The Rudolf Steiner Archive

It might seem at first sight that in the centuries immediately following the Mystery of Golgotha mankind had not been touched by the light of spiritual illumination; that this was the normal condition of mankind and increasingly so up to the present day. This is not so, however. If we wish to see these things in perspective we must distinguish between the prevailing spirit of mankind and that which occurs here and there in the life of mankind and may play a decisive part in the different spheres of life. It would be most discouraging for many today to be told of the existence of a spiritual world, but that the doors to this world were closed to them. And there are many at the present time who have come to this depressing conclusion. The reason for this is not far to seek. Where there is a clear possibility of gaining insight into the spiritual world they refuse to commit themselves unreservedly. Nor have they the courage to pass an objective judgement on this issue. It may seem therefore—but in reality it is only apparently so—that today we are far removed from those early times when the spiritual world was revealed to the whole of mankind through atavistic clairvoyance, or from the later times when the few could find access to the spirit through initiation into the Mysteries. We must draw together certain strands which link early periods of human evolution with the present if we wish to arrive at a full understanding of the mystery of man's destiny and especially of those phenomena we have discussed in these lectures in connection with the nature of the Mysteries. I should like to select an example from recent times which is accessible to all and which will lend encouragement to those who are faced with the decision of choosing paths leading to the spiritual world. From the many examples at our disposal I would like to take an example which demonstrates at the same time how these phenomena are none the less misjudged from the materialistic point of view of the present day—and will also be misjudged in the immediate future.

No doubt you have all heard of Otto Ludwig (note 1) who was born in 1813, in the same year as Hebbel and Richard Wagner. Otto Ludwig was not only a poet—some may feel perhaps that he was not in the front rank of poets, but that does not concern us at the moment—but he was a man given to introspection, who sought self-knowledge and who succeeded in penetrating into the inner life which is veiled from the majority today. Otto Ludwig describes very beautifully what he experiences in the process of poetic composition or when he reads the poetry of others and surrenders to its appeal. He then realizes that he does not read or compose like other men, but that an extraordinary ferment is set up within him. And Otto Ludwig gives a beautiful description of this in a passage I will now read to you because it reveals a piece of self-knowledge of a typically modern man who, in the course of this self-revelation, speaks of things which our present materialistic age regards as the wildest fantasy. But Otto Ludwig was no visionary or idle dreamer. By nature he was perhaps introspective, but if we take into consideration the information we have about his life, we shall find that alongside this introspective tendency there was something eminently sane and balanced in his make-up. He describes his own creative experience and his response to the poetry of others in these words:

“I experience first of all a musical impression which is transformed into colour (note 2). Then I see one or more figures in various postures executing formalized gestures, singly or facing each other, the whole resembling a copper engraving on parchment, coloured paper or, more precisely, like a marble statue or sculptural group on which the sun falls through a veil of that colour. I experience this colour phenomenon after reading poetry which has stirred me deeply. If I put myself in the mood which Goethe's poetry evokes I see a deep golden yellow passing over into golden brown. When I read Schiller I experience a brilliant crimson; with Shakespeare every scene is a particular nuance of the particular colour I associate with the whole drama. Strangely enough the image or the group evoked is not usually a representation of the denouement, sometimes it is only a characteristic figure in some moving posture which is immediately joined by a succession of other figures. At first I know nothing of the plot or content of the drama, but ever fresh miming figures, seemingly three-dimensional, are rapidly added, now from the beginning, now from the end of the initial dramatic situation until I experience the whole drama complete with all its scenes. The whole passes before me in rapid succession; meanwhile I remain passive and a kind of physical anxiety grips me. I can then reproduce at will the content of the individual scenes as they unfold; but I find it impossible to condense the narrative content into a brief account. Next the gestures are accompanied by speech. I write down what I can recall, but, once the mood forsakes me, what I have noted down becomes a dead letter. Then I proceed to fill in the gaps in the dialogue, but for this purpose I must cast a critical eye over what I have written.”

Here then we have the remarkable case of a man who experiences crimson-red on reading Schiller, or golden yellow passing over into golden brown on reading the dramas or poems of Goethe, who experiences a colour sensation with every drama of Shakespeare; who, when he composes or reads a poem sees figures like those of a copper engraving printed on a parchment-coloured background, or three-dimensional miming figures on which the sun falls through a veil which diffuses the light that evokes the total mood.

Now we must understand this experience in the correct way. It is not yet a clairvoyant perception, but it is a step towards spiritual vision. In order to have a right understanding of this mood from the standpoint of Spiritual Science we must realize that Otto Ludwig was no stranger to spiritual vision. For if he were to advance further along this path he would not only experience these visions, but, just as physical objects are visible to the physical eye, spiritual beings would be visible to his spiritual eye and he would know them as an inner experience. Just as we see scattered light when we gently rub our eyes in the dark, light that seemingly radiates from the eye and fills the room, so from his inner life Ludwig radiates impressions of colour and tone. As he rightly says, he experiences them first as musical impressions. He does not exploit them in order to gain spiritual insight; but we perceive that he is mature enough spiritually to embark on the path leading to the spiritual world.

It is no longer possible to deny that there exist people who are aware that “spiritual vision” is a reality, the vision that the neophytes learned to develop in the Mysteries in the way described in earlier lectures. For the real purpose of these ceremonies was primarily to call attention to the eye of the soul, to awaken man to the fact of its existence. That the phenomena which I have just described to you are not rightly understood today is evident from the observations of Gustav Freytag (note 3). When speaking of Otto Ludwig, he says:

“The work of this writer and indeed his whole makeup, was akin to that of an epic poet of the time when, in the early dawn of nations, the poetic figures were visioned by the poet as living Imaginations imbued with colour and sound.”

This statement is perfectly correct, but has nothing to do with poetic composition. For the experiences of Otto Ludwig were not only shared by poets in ancient times, but by all men, and were shared in later times by those who had been initiated into the Mysteries irrespective of whether they were poets or not. These experiences have therefore no connection with poetic invention. Behind the barrier which the materialist of today has erected in his own soul there is to be found that which Otto Ludwig describes. It is found not only in the poet, but in every man today. The fact that he was a poet has nothing to do with the phenomenon of poetic vision, but is something that accompanies it. One may be a far greater poet than Otto Ludwig and that which one is able to describe may remain entirely in the subconscious. It is present in the substratum of the subconscious, but need not manifest itself. For poetry, indeed art as a whole today, is something other than the conscious fashioning of clairvoyant impressions.

I quote the case of Otto Ludwig as an example of a man—and men of his type are by no means rare today—who stands on the threshold of the spiritual world. If one practises the exercises given in my book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, that which already exists in the soul is raised into consciousness, so that one learns to use it or to apply it consciously. It is important to bear this in mind. The problem is not so much that it is difficult to reach the hidden depths of the soul, but that people today lack the courage to embark upon a spiritual training; and that for the most part those who would willingly do so from a heartfelt need to know and to understand, none the less feel constrained to admit this need, albeit somewhat shamefacedly in their own intimate circle, but conceal it when they later find themselves in the company of contemporary intellectuals. What we should characterize today as the right path, perhaps because we live in the Michael Age since 1879, need not of necessity be regarded as the only right path. Looking back over the recent past it is possible that many may have attained a high degree of clairvoyance, genuine clairvoyance; there is no need for us therefore either to recognize fully or to accept this clairvoyance unreservedly, nor to regard it as something dangerous and to be rejected.

There are certainly many factors which for some time have undermined our courage to accept the validity of clairvoyance, and for this reason the assessment of Swedenborg (who has often been mentioned in your circle) has been so strange. He could act as a stimulus to many, in that people might see in him an individuality who had lifted to some extent the veils that concealed the spiritual world. Swedenborg had developed a high degree of Imaginative cognition which is a necessity for all who would penetrate to the spiritual world. It was indispensable to him; it was simply a kind of transition to higher stages of knowledge. And it was especially his clairvoyant sense for Imaginative cognition that he had developed. But precisely because this Imaginative cognition was stirring and pulsating in him he was able to make observations about the relations between the spiritual world and the phenomenal world, observations which are highly significant for those who seek to clarify their ideas about clairvoyance by studying the development of particular personalities. I should like to take Swedenborg as an example in order to illustrate how he came to self-understanding, how he thought and felt in order to keep his inner life attuned to the spiritual world. He was not motivated by egoism in his search for the spirit. He was already fifty-five years old when the doors of the spiritual world were opened to him (note 4). He was therefore a man of ripe experience; he had received a sound scientific training and had long been active in this field. The most important scientific works of Swedenborg have just been published in many volumes by the Stockholm Academy of Sciences and they contain material that may well determine the course of science for many years to come. But people today have learned the trick of recognizing a man such as Swedenborg (who was the leading scientist of his day) only in so far as they agree with him; otherwise they label him a fool. And they perform this trick with consummate skill. They attach no importance to the fact that from the age of fifty-five Swedenborg bears witness to the reality of the spiritual world—a man whose scientific achievement not only compares favourably with that of others—in itself no mean feat—but who, as a scientist, stood head and shoulders above his contemporaries.

Swedenborg was particularly interested in the question of the interaction of soul and body. After his spiritual enlightenment he wrote a superb treatise on this subject. The content was approximately as follows: In considering the interrelation of body and soul there are three possibilities. First, the body is the decisive factor; sense-impressions are mediated by the body and react upon the soul. The soul therefore is to some extent dependent upon the body. The second possibility is that the body is dependent upon the soul which is the source of the spiritual impulses. The soul fashions the body and makes use of the body during its lifetime. In this case one must speak not of a physical influence, but of a psychic influence. The third possibility is as follows: body and soul are contiguous, but do not interact; a higher power brings about a harmony or agreement between them just as two clocks which are independent of each other agree when they show the time. When therefore an external impression is made upon the senses, a thought process is set up within the soul, but both are unrelated; a corresponding impression is made upon the soul from within by a higher power, just as an impression is made upon the soul through the senses from without. Swedenborg points out that the first and third possibilities are impossible for those who are able to see into the spiritual world, that it is evident to the spiritually enlightened that the soul by virtue of its inner forces is related to a spiritual sun in the same way as the (physical) body is related to the physical sun. And he also shows that everything of a physical nature is dependent upon soul and spirit. He throws fresh light upon what we called the Sun mystery (when speaking of the Mysteries), that mystery of which Julian the Apostate had a dim recollection when he spoke of the sun as a spiritual being. It was this which was the cause of his hostility to Christianity because the Christianity of his day sought to deny Christ's relation to the sun. Through Imaginative cognition Swedenborg restored the Sun mystery as far as was possible for his time.

I have placed these facts before you in order to show what Swedenborg experienced inwardly in the course of developing his spiritual knowledge. His reflections upon the question I have just touched upon were embodied in a kind of philosophical treatise—the kind of treatise written by one who has insight into the spiritual world, not the kind of treatise written by the academic philosopher who is devoid of spiritual vision. At the conclusion of his treatise Swedenborg speaks of what he calls a “vision”. And by this vision he does not imply something he has conjured up, but something he has actually perceived with the eye of the spirit. Swedenborg is not afraid to speak of his spiritual visions. Furthermore he recounts what a particular angel said to him because he is certain of the fact. He no more doubts it than another doubts what a fellow human being has told him. He said: “I was once ‘in the spirit’; three Schoolmen appeared to me, disciples of Aristotle, advocates of his doctrine that attributes a physical influence to all that streams into the soul from without. They appeared on the one side. On the other side appeared three disciples of Descartes who spoke of spiritual influences upon the soul, albeit somewhat inadequately. And behind them appeared three disciples of Leibnitz who spoke of the pre-established harmony, i.e. of the independence of body and soul, of dissimilar monads existing and moving together in a state of absolute harmony pre-established by God. And I perceived nine figures who surrounded me. And the leaders of each group of the three figures were Leibnitz, Descartes and Aristotle, suffused in light”. Swedenborg spoke of this vision as one speaks of an event in everyday life. Then, he said, from out of the abyss there rose up a spirit with a torch in his right hand and as he swung the torch in front of the figures they immediately began to dispute amongst themselves. The Aristotelians defended, from their standpoint, the primacy of physical influences, the Cartesians defended spiritual impulses, and likewise the Leibnitzians defended, with the support of Leibnitz himself, the idea of preestablished harmony. Such visions may describe even the smallest details. Swedenborg tells us that Leibnitz appeared dressed in a kind of toga and the lappets were held by his disciple Wolf. Such details always accompany these visions in which such peculiarities are very characteristic. These figures, then, began to dispute amongst themselves. They all had a good case—and any and every case can be defended. Thereupon, after prolonged conflict, the spirit appeared a second time. He carried the torch in his left hand and lit up their heads from behind. Then the battle of words was really joined. They said: “We cannot distinguish which is our body and which is our soul.” And so they agreed to cast three slips of paper into a box. On the one slip was written “physical influence”, on the second, “spiritual influence” and on the third, “pre-established harmony”. Then they drew lots and drew out “spiritual influence” and said: “Let us agree to recognize spiritual influence.” At that moment an angel descended from the upper world and said: “It is not fortuitous that you drew out the slip of paper labelled ‘spiritual influence’; that choice had already been anticipated by the powers who in their wisdom guide the world because it accords with the truth.”

This is the vision described by Swedenborg. It is open to anyone to regard this vision as of no importance, perhaps even as naive. The salient question however is not whether it is naive or not, but that he experienced it. And that which at first sight seems perhaps extremely naive has profound implications. For that which in the phenomenal world appears to be arbitrary, the vagary of chance, is something totally different when seen symbolically from the spiritual angle. It is difficult to come to an understanding of chance, because chance is only a shadow-image of higher necessities. Swedenborg wishes to indicate something of special importance, namely that it is not he who wills it, but “it” is willed in him. This vision arises because “it” is willed in him. And this is an accurate description of the way in which he arrived at his truths, an accurate description of the spirit in which the treatise was written. How did the Cartesians react? They sought to demonstrate the idea of spiritual influence on purely human and rational grounds. It is possible to arrive at the spirit in this way but that seldom happens. The Aristotelians were no better than the Cartesians; they defended the idea of the spiritual influence, again on human grounds. The Leibnitzians were certainly no better than the other two for they defended the idea of “pre-established harmony”. Swedenborg rejected these paths to the spirit; he did everything possible to prepare himself to receive the truth. And this waiting upon truth, not the determination of truth, this passive acceptance of truth was his aim and was symbolized by the drawing of the slips of paper from the box. This is of vital importance.

We do not appreciate these things at their true worth when we approach them intellectually. We only appreciate them in the right way when they are presented symbolically, even though intelligent people may regard the symbol as naive. Our response to symbols is different from our response to abstract ideas. The symbol prepares our soul to receive the truth from the spiritual world. That is the essential. And if we give serious attention to these things we shall gradually understand and develop ideas and concepts which are necessary for mankind today, ideas which they must acquire by effort and which appear to be inaccessible today simply because people are antipathetic towards them—and for no other reason—an antipathy that springs from materialism.

The whole purpose of our investigations was to study the course of human evolution, first of all up to a decisive turning-point—and this turning-point was the Mystery of Golgotha. Then evolution continues and takes on a new course. These two courses are radically different from each other. I have already described in what respects they differed from each other. In order fully to understand this difference let us recall once again the following: in ancient times it was always possible for man without special training of his psychic life (in the Mysteries this was connected with external ceremonies and cult acts) to be convinced of the reality of the spiritual world through the performance of these rites and ceremonies and thereby of his own immortality, because this certainty of immortality was still latent in his corporeal nature. After the Mystery of Golgotha it was no longer possible for the physical body to “distil” out of itself the conviction of immortality; it could no longer “press” out of itself, so to speak, the perception of immortality. This had been prepared in the centuries before the Mystery of Golgotha. It is most interesting to see how Aristotle, this giant among philosophers, made every effort a few centuries before the Mystery of Golgotha to grasp the idea of the immortality of the soul; but the idea of immortality he arrived at was a most remarkable conception. Man, in Aristotle's opinion, is only a complete man when he possesses a physical body. And Franz Brentano, one of the best Aristotelians of recent time, says in his study of Aristotle that man is no longer a complete man if some member is lacking; how can he be a complete man when he lacks the whole body? Therefore, to Aristotle, when the soul passes through the gates of death it is of less significance than it was when in the body here on Earth. This shows that he had lost the capacity still to perceive the soul, whilst on the other hand the original capacity to accept the immortality of the soul still persisted. Now, strange to relate, Aristotle was the leading philosopher throughout the Middle Ages. All that can be known, said the Schoolmen, is known to Aristotle and as philosophers we have no choice but to rely upon him and follow in his footsteps. They had no intention of developing spiritual powers or capacities beyond the limits set by Aristotelianism. And this is very significant, for it explains clearly why Julian the Apostate rejected the Christianity that was practised by the Church during the age of Constantine. One must really see these things from a higher perspective. Apart from Franz Brentano, one of the leading Aristotelians of our time, I was personally acquainted with Vincenz Knauer, a Benedictine monk, whose relationship to Aristotle as a Roman Catholic was identical with that of the Schoolmen. In speaking of Aristotle he sought to discover at the same time what could be known of the immortality of the soul by purely human knowledge. And Knauer gave the following interesting summary of his opinion:

“The soul, that is, in this connection, the departed spirit—i.e. the soul of man that has passed through the gates of death—finds itself, according to Aristotle, not in a more perfect state, but in a highly imperfect state, inappropriate to its destiny. The image of the soul is by no means that which is often employed, namely, the image of a butterfly which after shedding its chrysalis takes wing. Rather does the soul resemble a butterfly whose wings have been torn off by a cruel hand and now crawls helplessly in the dust in the form of a miserable worm.”

It is very significant that those who are well versed in Aristotle admit that human knowledge could arrive at no other conclusion. And a certain effort therefore is demanded of us to resist the consequences of this attitude of mind. The materialism of the present time is unwittingly influenced by the Conciliar decree of 869 which abolished the spirit and declared that man consisted of body and soul only.

Modern materialism goes even further; it proposes to abolish the soul as well. That of course is the logical sequel. We need therefore both courage and determination in order to find our way back again to the spirit in the right way. Now Julian the Apostate who had been initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries was aware that a specific spiritual training could lead to the realization that the soul is immortal. This Sun mystery was known to him. And he now became aware of something that filled him with alarm. He was unable to grasp the fact that what he feared so much was a necessity. When he looked back to ancient times he realized that directly or indirectly through the Mysteries man was guided by Cosmic Powers, Beings and Forces. He realized that this may happen on the physical plane, that it is ordained from spiritual spheres because men have insight into these spiritual spheres. In Constantinism he saw a form of Christianity emerge which modelled Christian society and the organization of Christianity on the original principles of the Roman empire. He saw that Christianity had infiltrated into that which the Roman empire had intended for the external social order only. And he saw that the divine-spiritual had been harnessed to the Imperium Romanum. And this appalled him; he was unable to bring himself to admit that this was a necessity for a brief period. He realized that there was wide disparity between the mighty impulses of human evolution and what happened historically. I have often called attention to the need to bear in mind the golden age of the rise of Christianity before the era of Constantine. For at that time powerful spiritual impulses were at work which had been obscured solely because man's independent search for knowledge which he owed to the Christ Impulse had been harnessed to the Conciliar decrees.

If we look back to Origen and to Clement of Alexandria we find men who were open-minded, men still imbued with the Greek spirit: yet they were also conscious of the significance of what had been accomplished through the Mystery of Golgotha. Their conception of this Mystery and of the crucified Christ is considered to be pure heresy in the eyes of all denominations today. In reality the great Church Fathers of the pre-Constantine age who are recognized by the Church are the worst heretics of all. Though they were aware of the significance of the Mystery of Golgotha for the evolution of the Earth, they gave no indication of wishing to suppress the path to the Mystery of Golgotha, the gate to the Mysteries or the path of the old clairvoyance, which had been the aim of the Christianity of Constantine. In Clement of Alexandria especially we see that his works are shot through with great mysteries, mysteries which are so veiled that it is even difficult for contemporary man to make head or tail of them. Clement speaks of the Logos for example, of the wisdom that streams through and permeates the Universe. He pictures the Logos as music of the spheres fraught with meaning, and the visible world as the expression of the music of the spheres, just as the visible vibration of the strings of a musical instrument is the expression of the sound waves. Thus, in the eyes of Clement, the human form is made in the image of the Logos; that is, to Clement the Logos is a reality and he sees the human form as a fusion of tones from the music of the spheres. Man, he says, is made in the image of the Logos. And in many of Clement's utterances we find traces of that supernal wisdom that dwelt in him, a wisdom illuminated by the Christ Impulse. If you compare these utterances of Clement of Alexandria with the prevailing attitude today then the claim to recognize a man such as Clement of Alexandria without understanding him will appear as more than passing strange.

When it is said that the aim of Spiritual Science is to follow in the main stream of Christianity, to be a new flowering of Christianity to meet the needs of our time, then the cry is raised—the ancient Gnosis is being revived! And at the mention of Gnosis many professing Christians today begin to cross themselves as if faced by the devil incarnate. Gnosis for today is Spiritual Science; but the more developed gnosis of the present time is different from the gnosis known to Clement of Alexandria. What were the views of Clement of Alexandria who lived in the latter half of the second century? Faith, he says, is our starting-point—the orthodox Christian of today is satisfied with faith alone and asks no more. Faith, according to Clement, is already knowledge, but concise knowledge of what is needed; gnosis however confirms and reinforces what we believe, is founded on faith through the teaching of Our Lord and so leads to a faith that is scientifically acceptable and irrefutable. In these words Clement of Alexandria expresses for his time what we must realize today. Christianity therefore demands that gnosis, the Spiritual Science of today, must actively participate in the development of Christianity. But the modern philistine protests: “We must distinguish between science (which he would limit to sense experience) and faith. Faith must have no part in science.” Clement of Alexandria however says: To faith is added gnosis, to gnosis love, and to love the “Kingdom”. This is one of the most profound utterances of the human spirit because it bears witness to an intimate union with the life of the spirit. First we are nourished in faith; but to faith is added gnosis, that is, knowledge or understanding. Out of this living knowledge, i.e. when we penetrate deeply into things, there is first born genuine love through which our Divine inheritance operates. Mankind can only be the vehicle of the influx of the Divine as it was in the “beginning” if to faith is added gnosis, to gnosis love and to love the “Kingdom”. We must look upon these utterances as bearing witness to the deep spirituality of Clement.

Difficult as it may seem we must make the true form of Christian life once again accessible to mankind today. It is important to see certain things for what they are today and we shall then know where to look for the real cause of our present tribulations (i.e. the War of 1914). The effect of these calamities is such that, as a rule, no attempt is made to discover what really lies behind them. When, for example, an Alpine village is buried beneath an avalanche, everyone sees the avalanche crash down; but if we want to discover the cause of the avalanche we must look for it perhaps in an ice-crystal where the snow-slip began. It is easy enough to observe the destruction of the village by the avalanche, but it is not so easy to provide tangible evidence that the disaster was caused by an ice-crystal. And so it is with the great events of history! It is evident that mankind is now caught up in a terrible catastrophe; this is the conflagration that has overwhelmed us. We have to look for the sparks—and they are many—which first set the conflagration alight. But we do not pursue our enquiries far enough in order to ascertain where the conflagration first began. Today we are afraid to see things for what they are.

Let us assume that we wish to form an opinion about a certain field of science. Usually we rely upon the opinion of the specialist in that particular field. Why is his opinion accepted as authoritative? Simply because he is an expert in this field. Generally speaking it is the specialist or university professor who determines what is accepted as scientific today. Let us take a concrete case. I am well aware that it does not make for popularity to call a spade a spade, but that is no matter. But unless an increasing number of people is prepared to get to the root of things today we shall not overcome our present tribulations. Let us assume that a leading authority says the following: people are always talking about man in terms of body and soul. This idea of the dualism of body and soul is fundamentally unsatisfactory. That we still speak of body and soul today is due to the fact that we are dependent on a language that is already outmoded, which we have inherited from an earlier epoch when people were far more stupid than today. These people were so foolish as to believe that the body and soul were separate entities. When we speak of these matters today we are compelled to make use of these terms; we are victims of a language which belongs to the past. And our authority continues: we have to accept body and soul as separate entities, but this is quite unjustified. Anyone speaking from the present standpoint and wholly uninfluenced by the views of ancient times would perhaps say: let us assume here is a flower and here is a man. I see his form and complexion, his external aspect, just as I see that of the flower. The rest must be inferred.—Now someone might come along and object: that is true, but the man in question also sees the flower in his soul. But that is pure illusion. What I really receive from the perception of a flower or a stone is a sense-impression and the same is true of the man in question. The idea that an inner image persists in the soul is pure illusion. The only things we know are external relationships.

You will say that you can make nothing of this argument! And a good thing too, because it is a farrago of nonsense, it is the acme of stupidity. This crass stupidity is supported by all kinds of careful laboratory investigations into the human brain and sundry clinical findings and so on. In short the man is a fool. He is in a position to provide good clinical results because laboratories are at his disposal; but the conclusions which he draws from these findings are pure nonsense. Men of this type are a commonplace today. To say these things does not make for popularity. The cycle of lectures which has appeared in book form by the man I am referring to—strangely enough his name is Verworn, [original note 1] I take this to be pure coincidence—is called “The Mechanism of the Spiritual Life”. It would be about as sensible to write about the “ligneousness of iron” as about “the mechanism of spiritual life”.

Now if this is typical of the intellectual acumen of our most enlightened minds it is not in the least surprising that if those disciplines which are far from being accurate at least in relation to external facts—and in this respect Verworn is capable of accurate observation because he describes what he sees, but unfortunately muddies everything with his own foolish ideas—that if those disciplines which are unsupported by external evidence such as political science, for example, are exposed to the scientific mode of thinking, then the greatest nonsense results. Political science should be supported by thoughts that are rooted in reality, but lacks these thoughts for reasons I have indicated in my last lecture. And people are forcibly reminded of this fact.

I referred earlier in this lecture to Kjellén, one of the leading Swedish thinkers. His book The State as Organism is ingenious; towards the end of the book he puts forward a remarkable idea, but neither he, nor others today, can make anything of it. He quotes a certain Fustel de Coulanges (note 5), author of La Cité antique, who showed that when we analyse pre-Christian political and social institutions we find that they are entirely founded on religious rites and observances; the entire State has a social and spiritual foundation. Thus people are willy-nilly brought face to face with the facts, for I pointed out in my last lecture that the social order stemmed from the Mysteries and had a spiritual origin. In studying the body politic or political science people are faced with these questions but are at a loss to understand them. They can make nothing of what even history reports when they can no longer rely upon documents.

And still less can they make anything of the other idea which I indicated as a new path to the Christ. This idea which we find especially in the Mysteries and in Plato's writings, that remarkable echo of the Mystery teachings must arise once again. The central figure of Plato's dialogues is Socrates surrounded by his disciples. In the debate between Socrates and his disciples Plato unfolds his teachings. In his writings Plato was in communion with Socrates after the latter's death. Now this is something more than a literary device. It is the continuation, the echo of what was practised in the Mysteries where the neophytes were gradually prepared for communion with the souls of the dead who continue to direct the sensible world from the spiritual world. Plato's philosophy is developed out of his communion with Socrates, after the death of Socrates. This idea must be revived again and I have already indicated what form it must take. We must get beyond the dry bones of history, beyond the mere recording of external events. We must be able to commune with the dead, to let the thoughts of the dead arise in us once again. It is in this sense that we must be able to take seriously the idea of resurrection. It is through personal inner experience that Christ reveals Himself to mankind. It is by following this path that the truth of the Christ can be demonstrated. But this path demands of us that we develop the will in our thinking. If we can develop only such thoughts as are suited to the observation of the external world we cannot arrive at those thoughts which are really in touch with the dead. We must acquire the capacity to draw thoughts from the well of our inmost being. Our will must be prepared to unite with reality, and then the will which is thus spiritualised by its incorporation in our thinking will encounter spiritual beings, just as the hand encounters a physical object in the external world. And the first spiritual beings we encounter will, as a rule, be the dead with whom we are in some way karmically connected. You must not expect to find guidance in these abstruse matters from a set of written instructions which can be carried about in one's waistcoat pocket. Things are not as simple as that. One encounters well-intentioned people who ask: How do I distinguish between dream and reality, between phantasy and reality? In the individual case one should not attempt to distinguish between them in accordance with a fixed rule. The whole soul must be gradually attuned so that it can pass judgement in the individual case, just as in the external world we seek to pass judgement irrespective of the individual case. We must develop a wider perspective in order to form a judgement about the particular case. The dream may be a close approximation to reality, but it is not possible in the individual case to state categorically: this is the right and proper way to distinguish a mere dream from reality. Indeed what I am saying at the moment may not apply in specific cases, because other points of view must be taken into consideration. It is important to develop in ourselves the power to discriminate in spiritual matters.

Let us take the familiar case of a person who is dreaming or who imagines he is dreaming. Now it is not easy to distinguish between dream and reality. People who study dreams today follow in the footsteps of Herr Verworn. He says that one can undertake an interesting experiment. He quotes the following example. Someone taps with a pin on the window of a house where the occupant is asleep. He is dreaming at the time, wakes up and says he had heard rifle-fire. The dream, according to Verworn, exaggerates. The tappings of the pin on the window-pane have become rifle-shots. Verworn explains this in the following way: we assume that in waking consciousness the brain is fully active. In dream consciousness the brain activity is diminished; only the peripheral consciousness is active. Normally the brain plays no part; its activity is diminished. That is why the dream is so bizarre and why, therefore, the tappings of the pin turn into rifle-fire. Now the public is highly credulous. They are first told in the relevant passage in Verworn's book that the dream exaggerates and then, later on, they are told (not precisely in the words I have used) that the brain is less active and therefore the dream appears bizarre. The reader has meanwhile already forgotten what was told in the first place. He is unable to relate the two statements and simply says: the State has appointed an expert in these matters and so we must accept his word. Now, as you know, belief in authority is taboo today. He who does not hold these views about the dream may none the less feel that the following way of thinking might well be the right approach. Let us assume you are dreaming of a friend who is dead. You dream, or believe you are dreaming that you are sharing some situation in common with him—and then you wake up. Your first thought on awakening is of course: but he died some time ago! But in the dream it never occurred to you that he was dead. Now you can find many ingenious explanations of this dream if you refer to Verworn's book, The Mechanism of the Spirit. But if this is a dream, and a dream is only a memory of everyday life, you will have difficulty in understanding why the foremost thought in your mind, namely the death of your friend, plays no part in the dream when you have just experienced a situation which you know for certain you could not have shared with him when alive. You are then justified in saying: I have now experienced with X something I could not have experienced in life, something that I have not only not experienced, but which would have been impossible in our normal relationship. Assuming that the soul of X, the real soul, which has passed through the gates of death is behind this dream-picture, is it not self-evident that you do not share his death experience? There is no reason why X's soul should appear to be dead since it still lives on. If you take these two factors into consideration—perhaps in conjunction with other factors—you will conclude: my dream-picture veils a real meeting with the soul of X. The thought of death never occurs to me because the dream is not a memory of everyday life: in the dream I receive an authentic visitation from the deceased (i.e. X). I now experience the visitation in the form of a dream-picture, a situation which could not have arisen under the normal circumstances of everyday life. Furthermore the thought of death never occurs to me because the soul of the deceased persists. And then you have every reason for saying: when I experience this apparent dream I inhabit a realm where physical memory does not operate—and what I am about to say is most important—for it is characteristic of our physical life that our physical memory remains unimpaired. This memory does not exist to the same extent, nor is it of the same nature in the world of spirit which we enter at death. The memory which we need for the world of the spirit we must first develop in ourselves. The physical memory is tied to the physical body. Therefore anyone who is familiar with the super-sensible realm knows that the physical memory cannot enter there. It is not surprising that we have no memory of the deceased; but we are aware that we are in communion with the living soul of X.

Those who are acquainted with this fact maintain that what we call memory in the physical life is something totally different in the spiritual life. Anyone who has succumbed to the impact of Dante's great work, the “Divine Comedy” will never doubt, if he has spiritual discernment, that Dante experienced spiritual visions, that he had insight into the world of the spirit. He who comprehends the language of those who were familiar with the world of the spirit will find convincing proof of this in Dante's introduction to the “Divine Comedy”. Dante was well versed in spiritual knowledge; he was no dilettante in matters of the spirit; he was, so to speak, an expert in this field. He was aware that normal memory does not operate in the realm where we are in communion with the dead. He often speaks of the dead, of how the dead dwell in the “Light”. In the “Divine Comedy” you will find these beautiful lines on the theme of memory:

“O Light supreme, by mortal thought unscanned,
Grant that Thy former aspect may return,
Once more a little of Thyself relend.

Make strong my tongue that in its words may burn
One single spark of all Thy glory's light
For future generations to discern.

For if my memory but glimpse the sight
Whereof these lines would now a little say,
Men may the better estimate Thy might.”

(Paradiso. Canto XXXIII) [original note 2]

Thus Dante was aware that it is impossible with normal memory to grasp that which could originate in the spiritual world. There are many today who ask: why should we aspire to the spiritual world when we have enough to contend with in the physical world; the ordinary man seeks a practical answer to the problems of this life!—But have these people any reason to believe that those who were initiated into the Mysteries in ancient times were any less concerned with the physical world? The initiates knew that the spiritual world permeates the physical world, that the dead are unquestionably active amongst us even though people deny it. And they knew that this denial merely creates confusion. He who denies that those who have passed through the gates of death exercise an influence on this world resembles the man who says: “Nonsense! I don't believe a word you say”—and then proceeds to behave as if he did believe it. It is not so easy, of course, to give direct proof of the havoc that is wrought when the influx of the spiritual world into the physical world is not taken into account, when people act on the assumption that this interaction can be ignored. Our epoch shows little inclination to bridge the gap that separates us from the kingdom where the dead and the higher Beings dwell. In many respects our present epoch harbours a veritable antipathy towards the world of the spirit. And it is the duty of the spiritual scientist who is really honest and sincere to be aware of the forces that are hostile to the development of Anthroposophy. For there are deep underlying reasons for this hostility and they stem from the same sources which are responsible for all the forces which are today in active opposition to the true progress of mankind.

---

Original Notes:

Note 1. In the German text there is a play upon the word. If pronounced with an open “0” and a rolled “R” it gives the word verworren, i.e. muddle-headed or confused.

Note 2. Translation by Dorothy L. Sayers and Barbara Reynolds, Penguin Classics, 1962.

---

NOTES BY TRANSLATOR

Note 1. Otto Ludwig (1813–65). Best known for his realist novels Der Erbförster and Zwischen Himmel and Erde, genre painting with careful observation of detail. He coined the term “poetischer Realismus”. His “Shakespeare Studien” showed preoccupation with dramatic theory. During his process of poetic creation he experienced a spectrum of colours and forms, known as “synaesthesia”.

Note 2. “Synaesthesia” had first been foreshadowed by E. P. A. Hoffman in Kreisleriana. The hearing of a word or sound evokes a sensation of colour varying in accordance with the quality of the sound (cf. Baudelaire's sonnet “Correspondances”—“les parfums, les couleurs et les sons se repondent” and Rimbaud's sonnet “Voyelles” in which a definite colour-value is ascribed to each of the five vowels). F. W. H. Myers described synaesthesia as follows: “When the hearing of an external sound carries with it, by some arbitrary association of ideas, the seeing of some form or colour.”

Note 3. Freytag (1816–95). Author of realistic novels which extolled the virtues of the German middle class—Soll and Haben, Die Ahnen.

Note 4. Swedenborg (1688–1772), engineer, scientist, philosopher and theologian. In his Arcana Caelestia he wrote: “... it has been granted me now for some years to be constantly and continuously in the company of spirits and angels, hearing them speak and speaking with them in turn. It has been given to me to hear and see the wonderful things which are in the other life ... I have been instructed there in regard to different kinds of spirits; the state of souls after death ... and especially concerning the doctrine of faith which is acknowledged in the universal Heaven.”

Note 5. Fustel de Coulanges (1830–89). Originator of the scientific approach to history. His Cité antique showed that ancient institutions derived from religious beliefs common to primitive peoples. It was a study of the part played by religion in the political and social evolution of Greece and Rome.

As you may have realized, a basic feature of the various considerations in which we have been engaged in recent weeks is the effort to gather material that will help us understand the difficult times we live in. Such understanding can only come about through a completely new way of looking at things. It cannot be sufficiently emphasized that a healthy development of mankind's future depends upon a new understanding taking hold in a sufficiently large number of human beings.

I should like these discussions to be as concrete as possible, in the sense in which the word, the concept “concrete,” has been used in the lectures of past weeks. Great impulses at work in mankind's evolution at any given time take effect through this or that personality. Thus it becomes evident in certain human beings just how strong such impulses are at a particular time. Or, one could also say that it becomes evident to what extent there is the opportunity for certain impulses to be effective.

In order to describe certain characteristic aspects of our time I have here and elsewhere drawn attention to a man who died recently. Today I would like once more to speak about the philosopher Franz Brentano who died a short time ago in Zürich.¹ He was certainly not a philosopher in a narrow or pedantic sense. Those who knew him, even if only through his work, saw him as representing modern man, struggling with the riddle of the universe. Nor was Brentano a one-sided philosopher; what concerned him were the wider aspects of essential human issues. It could be said that there is hardly a problem, no matter how enigmatic, to which he did not try to find a solution. What interested him was the whole range of man's world views. He was reticent about his work and very little has been published. His literary remains are bound to be considerable and will in due course reveal the results of his inner struggles, though perhaps for someone who understands not only what Franz Brentano expressed in words but also the issues that caused him such inner battles, nothing actually new will emerge.

I would like to bring before you what in our problematic times a great personality like Franz Brentano found particularly problematic. He was not the kind of philosopher one usually meets nowadays; unlike modern philosophers he was first and foremost a thinker, a thinker who did not allow his thinking to wander at random. He sought to establish it on the firm foundation of the evolution of thought itself. This led to his first publication, a book dealing with Aristotle's psychology, the so-called “nus poetikos.”² This book by Brentano, which is long out of print, is a magnificent achievement in detailed inquiry. It reveals him as a man capable of real thinking; that is, he has the ability to formulate and elaborate concepts that have content. We find Franz Brentano, more especially in the second half of his book about Aristotle's psychology, engaged in a process of thinking of a subtlety not encountered nowadays, and indeed seldom at the time the book was written. What is especially significant is the fact that Franz Brentano's ideas still had the strength to capture and leave their mark in human souls. When people nowadays discuss things connected with the inner life, they generally express themselves in empty words, devoid of any real content. The words are used because historically they have become part of the language, and this gives the illusion that they contain thought, but thinking is not in fact involved.

Considering that everywhere in Aristotle one finds a distinct flaring up of the ancient knowledge so often described by us as having its origin in atavistic clairvoyance, it is rather odd that people who profess to read Aristotle today should ignore spiritual science so completely. When we speak today about ether body, sentient body, sentient soul, intellectual soul, consciousness soul, these terms are coined to express the life of soul and spirit in its reality, of which man must again become conscious.

Many of the expressions used by Aristotle are no longer understood. However, they are reminders that there was a time when the individual members of man's soul being were known; not until Aristotle did they become abstractions. Franz Brentano made great efforts to understand these members of man's soul precisely through that thinker of antiquity, Aristotle. It must be said, however, that it was just through Aristotle that their meaning began to fade from mankind's historical evolution. Aristotle distinguishes in man the vegetative soul, by which he means approximately what we call ether body, then the aesthetikon or sensitive soul, which we call the sentient or astral body. Next, he speaks of orektikon which corresponds to the sentient soul, then comes kinetikon corresponding to the intellectual soul, and he uses the term dianoetikon for the consciousness soul. Aristotle was fully aware of the meaning of these concepts, but he lacked direct perception of the reality. This caused a certain unclarity and abstraction in his works, and that applies also to the book I mentioned by Franz Brentano. Nevertheless, real thinking holds sway in Brentano's book. And when someone devotes himself to the power of thinking the way he did, it is no longer possible to entertain the foolish notion that man's soul and spirit are mere by-products arising from the physical-bodily nature. The concepts formulated by Brentano on the basis of Aristotle's work were too substantial, so to speak, to allow him to succumb to the mischief of modern materialism.

Franz Brentano's main aim was to attain insight into the general working of the human soul; he wanted to carry out psychological research. But he was also concerned with an all-encompassing view of the world based on psychology. I have already drawn your attention to the fact that Franz Brentano himself estimated that his work on psychology would fill five volumes, but only the first volume was published. It is fully understandable to someone who knew him well why no subsequent volumes appeared. The deeper reason lies in the fact that Brentano would not—indeed according to his whole disposition, he could not—turn to spiritual science. Yet in order to find answers to the questions facing him after the completion of the first volume of his Psychology he needed spiritual knowledge. But spiritual science he could not accept and, as he was above all an honest man, he abandoned writing the subsequent volumes. The venture came to a full stop and thus remains a fragment.

I would like to draw attention to two aspects of the problem in Brentano's mind. It is a problem which today every thinking person must consciously strive to solve. In fact, the whole of mankind, insofar as people do not live in animal-like obtuseness, is striving, albeit unconsciously, to solve this problem. People in general are either laboring in one direction or another for a plausible solution, or else suffering psychologically because of their inability to get anywhere near the root of the problem. Franz Brentano investigated and pondered deeply the human soul. However, when this is done along the lines of modern science one arrives at the point that leads from the human soul to the spirit. And there one may remain at the obvious, and recognize the human soul's activity to be threefold in that it thinks; i.e., forms mental pictures, it feels and it wills. Thinking, feeling and willing are indeed the three members of the human soul. However, no satisfactory insight into them is possible unless through spiritual knowledge a path is found to the spiritual reality with which the human soul is connected. If one does not find that path—and Franz Brentano could not find it—then one feels oneself with one's thinking, feeling and willing completely isolated within the soul. Thinking at best provides images of the external, spatial, purely material reality. Feeling at best takes pleasure or displeasure in what occurs in the spatial physical reality. Through the will, man's physical nature may appease its cravings or aversions. Without spiritual insight man does not experience through his thinking, feeling and willing any relationship with a reality in which he feels secure, to which he feels he belongs. That was why Brentano said: To differentiate thinking, feeling and willing in the human soul does not help one to understand it, as in doing so one remains within the soul itself. He therefore divided the soul in another way, and how he did it is characteristic. He still sees the soul as threefold but not according to forming mental pictures of thinking, feeling and willing. He differentiates instead between forming mental pictures, judging or assessing, and the inner world of fluctuating moods and feelings. Thus, according to Brentano, the life of the soul is divided into forming mental pictures, judgments, and fluctuating moods and feelings.

Mental pictures do not, to begin with, lead us out beyond the soul. When we form mental pictures of something, the images remain within the soul. We believe that they refer to something real, but that is by no means established. As long as we do not go beyond the mental picture, we have to concede that something merely imagined is also a mental picture. Thus, a mental picture as such may refer to something real or to something merely imagined. Even when we relate mental pictures to one another, we still have no guarantee of reality. A tree is a mental picture; green is a mental picture. To say, The tree is green, is to combine two mental pictures, but that in itself is no guarantee of dealing with reality, for my mental picture “green tree” could be a product of my fantasy.

Nevertheless, Brentano says: When I judge or make assessments I stand within reality, and I am already making a judgment, even if a veiled one, when I combine mental pictures as I do when I say, The tree is green. In so doing I indicate not only that I combine the two concepts “tree” and “green,” but that a green tree exists. Thus I am not remaining within the mental pictures, I go across to existence. There is a difference, says Brentano, between being aware of a green tree and being conscious that “this tree is green.” The former is a mere formulation of mental pictures, the latter has a basis within the soul consisting of acceptance or rejection. In the activity of merely forming mental pictures one remains within the soul, whereas passing judgment is an activity of soul which relates one to the environment in that one either accepts or rejects it. In saying, a green tree exists, I acknowledge not merely that I am forming mental pictures, but that the tree exists quite apart from my mental picture. In saying, centaurs do not exist, I also pass judgment by rejecting as unreal the mental picture of half-horse, half-man. Thus according to Brentano, passing judgment is the second activity of the human soul.

Brentano saw the third element within the human soul as that of fluctuating moods and feelings. Just as he regards judgment of reality to consist of acknowledgments or rejections, so he sees moods and feelings as fluctuating between love and hate, likes and dislikes. Man is either attracted or repelled by things. Brentano does not regard the element of will to be a separate function of the soul. He sees it as part of the realm of moods and feelings. The fact that he regards the will in this way is very characteristic of Brentano and points to a deeply rooted aspect of his makeup. It would lead too far to go into that now; all that concerns us at the moment is that Brentano did not differentiate will impulses from mere feelings of like or dislike. He saw all these elements as weaving into one another. When examining a will impulse to action, Brentano would be concerned only with one's love for it. Again, if the will impulse was against an action, he would examine one's dislike for it. Thus for him the life of soul consists of love and hate, acknowledgment and rejection, and forming mental pictures.

Starting from these premises Brentano did his utmost to find solutions to the two greatest riddles of the human soul, the riddle of truth, and the riddle of good. What is true (or real)? What is good? If one is seeking to justify the judgment of thinking about reality or unreality, the question arises, Why do we acknowledge certain things and reject others? Those we acknowledge we regard as truth; those we reject we regard as untruth. And that brings us straight to the heart of the problem: What is truth? The heart of the other problem concerning good and evil, good and bad, we encounter when we turn to the realm of fluctuating moods and feelings. According to Brentano, love is what prompts us to acknowledge an action as good, while hate is the rejection of an action as evil. Thus ethics, morality, and what we understand by rights, all these things are a province of the realm of moods and feelings. The question of good and evil was very much in Brentano's mind as he pondered the nature of man's life of feelings fluctuating between love and hate.

It is indeed extremely interesting to follow the struggle of a man like Brentano, a struggle lasting for decades, to find answers to questions such as What right has man to assess things, judging them true or false, acknowledge or reject them? Even if you examine all Brentano's published writings—and I am convinced that his as yet unpublished work will give the same result—nowhere will you find him giving any other answer to the question What is true? In other words: What justifies man to judge things except what he calls the “evidence,” the “visible proof”? He naturally means an inner visible proof. Thus Brentano's answer amounts to this: I attain truth if I am not inwardly blind, but able to bring my experiences before my inner eye in such a way that I can survey them clearly, and accept them, or by closer scrutiny perhaps reject them. Franz Brentano did not get beyond this view. It is significant indeed that a man who was an eminent thinker—which cannot be said about many—struggled for decades to answer the question What gives me the right to acknowledge or reject something, to regard it as true or false? All he reached was what he termed the evidence, the inner visible proof.

Brentano lectured for many years in Vienna on what in Austrian universities was known as practical philosophy, which really means ethics or moral philosophy. Just as Brentano was obliged to give these lectures, so the law students were obliged to attend them, as they were prescribed, compulsory courses. However, during his courses Brentano did not so much lecture on “practical philosophy,” as he did on the question How does one come to accept something as good or put something down as bad? Due to his original views, Franz Brentano did not by any means have an easy task. As you know, the problem of good is always being debated in philosophy. Attempts are made to answer the question: Have we any right to regard one thing as good and another as bad? Or the question may be formulated differently: Where does the good originate, where is its source, and what is the source of the bad or evil? This question is approached in all manner of ways. But all around Brentano, at the time when he attempted to discover the criterion of good, a peculiar moral philosophy was gaining ground, that of Herbart, one of the successors of Kant's.³ Herbart's view of ethics, which others have advocated too but none more emphatically than he himself, was the view that moral behavior, in the last resort, depends upon the fact that certain relationships in life please us, whereas others displease us. Those that please us are good, those that displease us are bad. Man as it were is supposed to have an inborn natural ability to take pleasure in the good and displeasure in the bad. Herbart says, for example: Inner freedom is something which always, in every instance, pleases us. And what is inner freedom? Well, he says, man is inwardly free when his thinking and actions are in harmony. This would mean, crudely put, that if A thinks B an awful fellow but instead of saying so flatters him, then that is not an expression of inner freedom. Thinking and action are not in the harmony on which the ethical view of inner freedom is based. Another view on ethics is based on perfection. We are displeased when we do something we could have done better, whereas we are pleased when we have done something so well that the result is better, more perfect than it would have been through any other action. Herbart differentiates five such ethical concepts. However, all that interests us at the moment is that he based morality on the soul's immediate pleasure or displeasure.

Yet another principle of ethics is Kant's so-called categorical imperative, according to which an action is good if it is based on principles that could be the basis for a law applying to all.⁴ Nothing could be more contrary to morality! Even the example Kant himself puts forward clearly shows his categorical imperative to be void of moral value. He says: Suppose you were given something for safekeeping, but instead you appropriated it. Such an action, says Kant, cannot be a basic principle for all to follow, for if everybody simply took possession of things entrusted to them, an orderly human society would be an impossibility. It is not difficult to see that in such a case, whether the action is good or bad cannot be judged on whether things entrusted to one are returned or not. Quite different issues come into question.

All the modern views on ethics are contrary to that of Franz Brentano. He sought deeper reasons. Pleasure and displeasure, he said, merely confirm that an ethical judgment has been made. As far as the beautiful is concerned, we are justified in saying that beauty is a source of pleasure, ugliness of displeasure. However, we should be aware that what determines us when it is a question of ethics, of morality, is a much deeper impulse than the one that influences us in assessing the beautiful. That was Brentano's view of ethics, and each year he sought to reaffirm it to the law students. He also spoke of his principle of ethics in his beautiful public lecture entitled “Natural Sanction of Law and Morality.”⁵ The circumstances that led Franz Brentano to give this lecture are interesting. The famous legislator Ihering had spoken at a meeting about legal concepts being fluid, by which he meant that concepts of law and rights cannot be understood in an absolute sense because their meaning continually changes in the course of time.⁶ They can be understood only if viewed historically. In other words, if we look back to the time when cannibalism was customary, we have no right to say that one ought not to eat people. We have no right to say that our concepts of morals should have prevailed, for our concepts would at that time have been wrong. Cannibalism was right then; it is only in the course of time that our view of it has changed. Our sympathy must therefore lie with the cannibals, not with those who refrained from the practice! That is, of course, an extreme example, but it does illustrate the essence of Ihering's view. The important point to him was that concepts of law and morality have changed in the course of human evolution which proves that they are in a state of flux.

This view Brentano could not possibly accept. He wanted to discover a definite, absolute source of morality. In regard to truth he had produced “the evidence” that what lights up in the soul as immediate recognition is true, i.e., what is correctly judged is true. To the other question, what is good, Brentano, again after decades of struggle, found an equally abstract answer. He said: Good and bad have their source in human feelings fluctuating between love and hate. What man genuinely loves is good; i.e., what is worthy of love is good. He attempted to show instances of how human beings can love rightly. Just as man in regard to truth should judge rightly, so in regard to the good he should love rightly.

I shall not go into details; I mainly want to emphasize that Brentano, after decades of struggle, had reached an abstraction, the simple formula that good is that which is worthy of love. Instead, it has to be said that Brentano's greatness does not lie in the results he achieved. You will no doubt agree that it is a somewhat meager conclusion to say, Truth is what follows from the evidence of correct judgment; the good is what is rightly loved. These are indeed meager results, but what is outstanding, what is characteristic of Brentano, is the energy, the earnestness of his striving. In no other philosopher will you find such Aristotelean sagacity and at the same time such deep inner involvement with the argument. The meager results gain their value when one follows the struggle it cost to reach them. It is precisely his inner struggles that make Franz Brentano such an outstanding example of spiritual striving. One could mention many people, including philosophers, who have in our time tried to find answers to the questions, What is truth? What is the good? But you will find their answers, especially those given by the more popular philosophers, far more superficial than those given by Brentano. That does not alter the fact that Brentano's answers must naturally seem meager fare to those who have for years been occupied with spiritual science. However, Brentano had also to suffer the destiny of modern striving man, lack of understanding; his struggles were little understood.

A closer look at Brentano's intensive search for answers to the questions, What is true? What is good? reveals a clarity and comprehensiveness in outlook seldom found in those who refuse spiritual science. What makes him exceptional is that without spiritual science no one has come as far as he did. Nowhere will you find within the whole range of modern philosophical striving any real answers concerning what truth is or what the good is. What you will find is confusion aplenty, albeit at times interesting confusion, for example in Windelband.⁷ Professor Windelband, who taught for years at Heidelberg and Freiburg, could discover nothing in the human soul to cause man to accept certain things as true and reject others as false. So he based truth on assent, that is, to some extent on love. If according to our judgment of something we can love it, then it is true; conversely, if we must hate it, then it is untrue. Truth and untruth contain hidden love and hate. Herbartians, too, judge things to be morally good or morally bad according to whether they please or displease, a judgment which Brentano considered to be applicable only to what is beautiful or ugly.

Thus there is plenty of confusion, and not the slightest possibility of reaching insight into the soul's essential nature. All that is left is despair, which is so often all there is left after one has studied the works of modern philosophers. Naturally they do pose questions and often believe to have come up with answers. Unfortunately that is just when things go wrong; one soon sees that the answers, whether positive or negative, are no answers at all.

What is so interesting about Brentano is that, if only he had continued a little further beyond the point he had reached, he would have entered a region where the solutions are to be found. Whoever cannot get beyond the view ordinarily held of man will not be able to answer the questions What is true? What is false? It is simply not possible, on the one hand to regard man's being as it is regarded today, and on the other to answer such questions as What is the meaning of truth in relation to man? Nor is it possible to answer the question What is the good? You will soon see why this is so. But first I must draw your attention to something in regard to which mistaken views are held both ways, that is the question concerning the beautiful.

According to Herbart and his followers, good is merely a subdivision of beauty, more particularly beauty attributed to human action. Any questions concerning what is beautiful immediately reveal it to be a very subjective issue. Nothing is more disputed than beauty; what one person finds beautiful another does not. In fact, the most curious views are voiced in quarrels over the beautiful and the ugly, over what is artistically justified and what is not. In the last resort the whole argument as to whether something is beautiful or ugly, artistic or not, rests on man's individual nature. No general law concerning beauty will ever be discovered, nor should it be; nothing would be more meaningless. One may not like a certain work of art, but there is always the possibility of entering into what the artist had in mind and thus coming to see aspects not recognized before. In this way, one may come to realize that it was lack of understanding which prevented one from recognizing its beauty. Such aesthetic judgment, such aesthetic acceptance or rejection, is really something which, though subjective, is justified.

To confirm in detail what I have just said would take too long. However, you all know that the saying “taste cannot be disputed” has a certain justification. Taste for certain things one either has or has not; either the taste has been acquired already or not yet. We may ask, why? The answer is that every time we apply an aesthetic evaluation to something we have a twofold perception. That is an important fact discovered through spiritual investigation. Whenever you are inclined to apply the criterion of beauty to something, your perception of the object is twofold. Such an object is perceived in the first place because of its influence on the physical and ether bodies. This is a current that streams, so to speak, from the beautiful object to the onlooker, affecting his physical and ether bodies regardless whether a painting, a sculpture or anything else is observed. What exists out there in the external world is experienced in the physical and ether bodies, but apart from that it is experienced also in the I and astral body. However, the latter experience does not coincide with the former; you have in fact two perceptions. An impression is made on the one hand on the physical and etheric bodies and on the other an impression is also made on the I and astral body. You therefore have a twofold perception.

Whether a person regards an object as beautiful or ugly will depend upon his ability to bring the two impressions into accord or discord. If the two experiences cannot be made to harmonize, it means that the work of art in question is not understood; in consequence, it is regarded as not beautiful. For beauty to be experienced the I and astral body on the one hand, and the physical and ether body on the other must be able to vibrate in unison, must be in agreement. An inner process must take place for beauty to be experienced; if it does not, the possibility for beauty to be experienced is not present. Just think of all the possibilities that exist, in the experience of beauty, for agreement or disagreement. So you see that to experience beauty is a very inward and subjective process.

On the other hand what is truth? Truth is also something that meets us face to face. Truth, to begin with, makes an impression on the physical and ether bodies and you, on your part, must perceive that effect on those bodies. Please note the difference: Faced with an object of beauty your perception is twofold. Beauty affects your physical and ether bodies and also your I and astral body; you must inwardly bring about harmony between the two impressions. Concerning truth the whole effect is on the physical and ether bodies and you must perceive that effect inwardly. In the case of beauty, the effect it has on the physical and ether bodies remains unconscious; you do not perceive it. On the other hand, in the case of truth, you do not bring the effect it has on the I and astral body down into consciousness; it vibrates unconsciously. What must happen in this case is that you devote yourself to the impression made on the physical and ether bodies, and find its reflection in the I and astral body. Thus, in the case of truth or reality you have the same content in the I and astral body as in the physical and ether bodies, whereas in the case of beauty you have two different contents.

Thus the question of truth is connected with man's being insofar as it consists of the lowest members, the physical and ether bodies. Through the physical body we participate only in the external material world, the world of mere appearance. Through the ether body we participate solely in what results from its harmony with the whole cosmos. Truth, reality, is anchored in the ether body, and someone who does not recognize the existence of the ether body cannot answer the question Where is truth established? All he can answer is the question Where is that established which the senses reflect of the external world; where is the world of appearance? What the senses reflect in the physical body only becomes full reality, only becomes truth, when assimilated by the ether body. Thus the question concerning truth can only be answered by someone who recognizes the total effect of external objects on man's physical and ether bodies.

If Franz Brentano wanted to answer the question What is truth? he would have been obliged to investigate the way man's being is related to the whole world through his ether body. That he could not do as he did not acknowledge its existence. All he could find was the meager answer he termed “the evidence.” To explain truth is to explain the human ether body's relation to the cosmos. We are connected with the cosmos when we express truth. That is why we must continue to experience the ether body for several days after death. If we did not we would lose the sense for the truth, for the reality of the time between death and new birth. We live on earth in order to foster our union with truth, with reality. We take our experience of truth with us, as it were, in that we live for several days after death with the great tableau of the ether body. One can arrive at an answer to the question What is truth? only by investigating the human ether body.

The other question which Franz Brentano wanted to answer was What is the good? Just as the external physical object can become truth or reality for man only if it acts on his physical and etheric bodies, so must what becomes an impulse towards good or evil influence man's I and astral body. In the I and astral body it does not as yet become formulated into concept, into mental picture; for that to happen it must be reflected in the physical and etheric bodies. We have mental pictures of good and evil only when what is formless in the I and astral body is mirrored in the physical and ether bodies. However, what expresses itself externally as good or evil stems from what occurs in the I and astral body. Someone who does not recognize the I and astral body can know nothing about where in man the impulse to good or evil is active. All he can say is that good is what is rightly loved; but love occurs in the astral body. Only by investigating what actually happens in the astral body and I is it possible to attain concrete insight into good and evil. At the present stage of evolution the I only brings to expression what lives in the astral body as instincts and emotions. As you know, the human “I” is as yet not very far in its development. The astral body is further, but man is more conscious of what occurs in his I than he is of his astral body. As a consequence man is not very conscious of moral impulses, or, put differently, he does not benefit from them unless the astral impulses enter his consciousness. As far as the man of today is concerned, the original, primordial moral impetus is situated in his astral body, just as the forces of truth are situated in his ether body. Through his astral body man is connected with the spiritual world, and in that world are the impulses of good. In the spiritual world also holds sway what for man is good and evil; but we only know its reflection in the ether and physical bodies.

So you see it is only possible to attain concepts of truth, goodness and beauty when account is taken of all the members of man's being. To attain a concept of truth the ether body must be understood. Unless one knows that in the experience of beauty the ether and astral bodies distinctively vibrate in unison—the I and physical body do too, but to a lesser degree—it cannot be understood. A proper concept of the good cannot be attained without the knowledge that it basically represents active forces in the astral body.

Thus Franz Brentano actually came as far as the portal leading to the knowledge he sought. His answers appear so meager because they can be properly understood only if they are related to insight of a higher order. When he says of truth that it must light up and become directly visible to the eye of the soul, he should have been able to say more; namely, that to perceive truth rightly one must succeed in taking hold of it independently of the physical body. The ether body must be loosened from the physical body. This is because the first clairvoyant experience is that of pure thinking. You will know that I have always upheld the view, which indeed every true scientist of the spirit must uphold, that he who grasps a pure-thought is already clairvoyant. However, man's ordinary thinking is not a pure thinking, it is filled either with mental pictures or with fantasy. Only in the ether body can a pure thought be grasped, consequently whoever does so is clairvoyant. And to understand goodness one must be aware that it is part and parcel of what lives in the human astral body and in the I.

Especially when he spoke about the origin of good, Franz Brentano had an ingenious way of pointing to significant things; for example, that Aristotle had basically said that one can lecture on goodness only to those who are already habitually good. If this were true, it would be dreadful, for whoever is already in the habit of being good does not need lectures on it. There is no need to instruct him in what he already possesses. Moreover, if those words of Aristotle's were true, it follows that the converse is true also, that those not habitually good could not be helped by hearing about it. All talk about goodness would be meaningless; attempts to establish ethics would be futile. This is also a problem to which no satisfactory solution can be found unless sought in the light of spiritual science.

In general it cannot be said that our actions spring from pure concepts and ideas. But, as those who have studied The Philosophy of Freedom will realize, only an action that springs from a pure concept, a pure idea, can be said to be a free action, a truly independent action.⁸ Our actions are usually based on instincts, passions or emotions, only seldom if ever on pure concepts. More is said about these matters in the booklet Education of the Child in the Light of Spiritual Science.⁹ I have also elaborated on it in other lectures.

In the first two seven-year periods of life—the first lasting up to the change of teeth, to about the seventh year, the second lasting till puberty—a human being's actions are predominantly influenced by instincts, emotions and the like. Not till the onset of puberty does he become capable of absorbing thoughts concerning good and evil. So we have to admit that Aristotle was right up to a point. He was right in the sense that the instincts towards good and evil that are in us already during the first two periods of life, up to the age of 14, tend to dominate us throughout life. We may modify them, suppress them, but they are still there for the whole of our life. The question is, Does it help that with puberty we begin to understand moral principles, and become able to rationalize our instincts? It helps in a twofold manner, and if you have a feeling and sense for these things, you will soon see how essential it is that this whole issue is understood in our time.

Consider the following example: Let us say a human being has inherited good tendencies, and up to the age of puberty he develops them into excellent and noble inclinations. He becomes what is called a good person. At the moment I do not want to go into why he becomes a good person, but to examine more external aspects. His parents we must visualize as good, kind people and so, too, his grandparents. All this has the effect that he develops tendencies that are noble and kind, and he instinctively does what is right and good. But let us now assume that he shows no sign, after having reached puberty, of wanting to rationalize his natural good instincts; he has no inclination to think about them. The reason for this we shall leave aside for the moment. So up to the age of 14 he develops good instincts but later shows no inclination to rationalize them. He has a propensity for doing good and hardly any for doing bad. If his attention is drawn to the fact that certain actions can be either good or bad he will say, It does not concern me. He is not interested in any discussions about it; he does not want to lift the issue into the sphere of the intellect. As a grown man he has children—whether the person is man or woman makes of course no difference—and the children will not inherit his good instincts if he has not thought about them. The children will soon show uncertainty in regard to their instinctive life. That is what is so significant.

Thus, such a person may get on well enough with his own instincts, but if he has never consciously concerned himself about good and evil, he will not pass on effective instincts to his children. Furthermore, already in his next life he will not bring with him any decisive instincts concerning good and evil. It is really like a plant which may be an attractive and excellent herb, but if it is prevented from flowering no further plants can arise from it. As single plant it may be useful, but if the future is to benefit from further plants, it must reach the stages of flower and fruit. Similarly a human being's instincts may, unaltered, serve him well enough in his own life, but if he leaves them at the level of mere instincts, he sins against posterity in the physical as well as spiritual sense. You will realize that these are matters of extreme importance. And, as with the other issues, only spiritual science can enlighten us about them.

In certain quarters it may well be maintained that goodness is due solely to instincts; indeed, that can even be proved. But anyone who wants to do away with the necessity for thoughtful understanding of moral issues on this basis is comparable to a farmer who says: I shall certainly cultivate my fields, but I see no point in retaining grains for next year's sowing—why not let the whole harvest be used as foodstuff? No farmer speaks like that because in this realm the link between past and future is too obvious. Unfortunately, in regard to spiritual issues, in regard to man's own evolution, people do speak like that. In this area great misconceptions continuously arise because people are unwilling to consider an issue from many aspects. They arrive at a onesided view and disregard all others. One can naturally prove that good impulses are based on instinct. That is not disputed, but there are other aspects to the matter. Impulses for the good are instincts active in the I and astral body; as such they are forces acting across from the previous life. Consequently one cannot, without spiritual knowledge, come to any insight concerning the way human lives are linked together either now or in the course of man's evolution.

If we now pass from these more elementary aspects to some on a higher level, we may consider the following: On the average, people living today are in their second incarnation since the Christian chronology began. In their first life it was sufficient if they received the Christ impulse from their immediate environment in whatever way possible. In their present, or second incarnation that is no longer enough; that is why people are gradually losing the Christ impulse. Were people now living to return in their next incarnation without having received the Christ impulse anew they would have lost it altogether. That is why it is essential that the impulse of Christ find entry into human souls in the form presented by spiritual science. Spiritual science does not have to resort to historical evidence but is able to relate the Christ impulse directly to the kinds of issues we are continually discussing in our circles. This enables it to be connected with the human soul in ways that ensure it is carried over into future ages when the souls incarnate once more. We are now too far removed from the historical event to absorb the Christ impulse the way we did in our first incarnation after the Christ event. That is why we are going not only through an external crisis, but also an inner crisis in regard to the Christ impulse. Traditions no longer suffice. People are honest who say that there is no proof of historical Christ. But spiritual knowledge enables man to discover the Christ impulse once more as a living reality in human evolution. The course of external events shows the necessity for the Christ impulse to arise anew on the foundation of spiritual science.

We have been witnessing so very many ideals on which people have built their lives for centuries suffering shipwreck in the last three years. We all suffer, especially the more we are aware of all that has been endured these last three years. If the question is asked, What has suffered the greatest shipwreck? there is only one answer: Christianity. Strange as it may seem to many, the greatest loss has been to Christianity. Wherever you look you see a denial of Christianity. Most things that are done are a direct mockery of Christianity, though the courage to admit this fact is lacking. For example, a view widely expressed today is that each nation should manage its own affairs. This is advocated by most people, in fact by the largest and most valuable part of mankind. Can that really be said to be a Christian view? I shall say nothing about its justification or otherwise, but simply whether the idea is Christian or not. And is it Christian? Most emphatically it is not. A view based on Christianity would be that nations should come to agreement through human beings' understanding of one another. Nothing could be more unchristian than what is said about the alleged freedom, the alleged independence—which in any case is unrealizable—of individual nations. Christianity means to understand people all over the earth. It means understanding even human beings who are in realms other than the earth. Yet since the Mystery of Golgotha not even people who call themselves Christian have been able to agree with one another even superficially. And that is a dreadful blow, especially in regard to feeling for and understanding of Christianity. This lack has led to grotesque incidents like the one I mentioned, of someone speaking about German religion, German piety, which has as much sense as speaking about a German sun or a German moon.

These things are in reality connected with far-reaching misconceptions about social affairs. I have spoken about the fact that nowadays no proper concept of a state exists. When people who should know discuss what a state is or should be, they speak about it as if it were an organism in which the human beings are the cells. That such comparisons can be made shows how little real understanding there is. As I have often pointed out, what is lacking, what we need more than anything else, are concepts and views that are real and concrete, concepts that penetrate to the reality of things. The chaos all about us has been caused because we live in abstractions, in concepts and views that are alien to the reality. How can it be otherwise when we are so estranged from the spiritual aspect of reality that we deny it altogether? True concepts of reality will be attained only when the spirit in all its weaving life is acknowledged.

There was something tragic in Franz Brentano's destiny right up to his death—tragic, because he did have a feeling for the direction modern man's spiritual striving should take. Yet, had he been presented with spiritual science he would have rejected it, just as he rejected the works of Plotinus as utter folly, as quite unscientific.¹⁰ There are, of course, many in the same situation; their spirit's flight is inhibited through the fact that they live in physical bodies belonging to the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. This provokes the crisis we must overcome. Such things do, of course, have their positive side; to overcome something is to become stronger.

Not till the concrete concepts of spiritual science are understood and applied can things be done that are necessary for a complete revision of our understanding of law and morality, of social and political matters. It is precisely spirits like Brentano that bring home the fact that the whole question of jurisprudence hangs in the air. Without knowing the super-sensible aspect of man's being, such as the nature of the astral body, it is impossible to say what law is or what morality is. That applies also to religion and politics. If wrong, unrealistic ideas are applied to external, material reality, their flaws soon become apparent. No one would tolerate bridges that collapse because the engineer based his constructions on wrong concepts. In the sphere of morality, in social or political issues wrong concepts are not spotted so easily, and when they are discovered, people do not recognize the connection. We are suffering this moment from the aftereffect of wrong ideas, but do people see the connection? They are very far from doing so. And that is the most painful aspect of witnessing these difficult times. Every moment seems wasted unless devoted to the difficulties; at the same time one comes to realize how little people are inclined nowadays to enter into the reality of the situation. However, unless one concerns oneself with the things that really matter, no remedy will be found. It is essential to recognize that there is a connection between the events taking place now and the unreal concepts and views mankind has cultivated for so long. We are living in such chaotic times because for centuries the concepts of spiritual life that were at work in social affairs have been as unrealistic as those of an engineer who builds bridges that collapse. If only people would develop a feeling for how essential it is, when dealing with social or political issues, indeed with all aspects of cultural life, to find true concepts, reality-permeated concepts! If we simply continue with the same jurisprudence, the same social sciences, the same politics, and fill human souls with the same religious views as those customary before the year 1914, then nothing significant or valuable will be achieved. Unless the approach to all these things is completely changed, it will soon be apparent that no progress is being made. What is so necessary, what must come about is the will to learn afresh, to adjust one's ideas, but that is what there is so little inclination to do.

You must regard everything I have said about Franz Brentano as an expression of my genuine admiration for this exceptional personality. Such individuals demonstrate how hard one must struggle especially when it concerns an impulse to be carried over into mankind's future. Franz Brentano is an extremely interesting personality, but he did not achieve the kind of concepts, ideas, feelings or impulses that work across into future ages. Yet it is interesting that only a few weeks before his death he is said to have given assurances that he would succeed in proving that God exists. To do so was the goal of his lifelong scientific striving. Brentano would not have succeeded, for to prove the existence of God he would have needed spiritual science.

Before the Mystery of Golgotha, before mankind's age had receded to the age of 33, it was still possible to prove that God exists. Since then mankind's age has dropped to 32, then 31, later 30 and by now to 27. Man can no longer through his ordinary powers of thinking prove that God exists; such proof can be discovered only through spiritual knowledge. Saying that spiritual science is an absolute necessity cannot be compared to a movement advocating its policies. The necessity for spiritual science is an objective fact of human evolution.

Today I wanted to draw your attention once more to the absolute necessity for spiritual science and related philosophical questions. However, it will be fruitful only if you are prepared to enter into such questions. What mankind is strongly in need of at the present time is the ability to enter into exact, clear-cut concepts and ideas. If you want to pursue the science of the spirit, anthroposophy, theosophy—call it what you will—only with the unclear, confused concepts with which so much is pursued nowadays, then you may go a long way in satisfying egoistical longings, gratifying personal wishes. You will not, however, be striving in the way the present difficult times demand. What one should strive for, especially in regard to spiritual science, is to collaborate, particularly in the spiritual sense, to bring about what mankind most sorely needs. Whenever possible turn your thoughts, as strongly as you are able, to the question: What are human beings most in need of, what are the thoughts that ought to hold sway among men to bring about improvement and end the chaos? Do not say that others, better qualified, will do that. The best qualified are those who stand on the firm foundation of the science of the spirit. What must occupy us most of all is how conditions can be brought about so that human beings can live together in a civilized manner.

We shall discuss these things further next time.

• 1 . Franz Brentano, see note 2 to Lecture I.
• 2 . Franz Brentano, Die Psychologie des Aristoteles, in particular his ideas of “nus poetikos.” “The nus poetikos is the light that illuminates phantasms, and makes the spiritual within the empirical visible for our spiritual eyes,” from a supplement on the “Activity of the Aristotelian God”; Mainz, 1867, p. 172.
• 3 . Johann Friedrich Herbart, 1776–1841, German philosopher.
• 4 . Immanuel Kant, 1725–1804, Critique of Pure Reason, Critique of Practical Reason, and Critique of Judgment, available in various editions and translations in English.—from Critique of Practical Reason, Part 1, section 7, the Categorical Imperative: “Act so that the principles underlying your will at any time could also be a principle for a universal law.” Compare also his Foundation for a Metaphysics of Morals, second section.
• 5 . Franz Brentano, Vom Ursprung sittlicher Erkenntnis, a lecture held on January 23, 1889, at the Vienna Law Society; published in Leipzig, 1889.
• 6 . Rudolf von Ihering, 1818–1892, jurist. His views were expressed in a lecture “Über die Entstehung des Rechtsgefuhls,” given several years before Brentano's (see above note) at the Vienna Law Society.
• 7 . Wilhelm Windelband, 1848–1915, German philosopher.
• 8 . Rudolf Steiner, The Philosophy of Freedom (Anthroposophic Press, Spring Valley, NY, 1964).
• 9 . Rudolf Steiner, Education of the Child (Rudolf Steiner Press, London, 1965).
• 10. Plotinus, 204-270, neo-Platonic philosopher.

We have devoted the recent lectures to considering from a certain point of view the life which runs its course behind the ordinary life which in normal circumstances, or to ordinary science, is embraced by our physical consciousness. Fundamentally all our considerations are directed to that life, which transpires beneath the threshold of ordinary consciousness. And we seek to characterise it from the most varied sides, as must be done in Spiritual Science.

A certain security is connected with the external physical perceptible reality, in that one beholds it. But physically, even for those who do not undergo the necessary training whereby they can themselves rise into the spiritual worlds, yet through illuminating these worlds from different sides which harmonise, a certain wisdom is created, and this may create a feeling of security.

Especial attention is drawn to the fact that man is not only in the world which he beholds with ordinary consciousness. Beneath the threshold of ordinary consciousness a life takes place which, unless one goes through the Portal of Initiation, is not grasped by the consciousness. This remains unknown to ordinary human life. Much takes place in the world with reference to the whole entity that comprises a human being; that which man knows while living in the physical body is merely one part of what really occurs; and all the efforts made to get into touch with the spiritual world, consist in trying to see something of the life which transpires beneath the threshold of ordinary consciousness. By means of a widening of this consciousness we try to cross the threshold and perceive that in which we really live, but which is not perceptible to our ordinary consciousness. As I have said, a certain adjustable threshold exists between the ordinary consciousness and that of which—and this expression has a certain meaning for us—we are unconsciously conscious.

In the last lecture I gave a very pointed example. A man proposes early in the morning to accomplish something that night. He lives, as it were, in the thought, that he will carry out his plan during the evening. At mid-day something occurs which prevents him from fulfilling his intention. To the ordinary consciousness this occurrence would seem to be an accident. But if one looks deeper into human life, one discovers wisdom in the so-called accident, but a wisdom that lies beneath the threshold of consciousness. One cannot really perceive this wisdom with the ordinary consciousness, but one very frequently discovers in such cases that if hindrance had not occurred at mid-day the man would perhaps have been brought into some disastrous situation through undertaking the proposed project during the evening. As I said, he might perhaps have broken his leg. But when one knows the connection, one discovers that wisdom lies in the entire occurrence: that the soul herself sought the obstacle and put it in the way, but with intentions lying beneath the threshold of consciousness. Now that is something which is still close to the ordinary consciousness, but it points below to a region to which man belongs; to which he belongs with the concealed parts of his being, those parts which, after he lays aside the physical body, go through the gate of death. This region belongs to that ruling consciousness, of which we spoke in the public lecture, as the beholder of the actions of our will. This spectator is really always present. He guides and conducts us, but the ordinary consciousness knows nothing of him, A great deal goes on in the intervals between the events which we perceive. In all this, especially in what takes place between the events of life, and in what transpires beneath the threshold of consciousness, there is prepared, as the living being is prepared in the egg, that which we shall be after we have passed through the gate of death. And now something on which we dwelt in our last consideration, must be brought into connection with much that should be well known to us from earlier lectures.

I have often pointed out how important and essential memory is for man, in so far as he stands here in physical consciousness, and that this memory should not be severed. We must remember back to a certain point in our physical experience, or at least have the power of tracing the continuity of our life. If this connecting thread is sundered, if we cannot remember definite events, so that at least we have the consciousness that we were in existence when these events took place, then a serious psychic illness appears, to which I have referred in a recent lecture. This memory forms part of our experience here in physical consciousness. But it is also, in a certain sense, a veil; it hides from us those events to which I am now referring, which lie behind the ordinary consciousness, and especially behind that veil woven by our continuous memory. Just think: we are first infants; then we traverse a period of consciousness which we do not recollect. Next comes the time to which we can always remember back in later life. This begins a continuous series of memories. At a certain time, either in the second, third, fourth year of life, or even later with some people, we must recollect becoming aware of the individual self, the Ego. When we thus look back into ourselves, our soul gaze meets this memory, and in so far as we are physical men here, we really live inwardly in these memories. We could not speak of ourselves as ‘I,’ unless we did retain this memory. Anyone who observes himself, recognises this. When he looks into himself, he really looks into the region of his memory. He regards, as it were, the tableau of his memories. Even although all we have experienced may not arise in our memory, yet we know that memories might arise, as far back as that point already described. We must presuppose that we have been consciously present with our Ego in all these memories, and have been able to retain them. If that were not so, the continuity of our Ego would be disturbed, and a soul disease would appear. But behind what we notice in memory there lies that which is seen with spiritual eyes and heard with spiritual ears. So that what I have already explained in public lectures is absolutely correct. When we look into the spiritual world, we use the same force which we otherwise employ in memory. That does not mean that we necessarily lose our memory on acquiring spiritual sight, but it does mean as already characterised in a public lecture, that it is not always possible to remember what we perceive spiritually, we cannot always take it in, for it to live in the memory; for we must always behold it over and over again and always behold it afresh. I have often said, for example, that if one gives a lecture on what one really sees in the spiritual world, one cannot do this from memory in the same way as one can speak of ordinary things, for one must bring it ever again out of the spiritual world. That which lives in the thought must be produced anew. Both the soul and the spirit must be active in such a case and must bring forth the things afresh. When the spiritual seer really looks into the spiritual world that which is usually the veil of memory becomes transparent, and he uses it to look through. He looks, as it were, through the force which otherwise fashions his memory, and looks into the spiritual world. If a student performs his occult exercises with strength and energy, he notices that in ordinary life he uses his power of thought to gain knowledge of the things and events of the world, with the support of the body as a physical instrument which enables him to form real conceptions of these things. The concept supported there by the activity of the physical body remains in us as a memory. When, however, we enter the spiritual world we must be continually active in order to call forth the concepts anew. When we reach the point which I characterised in the public lecture, where one can do nothing but wait until the secrets of the spiritual world reveal themselves—a ceaseless activity begins. But one must participate in this. Just as when drawing one has to be continually active, if one wishes to express anything through the drawing, similarly, when the spiritual world reveals itself, the imagination must actively co-operate. What it produces arises from the objective reality, but man must take part in this production of concepts. In this way we contact something which is continually active in man—in the two-fold man, of which I have already spoken—but which is concealed in us, which lives within our physical covering beneath the threshold of our ordinary physical consciousness. One connects oneself with this being. Then one notices the following: here in the physical world one is so united with it that one stands on a firm basis. One sees other things in the outer world and moves about among them. One enters into certain relations with other men, to whom one does this or that and from whom one suffers this or that. We spend the life which we embrace with the ordinary consciousness in the continuous comprehension of what we develop in this way, but behind it there lies another, a life following definite laws, which we do not perceive with the ordinary consciousness; in this life we share, when, between going to sleep and waking, we live in the astral body and Ego. Our consciousness is, however, then so lowered that we cannot perceive with ordinary senses what position we occupy in a spiritual world which pursues its own course, which continually lives around us, and while yet being super-sensible and invisible weaves itself into the sensible and visible.

Above all we must understand this world as spiritual, and not think of it as a duplicate, a simply more refined physical sensible world; we must conceive of it as spiritual. I have often drawn attention to the reason why just in our time there must be produced from out the fountain of all human knowledge, that which, as carried on by us, relates to the spiritual world. For truly, not only because of the facts which present themselves to the spiritual investigators who have to impart truths concerning the spiritual world, but from the whole course of our civilisation (I have drawn attention to this from various standpoints), it is evident that in humanity a certain longing is arising to open the soul to the hidden side of human life, and to learn something of it. I have already brought forward phenomena in scientific life and elsewhere, which show how this longing lives at the present time.

To-day I should like to add to our considerations a quite special example, from which we can see that already in our day there are people who to a certain extent touch on these secrets of existence. They divine and know something of these mysteries of existence, but for reasons which we shall presently examine closer, they do not wish to approach them in the manner practised by Spiritual Science. The easiest way to bring these things before people is to leave them more or less undecided, leaving, as it were, the door open, by saying: ‘You need not believe these things. You need not think of that world as real.’ In our time there are plenty of examples of this. I have given instances. I shall bring forward an especial case to-day in reference to this point. I shall introduce into our considerations a few remarks about a really extraordinary and significant novel of modern German literature. I might call it a pearl among German novels. It is called Hofrat Eysenhardt. It is really one of the best novels to be found in the more recent literature of Germany and in it, in a really wonderful manner, only one single individual is depicted: namely, Hofrat Eysenhardt himself. He lived in Vienna and became a lawyer, and later President of the local court. He became one of the greatest lawyers of his country. He was feared by all those who had anything to do with the law, and beloved by those associated with him, for he was a most distinguished criminologist. His eloquence was such that he could get anyone convicted who came within his clutches; during the trial he subjected him to a crossfire, and with a certain indifference to human life he was able so to harass his victim (one can use this expression here) that whatever happened, he was trapped. Thus this Hofrat Eysenhardt was, in his external life, a very remarkable man. He had not much talent for entering into psychic relations with other men. He was a kind of hermit with regard to human life; he laid great stress on being correct and blameless in external life; with his subordinates he exchanged but few words, but with his superiors he was not only friendly, but deeply courteous. I could bring forward many more characteristics; he was a model advocate. We need not enter now into his other qualities, they are wonderfully brought out in the novel, reflected in the statement of a subordinate, but we may go to the occasion when he was once chosen to conduct an important case against a notorious man named Markus Freund. This Markus Freund had already suffered punishment in a lesser degree for offences similar to the one of which he was now accused. But it never occurred to the examining magistrate who made the enquiry, that there was any possibility of bringing about a conviction on this occasion. Yet Hofrat Eysenhardt obtained one. And in a document which the Hofrat himself then drew up for a purpose which we shall presently disclose, he himself describes the manner in which Markus Freund behaved during and especially after his conviction. Let me read the passage: ‘This man, who possessed the strong family affections so characteristic of his race, had a special tenderness for a young grand-daughter, of whom he was never tired of speaking with his fellow prisoners. He could hardly await his release, which he confidently anticipated in spite of the severe suspicions laid on him, so much did he long to see the child again. Markus Freund obstinately denied everything, and in the preliminary trial before the magistrate was so well able to explain away each of the suspicious circumstances with a sagacity truly astounding, that the magistrate, a very efficient, although excessively soft-hearted man, was firmly convinced of Freund's innocence until the closing proceedings began, presided over by the person to whom this information refers.’ (Hofrat Eysenhardt writes that himself, he writes of himself in the third person.) Although Markus Freund even in the final trial exerted his sagacity to the utmost, and his advocate made a very beautiful and touching speech (of merit even according to the newspapers) yet the verdict was exactly the opposite to that expected by the magistrate, and perhaps by the defendant himself. Markus Freund was unanimously convicted by the jury and, as there were many previous convictions and aggravating conditions in his past, he was condemned to the severest penalty, twenty years' imprisonment. The person concerned (none other than Hofrat Eysenhardt himself) might well without presumption, regard this verdict as one of the greatest triumphs of his many years of criminal practice. For the jury would have been deceived by the truly bewildering sophistry of Markus Freund—although public feeling at that time was not favourable to men of his race—had not the President been able, by his superior eloquence to crumple this sophistry into nothing. ‘The effect of the verdict on the defendant was such’ (the Hofrat himself is still relating this) ‘that it required hardened nerves, accustomed to such outbreaks, not to be shaken as to the truth and justice of the sentence. First Markus Freund stammered a few incomprehensible words, probably in Hebrew. Then this bowed man, of barely middle height, drew himself up to his full height, so that he appeared huge, and lifted the heavy lids which usually almost covered his eyes—showing the blood-shot whites of his rolling eyes. And from his distorted mouth he rapidly hissed forth a stream of bitter curses and threats directed against the President. To repeat them here in the offensive jargon in which they were poured forth, would hardly harmonise with the respect due to the law. Only the first sentence may be quoted: “Mr. President! You know as well as I do myself that I am innocent;” and the last, “This shall be repaid to you. An eye for an eye, it shall be paid back to you. You shall see!” The rest of his speech was entirely fantastic and appeared, in so far as it had any sense at all, to amount to this: he, Markus Freund, had probed the noble President with his eyes to the very depths and discovered, that even though noble, the President was not aware of it, he was nevertheless of the same sort as himself; he the down-trodden, but this time, innocent Markus Freund. The officers immediately did their duty and seized the offender, to whom the President immediately awarded disciplinary punishment for his outburst. While the soldiers, each holding one of his waving arms, led the accused away, his fury broke out in weeping and sobbing. Even in the corridor one heard his dull moaning: my poor, poor little girl, you will never see your grandfather again. The jury were greatly distressed at this incident, and questioned the President through their foreman as to whether it would not be possible to try the case again immediately. Through their insufficient knowledge of the law they had not enough experience to know that outbursts of this kind occur more often with very hardened blameworthy criminals, than with innocent defendants, who really are much scarcer than the sensational minds of the public imagine. Less excusable was the fact that the above-mentioned soft-hearted Vice-President, who was present at the pronouncement of the sentence and its disagreeable sequel, took upon himself to say to the prosecutor, gently shaking his head, “Mr. President, I do not envy you your talent!”’

‘So Markus Freund was now imprisoned and the Hofrat lived on. But how he lived and what now happened he relates in his statement. We must presuppose that some considerable time has elapsed, and the accused had been a long time in prison. Now the following occurred: ‘Just as the person in question’ (the Hofrat relates this of himself) ‘had seen him at the moment when he uttered those threats and curses against him, with a face distorted with fury, precisely so did the long-forgotten Markus Freund come before his mind in the night between the 18th and 19th March, at 2 o'clock, when he suddenly awoke without cause.

‘Thus the Hofrat suddenly wakes up in the night between the 18th and 19th of March, at 2 o'clock, and has the impression in his mind that Markus Freund was standing before him.

‘And while he lay motionless, as in a trance, the above-mentioned events recapitulated themselves in imagination with lightning speed. He was not clearly conscious whether in the intervening years he had thought much about the occurrence or not. Both alternatives appeared equally correct to him at that moment, for horror weakened his power of thought.

‘Thus Hofrat Eysenhardt woke up in the middle of sleep, was forced to think of Markus Freund and to recapitulate what had happened, but he did not know whether he had previously often thought of it or not. ‘While he lay thus with throbbing heart, an impulse arose immediately to light the candle on the table, but he could not. (He could not move his hands). It was as if something gently tapped at the bedroom door, or rather a timorous scratching, as if a little dog was begging to be let in. Involuntarily the question formed itself: “Who is there?” There was no answer, nor did the door open, but nevertheless he had a feeling that something slipped in. The floor creaked slightly, the sound passing across the room from the door to the bed, as if this invisible something came nearer, and finally stood close to him. Anyhow he had the indescribable feeling of a strange presence, and not of an indefinite, unknown presence, but it seemed to him as if this “something” must be that Markus Freund, the sudden recollection of whom had roused him out of a deep sleep. He even felt as if this invisible presence bent over his face. Now, whether he fell asleep again without being aware of it and dreamed, and—as you know—the dreams and the people of whom one dreams are frequently confused with one another, or whether certain exaggerated ideas of Schopenhauer as to the secret identity of all individuals stirred in him as the after effects of what he had been reading during the last few days, at any rate the senseless thought flashed through his mind that he and Markus Freund were fundamentally one and the same person. And as if in confirmation of this idea, silly as it was and contrary to all logic, he repeated, whether merely inwardly, or outwardly and audibly, he knew not, the above-mentioned curses and threats of Markus Freund as far as he could remember them, and indeed with the horror-struck feeling that each curse was now beginning to fulfil itself. Now whether, as was not impossible, he had fallen asleep and dreamed, certain it is that he awoke with this terrible impression and lit the candle. The clock registered ten minutes past two. Everything in the room was as before, although furniture, walls, and pictures appeared strange to him, and he had to drink a glass of water and wait a little while to recover himself and realise where he was.’

He relates all this himself and says, that first he had this vision, as we may call it. Now, this made such an impression on him that he was driven to go immediately—though still somewhat shaken—to the Court, and look up the documents relating to Markus Freund. But he was not able to do so; something else occurred—Hofrat Eysenhardt had always been a quiet, open-minded man, and he merely relates what happened to him. We shall shortly see why he relates it. Indeed, he considers himself somewhat ridiculous and unworthy to have yielded to it.

‘In vain did he tell himself how absurd and ridiculous his conduct was. His former iron will was in this respect weakened, and remained so. It barely sufficed to conceal from his colleagues the inner torments which were always present with him. One morning, passing a group of legal officials who were engaged in heated conversation in a dark corridor, he thought he heard the name of Markus Freund.’

One day when he went to the Court-house, he really lacked the courage to again take up these documents, but in passing a corridor where several people were conversing he heard the name of Markus Freund.

‘Now, as this man and his name had gradually become a fixed idea in his mind, and never gave him any rest, he regarded a self-deception as not unlikely, and he stopped and asked the gentleman of whom they had been speaking? “Of Markus Freund, of your Markus Freund, Herr Hofrat, don't you remember him?” answered one of the gentlemen, who happened to be the soft-hearted magistrate who at the time had made that rash remark. “Of Markus Freund? Why? What has happened to him?” He could hardly breathe. “Why he is dead. By the grace of God the poor devil is now free,” the soft-hearted one answered. “Dead? When?” “Oh, he died in the night between the 18th and 19th of March, at 2 o'clock.”’

Thus the story relates that Hofrat Eysenhardt had convicted Markus Freund, who was imprisoned for a long time. During the night between the 18th and 19th of March, Eysenhardt wakes up, sees Freund in his thoughts, and then has a vision of his appearance. He is terribly frightened, wants to look up the documents, but allows several weeks to pass. Finally, he overhears a conversation, whereby he learns that Markus Freund died at the very time he appeared to him, creeping into his room like a little dog.

Now, in order to understand all that has been related, the conclusion of the novel is necessary. For this shows that the Hofrat was now urged by circumstances, and indeed by such circumstances that one could not have supposed would have this effect upon him. As President of an especially important trial of a case of espionage he was necessarily brought in connection with certain people. Now, in his connection with them and guided by a dim instinct, he is led to commit the very same offence of which he had convicted Markus Freund. And later, after he had been dragged by passion into crime, he had occasion to remember in a quite special manner the words spoken by Markus Freund after his trial: ‘This shall be repaid to you. An eye for an eye, you shall see.’ Thus something had lived beneath the threshold of the Hofrat's consciousness which was definitely connected with his previous deeds, and which was also connected in a remarkable and mysterious way with the fulfilment of what the dead man had threatened him with. Indeed, there is an even deeper connection. The author of the novel wrote in the first person, as though many of the things about Hofrat Eysenhardt had been related to him personally, and he writes that he had a conversation with one of his subordinates (this conversation occurs in the novel). And this subordinate, who was an extraordinary sagacious, philosophically inclined man, said: ‘This Hofrat was specially gifted with the power to penetrate to the depths of these things because he had a strong disposition towards them himself. And so he penetrates deepest into the cases which appeal to him most.’ That is related in the novel. Now, it is interesting that in the night of the 18th to the 18th of March, at 2 o'clock, the thought arises in the Hofrat, ‘You and this Markus Freund are practically identical.’ This unity, this uniting of the consciousness appears evident to his soul; he has an insight into a connection which lies beneath the threshold of ordinary life. This is revealed to him. Naturally it is not revealed to him in the same way as to others, for cases vary, but this disclosure comes to him. Now, it is interesting that the author of this novel has brought together all the materials possible to make the event comprehensible. And we must also recollect what this author mentions as preceding the vision which the Hofrat had during the night. The Hofrat was really a robust man; as has been said, many characteristics could be brought forward which show him to be a man who did not go soulfully through life, but was one who pursues his way with a sort of brutality, caused by a certain inner robustness. Only, as it were, through an outer symptom could this man, who had never been led astray and who was always sure of himself, become a wrong doer. The outer cause was this: he discovered a tooth had become loose and that he could easily remove it with his fingers. The thought then flashed through his head, ‘my life is now on the wane. Something has begun to decay.’ He could not get the thought out of his head: ‘In this way I shall lose my health, little by little.’ That would not have been so bad, the worst was that from that moment (only he did not notice it, but ruminated over his own decay, as he himself shows in his letters, wherein he describes himself in the third person), from that moment his memory began to fail. His memory was such a help in all his professional work that he develops a certain anxiety about life. He noticed that he could no longer remember certain things which formerly could be recalled so easily. Just consider how interesting it is that the novelist brings forward the possibility of developing a partial clairvoyance as the memory begins to decline. Then his memory becomes better again. He decides to record this, and remembers what his state had been. He, as a freethinker, cannot suppose otherwise than that all this was a part of a diseased condition. And he reflects: ‘thus I am really in danger of going mad.’ That conclusion would be natural in a freethinker. He is ashamed to seek advice and therefore he takes advantage of his position to write in the third person. He then places the document before a physician for mental diseases, as the case of some unknown person, and in that way he hoped to get medical advice. Thereby it happens that the novelist uses this document to impart something of the psychic life of this man.

You see that we have here a really beautiful work of art, which indeed points to those elements of which we have to speak in Spiritual Science, just those elements of which one speaks when dealing with the connection between the power of memory and the perception into the spiritual worlds. The novelist accomplishes that beautifully by causing the memory to fail the moment certain ‘shreds’ of these secret connections become evident to the person in question. And the whole narrative is very extraordinary, for it is so constructed in its various parts that one sees that the author realises that there are such connections behind life. Only he clothes the knowledge in the form of a novel. The novel is very cleverly written, and could only be written by a philosophical mind. It is written by one who was for many years the Manager of the Hamburg Theatre, and who later became Manager of the Vienna Burg-Theatre. This novel is really not only one of the best he has written, but is one of the pearls of German fiction. Naturally I do not say this because it is written around a subject deeply interesting to us, but because none but a man of very fine perception could have such delicate observation in an apparently abnormal matter. What I have said as to the merit of this book is purely from an artistic standpoint. It is really so written that the reader has the consciousness: the author has written a novel, but he might just as well have written a biography of Hofrat Eysenhardt, so realistically does he write. And we see in such a novel that Berger must have known a man who really had such experiences in the course of his life. One cannot help saying: how natural it would be for such a man as Alfred Freiherr von Berger to approach the spiritual world so that through Spiritual Science he might learn to know the real connections. How infinitely important would it be for Berger to have studied Spiritual Science, so that he would have been able to say, for example, ‘What will Hofrat Eysenhardt have to experience in the time which immediately follows the passage through the gates of death, in what we have always called Kamaloka, after having caused an innocent man to be convicted?’ As I have told you: man then has to experience the effects of his deeds, and the significance which his deeds have for others in connection with whom they were committed. What the Hofrat had done at the trial afforded him a tremendous satisfaction at the time, especially his great power of oratory. He had great satisfaction, which he expressed by saying: ‘He regarded it as meritorious that he prevailed against the sophistry of the prisoner, and delivered a speech which urged the jury to convict him, although they regretted it immediately afterwards, when they saw the effect of their verdict on the accused.’ That is the thing as seen from this side of the Hofrat. From the side of Markus Freund it is a very different matter, here we see the effect of the sentence upon him. The effect of this on his soul the Hofrat has to experience in Kamaloka. And a reflection, a picture of this reveals itself in the very moment when Markus Freund himself goes through the gates of death. This so discloses itself to him that he now sees himself as identical, as one with this Markus Freund. He sees himself in Markus Freund. He feels himself also within him. We see that the Hofrat had a foretaste of Kamaloka. This is so powerful that he not only experiences what had happened previously, but something which is intimately connected with the whole matter transpires further in him beneath the threshold of his consciousness. Each single detail is of importance. I told you that he had lost his memory for a while, during which this part of the spiritual world unveiled itself to him. But now comes a time when he is endowed anew with a great natural power of memory. Memory reinstates itself in him again, when he tried the case of espionage. But in the course of this very trial he is driven to commit the same offence for which through his eloquence he had caused Markus Freund to be convicted. The force which formerly proceeded from memory was transformed into the force of instinct, and this drives him. He does not now see the connection which was subconsciously working between what he was now himself doing, and what he had ascribed to Markus Freund. This leads to the following: Hofrat Eysenhardt, when he sees what has happened to him, the very evening preceding the conclusion of the law suit in which he was to accomplish his greatest triumph, goes into his office ...'

Having entered his once, the key of which he had with him, he lit the two candles on the writing table, washed his hands, face, and hair; then changed his civilian attire for his uniform, and for a long time paced up and down. Then he opened the top drawer of his writing table and took from a parcel a new revolver and a packet of cartridges which he had probably bought at the worst time of his nervous breakdown. He carefully loaded every chamber, then took from the paper-rack a sheet of official paper and wrote the following:

“In the name of His Majesty the Kaiser! I have committed a serious offence and feel myself unworthy to exercise my office further, or to live any longer. I have condemned myself to the severest punishment, and in the next few minutes shall execute the same with my own hand. EYSENHARDT. Vienna, 10th June, 1901.”

Neither writing nor signature betrayed a trace of even the slightest nervousness. Next morning he was found dead.

A quite remarkable connection is described in this novel, and we must say that the author was well qualified to see the connection existing between that which transpires here in the ordinary consciousness and that which happens beneath the threshold of consciousness, that is, he could see the spiritual events in which man is entangled. Exoterically one only sees the happenings of the physical world: that the judge convicted Markus Freund, and so on. If that had not happened just at that time when the lawyer became confused and lost his memory, he would not have seen these threads of the spiritual world. They would not have revealed themselves to him; and all this would have remained subconscious. A novel such as this is sent out into the world from the following standpoint, so to speak. ‘There is certainly something behind life, which in certain special cases cannot but be recognised. But if one speaks of this people do not like it. It is uncomfortable to approach such realities. So it is related as a novel and then nobody need believe it; if it merely amuses people that is all right.’

Now, that which holds people off from the spiritual world is something of which they are not aware. The way into the spiritual world goes, as it were, in two directions. In the first we push aside the veil of nature and investigate that which lies behind the phenomena of external nature. In the second we push through the veil of our own soul life, and seek what lies behind that. The ordinary philosophers also seek to probe behind the basis of existence; they seek to solve the Cosmic riddle. But note—how do they do this? They either observe nature directly, or through experiments, and then think it over afterwards. But while one puzzles out these ideas acquired through the knowledge of nature, turning them over and over again in one's mind, and interlacing them, one does certainly arrive at a philosophy, but not at anything really connected with the true outer reality. We can never get behind the veil of existence by reflecting on that which presents itself in outer nature. I expressed this as follows, in a public lecture: ‘That which causes our eternal forces is active, in that it first produces in us the instrument with which we approach our ordinary consciousness.’ But if we are to build up our ordinary consciousness, we must use this instrument. When we enter the experience of ordinary consciousness, everything which the eternal forces make in us is already completed. Hence when through meditation we reach this stage we notice that we cannot penetrate the secrets of nature by means of reflection, but by quite different means. If, as I have described in my public lectures, we strengthen our thought through meditation, and the revelation of the spiritual world comes to us through grace, we then behold nature quite differently. Even human life itself has a different aspect then. We then approach nature, and while taking in any process or object or event that meets us, we have at the same time the consciousness, ‘Before you really see a rose, something else takes place.’ True, you first see the perception, the realisation; but that perception has first fashioned itself. Into the perception is inserted the spiritual; therein lies the memory, the memory of the previous thought. To get behind the secret in this way through spiritual research, that is the secret. The philosopher beholds the rose and then philosophises about it in his rejections. But he who wants to get behind the secret of the rose may not reflect, for if he does, nothing happens. He must behold the rose and be aware, that before it comes through to his sense consciousness, some process has already taken place. It appears to him as a memory which preceded the perception. The whole matter turns on this; that something like a memory transpires, which tells us: ‘I did this before I reached the sensible perception; so that as regards external nature a previous thinking has taken place although it remains subconscious, and then it is brought to the surface as a memory.’ One cannot penetrate the secrets of nature through afterthought, but through forethought. Just as little can one penetrate the secrets of that which fills the soul, in any other way than by really approaching that spectator, of whom I have often spoken. Note well, these are the ways by which we can enter the spiritual world to-day.

You will remember that in the novel a shred of the spiritual world reaches the perception of Hofrat Eysenhardt after he realised the processes of decay in himself, and this is a peculiar illustration of what I have brought forward in my lectures. When our thinking is so strengthened by our exercises that we can see the spiritual world, we are immediately confronted with the process of destruction, with that which is connected with death. The Mystics of all ages have expressed this by the phrase: ‘To approach the Gate of Death,’ that is, all that manifests as destruction in human life. And if we have really carried our meditation to that point where we attain the experience of Initiation, we experience this: ‘I stand at the Gate of Death. I know there is something in me which has prevailed since my birth or conception, which then concentrates itself and becomes the phenomenon of death, the confiscation of the physical body.’ One then makes reply: ‘But all that leads to death has come from the spiritual world. That which has come from the spiritual world has united itself with that which arises from the hereditary substance.’ We see a man standing here in the physical world and we say: ‘That which confronts us is his countenance, which speaks to us through his words, everything he does as physical man is the expression of what prepared itself in the spiritual world through his last death and birth. His soul being lives in this.’ And from the whole bearing of these considerations we can conclude: that part of the human soul which lives between death and rebirth attracts the forces out of the spiritual world in order to fashion man in this incarnation between birth and death, in order to build something which is just the man himself. And then it is really the case, that through meditating on the Will, there is evolved the germ which again goes through the gate of death, to prepare itself in the spiritual world for a next incarnation. Thus in man there lies this eternal process of growth. The psychic spiritual descends from the spiritual world and forms a man here, in whom arises, at first as a mere speck, that which now originates here in life as the germ, and this again goes through the gates of death in order to continue its evolution. So that when we have a man here, it is really evident that as he stands before us, he as man has been created from out of the spiritual world. With that provided by the parents there unites itself that which descends from the spiritual world. While he was in the spiritual world he was among the spiritual powers, just as here in the physical body he is among the forces of nature. He was among the spiritual forces, and with their help he prepared himself for this incarnation. When we see a man incarnate before us, it truly is as I have represented in the second Mystery Play, The Soul's Probation, that whole worlds of divine beings work in order to produce man. Between death and rebirth spiritual forces are operative in order to maintain man. Man here is the goal of certain spiritual forces which are active between death and rebirth. Now note: this leads to Spiritual Science, but it has always been known and brought to expression; for example, a man of note expressed what I have said over and over again, by saying: ‘Life in the human body is the ultimate aim of the Path of the Gods.’ He meant that when we are in the spiritual world, woven into the world of the Gods between death and rebirth, we prepare ourselves for our incarnation, for our body. That is the object of the Divine Path. He was unable, however to add the other sentence: ‘In the body a new beginning is prepared, which then again goes through death and leads to a new incarnation.’ This phrase, ‘The life in the body is the ultimate aim of the Divine Path,’ forms to a certain extent the leading motive of all the works written by Christoph Oetinger, a very noted man nearly a hundred years ago. He drew attention continually to the path that human knowledge and perception must take if it is to recognise these spiritual connections. What Anthroposophy really desires can already be found in the older Theosophists. But Oetinger wishes to present it in his own way. His editor uttered some beautiful words at the end of his preface, in 1847. He wanted to express that in former times men sought the spiritual path, but in their own way; but that the time would come, and was not far distant, in which that which one had really always sought, would be grasped with full scientific consciousness. His editor says: ‘The essential point is that when Theosophy becomes a real science and brings forth definite results, these will gradually become the universal conviction of humanity. Yet this rests in the bosom of the future, which we do not wish to anticipate.’ Thus spake Richard Rothe, the Heidelberg professor, in referring to the Theosophist, Christoph Oetinger, in November, 1847. What Spiritual Science strives for has already existed, but in another form. To-day it is necessary to find it in just the form most appropriate for our time. And as I have often said, ‘the thought of Natural Science has to-day reached a standpoint from which, out of the method of that science herself, the right scientific form must be sought for what lived in Theosophy of all times.’ And when Rothe, as the editor of Oetinger, says that what the latter implies ‘rests in the bosom of the future,’ we must remember that what in 1847 was the future has certainly matured into the present of our time. We are confronting time when we can prove—for it was but one example which I have brought before you to-day in the novel Hofrat Eysenhardt, by Alfred von Berger—that human souls are really ripe to approach the spiritual truths, but that they morally lack the courage to grasp them in reality.

I said that in two directions lies the path to the spiritual world, in which one can see behind the veil of nature. For those who are accustomed to think scientifically, and who merely have to raise their scientific thought to an inner instrument in the way described, why is it so difficult to make progress? Why? They say that there are limits to human knowledge! Ignorabimus! And why do they not wish to enter the spiritual world? Well, the reason for that lies beneath the threshold of their consciousness.

Within the sphere of consciousness so-called logical reasons are brought forward as to why man cannot enter the spiritual world. These arguments have long been known. But beneath these logical reasons is to be found the true inner reason: the fear of the spiritual world. This fear of the spiritual world holds people back, but they are not aware of it. If they could only acquaint themselves with the existence of this unconscious fear, and how everything that is brought forward in opposition is merely a mask, hiding the fear in its reality, they would become aware of many things. That is the one thing. The other is this: directly a man enters the spiritual world he is seized upon, just as we can grasp his thoughts here—he is seized by the Beings of the Higher Hierarchies. Man becomes, as it were, a thought in the spiritual world. Against this the soul inwardly struggles. It is frightened, terrified, and shrinks from being taken possession of by the spiritual world. Again a question of fear, a powerless terror of allowing itself to be laid hold of by the spiritual world, in the way in which at birth one is laid hold of by the physical forces. Thus, outer fear, and dread of a certain powerlessness to resist being seized by the spiritual world, this it is which holds men back from it. That is why they so often wish, as the author in this novel, to splash in the waves of the spiritual world, without—as I might say—binding themselves in any way. That is why they have not really the courage to draw too near to the spiritual world lest it should lay hold of them, as may truly happen through the inner experiments often described, just as the apprehension of the secrets of nature may come about through external experiments.

If to what has been said you apply what was brought forward in one of the public lectures concerning this connection between the forces of genius which appear in life, and premature death, brought about by man's body being taken from him, through a shell or some other cause on the battlefield—if, in connection with what has been said you remember that the forces of genius or of invention appear in man as the effect of those processes which occurred when he was deprived of his physical body, then there also you have something remaining beneath the threshold of consciousness. But in his courage, in the whole way in which a man offers himself up for some great event of the time, there lies an instinctive expression of something resting beneath the threshold of consciousness, and which is unable to reach his consciousness in its full significance. Nevertheless, in our time there is in human evolution an impulse to carry up to the threshold of consciousness what lies beneath it, so that man may know something of it. And when I point to the fact that even in the great events of our time, in all that transpires in full consciousness, especially in the events of this epoch, there lie significant subconscious processes—I mean this to be taken in the above-mentioned sense, for that which these events are inserting into the great connection of human will never be included in what the external historian can grasp of these present events. More than ever before does the subconscious play a part in the present happenings. And therefore the spiritual investigator is allowed to indicate that a time will come in the future when, in order to behold the present significant historical events in the right light of their Cosmic connections, we shall point to their spiritual background. With this in view the words with which we now always conclude will be more and more present to our souls:—

From the fighters' courage,
From the blood of battles,
From the mourners' suffering,
From the people's sacrifice,
There will ripen fruits of Spirit
If with consciousness the soul
Turns her thought to Spirit Realms.

Our spiritual-scientific world view may not only turn to the development and advance of the individual souls, but above all it has also to help really to gain additional points of view for the observation of life. In our time it has to suggest itself to us in particular to gain such additional points of view for the judgement of life. Indeed, it is a big and also important task for the individual human being to help himself by that which he can gain as the fruit of the spiritual-scientific self-education. Only because the individual human beings really help themselves, can they co-operate in the development of humankind generally. But our attention should be directed not only to that, but we really should be able to feel as supporters of the anthroposophical world view the big events of our time from a high point of view, from a really spiritual point of view. We should be able to transport ourselves to a higher standpoint judging the events. Today some points of view just with reference to the big events of our time may be given, because our present meeting takes place in these destiny-burdened times.

We start from something that is near to us as human beings. Human beings have illnesses at certain times. One considers illnesses normally as that which damages our organism which penetrates our organism like an enemy. Such a general point of view is not always justified. Indeed, there are symptoms which must be judged from this point of view where as it were the illness comes like an enemy into our organism. But that is not always the case. In most cases, the illness is something completely different. The illness is not the enemy in most cases, but just the friend of the organism. That what is the enemy of the organism precedes the illness in most cases, it develops in the human being, before the externally visible illness breaks out. There are forces opposing each other in the organism, and the illness, which breaks out at any time, is the attempt of the organism to save itself from the forces opposing each other which were not noticed before.

Illness is often the beginning work of the organism to induce the healing. The illness is that which the organism undertakes to fight against the hostile influence which precedes the illness. The illness is the last form of the process, but it signifies the battle of the good juices of the organism against that which is lurking there at the bottom. Only if we look at the most illnesses in such a way, do we get the correct understanding of the illness process. Hence, the illness points to the fact that something has taken action, before the illness broke out, that should come out of the organism. If some phenomena of life are seen in the right light, you understand quite easily what I said. The causes may be in the most different areas. What it concerns, this is that which I have just suggested: the fact that we have to look at the illnesses as something that the organism defends itself against things which should be driven out.

I do not believe that there is a comparison which holds really as true as the comparison of such a sum of significant, deeply intervening events, as we experience them now since the beginning of August 1914 over a big part of the earth, with an illness process of the human evolution. Just this must strike us that these military events are actually an illness process. But wrong would it be to believe that we cope with it if we simply understand this illness process in the wrong sense as just many an illness process is understood: as if it is the enemy of the organism. The cause goes ahead of the illness process. It can strike us in our time particularly how little people are inclined in the present to take into consideration such a truth which must prove itself as immediately clear to somebody who takes up the spiritual-scientific world view not only in his reason, but also in his feeling.

We had to experience a lot of infinitely painful things just in the course of the last nine months—painful concerning the human ability of judgement. Is it not that way, actually, if one reads the literature, which is read mostly and is spread by the most different countries of the earth, is it not as if the people who judge about these events suppose that in July 1914, actually, history has begun? This was the saddest experience in which we had to take part beside all the other painful things that the people, setting the tone or rather giving articles, and making the public opinion, know basically nothing about the origin of the events and look only at the nearest. The infinite discussions, these invalid discussions came into being from that. Where is the cause of the present military conflicts? Over and over again one has asked: does this have the guilt? Does that have the guilt?—And so on. Always one hardly went back further than up to July, at most June 1914. I mention that because it is a characteristic feature of our materialistic time. One thinks usually that materialism only manages a materialistic way of thinking, a materialistic world view. This is not the case. Materialism manages not only this, but it also manages shortsightedness; materialism manages mental laziness, manages lack of insight. The materialistic way of thinking leads to the fact that one can prove everything and believe everything. It really belongs to that self-education which anthroposophy must give us to see that somebody who stops in the area of materialism can prove everything and believe everything.

I take a simple example. When one had something to say about the spiritual-scientific world view during the last years, somebody here or there believed to have to assert his view compared to the spiritual-scientific world view. One could often hear: Kant has already proved by his philosophy that the human being has limits of knowledge, and that one cannot get where the spiritual-scientific world view wants to attain knowledge.—Then the very interesting matters were stated by which Kant should have proved that one cannot penetrate to the spiritual world with human cognition. If one still went on representing spiritual science, then the people came and believed: he denies everything that Kant has proved. Of course, such a thing contained a little bit of the assertion: this man must be an especially foolish person, because he strictly denies proven matters.

It is not that way at all. The spiritual scientist does not deny at all that this is absolutely right what Kant has proved, it is clear that this is proved quite well. However, assume once that somebody would have strictly proved in the time in which the microscope was not yet invented, that there would be the smallest cells in the plant, but one could never find these because the human eyes were not able to see them. This could have been strictly proved, and the proof would be absolutely right, because the human eye, as well as it is arranged, could never penetrate to the organism of the plant up to these smallest cells. That is an absolutely right proof which can never be upset. However, life has developed this way that the microscope was invented, and that in spite of the strict proof people got the knowledge of the smallest cells. Only if once anyone understands that proofs are worthless for gaining the truth that proofs can be correct, but mean basically nothing special for the progress of the knowledge of truth, only then will one stand on the right ground. Then one knows: the proofs can be good, of course, but the proofs do not have the task to lead really to truth. Think only once of the comparison I have given, then you see that also, as absolutely strict the proof may be that the human visual ability does not reach to the cell, as strict can be the proof that human knowledge, as Kant says, does not reach to supersensible worlds.

The proofs were absolutely correct, but life goes beyond proofs. This is also something that is given to somebody on the path of spiritual research that he extends his ken and is really able to appeal to something different than to the human reason and its proofs. Who limits himself to materialistic ideas is really led to an uncontrollable confidence in proofs. If he has a proof in the pocket, he is generally convinced of the truth.

Spiritual research will just show us that anyone can prove the one and the other matter rather well that, however, proofs by reason have no significance for gaining real truth. That is why it is a concomitant of our materialistic time that people are enslaved by mental shortsightedness. If this mental shortsightedness is still infiltrated with passions, it comes about that we see today not only the European peoples fighting with arms, but feuding with each other. There anyone has to say all possible matters, and you cannot expect basically that one is able to persuade the other, not only during the war. If anybody believed that one day a neutral state could possibly choose between the allegations of two hostile states, he would have a naive confidence. Of course, one side can have its opinion and substantiates it by all kinds of proofs, but the other side will do the same. One gets insight only if one is involved in the deeper bases of the whole human evolution.

I tried already some years before the outbreak of this war to throw some light on it in the series of talks about the individual folk-souls and their effects on the individual human beings in the different European regions, how the individual nations face each other and that there really different forces hold sway over the different peoples. Today we want to complete that with a few other viewpoints.

Our materialistic time thinks too much in the abstract. Such a thing is not taken into consideration in our materialistic time at all that there is a real development in the life that the human being has to allow to be ripe that what is in him develops gradually to the real judgment. The human being—we know this and it is shown in detail in my essay Education of the Child in the Light of Spiritual Science—experiences such a development that during the first seven years his physical body, from the seventh up to the fourteenth years the etheric body develops in particular et cetera. This advancing development of the individual human being is taken into consideration a little, the parallel phenomenon, the synonymous phenomenon much less. The processes which take place within the individual nation's connections are directed and led—we all know this from spiritual science—by beings of the higher hierarchies. We speak of folk-souls, of folk-spirits in the true sense of the word. We know that, for example, the folk-soul of the Italian people inspires the sentient soul; the French folk-soul inspires the intellectual soul or mind-soul, that the inhabitants of the British islands are inspired by the consciousness-soul; in Central Europe the ego is inspired. I do not pass any value judgment on the individual nations, but I may only say that this is that way. The fact that, for example, an inspiration of the people that inhabit the British islands is based on the fact that it brings as nation everything into the world that is caused by inspiration of the consciousness-soul from the folk-soul. It is strange to which extent people become nervous in this field. When I emphasised here or there during the war what I had expressed in the mentioned series of talks, there were people who almost understood it like a kind of abuse of the British people that I said that it would have the task to inspire the consciousness-soul, while the German folk-soul has to inspire the human ego. As if one understood it as an insult when one says: salt is white, paprika is red.—It is a simple characterisation, the representation of a truth which exists, and one has to accept this as such a truth first of all. One manages that much better which prevails between the individual members of humankind if one looks at the characteristics of the individual peoples, and not, if one confuses everything, as the modern materialistic view does it.

Of course, the individual human being rises up above that which he gets from his folk-soul, and this is just the task of our anthroposophical society that it raises the individual human being out of the group-soul and raises him to the general humankind. But it remains that the individual human being, in so far as he stands in a people, is inspired by his folk-soul, that, for example, the Italian folk-soul speaks to the sentient soul, the French folk-soul to the intellectual soul or mind-soul, the British folk-soul to the consciousness-soul. We have to imagine that as it were the folk-soul is hovering over that which the individual human beings do in the single nations. But as we see that the human being develops already as we can say: the ego experiences a particular development in a certain time of life; we can also speak of a development of the folk-soul in relation to its people. Only this development is somewhat different from that of the individual human being.

We take, for example, the Italian people. There we have this people and the folk-soul belonging to this people. The folk-soul is a being of the supersensible world; it is affiliated to the world of the higher hierarchies. It inspires the sentient soul, and this always happens, as long as the people live, the Italian people, because we speak of this people, but it inspires the sentient soul in the different times in the most different way. There are times in which the folk-souls inspire the members of the single nations, so that this inspiration happens as it were on the level of the soul. The folk-soul floats in higher regions of spirit and its inspiration happens in such a way that it inspires the soul qualities only. Then there are times when the folk-souls float further down and make stronger demands on the single members of the peoples when they inspire them so strongly that not only the human being gets them in his soul qualities, but where they work so effectively that the human being becomes dependent on the folk-soul concerning his bodily qualities. As long as people are influenced by the folk-soul in such a way that it inspires the psycho-spiritual qualities, the type of the people is not coined so deeply. The forces of the folk-soul do not work there, so that the whole human being is seized up to the blood. Then a time comes when one can infer already from the kind how the human being looks out of his eyes, from the facial features how the folk-soul is working. It is revealed that the folk-soul has sunk deeply; it makes forceful demands on the whole human being.

Such a deep impression took place with the Italian people approximately in the middle of the 16th century, about 1550. Then again the folk-soul floated back as it were, and thenceforward that is passed on the descendants. You can say: the most intensive being together of the Italian people with their folk-soul was about 1550. At this time, the Italian folk-soul sank the deepest, this people of the Italian peninsula got their most distinctive character. If we go back to the time before 1550, we see that their character is not as strongly coined as from 1550 on. Then only the typical begins what we know as Italianità. The Italian folk-soul, so to speak, entered into marriage with the sentient soul of the individual human being, who belongs to the Italian people.

For the French people—I do not talk about the single human being who can rise up above the people—the similar point in time entered when the folk-soul sank the deepest and penetrated the people completely, about 1600, in the beginning of the 17th century. At this time, the folk-soul completely seized the intellectual soul or mind-soul.

For the British people the point in time entered in the middle of the 17th century, about 1650. Only then the British people got their exterior British expression.

If you know such matters, something will be explicable to you, because you can now put the question differently: how is it with Shakespeare in England?—Shakespeare worked in England, before the British folk-soul worked most intensively on the English people. That is why he is not understood in England substantially. As everybody knows, there are issues in which everything that does not correspond completely to the taste of the governesses is eradicated. Very often Shakespeare is extremely moralised. We know that the deepest understanding of Shakespeare was caused not in England, but in the Central European spiritual development.

Now you will ask: when did the folk-soul touch the members of the Central European people?—However, the case is somewhat different, because this folk-soul descends and ascends repeatedly. And thus we have in the time, when the boon legend world of Parzival, of the Grail originated, such a descent of the folk-soul which combines with the individual souls, then it ascends again and after that a next descending takes place in the time between 1750 and 1830. The Central European life is then touched by its folk-soul the deepest. Since that time the folk-soul is ascending. Thus you see that it is quite comprehensible that Jacob Böhme (1575–1624) lived in a time in which he could get little from the German folk-soul. There was not the time when the folk-soul combined with the individual souls of the people. Hence, Jacob Böhme is, although he is called the “Teutonic philosopher.” a person who is chronologically independent of his folk-soul; he stands as it were like an uprooted human being there, like an everlasting phenomenon within his time. If we take Lessing, Schiller, Goethe, these are also German philosophers, they are completely rooted in the German folk-soul. This is just the typical feature of these philosophers living in the time between 1750 and 1830 that they are completely rooted in the folk-soul.

You see that it does not depend only on the fact that one knows: with the Italian people the folk-soul works on the sentient soul, with the French people the folk-soul works on the intellectual soul, with the British people the folk-soul works on the consciousness-soul, with the Central European nation the folk-soul works on the ego. One has also to know that this happens at certain points in time. The events which happen become historically explicable only if one knows such matters really. That nonsense which is done as science where one gets the documents and enumerates the events successively and says that one has to derive one matter from the other, however, this nonsense of the historians does not lead to a real history, to an understanding of the human evolution, but just only, so to speak, to a falsification of that which exists and works in human history.

If one sees how differently that works on the individual peoples—I could still characterise other peoples—which forces drive these peoples, then one sees the conflicting matters which are there. And one sees that the events of today really did not happen only during the last years, but were prepared for centuries.

We look at the East, at the area of the Russian culture. The characteristic of the Russian culture is that it can develop when once the point in time can enter when the Russian folk-soul combines with the spirit-self—I already expressed this in the mentioned series of talks. A time has to come in which this characteristic of the European East is only revealed. This will be completely different from the development in the West or in the middle of Europe. Provisionally, however, it is quite explicable that that which is allotted to the Russian culture is not there at all, but that the Russian culture has such a relationship—like the individual human being—to the spirit-self that it turns always upwards. The single member of the Russian people and even profound Russian philosophers do not speak as one speaks of the biggest matters in Central Europe, but they speak quite differently.

We find something tremendously typical. What is the most characteristic of this Central European cultural life? You all know that there was a time of the great mystics in which Master Eckhart, John Tauler and others worked. They all sought for the divine in the human souls. They tried to find the God in their chests, in their souls, “the little spark in the soul,” as Master Eckhart expressed it. They said: therein something must be where the divinity is immediately present. Thus that striving originated through which the ego wanted to be united with its divinity in itself. This divinity wanted to be won by hard efforts; the divinity wanted to be won by the developing human being. This runs as a trait through the whole Central European being. Imagine which infinitely deep emotion it is when Angelus Silesius (1624–1677) who, I may say, stands internationally on the ground of the Central European culture and cultural life, says in one of his nice sayings The Cherubinic Wanderer: if I die, not I die, but God dies in me.—Imagine how infinitely deep this is. For he, who said this, seized the idea of immortality vividly, because he felt: if death happens in the individual human being,—because the human being is filled with God—this phenomenon of death is no phenomenon of the human being, but of God, and because God cannot die, death can be only a delusion. Death cannot mean destruction of life. He knows that an immortal soul exists and says: if I die, not I die, but God dies in me.—It is a tremendously deep sensation which lives in Angelus Silesius. This is a result of the fact that the inspiration takes place in the ego.

If the inspiration takes place in the sentient soul, it can happen what took place by Giordano Bruno. The monk got into the spirit with everything what he found with Copernicus, felt the whole world animated. Read a line of Giordano Bruno, and you find verified that he, in so far as he has grown out of the Italian people, just proves the fact that there the folk-soul inspires the sentient soul.

Cartesius, Descartes (1596–1650), is born almost in the characterised point of the French development, when the French folk-soul combined so surely with the French people. Read a page by Cartesius, the French philosopher, you find that he confirms on each page what spiritual science finds: the fact that there the inspiration of the folk-soul works on the intellectual soul.

Read Locke (1632–1704) or Hume (1711–1776) or another English philosopher, up to Mill (John Stuart Mill, 1806–1873) and Spencer (Herbert Spencer, 1820–1903), everywhere inspiration of the consciousness-soul.

Read Fichte (Johann Gottlieb Fichte, 1762–1814) in his struggle in the ego itself, then you have the inspiration of the ego by the folk-soul. This is just the characteristic that this Central European folk-soul is experienced in the ego, and that, hence, the ego is the actually striving force, this ego with all its power, with all its mistakes, with all its wrong tracks and also with all its conscious efforts. If this Central European human being should find the way to Christ, he wants to bear Him in his own soul.

Try once to look for the idea to experience the Christ or a God internally in the Russian cultural life, if it is not taken over externally by the west-European civilisation. You cannot find it at all. There one expects everywhere that a historical event happens really, so that it takes place, as Solovyov (Vladimir Solovyov, 1853–1900) says, as a “miracle.” The Russian cultural life is very much inclined to behold the resurrection of Christ in the supersensible realm, to revere the working of an inspiring power externally, as if the human being is beneath it, as if the inspiration moves over humankind like a cloud, not as if it enters into the human ego. This intimate being together of the ego with its God, or also, if it concerns Christ, with Christ, this desire that Christ is born in the soul is to be found only in Central Europe. If once the East-European culture develops as it is commensurate, again a kind of group-soul will appear because that culture will be founded which floats above the human beings. This kind of group-soul is only on a higher level than the old group-soul was. At the time being, we must find it quite natural that one speaks everywhere in that way, as the Russian philosopher does, about something that floats like the spiritual world above the human world. However, he can never approach that world as intimately as the Central European human being wants to approach with his ego the divine that flows and weaves through the world.

When I often spoke of the fact that the divinity flows through the world and weaves and surges, then that is out of the sentient world of the Central European human being and would not at all be understood by any other European people in the same way as it can be taken up by the Central European feeling nature. This is the typical, the characteristic of the Central European people.

These are the forces which live there in the individual peoples facing each other, which time and again are in competition, which must discharge by force as clouds discharge and cause flashes and thunderstorms.

Do we not hear, one could say now, a word sounding in the East of Europe which was as it were something like a slogan and should work thus, as if the culture of Eastern Europe should begin now to extend over the little valuable Western Europe, to overflow it? Do we not see that the Pan Slavists, the Pan-Slavism¹ appeared, especially also appeared in spirits like Dostoyevsky (Fyodor Mikailovitch Dostoyevsky, 1821–1881) and similar people, with the particular points of his program as there was said: you West-Europeans altogether, you have a decadent culture that must be replaced by East Europe.—Then a whole theory was built up, a theory which culminated above all in the fact that one said: in the West everything has become decadent; this must be replaced by the fresh forces of the East. We have the really orthodox religion against which we do not fight, but we have just accepted it like the cloud of the folk-soul floating above the human beings et cetera. Then sagacious theories were built up, very sagacious theories, which the principles, which the intentions of the old Slavism could already be, that from the East the truth must now spread out over Central Europe and Western Europe.

I said that the single human being can rise up above his people. Such an individual being was Solovyov in a certain field, the great Russian philosopher. Although one also notices with him in each line that he writes as a Russian, nevertheless, he rises up above his people. In the first time of his life, Solovyov was a Pan-Slavist. But he has more exactly concerned himself with that which the Pan-Slavists and Slavophils² put up as a kind of national philosophy, national world view. What did Solovyov, the Russian, find? He asked himself: is there already the real Russian being in the present? May it be included already in those who represent Pan-Slavism and Slavophilism?—And lo and behold, he did not rest, until he came on the right thing. What did he find? He checked the statements of the Slavophils to whom he had belonged before, he tackled them, and there he found that a big part of the forms of thinking, the statements, the intentions is got from the French philosopher de Maistre³ friendly to the Jesuits, who was the great teacher of the Slavophils concerning their world view. Solovyov himself proved that Slavophilism does not grow on own ground, but originates from de Maistre. He proved even more. He discovered a German book of the 19th century which was forgotten for long time and which nobody knows in Germany. The Slavophils copied whole parts of that book in their literature. What a peculiar phenomenon appeared? One believes that something comes from the East, whereas it is a purely western import. It came over from the West and was then sent back to the western people again. The western people were confronted with their own thought-forms because own thought-forms do not yet exist in the East.

If anyone tackles the matters exactly, it is confirmed everywhere what spiritual science has to say. So that one already deals with something while rolling from the East that is still elementary, with something that will find its development when it takes up that as affectionately which has developed in Central Europe as this Central Europe took up the Greek and Latin cultural achievements from the South. Because development of humankind takes place, so that the following condition takes up the previous one. What I could characterise in the public lecture as the Faustic way of thinking of Central Europe by the words: there was a year 1770—Goethe felt it as a Faustic striving when he said:

I've studied, to my regret,
Philosophy, Law, Medicine,
and—what is worst—Theology
from end to end with diligence.
Yet here I am, a wretched fool
and still no wiser than before

Faust I, verses 354–359

There a very rich German cultural life came about, a most intensive striving. But if Goethe had written his Faust forty years later, indeed he would not have started: “I've studied now, to my regret, Philosophy ...” et cetera, and I have now become a wise man,—but he would have written exactly his Faust like in 1770. This vivid striving comes from the inspiration of the folk-soul in the ego, from that intimate being together of the ego with the folk-soul. This is a basic characteristic of the Central European spiritual culture. And the East European culture has to combine with it affectionately, it must take up it. What had to flow into Central Europe was received once from the southern culture, was taken up. Now, however, it is not different when from the East the elementary wave of development rolls, as if the pupil is furious with his teacher because he should learn something from him and wants to thrash him, therefore. It is a somewhat trivial comparison, but, nevertheless, it is a comparison which exactly applies to the matter. Human masses of quite different internal forces of development live in Europe together. These different forces of development must compete with each other; they must assert themselves in different way. The reluctant forces developed for a long time. If one looks at the details, one finds that they express everywhere what spiritual science has to say.

Is it not expressed so wonderfully, does not the wave of the European development crowd together in such a way that it is put symbolically before the whole humankind that in Central Europe the intimate living together of the ego with the spiritual world must be felt? That God is to be experienced in the “little spark in the soul,” that Christ is to be experienced in the “little spark in the soul?” Christ Himself must come to life in the human ego efficiently. That is why the whole development in Central Europe tends to the ego as in no other European language. “Ich” (ego) is “I-C-H.” Like a mighty symbol in the intimate interaction of that what can be the holiest to the soul stands there in Central Europe: I = I-CH—Jesus Christ. Christ Jesus and at the same time the human ego! The folk-soul is working that way, inspiring the people to express in typical words what the underlying facts are. I know very well that people laugh at such a thing, when I express that the folk-soul worked for centuries, so that the term “ich” has come about which is so typical, so symbolical. However, we let people laugh. Only few decades, and they will no longer laugh, but then they will regard it as more significant than what people call physical laws today.

What had an effect as a wave of development worked rather typically. Sometimes, the consciousness expresses a very small part of the truth only; but what works in the subconscious depths expresses itself much truer. We speak, for example, of “Germans” (Teutons, Germanic people). Words are formed by the active genius of language. A part of the inhabitants of Central Europe is called “Germans.” If a German speaks of “Germanic people” (Teutons), he counts the inhabitants of Germany, Austria, Holland, Scandinavia, but also the inhabitants of the British islands to them. He expands the word “German” about a wide area. However, the inhabitant of the British islands rejects this. He calls the German “German” only. He does not have the word German for himself. The German language embraces a much bigger circle. It is inclined to put the word into the service of selflessness; he not only is called “German,” he also encloses the others. The other, the Briton, rejects this. If you are once grasped by the creative genius of language, then you see something really wonderful in it. What people have in consciousness becomes maya, the big delusion. What exists in subconscious depths has a much truer effect. Something tremendously significant and deep expresses itself therein.

Compare now the rude way to look at the relations of the European peoples today with the way one has to go to work intimately to understand the European interplay of forces. Then only will you be able to see the devastation that the materialistic age caused in the human power of judgment. The fact that one started to think that matter carries and holds everything is not yet the worst, but that one has become shortsighted that one cannot look at the central issue, even does not do a step behind the veil which is woven as a maya over the truth, this is the actually bad.

Materialism well prepared what it intended. Also there the genius worked, only the genius who caused materialism as the highest leader is Ahriman. He had a powerful influence during the last centuries. I may still point briefly to a chapter to which one does not point with pleasure today. If it happens, one looks at it as a particular madness. One influences the human being the easiest, if one instills to him in his youth in his powers of imagination, in his soul what should grow up then in him. In the later life one cannot teach human beings anything thoroughly. Hence, Ahriman never would have, actually, better prospects to make the souls really materialistic, than when he instills in the youthful childish souls already that which works on in the subconsciousness. If in the time when the human being does not yet think intellectually already the materialistic forms of thinking are taken up, then people will learn to think thoroughly materialistically if materialism is already instilled in the children's souls. Ahriman did this in such a way that he inspired a writer of the materialistic age⁴ with the idea of Robinson Crusoe. Who allows to take in Robinson sees the materialistic ideas of Robinson thoroughly working. It does not seem so, but the whole—as Robinson is constructed as he is driven in this adventurer's life in the external experience to everything, until even the religion grows up finally like cabbages on the fields—all that prepares the child's soul very well to the materialistic thinking. If you imagine that there were in a certain time—in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries—Bohemian, Portuguese, Hungarian versions of Robinson et cetera as imitations of Robinson Crusoe, one must say: the job was performed thoroughly, and the portion that the Robinson reading had in the education of materialism is enormous.

Compared with such a phenomenon one has to point to something different that the children should take up in their understandings for their later lives. These are the fairy tales which live in Central Europe, and particularly the fairy tales which the brothers Grimm⁵ collected. This is a much better literature for the children than Robinson. And if one understands that which now happens between the European peoples in such a frightful, such a grievous and destiny-burdened way as an admonition to look at the way a little more exactly that developed in the subsoil of the events, at that which extends to himself in the present, then one will know above all, that it does not depend really on whether now a few German scholars send back their medals and certificates to England. If the admonition of the time is so strong that one recognises the materialistically inspired consciousness-soul of the British people in its significance, one also understands the significance of the Robinson reading and eradicates the whole Robinson once. Much more thoroughly, much more radically one will have to set to work if one is able to take into consideration the admonitions of our time correctly one day.

Thirty-five years have now passed since I started interpreting Goethe, just in his spiritual-scientific task. I tried to show that in Goethe's theory of evolution a really great, spiritual theory of evolution is given. The time must come when that is seen in wider circles. For Goethe gave a great, tremendous and spiritual theory of evolution. This was hard to understand for the people. Then Darwin could work better in the materialistic age who gave that in a coarsened, materialistic way which Goethe gave in a fine, spiritual way as a theory of evolution. It was a thorough Anglicisation which seized Central Europe. Now imagine the tragedy which lies, actually, in the fact that the most English naturalist in Germany, Ernst Haeckel, who swore completely on Darwin, had to appear with his furious hatred about the English. When this war broke out, he was one of the first who sent back the received medals and certificates to England. To send back the English coloured Darwinism, he is probably too old, however, that would be the essential, the more important action.

The concerning matters are tremendously deep and important, and they are connected with the necessary spiritual deepening of our time. If one sees once that the Goethean theory of colours is infinitely deeper than the Newtonian theory of colours that the Goethean theory of evolution is infinitely deeper than Darwin's theory of evolution, then one finally becomes aware of that which the Central European cultural life involves, also with regard to such highest fields.

I will only arouse a sensation in your souls which admonitions the present grievous, destiny-burdened events must be to us. An admonition to work which should induce us to reflect that which is there in the Central European cultural life and which is as it were an obligation to get it out. I also meant this when I spoke yesterday in the public lecture⁶ about the fact that this Central European cultural life contains germs which must produce blossoms and fruits.

When we say time and again: the conscious soul-life takes place on the surface; however, beneath it there is something about which we have spoken during these days. Then we are also allowed to direct our thoughts to the fact that in the impulses of numerous human beings also in the present something lives that is quite different from that they are aware of. Do not believe that the human beings fight in the West and the East who have to defend the big Central European fortress only for that they are aware of in their consciousness. Look at the impulses above all which are unaware to many human beings who go through blood and death today. However, the impulses exist, and we should be able to get the sensation from spiritual science,—looking to the East and to the West—that in the impulses of those, who sacrifice their lives, something lives that the future has to bear only for the external experience, even if the fighters possibly have no premonition in their consciousness. Considering these events that way we can penetrate ourselves with the right feeling.

Take into account that many souls have gone through blood and death during these military events which cannot be compared with that which took place in the conscious history of humankind, and we imagine that these souls will look down on the death which was imposed to them by the big events of time. Imagine that for the purposes of what I said the day before yesterday the youthful etheric bodies permeate the spiritual atmosphere. Imagine that not only the souls, the individualities, are in the spiritual world, but that something useful of their young etheric bodies penetrates the spiritual atmosphere. Let us try to look at the admonitions which people should have, who are left here on the earth. Yes, the individual human being who has gone through the gate of death reminds us of the big tasks which are to be carried out in the European culture.

These admonitions must be heard. And people must be inclined to get recognising sensations of our conditions from the depth of the cultural life. If one feels once that way that everybody who remains today in the blossom of his years on the battlefield stands as an admonisher calling for the spiritualisation of humankind in the European culture, one will have properly understood it. One wants not only that from such sites as ours the abstract knowledge goes out: the human being consists of physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego, the human being goes through many incarnations, the human being has a karma and so on,—but one would want that the souls who take part in our spiritual-scientific life are roused in their internal depths to the sentient life which has just been suggested, to experience also that which the admonitions of the early deceased are in the next future. The nicest we can acquire to us as supporters of spiritual science is the vivid life which should go like a breath through those who count themselves to us. Not the knowledge, not the knowledge only, but this life, this life becoming reality.

In the last times, several members left us from the physical plane. Also a young co-worker, our dear Fritz Mitscher, died. I had, arranged by karma, the task to speak at the cremation in Basel. I had to speak certain words to the disappearing soul. Among various matters, I spoke to the soul that we are aware of the fact that he also remains as a co-worker, after he has gone through the gate of death. I had to speak this out of the consciousness that what invigorates us is not only a theory, but that it must fill our souls completely with life. Then, however, we must behave to those who have gone through the gate of death like to those who are here still in life. We must not be waiting to say to ourselves: human beings living in physical bodies are prevented by the most manifold circumstances from fully realising the spiritual life. Which inhibitions can we notice in this physical life on earth with the human beings if the really big tasks of development are involved—and have to be fulfilled then. But we can rely on the dead often better. This feeling that they are among us that a special mission can be transferred to them allowed me to speak the obituary for our friend Fritz Mitscher appropriately who has gone as an early deceased through the gate of death. What was said for him concerns many others who have gone through the gate of death. We regard them as our most important co-workers, and it will not be misunderstood if I say: even more than on the living we can rely on the dead with our spiritual work.

But that we can generally express such a thing, we have to stand quite vividly in that which our spiritual movement can give us. I rely on the fact that just the dead are now the most important co-workers for the spiritualisation of the future human culture on the external field in our destiny-burdened time. For this death is a great master at which those look back who have gone through the gate of death. Some people need a stronger teacher than life can be today. You can see this at various examples.

I would like to give an example—some other could be given. A spectacular article⁷, opposing against spiritual science, represented by me, appeared several years ago in a magazine which is published in South Germany, in the Hochland. This article caused a great sensation. It has made sense to many people because it was written by a quite famous philosopher. The editor of that magazine Hochland accepted this article. He supported, actually, as he thinks, such a view on this tricky spiritual science.

It does not depend really on defending oneself with external means against it. It is absolutely comprehensible that the quite clever people of the present consider spiritual science to be something foolish. But after the war had broken out, something different occurred. The editor of the mentioned magazine is a good German, a man feeling very German. Now the man whose article he accepted in those days has written letters to him, and this editor also has printed them, I may say, in his especially gifted “innocence” in the South German Monthly Magazine. Try once to read them, you will see that same philosopher venting his rage against the Central European spiritual culture so that the editor of the Hochland feels compelled to say: one can only find somebody, who thinks such matters, in madhouses in Central Europe. What an infinitely significant criticism. There is an editor of a South German magazine. This editor accepts an article which he considers to be authoritative to destroy spiritual science of which he says: this is a good article about spiritual science by a famous philosopher.—After some time the editor gets letters from the same man, who should be in a madhouse, as he says. So would one not have to continue, with the logic of life, and say: if the man is now a fool, he once was a fool, too, and the dear editor did only not realise in those days that he deals with a fool when he wrote against spiritual science.—This is logic of life. You cannot sometimes wait, until such logic of life works, but it already exists in our life. Thus you can sometimes experience something according to this prescription. In those days, the article appeared just against my spiritual science. People read him. People said: this is a famous philosopher and Platonist, he is especially clever.—The editor said to himself: if anybody who is so clever writes about spiritual science, this is a significant article.—Some time passes, and the same editor says: the man is a fool.—But he needed the proof in the just cited way. Such matters take place with the living human beings. Such people who have so little steady ground under their feet like that editor of the South German magazine need that they are taught by events which are given in much deeper sense by the life of the last times from the spiritual world than it is convenient.

Thus you understand when I return to that which I said just now: our time had many reluctant forces, and if we call the war an illness—we can do this,—this is an illness which was caused by something that took place long ago, and it is there to the recovery, so that something is eradicated that had to lead to the damage of the life of the whole culture gradually. If we call it illness in this sense, if we look at the illness as a defence, we understand this war and the destiny-burdened events of the present, understand it also in its significant hints and admonitions. We then experience it with all internal forces of our souls, so that we can surely take notice of those who have gone through the gate of death and look at the next future and really have learnt what they can inspire in the souls which they want to hear. That spiritual deepening which is necessary for the human welfare and progress in the next future must come into them.

If your souls can rightly take up that which I would like to say with these words, you are supporters of our spiritual-scientific world view in the right sense only now. If your souls can make the decision to become such souls which turn their attention to that which is murmured down from those who have gone through the gate of death because of the destiny-burdened events.

A connecting bridge between the living and the dead should be built by spiritual science just for the next future, a connecting line by which the inspiring elemental forces of those who have made the big sacrifices in our time are able to find their way to us.

That is why I wanted to stimulate sensations during these days, teaching to your souls. These sensations should be like sensations expecting that which is said to the souls by the effects of our destiny-burdened time. In this sense, I may close today again with the words that I already spoke here the day before yesterday that should have an effect like a mantram in our souls, so that our souls expect the inspiration which will come there from the dead who become particularly living in spirit:

From the courage of the fighters,
From the blood of the battles,
From the grief of the bereaved,
From the nation's sacrifices
Will grow up the fruits of spirit
If souls aware of spirit turn
Their senses to the spirit-land.

• 1. was originally a scientific term for the relationship of the Slavic languages. The idea of nationality of the Slavophils led to the demand to unite all the Slavic peoples under Russian dominion.
• 2. several Russian philosophers of the 19th century who stood up for the emancipation of the Russian culture in contrast to the “Westernisers.”
• 3. Joseph-Marie Comte de Maistre (1753–1821) stood up for absolutism and the feudal form of society. He regarded Catholicism and the papal primacy as foundations of the national and social life
• 4. Daniel Defoe (1660–1731) wrote The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe of York (1719)
• 5. Jacob Grimm (1785–1863) and Wilhelm Grimm (1786–1859) published their collection of fairy tales in 1810 for the first time.
• 6. The Human Destiny Seen in the Light of Spiritual Knowledge, Vienna, 8th May 1915, not yet published.
• 7. Wincenty Lutoslawski Rudolf Steiner's so-called Occult Science in Hochland October 1910

Arising out of yesterday's lecture a further question has been put to me in connection with our subject and I should like to deal with it here. The question is this: “With reference to the law of imitation in a child's movements I regard as important an explanation of the following fact. My grandfather died when my father was between eighteen months and two years old. When he was about forty-five my father visited one of my grandfather's friends who was astonished at the similarity of all my father's movements and gestures with those of my grandfather. What was the cause of this, seeing that owing to my grandfather's early death there could hardly be any question of imitation!”

So a man died when his son was between eighteen months and two years old and long afterwards, when the latter was in his 45th year, he heard from this friend, who was in a position to know, that as late as his 45th year he still imitated, or rather had the same gestures as his father.

Of course we are dealing here with matters of such a nature that it is scarcely possible to do more than give certain guiding lines, omitting detailed explanations. Unfortunately our courses of lectures are short, and the theme, if it were to be gone into fully, would need many lectures and ample time, six months for instance, or even a whole year. Very many questions are therefore likely to arise, and it may well be possible to answer these if they are brought forward. I must however point out that owing to the limited time at our disposal a certain lack of clarity will inevitably arise and this could only be cleared up if it were possible to enter fully into every detail. With reference to the question which has been put I should like to interpolate the following remarks.

If we take the first epoch of a child's life, that is, the time between birth and the change of teeth, the organisation of the child is working and developing in such a way that those predispositions are incorporated into the organism which I described yesterday as consisting of walking, which includes the general orientation of the human being, of speaking and thirdly of thinking.

Now this is how things follow one another. Between the first and seventh year of life the child is so organised that he is mainly concerned with gesture; between approximately the seventh and fourteenth year he is concerned with speech, as I explained yesterday; and, again speaking approximately, between his fourteenth and twenty-first year he is so organised that he is mainly concerned with thinking. What thus makes its appearance in the course of twenty-one years is however already taking shape as predisposition in the first period of life, between birth and the change of teeth. In so far as the assimilation of gesture is concerned, and this includes walking freely in space without need of support, so that the arms and also the muscles of the face can move in an expressive way—in other words a general orientation, finding a living relationship with gesture and movement—all this is developed mainly in the first third of these years, that is to say in the first 2⅓ years. The main development of the child during this time lies in the unfolding and building up of gesture. The gestures then continue to develop, but in addition something more intimate and inward is now impressed into the speech organism. Although the child has already uttered a few words nevertheless the experience of speech as predisposition takes place after 2⅓ years. The actual experience and feeling for speech is fully developed between the seventh and fourteenth year, but as predisposition it is there between 2⅓ and 4⅔ years old. Naturally all this must be taken as an average. From then on the child develops the faculty of experiencing inwardly the first beginnings of thought. What unfolds and blossoms later, between the 14th and 21st year is already developing germinally between 4⅔ and 7 years old. The forming of gestures continues of course throughout these years, but other faculties enter in. We see therefore that in the main we have to place the time for the unfolding and forming of gestures right back to the first 2½ years. What is gained during this time lies deepest. This is only natural, for we can well imagine how fundamentally the principle of imitation works in the very first years of life.

If you take all this together you will no longer find anything astonishing in what gave rise to the question that has been put here. The grandfather died when the father was between 1½ and 2 years old. Now this is precisely the time in which the forming of gesture is working most deeply. If the grandfather died then, the gestures the child imitated from him made by far the deepest impression. That is in no way altered by what may have been imitated later from other people. So just this particular case is extraordinarily significant when we consider it in detail.

We tried yesterday to explain how in the second period of life, between the change of teeth and puberty, the child in the course of his development experiences everything that finds its expression through speech, in which the self-understood authority of the teacher and educator must play its part. The intercourse between teacher and child must be of such a kind that it works in a pictorial, imaginative way. And I pointed out how at this age one cannot approach the child with moral precepts but can only work effectively on his moral nature by awakening in him such feelings as can be awakened by pictures: so that the child receives pictures described by his teacher and educator, who is also his model. These work in such a way that what is good pleases him and what is bad gives him a feeling of distaste. Therefore at this preparatory or elementary school age morality must be instilled in pictorial form by way of the feelings.

I explained further how writing must be brought to the child in a pictorial way and I showed how the forms of the letters must be developed out of the drawing-painting and the painting-drawing. Of all the arts this must be cultivated first, for it leads the child into civilisation. Everything which introduces the child at the very outset into the forms of the letters, which are completely strange to him, is quite wrong from an educational point of view; for the finished forms of the letters used in our present day civilisation work on the child like little demons.

Now in an education built up on a knowledge of man, learning to write must precede learning to read. If you want to come near to a child of this age, immediately after the change of teeth, you must as far as possible approach the whole being of the child. The child when occupied in writing does at least bring the whole of the upper part of the body into activity; there is an inner mobility which is quite different from when only the head is kept busy learning the forms of the letters. The emancipated, independent faculties of the head can only be made use of at a later age. For this reason we can make a transition by allowing the child also to read what he has written. In this way an impression is made on him.

By carrying out our teaching in this way at the Waldorf School it transpired that our children learn to read somewhat later than others; they even learn to write the letters a little later than children in other schools. It is necessary however, before forming a judgment in regard to this to be able really to enter into the nature of man with understanding. With the limited perception and feeling for a knowledge of man usual at the present day, people do not notice at all how detrimental it is for the general development of the human being if, as a child, he learns too early things so remote from him as reading and writing. Certainly nobody will experience any deficiency in his capacity to read and write, whose proficiency in these arts is attained somewhat later than others; on the other hand everyone who learns to read and write too early will suffer in this very respect. An education based on a knowledge of man must from the very beginning, proceed out of this ability to read human evolution and by understanding the conditions of life help the child in furthering the development of his own nature. This is the one and only way to a really health-giving education.

To gain deeper insight we must enter somewhat into the being of man. In man we have in the first place his physical body which is most intensively developed in the first epoch of life. In the second epoch the higher, finer body, the etheric body, develops predominantly. Now it is a matter of great importance that in this study of man we should proceed in a truly scientific way, and we must conjure up the same courage as is shown today in other branches of science. A substance showing a definite degree of warmth, can be brought into a condition in which that warmth, hitherto bound up with substance, becomes freed. It is liberated and then becomes “free” warmth. In the case of mineral substances we have the courage to speak scientifically when we say that there is “bound” warmth and “free” warmth. We must acquire the same courage when we study the world as a whole. If we have this courage then the following reveals itself to us in regard to man.

We can ask: Where are the forces of the etheric body in the first epoch of life? During this time they are bound up with the physical body and are active in its nourishment and growth. In this first epoch the child is different from what he becomes later. The entire forces of the etheric body are at first bound up with the physical body. At the end of the first epoch they are freed to some extent, just as warmth becomes free from the substances with which it was formerly bound up. What takes place now? Only a part of the etheric body is working after the change of teeth in the forces of growth and nourishment; the freed part becomes the bearer of the more intensive development of the memory, of qualities of soul. We must learn to speak of a soul that is “bound” during the first seven years of life and of a soul that has become free after the 7th year. For it is so. What we use as forces of the soul in the second seven years of life is imperceptibly bound up with the physical body during the first seven years; this is why nothing of a psychic nature becomes body free. A knowledge of how the soul works in the first seven years of life must be gained from observation of the body. And only after the change of teeth can any direct approach be made to what is purely of a soul nature.

This is a way of looking at things which leads directly from the physical to the psychological. Just think of the many different approaches to psychology today. They are based on speculation pure and simple. People think things over and discover that on the one hand we have the soul and on the other hand the body. Now the following question arises: Does the body work on the soul as its original cause, or is it the other way round? If they get no further either way, they discover something so extraordinarily grotesque as psychophysical parallelism, the idea of which is that both manifestations run parallel, side by side. In this way no explanation is given for the interaction of one with the other, but one speaks only of parallelism. This is a sign that nothing is known about these things out of experience. Out of experience one would have to say: In the first seven years of a child's life one perceives the soul working in the body. How it works must be learned through observation, not through mere speculation. Anthroposophy as a means of knowledge rejects all speculation and proceeds everywhere from experience, but of course from physical and spiritual experience.

So in the second period of life, in the time between the change of teeth and puberty the etheric body of man is our chief concern in education. Both teacher and child need above all those forces which are working in the etheric body, for these release the feeling life of the child, not yet judgment and thought. Deeply embedded in the nature of the child between the change of teeth and puberty is the third member of the human being, the astral body, which is the bearer of all feeling life and sensation. During this second period of life the astral body is still deeply embedded in the etheric body. Therefore, because the etheric body is now relatively free, we have the task to develop it in such a way that it can follow its own tendencies, helped and not hindered by education. When can it be so helped? This can happen when in the widest possible sense we teach and educate the child by means of pictures, when we build up imaginatively and pictorially everything that we wish him to absorb. For the etheric body is the body of formative forces; it models the wonderful forms of the organs, heart, lungs, liver and so on. The physical body which we inherit acts only as a model; after the first seven years, after the change of teeth, it is laid aside, and the second physical body is fashioned by the etheric body. This is why at this age we must educate in a way that is adapted to the plastic formative forces of the etheric body.

Now, just as we teach the child by means of pictures, just as, among other things, he learns to write by a kind of painting-drawing—and we cannot introduce the child too early to what is artistic, for our entire teaching must be permeated with artistic feeling—so must we also bear the following in mind. Just as the etheric body is inseparably associated with what is formative and pictorial, so the astral body, which underlies the life of feeling and sensation, tends in its organisation towards the musical nature of man. To what then must we look when we observe the child? Because the astral body between the change of teeth and puberty is still embedded in the physical and etheric bodies every child whose soul life is healthy is inwardly deeply musical. Every healthy child is inwardly deeply musical. We have only to call up this musicality by making use of the child's natural liveliness and sense of movement. Artistic teaching therefore must, from the very beginning of school life, make use both of the plastic and pictorial arts and also of the art of music. Nothing abstract must be allowed to dominate; it is the artistic approach which is all-important, and out of what is artistic the child must be led to a comprehension of the world.

But now we must proceed in such a way that the child learns gradually to find his own orientation in the world. I have already said that it is most repugnant to me if I see scientific text books brought into school and the teaching carried out along those lines. For today in our scientific work, which I fully recognise, we have deviated in many respects from a conception of the world which is in accordance with nature. We will now ask ourselves the following question, bearing in mind that in the course of discussion other things may have to be added. At about what age can one begin to teach children about the plant world?

This must be done neither too late nor too early. We must be aware that a very important stage in a child's development is reached between the 9th and 10th year. Those who see with the eye of a teacher observe this in every child. There comes a time in which the child, although he does not usually express it in words, nevertheless shows in his whole behaviour that he has a question, or a number of questions, which betray an inner crisis in his life. This is an exceptionally delicate experience in the child and an exceptionally delicate sense for these things is necessary if one is to perceive it. But it is there and it must be observed. At this age the child learns quite instinctively to differentiate himself from the outer world. Up to this time the “I” and the outer world interpenetrate each other, and it is therefore possible to tell the child stories about animals, plants and stones in which they all behave as though they were human beings. Indeed this is the best approach, for we should appeal to the child's pictorial, imaginative sense, and this we do if we speak about the kingdoms of nature in this way. Between the 9th and 10th year however the child learns to say “I” in full consciousness. He learns this earlier of course, but now he does so consciously. These years, therefore, when the consciousness of the child is no longer merged with the outer world, but when he learns to differentiate himself from it, are the time when we can begin, without immediately renouncing the pictorial element, to lead the child to an understanding of the plant world, but to an understanding imbued with feeling.

Today we are accustomed to look at one plant alongside of another, we know their names and so on; we do this as though the single plant was there for itself. But when we study the plant in this way, it is just as if you were to pull out a hair, and forgetting that it was on your head examine it for itself, in the belief that you can know something about its nature and life-conditions without considering it as growing out of your head. The hair only has meaning when it is growing on the head; it cannot be studied for itself. It is the same with the plant. One cannot pull it up and study it separately, but one must consider the whole earth as an organism to which the plants belong. This is actually what it is. The plants belong to the entire growth of the earth, in the same way as the hairs belong to our head. Plants can never be studied in an isolated way, but only in connection with the whole nature of the earth. The earth and the world of plants belong together.

Let us suppose that you have a herbaceous plant, an annual, which is growing out of the root, shooting up into stalk, leaves and flowers, and developing the fruit which is sown again in the following year. Then you have the earth underneath, in which the plant is growing. But now, think of a tree. The tree lives longer, it is not an annual. It develops around itself the mineralised bark which is of such a nature that pieces of it can be broken off. What is this in reality? The process is as follows: If you were to pile up around a plant the surrounding earth with its inherent forces, if you were more or less to cover it with earth, then you would bring this about in an external, mechanical way, through human activity. Nature however does the same thing by wrapping the tree round with the bark; only in this case it is not completely earth. In the bark there is a kind of hill of earth, the earth heaps itself up. We can see the earth flourishing and growing when we see the growing tree. This is why what surrounds the root of the plant must most certainly be reckoned as belonging to it. We must regard the soil as belonging to the plant.

Anyone who has trained himself to observe such things and happens to travel in a district where he notices many plants with yellow flowers will at once look to see what kind of soil it is. In such a case, where specifically many yellow flowers are to be seen, one is likely to find, for instance, a soil which is somewhat red in colour. You will never be able to think about the plant without taking into consideration the earth in which it grows. Both belong together. And one should lose no time in accustoming oneself to this; as otherwise one destroys in oneself a sense for realities.

A deep impression was made on me recently, when at the request of certain farmers, I gave an agricultural course, at the end of which a farmer said: Today everybody knows that our vegetables are dying out, are becoming decadent and this with alarming rapidity. Why is this? It is because people no longer understand, as they understood in bygone days, as the peasants understood, that earth and plants are bound together and must be so considered. If we want to foster the well-being of our vegetables so that they flourish again we must understand how to treat them in the right way, in other words, we must give them the right kind of manure. We must give the earth the possibility of living rightly in the environment of the plant roots. Today, after the failure of agricultural methods of development, we need a new impulse in agriculture based on Spiritual Science. This will enable us to make use of manure in such a way that the growth of plants does not degenerate. Anyone as old as I am can say: I know how potatoes looked 50 years ago in Europe—and how they look today! Today we have not only the decline of the West in regard to its cultural life, but this decline penetrates deeply also into the kingdoms of nature, for example, in regard to agriculture.

It really amounts to this, that the sense for the connection between the plant and its environment should not be destroyed, that on school outings and similar occasions die plants should not be uprooted and put into specimen containers and then brought into the classroom in the belief that thereby something has been achieved. For the uprooted plant can never exist just for itself. Today people indulge in totally unreal ideas. For instance they look upon a piece of chalk and a flower as having reality in the same sense. But what nonsense this is! The mineral can exist for itself, it can really do this. So the plant also (they say) should have an independent existence;

but it cannot, it ceases to be when it is uprooted from the ground. It only has earthly existence when it is attached to something other than itself, and that other only has existence in so far as it is part of the whole earth. We must study things as they are in their totality, not tear them out of it.

Almost all our knowledge based on observation teems with unrealities of this kind. This is why Nature Study has become completely abstract, although this is partly justified, as with the theory of relativity. Anyone, however, who can think in a realistic way cannot allow abstract concepts to run on and on, but notices when they cease to have any relationship with what is real. This is something he finds painful. Naturally you can follow the laws of acoustics and say: When I make a sound, the transmission of this sound has a definite speed. When I hear a sound anywhere, at any particular place, I can calculate the exact time its transmission will take. If now I move, no matter at what speed, in the direction the sound is travelling, I shall hear it later. Should my speed exceed the speed of the sound I shall not hear it at all; but if I move towards the sound I shall hear it earlier. The theory of relativity has its definite justification. According to this, however, we can also come to the following conclusion: If I now move towards the sound more quickly than the sound travels, I shall finally go beyond it, so that I shall hear the sound before it is made! This is obvious to anyone able to think realistically. Such a person also knows that logically it is absolutely correct, wonderfully thought out, to say that a clock (to take the famous comparison of Einstein) thrown with the speed of light into universal space and returning from thence, will not have changed in any respect. This can be wonderfully thought out. But for a realistic thinker the question must necessarily arise: What will the clock look like on its return? for he does not separate his thinking from reality, he remains always in the sphere of reality.

This is the essential characteristic of Spiritual Science. It never demands a merely logical approach, but one in accordance with reality. That is why people today, who carry abstractions even to the splitting of hairs, reproach us anthroposophists with being abstract, just because our way of thinking seeks everywhere the absolute reality, never losing the connection with reality, although here certainly the spiritual reality has to be included and understood. This is why it is possible to perceive so clearly how unnatural it is to connect plant study with specimens in a container.

It is therefore important when introducing the child to plant study that we consider the actual face of the earth and deal with the soil and plant growth as a whole, so that the child will never think of the plant as something detached and separate. This can be unpleasant for the teacher, for now he cannot take the usual botany books into class with him, have a quick glance at them during the lesson and behave as though he knew it all perfectly. I have already said that today there are no suitable botany text-books. But this sort of teaching takes on another aspect when one knows the effect of the imponderable and when one considers that in the child the subconscious works still more strongly than in older people. This subconscious is terribly clever and anyone able to perceive the spiritual life of the child knows that when a class is seated facing the teacher and he walks up and down with his notes and wants to impart the content of these notes to the children, they always form a judgment and think; Well, why should I know that? He doesn't even know it himself! This disturbs the lesson tremendously, for these feelings rise up out of the subconscious and nothing can be expected of a class which is taught by someone with notes in his hand.

We must always look into the spiritual side of things. This is particularly necessary when developing the art of education, for by doing so we can create in the child a feeling of standing firmly and safely in the world. For (in lessons on the plant) he gradually grasps the idea that the earth is an organism. And this it actually is and when it begins to become lifeless we must help it by making the right use of manure. For instance, it is not true that the water contained in the air is the same as that in the earth below. The water below has a certain vitality; the water above loses this vitality and only regains it when it descends. All these things are real, absolutely real. If we do not grasp them we do not unite ourselves with the world in a real way. This then is what I wished to say in regard to the teaching about the world of plants.

Now we come to the animal world and we cannot consider the animals as belonging to the earth in the same way. This is apparent from the mere fact that the animals can move about; in this respect they are independent. But when we compare the animals with man we find something very characteristic in their formation. This has always been indicated in an older, instinctive science, the after-effects of which still remained in the first third of the 19th century. When however a modern man with his way of looking at things reads the opinions expressed by those philosophers of nature who, following old traditions, still regarded the animal world in its relation to the human world, these strike him as being utterly foolish. I know that people have hardly been able to contain their laughter when in a study circle, during the reading from the nature philosopher, Oken, the following sentence occurred: “The human tongue is a cuttlefish.” Whatever could he have meant? Of course in actual fact this statement of Oken's can no longer be regarded as correct, but it contains an underlying principle which must be taken into account. When we observe the different animal forms, from the smallest protozoa up to the fully developed apes, we find that every animal form represents some part of the human being, a human organ, or an organic system, which is developed in a one-sided way. You need only look at these things quite crudely. Imagine that the human forehead were to recede enormously that the jaw were to jut right out, that the eyes were to look upwards instead of forwards, that the teeth and their whole nexus were also to be formed in a completely one-sided way. By imagining such an exaggerated, one-sided development you could get a picture of a great variety of mammals. By leaving out this or that in the human form you can change it into the form of an ox, a sheep and so on. And when you take the inner organs, for instance those which are connected with reproduction, you come into the region of the lower animals. The human being is a synthesis, a putting together of the single animal forms, which becomes softer, gentler, when they are united. The human being is made up of all the animal forms moulded into one harmonious structure. Thus when I trace back to their original forms all that in man is merged together I find the whole animal world. Man is a contraction of the whole animal world.

This way of looking at things places us with our soul life once more in a right relationship to the animal world. This has been forgotten, but it is nevertheless true; and as it belongs fundamentally to the principles of evolution it must again be brought to life. And, after having shown the child how the plant belongs to the earth, we must, in so far as it is possible today, proceed at about the nth year to a consideration of the animal world; and we must do this in such a way that we realise that in its various forms the animal world belongs, strictly speaking, to man himself. Think how the young human being will then stand in his relation to animal and plant. The plants go to the earth, become one with the earth; the animals become one with him! This gives the basis for a true relationship to the world; it places man in a real relationship to the world. This can always be brought to the child in connection with the teaching matter. And if this is done artistically, if we approach the subject in a living way, so that it corresponds with what the child in his inner being is able to grasp, then we give him living forces with which to establish a relationship to life. Otherwise we may easily destroy this relationship. But we must look deeply into the whole human being.

What really is the etheric body? Well, if it were possible to lift it out of the physical body and so impregnate it that its form were to become visible—then there would be no greater work of art than this. For the human etheric body through its own nature and through what man creates within it, is at one and the same time both work of art and artist. And when we introduce the formative element into the child's artistic work, when we let him model in the free way I described yesterday, we bring to him something that is deeply related to the etheric body. This enables the child to take hold of his own inner being and thereby place himself as man in a right relationship to the world.

By introducing the child to music we form the astral body. But when we put two things together, when we lead what is plastic over into movement, and when we form movements that are plastic, then we have eurythmy, which follows exactly the relationship of the child's etheric body to his astral body. And so now the child learns eurythmy, speech revealing itself in articulated gestures, just as he learned to speak quite naturally in his earlier years. A healthy child will find no difficulty in learning eurythmy, for in eurythmy he simply expresses his own being, he has the impulses to make his own being a reality. This is why, in addition to gymnastics, eurythmy is incorporated into the curriculum as an obligatory subject from the first school years right up into the highest classes.

So you see, eurythmy has arisen out of the whole human being, physical body, etheric body and astral body; it can only be studied by means of an anthroposophical knowledge of man. Gymnastics today are directed physiologically in a one-sided way towards the physical body; and because physiology cannot do otherwise, certain principles based on life-giving processes are introduced. By means of gymnastics, however, we do not educate the complete human being, but only part of him. By saying this nothing is implied against gymnastics, only in these days their importance is over-estimated. Therefore in education today eurythmy should stand side by side with gymnastics. I would not go as far as a famous physiologist did, who once happened to be in the audience when I was speaking about eurythmy. On that occasion I said that as a means of education gymnastics are over-rated at the present time, and that a form of gymnastics calling on the forces of soul and spirit, such as is practised in eurythmy side by side with the study of eurythmy as an art, must be introduced in addition to gymnastics as usually understood. At the end of my lecture the famous physiologist came up to me and said: Do you say that gymnastics may have their justification as a means of education because physiologists say so? I, as a physiologist, must say that gymnastics as a means of education are nothing less than barbarism! You would certainly be very astonished if I were to tell you the name of this physiologist. At the present time such things are already apparent to people who have some right to speak; and we must be careful not to advocate certain things in a fanatical way without a full knowledge of what is involved. To stand up fanatically for certain things is utterly out of place in connection with the art of education, because here we are dealing with the manifold aspects of life.

When we approach the other subjects which children have to be taught and do so from the various points of view which have here been considered, we come first to the years during which the child can only take in the pictorial through his life of feeling. History and geography, for instance, must be taught in this way. History must be described pictorially; we must paint and model with our words. This develops the child's mind. For during the first two stages of the second main epoch of life there is one thing above all to which the child has no relationship and this is what may be termed the concept of causation. Before the 7th year the child should most certainly not go to school. [i.e. to school as distinguished from a kindergarten.] If we take the time from 7 to 9⅓ years old we have the first subdivision of the second main epoch; from 9⅓ to 11⅔ years old we have the second stage and from 11⅔ until approximately the age of 14 we have the third stage. During the first stage of this second main epoch the child is so organised that he responds immediately to what is pictorial. At this age therefore we must speak as one does in fairy-tales, for everything must still be undifferentiated from the child's own nature. The plants must speak with one another, the minerals must speak with one another; the plants must kiss one another, they must have father and mother, and so on. At about 9⅓ years old the time has come which I have already characterised, when the ego begins to differentiate itself from the outer world. Then we can make a more realistic approach in our teaching about plants and animals. Always, however, in the first years of life history must be treated in fairy-tale, mythical mood. In the second subdivision of this longer epoch, that is to say, from 9⅓ until 11⅔ years old, we must speak pictorially. And only when the child approaches the age of 12 can one introduce him to the concept of causation, only then can one lead over to abstract concepts, whereby cause and effect can be allowed to enter in. Before this time the child is as inaccessible to cause and effect as anyone colour blind is to colours; and as an educator one often has absolutely no idea how unnecessary it is to speak to the child about cause and effect. It is only after the age of 12 that we can speak to him about things which today are taken for granted when looked at from a scientific point of view.

This makes it essential to wait until about the 12th year before dealing with anything that has to do with the lifeless, for this involves entering into the concept of causation. And in the teaching of history we must also wait until about this age before passing over from a pictorial presentation to one which deals with cause and effect, where the causes underlying historical events have to be sought. Before this we should only concern ourselves with what can be brought to the child as having life, soul-imbued life.

People are really very strange. For instance, in the course of cultural development a concept has arisen which goes by the name of animism. It is maintained that when a child knocks himself against a table he imagines the table to be alive and hits it. He dreams a soul into the table, and it is thought that primitive people did the same. The idea is prevalent that something very complicated takes place in the soul of the child. He is supposed to think that the table is alive, ensouled, and this is why he hits it when he bumps up against it. This is a fantastic notion. On the contrary those who study the history of culture are the ones who do actually “ensoul” something, for they “ensoul” this imaginative capacity into the child. But the soul qualities of the child are far more deeply embedded in the physical body than they are later, when they are emancipated and can work freely. When the child bumps against a table a reflex action is set up without his imagining that the table is alive. It is purely a reflex movement of will, for the child does not yet differentiate himself from the outer world. This differentiation first makes its appearance at about the 12th year when a healthy child can grasp the concept of causation. But when this concept is brought to the child too early, especially if it is done by means of crude external methods, really terrible conditions are set up in the child's development. It is all very well to say that one should take pains to make everything perfectly clear to a child. Calculating machines already exist in which little balls are pushed here and there in order to make the operations of arithmetic externally obvious. The next thing we may expect is that those of the same frame of mind will make moral concepts externally visible by means of some kind of machine in which by pushing something about one will be able to see good and evil in the same way as with the calculating machines one can see that 5 plus 7 equals 12. There are, however, undoubtedly spheres of life in which things cannot be made externally apparent and which are taken up and absorbed by the child in ways that are not at all obvious; and we greatly err if we try to make them so. Hence it is quite wrong to do as is often attempted in educational books and make externally apparent what by its very nature cannot be so treated. In this respect people often fall into really frightful trivialities.

In the years between the change of teeth and puberty we are not only concerned with the demonstrably obvious, for when we take the whole of human life into consideration the following becomes clear. At the age of 8 I take in some concept, I do not yet understand it fully; indeed I do not understand it at all as far as its abstract content is concerned. I am not yet so constituted as to make this possible. Why then do I take in the concept at all? I do so because it is my teacher who is speaking, because the authority of my teacher is self-understood and this works upon me. But today we are not supposed to do this; the child is to be shown what is visual and obvious. Now let us take a child who is taught everything in this way. In such a case what a child experiences does not grow with his growth, for by these methods he is treated as a being who does not grow. But we should not awaken in the child ideas which cannot grow with him, for then we should be doing the same thing as if we were to have a pair of shoes made for a three-year-old child and expect him to wear them when he is 12. Everything in the human being grows, including his power of comprehension; and so the concepts must grow with him. We must therefore see to it that we bring living concepts to the child, but this we can only do if there is a living relationship to the authority of the teacher. It is not achieved if the teacher is an abstract pedant who stands in front of the child and presents him with concepts which are as yet totally foreign to him. Picture two children. One has been taught in such a way that he takes in concepts and at the age of 45 he still gives things the same explanation that he learned when he was 8 years old. The concept has not grown with the child; he paid careful attention to it all, and at 45 can still explain it in the same way. Now let us take a second child who has been educated in a living way. Here we shall find that just as he no longer wears the same size shoes as he did when he was 8 years old, so at a later age he no longer carries around with him the same concepts that he learned when he was 8. On the contrary; these concepts have expanded and have become something quite different. All this reacts on the physical body. And if we look at these two people in regard to their physical fitness we find that the first man has sclerosis at the age of 45, while the second has remained mobile and is not sclerotic. How great do you think the differences are which come to light between human beings? In a certain place in Europe there were once two professors of philosophy. One was famous for his Greek philosophy; the other was an old Hegelian, an adherent of the school of Hegel, where people were still accustomed to take in living concepts, even after the age of 20. Both were lecturers at the same university. At the age of 70 the first decided to exercise his right to retire on a pension, he felt unable to continue. The second, the Hegelian professor, was 91 and said: “I cannot understand why that young fellow is settling down to retirement already.” But the conceptual life of this second professor had retained its mobility. People criticised him for this very reason and accused him of being inconsistent. The other man was consistent, but he suffered from sclerosis!

There exists a complete unity in the child between the spiritual and the bodily, and we can only deal rightly with him when we take this into consideration. Today people who do not share the views of materialists say that materialism is a bad thing. Why? Many will say that it is bad because it understands nothing of the spiritual. This, however, is not the worst, for little by little people will become aware of this lack, and as a result of the urge to get the better of it they will come to the spiritual. The worst thing about materialism is that it understands nothing of matter! Look into it yourselves and see what has become of the knowledge of the living forces of man in lung, liver and so on under the influences of materialism. Nothing is known about how these things work. A portion is removed from the lung, the liver and so forth and this is prepared and examined, but by means of present-day scientific methods nothing is learned of the spirit working actively in the human organs. Such knowledge can only be gained through spiritual science. The material reveals its nature only when studied from the aspect of spiritual science. Materialism has fallen sick, and the cause of this sickness is above all because the materialist understands nothing of matter. He wants to limit himself to what is material but he cannot penetrate to any knowledge of what is material in a real sense. In saying this I do not mean the “thought-out” material, where so and so many atoms are supposed to dance around a central nucleus: for things of this kind are not difficult to construct. In the earlier days of the Theosophical Society there were theosophists who constructed a whole system based on atoms and molecules; but it was all just thought out. What we have to do now is to approach reality once again. And if one actually does this one has a feeling of discomfort when one is supposed to grasp some concept which is entirely devoid of reality. One experiences pain when, for instance, someone propounds a theory such as this: Fundamentally it is one and the same thing whether I drive my car to a town, or whether the car stands still and the town comes to me. Certainly things of this kind are justified when looked at from a certain point of view. But drawn out to the extent that occurs today among those who hold completely abstract opinions, they impoverish the entire life of the human soul. And anyone who has a sense for such things experiences great pain in regard to much of what people think today, which works so destructively on teaching methods. For instance, I see the tendencies of certain methods applied already to little children in the kindergarten, who are given ordinary cut-out letters and then learn to pick them out of a heap and put them together to form words. By occupying the child in this way at such an early age we are bringing him something to which as yet he has absolutely no relationship. When this happens to him the effect is the same as if in real thinking one were to say: I was once a man who still had muscles, skin and so on; now I am merely a skeleton. So it is today under the influence of this propensity for abstractions in the spiritual life of mankind: one sees oneself suddenly as a skeleton. With such an outlook, however, which is the bare skeleton of reality, we cannot approach the child in education.

Because of this I wanted to show today how everything depends on the teacher approaching life in a true and living way.

First of all, I would like to express my warmest greetings to you, who have come here as the teachers from our immediate neighborhood. I am convinced that those who take an active interest in our Goetheanum and everything , will join me in wholeheartedly welcoming you on behalf of this Goetheanum and its workers and in expressing our great joy at having you here as our guests.

It has been suggested that I should discuss a few things that have emerged, and in some cases already been put into practice, in the wake of our spiritual scientific endeavors for the pedagogical arts and for the school system, before our eurythmic performance.

But before that, let me make a more general comment.

You see, what is to emerge from our anthroposophically intended spiritual science in pedagogical and didactic terms still has, in principle, few truly understanding representatives in the world today; it has all the more uncomprehending opponents and just as many people who, due to the general state of mental sleep of humanity today, are indifferent to such endeavors. But just in the very last days, things have happened that may be considered as, I would say, a sign, as on the one hand, so to speak, through lonely personalities from the whole breadth of our civilized life, the outlook is opened up to what is to happen from this Goetheanum building in Dornach. I must describe it as an important fact, even if only as a symptom, that the old professor Spitta in Tübingen, who is so well known to us, and who has concluded his teaching activities in these days, has given his last lecture in such a way that it culminated in a discussion of the most eminent spiritual-scientific truth: the truth of repeated earth lives. But not so much that this university teacher, at the solemn moment of the conclusion of his university career, once again professed what he had actually held all his life – that does not even seem as significant to me as the other thing, that he said at this lecture: Gentlemen, just imagine what it would mean for human knowledge and, above all, for human action in the future if this view were to become more widespread. It is a significant mark of a man who has grown old in science and in the philosophy of the present day when he concludes his teaching career with such a confession! For one can well imagine that the terrible events of the time have made a very deep impression on such a personality and that precisely such a personality, in lonely thought, feels the need to say what could help today's declining humanity from the spirit, from the soul, which in turn could lead to a revival.

You see, that is what I would like to say from one side: wherever there are discerning, feeling souls, the views that are represented here in a scientific context and that are also expected here to flow into all civilizational life of our time, can be seen at least as intuitions, which from here want to be represented in a scientific context and which are also expected here to be able to counteract the decline with a new dawn.

But these are flashes of light that arise in isolated places. Those who observe them will perceive them as rare flashes of light, but they will recognize from them the striving, especially among the best of our time, for a renewal of spiritual life from very, very deep sources of the soul. This is, however, opposed by what arises today out of a certain not only drowsiness, but, to put it mildly, out of an enormous superficiality of our time; which arises out of a superficiality that often leads to frivolity, especially in circles that are publicly active in journalism, with regard to the great questions of existence and human life. And after I have shown you a flash of light, I would also like to show you, so to speak, some of the shadows, which, however, do not occur in isolation, but are widespread. I could cite hundreds of facts in support of the last assertion; but I will now present only one particularly characteristic one.

One of our English friends has endeavored to arouse interest in London for what is to take place here in Dornach. He tried to place a very truthful and objective little article in what appears to be a respected journal – there are many such journals and newspapers at present. The journalist, who listened to the matter, with whom the gentleman in question was, a journalist from London, was very friendly and extremely accommodating. He promised to advocate the matter in such a way that a visit from about as many people as are here today to give us the pleasure of being here should be arranged from London. The journalist in question then said something about how transformative what he had been told was. I would like to read you something about this transformation as a document of the frivolity with which people speak today of that which they do not know — for the journalist naturally had no idea of what is going on here in Dornach. Something like this shows how little people today are inclined to respond at all when something wants to assert itself from a source that honestly believes it can counter decline with an ascent. So the following appears in a London magazine as the result of this interview, which the journalist conducted favorably:

Remarks and comments

A School of Spiritual Science

A School of Spiritual Science has been established at the Goetheanum in Dornach, near Basel, Switzerland. The building itself exemplifies a new concept of art initiated by Dr. Rudolf Steiner. It is planned to organize a trip to Basel to visit it, and Dr. Steiner has promised to personally instruct the participants during the ten-day visit, which is to take place in August. Assuming that the trip takes four days, it will be possible for the participants to recover from the shock of the first sight of Dr. Steiner's creation during the remaining six days. Assuming that no one who can make the journey wants to miss out on what we expect will be an interesting experience, we will provide an illustration of what awaits participants at the end of their pilgrimage, and if any of our readers are going to travel, we hope that they will do us the favor of sharing their impressions with us upon their return.” [«The Architect», No. 34, London July 16, 1920]

So you see, this is how you treat something you don't know. This is the mood of the world today, these are the difficulties we have to fight against.

Now, my dear attendees, spiritual science is there for many and it should – this will be shown above all in our autumn course, which is to open on 26 September – exert a fruitful influence on all possible branches of spiritual life. In spring, a more limited course here already showed how the medical-therapeutic field can be enriched by spiritual science. And it is the same for the most diverse fields. The outer form of the building itself is intended to bear witness to what can be artistically attempted through spiritual science that can be absorbed into our perceptions. But today I want to speak to you about the consequences that spiritual science can have in the field of education and teaching. I am not speaking to you about some kind of program that we would not give a damn about, nor am I speaking to you about some kind of theoretical pedagogical discussion. I am speaking to you about something that has already been put into practice during the school year at our “Freie Waldorfschule” in Stuttgart. This Free Waldorf School in Stuttgart was founded by Emil Molt. Its initial aim was to bring to life in practice what can arise from a development of what can be found in our spiritual science, above all, for a real understanding of man and thus also of the child.

You see, it is particularly important to me that we already have a year of real school practice behind us. I attach particular importance to this because all of this spiritual science, as it is to be brought into the world from the Goetheanum in Dornach, would basically be nothing more than just another sectarian movement or some worldview theory or the like — there are already many such beautiful things in the world — if something else were not there; if this spiritual science, in particular, did not want something completely different from everything that comes into the world in this way. This spiritual science does not want to produce ideas for a new world view; this spiritual science does not want to be some kind of theory or even a new religious confession, as it has been slanderously accused of — the latter least of all. What it wants to be was not originally conceived with reference to any religious confession, but rather it was conceived with the scientific way of thinking and attitude of our time in mind. It was conceived as that which can be brought forth by the human spirit and soul in the form of knowledge, just as natural science, which has been so fruitful for our time, has been brought forth as knowledge for physical life. And this spiritual science is based on the fact that if one applies the right methods, which I have described in my books “The Secret Science in the Outline” and “How to Obtain Knowledge of Higher Worlds?”, one is able to gain just as certain knowledge, so enclosed, contoured knowledge about soul and spirit, as one can gain through the scientific methods of the present for the physical world.

However, the work that needs to be done to arrive at spiritual scientific knowledge in a truly methodical way is no more comfortable or easier than the work that needs to be done in a chemistry or physics laboratory, at an observatory, or in a clinic. Just because people imagine that anthroposophical researchers are people who conjure up all kinds of ideas that can be had quickly, that are quickly drawn from the imagination - just because people imagine this, that is why they misunderstand the paths that are to be taken from anthroposophy into the spiritual world. If one familiarizes oneself with the way in which man, in a self-education of his entire being, can alone come to open up within himself views of the spiritual world that are just as exact and certain as the results of natural science; only if one informs oneself about how long it takes to research relatively small, insignificant truths that are added to external-physical knowledge - let us say, for example, for the doctrine of human sense, for human anatomy or the like; only if one realizes how decades of research are often necessary for the most trivial little things in the field of spiritual science: then one will learn to understand that research in this field is by no means more convenient and easier than research in the clinical field, in the observatory, in the physics or chemistry laboratory. But today one does not yet have the will to accept that there can be such research into the mind and soul.

The intentions that have emerged over the last three to four centuries, and particularly in the 19th century, for scientific knowledge have been great and powerful. And I do not need to tell you what this scientific knowledge has brought to the world. But there is one thing I would like to mention: that anyone who stands firmly on the ground of our anthroposophically-based spiritual science will be the very last to disparage anything legitimate in scientific research. Because that is the first thing to be considered: that only those who are not dabbling or even lay in the scientific work of today can stand firm in the field of our spiritual science. Only when one has acquired scientific conscientiousness and scientifically rigorous research methods in the laboratory, in the observatory and so on, when one has educated oneself to the exactitude of research, only then has one awakened in oneself the inner moral world-view that is necessary to become a spiritual researcher. In the outer world, as one says, one always has the rough reality before one, which corrects one. If I am a bad bridge builder in theory and calculate a bridge badly, then the falling train will teach me that I have built my bridge badly. And so the correction is always there if one wants to apply the laws seen by the spirit in the outer physical reality. However, the further we ascend from the lower foundations of physical reality and approach the actual research of mind and soul, the more precarious its exploration of reality becomes. And if you were as strict in judging a doctor who has to rebuild destroyed health as you are in judging nature when it corrects a bad mechanic by means of a crashing train, you would not be able to proceed in the same way according to today's view. Because as a mechanic you can be checked by nature. Whether someone has died despite or even because of medicine - that's where things get a little shakier! And when one reaches the spiritual and psychic spheres, one must bring with one's inner conscientiousness and, above all, the most earnest and strict sense of truth if one wants to conduct supersensible research, for then it is easy to mistake fantasy for reality.

But something very special happens when one acquires the method for spiritual research in this way through inner soul education and soul training. What happens is that one comes closer to the things of the world than one does as an external naturalist. For you see, that is precisely the remarkable thing about the more materialistic natural science of modern times: on the one hand, it places itself before the world of facts of the outer senses, but, by creating ideas for itself in natural laws, this outer sense world, it has increasingly become more and more intellectualized, theoretical, and divorced from reality, so that the newer researchers of worldviews no longer know how to connect the ideas they concoct with reality. They often research whether the ideas that man carries in his soul still have anything to do with external reality. This is the tragedy of the modern, scientifically oriented worldview: people may profess this worldview; they want to deal with reality, with mere external reality, and they come away from this external reality precisely through their ideas. They no longer have the living connection, the connection of the whole human being with living reality. They want to go for reality and grow out of reality. One arrives at abstract intellectualized soul content. And so it happens that the more man grows into materialism, the more he grows out of reality.

If one now sets out on the path of spiritual research, one immediately has the inner experience: you immerse yourself in reality; you do not just stand there looking at your object, but you immerse yourself in this reality with your entire soul life; you become one with reality. That is why spiritual science, as it is meant here, can never exist without one beginning to love and loving more and more the thing one wants to know. Spiritual science is at the same time something that, when it asserts itself in our soul, permeates us with love for the world; which cannot be at all, even though it strives for mathematical clarity in the formulation and shaping of ideas, without seizing the whole human being, the feeling and the will. Therefore, I may say: the practical testing of what follows pedagogically and didactically from spiritual science is actually the only thing that can be valuable to us. Because talking about something, no matter how beautiful the theories are, when you are alienated from what you are talking about: that is basically easy and is the task that numerous world-view people and confession founders set themselves today. What is wanted here has nothing to do with that. Rather, it is precisely this immersion in reality and especially human reality that arises quite naturally in the wake of this spiritual science through nature, through the essence of this spiritual science.

And so it comes about that, above all, what arises through this spiritual science is a more intimate knowledge of the human being itself. Such a recognition of the human being that the one who now stands before the developing human being, the child - before this wonderful world riddle that is born, that in the first days of its external existence shows us the wonderful construction of a physical organism out of the spiritual and soul in every moment , and then, as it grows up, shows us how everything is formed out of the inner being, out of the soul and spirit, that the person who is now confronted with this living mystery of the world, this developing human being, as a teacher or educator, grows together with his task in such a way that one can truly say: Spiritual science is then the fire through which love for education and teaching is directly awakened. That is the goal of all our striving here: to get to know the human being.

But we cannot get to know the human being without getting to know him as he is becoming. And if we really want to get to know the human being as he is becoming, then we even have to enrich our language with a new word. For those who look a little deeper into the reality of life, all the languages of European civilization have only one word for the fundamental fact of life, and there should be two! They have one word. Now, if we go back to primeval times, to those times of human life that only old documents speak of in a mythical way, then we find something similar to what we need again: when we speak of the eternal, of the indestructible in the human being, as opposed to the destructible, perishable body. We need another word to accompany our word 'immortality', which points to the physical end of life; we need the word 'unborn'. For just as we pass through the gate of death with our eternal, spiritual part and live on in the spiritual world – a different life that can be seen through by spiritual research – we also step out of the spiritual world before we are born or conceived here, down to this physical embodiment on earth. We not only pass through the gate of death as immortals, but also come through the gate of birth as the unborn. We need the word 'unborn' in addition to the word 'immortal' if we want to fully grasp the human being in his essence.

What I am hinting at here can be found in my writings, explained from all sides. I can only give you the main features, so to speak, because I want to show you what becomes of human life and human feeling if we want to make such a view fruitful.

Imagine a teacher who, like our Waldorf teachers in Stuttgart, has gone through everything that can be experienced when spiritual science is allowed to take effect on the soul. Imagine him standing before the developing human being, the child. He has not only a gray theory, he has this as a living purpose in life: he says to himself, “The souls have descended from spiritual worlds, these souls on which I now have to work.” And now, from the pedagogy and didactics that follow from spiritual science, knowledge is imparted to him about how these souls can be treated from year to year, from month to month. And I may perhaps give you an idea, since you are all educators of young people, based on a small detail, which in my case is the result of more than three decades of research. This idea, if it does not remain an idea, does not remain a thought, but when it becomes a living activity in the educator and teacher, it evokes a remarkably stimulating relationship between the teacher and the pupil, between the educator and the child to be educated. You see, today in psychology there is much talk about the relationship between the physical and the spiritual. And there are theories that say how soul and body are to interact. But these things are not studied. We do not have the method of spiritual science by which one can study these things. Because one has to study them in detail. You cannot talk about the relationship between the human soul and the body by rambling in generalities, but you have to know all the details. Details of the soul affect details of the human body. I will only hint at which of the individual ideas around which the matter revolves I actually mean.

We first observe the child before they start school. We know that they initially have what are known as milk teeth. From the age of six to eight, they then produce their permanent teeth. This is an extraordinarily important period in the life of someone who does not just observe the outer human being, but observes the whole human being through spiritual science. It is no coincidence that this period coincides with the one in which the child is handed over to the primary school. For what finally pushes through as teeth comes from forces that are present in the whole human being and are active in the whole human being; and that is, so to speak, the final point; when these second teeth appear, an end is put to something that has been active in the human organism until then. That which was active there has gone as far as the emergence of the teeth.

Now, anyone who observes human life more deeply will find that, from a certain stage of human life onwards, memory, and in particular the ability to combine and to imagine, takes on a very specific structure. What later becomes intellectual life particularly emerges from this stage of life onwards. And if we now follow what takes place in the soul and spirit of the child up to the point in time when the second teeth mainly shoot out, if we follow this quite appropriately, as one follows a natural object under the microscope, what becomes of the soul when the teeth are out? then you discover that it is the same power that first flooded and permeated the organism and then emancipated itself from the organism and became free in the soul to become the intellectual faculty.

You observe the child from the age of seven or nine, his life of soul and mind, and you say to yourself: What now emerges as mind has previously, when it was still in the subconscious, worked in the organism. That was active as soul in the body.

I will now summarize something for you that, as I said, is the result of more than three decades of research. You have observed in a very concrete way how the soul works in the body, although it does not appear in its original, natural form until the first seven years. This is how it is everywhere with our spiritual science. Based on strict research principles, it talks about the relationship between soul and body, not philosophically and rambling, but according to concrete results, how the individual soul, in this case the mind, first worked on the body. We follow how the mind works inside the body and gradually organizes the body until the teeth have erupted.

And so it can be done over and over again, and one can come to an understanding of the whole human body from the spiritual-soul realm. Here, theories are not constructed about the interaction of soul and body. Here, not only the human being present in a particular period of time is observed, but the whole human being is followed. One cannot ask: How do soul and body interact from birth to the change of teeth? For that which has been working there only appears externally from the seventh to the fourteenth year of life. Then a new epoch begins. And so, step by step, spiritual science is used to study what this human being actually is. This does not result in the abstract, grey theory of man that we are accustomed to finding in the usual textbooks and manuals; it gives us something that fills us with the realization of how we are filled with something in an individual, personal relationship with what we encounter in life and what interests us directly from life.

This opens our eyes to the development of the human being, the child: how the soul of the child develops more and more in the outer body. And this ignites the will to approach this developing child in the pedagogically correct way. Then one acquires the ability to say how the developing child actually stands in relation to what is to be offered to him.

You see, we teach our children to read and write. If we disregard certain primeval times of humanity, when reading and writing was still very close to human perception – I am only thinking of the old pictographic scripts – and look at our times, at our times of civilization – and we must, after all, live in them and educate ourselves in them – yes, what are our characters, what are our letters, if not something that is very far removed from the original, elementary, childlike experience! The child is actually introduced to a world that is quite foreign to him if he is to learn to read and write. It is not the same with arithmetic, because that is more human. Counting is much more closely related to the original and elementary human soul than reading and writing. Writing has developed further, and pictures have become signs through which one enters a foreign world.

Now, based on our essential insights into human nature, we have planned for our Waldorf curriculum that the child, by being educated and taught in the primary school in the beginning, learns to write from the artistic comprehension of writing and then learns to read from writing. So we do not introduce the child to foreign characters, but we seek out the way from the child's nature – which gives us spiritual scientific guidance to recognize it more precisely: How does the hand want to move? What does the hand experience when it makes a stroke, an action? We let the child draw. We let the child develop what is connected with its elementary nature; and only from that do we develop the written characters. So we start from life and lead to the abstract. We avoid bringing the intellectual element to the fore in any way. We start from life.

And we also start from life in such a way that, for example, we do not bring into the curriculum the kind of alternation that some people find so beneficial, where something different is done in every lesson. Instead, we work on a particular subject in the main lessons until the child has mastered it, until the child has understood it. Therefore, we do not have a curriculum of lessons, but for the main school subjects we have a curriculum that remains the same for about three months. Of course, this excludes languages and so on.

And then we try to fit everything that needs to be learned into the time when the child can develop the subject of its own accord. For example, we try to study everything that follows from the fact that what has been working in the organism at first, then stops working when the teeth change, coming to fruition from year to year in the eighth, ninth, tenth year. We observe what we can teach the child in a particular year, starting from the very first rudiments of observation of nature and historical life. We try to put into practice what is often said today, but which must remain abstract. The pedagogy that we have today is not to be criticized. I have the highest regard for what is available in the way of theoretical education and pedagogical instructions. I do not believe that we can add anything essential to that. But in what we can add from spiritual science because it is a living thing, that is in awakening the pedagogical approach, the didactic, in the utilization of precise human knowledge in the child. Thus, if guided by the insights of spiritual science, one can carefully study how around the age of nine a very important phase takes place in the child's soul. Until then, the child is actually always in such a state that it does not differ significantly from the environment. Around the age of nine, the child begins to differ from the environment to such an extent that from then on we begin to talk about plants and animals quite differently than before. And history lessons should only be taught in a fairy-tale or legendary way, in a pictorial way. They should only be taught at all – even in the very early stages – after the child has learned to distinguish itself from its environment, so around the age of nine.

Thus, through spiritual science, we strive to understand the human being in principle – not only in general pedagogical and didactic terms – and this shows us what we have to accomplish for the developing human being day after day. But all this still has something of thinking, of the conceptual, about it. Something much more important is the other.

Just think about what it means for education if you take the view that we have before us in man only the highest being in the animal series, and we have to develop in him what he receives through physical birth. Through spiritual science, on the other hand, the teacher starts from the basis that A spiritual being has descended from the spiritual world; it has embodied itself in a physical human being. It has brought spiritual substance from the spiritual world and combined it with what comes from the hereditary stream. We have this whole living human puzzle before us and have to work on its development. — How one is overcome by a tremendous reverence for the developing human being! For awe-inspiring stands before us, what the gods have sent down to us from heaven to earth.

And the second feeling that creeps up on us when we face the child is an enormous sense of responsibility; but a sense of responsibility that carries us, that really gives us strength and will to educate and teach. It is therefore something that can enter a person alive. I do not want to be misunderstood. What I mean is that what enters the human being as life – not as theory, not as theoretical pedagogy, not as doctrinaire pedagogy – that is what comes to us through spiritual science. For spiritual science does not just want to reflect the general life of the world in ideas; it wants to enable human beings to partake in this general life of the world. That is why things that arise from spiritual science play a role in educational activities that are based on it, and that we only really notice when we engage with this spiritual science.

We often find ourselves in a position where we have to say something to children that initially goes beyond their understanding when we teach it to them in concepts. Let us assume that we want to teach a child about the nature of the immortal human soul. Those who have experience know how difficult this is if we want to take the matter responsibly and reverently. Let us assume – I want to start from a comparison – we look at a butterfly pupa. We say to the child: Look, the butterfly will fly out of this chrysalis; you will see the butterfly when it comes out of the chrysalis. It is the same with the human soul; the human soul leaves the chrysalis of the body at the moment of death. You just cannot see this soul. An image presents itself to the children.

People often think that if someone does something in this way, it is the same as if someone else does it. Spiritual science shows us that this is not the case. If I have to think about it first to realize that the butterfly pupa with the butterfly flying out is an image for the immortal human soul, if I, because the child is more stupid than I am, I cobble together the image and bring it to him so that he can understand immortality – if you approach the child with this attitude, you are not teaching the child. Only if you believe in the image yourself, you are teaching the child the right thing. And I will be quite honest with you: for me, based on spiritual science, this is not a pieced-together image, but a fact; the human soul goes through what the butterfly shows in the image. And it is not my intellect that has found in this butterfly the image for immortality, but rather: at a lower level of nature, the same process is present. The image is made by nature, by the spirit of nature itself. I do not create the image, but I believe that in the butterfly emerging, nature's creative powers represent the same as the human soul leaving the body. I do not believe that the child is stupid and I am clever, but I place myself on the same level because I have honestly gained what I say to the child in consciousness. I must believe it to the same extent and in the same way that I want to teach it to the child. Then there is something imponderable, then it is really my soul and the child's soul, which at that moment are still connected by quite different forces than by the words that live in concepts and thoughts and theories. This connection with the developing child's soul through such things is often what matters.

And again we see how, in recent times, many things have been misunderstood in a one-sided way. People have striven more and more to teach children only what they can understand. But in so doing they descend more and more into the most dreadful triviality. Just think how banal and ordinary things would have to be presented in order for a child to understand them! And when you look at the method books that describe how to teach children, you will be horrified at the banalities you are supposed to inflict on children.

There is one thing that is so important and meaningful for human life that we simply do not know. When we get to know human life, it is like this: sometimes, perhaps at the age of thirty-five, we remember something we may have learned in the eighth year. If we have learned it correctly, from the right spirit, we know it as clearly as if it had happened yesterday. You also remember: You did not understand that, you accepted that on authority. — You felt that: I am younger, the teacher is older, he understands it, I do not understand it. Now, at thirty-five, the whole thing comes up again. Now you understand it because you have matured. Once people appreciate what it means when, in later life, you feel empowered by your own maturity to understand something that you used to believe only because you respected the person who told you, because he was an authority — if people would only grasp this, then they would also be able to appreciate what it means when spiritual science says: you have to look at the child as it develops up to about the age of seven, and you will find that the child is above all an imitator. It does everything that those around it do. This is a basic law of human nature developing during these years. You cannot educate by admonishment, but only by example, right down to the thoughts. Those who have impure thoughts in their childhood have a bad effect on children. For the souls have a subconscious connection. So, right down to the thoughts, everything is experienced by the child up to the change of teeth in an imitative way and is incorporated into the whole human being by imitation.

But then, with the change of teeth, with the entry of the intellectual part of the soul, begins what the human soul wants until sexual maturity: devotion to an honored authority. This should be said especially to our time, that it corresponds to a human law of development. The child can absorb truths during this time because it sees that the honored authority depends on these truths. Those who have not experienced absorbing truths out of a sense of authority, roughly from the ages of seven to fourteen, can hardly stand on their own two feet in life as independent and free human beings, for they have not developed the right relationship between people in their humanity!

Therefore, our educational philosophy is based on the fundamental principle that up to the age of seven, education and teaching should be based on imitation. The teacher in the primary school up to the age of fourteen then finds himself so isolated that he is the only authority. It has an enormous significance for life if one can later remember: Through your own maturity, you have now achieved something that was instilled during your school days. This gives a special strength. In this way, schooling and education have an effect on later life, when the teacher, through the authority that is taken for granted, teaches the child what he will only understand later. In general, it is easy and plausible for superficial observation: one only wants to teach the child what he understands. But then one makes people old early. One destroys life. One does not give the human being the right earthly substance for later life.

With these truths, I only wanted to make it clear how, not from theoretical pedagogy, but through what a person can become by permeating themselves with spiritual science, in the human relationship, that is achieved for the child, which we would like to add to what the pedagogy of the 19th century has produced in terms of the magnificent, in terms of very magnificent principles. Spiritual science wants to fertilize life out of the need of our time, because it is a recognition that permeates the human being completely in his innermost being. Therefore, this must be carried out in every detail. Our teachers and educationalists should work from the direct knowledge of the human being. Therefore, anyone who says that we want to introduce a new confession, a world view, into the school is judging us badly.

At our Freie Waldorf School in Stuttgart, whose top management I am in charge of and which I have to inspect from time to time, I said from the outset: It is impossible for us to bring the content of a world view into the school. Protestant children are taught their faith by Protestant pastors, Catholic children by Catholic pastors. Dissident children can remain dissident children. When a whole number of these children or their parents came to us and said: Yes, what you teach the children awakens in them the feeling that they should also receive a religious impulse - so the dissident parents came, not just those who belong to any confession; the present confessions do not manage to create such a strong religious need. We were forced to set up general religious education classes because the children educated in the anthroposophical tradition had a religious need arising from the spirit of our teaching and because the children of dissident parents did not want to send their children to religious education classes within a confessional framework. The children who receive these classes would otherwise have received no classes at all. And as I said, Catholic children receive Catholic religious education and Protestant children receive Protestant religious education. We can, because we do not want to bring a particular worldview into the school, be tolerant in the true, genuine sense in this regard. And this tolerance truly bears good fruit in practice. For what we are seeking is not to bring a worldview or confession into the school, but a practical pedagogy and didactics that can come from spiritual science and only from spiritual science. We have a purely objective educational interest in setting up our school and not in promoting any particular worldview. And anyone who claims that we promote a worldview out of our spiritual science, anyone who claims that, is lying. Only someone who knows how we want to serve nothing but practical life through that which, in the face of this life, does not stand in unworldly distances, but precisely through this knowledge, as I have just described to you, is connected with practical life, judges what we want correctly.

That is why we have included eurythmy in the curriculum as a compulsory subject. You will not think me so foolish as to object to the beneficial effects of gymnastics, which were rightly emphasized in the 19th century. But the time will come when people will think more objectively about these things. Then it will be found that gymnastics does correspond to human physiology; it introduces those physical movements into the child, into the human being, that correspond to the study of the human body. But we do not add to this, by contesting gymnastics – our eurythmy.

What is this eurhythmy? It is, first of all, an art, as presented here in public performances. But in addition, it also has a hygienic-therapeutic element and, furthermore, a strong pedagogical-didactic element. It is not based on some invented gestures - through random connections between external gestures or facial expressions and what is going on in the soul - but on what can be gained through careful study by what I would like to call, in the spirit of Goethe, “sensual-supersensory observation”. If we study the human speech organ more from within and see with our senses what takes place, not in movements or modulations, but in the potential for movement, then we can apply this to the whole human being, entirely in keeping with the principle of Goethe's theory of metamorphosis. Goethe sees the whole plant only as a more complicated leaf. What Goethe explained with regard to forms in his morphology and what will only be appreciated later, we try to apply functionally in human activity in an artistic way. We move the whole human organism or groups of people in such a way that it is derived from spoken language. That is, we make hands, legs and heads perform movements that correspond to the movement tendencies of the larynx and its neighboring organs. We make the whole human being into a larynx, so to speak, and thus create a soundless but visible language – not a sign language that comes from the arbitrariness of the imagination. We create a language that we transfer to the human being and his movements. It is formed just as lawfully – only formed through study – as it is formed by nature, which is carried out by the larynx and neighboring organs.

And when we have a short demonstration by children after a short break, so that the pedagogical-didactic element is also expressed, you will see that this eurythmy is not only an art but also, at the same time, soul-filled movement. Every movement is not performed out of physiological insight, but out of an understanding of the connection between body and soul. Every movement is inspired, as the sound is inspired. The whole human being becomes a speech organ. That is why it also reveals what can be artistically shaped in poetry. Today people have no idea that the content of prose is not the main thing in poetry. Ninety-nine percent of poetry today is superfluous! What poetry is based on either the shaping of language in the Goethean manner or on the rhythm of language – one need only refer to Schiller; many other examples could be cited. Schiller said that poems such as 'The Diver' or 'The Walk', for example, did not first live in his soul in prose, but rather something like music, something like a picture, something visionary lived in him. And it was only from this wordless-melodious, from the wordless-pictorial that Schiller and also Goethe formed the words, added them, as it were, to the wordless or musical or inwardly plastic. And so we are also compelled, when recitation is required, for example, to fall back on the rhythm of ordinary speech. For you will hear that the eurythmic presentation — as I said, the human being as a living larynx on the stage before you, moving — will be accompanied on the one hand by recitation and on the other by music. It can also be accompanied by what is not expressed with the poetry. But then it must not be recited in the way that reciting is done in our unartistic age, when the content of the poetry is simply taken from the depths of the soul. Rather, it is precisely the beat and rhythm and the connections that are formed in rhyme, that is, the actual artistic element, that must be expressed in the recitation. For eurhythmics could not be accompanied by the usual unartistic reciting of today. Therefore, eurhythmics will also have a healing effect on what is declining in our other arts.

Above all, you will be interested to know that eurythmy has an educational and didactic element. Gymnastics are excellent for people, but they only develop the outer, physical organism. As a compulsory subject in schools, eurythmy has an effect above all on what I would call the initiative of the will, the independence of the human soul. And this is what we actually need for the next age of humanity. Anyone who looks into the chaos of our social conditions today knows that, above all, people lack this soul initiative.

I have already said that the teacher and the educator cannot manage without the consciousness that can fill them with reverence, but also with responsibility: that they have to work on the souls that come from the spiritual world, but in such a way that the next generation enters the world in the right way. Anyone who looks at the world today already feels how important it is what we, as the next generation, bring into the world. And that is why one has such inner satisfaction when one can see how, without bringing a worldview into the school, our teachers, for example, treat anthropology in the fifth grade: not in a dry sense, not anthropological-theoretical knowledge, but in such a way that what one brings to the children as a first anthropology is permeated and warmed by the spirit. If you teach the children in this way, they begin to be present in a completely different way during the lessons; they establish something in themselves that will remain with them for the rest of their lives.

Likewise, I had the deepest satisfaction when our seventh-grade teacher developed history in this spiritual-scientific way in front of the children – but as I said, not spiritual science, but history treated in a spiritual-scientific-methodical way. In this way, what would otherwise remain more or less foreign to the children is transformed into something that the child knows directly related to its own being. And in this way a bridge can be built everywhere between what the child experiences from the developmental process of humanity and what can inspire the child to become a useful member of the future of humanity.

I wanted to begin with these few words before the eurythmy performances. And now, at the end, I would like to say once more: when I look at people like Spitta, at what can flow from a renewal of spiritual life, when I look at this and am moved to express a value judgment about spiritual science, let me express my joy. This joy is certainly shared by those here at the Goetheanum and those working from the Goetheanum who have set themselves spiritual-scientific, anthroposophical tasks. And I do not hope that it could be absolutely the only right thing to wish you, after you have had the kindness to listen to me for five quarters of an hour and after you will still have the kindness to watch the eurythmic performance and listening to what is played and recited — after that you will still need to recover from the “shock” you have suffered, according to the words of the English journalist, in a period of six days!

First of all, I must apologize for not being able to give the following explanations in the language of this country tonight. So I ask you to receive them in the language I am accustomed to.

Now, anyone who is unbiased and anyone who experiences the life of the present with an alert mind and an alert heart feels that we are living in a time that puts severe obstacles in the way of people. Times have become difficult. But it would be a mistake to think that the causes of today's difficulties can be found only in the external world. What confronts us in the external world — especially since this external world is composed of the actions of human beings themselves — ultimately has its roots in the depths of the human soul. We do not always see how man's strength, confidence, efficiency and especially his grasp of life fade away if he cannot form a view of life out of the spiritual and soul foundations of his being, a view that gives him inner strength as such.

As I said, we do not always realize this, especially because we do not know how even the physical powers of man, which we apply in the outer world, ultimately depend on the soul life that permeates and flows through our whole being. Therefore, anyone who is interested in our ascent in the broad orbit of our present civilization – for it is not a matter of individual narrow fields – must come from the joyful human heart. to enter into the life of the human soul, to ask how forces can arise from the deepest inner being for work, for looking around in life, for forces in general, in order to be able to go the paths of life in an appropriate way.

And if we want to look at the conflict that is actually unconscious in many people today, it still confronts us in the way the conflict appears, on the one hand, to our heads and, on the other hand, especially to our hearts, in the insights and impressions that we can gain from the scientific world view that has grown over a series of centuries.

This scientific worldview has celebrated triumph after triumph and has transformed all of modern life. Everything we encounter in the outside world today, especially if we live in cities, is a result of today's scientific thinking, as it has developed over centuries.

But this scientific thinking is contrasted with another, that which arises from the needs of the human breast, indeed, of the whole human being, as the moral, as the religious world view of man. If we take a brief look around at the development of humanity, we have to admit that the further back we go in this development, the more we find that in older and older times, people derived everything they thought they knew from a moral, from a religious world view. When he looked out at nature, he believed he perceived guiding and directing spiritual entities behind natural phenomena everywhere. And when he looked up at the stars, he believed that the formation of the stars, the movement of the stars, was directed and guided by divine spiritual entities. And when he looked into his own soul, looked into his own being at all, then he thought to himself that this divine-spiritual guidance and direction continues; he assumed that when he himself moved an arm, when he went about his daily life, the divine-spiritual guides were actually at work in him.

The ancient man did not really have a view of nature as we have it today in such magnitude. This is evident from many details. Consider, for example, what close connection there was in ancient times between human thought, illness, and even death, and what was called sin. It was believed that man could only fall ill for moral reasons. In particular, it was believed in ancient times that death was imposed on the human race as a result of the original sin. Wherever you looked, you did not see natural phenomena in the way we see them today; you saw the rule and work of divine spiritual powers, whose realm in the human race itself is the moral world view and to which one turned one's heart, to which one turned one's mind when one wanted to feel oneself in one's spiritual-eternal core, in the bosom of the divine world.

Alongside this moral and religious world view, there was no natural world view. And in the present day, humanity has only retained the remnants of what was handed down to it from ancient times in the form of a moral and religious world view, without a natural world view.

Today we have a magnificently developed view of nature, and we have included human beings in this view of nature; the 19th century has learned to reflect in particular on how the human being is formed from natural foundations, how he has gradually developed from lower animal forms. The 19th century – and to an even greater extent the beginning of the 20th century – has learned to reflect on how what we carry in our limbs, our ability to live, is basically the natural consequence of heredity. Modern times have placed the human being in the natural order. Everywhere we see natural laws that we cannot think of in connection with anything moral.

The way plants grow, how electricity and magnetism work through natural processes, how the development of animals, yes, how the physical development of humans happens: into all that, into which natural science has brought such clarity, moral thoughts cannot be introduced at first. And even if man can have his intimate joy, his deep contentment, yes, in a certain sense, an aesthetic devotion to nature, he cannot have a religious devotion to the world order, especially to the nature that science presents to him today.

And so modern man has come to see the true, the existing, the only thing that has reality, in nature. But in his heart, the urge for a moral world order still struggles to the surface, the intimate need to be connected to something that, as a supersensible force, stands in opposition to all that is sensual in nature, the urge to be able to feel religiously in the face of powers that cannot speak to people from within the laws of nature. And more and more, this modern man is losing his way in maintaining the old traditions from a moral, from a religious world view; more and more, he finds them in contradiction to what a newer view of nature gives. Thus, the modern man stands in discord, as he looks at the world, which is completely interwoven with natural laws, which has taken its beginning from natural laws, which, according to his hypothesis, must take its end according to natural laws.

And above that stands that which he says actually makes him human in the first place; above that stands moral sense, above that stands religious devotion. And man stands there with his anxious riddle of existence: Am I able to give reality to that which I bring out of my moral sense, since nature gives it no reality? Am I able to turn my religious sense towards something that it can strive for in truth and honesty, since this sense cannot turn to that which only appears to it as natural law?

Thus this man feels as if his moral ideals, his religious feelings, were beginning more and more to hang as abstractions in an airless space, as if they were doomed to be buried and lost in the merely natural-law universe when the earth comes to an end in a kind of heat death.

In this way, the man of the present age is placed in a state of profound conflict. He is not always aware of this conflict. But something else comes to his attention. He becomes aware that he does not know his way around the world, that he has neither the strength nor the joy to work in the world. And often, in order to have at least some support for his sense of morality and his sense of religion, he turns to all kinds of old world views, to all kinds of old mystical or, as they are also called, occult world views. He warms them up because he cannot find any evidence of the supersensible in man and the world from what surrounds him today.

Nevertheless, it is possible to find this supersensible in the world and in man. And how it can be found is what we want to talk about this evening.

Between what is purely moral and purely religious, and what is natural and sensual, there has always been something in the middle that comes to the surface in people during their lifetime. In older times, when the world was viewed only morally or only religiously, it was seen differently. But still, even today one can only place that which is in man in a one-sided way into the mere natural order.

There are three things in man that, I would say, fluctuate back and forth, oscillate between that which is felt to be supersensible and that which is merely natural. It may seem strange to you that I am emphasizing these three phenomena in human nature; but you will see that it is precisely these that, when transformed and metamorphosed, will lead us to a consideration of supersensible knowledge and world views.

The first thing we encounter in a human being, when he, I would say, has to go through his first experiences of life as a very young child in the struggle with his environment, is that he fights for this own situation out of his nature, which is not yet given in the world: the upright walk, the stand.

The second thing that man finds himself in is learning to speak. And only through speaking – anyone who is able to observe childhood uninhibitedly knows this – does the gift of thinking develop. To orient oneself in the world so that one does not look down to the earth like an animal, but looks freely out into the universe to the stars, to be able to carry one's own inner being out to one's fellow human beings in language , to bring the soul life into the world in the form of thoughts: an older world view perceived this as something that, in a sense, is given to man down here in the sensual world as a gift from the supersensible. The connection between the supersensible human being and the supersensible world was perceived by looking at these three characteristics of human nature. That man is so constructed that out of his build the upright walk, the looking out into the heavens, arises, that an older worldview, which looked at the moral and religious of the world order, saw as a gift of divine spiritual powers that worked in man. And learning to speak was seen even more as a gift of these divine spiritual powers.

Never in the early days of human development was it otherwise than that man said to himself: When thoughts take hold within him, then angelic spiritual beings live in these thoughts. — It was only in the course of the Middle Ages that man began to discuss whether his thoughts were only his own creation or whether divine spiritual powers within his bodily organization live out in his thoughts.

Thus in ancient times these three gifts were regarded as something that comes into man from supersensible worlds and lives and breathes there. Therefore, these three gifts, which come to man during his childhood, have been used as a starting point when one wanted to direct the person, who stands on the earth and lives on the earth and has to do his work on the earth, up to the powers of the moral, religious world order.

I will now disregard those exercises that an even older humanity, for example, has done by regulating the breath in order to gain knowledge of the external world through the supersensible. I will look back on views and exercises of humanity that lie far before Christ, but are not exactly the oldest, and which were based on these three characterized peculiarities of human nature.

There we see how in the Orient, where in older times there was a powerful striving for a knowledge of the divine-spiritual, man first of all wanted to develop that which lies in the power of his orientation, that which lies in the power that leads him as a child to become an upright being looking out into the vastness of the world. Look at the positions and postures prescribed by the wise oriental teacher for his pupil, because he, as an adult, is tackling in a different way what becomes the orientation of the gait and the orientation of the posture in the child. It was said: When the child learns to walk upright from crawling, then the Divine-Spiritual enters. When the student of the Oriental sage crosses his legs and rests his upper body on the crossed legs, he takes up a different position. And when he then becomes fully aware of this position, the spiritual-soul world can have an effect on him, as it has on the child, inspiring him to walk upright. And when man, instead of learning to speak as is the case in the sensual world, turns speech inwards, then he turns this gift of God into a clairvoyant and clairaudient power, so that he can thereby connect his own supersensory with the supersensory of the world.

That is why in ancient Oriental times, the recitative-like speaking of certain sayings, which were called mantrams, was associated with a certain breathing discipline. These mantrams were not spoken out in order to communicate with other people , but were directed inward, so to speak, vibrating throughout the human organism, directing inward that which we otherwise express outward in speech, so that the whole human organism participates in the power and potency of these mantric words. And what the child poured out into speech, through which it communicated with people, as a gift from the supersensible that had become his, the disciple of the Oriental sage poured into his own body. For him, the words did not vibrate outwards alone so that he could communicate with the other person; for him, the words vibrated down into the lungs, vibrated further into the blood, vibrated in the blood with the breath up into the brain. And just as the one who listens to our language feels the beat of our soul, the sensation of our soul from the words, so the Oriental sage sensed the supersensible of the world from what vibrated as a word in his body, from this supersensible experience of the mantric word.

And when the child develops thinking out of speech, this Oriental sage, as a third stage, developed not only a thinking that was only within him, but also a thinking that was outside of him, through the supersensible that he sensed through the mantric word, through the mantric verse. For just as our soul vibrates out to the other person in ordinary language, so the world vibrated in through the inner word that he experienced. And what spoke to him was not another person, it was not human thoughts; what spoke to him were world thoughts, it was the spirit, the supersensible of the world, which poured into his own organism as a supersensible being.

In ancient times, people sought to bring the supersensible world of the human being into relationship with the supersensible world of the universe. And everything that has come down to us in the way of religious and moral worldviews, everything that lives in tradition, comes from the connection that human beings once established between their own supersensible world and the supersensible world of the universe.

For a certain period of time, man has ceased to experience the divine-spiritual in the world. Teachers who sought their way into the supersensible parts of the world became increasingly rare; and people who had a need for such teachers and who wanted to listen to what such teachers had to say in order to draw their own soul nourishment from it, became increasingly rare. For a while, man went through an epoch in which everything that was to develop in him, including his soul and spirit, was to be in the closest connection with his body, with his physical body, with his sensuality. For that older human being, who felt completely secure in a moral world order that was not within him but permeated the world, who felt completely secure in a divine world that completely absorbed nature, this human being would never have been able to come to freedom as such - to that freedom that of the own I as a firm point of support within man; to that freedom which does not derive the action that man performs directly from the Divine-Spiritual, which works in man and actually acts in man; to that freedom which seeks to find the impulse for action in man himself.

Humanity had to come to this sense of self, to this experience of freedom, and it has come. But now we stand at an important turning point in human development. We have lost the old connection with the divine. And even those who, as I have already indicated, want to revive the old ways in every possible way, look to Gnosticism and Oriental occultism for consolation for what they cannot find in the scientific view of the present. No, the view of life I am speaking of here is often slandered to the effect that it also seeks to revive only the old Gnosticism or Orientalism. But that is not the case. This world view is based on the idea that we can find the way into the supersensible from the same strictly exact way of thinking that we apply today in our knowledge of nature, if only we strengthen and sharpen it in the right way.

However, what I have just characterized as the trinity of special qualities in human nature, and which in older times was regarded as gifts of the moral-divine world order, appears to the modern man, on whom the scientific world view has a powerful and convincing authority, only as a natural, sensual gift. And so it is taken for granted today – and from a certain point of view it is quite right to do so – that the particular structure that results from the human way of life, which has grown out of the animal way of life, can be used to derive the different organization of the individual human limbs and thus to understand the upright gait as arising from purely natural conditions. One seeks to understand language from the natural organization and from the connection that this natural organization of the child has with the older human being. And one also seeks to understand thinking itself, the cultivation of thoughts, as something that is connected with the human organization.

How could we not? After all, natural science has shown that people's thoughts are very dependent on their natural organization. It only needs this or that part of the human brain to be paralyzed; a certain part of the thought activity can fail. We see everywhere how human mental activity can be impaired, even by the application of toxic substances that work in the human body. The habit of looking at everything scientifically has placed this trinity – orientation of the human being in the universe, learning to speak, learning to think – in a natural sensory world order in a natural sensory way. And from there, other things have been placed in such a world order.

Now, what a person becomes for this earth, initially through his birth, or, let us say, through his conception, can be seen to emerge from a mere natural order. On the one hand, one can look ahead, to birth, and one can see in birth and heredity everything that pulsates and energizes us humans. But if we look at the other side, the side of death, then we can clearly see, if we are willing to be just a little unprejudiced, how what we are as human beings is not taken up by nature, but is extinguished, as the flame of a candle is extinguished. Thus it appears to modern man as if he himself is given by nature through germ life and inheritance. But it must also appear to him that at the end of his life on earth, he cannot see himself in the continuity of nature, as if nature were not capable of absorbing his human essence, but only of destroying it. Therefore, the great riddle that was once the riddle of birth for people in older times, when they had a moral and a religious world view, has become the riddle of death for a later humanity and still for us today. The riddle of birth has become the riddle of immortality.

For in the time when people were able to look into the divine spiritual world in a discerning way, in a moral and religious sense, and were able to relate the supersensible world of man to the supersensible world, the question arose: How did man come down from the spiritual worlds in which he used to live to this earth? What was a natural event in the life of the germ at birth was seen only as the outward expression of this descent from the divine spiritual worlds into physical life on earth. Birth was the great mystery. What is man to accomplish here on earth? That was the question. Today man looks in the other direction, toward the side of death, when he wants to pose the great mystery of the true nature of his innermost human core.

And we can look at the same mystery from yet another side. Indeed, one can believe that the moral impulses of man arise from the natural instincts that are born of the blood, of the flesh, of the nervous system, of the whole human organization, through a certain perfection, and one can also derive certain religious feelings from the existence of such moral impulses. Thus, to a certain extent, we can deduce the origin of morality and religious feelings from the natural order of the senses.

But we need not speak of the retribution of moral or immoral acts. That leads too much into the egoistic realm. Yet we can say that whatever we accomplish morally – if we believe only in the all-encompassing sensual order of nature – would otherwise fade away powerless in the world. The question arises: The smallest manifestation of electrical force has its definite consequence in the universe – that is according to the view of natural science; what arises morally out of us should have no consequences in the universe?

In this respect, too, we look to the other end. We can, if necessary, see moral impulses as highly developed drives and instincts, but we cannot recognize the significance of moral impulses for the future from a purely naturalistic worldview.

A part of humanity today consciously faces these questions. And whoever consciously faces these questions must turn to that which is being discussed here as anthroposophical spiritual science. A large part of humanity unconsciously faces these questions, feeling more. We can no longer fully follow the old religious traditions that have been handed down to us, because we instinctively feel that they must have emerged from old insights. — They did not emerge from a belief that people are being talked into today! All religious beliefs have arisen from ancient knowledge, from such a connection of the supersensible in man with the supersensible of the world, as I have characterized it to you before. But we cannot go this old way again today. Humanity has since adopted other forms of development. Otherwise it would not have been able to go through that path, I would say that intermediate epoch, in which it gained the feeling of I-consciousness, the experience of freedom. It would not have been possible for it to live entirely in the physical human body if it had not been organized quite differently in this intermediate epoch than in those older times, when those who, through the use of body positions, mantrams and the world thoughts revealed to them, have brought tidings to mankind of the way in which the human soul, the human inner being, is connected with the supersensible world, how man is an ephemeral being only as a body, but as a soul, an imperishable being, an eternal entity.

If a person today were to attempt to seek the connection between the supersensible in his nature and the supersensible of the world in the same way as, let us say, the followers of Buddha, if he were to seek world-thoughts revealed in the inner Logos through special bodily postures, the singing of mantrams, and , in the inner Logos, sought to reveal world thoughts through special physical postures, the singing of mantrams and words of a similar nature, and if, through all this, he wanted to reach the supersensible, then as a modern man, who has developed his physical body in a completely different way than an older humanity, he would only be able to bring his physical body into disorder and not direct it upwards to the supersensible. The earlier human body, which could be permeated by exercises in the way I have described, did not yet have the firmness, the inner consistency, from which a strong earth-I-consciousness, a strong earth-freedom experience arises. The human organism has become more consistent. If a more exact physiology, such as that given by the anthroposophical spiritual science referred to here, were recognized today, it would be known that in the newer human bodies the solid components, especially the salty ones, are more intensively developed than they were in the bodies of the ancient humans who could do such exercises for higher knowledge as I have described. Therefore, the modern human being must relate and connect his own supersensible with the supersensible of the world in a different way. The modern human being must seek the moral and religious in the world order in a different way than older times sought it.

The spiritual science of which I speak here therefore seeks to enter the supersensible world from two sides: firstly, from the side of thought, but secondly, from the side of will. From the side of thought, in that man experiences thought, which has indeed done him such tremendous service, especially in modern natural science in the observation and art of experimentation, not merely as a reflection of the external world, but learns to live with these thoughts in the quiet interior of the soul. In this way the modern man can develop a spiritual-scientific method, similar to the way in which the ancient man developed it through his mantrams, except that the mantrams were still something more sensual, while the modern man has something more spiritual in the mere development of thought.

I have described in detail in my books, for example in the book “How to Know Higher Worlds”, in the second part of my “Occult Science” and in other books, the long path one has to go through in order to arrive at a real spiritual science and thus to an understanding of the supersensible worlds. Here I would just like to briefly indicate the principle of how one can become a spiritual researcher today, quite appropriate for today's organization of humanity.

Not everyone needs to become a spiritual researcher, but individual people can become one. To a certain extent, however, everyone can at least become a reviewer of this spiritual research if they take on the exercises that I have presented in the books mentioned. But anyone who wants to become a spiritual researcher today no longer has to do so by chanting mantrams with the senses, but rather by purely supersensible exercise in thought.

Now, we have arrived at exact thinking today. When I look at the starry heavens in exact astronomy, we have achieved exact thinking in the physical and chemical realms. We are even striving for it today in biological research, in the study of living beings, and we feel particularly satisfied when we can explore the external sensory world in the way we are accustomed to orienting our thoughts when solving problems in mathematics. That is why the saying has been coined that only as much of real science of nature exists as mathematics is contained in natural science. And for this reason one speaks of exact natural science. Everything should be able to be surveyed in observation and experimentation in the same way that one surveys the problems when solving mathematical tasks. One speaks of exact science.

Exact clairvoyance, exact clairvoyance, is the subject of the anthroposophical spiritual science referred to here. If today's scientist researches the world in an exact way, the one who becomes an anthroposophical spiritual scientist does something equally exact, only in a different field. He gradually discovers that there are hidden forces in the soul that are not applied in ordinary life and ordinary science. He gradually discovers that it is really the case that in the child, in the very young child, the spiritual and supersensible and the physical and sensual still interact unseparatedly, but that then the child, so to speak, pours into the external sensory world that which previously lived in him in a supersensible form, through walking upright, through speech, and through thinking. Everything that wells up in the blood in the very earliest period of a person's life, everything that vibrates entirely in the organs, pours outwards as the person orientates themselves in the external world; it pours outwards in speech and particularly in thought.

But we can take it back again. The oriental disciple of the oriental sage sought to achieve what may be called the connection of the supersensible in man with the supersensible of the world, preferably by turning back to language. We, the more recent ones, have to turn the thought itself inward. We have to be able to say to ourselves quite seriously: We have come a long way in observing the outer nature. We have the exact thoughts of the star shapes and star movements. We have the exact thoughts of the electrical, magnetic, and thermal effects, as well as the sound and light effects. We look out into the world, and these exact thoughts within us reflect this world. As spiritual researchers, we must be able to refrain from all thoughts that lead us outward to the stars, to electrical, magnetic and thermal phenomena. We must be able to turn the power of thought inward, just as the ancient sage turned his mantric speech inward and thereby allowed the Logos of the world to reveal itself to him. With the same strength as externally through our senses - which are physical organizations and come to our aid so that we do not need to apply our own strength, the strength of the soul - we must rise to make thinking so strong in meditation that our thoughts, although they are only developed inwardly, become as vivid as the sensations of the senses otherwise.

Think about how alive it all is, how intensely it affects you when you hear sounds, see colors, and feel sensations of warmth and cold rushing through your body. Think about how gray and abstract the thoughts you retain of these experiences of the outside world are in comparison. And meditation consists of the fact that these thoughts, which only connect to the outside world in a gray and abstract way, which dawn on us as a result of passively observing the senses, are so intensified inwardly, so intensified, that they become exactly like sensory impressions. This is how you rise to a new way of thinking. While the thinking that one has in ordinary life and in ordinary science is such that one feels passive in it, that these thoughts are actually powerless, are only images that reflect the external world, one can through meditation, one can live in the world of thought, as one lives in one's growth forces, as one lives in hunger and thirst, as one lives in inner physical well-being. That is the result of meditation. One must only learn one thing in order to inwardly enliven the world of thought in such a way: one must learn to inwardly weave lovingly in thought.

If you want to become a spiritual researcher, you must practise this with the same devotion as you must practise for years in a physics laboratory if you want to become a physicist, or as you must practise for years in an observatory if you want to become an astronomer. It is truly no easier to become a spiritual researcher than it is to become an astronomer or a physicist. Anyone who pays even a little attention to what the spiritual researcher says can verify what the spiritual researcher says. But just as not everyone should become an astronomer in order to include astronomical findings in their world view, not everyone needs to become a spiritual researcher just because spiritual research is to become an element of our civilization and cultural life. On the contrary, the relationship between people that can arise from this and must arise in the not too distant future if the decline is not to become ever stronger, that social coexistence between people that will become necessary and, one could say, is actually is already necessary today, will be substantially invigorated when that trust in turn enters into the social life of people, whereby one knows: anyone who speaks from the depths of his soul about the spiritual, supersensible worlds, because he has risen to them as a spiritual researcher, deserves trust.

Where souls can relate to each other intimately in this way, and where the intimacies of the supersensible world are shared in the supersensible being of the human being, those forces will live in such a social order that they alone will in turn strengthen our social life. Therefore it is completely unfounded and actually arises only from human egoism when someone says: I will not accept the findings of anthroposophical research into the supersensible until I see the things myself. Every human being is predisposed to accept the truth rather than the untruth. Not everyone can explore the supersensible world, just as not everyone can paint a picture. But just as everyone can absorb an artistically painted picture, so too, because the whole person, as a fully human being, is predisposed to the truth, everyone can recognize the truth of spiritual science, as it is meant here, not on the basis of blind faith but on the basis of inner experience. This spiritual science itself can only be attained by meditating and concentrating within the life of thinking itself, in this way progressing from ordinary abstract thinking to pictorial thinking, to such thinking that is inwardly alive. And in this thinking the thoughts of the world live. In this thinking the human being no longer feels as if he were shut up in his body; in this thinking he feels that he has taken the first step towards entering the supersensible world.

The older man started from something more sensual, from the inwardly directed word. The newer man must start from something more spiritual, from the inwardly directed thought itself, and in this way he finds his connection with the supersensible world and can speak again of this supersensible world. For these are not empty words, which arise when one enters in this way through inwardly animated thinking into the supersensible world and, with the supersensible in one's own inner being, experiences this supersensible of the world. Just as we are surrounded by the many forms of plants and animals in the sensory world, and as we are surrounded by that which shines down to us from the stars, so too, in a sense, the sensory world fades before the spiritual vision that arises from pictorial thinking, and a spiritual world opens up. One no longer beholds merely the sun in its physical splendor, one beholds a sum of spiritual entities, of which the physical sun is the physical image. One penetrates through the physically appearing sun to the spiritual sun-being. And in like manner, one penetrates through the physically appearing moon to the spiritual moon-beings. One learns to recognize how these spiritual beings of the moon guide the human soul from the spiritual and soul worlds through birth here into earthly life, where it accepts the body from the mother and from the father. One learns to recognize how the spiritual being of the sun contains the forces that lead the human being out through death again, and one learns to recognize the path of the human soul out of the supersensible worlds.

This knowledge is, however, deepened by the fact that one does not train the will through physical positions, as the ancient Oriental did, but that one trains the will in a similar way to how one has trained the thought to achieve an exact clairvoyance, as I have described to you. It was also a training of the will when one suppressed external orientation, crossed one's legs and sat down on them in order to perceive other currents of the world through the human body in a different position of the human body and thus to gain a perception of the supersensible. Modern man cannot do this. His organism has become different. The modern man must go to the will itself. What the ancient Oriental developed, I would say through a more physical way, through bodily postures – he also turned the body to the east, to the west, to the south – all that would be considered charlatanry by the modern man. The modern person must take their will into their own hands. And you will find in “How to Know Higher Worlds” and in “Occult Science” a whole series of exercises for self-transcendence, self-education, and above all for the cultivation of the will. I will mention just a few.

For example, if a person – who is otherwise accustomed to following only external sensory processes from back to front [from the earlier to the later] – rearranges his thinking, for example, in the evening, presenting what he has experienced most recently, then what he experienced earlier in the day and so back to the morning, when he thus presents the order of nature in reverse before his soul, then he tears himself away from this natural order with his thinking, which otherwise adheres to the course of nature, which goes from the earlier to the later. He thinks in the opposite direction to the course of nature. In this way, the will, which lies in thinking, is strengthened. This is especially the case when you dwell on trivialities, on details. Imagine, for example, that I went up a staircase today; I do not imagine myself on the lowest step, but on the highest step, then go back, imagine the whole ascent as a descent, tear myself away from what was really an experience, imagine it the other way around. In this way I strengthen the will, which lies in thinking. I can also strengthen this will by, for instance, taking my self-education into my own hands, by saying to myself: I have this or that habit; I will change it - in three years I must have a quite different habit in regard to something. And so there are hundreds and thousands of exercises that are directly exercises of the will, that directly aim at a change of the will, so that the will breaks away from that which is imposed on it by mere physicality.

In this way, modern man undergoes something similar to what the ancient man went through with his bodily position. For the reasons mentioned, we cannot go back to these old exercises. But in this way, modern man comes more and more into a direct relationship between his own supersensible and the supersensible of the world.

What I mean by this can perhaps be made clear by means of a parable. For example, the human eye: what actually makes it our organ of sight? Well, you can see from cataracts, which are a hardening of the lens or vitreous body, how the eye can no longer serve to see when the material takes hold in the eye. Certain parts of the eye must be absolutely transparent if it is to serve the purpose of seeing. It must, so to speak, be selfless if it is to serve the human being. Thus, if we strengthen our will in the way I have just described, our body becomes a spiritual and mental sensory organ – if I may use the paradox; in certain moments of insight, our body is no longer permeated by drives, instincts, desires, which make our body opaque, in a mental way, of course, but also in our lives. In relation to desires, instincts and cravings, it becomes as pure as the transparent eye is in relation to the material. And just as one sees the world of colors through the transparent eye, so one comes through the body that has become free of desires and cravings - it is not always, but it can be attuned to it by the one who has trained himself to do so through the exercises in the books mentioned has trained himself to do so - to the appearance of the spiritual world, the supersensible world, to which one belongs as a supersensible entity of man, which one is indeed within oneself.

In this way we get to know the truly supersensible in man himself. Once we have seen how it is with the human being when he has made his body transparent in the way described, when he lives in the purely supersensible world, then we have solved the riddle of death by looking, because we have life without the body in our vision. We know how to live when we have passed through the gate of death and laid aside our body. One knows how it is to live in the world without the body. In this way one gets to know one's own human supersensible being. And by getting to know one's own human supersensible being, how it passes through the gate of death in a living, soul-like way, one learns to recognize it as something that can be taken up by a supersensible world, just as it was released by the supersensible world at the moment of conception. When, through the living thought that is attained in meditation, one gets to know the spiritual world of the sun behind the sun and the spiritual world of the moon behind the moon, that is, those spiritual entities that lead the human being into earthly existence and those that lead him out of earthly existence, then one gets to know the supersensible world. And then we know how our living soul after death is taken up by the living beings of the world, the living beings of the universe, the supersensible universe. Just as our body is taken up by the world of the senses and called to death, so the human soul is called to life in the eternal by those beings whom we see through in the supersensible world.

We then recognize the path that human civilization has taken in this way as one that gives us the strength to attach a morality and a religion to the natural order of the world in the present, again in an equally exact way, through the cultivation of the will, which like solving mathematical problems, is practised in exercises, in mental exercises as I have described them, which lead to exact clairvoyance. This is how we recognize the path that human civilization has taken in this way, as one that gives us the strength to join a morality, a religion, to the natural order of the world in the present, again in our nature, in an equally exact way, through the cultivation of the will,

This is what we need today. This course of human development is also indicated in a grandiose way in the position that a real knowledge of the spirit can give to the Mystery of Golgotha in human development.

How was it, let me just mention it in a few words, immediately after the Mystery of Golgotha had taken place on earth, with those people who were the first to profess this Mystery of Golgotha? They looked at what they had been told had happened at Golgotha. They looked at what Jesus of Nazareth had experienced and they sensed that the divine spiritual Christ Being had lived in Jesus of Nazareth as a human being.

They sensed that this divine spiritual Christ Being had descended to them on earth to bring them something that they needed very much on earth. What was it that caused these first Christians to accept the wisdom of the Mystery of Golgotha so unreservedly? The fact that remnants of those old views still existed, saying: Man has descended from supersensible worlds through birth into earthly existence. In ancient times, when man still clearly knew this from his instinctive observation and from what his initiates, his teachers, told him, people sensed that there was a spiritual guide in the spiritual worlds who guided them down to physical earthly existence. But they felt, because they knew, that they had come down to earth as spirits, that they would also pass through the gate of death. And death had nothing mysterious about it, no terror for early humanity, just as - do not misunderstand the comparison, it is not meant to belittle man - as the animal also feels no mystery or terror of death.

It was only in the course of time that man learned to feel death. Death only became a mystery when man no longer had the mystery of birth, when he no longer looked up into the spiritual and soul worlds from which he had descended, when in the development of mankind the disposition arose that saw everything that we have in the birth process as merely natural - that is when the mystery of death came upon man, that is when the actual terror of death came.

This was not cured by theoretical knowledge, but it was cured by the Mystery of Golgotha being played out on earth. And people knew from the remnants of ancient wisdom that the Christ, who had appeared on earth in the man Jesus of Nazareth, was the same Being that guided human souls down to this earth from spiritual worlds. And the first Christians knew that the Christ descended to earth to give people on earth that which would lead them beyond the riddle of death. Therefore, we see the connection that even Paul has between the riddle of death and what was accomplished at Golgotha. We see that Paul makes it clear to people that they can only think beyond death as human souls if they can look to the Risen One, that is, to Christ conquering death.

Now, from older wisdom, the first Christians were still able - feeling more than clearly recognizing - to grasp the Christ as the one who descended to earth. The more recent spiritual science of which I have spoken to you this evening teaches people to look into the supersensible worlds through exact clairvoyance. This anthroposophical spiritual research will, by leading man to see beyond his body, when this body has become transparent in the way described and man experiences the world in which he has to live when he has gate of death. It will again point not only to the man Jesus of Nazareth, but to the divine spiritual Christ, who descended from supersensible worlds and can permeate the supersensible in man himself. From this permeation, from this power that Christ unfolds in him, according to the words of St. Paul: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me,” the earthly human being can gain the impulse to pass through death with Christ as a living soul , so as not to enter blindly into those spiritual worlds, where — as I have described it — he is received by the sun being, but to enter this spiritual world seeing through the light that Christ brought to earth.

In this way, such an anthroposophical spiritual science can take up religious-Christian life. In this way, religious Christian life will in turn be deepened by anthroposophical spiritual science. The last few centuries have brought us the greatness of science, which we see developing slowly, but in such a way that we cannot see any moral world order in it. Indeed, nature reveals itself to us all the more faithfully the less we moralize into it. However, just as we cannot really surrender to what natural lawfulness is as to something divine, so we will, by applying the exact method that we have learned in mathematics and in natural science to thinking, elevate thinking to pictorialness, to exact clairvoyance. And by applying the exact method to our will, educating ourselves, doing the most beautiful deeds for our self-education, we will not arrive at an outwardly charlatan magic, but at an inward, idealistic magic, and thus again link the moral to the natural, to the religious.

And ultimately, what does this anthroposophy of which I speak want? It wants to fill the deep abyss that exists unconsciously, at least for modern man, for all people who somehow experience the world, between the natural amoral world order on the one hand and the religious moral order on the other, so that in the future, in his life, in that which nature, sensuality, gives him through his body, the strong supersensible, into which world morality, not only the morality of humanity, flows, into which not only the natural order, but the divine order flows.

And with the cosmic-moral impulses that become his individual ones, with the penetration of the awareness of God given to him by his spiritually sharpened gaze, man will find his way into the future and solve those important questions and riddles which can already be sensed today, if one does not sleep, but with full, alert impartiality, looks at the world around and at that which can live in the human heart as an urge, as a hope from the present into the future.

In these three lectures I would like to give a kind of comprehensive picture of the will of the spiritual-scientific movement, of that will that emerges from the clearly visible tasks of the present itself and from what can be recognized as the tasks for humanity in the near future.

Today, in a kind of introduction, I would like to make some remarks about the nature of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science and about the necessity of a spiritual-scientific movement within the civilization of the present. Tomorrow, I would then like to show in particular how this spiritual science leads to a deeper knowledge, a life-filled grasp of the human soul and spirit, and from there to a deepening of moral consciousness. I would then also like to show how this spiritual science must relate to the religious beliefs of the present day, and in the third lecture I would like to show how calamity in the present arises from the psychological peculiarities of the peoples spread across the earth today, how it has arisen from the historical development of these peoples. So that I would like to proceed, so to speak, from a characteristic of spiritual science to a consideration of present-day civilization, illuminated from the spiritual-scientific point of view.

If one hears about such a thing as the spiritual movement, of which the Dornach building is the external representative, in an external, superficial way, as is the taste of many contemporaries, one immediately has the feeling that something like this can only be for Sunday, because on all weekdays people have their useful occupations, which are regulated, which may have shown great irregularities once every four or five years due to some event, but which are rebuilt when they are destroyed. One does not have the feeling that something that has to do with these everyday tasks of humanity could arise through a spiritual movement. And so the opinion has arisen that everything for which the Dornach building is the external representative is a sectarian movement, that it wants to be a kind of new religious formation, and at most leaves it to those who, with a certain fanaticism arising from one or other motivation, cling to the old, to seek all possible forms of struggle against such a movement.

Now, my dear attendees, in addition to everything else, I would like to point out right at the starting point of this reflection that the spiritual movement, which is meant here as anthroposophically oriented, has been developing very practical activities in recent weeks. As in other places, a very practical activity is also underway here, in that an attempt is being made — please bear with me, it may even sound paradoxical when one speaks in the name of a spiritual scientific movement — to counter the decline of contemporary life by setting up a 'joint-stock company for the promotion of economic and spiritual values'. Very practical activities are to be started in the near future. And there it should also be shown how what is meant by the anthroposophically oriented spiritual scientific movement is really not a sum of Sunday afternoon sermons, but something that is intimately connected with what our time needs in terms of new impulses for practical life.

Let me therefore start with a characteristic representation of practical life in a particular direction, in order to then be able to characterize more intimately the will of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science from that direction. Many people who want to reform social life today out of more or less ideology, out of utopianism, have already noticed what I am about to point out; but they have not noticed it in such a way that they have been able to look at the fundamental issues that are at stake.

If you follow the various movements of the 19th century that, since the middle of the century, had been aiming to replace the gold and silver currency, the dual currency, with the gold currency as a single currency, you can see that these supporters of, let's say, monometallism, approached the matter from a very specific point of view. They said – and this can be seen from countless parliamentary reports of the European parliaments – that free trade must develop under the influence of the unified gold standard throughout the civilized world, free trade as the real basis of unhindered economic life, free trade that is not affected by all kinds of tariff barriers, protective tariffs and so on. This idea of promoting free trade through monometallism, through the gold standard, has been discussed in all possible keys. But what has happened under the influence of the gold standard? Precisely where this gold standard has been radically introduced, the opposite of what the clever economic practitioners predicted has occurred everywhere! Everywhere the necessity has arisen to resort to protective tariffs, including the American states. That is to say, almost all those who talked about the gold standard, whether from their practical knowledge of life or from the science of political economy, were mistaken about what was rooted in reality.

Now one may say: Have all people been stupid then? Did people really have no logic? Did they understand so little about life that the opposite of what they predicted came to pass? I do not think that the people who argued in favor of free trade during the 19th century were all fools; on the contrary, I think that they were very clever people who spoke with sharp logic and yet missed the point of reality! What is not realized when such a matter is discussed today is that, in the sense of the way of thinking that has developed in the civilized world over the last three to four centuries, one can be very clever and yet one's judgment can be unrealistic; one can consider oneself a great practitioner and give the most impractical advice that is possible. And basically it was this impractical advice that, over the last few decades, has driven humanity into its terrible catastrophe. Particularly in Germany, one could see how the real mastery of the circumstances gradually changed into the judgment of the great or small industrial and commercial leaders of the state. Other people have become more or less dependent on the industrial and commercial leaders. The influence of the commercial and industrial leaders was much greater than one would actually like to think. It was only during the war that it became clear how everything actually depended on the judgments of these leaders, and how disastrous the judgments of these leaders turned out to be.

And from this one could see that the whole of public life is, so to speak, summed up in the judgments of such alleged practitioners. But it was this that brought about the fateful catastrophe that befell civilized humanity in the last five to six years and that is far from over.

The reason for anthroposophically oriented spiritual science to appear at all is the observation of this fact. That was the reason why, precisely from the side from which this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science is asserted, the practical expression of this spiritual science must be pointed out again and again. I know how it surprised individuals, even the small group here in Basel, when I pointed out many years ago that we started with a semi-practical activity, so to speak, namely, performing mystery plays. Some “mystics” have thought that this is something that should not really be done; because in that way one becomes allied in a certain direction with practical measures that one needs. But I said at the time: My ideal would be not just to stage plays, but to develop a banking activity in order to permeate the most practical aspects of life with the kind of thinking that is necessary if one wants to pursue fruitful spiritual science. From a factual basis, I was always convinced that one does not arrive at the results that spiritual science seeks through unhealthy, superficial thinking, but precisely through healthy, careful and alert thinking, and that one can learn to train one's thinking in a way that was not possible under the materialistic approach of the last few centuries; that one can become practical for life through the healthy way of thinking, which is necessary when one does spiritual science in the sense in which it is meant here. I would like to say: a healthy treatment of life comes about as a kind of by-product. If you don't want to acquire stupid, nebulous, but true insight into the nature of the world through spiritual science, you are urged not to develop a rambling, nebulous way of thinking, but a way of thinking that is much clearer than what you are used to in science today. And if one develops this thinking, if one makes an effort to understand what spiritual science wants to be understood, then one trains one's thinking in such a way that one can also think correctly and appropriately in practical areas of life and no longer predict, for example, that monometallism will develop free trade when the circumstances are such that protective tariffs are introduced under the gold standard!

It is precisely this kind of world view, called anthroposophy here, that gives rise to a way of life, a real immersion in reality, in contrast to materialism, which everywhere tends towards the intellectual, towards merely looking at the world from the outside, and remains barren, with the exception of the only area where it could be fruitful, where it has led from triumph to triumph: that of external technology. But to see clearly in this direction, it is necessary that what I have developed over the years here from the most diverse points of view about the nature of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science be touched upon again today, at least with a few words. Anthroposophically oriented spiritual science basically starts from the most intimate, innermost human soul activity. It makes this human soul activity the very method of spiritual scientific research. But in that which lies in the depths of human nature as activity, as essence, is explored by this spiritual science, at the same time the human being is pointed to the whole universe, to the natural universe and to the social universe. The human being will penetrate into the depths of the world precisely by learning to look into the depths of his own being in an appropriate way.

Spiritual science must start from two things in human experience: firstly, from a further development of the life of imagination and, secondly, from a further development of the life of the will. In a certain sense, we develop that which is imagining and thinking, either for the external practical world or for conventional science. And we develop our will insofar as we are harnessed, I might say, in instinctively brought about social conditions. Spiritual science, however, leads to the recognition that just as one can develop the still undeveloped powers of the child in such a way that it can then, as an adult, enter the world with a certain imagination, with a certain will, one can also further develop that which the human being does today out of a certain laziness, as everyday and also scientific imagining and willing. To do this, however, it is necessary to first acquire a correct knowledge of the human being in a certain sense. It is necessary to gain the ability to look at the developing human being. In any case, we will have to learn to look at the developing human being, which is a necessity for a reform of the education system. This education system will have to be reformed. It will be done when it is realized that a large part of the social confusion of today stems from the failure of education and teaching. But it will not be possible to reform the education system until we look at the developing human being with real expertise, at this developing human being who, in each individual instance, presents a puzzle that, in a sense, needs to be solved. We look at the developing child. What wonderful events we encounter when we look at the child in the first weeks, in the first months, in the first years of its growth, when we really do not look away at what happens from week to week, from month to month, from year to year, but delve into this growing human being: what wonders of the event, of world events we encounter there!

Usually, for example, one only looks at something like the change of teeth from the outside. One does not consider what happens at the same time as the change of teeth, namely a complete transformation of the entire child's mental state. Until the change of teeth, the child lives in such a way that, fundamentally, its most inner instinct is to imitate what happens in its environment through people, especially through those people with whom it has grown together through blood or upbringing. We can grasp every hand movement the child makes if we know how devoted the child is to the people around him; and basically every hand movement is an imitation, even if sometimes in such a way that the imitator conceals himself. But anyone who can observe will notice that, for example, there is also an affiliation, an imitative affiliation to the environment in the formation of speech.

Thus we see how the child is an imitator in the first years of life. And by observing the child and seeing how, from week to week, from month to month, from year to year, something grows from the innermost depths and is then transferred into form, gesture, movement and action, into sound and thoughts. If we observe this in a child, we will notice – if we cannot do it any other way, then for the sake of my argument we will start from the hypothesis – how the soul-spiritual works on the physical. And if you immerse yourself in such an observation, if you see how the soul and spirit work on the body, then you cannot help but follow this work of the soul and spirit on the body right into the innermost part. Then one will say to oneself: something significant is happening throughout the whole organism, which is fulfilled around the seventh year in the second teeth that replace the milk teeth. In a sense, this change of teeth marks a conclusion.

And what then occurs in the child when the change of teeth is complete? Everyone can clearly and distinctly observe that the child's images, which were previously somewhat fleeting, came and went, were chaotic, then form themselves into more stringent contours, so that they take shape so firmly that they crystallize, as it were, and then become lasting memories.

The ability to remember does, however, occur earlier in some people, but the clearly defined memory, the memories shaped into thoughts, that is when they occur. And anyone who then follows this series of images cannot help but say to themselves: Yes, that is the same activity; up until the change of teeth, it was a spiritual-soul activity to drive out the teeth. This mental-spiritual activity worked in the organism. Now it has completed its activity, its field. Now it appears as a mental-spiritual activity itself. The clearly defined thoughts, the thoughts that are capable of being remembered, these thoughts now occur. What did they do earlier? It was they who worked in the organism to bring out the teeth; the same activity that later lives in thinking and remembering lived in the organism, was active there to drive out the teeth. It is, so to speak, an organic activity, metamorphosed, transformed into a spiritual-soul activity. And as such a spiritual-soul activity, it now lives on in the human being.

You see, this is how anthroposophically oriented spiritual science proceeds in a strictly methodical way. It says to itself: Just try to see how strongly active in the organism during the first seven years of life is what later only works as thought work, as memory work. Now, let us say, we take up this intensified activity of thinking, of imagining, and we hold to it, not just to let the translated spiritual-mental activity of the later years work in our soul, but to let the stronger activity work, which was able not only to form thoughts into memories, but to drive out teeth. But that is only one part of the activity, the greater, more intense one, up to the seventh year. This stronger activity is tackled through what anthroposophically oriented spiritual science calls meditation. Meditation is nothing other than intensified thinking, thinking made more intense, thinking that has been trained. Meditation consists of taking a thought or a train of thoughts – what is good for one person, for another, and the more precise thing can be found in the writings: 'How to Know Higher Worlds', 'Occult Science in Outline', 'The Riddle of Man' and 'The Riddle of Souls' and so on – this meditation, which is meant here, consists of taking a thought or a train of thoughts in the center of our consciousness and then engage ourselves so intensely in this train of thoughts, that we do not just unfold the abstract, intellectual activity of thought that we have in ordinary science or in ordinary life, but that intense activity of thought that, if we were still children under seven years of age, would engage our organism, seething and boiling within the organism. But when we engage in it as a spiritual-mental activity, it carries us along, so that we learn to live with thoughts as with realities. Just look at how people live with thoughts and judgments in their everyday lives or in ordinary science; they do not disturb them. It disturbs a person when he is friends with someone who harms him, or when he is in love with someone else, or when he is hungry or thirsty, and so on. The things of the body disturb a person; thoughts do not in the same way.

In meditation, you learn to move as you move in everyday life. And gradually you realize that meditating internally gives you a jolt. While in ordinary life you have a kind of guidance in your world of thoughts through the outside world, while you surrender to the thoughts that surround us as they come through the unbridled memories, emerge, disappear again and so on, meditation consists in bringing one's thoughts into consciousness of one's own will, in handling a thought as one moves one's hand when one performs some action with it. And gradually one really gets the feeling that one learns to think as one otherwise learned to grasp or to walk: that the activity of thought arises as something separated from the human being. When one thus advances to such a thought activity, which is more intense than ordinary thought activity, to a thought activity of which one inwardly experiences: if one were still a child, this thinking, which one develops in meditation, developing in meditation, would even intervene in the growth and formation of the body. When one develops this thinking, one comes to know what it means to be free of the body in thinking and imagining and devoting oneself to an activity.

It is quite true that ordinary thinking is entirely bound to the brain. And this is precisely what one learns to recognize when one becomes acquainted with this body-free thinking, to which one can only rise through meditative development. This thinking, which is as arbitrary as hand movements or leg movements, which one can perform through exertion, under which one tires, which one must refrain from after a certain time, just as one must refrain from exertion of the external body, when one gets to know this thinking, when one gets to know it from within, only then does one have an experience of creative thinking, of creative imagination. Then one grasps a being in the human being that is ethereal-thinking and that at the same time is that which has descended from supersensible worlds through birth or, let us say, through conception, and has worked as a sculptor, as an architect, on the human body. We have grasped that which works on the human body, and we have thus vividly transported ourselves back to what we were as human beings before we descended into this physical body and accepted the body that was given to us through inheritance from father, mother and so on. We have an experience of the prenatal or pre-conception life, an experience of what our supersensible existence was before our present physical existence.

Through the development of thinking, our human life extends beyond birth and conception. What I am telling you here is just as certain a result of a strict methodical investigation, walking the paths that I have outlined here, as any chemical result. What chemistry accomplishes in the laboratory or astronomy in the observatory is no more certain than what arises from the intimacy of the developed human thought life as the knowledge of the supersensible human being before birth; it is simply further developed thinking that provides the method of penetrating into the supersensible world. This thinking also provides the possibility of saying something about this prenatal life. We will come back to this tomorrow. But now I would like to point out the other side of what must be developed in man in order to ascend from sensory knowledge to supersensible knowledge. This other side is the will. And to understand the significance of this development of the will, you need only consider how far removed what we call the content of our moral ideals, our moral impulses, is from what is an external natural event, which is also a natural event in man. That is precisely the concern of the philosophical world view, that so-called ideals cannot be brought into the natural existence. On the one hand, geologists and astronomers describe how our Earth, together with everything that belongs to our planetary system, emerged from a primeval nebula according to eternal, iron laws, how it split off, how plants developed, how animals developed up to the point of man. Then they follow this in order to hypothesize how it will all perish again. But let us consider: The world of ideals does not enter into this world, nor the world of that which we must set before us if we want to lead a dignified human existence, nor the world of that under whose influence we carry out our actions; all that speaks to our conscience does not enter into it. But, my dear audience, what significance does this have for everything that takes place as a purely natural existence? In today's world view, there is no bridge that can be built from the moral ideal to what develops naturally. The astronomer and the geologist look to a final state of the earth, when everything will either succumb to the heat death or, as others describe, will be frozen, and so on. What we now call moral ideals will be a grandiose grave. What will become of what we call moral ideals? They are, as it were, like human thought, thoughts that slip over natural existence for such a materialistic world view. Those who start from the point of view of the spiritual science meant here do not theorize about these moral ideals, but seek to deepen life in another way. Above all, he tries to introduce into human arbitrariness something that is otherwise only considered by man in such a way that he leaves himself to it in a passive way.

And again, to help us understand what I mean, if we look with an unbiased eye at the second epoch of human life, the epoch from the change of teeth to sexual maturity. We see again how certain forces gradually develop in the child from the age of seven to fourteen, culminating in the years fourteen or fifteen. We see how individual love emerges first, how everything that is connected with the reproduction of the human race emerges. But we do not usually follow how a spiritual-soul element from the age of seven to fourteen or fifteen years again works as it did in the first seven years of life and comes to a conclusion, so that it is released and, as it were, redeemed from the organic activity in the fourteen or fifteen years. If we observe the development of the boy, we find – in a somewhat different way, which need not be further discussed here, it is more soul-like in the female sex – we find the conclusion of this epoch of life in the change of the voice, in the different timbre that the voice takes on. What is it actually that has shot into speech? If we observe impartially, we find that it is the will. In the first seven years of life it was the life of imagination, which then forms into a thought capable of remembering. Now it is the will that shoots into the organism, integrates with the organism and from now on permeates speech as free will, whereas until then, up to the 14th or 15th year, the child was not free in his speech, but — this can be demonstrated — was under the influence of his surroundings. So that we can say: In the second epoch of life, that which later appears as will, is what shapes the organs. And it comes to light in adolescence, in the 17th, 18th year, and into the twenties, glowing with ideals. That which has been working on what then appears as sexual love, as human love in general, has been released. What has been released after the 14th, 15th year of life in sexual maturity has been working until the 7th year; it is the will – first the will, which is bound to the organ, then the will that is released. If one takes this up again, and in such a way that one now turns to the will and transforms what one usually passively accepts as a human being into something active, then one will see that a second, special spiritual-soul power develops in the human interior. This is achieved by observing how one can say to oneself: If you look back on your life, you have actually changed from year to year – this is less noticeable – but in any case, from decade to decade, you have become a different person. Life, external circumstances, suffering, joys, all kinds of things intervene in life. And each of you may ask yourselves whether you have not become a different person over the decades? But this is not under your control. Life grinds you down. Life makes you someone else.

The method of spiritual science consists precisely in taking the development of the soul into one's own hands in this area, in taking the moral ideals of life more seriously than one otherwise does, for example, in taking these moral ideals of life into one's own self, in examining how one can shape something that one sets out to do so that one wills it, just as one wills to eat when one is hungry. You can bring it to that. You can bring it to the point where what are otherwise only abstract moral ideals become instinct, that they become an inner urge. Then, indeed, what otherwise, as I said, hovers above nature, of which one cannot understand what its actual meaning is, then it approaches the human inner organic becoming. Yes, even if it sounds paradoxical to many, there comes a time when moral impulses have the same effect on us as food has on our taste buds. One no longer has only an abstract feeling towards something that one finds good or bad, but one gets an inner antipathy towards something morally monstrous or bad, or even just blameworthy, just as one gets an antipathy towards something that tastes bad. What otherwise floats in abstract heights, intimately approaches what otherwise lives in taste and smell. You get a feeling of it when you just raise an arm, so what you set before you is effective in the arm's metabolism. In other words, when you actively take your human development into your own hands, you get a feeling of the spiritual-soul penetrating the physical-bodily. Just as one becomes free of the bodily in thinking when one develops it, so one will, through the other development that I am now discussing, which simply takes in that which 15th year, will be so intensively absorbed by the organism that love will not only have its usual effect in social or individual life, but love will have such an effect that it first organically shapes us into a body. If one now applies this intensity of love to one's own self-education, then one acquires in the will that which is strong enough to work, even if this body is given over to the earth or the elements. Once one has realized how the will has the power to affect the body, how the will not only instills moral impulses in us in the abstract, but how the will compels us to feel the moral impulses as we otherwise feel food through taste, then one has also grasped how this will intervenes in one's own human natural existence, how it intervenes in the entire natural existence of the universe. Then, through this other side of development, one acquires the possibility of grasping what lies beyond the grave. Just as through the development of the life of ideas one grasps prenatal life as something supersensible, as something eternal, so through the development of the will one grasps life after death. What the human being experiences here in this physical world is expanded by what spiritual science brings to light, precisely beyond this physical world. However, this does not mean that one merely speculates beyond the physical world. Rather, in order to arrive at what I have just described, one must actually develop a life of thought and will that is connected to reality. One develops the life of thought so truly that one has it in one's powers, in which it shapes us ourselves, by entering into life. One grasps the life of will in such a strong reality that one has it, as it will work even when our body with all its instincts and natural drives has decayed.

Then, when this has been achieved, one has something that can take on the same role as the content of my “Occult Science”, for example. Just as one speaks of the outside of the world from an external natural science, one can speak of the inside of the world. Not everyone needs to become a spiritual scientist to be able to understand spiritual science. Unflinching human understanding leads to the ability to grasp this spiritual science. We need not discuss how many spiritual researchers there will be in the future. There may be many, there may be few. From my book “How to Know Higher Worlds” you will see that anyone can become a spiritual scientist up to a certain point, namely, if one is willing to develop one's natural gifts, one can see into the supersensible world. To become a spiritual researcher in the sense meant here is perhaps not possible for some people for the simple reason that it requires much that a person in ordinary life cannot actually strive for. Just think how much time a person who becomes a chemist must spend in the laboratory, separated from the rest of life, and how, in a certain sense, he must renounce many things in the other life. This is the case with every single human activity in life. Just consider what it means when someone has to familiarize themselves with a world that is very different from the one in which we live daily from waking up to falling asleep, with a world that has very different laws, although these laws are effective here, but in secret. This imprints something on a person that is at the same time the source of suffering and pain. And every true spiritual researcher will tell you: He gratefully accepts the joys that life has brought him and would like to thank the world powers in a humble prayer for what he has been allowed to experience in joy. But he does not really owe his knowledge to his joys, which in a certain way lull him to sleep about the actual essence of life — we owe our knowledge to suffering. And it is the intense suffering that passes through our souls when we have climbed a certain step in going out from the world of sense-activity, as I have described to you today.

Then comes the other. Just think, I said it myself, thinking becomes something like grasping or walking: it is placed at the discretion of man. Otherwise we are accustomed to think involuntarily, to let thinking run on so automatically. This thinking must be transformed in such a way – at least for the time when one is doing spiritual research – as we otherwise move our hands and legs at will. One must now learn to differentiate precisely – and one learns this carefully when one is instructed in the right way in spiritual research – one must now carefully learn to separate the life that one must lead in the physical world and the life that leads into the spiritual world. Because here in the physical world one must be able to live like another human being. Those who become estranged from life out of a certain arrogance or out of a lust of the soul, who can devote themselves mystically and thereby despise life, who perhaps isolate themselves from the rest of humanity, don all kinds of strange clothes and the like, or say, “We belong to a completely different kind of people,” are not the real spiritual researchers. Those are rather the real spiritual researchers, who are not at all noticeable because they are in the outer life just as the others are, and even more practical, because they penetrate that with the real laws of the outer life, which one cannot get to know at all in the outer world, but only from the supersensible world; for everything sensual is completely dependent on the supersensible world. That is why I have often said that this spiritual science, which is meant here, will see its ideals fulfilled most when it can work precisely in the various practical branches of life. For example, I said, it would be a very special fulfillment of this anthroposophical ideal if one could talk to a number of doctors about what spiritual science could become for a renewal of medicine. This has now already been fulfilled: A course has been held in Dornach for doctors and prospective doctors on what can be contributed to medical science by this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science.

Truly, everything is closer to this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, which is fruitful for practical life activities, than the insubstantial arguing with those who, out of blind fanaticism or much worse, open themselves up defamatory to present this spiritual science as a religious sect because they have a general aversion to any human progress. For those who are serious about this spiritual science, it is not about arguing with creeds, but about serious work in all practical areas of life.

This is what is to be achieved above all from Dornach, and in the face of which, I would say, all the ramblings that are now arising from all sides are simply grotesque. Just try to familiarize yourself with what is really wanted and you will see that it looks quite different from what is now going through a large part of the press. That is what it is about: that in fact, through the method described, through which man penetrates more deeply into his own being, he also penetrates more deeply into the world. On the one hand, one learns to recognize the reality that brings us into existence; on the other hand, one learns to recognize the reality that carries us out of existence. But through this one also gains the possibility of looking more deeply into life itself. Today people pass each other by, not knowing what influence one person has on another, not only that which is conveyed through the outer sensual body, but how soul actually works on soul, spirit on spirit. People are almost afraid to think about these effects of soul on soul, of spirit on spirit. But until we arrive at an understanding of how human beings act upon one another as spiritual beings, we shall never gain a correct conception of what the supersensible world is.

The spiritual researcher must absolutely accustom himself to looking uninhibitedly into the supersensible world and thereby fulfill his place in the material world. This necessity of regulating one's life in the world here in a completely different, much more conscious way when one is a spiritual researcher is, among many other things, perhaps not everyone's cup of tea. But it is enough if the results that individual spiritual researchers communicate are simply taken up into common sense. Spiritual science is not concerned about not being understood by unprejudiced thinkers. No, it knows that the more unprejudiced, the more appropriate, the less dilettantish, the more scientific the approach, the more it will be understood. It positively demands to be taken as exactly and seriously as possible. Then it will be seen that one can no longer talk about it in the way one talks about it when one is only superficially acquainted with it. Common sense can certainly say yes to the results of spiritual science; but then a certain demand is made on it, a demand that people do not love today, but because they do not love it, they have brought themselves to the catastrophe that humanity has had to go through in the last five to six years.

You see, if you were to take and read my “Secret Science” with the kind of attitude that people particularly love today, then it is rubbish, and you are also entitled to grumble about it. It is not in a position to tell you as much as you are told when you sit down in a movie theater and pictures roll in front of you. You don't need to work very hard. You can be passive. If you were to sit and listen to a lecture accompanied by lantern slides, you could doze off. During the intervals you can passively devote your attention to the lantern slides. It is different with a lecture such as I am giving today. In a certain sense, one has to go along with it oneself if it is to have any meaning for the human being. But only in literature — my “occult science” has no content for anyone who does not go into it themselves. It is, so to speak, only a score, and one has to work out the content oneself through active inner work; only then does one have it. But in so doing, one acquires active thinking as an observer of what the spiritual researcher has explored. This thinking submerges into reality and connects with reality. One acquires a thinking that no longer says: If we introduce the gold standard, we will favor free trade. This thinking, standing completely outside of reality, is unreal in relation to reality. One trains oneself in a thinking that is intimately connected with reality and that can also orient itself in practical cases to reality. The other thinking is untrained. The trained thinking, which to a certain extent emerges as a by-product of spiritual scientific endeavors, has the effect that one becomes a practical person in the face of the demands that life makes today.

Therefore, this spiritual science may also claim that the apparent practitioners, the illusionary practitioners, who — well, how should I put it, I dare not say loudmouthed — who have loudly boasted that they knew everything that happens in business and other life, and have so shattered life as it has been shattered, will have to be replaced by those people who know something to say about the real course of life because they have learned to say something about life in so far as it concerns the relationship of man to the universe.

I may always refer back to the fact, which is, after all, demonstrable, that it was in the early spring of 1914, in Vienna, in the very place where the world conflagration started, that I said to a small group: We are in the midst of a social development in Europe that shows us how public life suffers as if from a social carcinoma, as if from a social cancer that must break out terribly in the near future. That was in the early spring of 1914. A little later, men who also think in terms of practicalities, for example the German Foreign Minister and the Austrian Foreign Minister, told their parliaments or delegations almost identically: the general political détente is making great progress. We are on friendly terms with Russia, and thanks to these friendly relations we will soon enter an era of European peace. In Germany, they said: We are negotiating with England, and although these negotiations have not yet been concluded, they promise to be concluded in the near future and will establish a long-lasting peaceful relationship between Germany and England. All this in May 1914! That is what the practical people said. The other one who said: We are suffering from a social carcinoma, was the dreamer, the fantasist, the crazy anthroposophist. But the practical men, the ones people listened to, said what I have mentioned to you. Their practicality was fulfilled in such a way that in the next few years ten to twelve million people were killed and three times as many were crippled!

But how these predictions have been fulfilled here, how they have been fulfilled in the field of monometallism, how the measures of these apparent practitioners, who are alien to real life, have had an effect on a small scale, has all been demonstrated in the last five to six years. Today, spiritual science asserts itself to civilization by saying how one must delve into the content of spiritual science in order to apply such thinking, which is not only logical but also realistic. I said explicitly that I do not consider the monometallists stupid, but I do consider them to be people whose thinking cannot be immersed in reality, whose thinking is unrealistic. I know how many people do not believe today that it is precisely through intellectual deepening that one can enter into real life!

This is how spiritual science relates to the spirit of our time; this is how it relates to the unspiritual in our time. How does this unspirituality express itself? Well, humanity has actually only acquired intellectualism in the last three to four centuries. It has developed out of an ancient wisdom, which was, however, more instinctive, more dream-like, and therefore had to fade away. Intellectuality had to arise. We have arrived at a point in intellectual development from which we must move away again in order to recognize spiritual things, which mere intellect can never do. Everything, including our science, medicine, jurisprudence, all the individual sciences, have become alienated from reality today, with the sole exception of the inorganic sciences and technology with their entourage. Thus intellectuality has had to develop in recent centuries. There used to be an instinctive spiritual knowledge, but it has faded for a while. A new spiritual knowledge must replace it again.

But we have the inheritance of this ancient spiritual knowledge within us, and one of the most significant parts of this inheritance is our language itself, that is, all our languages of civilization. That which lives in our language has not emerged from a world view such as that practiced in the last three to four centuries. If people had not already had the languages, out of such soul activity as led to intellectualism, people would never have developed the languages. The languages are an ancient heritage. They emerged from a time when people grasped the spiritual, even if only instinctively. What did they become in the age of intellectualism? They have become what has gradually brought our public life to a state of phraseology. We live because we have lost the old spiritual substantial content that was in the word, we live with language in the phrase and we depend on finding substantial content for our languages again through spiritual deepening. But the phrase is the sister of the lie. And ask yourself, without prejudice, how the lie has carried its triumphal march through the world in the last five to six years, how we live in the age of phrase! Our spiritual life is entirely characterized by phrase. This is the un-spirit in the spiritual life of the present: phrase-mongering. We can only escape this spirit of empty phrases, this part of the unspiritual, by filling ourselves with anthroposophical spiritual science. If we want spiritual content with spiritual substance, then our words will in turn resonate with spiritual content. Today people speak words and more words because they have lost their spiritual content. This is the one point that is pointed out from a spiritual science point of view in the idea of threefolding the social organism, that the spiritual life is dominated by empty phrases, that a way must be sought – we will have to talk about this way in the next few days – to bring substantial content back into our words from the spiritual life. That is the first task we have to accomplish in the face of the anti-spirituality of our time.

The second task is this: it has become clear that this more recent time is completely under the influence of the urge to develop democratic, truly democratic life. This has seized people as otherwise the individual human being is seized by sexual maturity or other periods of life. Since the middle of the 15th century, the call for democracy, for true democracy, has been making itself felt more and more throughout the civilized world. And what is true democracy? Honestly grasped, democracy is a coexistence of people in the social organism in such a way that every adult is equal to every other adult. This cannot be developed with regard to intellectual life; because there it depends on abilities. Spiritual life must be kept separate on its own ground. Democracy can only embrace political life. But what has become of political life? Because the urge to form democracy is there, but this urge is interrupted everywhere under the influence of modern materialistic un-spirit — what has become of this life? Instead of a legal coexistence, instead of the real legal life born out of the inner being of man, a life of convention has arisen. Just as we live in phrases in our spiritual life, so in our legal life we live in conventions, in what is set down in paragraphs. These are not things to which people belong with their souls, but which they obey because they are conventionally set down by an absolute power or, for example, a democracy. The second thing that spiritual science wants with regard to the threefold social organism is to establish real democracy in the area where democracy can be. So that convention is replaced by what must arise from the innermost part of human nature among people who have come of age with equal rights.

And in a third area, the area of economic life, we have to replace economic unity, the calculation of circumstances, with real economic judgment, which will arise in the way that I will also suggest in the next few days, but which you will also find by name in my “Key Points of the Social Question.” This economic judgment has emerged in the face of the unspirituality of modern times. Man has become a routine practitioner instead of a real economic practitioner, a routine practitioner who simply stands in the fabric into which he was born or into which other circumstances of life have placed him. Man is not a real practitioner in the field of economic life, but a routine practitioner under a compulsively shaped demon. We live under the demon of phrase, of convention, of routine. We cannot escape this if we do not fulfill both the legal, intellectual and economic life with the sense of reality and spirit that we can acquire from the practice of spiritual science.

Now, people today still overlook such things. With regard to the fact that one can point to the most important thing that is really directly involved in practical life, people often stick to the judgment that it is just a dream, a fantasy, and so on. Yes, that's just the way people are. Here in Switzerland, a man named Johannes Scherr lived in the 1870s. In many respects he was a blusterer, he poured out his scathing criticism of everything and anything, just like a blustering person. But in his blustering there is often a very sound judgment. This Johannes Scherr, out of a certain insight into what he saw in his time, said: “If this continues, if people in their knowledge merely chase after materialism, if in their external political and social lives they merely financial economy, as it is now being ignited, where everyone only considers their financial or industrial interests, pursues their selfishness, if this continues, then the time will come when man will have to say: nonsense, you have triumphed!

I would like to know who, with an unbiased mind, has not had to stand up in recent years and still does so now, when he sees what is happening here and there in the world, when he sees how the opposite of everything that could could only benefit, throughout the whole civilized world, if one has, in particular, during the ad absurdum of the present civilization in this war, placed oneself in these circumstances, how one did not have to say: Well, the time has come when one would not have to say: Nonsense, you have won, like Johannes Scherr; but: Nonsense, you have decided!

I will develop the rest in the next few days. Today I wanted to say by way of introduction that anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, as it is meant here, does not want to participate in bringing about a state in which one will have to say more and more: “Nonsense, you decided” — but rather to help bring about a state in which, out of the innermost human ability, out of the innermost real human knowledge, one will have to say: We can bring meaning back into life, constructive meaning. This is what spiritual science wants to work on.

And it draws its strength from faith, which is surely more than mere belief, from the conviction that the time will have to come when the unspiritual spirit of empty phrases, the unspiritual spirit of convention, the unspiritual spirit of routine will have to be conquered by the spirit that, out of a deeper knowledge, speaks again of the meaning of life. For spiritual science must be convinced: not the spirit of convention and routine will lead man to a salutary development of his life, but alone the spirit. Therefore, as strongly as it can, spiritual science would like to raise the call for the spirit and for its true knowledge in the face of the needs of the present day and the near future.

If Theosophy were to assert that it has in the last few decades brought any new thing into the world, it could easily and very effectively be contradicted. For it is easy to believe that any particular truth or achievement in a special branch of human knowledge, in man's conception of the world or in his world of thought, might enrich the advancing ages, but not that which concerns his innermost and deepest being—the source and origin of all human wisdom—could appear at any particular time. This in itself could not be believed; hence it is only natural that the belief that Theosophy could bring in or want to bring in anything completely new, must call forth a certain distrust against the movement itself.

But ever since Theosophy set out to obtain an influence upon modern civilisation, it has always described itself as possessing the old primeval wisdom, which man has ever sought and endeavoured to acquire in many different forms in the various ages. It is the task of the Theosophical Movement to look for these forms in the various religions and world-conceptions through which the peoples, throughout the ages, have striven to press through to the source of truth. Theosophy has brought to light the fact that in the various ages, even in the most primeval times, that wisdom by which man sought to attain his goal, has always in its really most profound essence been one and the same. That is a truth, Theosophy teaches us to be modest concerning the acquirements of our own times.

The well-known statement, which, in its lack of humility, boasts of the progress made in the 19th century, is felt to be particularly limited when we observe life in a deeper sense, extending through hundreds of thousands of years. But I do not wish to lead you back to those primeval ages.

I should like to ask you, by means of the example of a great personality of modern times, how he tried to carry out the wisdom-teaching inscribed in the Greek Temples; “Know thyself!” He, who made this saying his own, was really in complete harmony with the teaching and views of Theosophy. This personality is none other than Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. He certainly belongs not only to the German nation, but to many other civilized men of the present age and belongs indeed more or less to us all. Goethe is a spirit who affects us in a very special way. No matter to what part of his life we turn in study, we find, not only the great Poet very pre-eminently there, but, if we go more deeply into the subject, we soon discover in him the Wise One, to whose wisdom we turn back again after long years, always to discover something new.

We find that Goethe was one of those spirits who had within him an inexhaustible fund of greatness. And if we have learned to add to our own small stock of wisdom, by turning back to Goethe again and again, we are constantly astonished anew and stand in admiration before that which before was hidden from us, because there was in ourselves no responsive echo of the realm which expressed itself through him. No matter how polished a man may be, no matter how much wisdom he may have discovered in Goethe, if after some years he turns to him again, he will convince himself anew that there is still an infinite fund of what is beautiful and good in the works of Goethe. This experience may come in particular to those who believe profoundly in the evolution of the human soul. It has often been said that in his “Faust,” Goethe produced a sort of Gospel. If this be so, then, besides his Gospel, Goethe also produced a sort of secret Revelation, a sort of Apocalypse. This Apocalypse is concealed within his works, it forms the conclusion to his “Unterhaltung deutscher Ausgewanderten,” and is read only by few. I am always being asked where in Goethe's works this “Märchen” is to be found! Yet it is in all the editions and forms, as I have just said, the conclusion to the above. In this fairy tale, Goethe created a work of art of eternal beauty. The direct, symbolical impression of the work of art will not be interfered with, if I now try to give an interpretation of this fairy tale; Goethe put into this tale his most intimate thoughts and conceptions.

In the latter years of his life he said to Eckermann: “My dear friend, I will tell you something that may be of use to you, when you are going over my works. They will never become popular; there will be single individuals who will understand what I want to say, but there can be no question of popularity for my writings.” This referred principally to be the second part of “Faust,” and what he meant was that a man who enjoyed “Faust” might have a direct artistic impression, but that one who could get at the secrets concealed in “Faust” would see what was hidden behind the imagery. But I am not speaking of the second part of “Faust,” but of the “Fairy Tale of the Green Serpent and the Beautiful Lily,” in which Goethe spoke in an even more intimate way than in the former. I shall try to disclose in the course of this lecture the Mysteries concealed in these remarkable pictures, and to explain why Goethe made use of these symbolical images to express his most intimate thoughts. Anyone who is capable of understanding the Fairy Tale knows that Goethe was a Theosophist and a mystic. Goethe was acquainted with that wisdom and conception of the world which we try to give forth in a popular way in Theosophy; and the Fairy Tale itself is a proof of this; only, at the time when Goethe was writing, the endeavour had not yet been made to clothe the highest truths in words and to give them forth in open lectures by the power of reason; these most intimate human psychic truths were not then spoken of openly. Those who gave a hint of them put them into symbolical form, and expressed them by symbols. This was an old custom, dating from the middle ages, when it was thought that it would be impossible to put the highest insight into the abstract form, but that a sort of experience or initiation was necessary. This made it impossible for people to speak of these truths, who believed that a particular sort of mood, a sort of special soul-atmosphere was needed in order to understand such truths; they could not be grasped merely by the intellect. A certain mood was necessary, a certain disposition of the soul, which I will call a psychic atmosphere. The language of reason seemed to them to be too arid, too dry and cold to express the highest truths. Besides which they still retained a sort of conviction that those who were to learn these truths should first make themselves worthy of them. This conviction brought it to pass, that in the olden times, down to the 3rd century A.D.—the truth about the human soul and the human spirit was not given out publicly as it is now, but those who wished to attain to such knowledge had first to be prepared to receive that which was to be given to them in the Sanctuaries of the Mysteries. Therein all that had been preserved of the secrets of nature and of the laws of cycles, was given out as something which, to put it concisely, could not be learned and recognised as dry truths, but which the students had to recognise as living truths and learn to live them. It was not then a question of thinking wisdom, but of living it; not merely a question of permeating wisdom with the glow of the intellect, but of making it the mainspring of life, so that a man is transformed thereby. A certain shyness must possess a man before the Holy of Holies; he had to understand that truth is divine, that it is permeated by the Divine Cosmic Blood, which draws into the personality, so that the divine world lives anew within. The recognition of all this was included in the word “development.” This had to be made quite clear to the Mystic, and this it was which he was to attain through the stages of purification, on the way to the Mysteries, he was to acquire the holy shyness before the Truth, and to be drawn away from the longing for the things of the senses, from the sorrows and joys of life, from all that surrounds us in ever-day life. The Light of the Spirit, which is necessary to us when we withdraw from the profane life, we shall receive when we give up the other. When we are worthy to receive the Light of the Spirit, we shall have become different people; we shall then love with real, earnest sympathy and devotion, that which we are wont to look upon as a shadowy existence, a life in the abstract. We then live the Spiritual life which to the ordinary man is mere thought. But the Mystic learns to sacrifice the Self that clings to the everyday life, he learns not only to penetrate the truth with his thought but has to live it through and through, to conceive it within him as Divine Truth, as Theosophy. Goethe has expressed this conviction in his “West-Ostlichen Divan:”—

So lang dud as nicht hast,
Dies ‘stirb im Werde’,
Bist du nur ein trüber Gast
Auf der dunkeln Erde—

This it is that the Mystics of all ages have striven for,—to let the lower nature die out, and to allow that which dwells in the Spirit to spring forth; the extinction of sense reality, that man may ascend to the Kingdom of “Divine Purposes.” “To die in order to become.” If we do not possess this power we do not know of the forces that vibrate into our world, and we are but a “trüber Gast” (gloomy guest) on our Earth. Goethe gave expression to this in his “West-Ostlichen Divan,” and this he tries to represent in all the different parts of the “Fairy Tale” of the “Green Serpent and the Beautiful Lily!” The transition of man from one stage of existence to a higher one. That was the riddle he wanted to solve, the riddle as to how a man who lives in the everyday world,—and who can only see with his eyes, and hear with his ears,—can lay hold of this “dying and becoming!”

This was the question for the Mystics of all ages; and this great question was always called “Spiritual Alchemy.” The transmutation of man from the every-day soul to the Spirit-soul, one to whom the things of the Spirit are just as real as the things of this Earth, such as tables and chairs and so on, are to the ordinary man. When the alchemical transmutation had taken place in a man, he was then considered worthy to have the highest truths communicated to him, he was then led into the Holy of Holies. He was then initiated, and supplied with the teachings which instructed him as to the purposes of nature, those purposes which run through the plan of the world. It is an initiation of this kind which is described by Goethe, the initiation into the Mysteries, of one who has been made worthy to receive them.

There are two proofs of this—in the first place Goethe himself took a great deal of trouble to become acquainted with the secret which may be called the Secret of Alchemy. Between the studies he made at Leipzig and Strassburg he had already discovered that Alchemy had a Spiritual side, and knew that ordinary Alchemy was nothing but a reflection of the Spiritual, and all that is known of Alchemy consisted only in the symbolical expressions of realities. That is to say, he referred to that Alchemy which is concerned with the forces of the inner life.

Alchemists have also left indications of how this could be worked. As they were only able to describe the transmutation of the human forces by means of symbols, they therefore spoke of one substance being transmuted into another. All they related concerning the transmutation of matter, referred to what the human soul-life developed within itself at a higher stage, when it became transmuted spiritually. All that the great Spirits have disclosed about the Spiritual Realms to those men who are still bound to the life of every day, was taken by them as referring to the transmutation of substances and metals in the retorts, and they took great trouble to try and discover by what mysterious methods the transmutation of substances could be brought about.

Goethe, in one part of his “Faust,” shows us what he himself understood as to such things. In the first part of “Faust,” in the walk in front of the garden, he points clearly to the false, wrong and petty material conceptions that are held as to Alchemy. He makes fun of those who strive with such feverish efforts to discover these secrets, and who pour forth the lower substances, according to numberless receipts, in company of the Adepts.

“There a Red Lion, with the Lily wedded,
“A wooer bold, within the tepid bath,
“From bridal-bower to bridal-bower was speeded
“Racked by the naked fire's flaming wrath.”

The union with the Lily, which is made fun of by Goethe is what he wished to illustrate in his Fairy Tale, of the Green Serpent and the beautiful Lily.

The highest transmutation which man can accomplish is illustrated by Goethe in the symbol of the Lily. It is of like significance with what we call the Highest freedom. When a man follows the primal and eternal laws, in accordance with which we have to complete the primal and eternal circuit of our existence, and if he also recognises the primal and eternal evolution of his freedom, he will then find himself at a certain stage of his development which is accomplished by a disposition of the soul, which may be described by the symbol of the Lily. The highest forces of the soul, the highest state of consciousness, in which a man may be free because he will then not misuse his freedom, and will never create a disturbance in the circle of freedom,—this state of soul, which was communicated to the Mystics in the Mysteries, in which they were collectively transmuted,—this was from all time described as the “Lily.”

That which Spinoza expresses at the end of his “Ethics,” (dry and mathematical as he was in his other writings)—when he says that man ascended into the higher spheres of existence and penetrated them by means of the laws of nature,—this state of mind may also be described as the Lily, Spinoza describes it as the realm of Divine Love in the human soul, the realm in which man does nothing under compulsion, but in which everything belonging to the domain of human development takes place in freedom, devotion and utter Love, where everything arbitrary is transmuted by that Spiritual Alchemy in which every activity flows into the stream of freedom.

Goethe has described that Love as the highest state of Freedom, as the being free from all desires and wishes of our every-day life. He says, “Self-seeking and Self-will are not permanent, they are driven out by the Ego. Here we must be good.” The Divine Love, which is referred to by Spinoza, and which he wishes to attain through Spiritual Alchemy,—that it is with which man should unite himself, that it is with which man should unite his will. Human will active at every stage, is that which in all ages was known as the “Lion,” the creature in which the Will is most strongly developed, and that is why the Mystics have always called the will of man: the “Lion.” In the Persian Mysteries there were seven Initiations; there were the following: first the Raven, then the Occultist, then the Fighter; at the fourth grade the student was already able to look back at his life from the other side, and had really become Man, hence the Persians called one who had overcome the Lion stage a Persian. That was the fifth stage, and a man who had got so far that his actions flowed quickly along, just as the Sun runs its course in the Heavens above, was called a Sun-runner. But he who accomplished all his actions out of absolute and ceaseless love, was looked upon by the Persians as belonging to the grade of the “Father.” At the fourth grade, a man stood at the parting of the ways; he had then, besides his physical body, his etheric double, and that body which is subject to the laws of passions and desires, wishes and instincts; he was now organized for a higher life. These three bodies form, according to Theosophy, the lower part of man. From these the lower man is born. When a man was initiated into this grade and could see this connection the Persians called him a “Lion.” He then stands at the parting of the ways, and that which compelled him to act according to the laws of nature is transmuted into a free gift of Love. When he reaches the eighth stage of Initiation, when he has evolved himself into a free man, one who can allow himself to do, out of free love, what he was formerly driven to do by his own nature, this connection between the Lion and the free loving being, is described in Alchemy as “the mystery of human development.” This is the mystery Goethe represented in his Fairy Tale. First of all he shows us how this man of will stands there, drawn down to the physical world from higher spheres, from spheres of which he himself knows nothing. Goethe is conscious of the fact that man, in so far as his spiritual nature is concerned, comes originally from higher spheres; that he was led into this which Goethe represents as the world of matter, the world of sense-existence, this is the Land on the bank of the River.

But in the Tale of the green Serpent and the beautiful Lily, there are two Lands, one on this side of the River, and the other beyond. The unknown Ferryman conducts the man across from the far side into the Land of the sense-world;—and between the Land of spiritual existence and the sense-world there flows the River, the water which divides them. By water, Goethe describes that which the Mystics of all ages have symbolized as water. Even in Genesis the same meaning is applied to this word as we find in Goethe. In the New Testament too we find this expression in the conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus. “He who is not born again of water and the Spirit, cannot enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.” Goethe understood perfectly what was signified by the expression “born again of water.” And we can see in what sense he understood it by his “song of the Spirit.”

Seele des Menschen	Soul of humanity
Nie gleichat du dem Wasser!	How like to the water!
Schicksal des Menschen	Fate of humanity
Wie gleichst du dem Wind!	How like to the wind!

The world of humanity, the world of longing and wishes, the world of passions and desires, is a land inserted between our Spirit and our senses. Our senses know neither good nor evil, they cannot err. Anyone who goes into this question, knows that when we study the laws of nature, we cannot speak of good or evil. When we study nature in the animal world, we find that there are objectionable animals and useful ones, but we cannot speak of good and evil ones. Only when man plunges into the water—into the soul-world—does he become capable of good and evil. This world which is inserted between the Spiritual and the world of senses, is the River over which the Spirit passes from the unknown spheres. The innermost of man came across the River of passions and desires—and when he goes through further development he becomes like the Will-o'-the-wisp.

Thus man is subject to the laws within him, after he has crossed the River, and before he has received the Divine Spark which will take him across to the other world. He is therefore put ashore by the Ferryman who brings men across the River from the far bank to the near one. Nobody can be guided over by the Ferryman but all can be brought over by him. We feel ourselves being brought over without any action of our own, by the forces lying beneath our consciousness, which go ahead of our actions. By means of these forces we feel ourselves placed in the world of sense,—on the hither side; the Ferryman who brought us across from the Land of the Spirit, has put us into this world and cannot take us back to that country again to which we must however return, the Land of the beautiful Lily. The Will-o'-the-wisps wanted to pay the Ferryman his fare with gold, but he demanded fruits of the Earth, which they did not possess; they had nothing but gold, and he would not be paid with that. Gold coins, said he, were injurious to the River, it cannot bear such gold; which signifies that man can purchase wisdom with the fruits of the Earth. This is a profound wisdom; gold signifies the force of wisdom dwelling in man, and this is his guide through life. This force of Wisdom makes itself felt when a man is placed among the things of sense, as the forces of knowledge and reason. But this wisdom is not the wisdom which furthers his development. When it forms part of a man's nature, it makes him self-seeking and egotistical. If this force of reason and this knowledge were to join forces with what flows in the River, their passions would throw up huge waves; for whenever man does not place his wisdom at the service of selflessness, but simply throws it into the River, when he cultivates (frohmen) his passions, the River throws up great waves. Hence it is impossible to satisfy the River with gold; with that wisdom. So the Ferryman throws back the wisdom which has not yet passed through the stage of selflessness. He throws it back into the chasm, where reigns the profoundest darkness, and there it is buried. We shall hear why this is so.

The Ferryman demanded three cabbages, three artichokes, and three onions.—Thus he demands the fruits of the Earth. Now by what means can man attain his development? By ennobling the lower desire-forces of his nature, so that he purifies the sense-nature within him and casts this purified nature into the River, and thereby .................. this it is which Schiller refers to in his letters on the aesthetic education of man. He alone understands freedom who has set his own nature free;—when the outer sense-nature is so ennobled that it seeks for the good and the beautiful because it is no longer misled by passion, when we no longer throw our wisdom into the River, but reward our passions with the fruits of the Earth so that our sense-nature itself is taken up by them, just as the fruits of the Earth would be accepted by the River, we have then attained the first grade of initiation as expressed in the words, “Ye must know that I cannot be paid except with the fruits of the Earth.” Then the Will-o'-the-wisps proceed further on this side of the River, that means that man tries to follow his own way of life further.

On this side of the River he meets with the green Serpent, the symbol of human endeavours, of human knowledge. This Serpent had previously had a wonderful experience—the Ferryman had ferried over the piece of gold and concealed it in a cleft of the Earth, and here the Serpent had found it. The wisdom that brings men forward is still a hidden treasure, concealed in the mysteries, hence if a man wishes to find wisdom he must seek it far from all human self-seeking. When a man had made himself worthy to receive it, it will be found in its proper place;—the Serpent, the symbol of human striving after knowledge, permeates itself with the gold; this “self” is entirely permeated with wisdom, and becomes luminous. Then the Serpent desired from the Will-o'-the-wisps that which is a cause of pride to the self-seeking man, when he throws about him and pricks himself with,—this human knowledge which when used in the service of egoism is objectionable and worthless, will be attained when man crawls humbly on the ground as does the Serpent, and strives to recognize the reality piece by piece. If a man stands there, proud and stuck-up, he will never attain it, he can only receive it when like the Serpent, he goes horizontally on the ground and lives in humility,—then the gold of wisdom is in its place. Then the man may venture to permeate himself with wisdom—that too is why the Will-o'-the-wisps call the Serpent their relation, and say “We really are related on the side of light.” Indeed they are related, the wisdom that serves the self is related to the wisdom which serves humility; the Serpent is related to the Will-o'-the-wisps.

Now the tale relates further that the Serpent had been under the Earth in the clefts of the rock, and there had met something resembling human forms—the Serpent had reached a temple; this is none other than a symbol of the Mystery Temples of all ages,—this concealed Temple which was in the clefts below the Earth is the symbol of the Sanctuaries of Initiation. In this Temple the Serpent found the three great priests of Initiation; these priests were gifted with the highest forces of human nature, which theosophy calls Atma, Buddhi, Manas. They are called by Goethe the King of Beauty, the King of Wisdom, and the King of Strength or Will;—with these three basic forces of the soul, into which the human soul must be initiated, the Mystic had to be united in the Temple of the Mysteries—and Goethe represents the Serpent, all luminous within, because it had taken in the gold of wisdom, humility.

The old man with the lamp is another figure—what does he represent? He has a lamp which has the peculiarity of only shining when another light is there. Because the Serpent is luminous and illuminates the inner Hall of the Mystery Temple with its own radiating light,—Goethe expresses these thoughts in another passage in the words “If the eye were not sensitive to the Sun it could not perceive the light.” Here he expresses in poetic words what he expressed in the fairy tale in pictures; what we in Anthroposophy call “occult knowledge” is expressed by the old man with the lamp,—the light of occult knowledge cannot shine to anyone who had not prepared himself to receive it.

It appears to no one who has not worked his way up to that higher stage of development at which his higher self, his selfless nature shines forth from within, bringing light to meet light,—the highest wisdom is called occult, because it only appears when a man brings his own light to meet it. When those two lights, the intuitive light from above, and the light that comes from the personal, shine into one another, they then give that which man experiences in his transmutation as Spiritual Alchemy—then the space around him become light, he then learns to recognise the highest Spiritual forces, the gifts of the three Kings; Wisdom, Beauty, and Strength,—the gift of the golden King is Wisdom, that of the silver King is Beauty or Piety, the gift of the bronze King is Strength or force of Will. Man can only understand his innermost forces, he can only understand himself when he meets with the light of the lamp which can only shine when there is already a light. Then the three Kings appear in their radiance, and at the same time the significance of the fourth King becomes apparent—the King who is composed of the metals of the three others;—he is the symbol of the lower nature, in which the noble forces of Wisdom, Beauty, and Strength work together as disorderly and inharmonious chaos. These three forces that live in a highly developed soul are also to be found in lower natures, though there they are chaotic and inharmonious. This fourth King is the Kingdom of the present world;—the Chaotic mixture of Wisdom, Beauty, and Strength,—the soul-forces which can only attain the highest when they work together harmoniously,—affect one another in a chaotic way in the present age. The old man said of the fourth King “Er wird sich setzen” (here he will sit down)—The Chaotic mixture will have disappeared when that which Goethe so ardently longed for shall have come to pass, that is, that the Temple shall no longer be hidden, but shall be raised to the full light of day, when it shall have ascended from the depths, and all men will be able to serve in the Temple of Initiation, which will be a bridge across which all men may pass to and fro. That will be a time when all men will have made themselves worthy of being influenced by the highest wisdom, piety, and strength and will. The Temple will then have fulfilled its task. It will have raised itself above the river of passions, and the forces of passion will have become so pure and noble that the highest Spiritual can uplift itself in the Temple, in the clear light of day, above the stream of passions and desires. To this end it is necessary that mankind should be filled with the “Stirb und werde” (dying and becoming) which Goethe so distinctly outlined in his “West-Ostlichen Divan.” Goethe was frequently asked for the solution of the riddle and he replied “The solution of the riddle lies in the fairy tale itself, and not in one word alone.” There is a passage during the conversation in the Temple which we take to be the solution of the riddle. The solution is not a thing which can be expressed in words, but in an inner resolve; that was indicated by Goethe in the fairy tale. The Serpent said “I will sacrifice myself, I will purify myself through selflessness.” It is precisely this which must be taken as the profoundest solution of the riddle, it is an act, and not a doctrine. Till now one could only pass across the River in two ways. The one was when at noon the green Serpent laid itself across the River and formed a bridge, so that at the mid-day hour it was possible to go across the River. This means that at the present age there are moments in a man's life when the Sun is at noon for him, when he is ripe to yield himself to the highest Spiritual light; but he is always drawn away again and again from these noon-tide moments of life, into the lower world full of passions. In such noon-tide moments the elect of the Spirit can pass across from the shore of the sense-life to the shore of the Spirit.

But there is yet another way to pass over the River, and that is in the evening, when the shadow of the great giant is thrown across the River,—that too can form a bridge, but only in the hour of twilight. What is this shadow of the great giant? Goethe went into this question more deeply with his intimate and trusted friends; with them he spoke about the forces symbolized by him in the “Fairy Tale.” On one occasion when Schiller was planning a journey to Frankfort, Goethe wrote to him: “I am very glad you did not come here, to the West, for the shadow of the giant might have got hold of you unawares.” The meaning of the giant is moreover clearly expressed in the “Fairy Tale” itself, the giant who is weak, can do nothing of himself; but his shadow can form a bridge across to the far side. This giant is the crude mechanical forces of nature. Its shadow is sometimes able, when the light is no longer strong, to conduct the men of crude passions across the River. These are the people who, when their clear day consciousness is extinguished, pass over into the Land of the Spirit in trance, somnambulism, psychic vision, or some of the many similar conditions of the soul. Thus the clear day consciousness was also extinguished in the wild delirious acts by which at that time men tried to push their way into this realm of Freedom.

They wanted to penetrate into the realm of the beautiful Lily—But the shadow of the giant can alone reach across. Man is only able to overcome his passions in the twilight of his consciousness, when he is in an almost unconscious state, and not when living in clear consciousness. These are the two ways of reaching the opposite bank: First, in the holy moments of the noon-day hour, by the Serpent; and secondly, in the twilight of the consciousness—by the shadow of the giant.

But this one thing must be striven after:—the Serpent must sacrifice itself completely. Not only should it lead men over the River of passions at the noon-day hour, but at all hours of the day it should be ready to form the bridge from one side to the other; so that not only a few may be able to wander across, but that all men should be able to cross backwards and forwards at any time. The Serpent made this resolution, and so did Goethe; Goethe points to an age of selflessness, when man will not put his forces at the service of his lower self but at the service of unselfishness.

There are a few other thoughts connected with these basic thoughts about the Fairy Tale. I cannot go into them all today, and will only touch upon a few. We find the wife of the old man with the lamp, she is connected with the representatives of human occult knowledge. She keeps the house of the old man. To her come the Will-o'-the-wisps, they have licked off all the gold from the walls, and had at once given away all the gold which enriched them, so that the living “Mops,” who ate up the gold, had to suffer death. The old man is the force of reason, which brings forth that which is useful. It is only when occult force unites with this which forwards material civilization, when the highest is united with the lowest in the world, that the world itself can follow its proper course of development. Man should not be led away from everyday life, but should purify the everyday civilization. In the world man is surrounded in his dwellings by that which hangs as gold upon the walls. All that is around him is the gold. On the one hand he is a man of knowledge and on the other a useful man. Thus he has around him the two-fold experience of the human race; all the collective experience of humanity has been collected together in human science. Those who strive after this, seek what is written in the scriptures. They lick off the historical wisdom, as it were.

This it is which surrounds man in his strivings; this it is with which man must entirely permeate himself. But it can not be of use to that which is alive. The living Mops swallowed the gold and died of it. That wisdom which only rules as the dead wisdom of books, and which has not been made alive by the Spirit, kills everything living. But, when it is once again united with the origin of Wisdom, with the beautiful Lily, then it wakes to life again. That is why the old man gives the dead Mops to his wife, that she may carry it to the beautiful Lily. The Lamp has one great peculiarity, everything dead was made alive through it; and what was alive was purified by it. This transmutation is brought about in man by occult knowledge. Besides this, the old woman is begged by the Will-o'-the-Wisps to pay their debts to the Ferryman. These three fruits represent the human sense for usefulness in material civilization, which is to pay tribute to the passions. For from whence should the actual driving forces of nature come, if not from the technique, from the cultivation of material nature? It is an interesting fact that the shadow of the giant as it comes up from the River, takes one of the fruits of the Earth away with it, so that the old woman only has two left. Now she required three for the Ferryman and so had to renounce the River. Something then happens, something full of significance. She has to plunge her hands into the River, whereby she turns so black that she scarcely remains visible. She is still there, but she is almost imperceptible. That shows us the connection between external civilization and the world of the passions. Material civilization must be placed at the service of the Astral, of the soul. As long as the nature of man is not sufficiently ennobled to offer itself as tribute to the River of the passions, so long does technique remain in debt to the River of man (the soul of man). As long as human endeavours are devoted to human passions, man works invisibly at something of which he cannot perceive the final aim. It is invisible, yet it is there; it can be felt, but is not externally perceptible. Everything man does on the road to the great goal, until he pays his debts to the River or the Soul,—all that he has to throw into the River of passions becomes invisible, like the hand of the wife of the old man with the Lamp. As long as the sense-nature is not fully purified, as long as it is not consumed, as it were, by the fire of the passion it cannot shine, and remains invisible; that is what excites the old lady so much that she can no longer reflect any light of her own. This might be gone into more fully, in greater detail; every single word is fraught with meaning. But it would lead us too far to go into all that to-day.

So let us hurry on to the great procession in which we encounter a youth, who tried to capture the beautiful Lily too early, and in so doing crippled all his life forces. Goethe says (in another place): “A man who strives for freedom without having first liberated his own inner self, falls more deeply than before into the bonds of necessity. If he does not set himself free, he will be killed.” A man who has prepared himself, who has been purified in the Mysteries, and the Temple of the Mysteries, so that he may unite himself in a proper way with the Lily, he alone will escape death. One who has died to the lower to be born again in a higher sense, can grasp the Lily. The present time is represented by the crippled youth, who wanted to attain the highest by violence. He complains to all whom he meets that he cannot secure the Lily. He must now make himself ripe enough to do so, and to this aim those forces must be combined which are symbolized by those who took part in the procession. It consisted of the old man with the Lamp, the Will-o'-the-Wisps and the beautiful Lily herself. The procession thus included all the different beautiful forces, and it was led down into the clefts of the Earth to the Temple of Initiation. That too, is a profound feature of the enigmatical Fairy Tale, in that it allows the Will-o'-the-Wisps to open the door of the Temple. The self-seeking wisdom is not without object, it is a necessary stage of transition. Human egoism can be overcome if it is nourished by wisdom and permeated with the gold of true knowledge. This wisdom can then be used to open the Temple. Those who unconsciously serve wisdom in an external sense, will be led to the real sanctuaries of wisdom. Those learned men who only bury themselves in books are nevertheless our guides. Goethe does not undervalue science. He knew that science herself uncloses the Temple of Wisdom; he knew that everything must be proved and accepted by science, and that without her we cannot penetrate the Temple of the highest Wisdom. Goethe himself sought this wisdom everywhere. He only considered himself worthy of recognizing the highest revelation in Spiritual life, in Art, after he had gone through the study of Science. He sought wisdom everywhere, in physics, biology, etc.,—And so, he admits the Will-o'-the-Wisps into the Temple, they who resting on themselves alone occupy a false position towards the others, towards the others who enter through experience and observations, like the Serpent. They cause the Temple to be opened and the procession passes in. Now follows what Goethe intended to apply to the whole of mankind; the whole Temple moves up and ascends through the cleft in the Earth. The Temple can now be set up over the River of the Soul, over the River of passions and desires, because the Serpent sacrificed itself. The Self of man has become selfless, the Serpent is transformed into precious stone, which forms the piles of the bridge. And now men can more freely go to and fro from the world of sense to the world of the Spiritual.

The union between sense and spirit is brought about by man, when he becomes selfless, by a sacrifice of himself, such as was made by the Serpent, which offered itself as a bridge over the River of passions. Thus the Temple ascended from the clefts of the Earth and is now accessible to all who cross the bridge, to those who drive over as well as to those who go on foot. In the Temple itself we meet once more with the three Kings; and the youth who had been made pure by having recognized the three soul-forces, is now presented to them. The golden King goes up to him and says “Feed my Sheep,”—in this Goethe gave expression to a thought which was very deeply engraved in his soul, that of uniting beauty with piety. It is the commandment given in the Bible. He applied these words to the youth in the same sense as when in Rome he stood before the statue of a God, and said “Here is necessity (notwendigkeit) it could not be different from what it is, this is a God. I feel that the Greeks worked according to the same Divine Laws that I am seeking.” It is a personal note of Goethe's when he causes the silver King to appear as Beauty and Piety: And then the King of Strength comes to the youth and says “The sword in the left hand, and the right hand free,”—the sword was not to serve for attack but for defence. Harmony was to be brought about, not conflict. After this event the youth was initiated into the three soul-forces; the fourth King has nothing more to say, he subsides into himself. The Temple has risen from its concealment into the clear light of day. Within the Temple there was raised a small silver Temple, which is none other than the transformed hut of the Ferryman. It is a remarkable feature that Goethe transformed the hut of the Ferryman,—he who carries us over into the land of the Spirit,—into pure molten silver so that it becomes a small altar, a small Temple, a Holy of Holies. This hut which represents the holiest in man, the deepest core of his being which he has preserved as a recollection of the land from which he came and to which the Ferryman cannot take him back, represents something which existed before our evolution. It is the memory that we are descended from the Spirit,—the memory of this stands as a Holy of Holies within the Temple.—The giant,—the crude force of nature, which lives in nature without the Spirit, and could not work through itself alone, but only as a shadow,—has been given a remarkable mission. Now this giant stands upright, and now only does he show the time. This is a profound thought—when man has laid aside everything belonging to his lower nature and has become entirely spiritualised, then the lower forces of nature will no longer spring up around him in their original elemental power,—in the form of storms, as they now do—the mechanical crude force of nature will then only perform mechanical service; man will always require these mechanical nature-forces, but they will no longer have power over him, he will use them in his service. His work will be the hour-hand of Spiritual culture, it will be the hour-hand pointing to the regular mechanical necessity, and will go regularly as the course of a clock. The giant himself will then no longer be necessary. We must not interpret the Fairy Tale pedantically, by interpreting every word, but we must feel our way into what Goethe wanted to say, and which he painted in such beautiful pictures. Goethe in his Fairy Tale brought out what Schiller expressed in his Aesthetic Letters;—the union of Necessity with Freedom. What Schiller tried to express in these letters Goethe could not grasp in abstract thought, but gave in the form of a Fairy Tale. “When I want to express these thoughts in all their living force I require pictures and pictures and pictures, such as the ancient priests of Initiation made use of in the Mysteries.” He did not teach his pupils by means of abstract thoughts, but by bringing the whole drama of Dionysos before them, by showing them the great course of the evolution of man, of the resurrection of Dionysos; and he also showed that which went on invisibly in the drama of “Dionysos and Osiris.”

Thus Goethe wished to express what lived in him in the form of drama and pictures, so we will not interpret the Fairy Tale in the ordinary way, but as theosophy would teach us to do, as representing the uniting of the lower nature of man with the higher; the union of the physical with the etheric body; the life-force and the passions and desires, with the higher nature of man:—the three purely Spiritual soul forces Atma, Buddhi, Manas, which we represented as the three Kings. This is the course of the evolution of man up to the time when every man will be himself an Initiate. This is what Goethe tried to express in a truly theosophical fashion. Just as those priests of Initiation expressed their wisdom in the form of pictures, so Goethe expressed in pictures in his Apocalypse that which represents the evolution of humanity,—that which will some day become the highest act of man—the transformation of the lower nature into the higher and the transmutation of the lower metals, the lower soul-forces into the gold of wisdom. The transmutation of that which dwells alone in the pure noble metal of wisdom is represented by the King who is embodied in the gold. Goethe wished to express this human alchemy, this Spiritual transmutation, in a somewhat different manner from what he had concealed occultly in the second part of “Faust.” Goethe was in the true sense of the word a Theosophist. He understood what it means that all the transitory things we see with our senses, are nothing but symbols, but he also understood that what man is trying to do is impossible to describe, but can be accomplished by an act, and that the “Unzulängliche” is that which lives among us on this side of the River, and we must experience it if the purpose of human evolution is to be fulfilled. Goethe also expressed this to this end in the “Chorus Mysticus” and included it in the second part of “Faust.” The highest soul-force in man is symbolically represented as the beautiful Lily, and the male principle—the force of Will unites with her. He expresses this in the beautiful and expressive words with which the second part of “Faust” concludes. These final verses are a mystical creed. We can only understand them completely when we see our own intimate life come to life again in the story of the green Serpent and the beautiful Lily.

Even before the close of the 18th century, when Goethe passed on to his work on the second part of “Faust,” his nature had already been transmuted and he had attained the vision of a higher world.

It is of profound significance if we are able to understand the words written by Goethe in his testament, the second part of “Faust,” when he had completed his course on the Earth. After his death, this second part was found in his writing table, closed and sealed. He put this book as a gospel into the world, as a testament. And this testament closes with his mystical creed:

Alles Vergängliche ist nur sin Gleichnis
Das Unzulängliche hier wird's Ereignis.
Das Unbeschreibliche, hier ist's getan,
Das ewig Weibliche zieht uns hinan.

One translation is as follows:

All things transitory
But as symbols sent,
Earth's insufficiency
Here grows to event.
The indescribable, here it is done.
The Woman Soul leads us upward, and on.

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

My dear friends!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The first verse:

Practise spirit-recalling

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

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

The second is:

Practise spirit-awareness

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

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

The third is:

Practise spirit-beholding

From out there comes the answer:

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

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

Paragraph 4 is read by Dr Wachsmuth:

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

DR STEINER: Mr Collison has applied to speak first.

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

(Lengthy applause.)

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

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

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

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

Would Herr Wachsmuth please read Paragraph 5 of the Statutes.

Paragraph 5 is read out:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SOMEONE CALLS OUT: ‘Académie des lettres!’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Please would you now read Paragraph 6.

Dr Wachsmuth reads Paragraph 6 of the Statutes:

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

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

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

Will Dr Wachsmuth now please read Paragraph 7.

Paragraph 7 is read:

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

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

Now will Dr Wachsmuth please read Paragraph 8.

Paragraph 8 is read:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

DR STEINER: Yes, of course.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Would Dr Wachsmuth now please read Paragraph 9.

Paragraph 9 is read out:

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

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

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

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

Paragraph 10 is read out:

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

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

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

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

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

DR STEINER: Why?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Will Dr Wachsmuth please read Paragraph 11.

Paragraph 11 is read out:

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

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

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

Would Dr Wachsmuth now please read Paragraph 12.

Paragraph 12 is read out:

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

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

Would Dr Wachsmuth now read Paragraph 13.

Paragraph 13 is read out:

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

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

Would Dr Wachsmuth now read Paragraph 14.

Paragraph 14 is read out:

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

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

QUESTION: Will Das Goetheanum be available from Switzerland only?

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

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

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

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

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

Now we have to add a fifteenth Paragraph:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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