The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Spiritual scientific findings concerning the natural world and the human being as part of this world

For the spiritual scientist, familiarity with current and recent work in other sciences is most important. If there is anything which right away establishes the need for an anthroposophically orientated spiritual science, it is above all the relationship which this science must have to natural science.

Among the attacks against the particular science of the spirit of which I am speaking those directed against my own relationship to natural science are always of special interest to me. It is easy to understand that opposition has to arise from the natural science side against an approach which, whilst it is firmly grounded in natural science, must in almost every respect go beyond that science. It is, however, strange, and certainly of some significance for the whole position held by the science of the spirit, that I myself have been repeatedly accused in recent times of not objecting to current research findings in the natural sciences but basing myself wholly on natural science. This objection is raised by people who see themselves as representing a ‘spiritual scientific’ approach. And I think I am entitled to say that with the scientific approach presented in these lectures, one finds oneself caught, as it were, between opposition coming from the natural scientific side and opposition coming from various rather vague, mystical spiritual sides that are almost equally vociferous.

I must say, however, that for the science of the spirit which I am representing in these lectures one does not just have to confess that it is indeed a matter of necessity that one bases oneself on natural science, but also that natural science, the way it is and has to be at the present time, has achieved things that provide stimulus and support in every respect. For this we not only are but indeed must be grateful. People who are working in the science of the spirit eminently need to come to an understanding with people who are working in natural science, for in a certain respect the science of the spirit needs to have the most recent findings made in natural science as a foundation if it is not to be amateurish, vague and unclear.

This may seem strange to people who have already got to know something of this anthroposophically orientated science of the spirit. But then I may well have to say quite a few things today that may seem strange from various points of view. I would therefore ask your forgiveness, especially tonight, if I consider it necessary above all to present spiritual research findings, and my only purpose in presenting such results will be to arouse interest. To furnish proof for every detail of what I am going to say tonight would require a course taking a whole week.

We need to consider the essence of recent developments in natural science if we want to establish the right kind of relationship to it, especially as spiritual scientists. Natural science does not, in fact, owe its character to what scientists themselves say are its great virtues, but to entirely different conditions and facts. The particular character which the natural scientific way of thinking has assumed over the last four centuries, and especially in the 19th century and up to the present time, is due to the fact that quite specific tendencies and gifts have arisen in the search for knowledge in the course of human evolution.

The origins of the natural scientific way of thinking are often presented like this: Well, for thousands of years in the past people looked at things in the wrong way, especially where science is concerned, and now—perhaps I won’t use the commonly quoted phrase ‘seeing how much wiser we are today’⁵³—but let me just draw your attention to how many good, honest and upright followers of the natural scientific way of thinking do believe that humanity has now been able to arrive at the ‘truth’, at the ‘right view’ where some things are concerned, and that in earlier times people had been entirely ‘on the wrong track’.

Yet if we give some consideration to the essential nature of scientific development, we can see that it was not really the case that a sudden miracle happened in the 16th century, with people arriving at the one and only truth, but that from that century onwards quite specific gifts, tendencies and approaches to investigation arose. These tendencies, these human needs, this predilection, as I might call it, made people on the one hand focus attention on the natural world and on the other hand give their knowledge of that world the character which we must so greatly admire today, especially if we base ourselves on the science of the spirit.

One of the truly outstanding gifts to arise was the ability to observe tangible physical objects very accurately. Another tendency went hand in hand with this predilection and gift, and this was to give tangible, physical things preferential and indeed exclusive value, thinking that anything which went beyond this must inevitably take human beings into spheres that were somehow forbidden, spheres of vague fantasies, or, in short, into an abyss in their search for knowledge.

This is particularly evident if we consider the efforts made to make the human being himself an object of scientific study. These efforts went in the direction of applying the forces and laws that apply in the natural world outside the human being to the human being himself, that is, to see him purely as part of the natural world, the kind of creature that has shown itself to the scientific eye in more recent times. The triumphant progress of natural science extends not only to the natural, physical aspect of the human being but also to efforts somehow to study the human psyche, using scientific methods, and indeed to bring this, too, as close as possible to something governed by the laws of nature. And I would say we can see pride and satisfaction when a modern psychologist discovers that an irrefutable law of nature can also be applied, he thinks, to the inner life of man. I am speaking of rather extreme situations that go in this direction because I really want to make my point.

Someone who still takes the point of view that the human psyche is an entity in itself will of course also think that this human psyche, complete in itself, can come to expression through the power of will impulses—we’ll consider freedom or the lack of it the day after tomorrow—using the organism. The idea that the psyche is the primal source of energy, as it were, for the movement and actions of the organism lives strongly in some minds even today.

People who think that they should think in purely natural scientific terms say to themselves, on the other hand: In the 19th century natural science arrived at one of its most significant laws, the law of the constancy or conservation of energy. This says that energies are converted in such a way that nothing new can arise in the system of energies, and nothing can in any way intervene in this system unless it is already part of it. If, it is said, the soul were able to set the organism in motion, it would need to develop the necessary energy. This would then have to be added to the energies the organism already has from food intake and other ways of relating to the world around it. The soul would have to be a source of energy, as it were; energy would have to come out of nothing, so to say, but the law of conservation of energy only permits energies the human organism takes in with food and the like to be converted to energy. A movement or the development of body heat thus cannot be anything but the conversion of food energies and other forms of energy that have been taken in from outside. Conflict thus arises with this law of the conservation of energy, which has played such a significant role in scientific developments during the 19th century, when one comes up against the idea that the soul can be the source and origin of some form of energy.

People were really pleased to have experimental proof that a ‘reservoir of energy’ capable of intervening in the process of energy conversion did exist in the soul. The experiments the well-known biologist Rubner⁵⁴ did in this field with animals, and the continuation of them with human beings by Atwater⁵⁵ are regarded with some satisfaction by psychologists to this day, I would say. Rubner showed that the heat energies and the kinetic energies animals produce are, according to the measurements made, nothing but the converted energies of food they have taken in, with nothing coming from a psyche. Atwater extended these experiments to human beings, selecting subjects who we might think should be able to do even better—people doing mental work, physical work, at rest, or developing inner energies. He was able to show that up to a certain percentage—always important in experiments—nothing that comes from inside the human organism derives from a reservoir of energies in the soul, and that the energies available had been converted from energies the human organism had to take in first. Psychologists like Ebbinghaus⁵⁶ also stated, with some satisfaction, that there was no question of any form of psychology being in conflict with the law of conservation of energy.

Hundreds of other examples could be added, from many different points of view. They would show you how significant and characteristic the triumphant progress of the natural scientific way of thinking has become, even in our culture in general. It is thus easy to see why this triumphant progress, as we may call it, is still relatively recent and does not want to be held back at any point by something else, like the science of the spirit, for instance, and why it still has all kinds of tendencies—speak ‘prejudices’ perhaps—with regard to this that are extraordinarily difficult to deal with. If the necessity did not arise of its own accord from natural science itself for the science of the spirit to develop from it in its own way—as the child must of necessity grow to be an adult—it would probably still be a very, very long time before the science of the spirit would find anyone in the world of science prepared even just to listen when it comes up in one place or another.

No I have to make some critical comments my starting point today. One does, of course, always have to consider individual aspects, for I do not want to talk in abstract terms. Quite generally, I do not want to give general characteristics today but rather start with specific instances and use these to make my point.

If we review the character and the way of thinking and forming ideas which the natural sciences have assumed in more recent times, we have to say that this is above all ruled by the idea that the things we learn from nature must somehow come from somewhere that is separate from the human being. I’ll not go into a philosophical discussion of this; but there is a borderline issue we must consider briefly. Not that I would consider it to be of quite specific significance for natural scientists today, nor do many natural scientists enter into discussion of this issue; no, the reason is that their desire for knowledge is going in that direction, unconsciously so, in a way, and can only be judged if we consider it with regard to its movement in this direction, or to this goal.

Let me take up an idea which no doubt originated in philosophy but lurks in many people’s minds, and that is the idea of ‘things in themselves’. The philosophical question in the Kantian or some other sense will of course be of little interest to natural scientists. But the whole direction, the whole endeavour in natural scientific thinking shows a tendency to go towards this ‘things in themselves’ idea. Irrespective of whether one is basing oneself on the earlier atomic theory, or on or modern theory of ions, of electrons, whether one takes one standpoint or another in biology, people will of course say from the very beginning that they merely wanted to know the ‘laws of phenomena’, leaving the ‘things in themselves’ to the philosophers, but the way in which the phenomena are approached, how they are in fact investigated, is based on the premise that there is some ‘thing in itself behind the phenomena and that if one were able to go more deeply into the region made accessible by means of microscopy, let us say, or other scientific methods, one would come closer and closer to such a ‘thing in itself’.

This notion gives natural scientific thinking its direction, at least at an unconscious level, for if you assume a world of atoms, for instance, or assume that ether waves lie behind the tapestry of colours and nuances of light that surrounds us, you are of course thinking that these ether waves belong to a sphere of the ‘thing in itself,’ as it were. Eduard von Hartmann, the philosopher of the unconscious mind who wanted to found a natural philosophy, actually made it a challenge, saying that the world of atoms and the like, or of forces behind the things we perceive through the senses, must be accepted by scientists as something on a par with the ‘thing in itself.’

For a scientist working in anthroposophically orientated spiritual science this search for a ‘thing in itself’ behind phenomena, this whole trend—I am now not speaking of philosophical hypotheses but of this trend in natural science—is analogous to an attempt to see what is behind a mirror when one sees various images in it. It is as if one were walking round to the back of the mirror to see where the images have their origin. That origin does not lie behind the mirror, however. It is in front of the mirror, where we are standing. We are in the region where the images have their origin,⁵⁷ and we would fall into the most incredible delusion to think we should reach into the back, behind the mirror, to find something that would be the source of the images. It may sound grotesque and be unexpected, but the ideas and concepts of natural science are based on the illusion that one has to reach behind the mirror. The ‘thing in itself’ is behind the mirror if one thus deludes oneself. But in reality it is not there.

Why is that so? It is so because as human beings we are not merely in an outer material world behind which there is a ‘thing in itself’, but right in the midst of everything on which this world is founded. It is just that not all of it comes to our conscious awareness. We are right in the midst of it! And analysing the phenomena of the natural world outside will not show us the origins, just as you cannot perceive the true nature of a person, get to know this mirror image as a physical human being, by analysing the mirror image of that person. Analysing the phenomena does not give insight into their essential nature. Instead we must intensively, if I may put it like this, go beyond the level at which our conscious mind works in everyday life. And this is done by the methods I have characterized in my first lecture here.

Our ordinary, everyday waking consciousness serves merely to develop the conceptual tools we need to put the phenomena in some order and system, establishing the laws’. To go beyond this, the conscious mind must first be transformed, developing powers that lie dormant in it. Then the imaginative, inspired and intuitive perception which I have tried to characterize as perceptive vision, perception in images, must arise from the depths of that conscious mind—nothing nebulous, of course, but in the strictly scientific sense.

We would never be able to learn something about the nature, the physical nature, of the human being by looking at a mirror image unless we also had self-awareness. We must therefore strongly feel ourselves to be physical human beings, we have to get a feeling for ourselves and know that it is I myself who is standing in front of that mirror. In the same way we cannot arrive at the essential nature of natural phenomena unless our inner life, which is right in the midst of those phenomena, grows so strong that it gains the ability to perceive things in a way that is different from ordinary waking consciousness. With regard to this perceptive awareness, perception in images, and so on, I would refer you to my last-but-one book.⁵⁸ I would just say that, in principle, it is not a matter of a new organ in physical terms, but of developing a real ability to perceive purely in the soul realm, developing non-physical organs that add something new to everything the soul perceives in the world around it when in its usual waking conscious state. This is just like the newly opened eyes of someone born blind who has had an operation and now sees the world of colour of which he had only heard people tell before.

The task therefore is not to develop some kind of material hypotheses or draw conclusions concerning a ‘thing in itself and get at something that lies ‘behind the phenomena’, but to strengthen our inner faculties so that we are able to see the essence in front of the mirror. It will, of course, be a long time before such perceptive awareness will be taken seriously by greater numbers of scientists, despite the fact that I have characterized neither a miracle nor anything that is not accessible to human beings. It is something everyone can find from their own resources, though it has to be said that present-day habits of thinking, inwardly responding to things and gaining insight are an obstacle when it comes to awakening such perceptive awareness.

I would now like to give you some of the results of this perceptive awareness specifically relating to the sphere we may call ‘nature’. It will, of course, be necessary to speak of some things where it will not be easy to communicate with people who are firmly wedded to natural science. But perhaps this may be an occasion where it is permissible to speak of something personal. What I am offering here are not ideas that have come into my head, nor anything I have thought up. These are the results of years of investigations done in full accord with the more recent natural scientific developments; some of the things I am going to say—I would not have been able to formulate them like this even a short time ago.

My aim is above all to refer to things that are very real, going into detail. The theory of evolution, or ‘descent’, has had a considerable influence on scientific thinking in recent times. And it has to be said that anyone who is not an amateur in this field will know what fruit—leaving aside the shadow sides—this theory has borne for modern thinking, the whole modern way of looking at the world. Of course, if we really want to appreciate the nature of this theory we must ignore all the amateurish philosophical views into which so many scientific findings have unfortunately developed in recent times. ‘Monistic’ and other movements often arise because people know little of the form science has recently taken in the field in question. It is often grotesque to see how such efforts limp and lag behind scientific advances that can in no way be said to be in agreement with such things.

Yet when we speak of the theory of evolution, we also think of its early days, of all the great, idealistic hopes which Ernst Haeckel⁵⁹ had for it in the 1860s and 1870s—I do not wish to either overestimate nor underestimate him—and which he passed on to his students. I am not so much going to refer to the radical conclusions Ernst Haeckel arrived at in his day, though his scientific achievements are tremendous and often also positive. What I would like to mention is that even cautious investigators who have entered into the field—among them Naegeli⁶⁰ and Gegenbaur⁶¹—not only became aware of the fruitful nature of this theory but also demonstrated this with reference to their involvement in recent developments in the sciences. I could give a long list of names. But something strange can also be noted if we consider the relatively brief history of the theory of evolution.

Great indeed were the hopes Haeckel and his followers had for the development of Darwinian principles in natural science.⁶² Consider the role which catchwords like ‘theory of natural selection’ and ‘survival of the fittest’ have played. Some people had such hopes for a view of the world where they might say that some vague powers full of wisdom intervening in world evolution had now been overcome. People would have to realize that powers that were like powers of pure chance meet others arising from sheer natural necessity in the developmental stages of one organism or another, resulting in selection, with the fit surviving whilst the unfit do not, and the fit thus might be said to get more and more perfect compared to the unfit that has dropped away; one should not, however, think in terms of any kind of teleological principle of purpose. To this day there are people⁶³ who think they are representing modern views in saying that even if everything Darwin has presented in his theory of evolution were to disappear from this world, the progress made in disregarding ‘higher powers’, as Eduard von Hartman calls them, intervening in the purely inorganic laws of the realm of nature to let organic life arise⁶⁴—this progress cannot be undone.

Seen from a particular point of view, the thinking which has developed there, the thoughts that have come to human beings to liberate them from certain prejudices to which they used to be attached, are of particular value. But we have seen a strange thing. When Darwinism evolved, eliminating all the higher powers that were said to intervene in the evolution of organic life, Eduard von Hartmann’s book on the philosophy of the unconscious appeared in the late 1860s,⁶⁵ that is, when Darwinism was in full flower. I am not defending Hartmann, but this is simply a fact. Eduard von Hartmann was against a theory of pure chance. He said something quite different—powers giving direction, powers of a higher nature—must intervene in the lifeless, dead functions of purely inorganic natural laws if there was to be organic evolution. Selection cannot create anything new; anything new that did arise would have to arise from inner impulses; selection could only be made of things that already existed, removing anything unfit, but it did not have magical powers that would enable it gradually to let something perfect develop from something imperfect. Eduard von Hartman produced some brilliant thoughts in his refutation of Darwinism, which raised such hopes at the time, a theory of evolution in purely mechanical terms. People did not take the philosopher of the unconscious seriously because he was a philosopher and not a naturalist. They said: ‘Well, he’s an amateur and does not understand the principles of natural science; anything he has to say can be of no real value in the development of science.’ Remarks like this were used to reject the things Eduard von Hartmann had to say.

Refutations addressed to this ‘amateurish, dilettante philosopher’ were published. One, was about the unconscious from the point of view of physiology and the theory of descent, was by an anonymous author.⁶⁶ It was a brilliant refutation of Eduard von Hartmann from the point of view of Darwinism as it then was. Oskar Schmidt,⁶⁷ Darwin’s biographer, Haeckel himself, and others took a very sympathetic view of this refutation by an unknown, saying that it was excellent—this is more or less how we can sum up their views—that someone whom one could see, with every page read, to be firmly founded in the true scientific approach, was dealing with an amateur such as Eduard von Hartmann. This anonymous author—one dyed-in-the-wool Darwinist wrote—should just make himself known to us and we’ll regard him to be one of us! Someone else, also firmly grounded in mechanical Darwinist theory, said: ‘He has said everything I myself could say against Eduard von Hartmann’s amateurism.’ The man did say this. In short, the Darwinists made a lot of propaganda for this publication, which was soon sold out. A second edition had to be printed. This time the author gave his name—Eduard von Hartmann! From then on silence reigned among those who had previously praised the publication, and little further reference was made to it.

What follows may seem strange but I think it is all the more remarkable. One of Ernst Haeckels’ most important followers, someone who as a student lived wholly in the then current theories of evolution that arose in connection with Darwin’s name, was Oscar Hertwig.⁶⁸ Last year, in 1916—just consider how little time has passed since Darwinian theories were in full flower—Oscar Hertwig published a book that is truly exemplary as a scientific work. The subject is how organisms evolve—a refutation of Darwin’s theory of random chance. Eduard von Hartmann is one of the people Oscar Hertwig says should be taken note of when speaking of different powers being active in the realm of organisms from those active in the inorganic world.

It certainly is strange to see that within a relatively short time someone came from among the best people who had been developing the old theory of evolution of the 1860s, 1870s and 1880s who actually refuted one of the fundamental principles of that theory. This should give some pause for thought to people who make up their own—‘monistic’—philosophies by just putting together amateurish ideas.

I now need to go into some definite issues relating not so much to the more recent theories of evolution but to theory of evolution as such. This may show you the position that has to be taken in anthroposophically orientated spiritual science. The theory of evolution is based on considering the facts and drawing the conclusion that something perfect, ‘perfect’ as we know it today, or, perhaps better, something with a more differentiated organization, has gradually evolved from something that was less perfect, less differentiated in its organization. To prove this, scientists refer not only to geology and palaeontology but also to embryology, the theory of individual development. Oscar Hertwig’s new book is exemplary in so far as it offers a theory of individual development, though he does it by making comparisons with animal embryology. All theory of evolution must begin with the development of the individual; Haeckel established his biogenetic law to show that the embryological development of an individual shows the evolutional history of the species, so that the embryonic development of higher animals goes through the morphological and physiological functions, at a particular level, of the simpler animal forms that existed earlier.⁶⁹

Strange though it may seem, however, a theory of individual development where one seeks to apply its laws to the evolution of organisms in general will not provide the answer to a very simple question. I feel I must in fact apologize for speaking of something as commonplace as this; the matter has been discussed many times, but, as we shall see, it concerns an important principle. The question is, very simply: What came first in evolution, the chicken or the egg? The chicken comes from the egg, but—the egg can only come from a chicken.

The issue is of little importance today, when any facts you investigate take you into vagueness whichever direction you take. But it does have significance if we want to form an idea of the way in which individual development relates to world evolution. For in that case it proves necessary to consider that there must have been conditions in which the ovum, that is, the basis of individual development today, was able to evolve on its own, without descent from any kind of entities that had already reached some level of perfection. As I said, I can only refer to this briefly, but anyone who considers the issue in more detail will soon find that, though commonplace, the matter is of major importance.

If one is conscientious and honest in tackling this question, the concepts natural science has developed for embryology will not prove adequate. Somehow or other one finds oneself at what I have called the ‘frontier posts of knowledge’ in my first lecture, ‘points’ where one has to develop the higher powers of awareness in images. We might even say that such questions can provide significant stimuli for the development of inner powers that may otherwise well have continued to lie dormant in us for a long time. If we pursue the matter not using the approach where one seeks to reach behind the mirror but one where we consider the cause for the phenomena to be in front of the mirror, we find, as we progress to awareness in images, that even today it would be a serious error to say that the egg develops in the chicken through the chicken or merely because the chicken is inseminated. That is how it looks on the surface, in the mirror image, we might say. But if we develop awareness in images and are able to see what is truly there, we come to realize that the egg does indeed develop and mature under the influence of powers that come not only from the cock and the hen.

A scientific view based only on what is sense-perceptible and tangible cannot lead to any view other than that the interaction between cock and hen and the processes that occur in the hen’s body lead to the development of an egg. But if you then want to arrive at views on such a matter you will arrive at rather mystical concepts—mystical in a negative sense, the kind of concepts many people work with, even Hertwig—an example being the concept of a ‘germ, rudiment or potential’.⁷⁰

Speaking of such a ‘rudiment’, you can explain anything in the world by saying: Well, now it is there, previously it was not there, and the first thing to be there was, of course, the ‘rudiment’. This is about as clever as speaking of a ‘disposition’ with regard to certain diseases which only develop in some people under the same conditions and not in others. So you see, one can always push things further back in this way. Unless you try and somehow get a clear picture you will merely arrive at a term that has no real meaning and lacks clarity. ‘Rudiment’, ‘disposition’—those are the wrong kind of mystical terms that will only gain meaning if we are able to consider the reality that can be perceived in the spirit.

A mind with vision also sees all kinds of other things. Just as a blind person is able to see colours when he’s had an operation, so a mind with vision sees all kinds of other things. And in the present case these other things it is able to see make it clear to us that although today it is still an egg which develops in the hen, it arises from powers that are not in the hen but are brought to bear in the hen out of the universe. The hen’s body which surrounds the egg really only provides the native soil. The powers that configure the egg come from the cosmos; they come in from outside. Fertilization—I cannot go into the details today but they can be exactly determined—simply means that a possibility is created for the powers from the cosmos that are active in this site, giving them a reference point, as it were.

The egg which develops in the hen’s body has been developed out of the cosmos and is an image of the cosmos. If you find this inconceivable and cannot think of analogies in other fields, just think what it would be like if you wanted to ascribe the direction in which a magnetic needle is pointing purely to forces inherent in the needle. We do not do this; we ascribe it to a terrestrial effect, that is, forces that have to do with the whole earth. Forces from the environment influence the magnetic needle. Here, in the inorganic field, discoveries can be made purely on the basis of sensory perception. It will need a science made more productive by the science of the spirit to show that powers influence the egg that must be looked for not only in the ancestry but out there in the whole cosmos. Many different results, which will also prove of practical value, will be obtained once it is taken into account that essentially the knowledge we have in outer natural science, however sensual and factual, is merely an abstraction, something people rely on because they do not know of the more effective powers.

A mind with vision sees powers that go beyond individual nature influencing every insemination and embryonic development. These could be described in detail. In my small publication Human Life in the Light of Anthroposophy⁷¹ I refer to this method of research in another field; today I want to refer specifically to this particular field.

I truly do not feel contempt for empirical scientists, as they are now called, but admire them greatly. The results gained with the empirical approach have yielded a much richer store of human insights, I would say hundreds if not thousands of times as many human insights than the rudimentary concepts one is able to use in natural science today. When an embryologist produces facts, especially if he has been using a microscope, which has been developed to an admirable level today, a spiritual scientist following his work will say to himself: Everything the embryologist is establishing as fact may be external, sensual and factual, but when he describes how the male germ unites with the female germ, and so on, how parts of cell nuclei are repositioned so that one thing or another develops—these descriptions are extraordinarily interesting and significant—someone taking the point of view of anthroposophically orientated spiritual science sees the footsteps in all this of a comprehensive spiritual influence that simply comes to expression in the changes which are apparent to the senses. If one wanted to consider the things seen under the microscope, with all kinds of staining methods applied, to be something that stood entirely alone, something one merely had to describe to know the processes of germ cell and embryonic development, one would be like someone who goes along a road where someone else has left his footsteps and believes that those footsteps were made by inner forces in the soil and not that another person had made them. The explanation for these footprints would be quite wrong if I were to say that there are all kinds of forces down there which push the forms up from below. Instead I have to assume that someone went that way, stepping on the soil. In the same way I must consider the spiritual principle if I want to come to the real facts. The spiritual leaves its final traces, and what we see under the microscope, using staining methods, comes into existence—please forgive the expression—as if by processes of elimination.

But when a mind with vision takes hold of the matter, we also come to something else. We come to compare this process, which arose on the basis of pure empiricism, purely external experience of the facts through the senses, with something that we can only get to know of through investigations made by a mind with vision.

In the first lecture I gave an outline of what happens in human beings when they use their thinking to process sensory perceptions further, when they develop ideas. A real process occurs in the psyche, but materialistic thinkers do not consider it to be real; they limit their investigations to nerve functions. Yet once perception in images has awakened we can follow this process, which has inner reality. We cannot do so if our minds are limited to the kind of abstractions produced in modern psychology and indeed in logic—that ideas ‘connect’, are ‘reproduced’, and so on. But if we are able to develop a psychology of the kind I outlined here in my first lecture and turn the mind’s eye to this inner aspect of the way in which ideas develop and part of our feeling, this will give us something that belongs together with the discoveries our embryologist made in his field and in progressive cell development altogether. We then see in a way that is like comparing an original and its copy in a very factual way—on the one hand the inner process of forming ideas and the feeling process in the soul, and on the other hand the processes of insemination, division of the nucleus and so on, and actual cell division. We then see that the two have to do with one another—I want to put this as carefully as possible—have to do with one another in that the one represents in material form, as it were, what the other is in the sphere of soul and spirit.

Something else will also arise if we truly concentrate on this process in soul and spirit. We realize that it can only be the way it is in the human soul and spirit today, for the whole of our natural environment, with the human being within it, provides the physical body as a basis for it. If someone is truly able to see this in the spirit, the faculties that enable him truly to see the essential nature of something that belongs to the sphere of soul and spirit, will expand. We thus realize that under present-day conditions the organ which develops for forming ideas and feeling can only do so, in the way it happens today, on the condition that the whole takes place in the presence of a living human body. In its inner nature, however, the process shows itself to be one that moves back in time. Time becomes something real. It moves back in time. And you actually come to realize that what happens in us today when we think, and do part of our feeling, is indeed something which in the far, far distant past, when no such earthly environment existed, was able to develop on its own, without the human body.

This is the way—time is short, so I can only refer briefly, as it were, to the starting points for a road that goes far and wide—in which elements from the sphere of soul and spirit are related in a real way to the things that happen before our eyes in the sense-perceptible world. We then gain a very different understanding of the connection that altogether exists between sense-perceptible physical nature outside and the elements of soul and spirit that flow and billow through the world. If we then develop the things of which I have only been able to present the most elementary first beginnings, taking—if we proceed with the science of the spirit—not the external scientific approach of geology or palaeontology or Laplace’s theory but the approach based on genuine inner experience in spirit and soul, we come to states of the world that go a long way back, when it was not possible to do external, physical things, like embryonic development from a physical cell, as we know it today, but when the things that could be real at that time were in a form that belonged to spirit and soul. You look back to an element of spirit and soul that was a precursor of what happens today in the physical world perceptible to the senses.

The element of spirit and soul has withdrawn into the cosmic sphere today, as it were. It acts by the roundabout route via the living body and in a hen, let us say, if we go back to our earlier example, it causes the egg to have the density of matter which it did not need to have in the dim, distant past. However, in that dim, distant past the element of spirit and soul was able to use these powers—which one gets to know, with no need to speculate or set up hypotheses; we get to know them if we observe the inner laws of ideation and thinking from the inside—without there having to be the environment of the hen’s body, to create not a mystical ‘rudiment’ or ‘potential’, but a first thing. Later, when conditions changed, this needed to be protected by the ‘environ-body’ of the hen as it is today.

Someone working with the science of the spirit is thus on the one hand taking full account of natural science. On the other hand he has to go beyond it, beyond the things that are considered scientific today, not with speculation but with truly developed powers of insight through vision. These must replace theories and hypotheses—which are merely the outcome of speculation, thoughts that have been added—with things truly learned in the realm of the spirit. If one has advanced along this route, truly in such a way that nowhere are sins committed against facts that have been established in natural science, then the modern theory of evolution in particular will be seen in the right light.

I have to say paradoxical things at every step today, but I want to stimulate your thinking. I am exposing myself to the danger that people may hold me up to ridicule; but I want to stimulate your thinking. I merely want to say that this science of the spirit we call anthroposophy exists; it may not be accepted as yet, but it is able to offer research findings which, we believe, can be spoken of with the same scientific justification as the findings discussed in natural science that are based on sensory perceptions made with the help of microscopes and telescopes. It has to be said, not from presumption but because it is the way things are, that working with the spiritual scientific approach represented in these lectures one does not have it as easy, in many respects, as in working with natural science. So we can understand it if someone says: ‘The things he is saying are really difficult to understand.’ Comprehension will, of course, be easier if we only take note of purely factual elements, things that are immediately apparent; it is in the nature of the thing that understanding is difficult with the kind of issues I can only present briefly here. But with regard to practice, too, things are not so easy in anthroposophy. This is particularly apparent if we consider the human being as part of the natural world from its point of view, that is, not merely in theory.

As I said, I do not undervalue the theory of evolution. In fact, I believe it to be one of the most significant achievements in intellectual history. Attacks have come from people who did not understand these things particularly because in my book The Riddles of Philosophy and in other publications I made a strong case for justifying the theory of evolution. Just look in the second volume of my Riddles of Philosophy to see if I ever speak from a point of view that does not do justice to this theory of evolution. But things are not as easy in anthroposophy as they are in purely—as it is called today—empirical science. For if we consider the human being we have to say: ‘The idea that the human being, as he is in his physical form, has simply evolved from animal forms which in turn developed from lower animal forms, and so on, this idea is utterly amateurish if compared to the view taken in the science of the spirit.

If we want to consider the human being as part of the natural world from the spiritual scientific point of view, we must first of all differentiate this human being—this may seem strange, but that is how it is. Taking Goethe’s theory of metamorphosis further in a scientific way—anyone who has read my books will know that I have made special efforts in this field—one has to differentiate the human being. We cannot simply take him as a whole but have to establish a particular premise, which must, however, be a fully substantiated premise. It is this. We take the head on its own, realizing that the human being we have before us today can only be known and understood if we take the head on its own, with the rest as a kind of appendage organism—this just as an aid to understanding for the moment. The head on its own, therefore; we have to look for the descent, the origins, of this head as such. This human head—this is not entirely accurate, for the head does continue on into the trunk (this changes the situation; but after all it is only possible to speak in approximate terms about these matters). This human head, then, is indeed something with a morphology that has been transformed from other forms that lie immensely far back. We may say, therefore, that in so far as the human being has a head, he is descended from long way back. For the details I would refer you to my Occult Science and other writings. One actually finds that the entity which has gone through the transformations to make the present-day form of the human head possible must be sought much further back in time than the origins of all the animals and plants we have today. Considering the human being with regard to the head, we must therefore go back into a much earlier time.

The appended organism, as we may call it, has been added to the head—roughly speaking, for appendages existed even in early times. The head was the premise for its development. The principle which evolved, ultimately to become the human head principle, had the opportunity also to develop the remaining human organization which is close to the present-day animal body. The time when this organization evolved was also the time when general evolution had advanced so far that animals could develop.

This brings us to a strange theory of descent, though it is strange only compared to the ideas people have today. We have to say that in so far as human beings have a head they are descended from ancestors that went through a gradual transformation. In far distant times they undoubtedly had a different form from the one human beings have today, but it is really only the human head which is descended from them. It was during the time when general conditions for evolution made it possible to evolve creatures of the kind we have in the animal world today that the human being added to his human nature the elements that lie in his animal nature.

Again you have an early approach—for here, too, I can only give the elementary first beginnings—to a theory of evolution that arises if we do not believe the human head to have merely grown out of the rest of the organism, as it were, but rather that this human head is really the original part of the human being to develop, with the remaining organism added to it. It is because such an organism was added at a late stage in evolution that humanity entered into a line of evolution that may indeed be considered together with the line of evolution that was the descent of animal forms.

The discoveries made in the theory of evolution to this day provide genuine insights in this field. If one knows them really thoroughly, if one carefully—much more carefully than people are in the habit of doing in natural science today—considers also the work done in palaeontology, embryology, all the knowledge gained in the study of muscles, the investigations that can provide information on the way the human skull is built, then one is able to say to oneself: It is exactly the things not known from theory—meaning the theory modern natural scientists like Oscar Hertwig have refuted—but empirically, things that are there for us to see, which we only have to take up, letting the light that can be gained through the science of the spirit shine through them—all this offers tremendously far-reaching prospects. The modern theory of evolution has certainly served a good purpose and has not been just an aberration but on the contrary one of the most fruitful developments we have seen. In time to come it will really come into its own and prove immensely fruitful because it will cast its light incredibly far into the secrets of the universe.

If I might add something about the way I feel about the way the science of the spirit goes beyond pure and factual natural science, it is this: This theory of evolution from the second half of the 19th century is indeed the seed from which great, significant insights will come; the seed from which something will come that does not yet exist in general human awareness. And it is this which will in fact provide the best stimulus to develop a genuine philosophy, which takes its orientation from anthroposophy. This philosophy actually shows that the academic work which we think is final and conclusive and needs only be added to the facts perceived through the senses in order to explain them, that this academic approach—which we also find in a work as excellent as that by Oscar Hertwig and the works of others—does not provide real answers to our questions but only enables us to put our questions in the right way. Once they have been put in the right way they must then be answered. And the outside world will again and again provide answers if we know how to ask the right questions. If they are the right questions, the outside world will answer with the insight we gain through higher vision.

However, if I speak of a modified theory of descent, saying that we have to think of the human being the other way round, as it were, looking for his origin in the principle on which the head is based and having to make the head our starting point if we wish to understand the human being, whereas the matter is usually considered the other way round—when I say this, we must at the same time base ourselves on a genuine and true idea of the present-day human being. This brings me to another finding made in anthroposophical research relating to nature as a basis for the human being.

When people speak today of the way the soul relates to the human body, they really consider only the nervous system as the bodily ‘tool’, as it is put, though it is not a ‘tool’—we’ll be speaking about this the day after tomorrow—looking for it in the living body as a counterpart to the psyche. If you look at books on psychology today, with the first chapters always giving a kind of physiological preliminary to psychology itself, you will find that reference is really always only made to the nervous system as the ‘organ of the soul’.

Members of the audience who have heard me on a number of previous occasions will know that I’ll only rarely speak of personal things. But perhaps it is necessary this time, for I can only characterize the subject in outline. What I have to say on this is the outcome of investigations that have truly been going on for more than 30 years, taking account of everything that is relevant from physiology and related fields. Anyone with real knowledge of the findings modern physiologists and biologists have made in this field will find that they prove in every respect what I am going to tell you. To see the nervous system as something that is simply parallel to the psyche is to take a very biased view. No one has shown more clearly how biased it is than a scientist I hold in particularly high regard as one of the most outstanding psychologists, Theodor Ziehen.⁷² He, too, speaks mainly of the nervous system in discussing some of the relationships between soul and body, soul and the nature-related basis of the human being, and therefore comes to treat the emotional life—which properly considered is just as real as the life of thinking or ideas—as an appendage to the life of ideas. Theodor Ziehen does not really manage to consider the emotional life in his psychology. It is the same with other people. They will then speak of the ‘emotional overtones of ideas’; the ideas, which have their bodily counter image in the nervous system, are ‘emotive’, they say, and one need not think of a separate bodily counterpart to the emotions.

Read the psychology of Theodor Ziehen or other books—I could give you a whole list of truly excellent works in this field. You will find that when these authors come to speak of the will, they actually have no possibility whatsoever truly to speak of the will, which is a wholly real sphere in our inner life. The will simply slips from Theodor Ziehen’s grasp as he writes about physiological and psychological things; the will is simply disputed away; it does not exist for the author; in a way it exists merely as a play of ideas. Because of the existing bias, therefore, violence is done to something we quite clearly know from experience, just as serious violence is also done to other things in such investigations.

Yet if we really consider everything that has so far been achieved in physiology, this exemplary science—though much is still open to question and questionable—if we consider all the things that merely are not seen in the right light, we come to see—I can only refer to this briefly—that the whole human organism is counterpart to the whole human soul. In my latest book, Riddles of the Soul, which is due to appear shortly, or perhaps it is out already, I discussed questions concerning the limits of ordinary science and of anthroposophy, and this includes the issue which we are considering here, though again it is only presenting results. There is nothing to be said against the notion that the life of ideas has its bodily counterpart in the first place in the nervous system, though we have to see the whole situation very differently from the way it is seen in modern science; I am going to talk about this the day after tomorrow. When we want to look for a bodily counterpart to the life of ideas, we have to look to the nervous system for this.

Not so when it comes to the emotional life! I almost hesitate to put something so far-reaching in such brief words, something I have found in investigations taking not years but decades. When we speak of the emotional life, it is not possible to look for a connection between it and the life of the nerves the way we look for a connection between the life of ideas and that of the nerves. There is a connection, but it is indirect. The emotional life—this seems almost unbelievable if one takes the biased view commonly taken in modern science—has a direct connection with what we may call the breathing rhythm in all its ramifications, and this is a connection similar in nature to that between the life of ideas and the nervous system. In the nervous system one has to go into the finest ramifications; and the same applies to the rhythmical movements that originate in the breathing rhythm and then branch and divide everywhere, also influencing the brain. Comte’s ideas on the mechanics of the human body are very interesting in this respect.⁷³ The bodily counterpart of the emotional life must be sought in this rhythmical play of movements in the human being, all of them really dependent on the breathing rhythm, in rhythmical movements that also encompass the blood rhythm.

I know, ladies and gentlemen, that it must seem as if countless objections could be raised against what I have just been saying. All of them can be refuted, however. Let me draw your attention to just one of them—briefly. It would be easy to say, for instance: Well yes, the aesthetic effect of music depends on our feelings; but these feelings are aroused by sensory perception of the sounds, that is, a sensory perception of something outside, and the effect of this does of course continue on in the nervous system; so you can see—as the objection might be—that you are in error in saying that something which in its aesthetic effect is definitely dependent on our emotional life is connected with our breathing rhythm, when in fact the music is perceived by the senses and we gain this perception via the ear and the auditory nerve! This objection is illusory, for the real process is much more complex. Such things can indeed only be reached by the kind of vision that takes its orientation from the powers gained in an awareness that has vision. It is like this: In the brain, the breathing rhythm meets with the processes that occur in the nervous system. And the emotions we experience with music arise from this interaction, this encounter between the part of the breathing rhythm that extends into the life of the nerves and the structure of the nerves. The latter reacts to the breathing rhythm and this creates the feelings we have on hearing music. It is therefore possible to explain the feelings that are experienced properly if we consider the breathing rhythm, and the life of breathing altogether, to be the bodily counterpart to the life of feeling, just as we have to consider the nervous system to be the bodily counterpart to the life of ideas.

And now we come to the will impulses, to the things we do. If we examine everything people have been saying about the physiology, using the possibilities given when we are able to have awareness in vision, we find that everything which the soul experiences as our will expressed in doing has its bodily counterpart in metabolic processes. Life in the body is essentially made up of metabolic processes, breathing rhythms, and processes in the nerves; there are just two exceptions, which I’ll refer to later.

The subject gets difficult merely because a nerve must, of course, also be shown to be such that the life of nutrition or of metabolism extends into it. However, it is not the nutrition nor the metabolism in the nerve which is the bodily counterpart of the life of ideas but something entirely different. I wrote about this in my book Riddles of the Soul: in so far as the nerve depends on metabolism it merely acts as a mediator of the will process.⁷⁴ The fact that one system—metabolic system, rhythmical breathing process, nervous system—extends right into another, so that the systems are not side by side in space but change on into the other or extend into each other, makes it particularly difficult to study these things. Essentially, however, it is like this: In the nerve, the basis of the life of ideas is not the fact that it is touched by rhythm, nor the fact that it is provided with food, but yet another, very different inner activity. In the finest ramifications of the breathing rhythm it is this breathing rhythm itself which forms the basis for the life of feeling, and everything specified as metabolism in the organism, down to its subtlest ramifications, is the bodily counter image of will processes.

We have now related the whole of the soul to the whole of the human body. From the point of view of anthroposophical spiritual science, which I represent, I believe—believing this in no other way than the way one normally believes things in truly strictly scientific terms—that today we need only the facts known in physiology to substantiate fully what I have just been saying. I am convinced that the empirical sciences can be progressively developed further along these lines of orientation and will then prove immensely fruitful in all directions in life. Significant new ideas can be given in medicine, psychiatry and all possible kinds of fields if we take the whole of the human soul together with the whole of the human body in this way.

The zone of the senses, as I would call it, and the life of movement drop out of the context of the human organism in two directions. Modern science is on thin ice particularly when it comes to the theory of the senses on the one hand and the theory of movement on the other. Scientists working in psychology as well as in physiology understand very little, I would say, of these two opposite poles in human nature. This is because here human beings no longer belong wholly to themselves but partly to the outside world, with the soul living out into the outside world both in the zone of the senses, in the sphere of sensory life, and in the sphere of movement life. When human beings move, their movement involves a state of balance or dynamics that integrates the individual into the sphere or moving play of forces in the outside world. And when human beings go beyond living purely in their nerves and enter into life in the zone of the senses, that is, when their souls experience themselves right into their actual sense organs, it happens that the individual actually goes beyond his own sphere. The senses are bays where outside world extends into our lives, and we shall only have a sensible theory of the senses if we take this into account. It is something that cannot be gained by following the approaches taken in natural science today.

It has not been my intention to discuss general principles or offer general characterizations, especially in describing the relationship between anthroposophy and natural science and the human being’s foundations in the natural world. Although it can be risky to do so, I have taken individual real findings and areas where results were obtained, in order to characterize how anthroposophy should be seen in relation to established natural science. We can see that prejudices and partiality will have to be overcome in the world of science before anthroposophy can be understood. Today, sensuality—I am speaking of views taken of sensual and factual things, not sensuality in the moral sense—is even more powerful than it was at the time when the whole world raised the objection to the views of Copernicus that they went against the evidence of their senses and refused to accept them. Copernicus went against the evidence of the senses, feeling compelled to establish something for the outside world perceived through the senses which the outer evidence of the senses cannot give us. In the science of the spirit we are compelled to go beyond the evidence of the senses in yet another respect. This is sure to meet with resistance many times over. In a lecture like this, one can only point the way here and there. I would ask you, however, to take this into account. It is only too easy to criticize such pointers from a fixed and established point of view. The indications I have given can of course be criticized to the nth degree; I myself would be perfectly able to raise all the objections that can be raised. On the other hand, however, you will be able to see that providing people do not want to prevent this, the truths that live in natural science can develop further so that the more profound secrets of the world may be unveiled in far-reaching revelations.

The day after tomorrow I will be speaking of the fruitfulness and significance of this for the whole of human life in its widest sense. My subject will be the practical application of this in the sphere of morality, of social and also religious life, political life, the theory of free will and other practical applications.

I had to risk getting misunderstood because I referred to individual and real findings. Many things today militate against human beings being able to rise to the regions of genuine and actual, true life in the spirit. Today people think that to be an enlightened person one has to say about the most profound question in our hearts, which is the question of immortality—this is something else I’ll be speaking about the day after tomorrow—that this cannot be judged because man’s ability to gain scientific insight does not go that far.

Fritz Mauthner, a man with a brilliant mind, has been writing about human capacities for insight in his German dictionary of philosophy. It is a stimulating work to read, for you feel you have entered a sphere where your mind goes round and round in circles without ever getting anywhere; if you think you have a quarter of a result, it is refuted and you are taken forward again, continuing to go round in circles. Mauthner, whose great merit it is to have shown how inadequate ‘accomplished knowledge’ proves to be wherever you look, even thinks that talking of the spirit was a crafty invention made by Hegel, saying more or less that Hegel infected philosophy with the concept of the spirit which we have today, and that the earlier concept of spirit was taken purely from that of the Holy Spirit.⁷⁵ He finds that the situation with many who imagine themselves to be critical and particularly enlightened minds and indeed to be ‘spirits/minds’ [the German for ‘mind’ and ‘spirit’ is the same word Geist, tr.]—perhaps they won’t put it like that themselves, for ‘spirit’ is something they do not accept; let us say therefore to be human beings who are at the pinnacle of knowledge and insight—Mauthner says that with many of them the situation is this: People want to use their rational minds and common sense to gain insight; but ‘the rational mind is a silver axe without a handle, and common sense is a golden handle without an axe’, and people somehow want to use these two imperfect things to penetrate the essential nature of the world!

People of that kind like to refer to Goethe’s comprehensive concept of nature. Fritz Mauthner also quotes Goethe, suggesting that Goethe, too, considered the human being to be wholly part of nature. Yet even in the essay on nature, which Fritz Mauthner quotes, you find that Goethe said things like this about nature: ‘It has been thinking and is always reflective’, speaking not of the human being, of course, but of nature. The kind of nature Goethe thought of—yes, that one could accept! It is something different from the nature which generally is the subject of natural science today. If we then also consider what Goethe said to Schiller: ‘If my natural laws are supposed to be ideas then I see my ideas before my own eyes’,⁷⁶ we can find naturalism acceptable in that spirit, for it’s a naturalism that definitely does not exclude the science of the spirit but includes it. I believe that if what Goethe intended for the grand design of his theory of metamorphosis, which he developed to a high degree, but only in its elements, is taken further, developed and taken beyond into the realm of the spirit, it will be a real basis for a true science of the spirit with an anthroposophical orientation.

I know that what I have said today about the origins of man and the relationship between the human soul and body is in harmony with the Goethean approach, though the Goethean approach has been taken forward into our time and made scientific.

When people who seem to be enlightened in their criticism and refuse to accept any kind of genuine spiritual insight think they can refer to Goethe, one does have to say to them: Consider Goethe’s approach at its deepest level. What you think you find in him, and also have in you, is described in the words Goethe directed to another scientist, a man of considerable merit, who had written:

Into inner nature
No mind that has been created can ever enter,...
Happy is he to whom
She shows but her outermost shell.⁷⁷

Goethe responded:

I have heard this repeated for 60 years,
I curse it, though only in secret; ...
Nature has neither kernel nor shell,
She is everything at one and the same time;
Examine yourself most of all
If you be kernel or shell!⁷⁸

If the human being develops his kernel or core in this Goethean spirit, he will also penetrate—even if it takes infinitely long, serious and honest investigative labour—to the core, the essence of nature. For this does come to expression in the human being. Seen rightly, it is this and nothing else which is reflected in the human being. Spirit is nothing else but nature’s flower and fruit. In a certain respect nature is the root of the spirit.

That is indeed a truly Goethean approach! The science of the spirit will have to develop it scientifically.

Questions and answers

Following the lecture given in Zurich on 12 November 1917

Question. If conscious awareness correlates with death, what is the situation with animals, which also die, though one has to assume that conscious awareness is in all circumstances different from the way it is in humans?

When I am going to talk about practical aspects the day after tomorrow, I also intend—though again and again I hesitate to do so—to give brief consideration to various questions relating to a concept that is widely used today, the concept of the ‘unconscious’. This does of course also play a major role in psychoanalysis, a method that is well known here in Zurich. Important and indeed crucial questions arise in this field, and the day after tomorrow we will see, or least lightly touch on, how the attempts made in psychoanalysis to answer these crucial questions relate to the questions themselves. Today I will merely take up the idea of the unconscious, doing so with reference to your question. Eduard von Hartmann made the ‘unconscious mind’ a philosophical term. He stated the basis of existence to be firstly the natural world, secondly the conscious mind, which, however, must always be grounded in nature, and the unconscious mind, which is wholly non-physical but, of course, unconscious.

The position is, however, that in the science of the spirit one does not know what to do with the idea of the ‘unconscious’ as such. ‘Unconscious mind’ is about the same in spiritual science as ‘headless human being’ in the natural realm. It is certainly possible to think of ‘mind’ in abstract terms as being without conscious awareness, just as we can think away the head. We can make a drawing of a headless organism.

There are actually people who suffer from hysterical partial blindness, that is, their blindness is not organic but hysterical, who suffer from the defect that when they walk in the street they see only the bodies of people and never see anyone’s head. There are such people with this specific form of hysterical illness. They see only the body and no head, that is, nothing but headless people. You see, for some people, and they are exceptional, the evidence of their eyes would be that one might think human reality to be such that people had no heads. But of course that is not the reality. Thus the ‘unconscious mind’ is not real and can never be real. We’ll talk about what follows from this the day after tomorrow.

We now come to the question you asked. Animals as such certainly do not have human minds, but they do have conscious awareness. Earlier on today I had occasion to say that things are not as easy, as a rule, in the science of the spirit as they are in today’s established science, where things are considered more in terms of concepts rather than reality. Even when it comes to thinking, we have to proceed in a different way in the science of the spirit than one is generally used to today. Thus we read in our physics books that solids are impenetrable, meaning that if you have a solid at a point in space, no other body can be in that space. In the science of the spirit we cannot accept this definition as it stands but have to say, from this different point of view: A solid body or a life form which occupies a space to such effect that no other body or life form can occupy that space at the same time, is in fact impenetrable. Something given as a definition, if you like, simply changes into a postulate or something similar for the spiritual scientist.

It has to be clearly understood that animals may not have human minds but they do have conscious awareness. The point is that with our usual habit of thinking today we think that death equals death. People die, animals die, and plants, too, are allowed to die. The matter is not as simple as that when it comes to the science of the spirit. The fact that the concept is the same may not mean that the reality is also the same. Seen from an inner point of view, in its reality, human death is something very different from the death of animals. This is how we look at things in real terms! And to speak of the death of plants carries about as much meaning in the science of the spirit as if we were to speak of the death of a clock, which also ‘dies on us’ at some point; I think you’ll agree that it can die on us. This would have to come to an end, therefore. That is not the concept of death. The concept of death includes many things that make human death into something very different.

We need to consider the following. Essentially the conscious awareness of animals is such that the things which human beings send into the zone of the senses, which I mentioned earlier today, and there experience separately, are not experienced separately in the zone of the senses by animals. The things animals experience in the zone of the senses are of the same kind as the things they have as their life of ideas. That strict separation between sensory perception and idea which we can make for the human being, cannot justifiably be made for animals. This can be seen directly if the mind has developed vision; on the other hand you can also see it in the anatomy and physiology. Let me just remind you that the animal eye, for example, is inwardly organized in a completely different way than the human eye. In humans, certain elements of the eye are taken back into the internal organization, more into the organization of the nerves; in animals they extend into the eye. You will find a pecten, or marsupium, falciform process, in some animals, physical anatomical structures that may be said to show how the vital principle enters into the zone of the senses in animals. In humans this vital principle withdraws. Human beings thus experience the presence of their soul in such a way in the zone of the senses—please take careful account of this—that they experience something very different here than animals do. This experience which humans have in the zone of the senses, which develops further into image-based, inspired and intuitive awareness and then again continues on in the life of ideas and of memory—this experience in the zone of the senses gives the human mind a very different colouring, if I may put it like this, than is found in the conscious awareness of animals.

It is altogether necessary to revise many concepts. If you ask someone today which ideas are the most spiritual, being least connected with the physical body as a basis, I think very many people will agree when you say that the most philosophical ideas are the most spiritual! You see, from the point of view of spiritual science it is the philosophical ideas that are most abstract, and mathematical ideas, too, which are more than any other bound to the physical body. If there were only philosophical ideas we could be absolute materialists; these ideas are really purely physical and only have significance between birth and death. Something which people generally consider to be most spiritual is solidly founded in the physical world and in the physical body.

What matters, however, is that humans, being endowed with souls, are involved in the life of the senses in such a way that here, where the outside natural world extends into them rather like a bay, because vitality has withdrawn, they are already experiencing death all the time. In so far as this zone of the senses is inwardly reflected, the result, the conscious result of this zone, penetrates the inner life with what I have called ‘atomistic’ death.

What I mean is this. The death phenomenon is blended into life in the zone of the senses in human beings, and this makes it justifiable to speak of death in conjunction with conscious awareness in their case. In animals we have to connect the gradual fading of reproductive powers with what exists as conscious awareness. Death comes for the animal when the reproductive powers have gone; in humans, the fact that the death phenomenon comes in later has been an additional gain which does not exist for any animal. Here the human being has quite a different basis.

What I would really like to stress is that we only gain the right insight into the situation between birth and death if we connect the specific nature of human conscious awareness, which has to do with that special experience in the zone of the senses, with the much more vital experience which animals have in the zone of the senses. Animal awareness does not have that added element, if I may put it like that, which is forever bringing about death in the human conscious mind.

Question. It is possible to say something from the point of view of spiritual science about the concept of entropy in modern physics?

Concerning the modern concept of entropy one has to say first of all that anything covered by this concept is above all merely abstracted from the view taken in inorganic natural science. If we define the term by saying that the final state of present evolution will come because more and more heat remains when mechanical energy is converted to heat energy, so that ultimately the state of the world can only be a state of heat, this is an abstraction taken wholly from the laws of the inorganic world. There can be no objection to this in itself from the point of view of spiritual science. People who follow the entropy idea know that in postulating this end state one also assumes there to have been an initial state; both logically and scientifically it is necessary to assume an initial state if one then lets everything drift towards such a heat death.

From the point of view of spiritual science, the situation looks like this. Again I am immediately considering something real. In the first place, the observations made in the science of the spirit do not connect at all with an idea which is widely accepted in speculations on inorganic nature, and that is the idea of the dissipation of energies, with people always thinking that the dissipation of energies may go on to infinity. Speaking of energies in terms of modern science, I thus always think of something that goes out into infinity. On the basis of experience gained in the science of the spirit, we cannot do anything with this idea, for from the point of view of this science, and considering their morphogeny, all energies prove to be elastic. This means that when they spread out, they do not dissipate into infinity but only as far as a certain limit from which they then return into themselves. This may, however, take such a long time that it has no immediate relevance for the earth period that lies directly ahead. In the science of the spirit one does indeed have to realize that the concept of dissipation into infinity is nebulous and that any form of energy that spreads does not dissipate into infinity but returns to itself. Applying this concept in the field of entropy, we have a final state which is the polar opposite, so that the dissipating energies may come back to themselves again, as it were. This, then, is one point.

The other is the following. If you look at my Occult Science you’ll find that this state, which I refer to by the technical term ‘Saturn state’ is indeed shown to be entirely a state of heat. This on the basis of a system of spiritual observation which is a more developed form of what I have today been presenting in its elementary form. I go back and by spiritual scientific methods arrive at an initial state—which is not constructed but seen. The whole of evolution which follows arises from this heat state. When people arrive at an end state that is a heat state with their idea of entropy, this is an end state which I have to take as an initial state. The consequence is that there must then be a new beginning, starting from this. So there is no ‘beginning and end’, for beginning and end are merely a link in a sequence of evolution. The end state, when reached, would thus be merely the starting point for continuing evolution.

Question. Wouldn't it be possible that you could let the human being evolve as a simple organism in such a way that he does not arise first as a head principle, with an appendage added later? Modern scientists also work with very long time spans and an infinitely long period of evolution, and I think that with this it would be just as possible to have the human being arise as a uniform organism.

When one is dealing with such matters in a general way it will of course always be possible to say the kind of thing which the gentleman has just said. I would stress that today my aim has been to present positive and real findings made in anthroposophically orientated spiritual science, that is, to give individual examples of positive findings. One of them is indeed that if we do not want to consider the human being as solely part of the natural world, in a theoretical way—and this is what today’s lecture was about—he cannot be understood if we use the approach that is generally accepted today. The human being is of course also seen as a ‘uniform entity’ if one sees him as a head principle with appendage—I did say I was presenting this only in approximate terms. What matters is where we look for the starting point for human evolution and not if we treat the human being as a ‘uniform entity’, that is, what we look for further back in time. If we go further back in time in looking for the principle which today appears in metamorphosed form as the head, this makes the human being as an entity in the natural world different from the way he is when we use the theory of evolution to place him in world evolution in the way it is done with today’s banal Darwinism, a banal theory of descent.

It is not a matter of long time spans. Present-day hypotheses make these, too, hypothetical. Time can only have significance in an explanation if we are, as it were, configuring the before and after out of a real situation, and not simply postulating an evolutional sequence and bringing in time as something external. People presenting the theory of descent actually say that time is available to an unlimited degree. The question is, however, if anything that is available to us for such a thought actually also plays the same role in real terms when we consider the human being in absolutely real terms.

Reality organizes itself in such a way that the element I have called an appendage—the term is, of course, approximate—proves to be more recent in the process of evolution, with the head organism the earlier one. Time configures itself out of this. The lineage of the head organism goes back to far earlier times than something which is younger. It truly is a matter of having to make sure that our thinking must be wholly real in the field of spiritual science. Today I would emphasize once again that we cannot advance in the science of the spirit in any other way but by being able to relate to reality in a completely different way than is done in what is called empirical science today, a science which I would not underestimate. No one will be able to accuse me of underestimating it if they read my books. But one has to relate to reality in a very different and very real way.

Answering a question the last time I was here, I said that our ideas must be much more real. We'll also come back to this need for thinking in real terms when I speak about practical human issues and matters concerning the human psyche the day after tomorrow. Thinking in real terms means that with every idea we consider we are aware how far this idea relates to reality. You see, in abstract terms a rose I have before me is a real thing; and we may take it to be real. For a thinker whose concepts are fully connected with reality the concept of the rose can exist in no other way but that he is aware that in itself this rose is something abstract; in real terms it can only exist on a rose bush, and this in turn only in connection with the whole earth, and so on. A spiritual investigator will thus not present something as an isolated idea when in reality it is connected with something else but can be artificially taken out of this context. In pursuing his ideas, a spiritual investigator will thus always be aware of the degree to which the inner, substantial nature of ideas takes him into the real world. Here is another example, a paradox: you put a cell nucleus under the microscope to study it. You are studying it in isolation from everything that goes with it. A spiritual investigator will be fully aware of this; he knows that there is a difference if I look at a cell nucleus or a small animal under the microscope. I see the animal in its wholeness. Looking at a cell nucleus, however, I am not seeing something that is as real as that small animal, which does not grow larger and is thus a whole.

Having thus inwardly always the reality-character of the life of ideas in mind—that is one of the first preconditions for conscious awareness in vision. I made this clear in my book The Riddle of Man, published two years ago. This needs to be taken into account with such a question. I therefore said that the 19th century scientific theory of evolution has considerable merits to this day. But the issue is not dealt with in sufficiently real terms. If we want to study human evolution, it is not without significance where we start with this in the human being. It is not a valid objection, for instance, to say: ‘Here I have a life form; in its present form this life form has special climbing feet.’ There are life forms which in their present form—please forgive me for comparing a small creature with the human being, but we are in the field of science, and so it does not matter—so there are tiny creatures, lice—please forgive the rudeness—that develop special climbing feet. These feet are a product of later evolution. The original creature did not have them. They arose from adaptation to later conditions. It is important to realize that the original creature, living in different conditions, did not have such feet. This species of louse developed special climbing feet under later conditions. Many examples could be given. It is important, therefore, to see the real situation. Forgive me if I now move on to the human being. It is important to realize that the original form has the potential which in direct descent, in direct continuance, leads to the head organ, and that everything else is something acquired later. That is the real situation. And if we do not consider the human being in this way, we cannot understand him in the context of the whole evolution of nature.

Of course I can only refer to these things briefly. As I said, I’d have to give a long course if I were to give you all the details. Anthroposophy is still evolving today, and please do not consider it silly of me to say that it does not yet feel right to present anthroposophy in fully established courses. It needs to be done in form of suggestions made in individual lectures, and all one can do is refer to one thing or another. Because of this we have this imperfection which is the only possible thing in speaking like this. The things I have said, however, no more go against the view that the human being evolves as a uniform entity, than the evolution of lice that do not yet have feet to climb with into lice that do have them speaks against this being the evolution of a uniform entity. It is thus a matter of characterizing the evolutionary process, the special aspect of it. This is what matters in the present case.

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• 53. Goethe, J. W. (see note 49), Faust I, Faust’s servitor Wagner in ‘Night’. Tr. P. Wayne. Penguin Classics.
• 54. Rubner, Max (1854–1932). Die Gesetze des Energieverbrauchs beider Ernährung, Vienna 1902.
• 55. Atwater, W.O. ‘Neue Versuche über Stoff- und Kraftwechsel im menschlichen Koerper’ in Ergebnisse der Physiologie Bd 3.1904. S. 497-622.
• 56. Ebbinghaus Hermann (1850–1909), German experimental psychologist. Abriss der Psychologie, 2. Aufl. Leipzig 1909, I. Kapitel ‘Allgemeine Anschauungen’.
• 57. Eckermann reported Goethe’s views on the natural scientific thinking to which the lecture refers as follows. ‘But it is not usually enough for people to see the archetypal phenomenon; they think it must go further than this and are like children who, having looked in a mirror, immediately turn it round to see what is on the other side.’ Johann Peter Eckermann, Gespräche mit Goethe in den letzten Jahren seines Lebens, zweiter Teil, Gespräch vom 18. 2. 1829.
• 58. Steiner R. The Riddle of Man (note 3).
• 59. Haeckel, Ernst Heinrich Philipp August (1834–1919), German naturalist [Tr.]
• 60. Naegeli, Karl Wilhelm von (1817–1891), Swiss botanist. Mechanisch-physiologische Theorie der Abstammungslehre 1884.
• 61. Gegenbaur, Karl (1826–1903), German comparative anatomist. His chief work, Comparative Anatomy, was translated into English in 1878 [Tr.].
• 62. Haeckel in The Natural History of Creation (1868).
• 63. In the preface to Das Werden der Organismen (Jena 1916), Oscar Hertwig wrote: ‘For we would agree with Huxley that if Darwin’s hypothesis were to disappear, the theory of evolution would remain where it is. It is a lasting achievement of our century based on facts, and certainly one of its greatest.'
• 64. In System der Philosophie im Grundriss (Bad Sachsa 1907), Bd. II, Grundriss der Naturphilosophie, S. 172 & 208.
• 65. 1. Aufl. Berlin 1869.
• 66. Das Unbewusste vom Standpunkt der Physiologie und Deszendenz- Theorie (Berlin 1872). The second edition, this time bearing von Hartmann’s name, was published in 1877.
• 67. Schmidt criticized Eduard von Hartmann in his Die naturwissenschaftlichen Grundlagen der Philosophie des Unbewussten (Leipzig 1877), but praised the anonymous publication, saying that it had ‘fully confirmed the conviction of everyone who had not sworn an oath in favour of the unconscious that Darwinism is in the right.’
• 68. In Das Werden der Organismen (see note 63), Hertwig gave a long quote by E. von Hartmann.
• 69. ‘Ontogenesis, or the development of an individual, is a fast, short recapitulation of the phylogenesis, or evolution, of the species.’ Anthropogenie, 4. Aufl. Leipzig 1891, Bd I S. 64 (Evolution of Man 1874).
• 70. Concept used by Oscar Hertwig e.g. in Die Elemente der Entwicklungslehre des Menschen und der Wirbeltiere (Jena 1910), 4. Aufl. 4. Kapitel ‘Entwicklungsphysiologische Experimente’.
• 71. Human Life in the Light of Anthroposophy (from GA 35). Tr. S. M. K. Gandell. New York: Anthroposophic Press 1938.
• 72. Ziehen, Theodor (1862–1950). Leitfaden der physiologischen Psychologie 15 lectures, Jena 1891, S. 146. In the 9 lecture: ‘On the other hand (compared to the “older psychology” and Kant), our discussions so far have shown that feelings of inclination and disinclination simply do not exist in such an independent form but merely occur as characteristics of inner feelings and ideas, as emotional colouring.’
• 73. Comte, Auguste (1798–1857), French philosopher and social theorist. Cours de philosophie positive, 6 vols, Paris 1830-42, esp. the 40th-45th lectures.
• 74. See Von Seelenrätseln (note 1), Seite 156 f.
• 75. Literally: ‘And when Hegel had the arrogance to say that he had found the ultimate of all conceptual thought, presenting it in his head or in his system, when Hegel had infected the language of philosophy with the concept “spirit”, “nature” came to be the opposite of “spirit” ... When there is no longer contrast to nature in the human being, the mind and spirit no longer needs to “move itself’ with such effort to liberate the human being from nature. The spirit, of which no one ever knew what it was, a pale shadow of the Holy Spirit, of the decorative member of the Trinity, the spirit with which Hegel had made a final, for the time being, major attempt to drive nature out of the human being and the human being in his turn out of nature.’ Wörterbuch der Philosophie, 2. Bd., München 1910, S. 141 & 147 (Artikel ‘Natur’).
• 76. In conversation with Schiller in July 1794. Goethe wrote about this in an essay entitled ‘Glücklichs Ereignis’ in Naturwissenschaftliche Schriften (scientific writings, see note 10).
• 77. From Albrecht von Haller’s didactic poem ‘Die Falschheit menschlicher Tugenden’ (1730), verse 289 f.
• 78. In response to von Haller’s didactic poem, title ‘ Allerdings. Dem Physiker’(1820).

Welcome, all who are present here! It was the wish of the committees of this High School week that I give an introduction each day regarding the course which will take place in a scientifically orientated process. It will be conducted with the aim of Anthroposophy fructifying the individual branches of science and of life, and with these introductory words I ask you to take up this first lecture.

What has surprised me the most at the reception of the anthroposophical research method is the opposition, particularly from the philosophic-natural scientific side—I'm not only saying the natural scientific side—brought against Anthroposophy, and it stems from a basic belief that Anthroposophy's methods stand in an unauthorised, opposing position to those of natural science which has developed exponentially in the last century, particularly the 19th Century. It seems to me that among all the various things related to Anthroposophy which our contemporaries find the most difficult to understand, is this, that Anthroposophy in relation to natural science doesn't want anything other than that the methods used by natural science which have proved so fruitful, be developed further in a corresponding manner. In any case, with the idea of further development something else needs understanding, if one wants to arrive at an anthroposophic understanding, than that which one usually calls further evolution from a theoretical point of view.

Further development from a theoretical point of view for most people means that the particular way thoughts are linked—particularly if I may express it as the field of thought—remains constant, also when relevant thought systems expand to other areas of the world's phenomena. So for instance when you engage scientifically with lifeless, inorganic nature you necessarily come to linking thoughts, to a certain field of thought, which means the sum of linking thoughts is a foundation, in order to gradually arrive at a theory about lifeless, inorganic nature. This system of thoughts, as it stands, you now want to extend when you enter another sphere of the world, for example the sphere of organic phenomena in nature, in order to understand it. You would want with this causal orientation, which has proved itself so fruitful in the inorganic area, to simply apply it to living beings and in the same terms, drenching and explaining it, thus gradually conceptualising the sphere of the living beings similarly into an effective system derived from inorganic causalities which you would be doing with regard to lifeless, inorganic nature. What you have appropriated as a system of thought derived from lifeless nature, you simply apply to organic nature. This is what is usually understood today, as the ‘expansion’ of thoughts and theories.

This is of course quite the opposite of what Anthroposophy regards under such an idea as the expansion of thinking. A fully rounded concept of an independently developed, self metamorphosed idea need to be contained, so that if you want to go from one sphere of world phenomena into another, that you don't merely apply what you have learnt from lifeless natural phenomena, and—I could call it “logically apply”—it on to life-filled phenomena in nature. By comparison, just as things change in the living world, growing, going through metamorphosis, and how they often become unrecognisable from one form into another, so thoughts should also take on other forms when they enter into other spheres. One thing remains the same in all spheres which is what gives the scientific point of view its monistic and methodical character, it's the manner and way in which you can position yourself internally to what can be called “scientific certainty” which forms the basis of scientific convictions.

Whoever wants to find proof why one can't use concepts gleaned from lifeless nature, concepts which are applied through habits, in which to verify human causalities—if I may use Du Bois-Reymond's expression—whoever gets to know this intimately, can then shift over to quite different concepts, concepts which are metamorphosed from earlier concepts, and sound convincing in the world of the living. The way in which the human being is positioned within the scientific movement is completely monistic right though the entire scientific world view. This is usually misunderstood and results in the anthroposophic-scientific viewpoint not having a monistic but a dualistic character.

The second item which commonly leads to misunderstandings is phenomenology, to which Anthroposophy with regard to natural science must submit. We are experiencing a fruitful time of scientific developments, a time in which the important scientific researcher Virchow gave his lecture regarding the separation of the philosophic world view from that of the natural scientific view, how everything had been conquered which at that time had a certain historic rating of fruitful concepts regarding the inorganic, resulting in a certain rationalism being established in science. This period which worked on the one side earnestly from empiricism against the outer world of facts, this still went over to a far-reaching rationalism when it came down to it to elucidate the empirically explored facts of nature.

By contrast we now have the standpoint of Anthroposophy which comes from—at least for me it comes from this, if I might make a personal remark—from the Goethean conception of nature. Anthroposophy stands on the basis of a phenomenological concept of nature. In a certain way this phenomenology of recent times was established again by Ernst Mach, and as he established it, he again appeared to reveal fertile points of view, if one complies with his boundaries. For

I know very well how in the 19th Century several—one could say nearly all—of the details of Goethe's interpretations regarding natural scientific things have been overhauled. Despite that, I would like to sustain a sentence today which I made in the eighties of the previous (19th) Century in relation to Copernicus and Kepler of organic natural science.’ I want to still support this sentence today because I believe the following is justified by it.

What is it that lets us finally arrive at a true perception of nature on which so much of the 19th Century had been achieved? What I'm referring to can't but be set within the boundary of a historic category. What has been achieved through science during the 19th century nearly always refers back to the application of mathematical methods because even where pure mathematics aren't applied, but thoughts steered according to other principles of causality, where theories are developed, here the mathematical way of thinking forms a basis.

It is significant in what happened: we have seen in the course of the 19th Century how certain parties of science in a certain rationalistic way had to form a foundation by the introduction of mathematics. The Kantian saying claims that there is only as much certainty in a science as there is mathematics contained within it. Now obviously mathematics can be introduced into everything. Claims of causality go further than possible mathematical developments of concepts. However, what has been done in terms of explanations of causality was done extensively according to the pattern of mathematical conceptions. When Ernst Mach became involved, considering it with his more phenomenological viewpoint of these concepts of causality, as it had developed in the course of the 19th Century, he wanted to arrive at a certain causal understanding of the contents. Finally he declared: ‘When I consider a process and its cause, there is actually nothing different between it and a mathematical function. For instance, if I say: X equals Y, while X is the cause under the influence of the working called Y, then I have taken the entire thing back to the concept which I have in mathematics, when I created a concept of function. It can also be seen in the history of science, how the concept of mathematics has been brought into the sphere of science.’

Now Goethe is usually regarded—with a certain right—as a non-mathematician; he even called himself as such. However, if one places Goethe there as a non-mathematician, then misunderstandings arise—somewhat in the sense that Goethe couldn't achieve much with mathematical details, that he was not particularly talented in his time to solve mathematical problems. That may of course be admitted. I also don't believe Goethe in his total being had particular patience to solve detailed mathematical examples, if it was more algebraic. That has to be admitted. However, Goethe had in a certain sense, as paradoxical as it might sound, more of a mathematician's brain than some mathematicians; because he had fine insight into mathematized nature, in the nature of building mathematical concepts, and he prized this way of thinking, which lives within the soul process also with the content of imagination when concepts are created.

The mathematician, when building concepts, scrutinizes everything internally. Take for instance a simple example of Euclidean geometry which proves that the three angles of a triangle amounts to 180 degrees, where, by drawing a line parallel to the base line, through the tip of the triangle, two angles are created, which are equal to the other two angles in the triangle—the angle in the tip remains the same of course—and how one can see that these three corners at the top add to 180 degrees, being the total of all the corners of the triangle. When you consider this, you can see that with a mathematical proof you have simultaneously something which is not dependent on outer perception but it is completely observed as an inner creation. If you then have an outer triangle you will find that the outer facts can be verified with one's previous inner scrutiny. That is so with all mathematics. Everything remains the same, no perception of the senses need to be added to it in order to arrive at what is called a “proof”, that everything which has been discovered internally can be verified, piece-by-piece.

It is this particular kind of mathematics which Goethe regarded as eminently scientific and insofar he actually had a good mathematical brain. This for example also leads to the basis of the famous lectures which Goethe and Schiller, during the time of their blossoming friendship, had led regarding the method of scientific consideration. They had both attended a lecture held by the researcher Batsch in the Jena based Naturforschenden Gesellschaft (Nature's Investigator's Club—Wikepedia: August J G Batsch). As they departed from the lecture, Schiller said to Goethe that the content of what they had heard was a very fragmentary method of observing nature, it didn't bring one to a whole.—One can imagine that Batsch simply took single natural objects and ordered them one below another and refrained, as befitted most researchers at the time, from ordering them somehow which could lead to an overall view of nature. Schiller found this unsatisfactory and told Goethe. Goethe said he understood how a certain unification, a certain wholeness had to be brought into observations of nature. Thus, he began with a few lines—he narrates this himself—to draw the “Urpflanze” (Original Plant), how it can be thought about, looked at inwardly—not like some or other plant encountered in the day, but how it could be regarded inwardly through the root, stem, leaves, flowers and fruit.

In my introduction to Goethe's “Naturwissenschaftlichen Schriften” (Natural Scientific Notes) of the 80's of the previous (19th) century, I tried to copy the image which Goethe presented to Schiller on paper.—Schiller looked at it and said, as was his way of expressing himself: ‘This is no experience, this is an idea.’ Schiller actually meant that if one made a drawing of something like that, it had been spun out of oneself, it is good as an idea and as a thought but in reality, it has no source. Goethe couldn't understand this way of thinking at all, and finally the conversation was concluded by his reply: ‘If that is the case then I can see my ideas with my eyes.’

What did Goethe mean by this? He meant—but hadn't expressed it like this, he meant: ‘When I draw a triangle its corners add up to 180 degrees by themselves; when I have seen as many triangles and constructed them within me, the sum of all triangles fit on to this triangle, I have in this way gained something from within which fits the totality of my experiences.’ In this way Goethe wanted to draw his “Urpflanze” according to the “Ur-triangle” and this Ur-plant would have such characteristics that one could find it in all individual plants. Just as the sum of the triangle's corners, when you draw the Ur-triangle, amounts to 180 degrees, so also this ideal image of the Ur-plant would be rediscovered in each plant if you go through an entire row of plants.

In this manner Goethe wanted all of science to take shape. Essentially he wanted—but he couldn't continue—to let organic science be developed and introduce such methods of thinking as had been proven so fruitful for inorganic science. One can very clearly see, when Goethe writes about Italy, how he developed the idea of the Ur-plant ever further. He more or less said: ‘Here among the plants in South Italy and Sicily in the multiplicity of the plant world the Ur-plant rose up for me specially, and it must surely find an image which all actual plants possibly have within them, an image in which many different sides may appear taking on this or that, adapting elongated or other plant forms, soon forming the flower, soon the fruit and more, and so on—just like a triangle can have sharp or blunt corners.’ Goethe searched for an image according to which all plants could be formed. It is quite incorrect when later, Schieiden [Matthias Jakob Schieiden (1804-1881), botanist, Physician and lawyer.—“The plant and Its Life”, 6th edition of Leipzig 1864, Lecture 4: “The Morphology of Plants”, p. 86: “The idea of such laws for the design of the plant was first developed by Goethe in his idea of ‘Urpflanz’, what he put forth as the primal, or ideal plant. That realization was, as it were, the task of nature, and which she more or less has completely achieved completely.”] indicated that Goethe was looking for an actual plant to fit his Ur-plant. This is not correct—just as when a mathematician, when speaking about a triangle, doesn't have a particular triangle in mind—so Goethe was referring to an image, which, proven inwardly, could actually be verified everywhere in the outer world.

Goethe basically had a mathematical brain, much more mathematical than those who develop Astronomy. That's the essence. This led to Goethe, in his conversation with Schiller, to say: ‘Then I see my ideas with my eyes.’ He saw them with his eyes because he could pursue them everywhere in the phenomena. He didn't go along with anything only being an “idea”, because he found complete resonance in the experience of building an idea; just like a mathematician senses harmony within the experience of creating mathematical ideas. This led Goethe, if I might say so, through an inner consequence to arrive at mere phenomenology, that means not trying to find anything behind appearances as such, above all not to create a rationalistic world of atoms.

Here one enters into the area where many—I can but say it—misunderstandings developed relating to battles against some scientific philosophic points of view. It simply meant that what the outer world offered the senses were seen as phenomena. Goethe and with him the entire scientific phenomenology was narrowed down to not going directly from some sense perceptive phenomenon into the atomic content behind it, but by focussing purely on the perceived phenomenon and the single element of the perceived facts, and then to search not for what lies behind it, but for its correlation to other elements of sense-perceptible appearances relating to it.

It is very easy—I understand totally where misunderstandings come from—to find such phenomenology as hopeless. One can say for instance: When one wants to merely narrow down descriptions of mutual relationships in sensory phenomena and search for those phenomena which are the simplest, which possibly have the most manageable facts—which Goethe calls “Ur-phenomena”—then one doesn't come to an observation about endless fruitful things as modern Chemistry has delivered for example. How—one could ask—can one actually arrive at atomic weight ratios without observing the atomic world? Now, in this case one can counter this with the question: When one really reflects what is present there, does it involve a need to start with the phenomenon? One has no involvement with it. With atomic weight ratios one is involved with phenomena, namely weight ratios. Still, one could ask: To go further, could one express the atomic weight ratios numerically in order to clarify how specific molecular structures are built out of pure thought, rationalistically? One could pose this question as well. Briefly, what is not involved when Goethean observation is used, is this: remaining stuck in the phenomena themselves. I would like to compare it with a trivial comparison.

Let's imagine someone is confronted with a written word. What will he do? If he hasn't learnt to read he would meet it as something inexplicable. If he was literate he would unconsciously join the single forms together and encounter its meaning within his soul. He certainly wouldn't start with each symbol, for instance by taking the W and search for its meaning, by approaching the upward stroke, followed by the descending stroke, in order to discover the foundation of the letters. No, he would read—and not search for the underlying to obtain clarity. In this way phenomenology wants to “read” as well. You may remain within the connections of phenomenology and learn to read them, and not, when I offer a complexity of phenomenon, turn back to atomic structures.

It comes down to entering into the field of phenomena and learning to read within their inner meaning. This would lead to a science which has nothing rationalistically construed within it behind the phenomena, but which, simply through the way the phenomena are regarded, lead to certain legitimate structures. In every case this science would be a member of the totality of the phenomena. One would speak in a specific way about nature. With this approach the laws of nature would be contained, but in every instance the phenomena themselves would be contained in the forms of expression. One would achieve what I would like to call a natural science inherent in the phenomena. Along the lines of such a science was Goethe's striving. The way and manner of his approach had to be changed according to the progress of modern times but it still is possible for the fundamental principles to be maintained. When these fundamental principles are adhered to, nature itself presents something towards human conceptualising, which I would like to characterise in the following way.

It is quite obvious that we as modern humanity have developed our scientific concepts according to inorganic nature. This is the result of inorganic natural phenomena being relatively simple; it was also the result of, or course, when one enters the organic realm, the agents of the lifeless processes still persist. When one moves from the mineral to the plant kingdom then it does not happen that the lifeless activities stops in the plant; they only become absorbed into a higher principle, but it continues in the plant. We do the right thing when we follow the physical and chemical processes further in the plant organism according to the same point of view which we are used to following in inorganic nature. We also need to have the ability to shift our belief system towards change, to metamorphosed concepts. We need to research how the inorganic also applies to the plants and how the same processes which are found in lifeless nature, also penetrate the plants. However, this could result in the temptation to only research what lies in the mineral world within the plant and animal and as a result overlook what appears in higher spheres. Due to special circumstances this temptation increased much more in the course of the 19th Century. This happened in the following way.

When one looks at lifeless nature one feels to some extent satisfied because research of the phenomena can be done with mathematical thinking. It is quite understandable that Du Bois-Reymond in his wordy and brilliant manner gave his lecture “Regarding the boundaries of Nature's understanding” in which he, I could call it, celebrated the Laplace world view and called it the “astronomical conception” of the entire natural world existence. According to this astronomical conception not only were the starry heavens to be regarded this way, through mathematical thinking constructing single phenomena into a whole, as far as possible, but that one should try and penetrate with this into the constitution of matter. One molecule was to construct a small world system where the atoms would move in relation to one another like the stars in the world's structure. Man constructed himself in the smallest of the small world system and was satisfied that he would find the same laws in the small as in the big. So one had in the single atoms and molecules a system of moving bodies like one has outside in the world structure's system of fixed stars and planets. This is characteristic of the direction in which mankind was striving particularly in the 19th Century and how people were satisfied, as Du Bois-Reymond said, as a result of the need for causality. It simply developed out of the urge to apply mathematics fruitfully to all natural phenomena. This resulted in the temptation for these mathematicians to remain stuck in their observation of natural phenomena.

It won't occur to anyone, also not an Anthroposophist, if he doesn't want to express himself inexpertly, to deny that this is justified, for instance when someone remains within the phenomena and concerns himself with details, for example in Astronomy, and conceive it in this way. It won't occur to anyone to start a fight against this. However, in the course of the 19th Century it occurred that everything the world offered was overlooked which had a qualitative aspect and only regarded the qualitative aspect by applying mathematical understanding to it. Here one must differentiate: One can admit that this mechanical explanation of the world is valid, nothing can be brought against it. One needs to differentiate between whether it can be applied justifiably to certain areas only, or whether it should be applied as the one and only possible system of understanding everything in the world.

Here lies the point of difference. The Anthroposophist will not argue in the least against something which is justified. Anthroposophy namely won't oppose the other and it is interesting to follow arguments how Anthroposophy actually admits to all which is within justifiable boundaries. It doesn't occur to the Anthroposophist to argue against what natural science has validated. However, it comes down to whether it is justified to include the entire sphere of phenomena with the mathematical-causal way of thinking, or whether it is justifiable, out of the totality of phenomena, to place those of a purely mathematical-causal abstraction as a “conceived” content, as it had been done in earlier atomic theory.

Today atomic theory has to a certain extent become phenomenological, and to this extent Anthroposophy concurs. However even today it comes down to some spooks of the 19th Century appearing in this un-Goethean atomic theory, which doesn't limit itself to phenomena but constructs a purely conceptual framework behind the phenomena. When one isn't clear about it being a purely conceptual framework, that the world searches behind phenomena, but that the appearance claims this conceptual framework is reality, then one becomes nailed down by it. It is extraordinary how such conceptual frameworks nail people down. Through them they become more dogmatic and say: ‘There are people who want to explain the organic through quite different concepts which they find from quite somewhere else, but this doesn't exist; we have developed such conceptual structures which encompass the world behind the phenomena; this is the only world and this must also be the only workable way with regard the organic sphere.’—In this way the observation of the organic sphere is imported into the phenomena observed in inorganic nature; the organic is seen as having been created in the same way as inorganic nature.

Here clarity needs to be established. Without clarity no real foundation for a discussion can be created. Anthroposophy never intends sinning against legitimate methods in a dilettante manner, it will not sin against justified atomic theory; it wants to keep the route free from the creation of thought structures which had been developed earlier for the inorganic sphere and now needs to be created for other areas of nature. This will happen if one says to oneself: ‘In the phenomena I only want to “read”, that means, what I finally get out of the content of natural laws, dwell within the phenomena themselves—just as by reading a word, the meaning is revealed from within the letters. If I lovingly remain standing within the phenomena and am not intent on applying some hypothetical thought structure to it, then I would remain free in my scientific sense for the further development of the concept.’ This ability to remain free is what we need to develop.

We may not take a system of beliefs which have been fully developed and nailed down for a specific area of nature, and apply it to other areas. If we develop mere phenomenology which can obviously only happen if one takes the observed, or through an experiment of chosen phenomena which have been penetrated with thought and is thus linked to natural laws, one remains stuck within the phenomena, but now one arrives at another kind of relationship to thoughts themselves; one comes to the experience of how phenomena already exist within the laws of nature and how they now appear in our thoughts. If we allow ourselves to enter into these thoughts we no longer have the justification in as far as we are remaining within the phenomena, to speak of subjective thoughts or objective laws of nature. We simply dive into the phenomena and then give thought content to the content of the natural laws, which presents us with the things themselves. This is how Goethe could say naively: ‘Then I see my ideas in Nature’—which were actually laws of nature—‘with my own eyes.’

When you position yourself in this particular way in the phenomena of inorganic nature, then it is possible to go over into the organic, also within scientific terms. When a person sees that his horse is brown or a gray (Schimmel) horse is white, he won't refer back to the inorganic colour but refer to what is living in a soul-spiritual way in the organism itself. People will learn to understand how the empowered inner organisation of the animal or plant produces the colour out of themselves.

In addition, it is obvious that all the minutiae, for example the functioning of metabolism, need to be examined from within. However, then one doesn't apply the organic to what one has found in the inorganic. One doesn't nail oneself firmly on to a specific system of thought, and one doesn't apply the same basic conviction you had in one area on to other areas. One remains more of a “mathematical mind” than those who refuse to allow concepts to metamorphose into the qualitative. Then one is able to reach higher areas of nature's existence through inner examination just as one is able to validate through inner examination, the lifeless mathematical structures. This is what I briefly wanted to sketch for you, and if it is expanded further, will show that the scientific side of Anthroposophy is always able, what Goethe calls being accountable, to all, even the most diligent mathematician. This was Goethe's goal with the development of his idea of the Ur-plant, which he came to, and the idea of the Ur-animal, at which he didn't arrive. Anthroposophy strives to allow the origins of Goethe's world view to emerge with regards to nature's phenomena and from the grasping of the vital element in imagination to let it rise to the form of the plant and to the form of the animal. Already during the eighties (1880's)I indicated that we need to metamorphose concepts taken from inorganic for organic nature. I'll speak more about this during the coming days.

As a result of this one comes to perceive within the organic what the actual principle of the process, the formative principle, is. Now, in conclusion of this reflection I would like to introduce something which will lead to further observations in the coming days; something which will show how this materialistic phase of scientific development is not be undervalued by Anthroposophy.

Anthroposophy must see an important evolutionary principle in this materialistic phase of natural science, an educational method through which one has once learnt to submit oneself to the empiricism of the outer senses. This was extraordinarily educational for the development of mankind, and now when this education has been enjoyed, one can look at certain things with great clarity. Whoever now, equipped with such a scientific sense for observing the outer material world, will make the observation that this material world is ‘mirrored’ in people, if I might use this expression.

The world we experience within is more or less an abstraction of an inner image permeated by experiences and will impulses of the outer material world so that when we move from the material outer world to the soul-spiritual, we come to nothing but imagery. Let's hold on to this firmly: outwardly there's the totality of material phenomena, which we are looking at in a phenomenological sense—and within, the soul-spiritual which has a particular abstract character, a pictorial character. If one approaches the observation with an anthroposophical view that the spiritual lies at the basis of the outer material world, the spirit which works in the movement of the stars, in the creation of minerals, plants and animals, then one enters in the spiritual creation of the outer world; one gets to know this through imagination, inspiration and intuition, then this is also an inner mirror image of the human being. But what is this inner mirror image of the human being? It is our physical organs. They respond to me in what I've learnt to know as the nature of the sun, the nature of the moon, minerals, plants, animals and so on; this is how the inner organs answer me. I only get to know my inner human organism when I get to know the outer things of the world. The material world outside mirrors in my soul-spiritual; the soul spiritual world outside reflects itself in the form of lungs, liver, heart and so on. The inner organs are, when you look at them, in the same relationship with the spiritual outer world as the relationship of our thoughts and experiences are to the material outer world.

This shows us how Anthroposophy consistently does not want to reject materialism in an enthusiastic sense. Look at the entire scope of natural science: thousands will be dissatisfied with results obtained through the usual methods of natural science. Anthroposophy and its methods will gradually gain an opinion regarding the material world which does not result in dissatisfaction. It acknowledges matter in its own organisation and in the phenomenology of the environment but it has to acknowledge at the same time that the inner organisation is the result, the consequences of the cosmic soul-spiritual. Through this it wants to supplement what has only mathematically been accomplished in astronomy, astrophysics, physics or chemistry. This it wants to explore further in an organic cosmology and so on, and as a result bring about an understanding with materialistic people. In this lies the foundation of what Anthroposophy wants to offer to medicine, biology and so on.

So I believe that through these indications which I've only been able to give as a sketch, it will point out how Anthroposophy, when it is correctly understood, can't be seen as wanting to initiate a war against today's science but on the contrary, that the present day representatives of science haven't crossed the bridge to Anthroposophy to see how it also wants to be strictly scientific with regards to natural phenomena.

My dear venerated guests! Besides the introductory words I want to say regarding today's task, I want to limit myself to essential indications in the following lectures to details of the economic life in its relationship to the area coming under discussion.

Social science can't be talked about today from only a theoretical standpoint. Today—I mean at this very present moment—one can only speak about such questions while the dire situation of the economic life existing in the civilised world is in the background. Into this desolate situation was also added something which I set out in my “Key Notes of the Social Question”, after the temporary end of the terrible catastrophe of world war.

At that time, I urged everyone to observe the social economic life in relation to the present time of world development. It is this economic life at present which is intimately intertwined with that which moves in the entire circumference of the social question. Yes, most people at present can hardly sense that the social question can be separated from the economic question. Yet my book “Key Notes of the Social Question” enters into establishing clarity in relation to the area in question here, where it will be pointed out how the economic life within the social organism needs to establish its own independent position, such an independent position within which the same facts and indications acquire their form only according to economic principles, economic opinions and impulses. In this respect my book—I say it here in quite frankly, because that is what matters most—contains an inner contradiction. Only, this book is not to be regarded as a theoretical book on social science. This book wants to give suggestions above all to life practitioners; this book was written out of observations of the European economic life over decades. Because this book strives to be completely realistic, a direct encouragement for practical activities—practical action in the moment—it had to contain a contradiction. This contradiction is namely nothing other than what permeates our entire social life and consists in our social life being in the course of modern time mixed up, chaotic; only viable if it develops its individual branches from out of its own conditions.

I must speak about the threefold divisions of the social organism which leads to the economic life becoming separated in a fully, free way from the organised legal and state life as well as from the spiritual life, so that the economic life becomes, for those who stand within it, formed out of their personal actions and initiatives. However, we presently live at a time in which such a situation doesn't exist, in which the economic life stands within the structure of the general social organism. We live in a time in which contradiction is a reality. As a result, a manuscript, which has aimed at being written out of reality and is being offered with suggestions based on reality, can bring about a contradictory turn; it could only come from the standpoint of bringing the contradiction to clarity, and with this clarity achieve relationships.

I am thus in an unusual position today by giving this introduction because in connection to what is based on anthroposophical grounds, created with anthroposophical methods of thought, founded on decades of realistic observation of European economic relationships—it is in the widest circles where it was first misunderstood in the worst possible way. I can only say I fully understand these misconceptions which have been given to these underlying intentions; these misunderstandings are phenomena of our time. However, I must be on the other side of the standpoint, that in overcoming these misconceptions lies what we first have to strive for sociologically, socially, and to this I would like to say a few words to orientate us.

When my book “Key Notes of the Social Question” was first published, it took place in the middle of the European development which was immediately followed by the terrible war catastrophe. It was during the time preceded by the Versailles treaty, a time in which value relationships in central and eastern European states were essentially different. Not from some cuckoo land cloud impulse was my “Key notes” written down, but thought through from the immediate world situation in such a way that I hoped to believe a large number of people would find it, and on the basis of these suggestions search further, then one could—namely from central Europe—throw an impulse also into the economic development which would lead to a significant, acceptable ascent which from then on and up to today had been a continual waste on the economy and social life in general. At that time you could say to yourself that a person could think out of this complicated world situation: Perhaps no stone will remain standing as he has created into the thought structures of the “Key Notes of the Social Question”—; that these ideas would be made up out of those who were there. Still, it could be grasped and would perhaps have given quite a different result to what could be fixed in a manuscript. It is not important that ideas are presented in a utopian manner, that an image can be presented as a social futuristic organism, but it comes down to people discovering and understanding: real problems exist here, directly in life; we have to deal with these problems out of our expertise and see if we can handle these issues by finding an ever wider understanding for them.

Basically, something quite different has happened. On the one hand theorists have all kinds of discussions regarding the content of my book, discussions to which all manner of demands are linked regarding its contents. Some theoreticians misinterpreted what had been said completely, wanting to turn it in a utopian sense by asking: How will this be, how will that be?—ie: what one could actually expect. It turned out to be a strange fact to me which took me by surprise because precisely those practicing economists who work routinely within the economic life, who know about this or that branch of business and rejected what I had said, spoke about things in their business which wasn't practiced in their business—that these practitioners argue over the key points of the social question and as a result, prove themselves to be abstract theoreticians. This shows that one can have a routine practical involvement in economic life—in the old sense; under the newer relationships it can no longer be—these practitioners were absolutely not in the position to what was being battered here as also being related to problems of the economic life, other than discussion points made in abstract theories; which could raise doubts when you oppose practitioners and get involved in their discussions because nothing concrete is entered into but only completely trivial generalities are repeated about the social question, if you question someone.

The other thing you could come across would be that at first those, who on the whole are quite substantial practitioners, even reject wanting to talk in this way about the possible form which economic problems could take on. Going on from here, some interest could be stimulated for instance in socialistic circles; here the experience could be that what is wished for is the least understood from that side and that everything should be judged according to whether they fit into old party templates or not. And so time passed by from when these suggestions were thought about. The whole terrible Valuta-misery came about which has to be considered in quite a different way to how it is usually judged today.

With the first appearance of my “Call to the German Nation and the Cultural World” and then “Key Notes of the Social Question”, individual personalities immediately appeared who in their way are quite honest about healing central European economic life, and said: ‘Yes, such proposals’—they called them proposals—‘look quite attractive, but it should first be asked how we can enhance the Valuta.’ That was said during a time when the Valuta-misery according to today's relationships, still existed in pure paradise. Now it shows in such demands that tampering with only external symptoms are wanted. It has little understanding that Valuta relations battered on the surface show unhealthy economic relationships, that with such a cure of a symptom the evil is not addressed, and that it requires entering into much, much deeper social economic conditions today if one wishes to in some or other way arrive at speaking about problems realistically, regarding the indications in my “Key Notes of the Social Question.” Now it has come about that what I repeated in conclusion of lectures which I held in the end of the “Key notes” at that time, had the call: people have to wake up before it is too late—that this “too late!” has come to the fore to a large degree today. We are not at all in the position to resonate in the original sense with the “Key notes” to understand them because in the mean time chaos has broken into the economic life where now quite other additions would be necessary and not what was merely mentioned but what had to be spoken about according to my conviction. One can hardly pass by a characteristic common to our age if one wants to discuss the most damaging aspect in today's economic life.

When I picked up the newspaper yesterday, I came across—and it could today be one of the most important symptoms we find everywhere, which our contemporaries express in single sentences—I came across the article “Postponing the resignation of Lloyd George until after the Genoa Conference”. With this once again our daily situation is announced because the characteristic of today is “wait”. “We want to wait”—this has actually become the ruling principle: wait until something happens but you can't tell what it will actually be. This is what is deeply embedded in the human soul today, on all levels.

Now I want to apparently—only apparently—introduce something quite abstract: this is intended in a complete realistic way because it indicates the forces working among us which have in the course of human development gradually enabled us to arrive at such a promising principle as “We want to wait” and apply it to everything.

When we look back at ancient cultural development we find in these old cultures, that factual thinking, in the sense as it appeared in ancient times—you know this from my lectures I held in the Philharmonic—can't be called purely “scientific”. If one considers what stands in the place of today's scientific thinking then you will know that first of all, out of this thinking the economic life could not have directly emerged. The economic life had to more or less first become independent of human thinking, developed instinctively—not meaning automatically—as exchange in humanity. What wanted to be done in the economic life simply developed out of practical life. People acted instinctively; even expanded trade into this or that area but everything happened more or less instinctively. Now, one can from some point of view object according to today's understanding of human freedom, human worth and so on, to the economic conditions of olden times; all this would be good to be seen from the other side, how the extraordinary symptoms of human evolution, which even today can be instructive, for instance appear in the way employees and employers—if you want to apply a modern expression to olden times—lived in relation to one another during ancient Greece, old Egypt and right over to Asia. Today these things are taken in such a way that they elicit the sharpest criticism; but, each such a criticism is not historical and one must say: the conditions in the corresponding epochs resulted from the feelings of humanity at that time. This is what one needs to focus on.

The other one is a fact connected to that shift in humanity's evolution which I've often pointed out, of around the fifteenth century, through which the soul constitution of civilised humanity became something quite different. I've already said outer history hardly points out that the collective soul constitution of humanity has become something different. If we ask ourselves how this human evolution relates to the economic life, then we get the following answer. The time for instinctive leadership as I've characterised, this time reached into the epoch of the shift. With this shift intellectualism arrived into the soul constitution; the drive to understand the world purely through human mental logic. This drive, which simply became a deep need in the human constitution, proved itself so brilliantly in the field of natural science and in that field which developed as a result: the field of technology where in the most extraordinary way it has not celebrated enough triumphs. However, this intellectualism—it was shown in various arguments, which during this course have already been dealt with—has shown itself as completely incapable of understanding the phenomena of human life and human nature as well as social relationships. With this intellectualism, this intellectual orientation, the soul can be brought back in a grandiose way to outer sense perceptible nature and its laws. You can't intertwine the one with the other in this intellectualism and while this intertwining goes on, get organised and while organising yourself also enjoy life and grasp spiritually permeated social relations. I would like to say the following. The network of intellectual ideas is too broad for what lies in social life. To think scientifically—that, humanity learnt from this intellectualism. Everything has been drawn into it, even theology. Intellectualism rules while we observe and experiment with our entire scientific way of thinking, and finally, what we have introduced into it which can't fit between the lines of intellectualism, we see as not scientific.

During this time intellectualism fell into the transition from a purely instinctive economic life to one fuelled with human thoughts. We may say that in the time when people didn't think intellectually about the world, the economic life was directed instinctively. When however, the time came when more and more world economy and world traffic appeared, this tendency required human beings to penetrate world economy and world traffic with their thoughts. These thoughts only came from intellectualism. As a result, everything which came from economic thoughts—in mercantilism, physiocratism, in the national economic ideas of Adam Smith, as in everything which later appeared right up to Karl Marx—on the one side demanded economic life, which was not merely instinctively mismanaged but it was grasped with thoughts, however on the other side, where thoughts could only come from intellectualism, all economic observations would become thoroughly one-sided, so that nothing could result from this economic observation which could be seen as continuing to work in economic practice. On the one hand you have the economic theorists who created axioms from intellectual sentences—like for instance Ricardo, Adam Smith or John Stuart Mill—and who now develop systems on the basis of these principles on which they built a complete self-contained mentality (Geistesart). On the other hand, the economic practice needed and demanded penetration by the spirit, but found no connection to what had continued to work instinctively and as a result it fell into complete chaos.

So these two streams became more and more common in recent times, on the one hand were the economic theorists—without the influence of economic practice; on the other hand the practitioners with their old practices which had become a continued routine and as a result let the economic life of the civilised world fall into chaos. Obviously one must express such things in a somewhat radical manner because then one will really distinguish what works and what can be understood as a problem.

If one now wants to find, I might call it, a connection, a kind of synthesis between economic thinking—which has gradually been eradicated by practice—and this economic practice—then one finds this connection at least in one of them. Recently a kind of economic realism has developed; a kind of economic-scientific realism which says that one can hardly find general laws for economic life if economic facts are not considered and events between single nations or groups are looked at what has happened only in an external way, to find guidelines for economic trade. From this basis has developed the so-called social-political in economic law-making. This means people gradually believed they have discovered through mere observation of factual economic relationships in connection with the permeating social connection that they could find certain guidelines which could be brought to expression in economic law-making; people now had, by taking detours through the State, tried to actualize some of these which had developed out of observation, but as a result it had to be actually admitted that these foregoing observations of real scientific economic laws could not at all emerge. Yes, we are actually still basically in this situation today. Just when one is in the situation of encountering decisive experiences, I could call it social Ur-phenomena being judged in the right way, then one sees the situation one is in.

You all know that Woodrow Wilson's “fourteen points” arrived at the dreadful chaotic point civilised life had entered. What were these fourteen points actually? They were basically nothing other than abstract principles of an unworldly man, a person who knew little about reality, who appeared in Versailles where he could actually have played an important role. This man who was a stranger to reality wanted to show the world how to get organised according to principles founded on intellectualism. One only had to experience with what inspiration civilised mankind hung on to these fourteen points, however with the exclusion of a large part of the central European population, they unfortunately also fell for these fourteen points after a short period of time.

During 1917, by contrast, I tried to show individual central European personalities who were interested but who were not following it, but were either approached or brought to it, how abstract, how unrealistic this was which wanted to be brought into the social form, how so to speak everything which ruled in the poor educational principles in modern civilisation was a concentration of what this school master Woodrow Wilson had introduced, and how the abstract principles—in a bad sense—were received with enthusiasm. At that time, I tried to show that a healing of the relationships could be entered into if you take a stand in opposition to such abstract attitudes, without excluding thoughts but which promotes realistic thoughts in order to develop from a realistic basis. Then it will not be a utopian invention—I would like to say the Woodrow Wilson principles were the most condensed utopian, utopianism already in its third potency, but one must be clear about finding contemporary humanity in its real conditions in order to discover impulses. Therefore, I gave up having to deal with any utopian theory, refrain from even saying how capital, how labour and suchlike must be formed; I gave at most some examples for how one could think about forming the future according to contemporary relationships. That was however only as illustration to what should happen; because just as I have spoken about the transformation of capital forces in my “Key notes”, just so this transformation can be fulfilled in a modified way. It is not important for me to present an image of the future but to say from which foundations, in a real way, one can now—not with theoretically thoughts—come to an actual solution for the so-called social question. It is not important to say that this or that is the solution to the social question. I have already had too many experiences in trying to find such a solution. Already in the 1880's in pleasant Vienna all kinds of clever people gathered nearly every afternoon after two o'clock. In the course of one hour the social question was solved many times! Those who considered the relationships of the present in an unbiased manner, know very well that solutions which often appear in thick books have much less worth than those negotiated in comfortable Vienna with a stroke or two of the pencil and fantastic words across a white tablecloth. That is not the point and it was the worst mistake brought to me that it should be something like that.

What I wanted to point out was the following. The solution of the social problems can only be affected in a real way out of itself; the result can't be solved through discussion but through events and actions. Conditions first need to be established to contain this activity, conditions I try to refer to in my “Key notes” and in other sources. I'm trying to show we need arrangements in our social organism which makes it possible for a spiritual life to develop out of its own conditions in which the spiritual life itself works; that we need a second member, where only legal-state impulses are at work, and besides that a third member, where only those impulses work which come out of production and consumption of goods, and lastly that it develops out of an associative economic system, culminating in healthy pricing. In this way the old class system will not be recalled. It won't be people branching into an educational class, a defence class and a nutritional class, but the modern human being has moved into individuation and will not be divided into some particular state.

What exists externally as an arrangement simply comes from the forces in history's unfolding, which are separate from the conditions out of which they are negotiated, to do something for the spiritual life, the legal or state life and economic life. Only when conditions are created which for instance the economist can do purely out of economic impulses, which would be modified by contemporary market trends, or should modify the capitalistic relationships, only when such possibilities are created among people will they develop something of a real solution—which is in a continuous becoming—of what can be called the social question.

It is not important for me that the social question is solved because I have to agree that the solution can't at any one moment be given as something self-contained, while the social problem from which it has originated is in a constant forward flow. The social organism is something which becomes young, and older, into which new impulses must flow, of which the following can never be said: it has this or that form. If the social organism is not so, that people sit together in one parliament that mixes all interests together, where those interested in economics make decisions about questions of the spiritual life, legal life and economic questions and so on, but when in a healthy social organism each individual sphere is considered out of its own conditions, then the state life can be placed on a realistic democratic foundation; then what is to be said doesn't come from one person in one such a single parliament, but it will emerge from continued ongoing negotiations among individual branches of the social organism.

In this context my book was also a warning to finally stop the fruitless arguments about the social question and to place it on the foundation where the solution to the social questions can be taken up every day. It was a call to the understanding how to take what was abstract in thought and to really translate this into thoughtful action. Added to this for example the associations can serve the economic life. Such associations are different from those which in recent times have been established as socialization, and can be created every day out of economic foundations. They are concerned with those people who handle goods production, in the circulation and consumption of goods—which every person is—to unite in associations through which healthy pricing can develop. It is a long way from knowledge of the subject and specialised knowledge which have to be achieved by people linked to associations, up to what doesn't come from legislation, also not from results of discussions but results from experience, which will give healthy pricing. Above all people have the desire, the broad outline of what they want at the time and which I am trying to present to you to discuss through these introductory words, because the world is so schooled in abstract thinking that one also takes this suggestion only from the point of view of abstract thinking, which I'm only using as an illustration, and discuss it for hours, while it should be about really understanding how each day the members of the social organism can be tackled in the way as indicated in my “Key notes.”

Today it is not of importance to find theoretical solutions to the social question but to search for conditions under which people can live socially. They will live socially when the social organism works according to its three members, just like a natural organism under the influence of its relative threefoldness also work towards unity.

You see, it first has to be explained what is meant by such things. When these things are spoken about, words are still required; yet words need to be taken up according to their intellectualised meaning which we attach to them today. These are translated immediately into intellectual things which are quite clearly not immersed in intellectualism. Therefore, in my book I have spoken in such a way about capital and about the natural foundations of production simply as ideas being thought out. When we want to deal with things abstractly, we can create definitions for a long time, and that has in fact happened. Someone says with equal right: Capital is crystallized labour, work which is stored up—and someone else says with the same right: Capital is saved labour. You can do this with all economic concepts if you remain within intellectualism. But these are not all things which can be dealt with theoretically only; we need to understand them in a lively form. If practitioners do a lot for the benefit of their practice and routine, cultivated out of the abstractions in these things, they can achieve the following, which I want to explain through a comparison.

I look at Ernst Muller. He is small with completely childish features and childish qualities. Twenty years later I look at Ernst Muller and say that this is not Ernst Muller because he is small and has childish qualities and quite a different physiognomy.—Yes, if at that time I had formed a concept of Ernst Muller and now want to attribute him with what at that time I had met as his real being, then I'll be making a terrible mistake. As little as people want to believe this, yet it is the way people are thinking along economic routes. They form thoughts and ideas about capital and labour and so on, and they believe these ideas must always have the same validity. It is not necessary to wait twenty years; you only need to go from one employer to another, from one land to another to discover the concept which you had created in one place is no longer valid in another because a change has been brought about—like in Ernst Muller. People don't recognise what exists when one doesn't have mobile ideas moving within life.

This is what makes it possible that on an anthroposophical foundation today's needs also find their expression in economic institutions because Anthroposophy's nature involves flexible ideas, which can teach you how you can provide your ideas with forces of growth and inner mobility and that with such ideas—as little as today's practitioners want to believe it—they can dive into other kinds of reality, which are revealed in the social life between one person and another, between one nation to another, through to entirely what has become necessary now in the artificially impaired world economy. One can therefore rightly say it is not an external attempt made on Anthroposophical grounds towards social ideas but to arrive at social impulses.

I still remember a time when many discussions took place about these things. I always had to stress: I'm talking about social impulses!—This upset people terribly. Obviously I should have said: social ideas or social thoughts, because the people only had thoughts in their heads about such things. That I spoke about impulses angered them terribly because they hadn't noticed I used “impulses” on this basis of indicating realities and not abstract ideas. Obviously one had to express oneself in abstract ideas.

Today it must again be grasped that a new understanding must be found for what is called the social question. We live in different relationships today than in the year 1919. Time is moving fast, especially in economic areas. It is necessary that even those very ideas which were considered at that time as mobile, continue to be contained in the flow and that one's observations of viewpoints stay within the spiritual present.

Whoever wants to look at the reality of relationships within the economic life knows they have essentially changed since the writing of my “Key notes” and one can no longer just use deductions as before. At least in the “Key notes” one would find an attempt to search for this method of social thinking in a realistic way, perhaps exactly because this attempt has grown from the soil where realities are always looked for, where one doesn't want to fall into fanaticism or false mysticism—because this attempt is grown out of accuracy on the wrestling ground of the anthroposophical world view.

Today I should like to continue the theme which we have studied in the last two lectures. Firstly, it is a question of realising those impulses in evolution which have led to the spiritual life of our present age, so that we can see on the one side the Anthroposophical view of the world as a necessity, but on the other hand can fully understand that this Anthroposophical view of the world must find its enemies. Naturally I shall not now enter into the special characteristics of this or that opponent, perhaps that is comprehensible at the present time. Indeed, I want to deal with our theme as generally as possible because it is not essential for the moment to fix our minds on our opponents. Rather it is essential for us at present to understand that if the Anthroposophical Society is to exist as a Society, it must become fully aware of its position in the spiritual life of the day. Also, the Society itself must contribute something towards its own consolidation. Therefore, I am not going to say anything particularly new today. Only a few weeks ago I emphasised the fact that consolidation of the Anthroposophical Society is an absolute necessity.

So first of all, it has to become clear to us how Anthroposophy is placed in modern civilisation, a civilisation which, as regards Europe and America, really only goes back to the time which we have so often, discussed, the time of the 4th Post-Christian century. Now this 4th Post-Christian century lies right in the middle of the 4th Post-Atlantean epoch of time, and I have often pointed out that the spreading of Christianity,—the whole mood by which Christianity was grasped in the early years of the first three or four centuries of Christian evolution—was essentially different to the mood later on in time.

Today we think that following history backwards, we can study the previous epoch, that we can go back to the Middle Ages, then to the events we call the Wanderings of the Peoples. Further back we come to the Roman Empire, passing through that we come to Greece, and then we imagine that we can feel the same atmosphere in this Greece as we can feel in the time of the Roman Emperors or in later European history.

But that is not the case. In reality there lies a deep cleft between that which can still be placed with a certain vividness before the consciousness of modern man, namely, his journey back to Rome; but a deep cleft exists between this and that which took place as life in ancient Greece. Let us bring an outline of this before our souls. If we study the Greece of Pericles or Plato, or of Phidias, or even the Greece of Sophocles and Aeschylus, we find that their basic mood of soul goes back to a Mystery civilisation, to an ancient spirituality. And, above all things, this Greece had still much in itself of what I characterised yesterday as a living experience of absolutely real processes in man's inner being, and which I described as the salt, sulphur and mercury processes. We must be quite clear that Greek thought and Greek feeling came close to the feeling of man, whereas that later age,—from the 4th Post-Christian century onwards—already began to get ready for that which came about in the way described in my last two lectures, in which I showed how Man himself was lost for human nature, for human consciousness.

I also told you that these three personalities, Bruno, Jacob Boehme and, in a certain connection also Lord Bacon, struggled for a knowledge of man's nature, but that it was impossible for their striving really to approach the Being of Man. If, however, we go further back, from Rome to Greece, then this alienation of man's nature—any talk or an alienation of man's nature—ceased to have any sense, because the ancient Greek knew himself as a human being standing in the cosmos. The Greek had no idea of that concept of nature which came about later, that concept of nature which finally culminated in the seizing of the mechanism of nature. One might say of the ancient Greek:—That he saw the clouds, the rain falling, the clouds ascending and all that comes out of the world as fluid; then when with especial vividness looking into himself with his still sharply concrete vision, he saw the circulation of his blood, he did not feel a very great distinction between the rising and falling of water in Nature and the movement of his own blood. The Greek could still grasp something of `the world in man and man in the world.'

These things cannot be taken too deeply, because they lead into a mood of soul which only exists in fragments of the external history. One should not forget how, in the 4th Post-Christian century, evolution took the form of destroying everything which remained of the ancient clairvoyant civilisation. Certainly, modern humanity knows something of this, because of all the information which has been dug up, but one should not forget how that which later gave the impulse to Western civilisation really arose on the relics of ancient Hellenism, of that widespread Hellenism which not only existed in the South of Europe, but even passed over into Asia.

Again, one should not forget that between the middle of the 4th and middle of the 5th centuries after Christ, countless temples were burnt, having an infinitely significant pictorial content, a precious content with reference to everything developed by Hellenism. Our modern humanity, proceeding only according to external documents, does not realise this anymore. But one should recall the words of an author of that time, when he wrote in one of his letters:—“This age is passing to its downfall. All those holy places to be found in the open country, and for the sake of which the labourers worked in every field, are being destroyed. Where can the countrymen now find joy for their work?” One can hardly conceive today how much was destroyed between the middle of the 4th and the middle of the 5th century after Christ,

Now the destruction of those external monuments was part of the effort to exterminate spiritual life in Greece, and this, as you know, was given its most bitter blow by the closing of the Schools of Philosophy in Athens in the year 529. Yes, one can look back into ancient Rome, but one cannot look back into ancient Greece through external history. And it is indeed true that very many things in Western civilisation have come down to us, through the Benedictine Orders, but we must not forget that even the holy Benedict himself founded the Mother Church of the Benedictine Order on the site of an old heathen Temple which had been destroyed. All that had to disappear first, and it did disappear.

Now, with normal human feelings, it is difficult to understand why such an impulse for destruction passed over the whole of the South of Europe, Asia Minor and North Africa at that time. It only becomes comprehensible when one is convinced that the consciousness of mankind in that age was entirely different. I have often mentioned a sentence which is quite incorrect:—“Nature,—or one may say, the world, makes no leaps,” but in history such leaps do occur and the soul mood of civilised humanity in the 2^nd and 3^rd centuries after Christ was quite different to the soul mood of today.

But now I should like to draw your attention to something which may make it clearer to you as to how this transformation really occurred. You see, today we must say when we speak of the interchange between waking and sleeping, that the physical and etheric bodies remain in the bed, while the ego and astral bodies go outside. The soul and spirit go out of the physical and etheric bodies.

Now at a certain time in ancient India this was not true; just the opposite would have been correct. Then one would have said that in sleep the soul and spirit of man go deeper into his physical body, more into his physical body.

Now this fact is almost unnoticed, and I must point out to you how, for instance, when the Theosophical Society was founded, the people who founded it had heard some of the spiritual truths from India, and what they heard they made their own property. Now they heard this fact, of the ego and astral body going out. Of course, because the Indians said it then, (i.e. when the Theosophical Society was founded) naturally that was in the 19th century, and in India what is real can be often observed. But when these same people of the Theosophical Society tell us that this is primeval Indian wisdom, it is pure nonsense, because the ancient Indian would have said just the opposite: That the soul and spirit go deeper into the physical body when man sleeps. Which was the case in ancient times.

Now in a certain sense a consciousness of this was existing in Greece, a consciousness of the fact that in sleep the soul and spirit seize the physical body more than in waking, and that this lies in the evolution of mankind.

Now today, because we have to describe things out of our direct spiritual perception, we must describe the following as correct:—The ancient Wise Men, and even the people of Greece, had an instinctive dreamy clairvoyance. And we can describe it so from our modern standpoint, but for those people it was not dreamy. They felt in their condition of clairvoyance as if they were just waking up, they felt themselves especially awake. And so, their consciousness existed with a greater intensity when they perceived the world in those magnificent pictures which I described to you in my last lectures. But they knew that when they pressed down into the inner part of their being and at the same time saw that which occurs in man, that that which they beheld were world processes, because man is in the world. And they knew then that in their time man dived still deeper into his physical body, and in deep sleep their consciousness became dim twilight, even unconsciousness. And these people ascribed to the Influence of their physical body that which embraces the soul and leads it over into sin.

And it was just from this point of view that the ancient consciousness of sin arose. If we exclude the Jewish form of sin, the consciousness of sin leads back into heathendom, and it proceeded from the consciousness of the diving down into the physical body which does not leave the soul free enough to live in the spiritual world. But considering all that I am describing to you, it must be said:—that ancient humanity had a consciousness of the fact that he was a spiritual being, and as a spiritual being, lived in a physical body, but it never occurred to him. to call that MAN which he saw as physical body.

Why, the very word MAN itself leads back to some such meaning as “The Thinker.” Not to something which is to be seen with a more or less red or white face, with two arms and two legs. That was not a man! Man was a being who dwelt as a spiritual soul in that dwelling house of the physical body. And a consciousness of this spiritual psychic man, existing in the wonderful, plastic, artistic forms in Greece, passed over into the sphere of Art, and into the general Greek civilisation.

And even if the external temples, even if the cult became infinitely decadent in many connections, one must still say that in all the divine images and temples which were destroyed, much existed that points to this ancient soul mood. And I might add that the ancient spiritual psychic consciousness of humanity was shown with tremendous power in the form of everything destroyed in those centuries. Now if with that consciousness—not of the following incarnation when the consciousness was changed—but if a Mystery Initiate of that early Greek age came to us with the same consciousness which he then had, he would say:—”You modern human beings, you are all asleep,” Indeed he would say:—“You modern men are sleeping through everything. We were awake, we woke up in our bodies. We woke up as spiritual beings in our bodies; we knew that we were human beings, because in our bodies we could distinguish ourselves from the body. What you call waking, for us is sleeping, because whereas you wake up and direct your attention to the external world and explain something about the external world, all the time you are asleep with regard to your own human nature. You are asleep, we were awake.” That is what he would say, and from a certain point of view he should be quite right. We wake up from our moment of waking until we go to sleep, as we say, when we are in our physical bodies as spiritual human beings. But then we know nothing of ourselves, we are asleep with regard to ourselves. When, however, we are in the world outside us, we are asleep—and that is the time from sleeping to waking up. Thus, it is that we must learn to wake with the same intensity as that with which the ancient humanity were awake in their bodies. That is, modern man must learn to be awake outside his body when he is really in the external world.

From this you can see that we are dealing with a transition. As humanity, we have all gone to sleep compared with the ancient waking condition, but now we are in just that period when we have to be wakened up into a new waking state. What is the aim of Anthroposophy in this connection? Anthroposophy wants to be, Anthroposophy is nothing else than something which points out to you that man must learn to wake up outside of himself. And so, Anthroposophy comes along and shakes up modern humanity, the modern humanity which that ancient Initiate would have called a sleeping humanity, Anthroposophy shakes it up, hut they do not want to wake.

Anthroposophy often feels like Gallus beside the sleeper Stickl. (A reference to the Christmas Play just performed). Anthroposophy points out that the birds in the forest are singing. “Let them sing” says the present generation, “the birds have tiny heads and have soon had their ration of sleep.” Then Gallus goes on: “But the heavens are creaking,” Stickl (who is half asleep), “Let them go on creaking, they are old enough.” Of course, it is not said in the same words, but Anthroposophy says:—“The spiritual world wants to break through! Get up while the light of the spirit is shining.” The answer is:—“Let it go on shining, it is old enough.”

My dear friends, really it is so. Anthroposophy wants to awaken the sleepers, because that is just what is demanded of modern civilisation—an awakening—but humanity wants to sleep, and to go on sleeping!

I might say of Jacob Boehme—because he went right into the racial wisdom, and of Giordano Bruno, because he stands in a spiritual community which at that time had preserved so much from ancient times—that in them there lived a memory of the ancient waking condition.

In Lord Bacon there really lived the impulse for the justification of this new sleeping. That is, as I might put it, a still deeper explanation than we were able to give in the two preceding lectures and is the characteristic of our age.

Now with reference to the grasping of his own human nature, man of the present day cannot be awake as was humanity in ancient times, because man today does not press deep down into his physical body as ancient humanity did when asleep; because today when man goes to sleep he goes out of himself, but he must learn to come out of his physical body in a waking condition, for only thereby will he be in a position to realise himself again in his human nature.

But this impulse to continue asleep is still growing. “Stickl, the carters are cracking their whips in the street.” “Well, let them go on cracking, they have not far to go.”

It is du Bois Raymond, not Gallus, who says;—“Man has limits of knowledge, he cannot enter into the phenomena, the secrets of nature, he must limit himself.” But Anthroposophy says;—“We must strive yet further and further; the call for spirituality is already resounding.” “Well” says du Bois Raymond, “let it go on sounding, it won't be so very long before Natural Science will have come to the end of earthly days and therewith to the end of the discovery of all the secrets of nature.”

My dear friends, in many a relationship one thus finds a justification for the sleep of humanity today, because all talk of the limit of knowledge is a justification for sleep instead of a justification for a penetration into one's knowledge of human nature. And our present humanity can find ways enough of going to sleep. Even of this we have often spoken in our lectures. Today people only want to listen to things which can be put before them in images, in pictures. That is why the cinema is liked so much., but it is not popular when the listeners are asked to work with their heads. And so it is today that people want to go on dreaming of world secrets, but do not want to co-operate actively with those world secrets by means of energetic thinking. But that is just the path of awakening—one begins to wake up in one's thinking, because it is thought which first of all seeks to evolve into activity. That is the reason why in my “Philosophie der Freiheit” decades ago I pointed to this kind of thinking with such energy.

And now I should like to remind you of something else. I should like you to call to mind many a dream which you have had, and I should like to ask you whether you have never had a dream in which you have done something of which you would have been ashamed if you had done it in the daytime,—if you ever did by day what you did in the dream. Well, perhaps there are many sitting here who have never had such a dream, but at any rate they could let other people tell them of such an experience, because many people have dreamt of things they would never repeat in their waking lives, because they would be ashamed. My dear friends, apply that to our great sleep today—which we call the great sleep of present civilisation—where people really are letting themselves dream of all kinds of cosmic secrets, Anthroposophy comes along and says:—“Stickl, get up!” Anthroposophy wants to wake the people, they ought to wake! I can give you this assurance,—Many of the things that have been done in this civilisation would never have been done if humanity had been awake. That really is the case. You will say:—Who is going to believe that? Well, the dreamer pursuing his little business in his dreams, does not bother himself as to how that is really going to look when he is awake, but unconsciously the feeling exists somewhere in his soul that one really dare not do such things if one were awake. I do not mean this in a pedantic or a commonplace way, I just mean that many of the things which one considers today as being quite in order would look differently if one were really awake in one's soul.

And an unholy anxiety prevails in the soul because of this, especially in science. (If one were awake one could no longer comfortably dissect first a liver and next a brain.) One would be terribly ashamed of many methods of investigation if one were awake Anthroposophically. How can one ask people using such methods to wake up without any further reason? One notices many extraordinary apologies which exist for sleeping.

And now I want you to think of something else_. What an immense pleasure a dreamer has when he dreams something which actually happens, say a couple of days later. You must have noticed yourselves the tremendous joy of a superstitious dreamer when his dream actually happens; and it often happens, and they all have this tremendous joy. In our present civilisation dreamers calculate by Newton's laws of gravitation, by formulae which have been worked out by mathematicians, and they have calculated that Uranus has a definite path in the heavens. But that path does not agree with the formulae and therefore they go on dreaming; certain disturbances must exist owing to a planet as yet undiscovered. When this did happen, and when Dr. Gall really discovered Neptune, the vision was fulfilled. Now this is just what is so often brought forward today as a justification of the methods of Natural Science.

The existence of Neptune was calculated in a dream and later the dream really happened. It is just like a person dreaming of something which later on takes place. Then there is the case of Mendaleff, who even calculated elements out of his periodic system. But this dream of a curse is not quite so difficult, because when such a periodical system is discovered and one place in it is empty, then it is easy enough to fill up that place and to mention a few properties. Here we have the fulfilment of a vision by the same methods as when a sleeper dreams of something which actually takes place a couple of days later, and which, he then calls a verification of the fact. And today people say that in this way the affair can be proved.

One has to understand how radically our modern civilisation has become the civilisation of sleepers and how necessary an awakening is for humanity. At the same time this tendency to sleep in our present age has to be seen very clearly by those who have received an urge from Spiritual Science towards waking. Such a moment must occur as sometimes in a dream when the dreamer knows “I am dreaming,” and in the same way humanity ought to have a special feeling for a strong expression which was once used by that energetic philosopher J.G. Fichte. Fichte said “The world which is spread out before mankind is a dream and all that man thinks about the world is a dream about a dream,” Of course one must not fall into anything like the philosophy of Schopenhauer, because, after all you are not doing very much for a human being when you characterise everything in front of him as a dream. It is not one's task merely to say:—“one dreams,” that is not quite enough. But that is all that many people of the present want to prove:—Man dreams and cannot do anything else but dream. Then in one's dream one comes to the limit of one's dream. And beyond the dream is what Kant calls the “Thing in itself,” and one cannot approach the thing in its reality. Edouard von Hartmann, that acute thinker, often spoke of this kind of dreaming with relation to reality. And Edouard von Hartmann makes it clear that everything which man has in his consciousness is a dream by the side of the Thing in Itself, of which man knows nothing, but which lies at the basis of his dream. So that Hartmann, who drives everything to extremes, speaks of the `real' table, in contrast to the table which we have before us in our sensations. The table we have in our consciousness is a dream, and behind that stands the table in its reality. Hartmann distinguishes between the table as appearance and the table in itself; between the chair in appearance and the chair in itself. But he is not fully conscious that finally the chair of which he is speaking had something to do with the chair in itself, because if you take the chair as appearance one cannot very well sit down on it. Even a dreamer has to have a bed to lie on. And so all this talk of “the Thing in Itself” can only be a preparation for something else. For what? For waking up, my dear friends.

And so it is not a question of seeing the world as a dream, but, as soon as we have the idea:—That is a dream!—we must do something we must wake up; and this waking up already begins with an energetic grasping of one's own thinking. It begins with active thinking, and from that point one comes to other things.

Now you see, what I have characterised—this impulse for awakening—is a necessary impulse for the present time. Certainly that which as Anthroposophy can be presented to the world; but however, when an Anthroposophical Society becomes a Society, then that Society must represent a reality. Then every single person who lives in the Anthroposophical Society should feel it as a reality, and he must be deeply permeated by the will to awake, and not, as is so often the case, feel insulted if one says to him:—“Stickl, stand up.” This is very necessary. And it is something which I should like to repeat in a few words.

The misfortune (i.e. the burning of the Bau) which has met us should above all be an awakening call to the Anthroposophical Society to do something that is a reality. This real Being—which I have characterised at the end of the Christmas Congress—this real Being (Wesen) which one can feel since that time as “the living stream from man to man within the Anthroposophical Society” that must exist, a living stream from one to the other. A certain lack of love has often appeared in the newest phases of our Society instead of a mutual trust, and if this lack of love gets the upper hand then the Anthroposophical Society must crumble. You see, our building brought many wonderfully beautiful qualities in the different Anthroposophists to the surface, but side by side with them there had to be an invigoration of the Society itself. Many of these beautiful qualities were named during our course of lectures which were given during the building of the Bau, and on the night of the burning of the Bau, but those beautiful qualities require guidance, and above all things this is necessary:—That anyone who has anything to do within the Society should not carry into it those things, which today are so customary outside it. And above all things, that each one who does anything for the Society should do it with real personal interest and participation. It is this personal interest, this personal share that one misses when people do one thing or another for our Society.

My dear friends, no service for the Society—and that means anything done in the Society by one person for another—nothing can be trivial. The tiniest service rendered becomes valuable through its standing in the service of something great. That is so often forgotten, and the Society must really see this with the greatest and highest satisfaction, at a time when such a staggering blow demands the cultivation of these most beautiful qualities in the members. But at the same time, it should not be forgotten that in the industrious and patient accomplishment of everyday things, much which is necessary is overlooked. These are things which must not be undervalued when one sees Anthroposophy finding its enemies in the world around it. The fact that an enemy (Gegenschaft} is there, must not be overlooked, rather must it be grasped out of the very objective course of evolution itself. And I have often been astonished, and have said so publicly, at the lack of interest when opposition, taking its roots in objective untruth, develops around us. We must really place ourselves as positive defenders of Anthroposophy when it comes to a question of objective untruth. And at the same time, we must be able to raise ourselves to an understanding of the fact that Anthroposophy can only exist in an atmosphere of truth. We must develop a feeling of what it really means when so much untruth and so much objective calumny is brought against Anthroposophy. And for this we also need a real inner life. So you see, my dear friends we have a splendid opportunity for awakening ourselves. And if we can only reach the awakening in this sphere, then the impulse for awakening will spread itself out over other things.

But if we see everyone asleep while the flames of untruth are making themselves felt everywhere, then we must not be surprised when even Stickl goes on sleeping?

So that which I should like to characterise today, both in great things and also in tiny things is:—“Think, feel and meditate about this awakening.” So many today long for esotericism while these calumniations are hailing on our windows. Well, my dear friends, esotericism is there. Take hold of it. But, above all things, the will to awake is esoteric in our Society, and this will to awake must take its place within the Anthroposophical Society. Then the will to awake within the Society will be a point from which the awakening of the whole present civilisation will radiate.

[ 1 ] The preceding essay shows how strongly and concretely the anthroposophist (spiritual scientist) can wish to come to terms with the anthropologist (natural scientist). One might think that a book with purposes like those of Max Dessoir would lend itself to just such a discussion. From the anthroposophical viewpoint, Dessoir's book is written in the anthropological mode. It bases itself upon the findings of sense observation; and wants to employ the kind of thinking and research usual to the natural-scientific approach. His book belongs to what we mean by anthropological science.

[ 2 ] In that part of his book entitled “Anthroposophy,” Max Dessoir wants to deliver a critique of the anthroposophical views presented in my books.¹ He tries to reproduce in his own way some of the material from these books and then adds his critical comments. This could show us, therefore, what each of the two realms of thought has to say about one or another aspect of human striving for knowledge.

[ 3 ] Let me now present and discuss what Max Dessoir writes.

Dessoir wishes to point to my support of the view that the human soul, through inner development, can attain the ability to use its spiritual organs, and through this can bring itself into the same kind of connection with the spiritual world that it has to the sense world through its physical sense organs. You can see from my first essay how I picture what must occur in the soul in order for it to arrive at perception of the spiritual life. Max Dessoir presents in his way what I have said about this in my books. He writes:

Through this kind of inner work, the soul attains what all philosophy has sought. To be sure, we must be careful not to confuse the body-free consciousness with dream-like clairvoyance or hypnotic processes. When our soul powers are enhanced, the "I" can experience itself above consciousness, in a kind of densification and individualization of the spirit, as it were; yes, the "I," in its perception of colors and sounds, can even exclude the mediation of the body from this experience.

Dessoir then inserts the following footnote: "Refuting these assertions individually is not worth the while." So, Dessoir adds to my views about spiritual perception that T assert that in perceiving colors and sounds one can exclude the mediation of the body. Please look back at what I said in the preceding essay about the experiences of the soul through its spiritual organs, and how the soul arrives at expression of these experiences in color and sound pictures. You will see that, from the point of view of anthroposophy, I could not assert anything more absurd than that the soul, “in its perception of colors and sounds, can exclude the mediation of the body.” If I ever did make such a claim, it would then be correct to say that “refuting these assertions individually is not worth the while.” We are confronted here by a really strange fact. Max Dessoir asserts that I say something that, in accordance with my own presuppositions, I would have to label as absurd. It is of course impossible to come to terms with an objection raised by an opponent in this way. One can only recognize and show that a distorted picture was presented as though it were the actual view of the person one is opposing. [ 4 ] Now Dessoir might object to this by saying that he could not find in my earlier works any presentation as clear as that in the preceding essay on the conclusions to be drawn from my views on the point at issue here. I admit right away that on many points of anthroposophy my later presentations contain a more exact exposition of what I stated earlier, and that readers of my earlier works can perhaps arrive at an erroneous view here and there of what I myself consider to be the necessary conclusions to be drawn from my views on a certain point. I believe that any insightful person would find this obvious. For, anthroposophy represents a broad field of work, and books can only deal with individual parts of it. But in this case can Max Dessoir have recourse to my not having clarified in my earlier books the point at issue here? Dessoir's book was published in 1917. In chapter 6 of the fifth edition of my book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment, published in 1914, in the passage dealing with the pictorial manifestation of spiritual experiences in colors, I made the following statement:

In the descriptions that follow, one must be alert to the fact that "seeing" a color, for example, means a spiritual seeing (observing). In clairvoyant knowledge when one says, "I see red," one means, "in the soul-spiritual [realm], I am having an experience that is like the physical experience of the sense impression of the color red." Only because it is completely natural in clairvoyant knowledge in such a case to say "I see red," is this expression used. Someone who is unaware of this fact can easily mistake a color vision for a truly clairvoyant experience.

I added this footnote not because I believed that a reader with true understanding could believe that I assert the possibility of seeing colors without eyes, but because I could imagine that a superficial reader here or there, through misunderstanding, could falsely attribute such an assertion to me if I did not expressly state the contrary. Three years later, after I had expressly warded off any such imputation, Max Dessoir comes along and declares that I am asserting something that I actually consider to be absurd.

[ 5 ] But there is more. In the sixth edition of my book Theosophy, also published in 1914, the following statements are made on this subject:

One might picture that what is described here as “color” confronts the soul in the same way a physical color confronts the eye. But any such “soul color” would be nothing but a hallucination. Spiritual science has absolutely nothing to do with "hallucinatory" impressions and they are certainly not what we are referring to in these descriptions. One arrives at a correct picture when one keeps the following in mind. Relative to a physical color, the soul experiences not only the sense impression, but also has a soul experience in connection with it. When the soul perceives a yellow color through the eye, it has a different soul experience than when it perceives a blue color. Let us call this experience “living in yellow” or “living in blue.” Now, a soul that has entered the path of knowledge has a similar “experience in yellow” when confronted by the active soul experiences of other entities; and an “experience in blue” when confronted by devotional soul moods. The essential point is not that the “seer,” while picturing someone else's soul, sees "blue" the way he sees this “blue” in the physical world, but that he has an experience that justifies him in calling this picture “blue,” just as a physical person calls a curtain, for example, “blue.” Another essential point is that the “seer” is conscious of the fact that, with this experience, he is standing within a body-free experience, and thus is given the possibility of speaking about the value and significance of a soul life in a world whose perception is not communicated by the human body.²

[ 6 ] I will forgo quoting other passages from my books that present my true view on this particular subject. And as to an assessment of Max Dessoir's “version” of my statements, this I leave up to every reader who can still form an objective judgment about the facts even when anthroposophy is the topic.

[ 7 ] The level of understanding that Dessoir brings to the descriptions I attempted of the consciousness attained through spiritual organs does not bode well for his further presentations on the relation of "Imaginative" pictures to the spiritual reality to which they correspond. He has heard that anthroposophy does not explain the evolution of mankind on earth only by the means employed by anthropology but rather, with its own means, sees this evolution to be dependent upon spiritual powers and beings. In my book Occult Science, an Outline, I attempted to make this evolutionary process visible by means of "Imaginative" pictures (and through other kinds of knowledge as well that go beyond Imaginative vision, but are not so relevant to our present topic). In that book I indicated how to anthroposophical observation a picture arises of states undergone by mankind in evolutionary forms that are already close to those of the present day; and I also pointed to even earlier evolutionary forms in which the human being appeared that are quite unlike those of today and that are described by me, not in the pictures that anthropology borrows from sense perception, but in Imaginative pictures.

[ 8 ] Dessoir then informs his readers in the following way about what I have described as to the evolution of mankind. He says of my depiction of the evolutionary forms that are still close to those of the present-day human being that I designate a specific period of time in the past as the old Indian culture of mankind and then see other cultural periods succeeding it. As Dessoir puts it:

Old India is not the India we know of today, for, all geographic, astronomical, and historical references are to be taken as symbolic. Following the Indian culture, the ancient Persian culture arose, led by Zarathustra who, however, lived much earlier than the historical personality of that name. Other periods followed. We are now in the sixth period.

[ 9 ] What I say about a much earlier age of human evolution, in which mankind still appeared in forms quite unlike those of today, is reported by Dessoir like this:

This human being evolved in a distant past that Steiner calls the Lemurian age of the earth—why in the world?—and in a land that lay then between Australia and India (which, therefore, is an actual place and not a symbol).

I want here to totally disregard the fact that I could also see the entire “version” of my description as a mere distortion that could never give the reader a picture of what I mean. I only want to address one point of this “version.” Dessoir inspires in his reader the belief that I speak as though what is seen in the spirit is to be taken as symbolic, that old India, therefore, where I locate an ancient culture, is a “symbolic” land. Later, he blames me for locating a much older period of human evolution in Lemuria—between Australia and India—and in doing so contradict myself horribly, since one could notice from my presentation, after all, that I consider Lemuria to be an actual place and not a symbol.

[ 10 ] One could only agree fully with the view that a reader of Dessoir's book who has read nothing of my work and only takes up Dessoir's version of it would have to conclude that my presentation is complete rubbish—thoughtless, confused, and self-contradictory.

What really stands in my book about the region of the earth I refer to as old India? Read the pertinent passages and you will find that I express with full clarity that old India is not a symbol; it is the region of the earth that basically, if not quite exactly, corresponds with what we all call India. So, Dessoir reports to his reader, as though it were my view, something that it would never even enter my mind to imagine. And because he believes that, in describing old Lemuria, I speak, indeed, in a way that accords with my actual beliefs about old India—but not with the nonsense that he ascribes to me—he accuses me of contradiction.

[ 11 ] One has to ask oneself how the unbelievable can occur that Dessoir has me assert that old India is to be understood in a symbolic way. Out of the whole context of his presentation, I come to the following explanation. Dessoir has read something about the processes in our soul life that I call the path to spiritual vision, whose first level is Imaginative cognition. I describe there how the soul, through calm devotion to certain thoughts, evolves from its own depths the ability to form Imaginative pictures. I say that to this end the soul does best to dwell upon symbolic pictures. No one, through my description, should fall into the error of thinking that these symbolic pictures are anything other than a means of arriving at Imaginative cognition. Now, Dessoir believes that, because one arrives at Imaginative picturing by means of symbols, this picturing also consists only in symbolic pictures; indeed, he ascribes to me the view that someone who uses his spiritual organs does not look through the Imaginative pictures at realities, but only at symbols.

[ 12 ] With respect to my presentation, Dessoir's assertion that in cases like that of old India I am pointing at symbols, not realities, can only be compared with the following. Someone finds, from the condition of a certain stretch of ground, that in the region where he now is, it must have rained a short while ago. He communicates this to someone else. Naturally, he can only communicate his mental picture of the fact that it has rained. Therefore, a third person asserts that the first person is saying that the condition of the ground did not result from real rain, but only from a mental picture of rain. I am asserting neither that Imaginative pictures consist only of mere symbols, nor that they themselves are realities; I am saying that Imaginative pictures relate to a reality the way the mental pictures of ordinary consciousness do. And to impute to me that I am pointing only at symbolic realities is like asserting that the natural scientist does not see the reality to lie within the existence of that to which his mental picture relates, but rather within this picture itself.

[ 13 ] When one presents the views one wants to combat the way Dessoir does, the battle is quite easy. And Max Dessoir does make it really easy for himself to sit upon the judge's seat in a lofty manner; but he achieves this only by first perverting my presentations into distorted pictures—often into complete foolishness, in fact—and then scolding his own creation. He states: “It is self-contradictory to say that from ‘envisioned’ and merely ‘symbolic’ circumstances, the actual facts of real existence are supposed to have evolved.” But you will not find any such self-contradictory way of picturing things in any of my work. Dessoir only imputes such an element to my work. And when he goes so far as to assert: “For the point is not whether one regards the spiritual as brain activity or not, but whether the spiritual is to be regarded in the form of a childish way of picturing things or as a realm with its own lawfulness,” then the response must be: I agree with him totally that everything he serves up to his readers as my view bears the mark of a childish way of picturing things; however, what he labels as childish has nothing to do with my real views, but refers totally to his own mental pictures, which he has created by distorting mine.

[ 14 ] How is it even possible that a scholar could proceed in this way? In order to contribute toward an answer to this question I must take the reader for a little while into a realm that will perhaps not seem entertaining but that I must enter here in order to show how Max Dessoir reads the books that he appoints himself to judge. I must bring a little philology to bear upon Max Dessoir's presentations.

[ 15 ] As already mentioned, Dessoir describes my picture of the evolution of human cultural periods within certain time frames as follows: "The Old Persian culture followed the Old Indian. Other periods of time succeeded them. We are now in the sixth period." Now it might seem quite petty to criticize someone for having me say that we are now in the sixth period whereas I actually show, with all possible clarity, that we are in the fifth period. But in this case the matter is not such an insignificant one. For, anyone who has penetrated into the whole spirit of my presentation of this subject would have to admit that someone to whom it would even occur to believe I was speaking of the sixth period as our present one must have misunderstood my whole presentation in the grossest manner. My designation of the present period as the fifth is intimately connected with my whole discussion of this topic.

How did Dessoir arrive at his gross misunderstanding? One can form a picture of this if one compares my presentation of the matter with his “version” of it and, in doing so, tests it by the philological method.

When, in my description of the cultural epoch, I arrive at the fourth period—which I see to begin in the eighth century BC and end in about the fourteenth or fifteenth century—I say the following:

In the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries AD, a cultural era spread over Europe in which we are still living today. It was meant to gradually replace the fourth epoch, the Greco-Roman. It is the fifth Post- Atlantean cultural epoch.

Accordingly, my view is that, through processes occurring in the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries, effects were prepared that needed several centuries more to ripen, in order then, in the fourteenth century, to make the transition into the fifth cultural epoch in which we are still living now. In his reading of the above passage, Max Dessoir seems to have brought it into the domain of his attention in such a way that he confused the sequence of the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries with the sequence of the cultural epochs. When someone reads superficially and in addition has no understanding of what he is reading, such things can occur.

[ 16 ] I would not advance this hypothesis about Max Dessoir's superficiality by itself if it were not supported by the following discoveries that one can make in his “version” of my presentations. In order to discuss the pertinent factors here, I must introduce mental pictures relative to anthroposophical knowledge that are hardly comprehensible if not viewed in connection with the presentations in my book Occult Science, an Outline that refer to them. I myself would never tear them out of all context and introduce them to a reader or listener the way Dessoir does. But since he bases his criticism on his “version” of views that in my presentations are in a broad context, I must address this “version” here. I must show what kind of “version” this is. To begin with I must note that the depiction of such matters presents such difficulties because the content of spiritual observation can only be elucidated to some extent when one strives for the most exact possible forms of expression. Therefore, when presenting such matters, I always try to spare myself no pains or time in struggling to attain the greatest possible exactitude in my form of verbal expression. Anyone who penetrates even a little way into the spirit of anthroposophy will understand what I have just said.

In the light of this, let me now show how Max Dessoir proceeds in giving his "version" of my presentations.³

[ 17 ] With respect to the path that the soul takes in order to acquire the use of its soul organs, he presents my views in the following way:

The schooling toward a higher state of consciousness begins—at least for a human being of today— with his immersing himself with all his strength into a mental picture as though into a purely soul state of affairs. A symbolic mental picture works best, such as the visualization of a black cross (symbol of annihilated lower drives and passions), whose crossing point is circumscribed by seven red roses (symbol of purified drives and passions).

Leaving aside the fact that this statement, tom out of context, must make a strange impression upon a reader, whereas this would hardly be the case if read at its proper place in my book, I must say that, if I read what Max Dessoir states in the above sentence as the opinion of some person, I would consider the whole matter as nonsense, or at least as nonsensically expressed. For, I could find no connection between the meanings of the two symbols, between “annihilated lower drives and passions” and “purified drives and passions.” I would, in fact, have to picture that a person is supposed to annihilate his lower drives and passions, and then, at the place where the annihilation occurred, purified drives and passions arise as though shooting forth out of nothingness. But why “purified,” since there is nothing there to “purify”; something new has arisen at the place of the annihilation? In no way could my thinking deal with such a statement. But read what I wrote in my book. I say:

Picture a black cross to yourself. Let this be a symbol for the annihilated lower element of our drives and passions; and there, where the two arms cross, picture to yourself seven red, radiant roses in a circle.

You can see that I do not say that the cross is a symbol for “annihilated lower drives," but for the “annihilated lower elements of our drives and passions.” So, the lower drives and passions are not “annihilated,” but rather “transformed,” in such a way that their lower element is cast off and they themselves manifest as purified. This is how Max Dessoir deals with something that he wants to critique. Then he can portray it as a childish way of picturing things. It is definitely pedantic to correct someone's formulations in this pedagogical manner. But I am not the instigator of this pedagogical act. It is Dessoir's distortions, which can only be caught by the pedagogical approach, that make it necessary. For these distortions amount to misrepresentations— which, as far as I am concerned, arose unconsciously or through superficiality—of my own actual formulations. And only with respect to these misrepresentations is Dessoir's critique possible.

[ 18 ] Here is another example of Dessoir's “version” of what he reads. I speak—again, in a context that makes the matter appear completely different than when tom out of context in the Dessoirian manner—of certain earlier stages of the earth's evolution before it became a planet inhabitable by man in his present form of development. In Imaginative mental pictures I describe the first stage of this evolution. In order to elucidate these periods I have to speak of beings of a spiritual nature who were connected with the primal planetary form of the earth at that time. After Dessoir has me assert that through these spiritual beings “processes of nutrition and excretion develop” upon the planetary primal form of the earth, he continues: “A clairvoyant person still experiences these states today through a supersensible perception that is like smell, for these states are actually still present today.” What you will read in my book is that the relevant spiritual beings enter into interaction with "forces of taste that billow up and down" within the inner being of the primal planetary form. “As a result, its etheric or life body unfolds an activity of such a sort that one could call it a kind of metabolism.” Then I say that these beings bring life into the inner entity of this primal planetary form. “Processes of nutrition and excretion occur as a result.” It is obvious that sharpest rejection of such a description by present-day science is possible. But it should be just as obvious that a critic cannot go about his work the way Max Dessoir does. While awakening the belief that he is reproducing my description, he says that processes of nutrition and excretion develop through the beings referred to. The way I describe the matter, between my indication that beings arise and the indication that nutritional and excretory processes arise, there is an intermediary statement to the effect that an interaction develops and that through it an activity arises in the etheric or life body of these beings that now in its turn leads to the nutritional and excretory processes of the primal planetary form. What Dessoir accomplishes with my description can be compared with the following. Someone says: “A man enters a room in which a child and its father are present. The child treats the visitor in such a way that the father must punish him.” Another person now misrepresents this statement by asserting: “The punishment of the child arises from the visit of the stranger.” Now, from this assertion, could anyone know what the first person actually wanted to say? Nevertheless, Dessoir has me say in addition that the clairvoyant learns about certain conditions, arising in the primal planetary form, “through a perception that is like smelling.” But my formulation is that, in the relevant states, will forces manifest that communicate themselves “to clairvoyant perception through effects that can be compared with ‘odor.’” So, in my work, there is no trace of an assertion that the spiritual perception under discussion is “like smelling”; rather, the fact emerges quite clearly that this perception is not like smelling, but that what is perceived can be compared to odors. How such a comparison is to be understood in an anthroposophical sense is amply demonstrated at another place in this book. Nevertheless, through this misrepresentation of my formulation, Dessoir gives himself an opening for the following remark, which he probably considers clever: “I am surprised that the ‘odor of sanctity’ is not connected here with the ‘stench of the devil.’”

[ 19 ] I could now present (and rectify) more examples like these of Dessoir's “versions” of my presentations, such as the way he has me explain the “going to sleep” of a leg “through separation of the etheric body from the physical body,” whereas I do not explain in that way the objective fact of a “leg going to sleep,” but rather state that the subjective “strange sensation that one feels” results “from the separation of the etheric body.” Only if one takes my formulations the way they are given, can one form an opinion as to the significance of my statements and recognize how they absolutely do not exclude the objective facts discovered by natural science, anymore than they need to be excluded by the adherent of anthropological views. Dessoir, however, wants to make his readers believe that my views should be excluded from scientific consideration. But I need not tire the reader any longer with such corrections. I only wanted to show the degree of superficiality with which Max Dessoir reads what he sets himself up to judge.

[ 20 ] But I still want to show where that soul attitude can lead that sits in judgment with such superficiality. In my book The Spiritual Guidance of Man and Mankind, I try to show how the power to make mental pictures—which does not enter the consciousness of the child right away at birth but only at an older age—is already active before it emerges consciously, and how in its unconscious activity (in the upbuilding of the nervous system, for example, and in other ways), this power works in such a wisdom-filled way, that its later conscious working seems much less wise by comparison. For reasons too extensive to present here, I arrive at the view that our conscious life of mental picturing does indeed develop further the wisdom active in early childhood in certain formations of the human organism, but that this conscious life of mental pictures relates to that unconscious working of wisdom the way, for example, the structure of a tool stemming from conscious human wisdom relates to the marvelous structure of the human brain. The reader of the above-mentioned book can easily see from it that I do not express any such statement as the result of a sudden "inspiration," in an anthroposophical sense, even though I of course cannot present in every book the details of this path. In this respect I must ask that my books be considered as parts of one whole that mutually support and carry one another. But my concern now is not with presenting the validity of my statement about unconscious or conscious wisdom, but with something else that Dessoir does by retailoring the relevant passage of my book for his readers in the following way: “Our connection with the higher worlds— we read—is closest in our first three years of life, to which no memory extends. Especially a person who himself teaches wisdom—as Mr. Rudolf Steiner confesses—will say to himself: ‘As a child I worked upon myself through powers that worked in from the spiritual worlds, and what I can now give as my best must also work in from higher worlds; I must not regard it as belonging to my ordinary consciousness.’”

One might well ask: what picture imprints itself in a reader of Dessoir's book whose eye falls upon these sentences? Hardly anything other than that, in this book, I gave myself occasion to speak of the connection of the spiritual world to the knowing human being, and present myself as an example. It is obviously not difficult to expose someone to ridicule whom one can reproach with such bad taste. But what is the actual state of affairs? My book states:

Imagine that a person has found adherents, a few people who acknowledge him. Such a person, through genuine self-knowledge, can easily become aware that precisely the fact that he has found adherents gives him the feeling that what he has to say does not originate from him. It is much more the case that spiritual powers from higher worlds wish to communicate with his adherents and find in the teacher the suitable instrument through which to reveal themselves.

The thought will occur to such a person: As a child, I worked upon myself through powers that worked in from the spiritual world, and what I can now give as my best must also work in from higher worlds; I must not regard it as belonging to my ordinary consciousness. Yes, such a person may say that something “demonic,” something like a “daimon”— but a “daimon” in the sense of a good spiritual power—is working from a spiritual world through me upon my adherents.

Socrates experienced something like this... Many efforts have been made to explain this “daimon” of Socrates. But one can explain it only if one wishes to give oneself over to the thought that Socrates was able to feel something like what is described in the above discussion.

You can see that the issue for me is to grasp the Socratic "daimon" from the anthroposophical point of view. There are many views about this Socratic “daimon.” One can find grounds for opposing my view just as well as these other views. But what does Max Dessoir do? Where I speak of Socrates, he twists the matter to seem that I am speaking about myself by stating, “as Mr. Rudolf Steiner confesses” and even putting my name in italics. What are we dealing with here? With nothing less, in fact, than an objective untruth. I leave it up to any fair thinker to form a judgment about a critic who employs such means.

[ 21 ] But the matter does not end there. For, after using my view of the Socratic “daimon” in the way just described, Dessoir writes further:

The fact, therefore, that the individual person is the bearer of supra-individual truths coarsens here to the picture that a spirit world, conceived as thing-like, is connected with the individual person by pipes or wires, so to speak: Hegel's objective spirit transforms itself into a group of demons and all the shadow shapes of an impure religious thinking arise again. The whole direction characterizes itself as a materialistic coarsening of soul processes and as a personifying leveling of spiritual values.

In the face of such “critique,” all possibility of serious discussion with the critic really ends. Just reflect what we have before us here. I speak of the “daimon” of Socrates, about which Socrates himself has spoken, according to historical references. Max Dessoir imputes to me the view that when one speaks of the demonic in this way, then "Hegel's objective spirit transforms itself into a group of demons ..." So Dessoir uses his strange deviation from the thoughts as they were truly meant, to instill in his reader the view that someone is justified in assuming about me that I see in Fegels objective spirit “a group of demons.”

Just place beside this Dessoirian assertion all that I present in my book The Riddles of Philosophy to keep at a distance from Hegel's view of the “objective spirit” everything that could possibly stamp this spirit with the character of the demonic. Anyone who, with respect to what I have presented about Hegel, would say that the proponent of anthroposophy has mental pictures by which Hegel's “objective spirit” transforms itself into a group of demons, any such person would be asserting an objective untruth. For, he cannot even hide behind the excuse that: Yes, Steiner does in fact present it differently, but I can only imagine that the Steinerian anthroposophical presuppositions lead to the conclusions I have just drawn. To say this, in fact, would only show that he is not in a position to understand my presentations on Hegel's “objective spirit.” After making his jump from Socrates to Hegel, Max Dessoir judges on: "Out of an inability to understand in accordance with the facts there spring forth these fantasies that are not inhibited by any scientific scruples...”

Whoever reads my books and then looks at Dessoir's representation of my views might perhaps feel, when confronted by such a statement, that I have some right to give it the following turn: From Max Dessoir, out of his inability to understand, in accordance with the facts, what I say in my books, there spring forth the most superficial, objectively untrue fantasies about the mental pictures of anthroposophy.

[ 22 ] Max Dessoir shares with his readers the fact that besides my Occult Science, an Outline, he has also “used a long series of other writings.” From the way his manner of “expressing” himself has been characterized here, one can hardly ascertain what he means by “using a long series” of my writings. I looked into the chapter on anthroposophy in his book to see which of my books—besides Occult Science, an Outline—show traces of “use.” I can only discover that this “long series” consists of three small books: The Spiritual Guidance of Man and Mankind, consisting of 64 pages; Blood Is a Very Special Fluid, a reprint of a lecture that takes up all of 48 small pages; and the 46-page booklet Reincarnation and Karma. In addition he mentions The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity (1894) in a footnote. However much it might go against my grain to respond to this footnote with a few purely personal remarks, I must still do so, because even such incidental matters display Max Dessoir's own particular level of scientific exactitude. He states: “In Steiner's first work The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity (Berlin 1894), only germs of his actual teachings are to be found...” Max Dessoir calls The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity my “first” work (Erstling). The truth is that my literary activity began with my introductions to Goethe's natural-scientific writings, the list volume of which appeared in 1883, i.e., eleven years before the date set by Dessoir for my “first” work. Preceding this “first” work are the extensive introductions to three volumes of Goethe's natural-scientific works, my Science of Knowing (1886), my book Goethe As Father of a New Aesthetics (1889), and Truth and Science (1892), which lays the foundation for my whole world view. I would not have mentioned this further case of Dessoir's strange apprehension of what he writes about if the fact were not that all the basic views contained in The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity were already expressed in my earlier books and only represented them in a way that synthesized them and came to terms with the philosophical-epistemological views of the end of the nineteenth century. In The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity I wished to express, in a systematic, organic form, what I had written in the previous (almost entire) decade of extensive publications of epistemological groundwork and its ethical-philosophical implications for a view aiming at a grasp of the spiritual world.

[ 23 ] After writing in this way about my “first” work, Max Dessoir continues to speak about it:

It is stated there that man has taken over into himself something from nature, and therefore through knowledge of his own being, can solve the riddle of nature; that, in thinking, a creative activity precedes knowing, whereas we are not involved in the coming about of nature and so are dependent on knowing it subsequently. Intuition counts here merely as the form in which a thought content at first appears.

Look and see whether there is anything in The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity that could be synthesized into such monstrously trivial statements. In my book, after an extensive discussion of other philosophical directions, I tried to show that, for man, full reality is not present to sense observation, that the world picture given by the senses, therefore, is an incomplete reality. I made every effort to demonstrate that the human organization causes this incompleteness. Nature does not hide from man what is missing from the sense-perceptible picture as its essential being; rather man is so constituted that through this constitution, at the level of merely observational knowing, he hides from himself the spiritual side of his world picture. In active thinking then, the opening up of this spiritual side begins. In active thinking, according to my world view, something real (spiritual) is directly present that cannot yet be given to mere observation. That is precisely what characterizes my epistemological foundation for a spiritual science: that in intuition—insofar as it comes to expression in thinking—I do not see “merely the forms in which a thought content at first appears.” So Max Dessoir wishes to present his readers with the opposite of what is actually expressed in The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity.

[ 24 ] In order to see this, you need only look at the following thoughts from that book:

In thinking we are given the element that joins our particular individuality into one whole with the cosmos. Insofar as we sense and feel (and also perceive) we are separate entities; insofar as we think, we are the all-one-being that permeates everything ... The perception, therefore, is nothing finished, closed off; it is one side of total reality. The other side is the concept. The act of knowledge is the synthesis of perception and concept... In contrast to the content of perception, which is given to us from outside, thought content appears in our inner being. Let us call the form in which thought content at first arises "intuition." It is for thinking what observation is for perceptions. Intuition and observation are the sources of our knowledge.

So, I say here: I wish to use “intuition” as an expression for the form in which the spiritual reality anchored in the thought content at first appears in the human soul, before the soul has recognized that in this conceptual inner experience there is contained the side of reality that is not yet given in the perception. Therefore, I say that intuition “is for thinking what observation is for perceptions.” So even when Max Dessoir seemingly presents someone's thoughts verbatim, he is able to twist what the other person means into its opposite. Dessoir has me say “Intuition counts here merely as the form in which a thought content at first appears.” He leaves out the following sentence, which makes nonsense of his use of the word “merely.” For me, intuition counts not “merely” as the “form in which a thought content at first appears,” but as the revelation of a spiritual-real element, just as the perception is a revelation of a material-real element. If I say “My watch appears at first as the content of my vest pocket; it measures time for me,” someone else cannot assert that I said: “The watch is ‘merely’ the content of my vest pocket.”

[ 25 ] In the context of what I have published, The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity lays the epistemological foundation for the anthroposophically oriented spiritual science advocated by me. I explained this in the last chapter of my book The Riddles of Philosophy. I showed there how, in my view, a path leads straight from Truth and Science and The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity to anthroposophy. But Max Dessoir, through his non-use of my two-volume book, The Riddles of Philosophy, creates for himself the possibility of telling his readers all kinds of easily misunderstood stories about the “long series” of my three small books The Spiritual Guidance of Man and Mankind, Blood Is a Very Special Fluid, and Reincarnation and Karma. In the first little book, I try to recognize how the powers of concrete spiritual beings are at work in the course of the spiritual development of mankind. I made it clear to my readers (at least I thought I did) that I am very conscious of how easily the content of precisely this book could be misunderstood. In the preface I state expressly that someone who picks up this book without having the prerequisite background would have to "regard it as the curious product of pure fantasy.” To be sure, in this preface I name only the content of Theosophy and Occult Science, An Outline as prerequisites. That was in 1911. In 1914 my book The Riddles of Philosophy was published as the second edition of my two-volume book Nineteenth-Century Views of Life and the World (1900 and 1901). In The Riddles of Philosophy I also described how the atomic theory arose and how researchers like Galileo (in my view) fit into the course of mankind's development; in this description, I did not refer to anything other than what is “clearly evident to everyone” relative to the origins of the atomic theory or Galileo's place in the history of science.⁴

My presentation, to be sure, is made in my own way; but in this presentation I refer to nothing other than is usual in any presentation of an outline of the history of philosophy. In my book The Spiritual Guidance of Man and Mankind the attempt I made was to show how that which I myself strove in another book to show as “evident to everyone” is the result of the powers of concrete spiritual beings at work in the course of human development. Taken out of its context in The Spiritual Guidance of Man and Mankind, the relevant thought (in my opinion) can only be rendered in the following way: In the spiritual history of mankind, besides the forces that ordinary historical methods have found to be “clearly evident to everyone,” there are other powers (supersensible beings) working as well that are accessible only to spiritual-scientific research. And the powers of these beings work in accordance with specific, knowable laws. In the way in which man's cognitive powers work in that developmental period of mankind which I call the Egypto-Chaldean (from the fourth to the first pre-Christian millennium), one can recognize the powers of those beings who arise again in the age in which the atomic theory originates, but in a different form of activity. In the arising and further development of atomism I see those powers of spiritual beings at work that were already at work in a different way in the mode of thinking during the Egypto-Chaldean age.

Even someone who only goes into my books in a quite cursory way can find that through my anthroposophic viewpoint I do not assert the existence of spiritual powers at work in the course of man's development in order to obscure purely historical observations with all kinds of anthropomorphisms or analogies or in order to shift them into the twilight dimness of some false mysticism. Max Dessoir finds it possible, with respect to our topic here, to present his readers with these words:

No! Here even the most patient reporter can no longer hold his peace. It is evident to everyone how the atomic theory arose and developed consequentially since antiquity, and now someone comes along and calls for help from the mysterious great unknown!

Whoever reads The Riddles of Philosophy can see that what is evident to everyone is also presented by me in the way it is evident to everyone: and that—for those who are able to understand that what is evident to everyone contains something that is not evident to everyone—I am pointing to this something, which is accessible to spiritual vision. And I am not pointing to a “mysterious unknown,” but to something in fact that is known through the anthroposophical viewpoint.⁵

[ 26 ] I have shown that it is inadmissible for Max Dessoir to twist my reference to Socrates to mean that I was speaking of myself. But it is clear from the context that Max Dessoir is referring to none other than himself in his comment on page 34 of his book. In order to understand this comment, one must note that Dessoir distinguishes between two regions in the moment of consciousness: between a central field and a peripheral zone. He expounds on how the contents of consciousness move continuously from one of these regions to the other. It is only that these contents take on a particular appearance when they enter the peripheral zone. They lose sharpness, show fewer characteristics than usual, and become indistinct. The peripheral zone leads a marginal existence. But there are two ways that they attain independent activity. The first way does not pertain here. Dessoir expresses himself as follows about the second way:

The other kind of independence occurs in such a way that the peripheral zone does indeed remain as a co-consciousness beside the main consciousness, but lifts itself to a greater distinctness and coherency of its content and enters thereby into a completely new relation to the simultaneous fully conscious soul activity. To use another easily grasped picture: a complex glides from the center of a circle to the periphery, but does not sink into obscurity there but rather partly preserves its distinctness and coherency.

In connection with this, Dessoir then states:

An example: When I am lecturing on very familiar trains of thoughts, it sometimes happens to me that my concepts and words end up in that region and my attention occupies itself with other things. In spite of that, I speak on, without the participation of my consciousness, as it were. When this happens the following sometimes occurs: I am surprised by a sudden silence in the room and have to be reminded that it is due to the fact that I myself have stopped talking! Habitual mental connections and judgments, therefore, can also be made subconsciously, sometimes even those that move along invisibly; the movements of the organs of speech connected with them also run their course without difficulty in their usual groove.

To be sure, if I draw the full implications of this passage, I would rather believe that they do not refer to Dessoir's own experience but rather to something that he noticed in other absent-minded lecturers, and that he is only using the words “me” and “I” stylistically as though he were putting himself in someone else's place. The context in which these sentences occur makes this explanation difficult, to be sure, and possible only if one assumes that a stylistic device got in under Dessoir's guard, which does happen to many writers in our hurried times.

But however the case may be, the essential point is that a state of soul in which the “subconscious” plays a role like that just described in Dessoir's lecturer is the very first thing that must be overcome in the soul if a person wants to penetrate to an understanding of anthroposophical knowledge. The exact opposite—the thorough permeating of concepts with consciousness—is necessary if these concepts are to have a relation to the genuine spiritual world. In the sphere of anthroposophy a speaker who continues to speak when his “attention” is occupied “with other things” is an impossibility. For, someone who wants to grasp anthroposophy must have accustomed himself to not separating the direction of his attention from the direction of a train of thought that he is evoking. He will not go on speaking of things from which he has withdrawn his attention because he will no longer be thinking about these things.

[ 27 ] But if I only look at the way Max Dessoir reports to his readers on my little book Blood is a Very Special Fluid, the thought does occur to me that he not only speaks on when his attention turns to “other things,” but in such a state actually writes on. In his report you will find the following. My statement is quoted that our “blood takes up the pictures of the outer world that our brain has inwardized,” and then Dessoir adds the comment:

This kind of monstrous ignoring of all facts combines with the assertion—just as improvable as it is incomprehensible—that prehistoric man, in the “pictures that his blood received,” also remembered the experiences of his ancestors.

But if one reads in context the sentences that Dessoir quotes and put beside them the comment on the same page—'T must speak in analogies if I want to present the complicated processes that pertain here"—then one will perhaps understand in fact what it means when someone reports the way Dessoir does.

Picture what it would be like if I were writing about Max Dessoir's Beyond the Soul and told my readers: And now someone comes along and asserts that the blood "running in our veins" is “the blood of many millennia.” This is just as improvable as it is incomprehensible and has the same value as another assertion: “But beyond any doubt, behind the surface of our consciousness there is a dark, richly-filled space, whose changes also change the curvature of the surface.” These two sentences are in Dessoir's book, the second on page 1 and the first, about the “blood of millennia,” on page 12. Both sentences, of course, are fully justified because Max Dessoir is expressing himself “in analogies.” When I have to do the same and expressly state so, Dessoir forges for himself a critical weapon out of wooden iron to refute me.

Dessoir states that my reference to spiritual being, “on the whole, characterizes itself as a materialistic coarsening of soul processes and as an anthropomorphic leveling of spiritual values.” With respect to the contents of my books, this assertion makes about as much sense as the following would make: “A thinker who is capable of saying that ‘to use an admittedly very imperfect analogy, one can call the present moment of consciousness a circle, whose circumference is black, whose center is white, and whose intermediary areas are gradations of gray,’ such a thinker's view characterizes itself ‘on the whole ... as a materialistic coarsening of soul processes.’ And the thinker who is doing this grotesque thing—comparing the present moment of consciousness with a circle and speaking of white, gray, and black—is Max Dessoir.” Now it would of course never occur to me to say such things, because I know that Max Dessoir in this case is not coarsening soul processes in a materialistic manner. But what he does to me is like what I have just hypothetically characterized.

[ 28 ] You can see the total impossibility of discussing the meaning of the law of destiny from an anthroposophical viewpoint with a critic who bases himself on presuppositions like those of a Dessoir; I would have to cite whole chapters from my books here to show Dessoir's hair-raising distortions of my descriptions of human destiny when he says:

Here, supposedly, a connection between cause and effect in the spiritual world is revealed (so causality does not pertain only to the phenomenal world as grasped by the intellect). A person who perfects himself through a series of lifetimes is subject to the law of karma, according to which every deed brings its inevitable effects along with it; thus, for example, one's present poverty is one's own fault from an earlier life.

In 1887, in my introduction to the second volume of Goethe's natural-scientific work, I wrote:

The explaining of a process in nature is a going back to its determining factors: a seeking out of the producer in addition to the product that is given. When I perceive an effect and then seek its cause, these two perceptions do not by any means satisfy my need for explanation. I must go back to the laws by which this cause brings forth this effect. It is different with human action. Here the lawfulness that determines a phenomenon itself enters into action; that which makes a product itself appears upon the scene of activity. We have to do with a manifesting existence at which we can remain, for which we do not need to ask about deeper-lying determining factors.⁶

It is perfectly clear what I mean: One cannot ask about the determining factors of a human action in the same way as with a process of nature. So there must be a difference. Therefore, my views about destiny connections, which are closely related to those about the sources of human will, cannot refer to the relation between cause and effect spoken of in natural science. For this reason, in my book Theosophy, I took every pain to make clear that I am far from thinking that the experiences of one life work over into subsequent ones the way cause and effect work in nature. Max Dessoir distorts my picture of destiny in the crudest way by weaving into his report of it the statement: “So causality does not pertain only to the phenomenal world as grasped by the intellect.”

He creates for himself the possibility of adding this comment only by lifting out of my little book Reincarnation and Karma a statement that sums up a lengthier discussion. But only this discussion gives this statement its rightful meaning. The isolated form in which Dessoir presents this statement opens it to cheap criticism. The statement reads:

Everything that I have the ability for and actually do in my present life does not stand there isolated and alone as some kind of miracle, but it is connected with my soul's earlier forms of existence as effect, and with its later forms as cause.

Anyone who goes so far as to read this statement in the context of the discussion that it sums up will find that I understand the working over of one form of life into the other in such a way that one cannot put it in the category of causality in the usual, purely natural-scientific sense. One can only use the abbreviated term “causality” in a broader sense if one explains exactly what one means by it or if one can safely assume that the reader already knows how the word is being used. What precedes my summing-up sen57 fence, however, will not allow this sentence to be understood in any other way than:

Everything that I have the ability for and actually do in my present life is connected, as effect, with my soul's earlier forms of existence to the extent that the causes (lying in my present life) of my abilities and actions relate to the other forms of my life in a kind of connection that is not causality in the ordinary sense; and everything that I have the ability for and actually do is connected with my soul's later forms of existence to the extent that these abilities and deeds are the cause of effects in my present life that now in their turn relate to the content of later forms of my life in a kind of connection that again is not causality in the ordinary sense.

Anyone who investigates my writings will see that I have never advocated a concept of karma that is incompatible with the picture of man's free being. Dessoir could have noticed this fact even if he had not “used” more of my writings than what stands in my Occult Science, An Outline:

Anyone who believes that human freedom is not compatible with predetermination of the future configuration of things should reflect that man's free action in the future depends just as little upon how the predetermined things will be, as freedom depends upon the fact that/he plans in one year to live in the house whose blueprints he is drawing up now.

For even if these statements do not relate directly to the circumstances of human earthly lives, still, someone could not write them who believes that the destinies of our earthly lives relate to each other in a way that corresponds to the law of causality in the natural-scientific sense.

[ 29 ] Nowhere in Dessoir's book can one see that he made any effort to investigate the way I build the epistemological and general philosophical foundation—in accordance also with natural-scientific views—of the anthroposophy advocated by me. Instead, he makes assertions that do not have even distant reference points in my writings. For example, on page 296f. of his book, he writes:

We hear that medieval medicine—still totally under this spell—divided up man according to the zodiac and saw in the hand with its fingers subdivisions of the heaven's proportions. Or we read in Rudolf Steiner that before fertilization the plant is in the same situation that the whole earth was before its separation from the sun. These are examples of the basic principle of seeing in small things a copy of great cosmic processes.⁷

But even if Max Dessoir's statements were just as correct as they are actually false they would still serve the purpose of lumping my anthroposophical viewpoint together with all kinds of dilettantish goings-on that manifest today as mysticism, theosophy, and the like. In reality, this assertion of Dessoir's—all by itself—proves fully that this critic approaches my anthroposophy without any understanding either for its philosophical foundation or its methods— or even, in fact, for the form of expression of its results. Basically, Dessoir's critique is no different than many other “responses” to which the anthroposophy advocated by me is prey. Coming to terms with them is unfruitful because they do not critique what they claim to be judging, but rather a caricature arbitrarily drawn by them that is then quite easy to attack. It seems quite impossible to me that anyone who sees what I value in anthroposophy could put it, as Dessoir does, together with a literary, unintended burlesque like the Faust books of J. A. Louvier, with the repulsive racial mysticism of Guido List, with Christian Science, or even with everything that Dessoir calls "NeoBuddhism."

I leave it up to those who really want to learn to know my books to judge whether Max Dessoir is justified in saying of them:

It betrays an undemanding thinking when someone requires merely that the reader acknowledge what he is reading, as not contrary to reason (for, in a broader sense, much is possible that remains improbable and fruitless); or when things are nowhere investigated, questioned, doubted, or weighed but only dictated from on high in the form, “occult science says such and such.”

Or what about a statement like: “Unsuspecting readers might be taken in by the examples sprinkled about or by the purported explanations of certain experiences ...” It can at best make me think that "unsuspecting readers" of Dessoir's book might be taken in by the quotations from my books that Dessoir sprinkles about and interprets nonsensically or by the nice trivializing of my thoughts.

If, in spite of the fruitlessness to which a discussion with this critic is doomed from the beginning, I nevertheless undertake one here, it is because I had to show once again, with an example, the kind of judgment encountered by what I call anthroposophy; and because there are altogether too many “unsuspecting readers" who form judgments about such a spiritual striving from books like Dessoir's without acquainting themselves with what is being judged, and without even an inkling of the true nature of what is being caricatured for them.

[ 30 ] I will also not judge, but leave it up to the readers of my books to judge, what significance it has when someone like Dessoir, who is far from understanding my goals and who reads the books he is judging the way he does, asserts "from on high" that I “care about certain connections with science,” but possess “no inner relation to the spirit of science.”

[ 31 ] It would almost have been a miracle for Max Dessoir's whole approach for him not to have added to everything else the statement: “Indeed the bulk of his disciples renounce fully any work of their own in thinking.” How often do those people have to hear this (whom one likes to call my “disciples”)! Certainly there are “disciples” of dubious character in every spiritual endeavor. But the point is whether they and not others perhaps are characteristic of the endeavor. What does Max Dessoir know about my “disciples”? What does he know about the number of them who are not only far from renouncing any work of their own in thinking but who—after recognizing through their work in thinking the scientific inadequacy of world views of the stripe of Dessoir's—do not disdain to draw impulses from endeavors by which, as well as I can, I am seeking a methodical path by which to penetrate a little way into the spiritual world. Perhaps a time is also coming when one will judge more correctly those present-day people who can accomplish enough work in thinking not to belong to Max Dessoir's “unsuspecting readers.”^{8 9}

• 1. Pages 254-263 of his book, Vom Jenseits der Seele, die Geheiniwissenschafien in kritischer Betrachtung; Beyond the Soul, A Critical View of the Arcane Sciences, by Max Dessoir, Ferdinand Enke Press, Stuttgart, 1917.
• 2. Please see my book Theosophy, an Introduction into Knowledge of the Supersensible World and Human Destiny. In my book Occult Science, an Outline, there is a similar presentation about seeing colors. And now we are faced with the unbelievable fact that Max Dessoir cites this book as one of the writings that he supposedly used. He asserts, therefore, that I say something the exact opposite of which stands in the book he is citing!
• 3. One could perhaps point to something here that is not taken into consideration in those circles that often want to judge anthroposophical endeavors in terms of their philosophical and scientific validity. I do not want to leave out this point, because the opinion could easily arise in some people that what I am bringing against Dessoir is a much too pedantic insistence upon my actual words. In anthroposophy we are dealing with descriptions of the spiritual. In doing so, one must use the words and even the word combinations of ordinary language. But it is absolutely the case that one cannot always find adequate terminology for that toward which the soul directs its attention when it observes something spiritual. The relationships that hold sway in the spiritual realm and the particular nature of what one can call the beings and occurrences there are much more complicated, subtle, and manifold than what comes to expression in our ordinary use of language. One attains the goal only if one avails oneself of the linguistic potential of sentence structure and word transformation, and if one strives to bring to expression through a second sentence—in connection with the first—something that one cannot adequately express in one sentence. To understand anthroposophy it is absolutely necessary to enter into such matters. The case can arise, for example, that a spiritual state of affairs is seen in a completely skewed way if the form of expression is not regarded as essential to it. Dessoir has not even come close to recognizing the need to take such things into consideration. He seems to assume everywhere that what is incomprehensible to him is based upon childish thinking and the primitive method of the other person.
• 4. I also spoke of Galileo in the introductions and annotations to Goethe's natural-scientific works (Goethean Science).
• 5. Please forgive me for borrowing from mathematics an analogy for the Dessoirian kind of critique. Suppose that, in the context of logarithms someone says: two numbers are multiplied when you add their logarithms and seek the antilogarithm of their sum as their product. Then someone comes along and says: “No! Everyone knows how numbers are multiplied and here is a person talking about addition!” Max Dessoir's critique is of this sort in the above case.
• 6. Please see page 151 of Goethean Science. Ed.
• 7. Max Dessoir writes this in reference to statements at the end of Occult Science, An Outline. He has not even come close to understanding what I said there. Otherwise the thought could never have occurred to him that the matter could have anything at all to do with his dilettantish method of seeking "correspondences" between widely separated facts. Any unprejudiced person must see that what I say about the separation of the sun and earth on the one hand and fertilization of the plant on the other can be discovered in a completely independent way, without setting out to discover “correspondences.” One could just as well say that the physicist is seeking “correspondences” when he investigates the polar-opposite facts of the anode and cathode. But Max Dessoir is far from understanding that the method employed by me has nothing to do with what he is attacking, but rather is totally in the mode of a natural-scientific thinking applied to the realm of spirit.
• 8. Only the fact that Dessoir is in no position to really form an adequate picture of anthroposophical striving can explain why he cannot enter with understanding for these strivings, even into areas very close to where his own train of thought lands him. A case in point is the area he points to in two sentences from his book: “There is nothing beyond the soul in the sense of an invisible reality, because the spiritual state of affairs is raised above the existence of things as well as of persons. What is objectively beyond the soul may be regarded as a supra-consciousness, but never as something existing spatially outside the soul.” Dessoir does not see that with such statements he does not provide a refutation, but rather a precise proof of the necessity for anthroposophy. He does not see that everywhere in my books the attempt is made to treat the relevant questions as questions of consciousness. Please take note of how this attempt is carried through precisely in my Occult Science, on Outline, for example. But Dessoir just cannot see that through this the whole cognitive process, with respect to the spiritual world, is made into an inner function of consciousness and that, within consciousness itself, other forms of consciousness must be sought in an experiential way that are not concerned in fact with “something existing spatially outside the soul,” but are concerned with the soul's presence within an existent something that is non-spatial in exactly the same sense as the experiences of ordinary consciousness themselves are already non-spatial. To be sure, someone who wants to understand this must be able to do justice in an anthroposophical sense to a statement like that of Friedrich Theodor Vischer in the first part of his book Old and New (Altes und Neues ): “The soul, to be sure, as the uppermost unity of all processes, cannot be localized in the body, even though it is nowhere else than in the body...” This statement belongs to those that lead to the borderland of our ordinary knowing, in the sense of chapter 1 of this book and in the sense of Addendum 1: The Philosophical Validation of Anthroposophy.
• 9. Please see Dessoir's response to this essay.

Considering on this occasion the lectures which I am having to give just now in Zürich,¹ I am freshly reminded that one can hardly come into touch with the spiritual life of that city in any broad sense at present without giving some attention to what is now called analytical psychology, or psychoanalysis. And various considerations connected with this realization have decided me to introduce what I have to say today with a short enumeration of certain points in analytical psychology, in psychoanalysis. We shall link it then with further remarks.

We have often noted how important it is for the researcher in the field of anthroposophical spiritual science, to connect his considerations with what is offered by the moving forces of our own age. It may be said that all sorts of people who feel drawn to psychoanalysis today are earnestly searching for the spiritual foundations of existence, for the inner realities of the soul of man. And it may be called a curious characteristic of our own time that so many of our contemporaries are becoming aware of quite definite, and most peculiar forces in the human soul. The psychoanalysts belong to those who, simply through the impulses of the age, are forced to hit upon certain phenomena of soul life.

It is especially important also not to remain entirely oblivious of this movement, because the phenomena of which it takes cognizance are really present, and because in our own time they intrude themselves for various reasons upon the attention of human beings. Today they must become aware of such phenomena.

On the other hand it is a fact that the people who concern themselves with these things today lack the means of knowledge required for the discussion and, above all, for the understanding of them. So that we may say: psychoanalysis is a phenomenon of our time, which compels men to take account of certain soul processes, and yet causes them to undertake their consideration by inadequate methods of knowledge. This is particularly important because this investigation, by inadequate methods of knowledge, of a matter that quite obviously exists and challenges our present human cognition leads to a variety of serious errors, inimical to social life, to the further development of knowledge, and to the influence of this development of knowledge upon social life.

It may be said that even less than half-truths are, under certain circumstances, more harmful than complete errors. And what the psychoanalysts bring to light today can be regarded only as an assortment of quarter-truths.

Let us consider a few excerpts from the research magazine of the psychoanalysts. What is called psychoanalysis today had its origin in a medical case observed by a Vienna interne, a Dr. Breuer, in the eighteen-eighties. Dr. Breuer, with whom I was acquainted, was a man of extraordinarily delicate spirituality besides what he was as a physician. He was interested to a high degree in all sorts of aesthetic, and general human problems. With his intimate manner of handling disease, it was natural that one case, which came under his observation in the eighties, was particularly interesting to him.

He had to treat a woman who seemed to be suffering from a severe form of hysteria. Her hysterical symptoms consisted of an occasional paralysis of one arm, dreamy conditions of various kinds, reduction of consciousness, a deep degree of sleepiness, and besides all this, forgetfulness of the usual language of her every day life. She had always been able to speak German; it was her native language, but under the influence of her hysteria could no longer do so; she could speak and understand only English.

Breuer noticed that when this woman was in her dreamy condition she could be persuaded, by a more intimate medical treatment, to speak of a certain scene, a very trying past experience. Now I will make clear to you from the description of the case given by the Breuer school, how the woman in her half-conscious condition, sometimes artificially induced, gave the impression that her hysteria was connected with a severe illness of her father, through which he had passed a long time before. Breuer could easily hypnotize a patient, and when he had placed her under hypnosis and encouraged her to speak of it, she told of an experience she had had during her father's illness. She had helped with the nursing, and always came back to this definite experience. I will quote from the report: [The following quotations are translations of passages from C. G. Jung's Die Psychologie der unbewussten Prozesse. Ein Ueberblick über die moderne Theorie und Methode der analytischen Psychologie, Zürich, 1917.]

“On one occasion she was watching at night in great anxiety and tension, for the sick man had a high fever, and a surgeon was expected from Vienna to perform an operation. Her mother had left her for a time, and Anna (the patient) sat by the sickbed, her right arm across the back of the chair. She fell into a kind of waking dream, and saw, as if issuing from the wall, a black snake approaching, to bite her father. ...”

Men of the present day are always stricken by materialism, so we find in the report at this point the following suggestion, which is of no value whatever:

(“It is very probable that in the meadow behind the house there were a few snakes which had frightened the girl previously, and which now furnished material for the hallucination.”)

That is only an interpolated remark, to which you may attach importance, or not—it does not matter. The point is that the snake seemed to her to come out of the wall to bite her father.

“She wanted to fight off the creature, but was as if paralyzed; the right arm hanging over the back of the chair had gone to sleep and became anaesthetized and paralyzed and, as she looked at it, the fingers changed into little snakes tipped with skulls.”

All this was beside her father's sick bed.

“She probably tried to chase away the snake with the lamed right hand, and so associated the anaesthesia and lameness with the snake hallucination. When this had disappeared she wished, in her fright, to pray, but every language failed her. At last she remembered an English nursery rhyme, and could continue to think and pray in this language.”

The whole illness originated from this experience. From it there had remained the paralysis of one hand, reduction of consciousness in varying degrees, and inability to express herself in any language but English. Dr. Breuer then noticed that the condition was ameliorated whenever he had her tell this story, and he based his treatment upon this fact. By means of hypnosis he drew from her little by little all the details, and really succeeded in bringing about a marked improvement in her condition. The patient got rid of the matter, as it were, by uttering and communicating it to another.

Breuer and his collaborator Freud, in Vienna, who were both influenced, as was natural at this period, by the school of Charcot [Jean Martin Charcot, French M.D. (1825-1893).] in Paris, diagnosed this case as a psychic trauma, a psychic wound, what is called in England a “nervous shock.” The psychic shock was supposed to consist of this experience at her father's bedside, and to have had an effect upon the soul similar to that of a physical wound upon the body.

It must be noted that from the beginning Breuer conceived the whole affair as a soul illness, as a matter of the inner life. He was convinced from the beginning that no anatomical or physiological changes could have been shown, no causes, for example, such as changes in the nerves leading from the arm to the brain. He was convinced from the start that he was dealing with a fact within the soul.

They were inclined in these early days to regard these cases as induced by wounds of the soul, shocks, etc. Very soon, however, because of Dr. Freud's active interest, theories took on a different character. With Freud's further development of the subject Dr. Breuer was never fully in accord. Freud felt that the theory of soul wounds would not do, did not cover these cases, and thus far Breuer agreed with him. I will remark in parenthesis that Dr. Breuer was a very busy practicing physician, thoroughly grounded in science, an excellent pupil of Nothnagel [Hermann Nothnagel, M.D. (1841-1905).] and because of external circumstances alone never became a professor. We may well believe that if Breuer, instead of remaining one of the busiest physicians in Vienna, with little time for scientific research, had obtained a professorship and so been able to follow up this problem, it might have assumed a very different form!

But from then on Dr. Freud took especial interest in the matter. He said to himself: the theory of trauma does not explain these cases. We need to determine under what conditions such a soul wound develops. For it might be said with justice that many girls had sat beside a father's sickbed with equally deep feelings, but without producing the same results. The unscientific layman deals with such problems promptly by the extraordinarily profound explanation that one is predisposed to such symptoms while another is not. Although very “profound,” this is the most absurd solution that can be arrived at, is it not? For if you explain things that occur on the basis of predisposition, you can easily explain everything in the world. You need only say: the predisposition for a certain thing exists.

Of course serious thinkers did not concern themselves with such ideas, but sought the real conditions. And Freud believed that he had discovered them in cases like the following. You will find innumerable similar cases in the literature of the psychoanalysts today, and it may be admitted that an immense amount of material has been collected in order to decide this or that point within this field. I will describe this one case, making it as comprehensible as possible. Its absolute historical accuracy is not important to us.

There was a woman with other guests at an evening party, a gathering of friends to bid good-bye to the mistress of the house, who had become nervous and was about to leave for a health resort abroad. She was to leave on that evening, and after the party had broken up, and the hostess departed, the woman whose case we are describing was going with other supper guests along the street when a cab came around the corner behind them (not an automobile—a cab with horses), driven at a great pace. In the smaller cities people returning home at night often walk in the middle of the street instead of on the sidewalk. (I do not know if you have noticed this). As the cab rushed towards them the supper guests scattered to right and left on to the sidewalks, with the exception of this one woman whom we are considering. She ran along the street in front of the horses, and all the driver's cursing and swearing and the cracking of his whip could not deflect her. She ran until she came to a bridge where she tried to throw herself into the water in order to avoid being run over. She was rescued by passersby, and returned to her party, being thus preserved from a serious accident.

This performance was of course connected with the woman's general condition. It is due, undoubtedly, to hysteria if a person runs along the middle of the street in front of horses, and the cause of such an action had to be discovered. Freud, in this and similar cases, examined the previous life back to childhood. If, even at an early age, something happened that was not assimilated by the soul, it could create a tendency which might be released later by any sort of shock.

And in fact such an experience was found in the childhood of the woman in question. She was taken driving as a child, and the horses became frightened and ran away. The coachman could not control them, and when they reached the river bank he sprang off, ordering the child to jump too, which it did, just before the horses plunged into the river. Thus the shocking incident was there, and a certain association of horse with horse. At the moment when she realized her danger from the horses she lost control of herself, and ran frantically in front of them instead of turning aside—all this as an after-effect of the childhood experience. You see that the psychoanalysts have a scientific method, according to present-day scientific ideas. But are there not many who have some such experience in childhood without such a reaction, even with the association of horse with horse? To this single circumstance something must be added to produce a “predisposition” to run in front of horses, instead of avoiding them.

Freud continued his search, and actually found an interesting connection in this case. The woman was engaged to be married, but was in love with two men at the same time. One was the man to whom she was engaged, and she was sure that she loved him best; but she was not quite clear about that, only halfway so; she loved the other also, this other being the husband of her best friend, whose farewell supper had taken place that evening. The hostess, who was somewhat nervous, took her departure, and this woman left with the other guests, ran in front of the horses, was rescued, and brought back quite naturally into the house she had just left. Further inquiry elicited the fact that in the past there had existed a significant association between the lady and this other man, the husband of her best friend. The love affair had already taken on “certain dimensions,” let us say, which accounted for the nervousness of her friend, as you may easily imagine. The physician brought her to this point in the story, but had difficulty in persuading her to continue. She admitted at last that when she came to herself in her friend's house, and was again normal, the husband declared his love to her. Quite a “remarkable case,” as you see!

Dr. Freud went after similar cases, and his researches convinced him that the hysterical symptoms, which had been attributed to a psychic “trauma” or wound, were due instead to love, conscious or unconscious. His examination of life experiences showed that circumstances might greatly differ, indeed in the most characteristic cases, that these love stories might never have risen into the consciousness of the patient at any time.

So Freud completed what he called his neurosis theory or sexual theory. He considered that sexuality entered into all such cases. But such things are extraordinarily deceptive. To begin with, there is everywhere at the present time an inclination to call sex to your aid, for the solution of any human problem. Therefore we need not wonder that a doctor who found it to be a factor in a certain number of cases of hysteria set up such a theory.

But on the other hand, since analytical psychology is carrying on a research with inadequate tools, this is the point at which the greatest danger begins. The matter is dangerous first, because this longing for knowledge is so extremely tempting, tempting because of present circumstances, and because it may always be proved that the sex connection is more or less present. Yet the psychoanalyst Jung, who wrote Die Psychologie der unbewussten Prozesse (see the above quotations that are translations of passages from C. G. Jung's Die Psychologie der unbewussten Prozesse. Ein Ueberblick über die moderne Theorie und Methode der analytischen Psychologie, Zürich, 1917.), Professor Jung of Zürich does not share the opinion that Freud's sexual “neurosis theory” covers these cases. He has instead another theory.

Jung noted that Freud has his opponents. Among them is a certain Adler. This Adler takes a quite different viewpoint. Just as Freud tested large numbers of cases, and settled upon sex as the original cause (you can read it all in Jung's book), so Adler approached the problem from another side, and decided that this side is more important than the one that Freud has placed in the foreground.

Adler—I will only generalize—found that there was another urge that played quite as important a role in the human being as the sexual impulse emphasized by Freud. This was the desire for power, power over one's environment, the desire for power in general. The “will to power” is even regarded by Nietzsche as a philosophical principle, and as many cases may be found to support the power-impulse theory as Freud found for his sexual theory.

One need only begin “analyzing” hysterical women to find that such cases are not at all rare. Assume for example that a woman is hysterical and has spasms—heart spasms are a favorite in such cases—as well as all sorts of other conditions. The home is stirred up, the whole environment, everything possible is done, doctors are summoned, the patient greatly pitied. In short, she exercises a tyrannical power over her environment. A reasonable person knows that in such a case there is really nothing the matter, even though such patients are aware of their condition and suffered from it. They are in reality perfectly healthy—but ill when they wish to be. You may diagnose them as well and ill at the same time. They do of course fall down when they faint in a heart spasm, but they fall as a rule on the rug, not on the bare floor! These things may be observed.

Now this subconscious lust for power leads very easily to hysterical conditions. Adler investigated the cases at his disposal from this particular standpoint, and found everywhere when hysterical symptoms appeared that somehow the lust for power had been aroused and driven into unhealthy extremes. Jung said to himself: “Oh well, one cannot say that Freud is wrong; what he observed is there, and one cannot say that Adler is wrong; what he observed is also there. So it is probably sometimes one way, and sometimes the other!”

That is quite reasonable; it is sometimes one way and sometimes another. But Jung built upon this a special theory. This theory is not uninteresting if you do not take it abstractly, simply as a theory, but see in it instead the action of our present-day impulses, especially the feebleness of our present knowledge and its inadequacy. Jung says: there are two types of people. In one type feeling is more developed, in the other thinking.

Thus an “epoch-making” discovery was made by a great scholar. It was something that any reasonable man could make for himself within his own immediate environment, for the fact that men are divided into thinking men and feeling men is sufficiently obvious. But scholarship has a different task: it must not regard anything as a layman would, and simply say: in our environment there are two types of people, feeling people and intellectuals—it must add something to that. Scholarship says in such a case: the one who feels his way into things sends out his own force into objectivity; the other draws back from an object, or halts before it and considers. The first is called the extroverted type, the other the introverted. The first would be the feeling man, the second the intellectual one. This is a learned division, is it not? ingenious, brilliant, really descriptive up to a point—that is not to be denied!

Then Jung goes on to say; In the case of the extraverted type (that of the man who lives preferably in his feelings), there exist very frequently in the subconscious mind intellectual concepts, and he finds himself in a collision between what is in his consciousness and the intellectual concepts that float about subconsciously within him. And from this collision all sorts of conditions may arise, conditions mainly characteristic of the feeling type.

In the case of those who occupy themselves more with the mind, the men of reason, the feelings remain down below, swarm in the subconscious, and come into collision with the conscious life. The conscious life cannot understand what is surging up. It is the force of the subconscious feelings, and because man is never complete, but belongs to one of these two types, circumstances may arise that cause the subconscious mind to revolt against the conscious, and may frequently lead to hysterical conditions.

Now we must say that Jung's theory is simply a paraphrase of the trivial idea of the feeling and the reasoning man, and adds nothing to the facts. But from all this you needs must realize that men of the present are at least beginning to notice all sorts of psychic peculiarities, and so concern themselves that they ask what goes on within a man who shows such symptoms. And they are at least so far along that they say to themselves: These are not due to physiological or anatomical changes. They have already outgrown bare materialism, in that they speak of psychic phenomena. So this is certainly one way in which people try to emerge from materialism, and to reach some knowledge of the soul.

It is, however, very peculiar, when you look at the subject more closely, to see into what strange paths people are led by the general inadequacy of their means of cognition. But I must emphatically point out that men do not realize into what they are being driven, and neither do their supporters, readers, and contemporaries. Thus, rightly regarded, the matter has actually a very dangerous side, because so much is not taken into consideration. In the subconscious mind itself there is a commotion, it is the theories which agitate in the subconscious. It is really strange. People set up a theory in regard to the subconscious, but their own subconsciousness is agitated by it. Jung pursues the matter as a physician, and it is important that psychological questions should be handled from that standpoint, therapeutically, and that many should be striving to carry over the matter into pedagogy. We are no longer confronted by a limited theory, but by the effort to make it into a cultural fact.

It is interesting to see how someone like Jung, who handles this matter as a physician, and has observed, treated, and apparently even cured all sorts of cases, is driven further and further. He says to himself: when such abnormal psychological symptoms are found, a search must be made in order to discover any incidents of childhood which may have made such an impression on the human soul life as to produce after-effects. That is something especially sought for in this field: after-effects of something that happened in childhood. I have cited an example which plays quite a role in the literature of psychoanalysis: the association of horse and horse.

Later, however, Jung came upon the fact that in many of the cases of genuine illness it cannot be proved, even if you go back to his earliest childhood, that the patient as an individual is suffering from any such after-effects. If you take into consideration everything with which he has come in contact, you find the conflict within the individual, but no explanation of it. So Jung was led to distinguish two subconsciousnesses: first the individual subconsciousness, concealed within the human being. If in her childhood the young woman jumped out of a carriage and received a shock, the incident has long since vanished from her consciousness, but works subconsciously. If you consider this subconscious element (made up of innumerable details), you get the personal or individual subconsciousness. This is the first of Jung's differentiations.

But the second is the superpersonal subconsciousness. He says: There are things affecting the soul life which are neither in the personality nor in the matter of the outside world, and which must be assumed therefore as present in a soul world.

The aim of psychoanalysis is to bring such soul contents into consciousness. That is supposed to be the healing method: to bring everything into consciousness. Thus the physician must undertake to extract from the patient, not only what he has experienced individually from his birth on, but also something that was not in the outside world and is of a soul nature. This has driven the psychoanalysts to say that a man experiences, not only what he goes through after his physical birth, but also all sorts of things that preceded his birth—and that all this creates disorder within him. A man who is born today experiences thus subconsciously the Oedipus Saga. He not only learns it in school; he experiences it. He experiences the Greek gods, the whole past of mankind. The evil of this consists in the fact that he experiences it subconsciously. The psychoanalyst must therefore say—and he does go so far—that the Greek child also experienced this but, since he was told about it, he experienced it consciously. Man experiences it today, but it only stirs within him—in the thoughts of the extraverted man, in the subconscious feelings of the introverted type. It growls like demons.

Now consider the necessity that confronts the psychoanalyst if he is true to his theory. He would have to take these things seriously and say simply that when a man grows up and may be made ill by his relation to that which stirs within him—a relation of which he knows nothing—that this connection must become conscious, and it must be explained to him that there is a spiritual world inhabited by different gods. For the psychoanalyst goes so far as to say that the human soul has a connection with the gods, but it is a cause of illness in that the soul knows nothing of it.

The psychoanalyst seeks all sorts of expedients, sometimes quite grotesque. Let us assume that a patient comes and displays this or that hysterical symptom, because he is afraid of a demon—let us say—a fire demon. Men of earlier periods believed in fire demons, had visions of them, knew about them. Present-day people still have connections with them (the psychoanalyst admits that), but these connections are not conscious; no one explains that there are fire demons, so they become a cause of illness.

Jung however goes so far as to assert that the gods, to whom man is unconsciously related, become angry and revenge themselves, this revenge showing itself as hysteria. Very well, it amounts then to this: such a present-day man who is mistreated by a demon in his subconscious mind, does not know that there are demons, and cannot achieve any conscious relation with them because—that is superstition! What does the poor modern man do then, if he becomes ill from this cause? He projects it outwardly, that is to say he looks up some friend whom he had liked quite well, and says: This is the one who is persecuting and abusing me! He feels this to be true, which means that he has a demon which torments him, and so projects it into another man.

Often psychoanalysts, in treating such a case, deflect this projection upon themselves. Thus it often happens that patients, in a good or evil sense, make the doctor into a god or a devil.

So you see the physician of the present day is forced to say to himself: Men are tormented by spirits, and because they are taught nothing about them, cannot take possession of them in consciousness, they become therefore tormenting spirits among themselves, project their demons outwardly, persuade one another of all sorts of demoniacal nonsense, etc. And how disastrous this is assumed to be by the psychoanalysts is shown by the following case which Jung describes. He says: “Certain of my colleagues claim that the soul energies that spring from such torment, must be deflected into another channel.” Let us turn back then to one of the elementary cases of psychoanalysis. A patient comes, whose illness was caused, according to her psychoanalytical confession, by her having been in love, many years before, with a man whom she did not get. This had remained with her. Of course she might be annoyed by a demon, but in most cases observed by the doctors it turns out that something has happened in the individual subconsciousness, which they classify separately from the super-personal subconscious. The doctors try to divert this immature fantasy or to transform it. If a love-thirsty soul can be persuaded to make use of her accumulated affections in humanitarian services, perhaps as head of a charitable institution, it may turn out well. But Jung himself says: “It is not always possible thus to divert this energy. Energies so implanted in the soul have often a certain definite potential which cannot be directed.” Very well, I have no objection to this expression, but wish only to point out that it is a translation of what the layman often discusses, and the way in which he often expresses himself. But Jung describes a case which is interesting, and a good example of the fact that these potentials cannot always be directed.

An American, a typical man of today, a self-made man, the efficient head of a business that he had built up, having devoted himself to his work and achieved a great success, thought then: I shall soon be forty-five, and have done my bit! Now I will give myself a rest. So he decided to retire, bought himself an estate with autos and tennis courts, and everything else that belonged to it, intending to live in the country, and simply to draw his dividends from the business. But when he had been for a time on his estate he ceased to play tennis or to drive his car, or to go to the theater. He took no pleasure in the gardens that were laid out, but sat in his room alone, and brooded. It hurt him there, and there, everything hurt him. Actually his head hurt, then his chest, and then his legs. He could not endure himself, ceased from laughter, was tired, strung up, had continual headache—it was horrible. There was no illness that a doctor could diagnose! It is often that way with men of the present, is it not? They are perfectly healthy, and yet ill. The doctor said: "This trouble is psychic. You have adapted yourself to business conditions, and your energies will not readily take another course. Go back to business. That is the only suggestion that I can make.” The man in question grasped this, but found that he was no longer any good at business! He was just as ill there as at home.

From this Jung rightly concludes that you cannot easily deflect energy from one potential to another, nor even turn it back again when you have failed. This man came to him for treatment. (You know many people come to Switzerland bringing such illnesses and non-illnesses!) But he could not help this American. The trouble had taken too strong a hold; it should have been handled earlier.

You see from this that the therapy of deflection has also its difficulties, and Jung himself offers this example. Important facts are met everywhere which—I now may say—will be successfully dealt with only by spiritual science or Anthroposophy, in accordance with exact knowledge. But there they are, and people notice them. The questions are there. It will be discovered that the human being is complicated, and not the simple creature presented to us by the science of the 19th century. The psychoanalyst is confronted by a remarkable fact which is quite inexplicable by the science of today. In Anthroposophy, together with the information given in my lectures, you will easily find an explanation, but I can come back to the point in case you do not find it. It may happen, for example, that someone becomes hysterically blind, that is, his blindness is an hysterical symptom. This is possible. There are hysterically blind people, who could see, yet do not—who are psychically blind. Now such people are sometimes partially cured—partially; they begin to see again, but do not see everything. Sometimes such an hysterically blind man recovers sufficient sight to see people, all but their heads! Such a half-cured person goes along the streets, and sees everyone without a head. That really occurs, and there are even stranger symptoms.

All this may be dealt with by spiritual science—anthroposophically oriented spiritual science—and in a lecture that I gave here last year you may find an explanation of the inability to see the heads of people. [Lecture given at Dörnach, August 5, 1916.] But the present psychoanalyst is faced by all these phenomena. And so much confronts him that he says to himself: It may be quite disastrous for a man to be connected with the superpersonal unconscious; but for God's sake (the psychoanalyst does not say ‘for God's sake,’ but perhaps ‘for science's sake’) do not let us take the spiritual world seriously! It does not enter their minds to consider the spiritual world seriously. Thus something very peculiar happens. Very few notice what strange phenomena appear under the influence of these things. I will call to your attention something in Jung's book Die Psychologie der unbewussten Prozesse, [see the above quotations that are translations of passages from C. G. Jung's Die Psychologie der unbewussten Prozesse. Ein Ueberblick über die moderne Theorie und Methode der analytischen Psychologie, Zürich, 1917.] recently published, which will show you where the psychoanalyst lands today. I shall have to read you a passage.

“According to this example” (these are examples showing that a man has within him, not only the contents of his present personal life, but far-back connections with all sorts of demonic, divine, or spiritual forces, etc.)—“According to this example of the genesis of new ideas from the store of the primeval pictures”—(here he does not call them ‘gods’ but ‘primeval pictures’)—“we will take up the further description of the transference processes. We saw that the libido, in those apparently preposterous and curious fantasies, had seized upon its new object, namely the contents of the absolute unconscious.” (The absolute unconscious is the superpersonal unconscious, not the personal.) “As I have already said, the uncomprehended projection of the primeval pictures upon the physician involves a danger for the further treatment that must not be under-estimated.” (The patient transfers his demons to the doctor. That is one danger.) “The pictures contain not only the best and greatest of all that mankind has thought and felt, but also every infamous and devilish deed of which men have been capable.”

Just think! Jung has come so far as to perceive that a man has subconsciously within him all the most fiendish crimes, as well as the most beautiful of all that mankind has been able to think and feel. These people cannot be persuaded to speak of Lucifer and Ahriman, [Compare Rudolf Steiner, The Luciferic and Ahrimanic Influences in their Relation to Man, 1918, reprinted in Anthroposophie, Vol. 17, Book 2, p. 159.] but they agree upon the preceding statement, which I shall read to you once more:

“The pictures contain not only the best and greatest of all that mankind has thought and felt, but also every infamous and devilish deed of which men have been capable. If the patient cannot distinguish the personality of the physician from these projections, then every possibility of mutual understanding is lost, and the human relationship becomes hopeless. If, however, the patient avoids this Charybdis he falls into the Scylla of the introjection of these pictures, that is to say that he attributes their qualities not to the physician but to himself.” (Then he himself is the devil.) “This danger is equally serious. In projection he staggers between an extravagant and morbid adulation and a hateful contempt for his physician. In introjection he falls into a ridiculous self-deification, or a moral self-laceration. The mistake that he makes each time is in attributing to himself the contents of the absolute unconscious. So he makes himself into a god or a devil. Here lies the psychological reason why men have always needed demons, and were never able to live without gods—except a few particularly clever Western specimens of yesterday and the day before, supermen whose god being dead, have made gods of themselves, rationalistic pocket size gods with thick skulls and cold hearts.”

Thus you see, the psychoanalyst is driven to say: The human soul is so made that it needs gods, that gods are necessary to it, for it becomes ill without them. Therefore it has always had them. Men need gods. The psychoanalyst ridicules men, saying that when they lack other gods they make gods of themselves, but “rationalistic pocket size gods with thick skulls and cold hearts. The idea of God” (he says further), “is simply a necessary psychological function of an irrational nature. ...”

To describe the necessity of the God-concept in these terms is as far as one can go by the methods of natural science! Man must have a God; he needs him. The psychoanalyst knows that. But let us read to the end of the sentence:

“The idea of God is simply a necessary psychological function of an irrational nature, which has nothing to do with the question of the actual existence of God.”

When you read the complete sentence you run upon the great dilemma of the present day. The psychoanalyst proves to you that man becomes ill and useless without his God, but says that this need has nothing to do with the existence or non-existence of God. And he continues:

“For this latter question” (namely, of the existence of God,) “belongs to the most stupid questions that can be framed. Man knows well enough that he cannot conceive a God, much less imagine that he really exists, or that there can be any occurrence not conditioned by natural causes.”

Now I beg of you, here you find—here you are standing at the point where you may catch at things. The things are there, knocking upon the doors of knowledge. Seekers are also there. They admit an absolute necessity, but when that necessity is stated as a serious question they consider it one of the stupidest that can be suggested.

You see, you have there one of the points in the cultural life of today from which you may note exactly what is always avoided. I can assure you that, in their examination and knowledge of the soul, these psychoanalysts are far ahead of what is offered in current psychiatry by the universities. They are not only far beyond ordinary university psychiatry and psychology, but in a certain sense they are right to look down upon this dreadful so-called science. But one may catch them in any such passage, showing as it does what mankind is actually facing in the attitude of contemporary science.

Many do not recognize this. They do not realize the force of belief in authority. There has never been such faith in authority, nor has it ever reigned so absolutely as in the subconscious mind today. One asks again and again: Just what do you do as physicians when you handle hysterical cases? You seek something in the subconscious mind that is not solved within consciousness. Yes, but you find repeatedly just such a subconscious content in the case of the theorists. If you lift it into full consciousness it turns out to be exactly what has been murmuring in the subconsciousness of the modern doctors and their patients. And all our literature is so saturated with it that you are in daily and hourly danger of imbibing it. And since it is only through spiritual science that men may become aware of these things, many take them up unknowingly, draw them into their subconsciousness, where they remain.

This psychoanalysis has at least pointed out that the reality of the soul is to be accepted as such. They do that. But the devil is everywhere at their heels; I mean that they are neither able nor willing to approach spiritual reality. Therefore you find in all sorts of places the most incredible statements. But present humanity has not the degree of attention necessary to perceive them. We should naturally expect any reader of Jung's book to fall off his chair under the table at certain sentences, but men of the present do not do that; so only think how much of it must lie in the subconsciousness of modern humanity. Yet for this very reason, because these psychoanalysts see how much there is in the subconscious—and they do see it—they look upon many things differently from other people. In his Preface Jung says something, for example, part of which is not bad.

“The psychological processes which accompany the present war, above all the incredible depravity of public opinion, the mutual calumnies, the undreamed of fury of destruction, the flood of lies, and men's inability to halt the bloody demon, are all adapted to set before the eyes of thinking humanity the problem of the restlessly slumbering, chaotic realm of the subconscious. This war has shown pitilessly to the cultured man that he is still a barbarian, and at the same time what an iron rod of correction awaits him should it again occur to him to hold his neighbor responsible for his own bad character. The psychology of the single individual corresponds to the psychology of the nations.”

And now comes a sentence which makes you wonder what to do with it.

“What the nations do is done by each individual, and so long as the individual does it the nation will do it too. Only a change in the attitude of the individual can bring about a change in the psychology of the nation.”

These sentences, placed side by side, show how destructively this thinking works. I ask you if it is sensible to say: “What the nations do is done by each individual?” It would be equally reasonable to ask: Could an individual do it without nations doing it too? It is nonsense, is it not, to say things like that. The unfortunate thing is that even prominent thinkers are impressed by it. And this sort of thinking is not only to become therapy, but take the lead in pedagogy. This again is founded upon the justifiable longing to introduce into pedagogy a new soul and spiritual element. Are conclusions to be accepted which were reached by entirely inadequate methods of cognition? These are nowadays the important questions.

We shall return to the matter from the standpoint of anthroposophical orientation, and throw light upon it from a broader horizon. Then we shall see that one must set about it in a much bigger way, in order to succeed with these things at all. But they must be handled concretely. The problems which as yet have been investigated only by the old, inadequate methods, must be placed in the light of anthroposophical knowledge.

Take, for example, the problem of Nietzsche. Today I will only suggest it; tomorrow we shall consider such problems more thoroughly. We know already from former lectures: [Lectures given at Dörnach, October 14, 20, 21, 26, 27, 28; November 2, 3, 4, 1917.] from 1841 to 1879 battle of spirits above; from 1879 on, the fallen spirits in the human realm. In future such and similar things must of necessity play a role whenever a human life is studied. For Nietzsche was born in 1844. For three years before he descended to earth his soul was in the spiritual realm in the midst of the spirit battle. During his boyhood Schopenhauer was still living, but died in 1860, and only after his death did Nietzsche devote himself to the study of Schopenhauer's writings. The soul of Schopenhauer cooperated from above in the spiritual world. That was the real relationship. Nietzsche was reading Schopenhauer, and while he was absorbing his writings Schopenhauer was working upon his thoughts.

But how was Schopenhauer situated in the spiritual realm? From 1860 through the years when Nietzsche was reading his books, Schopenhauer was in the midst of the spiritual battle that was still being fought out on that plane. Therefore Schopenhauer's inspiration of Nietzsche was colored by what he himself gathered from the battle of spirits in which he was involved. In 1879 these spirits were cast down from heaven upon the earth. Up to 1879 Nietzsche's spiritual development had followed very curious paths. They will be explained in the future as due to the influence of Schopenhauer and of Wagner. In my book Friedrich Nietzsche, a Fighter against his Time, you may find many supporting details. Wagner had up to that time no particular influence except that he was active on earth. For Wagner was born in 1813; the battle of spirits only began in 1841. But Wagner died in 1883, and Nietzsche's spiritual development took its peculiar direction when Wagner's influence began. Wagner entered the spiritual world in 1883, when the battle of spirits was over, and the defeated spirits had been cast to earth. Nietzsche was in the midst of things when the spirits began to roam around here on earth. Wagner's post mortem influence upon Nietzsche had an entirely different object from that of Schopenhauer.

Here begin the super-personal but definite influences, not those abstract demonic ones, of which the psychoanalyst speaks. Humanity must resolve to enter this concrete spiritual world, in order to comprehend things which are obvious if only the facts are tested. In the future Nietzsche's biography will state that he was stimulated by that Richard Wagner who was born in 1813, and took part up to 1879 everything that led to the brilliant being whom I described in my book; that he had the influence of Schopenhauer from his sixteenth year, but that Schopenhauer was involved in the spiritual battle that was fought upon the super-physical plane before 1879; that he was exposed to Wagner's influence after Wagner had died and entered the spiritual world, while Nietzsche was still here below, where the spirits of darkness were ruling.

Jung considers this a fact: that Nietzsche found a demon, and projected it without upon Wagner. Oh well—projections, potentials, introverted or extraverted human types—all words for abstractions, but nothing about realities! These things are truly important. This is not agitation for an anthroposophical world-conception for which we are prejudiced. On the contrary, everything outside of anthroposophy shows how necessary this conception is for present-day humanity!

• 1. Anthroposophy and the Science of the Soul (Nov. 5), Anthroposophy and Spiritual Science (Nov. 7), Anthroposophy and Natural Science (Nov. 12), Anthroposophy and Social Science (Nov. 14).

I have designated what is called analytical psychology or psychoanalysis as an effort to gain knowledge in the soul realm by inadequate means of cognition. Perhaps nothing is so well adapted to show how, at the present time, everything urges the attainment of the anthroposophically orientated spiritual science, and how on the other side, subconscious prejudices lead men to oppose a spiritually scientific consideration of the facts. Yesterday I showed you by definite examples what grotesque leaps modern erudition is obliged to take when it ventures upon soul problems, and how to detect these leaps in the mental processes of modern scholars. It was pointed out that one of the better psychoanalysts—Jung—divided patients into two classes: the thinking type, and the feeling type. From this starting point he assumed that in cases of the thinking type, subconscious feelings force their way up into consciousness and produce soul conflicts—or in the opposite type, that thoughts in the subconscious mind arise and conflict with the life of feeling.

Now it might be suggested that these things will be fought out in scientific discussion, and that we might wait until people make up their minds to overcome the subconscious prejudice against anthroposophical spiritual science. But passive waiting becomes impossible in that such things do not confine themselves to the theoretical field, but encroach upon life practice and cultural development. And psychoanalysis is not content to occupy itself with therapy alone, which might be less dubious since there seems to be little difference—I said seems—between it and other therapeutical methods; but it is trying to extend itself to pedagogy, and to become the foundation of a teaching system. This forces us to point out the dangers residing in quarter-truths in a more serious manner than would be called for by mere theoretical discussion.

Much that relates to this matter can be decided only with the passage of time, but today we shall have to enlarge the scope of our examination in order to throw light upon one aspect or another. First of all I wish to call to your attention that the facts which lie before the psychoanalyst really point to an important spiritual sphere which present-day man does not wish to enter in an accurate and correct manner, but would prefer to leave as a sort of nebulous, subconscious region. For our present sickly, materialistically infected approach, even in this domain, likes nothing better than a vague, mystical drifting among all sorts of incomplete or unexecuted concepts. We find the most grotesque, the most repulsive mysticism right in the midst of materialism, if you take mysticism to mean a desire to swim about in all sorts of nebulous thinking, without working out your world-conception into clear, sharply outlined concepts. The domain into which recognized facts are pushing the psychoanalysts is the field of extra-conscious intelligence and reasoning activity. How often I have dealt with these matters—without going into details, but merely mentioning them, since they are taken for granted by students of spiritual science. How often I have reminded you that reasoning, intellectual activity, cleverness are not confined to the human consciousness, but are everywhere, that we are surrounded by effective mental activity as we are surrounded by air, interwoven with it, and the other beings as well.

The facts before the psychoanalyst might easily refer to this. I quoted to you yesterday the case described by Jung in his book, Die Psychologie der unbewussten Prosesse. It had to do with a woman who, having left an evening party with other guests, was frightened by horses, ran in front of them along the street to the river where she was rescued by passers-by, brought back to the house that she had left, where she had a love scene with her host. From the standpoint of Freud or Adler the case is easily explained on the basis of the love-drive or the power-drive, but this diagnosis does not reach the vital point. Its foundation is reached only by realizing that consciousness does not exhaust the cleverness, calculation, the artfulness of what penetrates man as intelligence, and by realizing that the laws of life are not limited by the laws of consciousness.

Consider this case. We can at least raise the question: What did the woman really want, after she had been one of the party, and had seen her friend depart for the health resort? She wanted the opportunity for what actually happened, she wanted a legitimate excuse to be alone with the master of the house. Of course this had nothing to do with what was in her consciousness, what she realized and admitted. It would not have been “proper,” as we say. Something had to be brought about that need not be avowed, and we shall reach the real explanation by allowing for her subconscious, designing intelligence, of which she was herself unaware. Throughout the entire evening she had wanted to bring about a conversation with her host. If one is less clever a poor choice is made of means, if more clever a better choice. In this case it may be said that in the woman's ordinary consciousness, which admitted scruples as to what was proper or improper, allowed or not allowed, the right means could not have been chosen for the end in view. But in that which was stored below the layer of the ordinary consciousness the thought was incessantly active: I must manage a meeting with the man. I must make use of the next opportunity that presents itself in order to return to the house.

We may be sure that if the opportunity with the horses had not offered itself, supported by association with the earlier accident, she would have found some other excuse. She needed only to faint in the street, and would have been brought back to the house at once, or she would have found some other expedient. The subconsciousness looked beyond all the scruples of the ordinary consciousness, taking the attitude that “the end justifies the means,” regardless of whether they would or would not harmonize with ideas of propriety and impropriety.

In such a case we are reminded of what Nietzsche, who surmised many of these things, called the great reason in contrast with the small reason, the all-inclusive reason that does not come into consciousness, that acts below the threshold of consciousness, leading men to do many things which they do not consciously confess to themselves. Through his ordinary outer consciousness the human being is in connection first with the world of the senses, but also with the whole physical world, and with all that lives within it. To the physical world belong all the concepts of propriety, of bourgeois morality, and so forth, with which man is equipped.

In his subconsciousness man is connected with an entirely different world, of which Jung says: the soul has need of it because it is related to it, but he also says that it is foolish to inquire about its real existence. Well, it is this way: as soon as the threshold of consciousness is crossed, man and his soul are no longer in merely material surroundings or relations, but in a realm where thoughts rule, thoughts which may be very artful.

Now Jung's view is quite correct when he says that modern man, the so-called man of culture, needs particularly to be mindful of these things. For present culture has this peculiarity, that it forces down numerous impulses into the subconsciousness, which then assert themselves in such a way that irrational acts—as they are called—and irrational general conduct result. When the “power-urge” or the “love urge” are mentioned, it is because in the moment that man and his soul enter the subconscious regions they come nearer to the realm where these instincts rule; not that they are in themselves causes, but that man with his subconscious intelligence plunges into regions where these impulses are effective.

That woman would not have gone to so much exertion for anything that interested her less than her love affair. It required an especial preoccupation for her subconscious cunning to be aroused. And that the love impulse so often plays an important role is due simply to the fact that the love interest is so very common. If the psychoanalysts would only turn more of their attention in other directions, cease to concentrate upon psychoanalytic sanatoriums, where the majority of the inmates seem to me to be women—(the same reproach is cast upon anthroposophical institutions but, I think, with less justice),—if they were more experienced in other fields, which is of course sometimes the case, if there were a greater variety of cases in the sanatoriums, a more extensive knowledge might be obtained.

Let us assume that a sanatorium was equipped for giving psychiatric treatment especially to people who had become nervous or hysterical from playing the stock market. Then the existence of other things in the subconscious mind could be established with as much reason as the love-urge, introduced by Freud. Then it would be seen with what detailed cunning, and artful subconscious processes, the man acts who plays the stock market. Then, through the usual methods of elimination, sexual love would be seen to play a very small part, yet the subtleties of subconscious acuteness, of subconscious slyness, could be studied at their height. Even the lust for power could not always be designated as being the primary impulse, but altogether different instincts would be found ruling those regions, in which man submerges himself with his soul. And if in addition a sanatorium could be equipped for learned men who had become hysterical—forgive me!—it would be found that their subconscious actions seldom lead back to the love-motive. For those with any thorough knowledge of facts in this field realize that, under present conditions, scholars are seldom driven to their chosen science by “love,” but by quite different forces which would show themselves if brought to the surface by psychoanalysis. The all-inclusive fact is that the soul is led from the conscious down into the subconscious regions where man's unconquered instincts rule. He can master these only by becoming aware of them, and spiritual research alone can lift them into consciousness.

Another inconvenient truth! For of course it forces the admission, to a point far beyond what the psychoanalyst is prepared to admit, that man in his subconscious mind may be a very sly creature, far more sly than in his full consciousness. Even in this field, and with ordinary science, we may have strange experiences. There is a chapter on this subject in my book Riddles of the Soul In it I deal with the strictures upon Anthroposophy, found in a book entitled Vom Jenseits der Seele,¹ and written by that academic individual Dessoir. This second chapter of my book Riddles of the Soul will be a nice contribution to thinking people who would like to form an opinion of present scholarly ethics. You will see when you read this chapter what kind of opposition must be encountered. I will mention, of all the points therein indicated, one or two only which are not unconnected with our present theme.

This man makes all sorts of objections to this and that, founded upon passages taken from my books. In a very neat connection he tells how I distinguish consecutive periods of culture: the Indian, the old Persian, the Chaldean-Egyptian, the Graeco-Latin, and now we live in the sixth, he says, “according to Steiner.”

This forces us to refute these misstatements in a schoolmasterly manner, for it shows us the only way to get at such an individual. How does Max Dessoir come to assert, in the midst of all his other nonsense, that I said we are living in the sixth postatlantean culture period? It may be easily explained if you have any practice in the technique of philological methods. I was connected for six years and a half with the Goethe Archives in Weimar, learned there a little about the usual procedure, and could easily show, according to philological methods, how Dessoir came to attribute to me this statement regarding the sixth culture period. He had been reading my book Occult Science, an Outline, in which there is a sentence leading to a description of our present fifth postatlantean culture period. In it I say that there are long preparations and, in one section, that events taking place in the 14th and 15th centuries were prepared in the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries. About five lines further on I say that the sixth century was a preparation for the fifth culture period. Dessoir, reading superficially, turned back hastily as scholars do, to the place that he had noted in the margin, and confused what was said about the culture period with what had been stated further back about the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries. Thus he says “sixth culture period” instead of fifth because his eye had moved backward a few lines.

You see with what a grand superficiality such a person works. Here we have an example of how such “scholarship” may be philologically shown up. In this literary creation such mistakes run through the entire chapter. And while Dessoir affirms that he has studied a whole row of my books, I could prove, again philologically, which ones of mine compose this “whole row.” He had read—and but slightly understood—The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, for he devotes a sentence to it that is utter nonsense. And he read Occult Science, but in such a way as to bring out the kind of stuff that I have described. He read in addition the small work The Spiritual Guidance of Man, and the little pamphlets on Reincarnation and Karma, and Blood is Quite a Special Fluid. These are all that he read, as may be shown by his comments. He read nothing else. These are our present ethics of scholarship. It is important once in a way to expose, in such a connection, the erudition of the present day. Out of the long list of my books he chooses a very small number, and founds upon them, with quite perverted thinking, his whole statement. Many of our scientists today do exactly the same thing. When they write about animals, for example, they usually have for a foundation about as much material as Professor Dessoir extracted from my books.

Quite a pretty chapter could be written from observations of Dessoir's subconscious mind. He himself, however, in a special passage in his book, permits us to take account of his subconsciousness. He relates rather grotesquely that when he is lecturing it often happens that his thoughts go on without his full conscious direction, and that only by the reaction of his audience does he recognize that his thoughts have taken a line independent of his attention. He tells that quite naively. But only think! From this fact he embarks upon extended consideration of the many peculiarities of human consciousness. I have pointed out somewhat “gently” that Dessoir thus strangely reveals himself. I said at first: It cannot be possible that he means himself. In this case he must simply be identifying himself with certain clumsy lecturers, and speaking in the first person. It would be imputing to him a good deal to suppose that he is describing himself. But he really does exactly that. Well, in the discussion of such matters many odd things must be noted.

He disposed of The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity by one remark, with the addition of a sentence that is Dessoirish, but did not originate with me. The whole matter is crazy. He says at the same time “Steiner's first book, the The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity.” This forces me to point out that this book forms the close of a ten year period of authorship, and to offer this incident as an example of academic ignorance, and ethics. I know of course that although I have shown how incorrect his statements are, people will say again and again: “Well, Dessoir has refuted Steiner.”—I know it very well. I know that it is speaking against walls to try to break through what men imagine they have long since got rid of—belief in authority!

But this chapter alone will prove the difficulties against which spiritual science must struggle because it insists upon clear, sharply outlined concepts, and concrete spiritual experiences. There is no question of logic with such an individual as Dessoir, and a lack of logic characterizes in the broadest sense our present so-called scientific literature.

These are the reasons why official learning, and official spiritual trends, even if they work themselves away from such inferiority as the university psychiatry or psychology, are not in a position to make good because they lack the smallest equipment for a genuine observation of life. So long as it is not realized how far from genuine research and from a sense for reality that really is which poses as scientific literature—I do not say, as science, but as scientific literature—and often forms the content of university and especially of popular lectures—so long as this authoritative belief is not broken through, there can be no cure. These things must be said, and are compatible with the deepest respect for real scientific thinking, and for the great achievements of natural science. That these things are applied to life in such contradictory fashion must however be recognized.

After this digression let us return to our subject. Dessoir takes the opportunity to combine objective untruth with calumny in his remark regarding the little pamphlet Spiritual Guidance of Man. He feels it to be especially irritating that I have indicated important subconscious action of spiritual impulses by showing that a child while building its brain manifests greater wisdom than it is conscious of later. A healthy science ought to take its starting point from such normal effects of the subconscious, yet it needs something in addition. If you take up the book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds you will find mention of the Secret of the Threshold. In the explanation of this “secret” it is stated that in crossing the threshold into the spiritual world a kind of separation takes place, a sort of differentiation of the three fundamental powers of the soul: thinking, feeling, and willing. Remember in the part dealing with the Guardian of the Threshold, the explanation that these three forces, which act together in ordinary consciousness in such a way that they can hardly be separated, become independent of each other. If I sketch them, this narrow middle section (see drawing) is the boundary between the ordinary consciousness and that region in which the soul lives in the spiritual world. Thinking, feeling, and willing must be so drawn as to show this as the range of will (red), but bordering upon the realm of feeling (green), and this in turn borders upon the realm of thinking (yellow). But if I were to indicate their direction after crossing the threshold into the spiritual world, I should have to show how thinking (yellow) becomes independent upon the one hand; feeling (green, right) separates itself from thinking, will becomes independent too (red, right), as I sketch it here diagrammatically, so that thinking, feeling, and willing spread out from one another like a fan.

You will find this described in my book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds. That these three activities, which before passing the threshold border upon each other but work separately, interact in the right way and do not come into confusion is due to the fact that the threshold has, so to speak, a certain breadth in which our

ego itself lives. If our ego acts normally, has perfect soul health, then the interaction of thinking, feeling, and willing is so regulated that they do not collide with one another, but mutually influence each other. It is the essential secret of our ego that it holds thinking, feeling, and willing beside each other, so that they can affect each other in the right way, but do not mix in any accidental fashion. Once across the threshold into the spiritual world there is no danger of this since the three faculties then separate.

Certain philosophers (such as Wundt, for example), insist that the soul must not be described as threefold because it is a unity. Wundt, too, confuses everything. The facts are that in the spiritual world thinking, feeling, and willing originate in a threefold manner, yet in the soul on earth they act as a unity. That must be taken into consideration, and if it be claimed, as recently reported, that Anthroposophy recognizes three souls though there exists but one, and that Anthroposophy has therefore no reasonable argument—then the answer must be that the unity of man is not impaired by the fact that he has two hands.

But now we are considering the relation of the ego to the soul-forces that work within it, and their action beyond the threshold of consciousness in the spiritual world. (Drawing, middle and right). An opposite condition may be brought about if the ego has been weakened in any way. Then the threshold is crossed, as it were, in the opposite direction (See drawing, left). Then thinking swerves aside (yellow, left), mingles with feeling (green, left), and willing (red, left), and confusion results. This happens if thinking is exposed in any way to the danger of not being properly confined, so that it asserts itself unwarrantably in the consciousness. Then, because the ego is not working as it should, thinking slides into the sphere of feeling or of will. Instead of working side by side, thinking mixes itself with feeling, or will, the ego being for some reason unable to exert its normal power.

This is what has happened in the cases described by the psychoanalysts as hysterical or nervous. Thinking, feeling, and willing have swung to the opposite side, away from the healthy direction that would lead them into the spiritual world. If you have any gift for testing and proving you may easily see how it comes about. Take the case of the girl sitting by the sickbed. Her strong ego-consciousness was reduced by loss of sleep and anxiety. The slightest thing might cause thinking to leave its track alongside of feeling and to run over into it. Then thought would be at once submerged in the waves of feeling, which are far stronger than the waves of thought, and the result in such a case is that the whole organism is seized by the tumult of feeling. This happens in the instant that thinking ceases to be strong enough to hold itself apart from feeling.

It is seriously demanded of the human being that he learn more and more to hold his thinking apart from the waves of feeling and will. If thinking takes hold subconsciously of the waves of feeling something abnormal results. (See drawing: at the right is the superconscious, in the middle the conscious, at the left the subconscious). This is extremely important.

Now you may readily imagine that in this modern life, when people are brought into contact with so much that they do not properly understand and cannot appraise, thoughts continually run over into feelings. But it must be remembered that thinking alone is oriented upon the physical plane; feeling is no longer confined to the physical plane, but stands in connection, by its very nature, with the spiritual plane as well. Feeling has really a connection with all the spiritual beings who must be spoken of as real. So that if a man with inadequate concepts sinks into his feeling-life, he comes into collision with the gods—if you wish to express it thus—but also with evil gods. And all these collisions occur because a man is submerged with no reliable means of knowledge. He must so submerge if he spends more time in the sphere of feeling than in the ordinary sphere of reason. In the sphere of feeling man cannot emancipate himself from his connection with the spiritual world. Even if, in this materialistic age, he does free himself in the realm of the intellect, he always enters the region of feeling with inadequate concepts, and so he must become ill.

What then is the real remedy, and how are men to be restored to health? They must be guided to concepts that reach out to include the world of feelings; that is to say that modern man must again be told of the spiritual world, and in the most comprehensive terms. Not the individually adapted therapeutic instructions of the psychoanalysts are meant, but the spiritual science which is applicable to all humanity. If the concepts of spiritual science are really accepted—for not everyone takes them in who only listens to lectures, or reads about them—but if they are really absorbed there will be no further possibility of the chaotic intermingling, in the subconscious, of the three spheres of the soul: thinking, feeling, and willing, which is the basis of all the hysteria and nervousness noted by the psychoanalysts.

For this, however, a man needs the courage to approach a direct experience of the operation of spiritual worlds, the courage to recognize that we are living now in a crisis that is connected with another (the established date being 1879), another crisis with painful consequences from which we are still suffering. I told you yesterday that many things must be considered from standpoints other than the materialistic ones of our own time, and I chose Nietzsche as an illustration.

Nietzsche was born in 1844. In 1841 the battle began in the spiritual world, of which I have already spoken, and Nietzsche was for three years in the midst of it, absorbing from it all possible impulses, and bringing them down with him to earth. Richard Wagner, born in 1813, took at first no part in it. Read Nietzsche's early writings, and notice the combative tone, almost every sentence showing the after-effects of what he experienced spiritually from 1841 to 1844. It gave a definite coloring to all the writings of Nietzsche's first period.

It is further of importance—as I have also explained—that he was a lad of sixteen when Schopenhauer died, and started at that time to read his works. A real relation ensued between the soul of Schopenhauer in the spiritual world and that of Nietzsche on earth. Nietzsche read every phrase of Schopenhauer so receptively that he was penetrated by every corresponding impulse of their author. What was Schopenhauer's object? He had ascended into the spiritual world in 1860 when the battle was still raging, and wanted nothing so much as to have the power of his thoughts continued through his works. Nietzsche did carry forward Schopenhauer's thoughts, but in a peculiar way. Schopenhauer saw when he went through the gate of death that he had written his books in an epoch threatened by the oncoming spirits of darkness, and with the struggle before him of these spirits against the spirits of light, he longed to have the effects of his work continued, and formed in Nietzsche's soul the impulse to continue his thoughts. What Nietzsche received from the spiritual world at this period contrasted strikingly with what was happening upon the physical plane in his personal relations with Richard Wagner. Nietzsche's soul life was composed in this way, and his career as a writer.

The year 1879 arrived. The battle that had been going on in the spiritual realms began to be transferred to earth after the fall of the spirits of darkness. Nietzsche was exposed by his whole Karma (in which I include his relations with the spiritual world), to the danger of being driven by the spirits of darkness into evil paths. He had been inspired by the transcendent egoism of Schopenhauer to try to carry on his work. I do not mean to say that egoism is always bad. But when Wagner rose into the spiritual world in 1883 the spirits of darkness were below, so he came into an entirely different atmosphere, and he became Nietzsche's unselfish spiritual guide. He let him enter what was for him the proper channel, and allowed him to become mentally deranged at exactly the right moment, so that he never came consciously into dangerous regions. That sounds paradoxical, but it was really the unselfish way in which Wagner's soul affected Nietzsche from the purer realms above, rather than the manner in which Schopenhauer's soul acted, he being still in the midst of the battle, up in the spiritual world, between the spirits of darkness and the spirits of light. What Wagner wanted to do for Nietzsche was to protect him, so far as his Karma permitted, from the spirits of darkness, already descended upon earth.

And Nietzsche was protected to a great extent. If his last writings are read in the right spirit, eliminating the things that have sprung from strong oppositions, great thoughts will be discovered. I tried in my book Nietzsche, a Fighter against his Time, to show the mighty thought impulses, detached from all his resisting impulses.

Yes, “the world is deep.” There is really some truth in Nietzsche's own saying: “The world is deep, and deeper than the day divines.” So we must never try to criticize the wide regions of the spiritual life by means of our ordinary consciousness. The wise guidance of the worlds can be understood only if we can enter into that guidance, free from egoistic thoughts, even if we can fit the development of tragic happenings into the scheme of wisdom. If you wish to look into the heart of things you will come upon many uncomfortable places.

In future whoever wishes to evaluate a life like Nietzsche's will make no progress if he describes only what happened in Nietzsche's environment on earth. Our view of life will have to extend to the spiritual world, and we shall be pushed to this necessity by the kind of phenomena that the psychoanalyst today tries to master by such inadequate means of knowledge, but never will control. Therefore human society might be driven into regions of great difficulty if it yields to psychoanalysis, particularly in the field of pedagogy.

Why should this be? Consider the fact that thinking slips down into the sphere of feeling. Now as soon as a man lives with his soul in the sphere of feeling, he is no longer in the life that is bounded by birth and death or by conception and death, but lives in the whole world, the extended world. This represents the usual life span (See drawing, a); within the realm of feeling he lives also in the period from his last death to his birth into this present life (See drawing, b); and with his will he lives even in his previous incarnation (Drawing, c).

Think of the relation to pupil or patient of an instructor who wishes to proceed by the method of psychoanalysis. When he tries to deal with soul contents which have slipped down into the realm of feeling he lays hold, not only upon the man's individual life, but upon the all-inclusive life which extends far beyond the individual. For this all-encompassing life, however, there are between men no connections that may be handled by means of mere ideas. Such connections lead instead to genuine life-relationships. This is very important. Imagine the existence of such a connection between a psychoanalytic instructor and pupil. What takes place could not be confined to the realm of ideas which are conveyed to the pupil, but real karmic connections would have to be established because one is really encroaching upon life itself. It would be tearing the individual in question out of his karma, changing the course of his karma. It will not do to handle that which extends beyond the individual in a purely individual manner. It must be treated instead in a universally human way. We are all brought together in a definite epoch, so there must be a mutual element which acts as soon as we go beyond the individual. That is to say: a patient cannot be treated by psychoanalysis, either therapeutically or educationally, as between individuals. Something universal

must enter, must enter even the general culture of the period, something which directs the soul to that which would otherwise remain subconscious; and that which draws the subconsciousness upward must become the milieu—not a transaction between individuals.

Here, you see, lies the great mistake that is being made. It has a terrific range and is of immense importance. Instead of trying to lead them to the attainable knowledge of the spiritual world which is demanded by the times, the psychoanalysts shut all the souls who show any morbid symptoms into sanatoriums, and treat each one in the individual manner. It can lead only to the forming of confused karmic connections—what takes place does not bring to light the subconscious soul content, but simply forms a karmic tie between doctor and patient because it encroaches upon the individual.

You understand: we are dealing here with real, concrete life, with which it does not do to play, which can only be mastered if nothing is striven for in this field except what is humanly universal. These things must be learned by direct relations of human beings with the spiritual world. Therefore it would be useful if people were to stop talking abstractly as Jung does, saying that a man experiences subconsciously everything that mankind has been through, even all sorts of demons. He makes them into abstract demons, not realities, by saying that it is stupid to discuss their possible existence. He makes them into abstract demons, mere thought demons that could never make a man ill. They can exist only in consciousness, and can never be subconscious. That is the point: that people who give themselves up to such theories are themselves working with so many unconscious ideas that they can never happen upon the right thing. They come instead to regard certain concepts as absolute, infallible; and I must ever repeat that when ideas begin to become absolute, men get into a blind alley, or reach a pit into which they fall with their thinking.

A man like Dr. Freud is obliged to stretch the sexual domain over the entire human being in order to make it account for every soul phenomenon. I have said to various people with psychoanalytic tendencies, whom I have met: A theory, a world-concept must be able to hold its own when you turn it upon itself, otherwise it crumbles into nothingness. The simple fallacy, if you extend it far enough, is an example. A Cretan says: All Cretans are liars. If it is said by a Cretan, and it is true, then it would be a lie, which causes the saying to annul itself. It will not do for a Cretan to say “All Cretans are liars,” expecting the sentence to pass unchallenged. That is only a sample of absolutizing. But a theory should not crumble when turned upon itself. Just as the statement that all Cretans are liars would be a lie if made by a Cretan, so does the theory of universal sexuality crumble if you test it out by applying it to the subject itself. And it is the same with other things. You can understand such a principle for a long time without applying it vigorously, in accordance with reality. But it will be one of the particular achievements of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, that it cannot be turned in this manner against itself.

• 1. Beyond the Limits of the Soul. (This book has not been translated into English. Ed.)

Die Menschenraetsel In Der Philosophie Und In Der Geistesforschung (Anthroposophie). (The Mystery of the Human Being. Lecture given at Zurich, Switzerland, October 9, 1916)

It is often said today that when man's spiritual life is in a confused, chaotic condition and human souls have lost their courage, their confidence, and their hope for the future, then all kinds of occult and mystical endeavors are likely to spring up. And in circles which are not inclined to make exact distinctions, Anthroposophy is often reckoned among such endeavors. This evening's subject, which concerns the nature of Anthroposophy, is intended to show you how little it is justified to confuse anthroposophical research with much else with which it is often confused today. Anthroposophy starts from that scientific seriousness and conscientious exactitude which have been developed particularly in the natural sciences in the course of recent centuries and especially in the nineteenth century. Anthroposophy, however, seeks to develop what can be achieved within certain limits by natural science, up to what can be called the supersensory worlds, up to the comprehension of those fundamental riddles with which the deepest longings of the human soul are concerned, the longing for the comprehension of the eternal in the human soul and of the relation of this soul to the divine, spiritual foundations of existence.

Although Anthroposophy begins from scientific foundations, it had to develop—since it is concerned with these comprehensive problems which concern all human beings—in such a way that it comes to meet the understanding of the simplest human heart, and the practical needs of human souls and spirits at the present time, when there is so much need for inner steadiness and certainty, for strength in action, and for faith in mankind and its destiny. Anthroposophy had to come to meet varied social and religious endeavors in the way that I will describe this evening, although having itself a thoroughly scientific origin. But Anthroposophy must take more seriously than do many who believe that they are standing on the firm basis of present-day scientific research, the possibilities which this research leaves open. Anthroposophy has to contemplate with particular attentiveness what are regarded by some careful thinkers today as the limits of science.

If we use the methods of scientific research, observation of the sense world, experiment, and thought, which combines the results of observation and experiment, and find in this way the laws of nature as we are accustomed to regard them, we easily come to the conviction that this research has its limits. It cannot reach beyond the world of the senses and its laws, and cannot comprehend more of the human being than that part of it which belongs to this sense world as the human physical, bodily nature. It has to accept that it has limits as far as the real value, dignity, and being of man are concerned, and that it cannot penetrate the real soul and spirit of man. Anthroposophy, if it seeks to be taken seriously, has to take conscientious account of these things. It has to see this danger seriously: one may not arbitrarily extend that thinking which has been acquired in natural science, beyond the sense world. It would be arbitrary to do so because this manner of thought has acquired its strength and its training through the use of the senses and at once becomes empty, vague and unsatisfactory if it attempts by itself to penetrate to regions which are beyond the sense world. You know that there are certain philosophical speculations, through which thought by itself attempts to go from the sense-given data to the supersensory. Such thinking, relying upon itself alone, attempts to make all sorts of logical inferences which lead from the temporal to the eternal. But anyone who in an unprejudiced way makes the attempt to satisfy the needs of his soul for a knowledge of the eternal through such logical inferences will soon be dissatisfied, for he will recognize that this thinking, which can observe the beings and phenomena of nature so confidently, must at once lose its confidence when it leaves the realms accessible to the senses. Hence the conflict of different philosophical systems; each chooses according to its subjective peculiarities the way in which it leads beyond the world of the senses and develops its own theory. No harmonious, satisfactory conception of the world can come about in this way. Anthroposophy has to see clearly how an unprejudiced mind must regard such ways of thought, which rely upon themselves alone. Here it sees one danger which must be overcome if the eternal in man and in the universe is to be truly known.

Thus Anthroposophy recognizes the limits set to our knowledge of nature, and it must recognize on the other hand how some more far-reaching minds look elsewhere for the help in answering the great riddles of existence, which natural science cannot give them. They turn to what is called mysticism or inner contemplation, where the soul seeks to turn and to descend into its own depths, and to discover there what cannot be found by science, or in the ordinary consciousness. But he who takes the search for the eternal as seriously as the anthroposophist must do, has to recognize in these other paths the illusions into which such mystics often fall. Anyone who can observe the life of the human soul without prejudice knows the meaning of the human memory in the whole life of the soul. Memories have their origin in the external perceptions of the senses; here we receive our impressions. We call up again the pictures of such impressions from our memories, often years later, and it may then happen that some external sense impression has been received by our soul, perhaps half unconsciously, without being observed with the necessary attentiveness. It has sunk into the furthest depths of the soul, and it comes up again, intentionally or unintentionally, years later. It may not reappear in its original form, but changed in such a way that it will only be recognized by someone with an exact knowledge of the soul's life. What was originally stirred in the soul by an outer impression has been received by all kinds of feelings and impulses of will, received indeed by the organic, bodily constitution; it may arise in the soul years later, entirely changed. He who has taken hold of it may believe that what is really only a transformed sense impression, which has passed through the most varied metamorphoses and has reappeared during mystical self-immersion, is the revelation of something that is eternal and does not originate from the external world of the senses. Anthroposophy has to see how mystics, who look for their revelations in this way, fall into the most grievous illusions; and it has to recognize that such mysticism is a second danger. It has to overcome the dangers which arise both at the limits of our knowledge of nature and at the limits of our own human soul life.

I had to say this first, in order that it can be seen how conscientiously Anthroposophy is alert to all the sources of error which can arise. For I will now describe the ways Anthroposophy itself adopts in order to reach the spiritual, supersensory worlds. I will have to describe much that is paradoxical, much that today is quite unusual.

It is easy to believe, and many people do believe, that Anthroposophy is nothing but a more or less fantastic attempt to acquire knowledge of worlds with which serious scientific research should have nothing to do. Anthroposophy sees clearly, in what ways knowledge about the spiritual is NOT to be achieved and in this way comes to a starting point for genuine research. Having learned about the ways which can lead to illusions and errors, it reaches a real preliminary answer to this question. It can say: With the ordinary powers of knowledge which we have in everyday life, and which are used by our recognized sciences, it is not possible to go further (because of the limits of our knowledge of nature and of mystical self-immersion) than external nature, and what is received by a man from this external nature into the life of his soul. If we are to reach further, we must call on powers in the soul's life which in our ordinary existence are still asleep, and of which man is ordinarily unconscious. Anthroposophy develops such sleeping powers in the soul in order that, when they are awakened, they can achieve knowledge of realms to which our ordinary powers cannot reach. Serious and exact researchers do indeed already speak today about all sorts of abnormal powers of the human soul, or of the human organism, through which they try to show that man is involved in other relationships than those recognized by ordinary biology or physiology. But Anthroposophy is not concerned with such abnormal powers of the soul either. It uses the normal powers of the human soul life, but develops these further. For this one thing is indeed necessary from the first which I would like to call intellectual modesty.

We must be able to say to ourselves: In early childhood we came into the world in a dreamlike condition, and could only use our own limbs very imperfectly, or were quite unable to orientate ourselves in the world. But through education and through life itself, powers which at first only slept in us developed out of the depths of our human constitution. And now that we possess the powers developed by education and by life we must be able to say to ourselves: Within our souls may sleep other powers also which could be unfolded from some starting point that life provides, just as the powers of the child have been developed up to the present time. That this is indeed the case can only be shown in practice, and this is what anthroposophical research does. First we have to consider the whole life of the human soul, in order that we can develop its powers further, from the condition in which we found them in ordinary life.

To begin with, we are concerned with the human power of thought on the one hand, and with the will on the. other. Between these two, between the thinking which has trained itself through the impressions of the senses, and also through the guidance given to us in life—between this power of thought and the power of will through which we can enter life as active human beings, lies the whole realm of our feelings. For anthroposophical research we shall be principally concerned in developing our powers of thought and will up to a higher level than they possess in ordinary life. For knowledge about the eternal cannot be achieved by outer measures, but only through an intimate education of the powers of the soul themselves. But when the power of thought on one side and the power of the will on the other, are developed further than in ordinary life, then the power of feeling, which is the deepest, most essential part of the human soul, will also be in some way transformed, as we shall see. To begin with, we are concerned with the question: How is the power of thought to be prepared for a higher stage of knowledge than that acquired in ordinary life?

Now in my book, “Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment,” and in other books as well, I have described these methods and exercises. Today I will describe the development of the soul's capacities in principle, and must refer you to these books for the details. For an introductory lecture it must be sufficient to point out the fundamental principle, which makes clear the real purpose and essence of the matter.

The power of thought which we have in ordinary life depends upon the external impressions of the senses. These impressions are living ones. Before us stands the world of colors and tones, and from it we receive living impressions. There remain behind in our soul the thoughts formed through these impressions, and we regard these thoughts rightly as shadowy. We know that in ordinary life these thoughts have a lesser degree of intensity for the soul than the impressions of the senses. We know too that the ordinary thoughts connected with sense impressions are in a sense taken more passively by man than are the immediate sense impressions.

Now our first task is to take that very vitality with which the soul experiences the impressions of the senses as a standard for the enhanced and strengthened life of thought which is to be developed in Anthroposophy as an instrument of research. The life of thought is to be enhanced and intensified in the following way. What I have to describe will appear simple, though the science of the spirit as a whole, as it is intended here, is no simpler than research in an observatory, in chemical or physical laboratories, or in a clinic. What I am here describing in principle in a simple way demands in practice, according to a man's capacities, years, months, or weeks. There are many such exercises for the soul. I will choose a few characteristic ones.

First, we must observe how we really stand toward thought in ordinary life. Strange though it sounds, the unprejudiced observer of his own thought should really say: The expression, “I think” is not quite exact. Thought develops in contact with external things; we only become conscious because in a sense we look back on our own physical organism and regard ourselves in a way from outside, that this developing thought is bound to our physical organism. Hence we say, “I think.” For the ordinary consciousness this “I think” is by no means fully justified. Anthroposophical research works in a direction through which it can become fully justified. It takes for example a simple idea or a simple group of ideas, and puts it in the midst of the soul's whole conscious life. The whole conscious life of the soul is concentrated on this one idea or group of ideas. This can be achieved through practice; I have described particular exercises in the books I have mentioned.

These exercises can help one to guide one's attention in such a way that it disregards everything else which otherwise occupies the soul from outside or from within, and by one's own innermost decision, as otherwise happens only with tasks of a mathematical kind, one is exclusively concerned with a simple group of ideas or single idea. But it is best, and should really be so, that an idea of this kind is not taken from one's memory. In memory, all sorts of experiences are engaged in alteration and metamorphoses, as I have already indicated.

Therefore it is good to seek out the ideas upon which attention is to be directed, from a book, or something of the kind, which is quite new to one—like an entirely new sense impression to which the living attention of the soul can be directed, and which has its effects through itself alone. Or one can receive from a person, who has experience in these things, a group of ideas of this kind, in order to have something which is entirely new.

There is no need to fear that in this way another person acquires power over one's soul in an improper manner, for it is not a question of letting this group of ideas have an influence upon one, but of developing the soul's own strength through uttermost attentiveness. The result then is that just as the muscles of an arm can be strengthened by exercise, thinking as a power of the soul can be made stronger and more intensive by being concentrated with the uttermost attentiveness upon a definite group of ideas, and by the repetition of such exercises in a rhythmic sequence. In this way the life of thought itself, without being dependent upon the impressions of the senses, can be made as living and intensive as is otherwise the experience of an external sense impression. Before, we had only pale thoughts, as compared with the living sense impressions; now, through these exercises, which I call meditation or concentration, a thinking is to be developed which gains inner strength until it is just as vivid as are sense impressions.

Here you see at once, that anthroposophical research goes in the opposite direction from that followed in the development of certain pathological conditions. What comes about in visions and hallucinations, through medium-ship, or through suggestion under hypnosis and things of this sort, goes in a diametrically opposite direction from the extension of the normal power of thought in anthroposophical research. If a man develops anything which leads him to hallucinations or visions, through which he becomes susceptible to suggestion, the powers of his soul are diverted in a certain way from the sense impressions and stream down into his physical organism. A man who suffers from hallucinations and visions becomes more dependent upon his physical organism than he is upon external sense impressions.

But the anthroposophical path of knowledge aims at the kind of experience which the soul has with external sense impressions. One who practices meditation and concentration must devote himself by his own individual choice, with the attentiveness he develops by his own decision, to that content which he has placed in the midst of his consciousness. Something comes about in this way which is different in principle from all pathological conditions, which can only be confused with the anthroposophical path through misunderstanding. If a man becomes subject to hallucinations and visions, or if he becomes open to suggestions under hypnosis, his whole personality is submerged in this life of hallucinations and visions. Into this disappears his ordinary consciousness, with its power of healthy human judgment.

The opposite is the case when a kind of higher consciousness is developed through meditation and concentration, carried out in the way I have described. If a man really acquires a power of thought which is enhanced and strengthened in this way, he has indeed higher faculties of soul.

But the ordinary clear-minded human being as he is occupied otherwise in knowledge and the fulfillment of his duties, remains active, side by side with the new, in a sense, second personality. The everyday man stands beside this second personality, who possesses a higher power of knowledge; he stands beside him with the ordinary power of knowledge, actively testing and criticizing. That is a difference in principle, which cannot be emphasized enough, when anthroposophical knowledge is described. And then, when in this way, thinking has been strengthened by meditation and concentration, one becomes able to say at a certain point of development: Now I am really the one who thinks within me; now I have experienced in an increased measure my own I within the world of my thoughts. As I experience myself otherwise in the external life of the senses, I experience myself now in thought itself.

This thinking is transformed, however. It does not appear before the soul's gaze like the ordinary pale thinking which is developed for use in the sense world. It is an abstract thinking no longer; it is experienced as intensively as colors and tones and one feels oneself strongly within it. And at a certain point one knows that one is no longer thinking with the help of the bodily instrument. (For ordinary thought always uses the physical instrument; Anthroposophy acknowledges this completely.) Now thinking has detached itself from the nervous system. This is known through inner experience. One knows when the moment has come in which the soul can live independently in thoughts, which however are no longer abstract, but pictorial.

The soul now really experiences itself for the first time, and at a certain moment, when a man is sufficiently mature, the first result of anthroposophical research appears before the soul's gaze. The entire earthly life appears in a mighty single picture, stretching back from the present moment toward birth. Otherwise this earthly life can be reached by memory, but to begin with it is a subconscious or unconscious stream within the soul. With or without our own decision, a few memory pictures can be raised from time to time from this stream, which goes back into our early childhood; but the stream of memories living in the soul more or less unconsciously is not what is meant by the great picture of our lives described here, through which we have in a single moment the inner being of our human experience before us, insofar as this experience takes place on earth. It is not as if we had particular events before us as they appear in memory; we have what can be contemplated as those impulses, which give us our abilities, that which gives us, from within, our moral powers, and that too which from within guides the powers of our growth and our assimilation. We have before us what I have called in the books I have mentioned the body of formative forces, or if we make use of older names which have always existed for such things, the human etheric body or life body.

This is a second, supersensory organism. It cannot be reached on the paths of ordinary natural science, or on the paths of logical thought alone; one must have developed what I have described as an enhanced power of thought, which is called, in the books I have mentioned, “Imaginative knowledge”—not as something concerned with fantasy, but because this thinking lives in the soul in a pictorial form and is itself knowledge. And so one experiences in addition to the external physical body, with its spatial limits, what I would like to call a time body, which is in constant movement, which can be perceived by the soul all at once, like a mighty picture of our life, and which contains everything that has worked from within upon our form, as far back as we can see in our earthly lives.

This body of formative forces, which is the first element in the higher, supersensory man, cannot be immediately represented in a drawing. Anyone who wished to draw it would have to realize that this is like painting a flash of lightning of which only a single moment can be represented. Anything drawn or painted of the etheric body would be like a flash of lighting, held fast only for a moment of its unceasing movement.

Through this the knowledge has been acquired that man in his inner being does not contain only the result of chemical and physical processes in his physical body; it has been learned in direct perception that man bears within him something akin to the nature of thought, and which can be reached through concentrated and strengthened thought processes. It is the first result of anthroposophical development, that one comes to know in perception this first super-sensory member of man's nature, the body of formative forces, or etheric body.

In order to reach further it is now necessary not only to do exercises of concentration and meditation in the way that has been described. It is necessary to observe that although one can give one's attention to such meditation and concentration by one's own decision with absolute clarity like a mathematician making his calculations, one gradually becomes completely absorbed in the subject of this concentration. It becomes difficult to detach oneself from the object of this uttermost attentiveness. Thus side by side with these exercises in concentration, it is necessary to do others which are entirely different. These have the aim of making possible the dismissal from the soul of all that has been placed before one's consciousness through one's own decision, and upon which one has concentrated. This must be dismissed with exactly the same clarity and conscious choice. By doing for a long time, in rhythmic sequence, such exercises in the rejection of ideas which first have been placed in the center of our consciousness with all our strength, a particular faculty of soul is acquired which has great importance for further research. One becomes able to achieve what I would like to call “an empty consciousness in full wakefulness.”

What is meant by this can become clear when we consider how a man who receives no external impressions, or has impressions that are similar to none at all, because they are monotonous or continually repeated, has his power of attention weakened. Under such conditions a man's consciousness becomes sleepy and dull. To achieve an empty consciousness without regular practice is impossible. It can be done only through practicing first an awareness of strongly intensified thoughts which are then dismissed from consciousness. Our consciousness can then remain so intensive and wakeful that it can retain this wakefulness, even when it has at first no content. This empty consciousness has to be achieved if one wishes to reach beyond the first result of anthroposophical research, the power of perceiving in a single picture the soul's inner being since birth.

If such exercises in the dismissal of ideas have been practiced long enough, and a certain maturity in doing this has been achieved, one will be able to dismiss this whole picture of life, which I have described, after it has been present to the soul. A second stage of higher knowledge is achieved if one can dismiss from consciousness (without letting this consciousness then be filled by external impressions) this life picture, which consists of our entire inner human being as it reveals itself during this earthly life as something constantly mobile forming our body from within. This life picture is our inner, etheric, earthly manhood, our body of formative forces, which is to be dismissed from consciousness.

I have called the first stage by the name “Imaginative knowledge;” it gives us only our subjective inner being in a life picture, as I have described. One must be entirely clear that through this first stage of supersensory knowledge one has only this subjective inner being. Then one will not fall into illusions, and even less into visions or hallucinations. A spiritual researcher in the anthroposophical sense is completely clear about every step of his path of knowledge.

If an empty consciousness is achieved through the dismissal of this life picture, the second state of higher super-sensory knowledge begins. I have called it “Inspiration.” Nothing superstitious or traditional is meant by this, but simply what I myself describe.—A terminology is necessary. When this has happened—when an empty consciousness has arisen through the dismissal of the life picture, the body of formative forces—then there arises in the soul through Inspiration what the soul itself was as a being of pure soul and spirit before birth, or, more precisely, before conception, when it was within a world of soul and spirit. The great moment now comes in such research, where one comes to know in immediate contemplation what is eternal in man's nature.

You see, the one who speaks from anthroposophical points of view cannot point to abstract conceptions which prove through logical inference or in some way that immortality exists. Step by step, he has to show what the soul has to do in intimate inner exercises in order to reach that moment when it can perceive what lives as eternal being within our soul. It can perceive this eternal being in the soul at that moment when the soul united itself through conception with the physical, bodily forces which are derived from parents and grandparents.

You may ask: When through Inspiration something of soul and spirit can be perceived, how does one know that this is the spiritual entity of the soul before conception? I can only explain through a comparison what is experienced directly at this point: Anyone who remembers an earthly event has perhaps a picture of what he experienced ten years ago. The content of this picture tells him that he does not have something before his mind which is directly aroused by an event of the present. He knows that the content of the picture directs him to something which happened ten years earlier. What now is experienced through inspired consciousness shows through its own content that it is something utterly different from what is present in the physical, sensory nature, where the soul is within the body. Time itself is part of the experience, as with the memory of earthly events. The impression itself reveals that we are concerned with the life before birth, with the experience through which the soul passed in a pure world of soul and spirit, before it has entered through the mother's body into the physical, sensory nature, which clothes it during earthly life.

After this stage of inspired knowledge has been achieved, and the question of immortality opens out toward a certain solution in one direction, in the direction of unborn-ness,—through other exercises which again have the character of knowledge, the other direction of the problem of immortality can be pursued. This can only happen through certain exercises of the will. Again, you will find exact details in the books I have mentioned, but here I will describe the matter in principle.

Man's will does not think; it does not resemble ordinary thought. Ordinary thought is aroused through external impressions, while man's will originates from within his organism. But in ordinary life we experience what this will is, only in a peculiar way. Take the simplest decision of the will, for example, the movement of the arm or hand, which is carried out because of an impulse of will. What of this impulse of will is really present in consciousness? Ordinarily this is not considered. But methodical research must have a firm starting point. At first we have the thought: we intend to raise and move the arm or hand. How this thought then dives down into our organism, how it stimulates the muscles and takes holds of the bones, how will makes itself effective within our organism, is completely unknown to the ordinary consciousness. Only later through an external impression, with which he can connect a thought, is he aware of the arm or hand which has been raised; of what happens between the first thought and the last impression, it must be said by real knowledge of the soul: This is beyond the grasp of our consciousness just as our experience between falling asleep and waking is beyond our consciousness, with the exception of the chaotic dreams borne up out of the waves of sleep.

It can be said: Man is really entirely awake only insofar as his life of ideas and thought is concerned. Through the element of will, a kind of sleep is included in our waking life. Paradoxical as it sounds, it must be said: Between the thought, which aims at an impulse of will, and the executed action there is a transition which is entirely comparable with falling asleep and awaking. The thought falls asleep into the unknown realm of will and awakens again when we observe the executed action.

The more one penetrates into the mysteries of the will (I can only indicate this briefly) the more one realizes that between these two regions I have described, the thought of intention and the thought which takes account of the observed execution of the act, there is really a kind of sleep present in man's waking life. A great alteration in the nature of the will can then be achieved by exercises, by particular exercises of the will.

Of the many exercises for the will mentioned in my books, I will single out a few here.—The will can be exercised, for example, by the direct influence of thought. The capacities of thinking, feeling and willing, which we have to distinguish in abstract thought when we wish to describe anything about the soul, do not lie so far apart in the real life of the soul, but play into one another. Thus the will plays into our thinking, when we connect or distinguish thoughts.

Now one can perform an exercise of the will by thinking backwards by one's own decision, something which ordinarily is thought of forwards, in the sequence of the external facts. For example, one can think a play backwards, from the fifth act to the first, beginning with the last events of the fifth act and ending with the first events of the first act. Or one can feel in thought the last lines of a poem, or of a melody in reverse order.

An exercise which is particularly valuable is at evening to allow the experience of the day to pass in part vividly before the soul, beginning with the last event of evening and progressing toward the morning. Everything must be taken atomistically as possible; one must go so far as to imagine the ascent of a staircase in reverse, as if it were a descent from the top to the lowest step. The more one forms ideas in this way in an unaccustomed sequence which is not dependent on the external facts, the more one liberates the will, which is accustomed to abandon itself passively to the external facts, from these, and also from the physical body.

After doing such exercises, further support can be won through others which I would like to call “exercises in serious self contemplation and self education.” One must be able to judge one's own actions and impulses of will with the same objective detachment as one can judge the actions and impulses of will of another personality. One must become in a sense the objective observer of one's own resolves and actions.

And one must go further: If you observe life, you know how you have changed in the course of the years. Everyone knows how in the course of ten years he has changed in his whole mood and attitude.—But what has been made of us in the course of the years, has been achieved by life, by external reality. These things must be seen objectively; it must be recognized how passively man accepts this external reality.

But now a man can practice self-education actively, in order to find the way into higher worlds. He can take his self-education in hand, by deciding, for example: “You will overcome this habit.” He uses all his powers to overcome a particular habit, or to acquire some new quality. If through one's own training, one achieves what otherwise is attained only through the influence of life, one gradually acquires the detachment of the will from the physical bodily nature. Something now happens which again I can only describe in a paradoxical way.

These things sound paradoxical because present-day thought is unaccustomed to them, but they are absolutely secure results of the anthroposophical path of knowledge which can be followed in the way I am describing, in order to enter higher worlds.

Although it will sound strange, you can make a comparison between an eye in which the vitreous body is obscured, or which has some kind of cataract so that through some opacity it cannot serve for vision, and an eye which is entirely healthy and transparent. The eye, which does not draw attention through its own bodily nature but takes a selfless part in our whole organism, through this very fact serves for our seeing. In ordinary life, our whole physical organism is comparable to a great opaque eye. Through such exercises of the will, our entire organism is made transparent. This is not done in any unhealthy way but in a way that is thoroughly healthy for ordinary life.

Nothing which is abstract or unhealthy for ordinary life should be attempted for the sake of achieving an entry into higher worlds.—It is a spiritualization of the will. We penetrate into the realm lying between the two thoughts—the thought containing the purpose of an action, and the thought of the action after it has been perceived. By making our organism in a sense entirely transparent for the soul, we enter a spiritual world. This is our task!

Just as the eye is not in the organism for its own sake, the whole physical organism is no longer there when these exercises of the will are continued; in a sense it becomes transparent. And just as it is the physical organism which catches up our impulses of will and makes them opaque, put them to sleep, through its instincts and impulses, its emotions and its entire organic processes,—in the same way everything now becomes transparent, as through the transparent, vitreous body of the eye, what is material is transparent in the eye. Through thus forming our entire physical organism into a transparent sense organ, we have now raised to a higher level a power of the soul which many are unwilling to accept as a means of knowledge, as I well know. It should indeed not be regarded as a means of knowledge as it exists in ordinary life. But through its further development it becomes such a means. This is the power of love.

It is the power of love which in ordinary life gives men a value as social beings. Love is the best and noblest power in ordinary life, individually and socially. When it is enhanced, as it can be enhanced through these exercises of the will, and when these exercises of the will make our organism transparent in this way, love develops to a higher level.

We gain the power to pass over into objective spiritual reality and the third stage of knowledge begins, that of true Intuition,—what I have called “Intuitive knowledge.” The word intuition is used also in ordinary life, and I will return to this point. Not in the sense used in ordinary life, but in this developed form as I have explained it, am I using the phrase “Intuitive knowledge” here. This is a knowledge in which man stands within the spiritual after he has made his body in a sense transparent, has transformed it into a sense organ. Through this knowledge something fresh enters the consciousness of the soul; we now learn how man can live within the will which has become independent of the physical body.

Man lives with the thought, which he has strengthened and united with his will, outside his body; and this provides him with the reflection in knowledge of the process of death.

What happens at death in full reality: that the soul and spirit detach themselves from the physical body and, after the human being has passed through the gate of death, continue their own existence in the world of soul and spirit—this is perceived in a picture, in a reflection that is a basis for knowledge, through intuitive perception, when, through an exercise of the will, we have transformed our whole organism into a sense organ. Thus immortality consists of two sides; on the one hand, of Unbornness, and on the other side, of Immortality, in the exact sense,—the fact that the soul is not destroyed by physical death. The eternity of the human soul consists in Unbornness and Immortality. It can be perceived through real anthroposophical research. Thus man comes to know in direct perception his own eternal and immortal being.

But as man comes to know his own being of soul and spirit, he also comes to know the environment in its soul and spirit nature. Through Inspired and Intuitive knowledge he comes to know the world of soul and spirit, in which the human soul lives before conception and after death. It is a world of real spiritual beings. Just as the world which we perceive with our senses lies before us with all its beings, there lies before the soul which is learning to experience itself in its existence as soul and spirit, the world from which we came at conception and through birth, and into which we enter again at death.—And just as our own bodily nature falls away from us, there falls away the sensory, bodily element which related us to other human beings, and we find ourselves in company with other men through our existence in soul and spirit.

Thus immortality, and the period of our existence in the spiritual world, become real results of knowledge. And this world of soul and spirit which always surrounds us, and which cannot be investigated by thought relying on its own resources beyond the laws of nature—this world of soul and spirit which is hidden in the spiritual part of nature, as the colors and tones are hidden in the sensory world—appears before the perception which can be developed in the way that has been described. The whole of nature then becomes something different from which it was in sense perception. It is not as though external nature with its material qualities and substances were to disappear. Before supersensory knowledge all this remains in existence, just as the healthy human being with his sound human understanding remains side by side with the personality which develops as the possessor of higher power of knowledge. To external nature is added a supersensory, spiritual nature, if you will allow me the seeming contradiction.

I will give one example for this spiritual perception within nature: For our ordinary sight and scientific knowledge the sun with its definite outlines exists in cosmic space. Through astronomy and astrophysics we form a definite picture of the form of the sun as something present in physical space and having its effects there. However, the sun becomes something quite different for the kind of research which uses the higher faculties that I have described. Through this it can be learned that the physical body of the sun present in space is only the body for a spiritual reality—and that this spiritual reality fills the whole space accessible to us. What belongs to the nature of the sun fills all the space accessible to us, and passes as a stream of forces through minerals, plants and animals, and through our human organism as well. In a way it is consolidated or concentrated in the external, spatial body of the physical sun, but what belongs to the sun-nature is present everywhere.

Just as we learn about external nature by representing it in abstract thoughts, through which external nature lives on in pictures, in the same way the spiritual foundations of nature live on more deeply in our spiritual human being. If we observe our abstract thoughts within us, we recognize that they are pictures of external, perceptible nature. If we observe the spiritual element in the external world and perceive how what belongs to the sun-nature works on within our being, we really come to know our own organism. For we find what belongs to the sun's nature within our own human constitution, in all those forces which work particularly strongly while we are still growing; these are the forces permeating us in our youth and which have their point of departure particularly in our brain and work in a plastic and constructive way upon our physical organism especially during early childhood. We come to know what is akin to the sun-nature in our own organism. And we come to know our particular organs: heart, lungs, brain, and so on, with a characteristic development of the sun forces in each. We come to know each organ, as far as its constructive, formative forces are concerned by learning about its relationship with the sun-nature.

I do not hesitate to describe these things, which are assured results of anthroposophical research, although they still appear paradoxical and perhaps fantastic to man today.

Just as we come to know the sun-nature, we can come to know all that stands in relation to the moon. We know the physical outlines of the physical moon; but the moon-nature too fills the whole of cosmic space accessible to us, and has its effects in all realms of nature,—has its effects in plant, mineral and animal,—has its effects too in our physical organism. We come to know the moon-like forces in their work within the whole human being. These are the destructive powers, those powers which are particularly active as we grow old. But these destructive forces are always active, in youth as in old age, within the process of assimilation, side by side with the sun forces.

We come to know how the whole cosmos with its forces streams into man. We come to know all that is present in man as varied processes. We understand the connection of the universe with the human being. And as I could describe in principle what the sun-nature and moon-nature are, the same could be done for other forces in the universe as well. A more intimate relationship than that recognized by ordinary science becomes known in this manner between the human being and the spirit in the universe.

In this way I have reached the point where I can describe how Anthroposophy, although it has developed as knowledge of the supersensory in the way I have described, can come to meet practical life and every region of scientific study. First I must point out how man becomes transparent for knowledge in quite another way, when he is understood in his relationship to the universe. Even physical man becomes the sum of many processes; what appeared to us before as the separate organs of heart, lung and brain, is transformed in a way that we never imagined into processes, in their growth and change. We come to know how constructive and destructive forces are contained in every organ in a different way.

As spiritual physiology and biology can be built up, such knowledge proves itself fruitful, particularly in the field of medicine, for pathology and therapy. When the human organism becomes transparent in this way, abnormal constructive forces, processes of rampant growth, can be known for what they are in the human organism. The abnormal destructive forces, processes of inflammation for example, can be understood in their connections too. For example, one comes to know what exists as polar opposite to an abnormal construction, that is, a process of rampant growth, through understanding the cooperation of sun-nature and moon-nature. One comes to know the corresponding remedy in a plant or a mineral. One comes to know how a process of rampant growth in the human organism corresponds to a destructive process in a plant or a mineral, and similar things. In short, one can go on from mere experiment among remedies to clear knowledge of how everything in nature, through the constructive and destructive processes contained within it, and through the other cosmic processes at work in everything, has its effects in the human organism.

When this is worked out in detail, it proves so fruitful that quite a number of physicians have felt themselves called to take up a rational medicine of this kind. Already there exist clinics at Dörnach near Basle and in Stuttgart, led by trained physicians who have taken up in a fruitful way the results of anthroposophical research into the basic spiritual facts which can supplement all that external research into the human body and into remedies can discover.

It must be emphasized that neither in this field, or in any other, does Anthroposophy engage in any unjustified opposition against what is really justified as scientific in the present time. On the contrary, Anthroposophy, when it is rightly understood must build on exact scientific method. Recognized medicine is in no way to be attacked, but only to be developed further.

Another field is that of the arts. Anthroposophy has existed already for two decades. At a particular time, a number of friends of the anthroposophical conception of the world could feel the necessity of building of Anthroposophy its own home. For reasons which I cannot describe in detail here, this home was built near Basle.

How would this home have been built by a different spiritual movement? If something of the kind was necessary in another spiritual movement, an architect would have been chosen who would have erected a building in the Classical, Renaissance, Rococo, Romanesque or Gothic style, or in a mixture of these styles. This would have been an outer frame for what was done inside it.

Anthroposophy cannot act in this way. It does not desire to produce a theory—something only concerned with the intellect, with the head,—and which can be contained in any sort of building. Anthroposophy seeks to work upon the whole human being. Just as it makes use of the whole human being as a sense organ, so everything that comes into the world through it proceeds from the whole, the entire human being. One cannot imagine a nutshell being formed by any other laws than is the nut itself. It is the same when Anthroposophy has to build, paint or carve, in order to provide a surrounding for itself. Everything artistic then must in a sense proceed from the same laws from which proceed the ideas that are spoken from the rostrum, out of the perception of the spiritual world. Hence, an ordinary, existing style was formed. It may still be very imperfect—it is a first attempt, a first beginning.

What has to be attempted can be described in this way: The shape of every wall and column, all sculpture and painting at Dörnach had to manifest the same thing as do the words spoken from the rostrum when Anthroposophy expresses in ideas what can be discovered in higher words through immediate perception. The spoken word is only another form of all that should work in an artistic way as the surrounding; everything really has flowed into artistic form.

What did Goethe say, when he wished once to express his ideas of art in the most intimate way? He said “Art is a manifestation of secret laws of nature, which without it would never be revealed.” And he also said significantly, “The man to whom nature begins to reveal her most intimate mysteries, feels a deep longing for her most worthy interpretress, Art.” One feels this longing most of all when the spirit which works in nature reveals itself in one's soul through supersensory vision. For then one receives no abstract allegories, but a real spiritual formative power, which has a sense for the materials and which can be embodied in particular substances as true art. Anthroposophy thus has a fruitful effect upon the field of art in all its forms.

A third field where it is shown how Anthroposophy provides fertile new impulses for life, is education. This has often been described in detail in lectures and writings in connection with the foundation and rapid growth of the Waldorf School in Stuttgart. It is a question of transforming what Anthroposophy can give into immediate educational skills; it is not a question of imposing anthroposophical ideas upon the children in the school. Through the fact that Anthroposophy provides a real knowledge of man, it gives a spiritual foundation for carrying out in practice the good principles expressed by the great educators of the nineteenth century. In educational practice, a real knowledge of man is needed. When one has come to know the whole of the human being fully, in body, soul and spirit, it is possible to derive from the child's nature itself the curriculum and the aims of education for each year of the child's school life.

Finally, to mention a few other areas, I would like to point out that Anthroposophy can have a fruitful effect upon social life as well, since the knowledge it achieves is concerned with the whole human being. We have seen how the one-sided use of the way of thinking developed in natural science has its definite limits, and cannot reach the true being of man, so that this way of thinking, if it shapes social purposes, is bound to work destructively.

I do not think that today there is sufficient unprejudiced judgment in wide circles capable of realizing the destructive character, for all human culture, of what has become, in the east of Europe, practical reality—and realized illusions at the same time. Those social impulses are derived from taking into account external nature alone. Like a great threat, there hangs over our entire present-day civilization what has begun its destructive course in the east of Europe. [Steiner refers to the spread of Communism resulting from the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, October 1918.—Ed.]

If social impulses are deepened by considering not only in an external way what is instinctive and natural in man and reckoning free actions in a sense as more highly developed instincts, then the true freedom of man in the spirit can be recognized. I have attempted to do this in my “Philosophy of Spiritual Activity” [published at the beginning of the nineties] on the basis of such anthroposophical principles. In this way a sum of social impulses can arise which relate whole human beings to whole human beings, and which can correct and spiritualize what is hanging over human civilization in such a destructive way, as a threatening specter of the future.

These are a few examples which show how Anthroposophy can be fruitful for life. If one considers the ethical and moral life in an unprejudiced way, as I have attempted to consider it and to place it upon a secure basis in The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, one comes upon the concept of Intuition of pure thinking, through an unconscious moral Intuition of pure thinking, through an unconscious moral Intuition. The true moral impulses which arise from the conscience are moral; their true source through Inspired and Intuitive knowledge as I have described these today from the anthroposophical point of view.

Thus with its knowledge Anthroposophy comes to meet the most intimate and important feelings and impulses of the human soul, above all, religious devotion. It would be utterly misleading if it were said that Anthroposophy sought to institute a new sect or found a new religion. Since Anthroposophy stands upon the basis of knowledge in the way I have described today, it cannot have about it, or desire anything of a sectarian nature. Nor can it institute a new religion. But if the supersensory reveals itself to knowledge, this can only be of benefit for the religions, and the religious needs of mankind.

One would believe that the representatives of religious faiths must feel deep satisfaction if a spiritual stream appears in our time, able to confirm from the side of knowledge what is sought by faith. Fundamentally it is incomprehensible that the official representatives of religious faiths do not see in Anthroposophy a confirmation of religious life, but often regard it as if it were something hostile. If they really grasped the fundamentals of Anthroposophy, and did not regard it superficially, they would see in it the firmest basis for real piety and real religious life.

For when the light of knowledge comes to meet the seeking soul, not only from the world of the senses but from supersensory worlds as well, then faith is not harmed, but strongly supported; and ethically too, the soul acquires powerful sources of goodness. For moral action it receives meaning, security, and purpose for life, since it comes to know itself as a member of a spiritual world as the external body is a member of a physical world. In this knowledge of himself as a member of a spiritual world, man can come to recognize again his true human dignity and a true ethics and morality worthy of his manhood.

I would like to sum up, as in a picture, what I have tried to describe as the nature of Anthroposophy. We have the human being before us; we see the form of his physical body. We only come to know his whole being when we see how his physiognomy is the expression of his soul and spirit. We have in natural science, which is fully recognized in its justified purposes by Anthroposophy, in a sense the knowledge of the external body of the world. In the natural science of the physical we have something that is itself a kind of intellectual body. Just as we have only the whole of man before us when his soul and spirit is revealed through his physical bodily nature, in the same way we have the knowledge of the world in its entirety, only when as if through a kind of wonderful physiognomy, through all that science offers us in its facts, its experiments, its hypotheses, its natural laws—a cosmic knowledge in soul and spirit comes to expression. For that body of knowledge, given in external natural science, Anthroposophy seeks to be the soul and spirit of a real and complete knowledge of man and of the world.

If we really grasp Spiritual Science, it gives us strength and confidence in life. How can we introduce it into our life so that it may help us to advance? Many people think that when they acquire knowledge in this sphere and accumulate spiritual truths it is not a help but a hindrance in a sound human life. Why, they ask, do we need all this knowledge of the spirit, why should we have to learn so much about the development of the earth and of a whole planetary system? Why do we need this at all? We are true theosophists, they say, when we strive to find the higher self within us and are enabled thereby to advance as human beings. There are others whose minds are more theoretical and who enjoy hearing of the different members of man's being, of the development of mankind through the different epochs of culture, and of the regular, numerical periods. They wish to learn of all these things as quickly as possible, noting down the most important truths in a few words and circulating them in a catechetical form. But we must affirm that neither of these notions correspond in any way to what Spiritual Science can mean to us, and does mean to those who have adopted the right attitude to life through It.

It is true that we must begin by learning that man consists of a physical body, an etheric body, an astral body and an Ego. But it is a mistake to think that by enumerating them we know something of man's being for when we do this we merely schematise. We really know something about man only when this knowledge is applied to life. But this is impossible unless we realise that the essential thing is not only to know the names of these four members, but how they are connected within the human being. When we look upon a human being, it is essential to know how his etheric body is connected with his physical body, whether the etheric and astral body tend towards each other and seek a close connection, or whether they are loosely connected. A closer observation shows that the relationship between these members of the human being changes in the course of mankind's development on earth. In the past, this relationship was different and, in the future, it will be different from what it is to-day.

If we study the ancient Egyptian in the first thousand years of Egyptian culture, thus looking upon ourselves in past incarnations, we shall find in him a human being whose physical, etheric and astral bodies were loosely knit together. But when we consider a human being of the present time, we find instead a more intimate and a closer connection between his different members. And in future, this connection will become closer and closer. This explains why we have to pass through the different epochs of culture. When we say that man reincarnates so and so many times, we may also ask: Why does he reincarnate?—Because the connection between his enveloping members always changes, so that the human being whom we meet in the external world during the different epochs, also changes. When we were Chaldeans, we had a quite different bodily constitution from that of to-day, and in the future, we shall again be differently constituted. Because of these differences our experiences as human beings are different.

It is now essential to develop the right kind of thoughts regarding the true relation of man's inner nucleus passing from incarnation to incarnation, with its enveloping sheaths—the astral body, the etheric body and the physical body. In reality, ordinary science does not know anything about the deeper laws ruling from one incarnation to another. It deals only with what is external. It ignores even the deeper significance of the laws ruling the external sheath. We may convince ourselves of this by considering some of the connections accepted by ordinary science or rejected by it.

It is very interesting to note that for a long time science was inclined to ascribe free will to man. Yet I have pointed out to you that in many respects modern science denies the existence of free will. It refers us to external scientific research which tells us to observe the external course of life. For example, statistics can establish how many suicides occur in a particular place. A certain regularity may be ascertained in regard to these suicides. Statistics show that this occurs at certain regular intervals. A certain number of people is simply condemned to commit suicide. How is it possible then to speak of free will?—One might go still further by drawing attention to the technique of insurance calculations which formulate and reckon out how many of a certain number of people will still be alive after thirty years. This is expressed arithmetically. Death and birth are thus imprisoned within external laws of Nature. Ordinary science admits this. It will, however, be forced to admit very different things also, for it is already evident that certain facts are coming to the fore which will compel people to think in a spiritual-scientific way. Generally speaking, science is not readily inclined to accept new ideas. In this direction it follows a very strange habit. One can hear people declaiming that in the Middle Ages there were men who opposed Kepler's discoveries. The greatest efforts were needed before his teachings could assert themselves against the dark minds of his age. The very people who more than others now draw attention to this fact, are those who adopt the same attitude, not only towards Spiritual Science, but also towards scientific facts which force us in the present time to seek spiritual laws.

A physician in Berlin, for example, ascertained certain numerical connections which appear in the course of human life. This doctor, Fliess [Wilhelm Fließ (1858-1928)] by name, began to register the connections between births and deaths by following them up in different families. For example, a female member of a certain family died on a certain day. Her first grandchild was born 1428 days before her death, the second grandchild 1428 days after her death, so that in this case the grandmother's death lies symmetrically before and after the birth of a grandchild. In the space of 7 times 1428 days after her death, a great-grandchild was born. By following up this case, we come to definite numerical connections, which finally determine in a very wonderful way the relationship between cases of death and birth. Fliess ascertained this in many instances. But apparently modern science does not wish to recognise it, because it goes too much against its own direction.

Even improvements in health-conditions are based on numerical connections. When we compare the number of deaths through tuberculosis during a certain epoch, with the number of deaths of the preceding decades, we again find that this is regulated by certain numbers. Doctors say that by hygienic measures they have been able to diminish the cases of death through tuberculosis. But Fliess proved that this decrease can be reckoned out on the basis of arithmetical connections. This is most inconvenient to modern science, but in the end it will be forced to admit the existence of objective arithmetical laws. It will return to the sentence of Pythagoras: "Number is something which rules everything that weaves and lives". With our soul we calculate, but the higher Spirits made these calculations long ago and set into the course of life something that is in keeping with numbers. The Pythagorean saying, "In calling the world into being, God is a mathematician" seems to come into play. On the other hand, if this is so it would strengthen the attitude of ordinary science which denies that man's inner being has any share in the destiny of his life. For if birth and death are connected in such a way that the distance between them is equal to 7 times 1428 days, it is possible to calculate when we have to die and in that case our inner being really appears to be imprisoned within violent external conditions.

Apparently, we must renounce speaking of special laws which rule our inner being. External reasons may however be adduced which tell us that this isn't quite right after all. According to calculations, a certain number of suicides may indeed take place at a definite place, but is it possible to determine arithmetically what person will commit suicide? According to the theory of probability it is possible to calculate the probable duration of human life. But I do not think that anyone will admit that he will have to die on the day fixed by arithmetical calculation. These laws based on mathematical formulae are of no consequence to man's inner being.

But how do matters stand when Fliess proves that 1428 days lie between a case of death and two births? Does this prove anything in regard to the inner laws of our Ego? For it is impossible to recognise right away the connection between the inner nucleus of our being and the external course of life. How can we explain this with the fact that we follow Karma, that we must follow our inner Ego? This is not easy to grasp.

Let me explain this by an analogy—it is quite possible that two events, two strains, two facts connected with each other should follow completely different courses. Consider this: when you travel from Baste to Zurich you go by train. You consult the time-table to find out when your train leaves. You become, as it were, intimately connected with the figures. Your thoughts, your objectives and so on are dependent on them. (There are, of course, many other figures in the time-table). But is it not the case that alongside this sequence of facts there is another (sequence of facts) that has to do with the development of your soul: that you want to progress or "catch the train?" When you consult the time-table it tells you nothing about yourself—whether you are good or bad, wise or foolish and is of no importance for the soul's being. Similarly, the figures that result from the calculations of Fliess are of no importance for the Karma of our life. We catch a certain train in life, entering a definite stream controlled by laws which are connected with our inner being only through things that we ourselves bring about. We decide which train to catch. In the same way we have to decide, through the inner laws of our Karma, to enter a certain stream of life which is then determined by arithmetical laws.

I speak of these things because those who seek the spirit should more and more acquire a feeling that life is complicated; it is something that cannot be encompassed by slack, easy thoughts. Those who think that it is an easy matter to grasp the whole of life, and that a few sentences taken from Spiritual Science suffice for this, are very much mistaken. We must be willing to penetrate more and more into these connections. We should acquire a feeling which shows us that the thoughts that lie at the foundation of the world's structure, are also valid for the human being. If no connection whatever existed between external laws and human Karma, our whole life would fall asunder.

Two facts can prove this. In Spiritual Science we endeavour to make the best possible comparisons. In a certain way the numbers in the timetable are connected with practical life. Even though it does not concern the time-table whether or not you travel to Zurich, even though you do not see any connecting link with your journey, the time-table is nevertheless connected with human conditions. For men have compiled it in such a way as to correspond, not too awkwardly, to the conditions of life. It is adapted to human conditions of life in general. Something similar is the case with human Karma and the stream of life which it controls. The Beings of the Higher Hierarchies fixed the "time-table" in accordance with numerical conditions, which are then discovered in the regular numbers of statistics. Outwardly, these correspond to human conditions in general. When we reincarnate, we may have an easy or a difficult life. Not in every family do we come across the law according to which a grandchild is always born 1428 days before or after its grandmother's death. But when we consider that 1428 is divisible by 28, that it is equal to 51 times 28, then it is easier to understand this numerical connection. These calculations will not always give the number 1428, but as a rule we find a multiple of 28 between the death and the birth of any member of a family. The multiples may be 30, 17, 26 times 28, and so forth, but they will contain the number 28: this is included regularly.

In accordance with the time-table we have the possibility to catch different trains, and according to our Karma we may arrange life in an easy or a difficult way. I mention this to indicate how complicated these conditions really are.

I also wish to point out that a moral conclusion may be drawn from all these truths. This constitutes the immensely important element given by Spiritual Science. We may say: I live in this world and I find in it numerical connections which show me how external life is regulated. It required long periods of human cultural development before this was discovered. But how much do we really know of these regular laws? Here we must admit that we know very little indeed. Slowly and gradually we discovered something of this divine wisdom. But just as we discover the most beautiful and important facets of wisdom, the wisdom admonishes us to be humble; it shows us how little our thoughts are able to encompass life.

This will stimulate us to continue striving for the Light. This moral feeling, this reverence which we have for the wisdom contained in the universe, is what we may acquire, so that we become better human beings. We acquire this feeling towards wisdom, it takes hold of us, when we recognise how near it was to us during our life between death and a new birth. When we have to come down to a new earthly existence, we choose the train by which we travel, so that we may fulfil our Karma. It is then that we choose our family-ties. If someone were to ask us now which family would be the best for our present incarnation, we would have no idea. If we had to depend only on our own forces, we could not make the right choice.

Before our incarnation we are far wiser than afterwards for at that time we make the right choice. The feeling that now we are not cleverer than before we were born, cannot fill us with pride in regard to our own achievements. For during our existence between death and birth we were filled with other forces besides those we have the moment we step into physical existence.

When we enter physical life, the substances of the earth's realms pervade us and exist within our body. On laying aside the physical body when passing through the portal of death, the Beings of the Higher Hierarchies receive us and we share their substance during our existence between death and a new birth, even as here we share the physical substances of the earth. These physical substances assert themselves—for example, iron streams through our blood in accordance with external laws—and similarly the Beings of the Higher Hierarchies assert themselves between death and a new birth by working within us, and it is their wisdom which pushes us towards the right stream of life. The Beings of the Higher Hierarchies are filled with the wisdom which we need, even as we are filled with physical substance. Humility is therefore a justified feeling, it is the moral consequence of the knowledge that during our physical life we have absorbed only a very small portion of the mighty wisdom of those Spiritual Beings.

Between death and a new birth, we are embedded in the Beings of the Higher Hierarchies. If we do not submit to them, this would be the same as trying to live on earth without taking in certain physical substances, such as hydrogen, oxygen, and so forth. It would be absurd to live without complete submission to the Beings of the Higher Hierarchies. Those who bear in mind the fact that between death and birth we must completely surrender to the Beings of the Higher Hierarchies will ask themselves: What is the best preparation for that existence? And they will give themselves the following answer: The best preparation is to unfold, already during the present earthly life between birth and death, a feeling of devotion for the divine-spiritual world. If we are pervaded by the right feelings, the truths which we receive will change into feelings of devoted surrender. Humility and reverence for the spiritual world will then live in all our feelings.

If we begin to think and live in this way, we shall also discover the true balance in the environing world, for thoughts of this kind regulate and harmonize all our other feelings.

Many mistakes of the external world are brought into the spiritual-scientific movement; they are mistakes which do not come from Spiritual Science, but which are brought into it from outside. For example, a person may be diligent and active in the outside world, but his activity might be characterized by saying that he is ambitious and does too much; he ruins his forces and does not notice that he should observe certain limits in his work. When such a person enters Theosophy, he will come across quite different ideas from those which he had in the external world. But he also brings into Theosophy his own characteristic qualities. He may, for example, hear that a certain amount of study is needed for the soul's progress. He begins to study,—yet he should learn to notice how much he can really do in accordance with the forces allotted to him by his Karma; he should not pursue theosophical studies which surpass his strength. Also, if for example, he becomes a vegetarian he must ask himself whether it agrees with him or not. Otherwise he will ruin himself.

The disciple of Spiritual Science must maintain the right balance. He must know if he can really follow the strictest obligations. A calm and humble observation of his Karma, of his own capacities and forces, may be acquired by accepting in the right way what Spiritual Science can give us. Those who have advanced furthest in occultism, faithfully observe the rule of maintaining the right balance. Some people try to force matters, when external circumstances obstruct a real training; they strive with all their might towards the aim which they have in view, work spiritually like slaves to obtain an immediate answer to the problems which rise up. But those who have really progressed, never do this. First of all, the existence of a definite problem should be clearly envisaged, and then the disciple of Spiritual Science should ask himself: Are you at this moment capable of obtaining a full answer? Wait (he should say to himself) until the Beings of the spiritual world send 3ou this answer. A true disciple of the spirit if he has to strain and push at the outset will give up for the time being. He knows that he must wait, and he can wait because he is filled with the knowledge of the eternity of life and that Karma, which he never forgets, gives each man his due. Then comes a certain moment in which he obtains a strange inner hint ... it is then that the Powers of the spiritual world may give him an answer. Perhaps after many years, even after many incarnations. But it is characteristic of a right attitude to be able to wait, to practise patience, to unfold soul-harmony.

Those who allow themselves to be influenced in the right way by the teachings of Spiritual Science will learn to master their feelings and sensations, so that they are always able to maintain a harmonious balance. If we adopt this attitude, our Ego sends forces into the astral body, so that the astral body absorbs the truths which come from the spiritual world, in the same way in which a sponge absorbs the water into which it is dipped. Spiritual knowledge gradually passes over into the astral body, and the astral body is pervaded by it.

We live in an age in which it is necessary, and in which it will be more and more necessary, to pervade the astral body with spiritual wisdom. The times change more and more, and they change also in regard to the crossing of the threshold of death. In future epochs, when man again returns to the earth, his astral body if not imbued with spiritual knowledge will not find its way about the spiritual world and will be filled with darkness. But if it is filled with the truths which we now absorb, it will become a source of light and it will shed this light on its environment, thus perceiving the wisdom which we take in here on earth, in the light of the spiritual world.

If we now ask ourselves why this future light of the spiritual world does not yet exist, we may say: It has not yet come, because in the past a primordial wisdom existed which could be impressed on man without any effort on his part. It existed as an inheritance which man had received from the old Moon. With this inheritance he could penetrate into the spiritual world. This lasted until the Christian era, when man could no longer obtain spiritual wisdom in an immediate way. In the present time he must first fill his soul with spiritual-scientific truths, which will constitute the power enabling him to enter the spiritual world, guided by the light in his soul. Human conditions change from epoch to epoch.

Every form of occultism knows that a wisdom exists which came from the old Moon and was still active, in its last traces, during the 15th and 10th century A.D. When the human being entered the spiritual world, he could see the light, which shone without any effort on his part. But in the present time, the whole wisdom of the past, which existed as an old inheritance, may unite with the human soul, but the soul no longer shines when we cross the threshold of death. Only the wisdom which we take in through Christ, by saying, "Not I, but Christ in me", will become a shining light, when in future we cross the threshold of death. We therefore take in the Christianized Spiritual Science in order that our astral body may become a source of light and that we may lift it out, when we cross the threshold of death.

When we take in this Christianized Spiritual Science and fill our astral body with it, it does not remain mere wisdom, for it permeates our feelings. We then learn to know the life-conditions of the past planetary stages of Saturn, Sun, Moon, and finally of the earth.

If you penetrate livingly into the descriptions in my Occult Science, you will be able to feel that the description of Saturn has an entirely different note from that of other planetary conditions. In the description of Saturn, you will be able to feel that conditions there are described with a certain harshness. Your soul will feel it. And this is essential. The Sun-existence will be experienced as if it contained a blossoming, growing life, and in the description of the Moon you will feel a dark, melancholic note in the conceptions pertaining to it. A sensitive person will even be able to taste it, he will feel its flavour on his tongue.

Fools may object that there are discrepancies in the descriptions and that a uniform style was not maintained. But we should realise that these differences are essential, and why. We should know why a melody of three definite notes must re-echo in the words of these descriptions, and when we know this, we are able to transform this knowledge into feelings which we send out into the world. These feelings undergo a change. The wisdom absorbed by the astral body changes into a freely willed surrender to the conditions of the world, and this takes hold of our etheric body. If we are wise, we shall prepare the path for this. The forces which enable us to descend into our subsequent incarnations form the etheric body and pervade it. If during our earthly life we have filled our etheric body with genuinely devout feelings and it then dissolves in the universal All when we die, we hand over to the universe an etheric body filled with devoutness, an etheric body which may be of benefit to the whole world. If on the other hand we have not been devout, but materialistic, the etheric body which we lay aside after death will have a destructive and explosive effect when it dissolves in the universal ether. In the same measure in which we gain wisdom, we help not only ourselves, but indirectly the world also, by acquiring better forces. And in the same measure in which we unfold devout feelings, we help the world in a direct way, for devoutness is imparted to the whole world.

Spiritual Science is not only able to bestow wisdom and unfold devout feelings, but it also gives us confidence and makes us aware of the body's vital forces. The conscious connection with the spiritual world in itself gives us these vital forces.

Fichte was aware of this connection of forces. He, too, had this confidence in life, so that when speaking of man's being he was able to say: Because I know of my connection with the eternal and that my innermost being is rooted in the eternal, I have such confidence in life that I am able to say: I look up to you, ye rocks and mountains; fall down upon me, crush my physical body; clouds, cover up everything that constitutes my being; thunder, split up everything which pertains to me; I shall nevertheless defy your might! Life-confidence streams out of the consciousness that we are rooted in the spirit's eternal essence. Can a man thus rooted in the spirit's eternal essence ever grow weak? It is Spiritual Science which gives him his strength, constantly pouring into him something of this strength.

What happens with this life-confidence? Wisdom gives the astral body the power enabling us to overcome more and more the obstructing forces and gives the etheric body its right structure. But the force which streams into our body through the knowledge of our connection with the eternal, is confidence in life, which penetrates into the very forces of our physical body. Maya, illusion and deception withdraw from us, if we are equipped with these forces. It is an illusion to say that our physical body decays into dust when we die. No! The structure of our physical body, the way in which we formed it, is not an indifferent matter. If this confidence in all that is eternal lives in the physical body, we give back to the earth this confidence in life which we gained for ourselves. We strengthen the earth-planet with the forces acquired during our life. Through our physical body we give the world confidence in life. The decadent part of our physical body is only a Maya. When we trace the physical body beyond death, we see that the amount of confidence in life which we acquired during our earthly existence streams into the earth.

We thus strengthen our astral body, our etheric body and our physical body by wisdom, devoutness and in life-confidence, the best forces which we were able to develop as human beings for the whole evolution of the earth. In this way we work upon the planet earth and we acquire a feeling which shows us that man does not lead an isolated existence in the world, but that the forces which he unfolds within himself are of value to the whole world. Every speck of dust bears within it the laws of the universe; similarly every human being builds up or destroys the world by what he does or leaves undone. We may give something to the progressive process of the world, or deprive it of something, and we may crumble away from it by ignoring it, by failing to acquire confidence in life. These sins of omission contribute to the decay of our planet, whereas the wisdom, the devoutness and confidence in life which we acquired, help to build it up. We may thus gradually obtain an idea of the feelings which Spiritual Science can give us, when it takes hold of the whole human being.

A lecture given during the first general meeting of the Anthroposophical Society in Berlin

My dear theosophical friends! When in the year 1902, we were founding the German Section of the Theosophical Society, there were present, as most of our theosophical friends now assembled know, Annie Besant and other members of the Theosophical Society at that date – members who had been so for some time. Whilst the work of organization and the lectures were going on, I was obliged to be absent for a short time for a particular lecture of a course which I was at that time – more than ten years ago – delivering to an audience in no way belonging to the theosophical movement, and the members of which have, for the most part, not joined it. Side by side, so to say with the founding of the theosophical movement in Germany, I had during these days to deliver a particular lecture to a circle outside it; and because the course was a kind of beginning, I had used, in order to describe what I wished to say in it, a word which seemed to express this still better than the word ‘Theosophy’ – to be more in keeping with the whole circumstances and culture of our time. Thus, whilst we were founding the German Section, I said in my private lecture that what I had to impart could best be designated by the word ‘Anthroposophy’. This comes into my memory at the present moment, when all of us here assembled are going apart, and alongside of that which – justly of course – calls itself Theosophy are obliged to choose another name for our work, in the first place as an outer designation, but which at the same time may significantly express our aims, for we choose the name ‘Anthroposophy’.

If through spiritual contemplation we have gained a little insight into the inner spiritual connection of things – a connection in which necessity is often present, even if to outer observation it appears to be a matter of mere ‘chance’ – feeling may perhaps be allowed to wander back to the transition I was then obliged to make from the business of founding the German Section to my anthroposophical lecture. This may be specially permissible today when we have before us the Anthroposophical Society as a movement going apart from the Theosophical Society. In spite of the new name no change will take place with regard to what has constituted the spirit of our work, ever since that time. Our work will go on in the same spirit, for we have not to do with a change of cause, but only with a change of name, which has become a necessity for us. But perhaps the name is for all that rather suitable to our cause, and the mention of feeling with regard to the fact of ten years ago, may remind us that the new name may really suit us very well. The spirit of our work – will remain the same. It is really that which at bottom we must call the essence of our cause. This spirit of our work is also that which claims our best powers as human beings, so far as we feel ourselves urged to belong to this spiritual movement of ours. I say, “ours best power as human beings” because people at the present time are not yet very easily inclined to accept that which – be it as Theosophy or Anthroposophy – has to be introduced into the spiritual and mental life of progressive humanity.

We may say “has to be introduced” for the reason that one who knows the conditions of the progressive spiritual life of humanity, gains from the perception of them, the knowledge that this theosophical or anthroposophical spirit is necessary to healthy spiritual and mental life. But it is difficult to bring into men’s minds, in let us say a plain dry way, what the important point is. It is difficult and we can understand why. For people who come straight from the life of the present time, in which all their habits of thought are deeply connected with a more materialistic view of things, will at first naturally find it very difficult to feel themselves at home with the way in which the problems of the universe are grappled with by what may be called the theosophical or anthroposophical spirit. But it has always been the case that the majority of people have in a certain sense followed individuals who make themselves, in a very special way, vehicles of spiritual life. It is true the most various gradations are to be found within the conception of the world that now prevails; but one fact certainly stands out as the result of observing these ideas – that a large proportion of contemporary humanity follows – even when it does so unconsciously – on the one hand certain ideas engendered by the development of natural science in the last few centuries, or on the other hand a residuum of certain philosophical ideas. And on both sides – it may be called pride or may appear as something else – people think that there is something ‘certain’, something that seems to be built on good solid foundations, contained in what natural science has offered, or, if another kind of belief has been chosen, in what this or that philosophical school has imparted.

In what flows from the anthroposophical or theosophical spirit, people are apt to find something more or less uncertain, wavering – something which cannot be proved. In this connection the most various experiences may be made. For instance, it is quite a common experience that a theosophical or anthroposophical lecture may be held somewhere on a given subject. Let us suppose the very propitious case (which is comparatively rare) of a scientific or philosophical professor listening to the lecture. It might very easily happen that after listening to it he formed an opinion. In by far the greatest number of cases he would certainly believe that it was a well founded, solid opinion, indeed to a certain degree an opinion which was a matter of course. Now in other fields of mental life it is certainly not possible, after hearing a lecture of one hour on a subject, to be able to form an opinion about that subject. But in relation to what theosophy or anthroposophy has to offer, people are very apt to arrive at such a swift judgment, which deviates from all the ordinary usages of life. That is to say, they will feel they are entitled to such an opinion after a monologue addressed to themselves, perhaps unconsciously, of this kind, “You are really a very able fellow. All your life you have been striving to assimilate philosophical – or scientific – conceptions; therefore you are qualified to form an opinion about questions in general, and you have now heard what the man who was standing there, knows.” And then this listener (it is a psychological fact, and one who can observe life knows it to be so) makes a comparison and arrives at the conclusion, “It is really fine, the amount you know, and the little he knows.”

He actually forms an opinion, after a lecture of an hour’s length, not about what the lecturer knows, but very frequently about what the listener thinks he does not know, because it was not mentioned in the hour’s lecture. Innumerable objections would come to nothing, if this unconscious opinion were not formed. In the abstract, theoretically, it might seem quite absurd to say anything as foolish as I have just said – foolish not as an opinion, but as a fact. Yet although people do not know it, the fact is a very widely spread one with regard to what proceeds from theosophy or anthroposophy. In our time there is as yet little desire really to find out that what comes before the public as theosophy or anthroposophy, at least as far as it is described here, has nothing to fear from accurate, conscientious examination by all the learning of the age; but has everything to fear from science which is really only one-third science – I will not even say one-third – one-eighth, one-tenth, one-twelfth, and perhaps not even that. But it will take time before mankind is induced to judge that which is as wide as the world itself, by the knowledge which has been gained outwardly on the physical plane. In the course of time, it will be seen that the more it is tested with all the scientific means possible and by every individual science, the more fully will true theosophy, true anthroposophy be corroborated. And the fact will also be corroborated that anthroposophy comes into the world, not in any arbitrary way, but from the necessity of the historical consciousness.

One who really wishes to serve the progressive evolution of humanity, must draw what he has to give from the sources from which the progressive life of mankind itself flows. He may not follow an ideal arbitrarily set up, and steer for it just because he likes it; but in any given period, he must follow the ideal of which he can say, “It belongs especially to this time.” The essence of Anthroposophy is intimately bound up with the nature of our time; of course not with that of our immediate little present, but with the whole age in which we live. The next four lectures,¹ and all the lectures which I have to deliver in the next few days, will really deal with the ‘essence of Anthroposophy’. Everything which I shall have to say about the nature of the Eastern and Western Mysteries, will be an amplification of ‘essence of Anthroposophy’. At the present time I will point out the character of this ‘essence’, by speaking of the necessity through which Anthroposophy has to be established in our time. But once again I do not wish to start from definitions or abstractions, but from facts, and first of all from a very particular fact. I wish to start from the fact of a poem, once – at first I will only say ‘once’ – written by a poet. I will read this poem to you, at first only a few passages, so that I may lay stress on the point I wish to make.

The god of love speaks softly to my inmost heart
In deep words of yearning,
He speaks of marvellous things,
Which throw my thoughts into a whirl;
So flattering is everything he says.
And as I hearken and delude myself,
I strive to repeat what I hear;
It is but lost labour.
It is beyond my power.

After the poet has enlarged further on the difficulty of expressing what the god of love says to him, he describes the being he loves in the following words:

At the sight of her,
Breezes from Paradise seem gently to fan me.
Love itself gives her that smile,
And what her eyes say is no lie.

It appears to be quite obvious that the poet was writing a love-poem. And it is quite certain that if this poem were to be published somewhere anonymously now—it might easily be a modern poem by one of the better poets—people would say. “What a pearl he must have found, to describe his beloved in such wonderful verses”. For the beloved one might well congratulate herself on being addressed in the words:

At the sight of her,
Breezes from Paradise seem gently to fan me.
Love itself gives her that smile,
And what her eyes say is no lie.

The poem was not written in our time. If it had been and a critic came upon it, he would say: “How deeply felt is this direct, concrete living relation. How can a man, who writes poems as only the most modern poets can when they sing from the depths of their souls, how can such a man be able to say something in which no mere abstraction, but a direct, concrete presentment of the beloved being speaks to us, till she becomes almost a palpable reality.”

A modern critic would perhaps say this. But the poem did not originate in our time, it was written by Dante.²

Now a modern critic who takes it up will perhaps say: “The poem must have been written by Dante when he was passionately in love with Beatrice (or someone else), and here we have another example of the way in which a great personality enters into the life of actuality urged by direct feeling, far removed from all intellectual conceptions and ideas.”

Perhaps there might even be a modern critic who would say: “People should learn from Dante how it is possible to rise to the highest celestial spheres, as in the Divine Comedy, and nevertheless be able to feel such a direct living connection between one human being and another.” It seems a pity that Dante has himself given the explanation of this poem, and expressly says who the woman is of whom he writes the beautiful words:

At the sight of her,
Breezes from Paradise seem gently to fan me.
Love itself gives her that smile,
And what her eyes say is no lie.

Dante has told us – and I think no modern critic will deny that he knew what he wanted to say – that the ‘beloved one’, with whom he was in such direct personal relations, was none other than Philosophy.

And Dante himself says that when he speaks of her eyes, that what they say is no untruth, he means by them the evidence for truth; and by the ‘smile’, he means the art of expressing what truth communicates to the soul; and by ‘love’ or ‘amor’, he means scientific study, the love of truth. And he expressly says that when the beloved personality, Beatrice, was taken away from him and he was obliged to forego a personal relation, the woman Philosophy drew near his soul, full of compassion, and more human than anything else that is human. And of this woman Philosophy he could use these words:

At the sight of her,
Breezes from Paradise seem gently to fan me.
Love itself gives her that smile,
And what her eyes say is no lie.

—feeling in the depths of his soul that the eyes represent the evidence for truth, the smile is that which imparts truth to the soul, and love is scientific study.

One thing is obviously impossible in the present day. It is not possible that a modern poet should quite honestly and truly address philosophy in such directly human language. For if he did so, a critic would soon seize him by the collar and say. “You are giving us pedantic allegories.” Even Goethe had to endure having his allegories in the second part of Faust taken in very bad part in many quarters. People who do not know how times change, and that our souls grow into them with ever fresh vitality have no idea that Dante was just one of those who were able to feel as concrete, passionate, personal a relation, directly of a soul-nature, towards the lady Philosophy as a modern man can only feel towards a lady of flesh and blood. In this respect, Dante’s times are over, for the woman Philosophy no longer approaches the modern soul as a being of like nature with itself, as a being of flesh and blood, as Dante approached the lady Philosophy. Or would the whole honest truth be expressed (exceptions are of course out of the reckoning), if it were said today, deliberately that philosophy was something going about like a being of flesh and blood, to which such a relation was possible that its expression could really not be distinguished from ardent words of love addressed to a being of flesh and blood? One who enters into the whole relation in which Dante stood to philosophy, will know that that relation was a concrete one, such an one is only imagined nowadays as existing between man and woman.

Philosophy in the age of Dante appears as a being whom Dante says he loves. If we look round a little, we certainly find the word ‘philosophy’ coming to the surface of the mental and spiritual life of the Greeks, but we do not find there what we now call definitions or representations of philosophy. When the Greeks represent something, it is Sophia not Philosophia. And they represent her in such a way, that we feel her to be literally a living being. We feel the Sophia to be as literally a living being as Dante feels philosophy to be. But we feel her everywhere in such a way – and I ask you to go through the descriptions which are still existing – that we, so to say, feel her as an elemental force, as a being who acts, a being who interposes in existence through action. Then from about the fifth century after the foundation of Christianity onwards, we find that Philosophia begins to be represented, at first described by poets in the most various guises, as a nurse, as a benefactress, as a guide, and so on. Then somewhat later painters etc. begin to represent her, and then we may go on to the time called, the age of scholasticism in which many a philosopher of the Middle Ages, really felt it to be a directly human relation when he was aware of the fair and lofty lady Philosophia actually approaching him from the clouds; and many a philosopher of the Middle Ages would have been able to send just the same kind of deep and ardent feelings to the lady Philosophia floating towards him on clouds, as the feelings of which we have just heard from Dante. And one who is able to feel such things even finds a direct connection between the Sistine Madonna, floating on the clouds, and the exalted lady, Philosophia.

I have often described how in very ancient periods of human development, the spiritual conditions of the universe were still perceptible to the normal human faculty of cognition. I have tried to describe how there was a primeval clairvoyance, how in primeval times all normally developed people were able, owing to natural conditions, to look into the spiritual world. Slowly and gradually that primitive clairvoyance became lost to human evolution, and our present conditions of knowledge took their place. This happened by slow degrees, and the conditions in which we are now living – which as it were represent a temporary very deep entanglement in the material kind of perception – also come by slow degrees. For such a spirit as Dante, as we gather from the description he gives in the Divine Comedy, it was still possible to experience the last remnants of a direct relation of spiritual worlds – to experience them as it were in a natural way. To a man of the present day it is mere foolish nonsense to except him to believe that he might first, like Dante, be in love with a Beatrice, and might afterwards be involved in a second love-affair with Philosophy, and that these two were beings of quite similar nature, the Beatrice of flesh and blood, and Philosophy.

It is true I have heard that it was said that Kant was once in love, and someone became jealous because he loved Metaphysics, and asked “Meta what?” – but it is certainly difficult to introduce into the modern life of the spirit enough understanding to enable people to feel Dante’s Beatrice and Philosophy as equally real and actual. Why is this? Just because the direct connection of the human soul with the spiritual world has gradually passed over into our present condition. Those who have often heard me speak, know how highly I estimate the philosophy of the nineteenth century; but I will not even mention it as possible, that anyone could pour forth his feelings about Hegel’s Logic in the words:

At the sight of her,
Breezes from Paradise seem gently to fan me.
Love itself gives her that smile,
And what her eyes say is no lie.

I think it would be difficult to say this about Hegel’s Logic. It would even be difficult, although more possible, with regard to the intellectual manner in which Schopenhauer contemplates the world. It would certainly be easier in this case, but even then it would still be difficult to gain any concrete idea or feeling that philosophy approaches man as a concrete being in the way in which Dante here speaks of it. Times have changed. For Dante, life within the philosophic element, within the spiritual world, was a direct personal relation – as personal as any other which has to do with what is today the actual or material. And strange though it seems, because Dante’s time is not very far removed from our own, it is nevertheless true, that for one who is able to observe the spiritual life of humanity, it follows quite as a matter of course for him to say: “People are trying nowadays to know the world; but when they assume that all that man is, has remained the same throughout the ages, their outlook does not really extend much further than the end of their noses.” For even as late as Dante’s time, life in general, the whole relation of the human soul to spiritual world, was different. And if any philosopher is of opinion that the relation which he may have with the spiritual world through Hegel’s or Schopenhauer’s philosophy, is the only possible one, it means nothing more than that a man may still be really very ignorant.

Now let us consider what we have been describing – namely, that on the transition from the Graeco-Roman civilisation to our fifth period, that part of the collective being of man which we call the intellectual soul, or soul of the higher feelings, which was specially developed during the Graeco-Roman period, was evolved on into the self-conscious soul, during the development which has been going on up to the present. How then in this concrete case of philosophy does the transition from the Graeco-Roman to our modern period come before us – i.e., the transition from the period of the intellectual soul to that of the self-conscious soul? It appears in such a form that we clearly understand that during the development of the intellectual soul, or soul of the higher feelings, man obviously still stands in such a relation to the spiritual worlds connected with his origin, that a certain line of separation is still drawn between him and those spiritual worlds. Thus the Greek confronted his Sophia, i.e. pure wisdom, as if she were a being so to say standing in a particular place and he facing her. Two beings, Sophia and the Greek, facing each other, just as if she were quite an objective entity which he can look at, with all the objectivity of the Greek way of seeing things. But because he was still living in the intellectual soul, or soul of the higher feelings, he has to bring into expression the directly personal relation of his consciousness to that objective entity. This has to take place in order to prepare the way gradually for a new epoch, that of the self-conscious soul.

How will the self-conscious soul confront Sophia? In such a way that it brings the ego into a direct relation with Sophia, and expresses, not so much the objective being of Sophia, as the position of the ego in relation to the self-conscious soul, to this Sophia. “I love Sophia” was the natural feeling of an age which still had to confront the concrete being designated as Philosophy; but yet was the age which was preparing the way for the self-conscious soul, and which, out of the relation of the ego to the self-conscious soul, on which the greatest value had to be placed, was working towards representing Sophia as simply as everything else was represented. It was so natural that the age which represented the intellectual soul, or soul of the higher feelings, and which was preparing the self-conscious soul, should bring into expression the relation to philosophy. And because things are expressed only by slow degrees, they were prepared during the Graeco-Roman period. But we also see this relation of man to Philosophia developed externally up to a certain point, when we have before us pictorial representations of philosophy floating down on clouds, and later, in Philosophia’s expression (even if she bears another name), a look showing kindly feeling, once again expressing the relation to the self-conscious soul.

It is the plain truth that it was from a quite human personal relation, like that of a man to a woman, that the relation of man to philosophy started in the age when philosophy directly laid hold of the whole spiritual life of progressive human evolution. The relation has cooled: I must ask you not to take the words superficially, but to seek for the meaning behind what I am going to say. The relation has indeed cooled – sometimes it has grown icy cold. For if we take up many a book on philosophy at the present day, we can really say that the relation which was so ardent [passionate] in the days when people looked upon philosophy as a personal being, has grown quite cool, even in the case of those who are able to struggle through to the finest possible relation to philosophy. Philosophy is no longer the woman, as she was to Dante and other who lived in his times. Philosophy nowadays comes before us in a shape that we may say: “The very form in which it confronts us in the nineteenth century in its highest development, as a philosophy of ideas, conceptions, objects, shows us that part in the spiritual development of humanity has been played out.”

In reality it is deeply symbolic when we take up Hegel’s philosophy, especially the Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences, and find as the last thing in this nineteenth-century book, a statement of the way in which philosophy interprets itself. It has understood everything else; finally, it grasps itself. What is there left for it to understand now? It is the symptomatic expression of the fact that philosophy has come to an end, even if there are still many questions to be answered since Hegel’s days. A thorough-going thinker, Richard Wahle,³ has brought this forward in his book, The Sum-Total of Philosophy and Its Ends, and has very ably worked out the thesis that everything achieved by philosophy may be divided up amongst the various separate departments of physiology, biology, aesthetics, etc., and that when this is done, there is nothing left of philosophy. It is true that such books overshoot the mark but they contain a deep truth, i.e., that certain spiritual movements, have their day and period, and that, just as a day has its morning and evening, they have their morning and evening in the history of human evolution.

We know that we are living in an age when the Spirit-Self is being prepared, that although we are still deeply involved in the development of the self-conscious soul, the evolution of the Spirit-Self is preparing. We are living in the period of the self-conscious soul, and looking towards the preparation of the age of the Spirit-Self, in much the same way as the Greek lived in the epoch of the intellectual soul, or soul of the higher feelings, and looked towards the dawning of the self-conscious soul. And just as the Greek founded philosophy, which in spite of Paul Deussen⁴ and others first existed in Greeks, just as the Greek founded it during the unfolding of the intellectual soul, or soul of the higher feelings, when man was still directly experiencing the lingering influence of the objective Sophia, just as philosophy then arose and developed in such a way that Dante could look upon it as a real concrete, actual being, who brought him consolation after Beatrice had been torn from him by death, so we are living now in the midst of the age of the self-conscious soul, are looking for the dawn of the age of the Spirit-Self, and know that something is once more becoming objective to man, which however is carrying forward through the coming times that which man has won while passing through the epoch of the self-conscious soul.

What is it that has to be evolved? What has to come to development is the presence of a new Sophia. But man has learnt to relate this Sophia to his self-conscious soul, and to experience her as directly related to man’s being. This is taking place during the age of the self-conscious soul. Thereby this Sophia has become the being who directly enlightens human beings. After she has entered into man, she must go outside him taking with her his being, and representing it to him objectively once more. In this way did Sophia once enter the human soul and arrive at the point of being so intimately bound up with it that a beautiful love-poem, like that of Dante’s could be made about her; Sophia will again become objective, but she will take with her that which man is, and represent herself objectively in this form – now not merely as Sophia, but as Anthroposophia – as the Sophia who, after passing through the human soul, through the being of man, henceforth bears that being within her, and thus stands before enlightened man as once the objective being Sophia stood before the Greeks. This is the progress of the history of human evolution in relation to the spiritual facts under consideration.

And now I leave it to all those, who wish to examine the matter very minutely, to see how it may also be shown in detail from the destiny of Sophia, Philosophia and Anthroposophia, how humanity evolves progressively through the soul principles which we designate the intellectual soul (the soul of the higher feelings), the self-conscious soul and the Spirit-Self. People will learn how deeply established in the collective being of man is that which we have in view through our Anthroposophy. What we receive through anthroposophy is the essence of ourselves, which first floated towards man in the form of a celestial goddess with whom he was able to come into relation which lived on as Sophia and Philosophia, and which man will again bring forth out of himself, putting it before him as the fruit of true self-knowledge in Anthroposophy. We can wait patiently till the world is willing to prove how deeply founded down to the smallest details is what we have to say.

For it is the essence of Theosophy or Anthroposophy that its own being consists of what is man’s being, and the nature of its efficacy is that man receives and discovers from Theosophy or Anthroposophy what he himself is, and has to put it before himself because he must exercise self-knowledge.

• 1. The Mysteries of the East and of Christianity, Berlin, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 7th February 1913 [PC]
• 2. Poem number 61 in Dante’s Rime {note from the book Isis Mary Sophia}
• 3. Richard Wahle (1857-1935) was professor of philosophy at the Universities of Czernowitz (in Western Ukraine) and Vienna.
• 4. Paul Jakob Deussen (1845-1919) was a German professor of philosophy at University of Kiel and academic researcher of the history and cultures, languages, and literature of the Indian subcontinent.