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30. Goethe as the Founder of a New Science of Aesthetics 09 Nov 1888, Rudolf Steiner
If this alleged alteration in my views was connected especially with my spiritual scientific (anthroposophical) activity, my answer is, that on reading through this lecture, the ideas developed in it appear to me to be a healthy foundation for Anthroposophy, and the anthroposophical way of thinking, in particular, to be most suitable for the understanding of these ideas.

30. Goethe as the Founder of a New Science of Aesthetics 09 Nov 1888, Rudolf Steiner
[ 1 ] This lecture, now appearing in a second edition, was given by me more than twenty years ago at the Goethe Society in Vienna. On the occasion of this new edition of one of my earlier works, the following may perhaps be said. It has happened that changes in my views have been discovered in the course of my literary career, notwithstanding the fact that this work of mine, of more than twenty years' standing, can be published to-day without the alteration of a single sentence. If this alleged alteration in my views was connected especially with my spiritual scientific (anthroposophical) activity, my answer is, that on reading through this lecture, the ideas developed in it appear to me to be a healthy foundation for Anthroposophy, and the anthroposophical way of thinking, in particular, to be most suitable for the understanding of these ideas. The most important part of what is said will scarcely be taken in, really and consciously, by those whose ideas are set in another direction. What stood, twenty years ago, behind my world of ideas, I have worked out since that time in many and various directions. This fact does not imply a change in my views. [ 2 ] The few notes added at the end, for the sake of elucidation, might equally well have been written twenty years ago. The question might be asked, if what was said in this lecture still holds good to-day with regard to Aesthetics? For in this field, also, a good deal of work has certainly been accomplished during the last two decades. It really seems to me that it holds good at the present time still more than it did twenty years ago. With regard to the development of Aesthetics, a grotesque statement may be risked: that the thoughts expressed in this lecture have become still more true since they first appeared, although they have in no way altered. Rudolf Steiner Basel, 15th September, 1919. [ 3 ] The number of works and treatises that are appearing in our time, with the object of determining Goethe's relation to the most divergent branches of modern Science and modern intellectual life generally, is overwhelming. The mere list of the titles would fill a portly volume. This feature may be ascribed to the fact that we are ever more clearly realising how, in the person of Goethe, a cultural factor confronts us, with which everything that would participate in the intellectual life of the present day must necessarily come to terms. To pass by would mean, in this case, to reject the foundation of our civilisation, to flounder in the depths, with no will to mount to the luminous heights from which all the light of our culture shines forth. It is only on condition that we attach ourselves, at some point or other, to Goethe and his epoch that we can acquire a clear view of the path our civilisation is treading, and realise the goal which humanity, in modern times, must pursue: failure to find this point of contact with the greatest spirit of latter times means simply being led like the blind, or dragged along by our fellowmen. All things appear to us in a different setting, when viewed with vision quickened at this fountain-head of civilisation. [ 4 ] However gratifying may be the efforts of our contemporaries to find some point of contact with Goethe, the way they set about it is admittedly not very felicitous. Only too often is that necessary quality absent—an open mind—permitting us to sink into and fathom the uttermost depths of Goethe's genius, before mounting the pulpit of criticism. The only reason for believing Goethe to have been superseded in many respects is due to the failure to recognise his full significance. We think we have gone far beyond Goethe, whereas, in most cases, the right thing would be for us to apply his comprehensive principles and magnificent way of looking at things to our own now more perfect scientific appliances and scientific facts. Whether the results of his investigations correspond, more or less, with the results of modern Science is, with regard to Goethe, never of so much importance as the way he sets to work. His results bear the stamp of their epoch, that is, they extend only so far as the scientific appliances and experience of his age allowed: his way of thinking, his way of posing the problems is, however, a permanent achievement, and no greater injustice can be committed than to treat it with contempt. But it is a peculiarity of our day that the spiritual productive force of Genius is considered to be almost without significance. How could it be otherwise in a time when any attempt to reach out beyond the limits of physical experience is tabooed. For mere observation in the world of the senses, all that is necessary are healthy organs of sense, and Genius can, for this purpose, be fairly dispensed with. [ 5 ] But true progress in Science, as also in Art, has never been the product of such methods of observation or servile imitation of Nature. What thousands observe and pass by is then observed by one who, as the result of this same observation, discovers a magnificent scientific law. Many before Galileo had seen a lamp swinging in a church, and yet this man of genius had to come and discover from it the laws of the pendulum, which are of so great importance in Physics. ‘Were not the eye of the nature of the sun, how could it behold the sun,’ exclaims Goethe; he means that none can glance into the depths of Nature who lack the necessary disposition and productive force to see more in the realm of fact than the mere outward facts. This is not accepted. The mighty achievements for which we have to thank Goethe's genius should not be confounded with the deficiencies inherent in his investigations, owing to the lower level of scientific experience at that time. How his own scientific results stand in relation to the progress of scientific research has been aptly characterised by Goethe in a picture: he describes them as pawns which he has perhaps moved forward too daringly on the board, but which should allow the plan of the player to be recognised. If we take these words to heart, then the following great task accrues to us in the field of Goethean research: to revert in each case to Goethe's own tendencies. The results which he himself gives us may stand as examples showing how he attempted to solve his great problems with limited means. It must be our aim to solve them in his spirit, but with the greater means at our disposal, and on the strength of our richer experience. In this way a fructification of all the branches of research to which Goethe devoted his attention will be possible, and, what is more, they will all bear the same uniform stamp, and form links within a great uniform conception of the world. Mere philological and critical research, the justification of which it were folly to deny, must await extension and completion along these lines. We must gain possession of the rich store of thoughts and ideas that are in Goethe, and, making this our starting-point, scientifically carry on the work. [ 6 ] It will at this point be incumbent on me to show to what extent the principles just explained may be applied to one of the youngest and most discussed of sciences—the science of Aesthetics. This science, which is devoted to Art and artistic creation, is barely 160 years old. It was with the conscious intention of opening a new field of scientific research that Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten came forward with it in 1750. To this same epoch belong the efforts of Winckelmann and Lessing to attain a basis for judging the fundamental questions in Art. All former attempts in the direction of this science cannot even be described as a most elementary tendency. Even the great Aristotle, that intellectual giant, whose influence on all branches of science was so decisive, remained quite unproductive in Aesthetics. He completely excluded the plastic arts from his sphere of research, thus showing clearly that he had no conception whatever of Art; and, besides, he knew no principle other than that of the imitation of Nature, which again shows that he never understood the task which the spirit of man sets itself in the creation of the work of art.¹ [ 7 ] That the science of the Beautiful only came into existence so late is no accident. It could not exist earlier, simply because the necessary conditions were absent. What are these conditions? The desire for Art is as old as man himself, but the desire to grasp the nature of its task only came into evidence much later. The Greek spirit, so happily constituted as to find satisfaction in the reality that immediately surrounds us, brought forth an epoch of Art which stands for a highest culmination; but it was the work of primitive ingenuousness, and the need was not felt to create in Art a world that should offer satisfaction such as could not come to us from any other source. The Greeks found in reality all that they sought; all that their hearts yearned and their spirits thirsted for, Nature supplied to them in abundance. It was never to go so far with them, that a yearning should be born in their heart for a Something which we seek in vain in the world that surrounds us. The Greek did not grow out of and away from Nature, therefore all his needs could be satisfied through Nature. With his whole being he was inseparably united and interwoven with Nature; Nature creates in him and knows quite well what she may implant in him, so as to be able again to satisfy his needs. Art, then, with this ingenuous people, was only a continuation of what lives and surges within Nature; it grew directly out of Nature; Nature satisfied the same needs as a mother, only in a higher sense. Aristotle knew no higher principle of Art than the imitation of Nature. There was no need to go farther than Nature, because in Nature was to be found the source of all satisfaction. The mere imitation of Nature, which, to us, would appear empty and insignificant, was, in this case, fully sufficient. We have forgotten how to see in mere Nature the highest that our spirit craves for; for this reason mere realism, which offers us reality devoid of that highest, could never satisfy us. This epoch had to come. It was a necessity for mankind, as it develops to an ever higher level of perfection. Man could only remain completely within Nature so long as he was unconscious of this fact. The instant he gained full and clear knowledge of his own self, the instant he became aware of a kingdom within his inner self, which was of at least equal standing with that outer world—in that instant he had to break away from the shackles of Nature. [ 8 ] He could now no longer surrender himself to her, for her to bear absolute sway over him, so that she should give rise to his needs and moreover satisfy them. Now he had to confront her, and this meant, in fact, that he had broken away from her, that he had created a new world within himself, and it is in this world that the source must now be sought from which his yearning and his desires flow. Whether these desires, now produced apart from Mother Nature, can also be satisfied by her is left to chance. At any rate, a deep chasm now separates man from reality, and he must restore the harmony formerly existing in its original perfection. Hence all the conflicts of the ideal with reality, of purpose with attainment—in short, everything that leads the soul of man into a veritable spiritual labyrinth. Nature stands there bereft of soul, devoid of everything our inner self tells us is divine. The next consequence is estrangement from everything which is Nature—a flight from direct reality. This is the exact opposite of the Greek spirit, which found everything in Nature.² The subsequent conception of the world finds nothing at all in Nature. The Christian Middle Ages must appear to us in this light. Just as little as the Greeks could gain a knowledge of the essence of Art, in their inability to grasp how Art reaches out beyond Nature, creating a higher Nature side by side with actual Nature, so little could mediaeval science attain a science of Art, for Art could only work with means offered by Nature, and the scholars could not grasp how works could be created within the pale of godless reality, which could satisfy the spirit striving to attain the divine. But the helplessness of Science did not injure the development of Art. While the scholars did not know just what to think, the most glorious works of Christian Art came into existence. Philosophy, which in those days had Theology in tow, was as incapable as the great idealist of the Greeks, the ‘divine Plato,’ had been, of conceding to Art a place within the progress of civilisation. Plato declared the plastic and dramatic arts to be harmful. He could so little conceive of an independent mission of Art, that he only mercifully spares music, because music promotes courage in war. [ 9 ] At a time when Spirit and Nature were so closely joined, a science of Art could not come into existence, nor was this possible at a time when they faced each other in unreconciled opposition. For the genesis of Aesthetics a time was necessary when man, in freedom and independence from the shackles of Nature, perceived the spirit in its undimmed purity, but a time, also, when a reunion with Nature is again possible. That the standpoint of the Greeks should be superseded, is not without good reason. For in the sum total of accidents constituting the world in which we feel ourselves placed, we can never find the divine, the necessary; we see nothing around us but facts that might equally well be different; we see nothing but individuals, and our spirit strives for the expression of the species, for the archetype; we see nothing but the finite, the perishable, and our spirit strives for the infinite, the imperishable, the eternal. And so if man's spirit, once estranged from Nature, is to return to Nature, it must be to something different from that sum total of accidents. It is for this return that Goethe stands; a return to Nature, but with the rich abundance of a developed spirit, with the level of culture of modern times.³ [ 10 ] The fundamental separation of Spirit and Nature does not correspond with Goethe's views. He sees in the world one great whole—a uniformly progressive chain of beings, within which man is a link, even though the highest. ‘Nature! we are surrounded and embraced by her, unable to withdraw from her and unable to advance more deeply into her. She lifts us unasked and unwarned, into the gyrations of her dance, and whirls with us away, until we are exhausted and fall from her arms.’ (Cp. Goethe's Scientific Works edited by Rudolf Steiner, vol. 2, p. 5.) And in the book on Winckelmann: ‘When man's healthy nature works as a whole, when the harmonious pleasure affords him a pure instinctive joy—then the Universe, if it could feel its own self, would cry out in exultation, as having reached its goal, and admire the pinnacle of its own growth and being.’ Here we have Goethe's characteristic way of reaching out far beyond the immediate in Nature, though without in the least losing sight of what constitutes the inner being of Nature. He is a stranger to a quality he finds in many especially gifted men, ‘of feeling a kind of shyness before real life, of drawing back into oneself, of creating one's own inner world, and in this way of giving the most excellent accomplishments an inward direction.’ Goethe does not fly from reality in order to create an abstract thought-world, having nothing in common with reality; he plunges deep into reality, in its eternal mutation, its genesis and movement, to find its laws that are immutable: he confronts the individual to behold the archetype. Thus were born in his spirit the plant-type and the animal-type, which are nothing but the Ideas of the plant and the animal. These are no empty general ideas that are part of a dry theory; they are the essential foundation of organisms—substantial and concrete, animated and distinguishable. Distinguishable, to be sure, not for the outer senses, but only for that higher contemplative capacity that Goethe discusses in his essay on ‘Contemplative Discernment.’ In the Goethean sense, ideas are just as objective as the colours and the forms of things, but they are only perceivable for those whose perceptive faculty is regulated for this purpose; just as colours and forms are only there for those who see, and not for the blind. If we approach the objective world with a non-receptive spirit, it does not disclose itself to us. Without the instinctive capacity for apprehending ideas, the latter remain an ever-sealed book. Here none saw as deeply as Schiller into the structure of Goethe's genius. [ 11 ] On 23rd August, 1794, he enlightens Goethe, in the following words, on the fundamental qualities of his nature: ‘You gather together the whole of Nature in order to gain light on the single detail; where the forms of the phenomena merge into the universal, there you seek the explanation and the reason for the individual. From the simple organisation you mount, step by step, to the more complicated, in order finally to build up the most complicated of all—Man—genetically, and from the materials of Nature's whole edifice. While thus creating him afresh after Nature's pattern, you seek to penetrate the secret of his construction.’ This re-creation provides a key for the understanding of Goethe's conception of the world. If we wish really to rise to the primal types of things, to the immutable in the general mutation, we must revert to the genesis, we must witness Nature create; we must not consider what has reached completion, for this no longer corresponds wholly to the Idea which comes to expression in it.⁴ This is the meaning of Goethe's words in his essay on ‘Contemplative Discernment:’ ‘If, in the sphere of morality, through belief in God, virtue and immortality, we seek to raise ourselves to a higher region and draw near to the first Being, the same should be the case in the sphere of the intellect—that, through the contemplation of an ever-creating Nature, we should make ourselves worthy of spiritual participation in her production. So did I press on untiringly to that original primal type.’ Thus Goethe's archetypes are no empty forms; they are the productive forces behind the phenomena. [ 12 ] This is the ‘Higher Nature’ in Nature over which Goethe wished to gain control. We gather from this that the reality spread out before our senses in no case represents something on the level of which a man who has attained a higher standard of culture can remain stationary. Only when man transcends this reality—breaks the shell and makes for the kernel—is that revealed to him, which the world holds together in its innermost recess. Nevermore can we find satisfaction in the isolated event in nature, but only in the law of nature; nevermore in the single and the particular, but only in the general and the universal. With Goethe this fact comes into evidence in the most perfect imaginable form. With him also the fact is established that, to the modern intellect, reality, as the single and the particular, can afford no satisfaction, because not in it but beyond it do we find that in which we recognise the highest, which we can revere as divine, which, in Science, we express as Idea. While mere observation cannot reconcile the opposing extremes, if it has reality but has not yet the Idea, so also is Science unable to effect this reconciliation, if it has the Idea, but no longer the reality. Between both, man needs a new kingdom; a kingdom in which the Idea is represented by the individual and not only by the whole; a kingdom in which the particular appears gifted with the character of the universal and the necessary. Such a world, however, is not present within sense reality; such a world must first be created by man, and this world is the world of Art—a necessary third kingdom by the side of the kingdoms of the senses and of reason. [ 13 ] The comprehension of Art as this third kingdom is the task which the Science of Aesthetics must regard as its own. The divinity which the objects in Nature have lost must be implanted in them by man himself, and therein lies a noble task which accrues to the artist. He has, so to speak, to bring the kingdom of God on to this earth. This religious mission of Art, as it may well be called, is expressed by Goethe (in the book on Winckelmann) in the following glorious words: [ 14 ] ‘In that Man is placed on Nature's pinnacle, he regards himself as another whole Nature, whose task is to bring forth inwardly yet another pinnacle. For this purpose, he heightens his powers, imbuing himself with all perfections and virtues, calling on choice, order, harmony, and meaning, and finally rising to the production of the work of art, which takes a pre-eminent place by the side of his other actions and works. Once it is brought forth, once it stands before the world in its ideal reality, it produces a permanent effect—it produces the highest effect—for as it develops itself spiritually out of a unison of forces, it gathers into itself all that is glorious and worthy of devotion and love, and thus, breathing life into the human form, uplifts man above himself, completes the circle of his life and activity, deifies him for the present, in which the past and the future are included. Such were the feelings of those who beheld the Olympian Jupiter, as we can gather from the descriptions, narratives, and testimonies of the Ancients. The god had become man, in order to uplift man to a god. They beheld the highest dignity and were filled with enthusiasm for the highest beauty.’ [ 15 ] In these words, the significance of Art for the progress of civilisation was recognised. And it is characteristic of the mighty German Ethos, that it was the first to whom the recognition of this fact occurred; it is characteristic that all German philosophers, for the last hundred years, have struggled to find the most suitable scientific form for the peculiar way in which, in the work of art, spirit and object, idea and reality, melt into each other. The task of Aesthetics is none other than to comprehend the nature of this interpenetration, and to study it in detail, in the single forms in which it asserts itself, in the various branches of Art. The merit of having given a stimulus to this problem in the way indicated, and thereby to have set the ball rolling in connection with the chief, central questions of Aesthetics, must be ascribed to Kant's Critique of Judgment which appeared in 1790, and at once created a favourable impression on Goethe. In spite, however, of particularly serious work devoted to this subject, we are bound to admit to-day that an all-round satisfactory solution to these aesthetical problems is not forthcoming. The grand master of Aesthetics, that keen thinker and critic, Friedrich Theodor Vischer, held firmly to the end of his life, to his expressed conviction that the science of Aesthetics was still in its infancy. This amounts to an admission that all efforts in this field, including his own five volumes on Aesthetics, were in a more or less false direction. This is indeed the case, and if I may here express my own conviction, it can only be traced back to the circumstance that the fruitful seeds planted by Goethe were passed over unnoticed, and that he was not regarded as being scientifically competent. Had he, on the contrary, been so regarded, those ideas would merely have received a final development, with which Schiller was inspired in the contemplation of Goethe's genius, and which he set down in his letters on Aesthetical education. These letters, too, are held by writers intent on systems, to be insufficiently scientific, and yet they can be counted among the most important works ever produced in the field of Aesthetics. Schiller sets out from Kant, who determined the nature of the Beautiful in more than one respect. Kant first examines the reason of the pleasure we feel in the beautiful works of art. He finds this feeling of pleasure quite different from any other. Comparing it to the pleasure we feel when concerned with an object to which we owe an element of utility to ourselves, it is quite different. This pleasure is closely bound up with the desire for the existence of the object. Pleasure in the useful disappears when the useful is no longer there. Not so with the pleasure in the Beautiful. This pleasure has nothing to do with the possession, with the existence of the object, for it is not attached to the object but to the idea of the object. Whereas with the expedient and the useful, the need is felt to translate the idea into reality: we are content, in the case of the Beautiful, with the mere image. For this reason, Kant calls the feeling of delight in the Beautiful a feeling that is uninfluenced by any actual interest—a disinterested delight. It would, however, be quite erroneous to hold that conformity to purpose is thereby excluded from the Beautiful; this applies only to an exterior purpose. Hence is derived the second explanation of the Beautiful: It is something formed in itself in conformity to purpose, without, however, serving an exterior purpose. When we perceive an object in Nature, or a product of human skill, our intellect comes and inquires for its use and purpose, and is not satisfied until its question as to the ‘wherefore’ is answered. With the Beautiful, the ‘wherefore’ lies in the object itself, and the intellect does not need to reach out beyond it. At this point Schiller sets in, weaving the idea of Freedom into the sequence of thought in a way that does the greatest honour to human nature. To begin with, Schiller sets in opposition two human instincts which ceaselessly assert themselves. The first is the so-called material impulse, or the need to keep our senses open to the inpouring outer world. A rich gift presses in upon us, but without our being able to exert any determining influence on its nature. Here everything takes place with unconditional necessity. What we apprehend is determined from outside; here we are unfree, in subjection; we must simply obey the commands of physical (natural) necessity. The second is the formative impulse; that is none other than Reason, which brings law and order into the chaotic confusion of sense perceptions (external impressions). Through its work, system is introduced into experience. Here too, Schiller finds, we are not free; for in this work Reason is subjected to the unchanging laws of logic. We submit, in the first case, to necessity as imposed by Nature, and, in the second case, as imposed by Reason. Freedom seeks a haven of refuge from both. Schiller, emphasising the analogy between Art and the play of a child, assigns to Freedom the domain of Art. What is essentially the nature of play? Things possessed of reality are taken, and their general bearing altered at will. In this transformation of reality no law of logical necessity decides the issue—as, for instance, in the construction of a machine, where we must strictly conform to the laws of Reason; here everything is in the service of subjective necessity. The player connects things in a way that gives him pleasure; he imposes on himself no constraint. He pays no heed to physical, natural necessity, for he overcomes this constraint by putting to quite arbitrary use whatever passes into his hands. From Reason, too, and its necessity, he feels independent, for the order he introduces into things is his own invention. Thus the player impresses on reality the stamp of his own subjectivity and endows the latter with objective value. The separation of the activity of the two instincts comes to an end; they become united and thereby gain freedom: in the object is spirit, and the spirit is objective. Schiller, the poet of Freedom, sees in Art a free instinctive play, on a higher level, and exclaims with enthusiasm: ‘Man is fully Man only where he plays, and he only plays where he is Man in the fullest sense of the word.’ Schiller calls the basic instinct in Art, the play-instinct or impulse to play. It produces in the artist works, which, while existing for our senses, satisfy our reason; while the reason of which they partake, is simultaneously present for our senses in objective existence. And man's nature, at this stage, shows such activity, that his physical nature acts spiritually, while his spiritual nature acts physically. Physical nature is raised to the spirit, while the spirit sinks into physical nature. The former is thereby ennobled, and the latter is brought down from its clear height into the visible world. The works which thus come to existence are, to be sure, not fully true to Nature, because, in reality, spirit and object are never fully coincident; therefore when we compare the works of Art with the works of Nature, the former appear to us as mere semblance (appearance). But they must be semblance, because they would otherwise not be true works of Art. With his conception of semblance, in this connection, Schiller occupies a unique position among the writers on Aesthetics: he is unsurpassed and unrivalled. This is where the work should have continued. The one-sided solution to the problem of the Beautiful should have been extended with the help of Goethe's reflections on Art. Instead of this, Schelling appeared on the scene with a completely false theory, and inaugurated an error from which the science of Aesthetics in Germany never recovered. As all modern philosophers, Schelling finds that the highest task human effort can set itself, lies in the perception of the eternal, primal types of things. The spirit sweeps beyond the world of physical reality and rises to the heights where the divine is enthroned. There all truth and all beauty is revealed to him. Only the eternal is true and also beautiful. Thus, according to Schelling, no man can behold actual beauty who does not raise himself to the highest truth, for they are one and the same. All sensuous beauty is merely a weak reflection of that endless beauty which we can never perceive with our senses. We see where this leads to: the work of Art is not beautiful for its own sake and through its own self, but because it reproduces the Idea of Beauty. It follows, then, from this theory, that the purport of Art and Science is the same, since they both adopt as a basis eternal truth, which is also beauty. For Schelling, Art is only Science that has become objective. The important question now is: On what does our feeling of pleasure in the work of Art rest? In this case it rests merely on the expression of the Idea. The sensuous image is only a means of expression, the form in which a super-sensible purport expresses itself. In this respect, all the writers on Aesthetics follow the direction of Schelling's idealism. I cannot agree with the latest writer on this subject, E. von Hartmann, when he says that Hegel essentially improved on Schelling on this point. I say on this point, for in many other respects he towered above him. Hegel says actually: ‘The beautiful is the sensuous appearance of the idea.’ This amounts to an admission that, for him, the essential in Art was the expressed idea. This stands out still more clearly in the following words: ‘The hard crust of Nature and of the ordinary world make it more difficult for the spirit to penetrate to the idea, than is the case with works of Art.’ This is surely a clear statement that the goal of Art is the same as the goal of Science, namely, to penetrate to the Idea: Art seeks only to illustrate what Science expresses directly in forms of thought. Vischer calls beauty the appearance of the Idea, and likewise identifies the purport of Art with truth. In spite of all objections, beauty can never be separated from truth, if its essence is found in the expression of the Idea. But then it is not clear what independent mission Art is to have by the side of Science. What Art offers us, we can attain by way of thought, in a purer, clearer form, with no physical veil to shroud it. If this standpoint in Aesthetics be adopted, there is no escape, except through sophistry, from the compromising conclusion that allegory in the plastic arts, and didactic poetry in the poetic art, are the highest artistic forms. The independent significance of Art cannot be grasped, and Aesthetics, from this standpoint, have proved unproductive. It would be a mistake, however, to go too far, and, in consequence, abandon every attempt to attain a science of Aesthetics that is free from contradiction. They go too far in this direction, who would have Aesthetics assimilated by the history of the fine arts. If unsupported by authentic principles, this science merely becomes a storehouse for collections of notes on artists and their works, to which more or less clever remarks are appended; these, however, originating from arbitrary and subjective reasoning, are without value. On the other hand, a kind of physiology of taste has been set up in opposition to Aesthetics. The simplest and most elementary cases in which pleasure is felt are examined; then, mounting from these to more and more complicated cases, ‘Aesthetics from below’ are set up against ‘Aesthetics from above.’ This is the plan adopted by Fechner in his Introduction to Aesthetics. It is incomprehensible that such a work should have found adherents in a country which produced a Kant. Aesthetics should start from the examination of the feeling of pleasure; as though every feeling of pleasure were aesthetical, and as though the nature of the various feelings of pleasure could be distinguished by any other means than through the object itself which caused them. We only know that pleasure is an aesthetic feeling when we recognise the object to be beautiful, for, physiologically, there is nothing to distinguish aesthetic pleasure from any other. It is always a question of ascertaining the object. By virtue of what does an object become beautiful? This is the basic question in all Aesthetics. [ 13 ] We come much nearer to solving this question if we follow Goethe's lead. Merck describes Goethe's creative activity in the following words: ‘You create quite differently from the rest; they seek to embody the so-called imaginative—this produces only rubbish; you, however, seek to endow reality with a poetic form.’ These words convey about the same meaning as Goethe's own words in the second part of Faust: ‘Consider what thou will'st; still more consider how thou will'st.’ It is clearly stated what Art stands for. Not for the embodiment of the super-sensible, but for the transformation of the physical and the actual. Reality is not to be lowered to a means of expression: no, it is to be maintained in its full independence; only it must receive a new form, a form in which it satisfies us. If we remove any single being from its surroundings and observe it in this isolated condition, much in connection with it will appear incomprehensible. We cannot make it harmonise with the idea, the conception we necessarily apply to it. Its formation within reality is, in fact, not only the consequence of its own conformity to law; surrounding reality had a direct determining influence as well. Had it been able to develop itself independently, and free from external influence, only then would it have become a living presentment of its own Idea. The artist must grasp and develop this Idea on which the object is based, but whose free expansion within reality has been hampered. He must find within reality the point, starting from which, an object can be developed in its most perfect form. Nature falls short of her intention in every single instance; by the side of one plant she creates a second, a third, and so on; in no single plant is the whole Idea represented in concrete life; in one plant one side, in another plant another side is given, as circumstances permit. The artist must revert to Nature's tendency, as this appears to him. This is what Goethe means when he declares of his own creative activity: ‘I seek in everything a point from which much may be developed.’ In the artist's work the whole exterior must express the whole interior; in Nature's product the exterior falls short of the interior, and man's inquiring spirit must first ascertain it. Thus the laws in accordance with which the artist goes to work are none other than the eternal laws of Nature, pure, uninfluenced and unhampered. Artistic creation rests not on what is, but on what might be; not on the actual, but on the possible. The artist creates according to the same principles as Nature, but applies these principles to the individual, whereas, to use Goethe's own words, Nature pays no heed to the individual, ‘She ever builds and ever destroys,’ because her aim is perfection, not in the unit but in the totality. The content of any work of Art is any physical reality—this is what the artist wills; in giving it its form, he directs his efforts so as to excel Nature in her own tendency, and to achieve to a still higher degree than she is capable of, the results possible within her laws and means. [ 18 ] The object which the artist sets before us is more perfect than it is in its natural state, but it contains none other than its own inherent perfection. Where the object excels its own self—though on the basis of what is already concealed within it—there beauty is found. Beauty is therefore nothing unnatural: Goethe can say with good reason, ‘Beauty is a manifestation of secret laws, which, failing beauty, would have ever remained concealed;’ or, in another passage: ‘He to whom Nature reveals her manifest secret, yearns for Art, Nature's worthiest interpreter.’ If it may be said that beauty is unreal, since it represents something which can never be found within Nature in such perfection, so, too, can it be said in the same sense, that beauty is truer than Nature, since it represents what Nature intends to be but cannot be. On this question of reality in Art, Goethe says—and we may extend his words to apply to the whole of Art: ‘The poet's province is representation. This reaches its highest level when it competes with reality, that is, when the descriptions are so lifelike, through the spirit, that they may stand as present for all men.’ Goethe finds that ‘nothing in Nature is beautiful which is not also naturally true, in its underlying motive’ (Conversations with Eckermann, iii. 79). And the other side of appearance or semblance, when the being excels its own self, we find expressed as Goethe's view in the proverbs in prose, No. 978: ‘The law of vegetable growth appears in its highest manifestation in the blossom, and the rose is but the pinnacle of this manifestation. The fruit can never be beautiful, for there the vegetable law reverts to its own self—back to the mere law.’ Here we surely have it plainly stated: Where the Idea develops and unfolds, there beauty sets in—where we perceive the law directly in the outward phenomenon; where, on the other hand, as in the fruit, the outward phenomenon appears formless and gross, because there is no sign in it of the fundamental law underlying vegetable growth—there beauty in the natural product ceases. For this reason the same proverb goes on to say: ‘The law, as it engages itself in the phenomenon with the greatest freedom and according to its own inherent conditions, produces the objective-beautiful, which, to be sure, must find a worthy subject by which to be perceived.’ This view of Goethe's we find most definitely stated in a passage in the Conversations with Eckermann (ii. 106). ‘The artist, to be sure, must faithfully and devotedly follow Nature's pattern in the detail ... only in the higher regions of artistic activity, where actually a picture becomes a picture—there he has free play and may even proceed to fiction.’ Goethe gives as the highest goal of Art: ‘Through semblance to give the illusion of a higher reality. It were, however, a false effort to retain the semblance so long within reality, that finally a common reality were left.’ [ 19 ] Let us now ask ourselves what is the reason of pleasure felt in works of Art. We must realise that pleasure and satisfaction in the object of beauty are in no way inferior to the purely intellectual pleasure which we feel in the purely spiritual. It always points to a distinct decadence in Art when its province is sought in mere amusement and in the satisfaction of lower inclinations. The reason for pleasure in works of Art is none other than the reason for the joyful exultation which we feel in view of the world of Ideas generally, uplifting man out of himself. What is it, then, that gives us such satisfaction in the world of Ideas? Nought else than the heavenly inner tranquillity and perfection which it harbours. No contradiction, no dissonance stirs in the thought-world which rises within our inner self, for it is itself an infinite. Inherent in this picture is everything which makes it perfect. This native perfection of the world of Ideas—this is the reason of our exultation when we stand before it. If beauty is to exalt us in the like manner, then it must be fashioned after the pattern of the Idea. This is quite a different thing from what the German writers on Aesthetics of the idealist school would have. This is not the Idea in the form of a phenomenon; it is just the contrary; it is a phenomenon in the form of the Idea. The content of Beauty, the material basis on which it rests, is thus always an actual positive reality, and the form in which it is presented is the form of the Idea. We see exactly the contrary is true to what German Aesthetics say; the latter simply turned things upside down. Beauty is not the divine in a cloak of physical reality; no, it is physical reality in a cloak that is divine. The artist does not bring the divine on to the earth by letting it flow into the world; he raises the world into the sphere of the divine. Beauty is semblance, because it conjures before our senses a reality which, as such, appears as an ideal world. Consider what thou will'st, still more consider how thou will'st—for on the latter everything turns. What is given remains physical, but the manner of its appearance is ideal. Where the ideal form appears in the physical to best advantage, there Art is seen to reach its highest dignity. Goethe says here: ‘The dignity of Art appears perhaps most eminently in music, because in music there is no material factor to be discounted. Music is all form and figure, exalting and ennobling everything it expresses.’ A science of Aesthetics starting from this definition: ‘Beauty is a physical reality appearing as though it were Idea’—such a science does not exist: it must be created. It can be called straight away the ‘Aesthetics of Goethe's world-conception.’ And this is the science of Aesthetics of the future. E. von Hartmann, one of the latest writers on this subject and the author of an excellent ‘Philosophy of Beauty,’ also cherishes the old error, that the content of Beauty is the Idea. He says quite rightly that the basic conception from which the science of the beautiful should proceed, is the conception of aesthetic semblance. Yes, but how can the manifestation of the world of Ideas, as such, ever be regarded as semblance. The Idea is surely the highest truth: when the Idea appears, it does so out of truth, and not as semblance. It is a real semblance, however, when the natural (physical) and the individual, arrayed in the imperishable raiment of eternity, appear with the character of the Idea; for reality falls short of this. [ 20 ] Taken in this sense, the artist appears as the continuator of the cosmic Spirit. The former pursues creation where the latter relinquishes it. The closest tie of kinship seems to unite the artist with the cosmic Spirit, and Art appears as the continuation of Nature's process. Thus the artist raises himself above the life of common reality, and he raises us with him when we devote ourselves to his work. He does not create for the finite world, he expands beyond it. This conception we find expressed by Goethe in his poem, ‘The Artist's Apotheosis,’ where he makes the Muse call to the Poet in the following words: So doth the Hero mightily inspire His equals through the chain of centuries: The heights a noble spirit can attain May not be mastered in life's narrow span. Hence also after death his soul continues, Not less creative now than when he lived; The noble deed, the beautiful idea Strives deathless on, as mortally it strove. So thou, The Poet too, livest through unmeasured time In fields of immortality sublime. Tr. Meredith Starr. [ 21 ] In this poem, Goethe's thoughts on what I may call the cosmic mission of the artist are most aptly expressed. [ 22 ] Who, like Goethe, ever grasped in Art such deep significance? Who ever endowed Art with such dignity? It speaks sufficiently for the whole depth of his conceptions, when he says: ‘The great works of art are brought into existence by men, as are the great works of Nature, in accordance with true and natural laws; all arbitrary phantasy falls to the ground; there is Necessity, there is God.’ A science of Aesthetics in his spirit were certainly no bad thing. And this might apply also to other departments of modern science. [ 23 ] When, at the death of the poet's last heir, Walter von Goethe, 15th April, 1885, the treasures of the Goethe House became accessible to the nation, many, no doubt, shrugged their shoulders at the zeal of the scholars as they seized on the smallest posthumous remnant and handled it as a precious relic—the value of which, in connection with research should by no means be despised. But Goethe's genius is unfathomable; it cannot be taken in at a glance; we can only draw near to it gradually from different sides. And for this purpose we must welcome everything; what appears a worthless detail, gains significance when we consider it in connection with the poet's comprehensive view of the world. Only when we traverse the whole gamut of expressive activity in which this universal spirit gave vent to his life—only then does the essential in him, his own tendency, from which everything with him originated, and which represents a culmination of humanity, appear before our soul. Only when this tendency becomes the common property of all who strive spiritually; when the belief becomes general that we have not only to understand Goethe's conception of the world, but that we must live in it and it must live in us—only then will Goethe have fulfilled his mission. This conception of the world must be a sign for all members of the German people and far beyond it, in which they can meet and know each other in a life of common endeavour. 1. We are concerned here with Aesthetics as an independent science. It is of course possible to find treatises on the fine arts by leading spirits of earlier times. A history of Aesthetics, however, could only treat this material as all human effort in philosophy is appropriately treated, before the actual beginning of philosophy in Greece, with Thales. 2. It is said of thought in the Middle Ages that it ‘found nothing at all in Nature.’ Against this the great thinkers and mystics of the Middle Ages might be cited. such an objection is based on a complete misapprehension. It is not stated that thought in the Middle Ages was incapable of forming a conception of the importance of apprehension and so on, but simply that man's spirit in those days was turned towards the spirit as such, in its own primal form, and felt no inclination to come to terms with the separate facts in Nature. 3. With Shelling's fundamental error is by no means meant the effort of the spirit to ‘rise to the heights where the divine is enthroned,’ but Shelling's application of this conception to his treatment of Art. This must be clearly pointed out, so that what is said here against Shelling should not be confused with the criticism nowadays frequently levelled against that philosopher, and generally against philosophical idealism. It is possible for the author of this treatise to hold Shelling in high esteem, but still find much to object to in the detail of his achievement. 4. In Art, physical reality is transfigured through its appearance as though it were spirit. To this extent, artistic creation is not an imitation of anything already in existence, but a continuation, springing from the human soul, of the comic process. Something can just as little be created by mere physical imitation as by the representation of spirit already in existence. Real strength cannot be felt in the artist who impresses the observer with the true imitation of reality, but by the artist who forces us along with him when he creatively continues the cosmic process in his work.

30. Goethe as the Founder of a New Science of Aesthetics 09 Nov 1888,

Rudolf Steiner

[ 1 ] This lecture, now appearing in a second edition, was given by me more than twenty years ago at the Goethe Society in Vienna. On the occasion of this new edition of one of my earlier works, the following may perhaps be said. It has happened that changes in my views have been discovered in the course of my literary career, notwithstanding the fact that this work of mine, of more than twenty years' standing, can be published to-day without the alteration of a single sentence. If this alleged alteration in my views was connected especially with my spiritual scientific (anthroposophical) activity, my answer is, that on reading through this lecture, the ideas developed in it appear to me to be a healthy foundation for Anthroposophy, and the anthroposophical way of thinking, in particular, to be most suitable for the understanding of these ideas. The most important part of what is said will scarcely be taken in, really and consciously, by those whose ideas are set in another direction. What stood, twenty years ago, behind my world of ideas, I have worked out since that time in many and various directions. This fact does not imply a change in my views.

[ 2 ] The few notes added at the end, for the sake of elucidation, might equally well have been written twenty years ago. The question might be asked, if what was said in this lecture still holds good to-day with regard to Aesthetics? For in this field, also, a good deal of work has certainly been accomplished during the last two decades. It really seems to me that it holds good at the present time still more than it did twenty years ago. With regard to the development of Aesthetics, a grotesque statement may be risked: that the thoughts expressed in this lecture have become still more true since they first appeared, although they have in no way altered.

Rudolf Steiner
Basel, 15th September, 1919.

[ 3 ] The number of works and treatises that are appearing in our time, with the object of determining Goethe's relation to the most divergent branches of modern Science and modern intellectual life generally, is overwhelming. The mere list of the titles would fill a portly volume. This feature may be ascribed to the fact that we are ever more clearly realising how, in the person of Goethe, a cultural factor confronts us, with which everything that would participate in the intellectual life of the present day must necessarily come to terms. To pass by would mean, in this case, to reject the foundation of our civilisation, to flounder in the depths, with no will to mount to the luminous heights from which all the light of our culture shines forth. It is only on condition that we attach ourselves, at some point or other, to Goethe and his epoch that we can acquire a clear view of the path our civilisation is treading, and realise the goal which humanity, in modern times, must pursue: failure to find this point of contact with the greatest spirit of latter times means simply being led like the blind, or dragged along by our fellowmen. All things appear to us in a different setting, when viewed with vision quickened at this fountain-head of civilisation.

[ 4 ] However gratifying may be the efforts of our contemporaries to find some point of contact with Goethe, the way they set about it is admittedly not very felicitous. Only too often is that necessary quality absent—an open mind—permitting us to sink into and fathom the uttermost depths of Goethe's genius, before mounting the pulpit of criticism. The only reason for believing Goethe to have been superseded in many respects is due to the failure to recognise his full significance. We think we have gone far beyond Goethe, whereas, in most cases, the right thing would be for us to apply his comprehensive principles and magnificent way of looking at things to our own now more perfect scientific appliances and scientific facts. Whether the results of his investigations correspond, more or less, with the results of modern Science is, with regard to Goethe, never of so much importance as the way he sets to work. His results bear the stamp of their epoch, that is, they extend only so far as the scientific appliances and experience of his age allowed: his way of thinking, his way of posing the problems is, however, a permanent achievement, and no greater injustice can be committed than to treat it with contempt. But it is a peculiarity of our day that the spiritual productive force of Genius is considered to be almost without significance. How could it be otherwise in a time when any attempt to reach out beyond the limits of physical experience is tabooed. For mere observation in the world of the senses, all that is necessary are healthy organs of sense, and Genius can, for this purpose, be fairly dispensed with.

[ 5 ] But true progress in Science, as also in Art, has never been the product of such methods of observation or servile imitation of Nature. What thousands observe and pass by is then observed by one who, as the result of this same observation, discovers a magnificent scientific law. Many before Galileo had seen a lamp swinging in a church, and yet this man of genius had to come and discover from it the laws of the pendulum, which are of so great importance in Physics. ‘Were not the eye of the nature of the sun, how could it behold the sun,’ exclaims Goethe; he means that none can glance into the depths of Nature who lack the necessary disposition and productive force to see more in the realm of fact than the mere outward facts. This is not accepted. The mighty achievements for which we have to thank Goethe's genius should not be confounded with the deficiencies inherent in his investigations, owing to the lower level of scientific experience at that time. How his own scientific results stand in relation to the progress of scientific research has been aptly characterised by Goethe in a picture: he describes them as pawns which he has perhaps moved forward too daringly on the board, but which should allow the plan of the player to be recognised. If we take these words to heart, then the following great task accrues to us in the field of Goethean research: to revert in each case to Goethe's own tendencies. The results which he himself gives us may stand as examples showing how he attempted to solve his great problems with limited means. It must be our aim to solve them in his spirit, but with the greater means at our disposal, and on the strength of our richer experience. In this way a fructification of all the branches of research to which Goethe devoted his attention will be possible, and, what is more, they will all bear the same uniform stamp, and form links within a great uniform conception of the world. Mere philological and critical research, the justification of which it were folly to deny, must await extension and completion along these lines. We must gain possession of the rich store of thoughts and ideas that are in Goethe, and, making this our starting-point, scientifically carry on the work.

[ 6 ] It will at this point be incumbent on me to show to what extent the principles just explained may be applied to one of the youngest and most discussed of sciences—the science of Aesthetics. This science, which is devoted to Art and artistic creation, is barely 160 years old. It was with the conscious intention of opening a new field of scientific research that Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten came forward with it in 1750. To this same epoch belong the efforts of Winckelmann and Lessing to attain a basis for judging the fundamental questions in Art. All former attempts in the direction of this science cannot even be described as a most elementary tendency. Even the great Aristotle, that intellectual giant, whose influence on all branches of science was so decisive, remained quite unproductive in Aesthetics. He completely excluded the plastic arts from his sphere of research, thus showing clearly that he had no conception whatever of Art; and, besides, he knew no principle other than that of the imitation of Nature, which again shows that he never understood the task which the spirit of man sets itself in the creation of the work of art.¹

[ 7 ] That the science of the Beautiful only came into existence so late is no accident. It could not exist earlier, simply because the necessary conditions were absent. What are these conditions? The desire for Art is as old as man himself, but the desire to grasp the nature of its task only came into evidence much later. The Greek spirit, so happily constituted as to find satisfaction in the reality that immediately surrounds us, brought forth an epoch of Art which stands for a highest culmination; but it was the work of primitive ingenuousness, and the need was not felt to create in Art a world that should offer satisfaction such as could not come to us from any other source. The Greeks found in reality all that they sought; all that their hearts yearned and their spirits thirsted for, Nature supplied to them in abundance. It was never to go so far with them, that a yearning should be born in their heart for a Something which we seek in vain in the world that surrounds us. The Greek did not grow out of and away from Nature, therefore all his needs could be satisfied through Nature. With his whole being he was inseparably united and interwoven with Nature; Nature creates in him and knows quite well what she may implant in him, so as to be able again to satisfy his needs. Art, then, with this ingenuous people, was only a continuation of what lives and surges within Nature; it grew directly out of Nature; Nature satisfied the same needs as a mother, only in a higher sense. Aristotle knew no higher principle of Art than the imitation of Nature. There was no need to go farther than Nature, because in Nature was to be found the source of all satisfaction. The mere imitation of Nature, which, to us, would appear empty and insignificant, was, in this case, fully sufficient. We have forgotten how to see in mere Nature the highest that our spirit craves for; for this reason mere realism, which offers us reality devoid of that highest, could never satisfy us. This epoch had to come. It was a necessity for mankind, as it develops to an ever higher level of perfection. Man could only remain completely within Nature so long as he was unconscious of this fact. The instant he gained full and clear knowledge of his own self, the instant he became aware of a kingdom within his inner self, which was of at least equal standing with that outer world—in that instant he had to break away from the shackles of Nature. [ 8 ] He could now no longer surrender himself to her, for her to bear absolute sway over him, so that she should give rise to his needs and moreover satisfy them. Now he had to confront her, and this meant, in fact, that he had broken away from her, that he had created a new world within himself, and it is in this world that the source must now be sought from which his yearning and his desires flow. Whether these desires, now produced apart from Mother Nature, can also be satisfied by her is left to chance. At any rate, a deep chasm now separates man from reality, and he must restore the harmony formerly existing in its original perfection. Hence all the conflicts of the ideal with reality, of purpose with attainment—in short, everything that leads the soul of man into a veritable spiritual labyrinth. Nature stands there bereft of soul, devoid of everything our inner self tells us is divine. The next consequence is estrangement from everything which is Nature—a flight from direct reality. This is the exact opposite of the Greek spirit, which found everything in Nature.² The subsequent conception of the world finds nothing at all in Nature. The Christian Middle Ages must appear to us in this light. Just as little as the Greeks could gain a knowledge of the essence of Art, in their inability to grasp how Art reaches out beyond Nature, creating a higher Nature side by side with actual Nature, so little could mediaeval science attain a science of Art, for Art could only work with means offered by Nature, and the scholars could not grasp how works could be created within the pale of godless reality, which could satisfy the spirit striving to attain the divine. But the helplessness of Science did not injure the development of Art. While the scholars did not know just what to think, the most glorious works of Christian Art came into existence. Philosophy, which in those days had Theology in tow, was as incapable as the great idealist of the Greeks, the ‘divine Plato,’ had been, of conceding to Art a place within the progress of civilisation. Plato declared the plastic and dramatic arts to be harmful. He could so little conceive of an independent mission of Art, that he only mercifully spares music, because music promotes courage in war.

[ 9 ] At a time when Spirit and Nature were so closely joined, a science of Art could not come into existence, nor was this possible at a time when they faced each other in unreconciled opposition. For the genesis of Aesthetics a time was necessary when man, in freedom and independence from the shackles of Nature, perceived the spirit in its undimmed purity, but a time, also, when a reunion with Nature is again possible. That the standpoint of the Greeks should be superseded, is not without good reason. For in the sum total of accidents constituting the world in which we feel ourselves placed, we can never find the divine, the necessary; we see nothing around us but facts that might equally well be different; we see nothing but individuals, and our spirit strives for the expression of the species, for the archetype; we see nothing but the finite, the perishable, and our spirit strives for the infinite, the imperishable, the eternal. And so if man's spirit, once estranged from Nature, is to return to Nature, it must be to something different from that sum total of accidents. It is for this return that Goethe stands; a return to Nature, but with the rich abundance of a developed spirit, with the level of culture of modern times.³

[ 10 ] The fundamental separation of Spirit and Nature does not correspond with Goethe's views. He sees in the world one great whole—a uniformly progressive chain of beings, within which man is a link, even though the highest. ‘Nature! we are surrounded and embraced by her, unable to withdraw from her and unable to advance more deeply into her. She lifts us unasked and unwarned, into the gyrations of her dance, and whirls with us away, until we are exhausted and fall from her arms.’ (Cp. Goethe's Scientific Works edited by Rudolf Steiner, vol. 2, p. 5.) And in the book on Winckelmann: ‘When man's healthy nature works as a whole, when the harmonious pleasure affords him a pure instinctive joy—then the Universe, if it could feel its own self, would cry out in exultation, as having reached its goal, and admire the pinnacle of its own growth and being.’ Here we have Goethe's characteristic way of reaching out far beyond the immediate in Nature, though without in the least losing sight of what constitutes the inner being of Nature. He is a stranger to a quality he finds in many especially gifted men, ‘of feeling a kind of shyness before real life, of drawing back into oneself, of creating one's own inner world, and in this way of giving the most excellent accomplishments an inward direction.’ Goethe does not fly from reality in order to create an abstract thought-world, having nothing in common with reality; he plunges deep into reality, in its eternal mutation, its genesis and movement, to find its laws that are immutable: he confronts the individual to behold the archetype. Thus were born in his spirit the plant-type and the animal-type, which are nothing but the Ideas of the plant and the animal. These are no empty general ideas that are part of a dry theory; they are the essential foundation of organisms—substantial and concrete, animated and distinguishable. Distinguishable, to be sure, not for the outer senses, but only for that higher contemplative capacity that Goethe discusses in his essay on ‘Contemplative Discernment.’ In the Goethean sense, ideas are just as objective as the colours and the forms of things, but they are only perceivable for those whose perceptive faculty is regulated for this purpose; just as colours and forms are only there for those who see, and not for the blind. If we approach the objective world with a non-receptive spirit, it does not disclose itself to us. Without the instinctive capacity for apprehending ideas, the latter remain an ever-sealed book. Here none saw as deeply as Schiller into the structure of Goethe's genius.

[ 11 ] On 23rd August, 1794, he enlightens Goethe, in the following words, on the fundamental qualities of his nature: ‘You gather together the whole of Nature in order to gain light on the single detail; where the forms of the phenomena merge into the universal, there you seek the explanation and the reason for the individual. From the simple organisation you mount, step by step, to the more complicated, in order finally to build up the most complicated of all—Man—genetically, and from the materials of Nature's whole edifice. While thus creating him afresh after Nature's pattern, you seek to penetrate the secret of his construction.’ This re-creation provides a key for the understanding of Goethe's conception of the world. If we wish really to rise to the primal types of things, to the immutable in the general mutation, we must revert to the genesis, we must witness Nature create; we must not consider what has reached completion, for this no longer corresponds wholly to the Idea which comes to expression in it.⁴ This is the meaning of Goethe's words in his essay on ‘Contemplative Discernment:’ ‘If, in the sphere of morality, through belief in God, virtue and immortality, we seek to raise ourselves to a higher region and draw near to the first Being, the same should be the case in the sphere of the intellect—that, through the contemplation of an ever-creating Nature, we should make ourselves worthy of spiritual participation in her production. So did I press on untiringly to that original primal type.’ Thus Goethe's archetypes are no empty forms; they are the productive forces behind the phenomena. [ 12 ] This is the ‘Higher Nature’ in Nature over which Goethe wished to gain control. We gather from this that the reality spread out before our senses in no case represents something on the level of which a man who has attained a higher standard of culture can remain stationary. Only when man transcends this reality—breaks the shell and makes for the kernel—is that revealed to him, which the world holds together in its innermost recess. Nevermore can we find satisfaction in the isolated event in nature, but only in the law of nature; nevermore in the single and the particular, but only in the general and the universal. With Goethe this fact comes into evidence in the most perfect imaginable form. With him also the fact is established that, to the modern intellect, reality, as the single and the particular, can afford no satisfaction, because not in it but beyond it do we find that in which we recognise the highest, which we can revere as divine, which, in Science, we express as Idea. While mere observation cannot reconcile the opposing extremes, if it has reality but has not yet the Idea, so also is Science unable to effect this reconciliation, if it has the Idea, but no longer the reality. Between both, man needs a new kingdom; a kingdom in which the Idea is represented by the individual and not only by the whole; a kingdom in which the particular appears gifted with the character of the universal and the necessary. Such a world, however, is not present within sense reality; such a world must first be created by man, and this world is the world of Art—a necessary third kingdom by the side of the kingdoms of the senses and of reason. [ 13 ] The comprehension of Art as this third kingdom is the task which the Science of Aesthetics must regard as its own. The divinity which the objects in Nature have lost must be implanted in them by man himself, and therein lies a noble task which accrues to the artist. He has, so to speak, to bring the kingdom of God on to this earth. This religious mission of Art, as it may well be called, is expressed by Goethe (in the book on Winckelmann) in the following glorious words:

[ 14 ] ‘In that Man is placed on Nature's pinnacle, he regards himself as another whole Nature, whose task is to bring forth inwardly yet another pinnacle. For this purpose, he heightens his powers, imbuing himself with all perfections and virtues, calling on choice, order, harmony, and meaning, and finally rising to the production of the work of art, which takes a pre-eminent place by the side of his other actions and works. Once it is brought forth, once it stands before the world in its ideal reality, it produces a permanent effect—it produces the highest effect—for as it develops itself spiritually out of a unison of forces, it gathers into itself all that is glorious and worthy of devotion and love, and thus, breathing life into the human form, uplifts man above himself, completes the circle of his life and activity, deifies him for the present, in which the past and the future are included. Such were the feelings of those who beheld the Olympian Jupiter, as we can gather from the descriptions, narratives, and testimonies of the Ancients. The god had become man, in order to uplift man to a god. They beheld the highest dignity and were filled with enthusiasm for the highest beauty.’

[ 15 ] In these words, the significance of Art for the progress of civilisation was recognised. And it is characteristic of the mighty German Ethos, that it was the first to whom the recognition of this fact occurred; it is characteristic that all German philosophers, for the last hundred years, have struggled to find the most suitable scientific form for the peculiar way in which, in the work of art, spirit and object, idea and reality, melt into each other. The task of Aesthetics is none other than to comprehend the nature of this interpenetration, and to study it in detail, in the single forms in which it asserts itself, in the various branches of Art. The merit of having given a stimulus to this problem in the way indicated, and thereby to have set the ball rolling in connection with the chief, central questions of Aesthetics, must be ascribed to Kant's Critique of Judgment which appeared in 1790, and at once created a favourable impression on Goethe. In spite, however, of particularly serious work devoted to this subject, we are bound to admit to-day that an all-round satisfactory solution to these aesthetical problems is not forthcoming. The grand master of Aesthetics, that keen thinker and critic, Friedrich Theodor Vischer, held firmly to the end of his life, to his expressed conviction that the science of Aesthetics was still in its infancy. This amounts to an admission that all efforts in this field, including his own five volumes on Aesthetics, were in a more or less false direction. This is indeed the case, and if I may here express my own conviction, it can only be traced back to the circumstance that the fruitful seeds planted by Goethe were passed over unnoticed, and that he was not regarded as being scientifically competent. Had he, on the contrary, been so regarded, those ideas would merely have received a final development, with which Schiller was inspired in the contemplation of Goethe's genius, and which he set down in his letters on Aesthetical education. These letters, too, are held by writers intent on systems, to be insufficiently scientific, and yet they can be counted among the most important works ever produced in the field of Aesthetics. Schiller sets out from Kant, who determined the nature of the Beautiful in more than one respect. Kant first examines the reason of the pleasure we feel in the beautiful works of art. He finds this feeling of pleasure quite different from any other. Comparing it to the pleasure we feel when concerned with an object to which we owe an element of utility to ourselves, it is quite different. This pleasure is closely bound up with the desire for the existence of the object. Pleasure in the useful disappears when the useful is no longer there. Not so with the pleasure in the Beautiful. This pleasure has nothing to do with the possession, with the existence of the object, for it is not attached to the object but to the idea of the object. Whereas with the expedient and the useful, the need is felt to translate the idea into reality: we are content, in the case of the Beautiful, with the mere image. For this reason, Kant calls the feeling of delight in the Beautiful a feeling that is uninfluenced by any actual interest—a disinterested delight. It would, however, be quite erroneous to hold that conformity to purpose is thereby excluded from the Beautiful; this applies only to an exterior purpose. Hence is derived the second explanation of the Beautiful: It is something formed in itself in conformity to purpose, without, however, serving an exterior purpose. When we perceive an object in Nature, or a product of human skill, our intellect comes and inquires for its use and purpose, and is not satisfied until its question as to the ‘wherefore’ is answered. With the Beautiful, the ‘wherefore’ lies in the object itself, and the intellect does not need to reach out beyond it. At this point Schiller sets in, weaving the idea of Freedom into the sequence of thought in a way that does the greatest honour to human nature. To begin with, Schiller sets in opposition two human instincts which ceaselessly assert themselves. The first is the so-called material impulse, or the need to keep our senses open to the inpouring outer world. A rich gift presses in upon us, but without our being able to exert any determining influence on its nature. Here everything takes place with unconditional necessity. What we apprehend is determined from outside; here we are unfree, in subjection; we must simply obey the commands of physical (natural) necessity. The second is the formative impulse; that is none other than Reason, which brings law and order into the chaotic confusion of sense perceptions (external impressions). Through its work, system is introduced into experience. Here too, Schiller finds, we are not free; for in this work Reason is subjected to the unchanging laws of logic. We submit, in the first case, to necessity as imposed by Nature, and, in the second case, as imposed by Reason. Freedom seeks a haven of refuge from both. Schiller, emphasising the analogy between Art and the play of a child, assigns to Freedom the domain of Art. What is essentially the nature of play? Things possessed of reality are taken, and their general bearing altered at will. In this transformation of reality no law of logical necessity decides the issue—as, for instance, in the construction of a machine, where we must strictly conform to the laws of Reason; here everything is in the service of subjective necessity. The player connects things in a way that gives him pleasure; he imposes on himself no constraint. He pays no heed to physical, natural necessity, for he overcomes this constraint by putting to quite arbitrary use whatever passes into his hands. From Reason, too, and its necessity, he feels independent, for the order he introduces into things is his own invention. Thus the player impresses on reality the stamp of his own subjectivity and endows the latter with objective value. The separation of the activity of the two instincts comes to an end; they become united and thereby gain freedom: in the object is spirit, and the spirit is objective. Schiller, the poet of Freedom, sees in Art a free instinctive play, on a higher level, and exclaims with enthusiasm: ‘Man is fully Man only where he plays, and he only plays where he is Man in the fullest sense of the word.’ Schiller calls the basic instinct in Art, the play-instinct or impulse to play. It produces in the artist works, which, while existing for our senses, satisfy our reason; while the reason of which they partake, is simultaneously present for our senses in objective existence. And man's nature, at this stage, shows such activity, that his physical nature acts spiritually, while his spiritual nature acts physically. Physical nature is raised to the spirit, while the spirit sinks into physical nature. The former is thereby ennobled, and the latter is brought down from its clear height into the visible world. The works which thus come to existence are, to be sure, not fully true to Nature, because, in reality, spirit and object are never fully coincident; therefore when we compare the works of Art with the works of Nature, the former appear to us as mere semblance (appearance). But they must be semblance, because they would otherwise not be true works of Art. With his conception of semblance, in this connection, Schiller occupies a unique position among the writers on Aesthetics: he is unsurpassed and unrivalled. This is where the work should have continued. The one-sided solution to the problem of the Beautiful should have been extended with the help of Goethe's reflections on Art. Instead of this, Schelling appeared on the scene with a completely false theory, and inaugurated an error from which the science of Aesthetics in Germany never recovered. As all modern philosophers, Schelling finds that the highest task human effort can set itself, lies in the perception of the eternal, primal types of things. The spirit sweeps beyond the world of physical reality and rises to the heights where the divine is enthroned. There all truth and all beauty is revealed to him. Only the eternal is true and also beautiful. Thus, according to Schelling, no man can behold actual beauty who does not raise himself to the highest truth, for they are one and the same. All sensuous beauty is merely a weak reflection of that endless beauty which we can never perceive with our senses. We see where this leads to: the work of Art is not beautiful for its own sake and through its own self, but because it reproduces the Idea of Beauty. It follows, then, from this theory, that the purport of Art and Science is the same, since they both adopt as a basis eternal truth, which is also beauty. For Schelling, Art is only Science that has become objective. The important question now is: On what does our feeling of pleasure in the work of Art rest? In this case it rests merely on the expression of the Idea. The sensuous image is only a means of expression, the form in which a super-sensible purport expresses itself. In this respect, all the writers on Aesthetics follow the direction of Schelling's idealism. I cannot agree with the latest writer on this subject, E. von Hartmann, when he says that Hegel essentially improved on Schelling on this point. I say on this point, for in many other respects he towered above him. Hegel says actually: ‘The beautiful is the sensuous appearance of the idea.’ This amounts to an admission that, for him, the essential in Art was the expressed idea. This stands out still more clearly in the following words: ‘The hard crust of Nature and of the ordinary world make it more difficult for the spirit to penetrate to the idea, than is the case with works of Art.’ This is surely a clear statement that the goal of Art is the same as the goal of Science, namely, to penetrate to the Idea: Art seeks only to illustrate what Science expresses directly in forms of thought. Vischer calls beauty the appearance of the Idea, and likewise identifies the purport of Art with truth. In spite of all objections, beauty can never be separated from truth, if its essence is found in the expression of the Idea. But then it is not clear what independent mission Art is to have by the side of Science. What Art offers us, we can attain by way of thought, in a purer, clearer form, with no physical veil to shroud it. If this standpoint in Aesthetics be adopted, there is no escape, except through sophistry, from the compromising conclusion that allegory in the plastic arts, and didactic poetry in the poetic art, are the highest artistic forms. The independent significance of Art cannot be grasped, and Aesthetics, from this standpoint, have proved unproductive. It would be a mistake, however, to go too far, and, in consequence, abandon every attempt to attain a science of Aesthetics that is free from contradiction. They go too far in this direction, who would have Aesthetics assimilated by the history of the fine arts. If unsupported by authentic principles, this science merely becomes a storehouse for collections of notes on artists and their works, to which more or less clever remarks are appended; these, however, originating from arbitrary and subjective reasoning, are without value. On the other hand, a kind of physiology of taste has been set up in opposition to Aesthetics. The simplest and most elementary cases in which pleasure is felt are examined; then, mounting from these to more and more complicated cases, ‘Aesthetics from below’ are set up against ‘Aesthetics from above.’ This is the plan adopted by Fechner in his Introduction to Aesthetics. It is incomprehensible that such a work should have found adherents in a country which produced a Kant. Aesthetics should start from the examination of the feeling of pleasure; as though every feeling of pleasure were aesthetical, and as though the nature of the various feelings of pleasure could be distinguished by any other means than through the object itself which caused them. We only know that pleasure is an aesthetic feeling when we recognise the object to be beautiful, for, physiologically, there is nothing to distinguish aesthetic pleasure from any other. It is always a question of ascertaining the object. By virtue of what does an object become beautiful? This is the basic question in all Aesthetics.

[ 13 ] We come much nearer to solving this question if we follow Goethe's lead. Merck describes Goethe's creative activity in the following words: ‘You create quite differently from the rest; they seek to embody the so-called imaginative—this produces only rubbish; you, however, seek to endow reality with a poetic form.’ These words convey about the same meaning as Goethe's own words in the second part of Faust: ‘Consider what thou will'st; still more consider how thou will'st.’ It is clearly stated what Art stands for. Not for the embodiment of the super-sensible, but for the transformation of the physical and the actual. Reality is not to be lowered to a means of expression: no, it is to be maintained in its full independence; only it must receive a new form, a form in which it satisfies us. If we remove any single being from its surroundings and observe it in this isolated condition, much in connection with it will appear incomprehensible. We cannot make it harmonise with the idea, the conception we necessarily apply to it. Its formation within reality is, in fact, not only the consequence of its own conformity to law; surrounding reality had a direct determining influence as well. Had it been able to develop itself independently, and free from external influence, only then would it have become a living presentment of its own Idea. The artist must grasp and develop this Idea on which the object is based, but whose free expansion within reality has been hampered. He must find within reality the point, starting from which, an object can be developed in its most perfect form. Nature falls short of her intention in every single instance; by the side of one plant she creates a second, a third, and so on; in no single plant is the whole Idea represented in concrete life; in one plant one side, in another plant another side is given, as circumstances permit. The artist must revert to Nature's tendency, as this appears to him. This is what Goethe means when he declares of his own creative activity: ‘I seek in everything a point from which much may be developed.’ In the artist's work the whole exterior must express the whole interior; in Nature's product the exterior falls short of the interior, and man's inquiring spirit must first ascertain it. Thus the laws in accordance with which the artist goes to work are none other than the eternal laws of Nature, pure, uninfluenced and unhampered. Artistic creation rests not on what is, but on what might be; not on the actual, but on the possible. The artist creates according to the same principles as Nature, but applies these principles to the individual, whereas, to use Goethe's own words, Nature pays no heed to the individual, ‘She ever builds and ever destroys,’ because her aim is perfection, not in the unit but in the totality. The content of any work of Art is any physical reality—this is what the artist wills; in giving it its form, he directs his efforts so as to excel Nature in her own tendency, and to achieve to a still higher degree than she is capable of, the results possible within her laws and means.

[ 18 ] The object which the artist sets before us is more perfect than it is in its natural state, but it contains none other than its own inherent perfection. Where the object excels its own self—though on the basis of what is already concealed within it—there beauty is found. Beauty is therefore nothing unnatural: Goethe can say with good reason, ‘Beauty is a manifestation of secret laws, which, failing beauty, would have ever remained concealed;’ or, in another passage: ‘He to whom Nature reveals her manifest secret, yearns for Art, Nature's worthiest interpreter.’ If it may be said that beauty is unreal, since it represents something which can never be found within Nature in such perfection, so, too, can it be said in the same sense, that beauty is truer than Nature, since it represents what Nature intends to be but cannot be. On this question of reality in Art, Goethe says—and we may extend his words to apply to the whole of Art: ‘The poet's province is representation. This reaches its highest level when it competes with reality, that is, when the descriptions are so lifelike, through the spirit, that they may stand as present for all men.’ Goethe finds that ‘nothing in Nature is beautiful which is not also naturally true, in its underlying motive’ (Conversations with Eckermann, iii. 79). And the other side of appearance or semblance, when the being excels its own self, we find expressed as Goethe's view in the proverbs in prose, No. 978: ‘The law of vegetable growth appears in its highest manifestation in the blossom, and the rose is but the pinnacle of this manifestation. The fruit can never be beautiful, for there the vegetable law reverts to its own self—back to the mere law.’ Here we surely have it plainly stated: Where the Idea develops and unfolds, there beauty sets in—where we perceive the law directly in the outward phenomenon; where, on the other hand, as in the fruit, the outward phenomenon appears formless and gross, because there is no sign in it of the fundamental law underlying vegetable growth—there beauty in the natural product ceases. For this reason the same proverb goes on to say: ‘The law, as it engages itself in the phenomenon with the greatest freedom and according to its own inherent conditions, produces the objective-beautiful, which, to be sure, must find a worthy subject by which to be perceived.’ This view of Goethe's we find most definitely stated in a passage in the Conversations with Eckermann (ii. 106). ‘The artist, to be sure, must faithfully and devotedly follow Nature's pattern in the detail ... only in the higher regions of artistic activity, where actually a picture becomes a picture—there he has free play and may even proceed to fiction.’ Goethe gives as the highest goal of Art: ‘Through semblance to give the illusion of a higher reality. It were, however, a false effort to retain the semblance so long within reality, that finally a common reality were left.’

[ 19 ] Let us now ask ourselves what is the reason of pleasure felt in works of Art. We must realise that pleasure and satisfaction in the object of beauty are in no way inferior to the purely intellectual pleasure which we feel in the purely spiritual. It always points to a distinct decadence in Art when its province is sought in mere amusement and in the satisfaction of lower inclinations. The reason for pleasure in works of Art is none other than the reason for the joyful exultation which we feel in view of the world of Ideas generally, uplifting man out of himself. What is it, then, that gives us such satisfaction in the world of Ideas? Nought else than the heavenly inner tranquillity and perfection which it harbours. No contradiction, no dissonance stirs in the thought-world which rises within our inner self, for it is itself an infinite. Inherent in this picture is everything which makes it perfect. This native perfection of the world of Ideas—this is the reason of our exultation when we stand before it. If beauty is to exalt us in the like manner, then it must be fashioned after the pattern of the Idea. This is quite a different thing from what the German writers on Aesthetics of the idealist school would have. This is not the Idea in the form of a phenomenon; it is just the contrary; it is a phenomenon in the form of the Idea. The content of Beauty, the material basis on which it rests, is thus always an actual positive reality, and the form in which it is presented is the form of the Idea. We see exactly the contrary is true to what German Aesthetics say; the latter simply turned things upside down. Beauty is not the divine in a cloak of physical reality; no, it is physical reality in a cloak that is divine. The artist does not bring the divine on to the earth by letting it flow into the world; he raises the world into the sphere of the divine. Beauty is semblance, because it conjures before our senses a reality which, as such, appears as an ideal world. Consider what thou will'st, still more consider how thou will'st—for on the latter everything turns. What is given remains physical, but the manner of its appearance is ideal. Where the ideal form appears in the physical to best advantage, there Art is seen to reach its highest dignity. Goethe says here: ‘The dignity of Art appears perhaps most eminently in music, because in music there is no material factor to be discounted. Music is all form and figure, exalting and ennobling everything it expresses.’ A science of Aesthetics starting from this definition: ‘Beauty is a physical reality appearing as though it were Idea’—such a science does not exist: it must be created. It can be called straight away the ‘Aesthetics of Goethe's world-conception.’ And this is the science of Aesthetics of the future. E. von Hartmann, one of the latest writers on this subject and the author of an excellent ‘Philosophy of Beauty,’ also cherishes the old error, that the content of Beauty is the Idea. He says quite rightly that the basic conception from which the science of the beautiful should proceed, is the conception of aesthetic semblance. Yes, but how can the manifestation of the world of Ideas, as such, ever be regarded as semblance. The Idea is surely the highest truth: when the Idea appears, it does so out of truth, and not as semblance. It is a real semblance, however, when the natural (physical) and the individual, arrayed in the imperishable raiment of eternity, appear with the character of the Idea; for reality falls short of this.

[ 20 ] Taken in this sense, the artist appears as the continuator of the cosmic Spirit. The former pursues creation where the latter relinquishes it. The closest tie of kinship seems to unite the artist with the cosmic Spirit, and Art appears as the continuation of Nature's process. Thus the artist raises himself above the life of common reality, and he raises us with him when we devote ourselves to his work. He does not create for the finite world, he expands beyond it. This conception we find expressed by Goethe in his poem, ‘The Artist's Apotheosis,’ where he makes the Muse call to the Poet in the following words:

So doth the Hero mightily inspire
His equals through the chain of centuries:
The heights a noble spirit can attain
May not be mastered in life's narrow span.
Hence also after death his soul continues,
Not less creative now than when he lived;
The noble deed, the beautiful idea
Strives deathless on, as mortally it strove.
So thou, The Poet too, livest through unmeasured time
In fields of immortality sublime.

Tr. Meredith Starr.

[ 21 ] In this poem, Goethe's thoughts on what I may call the cosmic mission of the artist are most aptly expressed.

[ 22 ] Who, like Goethe, ever grasped in Art such deep significance? Who ever endowed Art with such dignity? It speaks sufficiently for the whole depth of his conceptions, when he says: ‘The great works of art are brought into existence by men, as are the great works of Nature, in accordance with true and natural laws; all arbitrary phantasy falls to the ground; there is Necessity, there is God.’ A science of Aesthetics in his spirit were certainly no bad thing. And this might apply also to other departments of modern science.

[ 23 ] When, at the death of the poet's last heir, Walter von Goethe, 15th April, 1885, the treasures of the Goethe House became accessible to the nation, many, no doubt, shrugged their shoulders at the zeal of the scholars as they seized on the smallest posthumous remnant and handled it as a precious relic—the value of which, in connection with research should by no means be despised. But Goethe's genius is unfathomable; it cannot be taken in at a glance; we can only draw near to it gradually from different sides. And for this purpose we must welcome everything; what appears a worthless detail, gains significance when we consider it in connection with the poet's comprehensive view of the world. Only when we traverse the whole gamut of expressive activity in which this universal spirit gave vent to his life—only then does the essential in him, his own tendency, from which everything with him originated, and which represents a culmination of humanity, appear before our soul. Only when this tendency becomes the common property of all who strive spiritually; when the belief becomes general that we have not only to understand Goethe's conception of the world, but that we must live in it and it must live in us—only then will Goethe have fulfilled his mission. This conception of the world must be a sign for all members of the German people and far beyond it, in which they can meet and know each other in a life of common endeavour.

1. We are concerned here with Aesthetics as an independent science. It is of course possible to find treatises on the fine arts by leading spirits of earlier times. A history of Aesthetics, however, could only treat this material as all human effort in philosophy is appropriately treated, before the actual beginning of philosophy in Greece, with Thales.
2. It is said of thought in the Middle Ages that it ‘found nothing at all in Nature.’ Against this the great thinkers and mystics of the Middle Ages might be cited. such an objection is based on a complete misapprehension. It is not stated that thought in the Middle Ages was incapable of forming a conception of the importance of apprehension and so on, but simply that man's spirit in those days was turned towards the spirit as such, in its own primal form, and felt no inclination to come to terms with the separate facts in Nature.
3. With Shelling's fundamental error is by no means meant the effort of the spirit to ‘rise to the heights where the divine is enthroned,’ but Shelling's application of this conception to his treatment of Art. This must be clearly pointed out, so that what is said here against Shelling should not be confused with the criticism nowadays frequently levelled against that philosopher, and generally against philosophical idealism. It is possible for the author of this treatise to hold Shelling in high esteem, but still find much to object to in the detail of his achievement.
4. In Art, physical reality is transfigured through its appearance as though it were spirit. To this extent, artistic creation is not an imitation of anything already in existence, but a continuation, springing from the human soul, of the comic process. Something can just as little be created by mere physical imitation as by the representation of spirit already in existence. Real strength cannot be felt in the artist who impresses the observer with the true imitation of reality, but by the artist who forces us along with him when he creatively continues the cosmic process in his work.

70a. The Human Soul, Fate and Death: The Rejuvenating Power of the German National Soul 20 Feb 1915, Bremen Rudolf Steiner
This is not said comparatively, but to express something that is as certain for anthroposophy as, for example, the biological results are for the external science. Spiritual science says that the way a person, with their soul, faces the things and entities of external nature, and how they form concepts and ideas about them, so there are truly real spiritual beings, invisible to the physical eye, above the human being, and for these beings, the human being with their soul is as much a thought, as it is an idea, as the objects of external nature are for the human being.

70a. The Human Soul, Fate and Death: The Rejuvenating Power of the German National Soul 20 Feb 1915, Bremen

Rudolf Steiner

This is not said comparatively, but to express something that is as certain for anthroposophy as, for example, the biological results are for the external science. Spiritual science says that the way a person, with their soul, faces the things and entities of external nature, and how they form concepts and ideas about them, so there are truly real spiritual beings, invisible to the physical eye, above the human being, and for these beings, the human being with their soul is as much a thought, as it is an idea, as the objects of external nature are for the human being.

70a. The Human Soul, Fate and Death: The Rejuvenating Power of the German National Soul 20 Feb 1915, Bremen Rudolf Steiner
During each winter in the past years, I was allowed to give a lecture here on a spiritual-scientific topic. The local friends have also requested such a lecture for this year. And it will seem understandable that in these difficult, fateful and destiny-bearing times, such a reflection may lead to that which fills us all deeply, deeply in our hearts and souls. Our thoughts and feelings are directed towards the East and the West, to where the great events of our time are unfolding in such a significant, grand, powerful, and painful way; where the fate of humanity is not discussed with words, but with deeds, which find expression in courage, confidence, bravery, in death and suffering, but also in all the uplifting sacrifices that are so abundant in the time when something so significant is also happening for our Central European humanity. What can be stimulated in our present time regarding the relationship between the European national souls may be the subject of today's spiritual scientific reflection. It may be the subject of this reflection in the way that spiritual science can illuminate these very conditions. This spiritual science, which has indeed found little, truly little, favor and acceptance among the majority of contemporary people, but which, for those who are imbued with its innermost meaning, its innermost spirit, presents itself that it must take its stand for the whole movement for the whole life of the human spirit in the cultural movement for the present and the near future, just as the scientific movement for several centuries has taken its stand in cultural life. And it is precisely in the face of the deeply moving questions of life that spiritual science must prove itself. Among the concepts that have provoked the most ridicule and opposition in my first fundamental spiritual science book - in my “Theosophy” - is the concept of the folk soul not as an abstraction, as a mere idea and sum of characteristics that hold a group of people together, but as a real, active being. We have already reached a point where the habits of thought that have been formed over centuries no longer want to go along with spiritual science. Just as human beings, as the highest of earthly beings, stand in relation to the entities of the other natural kingdoms, just as the entities of the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms find their physical, sensory culmination in the human being, so spiritual science must show - however unusual it may be for present-day ideas - that the realms of beings are not limited to the visible, that there are other realms above the human being, which cannot be reached with the mind that is bound to our brain, or with our physical, sensory eyes and ears, but which can be reached with what Goethe called spiritual vision, spiritual eyes and ears. This is not said comparatively, but to express something that is as certain for anthroposophy as, for example, the biological results are for the external science. Spiritual science says that the way a person, with their soul, faces the things and entities of external nature, and how they form concepts and ideas about them, so there are truly real spiritual beings, invisible to the physical eye, above the human being, and for these beings, the human being with their soul is as much a thought, as it is an idea, as the objects of external nature are for the human being. Thus we are permeated and held by these spiritual beings. And to one of the next classes of these beings, spiritual science must count what for many is only the coincidence of the characteristics of a people: the folk souls. What matters is the relationship of the folk soul to the individual human soul. Spiritual science does not look at the soul like popular psychology. It regards it not as a product of the outer organization, but as the real creator of the outer organization. And not to make an easy classification, but out of the nature of things, the spiritual scientific researcher distinguishes three essential parts of the soul with the same justification - only of course transferred to another area - as one distinguishes in the rainbow spectrum the red color on one side, the green in the middle, and then the blue color. And just as one cannot grasp the interaction of light and colors without taking this structure, which is most clearly seen in the rainbow spectrum, so one cannot understand the human soul without the threefold nature that we describe as the sentient soul, the mind or emotional soul, and the consciousness soul. Just as the rainbow has the color red on one side, so the human being has the sentient soul on one side; in the middle, the human being has the mind or emotional soul; and just as the rainbow has the color blue, so the human being has the consciousness soul. As I said, this does not arise from arbitrariness, from a desire to classify, but is connected with the innermost nature of the soul. Let us first take the sentient soul: just as the red part of the spectrum primarily contains warmth, so the sentient soul contains more of the desires, the passions, the passionate forces of the soul, but at the same time, when the soul goes through the gate of death into the spiritual world, [withdraws into] that which are the eternal forces of the soul, which mysteriously hide behind the drives, the passions, the desires, which at the same time are what imprints the soul with the eternal character. But what exists in the soul as the mediation of the eternal self of the human being with the temporal-spatial human being corresponds to the green color, which primarily serves the light, just as the mind serves the spiritual, mediating the human being's relationship to his eternal and temporal. And the consciousness soul is what consumes the eternal between birth and death to work on the temporal; it is most turned towards the material world. The consciousness soul is what contains the soul powers that are least carried through the gate of death, that are least connected to the eternal self of man. In all that we distinguish as nuances of the soul life, the actual I of the human being lives as light lives in the nuances of the spectrum. As there is light in every color, so there is I in every part of the human soul; but at the same time, what permeates the human being like an invisible entity passes through the I into the soul's members: the soul of the people to which he belongs. The relationship between the national soul and the individual human soul varies greatly, and nations differ according to the nature of the relationship between the national soul and the individual human soul. There is not enough time in the world if I were to attempt to develop in full, on the basis of spiritual scientific research, the nature of the relationship between the national soul and the human soul. A comparison can be enlightening here, but it should be more than just a comparison; it should give a genuine spiritual-scientific result. If we look at a person in relation to the mineral, plant and animal world, we can distinguish three types of people. Firstly, there are people whose whole being is inclined only towards the external sense world, who cannot sharply concentrate their attention on something that withdraws from the sense world, who always need the impression of the outside world. They fall into indifference and inattention when they are supposed to have ideas that do not adhere to the outside world. There is another relationship to the environment that we encounter more in inward-looking, sensible natures, who go through the world in such a way that their senses are little attracted by external nature, who produce inwardly, who bring forth from the life of the soul what they experience. They go through the world of the senses raving and dreaming. These are very different types of people because the soul relates to itself and to the outer world in different ways. A third type is the one who has placed himself in history primarily through the representative of Germanness, through Goethe. A great thinker of his time called his thinking “representational thinking”. By this he meant that Goethe had the peculiarity of being just as oriented towards sensual things as he was, and that he could immerse himself in the spiritual that he was able to experience in and with things. The ideas of “spirit and body” were intimately interwoven in his soul. His thinking was objective and did not stray far from the objects, and when it did go to the objects, it did not stray from itself. Corresponding to this threefold relationship of man to the world around him, we also have three types of relationship of the folk soul to the individual human soul. For just as the human being relates to nature, so the folk soul relates to the individual human soul. There are folk souls that relate to individual souls in such a way that they are completely devoted to the individual human beings, as it were, that they completely slip into them and permeate them, that the individual soul is something that is the imprint of the folk soul. This is the preferred relationship for the souls that inhabit the west and south of Europe: the French, Italian and British people. The relationship is different for the Russian people. There we find that the folk soul remains, as it were, above the individual souls, that it does not enter into the being of the individual human being, which is expressed by the fact that the Russian people still have today - like a cloud spreading over the whole nation - the Byzantine religion, which does not connect with the individual soul. Such is the relationship of the folk soul to the individual Russian person. [Where, as in Western Europe, the national soul takes hold of the individual souls, it dominates the individual souls so that the individual soul is something like an imprint of the national soul. Just as the national soul in the West is within the individual soul, so the relationship of the Russian national soul is such that it does not descend. Like the person who lives only in his or her own soul, the national soul does not descend to the individual soul; the national soul, as it were, raves over the people. The Russian souls are not seized by the folk soul, but rather they are in anarchic confusion. Even when one thinks of the excellent representatives of the Russian people, of Tolstoy and so on, one sees how the folk soul hovers over them like a cloud and that the individual soul forces are not seized by it, but are in anarchic confusion. Let us now turn to the center of Europe: here we find such a relationship between the soul of the people and the individual soul that we can compare this relationship with Goethe's objective thinking. We have the soul of the people lovingly and intimately entering into the individual souls and yet, at the same time, rising above itself and being transported into the spiritual worlds in order to draw new strength and carry it down from the spiritual worlds. We have here the life of the soul of the people above the human being in the spiritual heights, and then again in the individual human souls. One can say: When you look at the people of Western Europe, a particular soul force is always taken hold of and ruled by the folk soul: in the Italians, the sentient soul; in the French, the mind or mind soul; in the British, the consciousness soul. All the qualities that the members of these nations have [precisely as members of these nations] immediately become clear and understandable when viewed from this perspective of the nature of the facts, which can be found through spiritual science. How powerfully passionate, how completely immersed in instinct, all of Italian life appears, right up to the greatness of Dante, who drafted his Divine Comedy from the images of the sentient soul. The Italian people become understandable when one knows that it is the folk soul that takes hold of the sentient soul here. The French nation becomes understandable when one recognizes that the folk soul directly takes hold of the intellectual soul. I read how a psychological society in a German city tried to explain the French national character. The result was: That is their mathematical disposition. This disposition becomes immediately understandable when one knows that the folk soul directly takes hold of the powers of the intellectual soul. Everything in this western nation is illuminated when one knows that it tends to take things in such a way that, despite all striving for personal freedom and national freedom, it is inwardly dogmatized and systematized to the point of artistic activity, to the point of the details of artistic activity. And we also find the other side there. I would like to say the negative pole of the dogma: that is criticism, the dissolving element. On the one hand, the rational soul wants to see everything in a system of dogmas, and if it cannot, it rebels against it, and so we have either dogmatism or Voltairism. The starting point of Descartes' philosophy is doubt down to the last detail. You can understand what is happening in the French people if you know this. I note that a number of prominent figures are sitting here who know that I have been dealing with these things for years and that they have not been formulated by the occasion of the present. But I believe that they can be enlightening for what we are now experiencing, which is so great, so meaningful and so painful. Now to the consciousness soul. The part that is most inclined towards the outer life and carries least into the eternal part of the human being is the consciousness soul, and in the British people it is most seized by the folk soul. The character of the British people as a trading nation and also the character of Shakespeare immediately becomes clear. For what is his greatness based on? That he has portrayed the individual human being in such a sharp characteristic, that they stand firmly on the physical plane, that he characterizes them in what does not pass through the gate of death. He is so great because he has succeeded in characterizing so sharply what is human in man that is not eternal about them, but what they develop for the physical world between birth and death. Now, the German national soul, or, as I could also say, Central European culture, is characterized by the fact that it does not take hold of the soul directly, but descends to the soul and takes hold of it in its entirety, as it were with that which flows from the sources of the spiritual world, for it has the gift of withdrawing into the spiritual worlds and drawing strength from there. Hence the peculiarity of the German soul to experience that which has the power of the eternal, which directly flows from the eternal into the individual souls. The individual soul must be able to feel that something in your soul lives through the national soul, which sinks into you, which is carried into you, and through which you are directly connected to what lives in spiritual heights. Hence the idealism, hence the ever-rejuvenating power of the German national soul. One can go through the products of German intellectual life and obtain the evidence that, in contrast to other nations, the German has this peculiar relationship to the folk soul: not the individual soul elements are seized, as in the western and eastern nations of Europe, but the ego, of which the German seems to be less developed. One is a Briton, a Frenchman; a German is to be made. It is an ideal because not a single power of the soul, but the whole soul is seized in the most profound life in the constant emergence of the different sides. Let us look back to the times when Christianity penetrated into the young, developing Germanic nation. How was it received? We can see this from the Old High German poem “Heliand”. What the individual - here the poet of “Heliand” - feels about the events, his personal experience, is directly related to the forces that surround him. What was only handed down to the Romans is reborn from the youngest germinal forces of the poet. And in other poems we find how Christianity not only becomes part of the German people, but is born out of the individual human being, as it becomes a personal matter for the individual. It is the soul of the people that does not allow what comes to the people to grow old, but rejuvenates it so that it lives like a plant in the soul and rises again. Furthermore, we see how a world view develops in the twelfth to fourteenth centuries that is called German mysticism, for example in the works of Tauler, Meister Eckhart, the unknown author of Theologia Deutsch, and so on. We see how the minds work in a peculiar way, how they relate to the spiritual world. The mystic Eckhart is convinced that the spiritual world must be experienced directly in the soul, that it must be left entirely to itself, that it must not move out of its own arbitrariness, but must give itself to the forces that are weaving and ruling through the world. Then something ignites in it, which is a spark, but in this spark lives God, the divine weaving and being. The place where God lives within, [where Christ is born within, which suffers] and dies when the individual soul goes the way of suffering and passion, / gap in the text] is where Meister Eckhart coined the word “Gemüt”. In the mind, the world is spiritually revived, and it is aware that what a person thinks, the Godhead thinks, what a person feels, the Godhead feels, what a person wills, the Godhead wills, if only he gives himself to his God. There we have something of the intimate coexistence of the individual with the German folk soul. And in the author of Theologia Deutsch we find a rejuvenation of the German Weltanschauung through a rhythmic beat of the life of the German national soul with the individual representatives of the German national soul. What in earlier times led to the resurrection of the life of Jesus, as if Jesus had wandered through Germany's countryside with his disciples as his servants, which so personally depicted the life of Jesus, which rejuvenated Christianity, that rejuvenates the worldview in German mysticism. And it is wonderful how deeply the German national soul intervenes in personal life! This becomes clear when we look at one of the disciples of mysticism, at Angelus Silesius, when we share a saying of this mystic, one of the deepest of the numerous sayings: I neither die nor live. God Himself dies in me, And what I am to live, He also lives for and for. Oh, what depths, we say, only in relation to the thought of immortality! He who has done this feels the ruling divinity. When I die, it is just as much an act of the divinity as when I live, it is the divinity that lives in me. By letting God experience death in me, I am aware of my immortality. One can say: such ideas of immortality, which point to an immortal power in the human soul that is not grasped by reflecting on what lies beyond death, but is already grasped by it in life, are demonstrated by Jakob Böhme, the simple cobbler from Görlitz, the profound philosopher, who was fully inspired by the German folk spirit. He directed his enlightened gaze to that which is of the divine worlds in his own soul. He saw the courage of human striving on earth in the fact that the individual human soul, which is otherwise given over to emotional impressions, to those of the intellect and so on, always knows itself connected with its immortal core, with that which lives in death, that knows how to die by living out of direct knowledge. Jakob Böhme's goal was to experience death directly in earthly life, and that this is the seed for the experiences of life. An expression that appears to be the utterance of the German national soul through a single person is the following: He who does not die before he dies, He perishes when he dies. Those who do not grasp during their lifetime what lives in the soul as an immortal and thus pass through the gate of death, those who do not grasp death as the source of spiritual life, perish when they die. We see the highest philosophical view, but one that is also imbued with elemental soul power, rising to the highest heights of the spiritual. When we see such figures of German nationality before our minds, we perceive how the German national soul has a rejuvenating effect again and again, so that it must always take hold of spirit and soul as a fresh germ in order to go up the whole ladder, to go to the highest heights of spiritual fruit. And after the scorching and burning devastation of the Thirty Years' War, we see the German soul's strength once again intervening in the life of the people. [Gap in the text] How consciously Lessing points out that a truth does not need to be foolish because it originally occurred in people who had not yet been corrupted by the sophistries of the schools - he means the great truth of repeated earthly lives - that the entire earthly life proceeds in such a way that it passes through different earthly lives. He expresses this in his “Education of the Human Race”. The very clever people say: He has grown old when he wrote this. But he was aware that in the “Education of the Human Race” he presented the entire development, which is equally drawn from the elementary soul forces and at the same time leads to the highest heights of spiritual life. What arises in this way arises through the intimate interaction of the soul of the people with the entire soul forces. This is also the case with Herder, who provided a broad overview in his “History of Mankind”, encompassing the entire nature of the soul, from the most elementary soul forces to the highest philosophical powers. There are many, many ways in which the soul of a nation lives in Goethe's soul. It is remarkable that we realize that in turn a poetic work could arise in him that could not have arisen within any other culture. If the German folk soul has the peculiarity of grasping not the individual soul forces but the whole soul, then it grasps the immortal in the mortal, and the personality becomes the bearer of the eternal. Therefore, Goethe's “Faust” could only arise within German culture. It contains everything in the human soul, all the striving for the very beginnings of spiritual life, which are consciously sought again after all tradition has been cast off. How is this presented? Let us compare how the German soul power inspires the German people in relation to the French people. In both, the Greek is reviving. But how does it revive with the French poets? It is studied, the rules are adopted and so on. But how is it with Goethe? Even in “Iphigenia” the Greek is not adopted, but reborn anew, rejuvenated. And in “Faust” we have the union with what he regarded as Greek: Helen is reborn for Faust. He becomes young in order to unite with the representative of Greek culture. Faust, who has grown old, throws off the old and seeks the rejuvenating potion. What is historically given must be brought into connection with Faust in a rejuvenated form. This demands the full strength, the rejuvenating strength of the German national soul. We can trace it everywhere in all the details of German intellectual life! This is what comes to consciousness through an immersion in the substance of the German national soul. One sees, feels and senses an ever-renewing power in it. However present culture may change, this renewing power will remain, because its magic breath will be breathed again and again in different epochs. This is a peculiarity of Central European culture. This hope and confidence, which immediately becomes strength, is the basis not for superficial but for profound optimism in the German, which is also connected to idealism in all philosophies. Whoever is truly capable of approaching what the German national soul has produced cannot despair of humanity, but always comes to a belief in humanity, and indeed to a spiritual belief in humanity. This becomes very significant when one looks at spirits who turn their gaze to humanity in search of something that can give good hope for the further development of man, and who can find nothing, who believe that European culture has died out. No one can regard European culture as having grown old; they can understand the relationship between the soul of the people and the individual German soul. Anyone who considers European culture to be old does not understand that. That is why we have a Russian intellectual who has searched for what can make humanity happy and cannot find anything that has grown out of this culture of the national soul. He looks everywhere and finds nothing. I am talking about Herzen, the great Russian who became so small in his own eyes when he wanted to understand Central European culture. The following saying of Herzen immediately sheds light on the way the Eastern European, anarchic soul views desolation where flourishing life can be seen by those who can understand Central European soul life. He enters into an intellectual alliance with an Englishman, with Stuart Mill, and says: Mill is not exaggerating when he speaks of the narrowing of the mind, of the constant flattening of life, of the reduction of life to commercial culture. He says that England will become like China, and we add that England will not be alone. That is what Herzen says, who has no understanding for what must fill the Central European with the highest vitality. And further he says: Perhaps a coincidence will save us from Chinese desiccation. If he had understood Goethe, such a statement would be impossible! Further Herzen says: Where is the highest thought, that is, hope, which hardens the hearts so that they feel neither pain nor suffering. Look around you, what can uplift the hearts. That the same force that brought forth the highest poetic and philosophical blossoms in Goethe is the same force that today brings forth countless victims, victims of death and suffering, that is what presents itself to us at the same time from the whole context of German life. And has German life always been so misunderstood in the world as it is now, when it is being shouted at from all sides that it is a life of “barbarians”? Not only is Central Europe being surrounded like a large fortress with the intention of starving it out, no, it is also being scolded and reviled from all sides. Here and there, friendly voices are raised, for example, by a Romanian who exclaims: All those who have studied in France and lived among the French people have rushed to fill the columns of newspapers with all kinds of praise. Why don't you, who have enjoyed German hospitality, respond to these people by saying that these barbarians have the best schools, clinics, universities and so on? That you were welcomed everywhere with open arms! Why don't you respond by saying that these barbarians, who were your teachers, are incapable of committing such crimes? [Why don't you respond? These voices were not always so rare. It is uncomfortable for a Central European to characterize the German essence in value judgments. What I have said, I know, is as certain a result of spiritual scientific research as the laws of the solar spectrum are a scientific research result. But it is uncomfortable for a German to make value judgments about the German character, so let us first hear from others. First Emerson, the great American teacher. In his reflections on Goethe, he wrote as if there were some awareness of how the German national character relates to the individual soul, and of the difference between Eastern and Western Europe: One [quality] in particular, which Goethe shares with his entire nation, makes him stand out in the eyes of both the French and English public: that everything in his work is based solely on inner truth. In England and America, people respect talent, but they are only satisfied when it works for or against a party of its conviction. In France, one is already delighted to see brilliant ideas going wherever they may. In all these countries, however, talented men write as far as their gifts will take them. If what they present stimulates the discerning reader and contains nothing that offends against good manners, it is considered sufficient. So many columns, so many pleasantly and usefully spent hours. The German mind has neither the French liveliness nor the Englishman's understanding, honed for practicality, nor, finally, the American — as I said, an American writing in English — All he has is a certain probity that never stops at the outward appearance of things, but always comes back to the main question: “Where is this going?” The German public demands that a writer stand above things and simply express himself. Intellectual agility is present, well and good: what does it advocate? What is the man's opinion? Where does it come from? Where does he get all these thoughts? The English [...] only see the individual, they do not know how to grasp humanity as a whole according to higher laws. The Germans think for Europe. The English do not appreciate the depth of the German genius. There is something alive in these words that can seem like an echo of what can arise from the intimate association of the soul of the people with the individual human being. And Emerson continues: That is why the distinguishing terms used in higher conversation are all of German origin. While the English and French, who are mentioned with distinction because of their acumen and erudition, approach their studies and their point of view with a certain superficiality, and their personal character is not too deeply connected with what they have taken up and with the way they express themselves, is not too deeply connected, Goethe, the head and content of the German nation, speaks not because he has talent, but the truth concentrates its rays in his soul and shines out from it. He is wise in the highest degree, though his wisdom may often be obscured by his talent. However excellent what he says is, he has something even better in mind. He makes me curious. He has that fearsome independence that comes from dealing with the truth. You could say: Well, that was said by Emerson, who lived far away in America. We have had to listen to it: the Germans who live now are not the same as they were. Even the French philosopher Bergson said how the Germans have become mechanical. It is strange how, in this day and age, a man who wants to be a philosopher wants to come to his judgment: He certainly longs for judgment! He knows that Germans have had great thoughts. He seems to feel that when cannons and rifles are turned against Germans from all sides, they should then recite poems by Novalis or Goethe in response. Strange logic is going around the world today. When people say, “Who wanted this war,” and the English, French, and Russians claim, “We didn't want it,” one could say, “Yes, we believe that too!” But it does not depend on what one says, but on whether one can say the relevant thing. If five people stand threateningly around a house, and the person who lives in it sees this and tells them to go away, and they then, because they do not leave, are beaten up by them, the five can also say: “We did not want the beating!” One cannot say that Emerson's judgment of the German “barbarians” is already outdated, but one would think that those who have immersed themselves in German intellectual substance can judge better. A few years before the war, a book was published by an Englishwoman entitled “Eight Years in Germany”. She visited German schools, clinics and so on and, having got to know the German character, wrote the following: We read a lot about the new Germany and the new German spirit. Is what exists now the mature work of generations? Blinded by the splendor of Germany's wealth, we are inclined to forget that it has never occupied any place but the very forefront except for prosperity. In literature, it has always provided the impetus; in science, it has always shone; in music, it has always dominated. And now the following. I don't know if she would have written it now, but about two years before the war she did: Forty years ago Germany was fighting for her existence, and she is still fighting for it today. It is entirely wrong to believe that Germany has already reached her zenith. She is fighting a quiet but determined battle against powerful rivals, whose power and experience was gained generations ago. [...] On every border and across the water, opponents sit, commercially and politically, eagerly awaiting the moment when Germany slackens just a little, to pounce on it and bring it down. The reasons why the German national character is so little understood can be grasped. Something can penetrate into the West from the German soul — less so into the East — but it is repelled in the West because it does not want to know anything about the dogmatic character of what wants to live actively in the whole soul. There is a certain understanding, but at the same time a reluctance to let it grow completely into the soul. About a year and a half before the outbreak of the war, lectures were held in Manchester. They have been published and were very interesting, and the scholars explain in the preface why they are holding them: English journalists should be better informed about German conditions. About the immediate present, the scholar Herford said that on the whole it is out of the question that the creation of the German Reich has been beneficial to peace. [Gap in the text] History should be something more than a cinematograph and shed the higher light on things: On the whole and in the big picture, there is no question - it says - that the establishment of the German Reich has been beneficial to world peace. This explanation will seem strange to those who know nothing but the events of the present and for whom history is nothing more than an ever-changing, dazzling cinematograph. But history should be something more. It is fitting for her to let the light of the past shine on the present confusion, and in that higher light, things that seem hurtful will take on a natural appearance. For if we look to the past, we find that our ancestors looked at France with far greater fear than the wildest rabble-rousers today fear Germany. And the fear of our ancestors had good reason. [...] So, to sum up, it can be shown that the founding of the German Empire was an asset for Europe and therefore also for Great Britain. For the events of the years 1866-1871 once and for all put an end to the possibility of waging predatory wars against the hitherto unprotected center of Europe, and thus removed an inducement to war which in earlier centuries had so often tempted into the wrong channels; they put the German people in a position to develop their hitherto stunted political abilities, and they helped to establish on a firm basis a new European system that has preserved the peace for forty years. This blessing resulted from the fact that German unity achieved at a single blow what Great Britain, despite all her expenditure of blood and money, had never been able to accomplish, namely, to secure the balance of power in such a decisive way that a great war became the most dangerous of all ventures. When one is confronted with these things and wonders what lies in the souls of those who wrote them, one must have some understanding of the peculiarity of the European national psyche to grasp why one can understand [it] so little outside of Germany. Only enlightened minds can do that. One mystic who has written beautiful things should also be mentioned. He confessed that he had great experiences with three mystics. One of them is Novalis, who gained so much from his intimate contact with the German folk soul. He uses beautiful words to characterize him. He says: “So much is going on on earth that can only interest earthly souls, such as what Shakespearean characters do. But if other beings from other planets could look down, what could interest them?” And he wonders if there is something that can interest other spirits as well, and in Novalis' writings he finds something that interests not only earthly souls but also beings that come down from heavenly heights. What the human soul can hardly bring forth in words is what he speaks of, what one would rather remain silent about, where true nature begins. He says: But if he needed other proof, it would — that is, presumably, the soul — lead him among those whose works almost move one to silence. She would open the gate of the realm where some loved her for her own sake, without worrying about the small gestures of their bodies. They would climb together to the lonely plateaus where consciousness rises by one level and where all those who are filled with restlessness about themselves attentively survey the immense ring that connects the world of appearances with our higher worlds. She would go with him to the borders of humanity; for at the point where man seems to end, he probably only begins, and his most essential and inexhaustible parts are [only] in the invisible, where he must be on his guard unceasingly. On these heights alone, there are thoughts that the soul can approve of, and ideas that resemble her and are as commanding as she is. There, humanity has ruled for a moment, and these dimly illuminated peaks are perhaps the only lights that announce the earth in the spiritual realm. Their reflection truly has the color of our soul. We feel that the passions of the mind and body would resemble the tolling of bells in the eyes of a strange reason; but [the people I am talking about] have come out of the small village of passions in their works and said things that are also of value to those who do not belong to the earthly community. This is how this enlightened spirit assessed Novalis. Who is it that speaks in this way? Is it someone who calls to account the self-righteous critics who are now railing against German “barbarism”? Is it someone who will take a stand against words such as: In truth, it is difficult to question one's soul and to discern its weak, childlike voice amidst the useless clamor that surrounds it. The words written by the enlightened man about Novalis are by Maeterlinck. And the words about the bawler are also by him. We are now experiencing such things; they characterize our time directly through themselves, without the need to add anything in particular. The lectures mentioned, which were held in Manchester, have been published and also translated into German. In the preface there are some words that can also be read in English: The source of the stream of his intellectual and political life lies in the Reformation. But at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century, a current unique in world history began to flow in a way that has been as continuous as it has been characteristic since that time. Since the days of ancient Greece, the world has not seen such a spectacle of the closest fusion of the life of the statesman with that of the thinker. The spirit of Germany today is to a great extent concrete and practical. The one saying this is Lord Haldane. If we consider how different the European center and the European east must be in terms of the overall character of the people, it can be understood that a powerful confrontation was bound to occur there. This confrontation was seen by people who wanted to see clearly. Today we hear from all sides: The Germans wanted this war. Who wanted it, who, because of the special character of their national aspirations, had to want it for a long time, was always seen by reasonably enlightened minds. A man who is not particularly inclined towards Germanic nature writes: As for me, I am in no doubt that a conflict between the Germanic and Slavic worlds is imminent, that it will be ignited either by the Orient, especially Turkey, or by the nationality dispute in Austria, perhaps by both, and that Russia will take the lead in it on one side. This power is already preparing for the eventuality; the Russian national press is spewing fire and flames against Germany. [...] The German press is already sounding its warning cries. It has been a long time since Russia gathered itself after the Crimean War, and it seems that it is now considered appropriate in St. Petersburg to take up the Oriental question again. If, according to the more pompous than true expression, the Mediterranean Sea should once become “a French lake”, Russia has the even more positive intention of making a Russian lake out of the Black Sea and a Russian pond out of the Sea of Marmara. That Constantinople must become a Russian city and Greece a direct vassal state of Russia is a fixed goal of Russian policy, which finds its levers of support in the common religion and in Pan-Slavism. Thus, the minds that wanted to see it, saw how the forces at work in Europe gradually brought about this time. This was written in 1870! The antagonism between Eastern Europe and Central Europe has always been there, so that the logic of the question, “Who wanted this war?”, is the flimsiest, because the people, whose soul hovers like a cloud over it, has a desire for expansion, and because there is not the slightest understanding for what has been achieved in Central Europe. It was received in Russia, but the way it happened is again quite characteristic. It is true, as Herman Grimm says, that the Englishman Mr. Lewes wanted to write an important book about Goethe. But he only told of a man who happened to be born in Frankfurt am Main and happened to die in Weimar, who had this and that experience and wrote these and those works. But the soul of Goethe does not live in it, because his soul slips through his fingers. He only sees what he can dogmatize; he only sees the Goethe that stands firmly on the ground – the dates of birth and death and so on. He knows the titles of the works and so on. But what Goethe really was, that he was the representative of the dialogue between the individual German and the German national soul, he does not sense. Just as the phenomenon has the effect in the West that the inner passions rebel against it and translate it into the rough, but into the dogmatic, so that which is directly experienced by the Germans has the same effect in the East – as I said, they have often willingly accepted it – in the East it becomes a web of thought. Because the Russian feels that it must be carried up into the cloud that hovers over him, it becomes ghostly, shadowy. Even the great philosopher Soloviev floats in this cloud. He borrowed his generous philosophy from German culture – but what lives with full life in the German soul seems ghostly to him, and it causes the confusedly fluttering thoughts that the German, who is accustomed to the intimate association with the folk soul, cannot follow as an image of truth. One must even experience it, [that an intellectual in Russia makes Goethe] into a ghost in yet another way, one who, however, once called another people “barbarians” before the war: Mereschkowski. He speaks of Herz's last vision of death: The last vision of death in Herz is - Russia as a “land of free life” and the Russian peasant community as the savior of the world. He exchanged his old love for a new faith, but it seems that he realized in the last hour that this last faith was also an illusion. Even if faith deceived him, love did not deceive him; there was a certain correct outlook in his love for Russia: not the peasant community, but the Christian community will perhaps in truth become the faith that the young barbarians are to bring to ancient Rome. So he says from the heart. Meanwhile, however, he dies - without any faith: Farewell, corrupt Rome! ... Farewell, native land! But let no one be deceived by what he says about Goethe in his latest book; the whole of Goethe has become a spectre there. That he does not understand the soul of the people, which has rejuvenated everything, that he cannot look at what Goethe is as a force of the soul of the world, is shown by the fact that he says that he dares to say such words of Goethe as: When Goethe speaks of the French Revolution, he suddenly bends to the earth, as a giant might be crushed by an evil spell and shrink to the size of a dwarf; from a Hellenic demigod he becomes a German citizen and – if the shadow of the Olympian will have mercy on me – a German philistine, a “Herr von Goethe”, a privy councillor of the Duke of Weimar and a respectable son of the respectable Frankfurt merchant. That about the “Faust” poet! One understands what needs to be understood in the middle of Europe, and the extent of the understanding that is shown for the German national soul from both the left and the right speaks for this. One day, world history will not only be judged by archives, by what has been printed and written, but also by more subtle characteristics! It was actually with a heavy heart, through tears, through inner tears, that I realized something like an image in front of my soul, the way the forces of Europe stand, because it is so far from the original forces through which the individual outgrows the cosmos. It is precisely [what that alliance of grand duchy and mendacious Pan-Slavism has done] to the Russian people that this image stands before me. We saw those first August days approaching. I will mention only three images from that time: In Central Europe, the Reichstag. Something characteristic is heralding the coming deeds; it is a purest expression of something infinitely youthful in the forces of the German national soul: the people are silent! There is something monstrous about this. Let us look instead to the west, to the French parliament; look at the speeches that have been made there, and how all these speeches flow out of the power of tyranny. And then we turn to Russia, where we are accustomed to seeing the best of the Russian man in silence: in the Duma, speeches rush, and they all talk in such a way that the words are phrases and everything looks like an arranged theatrical performance of speeches. And so the European powers confront each other, and I am aware of the objectivity in which I have painfully allowed them to affect my soul. The silence in the middle is a symptom of something that is connected with the rejuvenating powers of the German national soul; from epoch to epoch, it has held dialogues with the most outstanding representatives of Germanness, and the most beautiful products can be traced back to this. The striving of the German people for the spirit has also been carried out in what has happened in our time. That has always been the nature of German striving. But if you look at it and try to discern the fundamental character, you have to say: this German spirit has not yet exhausted the forces and possibilities for development that lie within it. The soul of the German nation has a rejuvenating power and will always rejuvenate it again and again. How rejuvenating is Fichte's philosophy! Like a stream of folk lore, it flowed into the times of “Speeches to the German Nation”. What brings his ideas to life in a strange and symbolic way is what a new education wants to give people as reality. Fichte knows how reluctant people are to accept the new, and needs a peculiar comparison. It is highly characteristic of his way of thinking. But spiritual science, from which the attitudes flow that can be used to understand the conditions of the soul of the people, wants to be an active science that courageously and bravely extracts its results. It speaks of the eternal, not merely in abstract words, but as it speaks when the human spirit lives from incarnation to incarnation, so it speaks as it must speak today, about the rejuvenating powers of the German national soul. Fichte says: Time appears to me as an empty shadow, which stands over its corpse, from which an army of diseases has just driven it, and laments and cannot tear its gaze away from the formerly so beloved shell and desperately tries all means to get back into the dwelling of the plague. The invigorating breezes of the other world, into which the deceased has entered, have already taken her in and surround her with a warm breath of love; friendly voices of the sisters already greet her and welcome her; she is already stirring and expanding within her in all directions, to develop the more glorious form to which she is to awaken; but she has no feeling for these airs or hearing for these voices, or, if she had, she is absorbed in pain over her loss, with which she believes she has lost herself at the same time. We can have confidence in the successful striving of the German spirit towards intellectual life, because we see what the German spirit has achieved. This is in the process of becoming and is not yet complete. It is as much a germ as it is a fruit. No matter how unintelligently people speak about Germany, it is not complete and must carry its inner strength out into the world. It is this strength that it has to defend. The time for what the German spirit has to defend will be seen to come. It may be expected. The souls who make the sacrifice of death today will, when those born later understand what the national soul can be for the German individual, they will be able to look down in the days to come on a time that will transform into [human salvation] and progress that which has been bought with such great sacrifices, [with courageous but painful sacrifices]. Truly recognizing the driving forces, it may be said that the German spirit has not reached perfection but will continue to develop: The German spirit has not reached perfection What it is to create in the world's becoming. He lives hopefully in future worries, He hopes for future deeds full of life; - In the depths of his being, he feels mightily Hidden things that must still mature and work. How can, in the power of the enemy, The wish for its end may uncomprehendingly revive: As long as life reveals itself to him, That holds him in the roots of being, creating?

70a. The Human Soul, Fate and Death: The Rejuvenating Power of the German National Soul 20 Feb 1915, Bremen

Rudolf Steiner

During each winter in the past years, I was allowed to give a lecture here on a spiritual-scientific topic. The local friends have also requested such a lecture for this year. And it will seem understandable that in these difficult, fateful and destiny-bearing times, such a reflection may lead to that which fills us all deeply, deeply in our hearts and souls. Our thoughts and feelings are directed towards the East and the West, to where the great events of our time are unfolding in such a significant, grand, powerful, and painful way; where the fate of humanity is not discussed with words, but with deeds, which find expression in courage, confidence, bravery, in death and suffering, but also in all the uplifting sacrifices that are so abundant in the time when something so significant is also happening for our Central European humanity.

What can be stimulated in our present time regarding the relationship between the European national souls may be the subject of today's spiritual scientific reflection. It may be the subject of this reflection in the way that spiritual science can illuminate these very conditions. This spiritual science, which has indeed found little, truly little, favor and acceptance among the majority of contemporary people, but which, for those who are imbued with its innermost meaning, its innermost spirit, presents itself that it must take its stand for the whole movement for the whole life of the human spirit in the cultural movement for the present and the near future, just as the scientific movement for several centuries has taken its stand in cultural life. And it is precisely in the face of the deeply moving questions of life that spiritual science must prove itself.

Among the concepts that have provoked the most ridicule and opposition in my first fundamental spiritual science book - in my “Theosophy” - is the concept of the folk soul not as an abstraction, as a mere idea and sum of characteristics that hold a group of people together, but as a real, active being. We have already reached a point where the habits of thought that have been formed over centuries no longer want to go along with spiritual science.

Just as human beings, as the highest of earthly beings, stand in relation to the entities of the other natural kingdoms, just as the entities of the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms find their physical, sensory culmination in the human being, so spiritual science must show - however unusual it may be for present-day ideas - that the realms of beings are not limited to the visible, that there are other realms above the human being, which cannot be reached with the mind that is bound to our brain, or with our physical, sensory eyes and ears, but which can be reached with what Goethe called spiritual vision, spiritual eyes and ears. This is not said comparatively, but to express something that is as certain for anthroposophy as, for example, the biological results are for the external science.

Spiritual science says that the way a person, with their soul, faces the things and entities of external nature, and how they form concepts and ideas about them, so there are truly real spiritual beings, invisible to the physical eye, above the human being, and for these beings, the human being with their soul is as much a thought, as it is an idea, as the objects of external nature are for the human being. Thus we are permeated and held by these spiritual beings. And to one of the next classes of these beings, spiritual science must count what for many is only the coincidence of the characteristics of a people: the folk souls.

What matters is the relationship of the folk soul to the individual human soul. Spiritual science does not look at the soul like popular psychology. It regards it not as a product of the outer organization, but as the real creator of the outer organization. And not to make an easy classification, but out of the nature of things, the spiritual scientific researcher distinguishes three essential parts of the soul with the same justification - only of course transferred to another area - as one distinguishes in the rainbow spectrum the red color on one side, the green in the middle, and then the blue color. And just as one cannot grasp the interaction of light and colors without taking this structure, which is most clearly seen in the rainbow spectrum, so one cannot understand the human soul without the threefold nature that we describe as the sentient soul, the mind or emotional soul, and the consciousness soul. Just as the rainbow has the color red on one side, so the human being has the sentient soul on one side; in the middle, the human being has the mind or emotional soul; and just as the rainbow has the color blue, so the human being has the consciousness soul. As I said, this does not arise from arbitrariness, from a desire to classify, but is connected with the innermost nature of the soul.

Let us first take the sentient soul: just as the red part of the spectrum primarily contains warmth, so the sentient soul contains more of the desires, the passions, the passionate forces of the soul, but at the same time, when the soul goes through the gate of death into the spiritual world, [withdraws into] that which are the eternal forces of the soul, which mysteriously hide behind the drives, the passions, the desires, which at the same time are what imprints the soul with the eternal character. But what exists in the soul as the mediation of the eternal self of the human being with the temporal-spatial human being corresponds to the green color, which primarily serves the light, just as the mind serves the spiritual, mediating the human being's relationship to his eternal and temporal.

And the consciousness soul is what consumes the eternal between birth and death to work on the temporal; it is most turned towards the material world. The consciousness soul is what contains the soul powers that are least carried through the gate of death, that are least connected to the eternal self of man.

In all that we distinguish as nuances of the soul life, the actual I of the human being lives as light lives in the nuances of the spectrum. As there is light in every color, so there is I in every part of the human soul; but at the same time, what permeates the human being like an invisible entity passes through the I into the soul's members: the soul of the people to which he belongs. The relationship between the national soul and the individual human soul varies greatly, and nations differ according to the nature of the relationship between the national soul and the individual human soul. There is not enough time in the world if I were to attempt to develop in full, on the basis of spiritual scientific research, the nature of the relationship between the national soul and the human soul. A comparison can be enlightening here, but it should be more than just a comparison; it should give a genuine spiritual-scientific result.

If we look at a person in relation to the mineral, plant and animal world, we can distinguish three types of people. Firstly, there are people whose whole being is inclined only towards the external sense world, who cannot sharply concentrate their attention on something that withdraws from the sense world, who always need the impression of the outside world. They fall into indifference and inattention when they are supposed to have ideas that do not adhere to the outside world.

There is another relationship to the environment that we encounter more in inward-looking, sensible natures, who go through the world in such a way that their senses are little attracted by external nature, who produce inwardly, who bring forth from the life of the soul what they experience. They go through the world of the senses raving and dreaming. These are very different types of people because the soul relates to itself and to the outer world in different ways.

A third type is the one who has placed himself in history primarily through the representative of Germanness, through Goethe. A great thinker of his time called his thinking “representational thinking”. By this he meant that Goethe had the peculiarity of being just as oriented towards sensual things as he was, and that he could immerse himself in the spiritual that he was able to experience in and with things. The ideas of “spirit and body” were intimately interwoven in his soul. His thinking was objective and did not stray far from the objects, and when it did go to the objects, it did not stray from itself.

Corresponding to this threefold relationship of man to the world around him, we also have three types of relationship of the folk soul to the individual human soul. For just as the human being relates to nature, so the folk soul relates to the individual human soul. There are folk souls that relate to individual souls in such a way that they are completely devoted to the individual human beings, as it were, that they completely slip into them and permeate them, that the individual soul is something that is the imprint of the folk soul.

This is the preferred relationship for the souls that inhabit the west and south of Europe: the French, Italian and British people. The relationship is different for the Russian people. There we find that the folk soul remains, as it were, above the individual souls, that it does not enter into the being of the individual human being, which is expressed by the fact that the Russian people still have today - like a cloud spreading over the whole nation - the Byzantine religion, which does not connect with the individual soul. Such is the relationship of the folk soul to the individual Russian person.

[Where, as in Western Europe, the national soul takes hold of the individual souls, it dominates the individual souls so that the individual soul is something like an imprint of the national soul. Just as the national soul in the West is within the individual soul, so the relationship of the Russian national soul is such that it does not descend.

Like the person who lives only in his or her own soul, the national soul does not descend to the individual soul; the national soul, as it were, raves over the people. The Russian souls are not seized by the folk soul, but rather they are in anarchic confusion. Even when one thinks of the excellent representatives of the Russian people, of Tolstoy and so on, one sees how the folk soul hovers over them like a cloud and that the individual soul forces are not seized by it, but are in anarchic confusion.

Let us now turn to the center of Europe: here we find such a relationship between the soul of the people and the individual soul that we can compare this relationship with Goethe's objective thinking. We have the soul of the people lovingly and intimately entering into the individual souls and yet, at the same time, rising above itself and being transported into the spiritual worlds in order to draw new strength and carry it down from the spiritual worlds. We have here the life of the soul of the people above the human being in the spiritual heights, and then again in the individual human souls.

One can say: When you look at the people of Western Europe, a particular soul force is always taken hold of and ruled by the folk soul: in the Italians, the sentient soul; in the French, the mind or mind soul; in the British, the consciousness soul. All the qualities that the members of these nations have [precisely as members of these nations] immediately become clear and understandable when viewed from this perspective of the nature of the facts, which can be found through spiritual science. How powerfully passionate, how completely immersed in instinct, all of Italian life appears, right up to the greatness of Dante, who drafted his Divine Comedy from the images of the sentient soul. The Italian people become understandable when one knows that it is the folk soul that takes hold of the sentient soul here.

The French nation becomes understandable when one recognizes that the folk soul directly takes hold of the intellectual soul. I read how a psychological society in a German city tried to explain the French national character. The result was: That is their mathematical disposition. This disposition becomes immediately understandable when one knows that the folk soul directly takes hold of the powers of the intellectual soul. Everything in this western nation is illuminated when one knows that it tends to take things in such a way that, despite all striving for personal freedom and national freedom, it is inwardly dogmatized and systematized to the point of artistic activity, to the point of the details of artistic activity. And we also find the other side there. I would like to say the negative pole of the dogma: that is criticism, the dissolving element. On the one hand, the rational soul wants to see everything in a system of dogmas, and if it cannot, it rebels against it, and so we have either dogmatism or Voltairism. The starting point of Descartes' philosophy is doubt down to the last detail. You can understand what is happening in the French people if you know this.

I note that a number of prominent figures are sitting here who know that I have been dealing with these things for years and that they have not been formulated by the occasion of the present. But I believe that they can be enlightening for what we are now experiencing, which is so great, so meaningful and so painful.

Now to the consciousness soul. The part that is most inclined towards the outer life and carries least into the eternal part of the human being is the consciousness soul, and in the British people it is most seized by the folk soul. The character of the British people as a trading nation and also the character of Shakespeare immediately becomes clear. For what is his greatness based on? That he has portrayed the individual human being in such a sharp characteristic, that they stand firmly on the physical plane, that he characterizes them in what does not pass through the gate of death. He is so great because he has succeeded in characterizing so sharply what is human in man that is not eternal about them, but what they develop for the physical world between birth and death.

Now, the German national soul, or, as I could also say, Central European culture, is characterized by the fact that it does not take hold of the soul directly, but descends to the soul and takes hold of it in its entirety, as it were with that which flows from the sources of the spiritual world, for it has the gift of withdrawing into the spiritual worlds and drawing strength from there. Hence the peculiarity of the German soul to experience that which has the power of the eternal, which directly flows from the eternal into the individual souls. The individual soul must be able to feel that something in your soul lives through the national soul, which sinks into you, which is carried into you, and through which you are directly connected to what lives in spiritual heights. Hence the idealism, hence the ever-rejuvenating power of the German national soul.

One can go through the products of German intellectual life and obtain the evidence that, in contrast to other nations, the German has this peculiar relationship to the folk soul: not the individual soul elements are seized, as in the western and eastern nations of Europe, but the ego, of which the German seems to be less developed. One is a Briton, a Frenchman; a German is to be made.

It is an ideal because not a single power of the soul, but the whole soul is seized in the most profound life in the constant emergence of the different sides. Let us look back to the times when Christianity penetrated into the young, developing Germanic nation. How was it received? We can see this from the Old High German poem “Heliand”. What the individual - here the poet of “Heliand” - feels about the events, his personal experience, is directly related to the forces that surround him. What was only handed down to the Romans is reborn from the youngest germinal forces of the poet.

And in other poems we find how Christianity not only becomes part of the German people, but is born out of the individual human being, as it becomes a personal matter for the individual. It is the soul of the people that does not allow what comes to the people to grow old, but rejuvenates it so that it lives like a plant in the soul and rises again.

Furthermore, we see how a world view develops in the twelfth to fourteenth centuries that is called German mysticism, for example in the works of Tauler, Meister Eckhart, the unknown author of Theologia Deutsch, and so on. We see how the minds work in a peculiar way, how they relate to the spiritual world. The mystic Eckhart is convinced that the spiritual world must be experienced directly in the soul, that it must be left entirely to itself, that it must not move out of its own arbitrariness, but must give itself to the forces that are weaving and ruling through the world. Then something ignites in it, which is a spark, but in this spark lives God, the divine weaving and being.

The place where God lives within, [where Christ is born within, which suffers] and dies when the individual soul goes the way of suffering and passion, / gap in the text] is where Meister Eckhart coined the word “Gemüt”. In the mind, the world is spiritually revived, and it is aware that what a person thinks, the Godhead thinks, what a person feels, the Godhead feels, what a person wills, the Godhead wills, if only he gives himself to his God. There we have something of the intimate coexistence of the individual with the German folk soul.

And in the author of Theologia Deutsch we find a rejuvenation of the German Weltanschauung through a rhythmic beat of the life of the German national soul with the individual representatives of the German national soul. What in earlier times led to the resurrection of the life of Jesus, as if Jesus had wandered through Germany's countryside with his disciples as his servants, which so personally depicted the life of Jesus, which rejuvenated Christianity, that rejuvenates the worldview in German mysticism. And it is wonderful how deeply the German national soul intervenes in personal life! This becomes clear when we look at one of the disciples of mysticism, at Angelus Silesius, when we share a saying of this mystic, one of the deepest of the numerous sayings:

I neither die nor live. God Himself dies in me,

And what I am to live, He also lives for and for.

Oh, what depths, we say, only in relation to the thought of immortality! He who has done this feels the ruling divinity. When I die, it is just as much an act of the divinity as when I live, it is the divinity that lives in me. By letting God experience death in me, I am aware of my immortality.

One can say: such ideas of immortality, which point to an immortal power in the human soul that is not grasped by reflecting on what lies beyond death, but is already grasped by it in life, are demonstrated by Jakob Böhme, the simple cobbler from Görlitz, the profound philosopher, who was fully inspired by the German folk spirit. He directed his enlightened gaze to that which is of the divine worlds in his own soul. He saw the courage of human striving on earth in the fact that the individual human soul, which is otherwise given over to emotional impressions, to those of the intellect and so on, always knows itself connected with its immortal core, with that which lives in death, that knows how to die by living out of direct knowledge.

Jakob Böhme's goal was to experience death directly in earthly life, and that this is the seed for the experiences of life. An expression that appears to be the utterance of the German national soul through a single person is the following:

He who does not die before he dies,

He perishes when he dies.

Those who do not grasp during their lifetime what lives in the soul as an immortal and thus pass through the gate of death, those who do not grasp death as the source of spiritual life, perish when they die. We see the highest philosophical view, but one that is also imbued with elemental soul power, rising to the highest heights of the spiritual.

When we see such figures of German nationality before our minds, we perceive how the German national soul has a rejuvenating effect again and again, so that it must always take hold of spirit and soul as a fresh germ in order to go up the whole ladder, to go to the highest heights of spiritual fruit.

And after the scorching and burning devastation of the Thirty Years' War, we see the German soul's strength once again intervening in the life of the people.

[Gap in the text] How consciously Lessing points out that a truth does not need to be foolish because it originally occurred in people who had not yet been corrupted by the sophistries of the schools - he means the great truth of repeated earthly lives - that the entire earthly life proceeds in such a way that it passes through different earthly lives. He expresses this in his “Education of the Human Race”. The very clever people say: He has grown old when he wrote this. But he was aware that in the “Education of the Human Race” he presented the entire development, which is equally drawn from the elementary soul forces and at the same time leads to the highest heights of spiritual life. What arises in this way arises through the intimate interaction of the soul of the people with the entire soul forces.

This is also the case with Herder, who provided a broad overview in his “History of Mankind”, encompassing the entire nature of the soul, from the most elementary soul forces to the highest philosophical powers. There are many, many ways in which the soul of a nation lives in Goethe's soul. It is remarkable that we realize that in turn a poetic work could arise in him that could not have arisen within any other culture. If the German folk soul has the peculiarity of grasping not the individual soul forces but the whole soul, then it grasps the immortal in the mortal, and the personality becomes the bearer of the eternal. Therefore, Goethe's “Faust” could only arise within German culture. It contains everything in the human soul, all the striving for the very beginnings of spiritual life, which are consciously sought again after all tradition has been cast off. How is this presented?

Let us compare how the German soul power inspires the German people in relation to the French people. In both, the Greek is reviving. But how does it revive with the French poets? It is studied, the rules are adopted and so on. But how is it with Goethe? Even in “Iphigenia” the Greek is not adopted, but reborn anew, rejuvenated. And in “Faust” we have the union with what he regarded as Greek: Helen is reborn for Faust. He becomes young in order to unite with the representative of Greek culture. Faust, who has grown old, throws off the old and seeks the rejuvenating potion. What is historically given must be brought into connection with Faust in a rejuvenated form. This demands the full strength, the rejuvenating strength of the German national soul.

We can trace it everywhere in all the details of German intellectual life! This is what comes to consciousness through an immersion in the substance of the German national soul. One sees, feels and senses an ever-renewing power in it. However present culture may change, this renewing power will remain, because its magic breath will be breathed again and again in different epochs. This is a peculiarity of Central European culture. This hope and confidence, which immediately becomes strength, is the basis not for superficial but for profound optimism in the German, which is also connected to idealism in all philosophies. Whoever is truly capable of approaching what the German national soul has produced cannot despair of humanity, but always comes to a belief in humanity, and indeed to a spiritual belief in humanity.

This becomes very significant when one looks at spirits who turn their gaze to humanity in search of something that can give good hope for the further development of man, and who can find nothing, who believe that European culture has died out. No one can regard European culture as having grown old; they can understand the relationship between the soul of the people and the individual German soul. Anyone who considers European culture to be old does not understand that.

That is why we have a Russian intellectual who has searched for what can make humanity happy and cannot find anything that has grown out of this culture of the national soul. He looks everywhere and finds nothing. I am talking about Herzen, the great Russian who became so small in his own eyes when he wanted to understand Central European culture. The following saying of Herzen immediately sheds light on the way the Eastern European, anarchic soul views desolation where flourishing life can be seen by those who can understand Central European soul life. He enters into an intellectual alliance with an Englishman, with Stuart Mill, and says:

Mill is not exaggerating when he speaks of the narrowing of the mind, of the constant flattening of life, of the reduction of life to commercial culture. He says that England will become like China, and we add that England will not be alone.

That is what Herzen says, who has no understanding for what must fill the Central European with the highest vitality. And further he says:

Perhaps a coincidence will save us from Chinese desiccation.

If he had understood Goethe, such a statement would be impossible! Further Herzen says:

Where is the highest thought, that is, hope, which hardens the hearts so that they feel neither pain nor suffering. Look around you, what can uplift the hearts.

That the same force that brought forth the highest poetic and philosophical blossoms in Goethe is the same force that today brings forth countless victims, victims of death and suffering, that is what presents itself to us at the same time from the whole context of German life.

And has German life always been so misunderstood in the world as it is now, when it is being shouted at from all sides that it is a life of “barbarians”? Not only is Central Europe being surrounded like a large fortress with the intention of starving it out, no, it is also being scolded and reviled from all sides. Here and there, friendly voices are raised, for example, by a Romanian who exclaims:

All those who have studied in France and lived among the French people have rushed to fill the columns of newspapers with all kinds of praise. Why don't you, who have enjoyed German hospitality, respond to these people by saying that these barbarians have the best schools, clinics, universities and so on? That you were welcomed everywhere with open arms! Why don't you respond by saying that these barbarians, who were your teachers, are incapable of committing such crimes? [Why don't you respond?

These voices were not always so rare. It is uncomfortable for a Central European to characterize the German essence in value judgments. What I have said, I know, is as certain a result of spiritual scientific research as the laws of the solar spectrum are a scientific research result. But it is uncomfortable for a German to make value judgments about the German character, so let us first hear from others. First Emerson, the great American teacher. In his reflections on Goethe, he wrote as if there were some awareness of how the German national character relates to the individual soul, and of the difference between Eastern and Western Europe:

One [quality] in particular, which Goethe shares with his entire nation, makes him stand out in the eyes of both the French and English public: that everything in his work is based solely on inner truth. In England and America, people respect talent, but they are only satisfied when it works for or against a party of its conviction. In France, one is already delighted to see brilliant ideas going wherever they may. In all these countries, however, talented men write as far as their gifts will take them. If what they present stimulates the discerning reader and contains nothing that offends against good manners, it is considered sufficient. So many columns, so many pleasantly and usefully spent hours. The German mind has neither the French liveliness nor the Englishman's understanding, honed for practicality, nor, finally, the American

— as I said, an American writing in English —

All he has is a certain probity that never stops at the outward appearance of things, but always comes back to the main question: “Where is this going?” The German public demands that a writer stand above things and simply express himself. Intellectual agility is present, well and good: what does it advocate? What is the man's opinion? Where does it come from? Where does he get all these thoughts?

The English [...] only see the individual, they do not know how to grasp humanity as a whole according to higher laws.

The Germans think for Europe.

The English do not appreciate the depth of the German genius.

There is something alive in these words that can seem like an echo of what can arise from the intimate association of the soul of the people with the individual human being. And Emerson continues:

That is why the distinguishing terms used in higher conversation are all of German origin. While the English and French, who are mentioned with distinction because of their acumen and erudition, approach their studies and their point of view with a certain superficiality, and their personal character is not too deeply connected with what they have taken up and with the way they express themselves, is not too deeply connected, Goethe, the head and content of the German nation, speaks not because he has talent, but the truth concentrates its rays in his soul and shines out from it. He is wise in the highest degree, though his wisdom may often be obscured by his talent. However excellent what he says is, he has something even better in mind. He makes me curious. He has that fearsome independence that comes from dealing with the truth.

You could say: Well, that was said by Emerson, who lived far away in America. We have had to listen to it: the Germans who live now are not the same as they were. Even the French philosopher Bergson said how the Germans have become mechanical. It is strange how, in this day and age, a man who wants to be a philosopher wants to come to his judgment: He certainly longs for judgment! He knows that Germans have had great thoughts. He seems to feel that when cannons and rifles are turned against Germans from all sides, they should then recite poems by Novalis or Goethe in response.

Strange logic is going around the world today. When people say, “Who wanted this war,” and the English, French, and Russians claim, “We didn't want it,” one could say, “Yes, we believe that too!” But it does not depend on what one says, but on whether one can say the relevant thing. If five people stand threateningly around a house, and the person who lives in it sees this and tells them to go away, and they then, because they do not leave, are beaten up by them, the five can also say: “We did not want the beating!”

One cannot say that Emerson's judgment of the German “barbarians” is already outdated, but one would think that those who have immersed themselves in German intellectual substance can judge better.

A few years before the war, a book was published by an Englishwoman entitled “Eight Years in Germany”. She visited German schools, clinics and so on and, having got to know the German character, wrote the following:

We read a lot about the new Germany and the new German spirit. Is what exists now the mature work of generations? Blinded by the splendor of Germany's wealth, we are inclined to forget that it has never occupied any place but the very forefront except for prosperity. In literature, it has always provided the impetus; in science, it has always shone; in music, it has always dominated.

And now the following. I don't know if she would have written it now, but about two years before the war she did:

Forty years ago Germany was fighting for her existence, and she is still fighting for it today. It is entirely wrong to believe that Germany has already reached her zenith. She is fighting a quiet but determined battle against powerful rivals, whose power and experience was gained generations ago. [...]

On every border and across the water, opponents sit, commercially and politically, eagerly awaiting the moment when Germany slackens just a little, to pounce on it and bring it down.

The reasons why the German national character is so little understood can be grasped. Something can penetrate into the West from the German soul — less so into the East — but it is repelled in the West because it does not want to know anything about the dogmatic character of what wants to live actively in the whole soul. There is a certain understanding, but at the same time a reluctance to let it grow completely into the soul.

About a year and a half before the outbreak of the war, lectures were held in Manchester. They have been published and were very interesting, and the scholars explain in the preface why they are holding them: English journalists should be better informed about German conditions. About the immediate present, the scholar Herford said that on the whole it is out of the question that the creation of the German Reich has been beneficial to peace. [Gap in the text] History should be something more than a cinematograph and shed the higher light on things:

On the whole and in the big picture, there is no question

- it says -

that the establishment of the German Reich has been beneficial to world peace. This explanation will seem strange to those who know nothing but the events of the present and for whom history is nothing more than an ever-changing, dazzling cinematograph. But history should be something more. It is fitting for her to let the light of the past shine on the present confusion, and in that higher light, things that seem hurtful will take on a natural appearance. For if we look to the past, we find that our ancestors looked at France with far greater fear than the wildest rabble-rousers today fear Germany. And the fear of our ancestors had good reason. [...] So, to sum up, it can be shown that the founding of the German Empire was an asset for Europe and therefore also for Great Britain. For the events of the years 1866-1871 once and for all put an end to the possibility of waging predatory wars against the hitherto unprotected center of Europe, and thus removed an inducement to war which in earlier centuries had so often tempted into the wrong channels; they put the German people in a position to develop their hitherto stunted political abilities, and they helped to establish on a firm basis a new European system that has preserved the peace for forty years. This blessing resulted from the fact that German unity achieved at a single blow what Great Britain, despite all her expenditure of blood and money, had never been able to accomplish, namely, to secure the balance of power in such a decisive way that a great war became the most dangerous of all ventures.

When one is confronted with these things and wonders what lies in the souls of those who wrote them, one must have some understanding of the peculiarity of the European national psyche to grasp why one can understand [it] so little outside of Germany. Only enlightened minds can do that.

One mystic who has written beautiful things should also be mentioned. He confessed that he had great experiences with three mystics. One of them is Novalis, who gained so much from his intimate contact with the German folk soul. He uses beautiful words to characterize him. He says: “So much is going on on earth that can only interest earthly souls, such as what Shakespearean characters do. But if other beings from other planets could look down, what could interest them?” And he wonders if there is something that can interest other spirits as well, and in Novalis' writings he finds something that interests not only earthly souls but also beings that come down from heavenly heights. What the human soul can hardly bring forth in words is what he speaks of, what one would rather remain silent about, where true nature begins. He says:

But if he needed other proof, it would

— that is, presumably, the soul —

lead him among those whose works almost move one to silence. She would open the gate of the realm where some loved her for her own sake, without worrying about the small gestures of their bodies. They would climb together to the lonely plateaus where consciousness rises by one level and where all those who are filled with restlessness about themselves attentively survey the immense ring that connects the world of appearances with our higher worlds. She would go with him to the borders of humanity; for at the point where man seems to end, he probably only begins, and his most essential and inexhaustible parts are [only] in the invisible, where he must be on his guard unceasingly. On these heights alone, there are thoughts that the soul can approve of, and ideas that resemble her and are as commanding as she is. There, humanity has ruled for a moment, and these dimly illuminated peaks are perhaps the only lights that announce the earth in the spiritual realm. Their reflection truly has the color of our soul. We feel that the passions of the mind and body would resemble the tolling of bells in the eyes of a strange reason; but [the people I am talking about] have come out of the small village of passions in their works and said things that are also of value to those who do not belong to the earthly community.

This is how this enlightened spirit assessed Novalis. Who is it that speaks in this way? Is it someone who calls to account the self-righteous critics who are now railing against German “barbarism”? Is it someone who will take a stand against words such as:

In truth, it is difficult to question one's soul and to discern its weak, childlike voice amidst the useless clamor that surrounds it.

The words written by the enlightened man about Novalis are by Maeterlinck. And the words about the bawler are also by him. We are now experiencing such things; they characterize our time directly through themselves, without the need to add anything in particular.

The lectures mentioned, which were held in Manchester, have been published and also translated into German. In the preface there are some words that can also be read in English:

The source of the stream of his intellectual and political life lies in the Reformation. But at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century, a current unique in world history began to flow in a way that has been as continuous as it has been characteristic since that time. Since the days of ancient Greece, the world has not seen such a spectacle of the closest fusion of the life of the statesman with that of the thinker. The spirit of Germany today is to a great extent concrete and practical.

The one saying this is Lord Haldane.

If we consider how different the European center and the European east must be in terms of the overall character of the people, it can be understood that a powerful confrontation was bound to occur there. This confrontation was seen by people who wanted to see clearly. Today we hear from all sides: The Germans wanted this war. Who wanted it, who, because of the special character of their national aspirations, had to want it for a long time, was always seen by reasonably enlightened minds. A man who is not particularly inclined towards Germanic nature writes:

As for me, I am in no doubt that a conflict between the Germanic and Slavic worlds is imminent, that it will be ignited either by the Orient, especially Turkey, or by the nationality dispute in Austria, perhaps by both, and that Russia will take the lead in it on one side. This power is already preparing for the eventuality; the Russian national press is spewing fire and flames against Germany. [...] The German press is already sounding its warning cries. It has been a long time since Russia gathered itself after the Crimean War, and it seems that it is now considered appropriate in St. Petersburg to take up the Oriental question again.

If, according to the more pompous than true expression, the Mediterranean Sea should once become “a French lake”, Russia has the even more positive intention of making a Russian lake out of the Black Sea and a Russian pond out of the Sea of Marmara. That Constantinople must become a Russian city and Greece a direct vassal state of Russia is a fixed goal of Russian policy, which finds its levers of support in the common religion and in Pan-Slavism.

Thus, the minds that wanted to see it, saw how the forces at work in Europe gradually brought about this time. This was written in 1870!

The antagonism between Eastern Europe and Central Europe has always been there, so that the logic of the question, “Who wanted this war?”, is the flimsiest, because the people, whose soul hovers like a cloud over it, has a desire for expansion, and because there is not the slightest understanding for what has been achieved in Central Europe. It was received in Russia, but the way it happened is again quite characteristic.

It is true, as Herman Grimm says, that the Englishman Mr. Lewes wanted to write an important book about Goethe. But he only told of a man who happened to be born in Frankfurt am Main and happened to die in Weimar, who had this and that experience and wrote these and those works. But the soul of Goethe does not live in it, because his soul slips through his fingers. He only sees what he can dogmatize; he only sees the Goethe that stands firmly on the ground – the dates of birth and death and so on. He knows the titles of the works and so on. But what Goethe really was, that he was the representative of the dialogue between the individual German and the German national soul, he does not sense.

Just as the phenomenon has the effect in the West that the inner passions rebel against it and translate it into the rough, but into the dogmatic, so that which is directly experienced by the Germans has the same effect in the East – as I said, they have often willingly accepted it – in the East it becomes a web of thought. Because the Russian feels that it must be carried up into the cloud that hovers over him, it becomes ghostly, shadowy.

Even the great philosopher Soloviev floats in this cloud. He borrowed his generous philosophy from German culture – but what lives with full life in the German soul seems ghostly to him, and it causes the confusedly fluttering thoughts that the German, who is accustomed to the intimate association with the folk soul, cannot follow as an image of truth. One must even experience it, [that an intellectual in Russia makes Goethe] into a ghost in yet another way, one who, however, once called another people “barbarians” before the war: Mereschkowski. He speaks of Herz's last vision of death:

The last vision of death in Herz is - Russia as a “land of free life” and the Russian peasant community as the savior of the world. He exchanged his old love for a new faith, but it seems that he realized in the last hour that this last faith was also an illusion. Even if faith deceived him, love did not deceive him; there was a certain correct outlook in his love for Russia: not the peasant community, but the Christian community will perhaps in truth become the faith that the young barbarians are to bring to ancient Rome.

So he says from the heart.

Meanwhile, however, he dies - without any faith: Farewell, corrupt Rome! ... Farewell, native land!

But let no one be deceived by what he says about Goethe in his latest book; the whole of Goethe has become a spectre there. That he does not understand the soul of the people, which has rejuvenated everything, that he cannot look at what Goethe is as a force of the soul of the world, is shown by the fact that he says that he dares to say such words of Goethe as:

When Goethe speaks of the French Revolution, he suddenly bends to the earth, as a giant might be crushed by an evil spell and shrink to the size of a dwarf; from a Hellenic demigod he becomes a German citizen and – if the shadow of the Olympian will have mercy on me – a German philistine, a “Herr von Goethe”, a privy councillor of the Duke of Weimar and a respectable son of the respectable Frankfurt merchant.

That about the “Faust” poet!

One understands what needs to be understood in the middle of Europe, and the extent of the understanding that is shown for the German national soul from both the left and the right speaks for this. One day, world history will not only be judged by archives, by what has been printed and written, but also by more subtle characteristics! It was actually with a heavy heart, through tears, through inner tears, that I realized something like an image in front of my soul, the way the forces of Europe stand, because it is so far from the original forces through which the individual outgrows the cosmos.

It is precisely [what that alliance of grand duchy and mendacious Pan-Slavism has done] to the Russian people that this image stands before me. We saw those first August days approaching. I will mention only three images from that time: In Central Europe, the Reichstag. Something characteristic is heralding the coming deeds; it is a purest expression of something infinitely youthful in the forces of the German national soul: the people are silent! There is something monstrous about this. Let us look instead to the west, to the French parliament; look at the speeches that have been made there, and how all these speeches flow out of the power of tyranny. And then we turn to Russia, where we are accustomed to seeing the best of the Russian man in silence: in the Duma, speeches rush, and they all talk in such a way that the words are phrases and everything looks like an arranged theatrical performance of speeches.

And so the European powers confront each other, and I am aware of the objectivity in which I have painfully allowed them to affect my soul. The silence in the middle is a symptom of something that is connected with the rejuvenating powers of the German national soul; from epoch to epoch, it has held dialogues with the most outstanding representatives of Germanness, and the most beautiful products can be traced back to this. The striving of the German people for the spirit has also been carried out in what has happened in our time.

That has always been the nature of German striving. But if you look at it and try to discern the fundamental character, you have to say: this German spirit has not yet exhausted the forces and possibilities for development that lie within it. The soul of the German nation has a rejuvenating power and will always rejuvenate it again and again. How rejuvenating is Fichte's philosophy! Like a stream of folk lore, it flowed into the times of “Speeches to the German Nation”. What brings his ideas to life in a strange and symbolic way is what a new education wants to give people as reality. Fichte knows how reluctant people are to accept the new, and needs a peculiar comparison. It is highly characteristic of his way of thinking.

But spiritual science, from which the attitudes flow that can be used to understand the conditions of the soul of the people, wants to be an active science that courageously and bravely extracts its results. It speaks of the eternal, not merely in abstract words, but as it speaks when the human spirit lives from incarnation to incarnation, so it speaks as it must speak today, about the rejuvenating powers of the German national soul.

Fichte says:

Time appears to me as an empty shadow, which stands over its corpse, from which an army of diseases has just driven it, and laments and cannot tear its gaze away from the formerly so beloved shell and desperately tries all means to get back into the dwelling of the plague. The invigorating breezes of the other world, into which the deceased has entered, have already taken her in and surround her with a warm breath of love; friendly voices of the sisters already greet her and welcome her; she is already stirring and expanding within her in all directions, to develop the more glorious form to which she is to awaken; but she has no feeling for these airs or hearing for these voices, or, if she had, she is absorbed in pain over her loss, with which she believes she has lost herself at the same time.

We can have confidence in the successful striving of the German spirit towards intellectual life, because we see what the German spirit has achieved. This is in the process of becoming and is not yet complete. It is as much a germ as it is a fruit. No matter how unintelligently people speak about Germany, it is not complete and must carry its inner strength out into the world. It is this strength that it has to defend. The time for what the German spirit has to defend will be seen to come. It may be expected. The souls who make the sacrifice of death today will, when those born later understand what the national soul can be for the German individual, they will be able to look down in the days to come on a time that will transform into [human salvation] and progress that which has been bought with such great sacrifices, [with courageous but painful sacrifices]. Truly recognizing the driving forces, it may be said that the German spirit has not reached perfection but will continue to develop:

The German spirit has not reached perfection
What it is to create in the world's becoming.
He lives hopefully in future worries,
He hopes for future deeds full of life; -
In the depths of his being, he feels mightily
Hidden things that must still mature and work.
How can, in the power of the enemy,
The wish for its end may uncomprehendingly revive:
As long as life reveals itself to him,
That holds him in the roots of being, creating?

64. From a Fateful Time: The Human Soul in Life and Death 26 Nov 1914, Berlin Rudolf Steiner
What I have today only been able to discuss in general terms, about the thought, its dying away and its revival in another sphere, about the spreading of the will over fate, and how it must work there in detail, I have presented in more detail in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds”, which has now been extensively revised and is available in a new and I have also tried to present it in a different way in the book 'The Riddles of Philosophy', which has now been published as a second edition of my 'World and Life Views in the Nineteenth Century' with a 'sketchy outlook on an anthroposophy' as a result of the entire spiritual-philosophical development of the West. Let it be emphasized once more: spiritual science does not give something that would not be there without it — just as natural science does not give something that would not be there without it.

64. From a Fateful Time: The Human Soul in Life and Death 26 Nov 1914, Berlin

Rudolf Steiner

What I have today only been able to discuss in general terms, about the thought, its dying away and its revival in another sphere, about the spreading of the will over fate, and how it must work there in detail, I have presented in more detail in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds”, which has now been extensively revised and is available in a new and I have also tried to present it in a different way in the book 'The Riddles of Philosophy', which has now been published as a second edition of my 'World and Life Views in the Nineteenth Century' with a 'sketchy outlook on an anthroposophy' as a result of the entire spiritual-philosophical development of the West. Let it be emphasized once more: spiritual science does not give something that would not be there without it — just as natural science does not give something that would not be there without it.

64. From a Fateful Time: The Human Soul in Life and Death 26 Nov 1914, Berlin Rudolf Steiner
In the first two lectures with which I began this winter lecture series, I tried to use the impulses that the great events of the time in which we live can give us to tie in with the essence of German spiritual culture as it presents itself in its great personalities. What I tried to elucidate through these reflections was that it is in the nature of this spiritual culture to become more and more imbued with the consciousness of the reality of the spiritual, of eternal existence. To a certain extent, I will try to give a special chapter from what spiritual scientific reflection has brought about in our time, in order to gain a basis for what should form the content of tomorrow's lecture: a reflection on the nature of the European folk souls. In doing so, I would like to suggest, at least with a few traits taken from spiritual science, what the latter has to say, from its point of view, to help us understand what is happening around us. The contemplation that is to be undertaken today about the human soul in life and death is, after all, always close to man as one of the greatest riddles of life – in our time, especially so – where we see the question of life and death way, where so many are intensely affected by this question through the reality of existence, where we see that — as it were through the facts — the noblest sons of the people are confronted with this question in every hour of their existence. In the lectures I have been privileged to give here over the years, I have often pointed out that we are living in a time when questions such as the nature of the human soul, the fate of the human soul and of man in general, and similar questions enter into a scientific approach, into an approach that is demanded by the development of that other scientific field that has been so greatly perfected in the last two to four centuries: the field of natural science. To place what can be known about the soul-spiritual in a truly scientific way alongside what has been scientifically conquered for humanity, that has often been described here as the task of spiritual science; and it has also been said that it should come as no surprise if this spiritual-scientific approach is still rejected by the vast majority of people today. This fate is shared by spiritual science with everything that wants to enter human spiritual and cultural development as something new, and it also shares it with natural science itself, which in its time appeared in exactly the same way, met with opposition after opposition, and which first had to prove - but could only prove it after centuries - what it is called upon to achieve for human development. Spiritual observation must relate to what we call knowledge and science in a completely different way to that of natural science. In order for spiritual contemplation to be called scientific in the true and best sense, it must proceed differently, it must approach the human being in a different way than what constitutes the essence of the scientific approach. In the scientific approach, we first turn our gaze outwards to the facts of nature and life, and from the abundance of the manifold that comes to us, we recognize the laws of life. What reaches us through the senses becomes an inner spiritual experience in us, it becomes thought, concept, idea. But who does not feel that with this ascent from the full contemplation of external diversity to the clarity — but also to the abstractness — of ideas and natural laws, the human soul with its inner experiences actually moves away from what one could call reality? We have the fullness of nature before us; we appropriate it in science, but we feel how, in principle, we present concepts and ideas that contain the laws of nature for us, and we feel how thin, one could say reality-less, we are in the face of external reality. And so we ascend from the abundance of external reality, which is spread out before our senses, to the — I would say — ethereally thin soul experience that we have when we have taken possession of the laws of nature in our world of ideas. In a sense, we distance ourselves from nature and its abundance; but we strive for this distance because we know that we can only recognize nature and its laws by distancing ourselves from it. This is the highest thing we strive for in science: the inner soul experience in ideas and thoughts. Spiritual research must take exactly the opposite path if it is to be scientific. The ultimate consequence of the inner experience of science in relation to external nature is preparation — merely preparation — for the knowledge of the spiritual, of the soul; and it would be a complete mistake to believe that spiritual science could proceed in the same way as natural science. What natural science ultimately strives for is the preparation for spiritual science: living in inner soul experience, immersing oneself in that which strengthens the soul inwardly and which it cannot obtain from external nature. In short, knowledge and science can only be a preparation for what one ultimately comes to: to beholding, to perceiving the spiritual world. One could say: in natural science, one strives for knowledge and science; in spiritual science, one prepares oneself through knowledge and science for what is to approach the soul, and everything that one can have in the way of knowledge and science remains, basically, in spiritual science an inner matter for the soul. But what the soul and spirit live through does not lead to something merely subjective, something that concerns only the individual soul of the person, but it leads to what is real, just as external nature is only real. I have often pointed out the way in which this preparation for beholding, for the real inner experience of spiritual reality, is designed. I will do so again today from a certain point of view. Only through this preparation can one lead the soul further and further, so that in the end what is spiritual reality spreads out around it. We leave nature; it is there. We go forward to the spirit. We must seek spiritual reality. We cannot start from it, it is not there at first; we can only prepare ourselves for its contemplation. But when we prepare ourselves inwardly for its contemplation, then it comes to us like a grace, spreading out of the spiritual twilight. We must acquire the ability to contemplate it. The first thing needed to experience the human soul in its reality, so to speak, is an inner experience — not paying attention, not just thinking, but an inner experience of that which we otherwise have only as a reflection of external reality – the world of thoughts, the world of feelings – that which we otherwise feel within us when we confront the external world, and which we regard as a reflection of nature, as an image in which nature is embedded. We have to experience this intensely and powerfully by turning our gaze away completely from external reality, by making ourselves blind and deaf to external sensory reality; we have to experience it so that we allow it to be intensely present as the only inner reality in the soul. The natural scientist seeks to extract a law of nature as a thought from the outer reality of the senses. The spiritual scientist gives himself up to a thought, or to a thought imbued with feeling, in inner experience; he lets, as it were, neither the eye nor the ear send out into the outer reality, and lets the inner interweaving and interworking of the soul and turns his most intense attention to this inner experience; he forgets himself and the world and lives only in what he, as it were, lets rise in his empty but alert consciousness from the depths of his soul. And then the strange thing happens: the thought to which we devote ourselves with infinitely increased attention over a long period of time, this thought, the stronger it becomes through our inner strength, the weaker it becomes precisely in relation to what it contains; it becomes more and more transparent and transparent, more and more ethereal and ethereal. One could say: the more the spiritual researcher endeavors to be present in the thought, which is called inner thought concentration, the more the content of the thought fades away. The more we endeavor to make the thought firm and, as it were, visible by devoting ourselves to it, the more this devotion leads to the thought fading away more and more, as if dissolving in a fog, and then disappearing completely from consciousness. One could also say, expressing a principle of this inner experience: the more the thought is experienced in its sharpness in the soul, the more it gains in energy through our own activity, the more it dies in the soul. To put it in an epigrammatic way, we can say: in order for the thought to reach the goal of spiritual research, it must die in the soul; and in dying, it undergoes an inner destiny, the destiny that also has the seed that is sunk into the earth to rot. But from its rotting, the strength for a new plant arises. When thought dies in us in the concentration of thought, it awakens to a completely different life; and one does not discover this different life until thought has died in inner sharp concentration. One must stop thinking in order to let the soul plant, that which arises from thought, germinate within oneself. And what then arises from the thought? It is difficult to express in human language what arises from the thought, because human language is created for the external sense experiences and not for the internal soul experiences. Therefore, in a certain respect, one can only hint at the inner experiences that come into question. As the thought, made energetic, dies away, the soul inwardly feels a burgeoning power, a power of which it becomes aware and of which it knows at the moment it becomes aware : This is spiritual-soul power; this is something that is not tied to your body; something that you carry within you without the mediation of your nervous system and your brain. But in grasping not the thought but the power of thought, there arises, as if by an inner necessity, the question that presents itself like a flash of lightning: “Where has the thought gone? After all, it was basically you yourself, in that you gave yourself over to it in sharp concentration of thought. You lived in the thought, and when it dissolved and died, it carried you away with it. Where has it gone? And where have you arrived now?” — Here one must choose a comparison. Just as we carry the thoughts we have of external nature within us, just as we know we have the thoughts, so we immediately perceive a state in ourselves through which we say: the thought as you had it has died in your concentration of thought; but through this it has awakened to another life – and has taken you with it. You are now thought of in the spiritual world! This is a harrowing, great, tremendously significant experience in the life of the spiritual researcher. For only in this way can one ascend into the spiritual world, by feeling itself grasped by it – as thought, if it were alive, would feel itself grasped by us. And basically, there is no other way to experience immortality than to appeal through our inner soul development to the invisible spiritual beings that always rule over us – just as the beings of nature visibly rule over us – and by appealing to our relationship with these spiritual beings, who begin to take the thought for themselves and think it for us the moment the thought fades. Now we begin to know: within the spiritual world there are beings whose existence goes beyond mere nature; as we human beings think with our thoughts, so our spiritual beings think, so these higher geniuses think the content of our soul. They hold us, they carry us; and through the fact that we are in them, our immortal being, which goes beyond our physical existence, is conditioned. We tell ourselves through spiritual science: If we cannot hold ourselves in death, if we lose what we have been able to create for ourselves in our existence between birth and death as inner experience through outer nature, then we pass through the gate of death and then see from the results of spiritual science that what is independent of us in the body is basically thought from higher beings. It is not the case that what we call the spiritual world expands around us in a similar way to the external nature – which many expect. External nature stands before us; we stand before it and we look at it. When we ascend into the spiritual world, it is different. There the spiritual world penetrates into our own experience, which we have only transformed; there we do not think about the spiritual world, there we must inwardly experience how we are thought. We are in the same situation vis-à-vis the spiritual world as our thoughts about external reality are vis-à-vis our soul. This is basically the most surprising thing about the external reality. It is the experience of spiritual reality that is reversed compared to that of sensual reality, that we say to ourselves: in the face of spiritual reality, when we really experience it, we feel the way nature should feel in the face of sensual reality; we do not think about the spiritual beings; we experience that when we have risen to them, we are thought of and held by them. If you want to express it pedantically and scientifically, we become the object of the spiritual world. Just as we are the subject in relation to the outer reality of nature, so we become the object in relation to the spiritual world. And just as the outer reality of nature stands before us as an object, so we rise to an experience of spiritual reality in which we ourselves are the object; for the spiritual reality comes to us as a subject — or as a multitude of subjects. This inner experience is very often, but always only by those who do not know it and who have no will to enter into it, presented as something subjective, as a purely personal matter. In a sense, the objection that is raised with this is quite correct. For what one can get to know in the first stage of spiritual research has a subjective character; this carries a personal nuance in all the struggles and inner conquests that one has to undergo in the process. And one can justifiably raise the objection that The researcher has the task of defining the limits of human knowledge, and he should be aware that what goes beyond the general limits imposed by external nature can basically only be subjective knowledge. The objection is justified, and none will recognize it as much as the spiritual researcher; but it is only valid up to a certain stage, and for the reason that in reality everything that one can go through subjectively, personally, is only preparation. In the moment when the preparation is sufficient, the objective spiritual reality comes to us as if by a grace that comes upon us as strength. What is experienced as preparation can basically be quite different for the most diverse people; but where they arrive in the end is the same for everyone. The objection is also often made that the spiritual researchers usually communicate what they communicate in a subjectively colored way; one says this about the facts of the spiritual world, the other that. That is quite right, but only right because many do not know how to communicate what presents itself through the grace mentioned, but because it is still their personal, subjective knowledge that they communicate, because they have not brought it to the point where the spiritual researcher arrives at a spiritual world that stands before him as objectively as the images of nature appear objectively before the human soul. The objections raised against spiritual scientific research — I have often said this here — are best understood by the spiritual researcher himself. When the spiritual world is reached by the spiritual researcher after sufficient preparation, then this spiritual researcher knows himself as experiencing an invisible, supersensible world. Knowledge has ceased to have meaning for him. This knowledge has been completely transformed into direct experience, into the most immediate inner perception. And now the spiritual researcher experiences what becomes immediate truth for him. He knows: Now you live in the world in which you are always during the course of twenty-four hours; you now live in the spiritual realm, in the soul's existence, in which you are otherwise always unconsciously during sleep. Through spiritual research one gets to know the state of sleep, learns to recognize that in it the human soul is really outside its body, that it has the body before it, as one otherwise only has the objects of the external world before it. How does one learn to recognize this? By the fact that one is now really in a state in which one is otherwise during sleep, only in a completely opposite way. In sleep, consciousness is depressed and darkness spreads around us. But now, as a spiritual researcher, one can look at this state because one experiences it – but not unconsciously, as in sleep, but consciously. One knows: One is, by having come out of the body – for one consciously comes out of the body – inwardly united with the spiritual world; one has become one with the spiritual world. And now the question is answered: Why is it then usually the case that the soul is unconscious during sleep? Why is it outside of its body in this dull, dark state? This question is answered for the spiritual researcher by the fact that he can now recognize what has been removed through his preparation in his inner soul being, and what is there for the soul when it is asleep. For the spiritual researcher arrives at a battleground, at an inner battleground, through his preparation, and it is difficult to find words to express what comes to man with tremendous intensity, with an inner tragedy, when he wants to bring the thought to extinction and to rebirth in another sphere. What takes hold of the human soul and can lead to the human soul being torn apart is that, if you do not properly control yourself, an inner opposition, an inner rebellion arises against what you do inwardly. For at the moment when the thought extinguishes itself inwardly, one feels: the more one lives out of one's own consciousness into the consciousness of the invisible spiritual beings that rule in the invisible, the more inner forces are awakened that lead the most fierce opposition against this rising out of one consciousness into another. One senses something coming that does not want to be done. And that inner discord, that rebellion against one's own act becomes the tragic inner struggle that every true spiritual research has to fight intensely. All words are too weak to really express what has to be lived through. For when one is so inwardly absorbed, one feels as it were removed from oneself, when one is lifted up into another sphere, then that opposition asserts itself, which says: “You do not want to lose yourself, but you do everything to lose yourself. It is indeed death that you are preparing for yourself; you do not live with your being in you, you become the thought of another. You die within yourself!” And everything that can be mustered with an enormous will, in protest against inner action, asserts itself as an opposition to this absorption. The next step is to gain control over this inner opposition, over what arises from the depths of the soul. One must first find it, which offers the possibility of getting out of this state. Once one has found it, the second step is to add to the concentration of thought, which, as it were, is subject to the second greatest spiritual law of the development of the human soul. One asks oneself: What is it in you that rebels? What is it that rears up like a terrible rebel? And just as one builds on the thought by having it and making it disappear and resurrect in another sphere, so too must one now build on what one already has. And that which one has, which one must build on, is what one can call human destiny. This human destiny approaches us in such a way that we experience its inner blows – whether good or bad – as coming from outside. How far removed are we in human experience from taking what fate is as something other than what “happens” to us, what “coincidence” is in the best sense of the word? But one can begin to take it differently. And by beginning to take fate differently, one becomes a spiritual researcher. One can start by asking oneself: What are you actually in relation to your fate? You can look back into your past, which you can survey in your youth or in the years you have lived through so far, and survey your destiny; you can look at the individual events of this destiny, as far as you can grasp them, in retrospective investigation, and you can ask yourself the question: What would you actually be if this destiny with all its “coincidences” had not befallen you? And if you look into this question, which must now be a very personal one, very deeply, you realize: however the blows of fate may lie, whether they have turned out well or badly, what we are now, we are through all the good and bad blows of fate; we are basically nothing other than the result of our fate. One wonders: what are you, then, other than the result of this fate? If this or that had not affected you, it would not have shaken and stirred your soul, and so you would not be what you are now. And when you then survey your entire destiny in this way, you find that you, with your present self and all your experiences, are basically connected with destiny in the same way that the sum in an addition is connected with the individual addends and addents. Just as the sum in an addition is nothing other than what flows together through the individual addends, so we are basically nothing other than the sum of all the good and bad blows of fate we have suffered, and we grow together with our destiny by contemplating it. The first feeling we can then give ourselves over to is: You are one with your destiny. And whereas we used to separate ourselves from our destiny, whereas we used to stand apart as a special ego, now the special ego flows into the stream of these events of destiny. But it flows into it in such a way that it does not just stand there like a result in the stream of the present; but by gradually experiencing this flowing together, our destiny takes our ego – that which we are – with it, so to speak. We look back on the course of our destiny and, as we look at our destiny, we find our own activity in it; we grow into the becoming of our destiny. We not only feel at one with our destiny, but we gradually grow into our destiny to such an extent that we unite with destiny and its deed. And now it is again one of the most significant, great inner experiences that, looking back on a stroke of fate, we do not say to ourselves: it hit us, it happened to us by chance, but that we say to ourselves: we were already involved in this fate; through it we have made ourselves into what we are today. Such a contemplation cannot be carried out only in thoughts, in ideas and images. Every step of such contemplation is filled with inner emotional, vital soul reality. The growing together with destiny is experienced; the I expands through destiny. And what expands – one learns to recognize it as something quite different from thought. As the other soul element, one learns to recognize it as present in us, as the will that is carried by feeling. We feel the thought as it concentrates, dies away and, as a force, rises up in a foreign spiritual world, from which we are, as it were, thought; our will, our will carried by feeling, grows back into the vastness of time, grows out of itself, so that it coincides with our destiny and becomes ever stronger. By feeling ourselves as one with our destiny, we do not experience dying in thought, but an ever-living and becoming-alive of the will. While the will is initially concentrated in the single point of our present, and we let it flow into our deeds and words, it expands, as from a small point of germination, in the stream of time to that which shines backwards, which, as it were, has created us ourselves. Our will – that is the second law that comes into play here – by giving itself to fate, by losing itself to fate, becomes stronger and stronger, more and more powerful. It moves from the state in which we usually have it to a completely different state. The thought dies in order to be reborn in a new existence. With the will, we stand in such a way that at a certain moment it is dead to our destiny; it is dead to the vicissitudes of fate. If we guide the will in inner meditation about our destiny, it becomes stronger and stronger – by sacrificing itself and, as it were, becoming more and more devoted to our destiny, by recognizing that we ourselves live in our destiny. The thought passes from its strength to its dying away and to its revival in another sphere; the will passes from its momentary effect to an enormous breadth, in that it becomes the bearer of our entire destiny. And here is where experience really expands into a realm that is not accessible to outer experience. Outer experience is only accessible to the extent of experiences where consciousness has awakened, where outer memory begins: in the third or fourth year of a person's life. But when we really live through ourselves with our will, so that we no longer regard our destiny as something alien, as something that is “outside,” then we no longer remain — and with time this inner experience develops — with the consciousness of the soul in our present life. Then we look back into the far, far distance, look back to the states of our soul that preceded our birth or conception, look back to times when our soul itself lived in the spiritual world before entering into physical earthly existence, look back to a state of the soul when it prepared forces to take hold of our body. Thus, by preparing the will to undergo the opposite of what is experienced in the concentration of thought, we grasp our own life beyond birth and death. If we want to grasp the thought, we must detach ourselves from external reality, we must become blind and deaf to the external sensory reality, we must withdraw completely into ourselves; then the thought is transformed so that we ourselves are thought by higher consciousnesses. With the will, we must do the opposite: we must spread into what is otherwise only outside of us. With our thoughts we go within ourselves; with our will we go out of ourselves, go into our destiny and through the passage through our destiny we find the way into the spiritual worlds, where we, according to the reality of our soul, stand in the most comprehensive reality, in that reality which has already taken hold of us before we descended to physical existence. What I am expounding here, seemingly theoretically, is only a description of the inner experiences that the spiritual researcher has to undergo in order to ascend to the knowledge of the spiritual world, to come to the vision of the spiritual world. In relation to external nature, nature precedes and knowledge follows; in relation to spiritual nature, knowledge — that is, something that proceeds like knowledge — precedes as preparation; the vision follows. And now we recognize ourselves in what basically always lives in us, but which humanity will also have to look at scientifically if the development of culture is to continue spiritually; but in order for this to enter consciousness through the progressive forces of development, the scientific grasping of these processes must precede. Of course — one should not even have to mention this — we do not “make” the soul experience by grasping it in this spiritual-scientific way; but we perceive that which is always within us. But just as in the knowledge of nature, experience and knowledge develop out of observation, so in spiritual science, if human evolution is to progress, then the knowledge of spiritual processes must develop into an understanding of the spiritual world. And what one recognizes is that which is independent of the outer physical body, which, as it were, attracts it by descending from the spiritual world into the physical. But even in our ordinary everyday life, we live out of our physical body, in that – for reasons that have been discussed here many times – we alternately enter into a state of sleep within the course of twenty-four hours. And when we consider the state of sleep, we can ask the question: Why does that which otherwise enters into spiritual consciousness become dulled during sleep? Why is there darkness around us then? And then, through spiritual science, we recognize precisely at the moment when the soul, through real preparation in concentration of thought and meditation, takes hold of itself powerfully, how this power enters the body, and we also recognize, because we then grasp the inner, immortal power, what obscures it in ordinary sleep, what makes it impossible to see spiritual reality in sleep when one is out of the body. When one examines this, when one beholds the spiritual reality, which is otherwise darkened, one notices: There is an excess of desire in the soul, an overgrowth of cravings, an emotional penetration of the most intense life of desire, a much stronger life of desire than is present when the soul submerges back into the body and wakes up. And what does the sleeping soul desire? This can be seen through spiritual scientific research: in sleep the soul desires to re-enter the physical body, into that which it has left, in an intense way. And because the desire to re-enter the body is overwhelmingly strong in the soul, this desire, like a fog that covers the clarity, extinguishes for the soul what it would otherwise perceive as belonging to the spiritual world: the consciousness of higher beings and their experiences, their — the soul's — inclusion in higher beings — and their inclusion in these before birth and death. But because the soul needs the forces that can come to it only from the spiritual world, just as the body needs the forces that can come from the world of atoms, it must immerge again and again into the spiritual world. But because it always desires to immerge into the body, its consciousness for the spiritual processes remains extinguished, even when it is free of the body in sleep. What a person experiences in his body, he will never be able to experience directly without this body. What he experiences in this body is that the little power he has in his soul to see the spiritual directly is overgrown in ordinary life by the desire for the body, and that this power in the body, where the soul has this power, becomes stronger and stronger. In the body, the soul learns to develop consciousness and self-awareness. That is the essence of this bodily life. The soul undergoes this life in the body, not as in a dungeon, not as a form of imprisonment, but as something necessary for its overall experience. For the soul can only become what it is meant to be through experience, and this experience changes from a dull to a brightly conscious one. But the conscious powers are first stimulated in the body. When the soul has, as it were, received its satisfaction, it devotes itself to being overshadowed by consciousness. This consciousness passes over into the soul as a power. And then — this is made especially clear by spiritual science — when the soul experiences 'becoming conscious' in the body, it retains the after-experience of this consciousness. Something comes into force that is higher than ordinary memory, but still similar to ordinary memory. In our lives, we remember through our ordinary memory what experiences we have gone through; we can call this up again in the soul. What the soul experiences in the body – this brightening of consciousness, this permeation with consciousness, this remembrance of self-awareness – occurs in the spiritual researcher when he undergoes what I have spoken of, so that he has the experience in his soul as in a memory. We must hold on to this. The spiritual researcher lives in a higher spiritual world; he becomes, as it were, a thought of higher beings. But by permeating himself with what spiritual research can give, what would otherwise become rebellion becomes such an inner experience that he now, by living in the spiritual world, remains afflicted with a memory of his bodily life. Now he knows: this physical life does belong to you after all. And now this rebellion is stripped away by the memory that one has gained through the expansion of one's destiny. One knows: now one is not exposed to spiritual death in the spiritual world. For however much one may merge into the consciousness of higher entities, one lives oneself up in such a way that although the thoughts are grasped by the higher entities, we remain in the power of inner experience; we preserve ourselves, we retain ourselves when we live ourselves up into the higher consciousnesses, how the thoughts are preserved in the consciousness of the higher entities. What we keep in our memory as a memory is not reality until we bring it up from our memory. How it is down there in the dull subconscious is of no interest to man at first; there it has no reality. That is why I called it what the spiritual researcher then has, something like a higher memory, which is similar to memory after all. It is as if we live ourselves up into the consciousness of higher beings, as if all our thoughts retained independent reality, and the stream of our experiences is not just like a stream for our memory, which is there for us to draw up into our memory, but as if the experiences in their own spiritual reality are floating in it. Thus, through the experience that has been hinted at, through the memories, we live our way up into a higher world, but these memories are ourselves, grasping us in our own remembering. It is hardly different from a parable, but it expresses the fact when one says: by developing itself further through meditation, through concentration of thought and through outpouring of the will over fate, the human soul becomes something for those entities which it takes up in its consciousness and which it holds in the regions in which it lives after death and before birth. But just as thoughts only have an existence that is borrowed from us, so we live our way up into the “thought-being” of the higher consciousnesses, and in that they look back on us, they look back on us as on entities that have remained independent. By taking hold of ourselves in our destiny, we maintain ourselves in the consciousness of higher entities. All that I express in this way is only the knowledge of the facts, which is always there for the soul. For what the spiritual researcher experiences is nothing other than the knowledge of what the soul experiences when it goes beyond the external reality through the gate of death. But as external natural events take place without our initially knowing about them, so too does death pass us by and makes the soul what it must make it. But in the course of human development, man must learn to know what death makes of the soul; through spiritual science he must acquire knowledge about what is called: the approach to the riddle of death. That is why what the spiritual researcher comes to in his inner soul development has been called, with a certain justification, “arriving at the gate of death”. From the observation made about sleep, it can be seen that the human soul, in its purely spiritual existence, is “dulled” by the desire for the body. When it passes through the gate of death and detaches itself from the body, it does not remain dulled by this desire. Rather, by withdrawing from the body, it is cured of the desire for the body; the desire pushes itself out of the soul, and the soul experiences being together with the spiritual world. The soul learns to experience itself in the spiritual world. But it would be dependent if it had not passed through death. The soul must pass through death because it is the greatest fact, the greatest experience for it. As we must enter the body through birth, so we must leave the body, pass through death, must die, in order to grasp ourselves as a self in the spiritual world through the experience of death and dying. We become a memory of higher consciousness by shedding the consciousness of the present that we have in the body; and after death, what our self gives us is presented to us in a different way than it is presented to us in the form of our self between birth and death. Between birth and death, we are so immersed in life that we lose our sense of self when consciousness is dulled, that we obscure what we experience in our sleep. Simultaneity exists between us and our body, but also between us and our self-awareness. After death, this changes. What in ordinary life between birth and death is, as it were, the ordinary spatial relationship to our spatial body, becomes after death a relationship to our being in time. After death, we look back on what we have gone through in our corporeal existence, and in this looking back, in this connection with our corporeal existence, we feel our self-awareness, we feel ourselves as selves. In time, the relationship to our self becomes. By looking at our spiritual surroundings, we merge into the higher beings in which we live. We retain our independence, our full self-consciousness after death, by immersing ourselves with our memories in the past life of the body — just as we immerse ourselves each day in the existence of space in order to arrive at our self-consciousness. Thus the human soul passes through the full experience, which includes death, to which death belongs as something necessary; for to self-awareness in the spiritual world belongs the experience of death in the sense world. With this, we can at the same time suggest – but only suggest; in the following lectures this winter, this will be explained in more detail – how this experience of death presents itself. Of course, when a person passes through the gate of death, he will remain unconscious of what he is experiencing. But as he becomes more and more familiar with the spiritual world, he strengthens himself with the forces that can flow to him from the spiritual world, and purifies himself from the forces that, between birth and death, as the desire for the body; and in this inner purification from dullness, the retrospect into one's own self arises, and with it, the insight into the spiritual world arises. The experience after death occurs, so to speak, in such a way that the memory of the experience of death gradually arises in the human soul only as the human being penetrates into the spiritual world after death. But then, when looking back on earthly life each time, it is the case for the human being that his self-awareness blossoms just as it blossoms within the sensory world when he normally awakens. What has been explained here cannot, of course, be proven externally. Therefore, it is very easy for those who do not want to engage in the true proof of the spiritual world to make objections. Anyone who demands that the spiritual world should be proved in the same way as the facts of external natural science and its laws, and who then, when that is not possible, is of the opinion that all talk about a spiritual world is only subjective talk, must be told: The spiritual world cannot speak to the general public in such a way that anyone can conduct the experiment, the observation. But that is why spiritual science does not remain mere subjective talk, but something that has value and significance for the general public; because there are methods, the workings of the soul, that lead every person to penetrate into the spiritual world when they go through them. Therefore, if someone says, “Your spiritual world is not clear to me; prove it to me according to the methods of external natural science,” the reply must be: You must obtain the proof for yourself by applying to your soul what is applicable to every human soul as the methods indicated by spiritual science! What I have today only been able to discuss in general terms, about the thought, its dying away and its revival in another sphere, about the spreading of the will over fate, and how it must work there in detail, I have presented in more detail in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds”, which has now been extensively revised and is available in a new and I have also tried to present it in a different way in the book 'The Riddles of Philosophy', which has now been published as a second edition of my 'World and Life Views in the Nineteenth Century' with a 'sketchy outlook on an anthroposophy' as a result of the entire spiritual-philosophical development of the West. Let it be emphasized once more: spiritual science does not give something that would not be there without it — just as natural science does not give something that would not be there without it. But the fact that man knows something presupposes that the facts of knowledge are there first. But when the facts are absorbed into consciousness, spiritual science will give the human soul what equips the soul with strength and power, as it will need it in the future. The soul has certainly had an awareness of its connection with the spiritual world in the past as well. But humanity continues to develop and evolve. And the results of spiritual scientific research will increasingly be part of what the soul will need for its inner strength, what will bring it to an awareness of itself, will be a real knowledge of the spiritual world, the world of the soul, which can only be imparted through research, just as knowledge of nature can only be imparted through research. Through this spiritual scientific research, the human soul is given what memory expands beyond the horizon, beyond which it can otherwise only roam. Today, this can only be hinted at. As the will expands to embrace destiny and the human being becomes one with destiny, and as the will in man grows to such strength that he grasps what blows of fate are in good and evil, and knows: I myself have formed all this —, memory grows back over earlier experiences, and also grows into those times that represent earlier human lives on earth. Only a hint can be given of what is to be explained in later lectures: intimately connected with the expansion of will over fate is the realization that man not only accomplishes one earth-life, but that this one life is the result of previous earth-lives, that this preparation of the will of fate has taken place in previous earth-lives. And so it presents itself in our consciousness that what we now grasp with our will is the cause for later earthly lives, and has an effect on later earthly lives. Especially in the spiritual culture of Central Europe, the stages by which outstanding leader spirits have grasped this connection between the human soul's experiences and the spiritual world have always emerged in their souls. And if it has been said today that the human soul can, through the concentration of thought, cause this thought to die away and to revive in a higher world, then reference can be made to a spirit to which I have already drawn attention in earlier lectures: to Johann Gottlieb Fichte. He did not yet have spiritual science. But he was so immersed in German, Central European spiritual life that he saw the certainty of the human soul's place in eternity from the way he found himself placed in this spiritual life, as if from an elementary, impulsive consciousness. In many places in his works, Fichte has expressed what emerged to him, what he felt about the human soul's standing within the world of a higher consciousness; but perhaps there is no place where he expresses this connection of the human soul with eternity more intensely than in his appeal to the public, in which he defended himself against the false accusation of atheism. There he says – addressing external nature as “thou” and the I that comes to grasp itself as “I” – the following words: “You are changeable, not I; all your transformations are only my spectacle, and I will always float unscathed above the ruins of your forms. That the forces are already at work now that are intended to destroy the inner sphere of my activity, which I call my body, does not surprise me; this body belongs to you, and is transient, like everything that belongs to you. But this body is not me. I myself will hover over its ruins, and its dissolution will be my spectacle. That the forces are already in effect which will destroy my outer sphere, which has only just begun to become so in the next points — you, you shining suns all, and the thousand times thousand world bodies that roll around you, cannot alienate me; you are doomed to die at birth. But when, among the millions of suns that shine above my head, the youngest will have long since exhausted its last spark of light, then I will still be the same, unharmed and unchanged, as I am now; and when so many new solar systems have emerged from your debris will have streamed together as many times as there are of you, you shining suns above my head, and the youngest among all her last sparks of light will have long since been emitted, then I will still be, unharmed and unchanged, the same as I am today." These convictions are not merely theoretical realizations; these convictions are experienced. And that is what I wanted to bring to the feeling and emotion in the last of my lectures here, that precisely Central European, German intellectual life is the one that contains the best, the most beautiful, the most energetic seeds for this experience. Hence it is that out of this spiritual life itself there may flow the consciousness of its significance in the world, and that now, when in the outer life of Central Europe this spiritual life too is confronted with the question of being or non-being, this spiritual life can know from its own direct knowledge what its calling is and how it must live, and how it must not perish because it is necessary to form the bond between the human soul and the eternals. Then, especially from this spiritual life, flows that consciousness which sees, as it were, in an intense form when one now turns one's gaze to all – we may already say – heroic natures who stand between life and death in the stream of today's events. We look at the great riddle, at the great question of fate that is posed to us today by the epoch — also in this form in which it is posed to us by today's events: the question of life and death. And when we look from the point of view of spiritual science at what lives in the human body, lives in the knowledge that it is sheltered in the consciousness of higher beings, that it can believe itself to be preserved as a living, independent memory then, when this body is destroyed, — that which lives there, that is what must appear before our soul today, when we see so many bodies fall in sacrifice, in the great sacrifice of the time. We ask ourselves: When viewed from the perspective of spiritual science, do the events of the soul really impose themselves on the soul of the one from whom death is demanded by the events of the time, mostly at a young age? We look up to the one from whom death is demanded in the sacrificial service of time, we look at what we grasp spiritually as a soul-like measure of strength, and we know: The thread of life is torn from that which lives in the body in the bloom of youth, at a time when the soul and spiritual powers could still experience for a long time. But truly, when we have recognized these spiritual powers through spiritual science, then we know that they remain alive, that they pass over into a spiritual world, into a new context, when they detach themselves from the old one. And when we then think how we ourselves become memories and thoughts in higher consciousnesses, then this death of the times, which appears so tragic to us today, will appear to us in a higher light. So that we see the forces that we see taken from the body penetrating into higher consciousnesses – and see these higher consciousnesses looking down on physical life on earth. With their strengthened powers, they have absorbed everything that man has sacrificed to them. And because it is the higher consciousnesses that offer us spiritual nourishment, the powers for the fertilization of the soul, the powers of preservation and life, just as physical powers offer us physical nourishment, we can look up to those who today, through the events of the times, go into the spiritual world with a sacrificial death, as something that in the future will look down strengthening and invigoratingly on what is taking place on the physical plane of the earth. It acquires a real, a true meaning when it is said: the sacrifice on the battlefield acquires a meaning through the whole development of humanity. And what is meant by this becomes understandable when we know: just as we, as physical human beings, face nature and it gives us its nourishment, so we give ourselves to the spirits and gods for nourishment; but they themselves give us what we need for nourishment and for strengthening the soul. And when young forces, who die on the battlefield or languish from the consequences of their wounds, leave the body, then these young forces are refreshment forces for the human evolution of the future. It becomes very real when the one who sacrifices himself on the battlefield is imbued with the consciousness that he does not merely die, but lives in his death and will live differently than if he had died a different death, will live for the salvation and for the vigorous future of humanity. We look at the meaning of these sacrificial deaths by recognizing how the seeds are sown for the prosperity of humanity in the future, and by knowing how consciousness can permeate the warrior, that he experiences his death today, that he experiences his wounded fate today, but that he retains the strength through which he will remain united with that for which he dies throughout the future. Torn out of all sentimentality and placed in the simple reality, reality, is placed in what otherwise could so easily only be taken symbolically or figuratively. Such a spiritual contemplation, as we have undertaken today, about the life of the human soul in the outer existence and also in the supersensible existence, I believe, in the right sense, creates right impulses in that which we experience today as the “fate of the times”. And if, in the context of a significant spiritual experience, a poet — Robert Prutz — has spoken beautifully of the ideal deeds of his people, then we may, from the point of view of spiritual science, give these words an even deeper meaning in view of current events. Regarding what the human soul experiences in life and in death, we may ask: What is the meaning of the death and suffering that are now demanded of us by the times? And today, deepening the meaning of Robert Prutz's words, we can say to anyone who will sympathize with and experience what is demanded of us today: what Robert Prutz said in the face of an event less significant in world history: It is for the coming generation, It is for the future dawn, It is for freedom and for the right, It is for life and for death!

64. From a Fateful Time: The Human Soul in Life and Death 26 Nov 1914, Berlin

Rudolf Steiner

In the first two lectures with which I began this winter lecture series, I tried to use the impulses that the great events of the time in which we live can give us to tie in with the essence of German spiritual culture as it presents itself in its great personalities. What I tried to elucidate through these reflections was that it is in the nature of this spiritual culture to become more and more imbued with the consciousness of the reality of the spiritual, of eternal existence. To a certain extent, I will try to give a special chapter from what spiritual scientific reflection has brought about in our time, in order to gain a basis for what should form the content of tomorrow's lecture: a reflection on the nature of the European folk souls. In doing so, I would like to suggest, at least with a few traits taken from spiritual science, what the latter has to say, from its point of view, to help us understand what is happening around us.

The contemplation that is to be undertaken today about the human soul in life and death is, after all, always close to man as one of the greatest riddles of life – in our time, especially so – where we see the question of life and death way, where so many are intensely affected by this question through the reality of existence, where we see that — as it were through the facts — the noblest sons of the people are confronted with this question in every hour of their existence. In the lectures I have been privileged to give here over the years, I have often pointed out that we are living in a time when questions such as the nature of the human soul, the fate of the human soul and of man in general, and similar questions enter into a scientific approach, into an approach that is demanded by the development of that other scientific field that has been so greatly perfected in the last two to four centuries: the field of natural science. To place what can be known about the soul-spiritual in a truly scientific way alongside what has been scientifically conquered for humanity, that has often been described here as the task of spiritual science; and it has also been said that it should come as no surprise if this spiritual-scientific approach is still rejected by the vast majority of people today. This fate is shared by spiritual science with everything that wants to enter human spiritual and cultural development as something new, and it also shares it with natural science itself, which in its time appeared in exactly the same way, met with opposition after opposition, and which first had to prove - but could only prove it after centuries - what it is called upon to achieve for human development. Spiritual observation must relate to what we call knowledge and science in a completely different way to that of natural science. In order for spiritual contemplation to be called scientific in the true and best sense, it must proceed differently, it must approach the human being in a different way than what constitutes the essence of the scientific approach. In the scientific approach, we first turn our gaze outwards to the facts of nature and life, and from the abundance of the manifold that comes to us, we recognize the laws of life. What reaches us through the senses becomes an inner spiritual experience in us, it becomes thought, concept, idea. But who does not feel that with this ascent from the full contemplation of external diversity to the clarity — but also to the abstractness — of ideas and natural laws, the human soul with its inner experiences actually moves away from what one could call reality? We have the fullness of nature before us; we appropriate it in science, but we feel how, in principle, we present concepts and ideas that contain the laws of nature for us, and we feel how thin, one could say reality-less, we are in the face of external reality. And so we ascend from the abundance of external reality, which is spread out before our senses, to the — I would say — ethereally thin soul experience that we have when we have taken possession of the laws of nature in our world of ideas. In a sense, we distance ourselves from nature and its abundance; but we strive for this distance because we know that we can only recognize nature and its laws by distancing ourselves from it. This is the highest thing we strive for in science: the inner soul experience in ideas and thoughts.

Spiritual research must take exactly the opposite path if it is to be scientific. The ultimate consequence of the inner experience of science in relation to external nature is preparation — merely preparation — for the knowledge of the spiritual, of the soul; and it would be a complete mistake to believe that spiritual science could proceed in the same way as natural science. What natural science ultimately strives for is the preparation for spiritual science: living in inner soul experience, immersing oneself in that which strengthens the soul inwardly and which it cannot obtain from external nature. In short, knowledge and science can only be a preparation for what one ultimately comes to: to beholding, to perceiving the spiritual world. One could say: in natural science, one strives for knowledge and science; in spiritual science, one prepares oneself through knowledge and science for what is to approach the soul, and everything that one can have in the way of knowledge and science remains, basically, in spiritual science an inner matter for the soul. But what the soul and spirit live through does not lead to something merely subjective, something that concerns only the individual soul of the person, but it leads to what is real, just as external nature is only real.

I have often pointed out the way in which this preparation for beholding, for the real inner experience of spiritual reality, is designed. I will do so again today from a certain point of view.

Only through this preparation can one lead the soul further and further, so that in the end what is spiritual reality spreads out around it. We leave nature; it is there. We go forward to the spirit. We must seek spiritual reality. We cannot start from it, it is not there at first; we can only prepare ourselves for its contemplation. But when we prepare ourselves inwardly for its contemplation, then it comes to us like a grace, spreading out of the spiritual twilight. We must acquire the ability to contemplate it.

The first thing needed to experience the human soul in its reality, so to speak, is an inner experience — not paying attention, not just thinking, but an inner experience of that which we otherwise have only as a reflection of external reality – the world of thoughts, the world of feelings – that which we otherwise feel within us when we confront the external world, and which we regard as a reflection of nature, as an image in which nature is embedded. We have to experience this intensely and powerfully by turning our gaze away completely from external reality, by making ourselves blind and deaf to external sensory reality; we have to experience it so that we allow it to be intensely present as the only inner reality in the soul. The natural scientist seeks to extract a law of nature as a thought from the outer reality of the senses. The spiritual scientist gives himself up to a thought, or to a thought imbued with feeling, in inner experience; he lets, as it were, neither the eye nor the ear send out into the outer reality, and lets the inner interweaving and interworking of the soul and turns his most intense attention to this inner experience; he forgets himself and the world and lives only in what he, as it were, lets rise in his empty but alert consciousness from the depths of his soul. And then the strange thing happens: the thought to which we devote ourselves with infinitely increased attention over a long period of time, this thought, the stronger it becomes through our inner strength, the weaker it becomes precisely in relation to what it contains; it becomes more and more transparent and transparent, more and more ethereal and ethereal. One could say: the more the spiritual researcher endeavors to be present in the thought, which is called inner thought concentration, the more the content of the thought fades away. The more we endeavor to make the thought firm and, as it were, visible by devoting ourselves to it, the more this devotion leads to the thought fading away more and more, as if dissolving in a fog, and then disappearing completely from consciousness. One could also say, expressing a principle of this inner experience: the more the thought is experienced in its sharpness in the soul, the more it gains in energy through our own activity, the more it dies in the soul. To put it in an epigrammatic way, we can say: in order for the thought to reach the goal of spiritual research, it must die in the soul; and in dying, it undergoes an inner destiny, the destiny that also has the seed that is sunk into the earth to rot. But from its rotting, the strength for a new plant arises. When thought dies in us in the concentration of thought, it awakens to a completely different life; and one does not discover this different life until thought has died in inner sharp concentration. One must stop thinking in order to let the soul plant, that which arises from thought, germinate within oneself.

And what then arises from the thought?

It is difficult to express in human language what arises from the thought, because human language is created for the external sense experiences and not for the internal soul experiences. Therefore, in a certain respect, one can only hint at the inner experiences that come into question. As the thought, made energetic, dies away, the soul inwardly feels a burgeoning power, a power of which it becomes aware and of which it knows at the moment it becomes aware : This is spiritual-soul power; this is something that is not tied to your body; something that you carry within you without the mediation of your nervous system and your brain. But in grasping not the thought but the power of thought, there arises, as if by an inner necessity, the question that presents itself like a flash of lightning: “Where has the thought gone? After all, it was basically you yourself, in that you gave yourself over to it in sharp concentration of thought. You lived in the thought, and when it dissolved and died, it carried you away with it. Where has it gone? And where have you arrived now?” — Here one must choose a comparison. Just as we carry the thoughts we have of external nature within us, just as we know we have the thoughts, so we immediately perceive a state in ourselves through which we say: the thought as you had it has died in your concentration of thought; but through this it has awakened to another life – and has taken you with it. You are now thought of in the spiritual world!

This is a harrowing, great, tremendously significant experience in the life of the spiritual researcher. For only in this way can one ascend into the spiritual world, by feeling itself grasped by it – as thought, if it were alive, would feel itself grasped by us. And basically, there is no other way to experience immortality than to appeal through our inner soul development to the invisible spiritual beings that always rule over us – just as the beings of nature visibly rule over us – and by appealing to our relationship with these spiritual beings, who begin to take the thought for themselves and think it for us the moment the thought fades. Now we begin to know: within the spiritual world there are beings whose existence goes beyond mere nature; as we human beings think with our thoughts, so our spiritual beings think, so these higher geniuses think the content of our soul. They hold us, they carry us; and through the fact that we are in them, our immortal being, which goes beyond our physical existence, is conditioned. We tell ourselves through spiritual science: If we cannot hold ourselves in death, if we lose what we have been able to create for ourselves in our existence between birth and death as inner experience through outer nature, then we pass through the gate of death and then see from the results of spiritual science that what is independent of us in the body is basically thought from higher beings.

It is not the case that what we call the spiritual world expands around us in a similar way to the external nature – which many expect. External nature stands before us; we stand before it and we look at it. When we ascend into the spiritual world, it is different. There the spiritual world penetrates into our own experience, which we have only transformed; there we do not think about the spiritual world, there we must inwardly experience how we are thought. We are in the same situation vis-à-vis the spiritual world as our thoughts about external reality are vis-à-vis our soul. This is basically the most surprising thing about the external reality. It is the experience of spiritual reality that is reversed compared to that of sensual reality, that we say to ourselves: in the face of spiritual reality, when we really experience it, we feel the way nature should feel in the face of sensual reality; we do not think about the spiritual beings; we experience that when we have risen to them, we are thought of and held by them. If you want to express it pedantically and scientifically, we become the object of the spiritual world. Just as we are the subject in relation to the outer reality of nature, so we become the object in relation to the spiritual world. And just as the outer reality of nature stands before us as an object, so we rise to an experience of spiritual reality in which we ourselves are the object; for the spiritual reality comes to us as a subject — or as a multitude of subjects.

This inner experience is very often, but always only by those who do not know it and who have no will to enter into it, presented as something subjective, as a purely personal matter. In a sense, the objection that is raised with this is quite correct. For what one can get to know in the first stage of spiritual research has a subjective character; this carries a personal nuance in all the struggles and inner conquests that one has to undergo in the process. And one can justifiably raise the objection that The researcher has the task of defining the limits of human knowledge, and he should be aware that what goes beyond the general limits imposed by external nature can basically only be subjective knowledge. The objection is justified, and none will recognize it as much as the spiritual researcher; but it is only valid up to a certain stage, and for the reason that in reality everything that one can go through subjectively, personally, is only preparation. In the moment when the preparation is sufficient, the objective spiritual reality comes to us as if by a grace that comes upon us as strength. What is experienced as preparation can basically be quite different for the most diverse people; but where they arrive in the end is the same for everyone. The objection is also often made that the spiritual researchers usually communicate what they communicate in a subjectively colored way; one says this about the facts of the spiritual world, the other that. That is quite right, but only right because many do not know how to communicate what presents itself through the grace mentioned, but because it is still their personal, subjective knowledge that they communicate, because they have not brought it to the point where the spiritual researcher arrives at a spiritual world that stands before him as objectively as the images of nature appear objectively before the human soul. The objections raised against spiritual scientific research — I have often said this here — are best understood by the spiritual researcher himself.

When the spiritual world is reached by the spiritual researcher after sufficient preparation, then this spiritual researcher knows himself as experiencing an invisible, supersensible world. Knowledge has ceased to have meaning for him. This knowledge has been completely transformed into direct experience, into the most immediate inner perception. And now the spiritual researcher experiences what becomes immediate truth for him. He knows: Now you live in the world in which you are always during the course of twenty-four hours; you now live in the spiritual realm, in the soul's existence, in which you are otherwise always unconsciously during sleep. Through spiritual research one gets to know the state of sleep, learns to recognize that in it the human soul is really outside its body, that it has the body before it, as one otherwise only has the objects of the external world before it. How does one learn to recognize this? By the fact that one is now really in a state in which one is otherwise during sleep, only in a completely opposite way. In sleep, consciousness is depressed and darkness spreads around us. But now, as a spiritual researcher, one can look at this state because one experiences it – but not unconsciously, as in sleep, but consciously. One knows: One is, by having come out of the body – for one consciously comes out of the body – inwardly united with the spiritual world; one has become one with the spiritual world. And now the question is answered: Why is it then usually the case that the soul is unconscious during sleep? Why is it outside of its body in this dull, dark state? This question is answered for the spiritual researcher by the fact that he can now recognize what has been removed through his preparation in his inner soul being, and what is there for the soul when it is asleep. For the spiritual researcher arrives at a battleground, at an inner battleground, through his preparation, and it is difficult to find words to express what comes to man with tremendous intensity, with an inner tragedy, when he wants to bring the thought to extinction and to rebirth in another sphere. What takes hold of the human soul and can lead to the human soul being torn apart is that, if you do not properly control yourself, an inner opposition, an inner rebellion arises against what you do inwardly. For at the moment when the thought extinguishes itself inwardly, one feels: the more one lives out of one's own consciousness into the consciousness of the invisible spiritual beings that rule in the invisible, the more inner forces are awakened that lead the most fierce opposition against this rising out of one consciousness into another. One senses something coming that does not want to be done. And that inner discord, that rebellion against one's own act becomes the tragic inner struggle that every true spiritual research has to fight intensely. All words are too weak to really express what has to be lived through. For when one is so inwardly absorbed, one feels as it were removed from oneself, when one is lifted up into another sphere, then that opposition asserts itself, which says: “You do not want to lose yourself, but you do everything to lose yourself. It is indeed death that you are preparing for yourself; you do not live with your being in you, you become the thought of another. You die within yourself!” And everything that can be mustered with an enormous will, in protest against inner action, asserts itself as an opposition to this absorption.

The next step is to gain control over this inner opposition, over what arises from the depths of the soul. One must first find it, which offers the possibility of getting out of this state. Once one has found it, the second step is to add to the concentration of thought, which, as it were, is subject to the second greatest spiritual law of the development of the human soul.

One asks oneself: What is it in you that rebels? What is it that rears up like a terrible rebel? And just as one builds on the thought by having it and making it disappear and resurrect in another sphere, so too must one now build on what one already has. And that which one has, which one must build on, is what one can call human destiny. This human destiny approaches us in such a way that we experience its inner blows – whether good or bad – as coming from outside. How far removed are we in human experience from taking what fate is as something other than what “happens” to us, what “coincidence” is in the best sense of the word? But one can begin to take it differently. And by beginning to take fate differently, one becomes a spiritual researcher. One can start by asking oneself: What are you actually in relation to your fate? You can look back into your past, which you can survey in your youth or in the years you have lived through so far, and survey your destiny; you can look at the individual events of this destiny, as far as you can grasp them, in retrospective investigation, and you can ask yourself the question: What would you actually be if this destiny with all its “coincidences” had not befallen you? And if you look into this question, which must now be a very personal one, very deeply, you realize: however the blows of fate may lie, whether they have turned out well or badly, what we are now, we are through all the good and bad blows of fate; we are basically nothing other than the result of our fate. One wonders: what are you, then, other than the result of this fate? If this or that had not affected you, it would not have shaken and stirred your soul, and so you would not be what you are now. And when you then survey your entire destiny in this way, you find that you, with your present self and all your experiences, are basically connected with destiny in the same way that the sum in an addition is connected with the individual addends and addents. Just as the sum in an addition is nothing other than what flows together through the individual addends, so we are basically nothing other than the sum of all the good and bad blows of fate we have suffered, and we grow together with our destiny by contemplating it. The first feeling we can then give ourselves over to is: You are one with your destiny. And whereas we used to separate ourselves from our destiny, whereas we used to stand apart as a special ego, now the special ego flows into the stream of these events of destiny. But it flows into it in such a way that it does not just stand there like a result in the stream of the present; but by gradually experiencing this flowing together, our destiny takes our ego – that which we are – with it, so to speak. We look back on the course of our destiny and, as we look at our destiny, we find our own activity in it; we grow into the becoming of our destiny. We not only feel at one with our destiny, but we gradually grow into our destiny to such an extent that we unite with destiny and its deed. And now it is again one of the most significant, great inner experiences that, looking back on a stroke of fate, we do not say to ourselves: it hit us, it happened to us by chance, but that we say to ourselves: we were already involved in this fate; through it we have made ourselves into what we are today.

Such a contemplation cannot be carried out only in thoughts, in ideas and images. Every step of such contemplation is filled with inner emotional, vital soul reality. The growing together with destiny is experienced; the I expands through destiny. And what expands – one learns to recognize it as something quite different from thought. As the other soul element, one learns to recognize it as present in us, as the will that is carried by feeling. We feel the thought as it concentrates, dies away and, as a force, rises up in a foreign spiritual world, from which we are, as it were, thought; our will, our will carried by feeling, grows back into the vastness of time, grows out of itself, so that it coincides with our destiny and becomes ever stronger. By feeling ourselves as one with our destiny, we do not experience dying in thought, but an ever-living and becoming-alive of the will. While the will is initially concentrated in the single point of our present, and we let it flow into our deeds and words, it expands, as from a small point of germination, in the stream of time to that which shines backwards, which, as it were, has created us ourselves. Our will – that is the second law that comes into play here – by giving itself to fate, by losing itself to fate, becomes stronger and stronger, more and more powerful. It moves from the state in which we usually have it to a completely different state.

The thought dies in order to be reborn in a new existence. With the will, we stand in such a way that at a certain moment it is dead to our destiny; it is dead to the vicissitudes of fate. If we guide the will in inner meditation about our destiny, it becomes stronger and stronger – by sacrificing itself and, as it were, becoming more and more devoted to our destiny, by recognizing that we ourselves live in our destiny. The thought passes from its strength to its dying away and to its revival in another sphere; the will passes from its momentary effect to an enormous breadth, in that it becomes the bearer of our entire destiny. And here is where experience really expands into a realm that is not accessible to outer experience. Outer experience is only accessible to the extent of experiences where consciousness has awakened, where outer memory begins: in the third or fourth year of a person's life. But when we really live through ourselves with our will, so that we no longer regard our destiny as something alien, as something that is “outside,” then we no longer remain — and with time this inner experience develops — with the consciousness of the soul in our present life. Then we look back into the far, far distance, look back to the states of our soul that preceded our birth or conception, look back to times when our soul itself lived in the spiritual world before entering into physical earthly existence, look back to a state of the soul when it prepared forces to take hold of our body. Thus, by preparing the will to undergo the opposite of what is experienced in the concentration of thought, we grasp our own life beyond birth and death. If we want to grasp the thought, we must detach ourselves from external reality, we must become blind and deaf to the external sensory reality, we must withdraw completely into ourselves; then the thought is transformed so that we ourselves are thought by higher consciousnesses. With the will, we must do the opposite: we must spread into what is otherwise only outside of us. With our thoughts we go within ourselves; with our will we go out of ourselves, go into our destiny and through the passage through our destiny we find the way into the spiritual worlds, where we, according to the reality of our soul, stand in the most comprehensive reality, in that reality which has already taken hold of us before we descended to physical existence. What I am expounding here, seemingly theoretically, is only a description of the inner experiences that the spiritual researcher has to undergo in order to ascend to the knowledge of the spiritual world, to come to the vision of the spiritual world. In relation to external nature, nature precedes and knowledge follows; in relation to spiritual nature, knowledge — that is, something that proceeds like knowledge — precedes as preparation; the vision follows. And now we recognize ourselves in what basically always lives in us, but which humanity will also have to look at scientifically if the development of culture is to continue spiritually; but in order for this to enter consciousness through the progressive forces of development, the scientific grasping of these processes must precede. Of course — one should not even have to mention this — we do not “make” the soul experience by grasping it in this spiritual-scientific way; but we perceive that which is always within us. But just as in the knowledge of nature, experience and knowledge develop out of observation, so in spiritual science, if human evolution is to progress, then the knowledge of spiritual processes must develop into an understanding of the spiritual world. And what one recognizes is that which is independent of the outer physical body, which, as it were, attracts it by descending from the spiritual world into the physical.

But even in our ordinary everyday life, we live out of our physical body, in that – for reasons that have been discussed here many times – we alternately enter into a state of sleep within the course of twenty-four hours. And when we consider the state of sleep, we can ask the question: Why does that which otherwise enters into spiritual consciousness become dulled during sleep? Why is there darkness around us then? And then, through spiritual science, we recognize precisely at the moment when the soul, through real preparation in concentration of thought and meditation, takes hold of itself powerfully, how this power enters the body, and we also recognize, because we then grasp the inner, immortal power, what obscures it in ordinary sleep, what makes it impossible to see spiritual reality in sleep when one is out of the body. When one examines this, when one beholds the spiritual reality, which is otherwise darkened, one notices: There is an excess of desire in the soul, an overgrowth of cravings, an emotional penetration of the most intense life of desire, a much stronger life of desire than is present when the soul submerges back into the body and wakes up. And what does the sleeping soul desire? This can be seen through spiritual scientific research: in sleep the soul desires to re-enter the physical body, into that which it has left, in an intense way. And because the desire to re-enter the body is overwhelmingly strong in the soul, this desire, like a fog that covers the clarity, extinguishes for the soul what it would otherwise perceive as belonging to the spiritual world: the consciousness of higher beings and their experiences, their — the soul's — inclusion in higher beings — and their inclusion in these before birth and death. But because the soul needs the forces that can come to it only from the spiritual world, just as the body needs the forces that can come from the world of atoms, it must immerge again and again into the spiritual world. But because it always desires to immerge into the body, its consciousness for the spiritual processes remains extinguished, even when it is free of the body in sleep. What a person experiences in his body, he will never be able to experience directly without this body. What he experiences in this body is that the little power he has in his soul to see the spiritual directly is overgrown in ordinary life by the desire for the body, and that this power in the body, where the soul has this power, becomes stronger and stronger. In the body, the soul learns to develop consciousness and self-awareness. That is the essence of this bodily life. The soul undergoes this life in the body, not as in a dungeon, not as a form of imprisonment, but as something necessary for its overall experience. For the soul can only become what it is meant to be through experience, and this experience changes from a dull to a brightly conscious one. But the conscious powers are first stimulated in the body. When the soul has, as it were, received its satisfaction, it devotes itself to being overshadowed by consciousness. This consciousness passes over into the soul as a power. And then — this is made especially clear by spiritual science — when the soul experiences 'becoming conscious' in the body, it retains the after-experience of this consciousness. Something comes into force that is higher than ordinary memory, but still similar to ordinary memory. In our lives, we remember through our ordinary memory what experiences we have gone through; we can call this up again in the soul. What the soul experiences in the body – this brightening of consciousness, this permeation with consciousness, this remembrance of self-awareness – occurs in the spiritual researcher when he undergoes what I have spoken of, so that he has the experience in his soul as in a memory. We must hold on to this.

The spiritual researcher lives in a higher spiritual world; he becomes, as it were, a thought of higher beings. But by permeating himself with what spiritual research can give, what would otherwise become rebellion becomes such an inner experience that he now, by living in the spiritual world, remains afflicted with a memory of his bodily life. Now he knows: this physical life does belong to you after all. And now this rebellion is stripped away by the memory that one has gained through the expansion of one's destiny. One knows: now one is not exposed to spiritual death in the spiritual world. For however much one may merge into the consciousness of higher entities, one lives oneself up in such a way that although the thoughts are grasped by the higher entities, we remain in the power of inner experience; we preserve ourselves, we retain ourselves when we live ourselves up into the higher consciousnesses, how the thoughts are preserved in the consciousness of the higher entities. What we keep in our memory as a memory is not reality until we bring it up from our memory. How it is down there in the dull subconscious is of no interest to man at first; there it has no reality. That is why I called it what the spiritual researcher then has, something like a higher memory, which is similar to memory after all. It is as if we live ourselves up into the consciousness of higher beings, as if all our thoughts retained independent reality, and the stream of our experiences is not just like a stream for our memory, which is there for us to draw up into our memory, but as if the experiences in their own spiritual reality are floating in it. Thus, through the experience that has been hinted at, through the memories, we live our way up into a higher world, but these memories are ourselves, grasping us in our own remembering. It is hardly different from a parable, but it expresses the fact when one says: by developing itself further through meditation, through concentration of thought and through outpouring of the will over fate, the human soul becomes something for those entities which it takes up in its consciousness and which it holds in the regions in which it lives after death and before birth. But just as thoughts only have an existence that is borrowed from us, so we live our way up into the “thought-being” of the higher consciousnesses, and in that they look back on us, they look back on us as on entities that have remained independent. By taking hold of ourselves in our destiny, we maintain ourselves in the consciousness of higher entities.

All that I express in this way is only the knowledge of the facts, which is always there for the soul. For what the spiritual researcher experiences is nothing other than the knowledge of what the soul experiences when it goes beyond the external reality through the gate of death. But as external natural events take place without our initially knowing about them, so too does death pass us by and makes the soul what it must make it. But in the course of human development, man must learn to know what death makes of the soul; through spiritual science he must acquire knowledge about what is called: the approach to the riddle of death. That is why what the spiritual researcher comes to in his inner soul development has been called, with a certain justification, “arriving at the gate of death”. From the observation made about sleep, it can be seen that the human soul, in its purely spiritual existence, is “dulled” by the desire for the body. When it passes through the gate of death and detaches itself from the body, it does not remain dulled by this desire. Rather, by withdrawing from the body, it is cured of the desire for the body; the desire pushes itself out of the soul, and the soul experiences being together with the spiritual world. The soul learns to experience itself in the spiritual world. But it would be dependent if it had not passed through death. The soul must pass through death because it is the greatest fact, the greatest experience for it. As we must enter the body through birth, so we must leave the body, pass through death, must die, in order to grasp ourselves as a self in the spiritual world through the experience of death and dying. We become a memory of higher consciousness by shedding the consciousness of the present that we have in the body; and after death, what our self gives us is presented to us in a different way than it is presented to us in the form of our self between birth and death. Between birth and death, we are so immersed in life that we lose our sense of self when consciousness is dulled, that we obscure what we experience in our sleep. Simultaneity exists between us and our body, but also between us and our self-awareness. After death, this changes. What in ordinary life between birth and death is, as it were, the ordinary spatial relationship to our spatial body, becomes after death a relationship to our being in time. After death, we look back on what we have gone through in our corporeal existence, and in this looking back, in this connection with our corporeal existence, we feel our self-awareness, we feel ourselves as selves. In time, the relationship to our self becomes. By looking at our spiritual surroundings, we merge into the higher beings in which we live. We retain our independence, our full self-consciousness after death, by immersing ourselves with our memories in the past life of the body — just as we immerse ourselves each day in the existence of space in order to arrive at our self-consciousness.

Thus the human soul passes through the full experience, which includes death, to which death belongs as something necessary; for to self-awareness in the spiritual world belongs the experience of death in the sense world. With this, we can at the same time suggest – but only suggest; in the following lectures this winter, this will be explained in more detail – how this experience of death presents itself. Of course, when a person passes through the gate of death, he will remain unconscious of what he is experiencing. But as he becomes more and more familiar with the spiritual world, he strengthens himself with the forces that can flow to him from the spiritual world, and purifies himself from the forces that, between birth and death, as the desire for the body; and in this inner purification from dullness, the retrospect into one's own self arises, and with it, the insight into the spiritual world arises. The experience after death occurs, so to speak, in such a way that the memory of the experience of death gradually arises in the human soul only as the human being penetrates into the spiritual world after death. But then, when looking back on earthly life each time, it is the case for the human being that his self-awareness blossoms just as it blossoms within the sensory world when he normally awakens.

What has been explained here cannot, of course, be proven externally. Therefore, it is very easy for those who do not want to engage in the true proof of the spiritual world to make objections. Anyone who demands that the spiritual world should be proved in the same way as the facts of external natural science and its laws, and who then, when that is not possible, is of the opinion that all talk about a spiritual world is only subjective talk, must be told: The spiritual world cannot speak to the general public in such a way that anyone can conduct the experiment, the observation. But that is why spiritual science does not remain mere subjective talk, but something that has value and significance for the general public; because there are methods, the workings of the soul, that lead every person to penetrate into the spiritual world when they go through them. Therefore, if someone says, “Your spiritual world is not clear to me; prove it to me according to the methods of external natural science,” the reply must be: You must obtain the proof for yourself by applying to your soul what is applicable to every human soul as the methods indicated by spiritual science!

Let it be emphasized once more: spiritual science does not give something that would not be there without it — just as natural science does not give something that would not be there without it. But the fact that man knows something presupposes that the facts of knowledge are there first. But when the facts are absorbed into consciousness, spiritual science will give the human soul what equips the soul with strength and power, as it will need it in the future. The soul has certainly had an awareness of its connection with the spiritual world in the past as well. But humanity continues to develop and evolve. And the results of spiritual scientific research will increasingly be part of what the soul will need for its inner strength, what will bring it to an awareness of itself, will be a real knowledge of the spiritual world, the world of the soul, which can only be imparted through research, just as knowledge of nature can only be imparted through research. Through this spiritual scientific research, the human soul is given what memory expands beyond the horizon, beyond which it can otherwise only roam. Today, this can only be hinted at. As the will expands to embrace destiny and the human being becomes one with destiny, and as the will in man grows to such strength that he grasps what blows of fate are in good and evil, and knows: I myself have formed all this —, memory grows back over earlier experiences, and also grows into those times that represent earlier human lives on earth. Only a hint can be given of what is to be explained in later lectures: intimately connected with the expansion of will over fate is the realization that man not only accomplishes one earth-life, but that this one life is the result of previous earth-lives, that this preparation of the will of fate has taken place in previous earth-lives. And so it presents itself in our consciousness that what we now grasp with our will is the cause for later earthly lives, and has an effect on later earthly lives.

Especially in the spiritual culture of Central Europe, the stages by which outstanding leader spirits have grasped this connection between the human soul's experiences and the spiritual world have always emerged in their souls. And if it has been said today that the human soul can, through the concentration of thought, cause this thought to die away and to revive in a higher world, then reference can be made to a spirit to which I have already drawn attention in earlier lectures: to Johann Gottlieb Fichte. He did not yet have spiritual science. But he was so immersed in German, Central European spiritual life that he saw the certainty of the human soul's place in eternity from the way he found himself placed in this spiritual life, as if from an elementary, impulsive consciousness. In many places in his works, Fichte has expressed what emerged to him, what he felt about the human soul's standing within the world of a higher consciousness; but perhaps there is no place where he expresses this connection of the human soul with eternity more intensely than in his appeal to the public, in which he defended himself against the false accusation of atheism. There he says – addressing external nature as “thou” and the I that comes to grasp itself as “I” – the following words:

“You are changeable, not I; all your transformations are only my spectacle, and I will always float unscathed above the ruins of your forms. That the forces are already at work now that are intended to destroy the inner sphere of my activity, which I call my body, does not surprise me; this body belongs to you, and is transient, like everything that belongs to you. But this body is not me. I myself will hover over its ruins, and its dissolution will be my spectacle. That the forces are already in effect which will destroy my outer sphere, which has only just begun to become so in the next points — you, you shining suns all, and the thousand times thousand world bodies that roll around you, cannot alienate me; you are doomed to die at birth. But when, among the millions of suns that shine above my head, the youngest will have long since exhausted its last spark of light, then I will still be the same, unharmed and unchanged, as I am now; and when so many new solar systems have emerged from your debris will have streamed together as many times as there are of you, you shining suns above my head, and the youngest among all her last sparks of light will have long since been emitted, then I will still be, unharmed and unchanged, the same as I am today."

These convictions are not merely theoretical realizations; these convictions are experienced. And that is what I wanted to bring to the feeling and emotion in the last of my lectures here, that precisely Central European, German intellectual life is the one that contains the best, the most beautiful, the most energetic seeds for this experience. Hence it is that out of this spiritual life itself there may flow the consciousness of its significance in the world, and that now, when in the outer life of Central Europe this spiritual life too is confronted with the question of being or non-being, this spiritual life can know from its own direct knowledge what its calling is and how it must live, and how it must not perish because it is necessary to form the bond between the human soul and the eternals. Then, especially from this spiritual life, flows that consciousness which sees, as it were, in an intense form when one now turns one's gaze to all – we may already say – heroic natures who stand between life and death in the stream of today's events. We look at the great riddle, at the great question of fate that is posed to us today by the epoch — also in this form in which it is posed to us by today's events: the question of life and death. And when we look from the point of view of spiritual science at what lives in the human body, lives in the knowledge that it is sheltered in the consciousness of higher beings, that it can believe itself to be preserved as a living, independent memory then, when this body is destroyed, — that which lives there, that is what must appear before our soul today, when we see so many bodies fall in sacrifice, in the great sacrifice of the time.

We ask ourselves: When viewed from the perspective of spiritual science, do the events of the soul really impose themselves on the soul of the one from whom death is demanded by the events of the time, mostly at a young age? We look up to the one from whom death is demanded in the sacrificial service of time, we look at what we grasp spiritually as a soul-like measure of strength, and we know: The thread of life is torn from that which lives in the body in the bloom of youth, at a time when the soul and spiritual powers could still experience for a long time. But truly, when we have recognized these spiritual powers through spiritual science, then we know that they remain alive, that they pass over into a spiritual world, into a new context, when they detach themselves from the old one. And when we then think how we ourselves become memories and thoughts in higher consciousnesses, then this death of the times, which appears so tragic to us today, will appear to us in a higher light. So that we see the forces that we see taken from the body penetrating into higher consciousnesses – and see these higher consciousnesses looking down on physical life on earth. With their strengthened powers, they have absorbed everything that man has sacrificed to them. And because it is the higher consciousnesses that offer us spiritual nourishment, the powers for the fertilization of the soul, the powers of preservation and life, just as physical powers offer us physical nourishment, we can look up to those who today, through the events of the times, go into the spiritual world with a sacrificial death, as something that in the future will look down strengthening and invigoratingly on what is taking place on the physical plane of the earth. It acquires a real, a true meaning when it is said: the sacrifice on the battlefield acquires a meaning through the whole development of humanity. And what is meant by this becomes understandable when we know: just as we, as physical human beings, face nature and it gives us its nourishment, so we give ourselves to the spirits and gods for nourishment; but they themselves give us what we need for nourishment and for strengthening the soul. And when young forces, who die on the battlefield or languish from the consequences of their wounds, leave the body, then these young forces are refreshment forces for the human evolution of the future.

It becomes very real when the one who sacrifices himself on the battlefield is imbued with the consciousness that he does not merely die, but lives in his death and will live differently than if he had died a different death, will live for the salvation and for the vigorous future of humanity. We look at the meaning of these sacrificial deaths by recognizing how the seeds are sown for the prosperity of humanity in the future, and by knowing how consciousness can permeate the warrior, that he experiences his death today, that he experiences his wounded fate today, but that he retains the strength through which he will remain united with that for which he dies throughout the future. Torn out of all sentimentality and placed in the simple reality,

reality, is placed in what otherwise could so easily only be taken symbolically or figuratively. Such a spiritual contemplation, as we have undertaken today, about the life of the human soul in the outer existence and also in the supersensible existence, I believe, in the right sense, creates right impulses in that which we experience today as the “fate of the times”. And if, in the context of a significant spiritual experience, a poet — Robert Prutz — has spoken beautifully of the ideal deeds of his people, then we may, from the point of view of spiritual science, give these words an even deeper meaning in view of current events. Regarding what the human soul experiences in life and in death, we may ask: What is the meaning of the death and suffering that are now demanded of us by the times? And today, deepening the meaning of Robert Prutz's words, we can say to anyone who will sympathize with and experience what is demanded of us today: what Robert Prutz said in the face of an event less significant in world history:

It is for the coming generation,
It is for the future dawn,
It is for freedom and for the right,
It is for life and for death!

67. The Eternal human Soul: The Historical Life of Humanity and Its Riddles 14 Mar 1918, Berlin Rudolf Steiner
However, a famous historian said the one thing, a crazy representative of anthroposophy said the other, and it goes without saying in the present to whom one listens. The point is to recognise how one has to use the facts which one called history up to now so that it points you to the deeper currents of human development by this coherence between the human soul and that only dreamt spirituality which flows along as historical current.

67. The Eternal human Soul: The Historical Life of Humanity and Its Riddles 14 Mar 1918, Berlin

Rudolf Steiner

However, a famous historian said the one thing, a crazy representative of anthroposophy said the other, and it goes without saying in the present to whom one listens. The point is to recognise how one has to use the facts which one called history up to now so that it points you to the deeper currents of human development by this coherence between the human soul and that only dreamt spirituality which flows along as historical current.

67. The Eternal human Soul: The Historical Life of Humanity and Its Riddles 14 Mar 1918, Berlin Rudolf Steiner
In this time where so many people have the comprehensible need to orientate themselves about the earth-shaking events you often hear, history “teaches” this or that. One means that one could judge about any fact of the present because of similar facts of history. If we ask ourselves, which possibilities present themselves to the human beings to judge this or that on basis of historical experience, then, however, you get to a somewhat dubious judgement about what history “teaches.” I would like to point only to two things, but I could increase them a hundred times. I would like to point to the fact that at the beginning of this world disaster many people were of the opinion that these critical events would last four, in the extreme case six months. One regarded such a judgement as completely entitled. You cannot say that these human beings had not applied all logical precautions to deliver such a judgement. Now, the facts themselves have taught such people rather thoroughly the opposite of that what they have believed. Just at this example, one also sees how narrowly that which history should teach is associated with the judgement of the social or other world relations, so that you can expect from a consideration of the historical life of humanity that also some light falls on the judgement you have to exert for the social and economic living together of the human beings. However, I would like to bring in another example of the limited validity of the sentence, that history “teaches” this or that. An ingenious personality received a professorship of history at a German university more than hundred years ago. Really, from a brilliant conception of that which history gives and which one can apply to the human life, this man spoke the following words approximately: the single nations of Europe have become in the course of the human progress, as history teaches, a big family whose single members are still feuding, but can never tear each other apart. - Really, a significant personality believed to be able to judge in such a way out of his insight into the course of history at his inaugural lecture. This man was Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805). He spoke these words in the eve of the French Revolution which contributed so much to that what one can call the tearing of the European nations, and particularly if he could see what happens in our present. It seems to me that from such facts Goethe got the sensation, which he pronounced in a wonderful sentence: “The best that we have from history is the enthusiasm which it excites.” It seems, as if he did this quotation just to reject the other fruits of the so-called historical knowledge and to appreciate that only which can arise as enthusiasm, as a certain positive mood from the historical documents. Today we want to examine which position spiritual science has to take towards two opinions: history can be the great master of life, and the other: the best what one can have from history is the enthusiasm that it excites. At first it will be interesting just in case of the consideration of the historical life of humanity and the consequences which can be drawn from this consideration for the judgement of the social life to which view one has come in the present about the historical evolution beyond spiritual science. Since the historical life of humanity is attached to that what goes through every single person because every human being is cocooned in the historical evolution. And really, just in the present it is important to look at this judgement of the contemporaries because the judicious viewers of history think that also the judgement is in a crisis how one should found history. I would like to talk not in abstractions, but to attach my considerations to realities. There one must comply with examples that of course are single examples out of many. I would like to comply, for example, with the judgement about history, how it should be anew founded in the present, which the famous Professor Karl Lamprecht (1846-1915) has done. You can find that which one can feel from his monumental German History (1891-1909), in a comfortable way summarised in his lectures What is History? Five lectures on the Modern Science of History (1905) which Lamprecht held partly in St. Louis, partly in New York at invitation of the Columbia University. There he tries to summarise what has arisen to him about the kind how history should be taught out of the requirements of the present. It is even more comfortable to get an idea of that what this famous historian wanted to say, actually, by the fact that he treated a segment of the historical evolution of humanity exceptionally clear in the second of these lectures. Lamprecht briefly told the whole development of the German people from the first Christian centuries up to now to the Americans. He told that in such a way as he meant that science of history has to become according to the requirements of the present. Now you can judge such things, actually, only properly if you can compare them anyhow. There just a lecture by Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924) offers itself which he held on the development of the North American life, so that you can compare two spirits who are emotionally and spatially far from each other how they look as historians at the history of their peoples in each case. Forgive if I let—not by courtesy but for stylistic reasons—the considerations of Woodrow Wilson precede. None who knows me more exactly states that I overestimate Wilson. I am also allowed to point to the fact that I already made my judgement about Wilson in a series of talks, which I held in Helsinki before the war, indeed, at a time when Wilson was already president of the United States (1913). At that time I already said that it is very unfortunate that at a position from which so much depends for humanity a personality is who is so frightfully narrow-minded in his judgement. Since although in those days still numerous people worshipped Wilson enthusiastically, for example, because of his books The New Freedom (1913) and Mere Literature and Other Essays (1896), one could prove that his independent judgement flowing from his personality is very much limited internally. Without being swayed by the present political events, I stress what I said before the war about the so misjudged, that is overestimated personality. I have to say this in advance, so that one does not doubt the objectivity of that which I still want to say about Wilson as a historian. It is very strange if one compares how Wilson considers the history of his people with that what Lamprecht says about the history of Central Europe. One detects that he finds out the most succinct point almost instinctively to answer the question: when have we become, actually, Americans, and how have we become Americans? How has this happened in history? There he makes an exceptionally appropriate distinction between all those who were sooner in the union whom he considers, however, as “Not yet Americans” but as “New Englanders” who are because of their whole disposition, their mood “New Englanders,” and the later “real Americans.” There he distinguishes to a hair's breadth a prehistory of the union and lets the union start its historical becoming when the population crowded together on a narrow space in the east expands to the west of America when the people develop that disposition which he calls the disposition of the frontiersmen. Now he shows how America's history consists externally and mentally of the fact that the east expands to the west, and he shows rather obviously how the regulation of the land distribution, of the tariff question, even the regulation of the slave issue which he ascribes not to some principles of humaneness but to the necessities which arose from the settlement and the conquest of the west. All these questions are put in the development of modern America. The essentials of this talk consist in the fact that he shows how the historical becoming has grasped a sum of human beings from an outer situation, and that that which goes forward with these human beings can be understood strictly speaking from that what they had to undertake under the influence of the described conditions. Various things are interesting if one pursues just these considerations of Wilson, and that what Wilson has performed, otherwise, as a historian. Just to get some thoughts on various things that are associated with the topic of the today's talk, a comparison of that what Wilson says about the most different historical objects with that which the Europeans say is very useful. It has exceptionally astonished me at the most different places of Wilson's explanations that there is a strange correspondence—to me already strange because I would have preferred it would not be this way—of the contents of sentences, of the contents of thoughts what Wilson explains about the most different objects, and of that what, for example, the spirited Herman Grimm, often mentioned by me, said about various things of the historical course of humanity. If one considers Herman Grimm as brilliant as I do and Wilson as prudent, as I must do, it may be quite unpleasant to someone if he reads Wilson sometimes and says to himself: it is peculiar, there I read a sentence that I could also read with Grimm. Although this is in such a way, although I have tested it with judgements that Wilson and Grimm made about the same personalities, like Macaulay, Gibbon and others, nevertheless, in spite of the often almost literal accordance, without having any relation to each other, it is obvious that in reality the attitudes of both men are completely different. Just on such occasion it becomes obvious that two persons can say the same but they do this from quite different mental undergrounds. In this case, it is particularly interesting because the colouring that the judgement receives in the one and the other case is associated with the roots of the one or the other personality in his respective national character. Just while one notices such resemblances, one discovers that the one is American and the other is German. It can strike you quite externally, which difference exists there. There is a volume of essays by Grimm that contains as frontispiece a picture of Grimm as this happens today so often. The German issue of Wilson's essays Mere Literature also contains a picture of Wilson. One can compare the portraits. Already this proves something quite strange to someone who knows to judge such a thing. If you look at Grimm's portrait, after you were engrossed in what he says as a historian, then you can realise that every feature of his face expresses that every sentence and every turn is connected intimately with everything that this man has wrested from his soul. Then you look at the portrait of Wilson, after you have also read his book first: it seems as if this man could not have been present at all with that what was judged there in the book; a certain foreignness appears. If you realise this, a riddle of the way dawns how in this case two persons consider history, and you can ask yourself in what way is this resemblance and the strongly felt basic difference caused? Then there appears something very strange. Just that what Wilson says about the American people makes sense immediately, so that you know, this is true of the historical development of this people as he wants to show it. However, you get on gradually—only the psychological observation can prove that—: Wilson has not grown together so intimately with his judgement as we imagine this within Central Europe. Another relation between judgement and human being exists there than we are used. I know that I say something paradox, but it is intimately connected with that what I would like to explain about the historical development of humanity. If it did not sound so superstitious, I would say, you find out for yourself that somebody like Wilson himself does not judge if he makes such suitable judgements as in this interpretation of history and at other places, but he is possessed by something in his soul. I would like to express myself somewhat different: With such a personality like Wilson, you have the impression that in the soul something is that suggests this judgement from the inside of the soul. You do not have the impression that the own individuality has completely developed it; you rather have the feeling that something like a second personality, a second being is in the soul, which has suggested it. If one looks at Wilson's appropriate judgements about the character of the American people where he says: that already the outer appearance and behaviour shows the right American because he has the quickly movable eye that he is inclined to take up courageous, but also adventurous lines of thought quickly that he is little inclined, on the other hand, to be attached to his native country as other people are that he likes a lot to make plans which can be carried out everywhere, if you envisage this characterisation of the Americans by Wilson, then they have something in themselves that oppresses them externally: not the sensibly looking, quiet eye—I could also adduce the other characteristics—, but the quickly movable eye is a sign of the fact that something oppresses the American from the inside, and such suggestions continue to have an effect if the judgement of Wilson is accurate. We compare what I had to say with an interpretation of history, which is spatially and mentally somewhat far away, with that what Lamprecht puts as his ideas about the historical development of Central Europe. These are original ideas. He tries to realise how this being of the Central European people has developed in the course of centuries, since the third century up to now. One notices that he has internally worked for everything that he says. One has not to agree with many things, in particular as a spiritual scientist; we will immediately have to speak of it. However, he gained everything from his immediate personality. It would be complete nonsense to say, any inner force would suggest something. He does not have it so easy. He has to grasp a thought bit by bit, has to overcome thoughts to get to a judgement. Only then, he gets to a conception of the historical development that is relatively new, even in the view of Ranke (Leopold von R., 1795-1886, German historian) and Sybel (Heinrich von S., 1817-1895, German historian), new insofar that Lamprecht understands historical development as the development of the whole soul. Lamprecht tries to pursue the mental dispositions of the people as mental expressions as the psychologist pursues the soul development of every single person. Up to the third century, the German people developed according to Lamprecht in such a way that one can say, this development shows a symbolising tendency. Also the outer actions, also the political development run in such a way that one realises that it comes from the desire to interpret the world phenomena as symbols, to realise symbols everywhere, even to make the heroes symbols and to revere them as living personal symbols. Then comes the period from the third century to the eleventh, twelfth centuries. Lamprecht calls it the categorising one. There is no longer the desire to use symbols, but to establish types. One revers those persons whom one reveres whom one obeys in such a way that they work not like single individualities, but as types of a whole clan, a whole city. Then the time comes from the twelfth to about the thirteenth centuries in which knighthood develops particularly; Lamprecht calls it the conventional time in which one judges and feels his will impulses in such a way as the convention demands it from human being to human being, from state to state, from people to people, the time of conventionalism. Then follows—it is important that Lamprecht notices this, although he does not figure the consequences out—the individualistic age with the turn of the fifteenth century where people really feel as individuals within a community. This lasts about up to the middle of the eighteenth century. There begins the age of subjectivism in which we still live where the human being tries to internalise himself, to work out of the depths of his personality, to work, to think and to want out of the depths of the subject. Lamprecht divides this age into two parts: the first lasts until the seventies of the nineteenth century to which the great classical period of Goethe, Schiller, and Herder belongs, and then since the seventies our time follows. It is strange now, that Lamprecht, as the maybe most significant historian of the present, is completely clear in his mind that he has to look for an impulse first to see how the course of history goes on, and he investigated incessantly how one should start lining up that which the documents, the monuments, and the archives give in such a way how to tell and describe them so that on can call it history. So the most important question of history, the question of existence, became topical to Lamprecht. He said to himself, one can get only to history—for he did not regard the historiography of Ranke, Sybel and others as history—if one tries to describe the mental development of a nation or of the whole humanity. Then one must have the possibility to observe this mental development to find some laws in this mental development. There it is interesting that a strange contradiction faces us in his whole approach after the habitual ways of thinking of the present. After the habitual ways of thinking, Lamprecht said to himself, the former merely individualistic approach cannot remain. How can one put the facts in order generally? There he says to himself, you have to look at the soul development in such a way that you describe it social-psychologically. This arises to him from a necessary way of thinking of modern time to take the social life, the common being together of human beings into consideration. He says this to himself on one side. Now he has no possibility to look at the social in the soul life or at the mental in the social life following a set pattern. He turns to the psychologists, asks how the psychologists look today at the single individual souls. Here they see in the individual soul the thoughts associating, the feelings ascending, the will impulses developing. Then he wants to apply this to the historical events, wants to investigate how the thought of the one human being works on the whole clan how the thoughts associate externally, as, otherwise, in the individual psychology a thought associates with the other. Thus, he wants to consider history social-psychologically according to the model of individual psychology. There arises, as I have already indicated, a very noteworthy contradiction. He wants to get away from the individual interpretation of history and to get to the social-psychological one; but he takes the means from the consideration of the individual psychology. A strange contradiction that he does not notice at all. Something else: if one is engrossed with that which this modern historian performs describing so clearly: how a cultural age changes into the other, how the feelings of the human beings become explosive at such transitions, how there the thoughts associate with each other and separate, how they follow in rapid succession, how new feelings form, how the will impulses work, one has the feeling that the man misses the trees for the forest. I do not take stock in the saying that one misses the forest for the trees. I would like to know how somebody wanted to do that while he is in the forest and wanted to see the forest! One has to go far away to see the forest. One has the strange feeling that Lamprecht cannot exactly work out the differences of the single periods. Briefly, one gets to the result that he is a researcher who has gained a view of the historical development for himself who, however, could not find the means to present the question to himself: what is now, actually, this historical development of humanity? Is that already history what one attains from the documents, from the archives, or do we still search anything quite different? Here you have to start if you want to consider the historical life and its riddles spiritual-scientifically. You have to put the question to yourself: is the object of history already found in the usual consciousness? Does one know already what one wants to judge if one approaches history? To answer these questions, however, I have to adduce something from spiritual science that is attached to things, which I have said here in former talks. The human soul life is within the change of being awake and sleeping. However, the alternating states of sleeping and being awake are normally considered one-sidedly, while one says, the human being spends two thirds or also more of his life awake and a third sleeping. However, the things are not so simple. It is only obvious that the sleeping state continues into the awake life that we are only partly awake in a certain sense from awakening to falling asleep. We are in reality consciously awake only with the percepts of the outside world and the mental pictures that we form from these percepts. Compare only how the feelings are experienced. Someone who gradually learns to observe how feelings arise in the human soul,—I will come back to this issue in the next talk on the Revelations of the Unconscious and say something fundamental now only—, learns to compare the emotional life, the affects and passions with the dreams. The dreams put pictures before us that are not penetrated with logic and moral impulses that we have only in the awake life. The visions differ indeed from the feelings from the passions and affects surging up and down, but there is something in which both are similar concerning the soul: it is the degree of consciousness in which we are given away to the visions. We have the same degree of consciousness if we are given away to our feelings, save that we accompany our feelings with mental pictures at the same time. If we get an idea about a vision, the light of the mental picture falls on the dream; then the dream becomes completely conscious, then we integrate it properly into the human life. We are doing this perpetually with our emotional life. We integrate our feelings into life by the mental pictures running parallel, but one experiences these feelings are with similar intensity as the dreams, so that the dreams continue in our wake day consciousness and become our world of feelings. You can easily realise that, however, also the deep, dreamless sleep continues in our awake life, namely as our will impulses. We know in the usual awake consciousness about these will impulses only if they are accompanied by mental pictures. We probably imagine what we should do, but it remains unaware to our usual day consciousness how the mental picture changes into the will impulse and then into the action, as we remain unaware in the deepest sleep. Only because we can imagine our will impulses, we accompany these sleeping impulses with the awake life. Thus, the sleeping life continues perpetually in our awake day life. Even if our feelings, our affects, our passions are only dreamt by us, nevertheless, our emotional life is connected with something objective spiritual-mental as with our own spiritual-mental, with our mental pictures and percepts. However, the connections of the contents of feelings and will impulses with the objective spiritual are in the subconscious. We oversleep this connection with the spiritual-mental, and only that towers above the sea in which we are embedded this way, which we experience by our mental pictures and percepts. If you learn to behold in the spiritual world, you know: indeed, with the usual consciousness you cannot perceive the world in which our feelings submerge just with that part of our soul, which remains unaware to our usual consciousness, but you can it perceive with the beholding one. Since the soul can develop pictures from the contact with this spiritual world by the strengthened will or by the mental capacity strengthened by the will impulses. The Imaginative cognition forms in it. It is the first level of supersensible beholding by which you get to the real spiritual world. This Imaginative cognition is the completely conscious beholding in a spiritual reality, so that the Imaginations are no imaginations, but reproductions of spiritual reality, although the soul does not experience them denser than the visions, save that you know that the visions have no reality value that, however, the Imagination points to an objective spiritual reality beyond us. You learn to recognise that with which the world of human feelings is connected, which is only dreamt for the usual consciousness; you learn to recognise it in its reality with the Imaginative beholding of the world. In the same way, you learn also to recognise that on the second level of higher consciousness, with the Inspirative consciousness in which the will impulses are embedded. You get to know the spiritual world as far as the will impulses that usually remain subconscious are also embedded in an objective spiritual reality. If you have figured these things out and if you ask yourself for the real object of the historical course, then you realise what, actually, the historical development is. You do not experience this as that development which is experienced in the everyday life, while we get into contact with the object personally. No, this historical development is something else in which something strange is contained as it is contained in that, which the human being experiences as a feeling, as a will impulse. As the human being dreams his feelings, he dreams the real stream of the historical development. This knowledge is the stupefying result of that observation which turns away from the human being to historical development, and it shows that we cannot use these mental pictures, which control the outer conscious life, to grasp history anyhow. Since that which you experience in the everyday consciousness as a single human being is experienced in the awake state. However, in this awake day life history is not included at all. The human beings do not consciously experience history, but they dream it. History is the big dream of the development of humanity, and history never enters into the usual consciousness. You may have an astute usual consciousness, you may be the most significant naturalist with that reason which can arrange the things according to cause and effect, and you may have that attitude which is especially appropriate to look properly at nature and to show her lawfulness. If you learn to recognise the real stream of historical development, you say to yourself, with any mental capacity that can understand nature, you cannot look into the historical development. This is not experienced in the usual consciousness like nature, but only on that level of consciousness, which you have also in the dream. It will be once for the interpretation of history one of the most significant results if one gets on that one has to find the object of the interpretation of history first that the stream of historical development is not at all there as nature is there that also that which is there as nature, namely the facts which are registered in the archives as documents which one normally already calls history, are not at all history. History is in reality only behind the facts; these facts emerge only from the historical development and are not the historical development. Once Herman Grimm said to me, one could consider the historical life only if one pursued the developing imagination of the people. One can say that Herman Grimm was on the brink to doing a discovery, but he did not want to make the transition to spiritual science. Hence, it appeared to him to be the only fertile to look not only at the outer events and to line up them in such a way as the naturalist does it according to the laws of causality but to look at them in such a way that he saw through them really at the developing imagination of humanity. This was an imperfect expression of that which he could have recognised: the fact that the historical development also does not take place in that which imagination experiences, but is still much deeper in the subconsciousness in which the dreams are woven. As well as the depths of the sea surge up in the waves, the single events surge up in the course of history. If we apply our usual reason to the historical development, we strangely meet the forces of decline only. Herman Grimm asked himself once why the historian Gibbon (Edward G., 1737-1794) portraying the first centuries of Christianity describes the decay of the Roman Empire only, but not the rise of Christianity. Grimm made a right aperçu, however, did not get on the reason. The reason is that Gibbon, although he is profound, applied that reason only to the interpretation of history, which one applies, otherwise, to the consideration of nature. There he could look only at the decline, not at the rise since one can only dream the rise. In the course of history that which is rising, growing, and sprouting is connected vividly with that what is declining, what is dying. That is why one can look with the usual reason only at the dead in the course of history. What does you need if you want to recognise the growing, the prospering element in the historical development, that what furthers the human being? In ancient times, one looked deeper in this respect, but just in the ancient form. One did not tell history, one told myths and legends. These myths and legends that should describe the historical dreams of humanity were truer than the so-called pragmatic history. However, we cannot go back in the development of humanity to myths and legends, but we can do something else. We can make up our mind to bring up that what rests for the usual consciousness as dreams in the subconscious, while we apply the Imaginative knowledge to the historical development. With the historical development, humanity and science will recognise that it cannot even reach the object of consideration if it does not want to go over to the spiritual-scientific consideration. Below the consciousness, that remains which works in history, if one does not bring up the dream into the consciousness. Then, however, one has to bring up the dream in the supersensible consciousness that can imagine the spiritual. Imaginative cognition only will create history. Then someone who can get to the heart of spiritual science and gets involved with the struggle of a man like Lamprecht, will realise that there a way is searched to a goal. However, where is this goal? Why does Lamprecht try to adduce everything to find history generally and, nevertheless, gets to nothing but to the usual psychology, although he believes that one has to apply social psychology? However, what the human being experiences as a social being what becomes his history, he dreams this, this also does not penetrate the individual psychology. There one has to apply that new psychology which spiritual science only can give. You find the demand with Lamprecht, you find the answer of the riddle of historical development in spiritual science. What will become, however, from all that for a conception of history? You see that Lamprecht does not get away from the intellectual consideration of the consecutive events. He considers that what happens up to the third, up to the eleventh centuries and so on even if he considers it brilliantly. But he does not get on to judge the events in such a way that he reaches that what the human being only experiences as a dream. One can easily find proofs of that. I want to bring in one example only where Lamprecht advances to the modern time. Among the rest, he asks, which are the most significant cultural phenomena in these modern times? Consider that Lamprecht held the concerning talk in 1904! There he asks, which are the most significant cultural-historical moments that appear as achievements of humanity today? He wants to bring in the most significant soul phenomena of the beginning twentieth century. What does he bring in? The answer is very interesting, just for a man who attaches so much significance to the soul. First, he brings in the attempts to propagate unselfishness, an altruistic life of humanity, various societies for ethical civilisation that came especially from England and America to Europe in those days, and secondly, he brings in the peace movement as something especially outstanding. An approved historian of the present says this. Is such a conception of history on the right way, even if Lamprecht endeavours so much? About at that time I held a talk here about similar ideas and explained that the least of all typical ideas of the beginning twentieth century are just these both movements: the movements of ethical civilisation and especially the peace movement. At that time, I summarised my talk saying: this is just the typical that that time in which the peace movement appears especially loud will be the same time in which the biggest human wars will take place. However, a famous historian said the one thing, a crazy representative of anthroposophy said the other, and it goes without saying in the present to whom one listens. The point is to recognise how one has to use the facts which one called history up to now so that it points you to the deeper currents of human development by this coherence between the human soul and that only dreamt spirituality which flows along as historical current. One can do this only if one replaces Lamprecht's and all other conceptions of history with that which I call symptomatic conception of history if one is aware that one has to use everything that one can find out in the archives, in the documents, briefly, with the usual conscious reason that one evaluates and appreciates it, while one relates it to something that is a symptom, an expression of it. One does not consider the great men of history, their appearances, and actions, for their own sake if one wants to describe the historical development of humanity but only as symptoms. One is aware that one properly describes history if one is able to connect the right symptom with the underlying spiritual current of development. Symptomatic history will look quite different from history, which runs in such a way, that one only strings together the facts and tries to use individual psychology to the explanation and analysis of these facts as Lamprecht does it. Symptomatic history consists of the fact that one becomes aware of this attitude which Goethe had that one can approach, actually, a spiritual being only from all sides, that one can get to know it only by its symptoms if one realises that that at which one has looked as history up to now is only at the surface and positions itself quite strangely in life like dream contents. Observe the dream contents, and you will realise that you often dream something quite different from what is directly attached to the most significant events of your day life. Nevertheless, it is anyhow associated as memory with your life, but in a much-concealed way, and it is associated with deeper forces of life. There is a reason why just this or that which works in the subconscious emerges symptomatically, while we do not dream anything significant that seems to be significant in the awake life, but maybe just something that appears to us as externally unimportant. Symptomatic historical research has to consider events that control the situation for the outer reason as unimportant for the true history and apparently unimportant events as far-reaching symptoms. Only thereby, one will penetrate from the outside to the inside of the historical life. One cannot transfer the individual soul life to the historical development in such an external way. Of course, I can do here no enclosing interpretation of history to show how this symptomatic consideration grasps the essential in the development of humanity, but I can at least indicate something. I have said in a former talk, if the spiritual researcher learns to behold in the spiritual world and its development, then he notices that the results, as one expects them, normally do not happen this way. They happen as a rule different from one could expect them after the judgement that one has gained in the sensory world. I want to bring in an example: One could expect that the historical events run in such a way that one could compare them to the childhood, youth, mature period, and old age of the human being. Indeed, some historians were under this illusion. These analogising considerations can be rather witty but have nothing to do with reality. However, something else appears. The result of which I have to inform you here is attained really with the same seriousness with which another scientific result is attained; I can state it, however, only as a result. Lamprecht tries to find periods of historical development for the German people at first. I have already indicated: it is owed to a right impression that he determines a transition from an age to another around the turn of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. It is also very typical that he calls this time the individualistic age. To spiritual-scientific research, an important incision likewise appears around the turn of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. However, while one spiritual-scientifically beholds in the current of the historical development, it becomes obvious that one has to go back further and has to disregard the borders of tribes or peoples. One has to envisage the general historical development of humanity. There the events combine for centuries, namely from the fifteenth century A.D. until the seventh and eighth centuries B.C. This age from the seventh century before the Mystery of Golgotha to the fifteenth century after it has its own character. This character changes from inner reasons in the fifteenth century more than modern people believe. Lamprecht recognises this, but he does not recognise the whole scope of this fact. Others have already pointed out from different viewpoints that one has to explain not for outer reasons, not even because of the emergence of Renaissance et cetera, but because spontaneously that significant reversal arises from historical life, from the souls of the human beings, which asserts itself in this time almost across the whole earth, but particularly across Europe. It is remarkable that the most significant Germanist of the present, Konrad Burdach (1859-1936), has pointed to that in very nice essays. Burdach recognises from wholly literary-historical investigations that from the soul development of humanity something quite new has arisen in the spiritual configuration, in the activities of the human being. Now we live in the period from the fifteenth century on. Spiritual science is able to go further back. Now there something very strange appears. If you look at the impulses that control the human beings since the fifteenth century historically, they are different from those, which controlled the human beings in the preceding period. However, one cannot say, the impulses of the preceding period relate to those of the following period in such a way as in the individual human life any life period relates to the following one. This is not the case. Rather the weird turns out that today the historical works in particular in that in the individual human nature, which develops until the twenties of life. The secret of our present development is that we develop those forces by the historical conditions, which belong to our individual life during the twenties. In the preceding age, the historical life of humanity especially grasped the thirties. One can show the matter also different. One can say, today our souls are organised so that we develop from childhood to the twenties, and that we carry that which we have developed during the twenties into the rest of life, so that the human being feels that his developmental period is finished after the twenties. One can prove this with wholly external things. Scarcely anybody will state that somebody wants to learn earnestly today during his thirties, in a time where already the youngest people write essays in the newspapers. However, one will experience very easily that people say, one reads Goethe's Iphigenia, generally the classical writers, in the youth, nobody does that in his later life. One could still bring in other symptoms. However, if one goes back to the preceding period, one finds that the growing life lasted until the thirties. As paradox as it sounds today, it is in such a way, and one will once have this as a backed historical achievement. The Greek and Roman developed unlike the modern human being develops, and history happened in those days different because the human being remained longer able of development. Spiritual science shows that one gets, going back even further, to times where the human beings remained capable of development until the forties. So that one can say, one finds three consecutive periods in the historical life of humanity: one behind the eighth pre-Christian century in which we find human beings who feel young until the forties; then the period of the Greek and Roman cultures comes when the human beings remained young until the thirties; then the period in which they are capable of development until the twenties. If you reflect about that, you recognise that you cannot compare the historical development of humanity possibly with the course of the single individual life. In the individual life one grows older and older, humanity as such develops in reverse direction; it grows younger and younger, that is it remains younger and younger; it carries youth less and less into the later individual age. Hence, the civilisation makes a younger and younger impression in the consecutive periods; that means, the human being carries that which he gains to himself in his youth more and more into the old age. One could have believed that in the time before the eighth pre-Christian century, if one had taken prejudices as starting point, one just finds a younger humanity, then an older one, and that we have now become much riper and older. One has to answer the question first what in the course of development, not in the single life, maturity and age do mean. However, you can consider this developmental process of humanity only in such a way as I have indicated now. You see, something quite different results from what one normally imagines as inner laws of cultural development if one looks really symptomatically at the historical development. I want only to emphasise one thing in the end. One can also go into the whole attitude of the human beings in two consecutive periods. There you recognise that in the period which began with the eighth pre-Christian century another attitude was there than in the present period. If you consider the human soul spiritual-scientifically, you do not have the same comfort as the trivial psychology has it. Then you have to realise that there are three quite different shadings of the whole soul, and, hence, one distinguishes three soul members. I call one of them the sentient soul. In it the desires and passions are anchored, but it also connects the human being with the outer nature by his senses; then one distinguishes the intellectual or mind soul, and thirdly the consciousness soul in which the real self-consciousness is anchored. While now in the course of the historical development always other forces intervene in the human soul, the following turns out: during the period which lasts from the eighth pre-Christian up to the fifteenth post-Christian centuries where the European civilisation is coloured especially by the influence of the Greek-Latin culture particularly the intellectual or mind soul is working. Hence, everything faces us that the human being accomplishes in the course of the historical development and in the outer life, in the social and economic life, as if his mind worked instinctively, as if he grasped the outer world with body and mind equally strongly. The human body and mind are balanced in this time, and the mind itself works instinctively. This becomes different with the big reversal in the fifteenth century. There the self-consciousness appears. There the consciousness soul becomes especially strong, there the human being does no longer have the mind instinctively, but he has to reflect everywhere. There the individuality starts forming. There he does no longer feel instinctively if he meets another human being: you have to behave to him this or that way. There he reflects, there he turns to the inside of his personality. So that we can say, the whole historical structure since the fifteenth century is characterised by the fact that the consciousness soul works since that time, while before the more instinctive intellectual or mind soul has worked. You cannot understand the Roman Law, nothing that comes from antiquity properly if you do not envisage this difference between the instinctive mind and that what in modern times works in intellectualistic way. It arises that that which Lamprecht searches up to the fifteenth century is just the preparation of the consciousness soul in the German people. The German folk soul carried that into the coming period what flowed from the south, while it was just minded to further the stream of historical development from the intellectual or mind soul to the consciousness soul and its various nuances. If one learns to recognise what really works there, then this shines into the details. Then you can ask yourself again, what is that, for example, what Wilson describes as the real nature of the American people? This is another nuance of the consciousness soul. The western nuance is experienced in its archetypal phenomenon, in its original characteristic here in Central Europe. Here the struggling egoity of the human being is really experienced which relates to the consciousness soul quite consciously which wants to penetrate with all forces of personality that what wants to enter life wholly consciously. This appears in another nuance in the American people where the human soul is like possessed by itself. It is sometimes disagreeable to face the truth. However, just the catastrophic events of our time necessitate a certain objectivity. Into the character of the historian Wilson, the light shines which spiritual science can spread. Only in principle I could show which direction science of history has to take if it is fertilised by spiritual science in the same sense as I tried to show it for natural sciences eight days ago. Only if you consider history in such a way, you will realise how the human being is associated with that dreamt stream of the historical development that stirs him up. Then, however, it will appear that that which becomes known Imaginatively by the symptomatic interpretation of history is internally related to the human being as a historical being. Then you will realise that not the reason, but the subconsciousness, the dreamlike emotional life is connected with the historical development. Imagination will teach what works in the mood and in the will impulses of the human beings, while they are in the stream of the historical development. Then something else will arise than the belief that history can teach this or that. If it were able to teach as one normally imagines, then one would be able to find a connection between history and this usual reason. However, it does not exist. The connection is there with that what works in the depths of the soul, in the subconsciousness. The human being cannot learn, indeed, for his usual reason from history, but from the true history if he develops it more and more by the view of the spirit in history, then the historical impulses settle down in the feeling of the human being. If he faces a fact, if he is called for action or for the right feeling towards a fact within the social life, then his feeling will lead him properly. Then not his reason, but his whole soul is taught by such an interpretation of history. With it let me summarise this consideration briefly. Goethe suspected that history, if it is recognised truly, works in the mood, in the feeling that it works if enthusiasm originates in the right way if antipathies or sympathies originate for what should be done or be omitted in a social situation. Briefly, Goethe said out of a right notion of that which spiritual science has to bring to light: the best that we can have from history is the enthusiasm, which it excites. Certainly, we cannot feel the intellectual judgement but the enthusiasm as a fruit of history if we can recognise the real historical development.

67. The Eternal human Soul: The Historical Life of Humanity and Its Riddles 14 Mar 1918, Berlin

Rudolf Steiner

In this time where so many people have the comprehensible need to orientate themselves about the earth-shaking events you often hear, history “teaches” this or that. One means that one could judge about any fact of the present because of similar facts of history. If we ask ourselves, which possibilities present themselves to the human beings to judge this or that on basis of historical experience, then, however, you get to a somewhat dubious judgement about what history “teaches.”

I would like to point only to two things, but I could increase them a hundred times. I would like to point to the fact that at the beginning of this world disaster many people were of the opinion that these critical events would last four, in the extreme case six months. One regarded such a judgement as completely entitled. You cannot say that these human beings had not applied all logical precautions to deliver such a judgement. Now, the facts themselves have taught such people rather thoroughly the opposite of that what they have believed. Just at this example, one also sees how narrowly that which history should teach is associated with the judgement of the social or other world relations, so that you can expect from a consideration of the historical life of humanity that also some light falls on the judgement you have to exert for the social and economic living together of the human beings.

However, I would like to bring in another example of the limited validity of the sentence, that history “teaches” this or that. An ingenious personality received a professorship of history at a German university more than hundred years ago. Really, from a brilliant conception of that which history gives and which one can apply to the human life, this man spoke the following words approximately: the single nations of Europe have become in the course of the human progress, as history teaches, a big family whose single members are still feuding, but can never tear each other apart. - Really, a significant personality believed to be able to judge in such a way out of his insight into the course of history at his inaugural lecture. This man was Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805). He spoke these words in the eve of the French Revolution which contributed so much to that what one can call the tearing of the European nations, and particularly if he could see what happens in our present. It seems to me that from such facts Goethe got the sensation, which he pronounced in a wonderful sentence: “The best that we have from history is the enthusiasm which it excites.” It seems, as if he did this quotation just to reject the other fruits of the so-called historical knowledge and to appreciate that only which can arise as enthusiasm, as a certain positive mood from the historical documents.

Today we want to examine which position spiritual science has to take towards two opinions: history can be the great master of life, and the other: the best what one can have from history is the enthusiasm that it excites. At first it will be interesting just in case of the consideration of the historical life of humanity and the consequences which can be drawn from this consideration for the judgement of the social life to which view one has come in the present about the historical evolution beyond spiritual science. Since the historical life of humanity is attached to that what goes through every single person because every human being is cocooned in the historical evolution. And really, just in the present it is important to look at this judgement of the contemporaries because the judicious viewers of history think that also the judgement is in a crisis how one should found history. I would like to talk not in abstractions, but to attach my considerations to realities. There one must comply with examples that of course are single examples out of many.

I would like to comply, for example, with the judgement about history, how it should be anew founded in the present, which the famous Professor Karl Lamprecht (1846-1915) has done. You can find that which one can feel from his monumental German History (1891-1909), in a comfortable way summarised in his lectures What is History? Five lectures on the Modern Science of History (1905) which Lamprecht held partly in St. Louis, partly in New York at invitation of the Columbia University. There he tries to summarise what has arisen to him about the kind how history should be taught out of the requirements of the present. It is even more comfortable to get an idea of that what this famous historian wanted to say, actually, by the fact that he treated a segment of the historical evolution of humanity exceptionally clear in the second of these lectures. Lamprecht briefly told the whole development of the German people from the first Christian centuries up to now to the Americans. He told that in such a way as he meant that science of history has to become according to the requirements of the present. Now you can judge such things, actually, only properly if you can compare them anyhow. There just a lecture by Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924) offers itself which he held on the development of the North American life, so that you can compare two spirits who are emotionally and spatially far from each other how they look as historians at the history of their peoples in each case.

Forgive if I let—not by courtesy but for stylistic reasons—the considerations of Woodrow Wilson precede. None who knows me more exactly states that I overestimate Wilson. I am also allowed to point to the fact that I already made my judgement about Wilson in a series of talks, which I held in Helsinki before the war, indeed, at a time when Wilson was already president of the United States (1913). At that time I already said that it is very unfortunate that at a position from which so much depends for humanity a personality is who is so frightfully narrow-minded in his judgement. Since although in those days still numerous people worshipped Wilson enthusiastically, for example, because of his books The New Freedom (1913) and Mere Literature and Other Essays (1896), one could prove that his independent judgement flowing from his personality is very much limited internally. Without being swayed by the present political events, I stress what I said before the war about the so misjudged, that is overestimated personality. I have to say this in advance, so that one does not doubt the objectivity of that which I still want to say about Wilson as a historian.

It is very strange if one compares how Wilson considers the history of his people with that what Lamprecht says about the history of Central Europe. One detects that he finds out the most succinct point almost instinctively to answer the question: when have we become, actually, Americans, and how have we become Americans? How has this happened in history? There he makes an exceptionally appropriate distinction between all those who were sooner in the union whom he considers, however, as “Not yet Americans” but as “New Englanders” who are because of their whole disposition, their mood “New Englanders,” and the later “real Americans.” There he distinguishes to a hair's breadth a prehistory of the union and lets the union start its historical becoming when the population crowded together on a narrow space in the east expands to the west of America when the people develop that disposition which he calls the disposition of the frontiersmen. Now he shows how America's history consists externally and mentally of the fact that the east expands to the west, and he shows rather obviously how the regulation of the land distribution, of the tariff question, even the regulation of the slave issue which he ascribes not to some principles of humaneness but to the necessities which arose from the settlement and the conquest of the west. All these questions are put in the development of modern America. The essentials of this talk consist in the fact that he shows how the historical becoming has grasped a sum of human beings from an outer situation, and that that which goes forward with these human beings can be understood strictly speaking from that what they had to undertake under the influence of the described conditions.

Various things are interesting if one pursues just these considerations of Wilson, and that what Wilson has performed, otherwise, as a historian. Just to get some thoughts on various things that are associated with the topic of the today's talk, a comparison of that what Wilson says about the most different historical objects with that which the Europeans say is very useful.

It has exceptionally astonished me at the most different places of Wilson's explanations that there is a strange correspondence—to me already strange because I would have preferred it would not be this way—of the contents of sentences, of the contents of thoughts what Wilson explains about the most different objects, and of that what, for example, the spirited Herman Grimm, often mentioned by me, said about various things of the historical course of humanity.

If one considers Herman Grimm as brilliant as I do and Wilson as prudent, as I must do, it may be quite unpleasant to someone if he reads Wilson sometimes and says to himself: it is peculiar, there I read a sentence that I could also read with Grimm. Although this is in such a way, although I have tested it with judgements that Wilson and Grimm made about the same personalities, like Macaulay, Gibbon and others, nevertheless, in spite of the often almost literal accordance, without having any relation to each other, it is obvious that in reality the attitudes of both men are completely different. Just on such occasion it becomes obvious that two persons can say the same but they do this from quite different mental undergrounds. In this case, it is particularly interesting because the colouring that the judgement receives in the one and the other case is associated with the roots of the one or the other personality in his respective national character. Just while one notices such resemblances, one discovers that the one is American and the other is German.

It can strike you quite externally, which difference exists there. There is a volume of essays by Grimm that contains as frontispiece a picture of Grimm as this happens today so often. The German issue of Wilson's essays Mere Literature also contains a picture of Wilson. One can compare the portraits. Already this proves something quite strange to someone who knows to judge such a thing. If you look at Grimm's portrait, after you were engrossed in what he says as a historian, then you can realise that every feature of his face expresses that every sentence and every turn is connected intimately with everything that this man has wrested from his soul. Then you look at the portrait of Wilson, after you have also read his book first: it seems as if this man could not have been present at all with that what was judged there in the book; a certain foreignness appears. If you realise this, a riddle of the way dawns how in this case two persons consider history, and you can ask yourself in what way is this resemblance and the strongly felt basic difference caused? Then there appears something very strange. Just that what Wilson says about the American people makes sense immediately, so that you know, this is true of the historical development of this people as he wants to show it. However, you get on gradually—only the psychological observation can prove that—: Wilson has not grown together so intimately with his judgement as we imagine this within Central Europe. Another relation between judgement and human being exists there than we are used.

I know that I say something paradox, but it is intimately connected with that what I would like to explain about the historical development of humanity. If it did not sound so superstitious, I would say, you find out for yourself that somebody like Wilson himself does not judge if he makes such suitable judgements as in this interpretation of history and at other places, but he is possessed by something in his soul. I would like to express myself somewhat different:

With such a personality like Wilson, you have the impression that in the soul something is that suggests this judgement from the inside of the soul. You do not have the impression that the own individuality has completely developed it; you rather have the feeling that something like a second personality, a second being is in the soul, which has suggested it.

If one looks at Wilson's appropriate judgements about the character of the American people where he says:

that already the outer appearance and behaviour shows the right American because he has the quickly movable eye
that he is inclined to take up courageous, but also adventurous lines of thought quickly
that he is little inclined, on the other hand, to be attached to his native country as other people are
that he likes a lot to make plans which can be carried out everywhere,

if you envisage this characterisation of the Americans by Wilson, then they have something in themselves that oppresses them externally: not the sensibly looking, quiet eye—I could also adduce the other characteristics—, but the quickly movable eye is a sign of the fact that something oppresses the American from the inside, and such suggestions continue to have an effect if the judgement of Wilson is accurate.

We compare what I had to say with an interpretation of history, which is spatially and mentally somewhat far away, with that what Lamprecht puts as his ideas about the historical development of Central Europe. These are original ideas. He tries to realise how this being of the Central European people has developed in the course of centuries, since the third century up to now. One notices that he has internally worked for everything that he says. One has not to agree with many things, in particular as a spiritual scientist; we will immediately have to speak of it. However, he gained everything from his immediate personality. It would be complete nonsense to say, any inner force would suggest something. He does not have it so easy. He has to grasp a thought bit by bit, has to overcome thoughts to get to a judgement. Only then, he gets to a conception of the historical development that is relatively new, even in the view of Ranke (Leopold von R., 1795-1886, German historian) and Sybel (Heinrich von S., 1817-1895, German historian), new insofar that Lamprecht understands historical development as the development of the whole soul. Lamprecht tries to pursue the mental dispositions of the people as mental expressions as the psychologist pursues the soul development of every single person.

Up to the third century, the German people developed according to Lamprecht in such a way that one can say, this development shows a symbolising tendency. Also the outer actions, also the political development run in such a way that one realises that it comes from the desire to interpret the world phenomena as symbols, to realise symbols everywhere, even to make the heroes symbols and to revere them as living personal symbols. Then comes the period from the third century to the eleventh, twelfth centuries. Lamprecht calls it the categorising one. There is no longer the desire to use symbols, but to establish types. One revers those persons whom one reveres whom one obeys in such a way that they work not like single individualities, but as types of a whole clan, a whole city.

Then the time comes from the twelfth to about the thirteenth centuries in which knighthood develops particularly; Lamprecht calls it the conventional time in which one judges and feels his will impulses in such a way as the convention demands it from human being to human being, from state to state, from people to people, the time of conventionalism. Then follows—it is important that Lamprecht notices this, although he does not figure the consequences out—the individualistic age with the turn of the fifteenth century where people really feel as individuals within a community. This lasts about up to the middle of the eighteenth century. There begins the age of subjectivism in which we still live where the human being tries to internalise himself, to work out of the depths of his personality, to work, to think and to want out of the depths of the subject. Lamprecht divides this age into two parts: the first lasts until the seventies of the nineteenth century to which the great classical period of Goethe, Schiller, and Herder belongs, and then since the seventies our time follows.

It is strange now, that Lamprecht, as the maybe most significant historian of the present, is completely clear in his mind that he has to look for an impulse first to see how the course of history goes on, and he investigated incessantly how one should start lining up that which the documents, the monuments, and the archives give in such a way how to tell and describe them so that on can call it history. So the most important question of history, the question of existence, became topical to Lamprecht.

He said to himself, one can get only to history—for he did not regard the historiography of Ranke, Sybel and others as history—if one tries to describe the mental development of a nation or of the whole humanity. Then one must have the possibility to observe this mental development to find some laws in this mental development. There it is interesting that a strange contradiction faces us in his whole approach after the habitual ways of thinking of the present. After the habitual ways of thinking, Lamprecht said to himself, the former merely individualistic approach cannot remain. How can one put the facts in order generally? There he says to himself, you have to look at the soul development in such a way that you describe it social-psychologically. This arises to him from a necessary way of thinking of modern time to take the social life, the common being together of human beings into consideration. He says this to himself on one side. Now he has no possibility to look at the social in the soul life or at the mental in the social life following a set pattern. He turns to the psychologists, asks how the psychologists look today at the single individual souls. Here they see in the individual soul the thoughts associating, the feelings ascending, the will impulses developing. Then he wants to apply this to the historical events, wants to investigate how the thought of the one human being works on the whole clan how the thoughts associate externally, as, otherwise, in the individual psychology a thought associates with the other. Thus, he wants to consider history social-psychologically according to the model of individual psychology.

There arises, as I have already indicated, a very noteworthy contradiction. He wants to get away from the individual interpretation of history and to get to the social-psychological one; but he takes the means from the consideration of the individual psychology. A strange contradiction that he does not notice at all.

Something else: if one is engrossed with that which this modern historian performs describing so clearly:

how a cultural age changes into the other,
how the feelings of the human beings become explosive at such transitions,
how there the thoughts associate with each other and separate,
how they follow in rapid succession,
how new feelings form,
how the will impulses work,

one has the feeling that the man misses the trees for the forest. I do not take stock in the saying that one misses the forest for the trees. I would like to know how somebody wanted to do that while he is in the forest and wanted to see the forest! One has to go far away to see the forest. One has the strange feeling that Lamprecht cannot exactly work out the differences of the single periods. Briefly, one gets to the result that he is a researcher who has gained a view of the historical development for himself who, however, could not find the means to present the question to himself: what is now, actually, this historical development of humanity? Is that already history what one attains from the documents, from the archives, or do we still search anything quite different?

Here you have to start if you want to consider the historical life and its riddles spiritual-scientifically. You have to put the question to yourself: is the object of history already found in the usual consciousness? Does one know already what one wants to judge if one approaches history? To answer these questions, however, I have to adduce something from spiritual science that is attached to things, which I have said here in former talks.

The human soul life is within the change of being awake and sleeping. However, the alternating states of sleeping and being awake are normally considered one-sidedly, while one says, the human being spends two thirds or also more of his life awake and a third sleeping. However, the things are not so simple. It is only obvious that the sleeping state continues into the awake life that we are only partly awake in a certain sense from awakening to falling asleep. We are in reality consciously awake only with the percepts of the outside world and the mental pictures that we form from these percepts. Compare only how the feelings are experienced. Someone who gradually learns to observe how feelings arise in the human soul,—I will come back to this issue in the next talk on the Revelations of the Unconscious and say something fundamental now only—, learns to compare the emotional life, the affects and passions with the dreams.

The dreams put pictures before us that are not penetrated with logic and moral impulses that we have only in the awake life. The visions differ indeed from the feelings from the passions and affects surging up and down, but there is something in which both are similar concerning the soul: it is the degree of consciousness in which we are given away to the visions. We have the same degree of consciousness if we are given away to our feelings, save that we accompany our feelings with mental pictures at the same time. If we get an idea about a vision, the light of the mental picture falls on the dream; then the dream becomes completely conscious, then we integrate it properly into the human life. We are doing this perpetually with our emotional life. We integrate our feelings into life by the mental pictures running parallel, but one experiences these feelings are with similar intensity as the dreams, so that the dreams continue in our wake day consciousness and become our world of feelings. You can easily realise that, however, also the deep, dreamless sleep continues in our awake life, namely as our will impulses. We know in the usual awake consciousness about these will impulses only if they are accompanied by mental pictures. We probably imagine what we should do, but it remains unaware to our usual day consciousness how the mental picture changes into the will impulse and then into the action, as we remain unaware in the deepest sleep. Only because we can imagine our will impulses, we accompany these sleeping impulses with the awake life.

Thus, the sleeping life continues perpetually in our awake day life. Even if our feelings, our affects, our passions are only dreamt by us, nevertheless, our emotional life is connected with something objective spiritual-mental as with our own spiritual-mental, with our mental pictures and percepts. However, the connections of the contents of feelings and will impulses with the objective spiritual are in the subconscious. We oversleep this connection with the spiritual-mental, and only that towers above the sea in which we are embedded this way, which we experience by our mental pictures and percepts. If you learn to behold in the spiritual world, you know: indeed, with the usual consciousness you cannot perceive the world in which our feelings submerge just with that part of our soul, which remains unaware to our usual consciousness, but you can it perceive with the beholding one. Since the soul can develop pictures from the contact with this spiritual world by the strengthened will or by the mental capacity strengthened by the will impulses.

The Imaginative cognition forms in it. It is the first level of supersensible beholding by which you get to the real spiritual world. This Imaginative cognition is the completely conscious beholding in a spiritual reality, so that the Imaginations are no imaginations, but reproductions of spiritual reality, although the soul does not experience them denser than the visions, save that you know that the visions have no reality value that, however, the Imagination points to an objective spiritual reality beyond us. You learn to recognise that with which the world of human feelings is connected, which is only dreamt for the usual consciousness; you learn to recognise it in its reality with the Imaginative beholding of the world. In the same way, you learn also to recognise that on the second level of higher consciousness, with the Inspirative consciousness in which the will impulses are embedded. You get to know the spiritual world as far as the will impulses that usually remain subconscious are also embedded in an objective spiritual reality.

If you have figured these things out and if you ask yourself for the real object of the historical course, then you realise what, actually, the historical development is. You do not experience this as that development which is experienced in the everyday life, while we get into contact with the object personally. No, this historical development is something else in which something strange is contained as it is contained in that, which the human being experiences as a feeling, as a will impulse. As the human being dreams his feelings, he dreams the real stream of the historical development. This knowledge is the stupefying result of that observation which turns away from the human being to historical development, and it shows that we cannot use these mental pictures, which control the outer conscious life, to grasp history anyhow. Since that which you experience in the everyday consciousness as a single human being is experienced in the awake state. However, in this awake day life history is not included at all. The human beings do not consciously experience history, but they dream it. History is the big dream of the development of humanity, and history never enters into the usual consciousness.

You may have an astute usual consciousness, you may be the most significant naturalist with that reason which can arrange the things according to cause and effect, and you may have that attitude which is especially appropriate to look properly at nature and to show her lawfulness. If you learn to recognise the real stream of historical development, you say to yourself, with any mental capacity that can understand nature, you cannot look into the historical development. This is not experienced in the usual consciousness like nature, but only on that level of consciousness, which you have also in the dream. It will be once for the interpretation of history one of the most significant results if one gets on

that one has to find the object of the interpretation of history first
that the stream of historical development is not at all there as nature is there
that also that which is there as nature, namely the facts which are registered in the archives as documents which one normally already calls history, are not at all history.

History is in reality only behind the facts; these facts emerge only from the historical development and are not the historical development.

Once Herman Grimm said to me, one could consider the historical life only if one pursued the developing imagination of the people. One can say that Herman Grimm was on the brink to doing a discovery, but he did not want to make the transition to spiritual science. Hence, it appeared to him to be the only fertile to look not only at the outer events and to line up them in such a way as the naturalist does it according to the laws of causality but to look at them in such a way that he saw through them really at the developing imagination of humanity. This was an imperfect expression of that which he could have recognised: the fact that the historical development also does not take place in that which imagination experiences, but is still much deeper in the subconsciousness in which the dreams are woven. As well as the depths of the sea surge up in the waves, the single events surge up in the course of history.

If we apply our usual reason to the historical development, we strangely meet the forces of decline only. Herman Grimm asked himself once why the historian Gibbon (Edward G., 1737-1794) portraying the first centuries of Christianity describes the decay of the Roman Empire only, but not the rise of Christianity. Grimm made a right aperçu, however, did not get on the reason. The reason is that Gibbon, although he is profound, applied that reason only to the interpretation of history, which one applies, otherwise, to the consideration of nature. There he could look only at the decline, not at the rise since one can only dream the rise. In the course of history that which is rising, growing, and sprouting is connected vividly with that what is declining, what is dying. That is why one can look with the usual reason only at the dead in the course of history. What does you need if you want to recognise the growing, the prospering element in the historical development, that what furthers the human being?

In ancient times, one looked deeper in this respect, but just in the ancient form. One did not tell history, one told myths and legends. These myths and legends that should describe the historical dreams of humanity were truer than the so-called pragmatic history. However, we cannot go back in the development of humanity to myths and legends, but we can do something else. We can make up our mind to bring up that what rests for the usual consciousness as dreams in the subconscious, while we apply the Imaginative knowledge to the historical development. With the historical development, humanity and science will recognise that it cannot even reach the object of consideration if it does not want to go over to the spiritual-scientific consideration. Below the consciousness, that remains which works in history, if one does not bring up the dream into the consciousness. Then, however, one has to bring up the dream in the supersensible consciousness that can imagine the spiritual. Imaginative cognition only will create history.

Then someone who can get to the heart of spiritual science and gets involved with the struggle of a man like Lamprecht, will realise that there a way is searched to a goal. However, where is this goal? Why does Lamprecht try to adduce everything to find history generally and, nevertheless, gets to nothing but to the usual psychology, although he believes that one has to apply social psychology? However, what the human being experiences as a social being what becomes his history, he dreams this, this also does not penetrate the individual psychology. There one has to apply that new psychology which spiritual science only can give. You find the demand with Lamprecht, you find the answer of the riddle of historical development in spiritual science. What will become, however, from all that for a conception of history? You see that Lamprecht does not get away from the intellectual consideration of the consecutive events. He considers that what happens up to the third, up to the eleventh centuries and so on even if he considers it brilliantly. But he does not get on to judge the events in such a way that he reaches that what the human being only experiences as a dream.

One can easily find proofs of that. I want to bring in one example only where Lamprecht advances to the modern time. Among the rest, he asks, which are the most significant cultural phenomena in these modern times? Consider that Lamprecht held the concerning talk in 1904! There he asks, which are the most significant cultural-historical moments that appear as achievements of humanity today? He wants to bring in the most significant soul phenomena of the beginning twentieth century. What does he bring in? The answer is very interesting, just for a man who attaches so much significance to the soul. First, he brings in the attempts to propagate unselfishness, an altruistic life of humanity, various societies for ethical civilisation that came especially from England and America to Europe in those days, and secondly, he brings in the peace movement as something especially outstanding. An approved historian of the present says this. Is such a conception of history on the right way, even if Lamprecht endeavours so much? About at that time I held a talk here about similar ideas and explained that the least of all typical ideas of the beginning twentieth century are just these both movements: the movements of ethical civilisation and especially the peace movement. At that time, I summarised my talk saying: this is just the typical that that time in which the peace movement appears especially loud will be the same time in which the biggest human wars will take place. However, a famous historian said the one thing, a crazy representative of anthroposophy said the other, and it goes without saying in the present to whom one listens.

The point is to recognise how one has to use the facts which one called history up to now so that it points you to the deeper currents of human development by this coherence between the human soul and that only dreamt spirituality which flows along as historical current. One can do this only if one replaces Lamprecht's and all other conceptions of history with that which I call symptomatic conception of history if one is aware that one has to use everything that one can find out in the archives, in the documents, briefly, with the usual conscious reason that one evaluates and appreciates it, while one relates it to something that is a symptom, an expression of it.

One does not consider the great men of history, their appearances, and actions, for their own sake if one wants to describe the historical development of humanity but only as symptoms. One is aware that one properly describes history if one is able to connect the right symptom with the underlying spiritual current of development. Symptomatic history will look quite different from history, which runs in such a way, that one only strings together the facts and tries to use individual psychology to the explanation and analysis of these facts as Lamprecht does it. Symptomatic history consists of the fact that one becomes aware of this attitude which Goethe had that one can approach, actually, a spiritual being only from all sides, that one can get to know it only by its symptoms if one realises that that at which one has looked as history up to now is only at the surface and positions itself quite strangely in life like dream contents.

Observe the dream contents, and you will realise that you often dream something quite different from what is directly attached to the most significant events of your day life. Nevertheless, it is anyhow associated as memory with your life, but in a much-concealed way, and it is associated with deeper forces of life. There is a reason why just this or that which works in the subconscious emerges symptomatically, while we do not dream anything significant that seems to be significant in the awake life, but maybe just something that appears to us as externally unimportant.

Symptomatic historical research has to consider events that control the situation for the outer reason as unimportant for the true history and apparently unimportant events as far-reaching symptoms. Only thereby, one will penetrate from the outside to the inside of the historical life. One cannot transfer the individual soul life to the historical development in such an external way. Of course, I can do here no enclosing interpretation of history to show how this symptomatic consideration grasps the essential in the development of humanity, but I can at least indicate something. I have said in a former talk, if the spiritual researcher learns to behold in the spiritual world and its development, then he notices that the results, as one expects them, normally do not happen this way. They happen as a rule different from one could expect them after the judgement that one has gained in the sensory world. I want to bring in an example:

One could expect that the historical events run in such a way that one could compare them to the childhood, youth, mature period, and old age of the human being. Indeed, some historians were under this illusion. These analogising considerations can be rather witty but have nothing to do with reality. However, something else appears. The result of which I have to inform you here is attained really with the same seriousness with which another scientific result is attained; I can state it, however, only as a result.

Lamprecht tries to find periods of historical development for the German people at first. I have already indicated: it is owed to a right impression that he determines a transition from an age to another around the turn of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. It is also very typical that he calls this time the individualistic age. To spiritual-scientific research, an important incision likewise appears around the turn of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. However, while one spiritual-scientifically beholds in the current of the historical development, it becomes obvious that one has to go back further and has to disregard the borders of tribes or peoples. One has to envisage the general historical development of humanity. There the events combine for centuries, namely from the fifteenth century A.D. until the seventh and eighth centuries B.C. This age from the seventh century before the Mystery of Golgotha to the fifteenth century after it has its own character. This character changes from inner reasons in the fifteenth century more than modern people believe. Lamprecht recognises this, but he does not recognise the whole scope of this fact. Others have already pointed out from different viewpoints that one has to explain not for outer reasons, not even because of the emergence of Renaissance et cetera, but because spontaneously that significant reversal arises from historical life, from the souls of the human beings, which asserts itself in this time almost across the whole earth, but particularly across Europe.

It is remarkable that the most significant Germanist of the present, Konrad Burdach (1859-1936), has pointed to that in very nice essays. Burdach recognises from wholly literary-historical investigations that from the soul development of humanity something quite new has arisen in the spiritual configuration, in the activities of the human being.

Now we live in the period from the fifteenth century on. Spiritual science is able to go further back. Now there something very strange appears. If you look at the impulses that control the human beings since the fifteenth century historically, they are different from those, which controlled the human beings in the preceding period. However, one cannot say, the impulses of the preceding period relate to those of the following period in such a way as in the individual human life any life period relates to the following one. This is not the case. Rather the weird turns out that today the historical works in particular in that in the individual human nature, which develops until the twenties of life. The secret of our present development is that we develop those forces by the historical conditions, which belong to our individual life during the twenties. In the preceding age, the historical life of humanity especially grasped the thirties. One can show the matter also different. One can say, today our souls are organised so that we develop from childhood to the twenties, and that we carry that which we have developed during the twenties into the rest of life, so that the human being feels that his developmental period is finished after the twenties. One can prove this with wholly external things.

Scarcely anybody will state that somebody wants to learn earnestly today during his thirties, in a time where already the youngest people write essays in the newspapers. However, one will experience very easily that people say, one reads Goethe's Iphigenia, generally the classical writers, in the youth, nobody does that in his later life. One could still bring in other symptoms. However, if one goes back to the preceding period, one finds that the growing life lasted until the thirties. As paradox as it sounds today, it is in such a way, and one will once have this as a backed historical achievement. The Greek and Roman developed unlike the modern human being develops, and history happened in those days different because the human being remained longer able of development. Spiritual science shows that one gets, going back even further, to times where the human beings remained capable of development until the forties. So that one can say, one finds three consecutive periods in the historical life of humanity: one behind the eighth pre-Christian century in which we find human beings who feel young until the forties; then the period of the Greek and Roman cultures comes when the human beings remained young until the thirties; then the period in which they are capable of development until the twenties. If you reflect about that, you recognise that you cannot compare the historical development of humanity possibly with the course of the single individual life. In the individual life one grows older and older, humanity as such develops in reverse direction; it grows younger and younger, that is it remains younger and younger; it carries youth less and less into the later individual age.

Hence, the civilisation makes a younger and younger impression in the consecutive periods; that means, the human being carries that which he gains to himself in his youth more and more into the old age. One could have believed that in the time before the eighth pre-Christian century, if one had taken prejudices as starting point, one just finds a younger humanity, then an older one, and that we have now become much riper and older. One has to answer the question first what in the course of development, not in the single life, maturity and age do mean. However, you can consider this developmental process of humanity only in such a way as I have indicated now. You see, something quite different results from what one normally imagines as inner laws of cultural development if one looks really symptomatically at the historical development.

I want only to emphasise one thing in the end. One can also go into the whole attitude of the human beings in two consecutive periods. There you recognise that in the period which began with the eighth pre-Christian century another attitude was there than in the present period. If you consider the human soul spiritual-scientifically, you do not have the same comfort as the trivial psychology has it. Then you have to realise that there are three quite different shadings of the whole soul, and, hence, one distinguishes three soul members. I call one of them the sentient soul. In it the desires and passions are anchored, but it also connects the human being with the outer nature by his senses; then one distinguishes the intellectual or mind soul, and thirdly the consciousness soul in which the real self-consciousness is anchored. While now in the course of the historical development always other forces intervene in the human soul, the following turns out: during the period which lasts from the eighth pre-Christian up to the fifteenth post-Christian centuries where the European civilisation is coloured especially by the influence of the Greek-Latin culture particularly the intellectual or mind soul is working.

Hence, everything faces us that the human being accomplishes in the course of the historical development and in the outer life, in the social and economic life, as if his mind worked instinctively, as if he grasped the outer world with body and mind equally strongly. The human body and mind are balanced in this time, and the mind itself works instinctively. This becomes different with the big reversal in the fifteenth century. There the self-consciousness appears. There the consciousness soul becomes especially strong, there the human being does no longer have the mind instinctively, but he has to reflect everywhere. There the individuality starts forming. There he does no longer feel instinctively if he meets another human being: you have to behave to him this or that way. There he reflects, there he turns to the inside of his personality. So that we can say, the whole historical structure since the fifteenth century is characterised by the fact that the consciousness soul works since that time, while before the more instinctive intellectual or mind soul has worked. You cannot understand the Roman Law, nothing that comes from antiquity properly if you do not envisage this difference between the instinctive mind and that what in modern times works in intellectualistic way.

It arises that that which Lamprecht searches up to the fifteenth century is just the preparation of the consciousness soul in the German people. The German folk soul carried that into the coming period what flowed from the south, while it was just minded to further the stream of historical development from the intellectual or mind soul to the consciousness soul and its various nuances.

If one learns to recognise what really works there, then this shines into the details. Then you can ask yourself again, what is that, for example, what Wilson describes as the real nature of the American people? This is another nuance of the consciousness soul. The western nuance is experienced in its archetypal phenomenon, in its original characteristic here in Central Europe. Here the struggling egoity of the human being is really experienced which relates to the consciousness soul quite consciously which wants to penetrate with all forces of personality that what wants to enter life wholly consciously. This appears in another nuance in the American people where the human soul is like possessed by itself. It is sometimes disagreeable to face the truth. However, just the catastrophic events of our time necessitate a certain objectivity. Into the character of the historian Wilson, the light shines which spiritual science can spread.

Only in principle I could show which direction science of history has to take if it is fertilised by spiritual science in the same sense as I tried to show it for natural sciences eight days ago. Only if you consider history in such a way, you will realise how the human being is associated with that dreamt stream of the historical development that stirs him up. Then, however, it will appear that that which becomes known Imaginatively by the symptomatic interpretation of history is internally related to the human being as a historical being. Then you will realise that not the reason, but the subconsciousness, the dreamlike emotional life is connected with the historical development. Imagination will teach what works in the mood and in the will impulses of the human beings, while they are in the stream of the historical development. Then something else will arise than the belief that history can teach this or that. If it were able to teach as one normally imagines, then one would be able to find a connection between history and this usual reason. However, it does not exist. The connection is there with that what works in the depths of the soul, in the subconsciousness. The human being cannot learn, indeed, for his usual reason from history, but from the true history if he develops it more and more by the view of the spirit in history, then the historical impulses settle down in the feeling of the human being. If he faces a fact, if he is called for action or for the right feeling towards a fact within the social life, then his feeling will lead him properly. Then not his reason, but his whole soul is taught by such an interpretation of history.

With it let me summarise this consideration briefly. Goethe suspected that history, if it is recognised truly, works in the mood, in the feeling that it works if enthusiasm originates in the right way if antipathies or sympathies originate for what should be done or be omitted in a social situation. Briefly, Goethe said out of a right notion of that which spiritual science has to bring to light: the best that we can have from history is the enthusiasm, which it excites. Certainly, we cannot feel the intellectual judgement but the enthusiasm as a fruit of history if we can recognise the real historical development.

114. The Gospel of St. Luke: The Event of Golgotha: Initiation Presented on the Stage of World History 26 Sep 1909, Basel Translated by Dorothy S. Osmond, Owen Barfield Rudolf Steiner
The facts now indicated are not usually observed; but they certainly will be when the conscious faculties of researchers are permeated by the spiritual teachings of Anthroposophy. As a result of the fact of which I have just spoken, a great change has taken place in connection with the faculties of the human being since Christ came to the Earth.

114. The Gospel of St. Luke: The Event of Golgotha: Initiation Presented on the Stage of World History 26 Sep 1909, Basel Translated by Dorothy S. Osmond, Owen Barfield Rudolf Steiner
Our task to-day will be to bring the knowledge gained in these lectures on the Gospel of St. Luke to the culminating point indicated by spiritual investigation—the culminating point we know as the Mystery of Golgotha. Yesterday's lecture endeavoured to convey an idea of what actually took place at the time when for three years Christ was on Earth, and the preceding lectures indicated how the convergence of streams of spiritual life made this event possible. The writer of the Gospel of St. Luke gives a wonderful account of the mission of Christ Jesus on the Earth, as we shall realize if the light of knowledge derived from the Akashic Chronicle can be brought to bear upon what he describes. The following question might be asked: As the stream of Buddhism is organically woven into Christian teachings, how is it that in the latter there is no indication of the great Law of Karma, of the adjustment effected in the course of the incarnations of an individual human being? It would, however, be sheer misapprehension to imagine that what the Law of Karma enables us to understand is not also implicit in the words of the Gospel of St. Luke. It is indeed there, only we must realize that the needs of the human soul differ in different epochs and that it is not always the task of the great emissaries in world-evolution to impart the absolute truth in abstract form, because men at different stages of maturity simply would not understand it; the great pioneers and missionaries must speak in such a way that men receive what is right and suitable in a particular epoch. The teaching received by humanity through the great Buddha contains, in the form of wisdom, everything that in conjunction with the teaching of compassion and love and the synthesis of this in the Eightfold Path, can enable the doctrine of Karma to be understood. Failure to achieve this understanding only means that no effort has been made to use faculties in the soul leading to knowledge of the teaching of Karma and Reincarnation. In the lecture yesterday it was said that in about three thousand years from now, large numbers of human beings will have progressed sufficiently to unfold from their own souls the teaching of the Eightfold Path and—we may now add—that of Karma and Reincarnation. But this must inevitably be a gradual process. Just as a plant cannot unfold its blossom immediately the seed has been sown but leaf after leaf must develop according to definite laws, so too the spiritual development of humanity must progress stage by stage and the right knowledge be brought to light at the right time. Anyone possessed of faculties that can be kindled by spiritual science will realize from the voice of his own soul that the teaching of Karma and Reincarnation is indispensable. It must be remembered however that evolution is not fortuitous and in point of fact it is only now, in our own time, that human souls have become sufficiently mature to discover these truths through their own insight. It would not have been a good thing to give out the teaching of Karma and Reincarnation exoterically a few centuries ago; and it would have been detrimental to evolution if the present content of spiritual science—for which human souls are longing and with which research into the foundations of the Gospels is connected—had been imparted openly to mankind a few hundred years earlier. It was necessary that human souls should be yearning for it and should have developed faculties able to accept such teaching; it was essential that these souls should have passed through earlier incarnations, even in the Christian era, and have undergone the available experiences before reaching a degree of maturity capable of assimilating the teaching of Karma and Reincarnation. Had this teaching been proclaimed in the early centuries of Christendom in the form in which it is proclaimed to-day, this would have meant demanding of human evolution the equivalent of demanding a plant to produce the blossom before the green leaves. Humanity has only now become sufficiently mature to assimilate the spiritual content of the teaching of Karma and Reincarnation. It is therefore not surprising that in what has been imparted to humanity for centuries from the Gospels, there is much that gives a quite erroneous picture of Christianity. In a certain respect the Gospel message was entrusted prematurely to men and it is only to-day that they are becoming mature enough to develop all the faculties that could lead to an understanding of the actual content of the Gospel records. It was absolutely necessary that what was proclaimed by Christ Jesus should take account of the conditions and the attitude of soul prevailing in those days. Therefore Karma and Reincarnation were not taught as abstract doctrines, but feelings were cultivated through which human souls would gradually become ready to receive this teaching. What was needed at that time was to speak in a way that could lead by degrees to an understanding of Karma and Reincarnation rather than any enunciation of the teaching itself. Did Christ Jesus and those who were around Him speak in this way? In order to understand this we must study the Gospel of St. Luke and interpret it rightly. If we do so we shall realize in what form the Law of Karma could be made known to men at that time. “Blessed be ye poor; for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are ye that hunger now; for ye shall be filled. Blessed are ye that weep now; for ye shall laugh. Blessed are ye when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate you from their company, and shall reproach you, and cast out your name as evil, for the Son of Man's sake. Rejoice ye in that day and leap for joy; for behold your reward is great in heaven”—i.e. in the spiritual worlds. (Luke VI, 20–23.) Here we have the teaching of ‘compensation’. Without going into the subject of Karma and Reincarnation in an abstract way, the aim is to let the feeling of assurance flow into the souls of men that one who for a time is still hungering will eventually experience the due compensation. It was necessary that these feelings should flow into the souls of men. The souls then living, to whom the teaching was given in this form, were not, until they were again incarnated, ready to receive, as wisdom, the teaching of Karma and Reincarnation. What was to ripen in human souls had to flow into these at that time. For a completely new epoch had begun, an epoch when men were preparing to develop their Ego, their self-consciousness, to maturity. Whereas revelations had hitherto been received and the effects made manifest in the astral, etheric and physical bodies of men, the Ego was now to become fully conscious but be filled only gradually with the forces it was eventually to acquire. Only the one Ego¹ which came to the Earth as the Nathan Jesus and into whose bodily constitution, when this had been duly prepared, the Individuality of Zarathustra passed this Ego-Being alone could bring to fulfilment within itself the all-embracing Christ-principle. The rest of humanity must now, in imitation of Christ, gradually develop what was present for three years on the Earth in the one single Personality. It was only the impulse, as it were the seed, that Christ Jesus was able to implant into humanity at that time and the seed must now unfold and grow. To this end provision was made that at the right times there shall always appear on Earth individuals able to bring the truth that humanity will not be ready to assimilate until a later period. The Being who appeared on Earth as Christ had to take care that His message would be accessible to men immediately after His appearance, in a form that they could understand. He had also to make provision for Individualities to appear later on and care for the spiritual needs of human souls at the stage of maturity reached in the course of time. In what manner Christ made such provision for the ages following the Event of Golgotha is related by the writer of the Gospel of St. John. He shows us how, in Lazarus, Christ Himself ‘raised’, ‘awakened’, that Individuality who continued to work as ‘John’, from whom the teaching proceeded in the form described in the lectures on the Gospel of St. John.² But Christ had also to provide for the appearance, in later times, of an Individuality who would bring to humanity in a form compatible with subsequent evolution, that for which men would by then be ready. How an Individuality was ‘awakened’ by Christ for this purpose is faithfully described by the writer of the Gospel of St. Luke. Having declared that he would describe what ‘seers’ endowed with the vision of Imagination and Inspiration could say about the Event of Palestine, he also points to what would one day be taught by another—but only in the future. In order to describe this mysterious process the writer of St. Luke's Gospel has also included an ‘awakening’, a ‘raising’, in his account (Luke VII, 11–17.) In what we read concerning the ‘awakening’ of the young man of Nain lies the mystery of the progress of Christianity. Whereas in the case of the healing of the daughter of Jairus, to which brief reference was made in a previous lecture, the mysteries connected with it were so profound that Christ admitted only a few to witness the act and charged them not to speak of it, this other ‘raising’ was accomplished in such a way that it might immediately be related. The former healing was an act presupposing in the healer a profound insight into the processes of physical life; the latter healing was an ‘awakening’, an Initiation. The Individuality in the body of the young man of Nain was to undergo an Initiation of a very special kind. There are various kinds of Initiation. In one kind, immediately after the process has been completed, knowledge of the higher worlds flashes up in the aspirant and the laws and happenings of the spiritual world are revealed to him. In another kind of Initiation it is only a seed that is implanted into the soul, and the individual has to wait until the next incarnation for the seed to bear fruit; only then does he become an Initiate in the real sense. The Initiation of the young man of Nain was of this kind. His soul was transformed by the event in Palestine but he was not yet conscious of having risen into the higher worlds. It was not until his next incarnation that the forces laid in his soul at that earlier time came to fruition. In an exoteric lecture names cannot now be given; all that is possible is an indication to the effect that the Individuality awakened by Christ in the young man of Nain subsequently appeared as a great teacher of religion; in later time a new teacher of Christianity arose, equipped with the powers implanted into his soul in a previous incarnation. Thus Christ provided for the subsequent appearance of an Individuality able to bring Christianity to a further stage of development. Moreover the mission of the Individuality who had been awakened in the young man of Nain is destined to permeate Christianity later on, and to an ever-increasing extent, with the teachings of Karma and Reincarnation—teachings which when Christ was on Earth could not be proclaimed explicitly as wisdom, because the human soul had first to receive them into the life of feeling. Christ indicates clearly enough (according to the Gospel of St. Luke too) that an entirely new factor had now entered into the evolution of humanity, namely, Ego-consciousness. He shows—it is only a matter of being able to read the meaning—that in earlier times the spiritual world did not flow into the self-conscious Ego, for men received this spiritual stream through the physical, etheric and astral bodies; a certain degree of unconsciousness was always present when, as in previous epochs, divine-spiritual forces flowed into men. In the stream in which Christ Jesus was actually working, men had had formerly to receive the Law of Sinai, which could be addressed only to the astral body. The Law was imparted to man in such a way that it did indeed work in him, but not directly through the forces of his Ego. These forces could not operate until the time of Christ Jesus because it was not until then that man became conscious of the Ego in the real sense. This is indicated by Christ in the Gospel of St. Luke when He says that men must first be made ready to receive an entirely new principle into their souls. He indicates this when speaking of His forerunner, John the Baptist. (Luke VII, 18–35.) How did Christ Himself regard this Individuality? He said that before His own coming the mission of John was to present in its purest and noblest form the old teaching of the Prophets that had been handed down, unadulterated, from bygone times. He regarded John as being the last to transmit, in its pure form, the teaching belonging to past ages. The ‘Law and the Prophets’ held good until the coming of John. His mission was to set before men once again what the old teaching and the old constitution of soul had been able to impart. How did this old constitution of soul function in the times preceding the advent of the Christ-principle? Here we come to a subject—incomprehensible as it may seem at the present time—that will some day become a teaching of natural science as well, when it allows itself to be inspired to some extent by spiritual science. I must now refer to a matter of which I can touch only the very fringe but which will show you what depths spiritual science is destined to illumine in the domain of natural science. If you survey the branches of natural science to-day and perceive the efforts that are made to penetrate the mysteries of man's existence with the limited faculties of human thought, you will find it stated that the whole human being comes into existence through the intermingling of the male and female seeds. One of the basic endeavours of modern natural science is to establish this theory. Searching microscopical examination of substances is made in order to ascertain which particular attributes proceed from the male or from the female seed, and the researchers are satisfied when they believe, it can he proved that the whole human being is thus produced. But natural science itself will eventually be compelled to recognize that only one part of the human being is determined by the intermingling of the male and female seeds and that however precisely the product of the one or the other may be known, the whole nature of man in the present cycle of evolution cannot be explained by this intermingling. There is in every human being something that does not arise from the seed but is, so to speak, a ‘virgin birth’, something that flows into the process of germination from a quite different source. Something unites with the seed of the human being that is not derived from father and mother, yet belongs to and is destined for him—something that is poured into his Ego and can be ennobled through the Christ-principle. That in the human being which unites with the Christ-principle in the course of evolution is ‘virgin-born’ and—as natural science will one day come to recognize through its own methods—this is connected with the momentous transition accomplished at the time of Christ Jesus. Before the Christ Event there could be nothing that did not enter into man's inner being by way of the seed. Something has actually happened in the course of the ages to bring about a change in the development of the Ego. Humanity has not been the same since the Christ Event; but the element that has been added since then to what is produced by the seeds must be gradually developed and ennobled by assimilating the Christ-principle. We are here approaching a very subtle truth. To anyone conversant with modern natural science it is extremely interesting that already to-day there are domains where investigators are faced with the fact that there is something in man not derived from the seed. The preliminary conditions for realizing this are already there, only the investigators are not yet intellectually capable of recognizing what is present in their own experiments and observations. More is at work in the experiments than is known to modern natural science and little progress would be made if it were entirely dependent upon the ability of the investigators. While one or another is working in a laboratory, in a clinic, or perhaps in his own study, there stand behind him the Powers which direct and guide the world, and these Powers allow that to come to light which the researcher himself does not understand and for which he is merely the instrument. It is therefore also true that even objective investigation is guided by the ‘Masters’, that is, by higher Individualities. The facts now indicated are not usually observed; but they certainly will be when the conscious faculties of researchers are permeated by the spiritual teachings of Anthroposophy. As a result of the fact of which I have just spoken, a great change has taken place in connection with the faculties of the human being since Christ came to the Earth. Previously, the only faculties available to man were those derived from the paternal and maternal seeds, for these faculties alone were able to develop in him. Between birth and death we develop through our physical, etheric and astral bodies such faculties as we possess. Before the time of Christ Jesus the instruments employed by man for his own life could be developed only from the seed. After the appearance of Christ Jesus that element was added which is of ‘virgin birth’ and does not in any sense arise from the seed. This element can of course be gravely impaired if a man is entirely given over to materialistic thought; but it can be sublimated if he lets his being be suffused by the warmth issuing from the Christ-principle and he then brings it into his following incarnations in an ever higher and higher form. What has now been said necessarily implies that in all the proclamations made to humanity prior to that of Christ, there was an element bound up with faculties originating from the line of descent and from the seed; and it also imparts the conviction that Christ Jesus addressed himself to faculties that have nothing to do with the seed arising from the Earth but from out of the divine worlds unite with the seed. Teachers before Christ Jesus could speak to men only by using the faculties transmitted to their earthly nature through the seed. All the prophets and forerunners, however exalted, even when they descended as Bodhisattvas, were obliged to use faculties transmitted by way of the seed. Christ Jesus, however, spoke to that in man which does not pass through the seed but comes from the realm of the Divine. He indicates this when He speaks to His disciples of John the Baptist (Luke VII, 28): "For I say unto you, among those that are born of women there is not a greater prophet than John the Baptist"—that is to say, among those who, as they stand before us, can be explained as having come into existence through physical birth from male and female seeds. But then Christ adds words to the effect that the smallest part of that which is not born of women and which unites with the man from the kingdom of God is greater than John. Such are the depths hidden beneath these words! Some day, when study of the Bible is illumined by spiritual science, it will be found to contain physiological truths of far greater significance than any finding of the blundering thinking applied in modern physiology. Words such as those just quoted can lead to recognition of one of the very deepest physiological truths. Profound indeed is the Bible when it is truly understood! Christ Jesus exemplifies in manifold ways, and also in a different form, what I have now told you. His purpose is to indicate that the element which is to come into the world through Him is something altogether new, a truth differing from any hitherto proclaimed, because it is connected with faculties derived from the kingdoms of Heaven—faculties that have not been inherited. He points out how difficult it is for men to learn to understand such a teaching, and that they will demand to be convinced in the same way as formerly. He tells them that they cannot be convinced in the old way of the new truth that has now come; for what could be proof of truth in the old form could not bring conviction of the new. The old truth was presented in comprehensible form when symbolized by the ‘Sign of Jonah’. This symbolized the old way in which man gradually attained knowledge and penetrated into the spiritual world, or how—to use biblical terms—he became a ‘Prophet’. The old way of attaining Initiation was this: first the soul was brought to maturity and every necessary preparation made; then a condition lasting for three-and-a-half days was induced in the candidate, a condition in which he was completely withdrawn from the outer world and from the organs through which that world is perceived. Those who were to be led into the spiritual world were carefully prepared and their souls trained in knowledge of the spiritual life; then they were withdrawn from the world for three-and-a-half days, being taken to a place where they could perceive nothing through their external senses and where their bodies lay in a deathlike condition; after three-and-a-half days their souls were summoned back again into the body and they were awakened. Such men were then able to remember their vision of the spiritual worlds and to testify of those worlds. The great secret of Initiation was that the soul, prepared by long training, was led out of the body for three-and-a-half days into an entirely different world, was shut off from the environment and penetrated into the spiritual world. Men who could bear witness to the realities of the spiritual world were always to be found among the peoples; they were men who had undergone the experience referred to in the Bible in the story of Jonah's sojourn in the whale. Such a man was made ready to undergo this experience and then, when he appeared before the people as an Initiate of the old order, he bore upon him the ‘sign of Jonah’ the sign of those who were able themselves to testify of the spiritual world. This was the one form of Initiation. Christ said, in effect: ‘In the old sense there is no other sign save the sign of Jonah.’ (Luke XI, 29.) And He expressed Himself even more clearly according to the meaning of words in the Gospel of St. Matthew. ‘As a heritage from olden times there remains the possibility that without effort of his own, without Initiation, a man can develop a dim, shadowy kind of clairvoyance and through revelation from above be led into the spiritual world.’ The indication here is that there were also Initiates of a second kind—men who went about among their fellows and who, as a result of their particular lineage, were able to receive revelations from above in a kind of sublimated trance condition, without having undergone any special Initiation. Christ indicated that this twofold manner of being transported into the spiritual world had come down from ancient times. He bade the people to remember King Solomon—thereby pointing to an Individuality to whom, without effort on his own part, the spiritual world was revealed from above. The ‘Queen of Sheba’ who came to King Solomon was also the bearer of wisdom from above; she was the representative of those predestined to possess, by inheritance, the dim, shadowy clairvoyance with which all men were endowed in the Atlantean epoch. (See Luke XI, 31.) Thus there were two kinds of Initiates: the one kind typified by King Solomon and the symbolic visit paid to him by the Queen of Sheba, the Queen from the South; the other kind typified by those who bore upon them the ‘sign of Jonah’, meaning the old Initiation in which the candidate, entirely cut off from the outer world, passed through the spiritual world for a period lasting three-and-a-half days. Christ now added: ‘A greater than Solomon, a greater than Jonah is here’—indicating thereby that something new had come into the world. The message was not to be conveyed to the etheric bodies of men from outside, through revelations, as in the case of Solomon, nor was it to be conveyed to etheric bodies from within through revelations imparted by the duly prepared astral body to the etheric body, as in the case of those symbolized by the sign of Jonah. ‘Here is something which enables a man who has made himself ready for it in his Ego, to unite his being with what belongs to the kingdoms of Heaven.’ The forces and powers from those kingdoms unite with the virginal part in the human soul, the part that belongs to the kingdoms of Heaven and that men can destroy if they turn away from the Christ-principle, but can cultivate and nurture if they receive into themselves what streams from the Christ-principle. As indicated in the Gospel of St. Luke, Christ's teaching is imbued with the new element which came to the Earth at that time, and we see how all the old ways of proclaiming the kingdom of God were changed through the Event of Palestine. Christ says to those from whom, because of their preparation, He could expect some measure of understanding: ‘Of a truth there are some among you who are able to see the kingdom of God, not only in the manner of Solomon, through revelation, or through the Initiation symbolized by the sign of Jonah; if any among you had attained nothing further than that they would never see the kingdom of God in this incarnation before their death.’ The meaning is that before their death they would not have seen the kingdom of God unless they had attained Initiation in some form; but then they would also have had to pass through a condition similar to death. Christ wished to show that because of the new element now present in the world there can also be men who, even before they die are able to behold the kingdom of Heaven. The disciples did not at first understand what this meant. Christ wanted to convey to them that they were to be the ones who would come to know the mysteries of the kingdoms of Heaven before natural death or the death experienced in the old form of Initiation. The wonderful passage in the Gospel of St. Luke where Christ is speaking of a higher revelation, is as follows: "But I tell you of a truth, there be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the kingdom of God." (Luke IX, 27.) The disciples did not understand that it was they themselves who, being closely around Him, were chosen to experience the tremendous power of the Christ principle which would enable them to penetrate directly into the spiritual world. The spiritual world was to become visible to them without the sign of Solomon, and without the sign of Jonah. Did this actually happen? Immediately after these words in the Gospel comes the scene of the Transfiguration, when three disciples—Peter, James and John—are led up into the spiritual world. The figures of Moses and Elijah appear before them in that world and, simultaneously, Christ Jesus in Glory. (Luke IX, 28–36.) The disciples gaze for a brief moment into the spiritual world—a testimony that insight into that world is possible without the faculties designated by the sign of Solomon and the sign of Jonah. But it is evident that they are still novices, for they fall asleep immediately after being torn out of their physical and etheric bodies by the stupendous power of what was happening. Christ finds them asleep. This account was meant to indicate the third way of entering the spiritual world, apart from the ways denoted by the signs of Solomon and of Jonah. Anyone capable in those days of interpreting the signs of the times would have known that the Ego itself must develop, that it must now be directly inspired, that the Divine Powers must work directly into the Ego. It was also to be made evident that the men of that time, even the very best among them, were not capable of taking the Christ-principle into themselves. The event of the Transfiguration was to be a beginning but it was also to be shown that the disciples were not able, at the time, to receive the Christ-principle in the fullest sense. Hence their powers fail them immediately afterwards, when they want to apply the Christ-power to heal one who is possessed by an evil spirit but are unable to do so. Christ indicates that they are still only at the beginning, by saying: I shall have to stay a long time with you before your forces are able also to stream into other men. (See Luke IX, 41.) Thereupon He heals the one whom the disciples could not heal. But then He says, again hinting at the mystery behind these happenings, that the time has come when “the Son of Man shall be delivered into the hands of men”. This means: the time has come when the Ego, which is to be developed by men themselves in the course of their Earth-mission, is gradually to stream into them, to be given over to them. This Ego is to be recognized in its highest form in Christ. “Let these sayings sink down into your ears; for the Son of Man shall be delivered into the hands of men. But they understood not this saying; it was hid from them, that they perceived it not.” (Luke IX, 44–45.) How many have understood this saying? Greater and greater numbers will, however, eventually understand that the Ego, the ‘Son of Man’, was to be given over to men at that time. And the explanation that was possible in those days, was added by Christ Jesus. He spoke to the following effect: As he stands before us, man is a product of the old forces that were active before the Luciferic beings had laid hold of human nature; but the Luciferic forces drew man down to a lower level. The results of all these processes have passed into the faculties possessed by him to-day. Everything that comes from the seed, as well as all human consciousness, is permeated by the influence that dragged man to a lower sphere. Man is a twofold being. Whatever consciousness he has developed hitherto is permeated by the Luciferic forces. It is only the unconscious part of man's being, the last remnant of his evolution through the Saturn, Sun and Moon periods when no Luciferic forces were at work—it is only this that streams into him to-day as a virginal element of his nature; but it cannot unite with him without the qualities and forces he is able to develop in himself through the Christ-principle. As he stands before us, man is primarily a product of heredity, a confluence of what derives from the male and female seeds. From the beginning he develops as a duality—a duality already permeated by Luciferic forces. As long as a man is not illumined by self-consciousness, as long as out of his own Ego he cannot fully distinguish between good and evil, he reveals to us his earlier, original nature through the veil of his later nature. Only the part of man that is ‘childlike’ still retains a last remnant of the nature that was his before he succumbed to the influence of the Luciferic beings. Hence there is a ‘childlike’ part and also a ‘grown’ part in man. It is the latter part of his being that is permeated by the Luciferic forces but its influence asserts itself from the very earliest embryonic stage onwards. The Luciferic forces also permeate the child, so that in ordinary life what was already implanted in the human being before the Luciferic influence, cannot make itself manifest. The Christ-power must re-awaken this, must unite with the best forces of the child-nature in man. The Christ-power may not link itself with the faculties that man has corrupted, with what derives merely from the intellect; the link must be with that which has remained from the child-nature of primeval times. That is what must be reinvigorated and must thereafter fructify the other part (of man's nature). “But there arose a reasoning among them, which of them should be the greatest,” that is, which of them was most fitted to receive the Christ-principle into his own being. "But Jesus, perceiving the thought of their heart, took a child and set it by them and said unto them. Whosoever shall receive this child in my name"—that is, whosoever is united in Christ's name with what has remained from the times before the onset of the Luciferic influence “receiveth me; and whosoever shall receive me receiveth him that sent me” (Luke IX, 46–48)—that is, He who sent this (childlike) part of the human being to the Earth. Emphasis is there laid upon the great significance of what has remained ‘childlike’ in man and should be fostered and nurtured in human nature. We may say of a human being standing before us that he has the rudiments of very good qualities. We may try our hardest to develop those qualities of his so that he makes real progress, but the methods usually adopted to-day take no account of what is present in the foundations of man's being. It is essential to pay heed to what has remained ‘childlike’ in man, for it is by way of this childlike nature that warmth can be imparted to the other faculties through the Christ-principle. The childlike nature must be developed in order that the other faculties may follow suit. Everyone has the childlike nature within him and this, when wakened to life, will also be responsive to union with the Christ-principle. But forces—of however lofty a kind—that are dominated by the Luciferic influence will, if they alone work in a man to-day, repudiate and scoff at what can live on Earth as the Christ power—as Christ Himself foretold. The Gospel of St. Luke, brings home very clearly the purport and meaning of the new proclamation. When a man who bore on his forehead the sign of Jonah went about the world as an Initiate of the old order, he was recognized—but only by those who were knowers—as one who had come to testify of the spiritual worlds. Special preparation was needed before the sign of Jonah could be understood. But a new kind of preparation was now necessary in order to understand what was greater than anything indicated by the signs of Solomon and of Jonah—a new preparation which was to pave the way for a new understanding, a new way of maturing the soul. The contemporaries of Christ Jesus could at first understand only the old way, and the way preached by John the Baptist was the one known to most of them. That Christ was now bringing an entirely new impulse, that he was seeking for souls among those who did not in the least resemble men who would formerly have been considered suitable, was utterly incomprehensible to them. They had assumed that He would associate with those who practised the old kind of disciplinary exercises and would impart His teaching to such men. Hence they could not understand why He sat among those whom they regarded as ‘sinners’. But He said to them: If I were to impart in the old way the entirely new impulse I have come to give to mankind, if a new form of teaching were not to replace the old, it would be as if I were to sew a piece of new cloth on an old garment or pour new wine into old wine-skins. What is now to be given to humanity and is greater than anything indicated by the sign of Solomon or the sign of Jonah, this must be poured into new wine-skins, into new forms. And you must rouse yourselves sufficiently to understand the new teaching in a new form! (See Luke V, 36–37.) Those who were to understand must now do so through the powerful influence of the Ego—not through what they had learnt but through what had poured into them from the spiritual Christ-Being Himself. Hence the chosen ones were not men who according to the old doctrines were properly prepared but men who in spite of having passed through many incarnations, proved to be simple human beings, able to understand through the power of Faith what had streamed into them. A ‘sign’ was to be placed before them as well, a sign now to be enacted before the eyes of all mankind. The ‘mystical death’ that had been a ceremonial act in the Mystery Temples for hundreds and thousands of years was now to be presented on the great arena of world-history. Everything that had taken place in the secrecy of the Temples of Initiation was brought into the open as a single event on Golgotha. A process hitherto witnessed only by the Initiates during the three-and-a-half days of an old Initiation was now enacted before mankind in concrete reality. Hence those to whom the facts were known could only describe the Event of Golgotha as being what in very truth it was: the old Initiation transformed into historical fact and enacted on the arena of world-history. That is what took place on Golgotha! In former times the three-and-a-half days spent in deathlike sleep had brought to the few Initiates who witnessed it, the conviction that the spiritual will at all times be victorious over the bodily nature and that man's soul and spirit belong to a spiritual world. This was now to be a reality enacted before the eyes of the world. An Initiation transferred to the outer plane of world-history such was the Event of Golgotha. Hence this Initiation was not consummated only for those who witnessed the actual Event, but for all mankind. What issued from the death on the Cross streamed into the whole of humanity. A stream of spiritual life flowed into mankind from the drops of blood which fell from the wounds of Christ Jesus on Golgotha. For what had been imparted by other Teachers as ‘wisdom’ was now to pass into humanity as inner strength, inner power. That is the essential difference between the Event of Golgotha and the teachings given by the other Founders of religion. Deeper understanding than exists to-day is necessary before there can be any true conception of what came to pass on Golgotha. When Earth evolution began, the human Ego was connected physically with the blood. The blood is the outer expression of the human Ego. Men would have made the Ego stronger and stronger, and if Christ had not appeared they would have been entirely engrossed in the development of egoism. They were protected from this by the Event of Golgotha. What was it that had to flow? The blood that is the surplus substantiality of the Ego! The process that began on the Mount of Olives when the drops of sweat fell from the Redeemer like drops of blood, was carried further when the blood flowed from the wounds of Christ Jesus on Golgotha. The blood flowing from the Cross was the sign of the surplus egoism in man's nature which had to be sacrificed. The spiritual significance of the sacrifice on Golgotha requires deep and penetrating study. The result of what happened there would not be apparent to a chemist—that is to say to one with the power of intellectual perception only. If the blood that flowed on Golgotha had been chemically analysed it would have been found to contain the same substances as the blood of other human beings; but occult investigation would discover it to have been quite different blood. Through the surplus blood in humanity men would have been engulfed in egoism if infinite Love had not enabled this blood to flow. As occult investigation finds, infinite Love is intermingled with the blood that flowed on Golgotha. The writer of the Gospel of St. Luke adhered to his purpose, which was to describe how, through Christ, there came into the world the infinite Love that would gradually drive out egoism. Each of the Evangelists describes what it was his particular function to describe. If these things could be explained in still greater depth we should find that all contradictions alleged by materialistic research would be invalidated, as they are in the case of the antecedents of Jesus of Nazareth when the true facts of his early childhood are known. Each Evangelist describes what concerned him most closely from his own standpoint. St. Luke describes what his informants, who were ‘seers’ and ‘servants of the Word’ were able to perceive as the result of their special preparation. The other Evangelists are concerned with different aspects—the writer of the Gospel of St. Luke perceives the out-streaming Love which forgives the most terrible of all wrongs the physical world can inflict. Words expressing this ideal of Love, words of forgiveness even when the most terrible of wrongs has been committed, resound from the Cross on Golgotha: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do!” (Luke XXIII, 34.) Out of His infinite Love, He who on the Cross on Golgotha accomplishes the Deed of untold significance, implores forgiveness for those who have crucified Him. And now we turn once again to the doctrine of the power of Faith. Emphasis was to be laid upon the fact that there is something in human nature that can stream from it and liberate man from the material world, no matter how firmly he may he bound to that world. Let us think of a man embroiled in the material world through every imaginable crime, so that the forum of that world itself inflicts the punishment; let us conceive, however, that he has saved for himself something that the power of Faith can cause to germinate within him. Such a man will differ from another who has no Faith, just as the one malefactor differed from the other. The one has no Faith, and the judgment is fulfilled. In the other, however, Faith is like a faint light shining into the spiritual world; hence he cannot lose the link with the spiritual. Therefore to him it is said: ‘To-day’—since you know that you are connected with the spiritual world—‘you shall be with me in Paradise!’ (See Luke XXIII, 43.) Thus do the truths of Faith and Hope, as well as the truth of Love, resound from the Cross in the account given in the Gospel of St. Luke. There is still something else, belonging to the same realm of the soul's life, upon which the writer of this Gospel wishes to lay emphasis. When a man's whole being is pervaded with the Love that streamed from the Cross on Golgotha he can turn his eyes to the future and say: Evolution on the Earth must make it possible for the spirit living within me gradually to transform the whole of physical existence. We shall in time give back again to the Father-principle which existed before the onset of the Luciferic influence, the spirit we have received; we shall let our whole being be permeated by the Christ-principle and our hands will bring to expression what is living in our souls as a faithful picture of that principle. Our hands were not created by ourselves but by the Father-principle, and the Christ-principle will stream through them. As men pass through incarnation after incarnation, the spiritual power flowing from the Mystery of Golgotha will stream into what they achieve in their bodies—which are the creations of the Father-principle—so that the outer world will eventually be imbued with the Christ-principle. Men will be filled with the confidence that resounded from the Cross on Golgotha and leads to the highest Hope for the future, leads to the ideal that can be expressed by saying: I let Faith germinate within me, I let Love germinate within me and I know that when they grow strong enough they will pervade all external life. I know too that they will pervade everything within me that is the creation of the Father-principle. Thus Hope for humanity's future will be added to Faith and Love, and men will understand that in regard to the future they must acquire firm confidence, saying: If only I have Faith, if only I have Love I may entertain the Hope that what has come into me from Christ Jesus will gradually find its way into the outer world. And then the words resounding from the Cross as a sublime ideal will be understood: “Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit!” (Luke XXIII, 46.) Words of Love, of Faith and of Hope ring out from the Cross according to the Gospel which indicates how spiritual streams that had previously been separate united in the soul of Jesus of Nazareth. What had formerly been received in the form of wisdom, streamed into men as an actual power of the soul, exemplified by the sublime ideal of Christ. It is incumbent upon human beings to acquire deeper and deeper understanding of what is communicated in a record such as the Gospel of St. Luke, in order that the three words resounding from the Cross may become active forces in the soul. When with the faculties that the truths of spiritual science can develop in them men come to feel that what streams down to them from the Cross is not lifeless exhortation but vital, active force, they will begin to realize that a truly living message is contained in the Gospel of St. Luke. It is the mission of spiritual science gradually to unveil what is enshrined in such records. In this course of lectures we have tried to penetrate as deeply as possible into the content of St. Luke's Gospel. In the case of this Gospel too, one course of lectures cannot possibly unveil everything and you will realise at once that a very great deal has inevitably remained unexplained. But if you pursue the path indicated by lectures such as have been given here you will be able to penetrate more and more deeply into these truths and your souls will be better and better fitted to receive and assimilate the living Word hidden beneath the outer words. Spiritual science is not a body of new teaching. It is an instrument for comprehending what has been given to humanity. Thus for us it is an instrument for understanding the Christian revelation. If you have this conception of spiritual science you will no longer say: ‘It is Christian theosophy or just another form of theosophy!’ There is only one spiritual science and we apply it as an instrument for proclaiming the truth, for bringing to light the treasures of the spiritual life of mankind. It is the same spiritual science that we apply in order to explain the Bhagavad Gita on one occasion and on another the Gospel of St. Luke. The greatness of spiritual science lies in the fact that it is able to penetrate into every treasure given to humanity in the realm of spiritual life; but we should have a false conception of it if we were to close our ears to any of the proclamations made to humanity. It is with this attitude of mind that you should listen to the proclamation made in the Gospel of St. Luke, realizing that it is pervaded through and through by the inspiration of Love. And then the increasing knowledge that can be acquired from this Gospel with the help of spiritual science will contribute not only to insight into the mysteries of the surrounding Universe and of the spiritual ground of existence but to an understanding of the momentous words in the Gospel of St. Luke: ‘And peace be in the souls of men in whom there is good will.’ When thoroughly understood, the Gospel of St. Luke is able, more than any other religious text, to pour into the human soul that warmth-giving Love through which peace reigns on Earth—and that is the most beautiful mirror-image of divine mysteries revealed on Earth. What can be revealed must be mirrored on Earth and, as mirror-image, rise up again to the spiritual Heights. If we learn to understand spiritual science in this sense it will be able to reveal to us the mysteries of the divine-spiritual Beings and of spiritual existence, and the mirror-image of these revelations will live in our souls. Love and Peace—here is the most beautiful mirror-image on Earth of what streams down from the Heights. In this way we can receive and assimilate the words of the Gospel of St. Luke which resounded when the forces of the Nirmanakaya of Buddha streamed down upon the Nathan Jesus-child. The revelations pour down from the spiritual worlds upon the Earth and are reflected from human hearts as Love and Peace to the extent to which men unfold the power, the ‘good will’, which the Christ-principle enables to flow from the centre of man's being, from his Ego. The proclamation rings out clearly and with the glow of warmth when we truly understand the meaning of these words in the Gospel of St. Luke: The revelation of the spiritual worlds from the Heights and its answering reflection from the hearts of men brings peace to all whose purpose upon the evolving Earth is to unfold good will. 1. See references to the nature of this Ego in Lectures Four, Five and Seven. 2. See the lecture-courses given at Hamburg, in May 1908, and at Cassel, in July 1909; also the book Christianity as Mystical Fact, Ch. VIII.

114. The Gospel of St. Luke: The Event of Golgotha: Initiation Presented on the Stage of World History 26 Sep 1909, Basel
Translated by Dorothy S. Osmond, Owen Barfield
Rudolf Steiner

Our task to-day will be to bring the knowledge gained in these lectures on the Gospel of St. Luke to the culminating point indicated by spiritual investigation—the culminating point we know as the Mystery of Golgotha.

Yesterday's lecture endeavoured to convey an idea of what actually took place at the time when for three years Christ was on Earth, and the preceding lectures indicated how the convergence of streams of spiritual life made this event possible. The writer of the Gospel of St. Luke gives a wonderful account of the mission of Christ Jesus on the Earth, as we shall realize if the light of knowledge derived from the Akashic Chronicle can be brought to bear upon what he describes.

The following question might be asked: As the stream of Buddhism is organically woven into Christian teachings, how is it that in the latter there is no indication of the great Law of Karma, of the adjustment effected in the course of the incarnations of an individual human being? It would, however, be sheer misapprehension to imagine that what the Law of Karma enables us to understand is not also implicit in the words of the Gospel of St. Luke. It is indeed there, only we must realize that the needs of the human soul differ in different epochs and that it is not always the task of the great emissaries in world-evolution to impart the absolute truth in abstract form, because men at different stages of maturity simply would not understand it; the great pioneers and missionaries must speak in such a way that men receive what is right and suitable in a particular epoch. The teaching received by humanity through the great Buddha contains, in the form of wisdom, everything that in conjunction with the teaching of compassion and love and the synthesis of this in the Eightfold Path, can enable the doctrine of Karma to be understood. Failure to achieve this understanding only means that no effort has been made to use faculties in the soul leading to knowledge of the teaching of Karma and Reincarnation.

In the lecture yesterday it was said that in about three thousand years from now, large numbers of human beings will have progressed sufficiently to unfold from their own souls the teaching of the Eightfold Path and—we may now add—that of Karma and Reincarnation. But this must inevitably be a gradual process. Just as a plant cannot unfold its blossom immediately the seed has been sown but leaf after leaf must develop according to definite laws, so too the spiritual development of humanity must progress stage by stage and the right knowledge be brought to light at the right time.

Anyone possessed of faculties that can be kindled by spiritual science will realize from the voice of his own soul that the teaching of Karma and Reincarnation is indispensable. It must be remembered however that evolution is not fortuitous and in point of fact it is only now, in our own time, that human souls have become sufficiently mature to discover these truths through their own insight. It would not have been a good thing to give out the teaching of Karma and Reincarnation exoterically a few centuries ago; and it would have been detrimental to evolution if the present content of spiritual science—for which human souls are longing and with which research into the foundations of the Gospels is connected—had been imparted openly to mankind a few hundred years earlier. It was necessary that human souls should be yearning for it and should have developed faculties able to accept such teaching; it was essential that these souls should have passed through earlier incarnations, even in the Christian era, and have undergone the available experiences before reaching a degree of maturity capable of assimilating the teaching of Karma and Reincarnation. Had this teaching been proclaimed in the early centuries of Christendom in the form in which it is proclaimed to-day, this would have meant demanding of human evolution the equivalent of demanding a plant to produce the blossom before the green leaves.

Humanity has only now become sufficiently mature to assimilate the spiritual content of the teaching of Karma and Reincarnation. It is therefore not surprising that in what has been imparted to humanity for centuries from the Gospels, there is much that gives a quite erroneous picture of Christianity. In a certain respect the Gospel message was entrusted prematurely to men and it is only to-day that they are becoming mature enough to develop all the faculties that could lead to an understanding of the actual content of the Gospel records. It was absolutely necessary that what was proclaimed by Christ Jesus should take account of the conditions and the attitude of soul prevailing in those days. Therefore Karma and Reincarnation were not taught as abstract doctrines, but feelings were cultivated through which human souls would gradually become ready to receive this teaching. What was needed at that time was to speak in a way that could lead by degrees to an understanding of Karma and Reincarnation rather than any enunciation of the teaching itself.

Did Christ Jesus and those who were around Him speak in this way? In order to understand this we must study the Gospel of St. Luke and interpret it rightly. If we do so we shall realize in what form the Law of Karma could be made known to men at that time.

“Blessed be ye poor; for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are ye that hunger now; for ye shall be filled. Blessed are ye that weep now; for ye shall laugh. Blessed are ye when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate you from their company, and shall reproach you, and cast out your name as evil, for the Son of Man's sake. Rejoice ye in that day and leap for joy; for behold your reward is great in heaven”—i.e. in the spiritual worlds. (Luke VI, 20–23.)

Here we have the teaching of ‘compensation’. Without going into the subject of Karma and Reincarnation in an abstract way, the aim is to let the feeling of assurance flow into the souls of men that one who for a time is still hungering will eventually experience the due compensation. It was necessary that these feelings should flow into the souls of men. The souls then living, to whom the teaching was given in this form, were not, until they were again incarnated, ready to receive, as wisdom, the teaching of Karma and Reincarnation.

What was to ripen in human souls had to flow into these at that time. For a completely new epoch had begun, an epoch when men were preparing to develop their Ego, their self-consciousness, to maturity. Whereas revelations had hitherto been received and the effects made manifest in the astral, etheric and physical bodies of men, the Ego was now to become fully conscious but be filled only gradually with the forces it was eventually to acquire. Only the one Ego¹ which came to the Earth as the Nathan Jesus and into whose bodily constitution, when this had been duly prepared, the Individuality of Zarathustra passed this Ego-Being alone could bring to fulfilment within itself the all-embracing Christ-principle.

The rest of humanity must now, in imitation of Christ, gradually develop what was present for three years on the Earth in the one single Personality. It was only the impulse, as it were the seed, that Christ Jesus was able to implant into humanity at that time and the seed must now unfold and grow. To this end provision was made that at the right times there shall always appear on Earth individuals able to bring the truth that humanity will not be ready to assimilate until a later period. The Being who appeared on Earth as Christ had to take care that His message would be accessible to men immediately after His appearance, in a form that they could understand. He had also to make provision for Individualities to appear later on and care for the spiritual needs of human souls at the stage of maturity reached in the course of time.

In what manner Christ made such provision for the ages following the Event of Golgotha is related by the writer of the Gospel of St. John. He shows us how, in Lazarus, Christ Himself ‘raised’, ‘awakened’, that Individuality who continued to work as ‘John’, from whom the teaching proceeded in the form described in the lectures on the Gospel of St. John.² But Christ had also to provide for the appearance, in later times, of an Individuality who would bring to humanity in a form compatible with subsequent evolution, that for which men would by then be ready. How an Individuality was ‘awakened’ by Christ for this purpose is faithfully described by the writer of the Gospel of St. Luke. Having declared that he would describe what ‘seers’ endowed with the vision of Imagination and Inspiration could say about the Event of Palestine, he also points to what would one day be taught by another—but only in the future. In order to describe this mysterious process the writer of St. Luke's Gospel has also included an ‘awakening’, a ‘raising’, in his account (Luke VII, 11–17.) In what we read concerning the ‘awakening’ of the young man of Nain lies the mystery of the progress of Christianity. Whereas in the case of the healing of the daughter of Jairus, to which brief reference was made in a previous lecture, the mysteries connected with it were so profound that Christ admitted only a few to witness the act and charged them not to speak of it, this other ‘raising’ was accomplished in such a way that it might immediately be related. The former healing was an act presupposing in the healer a profound insight into the processes of physical life; the latter healing was an ‘awakening’, an Initiation. The Individuality in the body of the young man of Nain was to undergo an Initiation of a very special kind.

There are various kinds of Initiation. In one kind, immediately after the process has been completed, knowledge of the higher worlds flashes up in the aspirant and the laws and happenings of the spiritual world are revealed to him. In another kind of Initiation it is only a seed that is implanted into the soul, and the individual has to wait until the next incarnation for the seed to bear fruit; only then does he become an Initiate in the real sense.

The Initiation of the young man of Nain was of this kind. His soul was transformed by the event in Palestine but he was not yet conscious of having risen into the higher worlds. It was not until his next incarnation that the forces laid in his soul at that earlier time came to fruition. In an exoteric lecture names cannot now be given; all that is possible is an indication to the effect that the Individuality awakened by Christ in the young man of Nain subsequently appeared as a great teacher of religion; in later time a new teacher of Christianity arose, equipped with the powers implanted into his soul in a previous incarnation.

Thus Christ provided for the subsequent appearance of an Individuality able to bring Christianity to a further stage of development. Moreover the mission of the Individuality who had been awakened in the young man of Nain is destined to permeate Christianity later on, and to an ever-increasing extent, with the teachings of Karma and Reincarnation—teachings which when Christ was on Earth could not be proclaimed explicitly as wisdom, because the human soul had first to receive them into the life of feeling.

Christ indicates clearly enough (according to the Gospel of St. Luke too) that an entirely new factor had now entered into the evolution of humanity, namely, Ego-consciousness. He shows—it is only a matter of being able to read the meaning—that in earlier times the spiritual world did not flow into the self-conscious Ego, for men received this spiritual stream through the physical, etheric and astral bodies; a certain degree of unconsciousness was always present when, as in previous epochs, divine-spiritual forces flowed into men. In the stream in which Christ Jesus was actually working, men had had formerly to receive the Law of Sinai, which could be addressed only to the astral body. The Law was imparted to man in such a way that it did indeed work in him, but not directly through the forces of his Ego. These forces could not operate until the time of Christ Jesus because it was not until then that man became conscious of the Ego in the real sense. This is indicated by Christ in the Gospel of St. Luke when He says that men must first be made ready to receive an entirely new principle into their souls. He indicates this when speaking of His forerunner, John the Baptist. (Luke VII, 18–35.)

How did Christ Himself regard this Individuality? He said that before His own coming the mission of John was to present in its purest and noblest form the old teaching of the Prophets that had been handed down, unadulterated, from bygone times. He regarded John as being the last to transmit, in its pure form, the teaching belonging to past ages. The ‘Law and the Prophets’ held good until the coming of John. His mission was to set before men once again what the old teaching and the old constitution of soul had been able to impart. How did this old constitution of soul function in the times preceding the advent of the Christ-principle?

Here we come to a subject—incomprehensible as it may seem at the present time—that will some day become a teaching of natural science as well, when it allows itself to be inspired to some extent by spiritual science. I must now refer to a matter of which I can touch only the very fringe but which will show you what depths spiritual science is destined to illumine in the domain of natural science. If you survey the branches of natural science to-day and perceive the efforts that are made to penetrate the mysteries of man's existence with the limited faculties of human thought, you will find it stated that the whole human being comes into existence through the intermingling of the male and female seeds. One of the basic endeavours of modern natural science is to establish this theory. Searching microscopical examination of substances is made in order to ascertain which particular attributes proceed from the male or from the female seed, and the researchers are satisfied when they believe, it can he proved that the whole human being is thus produced. But natural science itself will eventually be compelled to recognize that only one part of the human being is determined by the intermingling of the male and female seeds and that however precisely the product of the one or the other may be known, the whole nature of man in the present cycle of evolution cannot be explained by this intermingling.

There is in every human being something that does not arise from the seed but is, so to speak, a ‘virgin birth’, something that flows into the process of germination from a quite different source. Something unites with the seed of the human being that is not derived from father and mother, yet belongs to and is destined for him—something that is poured into his Ego and can be ennobled through the Christ-principle. That in the human being which unites with the Christ-principle in the course of evolution is ‘virgin-born’ and—as natural science will one day come to recognize through its own methods—this is connected with the momentous transition accomplished at the time of Christ Jesus. Before the Christ Event there could be nothing that did not enter into man's inner being by way of the seed. Something has actually happened in the course of the ages to bring about a change in the development of the Ego. Humanity has not been the same since the Christ Event; but the element that has been added since then to what is produced by the seeds must be gradually developed and ennobled by assimilating the Christ-principle.

We are here approaching a very subtle truth. To anyone conversant with modern natural science it is extremely interesting that already to-day there are domains where investigators are faced with the fact that there is something in man not derived from the seed. The preliminary conditions for realizing this are already there, only the investigators are not yet intellectually capable of recognizing what is present in their own experiments and observations. More is at work in the experiments than is known to modern natural science and little progress would be made if it were entirely dependent upon the ability of the investigators. While one or another is working in a laboratory, in a clinic, or perhaps in his own study, there stand behind him the Powers which direct and guide the world, and these Powers allow that to come to light which the researcher himself does not understand and for which he is merely the instrument. It is therefore also true that even objective investigation is guided by the ‘Masters’, that is, by higher Individualities. The facts now indicated are not usually observed; but they certainly will be when the conscious faculties of researchers are permeated by the spiritual teachings of Anthroposophy.

As a result of the fact of which I have just spoken, a great change has taken place in connection with the faculties of the human being since Christ came to the Earth. Previously, the only faculties available to man were those derived from the paternal and maternal seeds, for these faculties alone were able to develop in him. Between birth and death we develop through our physical, etheric and astral bodies such faculties as we possess. Before the time of Christ Jesus the instruments employed by man for his own life could be developed only from the seed. After the appearance of Christ Jesus that element was added which is of ‘virgin birth’ and does not in any sense arise from the seed. This element can of course be gravely impaired if a man is entirely given over to materialistic thought; but it can be sublimated if he lets his being be suffused by the warmth issuing from the Christ-principle and he then brings it into his following incarnations in an ever higher and higher form.

What has now been said necessarily implies that in all the proclamations made to humanity prior to that of Christ, there was an element bound up with faculties originating from the line of descent and from the seed; and it also imparts the conviction that Christ Jesus addressed himself to faculties that have nothing to do with the seed arising from the Earth but from out of the divine worlds unite with the seed. Teachers before Christ Jesus could speak to men only by using the faculties transmitted to their earthly nature through the seed. All the prophets and forerunners, however exalted, even when they descended as Bodhisattvas, were obliged to use faculties transmitted by way of the seed. Christ Jesus, however, spoke to that in man which does not pass through the seed but comes from the realm of the Divine. He indicates this when He speaks to His disciples of John the Baptist (Luke VII, 28): "For I say unto you, among those that are born of women there is not a greater prophet than John the Baptist"—that is to say, among those who, as they stand before us, can be explained as having come into existence through physical birth from male and female seeds. But then Christ adds words to the effect that the smallest part of that which is not born of women and which unites with the man from the kingdom of God is greater than John. Such are the depths hidden beneath these words! Some day, when study of the Bible is illumined by spiritual science, it will be found to contain physiological truths of far greater significance than any finding of the blundering thinking applied in modern physiology. Words such as those just quoted can lead to recognition of one of the very deepest physiological truths. Profound indeed is the Bible when it is truly understood!

Christ Jesus exemplifies in manifold ways, and also in a different form, what I have now told you. His purpose is to indicate that the element which is to come into the world through Him is something altogether new, a truth differing from any hitherto proclaimed, because it is connected with faculties derived from the kingdoms of Heaven—faculties that have not been inherited. He points out how difficult it is for men to learn to understand such a teaching, and that they will demand to be convinced in the same way as formerly. He tells them that they cannot be convinced in the old way of the new truth that has now come; for what could be proof of truth in the old form could not bring conviction of the new. The old truth was presented in comprehensible form when symbolized by the ‘Sign of Jonah’. This symbolized the old way in which man gradually attained knowledge and penetrated into the spiritual world, or how—to use biblical terms—he became a ‘Prophet’.

The old way of attaining Initiation was this: first the soul was brought to maturity and every necessary preparation made; then a condition lasting for three-and-a-half days was induced in the candidate, a condition in which he was completely withdrawn from the outer world and from the organs through which that world is perceived. Those who were to be led into the spiritual world were carefully prepared and their souls trained in knowledge of the spiritual life; then they were withdrawn from the world for three-and-a-half days, being taken to a place where they could perceive nothing through their external senses and where their bodies lay in a deathlike condition; after three-and-a-half days their souls were summoned back again into the body and they were awakened. Such men were then able to remember their vision of the spiritual worlds and to testify of those worlds. The great secret of Initiation was that the soul, prepared by long training, was led out of the body for three-and-a-half days into an entirely different world, was shut off from the environment and penetrated into the spiritual world. Men who could bear witness to the realities of the spiritual world were always to be found among the peoples; they were men who had undergone the experience referred to in the Bible in the story of Jonah's sojourn in the whale. Such a man was made ready to undergo this experience and then, when he appeared before the people as an Initiate of the old order, he bore upon him the ‘sign of Jonah’ the sign of those who were able themselves to testify of the spiritual world.

This was the one form of Initiation. Christ said, in effect: ‘In the old sense there is no other sign save the sign of Jonah.’ (Luke XI, 29.) And He expressed Himself even more clearly according to the meaning of words in the Gospel of St. Matthew. ‘As a heritage from olden times there remains the possibility that without effort of his own, without Initiation, a man can develop a dim, shadowy kind of clairvoyance and through revelation from above be led into the spiritual world.’ The indication here is that there were also Initiates of a second kind—men who went about among their fellows and who, as a result of their particular lineage, were able to receive revelations from above in a kind of sublimated trance condition, without having undergone any special Initiation. Christ indicated that this twofold manner of being transported into the spiritual world had come down from ancient times. He bade the people to remember King Solomon—thereby pointing to an Individuality to whom, without effort on his own part, the spiritual world was revealed from above. The ‘Queen of Sheba’ who came to King Solomon was also the bearer of wisdom from above; she was the representative of those predestined to possess, by inheritance, the dim, shadowy clairvoyance with which all men were endowed in the Atlantean epoch. (See Luke XI, 31.)

Thus there were two kinds of Initiates: the one kind typified by King Solomon and the symbolic visit paid to him by the Queen of Sheba, the Queen from the South; the other kind typified by those who bore upon them the ‘sign of Jonah’, meaning the old Initiation in which the candidate, entirely cut off from the outer world, passed through the spiritual world for a period lasting three-and-a-half days. Christ now added: ‘A greater than Solomon, a greater than Jonah is here’—indicating thereby that something new had come into the world. The message was not to be conveyed to the etheric bodies of men from outside, through revelations, as in the case of Solomon, nor was it to be conveyed to etheric bodies from within through revelations imparted by the duly prepared astral body to the etheric body, as in the case of those symbolized by the sign of Jonah. ‘Here is something which enables a man who has made himself ready for it in his Ego, to unite his being with what belongs to the kingdoms of Heaven.’ The forces and powers from those kingdoms unite with the virginal part in the human soul, the part that belongs to the kingdoms of Heaven and that men can destroy if they turn away from the Christ-principle, but can cultivate and nurture if they receive into themselves what streams from the Christ-principle.

As indicated in the Gospel of St. Luke, Christ's teaching is imbued with the new element which came to the Earth at that time, and we see how all the old ways of proclaiming the kingdom of God were changed through the Event of Palestine. Christ says to those from whom, because of their preparation, He could expect some measure of understanding: ‘Of a truth there are some among you who are able to see the kingdom of God, not only in the manner of Solomon, through revelation, or through the Initiation symbolized by the sign of Jonah; if any among you had attained nothing further than that they would never see the kingdom of God in this incarnation before their death.’ The meaning is that before their death they would not have seen the kingdom of God unless they had attained Initiation in some form; but then they would also have had to pass through a condition similar to death. Christ wished to show that because of the new element now present in the world there can also be men who, even before they die are able to behold the kingdom of Heaven. The disciples did not at first understand what this meant. Christ wanted to convey to them that they were to be the ones who would come to know the mysteries of the kingdoms of Heaven before natural death or the death experienced in the old form of Initiation. The wonderful passage in the Gospel of St. Luke where Christ is speaking of a higher revelation, is as follows: "But I tell you of a truth, there be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the kingdom of God." (Luke IX, 27.) The disciples did not understand that it was they themselves who, being closely around Him, were chosen to experience the tremendous power of the Christ principle which would enable them to penetrate directly into the spiritual world. The spiritual world was to become visible to them without the sign of Solomon, and without the sign of Jonah. Did this actually happen?

Immediately after these words in the Gospel comes the scene of the Transfiguration, when three disciples—Peter, James and John—are led up into the spiritual world. The figures of Moses and Elijah appear before them in that world and, simultaneously, Christ Jesus in Glory. (Luke IX, 28–36.) The disciples gaze for a brief moment into the spiritual world—a testimony that insight into that world is possible without the faculties designated by the sign of Solomon and the sign of Jonah. But it is evident that they are still novices, for they fall asleep immediately after being torn out of their physical and etheric bodies by the stupendous power of what was happening. Christ finds them asleep. This account was meant to indicate the third way of entering the spiritual world, apart from the ways denoted by the signs of Solomon and of Jonah. Anyone capable in those days of interpreting the signs of the times would have known that the Ego itself must develop, that it must now be directly inspired, that the Divine Powers must work directly into the Ego.

It was also to be made evident that the men of that time, even the very best among them, were not capable of taking the Christ-principle into themselves. The event of the Transfiguration was to be a beginning but it was also to be shown that the disciples were not able, at the time, to receive the Christ-principle in the fullest sense. Hence their powers fail them immediately afterwards, when they want to apply the Christ-power to heal one who is possessed by an evil spirit but are unable to do so. Christ indicates that they are still only at the beginning, by saying: I shall have to stay a long time with you before your forces are able also to stream into other men. (See Luke IX, 41.) Thereupon He heals the one whom the disciples could not heal. But then He says, again hinting at the mystery behind these happenings, that the time has come when “the Son of Man shall be delivered into the hands of men”. This means: the time has come when the Ego, which is to be developed by men themselves in the course of their Earth-mission, is gradually to stream into them, to be given over to them. This Ego is to be recognized in its highest form in Christ. “Let these sayings sink down into your ears; for the Son of Man shall be delivered into the hands of men. But they understood not this saying; it was hid from them, that they perceived it not.” (Luke IX, 44–45.)

How many have understood this saying? Greater and greater numbers will, however, eventually understand that the Ego, the ‘Son of Man’, was to be given over to men at that time. And the explanation that was possible in those days, was added by Christ Jesus. He spoke to the following effect: As he stands before us, man is a product of the old forces that were active before the Luciferic beings had laid hold of human nature; but the Luciferic forces drew man down to a lower level. The results of all these processes have passed into the faculties possessed by him to-day. Everything that comes from the seed, as well as all human consciousness, is permeated by the influence that dragged man to a lower sphere.

Man is a twofold being. Whatever consciousness he has developed hitherto is permeated by the Luciferic forces. It is only the unconscious part of man's being, the last remnant of his evolution through the Saturn, Sun and Moon periods when no Luciferic forces were at work—it is only this that streams into him to-day as a virginal element of his nature; but it cannot unite with him without the qualities and forces he is able to develop in himself through the Christ-principle. As he stands before us, man is primarily a product of heredity, a confluence of what derives from the male and female seeds. From the beginning he develops as a duality—a duality already permeated by Luciferic forces. As long as a man is not illumined by self-consciousness, as long as out of his own Ego he cannot fully distinguish between good and evil, he reveals to us his earlier, original nature through the veil of his later nature. Only the part of man that is ‘childlike’ still retains a last remnant of the nature that was his before he succumbed to the influence of the Luciferic beings.

Hence there is a ‘childlike’ part and also a ‘grown’ part in man. It is the latter part of his being that is permeated by the Luciferic forces but its influence asserts itself from the very earliest embryonic stage onwards. The Luciferic forces also permeate the child, so that in ordinary life what was already implanted in the human being before the Luciferic influence, cannot make itself manifest. The Christ-power must re-awaken this, must unite with the best forces of the child-nature in man. The Christ-power may not link itself with the faculties that man has corrupted, with what derives merely from the intellect; the link must be with that which has remained from the child-nature of primeval times. That is what must be reinvigorated and must thereafter fructify the other part (of man's nature).

“But there arose a reasoning among them, which of them should be the greatest,” that is, which of them was most fitted to receive the Christ-principle into his own being. "But Jesus, perceiving the thought of their heart, took a child and set it by them and said unto them. Whosoever shall receive this child in my name"—that is, whosoever is united in Christ's name with what has remained from the times before the onset of the Luciferic influence “receiveth me; and whosoever shall receive me receiveth him that sent me” (Luke IX, 46–48)—that is, He who sent this (childlike) part of the human being to the Earth. Emphasis is there laid upon the great significance of what has remained ‘childlike’ in man and should be fostered and nurtured in human nature.

We may say of a human being standing before us that he has the rudiments of very good qualities. We may try our hardest to develop those qualities of his so that he makes real progress, but the methods usually adopted to-day take no account of what is present in the foundations of man's being. It is essential to pay heed to what has remained ‘childlike’ in man, for it is by way of this childlike nature that warmth can be imparted to the other faculties through the Christ-principle. The childlike nature must be developed in order that the other faculties may follow suit. Everyone has the childlike nature within him and this, when wakened to life, will also be responsive to union with the Christ-principle. But forces—of however lofty a kind—that are dominated by the Luciferic influence will, if they alone work in a man to-day, repudiate and scoff at what can live on Earth as the Christ power—as Christ Himself foretold.

The Gospel of St. Luke, brings home very clearly the purport and meaning of the new proclamation. When a man who bore on his forehead the sign of Jonah went about the world as an Initiate of the old order, he was recognized—but only by those who were knowers—as one who had come to testify of the spiritual worlds. Special preparation was needed before the sign of Jonah could be understood. But a new kind of preparation was now necessary in order to understand what was greater than anything indicated by the signs of Solomon and of Jonah—a new preparation which was to pave the way for a new understanding, a new way of maturing the soul. The contemporaries of Christ Jesus could at first understand only the old way, and the way preached by John the Baptist was the one known to most of them. That Christ was now bringing an entirely new impulse, that he was seeking for souls among those who did not in the least resemble men who would formerly have been considered suitable, was utterly incomprehensible to them. They had assumed that He would associate with those who practised the old kind of disciplinary exercises and would impart His teaching to such men. Hence they could not understand why He sat among those whom they regarded as ‘sinners’. But He said to them: If I were to impart in the old way the entirely new impulse I have come to give to mankind, if a new form of teaching were not to replace the old, it would be as if I were to sew a piece of new cloth on an old garment or pour new wine into old wine-skins. What is now to be given to humanity and is greater than anything indicated by the sign of Solomon or the sign of Jonah, this must be poured into new wine-skins, into new forms. And you must rouse yourselves sufficiently to understand the new teaching in a new form! (See Luke V, 36–37.)

Those who were to understand must now do so through the powerful influence of the Ego—not through what they had learnt but through what had poured into them from the spiritual Christ-Being Himself. Hence the chosen ones were not men who according to the old doctrines were properly prepared but men who in spite of having passed through many incarnations, proved to be simple human beings, able to understand through the power of Faith what had streamed into them. A ‘sign’ was to be placed before them as well, a sign now to be enacted before the eyes of all mankind. The ‘mystical death’ that had been a ceremonial act in the Mystery Temples for hundreds and thousands of years was now to be presented on the great arena of world-history. Everything that had taken place in the secrecy of the Temples of Initiation was brought into the open as a single event on Golgotha. A process hitherto witnessed only by the Initiates during the three-and-a-half days of an old Initiation was now enacted before mankind in concrete reality. Hence those to whom the facts were known could only describe the Event of Golgotha as being what in very truth it was: the old Initiation transformed into historical fact and enacted on the arena of world-history.

That is what took place on Golgotha! In former times the three-and-a-half days spent in deathlike sleep had brought to the few Initiates who witnessed it, the conviction that the spiritual will at all times be victorious over the bodily nature and that man's soul and spirit belong to a spiritual world. This was now to be a reality enacted before the eyes of the world. An Initiation transferred to the outer plane of world-history such was the Event of Golgotha. Hence this Initiation was not consummated only for those who witnessed the actual Event, but for all mankind. What issued from the death on the Cross streamed into the whole of humanity. A stream of spiritual life flowed into mankind from the drops of blood which fell from the wounds of Christ Jesus on Golgotha. For what had been imparted by other Teachers as ‘wisdom’ was now to pass into humanity as inner strength, inner power. That is the essential difference between the Event of Golgotha and the teachings given by the other Founders of religion.

Deeper understanding than exists to-day is necessary before there can be any true conception of what came to pass on Golgotha. When Earth evolution began, the human Ego was connected physically with the blood. The blood is the outer expression of the human Ego. Men would have made the Ego stronger and stronger, and if Christ had not appeared they would have been entirely engrossed in the development of egoism. They were protected from this by the Event of Golgotha. What was it that had to flow? The blood that is the surplus substantiality of the Ego! The process that began on the Mount of Olives when the drops of sweat fell from the Redeemer like drops of blood, was carried further when the blood flowed from the wounds of Christ Jesus on Golgotha. The blood flowing from the Cross was the sign of the surplus egoism in man's nature which had to be sacrificed. The spiritual significance of the sacrifice on Golgotha requires deep and penetrating study. The result of what happened there would not be apparent to a chemist—that is to say to one with the power of intellectual perception only. If the blood that flowed on Golgotha had been chemically analysed it would have been found to contain the same substances as the blood of other human beings; but occult investigation would discover it to have been quite different blood. Through the surplus blood in humanity men would have been engulfed in egoism if infinite Love had not enabled this blood to flow. As occult investigation finds, infinite Love is intermingled with the blood that flowed on Golgotha. The writer of the Gospel of St. Luke adhered to his purpose, which was to describe how, through Christ, there came into the world the infinite Love that would gradually drive out egoism. Each of the Evangelists describes what it was his particular function to describe.

If these things could be explained in still greater depth we should find that all contradictions alleged by materialistic research would be invalidated, as they are in the case of the antecedents of Jesus of Nazareth when the true facts of his early childhood are known. Each Evangelist describes what concerned him most closely from his own standpoint. St. Luke describes what his informants, who were ‘seers’ and ‘servants of the Word’ were able to perceive as the result of their special preparation. The other Evangelists are concerned with different aspects—the writer of the Gospel of St. Luke perceives the out-streaming Love which forgives the most terrible of all wrongs the physical world can inflict. Words expressing this ideal of Love, words of forgiveness even when the most terrible of wrongs has been committed, resound from the Cross on Golgotha: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do!” (Luke XXIII, 34.) Out of His infinite Love, He who on the Cross on Golgotha accomplishes the Deed of untold significance, implores forgiveness for those who have crucified Him.

And now we turn once again to the doctrine of the power of Faith. Emphasis was to be laid upon the fact that there is something in human nature that can stream from it and liberate man from the material world, no matter how firmly he may he bound to that world. Let us think of a man embroiled in the material world through every imaginable crime, so that the forum of that world itself inflicts the punishment; let us conceive, however, that he has saved for himself something that the power of Faith can cause to germinate within him. Such a man will differ from another who has no Faith, just as the one malefactor differed from the other. The one has no Faith, and the judgment is fulfilled. In the other, however, Faith is like a faint light shining into the spiritual world; hence he cannot lose the link with the spiritual. Therefore to him it is said: ‘To-day’—since you know that you are connected with the spiritual world—‘you shall be with me in Paradise!’ (See Luke XXIII, 43.)

Thus do the truths of Faith and Hope, as well as the truth of Love, resound from the Cross in the account given in the Gospel of St. Luke.

There is still something else, belonging to the same realm of the soul's life, upon which the writer of this Gospel wishes to lay emphasis.

When a man's whole being is pervaded with the Love that streamed from the Cross on Golgotha he can turn his eyes to the future and say: Evolution on the Earth must make it possible for the spirit living within me gradually to transform the whole of physical existence. We shall in time give back again to the Father-principle which existed before the onset of the Luciferic influence, the spirit we have received; we shall let our whole being be permeated by the Christ-principle and our hands will bring to expression what is living in our souls as a faithful picture of that principle. Our hands were not created by ourselves but by the Father-principle, and the Christ-principle will stream through them. As men pass through incarnation after incarnation, the spiritual power flowing from the Mystery of Golgotha will stream into what they achieve in their bodies—which are the creations of the Father-principle—so that the outer world will eventually be imbued with the Christ-principle. Men will be filled with the confidence that resounded from the Cross on Golgotha and leads to the highest Hope for the future, leads to the ideal that can be expressed by saying: I let Faith germinate within me, I let Love germinate within me and I know that when they grow strong enough they will pervade all external life. I know too that they will pervade everything within me that is the creation of the Father-principle. Thus Hope for humanity's future will be added to Faith and Love, and men will understand that in regard to the future they must acquire firm confidence, saying: If only I have Faith, if only I have Love I may entertain the Hope that what has come into me from Christ Jesus will gradually find its way into the outer world. And then the words resounding from the Cross as a sublime ideal will be understood: “Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit!” (Luke XXIII, 46.)

Words of Love, of Faith and of Hope ring out from the Cross according to the Gospel which indicates how spiritual streams that had previously been separate united in the soul of Jesus of Nazareth. What had formerly been received in the form of wisdom, streamed into men as an actual power of the soul, exemplified by the sublime ideal of Christ. It is incumbent upon human beings to acquire deeper and deeper understanding of what is communicated in a record such as the Gospel of St. Luke, in order that the three words resounding from the Cross may become active forces in the soul. When with the faculties that the truths of spiritual science can develop in them men come to feel that what streams down to them from the Cross is not lifeless exhortation but vital, active force, they will begin to realize that a truly living message is contained in the Gospel of St. Luke. It is the mission of spiritual science gradually to unveil what is enshrined in such records.

In this course of lectures we have tried to penetrate as deeply as possible into the content of St. Luke's Gospel. In the case of this Gospel too, one course of lectures cannot possibly unveil everything and you will realise at once that a very great deal has inevitably remained unexplained. But if you pursue the path indicated by lectures such as have been given here you will be able to penetrate more and more deeply into these truths and your souls will be better and better fitted to receive and assimilate the living Word hidden beneath the outer words.

Spiritual science is not a body of new teaching. It is an instrument for comprehending what has been given to humanity. Thus for us it is an instrument for understanding the Christian revelation. If you have this conception of spiritual science you will no longer say: ‘It is Christian theosophy or just another form of theosophy!’ There is only one spiritual science and we apply it as an instrument for proclaiming the truth, for bringing to light the treasures of the spiritual life of mankind. It is the same spiritual science that we apply in order to explain the Bhagavad Gita on one occasion and on another the Gospel of St. Luke. The greatness of spiritual science lies in the fact that it is able to penetrate into every treasure given to humanity in the realm of spiritual life; but we should have a false conception of it if we were to close our ears to any of the proclamations made to humanity.

It is with this attitude of mind that you should listen to the proclamation made in the Gospel of St. Luke, realizing that it is pervaded through and through by the inspiration of Love. And then the increasing knowledge that can be acquired from this Gospel with the help of spiritual science will contribute not only to insight into the mysteries of the surrounding Universe and of the spiritual ground of existence but to an understanding of the momentous words in the Gospel of St. Luke: ‘And peace be in the souls of men in whom there is good will.’ When thoroughly understood, the Gospel of St. Luke is able, more than any other religious text, to pour into the human soul that warmth-giving Love through which peace reigns on Earth—and that is the most beautiful mirror-image of divine mysteries revealed on Earth. What can be revealed must be mirrored on Earth and, as mirror-image, rise up again to the spiritual Heights. If we learn to understand spiritual science in this sense it will be able to reveal to us the mysteries of the divine-spiritual Beings and of spiritual existence, and the mirror-image of these revelations will live in our souls. Love and Peace—here is the most beautiful mirror-image on Earth of what streams down from the Heights.

In this way we can receive and assimilate the words of the Gospel of St. Luke which resounded when the forces of the Nirmanakaya of Buddha streamed down upon the Nathan Jesus-child. The revelations pour down from the spiritual worlds upon the Earth and are reflected from human hearts as Love and Peace to the extent to which men unfold the power, the ‘good will’, which the Christ-principle enables to flow from the centre of man's being, from his Ego. The proclamation rings out clearly and with the glow of warmth when we truly understand the meaning of these words in the Gospel of St. Luke:

The revelation of the spiritual worlds from the Heights and its answering reflection from the hearts of men brings peace to all whose purpose upon the evolving Earth is to unfold good will.

1. See references to the nature of this Ego in Lectures Four, Five and Seven.
2. See the lecture-courses given at Hamburg, in May 1908, and at Cassel, in July 1909;
also the book Christianity as Mystical Fact, Ch. VIII.

136. Spiritual Beings in the Heavenly Bodies and in the Kingdoms of Nature: Lecture X 14 Apr 1912, Helsinki Translator Unknown Rudolf Steiner
Just as the earth in the course of time turns its countenance, so to speak, to all the stars which shine to us from cosmic space, so may humanity learn through the ideals of Anthroposophy to look in an unbiased manner upon all which speaks spiritually from cosmic space. Through such a positive consideration of facts this ideal will best be reached—not through a sentimental emphasis of love and peace.

136. Spiritual Beings in the Heavenly Bodies and in the Kingdoms of Nature: Lecture X 14 Apr 1912, Helsinki
Translator Unknown
Rudolf Steiner

Just as the earth in the course of time turns its countenance, so to speak, to all the stars which shine to us from cosmic space, so may humanity learn through the ideals of Anthroposophy to look in an unbiased manner upon all which speaks spiritually from cosmic space. Through such a positive consideration of facts this ideal will best be reached—not through a sentimental emphasis of love and peace.

136. Spiritual Beings in the Heavenly Bodies and in the Kingdoms of Nature: Lecture X 14 Apr 1912, Helsinki Translator Unknown Rudolf Steiner
After the statements which we were able to make in the last lecture on the cooperation of the spirits of the various hierarchies in the kingdoms of nature, there still remains the mineral kingdom to be considered. We call to mind that we described the mineral kingdom by saying that its physical part alone exists in the physical world; while that which corresponds to the etheric body of the mineral we have to seek in the so-called astral world; the astral body in the Lower Devachanic world, and the actual group-ego of the mineral kingdom on the higher Devachanic plane. Thus the mineral kingdom presents a remarkable contrast to, man. Whilst we have to say with regard to man that all four principles of his being are active on the physical plane—the physical as well as the etheric body, the astral body and the ego—we must as it were, distribute all that man has on the one plane and say: with regard to the mineral we have to seek on the astral plane that which corresponds to the etheric body of man; on the Devachanic plane the astral body; and on the higher Devachanic plane the group-ego of the mineral. Thus, that which in man is concentrated on the physical plane, is in the case of the mineral divided in its activity, among the various worlds. Again, when we trace with occult vision what is really in question, we arrive at the following result. In the sense of occultism we must, in the first place, seek only that part of the mineral kingdom on the physical plane which is perceptible to the external senses. We must be quite clear as to the fact that only what we call the forms, the shapes of the mineral kingdom, are perceptible. We know—this can only be touched upon here—that the mineral world, at any rate in part, encounters us formed, organized, in such a manner that we perceive this formation as suitable to the mineral nature. If we look at a certain body of cubic form, and at another of a different form, we know that these forms are not accidental but are connected in a certain way with the nature of the mineral. Now occult investigation teaches us that the forms in the mineral which we call crystal-forms, can be traced back to the action of the Spirits of Form. Now because occultism always starts from reality and seeks to find the origin of this or that, names are so bestowed in occultism that the name points to something characteristic. The name “Spirits of Form” was chosen for the reason that in the kingdom which we on earth describe as the mineral kingdom, the Spirits of Form display their activity; and further that the offspring of the Spirits of Form—in the sense in which we have spoken of offspring of the higher hierarchies in the course of these lectures, are above all, active there. To understand the nature of the minerals we must be quite clear that, to physical perception, generally speaking, only the forms of the minerals exist. To be sure, certain forces are evident in the mineral kingdom—such as the forces of electricity, magnetism—forces that cause the minerals to appear in certain colors; but we must be quite clear that in general only the form of the mineral kingdom is to be observed on the physical plane. Without taking the other qualities into account, let us consider the forms which we encounter, at any rate in most of the mineral kingdom, and let us be quite clear that this pure form proceeds from the mode of operation of the Spirits of Form or their offspring. Now we come to the so-called etheric body, which we must describe as the second principle of a being of the mineral kingdom. The occult investigator cannot find what he has to describe as the etheric body of the mineral in the physical world; but he finds it in the same realm in which he must seek, if, for instance he wishes to find the astral body of the plant, or the group-ego of the animal. As we saw yesterday, he need make no other preparation with regard to his soul than that necessary for finding the group-ego of the animal. With the same condition of consciousness with which he perceives the group-ego of the animal, he also perceives the astral body of the plant, and that which lies behind the mineral kingdom as its etheric body. Now we have seen that we must extend our observations into the region of the planets of a planetary system; in our own planetary system to those planets which exist outside the earth. And we have shown that the corresponding forces externalizing themselves in the group-egos of the animals and the astral bodies of the plants, work directly from the planetary centers. Thither must we also go if we wish to seek for that which works etherically in the mineral. How a mineral is laved by life-powers can first be seen if we penetrate to that universal life which is common to all, from the earth to the rest of the planets of our planetary system. Thus the principle by which the mineral is animated, the life of the mineral, is not to be found in the physical world, or in the realm of what our earth directly offers us, but in the life-streams pouring down from the planets; stimulated constantly, to be sure, by the sun, but still streaming down directly from the planets, and permeating our earth-planet livingly; in order to permeate all that is form with their offspring, the etheric nature-spirits, of which we have spoken. Thus form has inner-being; in other words, the form of the mineral which proceeds solely from the physical plane, is not permeable but offers resistance. Were nothing active in the mineral but what is active on the physical plane, then the mineral would only make itself perceptible as form; but this form is filled with inner-being. For the mineral has also inner-being; it has the inner-being of the various mineral substances. Not only has it form, it has matter, it has substance. When we directly perceive this substance in the physical world, it appears to us as a dead, lifeless substance. To cosmic space it is not dead, to planetary space at least, it is something which is part of its own life, which is precipitated from the life of the planetary system. Just as the human or animal organism separates off hard products—the nails, for instance—so is the mineral substance put forth; but the active forces by means of which it is put forth are not to be sought upon the earth itself; hence it appears to the earth as dead. These streams of life, these life-forces, this etheric body must be sought as streaming down from the several planets. Just as in considering the group-egos of the animals we could say: In reality only the general forms are treated by the group-egos of the animals, and these are then further developed; so must we say: The streams of life sent down by the individual planets which permeate the earth from all sides, do not create forms for the minerals, for those are created by the Spirits of Form; but through these streams the minerals are permeated with inner-being. But this occurs in such a way that this inner-being gives certain main types, main substances: and each substance is thereby connected with a stream proceeding from one of the planets. Now because the minerals at once acquired solid forms, mobile types are not created from the planets by means of these planetary streams, but types of one kind only. And then through the various positions of the planets, as I have already described with regard to the group-souls of the animals—besides the main types, and substances—other types, subordinate substances are created, which again depend on the constellation of the individual planets. But what the planets create, each through its own original nature, is expressed in the principal substances of the earth's organism. Thus we have certain mineral main substances of the earth's organism of which we can say. Here is a substance which is what it is because it is permeated by an etheric stream from one of the planets; another is permeated by a stream from another planet. Thus we have to trace back the nature of mineral substances to activities in the planetary system which externalize as etheric streams in the organism of the earth. Therefore the occult schools which have to investigate such matters have also so referred the principal substances of our earth-organism to the planets, that they have designated those substances which have been produced quite directly—not through the constellation but through the principal activity of the planet—by the same or similar names as the planets; and indeed in such a way that occult observation has been strictly adhered to. If we observe the planet Saturn in our system we find that the life stream which permeates the earth directly from him is connected with the substance we call lead: so that we have a basic substance which is inwardly animated by Saturn. From Jupiter we get tin as main substance; from Mars, iron; and in the occult sense, from Venus, copper. With regard to Mercury we must take into consideration that he was later confused with Venus. The life-activity (in the sense of true occult nomenclature) produced creatively by Mercury, on account of its greater proximity when it penetrated the earth-organism, bears a still greater resemblance to the planet itself, for Mercury stands nearer to the earth than the other planets. Therefore this substance has been given the same name as the cosmic body itself, namely, Mercury or quicksilver. These are the principal substances which are connected in their etheric body with the corresponding planets of our system. If we recollect how we had to speak of all that works from the planetary system, with regard to the group-souls of the animals and the astral bodies of the plants, we find it is always a question of the beings in connection with the Spirits of Motion, either with themselves or their offspring, who work in their totality on the earth from the planets of the system. Thus we must also reckon as belonging to the sphere of the Spirits of Motion, that which etherically permeates the mineral substances. Now if we wish to consider what belongs to the mineral kingdom as astral body, we have to ascend, as it were, to a still higher world. In the whole sense of our past considerations it will be clear, that as we had to ascend from the astral body of the plant to the group-ego, from the planets to the sun—to the fixed star; so with regard to the mineral kingdom, if we pass from the etheric body to the astral body we must again ascend to the fixed star. That is, we can understand, and occult vision tells us, that the astral nature of the mineral works from those beings in the ranks of the hierarchies through whom comes from the sun that which is directly perceptible; from the beings we call the Spirits of Wisdom, or from that which is connected with their sphere. Thus even the offspring of the Spirits of Wisdom come into consideration. What thus works in the mineral is seen by occult investigation as quite separate, outside the mineral; but it is so seen that the life just described as existing in the mineral, as the etheric body of the mineral, is pressed in from outside. Whereas the astral body in man or animal holds together the etheric body from within; the etheric body of the mineral is as it were, pushed towards it from outside, not concentrated and held together inside as in man and animal. If we consider the relation of the astral body of man to his etheric body, we see that what works as etheric body is held together by the power of attraction. In the mineral the etheric body is compressed together from outside by forces; thus in the mineral the content, the inner nature expressed in the etheric stream is, by means of active astral forces compressed into the form. The mineral is held together astrally from outside, and indeed for the reason that it is determined through the different positions of the sun to the earth in relation to this astral pressure. One might say that the etheric substance is driven into the mineral from the point from which the sun shines upon the earth. Thus while this etheric substance is itself directed by the planet, it is driven into and held within the mineral or crystal by the sun, by the forces belonging to the sphere of the Spirits of Wisdom. But now something very remarkable is seen. If we investigate occultly the activity exercised by the astral forces from the sun upon the mineral, we recognize very clearly at this point a very important fact; we learn that while all the etheric forces proceeding from the planets work upon the mineral and actually form its basic substances, other etheric streams also pass down from the sun as such to the earth. Thus, while in general, for the normal formation of the mineral, the etheric substance passes down from the planets, and is only compressed from outside by the forces proceeding from the sun, yet we cannot say that no etheric streams come down from the sun, for it is a fact that such an etheric stream does come down. What is the reason of this? Why does an etheric stream come down from the sun which can, as it were, inwardly animate the mineral? Why does this take place? It is brought about by the activity of what I have designated as the Luciferic principle. The spirits in the ranks of the higher hierarchies which work astrally upon the mineral are—as we have just said—the Spirits of Wisdom: whilst the Spirits of Motion work etherically. Now there are Spirits of Wisdom active on the sun who have gone through their complete normal process of evolution; they work, as has been described, astrally upon the mineral. But certain of the Spirits of Wisdom have become Luciferic. We have designated this “becoming Luciferic” of certain spiritual beings of a hierarchy, as a sort of rebellion in the cosmos. This rebellion comes about because certain spirits having reached a given stage in their hierarchy, resist their brethren and work against them; work in an opposite direction. This opposition comes about simply because they do not wish to go through the evolution which the others do; so they simply remain behind at an earlier stage, just as we know in our own souls that we wish to progress, yet the ideas and habits we have acquired Will not allow us to do so because they wish to remain as a permanence. Our habits are often rebels against what we have acquired in a new epoch of life. In like manner the spiritual beings who remain behind at an earlier stage are rebels in the Cosmos. The Luciferic Spirits, the Spirits of Wisdom of the Second Hierarchy who have not gone through their development with the rest—instead of sending astral streams from the sun to the mineral, send etheric streams to the earth. This resulted in a certain basic substance being formed, which received its inner-being, not from the planets but directly from the sun; and this mineral is gold. Gold is that Luciferic mineral which as regards its inner-being is not influenced etherically by the planets, but by the sun. Hence the occultist has allotted gold to the sun. In a certain sense this mineral is therefore somewhat different from other metals. Now you can easily grasp that because etheric streams come from the sun and work something into the earth which is actually a rebel principle, the equilibrium of the earth is thereby disturbed. The equilibrium of the earth in relation to the mineral kingdom would be maintained if all the etheric influences came from the planets, and none but astral influences came to the minerals from the sun; but there are also direct etheric forces coming from the sun and these disturb the equilibrium. Now, this equilibrium had to be re-established by the Wise Leaders of the world; for the earth could not carry out her evolution under such conditions. The hierarchies had to work in cooperation so that the equilibrium might be re-established. The stronger Luciferic forces had to be opposed by other forces which in a certain sense paralyzed them and arrested their effects. That could only come about through the etheric stream which came from the sun being opposed by another, which counteracted, and in a certain sense, balanced its effects. Thus while certain Spirits of Wisdom proved themselves Luciferic and sent down etheric currents from the sun into the mineral kingdom on the earth, other spirits took care that these were opposed by other currents. These opposing currents which re-adjusted the equilibrium, were created by a part of the disturbed equilibrium substance being detached from the earth and circling round the earth as moon. Thus the etheric streams coming from the sun came into opposition to the etheric stream which flowed from the moon to the earth from quite a different quarter, and in this way the balance was re-established. Thus because Luciferic Spirits of Wisdom on the sun had attained the possibility of sending forth etheric streams, other Spirits of Wisdom renounced their claim to working from the sun, and consented to apply their forces to restoring the equilibrium. That is, a cosmic colony, a planetary colony was founded on the moon, from which there now streamed etheric currents to the earth, so that a substance was created which had to be in the earth so that the direct power of gold might be weakened. This came about by the moon being separated from the earth; and from the Spirits of Wisdom who separated the moon, and who now, in a sense, became the opposers of the Luciferic Spirits of Wisdom from the sun, stream down to the earth those etheric forces which have produced the substance silver. Thus you see that in the universe, in the cosmos, certain things work in such a way that one might explain it by means of a certain diagram; but the peculiar thing is that the diagram would everywhere be broken through. If anyone were to prove by means of a diagram that all the etheric forces for the minerals come from the planets, he would be in error; for in reality two etheric streams come from two different sides, the one from the sun, the other from the moon; hence two basic substances are formed in a different way. If we wish to make what I have just described, objective, perceptible to our senses, and to find an external expression for it, we can achieve it in the following way; but we must first of all be clear as to what it really is that we see when we look at the sun. We pointed out previously that only the spirits of the higher hierarchies down to the Spirits of Wisdom go through their own evolution on the fixed star; what we see when we look at the fixed star is the actual content-substance of the Spirits of Wisdom. That is the true content of the fixed star. Indeed we human beings can only gain a concept of that which is the substance of the Spirits of Wisdom, by contemplating what exists in us, as at any rate an image of this substance. What is that in us, in humanity, in the human soul, which is a symbol of the substance of the Spirits of Wisdom? Our thoughts! But we do not see our thoughts with the physical eyes, that is the point; neither can the fixed stars, in so far as they are the fields of activity for the genuine Spirits of Wisdom, be seen with physical eyes. We have now reached a point where we can point again to the enormous significance of what we find in the religious documents, which are based on occultism. You know that the Bible, in Genesis, states that man was created in a very peculiar way. We are told that Lucifer appeared to Eve and told her that if she would do as he wished, her eyes would be opened. Anyone who knows the original text will not readily be put off with a merely symbolical explanation; for what the Bible means by good and evil does not refer to moral good and evil; that belongs to quite a different part of the development of civilisation. What is here meant as good and evil is that which is seen externally, not as something spiritually-psychic, but something seen with the physical eyes:—“Your eyes shall he opened.” Till then they were not open. This must be taken quite literally. Before Lucifer approached man, man could perceive; he saw the fixed stars with the primitive clairvoyance then given to man, but his vision was such that he saw the substance of the fixed stars as the substance of the Spirits of Wisdom; he saw them spiritually. He only began to see them physically, that is, perceptible light first streamed towards him perceptibly to his physical eyes, when he himself, the human being, had yielded to the Luciferic temptation. That means that the fixed stars as directed by the Spirits of Wisdom, are not physically visible, they do not shed physical light. Physical light can only be shed if there is something underlying it which serves as a bearer to the light, when light is, as it were, held captive through a bearer. For a fixed star to become visible, something more is necessary than the mere presence of Spiritual Beings of Wisdom at work there. It is necessary that in this fixed star Luciferic Beings should work, who resist the mere substance of Wisdom and permeate it with their own principle. Thus within the fixed star is mingled that which is only visible spiritually and that which resists this merely spiritual visibility: the Luciferic element in the fixed star which carries forth the light into physical phenomena. The fixed star would not be visible if it had not within it, in addition to the Spirits of Wisdom who have progressed normally, those who have not attained their goal, who remained at a lower stage, either at the stage of the Spirits of Motion or that of the Spirits of Form. Thus we have to recognize backward Spirits of Wisdom who have not attained their goal, as light-bearers in the lightless spiritual substance of the fixed star. Now, if we are clear as to the fact that from the fixed stars, from our own sun, physical light only reaches us because the normal Spirits of Wisdom have as companions those who have remained behind and who have become light-bearers:—Light—Lucifer—Phosphoros—we must also be clear that the same cause which makes the sun visible, which sends light to us from the fixed star, is also that which sends the etheric life-stream to the earth and produces gold. It was necessary therefore that other forces should work from the moon (which occult vision perceives as etheric currents), forces which produce silver. Now, as they are Spirits of Wisdom who oppose the moon to the sun in order to bring about an adjustment, we must say: “These Spirits of Wisdom upon the moon cannot shine;” for the Spirits of Wisdom do not shine.—Hence if occult vision searches for these spirits on the moon, it does not discover them as luminous; for these Spirits of Wisdom who founded a colony on the moon, were obliged to exclude the Lucifer Spirits from the moon, otherwise the balance would not have been maintained. That is to say, the moon cannot ray out any light of its own, only that reflected as sunlight. Quite normal Spirits of Wisdom made a sacrifice and took up their position on the moon in order to supply the earth with the necessary currents for keeping the equilibrium, in opposition to the Lucifer currents which stream from the sun. Hence the moon is excluded from having light of its own; and it is not difficult in this external fact which we encounter in the physical world, to see the symbol of a deep occult connection. The sun has its own light which appears to us, but the moon has not; and the reflected light which rays to us from the moon, and of which Lucifer is the bearer.—Lucifer—Phosphoros—tells us that the moon has no light of its own. Therefore that which is Lucifer can only appear to us in symbol, in a Maya, shining down from the moon, because the sunlight is reflected. When for instance, the crescent moon reflects the sunlight, there are then no Luciferic Spirits of Wisdom on the moon itself, but what is poured forth from the sun by the Luciferic Spirits of Wisdom is reflected as light. Now when we turn our occult vision to the moon, that which the physical eyes perceive, the shining crescent moon, disappears, for that exists only for physical vision; but in its place occult vision sees the real being behind all visible light in the cosmos; sees the form of Lucifer, though certainly as a reflection. Thus, if we think of the image of Lucifer as seen by occult vision in the place of the crescent moon, we must say: The moon owes its origin to the circumstances that certain normal Spirits of Wisdom renounced their dwelling-place on the sun and have taken up their abode in this colony, and thence restrain that which streams forth from the Luciferic Spirits. Hence to occult vision the Spirit of Wisdom does not reveal himself here, above the crescent of the moon, but is to be seen restraining the Luciferic principle. The occult fact is thus presented symbolically to the imagination, as a normal Spirit of Wisdom holding the Luciferic principle in subjection. The occultists therefore represent a form, usually taken to be a Chief Messenger of the higher Spirits of Wisdom, of one who curbs Lucifer; and in place of the crescent they represent Lucifer chained, curbed. This is an occult picture. Among our occult pictures there is also one representing the chief Messenger curbing Lucifer. This is an allusion to profound occult mysteries. What is thus shown externally in Maya, is in reality to be ascribed to the cooperation of the Spirits of the Hierarchies. When with physical eyes we see the crescent moon shining silver bright, there is often to be seen a sort of shadow above in the dark part; then to occult vision the crescent moon is transformed into a living Being, with the restraining Spirit above it, maintaining the balance from its place on the moon. Thus you see that even to produce a phenomenon such as our earth moon, many preparations had to be made in the COSMOS. The cooperative activities of the various hierarchies in the cosmos is a very complicated matter and even in a much longer course of lectures we could still only give suggestions of it; we can only make clear the principle as to how these spiritual, hierarchies cooperate. Please hold fast the thought just mentioned in connection with the astral body of the minerals. We have, indeed, still to consider the group-ego of the minerals; that has to be sought in a still higher super-sensible world—in a world not found in the regions where the group-egos of the animals or plants are to be found. Therefore we cannot find it upon the sun. Where then does the group-ego of the minerals reveal itself to occult vision? The peculiar thing about the group-ego of the minerals is, that, strictly speaking, it does not end anywhere when we search in cosmic space; it is in the whole widths of cosmic space and works from there. We are therefore driven to seek actually for the group-ego of the minerals outside the planetary system; we must look upon it as something which works into the planetary system from outside. Thus far this coincides with what we know from the Akashic Records, that the next higher class of beings above the Spirits of Wisdom are the Thrones, or Spirits of Will. These Spirits of Will belong to the First Hierarchy (though their offspring are not so far advanced that they can be reckoned with it), these Spirits of Will or their offspring give forth that which becomes the group-ego of the minerals, and which, in fact, works into the planetary system. This also coincides with the fact that simultaneously with the out-pouring of the substance of the Spirits of Will, begins the formation of the planetary system on ancient Saturn which was brought about by the Spirits of Will. They still work in the same way at the present time as when the first embodiment of our earth was built up out of the Universe by these beings. We can really only see these Spirits of Will when, having become Luciferic, they reveal themselves in a sense in certain phenomena which we find as minerals in the sphere of the earth, and which come, as it were, from cosmic space. The cosmic origin, the super-earthly origin of what we are now considering, is revealed by the fact that when these Spirits of Will thus work in they combine—very, very easily with that which works into the planetary system as the cometary and meteoric beings—as cometary or meteoric life. We have pointed out what meaning this life has in the planetary system. I should like at least to indicate that in reality a comet is something which comes in from outside, but which makes certain combinations. In as much as the comet travels through the planetary system it combines with the mineral kingdom which also arises through the Spirits of Will. And the result may be that as the comet rushes through the planetary system it attaches mineral substance to itself, which is then attracted by the earth and falls down upon it. This of course is not the comet, but rather does it announce its approach to the earth by a fall of meteors taking place. These things are absolutely in accord, and if certain things appear to contradict what was represented earlier, we must always understand that these contradictions will solve themselves if everything is taken into consideration and studied. This was only an, example to show that in the planetary system we really have to do with influences working in from the cosmos. These group-souls of the minerals work in the form of rays from without inwards. And since various modes of operation come from the various aspects of space, for space is not homogeneous, these group-souls of the minerals, which belong to the sphere of the Spirits of Will, ray towards us from different sides in the most varied manner. Now through the cooperation of what comes from the planets for the minerals, what comes from the sun, and what streams in from the universe from the various directions arises the possibility that not only have those basic types already mentioned come into existence in the mineral kingdom, but all sorts of other forms, all sorts of differently modified substances of the mineral kingdom have been formed. The kind of substance a mineral exhibits simply depends on the way the forces which come from the planets are again influenced by other forces either streaming astrally to the earth from the sun, or from various directions of cosmic space. The variety and multiplicity of the mineral kingdom can be understood in this way. If we observe our present-day Saturn, it presents itself in the first place to occult vision as the outermost planet of our System. Why? Because actually Saturn as planet, as well as ancient Saturn, the first of the successive incarnations of our earth known to us, was produced by the furthest currents coming from cosmic space. Had we been able to observe Saturn at a very early condition of our earth evolution, we should have seen that in his orbit he had a sort of nucleus and a sort of comet's tail, which passed out into cosmic space. In olden times Saturn would have revealed himself definitely with a nucleus and a comet's tail, extending into cosmic space. That is, in the primeval periods of our earth, Saturn would have been seen circling round his orbit with his tail pointing outwards. He was earlier like this (see below). The facts of the Akasha Chronicle show him thus: The tail of ancient Saturn took the most varied directions out into space, corresponding with the currents which came in from the cosmos, directed by the Spirits of Will, who are the group-souls of the minerals. At a later period, when through the spiritual beings of other hierarchies, the planetary system was enclosed, that which had formerly gone out into cosmic space was so drawn together that the tail became an enclosed ring; through the power of attraction of the planetary system the ring was formed. To occult vision the ring of Saturn is absolutely the same phenomenon as the comet's tail. If you were to take the ring of Saturn as it circles round Saturn and open it out, you would have a comet's tail. (See Diagram.) In this way it is possible to look back to the streaming in of the group-souls of the minerals into our planetary system; and again the Signs of the Zodiac in general give us their individual positions. It is to be noted that the two outermost planets now reckoned as belonging to our system by physical astronomy—Uranus and Neptune—did not originally belong to our Solar System; they came much later into the sphere of attraction of our system: they then joined company and remained within it. They cannot therefore be reckoned in the same sense as the other planets as belonging to our system from Saturn onwards, for they, so to speak, belonged to it from the beginning. Thus, when we consider Saturn, especially in his ancient form, we see in him a planet which, by sending forth etheric currents from his own center to our earth, creates—we can even say—the substance of lead. At the same time we see how the group-souls of the minerals stream in; we see how these group-souls are affected when a power of attraction is exercised on them from the sun, from which the astral body of the mineral streams out. From the sun the astral body of the mineral streams out into space; from outside in cosmic Space the ego of the mineral streams in. When these currents are united something takes place which, in a modified way, expresses itself, as it were, in a fructification of the group-ego by the astral body, and by this means alone does the mineral come to its perfection. Now if we go back to the comet, here, too, we have something which, in fact, streams in from cosmic space: a similar stream of beings to the group-souls of the minerals. The group-souls of the minerals belong to the sphere of the Spirits of Will; but above them lie the beings who essentially form the basis of cometary life. But as everywhere there are Luciferic Beings, so also within the comet there are such as stand at the stage of the Thrones, not of the Cherubim and Seraphim. That is why the comet acquires a mineral nature; appears as a mineral intervention in the planetary system; in other words, we have to look upon the comets as cosmic bodies which fly in from the cosmos after the planetary system is already formed and thus do not come as far as the bodies composing the system itself, but remain behind at a considerably earlier stage. It would certainly be very fascinating to trace the stages of cosmic growth; how worlds are formed by the cooperative activities of the spirits of the hierarchies in a fixed-star system; how those same spirits themselves appear when we direct our gaze back to cosmic mists and far-distant fixed stars. Whenever we direct our occult vision to a fixed star, we first of all encounter the normal Spirits of Wisdom. The whole heavens would be invisible to physical sight and only visible to clairvoyant consciousness if none but these normal Spirits of Wisdom were active; but everywhere Luciferic spirits are mingled with the normal Spirits of Wisdom, and bring physical light of its own into the world of the fixed star. When at night the starry heaven is illuminated, Phosphorus actually works down upon us from countless points: and everywhere in the universe we find the possibility of formation only through the cooperation of the opposing forces; through the combined working of the normal spirits of the hierarchies with those who are rebels—that is, those who have remained behind. Unillumined to physical eyes but visible to spiritual sight, is the starry world through the normal Spirits of Wisdom; it became luminous to physical eyes, it is revealed in Maya through Lucifer or the Luciferic spirits who are, and must be, active everywhere. Thus, we have seen something very remarkable in the mineral kingdom also. To-day we have, so to speak, grasped the moon as a field of action from which a Spirit of Wisdom works and restrains Lucifer, because a place had to be created from which through opposition of the Luciferic activity, the balance would be restored. Now what signification had this for humanity? We have seen that in man everything is compressed into the physical plane which as it were, for the mineral, is distributed over the worlds. We have found group-souls for the minerals, plants and animals. Is there also a sort of group-soul for the human being? Oh, yes, there is. The group-souls of the minerals are to be found in the sphere of the Thrones, those of the plants in the sphere of the Spirits of Wisdom, and the animals in the sphere of the Spirits of Motion; but man has so received his group-soul that with the inflowing of his ego, a group-soul was originally given him, as an emanation from the Spirits of Form. This group-soul of man was originally allotted by the Spirits of Form to be a unitary soul for the whole of humanity. What differentiated this group-soul into such variety that differences of race, differences of tribe arose? This was brought about through the action of other spirits. Man was created to be one all the world over; in this unity the primeval ego of man was to assert itself as a group-soul dwelling in all men, a group-soul which had descended to the physical plane. Just as the external form only of the minerals can be brought into being by the Spirits of Form, so by these same Spirits of Form was the group-ego created for humanity, which was then differentiated by the activity of other beings of the various hierarchies. Now the balance brought about for the mineral kingdom through the formation of the moon was also brought about for humanity; and indeed in such a way that whilst for the mineral realm in the moon there is a physical readjustment, in exactly the same way a moon-principle exists for humanity, which works against the Luciferic influence in human nature, just as in the mineral kingdom the dark moon-principle works against the Lucifer principle. Just as in the mineral kingdom something is active in the moon which keeps the balance with regard to the Luciferic forces streaming down from the sun, so does a spiritual moon-principle work from the moon against the temptation of Lucifer which man has encountered in the course of the earth evolution. As we have seen, all the planets, all the heavenly bodies stand in connection with beings of the higher hierarchies, and so, too, is it with the moon. The Spirits of Wisdom founded a colony upon the moon in order to preserve the equilibrium; and so from the direction of the moon there also Work in upon humanity compensating spirits against Lucifer, who approached man as a tempter; and just as he disseminated light, so, too, did his spiritual principle sink down into the human soul. So we can also point to the moon as the bearer of the opponent of Lucifer; as the dwelling-place of dark spirits, who yet must be there that the balance may be maintained with regard to the Light-bearers pressing forward, who, at the same time, are the tempting spirits to humanity. In fact, the secret of the moon and its spiritual principle was first revealed to humanity in the old Hebrew Records, and what we have found physically in the moon is, in its spiritual aspect, what Hebrew antiquity designated as the Jehovah principle. According to this the moon, so to speak, is designated as the starting-point of the forces working upon humanity as the opponents of Lucifer. Jahveh, or Jehovah, is the opponent of Lucifer. The secret doctrine of the ancient Hebrews looked up to the Sun, saying: In the Sun work the invisible Spirits of Wisdom who are only visible to spiritual, not to physical sight. The latter sees the principle of Lucifer raying down. What is to be seen externally as the sun principle is Lucifer; but therein works secretly, invisible to physical vision, everything attainable through the Spirits of Wisdom, who form the gateway to it. One of these Spirits of Wisdom separated and sacrificed himself, and has taken up his abode upon the moon in order through his activity there to curb the light and also to counteract the spiritual work of Lucifer. Hebrew antiquity saw in Jehovah an Ambassador of those true exalted spirits to whom vision is opened through the Spirits of Wisdom, if the sun is looked upon with spiritual sight. Hebrew antiquity justly concluded that Jehovah must continue to work from the moon until humanity has become inwardly mature enough to perceive and feel at least a little of that which gradually in the course of evolution will be both seen and understood—that from the same sun proceeds not only the physical part of Lucifer, but also the dissemination of that of which the Spirits of Wisdom are the portal. Thus to the ancient Hebrew there appeared in Jehovah that which is similar to the Spirits of Wisdom in the sun, and we can say: just as the sunlight is reflected from the moon in space, so to the ancient Hebrew who really knew, Jehovah was the reflection of that Spiritual Being Who, when man shall have become sufficiently mature, will ray down from the sun, and Whose appearance was foretold by the Holy Rishis, Zarathustra, and the worshippers of Osiris. Just as in space sunlight is reflected from the moon, so Jehovah is revealed as a reflection of the principle of the great Sun-Spirit Whom you may designate by whatever name you will—Vishvakarma, as the ancient Indians called him; Ahura Mazdao, as He was called by Zarathustra, Osiris by the ancient Egyptians, or as the Christ, as He is known to the fourth post-Atlantean period of civilisation—that is, the esoteric comprehension of Jehovah. He is Christ reflected by the moon-principle and because reflected in time, Christ announced prophetically. Hence in St. John's Gospel we come across a passage which otherwise can never be understood, in which it is said that Moses spoke of Christ. Actually, he spoke of Jehovah, but it is Christ, prophetically announced. This passage, in which Jehovah is mentioned is referred to because the bearer of the Christ wishes to point out that in antiquity Jehovah is but Christ foretold. Thus we see that these things are in accord, and that what we have heard to-day is connected with what was said in the last lecture; and that in what we call the external light and its bearer we must recognize something which is in opposition to the spiritual principle which is at the normal point of its evolution, and which appears to us as the spiritual center of our planetary system. It is not a question of names, but of recognizing the whole significance of this Principle. We must recognize that in the realm of the spiritual, we speak of Christ just as in that of the physical we speak of the Sun; that in the realm of the spiritual we speak of the planetary spirits and of the planets just as in the development of earthly civilisation we speak, perhaps, of the principle of Buddha. Here again is a point concerning which you find one of the important revelations you come across in H. P. Blavatsky. What great revelations there are in The Secret Doctrine you can see by the way H. P. Blavatsky treats the conception of Jehovah. We need not recoil at this, or think things are not correct because she shows a certain antipathy towards Christ and Jehovah; the truth nevertheless presses through, and the description of Jehovah as a Moon divinity, and the presentation of Lucifer as his opponent as given by H. P. Blavatsky is—one might say—the broken expression of a truth. The presentation given from inspiration by Blavatsky is only given a subjective coloring by her, because she had a feeling that Lucifer was really a good Divinity—she felt him as such. She preferred him, in a certain sense to the Moon-god, because to her Lucifer was a Sun-god. That is correct; he is that; but we had to represent the true connection in order that the expression used in former times. “Christ is the true Lucifer,” “Christus verus Luciferus,” may be understood. It does not sound quite right to us today; but at that time when people knew from the old Secret Doctrine that the Light-Bearer manifests in the external physical light, and that, if we penetrate through the physical light to the Spirits of Wisdom, to the spiritual light, then we reach the Light-Bearer of that Light. “Christus verus Luciferus”—I think, in spite of the incompleteness which was inevitable in our rendering of this comprehensive theme, yet what we always wish to attain in the sphere of Spiritual Science has come before your souls, that the treatment of every theme leads us to look up from the physical to the spiritual. With regard to the heavenly bodies which, as the expression of the wonders of the universe, shine forth from space, that is in many respects, very difficult; because in the heavenly bodies there is a complicated cooperation of the beings of the various hierarchies, and because everything which takes place in cosmic space can only be comprehended if, behind all matter, even behind the substance of light itself, we find the Spirit or Spirits. Behind all this Spiritual Life lies the Universal, Divine Fatherhood, an Omnipresent and ever-working All-Divine Life, which before It comes to expression in the physical, is differentiated into countless worlds of Spiritual Hierarchies. We look up to these worlds, however, and see within them, That which works down into our kingdoms of nature, and is the foundation of all the wonders of the heavens. For even in our kingdoms of nature either the hierarchies themselves are revealed or their offspring. When we thus look out into the spaces of heaven, we can, through such reflections, also gain a moral impression which must, if we allow the mighty operations of the hierarchies in cosmic space to gain a little influence over us, result in our being drawn away from the passions, desires, impulses and concepts which our physical earth-life brings to maturity. These are, in essence, that which flings down into the development of the earth that which divides humanity into factions, which makes men all over the world opponents or partisans, in the most varied directions. In a higher moral sense we attain a sense of freedom, if but for a brief time, we free ourselves from the consideration of earthly things, and contemplate the worlds of spirit in cosmic space. Then do we become free from that which otherwise plays in our egotistical impulses, which are the original cause of all the smallnesses and quarreling upon earth. Hence the most certain means of attaining the high ideals of our Anthroposophical life is to direct our gaze from time to time to the starry worlds and their spiritual guides and leaders, the hierarchies. If we investigate the different civilizations as we have tried to do and the significance of the inspiring spirits of the various religions and of the bearers of Wisdom to humanity, we shall cease to strive on earth as followers of individual systems. We shall not depend on names, nor on the creeds of the several groups of men on the earth. When men seek their knowledge there where the vision of all the humanity of the earth can he directed, and where the knowledge common to all can be obtained—knowledge which unites and does not separate—when men actually reach that heavenly language which expresses the significance of the various religious Founders and Inspirers of humanity, then will the Anthroposophical ideal of a tolerant and unbiased consideration of all religions and cosmic conceptions be really able to appear. Men will no longer quarrel when they no longer claim for their own group a particular bearer of religion or stream of civilisation, but seek for the origin of these bearers outside in cosmic space. In this sense such a contemplation may acquire great moral importance if in much which formerly brought divisions and disharmonies upon earth, peace and harmony are established. Only we must learn to read the mighty writing given us in the forms and movements of the heavenly bodies—learn to read how, in reality, not different but the same spirits, work for each single individual on earth—that they belong to all men. This might be explained by means of a physical picture. As long as we remain on the earth, a group of people may dwell in the North or in the South, East or West. But when we look upon the movement of the earth and observe how it turns its face to the stars when it changes its position—whether in short periods of time or in millions of years—how the southern half turns to the northern and the stars of our northern heavens become visible, and then the northern part of our earth turns to the south and perceives the stars of the southern heavens. Just as the earth in the course of time turns its countenance, so to speak, to all the stars which shine to us from cosmic space, so may humanity learn through the ideals of Anthroposophy to look in an unbiased manner upon all which speaks spiritually from cosmic space. Through such a positive consideration of facts this ideal will best be reached—not through a sentimental emphasis of love and peace. In a real way shall we attain love and peace and harmony, if we direct our vision away from the concerns of earth which divide humanity into races, nations, religions—to the starry heavens, where spirits speak the same language to us through all time, even through all eternity; the same language for every human soul, for every human heart, if only we understand it rightly. In this sense I should like now, at the end of our course of lectures, to point to the moral effects of such considerations, if we take the trouble to learn to know the facts of occultism. If we learn to know them in the true occult sense, what has been learnt will so stream into our hearts that it becomes a life-force within us, a living hope; and, above all, will become moral energy, and really make us what we may call citizens of the heavenly worlds. Then through his spiritual life a man carries heaven into the concerns of earth, and thus in the course of the processes of civilisation, brings about that which, in the highest sense, we can designate as harmony, as peace. Then will man become more and more conscious that at the very beginning as well as at the end of the evolution of civilisation an undivided Spirit really governs, a Spirit of Form, Who works uniformly throughout humanity, while He is stimulated by His brothers, the other Spirits of Form, who do Him service, in order to send a uniform working through the whole of humanity. Thus through true heavenly science something uniform is brought to men, and this will promote the intellectual and moral understanding of humanity on the earth. Thus we do not wish to consider merely the abstract and theoretical; but every such consideration ought at the same time to become in us a source of power, above all, a source of moral power; and then will all our teachings, even those which appear drawn from afar, serve to forward the direct aims and ideals of Spiritual Science. With these words, my dear friends, which should gather up the whole spirit and character of these lectures into a certain nuance of feeling, I should like at their close to take farewell of you all.

136. Spiritual Beings in the Heavenly Bodies and in the Kingdoms of Nature: Lecture X 14 Apr 1912, Helsinki
Translator Unknown
Rudolf Steiner

After the statements which we were able to make in the last lecture on the cooperation of the spirits of the various hierarchies in the kingdoms of nature, there still remains the mineral kingdom to be considered. We call to mind that we described the mineral kingdom by saying that its physical part alone exists in the physical world; while that which corresponds to the etheric body of the mineral we have to seek in the so-called astral world; the astral body in the Lower Devachanic world, and the actual group-ego of the mineral kingdom on the higher Devachanic plane. Thus the mineral kingdom presents a remarkable contrast to, man. Whilst we have to say with regard to man that all four principles of his being are active on the physical plane—the physical as well as the etheric body, the astral body and the ego—we must as it were, distribute all that man has on the one plane and say: with regard to the mineral we have to seek on the astral plane that which corresponds to the etheric body of man; on the Devachanic plane the astral body; and on the higher Devachanic plane the group-ego of the mineral. Thus, that which in man is concentrated on the physical plane, is in the case of the mineral divided in its activity, among the various worlds. Again, when we trace with occult vision what is really in question, we arrive at the following result. In the sense of occultism we must, in the first place, seek only that part of the mineral kingdom on the physical plane which is perceptible to the external senses. We must be quite clear as to the fact that only what we call the forms, the shapes of the mineral kingdom, are perceptible. We know—this can only be touched upon here—that the mineral world, at any rate in part, encounters us formed, organized, in such a manner that we perceive this formation as suitable to the mineral nature. If we look at a certain body of cubic form, and at another of a different form, we know that these forms are not accidental but are connected in a certain way with the nature of the mineral. Now occult investigation teaches us that the forms in the mineral which we call crystal-forms, can be traced back to the action of the Spirits of Form. Now because occultism always starts from reality and seeks to find the origin of this or that, names are so bestowed in occultism that the name points to something characteristic. The name “Spirits of Form” was chosen for the reason that in the kingdom which we on earth describe as the mineral kingdom, the Spirits of Form display their activity; and further that the offspring of the Spirits of Form—in the sense in which we have spoken of offspring of the higher hierarchies in the course of these lectures, are above all, active there. To understand the nature of the minerals we must be quite clear that, to physical perception, generally speaking, only the forms of the minerals exist. To be sure, certain forces are evident in the mineral kingdom—such as the forces of electricity, magnetism—forces that cause the minerals to appear in certain colors; but we must be quite clear that in general only the form of the mineral kingdom is to be observed on the physical plane. Without taking the other qualities into account, let us consider the forms which we encounter, at any rate in most of the mineral kingdom, and let us be quite clear that this pure form proceeds from the mode of operation of the Spirits of Form or their offspring.

Now we come to the so-called etheric body, which we must describe as the second principle of a being of the mineral kingdom. The occult investigator cannot find what he has to describe as the etheric body of the mineral in the physical world; but he finds it in the same realm in which he must seek, if, for instance he wishes to find the astral body of the plant, or the group-ego of the animal. As we saw yesterday, he need make no other preparation with regard to his soul than that necessary for finding the group-ego of the animal. With the same condition of consciousness with which he perceives the group-ego of the animal, he also perceives the astral body of the plant, and that which lies behind the mineral kingdom as its etheric body. Now we have seen that we must extend our observations into the region of the planets of a planetary system; in our own planetary system to those planets which exist outside the earth. And we have shown that the corresponding forces externalizing themselves in the group-egos of the animals and the astral bodies of the plants, work directly from the planetary centers. Thither must we also go if we wish to seek for that which works etherically in the mineral. How a mineral is laved by life-powers can first be seen if we penetrate to that universal life which is common to all, from the earth to the rest of the planets of our planetary system. Thus the principle by which the mineral is animated, the life of the mineral, is not to be found in the physical world, or in the realm of what our earth directly offers us, but in the life-streams pouring down from the planets; stimulated constantly, to be sure, by the sun, but still streaming down directly from the planets, and permeating our earth-planet livingly; in order to permeate all that is form with their offspring, the etheric nature-spirits, of which we have spoken. Thus form has inner-being; in other words, the form of the mineral which proceeds solely from the physical plane, is not permeable but offers resistance. Were nothing active in the mineral but what is active on the physical plane, then the mineral would only make itself perceptible as form; but this form is filled with inner-being. For the mineral has also inner-being; it has the inner-being of the various mineral substances. Not only has it form, it has matter, it has substance. When we directly perceive this substance in the physical world, it appears to us as a dead, lifeless substance. To cosmic space it is not dead, to planetary space at least, it is something which is part of its own life, which is precipitated from the life of the planetary system. Just as the human or animal organism separates off hard products—the nails, for instance—so is the mineral substance put forth; but the active forces by means of which it is put forth are not to be sought upon the earth itself; hence it appears to the earth as dead. These streams of life, these life-forces, this etheric body must be sought as streaming down from the several planets. Just as in considering the group-egos of the animals we could say: In reality only the general forms are treated by the group-egos of the animals, and these are then further developed; so must we say: The streams of life sent down by the individual planets which permeate the earth from all sides, do not create forms for the minerals, for those are created by the Spirits of Form; but through these streams the minerals are permeated with inner-being. But this occurs in such a way that this inner-being gives certain main types, main substances: and each substance is thereby connected with a stream proceeding from one of the planets.

Now because the minerals at once acquired solid forms, mobile types are not created from the planets by means of these planetary streams, but types of one kind only. And then through the various positions of the planets, as I have already described with regard to the group-souls of the animals—besides the main types, and substances—other types, subordinate substances are created, which again depend on the constellation of the individual planets. But what the planets create, each through its own original nature, is expressed in the principal substances of the earth's organism. Thus we have certain mineral main substances of the earth's organism of which we can say. Here is a substance which is what it is because it is permeated by an etheric stream from one of the planets; another is permeated by a stream from another planet. Thus we have to trace back the nature of mineral substances to activities in the planetary system which externalize as etheric streams in the organism of the earth. Therefore the occult schools which have to investigate such matters have also so referred the principal substances of our earth-organism to the planets, that they have designated those substances which have been produced quite directly—not through the constellation but through the principal activity of the planet—by the same or similar names as the planets; and indeed in such a way that occult observation has been strictly adhered to. If we observe the planet Saturn in our system we find that the life stream which permeates the earth directly from him is connected with the substance we call lead: so that we have a basic substance which is inwardly animated by Saturn. From Jupiter we get tin as main substance; from Mars, iron; and in the occult sense, from Venus, copper. With regard to Mercury we must take into consideration that he was later confused with Venus. The life-activity (in the sense of true occult nomenclature) produced creatively by Mercury, on account of its greater proximity when it penetrated the earth-organism, bears a still greater resemblance to the planet itself, for Mercury stands nearer to the earth than the other planets. Therefore this substance has been given the same name as the cosmic body itself, namely, Mercury or quicksilver. These are the principal substances which are connected in their etheric body with the corresponding planets of our system. If we recollect how we had to speak of all that works from the planetary system, with regard to the group-souls of the animals and the astral bodies of the plants, we find it is always a question of the beings in connection with the Spirits of Motion, either with themselves or their offspring, who work in their totality on the earth from the planets of the system. Thus we must also reckon as belonging to the sphere of the Spirits of Motion, that which etherically permeates the mineral substances.

Now if we wish to consider what belongs to the mineral kingdom as astral body, we have to ascend, as it were, to a still higher world. In the whole sense of our past considerations it will be clear, that as we had to ascend from the astral body of the plant to the group-ego, from the planets to the sun—to the fixed star; so with regard to the mineral kingdom, if we pass from the etheric body to the astral body we must again ascend to the fixed star. That is, we can understand, and occult vision tells us, that the astral nature of the mineral works from those beings in the ranks of the hierarchies through whom comes from the sun that which is directly perceptible; from the beings we call the Spirits of Wisdom, or from that which is connected with their sphere. Thus even the offspring of the Spirits of Wisdom come into consideration. What thus works in the mineral is seen by occult investigation as quite separate, outside the mineral; but it is so seen that the life just described as existing in the mineral, as the etheric body of the mineral, is pressed in from outside. Whereas the astral body in man or animal holds together the etheric body from within; the etheric body of the mineral is as it were, pushed towards it from outside, not concentrated and held together inside as in man and animal. If we consider the relation of the astral body of man to his etheric body, we see that what works as etheric body is held together by the power of attraction. In the mineral the etheric body is compressed together from outside by forces; thus in the mineral the content, the inner nature expressed in the etheric stream is, by means of active astral forces compressed into the form. The mineral is held together astrally from outside, and indeed for the reason that it is determined through the different positions of the sun to the earth in relation to this astral pressure. One might say that the etheric substance is driven into the mineral from the point from which the sun shines upon the earth.

Thus while this etheric substance is itself directed by the planet, it is driven into and held within the mineral or crystal by the sun, by the forces belonging to the sphere of the Spirits of Wisdom. But now something very remarkable is seen. If we investigate occultly the activity exercised by the astral forces from the sun upon the mineral, we recognize very clearly at this point a very important fact; we learn that while all the etheric forces proceeding from the planets work upon the mineral and actually form its basic substances, other etheric streams also pass down from the sun as such to the earth. Thus, while in general, for the normal formation of the mineral, the etheric substance passes down from the planets, and is only compressed from outside by the forces proceeding from the sun, yet we cannot say that no etheric streams come down from the sun, for it is a fact that such an etheric stream does come down. What is the reason of this? Why does an etheric stream come down from the sun which can, as it were, inwardly animate the mineral? Why does this take place? It is brought about by the activity of what I have designated as the Luciferic principle. The spirits in the ranks of the higher hierarchies which work astrally upon the mineral are—as we have just said—the Spirits of Wisdom: whilst the Spirits of Motion work etherically.

Now there are Spirits of Wisdom active on the sun who have gone through their complete normal process of evolution; they work, as has been described, astrally upon the mineral. But certain of the Spirits of Wisdom have become Luciferic. We have designated this “becoming Luciferic” of certain spiritual beings of a hierarchy, as a sort of rebellion in the cosmos. This rebellion comes about because certain spirits having reached a given stage in their hierarchy, resist their brethren and work against them; work in an opposite direction. This opposition comes about simply because they do not wish to go through the evolution which the others do; so they simply remain behind at an earlier stage, just as we know in our own souls that we wish to progress, yet the ideas and habits we have acquired Will not allow us to do so because they wish to remain as a permanence. Our habits are often rebels against what we have acquired in a new epoch of life. In like manner the spiritual beings who remain behind at an earlier stage are rebels in the Cosmos. The Luciferic Spirits, the Spirits of Wisdom of the Second Hierarchy who have not gone through their development with the rest—instead of sending astral streams from the sun to the mineral, send etheric streams to the earth. This resulted in a certain basic substance being formed, which received its inner-being, not from the planets but directly from the sun; and this mineral is gold. Gold is that Luciferic mineral which as regards its inner-being is not influenced etherically by the planets, but by the sun. Hence the occultist has allotted gold to the sun. In a certain sense this mineral is therefore somewhat different from other metals.

Now you can easily grasp that because etheric streams come from the sun and work something into the earth which is actually a rebel principle, the equilibrium of the earth is thereby disturbed. The equilibrium of the earth in relation to the mineral kingdom would be maintained if all the etheric influences came from the planets, and none but astral influences came to the minerals from the sun; but there are also direct etheric forces coming from the sun and these disturb the equilibrium. Now, this equilibrium had to be re-established by the Wise Leaders of the world; for the earth could not carry out her evolution under such conditions. The hierarchies had to work in cooperation so that the equilibrium might be re-established. The stronger Luciferic forces had to be opposed by other forces which in a certain sense paralyzed them and arrested their effects. That could only come about through the etheric stream which came from the sun being opposed by another, which counteracted, and in a certain sense, balanced its effects. Thus while certain Spirits of Wisdom proved themselves Luciferic and sent down etheric currents from the sun into the mineral kingdom on the earth, other spirits took care that these were opposed by other currents. These opposing currents which re-adjusted the equilibrium, were created by a part of the disturbed equilibrium substance being detached from the earth and circling round the earth as moon. Thus the etheric streams coming from the sun came into opposition to the etheric stream which flowed from the moon to the earth from quite a different quarter, and in this way the balance was re-established. Thus because Luciferic Spirits of Wisdom on the sun had attained the possibility of sending forth etheric streams, other Spirits of Wisdom renounced their claim to working from the sun, and consented to apply their forces to restoring the equilibrium. That is, a cosmic colony, a planetary colony was founded on the moon, from which there now streamed etheric currents to the earth, so that a substance was created which had to be in the earth so that the direct power of gold might be weakened. This came about by the moon being separated from the earth; and from the Spirits of Wisdom who separated the moon, and who now, in a sense, became the opposers of the Luciferic Spirits of Wisdom from the sun, stream down to the earth those etheric forces which have produced the substance silver. Thus you see that in the universe, in the cosmos, certain things work in such a way that one might explain it by means of a certain diagram; but the peculiar thing is that the diagram would everywhere be broken through. If anyone were to prove by means of a diagram that all the etheric forces for the minerals come from the planets, he would be in error; for in reality two etheric streams come from two different sides, the one from the sun, the other from the moon; hence two basic substances are formed in a different way.

If we wish to make what I have just described, objective, perceptible to our senses, and to find an external expression for it, we can achieve it in the following way; but we must first of all be clear as to what it really is that we see when we look at the sun. We pointed out previously that only the spirits of the higher hierarchies down to the Spirits of Wisdom go through their own evolution on the fixed star; what we see when we look at the fixed star is the actual content-substance of the Spirits of Wisdom. That is the true content of the fixed star. Indeed we human beings can only gain a concept of that which is the substance of the Spirits of Wisdom, by contemplating what exists in us, as at any rate an image of this substance. What is that in us, in humanity, in the human soul, which is a symbol of the substance of the Spirits of Wisdom? Our thoughts! But we do not see our thoughts with the physical eyes, that is the point; neither can the fixed stars, in so far as they are the fields of activity for the genuine Spirits of Wisdom, be seen with physical eyes. We have now reached a point where we can point again to the enormous significance of what we find in the religious documents, which are based on occultism. You know that the Bible, in Genesis, states that man was created in a very peculiar way. We are told that Lucifer appeared to Eve and told her that if she would do as he wished, her eyes would be opened. Anyone who knows the original text will not readily be put off with a merely symbolical explanation; for what the Bible means by good and evil does not refer to moral good and evil; that belongs to quite a different part of the development of civilisation. What is here meant as good and evil is that which is seen externally, not as something spiritually-psychic, but something seen with the physical eyes:—“Your eyes shall he opened.” Till then they were not open. This must be taken quite literally. Before Lucifer approached man, man could perceive; he saw the fixed stars with the primitive clairvoyance then given to man, but his vision was such that he saw the substance of the fixed stars as the substance of the Spirits of Wisdom; he saw them spiritually. He only began to see them physically, that is, perceptible light first streamed towards him perceptibly to his physical eyes, when he himself, the human being, had yielded to the Luciferic temptation. That means that the fixed stars as directed by the Spirits of Wisdom, are not physically visible, they do not shed physical light. Physical light can only be shed if there is something underlying it which serves as a bearer to the light, when light is, as it were, held captive through a bearer. For a fixed star to become visible, something more is necessary than the mere presence of Spiritual Beings of Wisdom at work there. It is necessary that in this fixed star Luciferic Beings should work, who resist the mere substance of Wisdom and permeate it with their own principle. Thus within the fixed star is mingled that which is only visible spiritually and that which resists this merely spiritual visibility: the Luciferic element in the fixed star which carries forth the light into physical phenomena.

The fixed star would not be visible if it had not within it, in addition to the Spirits of Wisdom who have progressed normally, those who have not attained their goal, who remained at a lower stage, either at the stage of the Spirits of Motion or that of the Spirits of Form. Thus we have to recognize backward Spirits of Wisdom who have not attained their goal, as light-bearers in the lightless spiritual substance of the fixed star. Now, if we are clear as to the fact that from the fixed stars, from our own sun, physical light only reaches us because the normal Spirits of Wisdom have as companions those who have remained behind and who have become light-bearers:—Light—Lucifer—Phosphoros—we must also be clear that the same cause which makes the sun visible, which sends light to us from the fixed star, is also that which sends the etheric life-stream to the earth and produces gold. It was necessary therefore that other forces should work from the moon (which occult vision perceives as etheric currents), forces which produce silver. Now, as they are Spirits of Wisdom who oppose the moon to the sun in order to bring about an adjustment, we must say: “These Spirits of Wisdom upon the moon cannot shine;” for the Spirits of Wisdom do not shine.—Hence if occult vision searches for these spirits on the moon, it does not discover them as luminous; for these Spirits of Wisdom who founded a colony on the moon, were obliged to exclude the Lucifer Spirits from the moon, otherwise the balance would not have been maintained. That is to say, the moon cannot ray out any light of its own, only that reflected as sunlight. Quite normal Spirits of Wisdom made a sacrifice and took up their position on the moon in order to supply the earth with the necessary currents for keeping the equilibrium, in opposition to the Lucifer currents which stream from the sun. Hence the moon is excluded from having light of its own; and it is not difficult in this external fact which we encounter in the physical world, to see the symbol of a deep occult connection. The sun has its own light which appears to us, but the moon has not; and the reflected light which rays to us from the moon, and of which Lucifer is the bearer.—Lucifer—Phosphoros—tells us that the moon has no light of its own. Therefore that which is Lucifer can only appear to us in symbol, in a Maya, shining down from the moon, because the sunlight is reflected. When for instance, the crescent moon reflects the sunlight, there are then no Luciferic Spirits of Wisdom on the moon itself, but what is poured forth from the sun by the Luciferic Spirits of Wisdom is reflected as light.

Now when we turn our occult vision to the moon, that which the physical eyes perceive, the shining crescent moon, disappears, for that exists only for physical vision; but in its place occult vision sees the real being behind all visible light in the cosmos; sees the form of Lucifer, though certainly as a reflection. Thus, if we think of the image of Lucifer as seen by occult vision in the place of the crescent moon, we must say: The moon owes its origin to the circumstances that certain normal Spirits of Wisdom renounced their dwelling-place on the sun and have taken up their abode in this colony, and thence restrain that which streams forth from the Luciferic Spirits. Hence to occult vision the Spirit of Wisdom does not reveal himself here, above the crescent of the moon, but is to be seen restraining the Luciferic principle. The occult fact is thus presented symbolically to the imagination, as a normal Spirit of Wisdom holding the Luciferic principle in subjection. The occultists therefore represent a form, usually taken to be a Chief Messenger of the higher Spirits of Wisdom, of one who curbs Lucifer; and in place of the crescent they represent Lucifer chained, curbed. This is an occult picture. Among our occult pictures there is also one representing the chief Messenger curbing Lucifer. This is an allusion to profound occult mysteries. What is thus shown externally in Maya, is in reality to be ascribed to the cooperation of the Spirits of the Hierarchies. When with physical eyes we see the crescent moon shining silver bright, there is often to be seen a sort of shadow above in the dark part; then to occult vision the crescent moon is transformed into a living Being, with the restraining Spirit above it, maintaining the balance from its place on the moon. Thus you see that even to produce a phenomenon such as our earth moon, many preparations had to be made in the COSMOS. The cooperative activities of the various hierarchies in the cosmos is a very complicated matter and even in a much longer course of lectures we could still only give suggestions of it; we can only make clear the principle as to how these spiritual, hierarchies cooperate.

Please hold fast the thought just mentioned in connection with the astral body of the minerals. We have, indeed, still to consider the group-ego of the minerals; that has to be sought in a still higher super-sensible world—in a world not found in the regions where the group-egos of the animals or plants are to be found. Therefore we cannot find it upon the sun. Where then does the group-ego of the minerals reveal itself to occult vision? The peculiar thing about the group-ego of the minerals is, that, strictly speaking, it does not end anywhere when we search in cosmic space; it is in the whole widths of cosmic space and works from there. We are therefore driven to seek actually for the group-ego of the minerals outside the planetary system; we must look upon it as something which works into the planetary system from outside. Thus far this coincides with what we know from the Akashic Records, that the next higher class of beings above the Spirits of Wisdom are the Thrones, or Spirits of Will. These Spirits of Will belong to the First Hierarchy (though their offspring are not so far advanced that they can be reckoned with it), these Spirits of Will or their offspring give forth that which becomes the group-ego of the minerals, and which, in fact, works into the planetary system. This also coincides with the fact that simultaneously with the out-pouring of the substance of the Spirits of Will, begins the formation of the planetary system on ancient Saturn which was brought about by the Spirits of Will. They still work in the same way at the present time as when the first embodiment of our earth was built up out of the Universe by these beings. We can really only see these Spirits of Will when, having become Luciferic, they reveal themselves in a sense in certain phenomena which we find as minerals in the sphere of the earth, and which come, as it were, from cosmic space. The cosmic origin, the super-earthly origin of what we are now considering, is revealed by the fact that when these Spirits of Will thus work in they combine—very, very easily with that which works into the planetary system as the cometary and meteoric beings—as cometary or meteoric life.

We have pointed out what meaning this life has in the planetary system. I should like at least to indicate that in reality a comet is something which comes in from outside, but which makes certain combinations. In as much as the comet travels through the planetary system it combines with the mineral kingdom which also arises through the Spirits of Will. And the result may be that as the comet rushes through the planetary system it attaches mineral substance to itself, which is then attracted by the earth and falls down upon it. This of course is not the comet, but rather does it announce its approach to the earth by a fall of meteors taking place. These things are absolutely in accord, and if certain things appear to contradict what was represented earlier, we must always understand that these contradictions will solve themselves if everything is taken into consideration and studied. This was only an, example to show that in the planetary system we really have to do with influences working in from the cosmos. These group-souls of the minerals work in the form of rays from without inwards. And since various modes of operation come from the various aspects of space, for space is not homogeneous, these group-souls of the minerals, which belong to the sphere of the Spirits of Will, ray towards us from different sides in the most varied manner. Now through the cooperation of what comes from the planets for the minerals, what comes from the sun, and what streams in from the universe from the various directions arises the possibility that not only have those basic types already mentioned come into existence in the mineral kingdom, but all sorts of other forms, all sorts of differently modified substances of the mineral kingdom have been formed. The kind of substance a mineral exhibits simply depends on the way the forces which come from the planets are again influenced by other forces either streaming astrally to the earth from the sun, or from various directions of cosmic space. The variety and multiplicity of the mineral kingdom can be understood in this way.

If we observe our present-day Saturn, it presents itself in the first place to occult vision as the outermost planet of our System. Why? Because actually Saturn as planet, as well as ancient Saturn, the first of the successive incarnations of our earth known to us, was produced by the furthest currents coming from cosmic space. Had we been able to observe Saturn at a very early condition of our earth evolution, we should have seen that in his orbit he had a sort of nucleus and a sort of comet's tail, which passed out into cosmic space. In olden times Saturn would have revealed himself definitely with a nucleus and a comet's tail, extending into cosmic space. That is, in the primeval periods of our earth, Saturn would have been seen circling round his orbit with his tail pointing outwards. He was earlier like this (see below). The facts of the Akasha Chronicle show him thus:

The tail of ancient Saturn took the most varied directions out into space, corresponding with the currents which came in from the cosmos, directed by the Spirits of Will, who are the group-souls of the minerals. At a later period, when through the spiritual beings of other hierarchies, the planetary system was enclosed, that which had formerly gone out into cosmic space was so drawn together that the tail became an enclosed ring; through the power of attraction of the planetary system the ring was formed. To occult vision the ring of Saturn is absolutely the same phenomenon as the comet's tail. If you were to take the ring of Saturn as it circles round Saturn and open it out, you would have a comet's tail. (See Diagram.)

In this way it is possible to look back to the streaming in of the group-souls of the minerals into our planetary system; and again the Signs of the Zodiac in general give us their individual positions. It is to be noted that the two outermost planets now reckoned as belonging to our system by physical astronomy—Uranus and Neptune—did not originally belong to our Solar System; they came much later into the sphere of attraction of our system: they then joined company and remained within it. They cannot therefore be reckoned in the same sense as the other planets as belonging to our system from Saturn onwards, for they, so to speak, belonged to it from the beginning. Thus, when we consider Saturn, especially in his ancient form, we see in him a planet which, by sending forth etheric currents from his own center to our earth, creates—we can even say—the substance of lead. At the same time we see how the group-souls of the minerals stream in; we see how these group-souls are affected when a power of attraction is exercised on them from the sun, from which the astral body of the mineral streams out. From the sun the astral body of the mineral streams out into space; from outside in cosmic Space the ego of the mineral streams in. When these currents are united something takes place which, in a modified way, expresses itself, as it were, in a fructification of the group-ego by the astral body, and by this means alone does the mineral come to its perfection. Now if we go back to the comet, here, too, we have something which, in fact, streams in from cosmic space: a similar stream of beings to the group-souls of the minerals. The group-souls of the minerals belong to the sphere of the Spirits of Will; but above them lie the beings who essentially form the basis of cometary life. But as everywhere there are Luciferic Beings, so also within the comet there are such as stand at the stage of the Thrones, not of the Cherubim and Seraphim. That is why the comet acquires a mineral nature; appears as a mineral intervention in the planetary system; in other words, we have to look upon the comets as cosmic bodies which fly in from the cosmos after the planetary system is already formed and thus do not come as far as the bodies composing the system itself, but remain behind at a considerably earlier stage. It would certainly be very fascinating to trace the stages of cosmic growth; how worlds are formed by the cooperative activities of the spirits of the hierarchies in a fixed-star system; how those same spirits themselves appear when we direct our gaze back to cosmic mists and far-distant fixed stars. Whenever we direct our occult vision to a fixed star, we first of all encounter the normal Spirits of Wisdom. The whole heavens would be invisible to physical sight and only visible to clairvoyant consciousness if none but these normal Spirits of Wisdom were active; but everywhere Luciferic spirits are mingled with the normal Spirits of Wisdom, and bring physical light of its own into the world of the fixed star. When at night the starry heaven is illuminated, Phosphorus actually works down upon us from countless points: and everywhere in the universe we find the possibility of formation only through the cooperation of the opposing forces; through the combined working of the normal spirits of the hierarchies with those who are rebels—that is, those who have remained behind. Unillumined to physical eyes but visible to spiritual sight, is the starry world through the normal Spirits of Wisdom; it became luminous to physical eyes, it is revealed in Maya through Lucifer or the Luciferic spirits who are, and must be, active everywhere.

Thus, we have seen something very remarkable in the mineral kingdom also. To-day we have, so to speak, grasped the moon as a field of action from which a Spirit of Wisdom works and restrains Lucifer, because a place had to be created from which through opposition of the Luciferic activity, the balance would be restored. Now what signification had this for humanity? We have seen that in man everything is compressed into the physical plane which as it were, for the mineral, is distributed over the worlds. We have found group-souls for the minerals, plants and animals. Is there also a sort of group-soul for the human being? Oh, yes, there is. The group-souls of the minerals are to be found in the sphere of the Thrones, those of the plants in the sphere of the Spirits of Wisdom, and the animals in the sphere of the Spirits of Motion; but man has so received his group-soul that with the inflowing of his ego, a group-soul was originally given him, as an emanation from the Spirits of Form. This group-soul of man was originally allotted by the Spirits of Form to be a unitary soul for the whole of humanity. What differentiated this group-soul into such variety that differences of race, differences of tribe arose? This was brought about through the action of other spirits. Man was created to be one all the world over; in this unity the primeval ego of man was to assert itself as a group-soul dwelling in all men, a group-soul which had descended to the physical plane. Just as the external form only of the minerals can be brought into being by the Spirits of Form, so by these same Spirits of Form was the group-ego created for humanity, which was then differentiated by the activity of other beings of the various hierarchies. Now the balance brought about for the mineral kingdom through the formation of the moon was also brought about for humanity; and indeed in such a way that whilst for the mineral realm in the moon there is a physical readjustment, in exactly the same way a moon-principle exists for humanity, which works against the Luciferic influence in human nature, just as in the mineral kingdom the dark moon-principle works against the Lucifer principle. Just as in the mineral kingdom something is active in the moon which keeps the balance with regard to the Luciferic forces streaming down from the sun, so does a spiritual moon-principle work from the moon against the temptation of Lucifer which man has encountered in the course of the earth evolution. As we have seen, all the planets, all the heavenly bodies stand in connection with beings of the higher hierarchies, and so, too, is it with the moon. The Spirits of Wisdom founded a colony upon the moon in order to preserve the equilibrium; and so from the direction of the moon there also Work in upon humanity compensating spirits against Lucifer, who approached man as a tempter; and just as he disseminated light, so, too, did his spiritual principle sink down into the human soul. So we can also point to the moon as the bearer of the opponent of Lucifer; as the dwelling-place of dark spirits, who yet must be there that the balance may be maintained with regard to the Light-bearers pressing forward, who, at the same time, are the tempting spirits to humanity. In fact, the secret of the moon and its spiritual principle was first revealed to humanity in the old Hebrew Records, and what we have found physically in the moon is, in its spiritual aspect, what Hebrew antiquity designated as the Jehovah principle.

According to this the moon, so to speak, is designated as the starting-point of the forces working upon humanity as the opponents of Lucifer. Jahveh, or Jehovah, is the opponent of Lucifer. The secret doctrine of the ancient Hebrews looked up to the Sun, saying: In the Sun work the invisible Spirits of Wisdom who are only visible to spiritual, not to physical sight. The latter sees the principle of Lucifer raying down. What is to be seen externally as the sun principle is Lucifer; but therein works secretly, invisible to physical vision, everything attainable through the Spirits of Wisdom, who form the gateway to it. One of these Spirits of Wisdom separated and sacrificed himself, and has taken up his abode upon the moon in order through his activity there to curb the light and also to counteract the spiritual work of Lucifer. Hebrew antiquity saw in Jehovah an Ambassador of those true exalted spirits to whom vision is opened through the Spirits of Wisdom, if the sun is looked upon with spiritual sight. Hebrew antiquity justly concluded that Jehovah must continue to work from the moon until humanity has become inwardly mature enough to perceive and feel at least a little of that which gradually in the course of evolution will be both seen and understood—that from the same sun proceeds not only the physical part of Lucifer, but also the dissemination of that of which the Spirits of Wisdom are the portal. Thus to the ancient Hebrew there appeared in Jehovah that which is similar to the Spirits of Wisdom in the sun, and we can say: just as the sunlight is reflected from the moon in space, so to the ancient Hebrew who really knew, Jehovah was the reflection of that Spiritual Being Who, when man shall have become sufficiently mature, will ray down from the sun, and Whose appearance was foretold by the Holy Rishis, Zarathustra, and the worshippers of Osiris. Just as in space sunlight is reflected from the moon, so Jehovah is revealed as a reflection of the principle of the great Sun-Spirit Whom you may designate by whatever name you will—Vishvakarma, as the ancient Indians called him; Ahura Mazdao, as He was called by Zarathustra, Osiris by the ancient Egyptians, or as the Christ, as He is known to the fourth post-Atlantean period of civilisation—that is, the esoteric comprehension of Jehovah. He is Christ reflected by the moon-principle and because reflected in time, Christ announced prophetically. Hence in St. John's Gospel we come across a passage which otherwise can never be understood, in which it is said that Moses spoke of Christ. Actually, he spoke of Jehovah, but it is Christ, prophetically announced. This passage, in which Jehovah is mentioned is referred to because the bearer of the Christ wishes to point out that in antiquity Jehovah is but Christ foretold.

Thus we see that these things are in accord, and that what we have heard to-day is connected with what was said in the last lecture; and that in what we call the external light and its bearer we must recognize something which is in opposition to the spiritual principle which is at the normal point of its evolution, and which appears to us as the spiritual center of our planetary system. It is not a question of names, but of recognizing the whole significance of this Principle. We must recognize that in the realm of the spiritual, we speak of Christ just as in that of the physical we speak of the Sun; that in the realm of the spiritual we speak of the planetary spirits and of the planets just as in the development of earthly civilisation we speak, perhaps, of the principle of Buddha. Here again is a point concerning which you find one of the important revelations you come across in H. P. Blavatsky. What great revelations there are in The Secret Doctrine you can see by the way H. P. Blavatsky treats the conception of Jehovah. We need not recoil at this, or think things are not correct because she shows a certain antipathy towards Christ and Jehovah; the truth nevertheless presses through, and the description of Jehovah as a Moon divinity, and the presentation of Lucifer as his opponent as given by H. P. Blavatsky is—one might say—the broken expression of a truth. The presentation given from inspiration by Blavatsky is only given a subjective coloring by her, because she had a feeling that Lucifer was really a good Divinity—she felt him as such. She preferred him, in a certain sense to the Moon-god, because to her Lucifer was a Sun-god. That is correct; he is that; but we had to represent the true connection in order that the expression used in former times. “Christ is the true Lucifer,” “Christus verus Luciferus,” may be understood. It does not sound quite right to us today; but at that time when people knew from the old Secret Doctrine that the Light-Bearer manifests in the external physical light, and that, if we penetrate through the physical light to the Spirits of Wisdom, to the spiritual light, then we reach the Light-Bearer of that Light.

“Christus verus Luciferus”—I think, in spite of the incompleteness which was inevitable in our rendering of this comprehensive theme, yet what we always wish to attain in the sphere of Spiritual Science has come before your souls, that the treatment of every theme leads us to look up from the physical to the spiritual. With regard to the heavenly bodies which, as the expression of the wonders of the universe, shine forth from space, that is in many respects, very difficult; because in the heavenly bodies there is a complicated cooperation of the beings of the various hierarchies, and because everything which takes place in cosmic space can only be comprehended if, behind all matter, even behind the substance of light itself, we find the Spirit or Spirits. Behind all this Spiritual Life lies the Universal, Divine Fatherhood, an Omnipresent and ever-working All-Divine Life, which before It comes to expression in the physical, is differentiated into countless worlds of Spiritual Hierarchies. We look up to these worlds, however, and see within them, That which works down into our kingdoms of nature, and is the foundation of all the wonders of the heavens. For even in our kingdoms of nature either the hierarchies themselves are revealed or their offspring. When we thus look out into the spaces of heaven, we can, through such reflections, also gain a moral impression which must, if we allow the mighty operations of the hierarchies in cosmic space to gain a little influence over us, result in our being drawn away from the passions, desires, impulses and concepts which our physical earth-life brings to maturity. These are, in essence, that which flings down into the development of the earth that which divides humanity into factions, which makes men all over the world opponents or partisans, in the most varied directions. In a higher moral sense we attain a sense of freedom, if but for a brief time, we free ourselves from the consideration of earthly things, and contemplate the worlds of spirit in cosmic space. Then do we become free from that which otherwise plays in our egotistical impulses, which are the original cause of all the smallnesses and quarreling upon earth. Hence the most certain means of attaining the high ideals of our Anthroposophical life is to direct our gaze from time to time to the starry worlds and their spiritual guides and leaders, the hierarchies. If we investigate the different civilizations as we have tried to do and the significance of the inspiring spirits of the various religions and of the bearers of Wisdom to humanity, we shall cease to strive on earth as followers of individual systems. We shall not depend on names, nor on the creeds of the several groups of men on the earth. When men seek their knowledge there where the vision of all the humanity of the earth can he directed, and where the knowledge common to all can be obtained—knowledge which unites and does not separate—when men actually reach that heavenly language which expresses the significance of the various religious Founders and Inspirers of humanity, then will the Anthroposophical ideal of a tolerant and unbiased consideration of all religions and cosmic conceptions be really able to appear. Men will no longer quarrel when they no longer claim for their own group a particular bearer of religion or stream of civilisation, but seek for the origin of these bearers outside in cosmic space. In this sense such a contemplation may acquire great moral importance if in much which formerly brought divisions and disharmonies upon earth, peace and harmony are established. Only we must learn to read the mighty writing given us in the forms and movements of the heavenly bodies—learn to read how, in reality, not different but the same spirits, work for each single individual on earth—that they belong to all men. This might be explained by means of a physical picture. As long as we remain on the earth, a group of people may dwell in the North or in the South, East or West. But when we look upon the movement of the earth and observe how it turns its face to the stars when it changes its position—whether in short periods of time or in millions of years—how the southern half turns to the northern and the stars of our northern heavens become visible, and then the northern part of our earth turns to the south and perceives the stars of the southern heavens. Just as the earth in the course of time turns its countenance, so to speak, to all the stars which shine to us from cosmic space, so may humanity learn through the ideals of Anthroposophy to look in an unbiased manner upon all which speaks spiritually from cosmic space. Through such a positive consideration of facts this ideal will best be reached—not through a sentimental emphasis of love and peace. In a real way shall we attain love and peace and harmony, if we direct our vision away from the concerns of earth which divide humanity into races, nations, religions—to the starry heavens, where spirits speak the same language to us through all time, even through all eternity; the same language for every human soul, for every human heart, if only we understand it rightly.

In this sense I should like now, at the end of our course of lectures, to point to the moral effects of such considerations, if we take the trouble to learn to know the facts of occultism. If we learn to know them in the true occult sense, what has been learnt will so stream into our hearts that it becomes a life-force within us, a living hope; and, above all, will become moral energy, and really make us what we may call citizens of the heavenly worlds. Then through his spiritual life a man carries heaven into the concerns of earth, and thus in the course of the processes of civilisation, brings about that which, in the highest sense, we can designate as harmony, as peace. Then will man become more and more conscious that at the very beginning as well as at the end of the evolution of civilisation an undivided Spirit really governs, a Spirit of Form, Who works uniformly throughout humanity, while He is stimulated by His brothers, the other Spirits of Form, who do Him service, in order to send a uniform working through the whole of humanity. Thus through true heavenly science something uniform is brought to men, and this will promote the intellectual and moral understanding of humanity on the earth. Thus we do not wish to consider merely the abstract and theoretical; but every such consideration ought at the same time to become in us a source of power, above all, a source of moral power; and then will all our teachings, even those which appear drawn from afar, serve to forward the direct aims and ideals of Spiritual Science.

With these words, my dear friends, which should gather up the whole spirit and character of these lectures into a certain nuance of feeling, I should like at their close to take farewell of you all.

143. Reflections of Consciousness, Super-consciousness and Sub-consciousness 25 Feb 1912, Munich Translator Unknown Rudolf Steiner
It is also lecture 3 of 5 included in the collection of lectures known as, Psychoanalysis in the Light of Anthroposophy, Psychoanalysis and Spiritual Psychology, or Freud, Jung, and Spiritual Psychology.

143. Reflections of Consciousness, Super-consciousness and Sub-consciousness 25 Feb 1912, Munich Translator Unknown Rudolf Steiner
This is lecture 3 of 14 in the lecture series entitled, Experiential Knowledge of the Supersensible. It is also lecture 3 of 5 included in the collection of lectures known as, Psychoanalysis in the Light of Anthroposophy, Psychoanalysis and Spiritual Psychology, or Freud, Jung, and Spiritual Psychology. When public lectures are held for a larger public, certain things must be dealt with differently than at Group-meetings, because the members of a Group who have worked together and have studied these matters for some time, are prepared to accept such things differently than a larger public. Yesterday we saw that we can speak of hidden aspects of man's soul-life and we must place these hidden sides of human soul-life against the facts ascertained through ordinary, everyday consciousness. If you were to observe superficially what lives in your soul, from the morning when you awake until the evening when you fall asleep—what lives in it in the form of ideas, feelings or moods, and impulses of the will-including of course all that enters the soul from outside through sense-perception—if you observe all this, then you will obtain all that can be termed as forming the contents of ordinary consciousness. We must now realise that everything which is thus contained in the life of our consciousness, is dependent as far as this ordinary consciousness is concerned upon the instruments of the physical body. The nearest and most obvious fact proving what has just been said, is that man must awake in order to live within the course of events, ascertained through an ordinary consciousness. This signifies that man must dive into the physical body with that part of his being which is outside the physical body during sleep, and that this physical body with its instruments is then at his disposal. He should be able to use these instruments in order to ascertain the happenings which are accessible to ordinary consciousness. The following question immediately arises:—How does man, as a spirit-soul being, use his bodily instruments—the sense-organs and the nervous system? How does he use his bodily organs in order to live within his everyday consciousness? In materialistic spheres it is held that the physical or bodily instruments constitute for man something which produces the facts of his consciousness. I have often pointed out that this is not the case; we should not imagine that the inner structure of our body, namely the sense-organs or the brain, produce the facts of consciousness, just as a candle, for instance, produces a flame. The relationship of what we call consciousness to the bodily instruments is entirely different; we may compare it with the relationship of a man who sees his reflection in a mirror, to this mirror. When we are asleep, we live within our consciousness as if we were walking, so to speak, in a straight line. If we are walking in a straight line, we do not see what our forehead, etc. looks like—but the very moment that someone holds a mirror in front of us, we can see ourselves. Then that which is already a part of us, comes toward us; it begins to exist for us. The same thing occurs in the case of the facts in our ordinary consciousness. They live in us continually, but in reality they have nothing to do with our physical body. Just as we ourselves have nothing to do with the mirror, so the facts in our consciousness have nothing to do with our physical body. The materialistic theory in this sphere is not even an acceptable hypothesis—it is sheer nonsense! For in this connection the materialist states something which may be compared to nothing less than this—namely, that someone who sees himself in a mirror, declares that he has been produced by the mirror. If you wish to delude yourself that the mirror has produced you, because you can only see yourself when a mirror is held before you, then you may also believe that various parts of the brain, or your sense-organs produce the contents of soul-life. Both things are equally clever and equally true. The truth, that a mirror can produce a man, has just the same value as the other truth, that a brain can produce thoughts. The facts that live in our consciousness have their own existence. It is necessary however that our ordinary organisation should perceive these existing facts of consciousness. To render this possible, we must be faced by something which reflects the facts of consciousness—namely, our physical body. Thus we possess in our physical body something which we may call a mirroring apparatus for the facts of our ordinary consciousness. These live in our spirit-soul being, and we perceive them because the mirror of our corporeality is held in front of what lives in us and is part of us, but cannot be perceived by us through the soul (just as we cannot see ourselves unless a mirror is held before us). This is the true aspect of things, But the body is not merely a passive mirroring apparatus—it is something in which processes take place. You may therefore imagine at the back of this mirror—instead of the dark coating which brings about the reflections—all kinds of happenings which take place there, behind the mirror. This comparison may be used to characterise the true relationship between our spirit-soul being and our body. Hence we must bear in mind that the body is a mirroring instrument for everything we experience within our normal, everyday consciousness and that moreover the physical body is a true mirror. Behind—or if you like—beneath these normal facts of consciousness, lie all those things which rise to the surface of our ordinary soul-life, which must be designated as the facts contained in the hidden depths of the soul. Something of what lives in the hidden depths of the soul is experienced—let us say—by the poet, by the artist. If he is a real poet, a real artist, he will know that he does not attain what comes to expression in his poetry in the usual way—he does not attain it through logical thinking, or in the way in which we come to the facts of consciousness through outer perception. He knows that things arise out of unknown depths and are there, really exist, without having been formed by the forces of ordinary consciousness. But other things also arise out of these hidden depths of soul-life. These are things which play a part in normal consciousness, although we do not know anything about their origin, as far as ordinary life is concerned. But yesterday we saw that we can descend more deeply into soul-life—as far as the region of semi-consciousness, the region of dreams, and we know that dreams lift something out of the hidden depths of soul-life which we would be unable to lift up in the usual, normal way, through an effort of consciousness. If something, which has been buried in memory long ago, rises before a man's soul in the form of a dream-picture, as happens again and again—then, in most cases, this man would never have been in a position to lift these things out of the hidden depths of his soul-life by trying to recollect them—because ordinary consciousness does not reach as far as this. What can no longer be reached through normal consciousness, can however be reached through sub-consciousness. In this semi-conscious state during dreams, many things are brought to the surface which have remained behind, as it were—which have been stored. They surge up—but only those things surge up which could not become active, in the same way as other things become active, which dive down into hidden soul-depths, from out the experiences gained in life. We acquire health or we grow ill, we become bad-tempered or glad—but this takes place so that we do not notice it in the normal course of life, because it constitutes bodily conditions, determined by what has dived down into the soul out of our life-experiences—something which we cannot remember, but which is nevertheless active in the depths of soul-life, making us into what we then become during the course of life. We would understand many human lives if we were to know what has entered the hidden depths during the course of life. We would understand many a human being in his 30th, 40th, 50th year—we would know why he has this or that inclination, why he feels so deeply the cause of his dissatisfaction—we would understand many things if we were to trace the life of such a man back to his childhood. In his childhood, we would see how parents and surroundings influenced him; what was called forth during childhood in the form of sorrow and joy, pain and pleasure—things perhaps that are completely forgotten, but influence a man's entire state of health and of mind. For what surges and rolls down into the hidden depths of soul-life out of our consciousness, continues to be active there below. The strange part of it all is that these forces which are working there, first work upon ourselves and do not abandon—so to speak—the sphere of our personality. Hence, when clairvoyant consciousness descends to these depths (this occurs through imagination, through what we call imaginative knowledge), when it descends to the depths where these forces are active in sub-consciousness, as just described, then man always finds his own self. He finds what surges and lives within him. And this is a good thing. Indeed, in a true self-knowledge, man must learn to know himself; he must contemplate and learn to know all the impulses which are active within him. If man does not pay attention to this fact, if he pays no attention to the fact that first of all he will find his own self with all that constitutes it and is active within it, he will be exposed to all kinds of errors when his clairvoyant consciousness penetrates into sub-consciousness through the exercises of an imaginative knowledge. Through a form of consciousness resembling the ordinary consciousness, man cannot be aware at all that he comes across his own self when he descends into the depths of soul-life. At a certain stage of development it will be possible to have visions—let us say—to see shapes which are unquestionably something new, when we compare them with what we have learnt to know through the experiences of life. Such a circumstance can indeed arise. But if we were to imagine that such things belong to the outer world, this would be a great illusion. These things do not arise in the same way in which the facts connected with our inner life generally arise in ordinary consciousness. If we have a headache, this is a fact which enters usual consciousness. We know that the pain is in our own head. If we have a stomach-ache, the pain is experienced within our own self. If we descend to the depths which we call the hidden soul-depths, we can only be within our own self—yet we can see things which appear to us as if they were outside our own selves. Let us take, for instance, a striking case. Let us suppose that someone desires most intensely to be the reincarnated Mary Magdalene, (I once mentioned that I have already met twenty-four reincarnated Magdalenes in my life); let us assume that someone desires most intensely to be Mary Magdalene. But let us also assume that this person does not confess this wish to himself (we need not confess our wishes to ourselves—this is unnecessary). Well—someone may read the story of Mary Magdalene and may like it immensely. In his sub-consciousness the desire to be Mary Magdalene may now immediately arise. He is aware of nothing in his usual consciousness except that he likes this character. The person in question has a liking for this character. He is aware of this in his upper consciousness. But in his sub-consciousness lives the burning desire to be himself this Mary Magdalene—yet he knows nothing about this. He does not bother about this. He is guided by the facts of his usual consciousness; he can go through the world without being compelled at all to become aware of this erroneous fact in his consciousness—the intense wish to be Mary Magdalene. But let us suppose that such a person has attained, in some way or other, a kind of occult training. This would enable him to descend into his sub-consciousness—but he would not become aware of the fact, “in me lives the desire to be Mary Magdalene”—he would not become aware of this in the same way that he becomes aware of a headache. If he were to notice this desire to be Mary Magdalene then he would be sensible and assume toward this desire the same attitude as toward a pain—namely, he would try to get rid of it. But through an irregular descent into sub-consciousness, this does not take place, because his desire acquires the form of something which is outside his own personality, and to the man in question it appears as the vision: “You are Mary Magdalene”. This fact stands before him, is projected outside his own being. Moreover, a human being at this stage of development is no longer able to control such a fact through his Ego. This lack of control cannot arise when we undergo a regular, sound and absolutely careful training; for then the Ego accompanies all experiences in every sphere. But as soon as the Ego no longer accompanies all our experiences, the fact described above can arise in the form of an objective outer happening. The observer believes that he can remember the events connected with Mary Magdalene and feels himself identified with this Mary Magdalene. This is unquestionably possible. I emphasize this possibility, because it shows you that only a careful training and the conscientiousness with which we penetrate into occultism, can rescue us from falling into error. If we know that we must first see before us an entire world, that we must see around us facts, not something which we apply to our own selves, but something that is in us, and yet appears like the picture of a whole world—if we know that we do well to consider what we first see before us is the projection of our own inner life—then we possess a good shield against the errors which can beset us along this path. The best thing of all is to consider at first everything that rises out of our inner being as if it were an exterior fact. In most cases these facts arise out of our desires, vanities, ambition—in a few words, out of all the qualities connected with human selfishness. These things above all project themselves outside and now we may ask:—How can we escape from such errors? How can we save ourselves from them? It is not possible to save ourselves from error through the usual facts of consciousness. Error arises because we cannot, so to speak, come out of ourselves at the moment when we are being faced by a world picture; we remain entangled within ourselves. This will show you that the essential thing is to come out of ourselves, to distinguish in one way or another that here we have before us one kind of vision, and there another. Both visions are outside; one is perhaps merely the projection of a wish, and the other one is a real fact. Yet they do not differ as much as things differ in ordinary life—for instance, when one person states that he has a headache and we ourselves have a headache. For our own inner life, as well as that of another man, are both projected outside into space. How can we discriminate between them? We must learn to investigate the occult sphere—we must learn to distinguish a true impression from a false one, although all impressions are mixed together and arise as if they were all equally entitled to be taken for true impressions. It is just as if we were to look into the physical world and were to see there, beside the actual trees, other imaginary trees, and as if we were unable to discriminate between them. The true facts outside and the facts which arise only within ourselves are mixed together, just as if false and true trees were standing side by side. How can we learn to distinguish one sphere from the other? We do not learn this at first through our consciousness. If we remain only within the life of thoughts we cannot possibly discriminate, for this possibility is given to us only through a slow occult training of the soul. If we progress more and more, we reach the point where we learn to distinguish one thing from another—that is, we do in the occult what we would have to do if we were to see actual trees beside imaginary ones. If we walk toward imaginary trees, we do not strike against them, but we do collide with real trees! Something similar also occurs—but as a spiritual fact, of course—in the occult sphere. If we proceed in the right way, we can learn to discriminate in a comparatively easy manner between what is true and false in this sphere; but we cannot do this through thoughts—only through a decision of the will. This decision of the will can arise as follows:—If we survey our life, we find in it two distinct groups of events. We often find that this or that thing in which we succeed or fail, is connected quite normally with our capacities. In other words—we can understand our failure in a certain direction because we are not particularly clever in that sphere. On the other hand, we can understand our success in this or in that direction because we know that we have certain capacities which account for it. Perhaps it may not always be so strictly necessary to realise this connection existing between our actions and our capacities. There is also a less clear way of realising it. For instance, when misfortune strikes someone at some later stage in life and he then thinks about this, he may say to himself:—“I have been a man who has done very little in order to become more active ... ” Or else he may admit to himself:—“I have always been such a happy-go-lucky fellow ... ” In both cases he will be able to say that he did not realise immediately the connection between his failure and his past actions, but he did realise that a light-hearted lazy man will not succeed in all things as well as a conscientious, diligent one. There are things where we can see quite well their connection with our successes or failures, but there are others where it seems impossible to find a connection—where we must say:—In spite of this or that capacity which should have guaranteed our success in this or in that direction, we have not succeeded. Evidently there are also certain kinds of successes or failures where we can not see at once the connection with our capacities. This is one aspect. The other one is that in the case of certain things which we encounter, such as blows of destiny, we may sometimes say:—“Well, this seems justified; for we ourselves have supplied the conditions for it.” But for other occurrences we find that they happen without our being able to discover anything which could be indicated as their cause. Thus we have two kinds of experiences—experiences which come from us, and where we can see the connection with our own capacities—and the other kind of experience which has just been described. In the case of some experiences which come to us from outside, we find happenings of which we cannot say that we ourselves have given rise to them, and again there are others of which we know that their foundation lies in us. Let us look about us in life and make an experiment which is very useful for every human being. This experiment can be made as follows. We place together all things the causes of which are unknown to us, and also all the things in which we have succeeded and of which we can say that they have happened in some unaccountable way—things for the success of which we are not responsible at all. But also failures which we can remember may be placed together in this way. Then we look upon outer events which have met us by chance, for which we cannot find any influence on our part. Now we may make the following soul-experiment. Let us imagine that we build up in thoughts an artificial man (bear in mind that first of all we make this grotesque soul-experiment)—we construct this artificial man; he is made in such a way that all the things in which we have succeeded in an unaccountable way are brought about through his capacities. Hence when we find that we have succeeded in something which requires wisdom, whereas we are stupid in this very thing, we build up an imaginary man who is particularly wise in this very sphere and who would therefore have met with success in it. We may also apply this experiment as follows in the case of an outer event. Let us assume that a brick falls on our head. At first we cannot realise the cause of this. Let us now construct an imaginary man who brought about the falling of this brick, as follows:—First of all he ran up on to the roof and pulled out a brick so that it would necessarily fall down soon afterwards. Then he quickly ran down again and the brick struck him. This is exactly what we do in certain happenings, although we know quite well in accordance with the usual course of events that we have not caused them; in fact these happenings may even be very much against our will. Let us suppose that someone has struck us at a certain time in our life. To facilitate matters, let us place this occurrence in our childhood; let us suppose that someone engaged to look after us, has beaten us. And let us imagine that we did all we could to deserve this beating. In short, we now construct an imaginary person in whom all those things are centred which are impenetrable to our understanding. You see, if we wish to progress in occultism, we must carry out several things which are in contrast to ordinary facts. But if we only do what appears to be sensible in the usual meaning of the word then we do not come much further in occultism, for the things connected with the higher world may at first seem foolish to an ordinary human being. But it does not matter if the method may appear foolish to a superficial sober-minded man. Let us therefore construct this imaginary human being. At first this may appear grotesque, and perhaps we do not realise its purpose. Yet we shall make a discovery within ourselves; everyone who makes this experiment will discover that it is impossible to get rid of this man whom we have built up in our thoughts—he will begin to interest us. Indeed, when we make this experiment, we will find that we cannot rid ourselves any more of this artificial man—he lives in us. Strange to say, he does not only live in us, but transforms himself within us; he changes greatly. He transforms himself so that in the end he differs entirely from what he was before. He becomes something, of which we cannot but say that after all it is contained in us. This is an experience which we all can have. What has now been described—not the imaginary human being which we have first constructed, but what has become of him—may be designated as a part of what is contained within ourselves. It is exactly that part which has, so to speak, brought about those things in life which apparently have no cause. Thus we find within ourselves something which really brings forth the things that cannot be explained otherwise. What I have described to you constitutes in other words a way enabling us not only to gaze into our own soul-life and to find something in it, but also to tread a path leading out of this soul-life into the surrounding world. For the things in which we fail do not remain in us, but become a part of the world around us. We have taken from it something which is not in keeping with the usual facts of our consciousness. But we have obtained something which appears as if it were contained within us. Then we feel as if we had after all some connections with the things that apparently arise with no real cause. Thus we begin to feel how we are connected with our destiny, with what is called karma. This soul-experiment is a true path, enabling us to experience karma in a certain way. You may argue:—“I cannot quite understand what you say.” But when you say this, it is not because you think that you cannot understand; you say it because you fail to understand something which is in reality quite easy to understand—but you do not think about it. It is impossible to understand such things unless we have carried out the above mentioned experiment. Hence, these things can be looked upon merely as the description of an experiment which can be made and experienced by everybody. Through this experiment we can all realise that in us something lives which is connected with our karma. If we were to know this beforehand, it would not be necessary to be given directions showing us how to attain it. It is quite natural that this cannot be realised unless we have made the experiment. However, it is not a question of “understanding” things in the usual meaning of the word, but of accepting a communication concerning something which our soul can experience. If our soul treads such paths, it will grow accustomed to live not only within itself, within its wishes and passions, but it will grow accustomed to look upon exterior happenings and to connect them with its own self. Our soul will grow accustomed to this. The very things which we have not desired are those which we ourselves have brought into the occurrences. Finally, if we are able to face our whole destiny so that we accept it calmly, if in the case of things about which we generally grumble and protest, we think instead—“let us accept them gladly, for we ourselves are responsible for them”—if we are able to do this, then we develop a particular frame of mind. This frame of mind will enable us to distinguish the true from the false when we descend into the hidden depths of soul-life, to discriminate with absolute certainty; then what is true and what is false will appear with wonderful clearness and certainty. If we look upon a vision with the spiritual eye and are able to dispel it simply through the fact that we dispel or conjure away all the forces which we experience as our inner being and which we learn to know anew in this form—if we can dispel them as it were through a mere glance—then this vision is nothing but a phantasm. But if we can not eliminate it in this way and are able to dispel only that part which reminds us of the outer sense world—that is the visionary part—if the spiritual element remains as an undeniable fact, then the vision is a true one. This distinction however cannot be made before we have accomplished what has already been described. Hence, on the super-sensible plane the true and the false cannot be distinguished with certainty unless we have undergone the above mentioned training. The essential fact during a soul-experience is that our usual consciousness is in reality always contained in what we desire, so that through this soul-experiment we become accustomed to consider as our own will what we do not wish at all as far as our ordinary consciousness is concerned—what usually goes against our will. In a certain connection we may have reached a definite stage of inner development; if however such a soul-experiment does not induce us to place this connection with what we have not wished, against the wishes, pensions, sympathies and antipathies living within our soul, then we shall make one mistake after another. The greatest mistake of this kind was made just in the Theosophical Society by H. P. Blavatsky. She observed the field where the Christ may be found, and because her wishes and desires—in a few words all that constituted her upper consciousness—contained antipathy, indeed hatred for everything Christian and Jewish, whereas she had a predilection for all that had spread over the earth as spiritual civilisation, excluding the Christian and the Hebrew, and because she had never passed through the training described today—she was faced by an entirely false idea of the Christ. This is quite natural. She handed this idea over to her more intimate disciples and it is still alive today, coarsened into a grotesque picture. These things reach into the highest spheres. We can see many things on the occult plane, but the capacity of distinguishing them is higher than merely seeing or perceiving them. This must be emphasized sharply. Now the following problem arises: When we dive down into our hidden soul-depths (every clairvoyant must do this), we first reach our own self. We must learn to know ourselves by passing really and truly through that stage where we are at first faced by a world in which Lucifer and Ahriman continually promise us the kingdoms of the world. This signifies that we are placed before our own inner world and that the devil tells us—this is the objective world. This is the temptation which even the Christ could not escape. The illusions of the inner-world were placed before Him. But through His own strength He was able to see from the very beginning that this was not a real world, but something contained in man's inner world. Through this inner world, in which we must distinguish two parts—one which we can eliminate, namely, our true inner content, and another which remains—we reach the objective super-sensible world through the hidden depths of our soul-life. Just as our soul-spiritual kernel must use the mirror of the physical body in order to perceive the things outside, or what constitutes the facts of ordinary consciousness, so the human being must use his etheric body as a mirror, as far as his soul-spiritual kernel is concerned, in order to perceive the spiritual super-sensible facts which he at first encounters. The higher sense-organs, if we may use this expression, appear in the astral body, but what lives in them must be reflected through the etheric body, just as the soul-spiritual content which we perceive in ordinary life is reflected through the physical body. We must learn to use our etheric body. Since our etheric body is generally unknown to us, although it is that part which really gives us life—it is quite natural that we should first learn to know this etheric body before we learn to know what enters into us from the super-sensible world outside, and before this can be reflected through the etheric body. You see, what we thus experience by reaching the hidden depths of our soul-life—when we experience, so to speak, our own self and the projection of our own wishes—this very much resembles the life which we usually call Kamaloca. It differs from Kamaloca-life through the fact that during our ordinary life we progress as far as an imprisonment (for we may call it thus) within our own self; yet our physical body is there and we can always return to it, whereas in Kamaloca the physical body no longer exists. Even a part of the etheric body no longer exists—that part which during life throws back to us a reflection; we are surrounded by the general life-ether which is now the reflecting instrument and mirrors everything that is contained in us. During the Kamaloca-period our own inner world is built up around us, with all its wishes and passions. All that we experience and feel within us, is now around us as our objective world. it is important that we should realise that Kamaloca-life can first of all be characterised through the fact that we are enclosed within ourselves and that this constitutes a prison; all the more so, as we cannot return to any form of physical life, which constitutes the foundation of our whole inner life. When we experience our Kamaloca-life so as to realise gradually (we gradually realise this) that everything contained in it can only be eliminated when we begin to feel in a different way, when we no longer have within us passions etc.—only then do we break through the walls of our Kamaloca-prison. In what sense can this be understood? In this sense:—let us suppose that someone dies cherishing a certain wish. This wish will be part of what is then projected outside; it will be contained in one of the formations that surround him. As long as this wish still lives in him he will not be able to open the gates of Kamaloca with any key, as far as this wish is concerned. When he realises that this wish can be satisfied only by eliminating it, by giving it up, by not desiring any more—only when this wish has been torn out of the soul and he assumes toward it the very opposite attitude, only then everything that imprisons him in Kamaloca, including this wish, will be torn out of the soul. At this stage between death and a new birth we reach the sphere which is called Devachan: we can also reach it through clairvoyance if we have learned to know what forms a part of us. Through clairvoyance we reach Devachan, when we have obtained a definite degree of maturity; during Kamaloca we reach Devachan in the course of time, just because time torments us through our own desires, so that they are gradually surmounted in the course of time. Through this, all that is conjured up before us, as if it were the world and its glory, is burst asunder. The world of real, super-sensible facts is what we generally call Devachan. How do we generally encounter this world of real, super-sensible facts? Here on the earth we can speak of Devachan only because we can penetrate through clairvoyance (if the Self has really been overcome) into the world of super-sensible facts which actually exist, and these facts coincide with what is contained in Devachan. The chief characteristic of Devachan is that moral facts can no longer be distinguished from physical facts, or physical laws; moral laws and physical laws coincide. What is meant by this? In the ordinary physical world the sun shines over the just and the unjust; one who has committed a crime may perhaps be put in prison, but the physical sun will not be darker because of this fact. This signifies that the world of sense-reality has both a moral order of laws and physical one; but they follow two entirely different directions. In Devachan it is otherwise—there, this difference does not exist at all. In Devachan everything that arises out of something moral, or intellectually wise, or esthetically beautiful, etc., leads to a creation, is creative—whereas everything that arises out of something immoral, intellectually untrue, or esthetically ugly, leads to destruction, is destructive. The laws of Nature in Devachan are indeed of such kind that the sun does not shine equally brightly over the just and the unjust. Speaking figuratively, we may say that the sun actually is darkened in the case of an unrighteous man, whereas the righteous man who passes through Devachan really finds in it the spiritual sunshine, that is, the influence of the life-spending forces which help him forward in life. A liar or an ugly-minded man will pass through Devachan in such a way that the spiritual forces withdraw from him. In Devachan an order of laws is possible, which is not possible here or earth. When two people, a righteous and an unrighteous one, walk side by side here on the earth, it is not possible for the sun to shine upon one and not to shine upon the other. But in the spiritual world the influence of the spiritual forces undoubtedly depends upon the quality of a human being. In Devachan this signifies that the laws of Nature and the spiritual laws do not follow separate directions, but the same direction. This is the essential thing which must be borne in mind—in Devachan the laws of Nature and the moral and intellectual laws coincide. As a result of this, the following will arise:—When a human being enters Devachan and lives there, with all that is still contained in him from his last life on earth—righteousness and unrighteousness, good and evil, esthetic beauty and ugliness, truth and falsehood—all this becomes active in such a way that it immediately takes possession of the laws of Nature existing in Devachan. We may perhaps compare it to the following fact in the sense-world. Let us suppose that someone has stolen, or has told a lie here on earth and then goes out into the sunshine; but the sun no longer shines upon him, he cannot find sunshine anywhere, so that through the want of sunlight he gradually becomes ill ... Or let us suppose—this can also serve as a comparison,—that someone who has told a lie here on earth cannot breathe any more—all these cases would be similar to what actually happens in Devachan. One who is guilty of this or that sin, will find there, as far as his soul-spiritual being is concerned, that the laws of Nature coincide with the spiritual laws. Consequently, when this man continues to develop in Devachan as described above, and he progresses more and more, then such laws and qualities will live in him, that what he now becomes in Devachan, corresponds to the qualities which he has brought with him from his preceding life. Let us suppose that someone lives in Devachan for 200 years; he has peered through Devachan, and if he told many lies during his life on earth, then the Spirits of Truth will withdraw from him in Devachan. Something in him will then die, whereas in another truth-loving soul this will instead flourish and come to life. Let us suppose that someone passes through Devachan with a pronounced vanity, which he has not set aside. In Devachan this vanity will be a most foul exhalation, and certain spiritual beings avoid such an individuality that exhales these foul odours of ambition or vanity. This is not described figuratively. Vanity and ambition are indeed most foul exhalations in Devachan, so that certain beings, who withdraw because of this, cannot exercise their beneficial influence. It is just as if a plant were to grow in a cellar, whereas it can flourish only in the sunshine. The vain person cannot prosper. He develops under the influence of this quality. Then, when he reincarnates, he has not the strength to take into himself the good influences. Instead of developing certain organs soundly, he develops an unsound organic system. Thus, not only our physical condition, but also our moral and intellectual condition, show us what we will become in life. On the physical plane, the laws of Nature and the spiritual laws go separate ways. But, between death and a new birth they are one—the laws of Nature and the spiritual laws are one. Destructive forces of Nature enter our soul, as the result of immoral deeds during a preceding life; but life-spending forces enter it, as the result of moral deeds. This is not only connected with our inner configuration, but also with what we encounter in life, as our karma. The characteristic element of Devachan is that there is no difference between the laws of Nature and spiritual laws. The clairvoyant who really penetrates into the super-sensible worlds experiences this. The super-sensible worlds differ very much from the worlds here on the physical plane. It is simply impossible for a clairvoyant to make the distinction usually made by a materialistic mind, namely, that there are merely objective laws of Nature. Behind the objective laws of Nature there are in reality always spiritual laws; and a clairvoyant cannot, for instance, cross a dry piece of meadow land, or a flooded region, or perceive a volcanic eruption, without realising that spiritual powers, spiritual beings, are behind all phenomena in Nature. A volcanic eruption is for him also a moral deed, although the moral element may perhaps lie on an entirely different plane than we may, at first, imagine. Those who always confuse the physical and the higher worlds will say:—“If innocent people perish through a volcanic eruption, how can we suppose this to be a moral deed.” But at first, we need not consider this opinion; for it would be just as cruelly narrow-minded as the opposite one—namely, to consider this eruption as a punishment inflicted by God upon the people who live near the volcano. Both opinions are only the result of the narrow-minded mentality here on the physical plane. But this is not the point in question; far more universal things must be taken into consideration. Those people who live on the slopes of a volcano and whose possessions are destroyed through an eruption, are perhaps without any guilt in this life. But this will find its balance later on, and does not imply a merciless attitude on our part (to consider it as such would again be a narrow-minded interpretation of the facts). In the case of volcanic eruptions, for instance, we find that in the course of the evolution of the earth human beings cause to certain things; and because these things occur, the entire evolution of humanity is held up. For this very reason, good Gods must work in a certain way in order to establish the balance—and such phenomena in Nature sometimes bring about such a balance. Very often, this connection can be seen only by penetrating into occult depths. Thus, adjustments occur in the case of things brought about by human beings—things which are in opposition to the spiritual course of mankind's true development. All events, even if they are mere phenomena of Nature, have something moral in their depths, and the bearers of this moral element; which lie behind the physical facts, are spiritual beings. Thus, if we imagine a world where it is impossible to speak of a division between the laws of Nature and spiritual laws—in other words, a world where justice rules as a law of Nature—then this world would be Devachan. And in Devachan we need not think that actions which deserve punishment are punished arbitrarily; for there, the immoral element destroys itself and the moral one progresses, with the same necessity with which a flame sets fire to combustible material. Thus, we see that just the innermost characteristics, the innermost nerve, so to speak, of existence, varies in the different worlds. We cannot form a picture of the various worlds unless we bear in mind these peculiarities which differ radically in each world. Hence, we may characterise the physical world, Kamaloca, and Devachan, as follows: in the physical world, the laws of Nature and the spiritual laws constitute a series of facts which take their course in separate directions. In the world of Kamaloca, the human being is imprisoned within his own self, enclosed in the prison of his own being. The world of Devachan is the very opposite of the physical world. There, the laws of Nature and the spiritual laws are one and the same thing. These are the three characteristics; and if we bear them carefully in mind, if we try to feel the radical difference between our world and one where the intellectual laws, and also the aesthetic laws, are at the same time laws of Nature, then we shall have an inkling of what is contained in Devachan. If we meet an ugly person, or a beautiful one, here in the physical world, we have no right to treat the ugly man as if he had something repulsive in his soul-spiritual being, nor can we place a beautiful human being on a certain height, from a soul-spiritual aspect. But in Devachan it is entirely different. There, we never meet anything ugly, unless it has been caused by something; and the human being who owes his ugly face to his preceding incarnation, but strives to be true and upright in this life, cannot possibly meet us in Devachan with an ugly face. Such a human being will indeed have transformed his ugly face into beauty. On the other hand, it is just as true that one who tells lies and is vain and miserly wanders about in Devachan with an ugly form. Something else, however, must also be borne in mind. In ordinary physical life we do not find that something is continually being destroyed in an ugly face, and that a beautiful face continually adds something to its beauty. But in Devachan we see that ugliness is a destructive element, and whenever we perceive something beautiful we are compelled to realise that it brings about a continual growth, a continual fructification. Hence, in the world of Devachan we must have entirely different feelings than in the physical world. It will be necessary to find the essential element in these feelings, and to acquire the capacity of adding to the outer description of things these feelings and experiences which are described in spiritual science. If you strive to experience a world wherein the moral, the beautiful, and the mentally true elements appear with the same necessity as a law of Nature, you will attain the experience of Devachan. It is for this reason that we must collect so many facts and work so hard, in order to melt down to a living experience what we have thus acquired through study. Without effort it is impossible to attain a true knowledge of the things which must gradually be made clear to the world through spiritual science. Today there are undoubtedly many people who argue:—“Why should we learn so many things through spiritual science? Must we become schoolboys again? Feelings or experiences seem to be the most important thing in it.” Indeed, feeling is precisely what should be taken into consideration—but, first of all, the right kind of feeling must be acquired. The same thing applies to everything. A painter also would find it far more pleasant if there were no need for him to learn the elements of his art, and so forth, and if he were not obliged to paint his final picture slowly and gradually on the canvas. It would be far more pleasant if he could just breathe on the canvas, and so produce his finished picture! The peculiar thing in the world today is this—that, the more we reach the soul-spiritual sphere, the more people fail to understand that a mere breathing on the canvas does not suffice! In the case of music, few people will admit that a man who has learnt nothing at all can be a composer; this is quite obvious to them. They will also admit this in the case of painting—although less strictly than in the case of music—and in the case of poetry they will admit still less that study and training is necessary. This is why there are so many modern poets. No age has been so unpoetical as our present age, in spite of its many poets! Poets need not learn much—they are simply expected to write (although this has nothing to do with poetry)—at least orthographically; it suffices if they are able to express their thoughts intelligibly! And less still is expected from philosophers. For it is taken for granted that anyone may express his opinion concerning all kinds of things which belong to a conception of the world, or life-conception. Everybody has his own point of view. Again and again we find that careful study, entailing the application of all means available to an inner activity, in order to investigate and know at least something of the world, counts for nothing in the present day. Instead, it is taken for granted that the standpoint of one who has toiled and worked in order, to venture to say at least a few things concerning the secrets of the universe is equivalent to the standpoint of one who has simply made up his mind to have an opinion! Hence today everybody has, so to speak, his own conception of the world. And a Theosophist above all others! In the opinion of some people, still less is required to be a Theosophist. In their opinion, all that is needed is not even to acknowledge the three principles of the Theosophical Society, but only the first one—and this entirely according to their own liking! Since all that is required is to admit with more or less truthfulness that love toward others suffices—whether or not one is really filled with love does not count so much—it is easy enough to be a Theosophist, and then of course one has the right kind of feeling! Thus we descend continually. We begin with an estimation of music and expect a certain standard from those who wish to have an opinion on music—we descend continually and require less and less, until we finally reach Theosophy, where least of all is required! For we think that what is generally considered inadequate in the case of painting, for instance, is sufficient in the case of Theosophy—no effort is needed here, yet we lay the foundation for a universal brotherhood, and then we are Theosophists! We need not learn anything else! But the essential point is this—we must strive with all our might to transform into living experiences what we gather in the form of study—for the shadings of these feelings will give us the highest and truest knowledge. You should direct all your efforts toward the attainment of an experience such as the impression derived from a world where the laws of Nature and the spiritual laws coincide. If you work in full earnestness (let the people believe that you have only studied theoretical facts!), if you have spared no effort in comprehending this or that theory, then an impression will be left behind in Devachan. If an experience, a real feeling, exists not only in your fancy, but you have really acquired it through careful work, then this experience, these nuances of feeling, will reach further than they can reach merely by themselves—they will become real through earnest, diligent study. And then you are not far distant from the point where this nuance of feeling will acquire life, and Devachan will really lie before you. For this nuance of feeling becomes a perceptive capacity if it is worked out truthfully. Our groups, our working centres, are what they should be, only if the work within them is really carried out without any sensation and on an honest basis. In this case our groups and centres are schools which are meant to lead man into the spheres of clairvoyance. Only someone who does not wish to attain this and is unwilling to work can have a false opinion concerning these things.

143. Reflections of Consciousness, Super-consciousness and Sub-consciousness 25 Feb 1912, Munich
Translator Unknown
Rudolf Steiner

This is lecture 3 of 14 in the lecture series entitled, Experiential Knowledge of the Supersensible. It is also lecture 3 of 5 included in the collection of lectures known as, Psychoanalysis in the Light of Anthroposophy, Psychoanalysis and Spiritual Psychology, or Freud, Jung, and Spiritual Psychology.

When public lectures are held for a larger public, certain things must be dealt with differently than at Group-meetings, because the members of a Group who have worked together and have studied these matters for some time, are prepared to accept such things differently than a larger public. Yesterday we saw that we can speak of hidden aspects of man's soul-life and we must place these hidden sides of human soul-life against the facts ascertained through ordinary, everyday consciousness.

If you were to observe superficially what lives in your soul, from the morning when you awake until the evening when you fall asleep—what lives in it in the form of ideas, feelings or moods, and impulses of the will-including of course all that enters the soul from outside through sense-perception—if you observe all this, then you will obtain all that can be termed as forming the contents of ordinary consciousness. We must now realise that everything which is thus contained in the life of our consciousness, is dependent as far as this ordinary consciousness is concerned upon the instruments of the physical body. The nearest and most obvious fact proving what has just been said, is that man must awake in order to live within the course of events, ascertained through an ordinary consciousness. This signifies that man must dive into the physical body with that part of his being which is outside the physical body during sleep, and that this physical body with its instruments is then at his disposal. He should be able to use these instruments in order to ascertain the happenings which are accessible to ordinary consciousness. The following question immediately arises:—How does man, as a spirit-soul being, use his bodily instruments—the sense-organs and the nervous system? How does he use his bodily organs in order to live within his everyday consciousness? In materialistic spheres it is held that the physical or bodily instruments constitute for man something which produces the facts of his consciousness. I have often pointed out that this is not the case; we should not imagine that the inner structure of our body, namely the sense-organs or the brain, produce the facts of consciousness, just as a candle, for instance, produces a flame. The relationship of what we call consciousness to the bodily instruments is entirely different; we may compare it with the relationship of a man who sees his reflection in a mirror, to this mirror. When we are asleep, we live within our consciousness as if we were walking, so to speak, in a straight line. If we are walking in a straight line, we do not see what our forehead, etc. looks like—but the very moment that someone holds a mirror in front of us, we can see ourselves. Then that which is already a part of us, comes toward us; it begins to exist for us. The same thing occurs in the case of the facts in our ordinary consciousness. They live in us continually, but in reality they have nothing to do with our physical body. Just as we ourselves have nothing to do with the mirror, so the facts in our consciousness have nothing to do with our physical body. The materialistic theory in this sphere is not even an acceptable hypothesis—it is sheer nonsense! For in this connection the materialist states something which may be compared to nothing less than this—namely, that someone who sees himself in a mirror, declares that he has been produced by the mirror. If you wish to delude yourself that the mirror has produced you, because you can only see yourself when a mirror is held before you, then you may also believe that various parts of the brain, or your sense-organs produce the contents of soul-life. Both things are equally clever and equally true. The truth, that a mirror can produce a man, has just the same value as the other truth, that a brain can produce thoughts. The facts that live in our consciousness have their own existence. It is necessary however that our ordinary organisation should perceive these existing facts of consciousness. To render this possible, we must be faced by something which reflects the facts of consciousness—namely, our physical body. Thus we possess in our physical body something which we may call a mirroring apparatus for the facts of our ordinary consciousness. These live in our spirit-soul being, and we perceive them because the mirror of our corporeality is held in front of what lives in us and is part of us, but cannot be perceived by us through the soul (just as we cannot see ourselves unless a mirror is held before us). This is the true aspect of things, But the body is not merely a passive mirroring apparatus—it is something in which processes take place. You may therefore imagine at the back of this mirror—instead of the dark coating which brings about the reflections—all kinds of happenings which take place there, behind the mirror. This comparison may be used to characterise the true relationship between our spirit-soul being and our body. Hence we must bear in mind that the body is a mirroring instrument for everything we experience within our normal, everyday consciousness and that moreover the physical body is a true mirror. Behind—or if you like—beneath these normal facts of consciousness, lie all those things which rise to the surface of our ordinary soul-life, which must be designated as the facts contained in the hidden depths of the soul.

Something of what lives in the hidden depths of the soul is experienced—let us say—by the poet, by the artist. If he is a real poet, a real artist, he will know that he does not attain what comes to expression in his poetry in the usual way—he does not attain it through logical thinking, or in the way in which we come to the facts of consciousness through outer perception. He knows that things arise out of unknown depths and are there, really exist, without having been formed by the forces of ordinary consciousness. But other things also arise out of these hidden depths of soul-life. These are things which play a part in normal consciousness, although we do not know anything about their origin, as far as ordinary life is concerned. But yesterday we saw that we can descend more deeply into soul-life—as far as the region of semi-consciousness, the region of dreams, and we know that dreams lift something out of the hidden depths of soul-life which we would be unable to lift up in the usual, normal way, through an effort of consciousness. If something, which has been buried in memory long ago, rises before a man's soul in the form of a dream-picture, as happens again and again—then, in most cases, this man would never have been in a position to lift these things out of the hidden depths of his soul-life by trying to recollect them—because ordinary consciousness does not reach as far as this. What can no longer be reached through normal consciousness, can however be reached through sub-consciousness. In this semi-conscious state during dreams, many things are brought to the surface which have remained behind, as it were—which have been stored. They surge up—but only those things surge up which could not become active, in the same way as other things become active, which dive down into hidden soul-depths, from out the experiences gained in life. We acquire health or we grow ill, we become bad-tempered or glad—but this takes place so that we do not notice it in the normal course of life, because it constitutes bodily conditions, determined by what has dived down into the soul out of our life-experiences—something which we cannot remember, but which is nevertheless active in the depths of soul-life, making us into what we then become during the course of life. We would understand many human lives if we were to know what has entered the hidden depths during the course of life. We would understand many a human being in his 30th, 40th, 50th year—we would know why he has this or that inclination, why he feels so deeply the cause of his dissatisfaction—we would understand many things if we were to trace the life of such a man back to his childhood. In his childhood, we would see how parents and surroundings influenced him; what was called forth during childhood in the form of sorrow and joy, pain and pleasure—things perhaps that are completely forgotten, but influence a man's entire state of health and of mind. For what surges and rolls down into the hidden depths of soul-life out of our consciousness, continues to be active there below. The strange part of it all is that these forces which are working there, first work upon ourselves and do not abandon—so to speak—the sphere of our personality. Hence, when clairvoyant consciousness descends to these depths (this occurs through imagination, through what we call imaginative knowledge), when it descends to the depths where these forces are active in sub-consciousness, as just described, then man always finds his own self. He finds what surges and lives within him. And this is a good thing. Indeed, in a true self-knowledge, man must learn to know himself; he must contemplate and learn to know all the impulses which are active within him.

If man does not pay attention to this fact, if he pays no attention to the fact that first of all he will find his own self with all that constitutes it and is active within it, he will be exposed to all kinds of errors when his clairvoyant consciousness penetrates into sub-consciousness through the exercises of an imaginative knowledge. Through a form of consciousness resembling the ordinary consciousness, man cannot be aware at all that he comes across his own self when he descends into the depths of soul-life. At a certain stage of development it will be possible to have visions—let us say—to see shapes which are unquestionably something new, when we compare them with what we have learnt to know through the experiences of life. Such a circumstance can indeed arise. But if we were to imagine that such things belong to the outer world, this would be a great illusion. These things do not arise in the same way in which the facts connected with our inner life generally arise in ordinary consciousness. If we have a headache, this is a fact which enters usual consciousness. We know that the pain is in our own head. If we have a stomach-ache, the pain is experienced within our own self. If we descend to the depths which we call the hidden soul-depths, we can only be within our own self—yet we can see things which appear to us as if they were outside our own selves. Let us take, for instance, a striking case. Let us suppose that someone desires most intensely to be the reincarnated Mary Magdalene, (I once mentioned that I have already met twenty-four reincarnated Magdalenes in my life); let us assume that someone desires most intensely to be Mary Magdalene. But let us also assume that this person does not confess this wish to himself (we need not confess our wishes to ourselves—this is unnecessary). Well—someone may read the story of Mary Magdalene and may like it immensely. In his sub-consciousness the desire to be Mary Magdalene may now immediately arise. He is aware of nothing in his usual consciousness except that he likes this character. The person in question has a liking for this character. He is aware of this in his upper consciousness. But in his sub-consciousness lives the burning desire to be himself this Mary Magdalene—yet he knows nothing about this. He does not bother about this. He is guided by the facts of his usual consciousness; he can go through the world without being compelled at all to become aware of this erroneous fact in his consciousness—the intense wish to be Mary Magdalene. But let us suppose that such a person has attained, in some way or other, a kind of occult training. This would enable him to descend into his sub-consciousness—but he would not become aware of the fact, “in me lives the desire to be Mary Magdalene”—he would not become aware of this in the same way that he becomes aware of a headache. If he were to notice this desire to be Mary Magdalene then he would be sensible and assume toward this desire the same attitude as toward a pain—namely, he would try to get rid of it. But through an irregular descent into sub-consciousness, this does not take place, because his desire acquires the form of something which is outside his own personality, and to the man in question it appears as the vision: “You are Mary Magdalene”. This fact stands before him, is projected outside his own being. Moreover, a human being at this stage of development is no longer able to control such a fact through his Ego. This lack of control cannot arise when we undergo a regular, sound and absolutely careful training; for then the Ego accompanies all experiences in every sphere. But as soon as the Ego no longer accompanies all our experiences, the fact described above can arise in the form of an objective outer happening. The observer believes that he can remember the events connected with Mary Magdalene and feels himself identified with this Mary Magdalene. This is unquestionably possible. I emphasize this possibility, because it shows you that only a careful training and the conscientiousness with which we penetrate into occultism, can rescue us from falling into error. If we know that we must first see before us an entire world, that we must see around us facts, not something which we apply to our own selves, but something that is in us, and yet appears like the picture of a whole world—if we know that we do well to consider what we first see before us is the projection of our own inner life—then we possess a good shield against the errors which can beset us along this path. The best thing of all is to consider at first everything that rises out of our inner being as if it were an exterior fact. In most cases these facts arise out of our desires, vanities, ambition—in a few words, out of all the qualities connected with human selfishness. These things above all project themselves outside and now we may ask:—How can we escape from such errors? How can we save ourselves from them?

It is not possible to save ourselves from error through the usual facts of consciousness. Error arises because we cannot, so to speak, come out of ourselves at the moment when we are being faced by a world picture; we remain entangled within ourselves. This will show you that the essential thing is to come out of ourselves, to distinguish in one way or another that here we have before us one kind of vision, and there another. Both visions are outside; one is perhaps merely the projection of a wish, and the other one is a real fact. Yet they do not differ as much as things differ in ordinary life—for instance, when one person states that he has a headache and we ourselves have a headache. For our own inner life, as well as that of another man, are both projected outside into space. How can we discriminate between them?

We must learn to investigate the occult sphere—we must learn to distinguish a true impression from a false one, although all impressions are mixed together and arise as if they were all equally entitled to be taken for true impressions. It is just as if we were to look into the physical world and were to see there, beside the actual trees, other imaginary trees, and as if we were unable to discriminate between them. The true facts outside and the facts which arise only within ourselves are mixed together, just as if false and true trees were standing side by side. How can we learn to distinguish one sphere from the other? We do not learn this at first through our consciousness. If we remain only within the life of thoughts we cannot possibly discriminate, for this possibility is given to us only through a slow occult training of the soul. If we progress more and more, we reach the point where we learn to distinguish one thing from another—that is, we do in the occult what we would have to do if we were to see actual trees beside imaginary ones. If we walk toward imaginary trees, we do not strike against them, but we do collide with real trees! Something similar also occurs—but as a spiritual fact, of course—in the occult sphere. If we proceed in the right way, we can learn to discriminate in a comparatively easy manner between what is true and false in this sphere; but we cannot do this through thoughts—only through a decision of the will. This decision of the will can arise as follows:—If we survey our life, we find in it two distinct groups of events. We often find that this or that thing in which we succeed or fail, is connected quite normally with our capacities. In other words—we can understand our failure in a certain direction because we are not particularly clever in that sphere. On the other hand, we can understand our success in this or in that direction because we know that we have certain capacities which account for it. Perhaps it may not always be so strictly necessary to realise this connection existing between our actions and our capacities. There is also a less clear way of realising it. For instance, when misfortune strikes someone at some later stage in life and he then thinks about this, he may say to himself:—“I have been a man who has done very little in order to become more active ... ” Or else he may admit to himself:—“I have always been such a happy-go-lucky fellow ... ” In both cases he will be able to say that he did not realise immediately the connection between his failure and his past actions, but he did realise that a light-hearted lazy man will not succeed in all things as well as a conscientious, diligent one. There are things where we can see quite well their connection with our successes or failures, but there are others where it seems impossible to find a connection—where we must say:—In spite of this or that capacity which should have guaranteed our success in this or in that direction, we have not succeeded. Evidently there are also certain kinds of successes or failures where we can not see at once the connection with our capacities. This is one aspect. The other one is that in the case of certain things which we encounter, such as blows of destiny, we may sometimes say:—“Well, this seems justified; for we ourselves have supplied the conditions for it.” But for other occurrences we find that they happen without our being able to discover anything which could be indicated as their cause. Thus we have two kinds of experiences—experiences which come from us, and where we can see the connection with our own capacities—and the other kind of experience which has just been described. In the case of some experiences which come to us from outside, we find happenings of which we cannot say that we ourselves have given rise to them, and again there are others of which we know that their foundation lies in us. Let us look about us in life and make an experiment which is very useful for every human being. This experiment can be made as follows. We place together all things the causes of which are unknown to us, and also all the things in which we have succeeded and of which we can say that they have happened in some unaccountable way—things for the success of which we are not responsible at all. But also failures which we can remember may be placed together in this way. Then we look upon outer events which have met us by chance, for which we cannot find any influence on our part. Now we may make the following soul-experiment. Let us imagine that we build up in thoughts an artificial man (bear in mind that first of all we make this grotesque soul-experiment)—we construct this artificial man; he is made in such a way that all the things in which we have succeeded in an unaccountable way are brought about through his capacities. Hence when we find that we have succeeded in something which requires wisdom, whereas we are stupid in this very thing, we build up an imaginary man who is particularly wise in this very sphere and who would therefore have met with success in it. We may also apply this experiment as follows in the case of an outer event. Let us assume that a brick falls on our head. At first we cannot realise the cause of this. Let us now construct an imaginary man who brought about the falling of this brick, as follows:—First of all he ran up on to the roof and pulled out a brick so that it would necessarily fall down soon afterwards. Then he quickly ran down again and the brick struck him. This is exactly what we do in certain happenings, although we know quite well in accordance with the usual course of events that we have not caused them; in fact these happenings may even be very much against our will. Let us suppose that someone has struck us at a certain time in our life. To facilitate matters, let us place this occurrence in our childhood; let us suppose that someone engaged to look after us, has beaten us. And let us imagine that we did all we could to deserve this beating. In short, we now construct an imaginary person in whom all those things are centred which are impenetrable to our understanding. You see, if we wish to progress in occultism, we must carry out several things which are in contrast to ordinary facts. But if we only do what appears to be sensible in the usual meaning of the word then we do not come much further in occultism, for the things connected with the higher world may at first seem foolish to an ordinary human being. But it does not matter if the method may appear foolish to a superficial sober-minded man. Let us therefore construct this imaginary human being. At first this may appear grotesque, and perhaps we do not realise its purpose. Yet we shall make a discovery within ourselves; everyone who makes this experiment will discover that it is impossible to get rid of this man whom we have built up in our thoughts—he will begin to interest us. Indeed, when we make this experiment, we will find that we cannot rid ourselves any more of this artificial man—he lives in us. Strange to say, he does not only live in us, but transforms himself within us; he changes greatly. He transforms himself so that in the end he differs entirely from what he was before. He becomes something, of which we cannot but say that after all it is contained in us. This is an experience which we all can have. What has now been described—not the imaginary human being which we have first constructed, but what has become of him—may be designated as a part of what is contained within ourselves. It is exactly that part which has, so to speak, brought about those things in life which apparently have no cause. Thus we find within ourselves something which really brings forth the things that cannot be explained otherwise. What I have described to you constitutes in other words a way enabling us not only to gaze into our own soul-life and to find something in it, but also to tread a path leading out of this soul-life into the surrounding world. For the things in which we fail do not remain in us, but become a part of the world around us. We have taken from it something which is not in keeping with the usual facts of our consciousness. But we have obtained something which appears as if it were contained within us. Then we feel as if we had after all some connections with the things that apparently arise with no real cause. Thus we begin to feel how we are connected with our destiny, with what is called karma. This soul-experiment is a true path, enabling us to experience karma in a certain way.

You may argue:—“I cannot quite understand what you say.” But when you say this, it is not because you think that you cannot understand; you say it because you fail to understand something which is in reality quite easy to understand—but you do not think about it. It is impossible to understand such things unless we have carried out the above mentioned experiment. Hence, these things can be looked upon merely as the description of an experiment which can be made and experienced by everybody. Through this experiment we can all realise that in us something lives which is connected with our karma. If we were to know this beforehand, it would not be necessary to be given directions showing us how to attain it. It is quite natural that this cannot be realised unless we have made the experiment. However, it is not a question of “understanding” things in the usual meaning of the word, but of accepting a communication concerning something which our soul can experience. If our soul treads such paths, it will grow accustomed to live not only within itself, within its wishes and passions, but it will grow accustomed to look upon exterior happenings and to connect them with its own self. Our soul will grow accustomed to this. The very things which we have not desired are those which we ourselves have brought into the occurrences. Finally, if we are able to face our whole destiny so that we accept it calmly, if in the case of things about which we generally grumble and protest, we think instead—“let us accept them gladly, for we ourselves are responsible for them”—if we are able to do this, then we develop a particular frame of mind. This frame of mind will enable us to distinguish the true from the false when we descend into the hidden depths of soul-life, to discriminate with absolute certainty; then what is true and what is false will appear with wonderful clearness and certainty.

If we look upon a vision with the spiritual eye and are able to dispel it simply through the fact that we dispel or conjure away all the forces which we experience as our inner being and which we learn to know anew in this form—if we can dispel them as it were through a mere glance—then this vision is nothing but a phantasm. But if we can not eliminate it in this way and are able to dispel only that part which reminds us of the outer sense world—that is the visionary part—if the spiritual element remains as an undeniable fact, then the vision is a true one. This distinction however cannot be made before we have accomplished what has already been described. Hence, on the super-sensible plane the true and the false cannot be distinguished with certainty unless we have undergone the above mentioned training. The essential fact during a soul-experience is that our usual consciousness is in reality always contained in what we desire, so that through this soul-experiment we become accustomed to consider as our own will what we do not wish at all as far as our ordinary consciousness is concerned—what usually goes against our will. In a certain connection we may have reached a definite stage of inner development; if however such a soul-experiment does not induce us to place this connection with what we have not wished, against the wishes, pensions, sympathies and antipathies living within our soul, then we shall make one mistake after another. The greatest mistake of this kind was made just in the Theosophical Society by H. P. Blavatsky. She observed the field where the Christ may be found, and because her wishes and desires—in a few words all that constituted her upper consciousness—contained antipathy, indeed hatred for everything Christian and Jewish, whereas she had a predilection for all that had spread over the earth as spiritual civilisation, excluding the Christian and the Hebrew, and because she had never passed through the training described today—she was faced by an entirely false idea of the Christ. This is quite natural. She handed this idea over to her more intimate disciples and it is still alive today, coarsened into a grotesque picture. These things reach into the highest spheres. We can see many things on the occult plane, but the capacity of distinguishing them is higher than merely seeing or perceiving them. This must be emphasized sharply.

Now the following problem arises: When we dive down into our hidden soul-depths (every clairvoyant must do this), we first reach our own self. We must learn to know ourselves by passing really and truly through that stage where we are at first faced by a world in which Lucifer and Ahriman continually promise us the kingdoms of the world. This signifies that we are placed before our own inner world and that the devil tells us—this is the objective world. This is the temptation which even the Christ could not escape. The illusions of the inner-world were placed before Him. But through His own strength He was able to see from the very beginning that this was not a real world, but something contained in man's inner world. Through this inner world, in which we must distinguish two parts—one which we can eliminate, namely, our true inner content, and another which remains—we reach the objective super-sensible world through the hidden depths of our soul-life. Just as our soul-spiritual kernel must use the mirror of the physical body in order to perceive the things outside, or what constitutes the facts of ordinary consciousness, so the human being must use his etheric body as a mirror, as far as his soul-spiritual kernel is concerned, in order to perceive the spiritual super-sensible facts which he at first encounters. The higher sense-organs, if we may use this expression, appear in the astral body, but what lives in them must be reflected through the etheric body, just as the soul-spiritual content which we perceive in ordinary life is reflected through the physical body. We must learn to use our etheric body. Since our etheric body is generally unknown to us, although it is that part which really gives us life—it is quite natural that we should first learn to know this etheric body before we learn to know what enters into us from the super-sensible world outside, and before this can be reflected through the etheric body.

You see, what we thus experience by reaching the hidden depths of our soul-life—when we experience, so to speak, our own self and the projection of our own wishes—this very much resembles the life which we usually call Kamaloca. It differs from Kamaloca-life through the fact that during our ordinary life we progress as far as an imprisonment (for we may call it thus) within our own self; yet our physical body is there and we can always return to it, whereas in Kamaloca the physical body no longer exists. Even a part of the etheric body no longer exists—that part which during life throws back to us a reflection; we are surrounded by the general life-ether which is now the reflecting instrument and mirrors everything that is contained in us. During the Kamaloca-period our own inner world is built up around us, with all its wishes and passions. All that we experience and feel within us, is now around us as our objective world. it is important that we should realise that Kamaloca-life can first of all be characterised through the fact that we are enclosed within ourselves and that this constitutes a prison; all the more so, as we cannot return to any form of physical life, which constitutes the foundation of our whole inner life. When we experience our Kamaloca-life so as to realise gradually (we gradually realise this) that everything contained in it can only be eliminated when we begin to feel in a different way, when we no longer have within us passions etc.—only then do we break through the walls of our Kamaloca-prison.

In what sense can this be understood? In this sense:—let us suppose that someone dies cherishing a certain wish. This wish will be part of what is then projected outside; it will be contained in one of the formations that surround him. As long as this wish still lives in him he will not be able to open the gates of Kamaloca with any key, as far as this wish is concerned. When he realises that this wish can be satisfied only by eliminating it, by giving it up, by not desiring any more—only when this wish has been torn out of the soul and he assumes toward it the very opposite attitude, only then everything that imprisons him in Kamaloca, including this wish, will be torn out of the soul. At this stage between death and a new birth we reach the sphere which is called Devachan: we can also reach it through clairvoyance if we have learned to know what forms a part of us. Through clairvoyance we reach Devachan, when we have obtained a definite degree of maturity; during Kamaloca we reach Devachan in the course of time, just because time torments us through our own desires, so that they are gradually surmounted in the course of time. Through this, all that is conjured up before us, as if it were the world and its glory, is burst asunder.

The world of real, super-sensible facts is what we generally call Devachan. How do we generally encounter this world of real, super-sensible facts? Here on the earth we can speak of Devachan only because we can penetrate through clairvoyance (if the Self has really been overcome) into the world of super-sensible facts which actually exist, and these facts coincide with what is contained in Devachan. The chief characteristic of Devachan is that moral facts can no longer be distinguished from physical facts, or physical laws; moral laws and physical laws coincide. What is meant by this? In the ordinary physical world the sun shines over the just and the unjust; one who has committed a crime may perhaps be put in prison, but the physical sun will not be darker because of this fact. This signifies that the world of sense-reality has both a moral order of laws and physical one; but they follow two entirely different directions. In Devachan it is otherwise—there, this difference does not exist at all. In Devachan everything that arises out of something moral, or intellectually wise, or esthetically beautiful, etc., leads to a creation, is creative—whereas everything that arises out of something immoral, intellectually untrue, or esthetically ugly, leads to destruction, is destructive. The laws of Nature in Devachan are indeed of such kind that the sun does not shine equally brightly over the just and the unjust. Speaking figuratively, we may say that the sun actually is darkened in the case of an unrighteous man, whereas the righteous man who passes through Devachan really finds in it the spiritual sunshine, that is, the influence of the life-spending forces which help him forward in life. A liar or an ugly-minded man will pass through Devachan in such a way that the spiritual forces withdraw from him. In Devachan an order of laws is possible, which is not possible here or earth. When two people, a righteous and an unrighteous one, walk side by side here on the earth, it is not possible for the sun to shine upon one and not to shine upon the other. But in the spiritual world the influence of the spiritual forces undoubtedly depends upon the quality of a human being. In Devachan this signifies that the laws of Nature and the spiritual laws do not follow separate directions, but the same direction. This is the essential thing which must be borne in mind—in Devachan the laws of Nature and the moral and intellectual laws coincide.

As a result of this, the following will arise:—When a human being enters Devachan and lives there, with all that is still contained in him from his last life on earth—righteousness and unrighteousness, good and evil, esthetic beauty and ugliness, truth and falsehood—all this becomes active in such a way that it immediately takes possession of the laws of Nature existing in Devachan. We may perhaps compare it to the following fact in the sense-world. Let us suppose that someone has stolen, or has told a lie here on earth and then goes out into the sunshine; but the sun no longer shines upon him, he cannot find sunshine anywhere, so that through the want of sunlight he gradually becomes ill ... Or let us suppose—this can also serve as a comparison,—that someone who has told a lie here on earth cannot breathe any more—all these cases would be similar to what actually happens in Devachan. One who is guilty of this or that sin, will find there, as far as his soul-spiritual being is concerned, that the laws of Nature coincide with the spiritual laws. Consequently, when this man continues to develop in Devachan as described above, and he progresses more and more, then such laws and qualities will live in him, that what he now becomes in Devachan, corresponds to the qualities which he has brought with him from his preceding life. Let us suppose that someone lives in Devachan for 200 years; he has peered through Devachan, and if he told many lies during his life on earth, then the Spirits of Truth will withdraw from him in Devachan. Something in him will then die, whereas in another truth-loving soul this will instead flourish and come to life.

Let us suppose that someone passes through Devachan with a pronounced vanity, which he has not set aside. In Devachan this vanity will be a most foul exhalation, and certain spiritual beings avoid such an individuality that exhales these foul odours of ambition or vanity. This is not described figuratively. Vanity and ambition are indeed most foul exhalations in Devachan, so that certain beings, who withdraw because of this, cannot exercise their beneficial influence. It is just as if a plant were to grow in a cellar, whereas it can flourish only in the sunshine. The vain person cannot prosper. He develops under the influence of this quality. Then, when he reincarnates, he has not the strength to take into himself the good influences. Instead of developing certain organs soundly, he develops an unsound organic system. Thus, not only our physical condition, but also our moral and intellectual condition, show us what we will become in life. On the physical plane, the laws of Nature and the spiritual laws go separate ways. But, between death and a new birth they are one—the laws of Nature and the spiritual laws are one. Destructive forces of Nature enter our soul, as the result of immoral deeds during a preceding life; but life-spending forces enter it, as the result of moral deeds. This is not only connected with our inner configuration, but also with what we encounter in life, as our karma.

The characteristic element of Devachan is that there is no difference between the laws of Nature and spiritual laws. The clairvoyant who really penetrates into the super-sensible worlds experiences this. The super-sensible worlds differ very much from the worlds here on the physical plane. It is simply impossible for a clairvoyant to make the distinction usually made by a materialistic mind, namely, that there are merely objective laws of Nature. Behind the objective laws of Nature there are in reality always spiritual laws; and a clairvoyant cannot, for instance, cross a dry piece of meadow land, or a flooded region, or perceive a volcanic eruption, without realising that spiritual powers, spiritual beings, are behind all phenomena in Nature. A volcanic eruption is for him also a moral deed, although the moral element may perhaps lie on an entirely different plane than we may, at first, imagine. Those who always confuse the physical and the higher worlds will say:—“If innocent people perish through a volcanic eruption, how can we suppose this to be a moral deed.” But at first, we need not consider this opinion; for it would be just as cruelly narrow-minded as the opposite one—namely, to consider this eruption as a punishment inflicted by God upon the people who live near the volcano. Both opinions are only the result of the narrow-minded mentality here on the physical plane. But this is not the point in question; far more universal things must be taken into consideration. Those people who live on the slopes of a volcano and whose possessions are destroyed through an eruption, are perhaps without any guilt in this life. But this will find its balance later on, and does not imply a merciless attitude on our part (to consider it as such would again be a narrow-minded interpretation of the facts). In the case of volcanic eruptions, for instance, we find that in the course of the evolution of the earth human beings cause to certain things; and because these things occur, the entire evolution of humanity is held up. For this very reason, good Gods must work in a certain way in order to establish the balance—and such phenomena in Nature sometimes bring about such a balance. Very often, this connection can be seen only by penetrating into occult depths. Thus, adjustments occur in the case of things brought about by human beings—things which are in opposition to the spiritual course of mankind's true development. All events, even if they are mere phenomena of Nature, have something moral in their depths, and the bearers of this moral element; which lie behind the physical facts, are spiritual beings. Thus, if we imagine a world where it is impossible to speak of a division between the laws of Nature and spiritual laws—in other words, a world where justice rules as a law of Nature—then this world would be Devachan. And in Devachan we need not think that actions which deserve punishment are punished arbitrarily; for there, the immoral element destroys itself and the moral one progresses, with the same necessity with which a flame sets fire to combustible material.

Thus, we see that just the innermost characteristics, the innermost nerve, so to speak, of existence, varies in the different worlds. We cannot form a picture of the various worlds unless we bear in mind these peculiarities which differ radically in each world. Hence, we may characterise the physical world, Kamaloca, and Devachan, as follows: in the physical world, the laws of Nature and the spiritual laws constitute a series of facts which take their course in separate directions. In the world of Kamaloca, the human being is imprisoned within his own self, enclosed in the prison of his own being. The world of Devachan is the very opposite of the physical world. There, the laws of Nature and the spiritual laws are one and the same thing. These are the three characteristics; and if we bear them carefully in mind, if we try to feel the radical difference between our world and one where the intellectual laws, and also the aesthetic laws, are at the same time laws of Nature, then we shall have an inkling of what is contained in Devachan. If we meet an ugly person, or a beautiful one, here in the physical world, we have no right to treat the ugly man as if he had something repulsive in his soul-spiritual being, nor can we place a beautiful human being on a certain height, from a soul-spiritual aspect. But in Devachan it is entirely different. There, we never meet anything ugly, unless it has been caused by something; and the human being who owes his ugly face to his preceding incarnation, but strives to be true and upright in this life, cannot possibly meet us in Devachan with an ugly face. Such a human being will indeed have transformed his ugly face into beauty. On the other hand, it is just as true that one who tells lies and is vain and miserly wanders about in Devachan with an ugly form. Something else, however, must also be borne in mind. In ordinary physical life we do not find that something is continually being destroyed in an ugly face, and that a beautiful face continually adds something to its beauty. But in Devachan we see that ugliness is a destructive element, and whenever we perceive something beautiful we are compelled to realise that it brings about a continual growth, a continual fructification. Hence, in the world of Devachan we must have entirely different feelings than in the physical world.

It will be necessary to find the essential element in these feelings, and to acquire the capacity of adding to the outer description of things these feelings and experiences which are described in spiritual science. If you strive to experience a world wherein the moral, the beautiful, and the mentally true elements appear with the same necessity as a law of Nature, you will attain the experience of Devachan. It is for this reason that we must collect so many facts and work so hard, in order to melt down to a living experience what we have thus acquired through study. Without effort it is impossible to attain a true knowledge of the things which must gradually be made clear to the world through spiritual science. Today there are undoubtedly many people who argue:—“Why should we learn so many things through spiritual science? Must we become schoolboys again? Feelings or experiences seem to be the most important thing in it.” Indeed, feeling is precisely what should be taken into consideration—but, first of all, the right kind of feeling must be acquired. The same thing applies to everything. A painter also would find it far more pleasant if there were no need for him to learn the elements of his art, and so forth, and if he were not obliged to paint his final picture slowly and gradually on the canvas. It would be far more pleasant if he could just breathe on the canvas, and so produce his finished picture! The peculiar thing in the world today is this—that, the more we reach the soul-spiritual sphere, the more people fail to understand that a mere breathing on the canvas does not suffice! In the case of music, few people will admit that a man who has learnt nothing at all can be a composer; this is quite obvious to them. They will also admit this in the case of painting—although less strictly than in the case of music—and in the case of poetry they will admit still less that study and training is necessary. This is why there are so many modern poets. No age has been so unpoetical as our present age, in spite of its many poets! Poets need not learn much—they are simply expected to write (although this has nothing to do with poetry)—at least orthographically; it suffices if they are able to express their thoughts intelligibly! And less still is expected from philosophers. For it is taken for granted that anyone may express his opinion concerning all kinds of things which belong to a conception of the world, or life-conception. Everybody has his own point of view. Again and again we find that careful study, entailing the application of all means available to an inner activity, in order to investigate and know at least something of the world, counts for nothing in the present day. Instead, it is taken for granted that the standpoint of one who has toiled and worked in order, to venture to say at least a few things concerning the secrets of the universe is equivalent to the standpoint of one who has simply made up his mind to have an opinion! Hence today everybody has, so to speak, his own conception of the world. And a Theosophist above all others! In the opinion of some people, still less is required to be a Theosophist. In their opinion, all that is needed is not even to acknowledge the three principles of the Theosophical Society, but only the first one—and this entirely according to their own liking! Since all that is required is to admit with more or less truthfulness that love toward others suffices—whether or not one is really filled with love does not count so much—it is easy enough to be a Theosophist, and then of course one has the right kind of feeling! Thus we descend continually. We begin with an estimation of music and expect a certain standard from those who wish to have an opinion on music—we descend continually and require less and less, until we finally reach Theosophy, where least of all is required! For we think that what is generally considered inadequate in the case of painting, for instance, is sufficient in the case of Theosophy—no effort is needed here, yet we lay the foundation for a universal brotherhood, and then we are Theosophists! We need not learn anything else! But the essential point is this—we must strive with all our might to transform into living experiences what we gather in the form of study—for the shadings of these feelings will give us the highest and truest knowledge. You should direct all your efforts toward the attainment of an experience such as the impression derived from a world where the laws of Nature and the spiritual laws coincide. If you work in full earnestness (let the people believe that you have only studied theoretical facts!), if you have spared no effort in comprehending this or that theory, then an impression will be left behind in Devachan. If an experience, a real feeling, exists not only in your fancy, but you have really acquired it through careful work, then this experience, these nuances of feeling, will reach further than they can reach merely by themselves—they will become real through earnest, diligent study. And then you are not far distant from the point where this nuance of feeling will acquire life, and Devachan will really lie before you. For this nuance of feeling becomes a perceptive capacity if it is worked out truthfully. Our groups, our working centres, are what they should be, only if the work within them is really carried out without any sensation and on an honest basis. In this case our groups and centres are schools which are meant to lead man into the spheres of clairvoyance. Only someone who does not wish to attain this and is unwilling to work can have a false opinion concerning these things.

183. Mysteries of the Sun and of the Threefold Man: Lecture III 26 Aug 1918, Dornach Translator Unknown Rudolf Steiner
And you will therefore understand why to a certain extent I have always been against drawing diagrams so long as we were still trying to run our Anthroposophy within the Theosophical Society. One had only to enter any theosophical branch and the walls as a rule would be plastered with all manner of diagrams; there were drawings of every possible thing with words attached; there ware whole genealogical trees and every possible kind of sketch.

183. Mysteries of the Sun and of the Threefold Man: Lecture III 26 Aug 1918, Dornach
Translator Unknown
Rudolf Steiner

And you will therefore understand why to a certain extent I have always been against drawing diagrams so long as we were still trying to run our Anthroposophy within the Theosophical Society. One had only to enter any theosophical branch and the walls as a rule would be plastered with all manner of diagrams; there were drawings of every possible thing with words attached; there ware whole genealogical trees and every possible kind of sketch.

183. Mysteries of the Sun and of the Threefold Man: Lecture III 26 Aug 1918, Dornach Translator Unknown Rudolf Steiner
Certain questions will increasingly obtrude themselves upon those who really think, even though in these times of overwhelming materialism these thinkers would prefer to keep them more or leas at a distance. There are many such questions, and today I should like, out of all of them, to pick a few that arise from man, in spite of resisting it, becoming aware of the spiritual world. To such questions belong those, for instance, raised in the course of everyday life; certain men die young, others in old age, others again in middle life. Concerning the fact that on the one hand young children die and on the other hand people grow to old age and then die—concerning this fact questions arise in man to which by the means today called scientific the answer can never be found. Everyone has to own this after inner reflection. Yet in human life these are burning questions; and surely anyone can feel that infinitely much in life must receive enlightenment when we can really get down to these questions: why do some human beings die early, some as children, some as adolescents, some in the middle of the normal period of life? Why do other die old? What significance has this in the whole cosmos? Men still had ideas, concepts, with which to answer these questions up to that point of time described in these lectures, the time at the beginning of the fourth post-Atlantean period, that is, up to approximately the middle of the eighth pre-Christian century. Men had concepts that came down out of ancient wisdom. In those olden times before the eighth pre-Christian century, ideas were in fact circulating everywhere in the cultural life of the earth giving men, in conformity with the mind of those times, the solution to such questions as are here mentioned. What today we call science cannot connect the right meaning with these questions and has no idea that there is something in them for which men should be seeking a possible answer. All this arises because since the point of time indicated, all conceptions related to spiritual and therefore to immortal man have actually been lost. Only these conceptions remain that are connected with man's transitory nature, man between his birth and his death. I have drawn attention to how in all the old world-conceptions they spoke of the Sun as being threefold; the same sun that is perceived out there by the physical senses as a shining sphere in cosmic space. But behind this sun the wise men of old saw the soul-sun, according to the Greeks Helios, and behind this soul-Sun again, the spiritual-Sun, still identified by Plato, for example, with the Good. Modern men do not see any real sense in speaking of Helios, the soul-Sun, or for that matter of the spiritual-Sun, the Good. But as the physical sun shines upon us here between birth and death, there shines into our ego, if I may say so, during the time we pass between death and a new birth, the spiritual sun identified by Plato with the Good. And during this time between death and a new birth, to speak of a shining sphere in the way it is spoken of in our modern materialistic world-conception has no meaning. Between death and a new birth there is only meaning when we speak of the spiritual-Sun Plato still referred to as the Good. A concept of this kind is just what should show us something. It should lead us to reflect how the matter really stands with regard to the physical representation we form of the world. It is not taken seriously in its full sense, at any rate not so seriously that our outlook on life is actually permeated by it, that in all our physical representations of the world, in what is spread out perceptibly before us, we have to see a kind of illusion, Maya. It is indeed fundamentally this kind of representation of the Sun that anyone accepts when taking as his authority modern physics, astrophysics, whatever you like to call it. If he were able to travel to the place where the physicist places the sun, on approaching it he would—now let us turn from the conditions of human life and assume that absolute conditions of life could prevail—he would become aware of overpowering heat, this is how he would picture it. And when he had arrived inside the space that the physicist considers to be filled by the sun, he would find in this space red hot gas or something of the kind. This is what the physicist considers to be filled by the sun, he would find in this space red hot gas or something of the kind. This is what the physicist actually pictures—a ball of glowing gas or something like it. But it is not so, my dear friends, that is definitely maya, complete illusion. This representation cannot hold water in face of true physical perception that is possible, let alone what can actually be perceived spiritually. Were it possible to get near the sun, to reach where the sun is, we should find yes, indeed, an getting near, we should find something that would have the same effect as going through floods of light. But when we came right inside, where the physicist supposes the sun to be, we should find first what we could only call empty space. Where the physical sun is supposed to be there is nothing at all, absolutely nothing. I will draw it diagrammatically (blue centre in yellow circle, diagram not available) but in reality nothing is there; there is nothing, there is empty space. But it is a strange kind of empty space: When I say there is nothing there I am not speaking quite accurately—there is less than nothing there. It is not only empty space for there is less than nothing there. And that is something that is an extraordinarily difficult idea for the modern western man to picture. Even today men of the east take this as a matter of course; for them there is absolutely nothing strange or difficult to understand when they are told that less than nothing is there. The man of the west thinks to himself—especially when he is a hard and fast follower of Kant, and there are far more followers of Kant today than those who are consciously so—he thinks to himself that if there is nothing in space then it is just empty space! However this is not the case, there can also be exhausted space. And if indeed you were to look right through this corona of the sun, you would feel the empty space into which you would then enter most uncomfortable—that is to say it would tear you asunder. By that it would show its nature, that it is more—or it is less, however we can best express it, than empty space. You need only seek the help of the simplest mathematical concept and when I say empty space is less than just emptiness you will no longer find my meaning so puzzling. Now let us assume you possess some kind of property. It can also happen that you have given away what you possess and have nothing. But we can have less than nothing, we can have debts. Then we do actually have less than nothing. If we pass from fullness of space to its ever diminishing fullness, we can come to empty space; and we can still go an beyond mere emptiness just as we can go beyond having nothing to having debts. It is a great weakness of the modern world outlook that it does not know this particular kind of—if I may so express it—negative materiality, that it only knows emptiness or fullness and not what is less than emptiness. For because knowledge today, the world outlook today is ignorant of what is less than emptiness, this world outlook is more or less held in the bonds of materialism, strictly confined by materialism—I should like to say, under the ban of materialism. For in man also there is a place that is emptier than empty, not in the whole of him but where there are layers of what is emptier than empty. As a whole, man, physical man, is a being who materially fills a certain space; but there is a certain member of man's nature, of the three I have referred to, that actually has something in it like the sun, emptier than empty. That is—yet, my dear friends, you'll have to put up with it—it is the head. And it is just because man is so organised that his head can become empty and in certain parts more than empty, that this head has the power to make room for the spiritual. Now just picture the matter as it actually is. Naturally we have to picture things diagrammatically, but use your imagination and picture that everything materially filling your head I am going to draw in the following way. This is the diagram of your head (see red in diagram 5). but now, if I want to draw it properly, I shall have to leave empty places in this head, these naturally are not very big; but there inside are empty places. And into these empty places can enter what I have recently been calling the young spirit. In these spaces the young spirit with its rays, as it were, is drawn (see yellow in diagram 5). Diagram 1 Now, my dear friends, the materialists say that the brain is the instrument of the soul-life, of the thinking. The reverse is the truth. The holes in the brain, what indeed is more than holes, or one could just say as well less than holes, what therefore is emptier than empty, that is the instrument of the soul-life. And here where the soul-life is not, into which the soul-life is continually pushing, where the space in our skull is filled with brain substance here nothing is thought, here is no soul-experience. We do not need our physical brain for our life of soul; we need it only to lay hold of our soul-life, physically to lay hold of it. And if the soul-life were not actually alive in the holes of the brain, pushing up everywhere, it would vanish, it would never reach our consciousness. But it lives in the holes of our brain that are emptier than empty. Thus we have gradually to correct our concepts. When we stand in front of a mirror we do not perceive ourselves but only our reflected image. We could forget ourselves ... We see ourselves in the mirror. In the same way man does not experience himself by putting together with his brain what is lying in the holes in that brain. He experiences the way in which his soul-life is everywhere reflected by pushing up against the brain substance. It is reflected everywhere, and man experiences it; what he experiences is actually its reflected image. All that has slipped into the holes, however, because it is then permeated by consciousness in the contrary sense is what makes man conscious when without the resistance of the brain he goes through the gate of death. Now I should like to draw another diagram. Take the following: forgive me if I am rather drastic in portraying the brain and how the holes are left (blue in diagram 6). Here is the brain substance and here the brain leaves its holes and into these holes goes the life of the soul. (yellow) Diagram 12/figcaption> This soul-life, however, continues, just outside the holes. There come to what naturally is only seen near man but projects indefinitely—man's aura. Now let us think away the brain and imagine we are looking at the soul-life of an ordinary man between birth and death. We should then have to say that seen in this way the condition of the real man between birth and death is such that actually his face is turned to his body thus (see lilac). It is true I shall have to draw this diagram differently. He turns his soul-life to the corporeal. And when we look at the brain the soul-life stretches out like a feeler that creeps into the holes of the brain. What there I made yellow here I make lilac, because that is more appropriate for the view into the living man. Thus, that would be what runs into the brain of the living man. If after this I want to draw, let us say, physical man, I could best indicate that by perhaps here drawing in for you the boundary set to the faculty of memory. You would go outside there and there you would have the outer boundary, the boundary of cognition, of which I have also spoken to you. For that you will just have to remember diagram 5 and diagram 3 drawn yesterday). But now this is the reality—when man is looked at spiritually from without, his soul-life stretches into him thus... so I will draw the single elongation only where the brain is concerned (diagram 7). But this soul-life in itself is also differentiated. So to follow up this soul-life further I should have to draw... another region here (red under the lilac), here another region blue); thus all this would belong to what constitutes man's aura. Then another region (green). You see how this part I am now drawing lies beyond the boundary of man's cognition. Then the region (yellow)—in reality all this belongs to man—and this region (orange.) Diagram 3 When man is asleep this moves more or less out of the body, as it was drawn yesterday (diagram 2), but when man is awake it is more or lass within the body. So that actually, perceived with the soul, the aura is in the immediate vicinity of the body. And if the physical man is described this is done by saying that this physical man consists of lungs, heart, liver, gall and so on; This is done in physical anatomy, this is done in physiology. But you can do the same when describing the man of soul and spirit who in this way actually stretches out into the holes in man, in what is more than empty in man. You can describe this in the same way—only then you must mention of what this soul-and spirit man consists. just as in physical man the organs are differentiated, here the different currents must be separated. It can be said: in here where it is red, physical man would stand thus in profile, the face turned in this direction, for example, the eyes here (diagram 7), and here would be the region of burning desire (red). That would be part of the man of soul-and-spirit who has taken his substance from the region known in my book Theosophy as the region of burning desire. Thus something taken from burning desire and introduced into man gives this part of him. If I am describing this in detail what I have here colored lilac I should have to call soul-life. As you know, a certain part of the soul-sphere, of the soul-land, has been given the name soul-life. This substance of it would have this violet color,this lilac, and forms in man a part of his soul-spiritual being. And if we continue in this way the orange here would have to be called active soul-force. So that you have to remember that your soul-life is what during your life between birth and death enters you with most intensity by way of your senses. And behind, checking itself, not so well able to enter, held up by the soul-life, there is the active soul-force. Still further behind there is what is called soul-light (yellow in diagram 8). To a certain extent attached to this soul-light, pressing itself through, there would be what is taken from the region of liking and disliking which I should have to give to the green area. Wishes, we should ascribe to the sphere of what is approximately blue. And now pushing up here, the real blue, that is approaching blue red, this would be the region of mobile susceptibility. These are auric currents that I here call burning desire, mobile susceptibility, and wishes. As you know, these auric currents, these auric streams, constitute the world of soul, they also constitute the man of soul and spirit who may be said to be built out of the ingredients of this soul world. Then when death comes the physical body falls away, and man withdraws what has projected into the holes in the body. He takes it away and by so doing (we can now think away physical man) he comes into a certain relation with the soul-world and then with the spirit-land as you will find it described in Theosophy. He has this relationship by having in him its ingredients, but during physical life these are bound up with the physical body and then they become free. Becoming free, however, as a whole it is gradually changed. During physical life—if I leave out the differentiations and draw the soul-life thus—the feelers (lilac in diagram 8) reach out into our holes; after death these feelers are drawn back. By their being drawn back, however, the soul-life itself becomes hollowed out and the life of the spirit coming from the other side rises into the life of soul (yellow). Diagram 4 In the same degree as man ceases to dive into the physical, the soul-spiritual lights up and, from the other side, penetrates his aura with light. And just as man is able to acquires a consciousness through the reflection caused by the continual pushing of the soul-spiritual against the physical body, he now acquires a consciousness by drawing himself back against the light. This light is that of the Sun, the original light that is the Good. Thus, whereas during his physical life as man of soul and spirit he pushes against what is related to the Sun, namely, against the more than empty holes in the brain, after death when he withdraws himself he pushes against the other Sun, the Good-Sun, the original sun. You see, my dear friends, how the possibility of receiving concepts of life between death and a new birth is bound up with the basic ideas of primeval mysteries. For we are placed into this whole cosmic life in true way I have been picturing during these last few days. It is true, however, that we have to go more deeply into the framework of actual human evolution throughout earthly time to come to correct concepts of these matters. I think you will agree it might be possible that someone through a special stroke of luck—if one might so call it—were able to see clairvoyantly, the whole of what I have been describing. This stroke of luck, however, could only bring him to the point of seeing ever changing images. It is something like this—a man through some kind of miracle—but nowadays it would not happen through a miracle—or let us say through clairvoyant vision, super-sensible vision, a man might see something of the nature of what I have been trying to picture, namely man's life of soul and spirit. You will find it obvious that this should look rather different from what a short time ago I was describing as the normal aura, if you understand what I was describing only a few days ago as the aura revealed when the whole man is seen, that is, physical man with his encircling aura. But now I have taken out the man of soul und spirit, so that this man of soul and spirit has been abstracted from the physical man. From this you recognise that in one case the colors have to be arranged in one way, in another case in another way; you recognise also that for super-sensible consciousness things look very different. Try simply to see man's aura—as it is while man is in the physical body—then look at this aura. Turn your attention that is, from the man of soul and spirit, and try to see the man why stretches out his organs into physical man. But when you see the man during the time between death and a new birth, then you also see how the whole changes. Above all, the region that is red here (Diagram 7) goes away, goes here, and the yellow goes below, the whole gradually gets into disorder. These things can be perceived but the percept has something confusing about it. Therefore it will not be easily possible for modern man to bring meaning and significance into this confusion if he does not turn to other expedients. Now we have shown that man's head points to the past whereas the extremities man points to the future. This is entirely a polaric contrast, both the head and the extremities of man (remember what was said yesterday) are actually one and the same, only the head is a very old formation, it is overformed. That is why it has the holes; so far the extremities man has not these holes; on the surface he is still full of matter. To have these holes is a sign of over development. Development in a backward sense can be seen in the head and much hangs on that. Much depends too on man being able to understand that extremities man is a recent metamorphosis—the head an old metamorphosis. And because extremities man is a recent metamorphosis he has not so far developed the capacity to think in physical life but his consciousness remains unconscious; he does not open up to the man of soul and spirit such holes as are in the brain. You see it is infinitely important for spiritual culture, and will in future become more and more so, for us to perceive that these two things that outwardly, physically, are as totally different from one another as the head man and extremities man, are according to soul and spirit, one and the same, and only differ because they are at different stages of development in time. Many mysteries lie in this particular fact that two equal physical things at different stages of their development in time, can be really one and the same that, though outwardly physically different, this is only due to the conditions of their change, of their metamorphosis. Goethe with his theory of metamorphosis began in an elementary way to form concepts by which all this can be understood. Whereas otherwise since ancient times there has been a deadlock in the formation of concepts, with Goethe the faculty of forming concepts once more arose. And these concepts are those of living metamorphoses. Goethe, it is true, always began with the most simple. He said: when we look at a plant we have its green leaf; but the green leaf changes into the flower petal, into the colorsome petal of the flower. Both are the same, only one is the metamorphosis of the other. And as the green leaf of the plant and the red petal of the rose are different metamorphoses, the same thing at a different stage, man's head and his extremities organism too are simply metamorphoses of one another. When we take Goethe's thought on the metamorphosis of the plant we have something primitive, simple; but this thought can blossom into something of the greatest and can serve to describe man's passing from one incarnation to the next. We see the plant with its green leaf and its blossom, and say: this blossom, this red blossom of the rose is the metamorphosis of the green leaf of the plant. We see a man standing before us and say: that head you are carrying is the metamorphosis of arms, hands, legs, feet of your previous incarnation, and what you now have as arms, hands, legs and feet will be changed into your head of the next incarnation. Now, however, will come an objection that evidently sits heavily on your souls. You will say: good gracious but I leave my legs and feet behind, my arms and hands too; I do not take them into my next incarnation ... how then should my head be made out of them? It is true, this objection can be made. But once again you are coming here up against Maya. It is not true that you actually leave behind your legs, feet, hands, arms. It is indeed untrue. You say that because you still cling to Maya, the great illusion. What indeed with the ordinary consciousness you refer to as your arms, hands, legs and feet, are not your arms, hands, legs and feet at all, but what as blood and other juices fills out the real arms, hands, feet and legs. This again is a difficult idea but it is true. Suppose that here you have arms, hands, feet and legs, but that what is here is spiritual, spiritual forces. Now please to think that your arms, hands, legs and feet are forces—super-sensible forces. Had you these alone you would not see them with your eyes; they are filled out, these forces, with juices, with the blood, and you see what as mineral substance, fluid or partly solid—the smallest part solid—fills out what is invisible (hatching in diagram 9). What you leave in the grave or what is burnt is only what might be called the mineral enclosure. Your arms and hands, legs and feet are not visible, they are forces and you take them with you, you take the forms with you. You say: I have hands and feet. Anyone who sees into the spiritual world does not say: I have hands and feet, he says; there are spirits of form, Elohim, they think cosmic thoughts, and their thoughts are my arms and hands, my legs and feet; and their thoughts are filled out with blood and other fluids. But neither are blood and the other fluids what they appear physically; these again are the ideas of spirits of wisdom, and what the physicist calls matter is only outer semblance. The physicist ought to say when he comes to matter: here I come to the thoughts of the spirits of wisdom, the Kyriotetes. And where you see arms, hands, feet, legs, you cannot touch them but should say: here the spirits of form are building into these shapes their cosmic thoughts. Diagram 5 In short, my dear friends, strange as it sounds, there are no such things as your bodies, but where your body is in space there intermingled with one another live the cosmic thoughts of the higher hierarchies. And were you able to see correctly and not in accordance with Maya, you would say: into here there project the cosmic thoughts of the Exusiai, the spirits of form, the Elohim. These cosmic thoughts make themselves visible to me by being filled out with the cosmic thoughts of the spirits of wisdom. That gives us arms and hands, legs and feet. Nothing, absolutely nothing, as it appears in Maya is there before the spiritual vision, out there stand the cosmic thoughts. And these cosmic thoughts crowd together, are condensed, pushed into one another; for this reason they appear to us as these shadow figures of ours that go around, which we believe to have reality. Thus, as far as the physical man is concerned, he does not exist at all. With certain justification we can say that in the hour of death the spirits of form separate their cosmic thoughts from those of the spirits of wisdom. The spirits of form take their thoughts up into the air, the spirits of wisdom sink their material thoughts into the earth. This brings it about that in the corpse an aftershadow of the thoughts of the spirits of wisdom still exists when the spirits of form have taken back their thoughts into the air. That is physical death—that is its reality. In short, when we begin to think about the reality we come to the dissolution of what is commonly called the physical world. For this physical world derives its existence from the spirits of the higher hierarchies pushing in their intermingled thoughts, and I beg you to imagine that finely distributed quantities of water are introduced in some way which form a thick mist. That is why your body appears as a kind of shadow-form, because the thoughts of the spirits of form penetrate those of the spirits of wisdom, the formative thoughts enter the thoughts of substance. In face of this conception the whole world dissolve into the spiritual. We must, however, have the possibility of imagining the world to be really spiritual, of knowing that it is only apparent that my arms and hands, my feet and legs are given over to the earth. That is what it seems; in reality the metamorphosis of my arms and legs, hands and feet begins there and comes to completion in the life between death and a new birth, when my arms and legs, hands and feet become the head of my next incarnation. I have been here telling you many things that perhaps at least in their form may have struck you as something strange. But what is all this ultimately of which we have been speaking but an ascending from man as he appears, to man as he really is, ascending from what lives externally in Maya to the successive ranks of the hierarchies. It is only when we do this, my dear friends, that we are able to speak in a form that is ripe today of how man is permitted to know a so-called higher self. When we simply rant about a higher self, when we simply say: I feel a higher self within me . . . then this higher self is a mere empty abstraction with no content; for the ordinary self is in the hands of Maya, is itself Maya. The higher self has only one meaning when we speak of it in connection with the world of the higher hierarchies. To talk of the higher self without paying heed to the world that consists of the spirits of form and the angels, archangels and so on, to speak of the higher self without reference to this world, means that we are speaking of empty abstractions, and at the same time signifies that we are not talking of what lives in man between death and a new birth. For as here we live with animals, plants and minerals, between death and a new birth we live with the kingdoms of the higher hierarchies of whom we have so often spoken. Only when we gradually come nearer to these ideas and concepts (in a week, perhaps, we shall be speaking of them) shall we approach what can answer the question: why do many human beings die as mere children, many in old age, others in middle age? Now, my dear friends, what I have just given you in outline are concrete concepts of what is real in the world. Truly they are not abstract concepts I have been describing, they are concrete concepts of world reality. These concrete concepts were given, for a more atavistic perception, it is true, in the ancient mysteries. Since the eighth pre-Christian century they have been lost to human perception, but through a deepening of our comprehension of the Christ-Being they must be found again. And this can only be realised on the path of spiritual science. Let us make ourselves from a certain point of view another kind of picture of human evolution. We will here keep before us exceedingly important concepts. Now it can be said that when we go back in the evolution of man we discover—and I have often described this—that in ancient days men had more of the group-soul, and that the individual souls were membered into what was group-soul. You can read about this in various cycles:¹ we can then diagrammatically represent human evolution and say: in olden days there were group-souls and each of these split up (it would appear thus to soul perception but different for the perception of the spirit). But each of these souls clothed itself with a body that here in this figure I indicate with red strokes. (Diagram 10). Up to the time of the Pythagorean school this drawing, or something like it, was always made and it was said: look at your body, so far as that is concerned men are separated, each having his own body (that is why the red strokes are isolated). Where the souls are concerned however, mankind is a unity, since we go back—it is true a long way back—to the group-soul. There we have a unity. If you think away the red, the while will form a unified figure (see diagram.) Diagram 6 There is sense in speaking of this figure only if we have first spoken of the spiritual as has been done here today; for then we know everything that is working together in these souls, how the higher hierarchies are working together on these souls. There is no sense in speaking of this figure if our gaze is not fixed on the hierarchies. It was thus that they spoke up to the time of the Pythagorean School; and it was from the Pythagorean School that Apollonius learned what I spoke about yesterday and about which I shall be talking further in these next weeks. But then after the eighth pre-Christian century, when the Pythagorean Schools were in their decadence, the possibility of thus speaking was lost. And gradually the concepts that are concrete, that have reality by being related to the higher hierarchies—these concepts have become confused and hazy to people. Thus there has come to them in the place of Angels, Archangels, Archai, Spirits of Form, Spirits of Movement, Spirits of Wisdom, Thrones, instead of all this concrete weaving of the spirit, they arrived at a concept that now played a certain part in the perception of the Greeks—the concept of the pneuma. Everything became hazily confused: Pneuma, universal spirit, this indistinct concept still so loved today by the Pantheists ... spirit, spirit, spirit ... I have often spoken of how the Pantheists place spirit everywhere; that goes back to Greek life. Again this figure is portrayed ... but you can now see how what was once concrete, the fullness of the Godhead, now became an abstract concept—Pneuma. The white is Pneuma, the red physical matter (see diagram 10) if we are considering the evolution of man. The Greeks, however, at least still preserved some perception of this Pneuma, for they always saw something of the aura. Thus, for them, what you can picture in these white branches was always of an auric nature, something really perceptible. There is the great significance of the transition from that constituted Greece to all that was Roman—that the Greeks still in their perception experienced Pneuma as something actual and spiritual, but that the Romans did so no longer. Everything now becomes quite abstract with the Romans, completely abstract; concepts and nothing more. The Romans are the people of abstract concepts. My dear friends, in our days you find in science the same diagram! You can come upon it today in materialistic books on science. You will find the same diagram, exactly the same, as you would have found in the old Mysteries, in the Pythagorean Schools, where everything was still related to the hierarchies. You have it with the Greeks where everything is related to the Pneuma; again today you find it drawn, and we shall see what it has now become. Today the scientist says as he makes this same drawing on the blackboard for his students: in the propagation of the human race the substance of the parents' germ cells passes over to the children; but part of this substance remains so that it can again pass over to the children and and again there remains some of this to pass over anew to the children. And another part of the germ cell substance develops so that it can form the cells of the physical body. You have exactly the same diagram, only the modern scientist sees in the white (see diagram) the continuity of the substance of the germ cell. He says; if we go back to our old human ancestors and take this germ cell substance of both male and female, and then go to present day man and take his, it is still the same stream, the substance is continuous. There always remains in this germ substance something eternal—so the scientist imagines—and only half of the germ plasma goes over into the new body. The scientist has still the same figure but no longer has the pneuma; the white is now for him the material germ substance—nothing is left of soul and spirit, it is just material substance. You can read this today in scientific books, and it is taken as a great and significant discovery. That is the materialising of a higher spiritual perception that has passed through the process of abstraction; in the midst stands the abstract concept. And it is really amusing that a modern scientist has written a book (for those whose thinking is sound, it is amusing) in which he says right out: what the Greeks still represented as Pneuma is today the continuity of the germ substance. Yes, it is foolish, but today it counts for great wisdom. From this you can, however, see one thing, it is not the drawing that does it! And you will therefore understand why to a certain extent I have always been against drawing diagrams so long as we were still trying to run our Anthroposophy within the Theosophical Society. One had only to enter any theosophical branch and the walls as a rule would be plastered with all manner of diagrams; there were drawings of every possible thing with words attached; there ware whole genealogical trees and every possible kind of sketch. However, my dear friends, these drawings are not important. What matters is that we should really be able to have living conceptions; for the same drawing can represent the soul-spiritual in the flowing of hierarchies, the purely material in the continuous germ-plasm. These things are seen very hazily by modern man. Therefore it is so important to be clear that the Greeks still knew something of the real self in man, of the real spiritual and that it was the Romans who made the transition to the abstract concept. You can see all this in what is external. When the Greek talked about his Gods, he did so in a way that made it quite evident that he was still picturing concrete figures behind these Gods. For the Romans the Gods, in reality, ware only names, only expressions, abstractions and they became abstractions more and more. For Greek a certain idea was ever present that in the man before him the hierarchies were living, that in each man the hierarchies were living a different life. Thus the hierarchies were living differently in every man. The Greek knew the reality of man, and when he said, that is Alcibiades, that is Socrates, or that is Plato, he still had the concept that there in Alcibiades, Socrates or Plato ware rising up, within each in a different way, the cosmic thoughts of the hierarchies. And because the cosmic thoughts arose differently these figures appeared different. All this was entirely lacking in the Roman. For this reason he formed for himself a system of concepts that reached its climax when from the time of Augustus on and actually from an earlier date, the Roman Caesar was held to be God. The Godhead gradually became an abstraction and the Roman Caesar was himself a God because the concept of God had become completely abstract. This applies to the rest of their concepts; and it was particularly the case with the concepts that lived deeply in the Roman nature as concepts of rights, moral concepts. Thus, in place of all that in olden days was a living reality, there arose a number of abstractions. And all these abstractions lasted on as a heritage throughout the middle ages and descended to modern times, remaining as heritage down to the nineteenth century—abstract concepts carried into every sphere. In the nineteenth century there came something startling. Man himself was entirely lost sight of among all these abstract concepts! The Greeks still had a presentiment of the real man who descends here after being formed and fashioned out of the cosmos; in the time of the Roman empire all knowledge of him was lost. The nineteenth century was needed to rediscover him through all the connections I have been showing you and will go on showing you even more exactly. The discovery of man took place now from the opposite pole. Greece wanted to see man as descending from the hierarchies, divine man; in place of this the Romans set up a series of abstract concepts; the nineteenth century—the eighteenth century too but particularly the nineteenth—was needed to rediscover man from the other side, from his animal side. And he could not be grasped with abstract concepts; this was the great shock. This was the great shock and the deep cleft that arose; what is this actually that stands there on two legs and fidgets with its hands, and eats and drinks all manner of things; what is it? The Greeks still knew, then a change took place when concepts became abstract. Now it comes as something startling to men of the nineteenth century; it stands there and there are no concepts with which to grasp it. It is taken for simply a higher form of animal. On the one hand, in science it produces Darwinism, on the other hand, in the spiritual it brings about socialism which would place man into society as a mere animal. Here is man standing transfixed before himself—what is this thing? And he is powerless to answer the question. That is the situation today; that is the situation that will produce not only concepts that are right or wrong according as men will them, but is called upon to create facts either catastrophic or beneficial. And the situation is—the shock men have when seeing themselves. We must find the elements once more for te understanding of spiritual man. These elements will not be found unless we turn to the theory of metamorphosis. There lies the essential point. Goethe's concepts of metamorphosis are alone able to grasp the ever changing phenomena which offer themselves to the perception of the reality. Now one might say that spiritual evolution has always moved in this direction. Even at the time when the Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz in the seventeenth century was being published in so wonderful a way—other writings too—the endeavour was already there to provide for the arising of a social structure for man compatible with his true nature. (In Das Reich I have referred to this in a series of articles concerning The Chemical Wedding). In this way the Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz by the so-called Valentin Andreae arose. On the other hand, however, there also arose the book he called Reformation des Ganzer Menschengeschlectes (Reformation of the whole Human Race), where he gives a great political survey of how social conditions ought to be. Then, it was the thirty years war that swept the thing away! Today, there is the possibility that the ordering of the world either sweep things away once more ... or carry them right into human evolution. With this we are touching an the great fundamental questions of the day, with which men should be occupying themselves instead of with all the secondary matters that engross them. If only men concerned themselves about basic questions they would find means and ways of bringing fruitful concepts into modern reality—then we could get away from abstract concepts. It is not very easy to distinguish reality from illusion. For that, we must have the will to go right into life with all seriousness and all good will, and not be bound down by programmes and prejudices. I could tell many tales about this but now I will refer to one fact only. In the beginning of the nineties of the last century a number of people foregathered in various towns of Europe and brought about something of an American nature, namely, the Movement for Ethical Culture. At that time it was the intellectuals who were connected with founding these societies for Ethical Culture. These people produced very beautiful things, and if today you read the articles written at that time by the promoters of Societies for Ethical Culture ... if you have a taste for butter, you will probably even today be enchanted by all the beautiful, wonderfully beautiful ideals, in which these people indulged. And indeed it was no pleasant task to go against this reveling in butter: However, I wrote an article at the time in one of the first numbers of Die Zunkunft (The Future), against all this oiliness in “ethical culture,” and denounced it in awful words. Naturally it was a shameful deed—how should it not have been when these people had set out to make the whole world ethical, moral—how should it not have been disgraceful to turn upon anything so good: At that time I was living in Weimar but on paying a visit to Berlin I had a conversation with Herman Grimm who said: “What is the matter with ‘ethical culture'? Go and see the people themselves. You will find that here in Berlin those who hold meetings about ethics are really thoroughly nice kind people—one could not have any objection to them. They can even be congenial and very pleasant.” This was not to be denied and at the moment Herman Grimm had just as much right on his side as I had. Outwardly and momentarily, one of us was as right as the other, one could be proved right just as well as the other. And I am not for maintaining that from the point of view of pure logic my grounds for opposing these ethical philosophers were any more sound than those brought forward by them—I wouldn't be sure. But, my dear friends, from all this highfalutin idealism the present catastrophe has arisen! And only those people were right, and have been justified by events, who said at the time; with all your talking and luxuriating in buttery ideals, by means of which you would bring universal peace and universal morals to man, you have produced nothing but what I then called social carcinoma that had to end in this catastrophic present. Time has shown who was working with concrete concepts, who with merely those that are abstract. When they are simply abstract in character, there is no distinguishing who is right and who is wrong. The only thing that decides is whether a concept finds its right setting in the course of actual events. A professor teaching science in a university can naturally prove everything he says to be right in a most beautiful and logical way. And all this goes into the holes in the head (and this today I naturally may be allowed to say with the very best intention). But you see it is not a question of bringing forward apparently good logical grounds; for when these thoughts sink into a head such as Lenin's they become Bolshevism. What matters is what a thought is in reality, not what can be thought about it or felt about it in an abstract way, but what force goes to the forming of it in its reality. And if we test the world-conception that is chiefly talked of today—for the others, specified yesterday, were more in picture form—when one brings socialism to the test, it is not a question today of sitting oneself down to cram (as we say for ‘study') Karl Marx, or Lassalle, or Bernstein, to study their books, to study these authors. No! It is a question of having a feeling, a living experience for what will become of human progress if a number of men—the sort of men who stand at a machine—have these thoughts. That is what matters, and not to have thoughts about the social structure in the near future that are learnt in the customary course of modern diplomatic schooling, Now is the time when it is important to weigh thoughts so as to be able to answer the question: what are the times wanting for the coming decades? Today the time has already come when it is not allowed to sit in comfort in the various magisterial seats and to go on cherishing what is old. The time has come when men must bear the shock of seeing themselves, and when the thought must rise up in those responsible anywhere for anything: How is this question to be solved out of the spiritual life? 1. For example: Universe, Earth and Man, and Egyptian Myths and Mysteries.

183. Mysteries of the Sun and of the Threefold Man: Lecture III 26 Aug 1918, Dornach
Translator Unknown
Rudolf Steiner

Certain questions will increasingly obtrude themselves upon those who really think, even though in these times of overwhelming materialism these thinkers would prefer to keep them more or leas at a distance. There are many such questions, and today I should like, out of all of them, to pick a few that arise from man, in spite of resisting it, becoming aware of the spiritual world. To such questions belong those, for instance, raised in the course of everyday life; certain men die young, others in old age, others again in middle life. Concerning the fact that on the one hand young children die and on the other hand people grow to old age and then die—concerning this fact questions arise in man to which by the means today called scientific the answer can never be found. Everyone has to own this after inner reflection. Yet in human life these are burning questions; and surely anyone can feel that infinitely much in life must receive enlightenment when we can really get down to these questions: why do some human beings die early, some as children, some as adolescents, some in the middle of the normal period of life? Why do other die old? What significance has this in the whole cosmos?

Men still had ideas, concepts, with which to answer these questions up to that point of time described in these lectures, the time at the beginning of the fourth post-Atlantean period, that is, up to approximately the middle of the eighth pre-Christian century. Men had concepts that came down out of ancient wisdom. In those olden times before the eighth pre-Christian century, ideas were in fact circulating everywhere in the cultural life of the earth giving men, in conformity with the mind of those times, the solution to such questions as are here mentioned. What today we call science cannot connect the right meaning with these questions and has no idea that there is something in them for which men should be seeking a possible answer. All this arises because since the point of time indicated, all conceptions related to spiritual and therefore to immortal man have actually been lost. Only these conceptions remain that are connected with man's transitory nature, man between his birth and his death. I have drawn attention to how in all the old world-conceptions they spoke of the Sun as being threefold; the same sun that is perceived out there by the physical senses as a shining sphere in cosmic space. But behind this sun the wise men of old saw the soul-sun, according to the Greeks Helios, and behind this soul-Sun again, the spiritual-Sun, still identified by Plato, for example, with the Good. Modern men do not see any real sense in speaking of Helios, the soul-Sun, or for that matter of the spiritual-Sun, the Good. But as the physical sun shines upon us here between birth and death, there shines into our ego, if I may say so, during the time we pass between death and a new birth, the spiritual sun identified by Plato with the Good. And during this time between death and a new birth, to speak of a shining sphere in the way it is spoken of in our modern materialistic world-conception has no meaning. Between death and a new birth there is only meaning when we speak of the spiritual-Sun Plato still referred to as the Good. A concept of this kind is just what should show us something. It should lead us to reflect how the matter really stands with regard to the physical representation we form of the world. It is not taken seriously in its full sense, at any rate not so seriously that our outlook on life is actually permeated by it, that in all our physical representations of the world, in what is spread out perceptibly before us, we have to see a kind of illusion, Maya.

It is indeed fundamentally this kind of representation of the Sun that anyone accepts when taking as his authority modern physics, astrophysics, whatever you like to call it. If he were able to travel to the place where the physicist places the sun, on approaching it he would—now let us turn from the conditions of human life and assume that absolute conditions of life could prevail—he would become aware of overpowering heat, this is how he would picture it. And when he had arrived inside the space that the physicist considers to be filled by the sun, he would find in this space red hot gas or something of the kind. This is what the physicist considers to be filled by the sun, he would find in this space red hot gas or something of the kind. This is what the physicist actually pictures—a ball of glowing gas or something like it. But it is not so, my dear friends, that is definitely maya, complete illusion. This representation cannot hold water in face of true physical perception that is possible, let alone what can actually be perceived spiritually. Were it possible to get near the sun, to reach where the sun is, we should find yes, indeed, an getting near, we should find something that would have the same effect as going through floods of light. But when we came right inside, where the physicist supposes the sun to be, we should find first what we could only call empty space. Where the physical sun is supposed to be there is nothing at all, absolutely nothing. I will draw it diagrammatically (blue centre in yellow circle, diagram not available) but in reality nothing is there; there is nothing, there is empty space. But it is a strange kind of empty space: When I say there is nothing there I am not speaking quite accurately—there is less than nothing there. It is not only empty space for there is less than nothing there. And that is something that is an extraordinarily difficult idea for the modern western man to picture. Even today men of the east take this as a matter of course; for them there is absolutely nothing strange or difficult to understand when they are told that less than nothing is there. The man of the west thinks to himself—especially when he is a hard and fast follower of Kant, and there are far more followers of Kant today than those who are consciously so—he thinks to himself that if there is nothing in space then it is just empty space! However this is not the case, there can also be exhausted space. And if indeed you were to look right through this corona of the sun, you would feel the empty space into which you would then enter most uncomfortable—that is to say it would tear you asunder. By that it would show its nature, that it is more—or it is less, however we can best express it, than empty space. You need only seek the help of the simplest mathematical concept and when I say empty space is less than just emptiness you will no longer find my meaning so puzzling. Now let us assume you possess some kind of property. It can also happen that you have given away what you possess and have nothing. But we can have less than nothing, we can have debts. Then we do actually have less than nothing. If we pass from fullness of space to its ever diminishing fullness, we can come to empty space; and we can still go an beyond mere emptiness just as we can go beyond having nothing to having debts. It is a great weakness of the modern world outlook that it does not know this particular kind of—if I may so express it—negative materiality, that it only knows emptiness or fullness and not what is less than emptiness. For because knowledge today, the world outlook today is ignorant of what is less than emptiness, this world outlook is more or less held in the bonds of materialism, strictly confined by materialism—I should like to say, under the ban of materialism. For in man also there is a place that is emptier than empty, not in the whole of him but where there are layers of what is emptier than empty. As a whole, man, physical man, is a being who materially fills a certain space; but there is a certain member of man's nature, of the three I have referred to, that actually has something in it like the sun, emptier than empty. That is—yet, my dear friends, you'll have to put up with it—it is the head. And it is just because man is so organised that his head can become empty and in certain parts more than empty, that this head has the power to make room for the spiritual. Now just picture the matter as it actually is.

Naturally we have to picture things diagrammatically, but use your imagination and picture that everything materially filling your head I am going to draw in the following way. This is the diagram of your head (see red in diagram 5). but now, if I want to draw it properly, I shall have to leave empty places in this head, these naturally are not very big; but there inside are empty places. And into these empty places can enter what I have recently been calling the young spirit. In these spaces the young spirit with its rays, as it were, is drawn (see yellow in diagram 5).

Now, my dear friends, the materialists say that the brain is the instrument of the soul-life, of the thinking. The reverse is the truth. The holes in the brain, what indeed is more than holes, or one could just say as well less than holes, what therefore is emptier than empty, that is the instrument of the soul-life. And here where the soul-life is not, into which the soul-life is continually pushing, where the space in our skull is filled with brain substance here nothing is thought, here is no soul-experience.

We do not need our physical brain for our life of soul; we need it only to lay hold of our soul-life, physically to lay hold of it. And if the soul-life were not actually alive in the holes of the brain, pushing up everywhere, it would vanish, it would never reach our consciousness. But it lives in the holes of our brain that are emptier than empty.

Thus we have gradually to correct our concepts. When we stand in front of a mirror we do not perceive ourselves but only our reflected image. We could forget ourselves ... We see ourselves in the mirror. In the same way man does not experience himself by putting together with his brain what is lying in the holes in that brain. He experiences the way in which his soul-life is everywhere reflected by pushing up against the brain substance. It is reflected everywhere, and man experiences it; what he experiences is actually its reflected image. All that has slipped into the holes, however, because it is then permeated by consciousness in the contrary sense is what makes man conscious when without the resistance of the brain he goes through the gate of death. Now I should like to draw another diagram. Take the following: forgive me if I am rather drastic in portraying the brain and how the holes are left (blue in diagram 6). Here is the brain substance and here the brain leaves its holes and into these holes goes the life of the soul. (yellow)

This soul-life, however, continues, just outside the holes. There come to what naturally is only seen near man but projects indefinitely—man's aura. Now let us think away the brain and imagine we are looking at the soul-life of an ordinary man between birth and death. We should then have to say that seen in this way the condition of the real man between birth and death is such that actually his face is turned to his body thus (see lilac). It is true I shall have to draw this diagram differently. He turns his soul-life to the corporeal. And when we look at the brain the soul-life stretches out like a feeler that creeps into the holes of the brain. What there I made yellow here I make lilac, because that is more appropriate for the view into the living man. Thus, that would be what runs into the brain of the living man.

If after this I want to draw, let us say, physical man, I could best indicate that by perhaps here drawing in for you the boundary set to the faculty of memory. You would go outside there and there you would have the outer boundary, the boundary of cognition, of which I have also spoken to you. For that you will just have to remember diagram 5 and diagram 3 drawn yesterday).

But now this is the reality—when man is looked at spiritually from without, his soul-life stretches into him thus... so I will draw the single elongation only where the brain is concerned (diagram 7). But this soul-life in itself is also differentiated. So to follow up this soul-life further I should have to draw... another region here (red under the lilac), here another region blue); thus all this would belong to what constitutes man's aura. Then another region (green). You see how this part I am now drawing lies beyond the boundary of man's cognition. Then the region (yellow)—in reality all this belongs to man—and this region (orange.)

When man is asleep this moves more or less out of the body, as it was drawn yesterday (diagram 2), but when man is awake it is more or lass within the body. So that actually, perceived with the soul, the aura is in the immediate vicinity of the body. And if the physical man is described this is done by saying that this physical man consists of lungs, heart, liver, gall and so on; This is done in physical anatomy, this is done in physiology. But you can do the same when describing the man of soul and spirit who in this way actually stretches out into the holes in man, in what is more than empty in man. You can describe this in the same way—only then you must mention of what this soul-and spirit man consists. just as in physical man the organs are differentiated, here the different currents must be separated. It can be said: in here where it is red, physical man would stand thus in profile, the face turned in this direction, for example, the eyes here (diagram 7), and here would be the region of burning desire (red). That would be part of the man of soul-and-spirit who has taken his substance from the region known in my book Theosophy as the region of burning desire. Thus something taken from burning desire and introduced into man gives this part of him.

If I am describing this in detail what I have here colored lilac I should have to call soul-life. As you know, a certain part of the soul-sphere, of the soul-land, has been given the name soul-life. This substance of it would have this violet color,this lilac, and forms in man a part of his soul-spiritual being.

And if we continue in this way the orange here would have to be called active soul-force. So that you have to remember that your soul-life is what during your life between birth and death enters you with most intensity by way of your senses. And behind, checking itself, not so well able to enter, held up by the soul-life, there is the active soul-force.

Still further behind there is what is called soul-light (yellow in diagram 8). To a certain extent attached to this soul-light, pressing itself through, there would be what is taken from the region of liking and disliking which I should have to give to the green area. Wishes, we should ascribe to the sphere of what is approximately blue. And now pushing up here, the real blue, that is approaching blue red, this would be the region of mobile susceptibility. These are auric currents that I here call burning desire, mobile susceptibility, and wishes. As you know, these auric currents, these auric streams, constitute the world of soul, they also constitute the man of soul and spirit who may be said to be built out
of the ingredients of this soul world.

Then when death comes the physical body falls away, and man withdraws what has projected into the holes in the body. He takes it away and by so doing (we can now think away physical man) he comes into a certain relation with the soul-world and then with the spirit-land as you will find it described in Theosophy. He has this relationship by having in him its ingredients, but during physical life these are bound up with the physical body and then they become free. Becoming free, however, as a whole it is gradually changed. During physical life—if I leave out the differentiations and draw the soul-life thus—the feelers (lilac in diagram 8) reach out into our holes; after death these feelers are drawn back. By their being drawn back, however, the soul-life itself becomes hollowed out and the life of the spirit coming from the other side rises into the life of soul (yellow).

In the same degree as man ceases to dive into the physical, the soul-spiritual lights up and, from the other side, penetrates his aura with light. And just as man is able to acquires a consciousness through the reflection caused by the continual pushing of the soul-spiritual against the physical body, he now acquires a consciousness by drawing himself back against the light. This light is that of the Sun, the original light that is the Good. Thus, whereas during his physical life as man of soul and spirit he pushes against what is related to the Sun, namely, against the more than empty holes in the brain, after death when he withdraws himself he pushes against the other Sun, the Good-Sun, the original sun.

You see, my dear friends, how the possibility of receiving concepts of life between death and a new birth is bound up with the basic ideas of primeval mysteries. For we are placed into this whole cosmic life in true way I have been picturing during these last few days. It is true, however, that we have to go more deeply into the framework of actual human evolution throughout earthly time to come to correct concepts of these matters. I think you will agree it might be possible that someone through a special stroke of luck—if one might so call it—were able to see clairvoyantly, the whole of what I have been describing. This stroke of luck, however, could only bring him to the point of seeing ever changing images. It is something like this—a man through some kind of miracle—but nowadays it would not happen through a miracle—or let us say through clairvoyant vision, super-sensible vision, a man might see something of the nature of what I have been trying to picture, namely man's life of soul and spirit. You will find it obvious that this should look rather different from what a short time ago I was describing as the normal aura, if you understand what I was describing only a few days ago as the aura revealed when the whole man is seen, that is, physical man with his encircling aura. But now I have taken out the man of soul und spirit, so that this man of soul and spirit has been abstracted from the physical man.

From this you recognise that in one case the colors have to be arranged in one way, in another case in another way; you recognise also that for super-sensible consciousness things look very different. Try simply to see man's aura—as it is while man is in the physical body—then look at this aura. Turn your attention that is, from the man of soul and spirit, and try to see the man why stretches out his organs into physical man. But when you see the man during the time between death and a new birth, then you also see how the whole changes. Above all, the region that is red here (Diagram 7) goes away, goes here, and the yellow goes below, the whole gradually gets into disorder. These things can be perceived but the percept has something confusing about it. Therefore it will not be easily possible for modern man to bring meaning and significance into this confusion if he does not turn to other expedients.

Now we have shown that man's head points to the past whereas the extremities man points to the future. This is entirely a polaric contrast, both the head and the extremities of man (remember what was said yesterday) are actually one and the same, only the head is a very old formation, it is overformed. That is why it has the holes; so far the extremities man has not these holes; on the surface he is still full of matter. To have these holes is a sign of over development. Development in a backward sense can be seen in the head and much hangs on that. Much depends too on man being able to understand that extremities man is a recent metamorphosis—the head an old metamorphosis. And because extremities man is a recent metamorphosis he has not so far developed the capacity to think in physical life but his consciousness remains unconscious; he does not open up to the man of soul and spirit such holes as are in the brain.

You see it is infinitely important for spiritual culture, and will in future become more and more so, for us to perceive that these two things that outwardly, physically, are as totally different from one another as the head man and extremities man, are according to soul and spirit, one and the same, and only differ because they are at different stages of development in time. Many mysteries lie in this particular fact that two equal physical things at different stages of their development in time, can be really one and the same that, though outwardly physically different, this is only due to the conditions of their change, of their metamorphosis.

Goethe with his theory of metamorphosis began in an elementary way to form concepts by which all this can be understood. Whereas otherwise since ancient times there has been a deadlock in the formation of concepts, with Goethe the faculty of forming concepts once more arose. And these concepts are those of living metamorphoses. Goethe, it is true, always began with the most simple. He said: when we look at a plant we have its green leaf; but the green leaf changes into the flower petal, into the colorsome petal of the flower. Both are the same, only one is the metamorphosis of the other. And as the green leaf of the plant and the red petal of the rose are different metamorphoses, the same thing at a different stage, man's head and his extremities organism too are simply metamorphoses of one another. When we take Goethe's thought on the metamorphosis of the plant we have something primitive, simple; but this thought can blossom into something of the greatest and can serve to describe man's passing from one incarnation to the next. We see the plant with its green leaf and its blossom, and say: this blossom, this red blossom of the rose is the metamorphosis of the green leaf of the plant. We see a man standing before us and say: that head you are carrying is the metamorphosis of arms, hands, legs, feet of your previous incarnation, and what you now have as arms, hands, legs and feet will be changed into your head of the next incarnation.

Now, however, will come an objection that evidently sits heavily on your souls. You will say: good gracious but I leave my legs and feet behind, my arms and hands too; I do not take them into my next incarnation ... how then should my head be made out of them? It is true, this objection can be made. But once again you are coming here up against Maya. It is not true that you actually leave behind your legs, feet, hands, arms. It is indeed untrue. You say that because you still cling to Maya, the great illusion.

What indeed with the ordinary consciousness you refer to as your arms, hands, legs and feet, are not your arms, hands, legs and feet at all, but what as blood and other juices fills out the real arms, hands, feet and legs. This again is a difficult idea but it is true. Suppose that here you have arms, hands, feet and legs, but that what is here is spiritual, spiritual forces. Now please to think that your arms, hands, legs and feet are forces—super-sensible forces. Had you these alone you would not see them with your eyes; they are filled out, these forces, with juices, with the blood, and you see what as mineral substance, fluid or partly solid—the smallest part solid—fills out what is invisible (hatching in diagram 9). What you leave in the grave or what is burnt is only what might be called the mineral enclosure. Your arms and hands, legs and feet are not visible, they are forces and you take them with you, you take the forms with you. You say: I have hands and feet. Anyone who sees into the spiritual world does not say: I have hands and feet, he says; there are spirits of form, Elohim, they think cosmic thoughts, and their thoughts are my arms and hands, my legs and feet; and their thoughts are filled out with blood and other fluids. But neither are blood and the other fluids what they appear physically; these again are the ideas of spirits of wisdom, and what the physicist calls matter is only outer semblance. The physicist ought to say when he comes to matter: here I come to the thoughts of the spirits of wisdom, the Kyriotetes. And where you see arms, hands, feet, legs, you cannot touch them but should say: here the spirits of form are building into these shapes their cosmic thoughts.

In short, my dear friends, strange as it sounds, there are no such things as your bodies, but where your body is in space there intermingled with one another live the cosmic thoughts of the higher hierarchies. And were you able to see correctly and not in accordance with Maya, you would say: into here there project the cosmic thoughts of the Exusiai, the spirits of form, the Elohim. These cosmic thoughts make themselves visible to me by being filled out with the cosmic thoughts of the spirits of wisdom. That gives us arms and hands, legs and feet. Nothing, absolutely nothing, as it appears in Maya is there before the spiritual vision, out there stand the cosmic thoughts. And these cosmic thoughts crowd together, are condensed, pushed into one another; for this reason they appear to us as these shadow figures of ours that go around, which we believe to have reality. Thus, as far as the physical man is concerned, he does not exist at all.

With certain justification we can say that in the hour of death the spirits of form separate their cosmic thoughts from those of the spirits of wisdom. The spirits of form take their thoughts up into the air, the spirits of wisdom sink their material thoughts into the earth. This brings it about that in the corpse an aftershadow of the thoughts of the spirits of wisdom still exists when the spirits of form have taken back their thoughts into the air. That is physical death—that is its reality.

In short, when we begin to think about the reality we come to the dissolution of what is commonly called the physical world. For this physical world derives its existence from the spirits of the higher hierarchies pushing in their intermingled thoughts, and I beg you to imagine that finely distributed quantities of water are introduced in some way which form a thick mist. That is why your body appears as a kind of shadow-form, because the thoughts of the spirits of form penetrate those of the spirits of wisdom, the formative thoughts enter the thoughts of substance. In face of this conception the whole world dissolve into the spiritual. We must, however, have the possibility of imagining the world to be really spiritual, of knowing that it is only apparent that my arms and hands, my feet and legs are given over to the earth. That is what it seems; in reality the metamorphosis of my arms and legs, hands and feet begins there and comes to completion in the life between death and a new birth, when my arms and legs, hands and feet become the head of my next incarnation.

I have been here telling you many things that perhaps at least in their form may have struck you as something strange. But what is all this ultimately of which we have been speaking but an ascending from man as he appears, to man as he really is, ascending from what lives externally in Maya to the successive ranks of the hierarchies.

It is only when we do this, my dear friends, that we are able to speak in a form that is ripe today of how man is permitted to know a so-called higher self. When we simply rant about a higher self, when we simply say: I feel a higher self within me . . . then this higher self is a mere empty abstraction with no content; for the ordinary self is in the hands of Maya, is itself Maya. The higher self has only one meaning when we speak of it in connection with the world of the higher hierarchies. To talk of the higher self without paying heed to the world that consists of the spirits of form and the angels, archangels and so on, to speak of the higher self without reference to this world, means that we are speaking of empty abstractions, and at the same time signifies that we are not talking of what lives in man between death and a new birth. For as here we live with animals, plants and minerals, between death and a new birth we live with the kingdoms of the higher hierarchies of whom we have so often spoken. Only when we gradually come nearer to these ideas and concepts (in a week, perhaps, we shall be speaking of them) shall we approach what can answer the question: why do many human beings die as mere children, many in old age, others in middle age?

Now, my dear friends, what I have just given you in outline are concrete concepts of what is real in the world. Truly they are not abstract concepts I have been describing, they are concrete concepts of world reality. These concrete concepts were given, for a more atavistic perception, it is true, in the ancient mysteries. Since the eighth pre-Christian century they have been lost to human perception, but through a deepening of our comprehension of the Christ-Being they must be found again. And this can only be realised on the path of spiritual science.

Let us make ourselves from a certain point of view another kind of picture of human evolution. We will here keep before us exceedingly important concepts. Now it can be said that when we go back in the evolution of man we discover—and I have often described this—that in ancient days men had more of the group-soul, and that the individual souls were membered into what was group-soul. You can read about this in various cycles:¹ we can then diagrammatically represent human evolution and say: in olden days there were group-souls and each of these split up (it would appear thus to soul perception but different for the perception of the spirit). But each of these souls clothed itself with a body that here in this figure I indicate with red strokes. (Diagram 10).

Up to the time of the Pythagorean school this drawing, or something like it, was always made and it was said: look at your body, so far as that is concerned men are separated, each having his own body (that is why the red strokes are isolated). Where the souls are concerned however, mankind is a unity, since we go back—it is true a long way back—to the group-soul. There we have a unity. If you think away the red, the while will form a unified figure (see diagram.)

There is sense in speaking of this figure only if we have first spoken of the spiritual as has been done here today; for then we know everything that is working together in these souls, how the higher hierarchies are working together on these souls. There is no sense in speaking of this figure if our gaze is not fixed on the hierarchies. It was thus that they spoke up to the time of the Pythagorean School; and it was from the Pythagorean School that Apollonius learned what I spoke about yesterday and about which I shall be talking further in these next weeks. But then after the eighth pre-Christian century, when the Pythagorean Schools were in their decadence, the possibility of thus speaking was lost. And gradually the concepts that are concrete, that have reality by being related to the higher hierarchies—these concepts have become confused and hazy to people. Thus there has come to them in the place of Angels, Archangels, Archai, Spirits of Form, Spirits of Movement, Spirits of Wisdom, Thrones, instead of all this concrete weaving of the spirit, they arrived at a concept that now played a certain part in the perception of the Greeks—the concept of the pneuma. Everything became hazily confused: Pneuma, universal spirit, this indistinct concept still so loved today by the Pantheists ... spirit, spirit, spirit ... I have often spoken of how the Pantheists place spirit everywhere; that goes back to Greek life. Again this figure is portrayed ... but you can now see how what was once concrete, the fullness of the Godhead, now became an abstract concept—Pneuma. The white is Pneuma, the red physical matter (see diagram 10) if we are considering the evolution of man. The Greeks, however, at least still preserved some perception of this Pneuma, for they always saw something of the aura. Thus, for them, what you can picture in these white branches was always of an auric nature, something really perceptible. There is the great significance of the transition from that constituted Greece to all that was Roman—that the Greeks still in their perception experienced Pneuma as something actual and spiritual, but that the Romans did so no longer. Everything now becomes quite abstract with the Romans, completely abstract; concepts and nothing more. The Romans are the people of abstract concepts.

My dear friends, in our days you find in science the same diagram! You can come upon it today in materialistic books on science. You will find the same diagram, exactly the same, as you would have found in the old Mysteries, in the Pythagorean Schools, where everything was still related to the hierarchies. You have it with the Greeks where everything is related to the Pneuma; again today you find it drawn, and we shall see what it has now become. Today the scientist says as he makes this same drawing on the blackboard for his students: in the propagation of the human race the substance of the parents' germ cells passes over to the children; but part of this substance remains so that it can again pass over to the children and and again there remains some of this to pass over anew to the children. And another part of the germ cell substance develops so that it can form the cells of the physical body. You have exactly the same diagram, only the modern scientist sees in the white (see diagram) the continuity of the substance of the germ cell. He says; if we go back to our old human ancestors and take this germ cell substance of both male and female, and then go to present day man and take his, it is still the same stream, the substance is continuous. There always remains in this germ substance something eternal—so the scientist imagines—and only half of the germ plasma goes over into the new body. The scientist has still the same figure but no longer has the pneuma; the white is now for him the material germ substance—nothing is left of soul and spirit, it is just material substance. You can read this today in scientific books, and it is taken as a great and significant discovery. That is the materialising of a higher spiritual perception that has passed through the process of abstraction; in the midst stands the abstract concept. And it is really amusing that a modern scientist has written a book (for those whose thinking is sound, it is amusing) in which he says right out: what the Greeks still represented as Pneuma is today the continuity of the germ substance. Yes, it is foolish, but today it counts for great wisdom.

From this you can, however, see one thing, it is not the drawing that does it! And you will therefore understand why to a certain extent I have always been against drawing diagrams so long as we were still trying to run our Anthroposophy within the Theosophical Society. One had only to enter any theosophical branch and the walls as a rule would be plastered with all manner of diagrams; there were drawings of every possible thing with words attached; there ware whole genealogical trees and every possible kind of sketch. However, my dear friends, these drawings are not important. What matters is that we should really be able to have living conceptions; for the same drawing can represent the soul-spiritual in the flowing of hierarchies, the purely material in the continuous germ-plasm. These things are seen very hazily by modern man. Therefore it is so important to be clear that the Greeks still knew something of the real self in man, of the real spiritual and that it was the Romans who made the transition to the abstract concept. You can see all this in what is external. When the Greek talked about his Gods, he did so in a way that made it quite evident that he was still picturing concrete figures behind these Gods. For the Romans the Gods, in reality, ware only names, only expressions, abstractions and they became abstractions more and more. For Greek a certain idea was ever present that in the man before him the hierarchies were living, that in each man the hierarchies were living a different life. Thus the hierarchies were living differently in every man. The Greek knew the reality of man, and when he said, that is Alcibiades, that is Socrates, or that is Plato, he still had the concept that there in Alcibiades, Socrates or Plato ware rising up, within each in a different way, the cosmic thoughts of the hierarchies. And because the cosmic thoughts arose differently these figures appeared different.

All this was entirely lacking in the Roman. For this reason he formed for himself a system of concepts that reached its climax when from the time of Augustus on and actually from an earlier date, the Roman Caesar was held to be God. The Godhead gradually became an abstraction and the Roman Caesar was himself a God because the concept of God had become completely abstract. This applies to the rest of their concepts; and it was particularly the case with the concepts that lived deeply in the Roman nature as concepts of rights, moral concepts. Thus, in place of all that in olden days was a living reality, there arose a number of abstractions. And all these abstractions lasted on as a heritage throughout the middle ages and descended to modern times, remaining as heritage down to the nineteenth century—abstract concepts carried into every sphere.

In the nineteenth century there came something startling. Man himself was entirely lost sight of among all these abstract concepts! The Greeks still had a presentiment of the real man who descends here after being formed and fashioned out of the cosmos; in the time of the Roman empire all knowledge of him was lost. The nineteenth century was needed to rediscover him through all the connections I have been showing you and will go on showing you even more exactly. The discovery of man took place now from the opposite pole. Greece wanted to see man as descending from the hierarchies, divine man; in place of this the Romans set up a series of abstract concepts; the nineteenth century—the eighteenth century too but particularly the nineteenth—was needed to rediscover man from the other side, from his animal side. And he could not be grasped with abstract concepts; this was the great shock. This was the great shock and the deep cleft that arose; what is this actually that stands there on two legs and fidgets with its hands, and eats and drinks all manner of things; what is it? The Greeks still knew, then a change took place when concepts became abstract. Now it comes as something startling to men of the nineteenth century; it stands there and there are no concepts with which to grasp it. It is taken for simply a higher form of animal. On the one hand, in science it produces Darwinism, on the other hand, in the spiritual it brings about socialism which would place man into society as a mere animal. Here is man standing transfixed before himself—what is this thing? And he is powerless to answer the question.

That is the situation today; that is the situation that will produce not only concepts that are right or wrong according as men will them, but is called upon to create facts either catastrophic or beneficial. And the situation is—the shock men have when seeing themselves. We must find the elements once more for te understanding of spiritual man. These elements will not be found unless we turn to the theory of metamorphosis. There lies the essential point. Goethe's concepts of metamorphosis are alone able to grasp the ever changing phenomena which offer themselves to the perception of the reality.

Now one might say that spiritual evolution has always moved in this direction. Even at the time when the Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz in the seventeenth century was being published in so wonderful a way—other writings too—the endeavour was already there to provide for the arising of a social structure for man compatible with his true nature. (In Das Reich I have referred to this in a series of articles concerning The Chemical Wedding). In this way the Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz by the so-called Valentin Andreae arose. On the other hand, however, there also arose the book he called Reformation des Ganzer Menschengeschlectes (Reformation of the whole Human Race), where he gives a great political survey of how social conditions ought to be. Then, it was the thirty years war that swept the thing away! Today, there is the possibility that the ordering of the world either sweep things away once more ... or carry them right into human evolution. With this we are touching an the great fundamental questions of the day, with which men should be occupying themselves instead of with all the secondary matters that engross them. If only men concerned themselves about basic questions they would find means and ways of bringing fruitful concepts into modern reality—then we could get away from abstract concepts.

It is not very easy to distinguish reality from illusion. For that, we must have the will to go right into life with all seriousness and all good will, and not be bound down by programmes and prejudices. I could tell many tales about this but now I will refer to one fact only. In the beginning of the nineties of the last century a number of people foregathered in various towns of Europe and brought about something of an American nature, namely, the Movement for Ethical Culture. At that time it was the intellectuals who were connected with founding these societies for Ethical Culture. These people produced very beautiful things, and if today you read the articles written at that time by the promoters of Societies for Ethical Culture ... if you have a taste for butter, you will probably even today be enchanted by all the beautiful, wonderfully beautiful ideals, in which these people indulged. And indeed it was no pleasant task to go against this reveling in butter: However, I wrote an article at the time in one of the first numbers of Die Zunkunft (The Future), against all this oiliness in “ethical culture,” and denounced it in awful words. Naturally it was a shameful deed—how should it not have been when these people had set out to make the whole world ethical, moral—how should it not have been disgraceful to turn upon anything so good: At that time I was living in Weimar but on paying a visit to Berlin I had a conversation with Herman Grimm who said:

“What is the matter with ‘ethical culture'? Go and see the people themselves. You will find that here in Berlin those who hold meetings about ethics are really thoroughly nice kind people—one could not have any objection to them. They can even be congenial and very pleasant.” This was not to be denied and at the moment Herman Grimm had just as much right on his side as I had. Outwardly and momentarily, one of us was as right as the other, one could be proved right just as well as the other. And I am not for maintaining that from the point of view of pure logic my grounds for opposing these ethical philosophers were any more sound than those brought forward by them—I wouldn't be sure. But, my dear friends, from all this highfalutin idealism the present catastrophe has arisen! And only those people were right, and have been justified by events, who said at the time; with all your talking and luxuriating in buttery ideals, by means of which you would bring universal peace and universal morals to man, you have produced nothing but what I then called social carcinoma that had to end in this catastrophic present. Time has shown who was working with concrete concepts, who with merely those that are abstract. When they are simply abstract in character, there is no distinguishing who is right and who is wrong. The only thing that decides is whether a concept finds its right setting in the course of actual events. A professor teaching science in a university can naturally prove everything he says to be right in a most beautiful and logical way. And all this goes into the holes in the head (and this today I naturally may be allowed to say with the very best intention). But you see it is not a question of bringing forward apparently good logical grounds; for when these thoughts sink into a head such as Lenin's they become Bolshevism. What matters is what a thought is in reality, not what can be thought about it or felt about it in an abstract way, but what force goes to the forming of it in its reality. And if we test the world-conception that is chiefly talked of today—for the others, specified yesterday, were more in picture form—when one brings socialism to the test, it is not a question today of sitting oneself down to cram (as we say for ‘study') Karl Marx, or Lassalle, or Bernstein, to study their books, to study these authors. No! It is a question of having a feeling, a living experience for what will become of human progress if a number of men—the sort of men who stand at a machine—have these thoughts. That is what matters, and not to have thoughts about the social structure in the near future that are learnt in the customary course of modern diplomatic schooling, Now is the time when it is important to weigh thoughts so as to be able to answer the question: what are the times wanting for the coming decades? Today the time has already come when it is not allowed to sit in comfort in the various magisterial seats and to go on cherishing what is old. The time has come when men must bear the shock of seeing themselves, and when the thought must rise up in those responsible anywhere for anything: How is this question to be solved out of the spiritual life?

1. For example: Universe, Earth and Man, and Egyptian Myths and Mysteries.

168. How Can the Destitution of Soul in Modern Times Be Overcome? 10 Oct 1916, Zürich Translator Unknown Rudolf Steiner
As I have already said; I am not reading this to you out of silly sentimentality, but considering the many things said from other points of view about Anthroposophy, it seems not irrelevant that we should make ourselves acquainted with a criticism such as this:—“One has only to read Steiner’s book on Theosophy to be struck by the earnestness with which he enjoins upon his readers the necessity for purification and self-improvement.

168. How Can the Destitution of Soul in Modern Times Be Overcome? 10 Oct 1916, Zürich
Translator Unknown
Rudolf Steiner

As I have already said; I am not reading this to you out of silly sentimentality, but considering the many things said from other points of view about Anthroposophy, it seems not irrelevant that we should make ourselves acquainted with a criticism such as this:—“One has only to read Steiner’s book on Theosophy to be struck by the earnestness with which he enjoins upon his readers the necessity for purification and self-improvement.

168. How Can the Destitution of Soul in Modern Times Be Overcome? 10 Oct 1916, Zürich Translator Unknown Rudolf Steiner
The truths we look for in spiritual science should not be dead facts, but should bring with them understanding of such a vital kind that it finds entrance into life in all circumstances and at every point. Taken in the abstract, as is often the case at present, spiritual science may seem to offer a diluted and unproductive kind of knowledge, and it is natural that people who know very little about it should be induced to ask: What, after all, is the use of learning that man consists of such and such parts; that humanity has developed, and will develop further, through different epochs of culture, and so on? Those who feel that a realistic attitude is demanded by modern life find spiritual science unprofitable. And it is often applied in an unprofitable way, even by its most devoted adherents. Nevertheless, spiritual science itself is infinitely alive, and is something which in the course of time can and must bring life into our most external concerns. I should like to make this clear today by a particular example. Most of us know that our present age was preceded by the so-called fourth post-Atlantean culture epoch, during which the most important peoples were the Greeks and Romans; that the following centuries down to the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries continued to be influenced by impulses preceding from that epoch; and that since the fifteenth century mankind has been living in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, into which we ourselves in our present incarnation have been born and in which humanity will be living for many hundreds of years to come. We know furthermore that in man in the fourth post-Atlantean period of civilisation—the Graeco-Roman epoch—was built up pre-eminently the so-called intellectual soul through external culture and work and that cultivation of the consciousness soul is our present task. What does the cultivation of the consciousness soul mean? This abstract statement, rightly understood, contains the destiny of mankind for our entire fifth post-Atlantean period. In order that the consciousness soul may be brought to expression, the various peoples of this period of culture should work together. All the conditions and circumstances of life proclaim this truth; on all sides we find it confirmed that our age stands for the development of the consciousness soul. Human life was completely different in the preceding Graeco-Roman period when, according to the stage of development mankind had reached, the faculties of intellect and of feeling were bestowed upon them. Intellect covers a wide field; today this is not sufficiently understood. In their soul-life the Greeks and Romans were dependent upon it in a different way from ourselves in the fifth post-Atlantean period. They received the intellect, in so far as they needed to make use of it, “ready-made”, as a natural tendency of their stage of development; there was no need to cultivate it as we must do at present, and as will be increasingly necessary in the further course of the fifth post-Atlantean period—it developed as a natural tendency. The child grew up, and as his natural tendencies developed, the natural intellect—in a certain sense—developed with them. Growing up in ordinary conditions in a particular incarnation he either possessed an intellect, or he did not. The latter case was considered pathological, or at any rate abnormal, out of the common. And so it was with heart-and-feeling. Appropriately to the fourth post-Atlantean period heart-and-feeling developed. And though history tells us little of such things, it is nevertheless true that two people meeting for the first time knew how to tune in to each other. In this respect there is a great, difference between the preceding centuries down to the fifteenth century, and our own time. People, then, did not pass each other by with the complete indifference often shown nowadays. At present we are slow, as a rule, to make friends. We must know a great deal about each other before confidence can be established. But what is now only to be arrived at after long acquaintance—if at all—in former centuries, particularly during the Graeco-Roman period of civilisation, could be won at a stroke. In virtue of their respective individualities people were drawn rapidly together, without so much need to exchange feelings and thoughts. Acquaintance was quickly made, in so far as it might be good for the two persons concerned, or necessary to a group of people forming themselves into a community. Heart-and-feeling in the one could still reach out more spiritually and make immediate contact with heart-and-feeling in the other. Up to the present, through the medium of our senses, we can still accurately distinguish the colours, and so forth, of plants; but it will no longer be possible to do this spontaneously in the seventh post-Atlantean epoch when learning to know nature will necessitate special conditions. And there is a resemblance between our actual connection with plants and human connections in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch. We must remember that this kind of feeling-and-heart connection was well adapted to that age, but a very different network of feelings and sensations spans the world of today. In the fourth post-Atlantean epoch human relationships and undertakings depended to the greatest possible extent upon personal contacts. The art of printing which has done so much up to now, and will do more and more in the future, to establish impersonal relationships, belongs to the fifth post-Atlantean epoch; and modern terms of intercourse are such that, fundamentally speaking, connections formed at a stroke are no longer even beneficial, and people can only approach one another on far more impersonal grounds. Towards this, modern man is developing; he is no longer possessed of a ready-made heart-and-feeling with its spontaneous reactions, nor of a penetrating intellect, but impelled by the consciousness soul to develop something far more detached, more individual, more dependent upon egoism, upon human loneliness inherent in the organisation of his own body, than was the intellectual soul or mind soul. Through the consciousness soul man is much more an individual, a solitary traveler through the world. And the tendency people now show to withdraw into themselves is becoming [a] more and more pronounced characteristic of our time. The hallmark of the consciousness soul is the urge towards an isolated life, secluded from the rest of mankind. Hence the difficulty of getting to know one another, especially of establishing confidence, without the transition period of formal acquaintanceship. The significance of all this becomes clearer if we give due weight to the spiritual-scientific truth that in the present age we are not thrown together by chance with other people. That the path of life brings us into contact with certain people and not with others depends upon the working out of individual karma. For we have entered upon a period of human evolution which brings man's preceding karmic developments to a culminating point. Think how much less karma had been accumulated in the earlier periods of earth evolution! With every incarnation fresh karma is made. At first, people had to meet under totally new conditions, with the possibility of forming fresh connections. But through repeated earth-lives we have gradually reached a point at which, as a general rule, we do not meet anyone with whom in former incarnations we have not shared this or that experience. And these experiences bring us into contact again with those who shared them. We meet other people as it would appear by chance but in reality because in former incarnations we had already met, and on the strength of this are brought together again. Now the self-contained consciousness soul can only develop—and its development is destined to take place in our time—when less importance is attached to what takes place at present between one person and another than to what works inwardly in solitude as the result of former incarnations. In the Graeco-Roman period two persons meeting for the first time made an impression upon each other which worked with the immediacy of a blow. At present, if a meeting is to take place that is to further the development of the consciousness soul, the moving factor between them must be what emerges in one or [the] other as the result of previous incarnations. This takes longer than recognition at first sight; it implies the gradual coming to the surface, little by little in a feeling, instinctive way, of what they formerly lived through together. What we ask today is that in becoming acquainted individual corners should be rubbed off. Because it is in the becoming acquainted, this rubbing off of corners, that the still unconscious, instinctive reminiscences and after-effects of former incarnations strike upwards. The consciousness soul can only develop when our contacts with other people are made from within; whereas the intellectual and mind soul develops more through immediate contact. What I have now described for the fifth post-Atlantean epoch is only in its initial stage. And as the epoch continues it will become increasingly difficult to bring ourselves into a right relationship with others, because this demands inner development, inner activity. A beginning has been made, but what has begun must continue to spread and become more and more intensive. How hard it is already in this present time for people drawn together by karma to understand each other, perhaps because owing to other karmic connections they have not the force instinctively to conjure up all the relations leading over from former incarnations. Stirred by certain after-effects of previous earth-lives, people are drawn together in love; but other forces work against these rising memories, and friends grow apart again. And this putting the durability of their relationship to the test is not only for those who meet in life as friends; it will also be increasingly difficult for children to understand their parents, parents their children, brothers and sisters each other. Reciprocal understanding will become more and more difficult, because of the increasing need to free what is karmically imprisoned within us, and to let it rise to the surface. Now this negative prospect of ever increasing difficulty in reciprocal understanding in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch requires of us that we should not dream our lives away in the dark, nor close our eyes to the condition of evolution, because this is an absolutely necessary condition. If the difficulty of coming to mutual understanding were not hanging over fifth post-Atlantean humanity, the consciousness soul could not develop, and people would have to live their life in common dependent upon their natural tendencies. And cultivation of individuality—which belongs to the consciousness soul—would not be able to develop either. This must take place. Men will have to undergo this test. Nevertheless, if only this negative aspect of evolutionary conditions in the fifth post-Atlantean period were to prevail, war and strife would inevitably arise, and find their way into even our most unimportant concerns. I need refer only to one thing and it will be plain to all of us how the remedy is to be sought for one of our necessary ills—for the difficulty we find in understanding each other. I need only say—because we are living in the age of the consciousness soul, as the fifth post-Atlantean epoch proceeds more and more conscious interest will have to be felt for SOCIAL UNDERSTANDING. In this term needs are summed up which in the fourth post-Atlantean period did not exist to at all the same extent. Anyone able accurately to study the history of ancient Greece and Rome knows that for these peoples the individual was not yet possessed of the abilities that can now be made use of by European humanity, and by their American connections. This becomes clearer if we compare human beings with an animal species. Why do animals of the same species live, within certain limits, harmoniously together? For through their group soul, the soul of their species, they have this inborn faculty; it is inherent in the species, and a matter of course. But this represents a stage of development at which the animal remains stationary, but which man must outgrow. Every single human being must develop himself as an individual, and particularly in our modern age of the consciousness soul this self-culture of the individual is one of the most important matters. The Graeco-Roman civilisation is still coloured by a group-soul element. We find its peoples making part of a social order, the structure of which, though certainly derived more from moral forces, is in itself a fixed structure and will in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch be increasingly broken up. This group-soul element in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch has no longer any meaning for the fifth. A conscious form of social understanding must take its place, proceeding from a deep knowledge of the true being of the human individual. And it is spiritual science which will first develop this understanding. When spiritual science blossoms more and more out of the abstract into the concrete, into fullness of life, among its adherents a very special knowledge of, a very special interest in, humanity will be aroused. There will be people with special gifts for teaching others about the different temperaments and characterological tendencies, how this person with a particular temperament should be taken in such a way, whereas that other person with the same temperament but with a different trend of character requires different treatment. These specially gifted men will say to those who are ready to learn: “Look carefully; there is this type of person and there is that other type, and, with each, must deal differently.” Practical psychology, practical knowledge of the soul, but also a practical knowledge of life, will be cultivated, and out of this true social understanding for human development will grow. What have we had up to now in the shape of social understanding? All kinds of abstract ideals, concerned with national welfare and human happiness, this or that form of socialism, have made their appearance. And only when certain sociological ideas are really on the point of being put into practice, is the acknowledgment of their impracticability forthcoming. What in the first place is important is not to found sects and societies with fixed programmes, but to spread the knowledge of men, notably such knowledge of human nature as will enable us to understand the growing, developing human being, to understand the child, and how each child develops according to its particular individuality. In this way we shall learn so to adjust ourselves in life that when confronted by karma with a personal connection to be made, a connection to be drawn closer, we shall establish a real and enduring relationship, of the kind which can prove itself in life to be most truly fruitful. Practical knowledge of man, practical, effectual interest in humanity, this is what counts. Up to the present mankind has gone only a short way along this path and with small success. For how do we judge a person whom we meet nowadays? As being agreeable to us, or the reverse. Look about you and you will find that this is, in most cases, the sole criterion, or if more than one opinion is pronounced there is only one point of view; “This man appeals to me, another does not. I like this about so-and-so, but I do not like that.” Foregone conclusions! We make for ourselves an idea of what someone should be, and when we find that they differ from it we criticise. No progress will be made towards a true practical understanding of man until we do away with these prejudices and fancies for this person or that, and make up our minds to take people as they are. How often, when two people meet for the first time, one of them arouses instantaneous antipathy in the other, whom he dislikes so much that afterwards whatever they have to do with each other is coloured by this dislike. As a consequence the karmic connection between them can be entirely blotted out, or set on a false track, and will have to be laid aside until the two meet again in their next incarnation. Sympathy and antipathy are the greatest enemies of true social interests, though only too little heed is paid to the fact. But to anyone deeply aware of the importance of true social understanding for the further development of mankind, it is distressing to watch the effect teachers in a school often have upon their pupils, when out of prejudice they show preference for one rather than another, whereas it is important to take each of them as he is able and to make the very most of that. But here we are up against regulations. Our regulations and social laws often so implacably wipe out individuality in the teacher himself, that any real effort to uphold individuality as such is impossible. Understanding for spiritual science would cause practical knowledge of the human soul and practical knowledge of man to become matters of general interest. This is a necessity for social understanding if it is, to some extent, to create the opposite pole to the difficulty of understanding one another. It is what must come in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch of the consciousness soul is to develop fully. Man must go through trials and provings, for the opposing forces set snares in our way. And accordingly feelings of sympathy and antipathy will be widespread, and it is only by consciously combating these superficial feelings that we shall bring the consciousness soul safely to birth. Social understanding between man and man will also be more and more powerfully opposed by those nationalistic feelings and emotions, which only assumed their present form in the nineteenth century but are gaining the upper hand more and more. And since good is to be found only in the overcoming of them, these national antagonisms, these national sympathies and antipathies,[as they arise] are so strong that they are fearful testings for mankind. Were they to gain the upper hand, as they bid fair to do, we should dream away the development of the consciousness soul, because nationalism works in the opposite direction, and stands in the way of man's independence by tending to make of him a mere reflection of this or that national group. This is the first thing to bear in mind if we want the otherwise empty saying to become a reality in our souls: that the fifth post-Atlantean epoch is in particular for the development of the consciousness soul. And further to this development: if as individualism increases religion does not adapt itself to the needs of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, but remains as it was suitable for the fourth post-Atlantean period, a certain drying up of the religious life must take place. Religious groups were bound to arise in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch because at that time mankind lived more as groups. It was necessary for authority to pour out dogmas, principles of religion, religious thought, upon groups of people, as common to them all. But because the urge to develop individuality through the consciousness soul in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch is becoming stronger and stronger, that which speaks out of the group religions can no longer find its way to human hearts, and individual human souls. And what comes from these group religions will simply not be understood. In the fourth post-Atlantean epoch it was still possible out of the group to teach people about Christ. But in the fifth period Christ is already actually entering the individual soul. Already, unconsciously or subconsciously, we all carry Christ within us. But through ourselves alone we must find the way to understand Him anew. This will not come from the imposing of fixed dogmas, only from doing all we can to further what will make Christ universally comprehensible, to further the spread of universal religious knowledge in general, and to search out everything which can work to this end. Hence in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch the need for more and more tolerance, particularly where thought in connection with religious experience is concerned. And whereas in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch those who worked to spread religious truths did so by imposing certain dogmas and fixed principles, in the fifth period this must all completely change. It is a question of something entirely different. Because men are becoming more and more individual an attempt should be made for anyone to describe his inner experiences completely freed from dogma to another, in such a way that the latter might also be able to develop his own free life of religious thought as an individual. It is a fact that dogmatic religion, the fixed dogmas of the religious confessions, will kill the religious life of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. So that a fresh start from this age must consist in making it clear that in the first centuries of the Christian era this or that may have been adapted to man's development at the time, and that in the following centuries something different is needed. Also that there are different religions. We must try to make the essential nature of the different religions intelligible, to make clear different aspects of the Christ-conception. In this way we bring to every soul what it requires for its particular deepening. But we do not ourselves intervene in the moulding of the soul; we leave the soul, especially in the sphere of religion, its own liberty of thinking and scope to unfold this liberty. Just as social understanding is necessary for the fifth post-Atlantean period at the point I have described, so is liberty of thought on religious grounds a fundamental condition for the development of the consciousness soul. SOCIAL UNDERSTANDING IN THE SPHERE OF HUMAN RELATIONSHIPS. LIBERTY OF THOUGHT IN THE SPHERE OF RELIGION—of the religious life. This effort of ours to understand the religious aspect of life more and more, to penetrate it, and by so doing to come to terms with our fellow men even though each of them may have his own religious life to unfold, must be kept clearly in view because it is a basic need of the fifth post-Atlantean period and something humanity must acquire by consciously drawing upon their own strength. In this very age of the consciousness soul, the ahrimanic powers are most fiercely renewing their attack upon liberty of thought—the nerve and sinew in the stream of the spiritual scientific conception of life—and we know what opposition it encounters from the religious confessions in general, and what calumnies are directed from every side upon spiritual science, on account of its complete and luminous acceptance of the birth of the consciousness soul, and its refusal to take part in propagating the kind of religious life which is still dependent upon the support of the intellectual or mind soul, as in the fourth post-Atlantean period. The various forms assumed by Christianity were established in the fourth post-Atlantean period according to the requirements of the Graeco-Roman civilisation. As Church-forms they are already unsuitable and will become ever more unsuitable for the growth of free thought which must take place. And in the age which prompted by modern life feels the first stirrings of a need to think freely, we find the opposing power at work in the so-called Jesuitism of the different religions—although much comes under this heading which would have to be described in detail. It is actually brought to life in order that the strongest possible resistance may be offered to liberty of thought, so vital a necessity for the fifth post-Atlantean period. It will become more and more necessary to exterminate Jesuitism, the enemy in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch of free thinking, because from religion outwards liberty of thought must spread over every sphere of life. But as it must be striven for independently, mankind is put, as it were, to the proof, and difficulties spring up everywhere. These difficulties will increase as men of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch advance towards clear consciousness, yet feeling this at first to be a disadvantage, and in many respects stupefying themselves. So we find the clash of sharp conflict between germinating liberty of thought and the principle of authority which works into our times like a hang-over from the past. And there is a passion for dulling the consciousness and for self-deception where belief in authority is concerned. In our time putting faith in authority has become so great and so intensified that under its influence people are losing their power of judgment. In the fourth post-Atlantean epoch they were endowed by nature with sound understanding; now they must acquire it, develop it, and their belief in authority holds them back from doing so. We are becoming bound hand and foot to our belief in authority. Only think how helpless human beings appear when compared to the unreasoning animal creation! How completely the animal is guided by instincts which lead it in a sound way even from sickness back to health; whereas modern man fights against sound judgment in this respect and submits himself entirely to authority. He has very little wish to acquire discernment for healthy conditions of living, although it is true that praiseworthy efforts are made in this direction by various societies and institutions. But these efforts need to be very much intensified; above all we must realise that we have increasingly to contend with our own trust in authority, and that whole theories are being built up which in their turn will become the basis of convictions only serving to uphold belief in authority. In medicine, in law and in every other sphere people declare themselves from the outset incompetent to judge, and accept what science tells them. The complications of modern life make this understandable. But under the pressure of authority we shall become more and more helpless. And systematically to build up this force of authority, this habit of authority, is actually the principle of Jesuitism. And Jesuitism in the Catholic religion is only a special instance of other less noticeable performances in other directions. It begins in the sphere of ecclesiastical dogma with the tendency to uphold papal authority projected over from the fourth post-Atlantean period into the fifth where it can do no good. But the same Jesuitical principle will gradually transfer itself to other spheres of life. In a form hardly differing from the Jesuitism of dogmatic religion, we already find it in medical circles where a certain dogmatism strives after more power for the medical profession. This is typical of Jesuitical aspiration everywhere; and it will grow stronger and stronger. People will find themselves more and more tied down by what authority imposes upon them. And in face of this ahrimanic opposition—for such it is—salvation for the fifth post-Atlantean epoch will be found in asserting the rights of the consciousness soul which is wishing to develop. But as the gift of reason is no longer bestowed upon us like our two arms by Nature, as was still to some extent the case in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, this can only come about through our good will to develop the faculties of understanding and sound judgment. The development of the consciousness soul demands liberty of thought; and this can flourish only in a particular aura, in a certain atmosphere. I have pointed out that the fifth post-Atlantean epoch is beset with difficulties on account of its pressing forward in a certain direction, to the development of the consciousness soul. The consciousness soul—just because it should develop as such—must encounter opposition and pass through trials. We see what tremendous and growing opposition there is to social understanding and liberty of thought. But this opposition is not acknowledged to be such; it is looked upon in the most extensive circles as right and proper, as something in no way to be condemned but on the contrary most carefully to be fostered. There are, however, a great many people whose sincerity and clear vision make them fully aware of what dangers modern man is exposed to and who have a keen sense for what is already plain to see: that karmic connections having entered the period of crisis described above, the moment has come when parents and children, brothers and sister peoples and nations will no longer understand each other. There are already a sufficient number of people who realise that these necessary conditions can work for good only when they are faced with the understanding which rises from the very life of the heart. For the impulse for this new world-working must be consciously wrung out of the heart's blood. What comes spontaneously brings estrangement between individuals. We must consciously strive after what springs from the human heart. Every single soul has difficulties to encounter in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch because the consciousness soul can develop only through the testing occasioned by the overcoming of these difficulties. How often nowadays one hears: “I don't know what to do with myself, I don't know how to organise my life.” This comes from inability to see clearly what the needs of the present time are, and what man's position is with regard to them. Many people are reduced by existing conditions to physical illness, physical strain and loss of balance. And a real understanding for this must be more and more intensively cultivated because what threatens us, and is at the same time a necessity for the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, is the danger of DESTITUTION OF SOUL—destitution of the particular “shade” described in today's lecture. Many people see what this means and feel how necessary it is that we should come to social understanding on the one hand and liberty of thought on the other. But today very few are inclined to make use of the right means to this end. For social understanding, what would be necessary to achieve it, is only too often served by a hotch-potch [hodge-podge?—e.Ed] of high-sounding phrases. There is a lot of talk nowadays about the necessity for the individual treatment of the growing child. What long-winded theories are devised in every branch of pedagogy! Very little of this is to the point. Whereas an intelligent circulation of as many positive descriptions as possible of how the human being actually develops, a positive natural history of individual development, is needed. Wherever possible we should describe how the human beings A, B and C have developed and enter lovingly into such human development as takes place before our eyes—this is what we need. Above all the study of life is necessary, the will to gain knowledge of life itself, rather than to make out programmes. The theoretical programme is the enemy of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch of culture. Now when a society is formed, this should take place in accordance with the aims of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. This means that the members of it must constitute the chief reason for its existence, and the exchange of ideas between these actual men should yield the best results possible; and if sufficient attention is given to this, very individual results will show themselves. At present, what is the usual procedure? It begins with a drawing up of rules. This can be quite good, and may be necessary, because external conditions demand rules and regulations. But on our own ground we must be very clear that talk about programmes and regulations is merely a concession to the outside world; that what concerns us must be the life in common as individuals, what issues from actual human beings; that reciprocal understanding is what counts. This will make it possible even in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch—which has centuries yet before it—that from among those who understand such things, understanding could go forth for vital individual development in the world generally, which at present puts everything into sections and regulations as if into a straight jacket. From thence come the high-sounding doctrines which from pulpit and platform proclaim the art of living. Theories crop up on every hand, dripping with abstractions and demonstrating every imaginable idea and ideal. So importance can be attached to them, but only to what is concrete, and to a comprehending penetration of the actualities of life. How can this come about? It stands to reason that to what has been said the following objections would be justified: “Yes, indeed—but we are not qualified to pronounce an opinion upon what experts nowadays officially give out. Only consider”—it might be objected—“what the medical student has to learn! That he should learn it is right and proper, but we could not; and then add to this what the lawyer must know, and the art student, and so on.”—It is certainly out of the question that we should learn these things; but we are not called upon to be creative, we need only be capable of judging. We must allow the expert to create, but we must be able to criticise the expert. And this faculty of judgment we shall not acquire by specialising, but only by cultivating in an all-round way our powers of understanding and our faculty of judgment. This, however, can never come about through expert knowledge in some particular branch of science, but only through the all-embracing knowledge of the Spirit. Spiritual science must be the centre around which all the sciences revolve; for it not only throws light upon the connections in human evolution, but the way of thinking peculiar to it develops in us sound understanding, and this must be produced and given out from far deeper depths than during the Graeco-Roman civilisation of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch. The construction of concepts and representations necessary for spiritual science, and peculiar to it, does not qualify us to become experts in any particular sphere, but it gives us the power of judging. And the reason for this will become more and more plain to see. There are mysterious forces in the human soul, and these forces, these mystery forces, will link the human soul with the spiritual world, and through our participation in spiritual science this link will enable us to use our judgment when we stand in the presence of authority. We shall not have expert knowledge but when in certain cases the expert acts on the strength of what he knows, we shall be able to form our own judgment about it. Emphasis must be laid upon the fact that spiritual science not only teaches us but in this connection develops our faculty of judgment—that is to say, it makes possible and fosters the freedom and independence of our thinking. Spiritual science may not qualify us to enter the medical profession, but if we can penetrate to its reality it makes us capable of forming a right judgment upon the results of medicine in public life. If what I mean by this could once be fully understood, there would be understanding as well for the many, many life-giving forces of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. For very much is contained in what I mean by saying that spiritual science will, as it were, remodel the human Intellect in such a way that man's critical faculty may be able to unfold itself, and in releasing his intellectual life from the life of his soul he may be able to develop true liberty of thought. I should like now, if you will allow me, to put these thoughts before you in a more pictorial, imaginative way» We are told in spiritual science of a concrete spiritual world; of elemental beings surrounding us; of the Hierarchies, Angels, Archangels and so forth. The world becomes peopled for us with real spiritual content, spiritual forces and spiritual beings. That we should know nothing about these spiritual beings is no longer a matter of indifference to them as to some extent it still was in the fourth post-Atlantean period. But if in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch men on earth know nothing about them it is as though, a part of their spiritual nourishment was being withheld. The spiritual world is in close communication with our present physical world of earth. You will understand this better when I tell you something which may seem strange now, but is quite simply true; and although at present it is still not possible to say very much, yet certain truths must be given out because humanity should no longer be without them. From the point of view of humanity on earth we are perfectly justified in saying: With the Mystery of Golgotha Christ entered earth-life, and He has remained in earth-life since then; and from this point of view we can feel it as good fortune for earth-life that Christ should have entered it. But now let us consider this from the standpoint of the Angels—which is no invention of mine, but follows as a reality from occult investigation—let us transfer ourselves to the standpoint of the Angels. Their experience in the spiritual sphere was quite different, it was the reverse of ours. Christ left the sphere of the Angels to come to mankind; He forsook their world. Speaking for themselves they could say: Christ left our world to go through the Mystery of Golgotha. And they would have as much reason to sorrow over this as we have to rejoice that Christ in His healing power should have come to us in as far as we live on earth in our physical bodies. This is a real train of thought, and anyone with actual knowledge of the spiritual world knows that there is only one way for the Angels to find solace, and I described it rightly when I said that men on earth in their physical bodies should live with the Christ-thought in such a way that it can shine upwards as a light to the Angels—since the Mystery of Golgotha—shine up to the Angels as a light. Men say: Christ has entered into us, and we can develop in such a way that He will be able to dwell in us—“not I, but Christ in me.” The Angels say: Christ has gone from the sphere of our inner life, and He shines up to us now like so many stars in the Christ-thought of individual men; He shines up to us since the Mystery of Golgotha, and there we find Him again. There is a real connection between the spiritual world and the human world. And this is also shown by the fact that the spiritual beings who apart from ourselves inhabit the spiritual world look with satisfaction and approval upon our thoughts about their world. They can help us only if we think about them; and although we may not have attained to clairvoyant vision into the spiritual world, if we know about these spiritual beings they can help us. In return for our study of spiritual science help comes to us from the spiritual world. It is not merely the things we learn, the knowledge we acquire, it is the beings of the higher Hierarchies themselves who help us when we know about them. And if in future, as the fifth post-Atlantean epoch proceeds, we face the authority of the expert, it will be good to have behind us not only our own human understanding but also what the spiritual beings are able to weave into it through our knowing about them. They qualify us to confront authority with sound judgment. The spiritual world helps us. We have need of it, we must know about it, and unite ourselves with it through conscious understanding. This is the third thing which must come to pass in the fifth post-Atlantean period. RECIPROCAL UNDERSTANDING IN SOCIAL LIFE. THE ACQUIRING OF FREEDOM OF THOUGHT. LIVING KNOWLEDGE OF THE SPIRITUAL WORLDS THROUGH SPIRITUAL SCIENCE. These three things must be the great true ideals of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. We must have reciprocal understanding in the social sphere, liberty of thought in religion and in the other branches of community life; and in the sphere of knowledge we must have knowledge of the spiritual worlds. SOCIAL UNDERSTANDING, LIBERTY OF THOUGHT, KNOWLEDGE OF THE SPIRITUAL WORLDS. These are the three great aims and impulses of the fifth post-Atlantean period. In the light of these impulses we must develop, for they are the true lights of our time. Many people feel strongly that some change is necessary, particularly in the social sphere where a quite different way of living must be adopted, and that we must have different concepts. But out of ignorance or unwillingness they evade the ultimate conclusions. This can be seen from the attitude of so many towards the aspirations of spiritual science. And here we need not confine ourselves to deliberately malicious calumny of it or of Theosophy. We need only consider the sincere will that abounds among men today, sincere will that aims at the creation of impulses tending in the direction post-Atlantean humanity should take. Only think how many reformers there are in every sphere, pastors and preachers on social matters; preachers too who do not belong to theological or religious circles. How they all take the floor! And often prompted by the best will possible. How is that to lead humanity in the direction towards which modern life is striving today? Good intentions are to be found everywhere, so let us for the moment consider what comes, not from bad intentions, but from good. And yet these good intentions do not help so long as they consist only in vague talk, however warm the feelings which underlie it; because the three great true ideals of human understanding, liberty of thought and knowledge of the spiritual worlds cannot reach fulfilment unless the knowledge which comes only from spiritual science is quickened into life. At present, however, except for the little company rallied round the spiritual-scientific conception of the world, understanding for such things has not yet reached even its initial stage. But we come nowadays upon fine and lofty theories tending in this direction. And, as an example, I should like to tell you of something which happened—“by chance”, as we say—to myself. Actually it came about through karma that looking one day into a shop window my eye was caught by the title of a little book which I bought. The subject of it is modern man, what he is in search of, under what impressions he grows up; it describes the many advantages of modern times which make life easy and comfortable—the convenience of steam and electricity, and so on—all set forth in detail. Emphasis is laid upon the jostle and rush of modern life, but also upon its increased possibilities; allusion is made to the outstanding discoveries and inventions of our time in comparison with the duller, poorer, more instinctive way of living in former times—all this is described with a kind of fervour and delight. But then follows a description of the difficulties of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, which I have pointed out today, only without any indication that these things proceed from the peculiarities of the age itself and its demand that the consciousness soul should be developed. What stands out is a complete lack of clear vision, in spite of an open compassionate heart. I will quote: “It is strange that a description of our modern civilisation, which begins on a high note of joy in existence, must end upon the deep note of inner destitution of soul. What we experience here in a small way” (he means by ‘a small way’ the place where he lives) “is in a far greater sense the experience of our age. An abundance of culture beyond compare, a display of beauty and power in life scarcely to be equaled in history, and side by side with it all a spiritual destitution mounting upwards to lay hold on every class.” And now, having given evidence of so much perspicacity, the author goes on to review various possibilities whereby the true impulse in modern humanity may find its right outlet. And among these possibilities, Theosophy, as he sees it, comes into consideration. Here, among its many enemies, we find a well-wisher of Theosophy, someone who with all good-will takes the trouble to interest himself in it and for this reason claims our attention. Indeed it is not without good reason that I bring these things to your notice; it is essential that we should concern ourselves with what are the positive connections of spiritual science with the outside world. After passing “pseudo mysticism” in review as a means of deepening life and as a remedy for destitution of soul, the writer goes on to say; “Theosophy is a near neighbour to mysticism. Many people see it only as a substitute for more trustworthy forces, or as a tendency to syncretism or to eclecticism”—that is to say a hotch-potch [hodge-podge, again—e.Ed] of religious confessions and world-conceptions, just as people who do not wish to go into spiritual science call it warmed-up gnosticism and so on. But the author of this book goes a step further, for he says; “Those who see it only as a tendency to syncretism and eclecticism, equivalent to individual inclinations, confuse it with still more doubtful symptoms of modern life such as superstition, spiritualism, apparitions, symbolism and similar trifling with the mystery-loving element in human nature. But this is not the case. We do this Movement an injustice by refusing to acknowledge its deep inner connections and values,”—Thus we stand indeed in the presence of a well-wisher.—He continues: “Where Steiner's circle at least is concerned, we must try to understand it as a contemporary religious Movement, although perhaps more syncretic than original, but going to the roots of all life.” Let us hope that as this man shows so much goodwill, he may yet find his way to the “originality” of our Movement. “We may look upon it as a Movement dedicated to the satisfying of man's super-sensible interests, and therefore as having outgrown the realism attached to the senses. Above all we may recognise it as a Movement which exhorts men to consider their moral problems, to work for inner re-birth through scrupulous concentration upon self-education.” As I have already said; I am not reading this to you out of silly sentimentality, but considering the many things said from other points of view about Anthroposophy, it seems not irrelevant that we should make ourselves acquainted with a criticism such as this:—“One has only to read Steiner’s book on Theosophy to be struck by the earnestness with which he enjoins upon his readers the necessity for purification and self-improvement. The speculations contained in it upon the super-sensible are in themselves a reaction to materialism; of course”—and now comes something to which I must beg that you will pay particular attention—“here the book loses touch with reality, and soars into the realms of hypothesis and clairvoyant fantasy, into a world of dreams in which there is no place for the realities of individual and social life. Nevertheless theosophy must be registered as a corrective phenomenon in the cultural progress of our time.” And so there is just one thing to which the author of this book takes exception, and that is the ascent, to knowledge of the spirit, to concrete knowledge of the spirit; which means that he would be glad of the impulse towards man's moral improvement which, by his own showing, springs from Theosophy, but he does not yet understand that for the fifth post-Atlantean epoch moral improvement can only come about through concrete spiritual knowledge. He cannot perceive the roots, and he wants the fruits without them. His range of vision cannot embrace the whole connection. And he is so extraordinarily interesting for just this reason: that, as we see, he has given deep thought to the study of my book “Theosophy” and yet cannot understand that the one is impossible without the other. He would like to cut off the book's head and keep its body because the latter he feels to be important. This bears out what I have been sayings that such people acknowledge the need for social understanding and liberty of thought—this they understand; but that the third, namely, knowledge of the spirit, must form the basis of our fifth post-Atlantean epoch they are not willing to admit; it is something they cannot rise to. And one of the most important tasks in the world-conception of spiritual science is to arouse understanding for this. People often say that rising to the spiritual worlds is a fantastic illusion. They do not see that it is the loss of this knowledge which has brought materialism upon us, with the incapacity for social understanding to which it is allied, with the materialistic way of living, and attitude towards life. And it is by studying our well-wishers that we can realise how difficult it is for people to admit the existence of concrete spiritual worlds. Because of this we must try the harder to gain understanding for such impulses as those I have brought forward today in my lecture. The title of the little book I mentioned is “Die Gedankenwelt des Gebildeten, Probleme and Aufgaben” by Prof. Dr. Friedrich Mahling, published in Hamburg in 1914, and it is the reprint of a lecture given by Dr. Mahling at Hamburg on the 23rd September 1913, during the 37th Congress for the Inner Mission. I am only surprised that no one in our circle has ever mentioned the book, for since its publication in 1914 it might easily have come under the notice of any one of us. And although it is important to concern ourselves with the various crossing and re-crossing threads between different spheres of thought at this present time, and with the various shades of abuse and mockery by which our Movement is attacked, we ought also to interest ourselves when, for once in a way as in this case, we are met by an honest effort to understand, and when we could learn from it something about the difficulties such an effort encounters. The purpose of this lecture has been to point out what should be the three great concrete Ideals of our fifth post-Atlantean epoch; reciprocal understanding in social life, liberty of thought, knowledge of the Spirit. In the future it will be for these three great ideals to direct the sciences. It will be for them to refine and purify life, to inspire morality with fresh impulses, to direct, penetrate and further the life of modern humanity to the greatest extent possible. But the first two demands, social understanding and liberty of thought, cannot be satisfied unless the third, knowledge of the Spirit, is added to them, because the consciousness soul should be developed. And the highest stage of the consciousness soul is the spirit-self, the natural predisposition for which will appear in the sixth post-Atlantean epoch. But it cannot develop without the preparatory stage of inner self-dependence, only to be attained by man through the unfolding of the consciousness soul. And we must remind ourselves as part of our endeavour in spiritual science that what may seem to us abstract truths have in them magic power which has only to be released for clear light to pour over the whole of life. And wherever we are placed, as scientists or practical workers in whatever sphere, however small our part, if we know how to quicken into life, for whatever that sphere may be, the abstract truths we take in during our meetings, we shall be fellow-workers at the greatest tasks of our time. And our souls will then be filled with a gladness which is not superficial good cheer, but has its part in the life-giving seriousness that increases our strength; and instead of allowing life to degenerate into a mere excuse for enjoyment makes of us true workers in life. In this sense the three great concrete social ideals and ideals of cognition will enable the consciousness soul in the fifth post-Atlantean period to understand the Mystery of Golgotha, and to receive Christ in a new way. For we forge a real link with the spiritual worlds by learning to know how these worlds also stand to the central impulse of earth evolution, to the Christ impulse. The Christ impulse will become our real link with the spiritual worlds under the influence of the thoughts which stream from them earthwards, and which we offer up again in our thinking about Christ; because in earth existence since the Mystery of Golgotha the thoughts of human souls shine upwards consolingly like bright stars, as I have described, even to the world of the angels who lost Christ from their sphere in order that they might find Him again shining up to them from the sphere of human thinking. No, knowledge of the Spirit may not be described as fantastic. It is knowledge of the Spirit which first, of all endeavours to find a way of influencing the actual conditions under which destitution of soul, necessarily bound up with the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, arises. It is of these things that I wished to speak to you today. Let us hope that we may meet again here at a not too distant date, and that until then we may be united in thought and continue to work in the spirit of our Movement.

168. How Can the Destitution of Soul in Modern Times Be Overcome? 10 Oct 1916, Zürich
Translator Unknown
Rudolf Steiner

The truths we look for in spiritual science should not be dead facts, but should bring with them understanding of such a vital kind that it finds entrance into life in all circumstances and at every point. Taken in the abstract, as is often the case at present, spiritual science may seem to offer a diluted and unproductive kind of knowledge, and it is natural that people who know very little about it should be induced to ask: What, after all, is the use of learning that man consists of such and such parts; that humanity has developed, and will develop further, through different epochs of culture, and so on? Those who feel that a realistic attitude is demanded by modern life find spiritual science unprofitable. And it is often applied in an unprofitable way, even by its most devoted adherents.

Nevertheless, spiritual science itself is infinitely alive, and is something which in the course of time can and must bring life into our most external concerns. I should like to make this clear today by a particular example. Most of us know that our present age was preceded by the so-called fourth post-Atlantean culture epoch, during which the most important peoples were the Greeks and Romans; that the following centuries down to the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries continued to be influenced by impulses preceding from that epoch; and that since the fifteenth century mankind has been living in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, into which we ourselves in our present incarnation have been born and in which humanity will be living for many hundreds of years to come. We know furthermore that in man in the fourth post-Atlantean period of civilisation—the Graeco-Roman epoch—was built up pre-eminently the so-called intellectual soul through external culture and work and that cultivation of the consciousness soul is our present task. What does the cultivation of the consciousness soul mean? This abstract statement, rightly understood, contains the destiny of mankind for our entire fifth post-Atlantean period. In order that the consciousness soul may be brought to expression, the various peoples of this period of culture should work together. All the conditions and circumstances of life proclaim this truth; on all sides we find it confirmed that our age stands for the development of the consciousness soul.

Human life was completely different in the preceding Graeco-Roman period when, according to the stage of development mankind had reached, the faculties of intellect and of feeling were bestowed upon them. Intellect covers a wide field; today this is not sufficiently understood. In their soul-life the Greeks and Romans were dependent upon it in a different way from ourselves in the fifth post-Atlantean period. They received the intellect, in so far as they needed to make use of it, “ready-made”, as a natural tendency of their stage of development; there was no need to cultivate it as we must do at present, and as will be increasingly necessary in the further course of the fifth post-Atlantean period—it developed as a natural tendency. The child grew up, and as his natural tendencies developed, the natural intellect—in a certain sense—developed with them. Growing up in ordinary conditions in a particular incarnation he either possessed an intellect, or he did not. The latter case was considered pathological, or at any rate abnormal, out of the common.

And so it was with heart-and-feeling. Appropriately to the fourth post-Atlantean period heart-and-feeling developed. And though history tells us little of such things, it is nevertheless true that two people meeting for the first time knew how to tune in to each other. In this respect there is a great, difference between the preceding centuries down to the fifteenth century, and our own time. People, then, did not pass each other by with the complete indifference often shown nowadays. At present we are slow, as a rule, to make friends. We must know a great deal about each other before confidence can be established. But what is now only to be arrived at after long acquaintance—if at all—in former centuries, particularly during the Graeco-Roman period of civilisation, could be won at a stroke. In virtue of their respective individualities people were drawn rapidly together, without so much need to exchange feelings and thoughts. Acquaintance was quickly made, in so far as it might be good for the two persons concerned, or necessary to a group of people forming themselves into a community. Heart-and-feeling in the one could still reach out more spiritually and make immediate contact with heart-and-feeling in the other. Up to the present, through the medium of our senses, we can still accurately distinguish the colours, and so forth, of plants; but it will no longer be possible to do this spontaneously in the seventh post-Atlantean epoch when learning to know nature will necessitate special conditions. And there is a resemblance between our actual connection with plants and human connections in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch. We must remember that this kind of feeling-and-heart connection was well adapted to that age, but a very different network of feelings and sensations spans the world of today. In the fourth post-Atlantean epoch human relationships and undertakings depended to the greatest possible extent upon personal contacts. The art of printing which has done so much up to now, and will do more and more in the future, to establish impersonal relationships, belongs to the fifth post-Atlantean epoch; and modern terms of intercourse are such that, fundamentally speaking, connections formed at a stroke are no longer even beneficial, and people can only approach one another on far more impersonal grounds.

Towards this, modern man is developing; he is no longer possessed of a ready-made heart-and-feeling with its spontaneous reactions, nor of a penetrating intellect, but impelled by the consciousness soul to develop something far more detached, more individual, more dependent upon egoism, upon human loneliness inherent in the organisation of his own body, than was the intellectual soul or mind soul. Through the consciousness soul man is much more an individual, a solitary traveler through the world. And the tendency people now show to withdraw into themselves is becoming [a] more and more pronounced characteristic of our time. The hallmark of the consciousness soul is the urge towards an isolated life, secluded from the rest of mankind. Hence the difficulty of getting to know one another, especially of establishing confidence, without the transition period of formal acquaintanceship.

The significance of all this becomes clearer if we give due weight to the spiritual-scientific truth that in the present age we are not thrown together by chance with other people. That the path of life brings us into contact with certain people and not with others depends upon the working out of individual karma. For we have entered upon a period of human evolution which brings man's preceding karmic developments to a culminating point. Think how much less karma had been accumulated in the earlier periods of earth evolution! With every incarnation fresh karma is made. At first, people had to meet under totally new conditions, with the possibility of forming fresh connections. But through repeated earth-lives we have gradually reached a point at which, as a general rule, we do not meet anyone with whom in former incarnations we have not shared this or that experience. And these experiences bring us into contact again with those who shared them. We meet other people as it would appear by chance but in reality because in former incarnations we had already met, and on the strength of this are brought together again.

Now the self-contained consciousness soul can only develop—and its development is destined to take place in our time—when less importance is attached to what takes place at present between one person and another than to what works inwardly in solitude as the result of former incarnations. In the Graeco-Roman period two persons meeting for the first time made an impression upon each other which worked with the immediacy of a blow. At present, if a meeting is to take place that is to further the development of the consciousness soul, the moving factor between them must be what emerges in one or [the] other as the result of previous incarnations. This takes longer than recognition at first sight; it implies the gradual coming to the surface, little by little in a feeling, instinctive way, of what they formerly lived through together. What we ask today is that in becoming acquainted individual corners should be rubbed off. Because it is in the becoming acquainted, this rubbing off of corners, that the still unconscious, instinctive reminiscences and after-effects of former incarnations strike upwards. The consciousness soul can only develop when our contacts with other people are made from within; whereas the intellectual and mind soul develops more through immediate contact.

What I have now described for the fifth post-Atlantean epoch is only in its initial stage. And as the epoch continues it will become increasingly difficult to bring ourselves into a right relationship with others, because this demands inner development, inner activity. A beginning has been made, but what has begun must continue to spread and become more and more intensive. How hard it is already in this present time for people drawn together by karma to understand each other, perhaps because owing to other karmic connections they have not the force instinctively to conjure up all the relations leading over from former incarnations. Stirred by certain after-effects of previous earth-lives, people are drawn together in love; but other forces work against these rising memories, and friends grow apart again. And this putting the durability of their relationship to the test is not only for those who meet in life as friends; it will also be increasingly difficult for children to understand their parents, parents their children, brothers and sisters each other. Reciprocal understanding will become more and more difficult, because of the increasing need to free what is karmically imprisoned within us, and to let it rise to the surface.

Now this negative prospect of ever increasing difficulty in reciprocal understanding in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch requires of us that we should not dream our lives away in the dark, nor close our eyes to the condition of evolution, because this is an absolutely necessary condition. If the difficulty of coming to mutual understanding were not hanging over fifth post-Atlantean humanity, the consciousness soul could not develop, and people would have to live their life in common dependent upon their natural tendencies. And cultivation of individuality—which belongs to the consciousness soul—would not be able to develop either. This must take place. Men will have to undergo this test.

Nevertheless, if only this negative aspect of evolutionary conditions in the fifth post-Atlantean period were to prevail, war and strife would inevitably arise, and find their way into even our most unimportant concerns. I need refer only to one thing and it will be plain to all of us how the remedy is to be sought for one of our necessary ills—for the difficulty we find in understanding each other. I need only say—because we are living in the age of the consciousness soul, as the fifth post-Atlantean epoch proceeds more and more conscious interest will have to be felt for SOCIAL UNDERSTANDING. In this term needs are summed up which in the fourth post-Atlantean period did not exist to at all the same extent. Anyone able accurately to study the history of ancient Greece and Rome knows that for these peoples the individual was not yet possessed of the abilities that can now be made use of by European humanity, and by their American connections. This becomes clearer if we compare human beings with an animal species. Why do animals of the same species live, within certain limits, harmoniously together? For through their group soul, the soul of their species, they have this inborn faculty; it is inherent in the species, and a matter of course. But this represents a stage of development at which the animal remains stationary, but which man must outgrow. Every single human being must develop himself as an individual, and particularly in our modern age of the consciousness soul this self-culture of the individual is one of the most important matters. The Graeco-Roman civilisation is still coloured by a group-soul element. We find its peoples making part of a social order, the structure of which, though certainly derived more from moral forces, is in itself a fixed structure and will in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch be increasingly broken up. This group-soul element in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch has no longer any meaning for the fifth. A conscious form of social understanding must take its place, proceeding from a deep knowledge of the true being of the human individual. And it is spiritual science which will first develop this understanding. When spiritual science blossoms more and more out of the abstract into the concrete, into fullness of life, among its adherents a very special knowledge of, a very special interest in, humanity will be aroused. There will be people with special gifts for teaching others about the different temperaments and characterological tendencies, how this person with a particular temperament should be taken in such a way, whereas that other person with the same temperament but with a different trend of character requires different treatment. These specially gifted men will say to those who are ready to learn: “Look carefully; there is this type of person and there is that other type, and, with each, must deal differently.” Practical psychology, practical knowledge of the soul, but also a practical knowledge of life, will be cultivated, and out of this true social understanding for human development will grow.

What have we had up to now in the shape of social understanding? All kinds of abstract ideals, concerned with national welfare and human happiness, this or that form of socialism, have made their appearance. And only when certain sociological ideas are really on the point of being put into practice, is the acknowledgment of their impracticability forthcoming. What in the first place is important is not to found sects and societies with fixed programmes, but to spread the knowledge of men, notably such knowledge of human nature as will enable us to understand the growing, developing human being, to understand the child, and how each child develops according to its particular individuality. In this way we shall learn so to adjust ourselves in life that when confronted by karma with a personal connection to be made, a connection to be drawn closer, we shall establish a real and enduring relationship, of the kind which can prove itself in life to be most truly fruitful. Practical knowledge of man, practical, effectual interest in humanity, this is what counts. Up to the present mankind has gone only a short way along this path and with small success. For how do we judge a person whom we meet nowadays? As being agreeable to us, or the reverse. Look about you and you will find that this is, in most cases, the sole criterion, or if more than one opinion is pronounced there is only one point of view; “This man appeals to me, another does not. I like this about so-and-so, but I do not like that.” Foregone conclusions! We make for ourselves an idea of what someone should be, and when we find that they differ from it we criticise. No progress will be made towards a true practical understanding of man until we do away with these prejudices and fancies for this person or that, and make up our minds to take people as they are.

How often, when two people meet for the first time, one of them arouses instantaneous antipathy in the other, whom he dislikes so much that afterwards whatever they have to do with each other is coloured by this dislike. As a consequence the karmic connection between them can be entirely blotted out, or set on a false track, and will have to be laid aside until the two meet again in their next incarnation. Sympathy and antipathy are the greatest enemies of true social interests, though only too little heed is paid to the fact. But to anyone deeply aware of the importance of true social understanding for the further development of mankind, it is distressing to watch the effect teachers in a school often have upon their pupils, when out of prejudice they show preference for one rather than another, whereas it is important to take each of them as he is able and to make the very most of that.

But here we are up against regulations. Our regulations and social laws often so implacably wipe out individuality in the teacher himself, that any real effort to uphold individuality as such is impossible.

Understanding for spiritual science would cause practical knowledge of the human soul and practical knowledge of man to become matters of general interest. This is a necessity for social understanding if it is, to some extent, to create the opposite pole to the difficulty of understanding one another. It is what must come in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch of the consciousness soul is to develop fully. Man must go through trials and provings, for the opposing forces set snares in our way. And accordingly feelings of sympathy and antipathy will be widespread, and it is only by consciously combating these superficial feelings that we shall bring the consciousness soul safely to birth. Social understanding between man and man will also be more and more powerfully opposed by those nationalistic feelings and emotions, which only assumed their present form in the nineteenth century but are gaining the upper hand more and more. And since good is to be found only in the overcoming of them, these national antagonisms, these national sympathies and antipathies,[as they arise] are so strong that they are fearful testings for mankind. Were they to gain the upper hand, as they bid fair to do, we should dream away the development of the consciousness soul, because nationalism works in the opposite direction, and stands in the way of man's independence by tending to make of him a mere reflection of this or that national group. This is the first thing to bear in mind if we want the otherwise empty saying to become a reality in our souls: that the fifth post-Atlantean epoch is in particular for the development of the consciousness soul. And further to this development: if as individualism increases religion does not adapt itself to the needs of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, but remains as it was suitable for the fourth post-Atlantean period, a certain drying up of the religious life must take place.

Religious groups were bound to arise in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch because at that time mankind lived more as groups. It was necessary for authority to pour out dogmas, principles of religion, religious thought, upon groups of people, as common to them all. But because the urge to develop individuality through the consciousness soul in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch is becoming stronger and stronger, that which speaks out of the group religions can no longer find its way to human hearts, and individual human souls. And what comes from these group religions will simply not be understood. In the fourth post-Atlantean epoch it was still possible out of the group to teach people about Christ. But in the fifth period Christ is already actually entering the individual soul. Already, unconsciously or subconsciously, we all carry Christ within us. But through ourselves alone we must find the way to understand Him anew. This will not come from the imposing of fixed dogmas, only from doing all we can to further what will make Christ universally comprehensible, to further the spread of universal religious knowledge in general, and to search out everything which can work to this end. Hence in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch the need for more and more tolerance, particularly where thought in connection with religious experience is concerned. And whereas in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch those who worked to spread religious truths did so by imposing certain dogmas and fixed principles, in the fifth period this must all completely change. It is a question of something entirely different. Because men are becoming more and more individual an attempt should be made for anyone to describe his inner experiences completely freed from dogma to another, in such a way that the latter might also be able to develop his own free life of religious thought as an individual. It is a fact that dogmatic religion, the fixed dogmas of the religious confessions, will kill the religious life of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. So that a fresh start from this age must consist in making it clear that in the first centuries of the Christian era this or that may have been adapted to man's development at the time, and that in the following centuries something different is needed. Also that there are different religions. We must try to make the essential nature of the different religions intelligible, to make clear different aspects of the Christ-conception. In this way we bring to every soul what it requires for its particular deepening. But we do not ourselves intervene in the moulding of the soul; we leave the soul, especially in the sphere of religion, its own liberty of thinking and scope to unfold this liberty.

Just as social understanding is necessary for the fifth post-Atlantean period at the point I have described, so is liberty of thought on religious grounds a fundamental condition for the development of the consciousness soul. SOCIAL UNDERSTANDING IN THE SPHERE OF HUMAN RELATIONSHIPS. LIBERTY OF THOUGHT IN THE SPHERE OF RELIGION—of the religious life.

This effort of ours to understand the religious aspect of life more and more, to penetrate it, and by so doing to come to terms with our fellow men even though each of them may have his own religious life to unfold, must be kept clearly in view because it is a basic need of the fifth post-Atlantean period and something humanity must acquire by consciously drawing upon their own strength. In this very age of the consciousness soul, the ahrimanic powers are most fiercely renewing their attack upon liberty of thought—the nerve and sinew in the stream of the spiritual scientific conception of life—and we know what opposition it encounters from the religious confessions in general, and what calumnies are directed from every side upon spiritual science, on account of its complete and luminous acceptance of the birth of the consciousness soul, and its refusal to take part in propagating the kind of religious life which is still dependent upon the support of the intellectual or mind soul, as in the fourth post-Atlantean period. The various forms assumed by Christianity were established in the fourth post-Atlantean period according to the requirements of the Graeco-Roman civilisation. As Church-forms they are already unsuitable and will become ever more unsuitable for the growth of free thought which must take place.

And in the age which prompted by modern life feels the first stirrings of a need to think freely, we find the opposing power at work in the so-called Jesuitism of the different religions—although much comes under this heading which would have to be described in detail. It is actually brought to life in order that the strongest possible resistance may be offered to liberty of thought, so vital a necessity for the fifth post-Atlantean period. It will become more and more necessary to exterminate Jesuitism, the enemy in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch of free thinking, because from religion outwards liberty of thought must spread over every sphere of life. But as it must be striven for independently, mankind is put, as it were, to the proof, and difficulties spring up everywhere. These difficulties will increase as men of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch advance towards clear consciousness, yet feeling this at first to be a disadvantage, and in many respects stupefying themselves.

So we find the clash of sharp conflict between germinating liberty of thought and the principle of authority which works into our times like a hang-over from the past. And there is a passion for dulling the consciousness and for self-deception where belief in authority is concerned. In our time putting faith in authority has become so great and so intensified that under its influence people are losing their power of judgment. In the fourth post-Atlantean epoch they were endowed by nature with sound understanding; now they must acquire it, develop it, and their belief in authority holds them back from doing so. We are becoming bound hand and foot to our belief in authority. Only think how helpless human beings appear when compared to the unreasoning animal creation! How completely the animal is guided by instincts which lead it in a sound way even from sickness back to health; whereas modern man fights against sound judgment in this respect and submits himself entirely to authority. He has very little wish to acquire discernment for healthy conditions of living, although it is true that praiseworthy efforts are made in this direction by various societies and institutions. But these efforts need to be very much intensified; above all we must realise that we have increasingly to contend with our own trust in authority, and that whole theories are being built up which in their turn will become the basis of convictions only serving to uphold belief in authority.

In medicine, in law and in every other sphere people declare themselves from the outset incompetent to judge, and accept what science tells them. The complications of modern life make this understandable. But under the pressure of authority we shall become more and more helpless. And systematically to build up this force of authority, this habit of authority, is actually the principle of Jesuitism. And Jesuitism in the Catholic religion is only a special instance of other less noticeable performances in other directions. It begins in the sphere of ecclesiastical dogma with the tendency to uphold papal authority projected over from the fourth post-Atlantean period into the fifth where it can do no good. But the same Jesuitical principle will gradually transfer itself to other spheres of life. In a form hardly differing from the Jesuitism of dogmatic religion, we already find it in medical circles where a certain dogmatism strives after more power for the medical profession. This is typical of Jesuitical aspiration everywhere; and it will grow stronger and stronger. People will find themselves more and more tied down by what authority imposes upon them. And in face of this ahrimanic opposition—for such it is—salvation for the fifth post-Atlantean epoch will be found in asserting the rights of the consciousness soul which is wishing to develop. But as the gift of reason is no longer bestowed upon us like our two arms by Nature, as was still to some extent the case in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, this can only come about through our good will to develop the faculties of understanding and sound judgment. The development of the consciousness soul demands liberty of thought; and this can flourish only in a particular aura, in a certain atmosphere.

I have pointed out that the fifth post-Atlantean epoch is beset with difficulties on account of its pressing forward in a certain direction, to the development of the consciousness soul. The consciousness soul—just because it should develop as such—must encounter opposition and pass through trials. We see what tremendous and growing opposition there is to social understanding and liberty of thought. But this opposition is not acknowledged to be such; it is looked upon in the most extensive circles as right and proper, as something in no way to be condemned but on the contrary most carefully to be fostered.

There are, however, a great many people whose sincerity and clear vision make them fully aware of what dangers modern man is exposed to and who have a keen sense for what is already plain to see: that karmic connections having entered the period of crisis described above, the moment has come when parents and children, brothers and sister peoples and nations will no longer understand each other. There are already a sufficient number of people who realise that these necessary conditions can work for good only when they are faced with the understanding which rises from the very life of the heart. For the impulse for this new world-working must be consciously wrung out of the heart's blood. What comes spontaneously brings estrangement between individuals. We must consciously strive after what springs from the human heart. Every single soul has difficulties to encounter in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch because the consciousness soul can develop only through the testing occasioned by the overcoming of these difficulties.

How often nowadays one hears: “I don't know what to do with myself, I don't know how to organise my life.” This comes from inability to see clearly what the needs of the present time are, and what man's position is with regard to them. Many people are reduced by existing conditions to physical illness, physical strain and loss of balance. And a real understanding for this must be more and more intensively cultivated because what threatens us, and is at the same time a necessity for the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, is the danger of DESTITUTION OF SOUL—destitution of the particular “shade” described in today's lecture. Many people see what this means and feel how necessary it is that we should come to social understanding on the one hand and liberty of thought on the other. But today very few are inclined to make use of the right means to this end. For social understanding, what would be necessary to achieve it, is only too often served by a hotch-potch [hodge-podge?—e.Ed] of high-sounding phrases. There is a lot of talk nowadays about the necessity for the individual treatment of the growing child. What long-winded theories are devised in every branch of pedagogy! Very little of this is to the point. Whereas an intelligent circulation of as many positive descriptions as possible of how the human being actually develops, a positive natural history of individual development, is needed. Wherever possible we should describe how the human beings A, B and C have developed and enter lovingly into such human development as takes place before our eyes—this is what we need. Above all the study of life is necessary, the will to gain knowledge of life itself, rather than to make out programmes. The theoretical programme is the enemy of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch of culture.

Now when a society is formed, this should take place in accordance with the aims of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. This means that the members of it must constitute the chief reason for its existence, and the exchange of ideas between these actual men should yield the best results possible; and if sufficient attention is given to this, very individual results will show themselves. At present, what is the usual procedure? It begins with a drawing up of rules. This can be quite good, and may be necessary, because external conditions demand rules and regulations. But on our own ground we must be very clear that talk about programmes and regulations is merely a concession to the outside world; that what concerns us must be the life in common as individuals, what issues from actual human beings; that reciprocal understanding is what counts. This will make it possible even in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch—which has centuries yet before it—that from among those who understand such things, understanding could go forth for vital individual development in the world generally, which at present puts everything into sections and regulations as if into a straight jacket. From thence come the high-sounding doctrines which from pulpit and platform proclaim the art of living. Theories crop up on every hand, dripping with abstractions and demonstrating every imaginable idea and ideal. So importance can be attached to them, but only to what is concrete, and to a comprehending penetration of the actualities of life. How can this come about?

It stands to reason that to what has been said the following objections would be justified: “Yes, indeed—but we are not qualified to pronounce an opinion upon what experts nowadays officially give out. Only consider”—it might be objected—“what the medical student has to learn! That he should learn it is right and proper, but we could not; and then add to this what the lawyer must know, and the art student, and so on.”—It is certainly out of the question that we should learn these things; but we are not called upon to be creative, we need only be capable of judging. We must allow the expert to create, but we must be able to criticise the expert. And this faculty of judgment we shall not acquire by specialising, but only by cultivating in an all-round way our powers of understanding and our faculty of judgment. This, however, can never come about through expert knowledge in some particular branch of science, but only through the all-embracing knowledge of the Spirit.

Spiritual science must be the centre around which all the sciences revolve; for it not only throws light upon the connections in human evolution, but the way of thinking peculiar to it develops in us sound understanding, and this must be produced and given out from far deeper depths than during the Graeco-Roman civilisation of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch. The construction of concepts and representations necessary for spiritual science, and peculiar to it, does not qualify us to become experts in any particular sphere, but it gives us the power of judging. And the reason for this will become more and more plain to see. There are mysterious forces in the human soul, and these forces, these mystery forces, will link the human soul with the spiritual world, and through our participation in spiritual science this link will enable us to use our judgment when we stand in the presence of authority. We shall not have expert knowledge but when in certain cases the expert acts on the strength of what he knows, we shall be able to form our own judgment about it.

Emphasis must be laid upon the fact that spiritual science not only teaches us but in this connection develops our faculty of judgment—that is to say, it makes possible and fosters the freedom and independence of our thinking. Spiritual science may not qualify us to enter the medical profession, but if we can penetrate to its reality it makes us capable of forming a right judgment upon the results of medicine in public life. If what I mean by this could once be fully understood, there would be understanding as well for the many, many life-giving forces of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. For very much is contained in what I mean by saying that spiritual science will, as it were, remodel the human Intellect in such a way that man's critical faculty may be able to unfold itself, and in releasing his intellectual life from the life of his soul he may be able to develop true liberty of thought.

I should like now, if you will allow me, to put these thoughts before you in a more pictorial, imaginative way» We are told in spiritual science of a concrete spiritual world; of elemental beings surrounding us; of the Hierarchies, Angels, Archangels and so forth. The world becomes peopled for us with real spiritual content, spiritual forces and spiritual beings. That we should know nothing about these spiritual beings is no longer a matter of indifference to them as to some extent it still was in the fourth post-Atlantean period. But if in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch men on earth know nothing about them it is as though, a part of their spiritual nourishment was being withheld. The spiritual world is in close communication with our present physical world of earth. You will understand this better when I tell you something which may seem strange now, but is quite simply true; and although at present it is still not possible to say very much, yet certain truths must be given out because humanity should no longer be without them.

From the point of view of humanity on earth we are perfectly justified in saying: With the Mystery of Golgotha Christ entered earth-life, and He has remained in earth-life since then; and from this point of view we can feel it as good fortune for earth-life that Christ should have entered it. But now let us consider this from the standpoint of the Angels—which is no invention of mine, but follows as a reality from occult investigation—let us transfer ourselves to the standpoint of the Angels. Their experience in the spiritual sphere was quite different, it was the reverse of ours. Christ left the sphere of the Angels to come to mankind; He forsook their world. Speaking for themselves they could say: Christ left our world to go through the Mystery of Golgotha. And they would have as much reason to sorrow over this as we have to rejoice that Christ in His healing power should have come to us in as far as we live on earth in our physical bodies. This is a real train of thought, and anyone with actual knowledge of the spiritual world knows that there is only one way for the Angels to find solace, and I described it rightly when I said that men on earth in their physical bodies should live with the Christ-thought in such a way that it can shine upwards as a light to the Angels—since the Mystery of Golgotha—shine up to the Angels as a light. Men say: Christ has entered into us, and we can develop in such a way that He will be able to dwell in us—“not I, but Christ in me.” The Angels say: Christ has gone from the sphere of our inner life, and He shines up to us now like so many stars in the Christ-thought of individual men; He shines up to us since the Mystery of Golgotha, and there we find Him again. There is a real connection between the spiritual world and the human world. And this is also shown by the fact that the spiritual beings who apart from ourselves inhabit the spiritual world look with satisfaction and approval upon our thoughts about their world. They can help us only if we think about them; and although we may not have attained to clairvoyant vision into the spiritual world, if we know about these spiritual beings they can help us. In return for our study of spiritual science help comes to us from the spiritual world. It is not merely the things we learn, the knowledge we acquire, it is the beings of the higher Hierarchies themselves who help us when we know about them. And if in future, as the fifth post-Atlantean epoch proceeds, we face the authority of the expert, it will be good to have behind us not only our own human understanding but also what the spiritual beings are able to weave into it through our knowing about them. They qualify us to confront authority with sound judgment. The spiritual world helps us. We have need of it, we must know about it, and unite ourselves with it through conscious understanding. This is the third thing which must come to pass in the fifth post-Atlantean period.

RECIPROCAL UNDERSTANDING IN SOCIAL LIFE.

THE ACQUIRING OF FREEDOM OF THOUGHT.

LIVING KNOWLEDGE OF THE SPIRITUAL WORLDS THROUGH SPIRITUAL SCIENCE.

These three things must be the great true ideals of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. We must have reciprocal understanding in the social sphere, liberty of thought in religion and in the other branches of community life; and in the sphere of knowledge we must have knowledge of the spiritual worlds.

SOCIAL UNDERSTANDING, LIBERTY OF THOUGHT, KNOWLEDGE OF THE SPIRITUAL WORLDS. These are the three great aims and impulses of the fifth post-Atlantean period. In the light of these impulses we must develop, for they are the true lights of our time. Many people feel strongly that some change is necessary, particularly in the social sphere where a quite different way of living must be adopted, and that we must have different concepts. But out of ignorance or unwillingness they evade the ultimate conclusions. This can be seen from the attitude of so many towards the aspirations of spiritual science. And here we need not confine ourselves to deliberately malicious calumny of it or of Theosophy. We need only consider the sincere will that abounds among men today, sincere will that aims at the creation of impulses tending in the direction post-Atlantean humanity should take.

Only think how many reformers there are in every sphere, pastors and preachers on social matters; preachers too who do not belong to theological or religious circles. How they all take the floor! And often prompted by the best will possible. How is that to lead humanity in the direction towards which modern life is striving today? Good intentions are to be found everywhere, so let us for the moment consider what comes, not from bad intentions, but from good. And yet these good intentions do not help so long as they consist only in vague talk, however warm the feelings which underlie it; because the three great true ideals of human understanding, liberty of thought and knowledge of the spiritual worlds cannot reach fulfilment unless the knowledge which comes only from spiritual science is quickened into life. At present, however, except for the little company rallied round the spiritual-scientific conception of the world, understanding for such things has not yet reached even its initial stage.

But we come nowadays upon fine and lofty theories tending in this direction. And, as an example, I should like to tell you of something which happened—“by chance”, as we say—to myself. Actually it came about through karma that looking one day into a shop window my eye was caught by the title of a little book which I bought. The subject of it is modern man, what he is in search of, under what impressions he grows up; it describes the many advantages of modern times which make life easy and comfortable—the convenience of steam and electricity, and so on—all set forth in detail. Emphasis is laid upon the jostle and rush of modern life, but also upon its increased possibilities; allusion is made to the outstanding discoveries and inventions of our time in comparison with the duller, poorer, more instinctive way of living in former times—all this is described with a kind of fervour and delight. But then follows a description of the difficulties of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, which I have pointed out today, only without any indication that these things proceed from the peculiarities of the age itself and its demand that the consciousness soul should be developed. What stands out is a complete lack of clear vision, in spite of an open compassionate heart. I will quote: “It is strange that a description of our modern civilisation, which begins on a high note of joy in existence, must end upon the deep note of inner destitution of soul. What we experience here in a small way” (he means by ‘a small way’ the place where he lives) “is in a far greater sense the experience of our age. An abundance of culture beyond compare, a display of beauty and power in life scarcely to be equaled in history, and side by side with it all a spiritual destitution mounting upwards to lay hold on every class.”

And now, having given evidence of so much perspicacity, the author goes on to review various possibilities whereby the true impulse in modern humanity may find its right outlet. And among these possibilities, Theosophy, as he sees it, comes into consideration. Here, among its many enemies, we find a well-wisher of Theosophy, someone who with all good-will takes the trouble to interest himself in it and for this reason claims our attention. Indeed it is not without good reason that I bring these things to your notice; it is essential that we should concern ourselves with what are the positive connections of spiritual science with the outside world.

After passing “pseudo mysticism” in review as a means of deepening life and as a remedy for destitution of soul, the writer goes on to say; “Theosophy is a near neighbour to mysticism. Many people see it only as a substitute for more trustworthy forces, or as a tendency to syncretism or to eclecticism”—that is to say a hotch-potch [hodge-podge, again—e.Ed] of religious confessions and world-conceptions, just as people who do not wish to go into spiritual science call it warmed-up gnosticism and so on. But the author of this book goes a step further, for he says; “Those who see it only as a tendency to syncretism and eclecticism, equivalent to individual inclinations, confuse it with still more doubtful symptoms of modern life such as superstition, spiritualism, apparitions, symbolism and similar trifling with the mystery-loving element in human nature. But this is not the case. We do this Movement an injustice by refusing to acknowledge its deep inner connections and values,”—Thus we stand indeed in the presence of a well-wisher.—He continues: “Where Steiner's circle at least is concerned, we must try to understand it as a contemporary religious Movement, although perhaps more syncretic than original, but going to the roots of all life.” Let us hope that as this man shows so much goodwill, he may yet find his way to the “originality” of our Movement. “We may look upon it as a Movement dedicated to the satisfying of man's super-sensible interests, and therefore as having outgrown the realism attached to the senses. Above all we may recognise it as a Movement which exhorts men to consider their moral problems, to work for inner re-birth through scrupulous concentration upon self-education.” As I have already said; I am not reading this to you out of silly sentimentality, but considering the many things said from other points of view about Anthroposophy, it seems not irrelevant that we should make ourselves acquainted with a criticism such as this:—“One has only to read Steiner’s book on Theosophy to be struck by the earnestness with which he enjoins upon his readers the necessity for purification and self-improvement. The speculations contained in it upon the super-sensible are in themselves a reaction to materialism; of course”—and now comes something to which I must beg that you will pay particular attention—“here the book loses touch with reality, and soars into the realms of hypothesis and clairvoyant fantasy, into a world of dreams in which there is no place for the realities of individual and social life. Nevertheless theosophy must be registered as a corrective phenomenon in the cultural progress of our time.”

And so there is just one thing to which the author of this book takes exception, and that is the ascent, to knowledge of the spirit, to concrete knowledge of the spirit; which means that he would be glad of the impulse towards man's moral improvement which, by his own showing, springs from Theosophy, but he does not yet understand that for the fifth post-Atlantean epoch moral improvement can only come about through concrete spiritual knowledge. He cannot perceive the roots, and he wants the fruits without them. His range of vision cannot embrace the whole connection. And he is so extraordinarily interesting for just this reason: that, as we see, he has given deep thought to the study of my book “Theosophy” and yet cannot understand that the one is impossible without the other. He would like to cut off the book's head and keep its body because the latter he feels to be important.

This bears out what I have been sayings that such people acknowledge the need for social understanding and liberty of thought—this they understand; but that the third, namely, knowledge of the spirit, must form the basis of our fifth post-Atlantean epoch they are not willing to admit; it is something they cannot rise to. And one of the most important tasks in the world-conception of spiritual science is to arouse understanding for this. People often say that rising to the spiritual worlds is a fantastic illusion. They do not see that it is the loss of this knowledge which has brought materialism upon us, with the incapacity for social understanding to which it is allied, with the materialistic way of living, and attitude towards life. And it is by studying our well-wishers that we can realise how difficult it is for people to admit the existence of concrete spiritual worlds. Because of this we must try the harder to gain understanding for such impulses as those I have brought forward today in my lecture.

The title of the little book I mentioned is “Die Gedankenwelt des Gebildeten, Probleme and Aufgaben” by Prof. Dr. Friedrich Mahling, published in Hamburg in 1914, and it is the reprint of a lecture given by Dr. Mahling at Hamburg on the 23rd September 1913, during the 37th Congress for the Inner Mission. I am only surprised that no one in our circle has ever mentioned the book, for since its publication in 1914 it might easily have come under the notice of any one of us. And although it is important to concern ourselves with the various crossing and re-crossing threads between different spheres of thought at this present time, and with the various shades of abuse and mockery by which our Movement is attacked, we ought also to interest ourselves when, for once in a way as in this case, we are met by an honest effort to understand, and when we could learn from it something about the difficulties such an effort encounters.

The purpose of this lecture has been to point out what should be the three great concrete Ideals of our fifth post-Atlantean epoch; reciprocal understanding in social life, liberty of thought, knowledge of the Spirit. In the future it will be for these three great ideals to direct the sciences. It will be for them to refine and purify life, to inspire morality with fresh impulses, to direct, penetrate and further the life of modern humanity to the greatest extent possible. But the first two demands, social understanding and liberty of thought, cannot be satisfied unless the third, knowledge of the Spirit, is added to them, because the consciousness soul should be developed. And the highest stage of the consciousness soul is the spirit-self, the natural predisposition for which will appear in the sixth post-Atlantean epoch. But it cannot develop without the preparatory stage of inner self-dependence, only to be attained by man through the unfolding of the consciousness soul. And we must remind ourselves as part of our endeavour in spiritual science that what may seem to us abstract truths have in them magic power which has only to be released for clear light to pour over the whole of life. And wherever we are placed, as scientists or practical workers in whatever sphere, however small our part, if we know how to quicken into life, for whatever that sphere may be, the abstract truths we take in during our meetings, we shall be fellow-workers at the greatest tasks of our time. And our souls will then be filled with a gladness which is not superficial good cheer, but has its part in the life-giving seriousness that increases our strength; and instead of allowing life to degenerate into a mere excuse for enjoyment makes of us true workers in life.

In this sense the three great concrete social ideals and ideals of cognition will enable the consciousness soul in the fifth post-Atlantean period to understand the Mystery of Golgotha, and to receive Christ in a new way. For we forge a real link with the spiritual worlds by learning to know how these worlds also stand to the central impulse of earth evolution, to the Christ impulse. The Christ impulse will become our real link with the spiritual worlds under the influence of the thoughts which stream from them earthwards, and which we offer up again in our thinking about Christ; because in earth existence since the Mystery of Golgotha the thoughts of human souls shine upwards consolingly like bright stars, as I have described, even to the world of the angels who lost Christ from their sphere in order that they might find Him again shining up to them from the sphere of human thinking.

No, knowledge of the Spirit may not be described as fantastic. It is knowledge of the Spirit which first, of all endeavours to find a way of influencing the actual conditions under which destitution of soul, necessarily bound up with the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, arises. It is of these things that I wished to speak to you today. Let us hope that we may meet again here at a not too distant date, and that until then we may be united in thought and continue to work in the spirit of our Movement.

173a. The Karma of Untruthfulness I: Lecture III 10 Dec 1916, Dornach Translated by Johanna Collis Rudolf Steiner
He also enthuses about Goethe's scientific writings and shows that he has drawn a little nearer to what we are coming to know as Anthroposophy; but in his case it is only a beginning. I might add, by the way, that his recent book about expressionism is full of praise for his Danzig friends—of course, so that they should stand out favourably in comparison with the Berliners.

173a. The Karma of Untruthfulness I: Lecture III 10 Dec 1916, Dornach Translated by Johanna Collis Rudolf Steiner
In order to examine, from our point of view, the subject we are dealing with at present, we must never lose sight of the manner in which spiritual-scientific observation—with all its significance for mankind's development in the fifth post-Atlantean period and for the preparation of the sixth—makes its appearance. For without paying attention to how materialistic man today is negligent with regard to a spiritual-scientific observation of the world, we cannot proceed to the source of present-day events. As a starting point for further discussions I want to show you the manner in which, in some individuals, a kind of compulsion comes about to look up to those worlds with which our spiritual science is concerned. It is important to realize that this compulsive winning-over of these people to a certain view of the world is only sporadic so far. Yet, even so, there is much in it that is extremely characteristic. A short time ago I mentioned to you that a certain Hermann Bahr had published a drama, The Voice, in which he attempts—though rather after the manner of the Catholics—to link the world that surrounds us and is accessible to our physical senses with spiritual events and processes. Not long before writing this drama, Hermann Bahr wrote a novel Ascension and this novel is really in some respects a historical document of today. I do not want to overstate its artistic and literary merit, but it is certainly a historical document of our time. As is the way with karma, it so happens that I have known Hermann Bahr, an Austrian, for a very long time, since he was a young student. This novel, Ascension, describes a romantic hero, as literary criticism would say. He is called Franz and he seems to me to be a kind of likeness—not a self-portrait, but a kind of likeness—of Hermann Bahr himself. A lot of interesting things take place in this novel, which was written during the war. It is obviously Hermann Bahr's way of taking issue with present-day events. Imagine that the hero of this novel represents a kind of likeness of a person living today, now fifty-two or fifty-three years old. He has joined in all the events of his day, being involved very intensely from a young age in all sorts of contemporary streams. As a student he was sent down from two different universities because of his involvement in these various streams, and he was always intent on joining his soul forces to all sorts of spiritual and artistic streams. This is not a self-portrait; the novel contains no biographical details of Hermann Bahr's life. But Bahr has definitely coloured his hero, Franz. A person is described who endeavours to come to grips with every spiritual direction at present to be found in the external world, in order to learn about the meaning of the universe. Right at the beginning we are told about all the places Franz has frequented in order to gain insight into universal matters. First he studies botany under Wiesner, a famous professor of botany at the University of Vienna. Then he takes up chemistry under Ostwald, who took over from Haeckel as president of the Monist Society. He studies in Schmoller's seminar, in Richet's clinic, and with Freud in Vienna. Obviously someone who wanted to experience present-day spiritual streams would have to meet psychoanalysis. He went to the theosophists in London and he met painters, engravers, tennis players and so on. He is certainly not one-sided, for he has been in Richet's laboratory as well as with the theosophists in London. Everywhere he tries to find his way about. His fate, his karma, continues to drive him hither and thither in the world, and we are told how here or there he notices that there is something in the background behind human evolution and discovers that he ought to pay attention to what goes on behind the scenes. I told you yesterday about one such background and I now want to show you how someone else was also won over to recognize such things. So I shall now read a passage from the book. Franz has made the acquaintance of a female person. She is particularly pious—Klara has her own kind of piety—but just now all I want to do is point out that this is of importance to Franz: ‘It was more important at the moment to decide whether he should reply to her and what he should say. Should he decline politely and then wait calmly till chance should bring her into his vicinity? Or should he follow her advice and turn to one of the pious men, and then take this as an occasion to write to her once more?’ The pious men in this connection are Catholic priests, and he does attempt to discover whether their opinions and knowledge can help him find his way in the affairs of the universe. The book continues: ‘But first and foremost he ought to make up his own mind as to what it was that he himself really wanted. Was he merely in love, and was therefore his inclination to turn pious nothing more than a hidden wish to please her? He had certainly not lied on purpose, but it could be that his feeling for her, which cast a brightness over everything, made all her attributes and ways desirable to him. Instinctively the lover longs to resemble his beloved, so that what she loves and values is lovable and valuable to him too. No, this did not apply in his case! Was he not on the way to believing before he ever met her? It was, indeed, unlikely that he would ever have made her acquaintance had that strange, to him inexplicable inner urge not drawn him gently into the church where he found her before the saint, herself almost a saint. Otherwise he would hardly have noticed her; did he perhaps not love her at all but merely the appearance through her of his own longings? So was what he now felt not love, not what love had meant to him hitherto, but the bliss of piety? But was he pious? He only knew that he wanted to be, but somehow still did not dare to, perhaps from fear of deceiving himself once again, since hitherto every desire had deceived him and, if he were to be disappointed yet again, there was no further wish he could aspire to! He longed to be pious, but whether he was capable of it was indeed questionable. Could he be as pious as those beggars in whom he so envied the staring bliss of their stolid worship? He doubted it. For that, he had tasted too much of the tree of knowledge. Could he be as pious as Klara? He was no longer in a state of spiritual innocence. But was there not perhaps a kind of second innocence—innocence regained? Was there not the piety of the one who knows his limitations, of the humble intellect, the faith of one who knows, the hope of desperation? Had there not lived, in every age, wise men, hidden, secluded from the world, associating with one another by secret signs, silently working wonders with their almost magical power, living in a higher region above nations, above creeds, above limitations, in the region of a purer humanity that was nearer to God? Were there not still in the world today, widespread yet hidden, knights of the Holy Grail? Were there not disciples of a white lodge, invisible perhaps, not to be entered, existing only in feelings, yet working everywhere, reigning over all, guiding destiny? Was there not ever on earth an anonymous company of saints, unknown to one another, not knowing of one another, and yet working on and with each other through the rays of their prayers? In his theosophical phase he had already been much exercised by such thoughts, but evidently he had met only false theosophists; maybe the true ones could not be known.’ He had met a canon who had shown himself to be a man with few prejudices in any direction. ‘Suddenly he wondered whether the canon might not perhaps be one of those true masters, one of those hidden spiritual rulers of the world, a secret guardian of the Grail? Only now did he realize that the canon had always attracted him, seeming to promise great revelations, as though he might be a repository of the words of life. The regard in which this priest was held; the timidity, the awe with which people spoke about him, the obedience shown even by those who disliked him, the deep solitude that surrounded him, the mysterious power he was reputed to have with which he could help his friends and damage his foes—though he smilingly denied that he deserved either the gratitude of his friends or the rancour of his enemies—all this went far beyond the importance, the power, the dignity of his office, of his external position. Some explained all this as stemming from “his good connections”, others by his rumoured descent from an exalted personage; and yet the magical power of his glance, his presence, indeed even his mere name, remained unexplained. There were dozens of canons in the city, but he was The Canon. If anyone spoke of the canon, he was meant. Someone asking for His Excellency was not immediately understood. They still could not accustom themselves to call him that. To them he remained the canon. In processions he paced modestly behind the cardinal, yet he it was who commanded all the attention. If he did not appear at a certain hour for his customary walk, the whole town whispered: The canon has gone away! And later when word went round: The canon is back; this seemed to be of the utmost importance for the whole of the city. Franz remembered a conversation years ago in Rome,’ forgive me for reading this, but Hermann Bahr wrote it ‘a conversation with an Englishman who, after travelling the whole world, had settled in the holy city because, he maintained, he had found nothing more mysterious than the monsignori. One who could understand them would possess the key to the destiny of mankind. He was an intelligent man of mature years, of good family, wealthy, independent, a bachelor and a proper English gentleman; sensible, pragmatic, unsentimental, totally unmusical, inartistic, a robust and jolly man of the flesh, angler, oarsman, sailor, given to hearty eating and drinking, a high liver whose enjoyment of life was disturbed by a single passion, a thirsty curiosity to see everything, to know everything, to have been all over the place. There was really no other reason for this than to have the satisfaction of saying, whatever town in question: Ah, yes! Cook's put me in that and that hotel and I saw such and such and met this or that person of high position or renown. To make his travels more comfortable and ensure an entree wherever he went, someone had recommended that he become a Freemason. He praised the usefulness of this association until he thought he had discovered that there must be a similar but better managed and more powerful organization. Then he was determined to become a member of that, just as he would have turned to a different, better Cook's if such a thing had existed. He could not be dissuaded from believing that the world was ruled by a tiny group of secret leaders. History was supposed to be made by these hidden men who were unknown, even to their closest servants, who in turn were unknown to theirs. Following the trail of this secret world government, this true Freemasonry, of which the other was no more than an exceedingly foolish copy possessing inadequate means, he claimed to have discovered its seat in Rome among those very monsignori, though of course most of these were unaware of their role as a crowd amongst whom the four or five true rulers of the world could conceal themselves. Franz still had to smile at the comical despair of his Englishman whose misfortune it was never to find those he sought; instead, ever and again coming up against none but supernumeraries. Yet he never allowed himself to be put off entirely. Indeed, his respect for such a well-guarded, impenetrable society only grew. He wagered that in the end he would be admitted to its ranks, even if he had to remain in Rome to the end of his days, become a monk or even have himself circumcised. For since he had everywhere sniffed out the invisible threads of a power which enmeshed the whole world, he was not disinclined to esteem the Jews to a considerable extent. Occasionally he seriously posed the supposition that in the last, inmost circle of this hidden world-wide web, rabbis and monsignori might be found joined in utmost concord. He would not have minded this in the least if only they would let him join in their magic workings.’ You see, he is searching! We are shown a person who is a seeker. And although this is not an autobiography you may be quite certain that Hermann Bahr met this Englishman! All this is told from life. ‘Even in those days Franz had asked himself from time to time whether there might not be a grain of truth in the Englishman's foolish idea. Life, both that of the individual and that of nations, appears at first glance and from close to, to be nothing but a confusion of coincidences; yet seen from a little distance, from a higher vantage point, it is ever well planned and firmly guided. If we do not want to assume that God Himself takes a direct hand in bending man's folly, the mad arbitrariness of his actions, to serve His purposes, then there is nothing for it but to imagine a kind of middle realm which mediates His will. Perhaps there is a circle of men who rule in seclusion, through whom God works upon the world; stages of divine power and wisdom, sending forth rays into the murky darkness of mankind, so that in the end all is once more purposefully ordered. These lenses of God's light, gathering the creative spirit and scattering it forth into the world, these secret organizers, these hidden kings, they it must be who transform all madness into sense, all passion into stillness, who render chance into necessity, give chaos form and bring light into darkness. Who in his life has not encountered people who seem indeed to possess a remarkable majesty and distance, who reputedly have the power to curse or bless with a glance, and who, however still they may seem, none the less appear to exercise their power far and wide? Often their lives are simple. They may be shepherds, country doctors, village parsons; often they are old women or precocious children who die young. There is something about them all that makes them uncanny to ordinary folk, something that gives them great power over man and beast, or indeed, it is always maintained, over all nature, over springs and minerals, weather, sunshine and rain, hail and drought. When our paths cross with theirs we sense with absolute certainty, at that very moment perhaps, or maybe years later, that the meeting has been decisive for our own life. They themselves, it seems, feel their power to be more of a burden, even a curse, but always a definite obligation. They live in obscurity and are glad to be left in peace. It is not hard to imagine them all linked together throughout the world, communicating by signs, or perhaps passing on the signs of even more mighty secret princes. Maybe they are quite unconscious of all this, or only partly conscious, fulfilling inner commands, obeying by instinct rather than acting from their own initiative; for they seem indeed to be not in control of their own power but rather overwhelmed by it. All these capacities appear when consciousness is dulled or even extinguished. In his youth, Franz had known people like this; they are not rare in the mountains. The Englishman's visionary fancies reminded him of them. Very much later it had occurred to him that perhaps even someone not born with these capacities might come into their possession; possibly by education and training they could be acquired. But he had soon been disappointed by the theosophical exercises. He had only been reminded of all this by the sight of the ecstatic worshippers in the dark church. Through practice these people had reached a stage in which sorrow, distress and envy were stilled; composed, comforted and strengthened they returned from prayer.’ As you see, Franz did not want to undertake these theosophical exercises; he did not want to find a transition to knowledge of the spiritual worlds by this means. But something about which we had to speak yesterday is beginning to dawn. People are being won over into recognizing the course of certain threads and they are beginning to notice that certain people make use of these threads. If only people like Hermann Bahr would approach this matter even more seriously than they do. Even the canon encountered by Franz did so more seriously. Franz was once invited to the home of this canon together with some rather unusual company which is described. We discover that the canon associates with all sorts, not only pious monks but also cynics and frivolous people of the world. He invites them all to his table. Franz noticed a number of things. The canon led him into his study while the others were conversing together. As we know, when dinner is over, something else always follows. So the canon led him into his study: ‘The niece had retired, but the guest of honour, Uncle Erhard and His Excellency, seated in comfortable chairs and devoutly given over to the process of digestion, had still not reached a conclusion. The tales waxed increasingly risqué, the mockery more audacious, the allusions more obvious; nothing was spared and it seemed as though the whole world consisted of nothing but anecdotes. Disgusted, Franz turned to the library. It was not large, but very select indeed. Only the bare essentials as far as theology was concerned:’ of course a canon needs theology least of all for himself ‘the Bollandists, many Franciscan writers, Meister Eckhart, the spiritual exercises, Catherine of Genoa, the mysticism of Görres, and Möhler's symbolism. Then philosophy; there was more of that: the whole of Kant including the papers of the Kant Society, Deussen's Upanishads and his history of philosophy, Vaihinger's Philosophy of the As If, and a great many works on the theory of knowledge. Then there were the Greek and Latin classics, Shakespeare, Calderon, Cervantes, Dante, Machiavelli and Balzac in the original; of German writers there were only Novalis and Goethe, the latter in various editions, that of his scientific writings in the Weimar edition. Franz took out a volume of these and found in it many annotations in the canon's hand. The latter at that moment left the young monk and the Jesuit to join Franz. He said, “Nobody knows Goethe's scientific writings. Alas! The old heathen he is supposed to have been appears in quite a new light in them, and they help you to understand the ending of Faust as well. I could never bring myself to believe that he was suddenly just pretending to go all Catholic” ’ We can forgive the canon, can we not, for wanting everything to be ‘Catholic’; what is important for us is that he has turned to the natural scientific writings of Goethe. ‘ “merely for the sake of the pictorial effect. My respect for this great writer is too great, indeed so is my respect for any writer, to believe that any one of them would dress up in a costume just when he is about to pronounce his last words. But in the scientific writings every page shows how Catholic Goethe was,” ’ Let us forgive the canon. ‘ “without knowing it perhaps, and certainly without the courage of his convictions. When you read them you seem to be listening to someone unfamiliar with Catholic truths who has discovered them all on his own. Of course he does violence to some of them and there are some wonderful eccentricities, but by and large nothing crucial, necessary or essential is missing, even that hint of superstition, magic, or whatever you might like to call it, that a born Protestant finds so suspicious about our holy doctrine! Often I could hardly believe my own eyes! But once you are on the track of Goethe, the unavowed Catholic, you soon find him everywhere. Observe his trust in the Holy Spirit, though he prefers to call Him Genius,” ’ Goethe has good reason for this, of course! ‘ “observe his profound feeling for the sacraments, of which he considers there are too few, observe his feeling for the mysterious, observe his gift for reverence. Note especially how he is quite unprotestant in the way he is never satisfied with faith alone; everywhere he urges that God should be recognized through the living deed, through pious works. And see his rare, most lofty and most difficult understanding, that man cannot be taken up by God if he does not first call God into himself; his grasp of this terrible human freedom of choice, the freedom to accept or reject the proffered grace, the freedom which makes of this grace a reward for the one who decides to accept it. Despite the exaggerations and distortions, all this is so utterly Catholic that, as you see, I have in many places been able to write the passages from the tridentine mass in the margins next to what Goethe says in almost the very same words. When Zacharias tells Werner that one sentence in Elective Affinities made him into a Catholic, I most certainly believe him. Of course I would not deny that there is also a heathen, a Protestant, and even almost a Jewish Goethe. And I certainly would not claim him as an exemplary Catholic, though he was more that than the insipidly jolly, common or garden monist that the north-German school teachers present to their pupils under his name.” ’ You notice, even in these circles a different Goethe is sought, one who can follow the path into the spiritual world, a different Goethe for sure than that ‘insipidly jolly, common or garden monist’ described and presented to the world today by the Goethe biographers. As you see, the path trodden by Franz is not so very different from those you find interwoven in what we call our spiritual science and, as you also see, a certain modicum of necessity can be present. May I remind you—I have often mentioned it—that the death of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria is one of those concealed events of the present day, despite all that occurred on the external physical plane. I have stressed especially that if the physical and spiritual worlds are taken together, then for them as a totality there was something present before the assassination of Franz Ferdinand that became different after that event. It does not matter in such cases what things look like in external maya! What occurs inwardly is the important thing. As I told you: What rose up as the soul of Franz Ferdinand into the spiritual worlds became a focal point for very strong, powerful forces, and much of what is now happening is connected with the very fact that a unique transition took place between life and so-called death, so that this soul became something quite different from what other souls become. I said that someone who has lived through recent decades in a state of spiritual consciousness must know that one of the main causes of today's painful events is the fear in which the whole world was drenched, the fear that individuals had of each other, even though they did not know it, and above all the fear that the different nations had of one another. If people had seeing eyes with which to track down the cause of this fear, they would not talk as much nonsense as they do about the causes of the war. It was possible for this fear to be so significant because it is woven as a state of feeling into what I described to you yesterday by means of examples. Please regard this as a kind of sketch. But, drenching everything is this aura of fear. That soul was connected in a certain particular way with this aura of fear. Therefore that violent death was in no way merely an external affair. I told you this because I was able to observe it, because for me it was a particularly significant event that is connected with many aspects of what is going on at present. I do not suppose that such things, which obviously ought to be kept within our circle, have been talked about all over the place outside our circle. The fact is, however, that I have been speaking about these things in various branches since the beginning of the war. There are witnesses who could verify this. Hermann Bahr's book appeared much later, only quite recently. Yet in it there appears a passage that I shall quote in a moment, and I would ask you to pay attention to the following fact: Within the circle of our anthroposophical spiritual science, indications are given about an event that is spiritually very important; then a novel written at a later date is published, in which is found a character who always appears to be rather foolish. He is actually a prince in disguise, but he appears as a foolish person who performs lowly tasks. From a poster—he is living in a rural area—he learns of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, whereupon he makes a remark which almost causes him to be lynched and leads to his being locked up; for any police force would naturally be convinced that somebody making such a remark immediately after an assassination must be a party to the plot. Though there are many miles in between, the one event having happened in Sarajevo and the other taking place in Salzburg, nevertheless to the police, in its wisdom, that man must be a party to the plot. It now emerges that this person is a prince in disguise and that he owns a deeply significant mystical diary. The reason for the remark he made also emerges. He was actually a prince, but had found the whole business of being a prince irksome and so had disguised himself as old Blasl who performed lowly tasks, behaved stupidly, even let himself be beaten by his master, and hardly ever spoke a word; he became talkative on certain occasions but usually he said nothing. Then when he was being investigated he was found to possess a mystical manuscript which he had written himself. The book continues: ‘The enchanted, now disenchanted prince, still in his old clothes, and still the same old fellow, too, though somehow different now that Franz knew they had been a disguise, said smiling, “Forgive me the deception which for me was none. I ceased to be the Infante Don Tadeo long ago. If circumstances now compel me to represent him again for a while, it will be a far more difficult role for me to play. For me, I really was old Blasl and, if I lied, it was myself I lied to, not you. That I should cause you inconvenience I could not have known. I am sorry indeed for that. Of course it was the most stupid misunderstanding. Though I had never met him, I knew the heir to the throne very well; he meant a great deal to me and we were in communication with one another, though not in the manner usual here.” ’ ‘The manner usual here’ denotes the manner usual on the physical plane: We were in communication with one another, though not after the manner of the physical plane. ‘ “He had long gone beyond the boundaries of earthly work and stood with one foot in that other realm of purely spiritual activity. Now it was time for him to step over finally. I knew that in order to fulfil himself he could no longer stay. His deed will be done from there. I was only surprised that destiny had hesitated so long with him. On that Sunday when I stepped out of church, where my prayers had once again been rewarded with reassurance, and saw the uneasy crowd, I knew immediately that his liberation had come. What has to happen through him he can only bring about from the other side. Here he could only promise; his life was only a prediction. Only now can it really happen. I have never been able to imagine him as a constitutional monarch with parliamentarianism and all that humbug. He was too great for that. By this he has seized the initiative for himself. This dead man will now truly start to live. This is what I felt when I heard the news. That is what I meant to say. You will understand that there was little chance of making myself understood to those peasants. I preferred to give myself up in silence and am only surprised that they did not do for me. I was prepared for that—then by now it would all be over. There must still be something for me to do. So be it!” He had said all this in the same tone of voice, as it were without punctuation, only staring at Franz from time to time with numb eyes. Then he requested him not to mention his notebooks and to forget them himself. “The truth is written in them, but only for myself; to understand them you would have to understand my sign language. What is written in them is right; only the words are invalid.” Franz could not help describing to him the impression the notebooks had made on him.’ For Franz was the only person in that town who could understand Spanish, and since the notebooks were written in Spanish he was asked to help out. There is a little gentle irony here too, since in Austria anything not immediately understandable is said to be ‘Spanish’. Since Blasl, or rather the Infante, was suspected of being a party to the plot, it was necessary to read the notebooks, and since Franz had once been in Spain, it was he who had to read them. For Hermann Bahr had also once been in Spain. So you see, since we must assume that Hermann Bahr had not been tipped off about this, that we have here an example of a remarkable winning-over of an invidual to a recognition of these things, of an inner need growing in him today to occupy himself with these things. I think it is justifiable to be somewhat astonished that such things appear in novels these days; it is something to do with the undercurrent of our time. Admittedly, to begin with, only people like Hermann Bahr are affected, people whose lives have been similar to that of Hermann Bahr, who went through all kinds of experiences during the course of time. Now that he is older, having for a long time been a supporter of impressionism, he is endeavouring to comprehend expressionism and other similar things. He is a person who has truly been capable in his soul of uniting himself outwardly and inwardly with the most varied streams. He really immersed himself in Ostwald's thoughts, in those of Richet, in those of the theosophists in London, struggling to enter fully into them. Only finally, when his perseverance failed him, did he happen upon Canon Zingerl, whom he now considers to be a Master. He did indeed immerse himself to the full in internal and external streams. When I first knew him he had just written his play Die neuen Menschen, of which he is now very ashamed; its mood was strictly social-democratic, and there was at that time no more glowing social-democrat than Hermann Bahr. Then he wrote a short one-act play which is rather insignificant. He then converted to the German nationalist movement and wrote Die grosse Sünde from their point of view. Again, there existed no more radical German nationalist than Hermann Bahr. Meanwhile, he had reached his nineteenth year and was called up to serve in the army; now he was filled to the brim with militaristic views and soldierly pride. He understood, you see, how to unite his soul with external streams, yet he never shirked coming to grips entirely seriously with those that are more inward as well. After his period as a soldier he went to Berlin for a short while and there edited a modern weekly journal, Die freie Bühne. Chameleon-like, he could turn himself into anything—except a Berliner! Then he went to Paris. He had hardly arrived, could not even conjugate a reflexive verb with être but used avoir with everything, when he started to write enthusiastic letters about the sunlike being Boulanger who would surely show Europe what true, genuine culture is. Then he went to Spain, where he became a burning opponent of the Sultan of Morocco against whom he wrote articles in Spanish. Finally he returned, not exactly a copy of Daudet but looking very like him. He told us about all this in the famous Griensteidl Café which has offered hospitality to all sorts of famous people since 1848 when Lenau, Anastasius Grün and others went in and out there. Even the waiters in this cafe were famous; everybody knew Franz, and later Heinrich, of Griensteidl's! Now it has been demolished, but because Hermann Bahr talked so much there about the way in which his soul had entered into the spirit of France and about that sunlike being Boulanger, someone else had grown rebellious, and when Griensteidl's was pulled down Karl Kraus wrote a pamphlet Literature Demolished. I still remember vividly how Hermann Bahr told us about the grand impressions he had gained and how he, the lad from Linz, had been the proud owner of the handsomest artist's face in the whole of Paris. He spoke enthusiastically about Maurice Barrès and stood up in the most intense way for the French youth movement; through the outpouring of a single heart filled with ardour we gained an experience of the total will-force of a whole literary movement. Then, in Vienna together with others, he founded a weekly journal himself, to which he contributed some really important articles. He became increasingly profound yet, with him, superficiality always seemed to go hand in hand with profundity. Thus he never stopped changing: from social democrat to German nationalist, from a militaristic disposition to a glowing admiration for Boulanger, then discipleship of Maurice Barrès and others; and after a later transformation he began to appreciate impressionist art. From time to time he returned to Berlin, but always departed again as quickly as possible; it was the one place he could not tolerate. Vienna, on the other hand, he loved dreadfully, and he expressed this love in many ways. In more recent years his beloved friends in Danzig have invited him a number of times to lecture on expressionism, something they are said to have understood exceedingly well; and the lectures are included in his book on expressionism. He also enthuses about Goethe's scientific writings and shows that he has drawn a little nearer to what we are coming to know as Anthroposophy; but in his case it is only a beginning. I might add, by the way, that his recent book about expressionism is full of praise for his Danzig friends—of course, so that they should stand out favourably in comparison with the Berliners. Lately it has been said that Hermann Bahr has converted to Catholicism. I don't suppose he will be all that Catholic though—perhaps about as much as he was boulangistic in days gone by. But he is a human being! You have now seen in his most recent novel that through his very worldliness, through his longing to learn about everything in his own way, he has now been touched by the necessity to discover something about man's ascent into the spiritual world and about the links between human beings that are different from those ordinary physical links; in other words, links of the kind we described yesterday. You can understand why I find it to some extent significant that such a novel should contain not only general echoes but should lead to a point as concrete as the death of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. This shows that these things are far more real than is generally supposed. Just such things as this must show us that what takes place on the physical plane is often no more than a symbol of what is really happening ‘behind the scenes of earthly life’. For if you read about what has occurred in connection with these events, in connection with this assassination, without appealing to the spiritual aspect, it will be impossible for you to understand that someone can be led to place such significance on the matter. But it is not yet possible today to speak about these things without some reservation; as yet, not everything connected with these things can be expressed. Attention may be drawn to some aspects only; to begin with, perhaps, the more external ones. Let us recall what was said yesterday about the world of the Slavs, about the soul of the Slavs. The testament of Peter the Great appeared on the scene in 1813, or perhaps a little earlier, and was disseminated for good reason as though it stemmed from Peter the Great himself. This document is used to seize hold of a natural stream, such as the stream of the Slav soul, in order to guide and lead it by means of suggestion. Whither is it to be led? It is to be led into the orbit of Russianism in such a way that the ancient Slav stream should become, in a way, the bearer of the idea of a Russian state! Because this is so, a clear distinction must be made between the spiritual Slav stream, the stream that exists as the bearer of the ancient Slav tradition, and that which strives to become an external vessel to encompass the whole of this Slav stream: Russianism. We must not forget that a large number of Slav peoples, or sections of these peoples, live within the boundaries of the monarchy of Austria-Hungary. The Austro-Hungarian monarchy encompasses—let me use my fingers to help me count—Germans, Czechs, Slavonians, Slovacs, Serbo-Croats, Croats, Poles, Romanians, Ruthenians, Magyars, Italians and Serbs; as you see, many more than Switzerland has. What really lives there can only be recognized by someone who has lived for quite a long time among these peoples and has come to understand the various streams that were at work within what is known as Austria-Hungary. As far as the Slav peoples are concerned there was, during the last decades of the nineteenth century, a paramount endeavour to find a way in which the various Slav peoples could live together in peace and freedom. The whole history of Austria-Hungary in recent decades, with all those bitter battles, can only be understood if it is seen as an attempt to realize the principle of the individualization of the separate peoples. This is of course exceedingly difficult, since peoples do not live comfortably side by side but are often enmeshed in complicated ways. Among the Germans in Austria there are very many who consider that their own well-being would be served by the individualizing of the various Slav peoples in Austria, that is, by finding a form in which they could develop independently and freely. Obviously such things need time to come about; but such a movement certainly does exist. Then, apart from the Slavs in Austria-Hungary, there are the Balkan Slavs who lived for a long time under Turkish dominion, which they have thrown off in recent decades in order to found individual states: Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro and so on. Yesterday I mentioned the Polish Slavs as those who have developed furthest in their spiritual life. I am mentioning only the more important sub-divisions, for I too can only work these things out gradually. In all these Slav peoples and tribes there lives what I called yesterday a consistent, primal folk element, which is something that is preparing for the future. Seen quite externally, why was Franz Ferdinand rather important? He was important because in his being, in all his inclinations—you must take the external manifestation as a symbol of what lived within—he was the external expression of certain streams. In him there lived something which, if only it had been able to free itself, bore the deepest understanding for the individual development of the Slav peoples. You might indeed call him an intense friend of all that belongs to the Slavs. He understood—or perhaps I should say: something living in him of which he was not fully aware understood—what forms would be necessary for the social life of the Slavs if they were to develop as individual peoples. We have to realize that karma had decreed that this karmic path should be extremely unusual. Let us not forget that there was once an heir to the throne, Archduke Rudolf, on whom great hopes were pinned, especially as regards the direction in which many liberal and free-thinking people of the day were tending. Those who knew the circumstances and the person, understood that something was working through his soul which would have brought about the application to the Austrian situation of what I yesterday called English political thinking, English ideas concerning the way in which states should be administered. This is what was expected of him and it was also what he himself was inclined to do. But you know how karma worked and how what should have happened was made impossible. So then something else became possible instead. Now a man tending in quite another direction grew in importance. It is indeed not without significance if our attention is drawn to this: ‘Here he could only promise; his life was only a prediction. Only now can it really happen. I have never been able to imagine him as a constitutional monarch, with parliamentarianism and all that humbug.’ Yet this is just how we should have imagined the other one to be! You see that karma is at work and we must see how this karma works in order to achieve further heights of understanding. The circumstances which could and should have been brought about—not because of the wishes of some person or other but because of the purpose of world evolution—by this soul who looked upon the Slav folk element with understanding (for the moment I am giving a purely abstract description), would truly have had a liberating effect on the Slav folk element. But it would, at the same time, have destroyed what Russianism wants to do with the Slav element. For Russianism wants to confine the Slav element within its own framework and use it as its tool. It wants to contain it within the confines of the testament of Peter the Great. The speed with which such things come to realization depends, of course, on all kinds of side-currents and peripheral circumstances. But it is important to have an eye for what is gathering momentum in any particular direction. Obviously, therefore, only those who understood the Slav element more deeply could understand what web was really being woven, and also that those who wanted to destroy the Slav element through Russianism had to work against more healthy endeavours. Matters become particularly delicate and tricky if they start interfering with streams and counting on methods that are connected in some way with the occult streams using the secret brotherhoods which exist all over the world. Some are more profound, as are those about which I shall speak tomorrow. Others only touch on these things but, even then, as they do touch on them, they must be seen as vessels through which occult streams flow. The society whose dissolution was demanded after the death of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the Serbian society ‘Narodna Odbrana’, was the actual successor of an earlier secret brotherhood, having changed its methods only slightly. I am stating no more than facts. Here, then, is a contact between political strivings and a secret society which, though centred in Serbia, had threads leading in every direction to wherever Slavs were to be found, and also links with all kinds of other societies, but in particular an inner connection with western societies. In such a society things can be taught which are connected with occult workings throughout the world. Why do we have to make so many detours in order to reach even a partial understanding of what we actually have to understand? Do not be surprised that so many detours are necessary, for a superficial judgement is all too easily reached if insight is directed to immediate events in which we are involved with sympathy or antipathy; all too easily misunderstandings and false ideas come about. What often happens to all of us? We are perfectly entitled to have sympathies and antipathies in our soul; but often there are reasons why we do not admit this to ourselves. Perhaps we do not actually convince ourselves on purpose, but autosuggestion often gives us good reason to believe that our judgements are objective. If only we would calmly admit to sympathies or antipathies, we would also accept the truth. But because we want to judge ‘objectively’ we do not admit the truth but, instead, delude ourselves in regard to the truth. Why do people have this tendency? It is simply because, when they endeavour to understand reality, they easily meet with extraordinary contradictions. And when they meet these contradictions they attempt to come to terms with them by accepting one half of what is contradictory and rejecting the other half. Often this means a total lack of any desire to understand the truth. I will give you an example of how we can become entangled in a serious contradiction if we fail to understand the living connection between the contradiction and the full truth of the reality. In our anthroposophical spiritual science we understand Christianity to be something that is filled with the meaning of the Mystery of Golgotha, with the fact that Christ was condemned, died, was buried, but then also rose again in the true sense and lives on as the Risen One. This is what we call the Mystery of Golgotha and we cannot concede the right to anyone to call himself a Christian unless he recognizes this too. What, though, had to happen so that Christ was able to undergo, for human evolution, what I have just described? Judas had to betray Him and He had to be nailed to the cross. If those who nailed Him to the cross had not done so, then the Mystery of Golgotha would not have taken place for the salvation of mankind. Here you have a terrible, actual contradiction, a contradiction of gigantic proportions! Can you imagine someone who might say: You Christians owe it to Judas that your Mystery of Golgotha took place at all. You owe it to the executioner's men, who nailed Christ to the cross, that your Mystery of Golgotha ran its course! Is anyone justified in defending Judas and the executioner's men, even though it is true that the meaning of earthly history is owed to them? Is it easy to answer a question like this? Is one not immediately faced with contradictions which simply stand there and which represent a terrible destiny? Think about what I have placed before you! Tomorrow we shall continue. What I have just said is spoken only so that you can think about the fact that it is not so easy to say: When two things contradict one another I shall accept the one and reject the other. Reality is more profound than whatever human beings may often be willing to encompass with their thinking. It is not without reason that Nietzsche, crazed almost out of his mind, formulated the words: ‘The world is deep, deeper than day can comprehend.’ Now that I have endeavoured to indicate the nature of a real contradiction, we shall tomorrow attempt to penetrate more deeply into the subject matter we have so far touched on in preparation.

173a. The Karma of Untruthfulness I: Lecture III 10 Dec 1916, Dornach
Translated by Johanna Collis
Rudolf Steiner

In order to examine, from our point of view, the subject we are dealing with at present, we must never lose sight of the manner in which spiritual-scientific observation—with all its significance for mankind's development in the fifth post-Atlantean period and for the preparation of the sixth—makes its appearance. For without paying attention to how materialistic man today is negligent with regard to a spiritual-scientific observation of the world, we cannot proceed to the source of present-day events. As a starting point for further discussions I want to show you the manner in which, in some individuals, a kind of compulsion comes about to look up to those worlds with which our spiritual science is concerned. It is important to realize that this compulsive winning-over of these people to a certain view of the world is only sporadic so far. Yet, even so, there is much in it that is extremely characteristic.

A short time ago I mentioned to you that a certain Hermann Bahr had published a drama, The Voice, in which he attempts—though rather after the manner of the Catholics—to link the world that surrounds us and is accessible to our physical senses with spiritual events and processes. Not long before writing this drama, Hermann Bahr wrote a novel Ascension and this novel is really in some respects a historical document of today. I do not want to overstate its artistic and literary merit, but it is certainly a historical document of our time. As is the way with karma, it so happens that I have known Hermann Bahr, an Austrian, for a very long time, since he was a young student. This novel, Ascension, describes a romantic hero, as literary criticism would say. He is called Franz and he seems to me to be a kind of likeness—not a self-portrait, but a kind of likeness—of Hermann Bahr himself. A lot of interesting things take place in this novel, which was written during the war. It is obviously Hermann Bahr's way of taking issue with present-day events.

Imagine that the hero of this novel represents a kind of likeness of a person living today, now fifty-two or fifty-three years old. He has joined in all the events of his day, being involved very intensely from a young age in all sorts of contemporary streams. As a student he was sent down from two different universities because of his involvement in these various streams, and he was always intent on joining his soul forces to all sorts of spiritual and artistic streams. This is not a self-portrait; the novel contains no biographical details of Hermann Bahr's life. But Bahr has definitely coloured his hero, Franz. A person is described who endeavours to come to grips with every spiritual direction at present to be found in the external world, in order to learn about the meaning of the universe. Right at the beginning we are told about all the places Franz has frequented in order to gain insight into universal matters.

First he studies botany under Wiesner, a famous professor of botany at the University of Vienna. Then he takes up chemistry under Ostwald, who took over from Haeckel as president of the Monist Society. He studies in Schmoller's seminar, in Richet's clinic, and with Freud in Vienna. Obviously someone who wanted to experience present-day spiritual streams would have to meet psychoanalysis. He went to the theosophists in London and he met painters, engravers, tennis players and so on. He is certainly not one-sided, for he has been in Richet's laboratory as well as with the theosophists in London. Everywhere he tries to find his way about. His fate, his karma, continues to drive him hither and thither in the world, and we are told how here or there he notices that there is something in the background behind human evolution and discovers that he ought to pay attention to what goes on behind the scenes. I told you yesterday about one such background and I now want to show you how someone else was also won over to recognize such things. So I shall now read a passage from the book. Franz has made the acquaintance of a female person. She is particularly pious—Klara has her own kind of piety—but just now all I want to do is point out that this is of importance to Franz:

‘It was more important at the moment to decide whether he should reply to her and what he should say. Should he decline politely and then wait calmly till chance should bring her into his vicinity? Or should he follow her advice and turn to one of the pious men, and then take this as an occasion to write to her once more?’

The pious men in this connection are Catholic priests, and he does attempt to discover whether their opinions and knowledge can help him find his way in the affairs of the universe. The book continues:

‘But first and foremost he ought to make up his own mind as to what it was that he himself really wanted. Was he merely in love, and was therefore his inclination to turn pious nothing more than a hidden wish to please her? He had certainly not lied on purpose, but it could be that his feeling for her, which cast a brightness over everything, made all her attributes and ways desirable to him. Instinctively the lover longs to resemble his beloved, so that what she loves and values is lovable and valuable to him too. No, this did not apply in his case! Was he not on the way to believing before he ever met her? It was, indeed, unlikely that he would ever have made her acquaintance had that strange, to him inexplicable inner urge not drawn him gently into the church where he found her before the saint, herself almost a saint. Otherwise he would hardly have noticed her; did he perhaps not love her at all but merely the appearance through her of his own longings? So was what he now felt not love, not what love had meant to him hitherto, but the bliss of piety? But was he pious? He only knew that he wanted to be, but somehow still did not dare to, perhaps from fear of deceiving himself once again, since hitherto every desire had deceived him and, if he were to be disappointed yet again, there was no further wish he could aspire to! He longed to be pious, but whether he was capable of it was indeed questionable. Could he be as pious as those beggars in whom he so envied the staring bliss of their stolid worship? He doubted it. For that, he had tasted too much of the tree of knowledge. Could he be as pious as Klara? He was no longer in a state of spiritual innocence. But was there not perhaps a kind of second innocence—innocence regained? Was there not the piety of the one who knows his limitations, of the humble intellect, the faith of one who knows, the hope of desperation? Had there not lived, in every age, wise men, hidden, secluded from the world, associating with one another by secret signs, silently working wonders with their almost magical power, living in a higher region above nations, above creeds, above limitations, in the region of a purer humanity that was nearer to God? Were there not still in the world today, widespread yet hidden, knights of the Holy Grail? Were there not disciples of a white lodge, invisible perhaps, not to be entered, existing only in feelings, yet working everywhere, reigning over all, guiding destiny? Was there not ever on earth an anonymous company of saints, unknown to one another, not knowing of one another, and yet working on and with each other through the rays of their prayers? In his theosophical phase he had already been much exercised by such thoughts, but evidently he had met only false theosophists; maybe the true ones could not be known.’

He had met a canon who had shown himself to be a man with few prejudices in any direction.

‘Suddenly he wondered whether the canon might not perhaps be one of those true masters, one of those hidden spiritual rulers of the world, a secret guardian of the Grail? Only now did he realize that the canon had always attracted him, seeming to promise great revelations, as though he might be a repository of the words of life. The regard in which this priest was held; the timidity, the awe with which people spoke about him, the obedience shown even by those who disliked him, the deep solitude that surrounded him, the mysterious power he was reputed to have with which he could help his friends and damage his foes—though he smilingly denied that he deserved either the gratitude of his friends or the rancour of his enemies—all this went far beyond the importance, the power, the dignity of his office, of his external position. Some explained all this as stemming from “his good connections”, others by his rumoured descent from an exalted personage; and yet the magical power of his glance, his presence, indeed even his mere name, remained unexplained. There were dozens of canons in the city, but he was The Canon. If anyone spoke of the canon, he was meant. Someone asking for His Excellency was not immediately understood. They still could not accustom themselves to call him that. To them he remained the canon. In processions he paced modestly behind the cardinal, yet he it was who commanded all the attention. If he did not appear at a certain hour for his customary walk, the whole town whispered: The canon has gone away! And later when word went round: The canon is back; this seemed to be of the utmost importance for the whole of the city. Franz remembered a conversation years ago in Rome,’

forgive me for reading this, but Hermann Bahr wrote it

‘a conversation with an Englishman who, after travelling the whole world, had settled in the holy city because, he maintained, he had found nothing more mysterious than the monsignori. One who could understand them would possess the key to the destiny of mankind. He was an intelligent man of mature years, of good family, wealthy, independent, a bachelor and a proper English gentleman; sensible, pragmatic, unsentimental, totally unmusical, inartistic, a robust and jolly man of the flesh, angler, oarsman, sailor, given to hearty eating and drinking, a high liver whose enjoyment of life was disturbed by a single passion, a thirsty curiosity to see everything, to know everything, to have been all over the place. There was really no other reason for this than to have the satisfaction of saying, whatever town in question: Ah, yes! Cook's put me in that and that hotel and I saw such and such and met this or that person of high position or renown. To make his travels more comfortable and ensure an entree wherever he went, someone had recommended that he become a Freemason. He praised the usefulness of this association until he thought he had discovered that there must be a similar but better managed and more powerful organization. Then he was determined to become a member of that, just as he would have turned to a different, better Cook's if such a thing had existed. He could not be dissuaded from believing that the world was ruled by a tiny group of secret leaders. History was supposed to be made by these hidden men who were unknown, even to their closest servants, who in turn were unknown to theirs. Following the trail of this secret world government, this true Freemasonry, of which the other was no more than an exceedingly foolish copy possessing inadequate means, he claimed to have discovered its seat in Rome among those very monsignori, though of course most of these were unaware of their role as a crowd amongst whom the four or five true rulers of the world could conceal themselves. Franz still had to smile at the comical despair of his Englishman whose misfortune it was never to find those he sought; instead, ever and again coming up against none but supernumeraries. Yet he never allowed himself to be put off entirely. Indeed, his respect for such a well-guarded, impenetrable society only grew. He wagered that in the end he would be admitted to its ranks, even if he had to remain in Rome to the end of his days, become a monk or even have himself circumcised. For since he had everywhere sniffed out the invisible threads of a power which enmeshed the whole world, he was not disinclined to esteem the Jews to a considerable extent. Occasionally he seriously posed the supposition that in the last, inmost circle of this hidden world-wide web, rabbis and monsignori might be found joined in utmost concord. He would not have minded this in the least if only they would let him join in their magic workings.’

You see, he is searching! We are shown a person who is a seeker. And although this is not an autobiography you may be quite certain that Hermann Bahr met this Englishman! All this is told from life.

‘Even in those days Franz had asked himself from time to time whether there might not be a grain of truth in the Englishman's foolish idea. Life, both that of the individual and that of nations, appears at first glance and from close to, to be nothing but a confusion of coincidences; yet seen from a little distance, from a higher vantage point, it is ever well planned and firmly guided. If we do not want to assume that God Himself takes a direct hand in bending man's folly, the mad arbitrariness of his actions, to serve His purposes, then there is nothing for it but to imagine a kind of middle realm which mediates His will. Perhaps there is a circle of men who rule in seclusion, through whom God works upon the world; stages of divine power and wisdom, sending forth rays into the murky darkness of mankind, so that in the end all is once more purposefully ordered. These lenses of God's light, gathering the creative spirit and scattering it forth into the world, these secret organizers, these hidden kings, they it must be who transform all madness into sense, all passion into stillness, who render chance into necessity, give chaos form and bring light into darkness. Who in his life has not encountered people who seem indeed to possess a remarkable majesty and distance, who reputedly have the power to curse or bless with a glance, and who, however still they may seem, none the less appear to exercise their power far and wide? Often their lives are simple. They may be shepherds, country doctors, village parsons; often they are old women or precocious children who die young. There is something about them all that makes them uncanny to ordinary folk, something that gives them great power over man and beast, or indeed, it is always maintained, over all nature, over springs and minerals, weather, sunshine and rain, hail and drought. When our paths cross with theirs we sense with absolute certainty, at that very moment perhaps, or maybe years later, that the meeting has been decisive for our own life. They themselves, it seems, feel their power to be more of a burden, even a curse, but always a definite obligation. They live in obscurity and are glad to be left in peace. It is not hard to imagine them all linked together throughout the world, communicating by signs, or perhaps passing on the signs of even more mighty secret princes. Maybe they are quite unconscious of all this, or only partly conscious, fulfilling inner commands, obeying by instinct rather than acting from their own initiative; for they seem indeed to be not in control of their own power but rather overwhelmed by it. All these capacities appear when consciousness is dulled or even extinguished. In his youth, Franz had known people like this; they are not rare in the mountains. The Englishman's visionary fancies reminded him of them. Very much later it had occurred to him that perhaps even someone not born with these capacities might come into their possession; possibly by education and training they could be acquired. But he had soon been disappointed by the theosophical exercises. He had only been reminded of all this by the sight of the ecstatic worshippers in the dark church. Through practice these people had reached a stage in which sorrow, distress and envy were stilled; composed, comforted and strengthened they returned from prayer.’

As you see, Franz did not want to undertake these theosophical exercises; he did not want to find a transition to knowledge of the spiritual worlds by this means. But something about which we had to speak yesterday is beginning to dawn. People are being won over into recognizing the course of certain threads and they are beginning to notice that certain people make use of these threads. If only people like Hermann Bahr would approach this matter even more seriously than they do. Even the canon encountered by Franz did so more seriously. Franz was once invited to the home of this canon together with some rather unusual company which is described. We discover that the canon associates with all sorts, not only pious monks but also cynics and frivolous people of the world. He invites them all to his table. Franz noticed a number of things. The canon led him into his study while the others were conversing together. As we know, when dinner is over, something else always follows. So the canon led him into his study:

‘The niece had retired, but the guest of honour, Uncle Erhard and His Excellency, seated in comfortable chairs and devoutly given over to the process of digestion, had still not reached a conclusion. The tales waxed increasingly risqué, the mockery more audacious, the allusions more obvious; nothing was spared and it seemed as though the whole world consisted of nothing but anecdotes. Disgusted, Franz turned to the library. It was not large, but very select indeed. Only the bare essentials as far as theology was concerned:’

of course a canon needs theology least of all for himself

‘the Bollandists, many Franciscan writers, Meister Eckhart, the spiritual exercises, Catherine of Genoa, the mysticism of Görres, and Möhler's symbolism. Then philosophy; there was more of that: the whole of Kant including the papers of the Kant Society, Deussen's Upanishads and his history of philosophy, Vaihinger's Philosophy of the As If, and a great many works on the theory of knowledge. Then there were the Greek and Latin classics, Shakespeare, Calderon, Cervantes, Dante, Machiavelli and Balzac in the original; of German writers there were only Novalis and Goethe, the latter in various editions, that of his scientific writings in the Weimar edition. Franz took out a volume of these and found in it many annotations in the canon's hand. The latter at that moment left the young monk and the Jesuit to join Franz. He said, “Nobody knows Goethe's scientific writings. Alas! The old heathen he is supposed to have been appears in quite a new light in them, and they help you to understand the ending of Faust as well. I could never bring myself to believe that he was suddenly just pretending to go all Catholic” ’

We can forgive the canon, can we not, for wanting everything to be ‘Catholic’; what is important for us is that he has turned to the natural scientific writings of Goethe.

‘ “merely for the sake of the pictorial effect. My respect for this great writer is too great, indeed so is my respect for any writer, to believe that any one of them would dress up in a costume just when he is about to pronounce his last words. But in the scientific writings every page shows how Catholic Goethe was,” ’

Let us forgive the canon.

‘ “without knowing it perhaps, and certainly without the courage of his convictions. When you read them you seem to be listening to someone unfamiliar with Catholic truths who has discovered them all on his own. Of course he does violence to some of them and there are some wonderful eccentricities, but by and large nothing crucial, necessary or essential is missing, even that hint of superstition, magic, or whatever you might like to call it, that a born Protestant finds so suspicious about our holy doctrine! Often I could hardly believe my own eyes! But once you are on the track of Goethe, the unavowed Catholic, you soon find him everywhere. Observe his trust in the Holy Spirit, though he prefers to call Him Genius,” ’

Goethe has good reason for this, of course!

‘ “observe his profound feeling for the sacraments, of which he considers there are too few, observe his feeling for the mysterious, observe his gift for reverence. Note especially how he is quite unprotestant in the way he is never satisfied with faith alone; everywhere he urges that God should be recognized through the living deed, through pious works. And see his rare, most lofty and most difficult understanding, that man cannot be taken up by God if he does not first call God into himself; his grasp of this terrible human freedom of choice, the freedom to accept or reject the proffered grace, the freedom which makes of this grace a reward for the one who decides to accept it. Despite the exaggerations and distortions, all this is so utterly Catholic that, as you see, I have in many places been able to write the passages from the tridentine mass in the margins next to what Goethe says in almost the very same words. When Zacharias tells Werner that one sentence in Elective Affinities made him into a Catholic, I most certainly believe him. Of course I would not deny that there is also a heathen, a Protestant, and even almost a Jewish Goethe. And I certainly would not claim him as an exemplary Catholic, though he was more that than the insipidly jolly, common or garden monist that the north-German school teachers present to their pupils under his name.” ’

You notice, even in these circles a different Goethe is sought, one who can follow the path into the spiritual world, a different Goethe for sure than that ‘insipidly jolly, common or garden monist’ described and presented to the world today by the Goethe biographers. As you see, the path trodden by Franz is not so very different from those you find interwoven in what we call our spiritual science and, as you also see, a certain modicum of necessity can be present.

May I remind you—I have often mentioned it—that the death of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria is one of those concealed events of the present day, despite all that occurred on the external physical plane. I have stressed especially that if the physical and spiritual worlds are taken together, then for them as a totality there was something present before the assassination of Franz Ferdinand that became different after that event. It does not matter in such cases what things look like in external maya! What occurs inwardly is the important thing. As I told you: What rose up as the soul of Franz Ferdinand into the spiritual worlds became a focal point for very strong, powerful forces, and much of what is now happening is connected with the very fact that a unique transition took place between life and so-called death, so that this soul became something quite different from what other souls become.

I said that someone who has lived through recent decades in a state of spiritual consciousness must know that one of the main causes of today's painful events is the fear in which the whole world was drenched, the fear that individuals had of each other, even though they did not know it, and above all the fear that the different nations had of one another. If people had seeing eyes with which to track down the cause of this fear, they would not talk as much nonsense as they do about the causes of the war. It was possible for this fear to be so significant because it is woven as a state of feeling into what I described to you yesterday by means of examples. Please regard this as a kind of sketch. But, drenching everything is this aura of fear. That soul was connected in a certain particular way with this aura of fear. Therefore that violent death was in no way merely an external affair. I told you this because I was able to observe it, because for me it was a particularly significant event that is connected with many aspects of what is going on at present.

I do not suppose that such things, which obviously ought to be kept within our circle, have been talked about all over the place outside our circle. The fact is, however, that I have been speaking about these things in various branches since the beginning of the war. There are witnesses who could verify this.

Hermann Bahr's book appeared much later, only quite recently. Yet in it there appears a passage that I shall quote in a moment, and I would ask you to pay attention to the following fact: Within the circle of our anthroposophical spiritual science, indications are given about an event that is spiritually very important; then a novel written at a later date is published, in which is found a character who always appears to be rather foolish. He is actually a prince in disguise, but he appears as a foolish person who performs lowly tasks. From a poster—he is living in a rural area—he learns of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, whereupon he makes a remark which almost causes him to be lynched and leads to his being locked up; for any police force would naturally be convinced that somebody making such a remark immediately after an assassination must be a party to the plot. Though there are many miles in between, the one event having happened in Sarajevo and the other taking place in Salzburg, nevertheless to the police, in its wisdom, that man must be a party to the plot.

It now emerges that this person is a prince in disguise and that he owns a deeply significant mystical diary. The reason for the remark he made also emerges. He was actually a prince, but had found the whole business of being a prince irksome and so had disguised himself as old Blasl who performed lowly tasks, behaved stupidly, even let himself be beaten by his master, and hardly ever spoke a word; he became talkative on certain occasions but usually he said nothing. Then when he was being investigated he was found to possess a mystical manuscript which he had written himself. The book continues:

‘The enchanted, now disenchanted prince, still in his old clothes, and still the same old fellow, too, though somehow different now that Franz knew they had been a disguise, said smiling, “Forgive me the deception which for me was none. I ceased to be the Infante Don Tadeo long ago. If circumstances now compel me to represent him again for a while, it will be a far more difficult role for me to play. For me, I really was old Blasl and, if I lied, it was myself I lied to, not you. That I should cause you inconvenience I could not have known. I am sorry indeed for that. Of course it was the most stupid misunderstanding. Though I had never met him, I knew the heir to the throne very well; he meant a great deal to me and we were in communication with one another, though not in the manner usual here.” ’

‘The manner usual here’ denotes the manner usual on the physical plane: We were in communication with one another, though not after the manner of the physical plane.

‘ “He had long gone beyond the boundaries of earthly work and stood with one foot in that other realm of purely spiritual activity. Now it was time for him to step over finally. I knew that in order to fulfil himself he could no longer stay. His deed will be done from there. I was only surprised that destiny had hesitated so long with him. On that Sunday when I stepped out of church, where my prayers had once again been rewarded with reassurance, and saw the uneasy crowd, I knew immediately that his liberation had come. What has to happen through him he can only bring about from the other side. Here he could only promise; his life was only a prediction. Only now can it really happen. I have never been able to imagine him as a constitutional monarch with parliamentarianism and all that humbug. He was too great for that. By this he has seized the initiative for himself. This dead man will now truly start to live. This is what I felt when I heard the news. That is what I meant to say. You will understand that there was little chance of making myself understood to those peasants. I preferred to give myself up in silence and am only surprised that they did not do for me. I was prepared for that—then by now it would all be over. There must still be something for me to do. So be it!” He had said all this in the same tone of voice, as it were without punctuation, only staring at Franz from time to time with numb eyes. Then he requested him not to mention his notebooks and to forget them himself.

“The truth is written in them, but only for myself; to understand them you would have to understand my sign language. What is written in them is right; only the words are invalid.” Franz could not help describing to him the impression the notebooks had made on him.’

For Franz was the only person in that town who could understand Spanish, and since the notebooks were written in Spanish he was asked to help out. There is a little gentle irony here too, since in Austria anything not immediately understandable is said to be ‘Spanish’. Since Blasl, or rather the Infante, was suspected of being a party to the plot, it was necessary to read the notebooks, and since Franz had once been in Spain, it was he who had to read them. For Hermann Bahr had also once been in Spain.

So you see, since we must assume that Hermann Bahr had not been tipped off about this, that we have here an example of a remarkable winning-over of an invidual to a recognition of these things, of an inner need growing in him today to occupy himself with these things. I think it is justifiable to be somewhat astonished that such things appear in novels these days; it is something to do with the undercurrent of our time. Admittedly, to begin with, only people like Hermann Bahr are affected, people whose lives have been similar to that of Hermann Bahr, who went through all kinds of experiences during the course of time. Now that he is older, having for a long time been a supporter of impressionism, he is endeavouring to comprehend expressionism and other similar things. He is a person who has truly been capable in his soul of uniting himself outwardly and inwardly with the most varied streams. He really immersed himself in Ostwald's thoughts, in those of Richet, in those of the theosophists in London, struggling to enter fully into them. Only finally, when his perseverance failed him, did he happen upon Canon Zingerl, whom he now considers to be a Master. He did indeed immerse himself to the full in internal and external streams.

When I first knew him he had just written his play Die neuen Menschen, of which he is now very ashamed; its mood was strictly social-democratic, and there was at that time no more glowing social-democrat than Hermann Bahr. Then he wrote a short one-act play which is rather insignificant. He then converted to the German nationalist movement and wrote Die grosse Sünde from their point of view. Again, there existed no more radical German nationalist than Hermann Bahr. Meanwhile, he had reached his nineteenth year and was called up to serve in the army; now he was filled to the brim with militaristic views and soldierly pride.

He understood, you see, how to unite his soul with external streams, yet he never shirked coming to grips entirely seriously with those that are more inward as well. After his period as a soldier he went to Berlin for a short while and there edited a modern weekly journal, Die freie Bühne. Chameleon-like, he could turn himself into anything—except a Berliner! Then he went to Paris. He had hardly arrived, could not even conjugate a reflexive verb with être but used avoir with everything, when he started to write enthusiastic letters about the sunlike being Boulanger who would surely show Europe what true, genuine culture is. Then he went to Spain, where he became a burning opponent of the Sultan of Morocco against whom he wrote articles in Spanish. Finally he returned, not exactly a copy of Daudet but looking very like him.

He told us about all this in the famous Griensteidl Café which has offered hospitality to all sorts of famous people since 1848 when Lenau, Anastasius Grün and others went in and out there. Even the waiters in this cafe were famous; everybody knew Franz, and later Heinrich, of Griensteidl's! Now it has been demolished, but because Hermann Bahr talked so much there about the way in which his soul had entered into the spirit of France and about that sunlike being Boulanger, someone else had grown rebellious, and when Griensteidl's was pulled down Karl Kraus wrote a pamphlet Literature Demolished. I still remember vividly how Hermann Bahr told us about the grand impressions he had gained and how he, the lad from Linz, had been the proud owner of the handsomest artist's face in the whole of Paris. He spoke enthusiastically about Maurice Barrès and stood up in the most intense way for the French youth movement; through the outpouring of a single heart filled with ardour we gained an experience of the total will-force of a whole literary movement. Then, in Vienna together with others, he founded a weekly journal himself, to which he contributed some really important articles. He became increasingly profound yet, with him, superficiality always seemed to go hand in hand with profundity. Thus he never stopped changing: from social democrat to German nationalist, from a militaristic disposition to a glowing admiration for Boulanger, then discipleship of Maurice Barrès and others; and after a later transformation he began to appreciate impressionist art. From time to time he returned to Berlin, but always departed again as quickly as possible; it was the one place he could not tolerate. Vienna, on the other hand, he loved dreadfully, and he expressed this love in many ways.

In more recent years his beloved friends in Danzig have invited him a number of times to lecture on expressionism, something they are said to have understood exceedingly well; and the lectures are included in his book on expressionism. He also enthuses about Goethe's scientific writings and shows that he has drawn a little nearer to what we are coming to know as Anthroposophy; but in his case it is only a beginning. I might add, by the way, that his recent book about expressionism is full of praise for his Danzig friends—of course, so that they should stand out favourably in comparison with the Berliners.

Lately it has been said that Hermann Bahr has converted to Catholicism. I don't suppose he will be all that Catholic though—perhaps about as much as he was boulangistic in days gone by. But he is a human being! You have now seen in his most recent novel that through his very worldliness, through his longing to learn about everything in his own way, he has now been touched by the necessity to discover something about man's ascent into the spiritual world and about the links between human beings that are different from those ordinary physical links; in other words, links of the kind we described yesterday.

You can understand why I find it to some extent significant that such a novel should contain not only general echoes but should lead to a point as concrete as the death of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. This shows that these things are far more real than is generally supposed. Just such things as this must show us that what takes place on the physical plane is often no more than a symbol of what is really happening ‘behind the scenes of earthly life’. For if you read about what has occurred in connection with these events, in connection with this assassination, without appealing to the spiritual aspect, it will be impossible for you to understand that someone can be led to place such significance on the matter. But it is not yet possible today to speak about these things without some reservation; as yet, not everything connected with these things can be expressed. Attention may be drawn to some aspects only; to begin with, perhaps, the more external ones.

Let us recall what was said yesterday about the world of the Slavs, about the soul of the Slavs. The testament of Peter the Great appeared on the scene in 1813, or perhaps a little earlier, and was disseminated for good reason as though it stemmed from Peter the Great himself. This document is used to seize hold of a natural stream, such as the stream of the Slav soul, in order to guide and lead it by means of suggestion. Whither is it to be led? It is to be led into the orbit of Russianism in such a way that the ancient Slav stream should become, in a way, the bearer of the idea of a Russian state! Because this is so, a clear distinction must be made between the spiritual Slav stream, the stream that exists as the bearer of the ancient Slav tradition, and that which strives to become an external vessel to encompass the whole of this Slav stream: Russianism.

We must not forget that a large number of Slav peoples, or sections of these peoples, live within the boundaries of the monarchy of Austria-Hungary. The Austro-Hungarian monarchy encompasses—let me use my fingers to help me count—Germans, Czechs, Slavonians, Slovacs, Serbo-Croats, Croats, Poles, Romanians, Ruthenians, Magyars, Italians and Serbs; as you see, many more than Switzerland has. What really lives there can only be recognized by someone who has lived for quite a long time among these peoples and has come to understand the various streams that were at work within what is known as Austria-Hungary. As far as the Slav peoples are concerned there was, during the last decades of the nineteenth century, a paramount endeavour to find a way in which the various Slav peoples could live together in peace and freedom. The whole history of Austria-Hungary in recent decades, with all those bitter battles, can only be understood if it is seen as an attempt to realize the principle of the individualization of the separate peoples. This is of course exceedingly difficult, since peoples do not live comfortably side by side but are often enmeshed in complicated ways. Among the Germans in Austria there are very many who consider that their own well-being would be served by the individualizing of the various Slav peoples in Austria, that is, by finding a form in which they could develop independently and freely. Obviously such things need time to come about; but such a movement certainly does exist.

Then, apart from the Slavs in Austria-Hungary, there are the Balkan Slavs who lived for a long time under Turkish dominion, which they have thrown off in recent decades in order to found individual states: Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro and so on. Yesterday I mentioned the Polish Slavs as those who have developed furthest in their spiritual life. I am mentioning only the more important sub-divisions, for I too can only work these things out gradually. In all these Slav peoples and tribes there lives what I called yesterday a consistent, primal folk element, which is something that is preparing for the future.

Seen quite externally, why was Franz Ferdinand rather important? He was important because in his being, in all his inclinations—you must take the external manifestation as a symbol of what lived within—he was the external expression of certain streams. In him there lived something which, if only it had been able to free itself, bore the deepest understanding for the individual development of the Slav peoples. You might indeed call him an intense friend of all that belongs to the Slavs. He understood—or perhaps I should say: something living in him of which he was not fully aware understood—what forms would be necessary for the social life of the Slavs if they were to develop as individual peoples.

We have to realize that karma had decreed that this karmic path should be extremely unusual. Let us not forget that there was once an heir to the throne, Archduke Rudolf, on whom great hopes were pinned, especially as regards the direction in which many liberal and free-thinking people of the day were tending. Those who knew the circumstances and the person, understood that something was working through his soul which would have brought about the application to the Austrian situation of what I yesterday called English political thinking, English ideas concerning the way in which states should be administered. This is what was expected of him and it was also what he himself was inclined to do. But you know how karma worked and how what should have happened was made impossible. So then something else became possible instead. Now a man tending in quite another direction grew in importance. It is indeed not without significance if our attention is drawn to this: ‘Here he could only promise; his life was only a prediction. Only now can it really happen. I have never been able to imagine him as a constitutional monarch, with parliamentarianism and all that humbug.’

Yet this is just how we should have imagined the other one to be! You see that karma is at work and we must see how this karma works in order to achieve further heights of understanding. The circumstances which could and should have been brought about—not because of the wishes of some person or other but because of the purpose of world evolution—by this soul who looked upon the Slav folk element with understanding (for the moment I am giving a purely abstract description), would truly have had a liberating effect on the Slav folk element. But it would, at the same time, have destroyed what Russianism wants to do with the Slav element. For Russianism wants to confine the Slav element within its own framework and use it as its tool. It wants to contain it within the confines of the testament of Peter the Great. The speed with which such things come to realization depends, of course, on all kinds of side-currents and peripheral circumstances. But it is important to have an eye for what is gathering momentum in any particular direction. Obviously, therefore, only those who understood the Slav element more deeply could understand what web was really being woven, and also that those who wanted to destroy the Slav element through Russianism had to work against more healthy endeavours.

Matters become particularly delicate and tricky if they start interfering with streams and counting on methods that are connected in some way with the occult streams using the secret brotherhoods which exist all over the world. Some are more profound, as are those about which I shall speak tomorrow. Others only touch on these things but, even then, as they do touch on them, they must be seen as vessels through which occult streams flow. The society whose dissolution was demanded after the death of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the Serbian society ‘Narodna Odbrana’, was the actual successor of an earlier secret brotherhood, having changed its methods only slightly. I am stating no more than facts.

Here, then, is a contact between political strivings and a secret society which, though centred in Serbia, had threads leading in every direction to wherever Slavs were to be found, and also links with all kinds of other societies, but in particular an inner connection with western societies. In such a society things can be taught which are connected with occult workings throughout the world.

Why do we have to make so many detours in order to reach even a partial understanding of what we actually have to understand? Do not be surprised that so many detours are necessary, for a superficial judgement is all too easily reached if insight is directed to immediate events in which we are involved with sympathy or antipathy; all too easily misunderstandings and false ideas come about. What often happens to all of us? We are perfectly entitled to have sympathies and antipathies in our soul; but often there are reasons why we do not admit this to ourselves. Perhaps we do not actually convince ourselves on purpose, but autosuggestion often gives us good reason to believe that our judgements are objective. If only we would calmly admit to sympathies or antipathies, we would also accept the truth. But because we want to judge ‘objectively’ we do not admit the truth but, instead, delude ourselves in regard to the truth.

Why do people have this tendency? It is simply because, when they endeavour to understand reality, they easily meet with extraordinary contradictions. And when they meet these contradictions they attempt to come to terms with them by accepting one half of what is contradictory and rejecting the other half. Often this means a total lack of any desire to understand the truth.

I will give you an example of how we can become entangled in a serious contradiction if we fail to understand the living connection between the contradiction and the full truth of the reality. In our anthroposophical spiritual science we understand Christianity to be something that is filled with the meaning of the Mystery of Golgotha, with the fact that Christ was condemned, died, was buried, but then also rose again in the true sense and lives on as the Risen One. This is what we call the Mystery of Golgotha and we cannot concede the right to anyone to call himself a Christian unless he recognizes this too. What, though, had to happen so that Christ was able to undergo, for human evolution, what I have just described? Judas had to betray Him and He had to be nailed to the cross. If those who nailed Him to the cross had not done so, then the Mystery of Golgotha would not have taken place for the salvation of mankind.

Here you have a terrible, actual contradiction, a contradiction of gigantic proportions! Can you imagine someone who might say: You Christians owe it to Judas that your Mystery of Golgotha took place at all. You owe it to the executioner's men, who nailed Christ to the cross, that your Mystery of Golgotha ran its course! Is anyone justified in defending Judas and the executioner's men, even though it is true that the meaning of earthly history is owed to them? Is it easy to answer a question like this? Is one not immediately faced with contradictions which simply stand there and which represent a terrible destiny?

Think about what I have placed before you! Tomorrow we shall continue. What I have just said is spoken only so that you can think about the fact that it is not so easy to say: When two things contradict one another I shall accept the one and reject the other. Reality is more profound than whatever human beings may often be willing to encompass with their thinking. It is not without reason that Nietzsche, crazed almost out of his mind, formulated the words: ‘The world is deep, deeper than day can comprehend.’

Now that I have endeavoured to indicate the nature of a real contradiction, we shall tomorrow attempt to penetrate more deeply into the subject matter we have so far touched on in preparation.

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