The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Our lectures, in that period of time before I had to go away some weeks ago, all tended to show how that which we call Spiritual Science can pass over into real life. They tended to show how that which we call the Cosmos stands in a certain inner connection with what we ourselves inwardly experience in man. And if you just survey the lectures given upon this very theme, I beg you once in a way, radically to ask yourselves this question:—What would it signify for the sum total of the evolution of humanity if these most penetrating, most significant results of Anthroposophical Spiritual Science would only penetrate into the life of those human beings working and living in a social relation with each other. They would know that man, while he attains his consciousness in a physical body, is all the time preserving something in this physical body which points to the period of time before his birth, or rather before his conception, when he was in a condition in which he was filled with a longing once again to have the life between birth and death. He carried within him then the feeling that the soul that has lived for a long time in the Spiritual world again needs the perception of the world obtainable through the bodily senses in order to progress further, and also needs actions performed in a physical body. This conscious contemplation of the pre-existence of the soul, if really understood in the right way, would not remain a mere theoretical view, but would lay hold of one's Feeling and Will, and thereby become a direct force in life.

We can see this my dear friends, in the humanity of the present- age.—They all show something of a lack of initiative, in its broad outlines. This lack of initiative, which broadly speaking, works in a weakening way on all these forces which are necessary in order to turn our decaying life once again into an ascending one, can only be bettered when man becomes conscious of his community with the Spiritual world. That however cannot be brought into the human soul through any theoretical considerations, but only through the living perception of what man was before he descended into the physical world.

Again, if that which looks beyond the time which we pass here as human beings between birth and death, is not the object simply of a vague belief but of a clear cognition, it does not work so abstractly in man as do the religious confessions of to-day, but works concretely, as a direct force of life, Man then works in such a way that what lies in his labour extends beyond his death; and because a man can take up such ideas into himself, life is thereby poured into everything which as a rule man only knows.

Just think for a moment. To-day we have a widely-extended Science of Nature; and as regards this external Science, we must say that man has progressed enormously; but the last few years have shown that this progress has not improved humanity in any moral respect. Such persons as Wallace and others, to whom I have often pointed when I wanted to emphasise that years ago, they were quite right when they said, “We have indeed made immense progress with respect to our knowledge of the outer world, but as regards our moral nature, humanity compared with primeval times, has not progressed.”

This progress must come to-day, in this historic Age, because human beings cannot remain as they are now, in their present disposition of soul. But how can this change be brought about? How can the more theoretical view of the world be animated? Let us take an apparently coarse example. In our human life, we make use of coal. We know that this coal is a relic of old forests, and so fundamentally it is a plant-substance. But now, how is this plant-substance, how is the whole world of plants connected with man as such? Just reckon over a few thousand years and see how much carbon dioxide, carbonic-acid the air would then contain,—because we breathe out carbon dioxide into the air with each expiration,—and you will find that it is a large quantity.

In the course of a few thousand years it would be an enormous quantity. In the course of a few thousand years, it would cause man to disappear; it would extinguish life. But now the plants absorb this carbon dioxide, and excrete the carbon; they form their body out of that which they absorb from man's cast-off produce; and these plants which once covered the Earth, now compose our layers of coal, our coal strata.

You see, that is an extraordinary transformation. At first it is more the qualitative aspect which comes into consideration; because naturally that coal was not formed by our breath but by other beings; but this qualitative aspect has to be considered. That which in a sense we excrete from ourselves, furnishes the basis for what we again use from the Earth. Thus far one can think, according to the theoretical results arrived at by Science.

Spiritual Science leads us further, I must remind you of what I have told you. It is true that man lays aside his physical body when he goes with his soul and spirit into the Spiritual worlds; but I also told you that the physical body, which is laid aside, signifies just that which builds up the Earth again.

As in our expiration we give carbon to the plant-world, so we give our body to the entire Earth. And what we see around us, my dear friends, is simply the product of such beings as ourselves, beings who, during the Moon, Sun and Saturn epochs were our predecessors, and who gave to the Earth that which composes the Earth to-day. When future worlds come, there will live in them that which we now excrete as our bodily substance. That is a thought of infinite scope, if one follows it out, because from our knowledge of nature (which is but a half-knowledge), we can get the connection of man with the entire world, and it is important that we should get that, extremely important; for if we bring together all that has been laid down as a foundation in our earlier lectures, we must say; that in our entire human nature, not merely in our thinking but in our entire nature, even as far as our external body, lives what we have worked upon in ourselves as our moral ideals. That dualistic philosophy, which can build no bridge between the natural world and the moral sphere, cannot imagine how what we have in our moral ideals can be connected with the very processes in our muscles; but if one can look at the world as we have tried to do in our recent lectures, one sees how what we think in our moral ideals incorporates itself into the very processes of our body. One sees that the Spiritual and bodily processes are interwoven and form a unity.

This method of looking at things ought to become general. If only it were taken up as part of the education of children, human beings would grow up who would not look on one side to a world developed from a nebulous condition, out of which, the Sun, the Stars and the Planets have condensed, and from which too, through the welding-together of matter void of morale or being, humanity has developed in order finally to return back into a purely natural condition. That which springs up in our souls as moral Ideals would then again be one with what stood at the starting point of our Cosmic evolution in its purely natural existence. We human beings would then realise that we are called upon to incorporate into the life of nature, what we experience as moral ideals. And then, in future worlds, we should know that what we now experience morally will re-appear as the Laws of Nature.

If only children could grow up to-day under the influence of such a perception, they would be able to take their place in the world in such a way that they would feel themselves as part of the Cosmos, and would thereby have a feeling for life drawn from these very forces which they would absorb into themselves with their knowledge of the Cosmos. Indeed, being educated to action, they would then know that whatever they do is to be imprinted in the entire Cosmos. If only that were the prevailing feeling, how differently human beings would live; whereas to-day man asks himself: “What am I really in this world?” He sees himself standing alone, sprung forth from indefinite Nature-forces, and permeated with moral ideals like soap bubbles. Such a man can be crippled in his very feeling for life. When he looks up to the stars he sees them passing through Cosmic space, but he feels he has no connection with them. They themselves have only arisen in a natural way. They are perishable worlds, falling to pieces, serving no purpose, and having no inner Spirituality.

We must bear in mind what a life-force for humanity might be developed from a Spiritual method of looking at things. That must be pointed out again and again, because that is just what human beings to-day understand least of all. They say that a Spiritual view makes a man live apart from the world; but my dear friends, it is the present modern view which makes one avoid the world. Why is this so? Because it works with the dogmas of the past, which in the past served a good purpose, because they then arose from a certain instinctive clairvoyance. But this instinctive clairvoyance has now disappeared, and human beings have no longer any relationship to it. The dogmas still retained are no longer understood. It is not a question of their falsity, but of modern humanity having no longer a living relationship with them. And outside of the dogmas still maintained, humanity to-day only has a nature science devoid of spirit. Anthroposophy will give a spirit-filled Science of nature, a science able to animate man, and that which trickles, as a knowledge of the spirit, into nature, will then transform itself in man in the same way as do the food-substances in a physical respect. That knowledge is transformed in man into Social Force, and one would experience it if one earnestly realised that Spiritual knowledge is nourishment for the soul, and can be absorbed and digested—if I can use that expression—it can be digested and re-appear as a force working socially. We can get social impulses in no other way than by taking up Spiritual cognition from surrounding Nature. Anyone who thinks he can carry out social reforms from any other impulse, thinks about the things of this world as one who meditates about man and wishing to explain him as clearly as possible, and in order to explain him to himself, forbids him food. Whoever speaks to-day of social forms without having Spiritual knowledge, does the same thing with reference to the social order of humanity as a man who wishes to explain man and prescribes for him a hunger cure. That is just what stands as a deep absurdity in the modern views of humanity, and which it cannot see through.

When we enter this life between Birth and Death, what we carry with us from the Spiritual worlds is only like an image, and fundamentally the whole of our soul-life is a life of images, pictures. But in former Ages this picture-life was animated by what then already existed in the natural perception as spirit. In ancient times there existed no concept of nature which was not filled with spirit. People to-day can read older views, but they read nothing there of a Natural Science, that is, of a natural Science devoid of spirit. Whoever goes back, even into the 13th or 14th Centuries, and reads the things written and spoken of nature there, may mock at the childishness, the superstition then existing; but the essential is, that all the things described then were described as permeated by spirit. To-day, on the other hand, we try as far as possible to see the phenomena of nature without spirit. Indeed, we regard it as the very perfection of our scientific observations to see them without spirit.

That which we take up out of nature without spirit, can however no longer work animatingly in the pictorial existence of our soul. We remain at a standstill in this respect and will not admit that it is merely an image. But this image, which is really the image of a past life, will not be fructified by the present life around us. This present life should be fructified by the past life, so that it can then be carried through the Gate of Death into the Spiritual worlds. It is only Spiritual Science livingly beheld which can give man that which it has to give him.

Just take, for instance, the dogmas of the old books of religion. Many men to-day fight against these because they find and consider them nonsensical; but they are in no wise nonsensical. Even such a dogma as that of the Trinity has a most profound sense. It was read by human beings from nature itself by means of the old instinctive clairvoyance, and for thousands of years in the evolution of humanity that dogma gave man an infinite amount. The external Churches have preserved such dogmas, but to-day they hardly exist except as a certain vocal sound. Men to-day feel no need to develop a relationship with what was an object of an ancient clairvoyance, and so it remains something which has no relationship to man to-day, because of his modern nature, although at one time it was a living soul-nourishment. And again, apart from these dogmas, we have our external Science of Nature, in a state of utter deprivation, which kills the soul unless it is permeated by the spirit.

These are the two basic evils which Spiritual Science as studied here, has to keep in mind: in order once more to give to the soul something which will animate it, and give it force, so that it can feel itself directly as a member of the entire Cosmos, and feel that responsibility in its social work which proceeds from knowing that as single individuals, even our tiniest action has a Cosmic significance for the whole evolution of the future. We have to look beyond that narrow circuit in which we are enclosed by reason of our lack of education; for that narrowing which man has himself brought about will increase more and more. That is why Spiritual Science meets with so much difficulty, because fundamentally that which it seeks to be, does not consist merely of words, nor thoughts, not merely ideas, but that which can permeate all those thoughts, flow through the words as the very Spiritual blood of life, and then trickle directly into each human soul. It is for that reason that, in any advocating of Spiritual Science, it is far more a question of how we speak than of what we say. We see to-day the most violent conflict between Materialism and Spiritualism. This conflict simply rests on the fact that human beings simply will not see what deep foundations this utterance has:—The truth always lies midway between two directly opposite associations.

My dear friends, is it true that God is within us? Is it true then that we are in God? It is true that we are in God. These two assertions are direct opposites. Both are true. God is in us, and we are in God; but the two assertions are polar opposites. The real truth, the whole truth lies between the two. The nature of all the conflict of ideas in the world rests on this—that human beings always tend to a one-sidedness, which is true, but only a one-sided truth; whereas the real truth lies between two opposite assertions. We must know both in order to get at the reality. For instance, to-day, in the present state of the evolution of the world, one must have the most earnest will to learn all we can of material existence above all, and not propagate the desire of those people who say: “We will only occupy ourselves with the Spirit: we do not want to know Matter.” To learn as much as possible of Matter is one side of human cognition, one thing for which the Will of man, must strive. On the other hand one must learn to know the Spirit, because between those two, lies what we are, and ought really to strive for. Both are wrong.—those who say the world is only Matter and those who say the world is only Spirit are wrong—For what is matter? Matter as human beings know it, is that which has remained behind from the Spirit, after the Spirit has become Spirit. Your own human form, my dear friends, is only what was once a thought of the Gods, which I here draw in red—the Divine workings of thought.

Just think; even as water that freezes gets a solid form, so this Divine thought gets a form and becomes the sheaths of man, (Blue). Then a new thought of God makes itself valid in the inner being of man, and then goes out again, (Red) and this Divine thought (left) was once transformed from a form which in still older times was also a thought of the Gods. Whatever we see as matter is nothing else than spirit which has become a firm form, and that which we perceive as the human spirit is simply a young form, a form engaged in the process of becoming. These two—Spirit and Matter—are only different because of their ages in the world—they only are of a different age. The mistake made about them does not consist in our applying ourselves either to Matter or to Spirit, but in wanting to maintain in the Present what we should so maintain in Life, which we should so fructify, that it may become something for the future.

Now just think. We bring something over into the present from our pre-existence in the Spiritual world; we bring that over as a Spiritual psychic life. But if we permeate that with a barren external spiritless Science of Nature, we harden it, we do not keep it germinal, we do not allow it to grow up for future worlds. We Ahrimanise it.

And if we try and grasp that which is already form, which is Divinity itself grown old and crystallised itself in form if we seek to grasp that in a nebulous way, through a nebulous mysticism into which we dream all kinds of things, we do not support ourselves on that which is given us by the Gods as our bodily support. And thus we Luciferise Matter. What is nebulous mysticism? Man should look into himself. He should recognise from out of the Cosmos that which he is in his own physical organism in his life between birth and death. Instead of that he cherishes the fantasy that he has a God within him. He has indeed a God within him, but he does not attain that through mystical fantasy, for he thus Luciferises what he should see in the later form of his own bodily sheaths. These are false views of Matter and Spirit, about which human beings come into strife with one another, for Matter and Spirit are one and the same, but at different ages of life.

That is something which it is very necessary our present Age should perceive; otherwise it can never come to an understanding of the social life. The attempt must be made to-day really to enter with one's thoughts into the true reality; but human beings do not want to do this,—they prefer to remain on the surface of things. A pretty little story was told to me a few days ago, which occurred a few weeks back in Zurich. Probably it has already been related to some of you here. One of our friends spoke at a University Celebration in Zurich about the scientific significance of Anthroposophy. A socialistic thinker in reply, got up and said: “One should not educate man to-day to such mystic phantasy, but to exact Science, for did not Goethe say: Into the inner being of nature no creative spirit can penetrate.”

You see, what this Swiss delegate brought forward rests simply on a superficial knowledge of what Goethe did say, For Goethe, quoting the above utterance of Halley said: “I have heard this repeated for 60 years and have sworn at it the whole time.” That is how the Spiritual Life is carried on to-day. That represents the accuracy with which men know things, and thus in a certain degree do they become authorities. Thus, do men strive to learn to know the world. Whether one man believes Goethe himself uttered what he swore at for 60 years, or whether as National Economists do they perform things such as I will characterise now, is really a matter of indifference. A very learned National Economist wrote a book about the free and the fixed formation of prices. He had to investigate a good deal as to the way in which, as I might say National Economy could be made social. Amongst the many things he discussed, is also the following. He says: Even George Brandes (who was himself no deep thinker) said: The people in their economic and social deeds are not guided by reason but by instinct.” Therefore, things should be explained to the people. That is what this National Economist is advocating. One must bring enlightenment to the people.

Now, my dear friends to this one could reply: In our many Universities, there are a great number of these National Economists, they are all enlightened, but when they arrange things amongst themselves, they are working exactly under the same institute instincts as the others,—neither more nor less. And so, as things are fashioned, especially to-day by our highly developed intelligence, as regards social life these same instincts remain, and are working. But now we must go further, we must now ask ourselves: How can we bring light into this working of the instincts, for that alone can be of social significance. It is simply nonsense to suppose that the majority of human beings can be guided by this; they cannot. Something must come in which can enter and transform these instincts. Reason cannot enter into them. We have here to remind ourselves of that ancient instinctive perception, (See Diagram) which has developed into our intellectuality; but this intellect lives only in the inner Spiritual life of man. On the other hand, the external forces working socially are permeated by instinct. Into this instinct something must penetrate which is related to the old instinctive vision, but which has an impulse from Spirituality. That is Imagination. Imagination must enter. (See Diagram) Imaginations as we call them in Spiritual Science, can alone give the force which can bring light to those instincts.

That which enables us to understand things to-day scientifically and externally; Botany, Zoology, Mathematics,—can be furnished by the intellect, but not that which implies human co-operation. There must enter what we have called Imagination. Imaginations must permeate the social life—that is the essential thing. In all social life which has developed from olden times up to recent times, there have lived the human instincts. It is actually only since the 2nd, and last third of the 19th Century that man has entered that age which no longer requires the old instincts. You can prove this exactly. Even at the turn of the 18th and 19th Century there still lived these ancient instincts in the social life of man. The uncertainty of man's instincts first appeared in that Age when intellect developed in its most shining form. Then tradition alone remained.

Just think, my dear friends, what gigantic efforts were made in the 19th Century, in order still to have moral views. Men had to preserve in the most abstract way what was still maintained from ancient times; and of necessity the old moral ideals were still propagated, though they were then petrified. We need to-day a rebirth of morality for that alone can produce what is social, that cannot come from the intellect, but simply and solely from moral intuition. Moral fantasy must raise itself to the Spiritual world, in order to fructify itself out of that world. That is now the essential, otherwise man faces the loss of moral impulses.

Those abstract Confessions which tend to belief alone cannot find in their faith the necessary strength for life to-day. Faith can give one something for the egoism of one's own soul; but with that egoism alone, at most one can live as an individual, separate being. If we want to enter into action, and that means social action, it is then necessary that we should be permeated with a Spiritual-psychic life-blood, and that can only come from a concrete Spiritual life. This consciousness of the Life-Force must flow through the Anthroposophical Movement into the Anthroposophical view of life. Especially from this point of view must one make oneself acquainted with these important concepts which to-day need a justification and defence.

Pantheism is a very favourite reproach against Anthroposophy, Pantheism, i.e., giving reverence to the things around us, for God lives in those things. That is heresy to the modern Confessions; and why? Why is it that the modern Confessions call our Anthroposophy a heresy? Because these Confessions are permeated through and through with materialism.—If the Jesuit regards the world around him simply as Matter, it is of course blasphemy to say that this Matter is Divine, is God. But can Anthroposophy help it if the Jesuits regard the world around them simply as Matter? It is not Matter, it is Spirit; and that which the Jesuits perceives as Matter in the world, that Anthroposophy has to show as illusion. We do not explain as Divine the world which we assert—is an illusion;—of course not, we do not claim that for Divine existence. Of course it is quite different to take what is around us and explain that as Divine, at the same time realising external sense-phenomena as illusion, than to regard it as mere Matter and then explain that the grossest Matter is Divine.

You see how far asunder these things are, and we must not grow weary of really trying to make these things valid before the world. Otherwise there may be a repetition of what happened lately, when something was printed in a Swiss Newspaper by way of objection to my methods of attaining Spiritual knowledge. There it was asserted that I said that one can see the Spirit; but that cannot be, because the Spirit is not sensible, and only the things of sense can be perceived. One cannot grasp the Spirit, and therefore one cannot see it.

You see, what a hopeless way this is; the writer maintains nothing else but that—he cannot see the Spirit, and therefore no one can see the Spirit. One can know nothing of the Spirit because one cannot grasp it. And in such variations, the thoughts of a whole Newspaper goes on. What works so terribly destructively to-day, is the fact that people have not the consciousness that they should read such things to the end. “Into the inner being of nature no creative Spirit can penetrate”—thus ran the first two lines; but the person reading them stopped there, and did not notice that Goethe added; “I have heard this said for 60 years, and have cursed it all the time.”

What we must look for everywhere to-day is the prevailing superficiality. I have often pointed this out, but it cannot be done too often. We must trace everywhere this terrible clinging to superficiality. It can be chiefly seen where it works so terribly to-day externally, i.e. in the sphere of Social Economics; There people will not dive down into that which lies in the very essence of things. For instance, I have been told to-day, that people are constantly saying that “The Threefold State” (book) is so difficult to understand,—well, that they want something which they can understand much more easily. But, my dear friends, if, with these things that can easily be understood, nothing is done in social life, but men have simply bungled, it is necessary to grasp what is a little difficult, which requires effort. It is strange to demand that a thing be made more comprehensible, for it is really necessary for our modern social thinking that we should make an effort. Things one can easily understand have worked so abstractly, so ruinously to-day. To demand that such things should be made more comprehensible, is simply frivolous. It really is. Indeed, it is not a question that one should not cultivate such inwardly frivolous thoughts as “This is difficult”—for if it were given in any such form as is desired, it would simply give people something else with which they could bungle. For really objective work this apparent difficulty simply must be overcome, it simply urges us to make a study of that book. That is the essential. In this earnest way should one try to enter into these things, in such serious times as these.

Yesterday I tried to draw the line between those sensory experiences which belong to the upper man, constituting man's essential soul life, and those which are more connected with the lower man, the content of which stands in much the same relationship to human consciousness as external experiences proper, only that these experiences take place within man. We have seen that the ego-sense, the sense of thought, the word-sense, the sense of hearing, the sense of warmth and the sense of sight are all experiences of the former kind, and that we then plunge into two regions in which man's inner experiences resemble external experiences so far as his consciousness is concerned; these two regions are, first, the senses of taste and smell, and then the other four, the inner senses proper.

You see at once how difficult it is to make do with the rough and ready terms which are suitable enough for descriptions of the external world, but quite inadequate directly one comes to consider the being of man and the structure of the world within him.

But at all events, if we are quite clear about this distinction between the upper and the lower man, both of which in a certain way are representative of the world-process, we shall also be well aware that there is a cleavage in our experience, that our relationship to the one pole of our experience is utterly different from our relationship to the other. Unless we grasp this division of the human being thoroughly we shall never reach full clarity about the most important problem of the present and of the near future, the problem of the relationship of the moral world, within which we live with our higher nature, within which we have responsibility, to that other world with which we are also connected, the world of natural necessity.

We know that in recent centuries, since the middle of the fifteenth century, human progress has consisted predominantly in the development of ideas about natural necessity. Humanity has paid less attention in recent centuries to the other pole of human experience. Anyone who is at all able to read the signs of the times, anyone who knows how to recognise the task of the times, is quite clear that there is a deep cleft between what is called moral necessity and what is called natural necessity.

This cleavage has arisen primarily because a great many of those who believe themselves to represent the spiritual life of to-day distinguish between a certain sphere of experience that can be grasped by science, by knowledge, and another sphere that is said to be grasped only by faith. And you know that in certain quarters only what can be brought under strict natural law is acknowledged to be really scientific; and another kind of certitude is postulated for all that falls within the sphere of the moral life, a certitude which only claims to be the certitude of faith. There are circumstantial theories as to the necessary distinction that has to be made between real scientific certainty and the certitude of belief.

All these distinctions, these theories, have come about because to-day we have very little historical consciousness; we pay very little attention to the conditions under which our present soul-content came into being. I have often given the classic example of this. I have often told you that to-day, when philosophers speak of the distinction between body and soul, they think they are using a concept which derives from original observation, whereas what they think about body and soul is merely the result of the decision of the eighth Æcumenical Council of 869, which raised to the status of dogma the doctrine that man must not be regarded as consisting of body, soul and spirit but of body and soul only, although some spiritual characteristics may be ascribed to the soul.

In the centuries that followed, this dogma became more and more firmly established. The Schoolmen in particular were steeped in it. And when modern philosophy developed out of Scholasticism, people thought that now they were forming their judgments from experience. But they were only judging according to their usual habits, through the centuries-old custom of assuming man to consist of body and soul.

This is the classic example of many situations in which present-day humanity believes that it forms an unprejudiced judgment, whereas the judgment it utters is nothing but the result of an historical event. One comes to a really sound judgment—and then not without difficulty—only by the survey of ever wider and wider historical epochs.

For example, the man who knows nothing but the scientific thought of the present time quite naturally thinks it the only valid kind of thought, and is incapable of thinking that there could be any other kind of knowledge. The man who, as well as being familiar with the scientific opinion of the present time—which has hardened somewhat since the middle of the fifteenth century—also knows a little of what was accepted in the early Middle Ages, right back to the fourth century, will form his judgments about the relations of man with the world somewhat as the Neo-Scholastics do. But at most he will be able to form opinions about man's relation to intellectuality; he will not be able to form any opinion about his relation to spirituality. For he does not know that if we go back earlier than, say, Aristotle, who died in 322 B.C., we have to see ourselves in a very different spiritual configuration from the one at present prevailing, in order to get any sort of understanding as to how the men of that time thought. To try to understand Plato or Heraclitus or Thales with a constitution of soul such as we have at the present day is an utter impossibility. We do not even understand Aristotle. And anyone who is at all familiar with the discussions that have taken place in modern times about the Aristotelian philosophy knows that amidst all the waging of wordy warfare which still goes on in connection with Aristotle countless misconceptions have arisen, simply because men have not reckoned with the fact that the moment we go back to Plato, for example, who was Aristotle's teacher, we need an entirely different spiritual constitution. For if one approaches Aristotle in a forward direction, from the direction of Plato, one judges his logic differently from the way one does if one merely looks back upon it with the spiritual make-up resulting from present-day culture.

Even when Aristotle was compiling his logic, which is certainly pretty abstract, very much intellectualised, he still had at least an external knowledge, even if not personal vision—there was certainly very little of that left in Aristotle—but he was still clearly aware that at one time it had been possible to see into the spiritual world, even if only in an instinctive way. And for him the rules of logic were the last utterance from above, from the spiritual world, if I may put it so. For Aristotle, accordingly, what he established as the laws or principles of logic were, so to say, shadows which had been cast down from the spiritual world—the world that was still a world of experience, a fact of consciousness, for Plato.

The enormous differences that obtain between different epochs of humanity is a thing that is usually overlooked. Let us take the years from the death of Aristotle, 322 B.C., to the Council of Nicea, A.D. 325; there you have a period which it is very difficult to get to know, because the Church took care to destroy all documents that might have given a more or less accurate picture of the state of soul of those three pre-Christian and three post-Christian centuries.

You have only to recall how often reference is made to-day to the Gnosis. But how do people know about the Gnosis? They know it through the writings of its opponents. Except for a very few texts, and those very far from representative ones, the whole of the Gnostic literature has been wiped out, and all we have are quotations from it in the works of its opponents, in works which are intended to refute it. We know about as much of the Gnosis as we should know of Anthroposophy if we were to make its acquaintance through the writings of Pius X. Nevertheless, out of this superficial knowledge people do hold forth about the Gnosis.

But the Gnosis was an essential element in the spiritual life of the centuries that I have just mentioned, To-day, of course, we cannot go back to it. But at that particular period it was an extremely important element in European development.

How can one really describe it? You see, one could not have spoken of it five hundred years earlier in the way it was spoken of in the fourth century A.D. For at that time there was still an instinctive clairvoyance, an ancient clairvoyance, there was knowledge of a super-sensible world, and one had to speak in a descriptive way out of this knowledge. The real spiritual world was always present in consciousness and was always behind such portrayals of it. Then that condition ceased.

It is a marked feature of Aristotle, for example, that this super-sensible world was for him only a tradition. He may have known something of it, but, as I have already said, in the main it was tradition for him. But the concepts which he received from the spiritual world still carried the impress of that world, an impress which was lost only in the third and fourth centuries A.D.

In Augustine we find no trace of the Gnosis; by his time it had quite disappeared. Thus we may say that the Gnosis is in its essence the abstract residuum of an earlier spiritual knowledge; it consists of naked concepts. What lived in it was a body of abstractions. We can see this already in Philo. And one can see abstractions in the ideas of the real Gnostics, too, but their teachings were abstractions of a spiritual world that had once been seen. By the fourth century A.D. things had come to the point when men no longer knew what to make of the ideas that formed the content of the Gnosis. Hence arose the dispute between Arius and Athanasius, which cannot really be reduced to a formula. The argument as to whether the Son is of the same nature and being as the Father, or of a different nature and being, is carried on in a realm in which the real content of the old ideas has been lost. The argument takes its course no longer with ideas, but merely with words.

All this formed the transition to the pure intellectualism which was to develop more and more, reaching western humanity just in the middle of the fifteenth century. By the time this intellectualism emerged, logic was something quite different from what it had been for Aristotle. For him, logic was, so to say, the residue of spiritual knowledge. He had made a compilation of what in earlier times had been experienced out of the spiritual world. By the middle of the fifteenth century the last scrap of consciousness of this spiritual world had vanished, and only the intellectual element remained; but now this intellectual element appears not as the residue of a spiritual world, but as an abstraction from the sense-world. What for Aristotle was a gift from the world above, was now taken to be an abstraction from the world below. And it was in essentials with

If you take what I said yesterday about the ego-sense, the thought-sense, the word-sense and so on, you will come to the conclusion that in what we now experience through these senses in our ordinary human consciousness we are actually only dealing with pictures; otherwise there could not be those perpetual discussions which result inevitably from the characteristics of the present time. Indeed, a real understanding of the essential soul-life has for the time being been lost. An example of this is the way in which Brentano's attempt to write a psychology, a theory of the soul, failed ... something which he tried to do in all sincerity. Other people of course write psychologies, because they are less honest, less candid ... but he wanted in perfect candour to write a psychology that would be worth while, and he achieved nothing of any intrinsic value, because this could only have come from spiritual science, which he repudiated. Hence his psychology remained truncated, since he achieved so little of what he was really striving for. This failure of Brentano's psychology is an historic fact of profound significance. For the jugglery with all sorts of concepts and ideas that our psychological science pursues to-day was of course for Brentano something quite empty.

But now what we have here (see diagram) as the soul-life which is the outcome of the six upper senses, from the ego-sense to the sense of sight, all this was at one time filled with spiritual life. If we turn our gaze back to ancient times in Europe, back as far as Plato, all that afterwards became more and more devoid of spirituality, more and more intellectualised, was then filled with spirituality. We find there all that had been given to humanity in its evolution in a still more ancient time, in the time when the Orient had taken the lead as regards human civilisation; then men possessed a civilisation which was devoted to this soul-life, this true soul-life. So that we can say:

All these senses furnish experiences which nourish the spiritual life, when spiritual life is present in the soul. And what humanity developed in this respect was developed within the ancient eastern culture. And you understand that culture best when you understand it in the light of what I have just told you.

But all this has, so to say, receded into the background of evolution. The life of the soul then lost its spirituality, it became intellectualised, and that, as I said, began in the fourth century B.C. Aristotle's compilation of abstract logic was the first milestone on the path of this despiritualisation of human soul-life, and the development of the Gnosis brought about its complete descent.

Now we still have the other man:

And now a civilisation began that was based essentially upon the senses just enumerated. Even if you do not at first admit it, nevertheless it is so. For take the scientific spirit that emerged, the scientific spirit that tries to apply mathematics to everything. Mathematics, as I explained to you yesterday, comes from the senses of movement and of balance. Thus even the most spiritual things discovered by modern science come from the lower man. But modern scientists work above all with the sense of touch. You can make interesting studies to-day if you go into the sphere of physiology.

Of course, people talk about seeing, or about the eye, or about the sense of sight; but one who sees through these things knows that all the concepts that are used are somehow conjured from the sense of touch to the sense of sight. People work with things that are borrowed, smuggled in, from the sense of touch. People do not notice it, but in describing the sense of sight they make use of categories, of ideas, with which one grasps the sense of touch. What to-day is called sight in scientific circles is really only a somewhat complicated touching; and categories, concepts such as tasting or smelling, are sometimes brought in to help. We can see everywhere at work the way of grasping external phenomena which lies behind modern ideas. For modern anatomy and physiology have already discovered—or at any rate have a well-founded hypothesis—that modern thinking really has its roots in the sense of smell, in that thinking is bound up with the brain—thus not at all with the higher senses, but with a metamorphosis of the sense of smell. This characteristic attitude of ours in our grasp of the outer world is quite different from the relationship that Plato had. It is not a product of the higher senses, it is a product of the sense of smell, if I may put it so. I mean that to-day our perfection as man does not come from our having developed the higher senses, but from our having created for ourselves a modified, metamorphosed dog's muzzle.

This peculiar way of relating ourselves to the outer world is quite different from the way which befits a spiritual epoch. Now if we have to designate as oriental culture what was first revealed through the higher senses in ancient times, then what I have just depicted, in the midst of which we are now living, must be called the essence of western culture. This western culture is in essentials derived from the lower man.

I must again and again emphasise that there is no question of appraisal in what I am now saying; it is merely a statement of the course of history. I am certainly not trying to point out that the upper man is estimable and the lower man less estimable. The one is an absorption into the world, the other is not. And it does not help to introduce sympathy and antipathy, for then one does not reach objective knowledge. Anyone who wishes to understand what is contained in the Veda culture, the Yoga culture, must start from an understanding of these things, and must take this direction (see diagram, upper man). And whoever wishes to understand what is really to be found in its first beginnings, what has to be more and more developed for certain kinds of human relationships, what indeed in the nineteenth century has already reached a certain climax, has to know that it is particularly the lower man that is trying to emerge there, and that this emergence of the lower man is especially characteristic of the Anglo-American nature, of western culture.

A spirit specially representative of the rise of this culture is Lord Bacon of Verulam. In his Novum Organum, for instance, he makes statements—statements very easily misunderstood—that at bottom can have meaning only for superficial people. And yet what he says is extraordinarily characteristic. Bacon is in a certain respect both ill-informed and foolish, for as soon as he begins to speak of ancient cultures he talks nonsense; he knows nothing about them. That he is superficial can be demonstrated from his own writings. For instance, where he speaks about warmth—he is an empiricist—he gathers together everything that can be said about warmth, but one sees that he gets it all from notes of experiments. What he has to say about warmth, he did not find out for himself, but it has been pieced together by a clerk, a copyist, for it is a frightfully careless piece of work. Nevertheless Bacon is a milestone in modern evolution. One may dismiss his personality as of no interest, but yet through all his ineptitude and through all the rubbish that he again and again gives out, something continually gets through that is characteristic of the emergence of a culture that corresponds with what I have described here (see diagram, lower man). And humanity will not be able to emerge from the poverty of soul in which it is now living if it does not grasp that—for reasons which previous lectures will have made sufficiently clear—it was possible to live with the culture of the upper man, but it will not be possible to live with the culture of the lower man. For after all, man brings his soul with him into each new incarnation, a soul which has unconscious memories of earlier lives on earth. Man is ever and again urged towards what he has outlived. To-day he often does not know what it is that he is being driven towards. This urge consists in a vague longing; it is sometimes quite indefinable, but it is there. And it is there above all because one comes gradually to regard what belongs to this sphere (see diagram, lower man) as something objective, since it can be grasped in terms of laws. All that exists of a more traditional nature, and belongs to this sphere (see diagram, upper man) has, as regards its real nature, faded away into belief. And although people are at a loss how to attribute real existence to this moral content of the soul, and turn to faith as the only support for knowing anything about it, nevertheless they try to cling to it.

But, my dear friends, it is not possible for humanity nowadays to go on living with this cleavage in the soul. One can still argue that the evangelical antithesis, the opposition between faith and knowledge which has been elaborated particularly in the evangelical denominations, can be maintained as a theory; but it cannot be applied to life, one cannot live by it. Life itself gives the lie to such an antithesis. The way must be found to assimilate morality with that to which we ascribe real being, otherwise we shall always come to the point of saying: Natural necessity provides us with ideas about the beginning and the end of the earth; but when the end decreed by the scientists has arrived, what is to become of everything to which we ascribe human worth, of all that man attains inwardly, morally ... as to what is to become of that, how it is to be rescued from the perishing earth, all this has to be left to faith!

And it is interesting to note that it is just from this standpoint that Anthroposophy is attacked. Perhaps at this point I may be allowed to mention this attack, because it is typical; it does not emanate from one person, but from a number of people. They find that Anthroposophy claims to have a content of knowledge, and thus can be treated like scientific knowledge. Simpletons say of course that its content cannot be compared with scientific knowledge, that it is something else—well, that is self-evident, there is no need to mention it; but it can be treated in the same way as natural scientific knowledge. Many people also say that one cannot prove it. Those people have never made themselves acquainted with the nature of logical proof. But the main point is that people say that the things of which Anthroposophy treats ought not to be the objects of knowledge, for this would deprive them of their essential character. They must be objects of faith. For it is only in the fact that we know nothing of God, of eternal life, but only believe in these things, that their true value lies. And indeed such knowledge is assailed on the ground that it will undermine the religious character of these truths; for their sacredness is said to lie in the very fact that in them we believe something about which we know nothing. The very expression of our trust lies in our ignorance. I should very much like to know how men would get on with such a concept of trust in everyday life, if they had to have the same trust in those about whom they knew nothing as in those of whom they knew something ... at that rate one should no longer trust the divine spiritual powers when one gets to know them! Thus the essence of religion is supposed to consist in the fact that one does not know it, for the holiness of religious truths suffers injury when one converts those truths into knowledge.

That is what it comes to. If one pays any attention to the worthless scribbling that goes on, then every week one sees in print things that are reduced to nonsense if one analyses them into their original elementary constituents. To-day one must not ignore these things. I must again and again stress this, and I do not hesitate to repeat myself. For instance, when a respectable newspaper in Wurttemburg publishes an essay on Anthroposophy by a university lecturer who writes, “This Anthroposophy maintains that there is a spiritual world in which the spiritual beings move about like tables and chairs in physical space,” when a university don to-day is able to write such a sentence, we must leave no stone unturned to discredit him; he is impossible: nonsense in responsible quarters must not be allowed to pass. It is only when anyone is drunk that he sees tables and chairs move, and then only subjectively. And since Professor T. would neither admit that he was drunk when he wrote his authoritative article, nor that he was a spiritualist—for tables and chairs do move for spiritualists, even if not of themselves—then one is justified in saying that here we have an example of the most thoughtless nonsense. And by having written such nonsense, the Professor undermines confidence in all his knowledge.

To-day we must make it our bounden duty to treat such things with the utmost severity. And we shall become more and more entangled in the forces of decadence if we do not maintain this severity. We meet with utterly incredible things to-day, and the most incredible things get by, since we perpetually find excuse after excuse for the trickeries that are committed in so-called authoritative circles. To-day it is absolutely necessary to lay stress upon the importance of reaching clear ideas, full of content, in every sphere. And if one does this, then the doctrine of the separation between knowledge and faith cannot be maintained, for then it would be reduced to what I have just now pointed out.

But this distinction between knowledge and belief is something that has been brought about only in the course of history. It has come about partly for reasons which I have already mentioned, partly on account of something else. Above all, the following must be taken into consideration. To begin with, there is what came about in western Christianity in the first Christian centuries through the fusing of the Gnosis with the monotheistic Gospel teaching, and then there is the fusing of Christianity with the Aristotelianism that arose in the time of the Schoolmen—certainly in a highly intelligent way, but nevertheless merely as historical recollection. And this doctrine, the doctrine of the uniform origin of both body and soul through birth or conception, is a thoroughly Aristotelian doctrine. With the casting off of the old spirituality, with the emergence of pure intellectuality, Aristotle had already been divested of the notion of pre-existence, the notion of the life of the human soul before birth, before conception. This denial of the doctrine of pre-existence is not Christian; it is Aristotelian. It first became a dogmatic fetter through the introduction of Aristotelianism into Christian theology.

But at this point an important question arises—a question which can be answered to some extent from the substance of the lectures I have given here in recent weeks. If you remember much of what I have lately been saying, you will have come to the conclusion that the materialism of the nineteenth century is in a certain sense not wholly unjustified (I have repeatedly stressed this). Why! Because what confronts us in the human being, in so far as he is a physical-material being, is an image, a reproduction, of his spiritual evolution since his last death. What develops here between birth and death is not in fact the pure soul-spiritual; it is the soul-physical, a copy. Out of man's experiences between birth and death there is no possibility of acquiring a scientific conception of life after death. There is nothing which offers a possible proof of immortality, if one looks merely at the life between birth and death.

But traditional Christianity does look only at this life between birth and death, for it regards the soul as well as the body as having been created at the time of birth or conception. This viewpoint makes it impossible to acquire knowledge about life after death. Unless one accepts the existence of life before birth, knowledge of which can, as you know, be acquired, one can never obtain knowledge of life after death. Hence the cleavage between knowledge and belief as regards the question of immortality arises from the dogma which denies the life before birth. It was because men wanted to drop the knowledge of pre-natal life that it became necessary to postulate a special certitude of faith. For if, whilst denying pre-natal life, one still wishes to speak of a life after death, then one cannot speak of it as scientific knowledge.

You see how systematically ordered the dogmatic structure is. Its purpose is to spread darkness among mankind about spiritual science. How can that be done? On the one hand by attacking the doctrine of life before birth ... then there can be no knowledge about life after death, then men have to believe it on the basis of dogma. The fight for belief in dogma is waged by fighting against knowledge of life before birth.

The way dogma has developed since the fourth century A.D., and the way modern scientific notions have developed without interruption out of dogma—it is all extraordinarily systematic! For all these scientific ideas can be traced back to their origin in dogma, only they are now applied to the observation of external nature, and it can be shown how thereby the way has been paved for man's dependence upon mere belief. Because man will have some relationship to immortality, he is deprived of his knowledge—for he has been deprived of it—and then he is open to dogmatic belief. Then dogmatic belief can seek out its kingdom.

This is at the same time a social question, a question relevant to the evolution of humanity, a question that has to be clearly faced to-day. And it is the crucial test, not only of the value of modern culture, but also of the value of the modern scientific spirit, and of humanity's prospects of recovering the strength to rise, to climb up again.

Let us compare what we learn through direct experiences about our relation to life between birth and death with what we must feel inwardly about the connection between our moral behaviour, thoughts and acts and the consequences of this behaviour. We began these evening lectures with just such studies and we will conclude with the same theme.

When on the one hand we consider how our moral deeds proceed from our purposes, from our whole attitude of soul, we realise that if we observe ourselves without prejudice, one category of our actions must be described as morally good, fit to become part of the world-order; the other category is of actions that must be described as morally bad, morally imperfect, unworthy to become part of the world-order. But whatever comes to pass through men cannot have a momentary significance only—this is admitted by everybody. And the same applies to the world of Nature. Everything has its effects, its consequences, becomes the cause of something or is itself the effect of something. Human life would certainly not be in keeping with the course of world events if what it embraces were not also cause and effect. But whereas we can be completely satisfied when we observe Nature and clearly perceive cause and effect, we certainly cannot be satisfied about the connection between our moral experiences and the course taken by the world-order. There appears to be no direct connection in the physical happenings between what ought to be the result of the moral disposition of our soul and what actually comes to pass in the course of physical life. And if we consider happenings in wider circles of people we see that a man who in respect of his soul-life seems to be morally good, encounters misfortune and evil in the world, while a man who seems inwardly weak and immoral may encounter external events that are in no way a requital for what is harboured in his soul. In short, we find no connection between what a man experiences as his destiny and the essential quality of his will. It could be called an irresponsible illusion if anyone were to deceive himself that in the one life on Earth the destiny he encounters is in any way the effect of his moral will. The bad can be fortunate, the good unfortunate. These two statements really summarise that characteristic of earthly life which makes it incomprehensible, to begin with, to human faculties. And we shall see from this that man, as he is now placed in the world, is himself not in a position to bring about the consequences answering to his deeds. In the single life on Earth morality remains an inner disposition, an inner attunement of the soul; it cannot become directly manifest in outer physical reality. Admittedly, the inner disposition of the soul can be a direct result of the moral attitude. We can be inwardly contented with our good conduct, in spite of being hit by misfortune that is in crass contrast to what we have actually done; but the experience brought about in this way remains in the realm of the soul. Man must acknowledge that in physical life he is not in a position to bring to outward manifestation in the world the inner, moral content of his soul.

When we study karma as we have been doing during the last few days, seeing how earlier lives work over into later incarnations, we realise that in the moral sphere of the life of soul the earlier is inwardly connected with the later. Put briefly, however, this means that here, in physical life on Earth, man has a constitution which forces back his moral conduct into the realm of soul, does not allow it to take effect in one earthly life. In a single earthly life man is powerless to give effect to the moral content he bears in his soul. His physical corporality, his etheric substantiality, make him powerless. In the life between death and a new birth, however, he becomes as powerful as here in physical life he is powerless. But if in his physical life the physical and etheric bodies render him powerless, there must be something in the life between death and a new birth that enables him to give effect to this soul-content, to make it a reality there, and physical reality too in later lives on Earth. On Earth we live in our physical and etheric bodies amid the kingdoms of Nature and it is what we have to take from Nature for these bodies that renders us powerless. With our own being of soul-and-spirit which passes through the gate of death we become powerful after death because we are then united with the Beings of the higher Hierarchies, just as on Earth we are united with the kingdoms of Nature. The Beings of the Hierarchies belong, as we know, to three realms: to the lowest realm belong the Archai, Archangeloi, Angeloi; to the middle realm belong Exousiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes; to the highest realm belong Thrones, Cherubim, Seraphim. In the course of these lectures we have learnt how man lives between death and a new birth with the inmost essence of the stars and hence with these higher Hierarchies. But in order that the moral content of the soul may come to expression in life on Earth, the following must take place.

It is true that, to begin with, we have to retain in our soul the effects of our moral attitude of thought, feeling and will; we have to wait until in the life between death and a new birth we are vouchsafed the help of the Beings of the higher Hierarchies. What lies in our soul is first carried through the spiritual world, emerges again in a new earthly life and appears then in the form in which it is right to appear. For what should we be if in earthly life we could bring to direct fulfilment the moral content of our soul? We should not be typical men of terrestrial life! Just imagine that you bore within your soul a moral content that quite justifiably you considered could be capable of creating a favourable world-situation and that you could actually bring it about. What would you be then? You would be magicians, not typical men of the Earth! For when a power of spirit-and-soul is brought to direct expression, that is an essentially magical achievement. In our present cycle of existence man is no magician in the single life between birth and death. But he is a magician when, together with the Beings of the Hierarchies, he is active between death and a new birth and is able to continue these activities when he again descends into life on Earth. The karmic development through these two entirely different modes of existence is in fact the process where the human being works magically. The physical human being standing before us in external life is membered—as I have shown at the end of the book Von Seelenratseln (Riddles of the Soul)¹—into the nerves-senses man, the rhythmic man and the metabolic-limb man. Metabolism and limbs are connected; when we use our limbs, metabolism is activated and must continue; forces in man must be used up. Metabolism must continue in inner experience too. But both are related. When we observe the human metabolic system as it operates in the physical body, we may be tempted at first to regard it as man's lowest system. There are people who claim to be idealists because they have accustomed themselves to look down with a certain superciliousness upon the metabolic-limb system. It is the lowest system, the system that the respectable idealist would prefer to be without. But without it earthly life would be impossible; it is the system that represents man in his imperfection in earthly life.

Now the facts of the matter are these. In the physical human form the metabolic-limb system is the lowest and therefore has little to do for what is essentially human in earthly life, but it is connected in this earthly life with the Beings of the highest Hierarchy, the Thrones, the Cherubim, the Seraphim. As we move about the world or work with our hands, in this mysterious activity the activity of the Thrones, Cherubim and Seraphim is present. These Beings remain helpers when man's life continues between death and a new birth. They remain helpers. Now it is quite erroneous to believe that the moral content of the soul proceeds from the head. In reality, regarded from a higher point of view, man's head is by no means such a tremendously important organ. The head is really more or less a mirror of the external world, and if we had the head alone we should know about nothing except the external world. The head simply reflects the external world. The experiences of the head are mirrorings, reflections of the external world. Our inner, moral impulses do not proceed from the head but from the region of the metabolic-limb system, not, however, from the physical system but from its constitution of soul-and spirit wherein Thrones and Cherubim and Seraphim are living.

And so to acquire a right view of man we must picture the following.—(a drawing was made). This third member of man's constitution, the metabolic-limb system, seems at first to be imperfect, indeed it might be said that in respect of its physical and etheric organisation it is unworthy of the human being. But something else lies within it, or rather this system lies within something else; the Thrones live within it, the Cherubim weave within it, the Seraphim flame within it. When man passes through the gate of death, everything that underlies the physical metabolic-limb system falls away from him and with his ego he remains in the realm wherein he previously existed, namely in the realm of the Thrones, Cherubim and Seraphim. He then separates from them but they continue to develop the moral quality of the soul. Here on Earth man looks upwards, to the Heavens, in order to divine a higher reality, a spiritual-super-sensible reality. He does this as long as he is on the Earth. If he is living between death and a new birth he looks downwards and beholds what the moral content of his soul becomes as a result of the deeds of the Cherubim, Seraphim and Thrones. There below, when he descends again to the Earth, the consequences are fulfilled; there the Cherubim, Seraphim and Thrones are working to bring about the fulfilment of the spiritual reality.

And so, after we have become attentive to it, we see how in a magical way man sends the consequences of his deeds of the present into the next earthly life.

Now that we have considered the metabolic-limb system, let us turn our attention to its polar opposite, the nerves-and-senses system. This, of course, extends through the whole organism but is established primarily in the head. We will therefore consider the human head. It is a fact that through the head man experiences only a reflection of the existing external world. His thoughts, his mental conceptions in which alone, as I have said, he is really awake, are actually only reflections from outside by way of the head. But when a man masters Initiation Science, at first through Imaginative knowledge, then, as you know, through its metamorphosis into knowledge through Inspiration and then through Intuition, he is able to look into his earlier lives on Earth—but he sees them then in their spiritual form. In the spiritual world, knowledge itself is reality. And the experience of a man who with genuine Initiation-knowledge is able to look into earlier earthly lives is that he is living not only, say, on June 15th, 1924, but is himself present through the course of the earlier lives; he not only looks into those earlier lives but he looks back upon his whole being. It is not abstract, theoretical observation but direct identification with his own former existence. His inner life is greatly stirred when he begins to experience his earlier earthly lives. But this experience makes it possible to change the focus of his world-outlook. What is the usual focus of a world-outlook? The usual focus is the head. This head with its physical organisation as the foundation, this head which was yours in previous earthly lives and in the immediately preceding life, cannot be made the focus of your world-outlook when you have once experienced earlier incarnations, for it has long since passed away. Only the spiritual principle that was present in the head can be made the focal starting-point of a world-outlook. Initiation therefore consists in this: through going back into his former existence on Earth, man spiritualises himself. All clairvoyance in the best sense of the word actually means going back into earlier earthly lives. To be initiated means not to remain within the limits of the present life but to look at the things of the world with the faculties that were ours in earlier earthly existence. Whereas in the ordinary course we are such imperfect beings in earthly life that we see only the external physical world, the beings we were in earlier existences had already become clairvoyant. And as a rule when we experience the immediately preceding incarnation we make the discovery that the person we were then was already much nearer perfection.

How does it come about that what we could have become after the earlier life has not been achieved? Why is this? You see, if as human beings having nothing but a head we were to pass from one earthly life to another, we should be as perfect in the later life as in the former, but we have the other systems as well as the head. And since the magical principle in man lies in the metabolic-limb system which in turn works in karma, karma brings the head across from one earthly life to another. Thus karma is directly active in the formation of the head. And if we begin to develop an unprejudiced view of man in this field, we shall gradually learn to read a great deal about his karma from the physiognomy of his head. To look at the human head with the ordinary consciousness of today is just the same as taking Goethe's Faust and beginning “I—h-a-v-e—s-t-u-d-i-e-d—a-l-a-s...” because then one knows only the letters and cannot read. When we have learnt to read we shall understand what these strange signs mean. As I said once before, this trivial fact brings it about that whereas we should otherwise see only about thirty different shapes of letters in books, we have Goethe's Faust, Hegel's Logic, the Bible, and so on, simply because we have learnt to read. In the same way we can learn to read the living things around us. The progress from merely spelling the form of the human head and reading it leads into the secrets of the karma of that particular person. As regards the outwardly perceptible form of the head we may say that every human being has his own particular head; no single individual has exactly the same shaped head as another. Although individuals often look alike, they are not alike in respect of their karma. In the head-formation the karma of a man's past is revealed to physical sense-perception. In the metabolic-limb system lies future karma; spiritually concealed, invisibly it is there. So that if we speak of man in the spiritual sense we can say: Man is so constituted that on the one hand he makes his past karma visible and on the other hand he bears his future karma invisibly within him.

In this way we can eventually acquire an inwardly spiritual view of the human being. Man's metabolic-limb system is inferior in respect of its physical and etheric nature only, for in that system live the Beings of the highest Hierarchy. When we consider the physical-material aspect of the head it is undoubtedly the most perfect system because it bears within it, externally and visibly, what works over spiritually from earlier earthly lives. The head is generally the most highly valued, but it is not the most perfect in a spiritual respect. For whereas Thrones, Cherubim and Seraphim live in the metabolic-limb system, in the head-system live Archai, Archangeloi, Angeloi. It is they who stand behind everything we experience with our head in the physical world of sense. They live in us, in our head-system, and are active behind our consciousness; they encounter the effects of the physical world and mirror them back, and we become conscious only of the reflections. What we are aware of in our head-system is only the semblance of the activities of the Archai, Archangeloi and Angeloi. (A drawing was made). If I am to continue this diagram I must say: the Archai, Archangeloi and Angeloi are working, at the other pole, in the head-system.—I always use the nomenclature of the earlier Christian world-conception in which the spiritual connection was still intact, although the spiritual Beings may just as well be given other names.

Between the nerves-and-senses system which is based primarily in the head and the metabolic-limb system, man has the rhythmic system in which everything that is active between the lungs and the heart is contained. In all this activity live the Beings of the Hierarchy of the Exousiai. Dynamis, Kyriotetes.

In concluding our studies of karma we are led again to the realisation that while man faces the three kingdoms of Nature here on Earth, behind him are the spiritual kingdoms of the Hierarchies, one above the other. And as here on the Earth his physical body encompasses him and prevents him from bringing to fulfilment by magic the moral forces of his soul, after death the world of the Hierarchies receives him and enables him to make effective magically for the next incarnation what he cannot achieve in one earthly life. When a man passes over from one earthly life to the next he would in all circumstances, if his further evolution were to proceed consistently, develop clairvoyance with the head-system yielded by the former life; Archai, Archangeloi and Angeloi would lead him to clairvoyance. Hence if a man is to have insight into spiritual reality—insight that without an iota of superstition or charlatanry can be called clairvoyance—he must be able to project himself with a certain cosmic consciousness into his previous life on Earth, although in the external world he has progressed to his present incarnation.

Thus, if someone is living, let us say, in the twentieth century, he uses the body which this century can provide and for knowledge he must avail himself of the head. He cannot be clairvoyant. But let us suppose he were transported into a previous earthly life, say in the tenth or eleventh century, as the result of his meditative exercises now, in this twentieth century. He is not the same person as he was at that earlier time, but through his own forces he has brought it about spiritually that now, in the twentieth century, he is the man he was in that earlier epoch—a clairvoyant personality. Clairvoyance can reveal this clearly to Initiation-knowledge during life in the physical world. When we look closely into human life, however, it is revealed to clairvoyant consciousness that in the deeper impulses of a man's nature, in the deeper foundations of his soul, what was present in a former incarnation rises up again in a different form. It is therefore essential, if we wish to approach in earnest such matters as the working of karma, that earthly experience must be of a more spiritual character than is usual.

I will elaborate what I have been saying by means of an example. You know from the way in which I have given such examples that they are the findings of spiritual investigation undertaken with a deep sense of responsibility.

A certain individual lived in the European-Asiatic Orient, somewhat earlier than the founding of Christianity, with a task that was far from his liking. It was in an epoch when slavery was still prevalent and his task was to supervise a number of slaves belonging to a certain owner. Supersensible vision leads us to a situation where a human soul, incarnated at that time in the body of a slave-overseer, was obliged to carry out whatever the cruel owner of these slaves decreed. The slaves were in the care of the overseer and relationships of an ethical nature developed between them. But there was deep conflict in the soul of this overseer. It went against the grain to carry out the often cruel, disciplinary punishments ordered by his master. Nevertheless he obeyed, because he was accustomed to these circumstances and because it was natural at that time to act in such a way. Now just consider for a moment: are people to-day always what they would like to be? They do not often think about this; they deceive themselves about the disharmony between what they are and what they would like to be. This individual too was not what he would have liked to be, but intrinsically he had deep sympathy, deep love, for all the unhappy slaves upon whom he was obliged to inflict these cruelties. Social customs, so to say, caused him to hurt the slaves in many ways. He therefore shared the responsibility, although the master and owner of the slaves was primarily the culprit.

Both individualities were born again in the middle of the Middle Ages, and now as a married couple. The former slave-owner came again in a male incarnation, the overseer came as a woman. In the middle of the Middle Ages the reincarnated slave-owner held a position in a certain village commune, a position that was by no means pleasant, for he was a kind of police jailer and was held responsible for whatever happened in the commune; he felt that life was full of hardships. If we look for an explanation we find that these villagers were for the most part reincarnations of the slaves whom he had formerly owned and whom he had caused to be ill-treated by his overseer. The karmic result turned out to be that the former slave-owner, although he had become a fairly high official, was nevertheless the village jailer, who together with his wife was held responsible for whatever happened in the commune. But at the same time, because the wife shared in all the suffering that the one-time slaves caused her husband, the karma was fulfilled between her—the former overseer—and the slave-owner. The bond between these two was dissolved but not the tie between the one-time overseer, now incarnated as a woman, and the members of the commune. They came together again in the nineteenth century. The earlier overseer, who in a certain way had adjusted his relation to the former master, came again as the great educational reformer Pestalozzi, and those who had been the slaves under him were the children who received such infinite benefit from his educational principles.

These things must be viewed not merely with the prosaic intellect, but with soul, with feeling and with love which must become as clear and brilliant as the intellect and be able to develop genuine knowledge. The intellect can develop only pictures of outer Nature, and anyone who thinks that he gets something more than pictures deceives himself. It is possible to get more only if soul, feeling and love become forces of knowledge, and it is only by going back to earlier karma that we are gradually able to realise how karma works. But the whole soul must participate, and the content of these explanations of karma must be grasped by the whole being of man.

It really amounts to this: the soul must penetrate into the very essence of the Anthroposophical Movement. A short time ago I was deeply moved by a certain incident. What I have told you about Pestalozzi I had also said in a lecture in Dornach, and later on had occasion to visit an official in Basle, accompanied by another member of the Dornach Executive. The well-known picture of Pestalozzi among the children was hanging on the wall in the waiting-room. It was known to the member of the Vorstand who was with me. He was deeply moved by it and he said: When one looks at this faithful portrayal of Pestalozzi, one realises that such a situation can only have come about in the way that is revealed through Anthroposophy. This kind of thing is just what ought to occur more often, this realisation in direct experience of what has been discovered by anthroposophical investigations.

These indications of karma which I have now been able, to my great satisfaction, to give you, cannot make demands merely upon your intellect. What has been presented during these eight days calls not merely upon intellect but upon heart, upon the whole soul. And only when you have gathered together all that I have said about the reincarnation of historical personalities, about observation of individual karma, about the influences of sleeping and waking life in the development of karma and let it all work in your hearts and souls, will a comprehensive grasp of the working of karma in individual personalities result from these studies.

Our civilisation will be rescued from the grip of its present decline only if what is so readily taken to-day merely in an intellectualistic sense penetrates into the whole being of man. What does an Oriental say nowadays about Western man? The spirituality of an Oriental at the present time is not of a kind that we can adopt forthwith, but it is a spirituality which in the ancient past was able to gaze deeply into the super-sensible worlds. To-day only traces have remained but in his soul an Oriental still has the feeling of what was once experienced in the East, namely, living communion with the spirit inherent in all things. Such is the experience of those who are not entirely steeped in materialism. One Oriental who had a feeling for the spirituality in Eastern wisdom said the following as he contemplated Western civilisation: ‘Its essential characteristic is that it is only façade and has no foundations. The façade stands on the ground without any solid foundations.’—And this Oriental went on to say: ‘Yes, in nearly everything that belongs to his civilisation, Western man actually starts from the standpoint of his ego, the ego that is enclosed within a single life and therefore has no reality. It has reality only when it emerges from its bounds and leads into the successive earthly lives.’ Realisation of existence in successive earthly lives is regarded by the Oriental as the foundation-structure and remaining with the ego that is enclosed between birth and death he regards as the façade. Have we not heard to-day that when a man looks into spiritual reality he will look back into the past? If he contemplates karmic development with its magical processes he must have accepted the principle of successive incarnations. Then the ego widens out and will no longer be egotistic. The Oriental says that the European can recognise the ego only within the limits of birth and death and this he calls the egotism of the European. So he says that European, indeed Western civilisation as a whole, is only façade and has no foundation-structure; moreover that if this state of things continues and Western civilisation persists in recognising only the ego living between birth and death, the separate stones of the façade might one day fall apart as the façade has no foundation. This picture of the single stones crumbling away from the façade has actually arisen in many oriental souls, living as they do, largely in Imaginations. It is insight into such matters as have been studied here during these last few days that can add the foundation-structure and supplement the mere façade. Contemplation of the karma which reaches from earthly life to earthly life leads man beyond the restricted activity that is limited to a single life on Earth.

In what must be our final lecture, I should now like to place before your souls a vista into the cultural task of Anthroposophy. If it works on within you, revealing many things, you will become co-workers in the task of creating the foundation-structure for a true and genuine façade of Western civilisation. I have nothing to add to what has often been said by men of the East. What they really mean is this: the West has departed too far from the spirit, it can no longer find the foundation-structure; the East must contribute what it still possesses from ancient times in order that civilisation on Earth may not perish.

Whether this terrible fate that is prophesied for Western civilisation by all clear-sighted Orientals can be avoided, depends upon endeavours such as those of Anthroposophy. Resolute will is needed to penetrate into the spiritual world, in order that its forces may again be received into the hearts of men. Hence a community of human beings who have come together, as you have done, for spiritual activity, has grasped what this truly means only if the resolution is taken to apply all the forces of the will to the task of furthering, for the sake of humanity, experience of the spirit. My purpose in these lectures was to point the way to experience of spiritual reality and thus to the moral principle that is everywhere implicit in it. For this reason I wanted in these hours when we could be together again, to give you just what I have given. But in Anthroposophy spiritual things should be taken in earnest at all times, during every moment, not only during every lecture-hour. In Anthroposophy, therefore, it is true to say that when we are beside one another in space, we are together physically, but because we recognise spiritual reality we know that we are also together even when physically apart. And as I know that some of you here must travel back after the lecture, I will add this.—As we make our farewells let us say to ourselves that we will be true anthroposophists by remaining together in our souls through the spirit which becomes alive in us through our view of life. Let those of us who are now going away again say to our friends of the Breslau Group: we too will think about what we have been able to acquire for our own souls and those of others while working together with you. We will feel that we are with you even when we have gone away from this room and we hope that the Breslau friends too will think of those who were so glad to have been among them at this time.

• 1. See The Case for Anthroposophy. Steiner/Barfield, (Rudolf Steiner Press).

The lecture presented here is the 3rd of 12 lectures in the series entitled A Living Knowledge of Nature, the Fall of the Intellect into Sin, the Spiritual Resurrection.

Within this course of lectures I intend to speak of things which are connected with the preceding lectures, but which bring results of spiritual science drawn from a deeper source and show how the human being is placed in the universe. We speak of man in such a way that we envisage, to begin with, his physical organization and his etheric or vital body revealed to spiritual investigation; and then we speak of the astral body and of the Ego organization. But we do not yet grasp man's structure if we simply enumerate these things in sequence, for each of these members has a different place in the universe. We are able to grasp man's position in the cosmos only if we understand how these different members are placed in the universe.

When we study the human being, as he stands before us, we find that these four members of human nature interpenetrate in a way which cannot at first be distinguished; they are united in an alternating activity, and in order to understand them we must first study them separately, as it were, and consider each one in its special relation to the universe. We can do this in the following way, by setting out, not from a more general aspect, but from a definite standpoint.

Bear I mind, to begin with, the more peripheric aspect of man, the external boundary, what is outside him. From other anthroposophical studies we know that we discover certain senses only when we penetrate, as it were, below the surface of the human form, into man's inner life. But essentially speaking, also the senses which transmit us a knowledge of our own inner being, have to be sought in regard to their starting point, and to begin with in a very unconscious way, on the inner side of the surface of man's being. We may therefore say: Everything in man existing in the form of senses should be looked for on the surface. It suffices to bear in mind one of the more prominent senses; for example, the eye or the ear—these show that the human being must obtain certain impressions from outside. How matters really stand in regard to these senses should, of course, be studied more deeply, by a more profound research. This has already been done here for some of the human senses. But the way in which these things appear in ordinary life induces us to say: A sense organ—for example, the eye or the ear—perceives things through impressions coming from outside.

Man's position on earth easily enables us to see that the chief direction which determines the influences enabling him to have sensory perceptions can approximately be described as “horizontal.” A more accurate study would also show us that this statement is absolutely correct; for when perceptions apparently come from another direction, this is an illusion. Every direction relating to perception must in the end follow the horizontal. And the horizontal is the line which runs parallel to the surface of the earth. If I now draw this schematically, I would therefore have to say: If this is the surface of the earth, with the perceiving human being upon it, the chief direction of his perceptions is the one which runs parallel to the earth. All our perceptions follow this direction. And when we study the human being, it will not be difficult to say that the perceptions come from outside; they reach, as it were, man's inner life from outside. What meets them from inside? From inside we bring towards them our thinking, the power of forming representations or thoughts.

If you consider this process, you cannot help saying: When I perceive through the eye, I obtain an impression from outside, and my thinking power comes from inside. When I look at the table, its impression comes from outside. I can retain a picture of the table in my memory through the representing or thinking power which comes from within. We may therefore say: If we imagine a human being schematically, the direction of his perceptions goes from the outside to the inside, whereas the direction of his thinking goes from the inside to the outside.

What we thus envisage, is connected with the perceptions of the earthly human being in ordinary life, of the earthly human being appearing to us externally in the present epoch of the earth's development. The things mentioned above are facts evident to the ordinary human consciousness. But if you study the anthroposophical literature, you will find that there are other possibilities of consciousness differing from those which exist for the earthly human being in ordinary life.

I would now ask you to form, even approximately and vaguely, a picture of what the earthly human being perceives. You look upon the colours which exist on earth, you hear sounds, you experience sensations of heat, and so forth. You obtain contours of the things you perceive, so that you perceive their shape, and so forth.

But all the things in our environment, with which we have thus united ourselves, only constitute facts pertaining to our ordinary consciousness. There are, however, other possibilities of consciousness, which remain more unconscious in the earthly human being and are pushed into the depths of his soul life; yet they are just as important, and frequently far more important in human life than the facts of consciousness which exhaust themselves in what I have described so far.

For the human constitution which man has here on earth, the things below the surface of the earth are just as important as those which exist in the earth's circumference. The circumference of the earth, what exists around the earth, may be perceived by the ordinary senses and grasped by the representing capacity which meets sense perception. This fills the consciousness of the ordinary human being living on the earth.

But let us consider the inside of the earth. Simple reflection will show you that the inside of the earth is not accessible to ordinary consciousness. We may, to be sure, make excavations reaching a certain depth and in these holes—for example in mines—observe things in the same way in which we observe them on the earth's surface. But this would be the same as observing a human corpse. When we study a corpse, we study something which no longer constitutes the whole human being, but only a residue of man as a whole. Indeed, those who are able to consider such things in the right way must even say: We are then looking upon something which is the very opposite of man. The reality of earthly man is the living human being walking around, and to him belong the bones, muscles, etc. which exist in him. The bone structure, the muscular structure, the nerve structure, the heart, lungs, etc. correspond to the living human being and are as such true and real. But when I look upon the corpse, this no longer corresponds to the living human being. The form which lies before me as corpse, no longer requires the existence of lungs, of a heart, or of a muscular system. Consequently these decay. For a while they maintain the form given to them, but a corpse is really an untruth, for it cannot exist in the form in which it lies before us; it must dissolve. It is not a reality. Similarly the things I perceive when I dig a hole into the earth are not realities.

The closed earth influences the human being standing upon it, differently from the things which exist in such a way that when the human being stands upon the earth, he beholds them through his senses, as the earth's environment.

If, to begin with, you consider this from the soul aspect, you may say: The earth's environment is able to influence man's senses and it may be grasped by the thinking or representing capacity pertaining to ordinary human consciousness. Also what is inside the earth exercises an influence upon man, but it does not follow the horizontal direction; it rises from below. In our ordinary state of consciousness, we do not perceive these influences rising from below in the same way in which we perceive the earth's environment through the ordinary senses. If we could perceive what rises up from the earth in the same way in which we perceive what exists in the earth's environment, we would need a kind of eye or organ of touch able to feel into the earth, without our having to dig a hole into it, so that we could reach or see through (durchgreifen) the earth in the same way in which we see through air when we behold something. When we look through air, we do not dig a hole into it; if we first had to dig a hole into air, in order to look at it, we would see our environment in the same way in which we would see the earth in a coal mine. Hence, if it were not necessary to dig a hole into the earth in order to see its inside, we would have to have a sense organ able to see without the need of digging holes into the earth, an organ for which the earth, such as it is, would become transparent to sight or touch. In a certain way this is the case, but in ordinary life these perceptions do not reach human consciousness. For what the human being would then perceive are the earth's different kinds of metals.

Consider how many metals are contained in the earth. Even as you have perceptions in your air-environment—if I may use this expression—even as you see animals, plants, minerals, artistic objects of every kind, so perceptions of the metals rise up to you from the earth's inside. But if perceptions of the metals could really reach your consciousness, they would not be ordinary perceptions, but imaginations. And these imaginations continually reach man, by rising up from below. Even as the visual impressions come, as it were, from the horizontal direction, so the radiations of metals continually reach us from below; yet they are not visual perceptions of the minerals, but something pertaining to the inner nature of minerals, which works its way up through us and takes on the form of imaginations or pictures. But the human being does not perceive these pictures; they are weakened. They are suppressed, as it were, because man's earthly consciousness is not able to perceive imaginations. They are weakened down to feelings.

If, for example, I imagine all the gold existing in some way in the caverns of the earth, and so forth, my heart really perceives an image which corresponds to the gold in the earth. But this picture is an imagination, and for this reason ordinary human consciousness cannot perceive it, for it is dulled down to a life feeling, an inner vital feeling, which cannot even be interpreted, less still perceived, in its corresponding image. The same applies to the other organs, for the kidneys perceive in a definite image all the tin which exists in the earth, and so forth.

All these impressions are subconscious and they do not appear in the general feelings that live in the human being. You may therefore say: The perceptions coming from the earth's environment follow a horizontal direction and are met from within by the thinking or representing power; from below come the perceptions of metals—above all, of metals—and they are met by feeling, in the same way in which ordinary perceptions are met by the thinking capacity. This process, however, remains chaotic and unreal to the human beings of the present time. From these impressions they only derive a general life-feeling.

If the human being on earth had the gift of imagination, he would know that his nature is also connected with the metals in the earth. In reality, every human organ is a sense organ, and although we use it for another purpose, or apparently do so, it is nevertheless a sense organ. During our earthly life, we simply use our organs for other purposes. For we really perceive something with each organ. The human being is in every way a great sense organ, and as such, he has differentiated, specified sense organs in the single organs of his body.

You therefore see that from below, the human being obtains perceptions of metals and that he has a life of feeling corresponding to these perceptions. Our feelings exist in contrast to everything coming to us from the earth's metals, even as our thinking or representing power exists in contrast to everything which penetrates into our sense perceptions from the earth's environment.

But in the same way in which the influences of the metals reach us from below, so we are influenced from above by the movements and forms of the celestial bodies in the world's spaces. We have sense perceptions in our environment, and similarly we have a consciousness which would manifest itself as inspired consciousness, as inspirations coming from every planetary movement and from every constellation of fixed stars. Even as our thinking capacity streams towards our ordinary sense perceptions, so we send out to the movements of the celestial bodies a force which is opposed to the impressions derived from the stars, and this force is our will. What lies in our will power, would be perceived as inspiration, if we were able to use the inspired state of consciousness.

You therefore see that by studying man in this way, we must say to ourselves: In his earthly consciousness we find, to begin with, the condition in which he is most widely awake: his life of sensory perceptions and of thoughts. During our ordinary, earthly state of consciousness, we are completely awake only in this life of sensory perceptions and thoughts. Our feeling life, on the other hand, only exists in a dreaming state. There, we only have the intensity or clearness of dreams, but dreams are pictures, whereas our feeling life is the general soul constitution determined by life; that is to say, feeling. But at the foundation of feeling lie the metal influences coming from the earth. And the consciousness based on the will lies still deeper. I have frequently explained this. Man does not really know the will that lives in him. I have often explained this by saying: The human being has the thought of stretching out his arm, or of touching something with his hand. He can have this thought in his waking consciousness and may then look upon the process of touching something. But everything that really lies in between, the will which shoots into his muscles, etc., all this remains concealed to our ordinary consciousness, as deeply hidden as the experiences of a deep slumber without dreams. We dream in our feelings and we sleep in our will. But the will which sleeps in our ordinary consciousness responds to the impressions coming from the stars, in the same way in which our thoughts respond to the sense impressions of ordinary consciousness. And what we dream in our feelings is the counter-activity which meets the influences coming from the metals of the earth.

In our present waking life on earth, we perceive the objects around us. Our thinking capacity counteracts. For this we need our physical and etheric body. Without the physical and etheric body we could not develop the forces which work in a horizontal direction—the perceptive and thinking forces. If we imagine this schematically we might say: As far as our daytime consciousness is concerned, the physical and etheric bodies become filled with sense impressions and with our thinking activity. When the human being is asleep, his astral body and his Ego organization are outside. They receive the impressions which come from below and from above. The Ego and the astral body really sleep in the metal streams rising up from the earth, if I may use this expression, and in the streams descending from the planetary movements and the constellations of fixed stars.

What thus arises in the earth's environment exercises no influence in a horizontal direction, but exists in form of forces which descend from above, and in the night we live in them.

If you could attain the power of imagination by setting out from your ordinary consciousness, so that the imaginative consciousness would really exist, you would have to achieve this in accordance with the demands of the present epoch of human development; namely, in such a way that every human organ is seized by the imaginative consciousness. For example, it would have to seize not only the heart, but every other organ. I have told you that the heart perceives the gold which exists in the earth. But the heart alone could never perceive the gold. This process takes place as follows: As long as the Ego and astral body are connected with the physical and etheric bodies, as is normally the case, the human being cannot be conscious of such a perception. Only when the Ego and the astral body become to a certain extent independent, as is the case in imagination, so that they do not have to rely on the physical and etheric bodies, we may say: The astral body and the Ego organization acquire, near the heart, the faculty of knowing something about these radiations coming from the metals in the earth. We may say: The center in the astral body for the influences which come from the gold radiations, lies in the region of the heart. For this reason we may say: The heart perceives—because the real perceptive instrument in the astral body pertaining to this part, to the heart—not the physical organ, but the astral body, perceives.

If we acquire the imaginative consciousness, the whole astral body and also the whole Ego organization must enable the parts corresponding to every human organ to perceive. That is to say, the human being is then able to perceive the whole metal life of the earth—differentiated, of course. But details in it can only be perceived after a special training, when he has passed through a special occult study, enabling him to know the metals of the earth. In the present time, such a knowledge would not be an ordinary one. And today it should not be applied to life in a utilitarian way. It is a cosmic law that when the knowledge of the earth's metals is used for utilitarian purposes in life, this would immediately entail the loss of the imaginative knowledge.

Last part—It may, however, occur that owing to pathological conditions, the intimate connection which should exist between the astral body and the organs is interrupted somewhere in man's being, or even completely, so that the human being sleeps, as it were, quite faintly, during his waking condition. When he is really asleep, his physical body and his etheric body on the one hand, and his astral body and his Ego on the other, are separated; but there also exists a sleep so faint that a person may walk about in an almost imperceptible state of stupor—a condition which may perhaps appear highly interesting to some, because such people have a peculiarly “mystical” appearance; they have such mystical eyes and so forth. This may be due to the fact that a very faint sleeping state exists even during the waking condition. There is always a kind of vibration between the physical and etheric body and the Ego organization and astral body. There is an alternating vibration. And such people can be used as metal feelers—they feel the presence of metals. But the capacity to feel the presence of special metal substances in the earth is always based on a certain pathological condition.

Of course, if these things are only viewed technically and placed at the service of technical-earthly interests, it is, cruelly speaking, quite an indifferent matter whether people are slightly ill or not; even in other cases, one does not look so much at the means for bringing about this or that useful result. But from an inner standpoint, from the standpoint of a higher world conception, it is always pathological if people can perceive not only horizontally, in the environment of the earth, but also vertically, in a direct way, not through holes. What thus comes to expression, must, of course, be revealed in a different way. If we take a pen and write down something, this is contained in the ordinary life of thought; this must be lifeless. But the ordinary life of thought drowns in light (“verleuchtet”)—if I may use this expression in contrast to “darkens” (“verdunkelt”)—the perception coming from below; consequently, it is necessary to use different signs from those we use, for example, when we write or speak; different signs must be used when specific metal substances in the earth are perceived through a pathological condition. I observe, for example, that also water is a metal. Pathological people may actually be trained, not only to have unconscious perceptions, but also to give unconscious signs of these perceptions—for example, they can make signs with a rod placed in their hand.

What is the foundation of all this? It is based on the fact that there is a faint interruption between the Ego and astral body on the one hand, and the physical and etheric body on the other, so that the human being does not only perceive what is, approximately speaking, at his side, but by eliminating his physical body he becomes a sensory organ able to perceive the inside of the earth, without having to dig holes into it.

But when this direction exercises its influence, a direction which is normally that of feeling, then one cannot use the expressions which correspond to the thinking capacity. These perceptions are not expressed in words. They can only be expressed, as already indicated, through signs.

Similarly, it is possible to stimulate perceptions descending from above. They have a different inner character; they are no longer a perception of metals, but inspiration, conveying the movements or the constellation of the stars. In the same way in which the human being perceives the earth's constitution as rising up from below, he now perceives, descending from above, something which again arises through pathological conditions, when the Ego is in a more loose connection with the astral body. He then perceives, descending from above, something which really gives the world its division of time, the influence of time. This enables him to look more deeply into the world's course of events, not only in regard to the past, but also in connection with certain events which do not flow out of man's free will, but out of the necessity guiding the world's events. He is then able to look, as it were, prophetically into the future. He casts a gaze into the chronological order of time.

With these things I only wished to indicate that through certain pathological conditions it is possible for man to extend his perceptive capacity. In a s o u n d and h e a l t h y way this is done through imagination and inspiration.

Perhaps the following may explain what constitutes sound and unsound elements in this field. For a normal person it is quite good if he has—let us say—a normal sense of smell. With a normal sense of smell he perceives objects around him through smell; but if he has an abnormal sense for any smelling object in his environment, he may suffer from an idiosyncrasy, when this or that object is near him. There are people who really get ill when they enter a room in which there is just one strawberry; they do not need to eat it. This is not a very desirable condition. It may, however, occur that someone who is not interested in the person, but in the discovery of stolen strawberries, or other objects which can be smelled, might use the special capacity of that person.

If the human sense of smell could be developed like that of dogs, it would not be necessary to use police dogs, for people could be used instead. But this must not be one. You will therefore understand me when I say that the perceptive capacity for things coming from below and from above should not be developed wrongly, so as to be connected with pathological conditions, for these are positively destructive for man's whole organization.

To train people to sense the presence of metals would therefore be the same as training them to be bloodhounds, police dogs, except that here—if I may use this expression—the humanly punishable element is far more intensive. For only through pathological conditions can such things appear in this or that person. All the things which generally come towards you in an ignorantly confused and nebulous way, will be understood in regard to their theory, and also by judging them as they have to be judged, within man's whole connection with the world. This is one aspect of the matter.

The other aspect is that there is also a right application of such a knowledge. A person who is endowed with the imaginative power of knowledge, must not use the imaginative forces of the astral body, located in the region of the heart, to procure gold. He may, however, apply these forces to recognize the construction, the true tasks, the inner essence of the heart itself. He may apply them in the meaning of human self-knowledge. In physical life this also corresponds to the right application of—let us say—the sense of smell, of sight, and so forth. We learn to know every organ in man when we are able to put together what we discern as coming from below or from above.

For example, you learn to know the heart when you recognize the gold contained in the earth, which sends out streams that may be perceived by the heart, and when, on the other hand, you recognize the current of will descending from the sun; that is to say, when you recognize the counter-current of the sun current in the will. If you unite these two streams, the joint activity of the sun's current from above, streaming down from the sun's zenith, and of the gold perceived below—if the gold contained in the earth stirs your imagination, and the sun your inspiration, you will obtain knowledge of the human heart, heart knowledge. In a similar way it is possible to gain knowledge of the other organs. Consequently, if the human being really wants to know himself, he must draw the elements of this knowledge from the influences coming from the cosmos.

This leads us to a sphere which indicates even more concretely than I have done on previous occasions man's connection with the cosmos. If you add to this the lectures which I have just concluded on the development of natural science in more recent times, you will gather, particularly from yesterday's lecture, that on the present stage of natural science man learns to know essentially lifeless substance, dead matter. He does not really learn to know himself, his own reality, but only his lifeless part. A true knowledge of man can only arise from the joint perception of the lifeless organs which we recognize in man, the organs in their lifeless state, and all we are able to recognize from below and from above in connection with these organs.

This leads to a knowledge based on full consciousness. An earlier, more instinctive knowledge was based upon an interpolation of the astral body which was different from that of today. Today the astral body is interpolated in such a way that man, as an earthly human being, may become free. This entails that he should recognize in the first place what is dead, and this pertains to the present, then the life foundation of the past through that which rises up from below—from the earth's metals—and finally the life-giving forces descending from above as star influences and star constellations.

A true knowledge of man will have to seek in every organ this threefold essence: the lifeless or physical, the basis of life or the psychical, and the life-giving, vitalizing forces, or the spiritual.

Everywhere in human nature, in every detail connected with it, we shall therefore have to seek the physical-bodily, the psychical, and the spiritual. Logically, its point of issue will have to be gained from a true estimate of the results so far obtained in the field of natural science. It is necessary to see that the present stage of natural science leads us everywhere to the grave of the earth and that the living essence must be discovered and lifted out of the earth's grave.

We discover this by perceiving that modern spiritual science must endow old visions and ideas (Ahnungen) with life. For these always existed. In these days I have given advice to people working in different spheres; I would advise those studying history of literature that when they speak of Goetheanism, they should keep to Goethe's ideas expressed in the second part of “Wilhelm Meister”, in “Wilhelm Meister's Wanderjahren”, where we find the description of a woman who is able to participate in the movements of the stars, owing to a pathological condition of soul and spirit. At her side we find an astronomer. And she is confronted by another character, by the woman who is able to feel the presence of metals. And at the side of this woman we find Montanus, the miner, the geologist. This contains a profound foreboding, far profounder than the truths in physics discovered since Goethe's time in the field of natural-scientific development, great as they are, for these natural-scientific truths pertain to man's circumference. But in the second part of “Wilhelm Meister” Goethe drew attention to something pertaining to the worlds with which man is connected—with the stars above, with the earth's depths below.

Many things of this kind may be found, both in the useful fields and in the luxury fields of science. But also these things will only be drawn to the surface as real treasures of knowledge, when Goetheanism, on the one hand, and spiritual science on the other, will be taken so earnestly that many things of which Goethe had an inkling will be illumined by spiritual science; and also spiritual science may thus change into something giving us a historical sense of pleasure when we see that Goethe had a kind of idea of things which now arise in form of knowledge, and which he elaborated artistically in his literary works.

With all these things, however, I wish to point out that when we speak of scientific strivings within the anthroposophical movement, these should be followed with that deep earnestness which does not bring with it the danger of Anthroposophy being deduced from modern chemistry, or modern physics, modern physiology, and so forth, but which includes the single branches of science in the real stream of living anthroposophical knowledge. One would like to hear of chemists, physicists, physiologists, medical men speaking in an anthroposophical way. For it leads to no progress if specialists succeed in forcing anthroposophy to speak chemically, physically or physiologically. This would only rouse opposition, whereas there should at last be a progress, evident in the fact that Anthroposophy reveals itself as Anthroposophy also to these specialists, and not as something which is taken in accordance with its terminology, so that terminologies are thrown over things which one already knows, even without Anthroposophy. It is the same whether anthroposophical or other terminologies are applied to hydrogen, oxygen, etc., or whether one adheres to the old terminologies. The essential thing is to take in Anthroposophy with one's whole being, then one becomes a true Anthroposophist, also as a chemist, physiologist, physician, etc.

In these lectures, in which I was asked to describe the history of scientific thought, I wished to bring, on the basis of a historical contemplation, truths that may bear fruit. For the anthroposophical movement absolutely needs to become fruitful, really fruitful, in many different fields.

In recent lectures we have been comparing man's relationship towards Nature, towards the whole world, in olden times with that existing in our time. I pointed out, for example, how very much more concrete and actual was man's experience of Nature in more ancient times, because his inner life was much more vivid. I showed how man used to perceive his thinking process as a kind of deposition of salt in his own organism—if I may express it somewhat crudely. When man thought, he had the feeling that something hardened in his own organism. He seemed to feel the thoughts shining through his being and was aware too of a kind of etheric-astral skeleton. The sight of a cubic crystal aroused in him feelings different from those evoked by a sharply pointed one. He experienced thoughts as a hardening process within himself. Willing was to him a fiery process, a process of warmth radiating inwards.

Because man possessed such definite and vivid feelings within his own being, he could also feel outer Nature more vividly and thereby also live more concretely within it. We might say that to-day man knows little more of his inner being than the reflections cast into it by the outer world. He knows these reflections as memories and he knows the feelings, the very abstract feelings, he experiences or has experienced in connection with them; but he has lost that vivid experience of his organism being irradiated, illumined and warmed through and through. At the present time man knows of his own inner being only as much as the doctor or the scientist can tell him. Actual inner experience of his own being has ceased. Since man's external knowledge corresponds exactly to his knowledge of his own inner world, and since of this latter he knows no more than the scientist or the doctor can tell him, then also his knowledge of the outer world remains equally abstract. He informs himself about the laws of Nature but these are abstract thoughts. A really sympathetic experience of Nature is only possible in an instinctive way, though it is one which cannot be denied. Man has gradually lost knowledge of the elementary forces really working in Nature and therefore he is shut out from the rich life of Nature.

What has been preserved from former times concerning the life of Nature is now called myths and fairy tales. Certainly these myths and fairy tales express themselves in pictures, but the pictures point to something spiritual ruling in Nature. This is first of all an "elementary" spirituality expressed in indefinite outlines, but it is nevertheless spiritual, and when we penetrate through it we see a higher spirituality.

We might say that in former times man dealt not only with plants, stones, animals, but with the elementary spirits living in earth, water, air, fire, etc. When man lost himself, he also lost this experience of the Nature spirits.

A kind of dreamy resuscitation of these Nature spirits in human consciousness would not do, for it would lead to superstition. A new attitude towards Nature must lay hold of human consciousness. Man must be able to say to himself something like this: "Once upon a time men looked into themselves. They then had a lively experience of what went on within their own being. They thereby became acquainted with certain elementary spirits. When man turned his gaze inwards, those spirits began to speak to his heart and to give him that older, inner knowledge in the form of pictures which even to-day work upon us with elemental poetic force."

Those beings who were thus able to speak to man had their homes in the several human organs; for one lived as it were in the human brain, another in the human lungs, another in the human heart, etc. For man did not perceive his inner being in the way described by the anatomist to-day, he perceived it as living, active, elementary being. And when to-day with the science of initiation the path is sought to these beings, man experiences a very definite feeling about them. It seems to him that in olden times they used to speak to man through his own inner being, through each single part of this inner being. They were as if enclosed within the human skin. They inhabited the earth but they dwelt in man. They were within man, spoke to him, and gave him their knowledge. All man's knowledge of earthly existence came to him from within his own human skin.

With the development of humanity to freedom and independence these beings have lost their dwelling-place in man on the earth. They do not embody themselves in human flesh and human blood and therefore they cannot inhabit the earth in the human way; but they are still within the domain of the earth, and together with man they must reach a certain earthly goal. This is only possible if man, as it were, pays back to them what he once received from them. Then with initiation science the path to vision of these beings is trodden, it is realised that these beings once cultivated and fostered human knowledge. Much of what man is, he owes to them, for they permeated his being in his former incarnations and through them man has become what he is to-day. But they do not possess physical eyes nor physical ears. Once they lived with man. Now having left him they remain in the domain of the earth. We should recognise that once upon a time they were our teachers. Now when they have grown old we must restore to them again what they once gave to us. But that is only possible in the present phase of evolution when we approach Nature in the spirit, when we seek in the beings in Nature not only that which the abstract intellectuality of the present day seeks, but that pictorial element which is not accessible to the dead judgment of the reason but only to the developed life of feeling.

When in spirituality, that is to say, from the spiritual world-conception of Anthroposophy, we seek this pictorial element, we meet with these beings again. They may be said to observe and listen to us immersing ourselves anthroposophically in Nature; in this way they receive something from us, whereas from the ordinary knowledge of physiology and anatomy they get nothing and even have to suffer frightful deprivation. They get nothing from the lectures on anatomy nor from the operating theatres, nothing from the chemical laboratories nor the experiments in physics. They seem to ask: "Has the earth become utterly empty? Has it become a desert waste? Have they left the earth, those men to whom we once gave all we possessed? Will they not now lead us again to the things of Nature, as they alone can do?"

The fact to be realised is that there are beings who are now waiting for us to unite with them—just as we unite with other human beings on a common ground of knowledge—so that they may share in our knowledge and our actions. When a man studies physics or chemistry in the ordinary way, he is ungrateful to the fostering beings who once made him what he is. For by the side of all that man now unfolds in his consciousness these beings must starve in the domain of the earth. And man will only develop gratitude for their kindly care when again he seeks the spirit in that which he can see with his eyes, hear with his ears, and grasp with his hands. For these beings are able to share with man the spirituality permeating the perceptions of the senses. But in what is grasped in a purely material way, these beings are quite unable to participate. We human beings are only able to pay our debt of gratitude to these other beings when we really enter deeply into the content of Anthroposophy.

For instance, let us suppose that a man of the present day lays a fish on the table, or places a bird in a cage, and perceives it externally through his sense of sight. He is so egoistic in his knowledge that he stops at what he already perceives. Nor is it enough to picture the fish in the water or the bird in the air—this egoism only gives way when we see from the very form of the fish or of the bird, that the former is a creature of the water and by means of the water, and the latter a creature of the air and by means of the air. Let us imagine that we are observing flowing water not merely as a chemist to whom it is a chemical combination of hydrogen and oxygen, H2O, but that we look at the water in its reality. Then perhaps we find fish in it; we find that these fish consist of a soft substance developed in remarkable way into breathing organs in front; and we find that they are surrounded by a bony structure which, on account of the water, remains soft, with a delicate jaw over which the flesh, the substance of the body is laid. This bodily substance may appear to us as if proceeding out of the water, from water into which fall the rays of the sun. If we are able to perceive the sun's rays falling into this water, shining through it and warming it, and the fish swimming towards the warm illumined water, then we begin to perceive how this sun-warmth tempered by the water, and this sunlight shining in the water come towards us. This warm illumined water, together with the rhythm of the breathing, lays the soft substance of the fish's body over the jaw, and when the fish faces me with his teeth, when he comes towards me with his covered jaws and his peculiarly formed head, I feel that with this fish the shining warm water also comes towards me. And then I feel how, on the other hand, some other formative force is active in the fins. I learn gradually to perceive in the fins of the tail (I will only briefly indicate this now) and in the other fins, a tempered light, a light so tempered as to produce a substance harder than the rest of the body. Thus I learn of gradually to recognise the reflection of the sun-element in all that the fish brings towards me in its head, and the reflection of the moon-element in its hardened fins; in short, I am able to place the fish in the whole water element.

Then I look at the bird. It is impossible for the bird to develop its head in water, by swimming towards or with the sun-warmed, sun-illumined water, for the bird is adapted to the air. I learn that there is effort in its breathing. Where the breathing is not supported by water working on the gills, it becomes an effort. I perceive how the sun shines through and warms the air differently, and I become aware of the way in which the substance of the bird is pressed back from the bird's beak; I recognise that in the bird it is somewhat as if a man were to force back all the flesh that lies over his teeth thus making his jaw project. I recognise why the bird thrusts its beak towards me, whereas in the fish the jaw is held out more modestly clothed in bodily substance. I learn how the bird's head is a creation of the air, air which is everywhere filled with the warmth and light of the sun. I learn to perceive a big difference between the warm gleaming water which produces fish, and the warm illumined air which produces birds. I learn gradually to understand how, through this difference, the whole life of the bird becomes different. While the fins of the fish obtain their simple rays from the water, the bird's feathers obtain their barbs and barbules through the particular activity of the air, air that is filled with the light and warmth of the sun.

In this way I outgrow the ordinary crude view, and when the fish comes on to the table I am not too lazy to see the water as well, and when the bird is in the cage, to see the air with it. When I go further and do not limit myself to seeing the air round the bird only when it is flying in the air, but in its form I see and feel the formative element in the air, then that which lives in the forms and is filled with spirit awakens for me. In this way I learn to distinguish how differently the different animals live together with outer Nature, what a difference there is between a pachyderm, a thick-skinned animal such as a hippopotamus, and a soft-skinned animal such as a pig. I perceive that the hippopotamus has the tendency to expose his skin to the direct rays of the sun, while the pig continually withdraws his skin from the direct sunlight, preferring to withdraw into the shade. In short, I learn to recognise the particular action of Nature in each single being. My method is to pass from the several animals to the elements. I leave the path of the chemist who says that water consists of two atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen! I leave the path of the physicist who tells us that air consists of oxygen and nitrogen. I pass over to concrete vision. I see the water filled with fish; I see the relationship between water and fish. To speak of water in its abstract character as hydrogen and oxygen is to be quite inadequate. In reality water, together with sun and moon, produces fish, and through the fish the elementary nature of the water speaks to my soul. To speak of the air as being a mixture of oxygen and nitrogen is too abstract—the air that is filled with light and permeated with warmth, that pushes back the flesh from the bird's beak, and that shapes the organs of breathing in fish and bird each in its own peculiar way. Through fish and bird these elements express to me their own character. What riches are brought to the inner life by this approach to Nature, what poverty by the other!

Anthroposophical spiritual science gives us opportunities everywhere to speak of things in the way just described. For Anthroposophy has no wish to be received like the products of contemporary civilization; it desires to stimulate us to a new and special perception of the world.

If what has just been characterised were to be really felt, than a gathering of people into such a society as the Anthroposophical would make this society a reality. For then every member of this Anthroposophical Society would have a certain right to say: "I return thanks to the elementary beings who were once active in my human nature and really made me what I am. Once they dwelt within my skin and spoke to me through my organs; now they have lost that possibility. But when I gaze upon the single objects in the world in this way and see how each is fashioned out of the whole of Nature, when I take seriously the descriptions in Anthroposophy, then I speak in my soul a language which these beings can understand once more. I am able to be grateful to these spiritual beings."

This is what is meant when it is said that members of the Anthroposophical Society should not merely speak of spirit in general,—the pantheist also does that,—but should be conscious of being able to live again with the spirit. Then quite of itself there would enter into the Anthroposophical Society this "living in the spirit" with other men. And it would be realised that the Anthroposophical Society is in existence for the purpose of repaying the debt we owe to those beings who nurtured us and cherished us in ancient times; then would members become aware of the reality of the spirit ruling in the Anthroposophical Society. Many of the old feelings that still live on in tradition would disappear, and be replaced by the recognition that the Anthroposophical Society has a very definite task. Then would everything else develop and be understood in its relation to life. We may indeed point with a certain inner satisfaction to the fact that during the war, when the peoples of Europe were engaged in fighting against one another, seventeen nations were working together on this Building, which has now come to such a sad end. But the reality behind the Anthroposophical Society only emerges when the various nationalities are able to burst through the narrow limita¬tions of nationality to real unity in Anthroposophy; when behind the abstract form of the Anthroposophical Society we experience the true reality. But to this end very definite preparations are necessary.

There is a certain justification in the reproach made by the outside world against the Anthroposophists, that whereas much is said about spiritual progress there is little of it to be seen among individual Anthroposophists.

It is quite possible to make this spiritual progress; for the right reading of any one book gives this possibility. But to this end it is necessary that the content of our last lecture¹ should be taken seriously:—that the physical body is built up rightly through truthfulness, the etheric body through the sense of beauty, and the astral body through the feeling for goodness.

To speak first of truthfulness. The cultivation of truth should be a fundamental characteristic of all who really strive to unite in an Anthroposophical Society. It must first of all be acquired in life itself, and it must be something different for those who wish to develop gratitude to the beings who nurtured them in ancient times from what it is for the ignorant who prefer to remain in ignorance.

Those who do not wish to hear these things may be those who assimilate facts in accordance with their prejudices; when they desire it they may make false statements about an event or a man's character. But he who wishes to develop inner truthfulness may never go beyond what the facts of the outer world tell him. And, strictly speaking, he must always take care so to formulate his words that in respect to the outer world he only relates the facts which he has proved.

Only think how much it is the custom for people to-day to presuppose something that pleases them, and then to suppose that it is so! Anthroposophists must accustom themselves to separate all their prejudices from the true course of the facts and to describe only the pure facts. In this way Anthroposophists would of themselves act correctively in a world in which falsehood is only too often the custom.

Only think of all that is reported in the newspapers. The newspapers feel bound to report everything, no matter whether it can be proved or not. And then, when something is related, we often feel that no effort has been made to discover if the facts of the matter have been proved. If we point to this we often meet with the retort, "Why shouldn’t it be true?" With such an attitude as this we cannot acquire inner truthfulness. Anthroposophists especially should develop the capacity to describe events of the outer world in strictest accordance with the truth. Were this aim to be followed in the civilised world of the present day it would have a very remarkable result. If, through some miracle, it were to happen that a number of people were forced to coin their words in such a way as to correspond exactly to the facts, there would be widespread silence. For modern talk seldom corresponds to proved facts, but arises from all manner of opinions and passions.

It is the truth that everything we add to the outer facts apparent to the senses, everything that does not correspond to the actual facts, obliterates within us the capacity for attaining higher knowledge.

It once happened that at a gathering of students of law a little scene was carefully prepared and enacted before about twenty people. Then these twenty people were asked to write an account of what they had seen. Of course it was known exactly what had been done, for each detail had been carefully studied beforehand. Twenty people had to write an account of it afterwards. Three described it fairly accurately, seventeen wrongly. That was in a gathering of law students, where but three managed to see a fact correctly! When at the present time we listen to twenty people describing one after another something they are supposed to have seen, what they describe does not as a rule correspond in the least to the facts. We shall leave out of account altogether unusual experiences. For it has indeed happened in the fever of war that a man has taken the evening star shimmering through a cloud to be an enemy aeroplane. Certainly, such a thing may happen in a time of excitement; it is an obvious mistake. But even in everyday life great mistakes are constantly being made in regard to little things.

The growth of anthroposophical life depends upon men really acquiring this sense for the facts; it depends upon men training themselves gradually to acquire this sense for the facts, so that having observed the actual course of an outer occurrence, they do not paint in ghosts in addition when describing it afterwards. We need only read the newspapers to-day! Spectres have, of course, been done away with, but reports given in the newspapers as reliable news, are in reality nothing but spectres, phantoms of the worst kind. And the stories people relate are very often phantoms too. The first and most elementary thing we require for the ascent into the higher world is the acquisition of the sense for actual fact in the outer world. In this way only do we develop what is described in our last lecture [1] as truthfulness.

And the real feeling for beauty, as I tried to describe it vividly in my lecture, is developed in no other way than by beginning to observe the objects and beings in the world more closely,—by noticing why the bird has a beak, why the fish has that remarkable formation in front, in which a delicate jaw is hidden, etc., etc. Only by really learning to share in the life of Nature do we acquire the sense for beauty.

But it is impossible to gain a spiritual truth without a certain measure of goodness, of a sense of goodness. For man must be capable of a deep interest in his fellow men—as I was saying, morality only begins when a man feels in his own astral body the sorrows which cause the lines of care on his neighbour's brow. This is where morality begins; otherwise it is only an imitation of conventional rules or customs. What is described in my "Philosophy of Spiritual Activity" as moral action, is connected with this sympathetic experience in one's own astral body of the furrow of care, or the wrinkle caused by the smile on the countenance of another. Without this submersion of one's soul in the being of the other, it is impossible to develop the sense for the true life of the spirit.

It would therefore be an excellent foundation for the development of spirituality to have an Anthroposophical Society which is a reality, one in which each member so confronts another that he really experiences in himself that devotion to Anthroposophy felt by the other; and if the present all too human failings were not carried into the Anthroposophical Society. If the Anthroposophical Society were really a new creation whose members recognise one another as Anthroposophists—then indeed the Anthroposophical Society would be true reality. It would then be impossible for cliques and their like to appear in this society, or antipathy to a person on account of such a thing as the shape of his nose. These things which are customary in external life have entered to a large extent into the Society. In a real Anthroposophical Society personal relationships would have for their foundation mutual spiritual experiences. But the first step is the development of the sense for truth in regard to facts—which fundamentally means absolute accuracy—responsibility for one's own utterances and faithful and exact reports of the words of others.

This sense for truth is one thing. The second is the sense for the recognition of the real place of each being in the world of which it is a part—to perceive the water with the fish, the air with the bird, and then further to the sense for the understanding of our fellow men. For the sense for goodness, which is this sympathetic experience of what interests another and lives in his soul, is the third thing. Then would the Anthroposophical Society be a place where an endeavour is made towards the gradual development of the physical body, the etheric body and the astral body, each in accordance with its own purposes and its own nature. Then there would be a real beginning towards something that I have had to characterise again and again. The Anthroposophical Society should not be a society that merely enrols new members by giving each a card bearing his name and a number; it should be something that is really permeated by a common spirituality containing within itself at least the power to increase in strength and to surpass other forms of spirituality, so that at length it would mean more spiritually to a man that he should be an anthroposophist than that he should be Russian, English or German. Then only is unity really achieved.

At the present time the historic element is not yet considered essential. But it is the task of man in our time to come to the realisation of his place in history and to know that the Christian principle of universal humanity must be taken seriously: otherwise the earth loses its purpose and its inner significance. We may start by thinking of the elementary spiritual beings who long ago nurtured and fostered our human nature and remembering them with gratitude. These beings, during the last few centuries, have lost their connection with man in the civilised world of Europe and America. Man must again learn to feel gratitude towards the spiritual world. We can only arrive at the right social conditions on the earth by developing feelings of deep gratitude and love towards the beings of the spiritual world, feelings which can be present when we acquire knowledge of these beings. Then, too, feelings between man and man will change. They will be quite different from the present attitude which has had its origin in earlier conditions and has developed during recent centuries. For to-day man really regards every other human being more or less as a stranger and only himself as of importance. Yet in reality he does not know himself at all! Though he does not acknowledge it he can really only say: "Oh, I like myself best of all." If asked: "What is it in you that you like best of all?" he could only reply, "well, I must leave that to the scientist or the doctor to explain." But unconsciously, in his feelings, man really lives only in himself.

This attitude is just the opposite of what an Anthroposophical Society can give.

We must first of all realise that man must come out of himself, that the peculiarities of other men,—at least to some extent,—must interest him just as much as his own. Without this an Anthroposophical Society cannot exist. Members may be received into the Society, and, by means of rules, they may continue to hold together for a time; but that is not reality. Realities do not arise through accepting members and these members having cards on which it is stated that they are Anthroposophists. Realities never arise through anything that is written or printed, but through that which lives. The written or printed word only counts when it is an expression of life. If it is an expression of life, then a reality exists; but if what is written and printed is merely written and printed matter, the significance of which is determined by convention, then it is a corpse. For the moment I write something down I "moult" my thoughts. We know what "moulting" means; when a bird casts its feathers something dead is thrown off. When something is written down, that is a kind of "moulting". At the present time people are only too ready to "moult" their thoughts. They desire to express everything in writing. But it would be very difficult for a bird, if it had just moulted, to moult again at once. If someone were to try to make a canary moult again when it had just moulted, he would have to make imitation feathers for the purpose. Such is the case to-day. Because people only want to have dead moulted thoughts we are really no longer dealing with realities but with counterfeit realities. What men produce are chiefly imitations of reality. It is enough to drive one to despair to measure these against genuine reality. It is no longer the human being, the man, who is speaking but the government official or the solicitor or the barrister. Abstract categories speak—the "young lady", or the Dutchman or the Russian. What we must strive for is that the "man" shall speak, and not the Privy Councillor, the member of the government board, the Russian, the German, the Frenchman nor the Englishman. But first of all there must be the "man" there. But a man does not really become man so long as he only knows himself. The remarkable thing is, that just as we cannot breathe the air which we ourselves produce, neither can we live out the human being who fills our own skin, whom we feel within ourselves. We cannot breathe the air we ourselves produce; neither can we really live the human being we produce within ourselves. Our social relationships are not determined by ourselves, but by the character of others—and through what we experience in common with them. That is true humanity; that is true human life! Were we to desire to live what we produce only within ourselves, that would be the same as deciding to breathe into a vessel in order to breathe over again the same air we have ourselves produced, instead of breathing the outer air. In that case, as the physical is not as merciful as the spiritual, we should very soon die. But if a man continually breathes only what he himself experiences as a man, he also dies; though he does not know that he has died psychically, or at least spiritually.

What is really needed is that the Anthroposophical Society or Movement should, as I recently said: "Stichel!" (Wake up!) In a recent lecture I said that this anthroposophical life should be an awakening. And at the same time it must be a continual avoidance of inner death, a continual appeal to the vitality of the psychic life. In this way, the Anthroposophical Society would of itself be a reality through the inner force of the spiritual and psychic life.

• 1. Truth Beauty and Goodness, Dornach, 19.01.1923

The author whom I discussed here the last time should really provide much food for thought for those very people who count themselves in the Anthroposophical Movement; for Oswald Spengler is a personality who has a scientific mastery of a very large part of all that can be known today. It can be said that he has complete command of the great variety of thoughts that have become the possession of civilized humanity in the course of recent centuries. Spengler can be regarded as a man who has assimilated a large number of the sciences, or at least the ideas contained in them.

The thought-combinations he achieves are sometimes dazzling. He is in the highest degree what may be called in Central Europe a brilliant man—not in France, but in Central Europe; Oswald Spengler's thoughts are too heavy and too dense for western—that is, French—genius; but, as has been said, in the Central European sense he may undoubtedly be regarded as a brilliant thinker. He can hardly be called an elegant thinker in the best meaning of the word, for the investiture of his thoughts, in spite of all his cleverness, is certainly extremely pedantic. And it can even be seen in various places that out of the sentence-meshes of this gifted man the eye of a Philistine unmistakably peers forth. In any case, there is something unpolished in the thoughts themselves.

Well, this is more what might be called an esthetic consideration of the ideas; but the important point is this: we confront here a personality who has thoughts, and they are in keeping with the spirit of the time, but he really has a poor opinion of thinking in general. For Oswald Spengler regards as decisive for the real happenings in the world not what results from thinking, but in his opinion the more instinctive life-impulses are the deciding factors. So that with him thinking really floats above life, as something of a luxury, we might say; and from his point of view, thinkers are people who ponder on life, from who's pondering however nothing can flow into life. Life is already there when thinkers appear who are ready to think about it. And in this connection, it is entirely correct to say that in the world-historical moment when a thinker masters the special form of present-day thoughts with something of universality, at that very moment he senses their actual sterility and unfruitfulness. He turns to something other than these unfruitful thoughts, namely, to what bubbles up in the instinctive life, and from the point of view thus provided he sees the present civilization. This really appears to him in such a way that he says: Everything that this civilization has brought forth is on the way to ruin. We can only hope that something instinctive will emerge once again from what Spengler calls “the blood,” which will have nothing to do with what constitutes present civilization, will even crush it, and put in its place a far-reaching power arising only from the instinctive realm.

Oswald Spengler sees that people of the modern civilization have gradually become slaves of the mechanistic life; but he fails to see that just through reaction, human freedom can result within this mechanistic life—that is, technical science in general—because it is fundamentally devoid of spirit. He has no notion of this; but why is this so?

You know that in the last lecture I quoted the passage in which Spengler says: The statesman, the practical man, the merchant, and so on, all act from impulses other than those that can be gained from thinking; and I said more or less jokingly: Oswald Spengler never seems to have noticed that there are also father-confessors, and others in similar positions. Neither has Spengler adequately observed something else, in regard to which the relation to the father-confessor represents only a decadent side-issue, from a world-historical point of view.

When we go back in humanity's evolution, we find everywhere that the so-called men of action, those people who have outwardly something to do in the world, turned, in later times to the oracles, and in earlier times to what can be recognized in the Mysteries as the decrees of the spiritual world. We need only to observe the ancient Egyptian culture to see that those who learned in the Mysteries the decrees of the spiritual world transmitted what they discovered by spiritual means to those who wished to become, and were intended to be, men of action. So that we have only to look back in the evolution of humanity to find that it is out of the spiritual world, not out of the blood—for this whole theory of the blood is about as mystically nebulous as anything could be—it is not, then, out of the obscure depths of the blood that the impulses were derived which entered into earthly deeds, but out of the spirit. In a certain sense the so-called men of action of that time were the instruments for the great spiritual creations whose directions were learned in the spiritual research of the Mysteries. And I might say that echoes of the Mysteries, which we see everywhere in Greek history, play a part in Roman history, and they are also unmistakably to be found even in the early part of the Middle Ages. I have called your attention, for instance, to the fact that the Lohengrin-legend can be understood only if one knows how to follow it back from the external physical world into the citadel of the Grail in the early, or properly speaking, in the middle part of the Middle Ages.

It is, therefore, a complete misunderstanding of the true progress of humanity's evolution when Oswald Spengler supposes that world-historical events originate in any way in the blood, and that what the human being acquires through thoughts has nothing to do with these events. Looking back into ancient times we find that when people had tasks to perform, they were to a large extent dependent upon research in the spiritual world. The designs of the Gods had to be discovered, if we may so express it. And this dependence upon the Gods existing in ancient times made the human being of that time unfree. Men's thoughts were completely directed toward serving as vessels, as it were, into which the Gods poured their substance—spiritual substance, under whose influence men acted.

In order that men might become free, this pouring of substance into human thoughts on the part of the Gods had to cease; and as a result, human thoughts came more and more to be images. The thoughts of the humanity of earlier times were realities to a far greater degree; and what Oswald Spengler ascribes to the blood are those very realities which lay hidden in the thoughts of ancient humanity, those substances which still worked through men in the Middle Ages.

Then came modern times. The thoughts of men lost their divine, substantial content. They became merely abstract thought-images. But it is only thoughts of this kind that are not constraining and coercive; only by living in such thought-images can man become free.

Now throughout recent centuries and into the twentieth century there was organically present in man scarcely more than the disposition to fashion such thought-images. This is the education of man toward freedom. He did not have the atavistic imaginations and inspirations of ancient times: he experienced only thought-images, and in these he could become ever more and more free, since images do not compel. If our moral impulses manifest in images, these impulses no longer compel us as they once did when they lay in the ancient thought-substance. They acted upon human beings at that time just as nature-forces; whereas the modern thought-images no longer act in this way. In order, therefore, that they might have any content whatsoever, the human being had, on the one hand, either to fill them with what natural science knows through ordinary sense-observation, or, on the other, to develop in secret societies, in rites or otherwise, something which was derived more or less from ancient times through tradition. By means of sense-observation he thus gained a science which filled his thoughts from without, but these thoughts rejected more and more anything from within; so that if man's thoughts were to have any inner content at all, he was compelled to turn to the ancient traditions, as they had been handed down either in the religious denominations or in the various kinds of secret societies which have flourished over the whole earth. The great mass of mankind was embraced in the various religious denominations, where something was presented whose content was derived from ancient times, when thoughts still had some content. Man filled his thoughts from without with a content of sense-observation, or from within with ancient impulses which had become dogmatic and traditional.

It was necessary for this to occur from the sixteenth century up to the last third of the nineteenth; for during that time human cooperation throughout the civilized world was still influenced by that spiritual principle which we may call the principle of the Archangel Gabriel, if we wish to employ an ancient name (it is only a terminology; I intend to indicate a spiritual Power); this Being, then, influenced human souls, albeit unconsciously in modern times. Human beings had themselves no inner content, and because they accepted a merely traditional content for their spirit-soul life, they were unable to feel the presence or influence of this Being.

The first really to become aware of this utter lack of spiritual content in his soul-life was Friedrich Nietzsche; but he was unable to reach the experience of a new spirituality. Actually his every impulse to find a spirit-soul content failed, and so he sought for impulses as indefinite as possible, such as power-impulses and the like.

People need not merely a spiritual content which they may then clothe in abstract thoughts, but they need the thorough inner warming which may be occasioned by the presence of this inner content. This spiritual warming is exceedingly important. It was brought about for the majority of people through the various rituals and similar ceremonies practiced in the religious denominations; and this warmth was poured into souls also in the secret societies of more recent times.

This was possible in the time of Gabriel, because practically everywhere on the earth there were elemental beings still remaining from the Middle Ages. The farther the nineteenth century advanced the more impossible it became—entirely so in the twentieth century—for these elemental beings, which were in all natural phenomena and so forth, to become parasites, as it were, in the human social life. In most recent times there has been much which has unconsciously resisted this condition.

When in these secret societies which followed ancient tradition—it is really unbelievable how “ancient” and “sanctified” all the rituals of these societies are supposed to be—but when rituals were arranged or teachings given, in the sense of ancient tradition, when something was developed in these societies which had been carried over as an echo of the ancient Mysteries, no longer understood, conditions were exactly right for certain elemental beings. For when people went through all sorts of performances—let us say, when they attended the celebration of a mass, and no longer understood anything about it, the people were then in the presence of something filled with great wisdom; they were present, but understood nothing at all of what they saw, although an understanding would have been possible. Then these elemental beings entered the situation, and when the people were not thinking about the mass, the elementals began to think with the unused human intellect. Human beings had cultivated the free intellect more and more, but they did not use it. They preferred to sit and let something be enacted before them from tradition. People did not think. Although conditions are becoming entirely different, it is still true today that people of the present time could do a vast amount of thinking if they wished to use their minds; but they have no desire to do this; they are disinclined to think clearly. They say rather: Oh, that requires too much effort; it demands inner activity.

If people desired to think they would not enjoy so much going to all sorts of moving pictures, for there one cannot and need not think; everything just rolls past. The tiny bit of thinking that is asked of anyone today is written on a great screen where it can be read. It is true that this lack of sympathy with active inner thinking has been slowly and gradually developed in the course of modern times, and people have now almost entirely given up thinking. If a lecture is given somewhere which has no illustrations on the screen, where people are supposed to think somewhat, they prefer to sleep a little. Perhaps they attend the lecture, but they sleep—because active thinking does not enjoy a high degree of favor in our time.

It was precisely to this unwillingness to think, lasting through centuries, that the practices of the various secret societies were in many ways adapted. The same kind of elemental beings were present that had associated with human beings in the first half of the Middle Ages—when experiments were still going on in alchemistic laboratories, where the experimenters were quite conscious that spiritual beings worked with them. These spiritual beings were still present in later times; they were present everywhere. And why should they not have made use of a good opportunity?

In most recent centuries a human brain was gradually developed which could think well, but people had no wish to think. So these elemental beings approached and said to themselves: If man himself will make no use of his brain, we can use it. And in those secret societies which cherished only the traditional, and always kept emphasizing what was old, these elementals approached and made use of human brains for thinking. Since the sixteenth century an extraordinary amount of brain-substance has been thus employed by elemental beings.

Very much has entered human evolution without man's cooperation—even good ideas, especially those appertaining to human social life. If you look around among people of our time who would like to be more or less informed about civilization, you will find that to them it has become an important question to ask what it is, really, that acts from man to man. People should think, but do not; what does act, then, from man to man? That was a great question, for instance, with Goethe, and with this in mind he wrote his Wilhelm Meister. In this story your attention is constantly drawn to all sorts of obscure relations of which people are unconscious, which nevertheless prevail, and are half unconsciously taken up by one and another and spread. All kinds of threads are interwoven; and these Goethe tried to find. He sought for them, and what he could find he aimed to describe in his novel, Wilhelm Meister.

This was the condition existing in Central Europe throughout the nineteenth century. If people today had any kind of inclination to spend more time with a book than between two meals—well, that is speaking figuratively, for usually they go to sleep when they have read one-third between two meals; then they read the next third between the next two meals, and the final third between the next two—and in that way, it is somewhat scattered. It would be good for people if even those novels and short stories that can be read between two meals, or between two railroad stations, stimulated reflection. We can hardly expect that at the present time; but if, for example, you should look up Gutzkow, and see how in his book, The Magician of Rome, and in his The Champions of the Spirit he has searched for such relations; if you take the extraordinarily social concatenations sought by George Sand in her novels, you will be able to notice that in the nineteenth century those threads, arising from indeterminate powers and working into the unconsciousness, everywhere played a part; you will notice that the authors are following up these threads, and that in their efforts they—George Sand, for example—are in many ways absolutely on the right track.

But in the last third of the nineteenth century it gradually came about that these elementals—who in the first place thought with the human brain and then, when they had taken possession of human minds and brought about the social conditions of the nineteenth century, really spun these threads—that these beings now at last had enough. They had fulfilled their world-historical task—we might better say, their world-historical need. And something else occurred which particularly hindered their continuing this kind of parasitic activity. This proceeded exceedingly well at about the end of the eighteenth century, then remarkably so in the nineteenth—but after that point of time these elemental beings attained their aims less and less; this was because an increasing number of souls descended from the spiritual world to the physical plane with great expectations regarding the earth-life.

When people have screamed and kicked as little children—and now in more recent times have had their meager education, they have by no means become conscious that they were equipped with very great expectations before they descended to earth. But this lived on nevertheless in the emotions, in the entire soul-organization, and still continues to live today. Souls really descend to the physical world with exceedingly strong expectations; and thence come the disillusionments which have been unconsciously experienced in the souls of children for some time past, because these expectations are not satisfied.

Chosen spirits who had especially strong impulses of anticipation before descending to the physical plane were the ones, for example, who observed this physical plane, saw that these expectations are not being satisfied here, and who then wrote Utopian schemes of how things should be, and what could be done. It would be exceedingly interesting to study, with regard to entrance through birth into physical existence, how the souls of great Utopianists—even the lesser ones and the more or less queer fellows, who have thought out all kinds of schemes which cannot even be called Utopian, but which reveal much goodwill to form a paradise for people on earth—how these souls who have descended from spiritual worlds were really constituted with regard to their entrance upon the physical earth-plane.

This descent filled with anticipation is distressing for the beings who are to make use of such human brains. They do not succeed in using the brain of the human being when he descends to earth with such anticipation. Up to the eighteenth century those descending had far less expectation. Then the use of the brain by those other beings, not human, went well. But just during the last third of the nineteenth century it became exceedingly uncomfortable for the beings who were to make use of the brains of people descending with such expectations, because these led to unconscious emotions, which were felt in turn by the spiritual beings when they wanted to make use of the human brain. Hence, they no longer do this. And now it is a fact that there exists in modern humanity a very wide-spread and increasing disposition for human beings to have thoughts, but to suppress them. The brain has been gradually ruined, especially among the higher classes, by the suppression of thoughts. Other beings, not human, who formerly took possession of these thoughts no longer approach.

And now—now human beings have thoughts, it is true, but they have no idea how to use them. And the most significant representative of the kind of people who have no understanding of what to do with their thoughts is Oswald Spengler. He is to be distinguished from others—well, now how shall we express it in order not to give offense when these things are repeated outside, as they always are—perhaps we must say that others completely neglect their minds in their early years, so that their brains tend to allow thoughts to disappear in them. Spengler differs from others in that he has kept his mind fresh, so that it has not become so sterile; he is not absorbed only in himself, occupied always with himself alone.

It is true, is it not, that a great part of humanity today is inwardly jellied (yersulzt, if I may make use of a Central European expression that perhaps many may not understand. Sulze is something that is made at the time of hog-slaughter from the various products of the killing which are not of use otherwise, mixed with jelly-like ingredients—what cannot even be employed for sausage-making is used for Sulze.) And I might say that as a result of the many confusing influences of education the brains of most people become thus versulzt. They cannot help it; and of course, we are not speaking at all in an accusing sense, but perhaps rather in an excusing sense, feeling pity for the jellied brains.

I mean to say, when people have only the one thought: that they have no idea what to do with themselves; when they are as if squashed together, compressed and jellied—then these thoughts can be very nicely submerged in the underworlds of the brain, and from there plunged more deeply into the lower regions of the human organization, and so on. But that is not the case with such people as Oswald Spengler. They know how to develop thoughts. And that is what makes Spengler a clever man: he has thoughts. But the thoughts a man may have amount to something only when they receive a spiritual content. For this result a spiritual content is needed. Man needs the content that Anthroposophy wants to give; otherwise he has thoughts, but is unable to do anything with them. In the case of the Spenglerian thoughts it is really—I might almost say—an impossible metaphor comes to me—it is as if a man, who for the occasion of a future marriage with a lady has procured all imaginable kinds of beautiful garments—not for himself, but for the lady—and then she deserts him before the wedding, and he has all those clothes and no one to wear them. And so you can see how it is with these wondrously beautiful thoughts. These Spenglerian thoughts are all cut according to the most modern scientific style of garment, but there is no lady to wear the dresses. Old Boethius still had at least the somewhat shriveled Rhetorica and Dialectica, as I said some weeks ago. These no longer had the vitality of the muses of Homer and of Pindar, but at any rate all seven arts still figured throughout the Middle Ages. There was still someone upon whom to put the clothes.

I might call what has arisen, Spenglerism, because it is something significant; but with it the time has arrived when garments have come into existence, so to speak, but all the beings who might wear these beautiful thought-garments are lacking—in other words, there is no lady. The muse comes not; the clothes are here. And so people simply announce that they can make no use of the whole clothes-closet of modern thoughts. Thinking does not exist at all for the purpose of laying hold on life in any way.

What is lacking is the substantial content which should come from the spiritual worlds. Precisely that is wanting. And so people declare that it is all nonsense anyway; these clothes are here, after all, only to be looked at. Let us hang them on the clothes-racks and wait for some buxom peasant-maid to come forth out of the mystical vagueness, and ... well, she will need no beautiful clothes, for she will be what we may look for from the primordial Source.

This represents Spenglerism: he expects impulses from something indeterminate, undefined, undifferentiated, which need no thought-garments, and he hangs all the thought-garments on wooden racks, so that at least they are there to be looked at; for if they were not even there to be seen, no one could understand why Oswald Spengler has written two such thick books, which are entirely superfluous. For what is anyone to do with two thick books if thinking no longer exists? Spengler allows no occasion to become sentimental, or we should find much that is amusing. A Caesar must come! but the modern Caesar is one who has made as much money as possible, and has gathered together all sorts of engineers who, out of the spirit, have become the slaves of technical science—and then founded modern Caesarism upon blood-borne money or upon money-borne blood. In this situation thinking has no significance whatever; thinking sits back and occupies itself with all sorts of thoughts.

But now the good man writes two thick books in which are contained some quite fine thoughts; yet they are absolutely unnecessary. On his own showing, no use whatever can be made of them. It would have been far more intelligent if he had used all this paper to ... let us say, to contrive a formula by which the most favorable blood-mixtures might come into existence in the world, or something like that. That is what anyone with his views should do.

What anyone should do corresponds not at all with what he advocates in his books. Anyone reading the books has the feeling: Well, this man has something to say; he knows about the downfall of the West, for he has fairly devoured this whole mood of destruction; he himself is quite full of it. Those who are wishing to hasten the decline of the West could do no better than make Oswald Spengler captain, even leader, of this decline. For he understands all about it; his own inner spirit is completely of this caliber. And so he is extraordinarily representative of his time. He believes that this whole modern civilization is going to ruin. Well, if everyone believes likewise, it surely will! Therefore, what he writes must be true. It seems to me that it contains a tremendous inner truth.

This is the way the matter stands; and anyone whose basis is Anthroposophy must really pay attention to just such a personality as Oswald Spengler. For the serious consideration of spiritual things, the serious consideration of the spiritual life, is precisely what Anthroposophy desires. In Anthroposophy the question is certainly not whether this or that dogma is accepted, but the important thing is that this spiritual life, this substantial spiritual life, shall be taken seriously, entirely seriously, and that it shall awaken the human being.

It is very interesting that Oswald Spengler says: When he thinks, a man is awake (that he cannot deny), but anything truly effective comes from sleep, and that is contained in the plant and in the plantlike in man. Whatever in the human being is of a plantlike nature, he really brings forth in a living state: sleep is what is alive. The waking state brings forth thoughts; but the waking existence results only in inner tensions.

Thus it has become possible for one of the cleverest men of the present to indicate something like this: What I do must be planted in me while I sleep, and I really need not wake up at all. To awake is a luxury, a complete luxury. I should really only walk around and, still sleeping, perform what occurs to me in sleep. I should really be a sleep-walker. It is a luxury that a head is still there continually indulging in thinking about the whole thing, while I go about sleep-walking. Why be awake at all?

But this is a prevailing mood, and Spengler really brings it to very clear expression, namely: The modern human being is not fond of this being awake. All sorts of illustrations come to me. For instance: When, at the beginning of the Anthroposophical Society years ago, a lecture was given, there were always in the front rows people who even outwardly accentuated sleeping a little, so that proper participation might be visible in the auditorium, so that properly devoted participants might be visible. Sleeping is really exceedingly popular, is it not? Now most people do it silently: on the occasions I have mentioned the people were well-behaved in this regard; if there are no specific sounds of snoring, then people are well-behaved, are they not? That is, they are at least quiet. But Spengler, who is a strange man, makes a noise over what other people are quiet about. The others sleep; but Spengler says: People must sleep; they should not be awake at all. And he makes use of all his knowledge to deliver an entirely adequate thesis for sleep. So what it comes to is this: that an exceedingly clever man of the present time really delivers an adequate thesis for sleep!

This is something to which we must pay attention. We need not make a noise about it, as Spengler does; but we should consider this, and realize how necessary it is to understand the waking state, the state of being more and more awake, which is to be attained precisely through something like the spiritual impulses of Anthroposophy.

It must be emphasized again and again that it is necessary for wakefulness, actual, inner soul-wakefulness, gradually to become enjoyable. Dornach is really felt to be unsympathetic, because its purpose is to stimulate to wakefulness, not to sleep, and because it would like to take the waking state quite seriously. It would really like to pour awakeness into everything, into art, into the social life, and most of all into the life of cognition, into the whole conduct of life, into everything to which human life is in any way inclined.

You may believe me, it is indeed necessary to call attention to such things now and then; for at least in such moments as this, when we are together again only to interrupt these lectures for a short time until my return from Oxford, it must be pointed out, as so often, that precisely among us a certain inclination to be awake must gain a footing. There must be an appropriation of what Anthroposophy contains, in order to relate it to man's waking existence. For that is what we need in all spheres of life: to be truly awake.

Dr. Steiner: Good morning, gentlemen. Have you thought of something else you would like to ask me?

A question is asked concerning the relationship between human breathing and the pulse. Wouldn't this have been completely different in earlier times?

Dr. Steiner: You mean in the human being himself? Well, let's quickly review how things stand today. We have on the one hand the breathing. Man is connected to the outer world through breathing, because he is constantly inhaling and exhaling air. It can thus be said that man today is constituted in such a way that he absorbs the healthy air and expels the air that would make him ill. The expelled air contains carbon dioxide. The circulation of the blood, on the other hand, is an internal process in which the blood flows through the body itself. I shall not discuss whether it is accurate to say that the blood circulates in the body, but the force of the blood circulates through the body. Now, although it varies slightly in each individual, a person takes approximately eighteen breaths per minute. As for the blood, the pulse rate is seventy-two beats per minute. So, one can say that breathing is related to blood circulation in an adult today in such a way that his pulse is four times faster than his breathing.

Now, we must be clear what is really involved in the human being when breathing is considered in relation to his blood circulation. First, we must be clear that man breathes chiefly through the lungs—the nose, mouth, and lungs—but this is only his primary way of breathing. Indeed, with the human being, functions primarily carried out by one part of his body are also actually carried out to a lesser degree by his whole body. Hence, air, or particularly the oxygen in the air, is constantly absorbed through the surface of his skin. Man therefore also breathes through his skin, and along with the ordinary breathing process of his lungs one can also speak of his skin's breathing. If, for example, the holes of his skin, called pores, are clogged, the skin absorbs too little air. Something is not right with the skin's breathing. Man's skin must always be in such shape that he can breathe through it.

Now, in the case of human beings, all outer processes can, as it were, also be found to exist inwardly. Making a sketch of a human being, we can say that breathing occurs through the entire surface of the skin but most particularly through the lungs in eighteen breaths per minute. All this, however, requires a counterbalance in the human being, and something quite interesting makes its appearance. Man cannot breathe properly through his lungs nor through his skin, but especially not through his skin, if this counterbalance is not present.

You know that a magnet has not only a north pole, a positive pole, but also a south pole, a negative pole. If man has his lungs and skin for breathing, then he also needs an opposite, and that opposite is located in the liver. We have already familiarized ourselves with the liver from various standpoints; now we must learn to view it as the opposite of the skin-lung activity; the liver and the skin-lung activity balance each other. One could say that the liver's constant purpose is to bring into order internally what man acquires through breathing in his relation with the outer world. That is what the liver is for.

Consider a disorder of the liver that may occur at any time, even in older people. It is quite difficult to diagnose when the liver is not in order, and frequently one is unaware of it because the liver is the organ, the single organ, that doesn't hurt when something is wrong with it. Man can suffer for a long time from a liver ailment without knowing of it. No one can diagnose it, because there is no pain. This is because the liver is related to the most outer aspects of the human being, the skin and lungs. Internally, the liver is really something like an outer world. Man does not sense it within when a chair is broken, nor does he sense it when the liver is being destroyed. It is as if the liver were a segment of the outer world. In spite of this, it is of terrible importance to the human being.

Now imagine that the liver malfunctions. When this happens, all the activity of the lungs and skin is also thrown out of balance, and then a specific problem arises. You see, from the heart, the veins reach everywhere into the lungs and the skin. Through quite delicate blood vessels, the blood circulation reaches everywhere into the skin, into the lungs, and also into the liver. The following now takes place. If the liver's function is impaired, the blood cannot flow properly in and out of the liver. If, because of a liver problem, the blood flows into it too strongly and the liver becomes overactive, too much bile is produced and the person becomes jaundiced. Jaundice occurs in man when too much bile is produced, when, therefore, the activity of the liver is too strong. Jaundice therefore results when overactivity of the liver pervades the body.

What happens, however, when the liver's activity is too weak? The blood's activity on the surface of the skin is not compensated for. The blood, which flows everywhere, wishes to be compensated, and the blood in the liver investigates, as it were, whether or not the liver is behaving properly. If the liver isn't behaving properly, the blood rushes to the surface of the body to replenish itself there. What happens? Smallpox is the result. This is the connection between smallpox and the blood circulation, which, due to a defective liver, has something wrong with it.

The blood reaches everywhere where I have drawn a line in blue (see sketch); there is also a red line signifying that oxygen from the air reaches everywhere. The circulation of the blood rightly makes a point of contact there with the breathing, and whether this occurs in the lungs or the skin really does not matter, because it balances itself out. If the air that enters through the breathing process does not make contact with the blood in the correct way, however, smallpox results. What is smallpox? Smallpox is really the result of the development of too much respiratory activity on the body's surface or in the lungs. A person becomes too active on his surface area, and this activity causes inflammation everywhere.

What can be done under these circumstances? Well, people already do the only thing that can be done in such cases. They vaccinate with cowpox vaccine. What is really accomplished through cowpox vaccine? The vaccine inwardly permeates the body, because the blood circulates everywhere. Whereas the blood is otherwise compensated for on the body's surface, it now has to cope with the vaccine. The overactivity on the surface thus is prevented. Smallpox inoculation does indeed have a certain significance. The blood, which is not properly engaged by the liver, is now busy with the vaccine. Generally, there is good reason for all methods of inoculation. You have perhaps heard that a large part of our healing is based on inoculation, because an activity occurring in the wrong place can thereby be directed to another part of the human body.

Inoculation against rabies is especially interesting. Though rabies comes from something altogether different, it is basically the same response as that I explained concerning smallpox. Imagine that a person is bitten by a rabid dog or wolf. Such an animal has actual poison in its saliva. This poison now enters the victim through the bite, and the person becomes involved in detoxifying the poison. He may be too weak to do it, and he might succumb to the poison, but something else is really the basis for death. You know that a man first develops rabies before he succumbs to the poison. What is the reason for this?

Let us assume that I am bitten by a rabid dog. Now I must direct all my inner activities to this spot, and I must let them flow here to use up the poison. This surge of activity is sensed by my spinal cord as though I had received a shock. This is how it affects my spinal cord. Since my body must suddenly develop such extreme activity because of the dog's bite, my spinal cord suffers a shock through which I become ill.

What must now be done to offset this shock? You know that when a person freezes in horror, he can be brought to his senses by being slapped a few times. The spinal cord also needs to be slapped, but one must first get to the spine. This can be accomplished by giving a rabbit rabies. It is then killed and its spinal cord removed and dried for approximately twenty minutes at about 20° C. This substance is then injected into the rabid person.

Now, oddly enough, all substances have a way of going to specific parts of the body. The dried spinal cord of the rabbit, which retains the rabies poison for a short time—about fifteen minutes—before becoming ineffective, is quickly injected into the human being. It goes into his own spinal cord, which thereby suffers a countershock. It is just as if you shake a person who is paralyzed with fear and he snaps out of it. In the case of rabies, man's spinal cord recovers from the shock by means of an inoculation with the rabid rabbit's dehydrated spinal cord.

You see, therefore, that when an activity develops in the human being in the wrong place and he becomes ill, he can be cured if almost the same process is developed in a different place. These are some of the complicated relationships of the human organism.

Now, if you consider respiration and the activity of the blood, these two processes are related in today's adult in a ratio of one breath to four pulse beats. The blood stream flows faster; after three pulsations man inhales, and after three more, he inhales again. This is how air goes through his body. The blood moves through the body: one, two, three, and with the fourth we inhale; one, two, three, and with the fourth we inhale again. This goes on throughout our body.

All this produces carbon dioxide. Now, most of this carbon dioxide is exhaled, but if all of it were exhaled, we would be the worst dopes. A part of the carbon dioxide must continuously enter our nervous system, which needs carbon dioxide, because it must be continuously deadened. The nervous system requires this deadening carbon dioxide. Through inhaling air it therefore rises up continuously in me and supplies my nervous system.

What does this mean? Nothing other than this, that since carbon dioxide is a poison, I continually require a poison in my system for my thinking. This is a most interesting point. Unless a continuous poisoning process took place in me, with which I must continuously struggle, I could not use my nervous system. I would be unable to think. Man is really in the position of having constantly to poison himself by inhaling air, and by means of the poison in the breath, he thinks. Carbon dioxide constantly streams into my head, and with this poisonous air I think.

Today, man simply breathes air. The air contains oxygen and nitrogen. Man absorbs the oxygen, omitting the nitrogen.

When we study man today, the following is discovered. The human head today requires carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is a combination of carbon that is produced in the human body and oxygen. Man omits the nitrogen contained in the air. If one studies the human head today, one discovers that this human head is so organized that it can think quite well because of the absorption of carbon dioxide and therefore of carbon and oxygen. This human head, through the carbon dioxide, which is a poison and rises fleetingly to the human head from the organs, is constantly exposed to damage. It is as if we were always to inhale a bit of carbon dioxide instead of oxygen. You really always inhale a bit of carbon dioxide into your head. This is of great significance, because we constantly take in something that actually destroys life. This is also the reason that we must sleep, that we require a time during which the head does not absorb this minute amount of carbon dioxide as vigorously and thereby is able to restore its organs.

Studies of the head show that in its present condition it can make use of this poison, carbon dioxide, by repeatedly sustaining a little damage and then restoring itself through sleep, then again being damaged, again restoring itself, and so on. In very ancient times, however, man did not as yet have a head. It came about through evolution. Man would never have acquired a head if he had inhaled only carbon dioxide. The fully evolved head can tolerate carbon dioxide, but if man had always inhaled carbon dioxide, he would never have acquired a head. Therefore, he must have breathed something else long ago. Now we must ask ourselves what man used to breathe. If all human evolution is studied in detail, one discovers that during embryonic development in the womb, the human being uses something other than mere carbon dioxide. It is an interesting fact that in the mother's womb man is almost all head. The rest of the embryo, if you study it in the early stages, is minute (see sketch) and still is almost all part of the head; the rest is terribly small. The whole embryo is then surrounded by the walls of the womb.

You see, man is almost all head, but he must still develop, and for that he requires nitrogen. He requires nitrogen, and this is supplied by the mother's body. If man did not have access to nitrogen in the womb, a substance he later rejects in the air, not allowing it to enter him, it would be impossible for him to develop. We would not acquire a proper head if it were not for nitrogen. In an early stage of evolution, when his head was only beginning to develop, man must not have absorbed oxygen but nitrogen. The essential elements for man must, therefore, have been carbon and nitrogen instead of today's carbon and oxygen.

Just as man inhales oxygen today, he once must have inhaled carbon combined with nitrogen—in other words, he must have absorbed nitrogen. But what is carbon plus nitrogen? It is cyanogen, and when it is present as an acid, it is hydrocyanic acid. This means that conditions must have been such at one time that man did not absorb oxygen from the air but nitrogen, with which he internally produced cyanogen, an even stronger poison. This even stronger poison is what has enabled man to think today with carbon dioxide. At that time he fashioned the organs with an even stronger poison.

Going back in time, we come to a point in ancient evolution when, unlike today, man produced cyanogen, and instead of exhaling carbon dioxide as he does today, he exhaled hydrocyanic acid, a much stronger poison. Thus, from man and his present-day respiration, we go back to an ancient condition in which the air was filled with hydrocyanic acid just as it is today permeated with carbon dioxide.

In 1906, I gave lectures in Paris, and because of various suggestions from the listeners I was prompted to tell them that even today there are cosmic bodies that possess the ancient cyanogen atmosphere rather than that of the earth. If the earth were viewed from the moon or particularly from Mars, one would be able to perceive traces of carbon dioxide everywhere in the earth's atmosphere by means of the spectroscope. Had the ancient earth been viewed from space when man was only beginning to acquire his head, however, one would have perceived traces of hydrocyanic acid instead of carbon dioxide. To this day there are cosmic bodies that have retained the earth's condition of former ages; these are the comets. The comets are what the earth was like when man acquired his head. Hence, they must contain cyanogen. I said in 1906 that the main characteristic of comets is that they contain cyanogen; if one studies a comet with a spectroscope, one must see lines of cyanogen. Soon after this a comet appeared; they only appear rarely. I was in Norway at the time, and there was much talk about it—curiously enough, people actually observed the cyanogen line.

People always say that when anthroposophy becomes aware of something that is based on spiritual insight, one should be able to prove it afterward. There are indeed numerous things that have later been proved. When proof arises, however, people overlook or suppress it. The truth is that, on the basis of this change in the breathing process, I stated prior to its having been observed with the spectroscope that comets contain cyanogen. This is the same substance that man needed in order to acquire his head at a time when the earth was still in a comet-like condition.

Now, imagine for a moment that I were to breathe nitrogen instead of oxygen; something other than human blood would naturally arise. As you know, the blood that has become blue combines in the lungs with oxygen and becomes red. Now, when man inhales oxygen he absorbs oxygen into his blood; when he inhales nitrogen, he absorbs the nitrogen into his blood. The way our blood functions today in a healthy person, it never contains uric acid, but if even a little nitrogen is absorbed into the blood, if something is only slightly amiss with the human being, uric acid appears in the blood.

In the age when man acquired his head, his blood consisted completely of uric acid, since nitrogen continuously combined with the blood instead of oxygen. His blood was only uric acid. As an embryo today, the human being swims in the amniotic fluid and thus has uric acid readily accessible. Uric acid is everywhere in his environment. In this early state the embryo needs uric acid for its development. In the past, when man was acquiring his head and exhaled hydrocyanic acid, he swam around in uric acid. In other words, he made use of cyanic acid, combining nitrogen and carbon and inwardly producing uric acid. Hydrocyanic acid surrounded him everywhere. The world was once in a condition in which uric and hydrocyanic acids actually played as big a role as water and air do today.

Even today, living creatures exist that can survive on something other than oxygen. There are, for example, creatures that are minute, since everything that was formerly large has become small today. The tiniest, smallest living creatures were once giants. But there are living creatures that cannot tolerate oxygen at all. They avoid oxygen and absorb sulphur instead. They are the sulphur bacteria that live by means of sulphur. This shows that oxygen is not the only necessity for life. Likewise, man didn't need oxygen to stay alive in earlier ages but instead required nitrogen, and through that he was formed. Man was fashioned during a comet-like formation of the earth, and the relationship between breathing and the blood was completely different in those earlier ages.

Let's now consider what we have learned in connection with the world itself. If we focus on the fact that we take one breath to four pulse beats—one, two, three, breath of air; one, two, three, breath of air—the same rhythm can also be found in nature: spring, summer, fall, winter. One: spring; two: summer; three: fall; four: winter. Here we have the correlation between what's outside in the universe and what you have within man. So we can say, if we behold the entire earth, that our inner rhythm can be found outside on earth as well. People pay no heed at all to these circumstances regarding the earth.

You see, there is snow outside now. In summer there is no snow. What does that really mean? What is outside as snow now you find at other times as water. Water is completely dependent on the earth, and man must certainly sense that. The water around here in the Jura mountains contains calcium. Everything within the earth is also in the water. People who are especially sensitive to this develop goiters from what is contained in the water in the Jura region. The water is dependent on the earth. In spring, it begins to become dependent, it is most dependent in summer, and it ceases somewhat to be dependent in fall. In winter—well, gentlemen, the earth does not form the snow! The snow, consisting of myriads of delicate crystals, is formed by the universe, from out of the cosmos. Unlike in summer, the earth in winter doesn't abandon itself to the warmth of the world but rather to the formative forces. The water turns away from the earth in winter and receives the coldness of universal space. So we have discovered an interesting rhythm in the universe. One: spring; two: summer; three: fall; four: winter, and the water no longer directs itself to the earth but to the universe. Again, one, two three—spring, summer, fall; then four: the water follows the universe, no longer the earth.

Now compare this rhythm with the blood and the breathing process. One, two, three pulse beats, the blood is directed to the body's interior; four: breath of air, the blood is directed to what is outside. Here you have the same activity with the earth as in the human being. If you compare the blood with the earth's water, the blood directs itself accordingly. The first three pulse beats are inwardly a little like spring, summer, and fall; four, now comes earthly winter, and aha, we breathe, now comes the breath, just as with the earth itself. Inwardly, man is attuned completely to the earth's breathing process. It can therefore be said that what runs its course in one year in the earth takes place quickly, eighteen times in one minute, in man. What takes a year for the earth takes place eighteen times in one minute in man. Man actually is always filled with this rhythm, but it is much faster than with the earth. When we consider the earth in the light of our discussion today, we realize that the condition of the earth was formerly quite different, and it comes to acquire for us a certain similarity to the comets. Now, when a comet disintegrates, the pieces, which contain iron, fall to earth as meteors. An entire comet, which falls to earth when it splinters, therefore contains iron.

This is also something that we still contain within ourselves. When our corpses disintegrate, the iron from our blood is left behind. Here we have retained something of our ancient comet nature, and we actually act as comets do. We have iron in our blood through developing the ancient cyanogen activity in ourselves—that is, our external bodies, the blood of which it may no longer enter though it was once allowed to. This means nothing more than that today we withdraw our inner spring, summer, fall, and winter from the outer spring, summer, fall, and winter. Our dependency on the outer seasons has become minimal.

You need not go terribly far back into the past, however, to find that things had a totally different character then. Although things are changing now, if one grew up in a country village as I did, one knows that there used to be people who were very dependent on spring, summer, fall, and winter; there are fewer now because everything is becoming more uniform in the world. One could even notice it in their whole life of soul. They were in a totally different mood in summer than in winter. When they encountered you in winter they were always a little outside their beings; they were much more like apparitions than people. They came into their own only in summer and then were really themselves. This means that they were dependent upon the outer spring, summer, fall, and winter.

This demonstrates to us what man was like in earlier ages. When he breathed nitrogen instead of oxygen, he was completely dependent on the outer surroundings; he participated in the pulse beat and breathing of his comet body, which in my book, An Outline of Occult Science, I called the ancient Moon. The ancient Moon was a sort of comet-like body, and, as a participant in it, man was a part of a large organism that also breathed. It was as if man today were suddenly to have one pulse beat in spring, one in summer, one in fall, and would then take a breath in winter, and so on. This is the way man was when he breathed nitrogen; he was a member of the entire earthly organism.

So, you see, we come from a completely different direction and again reach the point we arrived at earlier when we considered the megatheria, sauria, and so forth. We arrive at the same point by a different path.

This is the remarkable thing about spiritual science. Ordinary present-day scientific activity begins at some point and proceeds step by step, trotting along in a straight line without knowing where it is going. That is not the case with anthroposophical science. It can proceed in one or another direction from various points of departure, but just as a hiker always reaches the same summit regardless of where he starts at the foot of a mountain, so anthroposophy always arrives at the same goal. This is what is so remarkable. The more one honestly examines the world, the more the individual considerations fit together into a unity.

We have an example of this in exploring your question today. We proceeded from matters quite different from the earlier subjects, yet once again we arrived at the conclusion that man had his rhythm within the entire earthly organism when it was still comet-like; only now has he made it his own. Man existed as part of the earth just as he does today when he is still a germ within his mother. There he also takes part in her pulse and breathing activity.

Can it be proven that man today takes part in his mother's pulse and breathing activity? This is proven by what I said before, that smallpox develops from the blood's activity coming into connection with the breathing activity. This is interesting. If man does share the maternal blood and breathing activities while in the womb, a child in the womb should contract smallpox if the mother has it, and it does. When a pregnant woman contracts smallpox, her unborn child already has smallpox in the womb, because the child takes part in everything.

In the same way, when the earth was still the mother of the human being—although the earth was then a kind of comet—he participated in all that the earth underwent. His pulse beat and breathing were that of the earth's pulse beat and breathing. It therefore can be said that it is most remarkable when, if we go back into ancient times when human beings knew instinctively and were not clever as they are today, they always called the earth “mother”—Mother Earth and so forth. They spoke of Uranus, meaning the universe, and Gaea, the earth, and they viewed Uranus as the father in the universe outside an11 the earth as the mother.

So one can say that the part of the human organism in which the child develops, the womb, is really like a miniature earth that has remained behind and is still in the ancient comet-like state.

In that ancient comet-like state, man's breathing and that of the earth were together a breathing in the great universe. Not only did man absorb nitrogen, but the whole comet-earth received the nitrogen from the universe. Breathing in that age was also a form of fertilization. Only the process of fertilization in humans and animals remains of that today. In fertilization, therefore, something of the nitrogen breathing process still takes place, because the most important element in the human sperm is nitrogen. This is transmitted to the female organism and, as a nitrogen stimulus, brings about what oxygen could never accomplish, that is, the formation of the organs that must be present later when man is exposed to oxygen. So you see that we actually receive our breathing from the universe.

Now, let's try exploring something else. You see, the year's course is followed somewhat in the course of the day: 18 breaths per minute; 60 times that much per hour = 1,080; in 24 hours, one day, we have 24 times that much = 25,920. Hence, we take 25,920 breaths per day.

Now let me figure something else for you—the number of days in an average human life. As you know, the year has about 360 days. The average number of years a man lives is between 71 and 72. 72 times 360 makes 25,920. We take as many breaths per day as we have days in our human life. But a day, too, is in a certain sense a breathing. One day is also a breathing. When I go to sleep, I exhale my soul, and I draw it back in again when I awake: exhalation, inhalation. I exhale the spiritual and inhale it again. This rhythm in my breathing I therefore have throughout my life on earth in sleeping and waking. This is most interesting: 25,920 breaths per day, 25,920 days in the average human life.

Now we turn and look at the sun. When you observe the sun in spring today, it rises in the sign of Pisces, but it does not rise every year in spring in exactly the same spot. On March 21 in the spring of next year the sun will have moved a fraction. Year by year it moves a little. The point where it rises moves constantly and eventually comes full circle. Therefore, if the sun rises in the constellation of Pisces today—the astronomers think it is still in Aries where it was formerly, because they have not yet caught up with their notations—then it must have risen in primordial times in Pisces, too! When the number of years that it takes the sun to come full circle is calculated, the result is 25,920 years. It is the same ratio. Even the cosmic rhythm harmonizes with the faster rhythms of breathing and blood circulation. Just imagine how man stands with the cosmos! He is born completely from out the universe. His father and mother are originally in the universe.

One arrives at a completely different way of viewing man in relation to the universe than when one simply says that God created the world and man—a concept that doesn't require much thinking. But anthroposophy wishes to begin to think something in every instance. This is held against it. Why? Well, it takes no effort to say words that don't require thinking. In anthroposophy, however, one must exert oneself, and this makes people angry. One needn't strain oneself in today's science. All of a sudden here comes this upstart, anthroposophy, and one cannot sit as if in the cinema thoughtlessly watching a movie. People would even like to introduce movies into schools so that children wouldn't have to make an effort to learn. I am surprised that arithmetic has not been made into movies yet! Then along comes anthroposophy demanding that you don't sit around so idly but put your confounded skulls to use! And, that, no one wants to do.

I would like to start today by drawing your attention to something that may be connected with the assessment of what is now being associated socially with our anthroposophically oriented spiritual movement. You know the inner connection; I have spoken of it often. I have also drawn your attention to the fact that a spiritual movement would be in very little shape to meet the challenges of our time if it were to withdraw from the great questions that must occupy humanity and had nothing to say about the most significant demands of the present and the near future.

Yesterday I pointed out how dream-like elements creep into human thinking, and I pointed out the various ways, or at least some of the various ways, in which dream-like elements creep into human thinking. We must be particularly attentive to such creeping in when we are confronted with ready-made judgments from the outside world. A large part of what we think is thought by us in such a way that it is not first examined, that it is not first brought to life within us, but that it is repeated, re-evaluated, re-thought. You need only consider the numerous judgments that people of the most diverse nations have made in the last four to five years about the fate of the world, about the value of individual nations, about the causes of the war, and so on, and you cannot help but say to themselves: Of all the judgments that have been passed, even by people of whom one would have liked to assume a completely different one, very few have actually been examined; they have been repeated, re-judged, re-thought.

Perhaps I may also take this opportunity to remind you that when I have spoken here about contemporary phenomena, I have never given ready-made judgments, but have always characterized things that could serve to help people form their own judgments. In general, there should be more and more emphasis on giving the world the foundations for forming judgments, not ready-made judgments. But people today are very much inclined, when they hear something here or there, especially if it is said with great self-confidence, when it is imbued with a perhaps not quite perceptible fanaticism, to then reflect on, think about, repeat such judgments. And especially in view of the fact that some of our English friends are still here, I must touch on the following, which may also be of importance for the other friends sitting here from over there or over there.

For example, it has now been judged from a certain quarter that this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, which has its representative seat in Dornach, is now dealing with politics, and such a movement should not deal with politics. Among other things, it is said to have been pointed out that the Catholic Church had indeed come into its times of disaster by dealing with matters that are usually considered political.

When such a judgment arises, it echoes many things that one is accustomed to thinking. And when someone hears such a judgment, it seems somewhat plausible. He then says to himself: Yes, there is something to it, it is perhaps nonsense after all, when a spiritual scientific movement starts dealing with such questions, as the threefold social organism is one now.

Now, both the original judgment about this matter in the direction that I have just characterized it, and the repetition of it, belong to the class of superficial methods of thinking that are now emerging in large numbers. Our time very much believes that one has particularly advanced in thinking. Yes, we have the task of raising thinking to a certain level if humanity is not to perish in disaster. But what is demanded of humanity with regard to clear, sharp thinking, above all with regard to inwardly truthful thinking – because thinking that is unclear is always somewhat dishonest – what is demanded of humanity in terms of clear, sharp, inwardly truthful thinking, is confronted today with the urge to think unclearly, to think incompletely, to think half-way, to repeat what one hears here or there, or to think it again. But I also say: originally, the saying that anthroposophically oriented spiritual science has strayed into the political sphere, which does not belong to it, on the issue of threefolding, is based on an extraordinary superficiality. For anyone who judges in this way judges in a completely abstract way. He simply takes something that may be right for the Catholic Church and applies it to something that is quite different. This is just as if someone had learned that something is good for a shoe that you put on your foot, and then applied the judgment that he had formed about the shoe to the glove; that is how clever such a judgment is. Why? What is the original aim of the threefold social order? It is to create a clear division in the social order between spiritual life, which should have its own administration; legal or state life, which should stand in the middle between the other two with its full independence; and economic life, which should be clearly separated from the other two as the third link.

Now let us not think superficially, as does the person who says that anthroposophy should not concern itself with politics, but let us think through the matter objectively: What is the aim of such a strict separation? Well, spiritual life should stand on its own, spiritual life should develop on its own ground, spiritual life should only emphasize that which comes from its own impulses. The aim is therefore to achieve a spiritual life that is no longer dependent on the life of the state and the economic life, but can be free and independent, just as the Catholic Church has never been, always confounding itself with the state and the economic life. So it is a matter of creating precisely that through which one is in a position to assert all the impulses of this spiritual life. Therefore, think how frivolous, how superficial it is when someone says that anthroposophy should not venture into the field of politics, while it is precisely demanding that such a social order should be created that will make it possible for spiritual life to no longer deal with politics. What is to be created is a policy through which spiritual life has its own administration, its own internal organization. And it should no longer be necessary to turn to the political authority or to the state curriculum when one wants to found a school or develop a curriculum; because that is precisely how one becomes dependent on politics. From this example you can see what clear, sharp thinking means and how those think who today make judgments about what has been drawn from the impulses of spiritual life simply from things that have come their way. For the idea of threefolding is drawn from the Science of Initiation. And anyone who says that spiritual science oriented to anthroposophy should not deal with the idea of threefold social order does not understand how to think clearly; his thinking is confused. But secondly, he understands nothing whatever of the real impulse of spiritual science, for he does not know that this matter, in connection with the great demands of our time, has been brought out of the impulse of spiritual science.

But today, numerous judgments that are made publicly and that are simply repeated, re-judged and re-thought by a large number of people are based on such self-contradictions. Our most important task is to try to arrive at a pure, straightforward, inwardly truthful thinking, independently of all national chauvinisms. We will not achieve this if we do not first admit that the present is far from it. For if we have no sense of how far the judgments that are flying around today are from objectivity, then we will not even experience the drive within us to arrive at clarity, at an inner truthfulness of thought.

I wanted to use an obvious example of the misunderstanding of the position of threefolding in relation to the actual spiritual-scientific problem to make it clear to you what confused judgments are flying around the world today, and I know very well that such judgments have a blinding effect on many people because they do not think about it, because they believe that when the person in question says that anthroposophy should not deal with the threefold social order, there is something to be said for it, because it is subject to the fact that a spiritual movement can only flourish if it is self-contained. But that is precisely what is being sought. So anyone who judges as I have characterized it stops halfway.

On the basis of such premises, I would like to encourage self-examination to see where unfinished judgments are sitting in the mind, judgments for which the documentation is completely missing. It is, in fact, all too easy to criticize superficially what is given by anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. If you do not feel the depths from which things are created, then you can judge anthroposophy from the most superficial daily moods. That is why we so often see people who have hardly even sniffed into the field of anthroposophy, but who are clever, immediately saying: “I can agree with that, I cannot agree with that” and so on. The task for those who can really feel is always to penetrate deeper and deeper into the matter, to get a feeling for how initiation truths are actually drawn from the depths of being. For if we now take a somewhat deeper look at what I have touched on in terms of its outward appearance, the following emerges.

In modern history, we have seen more and more aspects of public life merge into a social organism: intellectual life, legal life, economic life. Modern parliaments strive to make their decisions on their own initiative through majority votes by people who may not understand the issues at hand, which can only be decided if you understand something about them. The unified parliaments are supposed to decide on everything: intellectual life, legal life, economic life. But the moment intellectual life — let us take this first — is separated from the other two elements, from the legal-state and economic spheres, intellectual life is brought entirely to the people themselves. Intellectual life becomes a separate organism. Spiritual life must be administered on the basis of the same principles from which it is constantly drawn. Those people who have this or that to teach must also administer the way teachers are employed and schools are run. Spiritual life should be completely free to rely on itself. In this way, individual human abilities are constantly called upon, especially in the field of intellectual life. Thus, what is to be decided in the field of intellectual life is constantly made dependent on the abilities of the people, on the abilities of those people who happen to be around in any given age. But that is how it should be. Those who are individually capable of this or that in any age should not be prevented by any state or parliamentary instruments from bringing their abilities to bear. In this way, spiritual life is made completely dependent on man. But because nothing else works in the development of spiritual life except human beings themselves, what I characterized yesterday, that element of spiritual life that develops itself, is at work. I have quoted Raphael as an example of the outstanding but also characteristic type. When his works have long since been lost, there will be in the world that he has developed through the works. This inward principle of development is applied to that which is active in spiritual life, that is to say, all that is Luciferian is eliminated from spiritual life precisely through its separation from the state. And only by this separation can the Luciferic be eliminated. Every spiritual life that depends on the state is permeated with Luciferic impulses. Then into spiritual life come into play the decisions of the majority or the like, which always cover up what comes from human individuality, but thereby blur the sharp thinking, the sharp volition that comes from human individuality. But it is precisely this blurring of clarity that gives rise to the Luciferic element in human thinking and human volition. So we can say that all spiritual life that is connected with the life of rights bears the Luciferic character. And it is precisely in order to overcome the Luciferic character, which must be overcome in public spiritual life, that it is necessary to separate from the life of rights. The individual human being cannot overcome it, because dream-like elements — I pointed this out yesterday — must always play a part in his spiritual life. But these are repelled by the fact that the human being is part of the social spiritual life, but this spiritual life is separate from the state.

Similarly, Ahrimanic elements play a part in economic life when it is administered by the state. These Ahrimanic elements, which play a part in economic life and in the administration of economic life when the state is involved in that economic life, can only be eliminated if economic life, as I have often emphasized here, is built on the life of brotherhood in corporations, associations and so on.

You see, it is a matter of applying truly great principles to this threefold order. In the middle then remains the actual structure of the state, everything that relates only to public law.

Now you will remember something that I have already explained to you here, but which I will repeat for those who have not heard it. Man, by living here on earth between birth and death, is not just this being that lives here between birth and death, but he carries within himself the echoes of what he has lived through, firstly in previous incarnations, but especially of what he has lived through between the last death and the birth that preceded his present life. In this time between death and a new birth, we have experiences in the spiritual world, and these experiences resonate in the present life. And how do they resonate in public social life? - So that everything that people bring into public life through their talents, through their special gifts, in other words, what public intellectual life actually is, is not at all from the earth, but is all the resonance from the pre-earthly life. What Goethe achieved as Goethe between 1749 and 1832 was all influenced by what he had experienced in the spiritual world before 1749; he had brought it down with him. And all the art, science and religious impulses that are developed by people here on earth, that is, all that is developed as earthly spiritual life, is an echo of the supermundane spiritual life, which people bring here through the portal of birth. If you take literature, if you take art, everything that is in it has been sent down from the spiritual worlds. So in this social life, in terms of forces, we have an element within us that is simply sent down to us from the spiritual worlds. Human beings bring it down by entering through the gate of birth into this world between birth and death. But what is worked in economic life through brotherliness or unbrotherliness, what people do for one another in their economic lives, has, strange as it may sound, not only a significance for this life between birth and death, but a very great significance for life after death. For example, it makes a difference whether I act as a grumbler all my life and behave in such a way that envy is my guiding principle, or whether I act out of love for my fellow human beings. Actions that influence public life, that bring people into contact with each other, are not only important here on earth, but their effects are carried through the gateway of death and are significant throughout the entire life between our death, which occurs after this life on earth, and the next life on earth. So that we can say: What takes place here as economic life is the cause of how people will live between death and a new birth.

If, for example, an economic order is based solely on selfishness, it means that people will become highly reclusive between death and a new birth, that they will have great difficulty in finding other human beings. In short, how a person behaves economically here has a huge significance for their life between death and the next birth.

Therefore, the only thing that remains purely earthly is the life under the rule of law or the life of the state. This has no significance for prenatal life or for the life after death, it only has significance for what happens here on earth. If we strictly separate the life of the rule of law from the other two areas, we separate the earthly from everything supernatural that plays a role here on earth. Thus, in this respect, there are also great principles in the threefold social organism. We divide into three parts because we must separate the most diverse areas that have something to do with the supersensible from that which has only to do with the sensual between birth and death. What the human being can decide on the path that alone makes majority decisions possible can only have significance here for the earth. What a person accomplishes through his talents, through his abilities, which are said to be innate but are actually acquired in the way I have just characterized, he accomplishes as a human individuality. And in that moment, to use an old expression, the “prince of this world” reigns when individuality is somehow compromised by majority decisions. Majority decisions can only and alone relate to that which, let it be said once more, has significance for earthly conditions; for that which has significance after death, again requires human love, humanity, goodwill, which in turn is and can only be entirely individual, to unfold its power.

In this way, I am pointing out to you that which can only be gained from the science of initiation to reinforce the idea of threefold social order. But what is the actual basis for the intrusion of the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic into our world? The intrusion of all that is Luciferic and Ahrimanic into our world is due to the fact that something flows into our world from other degrees of consciousness than are the normal degrees of consciousness. When we pass through the gate of birth, we enter this earthly stage of consciousness from a normal stage of consciousness that is quite different from the earthly one here. Just now, for our fifth post-Atlantic period, the dream consciousness is abnormal: the day consciousness, which is permeated by the images of the dream. If we let dreams into our thinking, we mix up what we should have only through our prenatal life with what happens between birth and death. And this mixture is particularly suitable for Lucifer to achieve his goals with us, not the normal divine goals of the earth. All the abnormal dream-like elements that enter into the present world of consciousness can therefore only lead to the Luciferization of humanity. It is normal for our consciousness to be educated in a dreamy way as long as our consciousness is still dreamy, namely during childhood. If we continue this same relationship to the world, which is quite good during childhood, where we are supposed to learn to speak, for example, in a dream-like state, beyond childhood, which a large part of today's humanity does, then we open the doors and windows and everything we can possibly open to Lucifer in our consciousness. Therefore, if we do not accept public judgments more deeply than something is founded when we dream it, then we continually open the gates to Lucifer. If, for example, we are ordered from some quarter to regard such and such a person as a “great statesman” or a “great prince” or as “innocent of war” or as a “great military leader,” without our examining the matter, then the reason why we form such a judgment is no different from the reasons why we dream anything at all.

A large part of the present human race has until recently considered Woodrow Wilson a great man because he sent the nonsense of the “Fourteen Articles” into the world. If you ask with what inner conviction people did that, you will find no difference between the conviction they felt in considering Woodrow Wilson a great man and the conviction you feel when you dream something. The dream comes to you with the same inner arbitrariness or involuntariness as the judgment about Woodrow Wilson and his “Fourteen Nonsenses” came to you. There is no difference between dreaming fully consciously in this way and dreaming while asleep. There is no difference between considering Ludendorff a great general or Clemenceau a great statesman in response to the voices of the outside world and dreaming this or that in the night. But humanity must become aware of these things. For in noticing such things, judgment enters into us at the same time, as we are seized by the Luciferic in the world. For we are seized by the Luciferic in the world in that we dream consciously, especially in dreams. In relation to this public judgment, a large part of humanity today has been and continues to be truly childish.

These are things that must be considered more seriously today than many people think. And on the other hand, it is important that we learn from life. Because in relation to our will, we are constantly asleep, as I have often said. I have explained to you: you have ideas about what you are doing, but not even about what the hand is actually doing when it moves; usually, people have no idea about that. People have as little idea about this strange process, which is connected with human will, as they have about what they do when they are deeply asleep. As a rule, will is an awake sleeping. This volition must be raised more and more to consciousness. This will be a long process, as volition is raised to consciousness in the understanding of the earth time. It is partially raised to consciousness in a small area, in other areas too, but most outstandingly in one area - for example, through our eurythmy. In it, movements are carried out with full consciousness. In it, full consciousness truly permeates the will. That is why I have often emphasized in the introduction to the eurythmic performance that it is important that eurythmists in particular fight against any drowsiness and work towards the opposite of dreaminess. It is a great mistake if eurythmy is not performed in a fully conscious state, but if it is performed in such a way that one believes one can also “mystify” into eurythmy. “Mystifying” comes from mysticism. It is very bad to mystify into ordinary life, and it is even worse when something that is supposed to be intentional, that is supposed to be the counter-image of the dream, is thoroughly mystified. But the will permeated by full consciousness must also be striven for more and more in the rest of life.

Once again we have a case here where a large part of humanity is working towards the opposite, towards the opposite of what should be before our eyes as a basic demand of our time. A basic demand of our time is this: to permeate life with consciousness, not just with intellect. The intellect is something very one-sided. Today people even believe that they can gain supersensible truths in a mystical way by using mediums, that is, they tune their consciousness down as much as possible. There is no more luciferic-Ahrimanic path to the spiritual world than the spiritualistic one. On the one hand, it brings the medium close to Lucifer, and on the other hand, it brings those who allow themselves to be told their “truths” by the medium close to Ahrimanism. And the content of such truths, of these so-called truths, is also accordingly. For what the medium has to say about the extrasensory is not something higher than the sensory. The sensible has a certain meaning throughout the whole of earthly time. What mediums have to say is only meaningful for a very short period of time, if it is based on truth, of course. It is only of significance for certain elementary spiritual effects over a short period of time, so that even if one does nothing but see with one's healthy eyes and hear with one's healthy ears throughout one's entire life, one still experiences something higher than that through mediums.

From these and similar things you can see that on the one hand there are great demands in our time for the renewal of spiritual life, but that there is also what can be called a strong resistance to the real sources of spiritual life that have grown in our time. People today resist the intrusion of the spiritual into the physical-sensual world. This resistance is what can confront you in all possible fields and what you should recognize from the various attacks on spiritual science as it is meant here. This spiritual science, as it is meant here, is clear about the fact that everything that is to enter into public social life in the future must flow entirely from the sources of initiation. What is being asserted there, such as the threefold social order, may not appeal to certain people today. There are people who say: I don't like this or that about it. These people should in turn learn to understand what whole thinking is. In life, it does not depend on what we like or dislike. I once knew a lady - I have told this story before - who had many things told to her about spiritual science. Then she said: Yes, but re-incarnation, the repeated lives on earth, that is something I don't like; I don't want to come back to earth. Little by little she could be made to understand that it did not depend on whether she wanted to or not, especially not whether she wanted to in this life or not, because she did not yet know what she would want between death and a new birth; then she would want to come back. Now she seemed to gradually understand that and also left, saying that she now understood. It was in Berlin. From Stettin she wrote a card saying that she did not believe in it after all; she did not like the idea of coming back to earth after all. — Then the thinking breaks off dynamically; it can also break off mechanically. We have already experienced an example of this on our own soil. The example is very plausible; but that it can be applied to much of what people think is less plausible. Once at a meeting I had to explain how human beings come back in reincarnation, how they reappear with their individual human souls. I had to say that animals have a group soul; and while it is the case with man that he has an individual soul, preserves this individual soul for the time between death and a new birth, reappears with his individual soul and so on, it is the case with animals that has a group soul, it is so that it is taken into the whole group at death, that each individual animal is then separated again at birth and, as it were, drawn back into the group soul after death through a tentacle. Then a lady began to polemicize: Yes, she could see that for all animals, only not for her dog - which she had particularly liked; because she had raised him so much that he had such a strong individual soul that he would reappear as an individuality! — Afterwards I had a conversation with another lady who said: How stupid the lady was to believe that her dog, who only has a group soul, will return as an individuality. I realized right away that that cannot be. But my parrot, he will surely return as an individuality, that is something else!

Of course, these things make you laugh; but it is precisely in these things that you notice when you make the thinking mistakes. From what I have told you regarding the alleged conflation of threefolding with spiritual science, one does not notice one's short thinking! I have seen how, in the last five years, numerous judgments have been made entirely according to the pattern of this parrot judgment, how people in one region of the country have grasped how things are everywhere else, but for them it was always something different, entirely according to the pattern of the parrot's return. The point is that we really take these things seriously in the present and that we can see: initiation science must be able to flow into social life, and that we must not deceive ourselves about the difference between what we would like to think and what is real. That is why many people today may find it unpleasant to propagate threefolding. But there are two things in the world today, and anyone who looks at the world honestly and sincerely, who has no illusions, can see that there are these two things: either Bolshevism over the whole world or threefolding! You may not like threefolding; then you decide in favor of an old world order! But just consider what has been left of a large part of Europe in the last four to five years! Take the individual parts. There you have, for example, German-Austria; apart from the efforts of a few prominent individuals whom I have singled out in my book 'Vom Menschenrätsel' (The Riddle of Man), the substance of the whole derives from the Catholic principles of the 8th and 9th centuries A.D. That still existed there, and could be artificially preserved under the principle of cohesion of the so-called House of Habsburg, which was only natural at the time, and then under the entire unnatural principle of cohesion of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. Or take, for example, what the former lands of the Holy Crown of St. Stephen are, Hungary: it is, in its entire constitution, what it became in the year 1000! And so we could indicate from all the individual areas what the essence of this overall substance actually is. It is not even convenient to say these things to people in the present, because people do not want to look at such circumstances impartially. But how can we expect that simply by piecing together these ruins, which have become old and decrepit because their entire substance dates from the 8th, 9th, 10th or 11th centuries and so on, they can be welded together into lasting structures today! No, only a real renewal of the soul life will do. But that must actually be grasped. Therefore, one must always appeal to people's sense of responsibility to take a look at this soul life. If it is looked at, then it will also be attended to.

I will continue speaking about these matters tomorrow, especially about the relationship between what I have said today and the particular view of the Christ principle.

[ 1 ] How does Man stand to-day, at his present stage of evolution, with regard to Michael and Michael's Company?

[ 2 ] Man stands over against a world which once was wholly divine, spiritual Being—divine spiritual Being, of which he himself was a living part. The world therefore, in those times when World and Man belonged together, was a world of divine spiritual Being. In a following stage of evolutionary progress, this had ceased. The world was then, the cosmic Revelation of Divine spirit; the Divine Spirit in its essential Being hovered behind the Revelation. Yet still it weaved and lived in this, its revealed glory. A world of stars was there; in their shining and their motion Divine Spirit weaved and lived as revelation. One may say, that in the place of a star's standing, in those days, or in the manner of its moving, might directly be seen the action of Divine Spirit.

[ 3 ] In all that here went on—the manner in which the Divine Spirit wrought within the Cosmos—the life of Man, as he grew up in every way a product of divine-spiritual action in the Cosmos—in all of this, Michael was still in his own element unopposed. He was mediator in the relations of the Divinity to Man.

[ 4 ] Other times came. The star-world ceased to be the immediate and present bearer of the divine-spiritual action. Its life and motion was but the persistent continuation of the same form of action which had once worked within it. Divine Spirit lived no longer in the Cosmos as Revelation, but only as Workings. A marked distinction had now taken place between the Divine-Spiritual and the Cosmic: they had become two against the Ahrimanic Powers, which will save us from falling into their snare.

Michael, from his own fundamental being, remained with the Divine-Spiritual. He endeavoured also to keep Man as close to it as possible. And he continued to do so. It was his purpose to preserve Man from living all too intensely in a world which was only the workings—not the being, and not the revelation—of Divine Spirit.

[ 5 ] Michael accounts it a matter of deepest satisfaction that he has succeeded, through Man, in keeping the star-world still directly connected with the divine-spiritual element, and in the following manner:—When Man has accomplished his life between death and new birth, and is on his way down to take up a new existence upon Earth, he himself endeavours, as he comes down towards this new existence, to establish a harmony between the course of the stars and his own earth-lives. This harmony was a matter of course in times of yore, since Divine Spirit was at work within the stars, and Man’s life had its source in them. To-day, when the stars merely continue in their courses to carry on the Divine Spirit’s workings, this harmony would not exist, unless Man sought for it. Man brings his own divine-spiritual element, that has been conserved from earlier times in him, into relation with the stars, in which the divine-spiritual element only exists as after-effect of an earlier time. Thus a divine element is introduced into Man’s relation with the world, which corresponds to earlier times and yet appears in later ones. That this is so, is the act of Michael; and this act gives him such deep satisfaction, that a great part of his life-element, his life-energy, his radiant, sun-like life-will, lives in this satisfaction.

[ 6 ] To-day, however, when he looks with a spirit’s eye at the earth, he sees there another and essentially different state of things. Man, during his life now in the physical sphere between birth and death, has all round about him a world which is no longer directly even the workings of Divine Spirit, but only something left behind from these workings,—what one can only call the work wrought by Divine Spirit. This wrought work is in its forms altogether of a divinely spiritual kind. The Divinity manifests itself to human perception in the forms, in the natural processes, of this wrought world. But Divinity is no longer within it as a living presence. Nature is this divinely wrought work of the Divinity, and everywhere the moulded likeness of the divine workings.

[ 7 ] In this sun-brightly divine, but not livingly divine world, lies the life of Man. But owing to Michael’s work upon - him, he has conserved as Man his connection with the essential being of Divine Spirit. He lives as a God-pervaded being in a non-God-pervaded world.

[ 8 ] Into this God-voided world, Man will introduce what is in himself—what his own being has come to be in this age.

[ 9 ] Mankind will take its place in a world-evolution, and expand its own form there. The Divine Spirit-Being from which Man first sprang, spread abroad as Man-Being throughout all the worlds, will then have power to fill with light that Cosmos, which now exists only in the wrought likeness of Divine Spirit.

[ 10 ] It will no longer be the same Being, which once was Cosmos, which will then shine forth in light through Man. Divine Spirit, in its passage through Mankind, shall realise a quality of being, which it had not brought to manifestation before.

[ 11 ] Against the progress of evolution in this direction, the Ahrimanic Powers turn all their force. They do not want the Divine-spiritual Powers of its origin to illumine the Universe on its further course. Their aim is that the whole of the new Cosmos should be lit by the cosmic intellectual light which they have absorbed into themselves, and that Man should live on henceforth in this intellectualised and Ahrimanised cosmos.

[ 12 ] In a life of this kind, Man would lose the Christ. For Christ came into the world with an Intellectuality which is in every way the same as it was, when once it lived in the Divine Spirit, when Divine Spirit in Being still informed the Cosmos. If, to-day, we speak in such a manner that our thoughts can also be the Christ’s, then we set something against the Ahrimanic Powers, which will save us from falling into their snare.

[ 13 ] To understand the meaning of the Michael-Mission in the Cosmos, means the ability to speak like this. One must be able in these days to speak about the world of Nature in the way demanded by the present stage of the Spiritual Soul's development. One must be able to make one's mind familiar with the purely scientific, naturalistic mode of thought.

But one must also learn to speak—which means, to feel—about the world of Nature too in a manner befitting the Christ. Not only about redemption from Nature, not only about the soul and things divine, but about the Cosmos, we must learn the Christ-language.

[ 14 ] That our human link with our first divine-spiritual origin may be so preserved, that we may know how rightly to speak the Christ-language about the Cosmos—this is something to which we shall in the end attain, if with inward sincerity of heart we learn to feel and ever more fully enter into all that Michael and Michael's Company are amongst us—in their mission, in all that they perform. For to understand Michael, means, to-day, to find the way to the Logos, as lived by Christ amongst men on earth.

[ 15 ] Anthroposophy sets due value upon all that the naturalistic form of scientific thought has learnt to say about the world during the last four to five hundred years. But Anthroposophy has another language to speak besides this one, about the Being of Man, the Evolution of Man, the Growth of the Cosmos. Anthroposohy would speak the Christ-Michael language.

[ 16 ] For if both languages are spoken, then the continuity will remain unbroken, and evolution will not pass over to Ahriman, before finding again its first, divine, spiritual origin. The language of the natural sciences, by itself alone, in a manner of speech that befits the detachment of the intellectual force from the Divine Spirit of its origin. It may become the language of Ahriman, if Michael's mission be neglected. It will not do so, if, through the might of Michael's great example, the freed and detached intellect comes to itself once more in that Cosmic Intellectual power of the beginning, which, severed from Man, has become objective to him, but which lies at Man's source, and appeared in its living essence in Christ within the realm of human kind, after having left Man for a while, in order that he might unfold his freedom.

Leading Thoughts

[ 17 ] 1. Divine Spirit manifests itself in various ways in the Cosmos, in the following stages: 1. In its own primal and essential Being. 2. In the Revelation of this Being. 3. In its Workings—when the Being withdraws from the Revelation. 4. In its Wrought Work, when in the Universe, as this appears, no longer the Divine itself but only the Forms of the Divine are there.

[ 18 ] 2. Man's present view of the natural world gives him no relation to the Divine but only to this finished Work, wrought by the Divine. The effects communicated to the human soul by this view of the natural world are such that Man may use them, either to ally himself with the Christ-Powers, or with the forces of Ahriman.

[ 19 ] 3. Michael's whole aim and effort is, that the pristine relation to the Cosmos, which has been conserved in Man from the ages of the divine manifestation in Being and Revelation, should by the free effect of Michael's own example, become incorporated in the further human and cosmic evolution. For then the present naturalistic view, which tells only of the Image or empty Form of the Divine, will be able to pass over into a higher view of Nature, more befitting the Spirit. This higher view of Nature will have present existence in Man; but it will be a human after-realization of the God's relation to the Cosmos during the first two stages of cosmic evolution. While giving assent, in this manner, to the view of the natural world which belongs to the Age of Consciousness (Age of the Spiritual Soul), Anthroposophy supplements and completes this view by another—the result of observation with the awakened eye of the Spirit.

One result of anthroposophical spiritual science—once it has been absorbed into civilization—will be a fructification of the arts. Precisely in our time the human inclination toward the artistic has diminished to a marked degree. Even in anthroposophical circles not everyone thoroughly comprehends the fact that Anthroposophy strives to foster, in every possible way, the artistic element.

This is of course connected with modern man's aforementioned aversion to the artistic. Today the positive way in which Goethe and many of his contemporaries sensed the unity of spiritual life and art is no longer experienced. Gradually the conception has arisen that art is something which does not necessarily belong to life, but is added to it as a kind of luxury. With such assumptions prevailing, the upshot is not to be wondered at.

In times when an ancient clairvoyance made for a living connection with the spiritual world, the artistic was considered absolutely vital to civilization. We may feel antipathy for the frequently pompous, stiff character of Oriental and African art forms; but that is not the point at issue. In this and further lectures we shall be concerned, not with our reaction to any particular art form, but rather with the way in which man's attitude places all the arts within the framework of civilization. The necessity is to see a certain connection between today's spiritual life and the attitude toward art previously alluded to.

If today, as is customary, one sees man as the highest product of nature, as a being brought forth at a certain point in earthly evolution (part of an evolutionary series fashioning a variety of beings), one falsifies the position of man in respect to the world; falsifies it because man has, in truth, no right to the self-satisfaction which would enter his soul, inevitably, as an elemental impulse of soul, if he were indeed only the terminal point of natural creation. If the animals had developed in the way currently assumed by natural science, then man, as the highest product of nature, would have to content himself with this status in the cosmos; he would have no call whatsoever to create something transcending nature.

For instance, if in art one wishes to create, as the Greeks did, an idealized human being, one has to be dissatisfied with what nature offers. For, if satisfied, one could never inject into nature something which surpasses her. Similarly, if satisfied with the nightingale's and lark's song, one could never compose sonatas and symphonies; such a combination of sounds would seem untrue; the true, the natural, being exhaustively expressed by the birds.

The naturalistic world-conception demands that those who wish to create something content themselves with imitations of the natural. For it is only when we envisage a world other than the natural one that we can see a transcending of nature as anything but dishonesty and sham.

We must grasp this fact. But present-day human beings do not draw the logical conclusion from naturalism as it affects the arts. What would happen if they did? They would have to demand that people imitate nature; nothing else. Well, but if a Greek prior to Aeschylus had been shown a mere imitation of nature, he would have said something like this: “Why all that? Why let actors speak as people do in everyday life? If you wish to hear such things, go into the street. Why present them on the stage? It is quite unnecessary. The street is a far better place to find out what people say to one another in ordinary life.” In other words, only a person who participates in spiritual life has an impulse for a creative activity transcending the merely natural. Otherwise, where would the impulse come from? In all ages the human souls in which the artistic element flourished have had a definite relation to the spiritual world. It was out of a spirit-attuned state that the artistic urge proceeded. And this relation to the spiritual world will be, forever, the prerequisite for genuine creativity. Any age strictly naturalistic must, to be true to itself, become inartistic, philistine. Unfortunately our own age has an immense talent for philistinism.

Take the individual arts. Pure naturalism can never create an artistic architecture, a high art of building. Today the “art” of building leads away from art. For if people do not have a longing to assemble in places where the spiritual is fostered, they will not construct houses suitable for spiritual impulses, but merely utilitarian buildings. And what would they say of the latter? “Well,” they would say, “we build in order to shelter our bodies, to protect the family; otherwise we would have to camp out in the open”—the idea of utility being primary. Though such an attitude is not, perhaps, because of embarrassment, generally admitted, it is admitted in particular cases. Today many people are offended if the architect of a residence sacrifices anything of expediency to the principle of the beautiful, the aesthetic; and one often hears the statement: “To build artistically is too expensive.” People did not always think like that; certainly not in those ages when human souls experienced a kinship with the spiritual world. Then the feeling about man and his relation to the universe found expression in words somewhat like these: “Here I stand in the world, but as I stand here with a human form in which dwell soul and spirit, I carry within me something which has no existence in purely natural surroundings. When soul and spirit leave this body, then the relation between it and my physical environment will become manifest; this environment will consume my corporeal part. Only on a corpse do the laws of nature take effect.” Which is to say that as long as the human being is not a corpse, as long as he lives here on earth, he can, through his spiritual heritage, through soul and spirit, preserve from the action of physicality the substances and forces which the corpse will eventually claim.

I have often remarked that eating is not the simple process ordinarily imagined. We eat, and the foods entering our organism are products of nature, natural substances and forces. Because they are foreign to us, our organism would not tolerate them if we could not transform them into something totally different. The energies and laws by means of which food is changed do not belong to the physical earthly environment. We bring them with us from another world. These facts and much else were recognized, understood, when people had a relationship with the spiritual world. Today, however, human beings think it is the laws of nature that are active in the roast beef when it rests on the plate, when it touches the tongue, when it has reached the stomach, intestines, blood; they see the laws of nature active everywhere. The fact that roast beef encounters spirit-soul laws which man himself has brought from another world into this one, and which transform it into something completely different—this fact has no place in the consciousness of a merely naturalistic civilization. Paradoxical as it may sound, materialists feel embarrassed to state bluntly the above. Yet they live with this attitude of mind.

It affects our whole artistic attitude. For, in the final analysis, why do we build houses for ourselves today? To be protected while eating roast beef! Well, this is only one detail. But all contemporary thinking tends in that direction.

By contrast, human beings of the past who had a living consciousness of their relationship to the spiritual universe erected their most valuable buildings to protect the human soul against inroads from their physical environment. Of course, when I use modern words in this connection they sound paradoxical. In ancient times people did not express themselves so abstractly. Things were felt, they were sensed subconsciously. But people's feelings, their unconscious sensations, were spiritual. Today we clothe these feelings in well-defined words which convey, not inadequately, what souls experienced in more ancient times. They were aware that, when a man has passed through an earth life, he lays aside his physical body; whereupon soul and spirit must find their way back into the spiritual universe. Consequently, these people were concerned as to how a soul fares after death: how it can find its way back into spiritual worlds.

Today people do not worry about such things, but there were times when this problem of means was a fundamental concern; when (for this is pertinent) people said to themselves: Outside, there are stones; outside, there are plants; outside, animals. When absorbed by man, substances derived from stones, plants, animals, are worked over by the physical body. Its spiritual forces can overcome some minerals—for example, salt. Similarly, it possesses the spirit-soul forces necessary for the overcoming of purely plant constituents, and can transform the animal element into the human element. All of which points up the fact that the physical body is a mediator between the human being who comes down from spiritual worlds and this so alien earth. Thanks to the physical body we can stand upon this earth; can exist among minerals, plants and animals.

But when the physical body has been laid aside, then the naked soul enters a state fitted only for the spiritual world; and having laid aside its body must ask: How can I pass through the impurity of the animals in order to escape from earthly regions? How pass through the plant element which absorbs, attracts and condenses light? How—accustomed to living amid earthly plant-condensed light—pass out into far reaches of quite another condition of light? How, when I can no longer dissolve them through body-juices, pass beyond the soul-impeding minerals massed on every side?

In ancient times, during mankind's evolution, these were religious-cultural anxieties. People pondered on what they had to do for souls, especially dear ones, to help them find the lines, planes, forms, by means of which they could reach the spiritual world. Thus was developed the art of erecting burial vaults, monuments, mausoleums, which embodied in their forms, their lines and planes, that which the discarnate soul requires if it is to be unimpeded by animals, plants and minerals when ready to find its way back to the spiritual world.

These edifices took their characteristic forms directly from the cult of the dead; and if we wish to comprehend how they arose, we must try to understand how the soul, deprived of its body, finds its way back to the spiritual world of its origin. The belief prevailed that, because the soul has a certain relation to the discarded body, it can find the path out into the world of spirit through the architectural forms vaulting above it.

This conviction was one of the fundamental impulses behind the development of ancient architectural forms. Insofar as these forms were artistic and not merely utilitarian, they took their rise from edifices for the dead. In other words, artistic construction was intimately connected with the cult of the dead; or, as in the case of Greece, with the fact that each temple was built for Athena, Apollo or some other god. For just as the human soul was thought to be incapable of unfolding amid minerals, plants and animals, so the divine-spiritual natures of Apollo, of Zeus, of Athena, were thought to be incapable of unfolding amid external nature unless the spirit of man created for them certain congenial forms. Only if we study the way the soul is related to the cosmos can we understand measurements and proportions in the complicated architectural forms of the ancient Orient; forms which are living proof of the fact that the human beings from whose imaginations they sprang said to themselves: “Man in his inner being does not belong to the earth; he is of another world, therefore needs forms which belong to him in his character as a native of that other world.”

No true historical art form can be understood from merely naturalistic principles. To understand we must ask: What lies behind and is inherent in it? For example, here is the human body, the indwelling human soul. The soul, through its inherent nature, desires to unfold in all directions; and the way it would unfold, disregarding the body, the way it desires to carry its being out into the cosmos, becomes an architectural form.

O soul, if you wish to leave the physical body in order to regain a relationship with the cosmos, what aspect will you take on?—this was the question. The forms of architecture were, so to speak, answers.

Within the evolution of mankind this impulse toward outer expression of inner needs continued to work for a long time. But of course today, during the age of abstractions, everything takes on a different appearance. Which does not mean that we should wish to retrieve the past; only to understand it.

Another custom of the past, though not a very ancient past, asking to be understood: churches surrounded by graves. Not every person could have an individual tomb; the church was the common mausoleum. Therefore it was the church which had to answer, through its form, the ancient question of the soul: How [to] unfold, how [to] escape in the right way, from the body connecting me with the physical world? Ecclesiastical architecture bodies forth, as it were, the desire of the soul for its right after-death form.

To repeat: past cultural elements can be understood only in connection with the feelings and intuitions which people had out of the spiritual world. To understand a cemetery-surrounded church we must develop a sense for the feelings which lived in the original builders when they asked: Dear souls leaving us in death, what forms do you wish us to erect so that, while still hovering near your body, you can take them on and be helped? The answer was ecclesiastical architecture, the artistic element in which was directed toward the end of earth life. Certainly, all this undergoes a metamorphosis. What proceeds from the cult of the dead can become the highest expression of life (as in what we attempted for the Goetheanum). But one must understand things; must understand that architecture unfolds out of the principle of the soul's escape from the body, out of the principle of the soul's growing beyond the body, after passing through the portal of death.

And if we look in the opposite direction, toward birth, toward man's passage from the spiritual into the physical world, then I must tell you something which may make you smile, a little, inwardly; or, perhaps, you won't smile; in which case I would say, Thank goodness! For what I am going to say is true. You see, when the soul arrives on earth in order to enter its body, it has come down from spirit-soul worlds in which there are no spatial forms. Thus the soul knows spatial forms only after its bodily experience, only while the after-effects of space still linger on.

But though the world from which the soul descends has no spatial forms or lines, it does have color intensities, color qualities. Which is to say that the world man inhabits between death and a new birth (and which I have frequently and recently described) is a soul-permeated, spirit-permeated world of light, of color, of tone; a world of qualities, not quantities; a world of intensities rather than extensions. Thus in certain primitive, almost-forgotten civilizations, they who descended and dipped into a physical body had the sensation that through it he entered into relation with a physical environment, grew into space. To him the physical body was completely attuned to space, and he said to himself: “This is foreign to me, it was not so in the spirit-soul world. Here I am under the joke of three dimensions [While the book says joke, a better translation of ‘hineingespannt’ might be yoke! – e.Ed.]—dimensions which had no meaning before my descent into the physical world. But color, tone harmonies, tone melodies, have very much meaning in the spiritual world.”

In those ancient epochs when such realities were sensed, man had a strong desire not to take into his being what was essentially foreign to him. At his most perceptive, he sensed that his head had been given him by the spiritual world. For, as I have often remarked, our trunk and limbs in one life become our head in the next; and so on, from life to life. Ancient man felt the adjustment of his lower body to gravity, to the forces circling the earth; felt its imprisonment in space; and felt that what entered his physical body from his environment did not befit him as a human being bearing, within, an impulse from spiritual worlds. He must do something to bring about a harmonization with his new home.

That was why he carried down from spiritual worlds the colors of his garments. Just as, in ancient times, architecture pointed to the end of earth life, to the death-pole, so in times when man had a sense for the artistic meaning of the colors and styles of dress, the art of costuming pointed to the beginning of human life, to the birth-pole.

Thus (I repeat) ancient garments reflected something brought down from pre-earthly existence, reflected a predilection for the colorful, for harmony; and we need not be astonished that at a time when insight into the pre-earthly has withered, the art of costuming has shriveled into dilettantism. For modern clothing hardly conveys the feeling that man wants to wear it because of the way he lived in pre-earthly existence. But if you study the characteristically vivid garments of flourishing primitive cultures you will see that clothing is or can be a fully justified and great art through which man carries something of his pre-earthly life into earth life; just as, through architecture, he would receive impressions relevant to space-free, post-earthly conditions.

Peoples who still wear national costumes express, through them, the pre-earthly relationships which led them into a certain folk community. Their garments remember, as it were, their appearance in heaven.

Often, to find meaningful costumes, you must go back to more ancient times. And you will see not only that there flourished, then, painters, sculptors, and so forth, but that people of other occupations, during the whole period, were highly artistic.

If you look at Raphael's paintings, you will see that Mary Magdalene and the Virgin Mary are clothed quite differently; also that in all his works Raphael gives Mary Magdalene—essentially—her characteristic garment, and the Virgin Mary hers. He did this because he still experienced in living tradition the fact that a soul-spirit being, brought down from heaven, expresses himself through his garments.

Here lies the meaning of costuming. Modern man may say that clothes derive significance through the fact that they provide warmth. Well, certainly, that is one of their materialistic meanings. But it creates no aesthetic forms. Artistry arises always and only through a relation to the spiritual.

This mode in which things stand to the spiritual must be found again if we would penetrate to the truly artistic. And since Anthroposophy takes hold of the spiritual in its immediacy, it can have a fructifying influence upon art. The great secrets of the world and of life which must be revealed out of anthroposophical research will prove to be artistic; will culminate in art.

In this connection we must perceive something anatomical, already referred to. That part of the human organism which was not head during one earth-life transforms itself, dynamically, into head in the subsequent life. Then (this is self-evident) it is filled out with earth-substance. I have often explained that we must not make the silly objection: The physical body having perished, how can a head arise from it? The other objections brought against Anthroposophy are not, as a rule, much more clever; and this one is really cheap. But we are not concerned, here, with the physical filling out; only with a force relationship which can pass through the spiritual world. The relationship of forces which today inheres in all parts of our physical organism below the head (whether those forces move vertically or horizontally, whether they are held together or expand) has a spherical tendency, becoming thereby the force relationship of our head in our next earth life. When the metamorphosis of legs, feet and so forth into head takes place, the higher hierarchies cooperate. For all heavenly spirits work together. Small wonder, then, that the top of the head appears as an image of the vast space arching spherically above us. And that the adjacent area is an image of the atmosphere circling round the earth; of atmospheric forces. One might say: In the upper part of the head we have a faithful image of the heavens; in the middle, an adaptation of the head to forces which triumph in the chest, to all that encircles the earth. For in our chest we need the earth-encircling air, need the light weaving round the earth, and so forth. The whole organism below the head has no form relationship to the head's spherical form—it has a relationship of substance, not of form; but our chest has a definite relationship to our nose, indeed to everything pertaining to the middle part of the head. And if we descend to the mouth, we find that it is related to the third member of the human threefoldness, namely, to the organism devoted to digestion, nutrition, and motion.

We see how what has passed through the heavens to become head on earth (out of the previous headless body-formation) is in its majestic spherical form adapted to the heavens; whereas the middle part comes from what man is through earth-encircling orbits; and the mouth's formation from what earthly man is through earthly substance and the power of gravity.

Thus, in terms of European mythology, the head of the human being contains, above, as it were, Asgard, the castle of the gods; in its middle part, Midgard, man's earthly home; and, below, what also belongs to the earth, Jotunheim, home of the giants.

These interrelationships do not become clear through abstract concepts; they become clear only if we perceive the human head artistically, in relation to its spiritual origin; only when we see in it heaven, earth and hell. Not hell as the abode of the devil; hell as the home of the giants, Jotunheim. There lives in the head the entire human being: a whole.

We look at a person in the right way if we see in the spherical form of the upper part of the head the purest memory of his previous incarnation; if we see in the middle part, in the lower portion of the eyes and in nose and ears, a memory dulled by the atmosphere of earth; and in the formation of the mouth, that part of his previous human formation conquered by earth, banished to earth. In the configuration of his forehead the human being brings with him, in a certain sense, what has been passed on to him karmically from his previous earth-life. In the formation of his chin he is conquered by the earthly life of the present age; he expresses gentleness or obstinacy in his chin formation. If his previous organization, minus head, had not transformed itself into his present head, he would not have a chin at all. But in the formation of mouth and chin all current earth impulses are so strong that they press and constrain the past into the present.

Therefore no artistic person will say: That human being is striking because of his prominent forehead. Rather, he will pay special attention to its spherical shape, to the formation of its planes. Its protrusion or recession is less important than its spherical shape.

In regard to the chin he will say: It is advancing, obstinate and pointed; or: It gently recedes. Here we begin to understand the form of man out of the whole universe; not merely out of the present universe—there we find little—but out of the temporal universe, then the extra-temporal.

Thus through anthroposophical considerations we are driven toward the artistic element, and see that philistinism is in no way compatible with a true and living apprehension of Anthroposophy. That is why inartistic people find it so difficult to come into harmony with the whole of this teaching. Though, abstractly, they might with pleasure recognize their present life as the fulfillment of previous earth lives, they are unable to enter intimately into the forms which reveal themselves in direct artistic fashion to spiritual perception, creating and transforming: a necessary activity for anyone desiring to unite with the essential living anthroposophical element.

This is the foundation I wished to lay down in order to show how the unspiritual character of our time manifests in the most varied spheres; among others, in a widespread unspiritual attitude toward art. If mankind desires to save itself from the unspiritual, one factor in its rescue will be a reversal of this position.

A true life in the artistic: to this desirable end Anthroposophy can show the way.