true; on the other hand, as an institution, it has completely lost the possibility of being an be an image of a spiritual reality, although there are priests within the Catholic Church through whose own purity, I might say, the impurity that enters the cultus through the personal element is in turn thrown out. So in a sense, the Catholic Church has brought down into the secular institution what should be felt as the original impulse of the spiritual worlds.

The Evangelical Protestant churches – we need not speak of the Russian Orthodox Church here for the time being because it has no current significance for Central Europe – have, by completely discarding ritual, brought the entire religious practice down to the individual human individuality with their subjective conviction of the truth of so-called “propositions”. What I mean is that the individual represents before the community what he, subjectively, can believe to be true. This counteracts the formation of communities, since such subjective belief is the beginning of the atomization of the community. The convictions of individuals will, of necessity, always take on a personal and subjective coloration if they are inwardly honest and sincere, and so every pastor will have to have his own opinion, especially if his religious conviction is related to a theology that engages in discussions of propositions about the spiritual world. In addition, there is something that you must all carefully, deeply and seriously consider if you really want to practice pastoral care: You must be aware that in the Protestant church regulations today, the necessary contrast between the lay believer and the pastor has actually disappeared. The disappearance of this contrast is seen as something excellent by certain modern convictions, but it can never be a real impulse for pastoral care. Almost everything that arises within the Protestant clergy today in discussions and debates about religion is such that the clergy speak in such a way that the simple religious person must speak. Of course, they speak in a more educated, scientific way, but they speak about the recognition or non-recognition of this or that religious impulse; they also speak about: What is religion at all? What is the relationship of the soul, the heart of the religious person to God, to the supersensible world? and so on. The discussions take on this coloration. But these discussions can have this coloring with simple religious people, but not with those who exercise a priestly office. The priest must be clear about the fact that he is not the one who is protected, but the shepherd of souls, that he therefore cannot put the question in the foreground: How does the soul of man relate to God or to the supersensible world? but must ask himself: How can I teach these people, how can I care for the souls of those entrusted to me? — If religious questions are of concern to him, they must, so to speak, have only an esoteric character for him, which he never brings up for discussion before a lay audience.

This is, of course, a somewhat radical statement, but it must be stated so radically so that it is felt: If you want to establish such a community today, as your group wants to do, where you want to become priests and not simple lay believers, then you have to be aware that the questions of the special character of religion and religious life do not play a role, but rather the esoteric community of soul shepherds must be felt from the outset. Of course, one can say that this contradicts the democratic feeling. But every church, every real religious community, contradicts the democratic feeling. And if something is to become purely democratic, as is attempted within the Protestant Church, the result is the absurdity that the religious community is completely atomized by the fact that the community elects its pastor according to democratic considerations. This introduces a completely unspiritual principle, the principle of an unspiritual choice, into the religious current, and this further atomizes it. Each individual shepherd of souls must receive his special mission from the spiritual world, and the result must be that the whole procedure of [democratic] election [of the shepherd of souls by the community] is regarded as a farce, which it actually is.

It is essential that we look at these things in complete earnest and not cast a veil over them, because otherwise there would be no need to found a new community, otherwise one could still hope that the old communities could be improved. But this new community is based on the conviction that the old one can no longer be improved. Only on this rock can that which you want to found rest. But then you must have such a sense of coherence that you perceive it directly as coming from the spiritual world itself.

Now, of course, you may object: Anthroposophy speaks in such a way that it derives its insights from experiences in the spiritual world; but it is difficult to maintain a direct connection with the spiritual world in such a way that this religious community can truly speak from an awareness of this connection with the spiritual world. — But, my dear friends, here we have something that must not be left untouched. The education of Western humanity has, of course, brought forth many human virtues in the field of outer activity. There have been brave people in the outer world, even in recent centuries, of course. But what has been rooted out by Western education – I mean the whole Ahrimanic education of the last centuries – is the courage of the soul. If we are to be blunt about it, we must say that souls have become cowardly, and that the souls of the spiritual leaders of Western human development have become cowardly. That is to say, they do not dare to bring the active soul forces into real activity; they shrink from calling upon the spiritual that lies in the human soul to such an activity that the connection with the spiritual world is established. In this case they rely on the passive, they rely on passively receiving visions to which they surrender, while the real connection with the spiritual world must be sought in activity. And so I cannot say otherwise than that this enormous burden, which rests on the spiritual life of Western humanity, has gradually caused such an eclipse of the soul that these souls are indeed little inclined to courageously and bravely unfold the activity to ascend to the spiritual world through the path of exercises.

My dear friends, take only what has been given to you as a breviary; after all, this is just one of many things you have received. If you simply apply with the appropriate spiritual courage what has been given to you as a breviary, you have every opportunity to gain a connection to the spiritual world. What is then still missing is merely the inner spiritual courage. Of course, today there is nothing else for it but to take the, I would say paradoxical path, to achieve courage through humility, to say to ourselves: We human beings live in community; that which is general lives in each and every one of us, and so , what is general, has also initially paralyzed our courage; we must wait in humility until we have the opportunity to awaken this courage in our soul through practice, and we must use the first steps of our priesthood to wait in humility until this courage awakens in our soul. But we must understand humility in the sense that it is a detour to courage, which consists in man really knowing himself in spiritual community with spiritual beings. Actually, this knowledge is the prerequisite for any priesthood. In this respect, perhaps a model can be gained from the Catholic Church, albeit a daunting one, but a real one. Those who become clergy within the Catholic Church are trained in such a way that the consciousness of their connection with the spiritual world is awakened in them, that the intellectual principle, which makes man so passive, is first extinguished, paralyzed. This is actually something that the Catholic Church has been doing since the fourth century AD: sweeping away the burgeoning intellectuality, paralyzing it, so that the deeper powers of the soul can develop more easily. One could say, in fact, that for a person who has gone through what you all went through in elementary school, before you had even really become human, through an education colored by intellectualism, for such a person, choirs of angels could appear on any occasion. These revelations of the angelic choirs would have no connection to the person, because intellectuality simply paralyzes the ability to receive. In contrast to this, the Catholic Church adorns the authoritative clergy in such a way that it may be enough for a person thus liberated from his intellectuality to hear the “Ite missa est” just once at the end of a mass, intoned in the way it is in some churches, for the gates of the spiritual world to be opened to such a person through what comes from the words of the mass. You may need to speak to such a person only a single word, a single sentence, and the connection with the spiritual world is there.

Of course, this is most eminently difficult for you all, because it is impossible for you to de-intellectualize yourself. You have to go through everything that is taught about all kinds of ecclesiastical concepts that are not needed at all in the sense of the Catholic Church, and that are even harmful in its sense. But this must be pointed out in order to draw attention to the fact that those powers of activity, which a priest does need if he wants to feel the connection with the spiritual world, are covered with a thick layer. But at the same time, the principles of priestly ordination are implied, and the principles for the practice of worship are implied. But for that you must understand something else.

In the spiritual world, the validity of human language begins to fade at a relatively low level. It is simply the case that when one establishes contact with a dead person, one must first learn the language through which one can communicate with the soul in the spiritual world. After a relatively short time, this soul loses all understanding of nouns, of everything that is crystallized in nouns. But it still retains the ability to understand verbs, that is, everything that points to what is becoming, to what is active. But the more the soul grows into the spiritual world, the more it loses the ability to even feel that the way of human speech is its property, and one must, in speaking, pass over to what can be expressed in interjections, to come to a common ground between people here on earth and those in the spiritual world, of course also with such spiritual entities that never appear in a human body on earth. Language is an earthly product, and it is more or less so in different degrees, according to the particular language. And so we must realize that what is put into words, what is expressed in words — such as the pulpit or the theological — can indeed only ever be a one-sided presentation of the reality of the spirit. It is impossible for you to tell people higher spiritual truths in a single unequivocal sentence if you do not present the things from different sides. This is not a triviality, but it even applies to the relationship of human thought, not only of human language, to the higher spiritual world. If I say “Christ in me”, that is one truth, but we can also turn it around and say “I am in Christ”, that is also a truth. Both are truths in the sense in which one can establish a human theory of knowledge, but they contradict each other. You cannot elaborate the image: Christ in me - I am in Christ. How do you want to elaborate the image that the Christ can be in you by being in him? And yet both are truths, that is to say, they are truths with regard to the world and not truths with regard to the supersensible world. The truth with regard to the supersensible world lies between the two statements, which, of course, need not be in complete opposition to each other, but can be at a different angle to each other.

What is impossible in this way – to bring religious substance to people – is possible to bring to people in worship. It is also possible if you are able to carry what you gain from the cult into your preaching. For the lay believer, the cult is an edification, a revelation; for the one who practices the cult, the cult must be a constant source of inspiration. It is a true cultus when it is this source of inspiration, when the one who practices the cultus – and in the highest degree this applies of course to the cultus of the Mass – feels in the act of saying the words: You can only preach in this way when you say the Mass; you would not have the spiritual substance within you from which you speak if you did not say the Mass. There must be a real relationship between the person performing the service and the reality of the cult, especially the cult of the Mass. For the cult of the Mass actually contains everything that connects man with the spiritual world, and it contains it in such a way that it can work as a continuous inspiration, in which one stands when the Mass is experienced in the right way.

It is therefore necessary, my dear friends, to grasp the concept of the Mass in such a way that you say to yourselves each time: the day brings sunrise, the day brings sunset; between sunset and sunrise there is then the night; but there is also a period of time between the daylight and the light that comes into the world when the Mass is celebrated. This belongs to the course of events in the cosmos, just as the course of the sun belongs to it. Reading or celebrating the Mass is a real thing. Perhaps it can be expressed in another way: when we look at our earth and its surroundings, we have minerals, plants, animals, and further afield we have stars, sun and moon, clouds, rivers, mountains; but although physicists dream of the constancy of matter, all this will one day no longer be there. All this is a temporary phenomenon in the universe, that is, in place of what we have on earth in our minerals, plants, animals, and so on, there will be nothing, less than nothing. But if you then look back at the events that took place on this earth as a sacrifice, their effects would always be present. The cult is more real than nature, if it is practiced in the right way. It is more real than nature. If you do not just take this theoretically, but grasp it in its full severity, it means something tremendous. It deepens the words: Heaven and Earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away, whereby, of course, by “words” is not meant what any Chinese, Japanese or German language has as a random formulation in relation to the cosmos. If the Christ is understood as speaking in Aramaic, then of course this is also a random formulation. But the Logos is that which lives in reality and in reality passes over into the evolution of the world, so that one is indeed standing in a reality with the sacrificial act, which is a reality that is more real than any natural process. This gives us a sense of responsibility, and this sense of responsibility is needed if we wish to be mediators between the spiritual world and people who are in great need of such mediation, but cannot receive it through a mere teaching, however edifying it may be. This does not mean, however, that no teaching should be given; it should certainly be given, but this teaching acquires its special power and authority through its appearance in the context of the cultic. Thus the things that are given as teaching are precisely integrated into what lives as reality in the cult.

One could say that the greatest contribution to the spread of materialism was the rejection of the cultic, because it simply limited humanity to views of the divine that only appear in the guise of the earthly. One speaks about the Divine in earthly words, in poor earthly words. These earthly words can become rich when they are backed by inspiration, which is effectively evoked by the cult. It is indeed the case that the action should carry the word. And so the word of reading the Gospel should also be carried by the action. Therefore, we incorporate the reading of the Gospel into the Mass action, and in doing so, we acquire the right to understand and also to feel and sense the reading of the Gospel in such a way that the message from the spiritual world, which the Gospel represents, introduces that which then prepares for the actual sacrificial action in the offertory. For it is through the offertory, which, as one of the main acts of the Mass, follows the reading of the Gospel, that the setting for the Mass is actually only given. If you let the content of the ritual, which you all became well acquainted with during your stay in Breitbrunn, sink in, you will see that the entire spirit of the Gospel particularly sets the scene for the offertory, and that even the utensils and so on are purified to such an extent that the next step can take place. Naturally, within the Catholic Church, the view that one should have towards these things has actually been materialized. There they consecrate a chalice or a monstrance once and for all, so that the monstrance is once and for all the Holy of Holies. They even consecrate the water there. That is not a spiritual reality, but a spiritual reality has actually been externalized, materialized. The essential thing is that the spiritual reality is carried by the human soul, and that with every single sacrifice of the Mass, the chalice and what goes with it, the bread and the wine, must first be consecrated during the sacrifice of the Mass. So consecration is an ongoing act that must be maintained in perpetual liveliness, so that only during the offertory is the consecration venue created for the following one. And when the transubstantiation follows, the transubstantiation, one is indeed in the midst of a real, spiritual transformation.

Now it is simply the case that the views of the first Christian centuries, that is, of the people on whom it depended, could not actually be disputed, but were only begun to be disputed and discussed in later centuries, since the approach of Wycliffe and others, because these discussions were all already influenced by materialism. Just think, if we take the dispute in the most crude way, it is the case that people said: The bread cannot contain the body of the Lord, it cannot be the body of the Lord!

Yes, my dear friends, only someone who sees a gross reality in this external appearance before him would speak in such a way. What you have before you as bread is not real in the true sense of the word. You must first go to the real thing if you want to discuss such things as transubstantiation. Because it is a matter of getting beyond the trivial view that what appears as a whitish or yellowish color filling the space or what meets the sense of taste is a reality. As long as it is supposed to be a reality, in which even all kinds of little demons are supposed to be present, corresponding to the imperishability of matter, one can raise all kinds of objections in a discussion. But that does not address the issue. The issue here is such things as were hinted at here yesterday with the expression “spiritual chemistry”, which is also used in the new era. For transubstantiation must be considered in such a way that what is actually taking place outwardly at the altar for the eye is Maya, appearance, but that the process that is taking place spiritually is nevertheless a reality within this community, and not only within this community, but within this place. Transubstantiation is there. And only because the spectators have ahrimanically configured eyes, which make them believe that the outer sensual reality is a reality, they do not see what is going on. This is something we must have in our consciousness. You must feel this in what I am saying and what I am now saying here and there to characterize the full seriousness of the present spiritual situation of humanity.

I said in a lecture in London recently that one must get used to the fact that the things said for the physical plane may sound contradictory when the same things are said from the spiritual world. I used the example that it is quite correct, when speaking for the physical plane, to say that Rousseau was a great man for this or that reason; that is quite all right for the physical plane. But seen from the spiritual world, one can only say: Rousseau was the general babbler of modern civilization, because everything he said is, seen from the spiritual worlds, the shallowest chatter. That is, today one must become accustomed in an intensive way to the fact that the spiritual world is something different than this physical world. This must be seen if one wants to gain a connection with the spiritual world.

Now you might say that this is just the old grumbling about the spiritual world, as it was in the Middle Ages. That is not right. The physical world becomes something completely different when viewed in the way I have just characterized it. Every flower becomes different; but it loses nothing, it only gains the fact that it becomes a mediator to the spiritual world. Does the flower lose something when I admire it as it stands in the field, when I can say all kinds of beautiful things about it, right up to the revelations of a good lyrical poet, and when it then becomes clear to me: yes, but that is not all the flower is, the flower also reveals that it merges upwards into an ethereal substance? This astral substance runs in coils (he draws on the blackboard), and through these coils one can ascend to the world of the planets. What underlies the flower is a kind of spiritual ladder into the supermundane world, and by ascending this ladder one encounters the forces that make flowers grow out of the earth and up towards heaven. Yes, if you add this to what you can say about the flower based on sensory observation, will you live in a medieval asceticism? Your view of the flower will only be enriched by it. The soul must immerse itself in this mood if it wants to receive what worship can bring it, if it simply learns to see what the physical eye does not see.

You must bring these feelings and perceptions with you to the ritual; only then will what happens become what it should be; and only then can it be said that you really enjoy with the host what the ritual speaks of. And only then are the four parts of the mass fulfilled: the gospel, the offertory, the transubstantiation or consecration, and communion.

These are things that you should not take as theory, but which I am telling you today for the reason that you approach the matter with the right feeling and only by doing so make things the truth; because without this feeling they are not truths. A mass can be a sacrifice to the devil just as easily as it can be a sacrifice to God. It is not the insignificant thing that the Protestant mind would like to make of it. A mass celebrated by a priest may be a sacrifice to God today within the

table of the Catholic Church, but it is never the nothing that the Protestants would like to make of it. They certainly do not succeed in making the Mass an insignificant material act, but they can make it a sacrifice to the devil under certain circumstances. Because what happens [in the Mass] is a reality, that is, the action in question is oriented either in the right or in the wrong direction, but not in a direction that leads to nothingness. However, it can also lead in a very bad, harmful direction. You must be aware that you can say to yourself: I cannot actually remain neutral, I can only serve God or the devil – with all possible intermediate stages, of course. Serving the devil is a very difficult task, for that you must be a consciously bad person; but there are all kinds of powers between the divine and the ahrimanic world.

This is part of the state of mind that one must have for the whole of the cult. When one has this state of mind, this inner liveliness that places one in the spiritual world, then the degree of consciousness that one attains is simply a matter of time. Do not forget that what you can achieve during the sacrifice of the Mass always draws your soul into the spiritual world, that your soul is drawn into the scene of the spiritual world, that you are not just saying something with your mouth and doing something with your hands, but that you are standing within the spiritual world. You must be aware of this when you consider the concept of worship. That means you must be very clear in your own mind that in the act of worship you are performing something that is a reality, and that when you speak as the celebrant, you are also speaking as a messenger from other worlds. You must feel as such a messenger. You must not feel as one who only establishes a connection between what is here on earth and heaven, but also as one who brings something from heaven into the earthly. That is your difference from the mere lay believer, and that is the tone that you must bring to the world if you want to found a justly existing priestly community. The world must feel that you, as priests, are attuned to the impulses from the spiritual world. You do not have to tell the world this in theory, for that would stir it up. But you must do what you do with your consciousness; then you will do the right thing. And then you can say, for example, that the words spoken at the ordination or at other ceremonies are the reflection of what takes place beforehand in the spiritual world, because you yourself have this connection to the spiritual world in your state of mind. What then appears as an outward act visible to the eyes is, of course, the legitimate reflection of the spiritual event; but one must not see it as a mere symbol when one stands before the believer. For the believer, what takes place outwardly in relation to the religious is really the same as - take any human being whom you say is a great painter, but he has never painted a picture. It may well be that he is a great painter for the spiritual world, but here in this world a painter must have actually painted a picture. They may all be priests for the spiritual world, but here in the physical world they must practice a cult in order to be true priests; then they behave in the same way as a painter behaves in order to paint. That is the great error of Protestantism today, when it says, figuratively speaking, that it does not matter that pictures are painted, but only that painters are there, so one should abolish painting, so that such terrible sensual elements do not enter into the treatment of the spiritual. It is really so. Only, when one says it, today things are such that they seem quite paradoxical to man, because even within the Catholic Church the self-evident, organic nature of worship is no longer felt, although even today one can still find naive Catholics who already have a feeling for the reality that lies in worship. Sometimes this is even more intense in the faithful than in the Catholic priesthood.

That is what I wanted to tell you, because anything I could add to what has been said so far can only be a deepening of the feeling and the state of mind. During the time we are gathered here, we must become priests, so to speak, through what is said and done among us. After all, everything that needs to be said to become a priest has already been said. Basically, not much needs to be added, except perhaps to clarify one or other sentiment.

So now we have reached the point that tomorrow at the beginning of the lesson I will first explain how we in this community now have to relate to this whole thing in practice, because of course some kind of consecration of the community will have to be carried out. To do this, it will be necessary for what has so far been described as necessary in theory to become immediately real in practice within this community. So tomorrow we will first deal with the question: How does an individual become a priest, and how do the individual members of the community relate to one another, so that those sitting here today become a priestly organism? Then we must move on to the practical exercise, to the demonstration of what I have said about celebrating a cult, and we will see that we can then really bring about the sacrifice of the Mass in a practical way.

I would like to have said this today for the strengthening of your souls. If you take it in the right way and bring with you the necessary mood for it, you will really be able to become what you want to become. You must leave as different people than when you came. You have not needed that so far, but you must have it now. You must leave here not only with the feeling that you have taken something in, but with the feeling that you have truly become something else. Consider what that means for human consciousness. If you have thought about it properly, we will be able to proceed in the right way tomorrow.

Rudolf Steiner: My dear friends! We have asked you to come here today because we, as the supervisory board of the “Kommende Tag”, have to introduce Mr. Benkendörfer as the general director of the “Kommende Tag” and introduce him to you.

The circumstances as they have developed, partly the circumstances in the “Coming Day” itself, but also, in particular, the circumstances between the “Coming Day” and the anthroposophical and the other outside world, have made it necessary to create the position of general director of the “Coming Day”, and the supervisory board had to look around for a suitable person. And I have often said that this task of finding suitable personalities for these or those posts today, which is connected with a very, very extensive sense of responsibility and a very extensive necessity for insight into the most diverse circumstances, that it is extremely difficult to find personalities for such posts. We consider ourselves fortunate to have been able to win Mr. Benkendörfer for this position, and we share this joy and satisfaction with you, believing that this satisfaction will also arise for you to the highest degree over time through Mr. Benkendörfer's work with all of you.

On this occasion, however, it is my duty, having discussed the most fundamental tasks of both the “Coming Day” and the movements from which the “Coming Day” emerged with Mr. Benkendörfer on the occasion of his integration into the “Coming Day”, örfer on the occasion of his integration into the “Coming Day”, it is incumbent upon me to tell you something about the content of these conversations and other things that need to be said today in connection with them.

A real, fruitful development of the “Day to Come”, as we had conceived it, is only possible if the “Day to Come” can truly be seen as growing out of, and continually growing out of, both the entire anthroposophical movement and the threefold social order movement. Now I ask you to consider one thing that has arisen almost by itself here in Stuttgart, although only partially: something of a model, but only a model, since in the present circumstances many exemplary aspects, perhaps even the most important ones, cannot be present. But even if it is not the desirable threefold social order, there is still the model of a threefold social order. We have the movement, which we have concentrated in the Waldorf school, and it in turn stands in connection with the entire anthroposophical movement. This is, so to speak, the spiritual part of a threefold organism. Then there is the Federation for the Tripartite Structure of the Social Organism, which today is essentially only there for the propaganda of the one after which it is named, which has only preparatory work to do for the future, but which we must nevertheless, in a certain sense, take as a model for what must be called the state-legal part of the tripartite social organism.

Now it has often been emphasized that it is precisely through the threefoldness of the social organism that true, concrete unity is achieved, not the abstract unity that the abstract state has to represent. And so, of course, a close bond had to develop first between all that is our spiritual limb and the political-state-legal limb in the weekly journal “Threefold Social Organism”, which must, as it were, stretch its arm out to both sides. But everything that has been developed here in the Waldorf School, in the Anthroposophical Society, in the Federation for Threefolding, in the connection [with] the Threefolding newspaper, must in turn move the current to the actual economic part of our local Stuttgart organism, to the “Kommenden Tag”. One cannot really exist without the other.

When our friend Kühne was introduced, I spoke about some of the immediate tasks of the threefolding movement today. We must not forget that we are living in a very special time, in a time in which the speed of events has increased significantly compared to previous years. And the most harmful thing for us under all circumstances is to get up in the morning and bring with us from yesterday's habits the thoughts of yesterday and then still want to have an effect from these thoughts of yesterday on the morning of the next day. We see that precisely the terrible misery of the times is increasing everywhere outside of our movement; we see that the attacks against the anthroposophical movement are made out of yesterday's thoughts. Those people, who are mostly the opponents, cannot think anything other than what has been done to date, in thoughts that they construct from this.

But these thoughts are outdated. And we must come to terms with the fact that we must stand on the ground of new thoughts, especially in our movement, and that our thoughts themselves must be renewed in a relatively short time. I will say a few more words about what I mean by the latter.

We have just come from a staff meeting at the company that was previously the company of Jos€ del Montes, whose partners were: Mr. del Monte himself, our supervisory board member, Mr. Emil Poch, a member of the Anthroposophical Society, and Mr. Benkendörfer, who will now be the managing director of the “Coming Day”. Two workers spoke after Mr. Benkendörfer and I spoke at the staff meeting today. But everything that these two workers said is, for those who can evaluate such things, again something extraordinarily weighty for the assessment of the present world situation. One does not really get anywhere today if one cannot evaluate such things with all sharpness. What is discussed in the 'Key Points of the Social Question' is that the bridge between the leading classes of today's humanity and [the working classes, the actual proletariat] has actually been broken, and indeed broken by the fault of the leading classes, that one will be able to note on such an occasion with an extraordinarily heavy heart. You speak to the people, the people speak to you, and basically, a very different language is spoken most of the time. And the task, which is already hinted at in the “key points”, the task of building this bridge, must be solved. Because there is no answer to the social question without building this bridge, without the possibility of an understanding between the former ruling classes and the proletariat. And building this bridge is one of the most difficult tasks. It is a task that we should not lose sight of for a single hour, or even a single minute. Of course, these people speak in the most ancient phrases of social phrases, but these phrases are natural to them, have become elementary to them, they are their whole being. They have become hollowed out, mere human shells, hollowed out and stuffed with Marxist and similar phrases, now also with Bolshevist ones. These people carry this with them, they are armored by what basically resembles a human being, and they bring it forward.

In the course of modern development, we have come to a point where nothing has been done, and indeed, when individuals have made an effort – my efforts, for example, while teaching at the Workers' Education School in Berlin – when individuals have made an effort, they have been completely abandoned, especially by the leading circles. They were concerned with theater, with newspaper articles, with everything that was only in their class, which spoke a completely different language than what was spoken in the proletariat every evening in meetings; which not only speaks a different language but also leads a different life. I believe that intellectually, it still exists today, even more so than before, and that it was once starkly and physically evident to me in Berlin when, in the early years, when these things still had little significance, there was talk of the possibility of a small revolution. In West Berlin, some families felt compelled to keep their shutters down and their houses locked for a whole day. The locked house is what the leading classes basically do in the social movement. It is still the same today. Today, in this small circle, we must have no illusions about this. Because we, we, as this particular movement, must regard building this bridge as our special task.

And we must entertain absolutely no illusions about our own path. Above all, we must not entertain the illusion – and I consider this to be the most serious of all – that we can take our time. We don't have much time! Because anyone who looks at things not in the abstract but in the concrete knows that we are in a great hurry for our movement. And in turn, a works meeting like this is extremely characteristic of that. What do you think: the more factories we incorporate for the “Coming Day”, the greater the number of workers we get in the wake of the “Coming Day”, and they ask from their point of view - whether the question is about an old shopkeeper or something else - they ask from their point of view: What does the “day to come” want? - If we just sit on our curule chairs here and take our time with the whole three-folding movement, then the proletariat grows into our own movement in such a way that we have no possibility of getting along with it, no possibility of coming to any kind of understanding. Rather, we will simply come to the point, as I will describe it to you bluntly, that people will say: No matter how much the “Kommende Tag” emphasizes that its supervisory board members do not receive any royalties or profits, it will not be better for the workers either. - If we take our time, if we do not understand today that we do not have time, but that we have to act as quickly as possible, our movement will be in vain. We must not lose sight of this. Through everything we do, especially in this way, we are placing a new obligation on ourselves in the most serious way to act quickly. Because the bridge will be built in no other way than by winning over as quickly as possible those people we need from all classes of the population for our ideas.

My dear friends! Learn to be uncompromising in every way. We have not had good experiences in the past with the compromises that were supposed to be spun; we would only lose time in the future through all the compromises. It is necessary that we represent what we have to say with the same rigor in the world as I did yesterday in relation to Count Keyserling in the public lecture. If we listened to those voices telling us that people like Count Hermann Keyserling, who judges anthroposophy favorably, could be won over, then that would mean that we would give up on ourselves today; today the matter has already reached the point that we would give up on ourselves. On the other hand, what we are experiencing in Stuttgart shows that our ideas have the potential to attract many people. We just have to really commit our whole selves to it, because we must not let those people who come together simply drift apart again, but we have to keep them together. And we cannot use other people in our society, all those who act so sympathetically and always say: There is such and such a person, we want to win him over. — That is the kind of politics that is often practiced in our country, which has already done us harm and should not really be continued. Now we are at an important point in time, and we must not compromise, but stand by the position that I have often expressed in our threefolding newspaper: simply to put our ideas into as many heads as possible, quite independently of who the people are; if they want to come, we take them in. We cannot compromise on any point. We simply reject everything that people want to bring in. When the Federation for Threefolding began here – I have often explained the context – we started by going among the proletariat, and at first we actually had quite noticeable success. We then tried to use these efforts to get the works council issue off the ground, and we had to let the works council issue peter out, so to speak.

Now I do not particularly want to criticize the course of these efforts, that would take us too far today. These things will perhaps have to be examined from various angles in the near future, but I just want to mention that it is eminently damaging for us for internal reasons if we take up a movement or an effort and then let it fizzle out. Circumstances may force us to do so at some point, but then we must be sure that the circumstances of the time have compelled us. But we ourselves must do everything to ensure that a movement that has been sparked by us does not fizzle out.

But as I said, I don't blame anyone, I don't criticize anything, I'm just pointing out that we started the cultural council movement and let it fizzle out. I would like to point out that we were forced to initiate a matter - regardless of how it turns out - to gather sympathy rallies - it has fizzled out. It has been emphasized with rather strong words that the Threefolding Newspaper should be transformed into a daily newspaper as quickly as possible - the movement as such has so far fizzled out.

As long as we do not have the feeling that when we do something, it is imperative that what we do has consequences, that it must be followed up, as long as we do not have the feeling that we cannot leave anything undone, that we have to move everything forward as quickly as possible, our whole movement will still come to nothing. We must keep this in mind with all clarity. Today, we are faced with the necessity of introducing a new initiative into the Federation for the Threefold Social Order. The Federation for the Threefold Social Order must achieve on its own initiative what the aforementioned bridge achieves. To do this, it must truly represent modern diplomacy, as I mentioned when introducing Mr. Kühne. Today it is rather fruitless to talk about all kinds of utopian ideas about how things should be in the future in this or that area, how associations should be organized and the like. Of course, these things can also be discussed, but they are not the most important thing. The most important thing today is to address the real issues of the day and to deal with these real issues of the day.

We are not concerned with setting up many such things as the “Kommende Tag” is. If we have to set up such a thing, we will know how to set it up based on the circumstances. But there is no time today to fuss about how a business should look, how the proletariat should be treated, and the like. Today we are dealing with the most diverse aspirations. They are real. We are dealing with the aspirations, for example, of those workers who are completely on the side that in Germany are called the majority socialists; we are dealing with all sorts of other shades. From these shades arise the present-day conditions of public life. On the other hand, there are the aspirations of public life and those currents that are characterized, for example, by the ideal of Stinnes. He has spoken out, and many have heard what he does, and they can follow Stinnes's activities in many fields. From his point of view, there is nothing complicated about this, but rather something that has been very clearly thought out and clearly defined by him. Stinnes wants to create conditions in which the entire working class of Germany will one day be forced to bow down at his gates and beg for work. He wants to trust the conditions. He wants to create such circumstances that the proletariat will be forced – be it through grandiose lockouts and the like that precede them – to push through the conditions that will force the proletariat to beg for work at any price. That is the ideal Stinnes has proclaimed, and that he consciously implements from day to day. Others are not as ingenious as Stinnes, but they accomplish similar things and they know what they want.

We have to move within the context of what is happening. We have to look at the circumstances. I will soon be providing a short article for the third issue of the threefolding newspaper, if not for the very next one, in which I will show how characteristic it is for international social conditions, what nature has taken on the First International, the Second International and the Third International. Studying these first, second and third internationals of the labor movement is highly significant for assessing the unrest in the proletariat today. These are the realities of the present. It is interesting, and I will demonstrate, that the First, Second and Third Internationals relate to one another as follows: the First International, in which the [followers of Bakunin] broke away from Marx, was still somewhat influenced by the spiritual essence; the Second was merely political and parliamentary work; and the Third is merely economic work, with the expulsion of all parliamentary and all spiritual aspects. So that one can almost study the progression from the spiritual to the parliamentary, to the mere economic thinking, by studying the First, the Second and the Third International.

But my dear friends, what I am describing is alive in what is happening today, and one cannot speak into the world as if into a wall, but one must speak in such a way that one knows what is actually alive there. You have to tell people what “strikes” them. You cannot talk about what you talked about ten or two years ago. For example, when talking about unreality, one must talk about something like the English miners' strike, and one must point out how the behavior there shows how, at the most prominent point, there was such an unreal way of thinking that they wanted to settle a huge strike by simply suppressing it for the time being and laying the seeds for prolonged, periodically recurring new strikes. This can already be seen today from the course of events since then.

Today, it is not about dreaming up utopias about what a fully developed, tripartite social organism should be like. The Key Points of the Social Question do not talk about that either, and where it does, it is only by way of example. Today, we must familiarize ourselves with the most concrete realities, and we must learn to speak to people in a way that resonates with them. But, my dear friends, we can only do this if we are not isolated. If we are limited to the framework in which I myself can still speak today – I can actually only speak in a few places – then when Mr. Kühne and Dr. Wachsmuth speak, it is not enough, not nearly enough! What is important is to develop our new initiative above all in such a way that we can put forward a whole corps of spokesmen to the world, because if we do not have a corps of spokesmen, the few will be swallowed up, that is, their activity is of no use. Today, the situation is such that the few speakers are devoured if there is no corps of speakers. We must use our speeches to ensure that in the event of a crisis, the minds of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, for example, are already filled with thoughts that simply suggest that one could get over something like , let us say, if we now have del Monte's business, have Unger's business, that one day it would be the case that the material improvements that are often the only thing the workers understand today could not be given to the people. We have to get to the point where the people who are with us say: what they have told us makes so much sense to us that we would rather go with them than with the proletarian leaders. If we cannot manage to communicate with each other to such an extent, to speak the [workers'] language to such an extent that we can communicate [with them], then our work is in vain for the time being. We have to be able to get there – there is no other way than to become a body of minds. Because it is of no use if we represent our affairs individually, sporadically. We have to work on a large scale. It is absolutely essential that a large following, a large number of followers, be won in a relatively short time. And we must also keep them. We must not let them drift apart again. For example, we must not forget to draw a lesson from the fact that many months ago our threefolding newspaper had exactly the same 3000 readers that it still has today. It is the task of the Threefolding Federation to ensure that such a fact does not exist at all. We must take this task seriously. To do so, however, we must be particularly careful to avoid getting caught up in things from yesterday. We must plunge into the whole of contemporary life and work directly from the present. We cannot afford the luxury of theorizing that seeks to be universally valid. We must be clear about the fact that what we say today with full value may no longer be true tomorrow if we do not work.

What must we do today? At a meeting like the one we just attended, of course we have to say something; we cannot speak in empty phrases if we want to see the truth. But it will not be possible to make it come true if we do not work in such a way that we present ourselves as a cohesive body. It is up to us not just to say something, because just because we speak a truth does not make it a truth. A truth, to be of the kind that is spoken in social life, only becomes a truth when one can subsequently do what is said. Truth demands action now. It is not a truth of the kind that underlies the sphere of the will, such as the truths of natural science. It can be a truth today and a lie in eight weeks if one is not able to make it a truth. If one does not consider the inner life of social events, something that must happen through the threefold social organism cannot happen.

Through the publishing house, spiritual life in turn extends directly into the economic organism of the “coming day”. And so everything is interwoven with us.

So it is actually necessary that what works here in Stuttgart and then goes out is basically seen as one big unit, and that we do not fragment in any way, but rather embrace everything in our interest.

Above all, I would like to draw attention to one thing: what was inaugurated here in Stuttgart with the best of intentions could not, from the outset, be driven in such a way that it could be understood in the same way out in the world. Instead of always guiding those proletarians out in the world to whom we had the opportunity to speak – which would have been absolutely necessary for us – the local groups [of the federation] often considered it their task to center such things, which led to our local groups being absorbed, more or less temporarily, into the proletarian bodies in a disorganized manner – it was later withdrawn. We have to get rid of that habit. We can only successfully shape a completely new movement if we are unable to compromise on anything. When we spoke to proletarians, it was only meant in the sense that we wanted to win proletarians over by speaking to them. I have indicated this by the fact that basically I have not made a single compromise among proletarians, not even at the time when they were joining us. And the mistakes that have been made have also arisen from the compromisery that has been practiced among us.

I have actually spoken to you most of what I always think needs to be done for threefolding in general. I have pointed out points that need to be taken up again in some form. The whole threefolding movement must be taken in hand so intensively that we can turn the newspaper into a daily newspaper in the shortest possible time. The threefold social order movement must be promoted so intensively that a number of agitators – I have often said fifty – are trained, and equipped with the knowledge needed today to avoid spreading party slogans or political phrases among the people, but to speak about reality. Then we can withstand the opposition if all this can be developed. Something that is saturated with reality will have an effect, even if it is misunderstood at first. For us, it is only important to know that something is effective. Success, immediate success, is not what matters. But we must do what is necessary.

And then it is necessary, above all, that we familiarize ourselves with the smallest concrete – because the smallest thing is sometimes the seed of the greatest – political or economic movement in every class today. We must familiarize ourselves with the goals that are working today. And the aims are effective today in an enormous number [of people]. You have to pay attention to our discussions everywhere, so that gradually a judgment is spread, radiated, from our movement, which leads to every communist or whoever says: Threefolding thinks about the matter in this way, and the people of Threefolding say this and that about it. But this must be effectively represented to the world so that it is heard. These are the basic conditions of our society, and we must actually be able to point to something that is in line with them, that makes visible what we want, for example, with something like the “coming day”.

We need scientific institutes as quickly as possible, and we have to make it clear how these scientific or artistic institutes are connected to the whole social movement. Without scientific and artistic institutes affiliated with our “Coming Day”, whose content we can make understandable to the broadest circles of humanity, we will not get anywhere. We have to put something into the minds of the proletarians, so that what is inside them prevents them from talking to us only as they do today. Of course, one can argue with them. Why did they set up the programs of the proletariat differently at the time of the First International? Because there were still common ideas that all classes of people had. These ideas have long since become empty phrases, just as the German constitution was an empty phrase. It had universal, equal, and secret suffrage; the reality in Germany was that the only person who had anything to say was Bismarck. That was how far removed from reality the idea was. And that is basically still the case today.

Try to study what the reality was that was cooked up when the revolution broke out in Germany. Try to compare that with the ideas that prevailed at the time, and you will see that it was no different in November 1918. And today it is even worse in terms of the general ideas that are supposed to be at work.

We must be clear about the fact that the old ideas have been exhausted and that we cannot compromise with the supporters of the old ideas before the people come to us. Of course, one must do one's duty when the opportunity arises; even when such a man as Foreign Minister Simons, who himself emphasizes that he only sits in his chair with reluctance, who always talks about wanting to be released as soon as possible, even with such a personality who misunderstands the task of the time, when something like what happened with Simons occurs, one must do one's duty. But you must not be under any illusions. It is more important to be able to say that you have done your duty than to have to say that you have given in to hope. There are many things you have to do where you can't give in to hope, because things turn out quite differently today than what you can do about them. You have to do your duty on such occasions.

For us, it is about opening our eyes, about waking up in the morning to what the day brings, not to what we thought yesterday.

And you won't hold it against me for speaking so freely and frankly, but it is what Mr. Benkendörfer and I have repeatedly discussed over the past few days. And it should only characterize something extraordinary that Mr. Benkendörfer needs it, since he is really – you can be assured of that – taking up his position with all goodwill, with great prudence, with extraordinary business acumen, with full devotion to the anthroposophical and other matters, but that he needs to be supported by everyone. The person who stands here with such responsibility, as Mr. Benkendörfer will stand here with such responsibility, must be supported by the Anthroposophical Society, by the Federation for Threefolding, by the Waldorf School, by everything that is relevant to us; otherwise he can work like an angel and achieve nothing. If we allow certain disharmonies, such as those that have existed up to now, to continue to have an effect, then Mr. Benkendörfer will not be able to work any miracles here either. Then that which is so often evident in our movement, but which must be eradicated, will take full hold of our movement, and it will continue to rot.

What is necessary at the present time is for each and every one of us to reflect on the fact that we support Mr. Benkendörfer in the most energetic way possible. Prudence and a sense of responsibility must prevail here. But combined with this, there must be a relationship of mutual understanding and cooperation. In today's difficult times, everyone must really do their best, especially when a person who has found it so difficult to make up his mind to take on this post under the current circumstances has finally taken on this post. I know how difficult it has been for him. He did it solely out of the realization that our cause is a necessary one. This realization that our cause is a necessary one towered above everything else for him, above the belief that it could succeed out of the circumstances. Because at first this belief was not very strong, that it could succeed out of the circumstances in Stuttgart and elsewhere. But in the end, the necessity was recognized, and that means a great deal. And it was out of this realization of the necessity of our entire cause for the present, out of this realization, that Mr. Benkendörfer overcame all his doubts and will, under the terms, head the general management of the “Kommenden Tages”, which I, above all, as the result of the initiative of Mr. Molt Mr. Benkendörfer to take over the post under the conditions that I immediately pronounced as absolutely necessary, and which I can summarize in the words: The General Director has assumed full and absolute responsibility for what happens in the “Coming Day”. It is the task of the supervisory board to represent to the outside world, first to the Anthroposophical Society and then to the rest of the outside world, what happens in the “Kommende Tag”. But as things stand, it is not possible for the official affairs of the “Day to Come” to be arranged differently, with a general director standing here who bears the full, heavy responsibility with his whole person because he wants to bear it, because he recognizes the necessity of this bearing. In this sense, I myself, as chairman of the supervisory board, will always be confronted with Mr. Benkendörfer. I will never fail to think up on my own initiative what is necessary for any branch of our movement, to seek out the opportunities that may arise to do this or that, but I will never really do anything without first discussing it in detail with Mr. Benkendörfer, insofar as it is to become an official matter of “Kommenden Tages”. In this way, I indicate to you the direction that each individual matter must take. Each individual initiative cannot be paralyzed, but can be developed all the more if we remain aware that the person who, as managing director, is fully responsible for the position can count on the fact that we also take this responsibility into account, that we do not cause him difficulties with partial or other actions, but in the most blatant way, we honestly unload what we find out on our own initiative, so to speak, onto his responsibility.

This must be the direction, because that is the modality under which I myself asked Mr. Benkendörfer to respond to the proposal made by our dear friend, the curator of the Bund für Dreigliederung, vice-president of the supervisory board of “Kommendes Tag”, protector of the Freie Waldorfschule, Mr. Emil Molt. Mr. Molt's initiative led to the proposal. Mr. Benkendörfer initially only agreed to discuss Mr. Molt's suggestion, so the first modality was this: But in the future, it must not be otherwise than that this general manager assumes full responsibility and that he can carry this responsibility through the special probation of everything that lies in the area of all our individual companies. I ask that the latter be given particular consideration, because without that, we will not be able to move forward.

I myself am personally most deeply grateful to Mr. Benkendörfer for promising to take on this responsibility in this spirit. And I hope that it is possible for him to carry this responsibility by ensuring that these special circumstances are properly understood in the broadest circles of our anthroposophical movement, the Threefolding Federation, the independent Waldorf school and all that follows from it, so that he can carry the responsibility.

That is what I wanted to say to you as Chairman of the Supervisory Board at this important hour of the introduction of the new General Director.

I welcome our dear friend Benkendörfer as General Director of “The Day to Come”!

Just think how few people today are able to awaken in their souls a clearly pertinent understanding of all the preparations now being made everywhere for Christmas. Clear ideas about this festival are scarce, and most of them correspond only in small degree with the intentions of those who in the past established the great festivals as symbols of the Infinite and Imperishable in the world. The preparations being made for Christmas that are published in our newspapers convince us of this. There is hardly anything more hopeless and alien to a true understanding of Christmas than the material being published today.

Now let us summarize in our souls the whole range of spiritual science that has been offered in various lectures this autumn. Let us not make it the pedantic summary of a schoolmaster, however, but one that will arise in our hearts when, from the standpoint of spiritual science, we connect it with a Christmas festival imbued with a spiritual-scientific concept of life that is not gray theory or an outer confession and philosophy, but life itself pulsing through us. Modern man, more than he thinks, confronts nature as a stranger—certainly more so now than in the time of Goethe. Who today can still experience the great depths of the words spoken by Goethe at the beginning of the Weimar period of his life? At that time he addressed a hymn or prayer to nature with its mysterious forces:

“Nature! By her we are encompassed and enfolded, unable to withdraw from her, nor yet to penetrate her deeper. Unbid and unforewarned, into the gyrations of her dance she lifts us, whirling and swirling us onward, until exhausted from her arms we fall.

“Unceasingly she generates new forms; what exists was never here before, what was does not return—all is new yet always the old.

“We live in the midst of her and are strangers to her. She speaks with us unceasingly and does not divulge her secret to us. We affect her constantly and yet have no power over her.

“She seems to aim in everything toward individuality, and does not trouble about individuals. Now she builds and now destroys, and her workshop is inaccessible.

“She lives in countless children, and the mother, where is she? She is the only artist: from the simplest substance to the greatest contrasts, without seeming exertion to the greatest perfection, the most exact acuteness, always clothed with gentleness. Each of her works has its own being, each of her phenomena the most isolated concept, and yet all is one. She acts a show: whether she sees it herself we do not know, and yet she plays for us who are standing in the corner.

“An eternal living, growing and moving is in her, and yet she does not advance. She is forever changing and in her, nothing for a moment still. She has not concept of rest and has attached her curse to stagnation. She is firm. Her tread is measured, rare her exceptions, her laws immutable ...”

We are all children of nature and when we believe we are not acting in the least according to its laws, we are acting perhaps all the more in accordance with the great law flowing through it and streaming into us. Who can feel deeply today these other significant words of Goethe in which he tries to express how man can penetrate with his feelings into the hidden forces common to himself and nature? Here Goethe addresses nature not as a lifeless being, as modern materialistic thought would have it, but as a living spirit:

Spirit sublime, thou gav'st me all, gav'st me all
For which I prayed. Thou has not turned in vain
Thy countenance to me in fire and flame.
Thou gav'st me glorious nature as a royal realm,
The power to feel and to enjoy her.
Not Amazed, cold visits only thou allow'st;
Thou grantest me to look in her deep breast
Even as in the bosom of a friend.
Thou leadest past a series of the living
Before me, teaching me to know my brothers
In silent covert and in air and water.
And when the storm roars screeching through the forest,
When giant fir-tree plunges, sweeping down
And crushing neighboring branches, neighboring trunks,
And at its fall the hills, dull, hollow, thunder:
Then leadest thou me to the cavern safe,
Show'st me myself, and my own heart becomes
Aware of deep mysterious miracles.¹

Here is expressed the mood through which Goethe, out of his feeling for nature, endeavored to enliven what flowed out of feeling allied with knowledge. This is the mood of a time when wisdom was in league with nature and there were created those signs of feeling united with nature and the universe, which we in spiritual science recognize in the great festivals. Now they have become abstractions, and the soul and heart meet them almost with indifference. In many instances today, the word, which we can dispute or swear by, means more than what it originally represented. What has become an external, literal word was really intended to be the representative, the herald, the symbol of the great creative Word that lives in nature and the whole universe and that can again arise in us if we truly know ourselves. The intention, when the great festivals were established on the occasions provided throughout the course of nature, was to make men conscious of this Word. Let us use the knowledge acquired in the course of our spiritual-scientific lectures to understand what the ancient sages expressed in the Christmas festival.

The festival held at Christmas time is not only a Christian event. It has existed wherever religious feeling was expressed. If you direct your gaze back thousands of years before our era to ancient Egypt, Asia or other regions, you find a festival being celebrated at the same time of year that Christianity recognizes the birth of Christ.

What was the nature of this primeval festival that was celebrated all over the earth at this time of year? In answering this question, we shall restrict our considerations today to those marvelous fire festivals that were celebrated in ancient times in regions of Europe, Scandinavia, Scotland, and in England by the ancient Celtic priests, the Druids.

What was the nature of their celebration? They celebrated the end of the winter season and the approach of spring. Though, to be sure, winter deepens as we move toward Christmas, nevertheless, a victory proclaims itself in nature at this time that is the symbol of hope, confidence and trust for man. In this way the victory of the sun over the counter forces of nature was expressed in most languages. Today we have felt how the days have grown shorter, which is an expression of the withering and falling asleep of the forces of nature, and this will continue until the day we celebrate as Christmas, a day that was also celebrated by our ancestors. From this day on, the days begin to grow longer. The light of the sun celebrates its victory over darkness. Materialistic thought does not reflect much on this event, but for those endowed with vital feeling and knowledge, it was the living expression for a spiritual experience of the Godhead that guides our lives. As an important and decisive event is experienced in the individual personal life of a man, so the winter solstice was experienced as a decisive event in the life of a higher being—as the memorial of something uniquely sublime. We are thus led to the fundamental concept of the Christmas festival as a cosmic festival, a festival of the first order for humanity.

In those ages in which genuine esotericism was alive and active like the very life blood of people—a fact that is denied by the materialistic world view of today—one observed an event taking place in nature at Christmas time that was considered a monument, a memorial of a great event that once had taken place on earth. During those days the priests collected the faithful ones, the teachers of the people, around them at the midnight hour and endeavored to divulge a great secret. What they said to them was somewhat as follows. I am not relating something here that has been discovered and thought out by abstract science, but what has lived in the Mysteries, in the secret shrines, in those earlier times.

Today, so said the priests, we see the victory of the sun over darkness ushered in. This also once took place on earth in a larger sense when the sun celebrated its great victory over darkness. Up to that time, everything physical, all bodily life on earth had only reached the level of development of the animals. The highest kingdom on earth at that time, prepared itself for the reception of the immortal human soul. Then, in this primeval age, the great moment in the evolution of mankind arrived when the immortal soul descended from divine heights. The surging life had developed to the point where the human body was able to receive the imperishable soul. This human ancestor was at a higher stage than that imagined by materialistic naturalists, but even so the spiritual, immortal part did not live in him yet. The human soul descended to earth from a higher planet, and the earth was now to become its field of action, its dwelling place.

We call these human ancestors the Lemurians. They were followed by the Atlanteans, who preceded the present-day Aryans. The human bodies of the Lemurians were fructified by the higher human soul—a great moment in the evolution of man that spiritual science calls “the descent of the Divine Sons of the Spirit.” Ever since Lemurian times the human soul has worked in and formed the human body for its higher development. I can only give an indication of what I am now going to say, but I have spoken in detail about these things in other lectures. Those who are here for the first time should take this into consideration and not take what I say as mere fantasy.

At the time when the human body was first fructified by the imperishable soul, the situation was quite different from the way materialistic natural science conceives of it today. An event took place in the universe that belongs to the most important in the evolution of man. Gradually, the constellation of earth, moon and sun arose that made the descent of the souls possible. It was in that period that the sun gained its significance for the growth and prospering of man on earth, and also for his fellow creatures, the plants and animals. To grasp this connection of sun, moon and earth with earth-man in the right way, one must make spiritually clear to himself the whole development of man and earth. There was a time—so ancient wisdom taught—when the earth was united with the sun and moon, forming one body. At that time, the earth beings of today had different shapes and appearances that conformed with the consolidated cosmic body of sun, moon and earth. Every living thing on earth received its being through the fact that first the sun, and then the moon separated from the earth and formed an external relationship to it. The mystery of the union of the human spirit with the universal spirit is connected with this development. In spiritual science the universal spirit is called the Logos. It embraces the sun, moon and earth, and in it we live, weave and have our being.

Just as the earth was born from the body that also comprised the sun and moon, so is man born from a spirit or soul to which the sun, earth and moon belong. When man looks up to the sun or the moon, what he sees should not be limited only to these external physical bodies, but he should perceive them as the external bodies of spiritual beings. Modern materialism can no longer accomplish this. Yet, one who is unable to see the sun and moon as bodies of spirits, will be unable to recognize the human body as that of a spirit. As truly as the human body is the bearer of a spirit, so the celestial bodies are likewise bearers of spiritual beings. Man belongs to these spiritual beings. His body is separated from the forces that rule in sun and moon but his physical nature nevertheless harbors forces that are active in them. The same spirituality is active in his soul, however, that governs the sun and moon. By becoming an earth being, man became dependent upon the sun's activity as a separate body shining upon the earth.

Our ancestors felt themselves to be spiritual children of the whole universe and understood that we have become human beings through what the sun spirit had called forth as our spirit. For us, the victory of the sun over darkness signifies a memory of the victory for our soul when for the first time the sun shone down upon the earth as it does today. It was a sun victory when the immortal soul descended into the physical body and immersed itself in the darkness of instincts, desires and passions.

Let us visualize the life of the spirit. For early man, darkness, which followed upon a previous sun period, preceded the victory of the sun. But the human soul, which sprang from the Divinity, had to dip down into unconsciousness for a time in order to form there the lower nature of man. It was the human soul that gradually built up the lower nature of man so that later it could come to dwell in it. If you imagine an architect using the best forces in himself to build a dwelling into which he subsequently moves, you will have an adequate likeness of the entrance of the immortal human soul into the physical body. At that early time, however, the soul could work only unconsciously on its dwelling place, and it is this that is expressed in the picture of darkness. The lighting up of consciousness in the human soul is expressed, of course, in the picture of the sun victory.

For those who had a living feeling for the connection of man with the universe, the sun victory signified the moment in which they received what was of the greatest importance for their earth existence. It was this great moment that was commemorated in the festival celebrating this event at the winter solstice.

In all earlier times, man's course through his earth development was seen to resemble increasingly the regular rhythmical course of nature. When we look up from the soul of man to the course of the sun in the universe and all that is related to it, we experience the great rhythm and harmony existing there as contrasted with the chaos and disharmony of our own natures. How rhythmical is the path of the sun; how regular is the return of the phenomena of nature in the course of the year and day!

I have frequently mentioned the rhythmical nature of the development of the lower beings. Just imagine the sun leaving its orbit for a fraction of a second and the unbelievable, indescribable disorder that would result. Our universe is only made possible through the great, tremendous harmony of the sun's orbit. With this harmony are connected the rhythmical life processes of all the beings dependent upon the sun. Picture to yourself how the sun calls forth the beings of nature in spring. It is not possible to think the violet might bloom at a different time from the one we are accustomed to. Imagine seeds to be broadcast or harvests to be gathered at times different from the usual ones. Right up to animal life we see how everything is dependent upon the rhythmical course of the sun. Even in man everything is rhythmical, regular and harmonious insofar as it is not subject to human passions, instincts and the human intellect.

Observe the pulse or the processes of digestion and admire the great rhythm and infinite wisdom of nature flowing through them. Then compare them with the irregularity and chaos holding sway in human passions, instincts, desires and particularly in the human intellect. Visualize the regularity of the pulse and breath and contrast it with the irregularity of thinking, feeling and willing. They are will-o'-the-wisps in comparison. Imagine the wisdom with which the life forces are organized, or how the rhythmic system must struggle against rhythmless chaos. Just think how much human passion and the desire for enjoyment trespass against the rhythms of the body! I have often mentioned how marvelous it is for the person who, through an anatomical study of the heart, learns to know the beautiful construction of this organ. Such a person must then come to realize how miraculous it is that the heart still continues its harmoniously rhythmical pulsation in spite of the abuse that can be heaped upon it through the use of tea and coffee. But, like our ancestors, who were filled with admiration for nature with its soul, the sun, in rhythmical orbit, we, too, can acquire feelings for all of nature, permeated as it is by rhythm and wisdom.

In looking up to the sun, the sages and their followers said, “You are the image of what the soul born in me will become.” The divine world order revealed itself in its great glory to these wise men. This is also expressed in the Christian view when it says there shall be glory in divine heights. “Glory” means “revelation.” “Today God reveals Himself in the Heavens.” This is what “Glory to God in the Highest” means. It is the expression of the glory permeating the world. This world harmony was presented as the great ideal for those who, in earlier times, were to be leaders of mankind. In all times and wherever a consciousness of these things was alive, it was the Sun Hero who was spoken of.

There were seven degrees of initiation in the ancient Mystery Temples. I shall cite them for you with their Persian names. In the first degree, man went beyond everyday feeling and attained to a higher soul experience and cognition of the spirit. Such a man was designated a “Raven.” The Ravens were those who communicated to the initiates in the temples what happened in the outside world. This was the case in the medieval saga of the Emperor Barbarossa who, surrounded by the earth's treasures of wisdom, awaits inside the earth the great moment when mankind is to be rejuvenated by a newly deepened Christianity. Here also the Ravens are the messengers. Even the Old Testament speaks of the Ravens of Elijah.

Those initiated into the second degree were called the “Occult Ones,” those of the third, the “Warriors,” and those of the fourth, the “Lions.” The initiates of the fifth degree were called by the name of their people—Persian or Indian, for example—because only these initiates were true representatives of their peoples. The initiate of the sixth degree was called a “Sun Hero,” that of the seventh, bore the name “Father.”

Why was the initiate of the sixth degree called a Sun Hero? Such a one, who had climbed the ladder of spiritual knowledge to that stage, had so far developed his inner life that the pattern of its course followed the divine rhythm of the universe. His feeling and thinking no longer contained anything chaotic, unrhythmical or disharmonious, and his inner soul harmony was in accord with the external harmony of the sun. This level of development was demanded of the initiates of the sixth degree, and as a result, they were looked up to as holy men, as examples and ideals. Just as it would be a great disaster for the universe if the sun were to leave its path for only a quarter of a minute, similarly, it would have been just as great a disaster if it had been possible for a Sun Hero to stray only for a moment from his path of high morality, soul rhythm and spirit harmony. He who had found as sure a path in his spirit as the sun outside in the universe, was called a Sun Hero, and they were to be found among all peoples.

Our scientists know little about these things. To be sure, they see that sun myths are crystallized around the lives of all the great founders of religions. But they do not know that in the initiation ceremonies the leaders were raised to Sun Heroes, and it is not at all remarkable when materialistic research rediscovers these customs of the ancients. Sun myths connected with Buddha and even with Christ have been searched out and found. Here you have the reason why they could be found in these myths. They had been put into them in the first place because they represented a direct imprint of the sun rhythm and were the great examples that should be followed.

The soul of such a Sun Hero who had attained this inner harmony was no longer considered to be a single individual human soul, but one that had brought to birth in itself the universal soul streaming through the whole cosmos. This universal soul was called “Chrestos” in ancient Greece, and the sublime sages of the Orient knew it by the name, “Buddhi.” When one has ceased to feel himself to be only the bearer of his individual soul and comes to experience the universe within himself, then he has created an image in himself of what as Sun Soul was united with the human body at that time. Then he has achieved something of tremendous significance for the evolution of mankind.

When we consider such a human being with his soul ennobled in this way, we can visualize the future of the human race and the whole relationship of this future to the idea, the percept of humanity in general. Today, disputing and quarrelling, people decide things by majority vote. As long as such majority resolutions are deemed to be the ideal, one has not yet grasped real truth. Where does real truth live in us? Truth lives in us when we endeavor to think logically. It would be nonsense to decide by majority vote that two times two equals four, or that three times four equals twelve. Once man has recognized what is true, millions of others may dissent but he will remain certain within himself.

In scientific thinking we have advanced as far as the use of logic, that is, thinking untouched by passions, drives and instincts. Wherever these come into play, they bring about chaos and cause men to quarrel and fight in wild confusion. When, however, in the future, these passions, drives and instincts will have been purified and become what is called Buddhi or Chrestos, when they will have reached the level of development at which logical, passionless thinking stands today, then the ideal of mankind, which radiates from the wisdom of ancient religions, from Christianity, and from the anthroposophical science of the spirit, will have been reached. When our feelings will have become so purified that they sound harmoniously together with what others feel, when for our feelings and sensations the same stage will have been achieved on earth as that of our intellects, when Buddhi and the Chrestos will have been incorporated into the human race, then the ideal of the ancient teachers of wisdom, of Christianity and of anthroposophy will have been fulfilled. Then it will not be necessary to determine by vote what is good, noble and right any more than one needs to decide by vote what is logically correct or logically false. Everyone can place this ideal before his soul and in so doing he raises the ideal of the Sun Hero, of all initiates of the sixth degree.

This was felt by the German mystics of the Middle Ages when they spoke the important word for “becoming Godlike,” “becoming one with the Divine” (Vergottung). What does this word signify? It means that those beings, whom we consider today to be the spirits of the universe, also passed through the stage of chaos upon which mankind stands today. The leading spirits of the universe have struggled up to the divine stage where their living utterances resound harmoniously through the All. What appears to us in the harmonious annual orbit of the sun, in the growth of plants, the life of animals was, in past ages, chaotic and a struggle had to be made to arrive at its present sublime harmony. Man stands today at a stage of development at which these spirits once stood. But he will develop out of chaos into a future harmony patterned after the present sun and the presiding universal harmony.

To allow these ideas to sink into our souls, not as theory or doctrine but as living sensation, yields the anthroposophical Christmas mood. Let us feel vividly that the glory and the revelation of divine harmony appears in the heights of heaven. Let us realize that the revelation of this harmony will resound from our own souls in the future. Then we will feel the peace of those who are of good will that will come about in mankind through this harmony. When from this great perspective we look into the divine world order, into the revelation and its glory in heavenly heights, when we look out upon the future of mankind, we may have now, today, a presentiment of the harmony that will reign in human beings on earth in the future. The more we let the harmony in the outer world sink into us, the more will there be peace and unity on earth.

If, during the time of Christmas, we feel and experience the orbit of the sun in nature in the right way, the great ideal of peace will be presented to our souls as a feeling of nature of the highest order. If we feel during these days the victory of the sunlight over darkness, we will gain from it the great confidence that unites our own developing souls with this cosmic harmony, and it will not flow in vain into our beings. Then something will flow and live in us that will be harmonious, and the seed of peace upon earth will sink into our souls. Those men are of good will who feel this peace, a peace that will prevail when the higher stage of harmony, which today has been attained only by the intellect, is reached by the feelings and heart. Strife and disharmony will have been replaced by the all-pervading love of which Goethe speaks in the Hymn to Nature I have quoted, when he says that a few draughts from the chalice of love are compensation for a life of trouble.

In all religions this Christmas festival has been a festival of confidence, trust and hope because they have felt that during these days the light must be victorious. This seed, placed in the earth, will sprout forth and prosper in the light of the newly arising year. A seed of a plant, when buried in the earth, will burgeon forth into the light of the sun. In the same way, divine truth, the divine and truthful soul, is sunk in the depth of the life of passions and instincts. There, in darkness, the divine Sun Soul will ripen. A seed in the earth sprouts as a result of the victory of light over darkness, and likewise, through the continuous victory of light over the darkness of the soul, the soul will become filled with light. In darkness there can only be strife; in light, only peace. Through true comprehension, world harmony, world peace will prevail. This is the deep and true word also of Christianity during these Christmas days: Glory, revelation of the divine powers in the heights of heaven, and peace to men who are of good will!

Out of this great cosmic feeling, the Christian Church resolved in the fourth century to establish the festival of the birth of the World Savior at the same time of year that all great religions had celebrated the victory of light over darkness. Before the fourth century, the time of the Christian festival, the festival of the birth of Christ, varied. It was not until the fourth century that it was resolved that the Savior of the Christians be born on the day on which the victory of light over darkness had always been celebrated.

Today we cannot deal with the wisdom of the teaching of Christianity itself. This will be the subject of a lecture next year. But one thing shall and must be said today. Nothing could have happened with more justification than the establishment of the birthday of Christ at that time of year. For that Divine Individuality, the Christ, is the guarantor for the Christian that his divine soul will be victorious over all that is darkness. Thus, Christianity is in harmony with all great world religions, and when the Christmas bells ring, we can remind ourselves that this festival was celebrated during these days throughout the world in the past. It was celebrated wherever on earth there was comprehension of the true progress of the human soul, wherever a knowledge prevailed of the significance of spirit and spiritual life, wherever self-knowledge was practiced.

We have not spoken of an abstract feeling for nature today. We have, rather, spoken of a feeling for nature in all its living spirituality. When we have connected our considerations with the Goethean words, “Nature! We are encompassed and enfolded! ...” we may be clear about the fact that we do not interpret nature in the materialistic sense. We see in it the external expression and physiognomy of the divine cosmic spirit. Just as the body is born out of the corporeal, the soul and spirit out of the divine soul and divine spirit, and just as the body united itself with merely material forces, so the soul unites itself with the spirit.

The great festivals stand as symbols leading us to use our feeling and thinking in order to bring about an experience of the union with the universe, not in an indefinite way but in a most decided fashion. If this is felt again, the festivals become something different from what they are today. They will become implanted in soul and heart in a living way, and they will become what they are intended to be for us, that is, focal points in the year that join us to the spirit of the universe. If, as the year proceeds, we have fulfilled our duties and tasks for everyday life, we can look to these focal points to what unites us with the eternal. Although we have had a hard struggle in the course of the year, during these festival days the feeling arises in us that beyond all struggle and chaos, peace and harmony exist. Therefore, these festivals are celebrations of the great ideals. The Christmas festival is the festival of the greatest ideal of humanity, and humanity must make it its own if it wishes to reach its destination. The Christmas festival, rightly understood, is the festival of the birth of mankind's highest feelings and will impulses.

The anthroposophical science of the spirit intends to contribute to this understanding. We do not wish to send a dogma a mere doctrine or philosophy into the world, but life itself. It is our ideal to have all that we say and teach, all that is contained in our writings and science, pass over into life itself. This will happen if men practice spiritual science in everyday relationships, if from the pulpits spiritual-scientific life resounds in the words that are spoken to the listeners, without special emphasis being put on the term, spiritual science. If in all courts of justice the deeds are judged with spiritual-scientific sensitivity, if the medical doctor feels and heals with spiritual-scientific insight, if in the schools the teachers develop spiritual science concerning the growing child, if on all the streets spiritual-scientific thoughts, feelings and actions prevail to the point of making spiritual-scientific teaching superfluous, then our ideal will have been achieved. Then the science of the spirit will have become an everyday affair. Moreover, spiritual science will then also be alive in the focal points of the great festivals throughout the year, and man will join his everyday life to the spirit through anthroposophical thinking, feeling and willing. Then the eternal, imperishable Spirit Sun will shine into his soul at the great festivals of the year, reminding him that in him there lives truth, a higher self, a divine, sun-like, light-filled Being. This Being will ever and again be victorious over all darkness and chaos, and will achieve soul peace and balance in the face of all disharmony, struggle and war in the world.

• 1. From Goethe's Faust, translated and edited by George Madison Priest; copyright by, and reprinted here with permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.