The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The lecture yesterday dealt with questions of karma, and the endeavour was made to speak of them in such a way that they appear to us to be linked with inner processes in the soul, with something that is within our reach. It was said that certain tentative measures can be taken and that in this way a conviction of the truth of the law of karma may be awakened. If such questions are introduced again and again into our studies, this is because it is necessary to realise with increasing clarity how Anthroposophy, in the genuine sense of the word, is related to life itself and to the whole evolution of man.

There is no doubt that at least an approximately adequate idea can be formed of the change that will gradually and inevitably take place in all human life if a considerable number of people are convinced of the truths upon which studies such as those of yesterday are based. By steeping themselves in such truths, men's attitude to life will be quite different and life itself will change in consequence.

This brings us to the very important question—and it is a question of conscience for those who enter the Anthroposophical Movement: What is it, in reality, that makes a man of the modern age into an anthroposophist?—Misunderstanding may easily arise when endeavours are made to answer this question, for even to-day many people—including those who belong to us—still confuse the Anthroposophical Movement with some form of external organisation. There is nothing to be said against an external organisation, which from a certain point of view must exist in order to make it possible for Anthroposophy to be cultivated on the physical plane; but it is important to realise that all human beings whose interest in questions of the spiritual life is earnest and sincere and who wish to deepen their world-view in accordance with the principles of this spiritual Movement, can belong to such an organisation. From this it is obvious that no dogmatic, positive declaration of belief can be demanded from those who attach themselves to such an organisation. But it is a different matter to speak quite precisely of what makes a man of the present age into an anthroposophist.

The conviction that a spiritual world must be taken into account is, of course, the starting-point of anthroposophical conviction, and this must always be stressed when Anthroposophy is introduced to the public and reference made to its tasks, aims and present mission in life. But in anthroposophical circles themselves it must be realised that what makes the anthroposophist is something much more definite, much more decisive than the mere conviction of the existence of a spiritual world. After all, this conviction has always been held in circles that were not utterly materialistic. What constitutes a modern anthroposophist and, fundamentally speaking, was not contained in the theosophy of Jacob Boehme, for example, or of other earlier theosophists, is something towards which the efforts of our Western culture are strenuously directed—so much so, on the one side, that such efforts have become characteristic of the strivings of many human beings. But on the other side there is the fact that what particularly characterises the anthroposophist is still vehemently attacked by external culture and education, is still regarded as nonsense.

We do, of course, learn many things through Anthroposophy. We learn about the evolution of humanity, even about the evolution of our earth and planetary system. All these things belong to the fundamentals required by one who desires to become an anthroposophist. But what is of particular importance for the modern anthroposophist is the gaining of conviction with regard to reincarnation and karma. The way in which men gain this conviction, how they succeed in spreading the thought of reincarnation and karma—it is this that from now onwards will essentially transform modern life, will create new forms of life, an entirely new social life, of the kind that is necessary if human culture is not to decline but rise to a higher level. Experiences in the life of soul such as were described yesterday are, fundamentally speaking, within the reach of every modern man, and if only he has sufficient energy and tenacity of purpose he will certainly become inwardly convinced of the truth of reincarnation and karma. But the whole character of our present age is pitted against what must be the aim of true Anthroposophy.

Perhaps this fundamental character of our present age nowhere expresses itself so radically and typically as in the fact that considerable interest is shown in the central questions of religion, in the evolution of the world and of man, and even in karma and reincarnation. When such questions extend to the specific tenets of religions—concerning, let us say, the nature of the Buddha or of Christ—when such questions are discussed to-day, evidence of widespread interest will be apparent. But this interest peters out the moment we speak in concrete detail about how Anthroposophy must penetrate into every domain of external life. That interest dwindles is, after all, very understandable. Men have their places in external life, they hold various positions in the world. With all its organisations and institutions the modern world appears not unlike a vast emporium with the individual human being working in it as a wheel, or something of the kind. This indeed is what he feels himself to be, with his labour, his anxieties, his occupation from morning till evening, and he knows nothing beyond the fact that he is obliged to fit into this outer world-order. Then, side by side with these conditions, arises the question that must exercise every soul who is able to look even a little beyond what everyday life offers: it is the question of the soul's destiny, of the beginning and end of the soul's life, its connection with divine-spiritual Beings and Powers holding sway in the universe. And between what everyday life with its cares and anxieties brings to man and what he receives in the domain of Anthroposophy yawns a deep abyss.

It may be said that for most men of the present age there is almost no harmony between their convictions and what they do and think in their outer, everyday life. If some concrete question is raised in public and dealt with in the light of Spiritual Science or Anthroposophy, it will at once be evident that the interest which was still there in the case of general questions of religion and the like, no longer exists when it comes to matters of a really concrete kind. It cannot of course be expected that Anthroposophy will at once make its way into life, that everyone will immediately bring it to expression in whatever he is doing. But the world must be made to realise that it is the mission of Spiritual Science to introduce into life, to incorporate in life, everything that will emanate from a soul who has become convinced of the truth of the ideas of reincarnation and karma. And so the characteristic stamp of the modern anthroposophist may be said to be that he is on the way to acquiring a firmly based, inner conviction of the validity of the idea of reincarnation and karma. All the rest will then follow of itself.

Naturally it will not do to think: Now, reinforced with the knowledge of reincarnation and karma, I shall at once be able to grapple with external life. That, of course, is not possible. The essential thing is to understand how the truths of reincarnation and karma can penetrate into external life in such a way that they become its guiding principles.

Now let us consider how karma works through the different incarnations. When a human being comes into the world, his powers and capacities must, after all, be regarded as the effects of causes he himself engendered in earlier incarnations. If this idea is led to its consistent conclusion, every human being must be treated as if he were a kind of enigma, as a being hovering in the dark foundations of his earlier incarnations. If this idea of karma is put earnestly into effect a significant change will be brought about, not in methods of education only but in the whole of life. If that were achieved, the idea of karma, instead of being merely an anthroposophical idea, would be transformed into something that takes hold of practical life itself, would become a really potent factor in life.

But all external life as it presents itself to-day is the picture of a social condition which, in its development, has excluded, has indeed refuted, the idea of reincarnation and karma. External life to-day is organised almost as if there were a deliberate desire to quash any possibility of men being able, through their own inner development, to discover the reality of reincarnation and karma. In point of fact there is, for example, nothing more hostile to a real conviction of reincarnation and karma than the principle that a man must be remunerated, must receive wages corresponding to his actual labour. To speak like this seems utterly eccentric! Do not, however, take this example to imply that Anthroposophy would wish to throw to the winds the principles of an established practice and to introduce a new social order overnight! That cannot be. But men must become alive to the thought that no fundamental conviction of reincarnation can ever flourish in a world-order in which it is held that there must be a direct correspondence between wages and labour, in which man is obliged, through the labour he performs, to obtain the necessities of life. Naturally the prevailing conditions must remain, to begin with, for it will be clear, above all to anthroposophists, that what exists is in turn the outcome of karmic law and in this sense is justified and inevitable. But it is absolutely essential for men to be able to realise that what can, nay must, ensue from recognition of the idea of reincarnation and karma, unfolds as a new seed in the organism of our world-order.

Above all it follows from the idea of karma that we should not feel ourselves to have been placed by chance into the world-order, into the positions in which we find ourselves in life; on the contrary, we should feel that a kind of subconscious decision of the will underlies it, that as the result of our earlier incarnations, before we passed into this earthly existence out of the spiritual world between death and a new birth, we resolved in the spiritual world—a resolve we merely forgot when we incarnated in the body—to occupy the very position in which we now find ourselves. Consequently it is the outcome of a pre-natal, pre-earthly decision of the will that we are assigned to our particular place in life and have the actual inclination to steer towards the blows of destiny that befall us. If a man then becomes convinced of the truth of the law of karma, he will inevitably begin to incline towards, even possibly to love, the position in the world in which he has placed himself—no matter what it may be.

You may say: You are telling us very strange things. They may be all very well for poets or writers, or others engaged in spiritual pursuits. To such people you do well to preach that they should love, delight in, be devoted to, their particular positions in life. But what of all those human beings whose situations, in their very nature and with the labours they involve, cannot possibly be particularly welcome but will inevitably evoke the feeling of belonging to the neglected or oppressed?—Who would deny that a large proportion of the efforts made in modern civilisation aim at introducing into life continuous improvements which may help to get rid of the discontent at having been placed in such unpleasant situations? How numerous are the different institutions and sectarian endeavours to better life in all directions in order that even from the external aspect the earthly life of mankind might be bearable!

None of these endeavours reckon with the fact that the kind of discontent inevitably brought by life to numbers of people to-day is connected in many respects with the whole course taken by the evolution of humanity, that fundamentally speaking, the way in which men developed in past ages led to karma of this kind, and that out of the combined working of these different karmas the present state of human civilisation has proceeded. In characterising this state of civilisation we can only say that it is complex in the highest degree. It must also be said that the connection between what man does, what he carries out, and what he loves, is weakening all the time. And if we were to count those people who in their positions in external life to-day are obliged to engage in some activity that goes much against the grain, their number would by far exceed the number of those who affirm: I can only say that I love my external occupation, that it brings me happiness and contentment.

Only recently I heard of a strange statement made by someone to a friend. He said: ‘When I look back over my life in all its details I confess that if I had to live through it again from childhood to the present moment, I should do exactly the same things I have done up to now.’—The friend replied: ‘Then you are one of those most rarely to be found at the present time!’—The friend was probably right, as far as most men of the modern age are concerned. Not many of our contemporaries would assert that, if it depended on them, they would without hesitation begin life all over again, together with everything it has brought in the way of happiness, sorrow, blows of fate, obstacles, and would be quite content if everything were exactly the same again.

It cannot be said that the fact just mentioned—namely that there are so few people nowadays who would be willing to recapitulate the karma of their present life together with all its details—it cannot be said that this is unconnected with what the prevailing cultural state of humanity has brought in its train. Our life has become more complex but it has been made so by the different karmas of the personalities living on the earth to-day. Of that there can be no doubt at all. Nor will those who have the slightest insight into the course taken by human evolution be able to speak of any possibility of a less complicated life in the future. On the contrary, the complexity of external life will steadily increase and however many activities are taken over from man in the future by machines, there can be very few lives of happiness in this present incarnation unless conditions quite different from those now prevailing are brought about. And these different conditions must be the result of the human soul being convinced of the truth of reincarnation and karma.

From this it will be realised that something quite different must run parallel with the complexity of external civilisation. What is it that will be necessary to ensure that men become more and more deeply permeated with the truth of reincarnation and karma? What will be necessary in order that the concept of reincarnation and karma may comparatively soon instil itself into our education, take hold of human beings even in childhood, in the way that children now are convinced of the truth of the Copernican theory of the universe?

What was it that enabled the Copernican theory of the universe to lay hold of men's minds? This Copernican world-system has had a peculiar destiny. I am not going to speak about the theory itself but only about its entry into the world. Remember that this world-system was thought out by a Christian dignitary and that Copernicus's own conception of it was such that he felt it permissible to dedicate to the pope the work in which he elaborated his hypothesis. He believed that his conclusions were entirely in keeping with Christianity.¹ Was any proof of the truth of Copernicanism available at that time? Could anyone have demonstrated the truth of its conclusions? Nobody could have done so. Yet think of the rapidity with which it made its way into humanity. Since when has proof been available? To the extent to which it is correct, only since the fifties of the 19th century, only since Foucault's experiment with the pendulum.² Before then there was no proof that the earth rotates. It is nonsense to state that Copernicus was also able to prove what he had presented and investigated as an hypothesis; this also holds good of the statement that the earth rotates on its axis.

Only since it was discovered that a swinging pendulum has the tendency to maintain the plane of its oscillation even in opposition to the rotation of the earth and that if a long pendulum is allowed to swing, then the direction of oscillation rotates in relation to the earth's surface, could the conclusion be drawn: it is the earth beneath the pendulum which must have rotated. This experiment, which afforded the first actual proof that the earth moves, was not made until the 19th century. Earlier than that there was no wholly satisfactory possibility of regarding Copernicanism as being anything more than an hypothesis. Nevertheless its effect upon the human mind in the modern age was so great that until the year 1822 his book was on the Index, in spite of the fact that Copernicus had believed it permissible to dedicate it to the Pope. Not until the year 1822 was the book on which Copernicanism was based, removed from the Index—before, therefore, any real proof of its correctness was available. The power of the impulse with which the Copernican theory of the universe instilled itself into the human mind finally compelled the Church to recognise it as non-heretical.

I have always considered it deeply symptomatic that this knowledge of the earth's motion was first imparted to me as a boy at school, not by an ordinary teacher, but by a priest.³—Who can possibly doubt that Copernicanism has taken firm root, even in the minds of children?—I am not speaking now of its truths and its errors. If culture is not to fall into decline, the truths of reincarnation and karma must take equally firm root—but the time that humanity has at its disposal for this is not as long as it was in the case of Copernicanism. And it is incumbent upon those who call themselves anthroposophists to-day to play their part in ensuring that the truths of reincarnation and karma shall flow even into the minds of the young. This of course does not mean that anthroposophists who have children should inculcate this into them as a dogma. Insight is what is needed.

I have not spoken of Copernicanism without reason. From the success of Copernicanism we can learn what will ensure the spread of the ideas of reincarnation and karma. What, then, were the factors responsible for the rapid spread of Copernicanism?—I shall now be saying something terribly heretical, something that will seem quite atrocious to the modern mind. But what matters is that Anthroposophy shall be taken as earnestly and as profoundly as Christianity was taken by the first Christians, who also arrayed themselves against the conditions then prevailing. If Anthroposophy is not taken with equal seriousness by those who profess to be its adherents, it cannot achieve for humanity what must be achieved.

I have now to say something quite atrocious, and it is this.—Copernicanism, what men learn to-day as the Copernican theory of the universe—the great merits of which and therewith its significance as a cultural factor of the very first order are truly not disputed—this theory was able to take root in the human soul because to be a believer in this world-system it is possible to be a superficial thinker. Superficiality and externality contribute to a more rapid conviction of Copernicanism. This is not to minimise its significance for humanity. But it can truly be said that a man need not be very profound, need not deepen himself inwardly, before accepting Copernicanism; he must far rather externalise his thinking. And indeed a high degree of externalisation has been responsible for trivial utterances such as those to be found in modern monistic books, where it is said, actually with a touch of fervour: Compared with other worlds, the earth, as man's habitation, is a speck of dust in the universe.⁴ This is a futile statement for the simple reason that this ‘speck of dust,’ with all that belongs to it, is a vital concern of man in terrestrial existence, and the other worlds in the universe with which the earth is compared are of less importance to him. The evolution of humanity was obliged to become completely externalised to be quickly capable of accepting Copernicanism.

But what must men do in order to assimilate the teaching of reincarnation and karma?—This teaching must meet with far more rapid success if humanity is not to fall into decline. What is it that is necessary to enable it to take footing, even in the minds of children? Externalisation was necessary for the acceptance of Copernicanism; inner deepening is necessary for realising the truths of reincarnation and karma, the capacity to take in earnest such things as were spoken of yesterday, to penetrate into intimate matters of the life of soul, into things that every soul must experience in the deep foundations of its own core of being. The results and consequences of Copernicanism in present-day culture are paraded everywhere nowadays, in every popular publication, and the fact that all these things can be presented in pictures, even, whenever possible, in cinematographs, is regarded as a very special triumph. This already characterises the tremendous externalisation of our cultural life.

Little can be shown in pictures, little can be actually communicated about the intimacies of the truths embraced in the words ‘reincarnation’ and ‘karma.’ To realise that the conviction of reincarnation and karma is well-founded depends upon a deepened understanding of such things as were said in the lecture yesterday. And so the very opposite of what is habitual in the external culture of to-day is necessary if the idea of reincarnation and karma is to take root in humanity. That is why such insistence is laid upon this deepening—in the domain of Anthroposophy too. Although it cannot be denied that certain schematic presentations may be useful for an intellectual grasp of fundamental truths, it must nevertheless be realised that what is of primary importance in Anthroposophy is to turn our attention to the laws operating in the depths of the soul, to what is at work inwardly, beneath the forces of the soul, as the outer, physical laws are at work in the worlds of time and space.

There is very little understanding to-day of the laws of karma. Is there anyone who as an enlightened man in the sense of modern culture, would not maintain that humanity has outgrown the stage of childhood, the stage of faith and has reached the stage of manhood where knowledge can take the place of faith? Such utterances are to be heard perpetually and give rise to a great deal that deludes people in the outside world but should never delude anthroposophists—utterances to the effect that faith must be replaced by knowledge.

But none of these tirades on the subject of faith and knowledge take into consideration what may be called karmic relationships in life. One who is capable of spiritual-scientific investigation and observes particularly pious, devotional natures among people of the present time, will ask himself: Why is this or that person so pious, so devout? Why is there in him the fervour of faith, the enthusiasm, a veritable genius for religious devoutness, for directing his thoughts to the super-sensible world?—If the investigator asks these questions he will find a remarkable answer to them. If in the case of these devout people in whom faith did not, perhaps, become an important factor in their lives until a comparatively advanced age, we go back to earlier incarnations, the strange fact is discovered that in preceding incarnations these individualities were men of learning, men of knowledge. The scholarship, the element of intelligence in their earlier incarnations has been transformed, in the present incarnation, into the element of faith. There we have one of those strange facts of karma.

Forgive me if I now say something that nobody sitting here will take amiss but would shock many in the outside world who swear by and are willing to accept only what is presented by the senses and the intellect that is dependent on the brain. In people who because of strongly materialistic tendencies no longer desire to have faith, but knowledge only, we find—and this is a very enigmatic fact—dull-wittedness, obtuseness, in the preceding incarnation. Genuine investigation of the different incarnations, therefore, yields this strange result, that ardently devout natures, people who are not fanatic but inwardly steadfast in their devotion to the higher worlds, developed the quality of faith they now possess on the foundation of knowledge gained in earlier incarnations; whereas knowledge founded on materialism is the outcome of obtuseness to views of the world in earlier incarnations.

Think how the whole conception of life changes if the gaze is widened from the immediate present to what the human individuality experiences through the different incarnations!

Many a quality upon which man prides himself in the present incarnation assumes a strange aspect when considered in the setting of how it was acquired in the preceding incarnation. Viewed in the light of reincarnation, many things will seem less incredible. We need think only of how, with these inner forces of soul, a man develops in one incarnation; we need observe only the power of faith in the soul, the power of soul that may inhere in faith and belief in something that as super-sensible reality transcends the phenomena of ordinary sense-perception. A materialistic monist may strongly oppose this, insisting that knowledge alone is valid, that faith has no sure foundation—but against this there is another fact, namely that the power of faith in the soul has a life-giving effect upon the astral body, whereas absence of faith, scepticism, parches and dries it up. Faith works upon the astral body as nourishment works upon the physical body. And is it not important to realise what faith does for man, for his well-being, for his healthiness of soul, and—because this is also the determining factor for physical health—for his body too? Is it not strange that on the one side there should be the desire to abolish faith, while on the other side a man who is incapable of faith is bound to have a barren, withered astral body? Even by observing the one life only this can be recognised. It is not necessary to survey a series of incarnations, for it can be recognised in the one. We can therefore say: Lack of faith, scepticism, dries up our astral body; if we lack faith we impoverish ourselves and in the following incarnation our individuality is drained dry. Lack of faith makes us obtuse in the next incarnation, incapable of acquiring knowledge. To contrast knowledge with faith is the outcome of worldly, jejune logic. For those who have insight into these things, all the palaver about faith and knowledge has about as much sense as there would be in a discussion where one speaker declares that up to now human progress has depended more upon men, while the other maintains that women have played the more important part. In the stage of childhood, therefore, the one sex is held to be more important, but at the present stage, the other! For those who are cognisant of the spiritual facts it is clear that faith and knowledge are related to each other as the two sexes are related in outer, physical life. This must be borne in mind as a trenchant and significant fact—and then we shall be able to see the matter in its true light. The parallelism goes so far that it may be said: Just as the sex usually alternates in the successive incarnations, so, as a rule, an incarnation with a more intellectual trend follows one more inclined towards faith, then again towards intellectuality, and so forth. There are, of course, exceptions—there may be several consecutive male or female incarnations. But as a rule these qualities are mutually fruitful and complementary.

Other qualities in the human being are also complementary in a similar way, for example, the two qualities of soul we will call the capacity for love and inner strength.

Self-reliance, harmonious inner life, a feeling of our own sure foundations, the inner assurance that we know what we have to do in life—in this connection too the working of karma alternates in the different incarnations. The outstanding stamp of the one personality is loving devotion to his environment, forgetfulness of self, surrender to what is around him. Such an incarnation will alternate with one in which the individual feels the urge not to lose himself in the outer world but to strengthen himself inwardly, applying this strength to bring about his own progress. This latter urge must not, of course, degenerate into lack of love, any more than the former urge must not degenerate, as it might well do, into a complete loss of one's own self. These two tendencies again belong together. And it must be constantly emphasised that when anthroposophists have the desire to sacrifice themselves, such desire is not enough. Many people would like to sacrifice themselves all the time—they feel happy in so doing—but before anyone can make a sacrifice of real value to the world he must have the strength required for it. A man must first be something before he can usefully sacrifice himself; otherwise the sacrifice of egohood is not of much value. Moreover in a certain respect a kind of egoism—although it is repressed—a kind of laziness, is present when a man makes no effort to develop, to persevere in his strivings, so that what he can achieve is of real value.

It might seem—but please do not misunderstand this—as though we were preaching lovelessness. The outer world is very prone to-day to reproach anthroposophists by saying: You aim at perfecting your own souls, you strive for the progress of your own souls. You become egoists!—It must be admitted that many capricious fancies, many failings and errors may arise in men's endeavours towards perfection. What very often appears to be the principle of development adopted among anthroposophists does not by any means always call for admiration. Behind this striving there is often a great deal of hidden egoism.

On the other side it must be emphasised that we are living in an epoch of civilisation when devoted willingness for sacrifice only too often goes to waste. Although lack of love is in evidence everywhere, there is also an enormous waste of love and willingness for sacrifice. This must not be misunderstood; but it should be realised that love, if it is not accompanied by wisdom in the conduct of life, by wise insight into the existing conditions, can be very misplaced and therefore harmful rather than beneficial. We are living in the age when it is necessary for something that can help the soul to progress—again something that Anthroposophy can bring—to penetrate into the souls of a large number of human beings, inwardly enriching and fertilising them. For the sake of the next incarnation and also for the sake of their activity between death and a new birth, men must be capable of performing deeds that are not based merely upon old customs, but are in essence new. These things must be regarded with great earnestness for it must be established that Anthroposophy has a mission, that it is like a seed of culture that must grow and come to flower in the future. But it can best be seen how this is fulfilled in life if we bear in mind karmic connections such as those between faith and reason, love and self-reliance.

A man who in accordance with the view prevailing nowadays is convinced that when he has passed through the Gate of Death the only prospect is that of an extra-terrestrial eternity somewhere beyond this world, will never be able truly to assess the soul's progress, for he will say to himself: If indeed there is such a thing as progress you cannot achieve it, for your existence is only transitory, you are in this world for a short time only and all you can do is to prepare for that other world.

It is a fact that our greatest wisdom in life comes from our failures; we learn from our failures, gather the most wisdom from the very things where we have not been successful. Ask yourselves seriously how often you have the opportunity of repeating a mistake, in exactly the same circumstances as before—you will find that such a situation rarely occurs. And would not life be utterly without purpose if the wisdom we can acquire from our mistakes were to be lost to earthly humanity? Only if we can come back again, if in a new life we can put into effect the experiences gained in earlier lives—only then does life acquire meaning and purpose. In either case it is senseless to strive for real progress in this earthly existence if it is regarded as the only one, and also for an eternity beyond the earth.

And it is particularly senseless for those who think that all existence comes to an end when they have passed through the Gate of Death. What strength, what energy and confidence in life would be gained by men if they knew that they can turn to account in a new life whatever forces are apparently lost to them! Modern culture is as it is because so very little was gathered for it in the previous incarnations of human beings. Truly, souls have become impoverished in the course of their incarnations.—How is this to be explained?

In long past ages, before the Mystery of Golgotha, men were endowed with an ancient clairvoyance and magical forces of will. And it continued to be so on into the Christian era. But in the final stages of this ancient clairvoyance it was only the evil forces, the demonic forces, that came down from the higher worlds. There are many references in the Gospels to demonic natures around Christ Jesus. Human souls had lost their original connection with the Divine-Spiritual forces and beings. And then Christ came to mankind. Human beings who are living at the present time have had perhaps two or three incarnations since then—each according to his karma. The influence exercised by Christianity until now could only have been what it is, because the souls of men were feeble, drained of force. Christianity could not unfold its whole inner power because of the feebleness of human souls. The extent to which this was so can be gauged if a different wave in human civilisation is considered—the wave which in the East led to Buddhism. Buddhism has the conviction of the truth of reincarnation and karma but in such a form that it regards the purpose and task of progress in evolution to consist in leading men away from life as quickly as possible. In the East a wave was astir in which there was no urge for existence. So we see how everything that should inspire men with determination to fulfil the mission of the earth has fallen away from those who belong to the wave of culture that is the bearer of Buddhism. And if Buddhism were to spread widely in the West, this would be a proof that souls of the feeblest type are very numerous, for it is these souls who would become Buddhists. Wherever Buddhism in some form might appear in the West, this would be a proof that the souls in question want to evade the mission of the earth, to escape from it as quickly as they can, being incapable of tackling it.

When Christianity was spreading in the South of Europe and was being adopted by the peoples of the North, the force of instinct in these Northern souls was strong and powerful. They absorbed Christianity, but, to begin with, its external aspects only could be brought into prominence, that is to say, those aspects which render it so important for men to-day to deepen their experience of the Christ Impulse, so that this Christ Impulse may become the inmost power of the soul itself and the soul grow inwardly richer as it lives on towards the future. Human souls have passed through incarnations of weakness, of uncertainty, and, to begin with, Christianity was an external support. But now the epoch has come when souls must become inwardly strong and vigorous. Therefore as time goes on, what the individual does in outer life will be of little consequence. What will be essential is that the soul shall fund its own footing, shall deepen itself, acquire insight into how the inner reality can be inculcated into the outer life, how the earth's mission can be permeated through and through with the consciousness, the strong inner realisation born from conviction of the truths of reincarnation and karma.

Even if no more than a humble beginning is made in the direction of enabling these truths to penetrate into life, this humble beginning is nevertheless of untold significance. The more we learn to judge man according to his inner faculties, to deepen life inwardly, the more we help to bring about what must be the basic character of a future humanity. External life will become increasingly complicated—that cannot be prevented but souls will find their way to one another through a deepened inner life. The individual may engage in this or that outer activity—but it is the inner richness of the soul that in the anthroposophical life will unite individual souls and enable them to work to the end that this anthroposophical life shall flow more and more strongly into external culture. We know that the whole of our outer life is strengthened when the soul discovers its reality in Anthroposophy; individuals pursuing occupations and vocations of every kind in outer life find themselves united. The soul of external cultural life itself is created through what is given us in Anthroposophy: benediction of the external life. To make this benediction possible, consciousness of the great law of karma must first awaken in the soul. The more we advance into the future, the more must the individual soul be able to feel within itself the benediction of the whole of life.

Outer laws and institutions will make life so complicated that men may well lose their bearings altogether. But by realising the truth of the law of karma the knowledge will be born in the soul of what it must do in order to find, from within, its path through the world. This path will best be found when the things of the world are regulated by the inner life of soul. There are certain things which go on quite satisfactorily because everyone follows the impulse that is an unerring guide. An example is that of walking along the street. People are not yet given precise instructions to step aside to one side of the pavement or the other. Yet two people walking towards each other very rarely collide, because they obey an inner instinct. Otherwise everyone would need to have a policeman at his side ordering him to move to the right or left. Certain circles would really like everyone to have a policeman on one side of him and a doctor on the other all the time—but that is not yet in the realm of possibility! Nevertheless progress can best be made in those things where a man is guided by an inner, spontaneous impulse. In the social life this must lead to respect for human beings, respect for the dignity of man. And this can be achieved only if we understand individuals as they can be understood when the law of reincarnation and karma is taken into account. This social life among men can be raised to a higher level only when the significance of this law takes root in the soul. This is shown most clearly of all by concrete observation such as that of the connection between ardent faith and knowledge, between love and self-reliance.

These two lectures have not been given without purpose. The real importance does not lie so much in what is actually said—it could be put in a different way. But what is of prime importance is that those who profess to adhere to Anthroposophy as a cultural movement shall be so thoroughly steeped in the ideas of reincarnation and karma that they realise how life must inevitably become different if every human soul is conscious of these truths. The cultural life of the modern age has taken shape with the exclusion of consciousness of reincarnation and karma. And the all-important factor that will be introduced through Anthroposophy is that these truths will take real hold of life, that they will penetrate culture and in so doing essentially transform it.

Just as a modern man who says that reincarnation and karma are fantastic nonsense, for it can be seen how human beings are born and how they die—something passes out at death but as that cannot be seen there is no need to take account of it just as a man who speaks in this way is related to one who says: What passes away cannot be seen, but this law can be taken into account and those who do so will for the first time find all life's happenings intelligible, will be able to grasp things that are otherwise inexplicable ... so will the culture of to-day be related to the culture of the future, in which the laws, the teachings of reincarnation and karma will be contained. And although these two laws—as thoughts held by humanity in general—have played no part in the development of present-day culture, they will certainly play a very leading part in all cultures of the future!

The anthroposophist must feel and be conscious of the fact that in this way he is helping to bring about the birth of a new culture. This feeling of the enormous significance in life of the ideas of reincarnation and karma can be a bond of union among a group of human beings to-day, no matter what their external circumstances may be. And those who are eventually held together by such a feeling can find their way to one another only through Anthroposophy.

• 1. Nicholas Copernicus (1473–1543) became a Church dignitary in Frauenburg. His celebrated astronomical work, De revolutionibus orbiurn coelestium, had been dedicated to Pope Paul III, but was not printed until 1543, in Nurnberg. Although protected, to begin with, by the dedication to the Pope, in 1615 it was put on the Index of books forbidden to Catholics, remaining there until 1822, when the ban was officially lifted by the Vatican on works dealing with the earth's motion and the fixed position of the sun.
• 2. In 1851, at the Pantheon in Paris, Leon Foucault demonstrated the diurnal motion of the earth by the rotation of the plane of oscillation of a freely suspended, long and heavy pendulum, and again the following year by means of his invention the gyroscope.
• 3. This was Franz Maraz, the priest at Neudorll, near Wiener Neustadt. Maraz was a Hungarian, later Canon at Oedenburg, and held high offices.
  
  In his autobiography, The Course of my Life, Rudolf Steiner says of him: “The image of this man was deeply engraved in my soul and throughout my life he has come again and again into my memory.”
• 4. cp. Herbert Spencer (1820–1903). 66

The Anthroposophical Society here has invited me to give a course of lectures on Education and has expressed the wish that I should also give one or two Public Lectures dealing with anthroposophical Spiritual Science in relation to the Art of Healing.

It will be necessary for me to begin this evening with a sort of introductory lecture, and deal with the actual subject itself in the two following lectures. I must do this because there are so many people in the audience to whom Anthroposophy is still but little known; and lectures dealing with a special subject would remain rather in the air if I did not begin with some introductory remarks treating of Anthroposophy in general before coming to definite observations in the domain of medicine.

Anthroposophy is indeed not as is so often said of it, some kind of craze, or a sect; it stands for a serious and scientifically-considered conception of the world; but a conception of the world which is applied just as seriously to the spiritual domain as we are accustomed to apply our modern scientific methods to the material domain. Now it might appear to begin with to many people that any suggestion of the spiritual at once introduces something unscientific, for the reason that people are generally inclined to the idea that only those things can be grasped scientifically which can be experienced by the senses, and carried further by means of the reason and intellect. It is the opinion of many people that directly we step over into the spiritual it implies renunciation of Science. It is said that decisions with regard to spiritual questions rest upon subjective opinion, upon a kind of mystical feeling, which everyone must manufacture for himself; “faith” must take the place of scientific knowledge. The task of this introductory lecture shall be to show that this is not the case.

Above all, Anthroposophy does not set out to be “Science” in the generally-accepted sense of the word as something that lies apart from ordinary life and is practised by single individuals who are preparing for some specialised scientific career; on the contrary, it is a conception of the world which can be of value for the mind of every human being who has a longing to find the answers to questions regarding the meaning of life, the duties of life, the operation of the spiritual and material forces of life, and how to turn this knowledge to account. Hitherto in the Anthroposophical field there has been unfailing success in achieving entirely practical methods of applying Anthroposophical principles, more especially in the sphere of education. We have founded schools, which are organised on the basis of these conceptions. And in many well-recognized ways we have succeeded in a similar manner with regard to the art of healing. Anthroposophy does not wish to create obstacles in any sphere, or to appear in opposition to anything that is in the nature of “recognized science;” it will have nothing to do with dilettantism. It is above all anxious that those who wish earnestly to work out what has been given as Anthroposophical knowledge, shall prize and admire all the great achievements that have resulted—with such fullness in recent times—from every kind of scientific endeavour. Therefore there can be no question (in the medical sphere or any other) of anything like dilettantism, nor of any opposition to modern science. On the contrary, it will be shown how by following certain spiritual methods one is in a position to add something to that which is already accepted, and which can only be added when the work of serious investigation is extended into the spiritual world itself.

Anthroposophy can do this because it strives after other kinds of knowledge which, do not prevail in ordinary life or in ordinary science. In ordinary life, as in our customary scientific methods, we make use of such knowledge which we attain when in the course of our development we add to our inherited tendencies and capabilities what we can gain through the usual lower or higher grades of schooling, and which together make us into ripe human beings in the sense in which that is understood to-day. But Anthroposophy goes further than this; it desires to start from what I may call intellectual modesty. And this intellectual modesty (which must be there to begin with if we are to develop a feeling for Anthroposophy) I should like to characterise in the following manner.

Let us consider the development of a human being from earliest childhood onwards. The child first appears in the world showing outwardly in its life and inwardly in its soul nothing of that by which a fully-developed human being finds his orientation in the world through actions and knowledge. There must be education and upbringing in order to draw out of the childlike soul and bodily organism those capacities which have been brought into the world in a dormant or “unripe” state. And we all admit that we cannot in the true sense of the word become active inhabitants of the world if we do not add to our inherited tendencies all those things which can only come by a process of unfolding and drawing them out. Then sooner or later, according to whether we have completed a higher or lower grade of education, we step out into life, having a particular relation to life, having the possibility of unfolding a certain consciousness with regard to our surroundings. Now any one who approaches the intentions of Anthroposophy with true understanding, will say: Why should it not be possible—seeing that it is possible for a child to become something entirely different when its soul-qualities are developed—for such a thing to take place also in a man who is “ripe” according to the standard of to-day? Why should not a man who enters the world fully equipped with the best modern education, also contain hidden capacities in his soul which can be developed further, so that he can progress by means of this development to still further knowledge, and to a practical conduct of life which to some extent can be a continuation of that which has brought him as far as the ordinary state of consciousness?

Therefore in Anthroposophy we undertake a kind of “self-development”—which is to lead out beyond the ordinary condition of consciousness.

There are three faculties in the human soul which are developed normally in life up to a certain point, but which we can unfold further; and Anthroposophy provides the only means in this our modern age of culture and civilisation which will create the necessary stimulus for the further development of these faculties. All three faculties can be so transformed as to become the faculties of a higher kind of knowledge.

First there is the Thinking. In the culture that we have acquired we use our thinking in such a way that we give ourselves over quite passively to the world. Indeed, Science itself demands that we should employ the least possible inner activity in our thinking, and that that which exists in the outer world should only speak to us through the observation of our senses; in fact that we must simply give ourselves over altogether to our sense-perceptions. We maintain that whenever we go beyond this passivity we are only led into dreams and fantastic notions. But where Anthroposophy is concerned, there is no question of fantasy or dreaminess, but of the exact opposite; we are guided to an inner activity which is as clear as any method leading maybe to the attainment of mathematics or geometry. In fact we comport ourselves with regard to Anthroposophy precisely in the same way as we do with regard to mathematics or geometry, only in Anthroposophy we are not developing any special attribute, but on the contrary, every faculty that is connected with human hearts and minds—the whole sum of what is human. And the first thing that has to be done is something which, if people are only sufficiently free from prejudice, can be readily comprehended by everyone. It is simply that the capacity and the force of Thinking should be directed for a time not in order to grasp or understand some external thing, but just in order to allow a thought to remain present in the soul—such a thought as may be easily observed in its totality—and to give oneself up entirely to this thought for a certain length of time.

I will describe it more exactly. Anyone having the necessary feeling of confidence might turn to someone who was experienced in these matters and ask what would be the best kind of thought to which he might devote himself in this way. This person would then suggest some thought which could be surveyed with ease but which would at the same time be as new to him as possible. If we use an old familiar thought, it is very easy for all kinds of memories and feelings and subjective impressions to arise out of the soul, so that only a dreamy condition would be induced. But if the enquirer is directed to a thought which is quite certainly a new one, which will arouse no memories, then he will be able to give himself up to it in such a way that the thought-forces of the soul will become stronger and stronger. In my own writings, and especially in my books—Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and An Outline Of Occult Science, I call this kind of thinking, which can be inwardly cultivated, Meditation. That is an old word: but to-day we will only use it in the particular connection which I will now describe. Meditation consists in turning the attention away from everything that has been either an inner or an external experience, and in thinking of nothing except that one thought, which must be placed in the very centre of the soul's life. By thus directing all the strength that the soul possesses upon this single thought something takes place with regard to the forces of the soul which can only be compared to the constant repetitions of some movement of the hand. What is it that takes place there? The muscles become stronger. It is exactly similar in the case of the soul's powers. When they are directed again and again to one thought they gain force and strength. And if this goes on for a long time—(though to spend a long time at it on each occasion is certainly not necessary, because it is rather a question of entering into a state of soul produced by concentration on a single thought)—and the length of time depends also on predisposition, for with one person it might take a week, and with another three years, and so on—so, if we go on for a long period doing such exercises again and again perhaps for five minutes or fifteen minutes every day, then we begin at last to have an inner sense that our being is becoming enfilled with a new content of force.

Previously, the forces of the nerves have been felt in the process of ordinary thinking and feeling as we feel the forces of the muscles active in the grasping of objects or in whatever we perform. Just as we have been feeling these things gradually more and more in growing up from childhood, so in the same way we gradually begin to learn how to feel that something new is permeating us when we apply ourselves to such thought-exercises—of which I can now only indicate the general principles. (You will find them described in greater detail in my books). Finally there comes a day when we are aware that we can no longer think about outer things in the same way as we used to think about them; but that now we have attained an entirely new soul-power; that we have something in us that is like an intensified, a stronger quality of thinking. And at last we feel that this kind of thinking enables us actually to take hold of what previously was only known to us in quite a shadowy way.

What we are then enabled to grasp is the essential reality of our own life. In what manner do we thus recognize our own earthly life—the life we have lived since birth? We know it through our memory, which reaches back as far as a certain point in our childhood. Rising out of undefined depths of the soul appears the remembrance of our past experiences. They are like shadows. Think how shadowy those emerging memory pictures of our life are in comparison with the intense, full-blooded experiences we have from day to day! If we now take hold of our thinking in the way that I have described, the shadowy quality of these memories ceases. We go back into our own actual earth-life; we experience again what we experienced ten or twenty years ago with the same inner forces and strength with which we originally experienced these events. Only the experience is not the same as formerly, inasmuch as we do not again come into direct contact with the external objects or beings, but we experience instead a kind of “extract” of it all. And that which we experience can, paradoxical as it may sound, be described as having definite significance. All at once, as in a mighty panorama, we have the whole of our life up to the time of birth before us. Not that we see the single events simply in a time-sequence, but we see them as a complete life-tableau. Time turns into Space. Our experiences are there before us, not as ordinary memories, but so that we know that we stand before the deeper being of our own humanity—like a second man within the man we know with our ordinary consciousness.

And then we arrive at the following: This physical human being that we confront in our ordinary consciousness is built up out of the matter which we take out of the Earth which is round about us. We continually discard this matter, and take in fresh matter, and we can definitely say that all the material substances which have been discarded by our body are replaced by new substances within periods of time of from seven to eight years. The material in us is something that is in constant flux. And so, learning to know our own life through our intensified thinking, we come to know that which remains—which endures throughout the whole of our earth-life. It is, at the same time, that which builds up our organism out of outer material substance; and this latter is itself at the same time that which we survey as the tableau of our life.

Now what we see in this manner is distinguished in yet another way from ordinary memory. In ordinary memory the events of our life appear before the soul as though approaching us from outside. We remember what such and such a person has done to us, or what has accrued to us from this or that event. But in the tableau which arises from our intensified thinking, we learn to know ourselves as we really are ourselves—what we have done to other human beings, how we have stood in relation to any occurrence. We learn to know ourselves. That is the important point. For in learning to know ourselves, we also learn to know ourselves intensively, and in such a way that we know how we are placed within the forces of our growth, yes, even within the forces of our nourishment; and how it is we ourselves who build up and again disintegrate our own bodies. Thus we learn to know our own inner being.

Now the important thing is that when we come to this self-knowledge, we immediately experience something which can never be experienced by means of any ordinary science or through the ordinary consciousness. I must admit that nowadays it is really very difficult to express what is now arrived at, because in face of what is considered authoritative to-day, it sounds so strange. But so it is. At this point we experience something through our intensified thinking, of which we must say the following:—There are the laws of Nature which we study assiduously in the sciences; we even learn about them in the elementary schools. We are proud of this; and prosaic humanity is justly proud of what has been learnt of these laws of Nature in physics, chemistry and so on. Here I must emphatically declare that Anthroposophy does not set itself in any amateurish opposition to Science. But because of our grasp of inner, intensive thinking we say that the natural laws which are learnt in connection with physics and chemistry are only present in the matter of the Earth, and they cease to be of any account so soon as we pass out into universal space.

Here I must state something which will not seem so very unplausible to anyone who thinks over it without prejudice: suppose we have somewhere a source of light, we know that the more widely the light is distributed from its source the more it loses in intensity; and the further we go out into space the weaker it becomes, so that we are tempted to speak of it no longer as ‘light’ but as ‘twilight,’ and finally when we have gone far enough it cannot be accounted as light any more. It is the same with the laws of Nature. They have a value for the region of the Earth, but the further we go out into the Cosmos they become less and less of value, until at length they cease to be of any account at all as laws of Nature. On the other hand, those laws which we come to apprehend through intensified thinking, which are already active in our own life, these show us that as human beings, we have not grown out of the natural laws of the Earth, but out of higher, cosmic laws. We have brought them with us in coming into earthly existence. And so we learn to recognize that the moment we have grasped our intensified thinking we can only apply natural law to the mineral kingdom. We cannot say—and this is a very reasonable error made by the newer physics—that natural laws can be applied to the Sun or the Stars. That cannot be done; for to wish to apply natural laws to the Universe would be just as artless as to wish to illumine the world of space with the light of a candle. Directly we ascend from the mineral, which as mineral is only apparent to us on this Earth, up to what is living, then we can no longer speak of the natural laws of the earthly realm, but we must speak of laws which worked down into the earthly realm from out of the Cosmos—from universal space. That is already the case with regard to the vegetable kingdom.

We can only use the laws of the Earth to explain the mineral-laws, for example, such as the law of gravity and so on, which work from the centre of the Earth towards the circumference. When we come to the vegetable kingdom, then we must say that the entire globe is the central point, and that the laws of life are working towards it from every side of the Cosmos—the same laws of life which we have first discovered in ourselves with our intensified thinking, and of which we have learnt to know that we build ourselves up between birth and death by their means.

To these laws, then, which work from the centre of the Earth outward, we add knowledge of the laws which work inwards towards the centre of the Earth from every direction, and which are already active in the vegetable kingdom. We look at the plants springing up out of the Earth and tell ourselves that they contain mineral matter. Chemistry to-day has gone very far in its knowledge of the respective activity of these mineral substances. That is all quite justifiable and quite right. And chemistry will go yet further. That will also be quite right. But if we want to explain the nature of plants we must explain their growth and that cannot be done through the forces that work upwards from the Earth, but only through those forces that work inwards from the surroundings, from the Cosmos, into the Earth-existence. Hence we have to admit that our knowledge must ascend from an earthly conception to a cosmic conception; and moreover in this cosmic conception is contained the real human Self-knowledge.

Now we can go further than this and transform our Feeling. To have ‘Feeling’ in ordinary life is a personal affair, not actually a source of knowledge. But we can transform that which is ordinarily only experienced subjectively as feeling, into a real objective source of knowledge.

In Meditation we concentrate upon one particular thought; we arrive at intensified or ‘substantial’ thinking and thereby are able to grasp something that works from the periphery of the Universe towards the centre of the Earth, in contradistinction to the ordinary laws of Nature, which work from the centre of the Earth outwards in all directions. So when we have reached this intensified thinking, and have perceived that our own life and also the life of the plants is spread out before our souls like a mighty panorama, then we go further. We come to a point, after having grasped something through this forceful thinking, when we can cast these strong thoughts aside. Anyone who knows how difficult it is, in ordinary life, to throw aside some thought which has taken hold of one, will understand that special exercises are necessary to enable this to be done. But it can be done. It is not only possible to cast out with the whole strength of our soul this thought that we have concentrated upon, but it is also possible to cast out the whole memory-tableau, and therewith our own life, and entirely to withdraw our attention from it.

Something then begins to occur by which we clearly see that we are descending further into the depths of the soul, into those regions which are usually only accessible to our feeling. As a rule in ordinary life, if all impressions received by sight or hearing are shut off, we fall asleep. But if we have developed intensified thinking, we do not fall asleep even when we have thrown aside every thought—even the substantially intense ones. A condition arises in which no sense-perceptions and no thoughts are active, a condition we can only describe by saying that such a person is simply ‘awake;’ he does not fall asleep; but he has nevertheless at first nothing in his consciousness. He is awake, with a consciousness that is empty. That is a condition revealed through Spiritual Science to which a person can attain who can be quite systematically and methodically developed—namely to have an empty consciousness in complete waking awareness.

In the usual way, if our consciousness is empty we are asleep. For from falling asleep to waking up we do have an empty consciousness—only—we are asleep in it. To have an empty consciousness and yet be awake, is the second stage of knowledge for which we strive. For this consciousness does not remain empty for long. It fills itself. As the ordinary consciousness can fill itself with colour through the perceptions of sight, or by the ear fill itself with sounds, so this empty consciousness fills itself with a spiritual world which is just as much in our surroundings ‘there’ as the ordinary physical world is in our surroundings here. The empty consciousness is the first to reveal the spiritual world—that spiritual world which is neither here on the Earth, nor in the Cosmos in Space, but which is outside Space and Time, and which nevertheless constitutes our deepest human nature. For if at first we have learnt to look back with the intense consciousness of thinking upon our whole earth-life as a script—now, with a consciousness that was empty and has become filled, we gaze into that world where we passed a life of soul-and-spirit before we came down into our earthly existence. We now learn to know ourselves as Beings who were spiritually present before birth and conception, who lived a pre-earthly existence before the one wherein we now are. We learn to recognize ourselves as beings of spirit-and-soul, and that the body that we bear we have received in that it was handed on to us by parents and grandparents. We have had it delivered to us in such a way that, as I have said, we can change it every seven years; but that which we are in our individual being has brought itself to Earth out of a pre-natal existence. But none of this is learnt by means of theorising, or by subtle cogitation; it can only be learnt when the suitable capacities are first of all unfolded in intellectual modesty.

Thus we have now learnt to know our inner humanity, our own individual being of spirit-and-soul. It comes to meet us when we descend into the region of feeling and not merely with feeling, but also with knowledge. But first we must mark how the struggle for knowledge is bound up with strong inner experiences which can be indicated as follows: If you have bound up one of your limbs tightly, so that you cannot move it—even if someone perhaps only bandages two of your fingers together—you feel discomfort, possibly even pain. Now when you are in a condition where you experience what is soul-and-spirit without a body, you do not possess the whole of your physical being, for you are living in an empty consciousness. The passing-over into this state is connected with a profound feeling of pain. Beyond the feeling of pain, beyond the privation, we wrestle for the entrance into that which is our deepest spiritual and soul-being. And here many people are arrested by terror. But it is impossible to gain any explanation of our real human nature by any other means; and if we can learn it in this way, then we can go still further.

But now we have to develop a strength of knowledge which in ordinary life is not recognised as such at all; we have to develop Love as a force of knowledge—a selfless out-going into the things and processes of the world. And if we perfect this Love ever more and more, so that we can actually lift ourselves out into the condition I have described, where we are body-free—and in this liberation from the body gaze at the world—then we learn to realise ourselves wholly as spiritual beings in the spiritual world. Then we know what man is as Spirit; but then we also know what dying is; for in Death man lays his physical body altogether aside. In this knowledge, which as a third form, is experienced through the deepening of Love, we learn to know ourselves outside our body; we accomplish separation from it by the constructive quality of knowledge.

From this moment we know what it will mean when we lay aside our body in this Earth-existence and go through the Gate of Death. We learn to know death. But we also learn to know the life of the soul-and-spirit on the other side of death. Now we know the spiritual-soul-being of man as it will be after death. As at first we had learnt to recognize our being as it is before the descent into earthly life, so now we know the continuation of the life of this being in the world of soul-and-spirit after death.

Then something else occurs which causes us to mark clearly how imperfect is the consciousness of to-day; for it speaks of ‘immortality,’ out of its hope and faith. But immortality—deathlessness—is only one half of Eternity—namely the everlasting continuation of the present point of time. We have to-day no word such as was to be found in the degrees of knowledge of an older time, which points to an immortality in the other half of Eternity—‘unborn-ness.’

Because just as man is deathless, so is he also unborn; that is to say, with birth he steps out of the spiritual world into physical existence, just as at death he passes from the physical world into a spiritual existence. Therefore in this manner we learn of the true being of man, which is spiritual, and which goes through birth and death; and only then are we in a position to comprehend our whole being.

The principles which I have briefly outlined have already formed the content of a wealth of literature, which has imbibed a conscientiousness and a responsibility towards its knowledge out of the realm of exact Science, on which alone this sense of responsibility can rest to-day. So we attain to a Spiritual Science, which has grown out of ordinary Science.

And just on account of this, we learn something else—namely how life consists of two tendencies or streams. People speak in a general way to-day about development; they say the child is small—it develops—it grows; it is full of energy—strong—it blossoms with life. They say that a lower form of life has evolved to a higher;—quickening, blooming life—growing ever more and more complicated! And that is right. But this stream of life is there, however, in opposition to another stream, which is present in every sentient living being—namely, a destructive tendency. Just as we have a budding and sprouting life in us, integrating life—so we have also the life of disintegration. Through knowledge such as this we perceive that we cannot merely say that our life streams up into the brain and nervous system and that this matter organises itself so that the nervous system can become the bearer of the life of the soul. No—it is not like that. The life is germinating and sprouting, but at the same time there is continual destruction incorporated into it.

Our life is incessantly going to pieces ... the blossoming life is always giving place to the decaying life. We are actually dying by degrees and at every moment something falls to ruin in us, and every time we build it up again. But, whereas matter is being destroyed, it leaves room wherein what is of the soul-and-spirit can enter and become active in us. And here we touch upon the great error made by materialism, for materialism believes that the sprouting and budding life evolves up to the nervous system in man so that the nerves are built up in the same way as the muscles are built up out of the blood. It is true they are. But no thinking is developed by means of building up the nerves; neither is feeling. On the contrary, in that the nerves decay to a certain extent, the psychic-spiritual incorporates itself into what is decaying. We must first disintegrate matter in order that the psychic-spiritual can appear in us and enable us to experience it for ourselves.

That will be the great moment in the development of a rightly-understood Natural Science, when the opposite to evolution will be recognized as carrying evolution forward at the corresponding point; when it will recognize not only integration, but also disintegration—thus admitting not only evolution but devolution. And thus it will be understood how the spiritual in the animal and in man—but in the latter in a self-conscious way—takes hold of the material. The spiritual does not take hold of the material because the latter is developing itself against it, but because matter, by a contrary process, is destroying itself; and the spiritual comes into evidence, the spiritual reveals itself, in this process. Therefore we are filled with the spirit; for it is everywhere present in devolution but not in evolution, which is Earth-development. Then we learn to observe that man as he stands before us in his entirety, is as though contained within a polar antithesis, Everywhere, in every single organ, wherever there is an upbuilding process there is also a destructive process going on. If we look at any one of the organs, it may be the liver, or the lungs, or the heart, we see that it is in a constant stream which consists of integration—disintegration, integration—disintegration. Is it not really rather an extraordinary expression that we use when we say for example ‘Here flows the Rhine?’ What is ‘the Rhine?’ When we say ‘Here flows the Rhine,’ we do not as a rule mean that there is the river bed ‘Rhine,’ but we mean the flowing water which we look at. Yet it is different every moment. The Rhine has been there a hundred years, a thousand years. But what is it which is there every moment? It is what is realised as being in alteration every moment in the flowing stream. In the same way, everything that we contain is held within a stream of change, in integration and disintegration, and in its disintegration it becomes the bearer of the spiritual. And so in every normal human being there exists a state of balance between anabolism and catabolism, and in this balance he develops the right capacity for the soul-and-spirit. Nevertheless, this balance can be disturbed, and can be disturbed to such an extent that some organ or other may have its correct degree of anabolism in relation to too slight a degree of catabolism, and then its growth becomes rampant. Or contrariwise, some organ may have a normal process of disintegration against too slight an anabolism, in which case the organ becomes disturbed, or atrophies; and thus we pass out of the physiological sphere into the pathological.

Only when we can discern what this condition of balance signifies, can we also discern how it may be disturbed by an excess of either integrating or disintegrating forces. But when we recognize this, then we can turn our gaze to the great outer world, and can find there what, under certain conditions, will act so as to equalise these two processes.

Suppose we take for example a human organ that is disturbed by reason of too strong a destructive process, and then look with sight made clear by spiritual-scientific knowledge at something outside in Nature, say at a plant; we shall know that in a particular plant there are anabolic—building-up—properties. Now it becomes apparent that in the habit of certain plants there are always anabolic properties and that these correspond precisely to the anabolic forces of human organs. Thus, we can discover—when we make use of these conceptions which have now been developed by me—that there are anabolic forces in the kidneys. Let us suppose the kidneys are too weak, that their destructive forces are excessive. We turn to the plants, and we find in the common horsetail, Equisetum arvense, anabolic forces which exactly correspond to those which belong to the kidneys. If we make a preparation from equisetum and administer it through the digestive process into the blood-circulation and thus conduct it in the right way to the region in the body where it can work, we strengthen the debilitated anabolic forces of the kidneys. And so we can proceed with all the organs. Once we have grasped this knowledge we have the possibility of bringing back into a condition of balance the unbalanced processes of integration and disintegration by using the forces which can be found in the outside world. If on the other hand we have to deal with forces of anabolism either in the kidneys or elsewhere which have become over-strong, then it will be necessary to reinforce the destructive processes. In this case we must have recourse to the lower type of plants, let us say the fern species, which have this property.

In this way we pass beyond the point of mere experiment and test in order to discover whether a preparation will be beneficial or not. We can look into the human organism in respect of the relative balance of the organs themselves; we can penetratingly survey Nature for the discovery of the anabolic and catabolic forces, and thus we make the Art of Healing into something wherein we can really see that a remedy is not administered just because statistics confirm that in such and such cases it is useful—but because by a really penetrating survey both of the human being and Nature we know with exactitude in every case the natural process in a Nature-product that can be transformed into a healing factor—that is, for the human organs in respect of the anabolic and catabolic forces.

I do not mean to say that in recent times Medicine has not made immense progress. Anthroposophy recognises this progress in Medicine to the full. Neither have we any wish to exclude what modern medical science has accomplished; on the contrary we honour it. But when we examine what has been brought out in the way of remedies in recent times we find that they have only been arrived at by way of lengthy experimentation. Anthroposophy supplies a penetrating knowledge which by its survey of human nature has fully proved itself in those spheres where Medicine has already been so happily successful. But in addition to this, Anthroposophy offers a whole series of new remedies also, a fact which is made possible by the same insight applied to both Nature and Man.

Therefore if we learn to look into the human being spiritually in this way—(and I will later show how the Art of Healing can be made fruitful in every single sphere through a true knowledge of the spirit)—we also learn to look into the spiritual life together with the material life, and then we arrive—and this no longer in the old dreamlike way which had its overflow in Mythology, but in an exact way—then we can arrive at a bringing together of perfectly rational knowledge with a ‘message’ of Healing.

Man learns to heal by means of a real and artistic conception of an art that has grown out of the world itself. Therewith we come again into touch with what existed in ancient times—though it was not then to be found in the way in which we to-day must aspire to find it now that we have the great wealth of Science behind us;—for what existed in ancient times through a kind of dreamlike knowledge, can lead us to-day to the application of forces and spiritual forces in connection with human health and sickness.

In ancient times there were the Mystery Centres in which a knowledge was cultivated which could solve humanity's religious problems and satisfy the longings of the soul; and in connection with the Mysteries there were places of Healing. To-day, quite rightly, we regard the things that were cultivated there as somewhat childish. But there was nevertheless a sound kernel in them;—it was known that the knowledge of the so-called normal world must go forward into knowledge of the abnormal world. Is it not strange that we, on the other hand, say that in his healthy state man comes forth out of Nature, and that then we have to explain the unhealthy man also by the laws of Nature? For every illness can be explained by these laws. Does Nature then contradict herself? We shall see that she does not do so with regard to disease. But our knowledge must be a continuation from the normal physical into the pathological. Knowledge can attain value for life only in so far as that side by side with those places where the normal aspects of life are cultivated, there must also be found those that are concerned with the illnesses of life.

There was to have been a centre of knowledge at the Goetheanum at Dornach in Switzerland, in the building which most unfortunately was burnt down, but which we hope will soon be rebuilt. It was to be a centre of knowledge where mankind would have been able to satisfy those longings of the soul which seek to penetrate into the sources of life. And out of what I might call a natural sequence it came to be regarded as a matter of course that there should be added to the Goetheanum a centre of Healing. True, this could only be, at first, of a modest kind. Such a thing must be there wherever there is to be a real knowledge of humanity. And we have it in the Clinical-Therapeutical Institute at Arlesheim which is the result of the efforts of Frau Dr. Wegman, and which has been followed by the founding of a similar Institute under Dr. Zeylmans van Emmichoven at The Hague. And so at Dornach there is established once again, side by side with the centre of Knowledge, a centre of Healing. And whereas courage must always be a part of everything that pertains to knowledge of the Spirit, so courage belongs above all things, to the way of Healing. This vital element lives in that Institute at Arlesheim—the courage to heal; in order that all which comes forth out of the whole human being as the possibility to control the forces of healing, may be used as a blessing for humanity. Therefore, such a centre of Knowledge, which once more strives towards the Mysteries—albeit in the modern sense—and where the great questions of existence are dealt with, must have beside it, even though it may be only in a modest way, a centre of Healing where knowledge of the smallest details of life is cultivated and where the effort is made to deepen the Art of Healing in a spiritual sense.

In the external nearness of Knowledge-Centre and Healing-Centre to one another we have the outer image of how close a connection should exist between Anthroposophical knowledge and the practical work of Healing, and that this should exist as such a spiritual Art that out of a conception of conditions of illness in the human being, there should grow a conception of Therapeutics, of Healing, so that the two may not fall asunder, but that the diagnostic process may be carried on into the healing process. The aim of Anthroposophy herein is that while one makes a diagnosis in the knowledge one has of what is happening in a person when he is ill, at the same moment one sees that such and such a thing is taking place, or something is happening in the anabolic processes. One then recognizes Nature for example in occurrences brought about by destructive forces; one knows where the destructive forces are to be found, and in administering these as a healing agent one is thus able to act so that these destructive forces can work against the upbuilding forces in the human being. And vice versa. So one is able to perceive clearly in what is going on in the human being, an unhealthy condition; but even in perceiving this unhealthy condition one immediately perceives also the nature of the working of the healing agent.

To-day I wished only to demonstrate the nature of a spiritual way of knowledge, and point out that the effect of this spiritual knowledge is such that man does not merely approach natural and spiritual forces in a theoretical way, but that he also learns to handle them, and out of his spiritual learning to mould life.

With advancing civilisation, life becomes continually more and more complicated. At the present time a longing is dominating the subconscious life of many souls—a longing to find what may be the source out of which this more and more complicated life has grown. Anthroposophy tries above all to assuage these longings. And we shall see that against much that is destructive in the life of to-day it honestly desires to co-operate in all that is constructive, that is advancing, that tends to prosperity in our civilisation—not with helpless phrases but actively, in all the practical questions of life. Anthroposophy wishes knowledge everywhere to flow into life, to give knowledge in a form which can help wherever help is needed in the affairs of life.

We begin our Christmas Conference for the founding of the Anthroposophical Society in a new form with a view of a stark contrast. We have had to invite you, dear friends, to pay a visit to a heap of ruins. As you climbed up the Goetheanum hill here in Dornach your eyes fell on our place of work, but what you saw were the ruins of the Goetheanum which perished a year ago. In the truest sense of the word this sight is a symbol that speaks profoundly to our hearts, a symbol not only of the external manifestation of our work and endeavour on anthroposophical ground both here and in the world, but also of many symptoms manifesting in the world as a whole.

Over the last few days, a smaller group of us have also had to take stock of another heap of ruins. This too, dear friends, you should regard as something resembling the ruins of the Goetheanum, which had become so very dear to us during the preceding ten years. We could say that a large proportion of the impulses, the anthroposophical impulses, which have spread out into the world over the course of the last twenty years made their initial appearance in the books—perhaps there were too many of them—of our publishing company, the Philosophisch-Anthroposophischer Verlag in Berlin. You will understand, since twenty years of work are indeed tied up in all that can be gathered under the heading ‘Philosophisch-Anthroposophischer Verlag,’ that all those who toiled to found and carry on the work of this publishing company gave of the substance of their hearts. As in the case of the Goetheanum, so also as far as the external aspect of this Philosophisch-Anthroposophischer Verlag is concerned, we are faced with a heap of ruins.²⁴ In this case it came about as a consequence of the terrible economic situation prevailing in the country where it has hitherto had its home. All possible work was prevented by a tax situation which exceeded any measures which might have been taken and by the rolling waves—quite literally—of current events which simply engulfed the publishing company.

Frau Dr Steiner has been busy over the last few weeks preparing everything anchored in this Philosophisch-Anthroposophischer Verlag for its journey here to the Goetheanum in Dornach. You can already see a small building²⁵ coming into being lower down the hill between the Boiler House and the Glass House. This will become the home of the Philosophisch-Anthroposophischer Verlag, or rather of its stock of books, which in itself externally also resembles a heap of ruins.

What can we do, dear friends, but link the causes of these heaps of rubble with world events which are currently running their course? The picture we see at first seems grim. It can surely be said that the flames which our physical eyes saw a year ago on New Year's Eve blazed heavenwards before the eyes of our soul. And in spirit we see that in fact these flames glow over much of what we have been building up during the last twenty years.

This, at first, is the picture with which our souls are faced. But it has to be said that nothing else at present can so clearly show us the truth of the ancient oriental view that the external world is maya and illusion. We shall, dear friends, establish a mood of soul appropriate for this our Christmas Foundation Conference if we can bring to life in our hearts the sense that the heap of ruins with which we are faced is maya and illusion, and that much of what immediately surrounds us here is maya and illusion.

Let us take our start from the immediate situation here. We have had to invite you to take your places in this wooden shed.²⁶ It is a temporary structure we have hurriedly put up over the last two days after it became clear how very many of our friends were expected to arrive. Temporary wooden partitions had to be put up next door. I have no hesitation in saying that the outer shelter for our gathering resembles nothing more than a shack erected amongst the ruins, a poor, a terribly poor shack of a home. Our initial introduction to these circumstances showed us yesterday that our friends felt the cold dreadfully in this shed, which is the best we can offer. But dear friends, let us count this frost, too, among the many other things which may be regarded as maya and illusion in what has come to meet you here. The more we can find our way into a mood which feels the external circumstances surrounding us to be maya and illusion, the more shall we develop that mood of active doing which we shall need here over the next few days, a mood which may not be negative in any way, a mood which must be positive in every detail. Now, a year after the moment when the flames of fire blazed skywards out of the dome of our Goetheanum, now everything which has been built up in the spiritual realm in the twenty years of the Anthroposophical Movement may appear before our hearts and before the eyes of our soul not as devouring flames but as creative flames. For everywhere out of the spiritual content of the Anthroposophical Movement warmth comes to give us courage, warmth which can be capable of bringing to life countless seeds for the spiritual life of the future which lie hidden here in the very soil of Dornach and all that belongs to it. Countless seeds for the future can begin to unfold their ripeness through this warmth which can surround us here, so that one day they may stand before the world as fully matured fruits as a result of what we want to do for them.

Now more than ever before we may call to mind that a spiritual movement such as that encompassed by the name of Anthroposophy, with which we have endowed it, is not born out of any earthly or arbitrary consideration. At the very beginning of our Conference I therefore want to start by reminding you that it was in the last third of the nineteenth century that on the one hand the waves of materialism were rising while out of the other side of the world a great revelation struck down into these waves, a revelation of the spirit which those whose mind and soul are in a receptive state can receive from the powers of spiritual life. A revelation of the spirit was opened up for mankind. Not from any arbitrary earthly consideration, but in obedience to a call resounding from the spiritual world; not from any arbitrary earthly consideration, but through a vision of the sublime pictures given out of the spiritual world as a modern revelation for the spiritual life of mankind, from this flowed the impulse for the Anthroposophical Movement.²⁷ This Anthroposophical Movement is not an act of service to the earth. This Anthroposophical Movement in its totality and in all its details is a service to the divine beings, a service to God. We create the right mood for it when we see it in all its wholeness as a service to God. As a service to God let us take it into our hearts at the beginning of our Conference. Let us inscribe deeply within our hearts the knowledge that this Anthroposophical Movement desires to link the soul of every individual devoted to it with the primeval sources of all that is human in the spiritual world, that this Anthroposophical Movement desires to lead the human being to that final enlightenment—that enlightenment which meanwhile in human earthly evolution is the last which gives satisfaction to man—which can clothe the newly beginning revelation in the words: Yes, this am I as a human being, as a God-willed human being on the earth, as a God-willed human being in the universe.

We shall take our starting point today from something we would so gladly have seen as our starting point years ago in 1913.²⁸ This is where we take up the thread, my dear friends, inscribing into our souls the foremost principle of the Anthroposophical Movement, which is to find its home in the Anthroposophical Society, namely, that everything in it is willed by the spirit, that this Movement desires to be a fulfilment of what the signs of the times speak in a shining script to the hearts of human beings.

The Anthroposophical Society will only endure if within ourselves we make of the Anthroposophical Movement the profoundest concern of our hearts. If we fail, the Society will not endure. The most important deed to be accomplished during the coming days must be accomplished within all your hearts, my dear friends. Whatever we say and hear will only become a starting point for the cause of Anthroposophy in the right way if our heart's blood is capable of beating for it. My friends, for this reason we have brought you all together here: to call forth a harmony of hearts in a truly anthroposophical sense. And we allow ourselves to hope that this is an appeal which can be rightly understood.

My dear friends, call to mind the manner in which the Anthroposophical Movement came into being. In many and varied ways there worked in it what was to be a revelation of the spirit for the approaching twentieth century. In contrast to so much that is negative, it is surely permissible to point emphatically here to the positive side: to the way in which the many and varied forms of spiritual life, which flowed in one way or another into the inner circles of outer society, genuinely entered into the hearts of our dear anthroposophical friends. Thus at a certain point we were able to advance far enough to show in the Mystery Dramas how intimate affairs of the human heart and soul are linked to the grand sweep of historical events in human evolution. I do believe that during those four or five years—a time much loved and dear to our hearts—when the Mystery Dramas were performed in Munich,²⁹ a good deal of all that is involved in this link between the individual human soul and the divine working of the cosmos in the realms of soul and spirit did indeed make its way through the souls of our friends.

Then came something of which the horrific consequences are known to every one of you: the event we call the World War. During those difficult times, all efforts had to be concentrated on conducting the affairs of Anthroposophy in a way which would bring it unscathed through all the difficulties and obstacles which were necessarily the consequence of that World War.

It cannot be denied that some of the things which had necessarily to be done out of the situation arising at the time were misunderstood, even in the circles of our anthroposophical friends. Not until some future time will it be possible for more than a few people to form a judgment on those moods which caused mankind to be split into so many groups over the last decade, on those moods which led to the World War. As yet there exists no proper judgment about the enormity which lives among us all as a consequence of that World War. Thus it can be said that the Anthroposophical Society—not the Movement—has emerged riven from the War.

Our dear friend Herr Steffen has already pointed out a number of matters which then entered into our Anthroposophical Society and in no less a manner also led to misunderstandings. Today, however, I want to dwell mainly on all that is positive. I want to tell you that if this gathering runs its course in the right way, if this gathering really reaches an awareness of how something spiritual and esoteric must be the foundation for all our work and existence, then those spiritual seeds which are everywhere present will be enabled to germinate through being warmed by your mood and your enthusiasm. Today we want to generate a mood which can accept in full earnestness that external things are maya and illusion but that out of this maya and illusion there germinates to our great joy—not a joy for our weakness but a joy for our strength and for the will we now want to unfold—something that can live invisibly among us, something that can live in innumerable seeds invisibly among us. Prepare your souls, dear friends, so that they may receive these seeds; for your souls are the true ground and soil in which these seeds of the spirit may germinate, unfold and develop. They are the truth. They shine forth as though with the shining of the sun, bathing in light all the seeming ruins encountered by our external eyes. Today, of all days, let us allow the profoundest call of Anthroposophy, indeed of everything spiritual, to shine into our souls: Outwardly all is maya and illusion; inwardly there unfolds the fullness of truth, the fullness of divine and spiritual life. Anthroposophy shall bring into life all that is recognized as truth within it.

Where do we bring into life the teaching of maya and of the light of truth? Let us bring it into life above all during this our Christmas Conference. Let us during this our Christmas Conference make the shining forth of the universal light—as it shone before the shepherds, who bore within them only the simplicity of their hearts, and before the kingly magi, who bore within them the wisdom of all the universe—let us make this flaming Christmas light, this universal light of Christmas into a symbol for what is to come to pass through our own hearts and souls!

All else that is to be said I shall say tomorrow when what we shall call the laying of the Foundation Stone of the Anthroposophical Society takes place. Now I wish to say this, my dear friends. In recent weeks I have pondered deeply in my soul the question: What should be the starting point for this Christmas Conference, and what lessons have we learnt from the experiences of the past ten years since the founding of the Anthroposophical Society?

Out of all this, my dear friends, two alternative questions arose. In 1912, 1913 I said for good reasons that the Anthroposophical Society would now have to run itself, that it would have to manage its own affairs, and that I would have to withdraw into a position of an adviser who did not participate directly in any actions. Since then things have changed. After grave efforts in the past weeks to overcome my inner resistance I have now reached the realization that it would become impossible for me to continue to lead the Anthroposophical Movement within the Anthroposophical Society if this Christmas Conference were not to agree that I should once more take on in every way the leadership, that is the presidency, of the Anthroposophical Society to be founded here in Dornach at the Goetheanum.

As you know, during a conference in Stuttgart³⁰ it became necessary for me to make the difficult decision to advise the Society in Germany to split into two Societies, one which would be the continuation of the old Society and one in which the young members would chiefly be represented, the Free Anthroposophical Society.

Let me tell you, my dear friends, that the decision to give this advice was difficult indeed. It was so grave because fundamentally such advice was a contradiction of the very foundations of the Anthroposophical Society. For if this was not the Society in which today's youth could feel fully at home, then what other association of human beings in the earthly world of today was there that could give them this feeling! Such advice was an anomaly. This occasion was perhaps one of the most important symptoms contributing to my decision to tell you here that I can only continue to lead the Anthroposophical Movement within the Anthroposophical Society if I myself can take on the presidency of the Anthroposophical Society, which is to be newly founded. You see, at the turn of the century something took place very deeply indeed within spiritual events, and the effects of this are showing in the external events in the midst of which human beings stand here on earth.

One of the greatest possible changes took place in the spiritual realm. Preparation for it began at the end of the 1870s, and it reached its culmination just at the turn of the century. Ancient Indian wisdom pointed to it, calling it the end of Kali Yuga. Much, very much, my dear friends, is meant by this. And when in recent times I have met in all kinds of ways with young people in all the countries of the world accessible to me, I have had to say to myself over and over again: Everything that beats in these youthful hearts, everything which glows towards spiritual activity in such a beautiful and often such an indeterminate way, this is the external expression for what came to completion in the depths of spiritual world-weaving during the last third of the nineteenth century leading up to the twentieth century. My dear friends, what I now want to say is not something negative but something positive so far as I am concerned: I have frequently found, when I have gone to meet young people, that their endeavours to join one organization or another encountered difficulties because again and again the form of the association did not fit whatever it was that they themselves wanted. There was always some condition or other as to what sort of a person you had to be or what you had to do if you wanted to join any of these organizations.

This is the kind of thing that was involved in the feeling that the chief disadvantage of the Theosophical Society—out of which the Anthroposophical Society grew, as you know—lay in the formulation of its three tenets.³¹ You had to profess something. The way in which you had to sign a form, which made it look as though you had to make some dogmatic assertion, is something which nowadays simply no longer agrees with the fundamental mood of human souls. The human soul today feels that anything dogmatic is foreign to it; to carry on in any kind of a sectarian way is fundamentally foreign to it. And it cannot be denied that within the Anthroposophical Society it is proving difficult to cast off this sectarian way of carrying on. But cast it off we must. Not a shred must be allowed to remain within the new Anthroposophical Society which shall be founded. This must become a true world society. Anyone joining it must feel: Yes, here I have found what moves me. An old person must feel: Here I have found something for which I have striven all my life together with other people. The young person must feel: Here I have found something which comes out to meet my youth. When the Free Anthroposophical Society was founded I longed dearly to reply to young people who enquired after the conditions for joining it with the answer which I now want to give: The only condition is to be truly young in the sense that one is young when one's youthful soul is filled with all the impulses of the present time.

And, dear friends, how do you go about being old in the proper sense in the Anthroposophical Society? You are old in the proper sense if you have a heart for what is welling up into mankind today both for young and old out of spiritual depths by way of a universal youthfulness, renewing every aspect of our lives.

By hinting at moods of soul I am indicating what it was that moved me to take on the task of being President of the Anthroposophical Society myself. This Anthroposophical Society—such things can often happen—has been called by a good many names. Thus, for example, it has been called the ‘International Anthroposophical Society’. Dear friends, it is to be neither an international nor a national society. I beg you heartily never to use the word ‘international society’ but always to speak simply of a ‘General Anthroposophical Society’ which wants to have its centre here at the Goetheanum in Dornach.

You will see that the Statutes are formulated in a way that excludes anything administrative, anything that could ever of its own accord turn into bureaucracy. These Statutes are tuned to whatever is purely human. They are not tuned to principles or to dogmas. What these Statutes say is taken from what is actual and what is human. These Statutes say: Here in Dornach is the Goetheanum. This Goetheanum is run in a particular way. In this Goetheanum work of this kind and of that kind is undertaken. In this Goetheanum endeavours are made to promote human evolution in this way or in that way. Whether these things are ‘right’ or ‘not right’ is something that must not be stated in statutes which are intended to be truly modern. All that is stated is the fact that a Goetheanum exists, that human beings are connected with this Goetheanum, and that these human beings do certain things in this Goetheanum in the belief that through doing so they are working for human evolution.

Those who wish to join this Society are not expected to adhere to any principle. No religious confession, no scientific conviction, no artistic intention is set up in any dogmatic way. The only thing that is required is that those who join should feel at home in being linked to what is going on at the Goetheanum.

In the formulation of these Statutes the endeavour has been made to avoid establishing principles, so that what is here founded may rest on all that is purely human. Look carefully at the people who will make suggestions with regard to what is to be founded here over the next few days. Ask yourselves whether you can trust them or not. And if at this Foundation Meeting you declare yourselves satisfied with what wants to be brought about in Dornach, then you will have declared yourselves for something that is a fact; then you will have declared yourselves to be in tune with something that is a fact. If this is possible, everything else will follow on. Yes, everything will run its course. Then it will not be necessary for the centre at Dornach to designate or nominate a whole host of trustees; then the Anthroposophical Society will be what I have often pointed to when to my deep satisfaction I have been permitted to be present at the founding of the individual national Societies.³² Then the Anthroposophical Society will be something that can arise independently on the foundation of all that has come into being in these national Societies. If this can come about, then these national Societies will be truly autonomous too. Then every group which comes into being within this Anthroposophical Society will be truly autonomous.

In order to reach this truly human standpoint, my dear friends, we must realize that especially in the case of a Society which is built on spiritual foundations, in the way I have described, we shall come up against two difficulties. We must overcome these difficulties here, so that in future they will no longer exist in the way they existed in the past history of the Anthroposophical Society.

One of these difficulties is the following: Everyone who understands the consciousness of today will, I believe, agree that this present-day consciousness demands that whatever takes place should do so in full public view. A Society built on firm foundations must above all else not offend this demand of our time. It is not at all difficult to prefer secrecy, even in the external form, in one case or another. But whenever a Society like ours, built on a foundation of truth, seriously desires secrecy, it will surely find itself in conflict with contemporary consciousness, and the most dire obstacles for its continuing existence will ensue. Therefore, dear friends, for the General Anthroposophical Society which is to be founded we cannot but lay claim to absolute openness.

As I pointed out in one of my very first essays in Luzifer-Gnosis,³³ the Anthroposophical Society must stand before the world just like any other society that may be founded for, let us say, scientific or similar purposes. It must differ from all these other societies solely on account of the content that flows through its veins. The form in which people come together in it can, in future, no longer be different from that of any other society. Picture to yourselves what we can shovel out of the way if we declare from the start that the Anthroposophical Society is to be entirely open.

It is essential for us to stand firmly on a foundation of reality, that is on the foundation of present-day consciousness. This will mean, dear friends, that in future we shall have to handle our lecture cycles in a manner that differs greatly from that to which we have been accustomed in the past. The history of these lecture cycles represents a tragic chapter within the development of our Anthroposophical Society. They were first published in the belief that they could be retained within a given circle; they were printed for the members of the Anthroposophical Society. But we have long been in a situation in which our opponents, so far as the public declaration of the content is concerned, are far more interested in the cycles than are the members of the Society themselves. Do not misunderstand me; I do not mean that the members of our Society do not work inwardly with the lecture cycles, for they do. But their work is inward, it remains egoistic, a nice Society egoism. The interest which sends its waves out into the world, the interest which gives our Society its particular stamp in the world, this interest comes towards the cycles from our opponents. It has been known to happen that as little as three weeks after its publication a lecture cycle is already being quoted in the worst kind of publication brought out by the opposition. To continue in our old ways as regards the lecture cycles would be to hide our head in the sand, believing that because everything is dark for us everything must be dark in the outside world too.

That is why I have been asking myself for years what can be done about the cycles. We now have no alternative but to put up a moral barrier in place of the physical barrier we tried to erect earlier on, which has meanwhile been breached at all manner of points.

In the draft of the Statutes I have endeavoured to do just this. In future all the cycles, without exception, are to be sold publicly, just like any other books. But suppose, dear friends, there was a book about the integration of partial differential equations. For a great many people such a book is very esoteric indeed. I am probably not wrong in assuming that among those of you gathered here in these two rooms today there is only an extremely small esoteric circle of individuals who might fruitfully concern themselves with the integration of partial differential equations, or of linear differential equations. The book, however, may be sold to anybody. But supposing someone who knows nothing of partial differential equations and is incapable of differentiating or integrating anything at all, someone who knows nothing about logarithms, were to find a textbook on the subject belonging to one of his sons. He would look inside it, see rows and rows of figures but not understand a thing. Then suppose his sons were to tell him that all these figures were the street numbers of the houses in every city in the world. He might well think to himself: What a useful thing to learn; now if I go to Paris I shall know the street number of all the different houses.

As you see, there is no harm in the judgment of someone who understands nothing of the matter, for he is a dilettante, an amateur. In this instance life itself draws the line between the capacity to judge and the lack of capacity to judge.

Thus as regards anthroposophical knowledge we can at least try to draw the line morally and no longer physically. We sell the cycles to all who wish to have them but declare from the start who can be considered competent to form a valid judgment on them, a judgment by which we can set some store. Everybody else is an amateur as far as the cycles are concerned. And we also declare that in future we shall no longer take any account of judgments passed on the cycles by those who are amateurs. This is the only moral protection available to us. If only we carry it out properly, we shall bring about a situation in which the matters with which we are concerned are treated just as are books about the integration of partial differential equations. People will gradually come to agree that it is just as absurd for someone, however learned in other spheres, to pass a judgment about a lecture cycle as it is for someone who knows nothing of logarithms to say: This book about partial differential equations is stuff and nonsense! We must bring about a situation in which the distinction between an amateur and an expert can be drawn in the right way.

Another very great difficulty, dear friends, is the fact that the impulses of the Anthroposophical Movement are not everywhere thoroughly assessed in the right way. Judgments are heard here and there which absolutely deny the Anthroposophical Movement by seeing it as something that is parallel to the very things it is supposed to replace in human evolution. Only a few days ago somebody once again said to me: If you speak to such and such a group of people about what Anthroposophy has to offer, even those who work only in the practical realm accept it so long as you don't mention Anthroposophy or the threefold social order by name; you have to disown them. This is something that has been done by a great many people for many years, and it could not be more false. Whatever the realm, we must stand in the world under the sign of the full truth as representatives of the essence of Anthroposophy. We must be aware that if we are incapable of doing so we cannot actually further the aims of the Anthroposophical Movement. Any veiled representation of the Anthroposophical Movement leads in the end to no good.

Of course everything is individual in such matters. Not everything can be made to conform to a single pattern. Let me give you a few examples of what I mean.

Take eurythmy. As I said yesterday before the performance, eurythmy is drawn and cultivated from the very depths of Anthroposophy. We have to be aware that, imperfect though it still is, it places something in the world which is entirely new, something original which can in no way be compared with anything else that may seem to resemble it in the world today. We have to muster enough enthusiasm for our cause to enable us to exclude any external, superficial comparisons. I know how a sentence like this can be misunderstood, but nevertheless I say it to you in this circle, my dear friends, for it expresses one of the fundamental conditions required for the prospering of the Anthroposophical Movement within the Anthroposophical Society.

Similarly, I have sweated much blood lately—I speak symbolically, of course—over the new form of recitation and declamation which Frau Dr Steiner has developed in our Society. As with eurythmy, the nerve-centre of this form of declaiming or reciting is what is drawn and cultivated from the very depths of Anthroposophy, and it is with this nerve-centre that we must concern ourselves. This nerve-centre is what we have to recognize and there is no point in believing that the result can be improved by taking on board any bits and pieces which might also be good, or even better, belonging to similar methods elsewhere. It is of this absolutely new, this primary quality that we must be aware in all the realms of Anthroposophy.

Now a third example: A realm in which Anthroposophy can be especially fruitful is that of medicine. Yet Anthroposophy will quite definitely remain unfruitful in the realm of medicine, especially therapy, if the tendency persists to represent matters within the field of medicine in the Anthroposophical Movement in a manner which meets with the approval of those who represent medicine in the ordinary way today. We must carry Anthroposophy courageously into every realm, including medicine. Only then will we make progress in what eurythmy ought to be, in what recitation and declamation ought to be, in what medicine ought to be, not to mention many other different fields living within our Anthroposophical Society, just as we must make progress with Anthroposophy itself in the strict sense of the term.

Herewith I have at least hinted at the fundamental conditions which must be placed before our hearts at the beginning of our Conference for the founding of the General Anthroposophical Society. In the manner indicated it must become a Society of attitudes and not a Society of statutes. The Statutes are to express externally what is alive within every soul.

So now I would like to proceed to the reading³⁴ of the draft of the Statutes^A which go in the direction I have thus far mentioned in brief.

STATUTES OF THE ANTHROPOSOPHICAL SOCIETY’

‘1. The Anthroposophical Society is to be an association of people whose will it is to nurture the life of the soul, both in the individual and in human society, on the basis of a true knowledge of the spiritual world.’

‘2. The persons gathered at the Goetheanum in Dornach at Christmas, 1923, both the individuals and the groups represented, form the nucleus of the Society. They are convinced that there exists in our time a genuine science of the spiritual world and that the civilization of today is lacking the cultivation of such a science. This cultivation is to be the task of the Anthroposophical Society. It will endeavour to fulfil this task by making the anthroposophical spiritual science cultivated at the Goetheanum in Dornach the centre of its activities, together with all that results from this for brotherhood in human relationships and for the moral and religious as well as the artistic and cultural life in the human being.’

Note, my dear friends, how we are thus building not on principles but on human beings, on those human beings who are gathered together here. And what will those who join later declare? That they are essentially in agreement with these people as regards what is stated here. So all abstractions are avoided and the Anthroposophical Society is built on human beings.

‘3.The persons gathered in Dornach as the nucleus of the Society’—you see how it is the individual people who are important—‘recognize and endorse the view of the leadership at the Goetheanum: “Anthroposophy, as fostered at the Goetheanum, leads to results which can serve every human being as a stimulus to spiritual life, whatever his nation, social standing or religion. They can lead to a social life genuinely built on brotherly love. No special degree of academic learning is required to make them one's own and to found one's life upon them, but only an open-minded human nature.” ’

This means that the results can be understood by all human beings who approach with an open-minded soul.

The matter is different—this is expressed next—as regards the research which leads to the results in question. A strict distinction must be made as regards this research. So the text continues:

‘ “Research into these results, however, as well as competent evaluation of them, depends upon spiritual-scientific training, which is to be acquired step by step. These results are in their own way as exact as the results of genuine natural science. When they attain general recognition in the same way as these, they will bring about comparable progress in all spheres of life, not only in the spiritual but also in the practical realm.” ’

‘4. The Anthroposophical Society is in no sense a secret society, but is entirely public. Anyone can become a member, without regard to nationality, social standing, religion, scientific or artistic conviction, who considers as justified the existence of an institution such as the Goetheanum in Dornach, in its capacity as a School of Spiritual Science.’

As you see, even here, where the requirements for becoming a member are exactly defined, we have been careful to make it clear that someone desiring to become a member must consider as justified the existence not of the Goetheanum, but merely ‘of an institution such as the Goetheanum in Dornach, in its capacity as a School of Spiritual Science.’ You must thoroughly consider every turn of phrase in these draft Statutes. They are brief. Statutes ought to be brief, and not fill a whole tome. But you will see that the effort has been made to phrase every sentence in a manner which speaks out of direct consciousness.

‘The Anthroposophical Society rejects any kind of sectarian activity. Party politics it considers not to be within its task.’

We need this sentence because numerous misunderstandings were brought about during the years when we were promoting the idea of the threefold social order. The misunderstandings arose out of a lack of clarity in the attitude of many of our members. The impression was frequently given that Anthroposophy wanted to become involved in the political affairs of the world—something that has never been and never can be the case—because many of our friends approached the political parties regarding the threefold idea. This was an error on their part right from the start.

‘5. The Anthroposophical Society sees the School of Spiritual Science in Dornach as a centre for its activity. The School will be composed of three classes.’

Please do not be alarmed by these three classes, my dear friends. These three classes existed originally in the Anthroposophical Society,³⁵ though in a different form, up to the year 1914.

‘Members of the Society will be admitted to the School on their own application after a period of membership to be determined by the leadership at the Goetheanum. They enter in this way the First Class of the School of Spiritual Science. Admission to the Second or Third Class takes place when the person requesting this is deemed eligible by the leadership at the Goetheanum.’

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

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

I can tell you now that I intend in future to divide this School of Spiritual Science into separate Sections under the leadership of suitable persons whom I shall appoint. These suitable persons, who will be the leaders of the Sections of the School of Spiritual Science, will at the same time be advisory members of the Vorstand which is to be formed and about which I shall be speaking shortly.

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

Everyone can buy the works. But valid judgments can only be made by those who belong to the Class mentioned in the note ‘Printed as manuscript for members of the School of Spiritual Science, Goetheanum, ... Class’.

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

‘10.The Anthroposophical Society shall hold a regular General Meeting at the Goetheanum at the beginning of each year, at which time the Vorstand shall present a full report with accounting. The agenda for this meeting shall be communicated by the Vorstand to all members, together with the invitation, three weeks before the meeting.’

Resolutions can of course be made about this.

‘The Vorstand may call special meetings and fix the agenda for them. Invitations to such meetings shall be sent to members three weeks in advance. Motions proposed by individual members or groups of members shall be submitted one week before the General Meeting.’

We shall have to add a passage here stating that special meetings may also be called at the request of the membership.

‘11. Members may join together in smaller or larger groups on any basis of locality or subject.’

From the point of view of the General Society this paragraph encompasses every group, including each national group. The General Society is neither international nor national but simply human in the widest sense; all the subdivisions are therefore groups. By this means we can bring into the Anthroposophical Society a life that is genuinely based on freedom, and also, wherever it wants to come into being, a life that is autonomous. We cannot make progress in any other way.

‘The headquarters of the Anthroposophical Society is at the Goetheanum. From there the Vorstand shall bring to the attention of the members or groups of members what it considers to be the task of the Society.’

My dear friends, this sentence is especially important because it expresses what the Vorstand considers itself to be. It does not consider itself to be an elected body. It considers itself to be a group of people which says: Here at the Goetheanum we want to do something and we shall communicate about the different things we do with those who so wish, either individuals or groups; we shall recognize as a member every individual or every group who can accept these Statutes and be in agreement with them.

In doing this, the Vorstand declares that it places itself within the Society in the freest manner possible: it wants nothing else but to be a group of people with initiative for the cause of Anthroposophy. To live fully in initiative for the cause of Anthroposophy will have to be the heart's blood of this Vorstand. It is not a representative of people in the abstract; it is a representative of the anthroposophical cause here at the Goetheanum. Its task is to represent the cause of Anthroposophy here at the Goetheanum. And to declare one's membership of a society for which this Vorstand wants to have meaning means to join in the promotion of the cause of Anthroposophy. The membership and the Vorstand, and their relationship with one another, is thought of as being quite generally human in an entirely free way in the future. We have not achieved this as yet; we must make it obvious to all the world. Then there will be no more criticisms like that expressed by Leisegang³⁶ to the effect that a self-appointed Vorstand, not accountable to anybody, not elected anywhere, has been in existence for the last ten years. From the start we must stress forcefully that an election as such is impossible in the Anthroposophical Society and that only initiative is possible. Let us return to the Vorstand:

‘The Vorstand communicates with officials elected or appointed by the various groups.’

How these come into being is a matter for the statutes of the different groups. For us here it will merely be a matter that on a basis we shall create we shall want to communicate with trust with these officials.

‘Admission of members will be the concern of the individual groups; the certificate of membership shall, however, be placed before the Vorstand in Dornach, and shall be signed by them out of their confidence in the officials of the groups. In general, every member should join a group. Only those for whom it is quite impossible to find entry to a group should apply directly to Dornach for membership.’

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

I have put dots here, though I already have an opinion which I may well voice if it comes to it. But for the moment I have put dots so that the matter may be as broadly considered as possible before tomorrow's discussions. For money is something we shall need here too. I have often indicated that idealism cannot take the form of saying: Oh, horrible ahrimanic money; let us not contaminate our ideals with it; our ideals should be as free from it as they possibly can be! The left fist clutches the purse-strings while the right hand is raised on high for the ideals. Alas, the uncomfortable gesture of putting that right hand into the left pocket is sometimes necessary; if the ideals are to be upheld, small sacrifices are necessary.

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

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

This paragraph is of particular concern to me because wherever I go members with a good capacity to judge have been saying to me: We never seem to hear what is going on in the Anthroposophical Society. By instituting this journal we shall be able to conduct a careful correspondence which will more and more come to be a correspondence belonging to each one of you, and through it you will be able to live right in the midst of the Anthroposophical Society.

Now, my dear friends, in case after due consideration you should indeed come to agree with my appointment as President of the Anthroposophical Society, I still have to make my suggestions as to the membership of the Vorstand with whom I should actually be able to fulfil the tasks which I have indicated very briefly here.

So that the affairs of Anthroposophy can be truly and properly administered, members of the Vorstand must be people who reside here in Dornach. So far as my estimation of the Society is concerned, the Vorstand cannot consist of individuals who are situated all over the place. This will not prevent the individual groups from electing their own officials autonomously. And when these officials come to Dornach, they will be taken into the meetings of the Vorstand as advisory members while they are here. We must make the whole thing come to life. Instead of a bureaucratic Vorstand scattered all over the world there will be officials responsible for the individual groups, officials arising from amongst the membership of the groups; they will always have the opportunity to feel themselves equal members of the Vorstand which, however, will be located in Dornach. The work itself will have to be taken care of by the Vorstand in Dornach.

Moreover, the members of the Vorstand must without question be people who have devoted their lives entirely, both outwardly and inwardly, to the cause of Anthroposophy. So now after long deliberations over the past weeks I shall take the liberty of presenting to you my suggestions for the membership of the Vorstand:

I believe there will nowhere arise even the faintest hint of dissension but that on the contrary there will be in all your hearts the most unanimous and fullest agreement to the suggestion that Herr Albert Steffen be appointed as Vice-president. (Lively applause)

This being the case, we have in the Vorstand itself an expression of something I have already mentioned today: our links, as the Anthroposophical Society, with Switzerland. I cannot express my conviction more emphatically than by saying to you: If it is a matter of having a Swiss citizen who will give all his strength as a member of the Vorstand and as Vice-president, then there is no better Swiss citizen to be found.

Next we shall have in the Vorstand an individual who has been united with the Anthroposophical Society from the very beginning, who has for the greater part built up the Anthroposophical Society and who is today active in an anthroposophical way in one of the most important fields: Frau Dr Steiner. (Lively applause)

With your applause you have said everything and clearly shown that we need have no fear that our choice in this direction might not have been quite appropriate.

A further member of the Vorstand I have to suggest on the basis of facts arising here over recent weeks. This is the person with whom I at present have the opportunity to test anthroposophical enthusiasm to its limits in the right way by working with her on the elaboration of the anthroposophical system of medicine: Frau Dr Ita Wegman. (Lively applause)

Through her work—and especially through her understanding of her work—she has shown that in this specialized field she can assert the effectiveness of Anthroposophy in the right way. I know that the effects of this work will be beneficial. That is why I have taken it upon myself to work immediately with Frau Dr Wegman on developing the anthroposophical system of medicine.³⁷ It will appear before the eyes of the world and then we shall see that particularly in members who work in this way we have the real friends of the Anthroposophical Society.

Another member I have to suggest is one who has been tried and tested in the utmost degree for the work in Dornach both in general and down to the very last detail, one who has ever proved herself to be a faithful member. I do believe—without intending to sound boastful—that the members of the Vorstand have indeed been rightly selected. Albert Steffen was an anthroposophist before he was even born, and this ought to be duly recognized. Frau Dr Steiner has of course always been an anthroposophist ever since an Anthroposophical Society has existed. Frau Dr Wegman was one of the very first members who joined in the work just after we did in the very early days. She has been a member of the Anthroposophical Movement for over twenty years. Apart from us, she is the longest standing member in this room. And another member of very long standing is the person I now mean, who has been tried and tested down to the very last detail as a most faithful colleague; you may indeed be satisfied with her down to the very last detail: Fräulein Dr Lili Vreede. (Applause)

We need furthermore in the anthroposophical Vorstand an individual who will take many cares off our shoulders, cares which cannot all be borne by us because of course the initiatives have to be kept separate. This is someone who will have to think on everyone's behalf, for this is necessary even when the others—again without intending to sound boastful—also make the effort to use their heads intelligently in anthroposophical matters. What is needed is someone who, so to speak, does not knock heads together but does hold them together. This is an individual who many will feel still needs to be tried and tested, but I believe that he will master every trial. This will be our dear Dr Guenther Wachsmuth who in everything he is obliged to do for us here has already shown his mastery of a good many trials which have made it obvious that he is capable of working with others in a most harmonious manner. As time goes on we shall find ourselves much satisfied with him. I hope, then, that you will agree to the appointment of Dr Guenther Wachsmuth, not as the cashier—which he does not want to be—but as the secretary and treasurer. (Applause)

The Vorstand must be kept small, and so my list is now exhausted, my dear friends. And the time allotted for our morning meeting has also run out. I just want to call once more on all our efforts to bring into this gathering above all the appropriate mood of soul, more and yet more mood of soul. Out of this anthroposophical mood of soul will arise what we need for the next few days. And if we have it for the next few days we shall also have it for the future times we are about to enter for the Anthroposophical Society. I have appealed to your hearts; I have appealed to the wisdom in you which your hearts can fill with glowing warmth and enthusiasm. May we sustain this glowing warmth and this enthusiasm throughout the coming meetings and thus achieve something truly fruitful over the next few days.

There are two more announcements to be made: This afternoon there will be two performances of one of the Christmas Plays, the Paradise Play. The first will take place at 4.30. Those who cannot find a seat then will be able to see it at 6 o'clock. Everybody will have a chance to see this play today.

Our next meeting is at 8 o'clock this evening when my first lecture on world history in the light of Anthroposophy will take place.

Tomorrow, Tuesday, at 10 o'clock we shall gather here for the laying of the Foundation Stone of the Anthroposophical Society, and, following straight on from that will be the Foundation Meeting of the Anthroposophical Society.

The meeting of General Secretaries and delegates planned for this afternoon will not take place because it will be better to hold it after the Foundation Meeting has taken place. It will be tomorrow at 2.30 in the Glass House lower down the hill, in the Architects' Office. That will be the meeting of the Vorstand, the General Secretaries and those who are their secretaries.

If Herr Abels could now come up here, I would request you to collect your meal tickets from him. To avoid chaos down at the canteen there will be different sittings and we hope that everything will proceed in an orderly fashion.

• 24. See Marie Steiner's Foreword. In Was in der Anthroposophischen Gesellschaft vorgeht 1926, No.39, she remarked in a footnote: ‘To avoid misunderstandings it should be said that the impression of a heap of rubble was gained entirely from the impossible tax burdens in Germany, the delays in customers' payments and the daily increase in the rate of monetary devaluation. Added to this was the sight of everything packed into a pile of crates. The company's intrinsic worth was such that under normal conditions it soon began to flourish once more.’
• 25. See Erich Zimmer Rudolf Steiner als Architekt von Wohn- und Zweckbauten (Rudolf Steiner. An Architect of Dwellings and other Buildings with Specific Purposes), Stuttgart 1971.
• 26. It had been necessary to enlarge the carpentry workshop in order to accommodate the influx of participants.
• 27. See Rudolf Steiner Zur Geschichte und aus den Inhalten der ersten Abteilung der Esoterischen Schule 1904–1914 (On the History and from the Content of the Esoteric School 1904–1914). GA 264.
• 28. See the lecture given in Berlin on 3 February 1913 ‘Das Wesen der Anthroposophie’ in Schickalszeichen auf dem Entwicklungswege der Anthroposophischen Gesellschaft to be included in the Complete Works in the series ‘Zur Geschichte der anthroposophischen Bewegung und Gesellschaft’.
• 29. Rudolf Steiner's four Mystery Dramas were first performed during the years 1910 to 1913. See Rudolf Steiner Four Mystery Plays, Steiner Book Centre, Toronto, 1973.
• 30. Meeting of Delegates at the end of February 1923. See Note 23.
• 31. The three objects of the Theosophical Society are:
  
  1. To form a nucleus of the universal brotherhood of humanity without distinction of race, creed, sex, caste or colour.
  2. To encourage the comparative study of religion, philosophy and science.
  3. To investigate unexplained laws of nature and the powers latent in man.
• 32. See Note 2.
• 33. See Rudolf Steiner's essay ‘Lebensfragen der theosophischen Gesellschaft’ (Existential Questions for the Theosophical Society) in Luzifer-Gnosis. Gesammelte Aufsätze 1903–1908. (Luzifer-Gnosis. Collected Essays 1903–1908). GA 34.
• 34. Rudolf Steiner had had the suggested Statutes printed and distributed to every participant. See Facsimile 2, Page V–VIII.
• A. See facsimiles of the manuscript draft and also the printed Statutes given to each participant (See facsimile 1, facsimile 2, pages I–VIII
• 35. See Note 27.
• 36. This refers to criticism of Anthroposophy expressed by Hans Leisegang (1890&8211;1951), lecturer at Leipzig University, in his book Die Geheirnwissenschaften (The Occult Sciences), Stuttgart 1924.
• 37. See Rudolf Steiner/Ita Wegman Fundamentals of Therapy. An Extension of the Art of Healing through Spiritual Knowledge, Rudolf Steiner Press, London 1983. GA 27.

INTRODUCTION

Rudolf Steiner's report in the weekly journal of the Anthroposophical Society, No. 25, June 29, 1924: "A number of younger members of our Society also participated in the agricultural course. At the end of the conference they still felt the need to gather together as a group. This took place during the early morning hours of June 17. In this gathering the younger friends spoke out of the depths of their hearts about their longing to approach—in their creative life and in their work—the insights out of the spiritual realm that unite the human being with the active forces of nature. It was an exchange out of the innermost soul of youth, wishing to move beyond fruitless materialism that does not unite with nature but rather separates man from her and condemns his work to fruitlessness. In this gathering I was allowed to point to paths on which this longing needs to move in order to arrive at a goal."

I.

The youth movement today is again searching for nature; anthroposophical youth is also searching for nature, but it is searching for the spirit in nature. This searching lives as a kind of call to the spirit in the hearts of those in this youth movement. This call to the spirit, however, was very little met in the civilizations stemming from earlier centuries, for humanity since the fifteenth century, through its particular world karma, had gradually to lose the spirit.

The spirit in nature can be lost most easily when one is already on the way to losing the spirit generally, for you must remember that death is the fundamental condition of nature's becoming. You must not forget that what is living, in order to exist, always needs the dead. You have only to think that in all living substance must be imbedded, as a bony or other form of scaffolding, that which was received out of the universe as the dead.

During our whole earthly life, therefore, we carry death within ourselves, in that we have to contain unliving, dead substance. We must have dead substance. It was known in ancient times that it is precisely this death element through which the living can gain revelations of the spiritual. From ancient Roman times there still resounds a phrase like, In sale sit sapienta (Wisdom rests in the salt.).

It was felt in the times when traditions of an ancient, instinctive clairvoyant wisdom still existed that in the dead salt, out of which the bones and other scaffolding are built, must be seen what differentiates the human being from other beings—those who, through the lack of such a lifeless scaffolding within, are unable to take into themselves enough spiritual light, sapienta (wisdom). We live again in a time of transition, however, in which the young person feels that even in nature around him he would find the death of the spirit if he were to approach this nature in the style of the last century, with the traditions of the last century.

Nature builds itself a wisdom-bearing crystal. This wisdom-bearing crystal can delight us when we wander out into nature. At the same time, however, we must be clear that the gods had to die—not an earthly death but the death of transformation, which means the transition into the unconscious—in order to be reborn in the light-reflecting forms of the crystal. Today, when we look out into what is dead, we must bring into our feeling again the fact that there, shining through to us, is the life of the gods that for thousands of years has lain unconscious in nature. We must find within our souls the possibility of sensing and feeling this light that can approach us from the sun, and also everywhere in nature, as the light of the gods, quickening our hearts.

Today let us try to feel this divine soul world, resting for thousands of years in all of the heaven-reflecting nature around us. The soul has much to search for here. The youth of today is searching for an ancient knowledge of humanity, the ancient knowledge that already in the period of ancient Saturn was connected with humanity and that, when the periods of Sun and Moon came, entered a kind of world sleep, a kind of resting consciousness, in order to form out of its own spirit-substance the foundation for earthly nature. The soul can only sense but cannot really penetrate through this earthly nature to the spirit, and thus earthly nature, even in summer, appears to the heart that feels young today like a snow-mantle of sparkling bright spirit crystals; yet it carries within itself death—which means unconsciousness—and challenges the soul to feel deep beneath this icy soul-mantle the fiery, living workings of the word, stemming from ancient times, radiating from the center of the earth out to earthly nature.

This appears complicated when expressed in this way, but it is actually very simple when it is sought for by youth today. When the call to nature sounds forth from somewhere, it arises from the souls of the youth. They wish to have a memory, a uniting with the divine source of everything earthly and starry, and this is what can be sensed when today's youth again searches for nature. In the searching of today's youth for nature and spirit there resides something of the deepest world karma, which actually can be comprehended only with great solemnity of soul.

Just think how in an earlier time—today we call it the time of Rousseau (we have a parallel back-to-nature movement in Germany in the Sturm und Drang period¹ that preceded Goethe and Schiller, though much wider circles than merely literary ones were involved)—let us think back to how the call to nature in this time sounded in an abstract, literary sort of way through broad areas of civilization. Just think of those warm, intense calls to nature issuing from the soul of Rousseau. Yes, many today will still be gripped if they listen to these calls. What has followed these calls to nature, however? "Nature, we want nature again," these young people were calling.

Goethe himself ominously called out in the cautious manner of the aged, "Nature! We are surrounded and embraced by her; unbidden and unwarned, she receives us into the circle of her dance." Goethe did not want to allow to enter consciousness what appeared as the call for nature among the Rousseauists. If we try to imagine ourselves as the Goethe of that time, how he felt in relation to nature and how he approached the calls of the others, we can still experience today something like a slight shiver running over us. We can feel the shudder he felt in encountering this call for nature. This call seemed to Goethe to be something that was itself unnatural, and he wanted to be received into the dancing circle of nature without being bidden; he felt that nature neither bids nor warns.

Then in the nineteenth century came the fulfillment of this call for nature. It was the knowledge, the so-called knowledge, of nature, the ever-resounding call for nature in the most rigid, materialistic sense, not only in relation to knowledge but in relation to all of life. A horrible fulfillment of Rousseauism thus emerged in the nineteenth century, as if a kingdom of demons began to snicker when the people around Rousseau and others were calling for nature, and then laughed with scorn when nature was allowed to approach humanity in an Ahrimanic form, in the most outward Ahrimanic form.

This is the background, and when we look into the middle ground the mood of tragic karma appears, a mood in which something lying deep in the souls of the youth today can be raised into full consciousness only with the greatest inner soul difficulties, something that since the end of Kali Yuga has been lying there dormant. This call to nature must be found again, the ancient working of the gods that is present in everything that in nature is earthly, watery, airy, and fiery and that above nature illumines and weaves and lives. This ancient spirit of nature must be found. But how can we avoid a rain of wild demons? How can we avoid what followed the call for nature in the nineteenth century like a shower of wild illusions? This must not happen. The twentieth century must not become a materialistic one! Thus the voice of karma calls in the souls of the young people today: if you allow the twentieth century to become as materialistic as the nineteenth century has been, you will have lost not only your own humanity but that which is human in the entire civilization. This is what one who is able to hear such voices can feel again and again in the most manifold ways, where circles of young people gather today. It is this that makes many members of these youth movements so certain in their vague feeling. You can experience these young souls as vague, uncertain, shifting from one path to the other—and at the same time there arises out of this uncertainty and vagueness a certainty, not yet completely light-filled but carrying a certain strength within itself.

This strength may not be broken, it must not be broken. Anthroposophy would like to contribute something toward this, because it believes that the concrete spirit can be perceived in all the particulars of life—in the roots of the plants, in the deeds of the light above the plants, and in the soul-blessing of warmth penetrating the plants—because it believes that what has been given to humanity as animality can be experienced as an admonishing call. It believes that there is much to be healed in this animality. The animals are on earth for the sake of the human being. In order to relate to the animals in the right way, as to all nature, it is necessary to sense and feel and finally even know in all nature the individual spiritual beings.

This can also be felt today if previously one has recognized the necessity not merely to speak in a general way about the spirit but to search for the working of the spirit right into the individual details of agricultural activities and other activities concerning nature. I therefore felt the deepest sympathy in my soul when you proposed that we exchange a few thoughts today.

(A discussion followed here.)

II.

You see, this is the situation. What is it that continually makes those who have already found their way into the anthroposophical spiritual movement feel somehow uncertain? What makes them believe that strong support must be sought in order to find the way to what they are seeking? The reason for this is actually that the young people, who feel with all their hearts that we must seek the path to the human being in a new way, different from what has come to us from the wisdom of past centuries, are again and again—mostly due to outer conditions—thrown back into the old tracks. It has not been possible for the soul to perceive clearly what, in our time since Kali Yuga, must be revealed only unclearly, to perceive the hidden seeking of humanity that is not openly revealed in our time: to find the way into nature out of "nature" itself, to find the way into the spirit out of the "spirit" itself.

Our dear friend, Dr. Ritter, spoke of how he had been a peasant's child and how he had grown out of this peasantry. This process of growing out of the peasantry could be experienced in its archetypal significance in a time that unfolded when people like you were not yet even lying in your cradles. This time of uncertainty had already begun. Basically, you see, the life of the peasant, as it has unfolded over the course of the centuries, is only a myth today. This life is actually quite different, regarding the soul, from natural science and the so-called civilization that has become so remote from all existence. The peasant was really more spiritual than today's scholars. In the 1860's and 70's it could already be sensed how a kind of living spirituality within the peasantry was slowly dying out.

It could often be seen how the peasants were seized by the impulse to send their sons to the university. This was already the first sign of such peasant abstractions, this idea that arose in the last third of the nineteenth century. This is already quite different from the way it was earlier with the peasantry, who truly lived in harmony with nature. Certainly the peasants' sons also studied then, but not in the same sense as later, not as they did in the last third of the nineteenth century. Looked at from the peasants' viewpoint, their sons did not study but became priests. To become a priest united one with the consciousness of the peasant. To become a priest united one with the consciousness through which the way to the spirit is sought. It was this search for the spirit that the peasant wanted when he put his son through educational institutions. In the last third of the nineteenth century, however, these educational institutions gradually became poor in spirit, empty of spirit. At the same time the consciousness of the peasant also changed: his son must attend the university—and in relation to this another experience arose. The son, who becomes a stranger to us, enters a totally different life; he no longer belongs to us.

One can only suggest these things, for they would be able to be understood correctly only in life. In the overall coarsening of life toward the end of the nineteenth century there arose within the peasantry a kind of aversion to, and sometimes even hatred for, everything spiritual. I still remember a charming picture from a peasant's calendar, which was surely conceived by a journalist but which arose out of the mood of the 1860's and 70's. In a certain region of Central Europe a peasants' union was founded. The peasants banded together, and the representative of such a peasant union, depicted in this picture with a tassel cap pulled far down over his ears, was saying, "No lawyer, no teacher, is allowed to enter this union of peasants." This was the consciousness, you see: it was no longer known what to do with learning in all areas, even the area of theology. It was felt to be very clever to exclude ordinary learning from this union.

This really expressed an outlook that, toward the end of the nineteenth century, produced human beings who actually were only "images." Human beings actually became mere images. There were no longer human beings walking on the earth; with a few exceptions there were only images. And when the turn of the century came, the civilized world was populated not by human beings but by images. The time came when what should have been truth was changed in a strange way into its opposite. At times it was painful to see the things that were presented as truths. The teaching arose that even encouraged over-population in individual regions. It was said that if many people were born it was a sign that all was going well—in this way the increase in population was encouraged. This increase in population was understood as expressing true progress. if you looked at the matter spiritually, however, you had to say that through the influence of such a world conception more and more souls came to the earth from the spiritual world really before their time—beings who actually were spiritually premature and basically did not find the earth. The human beings of the last third of the nineteenth century did not find the earth at all. They were on the earth without finding the content of their being, and they went about like appendages of their intellects. That was what was so horrible, that human beings walked about like appendages of their intellects, not like human beings!

The twentieth century thus began, in which numerous souls were born who in turn, as others previously had walked about as shadows, as images, estranged from nature, felt the deepest deprivation regarding these human images and had to seek again that which is truly human.

Every conceivable outer social institution has been retained, however, and young people experience this as a kind of soul-depressing influence. If we were already in a position, through anthroposophy, to form the outer life as we are able to awaken souls, many things would be quite different. It would not always be necessary to speak about anthroposophy needing now to become "concrete"; rather it would be experienced that anthroposophy would be able to become world-forming if outer powers were not trying to prevent it.

Just think how we develop today, especially how we develop in our youth. Yes, Dr. Ritter had the possibility in the course of his early development to experience such a great agricultural estate as Koefering, which still retained its spiritual nature, while all around it the world was wallowing in materialism. This is indeed a phenomenon. There will always be such phenomena, however, in which you will find an outer refuge for precisely what youth is seeking. Anthroposophy must be somewhat like this, standing in the background, because, in a different way, it is not the intellect that is striven for in anthroposophy; one does not study, but rather one becomes, in the best sense of the word, a "priest," if one wants to learn. And if one can look at this transition that has taken place so unusually rapidly—the transition from the old way of becoming a priest, which has become a lie, to this new way of becoming a priest—something quite special can be encountered. It is a very unusual path—what has taken place in Koefering, for example—which you will understand much better if I describe it to you so that you can comprehend it in your own way: it is the path from the anthroposophical formation of the estate owner's being to the anthroposophical formation of the whole estate.

We must learn to understand in our hearts what it is that transforms the merely intellectual conception of the spirit, which remains estranged from nature, into the spirit that has been truly worked for, which finds its path again into the world of facts concerning nature. Therefore I have tried in this course to find my words, as it were, out of actual experience. Today you can find the spirit in no other way than by finding the possibility of clothing it in words given by nature, and through this even the sensations will grow strong again. Just think, you transform what you are already able to know today—for the time of Michael is here—transform what apparently lives only iii ideas into real devotion. Then you will be on the best path. You are on the best path of all if you transform things into devotion. Just think what everything could become in that case! Meditating means to transform what one knows into devotion, to transform the single, concrete things. If you express such things, of course, as I have done many times, you lay yourself open to being called audacious.

Those who have become old in the twentieth century—not in a spiritual but in a conventional sense—will not experience the deep feeling man can have if he is compelled to look upon the human brain as something that has developed (though in a somewhat different direction) in the same way as dung. You must sense these penetrating forces in the human being, however: the brain forms itself like a dung heap. Feel how, in manuring, this dung substantiality is returned to the world-creating forces, so that the spirit can receive it there in a much higher sense than the human spirit can receive what is given to it as material substance from within.

Let us look now at this human being: he takes in outer material substance and has no inkling of what he is taking in with the plant, what he is taking in from outside with the cultivated plants. He is ignorant about what he takes in from outside. And now it begins to work within him through the power of the gods. It has already begun to work when he transforms what he takes in from outside into taste on the tongue. Of this process, by which things are transformed, he still retains something of mere sense experience. Then it leaves his consciousness, and a mighty, wisdom-filled process sets in. Everything is transformed within the human being, making it possible for us to be able to grasp the spirit. What we thus work over unconsciously finally ends up in the dung heap that fills our brain. Let us learn to think that as human beings we are urged to offer this dung to the world in the right way, that we do not use it in such a way as to want to transform compressed dung into little machines for children! It is mainly in this way that the human being of the present day uses his brain. He does not manure the fields of the spirit with his brain so that the spirit might work in them; he makes mechanisms out of everything. You see, you must know what the brain is intended for—to manure the fields of the spirit for the gods that come down to human beings—and you must thereby acquire the chaste reverence that can arise out of such an inward contemplation of these matters. If you thus learn to intimate what takes place in the unconscious and in the subconscious and then begin to take up nature, formed in accordance with the image of man, into your knowledge, thereby beholding nature really in connection with the dung, you can see how within nature—slowly, gradually—there rises into consciousness something that otherwise works unconsciously within the human being. Then you learn truly to renew out of yourself what has endured for a long time only as tradition, what was belief and, like so many things that had to be propagated out of the ancient clairvoyant age—still penetrated by nature—lives unintelligibly in Roman sayings such as, "Naturalia non turpia sunt" ("All things in nature are beautiful"). If they do not appear beautiful, it is only because man cannot see their beauty, cannot sense their fragrance.

Try once to bring together what has lived as the attitude in ancient times with what has lived as the attitude in recent times. Let us look at the whole realm of Western culture. A large part of how one imitates nature consists of the fact that one washes. Certainly it is very good to wash, but by the way in which washing is done in these European-American regions, everything that is nature is simply washed away. In this washing man anesthetizes himself. We may recall how in Egypt there was also a great deal of washing. The Egyptian process of washing was still something that later in Greece was forgotten and was recalled only when they spoke of catharsis.

All this gives us the consciousness that when we go out into nature, to the surface of the earth, we are deep in the belly of cosmic being. We may then also regain that feeling which I actually still experienced when, as a very small child, I associated with miners, not with coal-miners but with those mining for metals. There were still some among them who knew that if you descend into the earth you meet spiritual beings that you cannot find on the surface of the earth. You meet there the organs with which the earth dreams and thinks about the universe. With those people, thinking was still something that lived within the earth. They still knew that if you look up, you see abstract stars, but if you become acquainted with what lives beneath the earth, then you see in the universe something you could call pictures, but pictures that spring forth, that are truly living. Thus at the end of Kali Yuga a person lived in a hopelessly dead knowing, from which he began to grow into something more related to the realm of feeling. If we are able to do this, we will gradually free ourselves from the shackles with which our time has fettered the abstract human being.

Therefore I must indicate again and again what can unite you as young people in a very special, intense way. What unites you is that you say to yourselves the following. Anthroposophy appeared among people who developed out of the godless thinking in their surroundings. These people then met anthroposophy, but they abstracted anthroposophy also. So it happened that anthroposophy was well understood by the older people around the turn of the century, but in a somewhat abstract way. They actually understood anthroposophy, and it is not just chance but a karmically necessary phenomenon that in the history of our anthroposophical development there was a period in which people were coming to us who in some way or other had already retired, who had left the surrounding world and entered a retired existence. Now, what do you believe had to be experienced again and again if one were responsible for anthroposophy? As long as people were stuck in their professions they said, "I can probably be of more use to anthroposophy if I am not an anthroposophist. I feel quite connected to it, but I cannot be an anthroposophist." And so they came—and even then often in a strange, inward way—only when they had retired. We have seen many people come into these circles in this way, and we have lived through it as a kind of tragedy.

Then there came the time when these older members should have worked actively. The twentieth century began, then the very difficult time of the second decade of the twentieth century, when those in their late middle age should have been active. This failed to happen. Those in late middle age were somehow dangling between passing their doctoral examinations—and this could also happen with proletarians and peasants—and not yet having arrived at receiving their certificate of retirement. All of life just remained dangling; there was no sense of direction. Those within anthroposophy thought that deeds had to emanate out of anthroposophy.

Then the necessity arose to take up the question of the threefold social order, to create a threefold nature in the economic life, in life as such, where spirit-nature could have lived. And this also would have come about if the threefold social order had gripped people's hearts—but this failed to happen. One worked with people who were somehow dangling between their matriculation diplomas and retirement certificates. This is the tragedy of these people.

It was impossible to go further. And now there exists this abyss between those who have retired and those who no longer value such diplomas and retirement certificates, who no longer have much respect for the doctoral examinations but just take them as a matter of course and who no longer take pride in them as people did in the 1860's and 70's, when people thought that it was not possible to see an individual in his spirit- permeated blood but only hanging somewhere on the wall, framed as a diploma. Such an attitude is no longer present, and I am often led to think, when I meet the youth of today, of an old friend of mine. He was already in his late fifties when I met him, and he had attained a modicum of success in a small town. When he reached age sixty-four, he connected this old age in a strange way with his youth, for when he had been eighteen he had fallen in love with a girl and become engaged to her, and now in his old age he wanted to marry her. The church in which his birth had been registered, however, had burned down, and so he could not get the birth certificate anymore and had to forego his marriage; this was still the time when a person had to be recorded somewhere, and he had to show papers everywhere to prove that he existed. It did not matter then if one existed; it only mattered whether it was recorded somewhere that one existed! The youth today are no longer able to believe in the same way what a doctoral diploma stands for—what any kind of certificate stands for—because they no longer believe that the one who has written it really knows anything.

Then came the time when in the depths of these young souls, particularly among the proletarians, a warm, eager striving began to unfold. At the same time, however, this youth felt a tremendous abyss separating them from the older generation. This abyss truly exists in all those who at the beginning of the twentieth century were between age twenty-five and forty-eight. If at the turn of the century one was between twenty-five and forty-eight years of age, there was little chance of remaining human. One just appeared human outwardly, by virtue of one's clothes. Late middle age already formed a kind of abyss.

With the youth of today it does not amount to much when anthroposophy is transformed more and more into abstractions, when it is transformed into ideas, concepts, and even science. Now the young people who come want to experience, to live everything in deeds, in the true understanding of nature. One cannot remain with that, however. I would like to emphasize this especially strongly. It has been said that the sword of Michael has been forged, but this is connected with something else. It has to do with the fact that in the occult part of the world there remains what must be prepared of this sword of Michael, which is really to be carried, in the forging, to an altar that is not outwardly visible, that must lie beneath the earth, that really must lie beneath the earth.

To get to know the powers of nature beneath the earth leads to the understanding that the sword of Michael, as it is being forged, must be carried to an altar that lies beneath the earth. There it must be found by receptive souls. It depends on your help, on your contribution, for this sword of Michael to be found by more and more souls. And it is not enough for it to be forged; something is really achieved only when it is found. You must have the strong but at the same time the modest self-conviction as young people that you are karmically called upon to carry the sword of Michael out into the world, to search for it and find it. Then you will have received what you are searching for in gatherings such as the one today. Then you will also be able to recognize what I had to say to you about anthroposophy, about all the difficulties of those people who were dangling between their doctoral examinations and retirement certificates. And you will recognize it in a truly instinctive-pictorial way, so that the spirit of abstraction, that frightful Ahrimanic spirit, is not able to touch you too. Think in mighty pictures of the fact that two words have connected themselves with the striving of youth—words that in the nineteenth century were no longer understood. If one hears Wandervogel (Wander-bird) one wonders, does a well-traveled person today actually know what in ancient times this wandering was, what the wanderer was? We must return to a pictorial experience of the soul. Does the human being today still know what a person had to go through when meeting the birds, what Siegfried had to go through in order to understand the language of the birds? Wandervogel: Wotan, Siegfried—this is something that must be felt again, must be understood. One must first find the way from the abstract conception of Wandervogel to Wotan, who weaves in wind and clouds and waves of the earth-organism, to the hidden language of the birds, with which one must become acquainted by reviving in oneself the Siegfried-recollection and the Siegfried-sword, which was only the prophetic precursor of the sword of Michael.

The way must be found from the wanderer to Wotan, how with opened hearts one can believe again in the hidden language of the birds. You can feel this path from the Wandervogel to Wotan, to Siegfried, and if you can feel this deeply in your souls you will also find the possibility of experiencing nature and knowing about these things. And then if you are still able to dream a little, you will be able to live with the heavenly dreams in nature.

This is something that we should not reflect on a great deal at first but that we can sense and permeate with feeling. If you do this, you will form a community in accordance with your heart—a community in which step by step you will find what you are seeking. Let us keep this alive in our consciousness!

Let it fill our souls!

• 1. Sturm und Drang, (Storm and Stress), German literary movement of the late 18th century that exalted nature, feeling, and human individualism and sought to overthrow the Enlightenment cult of Rationalism. Goethe and Schiller began their careers as prominent members of the movement.

[ 1 ] Through the Leading Thoughts which have been sent out from the Goetheanum during the past weeks to the members of the Anthroposophical Society, the soul has been directed to the Beings of the spiritual kingdoms with whom man is connected from above, just as, from below, he is connected with the kingdoms of Nature.

[ 2 ] True self-knowledge may become the guide through which man finds his way into these spiritual kingdoms. And when such self-knowledge is striven after in the right way, then the understanding will be awakened for what Anthroposophy is able to make known through its insight into the life of the spiritual world. But self-knowledge must be practised in the true sense, not as a mere rigid gazing into one's inner being.

[ 3 ] By means of such a true self-knowledge one arrives in the first place at what lives in memory. In thought-pictures, the shadow of what was a direct and living experience in the past is called up into consciousness. Anyone seeing a shadow will, out of an inner impulse of thought, be guided to the object which threw the shadow. He who bears a memory within him cannot in this direct way turn the eye of his soul to the experience which lives on in the memory. But when he truly reflects on his own nature he will be obliged to say to himself: that he himself, in his soul-being, is what his experiences have made of him—those experiences which throw their shadows into the memory. The memory-shadows appear in the consciousness; in the soul there shines what in the memory is shadow. Dead shadow lives in the memory; living being lives in the soul in which the memory is active.

[ 4 ] It is only necessary that this relationship of the memory to the actual soul-life should be made clear; and in this striving for clearness in self-knowledge a man will then perceive that he is on the path to the spiritual world.

[ 5 ] Through memory, man is looking at the spiritual in his own soul. But in the ordinary consciousness he does not arrive at a real grasp of what he thus looks upon. He looks in the direction on something; but his look meets with no reality. Anthroposophy, out of Imaginative Knowledge, shows the way to this reality. Through it we are referred from the shadow to that which gleams and shines. Anthroposophy does this, in that it speaks of the etheric body of man. It shows how the physical body is active in the thought-shadow pictures; but how in the gleaming and shining the etheric body lives.

[ 6 ] With the physical body man is in the sense-world; with the etheric body he is in the etheric world. In the sense-world he has his environment; in the etheric world also. And Anthroposophy speaks of this latter environment as the first of the hidden worlds in which man is living. It is the kingdom of the Third Hierarchy.

[ 7 ] Let us now approach speech in the same way that we have considered memory. It issues from within man just as does the memory. It connects him with a certain state of being, as memory unites him with his own experiences. In words, too, there is an element of shadow. This is deeper than the shadow of the thoughts of memory. When man inwardly casts the shadow of his experiences as his memories, his own hidden self is active in the whole process. He is there when the light casts the shadow.

[ 8 ] In speech there is also a process of shadow-casting. The words are the shadows. What is it in this case that shines? Something stronger shines, because words are stronger shadows than are the thoughts of memory. The element in the human self which in the course of an earthly life can produce memories, cannot create words. Man must learn these in connection with other human beings. Something which lies deeper in him than that which casts the shadow of memory must take part in this process. In this case Anthroposophy speaks from Inspired Knowledge of the astral body, as in the case of memory it speaks of the etheric body. The astral body is added to the physical and etheric bodies as a third part of the human being.

[ 9 ] This third part, too, has a cosmic environment about it. This is made up of the Second Hierarchy. In human language we have a phantom of this Second Hierarchy. As to his astral body, man lives within the province of this Hierarchy.

[ 10 ] We may go still further. In speech a portion of man's being is engaged. When he speaks he brings his inner being into motion. That which surrounds this inner being remains at rest. The movement of speech wrings itself loose from the human being while he remains at rest, but the whole man comes into motion when he brings into activity all that belongs to his limbs. In such movement man is no less full of expression than in memory and speech. Memory expresses his experiences. The nature of language consists in its being the expression of something. In the same way the man whose whole being is in motion expresses something.

[ 11 ] Anthroposophy points out that this ‘something’ is another part of the human being. From Intuitive Knowledge it speaks of the ‘real Self’ or ‘I.’ This too, it finds, has a cosmic environment, namely the First Hierarchy.

[ 12 ] When man approaches the thoughts in his memory he meets with the first supersensible element—his own etheric being. Anthroposophy points out to him the cosmic environment corresponding to it. When man considers himself as one who makes use of language he finds his astral being. This is no longer comprehended in that which only acts inwardly, like memory. It is seen by Inspiration as that which in the act of speaking shapes a physical process out of the Spiritual. Speech is a physical process. At its foundation lies an activity which proceeds from the sphere of the Second Hierarchy.

[ 13 ] When the whole man is in motion there is a more intense physical action than in speech. Not merely a part of man is moulded, the whole man is given shape; and in the physical being which lives and moves in form, the First Hierarchy is active.

[ 14 ] In this way, then, true self-knowledge can be cultivated. But in doing this man does not grasp his own Self alone. Step by step he comprehends the parts of his body: the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body and the Self. And by comprehending these he also reaches up, step by step, to higher worlds which like the three kingdoms of Nature, the animal, plant and mineral kingdoms, belong, as the three spiritual kingdoms, to the whole Universe in which his being is unfolding.

Further Leading Thoughts issued from the Goetheanum for the Anthroposophical Society

[ 15 ] 69. The Third Hierarchy reveals itself as pure soul and spirit. It lives and moves in all that man experiences in the soul, in his inner life. Neither in the etheric nor in the physical could any processes arise if this Hierarchy alone were active. Soul-life alone could exist.

[ 16 ] 70. The Second Hierarchy reveals itself as soul and spirit that works in the etheric. All that is etheric is a manifestation of the Second Hierarchy. This Hierarchy, however, does not reveal itself directly in the physical; its power extends only to etheric processes. Only etheric and soul-life could exist if the Third and the Second Hierarchy alone were active.

[ 17 ] 71. The First and strongest Hierarchy reveals itself as the spiritually active principle within the physical. It makes the physical world into a Cosmos. The Third and the Second Hierarchy are the Beings who minister to it in this activity.

Further Leading Thoughts issued from the Goetheanum for the Anthroposophical Society

[ 18 ] 72. As soon as we approach the higher members of man's being—the etheric, the astral body and the Ego-organisation—we are obliged to seek for man's relation to the beings of the spiritual kingdoms. It is only the physical body's organisation which we can illumine by reference to the three physical kingdoms of Nature.

[ 19 ] 73. In the etheric body the Intelligence of the Cosmos becomes embodied in the human being. That this can happen, requires the activity of cosmic Beings, who, in their combined working, shape the etheric body of man, even as the physical forces shape the physical.

[ 20 ] 74. In the astral body the spiritual world implants the moral impulses into the human being. That these can show forth their life in man's Organisation, depends on the activity of Beings who are able not only to think the Spiritual, but to shape it in its reality.

[ 21 ] 75. In the Ego-organisation man experiences himself, even in the physical body, as a Spirit. That this can happen, requires the activity of Beings who themselves, as spiritual Beings, live in the physical world.

In giving an account of the history of Anthroposophy in relation to the Anthroposophical Society, and of the life-conditions that determined it, there will be two questions from which one must set out, and which arise naturally out of the history itself. These two questions I may perhaps formulate in the following manner:—First, why was it necessary to connect the anthroposophic movement on to the theosophic movement in the way that was done? And secondly,—why does it happen,—on merely external grounds, as a rule,—that Anthroposophy down to this day is confounded by malevolent opponents with Theosophy, and the Anthroposophical Society with the Theosophical Society?

The answers to these two questions can only really grow out of the course of the history itself. As I said yesterday, when one talks of an anthroposophic society, the first point for consideration is, what kind of people they are, who feel an impulse to pursue their search along the path of an anthroposophic movement. And I endeavoured yesterday to describe how the souls, who thus turn to Anthroposophy to find satisfaction for their spiritual needs, are, in a certain sort of way, homeless souls. Now at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries, these homeless souls in actual fact were there. Many more of them were there than people are usually inclined to suppose. For many people were seeking, by many and various roads, to bring to development in some form the underlying man within them.

One need only recall—quite apart from the attempts which proceeded from the new-age materialism and led into all the varieties of spiritualism,—how, quite apart from all this, numbers of souls found a kind of inner contentment through the perusal of writings such as those of Ralph Waldo Trine and others.

What was it, then, that such souls were seeking, who at that period had recourse to writings like those of Ralph Waldo Trine?—They were trying, I might say, to fill up the human gap in them with something,—something for which they longed, which they desired to feel and realize in their inner lives, but which was not to be found upon the paved roads of modern civilization,—something which for these people was not to be found, either in the popular profane literature, or profane art, nor yet which they were able to find by means of the traditional religious faiths.

I must begin first by giving you a few facts to-day, and leave it to the next lectures to draw the connecting lines between the facts. The first thing needed is to bring certain facts in the right form before the soul.

Amongst all the many people who were seeking, whether along spiritistic roads or through Ralph Waldo Trine or others, amongst all these were the people who attached themselves to the various branches, then in existence, of the Theosophical Society. And if one puts to oneself the question: Was there any peculiar, distinctive feature in those people who more particularly attached themselves in some form to the Theosophical Society! some quality by which they were distinguished from the others, who became spiritualists, for instance, or who sought to find in Ralph Waldo Trine an inner mine of wealth?—was there any difference between them?—then one must certainly reply: Yes, there was a most distinctive difference. It was unmistakably a special variety, as I might say, of human search, which was going on in those persons, who were more particularly impelled in some form towards the Theosophical Society.

As we know from the actual course of the Theosophical Society, it seemed probable, that what had to be sought as Anthroposophy at the beginning of this century would be most likely to find understanding amongst those circles which joined together at that time to pursue Theosophy. Rut to have the requisite light upon this, we must first place the facts properly before our souls.

Now I should like, before going further, to devote a little while to describing the persons themselves, who came together in this way, and to give you some picture of what, was then, in those days, to be understood by Theosophical Society,—that theosophic association which, as you know, found its most marked and prominent expression in the English ‘Theosophical Society’. And this was the society, as you know, on to which was then joined what afterwards came forth as Anthroposophy,—or indeed, more truly speaking, it came forth at once as Anthroposophy.

Looking at the ‘Theosophical Society’ and the whole intention of it, as actually presented before our eyes so to speak in a group of people, we must first look a little into the minds of these people, we must look into these people's souls and see what kind of consciousness these particular people had.—In a way, these people certainly lived out what was in their mind's consciousness. They came together, and held ‘meetings’, where they delivered lectures and carried on discussions. They met together also at other times, besides the ‘meetings.’ A great deal of conversation indeed went on amongst them in more private circles. It was not usual at General Meetings, for instance, for the time to be so filled up, as it was with us yesterday; they always found an opportunity to have a meal together, to drink tea, and so forth. Between times, indeed, they even found opportunities for changing their dresses, and things of that kind. There was always, at any rate, some sort of gleam from the outer world of what I might call social behaviour. All that, of course, is not so much what interests us. What is of interest for us is the mental consciousness of these people. And here the first thing at once to strike one strongly was that, between the different personalities, there were forces at play which were in remarkable contradiction to the personalities themselves.

This contradictory play of forces struck one particularly, when the people held their meetings. They met together; but of every person there,—if one were not a theosophist sworn and signed,—of each single person, one kept trying to form two conceptions. That was the curious thing, that when one came amongst the ‘Theosophical Society’ it was simply unavoidable to have two conceptions of each person. First, there was the conception one formed from how he was as one actually met with him. Rut the other, was the conception which the rest had of each amongst them. This was the outcome of general views, views of a quite general and of a very theoretic character,—notions about Man in general, about universal love of mankind,—about the stage one had reached: being ‘advanced’, as they called it, or ‘not advanced.’,—about the kind of way in which one's mind must be seriously disposed, if one were to prove worthy to receive the doctrines of theosophy,—and so on. They were notions of a highly theoretic kind. And there must be something, they thought, of all this, existing in the people actually walking about before them in flesh and blood. So that what was really living amongst them, were not those conceptions I spoke of at first: the conceptions, namely, that one forms quite naively of the other person,—these conceptions had really no living existence amongst the members; but what lived in each of them was a picture of all the others,—a picture that was really born of theoretic notions about human beings and human conduct.

In reality, no one saw the other as he actually was; he saw a sort of ghost. And so it was inevitable, when one met, say, with a Mr. Miller and naively formed for oneself a picture of Mr. Miller, and one then called to mind the sort of conception any other person might have of this same Mr. Miller, that one then raised a kind of ghost-conception; for the real conception of him did not exist amongst any of the rest, but each had in mind a ghost, theoretically constructed. And in this way one could not help having two conceptions of each person. Only, most of the members dispensed with the conception of the actual person, and admitted only the conception of the ghost. So that in reality, between the individual members there dwelt constantly their ghostly conceptions of one another. One met in the minds of the ‘members’, so to speak, with nothing but ghosts.—One required, in fact, to have an interest in psychology.

One required, too, a certain largeness of mind and heart in order to enter into it all with real interest. And then, indeed, it was extremely interesting to enter into what went on, rightly speaking, as a kind of ghost-society. For, to the extent which I have just said, it was a society of ghosts that went on there. This was more especially forced upon one's eyes in the case of the leading personalities. The leading personalities lived quite a peculiar kind of life amongst the others.

The talk, for instance, would be about some particular leading personality,—say X:—she went about at night as an astral form from house to house,—only to members' houses, of course!—as an Invisible Aid. And she emanated all sorts of things too.—They were, in part, uncommonly fine ghostly conceptions that existed of the leading personalities.

And often then it was a striking contrast when one came to meet the same person afterwards in actual reality. But then the generally prevailing tone of mind took care that, as far as possible, only the ghost-conceptions should have a chance to live, and the real conceptions not be all too lively.

Well, for this sort of thing, you see, it was undoubtedly necessary to have views and doctrines. For it is not so easy a matter, seeing that not everybody is clairvoyant,—though in those days there were an extraordinary number of people who gave themselves out at least to be clairvoyant (with what truth is a question into which we won't for the moment enter),—but since not all of them, at any rate, were clairvoyant, it was necessary to have certain theories, from which to put together these ghosts that were constructed.

Now these theories all had about them something remarkably antique; so that one could not but have the impression of old, warmed-up theories, that were being used to put together these ghost-constructions of people. In many cases, too, it was easy to find in ancient writings the patterns from which these ghostly figures of men were traced.

So, in addition to the ghostliness, there was also the fact that the people, whom one had as ghosts before one, were by no means people of the present day. They were really people of earlier incarnations, people who seemed to have risen out of the graves of Egypt or Persia, or from the graves of ancient India. The impression of the present time vanished, in a sense, altogether from one.

But, added to this, there was something else, quite different.—These ancient teachings, even when wrapped in comparatively modern terminology, were very little to be understood. Now these ancient doctrines, very largely, were talked about in abstract forms of speech. Physical body, indeed, was still called ‘physical body’. ‘etheric body’ was taken from the form of the Middle Ages, and ‘astral body’, too, perhaps. But then at once came things like manas, kama-manas, and so forth,—things which were in everybody's mouths, but of which nobody exactly knew what they purported.

And all this was clothed again in quite modern, materialistic conceptions. But within, contained in these teachings, there were whole chains of worlds and world-concepts and world-ideas; till one had the feeling: The souls are speak-ing as they did in far by-gone, earlier ages,—not hundreds, but thousands of years ago.

This was carried very far. Whole books were written in this style of speech. These books were translated; and so everything was carried on further in the same form.

There was, however, another side to it also. It had its beautiful side too. For all this, existing though it often did as mere words only, and not understood, left, nevertheless, something of its colouring upon the people. And if not in the souls themselves, yet one might say that in the soul-costumes of the people there was an immense amount of it all,—in their soul-costumes. The people went about really, as I might say, not exactly with a consciousness of aether bodies, or of kama-manas, but with a sort of consciousness of being robed in a series of mantles: one mantle is the aether-body, another Lama-manas, and so on. They attached some importance, too, to this set of mantles, this soul-costume. And this gave the people a sort of cement that held them together.

All this was something, which welded the ‘Theosophical Society’ together in an extraordinarily solid manner into a whole, and which was really effective in establishing an immense feeling of corporate fellowship, that made each one feel himself a representative of the ‘Theosophical Society.’ This ‘Society’ was a thing in itself; beside the fact of the individuals in it, the Society itself was some-thing. It had, one might really say, a ‘Self-consciousness’ of its own. It had its own ‘I’. And this ‘I’ of the Society was so strong that, even when the absurdities of the leading personages came to the surface in an un-mistakably queer fashion, the people had so come to feel themselves a corporate body, that they held together with iron pertinacity, and had a sort of feeling that it was like treachery not to hold together, whatever the failings of the personages at the head.

Anyone who has had opportunity to see something of the inner struggles that went on in some of the adherents of the Theosophic Society later on, long after the Anthroposophic Society was separated from it, what struggles went on in them, when again and again they recognized: ‘The things that the leaders are doing are quite monstrous; and yet, all the same, one can't separate from them!’ ... if one has watched these struggles that went on in the individual souls, then, although there was much about it which one can only condemn as excessively bad,—yet, on the other hand, one acquires a certain respect for this ‘I’-consciousness of the whole Society.

And here arises the question whether it were not possible, even under the conditions under which the Anthroposophic Society was bound to enter the world,—whether, even under these conditions it were not possible for some such associated consciousness to grow up?

In founding the anthroposophic society, all those, often very dubious methods had to be dispensed with, by means of which, in the theosophic society, the ‘I’-consciousness of the society had been obtained, and the strong tie through-out the whole. The ideal that was to hover before the anthroposophic society must be: Whom lies only in Truth. — These, however, are things, which have remained down to this day ideals. In this field especially, the anthroposophic society still leaves much to be desired; inasmuch as, until now, in respect to developing a corporate body, an associate ‘I’, it has not made even the first beginnings.

The Anthroposophical Society is an association of persons, who, as individual human beings, may be very full of zeal; but as a society they do not as yet, truly speaking, exist; because there is lacking just this sense of ‘belonging together’; because only very, very few of the members of the Anthroposophical Society feel themselves representative of this society. Each feels himself a private individual, and quite forgets that an Anthroposophical Society is supposed to exist.

And now that I have given a brief description of the public (which I will fill in more fully in these coming days), I should like to describe the matter now on its other side.—In what way, then, amidst this whole quest of the age,—for so I must call it,—did Anthroposophy now take its place?

The fundamental principles of Anthroposophy are to be found already, by anyone who chooses, in my Philosophy of Freedom. There is only one I wish more especially to pick out to-day, which is, that this Philosophy of Freedom everywhere points in the first place and by inner necessity to a domain of Spirit; a domain of Spirit from which, for example, the moral impulses are drawn. So that, following the Philosophy of Freedom, it is not possible to stop short at the sense-world; one is obliged to go on further, to a spiritual domain grounded in itself.

And this general existence of a spiritual domain takes further the very special and concrete form, that Man in his own innermost being, when he becomes conscient of his own innermost being, is connected, not with the world of Sense, but is connected in this, his innermost being, with the world of Spirit.

These two things: first that there is a spiritual domain; and, secondly, that Man, with the innermost ‘I’ of his being, is connected with this spiritual domain,—these are the two fundamental points of the Philosophy of Freedom. And a time could not but come, when the question arose: Is it possible for that which has now to be proclaimed as a sort of message to the men of the new age from the spiritual world,—is it possible for one to proclaim it in this way? Is there here an opportunity for connecting it onto some-thing? For naturally, one could not just stand up and talk into the air.—Although indeed, in these days, all sorts of strange proposals are made to one. I once,—it was in the year 1918, during my stay in Vienna—received an invitation, by telegram indeed, to travel from Vienna to the Rax Alp, on the northern boundary of Styria, and there to plant my-self on the Rax Alp, and deliver a lecture to the mountains. The proposal was actually made to me at the time, and by telegram. I need hardly say, that I did not respond to the proposal.—However, one can't talk to the mountains or the air; one must find something existing in the civilization of the day, onto which one can connect. And there was, on the whole, even at the turn of the nineteenth to twentieth century, still uncommonly little there. People were there, whose search namely, at that time, was leading them into the Theosophical Society. These were, after all, the people to whom it was possible to speak of these things.

But here, too, one required, not only to have a feeling of responsibility towards these people, as a public; one required on the other hand also to have a feeling of one's responsibility towards the spiritual world,—and, in particular, towards that form of the spiritual world which had come to expression at that particular time. And here I may perhaps be allowed to show you the way in which, out of this endeavour on my part, which as yet did not outwardly bear the name of Anthroposophy, there gradually grew up what became afterwards Anthroposophy. I want to-day merely to put forward a few facts, and leave it to the following days to trace you the connecting threads between them.

To begin with, I could discern in the 'eighties of last century what I might call a kind of fata morgana: some-thing which wore quite a natural appearance in the physical world, but which, though only as an airy fata morgana, as a light-phenomenon, had yet, in a sense, a deeper significance.

The fact was, that when one reflected upon the evolution in world-conceptions then taking place in the civilized world, as it struck one in what I may call its then-modern form (few people paid any heed to this evolution; but it was there), one might come upon something very curious. There,—if we confine our reflections for the moment to Central Europe only,—there was that great, I might say world-shaking philosophy, which aspired to be everything else as well, which aspired to being an entire world-conception: the idealist philosophy of the first half of the nineteenth century. There were the after-echoes still of the philosophy of Hegel, say, of Fichte, of Solger; philosophies, which, at the time they were founded, meant really to many persons who became their disciples, quite as much as ever Anthroposophy can be to someone to-day. And yet, in the main, it was all abstract conceptions, a pile of abstract conceptions.

Take a look into Hegel's Encyclopaedia of the Philosophic Sciences, the first of the four parts, and you will find a string of concepts, developed one out of the other. It starts with Real Being (Sein); then comes Nothing (Nichts); then comes Becoming (Werden); then comes Objective Existence (Dasein). ... Well, I can't, of course, give you an account now of the whole of Hegel's Logic, for it is a fat book, and it goes on in concepts like these. Finally, at the end, comes Purpose (Zweck). It never in fact gets further than abstract thoughts and abstract ideas.—

Real Being; Nothing; Becoming; Objective Existence; Purpose. — And. yet Hegel called it: ‘God before the Creation of the World.’ So that one could only suppose that, if one asked the question: What was God like before the creation of the world? the answer was a system of abstract concepts and abstract ideas.

Now there was living in Vienna, just at the time when I was young,—and that's long ago,—a philosopher of the Herbart school, Robert Zimmermann. And Robert Zimmermann said: ‘That is not permissible for us any longer to-day.’ (By ‘to-day’ he meant the last third of the nineteenth century.) ‘We cannot to-day think as Hegel and Solger and all those people thought.’—In what way, then did such people think?

Zimmermann, you see, said to himself: ‘These people thought in the kind of way, as though they themselves were God.’ Zimmermann thought in a very curious way really for a philosopher, but very characteristically; he said: ‘Hegel thought in the same way, as though he himself were God.’—That might almost, as it was spoken, have come from the Theosophical Society of the period; for there was a member a leading member indeed, of the Theosophical Society, Franz Hartmann; and his lectures, which he used to hold, were all to this effect:—One must become aware of the God within oneself; every man has within him as it were a divine man, a God; and when this divine man begins to talk, then one talks Theosophy.

Well, Franz Hartmann, when he let his divine man talk, said all sorts of things, about which I wish at the moment to express no opinion. But Hegel, when—according to Zimmermann's view—he let the God within him speak, said Real Being; Nothing; Becoming; Objective Existence; and then,—then the world began logically to hum; and then, it twisted over into its Other-State-of-Being, and lo! the natural world!

Now Robert Zimmermann said: ‘There must be an end of that; for that is Theosophy! We can't have Theosophy any more in these days,’ said Robert Zimmermann in the 'eighties. ‘It is impossible for us in these days to accept the Theosophy of a Schelling, a Solger, a Hegel. We must not let the God in Man speak: that makes a theocentric standpoint, to which one can only aspire, if one is prepared to be like Icarus;—and you know what that means; one skids off the track in the Cosmos, and. comes tumbling down!—We must keep to a human standpoint.’—And so, in opposition to the ‘Theosophy’ of Hegel, Schelling, Solger and the rest, (whom he treats as ‘theosophists’ also in his History of Aesthetics), Robert Zimmermann wrote his book Anthroposophy. And from this Anthroposophy I afterwards took the name. It appeared at the time to me an unusually interesting book, as a sign of the times.

Only ... this Anthroposophy of Zimmermann's ... it is made up of the most horribly abstract concepts. It is composed in three parts, too; and then there are subordinate chapters: 1, Logical Ideas; 2. Aesthetic Ideas; 3. Ethical Ideas.

One looks, you see, as a human being,—putting aside for the moment the part on aesthetics, which deals with Art, and the Ethical Ideas, which deal with human conduct,—one naturally looks to find, in what is there presented to one as a conceptual view of the world, something from which a human being must draw inner satisfaction, something which enables him to say to himself, that he is connected with a divine, spiritual existence, that within him there is some-thing eternal. Robert Zimmermann set out to answer the question: When Man ceases to be merely a man of the senses, when he really wakes to conscious knowledge of his spiritual manhood, what does he then know?—He knows the logical ideas. Hegel wrote at least a whole book, full of such logical ideas; but then those are ideas such as only a God can think. But when it is not a god thinking in the man, but the man himself who is thinking, then the result is five logical ideas,—at least, with Robert Zimmermann. First idea, the Absoluteness of Thought; second, the Equivalence of two Concepts; third, the Synthesis of Concepts; fourth, the Analysis of Concepts; and fifth, the Law of Contradiction, — that is, a thing can only be some-thing-in-itself, or else another thing; a third alternative is not possible.

Well, my dear friends, that is the total compass of what is given there, put together in the form of abstract ideas, as representing what a human being can know for certain, when he detaches himself from the world of sense, when he falls back upon his own mind and soul. If this ‘Anthroposophy’ were all and only what there was to offer to the human being, then one could but say: Everything must be regarded as superseded, whatever men once possessed in their different religious faiths, in their rites of worship and so forth; everything must be regarded as superseded, which is accepted as Christianity; since all these things again can only be deduced from history, etc. When man reflects on what he is able to know qu anthropos, on what he is able to know for certain, when he bestirs his own soul, independently of either sensible impressions or external history, it is this: ‘I can know for certain, that I am subject to the Absoluteness of Thought, to the Equivalence of Concepts, to the Synthesis of Concepts, to their Analysis, and to the Law of the Excluded Third (the third alternative that is self-excluded).’ With these, as people used to say, one must go to heaven.

Besides this, there were certainly the Aesthetic Ideas. These were the ideas of: Perfection, Accordance, Harmony ...; there are five again of these ideas, and, .similarly, five Ethical Ideas.—The Aesthetic Ideas included also the ideas of Discord and the Accordance of Discord.

1. Logical ideas: Absoluteness of Thought; Equivalence; Synthesis; Analysis; Law of Contradiction.

2. Aesthetic ideas: Perfection; Accordance; Harmony; Discord; Accordance of Discord. From these five ideas, through these five ideas, comes the life of all the arts.

3. Ethical ideas: And in the five ethical ideas: Ethical Perfection, Benevolence, Equity, Conflict, and Adjustment of Conflict, lies the life of all human transactions.

As you see, it is all reduced to the uttermost form of abstraction. At the beginning stands: Outline of Anthroposophy.

That a great deal was meant by it, you may see from the dedication with which it is prefaced. There are, I might really say, touching lines in this dedication. One reads in it,—I can't quote verbally, but something like this: To Harriet!—Thou it wast, who, when night began to darken round my eyes, didst lead me to gather the scattered thoughts, that long had lived within me, and bind them together in this book. And a willing hand was ready, too, to set on paper what my mind's eye had shown me in the dark-room.—

In short, it is indicated in very beautiful words, that the author had had an eye-disease, had been obliged to spend some time in the dark-room, where he had thought out these ideas, and that a willing hand had offered to write them down. These dedicatory lines conclude very beautifully with the words:—No one then can deny, that this book, like light itself, proceeded out of darkness.

It was just like a fata morgana, you see; most curious. Robert Zimmermann, out of Theosophy, brought forth an Anthroposophy, after his notions. But I don't think that, if I had lectured on this Anthroposophy, we should ever have had an anthroposophical movement. The name, however, was very well chosen. And this name I took over, when—for inherent reasons which will become apparent in the course of these lectures—I had, for inherent reasons, to begin by dealing with a variety of things; and in the first place, with the spiritual, and for every seer of the spiritual world clearly established fact, that there are recurrent earth-lives.

But when one is not light-minded in such matters, but has a sense of spiritual responsibility, one must first find a point of connection. And one may truly say, that at that period,—the turn of the nineteenth to twentieth century,—it was extremely hard to find any connection in the consciousness of the age for the recurrence of earth-lives. Points of connection, however, subsequently presented themselves. And I will begin by telling how I myself sought for these points of connection.

There is a very interesting Compendium of the Truths of Anthropology, by Topinard. In the concluding chapter of this book,—it was a book of which more mention was made ;it that period, than to-day; to-day it is already somewhat antiquated as regards details, but it is cleverly written;—in the concluding chapter there is a very neat summary. And there one could find, put together in Topinard, in a way which of course every modern-minded person of the time endorsed, a summary of all the different biologic facts which led up to the conception of the various species of animals as proceeding out of one another,—as proceeding, the one out of the other. Topinard had, set out in full in his book, all the material which could be quoted in support. And one could thus find everything which had led to the conception of a progressive transformation of the different animal species, one out of another. And Topinard stops short with the facts, and says, after adducing, I think, some twenty-two points, that the twenty-third he has then to adduce is this Transformation of the Animal Species. And now we stand directly before the problem of Man. — That, he leaves unanswered: How is it with Man?

Here, then, one might say, taking the evolution of the biologists seriously, quite seriously, and connecting onto an author, who is also really to be taken seriously: Here he leaves the question open. Let us go further; let us add to point twenty-two point twenty-three, and we get this: That the animals always repeat themselves on a higher grade in their species; with Man we must transfer this to the individual, and when the individual repeats himself, then we shall have repeated earth-lives. — I took as connection, you see, what I happened to have. That was altogether the form still at that time, in which I tried to make comprehensible to the whole world's understanding, what lies of course as a spiritual fact de facto before the soul. But to make it understandable to the surrounding world, one had to take what lay directly to hand, but which ended, not with a full stop, but with a dotted line. I simply connected on to the dotted line of natural-science.

That was the first thing. And this lecture I delivered in the circle of which I told you yesterday. They did not have much understanding for it; because they were not, there, interested in natural science. They did not feel, there, the necessity for paying any consideration to natural science; and it naturally seemed to the people waste of time, to set to work to prove what they already believed.

Well, what made the second thing, was, that, at the beginning of the century, I delivered a series of lectures in a circle which called themselves ‘The Coming Race’ (‘die Kommenden’), and where as a rule only literary themes were discussed. These lectures had for title From Buddha to Christ, and in them I tried to show the whole line of evolution from Buddha to Christ, and to sum up in Christ the total of all that lay in the previous aspects of conception. The series closed with that interpretation of the Gospel of John which sets out from the Waking of Lazarus. So that this Lazarus problem therefore, as it is found later in my Christianity as Mystical Fact, forms here the conclusion of this lecture-cycle From Buddha to Christ.

This occurred at about the time when, from the same circle of people who had invited me to hold the lectures that are contained in my book Mysticism at the Dawn of the New Age of Thought, I now received a request to speak to an audience of theosophists on the very subject it was my aim and wish to speak on. And this came together again with the efforts being made to found a German Section of the ‘Theosophical Society’. And I found myself called upon,—before really I was a member, before I had even given the least sign of becoming a member,—to become General Secretary in the German Section of the ‘Theosophical Society’.

At the time this German Section was being founded, I gave a lecture-cycle, at which there were, I think, only two or three theosophists present. The rest were mainly the same audience as in the circle in which I was holding the lectures From Buddha, to Christ.

It was a circle called the ‘Coming Race’ (‘die Kommenden’). The names seemed to stick to me:—there must be some law connected with it. ‘Anthroposophy’ stuck to me from Robert Zimmermann. The ‘Coming Race’ reappeared in the name of the ‘Coming Day’ (‘der Kommende Tag’). Names of this kind stick to one,—old names.

To this circle,—which, as I said, had been joined by two or three theosophists at most; and by these really out of curiosity, as you will see at once, for I spoke to this circle on the evolution of world-conceptions from the earliest Oriental times to the present day: or, Anthroposophy. This cycle of

¹ Literally ‘Thought-dash’.

² 1901-2, in Berlin.—See too the ‘Story of my Life’ by Dr. Rudolf Steiner, Chap. XXX.

lectures, then, bore from the first as its proper title: ‘The history of mankind's evolution, as shown in its world-conceptions from the earliest Oriental ages down to the present times: or, Anthroposophy.’—This lecture-cycle, as I must again mention, was held by me contemporaneously with the founding of the German Section of the Theosophical Society. I used to go away, indeed, out of the meeting, and whilst the others were continuing their conference and continuing to discourse Theosophy, I delivered my series of lectures on Anthroposophy.

One of the people, who afterwards, from theosophists became good anthroposophists,—one who became indeed a very good anthroposophist,—went out of curiosity at the time to these lectures, and said to me afterwards: ‘Yes, but what you have just been saying doesn't agree at all with what Mrs. Besant says and what Blavatsky says.’ To which I replied: ‘Well, no doubt that must be the case then.’—He was a good connoisseur of Theosophy and all its dogmas, who discovered, quite rightly, that ‘It doesn't agree.’—So even at that period, one could say: It is not in agreement; it is something different.

Well, these are facts, which for the moment I have just put before you. And now there is another fact I should like to mention, drawn apparently from another quarter altogether, and to which I have already alluded yesterday.

Take the books of Blavatsky, beginning with the principal books, first, the Isis Unveiled, and second, the Secret .Doc-trine. Now, one did not really need to have any very great weakness for the people who accepted everything in these books as sacred dogma; but all the same, if only for the reasons I mentioned yesterday, there was enough to make one find these books extraordinarily interesting,—above all, to find the phenomenon of Blavatsky herself an extraordinarily interesting one,—extraordinarily interesting, if only from a deeper psychologic standpoint.—And in what way?

Well, there is, after all, a big difference, you see, between these two books, the Isis Unveiled and Blavatsky's other book, the Secret Doctrine; — there is a very big difference indeed. And you will recognize this difference most forcibly, if I tell you how the two books were judged at the time by the people who were connoisseurs in such things.—What do I mean, when I speak of ‘connoisseurs in such things’?

My dear friends, there really exist traditions, which have come down from the very oldest mysteries and been pre-served since in various so-called Secret Societies. And the people too in certain secret societies had grades distributed to them accordingly. They moved up, from the first grade to the second, thence to the third, and so on. And, in these grades, such and such things were communicated to them always from the same traditions.

In the lower grades, the people did not understand the things, but they accepted them as sacred dogmas. They did not really understand the things in the higher grades either. But though neither the lower grades, nor yet the higher grades, understood the traditions, it was nevertheless a firm belief amongst those who belonged to the lower grades, that those who belonged to the higher ones understood everything. This was a quite fixed belief that existed among them; but all the same there did exist among them also a preserved store of genuine knowledge. Verbally, they knew a very great deal. And you need only take up anything ... to-day, when everything is printed and everything obtainable, these things too are easy to obtain you need only take up what is printed on the subject, and put life into it again from what Anthroposophy can teach you (for there is no other way of giving the things life), and you will then see, even in the mangled form in which they are usually printed to-day, that these traditions do contain within them a vast hoard of ancient, awe-inspiring knowledge. Often the words sound all wrong; but anyone who knows a little, knows what is implied, and that an ancient hoard of old-world knowledge lies behind. Rut still, however, the special feature of these secret societies and their proceedings is this: that the people have a general feeling that in earlier ages there existed persons who were initiates, and who possessed an ancient lore that enabled them to give information about the universe,—about the cosmos and the world of spirits. And they knew, too, how to put words together, they knew how to talk about these things that had been handed down to them. There were plenty of such people.

And now appeared the Unveiled Isis of Blavatsky. And the people, who had become possessed of the traditional knowledge through having attained to lower or higher grades in these secret societies, were the very people to have a terrible fright when the Unveiled Isis appeared. The reason of their fright was usually explained to be, that the times—they said—were not yet ripe, for these things, which had always been kept concealed in the secret societies, to be given out straightway to the mass of mankind through the press. That was what they thought. They were really indeed of this honest opinion, that the times were not ripe for these things to be communicated to the whole of mankind.

There was, however, for individuals amongst them, another reason besides. And this reason can only properly be under-stood, if I call your attention to certain other facts again.—You must consider, that during the fifth post-atlantean period,—namely, in the nineteenth century,—everything, really, had passed over into abstract concepts and ideas; so that finally, as we saw, one of the profoundest and most powerful minds couched his whole world-outlook in the abstract concepts: Real Being; Nothing; Becoming; Objective Existence, etc., down to Purpose. Everything in this modern age has turned to abstract concepts and ideas.

One of the first in Central Europe, who began with these abstract ideas, is the philosopher Schelling. At a time, when people were able to be enthused by such ideas, because they still had, latent in them, forces of human sentiment, and when, in Jena, Schlegel and Tieck were amongst the listeners when, with immense enthusiasm, such ideas were discussed,—at that time Schelling too had been one of those who taught these abstract ideas. Then, after a few years, Schelling no longer found any satisfaction in these abstract ideas,—plunged into all kinds of mysticism, more particularly into Jacob Boehme,—received from these ideas of Boehme's a new and fruitful impulse, and then, out of the ideas he had received from Jacob Boehme, produced some-thing, which now rang somewhat less abstracted and more substantial. No one can be said to have really any longer understood,—for it was not understood,—what Schelling had written in 1809, in his Human Freedom, and the Circumstances involved with it; but somewhere in the 'twenties, Schelling, who till then had been living for a long while in retirement, began to speak, and in a curious manner. You may find to-day in Reclam's Universal Library Series a little volume of Schelling's, called The Ages of the World. If you take up this little volume, you will get an odd feeling; you will say to yourself: ‘It's all quite hazy still, and abstract; and yet one has the strange feeling: How is it, that it doesn't occur to the man, to Schelling, to say what, for instance, has since been said on anthroposophic ground about the true facts concerning Atlantis; but that he almost, clumsily as it were, hints at them?’—So far he gets; to clumsily hinting at them. It is a quite interesting little volume, this of Schelling's, in Reclam's Universal Library, on The Ages of the World.

And then, as you know, Friedrich Wilhelm IV appointed him in 1844 to the University of Berlin. There, accordingly, after Hegel had been dead for fourteen years, he became Hegel's successor. And there Schelling began to deliver his lectures on the Philosophy of Revelation.

This, too, is still fearfully abstract, He speaks of three potentials, A', A', A' ... fearfully abstract! Then, however, he carries it on further, as far as to a kind of comprehension of the ancient Mysteries—as far as to a kind of comprehension of Christianity. And again, when he launches into these ideas, we have almost the feeling: It is an attempt, though in a still quite primitive fashion, to find a way into a real spiritual world. Only one can't rightly do much with what Schelling gives here briefly in his lectures.—But the people, all the same, understood nothing of it. It is not, after all, so very easy to understand, since the way is a dubitable one.

In the mind of the age, however,—as this is a proof,—in the mind of the age, then, there did lie something which, like Schelling, hinted: We must search into a spiritual world.

In another form, the same thing happened in England. It is extremely interesting to read the writings of Laurence Oliphant. Oliphant describes—in another way naturally, for Englishmen describe otherwise than Germans, more tangibly, in terms of things and senses,—he describes the picture which had risen before his mind of earliest ages of Man's evolution upon earth. And in a certain sense, and taking into consideration the difference of national genus, they are parallel phenomena: Schelling, in the first half of the nineteenth century, more from the idealist side; and Laurence Oliphant, more from the realist side; in both, a powerful kind of striving after the spiritual world, of striving after a comprehension of the world as revealed to man's sight from the spirit.

If one examines what it is exactly that is so curious, in Schelling as well as in Oliphant (it is the same phenomenon really in both, only varied by country), one finds that it is this: These two people grew up,—the one in German, the other in English fashion,—into the civilization of their age,—struggled through till they reached a crowning perfection in the ideas, then held as the philosophic ideas of the age, about Man, about the Universe, and so forth.

Schelling in his fashion, as well as Oliphant in his fashion, struggled their way through. Now, as you know from the anthroposophic descriptions which I have given you, Man's evolution to-day takes place during the first part of his life in such a way, that the physical presents an accompanying phenomenon to the evolution of his soul. This ceases later on.—With the Greeks, as I told you, their evolution still went on until they were in the thirties, in such a way that there was an actual, progressive evolution of the two, a parallelism of the physical and the spiritual.—With Schelling and with Oliphant it was again somewhat different from what it is with the average person of the present day. With them, what took place was this: their evolution went on at first as it does with a normal human being, ... for of course to-day one can be a philosopher, and in every respect a quite normal human being,—perhaps, indeed, a sub-normal one; but that's by the way! ... One just develops one's notions a little further, you know, and then one stops short, if one is a normal human being. Schelling and Oliphant didn't stop short; but with increasing age their souls became all of a sudden as lively as they had been in a previous earth-life, and there rose up a memory of things which they had known long ago, in earlier incarnations,—rose up in a natural way: distant memories, hazy memories. And now, a light suddenly flashes on one; now one begins to see both Oliphant and Schelling in a different light.

They struggle their way through; become first normal philosophers, according to their different countries; then in their later years they acquire a memory of something they had known before in previous earth-lives,—now as a hazy memory. And then, they begin to talk about the spiritual world. It is a hazy, indistinct memory, that rises up in Schelling and in Laurence Oliphant; but still it was a thing of which there was a certain amount of fear amongst the people who had merely a traditional, old evolution, lest it might get the upper-hand, might spread. These people were horribly afraid lest men might come to be born, who would remember what they had lived through in times before, and would talk about it. ‘And then’—thought they—‘what will become of our principle of secrecy? We exact solemn oaths from the members of the first, second, third grades; but if people come to be born, in whom it all wakes up again as a living memory, what we've preserved so carefully and keep locked up, of what use then is all our secrecy!’

And now appeared Isis Unveiled. The curious phenomenon was this: This book brought a whole lot of what was kept secret in secret societies openly into the book-market. The great problem that now faced these people was: How have these things, which we have kept well locked up, and to which the people are sworn by solemn oaths,—how has Blavatsky got hold of them, and from what source? Amongst these people particularly, and all who were frightened, this book, Isis Unveiled, aroused great attention.

It certainly was, for those people who took a conscient share in the spiritual life going on around them at the end of the nineteenth century,—it certainly was a problem, what had appeared here, with this book of Blavatsky's.

And now there appeared the Secret Doctrine. Then the thing became really serious.—To-day, as I said, I am merely setting forward the bare facts.—A whole mass of the things, which properly in secret societies were reserved for the highest grades alone, were planted by this book before the world. And the people who had been scared already by the first book, and now in addition by this second one, coined various expressions for it at the time; for there was something terribly, especially for the so-styled Initiates, terribly upsetting in this Blavatsky phenomenon.

Well, with the Isis Unveiled, things were not yet quite so uncanny,—for Blavatsky was after all a chaotic personality, who, along with the really profound wisdom, was constantly mixing up, as I said yesterday, all sorts of stuff that is absolutely worthless. At any rate, about the Isis Unveiled the alarmed, so-styled Initiates could still say: It's a book which, where it's true it isn't new, and where it's new it isn't true. And that was the judgment passed on this book to begin with. The people recognized that the unpleasant thing about it for them was: the things have been disclosed. (The book itself was named Isis Unveiled!) But they calmed their uneasiness by thinking: ‘What must have happened is, that—from some quarter or other—there has been an infringement, strictly speaking, of our rights.’

And then, when the Secret Doctrine made its appearance, in which there was a whole heap of things, that were not known even to the highest grades, then the people could no longer say: What is true isn't new, and what's new isn't true; for there were a whole number of things said in it, which had not been preserved by tradition.

So that they were now faced in a most curious way with the very thing that they had been afraid of ever since Schelling and Laurence Oliphant,—coming now from a woman, and in a most strange and, moreover, perplexing fashion.

For this reason, as I said, the personality is, psychologically, even more interesting than the books. It was certainly a significant and remarkable phenomenon for the spiritual life of the departing nineteenth century, this phenomenon of Blavatsky.

This is the point down to which I wished to carry my facts.

During the process of acquiring anthroposophical knowledge many questions may be asked on different points. Such questions are fully justified and we will devote part of our study today to the consideration of them. The answers will often lead more deeply into the whole complex of cosmic facts in so far as the spiritual world plays into them, and especially into the complex of facts connected with man's nature itself.

A person who has gradually come to realize the far-reaching significance of reincarnation may ask: Why is it that in ordinary life today man cannot become conscious of earlier earth-lives? Clairvoyant consciousness is able as it were so to extend the memory that earlier lives on earth rise up as remembrances, but in normal present-day humanity this does not happen.

From the standpoint of clairvoyant investigation the question takes the following form. It is clear, of course, that the faculty needed for clairvoyant investigation arises from within man himself, his own soul. He transcends the level of the ordinary human standpoint and reaches that of clairvoyance; hence the forces which subsequently make it possible to look back to previous earth-lives must be present in every human being. And now the question is: What happens to these forces, what does human nature do with these forces which, although they are present in a man, are born with him, he does not develop to the point where they enable him to remember earlier lives on earth?

When this question and the forces relevant to it are investigated by clairvoyance, observation must be directed to a very early age of childhood. For it is only then that the forces which can be used for retrospective clairvoyant vision into earlier earth-lives are to be seen at work. In present-day humanity these forces are used for the development of the larynx and everything connected with its functions. They are used especially for the development of that which later on makes the human larynx capable of learning to speak. Therefore the forces that would enable a man to look back into earlier incarnations are there in everyone; but in the present age they are used to such an extent for the development of the organs of speech that in normal circumstances this remembrance of the past is beyond man's reach.

There were, of course, epochs when nearly all over the earth men had this faculty of remembrance. The explanation is that retrospective vision into earlier earth-lives is not deprived of all the forces used for the development of the speech-organs; even while these organs are being formed, certain forces are kept back. In the process of evolution, speech has gradually assumed a form which in the present cycle of time summons up many more forces—especially of the etheric body—than it did in earlier epochs. Hence the forces that remain after the greater part of them have been applied in forming the larynx are left entirely unused by modern man. Were he to take account of them—as the clairvoyant must do—he would be able to look back into earlier earth-lives.

I indicated in the public lecture here [Riddles of Life. 9.X.13.] that if a man succeeds in developing the activity of the etheric body that is otherwise unfolded only in exercising the organs of speech, if he succeeds in releasing the forces from these organs, in being able as it were to listen inwardly without speaking aloud and in intensifying this experience, then the exercise of these forces is actually able to call forth the memory of earlier lives on earth. A man of the present pays no attention to the forces of speech which remain unused and can be applied for looking back into earlier incarnations. This is a case where clairvoyant investigation can indicate the origin of the forces in normal life which would otherwise enable men to have insight into the spiritual life.

The same applies to the forces which in the human being of today are used to bring into being the so-called grey matter of the brain—the main organ of thinking. Thinking is not, of course, actually engendered by the brain, but in order to think the brain is needed as an instrument. The forces of thinking which, if they were all at man's disposal, would enable him easily to grasp what is contained, for example, in my book Occult Science, are used in the case of the normal human being today to organize and co-ordinate the grey substance of the brain.

The high degree of co-ordination in the brain-substance of the average man nowadays was not present in the men of ancient Greece, about the sixth or fifth century B.C. Human nature changes in this respect more rapidly than is supposed. In the Greeks of the prehistoric epoch—the tenth, eleventh, twelfth centuries B.C.—there arose quite naturally at a certain age the clairvoyance that can now again be given expression as Spiritual Science, And the forces which to this day remain over from the elaboration of the grey substance of the brain must be exercised in the way described in order to survey with clarity and definition what is presented in my book Occult Science.

It is really not difficult, even for a modern man, to acquire the qualifications for describing the spiritual world. Indeed it might almost be said to be a matter of surprise that there are not numbers of people today with a quite natural vision of these conditions of existence—and it is also surprising that descriptions of them meet with such vehement antagonism. For it is not difficult, comparatively speaking, to attain the degree of clairvoyance necessary for vision of these things. All that need be done is the following—although in such matters the saying in Faust may well apply: ‘True, 'tis easy, yet is the easy hard.’

The most vigorous development of the brain takes place during the first years of life; it is then that clairvoyance sees the etheric body, and the astral body too, working most actively of all at the moulding and articulation of the brain. But this work goes on for some considerable time. Although the process is slower in later years, it is no exaggeration to say that through what he learns from life man becomes cleverer and cleverer; elaboration of the grey matter of the brain does not cease. But the following principle is not noticed, nor can one really expect it to be. If in a certain year a man resolves to give up a favourite spiritual pursuit ... it would have to be one connected with external matters because it is through this kind of activity that the brain-substance is moulded, although Anthroposophy can of course be studied, provided it is not studied just like some other science... if this man resolves to give up some favourite pursuit for seven years and strictly adheres to this, trying in silent meditation to awaken the forces which have been economized in this way but would have been used differently if the pursuit had continued, then it will be comparatively easy for him to acquire a high degree of knowledge at least of the conditions described in the book Occult Science. The fact that so few achieve this merely shows that very little is done in this direction. The effort is not carried through, because anyone who has a favourite pursuit will seldom have sufficient self-denial to abandon it entirely for seven whole years. So you see that part of the knowledge that can be given out today is within comparatively easy reach.

When you think of the amazing achievements of modern culture it will not surprise you that many forces of the etheric body are devoted to elaborating the brain, for this culture is almost entirely a product of the activity of the brain; the forces are all absorbed in this task. Someone might say: Yes, but I have taken no part whatever in creating this culture! Everyone can delude himself in this respect, but the facts remain. On the earth today there is scarcely a spot, however isolated, where outer culture does not penetrate to such an extent that man's thinking is engaged with it. And that in itself suffices to divert the forces from the attainment of clairvoyant consciousness.

True, it might be said that savages do not concern themselves with what is thus elaborated by the brain. But neither can it be said of savages today that they unfold any particular clairvoyant forces in this direction. This is because a definite spiritual law prevails, namely that there must be special preparation for what is thus to be acquired by means of clairvoyance. A savage might possibly be able to develop clairvoyant forces of a quite different kind, but not those required for vision of what is described in Occult Science, because he has undergone no preparation for it. These forces must be the outcome of the transformation of other forces.

Again, it might be argued: But a great many people have no pet occupation! Why is it that they have not become clairvoyant? The reason is that the development of the forces of clairvoyance does not originate from nothingness but from the transformation of what already exists. Forces must already have been developed in a certain direction; the preliminaries for the intelligence belonging to modern culture must already have been there. The exercise of these forces must be renounced for a time ... and then they are transformed. This is what enables the facts described in Occult Science to be followed clairvoyantly. Such descriptions are made possible by applying the forces which normally enable the brain to make use of the forces of intelligence in its higher form.

On the other hand, it is the transformation of different forces and faculties which leads, not to these wide, universal vistas, but to the discovery of particular conditions. For example, the faculty of looking back into earlier earth-lives is acquired by keeping back certain forces otherwise used entirely for the development of the organs of speech in the way described.

I have now spoken of two kinds of forces which enable man to have clairvoyant vision of the spiritual worlds. I have spoken of the forces used in the present age for the elaboration of the grey matter of the brain; the forces enabling man to look back to earlier lives on earth are connected with the development of speech. But there are still other forces which make it possible to see in greater detail what lies between death and a new birth and what is happening to an individual human being during that period of existence. It is the more general conditions that are described in Occult Science. But it is a different matter to see right into the spiritual world itself; other forces hardly noticed in life are required for that.

There is something that entails the exercise of a great many forces—the fact that man does not go about on all fours throughout his life but at an early age acquires the faculty of standing upright. The forces enabling man to assume the vertical position are of such a nature that they inspire a quite special reverence in one who has penetrated into the spiritual world. For a person capable of clairvoyant investigation a wonderful mystery is contained in the spectacle of a child learning to walk. Certain of the forces used by the human being in early childhood in order to stand upright, remain over, but they are taken all too little into account. These are the forces which make insight possible into the world where the life between death and a new birth is spent.

There are other ways of achieving this, but the following is one. When a man succeeds in recollecting how he learnt to walk and the nature of the efforts made, he discovers in himself the forces that have been saved up in his etheric body, for it is the etheric body that must be specially exerted then. If he seeks out these forces—and they are present in everyone—he can summon from his own being much that enables him to look back into the life spent between death and rebirth.

You may ask: How can this be achieved? If we have the good fortune to be able to promulgate our Anthroposophical Movement ... well, it can be said that we have already made a beginning with the summoning of these forces. If things go well, they become active only after a period of seven years has passed—but a beginning has been made and this beginning will develop further in human nature. These forces that have been saved generally remain unheeded, but awareness of them can be promoted by practising a certain form of dance. This awareness can of course also be aroused through meditation ... but for a little less than a year now, certain groups of people among us have been working at Eurythmy,¹ an art based on the principles of the movements of the etheric body.

Eurythmy is nothing like ordinary gymnastics or dancing—which are really of little account—but the movements made are in complete accord with those of the etheric body. Through these free movements the human being will gradually discover and become aware of the forces that are still within him. Foundations are being created for the awakening of forces within the human being which will really enable him to see into the spiritual worlds stretching between his last death and his birth in the present life.

In these and other ways Anthroposophy can be a really practical factor in cultural life. And we may be sure that Anthroposophy will not stop at the teaching of truths in the abstract but man himself, in his whole being, will be affected in such a way that the awakening of forces now slumbering within him will lead to actual spiritual experience.

These things that have to be said here are strange, but they are realities. When a man discovers the forces that have remained over from the process of learning to walk, this enables him to see with clairvoyant vision the worlds in which he lives between death and a new birth. This can also be achieved through meditation, but meditation must then become feeling, and feeling is the most difficult experience of all to acquire through meditation. It is therefore a matter of discovering the forces which enable man to see into the world stretching between death and rebirth, to see happenings that took place some long time before birth. In this realm there is a great deal that for the first time makes life really comprehensible. For example, some misfortune befalls us. To begin with, our one and only feeling is that it is indeed a misfortune. Did we but know why it was that decades, even centuries, before birth, we ourselves so arranged conditions that this misfortune should befall us, many things would be easier to bear! For then we should know that the misfortune is an ordeal, helping us to progress. Many other things, too, are experienced when we look into that realm of the spiritual world where the preparation for the present life has been undergone.

I will not now describe the general conditions, for that has been done in my writings. I will try to show by certain examples how the life before birth influences the life after birth. Strange as it may seem, when we have passed the middle point of life between death and rebirth—this life lasts for centuries, so there is naturally a middle point—the soul's attention in the spiritual world is directed mainly to the earth below. And after this middle point more and more impressions come to the soul from what is being done down there, from what human beings on earth are thinking and feeling; definite impressions are received by every individual soul.

For example, a soul may be passing into the second half of the spiritual life leading towards its new birth and may perceive more and more clearly those men who on the earth below are, let us say, pioneers of the coming epoch—men who are spiritually active. Certain individuals among these spiritually active men prove to be of great value to the soul. It even happens that the eyes of a soul are directed from the spiritual world very particularly to one or two figures on the earth.

Let us assume that a man born in the second half of the nineteenth century was in the spiritual world at the beginning of the nineteenth and during the second half of the eighteenth centuries. From that world the gaze of the soul is directed to men of significance in the cultural life of the time. Among them are certain individuals whom the soul particularly values and greatly loves. One of the experiences in that world is that souls look downwards to the human beings who are evolving on the earth. Moreover, these human beings on earth are influenced, although not in a way that encroaches upon freedom; the effect of the influence is that certain things arise more easily in the souls of these individuals on earth because some being is looking downwards to them from the spiritual world. Thus are men on earth stimulated to creative work and activity by souls who will be born at a later time and whose gaze is directed to them from the spiritual world. This can happen in matters both of a general and of a more intimate kind.

The case has occurred of a soul living in the spiritual world during the eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth centuries; an outstanding personage on earth becomes this soul's ideal. One sees what the soul would fain become, how its desire is to find this personage after birth. For example, the soul sees the books of the man he desires to emulate. Thus the soul looks down from heaven to earth with a certain inner yearning, a certain inner urge, just as a living man—although with somewhat different feelings—looks upwards with longing to the Beyond, to the heavens. But there is this great difference: when a man on earth looks up-wards to the heavens without any knowledge of Anthroposophy these heavens remain more or less undefined, indistinct. The human being who is living in the spiritual world, however, is able to see with great exactitude the conditions prevailing on the earth, the human souls there for whom he has particular admiration, whose writings he perhaps longs to read.

In short, during the second half of spiritual existence between death and a new birth one learns to know the souls of men in detail, to look right into these souls. And we ourselves, living now, can be aware that yonder in the spiritual world there are souls waiting to be born in decades of the near future; they gaze into our souls with longing, seeing there what they need as preparation for their earthly existence. During the period of their spiritual life they see our souls with vision as distinct as earthly man's vision of his heaven is indistinct.

This again is an indication of the fact that even if we have only a little knowledge of the spiritual worlds, the feeling comes that we are being observed. And so indeed we are, in manifold ways. The eyes of beings in the spiritual worlds, especially of those for whom the time has come to be born, are directed to our souls. Here again is a proof that the influence of Anthroposophy cannot possibly be harmful, for it helps to make what a man has in his soul worthy of observation by souls as yet unborn.

Clairvoyant investigation of these things brings momentous, often shattering experiences. One profoundly moving experience is when we look up to souls in the spiritual worlds who are on the way to birth, and see how they are gazing down to the earth, seeking for those who might become their parents. In earlier epochs this was of greater consequence than it is today. But even now it is still one of the most moving experiences to observe such souls, for infinitely diverse impressions are received. I will describe one such impression of something that may actually happen.

A soul about to incarnate knows, for example, that in the coming earthly life it will need a particular kind of education, that certain knowledge will have to be assimilated even in early youth. But now the soul realizes: either here or there it would be possible to acquire such knowledge. This, however, is possible only by renouncing parents who in another respect would have been able to ensure a happy existence and by resorting to parents who may be quite unable to do so. If other parents were chosen the soul would be forced to admit: In those circumstances what is most important of I all will be beyond my reach.

It must not be imagined that all conditions of the spiritual life differ entirely from those on the earth. One sees souls who before birth are in the throes of fierce inner conflict. For example, one may see a soul who is realizing:

In my youth I may be ill-treated by rough parents. When a soul is in this situation, the fierce inner conflict begins. Many souls in the spiritual world bring this conflict upon themselves while preparing for birth. It must here be said that these struggles constitute a kind of external world for the soul. What I am now describing is not an inner conflict only, not a conflict of the heart only, but it is projected outwards and is, so to speak, around the soul. One sees in all definition the Imaginations which show that these souls must go forward to their coming incarnation inwardly torn asunder.

When we think about these conditions, it will readily occur to us why so many people have an aversion to Anthroposophy. They would much prefer it to be true that after death man enters for all time into eternal bliss. But it is not so. Moreover, it is well that things are as they are, for under these conditions the world. will eventually reach the degree of perfection destined for it,

Curiously enough, the capacity to see into one's own life or that of another in the spiritual world comes from the forces of the etheric body that have been saved over from the process of learning to walk. But seership shows that these forces, when they have really unfolded, are in a certain respect superior to the forces of clairvoyance developed with the object of looking back into earlier earth-lives. Please take particular notice of this difference, for it throws light on many things.

There is no easier way of unfolding a dangerous form of clairvoyance than by the development of those forces which in modern man are there for the purpose of producing the organs of speech and which, if kept back, enable him to look into earlier incarnations; for these forces are connected most closely of all with the lower instincts and passions in man's nature. And by nothing is a man brought so near to Lucifer and Ahriman as by the development of these forces which, at a certain level, enable him to look back into his own earlier earth-lives or into those of others. They lead to illusions; but above all, if they are not rightly developed, they have the effect that under their influence the clairvoyant may deteriorate morally, rather than the reverse. So the very forces which make vision of earlier incarnations possible are the most dangerous of all. They should be unfolded only when at the same time a man pays full attention to the development of pure morality in his own being. Because morality in its purest form is essential if it is desired to unfold these forces, experienced teachers will not readily countenance any systematic development of the powers which enable man to look into earlier incarnations.

Moreover this can be said: It is as common to find a certain lower kind of clairvoyance which looks into other worlds and can give descriptions of spiritual regions, as it is rare to find evidence of the development of genuine, objective vision into earlier incarnations as the result of the exercise of the forces of speech alone. As a rule, therefore, recourse is had to yet other measures when it is desired to train the capacity to look back into earlier incarnations. And here we come to an interesting point, showing how necessary it is to pay attention to things of which otherwise little account is taken.

It will seldom happen that spiritual guidance brings a person to the point of being able, merely by the development of the forces of speech, to look back to earlier lives on earth. In the present age many individuals could be capable of this, but as a rule it is achieved by different means. One of these means will seem strange, although it is based on a profound truth.

Suppose someone lives intensely in his inner life. It would cost him excessive strain, or possibly lead to overpowering temptations, were he to succeed, merely by developing the forces of speech, to look back in the light of karma at his earlier incarnations. Hence the spiritual Powers have recourse to a different means. Apparently by chance, he meets someone who mentions a name or a particular epoch or people. This works upon his soul from outside in such a way that the mental picture sets astir the forces which help to promote clairvoyance. And then he becomes aware that this name or reference—although the speaker himself knew nothing about it—is a pointer, helping him to look into earlier lives on earth. In such a case there has been recourse to an outer means. The man in question hears the name of a person or of an epoch or of a people and is thus stimulated from outside to look back into previous incarnations. Such stimuli are sometimes exceedingly important for clairvoyant contemplation of the world. An experience seems to have been quite accidental but it provides a stimulus for powers of clairvoyance that would otherwise have remained rudimentary.

These are aphoristic indications on the subject of the penetration of the spiritual world into our earthly world. Actually, of course, the process is highly complicated.

Looking back into earlier earth-lives is therefore connected with forces fraught with danger because they lead to deception, to delusion. On the other hand, hardly anyone who develops the forces of clairvoyance leading to insight into the life in the spirit preceding birth will be prone to misuse these forces. As a rule it will be souls of a certain purity, in whom there is a certain natural morality, who look back with reliable vision into the life in the spiritual world preceding the present life on earth. This is connected with the fact that the forces of clairvoyance used for looking into this particular period of existence are the forces of childhood, those that have been left over from the process of learning to walk. They are the most innocent of all the forces in man's nature.

I ask you to pay attention to this, for it is very significant: The most innocent forces are at the same time those which, when they are developed, enable man to look into the life preceding birth. That, too, is why there is such enchantment in the sight of a tiny child, for in the aura playing around it are the forces which still send their radiance into the life before birth. In the aura of a child whose very countenance bears the stamp of innocence and otherworldliness, clairvoyant contemplation may perceive something that is truly more interesting than what comes to expression in the aura of many a grown-up person. The conflicts that were passed through in the spirit-land before birth and have determined destiny make the aura round the child into something full of glory, full of wisdom. The wisdom manifesting in the aura of a child is often far greater than anything which at a later age he will be able to express in words. The physiognomy may still lack definition, but very much can be revealed to the clairvoyant when he is able to see what is playing around a child. And if the forces present in childhood are developed later on into clairvoyance, vision becomes possible of the actual conditions preceding birth by a considerable period.

To look into this world may not, perhaps, be gratifying to egoism but to one who wishes to understand the whole setting of world-existence this vista, too, is of absorbing interest. Investigation in the Akasha Chronicle concerning certain outstanding figures in world-history consists not only in trying to discover what kind of life they lived on the physical plane, but how, as souls in the spiritual world between death and rebirth, they made preparation for this life.

The forces which, if kept unsullied, shine into earlier incarnations are saved, not so much in childhood but in the period of life when passions, moreover often in their worst form, unfold in the human being. These forces, which of course have other functions as well in human nature, develop much later than those of speech. They have to do with the emotions of sensual love and everything connected with them. There is a direct relationship between the forces leading to sensual love and those leading to speech—in the male this comes to expression in the breaking of the voice. It is at this age in life that many of these forces are saved. If they are kept pure they lead to the retrospective vision of earlier lives on earth If they are not kept pure, if they come to be associated with sensual instincts in man they may lead to the greatest occult abuses. The forces of clairvoyance which originate and are held back at this age in life are also those that are most easily subject to temptation. You will now be able to grasp the whole connection!

The seer who gladly speaks about the period stretching between death and rebirth—some of you will have noticed that in other circles this is seldom mentioned—such a seer has developed particularly the forces saved from very early childhood. But a clairvoyant who speaks a great deal—fallaciously for the most part—about the earlier incarnations of individuals, must be distrusted. Some cases occur very frequently, for many people come out with utterances about earlier incarnations as if they were handing them out on a tray! A clairvoyant of this type must be distrusted because in this domain it is all too easy to evoke the forces most liable to temptation. The forces that can be saved for this purpose are saved at the time of life when sensual love is developing, and before the human being has taken his place in the social life. At times these forces give rise to a great deal of malpractice, especially to a definite occult malpractice, because they, more than any others, contribute to the promotion of delusion after delusion in the domain of the spiritual world.

Why are the assertions of clairvoyants who are exposed to these temptations so often false? It is because when the forces saved from this age of life are put into application, the lower instincts and urges immediately rise out of the human being like mist. And then Ahriman and the Ahrimanic spirits approach and out of this rising mist create ghosts, spectres, which can be seen and taken to be earlier incarnations.

The kind of clairvoyance needed for descriptions such as are given in the book Occult Science will be developed particularly easily by saving forces which can be held back only at a later age. And because at this age—after the twenty-first until the twenty-eighth years—the human being is usually developing forces concerned more with the intellectual life, with the life that is associated with a certain element of dispassion, investigations in this domain are the least subject to error and delusion. Thus knowledge of the great spiritual conditions in world-existence is acquired through the development of the forces which work in man's being at the elaboration of the brain.

The spirit-region proper, the region that is of particular interest at the time when a new life is in preparation, can be investigated by means of the forces saved in earliest childhood, at the age when the human being is learning to walk.

Admittedly, these are astonishing facts, but if we desire to penetrate into the spiritual worlds we must accustom ourselves to assimilate many ideas which, to begin with, seem paradoxical. The spiritual world, however, is not a mere continuation of the physical world of sense; indeed in many respects it is in utter contrast to the physical world. Man is revealed to us as a being occupying a place of great significance in the universe when on the one side we consider his destiny, his faculties and abilities in his earthly life, and when on the other side—through knowledge of spiritual reality—we see how between death and a new birth he passes through phases of life altogether different from that of the earth. It is then that the true significance and destination of man are revealed to us.

In these two lectures I wanted to describe various matters relating to the spiritual world. I have thought it advisable to speak in a rather aphoristic way because it is the first time we have been together in this city, and most of you will already be familiar with the systematic presentations contained in the books and writings—and also because I wanted to give certain supplementary information. It seemed to me that this would be more useful to the friends here than if I had dealt with a more connected chapter of Anthroposophy.

One's wish—you will allow me to say this at the end of what has been, for me too, such a happy gathering—is that Anthroposophy may penetrate as deeply as possible into the hearts and souls of men at the present time! For two things are important. First, when we observe the life around us and the facts of that life, seeing that the greatest cultural achievements are having the effect of making men more and more materialistic ... then we realize how increasingly necessary Anthroposophy is to humanity, how great is men's need of it for the very reason that external life makes them into materialists. Because the most brilliant achievements of external life have this effect, men need the counterweight provided by Anthroposophy. Anthroposophy is a necessity for the earthy life of humanity and will become increasingly so in the immediate future. And anyone who reflects that external life in materialism would be doomed to sterility and to gradual death, caused precisely by the highest achievements of culture, will have the intense longing that Anthroposophy may find its way into the hearts and souls of men.

Our culture will make greater and greater progress; but true as it is that many birds of song disappear from areas where the chimneys of factories tower up, true as it is that they are driven away by the smoke pouring from these chimneys, it is equally true that although we need everything that culture can give us—railways, steamships, telephones, aircraft, and so on—although nothing is to be said against the progress of external culture, nevertheless happiness, vigour, harmony and vitality of the life of soul would inevitably wilt and die under the influence of material culture if Anthroposophy did not bring spirituality to the souls of men. Therefore anyone who has insight into existing conditions cannot but long most profoundly that Anthroposophy will spread—for it is a sheer necessity.

On the other side the fact must be faced that as a result of this materialistic culture men have never rejected, nay even hated, Anthroposophy as vehemently as they do today. And these two facts—necessity and misunderstanding confront us today like two pillars between which we must pass if a place is to be created in the world for Anthroposophy. For those of us who endeavour to prepare other souls for the assimilation of Anthroposophy, a challenge is inscribed on each of these pillars—an urgent challenge to do everything that brings ourselves and those who are willing for it to Anthroposophy.

It was from this standpoint that I wanted to speak to you during this, my first visit to this city. And I should like my words of farewell to be these: Would that something of what I have been able to say have passed into your hearts and feelings, not into your heads alone! Then you will feel even more deeply and fundamentally united with us and with all who would like to bear this Movement more widely into the world than they have done hitherto. Because up to now we could not be together in space and this has happened for the first time, it is the wish of all of us that this gathering will have strengthened and made closer the bond between our souls.

With this I take leave of you, my dear friends, and of this beautiful city, with the consciousness that when such a gathering has taken place, it becomes the stimulus for a communion not dependent upon space or time. Let my farewell to you be this: May it be that through being together in space the stimulus has been given for an unbroken and enduring communion in the spirit.

• 1. See Eurythmy as Visible Speech. Fifteen lectures given in Dornach, June/July, 1924. (Anthroposophical Publishing Co., 1956.)

Today I shall have to continue with some of the topics I discussed the last time I was here. It is particularly important, indeed necessary, to stress the connection between what I have said before and what I wish to add today. I have explained that the road to spiritual science calls for recognition to be given to two facts. One fact is that it is impossible to imagine that matter, physical substance, can be found to the outer world of our human environment. This can be clearly understood on the basis of many different things that can be learned through spiritual science. Our eyes behold the outside world, our ears hear the outside world, and we come to understand nature in a way when we use the intellect to combine the things we see, hear and Perceive with the other senses. We then think we know something about outer nature. Yet we are in error if we think and believe some form of science will help us to find physical matter and the laws pertaining to it in that outer nature. Materialism was in error not because it was speaking of physical matter but because materialists thought they could find physical matter and the laws of physical matter, its infrastructure and essential nature, in the outside world. People saying they do not want to know about the outside world because it is a material world, and that they want to follow the inner mystical path to a world of the spirit, are therefore materialists just as much as people who simply interpret the outside world in materialistic terms. Their search along the path of mysticism shows that in their view, too, Physical matter is to be found in the outside world. The people of more recent times are in error when they look for the essential nature of matter in the outside world. To put things right essentially means that we must no longer look for the nature of matter in the outside world and be very clear in our minds that however far we extend our sensory perceptions we shall never discover the nature of matter and its infrastructure, its laws. It has to be understood that all that exists in the outside world is Maya. It is the world of phenomena. Look as we may we shall never find anything material in that outside world.

On the other hand we must grasp a second, quite different fact. It is that the nature of matter, which materialism is erroneously looking for in the outside world, may be found within ourselves. We shall find it particularly if we become one-sided, abstract mystics. The contents of a certain mysticism coming to our awareness—experiences we think we are having—are nothing but the flame, I would say, that is lit within us by processes involving our physical organs. Considering the mysticism of Tauler and of Meister Eckhart, one is right in thinking that these men had a special faculty for experiencing these things and interpreting the physical matter in their bodies when the flame of awareness was ignited. They found the material world through mysticism. Until we know that external observation reveals only the world of phenomena, Maya, and that inward observation reveals only physical matter and its flame, we cannot get a clear, true picture of the nature of the world and the way human beings relate to this world. Physical matter is not to be found by applying science to the outside world, it must be sought within us, through mysticism. There we shall find its laws. The essential nature of gravity is not to be found with the aid of Atwood's machine.⁵¹ Instead we can try—in our thirty-second year, or perhaps at another time in our lives—to become inwardly aware of gravity, so that we know from inner experience what it really means to experience gravity. Concrete inner experience should show us that between the thirtieth and fortieth year we grow heavier and heavier inside. We can gain inner experience of a property of matter that merely comes to expression in mystical experiences. I have tried to demonstrate the essential point by saying that anyone finding himself in the midst of the chaos of the planet, the way modern scientists do, cannot get a clear idea concerning these things. We see the plants, the animals, the cloud cover; we see the glittering light of the stars, we see rivers, hills and valleys and so on. Yet if someone were to observe the earth from Mars, for instance, none of these would matter. An inhabitant of the planet Mars observing the earth through some instrument or other—we may well imagine, and it would be in accord with the truth, though in a different way, that those who inhabit Mars have the kind of organization that enables them to observe the earth—would perceive nothing of the cloud formations, rivers and mountains we see, nothing of the phenomena relating to the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms. He would only perceive what goes on inside the skin of the human beings living on earth. Everything else would vanish before the eye of an inhabitant of Mars. He would perceive only what goes on inwardly in the organic life of human beings and for him that would be the material world of the earth. When we grow aware of a mystical element within us it is not what many mystics think it is but the flame that is cooked inside us. That is the place where we can find out about the physical matter of the earth. This form of self-perception takes us into the sphere of matter and of energy, an area where the people of the Western world have arrived at exactly the opposite view over the last centuries.

This gives an indication of the extent to which we have to change our thinking if the decline is to become an upward movement again. People think they are materialists or idealists or spiritualists because they follow a particular philosophy. That is not the case. We are far from being spiritualists when we say we contemplate the inner and not the outer life. It could indeed happen that someone is concentrating on his inner life and exactly by doing so comes to observe matter; the way it turns into a flame inside us. To find the right path it will be necessary to grasp what I mean, and to do so with the right inner attitude. The outer world as we perceive it with the senses offers only phenomena; it does not reveal the root and origin of the phenomena. Their root and origin lies inside our own skins. Anything we see outside should be regarded in the same way as we regard a rainbow. Anyone who believes a rainbow to be more than merely a phenomenon, thinking it to be something material spanning the heavens, is taking the wrong view. In the same way we are in error If, due to the fact that our sense of touch is also involved when we perceive the world around us, we believe we are surrounded by material things and not mere phenomena. The only difference compared to a rainbow is that other senses are also involved. Materiality cannot be found there, however, just as it does not exist in a rainbow. Everything outside us is phenomenon. The root and origin of the phenomena therefore is inside the human skin. The processes that carry the affairs of the earth from one age to another take place inside the human skin.

It may seem highly improbable and paradoxical to modern minds but it is nevertheless true that the phenomena which surround us today, and the laws apparent in these phenomena, are not the outer consequence of material events that occurred three thousand years before the Mystery of Golgotha. They are the consequence of what went on inside the bodies of Egyptians, of Chaldeans and others three thousand years before the Mystery of Golgotha. Those inner events have become outer ones. The outside world of those times has vanished, disappeared. Human bodies hold the germ for a future that may be reckoned in thousands of years. It is possible to see this by considering the natural phenomena of today, drawing a conclusion that may be bold but nevertheless revealing. People talk about the properties of the element radium. To someone able to perceive the reality of the spirit this sometimes sounds like children talking about something adult minds have long since come to understand on the basis of different facts. Modern physicists know that the radium which existed on the earth's surface up to AD 140 has since disappeared and no longer is radium. The radium that is found today has only formed since AD 140. Physicists are actually teaching this now. These things present themselves to human minds to force them, as it were, finally to give up the erroneous ways of thinking which had to be pursued for centuries for the sake of human freedom.

All this shows that it is necessary to consider the things spiritual science working towards anthroposophy presents to human minds in a totally different way from the way we usually look at things. It is necessary to abandon mere theory and consider the reality: to progress at all levels from abstract intellectual knowledge to active perceptiveness, to doing things, really doing something in relation to the world. As I have said before—but it is essential to make this point with real forcefulness—people think that some are materialists nowadays and others are spiritualists. A spiritualist will say: ‘He's a materialist and has to be opposed because it is not true that the soul is the product of physical matter. What the materialist says is wrong and we have done enough when we have refuted his arguments. The materialist is in error and therefore must be opposed.’ That is not the point, however. It is not a question of logic, of theories. Yet people always think spiritual science is all theory. Spiritual science working towards anthroposophy always bases itself on reality, sometimes of course seeking it in the place where it is to be truly found: in the true realm of the spirit. People who look to the outside world and seek to find matter everywhere by the methods now used in molecular and atomic theory—it makes no difference if they see matter as point sources of energy or as tiny building stones—are not merely subject to an error in logic that can be refuted. True spiritual science has nothing to do with purely theoretical concepts. It is concerned with reality. Anyone looking for more than phenomena in the outside world Is on the road not only to logical error but to organic illness affecting the whole of his person. We should not say that to follow this road Is an error in logic. We should say that anyone searching for truth In that direction is on the road to organic illness, on the road to feeblemindedness. Spiritual science working towards anthroposophy often has to change theoretical views into views that relate to reality. The search for clarity of ideas and concepts has nothing to do with merely agreeing or disagreeing with the views of others; it has to do with sickness and health, very real things in our lives. It therefore has to be said that a seeker who looks to phenomena for more than mere phenomena, for physical matter, is on the road to feeblemindedness, to organic illness. This is entirely within the sphere of reality.

In the same way we cannot simply oppose people who look to find abstract spirituality within themselves. Someone looking for the spirit by following the path of mere one-sided inner mysticism, failing to realize that when he comes to see through the tissue of this mysticism it is materiality he finds, is on the way to becoming infantile, to developing an organic illness taking the form of childishness. (I have given it the name that may well be given when one perceives this from beyond the threshold.) If we call this the threshold from the Physical to the non-physical world, with the Guardian of the Threshold standing there, the quality we call inspiration, or genius, on this side may justifiably be called childishness on the other side of the threshold. Childishness goes the wrong way in the physical world if it persists throughout life. Genius on the other hand means that a certain childlike quality persists in the background throughout life. Genius is achieved when we are able to retain into ripe old age a quality of soul that normally belongs to childhood. This is seen in its true form from beyond the threshold. If however that childlike soul quality persists one-sidedly into subsequent life stages, then this element, which in its rightful place in the human sphere is genius, becomes childishness instead. Once again we see that purely logical ideas must be replaced with ideas relating to reality as soon as we enter the sphere of spiritual science. They must be replaced with concepts that not merely change our views but produce inner organic changes.

Spiritual science working towards anthroposophy is a very serious matter. The seriousness of it is not given full recognition when people approach the work of spiritual science with their ordinary mental attitudes. They want to agree or disagree the way they usually do in the outside world; they want to continue in their habitual ways as they approach spiritual science. Spiritual science working towards anthroposophy can however only be taught by speaking in the terms of the world beyond. There words have entirely different meanings. Gravity, which exerts a downward pull here on earth, exerts an upward pull in that world. In the spiritual world we have to speak of what draws us down in a way that makes it the exact opposite. It is not surprising then that anyone taking spiritual science seriously is, to begin with, completely misunderstood by people who want to proceed in the customary way—a way that was inevitable in the age of materialism—when they approach spiritual science. The inevitable result is that things like those I dared to put to you yesterday are misunderstood.

Someone presenting his own views in opposition to Oswald Spengler would simply refute him. A spiritual scientist finds himself obliged not to refute Spengler's view in the usual way. He has to assume points of view rather than follow a rigid line; he will have to say that Oswald Spengler speaks from a different point of view, one that offers no prospects for the immediate future. We do justice to such phenomena if we do not simply refute them but show the genius that is in them, speaking with inner concern about the things one would like to see overcome. Spiritual science has much more to do with the way in which we deal with these things than with bald statements, with the kind of mystical platitude that the person who produces it even believes to be a particularly inspired truth. We have to consider these things, for we are moving into an age where we have to get beyond the mere contents of intellectual life. This is something I want to stress over and over again: we must get beyond the mere content of intellectual life.

Going just by the content, even a fool would find it relatively easy to refute Oswald Spengler's ideas. That is by no means difficult, but it is not what matters. What matters is to establish the concrete reality of Spengler's work and show how it can be overcome in a real and concrete way. In future the essential point in characterizing a person Will be more and more to consider what they are actually saying rather than to respond in sympathy or antipathy to what he or she has to say. We should not consider whether certain contents please or displeases us, but whether there is a spiritual quality to them. It is more important for the overall outcome of world evolution that there is someone who is an inspired materialist, a genius in representing materialism, for that calls for a brilliant mind whilst it often needs very little intelligence to represent platitudinous mysticism. A platitudinous mystic may on occasion do more to make the world materialistic than an inspired materialist. It is the quality of mind that matters. Recognition of this fact will count for much more in future than the actual content. This is something we have to learn. We must not seek for the spirit as though it were a system of logic; we must look for its reality. Let me ask you this. Would it not be possible for You to see that more of the spirit is alive in an inspired materialist than in a spiritualist full of platitudes? These are the things spiritual science working towards anthroposophy must come to see clearly. It is the reality of the spirit that matters, not the abstract statements made by one person or another. People fail to realize how important it is to consider realities and not theories!

Some of the things we see in ordinary life simply must be considered from the point of view of spiritual science today if we are to get them clear in our minds. Consider the parties which have formed in public life in our everyday world. Let us first of all consider the ordinary political parties. You know that the most miserable, sterile cliches are to be found in party politics. Yet to some extent we are all part of this, willy-nilly, unless we want to withdraw completely from public life or perhaps cannot have a vote because we are stateless and have not been given the right to vote anywhere. Everybody who has the right to vote is forced to support one line or another, i.e. to work along party lines. Parties are a fact of life. They go back to better times, to the English see-saw system when there was the Conservative Party on one side and the Liberal Party on the other. It may be said that all the parties that now exist are different combinations of those two shades. Sometimes the liberal element which is to the left takes on some colour from conservatism on the right, and conservatism is coloured with liberalism from the left, as in the case of the Social Democrats, or conservatism turns radical, as we have seen in the present time. All in all it can be said that the conservative-liberal seesaw is the pattern on which all our parties are based. That is the picture one gets when looking at this in an outer way. The most dreadful things are happening in those party organizations—everybody would admit this. The thing exists, however, and the question is why it exists. What does it rally represent? What in fact are parties?

Everything that presents itself in the physical world is an image of the non-physical world. What is it that exists in the non-physical world with the result that in the physical world we have parties as an image of it? The matter can only be properly understood if we grasp the conditions which apply when we go across the threshold to the spiritual world. There we arrive at something very different, at the real nature of things. Here in the physical world we are idealists, sceptics, realists, spiritualists or any other kind of -ists. We are something that can be summed up in a manifesto, as a political or sociological system. In short, we are something-ists. We base ourselves on an abstract notion, for parties always base themselves on manifestos, systems and the like, i.e. on abstract notions. As soon as we cross the threshold to the spiritual world we are no longer dealing in mere logic and abstract notions, we are dealing with realities. It is merely that this is not usually taken seriously. You cannot give your allegiance to a party programme when you have gone past the Guardian of the Threshold, you can only hold to the essential spirit of things, for there everything has to do with the essential spirit. You can merely hold to a spirit of the higher hierarchies and say: That is the one I follow, the one I unite with. Let others present their affairs in their own way, I am uniting with that one, I take his side. The term 'to side with one or another' achieves very real significance then; it is no longer merely abstract. Being human we are inclined to say that as soon as we look beyond the threshold we find three essential spirits: the Christ, Ahriman and Lucifer. It is of course possible to prepare oneself carefully to gain comprehension of the spiritual world and then to say: I choose Christ's party, or Ahriman's or Lucifer's Party. It is however also possible to obscure the issue, being badly Prepared, and choose Ahriman but call him Christ. We follow a spiritual entity, however—everything is of the essence beyond the threshold! We are always dealing with realities there, not with anything by way of a programme or system.

These words I say to characterize the relationship of the human being to the non-physical world are weighty words. In one particular respect it is not yet possible to say the final word on the subject, because that would be too provocative. Very few people on this earth however are aware that basically it is an illusion to follow party lines, to accept the abstract notions of parties. There is no reality to it and when we begin to follow something that is real we must in fact follow something that lies in the spiritual world beyond the threshold. There is however one party that may immediately be characterized as being well aware of this secret and indeed acting upon it. This was said in public in the course of lectures given at Karlsruhe in 1911⁵² and has brought me the hatred of the party in question. These are the Jesuits. They know very well that to follow a party programme—forgive me for using a term commonly used in Germany—is nonsense. One follows a spiritual entity in the non-physical world! That is why their exercises start with the Jesuit having to visualize the spirit whom he is to follow in the Society of Jesus, forming a military corporation for him. When I say that the last word cannot yet be said, I want to hold back concerning the nature of what is called 'Jesus' there. The point is to show that Jesuitism forms a party that follows a spiritual entity and that Jesuits are very well aware that to follow some party or other that goes no further than a programme to be followed in the physical world is a nonsense. The effectiveness of the Society of Jesus is due to the fact that it trains its followers to be the soldiers of a spiritual entity. The do not say this is right and this is wrong. They say: ‘It is part of the mission of the spiritual entity I am following; I shall defend it. I shall oppose anything that is not part of the Mission of the spiritual entity I am following, even if it is logically defensible; it is just as possible to defend what Lucifer and Ahriman are about as it is to defend the things Christ is about. There are exactly three logical defenses and they are all equally valid.’

We therefore have the strange phenomenon that the Jesuits are of course aware that anthroposophy is taking a spiritual line that is wholly defensible and yet they oppose it. They know full well that logical argument is no effective opposition, for it merely means playing with logic. They know that they are facing an adversary in this battle of minds and they will use all available means. It is therefore pointless to join battle by refuting the refutations of the Jesuits. They know exactly what objections we can raise; the fact that they know them and consider them to be fair makes no difference, however, for they follow another spirit than the one anthroposophy must now follow for the weal of humankind. As soon as one is in the realm of the spirit it is reality that counts. What counts is that one really gets a clear understanding of the spiritual paths, using the whole human being in arriving at such understanding—which certainly can be achieved with healthy common sense nowadays—and not the human dwarf who tends to be the end product of the kind of educational establishments we have today.

The parties which exist in physical life are therefore caricatures of something that rightfully exists in the spiritual world. That is what is so difficult about it. Things appearing in the physical world may be a reflection of something of genuine significance in the spiritual world. In the physical world it is pernicious and abominable, because every world has its own laws, and today we face the growing necessity to work our way up into the spiritual world again. The first stage consists of caricatures of spiritual life appearing in physical life; of people setting up party banners and following party idols when in fact they should be giving their allegiance to spiritual entities. It is truth and reality when it occurs in the non-physical world, and a lie and illusion when it occurs here in the physical world. You see I am not using empty words when I tell you that what matters is to transform purely theoretical things into the reality whenever we wish to speak of the truths that exist beyond the threshold.

Mere refutation of materialism will not achieve anything, because the situation is like this where the human being is concerned: In their whole make-up human beings are really spirit and soul. This element of spirit and soul exists even before we are conceived, before we are born. It has evolved out of our previous earth incarnation; it has gone through the spiritual world. It now assumes flesh, creating a physical Image of itself that consists of nervous system, skeletal system, blood system. So we now have two things: the human being in soul and spirit and the human being of flesh and bone that is its image. When we are thinking the usual abstract thoughts, what is it that thinks in us? Not the human being of soul and spirit. It is particularly when we think abstract thoughts, above all using earthly logic, that the Physical brain in us is thinking. It is important to know that when materialists say that the brain does the thinking they are quite correct as far as abstract thoughts ar concerned. The physical brain is an image of the spiritual brain, and this image creates an image, abstract thinking being merely an image. It may thus be said that when it comes to abstract ideas the physical brain does the thinking.

This is simply a special case of what I have said before. Materialism has merely found out that the brain is thinking the thoughts that from the middle of the 15th century onwards have become standard in Western civilization. The materialism presented by Moleschott, Buechner and that fat man Vogt cannot be simply refuted by saying it is wrong. It is quite appropriate for human beings who, from the middle of the 15th century onwards, have turned more and more to mere materialism. Human beings of the Western world are in the process of becoming beings that think only with the physical brain. The prophets of such physical brain thinking, Moleschott and Buechner, merely stated what Western humankind was going to be. They were wrong only in so far as they applied this to humankind as a whole. What they said applies only to people living after the middle of the 15th century, and in their case it does apply. People have got used to thinking only with their brains; it is the common way of thinking nowadays. Everything to be found in our ordinary literature, in the whole of modern science, is material thinking, is that kind of thinking. The materialists are quite right, and we could say that Buechner and Vogt would have been unfair to their colleagues if they had said that they thought with the spirit. That is not the case; they think merely with their brains. This cannot be argued against, and it has to be recognized that the road to materiality is not merely a false philosophy but something with a very real effect. That is also the reason why, when something like spiritual science working towards anthroposophy appears on the scene, those people will say: ‘These are thoughts beyond comprehension; they cannot be grasped.’ Well, they want to think with their brains: the thoughts of spiritual science are however thought with a soul and spirit element that has torn itself away from the brain. People must make efforts to tear their soul and spirit away from the brain with the help of thoughts that have been produced in this way; they must think those thoughts through. People must make an effort to think those thoughts through, to use the opportunity that still exists of tearing the element of soul and spirit away from the physical aspect of the brain. This element is on the way to being chained to the physical brain. People must tear themselves free. It is not a question therefore of right views and wrong views but of a process. The thoughts of spiritual science working towards anthroposophy are given to the world in the hope that people who are still capable of handling the old faculty of tearing themselves away that lies in them, will indeed make use of it and try and understand thoughts that are independent of the physical body, so that their souls may grow free of the body. It is therefore a question of having the will to understand anthroposophy; anthroposophy is intended to tear the element of spirit and soul away from the physical body. Our mission therefore is not merely to refute views that are wrong; but we must face the fact that very many people want to slither into them, want to be sheer matter and want to think, use their will and feel out of matter. We want to give spiritual science working towards anthroposophy to the world as something real, so that spirit and soul may be torn away from matter. The aim is to prevent the possibility of people losing their spirit and soul, for they now run the risk of slithering entirely into the ahrimanic sphere. People face the risk of losing soul and spirit and of losing themselves as human beings when the material world vanishes into nothingness, as I have described on an earlier occasion.

It is not a question therefore of replacing the old with the new, but to become active in the search for truth. This saves the soul from slithering into mere materiality; it saves the spirit and soul element from slithering into the ahrimanic sphere, where egoity would be lost. It is not a question therefore of refuting materialism, but of saving humankind from materialism coming true. Materialism is in the process of developing into something that is true rather than false. When People say that materialism is wrong they are not talking about what really matters. No, we have to say that materialism is coming to be more and more right; in our present culture it is coming to be more and more right. We may well find that by the beginning of the 3rd millenium humankind will have developed in such a way that materialism is the correct view. It is not a question of refuting materialism, for it is in the process of becoming right. It is a question of making it not right, because it is on the way to becoming a fact and no longer merely a wrong theory.

Certain people are trying to ignore these things. They want to make It as easy as possible for others, telling them to see how wrong materialism is and inviting them to turn to an abstract mysticism that Will give them everything they need. We could take up such abstract mysticism, but that would encourage materialism to become real and not mere theory. We do not have to overcome materialism because it is wrong, using words that remain theory; we have to overcome it because it is right and we must fight against it being the right thing. This puts another face on things, and this is also where we find ourselves in the reality of the spiritual world—not with theories, but with a living approach to the truth that in the cosmic scheme of things is an active deed. People find it unpalatable to have to listen to such things, yet that is the light in which everything should be regarded, even individual events. Believe me, the old methods of combat are finished with; everything that could be the habitual way in the past Is now finished. We must consider things in the light of the spirit.

What is conservatism? What is liberalism? Here on earth they are caricatures of the spiritual world. Conservatives are followers of Ahriman, liberals of Lucifer. Having passed the Guardian of the Threshold one can see how the whole of conservatism is running after Ahriman and the whole of liberalism after Lucifer. That may seem peculiar to the sophisticated people of today. It is however because this seems so peculiar that spiritual science working towards anthroposophy is so difficult to understand. We shall never understand spiritual science by merely thinking it; we shall only come to understand it if every one of its concepts makes us suffer and rejoice, when we feel lifted up and cast down, when we want to despair over a word, or think we shall be redeemed because of a word, when we see destiny at work in what normally appears as a shadowy theory just as we see it at work in things that are done in the outside world, when what spiritual science working towards anthroposophy has to say goes beyond being mere words and becomes reality. Then, when the inner impulse alive in this spiritual science is understood and felt, it will be rightly seen why things that for a time were maintained as mere theory, because people first had to come to know about them, must now become reality, why we have to be serious about the reality that lives in the words of spiritual science working towards anthroposophy. It will be seen that the necessity arises in our age to make the substantial essence of those words come to reality.

It is still the case that what is really intended with such a Waldorf School is not at all seen in the light of reality, that it is far too little considered in the sense which I have tried to characterize for you. Believe me, this is not to touch your hearts, nor to gain a little more support. Things have been said that had to be said now because humankind must know them. That is why I have said the things I have been saying. I merely wish that the opportunity would arise to say these things to a sufficiently large number of people, so that these people develop an inner impulsiveness where they take words as realities and do not merely listen in the belief that one is speaking theories.

This is what I have wanted to put to you on these two occasions. It will have to happen that outer events follow not on the external contents of spiritual science as it is presented, but out of inner impulses. Fighters like the Jesuits know very well what many followers of anthroposophy still fail to realize: that spiritual science working towards anthroposophy is a reality. Since they have come to realize this—they have done so for some time now, from about 1906 or 1907—since they have come to realize it they are opposing this spiritual science with increasing vigour. Many anthroposophists have no idea of the methods that are used, the sheer ingenuity, because there is a refusal to be really sure in one's mind of the seriousness of the situation. Words will only evoke a little bit of the things one really wishes people to take to heart; I have tried, however, to present just a little of it to you on these two occasions. If we reflect on what has been said, if we progress from reflection to feeling, to letting it become part of the whole of our being, there will be an end to abstract mysticism and to modern science. It will become the essential inner nature of the human being, it will be the power that releases spirit and soul again from physical matter, it will overcome a materialism that unfortunately is not wrong but is indeed true.

• 51. Atwood, George. English mathematician, invented a machine to illustrate the motion of a body falling under the action of gravity.
• 52. Von Jesus zu Christus GA 131. English translation: From Jesus to Christ. H. Collison tr., C. Davy rev. London: Rudolf Steiner Press 1973.

Dear Friends!

Since there is now a pause, I could at most make a few comments that seem important to me. I hope that it is only a pause that is being filled. After all, it is clear that the discussion on the matter is not over.

I would like to make a few comments as a first interjection, asking that the debates on the matters at hand in this important meeting be brought to precision in the individual points if possible. And even at the risk of being misunderstood, I would like to state as a first point that abstractions, such as that a brochure should be produced, are of no use at all in this abstract form. You really have to think about such things very specifically; you can't characterize something from the outside, but you have to go into the circumstances, especially with such a thing. In the most diverse matters that have affected the anthroposophical movement, the suggestion has come up again and again that a brochure should be written. This is not the first time we have been presented with this suggestion, and I have mostly been extremely reluctant to write a booklet because I knew that, unless the booklet is a very special work of art, arising from the individuality of a single person and justified by the individuality of that single person, it is unlikely to have a real impact. The idea of doing something like this arises because we are accustomed to not thinking reality, but rather to thinking something or other, not even in general outlines, but in general external directions. Therefore, I would ask that if the proposal is to be further considered, it should be discussed in such a way that something can be understood. For the time being, I cannot imagine anything from what is being thought. That is the first thing I would like to note.

Then there is the fact that I do not want misconceptions to arise, especially at the present moment. Misconceptions within a spiritual movement, especially one that is guided by the motto “Wisdom lies only in truth”, are always associated with a destructive impulse, and one must be very careful not to give rise to misconceptions.

Such a false idea would arise if, for example, the opinion were spread that one could say today that the building of the Goetheanum was exiled from Germany by certain powers. If one has such ideas, then they must, of course, be stated very precisely. For outwardly the facts were not such that the building was exiled by powers that can in some way be linked to the fire. Outwardly, the facts were such that a certain building plan had been completed in Munich, and this was not rejected in such a way that one could say: Powers had influenced German law, causing the Bauhaus to be exiled, and the school would have had to move to a place where freer laws prevailed in this regard. But on the surface, the situation was such that it was essentially the Munich art community that had influence over the assessment of such a plan, and that as an art community, really as an art community, simply could not get into the matter, could not say anything right about it. And then one day, after working out a couple of dozen plans, I don't know how many in a row, we were faced with the fact that we still couldn't get a definite opinion from the relevant commission of experts.

In order to build as quickly as possible, the decision was made to build here, where the site was available to us and where there was a very nice view, that in the absence of a building law, it could be built as one wanted at the time. So in such a case, I would not want to say that theories are being spread and ideas are being conjured up today that do not exactly correspond to what happened back then. For it always happens in the anthroposophical movement that strange assertions are made from one side, and then something hostile appears that attributes these assertions to me and actually attacks me because of them. Therefore, in the future I am obliged to explicitly state that assertions I have not made myself have not been made by me.

You can also be quite certain that the opposing comment will reappear somewhere in the future: Dr. Steiner, despite everything, has once again not refrained from pointing to certain powers that were behind the Dornach fire. And I would like to note that from the very beginning, from the night of the fire, I have never pointed to such powers. I would just like to mention this fact and, so to speak, urge caution in this area. We are surrounded by lurking enemies to a much greater extent than we are usually aware of when speaking of such things – I am of course referring more to the way we speak of them. So even with ideas like this one, where there is a suggestion of some background, I would like to note today that I do not want to be identified with it.

I consider it extremely necessary that we try to be precise in our speech here in this assembly, and that we also speak precisely about the impossibility of bringing any valuables from the German borders here. Because the way things stand today, there is the absolute impossibility of bringing any valuables from Germany here. The possibility of accepting lovingly offered work, like so many other things, will arise during the construction process. I am not commenting on that now. But the fact must be clear in all its severity, because otherwise it could have unforeseeable consequences: It must be absolutely clear that whatever is collected in Germany, for my sake, during the reconstruction of the Goetheanum, must also remain within Germany by law, must be spent there, if I want to express myself clearly. So everything that is collected in Germany must also be spent within Germany, or rather, consumed there, within Germany.

For this side, therefore, only moral sacrifices can be considered, a spiritual sacrifice. A material sacrifice, if it is not compensated for in some way, cannot be considered at all. And if things are only expressed as they have been discussed so far, then the floodgates are opened to all sorts of opposing intentions, so that it is said: There it says that Dr. Steiner is the one who carries the result of a certain collection from Germany to other countries! You can be quite sure that this version will appear very soon if the matter is discussed only in the way it has been discussed so far.

We Anthroposophists must be clear about the fact that [material] thinking is not in the first place, but when it comes to practical matters, these must be considered. It must be clearly thought. And on this occasion, my dear friends, I may indeed point out one thing: it is extremely important today that there is the will to make many sacrifices for the reconstruction of a Goetheanum. On the other hand, it is also desirable that this reconstruction of the Goetheanum not be postponed indefinitely, but that it come about as soon as possible. But if we intend to make specific plans, it would be very good if it were borne in mind that this assembly itself is, in a sense, making a kind of proposition for the reconstruction. It should be visible at the end of this assembly how the Goetheanum can be rebuilt.

My dear friends, the Goetheanum can be rebuilt with one million francs, in which case two million francs of the insurance money will still be available for other purposes. It can be rebuilt with two million, with three million, with four million. If it is rebuilt with one million, a concrete barn will stand as a reminder of the old Goetheanum. If two million are used, it will be twice as nice as a barn; but it will be just as it can be built for two million, and so on. And what is necessary in view of the present situation in which we find ourselves, would be this: it should be known as soon as possible how large a sum can be expected. If we know by tomorrow evening that we can count on five million, then a Goetheanum will be built for five million. That is the practical approach we can take now.

And since I naturally assume that every soul has the tendency to want the Goetheanum to be as beautiful as possible, it seems to me that something very considerable can be achieved, even if we take this intention very seriously. But it is necessary that we approach the matter in such a way that by the end of this conference a kind of proposition can be formulated, and that this proposition can be seen as a celebration, and that we can say: in the spirit of this proposition, something will be placed here on the Dornach wing in place of the old Goetheanum. I think the times are much too serious for us to engage in disagreements. It is perhaps necessary for us to orient ourselves directly in the most determined way. My dear friends, it is really not my intention to add a little unpleasantness to so many beautiful things; but if it does not happen from any other side, then I must always do it, so that I am tempted to form a whole out of things. I am terribly sorry!

Now I would like to note that what I have just discussed now, in the first instance, is external, and so comes into consideration for an external structure. But something else also comes into consideration. And that is that in the future, as much thought as possible should also be given to the fact that it is necessary to support the whole anthroposophical activity morally in some way in relation to the world, to make some kind of moral contribution, so to speak. And such moral contributions are now even more necessary! Because ultimately, we will be able to build something here, so the possibility that a spiritual center will be created for anthroposophical matters is a given. But thought should also be given to how moral support could be attempted. And it must be pointed out again and again that an extraordinary amount needs to be done in this regard! If something were to be done by the Anthroposophical Society in an extensive and visible way that would tend to present the Anthroposophical Society itself to the world in such a way that one could not help but take it as something deeply serious, if, I might say, say, would arise here, to create a kind of moral fund to which precisely those who are currently having to leave their valuables within their own four walls, so to speak, could contribute, if a kind of moral fund could be created, then much of what I keep talking about would be fulfilled.

You see, in a sense I would like to see this brochure, which is supposed to be first-class, as was said yesterday, discussed here, because in a sense it also passes judgment on all the productions that have been released so far, and because it passes judgment that all the productions that have been released so far are actually useless! I would very much like to hear in precise and concrete terms how the first-class would relate to the second-class or third-class that has been produced so far.

These things are always hidden in the background. Now you may say that it is very bad to bring such things out from the background. Yes, my dear friends, if we simply say these things thoughtlessly, and do not draw attention to how such things are often said within our ranks, then we should not be surprised when our opponents take them up. The opponents will certainly notice what is at stake in such things. And it is against the whole onslaught of opponents that the building of the Goetheanum must be carried out today! The building of the Goetheanum cannot be carried out with money alone; it must also be carried out with the support of a moral fund of the Anthroposophical Society. There is no other way. This moral fund must be there.

And we must be clear about this: our outward work has already taken on a very strange form today. This too must not remain unconscious. In a certain respect, everything that is connected with Anthroposophy is like a besieged fortress. And think about what ideas people get when you say to them, “Go into a besieged fortress”. The first thing that a person with good will hears about anthroposophy today is what its opponents say. Anyone who approaches anthroposophy with the best of intentions is confronted with the writings, statements and slander of its opponents. And this is something that carries an extremely heavy weight when it comes to something like the construction of the Goetheanum.

Yes, my dear friends, if it were a matter of spreading anthroposophy today, I would say that all that is needed is the good will to stand up for anthroposophy. If it were only a matter of spreading anthroposophy in the world today, then I would, for my part, walk past fifty defamatory brochures and statements by opponents with absolute composure, accept them with absolute indifference, not worry about them, but just continue to work in a positive way. Because anthroposophy is spread only by continuing to work in a positive way. If it were only a spiritual current, then perhaps we would not need such gatherings at all; then we could be indifferent to all opposition. But when it comes to the fact that Anthroposophy is isolating itself today, when just mentioning its name leads to a whole range of external foundations, including of course the building of the Goetheanum, then it must be said: such things cannot be done unless a compact society is formed that is able to counteract the fact that anyone approaching the fortress first takes the opposing writings into their hands. One must make a clear distinction between the individual justifications and what the spiritual movement of anthroposophy is. It is self-sustaining. You can cover it with fifty kilometers of debris today, it can be rendered ineffective for decades for all I care. If the work is done in the right way, it will make its way through the world! But when things are presented to the outside world that are also incomprehensible to it, and all the individual justifications that are based on anthroposophy today are incomprehensible, then the Society must be united and compact.

And that, my dear friends, must be considered above all when making proposals that are to be made to the outside world by the Anthroposophical Society. Really, I can understand it when these things I say are repeatedly ignored. I am terribly sorry to have to mention it, but I want them to be heard! I want people to realize that they are not standing on a concrete floor but on glass when they make proposals for this cause, and that they need to create the moral foundation as well.

You see, here in this hall, I pointed out very recently, to a much smaller number of members than today, as was pointed out in the Journal de Geneve, that the Swiss should also be taken to the cleaners by me for the construction of the Goetheanum. We must not lack the answers that are an effective defense against such attacks. And so it should also be clear that from the moment something like this arises, everyone should be aware that it is not at all a matter of bringing a single centime into Switzerland from the German border. This must be stated unequivocally. Because that is the situation today.

Dear friends, I naturally have the greatest feeling for what enthusiasm is. But today one must really take into account the real possibilities, above all the realities themselves. Not to stop anything, but to ask outright that these real possibilities be taken into account as soon as the words are spoken. That is the only reason I wanted to fill this pause that has arisen. Because it hurt me, so to speak, that things are being discussed by one side that are not immediately taken out of context, so that the other side is not given a handle for their opponents.

End of session

It is not without significance to observe in the anthroposophic movement itself, particularly amongst those first people who began, as one might say, by being just an ordinary audience, how the ground had, so to speak, to be conquered for Christianity. For the theosophic movement, in its association with Blavatsky's special personality, started out in every way from an anti-christian orientation.

This anti-christian orientation, which I mentioned in connection with the same phenomenon in a very different person, Friedrich Nietzsche, is one which I should like to examine a little in a clearer light before going further.

We must be quite clear ... it follows, indeed, from all the various studies which, in our circles more especially, have been directed to the Mystery of Golgotha ... we must be quite clear that the Mystery of Golgotha intervened as a fact in the evolution of mankind on earth. It must be taken, in the first place, as a fact. And if you go back to my book, Christianity as Mystical Fact, and the treatment of the subject there, you will find already the attempt made there to examine the whole Mystery-life of ancient times with a view to the various impulses entering into it; and then to show how the different forces at work in the different, individual mysteries all came together in one, met in a harmony, and thereby made it possible for that which first, in the Mysteries, came before men so to speak in veiled form, to be then displayed openly before all men as an historic fact. So that in the Mystery of Golgotha we have the culmination in an external fact of the total essence of the ancient Mysteries. And then, that the whole stream of mankind's evolution became necessarily changed through the influences that came into it from the Mystery of Golgotha.—This is what I tried to show in this particular book.

Now, as I have often pointed out, at the time when the Mystery of Golgotha was enacted as a fact, there were still in existence remnants of the ancient Mystery-Wisdom. And by aid of these remnants of ancient Mystery-Wisdom, which passed on into the Gospels, as I described in the book,—it was possible for men to approach this Unique Event, which first really gives the Earth's evolution its meaning. The methods of knowledge which they needed to understand the Mystery of Golgotha could be taken from the ancient Mysteries. Rut it must be noted at the same time, that the whole life of the Mysteries is disappearing,—disappearing in the sense in which in old times it had existed and found its crown and culmination in the Mystery of Golgotha. And I pointed out too, that really, in the fourth century after Christ, all those impulses vanish, which mankind could still receive direct from the ancient way of knowledge, and that of this ancient way of knowledge there only remains more or less a tradition; so that here or there it is possible—for particular persons, for peculiar individuals, to bring these traditions again to life; but a continuous stream of evolution, such as the Mysteries presented in the old days, has ceased. And so all means, really, of under-standing the Mystery of Golgotha is lost.

The tradition continued to maintain itself. There were the Gospels,—at first kept secret by the ecclesiastical community, and then made public to the people in the various countries. There were the ritual observances. It was possible, during the further course of human history in the West, to keep the Mystery of Golgotha alive, so to speak, in remembrance. But the possibility of thus keeping it alive ceased with the moment when, in the fifth post-atlantean century, intellectualism came on the scene, with all that I spoke of yesterday as modern education. At this time there entered into mankind a science of natural objects,—a science which, were it only to evolve further the same methods as it has done hitherto, could never possibly lead to a comprehension of the spiritual world. To do so, these scientific methods require to be further extended: they require the extension they receive through anthroposophy. Rut if one stopped short at these natural science methods in their mere beginnings, as introduced by Copernicus, Galileo and the rest, then, in the picture of the natural world, as so seen, there was no place for the Mystery of Golgotha.

Now only just consider what this means. In none of the ancient religions was there any cleft between the Knowledge of the World and what we may call the Knowledge of God. Worldly learning, profane learning, flowed over quite in course of nature into theology. In all the heathen religions there is this unity between the way in which they explain the natural world, and in which they then mount up in their explanation of the natural world, to a comprehension of the divine one, of the manifold. divinity that works through the medium of the natural world, ‘Forces of nature,’ forces of the abstract kind, such as we have to-day, such as are generally accepted on the compulsion of scientific authority,—such ‘forces of nature’ were not what people had in those days. They had live beings, beings of the natural world, who guided, who directed, the various phenomenon of nature; beings to whom one could build a bridge across from that which is in the human soul itself. So that in the old religions, there was nowhere that split, which exists between what is the modern science of the natural world, and what is supposed to be a comprehension of the spiritual and divine one.

Now Anthroposophy will never make any pretension that it is going, itself, to establish the grounds of religion. But although religion must be always something that rests upon itself and forms in itself an independent stream in the spiritual life of mankind; yet, on the other hand, man's nature simply demands that there should be an accordance between what is knowledge and what is religion. The human mind must be able to pass over from knowledge to religion without having to jump a gulf; and it must again be able to pass over from religion to knowledge, without having to jump a gulf. But the whole form and character assumed by modern knowledge renders this impossible. And this modern knowledge has become very thoroughly popularized, and dominates the mass of mankind with tremendous authority. In this way no bridge is possible between knowledge of this kind and the life of religion;—above all, it is not possible to proceed from scientific knowledge to the nature of the Christ. Ever more and more, as modern science attempted to approach the nature of the Christ, it has scattered it to dust, dispelled and lost it.

Well, if you consider all this, you will then be able to understand what I am going to say, not now about Blavatsky, but about that very different person, Nietzsche.—In Nietzsche we have a person who has grown up out of a Protestant parsonage in Central Europe,—not only the son of religious-minded people in the usual sense, but the son of a parochial clergyman. He goes through all the modern schooling; first, as a boy at a classical school. But since he was not what Schiller calls a ‘bread-and-butter scholar,’ but a ‘lover of learning’, ... you know the sharp distinction made by Schiller in his inaugural address between the bread-and-butter scholar and the lover of learning ... so Nietzsche's interest widens out over everything that is knowable by the methods of the present age. And so he arrives consciently and in a very uncompromising way at that split-in-two, to which all modernly educated minds really come, but come unconsciently, because they delude themselves, because they spread a haze over it. He arrives at a tone of mind which I might describe somewhat as follows:—

He says:—Here we have a modern education. This modern education nowhere works on in a straight line to any clear account of the Christ-Jesus, without jumping a gap on the road. And now, stuck into the midst of this modern education which has grown up, we have something which has remained left over as Christianity, and which talks in words that no longer bear any relation whatever to the various forms of statement, the terms of description, derived from modern scientific knowledge. And he starts by saying to himself very definitely: If one in any way proposes to come to a real relation with modern scientific knowledge, and still at the same time to preserve inwardly any sort of lingering feeling for what is traditionally told about the Christ,—then one will need to be a liar. He puts this to himself; and then he makes his decision. He decides for modern education; and thereby arrives at a complete and uncompromising denunciation of all that he knows of Christianity.

More scathing words were never uttered about Christianity than those uttered by Nietzsche, the clergyman's son. And he feels it, with really, I might say, his whole man. One need only take such an expression of his as this,—I am simply quoting; I am, of course, not advocating what Nietzsche says; I am quoting it only—but one need only take such an expression as this, where he says: Whatever a modern theologian holds to be true is certainly false. One might indeed make this a direct criterion of truth.—One may know what is false—according to Nietzsche's view,—from what a modern theologian calls true. That is pretty much his definition, one of Nietzsche's definitions, as regards Truth. He decides, moreover, that the whole of modern philosophy has too much theological blood in its veins. And then he formulates his tremendous denunciation of Christianity, which is of course, a blasphemy, but at any rate an honest blasphemy, and therefore more deserving of consideration than the dishonesties so common in this field to-day. And this is the point which one must keep in sight: that a person like Nietzsche, who for once was in earnest in the attempt to comprehend the Mystery of Golgotha, was not able to do so with the means that exist,—not even by means of the Gospels as they exist.

We have now in our Anthroposophy interpretations of all the four Gospels. And what emerges from the Gospels as the result of such interpretation is emphatically rejected the theologians of all the churches. But Nietzsche in that day did not possess it. It is the most difficult thing in the world, my dear friends, for a scientific mind (and almost all people at the present day may be said in this sense to have, however primitively, scientific minds), to attain possession of the Mystery of Golgotha. What is needed in order to do so?

To attain to this Mystery of Golgotha, what is needed, is not a renewal of the ancient form of Mysteries, but the discovery of a quite new form of Mystery. The rediscovery of the spiritual world in a completely new form,—this is what is necessary. For, through the old Mysteries, not excepting the Gnosis, the Mystery of Golgotha could only be uttered haltingly and brokenly. Men's minds grasped it haltingly and brokenly. And this halting, broken utterance must to-day be raised to speech.

It was this urgent need to raise the old halting utterance to speech which was at work in the many homeless souls of whom I am speaking in these lectures. With Nietzsche it went so far as a definite and drastic—not denial only—but appalling denunciation of Christianity.

Blavatsky, too, drew her impulse mainly from the life of the old Mysteries. And, truly speaking, if one takes the whole of Blavatsky's Secret Doctrine, one cannot but see in it a sort of resurrection of the old Mysteries,—in the main nothing new. The most important part of what one finds revealed in the works of Blavatsky is simply a resurrection of the old Mysteries, a resurrection of the know-ledge through which in the old Mysteries men had become acquainted with the divine spirit-world.

But all of these Mysteries are only able to comprehend what is a preparation for the Christ. The people, who, at the time when Christianity began, were still in a way con-versant with the old Mysteries and their impulses,—these persons had a positive ground still, from which to approach the Unique Event of Golgotha. So that down, in fact, to the fourth century, there were people who still could approach the Event of Golgotha on positive ground. They were still able in a real sense to comprehend the Greek Fathers of the Church, in whom there are everywhere connections with the old Mysteries, and who—rightly understood—speak in quite a different key from the later Fathers of the Latin Church.

Within what dawned upon Blavatsky's vision there lay the ancient wisdom, which sees the natural world and spirit-world in one. And much as a soul, one might say, before the Mystery of Golgotha, beheld the world of Nature and Spirit, so Blavatsky beheld it now again. That way,—she said to herself—lies the Divine and Spiritual; that way a vista opens up for men into the region of divine spirit. And from this aspect she then turned her eyes upon what modern tradition and the modern creeds say about Christ-Jesus.

The Gospels, of course, she had no means of understanding as they are understood in Anthroposophy: and the understanding that is brought to them from elsewhere was not of a kind that could approach what Blavatsky had to offer in the way of spiritual knowledge. Hence her contempt for all that was said about the Mystery of Golgotha in the outside world. She said to herself, as it were: ‘What all these people say about the Mystery of Golgotha is on a far lower level than the sublime wisdom transmitted by the ancient Mysteries. And so the Christian God too must be on a lower level than what they had in the ancient Mysteries.’

The fault lay not with the Christian God; the fault lay with the ways in which the Christian God was interpreted. Blavatsky simply did not know the Mystery of Golgotha in its essential being; she could only judge of it from what people were able to say about it. Such things must be regarded with perfect objectivity. For as a fact, from the time of the fourth century after Christ, when with the last remnants of Greek civilization the sun of the old Mysteries had set, Christianity was taken over and adopted by Romanism. Romanism had no power, from its external civilization, to open up any real road on into the spirit. And so Romanism simply yoked Christianity to an external impulse. And this Romanized Christianity was, in the main, the only one known to Nietzsche and Blavatsky.

One can understand then that the souls I described as homeless souls, who had gleams from their former earth-lives, and were principally concerned to find a way back into the spiritual world, took the first thing that presented itself. They wanted only to get into the spiritual world, even at the risk of doing without Christianity. Some link between their souls and the spiritual worlds,—that was what these people wanted.

And so one met with the people who at that time were groping their way towards the Anthroposophical Society.

Let us be quite clear, then, as to the position which Anthroposophy held towards these people, when it now came upon the scene,—towards these people who were homeless souls. They were, as we saw, questing souls, questioning souls; and the first thing necessary was to recognize: What are these souls asking? What are the questions stirring in their inmost depths?—And if now from the anthroposophic side a voice began to speak to these souls, it was because these souls were asking questions about things, to which Anthroposophy believed that it could give the answers. The other people of the present day have no questions; in them the questions are not there.

Anthroposophy, therefore, had no sort of call to go to the theosophists in search of knowledge. For Anthroposophy, Blavatsky's phenomenal appearance, and what had come into the world with it, was so far a fact of great importance. But what Anthroposophy had to consider, was not the knowledge that came from this quarter, but principally the need for learning to know the questions, the problems that were perplexing a number of souls.

One might have said, had. there been any possibility at that time of putting it plainly into words: As to what the leaders of the Theosophical Society have given the people, one doesn't need to concern oneself at all; one's concern is with what the people's souls are asking, what their souls want to know. And therefore these people were, after all, the right people in the first instance for Anthroposophy.

And in what form did the answers require to be worded?—Well, let us take the matter as positively, as matter-of-factly, as possible. Here were these questioning souls: one could plainly read their questions. They had the belief that they could arrive at an answer to their questions through the kind of thing which is found in Mrs. Besant's Ancient Wisdom: Now you can easily tell yourselves that it would have been obviously very foolish to say to these people that there are a number of things in this book, Ancient Wisdom, which are no longer appropriate to the modern age; for then one would have offered these souls nothing; one would only have taken something away from them. There could only be one course, and that was, really to answer their questions; whereas from the other side they got no proper answer. And the practical introduction to really answering was that, whilst Ancient Wisdom ranked at that time as a sort of canonical work amongst these people, I did not much trouble about this Ancient Wisdom, but wrote my book, Theosophy, and so gave an answer to the questions which I knew to be really asked. That was the positive answer; and beyond this there was no need to go. One had now to leave the people their perfect liberty of choice: Will you go on taking up Ancient Wisdom? or will you take up Theosophy?

In epochs of momentous decision, when world-history is being made, things do not lie so rationalistically, along straight lines of reasoning, as people are apt to conceive.

And so I could very well understand, when theosophists attended that other set of lectures on ‘Anthroposophy’, which I gave in those days, at the founding of the German Section, that these theosophists said the same thing as I have been pointing out to you here: ‘But that doesn't in the very least agree with what Mrs. Besant says!’ Of course it didn't agree, and couldn't agree! For the answer had to be one which proceeded from all that the mind of this age can give out of its deeper consciousness. And so it came about,—just to give for the moment the broader lines only,—that, as a fact, to begin with—down to about 1907—every step on behalf of Anthroposophy had to be conquered in opposition to the traditions of the Theosophical Society. The only people, to begin with, whom one could reach with these things, were the members of the Theosophical Society. Every step had to be conquered. And controversy at that time would have had no sense whatever; the only thing was to hope and build upon the alternative selection.

Matters went on by no means without internal obstacles. Everything—in my opinion at least—had its proper place, in which it must be done properly. In my Theosophy I went, I think, no single step beyond what it was possible at that period to give out for a number of people publicly. The wide circulation which the hook has found since then of itself shows that the supposition was a right one: Thus far one could go.

With the people who were more intently seeking, and had, accordingly, come into the stream set going by Blavatsky, with these people it was possible to go further. And with these one now had to make a beginning towards going further. I could give you any number of instances; but I will pick out just one, to show how, step by step, the attempt was made to get away from an old, bad tradition, and come to what was right for the present day, to the results of direct present-day research.

For instance, there was the description usually given in the Theosophical Society of the way Man travels through so-called kamaloca, after death. The description of this, as given by the leading people in the Theosophical Society could only be obviated in my Theosophy by my leaving the Time notion so far out of account in this book. In the circles inside the society, however, I tried to work with the right notions of time.

So it came about that I delivered lectures in various towns, amongst what was then the Dutch Section of the Theosophical Society, on the Life between Death and New Birth, and there for the first time, quite at the beginning of my activities, pointed out that it is really nonsense to conceive of it simply so, that if this, B D, is the life on earth from birth to death, that then the passage through kama-loca were simply a piece joined on, as it were, in one's consciousness. I showed, that time, here, must be conceived backwards; and I depicted the life of kama-loca as a living backwards, stage by stage, only three times as quick as the ordinary earth-life, or the life that was spent on earth: B ---------- D.

In outer life, of course, nobody to-day has any conception of this going on backwards as a reality, a reality in the spiritual field; for Time is simply conceived as a straight line from beginning to end; and a going on backwards is something of which people to-day form no notion whatever.

Now the theory was, amongst the leaders of the Theosophical Society, that they were renewing the teachings of the old wisdom. They took Blavatsky's book as a basis; and all sorts of writings came out, linked onto Blavatsky's book. But in these writings everything was presented to the mind in just the same way as things are conceived under the materialist world-conception of modern-times. And why?—Because they would have needed to become again knowing, not merely to renew the old knowledge, if they had wanted to find the truth of the matter.

The old things were for ever being quoted. Amongst other things always being quoted from Buddha and the old Oriental wisdom, was the Wheel of Births. Rut that a wheel is not of such a nature that one can draw a wheel as a straight line—, this the people did not reflect; and that one can only draw a wheel as running back into itself.

—There was no vitality in this revival of ancient wisdom, for the simple reason that there was no direct knowledge.

What was needed, in short, was: that something should be brought into the world by direct, living knowledge; and then this might also throw light upon the old, primeval wisdom.

And so one conclusion, from these first seven years especially of anthroposophic labour, amounted to this: that there were people who were ... well ... just as well pleased that there should not be any renovations, or,—as they called it,—‘innovations’ in the theosophic field; and who said: Oh, all that he says is just the same thing as the other! There's no difference! The differences are quite inessential! And so they were argued away. But this awful thing that I had, so to speak, ‘gone and done’ at the very beginning of my work in the Dutch Section of the Theosophical Society, when I lectured ‘from the life’ instead of simply rehearsing the doctrines contained in the canonical books of the Theosophical Society as the others did,—that was never forgotten! It never was forgotten. And those of you, who may perhaps go back in memory to those days in the growth of our movement, need only recall in the year 1907, when the Congress was held in Munich, at a time when we were still within the fold of the Theosophical Society, how the Dutch Theosophists turned up all primed and loaded, and were quite furious at this intrusion of a foreign body, as they felt it to be. They had no sense, that here a thing of the living present was matched against something merely of tradition,—they simply felt it to be a foreign body.

But something else could not fail to occur even then. And at that time the conversation took place in Munich between Mrs. Besant and myself, in which it was definitely settled that what I have to stand for, the Anthroposophy which I have to represent, would carry on its work in perfect independence, without any regard to anything else whatever that might play a part in the Theosophical Society. This was definitely settled, as a modus vivendi, so to speak, under which life could go on.

Even in those days, however, in the Theosophical Society, there were already dawning signs on the horizon of those absurdities by which it afterwards did for itself. For as a vehicle for a spiritual movement, the society to-day—despite the number of members still on its lists—may truly be said to have done for itself. Things, you know, may live on a long while as dead bodies, even after they are done for. But what was the Theosophical Society is to-day no longer living.

One thing, however, must be clearly understood: At the time when Anthroposophy first began its work, the Theosophical Society was full of a spiritual life, which, though traditional, nevertheless rested on sound bases, and was rich in material. What had come into the world through Blavatsky was there; and the people really lived in the things that had come into the world through Blavatsky.

Blavatsky had now, however, been dead for ten years past as regards earthly life. And one can but say of the tone in the Theosophical Society, that what lived on in it as a sequel of Blavatsky's influence and work was some-thing quite sound as a piece of historical culture, and could undoubtedly give the people something. Still, there were even then unmistakable germs of decay already present. The only question was, whether these germs of decay might not possibly be overcome; or whether they must inevitably lead to some kind of total discord between Anthroposophy and the old Theosophical Society.

Now one must say that amongst the tendencies that existed in the theosophic movement, even from the days of Blavatsky, there was one tendency in particular that was a terribly strong disintegrating element.

One must make a distinction, when considering the subject in the way I am doing now. One must make a clear distinction, between what was flung as spiritual information into the midst of modern life through the instrumentality of Blavatsky, and what was a result of the particular way in which Blavatsky was prompted to give out this information, out of her own person, in the manner I described. For in Blavatsky there was, to begin with, this particular kind of personality,—such as I described to you recently,—one who simply, having once been given, so to speak, an instigation from some quarter—through a betrayal, if you like,—then, out of her own person, as though in recollection of a previous life of incarnation on earth, and though only as a reawakening of an old wisdom, yet did bring wisdom into the world, and transmitted it in book-form to mankind.—This second fact one must keep quite distinct from the first. For this second fact, that Blavatsky was instigated in a particular way to what she did, introduced elements into the theosophic movement which were different from what they should have been if the theosophic movement was to be one of a purely spiritual character.

That it was not. For the fact of the matter was, that Blavatsky in the first instance received an instigation from a quarter of which I will say no more, and put forth, out of herself, what is in her Isis Unveiled; and that then, through all sorts of machinations, it came about that Blavatsky, the second time, was subjected to the influence of esoteric teachers from the Orient; and behind these there was a certain tendency of a political-cultural kind and egoistic in character. From the very first, there lay an orientalist policy of a one-sided character in what it was now hoped to obtain in a roundabout way by means of Blavatsky. Within it all lay the tendency to show the materialistic West, how far superior the spiritual knowledge of the East is to the materialism of the West. Within it was concealed the tendency to achieve, in the first place, a spiritual, but, more generally, any kind of dominion, an ‘empire’ of some kind, of the Orient over the Occident: And this was to be done, in the first place, by indoctrinating the spirituality or unspirituality of the West with the traditions of Eastern wisdom.—Hence came what I might call that shifting of the axis which took place, from the altogether-European of Isis Unveiled, to the altogether-Oriental of Blavatsky's Secret Doctrine.

There was every variety of factor here at work; but one of the factors was this one, that wanted, namely, to join India on to Asia and so create an Indo-Asiatic Empire with the assistance of Russia. And so this ‘Doctrine’ of Blavatsky's was inoculated with the Indian vein, in order, in this way, to conquer the West spiritually.

Now this, you see, is a one-sided vein, egoistic,—nationally egoistic. And this one-sided vein was there from the very beginning. It met one directly with symptomatic significance. The first lecture I ever heard from Mrs. Besant was on ‘Theosophy and Imperialism’. And when one inwardly tried to answer the question: Does really the main impulse of this lecture lie in the continuation-line of the strictly spiritual element in Blavatsky? or does the main impulse of this lecture lie in the continuation-line of what went along with it;—then one could only say: the latter.

With Mrs. Annie Besant it was often the case, that she said things of which she by no means knew the ultimate grounds. She took up the cudgels for something or other of which the ultimate grounds were unknown to her; she was ignorant of the connections that lay at their root. But if you read this lecture, ‘Theosophy and Imperialism’ (which is printed), and read it understandingly, with all that lies underneath it, you will then see for yourselves, that, supposing there were somebody who wanted to split India off from England,—to split it off in a certain sense spiritually after a spiritual fashion,—a good way of taking the first unobtrusive step, would be with a tendency such as there was in this lecture.

This was always the beginning of the end with all such spiritual streams and spiritual societies, that they began to mix up one-sided political interests with their own sphere. Whereas a spiritual movement—above all to-day—can only possibly pursue its course through the world, and it is indeed, to-day, one of the most vital life conditions for a spiritual movement that would lead to real, actual spirituality, that it should be universally human, wholly and undividedly human. And everything else, which is not wholly and universally human, which sets out in any way to split the body of mankind, is from the first an element of destruction in any spiritual movement that would lead to the real spirit-world.

Just consider how deep one strikes with all such things into the sub-conscious regions of man's being. And hence it is one of the life-conditions of any such spiritual movement,—for instance, such as the anthroposophical movement, too, would be,—that there should be at least an earnest, honest endeavour to get beyond all partial, sectional interests in mankind, and really to rise to the universal interests of all mankind. And therein lay the ruin of the theosophic movement, that from the beginning it had an element of that kind in it. On occasion, as we know, this kind of element is quite capable of reversing steam: later, during the Great War, this opposite tendency turned very anglo-chauvinist. Rut this very circumstance should make it perfectly clear, that it is quite impossible successfully to cultivate a real spiritual movement, so long as there is some kind of sectionalism which one is not pre-pared to leave behind one.

Amongst the external dangers, therefore, which beset the anthroposophic movement to-day, there is this especially: That people in the present age, which is wandering astray in nationalisms on all sides, have yet so little courage to get beyond these nationalisms.

What then lies at the root of a one-sidedness like that of which we were speaking?—At its root lies the desire to acquire power as a society through something else than simply the revelations of the spiritual source itself. And one can but say that whereas, at the turn of the century, there was still a fairly healthy sense in the Theosophical Society as regards conscious aspirations after power, this was by 1906 all gone, and there existed a strong ambition for power.

It is necessary, do you see, that one should clearly recognize this growth of the anthroposophical life out of universal human interests, common to the whole of mankind; and that one should clearly see, that it was only because the questioners were there, in the Theosophical Society, and because of this only, that Anthroposophy was obliged to take growth in the Theosophical Society, to take up its lodging there, one might say, for a while; since otherwise it had nowhere to lodge.

The first period—so to speak—was scarcely over, when, as you know, the whole impossibility of the theosophical movement for Western life demonstrated itself quite peculiarly in the question of the Christ. For what with Blavatsky was in the main a theory,—although a theory that rested on emotions,—namely, the depreciation of Christianity, was afterwards carried in the theosophic movement to such a very practical depreciation of Christianity, as the education of a boy in whom they said they were going to train-up the soul of the re-arisen Christ.

One could hardly conceive anything more nonsensical. And yet an Order was founded amongst the Theosophical Society for the promotion of this Christ-Birth in a boy, who really, as one might say, was already there.

And now it very soon came to the perfection of nonsense.—With all such things, of course, there very soon come muddles which border terribly close on falsehoods. In 1911, then, there was to be a Congress of the Theosophical Society in Genoa. The things leading to this nonsense were already in full bloom, and it was necessary for me to announce as my lecture for this Genoa Congress From Buddha to Christ. It must then necessarily have come to a clear and pregnant settlement of relations; for the things, that were everywhere going about, would then necessarily have come to a head. But, lo and behold! the Genoa Congress was cancelled.—Of course excuses can be found for all such things. The reasons that were alleged all looked really uncommonly like excuses.

And so the anthroposophic movement may be said to have entered on its second period, pursuing its own straight course; which originally began, as I said, with my delivering a lecture, quite at the beginning, to a non-theosophical public, of whom only one single person remains, (who is still there!) and no more, although a number of persons attended the lecture at the time. Anyhow, the first lecture I delivered (it was a cycle of lectures, in fact) bore the title From Buddha to Christ. And in 1911 I proposed again to deliver the cycle From Buddha to Christ. That was the straight line. But the theosophical movement had got into a horrible zigzag.

Unless one takes the history of the anthroposophic movement seriously, and is not afraid to call these things by their right name, one will not be able to give the proper reply to the assertions continually being made about the relation of Anthroposophy to Theosophy by those surface triflers, who will not take the trouble to learn the real facts, and refuse to see, that Anthroposophy was from the very first a totally separate and distinct thing, but that the answers, which Anthroposophy has the power to give, were naturally given to those people who happened to be asking the questions.

One may say, then, that down to the year 1914 was the second period of the anthroposophic movement. It really did nothing very particular—at least, so far as I was concerned—towards regulating relations with the theosophic movement. The Theosophical Society regulated relations by excluding the Anthroposophical one. But one was not affected by it. Seeing that from the first one had not been very greatly affected by being included, neither was one now very greatly affected by being excluded. One went on doing exactly the same as before. Being excluded made not the slightest change in what had gone on before, when one was included.

Look for yourselves at the way things went, and you will see that, except for the settlement of a few formalities, nothing whatever happened inside the anthroposophic movement itself down to the year 1914, but that everything that happened, happened on the side of the Theosophical Society.

I was invited in the first place to give lectures there. I did so; I gave anthroposophic lectures. And I went on doing so. The lectures for which I was originally invited are the same newly reprinted in my book, Mysticism at the Dawn of the New Age of Thought. And I then carried on further what is written in this Mysticism at the Dawn of the New Age of Thought, and developed it in a variety of directions.

By this same society, with the same views, I was then excluded, and of course, my followers, too. For one and the same thing I was first included, and afterwards excluded. Yes ... that is the fact of the matter. And no one can rightly understand the history of the anthroposophic movement, unless they keep plainly in sight as a fundamental fact, that as regards the relation to the theosophic movement, it made no difference whether one were in- or excluded.

This is something for you to reflect upon very thoroughly in self-recollection. I beg you to do so. And then, on the grounds of this, I should like tomorrow to give a sketch of the latest and most difficult phase, from 1914 until now, and then to go into various details again later, in the subsequent lectures.