The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Considering the seriousness of the times, it seems to me that if I were to speak about Pentecost today in the way it is ordinarily spoken of, it would be unchristian—although such unchristian performances are quite the accepted thing. All who have been speaking here for the renewal of our education and school life, have spoken in the real spirit of Pentecost—endorsing as they have, so earnestly, our movement for the threefolding of the social organism. For in the liberation of the spiritual life, in the emancipation of the schools, lies the truest spirit of Pentecost for our present day—that Pentecost spirit which has entirely disappeared from the ordinary so-called religious and confessional streams of this age.

It is our sincere hope that an emancipation of the spiritual life, such as we are striving to achieve, will bring about its renewal—a thing of which mankind is so sorely in need. But one will only be able to comprehend what must be done to our schools and to our education in order to bring about a renewal of the spirit, a pouring out of the true Pentecost spirit, if one realizes how deeply the anti-Pentecost spirit has trickled into public life, into men's so-called spiritual intercourse with one another.

If one speaks in these times as one must on an anthroposophical basis, then one even—I underline it three times—even hears this reproof: that the word “German” and the word “Christian” or “Christ” are never mentioned in the course of one's remarks.

My dear friends, if we cannot find within ourselves the answer to such foolish chatter we have not yet get to the heart of the anthroposophical world-conception! It is the direct result of our distorted pedagogy; it illustrates what absurdities have trickled into our souls through our education. We must above all things gain a knowledge of the connection between the perverted chatter of our age and our perverted educational life; this knowledge must pour down in manifold fiery tongues upon the heads of our contemporaries.

A great deal is being said in our time about the unimportance of the word, and that “in the beginning was the deed”. My dear friends, an age like ours will even find a false use for the Gospel; the word has become mere chattered phrase and the deed, thoughtless brutality. An age like ours turns away from the Word with reason, because in the word that it knows it can only find phrase—and the deed that it knows is only thoughtless brutality.

There is a deep connection between our educational life and this fact which I have mentioned. We bear within us two sources of perverted humanity: a perverted Hellenic and a perverted Romanism. We do not understand Hellenism as it related to its own time and place. We can, hardly comprehend why the noble Socrates and Plato tried with such courage to cure the Greeks of their unconquerable love of illusion. The Greeks always wanted to escape from the seriousness of life, and sought their satisfaction in illusions. Socrates and Plato, the Greek lawgivers, had to point with great severity to the reality of the spirit, to save the Greeks from falling more and more into the failing of their race, that of withdrawing comfortably by means of illusions from the seriousness of life. The Greeks allowed “the loafer Socrates” to go on talking about the seriousness of life as long as he seemed harmless. But as soon an they realized what was really contained in his words they gave him hemlock to drink.

Socrates spirit of earnestness is not the spirit of this age. We inherit rather that spirit of Hellenism that poisoned Socrates; and we revel in it. We even consent to the poisoning of the pearl of world-literature, the beginning of the Gospel of St. John, when we allow the word “Word”—of which the Old Testament said that when man lets it become one of his illusions heaven and earth will fall—we allow it to be taken literally. St. John's Gospel begins, “In the beginning was the Word”. The man of today is content to take the word “Word” as a mere phrase. But something stands written there that is destined to scatter all his illusions which he drags into the phrase. The heaven end earth of our illusions would collapse if we were earnestly willing to understand the “Logos” that shines forth from this sentence, and that should be experienced in it.

Thus our culture has tried to ameliorate the severities of life either by mystic comfort or by brutal action. That is what we must see today, what we must realize above all things. Today we must drive out of men's souls from the first moment of education up through the highest schools, what Socrates and Plato sought to expel from Hellenism when they said to the Greeks: “Beware of illusions; the spirit alone has reality! There is living reality in ideas, which is not what you, with your elusive phrases, want to see in thee?”

We will get no further if we keep chattering about ethics and religion! For the Gospel is itself a fact in the evolution of the world. It has become today mere babble; and therefore it is accompanied by thoughtless, brutal action. We must fill our souls with what can really inspirit us when we speak. We must find a way to make the heart speak behind the lips. We must find a way to penetrate our words with our entire being; otherwise the word becomes a seducer, tempting us with illusion, alluring us from the earnestness of reality. We must put away forever the spirit which lures us to go church in order to be lifted there out of the earnestness of life, and to hear this gratifying phrase trickled out to us: that the Lord God will make it all right, He will deliver us from our evils. We must look within ourselves, within our own souls, for forces which are divine forces, which have been implanted in us during the evolution of the world in order that we shall use them, in order that we shall he able to receive God into our individual souls. We should not be listening to all this preaching about an external God, which allows our souls to lie in indolent repose on Philistine sofas, of which we are so fond when it is a question of spiritual life. Our education must find away out of the “Greek Phrase”, as one may call it today. It must also find a way out beyond the “Roman phrase”.

The “spirit of law” which our age still worships today was right for the Romans. For what was this spirit of law? A deep meaning lies hidden in the legend of the founding of Rome. Brutes were held together in order to combat the worst animal-human instincts. That is what the Roman laws were for, to herd wild animals together. But we should realize that we have become men, and we should not worship that spirit of law which arose from a legitimate Roman instinct to tame brutish human passions. The Roman spirit that still prevails in us today as our “spirit of right” is universally of such a character as to intend that wild human passions shall not rule in freedom, but shall be held in full restraint.

Christian! the complaint is that that word is not used in the lectures we are giving. But we continually forget a very Christian saying of Paul that reads as follows: “Sin came through law, not law through sin. “If there were no law, sin would be dead”. Of course that may be worth nothing for our time, because men have become unchristian. But it is a saying of which one must learn the dear significance. This is the true Christian spirit: to take out of the State—which men regard today as All-containing, All-embracing, and which is our inheritance from Rome—to take out of it the spiritual life and the economic life, and to make them free. But men do not want the Christian spirit, and therefore they want to make themselves feel comfortable by using “Christ” and “Christian” as often as possible as phrases.

Likewise they want to hear the word “German” as a mere phrase as often as possible. A true German spirit prevails in Goethe. The recent un-German spirit of middle Europe has in its enlightened representative, the Berlin Academy of Science, coined a phrase which I have mentioned here before: the glory of these men, the spiritual leaders of today, consists in this, they regard themselves as “the scientific bodyguard of the Hohenzollerns”! The man who coined that phrase has also given a lecture, in the scientific phraseology of the present day, entitled “Goethe and no End”, in which he endeavored to trample to the ground Goethe's whole natural-scientific spirit. He took great pleasure in saying: “Goethe's Faust character might better be inventing an air pump to keep Gretchen upright, than all the silly things he does in that book”. That is in the spirit of the time—trampling on the true German spirit which never takes the word “German” in vain—just as the “modern” Christian spirit (and that means unchristian spirit) has been always to require the words “Christ” and “Christian”, and to disregard this other saying; “Thou shalt not speak the word God is vain”. One should have a feeling for what is Christian, and not be constantly wanting to have one's ears filled with chatter about Christianity.

That is “the spirit of Whitsuntide” today. One can hardly say that if it were not cherished and cultivated it would find much fruitful ground upon which to fall. One has plenty of opportunity to see how this Whitsuntide spirit is everywhere misunderstood. The following fact, for instance, that has actually come to light, in a remarkable illustration of the spirit of our time (if I may descend for a moment to an everyday matter): Our Union for the Threefolding of the social organism started forth to make seed-words grow into deeds, and in order to be understood snatched up the words of a certain person for quotation. Then this person talked also on his side, about socialization, using words which could very well be used if socialization was being talked about, and which at the same time could very well be quoted by our Union for the Threefolding of the social organism, because as words, if they were the thought-seeds of actions, then would actually mean what we want to say. But then, what happened? From the side from which these words originally came, the course of action which should naturally follow these words was violently attacked. What, does this indicate, was under the surface of the man's thought? It was this: Woe to you if you regard our words as anything else but chatter and phrase! The moment you take our words seriously, we are your enemies! That is the outcome of on educational system that has grown up in this age under the wing of the State. That on the one side. On the other hand is this pleasing denunciation: We are in complete agreement with what Steiner says, his whole ides for fighting existing capitalism; we agree with his Threefold Commonwealth; but we are fighting him because we will not be preached to by a spirit-seer!

It does not seem unreasonable to ask ourselves: What can be attempted in an age that wants nothing else but phrases or thoughtless brutal action, that refuses everything else, but that nevertheless bears within it the seed out of which real men can be developed? People do not want to have to think; they prefer thoughtless class war. They utter beautiful phrases and do not want their thoughts to become deeds. And if someone takes their phrases seriously he is violently attacked.

We must ask ourselves noel, seriously: ! Have men who are born in the midst of such a spirit the right to pour out phrases—oily phrases—about the Pentecost wonder? My dear friends, the slime that is poured out today about the Pentecost wonder comes from the dame glands as the poison with which some want to choke everything today that comes from the spirit, poison by which they encourage in themselves on the one hand unreal phrase, and on the other hand thoughtless, brutal action. The unreel phrase is the religious chatter of the world; the brutal unspiritual act is militarism, the fundamental evil of our time. Until one realizes how thoroughly these two things are ingrained in our perverted educational life, one cannot think fruitfully about what ought to be done. Everything else is simply a quack remedy.

What must be done, my friends, must be done out or reality. For reality carries the spirit within it; whereas a denial of the spirit makes everything an absurdity. And if in our time anyone tries to indicate spiritual realities, he is branded a “visionary”, and “spirit-seer”. It is because a feeling for reality is universally lacking.

The comparison of the social organism with the human or any other organism, has also become a phrase, in our time, and avery cheap one at that. If one wants to use a comparison without resorting to phrases, one must present the fundamental knowledge for it as it is given in my book Riddles of the Soul. What sense is there today in speaking of the threefold social organism until its spiritual foundation, the threefold nature of the human organism, consisting of nerve-sense faculties, rhythmic faculties, and metabolic faculties, is presented to men as real natural-scientific knowledge? But men are so indolent that they will not allow the conceptions they have acquired from their perverted school-training of the present day to be corrected by that which originates in true reality.

Our official science, that is, the science that is accepted everywhere as authoritative, cherishes another hoary conception. Even modern science kneels in idolatrous worship before everything that is thrust forward as highest culture. To what else, then, should it have recourse when it wants to explain something especially mysterious, than to something to which just at this time kneels the lowest? Thus, the human nervous system has become for science a collection of “telegraphic lines”; it sees the whole nervous activity of men as a remarkably complicated telegraph system. The eye perceives; the skin perceives. Then what has been perceived on the outside is carried to the telegraph station called “the brain”. And sitting in the brain is some being or other—of course modern science would not have anything to do with a spiritual being—anyway, through some kind or being that has become a phrase because one acknowledges no reality there, the perception announced by the sensory nerves is transformed through the motor nerves into movements of will. And this distinction between sensory and motor nerves is stuffed into our young people, and upon it the whole conception of man is built.

For years I have been fighting this absurd distinction between sensory and motor nerves, first of all because the distinction is nonsense. For, the so-called motor nerves exist for no other reason than that for which the sensory nerves exist. A sensory nerve, a sense-nerve, is the means by which we are to perceive what is going on in our sense-organization. And a so-called motor nerve is not a “motor” nerve but is also a sensory nerve; it only exists so that I shall perceive my own movements, which originate in something quite other than the motor nerves. Motor nerves are inner sensory nerves for the perception of my own will-impulse. The sensory nerves exist in order that I may perceive the external things that are happening to my sense apparatus. And in order that I may not be merely an unconscious being walking, hitting, grasping, without myself knowing anything about it, the so-called motor nerves exist thus not for the exertion of will, but for the perception of what my will is doing. The whole idea of a distinction has been invented by modern science out of the distorted intellectual knowledge of our time, and it is truly scientific nonsense. That is one reason why I have been fighting it for years.

But there is another reason why this nonsense must be uprooted, this superstition about motor and sensory nerves, between which there is no other difference than that one is sensitive to what is outside the body and the other to what is inside the body. This is the other reason.

No one in any kind of social science can acquire a correct understanding of man in his relation to work if he builds up concepts on this false differentiation between sensory and motor nerves. For one will get most curious notions of what human work is, of what happens in man then he works, when he brings his muscles into movement, if one does not know that the man's bringing his muscles into movement does not depend upon his so-called motor nerves but upon the immediate connection of his soul with the outer world. I can do no more then just indicate this fact to you, because today men do not yet have the slightest understanding for it. Education has not yet produced even a primitive capacity for the understanding of such things because it still works on the basis of this mad distinction between sensory and motor nerves. When I confront a machine I must confront it as a whole man; I must set up a relation above all things between my muscles and this machine. This relation is all that a man's work really depends upon. It is this relation that one must understand if one wants to know the social significance of work,—this very special relation of men to work. What is our concept of work today?

The process that goes on in man when he is, as we say, “working” is no different, whether he is exerting himself at a machine, or chopping wood, or engaging in sport for pleasure. He can wear himself out just as thoroughly, he can consume just as much working-power, in some sport that is a social superfluity as in chopping wood which is social necessity. And the illusion of a difference between sensory and motor nerves is the origin psychologically of man's conception of work today—while in reality one can only gain a true conception of work if one considers, not how a man exerts himself in work, but in what sort of relation to his social environment he is placed by his work. I believe you do not really comprehend that, because the concepts one might have today of these things are so distorted by our education that it will be a long time before one can find any transition from the concept of work that is socially absurd and from the concept of sensory and motor nerves that is scientifically absurd. It is in these very things that we must look for the reason why our thinking in so impractical. How can humanity think practically about practical things when it is a victim of this absurd concept: that we have a telegraphic apparatus strung up in us by which wires go to someplace or other in the brain and are then switched on to other wires—sensory and motor nerves! It is from this unscientific science of ours, which arises from a distorted school system, and to which people are intrigued into pinning their faith—it is from this that the impossibility arises of thinking socially.

That is what we should recognize today as the Pentecost spirit. It would be wiser to pour that out in single streams on the men of the present day, than to use the kind of quack ointment that it is thought today will better this thing or that. When one says today that mankind must learn anew and think anew, people believe at most that one is employing that same phrase that they themselves employ—and that is easy to understand because people at once translate what one says into phrases and utopias. But does it not make a difference whether some popular orator says “Mankind must learn new lessons”, or whether someone says it who knows that through the habit of artificial thinking mankind has created such depths of false thoughts that they even reach down into the structure of the human nervous system, so that today men have a deeply rooted superstition about sensory and motor nerves because their authorities impose it upon them. It must be made clear to the world that one is speaking from a basis of reality—and saying very different things about this reality—when one talks on the ground of the anthroposophical movement about “thinking anew” and “learning anew”; it should be the task of the Anthroposophical Society to make that clear. For today the phrase has won such power that as far as the words themselves are concerned anyone who is unable to distinguish between reality and phrase can refer you, for instance, to the editorial of today's Stuttgart Daily and say: Look there, there is also preaching about “learning anew”. But it is not a question of comparing words, for then we fall into word-idolatry; today we must see what the reality is, and protect ourselves fro the danger of falling into phrase idolatry. How many times have I regretfully had to disagree when such phrases as this have been uttered: Look there, someone has again spoken from the pulpit “quite theosophically”—as people say. These things are so bad because they show how little capacity exists today for differentiating between a knowledge of reality and a smug use of phrases. With the Pentecost festival this admonition should pour down upon human souls: “Away from you phrases back to reality!” We talk today in the field of science, the field of art, the field of religion—in fact, we talk everywhere—in phrases which stick in the throat and do not include the whole man; just as man's belief today is that his sense impressions stay somewhere up in his brain and do not also register his motor activities. Everything is connected in the most intimate way, and until there is a change in those thought habits which official science has created in our time, which scientific popery has imposed upon us, there will be o real Pentecostal renewal—for all other renewal is only on the surface and does not pour forth, as it must, from real inner depths. If our school life and education are really to experience a renewal we must become awake to such things as have been discussed here, and protect mankind from the diseases which so easily can arise in it today, because of its inheritance from Romanism.

The love of illusion that is so widespread today must be fought against. The man of today feels comfortable when he can delude himself about reality, when he can say to himself: Not Christ in me, Who arouses my strength, Who liberates powerful forces within me—not that do I profess; but the Christ Who is external to me, and Who mercifully frees me from my sins without my having to do anything about it out of my own earnestness or my own powers!

My dear friends, again and again in numerous letter I have had this Christ-Jesus creed held up to me, in contract to what Anthroposophy must do and wants to do. And again and again I have been confronted by the request to “popularize” in trivial phrases, “so that people can understand it”, that which today must be stamped with severe accuracy out of the reality of the spirit because the time demands it. But the moment anthroposophical truths were cut up into trivial phrases they would become just phrases, such as all the phrases that are so cheap in the present day; they would be brought down either to trivialities of the street or to the Philistinism of modern science. Again and again I have found the courage not to do either—either to reduce anthroposophical teaching to the trivial phrases of the street (which is called “popularizing”) or to talk so that the scientific people would understand me. I have received these two admonitions many times. My dear friends, I should then have to talk so that I would find an echo in the scientific senselessness of the present day. It would be especially agreeable to me when people behave as a professor in Tübingen did recently out of the scientific conviction of the present time. It seems to me, truth reigns in external events, for that affair is the best proof of how necessary it is for the spiritual life to be completely transformed. Especially, if one wants to find a transition to the true Pentecost spirit, from babbling words to seed-bearing words, then one must earnestly again and again examine one's old habitual concepts in order to see what it is that one does not want to make new concepts for—what it is that can be chattered about perhaps while still clinging to one's old concepts, but not comprehended by them.

Apropos of' the value or words today, there is no great sense in pointing out that in certain circles the proletariat has sufficient goodwill to understand the Threefold Commonwealth ideas even better then the middle-class understands them. If the middle class would only have the same “goodwill” is what many would like to say today. The proletariat laughs at this urging the middle-class to have “goodwill”—and he is justified in laughing. He is better prepared to understand than a man of the middle-class. But it is on quite a different basis that he is prepared to understand these things, and he laughs when when anyone says one appeal to the goodwill of the middle-class in order to set understanding; he laughs especially when one says one could expect a result from this appeal. For he knows quite well that his better understanding comes from something quite different: that in the morning if he does not work he finds himself in the street: he is bound up with the social order, I might say, at points only—not throughout a straight line as is the middle-class citizen of today: he understands out of his humanness because the present social order has brought it about that he has other than human interests, for he is nothing else the morning he is thrown out on the street, but just a man. That is what his better understanding springs from.

As to the middle-class citizen, especially the state-official: the state takes him in hand as soon as possible—not too early, because then it is still considered indelicate, and so the state leaves him to mothers and wet-nurses. But as soon as he gets beyond this first indelicate period he is taken at once into the care of the state and trained, prepared—not to be a man, but to be a state-official. Then the strings are tied, so that he is connected with the social order not at points, like the proletarian, but by a long line; through strings on all his interests, he is fastened up to the social order that exists through the state and that is supported by the state. He is trained in all his behavior to be the correct expression of the social order. Then he is fed, and he is satisfied. He is not only fed, but he is so taken care of that he does not have to take care of himself. And then, when he is no longer able to work, the state sees that he gets a pension so that without having to do anything about himself he is properly supported by the Powers that trained him in the first place to be their loyal expression. This lasts until death. Then he is still taken care of, this time by a religion which gets its salvation not from the inner forces of the soul, but from a mercy that comes in from the outside; this religion sees to it that his soul is “pensioned” after death. That is the precise content of state wisdom and religious wisdom. No wonder that a man of the middle-class, citizen of both state and heaven, hangs on to that with which he is bound up so thoroughly.

There is the contrast: personal interest on the one side, but then also personal interest on the nearest corner of the other side. It is in opposition to the personal interest on the other side that that a number of men attain today that which mankind must attain in this age of the consciousness soul, and of which I have often spoken: establishing oneself as an individual human being. The proletarian has only an opportunity of doing that, of establishing the fact that he is first of all an individual, when he has not been drawn into a contract with all the others. The more he is drawn in, the worse it is for him.For here on this side are men who similarly are set up in their positions by the proletarist: they are the the men who have any kind of official position in the labor unions. Even if their positions are called by other names, they succumb easily to the same grand manners as the middle-class citizens, and they fight whatever arises as a possible hindrance to these airs. And so they gradually acquire the habits of the middle-class.

One talks today in the proletarian world of labor unions. In England about a fifth of the whole laboring population is economically organized. That is relatively many. Thus the present English laboring class, in the modern spirit of organizing, has grown quite neatly into the middle-class way of thinking. In Germany only an eighth are organized, the others are unorganized workers. And it is the unorganized workers today who stand on the ground of personality; they are the real driving powers, it is they who have preserved the consciousness of what it means to remain just a man, without the pensions—without even, the pension which I have rationed for one's later spiritual life. These men who stand in the external economic sphere upon their own individuality are, I might say, the psychic channel for that which must arise today as an historical necessity, for that which makes the proletarian demand of today at the same time a world-historical demand.

The modern economic order has harnessed the proletariat to factories and capitalism, where it is easier for them to understand what the demand of the time is, than for the middle-class man who hangs on with all his strings to his maintenance and his pension, and who does not want to think. If he were to think, if he were to analyze the age correctly, it would not be possible to speak as a Tübingen professor did recently, who brought up this argument during the discussion after one of my lectures: It has just been said that the proletarian's “existence worthy of a man” is undermined because the proletarian is paid wages for his work; is not Caruso paid wages when he sings, and at the end of the evening is given 30 or 40 thousand marks for his work? Or—the selfless gentleman continued—do I not also receive wages?—I feel none of this “unworthy of a man” business when I pocket my salary! Nor does Caruso feel it when he collects his 30 or 40 thousand marks… That is the gist of what he said. And he went on to say: the only difference is this, that in one case the wages are more, in the other, lees, but that is of no importance—in reality it is all the same!

My dear friends, that is the spirit which blossoms out of the educational life of today! It is the same spirit that says: We are becoming a poor nation , we will not be able to pay for schools and educations, the state will have to step in and pay for them. Now, to one who thinks so shortsightedly, one will have to reply: But what does the state do when everybody is poor, and it must suddenly become the Croesus who will pay the debts that all of, us cannot pay? First, the state takes away in the form of taxes whatever everybody has: it seems to me it can hardly manufacture as a Croesus what the people themselves do not have. That is what these classes of people have to learn. It is also what those persons must learn to understand who are supported by the state out of the pockets of those who stand economically on the basis of their human individuality. As long as they have not learnt to understand it through the necessity of life, it is impossible to put it into their minds. And so it seems to me, a great number of people today want to conjure up an age in which one can also be thrown on the street if one is not willing to bring about another social order through an impulse of thought. It could very easily happen that the state pensions of which I have spoken could no longer be paid—in which event, I believe, the people would not so much, either, of those other spiritual pensions that are paid today to the soul after death by the religious community that has become so dependent upon the material powers.

But now when something arises that is not willing to be mere phrase, but insists upon being seed-thoughts for action, people cannot accept it as anything other than phrase. They cannot perceive that a real concept of work depends upon actual knowledge of life, even of single details such as the scientific absurdity existing in the distinction between motor and sensory nerves.

It is necessary today that at least a few men see into these depths. Today it is absolutely necessary that individuals should not let themselves be fooled into saying: We will socialize the outer economic life, but we will not touch the schools, especially the high schools and colleges. They must remain as they are. That is the very worst thing that could happen, for the state of affairs that has prevailed until now will, if it remains as it is, will only become worse. Socialize economic life, and leave the spiritual life as it is, and in a short time out of your apparent socialization you will have a much greater tyranny and much worse conditions of life than ever before. Today of course the economic pressure which exists is the cause of frightful eruptions in the social organism. Is this now to be succeeded by place-hunting, by the worst kind of bureaucracy? Do men who have now (although a little late) finally learnt that they cannot depend upon “throne and alter”, actually believe that it would be any safer to depend in the same way upon the state treasury and state budget? Capitalism has known how to bring the altar around gradually to a respect for power that really no longer exists but that lives on in phrase, into corporation idolatry and corporation place-hunting.

What mankind needs for a renewal of the spirit is the courage to realize that the spiritual life of humanity has become today religious chatter on the one hand , and on the other , thoughtless, brutal action, militarism. The typical man of this modern capitalistic age feels most himself when he is engaged in cutting his coupons, averting his eyes while he does it from what really takes place through that action. On the one hand the gospel made into chatter about love of neighbor and brotherliness, and he sits there comfortably with his scissors, cutting it all to pieces: he does not need to see the reality of what he is doing, because on the other hand he knows that he does not have to protect his business himself: the state does that by manufacturing swords. We have experienced this covenant between business life and state life in modern times: it is precisely what brought the world catastrophe upon us. This “state” of which men have been so proud: what has it been else then the great Protector of economic life as it is carried on under capitalism? My dear friends, one would like to hope that the patriots of the past, whose patriotism in their sense one would not question, ( for they were “good” patriots, they coined the word from a patriotic phrase, and it was very disastrous in the age just past to point out that this patriotic phrase had a very real foundation, that the state reverenced by patriots was after all just a protector of banknotes?)—one would like to hope that these patriots do not suddenly “unpatriotize” themselves and now that their gold is probably bettor protected by the Entente powers, speedily trim their patriotism! I will not say anything in particular about such a possibility, but I should like to draw your attention to the ease with which the patriotic phrase can be transformed into its opposite. There are plenty of examples about us.

These are the things that must be said today, while celebrating Whitsuntide, in regard to the necessity of renewing school and educational life. For the unctuous talk that has been given to mankind should he poured out no longer. Men must accustom themselves to words that point to the realities of the present day. Then it will be possible for the real Pentecost spirit to descend among us, for little tongues of fire to reach into all that arises in the future out of the emancipated spiritual life, into the lowest school as well as the highest, so that in the future the liberated spirit, which is the real Holy Spirit, can bring about the spiritual evolution of mankind.

One is talking perhaps of something that the religious chatterer of today does not think of as exactly “Christian”. But mankind will have to decide whether the Christian talk of the man of today originates in that spirit which Peter denied his Lord three times, or whether it crises out of the spirit that said, “What I have revealed to you is not merely confined to one age, but will stand through all ages. And I will not cease to declare the truth to you; I will be with you until the end of the earth, time.” Those who can hear only the spirit of the past today even in Christianity, will be the phrase makers, the chatterers. Those who accept the living spirit today even for the transformation and rebuilding of the social order,' will be those perhaps in whom one will able to see the true Christ.

May this age grow out of a truly comprehended Pentecost spirit.

There is truly great significance in how certain men feel impelled to-day to speak about the present situation of mankind—men who at least try, with the aid of their feelings and perceptions, to see into the heart of social affairs. In this connection I would like to read you a few sentences from the address which Kurt Eisner gave to a gathering of students in Basle, shortly before his death. Perhaps some of you already know these sentences, but they are extraordinarily important for anyone who wants to grasp the symptomatic meaning of certain things to-day.

“Do I not hear and see clearly” (he says, referring to his earlier remarks), “that in our life this very longing strives to find expression—and yet accompanying it is the conviction that our life, as we are compelled to lead it to-day, is plainly the invention of an evil spirit! Imagine a great thinker, knowing nothing of our time and living perhaps two thousand years ago, who might dream of how the world would look after two thousand years—not with the most exuberant imagination would he be able to conceive such a world as that in which we are condemned to live. In truth, existing conditions are the one great mirage in the world, while the substance of our desires and the longings of our spirit are the deepest and final truth—and everything outside them is horrible. We have simply interchanged dreaming and waking. Our task is to shake off this ancient illusion about the reality of our present social existence. One glance at the war: can you imagine a human reason which could devise anything like it? If this war was not what men call reality, then perhaps we were dreaming, and now have woken up.”

Just think of it—in his efforts to understand the present time, this man was driven to make use of the concept of a dream, and to ask himself the question: Is not the reality which surrounds us to-day much better called a bad dream, than true reality?

So we have the remarkable case—and consider how typical it is—of a thoroughly modern man, a man who has felt himself to be a herald of a new epoch, who regards outwardly perceptible reality as nothing else than maya—rather as Indian philosophy does—as in fact a dream; and this man feels impelled by the singular events of the present to raise the question (no matter in what sense but still to raise it) whether this reality is not indeed a dream!

Yes, the whole tenor of Eisner's speech shows that he was using more than a mere phrase when he said that this present reality could be naught else than something inflicted on mankind by an evil spirit.

Now let us recall some of the many things that have passed through our souls in the course of our anthroposophical endeavours, and above all the fact that in general we try not to look on outwardly perceptible reality as the whole of reality, and that over against the perceptible we set the super-sensible, which alone prevents the perceptible from ranking as the true, complete reality. This outlook, however, is no more than a tiny spark in the currents of contemporary thought, for these are widely permeated by materialistic ideas—and yet we see that such a man as Kurt Eisner, who is certainly untouched by this spark (at any rate in his physical life), finds himself driven by the facts of the present day to make this surprising comparison: he compares outward reality, at least in its current manifestation, to a dream! Faced with present-day reality, he is driven to a confession which he can express only by calling to witness the general truth of the unreality, the maya-character, of the reality that is outwardly perceived.

Let us now go rather more deeply into many of the things which our consideration of the social problem has brought before our souls in the last few weeks. Let us observe how the trend of events in the past century has more and more brought men to the point of denying the reality of the spiritual or super-sensible world, so that this denial is, one might say, established in the widest circles. Certainly, in some quarters—you may object—a great deal is said about the spiritual world; churches are still numerous, if not always full, and words which purport to tell of the spirit echo through them. Moreover—to-day and also yesterday evening—you can listen almost all the time to bells, which again should be an expression of something recognised in the world as spiritual life. But in this connection we experience something else, too. If to-day an attempt is made to hear what the Christ is saying for our present age, then it is precisely from the adherents of the old religious communities that the most vehement attacks come. Real spiritual life, one that relies not merely on faith or on an old tradition, but on the immediate spiritual findings of the present—that is something which very, very few people want to-day.

On the other hand, is it not as though modern humanity were being impelled—not perhaps by an evil world-spirit, but by a good world-spirit—to think again of the spiritual side of existence—as witness the fact that people are surrounded by a sense-perceptible reality of such a kind that a man of modern outlook has to say: It is like a dream... even a great thinker of two thousand years ago could not have conceived the shape which outer reality would wear to-day?

In any case, here is a modern man led by such a recognition to form conceptions which are not customary to-day. I know that the conceptions of reality, which to-day I have pointed to as important, are found rather difficult by many of our anthroposophical friends. But, my dear friends, you cannot cope with life to-day unless you have the will to take account of these difficult conceptions. How do people usually form their thoughts in a certain realm to-day? They hold a crystal in their hands: that is a real object. They take a rose, plucked from its stem, and in just the same way they say: that is a real object. They call them both real objects in the same sense.

Natural scientists, in their chancelleries of learning and in every laboratory and clinic, talk about reality in such a way as to grant it only to things which have the same kind of reality as the crystal and the plucked rose. But is there not an obvious and important difference in the fact that for long ages the crystal retains, quite of itself, its existing form? The rose, plucked from its stem, loses its form in a very much shorter time; it dies. It has not the same degree of reality as the crystal. And the rose-stem itself, if we tear it from the earth, has no longer the same degree of reality that it had while it was planted in the earth. This leads us to look at objects in a way quite different from the superficial observation of the present day. We may not speak of a rose or a rose-stem as real objects; in order to speak of reality in the fullest sense we must take the whole earth into account—and then speak of the rose-stem, and its roses, as a kind of hair sprouting out of this reality!

So you see—sense-perceptible reality includes objects which cease to be real, in the true sense of the word, if they are separated from their foundation. It is here, in this great illusion, that we have to search among the appearances of outer reality for what truly is reality. Mistakes of the kind I have mentioned are common in looking at nature to-day. But anyone who makes them, and has got used to them as the result of centuries of habit, will find it extraordinarily hard to think about social questions in a way that corresponds to reality. For this is the great difference between human life and nature: anything in nature which no longer has full reality, such as the plucked rose, is allowed to die. Now something can have an appearance of reality which is not reality: the appearance is a lie. And we can quite well incorporate as a reality in social life something which is in fact not a reality. Only then it need not immediately fade away; it will turn into a source of pain and torment for mankind. Indeed, nothing can bring forth healing for mankind which is not first experienced and thought out in terms of complete reality, and then planted in the social organism. It is not merely a sin against the social order, but a sin against the truth, if—for example—daily work proceeds on the assumption that human labour-power (I have often said this here) is a commodity. It can be made to seem so, indeed: but this seeming results in pain and suffering for human society, and sets the stage for convulsions and revolutions in economic life.

In short, what needs to become a familiar thought for people to-day is this: not everything which is revealed in the outer appearance of reality—revealed within certain limits—is bound to be a true reality; it may be a living lie. And this distinction between living truths and living lies is something which should be deeply engraved in human minds to-day. For the more people there are in whom it is deeply engraved, in so many more will the feeling awake: we must seek for those things which are not lies, but living truths ... and the sooner will the social organism be restored to health. What must be added to this?

Something further is necessary for discerning the true or merely apparent reality of an external object. Imagine a being who comes from a planet with a different organisation from ours, so that this being has never encountered the distinction between a rose, growing on its stem, and a crystal—he might well believe, if a crystal and a rose were placed before him, that their reality was of the same kind. And he would no doubt be surprised to find the rose soon withering, while the crystal remained unchanged. Here on earth we know where we are in face of the realities, because we have followed the course of things through long periods.

But it is not always possible to distinguish true reality in the way one can with the rose. In life we encounter objects which require us to create a foundation for our judgment if we are to lay hold of the true reality in them. What sort of foundation is this—with respect particularly to social life?

Now, in the two preceding lectures I spoke about this foundation; to-day I will add something more. You know from my writings the descriptions I have given of the spiritual world—the world which man lives through between death and rebirth. You are aware that in referring to this life in the super-sensible, spiritual world one must be clear as to the relationships which prevail between soul and soul. For there the human being is free from his body: he is not subject to the physical laws of the world we live through between birth and death. So one speaks of the force or forces which play from soul to soul. You can read in my Theosophy how one must speak in this connection of the forces of sympathy and antipathy, playing between soul and soul in the soul-world. In a quite inward way these forces play from soul to soul. Antipathy sets soul against soul; through sympathy, souls are made gentler towards each other. Harmonies and disharmonies arise from the inmost experiences of souls. And this inward experience by one soul of the inmost experience of another is what determines the true relationship of the super-sensible to the sense-perceptible world. It is only a reflection—a sort of lingering remnant—of this super-sensible experience, the experience which establishes a true connection with the sense-world, that can be experienced here in the physical world during life.

This reflection, however, must be seen in its true significance. We can ask: How, from a social point of view, is our life here between birth and death related to our super-sensible life? From here we are at once led—as we often have been in studying the necessary threefolding of the social organism—to the middle member, frequently described: in fact to the political State. People who in our epoch have reflected on the political State, have always been concerned to understand exactly what it is. Moreover, the various class-interests of modern times have led to everything being jumbled up together in the State, so that without further knowledge it is pretty well impossible to tell whether the State is a reality, or a living lie.

It is a far remove from the outlook of the German philosopher, Hegel, to the very different outlook which Fritz Mauthner, the author of a philosophical dictionary, has lately proclaimed. Hegel regards the State more or less as the realisation of God on earth. Fritz Mauthner says: the State is a necessary evil. He regards the State as an evil, but one men cannot do without—as something required by social life. So are the findings of two modern spirits radically opposed.

Owing to the fact that a great deal which was formerly instinctive is now rising into the light of consciousness, the most variously-minded people have tried to form conceptions of how the State should be constituted and what sort of entity it ought to be. And these conceptions have taken the most manifold forms. On the one hand we have the pious sheep who refuse to grasp what the State really is, but want to portray it in such a way that there is not much to say about it, but a great deal to bewail. And there are the others, who want to change the State radically, so that men may derive from the State itself a satisfying form of existence. Hence the question arises: How can we gain a perception of what the State really is?

If one observes impartially what can be woven between man and man within the context of the State, and compares it with what can be woven between soul and soul in the life after death (as I described it just now), then and only then can one gain a perception of the reality of the State—of its potential reality. For, just as every relationship which arises from the fundamental forces of sympathy and antipathy in the human soul after death lives in the inmost depths of the soul, so everything built between man and man through political State-life is a pure externality, based on law, on the wholly external ways in which men confront one another.

And if you follow this thought right through, you come to see that the State represents the exact opposite of super-sensible life. And it is the more complete in its own way, this State, the more fully it fills this opposite role: the less it claims to incorporate in its own structure anything that belongs to super-sensible life, the more it merely embodies purely external relationships between man and man—those wherein all men are equal in the sight of the law. More and more deeply is one penetrated by this truth: that the fulfilment of the State consists precisely in it’s seeking to comprise only what belongs to our life between birth and death, only what belongs to our most external relationships.

But then we must ask: If the State reflects super-sensible life only by standing for its opposite, how does the super-sensible find its way into all the rest of our sense-life? In the last lecture I spoke of this from another point of view. To-day I must add that the antipathies which unfold in the super-sensible world between death and birth leave certain remnants, and we bring these with us into physical existence. Working against them in physical life is everything which lives in so-called spiritual life, in spiritual culture. This is what draws men together in religious communities, and in other spiritual societies, so that they may create a counterpart of the antipathies which have lingered on from the life before birth.

All our spiritual culture should be justified on its own ground, for it reflects our pre-earthly life and in a certain sense equips mankind for life in the sense-world, and at the same time it should be a kind of remedy for the antipathies which remain over from the super-sensible world. That is why it is so dreadful when people bring about schisms in spiritual life, instead of working for unity—in spiritual life above all. The remaining antipathies are surging in the depths of the human soul and prevent the achievement of what should be the essential aim: true spiritual harmony, true spiritual collaboration. Just where this should prevail, we find sects springing up. These schisms and sectarianisms are in fact the reflections on earth of the antipathies which are bound up with the origins of all spiritual life, and for which spiritual life should really come to serve as a remedy.

We must recognise this spiritual life as something which has an inner connection with our life before birth—indeed, a certain kinship with it. We should therefore never try to organise spiritual-cultural life except as a free life, outside the realm of politics, which in this sense is not a reflection but a counter-image of super-sensible life. And we shall gain a conception of what is real in the State, and in spiritual-cultural life, only if we take super-sensible life into account, as well as the life of the senses. Both together make up true reality, while the life of senses alone is nothing more than a dream.

Economic life has a quite different character. In economic life the single man works for others. He works for others because he, just as much as the others, finds it to his advantage to do so. Economic life springs from needs, and consists in all kinds of work which go to satisfy the ordinary natural needs of human beings on the physical plane—including the finer but more instinctive needs of the soul. And within economic life there is an unconscious unfolding of something whose influence continues on the far side of death.

Men work for one another out of the egoistic needs of economic life, and from the depths of this work come the seeds of certain sympathies which are destined to flower in our souls during the life after death. And so, just as spiritual-cultural life is a kind of remedy for the remains of antipathies which we bring into earthly existence from the life before birth, so are the depths of economic life a seed-ground for sympathies which will develop after death.

Here is a further aspect of the way in which we learn from the super-sensible world to recognise the necessity of a threefold ordering of the social organism. Most certainly, no one can reach this point of view unless he strives to become familiar with the spiritual-scientific foundation of world-knowledge. But for anyone who does this it will become more and more obvious that a healthy social organism must be membered into these three realms, for the three realms are related in quite distinctive ways to the super-sensible world, which—as I have said—is the complement of the sense-world and together with it makes up true reality.

But now observe—in recent centuries no one has spoken any longer of these interconnections of outward physical existence, as it manifests in cultural life, political life, and economic life. People have gone on spinning out the old traditions, but with no understanding for them. They have lost the practice of taking a direct way, through an active soul-life, into the world of the spirit, in order there to seek for the light that is able to illuminate physical reality, so that this reality comes then to be rightly known for the first time. The leading circles of mankind have set the tone of this unspiritual life. And in this way a deep gulf has arisen between the social classes—a gulf which lies at the root of our life to-day and is not to be drowsily ignored.

Perhaps I may again recall how, before the time of July and August, 1914, drew on, people who belonged to the leading classes—the former leading classes—were accustomed to praise the stage which our civilisation, as they called it, had at last reached. They spoke of how thought could be carried like an arrow over great distances by the telegraph and telephone, and of the other fabulous achievements of modern technique which culture and civilisation had carried to such an advanced stage. But this culture, this civilisation, was already rushing towards the abyss, out of which have come the frightful catastrophes of to-day. Before July and August, 1914, the statesmen of Europe, especially those of Central Europe—this can be established from the documents—declared times without number: Under present conditions, peace in Europe is assured for a long time. That is literally what was said, by the statesmen of Central Europe especially, in their party speeches. I could show you speeches made as late as May, 1914, when it was said: Through our diplomacy, the relationships between countries have been brought to a point which permits us to believe in enduring peace. That, in May, 1914! But anyone who at that time saw through those relationships, had to speak in a different vein. In lectures I gave then in Vienna, (See: The Inner Nature of Man and Life Between Death and Rebirth.) I repeated, before the war, what I have often said in the course of recent years: We are living in the midst of something which can be called only a cancerous social disease, a carcinoma of the social organism. This carcinoma, this ulcer, duly broke out, and became what people call the World War.

At that time, of course, the statement—we live in a carcinoma, a social ulcer—was for most people a mere way of talking, a phrase, for the World War was still in the future. People had no notion that they were dancing on a volcano! For many it is just the same to-day, if attention is now called to the other volcano—and it certainly is one—which lies in all that is now coming to expression out of the social question, as it has long been called. Because people are so fond of sleeping in face of reality, they fail to recognise in this reality the forces which alone turn it into true reality.

You see, that is why it is so hard to bring home to people to-day what is so necessary—to bring home the point of the threefold ordering of a healthy social organism, and the necessity of working towards this threefold ordering! What is it, then, that distinguishes this way of thinking, which comes to expression in the demand for a threefold social order, from other ways of thinking? You see, these other ways spring from trying to work out what would be the best social order for the world, and what must be done in order to reach it. Now observe how different is the way of thinking which is founded on a threefold ordering of the social organism! There is no question here of asking: What is the best way of arranging the social organism? We start from reality by asking: How must human beings themselves be interrelated, so that they will be free members of the social organism and be able to work together for what is right and just?

This way of thinking makes its appeal, not to theories or social dogmas, but to human beings. It says: Let people find themselves in the environment of a threefold social order, and they will themselves say how it should be organised. This way of thinking makes its appeal to actual human beings, not to abstract theories or social dogmas.

Anyone who lived entirely alone would never develop human speech—human speech arises only in a social community. In the same way, anyone who lives alone cannot arrive at a social way of thinking; he will have no social perceptions and no social instincts. Only in a rightly formed community is it possible to build up social life in face of the happenings of the present time.

But a great deal stands in contradiction to that. Because of the rise of materialism in recent centuries, men have moved away from the true reality. They have become estranged from it, and lonely in their inner lives. And most lonely of all are those who have been torn out of the context of their lives and are connected with nothing but the dreary machine—on the one hand, the factory; on the other, soulless capitalism. The human soul has indeed become a desert. But out of the desert there struggles up whatever can proceed from the single individual. And this consists of inner thoughts, inner visions of the super-sensible world, and also visions which throw light on external nature.

Now it is just when we are quite alone, when we are thrown back entirely on ourselves, that we are best disposed in soul for all the knowledge that can be gained by the single individual concerning his relationships with the worlds of nature and of spirit. In contradistinction to that, we have everything that should flow from social thinking. Only if we reflect on this can we form a right judgment of the momentous hour of history in which we are now living. It was necessary, once in the course of world evolution, that men should have this experience of loneliness, in order that out of their loneliness of soul they should develop a life of the spirit. And the loneliest of all were the great thinkers, who to all appearance lived in abstract heights, and sought from there the way to the super-sensible world.

But of course men must not seek only the way to the super-sensible world and to the world of nature; they must also find a way that unites their thinking with social life. Social life, however, cannot be developed in loneliness, but only through genuine living together with other men; and so the lonely individual who emerged in our modern epoch was not well fitted for social thinking. Just when he rightly wanted to make something worth while out of his inner life, the fruits of his inner life turned out to be anti-social, not social thinking at all! The present-day inclinations and cravings of mankind are the outcome of spiritual forces which are bound up with loneliness, and are given a false direction by the overwhelming influence of Ahrimanic materialism.

The importance of this fact comes out clearly if one asks about something which many people find terrible. Suppose one asks: What do you mean by “bolshevistic”? Most people will say: “Lenin, Trotsky.” Now, I can tell you of a Bolshevist who is no longer alive to-day, and he is none other than the German philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte. You will have heard and learnt a great deal about Fichte's idealistic, spiritual way of thinking. But you will not know much about the sort of man Fichte was unless you are familiar with the outlook he expressed in his Geschlossenen Handelstaat (A Closed National Economy), which can be bought very cheaply in the Reclam Library. Read how Fichte conceives the social ordering of the masses of mankind, and compare it with the writings of Lenin and Trotsky—you will find a remarkable agreement. Then you will become critical of merely external representations and judgments, and you will be impelled to ask: What really lies at the bottom of all this? And if you try to enter into it more closely and to get clear about its foundations, you will come to the following.

Suppose you try to make out the particular spiritual orientation of the most radical men of the present day, and endeavour perhaps to penetrate into the souls of the Trotsky’s and Lenin’s, their ways of thinking and forms of thought, and then you ask: How are we to think of such men? And you get this answer: One can imagine them first in a different social setting, and then again in our own social order, in this social order of ours which has developed in the light—or, more truly, in the darkness, the gloom—of the materialism of recent centuries. Now consider, if Lenin and Trotsky had lived in a different social order—what might they have become, with their spiritual forces unfolding in a quite different way? Deep mystics! For in a religious atmosphere the content of such souls might have developed into the deepest mysticism. In the atmosphere of modern materialism it has become what you know it to be.

Take Johann Gottlieb Fichte's Geschlossenen Handelstaat: we have here the social ideal of a man who in truth sought most earnestly to tread the highest path of knowledge who put forth a way of thinking which was constantly inclined towards the super-sensible world. When he conceived the wish to work out for himself a social ideal also, this was indeed a pure impulse of the heart, the human heart. But the very thing which fits us to pursue inwardly the highest ideals of knowledge is a handicap if we want to apply it to social life; it unfits us for developing a social way of thinking. Along the spiritual path taken by Fichte, a man has to make his way alone. Social thinking has to be developed in the community of other human beings. And then the social thinker's task is above all to consider how the social order must be laid out if men are to work together rightly at the task of founding social life on the direct experience of social fellowship. Therefore I never say to people: this is how you should organise private property as a means of production, or public property as a means of production. I am bound to say, rather: Try to work towards a threefold ordering of the social organism; then the operations of capital will be regulated from the spiritual realm, and infused with human rights from the political realm. Then spiritual life and the life of rights will flow together with economic life in an orderly way. And then will come in that socialisation which, in accordance with certain concepts of justice, will see to it that whatever a man acquires, beyond his own needs as a consumer, shall continually pass over into the spiritual realm. It returns once more to the spiritual realm.

At the present time this arrangement applies only to spiritual property, where it shocks nobody. A man cannot preserve his spiritual property for his descendants for more than a certain period—thirty years after his death at most. Then it becomes public property. We have only to take this as a possible model for the return flow of everything that is produced by individual effort, and indeed of everything embraced by the capitalist system—a model for the leading back of all this into the social organism. The question then is simply—how is it all to be divided up? In such parts as will do justice to the immediate spiritual and individual abilities, and also the former individual abilities, of the human beings concerned: it will be a question for the spiritual realm. Men will arrange it like that, if they are rightly situated within the social order. That is what this way of thinking assumes.

In every century, I daresay, these things would be done differently; in such matters no arrangements are valid for all time. But our epoch is accustomed to judging everything from a materialistic standpoint, and so nothing is seen any longer in the right light. I have often pointed out how in modern times labour-power has become a commodity. Ordinary wage contracts are based on that; they derive from the assumption that labour-power is a commodity, and they are determined by the amount of labour which the workman renders to the employer. A healthy relationship will arise only under the following conditions: the contract must by no means be settled in terms of so much labour; the labour must be treated as a rights-question, to be fixed by the political State; and the contract must be based on a division of the goods produced between the manual workers and the spiritual workers. Such a contract can be based only on the goods produced, not on the relationship between workmen and employer. That is the only way to put the thing on a healthy footing.

People ask: whence come the social evils which are associated with capitalism? They say, these evils come from the capitalist economic system. But no evils can arise from an economic system: they arise first of all because we have no real labour laws to protect labour; and further because we fail to notice that the way in which the worker is denied his due share amounts to a living lie. But what does this denial depend on? Not on the organisation of economic life, but on the fact that the social order permits the individual capacities of the employer to be unjustly rewarded, at the worker's expense. The division of proceeds ought to be made in terms of goods, for these are the joint products of the spiritual and the manual workers. But if you use your individual capacities to take from someone something which ought not to be taken, what are you doing? You are cheating him, taking advantage of him! One need only look these circumstances straight in the face to realise that the trouble does not he in capitalism, but in the misuse of spiritual capacities.

There you have the connection with the spiritual world. First make the realm of society healthy, so that spiritual capacities are no longer enabled to take advantage of the workers: then you will bring health into the social organism as a whole. It all turns on perceiving everywhere what is right and just.

In order to perceive this, one needs a principle of justice. To-day we have reached a stage when principles of justice can be derived only from the spiritual world. And again and again it must be pointed out that nowadays it is not enough to keep on and on declaring: People must recover belief in the spirit. Oh, there are plenty of prophets ready to speak of the necessity of belief in the spirit! But it gets nowhere for people merely to say: “In order to bring healing into the unhealthy conditions of our time, men must turn from materialism to the spirit.” ... No, mere belief in the spirit brings no healing to-day! Any number of celebrated prophets may go round the country saying over and over again: “People must turn inwardly” ... or, “The Christ used to be the concern of a man's personal life only; now He must be brought into social life”... with such phrases absolutely nothing is accomplished! For what matters to-day is not merely to believe in the spirit, but to be so filled with the spirit that through us the spirit is carried directly into material existence. It is useless to-day to say. Believe in the spirit ... what is necessary is to speak of a spirit which is in truth able to master external reality, and can truly declare how the membering of the social organism is to be accomplished. For the cause of the unspiritual character of the present day is not that men do not believe in the spirit, but that they cannot reach such a relationship with the spirit as would enable the spirit to seize hold of matter in real life.

How many men there are to-day who think it extraordinarily fine to say: “Oh, there is nothing spiritual in mere material existence—one ought to withdraw from it: our duty is to turn away from material existence to the set-apart life of the spirit.” Here is material reality: you clip your coupons ... and then you sit down in the room reserved for meditation, and off you go to the spiritual world. Two beautifully distinct ways of living, kept gracefully apart! That leads nowhere to-day. What is wanted to-day is that the spirit should wax so strong in human souls that it does not merely find expression in talk about how men are to be blessed or redeemed, but penetrates right into what we have to do in material existence—so that we enable the spirit to flow into and penetrate external reality. To talk habitually about the spirit comes very easily to human beings. And in this connection many people slip into strange contradictions. The character in Anzengruber's play, who denies God, illustrates this; it is specially emphasised that he denies God by saying: “As truly as there is a God in heaven, so am I an atheist.” This type of self-contradicting person, even though it may not take so crass a form as in Anzengruber's play, is far from rare to-day. For it is very common to talk in this style: As truly as there is a God in heaven, so am I an atheist!

All this gives us further warning not to think merely of belief in the spirit, but to try above all to make such an encounter with the spirit that it gives us strength to see through the reality of the material, external world. Then indeed people will stop using the word spirit, spirit, spirit... in every sentence. Then a man will prove by the way he looks at things, that he is seeing them in the light of the spirit. This is what matters to-day: that people should see things in the light of the spirit, and not merely keep on talking about the spirit.

This is what needs to be grasped, so that anthroposophical spiritual science may not be constantly confused with all the talking about the spirit which is so popular nowadays. Again and again, when some Sunday afternoon preacher of the worldly sort has merely spoken in a better style than usual, one hears that someone has said: “He speaks quite in the spirit of Anthroposophy!” Usually, in such cases, he is doing the very opposite! This is the point that needs attention; this is what counts.

Whoever recognises this is not far from perceiving that such a well-intentioned remark—I might say, a remark spoken from a presentiment of tragic death—as the one I quoted from Kurt Eisner, is particularly valuable, because it strikes one like the confession of a man who might say: “To be honest, I don't believe seriously in the super-sensible—at least I have no wish to give it any active attention. Those who speak about the super-sensible have certainly always said: the reality we perceive here with our senses is only a half-reality; it is like a dream! But I am bound to scrutinise the form which this sense-perceptible reality has assumed in the social life of the present—and then it does look to me very like a dream! The effect is that one is forced to say: this reality is clearly the invention of some kind of evil spirit ...”

Certainly a noteworthy confession! But might it not be otherwise? This tragic, terrible guise in which present-day reality presents itself to humanity, could it not be the educative work of a good spirit, urging us to seek in what looks like an evil nightmare for the true reality, which is compounded of the sense-perceptible and the super-sensible? We must not take an exclusively pessimistic view of the present; we can also draw from it the strength to achieve a kind of vindication of contemporary existence.

Then we shall never again allow ourselves to stop at the sense-perceptible: we shall feel impelled to find the way out of it to the super-sensible. Anyone who refuses to seek for this way will indeed be unable to think far without saying: this reality is the invention of an evil spirit! But whoever develops the resolve to rise from this reality to a spiritual reality, will be able to speak also of education by a good spirit. And in spite of everything we see around us to-day, we should remain convinced that humanity will find a way out of the tragic destiny of the present. But, of course, we must attend to the clear injunction that bids us work together for social healing.

This I wished to add to what I have said recently.

You will easily believe what very deep satisfaction it gives me to take up work again among you all on this building of ours. It is a fact that anyone coming into intimate contact with the whole aura of this building today would be able to receive the impression, as a result not only of deep reflection but also of quite superficial thought; that something connected with the most significant, the most weighty tasks of man's future is bound up with this building. And it goes without saying that after long, forced absence one is profoundly satisfied on finding oneself once more at this place where this building stands as a symbol of our cause.

To this I would add that particularly for me, my dear friends, it is a matter of infinite gratification every time I now return after long absence to be able to see how beautifully and significantly the work on the building has progressed through the active devotion of the workers. In these months of my recent absence in particular, when work has been carried out under such difficult conditions, part of the artistic work has gone forward in an unprecedented way; it has made progress in the spirit that should permeate the whole.

With deep pleasure too, I see, as a consequence of the spirit in our work, as consequence of all that is originating here, the real feeling of solidarity among many of our friends—the genuine feeling towards all that this building incorporates. What reveals itself to the soul when one lets this whole matter renew its effect upon one is that here we have a place with which is united such a true sentiment in a number of the friends of our spiritual movement, so sincere a sentiment that it promises a continuance of the best impulses in this movement for the future of mankind for which they are so necessary. In the work devoted to this building there is already something that could serve as a model for all that, in common with what we call today the Anthroposophical Society, is actually intended.

On the other hand, I have a strong feeling that what is favourable, what is so significantly good found here in our building, in the harmony of human work, and human feeling consists in this building being able through its objective nature to free what our movement wills from the subjective interests of individual men.

Concerning what we have just touched upon, my dear friends, there have been indeed, and still are, in all similar societies as well as in the Anthroposophical Society, certain remarkable views, that to be more exact, are remarkable illusions. A great deal is preached about selflessness and universal love between men; this is often, however, a mere mask for certain artful egoistic interests of individual human beings. It true that these individuals do not know that this is a question of mere egoistic interest; in face of their own consciousness they are innocent nevertheless, the fact remains.

The building itself, however, claims from a relatively large number of our friends a selfless devotion to something objective, to something standing out as a symbol of our cause, and free from all that is personal. And what is connected with our building can to that extent very well be, the model for what is sought in our Movement.

My dear friends! When, as today, we greet each other again, we need especially to dwell upon what if fruitful and all-embracing in the spiritual movement of ours. Meeting thus again, we need to reflect upon how earnestly we can believe that however it may happen—and the manner in which it does so depends upon how conditions take their course—man will never find his way out of the appalling blind alley into which he has come today until he decides in some way to seek a starting point for fruitful work, fruitful action, within a spiritual movement such as ours. We shall certainly not insist egoistically that the truth is to be found only in our small confined circle where it is recognised, through the very nature of the matter, that man has landed himself in the present terrible situation by neglecting his own spiritual substance. We should be able to recognise ourselves as men who are united in those ideas that alone can lead mankind out of this blind alley.

In the soul of modern men there is indeed very much that is not clear. When it has been possible to renew our knowledge here or there about the needs prevailing in our spiritual movement the following may be said on one hand: Yes indeed, the number of souls of those who are thirsting for spiritual life in our sense has very greatly increased. The longing for such spiritual life can well be said to have become infinitely greater; the attention given to our impulses has recently become undeniably greater, at least in those spheres that have been outwardly accessible to me in these last years and especially in recent months. It is not without meaning that I remark upon this distinct increase and strengthening of man's longing for the spiritual life. It is true that over against this strengthening and sharpening of the desire for spirit life there stands the terrible confusion from which the greater part of mankind is suffering. This terrible confusion among men comes about through the outworn ideas, or it would be better to say the outworn lack of ideas, the easy-going comfort where all keen vigorous thought concerned, the comfort that comes from the laxity, the indolence, with which during many decades, the thought-life on earth has been carried. This laxity, this laziness, leads souls astray in the present yearning after spiritual life. On the one hand, men are immersed in a genuine longing for spirituality, for strong supersensible impulses. On the other hand, these souls are fettered by the old powers that do not wish to withdraw from the scene of human activity, but should be able to see from this very activity how far they are removed from having any further place there. It might be said that one finds everywhere this dark impression, this impression of a cleft.

In many places in connection with repeated lectures with lantern slides, I have talked a great deal with our members about the Group that will take the chief place in our building. It could be seen on the one hand what powerful impulses have actually entered those souls who, by reason of the conditions during past years, have not even had a glimpse of what is going on here. A new human understanding is already arising from the very way in which what is ahrimanic and what is luciferic has been thought out in connection with what belongs to the Christ and has been represented and revealed in our Group. It makes a deep impression on souls when they are approached by all that is thus given. On the other hand, however, my dear friends, we find everywhere the obstructive influences of what is widespread among men in the remnants of what is old, rotten, in their so called cultural life.

This could be seen particularly in what might be called in a real sense the humorous frame of mind with which the lectures were received that were given at the art centre of our friend Herr von Bernus in Munich, when I tried to show a large audience the inner impulses active here in our conception of art. That did indeed arouse interest in people to an extraordinary degree, for I held lectures of this kind in Munich in February and in May and had to give each of them twice. Herr von Bernus assured me there were so many enquiries that I should have been able to give four times over each of the public lectures dealing with the principles of my conception of art, as they have found expression in the building here. Interest was certainly there, but it goes without saying one could find less reason to be pleased in the agreement shown with what was said by the critic of a Munich newspaper, which might be called a showing of teeth though politely and humorously. It was particularly facetious since inner resentment made itself felt against what could not be understood. It was all—not spoken,—but spat out, if you forgive the inelegant expression. And it was shown up by the very interest aroused by the matter where honesty and sincerity spoke in opposition to what was otherwise noticeable in this artistic centre (that is Munich, it goes without saying; it is a well-known fact). Thus was shown how in this centre of artistic activity the most intelligible as well as the unintelligible stuff was talked... It is just in this sort of discrepancy that we get an example of how today the two streams of which I have been speaking are present, and how we need to stand consciously within what is essential and important, towards which we must struggle for the sake of the world and its future.

I am certainly not saying all this because when our matters have publicity anywhere I would strive for what is called a “good press” for the moment we had a “ good press” I should think there must be something wrong, something of ours must have been untrue.

All these things are suitable for calling up in us a consciousness that it is very necessary for us to take a decided stand on the grounds of our cause. For nothing could promote greater confusion among us than our wishing to make any kind of compromise with—well with what the external world would consider it right for us to do. In what we do it is only towards the principles for which we stand that must look for guidance.

Another example of what we have been discussing, less directly connected with our cause, nevertheless connected inwardly, is the recent increasing interest shown in the most varied places for Eurythmy. And when we who were present remember how Eurythmy was received particularly in one place, where it had scarcely been seen before, it was partly something entirely new to the audience, namely in Hamburg, we have really to remember this reception with the deepest satisfaction. The significance of the impulses going out from even an affair of that kind was especially evident in Hamburg. People were there who to all intents and purposes were witnessing a proper performance of Eurythmy for the first time. And the possibility will yet arise perhaps for Eurythmy to be performed publicly. It is just at this juncture, however, that we must stand on the very firmest ground with our cause and do nothing that is not entirely consistent with it.Otherwise, my dear friends, it would soon be seen that, from a certain point of view, it must not be thought that I shall yield when some particular matter is in question that depends upon me. Most of you already know that where no principle is concerned, when some purely human affair comes to the fore, it goes without saying that I am always in it all with best of you. When it is a question, however, of approaching the boundary where any principle whatever has to be forsworn—even in the smallest degree—I shall show myself inflexible. Therefore, at the present time, when so much dancing can be seen—for there is dancing everywhere, it is quite dreadful, if you live in a town any night you join in a dance evening—when there is show-dancing everywhere, if it should be thought (I do not say all this without good reason; although I do not specify any particular instance, I have good reason to speak) if it should be thought that by giving public performances of Eurythmy, we meant to identify ourselves with any kind of journalistic stunt to put forward some kind of claim for attention, then I should take precautions against this in the most determined manner. A feeling for what is in good taste must be forthcoming solely out of our cause.

You see my dear friends, we have sometimes also to remember, especially on meeting again, to conduct according to the standard of spiritual impulses the necessary direct activity resulting from the will. These spiritual impulses will have to fight against a great deal of what today we can no longer call prejudice, for things work too powerfully be described by such a weak term. I do not say in a conceited, egoistical way “We” have to fight, but these impulses will have to fight against many different things. Now over and over again we have to refer to the terrible malady of our age, that consists in lack of control where the life of thinking is concerned. For, rightly conceived, the life of thought is already a spiritual life. It is because men give so little heed to their life of thinking that they seldom find their way into the spiritual worlds.

There is one thing upon which I must repeatedly touch from the most varied sides, namely, what an appalling value is put today upon the mere content of thoughts. The content of thoughts, however, is what is of least importance! The content of thoughts—Look! a grain of wheat is a grain of wheat, this cannot be gainsaid. Even though a grain of wheat is a grain of wheat, however, when you put it into suitable, good, fruitful ground you get a juicy ear, and when you, put it into ground that is barren and stony, you get either nothing at all or a rotten ear. But each time you are dealing with a grain of wheat.

Let us speak of something other than a grain of wheat. Let us say instead of ‘grain of wheat ’, ‘idea of free man’ which is so much discussed today. Some will say ‘idea of free man’ is the ‘idea of free man.’ It is just the same as a grain of wheat is a grain of wheat. But there is a difference in whether ‘idea of free man’ flourishes in a heart, in soul where this heart and soul is fruitful ground, or whether the ‘idea of free man’, exactly the same idea with the same foundation, flourishes in Woodrow Wilson's head! It matters not in the least if a grain of wheat is sown in stony ground or right into the rock, and it is just true that all the so called beautiful ideas that we are given in the programmes of Woodrow Wilson signify nothing if they come out of his head. But this is something that modern man comes to understand with such infinite difficulty, for he holds the view that it is the content of a programme, the content of the idea, has as little significance as the germinating power of a grain of wheat before it is planted in fertile ground.

To think with reality! Man has the greatest need of this. And something else is connected with the present unreality in thinking namely, men are taken unawares by almost all that happens. Indeed one might ask when has that not occurred in these last years?. Men are surprised by everything, and they will go on being more and more surprised. But they will not have anything to do with what is really working in the world, and this today makes it impossible for them to bring any foresight to bear on their affairs.

Working merely with ideas, one can from any side base anything upon anything. If one works with the content of ideas alone it is actually possible to base everything on anything. This is also something it is necessary to see into increasingly and ever more deeply; it is necessary but there is little will for it.

Generally, when such things are spoken of, and examples of them given, one meets with no real response because the examples seem too grotesque. But our whole life of soul and spirit today fairly hums with these things that give so grotesque an impression on being brought to light—my dear friends, they buzz around us! I know that many of you may feel resentment if I give you a really outstanding idea as an example—I will, however, quote this instance.

Now it is a case here of a University professor, an old respected professor at a university, who lit on the fact that Goethe during his long life was attracted by various women. Yes, our professor came up against this idea and took upon himself the task of making a real study of both the life of Goethe and that of the spirits connected with him. And we see how he obviously makes it his business, in spite of not being professor at a European university, to go to work as thoroughly as a mid-European professor usually does, and he made to pass before his soul the whole procession of Goethe's ladies in their relation to Goethe. What did he discover? I can quote this for you almost in his very words.

He discovered that each woman Goethe loved momentarily during his life can be said to have been for him a kind of Belgium, the neutrality of which he violated and then bemoaned that his heart bled for having been obliged to assail shining innocence. Neither did he forget to assert, each time, like the German Chancellor, that this sphere of violated neutrality had deserved a better fate but that he, Goethe, could not do otherwise since his destiny and the rights of his spiritual life obliged him to sacrifice the loved one—yes, even to offer up the pain of his very heart on the altar of the duty he owed to his own immortal ego.

Now I could give you here many other ideas that come in this book. You might ask for, what purpose? But, my dear friends, there is very good reason. For you find this kind of idea all over the world. The ideas of modern men are like that! And it is not without reason that such ideas should show themselves in literature where the essence of human thinking appears. This conception is upheld by Santayana, a professor at Harvard University in America, a much esteemed Spaniard who is, however, completely Americanised. His book was written during this present catastrophe, or at least Boutroux has translated it into French during the war. Shortly before this Boutroux gave a lecture in Heidelberg in which he eulogised German Philosophy in the most flattering terms! The book is called The Errors of German Philosophy and is entirely characteristic of present-day thinking. The appearance of this book was certainly not just a casual event but is very characteristic of modern thought and compares man with what is very far removed from him, with the same facility we find in Professor Santayana when he compares Belgian neutrality with Goethe's treatment of various women. For, if you have eyes to see it, this kind of thinking meets you in every sphere of so-called modern science. It is a fact; you come across it everywhere.

Now it is just the task of the spiritual impulse to which our Anthroposophy is devoted, to make a stand against three fundamental evils in the present so-called culture of mankind. There is nothing for it but to fight against these fundamental evils. One fundamental evil shows itself in the sphere of thinking, another in the sphere of feeling and the third fundamental evil is seen in the sphere of the will.

In the sphere of thinking we have gradually reached the point where men can only think in the way the thinking takes its course when it is strictly bound up with the brain. But this thinking, so closely connected with the brain, this thinking that refuses to make a flight to the spiritual, is condemned in all circumstances to be narrow and confined. And the most significant symptom of present scientific thinking in particular is narrowness and limitation. In the field of his narrowness and limitation great things can certainly be done. It is done for example, in modern science. But the thought applied to science today has no need of genius, my dear friends! Thus, narrowness, limitation, is what must be striven against, especially in the intellectual sphere. Today I will simply give these things in outline, but later we shall be describing them more in detail.

In the sphere of feeling it is a question of men having gradually arrived at a certain philistinism—we can only call it so—philistinism, lack of generosity, and being bound to a certain confined circle. It is the chief characteristic mark of the philistine that he is incapable of being interested in the big affairs of the world. Village pump politicians are always philistines. Naturally, in the sphere of Spiritual Science this does not suffice, for here one cannot confine oneself to a narrow circle, we have to be interested in what is outside the earth, therefore in a very wide circle indeed. And people get quite annoyed at the mere suggestion that there should be a desire to know something about a circle wide enough to embrace Moon, Sun, Saturn. In all spheres, however, philistinism must soften into non-philistinism if Spiritual Science is to penetrate. Sometimes that is not convenient or comfortable, for it means facing up unreservedly to the matter. It demands a more unprejudiced facing up to the matter.

Recently an awkward thing happened in our midst—but I stopped it because otherwise perhaps—well, nothing actually happened but something could have happened. Now you will remember the Zurich lectures of last fear; among various examples I gave then of how Darwinism can be overcome through the growth of natural science itself, I pointed to the excellent book by Oskar Hertwig called Des Werden der Organismen (How Organisms come into Being). Here, and every time the opportunity occurred, I referred to this excellent book. Very soon after this work a shorter book appeared by this same Oskar Hertwig, in which the same Oskar Hertwig spoke about the social, the ethical and the political life. And I then thought to myself: it may happen that some of our members having heard me call Oskar Hertwig's book about organisms an outstanding book will assume that this second volume is excellent also, when it is actually a worthless book, a book written by a man who in this particular sphere—in the sphere of the social life, the ethical life and the political life—cannot put into shape a single orderly thought. I feared lest certain of our members might already have judged that since it came from Hertwig this book too would have some kind of merit. So I had to step in and again whenever I could seize the opportunity I availed myself of it to point out that I considered this second book of the author, who had previously written so well about natural science, to be the worthless and foolish effort of a man who had no ability to speak of the things of which he spoke here.

Our Spiritual Science does not admit of one thing conveniently following from another, without each new fact being confronted and judged impartially. Spiritual Science demands from men actual proof of the concrete nature of every single case. Philistinism is something that will vanish when the impulse of Spiritual Science spreads. So much for the sphere of feeling.

And in the sphere of the will there is something that recently has particularly and in the widest sense taken hold of mankind, something I can only term lack of skill. As a rule, a man today is very able within the narrow circle of what he learns, but he is considerably inept about everything outside this circle. One comes across people who can't even sew on a button—that is only one example. There are men who are unable to sew on a button! Lack of skill in anything beyond a narrow circle is what is specially prevalent in the sphere of the will. Whoever takes what we call Spiritual Science with his whole soul, and not just with abstract thinking, will see that it makes a man more dexterous and fits him actually to spread his interest over a wider area, to extend his will over a wider world. Naturally it is just where this lack of skill is concerned that spiritual science is still too weak; but the more intensively we take it the more will it contend with unskillfulness.

This is what confronts the present-day acceptance of Spiritual Science with what might be called a trinity: narrowness in the intellectual sphere; philistinism, which means a lack of generosity, in the sphere of feeling; unskillfulness in the sphere of will.

And the three are loved nowadays even if loved unconsciously. Nothing in the world today is more loved than unskillfulness, philistinism and narrow-mindedness. Because they are loved it will not be easy for men to progress to the wide views to which they must come—to the way in which we must look at all that is connected with the names Ahriman and Lucifer. And it is just here that something important must understood today. For today among many other things there is an important transition from the luciferic to the ahrimanic. And as this transition is shown not simply elsewhere but also here in Switzerland one may well speak of it here. In this region the first has perhaps less significance owing to the very habits of the Swiss. The second, however, shows every prospect of attaining more importance precisely in this country. Where certain things are concerned mankind is indeed in a state of transition from faults that are luciferic to those that are ahrimanic, from luciferic impulses that run counter to human development to ahrimanic counter-impulses.

Now certain impulses of earlier days holding good in educational matters were of a thoroughly luciferic nature. Ambition and vanity were counted on in educational matters. (All of us when young, with the exception of the youngest among us, have known this quite well.) Perhaps this applies less to Switzerland but elsewhere it is pretty prevalent—this reckoning on ambition and vanity—orders, titles, and so on and so forth! Some people's whole career was based on the luciferic impulses of vanity and ambition, on the being worth more than other men. Just try to think back to how educational affairs were indeed built up on such luciferic impulses.

At the present time there is an endeavour to put ahrimanic impulses in the place of those that are luciferic. Today they hide themselves behind the elegant term “ability tests”. In the ahrimanic sphere this corresponds to what in the luciferic sphere was boasting about vanity and ambition even among children. Today there is an endeavour to seek out those the most gifted, or those who apart from that are most successful in class; out of these again individuals are taken. Among these gifted ones tests are made, intelligence tests, memory tests, perception tests and so on. This is something very suited to the Swiss disposition. And should the luciferic play a very small part here, the ahrimanic shows itself nicely in bud in the understanding for these ability tests. For these ability tests proceed from the intelligence, from science, from the present-day psychology of the learned. Then these gifted ones who are to be tested are made to sit down and are given the written words: murdered, looking-glass, the murderer's victim. And they sit there, poor lambs, in front of the three words murderer, looking-glass, the murderer's victim, and are supposed to look for a connecting link between them. One child finds that the murderer steals upon his victim, but the victim has a looking-glass in which the murderer is reflected so that the victim is able to save himself. So much for the first child. His gift of perception takes him as far as connecting the three words in this way.

Now comes another:—A murderer is creeping on his victim and sees himself in a looking-glass. His face appears to him in it as the face of somebody with a bad conscience, so he leaves his victim on account of seeing the reflection of his own face. That is the second child.

The third child makes yet another combination. A murderer comes creeping, he finds a mirror and falls against it so that the mirror falls down with a terrible noise, it makes a regular disturbance. The victim hears the noise and is in time to defend himself against the murderer.

The last child is the most talented! The first only found the nearest combination of ideas; the second an obvious matter of morals; the third child found a very complicated connection of ideas, and this one is the most talented!—That is more or less how it is. When describing things briefly one naturally gives them a little colouring of one's own. But this is how the ability of children is henceforward going to be tested to find out who is the most talented.

One thing is certain, my dear friends—if the men who invent these methods would just think of the great people they revere, Helmholtz for instance, and so on, Newton and so on, these great ones would one and all, if given these tests, have been looked upon as the most untalented little rascals. Nothing would have come of it. For Helmholtz who is certainly considered by those who give these tests today as a very great physicist—as I think you will agree—was a hydrocephalic and not at all gifted in his youth, and so on and so forth.

What is it that people want to test? Simply the outer organism, entirely what may be counted as the physical instrument of man, what is purely ahrimanic in human nature. If ever the fruits of these ability tests are to come to anything, more ghastly thought-pictures will arise than those that have led to the present human catastrophe. When, however, one speaks today about anything that may lead to catastrophic events in perhaps a hundred years, this does not interest man. For we live now in this transition from a luciferic educational system to an educational system that is ahrimanic; and we must belong to those who understand how to see clearly into such matters:

Men must change what is active force for the future into forces of the present. For this is what is demanded from us today—to confront concrete reality in a true, genuine, unprejudiced way.

Here one may have very strange experiences. I do not remember if I have already mentioned here a very interesting experience of mine. There are writings of Woodrow Wilson's—one about “Freedom”, another just called “Literature”. These writings have been very much admired—are still very much admired. In the publication called “Literature” an interesting lecture appears again which Woodrow Wilson once gave about the historical evolution of America. And elsewhere, too, interesting lectures by Woodrow Wilson have been repeated having wide historic standpoints. And reading these writings I had an interesting experience. In them one finds isolated sentences which appeared to me extraordinarily familiar yet certainly not copied from anywhere—certainly not copied they nevertheless seemed to me wonderfully familiar. And the idea soon struck me that these sentences of Woodrow Wilson's might just well have been written by Herman Grimm, that quite a number of these sentences indeed are found word for word in Grimm. Herman Grimm I love; Woodrow Wilson—Well, you know by now that I do not exactly love him! Nevertheless I cannot on that account conceal the objective fact that where the content of the subject is concerned one could simply take over whole sentences from Herman Grimm's lectures and articles and transpose them into those of Wilson—and, vice versa, transpose sentences of Wilson's into the works of Herman Grimm. Here are two people who as far as the actual text is concerned are saying just the same thing. We have, however, to learn today that when two people say the same thing it is not the same! For the interesting fact meets us that Herman Grimm's sentences are personally striven for, bit by bit they are wrenched from the soul. The sentences of Woodrow Wilson that sound so similar come from a kind of characteristic frenzy. The man is possessed by a subconscious ego forcing these sentences into the conscious life.

Whoever can judge of such things realises that this is the point here! A grain of wheat is a grain of wheat: The difference, however, lies in where it is sown, in what kind of soil. There is a difference in whether an idea becomes so much part of a personality because he has striven for it bit by bit in his own particular way, or whether one gets the idea by being possessed by the subconscious, everything sounding out of a possessed subconscious, out of a consciousness that is possessed by the subconscious.

Thus it is a question today of understanding that the content of thoughts, the content of programmes, are not of importance—the important thing is the livingness of the life lived by mankind.

My dear friends! We can teach materialistic philosophy, we can teach the philosophy of mere ideas; we can teach a science that is merely materialistic, and in this merely materialistic science become a most excellent European teacher, a credit to the university and a good citizen of the State. The type is not so rare, I fancy you can find them anywhere, these ornaments and lights of science, who at the same time are quite exemplary good citizens; one can well be this, my dear friends! But take some ideas, I should say an idea of a definite kind, let us take as a trivial idea the struggle for existence, for instance, or those ideas that are advocated by more peaceable people such as Oskar Hertwig, and so on, or ideas upheld by Spencer, Mill, Boutroux or Bergson who certainly are not wishing to press forward to the spiritual life, but are confined to the philosophy of mere ideas. But still more, take the materialistic ideas of science, take these ideas! It is true they might be able to spring up in the brain of the good subjects of the State. Very well. But, my dear friends, a grain of wheat is a grain of wheat; nevertheless it makes a difference whether it grows in soil that is fertile for it or in rocky soil, and it makes a difference whether these scientific ideas which can be striven for in Europe as a credit to science, and hold good in the universities, thrive in the brains of the university students, or whether they spring up in the brain of a man whose brother already as a young man at the end of the eighties was counted a shining light in science at the Petersburg laboratory... Such facts certainly like a flash of lightning illumine things that are working at the present time! Take this young man who was there in the Petersburg laboratory about the year already a shining light in science, full of productive ideas in chemistry with a medal—a very rare thing—distinguished by this special medal from all those working with him, and highly esteemed even as a young man—and suddenly he disappears! Even marked out by the university authorities—he is suddenly no longer there! In all manner of roundabout ways his colleagues have to find out that meanwhile he has been hanged for taking part in a conspiracy against the reactionary Alexander III. It makes a difference whether the same idea enters the brain of a worthy university professor of Western Europe, or the brain of the brother of the man who was hanged under such conditions. When it enters the brain of this brother it changes this brother into a Lenin—for the hanged mans brother is Lenin—then this idea becomes the driving force behind all that you now see in Eastern Europe.

Idea is idea, as grain of wheat is grain of wheat; one has, however, to realise whether something is the same idea that arises either in the brain of a university professor or in the brain of the brother of this man they hanged. We must have the will to see into the background of existence where lie the actual impulses behind events. And we must have the courage to reject all the empty nonsense about programmes, ideas, sciences, of those who believe in them. Something depends on what they uphold. This or that may be upheld according to its content, nevertheless it is of consequence in what sphere of actual life what is thus upheld lies, just as it is of consequence where the grain of wheat falls, whether in fertile or unfertile ground. In every sphere man must find the way out of the abstraction that in the present grave conditions is everywhere leading to illusion or to chaos; he must find the way to the reality that can be found in spirituality alone! And however long it be, this is the only road by which man can find his way out of the present confusion to what can bless and heal him.

This is what should be written on our hearts, my dear friends, something in which we can all be united. this is something with which we should greet each other in earnest, associating ourselves in this knowledge with what must be the cure for man's failings. For it is possible to cure them. But, my dear friends, this may not be done with quack remedies, they must be healed by something the lack of which has brought mankind into this chaos.

Leninism would never have taken hold of the East had not materialistic science—not always recognised as such—been taught in the West. For what has been produced in the East is the direct child of materialistic science. It is just a child of materialistic science. Through Karl Marx a changeling has arisen; the real child of materialistic science already exists in the East. But we must have the will really to see into these things.

This, my dear friends, is as it were the background against which our building is being erected. And individual men who work here at this building think about it quite apart from the ideas today affecting men in so many lands. We can well imagine that outside, in other countries, there may be people who consider that men are living here who keep aloof from what concerns the world and, as these people believe, should concern it. It is easy to imagine people looking reproachfully at this place. Those who have their whole heart and soul in this building need not worry themselves about being thus reproached. For even if this building does not perhaps fulfil its task, if it never reaches its goal, what works on the building, my dear friends, and what proceeds from those working with devotion on the building, is today the most important thing of all; it is what must rescue men from everything into which they have fallen. And when people outside believe that here men are working with no thought for the task of present-day mankind, the answer must be that here we are working on what is of supreme importance today, on what is preeminently essential, only others know nothing of it, it is something of which as yet they are ignorant. But the important point is that mankind will want to know something of what is happening here.

Once again let it be emphasised. It is not important whether this building attains its goal—although it would be good were it to do so. What is important is that this building should be worked upon out of certain ideas that men have discovered for this work. It is not the content of these ideas but the way in which they live that gives them their impulses for the future, whereas the ideas so many believe in today are simply and solely ideas that incline towards the grave, ideas of a former age which are passing into dissolution and are ripe for dissolution.

I have already indicated a few of the symptomatic forces that play a part in the development of contemporary history. I have only time to discuss a few of these impulses. To discuss them all—or even the most significant—would take us too far. I have been asked to give special attention to specific impulses of a symptomatic nature. This can be deferred until next week when I will willingly speak of those symptoms which have special reference to Switzerland and at the same time I will attempt to give a sketch of Swiss history.

Today, however, I propose to continue the studies we have already undertaken. I concluded my lecture yesterday with a picture, albeit a very inadequate picture, of the development in recent times of one of the most significant Symptoms of contemporary history—socialism. Now for many who are earnestly seeking to discover the real motive forces of evolution, this social, or rather socialist movement occupies the focus of attention; apart from socialism they have never really considered the Claims of anything else. Consequently people have failed in recent times to give adequate attention to the very important influence of something which tends to escape their notice. Even where they searched for new motives they paid no attention to those of a spiritual nature. If we ask how far people were aware of the impulses characteristic of modern evolution we can virtually discount from the outset those personalities who in the nineteenth century, and more especially in the twentieth century, were largely oblivious of contemporary evolution, who belonged to those circles which were indifferent to contemporary trends. The historians of the old upper classes were content to plough the old furrows, to record the genealogy of dynasties, the history of wars and perhaps other related material. It is true that studies in the history of civilization have been written, but these studies, from Buckle to Ratzel, take little account of the real driving forces of history. At the same time the proletariat was thirsting for knowledge and felt an ever-increasing desire for education. And this raised the three questions I mentioned yesterday. But the proletariat lacked the will to explore the more subtle interrelations of historical development. Consequently, up to the present, a historical symptom that has not been sufficiently emphasized is the historical significance of the natural scientific mode of thinking.

One can of course speak of the scientific mode of thinking in terms of its content or in relation to the transformation of modern thinking. But it is important to consider in what respect this scientific thinking has become a historical symptom like the others I have mentioned—the national impulse, the accumulation of insoluble political problems, etcetera. In fact, since the beginning of the epoch of the Consciousness Soul, the scientific mode of thinking has steadily increased amongst wide sections of the population. It is a mistake to imagine that only those think scientifically who have some acquaintance with natural science. That is quite false; in fact the reverse is true. Natural scientists think scientifically because that is the tendency of the vast majority of people today. People think in this way in the affairs of daily life—the peasant in the fields, the factory worker at his bench, the financier when he undertakes financial transactions. Everywhere we meet with scientific thinking and that is why scientists themselves have gradually adopted this mode of thought. It is necessary to rectify a popular misconception on this subject. It is not the mode of thinking of scientists or even of monistic visionaries that must engage our attention, but the mode of thinking of the general public. For natural science cannot provide a sufficiently powerful counterpoise to the universalist impulse of the church of Rome. What provides this counterpoise is a universal thinking that is in conformity with the laws of nature. And we must study this impulse as symptom in relation to the future evolution of modern man.

Text-books of history, rather thoughtlessly, usually date the birth of modern times from the discovery of America and the invention of gunpowder and printing, etcetera. If we take the trouble to study the course of recent history we realize that these symptomatic events—the discovery of America, the invention of gunpowder, and the art of printing, etcetera—did in fact inspire seamen and adventurers to pioneer voyages of exploration, that they popularized and diffused traditional knowledge, but that fundamentally they did not change the substance of European civilization in the ensuing centuries. We realize that the old political impulses which were revived in the different countries nonetheless remained the same as before because they were unable to derive any notable benefit from these voyages of discovery. In the newly discovered countries they simply resorted to conquest as they had formerly done in other territories: they mined and transported gold and so enriched themselves. In the sphere of printing they were able increasingly to control the apparatus of censorship. But the political forces of the past were unable to derive anything in the nature of a decisive impulse from these discoveries which were said to mark the birth of modern times. It was through the fusion of the scientific mode of thinking—after it had achieved certain results—with these earlier inventions and discoveries in which science had played no part that the really significant impulse of modern times arose. The colonizing activities of the various countries in modern times would be unthinkable without the contributions of modern science. The modern urge for colonization was the consequence of the achievements of natural science in the technical field. It was only possible to conquer foreign territories, as colonization was destined to do with the aid of scientific inventions, with the application of scientific techniques. These colonizing activities therefore first arose in the eighteenth century when natural science began to be transformed into technics.

Applied science marks the beginning of the machine age, and with it a new era of colonization which gradually spreads over the whole world. With technics an extremely important impulse of modern evolution is born in the Consciousness Soul. Those who understand the determinative factors here are aware that the impulses behind worldwide colonial expansion, that these colonizing activities and aspirations are directly related to the epoch of the Consciousness Soul. This epoch, as you know, will end in the third millenium, to be followed by the epoch of the Spirit Self, and will as the result of colonization bring about a different configuration of mankind throughout the world. Now the epoch of the Consciousness Soul recognizes that there are so-called civilized and highly civilized men, and others who are extremely primitive—so primitive that Rousseau was captivated by their primitive condition and elaborated his theory of the ‘noble savage.’ In the course of the epoch of the Consciousness Soul this differentiation will cease—how it will cease we cannot now discuss in detail. But it is the function of the Consciousness Soul to end this differentiation which is a heritage from the past.

Armed with this knowledge we see the connection between wars such as the American Civil War and modern colonizing activities in their true light. When we bear in mind the importance of these colonizing activities for the epoch of the Consciousness Soul then we gain insight into the full significance of isolated symptoms in this field. And these colonizing activities are inconceivable without the support of scientific thinking.

We must really give heed to this scientific thinking, if, from the point of view of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, the epoch of the Consciousness Soul, we wish to penetrate to the true reality of human evolution. It is a characteristic of this modern scientific thinking that it can only apprehend the ‘corpse’ of reality, the phantom. We must be quite clear about this, for it is important. The scientific method starts from observation and proceeds to experimentation, and this applies in all spheres. Now there is a vast difference between the observation of nature and the knowledge which is confirmed by experimental proof. Observation of nature—with different nuances—was common to all epochs. But when man observes nature he becomes one with nature and shares in the life of nature. But, strangely enough, this communion with nature blunts the consciousness to some extent. One cannot live the life of nature and at the same time know or cognize in the sense in which the modern Consciousness Soul understands this term. One cannot do both at the same time any more than one can be asleep and awake at the same time. If one wishes to live in communion with nature one must be prepared in a certain sense to surrender one's consciousness to nature. And that is why the observation of nature cannot fathom its secrets, because when man observes nature his consciousness is somewhat dimmed and the secrets of nature escape him. In order to apprehend the secrets of nature he must be alive to the super-sensible.

One cannot develop the Consciousness Soul in a semiconscious state, a state of diminished consciousness, and therefore modern natural science quite instinctively attempts to dispense with observation and to depend upon experimentation for its findings. Experiments have been undertaken even in the fields of biology and anthropology. Now in experimentation the first consideration is to select and assemble the material, to determine the order of procedure. In experimental embryology for example, the order of procedure is determined not by nature but by intellection or human intelligence; it is determined by an intellectual faculty which is detached from nature and is centred in man. ‘We murder to dissect’—our knowledge of nature is derived from experimental investigation. Only what is acquired experimentally can be exploited technically. Knowledge of nature only becomes ripe for technical exploitation when it has passed through the indirect process of experimentation. The knowledge of nature which hitherto had been introduced into social life had not yet reached the stage of technics. It would be monstrous to speak of technics unless it is concerned purely with the application of experimentation to the social order or to what serves the social order.

Thus modern man introduces into the social order the results of experimental knowledge in the form of technics; that is to say, he brings in the forces of death. Let us not forget that we bring forces of death into our colonizing activities; that when we construct machines for industry, or submit the worker to the discipline of the machine we are introducing forces of death. And death permeates our modern historical structure when we extend our monetary economy to larger or smaller territories and when we seek to build a social order on the pattern of modern science as we have instinctively done today. And whenever we introduce natural science into our community life we introduce at all times the forces of death that are self destructive.

This is one of the most important symptoms of our time. We can make honest and sincere pronouncements—I do not mean merely rhetorical pronouncements—about the great scientific achievements of modern times and the benefits they have brought to technics and to our social life. But these are only half truths, for fundamentally all these achievements introduce into contemporary life an unmistakably moribund element which is incapable of developing of itself. The greatest acquisitions of civilization since the fifteenth century are doomed to perish if left to themselves. And this is inescapable. The question then arises: if modern technics is simply a source of death, as it must inevitably be, why did it arise? Certainly not in order to provide mankind with the spectacle of machines and industry, but for a totally different reason. It arose precisely because of the seeds of death it bore within it; for if man is surrounded by a moribund, mechanical civilization it is only by reacting against it that he can develop the Consciousness Soul. So long as man lived in communion with nature, i.e. before the advent of the machine age, he was open to suggestion because he was not fully conscious. He was unable to be fully self-sufficient because he had not yet experienced the forces of death. Ego-consciousness and the forces of death are closely related. I have already tried to show this in a variety of ways: In ideation and cognition, for example, man is no longer in contact with the life-giving, vitalizing forces within him; he is given over to the forces of organic degeneration. I have tried to show that we owe the possibility of conscious thought to the process of organic degeneration, to the processes of destruction and death. If we could not develop in ourselves ‘cerebral hunger’, that is to say, processes of catabolism, of degeneration and disintegration, we could not behave as intelligent beings, we should be vacillating, indecisive creatures living in a semiconscious, dream-like state. We owe our intellection to the degenerative processes of the brain. And the epoch of the Consciousness Soul must provide man with the opportunity to experience disintegration in his environment. We do not owe the development of modern, conscious thinking to a superabundant vitality. This conscious thinking, this very core of man's being grew and developed because it was imbued with the forces of death inherent in modern technology, in modern industry and finance. And that is what the life of the Consciousness Soul demanded.

And this phenomenon is seen in other spheres. Let us recur to the impulses to which I drew attention earlier. Let us consider the case of England where we saw how a specific form of parliamentary government develops as a certain tendency through the centuries, how the self-dependent personality seeks to realize itself. The personality wishes to emancipate itself and to become self-sufficient. It wishes to play a part in the life of the community and at the same time to affirm its independence. The parliamentary system of government is only one means of affirming the personality. But when the individual who participates in parliamentary government asserts himself, the moment he sacrifices his will to the vote he surrenders his personality. And, rightly understood, the rise of parliamentary government in England in the centuries following upon the civil wars of the fifteenth century provides ample evidence of this. In the early years of the democratic system society was based upon a class structure, the various classes or ‘estates’ not only wishing to affirm their class status, but to express their views through the ballot-box. They were free to speak; but people are not satisfied with speeches and mutual agreement, they want to vote. When one votes, when speeches are followed by voting, one kills what lives in the soul even whilst one speaks. Thus every form of parliamentary government ends in levelling down, in egalitarianism. It is born of the affirmation of the personality and ends with the suppression of the personality. This situation is inescapable; affirmation of the personality leads to suppression of the personality. It is a cyclic process like life itself which begins with birth and ends in death. In the life of man birth and death are two distinct moments in time; in the life of history, the one is directly related to the other, birth and death are commixed and commingled. We must never lose sight of this.

I do not wish you to take these remarks as a criticism of parliamentary government. That would be tantamount to insinuating that I said: since man is born only to die he ought never to have been born—which is absurd. One should not impute to the world such foolishness—that it permits man to be born only to die. Please do not accuse me of saying that parliamentary government is absurd because the personality which gives birth to this system proceeds to destroy the system which it has itself created. I simply wish to relate it directly to life, to that which is common to all life—birth and death, thus showing that it is something that is closely associated with reality. At the same time I want to show you the characteristic feature of all external phenomena of a like nature in the epoch of the Consciousness Soul, for they are all subject to birth and death.

Now in the inner circles of the occult lodges of the English speaking world it has often been said: let us not reveal to the world the mystery of birth and death, for in so doing we shall betray to the uninitiated the nature of the modern epoch! We shall transmit to them a knowledge that we wish to reserve for ourselves. Therefore it was established as the first rule of the masonic lodges never to speak openly of the mystery of birth and death, to conceal the fact that this mystery is omnipresent, above all in historical phenomena. For to speak of this is to open the eyes of the public to the tragedy of modern life which will gradually be compelled—a compulsion to which it will not easily submit—to divert man's attention from the results of work to the work itself. One must find joy in work, saying to oneself: the external rewards of work in the present epoch serve the purposes of death and not of creative life. If one is unwilling to further the forces of death, one cannot work with modern techniques, for today man is the servant of the machine. He who rejects the machine simply wishes to return to the past.

Study the history of France and the attempts made to thrust inwards the emancipation of the personality, ending in that disastrous suppression of the personality which we observe in the final phase of the French Revolution and in the rise of Napoleonism. Or take the case of Italy. From what hidden springs did modern Italy derive that dynamic energy which inflamed the nationalism to the point of sacro egoismo? One must probe beneath the surface in order to discover the factors underlying world events. Recall for a moment that important moment before the birth of the Consciousness Soul. This dynamic energy peculiar to modern Italy is derived in all its aspects from that which the Papacy had implanted in the Italian soul. The significance of the Papacy for Italy lies in the fact that it has gradually imbued the Italian soul with its own spirit. And, as so often happens to the magician's apprentice, the result was not what was intended—a violent reaction against the Papacy itself in modern Italy. Here we see how that for which one strives provokes its own destruction. Not the thoughts, but the forces of sensibility and enthusiasm, even those which inspired Garibaldi, are relics of the one-time Catholic fervour—but when these forces changed direction they turned against Catholicism.

People will understand the present epoch only if they grasp the right relationship between these things. Europe witnessed those various symptomatic events which I have described to you. And in the East, as if in the Background, we see the configuration of Russia, welded out of the remnants of the Byzantine ecclesiastical framework, out of the Nordic-Slavonic racial impulse and out of Asianism which is diffused in a wide variety of forms over Eastern Europe. But this triad is uncreative; it does not emanate from the Russian soul itself, nor is it characteristic of that which lives in the Russian soul. What is it that offers the greatest imaginable contrast to the emancipation of the personality?—The Byzantine element. A great personality of modern times who is much underrated is Pobjedonoszeff. He was an eminent figure who was steeped in the Byzantine tradition. He could only desire the reverse of what the epoch of the Consciousness Soul seeks to achieve and of what it develops naturally in man. Even if the Byzantine element had made deeper inroads into Russian orthodoxy, even if this element which stifles everything personal and individual had gained an even stronger hold ... the sole consequence nonetheless would have been a powerful age for the emancipation of the personality. If, in the study of modern Russian history, you do not read of those events which it has always been forbidden to record, then you will not have a true picture of Russian history, you will be unaware of the really living element. If however you read the official version, the only version permitted hitherto by the authorities, you will find everything which pervades Russian life as an instrument of death. It appears here in its most characteristic form because Russian life is richest in future promise. And because Russian life bears within it the seeds of the development of the Spirit Self, all the external achievements of the era of the Consciousness Soul hitherto bring only death and destruction. And this had to be, since what seeks to develop as Spirit Self needs the substratum of death.

We must recognize that this is a necessity for the evolution of the Consciousness Soul, otherwise we shall never grasp the real needs of our time. We shall be unable to form a clear picture of the destructive forces which have overtaken mankind if we are unaware that the events of these last four years are simply an epitome of the forces of death that have pervaded the life of mankind since the birth of the epoch of the Consciousness Soul.

Characteristically the dead hand of scientific thinking has exercised a strange influence upon one of the most prophetic personalities of recent time. In contemporary history the following incident is symptomatic and will always remain memorable. In the year 1830 in Weimar, Soret¹ visited Goethe who received him with some excitement—I mean he betrayed excitement in his demeanour—but not with deep emotion. Goethe said to Soret: ‘At last the controversy has come to a head, everything is in flames’. He made a few additional remarks which led Soret to believe that Goethe was referring to the revolution which had broken out in Paris in 1830 and he answered him accordingly. But Goethe replied: ‘I am not referring to the revolution; that is not particularly important. What is important is the controversy between Cuvier and Geoffroy de Saint-Hilaire in the Academy of Sciences of Paris’—Cuvier was a representative of the old school which simply compares and classifies organisms—a way of looking at nature that is concerned above all with technique—whilst Geoffroy de Saint-Hilaire has a living conception of the whole course of evolution. Goethe saw Saint-Hilaire as the leader of a new school of scientific thinking, different from that of Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo. Cuvier belongs to the old school of thought; Geoffroy de Saint-Hilaire is the representative of a scientific outlook which sees nature as a living organism. Therefore Goethe saw the dawn of a new epoch when Geoffroy de Saint-Hilaire prepared the ground for a new scientific thinking which, when fully developed, must lead to a super-sensible interpretation of nature and ultimately to super-sensible, clairvoyant knowledge. For Goethe this was the revolution of 1830, not the political events in Paris. Thus Goethe showed himself to be one of the most prescient spirits of his time. He showed that he sensed and felt what was the cardinal issue of our time.

Today we must have the courage to look facts squarely in the face, a courage of which earlier epochs had no need. We must have the courage to follow closely the course of events, for it is important that the Consciousness Soul can fulfil its development. In earlier epochs the development of the Consciousness Soul was not important. Because the Consciousness Soul is of paramount importance in the present epoch, everything that man creates in the social sphere must be consciously planned. Consequently his social life can no longer be determined by the old instinctive life; nor can he introduce solely the achievements of natural science into social life for these are forces of death and are unable to quicken life; they are simply dead-sea fruit and sow destruction such as we have seen in the last four years. In the present epoch the following is important.

Sleep, of course, is a necessity for man. In waking life he is in control of his normal free will ... he can make use of this free will for the various things he encounters through Lucifer and Ahriman, in order to develop guide-lines for the future. When he falls asleep this so called free will ceases to function; he continues to think without knowing it, but his thinking is no less efficacious. Thinking does not cease on falling asleep, it continues until the moment of waking. One simply forgets this in the moment of waking up. We are therefore unaware of the power of those thoughts that pour into the human soul from the moment of falling asleep until the moment of waking up. But let us remember that for the epoch of the Consciousness Soul the gods have abandoned the human soul during sleep. In earlier epochs the gods instilled into the human soul between sleeping and waking what they chose to impart. If they had continued to act in this way man would not have become a free being. Consequently he is now open to all kinds of other influences between sleeping and waking. At a pinch we can live our waking life with natural science and its achievements, but they are of no avail in sleep and death. We can only think scientifically during our waking hours. The moment we fall asleep, scientific thinking is meaningless—as meaningless as speaking French in a country where no one understands a word of French. In sleep only that language has significance which one acquires through super-sensible knowledge, the language which has its source in the super-sensible. Supersensible knowledge must take the place of what the gods in former times had implanted in the instinctive life. The purpose of the present epoch of the Consciousness Soul is this: man must open himself to super-sensible impulses and penetrate to a knowledge of reality. To believe that everything that our present age has produced and still produces without the support of super-sensible impulses is something living and creative and not impregnated with the forces of death is to harbour an illusion, just as it is an illusion to believe that a woman can bear a child without fecundation. Without impregnation a woman today remains sterile and dies without issue. Modern civilization in the form it has developed since the beginning of the fifteenth century and especially in respect of its outstanding achievements, is destined to remain sterile unless fertilized henceforth by impulses from the super-sensible world. Everything that is not fertilized by spiritual impulses is doomed to perish. In this epoch of the Consciousness Soul, though you may introduce democracy, parliamentary government, modern finance economy, modern industrialism, though you may introduce the principle of nationality the world over, though you may advocate all those principles on which men Base what they call the new order—a subject on which they descant like drunken men who have no idea what they are talking about—all these things will serve only the forces of death unless they are fructified by spiritual impulses. All that we must inevitably create today, forces that bring death in all domains, will only be of value if we learn how to transform these forces by our insights into the super-sensible.

Let us realize the seriousness of this situation and let us remember—as we have learnt from our study of the symptoms of recent history—that what man considers to be his greatest achievements, natural science, sociology, modern industrial techniques and modern finance economy, all date from the fifteenth century. These are destructive agents unless fructified by spiritual impulses. Only then can they advance the evolution of mankind. Then they have positive value; in themselves they are detrimental. Of all that mankind today extols, not without a certain pride and presumption, as his greatest achievements, nothing is good in itself; it is only of value when permeated with spirit.

This is not an arbitrary expression of opinion, but a lesson we learn from a study of the symptoms of modern history. The time has now come when we must develop individual consciousness. And we must also be aware of what we may demand of this consciousness. The moment we begin to dogmatize, even unwittingly, we impede the development of the consciousness. I must therefore remind you once again of the following incident. I happened to be giving a course of lectures in Hamburg on The Bible and Wisdom.^T1 Amongst the audience were two Catholic priests. Since I had said nothing of a polemical nature which could offend a Catholic priest and since they were not the type of Jesuit who is a watchdog of the Church and whose function is to stick his fingers in every pie, but ordinary parish priests, they approached me after the lecture and said: we too preach purgatory; you also speak of a time of expiation after death. We preach paradise; you speak of the conscious experience of the Spirit; fundamentally there are no objections to the content of your teaching. But they would certainly have found ample grounds for objection if they had gone more deeply into the matter—a single lecture of course did not suffice for this. And they continued: You see the difference between us is this: You address yourself to a certain section of the population which is already familiar with the premises of anthroposophy, people who are educated and are conversant with certain concepts and ideas. We, on the other hand speak to all men, we speak a language which everyone can understand. And that is the right approach—to speak for all men. Whereupon I replied: Reverend fathers (I always believe in respecting titles) what you are saying is beside the point. I do not doubt that you believe you speak for all men, that you can choose your words in such a way as to give the impression that you are speaking for all men. But that is a subjective judgement, is it not? that is what one usually says in self-justification. What is important is not whether we believe we speak for all men, but the facts, the objective reality. And now I should like to ask you, in an abstract, theoretical way: what evidence is there that I do not speak for all men? You claim to speak for all men and no doubt there are arguments that would support your claim. But I ask you for the facts. Do all those for whom you think you are able to speak still attend your church today? That is the real question. Of course my two interlocutors could not claim that everyone attended their church regularly. You see, I continued, that I am concerned with the facts. I speak for those who are outside the church, who also have the right to be led to the Christ. I realize that amongst them there are those who want to hear of the Christ impulse one way or another. That is a reality. And what matters is the reality, not personal opinions.

It is most desirable to base one's opinions on facts and not on subjective impressions; for, in the epoch of the Consciousness Soul nothing is more dangerous than to surrender to, or show a predilection for personal opinions or prejudices. In order to develop the Consciousness Soul we must not allow ourselves to become dogmatists unwittingly; the driving forces of our thoughts and actions must be determined by facts. That is important. Beneath the surface of historical evolution there is a fundamental conflict between the acceptance of what we consider to be right and the compulsion of facts. And this is of particular importance when studying history, for we shall never have a true picture of history unless we see history as a truly great teacher. We must not force the facts to fit history, but allow history to speak for itself. In this respect the whole world has forgotten much in the last four years. Facts are scarcely allowed to speak for themselves; we only hear what we deem to be facts. And this situation will persist for a long time. And it will be equally long before we develop the capacity to apprehend reality objectively. In the epoch of the Consciousness Soul what matters in all spheres of life is an objective apprehension of reality; we must strive to acquire an impartial attitude to reality.

What our epoch demands—if we wish gradually to look beyond the Symptoms of history (I will speak more of this in my next lectures)—is that we turn our attention to those spiritual forces which can restore man's creativity. For, as we have seen, the most characteristic feature of all phenomena today is a decline in creativity. Man must open himself to the influences of the super-sensible world so that what his Spirit Self prepares may enter into his ego; otherwise the paths to the Spirit Self would be closed to him. Man therefore must familiarize himself with that which is pure spirit, with that which can penetrate to the centre of his psychic life. The moment he is prepared to turn his attention to this centre of his soul life through a sensible study of the symptoms in history, he will also be prepared to examine more objectively the events at the periphery.

In man there exists a polarity—the psychic centre and the periphery. As he penetrates ever more deeply into his psychic and spiritual life he reaches this centre. In this centre he must open himself to those historical impulses which I have already described to you. Here he will feel an ever increasing urge for the spirit if he wishes to become acquainted with historical reality. In return however, he will also feel a desire to strive towards the opposite pole at the periphery. He will develop an understanding for what is pressing towards the periphery—his somatic nature. If in order to understand history we must look inward, as I have indicated, to the underlying symptoms, then in order to understand medicine, for example, hygiene and medical health services we must look outwards, to cosmic rhythms for the source of pathological symptoms.

Just as modern history fails to penetrate to spiritual realities, so modern medicine, modern hygiene and medical health services fail to penetrate to the symptoms which are of cosmic provenance. I have often emphasized the fact that the individual cannot help his neighbour, however deep his insight into current problems, because today they are in the hands of those who are looking for the wrong solution. They must become the responsibility of those who are moving in the right direction. Clearly, just as the external facts are true that the outward aspect of James I was such and such, as I pointed out earlier, so, from the external point of view it is also true that a certain kind of bacillus is connected with the present influenza epidemic. But if it is true, for example, that rats are carriers of the bubonic plague, one cannot say that rats are responsible for the plague. People have always imagined that the bubonic plague was spread by rats. But bacilli, as such, are of course in no way connected with disease. In phenomena of this kind we must realize that just as behind the symptoms of history we are dealing with psychic and spiritual experiences, so too behind somatic symptoms we are dealing with experiences of a cosmological order. In other cases the situation of course will be different! What is especially important here is the rhythmic course of cosmic events, and it is this that we must study. We must ask ourselves: In what constellation were we living when, in the nineties, the present influenza epidemic appeared in its benign form? In what cosmic constellation are we living at the present time? By virtue of what cosmic rhythm does the influenza epidemic of the nineties appear in a more acute form today? Just as we must look for a rhythm behind a series of historical symptoms, so we must look for a rhythm behind the appearance of certain epidemics.

In the solfatara regions of Italy one need only hold a naked flame over the fango hole and immediately gases and steam escape from the dormant volcano. This Shows that if one performs a certain action above the surface of the earth nature reacts by producing these effects. Do you regard it as impossible that something takes place in the sun—since its rays are directed daily towards the earth—which has significance for the earth emanations and is related to the life of man, and that this reaction varies according to the different geographical localities? Do you think that we shall have any understanding of these matters unless we are prepared to accept a true cosmology founded upon a knowledge of the soul and spirit? The statement that man's inclination to resort to war is connected with the periodic appearance of sun spots is, of course, regarded as absurd. But there comes a point when statements of this kind cease to be absurd, when certain pathological manifestations in the emotional life are seen to be connected with cosmological phenomena such as the periodic appearance of sun spots. And when tiny creatures, these petty tyrants—bacilli or rats—really transmit from one human being to another something that is related to the cosmos, then this transmission is only a secondary phenomenon. This can be easily demonstrated and consequently finds wide public support—but it is not the main issue. And we shall not come to terms with the main issue unless we have the will to study the peripheral symptoms as well.

I do not believe that men will acquire a more reasonable and catholic view of history unless they study historical symptomatology in the light of super-sensible knowledge which is so necessary for mankind today. Men will only achieve results in the sphere of health, hygiene and medicine if they study not historical, but cosmological symptoms. For the diseases we suffer on earth are visitations from heaven. In order to understand this we must abandon the preconceived ideas which are prevalent today. We have an easy explanation: a God is omnipresent ... but whilst recognizing the presence of God in history mankind today is unable to explain the manifold retardative or harmful phenomena in history. And when we are faced with a situation like the last four years (1914–1918), then this business of the single God in history becomes extremely dubious, for this God of history has the curious habit of multiplying, and each nation defends its national God and provokes other nations by claiming the superiority of its own God. And when we are expected to look to cosmology and at the same time remain comfortably attached to this single God, then this same God inflicts disease upon us. But when we can rise to the idea of the trinity, God, Lucifer and Ahriman, when we are aware of this trinity in the super-sensible world behind the historical symptoms, when we know that this trinity is present in the cosmic universe, then there is no need to appeal to the ‘good God’. We then know that heaven visits disease upon us by virtue of its association with the earth, just as I can evoke sulphur fumes by holding a naked flame over a solfatara. We can only advance the cause of progress in the epoch of the Consciousness Soul, when men recognize the validity of spiritual realities. Therefore everything depends upon this one aim: the search, the quest for truth.

• 1. Frédéric Jean Soret (1795–1865). Scientist and author. A frequent visitor in Goethe's house. Notes from his journal were used by Eckermann for his ‘Conversations with Goethe’.
• T1. 5th December, 1908. See Bibl. Nr. 68.

Before turning to other matters I must speak of certain wider conceptions that follow from our consideration of the recent development of human history. We attempted to examine this development from the stand-point of a symptomatology; we tried to show that what are usually called historical facts are not the essential elements in history, but that they are symbols of the true reality that lies behind them. This true reality, at least in the sphere of the historical evolution of mankind, is thus detached from what can be perceived in the phenomenal world, i.e. the so-called historical facts. If we do not regard the so-called historical facts as the true reality but seek in them manifestations of something that lies behind them then we discover of course a super-sensible element.

In studying history it is not easy to show the true nature of the super-sensible because people believe, when they discover certain thoughts or ideas in history, or when they record historical events, that they are already in touch with the super-sensible. We must be quite clear that whatever the phenomenal world presents to the senses, to the intellect or emotions cannot in any way be regarded as super-sensible. Therefore everything that is normally depicted as history belongs to the sensible world. Of course when we study the symptomatology of history we shall not regard the symptoms as having equal value; the study itself will show that, in order to arrive at the super-sensible reality behind the events, a particular Symptom is of capital importance, whilst other symptoms are perhaps of no importance.

I have already mentioned many of the more or less important symptoms manifested since mankind entered the epoch of the Consciousness Soul. I should now like to try to describe to you, step by step, a few characteristics of the super-sensible present in the background. Some I have already described. For of course a fundamental feature pulsing in the super-sensible is the entrance of mankind into the civilization of the Consciousness Soul, that is to say, the acquisition of the organs necessary for the development of the Consciousness Soul. That is the essential. But we have recently seen that the other pole, the complement to this inner elaboration of the Consciousness Soul, must be the aspiration to a revelation from the spiritual world. Men must realize that henceforth they will be unable to progress spiritually unless they open themselves to the new revelation of the super-sensible world.

Let us now consider these two poles of evolution. To a certain extent they have come to the fore in the centuries since 1413 when mankind entered the epoch of the Consciousness Soul. These two impulses will continue to develop, will assume a wide diversity of forms in the different epochs up to the third millennium and will be responsible for the manifold vicissitudes that befall mankind. Individuals will gradually become aware of this. In considering these two impulses in particular, we learn that fundamental changes have occurred since the fifteenth century. Today we are in a position to draw attention to these important developments. In the eighteenth century, and even in the early nineteenth century it would not have been possible to show the operation of these two impulses purely from the observation of external phenomena. They had not yet been operative for a sufficient length of time to show their full effect. Now such is their dynamic power that it is perceptible in external phenomena.

Let us now consider an essential fact which has an important bearing today. Whilst early indications were apparent only to those who were more or less acquainted with the true state of affairs—I am referring to the Russian Revolution in its last phase, namely from October 1917 to the peace negotiations of Brest-Litovsk—this extraordinarily interesting development which can easily be followed, since it lasted only a few months, is of immense importance to those who seriously wish to understand the historical symptoms, for this development is of course a historical symptom. In the final analysis the origin of the Russian Revolution is to be found in the deeper impulses of contemporary evolution. In this revolution it is a question of new ideas. For when we speak of real evolution in mankind we are concerned only with new ideas. Everything else—as we have already indicated, and we will recur to this later—is subject to a certain extent to the symptoms of death. It is a question of making new ideas effective. As you will have gathered from the many discussions which I have had upon this subject over recent decades—these new ideas must be able to capture the broad masses of peasantry in Eastern Europe. Of course we are dealing here with a passivity of soul, but a soul that, as you know, is receptive especially to new and modern ideas, for the simple reason that it bears within it the seed of the Spirit Self. Whereas, on the whole, the rest of the world's population bears within it the impulse to develop the Consciousness Soul, the broad mass of the Russian population, together with a few satellites, bears within it the seed from which the Spirit Self will be developed in the course of the sixth postAtlantean epoch. This necessitates, of course, very special circumstances. But this has an important bearing on what we are about to study next.

Now this idea—partly correct, partly false or wholly mistaken—this modern idea of something entirely new which was destined to capture the broad mass of the population could only come from those who had had the opportunity to be educated, namely from the ruling classes.

After the fall of Czarism the centre of the state was at first occupied by an element that was closely connected with a totally sterile class, the upper middle class—called in the West, heavy industry, etcetera. This could only be an interlude which we need not discuss, for this class is destitute of ideas and, as a class, is of course quite incapable of developing ideas. (When speaking of these matters I never indulge in personalities.)

Now at first those elements which were of middle class origin, together with a sprinkling of working class elements, formed the party of the left. They formed the leading wing of the so-called Social Revolutionaries and were gradually joined by the Mensheviks. They were men who—purely in terms of their numbers—could easily have played a leading part in determining the future course of the Russian Revolution. As you know events took a different course. The radical wing of the Russian Social Democratic party, the Bolsheviks, took over the helm. When they (the Bolsheviks) came to power, the Social Revolutionaries, the Mensheviks and their followers in the West were quite sure that the whole charade would not last more than a week before everything collapsed. Well, the Bolsheviks have now been in power more than a week and you can rest assured of this: if many prophets are bad prophets, then those who today base their predictions of historical events upon the outmoded world conceptions of certain middle classes are certainly the worst! What is the cause of this situation? This problem of the October Revolution, throughout the months following its outbreak and until today, is, in the terminology of physics, not a problem of pressure, but of suction. It is important that we can infer from the historical situation that we are dealing here not with a problem of pressure, but of suction. What do we understand by a problem of suction? As you know, when we create a vacuum by sucking out the air in the glass jar of an air pump and then remove the stopper, the air rushes in with a hissing sound. The air rushes in, not of its own volition, but because a vacuum has been created.

This was the situation of those elements which to some extent stood midway between the peasantry and the Bolsheviks, between the Social Revolutionaries, the Mensheviks, and the radical revolutionary groups of the extreme left, i.e. the Petrograd Soviet. What had happened was that the Mensheviks, though they had an overwhelming majority in the Provisional Government were totally destitute of ideas. They had not a word to say about the future of mankind. No doubt they cherished touching ethical sentiments and other romantic ideals, but, as I have often pointed out, ethical good intentions do not provide the impulses which can further the development of mankind. Thus a vacuum was created, an ideological vacuum, and the radical left wing rushed in. It is impossible to believe that, by their very nature, the most radical socialist elements who were alien to Russian tradition and culture were destined to take over in Russia. They could never have done so if the Social Revolutionaries and the various groups associated with them had had any ideas of how to give a lead. But you will ask: what ideas ought they to have had? A fruitful answer can only be found today by those who are no longer afraid to face this fact: for this section of the population the only fertile ideas are those which spring from spiritual experience. Nothing else avails.

It is true that these people have become more or less radical and will now deny their middle class origin, many at least will deny it, but there is no mistaking their origin. But the essential point is that this section of the population which created a vacuum, who were bereft of ideas, simply could not be induced to develop anything in the nature of positive ideas.

And this applies, of course, not only to Russia. But the Russian Revolution in its final phase—provisionally the final phase—demonstrates this fact with particular clarity to those who are prepared to study the matter. We see how, day after day, these people (i.e. the Mensheviks and their supporters) who have created a vacuum are gradually forced back and how others rush in to fill the vacuum, i.e. to replace them. But today this phenomenon is world-wide. The fact is that the section of the population which today stands politically between the right and the left has steadily refused to make the slightest effort to develop a positive Weltanschauung. In our epoch of the Consciousness Soul a creative Weltanschauung must of necessity be one which also promotes social cohesion.

It was this which from the very beginning permeated our Anthroposophical movement. It was not intended in any way to be a sectarian movement, but endeavoured to come to terms with the impulse of our time, with everything that is essential and important for mankind today. This was increasingly our goal. It is this which is most difficult to bring to men's understanding today for the simple reason that the belief persists (not in all, but in the majority) that what they are looking for in Anthroposophy, as they understand it, is a little moral uplift, something necessary for one's private and personal edification, something which insulates one from the serious matters which are settled in Parliament, in the Federal Councils, in this or that Corporation, or even round the beer table. What we must realize is that the whole of life must be impregnated with ideas which can be derived only from spiritual science.

Whilst this section of the population, i.e. the bourgeoisie, was indifferent to spiritual ideas, the proletariat showed and still shows today a lively interest in them. But as a consequence of the historical evolution of modern times the horizon of the proletariat is limited purely to the sensible world. It is prisoner of materialistic impulses and seeks to steer the evolution of mankind into utilitarian channels. The bourgeoisie knows only empty rhetoric, what it is pleased to call its Weltanschauung is simply verbiage, because it has no roots in contemporary life and is a survival from earlier times. The proletariat, on the other hand, because it is motivated by a totally new economic impulse lives therefore in realities, but only in realities of a sensible nature.

This provides us with an important criterion. In the course of the last few centuries the life of mankind has undergone a fundamental change; we have entered the machine age. The life of the middle class and the upper middle class has scarcely felt the impact of the machine age. For the new and powerful influences which have affected the life of the bourgeoisie in recent centuries belong to the pre-machine age ... for example, the introduction of coffee as the favourite beverage for cafe gossip. Equally the new banking practices, etcetera, introduced by the bourgeoisie are wholly unsuited to the new impulses of today. They are simply a hotchpotch of the ancient usages formerly practised in commercial life.

On the other hand the proletariat of today is the caste or class which is dominated by a modern impulse in the external life and to a certain extent is the creation of modern impulses themselves. Since the invention of the spinning jenny and the mechanical loom in the eighteenth century, the entire political economy of mankind has been transformed, and these inventions have been largely responsible for the birth of the modern proletariat. The proletariat is a creation of the modern epoch, that is the point to bear in mind. The bourgeois is not a creation of modern times. For the class or group which existed in earlier times and which could be compared with the proletariat of today did not belong to the third estate; it still formed part of the old patriarchal order. And the patriarchal order is totally different from the social order of the machine age. In this new order the proletarian is surrounded by a completely mechanized environment wholly divorced from living nature. He is entirely engaged in practical activities, but he thirsts for a Weltanschauung and he has endeavoured to model his conception of the universe on the pattern of a vast machine. For men see the universe as a reflection of their own environment. Now I have already pointed out there is an affinity between the theologian and the soldier. They see the universe as a battleground, the scene of the clash between the forces of good and evil, etcetera and leave it at that. Equally there is a close affinity between the jurist and the civil servant; they and the metaphysician see in the universe the realization of abstract ideas. Small wonder then that the proletarian sees the universe as a vast machine in which he is simply a cog. That is why he wishes to model the social order on the pattern of a vast machine.

But there was and still is a vast difference between, for example, the modern proletarian and the modern bourgeois—we can ignore the class which is already in decline. The modern bourgeois has not the slightest interest in deeper ideological questions, whereas the proletarian is passionately interested in them. It is true the modern bourgeois holds frequent meetings for an exchange of views, but for the most part they are so much hot air; the proletarian on the other hand discusses his daily life and working conditions and the daily output of mass production. When one passes from a middle class reunion to a proletarian meeting one has the following impression—In the former they spend time in discussing what a fine thing it would be if men lived in peace, if all were pacifists for example, or other fine sentiments of alike nature. But all this is merely verbal dialectic seasoned with a pinch of sentimentality. The bourgeoisie is not imbued with a desire to open a window on the universe, to realize their objectives from out of the mysteries of the Cosmos. When you attend a proletarian meeting you are immediately aware that the workers are talking of realities, even if they are the realities of the physical plane. They have the history of the working class at their finger-tips, from the invention of the mechanical loom and the spinning jenny until the present day. Every man has had dinned into him the history of those early beginnings and their subsequent development, and how the proletariat has become what it is today. How this situation arose is familiar ground to every worker who is actively involved in this development and who is not completely stupid, and there are few amongst this section of the population who haven't a good head on their shoulders.

One could give many typical instances of the obtuseness of the present bourgeoisie with regard to ideological questions. One need only recall how these people react when a poet presents on the stage figures from the super-sensible world (those who are not poets dare not take this risk for fear of being labelled visionaries). The spectators half accept these figures because there is no need to believe in them, because they are totally unreal—they are merely poetic inventions! This situation has arisen in the course of the development of the epoch of the Consciousness Soul. If we consider this situation spatially, we see the growth of a section of the population which, unless it takes heed, is increasingly in danger of ending completely in empty talk. But one can also consider this same situation in relation to time, and in this respect I have repeatedly called attention from widely different angles to certain important moments in time.

The epoch of the Consciousness Soul began approximately in 1413. In the forties of the nineteenth century, about 1840 or 1845, the first fifth of this era had already run its course. The forties were an important period. For the powers impelling world evolution foresaw a kind of crisis for this period. Externally this crisis arose because these years in particular were the hey-day of the so called liberal ideas. In the forties it seemed as if the impulse of the Consciousness Soul in the form of liberalism might breach the walls of reactionary conservatism in Europe. Two things concurred in these years. The proletariat was still the prisoner of its historical origins, it lacked self-assurance, confidence in itself. Only in the sixties was it ready to play a conscious part in historical evolution; before this one cannot speak of proletarian consciousness in the modern sense of the term. The social question of course existed before the sixties, but the middle class was totally unaware of it. At the end of the sixties an Austrian minister¹ of repute made the famous remark: ‘The social question ends at Bodenbach!’ Bodenbach, as you perhaps know, lies on the frontier between Saxony and Austria. Such was the famous dictum of a bourgeois minister!

In the forties therefore the proletarian consciousness did not yet exist. In the main, the bearer of the political life at that time was the bourgeoisie. Now the ideas which could have become a political force in the 1840's were exceedingly abstract. You are all familiar (at least to a certain extent I hope) with what are called the revolutionary ideas—in reality they were liberal ideas—which swept over Europe in the forties and unleashed the storm of 1848. As you know, the bearer of these ideas was the middle class. But all these ideas which were prevalent at the time and which were struggling to find a place in the historical evolution of mankind were totally abstract, sometimes merely empty words! But there was no harm in that, for in the epoch of the Consciousness Soul one had to go through the abstractive phase and apprehend the leading ideas of mankind first of all in this abstract form.

Now you know from your own experience and that of others that the human being does not learn to read or write overnight. In order to develop certain potentialities mankind also needs time to prepare the ground. And mankind was given until the end of the seventies to develop new ideas. Let us look at this a little more closely. Starting from the year 1845, add thirty-three years and we arrive at the year 1878. Up to this year, approximately, mankind was given the opportunity of becoming acclimatized to the reality of the ideas of the forties. The decades between the forties and the seventies are most important for an understanding of modern evolution, for it was in the forties that what are called liberal ideas, albeit in an abstract form, began to take root and mankind was given until the end of the seventies to apprehend those ideas and relate them to the realities of the time.

But the bearer of these ideas, the bourgeoisie, missed their opportunity. The evolution of the nineteenth century is fraught with tragedy. For those who listened to the speeches of the outstanding personalities of the bourgeoisie in the forties (and there were many such throughout thc whole civilized world) announcing their programme for a radical change in every sphere, the forties and fifties seemed to herald the dawn of a new age. But, owing to the characteristics of the middle class which I have already described, hopes were dashed. By the end of the seventies the bourgeoisie had failed to grasp the import of liberal ideas. From the forties to the seventies the middle class had been asleep and we cannot afford to ignore the consequence. The tide of events is subject to a pattern of ebb and flow and mankind can only look forward to a favourable development in the future if we are prepared to face frankly what occurred in the immediate past. We can only wake up in the epoch of the Consciousness Soul if we are aware that we have hitherto been asleep! If we are unaware when and how long we have been asleep, we shall not awake up, but continue to sleep on.

When the Archangel Michael took over his task as Time Spirit at the end of the seventies the bourgeoisie had not understood the political impact of liberal ideas. The powers which in this epoch intervened in the life of mankind began by obscuring the nature of these ideas. And if you take the trouble, you can follow this very clearly. How different was the configuration of the political life at the end of the nineteenth century from that envisaged in the forties! One cannot imagine a greater contrast than the ideas of 1840–1848 (which were certainly abstract, yet lucid despite their abstract nature), and the ‘lofty human ideals’, as they were called, in the different countries in the nineteenth century and even up to our own time, when they ended in catastrophe.

The temporal complement therefore to the spatial picture is this: in the most productive and fertile years for the bourgeoisie, from the forties to the end of the seventies, they had been asleep. Afterwards it was too late, for nothing could then be achieved by following the path along which the liberal ideal might have been realised in this period. Afterwards only through conscious experience of spiritual realities could anything be achieved. There we see the connection between historical events.

In the period between the forties and the seventies the ideas of liberalism, though abstract, were such that they tended to promote tolerance between men. And assuming for the moment that these ideas were realized, then we should see the beginning, only the first steps it is true, but nonetheless a beginning of a tolerant attitude towards others, a respect for their ideas and sentiments which is so conspicuously lacking today. And so in social life a far more radical, a far more powerful idea, an idea which has its source in the spirit, must lay hold of men. I propose first of all, purely from the point of view of future history, to indicate this idea and will then substantiate it in greater detail.

Only a genuine concern of each man for his neighbour can bring salvation to mankind in the future—I mean to his community life. The characteristic feature of the epoch of the Consciousness Soul is man's isolation. That he is inwardly isolated from his neighbour is the consequence of individuality, of the development of personality. But this separative tendency must have a reciprocal pole and this counterpole must consist in the cultivation of an active concern of every man for his neighbour.

This awakening of an active concern for others must be developed ever more consciously in the epoch of the Consciousness Soul. Amongst the fundamental impulses indicated in my book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds. How is it achieved? you will find mentioned the impulse which, when applied to social life, aims at enhancing understanding for others. You will find frequent mention of ‘positiveness,’ the need to develop a positive attitude. The majority of men today will certainly have to foreswear their present ways if they wish to develop this positive attitude, for at the moment they have not the slightest notion what it means. When they perceive something in their neighbour which displeases them—I do not mean something to which they have given careful consideration, but something which from a superficial angle meets with their disapproval—they immediately begin to criticize, without attempting to put themselves in their neighbour's skin. It is highly anti-social from the point of view of the future evolution of mankind—this may perhaps seem paradoxical, but it is none the less true—to harbour these tendencies and to approach one's neighbour with undisguised sympathy or antipathy. On the other hand the finest and most important social attribute in the future will be the development of a scientific objective understanding of the shortcomings of others, when we are more interested in their shortcomings than in our concern to criticize them. For gradually in the course of the fifth, sixth and seventh cultural epochs the individual will have to devote himself increasingly and with loving care to the shortcomings of his neighbour. On the pediment of the famous temple of Apollo in Greece was inscribed this motto: ‘Know thyself’. Self knowledge in the highest sense could still be achieved at that time through introspection. But that is becoming progressively less possible. Today man has made little advance in self knowledge through introspection. Fundamentally men know so little of each other because they are concerned only with themselves, and because they pay so little attention to others, especially to what they call the shortcomings of others.

This can be confirmed by a purely scientific fact. Today when the scientist wants to discover the secrets of human, animal and plant life he does two things. I have often spoken of this and it is most important. First of all he carries out an experiment, following the same procedure for inorganic life as for organic life. But by experimentation he loses touch with living nature. He who is able to follow with true insight the results of experimentation knows that the experimental method is shot through with the forces of death. All that experimentation can offer, even the patient and painstaking work of Oskar Hertwig² for example, is dead-sea fruit. It cannot explain how a living being is fertilized, nor how it is born. By this method one can only explain the inorganic. The art of experimentation can tell us nothing of the secrets of life. That is the one side.

Today however there is one field of investigation which operates with very inadequate means and is as yet in its very early stages, but which is calculated to give valuable information about human nature, namely, the study of pathological conditions in man. When we study the case history of a man who is not quite normal we feel that we can be at one with him, that with sympathetic understanding we can break through the barrier that separates us from him and so draw nearer to him. By experimentation we are detached from reality; by the study of what are called today pathological conditions—malformations as Goethe so aptly called themwe are brought back to reality. We must not be repelled by them, but must develop an understanding for them. We must say to ourselves: the tragic element in life—without ever wishing it for anybody—can sometimes be most instructive, it can throw a flood of light upon the deepest mysteries of life. We shall only understand the significance of the brain for the life of the soul through a more intensive study of the mentally disturbed. And this is the training ground for a sympathetic understanding of others. Life uses the crude instrument of sickness in order to awaken our interest in others. It is this concern for our neighbour which can promote the social progress of mankind in the immediate future, whereas the reverse of positiveness, a superficial attitude of sympathy or antipathy towards others makes for social regression. These things are all related to the mystery of the epoch of the Consciousness Soul.

In every epoch of history mankind develops some definite faculty and this faculty plays an important role in evolution. Recall my words at the end of the last lecture. I said: men must be prepared to recognize more and more in the events of external history creation and destruction, birth and death, birth through impregnation with a new spiritual revelation, death through everything that we create. For the fundamental characteristic of the epoch of the Consciousness Soul is that, on the physical plane, we can only create if we are aware that everything we create is destined to perish. Death is inherent in everything we create. On the physical plane the most important achievements of recent time are fraught with death. And the mistake we make is not that our creations are fraught with death, but that we refuse to recognize that they are vehicles of death.

After the first fifth of the epoch of the Consciousness Soul has elapsed, people still say today: man is born and dies. They avoid saying, for it seems absurd: to what end is man born if he is destined to die? Why bring a man into the world when we know that death is his lot. In that event birth is meaningless! Now people do not say this, because nature in her wisdom compels them to accept birth and death in the sphere of external nature. In the sphere of history, however, they have not yet reached the stage when they accept birth and death as the natural order of things. Everything created in the domain of history, they believe, is without exception good and is destined to subsist for ever. In the epoch of the Consciousness Soul we must develop a sense that the external events of history are subject to birth and death, and that, whatever we create, be it a child's toy or an empire, we create in the knowledge that it must one day perish. Failure to recognize the impermanence of things is irrational, just as it would be irrational to believe that one could bear a child which was entitled to live on earth for ever.

In the epoch of the Consciousness Soul we must become fully aware that the works of man are impermanent. In the Graeco-Latin epoch this was not necessary, for at that time the course of history followed the natural cycle of birth and death. Civilizations rose and fell as a natural process. In the epoch of the Consciousness Soul it is man who weaves birth and death into the web of his social life. And in this epoch man can acquire a sense for this because in the GraecoLatin epoch this seed had been implanted in him under quite specific circumstances.

For a man of the middle Graeco-Latin epoch the most important moment in his development was the early thirties. These years were to some extent the focal point of two forces which are active in every man. The forces which operate in the symptoms of birth are active throughout the whole period from birth to death; but their characteristic features are manifested at birth. Birth is only one significant symptom of the activity of these forces; and the other occasions when the same forces are active throughout the whole of physical life are less important. In the same way, the forces of death begin to act at the moment of birth and when man dies they are especially evident. These two polar forces, the forces of birth and the forces of death, always maintain a kind of balance. In the Graeco-Latin epoch they were most evenly balanced when man reached the early thirties. Up to this age he developed his sentient life and afterwards, through his own efforts, his intellect. Before the thirties his intellectual life could only be awakened through teaching and education. And therefore we speak of the Graeco-Latin epoch as the era of the Rational or Intellectual Soul because the sentient life up to the age of thirty and the intellectual life which developed later were united. But this no longer applies in the epoch of the Consciousness Soul. Today intellectual development ceases before middle life. The majority of people one meets today, especially amongst the middle classes, do not mature after the age of twenty-seven; thereafter they are content to plough the same furrow. You can easily see what I mean by looking around you. How few people today have radically changed in any way since the age of twenty-seven. They have aged physically, their hair has turned grey, they have become decrepit ... (perhaps that is going a little too far), but, on the whole, man reckons that he has reached maximum potentiality by the age of twenty-seven. Let us take the case of a member of the so-called intellectual class. If he has had a sound training up to the age of twenty-seven he wants to establish himself; if he has gained a qualification he wants to make use of it and advance his career potential. Would you expect a man of average intelligence today to become a second Faust, that is to say, to study not only one faculty, but four faculties in succession up to the age of fifty? I do not mean that he should of necessity go to the university, perhaps there are better possibilities than the four faculties. A man who is prepared to continue his studies, to expand his knowledge, a man who remains plastic and capable of transformation is a rarity today. This was far more common amongst the Greeks, at least amongst the intellectual section of the population, because development did not cease in the early thirties. The forces inherited at birth were still very active. They began to encounter the forces leading to death; a state of equilibrium was established at the midway stage of life. Today this situation has come to an end; the majority hopes to be ‘made’ men, as the saying goes, by the age of twenty-seven. Yet at the end of their thirties they could recapture something of their youthful idealism and go forward to wider fields if they really wished to do so! But I wonder how many there are today who are prepared to make the readjustment necessary for the future evolution of mankind: to develop a constant readiness to learn, to remain plastic and to be ever receptive to change. This will not be possible without that active sympathy for others of which I have already spoken. Our hearts must be filled with a tender concern for our neighbour, with sympathetic understanding for his peculiarities. And precisely because this compassion and understanding must take hold of mankind it is so rarely found today.

What I have just described throws light upon an important fact of man's inner psychic development. The thread linking birth and death is broken to some extent between the ages of twenty-six to twenty-seven and thirty-seven to thirty-eight. In this decade of man's evolution the forces of birth and death are not fully in harmony. The disposition of soul which man needs, and which he could still experience in the Graeco-Latin epoch because the forces of birth and death were still naturally conjoined, this disposition of soul he must develop in the epoch of the Consciousness Soul because he is able to observe birth and death in the external life of history. In brief, our observation of external life must be such that we can face the world around us fearlessly and courageously, saying to ourselves: we must consciously create and destroy in all domains of life. It is impossible to create forms of social life that last forever. He who works for social ends must have the courage constantly to build afresh, not to stagnate, because the works of man are impermanent and are doomed to perish, because new forms must replace the old.

Now in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, the epoch of the Intellectual or Rational Soul, birth and death were active in man in characteristic fashion; as yet there was no need for him to be aware of them externally. Now, in the epoch of the Consciousness Soul he must perceive them externally; to this end he must again develop in himself something else, and this is very important.

Let us look at man schematically in relation to the fourth, fifth and sixth cultural epochs.

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In the fourth post-Atlantean epoch (the Graeco-Latin epoch) man was conscious of birth and death when he looked within himself. Today he must first perceive the forces of birth and death externally, in the events of history, in order to discover them within himself. That is why it is so vitally important that in the epoch of the Consciousness Soul man should have a clear understanding of forces of birth and death in their true sense, i.e. a knowledge of repeated lives on earth, in order to acquire an understanding for birth and death in the unfolding of history.

But just as man's consciousness of birth and death has passed from an inner experience to an external realization, so in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch he must develop within himself something which in the sixth post-Atlantean epoch beginning in the fourth millennium will once again be experienced externally, namely, evil. In the fifth post-Atlantean epoch evil is destined to develop in man; it will ray outwards in the sixth epoch and be experienced externally just as birth and death were experienced externally in the fifth epoch. Evil is destined to develop in man's inner being.

That is indeed an unpleasant truth! One can accept the fact that in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch man was familiar with birth and death as an inner experience and then perceived them in the cosmos as I pointed out in my lectures on the Immaculate Conception and the Resurrection, and the Mystery of Golgotha. Therefore mankind of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch is brought face to face with the phenomenon of the birth and death of Christ Jesus because birth and death were of vital importance in this epoch.

Today when Christ is destined to appear again in the etheric body, when a kind of Mystery of Golgotha is to be experienced anew, evil will have a significance akin to that of birth and death for the fourth post-Atlantean epoch! In the fourth epoch the Christ impulse was born out of the forces of death for the salvation of mankind. We can say that we owe the new impulse that permeated mankind to the event on Golgotha. Thus by a strange paradox mankind is led to a renewed experience of the Mystery of Golgotha in the fifth epoch through the forces of evil. Through the experience of evil it will be possible for the Christ to appear again, just as He appeared in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch through the experience of death.

In order to understand this—we have already given here and there a few indications of the Mystery of Evil—we must now say a few words about the relationship between the Mystery of Evil and the Mystery of Golgotha. This relationship will be the subject of our next lecture.

• 1. The Austrian Minister was Dr. Giskra (1820–79).
• 2. Oskar Hertwig (1849–1922). Director of the Anatomical-biological Institute in Berlin (1888–1921). Author of works on biology, zoology. Rejected Darwin's theory of sexual selection.

You will have gathered, from what I said yesterday, that at the present time we must come to realize the distinction between abstract and purely intellectual thinking, and thinking which is based on reality, in order to relate our thinking to the reality. The natural tendency is to make our thinking incontrovertible, as free from contradictions as we can make it. But the world is full of contradictions, and if we really want to grasp reality, we cannot throw a general, standard form of thinking like a net over everything in order to understand it. We have to consider everything on an individual basis.

The greatest defect and deficiency in our time is that people are literally inclined to think in abstractions. This takes them further away from reality.

We now come to the application of this to reality itself. Please, consider this carefully! I am going to say something rather strange, for I have to apply unrealistic thinking to reality. Unrealistic thinking is, of course, also part of reality. The unrealistic thinking which has developed over the last three or four centuries, and the fact that as such it has become part of reality in human life, has resulted in an unreal structure which is always self-contradictory. People are doing alright, one might say, with regard to the physical and material world, for the physical world ignores them, and they can therefore have as many wrong ideas as they like. This makes them—forgive the paradoxical way of putting this—into billy-goats who keep butting against the brick wall of reality with their horns in their insistence on thinking about the physical world in abstract terms. We can see this with many ideologies; they keep coming up against the brick wall of reality. And they are sometimes just as stubborn as goats, these ideologies.

The situation is different, however, when it comes to social and political life. Here the human thoughts of every individual enter into the social structure. We do not come up against a reality that will not yield; in this case we create the reality. And if this goes on for a few hundred years the reality will be what you may expect it to be; it will be full of contradictions. Reality itself comes to realization in structures which do not have the power of reality in them; as a result there are upheavals such as the present catastrophic war.

Here you have the connection between the inner life of people who lived in a particular age and the outer physical events of a time which comes a little later. It is always the situation that anything which emerges in the physical world has first lived in the spirit, and this also applies where humanity is concerned, with things living first in human thoughts and then in human actions. And we can see how abstract thinking has penetrated into reality if we look at the present time where this shows itself in its true form—that is, in this case in its untrue form, which is its true form. The reality is in many ways seen in an abstract way. People look at it as if they were watching the conjuror I spoke of yesterday and the weights which have no weight, with the conjuror behaving as if they weighed many kilograms.

The most significant characteristic of many of the concepts held today is their poverty. People like to take things easy today—as I have said so many times—and they want their concepts to be as straightforward as possible. This, however, makes them rather limited. Now, limited concepts do prove adequate when one is dealing with the superficial aspects of the physical world, the mere surface of that world, which is the only thing modern people want to consider, in spite of all the advances. Magnificent discoveries have been made in recent times about physical phenomena, but the concepts used to explore them are relatively limited. The desire for limited concepts, or concepts of limited content, has also crept into all philosophical and ideological thinking. We see philosophers today who are literally craving such limited concepts. The most limited concepts, with practically no content, are tossed about over and over again. They are often quite pretentious, but they do not contain anything which has real weight. Widely used ideas today are ‘the eternal’, ‘infinity’, ‘unity’, the ‘significant’ compared to the ‘insignificant’, ‘general’, ‘particular’, and so on. People like bandying these about—the more abstract the better.

This creates a peculiar situation with regard to reality. People no longer see the living reality in anything and lose all feeling for what reality really has to offer. Merely observe the present situation and you will find this everywhere.

Let me tell you about something that is really worrying. A present-day philosopher¹ has been considering the question as to whether it is possible to have an opinion regarding the length of time for which this war will continue. It is a vital question, I think you will agree, but it is a question which needs to be decided by using real concepts which have content and are full of life; it cannot be decided by using generalized abstract ideas of world and temporality, general and particular, and so on. This kind of generalized philosophizing will get us nowhere with regard to the concrete issues. The philosopher concerned found, as many people find, that it does not matter if the war continues for any length of time, for this will the only way of achieving ‘permanent peace’, as they call it, and let us have paradise on earth. You will remember, I compared this with the idea that the best way of making sure no more crockery is broken in the home is to break all the crockery in the first place. This is more or less the conclusion reached by people who say the war must continue until there is a prospect of permanent peace.

The philosopher therefore applied his ideology to the question, an ideology which in his opinion deals with the most sublime—which in our time means the most abstract—ideas. And what did he say? Believe it or not, he said: ‘Compared to the eternity it takes to create satisfactory conditions for humanity, what does it matter if a few more tons of organic matter perish in the Fields of battle! What are a few tons of organic matter compared to life eternal, to human evolution!’

Those are the achievements of abstract thinking when it is addressing itself to reality. And we have to draw people's attention to how horrific this is, for they do not feel it on their own. We can only be in constant amazement at how these things escape attention and fail to give much cause for thought. Fundamentally speaking, such ideas are part of the present-day desire for ideologies. This has given rise to the most abstract of abstract ideas which, however, can only be applied to the dead, inorganic mineral world. If philosophers apply such ideas not only to the sphere of life, but also to that of the soul and spirit, it is only to be expected that they come to this kind of conclusion. In the realm of dead matter, human beings do, of course, have to apply the principle: ‘What are so and so many hundredweight of material compared to what will be the end result?’ It would be impossible to do any building, for instance, if we were obliged to leave everything untouched. Yet we must not apply to human life what applies only in the lifeless, inorganic world. The concepts developed in modern science apply only to the inorganic world, but people are all the time applying them elsewhere, and the problem is that no one notices. Opinions of the kind that the war should not be brought to an end until the above-mentioned prospect is there, are saying exactly what the philosopher put so brutally, although it would seem to him that he put it in a very superior way. Others simply feel embarrassed about saying such things, but the philosopher hides the brutality behind beautiful words. Yes, he puts things in a very superior way, juggling with ideas like eternity and temporality, the human being forever evolving, the transient, temporal reality of so and so many tons of organic matter; but he ignores the fact that eternity, infinity, lives in every human being, and that every single human being is worth as much as the whole inorganic world taken together!

These things also provide the background to the forms we are now seeking to develop here on this hill. For art, too, has gradually been caught up in an ideology which is without weight and without reality. We have to come to the true nature of things again, and this is only possible if we come to the spirit. We therefore need different forms from those one generally sees in the world of art today. In other words, our age must once again become creative and do so out of the spirit. This goes against the grain with many people today. But try and understand the enormous extent to which our whole ideology has gradually entered more and more into the lifeless sphere, because it has only been considering that sphere. Look at the buildings and at the other works of art produced in the nineteenth century. Really, all one gets is old styles rehashed over and over again. People have built in the classical style, the Renaissance and the Gothic styles—always something which is no longer alive. They have not been able to work with the elements which live in the present. This is what we must achieve; it will create a completely new spirit. It will involve many sacrifices. But² which has new forms created out of the concrete itself, is a pioneering effort. And it matters not only that these forms have been thought, but also that the opportunity was made to produce such a building. These things must be considered and given their full weight, otherwise there can be no comprehension of what we intend to create on this hill. The nature of the whole is such that the forms now coming into existence here contradict and are in utter conflict with the forms created in the rest of the world today.

‘To understand the present time’—this phrase has been like a thread running through everything I have been saying to you since my return. It does, however, mean that rather than take it easy, we have to put in a lot of effort—effort of thought, effort of feeling, effort of will to experiment, in the desire to understand the present time. And we must have the courage to make a complete break with some of the things that belong to the past. Fundamentally speaking, the people who are considered to be most enlightened today are often working with old ideas, without really knowing how to use them to good purpose.

Let me give you an example. I am sure that here in Switzerland, too, you will have heard and read a lot about a book which was no doubt also given pride of place in local bookshop windows, for it has made a profound impression in the present time. I am especially pleased to be able to speak of something that comes from our friends and not only our enemies, so that no one should think there is a personal bias. The book, on the State as a life form, was written by the Scandinavian writer Rudolf Kjellen,³ one of the few who have shown an interest in my writings and commented on them in a positive way. So I think it will be obvious that there is no personal bias in what I am going to say about this book, but I believe it is something which has to be said.

The book is a good example of the inappropriate ideas people have in the present time. An attempt is made to see the State as an organism. This is the kind of thing people do when they use the ideas current in our time to grasp anything that needs to be grasped in mind and spirit. It is good to be able to say this is an erudite, scholarly and truly profound individual, someone we really cannot praise enough, but at the same time we are going to show the true nature of the completely inappropriate idea on which the book is based. This is the kind of contradiction in which we find ourselves all the time. Life is full of contradictions. Abstract and incontrovertible ideas will not do if we want to take hold of life. We should not immediately think that someone whom we have to fight is an idiot; it is also possible to see someone whom we have to fight as a most erudite and thoroughgoing scholar, as indeed is the case with the author about whose work I am speaking.

What Kjellen is doing is rather similar to what the Swabian—now I do not know what to call him, the Swabian scholar or the Austrian Minister of State, for he was both—Schaeffle.⁴ Schaeffle in his day made a thorough attempt to see the State as an organism and individual citizens as the cells in this organism. Hermann Bahr—I have spoken of him before⁵—wrote a refutation of Schaeffle's book. The title of the book was: Die Aussichtslosigkeit der Sozialdemokratie (translates as ‘Social democracy—Outlook nil’); the refutation was entitled: Die Einsichtslosigkeit des Herrn Schaeffle (translates as ‘Mr. Schaeffle—Insight nil’), a brilliant little book. He called it a bit of naughtiness in a recent lecture. It is still quite a brilliant piece of work, written in his youth.

Schaeffle, therefore, did something rather like Kjellen is doing now. Kjellen, too, is trying to present every State as an organism, with the individual citizens as its cells. We do, of course, know quite a few things about the way in which cells function in an organism, and about the laws which pertain in an organism, and this transfers quite prettily to a State. People like to use such comparisons in areas which their minds are unable to penetrate. Well, the method of comparison can be applied to anything. If you like, I can easily develop a complete little science based on the comparison between a swarm of locusts and a double bass. You can compare anything to anything in the world, and comparisons will always prove fruitful. But the fact that we are able to make comparisons certainly does not mean that we are dealing with reality in making them. It is especially important to have a tremendous sense of reality when creating analogies, otherwise they will not work. When we create an analogy we are apt to find ourselves in the situation which some people experience as a harsh destiny in the days of their youth, when—forgive me—we instantly fall in love with the analogy we have created. Analogies which come to mind and really are obvious do have the drawback that we fall in love with them. This has its consequence, however, for we grow blind to any argument against the conclusions which may be drawn from the analogy.

And I must say, when I had read Kjellen's book, I realized, as soon as I considered it in the light of reality, that it has been written right now, during this war. To write such a book about the State as an organism did seem entirely unrealistic to me. You only need to look around you a little and you realize—even if it may not be literally so—that wars are fought in such a way that bits are cut off from the States which are in combat, and one bit is put here and another there; bits are cut off and put somewhere else. This aspect of war does matter, at least to a lot of people.

Now, if we were to compare States to organisms, we should at least try and take the analogy so far that one would also be able to cut bits off one organism and give them to a neighbouring organism. This is something people should realize, but they do not, because they have fallen in love with the analogy. There are many other examples I could give, and these would probably amuse you a great deal and make you laugh heartily, and you would then no longer consider the individual concerned to be as erudite as I do consider him to be. I do indeed consider him to be most erudite and truly profound.

How can it happen that someone may be erudite and a real scholar and nevertheless build a whole system on a completely inappropriate idea? Well, you see, the reason is that the analogy created by Kjellen is correct. You will now say that you no longer know which way to turn; first I tell you the analogy is utterly inappropriate and then I tell you it is correct. Well, in saying that it is correct I meant that it can certainly be made; what matters, however, is what we are comparing. You always have two things in an analogy, in Kjellen's case the State and the organism. Things must always be presented in accord with their true nature. The State exists, and the organism, too, exists. Neither of them can be wrong—only the way they are brought together is wrong. The point is that what is happening on earth can certainly be compared to an organism. The political events on earth can be compared to an organism; but we must not compare the State to an organism. If we compare the State to an organism, this makes individual human beings into cells, which is simply nonsense, for it will get us nowhere. It is, however, possible to compare political and social life on earth to an organism, but it is the whole earth which must be compared to the organism. As soon as we compare the whole earth, that is human events all over the earth, to an organism, and the different States—not the people—to different kinds of cells, the analogy is true and it is valid.

If you take this as your basis and then observe how individual States relate to each other, you will have something similar to the cells which make up the different systems in the organism. What matters, therefore, is that we apply any analogy we have chosen to create at the right level. Kjellen's—and also Schaeffle's—mistake was to compare an individual State to the whole organism, when in fact it can only be compared to a cell, a fully developed cell. Life on the earth as a whole can be compared to an organism, and then the comparison will prove fruitful. I think you will agree that the cells of the organism do not walk past each other in the way individual people do in a country. Cells adjoin, they are neighbours, and this also holds true for individual States, which are indeed like cells in the total organism of life on earth.

You may well feel that something is missing in what I have been saying. If your sense for pedantic accuracy—and this, too, has its justification—begins to stir in your hearts as I say these things, you will no doubt say I ought to give you proof that the life of the whole earth must be compared to the organism and an individual State to a cell. Well, the proof of the pudding lies in the eating; it does not lie in the abstract deliberations which we can always go into, but in taking the thought to its conclusion. If you do so with regard to Kjellen's idea, you will always find that it cannot be taken to its conclusion. You will keep running into a brick wall, and you will have to turn into a goat; otherwise you cannot take it to its conclusion. Yet if you take the thought to its conclusion for the life of the whole earth, you will find that it works, that you gain useful insights and it makes a good regulative principle. You will come to understand many things, even more than I have already indicated.

People are abstractionists today, and one feels like saying that if you have a dozen people, thirteen of them would think as follows—I know the figures do not fit, but the real situation is such today that it is practically true. If you take the case where Kjellen compares the individual State to an organism—and if we are countering this by saying that in reality one must compare political and social life all over the globe to an organism—these thirteen people out of a dozen will believe the analogy to be valid for all times. For if someone establishes a theory about the State, then this theory must apply in the present time, in Roman times, and even in Egyptian and Babylonian times; for a State is a State. People base themselves on concepts today, not on the reality.

But truly this is not how things are. In this respect, too, humanity is going through a process of evolution. The analogy I have given is only valid from the sixteenth century onwards; before then the globe was not a coherent whole; it has only come to be a coherent political whole from then onwards. America, the western hemisphere, simply did not exist for any political life which might have been a coherent whole. By creating a proper analogy, you immediately also see the tremendous break that exists between more recent life and life in the past. Insights based on reality always bear fruit, compared to concepts not based on reality, which are sterile and do not bear fruit. Every insight based on reality takes us a step further. We gain more than its immediate content and it takes us forward in the real world. This is what is so important; it is what we must concentrate on. Abstract concepts are like this: we have them, but the reality is outside and does not care a hoot about this abstract concept. Concepts based on reality hold within them the whole active inner life which is also there outside, life that chumbles and churns⁶ in every part of the real world out there. People are made uncomfortable by this. They want their concepts to be as quiet and colourless as possible and are afraid they will get giddy if their concepts have inner life.

Concepts without inner life do, however, have the disadvantage that the reality can be there in front of our eyes and yet we do not see the most important element in it. Reality is also full of concepts and ideas. It is really true what I said here a few days ago: elemental life goes on out there, and it is full of concepts and ideas. I also said that abstract ideas are mere corpses of ideas. It can happen that people who only like corpses of ideas will speak and think in them, whereas reality comes to quite different conclusions; it lets events take quite a different course from anything human minds are liable to come up with.

For three years now we have been caught up in terrible events which can teach us a great deal; we must be awake in following events, however, and not asleep. It is really something to marvel at, negatively speaking, that so many people are still asleep to the reality of these terrible events and still have not come to the realization that events which have never happened before in the world evolution of humanity demand that we develop new ideas, which also have not existed before. Let me put this more accurately in symbolic form. We may certainly say that some individuals had a notion that this war was coming and they may have had it for many years. Generally speaking, it can be said, however, that with the exception of certain groups in the Anglo-American world, the war was completely unexpected. With those who had an idea of its coming, the idea sometimes took a very odd form. One idea, which could be found again and again, came from economists and politicians who were deep thinkers—I assure you, I am not being ironical, I am completely serious about this—and was based on careful deductions made with reference to certain events. These people proceeded in a very scientific way, combining, abstracting and making all kinds of syntheses, and finally arrived at an idea which one really did come across for a long time, even at the time when war broke out. It was that in the light of the present world situation, of economic factors and the trade situation, this war could not possibly go on for more than four or six months. This was a truth fully supported by factual evidence. And the reasons given were far from stupid; they were perfectly good reasons.

But how does reality compare to the whole tissue of reasons put together by those clever economists? Well, you can see what is happening in reality! What is the point, ask you, when such a situation arises? The point is that we must draw the right conclusions from such a situation, so that the war actually teaches us something. What is the only possible conclusion from what I have given as a symbol? You see, I have merely given one glaringly obvious instance; I could tell you of many other and similar views which have also fallen foul—to put it mildly—of the real events which have occurred in the last three years. What, then, is the only real conclusion? It is that everything from which the wrong conclusions were drawn must be thrown overboard and we must say to ourselves: Our thinking has been divorced from reality; we have developed a system of ideas and then applied this abstract, unrealistic system to reality, which made reality become untrue. We must therefore break with the premises on which our apparent conclusion was based, for this conclusion destroys the real world!

One can make a strong point of saying these things to people today, but whether they will also take it as a strong point is another question. Something that was just as intelligent as the politicians' idea of the potential duration of the war—again I am not being ironical—were the reasons given by an enlightened group of medical men when the first railways were being built in Central Europe. Speaking on the basis of medical knowledge at the time, not just a single eccentric but a whole group of medical men—I have spoken of this before—said that the railways should not be built because the human nervous system would not be able to cope with them. This is on historical record; it happened in 1838. Not so long ago, therefore, the professional opinion was that railways should not be built. If, however, people were to build railways after all—so the document says—high board fences should be put on either side of the tracks, so that the farmers would not see the trains passing by and suffer concussion as a result. Yes, it is easy to laugh afterwards, when reality has ignored such arguments. People laugh about it afterwards, but there are some elemental spirits who laugh about human folly when it is being committed, or indeed even before scientists come up with such foolish notions.

We must break with anything where the opposite has proved true. Reality is contradicting theory, and the life of the last three years, as it has been all over the world, is contradiction come to realization. We must take a new look at events, for the present time is challenging us to make a radical revision of our views. It is actually difficult to take such a train of thought through to its conclusion once it has been started. Humanity is not sufficiently free-thinking today to allow these thoughts to reach their conclusion. Anyone who has a sense for reality, for what really happens all around us, can of course see that the conclusions are being drawn in the real world outside. It is just that people will not get this into their heads.

There is an enormous difference in this respect between the West and the East. Last year I discussed the profound difference between West and East with you from all kinds of different points of view,⁷ pointing out, for example, that the West is mainly talking of birth and of claiming rights. Look at Western views: birth and origin is the principal idea in science. It has given rise to Darwin's theory on the origin of species. We might also say: in ideological terms the theory of birth and origin, in practical terms the idea of human rights.

In the East, in Russian life, which is little known to us, we find reflections on death, on the human goal extending into the world of the Spirit, and on the concept of guilt and of sin in terms of practical ethics—read Soloviev,⁸ his works are now readily available. Such contrasts may be found in most areas, and we do not grasp reality unless we take full note of them. Emotions, sympathies and antipathies prevent people from considering the things which matter. As soon as sympathies and antipathies are aroused, people will not even let the truth get near them; in the same way people who have fallen in love with a particular analogy fail to see the contradictions. People hold anything they love for the absolute truth; they cannot even imagine that the opposite may also be true, though from a different point of view.

Let us consider the West, and specifically the Anglo-American West, for the rest are mostly repeating what they are saying. Which point of view—or ideal, as people also like to call it—is all-pervading, particularly in Wilsonianism? It is that the whole world should be the same as these Western nations have been in recent centuries. They developed their own ideal system—calling it by different names, such as ‘democracy’ and the like—and other nations are very much at fault because they have not developed the same system! It is only right and proper that the whole world should adopt their system. The Anglo-American view is this: ‘What we have developed, what we have become, is right for all nations, great and small; it creates the right political situation and makes the people happy. This is how things should be everywhere.’

We hear it being proclaimed; it is the gospel of the West. No one even considers that such things are only relative and that they develop mainly on the basis of emotions and not, as people believe, of pure sense and reason.

Take care, of course, not to squeeze these words too much, for squeezing the last out of a word is something which often leads to misunderstanding today. People might think, for instance, that I want to hit out at the American people, or the Anglo-American peoples, when I speak of Wilsonianism or Lloyd-Georgianism. This is not at all the case. I am deliberately calling it ‘Wilsonianism’ because I mean something quite specific. But far be it from me to mean something which you could simply call ‘Americanism’. This is another case where one has to concentrate on the real situation. Some of the tirades to have come from Mr Wilson⁹ in recent times did not even originate on American soil. We cannot even do Mr Wilson the honour of calling his tirades original. They are worthless and untrue and they are not even entirely original. The strange thing is that a writer in Berlin, someone with considerable acumen, has written articles which were Wilsonian without being Wilson's. They did rather well, these articles, though not in Germany. They did well in the American Congress and you find them included, page by page, in the Proceedings of Congress, because they were read out at Congress meetings. Some of Wilson's more recent tirades may be found in those pages. Some of the fabrications Wilson produces against Central Europe have their origin there. So they are not even original. It should be rather interesting, quite a joke in fact, when future historians look at the Proceedings of the American Congress and find there was a time when those gentlemen decided not to present their own brilliant ideas but to read out the articles by the writer in Berlin, and those pages were then included in their Proceedings, with ‘Proceedings of the American Congress’ written on the cover.

What really interests us, however, is the reason why the Americans liked those articles. Well, it is because they really say that one can feel perfectly comfortable on a chair which one has occupied for centuries and where one is now able to sit and tell the world: ‘You should all sit on chairs like this, and everything will be fine.’ This is what you get in the West.

The East, Russia, has also come to a conclusion, but not by way of a concept; the people there are not yet theorists, for they have their reality. The conclusion they have drawn is a different one. They never dreamt of saying: ‘What we have been doing for centuries must now be the salvation of the whole world. We want people to be the same as we have been.’ It would have been possible to find a pretty word for what has been going on for centuries in Russia. Pretty words can always be found, even if the reality is about as horrible as you can imagine. If you pay for it with American money, it will just cost so and so many dollars and you can reinterpret the most golden of ideas as ethical ideals. This, however, is not what happened in the East, for there a real conclusion was reached. People did not say: ‘The world should now accept what we have had so far.’ Instead, the real conclusion which I touched on earlier was drawn: that the premises do not have to be correct. Something has been set in motion, though it is as yet far from what it will be one day. But this does not concern us; I do not want to express an opinion on the one or the other, I merely want to show how great the contrast is. If you consider the contrast, you get a colossal picture of the reality between the West, where people swear on anything which has to do with their past, and the East, where people have broken with everything that was their past.

If you consider this, you are not at all far away from the real causes of the present conflict; neither will you be far away from something else to which I have drawn attention before:¹⁰ The war is actually a war between West and East. The middle is simply being ground to dust between the two, merely because West and East cannot come to terms; the middle is suffering because of disagreement between West and East.

But does anyone want to pay heed to such a colossal truth? Did the events of March 1917¹¹ cast a light on the enormous contrast between West and East? Last year we had the ideologies of the West and the East written up on this blackboard.¹² World history has been teaching us from March this year. And humanity will have to learn, and come to understand; if they do not, quite different, even harder, times will come. It is not a question of knowing things in an abstract sense but above all of calling for a changing of ways, for an effort to be made; the old easy ways must go, and a spiritual approach must be seen to be the right way. And the effort must be made to find energies through spiritual science, not the kind of mere satisfaction where people say: Wasn't that nice! I feel really good!’—and float around in Cloud-cuckoo-land where they gradually go to sleep in their satisfaction at the harmony which exists in the world and the love of humanity which is so widespread. This was very much to the fore in the society endeavour headed by Mrs Besant.¹³ Many of you will remember the many protests I made against the precious sweetness and light that was particularly to be found in the Theosophical Society. High ideals were dished up liberally and internationally in the sweetest tones. All you heard was ‘general brotherhood’, ‘love of humanity’. I could not go along with this. We were seeking real, concrete knowledge about what went on in the world. You will remember the analogy I have often used, that this sweetness and general love seemed to me like someone who keeps on encouraging the stove which is supposed to heat the room: ‘Dear stove, it is your general stove duty to get the room warm; so please make it warm.’ All the male and female aunts, it seemed to me, were presenting the sum total of theosophy in those days in sweet words of love for humanity. My answer at the time was: ‘You have to put coal in the stove, and put in wood and light the fire.’ And if you are involved in a spiritual movement you must bring in real, concrete ideas; otherwise you will go on year after year with sweet nothings about general love of humanity. This ‘general love of humanity’ has really shown itself in a very pretty light in Mrs Besant, the leading figure in the theosophical movement.

It is, of course, more of an effort to deal with reality than to waffle in general terms about world harmony, about the individual soul being in harmony with the world, about harmony in the general love of humanity.

Anthroposophy does not exist to send people off to sleep, but to make them really wide awake. We are living at a time when it is necessary for people to wake up.

• 1. Henri Lichtenberger (1864–1941).
• 2. Duldeck House, built opposite the Goetheanum according to a model made by Rudolf Steiner.
• 3. Rudolf Kjellen (1864–1922), Swedish political scientist who first conceived the idea of geopolitics, which was later taken up by Haiford Mackinder in England and Karl Haushofer in Germany (who coined the term Lebensraum) and finally by the Nazis. The German title of Kjellen's book was Der Staat als Lebensform, Leipzig 1916.
• 4. Albert Schaeffle (1831–1903), sociologist and politician, minister of trade for Austria. His works include Bau und Leben des sozialen Koerpers (translates as ‘Anatomy and life of the body social’), 4 vols, Tübingen 1875–8, and Die Aussichtslosigkeit der Sozialdemokratie (translates as ‘Social democracy—Outlook
• 5. Hermann Bahr, see Note 3 of lecture 3. Die Einsichtslosigkeit des Herrn Schaeffle, Zurich 1886.
• 6. Rudolf Steiner used two made-up words, durchwurlt und durchwirlt, that were sufficiently close to existing German words to paint a lively picture in his listeners' minds. (Translator)
• 7. See the lecture of 24 September 1916 in Inner Impulses of Human Evolution (GA 171), translation revised by G. Church, F. Kozlik and S. C. Easton. Anthroposophie Press, Hudson NY 1984.
• 8. Vladimir Soloviev (1853–1900), Russian philosopher and poet. His selected works were translated into German by Harry Koehler, with the first volume published in Jena in 1914. His Justification of Good was first translated into English in 1918.
• 9. See Note 2 of lecture 3.
• 10. After the war had broken out, Rudolf Steiner spoke on various occasions about the centrast between East and West. Examples are two lectures given in Stuttgart on 13 and 14 February 1915 (GA 174b), available in manuscript translation by M. Cotterell (“The Christ Impulse as Bearer of the Union of the Spiritual and the Bodily”—Z 270) at Rudolf Steiner House Library in London, and a lecture given in Leipzig on 7 March 1915 (in GA 159) which is not available in English.
• 11. The February Revolution in Russia; on 12 March 1917 (February by the Gregorian calendar) the Duma chose a Provincial Government.
• 12. See Note 3 of lecture 1.
• 13. Annie Besant (1847–1933), President of the Theosophical Society.

LET us dwell again today a little on the considerations already referred to as the so-called Three Meetings. We have said that the two alternate states of sleeping and waking, in which man lives in the short course of twenty-four hours, are not only what they seem to external physical life, but that during every one of these two-fold periods man has a meeting with the Spiritual world. We explained this by saying that the ego and the astral bodies, which are separated from the physical and etheric bodies during sleep—being breathed forth as it were, on going to sleep and breathed in again on waking—that these during the hours of sleep meet with the world we reckon as belonging to the Hierarchy of the Angeloi. To this world our own human soul will also belong when it has formed the Spirit-Self; in this rules as highest directing principle, that which in the life of religion we are accustomed to call the Holy Spirit. We have gone somewhat minutely into the meeting which man has with the Holy Spirit in the Spiritual world, during each one of his normal periods of sleep.

Now, we must very clearly understand that in the course of the development of the human race, during the evolution of the earth, changes have taken place with regard to these things. What then actually takes place while man is asleep? Well, I think I made that clear in the last lecture, from the standpoint of what takes place within man. Considered in his relation to the universe, man in a certain sense, imitates that rhythm in the world-order, which is established in any one part of the earth by the fact that one half of the twenty-four hour period is day and the other half night. Of course, it is always day in some part of the earth, but a man only lives in one part of it, and in respect to this the rule given holds good: wherever he lives, he imitates the rhythm between day and night in his own rhythm of sleeping and waking. The fact that this rhythm is broken through in modern life, that man is no longer compelled to be awake at day and asleep at night, is connected with his progress in evolution, in the course of which he raises himself above the objective course of the world, and now only has within him the one rhythm of day and night,—no longer the two rhythms working together. These rhythms work in a certain sense at one time for the universe, for the Macrocosm, and at another for man, for the Microcosm; but they are no longer in unison. In this way man has, in a certain respect, become a being independent of the Macrocosm.

Now, in those olden times, when, as we know, there was a certain atavistic clairvoyance in man, he was then more in harmony with the great course of the world-order, with respect to this rhythm. In olden times people slept all night, and were awake all day. For this reason the whole circle of man's experience was different from what it is now. But man has had in a sense to be lifted out of this parallel with the Macrocosm, and being thus torn away he has been compelled to stimulate an inner independent life of his own. It cannot be said that the main point was, that as in those days man slept at night he did not then observe the stars; for he did observe them, notwithstanding the fables of external science with respect to worship of the stars. The essential thing was that man was then differently organised into the whole world-order; for, while the sun was at the other side of the earth and consequently did not exercise its immediate activity on the part of the earth on which he lived, a man was then able in his ego and astral bodies—which were outside his physical and etheric bodies—to devote himself to the stars. He thus observed not merely the physical stars, but perceived the Spiritual part of the physical stars. He did not actually see the physical stars with external eyes; but he saw the Spiritual part of the physical stars. Hence we must not look upon what is related of the ancient star-worship, as though the ancients looked up to the stars and then made all sorts of beautiful symbols and images. It is very easy to say, according to modern science: In those olden times the imagination was very active; men imagined gods behind Saturn, Sun and Moon; they pictured animal forms in the signs of the Zodiac. But it is only the imagination of the learned scientists that works in this way, inventing such ideas True it is, however, that in the state of consciousness of the egos and astral bodies of the ancients, this did seem to them to be as we have described, so that they really saw and perceived those things. In this way man had direct vision of the spirit which is the soul of the universe; he lived with it. In reality it is only as regards our physical and etheric body that we are suited for the earth; the ego and astral body in their present condition are suited to the spirit that ensouls the universe, in the manner described. We may say that they belong to that region of the universe; but man must develop so far as really to be able to experience the innermost being of his ego and astral body, and to have experiences within them. For this purpose the external experience which was present in olden times, had to disappear for a while, it had to be blurred. The consciousness of communication with the stars had to recede; it had to be dimmed, so that the inner being of man could become powerful enough to enable him, at a definite time in the future, to learn so to strengthen it that he may be able to find the spirit, as spirit. Just as the ancients were united every night, when asleep, with the spirit of the stellar-world, so was man once connected with that spirit in the course of every year; but as time went on, in the course of the year he came in touch with a Higher Spirit of the world of the stars, and also in a sense with what went on in that world. While asleep at night the forms of the stars in their calm repose worked upon him; in the course of the year he was affected by the changes connected with the sun's course through the year; connected, as one might say, through the sun's course with the destiny of the earth for the year, caused by her passage through the seasons, and especially through the summer and winter.

You see, although some traditions are still extant relating to the experiences man formerly went through when asleep at night, there are but few remaining of those yet more distant times (or rather few traced back to their origin), when men took part in the secrets of the year's course. The echoes of these experiences still persist, but they are little understood. If you seek among the myths of the different peoples you will constantly come across that which proves that man then knew something of a conflict between winter and summer, summer and winter. Here again external erudition sees nothing but the symbolic creative imagination of the ancients; it says, we in our advanced times have gone much further than that! These were, however, real experiences which man went through, and they played a significant and profound part in the whole Spiritual civilisation of the ancient past. There were mysteries in which the knowledge of the secrets of the year were taught. Let us just consider the significance of such mysteries. These were not the same in the very ancient times as they became later, in the times when the history of ancient Egypt and of ancient Greece and to some extent even the earlier Roman history was enacted. We will, therefore, consider those mysteries which passed away with the older civilisations of Egypt, Greece, and Rome.

In these mysteries there was still a consciousness of the connection of the earth with the whole universe. At that time it was customary for suitable persons to be subjected to a definite Psychical process—but this could no longer be done today. They could then, during a certain number of days—in winter—be sent to certain definite localities, there to serve in a sense as receiving stations for the universe, the supra-earthly universe, and to receive what it is able to communicate to the earth at such times, if the times could provide a sufficiently receptive receiving-station. Our present Christmas time was then not precisely the most important time, though approximately so but the exact time does not signify for the moment. Let us assume the time to be between the 24th December, and the early days of January. This season is one in which, through the special position of the sun to the earth, the universe conveys something to the earth that it does not at other times. At this season the universe speaks in a more intimate way to the earth than at other times. This is because the sun does not unfold its summer-force at this time; the summer-force has in a certain respect, withdrawn. Now, the leaders of the ancient mysteries took advantage of that time to make it possible in certain organised places with the help of specially prepared persons, to receive the inner secrets of the universe, which came down to the earth during this intimate duologue. This may be compared today with something certainly much more trivial, yet the two can be compared. You know that what is known as ‘wireless telegraphy’ rests upon the fact that electric waves are set in motion, which are then further transmitted without wires, and that in certain places an instrument called a coherer is installed, which, by its peculiar arrangement makes it possible for the electric waves to be received and the coherer is then set in action. The whole thing depends entirely on the arrangement and formation of the metal filings in the coherer which are then shaken back into place when the waves have passed through it. Now, if we assume that the secrets of the universe, of the supra-earthly universe, pass through the earth at the special time alluded to, it would be necessary to have an instrument for receiving them; for the electric waves would pass by the receiving-station to no purpose, unless the right instrument attuned to receive them were there! Such an instrument is needed to receive what comes from the universe. The ancient Greeks used their Pythia, their priestesses for this purpose; they were trained for the purpose and were very specially sensitive to what came down from the universe, and were able to communicate its secrets. These secrets were then later on taught by those who perhaps, had long been unable themselves to act as receivers. Still the secrets of the universe were given out. This, of course, took place under the sign of the holy mysteries, a sign of which the present age, which has -no longer any feeling for what is holy, has no conception. In our age the first thing would obviously be to ‘interview’ the priests of the mysteries!

Now, what was above all demanded of these priests? It was necessary in a certain sense that they should know that if they made themselves acquainted with what streamed down from the universe for the fructification of earth-life, and especially if they used it in their social knowledge, they must be capable, having thereby become much cleverer, of establishing the principal laws and other rules for government during the coming year.

It would at one time have been impossible to establish laws or social ordinances, without first seeking guidance from those who were able to receive the secrets of the Macrocosm. Later ages have retained dim and dubious echoes of this greatness in their superstitious fancies. When on New Year's Eve people pour melted lead into water to learn the future of the coming year, that is but the superstitious remains of that great matter of which I have described. Therein the endeavour was made so to fructify the spirit of man that he might carry over into the earth what could only spring from the universe; for it was desired that man should so live on the earth that his life should not merely consist of what can be experienced here, but also of what can be drawn from the universe. In the same way, it was known that during the summer time of the earth we are in a quite different relation to the universe, and that during that season the earth cannot receive any intimate communications from thence. The summer mysteries were based upon this knowledge, and were intended for a quite different purpose, which I need not go into today.

Now, as I have said, even less has come down to us in tradition concerning the secrets of the course of the year, than of those things relating to the rhythm between day and night, and between sleeping and waking. But in those olden times, when man still had a high degree of atavistic clairvoyance, through which he was able to experience in the course of the year the intimate relations between the universe and the earth, he was still conscious that what he thus experienced came from that meeting with the Spiritual world, which he cannot now have every time he sleeps. It came from the meeting with the Spiritual world in which dwell those Spiritual beings we reckon as belonging to the world of the Archangels—where man will some day dwell with his innermost being, after he has developed his Life-Spirit, during the Venus period. That is the world in which we must think of Christ, the Son, as the directing and guiding principle. (Man had this meeting in all ages, of course, but it was formerly perceived by means of atavistic clairvoyance.) We have, therefore, called this meeting, which in the course of the year man has in any part of the earth where he makes Christmas in his winter: the meeting with the Son. Thus in the course of a year, a man really goes through a rhythm which imitates that of the seasons of the year, in which he has a meeting and a union with the world of the Son.

Now we know that through the Mystery of Golgotha, that Being whom we designate as the Christ has united Himself with the course of the Earth. At the very time this union took place, the direct vision into the Spiritual world had become blurred, as I have just explained.

We see the objective fact: that the Event of Golgotha is directly connected with the alteration in the evolution of mankind on the earth itself. Yet we may say that there were times in the earth's development when, in the sense of the old atavistic clairvoyance, man entered into relation with Christ, through becoming aware of the intimate duologue held between the earth and the Macrocosm. Upon this rests the belief held by certain modern learned men, students of religion, with some justification:—the belief that an original primal revelation had once been given to the earth. It came about in the manner described. It was an old primeval revelation. All the different religions on the face of the earth are fragments of that original revelation, fragments fallen into decadence. In what position then are those who accepted the Mystery of Golgotha? They are able to express an intense inner recognition of the Spiritual content of the universe, by saying: That which in olden times could only be perceived through the duologue of the earth with the cosmos, has now descended; it dwelt within a human being, it appeared in the Man, Jesus of Nazareth, in the course of the Mystery of Golgotha. Recognition of the Christ who dwelt in Jesus of Nazareth, recognition of that Being who was formerly perceptible to the atavistic clairvoyance of man at certain seasons of the year, must be increasingly emphasised as necessary for the Spiritual development of humanity. For the two elements of Christianity will be then united as they really should and must be, if on the one hand Christianity, and on the other humanity, are each to develop further in the right way. The fact that in the old Christian traditions the Legend of Christ Jesus was part of the yearly celebration of the Christmas, Easter, and Whitsuntide Festivals, is connected with this; and, as I stated in a former lecture, the fact that the Festival of Christmas is kept at a fixed date, while Easter is regulated according to the heavenly constellations, is also connected with this. Christmas is celebrated in accordance with the earth-conditions, it is kept in what is always the very depth of winter and this hangs together with the meeting with Christ, with the Son, which meeting really takes place at that season. Christ, however, is a Being belonging to the Macrocosm. He descended from thence, yet is One with it; and this is expressed in the fixing of Easter by the heavens in spring, according to the constellations of sun and moon;—for the Easter Festival is intended to show that Christ belongs to the whole universe, just as Christmas should point to the descent of Christ to the earth. So it was right that what belongs to the seasons of the year through their rhythm in human life, should be inserted into the course of the year as has been done. For this is so profound a thing, as regards the inner being of man, that it is really right that these Festivals relating to the Mystery of Golgotha, should continue to be held in harmony with the rhythm of the great universe, and not be subject to the alteration which in modern cities has taken place in the hours of sleeping and waking.

Here we have something in which man should not as yet exercise his freewill, something in which each year the consciousness should come to him, that, though he can no longer come into touch with the great universe through atavistic clairvoyance, there is still something living within him which belongs to the universe and expresses itself in the course of the year.

Now, among the things which are perhaps the most found fault with in Spiritual Science by certain religious sects, is, that according to Spiritual Science the Christ-Impulse must once again be bound up with the whole universe. I have often emphatically stated that Spiritual Science takes nothing away from the traditions of religion with respect to the mystery of Christ Jesus; but rather adds to them the connection which surrounds that mystery extending, as it does, from the earth to the whole universe. Spiritual Science does not seek Christ on the earth alone, but in the whole universe.

It is indeed not easy to understand why certain religious confessions so strongly condemn this connecting of the Christ-Impulse with Cosmic Events. This attitude would be comprehensible if Spiritual Science wished to do away with the traditions of Christianity; but as it only adds to them, that should not be a reason for censure. So it is, however; and the reason is that people do not wish anything to be added to certain traditions.

There is, however, something very serious behind all this, something of very great importance to our age. I have often drawn your attention to the fact, which is also mentioned in the first of my Mystery Plays, that we are approaching a time in which we can speak of a Spiritual return of Christ. I need not go more fully into this today, it is well known to all our friends. This Christ Event will, however, not merely be an event satisfying the transcendental curiosity of man, but it will above all bring to their minds a demand for a new understanding of the Christ-Impulse. Certain basic words of the Christian faith, which ought to surge through the whole world as holy impulses—at any rate through the world of those who wish to take up the Christ-Impulse—are not understood deeply enough. I will now only call to your remembrance the significant and incisive words: ‘My kingdom is not of this world.’ These words will take on a new meaning when Christ appears in a world which is truly not of this world, not of the world of sense. It must be a profound attribute of the Christian conception of the world to cultivate an understanding of other human views and conceptions, with the sole exception of rough and crude materialism. Once we know that all the religions on the earth are the remnants of ancient vision, it will then only be a question of taking seriously enough what was thus perceived; for later on, because mankind was no longer organised for vision, the results of the former vision only filtered through in fragmentary form into the different religious creeds. This can once again be recognised through Christianity. Through Christianity a profound understanding can be gained, not only of the great religions, but of every form of religious creed on the earth. It is certainly easy to say this; though at the same time very difficult to make men really adopt these views. Yet they must become part of their convictions, all the wide world over. For Christianity, in so far as it has spread over the earth up to the present time, is but one religion among many, one creed among a number of others. That is not the purpose for which it was founded; it was founded that it might spread understanding over the whole earth. Christ did not suffer death for a limited number of people, nor was He born for a few; but for all. In a certain sense there is a contradiction between the demand that Christianity should be for all men and the fact that it has become one of many creeds. It is not intended to be a separate creed, and it can only be that, because it is not understood in its full and deep meaning. To grasp this deep meaning a cosmic understanding is necessary.

One is compelled today to wrestle for words wherewith to express certain truths, which are now so far removed from man that we lack the words to express them. One is often obliged to express the great truths by means of comparisons. You will recollect that I have often said that Christ may be called the Sun-Spirit. From what I have said today about the yearly course of the sun, you will see that there is some justification for calling Him the Sun-Spirit. But we can form no idea of this, we cannot picture it, unless we keep the cosmic relation of Christ in view, unless we consider the Mystery of Golgotha as a real Christ-Mystery, as something that certainly took place on this earth, and yet is of significance for the whole universe and took place for the whole universe.

Now, men are in conflict with one another about many things on the earth, and they are at variance on many questions; they are at variance in their religious beliefs, and believe themselves to be at variance as regards their nationality and many other things. This lack of unity brings about times such as those in which we are living now. Men are not of one mind even with regard to the Mystery of Golgotha. For no China-man or Indian will straightway accept what a European missionary says about the Mystery of Golgotha. To those who look at things as they are, this fact is not without significance. There is, however, one thing concerning which men are still of one mind. It seems hardly credible, but it is a commonplace truth and one we cannot help admitting, that when we reflect how people live together on the earth, we cannot help wondering that there should be anything left upon which they are not at variance; yet there still are things about which people are of one mind, and one such example is the view people hold about the sun. The Japanese, Chinese, and even the English and Americans, do not believe that one sun rises and sets for them and another for the Germans. They still believe in the sun being the common property of all; indeed they still believe that what is supra-earthly is the common property of all. They do not even dispute that, they do not go to war about these things. And that can be taken as a sort of comparison. As has been said, these things can only be expressed by comparisons. When once people realise the connection of Christ with these things which men do not dispute, they will not dispute about Him, but will learn to see Him in the Kingdom which is not of this world, but which belongs to Him. But until men recognise the cosmic significance of Christ, they will not be of one mind with respect to the things concerning which unity should prevail. For we shall then be able to speak of Christ to the Jews, to the Chinese, to the Japanese, and to the Indians,—just as we speak to Christian Europeans. This will open up an immensely significant perspective for the further development of Christianity on the earth, as well as for the development of mankind on the earth. For ways must be found of arousing in the souls of men, sentiments which all people shall be able to understand equally.

That will be one thing demanded of us in the time that shall bring the return, the Spiritual return, of the Christ. Especially with respect to the words: ‘My Kingdom is not of this world,’ a deeper understanding will come about in that time; a deeper understanding of the fact that there is in the human being not only what pertains to the earth, but something supra-earthly, which lives in the annual course of the sun. We must grow to feel that as in the individual human life the soul rules the body, so in everything that goes on outside, in the rising and setting stars, in the bright sunlight, and fading twilight, there dwells something Spiritual; and just as we belong to the air with our lungs, so do we belong to the Spiritual part of the universe with our souls. We do not belong to the abstract Spiritual life of an outgrown Pantheism, but to that concrete Spirituality which lives in each individual being. Thus we shall find that there is something Spiritual which belongs to the human soul, which indeed is the human soul; and that this is in inner connection with what lives in the course of the year as does the breath in a man; and that the course of the year with its secrets belongs to the Christ-Being, who went through the Mystery of Golgotha. We must soar high enough to be able to connect what took place historically on the earth in the Mystery of Golgotha, with the great secrets of the world—with the Macrocosmic secrets. From such an understanding will proceed something extremely important: a knowledge of the social needs of man. A great deal of social science is practised in our day, and all sorts of social ideals mooted. Certainly nothing can be said against that, but all these things will have to be fructified by that which will spring up in man, through realising the course of the year as a Spiritual impulse. For only by vividly experiencing each year the image of the Mystery of Golgotha, parallel with the course of the year, can we become inspired with real social knowledge and feeling.

What I am now saying must certainly seem absolutely strange to people of the present day, yet it is true. When the year's course is again generally felt by humanity as in inner connection with the Mystery of Golgotha, then, by attuning the feelings of the soul with both the course of the year and the secret of the Mystery of Golgotha, a true social ruling will be the true solution, or at any rate the true continuation of what is today so foolishly called (in reference to what is really in view) the social question. Precisely through Spiritual Science people will have to acquire a knowledge of the connections of man with the universe. This will certainly lead them to see more in this universe than does the materialism of today.

Just those very things to which least importance is attributed today, are really the most important. The materialistic biology, the materialistic Natural Science of today compares man with the animal; though it certainly does admit a certain difference,—in degree. In its own domain it is of course right; but what it completely leaves out of account is the relation of man to the directions of the universe. The animal spine—and in this respect the exceptions prove the rule—the animal spine is parallel with the surface of the earth, its direction is out into the universe. The human spine is directed towards the earth. For this reason man is quite different from the animal, above and below. The ‘above and below’ in man determine his whole being. In the animal the spine is directed to the infinite distances of the Macrocosm; in man the upper part of the head, the brain, and man himself are inserted into the whole Macrocosm. This is of enormous significance. This brings about what establishes a relation between the Spiritual and bodily in man, and through this his Spiritual and bodily parts are made subject to the conditions of above and below. I shall have more to say on this subject, but today I will merely just allude to it in a sketchy way. This ‘above and below’ characterises what we may call ‘the going out of the ego and astral body during sleep.’ For man with his physical body and etheric body is really inserted into and forms part of the earth while he is awake. During the night time he, with his ego and astral body is in a certain sense, inserted into that which is above.

Now we may ask: well, how is it then with other opposites to be found in the Macrocosm? There is also the opposite which in man can be described as ‘before and behind.’ In respect to these, too, man is inserted in a different way into the whole universe than is the animal or, indeed the plant. Man is inserted in such a way that he corresponds both before and behind to the course of the sun. This ‘before and behind’ is the direction which corresponds to the rhythm in which man takes part in living and dying. Just as man expresses in a sense a living relation of the ‘above and below’ in his sleeping and waking, so in his living and dying does he also express the relation of ‘before and behind.’ This ‘before and behind’ is in correspondence with the course of the sun; so that for man, ‘before’ signifies towards the east, and ‘behind’ towards the west. East and west form the second direction of space, that direction of which we really speak when we say that the human soul forsakes the human body not in sleep, but at death. For the soul on leaving the body goes towards the east. This is only still to be found in those traditions in which, when a man dies it is said: he has ‘entered the eternal east.’ Such old traditional sayings will some day, as indeed they are even now, be looked upon by learned men as merely symbolic. Some such platitudes as the following will be uttered: ‘The sun rises in the east,’ and is a beautiful sight; therefore, when it was desired to speak of eternity, the ancients spoke of the east! Yet this corresponded to a reality, and indeed one more closely connected with the yearly course of the sun than with the course of the day.

The third difference is that between the inner and the outer. Above and below, east and west, inner and outer. We live an inner life and we live an outer life. The day after tomorrow (15 March, 1917) I shall give a public lecture on this inner and outer life, entitled: ‘The human soul and the human body.’ We live an inner and an outer life. These form just as great opposites in man as above and below, east and west. Whereas in the course of the year man has more to do with what I might call a representative delineation of the whole course of life, we may say that when we speak of an inner and outer life in connection with the life and death of man, we refer to the whole course of his life, especially in so far as it has an ascending and a descending development. We know that up to a certain age a man goes through an ascending development. His collective growth then ceases, it remains at a standstill for a while, and then retrogrades. Now it hangs together with the collective course of a man's life, that at its early stages his whole body is then more connected in a natural, elemental way, with the Spiritual. I might say that at the beginning of his life a man is constituted in the very opposite way from what he is at the middle of his life, when he attains the zenith of his ascending development. In the first part of his life a man grows, thrives, and increases; afterwards his descending development begins. This is connected with the fact that the physical forces of man are then no longer in themselves forces of growth, for with the forces of growth are also intermingled the forces of decay. The inner nature of man is then connected in a similar way with the universe, as at his birth, at the beginning of his life, his outer bodily nature is connected with the universe. A complete turning round takes place. That is why at the present day a man goes through in a state of unconsciousness, in the middle of his life, the meeting with the Father-Principle, with that Spiritual Being whom we reckon as belonging to the Hierarchy of the Archai. He then meets with that Spiritual world in which he will dwell when he has completely developed his Spirit-Man.

Now, one might ask: Is this too in any way connected with the whole universe? Is there anything in the life of the universe connected in a similar way with the meeting that occurs in the middle of a man's life with the Father-Principle, as the meeting with the Spirit is connected with the rhythm of day and night, and the meeting with the Son with the rhythm of the year? That question might be asked. Well, now, my dear friends, we must bear in mind and hold firmly to the fact that, as regards the meeting with the Father-Principle, and also as regards that with the Spirit-Principle, man is lifted above rhythm, rhythm does not run quite parallel with man. For men are not all born at the same time, but at different times, therefore, the course of their lives cannot be parallel; but they can inwardly reflect some Spiritual Cosmic happening.

Do they do this?

Well, you see, if we recall what is stated in the little book: Education of the Child in the Light of Anthroposophy, and in other books and courses of lectures, we shall know, that in the first seven years man more particularly builds up his physical body, in the next seven years his etheric body, in the next seven years his astral body. Then for seven years he forms the sentient soul; from twenty-eight to thirty-five he forms the intellectual or reasoning soul; and during this period he has the meeting with the Father-Principle. It takes place during that time;—not that it extends over the whole period, but it occurs during those years;—so that we may say: a man prepares for it in his twenty-eight, twenty-ninth, and thirtieth years. In the case of most people the meeting takes place in the deepest subconscious regions of the human soul. Now, we must assume that this corresponds to something that takes place in the universe; that is, we must find in the universe something representing a course, a rhythm. Just as the rhythm of day and night is one of twenty-four hours, and the course of the year one of three hundred and sixty-five days, so we ought to be able to find something of a like nature in the universe, only that would have to be more comprehensive. All this is connected with the sun, or at least with the solar system. Just as the twenty-eighth twenty-ninth, and thirtieth years are more comprehensive than the period of twenty-four hours; and the three hundred and sixty-five days than any other period, so something yet greater must be connected with the sun, something corresponding with this third meeting. Now, the ancients rightly considered Saturn as the most distant planet from our solar system; it is the furthest away. From the standpoint of materialistic astronomy it was quite justifiable to add Uranus and Neptune to our system; but they have a different origin and do not belong to the solar system; so that we may speak of Saturn as the outermost Planet of our system. Now let us consider this. If Saturn forms the boundary of the solar system, we may say that in its circuit round the sun, it travels round the outermost boundaries of the solar system. When Saturn travels round this and returns to the point from which he started, he describes the extreme limits of the solar system. When he has traveled round the Sun and returned to his starting point, he then occupies the same relation to the sun as he did at first. Now Saturn, (as may be said, according to the Copernican Cosmic System) takes from twenty-nine to thirty years to complete his course, which is thus of about that duration. Here then, in the circuit of Saturn round the sun, which is not yet understood today—(the facts are really quite different, but the Copernican Cosmic System has not yet gone far enough to understand these) in this course of Saturn we have a connection, extending to the furthest limits of the solar system, with the course of a human life, which is thus an image of the Saturnian circuit in so far as the life-course of man leads to the meeting with the Father. That also leads us out into the Macrocosm. In this way, my dear friends, I think I have shown you that the innermost being of man can only be understood when considered in its connection to the supra-earthly. The supra-earthly, being Spiritual, is organised into that which in a sense it turns towards us visibly. But that which it manifests visibly is also merely an expression of the Spiritual. The raising of man above materialism will only take place when knowledge has progressed far enough to raise itself above the mere comprehension of earthly connections, and ascends once more to the grasp of the world of the stars and the sun.

I have already pointed out on a former occasion, that many things of which the present scholastic wisdom does not allow itself to dream, are connected with these things. Today men believe they will some day be able to generate living beings in their laboratories from inorganic matter. Materialism makes the most of this today. But it is not necessary to be a materialist to believe that a living being can be created out of inorganic matter, in the laboratory; for the alchemists, who certainly were not materialists, testified that they could make Homunculi; but today this is taken in a materialistic sense. The time will come, however, when it will be realised and inwardly felt, on approaching a man at work in his laboratory—(for living beings will indeed be produced in the laboratory from that which has no life)—on approaching such a man we shall feel ourselves compelled to say: ‘Welcome to the star of the hour!’ For this cannot be brought about at any hour; it will depend on the constellations. Whether life arises from the lifeless, will depend on the forces that do not belong to the earth, but come from the universe. Much is connected with these secrets. We shall speak of these things again in the near future, for it is now possible to say somewhat on these subjects, concerning which de Saint-Martin, who was called ‘The unknown philosopher’ says in many passages of his book on Truth and Error, that he thanks God that they are shrouded in secrecy. They cannot remain shrouded in secrecy however, for man will need them for his further development; but one thing is necessary, my dear friends, it is necessary that men should once more acquire that earnestness and feeling for the holiness of all these things, without which the world will not make the right use of such knowledge.

We will speak of these things again in the next lecture.

The Mystery of Golgotha for which I have already prepared the ground in recent lectures will be the subject of our enquiry today.

Let us recall the main points for consideration. I mentioned on the last occasion that in order to arrive at a true understanding of the world we must study the tripartite division of the cosmos and man in the light of the three principles of body, soul and spirit. It is most important to be aware of this fact at the present time, especially in the field of Anthroposophy. I should like to remind you that this idea of trichotomy forms the central theme of my book Theosophy. No doubt you have all read this book and will know that this idea forms the nucleus of the whole book. I quote the relevant passage:

“The spirit is eternal; the body is subject to life and death in accordance with the laws of the physical world; the soul-life which is subject to destiny mediates between these two (body and spirit) during life on Earth.”

Now at the time of the publication of this book I felt it was necessary to define clearly this idea of trichotomy. For by laying special, even decisive emphasis upon this idea we are really in a position today to understand the cosmos and at the same time to understand the central event of our Earth evolution—the Mystery of Golgotha.

In my last lecture I spoke of the solid body of opposition we encounter today when we set out to study both cosmos and man in the light of the threefold principle of body, soul and spirit, not simply as something of secondary importance, but as the central theme of our study. I have shown how the idea of the spirit was lost in the course of the spiritual evolution of the West. I mentioned that the idea of the spirit was proscribed by the eighth Ecumenical Council of Constantinople and that this proscription not only influenced the development of religious ideas and sentiments, but left a deep impression upon the thinking of recent times. In consequence there are few modern philosophers who are able to distinguish clearly between soul and spirit. And even amongst those who imagine themselves to be objective, one encounters everywhere the dogmatic assertion, stemming from the eighth Ecumenical Council, that man consists of body and soul alone. He who is familiar with the spiritual life of the West, not only as it is reflected in the more superficial realms of philosophy, but as it has implanted itself in the thinking and feeling of all men, even of those who have not the slightest interest in philosophical ideas, sees everywhere the effects of the proscription of the idea of the spirit. And when, in recent times, a tendency developed to draw upon certain aspects of the wisdom teaching of the East as a corrective to Western teachings, the borrowings were presented in such a light that one would scarcely suspect that the cosmos and man are founded on the threefold principle of body, soul and spirit. For in the division of man into gross body, etheric body and astral body, derived purely from astral observation, Sthula Sharira, Linga Sharira—Prâna as it was then called—Kâma, Kâma-Manas and the various other divisions introduced from the East—in all these divisions which are an arbitrary collocation of seven principles, there is no indication of what should be regarded of vital importance, namely, that our “Weltanschauung” should be permeated with this idea of trichotomy.

There is no doubt that this idea of man's threefold nature has been suppressed. The spirit, it is true, has often been a focus of discussion today, but the discussions are little more than empty words. People are unable to distinguish nowadays between mere words and realities. Hence many expositions are taken seriously which are little more than a farrago of words, such as the philosophy of Eucken.

We cannot understand the essential nature of the Mystery of Golgotha if we decide to reject the tripartite division of man. As I pointed out in my last lecture, the abolition of the spirit was first decreed by the eighth Ecumenical Council, but preparations had been underway for some time. The ultimate abolition of the spirit is connected with a necessary stage in the spiritual evolution of the West. We shall perhaps be able to approach the Mystery of Golgotha most easily from the standpoint of the tripartite division of man if we recall how Aristotle, the leading representative of Greek thought, envisaged the soul. The Middle Ages were also dominated by Aristotelian philosophy and though people are unwilling to admit it, modern thought still draws upon the concepts of the Middle Ages. Furthermore, the later evolution of thought was already anticipated in Aristotle a few centuries before the Mystery of Golgotha, and it was with the help of his ideas that the leading minds of the Middle Ages sought to understand the Mystery of Golgotha. These things are of paramount importance and we must really make an effort to investigate them with an open mind.

What was Aristotle's conception of the human soul? I will tell you as briefly as possible the Greek view of the soul as presented by an enlightened mind such as Aristotle. His conception of the soul—and we have here the views of the most famous European of the fourth century B.C.—was roughly as follows.

When an individual incarnates he owes his physical existence to his father and mother. But he owes only his physical inheritance to his parents. The whole man, according to Aristotle, could never come into being solely through the union of father and mother, for this whole man is endowed with a soul. Now one part of the soul—let us remember that Aristotle distinguishes two parts of the soul—is tied to the physical body, expresses itself through the body and apprehends the external world through sense-perception. This part of the soul arises as a necessary by-product of man's parental inheritance. The spiritual part of the soul, on the other hand, the “Active Reason” as Aristotle calls it which participates through intellection in the spiritual life of the Universe, in the “nous”, is immaterial and immortal and could never come into being through parental inheritance, but solely through the participation of God—or the “Divine” as Aristotle calls it—in the procreation of man through the parents.

It is thus that the whole man comes into existence. The whole man is born of the co-operation of God with the father and mother, and it is most important to realize that Aristotle understands the word “man” in this sense. From God man receives his spiritual soul or “Active Reason” as Aristotle calls it. This “Active Reason” which comes into being with each individual through Divine co-operation, evolves during life between birth and death. When man passes through the gate of death the physical body is given over to the Earth, and, with the body, the lower part of the soul, the “Passive Reason” in Aristotelian terminology, which is associated with the physical organism. The spiritual part of the soul, the “Active Reason”, on the other hand, subsists according to Aristotle, and when “separated, appears just as it is”, withdraws to a world remote from the phenomenal world and enjoys immortality. Now this immortal life is such that the man who performed good deeds whilst in the body is able to look back upon the fruits of his good deeds, but cannot change the karma of his past actions. We only understand Aristotle aright when we interpret his ideas as implying that through all eternity the soul looks back on the good or evil it has wrought.

In the nineteenth century especially, scholars were at pains to grasp this idea, for the style of Aristotle is economical to the point of obscurity. In his controversy with Eduard Zeller, the late Franz Brentano [original note 1] endeavoured throughout his life to gather every scrap of evidence which could throw light upon Aristotle's conception of the relationship between the spiritual part of man and the whole man. Aristotle's views passed over into the philosophy which was taught throughout the Middle Ages down to recent times and which is still taught in certain ecclesiastical circles today. Franz Brentano, who was actively interested in these ideas, in so far as they stemmed from Aristotle, came to the following conclusion.

The mind of Aristotle which, by virtue of its inherent disposition towards reflective thought transcended the limitations of materialism, could not have subscribed to the notion that the spiritual part of the soul was in any way material or could have evolved from man's parental inheritance. There were only two possible ways therefore, Brentano thought, in which Aristotle could envisage the soul. On the one hand, to accept the idea that the spiritual part of the soul was a direct creation of God working in conjunction with the parental inheritance, so that the spiritual part of the soul arose through Divine influence upon the human embryo and that this spiritual part did not perish at death, but entered upon eternal life. What other possibility was open to Aristotle, Brentano asks, if he rejected this idea? And he believed that Aristotle was right to accept this idea. There was only a second possibility; a third did not exist—and this was to admit not only the post-existence, but also the pre-existence of the soul before birth or conception. Now Brentano realized clearly that once we admit the possibility that the soul exists before conception then we are forced to concede that the soul does not experience a single incarnation only, but undergoes successive incarnations. And since, in later life, Aristotle rejects palingenesis, i.e. reincarnation, he had no option but to accept creationism, the doctrine that the soul is created ex nihilo with each embryonic life. This accepts post-existence, but denies pre-existence. Franz Brentano who had been a priest may be regarded as one of the last representatives of the positive side of Aristotelian scholastic philosophy. He thought it was eminently reasonable on the part of Aristotle to reject the doctrine of reincarnation and to recognize only creationism and post-existence.

And this view, despite its many modifications, forms the core of all Christian philosophy in so far as this philosophy rejects the idea of reincarnation. It is a strange phenomenon, both touching and tragic, to see how such an eminent scholar as Franz Brentano, who had resigned from the ministry, resolutely strove to clarify his ideas about creationism and yet could not bridge the gap which separated him from the doctrine of reincarnation. What was the reason for this? It was evident that, despite his profound erudition, despite the vigour and acuity of his mind, the door to the spirit was closed to him. He could never attain to the idea of the spirit or recognize the spirit as separate from the soul. It is not possible to attain to the idea of the spirit without accepting the idea of reincarnation. The idea of reincarnation is inseparable from the idea of the spirit. In Aristotle's day the idea of the spirit had already begun to decline. In the key passages of Aristotle's writings we observe that when he touches upon the question of preexistence he becomes obscure or ambiguous.

All this is connected with something of the greatest importance, something which carries profound implications, namely, that a few centuries before the Mystery of Golgotha man had entered upon a stage of evolution when something akin to a mist shrouded the soul whenever the spirit was mentioned. This mist was not so dense then as it is now, but the first signs of the corruption of man's thinking in matters of the spirit were already manifest at that time. And this is connected with the fact that in the course of time mankind had undergone an evolutionary process. Over the centuries man's soul had changed and was no longer the same as it had been in primeval times. Because man possessed atavistic clairvoyance in those remote times he had direct experience of the spirit. He could no more doubt the existence of the spirit than he could doubt the existence of the phenomenal world. It was simply a question of the degree of spiritual perception he could attain. That it was possible to find the path to the spirit in past ages was never in doubt. Nor was there ever any doubt that during the life between birth and death the spirit dwelt in the souls of men so that by virtue of this spiritual endowment the human soul could participate in divine life. And this conviction which was founded on an immediate awareness of the spirit was at all times expressed in the cult of the Mysteries. It is a remarkable fact that one of the earliest Greek philosophers, Heraclitus, speaks of the Mysteries in such a way that we realize he is aware that in olden times they were of immense importance to mankind, but that they had already fallen into desuetude. Thus enlightened Greeks had already begun in the fifth century B.C. to speak of the decline of the Mysteries.

Rites of various kinds were enacted in the Mysteries, but it is only the central idea of these Mysteries which is of particular interest to us today. Let us dwell for a moment on this central idea of the Mysteries as they were practised up to the time of the Mystery of Golgotha and as late as the reign of the Emperor Julian the Apostate. In recent times attention has been called to the anti-Christian nature of many aspects of these Mystery Cults. It has been pointed out that what we know as the “Easter Legend”, the keynote to the Passion, the Death and Resurrection of Christ, can be found everywhere in the Mysteries. And the conclusion drawn from this was that the Christian Easter Mystery was simply a transference of the ancient pagan myth and ritual cults to the Person of Jesus of Nazareth. Indeed these legends and rites were so alike that many no longer questioned their identity and said: “What the Christians say of Christ, that He suffered, was crucified and rose again, that His resurrection gave promise of hope and salvation for man—all these Christian ideas are to be found in the Mystery Cults!” Pagan usages, they claimed, had been collected together, fused into the “Easter Legend” and transferred to the Person of Jesus of Nazareth.

Indeed in recent times people have gone even further. Strangely enough, even in the sphere of orthodox Christianity—one need only recall certain (Protestant) sects in Bremen—there was no longer any interest in the historicity of Jesus. They said that the various Mystery cults and legends had been collected over the years and had been centralized, so to speak, and that in the early Christian community the Christ legend had been developed out of them. I recall a discussion which took place here in Berlin a few years ago. During the tragic years of recent times past events have become unreal and seem a distant memory, although the discussion took place only a few years ago. In the course of this discussion the official representatives of Christianity declared that the real issue was not the historical Jesus, but simply the “Idea of Christ” which arose in the primitive Christian community through the impact of divers social impulses.

Now in studying the pagan Mystery cults there is always a dangerous temptation to compare them with the Christian Easter Mystery. Let me illustrate this by a faithful description of the Phrygian Easter festivals. In addition to the Phrygian festivals I could also cite other festivals for these were equally widespread. In a letter to the sons of Constantine, Firmicus (note 1) gives the following account of the Phrygian Easter festival. The statue of the God Attis was bound to the trunk of a fir tree and carried round in solemn procession at midnight. Then the sufferings of the God were re-enacted. At the same time a lamb was placed at the foot of the tree. At dawn the resurrection of the God was proclaimed. Whilst on the previous night when the God was bound to the tree and seemingly given over to death the multitude broke out in wild lamentations as was customary during the ritual; now, when the resurrection of the God was announced at sunrise the lugubrious chants were suddenly transformed into wild outbursts of joy. The statue of the God, Firmicus tells us, was buried elsewhere. During the night when the melancholy dirges reached their climax, a light shone in the darkness and the tomb was opened. The God had risen. And the priest addressed the assembled populace in these words: “Take comfort, ye faithful, for the God is saved and ye too will be saved.”

There is no denying that these religious festivals, celebrated untold centuries before the Mystery of Golgotha, show great similarity to the Easter Mystery of Christianity. Because this idea was so attractive many believed that these ideas of the suffering, death and resurrection of the God were widespread and had been, to some extent, welded into a unity under Christian influence and transferred to Jesus of Nazareth.

Now it is important to understand the real origin of these pagan, pre-Christian rites. They date far back into the past and sprang from those profound and original insights into the nature of man and his relation to the cosmos as revealed through atavistic clairvoyance. Of course at the time when the Phrygian festivals were celebrated, people did not understand their real meaning any more than the Freemasons of today understand the significance of the rites they practise. None the less all these ceremonies date back to a time when an ancient wisdom, a grandiose knowledge of the universe and man existed, a knowledge which is exceedingly difficult to understand today. Remember that not only is man dependent upon his environment in relation to his physical body, but that his spirit and soul also are an integral part of his environment. He draws on his environment for his ideas and representations, they become routine responses, second nature to him and for various reasons he cannot escape them. Therefore with the best will in the world it is difficult to understand certain knowledge which, for reasons I have already mentioned, has been lost in the course of the spiritual evolution of mankind.

The natural science of today—there is no need to repeat my admiration for its achievements, though I harbour certain reservations about it—is concerned only with the superficial aspect of things. It can make only a minimal contribution to an understanding of their true nature. It is true that science has made great advances in certain spheres—but it all depends upon what one understands by “great advances”. The invention of wireless telegraphy and many other discoveries which are important contributions to our life today are certainly deserving of admiration. But, one may ask, where does that take us? If we were to pursue this question we should come face to face with what is forbidden territory today. Modern science naturally considers the primordial wisdom, the last corrupt remnants of which survived in the Mystery cults I have mentioned, to be sheer folly. That may well be. But what is foolishness in the eyes of men may often be wisdom in the sight of God.

True insight into the nature of the universe and man discloses amongst other things—I propose today to emphasize those aspects which are important for an understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha—a certain conception of the human organism which modern science regards as the height of absurdity, i.e. that the human organism is fundamentally different from the animal organism. (I have already mentioned many of these differences, but today I will confine myself to the difference which bears upon the Mystery of Golgotha.) When we make a serious study of the animal organism in the light of Spiritual Science we find that it bears within it the seeds of death. In other words, spiritual investigation, when applied to the animal organism recognizes that, by virtue of its constitution, this organism must inevitably suffer death, that it disintegrates and finally returns to the mineral kingdom. The death of an animal is not something mysterious and inexplicable. When we study its organism we realize that, for the animal, death is as natural to it (i.e. the organism) as the need for food and drink. That death is a necessity for the animal lies in the nature of its organism.

This is not the case with man, for his organism is differently constituted. Here we touch upon a sphere that must remain a total enigma to modern science. When we study the human organism in the light of Spiritual Science we find nothing in the human organism itself which suggests that death is inevitable. We must accept death in man as something he experiences and which cannot be explained, for, originally, neither man nor his physical organism were made for death. The fact that death occurs in man from within cannot be explained from the being of man itself. The inner being as such provides no explanation of death.

I realize that this view will be regarded as folly by the scientific pundits of today. Generally speaking it is extremely difficult to arrive at an understanding of these problems for they touch upon profound mysteries. And even today, if we wish to understand these problems we can only treat of them after the fashion of Saint-Martin [original note 2] in his book Des Erreurs et de la Vérité. In an important passage, when speaking of the evolutionary consequences that follow from a supernal event that took place in the spiritual world before man first incarnated on the physical plane, he wrote the following words which will be readily understood by everyone who is familiar with such matters:

“However much I may desire to enlighten you, the obligations I have undertaken do not permit me to comment in any way upon this subject; and furthermore, I, for my part, would rather blush for man's transgressions than speak of them.”

For Saint-Martin is here alluding to a transgression committed by man before his first incarnation on Earth. He was forbidden to speak of this openly. But today we are in a position to speak of many things that Saint-Martin could not discuss in his time—not because mankind has progressed since that time, but for other reasons. But if we were to discuss a truth such as “man is not intended to die”, together with all the relevant factors, we would have to touch upon matters which may not be disclosed today. Man is not born to die and yet he dies! These words express something which is obviously an absurdity to the pundits of modern science, but which, to those who seek to penetrate to a true understanding of the world, must be reckoned amongst the most profound mysteries.

This realization that man was not born to die and yet dies, lies concealed in those ancient Mysteries, including the Attis Mysteries which I have already mentioned. Man looked to the Mysteries for an answer to this enigma that man was not born to die and yet dies. Now why were the Mysteries celebrated? They were celebrated in order that man should be reminded afresh each year of something he wished to hear, something he wished to experience and realize within his soul. He wished to be reassured that the time had not yet come when he would have to face the inexplicable problem of his death. What did the neophyte hope for from the Attis Mysteries? He had the instinctive feeling that a time would one day come when mankind would seriously have to face the reality of death which remained an enigma. But this time had not yet come. And whilst the priest celebrated the death and resurrection of the god, man felt reassured and consoled, for the time had not yet come when he would have to come to terms with the reality of death.

It was common knowledge in ancient times that the event described in the first chapter of Genesis, and which is understood symbolically today, referred to a reality. The men of ancient times knew this instinctively. It was modern materialism that first outgrew the instinctive feeling that the temptation of Lucifer referred to an actual occurrence. On this question the materialist interpretation of Darwin, which is intellectually so perverse, is very far removed from the truth. This crude, perverted thinking believes that by a gradual and continual process over long periods of time man has developed from animal ancestry. In such a materialist hypothesis the story of the temptation can have no place. For only a “brow villanous low” could believe that an archetypal ape or guenon [original note 3] could have been tempted by Lucifer!

Instinctively men knew at the time of the Mysteries that the story of Creation concealed a “fact” that had once been common knowledge. They felt that man, as originally created, was not mortal. And because of this “fact” they felt that something had entered into his physical organism and had corrupted it and so opened the doors to mortality. Man became mortal through a moral defect, through what is called original sin. I will recur to this later. Man became mortal, not after the fashion of other forms of organic life, not as the inevitable consequence of natural law, but through a moral defect. The soul was the seat of his mortality.

The animal soul as species-soul is immortal. It incarnates in the individual animal which is mortal in virtue of its organism. The species-soul (or group-soul) relinquishes the animal organism which is subject to death without having undergone any transformation. From the outset the nature of the animal organism is such that, as individual organism, it is ordained to die. This does not apply to the human organism to the same extent. In the case of the human organism, the species-soul or group-soul which lies at the root of this organism is able to manifest in the individual man, and as independent human organism ensures him immortality. Man could only become mortal through a moral act originating in the soul. In a certain sense man had to be endowed with a soul before he could become mortal. The moment one treats these ideas as abstractions they become meaningless. We must endeavour to attain to a concrete knowledge of spiritual realities.

Now in ancient times—and also in the period shortly before the Mystery of Golgotha—men never doubted for a moment that the soul brought death to man. The soul has evolved through the ages. In the course of this evolution the soul has progressively corrupted the organism and in consequence has worked destructively upon the organism. Man looked back to ancient times and said to himself: A moral event took place in olden times and its effect upon the soul is such, that whenever the soul now incarnates, it corrupts the body. And because it corrupts the body man can no longer live between birth and death in a state of innocence. In the course of hundreds and thousands of years the condition of the soul has grown progressively worse and the body has suffered continuous corruption! Thus it is increasingly difficult for man to find his way back to the spirit. The further evolution advances, the more the body is corrupted by the soul and the more the seeds of death are sown in the body. And a time must come when it will no longer be possible for man, once he has lived his alloted span, to find his way back to the spiritual world.

In ancient times it was this moment that was anticipated with fear and dread. Men felt that, after countless generations a generation would arise whose souls would so corrupt the body and sow the poisonous seeds of death that man could no longer reclaim his spiritual heritage. And this generation will one day appear, they said. And they wanted to be reassured whether this fatal moment was drawing near, and to this end the Attis rites and similar ceremonies were enacted. At the same time they sought to discover whether the souls of men still had so much of divine plentitude that the time had not yet come when these souls had abandoned their divine heritage and could no longer find their way back to the spirit. Great importance therefore was attached to the words of the priest when he said: “Take comfort, ye faithful; the God is saved, your salvation is assured!” With these words the priest wished to indicate that God was still active in the world; that the souls of men had not yet severed all connection with the divine. The priest sought to comfort the people saying: “The resurrection of the God is ever renewed. The God is still within you.”

When we touch upon these questions we become aware of the deep, unplumbed depth of feelings and emotions which were once characteristic of a particular epoch in the evolution of man. Today man has not the slightest inkling of the inner conflicts with which these men of earlier times had to wrestle. Though they may have been totally illiterate and have known nothing of what we call culture today, yet they could not escape these feelings. And in the Mystery Schools which preserved the old traditions derived from ancient clairvoyant insight the neophytes were told that if evolution were to continue unchanged, if the effects of original sin were to be prolonged, then a time would come when the souls of men would turn from God to a world of materialism of their own creation, and would progressively corrupt the physical body and rapidly hasten the process of death. These souls would remain earthbound and be relegated to the limbo; they would be lost. But since these Schools still preserved a knowledge of the spirit, the knowledge of the trichotomy of man still survived. What I am speaking of at the moment, the seminaries, applied to the soul and not to the spirit. For the spirit is eternal and follows its own laws. From their spiritual insight people knew that the soul would be relegated to the limbo, but the spirit would reappear in ever repeated Earth-lives. A time in the evolution of the world was approaching when the spirits of men would incarnate anew and would look back upon the lost Paradise which once had existed on Earth. Souls would be lost, never to return. Spirits would reincarnate in bodies which they would activate after the fashion of automata. And the way in which this was done would be neither felt nor experienced by the soul.

But what, on the other hand, were the feelings bf those who were drawn to the Christian Easter Mystery? They felt that unless the Earth received a new impulse, then, in future incarnations, man would be born without a soul. They awaited something that Earth evolution could not achieve of itself, something that was destined to enter earthly life from without, namely the Mystery of Golgotha. They awaited the incarnation of a Being who would save the souls of men from death. There was no need to save the spirit from death, but it was imperative to save the soul. This Being who entered Earth evolution from without by incarnation in the body of Jesus of Nazareth was recognized as the Christ who had come to save the souls of men. Men were now able to unite spiritually with the Christ, so that through this union the soul loses its power to corrupt the body and all that they had lost since the Fall could gradually be recovered. That is why the Mystery of Golgotha must be regarded as the central point in human evolution. From the “Fall” until the Mystery of Golgotha man experienced a progressive decline of his spiritual forces. The forces of corruption had increasingly invaded his soul and threatened to make man an automaton of the spirit. And from the Mystery of Golgotha until the end of the Earth cycle all that was lost before the Mystery of Golgotha will gradually be retrieved once more. Thus, at the conclusion of Earth evolution, the spirits of men will incarnate in the physical body for the last time and these bodies will once again be immortal. It was in expectation of this redemption that men understood the Mystery of Easter.

Before this could be realized it was necessary to overcome the power which had caused the moral corruption of the soul; and this power was overcome by the decisive event on Golgotha. How did the early Christians who still possessed occult knowledge understand the last words of Christ on the Cross? They were living in expectation of an external event that would bring to an end this corrupting influence of the soul. The cry of Christ on the Cross “It is finished” was a sign to them that the time had now come when the corrupting power of the soul was a thing of the past. It was a miraculous event fraught with vast and unsuspected mysteries. For tremendous questions are involved when we think about the Mystery of Golgotha. When we pursue our studies further we shall find that it is impossible to think of the Mystery of Golgotha without also thinking of the Risen Christ. The Risen Christ—that is the essential. And in one of his most profound utterances St. Paul says: “If Christ be not risen then all our faith is vain.” The Risen Christ is unique to Christianity and is inseparable from Christianity. The death of Christ is also an integral part of Christianity. But how is this death portrayed? And how must it be portrayed? An innocent man was put to death, He suffered and died. Those who crucified Him clearly bear a heavy burden of guilt, for He who died was innocent. What was the significance of this guilt for mankind? It brought them salvation. For had Christ not died upon the Cross mankind could not have been saved. In the Crucifixion we are confronted by a unique event. The death of Christ on the Cross was the greatest boon bestowed upon mankind (cf. John XI, 49–52). And the heaviest guilt that mankind has taken upon itself is this, that Christ was crucified. Thus the heaviest guilt coincides with the greatest good fortune.

The superficial mind no doubt will pay little attention to this. But for those who probe deeper, this question is fraught with profound mystery. The most heinous crime in the history of the world proved to be the salvation of mankind. Now we must understand this enigma, or at least try to understand it, if we are to comprehend the Mystery of Golgotha. And the key to the solution of this enigma is found in the exemplary words spoken by Christ on the Cross: “Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do.” The right understanding of these words provides the answer to the cardinal question: Why did the most heinous crime become the source of the salvation of mankind?

If you reflect upon this you will realize that one must take into account the trichotomy of man in order to understand the Mystery of Golgotha. For Christ died in order to redeem the souls of men. He reclaims the souls of men that would have been lost but for His advent. Morality would have vanished from the Earth and the spirit inhabiting a body that reacted mechanically would have been the victim of necessity in which morality has no place. Mankind would have been unable to have psychic experiences. The mission of Christ was to bring man back to God. It is not surprising, therefore, that three centuries before Christ, Aristotle, a most enlightened Greek, failed to understand the nature of the soul and its relation to the spirit at a time when the crisis of man's soul was at hand. There were many discrepancies in Aristotle's view of the soul since he could not have known of the coming of the Saviour, and it is not surprising therefore that his views of the soul were illogical. How is one to account for the fact that the erroneous conceptions of Aristotle concerning the relationship of soul and spirit persisted so long? The significance of Christ for the souls of men is that He demonstrates once again that man is a threefold being of body, soul and spirit and that an inner relationship exists between objective events and moral events. And we shall never fully understand this relationship unless we accept the idea of the trichotomy of man.

If we wish to arrive in some measure at an understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha we must penetrate to the inmost recesses of the human soul. In the present lecture I have only been able to offer an introduction to this theme. I believe that it is our immediate concern to speak of these things at the present time. We must take advantage of this Easter festival to enquire more closely into these matters in so far as it is possible today. Perhaps it may be possible thereby to awaken in us much that may one day be a seed that will only mature in future time. For it is only gradually that we come to realize that we are living in an age when there are many things we cannot fully comprehend. This is evident from the difficulty men experience today in developing a clear and conscious understanding of events that are imminent. Unfortunately it is not possible to indicate, even briefly, how one should understand in clear consciousness the painful event of which the people of Europe, or at least of Central Europe, have only recently been informed. [original note 4] Today we are only half aware of these things.

I only wanted to touch upon certain questions today in order to relate them in my next lecture to the Mystery of Golgotha.

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Original Notes:

Note 1. See Note 6, Lecture Eight.

Note 2. See Note 3, Lecture One.

Note 3. guenon—a female monkey.

Note 4. The outbreak of the Russian Revolution.

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NOTES BY TRANSLATOR

Note 1. Firmicus. His full name was Julius Firmicus Maturnus. A Sicilian priest of the fourth century. The reference is the “De errore profanorum religionum” A.D. 347. (German translation by A. Müller, 1913.)

We have once more pointed out in these lectures that in the most recent cultural period of human evolution, the fifth post-Atlantean period, the main force governing human soul life is the force of the intellect, the force of ideas living in thoughts. To this we had to add the statement that the force of thoughts is actually the corpse of our life of spirit and soul as it was before birth. More and more strongly in recent times this force of thought has emancipated itself from the other forces of the human being, and this was clearly felt by those spirits who wanted to attain a full understanding of the Christian impulse.

Yesterday I endeavoured to describe this, using the example of Calderón's Cyprianus. That drama depicts, on the one hand, the struggles which arise out of the old ideas of a nature filled with soul and, on the other, the strong sense of helplessness encountered by the human being who distances himself from this old view and is forced to seek shelter in mere thoughts. We saw how Cyprianus had to seek the assistance of Satan in order to win Justina—whose significance I endeavoured to explain. But in consequence of the new soul principle, which is now dominant, all he could receive from Satan was a phantom of Justina.

All these things show forcefully how human beings, striving for the spirit, felt in this new age, how they felt the deadness of mere thought life and how, at the same time, they felt that it would be impossible to enter with these mere thoughts into the living realm of the Christ concept. I then went on yesterday to show that the phase depicted in Calderon's Cyprianus drama is followed by another, which we find in Goethe's Faust. Goethe is a personality who stands fully in the cultural life of the eighteenth century, which was actually far more international than were later times, and which also had a really strong feeling for the intellectual realm, the realm of thoughts. We can certainly say that in his young days Goethe explored all the different sciences much as did the Faust he depicts in his drama. For in what the intellectual realm had to offer, Goethe did not seek what most people habitually seek; he was searching for a genuine connection with the world to which the eternal nature of man belongs. We can certainly say that Goethe sought true knowledge. But he could not find it through the various sciences at his disposal. Perhaps Goethe approached the figure of Faust in an external way to start with. But because of his own special inclinations he sensed in this Faust figure the struggling human being about whom we spoke yesterday. And in a certain sense he identified with this struggling human being.

Goethe worked on Faust in three stages. The first stage leads us back to his early youth when he felt utterly dissatisfied with his university studies and longed to escape from it all and find a true union of soul with the whole of cultural life. Faust was depicted as the struggling human being, the human being striving to escape from mere intellect into a full comprehension of the cosmic origins of man. So this early figure of Faust takes his place beside the other characters simply as the striving human being. Then Goethe underwent those stages of his development during which he submerged himself in the art of the South which he saw as giving form on a higher plane to the essence of nature. He increasingly sought the spirit in nature, for he could not find it in the cultural life that at first presented itself to him. A deep longing led him to the art of the South, which he regarded as the last remnant of Greek art. There, in the way the secrets of nature were depicted artistically out of the Greek world view, he believed he would discover the spirituality of nature.

And then everything he had experienced in Italy underwent a transformation within his soul. We see this transformation given living expression in the intimate form of his fairy-tale¹ about the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily, in which, out of certain traditional concepts of beauty, wisdom, virtue and strength, he created the temple with the four Kings.

Then, at the end of the eighteenth century, we see how, encouraged by Schiller, he returns to Faust, enriched with this world of ideas. This second stage of his work on Faust is marked particularly by the appearance of the ‘Prologue in Heaven’, that wonderful poem which begins with the words: ‘The sun makes music as of old, Amid the rival spheres of heaven.’² In the drama as Goethe now conceives it, Faust no longer stands there as a solitary figure concerned solely with himself. Now we have the cosmos with all the forces of the universe ascending and descending, and within this cosmos the human being whom the powers of good and evil do battle to possess. Faust takes his place within the cosmos as a whole. Goethe has expanded the material from a question of man alone to a question encompassing the whole of the universe.

The third stage begins in the twenties of the nineteenth century, when Goethe sets about completing the drama. Once again quite new thoughts live in his soul, very different from those with which he was concerned at the end of the eighteenth century when he composed the ‘Prologue in Heaven’, using ancient ideas about nature, ideas of the spirit in nature, in order to raise the question of Faust to the level of a question of the cosmos. In the twenties, working to bring the second part of the drama to a conclusion, Goethe has returned once more to the human soul out of which he now wants to draw everything, expanding the soul-being once more into a cosmic being.

Of course he has to make use of external representations, but we see how he depicts dramatically the inner journeyings of the soul. Consider the ‘Classical Walpurgis-Night’ or the reappearance of the Helena scene, which had been there earlier, though merely in the form of an episode. And consider how, in the great final tableau, he endeavours to bring to a concluding climax the soul's inner experience, which is at the same time a cosmic experience when it becomes spiritual. Finally the drama flows over into a Christian element. But, as I said yesterday, this Christian element is not developed out of Faust's experiences of soul but is merely tacked on to the end. Goethe made a study of the Catholic cultus and then tacked this Christianizing element on to the end of Faust. There is only an external connection between Faust's inner struggles and the way in which the drama finally leads into this Christian tableau of the universe. This is not intended to belittle the Faust drama. But it has to be said that Goethe, who wrestled in the deepest sense of the word to depict how the spiritual world should be found in earthly life, did not, in fact, succeed in discovering a way of depicting this finding of spirituality in earthly life. To do so, he would have had to come to a full comprehension of the meaning of the Mystery of Golgotha. He would have had to understand how the Christ-being came from the expanses of the cosmos and descended into the human being, Jesus of Nazareth, and how he united himself with the earth, so that ever since then, when seeking the spirit which ebbs and flows in the stormy deeds of man, one ought to find the Christ-impulse in earthly life.

Goethe was never able to make the link between the spirit of the earth, ebbing and flowing in stormy deeds, in the weaving of time, and the Christ-impulse. In a way this may be felt to be a tragedy. But it came about of necessity, because the period of human evolution in which Goethe stood did not yet provide the ground on which the full significance of the Mystery of Golgotha could be comprehended. Indeed, this Mystery of Golgotha can only be fully comprehended if human beings learn to give new life to the dead thoughts which are a part of them in this fifth post-Atlantean period. Today there is a tremendous amount of prejudice, in thought, in feeling and in will, against the re-enlivening of the world of thought. But mankind must solve this problem. Mankind must learn to give new life to this world of thought which enters human nature at birth and conception as the corpse of spirit and soul; this corpse of thoughts and ideas must be made to live again. But this can only happen when thoughts are transformed—first into Imaginations, and then the Imaginations transformed into Inspirations and Intuitions. What is needed is a full understanding of the human being. Not until this becomes a reality, will what I told you yesterday be fully understood: That the world around us must come to be seen as a tremendous question to which the human being himself provides the answer. This is what was to have been given to mankind with the Mystery of Golgotha. It will not be understood until the human being is understood.

Let us look at a diagram of threefold man once more: the human being of the head or of the nerves and senses as discussed yesterday;

Earth

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the human being of the rhythmic system or of the chest; and the human being of the metabolism and limbs.

Looking at the human being today, we accept him as the external form in which he appears to us. Someone dissecting a body on the dissecting table has no special feeling that the human head, for instance, is in any way very different from, say, a finger. A finger muscle is considered in the same way as is a muscle in the head. But it ought to be known that the head is, in the main, a metamorphosis of the system of limbs and metabolism from the preceding incarnation; in other words, the head occupies a place in evolution which is quite different from that of the system of limbs that goes with it.

Having at last struggled through to a view of the inner aspect of threefold man, we shall then be in a position to come to a view of what is linked from the cosmos with this threefold human being. As far as our external being is concerned, we are in fact only incarnated in the solid, earthly realm through our head organization. We should never be approachable as a creature of the solid earth if we did not possess our head organization, which is, however, an echo of the limb organization of our previous incarnation. The fact that we have solid parts also in our hands and feet is the result of what rays down from the head. But it is our head which makes us solid. Everything solid and earthly in us derives from our head, as far as the forces in it are concerned.

In our head the solid earth is in us. And whatever is solid anywhere else in our body rays down through us from our head. The origin of our solid bones lies in our head. But there is also in our head a transition to the watery element. All the solid parts of our brain are embedded in the cerebral fluid. In our head there is a constant inter-mingling vibration of the solid parts of our brain with the cerebral fluid which is linked to the rest of the body by way of the spinal fluid. So, looking at the human being of nerves and senses, we can say that here is the transition from the earthly element (blue) to the watery element. We can say that the human being of nerves and senses lives in the earthy-watery element. And in accordance with this, our brain consists of an intercorrespondence between the earthy and watery elements.

Now let us turn to the chest organism, the rhythmic organism. This rhythmic organism lives in the interrelationship between the watery and the airy element (yellow). In the lungs you can see the watery element making contact with the airy element. The rhythmic life is anintermingling of the watery with the airy element, of water with air. So I could say: The rhythmical human being lives in the watery-airy element.

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And the human being of metabolism and limbs then lives in the transition from the airy element to the warmth element, in the fiery element (red, next diagram). It is a constant dissolving of the airy element in the warmth, the fiery element, which then seeps through the whole human being as his body heat. What happens in our metabolism and in our movements is a reorganization of the airy, gaseous element up into the warm, fiery element. As we move about, we constantly burn up those elements of the food we have eaten which have become airy. Even when we do not move about, the foods we eat are transformed airy elements which we constantly burn up in the warmth element. So the human being of limbs and metabolism lives in the airy-fiery element.

Human being of nerves and senses: earthy-watery element

Rhythmical human being: watery-airy element

Human being of limbs and metabolism: airy-fiery element

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From here we go up even further into the etheric parts, into the light element, into the etheric body of the human being. When the organism of metabolism and limbs has transferred everything into warmth, it then goes up into the etheric body. Here the human being joins up with the etheric realm which fills the whole world; here he makes the link with the cosmos.

Ideas like this, which I have shown you only as diagrams, can be transformed into artistic and poetic form by someone who has an inner sense for sculpture and music. In a work of poetry such as the drama of Faust such things can certainly be expressed in artistic form, in the way certain cosmic secrets are expressed, for instance, in the seventh scene of my first Mystery Drama.³ This leads to the possibility of seeing the human being linked once more with the cosmos. But for this we cannot apply to the human being what our intellect teaches us about external nature. You must understand that if you study external nature, and then study your head in the same way as you would external nature, you are then studying something which simply does not belong to external nature as it now is, but something that comes from your former incarnation. You are studying something as though it had arisen at the present moment; but it is not something that has arisen out of the present moment, nor could it ever arise out of the present moment. For a human head could not possibly arise out of the forces of nature which exist. So the human head must not be studied in the same way as objects are studied with the intellect. It must be studied with the knowledge given by Imagination. The human head will not be understood until it is studied with the knowledge given by Imagination.

In the rhythmical human being everything comes into movement. Here we have to do with the watery and the airy elements. Everything

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is in surging movement. The external, solid parts of our breast organization are only what our head sends down into this surging motion. To study the rhythmical human being we have to say that in this rhythmical surging the watery element and the airy element mingle together (see diagram, green, yellow). Into this, the head sends the possibility for the solid parts, such as those in the lungs, to be present (white). This surging, which is the real rhythmical human being, can only be studied with the knowledge given by Inspiration. So the rhythmical human being can only be studied with the knowledge given by Inspiration.

And the human being of limbs and metabolism—this is the continuous burning of the air in us. You stand within it, in your warmth you feel yourself to be a human being, but this is a very obscure idea. It can only be studied properly with the knowledge given by Intuition, in which the soul stands within the object. Only the knowledge given by Intuition can lead to the human being of metabolism and limbs.

The human being will remain forever unknown if he is not studied with the knowledge given by Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition. He will forever remain the external shell which is all that is recognized today, both in general and in science. This situation must not be allowed to remain. The human being must come once more to be recognized for what he is. If you study only the solid parts of the human being, the parts which are shown in the illustrations in anatomy textbooks, then, right from the start, you are studying wrongly. Your study ought to be in the realm of Imagination, because all these illustrations of the solid parts of the human organism ought to be taken as images brought over from the previous incarnation. This is the first thing. Then come the even more delicate parts which live in the physical constituents. These can only be studied with the knowledge given by Inspiration. And the airy-watery element can only be studied with the knowledge given by Intuition. These things must be taken into European consciousness, indeed into the whole of modern civilization. If we fail to place them in the mainstream of culture, our civilization will only go downhill instead of upwards.

When you understand what Goethe intended with his Faust, you sense that he was endeavouring to pass through a certain gateway. Everywhere he is struggling with the question: What is it that we need to know about this human being? As a very young man he began to study the human form. Read his discourse on the intermaxillary bone and also what I wrote about it in my edition of his scientific writings.⁴ He is endeavouring so hard to come to an understanding of man. First he tried by way of anatomy and physiology. Then in the nineties he explored the aspect of moral ideas which we find in the fairy tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily. Then, in Faust, he wants to depict the human being as he stands in the world. He is trying to pass through a gateway in order to discover how the human being does, in fact, stand in the world. But he lacks the necessary prerequisites; he cannot do it.

When Calderón wrote his drama about Cyprianus, the struggle was still taking place at a previous level. We see how Justina tears herself free of Satan's clutches, how Cyprianus goes mad, how they find one another in death, and how their salvation comes as they meet their end on the scaffold. Above them the serpent appears—on it rides the demon who is forced to announce their salvation.

We see that at the time when Calderon was writing his Cyprianus drama the message to be clearly stated was: You cannot find the divine, spiritual realm here on earth. First you must die and go through the portal of death; then you will discover the divine spiritual world, that salvation which you can find through Christ. They were still far from understanding the Mystery of Golgotha through which Christ had descended to earth, where it now ought to be possible to find him. Calderon still has too many heathen and Jewish elements in his ideas for him to have a fully developed sense for Christianity.

After that, a good deal of time passed before Goethe started to work on his Faust. He sensed that it was necessary for Faust to find his salvation here on earth. The question he should therefore have asked was: How can Faust discover the truth of Paul's words: ‘Not I, but Christ in me’?⁵ Goethe should have let his Faust say not only, to ‘Stand on free soil among a people free’,⁶ but also: to ‘stand on free soil with Christ in one's soul leading the human being in earthly life to the spirit’. Goethe should have let Faust say something like this. But Goethe is honest; he does not say it because he has not yet fully understood it. But he is striving to understand it. He is striving for something which can only be achieved when it is possible to say: Learn to know man through Imagination, Inspiration, Intuition. That he is striving in this way gives us the feeling that there is much more in his struggle and in his endeavour than he ever managed to express or than has filtered through into today's culture. Perhaps he can only be fully recognized by doing what I did in my early writings when I endeavoured to express the ‘world view which lived almost unconsciously in him. However, on the whole, his search has met with little understanding amongst the people of today.

When I look at this whole situation in connection with modern civilization, I am constantly reminded of my old teacher and friend, Karl Julius Schröer.⁷ I think particularly of how, in the eighties of the last century, Schröer was working on Faust and on Goethe's other plays, writing commentaries, introductions and so on. He was not in the least concerned to speak about Goethe in clearly defined concepts but merely gave general indications. Yet he was at pains to make people understand that what lived most profoundly in Goethe must enter into mainstream modern culture. On the fiftieth anniversary of Goethe's death, in 1882, Schröer gave an address: ‘How the future will see Goethe’. He lived with the dream that the time had already come for a kind of resurrection of Goethe. Then we wrote a short essay in Die Neue Freie Presse which was reprinted in the booklet ‘Goethe and Love’. This and other of his writings have now been acquired by our publisher, Der Kommende Tag, so remaindered copies can be acquired there, and there will also be new editions eventually. This essay ‘Goethe after 50 Years’ is a brief extract from that lecture, at which I was present. It contains a good deal of what Schröer felt at that time regarding the need for Goethe to be assimilated into modern culture. And then in this booklet ‘Goethe and Love’ he endeavoured to show in the notes how Goethe could be made to come alive, for to bring Goethe to life is, in a sense, to bring the world of abstract thoughts to life. In the recent number of Das Goetheanum I referred to a beautiful passage about this in the booklet ‘Goethe and Love’. Schröer says: ‘Schiller recognized him. When an intuitive genius searches for the character of necessity in the empirical realm, he will always produce individuals even though these may have a generic aspect. With his intuitive method of seeing the eternal idea, the primeval type, in the mortal individual, Goethe is perhaps not as alone as one might assume.’

While Schröer was writing this booklet in 1882 I visited him a number of times. He was filled to the brim with an impression he had had. He had heard somewhere how Oppolzer, a physician in Vienna, used a rather vague intuitive faculty when making his diagnoses. Instead of examining the patient in the usual way, he allowed the type of the patient to make an impression on him, and from the type of the patient he deduced something of the type of the illness. This made a strong impression on Schröer, and he used this phenomenon to enlarge on what he was trying to explain: ‘In medicine we extol the ability of great diagnosticians to fathom the disease by intuitively discerning the individual patient's type, his habitude. They are not helped by chemical or anatomical knowledge but by an intuitive sense for the living creature as a whole being. They are creative spirits who see the sun because their eyeis sunlike. Others do not see the sun. What these diagnosticians are doing unconsciously is to follow the intuitive method which Goethe consciously applied as a means of scientific study. The results he achieved are no longer disputed, though the method is not yet generally recognized.’

Out of a conspectus which included Oppolzer's intuitive bedside method, Schröer even then was pointing out that the different sciences, for example, medicine, needed fructifying by a method which worked together with the spirit.

It is rather tragic to look back and see in Schröer one of the last of those who still sensed what was most profound in Goethe. At the beginning of the eighties of the last century Schroer believed that there would have to be a Goethe revival, but soon after that Goethe was truly nailed into his coffin and buried with sweeping finality. His grave, we could say, was in Central Europe, in the Goethe-Gesellschaft, whose English branch was called the Goethe Society. This is where the living Goethe was buried. But now it is necessary to bring this living element, which was in Goethe, back into our culture. Karl Julius Schroer's instinct was good. In his day he was unable to fulfil it because his contemporaries continued to worship the dead Goethe. ‘He who would study organic existence, first drives out the soul with rigid persistence.’⁸

This became the motto, and in some very wide circles this motto has intensified into a hatred against any talk of spiritual things—as you can see in the way Anthroposophy is received by many people.

Today's culture, which all of you have as your background, urgently needs this element of revival. It is quite extraordinary how much talk there is today of Goethe's Faust, which after all simply represents a new stage in the struggle for the spirit which we saw in Calderón's Cyprianus drama. So much is said about Faust, yet there is no understanding for the task of the present time, which is to bring fully to life what Goethe brought to life in his Faust, especially in the second part. Goethe brought it to life in a vague, intuitive sensing, though not with full spiritual insight. We ought to turn our full attention to this, for indeed it is not only a matter of a world view. It is a matter of our whole culture and civilization. There are many symptoms, if only we can see them in the right light.

Here is an essay by Ruedorffer⁹ entitled ‘The Three Crises’. Every page gives us a painful knock. The writer played important roles in the diplomatic and political life of Europe before the war and on into the war. Now, with his intimate knowledge of the highways and byways of European-life, and because he was able to observe things from vantage points not open to most, he is seeking an explanation of what is actually going on. I need only read you a few passages. He wants to be a realist, not an idealist. During the course of his diplomatic career he has developed a sober view of life. And despite the fact that he has written such things as the passages I am going to read to you he remains that much appreciated character, a bourgeois philistine.

He deals with three things in his essay. Firstly he says that the countries and nations of Europe no longer have any relationship with one another. Then he says that the governing circles, the leaders of the different nations, have no relationship with the population. And thirdly he says that those people in particular who want to work out and found a new age by radical means most certainly have no relationship with reality.

So a person who played his part in bringing about the situation that now exists writes: ‘This sickness of the state organism snatches leadership away from good sense and hands responsibility for decisions of state to all sorts of minor influences and secondary considerations. It inhibits freedom of movement, fragments the national will and usually also leads to a dangerous instability of governments. The period of unruly nationalism that preceded the war, the war itself, and the situation in Europe since the war, have made monstrous demands on the good sense of all the states, and on their peace and their freedom to manoevre. The loss of wealth brought about by necessary measures has completed the catastrophe. The crisis of the state and the crisis in world-wide organization have mutually exacerbated the situation, each magnifying the destructive effect of the other.’ These are not the words of an idealist, or of some artistic spirit who watched from the sidelines, but of someone who shared in creating the situation. He says, for instance: ‘If democracy is to endure, it must be honest and courageous enough to call a spade a spade, even if it means bearing witness against itself. Europe faces ruin.’

So it is not only pessimistic idealists who say that Europe is faced with ruin. The same is said especially by those who stood in the midst of practical life. One of these very people says:

‘Europe faces ruin. There is no time to waste by covering up mistakes for party political reasons, instead of setting about putting them to rights. It is for this reason alone, and not to set myself up as laudator temporis acti, that I have to stress that democracy must, and will, destroy itself if it cannot free the state from this snare of minor influences and secondary considerations. Pre-war Europe collapsed because all the countries of the continent—the monarchies as well as the democracies and, above all, autocratic Russia—succumbed to demagogy, partly voluntarily, partly unconsciously, partly with reluctance because their hand was forced. In the confusion of mind, for which they had only themselves to thank, they were incapable of recognizing good sense, and even if they had recognized it they would have been incapable of acting on it freely and decisively. The higher social strata of the old states of Europe—who, in the last century, were certainly the bearers of European culture and rich in personalities of statesmanlike quality and much world experience—would not have been so easily thrown from the saddle, rotten and expended, if they had grown with the problems and tasks of new times, if they had not lost their statesmanlike spirit, and if they had preserved any more worthwhile tradition than that of the most trivial diplomatic routine. If monarchs claim the ability to select statesmen more proficiently and expertly than governments, then they and their courts must be the centre and epitome of culture, insight and understanding. Long before the war this ceased to be the case. But indictment of the monarchs’ failures does not exonerate the democracies from recognizing the causes of their own inadequacies or from doing everything possible to eliminate them. Before Europe can recover, before any attempt can be made to replace its hopeless disorganization with a durable political structure, the individual countries will have to tidy up their internal affairs to an extent which will free their governments for long-term serious work. Otherwise, the best will in the world and the greatest capability will be paralysed, tied down by the web of the disaster which is the same wherever we look.’

I would not bother to read all this to you if it had been written by an idealist, instead of by someone who considers his feet to be firmly on the ground of reality because he played a part in bringing the current situation about.

‘The drama is deeply tragic. Every attempt at improvement, every word of change, becomes entangled in this web, throttled by a thousand threads, until it falls to the ground without effect. The citizens of Europe—thoughtlessly clutching the contemporary erroneous belief in the constant progress of mankind, or, with loud lamentations trotting along in the same old rut—fail to see, and do not want to see, that they are living off the stored-up labour of earlier years; they are barely capable of recognizing the present broken-down state of the world order, and are certainly incapable of bringing a new one to birth. On the other hand, the workers, treading a radical path in almost every country and convinced of the untenability of the present situation, believe themselves to be the bringers of salvation through a new order of things; but in reality this belief has made them into nothing more than an unconscious tool of destruction and decline, their own included. The new parasites of economic disorganization, the complaining rich of yester-year, the petit bourgeois descending to the level of the proletariat, the gullible worker believing himself to be the founder of a new world—all of them seem to be engulfed by the same disaster, all of them are blind men digging their own grave.’

Remember, this is not written by an idealist, but by one who shared in bringing about this situation!

‘But every political factor today—the recent peace treaties of the Entente, the Polish invasion of the Ukraine, the blindness or helplessness of the Entente with regard to developments in Germany and Austria—proves to the politician who depends on reality that although idealistic demands for a pan-European, constructive revision of the Paris peace treaties can be made, although the most urgent warnings can be shockingly justified, nevertheless, both demands and warnings can but die away unnoticed while everything rolls on unchanged towards the inevitable end—the abyss.’

The whole book is written in order to prove that Europe has come to the brink of the abyss and that we are currently employed in digging the grave of European civilization. But all this is only an introduction to what I now find it necessary to say to you. What I have to say is something different. Here we have a man who was himself an occupant of crucial seats of office, a man who realizes that Europe is on the brink of the abyss. And yet—as we can see in the whole of his book—all he has to say is: If all that happens is only a continuation of older impulses, then civilization will perish; it will definitely perish. Something new must come.

So now let me search for this new thing to which he wants to point. Yes, here it is, on page 67; here it is, in three lines: ‘Only a change of heart in the world, a change of will by the major powers, can lead to the creation of a supreme council of European good sense.’

Yes, this is the decision that faces these people. They point out that only if a change of heart comes about, if something entirely new is brought into being, can the situation be saved. This whole book is written to show that without this there can be no salvation. There is a good deal of truth in this. For, in truth, salvation for our collapsing civilization can only come from a spiritual life drawn from the real sources of the spirit. There is no other salvation. Without it, modern civilization, in so far as it is founded in Europe and reaches across to America, is drawing towards its close. Decay is the most important phenomenon of our time. There is no help in reaching compromises with decay. Help can only come from turning to something that can flourish above the grave, because it is more powerful than death. And that is spiritual life. But people like the writer of this book have only the most abstract notion of what this entails. They say an international change of heart must take place. If anything is said about a real, new blossoming of spiritual life, this is branded as ‘useless mysticism’. All people can say is: Look at them, bringing up all kinds of occult and mystical things; we must have nothing to do with them.

Those who are digging the grave of modern civilization most busily are those who actually have the insight to see that the digging is going on. But the only real way of taking up a stance with regard to these things is to look at them squarely, with great earnestness—to meditate earnestly on the fact that a new spiritual life is what is needed and that it is necessary to search for this spiritual life, so that at last a way may be found of finding Christ within earthly life, and of finding Him as He has become since the Mystery of Golgotha. For He descended in order to unite with the conditions of the earth.

The strongest battle against real Christian truth is being fought today by a certain kind of theology which raises its hands in horror at any mention of the cosmic Christ. It is necessary to be reminded again and again that even in the days when Schröer was pointing to Goethe as a source for a regeneration of civilization, a book appeared by a professor in Basel—a friend of Nietzsche—about modern Christian theology. Overbeck¹⁰ considered at that time that theology was the most un-Christian thing, and as a historian of theology he sought to prove this. So there was at that time in Basel a professor of theological history who set out to prove that theology is un-Christian!

Mankind has drifted inevitably towards catastrophe because it failed to hear the isolated calls, which did exist but which were, it must be said, still very unclear. Today there is no longer any time to lose.

Today mankind must know that descriptions such as that given by Ruedorffer are most definitely true and that it is most definitely necessary to realize how everything is collapsing because of the continuation of the old impulses. There is only one course to follow: We must turn towards what can grow out of the grave, out of the living spirit.

This is what must be pointed out ever and again, especially in connection with the things with which we are concerned.

• 1 . Floris Books, Edinburgh 1979. See, for instance, Rudolf Steiner, The Portal of Initiation & The Character of Goethe's Spirit as Shown in the Fairy Story (incl. a translation of the Fairy Story by Thomas Carlyle), Rudolf Steiner Press, New Jersey 1961.
• 2 . Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, Part One, ‘Prologue in Heaven’. The English versions of the quotations from Faust are taken from the translation by Bayard Taylor, with the exception of these lines from the ‘Prologue in Heaven’, which are translated by Shelley. (Tr.)
• 3 . The Portal of Initiation. A Rosicrucian Mystery through Rudolf Steiner, transl. Ruth and Hans Pusch, Steiner Book Centre, Toronto, 1973.
• 4 . Rudolf Steiner Goethes Naturwissenschaftliche Schriften, mit Einleitungen, Fussnoten und Erlauterungen im Text (Goethe's Natural Scientific Writings) in Kürschners Deutsche National-Litteratur. On the intermaxillary bone see Volume 1.
• 5 . Galatians 2, 20
• 6 . Part Two, Act 5, Great Outer Court of the Palace.
• 7. Karl Julius Schröer, 1825-1900. On his booklet Goethe und die Liebe (Goethe and Love) see Rudolf Steiner's collected essays 1921-1925 in Der Goetheanumgedanke inmitten der Kulturkrisis der Gegenwart, p.111. GA 36.
• 8 . Faust Part One. The Study.
• 9 . J.J. Ruedorffer, Die drei Krisen. Eine Untersuchung fiber den gegenwartigen politischen Weltzustand (The Three Crises. A consideration of the present state of world politics.) Stuttgart/Berlin 1920.
• 10. Franz Overbeck, 1837-1905.

Dr. Steiner: Since we have only a little time, we can discuss only the most important things. Perhaps you would be good enough to present the things that have come up in the faculty.

A teacher: The school was approved, but now we have received an official edict about how many children we can accept in the first grade. We need to discuss that.

Dr. Steiner: Discussing it will not help much. The order says that as long as the government allows it, we can have a first grade that at best is only as large as it was in these two school years, and that we cannot accept more children. That is what it clearly contains. There can be no talk at all of the school continuing in any way we wish. We can accept no more children than we have already had.

What we can say about it is that if we actually had a Union for Threefolding, we could protest against this school regulation. In connection with such things, the individual can never achieve anything. It is necessary to take a general position against such tendencies. There is not much else to say, and we cannot do much else about that order.

I also need to mention something about limitations in another area. There has never been any intention within the Anthroposophical Society of acting publicly against medical tyranny. To the contrary, we have had a tendency toward quackery, and that is what is ruining our movement, namely, this secret desire that we cannot speak about publicly. It is rampant. (Speaking to a teacher) You were certainly courageous enough today with your words. They can have consequences, but that will hurt nothing.

Another thing we must speak of is the fact that the threefold newspaper has not had one single new subscriber since the end of May. The fact that the Union for Threefolding is absolutely not functioning needs to be said.

A teacher: The school building will not be completed in time. We may need to put up a temporary building.

Dr. Steiner: We probably will have to put up such a temporary building. The prospect that this large school building costing millions will be completed in the near future is minimal. The money would have to come from The Coming Day. It is not very likely that The Coming Day could afford it since it has a number of absolutely necessary things to do. It is virtually impossible that they could use the first money for the construction of the school building. If they cannot use the first money, then we cannot think the school building will be completed in time for next school year. Technically, we could complete it, but financially that is impossible. Several teachers speak about ways of obtaining money.

Dr. Steiner: There is nothing standing in the way of obtaining money somehow. That kind of activity depends upon humor. I was unable to take care of the Waldorf School very much recently. That was very difficult for me. I have never gone away with such painful feelings as I do this time. I want to say a few things. It does not seem to me that our present Waldorf teachers can add much to such appeals. In general, I have the impression that the Waldorf teachers are sufficiently burdened with teaching the seminars. We need to relieve them of many things if the school is to flourish properly. I have the impression that we cannot burden you further. When you want to teach, you really need a certain amount of time for preparation. You need a thorough preparation of the material. Some of you are so burdened that that is no longer possible. Thus, I would decisively recommend to Dr. Stein that, when someone shoves him a task from the Union for Threefolding, he energetically refuse it. This is a way of correcting things. If the Union for Threefolding pushes things onto you that it should do itself, and then limits itself to withdrawing to its rooms, that is a method of overburdening and thus ruining those few people who really work, and allowing the others to return to their fortress so that nothing moves forward.

A teacher: I am supposed to give lectures. I have known for some time that I absolutely cannot do the necessary preparation.

Dr. Steiner: I am not complaining about you. I did not intend to criticize. It would certainly be inappropriate to criticize the best group. We need to spread things out more evenly. Certainly, when we arrange things properly, you can do things like you did in Darmstadt, but a much more intensive, cooperative working with the Union for Threefolding would need to exist. In any event, you must see to it that people do not hang things around your neck that are primarily the responsibility of those people in the Union for Threefolding. That goes for the rest of you also.

Our primary task is to take care of the school. The research laboratory and the school belong together in order to act in accord. They belong together.

A teacher: I would like to ask what to do about including music in the instruction. I have done it by playing a little piece on the piano at the beginning of class in order to prepare the mood.

Dr. Steiner: What you just said is nonsense. We can certainly not affect the instruction through an artificially created mood, and on the other hand, we cannot use an art for such an end. We must always maintain art for its own sake; it should not serve for preparing a mood. That seems to have a questionable similarity to a spiritualistic meeting. I do not think you should do this any more. The case would be different if you were teaching acoustics.

A teacher: I have always sought to make a connection.

Dr. Steiner: There is no connection between the Punic Wars and something musical. What do you suppose the connection to be? What is the goal? Not with eurythmy, either. You can certainly not present some eurythmy in order to create a mood for a shadow play. Would you want to give eurythmy presentations in order to write business letters? That would be an expansion in the other direction. Our task is to form the lessons as inwardly artistically as possible, but not through purely external means. That is as detrimental for the content of what we present as it is for the art itself. You cannot tell a fairy tale as preparation for a discussion on color theory. That would put the instruction upon the completely wrong track. We should form the instruction so that we create the mood out of it. If you find it necessary to first create a mood through something decorative, whereby the art itself suffers, then you are admitting that you cannot bring about that mood through the content of the lesson. I think it is questionable that sometimes anthroposophical discussions are preceded by some piece of music, although that is something else because that is done with adults. We cannot do that in the classroom, and we will need to stop it.

A teacher: Could we use that in physics as a bridge between music and acoustics?

Dr. Steiner: It would be desirable that you make acoustics more musical, and that you develop an artistic bridge to acoustics with music. It is certainly possible to bring music into that, but you should not try to do it in the way mentioned previously. I really don’t know what would remain for the Punic War if you took half an hour for all those things.

A eurythmy teacher: It was a very short poem.

Dr. Steiner: That is a ridiculous pedagogy. It is the best way to make eurythmy laughable.

A eurythmy teacher: I had the impression that the children were very interested.

Dr. Steiner: Perhaps they would be even more interested if you showed a short film. We may never pay any attention to what interests the children. We could let them dance around. What interests them is unimportant, it leads only to a terribly nonsensical pedagogy. If that became normal practice, then our instruction would suffer and eurythmy would be discredited. Either it is proper in principle, in which case we should do it, or it is wrong. Those are the two choices. In any event, this is something that doesn’t work.

There was that boy, T.L. in the 6-b class, who had difficulty writing, who made one stroke into the next. In such cases there is a tendency to cramp in the central nervous system, which may lead later to writer’s cramp. You need to try to counteract it at an early age. You should have this boy do eurythmy with barbells. He should do the movements with barbells. They don’t need to be particularly heavy, but he should do eurythmy with barbells. You will notice that his handwriting will improve in that way. You could also do some other things. You could try to get him to hold his pen in a different direction. There are such pens, although I don’t know if they are still available now after the war, with the nib set at an angle to the pen. Such a boy needs to become accustomed to a different position. It will help him to become conscious of the way he holds his fingers. Another thing is that the axes of his eyes converge too strongly. Get him to hold the paper further from his eyes so that the axes converge less. You will need to wait to see how his handwriting changes due to the influence of these more organic means. If you observe that he makes some effort, and that he writes something more orderly, then you can begin to guide him and his conscious will can take over.

The other boy, R.F., is a bit apathetic. I have not seen his writing.

A teacher: His handwriting is quite beautiful. He wrote for an hour and a half.

Dr. Steiner: You don’t need to do anything there. He was always a problem child, and now there is not much we can do with him. Until the light goes on, in spite of the fact that he makes trouble, you will have to call upon him more often so that he sees that you see him lovingly. He will then think to himself, “I can be called upon more often.”

With such children, you need to remember to call upon them more often, and perhaps distract them from the normal course of things. There is not much else you can do with them. He is also nearsighted and apathetic. Probably there is an organic problem lying at the basis. You must work with him individually. Probably he is suffering from some organic problem. I had the impression that the boy should be given worm medicine every other day for two weeks. You will need to check him then. I think he is suffering from worms. If we can cure that, things will go better. You need to take care of such things with the children. Perhaps you could take a look at him, Dr. Kolisko, and see whether that or something similar is in his digestive system. There may be something else slowing his digestion. You can certainly find the actual reason for his apathy in the digestive system.

If there are things similar to those with these two children, please do not hesitate to mention them. The individual cases are not so important. What is important is that through discussing a number of such cases where we consider individual children, you will slowly gain some experience. Please do not forget to mention such things that seem important to you, or possibly unpleasant.

Now, what is the situation with the withdrawals?

A teacher: Many parents have removed their children after the eighth grade to put them to work. The children of laborers are particularly susceptible to that.

Dr. Steiner: That will truly be a problem if we cannot expand the instruction in the higher grades with training that people can see can replace what the children would receive through some sort of apprenticeship. We need to set up our upper classes in the way that I discussed in my “Lectures on Public Education.” That way, the children can stay. If we do not move in that direction, we will find it very difficult to get the parents to allow them to stay. Many will not see what we want to do with their children. We can still prepare the children for their final examinations. That is a practical difficulty, and we need to look for some solution. We can still prepare the children for their final examinations, even though they may do practical work. For those who tend more toward the trades, we should provide more practical training, but without splitting the school. I don’t think we can avoid losing a number of children when they are fifteen if we allow the school to become an “institution of higher learning.”

A teacher: I only hope the workers’ children will remain in the school as long as possible.

Dr. Steiner: First, the parents have no understanding, something that does not go very far in social democratic circles. “Our children should become something better,” is something they may understand a bit. That attitude is barely present. They may have taken the opportunity to allow their girls to be educated cheaply. We cannot immediately achieve very much in the area of people’s habits. It will also not be easy with the children who have not attended the elementary school from the very beginning, that is, with those who entered later, those we had for only a year in the eighth grade, and who will now move on to the higher grades. Those children cannot really move up. We did not have very many working-class children in the eighth grade.

A teacher: Nine have left. It is difficult to teach the children in the eighth grade what they need for the higher grades.

Dr. Steiner: We should not raise their attitude toward life, I mean exactly what I say, the inner attitude of their souls, to what we normally have in a higher school. Working-class children can get into the higher bourgeois schools only if they are ambitious, that is, if they want to move into the bourgeoisie. We would need to set up the school as I described it in my “Lectures on Public Education.” We would then see what we need to give these students as a proper education. As long as the law requires us to have a college preparatory high school, something that is purely bourgeois with nothing that is not precisely for the bourgeoisie, the working-class children will not fit in.

I would like to say something about this tone of “just teach.” That is, that we do not actually bring anything to the children. Here the issue is that the method we began and that I presented in my didactic lectures can offer a great deal toward efficient instruction when we properly develop it. We still need to work more toward efficiency in teaching. This efficiency is absolutely necessary if other things are to be retained.

I have not complained that the children cannot yet write. In this period of life, they will learn to do something else. I would like to mention the case of R.F.M. as an example. At the age of nine, she could not write and learned to write much later than all the other children. She simply drew the letters. Now she is over sixteen and is engaged. She is extremely helpful at work. This is really something else. In spite of how late the girl learned to read, she received a scholarship to the commercial school and has been named the director’s secretary. We do not take such things sufficiently into account. When we do not teach such things as reading and modern handwriting at too early an age, we decisively support diligence, for such things are not directly connected with human nature. Learning to read and write later has a certain value.

A teacher: There is talk among the parents that a certain discrimination exists between the working class children and the others.

Dr. Steiner: What has occurred in those relationships?

A teacher: I was unable to discover anything between the children. Only little W.A. draws such things out of a hat: “You allow the rich kids to go out, but you do not allow us poor people to do that.” In spite of that, we have never had an attitude against the working-class children.

Dr. Steiner: That is not particularly characteristic of the development of our school because he has become better here. He is much more civilized than he was. He was really wild when he first came, but has improved decisively. I don’t think he is an example of discrimination against the working-class children.

A teacher: He cannot concentrate.

Dr. Steiner: Things would significantly improve if we could look at him from a pathological standpoint. That is, if we could give him a couple of leechings. That is something that belongs to pedagogy, but we would cause a tremendous turmoil if we attempted it now.

You could achieve something with him if you could get him to do something of consequence in detail from the very beginning to the end. If he is chewing on a problem, then he should write it down. In some way, you will need to have him go through the problem into the last details. You can achieve a great deal if you have him do something until he has done it perfectly. His main problem is that his blood has too strong an inner activity. There is a tremendous tension within him, and he is what I would like to call a physical braggart. He wants to boast. He swaggers with his body. That is something that treating the blood could change significantly.

There is much you could do with many of the children if you take it up in the proper way. I will pick out a few children in each class who need physical treatment. It is certainly so that K.R. needs proper treatment. He needs to have a special diet that will treat him for what I spoke of.

We need a school doctor and we need to arrange that position in such a way that it is acceptable to official opinion. We need to create the special position of the school doctor.

A teacher: Couldn’t we do that quickly?

Dr. Steiner: I am not certain if Dr. Kolisko could do something like that. The school doctor I am thinking of would need to know all the children and keep an eye on them. Such a person would not teach any special classes, but would take care of the children in all the classes as necessary. He would have to know the state of health of all the children. There is much I could say about that. I have often mentioned that people say there are so many illnesses and only one health. But, there are just as many healths as there are illnesses.

The position of the school doctor who knows all the children and keeps an eye on them would be a full-time position. That person would have to be employed here. I don’t think we can do it. We are not so far along financially that it would be responsible. We would have to carry it out strictly as that is the only way the officials would accept it. The doctor would have to be employed by the school.

There are questions about W.L. and R.D.

Dr. Steiner: R.D. is much better. Last year he was not in that state. Why did you put him in the back of the class? Last time he sat quite close to the heater.

A teacher: That was mostly because he was too preoccupied with E.

Dr. Steiner: In any event, R.D. is better now. Concerning W.L., I know only of his general state of health as I have not given him much thought. There is something wrong with him physically. R.D. is hysterical, he has an obvious male hysteria. Perhaps the other one has something similar. We will have to examine him to see if there is something organically wrong.

A teacher: May I ask if you recall D.R.?

Dr. Steiner: The boy is physically small, but he seems to be very curious. I think what the boy needs is to often experience that you like him so that he has some security. He receives little love at home. It may well be that the mother talks cleverly, but we should give him some love here at school. You should speak to him often and do similar things. That will be difficult because he makes such an unsympathetic impression. You should speak with him often and ask him about one thing or another. I have the impression that we need to treat him along those lines. The boy is simply a little stiff.

A teacher: Should I also do something special with N.M.?

Dr. Steiner: The question is whether we can awaken her.

A teacher: She is quite distracted, and her eyes are a little askew.

Dr. Steiner: She is intellectually weak. We need a class for weak-minded children so that we can take care of them systematically. These children would gain a great deal if we did not have them learn to read and write, but instead learn things that require a certain kind of thinking. They need basic tasks like putting a number of marbles in a series of nine containers so that every third container has one white and two red marbles. They need to do things that involve combining, and then you could achieve quite a bit with them. We need a teacher for these emotionally disturbed children.

A teacher: In ninth grade history, I have gotten as far as 1790, but I should be at the present. I’m moving forward only slowly.

Dr. Steiner: Recently, I was unable to determine how quickly you were moving forward. What is the problem, in your opinion?

A teacher: The problem is that I am not very familiar with history. The preparation needed to encompass entire periods is very arduous.

Dr. Steiner: Where did you begin?

A teacher: With the Reformation.

Dr. Steiner: What follows is short. You need to come to the present as quickly as possible.

A teacher: Is it better to begin with the artistic or with the geometric when teaching sixth grade projective geometry?

Dr. Steiner: Probably the best thing is to form a kind of bridge in the instruction between art and what is strictly geometric. I don’t think you can treat it through art. What I mean here is the central projection. I think the children really need to know about how the shadow of a cone falls upon a plane. They need an inner perspective.

A teacher: Should I use expressions such as “light rays” or “shadow rays”?

Dr. Steiner: Well, that is a more general question. It is not a good idea to use things in projective geometry that do not exist. There are no light rays and still less shadow rays. It is not necessary to work with such concepts in teaching projections. You should work with spatial forms. There are no light rays and no shadow rays. There are cylinders and cones. There are shadows that arise when I place a cone at an angle and illuminate it from a point and allow a shadow to fall upon an appropriately angled plane. Then I have a shadow form. The form of the shadow as such is the boundary of the shadow, and even a child should understand that. It is the same later in projective geometry when the child learns what occurs when a cylinder cuts through another with a smaller diameter. It is very useful to teach children that, but it does not detract from the artistic. It guides children into the artistic. It makes their imagination flexible. You can imagine flexibly if you know what section occurs when two cylinders intersect one another. It is very important to teach these things, but not as abstractions. A teacher asks about plane geometry.

Dr. Steiner: Perhaps I came in the middle of the class. In this case I think you should proceed more visually. The children could answer more rationally. Everything fell apart. The children spoke in a confused way. If you taught them juicier ideas, that would, of course, change. I would begin with more visual things; teach the children how different a building looks when seen from a balloon. Or, how different things look when you look down upon them from a mountain behind them. In this way, I would then move on from the more complicated object to explain the concepts of the horizontal and vertical projections before I went on to a presentation of the point.

This sort of geometry is something children would do with a passion when you teach them. It is something terribly fruitful. I think you talked too much about placing a point in the surface of a triangle. When you drew a point at the beginning of the lesson and then spoke about all kinds of things without having come to drawing the lines at the end of the class, then I think you have spread the picture out too much. When you spread children’s’ imaginations out so much, they lose the connection. They lose the thread. Everything is so spread out that the children can no longer understand it. It breaks apart.

A teacher: Is there some artistic value in learning “The Song of the Bells”?

Dr. Steiner: You can certainly do that if you raise it to a freer understanding. “The Song of the Bells” is one of those poems where Schiller made concessions to convention. A great deal of it is very conventional. Many of the ideas are quite untrue, and for that reason, it is dangerous. Of course, the working-class children will tell it to their parents, something we don’t want. People perceive it as a bourgeois poem. How are things with the first grade? A teacher reports.

Dr. Steiner: The homogeneity of your class makes a good impression. The children in both first grade classes do not seem to be particularly gifted or dull.

A teacher: There are some individuals with some difficulties.

Dr. Steiner: That is also good; you should awaken some individuals. In general, I was quite pleased with both first grade classes. They were relatively quiet, whereas the second grade is terribly loud. They are having a hellish time of it. They are also restless. In that regard, the two first grade classes are quite good.

A teacher: It is somewhat more difficult in foreign language.

Dr. Steiner: In general, we can be satisfied with the children in these classes. There are a few lagging behind. The little girl in the first row to the left is moving forward only with difficulty. Also, little B.R. is not doing too well.

Dr. Steiner had proposed that a younger teacher, Miss S., help one of the older class teachers, Miss H. A question arose as to how they should work together.

Dr. Steiner: I thought you would relieve one another, but while one of you was not teaching, you would not simply listen, but go around a little to maintain discipline on the side.

A teacher: We did not do that because we thought it would not work.

Dr. Steiner: In an abstract connection that may be correct, but in the intimacy of the class, that is not so. Miss H. is under terrible strain, so that if you were to go around a little, you could keep those children seated when they jump up. That is certainly more effective than when you simply listen.

A teacher: When I tell the children something, Miss H. says the opposite.

Dr. Steiner: Well, that certainly does not come into question if you are seeing to it that a child who is jumping about remains in his seat. I don’t think we want to get into a discussion about principles here. The interesting thing about this class is that the children all run around in colorful confusion. You can certainly keep them from that confusion. What could Miss H. say in opposition? I certainly hope you are not having differences between yourselves. I don’t mean that when children go somewhere for a reason you should keep them in their seats. The concern here is with those obvious cases when children are misbehaving and it is difficult to maintain discipline. Do it unobtrusively so that you do not do anything about which Miss H. could complain.

Is it really so difficult to do that? My intent in proposing this was to give Miss H. some help because the class was too large for her, and the children are somewhat difficult to keep under control. We cannot make an experiment like this one if it remains an experiment. I can easily imagine that you might come so far as to speak for five minutes with one another about the object of the next day’s lesson.

It appears that a question was posed in regard to the telling of fairy tales.

Dr. Steiner: If you think that it is justifiable. I would, however, warn you about filling up time with fairy tales. We should keep everything well divided pedagogically. I do not want these things emphasized too much, so that you do not think through the instruction sufficiently. I do not want you simply to tell a fairy tale when you don’t know what else to do. You should think out each minute of the lesson. Telling a fairy tale is good when you have decided to do it. In the sense of our pedagogical perspective, these two hours in the morning should be a closed whole. Diverging interests should not enter into them.

You will get through only if the two of you are together heart and soul, that is, when you have a burning desire to continue your work together. To be completely of one accord, that is most essential.

A teacher: Miss Lang wants to leave because she is getting married.

Dr. Steiner: I can say nothing other than that it is a shame. We will need to have another teacher. It is absolutely necessary that we call someone who can find the way into the spirit of the Waldorf School completely out of his or her heart. We have gone through nearly all the people who come into consideration as teachers. Not many more may marry.

When will Boy be free? I received a very reasonable letter from him. The question is whether he can be here heart and soul. He is a little distant from the work. I have the feeling he might come here with a predetermined opinion about teaching and not be quite able to find his way into our methods. teachers at such schools have their own curious ideas. I have seen from a number of signs that he is not quite so fixed in such things, but, of course, I would have to know he would be here heart and soul. I would like to meet Mr. Boy personally.

Boy was at that time working at a country boarding school. Other candidates were also discussed.

Dr. Steiner: Well, then, we’re in agreement that we will give Mr. Ruhtenberg one class and that we will try to get Boy or someone else. Is it possible for me to meet Boy personally?

Is there still a class in deportment?

A teacher: I have included all of it in the music class.

Dr. Steiner: If it is properly done, that may be good. In this class, you must teach through repetition so that the rhythm of the repetitions affects the children.

I have not seen much of the eurythmy.

A teacher asks about curative eurythmy and how difficult cases are to be treated in particular.

Dr. Steiner: I have been considering the development of curative eurythmy for a long time, but it has been difficult for me to work in that area recently. We will have to work out curative eurythmy. Of course, there is also much we can do for the psychological problems. If we have the children, then there is much we can do. A teacher reports about the singing class.

Dr. Steiner: I can hardly recommend using two-part singing with the younger children. We can begin only at fifth grade. Until the age of ten, I would remain primarily with singing in one part. Is it possible for you to have the children sing solo what they also sing in chorus?

A teacher: I can do that now.

Dr. Steiner: That is something we should also consider. I think we should give attention to allowing the children to sing not only in chorus. Do not neglect solo singing. Particularly when the children speak in chorus, you will find the group soul is active. Many children do that well in chorus, but when you call upon them individually, they are lost. You need to be sure the children can also do individually what they can do in chorus, particularly in the languages.

How do things stand with the older children in singing?

A teacher: The boys are going through the change of voice. They receive theory and rhythmic exercises. The older children work in various ways. Perhaps we could form a mixed choir. That would be fun.

Dr. Steiner: We can certainly do that. How is it in the handwork classes?

A report is given.

Dr. Steiner: You will need to take into account the needs of the children when you select the work. It is not possible to be artistic in everything. You should not neglect the development of artistic activities nor let the sense of art dry out, but you cannot do much that is artistic when the children are to knit a sock. When the children are knitting a sock, you can always interrupt with some small thing. We want to bring some small activities into our evening meetings [with parents], perhaps making a small bracelet or necklace out of paper, but we shouldn’t get into frivolous things. Things people can use, which have some meaning in life and can be done artistically and tastefully. But, make no concessions. Don’t make things that arise only out of frivolous desires. There are not many things we can do with paper. I also hope to attend.

Mr. Wolffhügel, you certainly have some special experiences with shop.

A teacher: The children have begun making toys, but they have not yet finished.

Dr. Steiner: There is nothing to say against the children making cooking spoons. They don’t need to make anything removed from life, and when possible, no luxury items.

A biennial report is mentioned.

Dr. Steiner: A yearly report would be good. We cannot say enough about the Waldorf School, its principles and intentions and its way of working. It is a shame when that does not always occur objectively. I will see what I can write. It should not be too long.

A teacher: In the parent evening for my class, I gave a talk about all the children have learned.

Dr. Steiner: Nothing to say against that, but it cannot become a rule. Those who want to do it, should do it. You simply need to believe it is necessary. Not everyone can do that. People will need the kind of energy you have if they are to do such things.

When we cannot increase the number of students due to the lack of space, quite apart from the problems with the regulations, then you, of course, need to consider our primary work is for the continuation of the Waldorf School. That is what is important. It is important that we place the goals of the Waldorf School in the proper light. Within the threefold movement, it is more important to present the characteristic direction of the Waldorf School objectively, not as advertising for the school, but as characteristic of our work. It is certainly much more necessary to do that than to speak about Tolstoy among the members of the Union for Threefolding. People already know about the school to a certain extent, but it must become much better known, particularly its basic principles. We also need to emphasize the independence of the faculty, the republican-democratic form of the faculty, to show that an independent spiritual life is thinkable even within our limited possibilities.

A teacher: Would you advise us to continue to travel north to give lectures?

Dr. Steiner: Well, we would have to decide in each case whether that is possible. If we can make good arrangements, it would certainly be good to reach as many people as possible with our lectures.

Marie Steiner: Mr. L. wants to meet with me tomorrow regarding a performance in another city.

Dr. Steiner: Well, it is in general not possible for the children from the Waldorf School to travel around. I am not sure we should even begin that when the whole thing is somewhat spinsterish. We cannot be sending the Waldorf children around all the time, so that must be an exception. The Waldorf children can’t be a traveling troupe. I don’t think that would be appropriate. We can certainly work for the children’s eurythmy, but we should have people travel here to see it. It must be taken more seriously than Mrs. P. and Mr. L. would do. They want to make it into some sort of social affair. There is also too much energy being expended in giving lectures in this connection. We should not accept this tea party Anthroposophy too much.

Those who have time may want to go, but it is really a little bit wasted energy. Those who want to can go to lectures. Popular celebrities also hold lectures, but it is relatively clear that the audience is not very promising. It’s a little bit of a mixture of Bohemians and salon people, not people who could really contribute in some way to the further development of the anthroposophical movement.

In Bavaria, the major party is completely narrow-minded. These idealists have done everything wrong, so that narrow-minded viewpoints easily arise. When Bavarians say “Wittelsbacher,” they mean a good bratwurst.

Is there anything else? From my own perspective, I wish I could be more active here in the Waldorf School.