The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The background mood out of which I shall be addressing you today is not the same as that that prevailed on earlier occasions when I was privileged to speak here. Since New Year's Eve 1922, that mood is conditioned by the dreadful picture of the burning Goetheanum. The pain and suffering that picture inevitably causes anyone who loved the Goetheanum because of its connection with anthroposophy are such that no words can possibly describe them.

There might seem to be some justification for feeling that a movement as intent on spiritual things as ours is has no real reason to grieve over the loss of a material expression of its being. But that does not apply in the case of the Goetheanum we have lost. It was not an arbitrary building for our work. During its erection, a process that went on for almost ten years, I often had occasion to explain that a structure that might suitably have housed some other spiritual or similar movement would not have been appropriate for our Anthroposophical Movement. For, as I have often said, we are not just a spiritual movement, which, as its membership increased, found itself with a number of people in its ranks who wanted to build it a home in some conventional style or other. The point here was that anthroposophy is built on a spiritual foundation that is not one-sidedly religious or scientific or artistic. It is an all-embracing movement, intent on demonstrating every aspect of mankind's great ideals: the moral-religious, the artistic, and the scientific ideals. There could, therefore, be no question of erecting any arbitrary type of building for the Anthroposophical Movement. Its design had to come from the same source from which anthroposophical ideas receive their shaping as an expression of the spiritual perspective gained on the anthroposophical path of knowledge, and it had to be carried out in artistic harmony with that outlook. For almost ten years many friends worked side by side with me trying to incorporate and demonstrate in every single line, in every architectural and sculptural form, every choice of color, what was flowing from the wellsprings of anthroposophical investigation, anthroposophical life, anthroposophical intention. That was all incorporated there, and the building was intimately associated with the artistic and scientific striving in the Movement. Friends who attended eurythmy performances in the Goetheanum will surely have felt how, for example, the architectural forms and decoration of the auditorium harmonized with and responded to eurythmic movement. It was even possible to have the feeling that the movements of the performers on the stage there were born of those architectural and plastic forms. If one stood on the podium speaking from the heart in a truly anthroposophical spirit, every line and form responded and chimed in with what one was saying. That was our goal there. It was, of course, a first attempt, but such was our goal, and it could be sensed. That is why those who worked on the Goetheanum at Dornach have the sensation that the very feelings they put into their efforts went up in the flames of New Year's Eve. It was just this intimate connection of anthroposophical feeling and will with the Goetheanum forms—forms that were artistically shaped by and for spiritual contemplation and that can never find a substitute in any thought forms or words—that makes our grief at the loss we have suffered so immeasurably deep.

All this ought to become part of the memories of those who grew to love the Goetheanum and to feel the intimate connection with it just described. We must, in a sense, build a monument to it in our hearts in memory form. Even though the very intimacy of our connection with it is the reason why we are now shelterless, we must seek the more intensively for a shelter in our hearts that will replace the one we have lost, We must try with every means at our disposal to rebuild in our hearts, for all eternity, this building that has been lost as an external source of artistic stimulation. But the terrible flame into which all the lesser flames of New Year's Eve were drawn is there in the background of every effort yet to be made in the field of anthroposophy. Though living, spiritual anthroposophy came to no harm in the fire, a great deal of work that we had been trying to accomplish for anthroposophy in the present day world was brought to naught.

I do believe, though, that if what we experienced on that occasion becomes properly rooted in our members' hearts, the grief and pain we suffered can be turned into strength to support us in everything we are called upon to accomplish for anthroposophy in the near future. It is often the case in life that when a group of people find themselves faced by a common disaster, they are united by it in a way that gives them strength and energy to go on together in effective common action. Experience, not grey theories or abstract thoughts, should be the source on which we draw for the strength needed for our anthroposophical work.

My dear friends, I want to add these comments to those I will be making in connection with the theme I have had to choose for this conference, to a description of the conditions that must prevail in anthroposophical community building. I would like to include them not only because they are graven on my heart, but because they point to a fact on which we would do well to focus our attention in these coming days. A great deal of sacrifice and devotion went into the work on the Goetheanum. The impulses from which that sacrifice and devotion sprang have always been there to count on in the two decades of our work, wherever anthroposophy really lived. They were born of hearts filled with enthusiasm for anthroposophy, and the Goetheanum was the product of deeds done by anthroposophically-minded individuals. Though, for a variety of reasons, we are thinking—are having to think—today about how to regenerate the Society, we should not forget on the other hand that the Society has been in existence for two decades; that a considerable number of people have undergone experiences of destiny in their common work and effort; that the Society is not something that can be founded all over again. For history, real history, history that has been lived and experienced, cannot be erased. We cannot begin something now that began twenty years ago. We must guard against any such misconceptions as these as we proceed with our current deliberations. Anyone who has found his way into the Society over the years certainly sees plenty to find fault with in it, and is justified in doing so. Many a true and weighty word has already been uttered here on that score. But we must still take into account the fact that the Society has been effective and done things. There are certainly people enough in the Society who can express the weight of their grief and sorrow in the words, “We have suffered a common loss in our beloved Goetheanum.”

It makes a difference whether a person joined the Society in 1917 or later, and whether one's relation to it is such that these grief-stricken words issue from long and deep experience in it. That should influence our deliberations. It will do much to tone down the feelings that some of our friends had good reason to express here. I heard someone say (and I certainly felt the justice of the remark), “After what I have listened to here I will go home unable to continue speaking of anthroposophy as I used to when I was still full of illusions.” Part of what that sentence conveys will disappear if one considers how much those individuals who have been anthroposophists for two decades have gone through together, and how much they have had to suffer with each other recently, because that suffering is the product of a long life in the Anthroposophical Society. The load of worry we are presently carrying cannot wipe out all that human experience; it remains with us. It would still be there even if events here were to take a much worse turn than they have taken thus far. Are we to forget the depths for the surface? That must not be allowed to happen in a spiritual movement born of the depths of human hearts and souls. What has come into being as the Anthroposophical Movement cannot rightly be called sunless. Even the sun sometimes suffers eclipse.

Of course, this should not prevent our dealing with the situation confronting this assemblage in a way that enables us to provide anthroposophy once again with a proper vehicle in the form of a real Anthroposophical Society. But our success in that depends entirely on creating the right atmosphere.

It will, of course, be impossible for me to cover the whole situation today. But in the two lectures I am to give I shall try to touch on as much of what needs to be said as I possibly can. Some things will have to be left out. But I do want to stress two matters in particular. Those are the pressing need for community building in the Society and the symptomatic event of the entrance into the Anthroposophical Movement of the exceedingly gratifying youth movement. But in anthroposophical matters we have to develop a rather different outlook than prevails elsewhere. We would not have taken our stand on ground that means so much to many people if we could not see things in a different light than that in which the modern world habitually views them.

Community building! It is particularly noteworthy that the community building ideal should be making its appearance in our day. It is the product of a deep, elemental feeling found in many human souls today, the product of a sense of definite relationship between person and person that includes an impulse to joint activity.

A while ago, a number of young theologians came to me. They were preparing to enter the ministry. They were intent above all else on a renewing of religion, on a renewal permeated through and through by the true Christ force, such as to be able to take hold of many people of the period in the way they long to be taken hold of but cannot be by the traditional confessions as they are today. I had to bring up something that seemed to me to have vital import for the development of such a movement. I said that a suitable method of community building must be found. What I had in mind was to develop a religious and pastoral element capable of really uniting people. I told these friends who had come to me that religious community could not be effectively built with abstract words, the usual kind of sermon, and the meagre remnants of a divine service, which are all that most contemporary churches have to offer. The prevailing intellectualistic trend that is increasingly taking over the religious field has had the effect of saturating a great many present day sermons with a rationalistic, intellectualistic element. This does not give people anything that could unite them. On the contrary, it divides and isolates them, and the social community is reduced to atoms. This must be easy to see for anyone who realizes that the single individual can develop rationalistic and intellectualistic values all by himself. Simply attaining a certain cultural level enables an individual to acquire increasingly perfect intellectual equipment without depending on anyone else. One can think alone and develop logic alone; in fact, one can do it all the better for being by oneself. When one engages in purely logical thinking, one feels a need to withdraw from the world to the greatest possible extent, to withdraw from people. But the tendency to want to get off by oneself is not the only one man has. My effort today to throw light on what it is in the heart's depths that searches for community is called for by the fact that we are living in a time when human nature must go on to develop the consciousness soul, must become ever more conscious.

Becoming more conscious is not the same thing as becoming more intellectualistic. It means outgrowing a merely instinctual way of experiencing. But it is just in presenting anthroposophy that every attempt should be made to portray what has thus been raised to a clear, conscious level in all its elemental aliveness, to offer it in so living a form that it seems like people's own naive experiencing and feeling. We must make sure that we do this.

Now there is one kind of community in human life that everyone over the entire globe is aware of, and it shows that community is something built into humankind. It is a type of community to which a lot of attention is being given in modern cultural and even political and economic life, and this in an often harmful way. But there is a lesson of sorts to be learned from it, though a primitive one.

In a child's early years it is introduced into a human community that is absolutely real, concrete and human, a community without which one could not exist. I am referring to the community of human speech. Speech is the form of community that we might say nature presents to our contemplation. Speech—and especially our mother tongue—is built into our whole being at a time when the child's etheric body is not yet born, and it is our first experience of the community building element. We can lay it to the rationalism of our age that though people nowadays have some feeling for languages and nationality and conceive folk groups in relation to the language they speak, they do so from the political-agitational standpoint, without paying any heed to deep and intimate underlying soul configurations, to the tremendous aspects of destiny and karma attached to a language and to the spirit behind it, all of which are the real and intrinsic reason why human beings cry out for community. What would become of us if we passed one another by without hearing resounding in the other's words the same life of soul that we ourselves put into those same words when we use them? If everybody were to practice just a little bit of self-knowledge, we would be able to form an adequate picture, which I cannot take the time to develop now, of all we owe to language as the foundation of a first, primitive building of community.

But there is a community building element still deeper than language, though we encounter it more rarely. On a certain level, human language is indeed something that unites people in community life, but it does not penetrate to the deepest levels of soul life. At certain moments of our life on earth we can become aware of another community building element that transcends that of language. A person feels it when his destiny brings him together again with others whom he knew as children. Let us take an ideal example. Someone finds himself in later life—in his forties or fifties, say—in the company of several companions of his youth or childhood whom he has not seen for decades but with whom he spent the period between his tenth and twentieth years. Let us assume that good relationships prevailed among them, fruitful, loving relationships. Now imagine what it means for these individuals to share the experience of having their souls stirred by common memories of their youthful life together. Memories lie deeper than experiences on the language level. Souls sound more intimately in unison when they are linked by the pure soul language of memories, even though the community experience they thus share may be quite brief. As everyone knows from such experiences, it is certainly not just the single memories that are summoned up to reverberate in the souls of those present that stir such intimate soul-depths in them; it is something quite else. It is not the concrete content of the particular memories recalled. An absolutely indefinite yet at the same time very definite communal experiencing is going on in these human souls. A resurrection is taking place, with the countless details of what these companions experienced together now melting into a single totality, and what each contributes as he enters into the others' recollections with them is the element that awakens the capacity to experience that totality.

That is how it is in life on earth. As a result of pursuing this fact of soul life into the spiritual realm, I had to tell the theological friends who had come to me for the purpose described that if true community were to come of the work of religious renewal, there would have to be a new form of worship, a new cultus, suited to the age we live in. Shared experience of the cultus is something that quite of its own nature calls forth the community building element in human souls. The Movement for Religious Renewal understood this and accepted the cultus. I believe that Dr. Rittelmeyer spoke weighty words when he said from this platform that such a development of community could conceivably become one of the greatest threats to the Anthroposophical Society that the Movement for Religious Renewal could present. For the cultus contains a tremendously significant community building element. It unites human beings with one another. What is it in this cultus that unites them, that can make a commonality out of separate individuals atomized by intellectuality and logic, and that most certainly will create commonality? For that is surely what Dr. Rittelmeyer had in mind, that this is the means of building community. Since community, however, is also a goal of the Anthroposophical Society, the Society will have to find its own way of building it if the Movement for Religious Renewal is not to pose a threat to it from that angle.

Now what is the secret of the community building element in the cultus developed for the Movement for Religious Renewal with that specific end in view?

Everything that comes to expression in the various forms of worship, either as ceremonial acts or words, is a reflection, a picturing of real experiences, not earth experiences, of course, but real experiences in the world through which man makes his way before he is born; in other words, experiences of the second half of his path between death and rebirth. That is the part of the cosmos he passes through from the midnight hour of life after death to the moment when he descends again into life on earth. In the realm thus traversed are found the beings, the scenes, the events faithfully reflected in all true forms of worship. What is it, then, that a person is experiencing in the cultus in common with others whom some karma or other has brought together with him? For karma is so intricately woven that we may ascribe all encounters with our fellow men to its agency. He is experiencing cosmic memories of pre-earthly existence with them. They come to the surface in the soul's subconscious depths. Before we descended to earth, we and these others lived through a cosmic lifetime in a world that reappears before us in the cultus. That is a tremendous tie. It does more than just convey pictures; it carries super-sensible forces into the sense world. But the forces it conveys are forces that concern man intimately; they are bound up with the most intimate background experiences of the human soul. The cultus derives its binding power from the fact that it conveys spiritual forces from the spiritual world to earth and presents supernatural realities to the contemplation of human beings living on the earth. There is no such reality for man to contemplate in rationalistic talks that have the effect of making him forget the spiritual world, forget it even in subconscious soul depths. In the cultus he has it right there before him in a living, power-pervaded picture that is more than a mere symbol. Nor is this picture a dead image; it carries real power, because it places before man scenes that were part of his spiritual environment before he was incarnated in an earthly body. The community creating power of the cultus derives from the fact that it is a shared, comprehensive memory of spiritual experiences.

The Anthroposophical Society also needs just such a force to foster community within it. But the ground this springs from need not be the same for the Anthroposophical Movement as for the Movement for Religious Renewal. The one by no means excludes the other, however; the two can co-exist in fullest harmony provided the relationship between them is rightly felt.

But that can be the case only if we acquire some understanding for a further community building element that can be introduced into human life. Memory, transposed into the spiritual realm, rays out to us from the form the cultus takes. The cultus speaks to greater depths than those of intellect: it speaks to man's inwardness. For at bottom the soul really does understand the speech of the spirit, even though that speech may not be fully consciously perceived in present day earth life.

Now, in order to grasp the further element that must come to play a corresponding role in the Anthroposophical Society, you will not only have to contemplate the secrets of language and memory in their relationship to community building; you will also have to consider another aspect of human life. Let us study the condition in which we find a dreaming person and compare it with that of someone going about his daytime activities wide awake.

The dream world may indeed be beautiful, sublime, rich in pictures and in significance. Nevertheless, it isolates people here on earth. A dreaming person is alone with his dreams. He lies there asleep and dreaming, perhaps in the midst of others awake or asleep, the content of whose inner worlds remains completely unrelated to what is going on in his dream consciousness. A person is isolated in his dream world, and even more so in the world of sleep. But the moment we awake we begin to take some part in communal life. The space we and those around us occupy is the same space; the feeling and impressions they have of it are the same we have. We wake at hand of our immediate surroundings to the same inner life another wakes to. In waking out of the isolation of our dreams we awaken, up to a certain point at least, into the community of our fellowmen, simply as a result of the way we are related to the world around us. We cease being completely to ourselves, shut in and encapsulated, as we were when absorbed in our dream world, though our dreams may have been beautiful, sublime, significant. But how do we awaken? We awaken through the impact of the outer world, through its light and tones and warmth. We awaken in response to all the various impressions that the sense world makes on us. But we also wake up in ordinary everyday life in the encounter with the external aspects of other human beings, with their natural aspects. We wake up to everyday life in the encounter with the natural world. It wakes us out of our isolation and introduces us into a community of sorts. We have not yet wakened up as human beings by meeting our fellow men and by what goes on in their innermost beings. That is the secret of everyday life. We wake up in response to light and tone and perhaps also to the words someone speaks in the exercise of his natural endowment, words spoken from within outward. In ordinary everyday life we do not wake up in the encounter with what is going on in the depths of his soul or spirit, we wake up in the encounter with his natural aspects.

The latter constitutes the third awakening, or at least a third condition of soul life. We awaken from the first into the second through nature's impact. We awaken from the second into the third at the call of the soul-spiritual element in our fellowmen. But we must first learn to hear that call. Just as a person wakes up through the natural world surrounding him in the right way in everyday life, so do we wake up rightly at a higher level in the encounter with the soul-spirit of our fellowmen as we sensed light and tone on awakening to everyday life. We can see the most beautiful pictures and have the most sublime experiences in our isolated dream consciousness, but we will scarcely be able to read, for example, unless highly abnormal conditions prevail. We are not in a relationship to the outer world that would make such things possible. We are also unable to understand the spiritual world, no matter how many beautiful ideas we may have garnered from anthroposophy or how much we may have grasped theoretically about such matters as etheric and astral bodies. We begin to develop an understanding for the spiritual world only when we wake up in the encounter with the soul-spiritual element in our fellowmen. That is where the first true understanding of anthroposophy sets in. Yes, it is indeed necessary to base our understanding of anthroposophy on what can be called a waking up in the encounter with the soul and spirit of another person.

The strength needed to achieve this awakening can be created by implanting spiritual idealism in human communities. We talk a lot about idealism these days, but it has become a threadbare thing in the culture and civilization of the present. For true idealism exists only where man reverses the direction he takes when, in presenting the cultus, he brings the spiritual world down to earth; when, in other words, he consciously makes himself capable of lifting to the super-sensible-spiritual, the ideal level, what he has seen and learned and understood on the earthly level. We bring the supernatural down into a power-permeated picture when we celebrate the ritual of the cultus. We lift ourselves and our soul life to the super-sensible level when our experiences in the physical world are experienced so spiritually and idealistically that we come to feel we have experienced them in the super-sensible world itself and that what we perceive here in the sense world suddenly comes all alive on being lifted to the ideal level. It comes alive when properly permeated with our wills and feeling. When we ray will through our inner being and infuse it with enthusiasm, we carry our idealized sense experience in a direction exactly opposite to that taken when we embody the super-sensible in the ritual of the cultus. Whether the anthroposophical community be large or small, we can achieve what I am characterizing when, infusing living power into the spiritual ideas we form, we put ourselves in a position actually to experience something of that awakening element, something that doesn't stop at idealizing our sense experience and leaving it at the stage of an abstract thought, but that endows the ideal with a higher life as we live into it and make it the counterpart of the cultus by raising it from the physical to the super-sensible level. We can achieve it in our life of feeling by taking care to imbue everything we do for anthroposophy with thoroughly spiritualized feeling. We do this when, for instance, we feel that the very doorway we reverently enter on our way to an anthroposophical assemblage is consecrated by the common anthroposophical purpose being served in the room it leads to, no matter how mundane the setting. We must be able to feel that everybody joining with us in a communal reception of anthroposophy has the same attitude. It is not enough to have a deep abstract conviction of this; it must be inwardly experienced, so that we do not just sit in a room where anthroposophy is being pursued, a group of so and so many individuals taking in what is being read or spoken and having our own thoughts about it. A real spiritual being must be present in a room where anthroposophy is being carried on, and this as a direct result of the way anthroposophical ideas are being absorbed. Divine powers are present in sense perceptible form in the cultus celebrated on the physical plane. Our hearts and souls and attitudes must learn similarly to invoke the presence of a real spiritual being in a room where anthroposophy is being talked of. We must so attune our speaking, our feeling, our thinking, our impulses of will to a spiritual purpose, avoiding the pitfall of the abstract, that we can feel a real spiritual being hovering there above us, looking on and listening. We should divine a super-sensible presence, invoked by our pursuit of anthroposophy. Then each single anthroposophical activity can begin to be a realizing of the super-sensible.

If you study primitive communities, you will find another communal element in addition to language. Language has its seat in the upper part of man. But taking the whole man into consideration, you will find that common blood is what links members of primitive communities. Blood ties make for community. But what lives there in the blood is the folk soul or folk spirit, and this is not present in the same way among people who have developed freedom. A common spiritual element once entered groups with common blood ties, working from below upward. Wherever common blood flows in the veins of a number of people, there we can discern the presence of a group soul.

A real community spirit is similarly attracted by our common experiencing when we study anthroposophy together, though it is obviously not a group soul active in the bloodstream. If we are able to sense this, we can form true communities.

We must make anthroposophy real by learning to be aware in anthroposophical community life that where people join in anthroposophical tasks together, there they experience their first awakening in the encounter with the soul-spiritual element in their fellows. Human beings wake up in the mutual encounter with other human beings. As each one has new experiences between his encounters with these others, and has grown a little, these awakenings take place in an ever new way as people go on meeting. The awakenings undergo a burgeoning development.

When you have discovered the possibility that human souls wake up in the encounter with human souls, and human spirits wake up in the encounter with human spirits, and go to anthroposophical groups with a living awareness that only now have you come awake and only now begin to grow together into an understanding of anthroposophy, and on the basis of that understanding take anthroposophical ideas into an awakened soul rather than into an everyday soul asleep to higher things, then the true spirit of community descends upon the place where you are working. Is truth involved when we talk of the super-sensible world, yet are unable to rise to awareness of a spiritual presence and of this reversed cultus? We are firmly grounded in our understanding of things of the spirit only when we do not rest content with abstract spiritual concepts and a capacity to express them theoretically, but instead grow into a sure belief that higher beings are present with us in a community of spirit when we engage in spiritual study. No external measures can bring about anthroposophical community building. You have to call it forth from the profoundest depths of human consciousness.

I have described part of the path that leads to that goal, and tomorrow we will follow it further. Descriptions of this kind are intended to show that the most important thing for any further development of the Anthroposophical Society is that it become absorbed in a true grasp of anthroposophy. If we have that grasp, it leads not only to spiritual ideas but to community with the spirit, and an awareness of community with the spiritual world is itself a community building force. Karmically preordained communities will then spring up as an outcome of true anthroposophical awareness. No external measures for achieving that can be indicated, and a person who offers any such is a charlatan.

Now these matters have been understood to some degree during the two decades of anthroposophy's development, and quite a good many members have also understood them in a spiritual sense. I will perhaps return to this subject and discuss it more fully tomorrow when I continue with these reflections and go on to point out a further goal. For now, I would like to add just a few words on matters that may have been occupying you after hearing my description of the spiritual bases of anthroposophical community life. On the one hand, things in the Anthroposophical Movement are really such as to necessitate my describing them as I have done. The Anthroposophical Society may present this or that appearance in a given phase. But anthroposophy is independent of anthroposophical societies and can be found independently of them. It can be found in a special way when one human being learns to wake up in the encounter with another and out of such awakening the forming of communities occurs. For one undergoes ever fresh awakenings through those with whom one finds oneself foregathered, and that is what holds such groups together. Inner, spiritual realities are at work here.

These matters must be increasingly understood in the Anthroposophical Society. Every consideration brought up in connection with the Society's welfare ought really to be pervaded with forces intimately related to anthroposophy itself.

It was deeply satisfying to me, after spending weeks attending larger and smaller conclaves where preparations were being made for these delegates' meetings, and listening there to debates reminiscent of the ordinary, everyday kind of rationalistic considerations in which parliaments and clubs engage, to go to an assemblage of young people, a meeting of young academicians. They, too, were pondering what ought to be done. For a while the talk was about external matters. But as time passed, it changed, all unaware, into a truly anthroposophical discussion. Matters that first appeared in an everyday light took on aspects that made anything but an anthroposophical treatment impossible.

It would be ideal if, instead of dragging in anthroposophical theories in an artificial, sentimental, nebulous way, as has so often happened, a down-to-earth course were to be pursued. Taking life's ordinary concerns as a starting point, the discussion should lead to the conclusion that unless anthroposophy were called upon, no one would know any longer how to go about studying such subjects as physics and chemistry. This spirit could serve to guide us.

But no solution will be found by tomorrow evening if things go on as they have up to this point; they can only lead to a state of tremendous, tragic chaos. The most important thing is to avoid any sentimental dragging in of all sorts of matters, and instead fill our hearts with anthroposophical impulses, conceived in full clarity.

As things are now, I see two parties, two separate groups of human beings sitting in this room, neither of which in the least understands the other, neither of which is able to take the first small step toward mutual understanding. Why is this the case? It is because what one side is saying issues inevitably from the experience of two whole decades, as I explained briefly earlier today, and the other side takes no interest whatsoever in that experience. I say this not in criticism, but in a spirit of concerned pleading. There have been occasions in the past when well-meaning people, in their own way genuinely enthusiastic about anthroposophy, have simply cut across our deliberations with such comments as, “What possible interest can these reports have for us when they keep on being served up at a moment when the important thing is that people unacquainted with the great dangers the Society faces want to learn about them?” Here, on the one side, we see an elemental, natural interest in the life of the Anthroposophical Society, a life that may have certain familial characteristics, but that has the good aspects of the familial as well. On the other side we find no interest in that life, and instead just a general conception of an Anthroposophical Society.

As things stand today, both points of view are justified, so justified that unless we can quickly develop a wholly different form of discussion, the best thing we could do (I am just expressing my opinion, for the decision will have to be made by the Society) would be to leave the old Society as it is and found a union of free anthroposophical communities for those who want something entirely different. Then each party could carry on in the way that suits it. We would have the old Society on the one side, and on the other a loose but closely related confederation of free communities. The two societies could work out ways of living together. It would be better to solve the problem this way than to continue on in the hopeless situation that would present itself tomorrow evening if the discussion were to go on as it has thus far. So I ask you to put on the agenda the further question whether you would not prefer to avoid the false situation that would develop from keeping the two groups welded together, regardless of whether things stay as they have been or undergo some modification. If the situation remains as it is, with each side failing to understand the other, let us go ahead and set up the two suggested groups within the one movement. I say this with an anxious, a very anxious heart; for surely no one will deny that I understand what it is to feel concern for our anthroposophical undertaking and know what it means to love it. But it is better to have two devoted sisters, each going her own way and united only by a common ideal, than to settle for something that would again lead in short order to a state of chaos.

My dear friends, you simply must not let yourselves overlook the fact that it is the various single enterprises that are causing our troubles. That should have been worked out in clearest detail. I am certainly not stating that the last Central Executive Committee accomplished a great deal more, materially, than the one before it, not any more, that is, than I accomplished when I was similarly active at the center in my role as General Secretary. But that is not the question. The real question is: What should have happened, anthroposophically speaking, after all the various enterprises were started here in Stuttgart? This will have to be answered. We cannot at this point dissolve what has been brought into being. Once these enterprises exist, we must find out how to keep them flourishing. But if we fail, as we have in the past four years, to learn how to go about this in an anthroposophical spirit, if we introduce enterprises as foreign bodies into the Anthroposophical Movement, as we have done, these institutions that have been in existence since 1919 will ruin the whole Anthroposophical Movement. They will ruin any Central Executive Committee, no matter what name it is given.

We should therefore keep our discussions objective and impersonal, and try to reach some clarity on what form the Society ought to take, now that it embraces all these institutions, and among them one as wonderful as the Waldorf School. Not a single word has yet been spoken on this subject, for those who are most familiar with what is going on in Stuttgart have thus far kept fairly silent. I would particularly like to hear what the two members of the Central Executive Committee would say to this. [The members of the Central Executive Committee were Ernst Uehli, Emil Leinhas, Dr. Carl Unger.] (I am not including Herr Leinhas, the third member, as he was the only one who helped me in a problematical situation and who continues to help. Indeed, for his sake I hardly like to see him go on devoting himself to the Central Executive Committee, ideally fitted for it though he is.) It is not a question of these two gentlemen defending themselves, but simply of saying what they think about the future shaping of the Anthroposophical Society, which is capable of amalgamating the enterprises that have been in existence since 1919; otherwise, it would have been an irresponsible deed to launch them. We cannot leave it at that, now that they exist.

These are very, very serious questions. We have to deal with them and discuss them objectively and impersonally. I meant what I said objectively, not as an attack on any member or members of the Central Executive Committee. Nobody is being disparaged, but in my opinion these problems, thus again sharply enunciated by me, had to be brought up. If the two proposed societies are to be established, the group that would be a continuation of the old Anthroposophical Society could make itself responsible for the projects the Society has undertaken, and the other group, that feels no interest in them, could pursue a more narrowly anthroposophical path.

This is what I wanted to put before you in a brief sketch. Tomorrow at twelve I shall speak in detail about matters of business.

Report by Rudolf Steiner on the Berlin School of Spiritual Science

[My dear friends!]

Allow me to say a few words today about the course of the Berlin School of Spiritual Science and then, tomorrow, to conclude with a reflection that should be of particular interest to you as a further elaboration on this very topic.

The Berlin School of Spiritual Science had organized its program in a special way. The aim was to show the relationship between certain branches of life and science in the present day and the anthroposophical world view. Each day was to be devoted mainly to a particular branch of science or life. The week was organized so that it began on Sunday, which was to be devoted to inorganic natural science; Monday was to be devoted to organic natural science and medicine; Tuesday to philosophy; Wednesday to education; Thursday to economics; Friday to theology. Saturday should be devoted to linguistics, and then on Sunday the whole thing should come to a certain conclusion with a performance of eurythmy at the Deutsches Theater.

The program was so well thought out that each day was to begin with a short lecture by me. Only the first Sunday could not begin in this way, since I could not yet be in Berlin at that time. So on Monday I had to summarize both inorganic and organic science in my introductory words; then the day should have a unified character. After my introductory remarks, two more lectures took place in the morning; then there was a short break for refreshments, but – as had already been announced – no refreshments were available in the Singakademie rooms, and a discussion was scheduled to take place from 1 to 2 p.m. The last lecture of the morning was then to follow from 2 to 3 p.m. It was a bit of a strenuous program!

In the evening, there were lectures, some of which were held by me in the Philharmonie, and some of which were held by others in the rooms of the Berlin University. Every evening there was a lecture, and for the other lectures, except for mine, there was still some kind of discussion in the evening after these lectures. So the days were extremely full.

Now, the entire structure of the program can actually be called interesting, especially through the formulation that the individual 'daily programs had experienced. To some extent, each day had an overall title, and the formulation of these overall titles for the days is really interesting, because they reveal so much that is significant. If you go through these formulations of the daily programs, each individual day has something positive in its formulation, except for Friday, which was dedicated to theology.

This is significant, not so much in terms of an awareness of the times, but in the way the program formulators related to the development of anthroposophy on the part of those who formulated the program. One simply felt compelled to formulate the other daily programs in a positive way. And we only need to look at these formulations to find out what is significant.

Sunday, March 5: “From hostile mechanistics to true phenomenology” - so in the formulation of the program, the hope is expressed that through anthroposophy one will come to find a phenomenology as the basis of inorganic science.

The program for Monday is summarized even more positively: “Ways of anthroposophical human knowledge in biology and medicine”. And the program for Tuesday on philosophy is just as positive: “The foundation of anthroposophy from the philosophical consciousness of the present”.

The program for Wednesday was equally positive: “From modern pedagogical demands to their realization through anthroposophy” — so here, too, the idea is that there are such pedagogical

demands in the present that can be realized through anthroposophy.

Thursday, which was devoted to social science, had a very auspicious title in the overall formulation of the program, although what was presented was less auspicious. Thursday even had an extremely auspicious title that sounds very positive: “National Economic Outlooks”.

Saturday, which was devoted to linguistics, bore the title: “From dead linguistics to living linguistics”.

So you see, these title formulations are the basis for everything: the aim is to point out the path that leads from the present into the anthroposophical shaping of the spiritual path in question. One has an idea of how the individual disciplines take their starting point from the given scientific formulations of the present and run into certain other insights, which are to be given by anthroposophy — everywhere absolutely concrete ideas about possible paths. Only - as I said - Thursday has the extraordinarily promising title: “Outlook”, even “economic outlook”, which is an abstract formulation, but which, in its abstractness, points out that one does not want to go, but to leap.

If we then look at Friday in the general formulation of the daily program, it reads as follows: “The Decline of Religion in Contemporary Theology and the New Foundation through Anthroposophy”. - So here, first of all, it is formulated quite negatively: The decline of religion in contemporary theology, and the new foundation - so it is only pointed out, even in a negative way, that there is something like anthroposophy, and that through it theology and religion can experience a renewal. It is not shown in this title in such a concrete way how the path out of the present confusion can lead into the anthroposophical formation.

If you compare this with the formulation from Sunday, for example: 'From mechanistic materialism hostile to life to true phenomenology', you even have a very specific term for what is to come in the word 'phenomenology'. Likewise, in the word 'human knowledge' from Monday, you pointed to something very specific. In philosophy you pointed to the philosophical consciousness of the present, and so to something concrete; in education you pointed to the pedagogical demands of the present, and in linguistics you said, at least, that we must move from the study of dead languages to the study of living languages, and so you formulated something concrete too.

Now, it is extraordinarily significant that this entire university course, which essentially culminated both internally and externally in the Friday event, which basically – especially the feeling that arose – had a theological character, which, while otherwise extremely well attended, on Friday, the theological day, had an attendance such that it was “packed”, overcrowded —, [it is extremely significant] that this course, in the formulation of the day for the theological program, had something negative,

Of course, these formulations arose out of the circumstances of the moment, and the speakers tried in all honesty and sincerity to express these circumstances as they arose, on the one hand from an awareness of the present and on the other from an idea of what can become of this awareness of the present through anthroposophy.

If we then go through the individual days, we naturally encounter things that are mostly familiar to us. Sunday: From mechanistic materialism hostile to life to true phenomenology: The point here, then, is to point out how we should overcome all speculation about atomism, about a mechanistic view of inanimate nature, how we should come to a pure observation of what is present in phenomena, in appearances, how these appearances themselves should speak for themselves, how they themselves should provide their theory. So it is expressed in this formulation that one wants to pursue Goetheanism in natural science.

In organic natural science, it is then expressed that the entire scope of organic natural science must be based on knowledge of the human being, that it is therefore necessary not to study nature in its kingdoms in a fragmented way, as is currently the case, but that, above all, one should start out from getting to know the human being, and from there explore the other kingdoms of nature.

If we then look at philosophy, the question on Tuesday was how philosophical consciousness has reached an end of a kind. It is interesting to think of this formulation in connection with Hegelianism, for example. In his philosophy, which dates back to the beginning of the nineteenth century, Hegel said that all philosophy of the present is an end in itself, and that basically, in philosophy, one can only look back on how things have come about, but that further development is not possible.

Now, on this Tuesday, it should be shown how a beginning, a new beginning, can arise from the end of philosophy, if one allows this beginning in the anthroposophical sense.

In education, the aim was to show that all truly thinking people today actually make certain educational demands, but that these cannot be met by the pedagogy currently being developed. These demands, which are basically made by all thinking people, can only be met by anthroposophy.

In linguistics, it should be shown how language itself, as a living organism, should be understood in the context of the human being, and not merely from the dead records, as is the case with contemporary linguistics.

As for social science, it can only be said that Emil Leinhas, in an extraordinarily illuminating way, has said something quite significant about the monetary problem of the present day based on his sound knowledge; but, as you yourself may sometimes feel, not an awful lot of positive things can be said about the monetary problem of the present day. You will already feel this here in Switzerland, in this country with its almost supreme currency. But you will believe that not much positive can be said about the money problem when you cross the border! So it is true that not an enormous amount of positive things could be said. The next two lectures did not bring any such positive results either, and this national economic day in particular showed how, basically, the cultivation of the national economic within our anthroposophical movement is what has actually failed through and through. For we have basically not been able to bring it about, despite the fact that the necessity in this area has been emphasized time and again. We have not been able to bring it about that in economics, on the part of those who are involved in economic life itself, something truly future-proof would have been put forward; namely, something that would meet the extremely difficult demands of the present. And so, for this day, the title “Nationalökonomische Aussichten” was basically something of a dancing promise; but what the day then brought was a more or less limping follow-up to this dancing promise.

As for theology, the three titles of the lectures that followed my introductory words were just as interesting as the general formulation of the day's program. The first title of Licentiate Bock's lecture was: “The Decline of Religion into Psychologism”; the second of Licentiate Doctor Rittelmeyer was: “The Decline of Theology into Irrationalism”; and the third lecture by Doctor Geyer was: “The Decline of Theology into Historicism”. So we have been given a threefold description of the decline of theology and religion in these days.

In a sense, the situation of the time had naturally led to theologians speaking, who explained how they come to a dead end within their theology today, based on their particular experiences of thought and feeling. Basically, there was a tendency among theologians to show how they come to a dead end within the theology that is presented to them at the present time.

And if we then consider what has been presented in a positive way, what has been said this Friday can be summarized as follows: Theological consideration of religion – as Mr. Bock, the licentiate, was probably thinking – comes down to looking only at the spiritual experience that can be described as a religious experience, perhaps as an experience of God. It is found that among the various inner experiences of the soul, the human being also has the religious experience, the experience that in a certain respect points to a divine one; but that, if one is unbiased, one can say: Yes, you just have a subjective experience. You have something purely psychological. There is absolutely no guarantee that this experience corresponds to anything in the objective world. The subjective experience of God is not such in modern theology that it can lead to a real acceptance of God, let alone to a view of the essence of the divine in the world. It stifles, as it were, the religious element in the consciousness of man in the psychological fact: Yes, we need a religious life. But there is nothing that can provide the certainty that this need will somehow be satisfied. The psychological fact is there that man needs religion, but the present knows of no content of this religion. - The result of the first lecture by Licentiate Bock would be something like this.

Dr. Rittelmeyer then explained how theology had become tired of rationalism, how it had come to no longer want to formulate the essence of the divine in the world in thought, that it no longer wanted to say: this or that is the content of the divine that permeates and animates the world. Thought was to be excluded from theology. The rational, the one stemming from reason, should be eliminated, and the irrational, the one that excludes thought, should become the content of theology. So that in fact in theology one arrives at nothing but the most extreme abstractions. One no longer wants concrete thoughts, one wants the most extreme abstractions. One does not dare to say: the essence of God can be grasped by this or that thought. One dares only to say: the Being of God is the Unconditional, the Absolute. One pins down a completely indeterminate concept, the “irrational,” that which no reason can grasp.

Would it not be so, in every other area of life, it would be strange to characterize something so negatively. If someone were to ask, for example, “Who is the head of the Goetheanum?” – [And one would answer:] The board of directors is the one who is not the board of directors of any other institution. – One would not get any information about who the board of directors of the Goetheanum is. Of course, you don't get any information about it if you say: The ratio of the divine being consists in the fact that God is the irrational, that which cannot be grasped by reason. – It is all just negation.

Rittelmeyer then linked this to some of the things these contemporary irrationalists have to say. For example, how man behaves inwardly when he wants to rise to this God, who can only be grasped in an irrational way. How does he experience this rising? He experiences it in silence. This is not the silence of mystical experience, which can be very positive, but the absence of speech, the cessation of speaking to oneself inwardly in thought. It was then further explained how this silence should take place in worship. It is out of the absolute powerlessness to formulate anything at all, to take refuge in silence.

It was interesting to hear two gentlemen speak, a private lecturer and a pastor, who defended this irrationalism in turn in order to show that irrationalism is particularly prevalent in the present day. For example, one private lecturer said: Yes, that would be quite right, it would be nonsense, for example, to say that one could find God less in nature than in the spirit. Nature is no more distant from God than is the spirit. Knowledge of the spirit provides no more for God than does knowledge of nature, for God is precisely the absolute that breaks through everywhere. This was repeated very often: that God is the absolute that breaks through everywhere.

Theology... Faust would have said “unfortunately” not just once, but three times; Faust would have to be rewritten: I have now studied, alas, philosophy, jurisprudence, medicine and, alas, alas, alas, also theology. So when one has to hear again and again: God is the absolute, which breaks through everywhere... one imagines it everywhere, and then it breaks through, breaks out... but it is precisely the indeterminate that breaks through everywhere! The last lecture was that of Dr. Geyer, who dealt with the decline of theology in historicism. Geyer tried to show how theology gradually came to have nothing creative of its own, but only to observe what had already been, always studying history, what had already been, in order to arrive at a content - but which naturally leads to the fact that at most one can say: In the past, people had a religious consciousness, but today they only have the opportunity to look at these different stages of religious consciousness in the past and choose something they still want to keep. Unfortunately, by making that choice, they are left with nothing of all that is served up to them from the different epochs of the past.

I myself began this day's program by noting that anthroposophy does not want to appear as a religion, that it wants to be a knowledge of supersensible worlds, and that, if theology wants to be fertilized by it, it may do so. Anthroposophy will, of course, say what can be said about the supersensible worlds, and it can wait to see what theologians can use from Anthroposophy for themselves.

For anyone who is able to see the big picture of the present situation, one deficiency has become very apparent today – but one that naturally arises from the circumstances. At least, if the topic of the day had been exhausted – as has been attempted with the other topics of the day and, with the exception of social science, has been achieved to a certain extent – a Catholic theologian should also have spoken. For all the lectures that have been given have been given solely from a Protestant perspective.

A Catholic theologian would have been in a completely different position from these three Protestant theologians. A Catholic theologian does not have a historically handed down theology, but a historically handed down and eternally valid theology, a theology that must be grasped in the present as vividly as it was grasped, let us say, in the third or second centuries of the Christian era. Of course, the councils and, in the eighteenth century, the Pope, who had become infallible, added many things. But these are individual dogmas, these are additions. But the whole essence of Catholic theology is something that, first of all, does not depend on the development of time, and that, in itself, through its own way of knowing, should have a perennial, an everlasting character.

Perhaps if a more progressive man had spoken about Catholic theology, it might have been possible to present the struggles of Catholic thinkers such as Cardinal Newman in an extraordinarily interesting way. If a less advanced Catholic theologian had spoken, he would have presented the essence of the eternal doctrine of salvation, that is, Catholic theology. Then questions of tremendous importance would have arisen. [For example] the question: What exactly is given in Catholic theology for today's man? In Catholic theology, as it appears today, there is undoubtedly nothing living for the present consciousness. But it was once something living. Its content is based entirely on the results of old spiritual knowledge, even if it is atavistic. What Catholic theology contains, say, about the fact of creation, of redemption, about the content of the Trinity, about all these things, these are real concepts, this is something that – only that it has content, which modern consciousness can no longer grasp, but instead dresses it up in abstract, incomprehensible dogmatics or does not dress it up at all, but accepts it as incomprehensible, dry dogmatics.

It was particularly the development of Catholic theology in the nineteenth century in such a way that it was no longer recognized what is contained in the dogmas. On the other hand, there is – or was, in the case of this university course in Berlin – an interesting experience.

On Friday, in my introduction, I said the following, based on my direct experience, which you already know: I said that the one who experiences what is in our natural environment and in what follows on from this natural environment comes, if he is not somehow inwardly crippled, to an awareness of the Father-God. Those who, during their lifetime, recognize the inadequacy of the Father-God and experience a kind of inner rebirth come to an experience of the Son-God, the God-Son. And then, in the same way, by progressing further, one comes to the spiritual experience.

Now a Protestant private lecturer, Lizentiat X., thought: Aha, there is the Trinity, you have to construct it. And he called it a construction, not realizing that there were experiences on which it was based... that was quite foreign to him. Well, those experiences on which the Catholic dogmas are based have become just as foreign to the modern consciousness of the nineteenth century.

These Catholic dogmas, of course, originally go back to spiritual realities. But they are no longer understood, they have become empty concepts. But in the nineteenth century, people wanted to get back to being able to revive a little externally what lives in Catholic theology. You are well aware that this urge to at least be able to understand a little of what lives in Catholic theology arose particularly under the pontificate of Leo XIII, hence the Catholic decree at that time, the Roman decree for all Catholic theologians to return to the study of Thomistic philosophy, the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas, because all later philosophy is no longer useful for grasping something like what lies in Catholic dogmas. All philosophy that followed Thomas Aquinas is only useful for understanding natural existence, for providing a foundation for the natural sciences, but not for understanding spiritual realities. These are indeed unknown even in the Catholic Church, but they are formulated in Catholic dogmas – they were formulated at a time when these spiritual realities were still known. For this purpose, all later post-Thomistic philosophy is no longer suitable. Therefore, when the need was felt to understand something of what lies in the Catholic dogmas, the renewal of the study of Thomistic was demanded, which is indeed the actual philosophical endeavor within Roman Catholicism today.

There are historical realities at the root of this. And if we compare what is actually necessary to gain access to spiritual things again, we can see that, of course, Thomistic theology alone is not enough to revive what is contained in the old dogmas that have become ossified in Rome. A completely different approach is needed.

Please just remember what a completely twisted view I put forward for such a contemporary literary historian before I left here, in the last lectures, where, by going beyond everything that is space and time, I was able to show you how Hamlet is a pupil of Faust, how Hamlet sat at the feet of Faust for ten years, during those ten years when Faust led his pupils by the nose straight and crooked, how Hamlet was one of those who were led by the nose straight and crooked and criss-cross at the time. Such connections, which are of course an abomination to the present-day literary historian – but then, almost nothing of significance can be said today in the intellectual field that would not be an abomination to the official representatives – is that it is almost the stigma of the real truth today that it is an abomination to the public representatives of real science... Well, if you take this for such a profane area, then you will see what is necessary to really come to that agility of mind that can provide a basis for grasping what is preserved in the dogmas. How one must go back to a completely different state of mind in order to enter into the way one lived in such dogmas is shown precisely by the development of Cardinal Newman.

In Berlin today, it is perhaps still taken for granted that such a university course only addresses Protestant points of view and disregards the Catholic point of view; but you still won't get a picture of what actually prevails there today if you are not somehow able to discuss the Catholic point of view, especially today, when we once again need to look at the whole world.

We have to get beyond just talking today. You know about parochial science and parochial politics. But there is also such a thing as a parochial worldview; it comes across very strongly when you see something like the event on Friday evening, when Dr. Theberat gave a lecture on the topic: “Atomistic and Realistic Consideration of Chemical Processes.” That is to say, Dr. Theberat, who is now employed at our research institute in Stuttgart, tried to show how atomism must be abandoned and how phenomenology must also be introduced into chemistry. Dr. Kurt Grelling then entered the debate. I do not want to talk about Dr. Kurt Grelling, who more or less follows the recipe: Yes, all sorts of things are said in anthroposophy, but all that is not yet probable to me. What is certain, however, is that 2 x 2 = 4, and one must hold to what is certain: 2 x 2 is 4, this is certain. He asserted this already last summer in the Stuttgart course and then even called in two university teachers to help him assert this, that 2 x 2 = 4, on a special evening.

Of course, one could not contradict him. I mean, I only want to hint symbolically at what he said; because 2 x 2 is really 4. I could not contradict him. I could not even contradict him when he said last Friday, again completely out of context: I had admitted in Stuttgart that 2 x 2 = 4. Of course, I cannot deny that. I don't just mean 2 x 2 is 4, but rather things that are just as valuable in the overall context, he put forward at the time... but actually I want to say something else with this. He then claimed: Yes, the question that is being put forward can be decided on the basis of phenomenology, it cannot be decided from the point of view of natural science, but only from the point of view of philosophy.

Now, I am not saying that this is just a Göttingen thing, but at least it is not thought in a cosmopolitan scientific way today, because in England, for example, one would not be able to make sense of a sentence like that. If someone says: This cannot be decided scientifically, this can only be decided philosophically - because this difference is something that is, isn't it, a parochial worldview. This formulation is only known within certain Central European circles.

In any case, when we are talking about such questions, we need a broader perspective today. And it is impossible, for example, to keep talking about the center, west and east – formulation of the Vienna Program: there is constant talk of the west and the east and the center, which I do not criticize, I think it is quite great-spirited when there is talk of the west and the east and the center – but I think you then have to broaden your concepts a bit, they then really have to span these areas. You cannot, of course, embrace the world from a limited point of view. Well, for example, something is missing in relation to the western development of religious life if one completely leaves out Catholicism. Because this western religious life has nothing in it of what one touches when one speaks only of Protestant theology. One does not even come to talk about how... let us say, for example, Puritanism in England or the High Church in England or things like that.

I am not putting all this forward as a criticism, because the things that have been put forward were, of course, excellent. But I would still like to talk in the narrower anthroposophical circle about what needs to be said in connection with all that has happened.

And then it would have become clear how current thinking is not at all able to approach what was once the source of the theological content. So that in Berlin there was no bridge between what modern Protestant theology is and what is now to come from Anthroposophy to enliven religious consciousness. There were only ever indications that this should come from anthroposophy. But how it should be developed was not actually discussed.

These are things that may give you an idea of the struggle on anthroposophical ground, which has now found its most beautiful expression in Berlin. It was clear from the participation of the most diverse circles in Berlin – the lectures were extremely well attended, even the morning lectures – and it was clear from the participation of wide circles that something is definitely alive in the anthroposophical movement, which strikes strongly and intensely at the consciousness of the present.

And sometimes we also did not hold back on our part in the sharpness of expression, which should be characteristic of what is. I remember, for example, with a certain inner joy, when on Saturday Dr. Karl Schubert, who was speaking within the framework of “Anthroposophy and Linguistics” and who also wanted to show how linguistics should play a role in the political life of thinkers and races, became spirited in the debate. He wanted to point out what linguistics is today when you look at it... and what it must become through anthroposophy. It was spirited when he then said: Yes, he had been to Berlin, studied linguistics with a wide variety of teachers, and then came to anthroposophy to enliven this linguistics... and only then did it become clear to him... and there he found what this present linguistics is: a dunghill! And then he banged on the table! Well, there was no lack of spirited expressions to characterize the present situation. So it was already strongly felt what one could feel. The opponents have not exactly... yes, spirited I can't really say, I don't want to say anything that — well, I won't say anything like that!

The evening events were such that one tried to give a picture of the anthroposophical content. It was particularly significant this time that both Dr. Stein and Dr. Schwebsch, two teachers at the Waldorf School, gave vivid pictures of the educational work in the Waldorf School itself.

I would like to say, between the lines, that one could experience many strange things. The whole course ended on Sunday, and I had to give the final evening lecture on Sunday, but the morning events ended with a eurythmy performance at the Deutsches Theater, in front of a full house, which was an extraordinarily successful event.

I hardly need to say that if you should come across any newspapers, you will read the opposite of what happened. But a gentleman, for example, who wrote an article in a Berlin paper that some consider to be pro-Anthroposophy... well, I don't want to comment on that – he then asked another paper, a large paper, if he could also write an article about this college course. They asked: pro or contra? He said, because he thought his article was pro: pro. They said: No, we only take contra.

So they don't care what anyone writes, they just buy “contra”! And of course you won't get any idea of what happened there if you get other reports from outside.

It is a pity that apart from this eurythmy performance at the German Theatre, and the short eurythmy performances on Thursday and Sunday, more eurythmy was not performed; for that might perhaps have led to the situation – along the lines of the Stuttgart Anthroposophical Congress – that the honored attendees would not have had to bear the burden of these packed days quite so heavily. Because I could well imagine that it was quite hard! You see, take any of the days, an average day, when there were no meetings for a number of people, well, the person who experienced everything heard five lectures and a discussion. That is a bit much for a person today: five lectures and a discussion in one day! There were actually two discussions on a normal day. So one had the opportunity to live in such thoughts from 9 a.m. to [3:00 p.m.] and then again from [8:00 p.m.] to about [10:30 p.m.]. Of course, it would have been much better if, in between, as was the case in Stuttgart, witty eurythmy lectures could have taken place.

Yes, I was in a city and had the opportunity to speak to a theologian. He said: We were at a theological meeting in Eisenach; they showed us something like eurythmy there! Well, it must have been something else, but that is what he thought. 'I don't know,' he said, 'what we theologians should make of it; we were all quite amazed, we didn't know how we came to see something like that. But on the whole the result is an extraordinarily significant one, and otherwise, I would say, the inner characteristics of the times presented themselves in an extraordinarily eloquent way. For example, at the theologians' conference, a gentleman asked to speak who once had to give a lecture on the whole field of anthroposophy in one evening; he came to the Philosophisch-Anthroposophischer Verlag in Berlin that morning Berlin and bought, or rather was given, the books he needed to prepare for his evening lecture, in which he wanted to explain to a larger audience what anthroposophy is, because he was the one who had to give the lecture. Then the gentleman in question seems to have heard one of my philharmonic lectures in Berlin. He ranted terribly about it in a lecture he gave afterwards; among other things, he said that he had actually seen, when he looked around with the opera-goer during my lecture, that someone had even slept on individual benches. And on that theological morning, he spoke.

You couldn't really see the context of this discussion, neither with the topic of the day nor with what

what had been said, nor with anything else. I just kept hearing: “The Gospels shall greet us.” But I had no real idea how it related to the whole. Then he explained that the things had all been so significant that one must have the most ardent desire to unite the whole into one book in order to sell it. Yes, that is the essence of the present-day culture: essence.

I wanted to give you a kind of overview of what has been going on. I don't want to fail to mention that a very pleasing influence has emerged in Berlin, particularly within the German anthroposophical movement: the student influence. With a real inner devotion and with extraordinary zeal, one could see a part of the student body attached to anthroposophy. And that afternoon during the week, it was Friday, when I was with the students to discuss in their way what they wanted to know, that afternoon was a very beautiful part of this entire college course for me.

It is perhaps also worth mentioning that such an afternoon also took place in Leipzig – with a small group of university students devoted to anthroposophy. But the fact that, if one really wants it, a scientific discussion can take place between well-meaning people of current scientific practice and anthroposophy was demonstrated on that very afternoon in Leipzig, when the well-known anatomy professor Spalteholz was there and actually talked to me mainly about the relationship between current natural science and anthroposophy in front of the students. I believe that the students present learned an extraordinary amount from this conversation.

You can see from such a fact that it is actually quite unobjective reasons that official science, slandered and hereticized, is the one that is anthroposophical; while, if if someone were to be found who would deign to enter into a dispassionate discussion, such as Professor Spalteholz in Leipzig, then something very fruitful could come out of it, even if a full understanding is not reached. A complete understanding cannot yet be reached today because there is an abyss between the two sides. But at least a beginning can be made by saying in front of young people what can be said by both sides if we listen to each other. That is the essential thing, and that was the case on that Saturday, March 4, when a number of Leipzig students were with Professor Spalteholz and me to talk about anthroposophy and science. And in fact, many extremely important things were discussed.

Tomorrow we will then address a specific question. I just have to say that tomorrow evening will begin with an artistic eurythmy performance, in which new students will perform, supported by some older eurythmy performers. We will start with the eurythmy performance at [7:30] p.m., and then my lecture will follow.

Rudolf Steiner: We have now reached the point where at least a draft of a circular letter to the Anthroposophical Society has been made. This has created a kind of basis on which negotiations would be possible. I believe that it would perhaps be good now if you were to negotiate what you yourselves want in joint negotiations with the committee that will be in place until the delegates' assembly. This committee has been put together purely on the basis of the issues, so purely that, unlike the 30-strong committee you are familiar with, it is not made up of members of the individual institutes but of those who represent the existing institutions. This committee is composed in such a way that of the old central board, Mr. Leinhas for the “Kommenden Tag”, Dr. Unger as the rest of the old central board, Dr. Rittelmeyer as a representative of the movement for religious renewal, then Wolfgang Wachsmuth, Mr. von Grone, Dr. Palmer, Dr. Kolisko, Miss Mücke for the Philosophical-Anthroposophical Press and Mr. Werbeck of Hamburg for the remaining external interests. I have asked the seven people from Stuttgart to take the steps you have in mind together with you. I myself have to leave for Dornach tomorrow morning and will be back on Monday. I regret that I will not be able to attend the next meetings. I now believe that it is best, since there can be no difference between us, that you conduct the negotiations with these people on your own initiative. As things stand, these personalities are the ones given, since all shades are represented among them; the youthful ones through the presence of Mr. von Grone and Wolfgang Wachsmuth - I am leaving it to you to decide whether you find these two likeable - who are completely inexperienced in terms of all board work. Furthermore, Dr. Palmer has declared that he wants to build every possible bridge to young people.

The appeal to the members of the Anthroposophical Society is available in draft. It will essentially contain what the Anthroposophical Society has had to say. It had to come naturally from those who have led the Anthroposophical Society so far. From February 25 to 28, a meeting of delegates will take place in that the individual branches and groups that consider themselves to belong together will send their delegates here, so that a kind of general assembly will take place. This will provide an opportunity to present all views on the development. Until now, we were faced with the alternative of doing it this way or allowing the Anthroposophical Society, as it was, to come to an end and founding something completely new. In 1918, it would have been easier to found something new. Now we are faced with positive institutions with which we are engaged before the world and from which we cannot escape, so everything must arise out of the Society. Society itself must be more freely formed within itself, and it must be impossible to feel constrained in it. I think it will work, but I would like to hear something that you have to say on your own initiative. The fact that it took so long to get this far must be put down to the deliberateness of old age. We will be happy to hear what you have to say at the present moment.

A representative of the younger generation will speak about the involvement of younger people in society with regard to what Dr. Steiner said in the last Stuttgart branch lecture about the individual phases in the history of the Anthroposophical Society.

Rudolf Steiner: What you said about the wall that has arisen in connection with the first, second and third phases of the movement, which can be very clearly distinguished from one another, is correct. We have to bear in mind that the individual phases lasted for about seven years, and that the Society itself is now about 21 years old. What is true is this: the impulses for entering and participating were actually different for the earlier members than they are now for the essentially academic youth groups. They are different in that the people who came during the first phase came with the whole complex, admittedly from today's contemporary conditions, but with completely unconscious longings; they did not know themselves in connection with any contemporary conditions and were at an age at which one does not give a clear account of one's relationship to time. They came with very general human interests that are related to time, but people did not account for it. It was almost the same in the second phase. Anthroposophy came a lot further, but the Anthroposophists, with exceptions, were less interested in the questions related to the contemporary. The third phase was creepy for those who had joined earlier. They came together with all those who were dissatisfied – not with the general conditions of the times, but in a very specific way with what these people had experienced in today's educational institutions. They would not have come to anthroposophy if they had not felt a strong contrast to today's educational institutions. They came with different impulses than those who had actually seen anthroposophy in relation to time. I myself had to speak about this. What I said about the relationship between Anthroposophy and time has actually been taken in very little. But strangely enough, they came with a longing that actually goes to the heart of Anthroposophy.

Now a strange thing has emerged: namely, the misunderstanding of the School of Spiritual Science courses. I do not want to say anything against their value. But the School of Spiritual Science courses were a misunderstanding. What was expressed there was not at all what you were seeking. You were seeking anthroposophy in itself. This could not be understood by those who had come into the Anthroposophical Society as academics in earlier times. They wanted to weld their academic work together with anthroposophy. They did not accept this. So in time they will not come into conflict with what I have called the bulk of the Anthroposophical Society. The real conflict was only with the academics because they believed that they wanted to represent anthroposophy in a biological, chemical-physical, historical way. They do not want that. They want pure anthroposophy. They have the difficulty of getting over this mountain together with the whole society. The academic side that has entered is like a mountain; but it must be crossed over and over. If both sides work with goodwill, it may prove useful. On the other hand, however, if we want to make progress, in the end a little specialization is also needed. If there is goodwill on both sides, it will work.

A participant talks about some of the younger people's wishes regarding the reorganization of the branch work, in particular the lecture and presentation system.

Rudolf Steiner (interrupts): This little book by Albert Steffen [The Pedagogical Course at the Goetheanum] is justified because it reflects the content of my lectures in a truly artistic way. It is not a journalist's report; it stands on its own. In the past, nothing like this has been done. We will see if it catches on. It would be a stroke of luck.

Wouldn't it? The appeal will have to include two main points. One is to emphasize the need for inner work in the anthroposophical movement. Secondly, it is already essential that the anthroposophical society be so united that it can fend off opponents. Defense not through polemics, but through real, appropriate work in the world. If, in the face of opposition, nothing is done, then anthroposophy will perish. One cannot work in such a way that one asserts something and the other refutes it. With the most important opponents, one cannot reach the public. Today, when defamations are spread about Anthroposophy from the circles of the Pan-Germans and the German-Völkisch, one has an audience that believes everything under all circumstances. One cannot reach them. One must know the people who are among this audience. One cannot say certain things to a Catholic audience. If the refutations are wrong, then they are wrong. But if they are right, they are of no use to us, but – I have to use this word – only harm us, especially among Catholics. They are annoyed when one is in a position to refute the opponent's assertions. Being right harms us today, being wrong perhaps less so. These things can only be refuted by positive work. Make yourself strong, as the others are. Dr. Rittelmeyer was right to use the saying the other day, and I myself have often pointed it out: one does not even suspect how everywhere there is something of which one can say: fire is being made everywhere! Our opposition will be expressed in a very terrible way in the near future. It is necessary to form a united body against it. All things that are good endanger society. It is already the case that the movement for religious renewal endangers the Anthroposophical Society. It is the case that no one imagined that we would achieve something in this area as well. And if we continue to work in the academic field, which is of course also very desirable, then the leisegangs will slip out everywhere. It really worries me because the old reactionary powers are growing ever stronger. When the Hochschulbund was founded, there were many more opportunities to hold back the old powers. Today these opportunities have diminished. They will have to suffer a great deal. But even if anthroposophy were killed, it would rise again, because it must arise, and it is a necessity. Either there is a future for the earth or there is none. The future of the earth is inseparable from anthroposophy. If the latter has no future, then all of humanity will have no future. The tendency alone is enough. Anthroposophy may go through many phases in terms of its expansion. I do believe that you will have to come over this mountain, which I mentioned earlier, for the benefit of society in all peace.

A participant talks about a different relationship that young people should have with society.

Rudolf Steiner: You just have to bear in mind that in the case of old cultural movements that have already come of age in world history, there were very different attitudes of the soul than in the case of those that are historically very young. Today, people simply no longer have any idea how difficult it was to be a Christian in the first centuries of Christianity. Today it is easy to be a Christian. In the early days it was not the external difficulties of martyrdom, but the internal difficulties of the soul. It was difficult to be a Christian in one's own eyes. Today it is difficult to be a true anthroposophist. In a sense it is difficult. Those who have been Anthroposophists for a long time carry within themselves, in their whole soul attitude, the whole difficulty of being connected with the first appearance of a spiritual movement; in them, the understanding for certain phenomena of life is not so strong. Those who have been Anthroposophists for a long time, longer than the young ones, sometimes talk past each other. Just recently, I came across a very striking example. These friends had a meeting; the mood there was that the belief was there, now all bridges have been built, now they understand each other. They were quite honest. On the other hand, I was confronted with the mood that one had to organize the opposition; they did not find each other at all. This certainly reflects the slight tendency to be under illusion about the conditions of life when one is in a certain attitude towards life, which I have characterized. It is hard to be an anthroposophist; it is not easy to overcome a certain rigidity. The illusionists are honest. They come with the freshness of soul, and therefore you, as one who has not yet grown tired, are less inclined to have these illusions than a tired person. Many have grown tired and weary due to the difficulties we have faced. Therefore, there has been a lot of talking past each other these days as well.

One participant talks about his original plan to redirect the energies of the youth and organize them in a fruitful way for the opposition.

Rudolf Steiner: Some things are so that a realistic thinking must also consider them. Somehow there must be something in the future that is your educational institutions. Even if all hopes for the future are in the bud in this respect, it must not be the case that the college remains a mere mock-up. It really worries me how far away we still are from that. On the other hand, the university system is in a sorry state. A century ago, at least there was still a unified worldview; that is now completely gone, including the sense of human dignity. You see, Leisegang – it doesn't depend on the way he treats me – but Leisegang, who will soon become a professor, since he has all the aspirations for it, has now published a work about Plato, a first volume. He doesn't treat me as badly as he treats Plato, he treats Plato much worse, he caricatures him, only – people don't notice it. You see, and that worries me, really worries me, how far away we are from the possibility of creating a university.

One participant points out how a university was created by the prisoners in the prison camp where he worked, and presents this as an example of how a university for the humanities can be created.

Rudolf Steiner: You can't create a university today because the first prerequisite is that the individual scientists are available. Ideas and approaches are already available. But as long as the people who are to work within the movement can only be had as starving students, to put it bluntly, it will be difficult. This is becoming more difficult every day because the time is approaching when it will hardly be possible to think that the preceding period will provide the subsequent one with scholarships. The possibility of bringing about a completely new education in a different way is becoming more difficult every day. I must emphasize two things at every opportunity for purely spiritual reasons: first, to strive with all intensity to become as strong as possible; second, to devote all energy to expanding the circle of friends; it would not be necessary to look at the number, only in view of the time conditions. In the spiritual, the opposite must be true, but in view of time it is so. The widening of the circle need not be at the expense of shallowness, but efforts must be made in that direction in order to maintain a large number of friends. Otherwise the downfall of the individual and of the movement as such is more likely. It is already so. But you must not be afraid to be strong as a youth in order to achieve outward expansion.

A participant talks about how difficult it is to communicate with the elderly.

Rudolf Steiner: Apart from judgments, it is, however, in a sense the case that the lack of understanding is mutual! The situation of old age is such that one can say: the way it is, it is not his fault, but his destiny. But the resistance of youth against old age is both a means of protection and a weakness!

Become interested, become geniuses!

The development of conditions in the Anthroposophical Society makes it seem desirable to touch on at least a few of them again tonight. It was really never my intention to use lecture time to go into such matters as organizational and developmental aspects of the Society, for I see it as my task to work for pure anthroposophy, and I gladly leave everything related to the life and development of the Society to others who have assumed responsibility for it at the various places. But I hope to be able, at the delegates' meeting that will soon be held, to discuss at greater length the subject originally intended for presentation today. In view of the need evidenced by the way the Society's current concerns are going, you will perhaps allow me to make a few comments complementing what I said a week ago about the three phases of anthroposophical development.

Today, I want to bring out those aspects of the three phases that all three share in common; last week I concentrated, even though sketchily, on their differences.

I would like to start by discussing how a society like ours comes into being. I believe that what I am about to say could serve many a listener as a means to self-knowledge and thus prove a good preparation for the delegates' meeting.

It is certainly clear to anybody who keeps up with the way civilization and culture are presently developing that the times themselves demand the deepening of knowledge, the ethical practice, the inner religious life that anthroposophy has to offer. On the other hand, however, a society such as ours has to act as a vanguard in an ever wider disseminating of those elements that are so needed under the conditions that prevail today.

How is such a vanguard created? Everybody who has sought out the Anthroposophical Society from honest motives will probably recognize a piece of his own destiny in what I am about to describe.

If we look back over the twenty-one or twenty-two years of the Society's development, we will certainly discover that by far the greater number of those who approach the Society do so out of a sense of dissatisfaction with the spiritual, psychological and practical conditions they find surrounding them in life today. In the early days of the Society, which, when considered factually and not critically, might even be called its better days, something was taking place that almost amounted to flight from the life of the present into a different kind of life built on human community, a community where people could live in a way they felt in their souls to be in keeping with their dignity as human beings. This alienation from the spiritual, psychic and practical situation prevailing in the life around them must be taken into account as a factor in the founding of the Anthroposophical Society. For those who became anthroposophists were the first people to feel what millions and millions of others will be feeling keenly indeed in a not too distant future, that older forms have come down into the present from by-gone days in which they were not only fully justified but the product of historical necessity, but that they no longer provide what modern man's inner life requires and the dignity of full humanness demands.

Anyone who has a really open mind about these things and has come to anthroposophy in honest seeking will find, if he practices self-observation, that this drive to satisfy his soul needs in a special community rather than in just any other present day group of human beings is something that springs from the innermost core of his humanity, something he feels to be a special phenomenon of the present moment working its way to the surface of his soul from the eternal sources of all humanness. Those who have come honestly to anthroposophy therefore feel the need to belong to an anthroposophical community to be a real and deep concern of their hearts, something they cannot really do without if they are honest. But we must admit, too, that the very clarity (clarity of feeling, not of thought) with which people seek belonging in the anthroposophical community shows how little able the outer world presently is to satisfy a longing for full humanness. People would not feel so urgently impelled to seek anthroposophy if the soul's feeling of alienation from conditions existing in the world today had not become so particularly intense.

But let us go on and consider something else. What I have been describing thus far might be called a reversing of human will impulses. A person is born into a certain period and educated to be a man of his time. The result is that his will impulses simply coincide with those of all the rest of the human world around him. He grows up, and as he does so he grows without any great inner stirrings into the will tendencies of the surrounding population. It takes a deeply experienced inner revulsion against these habitual will impulses that he has adopted from the outside world to turn this erstwhile external will inward. When he does so, this reversing of the direction of his will causes him to notice the longing, experienced so keenly in our time, that wells up as though from eternal wellsprings, impelling him to seek a different belonging to the community of men than lay in the previous direction of his will.

Now everything that has to do with the will is intrinsically ethical and moral. The impulse that drives a person into the Anthroposophical Society is thus, in its will and feeling aspects at least, an ethical-moral impulse. Since this ethical impulse that has brought him into the Anthroposophical Society stirs him in his innermost holy of holies as it carries him to the eternal wellsprings of his soul life, it goes on to develop into a religious impulse. What otherwise lives itself out simply as a matter of response to externally imposed laws and traditional mores and as habits more or less thoughtlessly adopted from the life around one, in other words, everything of an ethical, moral, religious nature that had developed in the course of one's growing up, now turns inward and becomes a striving to make one's ethical-moral and religious being a full inner reality. But it is not consistent with full human stature for a person to couple his life of will and—to some extent at least—his life of feeling with the acceptance of just any haphazard type of knowledge.

The kind of knowledge that we may not, perhaps, absorb with our mother's milk, but are certainly receiving as inner soul training by the time we are six, and go on receiving—all these things that our minds in their learning capacity take in, confront the ethical, moral and religious elements in us as their polar opposite, though one perfectly harmonious and consistent with them. But they are by no means an inconsiderable item for a person who seeks to bring a religious deepening into his anthroposophical striving. The kind of life and practice that civilized man has developed in recent centuries is just exactly the kind from which an anthroposophist longs to free his moral, ethical and religious nature. Even if he makes compromises with the life about him, as indeed he must, his real desire is to escape from what the civilization of recent centuries has produced, leading as it has directly to the catastrophic present. It may be that this desire exists only as an instinct in many of those who seek out the Anthroposophical Movement, but it is definitely present.

Now let us recognize the fact that the factors accounting for the development of the religious and will impulses of recent centuries are the very same ones responsible for the direction and whole nuance of the modern life of learning. Only a victim of prejudice could believe and say that the modern way of knowledge has produced objective physics, objective mathematics, objective chemistry, that it is working toward an objective science of biology, and so on. That is pure prejudice. The real truth is that what we have had drummed into us from about our sixth year onward is the product of externally influenced will and religious impulses that have evolved during recent centuries. But when a person seeking anthroposophy wants to escape from these will impulses and from the religious forms in which man's moral life finds its highest expression, he cannot help asking at the same time for a way of knowledge in keeping not with the world he wants to leave behind but with the new world of his seeking. Since he has turned his will impulses inward, he must, in other words, strive for the kind of knowledge that corresponds to his in-turned will, that takes him ever further away from the externalized science that has been an outgrowth of the externalizing of all life in the civilized world in the past few centuries. An anthroposophist feels that he would have to be inconsequential and reverse the direction of his will again if he were not to change the direction of his knowledge. He would have to be a quite unthinking person to say, “I feel my humanity alien to the kind of life and practice that past centuries have brought us, but I feel quite at home with the knowledge they produced.” The kind of learning that the world he wants to escape from has acquired can never satisfy a person with an in-turned will. Many an individual may come to realize purely instinctively that the life and practice he longs to flee received their present form from the fact that man believes only in what his eyes see and what his mind makes of his physical observations. Seekers therefore turn to the invisible super-sensible realm as the basis of knowledge. Externalized forms of life and practice are outgrowths of a materialistic science, and a person impelled to regard these forms as subhuman rather than as fully human cannot feel suited by a science based on an exclusive belief in the external and material and what the mind concludes about them.

After the first act in the soul drama of the anthroposophist, the moral-religious act, there comes a second, one already contained in seed form in the first. It consists in a compulsion to seek super-sensible knowledge. That the Anthroposophical Society builds its content on knowledge received from super-sensible worlds is something that comes about quite of itself. Everything that the will thus experiences as its destiny, everything that the striving for insight recognizes as its seeking, is fused into one indivisible whole in the heart and soul of an anthroposophist; it is the very core of his life and his humanity. As such it shapes and colors his whole attitude, the state of soul in which he takes his place in the Society.

But now let us weigh the consequences this implies for an anthroposophically oriented person. He cannot just cut himself loose from external life and practice. He has taken flight into the Anthroposophical Society, but life's outer needs continue on, and he cannot get away from them in a single step or with one stroke. So his soul is caught and divided between his continuing outer life and the ideal life and knowledge that he has embraced in concept as a member of the Anthroposophical Society. A cleavage of this sort can be a painful and even tragic experience, and it becomes such to a degree determined by the depth or superficiality of the individual. But this very pain, this tragedy, contains the most precious seeds of the new, constructive life that has to be built up in the midst of our decaying culture. For the truth is that everything in life that flowers and bears fruit is an outgrowth of pain and suffering. It is perhaps just those individuals with the deepest sense of the Society's mission who have to have the most personal experience of pain and suffering as they take on that mission, though it is also true that real human strength can only be developed by rising above suffering and making it a living force, the source of one's power to overcome.

The path that leads into the Society consists firstly, then, in changing the direction of one's will; secondly, in experiencing super-sensible knowledge; lastly, in participating in the destiny of one's time to a point where it becomes one's personal destiny. One feels oneself sharing mankind's evolution in the act of reversing one's will and experiencing the super-sensible nature of all truth. Sharing the experience of the time's true significance is what gives us our first real feeling for the fact of our humanness. The term “Anthroposophy” should really be understood as synonymous with “Sophia,” meaning the content of consciousness, the soul attitude and experience that make a man a full-fledged human being. The right interpretation of “Anthroposophy” is not “the wisdom of man,” but rather “the consciousness of one's humanity.” In other words, the reversing of the will, the experiencing of knowledge, and one's participation in the time's destiny, should all aim at giving the soul a certain direction of consciousness, a “Sophia.”

What I have been describing here are the factors that brought the Anthroposophical Society into being. The Society wasn't really founded; it just came about. You cannot carry on a pre-conceived campaign to found a thing that is developing out of some genuine inner reality. An Anthroposophical Society could come into being only because there were people predisposed to the reversal of their wills, to the living knowledge, to the participation in the time's destiny that I have just characterized, and because something then made its appearance from some quarter that was able to meet what lived as those needs in those specific hearts. But such a coming together of human beings could take place only in our age, the age of the consciousness soul, and those who do not as yet rightly conceive the nature of the consciousness soul cannot understand this development. An example was provided by a university don who made the curious statement that three people once joined forces and formed the executive committee of the Anthroposophical Society. This donnish brain (it is better to be specific about what part of him was involved, since there can be no question in his case of fully developed humanness), this brain ferreted out the necessity of asking who selected them and authorized them to do such a thing. Well, what freer way could there possibly be for a thing to start than for three people to turn up and announce that they have such and such a purpose, and anyone who wants to join them in pursuing it is welcome, and if someone doesn't, why, that's all right too? Everyone was certainly left perfectly free. Nothing could have shown more respect for freedom than the way the Anthroposophical Society came into being. It corresponds exactly to the developmental level of the consciousness soul period. But one can perfectly well be a university don without having entered the consciousness soul age, and in that case will have no understanding for matters intimately allied to freedom.

I know how uncomfortable it makes some people when things of this kind have to be dealt with for the simple reason that they are there confronting us. They throw light, however, on the question of what must be done to provide the Society with what it needs to go on living. But since anthroposophists have to keep on being part of the world around them and can escape from it on the soul level only, they become prone to the special nuance of soul experience that I have been describing and that can run the gamut of inner suffering to the point of actual tragedy. Soul experience of this kind played a particularly weighty role in the coming into being of the Anthroposophical Society. Not only this: it is constantly being re-lived in the case of everyone who has since sought out the society. The Society naturally has to reckon with this common element, which is so deeply rooted in its social life, as with one of the lasting conditions of its existence.

It is natural, too, that in an evolution that has gone through three phases, newcomers to the Movement should find themselves in the first phase with their feeling life. Many a difficulty stems from the fact that the Society's leaders have the duty of reconciling the three co-existing phases with one another. For they go on side by side even though they developed in succession. Furthermore, in their aspect as past stages in a sequence, they belong to the past, and are hence memories, whereas in their simultaneous aspect they are presently still being lived. A theoretical or doctrinaire approach is therefore out of place in this situation. What those who want to help foster anthroposophical life need instead is loving hearts and eyes opened to the totality of that life. Just as growing old can mean developing a crochety disposition, becoming inwardly as well as outwardly wrinkled and bald-headed, losing all feeling for recalling one's young days vividly enough to make them seem immediate experience, so too is it possible to enter the Society as late as, say, 1919 and fail to sense the fresh, new, burgeoning, sprouting life of the Movement's first phase. This is a capacity one must work to develop. Otherwise, the right heart and feeling are missing in one's relation to anthroposophy, with the result that though one may scorn and look down upon doctrines and theories in other spheres of life, one's efforts to foster anthroposophical life cannot help becoming doctrinaire. This does serious damage to a thing as alive as an Anthroposophical Society ought to be.

Now, a curious kind of conflict arose during the third phase of the Movement. It began in 1919. I am not going to judge it from an ethical standpoint at the moment, although thoughtlessness is indeed a will impulse of sorts, and hence a question of ethics. When something is left undone, due to thoughtlessness, and that same thoughtlessness leads to a lot of fiddling around where a firm will is what is really needed, one can surely see that an ethical-moral element is involved. But I am not as much interested in going into that aspect of the subject today as I am in discussing the conflict into which it plunged the Society, a long-latent conflict. It must be brought out into the open and frankly discussed.

In the first phases of anthroposophical development, there was a tendency for the anthroposophist to split into two people. One part was, say, an office manager, who did what he had to do in that capacity. He poured his will into channels formed by the way things have developed in modern external life and practice during the past few centuries, channels from which his innermost soul longed to escape. But he was caught in them, caught with his will.

Now let us be perfectly clear about the will's intense involvement in all such pursuits. From one end of the day to the other, the will is involved in every single thing one does as an office manager or whatever. If one happens to be a schoolmaster or a professor instead of an office manager and is therefore more involved in thinking, that thinking also flows into one's will impulses, insofar as it has bearing on external life. In other words, one's will really remains connected with things outside oneself. It is just because the soul wants to escape from the direction the will is taking that it enters the Anthroposophical Society with its thought and feeling. So the man of will ends up in one place, the man of thought and feeling in another. Of course, this made some people happy indeed, for many a little sectarian group thought it a most praiseworthy undertaking to meet and “send out good thoughts” at the end of a day spent exerting its members' wills in the most ordinary channels. People formed groups of this sort and sent out good thoughts, escaping from their outer lives into a life that, while I cannot call it unreal, consisted exclusively of thoughts and feelings. Each individual split himself in two, one part going to an office or a classroom, the other attending an anthroposophical meeting where he led an entirely different kind of life. But when a number of anthroposophically thinking and feeling people were moved to apply their wills to the establishing of anthroposophical enterprises capable of full and vigorous life, they had to include those wills in the total human equipment needed for the job. That was the origin of the conflicts that broke out. It is comparatively easy to train oneself to send out good thoughts intended to keep a friend on a mountain climb from breaking his legs. It is much harder to pour good thoughts so strongly into a will engaged in some external, material activity that matter itself becomes imbued with spirit as a result of one's having thus exerted one's humanness. Many an undertaking has suffered shipwreck because of an inability to do that, during the Society's third phase of development. There was no shortage of fine intelligences and geniuses—I say this very sincerely—but the intelligence and genius available were not sufficiently applied to stiffening and strengthening the wills involved.

If you look at the matter from the standpoint of the heart, what a difference you see! Think how dissatisfied the heart is with one's external life! One feels dissatisfied not only because other people are so mean and everything falls so short of perfection, but because life itself doesn't always make things easy for us. You'll agree that it isn't invariably a featherbed. Living means work. Here one has this hard life on the one hand, and on the other the Anthroposophical Society. One enters the Society laden with all one's dissatisfaction. As a thinking and feeling person one finds satisfaction there because one is receiving something that is not available in the outer life one is justifiably so dissatisfied with. One finds satisfaction in the Anthroposophical Society. There is even the advantage there that one's thoughts, which in other situations are so circumscribed by will's impotence, take wing quite easily when one sits in a circle sending out good thoughts to keep the legs of friends on mountain climbs from getting broken. Thoughts fly easily to every part of the world, and are thus very satisfying. They make up for one's external life, which is always causing one such justifiable dissatisfaction.

Now along comes the Anthroposophical Society and itself starts projects that call for the inclusion of the will. So now one not only has to be an office manager in the outer world, though with an Anthroposophical Society to flee to and to look back from at one's unsatisfactory life outside—a life one may, on occasion, complain about there; one now faces both kinds of life within the Society, and is expected to live them there in a satisfied rather than dissatisfied state of mind!

But this was inevitable if the Society wanted to go farther and engage in actual deeds. Beginning in 1919 it did want to do that.

Then something strange happened, something that could probably happen only in the Anthroposophical Society, namely, that people no longer knew what to do with their share of dissatisfaction, which everyone naturally wants to go on having. For one can hardly accuse the Society of making one dissatisfied. But that attitude doesn't last. In the long run people do ascribe their dissatisfaction to it. What they ought to do instead is to achieve the stage of inner development that progresses from thoughts and feelings to will, and one does achieve just that on a rightly travelled anthroposophical path. If you look in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, you will see that nowhere is there a recommendation for developing thought that does not include aspects that bear on will development.

But modern humanity suffers from two evils, both of which must be overcome in the Society. One is fear of the super-sensible. This unadmitted fear accounts for every enemy the Anthroposophical Movement has. Our enemies really suffer from something that resembles a fear of water. You know, of course, that a fear of water can express itself in another, violently compulsive form, and so we need not be surprised if the kind I am referring to sometimes vents itself in a sort of phobia. Sometimes, of course, it can be comparatively harmless. Some people find anthroposophy a rewarding subject to write about; these books bring in money and appear on book lists. There must be themes to write about, and not everybody has one inside him, so it has to be borrowed from the world outside. The motives in such cases are sometimes more harmless than one might suppose. But their effects are not equally harmless.

Fear of super-sensible knowledge, then, is one characteristic of the human race. But that fear is made to wear the mask of the scientific approach, and the scientific approach, with the limits to knowledge it accepts, is in direct line of inheritance from man's ancient Fall into error. The only difference is that the ancients conceived the Fall as something man ought to overcome. The post-scholastic period is still haunted by a belief in the Fall. But whereas an earlier, moralistic view of it held that man was born evil and must overcome his nature, the intellectualistic view holds that man cannot gain access to the super-sensible with his mind or change his nature. Man's willingness to accept limits to knowledge is actually an inheritance from the Fall he suffered. In better days he at least tried to overcome error. But conceited modern man not only wants to retain his fallen status; he is actually intent on staying fallen and loving the devil, or at least trying to love him.

That is the first of the two evils. The second is the weakness, the inner paralysis that afflicts modern human wills, despite their seeming activity, which is often nothing more than pretense. I must add that both these ominous characteristics of modern civilization and culture are qualities that anthroposophical life must overcome. If this anthroposophical life is to develop in a practical direction, everything it undertakes must be born of fearless knowledge and a really strong will. This presupposes learning to live with the world in a truly anthroposophical way. People used to learn to live anthroposophically by fleeing the world. But they will have to learn to live anthroposophically with the world and to carry the anthroposophical impulse into everyday life and practice. That means making one single whole again of the person hitherto split into an anthroposophist and a practical man. But this cannot be done so long as a life lived shut away from the world as though by towering fortress walls that one cannot see over is mistaken for an anthroposophical life. This sort of thing cannot go on in the Society. We should keep our eyes wide open to everything that is happening in the world around us, that will imbue us with the right will impulses. But as I said the last time, the Society has not kept pace with anthroposophical life during the third phase of anthroposophy, and the will element is what has failed to do so. We have had to call away individuals who formerly guided activities in the various branches and assign them tasks in connection with this or that new enterprise, with the frequent result that a person who made an able Waldorf School teacher became a poor anthroposophist. (This is not meant as a criticism of any of our institutions. The Waldorf School is highly regarded by the world at large, not just by circles close to it, and it can be stated in all modesty that no reason exists to complain about any of the various institutions, or if there is, it is on an entirely different score than that of ability.) It is possible to be both a first-rate Waldorf teacher and a poor anthroposophist, and the same thing is true of able workers in the other enterprises. The point is, though, that all the various enterprises are outgrowths of anthroposophy. This must be kept firmly in mind. Being a real anthroposophist is the all-important thing. Waldorf teachers, workers at Der Kommende Tag, scientists, medical men and other such specialists simply must not turn their backs on the anthroposophical source or take the attitude that there is no time left from their work for anthroposophical concerns of a general nature. Otherwise, though these enterprises may continue to flourish for a while, due to the fact that anthroposophy itself is full of life and passes it on to its offspring, that life cannot be maintained indefinitely, and the offspring movements too would eventually die for lack of it.

We are dealing with enemies who will not meet us on objective ground. It is characteristic of them that they avoid coming to grips with what anthroposophy itself is, and instead ask questions like, “How are anthroposophical facts discovered?” or “What is this clairvoyance?” or “Does so and so drink coffee or milk?” and other such matters that have no bearing on the subject, though they are what is most talked about. But enemies intent on destroying anthroposophy resort to slander, and samples of it have been turning up of late in phenomena that would have been quite unthinkable just a short while ago, before civilization reached its lowest ebb. Now, however, they have become possible. I don't want to go into the specifics; that can be left to others who presumably also feel real heart's concern for the fate of anthroposophy. But since I was able to be with you here today I wanted to bring up these problems. From the standpoint of the work in Dornach it was not an opportune moment for me to leave, however happily opportune it was to be here; there are always two sides to everything. I was needed in Dornach, but since I could have the deep satisfaction of talking with you here again today, let me just add this. What is most needed now is to learn to feel anthroposophically, to feel anthroposophy living in our very hearts. That can happen only in a state of fullest clarity, not of mystical becloudedness. Anthroposophy can stand exposure to the light. Other movements that claim they are similar cannot endure light; they feel at home in the darkness of sectarianism. But anthroposophy can stand light in all its fulness; far from shrinking from exposure to it, anthroposophy enters into the light with all its heart, with its innermost heart's warmth. Unfounded personal slander, which sometimes goes so far that the persons attacked are unrecognizable, can be branded for what it is. Where enmity is an honest thing, anthroposophy can always reply on an objective basis. Objective debate, however, requires going into the question of methods that lead to anthroposophical knowledge. No objective discussion is possible without satisfying that requirement. Anybody with a heart and a healthy mind can take in anthroposophy, but discussions about it have to be based on studying its methods and getting to understand how its knowledge is derived. Experimentation and deduction do not call for inner development; they merely require a training that can be given anybody. A person with no further background is in no position to carry on a debate about anthroposophy without undergoing training in its methods.

But the easy-going people of our time are not about to let themselves in for any such training. They cling to the dogma that man has reached perfection, and they don't want to hear a word about developing. But neither goodness nor truth are accessible to man unless he acts in the very core of his free being to open up the way to them. Those who realize what impulses are essential to sharing with one's heart in the life and guidance of the Anthroposophical Society and who know how to assess its enemies' motives will, if they have sufficient goodwill, also find the strength needed to bring through to a wholesome conclusion these concerns with which, it was stated before I began this talk, the Society itself is also eager to deal.

We cannot establish branches of the Goetheanum wherever souls long for anthroposophy. We are a poor society.

We will only be able to enable those individuals who are far away from the Goetheanum to participate in its work by continuing in written correspondence what happens at the Goetheanum itself. We shall have to discuss how to organize this written correspondence. It will enable those who are unable to spend a certain length of time at the Goetheanum to participate in the classes there. In addition, this correspondence will be facilitated by the visits that the leaders of life at the Goetheanum, or those closely associated with them in various places, will make wherever possible.

But if the School of Spiritual Science is to flourish with its esoteric life, all this must be held together by the genuine anthroposophical spirit.

The leadership at the Goetheanum must strive not to isolate itself in any way from the spiritual life of the present day, but to look out with full participation for everything that is revealed in this spiritual life for the true further development of humanity.

Therefore, the management will be organized in such a way that individual personalities will take over the administration of individual sections, which are already possible and which will hopefully flourish in ever more active work.

The central focus will be the General Anthroposophical Section, which will initially incorporate the Pedagogical Section. I myself will be responsible for leading this section. A Medical Section will ensure that anthroposophy can fertilize the art of healing. Dr. Ita Wegman will be in charge of this section. From the very beginning, medicine has been closely connected with the central task of human knowledge. Anthroposophy will prove its vitality by restoring this connection. Dr. Ita Wegman's clinical-therapeutic institute is a model for this endeavor and its practical application.

Anthroposophy must be particularly concerned with artistic life. For a number of years, we have seen a burgeoning artistic life in the cultivation of eurythmy, declamation and recitation. Music is closely connected with this. This life will be cultivated in a separate section. Marie Steiner has devoted herself to this work with the greatest commitment. She has been appointed to lead this section by the General Anthroposophical Society itself.

The visual arts were influenced by the construction of the Goetheanum. The central works that have been developed on this basis have given rise to a style that will undoubtedly still have many opponents by its very nature. Naturally, it can only express itself imperfectly at the moment. But it will be better understood when people become more familiar with anthroposophy in general. Miss E. Maryon helped me in the development of this style in a way that befits the leader of the sculpture section.

There used to be a concept of “beautiful sciences”. They bridged the gap between actual science and works of human creative imagination. The view that a more recent period has developed of “science” has pushed the “beautiful sciences” completely into the background. I will be speaking about “beautiful sciences” at the “Goetheanum” soon. We in the Anthroposophical Society are fortunate to have a wonderful representative of the “beautiful sciences” among us: Albert Steffen. He is called upon not only to lead the Section for “beautiful sciences”, but also to revive this branch of human creativity, which has been pushed aside to the detriment of civilization. Furthermore, the personalities working among us allow us to form a section for mathematical and astronomical views, headed by Dr. L. Vreede, and a natural science section, headed by Dr. Günther Wachsmuth. The astronomical field is particularly important for anthroposophy, and the natural science section is intended to show how genuine knowledge of nature is not in contradiction to, but in full harmony with, anthroposophy. With the book he is about to publish, Dr. G. Wachsmuth has proven himself to be the right leader of this section. (To be continued in the next issue.)

Dear attendees!

After the moving words that have just been spoken, let me say a few words of greeting and thanks at the end of this summer school endeavor.

Looking back on this time in Penmaenmawr, I can say that I see it as a time of deep satisfaction. It was this Summer School that provided the opportunity to bring anthroposophy to bear here in England on its own, to a greater extent and for a longer period of time. And that is what fills me with such deep satisfaction.

We must not underestimate the ideas that arise from a particular undertaking, especially in our anthroposophical field. The idea from which this summer school originated was developed by Mr. Dunlop when I visited him during his illness - he already mentioned it during my last visit to London. At that time, he was completely absorbed by the idea of adding something to what has been achieved for anthroposophy in such an admirable way, that would put the central core of the anthroposophical movement itself before the world. And he told me at the time that his particular idea was to present to the world in such a summer school what Anthroposophy can give in its content through the word, and also what has emerged from it through eurythmy. And he expressed a third idea, the realization of which was of course not immediately possible because it was too big for external realization in the first attempt. But we have gained the satisfaction of realizing the central anthroposophical element, that which appears as anthroposophy in itself, and that which has grown so intimately out of anthroposophy – I would like to say eurythmy – and to bring it to bear in Penmaenmawr.

This is not to say that the assertion of the individual currents that otherwise grow out of anthroposophy should be underestimated. But, ladies and gentlemen, for those who can examine more deeply the connections of the human soul, and especially the connections that arise between a movement such as anthroposophy and what can come forth from it into the world, it is clear that these other currents can only have an appropriate effect in the world if the Central Anthroposophical Society really comes into its own.

Believe me, my dear audience, the educational movement in all its aspects is truly close to my heart. But never, perhaps precisely because it is so close to my heart, could I ever give anyone the assurance that this educational movement, as it has grown out of anthroposophy, could be fully understood by itself with inner truth , let alone that by first winning an audience for what has grown out of anthroposophy as pedagogy, as an educational system, that this could lead to anthroposophy.

The opposite, in the truest sense of the word, must be the right thing: that it is precisely through anthroposophy itself, through the cultivation of anthroposophy in its most central areas, that a real understanding comes about for that which has grown out of anthroposophy, namely the educational movement, which is so important for the world. That is why Mr. Dunlop spoke so extraordinarily from my heart when he said that before taking care of the dependent movements, one must above all put what must be the source of everything: anthroposophy. Nevertheless, I would prefer to have a different name for Anthroposophy every eight days, so that the public does not get stuck on the name instead of asking about the matter. But that is not possible because of the letterhead and other organizational difficulties. And when I think back to that conversation, I have to say that anyone who is as immersed in the spiritual science movement as I am can give what they are able to give without needing to impose it on the world in any way, without needing to give it because it is expected of them, because it is expected of them in the right way.

Actually, this law should be much more recognized, that real occult spiritual science can only be given when it is requested, when it is requested in the right way. And it was requested in the right way at the time.

And so I may say: My opinion is that precisely from this Summer School in Penmaenmawr a tremendous fertilization can come to the whole anthroposophical movement and its ramifications in England. Therefore, we can look back with such satisfaction on the time we were allowed to spend here in Penmaenmawr. And I already express my heartfelt thanks to Dr. Steiner and to Mr. Dunlop and those who worked with him to make it possible to present the very core of anthroposophy and the eurythmy that has grown out of it to such a dear audience as the one present here. And we are no less grateful to this audience – I am also speaking on behalf of Dr. Steiner – for its attentive support. It is of extraordinary importance to be able to speak, on the one hand, about what one is trying to extract from the sources of spiritual knowledge, because at present it is that which should actually speak most deeply to the heart and soul of the human being. On the other hand, we live in a time in which it can be seen from all possible symptoms how necessary it is for modern civilization to receive a spiritual impetus, and how little that which has come down to us from ancient times is suited to advance civilization in a fruitful way. It would go backwards if it could not gain a new spiritual impetus. And here it may be said: when the opportunity arises, from such a context as has been expressed here, to point out precisely what the time needs, it fills me with the deepest satisfaction.

This morning, for example, I had to draw attention to the fact that civilization itself is threatened by a kind of occult captivity, and more than one might think, the entire intellectual life of our time is in danger of this occult captivity. We can point out this danger everywhere. This morning I mentioned the speech that Oliver Lodge recently gave in England to a very important assembly. I mentioned how one can see from this speech how longings are present even in the most abstract of sciences, longings that remain in the subconscious, but which, if they are properly understood and come from the right attitude, lead to what – in all modesty, let it be said – spiritual science can really provide. And if we follow up such things, we can see everywhere what the word of spiritual science must be in such a case.

You see, it is indeed a significant phenomenon that the remarkable book written by Oliver Lodge about his son's soul after his death, entitled 'Raymond or Life and Death', has grown out of the very way of thinking and attitude that is fully rooted in the most official modern science. I need only mention the fact, it will be known here. The point was that Oliver Lodge's son, who died in the war, was able to communicate through a medium and say things that went deep into the soul of the deeply saddened father.

When the brochure by the excellent man, Oliver Lodge, about Raymond Lodge came out, the world was amazed; for with an enormous erudition, which was truly taken from the most conscientious, exact, modern thinking, the spiritual world was pointed out by Oliver Lodge in the same. A tremendous amount of material had been collected to show how, through this mediumistic channel, one can really enter into the spiritual life of the world through a method similar to that of modern natural science. Particularly striking to the world was the fact that it was possible to speak through mediumship about a photograph that had been taken at the theater of war in France by Raymond Lodge and his colleagues. Two photographs had been taken in succession of Raymond Lodge and his comrades-in-arms; and as the photographer often does in the second shot, he turns the face slightly, raises it higher, and so on. These photographs were such that in England one could not know about them, because by the time one heard about them, Raymond had already died.

Through mediumship, as Oliver Lodge reports, the soul of Raymond Lodge spoke to him and the other family members, he spoke of these photographs that no one here in England had seen; they only arrived here three weeks later. Everything came true, down to the slightest change in the session and attitude. What could be more striking than this! What could be more striking than that something is described by means of a medium, stating that it is the soul of the deceased that is describing something, which was not yet known in England and only arrived later. |

Nevertheless, a terrible error crept in on this very point. Everyone who is well-versed in this field knows that under certain circumstances there is every possibility of premonitions. What the circle gathered with the medium saw by fixing their eyes on the pictures that only arrived in England later could be foreseen by the medium without the soul of the deceased being taken into account in any way – a premonition, albeit an extraordinarily delicate and intimate one, but a premonition nonetheless. One must be more than just a modern scientist if one wants to be critically correct in the spiritual world. Everything that comes in this field, even this excellent, serious, exact work by Oliver Lodge, tends to lead away from the real grasp of the spiritual world rather than to it. The habits of thought and research taken from the natural sciences today are such that, even when one is investigating the spiritual, one wants to proceed as one is accustomed to doing in the laboratory, that one wants to take every step by the hand of the material. But this way does not lead into the spiritual. Only pure spiritual paths lead into the spiritual, as they have been described here. And the person who believes that he can enter the spiritual realm through such a mediumistic path will indeed enter it, but into the spiritual that takes place on the physical plane, in the physical world. Because it was a foreshadowing of two things that took place in the physical world; what has been described only appears to be something that was projected from the spiritual world. Certainly, the physical world is filled with spiritual phenomena everywhere, but people are mistaken about the relationship between the earthly world and the supernatural world if they do not have the opportunity to direct their attention to real, truthful spiritual research. And so what I mentioned this morning is this: this desire to create only from scientific thoughts, as is customary today, and to only allow what comes from scientific thoughts, that is what brings the walls of occult imprisonment. And once inside these occult prisons, attempts are made that in truth go completely awry; for they do not represent the truth, they represent terrible errors that tend to lead further away from the truths; especially when the hearts are as much a part of it as they are in the case of what is written in the book about Raymond Lodge. And we must, because in the realm where the spirit begins to speak, there is such a strong echo coming from our hearts, because the hearts have so much to say, because what can easily be human prejudice creeps into the hearts, we must use all means to prevent the possibility of being surrounded by the spiritual walls of occult imprisonment.

I would not mention these things here if the seriousness of the times did not demand it. And the seriousness of the times demands it. Because it is true: humanity needs to take a decisive step towards the spiritual.

I have been asked many questions during this summer course. Some questions could not be answered in full, not because the subject matter was too difficult, but because the time has not yet fully arrived in the development of humanity when we can speak quite openly about some things. This applies particularly when questions are asked about the spiritual relationships between individual nations. I have also been asked how the spiritual world deals with the fact that one nation conquers another and makes it dependent on itself.

Oh, spiritual science could of course provide the appropriate information on such questions. But the time is truly not yet ripe – believe me, my dear audience, – to speak about these things in complete candour. Because we still do not fully accept the consequences of those truths that begin, for example, like this: One should only ask oneself whether the external aspect is really always the only one when one nation has made another dependent on itself in physical terms, in the material affairs of the world. And one does not always see how the nation that has made the other materially dependent on itself has become spiritually dependent on the one that has made it materially dependent on itself. But this is only the beginning of truths that must also become popular throughout the civilized world. And we will come to that universal understanding of such things, which can then also gain their full significance in practical life, only if we really have the inner courage to engage with the actual spiritual truths.

And so it is ultimately also with the question: Yes, are there individualities in the world today that have some kind of higher truths, that somehow convey these truths to the world and that perhaps are related to each other?

I have already pointed out that it does not depend solely on certain individuals sending truths into the world, but that it also depends on the extent to which the world is willing to accept these truths. I have pointed out many obstacles that exist today and that could be expressed as follows: The Bodhisattva is already waiting; but people must first, in a sufficiently large number, make themselves able to understand him. And when the question is raised as to whether those who have something spiritual to say to the world should communicate this spiritual knowledge to humanity, then it may be said that the fact that something is printed on paper with printed letters does not yet mean anything. I would just like to mention that today much can be written on paper with printed letters that reveals the deepest wisdoms and wisdoms. It always depends on whether these wisdoms and wisdoms are also understood. And there are many means of understanding; there are also many means of understanding that can be applied. But, my dear attendees, communication among people who have something to say from higher worlds was easier in the time when it was spoken from sacred places, such as the Druidic circles that are found here, and when the thought waves that went out from such places into the world did not encounter the waves of wireless telegraphy.

Again, wireless telegraphy is not mentioned in a reactionary way. It is, of course, a material blessing for humanity. But the point is that if spiritual messages are really to go out into the world, stronger forces are needed at the time when spiritual waves meet wireless telegraphy waves than at the time when this is not yet the case. If only people would realize the basic concepts, the fundamental, profound truth that precisely in our time, in which our material culture has reached such a high level, precisely in this time, it is all the more necessary for the spiritual to be written into the hearts of people with great intensity and to spread out from the hearts of people.

There was a really good, great opportunity for this here. For we lived as if in an atmosphere that actually still radiated something wonderful in those old shrines here - and I was also able to draw attention to that in the course of the lectures. Therefore, it was a lucky choice to choose this place, where, in a certain way, what was in Central and Northern Europe before the Mystery of Golgotha went out into the world could spiritually revive. What was waiting for the Mystery of Golgotha, but which then initially found no continuation, as Christianity - as I described this morning - came up from the south. In a sense, it is still waiting.

Because, esteemed attendees, when you come up to that remarkable solitude where these stone circles stand, you can still encounter the real echoes of what once worked with great power here in the northern regions of Europe. And there was much in the stream of power in those days that can no longer be today, because human souls must progress and with today's progress they could not bear it, it would inhibit their freedom. Thus it is precisely because that which was once derived from the Sacred Mysteries by the deepest occult knowledge has gradually passed into the cosmic memory, which, like luminous clouds, hover around the hollows of the mountain peaks in which these sanctuaries are located; precisely because of this, this special atmosphere is spread over everything that can be done here for a newer spiritual life. These are the things that, in the deepest sense, call for Dr. Steiner's and my most heartfelt thanks, that through the efforts of Mr. Dunlop, Mrs. Merry and others, we can include this Penmaenmawr enterprise in what the anthroposophical movement is.

It has already been beautifully mentioned here how many people have worked behind the scenes to make all this possible, and just as you all, my dear listeners, are being expressed the most heartfelt thanks for the beautiful attention you have shown to such a beautiful place for anthroposophy, eurythmy and so on, these thanks also go to all those who prepared this so beautifully and then continued to carry it forward in such a beautiful way during the summer school days themselves. I have already mentioned that anyone who knows how much effort is required to accomplish something like this, and who has often been there themselves, is indeed in a good position to judge these things. And, you see, he also knows something else: those who were around me in the old days and had to prepare such things themselves always sent their skin first to the tanneries, because basically you can't really satisfy everyone. You can't satisfy everyone, but you still get your kicks afterwards. And it's good to have a tanned skin for these days – especially for all those who are behind the scenes and have set up the whole thing.

The anthroposophical movement really did start from a small beginning, ladies and gentlemen. Recently in Dornach I pointed out that twenty-one or so years ago the anthroposophical movement was initiated within the theosophical movement through the journal Lucifer-Gnosis. It was not discontinued, but the work piled up to such an extent that it could no longer be continued. It had a far from adequate, but overwhelming number of subscribers at the very moment when I could not continue it. But the anthroposophical movement started with it, on a very small scale. I wrote most of Lucifer-Gnosis, so to speak; then I had to go to the printer myself to make the corrections at the printing house, then we received the issues, and Dr. Steiner and I placed the cross bands over them, wrote the addresses ourselves (we didn't even have printed addresses, nor did we have a typewriter), then each of us took a laundry basket, put the issues in it and took them to the post office. The anthroposophical movement began on a small scale. Even when giving lectures, one was not allowed to look at the fact that there are such elegant, wonderful rooms as the one here. I once gave a lecture in a room where I had to be careful not to let my legs fall into holes in the floor with every step I took when walking through the hall. Therefore, it did not surprise me that it rained again here the other day – I could almost say, to remind us – because the ceiling here in the city hall also has holes. These things, when compared to the beginnings of the anthroposophical movement, look very much like real festive occasions compared to what could not yet be present in such a solemn way. I am not ashamed to say that in Berlin, for example, we once had to hold our lectures in a room that was separated from the rest by a so-called “Spanish wall”; behind it, the sound of beer glasses could be heard, because behind it was a beer bar. And when we were once unable to get this hall, we were told: This hall is filled with more important things today, go to the only other room we have — which was something between a cellar and a stable. So the anthroposophical movement has had to struggle. And that is why it also knows how to be grateful, insofar as it lives in the hearts of people. And you will understand that what has happened here during these days should be fully appreciated, especially by our side.

In these words of thanks I would like to summarize everything that I feel at this moment of deepest, most heartfelt satisfaction about these days in Penmaenmawr. Finally, I would just like to say: It is indeed always a challenge when I am supposed to work here in England for anthroposophy, that the audience has to spend twice as long at the lectures because everything has to be translated. But from a certain point of view I am not sorry, and that is from the point of view that it has shown something that is basically quite extraordinary - Mr. Kaufmann's excellent translation skills have been demonstrated. He will also have to translate what I am saying now, and as always, I ask him not to omit these last words, otherwise I will threaten him by saying that I will ask Dr. Baravalle to translate these words. I also express my gratitude to Mr. Kaufmann for what he has once again done in such a dedicated manner, even though he almost got sick because he didn't bring his winter coat here, where you really need winter coats. He has taken on this work tirelessly, and as I know for certain, to the deepest satisfaction of the audience. Above all, he deserves the warmest thanks, because I must say: what should I do if Mr. Kaufmann were not there to convey what I would have liked to convey to you so much. And so, at the end of this undertaking, I believe I have the right to express the warmest thanks in my name and in that of Dr. Steiner to everyone: Mr. Dunlop, Mrs. Merry, Mr. Kaufmann and all the others who have worked in front of and behind the scenes. And let it also be said that the memory of what we have experienced here at Penmaenmawr will remain a truly warm and lasting one.

With these words, which should bind us together for the future, since I believe we have been here in harmony, in a harmony also consecrated by historical memories, I would like to conclude my greeting and expression of thanks for these wonderful days in Penmaenmawr.

This lecture is number six of eighteen lectures from the lecture series entitled, Man's Responsibility for World Evolution through His Spiritual Connection with the Planet Earth and with the Stars Above. It is also known as, Spiritual Science in the Light of Today.

My dear friends,

On the basis of those things which we discussed here in the last lecture, I should now like to bring forward various details which may perhaps be of use to you as members of the Anthroposophical Movement for purposes of defence, whenever from some corner or other, attacks are made against our Anthroposophical Movement, and what must now appear in its train. In recent times, one sees these attacks appearing everywhere. To-day I will confine myself simply to attacks of a certain kind, but at the present moment attacks are being specially directed against our practical undertaking, against which has to come forth as such from the Anthroposophical Movement. Far and wide one can hear it said:—“Well, these people are now founding a ‘Kommende Tag,’ a ‘Futurum’;—what do they mean to do with these things? They only want to establish such practical things for the use of those who confess themselves as belonging to the Anthroposophical view of the world. Economic undertakings are therefore set on foot, in order that those who confess to an Anthroposophical world view may acquire a certain power, and in the first place an economic power.”

If those who make this reproach were to enter more closely into what lies at the basis of such undertakings and see how they proceed out of the whole spirit of the Anthroposophical Movement, such a reproach could not be made; but, on the other hand, one cannot deny that, even amongst those human beings who stand within our Anthroposophical movement, often things are said which contribute richly to the arising of such misunderstandings. It is quite impossible, according to the whole ways and methods by means of which what is here called Anthroposophy seeks to relate itself to the world, it is absolutely impossible that such a judgment can be in any way justified, but that will only be clear to those who can grasp the spirit of our whole Anthroposophical Movement. This Anthroposophical Movement reckons with all the forces present in the evolution of humanity. How often has it been emphasised that the development of humanity has to undergo certain points of transition, and that these turning points should be observed. I should just like to point to one such turning point, in order to show how little justified is the opinion that we may have any definite dogma or theory which we seek to bring to humanity.

It may of course, occur, as a kind of anomaly, a kind of out-growth of fanaticism amongst a few members, that they should think they have to advocate a definite dogma; and indeed, this may be considered right by many, but it does not lie in the spirit of the Anthroposophical Movement. For if, in the spirit of this Movement, we look back into human evolution, then we find that in olden times, those ancient times in which an instinctive clairvoyance was prevalent, the whole disposition of Man's soul was different; man assumed a quite different place in the world. What was striven for in those places which we often designate as the Mysteries, in those ancient epochs of human evolution? Let us for the present leave all details aside, and just try to grasp the meaning of the Mysteries.

Those who wore considered ripe and were found suitable for being received into the Mysteries during their earth-life—that means in the time between birth and death—participated in a certain instruction given them by the Guides in those Mysteries, and that instruction came from what the Leaders of the Mysteries had to impart concerning the super-sensible worlds. No Mystery-Leader made any secret of the fact that, in his opinion, the teachings in the Mysteries did not proceed only from human beings, but that, through the special rites carried on in those Mysteries, super-sensible beings, Divine Spiritual Beings were present during the celebration of the Mysteries, and with the assistance of those Gods present therein everything connected with it was given out. The essential point was this:—all the arrangements made in the Mysteries were of such a nature that they attracted, so to speak Divine Spiritual Beings, who, through the mouths of those who were the Leaders of the Mysteries, gave instruction to those who were the pupils therein.

In those olden times, everything was so organised socially, that not only were the arrangements made accepted by the Guides and Pupils of the Mysteries, but even by those who stood outside the Mysteries and who were not able to share in the life of the Mysteries. The whole arrangements made as social arrangements for humanity, were thus accepted.

One need merely think of old Egypt, and of how those who were the Leaders in the State received their directions from the Mysteries. The Mysteries were regarded as the self-understood place of direction for everything which had to occur within the social life.

To-day, my dear friends, one can also impart instruction, esoteric instruction, which can run in forms similar to those old Mystery-arrangements; but all that has quite another meaning to-day. That is because between our epoch and that ancient epoch, in reference to such things, a significant turning-point has occurred in the development of mankind. In those ancient times man was, as it were, destined to receive the instruction given through the Mysteries and through which he approached those Divine Spiritual Beings, during his life here,—between birth and death. Now things are different. We are living after that turning-point in human evolution, between birth and death. When these things altered, that which man then had to learn through the Mysteries between birth and death;—that, my dear friends, he now learns to-day, before he descends through conception or through birth into a physical body. He learns it according to his Karma, and according to the preparations he had gone through in a former life on earth. What man undergoes now in the Spiritual world, between the great Midnight Hour of existence and his next birth, is something which also includes that Spiritual instruction.

You will find what had to be said in another connection concerning these things, in a cycle which I gave in Vienna in 1914, on the life between Death and a New Birth; but that was only indicated there, was only touched upon with a few strokes. I will now try to characterise it more closely.

Man to-day experiences something akin to the old Mystery instruction, before he descends from the pre-existence condition into his physical body. That is a factor with which anyone must reckon, who through Spiritual knowledge, stands in reality to-day. We must not think of a man born to-day as he was thought of in olden times. In olden times he was so considered that one could say: “He descends on to the Earth and is destined to be initiated through the Mysteries into the knowledge of what he really is as a human being.”

The case is not like that to-day. That arrangement was made for human beings who had gone through a smaller number of earthly lives than has the man of to-day, who has, of course, taken far more into his soul in his many incarnations which made it possible for him to receive certain instruction on the part of the Divine Spiritual Beings in his pre-existent condition.

My dear friends, we have to pre-suppose something of this nature to-day, when we see a child. When we meet a child to-day, we must realise that we no longer have the task of pouring into that child that which had to be poured in, in olden times. To-day it is our task to say: “This child has been taught, he has only laid a physical body around his already-instructed-soul; that which was his pre-birthly instruction from the Gods must make its way through the veils around that soul, it must be brought out.” That is how we should think to-day in the sense of pedagogy, if we are to think in the sense of true Anthroposophical Spiritual Science. It will then be clear to us that, fundamentally, all our instruction shall tend to remove those hindrances which lie around that which the child brings with him into this world from his pre-birthly existence. It is for that reason that, in our Waldorf Teaching, such significance is laid on the fact that the teacher should really regard the child before him as something like a riddle that he has to solve,—in whom he must seek that which the child is concealing in himself; he must not lay the chief importance on anything which he has undertaken to put into the child. He must never proceed in any dogmatic way, but all the time he has to consider the child itself as his teacher, and see how the child through its special behaviour, betrays the very way in which those veils are to be broken through; so that, from out of the child itself, that Divine instruction can come forth. So the Waldorf pedagogy and didactic consist in eliminating those veils which are around the child, so that the child can come to itself, and discover within itself its own Divine instruction. Therefore, we say we have no need to inoculate into the child anything we have conceived as a theory—no matter how beautifully it may be put in our books; we leave that to those who are still rooted in the ancient traditional religious Confessions. We leave that to those who want to make children Catholics or Evangelists or to those who want to make them Jews. That is not our way,—we do not even want to inoculate Anthroposophical pedagogy into the children. We simply want to use what we have learned as Anthroposophy, to make ourselves capable of evoking into being that living spirit which lives in the child from its pre-existence. We want through Anthroposophy to acquire a dexterity in teaching, and not a number of dogmas, which we teach the children. We want to become more dexterous ourselves; we want to evolve a didactic art, so as to make of the child what it has to become. We ourselves are quite clear that all the other knowledge which is to-day brought from the most diverse sides, may indeed instruct the head, but cannot make a person an artist in pedagogy; it does not affect the whole man, but simply the head. Anthroposophy grasps the whole human being and makes him a manipulator of that artistic dexterity, (as I might call it) which should be displayed to the pupils. Therefore, we use Anthroposophy in order to become more dexterous teachers, but not to bring it to the child. We are quite clear as to this:—the spirit does not consist of a number of ideas, of concepts; it is a living thing, and it appears in each individual child in a quite special and individual way, if only we ourselves are able to bring to its consciousness what each child brings to the Earth with its birth here. My dear friends, we would impoverish this Earth, if we only sought to bring to the children things which can be comprised in a sum of dogmas; while on the contrary we make the Earth richer if we cultivate and cherish that which the Gods have given to the child and which it brings with it to the Earth. That which is the living spirit then appears in ever so many human individualities;—not that which some wish to bring as Anthroposophy to these human children in order to make them uniform, but that which brings to life that living spirit which dwells in them. That is our object, and for that reason we have absolutely no interest in bringing Anthroposophical dogma to the children. That is one of the practical outcomes of Anthroposophical Spiritual Science.

This special didactic, this special pedagogic art, is quite different from anything which human beings have thought of till now, for they have only been able to think, for instance “I believe in a certain dogma; that therefore is the best which we can give to our children.” It does not interest us at all to bring any dogmas to the children, for we know that each child brings his own message when he appears on the Earth through the Gate of Birth, and we should destroy that message if we tried to meet it with dogma of any kind. The spirit does not need to be cultivated in an abstract way; when one is able to get it free and bring it to life, the living spirit itself is then there, instead of a series of dogmas.

All our “opinions” are only there as a means of awakening the living spirit in humanity and to keep it quite in a state of continual development; that is why it is quite a wrong idea spread abroad that in the Waldorf School or in anything else which we cultivate pedagogically, we wish to carry on Anthroposophy in a dogmatic way. We do not wish to do so in the Waldorf School, nor do we want to impress Anthroposophy dogmatically on any Science. On the contrary, in every single Science we want to bring out the individual nature of that Science. We are quite convinced that it is essential to create something in the world through Anthroposophy which will extinguish all dogma and bring out the individual nature of each particular sphere. From this point of view, it was needful that those attacks springing up from all corners should be repelled, whenever they turn on our bringing Anthroposophy as Dogma into any Science, or pedagogy.

And now, in what concerns our practical undertakings we find people saying, with remarkable unanimity during the last few weeks in Germany, as also in Switzerland and many other places,—because of the recent publications of the “Kommenden Tag” and the “Futurum,”—“Well, these undertakings are all conducted by Anthroposophists combining together so that they can have their own economic undertakings, and so on. Other people perhaps nay be admitted to these undertakings and concerns, but they will certainly have no voice in the administration,” and so on and so on. Now if we wanted to do things of this kind, it would contradict the very principle on which we stand, i.e. we have to keep the development of humanity in all its details clearly before our minds, and not ask for something absolutely complete and correct, but just ask ourselves: “What ought to take place to-day?” Then we must pay attention to the second turning-point in the evolution of humanity. To-day various affairs, but especially economic affairs are developed amongst humanity from a certain principle of inertia. Formerly these arrangements were born in a tiny circle, usually in a tiny territory. To-day, because they are as a rule State economic concerns, we find, in the place of the individual undertakings of the past, that we have imperial concerns, which have consequently become gigantic, although we find them now springing up from inertia. To-day one speaks of National Economy, thereby welding two things together, the peculiar Group-Spirit which holds a race together, a Group-Spirit is externally, I might say, embodied in the blood. Now the world-relationships have for a long time been of such a nature that, with every kind of Group-Community which expresses itself in the blood, modern economics can have nothing whatever to do,—that is, if they are to be based on sound relationships. So to-day, something is strongly expressed in an economic relationship when the Rhine boundaries are discussed, because it is desired to have on one side of the Rhine a different economic arrangement to what exists on the other side, because of the different racial and national considerations. These national considerations have all arisen from different forces, and to-day have nothing whatever to do with that which constitutes world-economy (Weltwirtschaft). These things have reached a certain crisis in the course of the last third of the 19th Century. Then only did these turning-points in evolution, in the evolution of humanity, become so obvious.

As we have just tried to explain, in olden times man entered physical existence uninstructed by the Gods, and he had to be taught through the Mysteries. To-day he enters already taught, and that which is in his soul has only to be brought to his consciousness. In ancient times, as regards the social and economic life of mankind, things were so arranged that a man was born into a definite social connection, into a certain group, according to just those forces which worked in him before his birth. It was not only the principle of physical heredity which lay at the basis of the oldest forms of inequality, which we find, for instance, in the oldest caste divisions;—in the old caste division the Leaders of the social orderings operated things according to the way in which man, before his birth or conception was destined for a certain Group of his fellow-human beings. In those times when fewer earthly incarnations lay behind the earthly soul, then, because of his fewer earthly incarnations on Earth, a man was born into a quite definite Group, and in that one definite Group alone could he develop socially. A man who, for instance, belonged to a certain caste in Old India, belonged to it because of what his soul had gone through in the Spiritual world; and, because of the small number of his incarnations, if he had been transferred to another caste he would have degenerated in his soul. It was not only the blood-inheritance which lay at the basis of the Caste system, but something which I must call Spiritual pre-determination. Man has long grown out of that. Between our Age and that old epoch there is in this respect another turning-point. People to-day still bear within them marks of a Group-nature, but that if simply a phantom-image. People are born into certain nations, and also into a certain class of society, but in the great number of people growing up in a certain epoch one can already see, even in childhood, that such a predetermination from a pre-earthly existence no longer prevails to-day. To-day human beings are instructed by the Gods in their pre-natal existence, and the stamp of a definite Group is no longer impressed upon them. The last relic of this still lingers in physical heredity. In a sense, one might say that to belong with one's consciousness to a Nationality is a piece of inherited sin and is something which should no longer play a, part in the soul of man.

On the other hand, there is the fact, which does play a definite role in our modern epoch, that man, as he grows up, grows away from all the Group-forms; yet within the economic life he cannot remain without a Group-education, because, with reference to the economic life, the individual can never be dominant. That which constitutes the Spiritual life, springs from the deepest part of man's inner being, within which he can acquire, not only a certain harmony of his capacities, but should perfect and maintain them through a certain schooling. But that which constitutes a judgement in the sphere of economics can never proceed from a single human being. I have given you instances of this, and I have shown you how an economic judgment suet always fall into error when it proceeds from one single man. I will give another example, taken from the second half of the 19th Century.

I have told you that at a definite time, in the middle and second half of the 19th Century, in Parliaments and other corporate bodies the discussions everywhere centered round the Gold Standard. Those speakers who at that time spoke in favour of a Gold Standard—you could have heard them everywhere,—were really clever people. I do a not say that ironically, because the people who at that time appeared as practical and Theoretical speakers in Parliaments and other assemblies really were very clever, and what they said really belongs to the best utterances of Parliament concerning the Gold Standard in the various Countries. But almost everywhere they pointed to one thing with great sagacity,—to the fact that the Gold Standard will set Free-Trade on its feet again, and do away with all Customs Duties. If one reads to-day what was then said about the beneficial effects of the Gold standard on Free-Trade, one has real joy in seeing how clever those people were; but, my dear friends, the very opposite appeared of what all the cleverest people said. As a consequence of the Gold Standard, prohibitive tariffs appeared everywhere. You see that the cleverness in the economic life which proceeded out of single personalities, was not able to help man. That could be proved in the most diverse spheres; because the fact is, that although what a man knows about nature or about another man makes him competent to judge as a single individual, no man is competent to judge as a single individual when it comes to the sphere of economics. A man cannot have a judgment on economic things in the concrete, as a single individual. An economic judgment can only arise when human beings unite together, associate together, and support each other mutually, when there is co-operation in their associations. It is not possible for a single man to have a sound judgment which can pass into economic activity.

Just the contrary happens when a man has a scientific judgment. In a scientific judgment, if it proceeds out of the whole man, he can give a comprehensive judgment; but in concrete economics and in economic trade the point is that one man knows one part, the second knows another part, the third knows something else. The producer in one department knows something, the consumer in the same department knows something else; what they each know must flow together, and then can arise a Group-judgment in the sphere of Economics. In other words, the old Forms are done away with, and a Group-judgment, a collective judgment must arise. Human beings must form themselves into Groups of their own accord, and these must comprise associations of the economic life. From the understanding of a necessary evolving force in evolution it comes about, that this associative life of economics must be taken up by humanity, and take the place of the old group-connections which are still propagated to-day in humanity as an inherited sin. When we consider this; we must indeed say:—As regards knowledge, in ancient times humanity came untaught to Earth, but in the Mysteries, they then received their wisdom. Now human beings descend to Earth instructed, and we have so to arrange our didactics that we can draw out of them that which the Gods have taught them.

In reference to the economic arrangements, formerly human beings were pre-determined, as it were; a stamp from the Gods was imprinted on them, and so they were born into a certain Caste, or into one Group or another. That is also past. To-day human beings are born without that stamp; they are in a sense put as single isolated individuals into humanity, and now they must bring ahout their own Group- forms by means of their Spirituality. It is really not a case of bringing such human beings as profess Anthroposophy; that simply depends upon what the Gods have taught them before their birth, and whether in their former incarnations they have been found ripe for that Divine instruction so that now we can draw forth Anthroposophy from them,—Anthroposophy is in far more people to-day than one thinks, but so many are too lazy to draw forth from themselves that which is in them, or perhaps their school instruction was so organised that the veils cannot be dissolved, and so they cannot attain their consciousness.

In the practical sphere, and especially in the economic sphere, it would be absurd to bring human beings together simply because they are Anthroposophists. We study Anthroposophy in order to obtain insight into the way in which human beings are seeking, from out of their group consciousness, the group-formation which they must seek as a result of their former incarnations. They must be given the opportunity of forming Groups and of carrying out what lies in germ in the development of humanity. So you see it can never be a question of grouping together human beings because they live in a definite dogma, but those human beings who, through their previous life on earth are called upon to find themselves in groups, to those should be given the possibility of associating themselves in these groups. In these things, as soon as we pass from the abstract into the concrete, we find an extraordinary number of riddles,—I might almost say mysterious things; because, whether a man belongs to one group or another, is by no means a simple matter. The longing people now have for simplicity, shows itself in extraordinary ways. I have been informed of something concerning a lecture which the worthy Frohmeyer has just held, “Theosophy and Anthroposophy” in which he says at the end,—“his own personal relationship to Christianity reminds him of the well-known fact that it unfortunately always annoys these people that what is so great can yet he so simple.”

He means apparently that the Anthroposophists are annoyed that the great is so simple. That is, as simple as the laziness of the Rev. Frohmeyer would like to have it, for he will not endeavour to realise the greatness in all its differentiation. One always has to translate these things into their proper language. That is something which is our especial task; we must translate things into their true-speech.

Of course, there can be no question of throwing at anyone's head this doctrine of the instruction of man before his birth, of his being born into Groups in ancient times and no longer being born into Groups now-a-days; but we can permeate ourselves with these truths, and we shall then find a possibility of showing our methods as time goes on, of showing how far removed we are from introducing any dogma into our schools, or of bringing people into economic associations because they admit amongst themselves the truth of certain dogmas.

How strongly that is made a point of in our Waldorf school at Stuttgart, you can see from the simple fact that we have no interest in bringing Anthroposophy to the children. We want to have a method of instruction which can only be gained through Anthroposophy; but that is a purely objective affair. Those children, or rather their parents, who wish them to have instruction from a Catholic Priest in the Catholic religion—for them a Catholic priest can come to the Waldorf school;—and for those who want to he taught the Evangelical religious instruction, the Evangelical minister can come to the school. We place no hindrance whatever in the way of these men. But it became necessary in recent times, when so many parents, especially those from the proletariat, do not want their children instructed either in the Catholic or Evangelical views, to ask whether they perhaps would like their children to have a free religious instruction born of an Anthroposophical education. It then at once became evident that those who would otherwise have been educated without any religion whatever, and would not have entered any religious confession, were very numerous; but these came to a so-called Anthroposophical religious class which did not teach Anthroposophy, but was simply born of Anthroposophy. These children proved to be more industrious in their religious instruction than was the case with the others taught by the Catholic or Evangelistical clergy; but that we could not help, that was the business of the Catholic or Evangelical Priests. Gradually a number of children passed over from the one religious instruction to the other. I believe it was the Evangelical teacher who finally said:—“In the near future I shall have no one left in my class, they are all running away from me!” But that again was most certainly not our fault; there was never any question of teaching dogma of any kind to those children. We have no interest in doing that. We knew that if our method succeeded in removing the veils around the children, they would then have the best instruction,—that which was given to them in the Spiritual world before their descent on to the Earth. Of course, certain confessions are strongly interested in darkening this instruction, not to let it appear. Whoever e.g. can compare the extraordinary relation between what stands in the Papal Encyclical and what transpires in the Spiritual world knows that the Divine religious instruction which children enjoy before their descent is absolutely not what many religious confessions would like them to have to-day. This is especially to be noticed in the Catholic Church; because the Catholic Church, as compared with the Evangelical, has always preserved a more super-sensible influence through its ritual and Ceremonies. But super-sensible influence can appear in various ways, and one can say: it may be an error when it deviates from the truth, it may also be an error when it is the direct opposite of the truth.

Regarding now what concerns the practical undertakings,—naturally I cannot betray here what is discussed in our business meetings, which often last till 3:30. but I can give you the assurance, that in the meetings of the Futurum and Kommenden Tag, Anthroposophy is not discussed, but things of quite another nature. There are things which must be treated only in the most practical manner; how one should manage things in this or that sphere, etc. Here theoretic Anthroposophy plays no role, except that what is discussed should grasp the economic life in as clever a manner as one does when one makes ones thoughts mobile so that they can contact the reality, as happens through a living grasp of the Spirit of Anthroposophy.

One need therefore merely point out, that neither in the Statutes of the “Kommenden Tag” nor of the “Futurum,” are there any Anthroposophical dogmas,—merely economic things; the only question is how to make these undertakings better than similar undertakings to-day. That is one of the points which must be defended, because it is one of the attacks which now crop up from every corner, and will do, do so more and more, unless we put our affairs clearly and energetically before the world. What I have to say recently in Stuttgart is true; it has not yet been learnt in the Anthroposophical Movement how to be attentive to realities. Our opponents are different. They organise and will prove their organisation. We must unconditionally fail unless we are conscious of this, and can make as strong efforts for the good as are now being made for the bad.

Thus to-day I wanted to bring up one of the points in reference to which you will hear definite attacks against our practical undertakings. If you open your ears, and this is necessary (figuratively I mean), you will hear: and many things will have to be defended in this direction. I wanted to-day to say what could enthuse the soul when it becomes necessary to defend in this direction. This enthusing-of-the-soul can come, when we know what it meant in olden times that man came to Earth uninstructed by the Gods; he now comes instructed before birth and his whole life must be ordered thereto. Also what it means that man was formerly determined by the will of the Gods into Castes, Classes, Peoples, Tribes, etc. That disappeared after the turning-point which lies behind us. Man is now destined from Economic necessities to form Groups in Earth-life. That happens in Economic Associations. A right knowledge of the Earth-development of the Spiritual evolution of man and their connections, shows how what we call the “Three-fold Commonwealth” is not merely a political programme, but the result of what flows from a real knowledge of human evolution as a Necessity for the Present and the immediate Future.

Of these things, more tomorrow.

To-day we must bring our observations to a sort of conclusion; and the natural and proper conclusion of them will of course be, as I indicated yesterday, to consider the necessary consequence to be drawn for the conduct of the Anthroposophical Society in the future. In order to form a clearer notion of what this conduct should be, let us just look back once more and see how Anthroposophy has grown up out of the whole modern civilization of the day.

You will have seen from the course of our observations during this past week, that in a way the public for Anthroposophy had necessarily to be sought in the first place amongst those circles where a strong impulse had been given towards a deepening of the spiritual life. This impulse came, of course, from many different quarters. But here one needed to look no further for the main impulse for these homeless souls, than to the things which Blavatsky, so to speak, delivered as riddles to this modern age.—Well, we have discussed all that. If, however, we must go back to this in the first place as the impulse for the Anthroposophical Society, on the other hand it must also have been plain, that for Anthroposophy itself such an impulse, or this particular impulse, was not the essential matter; for Anthroposophy itself goes back to other sources. And although—for the very reason that its public happened to come in the way I said—Anthroposophy at first employed outward forms of expression—even for its own wealth of wisdom—that were terms already familiar to these homeless souls, as coming from the quarter connected with Blavatsky,—yet these were just outward forms of expression. If you go back to my own first writings, Christianity as Mystical Fact, Mysticism at the Dawn of the New Age of Thought, you will see, that in reality these writings are in no way traceable to anything whatever coming from Blavatsky, or indeed from that quarter at all, with this one exception of the fact, that the outward forms of expression have been selected incidentally with a view to finding understanding.

One must distinguish, therefore, between what was actual spiritual substance, flowing all through the anthroposophic movement, and what were outward forms of expression, incidentally required by the conditions of the time. That mistakes can arise on this point is simply due to the fact, that people at the present day are so disinclined to go back from the form of outward expression to what is the real heart of the matter.—Anthroposophy can be traced back in a straight line to the note already struck in my Philosophy of Freedom (though then in a philosophic form),—to the note struck in my Goethe writings of the 'eighties.

If you take what is in these writings on Goethe and in the Philosophy of Freedom, the dominant note struck in them is this: That Man, in the innermost part of his being is in connection with a spiritual world; that therefore, if only he looks deep enough back into his own being, he comes to something within himself to which the usual natural science of that day, and also of this, is unable to penetrate, and which can only be contemplated as direct part of a spiritual world-order.

And in face of the terrible, what I might call spiritual chaos of language which this modern civilization has created in all countries, it might really be recognized as inevitable, if one was sometimes obliged to have recourse to what sounded paradoxical terms of expression.

And so I let glimmer faintly, so to speak, through these Goethe writings, that when one rises from contemplation of the world to contemplation of divine spirit, it is necessary to introduce a modification in the idea of Love. Already in these writings on Goethe, I indicated, that the Divinity must be conceived as having shed Itself abroad in infinite love through all existence, and that it has now to be sought in each particular existence;—which leads to something totally different from a confused pantheism.—Only, at that date, there was absolutely no possibility in any way of finding what one might call a philosophic ‘point of connection’. For, easy as it would have been to gain a hearing for a spiritual world-conception such as this, had the age possessed any philosophic ideas on to which to connect, it was equally difficult with the sort of warmed-up Kantianism that at that time existed,—with this sort of philosophy, it was difficult to find any point of connection. And accordingly it was necessary to seek this point of connection in a fuller, more intensive stream of life, in a spiritual life inwardly saturated, so to speak, with spiritual substance.—

And this kind of spiritual life was just what one found manifested in Goethe. And therefore, when I had first had to make public these particular ideas, I could not connect-on with a Theory of Cognition to what was then to be found in the civilization of the day: one had to connect-on to the world-conception of Goethe; and by aid of this Goetheistic world-conception it became possible to take the first step into the spiritual world.

In Goethe, one finds two doors which in a way open into the spiritual world,—which, to a certain degree, give access to it. One finds the first of these doors at the point where one enters upon the study of Goethe's natural-science works. For with the scientific conception of nature which Goethe worked out, he was able, within the bounds of the vegetable-world, to overcome just that disease under which the whole of modern natural science down to this day is suffering. He succeeded in putting living, flexible ideas in place of the dead and dried ones, for the observation of the vegetable-world. And then it was possible to go further, and indicate at any rate ... even though Goethe himself failed with his theory of metamorphosis when he came to the animal king-dom, still it was at any rate possible to indicate a prospect that a similar, only intensified, method of observation, not worked out so far by Goethe, might be applied to the animal kingdom as well. And in my book, Goethe's World-Conception,¹ I tried to show how it was possible—only as a sketch to begin with—to push on as far as history, as far as historic life, with the live and live-making ideas from the source.—That was the first door.

Now, in Goethe, one finds no direct line of continuance leading on from this starting-point into the actual spiritual world; from this starting-point one can only work on, as it were, to a certain definite level. And whilst thus working one has the feeling then of grasping the sensible world in a spiritual fashion. When employing Goethe's method, one is moving, rightly speaking, in a spiritual element. And though one is applying this method to the sensible plant-world, or the sensible animal-world, one grasps by this method the spiritual element living and weaving in the plant or in the animal-world.

But Goethe had another door besides in contemplation. And this was most strikingly apparent when one started out from something which Goethe was only able to indicate pictorially,—half symbolically, one might say; when one started out, namely, from his Story of the Green Serpent and the Lovely Lily,² through which he wished to show how spirit, spiritual agencies, are at work in the evolution of the world, and how the several spheres of the True, the Beautiful, the Good, work together, and that they are actual Spiritual beings one must grasp, not mere abstractions of the mind, if one wants to arrive at a view of the actual life of spirit.

The possibility therefore existed, of connecting-on, to begin with, to this point in Goethe's world conception. Rut then, however, there followed a very particular necessity. For there is one thing above all, you see, which must necessarily present itself to anybody to-day, when it is a question of a world-conception for these homeless souls; and that is the moral and ethical problem, the moral conduct of life.

¹ ‘Grundlinien einer Erkenntnistheorie der Goetheschen Weltanschauung.’

‘Cognitive Theory of Goethe's World-Conception.’

² See: ‘Goethes Geistesart in ihrer Offenbarung usw.’

In those old times, when men arrived by original clairvoyance at their view of the divine spirit-world, it was, then, a matter-of-course that this divine spiritual world, of which men could rise to a view, was the source of their ethical impulses also. If we look back to very old periods of human evolution, we find a state of things in which, when Man gazed up, say in the good old times, in his first primitive clairvoyance, to the world of Divine Spirit above him, he beheld on the one hand, those living Beings, those Powers, who rule the phenomena of the natural world; and in the phenomena of the natural world, in the workings of wind and weather, in the workings of earth, in mechanic workings, this man of a primal age could see the continuance, the prolongation of what he beheld in the divine spirit-world. But at the same time he could receive from this divine spirit-world the impulses for his own actions.

This is the peculiar thing about the old world-conceptions, which still went along with a primitive clairvoyance, that, if we take, say, the Ancient Egyptian Age, men looked up to the skies in order to learn the workings of the earth, even to learn what they needed to know about the flooding of the Nile; they looked up to the stars; and from the courses of the stars, from the laws of the stars in their courses, they deduced what concerned them for the earth-world,—I mean, for the order of Nature in the earth-world.

And in the same way, too, these people calculated—if I may use the expression—what the impulses should be for ethical life. The impulses of ethical life, too, were drawn from observation of the stars.

And if we then look at things as they are now in recent times, we shall say: Observation of the stars is now carried on in its mathematical aspect only; which amounts to nothing more, than that men carry the mathematics of earth up into the stars of heaven. And they look on earth, and find on the earth what are called ‘laws of nature’.

Well, these ‘laws of nature’, which Goethe found, too, in his time, and which he converted into live ideas,—these ‘laws of nature’ have a certain peculiarity, directly it comes to a view of the world,—to a world-conception. The peculiarity namely is this: that Man,—to go by the laws of nature,—is himself excluded from the World,—that he then, in his own truest, most characteristic being as Man, has no longer any place in the World.

Picture to yourselves the old world-conceptions and how it was there. On the one side we have the world of Divine Spirit. This world of Divine Spirit permeated the phenomena of the natural world. People discovered laws for the natural phenomena; but these laws were recognized as being a kind of reflection from the action of Divine Spirit in the world of Nature. And Man, too, was also there. The same divine spirit-world shed its rays into Man. And so Man had his place within the whole order of the world. He derived, so to speak, the substance of which he was made from the same divine spiritual element of which the substance of the natural world was made.—What happened then?—My dear friends, what then happened, is something that one must regard in all its gravity; for what happened was, that, in a sort of way, a cut was made by natural science across the link that joined the world of Nature to the world of the Divine. The Divine is gone,—gone from the world of Nature. And in the world of Nature the reflections of Divine action are statuated as natural laws, and people speak of ‘laws of Nature’.

To the people of old, these Laws of Nature were the Thoughts of Cod. To the men of to-day they are still of course thoughts, for one has to comprehend them by thoughts; but the explanation lies somehow or other in the phenomena of Nature, which of course are themselves contained under the laws of Nature:—law of gravitation, law of the refraction of light, and all these fine things,—these are what people talk of to-day. But all these things have nothing whatever underneath them, or rather, nothing whatever above them; for there is no sense in talking of all these laws; unless one can talk of them as reflections from the Divine Spirit's action in the natural world.

This is what is felt by minds of greater depth, by homeless souls, in all the talk of the present day about Nature: they feel, with these people who talk about Nature, that one might rightly apply to them the words of Goethe,—or, more correctly, the words of Mephisto: they ‘laugh at themselves, and never know it’.¹ People talk of laws of Nature, but these laws of Nature are what has been left behind from the views of the men of old. Only, the views of the men of old had something else beside these laws of Nature, something, namely, that made these laws of Nature possible.

Suppose for a moment that you have a rose-bush. You can always go on having roses from this rose-bush. When the old roses wither, new ones grow again. But if you pick the roses and let the rose-bush die, you cannot still go on having new roses.

But this is just what happened with the science of nature. A rose-bush was once there; it had its roots in God. The laws which men found in the natural world, were the separ-ate roses. These laws, men have picked; they have picked the roses; the rose-bush they have let die. And so we have now in the laws of Nature, something that remains like roses without a rose-bush. And people are blind to it; they have no notion of it in their heads, upon which they set such store in these days. But those people, who are homeless souls, have a very strong notion of it in their hearts: for they can make nothing of these laws of Nature; they feel: These laws of Nature are withered: they shrivel up, when one tries to look at them as a human being.

And so the men of modern times, in so far as they can feel, in so far as they have hearts in their bodies, suffer unconsciously under an impression: ‘They tell us about Nature; but what they tell us withers in our grasp; indeed, it withers us, ourselves, as human beings.’ And mankind is compelled

to accept this as pure truth. Mankind is compelled by fearful force of authority to believe,—whilst in their hearts they feel, that the roses wither, they are compelled to the belief that these roses are the eternal living World-Beings. And people talk about World-Laws! The phenomena pass away, the laws abide for ever!—Natural science, this ‘science of Nature’, ... since what Man is seeking to express as his own consciousness of Human Self is Anthroposophy, then natural Science is,—Anti-Anthroposophy!

But let us look at the other side of it, at the ethical and moral side. The impulses of ethical and moral life came from the same divine source; but just as men had made withered roses of the laws of nature, so they made withered roses of the ethical impulses. The roots were everywhere gone; and so the ethical impulses went fluttering about the civilized world as moral commandments and customs, of which nobody knew the root. How could people possibly help feeling, ‘The moral commandments and customs are there;—but the divine origin is not there.’ And now arose the inevitable question: ‘Yes!—but what is to come of it, if these customs and commandments are not obeyed? It will come to chaos and anarchy in human society! ‘Whilst on the other side, again, there was this question: ‘What is the force of these commandments? What is at the root of them?’—Here, too, people felt this same withering and drying-up.

¹ He has the bits then all in his hand:

—One thing, alas! is missing however:

The bond of the spirit to hold them together!

• Encheiridion, Chemistry calls it;—

Laughs at itself, and never knows it!

(‘Faust’ I.)

That, you see, became the great question. That came to be the question, which arose out of Goetheanism, but to which Goetheanism, in itself, could give no answer.

Goethe gave, so to speak, two starting points, which converged upon one another, but did not meet. What is wanted,—what was wanted,—is the Philosophy of Freedom.

It needed to be shown that Man himself is the seat of the divine impulse, since in Man lies the power to go to the grounds of the spiritual principle both of the natural, as well as the spiritual principle of the moral law.

This led to the intuitionalism of the Philosophy of Freedom; it led to what people termed ethical individualism; ‘ethical individualism’, because in each single human individual was shown to reside the source of the ethical impulses,—in that Divine First Principle to which every man in the innermost part of his being is united.

Now that the age had begun, when the laws of Nature on one hand, and on the other, the moral commandments, had lost all life for men, because the Divine Principle was no longer to be found in the external world—(it could be no otherwise in the age of freedom!)—it was now in Man for we meet with Man in the first place in individual form ... it became now necessary to look in Man for the Divine Principle.

And with this, one has reached a world-conception which,—if you only consider it clearly, you will see,—leads on in straight continuation to what to-day we call Anthroposophy.

Suppose ... it is rather a primitive sketch, but it will do! ... that these are men. (Sketch in coloured chalks on the blackboard.) These men are connected in the inmost part of their being to a divine spiritual principle. This divine spiritual principle assumes the form of a divine, spiritual order in the world. And by looking at the inside of all men, conjunctively, one penetrates, now, to the divine spiritual principle, as, in old days, one penetrated to the divine spiritual principle when one looked outside one, and by primitive clairvoyance discovered the divine spiritual principle in the outer phenomena.

What had to be done then, was to follow up what was given by Goethe's world-conception on the one hand, and, on the other, by the sheer necessities of human evolution at the end of the nineteenth century; and so push on to the spiritual principle;—not to push on by any external, materialistic means, but by actual direct apprehension of Man's essential being.

Well, with this, the foundations were really laid of Anthroposophy,—if one looks at the matter in life and not in theory. For if anybody were to suggest that the Philosophy of Freedom is very far short of being Anthroposophy, it must seem to one exactly as though somebody said: ‘There was once a Goethe. This Goethe wrote all sorts of works. By “ Goethe ” we understand to-day the creator of Goethe's works.'—And another person were to answer, ‘That's not a logical sequence; for in 1749 there was a baby in Frankfort-on-Main; the baby indeed was quite black at its birth, and they said it couldn't live. If one considers this baby, and all the circumstances connected with it, it is impossible, logically, to deduce the whole of these “Goethe” Works. It is inconsequent:—one must trace Goethe back to his origin. And see whether you can discover Faust in the black-and-blue little boy who was born in 1749 at Frankfort-on-Main!’

You will agree that it is not very sensible to talk like this; but it is just as little sensible to say that Anthroposophy cannot logically follow from the Philosophy of Freedom. The black little baby in Frankfort went on living, and from its life proceeded all that to-day lives in the world's evolution as Goethe. And the Philosophy of Freedom had to go on living; and then, out of it, proceeded Anthroposophy.

Just think what it would be if, instead of actual life, there were to come a professor of philosophic logic, and say that everything which is in East and Wilhelm Meister, etc., must be deduced logically from the blue-and-black little boy of 1749! Do you think he would be able to deduce anything? By no means! He would only demonstrate contradictions—terrible contradictions! ‘I can't make the two things agree! ‘he would say; ‘I find no sequence between this Faust, as written at some time by somebody or other, and the blue-black little boy, as he existed in Frankfort-on-Main.’

And so, too, say the people who deal in fusty book-worm-logic, not in life: ‘From the Philosophy of freedom there is no logical sequence to Anthroposophy.’—Well, my dear friends, if the sequence had been a logical one, then you might have seen how all the schoolmasters would have been busy in 1894, deducing Anthroposophy from the Philosophy of Freedom! They just did nothing of the kind! And afterwards they come, and confess that they cannot deduce it, that they can't bring the two together; and make out a contradiction between what came after and what went before.—The fact is that people in these days have absolutely no capacity,—at a time when so-called logic is cultivated, and philosophy, and such things,—they have absolutely no capacity for entering into real life, for observing what is springing and sprouting up around them, and has more in it than can be seen by the pedantry of logicians.

The first thing to be done, then, in the next place, was to come to relations with all that was pushing its way up, so to speak, out of the present life of the day towards a progressive development of human civilization.

Well, as you know, I tried to do this by picking out two very striking and remarkable instances as subjects for discussion.—The first of these was Nietzsche. Why this particular case should he chosen will be obvious to you from what has gone before. For Nietzsche, namely, presented a personality on the top-surface of the modern stream of civilization, who had grown into the whole evolutionary tendency of world-conception at the present day, and who, in opposition to all the rest, was honest.

What did all the rest say? What did one find to be the general verdict, so to speak, in the 'nineties of the nineteenth century. The general verdict amounted to this:—Natural science must, of course, be right. Natural science, as constituted, is the great authority. We take our stand on the abiding ground of Natural science and peep up at the stars.—Well, of course as a leading instance, even before this, there was the conversation between Napoleon and the famous astronomer Laplace. Napoleon could not understand how, by looking up at the stars with a telescope, one can find God. And the astronomer replied: ‘I do not need the hypothesis’.Of course he didn't need such an hypothesis to see the heavens and their stars with a telescope. But he needed it, the moment he wished to be a man. But the sight of the heavens and the stars with a telescope gave man's own nature nothing, absolutely nothing. The heavens were full of stars; but they were stars of the senses. Otherwise they were empty.

And men looked through the microscope as far as ever one can see, into the tiniest life-germ, into the tiniest part of a life-germ, and ever further. And the microscope was made more perfect, and more perfect still.

But the soul they didn't find. They might look never so long into the microscope; it was empty of any soul. There was nothing there, either of soul or spirit. Neither in the stars was there anything of soul or spirit; nor under the microscope could they find any soul or spirit. And so it went on.

And with this Nietzsche found himself faced.—What did the rest of them say?—They said: ‘Oh, well, one looks through the telescope at the stars, and one sees so many worlds of the senses,—nothing else. But then we have a religious life, a religion, and this tells us that there is a spirit all the same.’ David Friedrich Strauss may talk as much as he pleases and ask at the end: ‘Where, then, is this spirit to be found along any scientific road!’ We stand by the fact, that in the writings handed down to us they talk of the Spirit all the same. We don't find him anywhere, it is true; but nevertheless we believe

¹ ‘Ihr Anblick gibt den Engeln Starke.’

‘The sight gives strength unto the Angels,

Though none may sound the depths thereof;’

(‘Faust,’, Prologue in Heaven.)

in him. Science finds him nowhere; and we are bound to believe in Science; which is what it is, because it is bent upon reality;—if it were different, it would have no reality,—and there-fore everything that searches along any other road will come to no reality. We know about reality; and we believe, ... we believe in what is not indeed discovered to be a reality, but what old times tell us about as being a reality.

It was this, you see, that in a soul like Nietzsche's, which was honest, worked downright distraction. There came a day when Nietzsche said: ‘One must cut the account!’—How did he do it? He did it thus: he said: ‘Well then, we have now the reality. The reality is discovered by natural science. All the rest is nothing. Christianity taught that Christ is not to be sought in the reality that one investigates with telescopes and microscopes. But there is no other reality. Therefore, there is no justification for Christianity. Therefore,’ said Nietzsche, ‘I shall write the Anti-Christ.’

When one looks through the microscope and telescope, one discovers no ethical impulses, People accept the old ethical impulses, however, as commandments that flutter around in the air, or are ordered by the official authorities. But they are not to be discovered by scientific research. And so Nietzsche proposed, as the next book to his Anti-Christ, which was the first in his Revaluation, of all Values, to write a second book, in which he showed that all ideals exist, strictly speaking, in Nothing,—for they are not to be found in Reality; and that, therefore, they must be abandoned.

And he proposed then to write a third book: The Moral Principle, certainly, is not derived from the telescope and microscope; therefore, said Nietzsche, I shall argue the case for the Immoral principle.—And accordingly the three first books were to have been called: Revaluation of all Values; first book, The Anti-Christ;—second book, Nihilism, or The Abolition of all Ideals;—third book, Immoralism, or The Abolition of the Universal Moral Order.

It was a dreadful thing, of course. Rut it is the ultimate honest consequence of what are really the other people's premises. One must put things in this way before one's soul in order plainly to perceive the inner nerve of modern civilization.—And this was something that required to be dealt with. One required to show in what a terrible error Nietzsche was involved, and how it must be rectified in each case by assuming Nietzsche's own starting-point, and showing that these starting-points must be taken as leading, in actual fact, not to Nothing, but to a Spiritual Principle.—It was a necessity, therefore, to settle relations with Nietzsche.'

And the same, too, with Haeckel. Here again was a phenomenon with which it was necessary to enter into discussion. Haeckelism had followed up with a certain consequentiality all that natural science can make out of the evolution of sense-organisms. And this was a point to be connected onto in the manner I described to you at the beginning. I did it, as I said, by the aid of Topinard's book, in the very first anthroposophical lectures that I ever gave. One only needed to proceed in this way, and the actual progressive steps led on of themselves into the concrete spiritual world. And the details then came afterwards simply through further investigation, further life with the spiritual world.

I have told you all this for the following reason, namely, to show this:—that in tracing the history of Anthroposophy one must go back to illustrations from the life of our modern civilization.—If one traces back the history of the Anthroposophical Society, one must go back and ask: Where were the people in the first place, who had received a kind of impulse that made them ready to understand spiritual things?

And these were just the people who, from the character of their peculiarly homeless souls, had received such impulses from Blavatsky's quarter.

¹ Fr. Nietzsche, ein Kampfer gegen seine Zeit. ( Nietzsche, the Antagonist of his Age.) Phil. Anthr. Verlag.

You see, my dear friends, what at the beginning of the century,—simply from the circumstances of the time,—had gone on side by side: the Theosophical Society and Anthroposophy, was something that now, in this third period (which began, as I told you about 1914), was completely outgrown and done with. There was absolutely nothing left, indeed, to remind one in any way of the old theosophist days. Down to the very forms of expression there was nothing, really, left. As it was, quite at the be-ginning of anthroposophic working, the tendency of the stream itself led the direction of spiritual study on to the Mystery of Golgotha, to the penetration of Christianity; and so, on the other side, the tendency which now set in brought these same spiritual means to bear upon natural science. Only,—I would like to say,—the acquisition of the spiritual means, by which true Christianity could be restored to its place before the eyes of the age,—the acquisition of these means belongs, as a fact, to an earlier time. It begins in the first period already, and is more peculiarly cultivated in the second. What was required for work in the various other directions did not really come out, in the manner I have been describing in these last few days, until the third stage. There then came to be people within the anthroposophic movement itself, who were seeking along the scientific path.

Now for those who are seeking along this scientific path, it is quite necessary, ... I say this in order that fresh misunderstandings may not continually be introduced into the anthroposophic movement ... especially for those who are pursuing this scientific path it is pre-eminently necessary that they should be absolutely filled through and through with what I spoke of yesterday and this morning again, namely, this working from the central source of Anthroposophy. It is here really necessary that people should be quite clear about these things.

My dear friends, it was in the year 1908, I think, that I said once in Nuremberg,—to give a quite definite fact as illustration:—We undoubtedly have a very great evolution in science, owing to the experiments made in recent times. Such investigations made by aid of experiment have brought an enormous amount to light. They turn out well everywhere, for the reason that all through the experimental process a spiritual element is at work, in the form of spiritual beings. For the most part, what happens is,—as I said then,—that the learned scientist goes up to the table of operations, and simply really goes through the manual performances, according as the practice may be, according to the regular methods of the mechanic routine. And then, besides him, there is a whole army at work,—so to speak—of spiritual beings. And it is they, who really do the thing. For, as for the person experimenting at the table, he only provides the opportunities, so that the different things can come out, bit by bit. If this were not the case, the thing wouldn't have gone so particularly well in recent times.

For you see, whenever anybody struck upon something,—like Julius Robert Mayer on his voyage,—he proceeded to clothe it in exceedingly abstract formula. But the other people didn't even understand it. And when, in course of time, Philip Reis was forced upon the telephone: then again the other people didn't understand it. There is really an enormous gulf between what folks understand and what is continually being dug out by experiment. For the spiritual impulses are not the very least under Man's control.

The fact of the matter is this:—Let us go back again to that very distinguished man, Julius Robert Mayer, who to-day, of course, as I said, is a great scientific discoverer, universally acknowledged, but who, so long as he was at school, was always at the bottom of his class. When he was attending the University at Tubingen, they thought of advising him to leave before taking his degree. With pain and grief, however, he succeeded in becoming a doctor, enlisted then as a ship's surgeon, and went on a voyage to India. They met with very rough weather on the voyage, the sailors fell ill, and on arrival he had to bleed a number of them.

Now a doctor, of course, knows that there are two sorts of blood vessels: veins and arteries. Arterial blood spurts out red; veinous blood spurts out bluish. When one lets blood, therefore,—makes an incision in the vein,—the blood. that comes out should be bluish. Julius Robert Mayer had very often to bleed people. Rut with all these sailors, who had made the voyage with him and fallen ill from the exciting times they had gone through at sea, something very curious happened when he made the incision. ‘Good heavens!’ he said to himself, ‘I've gone and struck the wrong place; for it's red blood spurting out of the vein! I must have struck an artery!’ And now the same thing happened again with the next man; and he got quite perplexed and nervous, thinking each time that he must have struck the wrong place; because each time the same thing happened. Finally he came upon the idea that he had made the incisions quite rightly after all; but that the sea, which had made the people ill, must have had some effect upon them, which gradually caused the veinous blood to come out red instead of blue, or at least approximately red, approximately the colour of the arterial blood.

And so, quite unexpectedly, in the process of blood-letting, a modern man, without any sort of spiritual motive leading him to look for any particular mental chain of connections, discovers a stupendous fact. But what does he say to it? As a modern man of science he says: ‘Now I must carefully consider what exactly takes place: Energy is converted into Heat, and Heat into Energy. It will be the same, then, as with the steam-engine. One heats the engine, and the result is Motion, Work; Work produced by Heat; and it will be the same in Man; and because Man is in the tropical zone (the ship had sailed to the tropics), where he is under other conditions of temperature, he therefore does not need to perform the process of con-version into blue blood. According to the law of the transformation of forces in nature, the thing takes place differently. The conditions of temperature in the human organism are different; the blood does not turn so blue in the veins, but remains red.’—The law of the transformation of substances, of forces, which to-day is a recognized law, is deduced from this observation.

Suppose for a moment that something of the kind had happened to a doctor, not in the nineteenth century but, let us say, if we imagine quite different conditions, to one perhaps in the eleventh or twelfth century only. It would never have occurred to this doctor, when he observed such a fact, to deduce from it the ‘mechanical equivalent of heat’. It would never have entered his head to connect anything so abstract with a phenomenon of the kind.

Or even, indeed, if you think of later times:—Paracelsus would certainly never have thought of such a thing,—not even in his sleep; although Paracelsus in his sleep was still a great deal cleverer, of course, than other people when awake,—but such a thing would most certainly not have occurred to him, my dear friends. A doctor such as Paracelsus might have been (and for the nineteenth century, Julius Robert Mayer was much the same as Paracelsus was for his age),—or a hypothetical doctor that lived, let us say if you like, in the tenth, or eleventh, or twelfth century,—what would he have said?

Well, even van Helmont still talks of archeus, that is, of what to-day we should call, conjointly, the etheric and astral bodies; (we have to discover it again by means of Anthroposophy; these terms had been forgotten) ... . A doctor of the twelfth century would have said: ‘In the temperate zone we find in Man a very pronounced inter-action between red blood and blue blood. When we take Man to the torrid zone, the veinous blood and the arterial blood no longer make themselves so vigorously distinct from one another; the blue veinous blood has become redder, and the red arterial blood more blue. There is scarcely any distinction left between them. What can be the origin of this?’—Well, there the doctor of the eleventh or twelfth century would have said (in those days he would have called it archeus, or something of the sort,—what we to-day call the astral body): With Man in the torrid zone,—he would have said,—the archeus sinks less deep into the physical body than it does with Man in the temperate zone. A Man of the temperate zone is more saturated with his astral body, more densely permeated by it; with the Man of the torrid zone, the astral body remains more outside him, even when he is awake. And, as a consequence, this differentiation, which takes place through the action of the astral body upon the blood, takes place more strongly with the Man of the temperate zone, and less strongly with the Man of the torrid zone. The Man of the torrid zone, therefore, has his astral body more free. We have a sign of this in the lesser thickening of the blood. And so he lives instinctively in his astral body, because this astral body is freer. And he becomes, accordingly, not a mechanically-thinking European; he becomes a spiritually-thinking Indian who, at the full flower of his civilization (not now, when it is all in decadence, but at its full flower) naturally has a quite different, a spiritual civilization, a Veda-civilization; whereas the European naturally has a Comtist, or Darwinist, or John Stuart Mill-ist civilization.

Yes, indeed, my dear friends; from this blood-letting a doctor of the eleventh or twelfth century would have arrived at some contemplation, such as this, of the Anthropos. He would still have sailed on into Anthroposophy. He would still have found his way on to the spiritual reality, to the living spirit. Julius Robert Mayer,—the Paracelsus, if you will, of the nineteenth century,—found, in his day, the law: ‘Nothing comes from nothing; therefore, there is a transformation of forces’,—an abstract formula.

The spiritual principle in Man, which can once more be found by means of Anthroposophy, this spiritual principle leads on in turn to Epics. Here we link up with that quest for the moral principles which we started on in the Philosophy of Freedom. Thereby the way is once more opened to Man for a spiritual activity in which he no longer has a gulf between Nature and Spirit, Nature and Ethics, but in which he finds the direct union of both.

One thing, however, will be plain from all I have been showing you, which is this:—The leading lights of modern science arrive at their abstract formulae. And these abstract formula are, of course, buzzing about in the heads of all the people to-day who have received a scientific training. The people who give this scientific training regard this tanglewood of abstract formula as something in which the modern man has to believe. And they look upon it as sheer lunacy for anyone to talk of leading up from the composition of the red and the blue blood to the spiritual principle of Man.

From this, however, you can see all that it means for an actual scientist, if he proposes to come into Anthroposophy. It means something more, besides the mere goodwill. It means, in reality, immense and devoted application to a profundity of study to which people are not accustomed at the present day,—and least of all accustomed, when they have passed through a scientific training.

What is wanted then, here, more especially, is courage, courage, and ever again courage. And with this we touch on the element which we above all things need for our souls, if we are to meet the necessary life-conditions of the Anthroposophical Society. This Society stands, in a way, to-day in diametrical opposition to all that is popular in the world. If it wants to make itself popular, therefore, it can have no possible prospect of succeeding. And therefore what we must not do,—more particularly if we want to spread Anthroposophy through the various branches of actual life; which has been the constant attempt since the year 1919,—we must not take the line of trying to make ourselves popular, but we must go out straight from the centre and essence, and pursue the road marked out by the life of the spirit itself,—as I described to you with reference to the Goetheanum this morning, in this one particular case.—But we must learn to think in this way in all matters; otherwise, we slide off the path; otherwise, we slide off it in such a way that people continually, with more or less justice, confuse us with other movements and judge us from the outside. But if we give ourselves with all energy our own form of structure, then, my dear friends, then we shall be following the road that runs in the direction of the anthroposophic movement and the conditions of its life. But we must teach ourselves the earnestness from which then the needful courage will come.

And we must not forget what is made simply necessary by the fact that we to-day, as Anthroposophists, are only a little handful. It is the hope, truly, of this little handful, that what they are the means of spreading abroad to-day will spread to ever larger and larger numbers of people; and, amongst these people then, there will be a certain direction of mind and knowledge, a certain moral and ethical, a religious direction.

But all these things, which will exist amongst people then through the impulses of Anthroposophy, and will be looked upon as, matters of course,—these things need to exist in a very much higher degree amongst those to-day who are only a little handful; these people must feel the very gravest obligations incumbent upon them towards the spiritual world. And one must understand that, quite instinctively, this will find expression in the verdict of the world around them.

By nothing can the Anthroposophical Society do itself more harm,—intense harm,—than if this Anthroposophical Society fails to give itself, in its members, a general form and style, through which people outside are made aware that, in the very strictest sense of the term, the Anthroposophists will this and that; so that they are able to distinguish them from all other, sectarian or other, movements.

So long as this is not the case, however, the Society cannot fail to call forth the kind of verdict from the outer world, which it does to-day. People don't really quite know what the purpose is of this Anthroposophical Society. They make acquaintance with some of the individual members; and in these there is nothing to be seen of Anthroposophy. Now suppose, let us say, that the Anthroposophists were to proclaim themselves by such a fine and marked sense for truth and circumstantial accuracy, that everybody saw at once: That's an Anthroposophist; one notices that he has such a very delicate sense in all he says, on no account to go further in his statements than strictly accords with the facts;—that, now, would give a certain impression.—However, to-day I don't wish, as I said, to make criticisms, but only to point out the positive things.—Are there signs of this happening? that is the question to be asked.

Or, again, people might say: Yes, those are Anthroposophists! They are very particular in all little matters of good taste. They have a certain artistic sense; the Goetheanum in Dornach must have had some effect after all.—Then again people would know: Anthroposophy certainly gives its members a sort of good taste: one can distinguish them by that from other people.

This is the kind of thing you see,—not so much what can be put into clearly defined propositions, but things of this kind,—that are all part of what the Anthroposophical Society, must study to develop, if it is to fulfil the conditions of its life.

Oh, there has been a great deal of talk about such things. But the question that has again and again to be raised, and one that should occupy a great place in all that is discussed amongst Anthroposophists, is this: How to give the anthroposophic society a quite distinct stamp, so that everyone can tell: Here is something by which this society is so completely distinguished from all the others as to leave no possibility of confusion.

One can only indicate these things as matters more of feeling; for where there is to be life, there can be no fixed programmes. Rut just ask yourselves whether, in the anthroposophic society, we have altogether got beyond the old: ‘One has to do this’, ... ‘One always does that’,... ‘One must be guided by this or the other’, and whether the impulse is always a strong one on every occasion to ask: What does Anthroposophy herself say?—There is no need for it to be set down in a lecture. But the things set down, or spoken, in lectures sink into hearts,—and this gives a certain tendency of direction.

I must say it once more, my dear friends: Until Anthroposophy is taken as a living being, who goes about unseen amongst us, and to whom each feels himself responsible,—not until then will this little band of Anthroposophists go forward as a model band that leads the way. And they should lead the way as a model band,—this little band of Anthroposophists.

When one came into any of the theosophic societies (of which there are many) they had, of course, the three well-known ‘principles’. I have spoken of these yesterday and how we must look upon them. The first principle was the establishment of universal human brotherhood, without distinction of race or nation, etc. I pointed out yesterday that it is a matter for consideration whether in future this should be set up in the form of a dogma. But still, my dear friends, it is significant that people make such a principle at all. Only it must become a reality. It must, little by little, become a reality in actual fact. And this it will do, when Anthroposophy herself is regarded as a living, supersensible, invisible being, going about amongst the Anthroposophists. Then perhaps there may be less talk of brotherhood,—less talk of universal love of mankind, but this love will be more living in men's hearts; and the world will see, from the very tone in which they speak of that which binds them together in Anthroposophy, from the very tone in which one tells the other this or that, it will be evident that it signifies something for the one, that the other too is a person who, like himself, is linked to the Unseen Being, Anthroposophy.—My dear friends, we can choose instead to take another way. We can take the way of simply forming a number of cliques, of going on as the fashion is in the world,—coming together for five-o'clock tea-parties or other social gatherings of the kind, where people drop in just for the purpose of mutual conversation, or at most to sit in company and listen to a lecture. We can do that, too, no doubt, instead. We can form little cliques, of course, instead,—little private circles. Rut an anthroposophic movement, of course, cannot live in a society of this kind. An anthroposophic movement can only live in an Anthroposophical Society which is a reality. But, in such a society, things need to be taken with very serious earnestness; there, one must at every moment of one's life feel that one is an associate of the Unseen Being, Anthroposophy.

If this could become the tone of mind, the tone of actual practice; if,—not in twenty-four hours perhaps, but after a certain length of time,—this could become the tone of mind, then,—let us say in twenty-one years,—there would most certainly arise a certain impulse: The moment people heard anything like what I mentioned yesterday again from the opponents, then the needful impulse would awake in people's hearts;—I am not saying by any means that it need lead at once to any practical action, but the necessary impulse would be there, in people's hearts; and then in good time the actions would come too.

When the actions do not come; when only the opponents act and organize; then it must be that the right impulse is not there; it must be that people still prefer well ... to live on in peace and comfort,—and of course to sit in the audience, when there are lectures on Anthroposophy. But this, at any rate, is not enough if the Anthroposophical Society is to prosper. If the Anthroposophical Society is to prosper, Anthroposophy must really live in it. And if that is the case, then indeed, in the course of twenty-one years, something of importance might come to pass,—or even in a shorter period. When I come to reckon,—why, the society has already existed twenty-one years!

Well, my dear friends, since I do not wish to make criticisms, I would merely ask you yourselves to carry your self-recollection so far as to ask, whether really each single individual at each single post has done that which must be felt to proceed from the very centre of all that is anthroposophic? And if you should happen to find that one or other of you has not as yet felt this, then I would beg you to begin at once, tomorrow, or this very evening; for it would not be a good thing if the Anthroposophical Society were to go to pieces. And it will most certainly go to pieces if (now that in addition to all the other things it already has on hand, it proposes to rebuild the Goetheanum), it will most certainly go to pieces, if that consciousness does not awake, of which I have been speaking in these lectures,—if this self-recollection is not there. And then, my dear friends, if it does fall to pieces, it will fall to pieces very rapidly.—But that is entirely dependent on the will of the people who are in the Anthroposophical Society.

Anthroposophy will quite certainly not be driven out of the world. But it might sink back for tens of years and more, so to speak, into a latent state, and then be taken up again later. An enormous amount would be lost for the evolution of mankind.—This is something to think over, if one intends in earnest to set about that self-recollection which was really my meaning with these lectures. It certainly was not my meaning, however, that there should again be a lot of big talk, and all sorts of programmes set up again, and declarations that ‘should this or that be wanted, we place ourselves entirely at disposal!’ ... those things we always did. What now is needed is that we should look into ourselves and find the inner centre of our own being. And if we pursue this search for the inner centre of our being with aid of the spirit to be found in the anthroposophic wealth of wisdom, we shall then find, too, that anthroposophic impulse, which the Anthroposophical Society needs as a condition of its life.

I particularly wanted in these lectures, my dear friends, not to deal so much in criticism, of which there has been plenty in these last times;—a great deal has been said, scattered about, on one or the other occasion. This time I wanted rather, by a historical review of one or two things,—if I tried to say everything, these lectures would. not be long enough;—but by a historical review of just one or two things, I wanted really through a study of anthroposophical affairs to give just a stimulus towards the actual handling of them in the right way. And these lectures especially, I think, can afford occasion for being thought over, reflected upon, so to speak. That is a thing for which one can always find time; for it can be done between the lines of life,—the lines of a life that brings with it the calls of the outer world.

This, my dear friends, is what I wanted to put before you in these lectures more especially, as a sort of Self-Recollection for the Anthroposophical Society, and to lay it very urgently to your hearts. We have absolute need to-day of this kind of self-recollection. We should not forget that if we go to the sources of anthroposophic life, very much can be done by means of them. If we neglect to do so, we are simply abandoning the paths on which it is possible to do anything.

We are about to enter on tasks of so great a magnitude as the rebuilding of the Goetheanum. Here, truly, our hearts' considerations can go out only from really great impulses; here we can go out from no kind of pettiness. This is what I said this morning to those who were there; and this is what I wished to put before you again to-night from a particular aspect.

Before the conference began, Rudolf Steiner addressed the participants gathered in the White Hall of the Goetheanum:

Ladies and Gentlemen, before beginning this lecture course, allow me to bring up an administrative matter. Originally, this course was meant for a smaller group, but it has drawn such a response that it has become clear that we cannot gather in this tightly-packed hall. It would be impossible, and you would soon realize this if you were to attend both the lectures and the translations. Consequently, I have decided to present the lectures twice—the first each day at ten A.M. and again at eleven, for those who wish to hear it translated into English. For technical reasons this is the only way to proceed. Therefore, I will begin the earlier lectures exactly at ten and second at eleven o’clock. I will ask those who came from England, Holland, and Scandinavia to attend the later lectures and everyone else to attend the first.

First of all I would like to express my great joy at meeting so many of you here in this hall. Anyone whose life is filled with enthusiasm for the movement centered here at the Goetheanum is bound to experience happiness and a deep inner satisfaction at witnessing the intense interest for our theme, which your visit has shown. I would therefore like to begin this introductory lecture by welcoming you all most warmly. And I wish to extend a special welcome to Mrs. Mackenzie, whose initiative and efforts have brought about this course. On behalf of the anthroposophic movement, I owe her a particular debt of gratitude.

I would like to add that it is not just a single person who is greeting you here, but that, above all, it is this building, the Goetheanum itself, that receives you. I can fully understand if some of you feel critical of certain features of this building as a work of art. Any undertaking that appears in the world in this way must be open to judgment, and any criticism made in good faith is appreciated—certainly by me. But, whatever your reactions may be to this building, it is the Goetheanum itself that welcomes you. Through just its forms and artistic composition, you can see that the aim here was not to erect a building for specific purposes, such as education, for example. The underlying spirit and style of this building shows that it was conceived and erected from the spirit of our time, to serve a movement and destined to play its part in our present civilization. And because education represents an integral part of human civilization, it is proper for it to be nurtured here at this center.

The close relationship between anthroposophic activities and problems of education will occupy us in greater detail within the next few days. Today, however, as part of these introductory remarks, I would like to talk about something that really is a part of any established movement. In a sense, you have come here to familiarize yourselves with the various activities centered here at the Goetheanum, and in greeting you most warmly as guests, I feel it right to begin by introducing you to our movement.

The aims of this anthroposophic movement, which has been in existence now for some twenty years, are only gradually beginning to manifest. It is only lately that this movement has been viewed by the world at large in ways that are consistent with its original aims. Nevertheless, this movement has gone through various phases, and a description of these may provide the most proper introduction.

Initially, the small circle of its adherents saw anthroposophy as a movement representing a very narrow religious perspective. This movement tended to attract people who were not especially interested in its scientific background and were not inclined to explore its artistic possibilities. Nor were they aware of how its practical activities might affect society as a whole. The first members were mainly those dissatisfied with traditional religious practice. They were the sort of people whose deepest human longings prompted them to search for answers to the problems inherent in the human soul and spirit—problems that could not be answered for them by existing religious movements.

For me it often was quite astonishing to see that what I had to say about the fundamentals of anthroposophy was not at all understood by members who, nevertheless, supported the movement with deep sympathy and great devotion. When matters of a more scientific nature was discussed, these initial members extracted what spoke to their hearts and appealed to their immediate feelings and sentiments. And I can truly say that it was the most peaceful time within the anthroposophic movement, though this was certainly not what I was looking for. Because of this situation, during its first phase the anthroposophic movement was able to join another movement (though only outwardly and mainly from an administrative perspective), which you might know as the Theosophical Society.

Unless they can discern the vital and fundamental differences, those who search with a simple heart for knowledge of the eternal in human nature will find either movement equally satisfactory. The Theosophical Society is concerned primarily with a theoretical knowledge that embraces cosmology, philosophy, and religion and uses the spoken and printed word as its means of communication. Those who are satisfied with their lives in general, but wish to explore the spirit beyond what traditional doctrines offer, might find either movement equally satisfying. But (and only a few members noticed this) once it became obvious that, in terms of cosmology, philosophy, and religion, anthroposophic goals were never intended to be merely theoretical but to enter social life in a direct and practical way according to the demands of the spirit of our times—only then did it gradually become obvious that our movement could no longer work within the Theosophical Society. For in our time (and this will become clear in the following lectures), any movement that limits itself to theories of cosmology, philosophy, and religion is bound to degenerate into intolerable dogmatism. It was the futility of dogmatic arguments that finally caused the separation of the two movements.

It is obvious that no one who is sensible and understands western culture could seriously consider what became the crux of these dogmatic quarrels that led to this split. These quarrels were sparked by claims that an Indian boy was the reincarnation of Christ. Since such a claim was completely baseless, it was unacceptable.

To waste energy and strength on theoretical arguments is not the way of anthroposophy, which aims to enter life directly. When it became necessary to work in the artistic, social, scientific, and—above all—in the educational realm, the true aims of anthroposophy made it necessary to separate from the Theosophical Society. Of course, this did not happen all at once; essentially, all that happened in the anthroposophic movement after 1912 demonstrated that this movement had to fight for its independence in the world, if it was going to penetrate ordinary life.

In 1907, during a Theosophical Society congress in Munich, I realized for the first time that it would be impossible for me to work with this movement. Along with my friends from the German section of the Theosophical Society, I had been given the task of arranging the program for this congress. Apart from the usual items, we included a performance of a mystery play by Edouard Schuré (1841–1929), The Sacred Drama of Eleusis. We decided to create a transition from the movement’s religious theories to a broader view that would encourage artistic activity. From our anthroposophic perspective, we viewed the performance as an artistic endeavor. But there were people in the movement who tried to satisfy their sometimes egotistical religious feelings by merely looking for a theoretical interpretation. They would ask, What is the meaning of this individual in the drama? What does that person mean? Such people would not be happy unless they could reduce the play to theoretical terms.

Any movement that cannot embrace life fully because of a lopsided attitude will certainly become sectarian. Spiritual science, on the other hand, is not the least inclined toward sectarianism, because it naturally tends to bring ideals down to earth and enter life in practical ways.

These attempts to free the anthroposophic movement from sectarianism by entering the artistic sphere represent the second phase of its history. Gradually, as membership increased, a need arose for the thought of philosophy, cosmology, and religion to be expressed artistically, and this in turn prompted me to write my mystery plays. And these must not be interpreted theoretically or abstractly, because they are intended to be experienced directly on the stage. To bring this about, my plays were performed in ordinary, rented theaters in Munich, from 1910 to 1913. And this led to an impulse to build a center for the anthroposophic movement. The changing situation made it clear that Munich was inappropriate for such a building, and so we were led to Dornach hill, where the Goetheanum was built as the right and proper place for the anthroposophic movement.

These new activities showed that, in keeping with its true spirit, the anthroposophic movement is always prepared to enter every branch of human life. Imagine that a different movement of a more theoretical religious character had decided to build a center; what would have happened? First, its members would collect money from sympathizers (a necessary step, unfortunately). Then they would choose an architect to design the building, perhaps in an antique or renaissance style or in a gothic or baroque or some other traditional style.

However, when the anthroposophic movement was in the happy position of being able to build its own home, such a procedure would have been totally unacceptable to me. Anything that forms an organic living whole cannot be assembled from heterogeneous parts. What relationship could any words, spoken in the spirit of anthroposophy, have had with the forms around a listener in a baroque, antique, or renaissance building? A movement that expresses only theories can present only abstractions. A living movement, on the other hand, must work into every area of life through its own characteristic impulses. Therefore, the urge to express life, soul, and spirit in practical activity (which is characteristic of anthroposophy) demanded that the surrounding architecture—the glowing colors of the wall paintings and the pillars we see—should speak the same language that is spoken theoretically in ideas and abstract thoughts. All of the movements that existed in the world previously were equally comprehensive; ancient architecture was certainly not isolated from its culture, but grew from the theoretical and practical activities of the time. The same can be said of the renaissance—certainly of the gothic, but also of the baroque.

To avoid a sectarian or theoretical ideology, anthroposophy had to find its own architectural and artistic styles. As mentioned before, one may find this style unsatisfactory or even paradoxical, but the fact is, according to its real nature, anthroposophy simply had to create its own physical enclosure. Let me make a comparison that may appear trivial but may, nevertheless, clarify these thoughts. Think of a walnut and its kernel. It is obvious that both nut and shell were created by the same forces, since together they make a whole. If anthroposophy had been housed in an incongruous building, it would be as if a walnut kernel had been found in the shell of a different plant. Nature produces nut and shell, and they both speak the same language. Similarly, neither symbolism nor allegory was needed here; rather, it was necessary that anthroposophic impulses flow directly into artistic creativity. If thoughts are to be expressed in this building, they must have a suitable shell, from artistic and architectural points of view. This was not easy to do, however, because the sectarian tendency is strong today, even among those looking for a broadening of religious ideals. But anthroposophy must not be influenced by people’s sympathies or antipathies. It must remain true to its own principles, which are closely linked to the needs and yearnings of our times, as will be shown in the next few days.

And so anthroposophy entered the practical domain—as far as this was possible in those days. At the time, I surprised some members by saying, “Anthroposophy wants to enter all walks of life. Although conditions do not allow this today, I would love to open banks that operate according to anthroposophic principles.” This may sound strange, but it was meant to show that anthroposophy is in its right element only when it can fertilize every aspect of life. It must never be seen merely as a philosophical and religious movement.

We now come to the catastrophic and chaotic time of the World War, which produced its own particular needs. In September 1913, we laid the foundation stone of this building. In 1914, when war broke out, we were building the foundation of the Goetheanum. Here I want to say only that, at a time when Europe was torn asunder by opposing nationalistic aspirations, here in Dornach we successfully maintained a place where people from all nations could meet and work together in peace, united by a common spirit. This was a source of deep inner satisfaction. Those war years could be considered as the second phase in the development of our movement.

Despite efforts to continue anthroposophic work during the war, the outer activities of the anthroposophic movement were mostly paralyzed. But one could experience how peoples everywhere gradually came to feel an inner need for spiritual sustenance, which, in my opinion, anthroposophy was able to offer. After 1918, when the war had ended, at least outwardly, there was an enormous, growing interest in spiritual renewal, such as anthroposophy wished to provide. Between autumn 1918 and spring 1919, numerous friends—many from Stuttgart—came to see me in Dornach. They were deeply concerned about the social conditions of the time, and they wanted the anthroposophic movement to take an active role in trying to come to terms with the social and economic upheavals. This led to the third phase of our movement.

It happened that Southern Germany—Württemberg in particular—was open to such anthroposophic activities, and one had to work wherever this was possible. These activities, however, were colored a little by the problems of that particular region, problems caused by the prevailing social chaos. An indescribable misery had spread over the whole of Central Europe at the time. Yet, seen in a broader context, the suffering caused by material needs was small compared to what was happening in the soul realm of the population. One could feel that humanity had to face the most fundamental questions of human existence. Questions once raised by Rousseau, which led to visible consequences in the French Revolution, did not touch the most basic human yearnings and needs as did the questions presented in 1919, within the very realms where we wished to work.

In this context, awareness of a specific social need began to grow in the hearts of my friends. They realized that perhaps the only way to work effectively toward a better future would be to direct our efforts toward the youth and their education. Our friend Emil Molt (who at the time was running the Waldorf- Astoria Cigarette Factory in Stuttgart) offered his services for such an effort by establishing the Waldorf school for his workers’ children, and I was asked to help direct the school. People were questioning everything related to the organization of society as it had developed over the past centuries from its tribal and ethnic elements. This prompted me to present a short proclamation concerning the threefold social order to the German people and to the civilized world in general, and also to publish my book Towards Social Renewal.

Many other activities connected with the social question also occurred, at first in South Germany, which resulted from this general situation and prevailing mood. It was essential then, though immensely difficult, to touch the most fundamental aspirations of the human soul. Despite their physical and mental agony, people were called upon to search, quite abstractly, for great and sublime truths; but because of the general upheaval they were unable to do so. Many who heard my addresses said to me later, “All this may be correct and even beautiful, but it concerns the future of humanity. We have faced death often during the last years and are no longer concerned about the future; we must live from day to day. Why should we be more interested in the future now than when we had to face the guns every day?” Such comments characterize the prevaling apathy of that time toward the most important and fundamental questions of human development.

Before the war, one could observe all sorts of educational experiments in various special schools. It was out of the question, however, that we would establish yet another country boarding school or implement a certain brand of educational principles. We simply wished to heal social ills and serve the needs of humankind in general. You will learn more about the fundamentals of Waldorf education during the coming lectures. For now, I merely wish to point out that, as in every field, anthroposophy sees its task as becoming involved in the realities of a situation as it is given. It was not for us to open a boarding school somewhere in a beautiful stretch of open countryside, where we would be free to do as we pleased. We had to fit into specific, given conditions. We were asked to teach the children of a small town—that is, we had to open a school in a small town where even our highest aspirations had to be built entirely upon pragmatic and sound educational principles. We were not free to choose a particular locality nor select students according to ability or class; we accepted given conditions with the goal of basing our work on spiritual knowledge. In this way, as a natural consequence of anthroposophic striving, Waldorf education came into existence.

The Waldorf school in Stuttgart soon ceased to be what it was in the beginning—a school for the children of workers at the Waldorf-Astoria Cigarette Factory. It quickly attracted students from various social backgrounds, and today parents everywhere want to send their children. From the initial enrollment of 140 children, it has grown to more than 600, and more applications are coming in all the time. A few days ago, we laid the foundation stone for a very necessary extension to our school, and we hope that, despite all the difficulties one must face in this kind of work, we will soon be able to expand our school further.

I wish to emphasize, however, that the characteristic feature of this school is its educational principles, based on knowledge of the human being and its ability to adapt those principles to external, given realities. If one can choose students according to ability or social standing, or if one can choose a locality, it is relatively easy to accomplish imaginary, even real, educational reforms. But it is no easy task to establish and develop a school on educational principles closely connected with the most fundamental human impulses, while also being in touch with the practical demands of life.

Thus, during its third phase, our anthroposophic movement has spread into the social sphere, and this aspect will naturally occupy us in greater depth during the coming days. But you must realize that what has been happening in the Waldorf school until now represents only a beginning of endeavors to bring our fundamental goals right down into life’s practicalities.

Concerning other anthroposophic activities that developed later on, I would like to say that quite a number of scientifically trained people came together in their hope and belief that the anthroposophic movement could also fertilize the scientific branches of life. Medical doctors met here, because they were dissatisfied with the ways of natural science, which accept only external observation and experimentation. They were convinced that such a limited attitude could never lead to a full understanding of the human organism, whether in health or illness. Doctors came who were deeply concerned about the unnecessary limitations established by modern medical science, such as the deep chasm dividing medical practice into pathology and therapy.

These branches coexist today almost as separate sciences. In its search for knowledge, anthroposophy uses not just methods of outer experimentation—observation of external phenomena synthesized by the intellect—but, by viewing the human being as body, soul, and spirit, it also utilizes other means, which I will describe in coming days. Instead of dealing with abstract thoughts, spiritual science is in touch with the living spirit. And because of this, it was able to meet the aspirations of those urgently seeking to bring new life into medicine. As a result, I was asked to give two courses here in Dornach to university-trained medical specialists and practicing doctors, in order to outline the contribution spiritual science could make in the field of pathology and therapy. Both here in Dornach and in nearby Arlesheim, as well as in Stuttgart, institutes for medical therapy have sprung up, working with their own medicines and trying to utilize what spiritual science can offer to healing, in dealing with sickness and health. Specialists in other sciences have also come to look for new impulses arising from spiritual science; thus, courses were given in physics and astronomy. In this way, anthroposophic spirit knowledge was called upon to bring practical help to the various branches of science.

Characteristic of this third phase of the anthroposophic movement is the fact that gradually—despite a certain amount of remaining opposition—people have come to see that spiritual science, as practiced here, can meet every demand for an exact scientific basis of working and that, as represented here, it can work with equal discipline and in harmony with any other scientific enterprise. In time, people will appreciate more and more the potential that has been present during these past twenty years in the anthroposophic movement.

Yet another example shows how the most varied fields of human endeavor can be fructified through spiritual science, through the creation of a new art of movement we call eurythmy. It uses the human being as an instrument of expression, and it aims toward specific results. So we try to let anthroposophic life—not anthroposophic theories—flow into all sorts of activities—for example, the art of recitation and speech, about which you will hear more in the next few days.

This last phase with its educational, medical, and artistic impulses is the most characteristic one of the anthroposophic movement. Spiritual science has many supporters as well as many enemies—even bitter enemies. But now it has entered the very stage of activities for which it has been waiting. And so it was a satisfying experience during my stay in Kristiania [Oslo], from November twenty-third to December fourth this year to speak of anthroposophic life to educators and to government economists, as well as to Norwegian students and various other groups. All of these people were willing to accept not theories or religious sectarian ideas, but what waits to reveal itself directly from the spirit of our time in answer to the great needs of humanity.

So much for the three phases of the anthroposophic movement. As an introduction to our course I merely wanted to acquaint you with this movement and to mention its name to you, so to speak. Tomorrow, we will begin our actual theme. Nevertheless, I want you to know that it is the anthroposophic movement, with its deep educational interests, that gladly welcomes you all here to the Goetheanum.

[ 1 ] Emil Bock: I would like to open the hour of our discussion with my immediate task in asking Dr Steiner to give answers regarding the letter of Dr Rittelmeyer. This letter has indeed grown out of various wishes for guidelines regarding possible answers to those who made these objections.

[ 2 ] Rudolf Steiner: If we have to start with it, please permit me to make a few points. I ask you however, to link your remarks to those comments I will be making, because obviously some of you here can approach what Dr Rittelmeyer has formulated, from another point of view.

[ 3 ] Firstly, I think there is a feeling for many today that some kind of impact is needed in religious life, that religious life needs a kind of renewal in the most diverse areas. Dr Rittelmeyer has formulated the experience which he indicates is present with those familiar with it and I have to admit, something similar has at times confronted me. Already in relation to his first point presented here, one expects unified thoughts, a soul-powerful feeling—and this is summarised in the words "one thing is necessary"—while one finds in Anthroposophy a sum, even perhaps a very large sum of declarations regarding the world content and so for a person, who knows no sure approach, has to say: it appears to me through this experience that in many respects it has already been there for such a long time and has now contributed a lot to the fact that we in our current western civilisation have entered into a dead end.

[ 4 ] Just think how vague, how uncertain an experience would be to presume it could perhaps be more succinctly formulated in order to solve the problem. One could even make references to this in our domain. In our domain another kind of domain has arisen out of Anthroposophic foundations where something similar has happened as what is meant with this point, if I understand it correctly. This is in the domain of social thinking. Something like a unified thought has come about, I could say, in the domain of the Threefold social organism. Firstly, I only want to make characteristic comparisons. I must confess this example doesn't show anything significant when it appears publicly in such a short formulation. In life such short formulations don't prove to be really effective; having a decisive importance. I always encounter an objection for instance when someone says: You want to tell me something about the human organism, and instead of giving me a uniform idea, you present an entire physiology.—One must try and understand how the doubt-free comfortable thoughts of modern time have contributed largely to our unhappiness and inner and outer relationships, and what we are suffering from is based on the vague manner of our desire to understand everything in a summary. One has to say to oneself: precisely because such ideas arise, proves that something must change when things happen, which many expect in a vague way. In particular, when it is then said, instead of such "uniform ideas." instead of "mighty soul feelings," a number of exercises are given, some of them could be of a moral nature—and others—they are called "occult" in the letter, which makes an unusual, thoughtful impression on others—yes, it must even be said: What can one then actually expect?—One can expect that there will simply be a debate about what current humanity is missing. I'm speaking firstly in this way, how in the anthroposophical domain it is by all means necessary; we will soon address the particular religious questions given in the letter itself.

[ 5 ] You see, the moral exercises, which are mentioned here as familiar, are such that according to their wording, they certainly would be known if they were moral instructions. Firstly, according to the anthroposophic context, this is not what they are. In an anthroposophic context they are indications for the attainment of higher knowledge. It is certainly presented in such a way that it must be clear: they are indication for the attainment of a higher, supersensible knowledge. One must after all admit: If I would say a person necessarily longs for the attainment of supersensible knowledge, as opposed to if I say, that a kind of tranquillity in relation to "exulting to the skies, grieving to death" provides humanity with a moral stand, there is certainly a more radical difference between them. By me expressing something like the demand for serenity, I'm expressing something which could perhaps be quite well known, and which could initially sound like an obvious moral instruction, but which is not a discussion based on the demand for serenity. Is it said in my book 'Knowledge of the higher Worlds and its attainment' that for the purpose of morality, for the purpose of obtaining moral support it is necessary to develop serenity? No! Something quite different is said. It is said that an exercise needs to be done, it is said that this exercise needs to be repeated, in this way the exercise should be done in a certain rhythm in such a way that one could describe it as done in tranquillity. To repeat a certain exercise is quite different to a moral action. Above all you need to consider what is given in my book Knowledge of the higher Worlds and its attainment.

You see, it is actually the most natural thing that one person can say to another: you need to make an effort to search for the truth. That is a self-evident fact. Here the important thing is that within the rhythmic sequence of thoughts, thoughts are rendered to the truth, in relation of human beings to the truth. This exercise, this making-oneself-conscious-in-the-present within such a content, this repeated rhythmic making-oneself-conscious-in-the-present is what is involved. It is about applying quite a particular mood for spiritual knowledge. I want to explain this attitude to you in more detail. I will deviate from the strict formulation of the letter but maybe this will make some things much clearer.

[ 6 ] Let's see, take for example a professor, lecturer or some scholar who gives lectures. Very often it happens that he prepares his lecture, then memorises it and then delivers it. This is indeed not possible if one really allows spiritual science to live within it. If you lived within spiritual science, this would be unworthy of you. Preparation can only be that a certain inner accumulation regarding the subject matter comes about. As a result of this inner assembly you do indeed step—even though you have a been connecting with the subject matter a thousand times—each time again with a new approach regarding the subject matter, so that you gradually grasp it clearly and speak out of the direct observation of it once again. You see, when you learn about something, for example a chapter in geography—good, you learn it, you have it, and then you retain in your thoughts. This doesn't happen in spiritual science at all if it is to be alive. Whoever wants to be a spiritual scientist in reality, must just again and again allow the most elementary things to draw through the soul. What I have written for example in my book Theosophy doesn't have a conclusive meaning. What it contains, I had to repeatedly allow to be drawn through my soul for it to have meaning. It can't be said: The book Theosophy is there, I know its contents.—It would, on the basis of spiritual science, be the same if one would say: I don't believe that there is a person who could say: I have eaten for 8 days so now I don't need to repeat it.—Every day we sit down to eat and do the same thing. Why? Because it is Life, it is not something which can be merely stored in thought form. The life in spiritual science is Life, and it declines if it is not ever and again lived through. This is what needs to be considered.

[ 7 ] If you have through spiritual science approached life you would have become acquainted with the possibility for instance, that you can help those who have passed through the gate of death, by giving them a kind of meditative content based on the spiritual world which they have entered through the gate of death. This doesn't mean that one, for example, reads something to them once and now recon: now they understand it—no, it involves repeating it ever and again, this living-yourself-into the content, each time, as something new. This is far too seldom respected. People are used to observe everything as theory. Spiritual science is no theory, it is Life; but if one treats it by thinking one can learn it, like you learn about other things, then you make it into a theory. Obviously one can make it into a theory but then if you take it up this way, it is only a theory. Every serious spiritual scientist knows that one must live in it; the exercises are not exhausted by knowing their contents.

[ 8 ] These are things which have disappeared from Western consciousness. What this Western consciousness is, shows also in other things. People have come to me who say: There's something awful about the Buddha speeches, they contain mere repetitions; one should surely produce a publication with only the contents of the speeches and leave out the repetitions.—Yet, no one really understands the Buddha-speeches who can make such a statement because the essence of the Buddha speeches depend upon following the rhythmic sequence in very small slots, always repeating the same one. This is an oriental method which does not coincide with our work here and in order to clarify this, I will make some comments.

[ 9 ] Continuing with the letter, there is further mentioned about the exercises, that some are strange and questionable. Yes, we must look at the kind of judgement or the basis upon which this assessment is made today. If one speaks about the desire present today for something new, then one must acquaint oneself with why such a desire exists; and what exists must really be characterised. I could, in order to make myself clear, perhaps bring to mind the book of Oswald Spengler The Decline of the West. Spengler followed up with a small brochure entitled Pessimism? I will quote a sentence from Pessimism. He says: It is not important to recognise truth, but to make facts matter.—Now a discussion follows regarding this statement, regarding what he understands as "truth" and as "facts". In one place he says: "Truths are the greats of thought ... what stands in a dissertation is truth, that a candidate fails his dissertation is a fact."—Now one must imagine that with such a sentence something must somehow be said, but it is complete nonsense. Yet people read over something like this, they take it all in, which says something, and they don't notice anything strange and consider it as something outlandish. One can't possibly have a discussion about such a statement, it is total nonsense. Something like this is not even discussed when it is such nonsense; you don't even notice it. It can't fail that in a time in which such a judgment prevails, many strange and questionable things are found. However, we can imagine where we have actually arrived—in any case in another connection than meant by Spengler. We graduate today, so to say without a fuss, up to the highest levels of our study; here in our knowledge itself there are actually no disasters or turning points. You could say that a disaster happens when a student fails, but not knowledge itself. This involvement of the whole person, so that you are able to live with a problem in such an inner way as you have any other outer experience, is something which is rarely found. When you have written a book or if you are a private tutor you may feel very satisfied, but you don't experience disasters or turning points because of the material. This is something which has, one could say, spread over the entire scientific life.

[ 10 ] It is necessary that we come to live within the spirit once again, that the spirit becomes a reality in whose processes we participate. This is no contradiction against tranquility. Precisely though cultivating tranquility you acquire the right way to participate more strongly and concretely towards what happens objectively; finally, it is no contradiction against tranquility when one observes all the horror of a volcanic eruption or some similar events this way.

[ 11 ] I would like to say that in our modern time there is hardly any receptivity necessary for the particular way to spiritual science, simply the entire way of thinking, the quite different way of experiencing truth, is first necessary. You see, when someone says: Yes, we don't need thinking, we don't need intellectualism, we need feelings!—it is because he doesn't get the feeling that he's being moved inwardly; what should be given is what is lacking.

[ 12 ] You see, is it really enough today, to adhere to ancient religious rules? When one gives a single lecture—and I speak from experience—when one gives a single lecture, let's say, from certain details regarding the social question, then there are many listeners who could say or write: Sure, this is all possible but in this lecture the name of Christ is not mentioned even once.—Yes, my dear friends, there is still a divine commandment which says: You should not pronounce the name of God in vain—and there is the commandment: You should not continuously say, God, God. It can be something very Christian, no not continuously say the name of Christ; perhaps it is even Christian for this reason, because the name of Christ is not misused. It is not through the use of Christ's name in every third line that something becomes Christian.

[ 13 ] All these things should stop in the old thinking's comfortable way. Those who don't drop this comfortable thinking—they would also have the vague feeling that something must change—they can't be informed about the demands of the time because everything which exists in the demands of the time is something which they are unable to experience; they can't, because they are merely taught that these demands must be experienced basically as they have always been, and not commit to actually moving to solutions which must be investigated to really meet the demands of the time. Often the enormous difference between theoretical thought and immersed-in-spirit-living, is not considered. However, already during the first step into spiritual science there must be a living-within-the-spirit. I'm not saying you need to be clairvoyant or something of the kind, but that there needs to be a living-in-spirit; there must be another form of experience of truth, of content, than what one is accustomed to these days.

[ 14 ] Another objection which Dr Rittelmeyer expressed took me quite by surprise, I must admit, but this is the way it's going to happen. The objection is that people feel insulted when, instead of something being pointed out as within them, they are made aware of what individuals perhaps know, what individuals have seen. People feel, they expressed it as "their human kingdoms having been stolen", they had felt great and now they must feel small.—Yes, I must admit, this objection surprised me because I don't really understand its content. Isn't it true, what is said consequently in the letter, that people expect something to happen from above, but now they feel thrown back on to themselves, on to exercises they need to do, on to efforts needed to understand something.—I initially feel an extraordinary contradiction between both these allegations. Secondly, I must add this: my whole life I have been—and it has been already quite long—extremely glad if a truth appears somewhere, and I actually find it disturbing when someone rejects the truth, because it has not grown out of their own soil. This is quite an egotistical subjective judgment, but we are stuck in such egotistical subjective judgments, and as a result we need a renewal of thinking in our current time, because it exists.

[ 15 ] Here we have a bunch of judgements which indicates how necessary it is that a shift takes place. If these judgemental directions, which have been created by our time, continue to exist, then we will get nowhere. It is already necessary to say, even though it may sound rough, it is above all necessary to mention that the objectors must think about their objections, to what a degree they should not be making them, in order for the entry of the renewal not to be disturbed by the most ancient judgments. This is what has to be said above all things.

[ 16 ] Another objection which is of course often made is that Anthroposophy appears in the form of a science and the inference is made that the realm of belief and the realm of knowledge must metamorphose. Actually, the objection depends, when it is made, on the inexact understanding of the context in Anthroposophy. In Anthroposophy the claim is never made that a belief must be transformed into knowledge or something similar, but in Anthroposophy this first positive element appears: it is shown that through knowledge not only can one have something in the sensory world of appearance, but also in the spiritual world. The question can at least be: Are the methods which are applied directed to the real, safe and equivalent?—This can then be examined and re-examined. When the issue is expressed in a way of objecting to imagination, objecting to inspiration and so on, then there is nothing to be discussed. However, no judgment can be made when one says: I feel uncomfortable if something is to be known about it.—It isn't important if something is unpleasant, but it is important that a certain method regarding the super-sensory can be known, just as in the sensory world something can be known. What can be known can't be judged in a way so that one can say the objects of faith were based on the free recognition of inner truths because Anthroposophy is a knowledge forced through "hallucination and proof."—Anthroposophy is just a science and is established as a science, it can't get involved with such an objection because it is a science. One could have the same objection against mathematics; one could say it would be detestable if mathematical truths were actual truths. Such an objection can't actually be made, because it is basically pointless.

[ 17 ] An objection which I have heard with the most diverse nuances, is this, that something is expected, which could be something shocking, which you accept and get away with by listening to such things as "Christ is the ruler of the sun" or the issue about the "Two Jesus children." which are equally indifferent to you.

My dear friends, I must admit I don't really understand how these things can be indifferent, when they are understood. The unbelievably important question of the present day is: How can the realm of morality be founded in the realm of natural necessities? We live today on the one side within a scientifically acknowledged realm of natural necessities and one allows that within this realm of necessities, hypotheses are made which are not supported by direct observation. One takes for instance the example of the development of the earth according to geology and so on, spanning only a certain time in history and then according to these impressions arrive at the origin of the earth as coming out of the ancient mists, or like the modified hypotheses in the sense of the Kant-Laplace theories which are no more valid these days; then out of this comes the imagining of the earth's origin and out of the second main statement of the mechanical heat theory, the theory of entropy, the imagining how everything is heading for death through heat (Wärmetod). Who constructs this hypothesis regarding the earth's origin and evolution must say to himself—because according to the scientific point of view on which it is based, it can't be assumed otherwise—that this ancient mist was there as the sovereign entity with laws of aerodynamics and laws of aerostatics, and out of this the laws of hydrodynamics and hydrostatics were created, and then luckily such conditions arose through which connections were created as we find in the simplest cells, the amoebas, and then all that turned into complicated organisms, also humans, and in humans moral ideals rose through which human worth could be felt.

[ 18 ] What would we be as humans if we hadn't had our moral ideals, and if through these moral ideals we didn't, through the acceptance of a divine world order in the entire global context, become ennobled? It is useless to just let it go; to say we will separate the realm of the certainty of faith which we have in moral ideals, from what we have as the natural order. Such a separation can only happen with those who aren't really inwardly serious about what they see presented in the natural order.

[ 19 ] My dear friends, I once became acquainted with someone who at the time was involved with the great problem of death in the world, explored from Haeckel's point of view. With an earnest attitude, an inner enthusiasm to understand such a point of view, he approached this view which is quite honestly based on the foundation of science. What did he have to say about moral-religious ideals? He said: "Those are religious foam bubbles rising in human life, it is something people put in front of themselves, it is something on which the human race lives, from which they take their dignity; but one day the great graveyard of the heat death will arrive, and then all outer forms of organisms, everything which appeared as moral-religious foam bubbles will be buried, and in the world's space a sloop will be circling in some curve that can be said to be something which people once created according to mechanistic or dynamic laws, these people allowed bubbles to rise and from this the people derived their worth; and all of that has turned out to be a cosmic cemetery."

[ 20 ] You see, out of this person's honesty, because he couldn't unhook himself from it, he returned to the blissful womb of the Catholic Church for some years. This is only one example out of many.

[ 21 ] This abyss has opened up between the moral-religious world order and the scientific-mechanic world order. There are only a few people capable of enough sensitivity, who doesn't tolerate the entire world view regarding the earth's origin or demise according to science. For example, Herman Grimm said a rotting and decaying carcass bone would be an appetizing piece compared to what the Kant-Laplace theory made of the earth.—What Herman Grimm added is true, future generations of scholars will be able to make astute treatises to explain the nonsense which the Kant-Laplace theory introduced into people's heads, to their detriment.

[ 22 ] My dear friends, if with your deepest insight you want to look at what such a point of view has caused for the doom of the human soul, starting in the lowest classes in school, then in order to do what needs to be done today, you must search much deeper than is normally done. You can't get stuck half way and say: We must withdraw religious content from the general view of the world, we must have our own religious certainty and beside it, science may exist.—For then, at most, man's moral-religious view of the world will help him return to the bosom of the blessed Roman Catholic Church to numb himself if he still comes under such an anesthetic.

[ 23 ] In the course of evolution, we have reached the point where we no longer know that the spiritual lives in all-natural laws, that for example what happens within man himself, where there is actually a hearth within him, is accomplished outside in nature. My dear friends, the people from the 19th century quite correctly were strongly affected by for example what Julius Robert Mayer expressed as a law of conservation of energy and of matter. (Erhaltungssatz der Kraft.) It has really come to the fore that the law of the conservation of power and of matter in the 19th century dominates our physics today. However, this is valid for outer nature only and there only within certain boundaries which become more limited as time goes by; but in terms of time it doesn't apply to human beings. It is simply true that within man there is a hearth where all material things which he takes into himself, is transformed into nothing, where matter is destroyed, matter is dissolved. By letting our pure thoughts be assimilated by our etheric body and letting these thoughts work on our physical body through the etheric, matter is destroyed in our physical body. (During the next explanation drawings were made on the blackboard. The originals are no longer available.)

I'm sketching diagrammatically, it is intensively spread over the entire human being, I draw it in such a way as if it is only a part. This place in a person where matter becomes destroyed is at the same time the place where matter is created again, when morality, when religious perceptions glows through us. What is created here simply by our perceptions through moral and religious ideals, this is like a seed for future worlds. If the material world perishes, when the material world has been destroyed in the heat death then this earth will be transformed into another world body, and this body of a world will be made from the moral ideals created into material forms. Because our science is not capable of penetrating deeply enough into matter, it is not capable of grasping the thought that matter itself is an abstraction. We may speak about the thermal death of the earth, but at the same time we have to speak of what is cast off from plants, in wilting and drying out, and about the seed surviving into the next year; even as we can speak in relation to the heat death, we can speak about the seed which remains to us and survives the world death.

[ 24 ] There is a sphere where scientific truths end; mere scientific truths in the sense of today, where moral ideals end being bubbles of foam, when the earth will expire in the heat death. There is an accessible region for man, where moral ideals are received when physical matter is destroyed, a sphere where the Word becomes a natural scientific truth: "Heaven and Earth will pass away but My words will not pass away!"—There is a sphere where the Bible becomes science; and before this—it needs to be acknowledged in the background of today's aspirations—no healing can occur, before we have the opportunity to advance to a science, not a one-sided science like today, nor one which is a one-sided abstract spiritual science.

[ 25 ] Today the term "spiritual science" is applied only to the science of ideas. For Anthroposophy spiritual science is not only what can be grasped on the other side of materiality, but it is something whose processes penetrate matter.

[ 26 ] With results of this research it is then possible, certainly by applying diligent spiritual scientific methods, to consider everything regarding the relationship between the sun and Christ. These things must be considered in the right light. With a certain authority we have during the course of the last three centuries come to see something regarding the stars, sun and moon, which can be calculated. What has brought us misfortune is that we only calculate. We need to once again observe that by looking at the arithmetic of the world's structure, we are in fact investigating a corpse. We need to learn to investigate the spirit of the cosmic whole. Everything depends on this. We won't find the spirit, if we allow matter to violate us in such a way that it presents itself in the universe as something which can only be calculated, or at most be judged according to basic mechanical laws. For this reason, it can already be said that it depends entirely on the individual human being who says: "For me it is not important that the Christ is the ruler of the sun".—This sentence must be understood in the correct way: "For me it is a matter of indifference".

[ 27 ] My dear friends, I've heard a few people say they are indifferent to what the Christ has to do with the sun, but they were not indifferent when their taxes increase by fifty percent. Yet it is more necessary for the overall salvation of mankind that Christ and the sun are seen to be related than the rising tax of fifty percent is.

[ 28 ] How we think in detail about the two Jesus children may be discussed again. However, what would one say to an objection which claims we should practice something that, yes, I don't know what it is, and then the issue about the two Jesus children is put on the table, which leaves us indifferent. I open the Gospel and read a great deal which is presented there, similar to the issue about the two Jesus children mentioned in Anthroposophy. Then again, you don't say: We want religion, but we are quite indifferent whether Jesus was the son of Joseph and Mary or something similar, every single Gospel truth leaves us completely indifferent.—I don't know to what else you don't care about. One doesn't want to enter into something which is of no interest to you, but an objection is not the same, it is definitely not.

[ 29 ] Now I would still like to enter into point eight which I've written down for myself, because time is marching on. It is said that a certain progress is expected in people's internalizing; yet through the way culture has been created, people have come to hate culture, they don't want to hear anything more about culture, and now (with Anthroposophy) something arrives which doesn't only speak about internalization, but even what strives to have an effect on architecture and the art of movement.

[ 30 ] Yes, my dear friends, if you take life seriously you won't want anything other than what appears in Anthroposophy, what appears to you as spiritual foundations penetrating everything in outer life. I'm still talking about Anthroposophy; we will still touch on what religion has to say about it. That's just the trouble, we are no longer in the position to bring what we experience in the spiritual into our outer life, and finally this happens just in those areas where it is the most noticeable. Just imagine you had said to a Greek that he couldn't express his spiritual experiences in outer life. Just as the Greek thought about his Apollo, as he thought about Zeus, he created his Zeus temple accordingly, his colonnaded temple. We no longer create, we imitate what is old; we don't have the possibility of taking those areas relating to the spirit and also create an external physiognomy of life. The only thing we can create is a department store. The department store is the grandiose creation of the materialistic spirit of the present day. However, if we wanted a home for the spirit and turn to a builder, then he would build it in a Romantic, Gothic or some or other style, and we would have no feeling, when we stand there within the walls, of anything being expressed of what we had inwardly lived through spiritually.

[ 31 ] You see, when the thought was created—not through me but through others—to build a house for Anthroposophy, not for an instant would an idea exist to approach a builder and let him erect a Renaissance or Baroque building and then to move in there, but the idea could come about in the following way. In this building this and that would be spoken about and the forms which would be visible all around should say exactly the same as what is being spoken within it. If this is not only theoretical but life, if the forms are creative, then they are presented—as living—in the world. It is impossible to measure what is created here as a matter of course in comparison with the dishonest cultural activity of the times which has brought us into all this trouble.

[ 32 ] This is what I wanted to present primarily, my dear friends. There are too many questions to deal with in one stroke; I will continue with them tomorrow. I've limited myself today by entering into what has been raised against Anthroposophy in general. I will however expand on what in particular will be raised against the service which Anthroposophy will bring towards religious renewal. I would like to stress the following: if somehow an idea develops that it equally represents an existing religious confession, or a creed, which one thinks to justify only through Anthroposophy as its basis, then you do Anthroposophy a wrong because it has never claimed to be a religious education nor is it a religion or wants to establish a religion. This Anthroposophy will not do. Anthroposophy follows impulses to knowledge, goals to knowledge; and whoever says that Anthroposophy is not a religion because it doesn't have the characteristics of religion—say something which Anthroposophy must say about itself from the outset. You can't accuse someone of being something he doesn't even want to be! The objections which are actually made from a religious side, appear to me as if, let's say, someone is active in a field and is accused of not doing what he could in another field.

The objections raised by Dr Rittelmeyer, as far as I have taken into account, certainly involve the relationship people have to Anthroposophy. For this reason, I approached it from this side and will enter into it from the religious side, tomorrow.