The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Concluding words at a meeting for the orientation of members.

Some time ago, a few young theology students came to me to talk about their inner struggles, and the way they spoke gave the impression of the utmost seriousness. This was because, in their words, there was a very specific undertone of the soul that was not clearly expressed at the time, but which was extremely strong in these younger souls. If I am to characterize what actually manifested itself as this underlying resonance of the soul, it is this: they were young theologians who were about to complete their studies and who looked ahead to their future with a certain sense of responsibility, but who looked back on what they had lived through during their studies of theology had gone through, with a certain bleakness, at least looking back on it in such a way that they showed: they do not feel able to really do justice to the responsibility they felt towards their task.

It is obvious to think about the source of this underlying feeling, which was basically a kind of inner disharmony. It came from the fact that in the present, the most earnest souls, those souls who want to take their life's task seriously on the basis of religious work, cannot take with them from their studies the inner strength that is necessary to carry out this mission.

Now, it was the case that at that time this unspoken thing that came from these souls affected me more than what was said, that this or that was to come.

Now, my dear friends, you have heard a lot today from a theological point of view about the causes of these inner soul disharmonies. On such an occasion one would like to point out that a long time ago a large number of people felt the need for something that we all know here and that has been characterized today in its relation to the religious questions before you: the need arose for anthroposophy. And that something is being sought in anthroposophy that is missing where it should not actually be missing is shown by the fact that, in the past, young life beginners, if I may put it that way, came to the very conclusion that they should at least ask how one could come to have the strength of which one had the dark awareness that one needed this strength, and one could not find it where it should actually be given.

Since Dr. Geyer, Dr. Rittelmeyer and Dr. Bock have already discussed on previous occasions what theology, as it is offered today, has gradually become, I do not need to explain to you how little the one who is chosen to proclaim religion, to work religiously, can see himself supported by theology as it is. Anthroposophy has also occasionally had the opportunity, albeit not in a very intensive way – but that may also have its reasons – to see the illumination of contemporary theology in anthroposophical events. Perhaps some of you were there. A representative of today's theology turned up and spoke against what Dr. Geyer, Dr. Rittelmeyer and Licentiate Bock had said. He presented his view of theology to anthroposophists. If I pick out the most important thing in that speech — the other had even less content —, it is that this gentleman said to the young theologians, who now want to be given the strength to work religiously in the world, “Oh, we don't need any of that, what anthroposophy says. We don't need other teachings and insights that speak about God, about the divine and so on, all that actually hinders religious life. The most important thing is that the divine breaks through everywhere.” – This gentleman repeatedly stated that the divine breaks through everywhere. This breaking through of the divine, he emphasized so sharply that I could not think of anything else but that when he now teaches his theological course at the university, he always talks about this breaking through of the divine. Well, certainly no one sitting there got an opinion, an idea, a feeling of where and what is breaking through. Yes, where? Everywhere.

If you really look at these things with attention, you have to say: it's just bleak. And it's so incredibly bleak because the people who are mostly appointed as official representatives, especially in the theological field, have no idea how far removed they are from all that religion was actually founded on. It is indeed the strangest phenomenon that in our time people have emerged who have set themselves the task of proving that there was no Christ at all, but that Christ formed himself as an idea out of social life, after the Near Eastern, Greek, and Roman world had entered a certain stage. Then people would have had such ideas, and that out of social need, and would have made the idea of the Christ out of it, which then just lived on and held people together.

Yes, my dear friends, there is the peculiar phenomenon that Christianity was founded and now a person feels the mission to place himself in a real Christian community today with the task of actually destroying Christ. Representative of such a debate was, for example, the theologian Kalthoff. Well, there are man-eaters, and there are those who don't eat the whole person, don't they, who leave something over. Yes, such a Kalthoff, he destroys the whole Christ. Others did it more partially, as already mentioned, by proclaiming as the result of theological research into the essence of Christianity: What happened in the garden, of which Christian tradition says that Christ rose there, is not known, but the belief in resurrection - or actually the person in question says: the Easter belief - emerged from this place and then spread further. - Well, it doesn't destroy the whole of Christ, but it is a good part of it.

And you see, you don't have to go far to find that - it was in Basel, as I have already pointed out - a theologian felt compelled to provide a kind of very

proof that there is still much that is Christian in the present day, but that at any rate theology is no longer Christian. During his professorship in theology, Overbeck wrote an excellent little book entitled “On the Christianity of Our Present-Day Theology,” which also made an extraordinary impression on Nietzsche.

Yes, you see, my dear friends, with just these few sketchy words I would like to suggest that one must look at something bleak if one wants to look at what confronts young “theologians who, after studying theology ‘through and through with hot endeavor,’ are then to stand before the communities and introduce these communities to the experience of the living Christ.

But now we can also look at the picture from the other side, from the side of the faithful. From the side of the faithful, it appears that these believers have an honest need, an honest longing for a revival of spiritual strength within themselves. But one cannot say how nothing is the nothing that these believers actually feel is coming towards them most of the time.

Now, my dear friends, in describing all this with a few sketchy words, I actually feel as if I have to squeeze every word out of myself. I would rather not talk about it at all. Why? Because it is something that, when you take it completely seriously, can no longer be characterized because it has lost its content. But precisely when one, I would like to say, with a compressed chest, wants to recall in words what actually lay at the root of it back then, when young theologians came to talk about their needs, precisely when one really visualizes this, then one will also understand that one can look with deep satisfaction at those who have spoken here before you today and who, out of their intimate knowledge of what it means to live this life, have spoken out in favor of a renewal of the religious life of humanity, and have not only spoken out in some vague, abstract, idealistic way, but have spoken out in the way that needs to be spoken out today if it is to lead somewhere. Perhaps some of you were even surprised that there was so much talk about worship and the necessity of worship. Well, precisely because everything

that has developed outside of Catholicism in recent times has been so very much outside of the cultural-religious and has developed more and more outside of this cultural-religious, precisely because of this, the intellect has been driven more and more to the surface. Ultimately, religious life became the domain of the intellect. Whether a preacher delivered his sermon in a somewhat rougher voice, which was taken to mean that he was more knowledgeable and reflective, or whether another preacher delivered his sermon with less emphasis on being knowledgeable for for easily understandable reasons and therefore his words sounded more in certain unctuous emotional nuances, that didn't make a very big difference in terms of the presentation, at least not in terms of really standing in an immediate spiritual way.

You have to bring all this to mind if you want to, I would say, gain the right heart for what has been said here today. Now, you yourself have sought a path to the spiritual by becoming an anthroposophist.

When I was approached with the matter I have just described, I had to say to myself, in view of the seriousness with which the whole thing was approached: here something is wanted in a particular field of anthroposophy, and it must be fulfilled as well as it can be fulfilled. And although I am completely down to earth, leaving the anthroposophical movement to be anthroposophical, as it has been so far, and certainly not feeling any kind of mission to found a religion myself, I still felt that I was obliged to actually fulfill everything that was asked of me in terms of giving content to this religious movement. And so it has come about, in the way it has been described to you, that this religious renewal movement will soon begin its work.

It is self-evident that this religious renewal movement should not be confused with the course of the anthroposophical movement itself. What I wanted to add here at the request of the honored speakers this evening is this: that in this case anthroposophy was confronted with a need that arose from religious life itself. And that is actually what should be particularly emphasized now that this religious renewal movement wants to get down to business in terms of its work. It was not the Anthroposophical Society that wanted to step forward and say: I now want to found a religious renewal movement. Rather, the longing for renewal arose from religious life itself, and Anthroposophy was sought out to provide the content for this renewal idea. And so, the content of Anthroposophy will be there, waiting to be asked for, and insofar as it is asked for.

But it is also up to you, my dear friends, who are Anthroposophists, to show understanding for this matter, but active understanding based on the matter itself, by contributing on your part to the fulfillment of those wishes that Dr. Geyer, Dr. Rittelmeyer and Mr. Bock, who are now facing with their whole personality all the storms that will undoubtedly come when this movement steps forward into the world.

We have indeed experienced many such storms in relation to the Anthroposophical movement. Believe me, my dear friends, even if what was to be experienced passed by many anthroposophists in this way – I am not saying anything bad, but only pointing out facts, that these anthroposophists closed their eyes and slept gently, even if some of these storms became bigger and bigger and stronger and stronger because they were not paid attention to. I do not wish to bore you, for if I talk at great length about these things, then again — although the present company is always excepted, well, then we imagine we are speaking to those who are absent —, then again this state of sleep could occur, which always occurs when how strong the storms are that are battering against our movement from the outside, and then we find that we are not there to be talked about in polemics and the like; so we turn to those who treat us in the way that is happening today. One should not oversleep that! You see, I just want to explain the matter by telling you a little story from recent times. A few days ago in Vienna, a man was arrested for advertising all kinds of dance performances and then, under the guise of all kinds of dance performances, carrying out criminal, immoral acts with young people. And then, in these days, one could read an article by someone who has also written about the Viennese anthroposophists, which began: “I have long since pointed out the harmfulness of Steinerism, and it is absolutely necessary that we now finally learn from such excesses of Steinerism what needs to be done.” Well, it is true that in a sense such things grow to monstrous proportions if the will is not there to be with one's whole personality with the one to whom one's thoughts turn.

Therefore, I would like to take this opportunity to point out once again that anthroposophists should understand if personalities - first and foremost those who have spoken to you today, but also those who will initially work actively for this religious renewal - have to face all the storms that can be expected in our time when people want to work honestly and sincerely from the spiritual realm. It is always a little unpleasant that it is supposed to be heard in our time. But it is.

Therefore, at least those who have the opportunity to understand something about spiritual movements and spiritual currents must also be fully engaged in them with their whole soul and approach with understanding those who are seeking such understanding, first of all in the Anthroposophical Movement. Because if it is not there, one might well ask: Where should this understanding begin today? And it must begin. For it is self-evident that this religious renewal cannot be limited to the Anthroposophical Society, but only makes sense if it takes effect outside the Anthroposophical Society. But we in our circles have a great need to show understanding for it.

I just wanted to add this to what has been presented to you today.

In order to relate to our anthroposophical movement certain current thoughts and opinions concerned with some special phenomena, I would like today to add to our considerations some incidental material.

I will begin by speaking about experiments that are being made at the moment; they have a certain interest for us. During our discussions I have often mentioned the natural scientist Moritz Benedikt; his main interests are anthropology and criminology, though his scientific investigations cover a great variety of subjects.¹ Lately he has been intensely occupied with scientific investigations into dowsing, or water divining. The war has caused great interest in this subject. Dowsing consists mainly of the use of a fork-shaped rod, made of certain kinds of wood such as hazel. The rod is held in a special way by the prongs, and when it moves that indicates that there is either something metallic or water in the ground beneath.

Moritz Benedikt is certainly no dreamer, in fact very much the opposite; he is also someone who would emphatically reject anything to do with anthroposophy. Yet he has been completely absorbed in research into dowsing. His interest has been aroused partly because of war operations taking place in certain regions. His aim to set dowsing on a rational footing has led to experiments with certain types of people whom he calls “darkness-adapted.” I will explain in a moment why he attempts' to establish that each human being is asymmetric, a twofold being in the sense that not only does the right side differ from the left, but the two sides are polar opposites. Forces in the left side relate to forces in the right as positive magnetism relates to negative, or positive electricity to negative.

Moritz Benedikt has discovered that when a person holds the divining rod by both prongs the forces in the left side of the body unite with those in the right side. Or, as he expresses it, the forces, by flowing together, form a common stream of emanation. When a person particularly strong in such forces walks over ground beneath which there is water, a change takes place in the forces of both sides of his body. This change is caused by emanations streaming upwards from the water below into the person. It is interesting that Moritz Benedikt, himself a doctor, discovers that particularly susceptible persons can become so strongly influenced that they become ill by simply walking over ground under which there is water or a metal ore. Thus Benedikt found that if certain individuals walked over ground containing particular substances which they either ignored or knew nothing of, they could suffer illnesses such as melancholia, hypochondria or hysteria, illnesses of which doctors no longer know much more than their names. However, when the same individuals held the divining rod, they did not become ill. The rod causes the two streams of forces in the body to unite, and as it dips it diverts the force that would otherwise cause illness in some part of the body. So it is a case of streams of forces being diverted from the body through the rod.

The divining rod is a branch which has been carved into a fork, the way branches fork on a tree, and it is held by the two prongs. But how did Professor Benedikt arrive at his conclusions? He did it with the help of certain individuals whom he calls “darkness-adapted.” He calls them this because when they observe other people in the dark, they see colors. Experiments have established that the colors thus seen on a person's left side are different from those on his right side. Benedikt had the help of two such persons in his experiments. It becomes clear that these colors seen in a dark room, so dark that there is no possibility of ordinary physical sight, are what Benedikt calls emanations. We would call them deep physical aura. In this way it was possible for Professor Benedikt, with the help of “darkness-adapted” persons to prove, not only that human beings are asymmetric; i.e., show different colors on the two sides of their body, but also that the whole color picture changes when the divining rod is held. The experiment can be carried out in a laboratory; all that is needed is a bowl with water or a piece of metal. Thus in a room that is made dark one can prove what causes the effect produced by the rod.

It is interesting to look at some of the passages in Professor Benedikt's latest publication. He says:

There exist, if only in a relatively small number, human beings who are darkness-adapted! A relatively large number of this minority see many objects in darkness as luminous, but without color. A few see objects not only as luminous but colored. Already Reichenbach declared that every human being drags about a huge covering of luminous substance (emanation). Such phenomena, both colored and colorless, have since been strictly tested by me. A great many doctors and other educated people have been observed in my darkroom by two persons who are typically “darkness-adapted,” engineer Josef Pora and civil servant Hedwig Kaindl. According to the result of these tests, there can be no justified reason to doubt the correctness of what is seen and described. The gentlemen who were tested could convince themselves that the two “darkness-adapted” persons saw these unexpected phenomena on the parts of the body whose specific color emanation they described. ... The people who are “darkness-adapted” and see colors will observe on a person's right side blue at the crown of the head down over the forehead and the rest of that half of the body; on the left side red is seen, or by some, for example by engineer Pora, an orange yellow. From the back the same division and the same colors are seen ... I will mention here that an enclosed electrical battery in the darkroom glowed red at the anode and blue at the cathode terminals, thus in colors analogous to those seen on the left and right side of the body. The emanations from the two polar halves of the body were united into a single stream through the rod and combined with the emanation from the substance below the rod; its deflection signified this union.²

All this is very interesting. I must emphasize, so that there can be no misunderstanding, that what we are here concerned with has nothing to do with what I describe in my book Theosophy as the aura.³ What I describe reveals man's higher soul and spirit. What Professor Benedikt discovers in his darkroom is something that exists below the threshold, that is, not above but below the threshold of man's ordinary consciousness. These emanations or radiations are not perceptible to ordinary physical sight. What is interesting for us is the fact that a modern natural scientist finds it acceptable not only to speak about but to investigate scientifically a subconscious aura. It is also interesting that Benedikt himself finds it necessary to indicate that an aptitude for using the divining rod is not an indication of a higher kind of human capability. On the contrary it is seen to be a talent connected with man's lower organization and denied to those who are intellectually developed. It is shown that the ability of certain people to make the rod dip especially strongly is connected with lower soul impulses of a kind not perceptible to the ordinary senses, at least not in the normal way. That is why Professor Benedikt always needs “darkness-adapted” persons for his experiments.

Naturally this phenomenon comes up against opposition, but this is only to be expected; such things always create opposition. Professor Benedikt himself says on page twelve of his booklet:

The simple man instinctively recognizes dowsing as a fact; the academically educated person recognizes the generally held opinion. Thus for the former it is simply traditional knowledge and becomes irrefutable fact the moment he sees and feels the rod dip. The “intellectual” puts blinkers on and refuses to see what does not happen to fit into any compartment of his knowledge.

However, it all depends on what level someone wears his blinkers. Professor Benedikt takes his off when he investigates the aura connected with dowsing, but he puts them on when it comes to those higher realms investigated by anthroposophy. But other things of interest, based on his experiments, are published by Professor Benedikt. He says, for example:

We want to emphasize the significance these experiments have for the theory of color. The Newtonian theory that color effects originate exclusively from light which is reflected or transmitted through the prism is universally accepted without reservation by the guild of physicists, but it was challenged by Goethe. He maintained that the color impressions we receive from naturally colored objects and also from fabrics treated with natural color are due partly to the colored objects themselves. The proofs he offered were not sufficiently convincing to be generally accepted. ... With the help of the pendulum the theory of emanation dramatically confirms and clarifies one of Goethe's views; in this connection it must be stressed that reflected light produces emanations similarly colored.

Thus you see that Benedikt, now that he has embarked on research into this border realm,, comes as far as Goethe's theory of color. When one has been occupied, as I have, for more than three decades with justifying and defending Goethe's theory of color, then one is able to evaluate the extent to which there is a connection between the theory of emanation and Goethe's theory of color, and also whether there is a connection between the boneheaded materialistic theories that dominate modern physics and the rejection of Goethe's theory of color. However, what is interesting is that when someone ventures even slightly into the theory of color, he gets a little further in the direction of the anthroposophical view.

It is significant that when experiments are made with things like dowsing it is found that the simple man instinctively recognizes the phenomenon for a fact, whereas the scholar or academically trained person recognizes only the general opinion. It is significant because no age has been so dominated by opinions as ours, although it is always stressed that common sense should prevail. This is stressed especially in politics. But the fact is that healthy human common sense must today be striven for; it is simply not there. That is the great secret of our time. It must be striven for so that man can regain the connection with the spiritual world which in ancient times he had through atavistic clairvoyance. What he lost can be attained only along the path anthroposophy indicates.

I have mentioned that Professor Benedikt is a somewhat vain person which makes his books rather disagreeable to read, though it does not apply in this particular case. The frontispiece in his book is a photograph of himself, sitting in his darkroom making experiments with the pendulum. In his attempt to discover the interplay of forces between man and world, he arrives at physical auras. That is significant because even such physical experiments in this realm show that the accepted concept of space must be altered, must acquire a new foundation. Through such experiments it is shown, for example, that water is not just contained within the earth. Different emanations flow together when the water diviner walks over ground below which there is water; the rod dips because emanations rise from below and unite with emanations from the human being. In other words, water is not only under the ground; an element rises upwards from it. You may remember my pointing out the great significance of Schelling's famous—or perhaps not famous—saying: “An object exists not only where it is present; rather, it exists wherever its effect is manifest.”⁴ To comprehend such things is important. In my book Riddles of Philosophy you will find more about the significance of such concepts.⁵ They enable one to see things as they truly are, rather than to cling to preconceived notions and opinions.

Though it is naturally not generally acknowledged, individual instances do factually prove that the anthroposophical way of looking at things can guide modern man's thinking in the right direction. When an issue is approached without prejudice, thinking is led towards anthroposophy. The war has drawn attention to dowsing; it has become important to discover just what there is beneath the ground in certain regions especially in regard to water. To find water becomes essential for those who must stay behind in those regions when other sources have become exhausted. Thus investigation into dowsing reveals—especially when account is taken of the lower aspect of man's nature—that he encompasses infinitely more than either modern philosophy or biology have ever dreamed of.

It is a strange fact that although individual instances demonstrate that anthroposophy points in the right direction, it continues to be treated in the peculiar ways I have indicated in recent lectures. Those who have been connected with our movement for a longer period will understand why I am obliged today to speak about a literary phenomenon which can be said to be typical of the ways in which the spiritual stream that is anthroposophy is currently treated.

A book has just been published by a professor at Berlin University, Max Dessoir, a hefty book entitled Behind the Soul.⁶ It contains a chapter which, in the typical way I have mentioned, deals extensively with anthroposophy. When I picked up the book, my first thought was that it was going to be very interesting to see how those concerned with modern philosophy would discuss anthroposophy, and especially so as the author is a professor at a university; in fact, I looked forward to reading the book. I expected opposition of course, that cannot be otherwise for reasons I have mentioned. It is not surprising that modern philosophy is still opposed to anthroposophy; that does no harm provided the opposition is not defamatory or malicious. After all it is precisely through dialogue, through exchange of thoughts that something very positive can come about. However, as I studied this seemingly substantial book, I had to say that it was not in the least interesting. Everything he deals with, not only in the lengthy chapter on anthroposophy but elsewhere, shows that the author has not the slightest understanding of what anthroposophy is or the direction in which it points. It is quite extraordinary; he attempts to tell the reader about anthroposophy and does not come up with a single correct statement. His misinterpretations are typical of those usually made.

One's first reaction is to wonder how someone who must claim a degree of intelligence comes to present such a caricature. He must after all have investigated the subject since no decent person, you will agree, writes about something without first looking into it. On closer reading one comes to realize that he simply has no understanding of the subjects he writes about. Everything is unbelievably distorted—in fact, so distorted that anyone who takes such matters seriously is faced with an enigma. One cannot help asking how a person who must generally be regarded as clever (at least up to a point, or he would not be a professor at a university) comes to bungle an issue to such a degree.

However, when one has some experience of philology—and it is not in vain that I have worked with philologists for over six years at the Goethe-Schiller Archives in Weimar—then it is usually possible to put one's finger on the problem. I will start with a concrete example and clear up a particularly gross misunderstanding. Anyone who reads about post-Atlantean history in my books, for example in Occult Science, will know that I divide post-Atlantean time into seven consecutive epochs of which the fifth is the one we live in.⁷ How often have I mentioned that we live in the fifth epoch of post-Atlantean times, the first epoch being the ancient Indian, the second the ancient Persian and so on. This you all know. Max Dessoir, having discovered these time divisions, writes:

By ancient India is not meant present India, for in general all geological, astronomical and historical designations are to be understood symbolically. The Indian civilization was followed by the ancient Persian which was led by Zarathustra who lived much earlier than the historical personality of that name. Other epochs followed and we live in the sixth (p. 258).

Here you have one of those gross absurdities that occur when people report what I have said. But you will agree that the problem becomes worse when it is brought about by a professor whom one expects to be exact and correct in what he reports. What he writes here is certainly nonsense. If you turn to my Occult Science, you will realize how this inaccuracy came to be written. There it is said that the fifth cultural epoch was gradually prepared within the fourth, and that the fourth, fifth and sixth centuries of the fourth epoch were especially important in this preparation. The passage reads:

In the fourth, fifth and sixth centuries A.D. a new civilization-epoch was preparing in Europe. The actual beginning of it was in the fifteenth century, and we are still living in it now. Intended as it was by slow degrees to replace the fourth, the Graeco-Latin, this is the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. (pp. 218-219)

This passage Professor Dessoir reads with such care that by the fifth line he has forgotten what it is about—or perhaps filed it incorrectly in his card index—and as he looks again he reads the first line: “In the fourth, fifth and sixth centuries” the fifth epoch was being prepared; as he looks once more—as a professor he is very careful—his eye falls on the first line instead of the fifth, and he writes: “We live in the sixth epoch.”

Such is this man's method when he sets out to explain the anthroposophical movement. It shows an unbelievable superficiality which remains undetected because one simply takes for granted that professors are responsible people. Those who read this passage without checking will accept it without question. It is not so terribly important that he says sixth instead of fifth, but it is an instance that provides us with the solution to the problem—an exact philological solution—which shows the man's irresponsibility.

Let us look further in order to find the measure by which to evaluate this publication. Dessoir writes the following:

If contemporary man is to attain a higher consciousness, he must begin by immersing himself, with all his powers, in a mental picture. Best suited for this purpose is a symbolic picture such as a black cross (symbol of the lower desires and passions which have been destroyed) whose intersection is surrounded by seven red roses (symbol of desires and passions which have been purified) ... (p. 255)

Anyone who reads this passage in Max Dessoir must ask if this anthroposophy is quite mad. How is that to arise which is symbolized as purified desires and passions if the black cross symbolizes that desires and passions have been destroyed? If all desires and passions are destroyed then what is there left to transform? So again what he has written is nonsensical. But you see, the passage is supposed to be a quotation. So let us turn to Occult Science. There we read:

Then, having entered right into the experience of the thoughts and feelings, we can re-cast them in the following symbolic picture. Imagine you see before you a black cross. Let this black cross be for you a symbol for the baser elements that have been cast out of man's impulses and passions. (p. 231)

Professor Max Dessoir audaciously alters this passage to “... symbol of lower desires and passions which have been destroyed,” whereas it says: “baser elements that have been cast out of man's impulses and passions.” This shows how carelessly he reads and how inexactly he quotes. In dealing with super-sensible knowledge it is all-important to be as conscientious as possible especially when quoting, yet the learned professor appears to go out of his way to be as slovenly and inaccurate as possible.

Faced, as one is, with a complete caricature of anthroposophy one comes to realize that this man is incapable of giving a proper rendition of it, not for lack of intelligence but for lack of ordinary scientific conscientiousness. One comes to the conclusion that his main characteristic is superficiality. Let us look at another passage where he speaks about how clairvoyance can be attained:

The goal of all philosophy is attained by the soul through such inner work. One must be careful to distinguish body-free consciousness from dreamlike clairvoyance or hypnotic influences. When our soul forces have been strengthened the I can experience itself above consciousness. It is in fact possible already in the perception of color and sound to exclude the body's mediation. (p. 255)

Nowhere do I say that one can exclude the body's mediation when perceiving color and sound, but that does not prevent Professor Max Dessoir from writing that I do. It can hardly be expected that such a man should understand anything; even when he tries, he manages to misunderstand. For example, you will not find anywhere in my writings the expression “cell body.”^* That is a term that has no meaning in connection with what is said in Occult Science or indeed with anthroposophy in general. Nevertheless, Professor Dessoir says: “When through the submersion the spirit becomes free from the cell body it is still not free of all corporeality.” This is because: “The functions of the astral body are varied. It contains the patterns according to which the ether body gives the cell body its form.” (p. 256)

Nowhere do I speak of “cell body” but rather of physical body. By using such a term, everything I say concerning the physical body becomes meaningless. Thus you see that Dessoir has no understanding of the subject whatever. The following is a typical example:

The recuperation one experiences after sleep can be simpler and more straightforwardly explained without resorting to an astral body. Also, unlike Steiner, we do not need to “explain” the falling asleep of a limb as a separation of the ether body from the physical body. (p. 256)

He puts the word “explain” in quotation marks. But let us turn to <Occult Science where we find:

When, for example, a man subjects an arm or leg to an unusual pressure, a portion of the ether body may become separated from the physical. We say then that the limb has “gone to sleep.” The peculiar sensation it gives is in fact due to the severance of the ether body. (Here too, of course, materialistic thinking can deny the invisible within the visible, maintaining that the effect is merely due to the physical or physiological disturbances induced by the excessive pressure.) (p. 72)

You can see that it is not in the least denied that the physical pressure has an effect and causes the “falling asleep” of the limb. What is said is that the peculiar sensation that accompanies the experience is due to the separation of the ether body.

One wonders if such people are able to read at all. Are they capable of taking in a serious book on a spiritual subject in which every detail has been carefully considered? It is not without significance that people of this kind, capable of treating a serious contemporary work in this manner, fill the professorial chairs at universities. I had hoped to present to you today an example of how one might refute objections of an earnest nature, raised against anthroposophical issues. Instead I am obliged to show you that what we are up against are superficial people who falsify everything. Refuting serious objections would have given me great pleasure.

Dessoir finds, as one might expect, the passages in Occult Science dealing with the Saturn evolution particularly—how shall I put it—“lip-smacking.” It is only natural that he is especially offended by a passage which he presents as follows:

Various kinds of spirits move in Saturn's environment, those of form (Exusiai), of personality (Archai), of fire (Archangeloi) and of love (Seraphim). Through the Angeloi processes of nutrition and excretion develop on Saturn, and through the Cherubim, at a later stage, a dull dreamlike consciousness. The clairvoyant can experience these conditions even today, for they are actually always present to a super-sensible perception which is akin to smell. (p. 258)

So the clairvoyant is supposed to be able to experience by means of super-sensible perception akin to smell! In other words “clairsmellers” smell Saturn,conditions! Now that is something to smack one's lips over, and Dessoir cannot resist saying: “That the ‘odor of sanctity’ and the ‘stench of the devil’ is not brought to bear on this amazes me.” (p. 252)

One wonders if it would be at all possible to have a proper discussion with such a man should the occasion arise. But let us turn to Occult Science where this passage comes from; there it reads: “Inwardly (within Saturn) the dull human will manifests itself to the faculty of super-sensible perception by effects which could be compared to smell.” (p. 125) Thus this passage speaks of effects which can be compared with smell. Dessoir finds it necessary to alter it to: “The clairvoyant experiences these conditions even today through a super-sensible perception which is akin to smell.” (p. 258) In other words he turns a clear statement into nonsense, and then proceeds to criticize his own nonsense. Nor is it said by me that processes of nutrition and excretion begin on Saturn through the Angeloi. What I do say is that by the time the Angeloi appeared, processes of nutrition and excretion took place on Saturn. What is indicated is simultaneity; the Angeloi appear, and processes of nutrition and excretion begin. That these come about through the Angeloi is Dessoir's version.

Later he says: “The Christ or Sun-man taught seven great teachers.” I have not been able to find to what that sentence is supposed to refer. In Occult Science it is clearly stated that the Sun humanity experienced the Christ as the higher “I” (p. 191) which is obviously something quite different than saying “the Christ or Sun-man.” Dessoir presents things at times with great cunning. One gets the impression that his superficiality is deliberate, and he comes close to being slanderous. For example, he remembers that I speak about forces at work in the formation of the brain during early childhood. You will find descriptions of this in certain lectures with which Dessoir is slightly acquainted; these lectures are published under the title The Spiritual Guidance of Man.⁸ I describe that if one later remembers how all the wonderful wisdom which later arises in the brain could have been produced by one's own cleverness, then one comes to see how wisdom works from the unconscious in man during the first three years of childhood. The ingenious Max Dessoir, professor at Berlin University, quotes that as follows:

Particularly a person who has learned wisdom himself—this Rudolf Steiner confesses—will say: When I was a child I worked on myself with forces that entered me from the spiritual world, and what I am now able to give of the best within me must also stem from higher worlds. I cannot regard it as belonging to my ordinary consciousness. (p. 260)

Thus Dessoir gives the reader the impression that I maintain that everything I say is of my own making. Let us turn to The Spiritual Guidance of Man. There we read:

The idea thus gained of the guidance of humanity may be extended in many directions. Let us suppose that a man finds disciples—a few people who follow him. Such a one will soon become aware, through genuine self-knowledge, that the very fact of his finding disciples gives him the feeling that what he has to say does not originate with himself. The case is rather this—that spiritual powers in higher worlds wish to communicate with the disciples, and find in the teacher the fitting instrument for their manifestation.

The thought will suggest itself to such a man: when I was a child I worked on myself by the aid of forces proceeding from the spiritual world, and what I am now able to give, of my best, must also proceed from higher worlds; I may not look upon it as belonging to my ordinary consciousness. (p. 22)

That is the passage quoted by Dessoir. My continuation reads as follows:

Such a man may in fact say: something demonic, something like a “daimon”—using the word in the sense of a good spiritual power—is working out of a spiritual world through me on my disciples. Socrates felt something of this kind. (p. 22)

Thus the whole passage refers to Socrates. Max Dessoir, in bad taste—not to use stronger words—not only distorts completely what is said, but adds the following:

Because a certain individual possesses superior knowledge it is assumed that he is connected through tubes or wires to a spiritual world, thought of in materialistic terms. The objective spirit of which Hegel speaks is transformed into clusters of demons while a muddled religious thinking conjures up all kinds of phantoms. (p. 260)

Dessoir should read the chapter on Hegel in my Riddles of Philosophy, then he would have to recognize that what I say about daimons^** refers to Socrates, who used the term.⁹ In the Riddles of Philosophy I emphasize that it could never be used with reference to Hegel. I shall show why in this particular case Professor Dessoir is especially tactless. What he says amounts to slander even if it originates in superficiality mixed with all kinds of antagonistic feelings.

It is truly amazing that such distorted ideas can take hold of the brain of a modern professor. For example, I describe imaginative knowledge, which is experienced pictorially, as the first stage of super-sensible knowledge; just as one gains knowledge of physical things through abstract, shadow-like concepts, so one gains knowledge of facts belonging to higher worlds through imaginative knowledge. What Professor Dessoir makes of this is not very clear. When he reads that knowledge is gained by means of symbols, he thinks that the facts themselves are symbols. That is why he says earlier that: “Ancient India is not the present India, for generally all geological, astronomical and historical designations are to be understood symbolically.” (p. 258)

No one would think it possible for a sensible person to gain the impression from the description in Occult Science that ancient India is to be understood symbolically even though the concept does not coincide with that of modern India. Because he reads that imaginative knowledge, the first stage of higher knowledge, is symbolic he thinks that ancient India, the object of that knowledge, is itself only a symbol. This belief leads him to write, “Steiner has worked out a primordial past of earth evolution which for some reason he calls the Lemurian epoch and places it in a country that was situated between Australia and India. (Thus a concrete place, not a symbol).” (p. 261)

Thus you see that Dessoir presumes that the land of Lemuria is only meant allegorically and blames me as he finds it particularly offensive that I speak of it as real. So here he is not only superficial but stupid, though he regards himself especially clever when he ends by saying:

There are in these descriptions strange contradictions though also apparent logic. There is contradiction in saying that real facts and their mutual connections have evolved out of something merely visualized and symbolic. (p. 263)

So according to Dessoir, when knowledge is pictorial, it can depict only pictures, and he finds it contradictory that it depicts reality. Imagine if a painter found it contradictory that his painting depicted reality and confused the one with the other. In this case his superficiality amounts to stupidity.

This is an example of how the modern world presents anthroposophy. This fat book, written by a university professor, will naturally be widely read and discussed. People will read the chapter on anthroposophy and will of course not realize that what they are reading is a caricature. The announcement appearing in all the periodicals will most likely make them think that the matter has been justly dealt with. Such book announcements are usually composed by people close to the author. This particular one states that

... the book deals with cabbalistic methodology, manifest not just in the actual cabbala, but also in Freudian psychoanalysis, in the unproductive cleverness of certain exponents on Faust, and also in theoretical speculations concerning Shakespeare and Bacon. All these secondary sciences are analyzed, their shallowness revealed. The false doctrines of Guido von List and of Rudolf Steiner are investigated just as thoroughly and relentlessly, thus throwing light on the obscure and questionable theories of faith healers and Theosophists.

So there you have an example of modern scholarship. That is the way officialdom deals with a subject that seeks to serve truth. At times the superficiality of approach by the likes of Max Dessoir reaches hitherto unscaled heights. In his publication you will find this note: “Compare Rudolf Steiner's Occult Science, fifth edition, Leipzig 1913. I have in addition consulted a long list of his other publications.” (p. 254)

I have shown—and my philological training stood me in good stead—that Max Dessoir knows none of my writings except Occult Science, The Spiritual Guidance of Man and “The Occult Significance of Blood.” He has never read Riddles of Philosophy, to mention just one book. The long list of publications, apart from Occult Science, that he mentions consists of the two I have named. He continues: “Steiner's first production, The Philosophy of Freedom (Berlin 1894) is merely a prelude to the actual doctrine” (p. 254). First production! My first book was published in 1883, some eleven years before this so-called first production. That is the kind of thing one is up against.

I shall, of course, write a brochure about this chapter, and also about the rest of Dessoir's book. That must be done because it is a question of putting on record for once the glaring superficiality of a so-called learned publication by demonstrating it. One must formally show that the man is incapable of observing even rudimentary standards of propriety. Nor is it a simple matter of refuting sentence by sentence what is said; before that all the distortions must be demonstrated. Dessoir actually sets the pattern for his whole approach to the subject in his opening remarks. I am aware that of course no one will find anything wrong with those remarks. He says: “Dr. Rudolf Steiner is an altogether strange personality. He comes from Hungary where he was born on the 27th of February 1861, and has arrived in Weimar via Vienna.” (p. 254)

Well, the only time I have spent in Hungary was the first eighteen months of my life. I do not actually “come” from Hungary but from Lower Austria and I descend from an old German family. My father was an official on the Southern Austrian railway, operating between Wiener-Neustadt and Gross-Kanizsa which at that time was part of Cisleithania. He was employed at a station on the Hungarian line, at Kraljevec where I happened to be born and where I lived for eighteen months. In Kürschner¹⁰ it naturally reads: “born in Hungary,” and that is Dessoir's source of information. I know that people who are always ready to excuse lack of conscientiousness will say: Well, how could the man know otherwise when it is printed in Kürschner. However, a German professor of philosophy should not have such an easygoing attitude. It is true that Kürschner gives the place of birth, but it is well known that someone can be born in one place but originate from quite another. Nowadays that often happens as people are becoming more and more intermingled.

I mentioned that Max Dessoir is acquainted with the lecture “The Occult Significance of Blood.” His quotations from it are quite ingenious. If you look at that lecture, you will find that I proceed with the greatest caution when I explain how things were in earlier times. One of the things I explain is how the blood used to affect man's memory to a much greater extent. I emphasize that these things are difficult to describe; often one can make only approximate comparisons. Needless to say Max Dessoir completely ignores these introductory remarks. If you look up the passages to which he refers in “The Occult Significance of Blood,” you will see with what care and caution everything is described. But Max Dessoir deliberately quotes so as to give the maximum adverse impression. He first remarks: “The astral body is supposed to come to expression partly in the sympathetic nervous system, partly in the spinal cord and brain.” (p. 261) He then quotes this sentence: “The blood absorbs the pictures coming from the external world and made inward through the brain.” He then remarks further: “This colossal disdain for everything factual is combined with the equally unprovable and incomprehensible assertion that prehistoric man remembered, in the pictures received by his blood, not only his own but his ancestors' experiences.” (p. 261)

It is inexcusable to hoax the reader by abbreviating what has been explained with great care in such a way that it is rendered meaningless. This hoax is particularly damaging as it presents things in a defamatory way. Yet what is the good professor quoting? Simply the fact that what is inherited from his forebears through the blood man experienced under earlier and different conditions as memory. This Max Dessoir finds particularly objectionable; yet I would like to draw your attention to one of Dessoir's own assertions which is most interesting. He explains how it comes about that very ancient views still persist, views such as those held by superstitious country folk, by faith healers, or by Guido von List and anthroposophists. This he attempts to explain by saying:

Already from such examples can the conclusion be drawn that primitive thought forms continue to live in occult research. Admittedly this theory of a residue does not in itself provide a conclusive refutation of occultism. The truths grasped in the youth of a people could have become lost from our cultural field, but this is refuted by the facts drawn on for support. And a memory of primitive man's thoughts and views would explain why modern man has difficulty in freeing himself from them. After all, our blood has run through our veins for many centuries. Its pulsebeat is not always regular; it often becomes arhythmical as it once was. (p. 11)

In other words, when Dessoir finds in anthroposophy that our ancestors' blood runs in our veins and constitutes a kind of memory, then that is a matter for ridicule, but when he himself finds the idea useful, then it is acceptable! This is typical of Max Dessoir, Professor at Berlin University.

Those acquainted with my writings on Goethe will know of a strange book which I have always emphatically rejected, Sphinx locuta est by F.A. Louvier.¹¹ It is a dreadful book which sets out to explain Goethe's Faust by means of cabbalism. Dessoir speaks first about cabbalism itself; what he says about it would lead us too far as he does not understand it at all. In dealing with modern cabbalism he brings up Louvier's Sphinx locuta est which contains juicy bits for him to get his teeth into. This is what he has to say:

Spiritual forces appear in various places as allegoric figures. The earth spirit—truly the most obscure figure—is the spirit of the whole Faust plane (for earth represents “plane” or “glade”). Gretchen represents naivety, the black poodle negative proof and so on. With this in mind let us look at the scene: ‘At the Gates.’ When Faust symbolizes speculating reason, he resides in the head. Thus the brain represents the city and the dark cavern of the gate represents a mouth from which come audible utterances of the spirits escaping into the open. These are represented by various strollers, but not heard at this point; they are described in detail in the second part as the harbinger's wand. The poem as such is represented by soldiers. The castle (seat of thought) and maidens (feelings) must yield to the poem (soldiers). The trumpets (tones) in the poem are sounded to indicate both joy and destruction ... The middle class girl (Agathe) represents folksong, and the beloved, one of the soldiers, unites with the folksong (Agathe); thus words and song form a pair ... At the side of the folk-song (Agathe) appears a ‘Student’ representing the ballad called curly head, and with them a second student representing the refrain ... Apart from the figures already mentioned there also appear the following audible utterings coming from the gate (mouth): request, command, distortion, chatter, consent, quarrel, question, politics, promise and apology. (p. 222)

Thus Louvier, who sees the whole Kantian philosophy represented in Goethe's Faust, provides Dessoir with plenty to make fun of. Dessoir goes on to ridicule Edwin Bormann and his Shakespeare-Bacon theory,¹² demonstrating what nonsense they have produced by means of cabbalism. He then cites, in very bad taste, three poems by Stefan George.¹³¹⁴ After that he brings up race-mysticism as expounded by Guido von List.¹⁵ I knew Guido von List when he was still a reasonable person and had written his novel Carnuntum. But our only connection was when he sent me an essay in the early 1880s when I was still publishing Lucifer Gnosis.¹⁶ I returned the essay, as it was amateurish and quite unsuitable.

Dessoir goes on to speak about Christian Science. You know how much connection I have had with that! My relation to Christian Science can be summed up in the few words I usually said, when asked about it, after public lectures. Dessoir uses similar words as his own, but you know it is what I have always answered to questions about Christian Science, It is utterly materialistic; furthermore, this so-called Christian Science has no right to call itself Christian. Dessoir says:

For it is clear that the whole teaching is irreconcilable with the spirit of Christianity; a teacher that wants to eradicate all suffering cannot take the Gospels as precedent. Christianity proclaims with awesome solemnity the truth that sin and pain necessarily belong to human nature. These are not illusions of imperfect human reasoning, but facts. Hence the need for God's mercy and the sacrificial death of Jesus. Christian Science is not Christian. (243)

He goes on to describe the theosophical movement as neo-Buddhistic. Well, I could write a book about spiritualism and, based on Dessoir's own descriptions of how he has attended all kinds of spiritualistic meetings, devote a chapter to Max Dessoir, linking him with spiritualism. That would be as justifiable as the way he here links anthroposophy with theosophy, especially in the following tasteless passage:

The occult researcher of this “universal brotherhood” opposes violently the modern or pseudo-theosophists, by whom are meant the anthroposophists rallying round their master Rudolf Steiner. However, their opposition shall not prevent us from looking into this movement as well. (p. 240)

Another thing that must be pointed out is Dessoir's unscrupulous mixing things together so that they become related to issues with which they have nothing to do, as is done throughout a book. For example, you find the following:

There is always a danger that such societies could wield a certain influence especially in our uncertain times. One consolation is that race-mystics, faith healers and theosophists mutually despise and fight one another. (p. 240)

I ask you, my dear friends, have I ever fought anyone unless I was first attacked? What is said here is an example of the untruthfulness that permeates the book. You can test for yourself whether any of those mentioned have been attacked by me. Race-mysticism I have never opposed because I consider it too silly to be worth the effort. I have never said anything about faith healing except what is conveyed by the two passages just mentioned.

Dessoir is certainly a special case. I cannot today go into all the things he maintains to have experienced in various spiritualist sessions. These experiences have enabled Dessoir to write a book which is simply an elaboration of all kinds of sensations. The question is how a person comes to write a book that is really quite mad. Going through the remaining chapters one comes to the sad conclusion that the man, who is supposed to be a specialist writing about his special subject, knows nothing about it. How can a professor of philosophy such as Max Dessoir come to write a passage like the following:

A musically cultivated person will succeed at every moment, during an opera, to grasp as a unity: the text, the music—which itself is highly complex—and the acting, despite the fact that these three components may be quite independent of one another (p. 35).

Someone with any knowledge of what Aristotle, for example, says about the collaboration between the senses in the normal human being could not deliver such verbiage. So it amounts to this, that a university professor, supposedly a specialist in his field, has not read let alone studied even the simpler aspects of his subject. It is truly astounding.

Here among ourselves we can for once discuss these things freely. I shall of course be completely objective in my official refutation. I shall point objectively to the facts and refrain from using the sharp words I have employed today. It must be put to the test whether there are still people who at least become indignant when their attention is forcibly drawn to such a “cultural” publication.

Dessoir brings up another peculiar matter. He speaks about consciousness; there exists, he says, a “borderline,” even a “surface area” of consciousness. To illustrate it he comes up with the following:

Let us resort again to an easily understandable picture: from the centre of the circle [he means the circle of consciousness] “... a complex of ideas slide to the periphery and become engulfed, yet remain partially definite and coherent. To give an example: when I lecture on familiar subjects there can come into that region incidental thoughts and ideas, so that one's attention is drawn to other things. Nevertheless I continue speaking without conscious participation, as it were, in what I am saying. It has happened that I have become surprised by a sudden quiet in the hall, and have to make clear to myself that it is because I have stopped speaking! Thus habitual opinions and trains of thought can be continued “unconsciously” especially when they, as it were, move along not very vividly, while the speech connected with them, likewise continues without difficulty along well practiced paths (p. 34).

Well, I might have known! I am quite sure that not even in this circle have I ever continued speaking without being conscious of doing so, and participating in what I was saying. Dessoir's statement really amounts to an extraordinary self-revelation. One wonders to whom else this condition applies, but that I shall not pursue. He obviously considers it applies to everybody. As he at times gives lectures without participating in what he is saying, one can perhaps assume that he also continues to write page after page without participating in what he is writing—that would indeed explain a few things. But in fact the whole book appears to have been written in a state of semi-consciousness. Perhaps the professor wrote it in a kind of trance and that is the explanation for the insidious superficiality.

When one is committed to establishing a spiritual movement in the modern world, one certainly meets with things that are neither easy to bear nor to deal with. I found it necessary today to draw your attention to two of the ways in which anthroposophy is received. On the one hand I wanted to give a brief description of how someone who takes only a few steps in the right direction moves toward anthroposophy. On the other hand I wanted to show-how anthroposophy is dealt with by those who are officially appointed to represent scientific and philosophical viewpoints and are consequently taken seriously. Well, anthroposophy will struggle through on its own. But let us be clear that in a man like Max Dessoir we are dealing with someone who, apart from being utterly superficial, is also rather ridiculous.

After this digression I hope next time we can proceed and enter more deeply into our present considerations.

• 1 . Moritz Benedikt, 1835-1920, criminologist and anthropologist.
• 2 . Moritz Benedikt, Ruten- und Pendellehre, Vienna and Leipzig, 1917.
• 3 . Rudolf Steiner, Theosophy: An Introduction to the Supersensible Knowledge of the World and the Destination of Man (Anthroposophic Press, Spring Valley, NY, 1985).
• 4 . Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling, 1775–1854, see Von der Weltseele, 1798: “It is very true that a body only acts where it is; but it is equally true that it only is where it acts.”
• 5 . Rudolf Steiner, Riddles of Philosophy (Anthroposophic Press, Spring Valley, NY, 1973).
• 6 . Max Dessoir, 1867–1947, philosopher and psychologist. Vom Jenseits der Seele, Stuttgart, 1917. Further references to this book will be indicated in the text.
• 7 . Rudolf Steiner, Occult Science: An Outline (Rudolf Steiner Press, London, 1984). Further references to this book will be indicated in the text.
• *. Zellenkörper: The usual translation is “protoplasm.” Protoplasm is often defined in biology as the living substance of a cell, or the cell material when considered apart from the cell membrane. “Cell body” is here used to clarify the confusion of terms in German.
• 8 . Rudolf Steiner, The Spiritual Guidance of Man (Anthroposophic Press, Spring Valley, NY, 1976), p. 22.
• **. Daimon (Greek) = “Deity”
• 9 . Steiner, Riddles of Philosophy, ibid.
• 10. Kürschner is the name of the German publishing house that has been publishing an annually updated encyclopedia of literature, philosophy, and literary history with writers' names, dates of birth, etc. since 1873. This encyclopedia is generally known by the name of its publisher as “Kürschner.”
• 11. Ferdinand August Louvier, Sphinx Locuta est. Goethe's “Faust” und die Resultate einer rationellen Methode der Forschung. 2 volumes, Berlin, 1884, p. 122.
• 12. Edwin Bormann, 1851–1912, Der historische Beweis der Bacon-Shakespeare Theorie, 1897.
• 13. Stefan George, 1868–1933, German poet.
• 14. Steiner quotes Dessoir's comparison of these poems in order to criticize Dessoir's-method. The complete text, deleted in the text, is included here:
  
  Then he goes on to Stefan George. Here he has the tasteful style of characterizing Stefan George by quoting three of his poems. It is not necessary to go into all of that. It would take an hour to demonstrate Max Dessoir's distortions to you completely; but we will go into one of them, where he compares three poems. It is not necessary to be a fan of these poems, but I want to show you the system Max Dessoir uses. So, please, don't take it as if I were a proponent of Werfel's poems—that is not the point here.
  
  Entrückter, leichter Himmel fiber dem Ort!
  Du weißt von der Seebader goldenen Fetzen.
  Du weißt von Prinzen
  Und herbstlichem Halali.
  Ihr Knabenbaume
  Zuckt von den Schultern
  Das letzte Netz,
  Das braune.
  Den Schatten werfet auf mich,
  Hier sitze ich
  Und lese den iibermiitigen
  Namen im Stein.
  Nun bist du bei meiner Großmutter, Kind,
  O unterirdisches Fest,
  Das niemand denken will!
  
  As I said, one could hold something against this poem; but Dessoir has the tasteful touch, and compares it with the following poem. This, which I will now read, is the first of the poems:
  
  Der blasse Adelknabe spricht:
  Du Dunkelheit, aus der ich stamme?
  Ich glaube an alles noch nie Gesagte,
  Ich bin auf der Welt zu allein and doch nicht allein genug.
  Du siehst, ich will viel!
  Wir bauen an dir mit zitternden Handen.
  
  That is the first poem; then comes Werfel's poem, then comes the third. That I will also read now:
  
  Vielleicht, da ich durch schwere Berge gehe—
  Du Berg, der blieb, da die Gebirge kamen,
  Mach mich zum Wachter deiner Weiten,
  Denn, Herr, die großen Stadte sind:
  Da leben Menschen, weiß erbliihte, blasse,
  O Herr, gib jedem semen eignen Tod!
  Herr, wir sind armer denn die armen Tiere,
  Mach' Einen Herrlich, Herr, mach' Einen groß
  Das letzte Zeichen laß an uns geschehen
  
  The middle poem, that I read to you first, is really Werfel's; but to interpret it Dessoir tastefully takes a volume of Rilke's poems, and does not quote them as written but includes only their first lines as they stand in the table of contents! He makes poems by putting their first lines together, and compares them with Werfel's poem. That is the tasteful way in which he tries to characterize modern verse. He wants to say: Werfel's poem also arises, if one takes the first lines of Rilke's Stundenbuch (Prayer-Book) and writes them consecutively to construct a poem. That is how he does it.
  
  Franz Werfel, 1890–1945, Austrian poet.
  
  Rainer Maria Rilke, 1875–1926, German poet.
• 15. Guido von List, 1848–1919, Carnuntum, historischer Roman aus dem vierten Jahrhundert nach Christus, 2 volumes, Berlin, 1889.
• 16. Luzifer-Gnosis: a periodical edited by Rudolf Steiner from 1903–1908. Essays which he wrote for the journal may be found in Luzifer-Gnosis, GA 34, Dornach, and in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment (Anthroposophic Press, Spring Valley, NY, 1985).

To-day I wish to continue with the subject I placed before you the day before yesterday. We were tracing the thread of evolution which enters into the spiritual life of the present time, and we left off with the individuality of Julian the Apostate. I told you that this individuality was next incarnated in one who is only known by legendary accounts, whose secret is contained in the Parsifal legend, in the name of Herzeleide. In this life as Herzeleide, the soul of Julian the Apostate entered into a far deeper inner life. The soul-life of the individuality was deepened, as was indeed necessary after the many storms and inner moods of opposition which he had undergone in his life as Julian the Apostate.

But this later life of which I told you—this life as Herzeleide—spread itself out over the former life as Julian the Apostate like a warm embalming cloud. Thus the soul grew more intense and deep and inward, and grew richer, too, in manifold impulses of the inner life.

Now this soul was among those who had carried over something of the ancient Mysteries. Julian had lived within the substance of the ancient Mysteries at a time when their light was still radiant in many ways. Thus he had received into himself much spirituality of the cosmos. All this had been as it were pressed back during the incarnation as Herzeleide; but it was none the less pressing forth in the soul, and thus we find the same individuality again in the 16th century; we find arising in him once more, in a Christianised form, what he had undergone as Julian the Apostate. For the same individuality reappears in the 16th century as Tycho de Brahe, and stands face to face with the Copernican world-conception which emerges within Western civilisation at that time.

The Copernican world-conception pictures the universe in a way, which if followed to its logical conclusions would tend to drive all spirituality out of the cosmos in man's conception of it. The Copernican world-picture leads at length to a mechanical, machine-like conception of the universe in space. It was after all in view of this Copernican picture of the world that the famous astronomer said to Napoleon: he had searched through all the universe and he could find no God. It is, indeed, an entire elimination of spirituality.

The individuality of whom I am now speaking, who had now returned as Tycho de Brahe, could not submit to this. Thus we see Tycho de Brahe accepting in his world-conception what is useful of Copernicanism, but rejecting the absolute movement of the earth ascribed to it according to the Copernican world-picture. In Tycho de Brahe we see these things united with true spirituality. When we consider the course of his life, it is indeed evident how a karma from ancient time is pressing its way forth with might and main into this life as Tycho de Brahe, seeking to enter the substance of his consciousness. Such is his spirituality. We remember how his Danish relatives sought to hold him fast at all costs in the profession of a lawyer, and we see how, living as a tutor, he steals the hours by night in which to commune with the gods. And here an extraordinary thing appears. All this is contained in his biography. We shall see presently how deeply significant it is for a true estimate of this individuality of Tycho de Brahe—Julian—Herzeleide. With the most primitive instruments contrived and manufactured by himself, he discovers considerable errors in calculation which had entered into the determination of the orbits of Saturn and Jupiter. We have this remarkable scene in the life of Tycho de Brahe. As a young man with the most primitive instruments with which other people would not dream of trying to accomplish anything, he feels impelled one day to seek the exact places of Saturn and Jupiter in the heavens. In his case all these things are strongly permeated with spiritual content. And this spiritual content leads him to a conception of the universe such as we must have if we are striving once again to the modern science of Initiation, when at length we come to speak of spiritual beings as we speak of physical men on earth. For in reality we can ever meet them, and there is in fact only a difference in quality of being as between those individualities who are now on the physical plane and those who are discarnate, living between death and a new birth.

These things kindled in Tycho de Brahe an extraordinarily deep and penetrating vision of spiritual connections. I mean the connections which appear when we no longer regard everything on earth as though it were caused by earthly impulses alone, and on the other hand consider the stars only in mathematical calculations, but when we perceive the interplay of impulses from the stars with the historic impulses within mankind. In Tycho de Brahe's soul there lived instinctively what he had brought with him from his life as Julian the Apostate. In that former life it had not been permeated with rationalism or intellectualism. It had been intuitive, imaginative—for such was the inner life of Julian the Apostate. With all this he succeeded in doing something that made a great sensation.

He could make little impression on his contemporaries with his astronomic opinions, differing as they did from Copernicus, or with his other astronomical achievements. He observed countless stars and made a map of the heavens which alone made it possible for Kepler afterwards to reach his great results. For it was on the basis of Tycho de Brahe's mapping of the stars that Kepler discovered his famous laws. But none of these things could have made so great an impression on his contemporaries as a discovery relatively unimportant in itself, but very striking. He foretold almost to the day the death of the Sultan Soliman, which afterwards occurred as he had foretold it. Here we see ancient perceptions working into a later time in a spiritual intellectuality. Perceptions which Julian the Apostate had received light up again in modern time in Tycho de Brahe. Tycho de Brahe is indeed one of the most interesting of human souls. In the 17th century he passed on through the gate of death and entered the spiritual world. Now in the spiritual currents which I have described as those of Michael, this being, Tycho de Brahe—Julian the Apostate—Herzeleide, constantly emerges. In one or another of the super-sensible functions he is in fact always there. Hence too we find him in those great events in the super-sensible world at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th century which are connected with this stream of Michael.

I told you already of the great super-sensible School of instruction in the 15th, 16th centuries which stood under the aegis of Michael himself. Then there began for those who had been within this School a life which took its course in such a way that activities and forces unfolded in the spiritual world worked down into the physical, worked in connection with the physical world. For example, in the time that immediately followed the period of the super-sensible School of Michael, an important task was allotted to an individuality of whose continued life I have often spoken—I mean the individuality of Alexander the Great.

I have already spoken, here at Dornach too, of Lord Bacon of Verulam as the reincarnated Haroun al Raschid. We know how intense and determining an influence Bacon's conceptions had on the whole succeeding evolution of the spiritual life, notably in its finer impulses and movements. Now the remarkable thing is this, that in Lord Bacon himself something took place which we may describe as a morbid elimination of old spirituality. For such spirituality he had after all possessed when he was Haroun al Raschid.

And thus we see, proceeding from the impulse of Lord Bacon, a whole world of daemonic beings. The world was literally filled supersensibly and sensibly with daemonic beings. (When I say “sensibly” I meant not, of course, visibly, but within the world of sense.)

Now it chiefly fell to the individuality of Alexander to wage war against these daemonic idols of Lord Bacon, Francis Bacon of Verulam. And similar activities, exceedingly important ones, were taking place on earth below. For otherwise the materialism of the 19th century would have broken in upon the world in a far more devastating way even than it did. Similar activities, taking place in the spiritual and in the physical world together, were allotted to the stream of Michael, until at length at the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century there took place in super-sensible regions what I have already described as the enactment of a great and sublime super-sensible ritual and ceremony.

In the super-sensible world at that time a cult was instituted and enacted in real imaginations of a spiritual kind. Thus we may say: At the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th century there hovers in the immediate neighbourhood of the physical world of sense a great super-sensible event, consisting in super-sensible acts of ritual, an unfolding of mighty pictures of the spiritual life of beings of the universe, the Beings of the Hierarchies in connection with the great ether-workings of the universe and the human workings upon earth. I say“in the immediate neighbourhood,” meaning of course, adjoining this physical world in a qualitative, not in a spatial sense. It is interesting to see how at a most favourable moment a little miniature picture of this super-sensible cult and action flowed into Goethe's spirit. Transformed and changed and in miniature we have this picture set down by Goethe in his fairy story of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily ...

There was, then, a great super-sensible action in which those above all took part who had partaken in the stream of Michael, in all the revelations super-sensible and sensible, of which I told you. Now here again and again the individuality who was last present upon earth in Tycho de Brahe, plays a very great part. And it was his constant striving to preserve the great and lasting impulses of what we call paganism, of the old life of the Mysteries. It was his striving to preserve it in effect towards a better understanding of Christianity. He had entered Christianity when he lived as the soul of Herzeleide. Now it was his striving to introduce into the Christian conception all that he had received through his Initiation as Julian the Apostate. For it was this especially which seemed so important to the souls of whom I have spoken. The many souls who are now to be found in the Anthroposophical Movement or strive towards this Movement with sincerity are united with all these spiritual streams. By its very essence and nature they feel themselves attracted by the School of Michael, and Tycho de Brahe had a great influence in this. At the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, especially at the end of the 19th century, these souls have descended to the earth, prepared not only to feel the Christ as He is felt in the various Confessions, but to feel Him and behold Him as the Cosmic Christ in His universal majesty and glory. The souls were prepared for this even supersensibly, between death and the new birth. They were prepared by such influences as that of Tycho de Brahe, of the soul who was last incarnated in Tycho de Brahe.

This individuality therefore played an extraordinarily important part continuously within the stream of Michael.

You see, the souls were constantly looking towards the approaching dominion of Michael. They were looking towards it in the old super-sensible School of the 15th and 16th centuries, and they were looking towards it again during the enactment of that super-sensible ceremony which was to introduce and, as it were, to consecrate from the spiritual worlds the subsequent Michael dominion upon earth. Now as I have already indicated, a large number of Platonically gifted souls have remained in the spiritual worlds since the time they worked in Chartres. (I have placed here for your inspection to-day other pictures of the series from Chartres which I received. They are pictures of the Prophets and also of the wonderful architecture of Chartres.) The individualities of the teachers of Chartres, who were of a Platonic tendency, remained in the spiritual world. It was more the Aristotelians who descended to the earth, finding their way largely into the Dominican Order. Then, after a certain time, they united again with the Platonists in the spiritual world and went on working together with them supersensibly, from the spiritual world. Thus we may say: the souls of Platonic character have remained behind. They have not appeared again on earth, not at any rate the more important individualities among them. They are waiting till the end of this century. But on the other hand, many who felt themselves drawn to what I have described as the Michael deeds in the super-sensible, have come down and entered the stream of the Anthroposophical Movement inasmuch as they have felt sincerely drawn on earth to such a spiritual Movement.

We may say in truth: what lives in Anthroposophy was kindled first by the Michael School of instruction in the 15th, 16th centuries, and by the great religious act that took place in the super-sensible at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th century. It was in vision of that super-sensible action that my Mystery Plays came into being, and for this reason the first Mystery Play, different as it is from Goethe's fairy story of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily, nevertheless reveals distinctly similar features. For a thing that would contain real impulses of a spiritual kind cannot be arbitrarily conceived. It must be seen and worked out in harmony with the spiritual world.

Thus we stand here within the Anthroposophical Movement to-day, having entered into the dominion of Michael which has now begun. We stand here in this Movement, called to understand the essence of this reign of Michael, called to work in the spirit of his working through the centuries and the thousands of years. At this moment of great significance he has begun his earthly rulership once more and we are called to work in his direction. Such is the inner esoteric impulse of this stream of Michael, whose working to begin with for this century, is very clearly foreshadowed.

But you must see that if we take Anthroposophy in its present content and trace it backward, we find little preparation for it upon earth. Go back just a little way from what appears as Anthroposophy and try to find its sources in the course of the 19th century, for instance. If you do so open-mindedly, if your vision is not clouded by all manner of philological contrivances, you will not find the sources. You will find isolated traces of a spiritual conception which it was always possible to use like little germinating seeds, though very sparingly, within the great texture of Anthroposophy. But you will find no real preparation for it within the earthly sphere.

All the greater was the preparation in the super-sensible. You are well aware how Goethe's working (even after his death, though in my books it may not seem so) contributed to the forming and shaping of Anthroposophy. It is indeed true that the most important things in this respect took place within the super-sensible. Nevertheless we can trace the spiritual life of the 19th century backward in a living way till we come to Goethe, Herder, and others, nay even to Lessing. And we find after all that what was working in isolated spirits of the end of the 18th and first half of the 19th century was, to say the least of it, imbued with a strong spiritual atmosphere, even if it appeared in great abstractions as in Hegel, or in abstract pictures as in the case of Schelling.

You may read in my Riddles of Philosophy how I described Schelling and Hegel. I think you will recognise that I was seeking to point to something of the soul and spirit in this evolution of world-conceptions which could then enter into the Anthroposophical stream. In the book Riddles of Philosophy, I tried indeed to take hold of those abstractions of the philosophers with full heart and mind. Perhaps I may specially draw your attention to the chapter on Hegel, and to the things I said of Schelling.

But we must go still deeper to perceive the origin of certain remarkable phenomena that appeared in the spiritual life of the first half of the 19th century. They were lost sight of, they were obliterated in what then came forth as the materialistic spiritual life of the second half of the century. Nevertheless, in however abstract conceptions, there did appear something that contained a hidden spiritual life and being.

Most interesting, and increasingly so the more one enters into him, is the philosopher Schelling. He begins almost like Fichte, with pure, clear-cut ideas, saturated through and through with will. For such was Fichte. Johann Gottlieb Fichte was one of the few figures of world-history—indeed in a certain respect he is perhaps unique—who combined the greatest conceptual abstractions with enthusiasm and energy of will. He is an extraordinarily interesting figure. Short and thick-set, under-grown a little owing to the privations of his youth, one would see him marching along the street with extraordinary firmness of step. He was all will, and will and will again, and his will lived itself out in the description of the most abstract concepts. And yet with these most abstract concepts he could achieve such a thing, for instance, as his Addresses to the German Nation, with which he inspired countless people most wonderfully.

Schelling appears in an almost Fichte-like way, not with the same power, but with a similar way of thought. But we very soon see Schelling's spirit expand. In his youth he speaks like Fichte of the“I” and the “Not I” and other such abstractions and inspires the people of Jena with these things. But he soon departs from them. His spirit grows and widens and we see entering into him conceptions, albeit fanciful, which nevertheless tend almost to spiritual imaginations. Thus he goes on for a while. Then he enters deeply into such spirits as Jacob Boehme, and writes something altogether different in style and tone from his former works. He writes The Foundations of Human Freedom—which is a kind of resurrection of the ideas of Jacob Boehme.

Then we see almost a kind of Platonism springing up in Schelling's soul. He writes a philosophic dialogue entitled Bruno which is truly reminiscent of Plato's Dialogues, and deeply penetrating. Interesting too is another short work Klara, wherein the super-sensible world plays a great part. Then for a very long time Schelling is silent. His fellow philosophers begin to look on him, if I may put it so, almost as a living dead man. He published only his extraordinarily deep and significant work on the Samothracian Mysteries, once again an expansion of his spirit; but he lives on in simple retirement at Munich, until at length the King of Prussia summons him to lecture on philosophy at the University of Berlin. And of the philosophy he now proclaimed Schelling said that he had gained it in the silence of his retirement through the course of decades.

Now, therefore, Schelling appeared in Berlin, proclaiming that philosophy which was afterwards included in his posthumous works as the Philosophy of Mythology, and the Philosophy of Revelation. He made no great impression on the Berlin public, for the whole tenor of his lectures in Berlin was really this: Man, however much he thinks and ponders, can attain nothing in the sphere of world-conceptions; something must enter his soul, inspiring and imbuing his thought with life as a real, spiritual world.

Suddenly, in place of the old rationalistic philosophy there appears in Schelling a real awakening of the ancient philosophy of the gods of mythology, a reawakening of the old gods in a very modern way, and yet with old spirituality quite evidently working in it. All this is very strange. And in his Philosophy of Revelation he evolves ideas of Christianity which do contain, in however abstract a form, important inspirations and suggestions for what must afterwards be said by Anthroposophy, directly out of spiritual vision, on many points of Christianity.

Schelling is most certainly not to be passed over in the easygoing way of the Berlin people. Indeed he cannot be passed over at all, but the Berlin folk passed him over quite easily. When one of his descendants got engaged to the daughter of a Prussian minister (an external, but at any rate a karmically connected event) a Prussian functionary who heard of it remarked:“I never knew before why Schelling ever came to Berlin. Now I know.”

Nevertheless one can well come into inner difficulties and conflicts in following Schelling thus through his career. Moreover the last period in his life, dreadfully as it is generally treated in the histories of philosophy, is always dealt with in a chapter by itself, under the title: Schelling's Theosophy.

I myself again and again returned to Schelling. For me a certain warmth always proceeded from what lives in him, in spite of the abstract form. Thus at a comparatively early age I entered deeply into the above-mentioned philosophic dialogue, Bruno, or On the Divine and Natural Principle of Things.

Since the year 1854, Schelling was in the spiritual world again. And he came especially near to one through this dialogue, Bruno, if one entered into it, and lived through it, also through his Klara, and notably through his essay on the Samothracian Mysteries. One could easily come really near to him in spirit.

And at length, as early as the beginning of the eighteen nineties, it became fully clear to me: However it may have been with the other personalities who worked in the sphere of philosophy during the first half of the 19th century, in Schelling's case it is absolutely clear that a spiritual inspiration did really enter in. Spiritual inspiration worked and entered into his work continually.

Thus one might attain the following picture.—To begin with, down in the physical world, one could see Schelling, as he passed through the manifold vicissitudes of life, through a long period, as I said above, of loneliness and isolation, treated in the most varying way by his fellow men, now with immense enthusiasm, and now again with scorn and derision; Schelling, who really always made a significant impression whenever he appeared again in public—the short, thick-set man, with the immensely impressive head, and eyes which even in extreme old age were sparkling with fire, for from his eyes there spoke the fire of Truth, the fire of Knowledge. And this Schelling whom one can distinctly see—the more so, the more one enters into him—had certain moments when inspiration poured into him from above.

Most clear and visible it became to me when I read Robert Zimmermann's review of Schelling's book on the Ages of the World. From Zimmermann, as you know, is derived the word Anthroposophy, though his Anthroposophy is a tangled undergrowth of abstract concepts. I had the very greatest regard for him, and yet, when I read this review, I could not help breaking out into the sigh—“Pedant that you are!”

Then I returned to the book itself, Schelling's Ages of the World, which is indeed somewhat abstractly written, but in which one may clearly recognise something like a description of ancient Atlantis—quite a spiritual description, containing spiritual realities, however much distorted by abstractions.

Thus you see in Schelling's case again and again there is something working in from higher worlds, so that we must say: Down there is Schelling, but in the higher worlds something is taking place which influences him from above. In Schelling's case what is a general truth becomes most visible, namely that in spiritual evolution there is a perpetual interplay of the spiritual world above with the earthly world below. And once in the eighteen nineties I was most intensely concerned in finding the spiritual foundations of the age of Michael and of other things.

At that time I myself was entering a phase of life in which I could not but experience intensely the world immediately adjoining our physical world of sense. I could only hint at these things in my autobiography, but I have hinted at them there. That adjoining world is separated, if I may so describe it, only by a thin wall from the physical, and in it the most gigantic facts are happening, nor are they at all powerfully separated from our world. It was at the time when I was in Weimar. On the one hand I entered most intensively into the social life of Weimar in all directions; but at the same time I felt the inner necessity to withdraw into myself. These two sides of my life went parallel with one another. And at that time, in the very highest degree, it happened that my experience of the spiritual world was always more intense and strong than my experience of the physical. Already as a young man I had no great difficulty in quickly comprehending any philosophy or world-conception that came into my sphere. But a plant or a stone, if I had to recognise it again, I had to look at, not three or four times, but fifty or sixty times. I could not easily unite my soul with that which in the physical world is named by physical means. And this had reached its highest point during my Weimar period.

It was long, long before the Republican Constituent Assembly took place in Weimar, and at that time Weimar was really like a spiritual oasis, quite different from any other place in Germany. In that Weimar, as I said in my autobiography, I did indeed experience intense moments of loneliness. And once again—it was in 1897—wishing to investigate certain matters, I put my hand on Schelling's Divinities of Samothrace, and his Philosophy of Mythology, simply to receive a stimulation, not in order to study in the books. (Just as one who researches in the spiritual world, if for instance, he wishes to make researches on the periods of the first Christian centres, in order to facilitate matters may lay the writings of St. Augustine or of Clement of Alexandria under his head for a few minutes in succession. You must not laugh about these things. They are simply external methods to assist one, external technicalities that are not directly connected with the real thing itself. They are an external stimulation, like any technical mnemonic.) Thus at that time I took into my hand Schelling's Divinities of Samothrace, and his Philosophy of Mythology. But the real subject of my study at that moment was that which was taking place spiritually in the course of the 19th century, and which afterwards poured down so as to become Anthroposophy.

And at that moment, when I was really able to trace Schelling's life, his biography, his evolution through his life, it was revealed to me—not yet quite clearly, for these things only became clear at a far later date, when I wrote my Riddles of Philosophy—it was revealed to me, I could already perceive, although not quite clearly, how much of Schelling's writing was written down by him under inspiration, and that that inspiring figure was Julian the Apostate—Herzeleide—Tycho Brahe. He has not appeared again himself on the physical plane, but he worked with tremendous strength through the soul of Schelling. Then I became aware how greatly Tycho Brahe had progressed in his life as Tycho Brahe. Through Schelling's bodily nature little could penetrate; but once we know how the individuality of Tycho Brahe hovered over him as an inspirer, we read the lightning-flashes of genius in the Divinities of Samothrace quite differently. We read the flashes of genius above all in the Philosophy of Revelation, and in Schelling's interpretation of the ancient Mysteries, which is, after all, magnificent of its kind. And especially if we enter deeply enough into the curious language he uses in these passages, then presently we hear, no longer the voice of Schelling but the voice of Tycho Brahe! Then indeed we become aware how, among other spirits, this Tycho Brahe, especially the individuality who was in Julian the Apostate, played a great part, and contributed many things. For by his genius many a thing arose in the spiritual life of modern time which worked in turn as a stimulus, and whence we were to borrow at least the external form and expression for the spirit and teachings of Anthroposophy.

Another of the writings of German philosophers which made a great impression on me was Jakob Froschhammer's book, Die Phantasie als Welt-Prinzip, a brilliant book at the end of the 19th century, brilliant because this courageous man, having been driven from the Church, and his writings placed in the Index, was no less courageous in the face of science, for he revealed the kinship of the creative principle of fancy working purely in the soul when man creates artistically, with the force that works within as the force of life and growth. In that time it was indeed an achievement. Froschhammer's book on fancy or imagination as a world-principle, as a world-creative power, is indeed a work of great importance.

Thus I was greatly interested in this man, Jakob Froschhammer. Once more I tried to get at him in a real sense, not only through his writings, and once again I found that the inspiring spirit was the same who had lived in Tycho Brahe and in Julian the Apostate. And so it was in a whole number of personalities in whose working we can see a certain preparation for what then came forth as Anthroposophy.

But in each case we need the spiritual light behind, the light which works within the super-sensible. For what came to earth before remained, after all, in a world of abstraction. It is only now and then, in a spirit such as Schelling, or in a man of courage like Jakob Froschhammer, that the abstractions suddenly grow concrete.

And to-day, my dear friends, we may look up to what is working there in spiritual realms, and we may know how Anthroposophy stands in relation to it. And well we know how we are being helped by that which we perceive when we extend our spiritual research into the detailed realities of spiritual life in the course of history. Well may we know it. Here upon earth, striving honestly towards Anthroposophy, there are numbers of souls who have always stood near to the stream of Michael. Added to these, in the super-sensible world, are numbers of souls who have remained behind, among them the teachers of Chartres. And between those who are here in the world of sense, and those who are above in the spiritual world, there is a decided tendency to unite their work with one another.

And now if we would find a great helper for those things which we must investigate for the future of the 20th century, if we would find one who can advise us in relation to the super-sensible world, if we need impulses that are there within that world, it is the individuality of Julian the Apostate—Tycho Brahe who can help us. He is not on the physical plane to-day; but in reality he is always there, always ready to give information on those matters especially which concern the prophetic future of the 20th century.

Taking all these things together it does indeed emerge that those who receive Anthroposophy in a sincere way at the present time are preparing their souls to shorten as far as possible the life between death and a new birth, and to appear again at the end of the 20th century, united with the teachers of Chartres who have remained behind.

We should receive into our souls this consciousness: That the Anthroposophical Movement is called to work on and on, and to appear again not only in its most important, but in nearly all its souls, at the end of the 20th century. For then the great impulse will be given for a spiritual life on earth, without which earthly civilisation would finally be drawn into that decadence, the character of which is only too apparent.

Out of such foundations, I would fain kindle in your hearts something of the flames that we require, so that already now within the Anthroposophical Movement we may absorb the spiritual life strongly enough to appear again properly prepared. For in that great epoch after shortened life in spiritual worlds we shall work again on earth—in the epoch when for the salvation of the earth the spiritual Powers are reckoning in their most important members, in their most important features, on what Anthroposophists can do.

I think the vision of this perspective of the future may stir the hearts of Anthroposophists to call forth within themselves the feelings which will carry them in a right way, with energy and strength of action and with the beauty of enthusiasm, through the present earthly life; for then this earthly life will be a preparation for the work at the end of the century when Anthroposophy will be called upon to play its part.

Before I begin the lecture today, I would like to say a word of remembrance for a person who is very precious and beloved to us. We would certainly have had the satisfaction of having Admiral Grafton among the participants at the eurythmy performance today if he were still with us in the physical world. And to dedicate a word of remembrance to him in these days is a heartfelt desire for me.

Admiral Grafton joined our ranks here in Dornach with the warmest and most heartfelt commitment to anthroposophical endeavors. His connection to anthroposophical endeavors was the most intimate imaginable, and when he spoke of this connection to anthroposophy, one could only be deeply moved in one's heart. Admiral Grafton had a long, busy life behind him, and during this outward-looking, working life he was always keenly interested in acquiring a worldview, a philosophy of life. interested in acquiring a worldview, a philosophy of life, and he often spoke to me about how, for many years, he sought his worldview and philosophy of life from the spirit of the age from Herbert Spencer, the more materialistically inclined philosopher, just as a person experiences this spirit of the age, on whom this spirit of the age initially has such an effect with all its power and might, as it must have on many of our contemporaries. But Admiral Grafton was a man who, in the truest sense of the word, was a seeker. And so he repeatedly told me that the great satisfaction of his life was that, after a long search, he had finally come to an understanding of life through anthroposophy, although he had started from the opposite pole. And one always had the feeling that when this personality spoke about a connection with anthroposophy, it was not only from the depths of the heart, but there was also a wonderful, almost beautiful enthusiasm in this sense of connection, an enthusiasm that must truly appear as a particularly beautiful one when it is spoken from a heart that who had reached old age through a life of hard work.

When I think of the lectures I gave here, and during which I always saw Admiral Grafton sitting in the auditorium, devoted to the lectures, with a touchingly warm and attentive attention, one could say to oneself: There is a heart that listens. — There was a heart that listened. Admiral Grafton was only able to listen because of his general enthusiasm for the spirituality of anthroposophy, as he did not understand German well enough to follow a lecture. He could only follow with his heart. He was only able to follow the general thrust of the matter. And that is what he was like, but always inwardly joyfully excited, always devoted to the matter with heartfelt enthusiasm.

He was overjoyed when his daughter turned to eurythmy and spoke about it with touching, joyful enthusiasm when he talked about it. He was truly devoted to anthroposophy in an exemplary way. He was a personality full of kindness, who could only truly live when she was able to perform acts of kindness towards her fellow human beings. He helped us in many ways by repeatedly playing the flute in our eurythmy orchestra. And he did that with a truly warm, admirable and, I may say, exemplary devotion, because I have experienced many instances of people who were supposed to participate being late. Admiral Grafton was never one of them. He was always in his place. And above all, he was always in his place when his help was needed in some way, large or small. He helped us tremendously in many ways. Admiral Grafton was truly a personage who was loved by everyone, and I know that I speak from the hearts of many when I say these short words of remembrance for him here in the spiritual world.

It was actually the case that in the last few days before we traveled to England, Admiral Grafton was in a devoted mobility, and, surprisingly for the outer life, the news was sent to us by our dear friend Heywood-Smith that Admiral Grafton had left the physical plane during an operation. All of us who received this news were deeply affected. And I am very grateful who could not be here in person at the funeral service for our dear friend, that the friends, especially our friend Heywood-Smith, have taken it upon themselves to say beautifully, devotedly, with a deep understanding of the personality of Admiral Grafton, what I would have liked to have said myself at the funeral service if I had not been detained in England out of duty.

I can say, my dear friends, that in this case, the numerous personalities who are now here and who have not heard of have not heard from Admiral Grafton, did not know him, may believe that the Goetheanum was fond of Admiral Grafton, and that of those who loved him here, the most unifying thoughts will follow him to the places he has now entered, having passed through the gate of death in such a surprisingly quick way. We are grateful to him for all that he has accomplished through his infinite kindness among us here. But we are also grateful that we were able to witness the heart-moving sense of purpose and noble enthusiasm for the anthroposophical cause in this personality, which had previously been so strong in the world. And it is out of this gratitude that we form the thoughts that will continue to connect us with the spirit and soul of Admiral Grafton. We know that he looks down on the anthroposophical movement with a devoted heart and a powerful soul. We know that our thoughts for him are truly imbued with the wish for spiritual benefit and for the anthroposophical cause to flourish. And so all of you, my dear friends, who are gathered here today, are gathered together with the circle that lived with Admiral Grafton here at the Goetheanum for the last years, and rise from your seats with us in memory of this noble soul. May our thoughts unite with his in free will, as is right and proper among anthroposophical people, who know that the bonds formed in life here on earth can endure, if they are honest and genuine, through all time and also through the eternities.

In my presence today, I intend to speak to you about things that can help the seeking human mind to understand the events of the present a little more deeply. These things should not be discussed in an external way, but rather, some should be pointed out that can help man, so to speak, in a spiritual expansion of understanding of our present time. This intention, which I have had for a long time for this visit to Stuttgart, we also want to carry out. We still have the lecture next Sunday.

In view of the many things that, I would say, like waves of our time — I say this with full deliberation — play into our movement from the outside, it seems necessary to me, however, to begin today with a kind of introduction to present some principles that may be suitable to dispel some misunderstandings which can arise all too easily in our time, which hates the depth of thought and feeling, about anthroposophy, which on the other hand can be suitable for gaining a correct relationship within ourselves to what anthroposophy can be for us.

Let us try to pose the question as follows: What are we seeking when we choose the path into the anthroposophical movement? — In this way, we seek to gain the opportunity to find a relationship to the spiritual world that corresponds to the needs for this spiritual world that arise in us from the forces and living conditions of the present. No one comes to us who cannot gain access to the spiritual world by more direct routes than those we have at our disposal. No one comes to us who cannot gain access to the spiritual world by the routes that have been fully recognized for centuries and that are only as direct as people have forgotten to reflect on the justification for what has become part of the general necessities of life. On the other hand, there is much discussion about the justification for something that must, as it were, first appear in the world. We cannot often enough bear in mind what, out of the spirit of our time, anthroposophy should be and wants to be, and bring it into connection with what is in us that can push towards anthroposophy, that wants to bring us to anthroposophy.

You see, my dear friends, Anthroposophy would not be there if it were only for the one or other person who finds it appealing to agitate for such ideas, as they live in Anthroposophy, now, we use the unofficial expression. Anthroposophy arises entirely from the realization that there are searching souls in our time who can only find what they are seeking through the path of Anthroposophy. Anthroposophy is not pursued because someone wants it, but because souls long for it. The fact that some may deny this does not count against it, for much that is subconscious and unconscious lives in the soul and, when interpreted correctly, represents nothing other than the longing for Anthroposophy. Above all, if we single out one thing from this anthroposophy, it is the longing to recognize the greatest impulse of earthly development, the Christ impulse, in a way that is appropriate to the needs of the present, to find the path to the Christ impulse in the way that the heart must long for if it really wants to understand itself within the living conditions of the present. Now such general, abstract sentences, as I have just uttered, are certainly plausible to someone who has been grounded in anthroposophy for years. But what it is about is this: to really permeate one's soul with the spirit of these words in such a way that they do not remain merely abstract, merely theoretical in us, but that they become the content of our whole life, above all the content of our way of thinking.

I have already given an example here that is particularly characteristic: I once gave a lecture in a town in southern Germany on the subject of 'Bible and Wisdom', in which I tried to explain how a positive Christian, especially if he understands himself correctly, can find his way to anthroposophy. I described how anthroposophy, through its presuppositions, can penetrate more deeply into the great and inexhaustible secrets of the original book of humanity, the Bible. After the lecture, two Catholic priests who had attended the lecture approached me. And from what they said, it was clear that they could not really object to anything in particular from their Christian doctrine, as they understood it, as they knew it as theologians - perhaps not so much as priests bound by any obligations as theologians. So they went off on a side track and said: Yes, you see, there is nothing special to be said from our point of view against what you have just said today, except this: When we speak, we speak in such a way that everyone can understand what we are saying. They also speak of Christianity, but only for those who have reached a certain level of education or have specially prepared themselves for this kind of thing. “I replied: Yes, you see, Reverend, what you or I think about the question of what should be said to all people is not the point, because that leads the whole topic down the path of personal opinion. It is not particularly remarkable that everyone believes that what they do is universally valid for all people. Why should one be surprised at that; otherwise they would not do it! But what you or I think is right is not the point. Our way of doing research on the spirit begins with rising above personal opinion and facing reality, true reality. In our case, this reality is very close. It lies simply in the answer to the question: Do all the people for whom you believe you speak – you do believe you speak for all people, don't you? – still come to church with you? The question answers a fact – the question of whether you think you speak for all people. That it should apply to all people is only your opinion; the other corresponds only to a fact. Tell me whether all people go to church! — They could not answer me except that a number of people do not go to church. That

185 refutes you, I said, because then you are not speaking for those who do not go to church. And among them are numerous people to whom I have to speak, and who also have the right to find the way to Christ in the present.

This means not judging according to what one personally considers to be true or false, but subordinating one's judgment to the demands and tasks of reality. It is, however, much more comfortable to theorize about what is right or wrong than to study reality in detail, constantly listening attentively to what reality demands of us. Anthroposophy does not want to be something other than an answer to questions that it does not ask itself, but that the hearts and souls ask in the present, when they understand each other properly. And I am aware that the questions that are asked in my writings, which are already very numerous, are not asked by me. The answers are given by me in many cases, but the questions are not asked by me. The questions are posed by what the culture of the time brings forth, by what, for example, natural science in the culture of the time brings forth, by what anyone who is interested in the demands of the time must ask, and who, above all, is serious about the most important needs of the souls of the present.

If we call these conditions to mind, then it becomes clear that a basic intention, a basic view, a basic tendency and a basic attitude prevail throughout the anthroposophical literature. If one goes through all these writings, not with the benevolent attitude that we may have gained within our circle, but with the critical eye that one can gain from the present-day culture, then one will find one thing as the core of all this anthroposophical literature. That is, that everything aims to bring the human soul that which this human soul must long for above all in the present: independence, the power of judgment from one's own inner being. I have often had to resist the urge to write popularly from this or that side. I have always resisted this urge for the simple reason that the point of anthroposophical literature is not to give people articles of faith that they can accept at will in a lightly veiled form, but rather to call on them to use their own powers of judgment and search their own souls. Anyone who wants to can see that this is the case throughout all of this anthroposophical literature.

Nowhere is the aim to evoke blind faith. Of course, there are things told that cannot be verified without further ado, but they are told as facts of the spiritual world that anyone can accept as messages and to which they can apply their critical standard, to ever greater and greater extent, if they wish. And we have seen that in recent times friends who have sympathetically examined the matter have managed to approach even the most subtle things to a high degree with the probe of an unprejudiced criticism. What is contained in the anthroposophical literature referred to here need never shrink from this unprejudiced criticism. This unprejudiced criticism will pass it; it will pass it all the better, the more unprejudiced this criticism is: Never will anyone hear anything different from me when it comes to this question than this: Test, test, test, but do not stop at testing, but seek to test by trying to get deeper and deeper into things with the means of present thinking. Because this is the aim, the writings of this literature can make people independent.

Now, however, one experiences many things when one surveys the way in which anthroposophy is received. I met people again and again who listened to one or the other lecture, read one or the other small writing, and then no longer showed themselves. That is their right, of course, and no one should be reproached for it. And when they were asked by an acquaintance why they no longer appeared - in all friendship, of course, not as if they were being reproached - they replied: “Yes, if we go into the matter in more detail, we fear being convinced.” This is certainly a significant word, but it also points to significant facts. What is being attempted is precisely this: to break away from the hereditary evil of our time, from the positing of personal opinions, from the positing of personal thecri, and to direct souls to that which the spirituality of the world itself says, if we find the possibility to surrender ourselves to this spirituality of the world with all our soul and to speak of the methods, to speak of the means by which the soul can attain to listening to the spirituality of the world itself.

A world view that emerges in this way from the deepest needs of the time, but which so thoroughly contradicts what people of the present believe, will only slowly and gradually find its way into the souls of men. Human souls cling to what is familiar; human souls prefer to hear their own water-clear thinking from the pulpit and to be able to say of what they hear: “I have thought that for a long time.” The anthroposophical teachings that are emerging in the present are certainly not truths that have been “thought for a long time”. But in the eyes of many people this is precisely the main mistake, that they cannot say to themselves: “I have thought that for a long time” — and that they do not want to say to themselves: “If I dig deep enough within myself, I will not express a personal opinion, but something that is connected with the developmental factors of humanity.” — We will come back to such developmental factors of humanity many times during my stay in Stuttgart this time. So it is understandable that many obstacles and hindrances arise when people try to approach anthroposophy, to approach spiritual science.

My book “How to Know Higher Worlds” is widely read over time, not only within those who belong to the various circles of the Anthroposophical Society, but it is also widely read outside the Society at the present time. When reading this book in particular, an experience can be made again and again that is extraordinarily characteristic. Someone reads the book “How to Know Higher Worlds” and writes me a letter about it. And of course, I am always pleased when someone writes me an intelligent letter about any book or about anything else, but especially about the book “How to Know Higher Worlds”. But the usual thing is that the letter that is written is the clearest proof, the clearest proof that the person concerned has not understood the book at all and has translated the most important things of the book into the most materialistic attitude of the present. Because what people usually go for when they come across this book is the following. But let us send something in advance: a whole host of doubts can arise in the mind of someone reading the book “How to Know Higher Worlds”, and there are already many people who can testify that I am always ready to discuss these doubts with people, and so I certainly do not want what I am saying now to appear as if it should deter anyone from writing the letter I just mentioned. No one should be deterred from writing this letter, but the letter is very often written with people getting stuck on one particular thing, where the thing immediately turns into materialism for them. Much is said in the book 'How to Know Higher Worlds', which, when properly observed, leads people to find their own way into the spiritual world, from within themselves, from their soul. This book is designed to make people as independent as possible, not to impose anything on them in any subjective way, but only to remove the obstacles so that they can find the truth themselves. The best way to begin to take in this book would be to appropriate its content in inner deed. But then people get stuck on the sentence: The one who has attained the necessary maturity will find his spiritual teacher if only he searches for him correctly. — So, there we have it! I write a letter to the one who wrote the book, and he becomes my spiritual teacher; that's the simplest thing! There we have the materialistic explanation. The fact that this passage could be the most sacred incentive for a person seeking independence to continue searching in order to find the path, which might consist of something completely different than writing a letter to someone: You, give me instructions - that is very uncomfortable for many readers of the book. They do not search enough in the book. And so this book, How to Know Higher Worlds, is one of the most widely read books in the German-speaking world today, and has been translated into many foreign languages, despite the fact that it is one of the most misunderstood books. And yet it is child's play to understand if you just let it sink in without prejudice. And don't translate it into materialistic comfort.

To some extent, people today are looking for what they are accustomed to seeking in other areas. How deeply ingrained it has become in people today not to help themselves, that is, not to learn what can help them in one situation or another, but to be helped and not to worry about the principles by which they are helped. Why should we trouble ourselves today about the best way to live in terms of our health? We let ourselves be prescribed for by someone who is there for that purpose, and then we do not need to check the principles according to which he prescribes; we hand over our fate to the one who is set up as an authority. Why should we not be particularly inclined to surrender our destiny to someone else when we are on the spiritual path, the most important human path? But what if the very work that inspires us to do so is dedicated above all to making the human soul independent!

It may be said that scientific research in particular has reached a certain level today, and that this level of scientific research would be accessible to those who are called upon today to represent the natural sciences if most of them did not simply become absorbed in their subject and did not go beyond the boundaries of their subject. If only, I might say, a dozen of the official representatives — and only these are listened to today — would make an honest effort to examine with the most profound honesty what is contained in my 'Occult Science: An Outline of the Fundamental Principles of the Science of Man and Nature', ' and in my 'Theosophy', they would find everything confirmed from the side that can be characterized by saying: Look at life, whether life does not confirm what can be experienced through spiritual science, what is sought here from the spiritual world! — Anyone who really masters natural science today comes to the verification of what anthroposophically oriented spiritual science gives. This is absolutely a truth. But we are faced with the peculiar fact that precisely those who could undertake such an examination are absolutely not concerned about it, have not been concerned about it until now — I am ignoring those who, in our circles, have received the stimulus for it — that no one has set themselves the task of really testing the spiritual-scientific results of anthroposophy against the, fully understood, natural-scientific research of the present! The spiritual-scientific research really has no need to fear this test; it will pass it. It should only be employed, it will be passed. But admittedly, in a time when one is not even inclined to go into the most primitive truths, this test will perhaps take a long time.

The urge not only to be logical, but to be realistic, that is, to form one's judgment not only according to abstract logic, but by immersing oneself in reality, this urge is possessed by few in our present time. Many strive to be logical, but only after going behind logic a certain way is it possible to see the scope of logic itself; otherwise one does not even realize what confusion one can create with such very consistent judgments. You see, it is logical to be always consistent with one's own judgment or consistent with someone else's judgment, but it can lead to rather strange collisions. Charles V, the Austrian, and the French king Francis I came to the same conclusion. They were, so to speak, in complete agreement with regard to a certain idea that they wanted to realize. Francis said: “My dear brother wants exactly the same as I do. We both want exactly the same thing. — They both wanted to conquer Milan! Yes, you see, you notice it — namely when you say the postscript. But that such judgments are swarming around and dominate precisely contemporary thinking, to the detriment of this present, few in the present have the inclination to even think of it.

It is remarkable how – forgive the philistine image – enlightened minds today sometimes approach judgment by going at it from the wrong end, as if someone were to put a horse's bridle on by the tail instead of by the head. But such a bridling is immediately accepted if the person concerned is officially authorized. Anyone with a sense for the living in thinking, feeling and willing could have suffered real torments for many years from the way much thinking is done in the present. I still remember hearing my first lecture in Vienna on elliptic function theory – forgive the word, but it depends on the mind of the person what I want to express, and not on whether one or the other understands what I am using now. So I heard lectures by Professor Leo Königsberger, who was already famous at the time. He was so famous that after being appointed a professor he could write to the government right away to request to be appointed a court councillor, not just a professor. So when I attended his first lecture, he came to the question: What about numbers? People assume positive and negative numbers. Positive numbers correspond to the money I have, negative numbers to the money I don't have, the money I owe. But there are other numbers. Now mathematicians use a line with an O in the middle to denote positive and negative numbers: plus 1, plus 2; minus 1, minus 2. And then the famous Gauss added a new line of numbers so that you can fill the plane with different types of numbers. I don't want to talk about the justification of this number level, but Leo Königsberger began his lecture on elliptic functions by saying, “It could now be that someone would say today that one could just as well take numbers perpendicular to this plane.” When I, as a very young badger of sixteen or seventeen, learned about the story of the plane of numbers, I immediately raised an objection: I said that then one could also think of space as being filled with numbers. The teacher kindly reassured me by saying, “Well, just wait until the next few centuries!” — which, of course, made a great impression on me, the young badger. Now I heard Leo Königsberger in Vienna address the same question. He said, “Let's assume there are these three types of numbers, not just the numbers that lie in the plane of the two lines, but the numbers that lie in the third dimension. We hypothetically assume that such numbers exist, and I would multiply such a number by another number. Now I will show you that when you multiply them, the product can sometimes be zero. But since that can never be the case, there can be no such number. Well, you see, having to listen to this is torture. I don't want to talk about whether the whole story is right or not, but if you accept one thing and don't accept the other, and claim that because the product is zero, there can be no such number, then having to listen to this is torture, because of course the correct thing is that if you have two numbers that equal zero, you have to assume that zero can be created by multiplication, not the opposite; that is the most obvious thing. But whether these judgments live in mathematics, whether these judgments live in political notes, for example in Mr. Wilson's notes, they always lead back to the same forms of thought. But if these forms of judgment live in those judgments that want to be effective for the fate of humanity, then an error in judgment means something quite different from an error in a merely limited scientific speculation, as it is in many respects the teaching of Leo Königsberger.

It must be emphasized, as it is characteristic of our time, that people do not want to adapt their judgment to reality. They do not want to live in reality because they do not want to in the simplest things. They want to assume that the simplest things are what they want, not what reality dictates. It is of the greatest importance that we should learn to think differently in many respects, in order to escape from much of the mischief of the present time. We must learn not merely to think differently, but to think differently. If people with their old habits of thinking could really grasp anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, then they would be able to familiarize themselves more quickly with spiritual scientific truths. But these should not be grasped with the old habits of thinking, but rather with the new thinking, and people find that extremely difficult.

Now, these are some of the reasons why it is so difficult at present to get through with anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, simply because it has to confront the very, very nearest prejudices. But precisely because this is the case, spiritual science is not really fought against, because, it must be admitted, the fight against spiritual science is on very shaky ground. Go and look for those scientific discussions that seriously and thoroughly try to deal with spiritual science as it stands; go and look for treatises or the like of this caliber! Anyone who has ever looked into it will see how little there is in this direction. But perhaps it is not convenient to proceed in this way. You see, a few years ago a student told me that he was preparing to do his doctorate in philosophy at a very well-known university: he wanted to write a dissertation that had been recommended to him by a famous professor. This dissertation was to be about the great Russian thinker Solowjow. At that time, not much more had been printed by Solowjow than a few things that had been published by Nina Hoffmann; much more came out later. I asked the student: Why does the professor advise you to write your dissertation about this Solowjow? “Yes,” said the student, ‘the professor knows nothing about this philosopher and would like to learn something.’ ‘So that's the best way: you let the student write a doctoral thesis on Solovyov, if the student knows Russian; then you learn something about him.’ So the doctoral thesis on Solovyov was written. But a great many doctoral theses are written out of the same sentiment. In many cases, this is a maxim for how topics for doctoral theses are given. But in this way a certain scientific attitude is cultivated, one might say bred. The professor in question could only have really got to know Solowjow if he had intended not only to be a professor of philosophy but also to get to know contemporary philosophy through one of its most outstanding representatives. He would have had to try to study Solowjow himself as best he could, even though only a small part of Solowjow's work has been translated and he does not know Russian himself. It is an uncomfortable path, but it can be said that for many people who want to come to their own conclusions about spiritual science, the path to getting to know spiritual science is much more uncomfortable today. Because there is still a difference between a professor having a dissertation written about Soloviev or about spiritual science. With Soloviev it is still more or less possible to form an opinion by the time the dissertation is finished, because the student is well trained to give this opinion in the sense in which philosophy is taught. But what should a modern professor do with a dissertation about spiritual science, for example? He would be completely at a loss. And even more uncomfortable, of course, is the way of not getting to know the subject indirectly through a dissertation, but rather by studying the subject itself exhaustively in some way.

But all these things are no obstacle for the honest seeker of truth in the present day; he may be longing for spiritual science. Many of you know this, my dear friends. But for most people in today's world, it is an obstacle to recognize this spiritual science, to do anything other than to drill this spiritual science to the ground. They do not approach it, and since it does not come from them, it must be drilled to the ground. You cannot do that in a matter-of-fact way; today, the facts already show that. For those who have tried to approach spiritual science have not, as a rule, become opponents; they have certainly not become blind followers, but they have not become opponents either. There are those too. But a large part of our contemporaries simply have a personal interest in extinguishing this spiritual science, in making it impossible in the present. If they try to do this through honest literary debate, using whatever arguments they have against it, whatever arguments someone else has, then of course there is nothing to be said against it. But that is just what they do not want, it is too inconvenient. It is much more convenient to play the whole thing over into the personal sphere, not to talk about what is said in spiritual science, but to talk about all kinds of other things. And that, you see, is precisely what is being attempted in our immediate present today and will be attempted more and more in the near future, and to which I would like to draw your attention. Because this will lead to a situation in which numerous dissatisfied people, who become dissatisfied for personal reasons within our society, can easily be turned into tools for those who want to eliminate anthroposophy from the world, but do not strive for it in an honest way – they would not achieve their goal by honest means either – they do not strive for scientific discussion, but avoid the honest path, and instead seek to attach some kind of scandal to the spiritual science movement and to personalize everything.

Since my time for talking about factual matters has expired, so that no one can say that I am taking up your time for matters related to the Society and its interests instead of dealing with the factual questions, I may add the following now: There are more and more people who are suitable to be used by those who are characterized in this way, and if one is honest about anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, one has an obligation to point out these things more precisely.

There is a person – many years ago his name first appeared before our eyes – who comes from a small town. One day Dr. Steiner received a letter, as they so often occur: “I feel unhappy in my situation, I would like to improve my situation”. And one of the letters that had this tone asked for advice on how the person concerned should act: whether he would do better to marry into a house or a business, or whether he should seek his way in the world in some other way. Yes, you have to tell the truth, unembellished, if you want to get to the bottom of things, and if you do not want to be blind to what will happen in the near future. Now it was made clear to the man that we cannot deal with the question of whether he should marry into a family or not, but since he did not let up, we willingly provided him with some information that was suitable to meet his need for spiritual instruction, which he claimed to have. By devoting himself to such spiritual things as he imagined them to be, he very soon came to the conclusion that it would be beneath a great mind like his to take care of a business in a small town. He longed for larger circles. He had apparently saved some money and came to Berlin. He found that

"It is quite nice to pursue the humanities alone, but he also felt a special artistic talent in himself, and he now demanded that society promote this. It's nice to help people, isn't it. The samples that the person in question gave of his art spoke against any talent, but some people learn so much even without talent that it sometimes meets strict requirements. And so it came about that the person in question was recommended to various members who could create this or that for him, that he should be supported. But it always turned out that the matter failed precisely because the person in question wanted to practice an art but not learn anything, because he thought he could do more than all the teachers who wanted to take care of him. And the consequence was that, because he ran away from every teacher, in the end nothing could be done at all. One had indulgence after indulgence, but nothing special could be done, nothing pleased the person concerned. For, of course, in his eyes this was again such a blatant case of how the world misunderstands the nascent genius! That no one else could honestly share this view, yes, my dear friends, it was truly not our fault. That is the main thing, all other things are secondary. And so it was with this person as it is with many. They first seek advancement within our society, and when this advancement is not granted to them according to their mind, they become opponents. And then they come forward with all kinds of things. Of course, they never talk about what is behind things. They come up with all kinds of things that are best refuted by first explaining the reasons. Of course, in this case it was pure offended vanity and incompetence. And everything else that was added as a fuss was the most foolish invention, the most foolish fantasy. But today, of course, you find the journals that take up these things. Because the person I mean is called Erich Bamler. And if you really get to the bottom of things in such undertakings, then you don't need to take on such an essay, which mostly doesn't mean anything, because all the individual things don't express what they say, but

41n0 they arise from quite different things. And it is actually foolish to seriously want to refute the non-essential. Because that is not what is important, but what lies behind it.

Let us take another case: a man who is not exactly lacking in vanity found himself years ago, after first objecting to anthroposophy in general, in this anthroposophy. I was the very last person to have sought out this personality. He presented himself. It turned out that there were many things that did not exactly mean that this personality was striving for completely impersonal goals in our society. That cannot be demanded, of course, so it cannot be criticized if sometimes personal goals are also accommodated to some extent. Sometimes such personal aims are accommodated because in this way many people can be led to what is right after all. And so it happened that at first the person concerned was quite satisfied with us. He wrote a pamphlet, in fact. I even condescended to write an epilogue to it, and the pamphlet was also taken up by our publishing house. He was on good terms with us; we were people who could be talked to. Then the person in question had another work printed, and after this work had had various fates, which are now of no concern to us, he offered it to the Philosophical-Anthroposophical Publishing House again. However, it was impossible to include this work in the Philosophical-Anthroposophical Publishing House. On the first pages of this writing, it says that I had only hinted at certain things about the Christ problem, and that the gentleman in question would like to elaborate on them. I am not saying this out of hurt vanity, although in this case I am being accused of it; but the sentence in which it is attributed to me is a blatant untruth, because the matter mentioned did not take place. Without taking into account the fact that I might have had reason not to go further, things are then elaborated in a way that may remind one of another story that took place, of which this story is at least a miniature version. I will have to come back to this other story as well, and I will do so briefly in a moment. In this writing by the gentleman in question, all kinds of things that I had only said in lectures were simply stated. Dr. Steiner was quite right to take umbrage at this and rejected the manuscript for publication. And because his manuscript was rejected, the man became an opponent. Now, of course, if you are writing an article for a journal, you cannot say: The Anthroposophical Society is fundamentally bad because the Philosophical-Anthroposophical Publishing House rejected my manuscript. That won't do! But that would have been the truth! So, despite the fact that the person concerned has been informed about the matter countless times, the fairy tale about contradictions is invented. The person concerned knows very well what the situation is regarding these contradictions, but he writes newspaper articles about them! What these newspaper articles say is of no significance, because the person concerned did not become an opponent because of this matter. He could have known about this long before he joined. He became an opponent for the stated reason. Some doubt whether one can so easily make the hypothesis: What is afterwards is also causally conditioned by what went before; but it remains conspicuous, nevertheless, that the antagonism of Mr. Max Seiling followed immediately upon the rejection of his writing by our publishing house. Of course it is easy to deny such a thing, to object to it in all sorts of ways, but it is not a matter of what one or the other objects to, but of what the facts are.

It is indeed reminiscent of a somewhat more ingenious case; this is only a miniature version of it. The more ingenious case is that of a gentleman who had been to America but is a good European. He was summoned here to Germany by a long-standing member and listened to all kinds of lectures. He tried hard to get the lectures that had been given years ago by demanding them from this person or that. After he had faithfully packed up everything he had copied, he went back to America. He said there that he had been here, that he had familiarized himself with my teaching, but that he could not be satisfied with my teaching, but had to go much deeper, so one would find in his work many things that are not yet to be found in my books. For when he had exhausted everything that could be found with me, he was called to a master who dwells somewhere in the Transylvanian Alps; he then told him many things that he is now incorporating into his book. But now everything that he incorporated into his book was what he had overheard here in the lectures and copied down! And then the book was called: “Rosicrucian Worldview”. It was published in America and caused a great stir: the book, that was a combination of what he had heard from me here, and what the master was supposed to have told him in the Transylvanian Alps. People did not need to check what I had said, nor could they, because it had been said in part in our internal lectures. But not only did this appear as a book written in English and American, but a German bookshop was also found that translated the book and published it as “Weltanschauung der Rosenkreuzer” (The Rosicrucians' World View). The editor was Dr. Vollrath.

These are just a few examples of how it is done, my dear friends! These things may well be pointed out. Attention must be paid to them, because they show the means by which, on the one hand, we make use of what is growing on our soil and, on the other, how we fight it. It may well be said that perhaps never before have worse means been used to fight against anything than are now being used to fight against us, especially against anthroposophically oriented spiritual science! You will therefore understand that we have been forced, as it were, to resort to the only means of averting the disaster, although it may not bring about any improvement if everyone joins forces to cause the greatest possible difficulties for the personalities associated with the matter. But one thing must be considered: too much has been said about this matter, but always actually for deaf ears. Therefore, there is no other choice than to submit to a certain iron necessity in order to serve the matter, to which we must all be devoted, in an appropriate way. This iron necessity simply arises. Suppose spiritual science were to appear as literature, were there as literature. It would then be quite impossible – in theory it is possible, but in view of the concrete facts it would be quite impossible – for all these things to attach themselves to spiritual science, as they have done and will continue to do in the most terrible and unworthy manner. What we have to distinguish from the spiritual science movement, which wants to be a pure knowledge movement, a world view movement of the present day, is the Anthroposophical Society. The idea of the Anthroposophical Society is a good one, but in practice, as I see it, it is developing in many ways, not as I see it, but as the facts teach us, in many ways, so that every day we are confronted with things that show, and this is no exaggeration, how within this Anthroposophical Society, cliques develop with a certain ease, especially personal interests for and against, in the most extensive way. It is difficult to separate personal interests from purely factual ones in the context of a society. But think that precisely through the social activities, the floodgates are opened to those people who do not want to confront spiritual science through honest discussion, but who want to bring down spiritual science by the detour of personal defamation, through personal slander. Because one can say this: they want to bring down spiritual science.

Years ago, I decided to accommodate the wishes of various members for personal meetings, to the youngest and oldest members in the broadest way. Only in recent years, when things were already so close, did I sometimes have to deviate sporadically from the old practice; but only sporadically, in exceptional cases. Despite the fact that it has been emphasized time and again that what is available in the literature and what is said here in the lectures contains plenty of material that the individual needs for his or her own development, so that personal consultations could only relate to an expression from person to person to person, it will happen time and again that the most outrageous lies — excuse the expression — are told within the Society in connection with the personal contact of members with me, and outsiders then seek ways to all kinds of defamation and slander. By this I mean that all too often within the Society people are quite inclined to use a nice-sounding little word for their own deep satisfaction when they have one. How good it does some people, for example, when they can say: I have become an esoteric disciple. — And how good it does some people when they can say: Yes, you know, that is something very mysterious, I am not allowed to tell you that; I am not allowed to tell you anything about it. — Putting oneself in the limelight, giving oneself a certain prestige, that is what is behind many an expression that is used and which is then often misused by outsiders in a quite malicious way. All these things, which are now being used with malicious intent, could never have happened if what was being put in a false light were not in line with legitimate desires and perhaps an equally legitimate accommodation of these desires, but which, in view of what the outside world is making of it, cannot be maintained, however difficult it may be for me, my dear friends. Of course, everyone can maintain friendly relations in society, but the iron necessity compels me to stop giving private audiences. I am particularly sorry for this because some will say: Why should the innocent suffer with the guilty? But if you are in a society, that is of course the karma of the society, and the matter cannot be done differently. All those private conversations that were sought out, in view of those malicious slanders, must simply stop. |

Don't think that I am any less sorry for that than you are, but I know that, just as everything I have said about such things was spoken in vain, my speaking today would also be spoken in vain if measures were not taken that simply force people to realize the seriousness of the matter.

It is easy to fabricate slanderous stories about what is said in private conversations with individual members, if these slanderous stories reach the point where, for example, it is said here or there that this or that member has been hypnotized. Now, my dear friends, in the face of these things I shall have to take a different line altogether, from which you will see — and I am really speaking out of a simple sense of duty towards our movement — that I am now and in this matter, in the very bitterest seriousness, for the sake of the sanctity of spiritual science. If a movement like this is based simply on the principle of not encroaching on anyone's sphere of freedom, and if this is strictly observed, if everything that encroaches on a person's sphere of freedom is strictly rejected, and if one then proceeds with these very things, then it is necessary that one day everything that is to grow on our soil will grow in the full light of day. When things grow in full public view, then the ground will be cut from under the slanderers. But there will be no other method in the future. Therefore, I will strive, as far as it depends on me, to ensure that in the future anthroposophically oriented spiritual science will increasingly take place in the full light of the public. It does not have to shy away from the public. And today I declare explicitly: With regard to the private conversations that have taken place with members for years, I release everyone from the promise not to speak about the content of the conversation. Everyone can share, as much as they themselves find appropriate, what has ever occurred in a private conversation with a member. Nothing will be found that should be kept from the light of day. Then one will no longer be able to pussyfoot around with things that are on the following ground. I will give you an example of how these things can be used against the most blatant ignorance and the will to be most blatantly ignorant.

Not only Erich Bamler, but also others who are fighting just as “honestly” as he is, have put forward and basically believe that among all sorts of esoteric principles this one would also have been given to them: “Look at everything around you in the light of necessity, as if it were necessary, as a given necessary fate.” It is comforting for a time, as long as one believes oneself to be supported within society, when one has been given such a rule to say: “I am an esoteric disciple, for I meditate continually: ‘See everything around you in the light of necessity’.” But why has this rule been given to those people, why has this rule been advised to them? For the simple reason that they needed it according to the state of their soul! It was a piece of advice that did not encroach on their freedom at all, but a piece of advice whose scope and esotericism you may judge if I point out the following to you: Schopenhauer says in his essay on the freedom of the will, towards the end of his essay, concerning our attitude towards the course of the world and fate: “Everything that happens, from the greatest to the smallest, happens necessarily”; and he speaks of the calming effect of the realization of the inevitable and necessary. So people have been advised to do nothing other than what Schopenhauer himself considers a proven way of overcoming certain forms of depression.

Now, when speculating on the most blatant ignorance and on the will to the most blatant ignorance, people can, of course, be told all kinds of beautiful fairy tales: that one has turned green and blue, especially in the legs, by following such principles. And for those who want to make something esoteric out of thin air, these things can, of course, be used as slander. But precisely when we know that the things that are being done in anthroposophically oriented spiritual science are actually required by necessary needs, then we will be able to understand that such a measure as the one mentioned above must one day be taken, simply for the reason that it must be seen that the things at issue are meant seriously. Do not complain to me, who feels it just as hard as you do; complain to those whom I have clearly pointed out to you, and who make it impossible for such a measure to be avoided. Today it is very difficult for me, for reasons of principle, to have to refuse private conversations, which numerous members desire. Of course I also know that this will in turn be used against me, but I cannot act according to personal reasons, but according to what is necessary for our movement. That means that I must submit to the principle of taking what is said seriously, for whatever reason it may be taken as a pretext for calumny or slander by those who do not honestly want to refute spiritual science but who want to do away with it in some other way.

Examine much of what has occurred; you will find that the causes always come from society. It is very rare for society to be attacked; the point of attack is usually me or my immediate surroundings. Examine the things. But by attacking me, it is the case that they want to attack spiritual science in me. Because one way or another, it is of no importance to them whether a foolish esoteric piece of advice is given here or there; there are enough of those in the world. But what people do care about is that spiritual science in the anthroposophical orientation is a cultural factor of our time, that it wants to have a say. People do care about that. They do not care about esoteric Winkel esoterics, but they do care about someone who, according to his destiny, cannot remain an esoteric Winkel esoteric. You would not want to meet an esoteric Winkel esoteric if he sat in front of fifty people in Berlin and gave them advice. The attacks only began when the number of books exceeded a certain number. It would be a sin against the spirit of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science to let it perish when it might be possible to prevent it by having to do without certain things, perhaps only for a while, because the morality of people today turns out the way it has now turned out.

We have often seen how things are misrepresented; but how it is done in the case of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, how things are invented that are not there at all and something quite different from what has taken place is told, that is one of the greatest rarities, even in the history of mankind.

All this is not said to, as they say in Austria, grumble or gripe, or to some extent to rant, but it is said because the symptoms are now appearing daily that the intention is to put an end to our spiritual movement in the way indicated, and because the tendency must arise to see the snowball at the top, and not just the avalanche when it has reached the bottom. Just a few hours before I came here, among other things, a letter was read to me in which it was once again related that two people had come together; I will not mention any names, so such a case can simply be cited as an example. The one is accused of hypnotizing the other, of even sitting behind the other and meditating into the other's neck so that all kinds of harmful things arise in the soul of the person concerned. And then the matter is pursued further. It is only one case, the last one, no, not the last one, there was another one after that, but it is the one that I read about three hours ago. Today it is a harmless matter, but in a few years it may no longer be so: that one person is supposed to have sat behind another in order to meditate all kinds of harmful things into the neck of the other person and thereby exert influence. There is no doubt that the person concerned is as harmless as possible in this matter. But today, my dear friends, this plays between two members; in a few years it will be made into a “Steiner case”, which in turn provides a very nice case for such “studies”. Perhaps it will happen more quickly and will not take a few years.

So, please understand that I am truly faced with an extremely difficult dilemma if I have to resort to saying, on the one hand, that an attempt must be made to make spiritual science fully public. Nobody will be left wanting as a result, nobody will somehow not find what they need to find because everything is in the public domain. But all the gossip: that is something mysteriously mystical, you must not say that and so on – that should no longer be able to give rise to all kinds of slander. No matter how friendly our dealings may be, they must not be any other than those between friends for the time being, because private conversations must stop as a matter of principle for the time being. Perhaps this will force our dear members, however inconvenient it may be, to pay a little more attention to things and take care of the matters that have been neglected so far.

As I said, please forgive me for bringing up these matters here today; I only did so after the actual lecture was already over, but I had to bring them up because they are related to the vital issues of the Anthroposophical Society and the anthroposophical movement. This, and not any lack of friendliness, is why I very much regret not being able to hold the private conversations with our dear members, which I have always been happy to do, in the near future. Then it will not be possible, really not possible in the concrete, to create what the malicious enemies are so keen to seek. — Because, my dear friends, you could of course make an objection, and everyone does it of their own accord in an understandable way, namely by saying: But he could talk to me. This has been said by each of those who are now launching their attacks in the most abusive manner; and some of those who are now the tools of their protectors were brought into society by very, very respected members of society. In some respects, it must change, but it can only change through the members.

Notes 5456-5461, undated, circa 1917.

Life itself creates the human riddle. – The soul decays without spiritual nourishment. While self-deception is possible, actual death is not. – The animal is incorporated into the evolution of the world; but not the human being. – He must incorporate himself.

There is progress in modern science that was hoped to help solve the riddles of existence.

The advances in physics and chemistry. The path led to the atom. It was hoped that the facts of the external world could be understood from the way atoms fit together.

Where did we end up: “that an iron atom must be more complicated than a Steinway grand piano” - A. Rowland based on spectral-analytical observations. (Kolbe calls van 't Hoff's stereometric formulas “hallucinations”.)

And in biology: Nägeli:

The ovum contains all the essential characteristics of the species just as much as the developed organism does, and as ovums the organisms differ from each other no less than in the developed state. The hen's egg contains the species just as completely as the hen does, and the hen's egg is just as different from the frog's egg as the hen is from the frog.

Thus, we encounter the same world in miniature. Therefore, we will not be able to answer the questions that arise in the context of the world of ordinary observation by looking at the world of the microscopic.

Likewise, we encounter nothing in the astronomically or geologically large that is not also present in the terrestrial world.

People who receive a feeling from this fact arrive at philosophy. This seeks to arrive at a solution to the human riddle from the concepts developed in the ordinary world. But these concepts only lead to the insight that they are powerless to answer the questions that man must ask.

Anthroposophy is therefore based on what is developed in man through an awakening with the help of the invigoration of thinking. In the physical, the spiritual becomes spiritually perceptible. Thinking, which is otherwise only produced in the physical world as a dead thing, is thereby truly connected with the soul life. Together with the soul, it interacts differently with the outside world. Anthroposophy thus comes to experience the etheric body.

Instinctively, Troxler's “Riddle of Man” p. 94 and I. H. Fichte ibid. p. 82ff.

Secondly, anthroposophy comes to recognize that this being can also be observed. The ether body is found when the thought process is detached from external perception. The soul body is found when the will is detached from the drives, affects, etc. In connection with these, it is blind; when it is detached from them, it sees spiritually. There is an “inner man.” Ed. v. Hartmann pointed to him as a hypothesis.

The fate of his philosophy.

The “inner man” can be found in a more recent philosophy as the “subconscious” (subliminal consciousness).

James calls this “the discovery made for the first time in 1886”.

Anthroposophy seeks the means to make use of this consciousness.

G. Tyrrel (translated into German in 1909 by E. Wolff. Between Scylla and Charybdis) speaks of a “sphere of dark knowledge and darkly knowable objects”.

Just as in the physical world, past experiences are brought into the present consciousness through memory, so the experiences of the subconscious person are brought into the realm of ordinary consciousness. (Otherwise they only come up in the form of dark impulses).

What a philosophy like Hartmann's instinctively postulated comes about: ordinary consciousness participates in the interaction of the “inner man” with the “spiritual world”.

Insight into the details of the spiritual world is not sought; it arises as a consequence. (Example of how some want the one without the other.) (Verification is absurdly demanded by those who do not understand.)

In the experience of thinking, the world is experienced - that which is sought through knowledge. However, the questions are not put aside. One does not have to enter into another world; one is constantly in it. One must develop a spiritual eye for this other world.

One must not step out of the spirit, but experience the rhythm of the world in the spirit. (Comparison with a person traveling in a train. The inner experiences in different ages.)

Anthroposophy has a different starting point from the mystical endeavors of the past, with which it is often confused. These were based on religious experiences. They therefore led to sectarianism. Because they have subjective content. Followers gained only through authority. Anthroposophy is based on scientific experiences. Also from scientific needs. It leads to religious experience. Therefore, it has a different effect than modern natural philosophy and philosophy. One will understand theology again. He does not really love Christianity who believes it endangered by knowledge. “On the Riddle of Man” $. 273.

J. Böhme:

All this is Babel, which clashes with each other and argues about the letter; for these all stand in one root, the Spirit of God. Who judges the birds in the forest, who praise the Lord with many a voice, each in its own way? All their sounds proceed from God's power, and before him they play. Therefore men, who quarrel and despise each other about science and about the will of God, are more foolish than the birds of the forest and more useless than the meadow flowers, which nevertheless keep silent to the Spirit of God and let him reveal his wisdom and power through them. What should they quarrel about for long around that in which they live and whose essence they themselves are?

Arrhenius:

Sometimes we hear it said that we live in the “best of all possible worlds”; it is difficult to say anything well-founded about that, but we - at least the natural scientists - can say with complete certainty that we live in the best of times. We can say, with the great connoisseur of nature and man, Goethe, in the firm hope that the future will only get better:

It is a great delight
to place oneself in the spirit of the times.
To see how a wise man thought before us,
And how we have then ultimately come so gloriously far.

But Faust (alone):

How can I not despair when I think
Of all the empty stuff I know,
How I dig for treasure with my greedy hand,
And am glad when I find earthworms!

It is a great experience
to rise to the spirit of the times
to hear how so many a true sage speaks:
Only by striving do we reach the light!

Kolbe: van 't Hoff had “mounted Pegasus (apparently borrowed from the veterinary school)” to announce: “how the atoms in space appeared to him on the chemical Parnass he had scaled by bold flight.”

Goethe:

Man in himself, insofar as he uses his healthy senses, is the greatest and most accurate physical apparatus that can exist, and that is precisely the greatest misfortune of modern physics, that one has separated the experiments, as it were, from man, and recognize nature only in what artificial instruments show, yes, what it can achieve, thereby limiting and wanting to prove.

But

But man stands so high that the otherwise unrepresentable is represented in him. What is a string and all its mechanical divisions compared to the musician's ear? Yes, one can say what the elementary phenomena of nature themselves are compared to man, who has to tame and modify them all in order to assimilate them to some extent.

O. Hertwig:

The principle of utility, the conviction of the necessity of unrestricted commercial and social competition, and materialistic schools of philosophy are forces that played a major role in the [modern] development of humans even without Darwin. Those who were already under their influence welcomed Darwinism as a scientific confirmation of ideas already familiar and dear to them from other sources. They could now see themselves, as it were, in the mirror of science.

The interpretation of Darwin's theory, with its imprecisions and ambiguities, also allowed for a wide range of applications in other areas of economic, social and political life. From it, everyone could, as from a Delphic oracle,

depending on what he wanted, draw his conclusions about social, political, hygienic, medical and other issues and, to support his assertions, invoke the science of biology, reworked in a Darwinian way, with its unalterable laws of nature. But if these supposed laws are not such, should there not also be social dangers when they are applied in other areas? One should not believe that human society can use phrases such as “relentless struggle for existence” [1], “selection of the suitable” [2], “the useful” [3], “the expedient” [4], improvement by natural selection [5] etc. in their transfer to the various fields, like daily bread, without being influenced more deeply and lastingly in the whole direction of their idea formation!

1. unrelenting struggle for existence: fruitful harmony of souls
2. Selection of the suitable: Cultivation of every justified aspiration
3. of the useful: Recognition of the usefulness of the spiritual
4. of the expedient: of that which elevates life
5. Perfection through breeding selection: Perfection through the mutual complementation of people

The addresses published here do not belong in a narrow sense to those ‘Private Papers’ of Rudolf Steiner which have been published as urgently desired study-material for seekers after true humanity and a world-conception in accordance with spiritual values. Nevertheless what Rudolf Steiner himself says in his ‘Lebensgang’ concerning the printing of words which were taken down by his listeners, though intended by the lecturer himself to be only spoken, applies also to these:

‘Of my anthroposophical work there are now two results; first, my books which are open to all the world, and secondly a long series of Courses, which were intended to be looked upon as private publications, for sale only to the members of the Theosophical, later the Anthroposophical Society. These were versions, made with more or less accuracy at the lectures, which, owing to lack of time, could not be corrected by me. I should have preferred if the spoken word were to have remained so. But members wanted the printed edition of the Courses, and so it came into being. Had I had time to correct things, there would have been no need from the beginning for the limitation “Only for Members.” Now it has been omitted for more than a year.

‘Here in my “Lebensgang” it is above all necessary to say how the two things—my published books and private editions—fit into what I established as Anthroposophy.

‘Anyone who wishes to follow my inner struggle and work to bring Anthroposophy before the consciousness of the present age, must do so by means of the general published writings. In them I elaborate everything that exists at present in the way of the pursuit of knowledge. There is given what was revealed more and more to me in “spiritual vision,” what became part of the building of Anthroposophy—although in many respects in an incomplete manner.

‘Side by side with this demand to build up Anthroposophy, and by doing so to take the consequence of giving messages from the spirit-world to the general world of culture to-day, there was also the other demand, to meet fully the spiritual needs and desires of the members as they manifested themselves.’

Also the lectures given publicly in Berlin had, beside the casual listeners each time, an audience of people who came regularly, whose intelligence and capacity to understand were from time to time taken into consideration by the lecturer. And the stenographer had to adapt his gradually increasing skill to catching lectures of one and a half hour's duration. The two addresses published here cannot pretend to give again the pure style of the spoken word, which Rudolf Steiner so sharply differentiates from the style of the written Essay.

As there is such a strong demand for the spoken wisdom of Rudolf Steiner, that we can scarcely keep up in the issue of his addresses with the wishes of readers, our obligation increases to place simultaneously the written Essays of Rudolf Steiner by the side of these as a corrective. They are contributions to several papers, notably to the Goetheanum. Under the title ‘Studies in Goethe, the Goetheanistic Thought Methods,’ a series of these Essays is to appear shortly in book form. In them one will recognize the continuity of Rudolf Steiner's thought and the impersonality and timelessness of his style as a form of expression of those thoughts which are directed towards the eternal, and grasp ‘all things transitory’ with the most intimate sympathy and the acutest accuracy, as a link in the chain from earthly growth to divine existence.

At Whitsuntide this year an international Congress of the Anthroposophical Movement was held at Vienna under the title of ‘East and West.’ Seventeen hundred people were present from all parts of Europe. It was an inspired gathering,—held in a city where Eastern and Western elements have met and mingled for many centuries. Dr. Steiner gave two courses of lectures on Anthroposophy and Knowledge, and Anthroposophy and Sociology. The problem of East and West, spiritually considered, was the main theme. The Viennese public felt the message and gave him a great ovation, a sign that his lectures, with all their intensity of thought, had been appreciated and their impulse understood.

The Congress opened boldly with the clear statement that the problems of today are to be solved neither on economic nor on political platforms, but only on the basis of a new spiritual understanding, a creation of fresh spiritual values and ideals. Dr. Steiner described the path of the soul to higher knowledge in ancient Eastern methods—for example, in the Yoga training and he described how the ancient spirituality of the East was led to Europe by the civilisation of ancient Greece. He showed how other elements of humanity in Northern and Western Europe, and later in America, had come into contact with this heritage from the ancient East and brought fresh faculties and impulses to bear on it. He claimed that Anthroposophy points to a deeper knowledge, born of new faculties of spiritual perception, and is the only power great enough to draw together the conflicting elements in Eastern and Western points of view. Convincingly he showed how these seeds of new spiritual faculties are ready to burst into life in Europe and in the West, and how in this alone lies the solution of the world's problems today. If the West develops these latent spiritual faculties and so permeates her industrial and economic civilisation with fresh spiritual values, the East will recognise her opportunity of a great spiritual revival and meet the West with understanding. Otherwise, despite all external appearances they will go on developing a latent hostility to our external Western civilisation.

Hence Dr. Steiner claims that the keynote of the most immediate and practical problems of the hour lies in an understanding of the esoteric evolution of humanity, and of the relationship of man in East, Middle and West, in Past, Present and Future to the spiritual worlds. The subject therefore that is dealt with esoterically in this book from a course of lectures given at private meetings of Anthroposophical students twelve years ago has now become the most urgent and practical problem before the world. For, again and again, Dr. Steiner has referred to the significant words of General Smuts, who said that the eyes of the world's statesmen must now be turned from the North Sea and the Atlantic to the Pacific, the immediate meeting-point of East and West.

Much will depend on a sufficient number of men and women realising and understanding these problems in the light of the deeper knowledge that is contained, for example, in the course of lectures which has now been revised and made public, with Dr. Steiner's permission, in this volume.

To assist those who seek the connection between the spiritual and practical side of this question, the Editor of Anthroposophy has kindly permitted me to print as the Introduction to this book a very able article in that journal from the pen of Mr. George Kaufmann.

The translation of these lectures has been done chiefly by Mr. S. M. K. Gandell, who has already assisted me so greatly in former translations, and by Miss D. Osmond. I take this opportunity of conveying to them my sincere thanks for their co-operation in a very difficult task.

H. COLLISON.
September 1922.

See GA 223

Words on the Inaugural Meeting of the Austrian National Society

My dear friends! At today's afternoon meeting, you have adopted a resolution for which I must be grateful to you. I express my thanks to you from the depths of my heart. But you must not be angry with me if I also say a few words about what should be linked with what has been discussed so often this afternoon, and so passionately at times: the further development, the reorganization, the coming of age of the Anthroposophical Society. All this is certainly extraordinarily good when it is backed by a strong will. But, my dear friends, I am sometimes put in the position of having to speak more concretely about what is actually necessary. Since, to my regret, I cannot be in Vienna as often as I would like, I have spoken less concretely about these things here in Vienna than, for example, in February on other occasions in Stuttgart. But some of what I said in Stuttgart or Dornach with regard to what would be necessary for the Anthroposophical Society to come of age in the twenty-first year of its life may have been leaked. Again and again I had to point out a word that is very necessary in the development of the Anthroposophical Society: This is the word waking up, being attentive to what is going on around us, having a heart for life – not just for theories about life – in the Anthroposophical Society. Please forgive me if I then also characterize small things; but to him who observes life, it often reveals itself in small things. I would like to draw attention to one such detail. It is not meant in a negative way, but the following happened a few days ago.

It is true that I care as little as possible about what is said in public about my lectures or about what I do. But there are exceptions. On the day of my second public lecture, a newspaper article appeared here that – I will now completely disregard whether it is praising or not, I do not consider praising articles more valuable than terribly scathing ones – but it does have some characteristic words that say the following. I mention it because of the coming of age of our society. About supersensible knowledge it says:

"It (anthroposophy) has not met the challenge of the time to improve our existence, so it has not yet proved itself to be the challenge of the time. And it will not become so until it comes to truly beneficial insights in its ‘exact formulation of supersensible experience’. What it offers us is only old mysticism, which fell asleep when it experienced the supersensible and, upon awakening, forgot everything it had experienced. Overcoming such forgetfulness is the challenge of the times for Rudolf Steiner.

These words are extremely characteristic. I am only, I would like to say, as if by fate, somewhat absorbed in the discussion of this demand, in that I have pointed out that there are insights, for example, about the human heart, that lead us further in education. But just think: if I had received this article when the lecture was given, instead of a day after, then I could have replied: “What you are calling for exists!” I touched on it, but perhaps I would have gone into it in more detail otherwise. The things are there – they are just not taken into account. But then people come up with such demands!

If one of our friends here had been kind enough to give me this article during the day on the twenty-ninth, it would have meant: People are paying attention, they care about the things that are happening, they are getting involved! Because I would have said something very important, even if only in five lines, in connection with the end of this article, and something could have been done as a result. It is not enough to merely talk about the fact that we are founding a new phase of society. We really have to wake up and work together. We can do this on a small and large scale. Because just as I received this article when the cow was out of the barn, I could have received it when the cow was still in the barn. That is what I once requested as the coming of age of society. I have to be unpleasant when I characterize things from my point of view, but it has happened and it is not meant to be so bad!

But these things have to be pointed out, because they can really be worked with! It would have been quite good... I know that many have read the article, but they did not consider it worth the effort to hand it over to me the day before the lecture. It is only one symptom, and I choose to make it clear that I do not mean it badly, the most venomous symptom, but it is still characteristic for that reason.

And so I would ask you to take seriously what I mean by awakening. Awakening means: focusing attention on the environment, working with the world, working for our great cause when our great cause comes into consideration. Theoretical arguments that we are “now twenty-one years old” do not do it. What does it matter if one has now turned twenty-one? If, however, it has really reached the depths of your soul, waking up is what we need. What I am saying is actually meant as a kindness.

In the afternoon I was asked if I would like to speak myself, and I would like to say the following: In general, it would be good for our dear friends in Austria, if they — since I love Austria so much — would not just go along with this awakening, but if they would even be a prime example of awakening. But then it must begin with the most everyday things, insofar as it touches the life of society. In Austria, there is really an opportunity to do a great deal for this spiritual movement to which we are devoted. For Austria has always had, I might say, a certain development of an external or bureaucratic-mechanical spirit of life, and yet always a strong inwardness in the realm where the intellectual merges into the emotional. And I would never want to fail to mention this. If we go back to the 1850s, 1860s or even the early 1970s of the last century, we see that Austria had the best schoolbooks in the world, and this excellence extended not only to the so-called humanistic schoolbooks, but also to mathematics and geometry books. And we must be fair here. One can also be fair to those who are our opponents. It is really time that people realized that anthroposophy is not anyone's opponent: the others are opponents of anthroposophy. I recently had to complain about this in connection with an unpleasant matter in Stuttgart. People say that so-and-so treats me as an 'adversary'. They have no right to do so, since I do not behave as an adversary until I feel compelled to defend myself against attacks from others; only then do they become adversaries. A fine distinction needs to be made here. Therefore, one must be fair and say: From that fine education which chiseled the spiritual life, which in Austria was the education of the Benedictines and the Cistercians right up to the secondary schools, something of the spiritual flowed into the Austrian mind from this education, which you will not find anywhere else. I really don't want to flatter you otherwise, but the older ones of you have it unconsciously within you, perhaps you don't take it into account. The introduction of those horrible geometry books that came later, in place of, for example, Fialkowski or the old Močnik, which was used as a geometry book in Austria, where all of descriptive geometry, without anyone noticing, led to the imaginative, was not done so without consequence. This could be seen from the figures alone: they had a black background with white lines instead of the black lines that are most commonly found today. All of this was infinitely closer to the soul. Much of that still lives here. It lives in the soul; only people maltreat their own soul: they suppress these things. And precisely the fact that that reformatory Protestant-evangelical intellectualism did not sweep through the Austrian soul as a wave, that is precisely what conditions a very special Austrian spiritual milieu. Germanness in Austria is different from Germanness anywhere else in the world. One need only point to those fine minds that worked in Austria in the last third of the 19th century. I will not mention names, but they can be found everywhere, sometimes in the most unlikely places.

All this could indicate that this thought also occurred to me at a decisive moment: talk about anthroposophy and the human mind, especially in Austria and especially in Vienna. And even if you in your higher souls were to grasp all this in the same way as the world otherwise grasps it, in your lower souls you cannot grasp it at all in the same way! Because there is something there of that fine vibration that emerged from the profound education that was present in Austria around the middle of the last century. And one must answer the question: What can German-Austria do for anthroposophy? with the soul. You must not speculate about the difference between this or that area of the world, but you must feel how there is really a strong inwardness here. This is expressed in the smallest details. The other Germans sometimes feel this as something quite foreign.

Do you see that you have a special task here, to work from the heart, which may emerge from the details. I was once sitting with Herman Grimm in Weimar. In the course of our conversation we happened to mention Grillparzer, and Herman Grimm said: “I once heard Scherer (who was called from Vienna to Berlin) say that Grillparzer was also a poet.” Imagine! The man who at that time was the most brilliant representative of German intellectual life spoke in this way! And he continued: “Once, during a stay in Munich, I had a free hour and sent over to the court library to have something of Grillparzer's sent to me; and when I read it, it seemed to me as if it were not actually written in German at all, but in a foreign language, it seemed to me like something quite foreign.” That was Herman Grimm saying it!

Those who embrace Austria with their hearts cannot speak in this way; for them, precisely this language, which is so strongly emphasized by Grillparzer, will reveal itself as the language of the heart. One must answer this question with one's heart: What should Austria do for anthroposophy? — It is good for the Austrian that in the word 'anthroposophy' there is only one R; for you know — you will agree with me — the Austrian never really learns to pronounce the R properly. It is precisely his peculiarity that wherever there is an R, he actually speaks an A. We vocalize the R. Just explore your vowel and consonant secrets, and you will find that you are no great genius at R! It is the case with Austrians that they never actually grasp this “rolling” of the R with their speech organ. The Austrian speaks a “cozy” R; but it is just not cozy — and so it is not a proper R. But it is the case that you have to grasp the essence where it is.

And so I thought: I would like to touch your soul with this series of lectures! That is the answer to the question that our dear friend Zeißig asked me this afternoon. That is what I wanted to say as a farewell greeting. With this, I close this lecture series, and I would just like to add that it has given me great satisfaction to be among you in Vienna once again. And I do hope that, in our spiritual movement, even when we are apart in the physical sense, we will always know that we are together in the inner sense. And since we always know and feel that we are together, we will be together spiritually even when we are physically apart!

This book is the first volume of a new edition of all Rudolf Steiner's written work—Classics in Anthroposophy. It can be called a classic for several reasons that I will describe, and it contains an important presentation of Rudolf Steiner's Christology (his research into the Christ impulse in earthly and cosmic evolution). It is one of the best accounts of this teaching with which to begin ones study, and one to which we can profitably return again and again.

Steiner had little time to revise his lectures—even during the early years of the century—due to the sheer amount of his lecturing activity, which increased each year; he sometimes gave two or more lectures in twenty-four hours. Today, about 6,000 of these lectures are in print. In addition to his lectures, Steiner's days were filled with administrative and other teaching duties, as well as meeting the needs of people who sought his advice for personal concerns. The lectures in this book and those now published as The Mission of the Folk-Souls are the only lectures he was able to revise in all his years as a spiritual teacher. Rudolf Steiner often emphasized the qualitative difference between his written works and his lectures, which are unrevised stenographic reports. Indeed, he did not write many books, and most of those that he did write underwent at least one revision during his lifetime, as he sought constantly for the clarity and precision which epitomize his approach to spiritual science.

Originally he had not wanted the lectures to be published at all, but his students began to pass around lecture notes to facilitate their study. One must imagine their excitement in those days, when each cycle of lectures seemed to present new revelations from Steiner's research. It was natural for those who could travel to the various cities and attend the lectures to want to convey these esoteric treasures to their friends. On the other hand, Steiner lectured to each specific audience according to what he thought they needed to hear out of their karmic backgrounds, and many of the lectures that are now available to the general public were originally given for members of the Theosophical Society and, later, the Anthroposophical Society. Many listeners had been personal students of Steiner for some years and had acquired a familiarity with the general outlines of his teachings. In 1923, after the founding of the Anthroposophical Society, he decided to make all his lectures available to the public. The public lectures contained a note that some familiarity with fundamental anthroposophy was necessary for an intelligent reading, and that criticism not based on such knowledge would have to be disregarded.

Yet, in the case of this book, he undertook to revise the lectures he had given June 5–8, 1911 in Copenhagen. He spent about two weeks on the revision, and the lectures were printed only two months later, on August 26, 1911. In his preface, Steiner says there were reasons he allowed these lectures to appear when they did. We may ask what those reasons were.

Rudolf Steiner sought for many years a place where he could speak openly out of his spiritual insights. Accordingly, he accepted an invitation in 1900 to lecture to the Berlin Lodge of the Theosophical Society. The enthusiastic reception of these and other lectures led to his assuming the position of General Secretary of the German section of the Theosophical Society in 1902. From the beginning, he asserted his intention to teach from the results of his own research in accordance with the needs of Western humanity, and this freedom was granted. Within the organizational framework of the Theosophical Society, Steiner worked to serve those souls who sought a spiritual impulse they could not find in either the sciences or in the established churches. For several years, Steiner's relationship with the Society was largely cordial and fruitful, and he lectured in many European cities to the lodges of the Theosophical Society.

The Theosophical Society took an increasingly Eastern direction, both spiritually and geographically, The headquarters was moved to Adyar, India. The leaders of the Theosophical Society, at first the remarkable Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, and then Annie Besant and Charles Leadbeater, as well as many members had strong feelings against Western spirituality and the Christian churches. In 1911, in Mrs. Besant proclaimed Jiddhu Krishnamurti, then a young boy, the incarnation of the Christ, and she created the Order of the Star of the East to promote this idea. This, of course, directly contradicted Rudolf Steiner' s perception that the physical incarnation of Christ could occur once during the history of the earth, for reasons carefully delineated in this book.

In 1912, some of the German members, opposed to the Order of the Star of the East, decided to form a new organization; Steiner, when asked, offered the name “Anthroposophical Society.” Steiner neither desired nor actively pursued the break with the theosophists but, recognizing that it was impossible to work within the increasingly hostile atmosphere of the Theosophical Society, he agreed to work with the new “anthroposophical” organization. The first meeting was held in 1913, after Mrs. Besant had excluded the German section. Readers new to anthroposophy may see these events as typical of the regrettable yet apparently inevitable infighting that occurs within spiritual organizations of all kinds. They take on quite a different coloring, however, when seen in the context of Steiner's struggle to insure that his unique teaching of Christian esotericism could find its proper audience and the necessary methods of presentation.¹

Thus it was that Rudolf Steiner revised these lectures—an important element in the initial exposition of his Christology—during the height of difficulties within the Theosophical Society, just before the inaugurations of the Anthroposophical Society. During these years he also wrote and produced his four mystery dramas, and began the work that later matured as eurythmy and speech formation². Rudolf Steiner introduced something quite foreign to the mode of theosophical meetings when he began to include artistic presentations, begun by Rudolf Steiner in 1907. The effect of his dramas, which included eurythmy and the new method of speech, gave the impetus to create a special building in which to perform them. Looking back, we can see how Steiner's studies in Christology and his artistic work in drama, painting, and sculpture culminated in the building of the first Goetheanum in Dornach.³

It is not surprising, then, to find that The Spiritual Guidance of the Individual and Humanity reveals an extremely artistic composition. Rudolf Steiner weaves together the themes of the beings that guide humanity, the working of the Christ impulse before and after the Mystery of Golgotha, and our common soul experience in a way that can best be called musical. Each new expression brings a variation that imports new information and yet relates to what precedes it. In some of his other lectures, Rudolf Steiner builds mighty pictures of the earth and of the cosmos, and portrays the activities of spiritual beings whose deeds are revealed externally through the natural sciences and through history. Until one achieves a sufficient background through contemplative study of a variety of anthroposophical concepts and makes the effort to allow these concepts to create the inner organs for further work, these initial studies can be overwhelming in their complexity and seem quite dry. For that reason, this book can be most helpful, because Steiner relates the entire subject matter to the human soul, to observations and experiences we share as human beings. These can help us find an inner strength to begin to take' anthroposophy more deeply into our own soul life.

The first chapter begins with a description of how, in the first three years of life, the higher self in each of us works to establish three capacities. Unlike the animals, we learn to orient our body in space in a way that is not innate or instinctual. Next, we learn the use of language; and then comes the ability to work with thoughts, with ideas. Thus, in the time before we are aware of our “I”, we have already done our wisest work on ourselves. If, however, our higher, divine self continued to work in this way, we would remain as children and not have the possibility of freedom. This active working must fall away as we achieve our own self-consciousness, which is constantly subject to the lure of pride and deceit, but which also gives us the possibility of self-development. Indeed, if the higher self lived within us in our present constitution for longer than three years, our body would die. In the same way, when the cosmic Christ entered the body of Jesus during the baptism in the Jordan, it could live even in this special human body for only three years.

Even if the Gospels had not been written, Steiner asserts, this knowledge of the first years of childhood would reveal that Christ lives in us: “To perceive and understand the forces at work in our childhood is to perceive Christ in us.” Through inner striving, we can contact again the wisdom that worked so powerfully in our first years, and we can find the Christ because of his incarnation into humanity. Indeed, the goal of earthly evolution, of the existence of this planet and our life on it, is to gradually make our entire being an expression of these divine cosmic forces—of the Christ impulse. Childhood is a perpetual reminder of the higher self, and it reveals the spiritual guidance that also lives in the Gospels and in the great initiates.

In the second chapter, Steiner describes humanity's own childlike condition in ancient times, and then he outlines how the higher spiritual beings have passed through their own “human” stage in earlier incarnations of the earth. As recently as ancient Egypt, people could recognize the spiritual beings who spoke through their leaders and teachers. The focus of the chapter is on the angels, the beings closest to humanity, who guided human development during the Egyptian epoch and again during our time. He shows how some of the angels have progressed properly in their development, while others have developed more slowly. These two types of angels bring to humanity both the possibility for our own progressive evolution, and also the two kinds of evil: the tendency to ignore our earthly responsibilities and become dreamers and visionaries, and the increasing temptation toward materialism. While their activities cause trouble in the present life of humanity, these beings actually work together in the spiritual world to guide human development. With delicacy and beauty, Steiner indicates the necessity for these retarding spirits in our evolution, for without them, we would not have the opportunity to achieve full self consciousness, diversity and freedom. The more progressive beings could only have produced uniformity in human nature.

This chapter concludes with a caution against fanaticism. “The most beautiful things can seduce and tempt us if we pursue them one-sidedly.” To guard against this, he urges us to insure that clairvoyance is augmented by an effort to grasp conceptually just the kind of spiritual facts that are presented in this book. Spiritual science helps us to avoid error; clairvoyance should be accompanied by initiation, the training that allows “a clear assessment of what is perceived in the supersensible world.” This is the difference between seeing and understanding, by being able to distinguish between the different kinds of beings and events of the higher worlds. Most important, through the study of anthroposophy, we begin to meet the Christ with our higher soul forces.

In the final chapter, Rudolf Steiner surveys the sweep of the Post Atlantean Age, the present age of the world.⁴ He shows how the progressive spiritual beings have also met the Christ, but the retarding beings have not. These latter spirits have inspired the natural science that has formed the present world culture. In the future, scientists will perceive that the Christ has arranged every atom of the earth, and a new physics and chemistry will result. We can say, then, that in the future there will live in people's hearts a Christ-idea whose magnitude will be beyond anything humanity has believed to know and understand so far. What has developed through Christ as a first impulse and has lived on as an idea of him until now is—even in the best representatives of the Christ—principle only a preparation for a true understanding of Christ. Christ first entered human hearts through the pictures from his life on earth in a human body. Today we must prepare for a spiritual meeting with the Christ, similar to Paul's experience at Damascus. An essential part of this preparation is a strengthened consciousness and a sense of responsibility toward spiritual perception, and this vital discrimination can be enhanced through the careful study of such a book as this one.

In conclusion, one hopes that this new edition will find the active readership it deserves. Many people who first approach anthroposophy for the first time are suspicious and even resentful of Christianity as it has manifested in the past two thousand years, and when they discover that anthroposophy is Christ-centered, they may feel disappointed or even upset. For others, it is perplexing that Steiner's Christology puts forward quite radical elements when compared to the theology of his day or ours. In this book, Rudolf Steiner gives both a broad, sweeping picture of human and cosmic evolution and the central place of the Christ impulse in that development, and also relates this evolution to our inner life, to the experiences and insights that anyone with the good will to look within can have, and from which they can then follow these anthroposophical thoughts to the reality of the Christ experience. Here we are given a deeply rewarding perspective of the age in which we live and in which we are witnessing the rapid dissolution of our cultural life; here also we can find the inner sustenance to work toward building the culture of the new age. From this point of view, The Spiritual Guidance of the Individual and Humanity is a “classic” work of spiritual science.

HILMAR MOORE

• 1. For further information, see Guenther Wachsmuth, The Life and Work of Rudolf Steiner (Whittier Books, 1955) 158–193; and Stewart C. Easton, Rudolf Steiner: Herald of a New Epoch (Anthroposophic Press, 1980), chapters 6 and 8. It should be noted that Krishnamurti publicly repudiated the claims of Besant and Leadbeater and dissolved the organization, called the Order of the Star of the East, in the 1920s. Stewart Easton has managed to portray with admirable clarity the issues and personalities which are of great importance in Steiner's work. In chapter five of his Man and World in the Light of Anthroposophy (Anthroposophic Press, 1975) he has provided a succinct presentation of Rudolf Steiners Christology.
• 2. Eurythmy. System of movement created by Rudolf Steiner expressing both music and the sounds of speech. See Marjorie Raffe et al., Eurythmy and the Impulse of Dance (London: Rudolf Steiner Press, 1974). Speech. Steiner developed a particular mode of artistic speech in the production of his Mystery Dramas. See Rudolf Steiner, Speech and Drama (Spring Valley, NY: Anthroposophic Press / London: Rudolf Steiner Press, 1968). Also, Steiner, Four Mystery Dramas, trans. Ruth Pusch (North Vancouver: Steiner Book Centre, 1973), and Steiner, Three Lectures on the Mystery Dramas (Spring Valley, NY: Anthroposophic Press, 1983).
• 3. The Goetheanum is the world headquarters of the Anthroposophical Society in Dornach, Switzerland. Architecturally unique. See biesantz, The Goetheanum, (London: Rudolf Steiner Press, 1979) and Rex Raab et al., Eloquent Concrete, (London: Rudolf Steiner Press, 1979).
• 4. For a description of earth evolution, including post-Atlantean times, see Rudolf Steiner, An Outline Of Esoteric Science, trans. Catherine E. Creeger (Hudson, NY: Anthroposophic Press, 1997).