The Rudolf Steiner Archive

by Marie Steiner to
the First German Edition of 1944

THE WORK that now began, without the interruption of even a single day, was at first devoted to medical knowledge; its scientific aspect had to be filled full of genuine spiritual forces; the esoteric work for which the younger doctors were so intensely striving had to be deepened, so that the loving will and the healing will that requires so much selflessness in the practice of caring for the sick could be unfolded.

On 2 January 1924 the third of the lectures to doctors was given. [Note 81] And also on 2 January the course of eight lectures [Note 82] to younger doctors and medical students began; it continued till 9 January.

The evening lectures brought contemplations of the destinies of inner spiritual life between the ninth and the end of the twelfth century. Rosicrucianism and Modern Initiation is the title of the cycle running from 4 to 13 January. [Note 83] In the final lecture we are led from the principle of Rosicrucian initiation up to the mystery of modern initiation and the beginning of the Age of Michael. A lecture given to members on 18 January [Note 84] is of particular importance. It gives a concise account of the coming into being of the Anthroposophical Society, from its beginnings, through the war years and right up to the completion of the building in Dornach. In opposition to the institutions being founded chiefly in Stuttgart, and to the work of scientists who join the Society in considerable numbers, there arises the will to destroy it held by a well-organized coalition of opponents. The gauntlet is thrown down when the Goetheanum is burnt to the ground, and finally we come, in view of the newly created world situation to the new founding of the Society as the General Anthroposophical Society.

The question now demanding an answer of us is: How can Anthroposophy be represented before the world? That lecture of 18 January culminates in this question. It also gives us a greater understanding of the coming inauguration of the Classes. And in order to provide a firm basis for the spiritual schooling to be striven for, nine lectures give new aspects of a deeper penetration into the nature of Anthroposophy, made possible only by the work of many years, under the modest title of Anthroposophy—an Introduction. [Note 85]

At the same time in Das Goetheanum began the series of what came to be called Dr Steiner's Letters to Members. In these he endeavoured to awaken and strengthen people's sense of responsibility for the forming of the life of the Society and of what went on in the different branches. They have recently been republished in the little book Life, Nature, and Cultivation of Anthroposophy. [Note 86] From this foundation Dr Steiner goes on to what he describes as the special fields of the different Sections at the Goetheanum. In the first few essays, under the title ‘The School of Spiritual Science’, he turns first to the promotion of the medical work with which he was at that time particularly concerned. Then he goes on to the tasks of the young people who search with such yearning for a spiritual view of the world. The perennial conflict between the generations, particularly strong at the time, is thoroughly examined. Youthful impetuosity, now emerging to the full rather exuberantly and immaturely amid the strife within the Society, is given an orderly field of work in the newly to be founded Section ‘for the Spiritual Striving of Youth’. There follow other brief discussions.

Since a new edition of these essays has been long awaited, this seemed the appropriate moment to bring it out as a continuation of the proceedings of the Christmas Foundation Conference. So the next private publication under the title of The Constitution of the School of Spiritual Science [Note 87] will contain in the main those essays as well as Dr Steiner's lectures of 18 and 30 January and an address given on 3 February. They treat of questions of dividing up the School into Sections and of the special significance of belonging to the Class.

New Education and the Whole Human Being

Here in Bern, I have spoken to you often about anthroposophy in general. And it is a special pleasure to be able now to speak to you in the spirit of anthroposophy about education—the sphere of life that must lie closest to the human heart. We must develop an art of education that can lead us out of the social chaos into which we have fallen during the last few years and decades. Our chances of overcoming this chaos are very slight. In fact, one is tempted to say that there is no escaping this chaos unless we find a way to bring spirituality into human souls through education, so that human beings may find a way to progress and to further the evolution of civilization out of the spirit itself.

We feel confident that this is the right way to proceed, because in our hearts we know that the world is created in spirit and arises from spirit. Therefore, human creation will be fruitful only when it springs from the fountainhead of spirit itself. To achieve such fruitful creation from spirit, however, people must also be educated and taught in the spirit. I believe that anthroposophy in fact has much to say about the nature of education and teaching, therefore, it gives me great satisfaction that I can present these lectures here.

There are many all over the world who feel that a new impetus of some kind is needed in education and teaching. It is true that the nineteenth century was full of progressive ideas and much was done to further schooling and education. However, a recent tendency of our civilization has been that individuals are seldom brought into touch with their own humanity. For many centuries we have been able to record the most wonderful progress in the realm of natural science and in its resulting technology.

We have also seen that a certain worldview has gradually crystallized out of that scientific progress. The world as a whole—which includes the human being—seems to be viewed exclusively in terms of what the senses tell us about natural phenomena, and what the intellect, which is related to the brain, tells us about the realm of the senses. Nevertheless, all of our recently acquired knowledge about the natural world does not, in fact, lead us to the human being; this is not clearly recognized today. Although many people feel this to be the situation, they are unprepared to acknowledge that—regardless of all that the modern age has provided us in terms of information about the natural world—we are still no closer to understanding the human being.

This impossibility is most likely to be felt when we attempt to understand the growing human being, the child. We sense a barrier between the teacher and the child. Anthroposophy, which is based on a real and comprehensive understanding of the human being, would hear this heartfelt appeal coming from all sides—not by establishing theories on education, but by showing men and women as teachers how to enter the school’s practical life. Anthroposophic education is really the practical life of the school, and our lectures should provide practical details about how to deal with the various details of teaching.

Something else must come first, however; for if we were to begin by speaking of practical details in this way, then the spirit that gives birth to all this could not reveal itself. Therefore, you must kindly permit me to speak today of this spirit of anthroposophic education as a kind of introduction. What we have to say about it will be based on a comprehensive, truly penetrating knowledge of the human being—the active force of anthroposophy in education.

A penetrating knowledge of the human being—what does this mean to us? If a growing human being, a child, stands before us, it is not enough, as I have said, to make certain rules for teaching and educating this child, merely conforming to rules as one would when dealing with a technical problem. This will not lead to good teaching. We must bring an inner fire and enthusiasm to our work; we must have impulses that are not transmitted intellectually from teacher to child according to certain rules, but ones that pass intimately from teacher to child. An educator’s whole being must be at work, not just the thinking person; the person who feels and the person who wills must also play their roles.

Recently, the thinking and worldview of natural science have taken hold of people more deeply and closer to the marrow than they like to think. Even those not specifically trained as scientists think, feel, and act scientifically. This is not acceptable for teachers, since scientific thinking provides an understanding of only one member of the whole human being—the physical body, or body of the senses. But this is only one member of the entire human being, and anthroposophy shows us that when we have genuine knowledge of the human being, we see that the human being possesses three clearly distinguished members—physical body, soul, and spirit.

We see the whole human being only when we have enough wisdom and knowledge to recognize the soul’s true nature as clearly as we recognize the physical body. We must also be able to recognize the human spirit as an individual being. Nevertheless, the connections among the body, soul, and spirit in the child are not the same as in the adult; and it is precisely a loosening of the connection with the physical body that allows us to observe the soul and spirit of the child as the greatest wonder of knowledge and practical life in human existence.

The First Stage of Childhood

Let’s look for a moment at the tiny child and see how that child is born into the world. Here we see a genuinely magical process at work. We see how spirit, springing from the innermost being of the little child, flows into undefined features, chaotic movements, and every action, which seem still disjointed and disconnected. Order and form come into the child’s eyes, facial expressions and physical movements, and the child’s features become increasingly expressive. In the eyes and other features, the spirit manifests, working from within to the surface, and the soul—which permeates the entire body—manifests.

When we look at these things with a serious, unbiased attitude, we see how they come about by observing the growing child; in this way we may gaze reverently into the wonders and enigmas of cosmic and human existence. As we watch in this way while the child develops, we learn to distinguish three clearly differentiated stages. The only reason such stages are not generally distinguished is because such discernment depends on deep, intimate knowledge; and people today, with their crude scientific concepts, are not going to trouble themselves by acquiring this kind of intimate knowledge.

Soul and Spirit Build the “Second” Human Being

The first significant change in a child’s life occurs around the seventh year when the second teeth appear. The outer physical process of the change of teeth is itself very interesting. First we have the baby teeth, then the others force their way through as the first are pushed out. A superficial look at this process will see no farther than the actual change of teeth. But when we look into it more deeply (through means I will describe later in these lectures) we discover that this transformation can be observed throughout the child’s body, though more delicately than the actual change of teeth. The change of teeth is the most physical and basic expression of a subtle process that in fact occurs throughout the body.

What really happens? Anyone can see how the human organism develops. We cut our nails, our hair, and we find that our skin flakes off. This demonstrates how physical substance is cast off from the surface as it is constantly pushed out from within. This pushing from within—which we observe in the change of teeth—is present throughout the whole human body. More exacting knowledge shows us that indeed the child gradually forced out the body received through inheritance; it was cast out. The first teeth are forced out, and likewise the child’s whole initial body is forced out.

At the change of teeth, a child stands before us with a body that—in contrast to the body at birth—is entirely formed anew. The body from birth has been cast out as are the first teeth, and a new body is formed. What is the nature of this more intimate process? The child’s first body was inherited. It is the result of a collaboration between the father and mother, so to speak, and it is formed from the earthly physical conditions. But, just what is this physical body? It is the model that the Earth provides to the person as a model for true development as a human being. The soul and spirit aspect of a human being descends from a realm of soul and spirit where it lived prior to conception and birth. Before we became earthly beings in a physical body, we were all beings of soul and spirit in a soul and spirit realm. What we are given by our parents through inherited physical substance unites in embryonic life with what descends from a higher realm as pure spirit and soul. Spirit and soul take hold of the physical body, whose origin is in the stream of inheritance. This physical body becomes its model, and on this model an entirely new human organism is formed, while the inherited organism is forced out.

Thus, when we consider a child between birth and the change of teeth we can say that the physical body’s existence is due to physical inheritance alone. But, two other forces then combine to work on this physical body. First is the force of those elements the human being brought with it to Earth; the second is assimilated from the matter and substance of the Earth itself. By the time the teeth change, the human being has fashioned a second body modeled after the inherited body, and that second body is the product of the human soul and spirit.

Having arrived at such conclusions by observing the human being more intimately, one will naturally be aware of objections that may be raised; such objections are obvious. One is bound to ask: Can’t you see that a likeness to the parents often appears after the change of teeth—that, therefore, a person is still subject to the laws of inheritance, even after the change of teeth? One could raise a number of similar objections.

Let’s consider just this one: We have a model that comes from the stream of inheritance. On this model the spirit and soul develop the second human being. But when something is built from a model we don’t expect to find a complete dissimilarity to the model; thus, it should be clear that the human spirit and soul use the model’s existence to build up the second human organism in its likeness.

Nevertheless, when you can perceive and recognize what really occurs, you discover something. Certain children come into their second organism between nine and eleven, and this second body is almost identical to the initial, inherited organism. With other children, one may notice a dissimilarity between the second organism and the first, and it is clear that something very different is working its way from the center of their being. In truth, we see every variation between these two extremes. While the human spirit and soul aspect is developing the second organism, it tries most of all to conform to the being it brings with it from the realm of spirit and soul.

A conflict thus arises between what is intended to built as the second organism and what the first organism received through inheritance. Depending on whether thy have had a stronger or weaker spiritual and soul existence (in the following lectures we shall see why this is), human beings can either give their second organism an individual form that is strongly impregnated with soul forces, or, if they descend from the spiritual world with weaker forces, stay as closely as possible to the model.

Consider what we must deal with to educate children during the first period of life between birth and the change of teeth. We are inspired with great reverence when we see how divine spiritual forces work down from supersensible realms! We witness them working daily and weekly, from month to month and year to year, during the first phases of children’s lives, and we see how such work carries them through to forming a second individual body. In education we participate in this work of spirit and soul; for human physical existence, we continue what divine spiritual forces began. We participate in divine labor.

The Child as a Sense Organ

These matters require more than strictly intellectual understanding; one’s whole being must comprehend them. Indeed, when we are brought face to face with the creative forces of the world, we may sense the magnitude of our task in education, especially during the early years. But I would like to point out to you that the way spirit and soul enter the work of creating a second human organism shows us that, in the child, the formation of the body, the activity of the soul, and the creation of the spirit are a unity. Whatever happens while forming a new organism and pushing out the old involves a unity of spirit, soul, and body.

Consequently, children reveal themselves very differently than do adults. We may observe this clearly in individual instances. As adults, when we eat something sweet, it is the tongue and palate that perceive its sweetness; a little later, the experience of sweetness ceases when the sweet substance has gone into another part of the body. As adults, we do not follow it farther with our taste. This is very different for a child, in whom taste permeates the whole organism; children do not taste only with the tongue and palate but with the whole organism. The sweetness is drawn throughout the organism. In fact, the whole child is a sensory organ.

In essence, what is a sensory organ? Let’s consider the human eye. Colors make an impression on the eye. If we properly consider what is involved in human seeing, one has to say that will and perception are one in the human eye. The surface is involved—the periphery of the human being. During the first years of life, however, between birth and the change of teeth, such activity permeates the whole organism, though in a delicate way. The child’s whole organism views itself as one all-inclusive sense organ. This is why all impressions from the environment affect children very differently than they would an adult. An expression of the soul element in the human being—the element of human morality—is occurring in the environment, and this can be seen with the eye.

The Effects of the Teacher’s Temperament on Children

Subconsciously—even unconsciously—children have a delicate and intimate capacity for perceiving what is expressed in every movement and act of those around them. If a choleric person expresses fury in the presence of a child and allows the child to see this in the unconscious way I described, then, believe me, we are very mistaken to believe that the child sees only the outer activity. Children have a clear impression of what is contained within these moral acts, even when it is an unconscious impression. Sense impressions of the eye are also unconscious. Impressions that are not strictly sensory impressions, but expressions of the moral and soul life, flow into a child exactly the way colors flow into the eye, because the child’s organism is a sense organ.

This organism, however, has such a delicate structure that every impression permeates all of it. The first impression a child receives from any moral manifestation is a soul impression. For a child, however, the soul always works down into the bodily nature. Whether it be fear or joy and delight that a child experiences in the environment, all this passes—not crudely but in a subtle and delicate way—into the processes of growth, circulation, and digestion. Children who live in constant terror of what may come their way as expressions of fury and anger from a choleric person, experience something in the soul that immediately penetrates the breathing, the circulation of the blood, and even the digestive activities. This is tremendously significant. In childhood we cannot speak only of physical education, because soul education also means educating the body; everything in the soul element is metamorphosed into the body—it becomes body.

We will realize the significance of this only when, through genuine knowledge of the human being, we do more than merely look at children and imprint certain educational maxims on them, and instead consider all of human earthly life. This is more difficult than merely observing children. We may record observations regarding memory, thinking powers, sensory functions of the eye, ear, and so on, but such records are made for the moment or, at most, for a short while. But this has not helped us in any way toward true knowledge of the human being as such.

When we look at a plant, something is already contained there in the seed that takes root and, after a long time, will appear as blossom and fruit. Similarly, in children before the change of teeth, when the bodily nature is susceptible to the soul’s influences, there are seeds of happiness and unhappiness, health and sickness, which will affect all of life until death. As teachers and educators, whatever we allow to flow into children during their first phase of life will work down into the blood, breathing, and digestion; it is like a seed that may come to fruition only in the form of health or sickness when they are forty or fifty years old. It is in fact true that the way educators act toward the little child creates the predispositions for happiness or unhappiness, sickness or health.

This is particularly noticeable when we observe in detail the effects of teachers on the children, based on actual life events. These phenomena may be observed just as well as the phenomena of botany or physics in laboratories, but we seldom see this. Let us consider individual examples. Let us consider, for instance, the teacher’s relationship to a child in school. Consider the teacher’s temperament. We may know that, due to temperament, a choleric teacher may be energetic, but also quick-tempered and easily angered. A melancholic teacher may be the kind of person who withdraws into the self—an introvert who is self-occupied and avoids the world. A sanguine teacher may be quick to receive outer impressions, flitting from one impression to the next. Or, we may find a phlegmatic person who allows things to slide, someone indifferent to everything, who remains unaffected by outer impressions, generally gliding over things.

Let’s imagine for the moment that a teachers’ training college did nothing to moderate these temperaments and prepare teachers to function well in the school life—that these temperaments were allowed full and total expression with no restraint. The choleric temperament—let us imagine that, before the change of teeth, a child is exposed to a choleric temperament. If a teacher or educator lets loose with a temperament of this kind, it permanently affects the child’s soul, leaving its mark on the circulatory system and all that constitutes the inner rhythmic life. Such effects do not initially penetrate very deeply; really, they are only there in seed, but this seed grows and grows, as all seeds do. It sometimes happens that, at forty or fifty years of age, circulatory disorders of the rhythmic system appear as a direct result of a teacher’s unrestrained choleric temperament. Indeed, we do not educate children only for childhood, but for their whole earthly existence and even, as we shall see later, for the time beyond.

Or, let’s imagine a melancholic giving rein to that particular temperament—someone who was not motivated during teacher training to harmonize it and find an appropriate way to channel it into working with children. Such teachers succumb to their own melancholy in their interactions with children. But by living, feeling, and thinking such inner melancholy, such a person continually withholds from children exactly what should flow from teacher to child—that is, warmth. This warmth, which is so often missing in education, acts first as a warmth of soul, and then passes into the body, primarily into the digestive system. This quickens the seed of certain tendencies that appear later in life as all kinds of disorders and blood diseases.

Or consider the phlegmatic, a person who is indifferent to interactions with the child. A very peculiar relationship arises between them—not exactly a coldness, but an extremely watery element is active in the soul realm between the child and such a teacher. The foundation is not strong enough for the proper interplay of soul between teacher and child. The child is insufficiently aroused to inner activity. If you observe someone who developed under the influence of a phlegmatic person, and if you follow the course of that person’s life into later years, you will often notice a tendency to brain weakness, poor circulation in the brain, or a dulling of brain activity.

And now let us look at the effects of sanguine people on the child—those who allow their sanguine nature to get out of hand. Such an individual responds strongly to every impression, but impressions pass quickly. There is a kind of inner life, but the person’s own nature is taken right out into the surroundings. Children cannot keep up with such a teacher, who rushes from one impression to the next, and fails to stimulate the child properly. In order to arouse sufficient inner activity in a child, the teacher must lovingly hold that child to one impression for a certain period of time. If we observe a child who has grown up under the influence of an uncontrolled sanguine nature, we see in later life that there is a certain lack of vital force—an adult life that lacks strength and content.

Thus, if we have the ability to see it (and education depends on a capacity for subtle perception), we recognize various types of people in their fortieth or fiftieth year of life, and we are able to say whether a person has been influenced by the temperament of an educator who was melancholic, phlegmatic, choleric, or sanguine.

The Lasting Effects of a Teacher’s Actions

I mention these things in introducing my lectures, not to give instructions on how to work out these things for training teachers, but to show you how actions meant to affect the child’s soul life do not just remain in the soul, but go all the way into the physical nature. To educate the soul life of children means to educate them for their whole earthly life, even in their bodily nature.

Anthroposophy is often criticized for wanting to speak of spirit as well as soul. There are many today who become very critical and antagonistic whenever they even hear the word spirit, and anthroposophy is easily assumed to be a kind of fantasy. Anthroposophists are accused of reducing the reality of the sense world to a kind of vague abstraction, and those who speak rationally of spiritual things should naturally be unconcerned with such abstraction.

In fact, what anthroposophy attempts in education is to apply the correct principles for bodily education, since we understand that precisely during the first stage of life, the entire physical nature of a child is influenced by soul impulses. Anyone who consciously tries to discover how all physical activity is based fundamentally on soul and spirit can still choose to be a materialist when working on child development between birth and the change of teeth. The way matter works in a child is contained in a unity of soul and spirit. No one can understand matter in a child unless soul and spirit are considered valid. Indeed, soul and spirit are revealed in the outer appearance of matter.

The ability to educate necessitates a sense of responsibility. The considerations I have presented to you strongly arouse one’s sense of responsibility as a matter of heartfelt concern. If you take up educational work knowing what affects the young child and that it will continue through all of life as happiness or unhappiness, sickness or health, such knowledge may initially seem like a burden on the soul; but it will also spur you on to develop forces and capacities and above all, as a teacher, a mental attitude that is strong enough to sow “seeds” of soul in the young child that will blossom only later in life, even in old age.

This knowledge of the human being is what anthroposophy presents as the basis for an art of education. It is not merely knowledge of what we find in a human being in a single stage of life—for example, in childhood; it springs from contemplating all of human earthly life. What, in fact, is a human life on Earth? When we view a person before us at any given moment, we may speak of seeing an organism, since each detail is in harmony with the formation of the whole.

To gain insight into the inner connections of size or form in the individual members of the human organism—how they fit together, how they harmonize to form both a unity and a multiplicity—let us look, for example, at the little finger. Although I am only looking at the little finger, I also get some idea of the shape of the earlobe, since the earlobe’s form has a certain connection with the form of the little finger, and so on. Both the smallest and the largest members of the human organism receive their shape from the whole, and they are also related in form to every other member. Consequently, we cannot understand, for example, an organ in the head unless we see it in relation and in harmony with an organ in the leg or foot. This also applies to the spatial organism—the organism spread out in space.

Besides having a spatial organism, however, the human being has also a time organism. We have seen that within the space organism, the earlobe receives its form from the body as a whole, as well as from the form of, say, the little finger or knee; but the time organism must also be considered. The configuration of a person’s soul in the fiftieth year—the person’s physical health or sickness, cheerfulness or depression, clarity or dullness of mind—is most intimately connected with what was present there in the tenth, seventh, or fourth year of life. Just as the members of a spatial organism have a certain relationship to one another, so do the members of a time organism separated from one another by time.

From one perspective, it may be asserted that when we are five years old, everything within us is already in harmony with what we will be at forty. Of course, a trivial objection may be raised that one might die young, but it doesn’t apply, since other considerations enter in. Additionally, as a spatial organism, a human being is also organized in time. And if you ever find a finger lying around somewhere, it would have to have been very recently dislodged to look like a finger at all—very soon, it would no longer be a finger. A limb separated from the organism soon shrivels and ceases to be a human limb. A finger separated from the human organism is not a finger at all—it could never live apart from the body, but becomes nothing, and since it cannot exist on its own, it is not real. A finger is real only while united with the whole physical body between birth and death.

Such considerations make it clear that in all our teaching, we must consider the time organism. Imagine what would happen to the space organism if it were treated the way people often treat their time-organism. Let say, for example, that we put some substance into a man’s stomach, and it destroys his head. Imagine, however, that we examined only the stomach and never looked at what happened to this substance once it dispersed into the organism, where it eventually reached the head. To understand the human organism, we must be able to examine the process that the substance goes through in the human stomach and also see what it means for the head. In passing from the stomach to the head the substance must continually alter and change; it must be flexible.

In the time organism, we continually sin against children. We teach them to have clear, sharp ideas and become dissatisfied if their ideas are flexible and not sharply defined. Our goal is to teach children in such a way that they retain in their mind what we teach them, so they can tell us just what we told them. We are often especially gratified when a child can reproduce exactly what we taught several years later. But that’s like having a pair of shoes made for a child of three and expecting them to fit when the child is ten years old. In reality, our task is to give children living, flexible ideas that can grow in the soul just as the outer physical limbs grow with the body. It is much less trouble to give a child definitions of various things to memorize and retain, but that is like expecting the shoes of a three-year- old to fit a child of ten.

We ourselves must take part in the inner activities of children’s souls, and we must consider it a joy to give them something inwardly flexible and elastic. Just as their physical limbs grow, so can their ideas, feelings, impulses, and soon they themselves are able to make something new out of what we gave them. This cannot happen unless we cultivate inner joy in ourselves toward growth and change. We have no use for pedantry or sharply defined ideas of life. We can use only active, life forming forces—forces of growth and increase. Teachers who have a feeling for this growing, creative life have already found their relationship to the children because they contain life within themselves, and such life can then pass on to the children who demand it of them. This is what we need most of all. Much that is dead in our pedagogy and educational systems must be transformed into life. What we need, therefore, is a knowledge of the human being that doesn’t say only that a human being is like this or like that. We need knowledge of the human being that affects the whole human being, just as physical nourishment affects the blood. Blood circulates in human beings, and we need human knowledge that gives blood to our souls also; it would not only make us sensible, clever, and intelligent, but also enthusiastic and inwardly flexible, able to enkindle love in us. This would be an art of education that springs from true knowledge of the human being, borne by love.

These have been the introductory remarks I wanted to present about the essential ideas that an art of education must get from anthroposophy. In future lectures we will see how the spirit of anthroposophic education can be realized in the practical details of school.

Today's meeting provides a further opportunity for me to speak to you who are friends of the anthroposophical movement before I leave. I wish to do something which in a way is particularly close to my heart, to discuss some of the things that really need to be discussed. It is possible that most of what I have to say today is a repetition of things that have been discussed on a number of occasions from all kinds of different aspects, things now also taken into consideration in public lectures. There are reasons, however, why it is necessary for us to consider some of them once again today.

I have often stressed that it is necessary for a sufficient number of people to fully understand the following. To prevent the decline into which we have got ourselves in the civilized world from continuing into utter ruin, certain impulses must be brought into modern civilization that can only arise if spiritual science reveals the nature of the world to its fullest extent.

Materialism has come to Europe over the last three or four centuries, coming to a crest in the 19th and then tumbling over in the 20th century. It has a peculiarity that seems paradoxical, particularly if one fails to realize the true causes. The peculiar thing about materialism is that it has no possibility of recognizing the material world as it really is. I think I have already given you an example of this. The materialistic way of thinking has in more recent times given rise to an idea that is believed by a great many people, namely that the heart is a kind of pump in the human organism that pumps the blood through the organism. This idea of the human heart being a pump comes up in all kinds of variations nowadays. The facts are rather different, however, and should be seen like this: The whole of our rhythmical circulatory system is something alive. It cannot be compared with a system of channels or the like with water flowing through them, water kept circulating with the aid of a pump. Our rhythmical circulatory system, our blood system, is something alive. It is kept alive by a number of factors, the major factors being breathing, hunger, thirst and so on. These clearly function at the level of soul and spirit. Our blood system is set in motion by entirely primary causes, and the movement of the heart arises when this spiritual principle enters into the rhythm of the blood. The rhythm of the blood is the primary, living principle, and the heart is caught up in this rhythm. The facts are therefore entirely the opposite of what every professor of physiology is teaching today, with the result that it is dinned into people's heads at school and indeed from their earliest childhood.

It therefore has to be said that materialism has not even managed to get a real understanding of the physical processes relating to the heart in the human organism. The material aspect in particular is completely misunderstood. This is just one of many examples. Material things in particular have found no explanation whatsoever under the influence of materialism. The heart is not a pump. It it something we might regard more as a sense organ incorporated within the human organism to give human individuals a kind of subconscious perception of their circulation, just as the eye perceives colour in the world outside. Basically the heart is a sense organ within the circulatory system, yet exactly the opposite is taught nowadays.

This would appear to be an example of limited relevance. I can imagine some philistine saying: ‘Well, it can't do much harm if people have entirely the wrong idea about the nature of the human heart. Of course, if doctors had the wrong idea about the nature of the human heart that would be cause for general alarm. After all, it does make quite a difference in human life if doctors have the right or the wrong idea about the heart.’ But this also holds true for other things. Everything is connected with everything else in life, and because of this humankind is absolutely full of wrong ideas, completely upside-down ideas. One might well think, if one was serious about it, that being hung up on wrong ideas would cause real havoc in our thinking processes. It certainly does. Our thinking is utterly ruined because it has been dinned into us and we have become used to thinking that things are the opposite of what they really are. That is why we never acquire the habit of steady, purposeful thinking. How can our thinking grow purposeful in social life, for example, if in areas where truth should be sought above all else we are in fact going in the opposite direction?

You see, some things that are important to know are a closed book for People today. When the human organism is investigated in conventional institutes nowadays, in physiological and biological laboratories, in hospitals and similar institutions, the brain for instance is examined by analyzing it bit by bit as it presents itself to the eye. The liver is examined by the same kind of analysis. In doing so, people never consider one thing that is absolutely essential if one wishes to understand the human being: The whole of the head organization as We have it today and everything it governs is entirely different from the rest of the human organism.

Let me show you what lies behind this. You can draw it like this. I intend to lead up gradually to what I really want to say. You can say that the human being has two organs of perception, and the direction in which they perceive is approximately like this [see (a) in the diagram]. Two other directions in which we perceive show a certain relationship to these. In diagrammatic form I would draw them like this (b):

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

I deliberately did not tell you where these organs are to be found in the human organism. If I draw nothing but two arrows to indicate direction (a) here, where one stretches out, as it were, to perceive, and two others here, (b), where we perceive sideways, it makes no difference at all if these are the directions in which feeling and sensation pass through my legs and these where they pass through my arms. Here we have something that is in accord. I perceive my own gravity, as it were, I stand with my two feet on the ground. I really perceive something. And I also perceive something when I stretch out my hand, stretch out my arm, even if I do not actually touch anything. I can draw it like this (a). The same drawing can also stand for something different. Imagine this is the horizontal plane. The two arrows could represent the two visual axes; I could draw the two visual axes like this. And these arrows (b) could indicate the directions of my ears. The same diagram would serve to indicate perception by the eyes and ears. On the one occasion I have the whole organism within the head, though the plane has turned through a 90° angle, on the other within the rest of the organism. There is a higher point of view where both are the same. Our two legs are merely directions in which we perceive that have become flesh. The same directions exist in a less physical form where they extend from the brain through the eyes to perceive colour. Elsewhere we perceive gravity and everything connected with it. We see our weight and we step on colour, we could say, if we were to change the two things over, entirely in organic terms, of course. I hear the blackboard chalk, I touch a C or C sharp that is sounding. The difference is merely one of degree. In the head everything has gone through a 90° angle and is less physical; the other is in the vertical plane, and is physical. In the final instance both are the same. It is only that I am aware of the way my eyes step on colours, my ears touch sounds; I know about it, it is part of my ordinary conscious life. Everything my legs see with regard to gravity and all kinds of other things that my arms hear—all these are in the subconscious sphere. Conditions belonging to the cosmic sphere are present in the subconscious. With the whole of my subconscious I have knowledge of the cosmic sphere, knowledge of the way the earth relates to other bodies in the universe, knowledge of the universal background to gravity. I hear the music of the spheres with my arms and not with my ears.

Thus we may say that we have a lower organism, as it is called, with subconscious cosmic awareness, and we have a head with early awareness; this however is a ‘conscious’ awareness. The whole of the human being is organized on the basis of these differences. Our outer form and configuration depends entirely on these differences. You know that the head we carry today is the transformed body of our previous incarnation, our previous earth life, and that the rest of our present organism will be the head in our next life. The head, then, is the rest of the organism which has undergone a transformation. It is more perfect, more finished in a way. As a result the legs have become fine visual threads extending beyond the eye and stepping on the colours in a very lively way. The arms of our former life have become so ethereal that they now extend from our ears and touch the sounds we hear.

These are concrete facts about the human being. It does not get People anywhere to know about repeated earth lives and so on. Those after all are dogmas and it makes no difference if you have the dogmas of the Catholic or Protestant church or the dogma of repeated earth lives. Real thinking only starts when you enter into concrete events, when you come to realize that looking at the human head you are looking at the transformed body of your previous earth life, and that the head you had then was the transformed body of the preceding life—you must imagine it without the head, of course. The head you see now is the transformed organism of the last life lived on earth. The rest of the organism as you see it now will be the head in the next life. Then the arms will have metamorphosed and become ears, and the legs will have become eyes. We must look at the physical world and understand it in its transformed non-physical form, our intellect must illumine the material world in this way. Then at last we shall have what humankind is much in need of today. Once the human mind has been organized so that it no longer produces the kind of folly that has been put forward as a potential social theory, particularly in the second half of the 19th century, human beings will indeed be ready to develop social ideas that can be put into effect in this world. It is necessary to gain a thorough understanding of this today. It is a serious matter when people say today: Something else will have to take the place of the science which has evolved and is so highly respected, of all the things that are generally disseminated. There can be no other way.

It is nonsense, and I also said so recently in a public lecture,³⁰ to talk about setting up adult education thinking that the same kind of work can be done there as at ordinary universities. It is the work done at the universities that has brought us to these disastrous situations, because it has become the materialistic view of a few leading personalities. This is now to be presented to the masses; that is, millions are to head for the disasters that so far have come about because the wrong lead was given by a few. Something that proved useless for a few is now to be spread among many. It is not as easy as that, however. Popular education cannot be introduced simply by teaching outside the universities what until now has been alive inside them. It would mean teaching something that is altogether unsuitable for human beings. This may sound radical, but it is absolutely essential that it is fully understood if there is to be even the least hope of the decline being halted and something new and positive developing. These are the things one wishes one could speak of in words that truly go to the heart. These concrete truths must reach as many hearts as possible. It was therefore important to me to point out in my public lectures that something has been achieved in the Waldorf School, that anthroposophy has positively influenced the history lessons in some places. I was also able to refer to the teaching of anthropology in class 5. There, too, anthroposophy was effective. Not that one would teach anthroposophy to the children—we would never think of doing such a thing—but lessons come to life if anthroposophy is the foundation, if the inspiration of anthroposophy is there in what we teach. This brings the souls of the children to life; they are quite different when this influence is there. It would be taking the easy way simply to teach anthroposophy in our schools. No, that is not what we are about, but rather to use anthroposophy to enliven the subject matter. It will of course be necessary for anthroposophy to come alive in oneself first of all, and that is something that really comes hard, to let anthroposophy come alive in human beings. Otherwise the potential is there today for all kinds of disciplines, not only in science but all kinds of disciplines in life, to have the full benefit of what life in anthroposophy is able to give.

That is a general way of looking at it. Let me go on to something specific, so that you can see the things we are considering in their proper context.

Marxist philosophy, Marxist views are widespread today. They have their most radical expression in Leninism and Trotskyism, which are destroying the world. A view of history known as ‘historical materialism’ plays a great role in Marxist philosophy, particularly the dogma of the fundamental importance of the modes and relations of production. Millions of proletarians have accepted this dogma according to which tradition, law, science, religion and so on are like smoke, like an ideology rising from the modes and relations of Production—you will find further details in my book Towards Social Renewal³¹—and that the modes and relations of production are the Only reality on which to base one's view of history.

It was very important to me on past occasions—this has to do with the feeling I have that I was really able to achieve something and create a potential basis at the Worker's Education Institute in Berlin³²—to speak in proletarian circles about the view that the modes and relations of production are the only effective element, and to present a clear picture. My aim therefore was not to teach historical materialism but the truth. That was of course also the reason why I was thrown °in, for it offended those in charge at the time just as much as the idea of a threefold social order offends people today. Authoritarian thinking and belief in authority were and still are as great in the socialist movement as in the Catholic church.

What really matters is to gain a clear understanding of social relations in this world. Real understanding of the natural threefold order of the human organism, of the way the human organism is an organism of nerves and senses, rhythmical organism and a metabolic organism, as shown in my book Von Seelenrätseln,³³ leads to a way of thinking that can also apply to social life. People of little understanding will say: ‘You are using analogy in applying the threefold order of the human body to the social organism’. This is nonsense of course. Analogy is not the method used in Towards Social Renewal. All I said was that if people succeeded in letting their thinking escape from the strait jacket put on it by modern scholarship and particularly public opinion, they would free their thinking to the extent that it will be possible to think sensible thoughts concerning social issues. The kind of thinking that puts the human brain side by side with the liver, examining everything as though it were of the same substance, will never come to sensible conclusions.

Using external analogies we might say: The social organism is threefold by nature and so is the human organism. The head is the organ of mind and intellect; it should therefore be compared with the cultural and intellectual life in the threefold organism. The rhythmical system establishes harmony between different functions in the action of the heart, in respiration—that would be the rights sphere in the social organism. Metabolism, the most physical, material aspect—something mystics tend to look down on to some extent, though they say they also have to eat and drink--would be compared to the sphere of economics.

This is definitely not the case, however. I have repeatedly pointed out on other occasions that in reality things are very different than mere analogy would make them to be. It cannot be said, for instance, that summer is comparable to the waking state for the earth and winter to a state of sleep. The reality is different. In summer the earth is asleep, in winter it is awake. I have gone into this in detail.

The same applies if we consider the real situation in comparing the social and the human organism. The economic sphere of the social organism actually compares to the activities of the human head. As to the sphere of rights, the legal sphere, people were quite rightly comparing this, the middle realm, with rhythmical activities in the human organism. The life of mind and intellect however has to be compared with the metabolism. This means that economic life has to be compared with the organs that serve the mind and intellect, and the cultural and intellectual sphere of the social organism with the metabolic organs. There is no way round this. Economic life is the head of the social organism; cultural life is the stomach, liver and spleen of the social organism but not of the individual human being. It is of course too much of an effort for anyone whose thinking is in a strait-jacket to make distinction between social life and the life of an individual person.

Again the essential point is that spiritual science prepares us to see things as they really are and not to produce analogies and elaborate symbolism. We will then arrive at important conclusions. We shall find, for example, that we can say: But in that case economic life, if it really is the head in the social organism, will have to live on the rest of the organism, just as the head does in the human organism. In that case we cannot say morality, religious life and the search for knowledge are ideological elements arising from economic life. Quite the contrary, in fact. Economic life is dependent on cultural life, on the metabolism of the social organism, just as the human head depends on respiration, on stomach, liver and spleen. We then come to see that economic life arises out of cultural and religious life. If we did not have a stomach we could not have a head. Of course we also could not have a stomach if we did not have a head, but it is the head after all that is fed by the stomach, and in the same way economic life is fed by cultural life and not the other way round. The socialist theories that now threaten to spread through the whole of the civilized world are therefore quite erroneous, a dreadful superstition. No one has thought to look for the truth in recent centuries; on a purely emotional basis everyone has been promulgating the kind of truth their class and point of view suggested to them. Now at last it is realized that it is a total delusion to see historical evolution as the product of the modes and relations of production. The idea is now to compare the actual facts and not to talk in analogies. Now a realistic view is taken and it is realized that if the stomach is undermined in the human organism, the head will suffer. In the same way there can be no sound metabolism in the social organism and economic life must fall into decline if morality, religious life and intelligent thought are undermined in the social organism. Nothing in fact depends on economic life; primarily everything depends on the views, the ideas, the cultural life of humankind.

The head is always dying—I have spoken of this in other lectures—and we only maintain the head organism because it is constantly dying and the rest of the organism rebels against this. The same applies in the sphere of economics. Economic life is constantly bringing death and decay into the progress of history; rather than generating everything else it brings about the death of everything. This element of death constantly has to be counterbalanced by what the cultural organism is able to produce. The situation is therefore exactly the other way round. Anyone speaking in materialistic terms and saying economic life is the basis for progress is not speaking the truth. The truth is that economic life is the basis of something that is always dying in stages, and the mind and spirit have to make up for this dying process. To proceed the way people are now proceeding in Russia is to help the world to its death. The only possible outcome of proceeding in this way is to help the world to its death, for the simple reason that the laws of death are inherent in the things that are being done there.

You can see the eminent social importance of these things. We have now been working in anthroposophy for twenty years, and all the time I have tried to make it utterly clear and apparent in all kinds of lectures that what matters to us is not the cultivation of a philosophy full of inner self-gratification, a kind of spiritual snobbery, but to develop the most important impulse that is needed in the present age.

I wanted to present this to you again today in a slightly different form in connection with a number of things that can help us understand the essential nature of the human being. It is important that those who call themselves friends of the anthroposophical movement clearly perceive the connection between this anthroposophical movement and other events as we know them.

The ideas put forward by myself and other friends are often seriously distorted. It is therefore difficult to speak freely to such a large audience, even if it is anthroposophical. As there is no immediate opportunity, however, to discuss these things at a more intimate level and yet it is necessary to speak of them, let me draw your attention to a few things. We must be aware, particularly here in Stuttgart, that the anthroposophical movement we have now had for twenty Years has indeed reached a new stage. If we are serious about the movement this means we have accepted the obligation to follow this change, to adapt to this change. You must properly understand that because our friends Molt, Kühn, Unger, Leinhas³⁴ and others have attempted to take the anthroposophical approach to its practical conclusion something has happened that concerns us all. It concerns us all and we must take account of it in everything we say and do. The fact is—and let us be very clear about this—that until then the anthroposophical movement was a current in the life of the mind and spirit. Such things continue on their way, cliques and closed groups, however objectionable, that go by personal and heaven knows what other interests, may form; a spiritual movement may even proceed by the agency of privy councillors like Max Seiling.³⁵ One does of course have to approach it properly in view of what is called for, but for as long as it is a purely spiritual or cultural movement it can be ignored. Now, however, three things have grown out of this spiritual movement.

The first followed the appeal I made last year.³⁶ It now forms part of the struggling threefold movement, the Association for a Threefold Social Organism. This has not yet been able to get anywhere near the real objectives. What the appeal had to say has in a sense met with rejection, and it would be a good thing to be fully aware that there has been this rejection, that only very little of what was intended has come to fruition.

This does of course mean that I have many requests made to me. The idea has come up in Dornach, for example, of issuing a further appeal that would make it known internationally what Dornach means to the world. I had to explain to our friends that in the ordinary life outside that is now heading for a breakdown, appeal usually follows appeal, programme on programme. We cannot do this if we work out of anthroposophy. It is important to realize that, in a way, it is not at all healthy if something is undertaken that does not come off. It is important to make a careful assessment of the chances of success, and not just do what comes to mind but only the things that have a chance of success. This is why I then said—it is important and I must ask you to consider it carefully—that I would not dream of making a similar appeal again, for what has happened to the first appeal should not happen a second time. It was possible to let the appeal for a Cultural Council³⁷ go out, for that was not my work, but we must be very clear that things are getting a great deal more serious than people are inclined to think if something like the anthroposophical movement stands behind them.

Three things have now evolved out of the anthroposophical movement, in a way, each of them quite distinct. A threefold order following that appeal—we will have to work at it, for it partly meets with rejection; secondly the Waldorf School;³⁸ thirdly the financial, commercial and industrial enterprise called Der Kommende Tag (Dawn of Tomorrow).³⁹

Coming to Stuttgart in the past, when we only had the anthroPosophical movement—I am referring only to Stuttgart—I would spend three or four days here and you know how many personal interviews I managed. These things have had some effect, as is now becoming apparent. It was not without significance that whatever had happened in the meantime—people will understand what I mean if they want to—could be put to rights again in those personal interviews. Events could then proceed until the next time. Now the position is such that following those outer developments one has to attend meetings from morning till night, and indeed well into the night, and there is no question of continuing in the ways we got used to when we were only an anthroposophical movement. Now there are many people who feel that it is a nuisance that things are no longer the way they were. It is necessary, however, to look at all the changes and really say to oneself: Things have changed since the spring of last year and this will have to be taken into account.

The situation cannot remain as it is, but a united effort must be made to see that it does not remain this way. It cannot remain as it is because everything that is done—be it for the Waldorf School or the Kommende Tag—has its basis in spiritual work. Without the spiritual work that has been done and must continue to be done there is no point to it all. The spiritual work must give form, vigour and content to the whole. To continue the way we are going would mean that the institutions which have now been established would swallow up the original spiritual movement. We would be taking away the original basis. Nothing growing out of the anthroposophical movement should be allowed to swallow up the movement as such.

You see, these are serious matters we have to discuss today, and I think at least some of you will understand what I mean. Things will not be different unless we accept it as a reality that anthroposophical work has been done for many years, for decades. This work must be seen as something real.

I would ask you also to consider the following. There is much conflict in the world, but where is most of this conflict to be found? It takes a certain form and people fail to notice, but most of it takes place in the sphere of spiritual endeavour. There is no end to the conflict within the body we call the anthroposophical movement, for example. When our movement evolved out of older practices—it was necessary to start from these, you know the reasons—that is, when many people familiar with the old theosophical practices joined our movement, I had the feeling that a gentleman, who at the time was particularly vehement in his defense of the line we were following, would very soon be in conflict with various other people. Conflict is likely to be particularly bad in this sphere. In fact I always made it quite clear that the gentleman in question, a theosophist of the purest Water, would not only come in conflict with others, but that his right side and his left would be involved in a desperate struggle. People Will find that the left side of this individual will have the most dreadful quarrel with his right side.

It will of course be necessary to develop the other extreme, where the conflicts that constantly arise are overcome. Such conflicts are due to the very nature of spiritual movements, because they all aim to develop the human individuality. The other pole, the other extreme, of human understanding, must be there as well; it is the pole of human understanding where it is possible to enter into a human individual, to go deeply into the life impulses of another person, and so on. It must be possible for the Kommende Tag and the Waldorf School we are now running to be given a sound moral basis by the anthroposophical movement here in Stuttgart, the moral basis that is the work of decades, or at least should have been such. That has to be the foundation, for it is the only way in which we can go ahead and restore the balance between a life consisting of meetings and the necessary spiritual work which after all should be the basis. We cannot achieve this, of course, if things go on all the time where one is told, for instance, that dreadful things have been going on again, with someone causing trouble all the time, someone upsetting all the rest. Well, that may be so. To date—and on this visit such things have come up again countless times—I have not been able, however, to pursue such an affair to the point where the second person, when approached, told the same story as the first. When it came to the fifth or sixth person, I would hear the absolute opposite of what the first had told me. I do not want to criticize, to apportion praise or blame, really, not even the latter, but that is how it is. What is needed, particularly among anthroposophists, and I have said this on many occasions, is an absolute and unerring feeling for the truth. It is very difficult to continue working in all these areas unless there is a basis of truth, of genuine, immediate truth. If there is this basis of genuine truth, surely it must happen that when something comes up and one pursues the matter further a fifth or sixth person would still present the same facts. Yet it happens that I am told about something ‘dreadful’ and everybody I ask tells me something different. I cannot, of course, apply the things I have from other sources to external life; I have said this many times. It is not a question of whether I know about it, know who is right and who is wrong. The question is whether the first says the same as the sixth or seventh. What I know has nothing to do with it. As a rule I do not allow people to pull the wool over my eyes, and that is not why I ask people. The reasons are quite different. As a rule it does not interest me very much what people tell me. The point is that I hear what the first person says and then the seventh, only to find on many occasions that one person says one thing and the seventh says the opposite. It evidently follows that one of the two things cannot be true. It seems to me that this does follow.

In outer physical life which for this very reason is going into a decline people have always wanted to shut their eyes to the function, the crucial significance, of untruths. Even unintentional untruths are destructive in their effects. In spiritual science working towards anthroposophy it is absolutely essential to realize that an untruth in the life of mind and spirit is the same as a devastating bomb in physical life. It is a devastating force, an instrument of destruction, and this in very real terms. It would certainly be possible to do important and fruitful work in the spiritual sphere again, in spite of the many new developments, providing these things are given some attention—objective attention, however, not subjective attention.

You know I do not normally go in for tirades; it is not my habit to moralize. Just for once, however, I really must discuss the facts that have become very obvious at this time, because the situation is serious. We are looking at undertakings that must not fail, that will have to succeed, and there can be no question of any kind of failure; we have to say today that they shall succeed. They must not however swallow up the original anthroposophical movement, and this means that everybody must do his share to ensure that the moral foundation established in the work of many years really exists. Everybody must do his part. It is really necessary for everybody to to their part.

It saddens my heart that I am unable to respond to almost all the many requests that are made to me. I had to keep refusing to help my friends because time cannot be used twice, and meetings go on not only from morning till night, but even well into the night. Quite obviously I cannot use the same time to talk to individuals. The membership in the widest sense must come to its senses and get rid of the things that play a role in all aspects of life here, the kind of thing I have just been mentioning. Every single member must reflect and see that here in this very place these things have to be done away With Unless this is done—and these things are connected—it will not be possible to find the time to do real fundamental spiritual work. Everything arising out of anthroposophy will succeed. Yet unless some things change the original spiritual movement will be swallowed up. The will impulses of those who consider themselves the bearers of this spiritual movement would then lead to a new materialism, as the original spiritual movement will have been aborted. The spirit needs to be nurtured or it will die. Materialism does not arise of its own accord; you cannot create materialism, just as you cannot create a corpse. A corpse is produced when the soul leaves the organism. In the same way everything created here on a spiritual basis, out of something that has soul, will become entirely material unless there is a genuine desire to nurture the spirit. It means that above all the moral and ethical basis which we have been able to establish is given careful attention. It is necessary above all to ensure that we do not become subject to illusion, that we do not think it is enough to accept Certain views just because they are easy to accept. We must look at life without flinching.

It is really very bad for people to say things like: ‘The threefold order is a good thing; we must take it up.’ Feeling rather good about it they will say: ‘I am getting something organized and it is very much in accord with the threefold order; aren't I good! It makes me really feel good getting something organized that is a nucleus of threefoldness’. Licking your lips morally speaking, full of inner self gratification—you may feel like this when you are doing such things, but it does not mean that you have a sense of reality. The threefold idea is true to reality because it requires genuine effort to bring it to realization. Many people's ideas are however so unrealistic that the idea of threefoldness goes against the grain with them. The first and most essential thing is for this idea to be taken up by a sufficiently large number of people. We must have the necessary sense of reality and practical common sense.

Eight days ago I had to speak here in Stuttgart about the consequences the threefold order has for the management of landed property.⁴⁰ I said that the threefold order obviously aims to achieve a situation where social exchange, social conditions relating to landed property, are such that land cannot be bought and sold like other goods That is entirely based on reality; to say the opposite would be unrealistic. I had to discuss the subject on a day when I actually got here late because we had been going round the countryside all day trying to buy land. If we have a sense of reality we cannot base ourselves on the threefold order and say: ‘I must be good; I am forming a nucleus for the threefold order.’ No, it has to be accepted, and there can be no illusions, that in a certain respect the only possible way in which we can work for a threefold order is by working on the most important aspect, not basing our work on the immediate present.

It is not a question of morally licking our lips as we say that we follow a particular idea. This would make it unfruitful and abstract. It is a question of really seeing the reality, seeing what is necessary. This is the difference between people whose approach is utopian and dogmatic and those who take a practical view. The latter will take an idea as far as it can go, but they are not unworldly people living for some private pleasure; they take hold of the reality. We really only give ourselves up to illusion for our own private pleasure. This must be realized. It is also necessary to realize that many other things go in the same direction. I am sorry, it could not be helped. There were quite a number of things that I could have talked about on this last occasion before my departure. I might have drawn your attention to many things that were put to me more or less in passing, things that do have an effect on the fruitful activities. One of the main problems with those fruitful activities is that there is a constant need to have endless discussions on matters that should be dealt with in half an hour, because things are thrown into the pool that really should not be there. If you have sound thinking habits—and those are the habits we must acquire if spiritual science as it is presented here is to come about—and then find yourself—I am not speaking theoretically—right in the middle of what is nowadays called business practice, the best way of defining what goes on is that people kill as much time as possible, that time is wasted. There are practical people today who boast of being busy all day long. If they did not waste so much time, their work, which let us say takes ten hours, could be easily done in one hour. Time is killed particularly in what is called active life today. This killing of time causes thoughts to be drawn out. Entering into practical life as it goes on today one really gets the feeling that one is in a noodle factory where thoughts that ought to be concentrated are drawn out, pulled apart like strudel or noodle dough; everything is pulled well apart. It is dreadful to come across those spread-apart thoughts that are cultivated in practical life. If you wanted to use thoughts like these to get a clear understanding of the world, of the things I have spoken of today by way of an introduction, you would not get anywhere. All this ‘strudel-dough thinking’ has arisen in the process of killing time. Thoughts that ought to be concentrated, for that is the only way for them to be effective, simply come to nothing by being drawn out. Something which functions properly at a certain density will of course be useless once it has become thin and worn. Many of the things that play a large role in modern economics are quite useless when it comes to making world affairs progress. Our particular task would thus be to grow concise in our thinking also with regard to practical things, and not to kill time. However, time still has to be killed these days, unless the anthroposophical movement, which after all supports our enterprises, becomes what it ought to be: A movement based on truth in every respect, a movement where all untruth eliminates itself because we have no use for it and because it would immediately show itself to be what it is.

This is what I wanted to say to you today. It is not addressed to anyone in particular. Please do not continue to go around saying that I was aiming at one thing or another in particular. I wanted to give you a clear picture of the facts as they are in general. The world situation is serious today and the things that have been going on among us here in Stuttgart really reflect the serious situation that exists for the whole of civilization. The things that haunt us in our community here can teach us a lot about the things that haunt the world as a whole.

I do not wish to hurt anyone's feelings. Nor do I want to moralize, to preach at you. The intention has been to discuss the things that have been obvious to the eye and to the soul on so many occasions over the last two weeks.

• 30. ‘Die Erziehung und der Unterricht gegenüber der Weltlage der Gegenwart’ (Education and teaching in the light of the present world situation), Stuttgart 10 June 1920. Published in Geisteswissenschaft und die Lebensforderungen der Gegenwart 6, Dornach 1950. To be published in GA 335. No record of translation into English.
• 31. Die Kernpunkte der Sozialen Frage in den Lebensnotwendigkeiten der Gegenwart und Zukunft (1919) GA 23. English translation: Towards Social Renewal. F.T. Smith tr. London: Rudolf Steiner Press 1977.
• 32. See Rudolf Steiner's Mein Lebensgang (1923–25) GA. 28. English translation: Rudolf Steiner: An Autobiography. R. Stebbing tr. New York: Rudolf Steiner Publications 1977.
• 33. Von Seelenrätseln (Riddles of the soul) (1917) GA. 21. Parts translated into English in The Case for Anthroposophy. Owen Barfield tr. London: Rudolf Steiner Press 1970.
• 34. Molt, Emil, see ref. 37.
  
  Kühn, Hans, writer and publisher.
  
  Unger, Carl, grad. engineer, owner of machine tool works, member of Council of the German Anthroposophical Society from 1905, lecturer and writer. Shot by a mentally sick individual in Nuremberg in 1929.
  
  Leinhas, Emil, businessman, managing director of Der Kommende Tag AG (see ref. 39), writer.
• 35. Seiling, Max, first a follower then an opponent of Rudolf Steiner. Bore the title Privy Councillor.
  
  TN. Rudolf Steiner used word-play here, calling Hofrat (Privy Councillor) Seiling an Un-Rat. The word Unrat means garbage, refuse, ordure.
• 36. An das deutsche Volk und an die Kultunvelt! (Appeal to the German nation and the civilized world), pamphlet, 1919, reprinted a.o. in Towards Social Renewal (ref. 31).
• 37. Appeal to establish a Council for Culture. Whitsun 1919, signed by many well-known figures in cultural life.
• 38. Waldorf School: intergrated primary and secondary school established by Emil Molt in 1919 for the children of workers in the Waldorf Astoria Cigarette Factory and the general public. This was done under the guidance of Rudolf Steiner who also appointed the teachers and himself gave the preparatory teachers' seminars.
• 39. Der Konunende Tag, Aktiengesellschaft zur F6rderung wirtschaftlicher and geistiger Werte (join-stock company for the promotion of economic and cultural values), established in Stuttgart in March 1920. Rudolf Steiner was Chairman of the Board until 1923. The company became a victim of post-war inflation in Germany and had to be dissolved in 1925.
• 40. Stuttgart 16 June 1920; published in Landwirtschafi und Industrie/Neuordnung des Bodenrechtes als soziale Forderung der Gegenwart (Agriculture and industry/New proposals for land ownership as a social requirement for the present age); quoted from the writings and lectures of Rudolf Steiner, Roman Boos ed., Stuttgart 1957, S. 84 ff. (to be published in GA 335). No record of translation into English.

Anyone who has studied the forms that make up the living structure of the Goetheanum could see how Goethe's ideas on metamorphosis were incorporated into the architectural ideas. These metamorphosis ideas became clear to Goethe when he wanted to embrace the diversity of the plant world in spiritual unity. To achieve this goal, he searched for the archetypal plant. This was to be an idealized plant form. In it, one organ could be developed to particular size and perfection, while others could be small and unattractive. In this way, one could also devise an immense number of special forms from the ideal original plant; and then one could let one's gaze wander over the external forms of the plant world. One found this realized in one form, that in the other, derived from the original plant. The whole plant world was, so to speak, one plant in the most diverse forms.

But with this, Goethe assumed that a formative principle prevails in the diversity of organizations, which is recreated by man in the inward mobility of thought forces. He thus ascribed something to human knowledge whereby it is not merely an external observation of world beings and world processes, but grows together with them into a unity.

Goethe had applied the same principle to the understanding of individual plants. In the simplest way, he saw an entire plant in the leaf. And in the multiform plant he saw a leaf developed in a complicated way; so to speak, many leaf-plants combined again according to the leaf principle into a unity. — Likewise, the various organs of animal formation were transformations of a basic organ for him; and the whole animal kingdom the most diverse forms of an ideal “primordial animal”.

Goethe did not develop the idea in all its aspects. His conscientiousness led him to stop on unfinished paths, especially in relation to the animal world. He did not allow himself to go too far in the mere formation of thoughts without repeatedly having the ideational confirmed by the sensuous facts.

One can have a twofold relationship to these Goethean metamorphoses of ideas. One can regard them as an interesting peculiarity of the Goethean spirit and leave it at that.

But one can also attempt to bring one's own activity of ideas in the Goethean direction. Then one will find that in fact secrets of nature are revealed, to which one cannot gain access in any other way.

More than forty years ago, I believed I had realized this (in my introductions to Goethe's scientific writings in Kürschner's Deutsche National-Literatur) and called Goethe the Copernicus and Kepler of the science of the organic. I proceeded from the view that for the inanimate, the Copernican act consists in noticing a material connection independent of man; but that the corresponding act for the animate lies in discovering the right mental activity by which the organic can be grasped by the human mind in its living mobility.

Goethe accomplished this Copernican feat by introducing the spiritual activity through which he worked artistically into knowledge. He sought the path from artist to knower and found it. The anthropologist Heinroth therefore called Goethe's thinking a representational one. Goethe spoke with deep satisfaction about this. He took up the word and also called his poetry a concrete one. He thus expressed how close the artistic and cognitive activities were in his soul.

Immersing oneself in Goethe's spiritual world could give courage to lead the view of the metamorphoses back to the artistic. This helped to develop the architectural idea of the Goetheanum. Wherever nature unfolds in living activity, she creates forms that grow out of each other. One can come close to nature's creative activity through artistic-sculptural work, if one lovingly and empathetically grasps how she lives in metamorphoses.

It is now possible to call a building the “Goetheanum” which has been created in such a way, both architecturally and sculpturally, that the assimilation of Goethe's metamorphic view of life has dared to attempt to be realized in its forms.

And in the same way, anthroposophy itself is also the direct further development of Goethe's views. Anyone who embraces the idea of the transformation not only of the sensory forms – in which Goethe, in accordance with his particular soul character, remained – but also of what can be grasped in soul and spirit, has arrived at anthroposophy. This is only a very elementary observation. In the human soul, we see thinking, feeling and willing at work. Anyone who is only able to see these three forms of soul life side by side or in their interaction cannot penetrate deeper into the essence of the soul. But anyone who gains clarity about how thinking is a metamorphosis of feeling and willing, feeling a metamorphosis of thinking and willing, and willing a transformation of thinking and feeling, connects themselves with the essence of the soul. If Goethe, who wanted to be oriented towards the sensually descriptive, was highly satisfied to hear that his thinking was called objective, then a spiritual researcher can find a similar satisfaction when he realizes how his thinking becomes “spiritually animated” through the metamorphosis view. Thinking is “representational” when it can become so entwined with the essence of sense perceptions that this essence is experienced as resonating within it. Thinking becomes “spirit-animated” when it is able to absorb the spirit into its own currents and movements. Then thinking becomes spirit-bearing, just as perception, directed to the sense world, becomes color- or sound-bearing. Then thinking metamorphoses into intuition.

With this metamorphosis, however, thinking has been freed from the body. For the body can imbue thinking only with sense-perceptible content.

One conquers the living through the contemplation of metamorphosis. One thereby enlivens one's own thinking. It is transformed from a dead to a living one. But in this way it becomes capable of absorbing the life of the spirit by contemplation. Anyone who, on the basis of what Goethe's writings contain, wants to form the judgment that Goethe himself would have rejected anthroposophy may be able to cite external reasons for doing so. And one may concede that Goethe would have been very cautious in such a case, because he himself would have felt uncomfortable pursuing the metamorphosis into areas where it lacks the control of sensory phenomena. But Goethe's world view merges with anthroposophy without artifice.

Therefore, that which rests securely on Goethe's world view could be cultivated in a building that bore the name Goetheanum in memory of Goethe.

Meeting with the Thirties Group

Dr. Steiner: It is important that the Anthroposophical Society asserts what it wants.

Emil Leinhas: It is to be presented what is still to be said about the presentations [about the various institutions at the assembly of delegates].

Several: Heyer, Stein, Maier, Hahn, Stockmeyer, Rittelmeyer, Krüger and Leinhas speak about the “Bund für freies Geistesleben” (Federation for Free Spiritual Life). One should give it concrete tasks for young people.

Dr. Steiner: The “day to come” can no longer finance things. With the large expenses that our institutes require, it will not be possible to finance such things. But then it must be shown that the world is interested in them. The “day to come” could only be in a position to finance such things if it could be placed on a broader basis. We often encounter the opinion that people do not want to join the “Kommende Tag”, but would like to profit from it. As long as it is not possible for us to involve everyone in the “Kommende Tag”, we will not be able to achieve anything.

A large number of speakers – Stockmeyer, Kolisko, Werbeck, Baravalle, Heyer, von Grone, Leinhas, Kolisko, Rittelmeyer – speak programmatically about the “Federation for a Free Spiritual Life” and also about the newspaper “Anthroposophie”.

Dr. Steiner: If we had learned by chance that a lecture was to be given on eurythmy, we would naturally have found it out of place. Eurythmy has its own content. The point is that there is no need to talk about eurythmy at all. Imagine if the report on religious renewal contained instructions on what the leaders should do, for example, in worship! On the other hand, there are a number of agendas that fall to the Society with regard to the religious renewal movement. In the same way, we would have to talk about such things as the newspaper [Anthroposophie] and the Bund für freies Geistesleben. On the other hand, we are constantly discussing the substance of the matter. This will not be the task of the assembly of delegates, but rather to show what the Anthroposophical Society as such has to contribute. You will also not be able to present the lecture on the Waldorf school in such a way that you talk about the curriculum, but rather about what the Society has to do. If we do not stick to the issues, people will leave. The questions must be addressed in such a way that the assembly of delegates gets the impression: these people know what they are doing with “Anthroposophy”, these people know what they are doing with the “Federation for a Free Spiritual Life”.

Now it is a matter of giving the members suggestions as to what the Anthroposophical Society has to do to enable the anthroposophical movement to be fed by it. The discussion should be concentrated on this point. One should give a picture, for example, of the “Bund für freies Geistesleben”, that it has a great justification in the whole spiritual life of the present day. A few strokes are needed to indicate the factors from which it can draw its substance. One would have to show how society wants to absorb this and what it can do in the process.

The question of financing is answered by the anthroposophical movement. We have never worried about financing the anthroposophical movement. We have not financed anything. The “Bund für freies Geistesleben” (Association for an Independent Spiritual Life) is best financed when it is left to finance itself. If one continually strives to create funds that are spent in the most inappropriate way until there is nothing left, and does not ensure that the cause finances itself, it will not work. In the Anthroposophical Society we had no need to discuss financial questions until 1918. If one has to talk as one has done just now about financial questions, it is because one thinks only of funds.

Things that have inner life will assert themselves. The meeting on Wednesday must not break up without having achieved anything; without having talked about everything except the specific tasks of the Society, these great tasks that lie ahead for the Waldorf School, for the Research Institute, eurythmy and art. Then the discussion of community life comes up by itself. If we continue our conversation as before, the members will leave at the end as they came. It must be shown that the things are there and what one has to do with them. When the tasks of the society are discussed, it will emerge from such a discussion that the newspaper is also being properly edited.

The publishing house [“Kommender Tag”] is discussed: Wolfgang Wachsmuth, Dr. Kolisko.

Dr. Steiner: The publishing house of “Kommender Tag” is precisely an institution for a free spiritual life, which in turn is a gift of the Anthroposophical Society. The Society should continue this activity.

Gratitude must be expressed by spreading the spiritual knowledge. The existence of spiritual knowledge gives rise to the obligation to protect it.

The Philosophical-Anthroposophical Press is mentioned.

Dr. Steiner: The Philosophical-Anthroposophical Press can be satisfied. It will fulfill its tasks even when the Society is really up and running. (Note from Dr. Heyer: “It will at most receive new tasks when the Society is functioning.”) In itself, it hardly needs to be mentioned.

Marie Steiner: But there was a time when it was presented as overcome and people wanted to move beyond it. There was a time when it had to defend itself.

Dr. Steiner: The important thing is to let what is going well develop properly and to point out the real harm. This lies in the tendency to want to do something for the publishing house. The real task is to not interfere in something that is solidly grounded in itself. It must be placed on a more general footing. There have been cases in the past where a tendency has emerged to interfere with things that were in order. Instead of dealing with the things that were out of order, people have always been concerned with things that were in order.

Marie Steiner: It was thought that the women's economy should be done away with and that the matter had to be handled in a cosmopolitan way.

Dr. Steiner: It is mentioned as justified in the matter, in lectures on economics as an example that is based on a healthy foundation. First there was consumption, so that it is based on a healthy foundation. It must be mentioned from the anthroposophical point of view. Of course, you can also have a framework first and then give it content. The basic difference between these two publishing houses is that the Philosophisch-Anthroposophischer Verlag emerged from the anthroposophical movement, while the Kommende Tag Verlag came into being because people wanted to found a publishing house in opposition to the Philosophisch-Anthroposophischer Verlag. That is one aspect here. One is something that has become necessary out of anthroposophical affairs; the other is something that is tremendously linked to things that have been founded out of unobjective points of view. All these kinds of foundations have caused the movement many difficulties as a result. You cannot imagine the difficulties we are now facing, the huge difficulties that have arisen from the fact that, for example, the quirk has arisen of having the financial affairs of the Goetheanum administered by a Stuttgart trust company. This is something that hangs around like shackles. In the last few days I have even been obliged to tell the experts that they wanted to pass off as reasonable something that I regarded as unreasonable. These things were justified by “really practical people”, and they turn out to be the most impractical stuff there can be. Of course, if the personality and its energy are behind it, you can put a lot into such things. This must be talked about in the next few days. You can't just sweep the things that have happened since 1918 under the carpet; but you have to explain that you want to give them substance.

Dr. Krüger comments on this.

Dr. Steiner: It depends a lot on how things have been done since 1918. It must become apparent that things will not be done in the same way, that they will not be done from points of view that are heterogeneous to anthroposophy. Something has been added from outside to purely anthroposophical activity. It is not anthroposophy that cuts one off from the rest of the world. You may even find that people are very interested to know about anthroposophy. It is the things that have happened that discredit anthroposophy. We must call things by their right name.

Was it necessary to go to the President of Württemberg in 1918 without my knowledge, so that these things are now attributed to me? Was it necessary to combine something so un-anthroposophical with the anthroposophical current? These things are what has led us into the abyss. We must realize that things must not be done in this way. Was it necessary to do all this work? If in the next few days there is no talk of the things that matter and about which one can say: mistakes have been made — and the mistakes are avoided in such a way that one becomes aware of the direction in which the mistakes were made and how one will therefore do things differently — we will not make any progress. It must be shown that it is this positive doing-differently that matters (Dr. Heyer's note: “not pater peccavp”).

Ernst Uehli: I have offered to give a talk on eurythmy.

Dr. Steiner: I am just taking this opportunity to point out that we need to address the question of what the Society has to do in relation to the problems at hand. We can talk about the things that have led us away from our anthroposophical endeavors. All these endeavors should have been guided by anthroposophy, as was the case with eurythmy. All these things could have been done in the anthroposophical sense. But they were done in a bureaucratic sense. It would be just as if one were to improve the Waldorf school method by mixing in all kinds of nonsense.

But in the other areas, all kinds of nonsense has been mixed in from the outside.

Louis Werbeck is to give the presentation on the opponents.

Dr. Steiner:

But in the other areas, all kinds of nonsense has been mixed in from the outside.

Louis Werbeck should take over the presentation about the opponents.

Dr. Steiner: You have to take the standpoint of the real conditions. It is important to realize that conditions are getting worse, so that we have to expect that the books will be boycotted by the retail book trade. We have to be prepared for this fact. Now, in the next few days, our members must be spoken to in the same way that the “Berliner Tageblatt” dared to speak to its subscribers. The French have banned it in the Ruhr area because of certain articles. The Tageblatt has said: “We will nevertheless find ways and means that all those who previously received it will continue to receive the Tageblatt.” We cannot achieve anything by getting books from booksellers. We have to look for ways and means of spreading our literature.

Then it will be necessary for the branches to become disseminators of anthroposophical literature in a real way, but in such a way that it can be seen that the Society is actually working for the various fields. We must seek out new channels. I have been recommending this for two or three years; only it has not been taken into account much. To find new channels, you have to put your brainpower to work. Only cleverness belongs in criticism. We really do not lack genius. But there is a lack of goodwill. With goodwill, one must apply one's brainpower. This is not necessary with genius. One can be a genius and a mere automaton at the same time.

The question of the opponents of the Goesch case is discussed.

Dr. Steiner: You only need to take the thick document that Goesch wrote shortly after he was expelled. You just need to look at it: constant repetitions, nitpicking, fear of physical contact like shaking hands, and so on. You can put together an absolutely reliable clinical picture from these things. I do not think it is right to put things together from his own statements. That is not decisive. With these things one can throw in “situations”. I have mentioned the matter somewhere; one could know that, since every piece of rubbish is copied. For example, Goesch writes that the children spit eight days before a great battle. If you take the concoction, you will find all the symptoms that make up a complete clinical picture. I have dealt with this clinical picture in a Dornach lecture.

The main thing is that the Anthroposophical Society would understand what its duties are. The Goesch case has been left lying around; it has been left lying around. No further attention has been paid to it. But if the Anthroposophical Society is there and makes demands, it would be obliged to follow up the matter. It is a matter of drawing attention to what the tasks of the Anthroposophical Society are in each individual case.

It is just as easy to make it clear with Seiling. He has become an opponent simply because our publishing house has not accepted his Christ brochure. It is of no use if this is mentioned in a subordinate clause. This must always be brought to the attention, it must be said again and again. The archives have made it their business to lock things up and not take any responsibility for them. So the lectures in which something like this is said were locked up, so that the things have now become a scandal. This is part of the bigger picture. You have to characterize your opponents correctly.

Goesch is a medical case. He has to be destroyed professionally because he is simply a pathological case. Many people could have written a paper about him, but they didn't. I don't understand why it wasn't possible to find this Goesch case interesting. It's an interesting medical case. One really has to say: any journal with even a passing interest in psychiatry would have accepted this paper if 'y' had been used instead of 'Goesch'. Today one could have pointed to Goesch. Psychiatry is entitled to do that. There is talk of Dr. Steiner's scientific courses 'The Doctrine of Heat and Light' [GA 320, GA 321] and their publication.

Dr. Steiner: The point is that you yourselves do what you consider necessary. The point of the courses is that I would have to correct them so that they do not contain various cabbages, but are consistent. We can no longer avoid the fact that all these things are being made accessible to a wider public.

One course was about thermodynamics. Now, on the basis of this course, a theory of heat can be written in the way one is accustomed to writing a theory of heat. On the basis of this course, an optics can be written on the basis of this course on light, so that physicists would see that it is possible to treat such chapters anthroposophically in this way. In doing so, it would be shown that some things have been treated briefly there. We shall have to consider how to treat this or that problem from the point of view of the course. The chapters in question would have to be treated in such a way that, based on these principles, a theory of heat and an optics would be written anthroposophically. I have made that clear.

It happens again and again that others express their own opinions and then claim that these are my opinions. I never said that this course should only be used to do experiments. That is a task that is never complete. I don't know why people keep putting their own opinions out there as if I had said them. You can tell whether I said it or not.

Dr. von Baravalle: That is my favorite answer. In that sense, I would have liked to have taken on this task.

Dr. Steiner: I would not have had the slightest objection to things being done this way after my course. Steffen's account of the pedagogical course is an independent work. But why do people keep racking their brains over how to solve my tasks? It would have been quite a different matter if someone had reported on the courses in Anthroposophy in the manner of Steffen in the Goetheanum. Anthroposophy must solve the tasks on its own initiative.

The processing of the language course given by Dr. Steiner, “Geisteswissenschaftliche Sprachbetrachtungen” [GA 299], is discussed.

Dr. Steiner: The only thing that can be done is to write a short linguistics paper as an independent work. A Zurich student has dealt with the problems in his own way. The Stuttgart students are so lazy that they let the things in the archive gather dust. A suitable terminology would have to be found. If the Stuttgart people could do what they are capable of, the Anthroposophical Society would be the most brilliant society in the world. The suggestions that are made must be reviewed by me myself. I thought that the work would be based on the linguistic course. Instead of that, it has not been worked with at all.

There is talk of the Hochschulbund and the academic youth.

Dr. Steiner: The Hochschulbund was the pivotal point of the matter, where things were started and left lying around. From the outset, I had said that the Hochschulbund would only be taken on if there was a will to carry it through to a successful conclusion. It was left lying around. The Hochschulbund is one of the things that most clearly illustrates what must not be done. This Hochschulbund phenomenon, which we knew would be used to send private lecturers after us, was a complete waste of time. You have had opportunities here to interact with a whole range of young people and thus to see for yourself what these people say, in order to gain something positive from what now remains as a sad wreck.

When I sat with the young people here after the illustrious assembly ended the other day [on February 14], they presented their scientific problems and wanted to know what they, as anthroposophists, have to do in relation to science. The young people are completely wild. You have to make it clear to them: the possibility must be created that such a free college is enabled to issue doctoral diplomas. It is one of the tasks of the Anthroposophical Society to do something with this “Federation for a Free Spiritual Life” so that it does not end in failure. To do that, you need the young people. You can't do it with the old fogies, you can only do it with the young people. Then you also have to have young people for the Anthroposophical Society. At present there is no heart for the Anthroposophical Society. I have the feeling that the young people would prefer it if there were no society at all.

That can only happen if you are able to awaken real enthusiasm in these young people. The great fiasco was that no enthusiasm was awakened. You have to awaken enthusiasm in young people. Youth goes along when enthusiasm is awakened. Nationalist university folly has the youth behind it because it has awakened enthusiasm. But if the Genualität is used to present dry theories, then the youth will not go along. Anthroposophy must have momentum! Why is it that in Stuttgart genius is not used? That there is a reluctance to activate the will in order to use the head? Why is the seat of the organs of perception the most active and why does the soul not want to rise up into the head?

The Free School and the World School Association are discussed. Dr. Hahn and Dr. von Heydebrand discuss this.

Dr. Steiner(?): Healthy self-confidence could be given to society.

Louis Werbeck: Society should be interested in the central school.

Dr. Steiner: The difficulty is this: initially, for the first step, the people who live somewhere have no direct interest in supporting a school in Stuttgart that they cannot send their children to, so they have to say to themselves: We support a school, but we cannot allow our children to benefit from it. The only way to overcome this is to make it a matter for the whole of humanity. To support something that I have often emphasized: to propagate the idea of a free school in the form of a world school association. Then people would broaden their primary judgment and say to themselves: We see that schools can become better through this method, and such a school must exist as a model school. Then people would not focus so much on the effectiveness of the details but on the big idea of the free school. Something like this would have to be popularized and introduced to the branches. It would have to be seen as a general anthroposophical matter that free education was being addressed. Then something could really be achieved.

Then one would be able to maintain one school through contributions, and the other schools would be treated in such a way that one would say: You can found them if you have the money to maintain them in a private way. But one matter for the Anthroposophical Society is the one model school, which is simply intended to demonstrate the practical side of this methodology. In all things, it is important to present it to the whole world. Then it would work. But the founding of the World School Association has been thrown to the wind. I don't see why it couldn't have been supported. I don't see why the World School Association shouldn't have come into being. But when it comes to putting the genuality into action, then the forces fail.

In Hamburg, the matter has been messed up. What was the starting point? Pohlmann came and said he wanted to found a school. In this matter, he alone is fully responsible. Today, Pohlmann would have to be obliged to fulfill his obligations: he should found his school as a private citizen. I thought this community would be a good one, because this community of Pohlmann and Kändler seems to suit me quite well, and that would have worked. If only our membership would take something like this seriously and not always go awry! I don't know why this private school, which Pohlmann wants as a hobbyhorse, why this school had to be a branch affair. Mr. Pohlmann took over this school, so he should also carry it out.

It was not possible to found the World School Association. The Stuttgart vice also came to light outside of Germany.

Nor did Germany try to encourage friends abroad. The difficulty is that people say to themselves: We cannot send our children to Stuttgart. Therefore, this matter would have to be put on a different map.

Louis Werbeck: People feel it is a world affair.

Dr. Steiner: You can be sure: If the same conditions were possible today as before the war - that a large number of people could easily give their children away -, then a large number of parents would be scattered in different places and people would have much more heart for the Waldorf school for primary reasons. We need to popularize the secondary reason: the idea of a free school. People are easily inspired by educational ideas. Apart from isolated praiseworthy exceptions, our society is not characterized by what must be called enthusiasm. How often have I expressed my despair here in such terminology, how difficult it is to get a thirty-strong committee moving! There is a viscousness there like in strudel dough. Everything is coughed up. Only when there is something to grumble about is there momentum. Momentum is lacking in ideal things. If only momentum could be injected into them! Ingenuity is there, but momentum and enthusiasm would have to be injected into this ingenuity! It is no exaggeration to say that enthusiasm and drive are lacking here. People carry the Curule chair with them, even when they walk. Things are discussed so endlessly cleverly. This endless cleverness also characterizes the way the other person is judged.

My dear friends!

It will be different for me too, and I will have to speak to you today from a different background than I have been able to do in these meetings in past years. For we are still under the impression of the passing of our beloved anthroposophical building, the Goetheanum. I do not need to emphasize again and again what that actually means. The words of the Chairman have brought this home to you today; and I am convinced that these words were spoken from the soul of each of you. It is indeed the case that an accident beyond a certain level can only be revealed in silent language, and that words are really not enough to express what has been lost for us with the Goetheanum.

In the lectures that I had to give at the General Assembly of the Swiss Anthroposophical Society and the General Assembly of the Goetheanum Association in the meantime between the two assemblies and following them, I had to talk about everything that I feel compelled to say at this time.

Much of what I have to say at this time is, of course, said precisely in view of the great stroke of fate that has affected us. It should also not be overlooked how this stroke of fate has shown that there is a great deal of shared feeling among the members of the Anthroposophical Society. But, my dear friends, what I would say came to expression in a way that was self-evident to us at the time, when we were under the immediate and momentary impression of the Goetheanum fire, was that we did not want to give up the continuity of the work of our spiritual life. That must always inspire us. And it is particularly important that we know how to act in the sense of what I said yesterday: to work from the center of our spiritual life and not to be deterred by the most painful or uplifting impressions from the outside world in this actual inner work and attitude that comes from the center. The real perspective of the anthroposophical movement depends on this. It does not depend on how many and what kind of blows of fate come from outside. These must be accepted with the attitude that arises from the anthroposophical view of life. But the question of whether the inner energy needed to work out the center of spiritual life slackens despite all strokes of fate, or despite all favorable strokes of fate, depends on what is to be achieved and can be achieved with the anthroposophical movement.

But we must always remind ourselves of what is necessary for such work, especially in these very difficult times.

I would just like to note that in a spiritual movement of the kind that anthroposophy is, if it is to find the right path, success and failure must be taken as meaningless, and that only that which arises from the inner strength and impulses of the cause itself means anything. But a great deal depends on the consciousness of those united in the Anthroposophical Society.

My dear friends, you only have to consider the following: attitudes and impulses of consciousness do not materialize overnight. We cannot say today what the successes of the impulses of consciousness and attitudes of the day before yesterday are. If you did that, you would end up in a completely different direction than anthroposophy can take. For example, if you were to take the matter in this external way, you would be able to say: We rely on our good luck. But then, if this luck is not there in the way you imagine it, you would also say: We lose our courage, our energy. I might have imagined that at the time when we were struck by the terrible misfortune, there might have been souls, even among anthroposophists, who would have said: Yes, why did the good spiritual powers not protect us in this case? Can one believe in the impact of a movement that is so abandoned by the good spirits?

Such a thought, my dear friends, is linked to appearances, not to that which comes unerringly from the inner center of the matter, through appearances alone. If we want to take it seriously that our attitudes, thoughts and, in particular, our impulses of consciousness are realities, then we must believe in them ourselves, in these impulses of consciousness, in these thoughts, in these feelings, not in the help that they can get from outside, but in their own power. Then one must be sure that what one draws from such impulses will, despite all outward appearances of failure, reach its true goal, the goal prescribed for it in the spiritual world; even if it were to be completely destroyed for the time being by external circumstances in the external world.

He who can ever entertain the belief that a spiritual idea, which is rightly willed, can be completely destroyed by anything in the external world, even if the destruction takes place in the external Maja, does not really believe in the power of spiritual impulses, in the power of spiritual energy. It must still be possible to say at the moment when everything external perishes: Success is certain for that which is willed from within. But then one may only speak of success in the sense of that which lies within the inner impulses, the thoughts, the intentions of consciousness themselves. The things that take place in the outer world usually happen in such a way that they often only become explainable after decades, or perhaps even longer. And to judge the government of the spiritual world by the current constellations, if I may say so, would be to be timid about this spiritual world. The spiritual world must give itself its strength and power. Now there is nothing within the earthly world except human minds in which this power can find a home, can be understood; not organizations, not institutions, however beautiful or ugly they may be, can in any way prove or disprove what is really willed by the spirit.

Those who seek to prove or disprove the truth or falsehood of the spiritual by outward appearances are on the wrong path, for they do not stand within the center of spiritual impulses but outside it. The innermost part of the human soul is the only thing that can be used to judge what is at issue here; external connections can never be decisive. On the other hand, however, this means that people who want to be the leaders of such a spiritual movement must strive more and more for this inner strength and develop an understanding of what it actually means to work from the inner center of a spiritual movement. It seems to me, my dear friends, that it is urgently necessary, especially at this moment, to become fully aware of how difficult this is and how it cannot be sufficiently fulfilled by what is often expressed by saying, “I have the anthroposophical attitude, I have the anthroposophical will.” It cannot be satisfied by that in any way.

And here I would like to mention a word that I have often spoken, often spoken since the Goetheanum fire, and which I would like to see really understood; I have often said it: The first Goetheanum, the form of the first Goetheanum, this home of anthroposophy, as a building, as it stood there, cannot be rebuilt.

You see, my dear friends, when such a word, which is meant in the spirit, is spoken, it must be felt as a reality, one must make the assumption that one can look at it from the most diverse sides, as one can look at realities from the most diverse sides, that one can often only gain the right perspective for such a word from a certain starting point. For such a word was spoken initially out of spiritual obligation. And at the moment when the word is spoken out of spiritual obligation, there is absolutely no need to carry around on one's physical hands all the reasons, the so-called reasons, for such a word.

Today, at this hour, it is less incumbent upon me to speak of the external circumstances, but I would like to speak today particularly about something that is connected with the inner impulse of this word: the first Goetheanum cannot be rebuilt. And please allow me to speak of it with all seriousness; because only this seriousness towards the task of reconstruction can give the friends the right attitude.

You see, we can report an external fact today. This external fact is that the legal investigations that followed the Goetheanum fire have now been concluded; one can say that they have been concluded so that the authorities have now been able to decide to pay us the sum insured of three million and some hundred thousand francs. The payment has been made. These three million are there; and this fact can be recorded for the time being today. So, since June 15, we have had these three million.

Now, my dear friends, it could turn out that souls would breathe a sigh of relief at the fact that we now have these three million for the construction and at most have to raise another three million through the willingness of our friends to make sacrifices. One could characterize the fact in this way. One could now record this June 15 as an extraordinarily joyful event in the development of the anthroposophical movement.

My dear friends, it is not. And if I am to shed light on the matter for you today from a perspective that is wholly in keeping with anthroposophical life, then I must speak differently. For me, for example, this fact, which may be described as extraordinarily joyful by some and extraordinarily sad by others, is extraordinarily painful. And one of the feelings of suffering that I have had since the Goetheanum fire is that I have had to say to myself: what has happened now must be brought about, must be brought about in the best and most energetic way, must happen of necessity; but something must be brought about that actually has nothing to do with the center of the anthroposophical movement, that lies completely outside the center work of this movement.

You see, my dear friends, the saying: The first Goetheanum cannot be rebuilt, has not only an aesthetic, not only an opportunistic, not only an external-historical background, but also an anthroposophical-moral one. And it is this anthroposophical-moral background that I would like to talk about today.

Let us look back to 1913, 1914, and ask ourselves: what were the reasons behind the decision to build the Goetheanum and to start this construction project? What was pursued at that time and in the period leading up to December 31, 1922, or January 1, 1923, was based on the fact that every single franc that was invested in the Goetheanum flowed from the willingness to make sacrifices of those who, in some way, professed their belief in the anthroposophical movement. The Goetheanum was built entirely out of inner understanding. Every franc flowed out of inner understanding for the cause.

My dear friends, the following is truth, is real truth, because reality coincides with the inner core of the matter: at the moment the last lecture was given at the Goetheanum, we had a home for anthroposophy that had been built with the sacrificial pennies and sacrificial cents of those who were wholeheartedly committed to the cause. From the hill in Dornach, the building shimmered, having incorporated anthroposophical will and anthroposophical willingness to sacrifice into every cubic centimeter of wood and stone. This moral substance was built into the first Goetheanum.

My dear friends, now we will begin to build with three million francs, many of which come from the pockets of those who not only have no inner interest in the Goetheanum, but have an interest in this Goetheanum not being there. And when the Goetheanum again shimmers down from the hill of Dornach, it will not only be built with anthroposophical willingness to make sacrifices, but also with what is common outside of anthroposophy in the structure of the present world.

Then, my dear friends, there will be a very different structure, seen from the inner spiritual point of view. There will most certainly be people who will not only not accompany with any deep sympathy, but perhaps even with a kind of curse, what, according to the social context that now exists, comes out of their pockets and is built into the Goetheanum.

I have often said that within a movement such as anthroposophy's, it is a matter of being awake, not sleeping. What I have told you now is not said in a sleeping state, but in a waking one. For us, words such as “blessing of a thing”, “connection of blessing with beautiful qualities of the human mind” must not be a mere phrase; for us they must be a fact. And so the first Goetheanum was built with the inner feeling that we were doing something that, from its right causes, takes the path forward in such a way that this path is the path of the causes themselves. Now we are building the Goetheanum in a tragic direction, my dear friends. A tragically built Goetheanum is different from the Goetheanum that we were able to tackle in 1913, 1914.

You see, my dear friends, anthroposophy is often criticized for being too intellectual. No, it leads through what lies in its real impulses to the deeper feelings of humanity. In 1913, one could begin building with a joyful heart; today, when one begins, it is almost inevitable that one begins in tears. I am giving you just such a description, which comes from the inner center of spiritual thinking; and such thinking differs quite essentially from thinking that takes its impulses from external facts. Thinking that is linked to external facts would probably not express the words I have just spoken; instead, it would be excitedly joyful that June 15 brought us the three million.

My dear friends, I have often spoken, perhaps unjustifiably in the eyes of many of you, about the fact that there is an inner opposition within the Anthroposophical Society to what I sometimes have to represent from the center of anthroposophy; today I do not want to characterize this opposition again; but I would just like to ask the question: Has the feeling that I have just expressed been present everywhere in the course of the last few months, since the Goetheanum fire? If another feeling has been present, it has been an example of inner opposition. It was a feeling that should no longer have been reckoned with, after the anthroposophical movement has gone through the three periods of its existence.

When we stood here on the hill in Dornach, bowed down with grief on the first day after the fire, while the flames were still licking outside, many anthroposophists gathered around the still burning building. One or another said something. In the end, it really did not matter to me what anyone said, because the content of the words is only a symptom for the actual spiritual background; but I would like to say that what was said on that first day after the outbreak of the terrible disaster differed in two respects. Anthroposophists spoke the word, for example: Now we no longer have the Goetheanum, now we want to build it in our hearts. It was an elementary feeling that already had something to do with the center of the movement. But there were other voices that spoke like this: The Goetheanum is insured; will it be possible to rebuild it with the insurance money?

My dear friends, I do not want to lead you into impracticality in any area of life. I have nothing against these things being considered as practically as possible. But it depends on the intentions. It depends on whether one recognizes the difference between what was there before and what will necessarily have to be built now. For no one should say, in the anthroposophical field, that it does not matter what the intentions are, as long as the Goetheanum is rebuilt. Attitudes and thought impulses, especially impulses of consciousness, do not work overnight, but move in the currents of the spiritual world and must not be judged by mere external facts, which are only symptoms for them, not an immediate reality.

Now, in everything that had to be done after the fire – please forgive me for mentioning this too – I tried, as far as it was possible under the influence of the necessary facts, to shape our actions from the center of the matter. Therefore, I calmed the friends who, in the first few days, saw it as the most necessary thing to use all possible means to protect our interests – for example, during the negotiations with the insurance company. I tried as far as possible to remove from our actions everything that did not come from the core of the anthroposophical movement itself.

My dear friends, must we not think that we have to learn to take our affairs into our own hands, that we have to learn not to proceed as we would on unanthroposophical ground? It was certainly not to impose more work on myself that I tried to conduct all negotiations in such a way that they were conducted by us on our own side.

I knew that I was taking on a responsibility towards our friends. Because if the outcome of June 15 had been worse, people would naturally have said: If you had taken the right lawyers at the time, things would have been different. But such responsibilities have to be taken on when it comes to the higher duties arising from the center of anthroposophical work. They have to be taken seriously. And they are no longer taken seriously if one does not, as far as possible, remain within the designated center in specific cases. One immediately describes one's powerlessness when one declares oneself unable to deal with matters that are one's own, from the center of anthroposophical impulses. Of course, we can never set out today to do what should actually be done, I would say, as the most radical thing: to use the three million for some charitable purpose, and to build the Goetheanum again only out of the sacrificial willingness of the friends.

My dear friends, as I said, do not regard me as a person who wants to tempt you not to be practical. But my concern now is not just to focus on the external deeds; my concern is to utter the words that should shape our thinking, to utter them quite openly. If we make them shape our thinking, then they will also, in the nobler sense, have the right results.

Those who say, “So we have to use the three million for charitable purposes and have to wait until the building can be rebuilt out of a willingness to make sacrifices,” would of course be wrong now. They would again be confusing what must be done with what suits their selfish, ambitious intentions. The energy and strength do not lie in choosing the easiest path, even if the easiest path can be described as extraordinarily moral in an egoistic sense; but the energy lies in the fact that, even if the path has to be a tragic one, one plunges, if I may say so, into the tragedy. But this must not be done unconsciously; one must plunge into the tragedy consciously and know that one is in a realm in which one cannot do what is purely anthroposophical; one must know that one must do what one has to do, despite the fact that it is not anthroposophical, but must balance it out with an all the stronger anthroposophical element. When you weigh something, you don't take away from the pan on the side where the weights are too heavy for the other side; you add to the other side.

We will need that. We will have to create the counterweights through an even stronger anthroposophical approach to counteract what we are tragically being led into, as something that, for the most part, perhaps for half of it, must happen un-anthroposophically. I can say that it would perhaps have been easiest for me to say: I will only lend a hand in building the Goetheanum if the three million insurance money is used for charitable purposes and the building fund is created entirely through donations. It would have been easier because it would have caused less pain. But we must not shy away from pain, my dear friends, if we want to work in the realm of reality. But neither should we want to ignore the pain. We should not just keep telling ourselves: we are doing what is most beautiful, what is best. We cannot do that in the earthly world, least of all in the present. Therefore, we should not let our heads sink and say: then I will lose heart altogether. When the gods sometimes seem to fade away, as if they were not there, as if humanity had been abandoned by them, the wisdom of the gods consists in people receiving impulses to seek them out even more in the places where they have hidden, but not to complain about their disappearance and inaction. Wanting the earth only as a soft resting place and only finding it divine when it presents itself in such a way that it always corresponds to what one would like, can never form the attitude of a spiritual movement, because that is not strength, that is powerlessness. And we will not perform the Goetheanum, which is colorfully tragic, out of powerlessness, but only with the development of strength, with the awareness that where the gods seem to have withdrawn, they must be sought all the more by us in their place, where they seem to be hidden.

My dear friends, I wanted to develop thoughts of encouragement. And since it is quite difficult to speak between the lines, today I have added some things to the lines themselves, I would say with a certain clarity. But what I have added to these lines is really necessary if we want to develop the right attitude in the near future for the reconstruction of the Goetheanum and also for other things. It would not help at all to lull ourselves into this or that illusion; but it helps solely and exclusively to face ourselves without a veil with the eyes of truth, in this case the inner truth that flows from the moral side of anthroposophy.

If that can happen, then what should actually happen would happen: that the Anthroposophical Society, in the midst of today's world events, would be a place where people do not indulge in the illusions in which everyone lives today. Because for much of what is happening in the present, you can expose the illusions. Since 1914, people have been living with a certain relish in illusions because they do not have the inner courage to admit the truths. If the Anthroposophical Society, the association of the Goetheanum, could develop awakening soul power in the midst of a world full of illusions, then, my dear friends, the tragic situation in which we now find ourselves, and about which we should not be under any illusion, would be counterbalanced as it is in every real tragedy.

Study the tragedians of all times. You will see that the tragedy consists in the fact that everything external seems to collapse and that only within oneself is the strength to lead beyond the catastrophe. When this occurs in art, some people like to look at it, although today there are not many, because tragedies are no longer very popular. But if it is to happen in reality, then things must happen as I have characterized them. Then something must happen that makes the Anthroposophical Society, the Goetheanum Association, stand out in its inner spiritual attitude like an island formation within a world based on illusions. Then what is a real power can radiate into the world based on illusions.

My dear friends, if we take the words in the right way that I had to speak to you, then there will be much intention, much endeavor, much striving for a different state than the one we are in, in our feeling. Then we will not be blinded by much satisfaction, especially not much self-satisfaction. We will banish from us the thoughts of satisfaction and self-satisfaction and awaken in us those thoughts that can arise from a purely spiritual view of things. Then we will have right thoughts of building up out of the spirit.

My dear friends, it was in all seriousness, but also, I believe, with complete objectivity, that I wanted to speak to you today. And I thank the board of the Goetheanum Association for giving me the opportunity to speak these words at this event about what is so closely linked to the fate of the Goetheanum, the past and the possibly coming Goetheanum.

At the suggestion of German students, a meeting was held on the afternoon of 9 April 1921 to discuss the question of how anthroposophical work could be built up at universities. Dr. Steiner spoke at the end.

Dr. Stein has, however, pointed out the three most important things to be considered here: whether to organize or not, as desired. But above all, I would like to emphasize one thing: if you are involved in a movement like ours, it is necessary to learn from the past and to lead further stages of the movement in such a way that certain earlier mistakes are avoided.

What it will depend on in the first place is this: that anthroposophy, to the extent that it can already be accepted by the student body in terms of understanding and to the extent that it is at all possible through the available forces or opportunities, that anthroposophy in its various branches be spread among the student body as positive spiritual content. Our experience has basically shown that something real can only be achieved if one can really build on the basis of the positive.

Yesterday I had the opportunity to point out that years ago an attempt was made to establish a kind of world federation for spiritual science, and that nothing came of this world federation, which actually only wanted to proceed according to the rules of formal external organization. It ended, so to speak, in what the Germans call a “Hornberg shooting”. But because a sense of cohesion and collaboration were needed at the time, the existing adherents of anthroposophy had to be brought together in the “Anthroposophical Society”. These were now more or less all people who had simply been involved with anthroposophy. It is only with such an organization, where there is already something in it, that one can then do something.

Of course it will be especially necessary for the student body not only to work in the sense of spreading the given anthroposophical problems in the narrower sense, but also to work out general problems and the like in the sense that Dr. Stein just meant. Of course, it will not be so necessary at first to work towards dissertations with such things. It has often, really quite often, happened that I have been asked by younger students in recent times along the following lines: Yes, we actually want to combine anthroposophy with our specific science. How can one act so that one works in the right way towards one's goal after graduation, after the state examination? What should you do? How should you organize your work? — I always gave the following advice: Try to get through the official studies as quickly as possible, to get through them as quickly as possible, and I am always very happy to help with any advice. Choose any scientific topic that seems to emerge from the course of your studies, as a dissertation or state examination paper or the like. Whichever topic you choose, each one is of course diametrically opposed to the other approaches in anthroposophical terms; there can be no doubt about that. Each is diametrically opposed. But now I advise you to write your dissertation in such a way that you first write down what the professor can censor, what he will understand; and take a second notebook, and write down everything that arises for you in the course of your studies and that you believe should actually be worked in from anthroposophy. You then keep that for yourself. Then you write your two pages — that is how long a dissertation must be — and you submit them. And try to complete them. Then you can really help anthroposophy energetically with what you have acquired in addition to this one in the second notebook. For one only really realizes what significant problems arise, specialist and specialized problems, when one is put in the position of having to work scientifically on a certain topic and the like. But there is a danger of unclear collaboration with the professors. And submitting dissertations to the professors that are written “in the anthroposophical sense” – these are usually not suitable for professors – I do not consider this to be favorable because it actually slows us down at the pace that the anthroposophical movement should be taking.

We need as many academically trained colleagues as possible. If there is anything that is seriously lacking in the anthroposophical movement today, it is a sufficiently large number of academically trained colleagues. I do not mean the externality of needing, let's say, stamped people. It is not meant that way. But first of all, we need people who have learned to work scientifically from within. This inner scientific work is best learned in one's own work. Secondly, however, we need co-workers who come from the student body as soon as possible, and who are no longer held back by considerations for their later professional studies. — You see, it is not at all surprising that it is as difficult as it is in Switzerland, for example. As a student, of course, it is easy to join such an association in the first few semesters if you are free-minded enough to do so. Then come the last semesters. You are busy with other things, and it becomes more difficult. And so, one by one, the threads you have pulled are torn away. This has just been emphasized.

So I would like to say, especially for scientific collaboration: During such a transition period, the topics must be dealt with in two ways: one that the professor understands and the other that is saved for later. Of course, I am not saying that very special opportunities that arise should not be seized, and that these opportunities, which are there, should not be vigilantly observed by the student body in the most eminent sense and really exploited in the sense and service of the movement. On the one hand, I hope, and on the other hand, I fear almost silently, that our dear friend, Professor Römer in Leipzig, will now be inundated with a huge number of anthroposophical dissertations! But I think that would also be one of the things he would probably prefer. And such a document of student trust would show that he is not one of the professors just mentioned. That would come from the foundation.

Now, however, we need an expansion of what has already been discussed here in Dornach, namely a kind of collaboration after all. You will work out among yourselves later how this can best be done technically. It would be good if, with the help of the Waldorf teachers, who would be joined by other personalities from our ranks – Professor Römer, Dr. Unger and others – a certain exchange could take place, especially regarding the choice of topics for dissertations or scientific papers, without in any way compromising the free initiative of the individual. It can only be in the form of advice. It is precisely for this scientific work that a closer union should be sought – you do not need an organization, but an exchange of ideas.

The economic aspect is, of course, a very, very important one. It is a fact that the university system in particular, but actually more or less the entire higher education system, will suffer greatly from our economic difficulties. Now it is a matter of really seeing clearly that it is only possible to help if it is possible to advance such institutions, as for example for Germany it is the “Kommende Tag”, as it is here the “Futurum”. So that a reorganization of the economic situation of the student body can also emanate from these organizations. I can assure you that all the things we are tackling in this direction are actually calculated on rapid growth. We do not have time to take our time; instead, we actually have to make rapid progress with such economic organizations. And here I must say that the members of the student body, perhaps with very few exceptions, can help us above all by spreading understanding for such things. It has really happened in relation to other things that the student could get something from his father for this or that, could get something from his relatives. Not everyone has only destitute friends. And then there really is something that works like an avalanche. Just think about how powerfully something like an avalanche works, based on experience: when you start somewhere, it continues. Something like this continues to have an effect when you act out of the positive: try to study these brochures that have been published by “Kommender Tag” and “Futurum”, and try to create understanding for something like this.

It is this understanding that the oldest people in particular find extremely difficult to work their way up to. I have seen how older people, I would say, have chewed on the desire to understand what “Tomorrow” or “Futurum” want, how they have repeatedly fallen back on their old economic prejudices, like a cat on its paws, with which they have rushed into economic decline, and how they cannot find their way out. I believe that my dear fellow students really do have a clear understanding that could also have an effect on the older generations. We cannot make any progress in any other way. Because I can tell you: when we have come so far in relation to these economic institutions that we can effectively do something, that we first of all have enough funds to do something on a large scale – because only then does it help – and on the other hand can overcome the resistance of the proletariat, which is simply hostile to an economic improvement in the situation of students, then it must indeed be the first concern of these our economic organizations to work economically in relation to the student body.

The “struggle problems”! Yes, you see, the point is this. The Anthroposophical Society, even if it was not called that in the past, has existed since the beginning of the century, and it has actually only ever worked positively, at least as far as I myself am concerned. It let the opponents rant and rave, do all sorts of things. But of course the opponents then come up with certain objections. They say, this has been said, that has been said, yes, that has not even been refuted. It is indeed difficult to find understanding for the fact that it is actually the person making the claim who has the burden of proof, not the person to whom it is attributed. And we could really experience it, again and again, that strange views emerged precisely among academics, I now mean lecturers, professors, pastors and those who had emerged from the ranks of academics. Just think, for example, of the things said against anthroposophy, anthroposophists and so on by professors who are, I would say, 'revered' by the outside world (but I say this only with caution) – things that are so well documented that following up the evidence is a mockery, a bloody mockery, of all possible methods of making a claim in science. and so on, which are so documented that if one follows these documents with reasons, it is a mockery, a bloody mockery of all possible methods of asserting something in science. Therefore, with someone like Professor Fuchs, I simply had to say: It is impossible that this person is anything other than a completely impossible anatomist! Am I supposed to believe that he conscientiously tests his things when, after all that has been presented, he tests my baptismal certificate in the way he has tested it? You have to draw conclusions about the way one person treats one area from the way they treat another. Such things simply show – through the fact that people step forward and show their particular habits – the symptoms of how science is done today. Even the things that are presented at universities and technical colleges today are basically no better founded than the things that are asserted in this way; it is only that the generally extremely loose habits in scientific life are emerging in this way. And that is what is needed: to raise the fight to a higher level, so to speak.

And here it is not necessary, as my fellow student wished, for example, and as I very well understand, to play the game as a “fighting organization.” That is not necessary. Rather, only one thing: to avoid what has occurred so frequently in the Anthroposophical Society. In the Anthroposophical Society, this always came to the fore, as incredible as it is – not in everyone, of course, but very often: one was obliged to defend oneself against a wild accusation, and then to use harsh words, for example, say, in the case when a gentleman of Gleich invents a lecturer “Winter” by reading that I myself have held winter lectures, then invents a personality “Winter” and introduces it into the fight in a very evil way. Yes, you see, I don't think one would say too harsh words in this case if one were to speak of foolishness! Because here, even when it occurs in a general, we are dealing with a genuine, pure-bred idiot. And in the Anthroposophical Society, it was usually the case that one was not wronged by the one who acted somewhat like Mr. von Gleich, but by the one who defended himself. Until today! We have learned from experience that one must not become aggressive in this way. In the eyes of many people, to become aggressive means to defend oneself in this way. It is necessary to follow things with a watchful eye and to reject them, without emphasizing that one is a fighting organization or the like. You have to be positive about it. And then the others must stand behind them, behind the one who is obliged to defend himself. It is not a matter of us becoming fighting cocks ourselves; but it is a matter of the others standing behind us if it should become necessary to defend ourselves. And it is a matter of really following the symptoms of the world-descriptive, scientific, religious and so on in this respect in our time, taking an interest in them.

Take this single phenomenon: I was obliged to characterize in the appropriate way the philosophical, or what should one call it, scribblings of Count Keyserling – in my opinion it does not matter what you call them – because in his incredible superficiality he mixed in the madness that I had started from Haeckel's views. This is not only an objective untruth, but in this case a subjective untruth, that is, a lie, because one must demand that the person who makes such an assertion search for the sources; and he could have seen the chapter that I wrote in the earliest years of my writing in my discussions with Haeckel, in the introduction to Goethe's natural science writings. You can all read it very well. Now Count Keyserling has had a small pamphlet published by his publisher: “The Way to Perfection”. I will not characterize this writing further, but I recommend that one or two of you buy this writing and pass it around; because if everyone wanted to buy it, it would be a waste of money; but I still recommend that you read it so that you get an idea of what, so to speak, goes against all wisdom in this writing “The Way to Perfection” by Keyserling. There is the following sentence, which he made up, more or less, as I remember it – it is not literal: Yes, if I said something incorrect, that Dr. Steiner started from Haeckel, Dr. Steiner could have simply rectified that; he could have corrected me, because I have — and now I ask you to pay close attention to this sentence — because I have no time for a special Steiner source research.

Now then, you see, we have already brought it so far in scientific morality that someone who founds a “school of wisdom” considers it justified to send things out into the world that he admittedly has no time to research, that he therefore does not research! Here one catches a seemingly noble thinker - because Count Keyserling always cited omnipotence in his writing; that is what is so impressive about Count Keyserling, that he always cites omnipotence. All present-day writing has arrived at a point where it is most mired and ragged. And despite the omnipotence, there is a complete moral decline of views here. And so people have to be told: Of course, nobody expects you to do Steiner source research either; but then, if you don't do any Steiner source research, if you don't have time, then – with regard to all these things about which you should know something about the matter: Keep your mouth shut!

You see, it is necessary that we have no illusions, that we simply discard every authority principle that has arisen through convention and the like, that we face ourselves freely, really, truly examining what is present in our time. Then we will be able to notice quite a lot of it today.

I would advise you to look at some of the sentences that the great Germanist Roethe in Berlin occasionally utters, purely in terms of form – I will completely disregard the view, which one can certainly respect. Then you will find it instructive. We do not need to be a fighting organization. But we must be ready and alert to take action when the things that are leading us so horribly into decline actually materialize. Do we need to be an organization of anthroposophical students to do that? We simply need to want to be alert, decent, and scientifically conscientious people, then we can always take a stand against such harm from our most absolute private point of view. And if we are also organized for positive work, then the number of those who are organized for it can stand behind us and support us. We need the latter. But it would not be very clever of us to present ourselves as a fighting organization. On the other hand, it is important that we really work seriously on improving our current conditions. And to do that, we first have to take note of the terrible damage that is coming to light in one field or another – and which is really easy to see, because it involves enormous sums of money – and have the courage to take a stand against it in whatever way we can.

You have already done something if you can do just that: simply set the record straight for a small number of your fellow students with regard to such things, even if it happens only in the smallest of circles. Yesterday, I said to one of our members here regarding the World School Association: I think it is particularly valuable, especially with regard to such things, to start by talking to one or two or three others, that is, to very small groups, even if there are only two of them; and, to put it very radically, if someone can't find anyone else, then at least say it to yourself! So these things are quite tangible in terms of what the individual is able to do. Some will be able to do much more, as has actually already happened with a doctor who was a member and whose fellow students proved to be very enthusiastic. The point is not to make enemies by appearing as fighting cocks in a wild form, but also not to shy away from the fight when others start it. That's it: we must always let the other start; and then the necessary help must stand behind us, which does not allow the tactic to arise, because it has arisen: that we would have started. If they start from the other side, then one is forced to defend oneself; and then you can always read that the anthroposophical side has used this or that in the fight as an attack and so on. They always turn the tables. That is the method of the opponents. We must not let that happen.

As for the World School Association, I would just like to say this: in my opinion, it would be best if the World School Association could be established independently of each other in Entente and neutral countries, but also in the German-speaking area of Central Europe. If it could happen at the same time, so that things could develop independently of each other, so to speak, it would be best. Of course, a certain amount of vigilance is required to see what happens. I believe that Switzerland, in particular, should mediate here. It would be good if we could do it right now. I can assure you: things are on a knife's edge – and if the same possibilities for war existed today as existed in 1914, then we would have had war again long ago. Things are on a knife edge in terms of sentiment and so on. And we won't get something like this World School Association off the ground if, for example, it is founded in Germany now, and then the others, if only for a week, have to play catch-up. It would simply not come off; it would be impractical to do so.

On the other hand, we must not allow any doubt to arise about our position regarding these matters. This School of Spiritual Science is called the Goetheanum. We gave it this name during the First World War while we were still here. The other nations, insofar as they have participated in anthroposophy, have adopted the name and accepted it. We have never denied that we have reasons to call the School of Spiritual Science 'Goetheanum', and it would therefore not be good if in Germany things were allowed to appear as some kind of imitation from the other side.

So it would be a matter of proceeding in this regard — forgive the harsh word — a little less clumsily, of doing it a little more skillfully in the larger world cultural sense! Switzerland would now have to work with full understanding here. So it would actually have to be taken up simultaneously by Central Europe, by the Entente and by the neutral countries.

For the time being, I don't know whether it will take off in just one or two places. This morning I received the news that the committee, which was convened yesterday and which wanted to work so hard, went to bed a few minutes after yesterday's meeting left the hall; it was postponed until tonight. We will wait and see if they meet tonight. We have already had very strange experiences; and based on this knowledge, that we have already had the most diverse experiences, I have taken the liberty of speaking to you here about the fact that the experiences made should be taken into account in the further course of the movement.

On the other hand, I am convinced that if the necessary strong impulse and proper enthusiasm can be found among my fellow students, especially for what I myself and other friends of mine have mentioned in the course of this lecture: enthusiasm for the truth – then things will work out.

I would also like to say: I recently read an article from a feature page, and I can assure you that what recently took place in Stuttgart is not the slightest bit an end, but only a beginning, and I can assure you that things will get much, much worse. I have often said this to our friends here – a very, very long time ago already. I recently read a piece from a feature article in which it says: “Spiritual sparks, which flash like lightning after the wooden mousetrap, are thus sufficiently available, and it will take some of Steiner's cleverness to work in a conciliatory way so that one day a real spark of fire from the Dornach glory does not bring about an inglorious end.

I really do think that whatever must occur as a reaction against such action, which will grow ever stronger and stronger, will have to be better shaped and, above all, more energetically carried out. And I believe that you, my dear fellow students, need to let all your youthful enthusiasm flow in this direction, in what we have often mentioned here during this course: enthusiasm for the truth. Youthful enthusiasm for the truth has always been a very good impulse in the further development of humanity. May it be so in the near future through you in a matter that you recognize as good.

My dear friends,

Quite a large number of new members of this School are present, and I am therefore obliged to again say a few words about its principles.

First if all, this School represents the impulse of the anthroposophical movement which was renewed here during the Christmas Conference at the Goetheanum. Previously there were several esoteric circles. All these esoteric circles must be gradually absorbed into this School, because with the Christmas Conference a new spirit was introduced into the anthroposophical movement insofar as it streams through the Anthroposophical Society.

I have repeatedly spoken - also outside [Dornach] - about what the difference is between the anthroposophical movement before the Christmas Conference and the one we now have since Christmas. Previously the Anthroposophical Society was a kind of administrative body for anthroposophical teaching and content. Within the Anthroposophical Society, Anthroposophy was, so to speak, cultivated. Since Christmas anthroposophy is not only cultivated, it is also carried out; meaning that everything which passes through the Anthroposophical Society as activity, as thought, is anthroposophy itself.

The renewal which has taken place must be clearly grasped, my dear friends, and above all it must be grasped with deep earnestness. For a distinction exists between the Anthroposophical Society in general and this Esoteric School within the Anthroposophical Society. The Anthroposophical Society will, as a matter of course and according to the principle of openness, not be able to demand anything more from the members than that they honestly recognize what anthroposophy is and that they are in a certain sense listeners to what anthroposophy says; and that they receive from it what their hearts, their souls can make of it.

It is different as far as the School is concerned. Those who become members of this School declare that they want to be true representatives of the anthroposophical movement. In this Esoteric School, which will gradually be expanded to include three classes, the same freedom must of course apply as it does to every member of the Anthroposophical Society; but freedom must also apply for the Executive Council at the Goetheanum which is responsible for this School. In this case, it means that only those who are recognized by the School as true members can be recipients of what the School teaches.

Therefore, whatever a member of the School does should have the effect of reflecting on anthroposophy in the world; and it must belong to the competence of the Executive Council to remove a member if it considers that he cannot be a representative of the anthroposophical movement. The relationship must be mutual.

Therefore, more and more a serious, in a certain sense strict spirit will have to be utilized in the management of the School. Otherwise the anthroposophical movement cannot advance if we do not feel that the School is like building a rock to support anthroposophy. It is going to be very difficult and the members of this School must know that they must adapt to those difficulties. They are not merely anthroposophists, they are members of an Esoteric School.

And it must be an inner obligation to consider the Executive Committee, as it is presently constituted, as an esoteric entity. This is not generally understood. So something must be done to bring it to the members' attention. It is saying much that an Executive Committee has been esoterically formed.

Furthermore, all those who consider themselves to be legitimate members of this School see the School as not having been founded by men, but in fact by the will of the world's presently reigning spiritual powers; something which has been instituted from the spiritual world and which intends to act accordingly; which feels responsible to the spiritual world alone. Therefore, anything which indicates that a member is not taking the School seriously must lead to the cancellation of that person's membership.

It is a fact that negligence has entered into the Anthroposophical Society to a marked degree in recent years. That it ceases is one of the tasks for the members of this School. We want to feel responsible even for the words we speak. Above all we should feel responsible that every word we speak is tested to the extent that we know it is true. For untruthfulness, even when derived from what is called good intentions, is destructive in an occult movement. There must be no illusions about this; it must be completely clear. It is not a question of good intentions, which are often taken very lightly, but of objective truth. Among the first duties of an esoteric student is that he does not merely feel obliged to say what he thinks is true, but that he feels obliged to determine that what he says is really objectively true. For only when we serve the divine-spiritual powers - whose forces stream through this School - in the sense of objective truth, will we be able to steer through all the difficulties which will assail anthroposophy.

What I will now say is within the circle of the School, and what is said within the circle of the School remains within the circle of the School. We may not forget that many people are saying something like the following. Certain influential persons are saying: Those who represent the principles of the Roman Church will do everything in their power to make the individual states of the former German Empire independent and out of them - I am only reporting - with the exception of the predominance of Prussia, to reestablish the Holy Roman Empire, which of course, when it is established by such prominence, will spread its power over the neighboring regions. Then - they say - we will need to completely destroy from the roots up the most dangerous, the worst movements. And, they add, if the reestablishment of the Holy Roman Empire is not successful, and it will be successful, but if not, we will find other means to completely destroy from the roots up the most resisting, the most dangerous movements of the present, and they are the anthroposophical movement and the movement for Religious Renewal [Christian Community].

I quote almost verbatim. And you can see that the difficulties are not less, but every week greater, that what I say is well founded. I wish today to speak from the heart to those who consider their membership in this School with heartfelt seriousness. Only by such earnestness as members of the School can we construct the necessary foundation for navigating through the future difficulties.

You can see from this that anthroposophy - the movement for religious renewal is only a branch of it - is taken more seriously by the opposition than by many of the members. Because when one can learn that the Holy Roman Empire, which fell in 1806, is to be reinstated in order to eliminate such a movement, that means that it is taken very seriously indeed. What is important is whether a movement is founded from the spirit and not, my dear friends, how many members it has, but which force is instilled in it directly from the spiritual world. The opponents see that it contains a strong inner force; therefore, they choose sharp, strong rather than weak means [to combat it].

*

The considerations of these Class lessons, my dear friends, have been primarily concerned with what can be told about the encounter with the Guardian of the Threshold, the encounter which is the first experience towards the attainment of real and true supersensible knowledge. Today I would like to add something to what has already been considered.

It is not possible to claim that the encounter with the Guardian of the Threshold has been successful until one has experienced what it means to be outside the physical body with the human I and the astral body. Because when the human being is enclosed within the physical body, the only things he can perceive in his surroundings are those which he perceives with the instruments of his physical body. And through the instruments of the physical body only the sensible world can be perceived - which is a reflection of a spiritual world, one which does not, however, reveal to the senses what it is a reflection of.

Generally speaking, it is not difficult for a person to leave the physical body. He does so every time he falls asleep. He is then outside the physical body. But when he is asleep outside the physical body his consciousness is suppressed to the point of being unconscious. Only illusory - or perhaps even not illusory - dreams rise up from this unconsciousness. But through the attainment of higher knowledge leaving the physical body takes place in fully conscious deliberateness, so that when outside the physical body the person perceives his surroundings exactly as he perceives the physical world with his senses when within the physical body. He perceives the spiritual world while outside the physical body.

But the human being is at first unconsciously asleep. Under normal circumstances he is not aware of what he could see when outside the physical body. And the reason for this is that he is protected from approaching the spiritual world unprepared.

If he is sufficiently prepared, what happens then? When he is at the abyss between the sensory world and the spiritual world, the Guardian of the Threshold extracts his true human essence - assuming he is prepared as described in the previous lessons - which can then fly over the abyss with the means indicated in the mantric verses. And then from beyond the threshold he can behold his own sensory physical being.

That is the first powerful impression of true knowledge, my dear friends, when the Guardian of the Threshold can say to the human being: See, that is how you are over there, as you appear in the physical world; here with me you are as your inner being really is.

And now meaningful words sound out again from the Guardian of the Threshold - that the person is called upon, now that he is on the other side of the abyss, how differently he sees himself on the other, physical side. He sees himself differently. He sees himself as a tripartite being. He sees himself as a tripartite being which expresses itself psychically in thinking, feeling and willing. In reality they are three humans: the thinking one, the feeling one, the willing one, which exist in every person and are only held together in one by the physical body in the physical world. And what the person sees there resounds from the lips of the Guardian of the Threshold in the following way:

O see the three
They are the one,
When you in earthly life
the human form have got.

Or also “human imprint”; one must translate the words from the occult language.

O see the three
They are the one,
When you in earthly life
the human imprint bear.

Experience the head's cosmic form
Feel the heart's cosmic pulse
Think the limbs' cosmic force

They are the three
The three, which as the one
In earthly being live.

[The mantra is written on the blackboard:]

O see the three
They are the one,
When you in earthly life
the human imprint bear.

Experience the head's cosmic form
Feel the heart's cosmic pulse
Think the limbs' cosmic force

They are the three
The three, which as the one
In earthly being live.

The Guardian of the Threshold is indicating here how the Three - which separate from each other once the person leaves the physical body - how the Three look in relation to the physical body. Thevision is directed to the physical body, to the head, heart and limbs, and the Guardian of the Threshold says: If you observe the human head in its true cosmic significance, it is a mirror image of the heavenly universe. You must look into the distance, where the universe seems to reach its boundary. (In reality it is bounded by the spirit, not as it naively appears physically to be.) In looking up you must recall that your round head is a true image of the heavenly universe. And we add here, being conscious of the mantric words:

“Experience the head's cosmic form”

The sign is added here [in front of the above line]:

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

which encourages us to pause at this line of the mantric verse in order to envision the upward direction to the cosmic vastness, and of course that direction is always upward from anywhere on the earth.

“Feel the heart's cosmic pulse”

Through this cosmic-heavenly place the cosmic rhythm resounds as cosmic music. When we hear the human heart beating it seems as if this human heart were only beating as a result of the human organism's interior processes. In reality what beats in the heart is the counterpoint of the cosmic rhythm which has circulated not only for thousands but for millions of years. Therefore, pause again - the Guardian of the Threshold says - at the words “Feel the heart's cosmic pulse”, and feel what works in the heart upward as well as downward.

[The corresponding sign is drawn:]

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

The triangle pointing downward combines with the one pointing upward.

“Think the limbs' cosmic force”

This cosmic force is the one concentrated from below by gravity and other earthly forces. In our thinking - which as earthly thinking is only capable of understanding the earthly - we must look downward to grasp what streams out from the earth to work in man. Now we pause again at “Think the limbs' cosmic force” in the triangle pointing downward:

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

And we will feel the Guardian's words as they should affect the human heart, the human soul today if one activates this mantric verse in the appropriate way.

Experience the head's cosmic form.

The verse is spoken while making the sign before the head:

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

Feel the heart's cosmic pulse

One speaks the verse while making the sign before the breast:

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

Think the limbs' cosmic force

One speaks the verse while making the sign pointing downward:

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

And you should then try, after letting these mantric verses work on the soul, to make the senses subdued, close the eyes, hear nothing with the ears, perceive nothing and have darkness around you for a while, so that you are living totally in the atmosphere through which these words pass. And in this way you will transport yourself to the sphere in initiation which in all reality can be realized during the encounter with the Guardian of the Threshold. This is one of the ways by which one can take the first step beyond the threshold.

But we must let the Guardian's next words work upon us with great earnestness. These words indicate that once we have crossed the threshold everything is different from the sensory world. In the sensory world we think that the site of thinking and mental images is the human head. And so it is, for the sensory world. But this thinking in the head is always mixed a little bit with willing, something which is also perceptible for normal consciousness. Because when we move from one thought to another we must use the will just as we use it when moving an arm or a leg, or when willing in general. But it is a fine, delicate willing which transfers one thought to another. When we are in the sensory world the whole extent of thinking and a small amount of willing are bound together in the head. As soon as we cross over the Threshold and encounter the Guardian it is the reverse: a small amount of thinking and much widespread willing is bound to the head. And in this willing, which otherwise sleeps in man, we sense the spirit which forms the head from out of the cosmos, the heavens, as it's spherically-shaped mirror image in all its details.

Therefore, once we have crossed beyond the threshold, the Guardian calls out the following words:

[The new mantra is written on the blackboard.]

The head's spirit,
You can will it

And now we see that willing is something quite different from what it previously was. Previously the senses were the transmitters of sense-impressions, and one was not aware that the will goes through the the eyes, through the ears, that the will goes through the sense of warmth, and through every other sense as well. Now we see that everything the eye experiences as multiple colors, what the ear hears as multiple sounds, what man perceives as warmth and cold, as rough and smooth, smells and tastes etc., is all will in the spiritual world.

[writing continues:]

And willing provides you with
The senses' multiple heaven-weaving

If on seeing the head from the other side of the threshold one recognizes how will goes through the head and how the senses represent will, then he will realize how the heart contains the soul and how one can feel the soul within the heart just as he can will the head's spirit when observing the head. And now we know that when thinking is not considered as a function of the head, but as a function of the heart, of the soul, we realize that thinking does not belong to an individual, but to the world; then one experiences cosmic-life, the music of the spheres.

[The second verse is written on the blackboard.]

The heart's soul,
You can feel it;
And feeling provides you with
Thinking's germinal-waking cosmic-life.
You live in the shining.

not in the unsubstantial shining, but the shining where the essence of the world appears.

The head's spirit,
You're able to will it;
And willing provides you with
The senses' manifold heavenly weave.

summing up in the line:

You weave in wisdom.

Summing up what pertains to the heart's soul and feeling in the line:

You live in the shining.

Just as you recognize the senses as will, you also recognize thinking as feeling in respect to cosmic being, when you consider the Three, which only in the sensory world are One.

And thirdly the Guardian of the Threshold adds:

[The third verse is written on the blackboard.]

The limbs' strength,
You can think it.

Now we have a complete reversal. Whereas normally we consider thinking to be concentrated in the head, here [in the first verse] it is the will, as I previously explained, that is concentrated in the head. Feeling stays in the heart, where it is also felt to be in the sensory world; for the inner force of the heart goes over to the spiritual world.

The limbs' strength,

You can think it.

Now thinking is brought directly into connection with the limbs, the opposite of the sensory world.

[Writing continues.]

And thinking gives you
Human striving's goal oriented will;

thus, willing becomes thinking,

You strive in virtue.

Thus, we have the complete reversal in the spiritual world as revealed to us by the Guardian of the Threshold. Whereas we normally differentiate willing, feeling, thinking from below upward in man, on the other side [of the threshold] we differentiate man as a Three: will above in the head, feeling in the middle, thinking below at the limbs.

We realize then how willing, concentrated in the head, is the weaving cosmic wisdom in which we live; how feeling is the cosmic shining in which all the spirit-beings glow; and how thinking, observed in the limbs, is human striving, which can be lived as human virtue. And the Three appear before spiritual vision thus:

The mantric verse is built thus. And we must be aware of this inner congruence, and also aware that if we let this mantric verse work on us the following will penetrate our being:

[These three lines are underlined in yellow.]

These then are the Guardian of the Threshold's words which accompany our spiritual vision of the Three, which derive from the One, when we cross over into the world beyond the threshold:

These are the sensations which must flow through the soul if real knowledge is to be obtained; these are the admonitions which the Guardian of the Threshold lets resound at the moment when he also tells us:

[Written on the blackboard:]

Those are the words which for thousands and thousands of years have resounded at all the gates to the spiritual world, admonishing and yet encouraging:

Just imagine, my sisters and brothers, that you say to yourselves for the first time: I want to take the Guardian of the Threshold's words seriously; I recognize that I was not yet a human being; I recognize that I will become one through insight into the spiritual world.

Imagine, my dear sisters and brothers, you say the second time: Oh, I didn't take the words seriously enough the first time; I must admit that I need not one, but two of the stages from where I am now in order to become a true human being.

And imagine you say the third time: I recognize that I need three of the stages from the point where I now stand, at which I am not a true human, in order to become a true human being.

The first admonition, which you give to yourself, is earnest. The second admonition is more earnest. But the third admonition must bear the most earnest impression of all. And if you can awaken this threefold admonition of earnestness from the depths of your souls, then you will have an inkling of what it means to become a true human being through knowledge. And then you will return to the first admonition - as we will also do now - as a transforming verse in our souls.

Thus, my sisters and brothers, has it resounded in the hearts of all who have striven for knowledge ever since there have been human beings on the earth.

There has been a pause in the striving since the dawn of the fifth post-Atlantean cultural epoch. According to the will of the divine-spiritual entities who guide humanity, the pause has come to an end. Now it is up to you to make human hearts open again in a worthy way to what the wise guides of humanity raise up to the vision of what works in the world as spirit, what as spirit works in the world in humanity, as the crown of existence.

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

We have tried to substantiate certain truths about the inner life of the fifth post-Atlantean period and about the development of the period from the sources that spiritual science opens up, using individual examples that simply result from the study of the physical world. Yesterday, in particular, we pointed out how important it is to note that a certain crisis can also be observed in the outer life during the 19th century. I have often pointed out how the mid-19th century in particular represents the crisis of materialism, and yesterday we were able to show, using a particular example from our own area, how certain indications — only indications, but still indications — of insights that could only come through anthroposophy were present, but how these insights are buried, I would say historically buried, just as a geological history of the earth is buried. that can only come through anthroposophy, but how these insights are buried, I would say, historically buried, just as one geological layer of the earth is buried and another lies above it. And so one would be able to prove in many cases in the spiritual life of modern times how the urge, the drive for a deeper insight, as it is opened up by anthroposophy, was present, especially present from certain conditions of earlier times in the course of the first half of the 19th century, and how then, brought about by the great advances in natural science, another layer, a completely opposite layer of human thinking, human thinking, has been superimposed on it, so that today what was already there is extremely difficult to reveal. And those people who today draw their concepts and ideas only from the uppermost layer covering the lower one, are strangely in darkness about what was already there. In this way, quite grotesque things arise.

Especially when you look at Troxler, who was also born in Switzerland and taught there for many years, and consider him in the context of European intellectual life, as I tried to do in my last book, The Riddle of Man), one can see in him how, although he did not yet have the things that can now come through spiritual science or anthroposophy, he worked towards them, I would like to say, in certain ideas, concrete ideas. In a straight line of development, if this existed in human development, but it is not given to the human race, a real spiritual deepening could have arisen, as it must be drawn today from the sources that spiritual science has. Then, in this country least of all, would spiritual science appear today as a foreign plant, but it would appear to those people who would only know the spiritual life of the 19th century in one of its most important representatives, as a continuation of the spiritual life. And if someone who was familiar with Swiss intellectual life were to speak at the Aarau conference in May 1916, he would say something like this: With this anthroposophy, we Swiss in particular do not have anything foreign coming into the country, but rather we greet an old acquaintance in this anthroposophy; after all, we have even been given a beautiful, wonderful definition of anthroposophy by our fellow countryman Troxler. In connection with the whole historical life, especially in this country, that would be the truth if it were told. But instead of that, in this Aarauer Aura in the writing, of which I already spoke to you yesterday, another thing was said. First of all, this spiritual science is lumped together with other things in order to be able to present it as a quantite negligeable, so to speak. It is said: “The overview may only use what is necessary for the characterization” — the overview that is to be given in this speech.

"Among these movements, all of which are immigrants in our country, the best known are the Christian Scientists, popularly known as faith healers, the Mazdaznan, the Theosophists and finally the Anthroposophists with their enormous temple in Dornach.

So we see that while it would be so nice to correspond to reality, that in Anthroposophy we would greet an old acquaintance here, Anthroposophy is declared to be an intruder. You see, that is just one symptomatic expression, but it could be multiplied not by thousands but by millions in our time, such a symptomatic expression of how our time is inclined to speak untruthfully. This is precisely what one should study in the impulses that underlie our contemporary culture: what the inclination towards untruthfulness is in our time. Of course, one soon realizes why the man in this case tells the untruth. He does not know the truth, of course, and has no idea of this truth, because he probably has not read much by Troxler. But that is precisely the characteristic of our time, that the most uncalled stand up and become teachers, enlighteners of the people, and that this must necessarily be connected with the spreading of untruth. Lack of thought is what underlies such things.

Now it is a matter of seeing these things in a deeper context. First of all, seeing that these things already arise from impulses, as we have discussed them in the course of this week, and that they must be seen through by our friends, so that our friends with spiritual science can place themselves in our present life in the right way. For it cannot be denied that it is quite difficult for many to assert themselves today as spiritual scientists, as confessors of spiritual science, in view of the situation in the world and what is happening in the outer world, and what, as can be seen more and more, naturally cannot find anything in this spiritual science that it understands. First of all, one must see the bigger picture. Some time ago, we characterized how completely inaccurate the theories of natural scientists are in the face of reality, given the great progress they have made in the world of facts. The facts that natural science has brought to the surface of existence can only be admired; it is truly a great achievement. But what has been said about the struggle for existence, about selection, about all the problems related to the problem of birth and kinship, all this is as inaccurate as possible, as is already recognized by scientists today. I even explained this in the public lecture in Basel.

But all of this is connected through the way in which certain old traditions have emerged in modern times with the present form of these old traditions. It is intimately connected with this. Modern times have indeed shown that they need the old times for their educational life. For the humanities scholar, this is not surprising, because the humanities scholar knows that certain impulses repeat themselves in every age. So it is only natural that impulses which intervene in a different form in the fifth post-Atlantic period in the development of humanity should also arise as repetitions of the fourth post-Atlantic period. This fourth post-Atlantic period began, as we know, in the eighth century BC and ends in the fifteenth century AD. Since the fifteenth century AD, we have entered a completely new era, as can be seen even on the surface, as we demonstrated yesterday with a few examples. But certain things that took place in the fourth post-Atlantic period are repeating themselves on a different level in our period. And I would like to say: “Outwardly, this fifth post-Atlantic period has indeed shown that it even has to consciously carry over certain things from the fourth post-Atlantic period. Did we not see how in the 15th century Greek scholars emigrated to Western Europe and brought ancient Greek scholarship in a new form first to Italy and then to the rest of Europe? What blossomed in European intellectual life through the impulses that arose from the traditions of an older time is called the Renaissance. And more than one might think, today's life still depends on the Renaissance.

But in other ways, too, one can show everywhere how, in relation to certain things, this fifth post-Atlantic period wanted to build on the fourth post-Atlantic period. Is it not a remarkable fact that Pico de Miranda, in the 15th century, when one could still speak more freely about Christianity than today, undertook to invite the most important scholars from all over Europe to Rome to discuss with them nine hundred theses that would essentially show how to arrive at a worldview suitable for the coming era. Of course, for obvious reasons, nothing much came of this. But this Pico de Mirandola, who was steeped in Greek culture, tried to substantiate Christianity in all its profound wisdom by drawing on Plato and Platonic philosophy. He believed that with the help of Plato, the Greek philosopher and greatest philosophical genius of the fourth post-Atlantic period, Christianity could be proven. So he wanted to create a connecting bridge between Plato and Christianity. One would like to say what a wonderful perspective would have resulted from this if such things could have been successful, if another geological layer had not been superimposed on top of it, if today in Europe we had a free, genuine Christianity permeated by Platonic philosophy!

But something else preceded that. Something preceded it that is connected in the deepest sense with many peculiarities of more recent spiritual life. If we take a look at the origin of Christianity, if we take a look at the time in which that exalted Being, whom we have come to know as the Christ, embodied Himself in a human body, and at the time in which that human life of feeling spread life, which was linked to this greatest event of the development of the earth, to the Mystery of Golgotha, which alone gives meaning to life on earth – if one takes a look at this time of the first spread of Christianity, then one notices that among those who, as a small group of people, brought this Christianity to Europe, there were some – they were then called Gnostics, especially by their opponents – who lived in the belief that the highest ideas, the highest wisdom, were necessary to make understandable the most significant event in the evolution of humanity on Earth.

We know that it is a misunderstanding of today's spiritual science to lump it together with Gnosticism. That is not the point. Gnosticism is something that was alive in the first Christian centuries, and was then buried like an old geological layer, and it cannot revive in the old form; it would then take on a Luciferic character. What is today spiritual science or anthroposophy must be born completely out of our time, and precisely this must be born completely out of our time, must fully reckon with all the great advances of the scientific world view. Thus spiritual science must not be confused with Gnosticism; but it must be recognized that the Gnostics, starting from the highest ideas, attempted to understand the Mystery of Golgotha by way of a spiritual evolution of the universe. And there is a deep striving for wisdom in the Gnostic systems. Everywhere we look, if we examine the matter from a spiritual-scientific point of view, we see how Christianity appears, I might say is borne by the Gnostic vehicle, as it appears to have been born out of a broad wisdom. It is one of the peculiarities of the development of Western civilization from the beginning of our era to the present day that this development was met with all the might of the wisdom in which Christianity was steeped. In a sense, the Gnostics were the ones most fiercely opposed. That is why only a few of their writings have come down to us, and most of what we know about the Gnostics comes from the writings of those who supposedly refuted them. But they did not refute them, they only eradicated them, they only pushed back the actual wisdom. That is the peculiar thing that was to be pushed back by the European impulses, the actual wisdom. And therein lies the origin of the fact that today even well-meaning people say: Well, these anthroposophists, if you look at their idealistic, ethical striving, that may still be acceptable; but what they want to research about world evolution, about the evolution of humanity, that goes - even well-meaning people say - into the regions of the worst fantasy. In order to make such a judgment possible, the sources of wisdom that also flowed in Gnosticism first had to be suppressed so that later European humanity could have the belief that the Lord gives His to His own in their sleep, and it is so beautifully preached that one says that the Most High must be simple. But what is really meant is that it must be comfortable, that it must not be necessary to expend any thought at all in order to find those regions, or to expend any spiritual effort at all in order to find those regions from which the deepest things in humanity have emerged.

And so we see that the West developed almost exclusively under this principle of suppressing the Gnostic. But this Gnostic element has not been completely suppressed. It has been suppressed in relation to the people, in relation to the broad masses, to whom, as we were able to discuss yesterday, it was even denied to get hold of the Bible until the invention of the printing press. But in a sense, the old wisdom that was already there was passed on. It was passed down and kept alive, as we have already indicated, in certain occult brotherhoods, which found their way into the education of Western Europe, occult brotherhoods that have developed up to modern times, some of which have been preserved in older forms, some of which have developed into what is today called modern Freemasonry. We know that such occult fraternizations, under this or that name, do indeed preserve a certain knowledge, a certain store of wisdom, but only through tradition, and that they do not endeavor to cultivate this store of wisdom in a truly living way. Until recent times, until the beginning of the fifth post-Atlantic period, it was indeed easy to preserve such wisdom in the circles of those occult brotherhoods that closed themselves off from the outside world and selected their people, those they wanted to admit, to whom they gave of this wisdom what they wanted to give them. Until recent times, it was relatively easy. Today, even that is more difficult, and there is a vast literature, as you know, in which the various degrees into which one is said to be initiated are communicated, along with their rituals and their so-called secrets. In particular, there is a vast English and French literature in this field.

On the whole, however, it can be said that what is written in these books of this literature will not be of much use to anyone in particular. Although there are enough people today who study this literature, even study it “with great zeal,” the students of such literature are still for the most part those who can say, “There I stand, I poor fool, and am as wise as before,” although these people often do not disdain to say what they do not know, though not often “with bitter sweat,” but still with great pomp. For this literature is so composed that he who has not special keys cannot penetrate it. This is due to the fact that in times when one no longer had direct access to the old Gnostic insights gained through clairvoyance, these things were also handed down in such inner occult brotherhoods in a purely external way. Of course, there have been individuals throughout the centuries, albeit only a limited number, who knew certain secrets associated with this ancient wisdom. But at the same time, these people chose to express themselves in such a way that they did not speak to the ordinary mind, which was increasingly emerging in humanity, but that they spoke through all kinds of signs and symbols. And so it has become more and more common in those occult brotherhoods to communicate what was preserved as ancient knowledge through signs and symbols, through very specific symbols. And to remain silent about these symbols and their meaning was strictly imposed on those who were truly initiated to a certain degree. So that there was actually always a fairly large group of people for such occult fraternization who knew the symbols but did not understand them. They then began to interpret the symbols. Nothing special comes of that, because something special only comes of it if you really learn to read the symbols. Then there was a small, limited number of people who really learned to read the symbols. These people did indeed arrive at a certain insight, at a certain wisdom, which was couched in the style of the old wisdom, which, as we know, still arose from atavistic human clairvoyance. We can best understand what this old wisdom was really like if we once again take a closer look at something that I have already touched on in recent weeks. On the one hand, let us consider the scientific research of modern times. I am referring less to the natural-scientific world view than to the way in which this natural-scientific research is carried out. Here we must say: in the relevant institutions, laboratories, cabinets, observatories, clinics and so on, the facts of nature are investigated. Certainly, in the course of time, the most magnificent things have come out of these things, and it must be emphasized again and again that spiritual science fully recognizes the progress of natural science. Great and momentous things have come out of it. But what has come out is, I might say, based only on the exploitation of a lucky groping in the dark. Anyone who takes an interest in the course of scientific research will notice this. The fact that this scientific research has produced the great technical advances that influence our whole lives today does not speak against it. These technical advances are also based on the fact that, to a certain extent, there is a wise guidance in the fact that certain things have been revealed in the last few centuries that could then be applied to our technical advances. But what all this scientific research has not led to is the revelation of certain secrets that can be expressed through what can be researched in laboratories, clinics and observatories. Of course, it was possible to find out how to make this or that powder by “scientific research” in the spirit of modern times; it was possible to find out how to make this or that machine, and then to bring this or that machine to a truly magnificent level of perfection. All that could be done. But the longed-for secrets of existence were not revealed. In modern times, we know how the chemical composition of a substance called phenacetin works on the human body. We know because we have tried it. And all that is attempted today in technical progress is an application of the tried and tested. Research is not aimed at revealing secrets. Sometimes this research does come up with hypotheses, but hypotheses never lead to the unveiling of secrets, but only to the transposition into nature of what has already been conceived. Thus, on the one hand, in modern times we have a natural science that, while it does diligent, conscientious research and from which we can learn a great deal, is unsuitable for pointing to the secrets of existence. One can achieve an extraordinary amount with this natural science, but know nothing at all about the connections of existence. That is on the one hand.

On the other hand, one has certain truths of faith, truths of religious creeds. In these religious creeds it is said - let us take something quite ordinary - that the human soul is immortal. Something is said about the nature of the Godhead and so on, but nothing is done to apply these truths to real objects, such as a soul that one wants to explore, that one wants to talk about in concrete terms. Concepts and ideas are sought that are, so to speak, beneficial to man, that he likes, and from which he can indeed be edified; these are sought. But these ideas are not applicable to anything that is actually there; rather, these ideas are supposed to refer to something that is not there. One avoids applying these ideas to something that is actually being explored in one's immediate life. So that today religious denominations talk about something with their beliefs that no one actually has a concrete idea of, something that they at most convince themselves that they have a concrete idea of. When someone wants to talk intelligently about such things, he speaks as I quoted an important contemporary theologian as saying the other day: “You natural scientist, you have the human being as nature reveals it; I retain the human being as a free being!” But when you then follow his words, he simply hands everything over to natural science, even saying that the human being is such that his freedom is taken from him by nature. I would like to know what he is talking about at all. He remains in what has been handed down to him through words. And such a person does not have more than what has been handed down to him in words.

Now, such things differ quite significantly from what the ancient Gnostic wisdom actually was; but they have transferred their way of thinking, their way of imagining, to what wants to open up in many ways, theoretically or otherwise, in modern times. Because everywhere in such occult societies or in non-occult societies that include occult circles, people talk about so-called esotericism. But what one often hears in this esotericism is also nothing more than what does not refer to anything specific that can be grasped, but what is modeled on religious truths as they are often taught today without object. An esoteric truth does not become esoteric by being spoken of with a certain very drawn-out story that marks a sentimentally exalted expression: Oh, that is abysmally esoteric, one dare not say it... because...! What one so often dare not say has no very abundant content. If you go back to older times, there were indeed things that were quite esoteric and were not shared by certain individuals who possessed them with those who were not considered mature. But these were truly not abstract truths, but very, very concrete truths. Today, the outer world can only gain an idea of the concreteness of such truths by looking at the last foothills of these older truths. And these foothills are just fading away, so to speak, at dusk, in the evening twilight of the fourth post-Atlantic period. In Paracelsus, however, we do find some indications, last foothills, weak foothills of the old deeper insights; but he does not speak abstractly when he speaks of such foothills of the old deeper insights; he speaks very concretely, so concretely that one sees how, in his work, spiritual life flows together with natural life in the imagination. For example, when he speaks of man, he speaks of salt, mercury, and sulfur. You can read about it in my writing: “Mysticism in the Dawn of Modern Spiritual Life.” He speaks, then, of external natural things, but he speaks of the deeper character of these external natural things. He speaks in a sense that it is not possible to speak of these things today, as one will speak again when this spiritual science or anthroposophy, which we practice, experiences a corresponding continuation. Then we shall again dig into that which should not hover in cloud-cuckoo-land, but which should really delve into the secrets of nature; we shall again speak in the most concrete way. These were also only offshoots of an ancient knowledge, of which Paracelsus still spoke.

You understand what is at stake when one wants to characterize this ancient knowledge. It is about not just looking into a void when you really want to develop spiritual concepts, but also to see the natural existence with your concepts, as it were, in a glass of water that you heat up and from which, when it cools down again, salt settles to the bottom, the spiritual process, that spiritual process that also takes place in our human organism itself. As you are all listening to me, something very similar is happening in you to what happens in this glass of water containing dissolved salt that is treated in such a way that the dissolved salt settles to the bottom. And only when one can follow this entire cycle of phenomena, but as they are spiritually, through the different spheres, then one speaks of real Gnostic knowledge. And again, Paracelsus saw something quite different from what a chemist or physicist sees today when sulfur burns. For what happens when sulfur burns will happen again in all of you when you go home, go to bed and sleep through what you have thought through here. And so it was for Paracelsus that he saw the spiritual in the processes everywhere in the outer nature – but as I said: only in the last foothills. That was the old esoteric, which was really strong-minded enough to imbue itself with ideas that had real value and that intervened in external existence. But that is why this old esoteric was connected with the highest human activity, which was developed for social life. There was a certain power in the old esoteric; because the one who understood something about the spiritual world could do something. Today many people can do something, because they learn from science to achieve a high level of skill; but they do not understand the subject, and those who understand it, that is, who repeat the words that come from understanding, they cannot do anything, they want the secrets to remain “secrets”, as I hinted to you yesterday. This time had to come, because humanity had to undergo a crisis in moral terms, and because certain secrets had to be reconquered from human freedom, which only took place in our fifth post-Atlantic period.

But the truth cannot be stopped. And in what I hinted to you the day before yesterday, that certain people now already see how smoke, which is developed, becomes sensitive and follows the sound, how even flames follow the sound, lies the beginning of a realization, to which the time must come, to a realization that will lead to what, for example, Goethe hints at in the evocation of the spirit. Because the beginning of this is, after all, this seeing of the smoke being transformed, which I hinted at the day before yesterday. But people today would only misuse certain things. Precisely the important things that still have to come out within our fifth post-Atlantic period, they just have to come out slowly, because today people would misuse them badly. I will have to refer to such things in the following period. In particular, I will have to point out the relationships that currently exist between spiritual science and various branches of knowledge, for example medicine. And then, in the following period, I would still like to speak about a very important topic, about the so-called karma of the human profession, because the concept of the various professions will have to change significantly for the following period, and indeed for a period that will follow very soon. If people continue to understand what is meant by a profession in the way that arises from our present way of thinking, it will truly lead to social chaos. But more about that in later lectures.

Today, however, I want to point out something else. In the fourth post-Atlantic period, more and more things have developed in such a way that people began to carefully guard what they knew about the spiritual connections between nature and human existence, and this practice has been passed on to the occult fraternizations of which I have spoken. These occult fraternizations were, as already indicated, as a rule quite incapable of finding anything out about spiritual connections by themselves; but they did pass on certain old secrets. And those human beings who today have no connection with such occult fraternization, who often have no idea that such occult fraternization even exists, would be amazed if they really understood what lives in many a formula and in many a practice that is found within occult fraternizations, and how some people in such occult fraternizations, who then use the masses at their disposal for their own purposes, know certain secrets handed down from time immemorial, even about physical existence. Certainly, most of this knowledge has been handed down to the series of unfortunate alchemists, those unfortunate other people who, under this or that name, existed precisely in the transition period from the fourth to the fifth post-Atlantic period, who were so similar to the man of whom Faust said of his father said: “he was a dark honorable man... who, in the company of adepts, locked himself in the black kitchen, and, according to endless recipes, poured together the adverse,” and then did this or that with this adverse, poured together, as you know from this Faust scene. That was a time of much trial and error, but for the most part real wisdom had already been lost. This real wisdom, however, has found its way into many occult brotherhoods.

Now there is a law that must be observed if such things are to be considered at all. This law could be characterized in the following way: One could say that such things as the survival of wisdom among people are not bound to the laws of the dead, but to the laws of the living. Therefore, there must always be life in the further development of these things. These things cannot be simply handed down by tradition, for then they die, and then necessarily what is good in them must change into what is bad. And at first the impulse to let live was not present in the occult wisdom of these occult brotherhoods. All they did was to preserve a certain occult wisdom, to guard it from the world and to use it as they wished, and then at most to acquire a certain power through all sorts of atavistic mediumistic machinations or the like. It must be fully understood that these things will become worse and worse if they are not taken up by direct life. Therefore, occult truths must reproduce themselves in the worst possible way in those occult societies that preserve these occult truths, give them to their people in symbols, but do not work them in a living way. The good that lives has the same property as everything that is alive: after some time it must die if new life is not implanted in it. But there was also a certain temptation in the purely traditional preservation of occult wisdom in these occult fraternities. For those who are in living contact with the spiritual worlds, this temptation need not be present to the same extent. But for those in whom the living connection has already died to a certain extent, this temptation that I am referring to can very easily arise. And so certain occult fraternities were not at all free from the influence of such temptation. Such occult fraternities have enough graduates and adepts who put what they have seen of human wisdom at the service of human egoism, whether it be the egoism of individuals or that of groups.

In particular, it became more and more common among certain occult fraternities to combine what could be gained from occult wisdom with all kinds of political points of view and political impulses. And it must be said that such occult fraternities have thoroughly and closely combined what they have often practiced with clearly defined political tendencies. And in the case of occult fraternization, it is almost a characteristic of modern times that they have combined political tendencies with what they have been given from certain insights into interrelationships. — It is indeed extremely difficult to talk about these things in the present day because these things are immediately misunderstood, and it will really take a certain period of preparation before certain things can be spoken about at all. But it can be indicated that occult fraternization is definitely concerned with finding ways and means to bring the political affairs of modern times into their orbit, to shape them in their sense, or, in trivial terms, to gain political influence. And they have gained this in abundance and in a most satisfactory manner. And when the connections are once revealed between much of what has happened in modern times in political life and the sources in the occult fraternizations, from which it has happened through all sorts of channels that the public does not notice today, then strange discoveries will be made. For today more than ever, people talk about insisting on their freedom. But many a one who today presents himself to the world and talks about his freedom, who makes great declamations about his freedom, is anything but free. He just does not suspect how he is pulled by the various strings from this or that so-called occult side. And it would make an interesting chapter to describe how this or that so-called authoritative personality seemingly plays their great ideas out into the world from their own soul, how they are also celebrated by thousands and thousands, how entire groups of newspapers write for this personality write, it would be interesting to show how this machinery works, which pulls the strings from certain occult fraternizations, and how the relevant authoritative personality would appear to be quite unimportant in the process through her own individuality. For it must be emphasized that certain occult fraternities are aware of the sources of wisdom that were once so tapped, as I have indicated to you in recent weeks, but that these sources of wisdom are often misused. And they are always misused when they are applied in the way I have just indicated. Especially in an age in which, as in the fifth post-Atlantic period so far – you can see this from all the considerations we have been making in these weeks – occult knowledge has declined and people have been cut off, as it were, from the occult context for the outer life from the occult connections, those occultists who abused the old traditional occult knowledge had to work all the more strongly, but in a harmful sense. For the people were not at all armed against it. Hence it is that wherever honest occult knowledge appears, so many ways and means are sought to make it impossible. Honest occult knowledge, which simply represents the truth, is highly inconvenient for those who want to fish for occult knowledge in secret. We ourselves have had an example of this, which is not one of the most significant examples, but which can serve to illustrate a few points. When the Alcyone fraud was revealed by the Theosophical Society, it was linked to much more extensive intentions. They wanted a great deal from it. The fact that people believed in Alcyone was only a means to an end. The actual purpose was to be seen in something quite different. But that is why people found it so unpleasant when we vigorously rejected this Alcyone humbug, because they realized that the matter was being seen through, and that, you see, is the most unpleasant thing for occultists fishing in troubled waters for the occultists fishing in troubled waters, it is most unpleasant when they realize that someone has penetrated their plans, really penetrated the matter, and is not inclined to go along, but to go an honest, sincere way. If you study our entire movement, as it has developed for the last twenty-eight years, you will see that we have always tried to keep to the right path between public announcement and the practice of spiritual science, and we have even placed great emphasis on really going out to people and saying what people today will allow us to say. And further, particular emphasis is placed on our friends understanding how the demand to present a certain occult knowledge to humanity arises today, not out of arbitrariness, but out of the necessity of the time. And here it is necessary to take up the thread from such great minds as Troxler's, who expressed so beautifully the longing for spiritual knowledge such as is found in anthroposophy. But that this anthroposophy must rise up out of the upper geological layer that has settled over it is felt by many, many people.

Of course, one could easily believe that it is pessimistically described when, again and again, it is pointed out from this very place how the spiritual life of our time has come to a kind of dead end and that this coming to a dead end shows that rescue and help must come through spiritual science. But anyone who considers this to be an exaggeration, too radical or too pessimistic, has not studied the longings that have arisen in the last days of the best people of the 19th and 20th centuries. If you read any of Troxler's writings, you will see that such longings were particularly strong in him. At least he was still able to point to an anthroposophy, even if it did not take the form of today's spiritual science. Later times could no longer do so. I have often spoken to you about Herman Grimm, who is, so to speak, half Swiss, since his mother came from Switzerland; I have also recently pointed out how Herman Grimm from school as the Kant-Laplace hypothesis, in such a way that he says, scholars of the future will have a lot of trouble understanding how this fantasy could have been accepted by a certain age. This Herman Grimm, of course he could not come to spiritual science, the end of the 19th century was not suitable for that. But he saw the deadlock into which the newer spiritual life was moving. And it is interesting, endlessly interesting, to see how such people, such finely organized spirits, such spirits that have grown up with Goethe, how they constantly speak of something that they actually do not know, but that must come. They are constantly speaking of something that must come. The answer would be what spiritual science could give to humanity. But they know nothing about that. But they speak out of their longings in strong words, in words that surpass in radicalism much of what has been said here from this place, but which in turn show that the things have not been misunderstood.

Herman Grimm, the subtle observer of the intellectual life of humanity, especially from its artistic side, often turned his gaze to the question: Where should this lead, when one sees what has become of it in recent times? Certainly, he then consoled himself again and again: There will come a time when Goethe will be understood, when people will increasingly empathize with him. But on the other hand, other thoughts often occurred to him as well. He was able to appreciate the great advances that came about in the 19th century; but on the other hand, he also saw the dark side of this progress. In a volume of essays published in 1890, there is an interesting passage that, I would say, expresses precisely these sentiments. Herman Grimm says:

“The world is filled with the urge to achieve an unknown goal, for the love of which the tremendous efforts we are witnessing are being made.”

So it is an unknown goal; what he sees are multiple efforts towards an unknown goal. He says:

And now he states in abstract words what he alone knows about the goal:

“The goal is: to make all of humanity, in its final form, a kingdom of brothers who, yielding only to the noblest of motives, move forward together.”

But if there is such a longing to unite humanity in a realm of brotherhood, which, as we have also seen from lectures given recently, applies to the physical plane, then what is needed for this is the common bond of understanding for a general humanity. This general humanity is not present, however, if spiritual science cannot be spread; for the more recent development has been to fragment humanity. Then Herman Grimm continues:

“If you only follow history on the map of Europe, you might think that mutual general murder must fill our immediate future.”

We read these things today with a special feeling when a person looks at the fate of Europe in 1890 and comes to the conclusion:

“Those who follow history only on the map of Europe might believe that a mutual general murder must fulfill our immediate future; while those who study it on the globe” - that is, in the context of the earth with the whole world - “can be sure that the hour is approaching when the Germanic peoples, united in the same thoughts of the highest spiritual striving, will open the way to the true goods of human life for all the countless millions of Asia and Africa and what the world otherwise harbors.

And now comes the sentence that shows how people who saw what was happening in the 19th century in the destiny of humanity were able to speak about what they had seen with open eyes and not as sleepily as most of humanity. Herman Grimm continues:

“Allow these thoughts... .”

He is referring to the idea of the fraternization of peoples, as he has just expressed it, and of looking at the world through the lens of the globe.

“Permit this thought, which seems to be at odds with our enormous military armaments and those of our neighbors, but in which I believe and which must enlighten us, if it is not better to abolish human life by a communal decision and to set an official day of suicide.”

I think that such very serious sentences, which correspond to deep human feelings, could point to one thing: that seriousness is necessary for life in our time. Imagine what is going on in the soul of the person who expresses such feelings! But I know that many also read such a sentence and read it as one reads the newspaper today; they are incapable of looking into the seriousness of the times because it is more comfortable to sleep. But the lack of understanding of spiritual science arises from the complacency of oversleeping the demands of the time. The less one wants to sleep, the more one wants to understand how necessary it is not to sleep today, the more one will recognize that something like spiritual science is necessary for humanity. But for us, who are in spiritual science, it is necessary that we arm ourselves with this seriousness so that we can find the right relationship to the world that does not yet have this seriousness.