The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Nationalzeitung (Basel), Vol. 82, No. 513

By Dr. Rudolf Steiner.

The rebuilding of the Goetheanum has been much discussed in the press and has aroused the interest of the widest circles. We are now in a position to publish a picture of the future building. At the same time, we have asked Dr. Rudolf Steiner to comment on the idea on which the building is based.

The reconstruction of the Goetheanum presented no easy task for the design of the building idea. A complete reorientation was necessary because the old building was mainly made of wood, while the new one is to be built entirely of concrete. However, the design of the building should not contradict the nature of anthroposophy, which the building is intended to foster. It seeks to draw from spiritual sources, from which spiritual knowledge flows for the powers of perception, but from which art forms and style also flow for the sentient imagination. It strives for the very primal forces of perception, but also for those of artistic creation and stylistic expression. It would be grotesque if someone were to build her workplace who, out of some artistic sentiment, were to invent the building idea with only external feelings for the essence of anthroposophy. This workplace can only be built by someone who experiences every detail of the form artistically out of the essence of spiritual insight, just as he recognizes every word spoken out of the same insight in anthroposophy.

The softness of the wood made it possible to create a spatial design that emulated nature's own creative process in organic forms. The organism as a whole makes a form necessary, for example for the smallest structure - a earlobe - that could not be otherwise. To merge with artistic experience in this organic creation of nature could lead to the development of an “organic architectural style”, in contrast to one based on mere statics or dynamics, if the natural was elevated by the creative imagination into the spiritual. For example, in the old Goetheanum there was a hall that visitors entered before coming to the large auditorium. The wooden forms allowed a design to be created that showed exactly that the space was ready to receive those entering from outside. What was achieved through the organic integration into the overall building then extended over this special design. But this also provided the design on the outside. It revealed in an artistic way what had been designed and structured in the building for the purposes of anthroposophical work.

Concrete does not lend itself to such a formation of the building idea in the same way as wood does. This is the reason why the design of the model took almost a full year to complete. - You work the spatial form into the wood; you create the form by deepening a main surface. Concrete, on the other hand, is a material from which the form has to be carved by raising the main surface in the way that is needed to define the necessary space. This also applies to the formation of the outward-facing forms. Surfaces, lines and angles, etc. are to be kept in such a way that what is designed and structured inside pushes its way into the outer forms and thus reveals itself.

Furthermore, this second Goetheanum needs to make more economical use of space than the first. The interior of the first was really just one room designed to provide an artistic setting for lectures and performances alike. But now there will be two floors: a lower floor with work and lecture rooms and a rehearsal stage, and an upper floor with an auditorium and a stage, which can also be used as a lecture room.

This internal structure had to be followed by the artistic design of the lines and surfaces on the outside. Look at the shape of the roof – which is not a dome this time. If you feel your way through the forms, you will find how the task of artistically integrating the roof into the forms on one side is attempted, corresponding to the ascending auditorium, while on the other side it is conceived as enclosing the stage area with its storerooms, etc. With an artistically unbiased view, one might perhaps discover how the necessities of the design of the floor plan have influenced the design of the building idea, right up to the daring shaping of the west front.

The building will stand on a ramp. This will make it possible to walk around the building on a surface raised above ground level. The portals will be reached by large staircases leading from ground level to the ramp. The cloakroom and other ancillary rooms will be located under the ramp.

The creator of the building idea is convinced that this concrete structure will correspond particularly well to the forms of the hill group on which the Goetheanum is located. When he designed the wooden building, he was not yet as familiar with these natural forms as he is now, after looking back on a decade in which he has come to know and love them.

(Alterations will still be made to the rear part of the building in accordance with the wishes of the Dornach community and the Solothurn government; these are not yet included here.)

Dear attendees! For many years I have had the privilege of speaking here in this place about anthroposophical spiritual science, its essence and significance for the present spiritual life of humanity. Since I last had the opportunity to do so, the School of Spiritual Science courses have taken place at the Goetheanum in Dornach in September and October of this year. These School of Spiritual Science courses were also intended to demonstrate in practical terms the task that the anthroposophical spiritual science in question seeks to fulfill in relation to the other sciences and to practical life. About thirty personalities from the various branches of science, artistic creation, and also practical life, industrial and commercial life, contributed to this; through them it should be shown how spiritual science can have a fruitful effect not only on the individual branches of science and on artistic creation, but also, and above all, on practical life. Spiritual science should not be limited to theoretical discussions and sentimental descriptions, but should show how it has the means to do precisely that which, in many respects, cannot be done by other sides in the present and in the near future, but which can be undertaken by spiritual science.

Those who are more familiar with the course of intellectual life in the present day know that the opinion and feeling is widespread throughout the individual branches of science that the individual sciences are coming up against certain limits that it is impossible for them to cross. Often it is even thought that it is impossible for humans to go beyond such limits.

But on the other hand, there is also practical life in relation to science. Science should and wants to intervene in practical life. And anyone who is involved in the life of science will not be able to deny that the limits that the various sciences find themselves up against — I need only draw attention to medicine —, that these limits can be settled by philosophical-theoretical arguments that are intended to justify these boundaries, but rather that life often demands human action precisely where science is confronted with such boundaries. The fact that it is indeed possible, through the special method of spiritual science, to enter precisely those areas that modern science points to as boundaries, should be shown on the one hand in the Dornach School of Spiritual Science. It should be shown, not by individual personalities who are merely familiar with spiritual science, but precisely by all people, by personalities who have thoroughly mastered their individual subject just as others have and who are immersed in it, who are the only ones who are able to show how this subject can be stimulated and fertilized by spiritual science. It was also of very special importance that personalities in practical life showed that this special way of thinking, which is based on reality, on full, total reality, to which the spiritual forces of the world certainly belong, that this way of looking at things is capable of accomplishing in practical life what has often had to remain unaccomplished in modern times, and which has indeed been outwardly documented as unaccomplished by the social and other necessities of life in our present time.

Of course, at this point we cannot yet say how successful this anthroposophical spiritual science has been in demonstrating its legitimacy in the spiritual life of the present day through such practical measures. On the other hand, however, it can be said that despite the attacks, of which you have been informed in the preparatory remarks, that despite these attacks, it has been recognized in recent times, even by serious parties, that what is believed by many is not true at all, that one has to deal with anthroposophy [as] with the activity of some obscure sect or the like.

I would like to give just one example to show you how, despite all the opposition, which is not always well-intentioned and, above all, not always well-meaning; how, despite all the opposition, spiritual science is slowly coming to what it must come to, at least to recognition of its earnest striving and its open eye for the cultural needs of the present.

I would like to cite just this one example. The opposing writings are gradually growing into books, and a book has been published in recent weeks called “Modern Theosophy”. For a reason that is, of course, strange, the author states that he is concerned with nothing but spiritual science. He says in the following remarks: Wherever the talk is of theosophy and theosophists, this is always the mode of expression that is more familiar than the expressions anthroposophy and anthroposophists.

Now, one cannot say – and this is addressed to those present – that the author of this writing, Kurt Leese, who has a licentiate in theology, is appreciative of anthroposophy. On the contrary, the whole book is written as a refutation. Nor can it be said that the author of the book understands an enormous amount about anthroposophy. But what he presents on the very first page and repeats many times in the book is something that shows that even from the position of an opponent, it is gradually no longer possible to deny the seriousness of anthroposophy's intentions. Here is what an opponent says:

“If Theosophy were only the random ideas of a small sect fishing in troubled waters, it would not be worth the effort to pay it any attention.”

And then he says that one is dealing with something that shows the foundations of a comprehensively designed world view, powerfully interwoven with an ethical spirit. The fact that this ethical spirit remains even if one negates everything else in anthroposophy is something that the author of this book openly admits:

"Its most active contemporary promoter, Rudolf Steiner, with the tools of great reading and undeniable acumen, has compiled a great wealth of religious-historical, scientific and philosophical material in detail, in order to lay the foundations of a comprehensively designed world view, powerfully imbued with an ethical spirit.

Nevertheless – and now I come to the positive part of my argument – this opponent, who strives to be objective, wants to look for the reasons for refuting anthroposophy from within anthroposophy itself. He wants to take up what the anthroposophist says and prove contradictions and the like, namely, to demonstrate an unscientific character. But at one point he betrays himself in a very strange way. He says, at a particularly characteristic point, that Anthroposophy has an inflammatory effect and is “ill-tempered”.

Such feats of tricky distinctions, which from the outset are in the service of an ideational preconceived scheme, make reading Steiner's writings not only difficult, where multiple misunderstandings of the uninitiated could occasionally occur, but also annoying and unpleasant.

So not only challenging logical judgment, challenging scientific judgment, but challenging feelings and emotions, that is how one views anthroposophy! And why is this so? This is certainly connected with the very special way in which anthroposophy, precisely because it wants to be as scientific as any other science, relates to the paths of knowledge of mankind.

Anthroposophy – of course, as I have said here very often – Anthroposophy would certainly not be taken seriously if it were somehow foolishly dismissive of the great, the significant achievements of the scientific method in modern times. Nor would it be taken seriously if it were to behave in some dilettantish way towards the spirit, the whole inner attitude of scientific research. It starts out from an acknowledgement of modern scientific endeavor. It does this by seeking to deepen its understanding of the scientific method, but at the same time it seeks a path from the comprehension of the external sense world into the comprehension of the spiritual world. And she would like to answer the questions that matter, the questions about the path of knowledge, in such a way that the spiritual realm is given its due, just as the sensory realm is given its due through scientific research. In doing so, she sees herself compelled — not by the scientific method as it is commonly practiced, in which one believes one is limited if one only works in the sensory world — she feels compelled by this scientific method, as it is commonly practiced, not to stop. It devotes itself more to the education, the inner discipline of research than to scientific methods, and for this reason cannot accept what is often dogmatically stated today as to the necessity of remaining in the world of sense and in the world of appearances through understanding.

And from this point of view, spiritual science seems provocative, as this critic says, and “unpleasant”. For on the whole, today's man is not inclined to accept any method of knowledge that does not arise from the ordinary characteristics of human nature, that one has in the world, that one has been educated to, or that follow from the course of ordinary life. The great and most wonderful achievements of modern natural science are based on the fact that one remains at a certain point of view of sense observation, of experiment and of combining through the intellect, that one carries out this kind of research further and further, conscientiously, but that one wants to remain with the point of view that one has once adopted in this way.

Spiritual science, as it is meant here, cannot remain at this point of view, but it must, it feels compelled, precisely because of the strict scientific education that the spiritual scientist has to undergo. It feels compelled – not only to knowledge applied in natural science, to expand it, to make it more precise through all kinds of aids — but she feels compelled to develop a completely different kind of knowledge in the soul, a different way of knowing than the one used in natural science today. She therefore feels compelled to continue the work of the scientist into the spiritual realm, so that the development of this spiritual scientific method can be characterized more as a natural outgrowth of the scientific method than as a mere extension of it. And so one arrives at what has been expressed by me from the most diverse points of view over the years.

One comes to the conclusion that in the life of the human soul there are certain forces that are hidden, just as they are hidden from ordinary perception and from ordinary scientific perception, just as those soul forces that only emerge after five or ten years are hidden in a ten-year-old child. What must be borne in mind is a real growth of the human being, a sprouting forth of that which is not yet there in the tenth year but continues into the fifteenth or twentieth year. And this is discovered by the anthroposophical spiritual science referred to here, that even if one has developed to the point of having the methods by which one can conduct scientific research in the most conscientious way, it is still possible – so that it can be compared with a real growth of the human being – to soul forces, that it is possible to extract soul forces from the human soul, which the world can now not only see, I would like to say, more precisely with a microscope or more closely with a telescope, but which see the world quite differently, namely spiritually and soulfully, in contrast to the merely sensory view.

And it is not attempted – esteemed attendees – to somehow explore the spiritual through external measures or external experiments. How could one recognize the supernatural through laboratory experiments! That is what those who are inclined towards spiritualism want, that is what those people who gather around Schrenck-Notzing or others want. The anthroposophical spiritual science referred to here takes precisely this view, that what can be observed externally through measures that are modeled on the external scientific experiment - however astonishing they may be - that by world in some way, be it by deepening or refining it, or by allowing it to work more into the etheric in some way —, that by remaining in the sensory world, one can by no means gain knowledge of the supersensible world. But modern man often finds this unacceptable, that he should now do something with his soul forces, that he should develop these soul forces himself before he can research in the spiritual world.

It is, however, necessary to develop a certain intellectual modesty, which consists in saying to oneself: the powers that are so well suited for the sensory world, such as those applied by modern science, cannot be used to enter the spiritual world. Man must first awaken his own supersensible when he wants to explore the supersensible in the external environment, to which he belongs as a spiritual-soul being just as he belongs to the physical world through his sense of being, when he wants to explore this spiritual-soul entity in the environment.

It is certainly not everyone's cup of tea, dear attendees, to become a spiritual researcher; but if one does not want to become a spiritual researcher, it is nevertheless not acceptable to say that spiritual science is idle because it opens up a field that only those who, in a certain sense, develop their soul powers can see into.

Modern humanity as a whole does not follow the path into the scientific method itself; but modern life is permeated by the ideas that we bring into it through science. We are simply compelled by common sense to accept what radiates from the natural sciences, to incorporate it into life, and to apply it in other ways to the human condition. Just as the researcher in the laboratories carries out his experiments, which then go out into the world, so too will there be a new spiritual research. But humanity in general wants to be able to relate to the results of spiritual research in the same way as it can relate to those of natural science, without having to face the reproach that something has been accepted on mere faith or on authority.

What is indicated as this special inner, intimate soul method is to be sought in a straightforward development of human soul forces that already exist in ordinary life and in ordinary science. I would like to say that it comes to mind that there must be something like this when one brings to mind the actual meaning of knowledge in modern scientific life.

I am certainly no Kantian, dear attendees. Everything that arises for me from anthroposophically oriented spiritual science is basically anti-Kantian. But I may refer to one of Kant's sayings here, because what lies in this saying has basically been verified by the whole of more recent scientific development, insofar as this whole more recent scientific development really strives to be knowledge of the world, comprehensible knowledge of the world. There is Kant's dictum: In every science, there is actually only as much real science to be found as there is mathematics present in it.

Now, my dear attendees, this is not something that we need merely believe about Kant; rather, we see it as true everywhere in the scientific development of modern times, especially in the development that most clearly and most directly leads to a world view, in the physical sciences. Mathematical thinking is applied, experiments are carried out, and not only observed, but the observations are permeated with mathematics. What does that actually mean?

Yes, it means that one only has the feeling of bringing intellectual light into what can be observed in the external world when one has verified the observations in a mathematical way. And how is that? Yes, it is because one comprehends mathematical insights through oneself, and does not become acquainted with mathematical insights through external observation. The one who once knows through inner contemplation that the three angles of a triangle are 180°, who can grasp this for himself through his own contemplation, in ordinary Euclidean geometry, he knows it. He knows it clearly through his own intuition, even if millions of people were to contradict him, he knows it. He can affirm it as a truth for his inner contemplation. It is therefore the inner work of contemplation through which one comes to mathematical truths, through which one, so to speak, inwardly experiences mathematical truths. And external observation becomes scientific in that one carries what one has observed inwardly into these external observations and connects it with them.

Especially when one has experienced this urge of the modern scientific direction in oneself through mathematics, that is, through an inwardly clear, light-filled pursuit of certain ideas in order to arrive at scientific paths that also satisfy the human need for knowledge, then one is pushed further. And then something else arises. I would say that it arises from the depths of life. From the depths of our soul, all kinds of needs for knowledge arise in the face of the great riddles of existence.

At first, in a very vague way, the human being wants to know something about what his or her essential core is. He wants to know something, or at least, one can say, he assumes that there is something to know about that which lies beyond birth and death. He also assumes that, however dark his path may be with regard to what he calls his fate, there may be a path of knowledge that allows him to somehow see through the seemingly so confused threads of human destiny. In the very act of experiencing such surging up from the soul, the human being will, I would say, become more and more aware through inner soul practice of how he is prompted when he wants to observe his inner soul , this thinking, feeling and willing that is in him, when he wants to observe it in a similar transparent way to how he already manages to a certain extent today to penetrate the outer world with mathematical concepts. And from what one experiences there as a driving force for knowledge, the spiritual researcher starts from there, he comes to the conclusion that one can further develop certain soul powers than are present in ordinary life, that one can further develop certain soul powers that are absolutely necessary for a healthy human existence in ordinary life.

Now, one of these ordinary soul abilities, without whose normal functioning we cannot be mentally healthy, is the ability to remember. My dear attendees! We all know this ability to remember; but we also know how necessary it is for a healthy, normal soul life. We know of pathological cases in which the thread of memory is interrupted up to the point of childhood, which is the furthest we can remember in life, where we cannot look back at the life we have gone through since our birth. When a person's thread of memory, his stream of memory, is interrupted in this way, then he feels, as it were, hollowed out inside. His soul life is not healthy and he cannot find his way healthily into the outer life, neither into social life nor into natural life. So the ability to remember is something that is, so to speak, absolutely intertwined with normal human life. Memory is connected to what we experience through our senses, what we go through in our interaction with the outer world. How does this memory present itself to us?

We can summon it quite well in our being if we do so through an image. In a sense, our life lies behind us at every moment like an indeterminate stream. But we live in our soul in such a way that from this state indefinite currents can emerge, the images of individual experiences, that we can bring up these images through more or less arbitrary inner actions, that they also come to us involuntarily and the like. It is as if a stream of our being were there and from this stream these images of our memory could emerge like waves.

Those who do not think with prejudice but truly from the spirit of modern science know how closely this ability to remember is connected with the human body, with the physical nature of the human being. We can, we need only point to what physiology and biology can tell us in this regard: how the ability to remember is somehow connected with the destruction of the body. And we will see how all this points to the fact that a truly inwardly healthy body is necessary for the human being to have the ability to remember in a healthy state.

This ability to remember is such that, in the right way, I would say the vividness of the external sensory perceptions that we experience in our connection with the external world, that this vividness of external sensory perception must [fade] in a certain way. We may recall the images of our experiences only in a faded state, and we must recall these images in such a way that we can participate with our will in an appropriate manner in this recall. These images must emerge in our inner soul life in a pale and somewhat arbitrary manner. And it is well known that when these images of memory emerge with a certain vividness and intensity, and when the human will, when the structure of the ego, must recede before these images, when a person cannot firmly persist in his ego in the face of these images, then hallucinations, visions, everything arises through which the human being is actually deeper in his body than he is connected when he is in the ordinary life of perception and memory.

This must be assumed in order to avoid misunderstanding spiritual science, especially with regard to its method, that spiritual science is quite clear about it in the moment when what is called a vision, what is called a hallucination, what you can call more intense images of fantasy, that in that moment the person is not freer from his physical life, but that he is more dependent on the physical life through some pathological condition than he is in ordinary external existence. The belief that spiritual science has anything to do with such pathological conditions of the soul must be fought against. On the contrary, it emphasizes more sharply than the external life that those who believe that one can look into the spiritual world by indulging in such abnormal soul phenomena, caused only by pathological bodily conditions, as they are, for example, those that occur in mediumship, that occur as hallucinations, as visions and the like, are quite on the wrong track.

What the spiritual researcher does as an inner activity of the soul is much more – my dear audience – than that. This is brought into a state of mind that is entirely modeled on the way this soul proceeds when it devotes itself to mathematical thinking. Just as mathematical thinking is completely permeated by the ego, which is constantly in control of itself. And just as every transition is made in such a way that one is, as it were, everywhere inside and knows how one thing passes into another, so too must the spiritual researcher's method in the inner life of the soul proceed in such a state of mind. Starting from the ability to remember, he draws on the most important quality of this ability to remember. It consists in the fact that memory makes permanent that which we otherwise experience only in the moment. What we have experienced in the moment remains with us for our lifetime. But how does it remain permanent for us?

If we take what I have already said, the dependence of normal human mental life on the body, then we have to realize that we maintain our memory normally when it is based on our body helping us to have this ability to remember. It is based on the fact that we do not have to work with just our soul when we want to remember. We know, after all, that what later comes up as a memory has descended into the indeterminate depths of bodily life. And again, it also comes up from the indeterminate depths of life. These depths, so to speak, pass on to our bodily life what is brought about in us through sensory impressions and through the intellectual processing of these impressions. We then bring it up again by lifting that which is experienced bodily in the time between the bodily life and the memory, by lifting it up into the imagination. We thus borrow our ideas, by becoming memories, the clear perception, to which we devote ourselves in mathematical thinking.

The spiritual researcher nevertheless ties in with precisely this lasting of the ideas in the memory. And that then leads him to what I have called the appropriate meditation in my writings, especially in the book “How to Know Higher Worlds” and in my “Occult Science: An Outline”. There it shows itself, I have characterized it many times, and you will find it discussed in more detail in the books mentioned. You bring into your consciousness an individual set of ideas or a complex of ideas and hand over — as I said — so that any reminiscences that emerge from the subconscious do not enter what you are to do only through human will, just as you do mathematical connecting and analyzing through human will. So you place certain ideas, which you have guessed or somehow obtained, at the center of your consciousness for a long time – and with the same completely clear, mathematically clear day consciousness – such ideas that you, so to speak, perform the activity, perform it mentally: to rest on ideas, as can otherwise only be achieved with the help of the physical body.

And then we see that this resting on certain ideas does indeed have a success. Then we see that we become aware of forces resting within our soul that have nothing to do with the physical body, that do not at all lead into the realm of hallucination or vision, that remain entirely within the realm in which the soul moves when it develops mathematics. But it is also an inner development of ideas, it is a spiritual experience of ideas. It is only necessary to bring other ideas than mathematical ones to the center of the soul's life, then a different ability than that of mathematical thinking will develop.

And one should not imagine that this is particularly easy and comfortable. Such exercises must be continued for years by those who want to become genuine spiritual researchers. But then it also turns out that forces were previously latent in the soul, hidden, which are now brought out. He then feels he has certain powers. Above all, the soul's ability to perceive, to perceive spiritually and mentally, is added to the ability to perceive sensually and intellectually that he had before. The human being becomes capable, as it were, of developing in real terms from within what Goethe more symbolically called the 'eye of the mind' and the 'ear of the mind'. The human being becomes capable of seeing differently than before, and above all, he first sees his own soul life differently.

I have pointed out that we have experienced this soul life since birth in an initially indeterminate stream, which we actually only have in mind in a very vague way, and from which the memory images then emerge. But it must be added that we ourselves are actually this stream. Just try to apply the “know thyself” correctly. You will see that in ordinary life you are actually nothing other than this stream, this stream that is so indeterminate, but from which all kinds of things we have experienced can emerge again and again. One is the Self. But one ceases to be the Self in a certain sense when one meditates in the way I have just indicated. I just called meditation this resting on certain ideas, although in practice it is necessary to develop the previously hidden soul powers within the human being. And the first success of this is that what we are otherwise always immersed in, what we are otherwise always, the context of our memories – because otherwise, in our ordinary state of consciousness, we are basically nothing but the stream of our memories – that this becomes more objective for us, that it becomes something external for us, that we learn to look at it.

That we have thus lifted ourselves out of it in full mathematical clarity and that we look at it. That is the first experience we have. In a certain moment of our consciousness, as a result of meditation, we have our life in front of us like a memory tableau, at least almost back to birth, like a unified whole, like a totality, like a panorama. It is not exactly what we have before us as memory images, but what we have before us is actually our inner self, inasmuch as we experience what existence has made of us, as in a totality. I would like to say that the whole stream, which we are otherwise ourselves, lies before us. We have lifted ourselves out of this stream.

This is the first experience that we have of ourselves in time, in the duration of the overview, that we actually do not merely remain in the moment through practical inner soul-making, but that we overview life as such.

But we learn something else through this as well. By making our soul life objective in this way, we learn to educate ourselves about processes that we actually go through every day, that we also observe externally, but that we certainly cannot observe from within in everyday life. This is the process of falling asleep, the process of waking up in ordinary life. One would indeed succumb to a bitter contradiction if one wanted to believe that what the soul contains dies every time one falls asleep and is reborn every time one wakes up. This soul content is there from falling asleep to waking up. But since in ordinary life a person can only have consciousness through the interaction of his soul with his body, but in the state of sleep the soul has detached itself from the body, so from falling asleep to waking up, within the ordinary consciousness, the person cannot know anything about himself.

But by having ascended to such a realization, as I have just characterized it, by having one's life as a continuous presence beside one, one can also enlighten oneself about the process of falling asleep and waking up. Because the human being is, by moving out of his ordinary experience, by learning to look at himself, he is in the same state – he learns to recognize that he is in the same state from direct experience, that he is in the state – in which he is otherwise, unconsciously, when he is between falling asleep and waking up. In this way, one learns to recognize the process of falling asleep and waking up. In this way, one learns to recognize that one knows: Now you have placed yourself in a state where you can see your life. But this is only a brief state of realization. Then you go back to ordinary life. So you have the state of the soul outside of ordinary experience and the ordinary state in which you are otherwise, where you are within your experiences. This re-entry into the state of ordinary life is exactly the same as waking up. And going out of oneself is learned by direct observation; going out and objectivizing of life is exactly the same as, when seen inwardly, falling asleep. So you learn to look at these two processes inwardly. But through that you get the elements to look at something else.

However, then there must be a certain expansion of what I have mentioned. I have said that today I can only point out – my dear audience – how the spiritual researcher puts certain ideas at the center of his consciousness. But he must actually attach very special importance to not just being able to rest with his consciousness on such ideas, but he must also be able to arbitrarily — and that must happen through completely different exercises, you can read about them in the books mentioned — he must be able to arbitrarily suppress these ideas again, to embrace them with his consciousness. He must thus inwardly become master — if I may repeatedly use the expression — over these ideas, which are essentially like pictures, viewed pictures, colored viewed pictures. No matter how people laugh at what Goethe called and what I also described in my “Theosophy” as “viewing images in the imagination,” what Goethe called “sensual-supersensory viewing.” Just as one can speak of a colored looking, just as one can speak of a colored looking towards the outside world, so one can speak of a colored looking at the inner images. It arises from the fact that something becomes objective. And the soul life becomes objective, as I have described it, through meditation.

But the person must also be able to remove all of this again. As you know, he is not capable of this in the case of a pathological state of mind. With mathematical clarity, the person must move in this bringing up of the ideas and in this removing of the ideas again. In that the human being, in this way, swings back and forth in his consciousness between ideas that he brings into his consciousness at will and then removes again, he practices a kind of systole and diastole, a kind of exhaling and inhaling. The spiritual-soul inner mobility comes about through this.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is the method of entering the spiritual worlds that is entirely appropriate for our age. It is appropriate to enter the spiritual worlds consciously. In the old days, when people instinctively plunged into the spiritual worlds, especially through the Oriental method, they tried to consciously elevate the breathing process, thus also trying to perform an inner activity by striving to inwardly oversee the breathing process, and then to see in the breathing process that which is present as the inner being of the human being. This process does not lead people into the spiritual world in an appropriate way in the present time. Those who want to bring it back, to bring back old institutions, are actually acting against the development of humanity. Today it is appropriate for humanity to replace this method of physical breathing with a different systole and diastole – with that which I have just characterized as a sitting down of the images brought about by the will and then again arbitrarily bringing these images out of consciousness.

On the one hand, by coming to imagination and thereby describing the reverse path – and by moving further and further away from what I have described here as a conscious back and forth in meditative life – man then learns to recognize how to expand what one grasps elementarily in inhaling and exhaling. And one gets to know this as a soul process that is essentially based on a kind of longing for the body after being outside of the body for a period of time. And you learn to recognize what you experience with your soul from birth to death, how that brings the soul into the inner state in which you feel compelled to devote yourself to an [antipathy] towards life again for a while.

You then expand these ideas, but not through philosophical speculation, but by expanding your inner capacity for knowledge. And in this way one arrives at — just as one otherwise advances from a simpler species to a more complicated one — one arrives at inwardly beholding, from the inward beholding comprehension of [awakening], the complicated process that is present when the permanent part of a person, through birth or conception from the spiritual world into the physical body, when it develops the greater desire not only to return to the existing body as in waking up, but to embody itself in a new body, having been in the spiritual world for a while, having now embodied itself again.

And one learns to recognize from falling asleep, by getting to know the moment of dying in an embodiment, one learns to recognize: Through the gate of death, the soul that outlasts the course of a person's life goes to continue living in the spiritual world. One does not learn through a logical or elementary force, for example, but by falling asleep and waking up, the processes of being born and dying, or by becoming familiar with these processes in nature, but rather by moving from element to element of inner experience with mathematical clarity.

But this, dear attendees, is how one arrives at the second stage of a higher consciousness, which I have always called – please don't take offense at the term, it is just a terminology that one has to use – inspiration – through which one looks back at the lasting in ordinary physical life as at a flowing panorama. Through inner contemplation and spiritual science, it is possible to grasp the eternal in the human being. And it is possible to grasp this eternal in man. It is possible for man to recognize his connection with the supersensible-eternal just as man recognizes his connection with the sense world when he awakens the consciousness in himself through which man beholds his connection in the physical world.

These things, they certainly enter into present consciousness, my dear audience, in the same way as the Copernican worldview, for example, once entered, contradicting everything that came before, the Copernican worldview or similar. But even if what I have just mentioned still seems paradoxical to so many people today, we must remember that the Copernican worldview also seemed quite paradoxical to people at the time of its emergence.

And then, my dear audience, you also learn how to develop another human soul power, that of memory, which is trained in a way that I have just described. One learns not only to recognize this, but also another human soul power, which now also leads into ordinary normal life, only, I would say, leads into it, nevertheless, its origin is a physical one, in a more moral way into the higher life. One learns to recognize how this soul power is capable of a different development than that which it has in ordinary life. One learns to recognize how love can become a power of knowledge.

I am well aware, esteemed attendees, of how contradiction must arise from today's world view when one says: Love will be made into a power of knowledge. After all, love is seen as subjective, as that which must be excluded from all science. Nevertheless, anyone who experiences such things in their soul, as I have described to you, by developing into a spiritual researcher, knows that what develops in ordinary life as love is a human ability that is connected with the human being, and that this love cannot only be experienced by the human being when he is confronted with some beloved external object, but that it can also be experienced inwardly by the human being as a general human characteristic. It can be heightened spiritually, and I might say quite intimately, by developing that which one also applies in ordinary life. Precisely when we extend the ability to remember, to concentrate on any single content of consciousness, any object, just as in the past one repeatedly and repeatedly raised images arbitrarily in duration [by concentrating on the object, initially arbitrarily], by being in a certain interaction with the external world. By developing our will into concentration, we learn to recognize how that which otherwise expresses itself through the physical body of man as love can be grasped by the soul, how it can be detached from the body by the soul, just as in the ability characterized earlier.

But through this – my dear attendees – by learning to recognize how a person is inwardly constituted as a loving being, which otherwise only ignites in interaction with external beings, by absorbing these inner qualities, this inner impulsivity of the human being into the soul — the individual exercises for this you can also find in the books mentioned —, in this way one arrives at what I characterized earlier, this being born and dying as a physical waking up and falling asleep, not only to look at this inwardly, but also to see through it inwardly. But through this, human life is moved into a completely different sphere.

Let us take a look at this human life as it touches us by fate. We face this human life, meet hundreds and hundreds of people. In a place where life has brought us, something ignites in this or that being that brings us into a meaningful connection with fate. The one who only looks at life with an ordinary consciousness speaks of coincidence, speaks of the one that has just happened to him from the inexplicable depths of life. But the one who has brought the soul forces, which are otherwise hidden, out of his soul to the degree that I have characterized it so far, he certainly sees how, in the subconscious depths, not illuminated by ideas for the ordinary consciousness, but in the subconscious depths, in man, there rests that which is akin to desire, which drives one in life.

When you have prepared yourself to survey your life like a panorama, when you have become aware of the permanent, the eternal, that goes through birth and death, when you have developed the abilities to can see this, then – my dear attendees – then these abilities, when they are still warmed by a special training of the ability to love, then abilities in life develop in such a way that we learn how we have shaped our lives, in order to bring it – let us say – in individual cases, to the point where we have been affected by this or that stroke of fate.

We learn to recognize how life is connected in relation to what otherwise lies in the subconscious. And from there, the realization goes, how what now underlies this fateful connection of life points to repeated earthly lives. How that which we can follow with the developed soul powers, in the course of our destiny, warmed by the power of knowledge of the ability to love, how that brings us the awareness that we have gone through many earth lives and will still go through many earth lives. And that between the lives on earth there are always stays in the purely spiritual-soul world, in which the soul experiences what is conceptual from previous lives on earth, that which we have raised up into thinking above all, how this is transformed into an inner soul metamorphosis, into desire, which then pushes towards a new life on earth. This new life on earth is shaped in this way. What is the fateful connection of life becomes transparent.

Now, my dear attendees, I have only been able to sketch out the results that spiritual science, which is based on scientific education but which also develops this scientific education further, comes to. That this spiritual science is not a theory, not a collection of mere thoughts and ideas, is obvious when one considers its value for human life. At the same time, however, one must point out what this spiritual science can be, especially for people of the present and the near future and for humanity in various times.

It is very remarkable how the critic I spoke to you about earlier, who only speaks from the consciousness of the present and criticizes spiritual science to no end, nevertheless recognizes the value of which I spoke to you earlier, how this man speaks of the evaluation of life. This man is full of ideas about what he imagines to be the scientific nature of the present. He wants to evaluate spiritual science, but he has hardly got to know it, he has read everything that has been published, he claims. But then he can ask the following question:

What is all the talk of service [of knowledge, of the riddles of life and their solutions, what is all the momentum if, despite all the momentum, it leads to primeval depths and remoteness, if the theosophist]

— as I said, he means anthroposophist —

[cannot say] why it is better to be an I than a non-I.

Now, my dear attendees, imagine a person who states: What is all this talk about spiritual worlds for, if one cannot come to know why it is better to be a 'I than a non-I'? The answer to this question cannot be given theoretically. And the science that the man is talking about can actually only satisfy theorists. What does the science that the man is talking about actually have to say about everything? As I said, it is precisely from the humanities that the full value of the modern scientific method for the external sense practice should be fully recognized. It would certainly be foolish not to recognize what the X-ray method, what microscopy, what the telescope and numerous other [methods and instruments] have achieved in recent times for the knowledge of the external sense world. And it would be foolish, and above all amateurish, not to recognize the value of scientifically conscientious methods for disciplining the human capacity for knowledge. But everything that works in external experimentation, in external observation and in the mathematical processing of external observations, is basically only something that works on the human intellect. And however paradoxical it may sound, anyone who does not go through these things, I would even say not just professionally but in their whole way of life, comes to ask themselves: What can the ordinary scientific method, when it develops a world view, give us about human life? One sees it in such results. People with such a method then ask: Why is it more valuable to be “I than not-I”? Why not live as an unconscious [atom] in the universe? Why live as a conscious I?

Spiritual science, by looking more deeply, must say: What is it that gives you life, the science that has indeed achieved such great triumphs for the inner life of the soul? Does this science give us more than knowledge of the digestive processes, of the nutritional content of food for hunger? It gives us the intellectual, it gives us what can be described. It also provides clues as to how what is done instinctively can be done rationally in a certain way. But science as such can say how hunger should be satisfied, what is in the foods that satisfy hunger. But it could never satisfy hunger itself with its descriptions.

We must, however, translate this from the physical into the spiritual-soul realm. And here it must be said that spiritual-scientific knowledge, even if it has to be expressed in ideas and concepts, can be grasped by immersing oneself in these concepts and in what spiritual researchers are able to say about them from the spiritual worlds. By learning to recognize the enduring, the eternal, and the repeated earthly lives in the physical life of a person, the eternal, repeated earth-lives, the connection with destiny and thus also a world picture in connection, as it is presented in my “Occult Science in Outline”, in a spiritual-scientific way. He who lives into all this does not bring forth concepts that merely describe something about the human being, as the various scientific concepts do. Rather, they bring forth real images that, when experienced, have the power to affect the whole human being, to take hold of the feelings and will impulses of this whole human being and, so to speak, are simply soul food, spiritual-soul food — it is not just spoken of the thing — and which therefore also work into the spiritual-soul. So that the I does not have to answer the question theoretically, why it would be better to be an 'I than a non-I', but by giving itself to what radiates out of this spiritual science with all the warmth, with all the light of the spiritual, it does not merely have the possibility of giving a description from outside, but it lives in the concept the essence of the matter itself. The concepts are only the bearers of the matter itself.

This is the peculiar thing that is not at all seen in spiritual scientific literature, that it is spoken differently, not just words about something, but that the words are rooted in real experience, they are the carriers of the living experience. And that, indeed, anyone who listens carefully, if they have an ear for it, can feel all of this in the words, that they are not just descriptions of spiritual and mental processes, but these spiritual and mental processes themselves.

This, ladies and gentlemen, shows us that this spiritual science can indeed be of use in our practical lives. And it has indeed already tried to find practical application in a wide variety of fields, as I mentioned at the beginning. It has done so in a particularly important area. We have founded the Free Waldorf School in Stuttgart. It is based entirely on the idea of those schools that will one day be there when the threefold social order, as I have described it in my “Key Points of the Social Question” and as I have also presented it here and repeatedly presented it in Bern, will become a fact.

This Waldorf School is a truly independent school. That is to say, it is governed by its own teaching body, which is a direct consequence of the loophole in the Württemberg education laws. The teachers are completely sovereign as a teaching body. The school is administered by the teachers. And the administration of the school itself is just as much a consequence of the pedagogical-didactic impulses as what is taught is a consequence of the pedagogical-didactic impulses.

Of course, there is no longer time to describe to you in detail the principles of this Waldorf school. I will just say that an attempt was made not to found a school based on a particular worldview. Catholic priests teach Catholic religious education there, and Protestant priests teach Protestant religious education there. Those children who, through their own will or that of their parents, do not have such a religion, are instructed in a free religious education. But it is not at all intended to impose any kind of world view on the children. The Waldorf School is not a school of world view! What is to prevail from the roots of anthroposophical spiritual science is merely the art of pedagogy and didactics, the way in which one teaches. Anthroposophy does not want to be a theory; anthroposophy wants to be transferred into the practical handling of life. It has already proven itself in this way, although of course after one year one cannot say anything special, and especially in the pedagogical-didactic art of the Waldorf school.

I would like to mention just one thing from the end of the previous school year and the beginning of this school year. At the end of the last school year, we saw how it affects children when they are given the kind of report cards that we gave them at the Waldorf School, which was founded by Emil Molt in Stuttgart and established by me. There are sometimes classes at the Waldorf School with fifty children, or even more than fifty children in the last school year. Nevertheless, it was possible to depart from the usual way in which teachers assess their pupils. All these patterns of 'sufficient', 'almost sufficient', 'halfway, almost satisfactory' and so on and so forth, you can't find your way around at all, you don't know how to grade it, where to take it from. All these things were left out in the Waldorf school. Each child was described individually, how they had been received at the school, how they had behaved, so that the teacher could see from the report what the child had gone through in that one school year. And each child was given a saying that was individually tailored to their soul life. Despite the fifty pupils in each class, the way in which the teachers practised the art of pedagogy and didactics, based on the spirit of the anthroposophical worldview, meant that they were able to formulate a life verse, a life force verse, for each individual child, which was included in the report card and which the child would visualize in his or her soul. And we have seen – for we seek the art of education in a living psychology, in a living study of the soul – how it affected the child, in that it allowed him to see himself in the mirror, so to speak. And if I may mention something else: when the children came back from their vacations, it was really the case that they came back with a different state of mind than children are usually seen to have after vacations in schools. They longed to go back to school.

And there is something else I want to tell you. Every time I came to this school for an inspection – esteemed attendees – I did not fail to ask a question very systematically, again and again, among other things: Do you love your teachers? And one can distinguish, my dear attendees, whether something comes wholeheartedly from the human soul or whether it is just some conventional answer. When this “Yes!” resounded directly and fundamentally from the soul, then one could see how what had been attempted as a pedagogical-didactic art from anthroposophical spiritual science had indeed found validity.

We are not yet allowed to work unhindered in many areas of life. But where it is possible, it must also be done in such a way that, on the one hand, what can be brought from spiritual science, as it is meant here, and, on the other hand, what corresponds to the needs, longings and hardships of our time in the true sense of the word, is brought together. In this context, it is also important to point out how numerous personalities in history who devote themselves to artistic creation instinctively seek new paths.

Such a new artistic path, but now not at all out of some theory, not out of ideas, for example through symbolism or straw-like allegory, but through living feeling, such a path was also sought in Dornach itself through the construction of the Goetheanum. Spiritual science, as it is meant here, was not in a position to simply take a master builder and say: Build me a building here in such and such a style, and there we will practice spiritual science in this building. No, my dear audience, spiritual science is something that life works because it is life. And so spiritual science, as it is meant here, as I said, cannot be allegorized, cannot be symbolized, but by looking at the human being at the same time, by working on the whole human being, it can stimulate the forces of artistic creation and the forces of artistic enjoyment. In this way it can also point the way for the future in the same way as it points the way for the new needs of the present in intellectual life, and can increasingly point the way for the future in artistic matters.

We need not only – my dear audience – see how the artistic has developed in the course of human development, how this artistic, which in the course of human development has indeed come to light in such peaks as in Raphael, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, how this artistic presupposes, in that it has always been drawn from the supersensible, how it presupposes that the sensory, the outwardly sensory, really strives towards what one wants to experience in the idealized. And this idealization is what basically characterized the artistic epoch that artistic personalities in particular feel is over and that new paths must be sought in relation to it. When one stands before the Sistine Madonna, one is confronted with something that is thoroughly material. But at the same time, one is confronted with something in relation to which one must say: the artist experienced it in such a way that the spiritual emerged directly from the material. He rose up out of the material into the spiritual; he idealized the material.

Now we are entering a stage of human development in which, in the spiritual life, in the life of knowledge, we must really look — as I have indicated — at the spiritual as such, so that the spiritual can be seen directly. We are thus also faced with the path that is artistically most appropriate for humanity in the present and near future. If an old art idealized, a new art must realize.

Spiritual beholding also longs for realization, just as sensual beholding longs for idealization. And just as one does not arrive at a truthful or dominant artistic creation by only having artistic spirit through idealization, so too does one not arrive at an allegorical or symbolic artistic creation by realizing what has been spiritually beheld. Those who, I might say, theoretically defame what can be seen in Dornach find all kinds of symbols and allegories, but they see them themselves. There is not a single symbol or allegory in the whole of the Dornach building, the Goetheanum. What can be found there has been seen in the spiritual world and realized out of the spiritual world. The architectural and sculptural elements of the building are there as a result of what was seen in the spiritual world and realized in the material world. What was seen spiritually is not shaped into ideas or concepts, but is actually seen. It is seen in full, living concreteness. And it is only incorporated into the material in a living way. It is seen in full concreteness.

This shows, dear attendees, how spiritual science can indeed also have a fruitful effect on artistic creation and enjoyment. And by leading people through its results to a life together with the spirit from which they themselves come, and towards which they seek their path out of the sensual world, which they hope for after death, out of which they know they are born if they only look at existence correctly; by Spiritual science brings man together precisely with regard to that which wants to develop most clearly, brightly, and luminously in him through the life of imagination, which otherwise remains only in abstractions that are foreign to life. It deepens in man that feeling which is the actual religious feeling. And that should be seen in the right light. One should not strive to block the path of this spiritual science based on denominations. For one can show by the example of Christianity itself what spiritual science can be for religious feeling, for the whole religious life.

What then does Christianity depend on, my dear audience? Christianity depends on the Mystery of Golgotha being understood in the right way. If one does not understand how, through the Mystery of Golgotha, something we call the Christ united with earthly life from extraterrestrial worlds, if one does not understand that there is something in the Mystery of Golgotha that cannot be exhausted by observation from the sense world, but must be grasped through spiritual contemplation, then one cannot do justice to the Mystery of Golgotha. That is why even the most modern theology has come to omit from the Mystery of Golgotha that which can only be grasped spiritually, and to speak only – in a sense naturalistically – of the simple man from Nazareth. Modern theology speaks of a man, however outstanding he may be, who at most had the consciousness of God within him. While spiritual science will bring back the Christian consciousness to grasp the mystery of Golgotha as a supersensible event in itself, as an event through which not only a man stands in the course of human development, who developed the consciousness of God a certain way, but who was the bearer of an entity that came from extraterrestrial worlds at a certain point in the development of the earth in order to henceforth, renewing human life, continue to exist with this human life.

The Christ event, in turn, is grasped by spiritual science as an impact from the extraterrestrial, from the spiritual-supernatural into earthly life. And the whole of earthly development is understood in such a way that it is a preparation for the Mystery of Golgotha, a leaning towards the Mystery of Golgotha of everything that has gone before, and a streaming forth of the impulse of this Mystery of Golgotha through the events that follow.

But one also learns to understand the difference between the event of Golgotha, which stands for itself and can be grasped by everyone according to their abilities, and what is taught about this mystery of Golgotha in any given time.

The first Christian centuries took their concepts from the Oriental world view and made the mystery of Golgotha vivid and explainable from these concepts. Then, gradually, another world emerged in the spiritual life of Western humanity. The natural sciences arose. The human spirit has become accustomed to other ways of understanding. We see today how these ways of understanding have also taken hold of theology in the nineteenth century, where it has tried to become progressive, how they have made of the Christ-Jesus being the “simple man from Nazareth”. And however much power may be brought to bear against what comes from this side, this battle will not be won unless the mystery of Golgotha is again grasped from the spiritual-scientific side, unless it can be said anew from the spirit how an extraterrestrial spirit entered into earthly life through the man Jesus of Nazareth. The explanation must be a new one in relation to human progress; it must become a new experience.

Spiritual science does not want to found a new religion, it only wants to fuel consciousness in accordance with the knowledge of modern times. It wants to show that which once gave meaning to the development of the earth in the light that this humanity needs for the culture of the present and future. Thus spiritual science, as I can show from this Christian example, can deepen a person's religious life. It can give him that which, according to modern consciousness, cannot be given to him in any other way; it can give him that.

Oh, he is timid towards Christianity who believes that through spiritual science, Christianity can be destroyed. No, on the contrary, only he looks at Christianity in the right way who has the courage to confess that, as with the physical, so the spiritual discoveries are also made. What is the Christian impulse cannot thereby appear in some lesser, weaker light, but in an ever stronger and stronger light. He would prove to be truly Christian who, out of a deep yearning, would accept the affirmations that, precisely from spiritual science, can lead to the realization of the mystery of Golgotha.

But it seems that humanity in the present truly needs religious deepening, my dear audience. For we are indeed experiencing strange things today. And I would like to mention one more example to conclude.

In Dornach, at an outstanding location in the Goetheanum, an installation is to be created that is directly related to the Mystery of Golgotha. A nine-and-a-half-meter-high wooden group is to be installed. We have been working on this sculpture for several years. At the center of this sculpture stands a figure of Christ. It is finished at the top in the head and chest parts, but still a block of wood below. The head is thoroughly idealized. Those who have seen it will certainly testify that I said: From a spiritual-scientific perspective, this image of Christ arises in me, as he walked in Palestine. I do not impose it on anyone, but it is developed out of humanity, when one projects into a human being that which one projects when one seeks the soul in the whole human being, not only in individual human physiognomic features in the face, but seeks the soul in the whole human countenance. But things are said and seen without knowing what is actually being done in Dornach.

Now, among the many writings by opponents, there is a very remarkable one. In it you will find the following sentence – I won't detain you long – you will find the following sentence:

Anthroposophy starts with the human being and its goal is the ideal human being. This and God are apparently one and the same. A nine-and-a-half-meter-high... with animal features at the bottom is currently being built in Dornach.

Now, dear attendees, I have told you about people who were there and know what has been worked on this group so far. Anyone who wants to see something like this in a wooden figure, which has an idealized human head at the top and is just a block of wood at the bottom, not yet finished, and which sees Luciferic features at the top and animal features at the bottom, reminds me of the anecdote that is often mentioned about how you can tell in the evening whether you are sober or drunk. You put a top hat on the bed. If you can see it clearly, you are still sober; if you see two of them, you are drunk.

Now, dear readers, anyone who, when looking at the woodcarving group in Dornach, sees a human being with 'Luciferian features' at the top and 'bestial characteristics' at the bottom, should not, in his drunkenness, complain about the fantasies or illusions of the anthroposophists! For anyone who is truly devoted to anthroposophy will certainly not be taken in by the same illusion, the same fantasy, which are also objective untruths. But this is how someone works with the truth — my dear audience — who can write on the title page the capital <«D> in front of his name, who is a doctor of theology.

Yes, my dear audience, we need a deepening, a refinement of religious consciousness. Those who are appointed guardians treat the truth in this way. From this it can be seen that we need a deepening of the sense of truth. After all, what is the science of a person who has only enough scientific conscientiousness to present an objective untruth of this kind in a single case in just such a way?

Now, my dear audience, as I said, it requires precisely this internalization of the human being, which will also be connected with a refinement of religious feeling, with a deepening of religious feeling. Spiritual science will be able to radiate its impulses into the most diverse branches of life. It wants to be completely practical, but it also does not want to go beyond scientific education. It wants to be scientifically grounded in that it arises out of the attitude, out of methodical conscientiousness, as only some mathematical method, combined with external observation, can arise out of the human soul in full scientificness.

Now, in conclusion, just a few personal words. When it is pointed out today, as it has been by Christian luminaries, for example, that this anthroposophical spiritual science in Dornach is not addressed to scholars but to educated laypeople, then one thing may be said. To a certain extent, this is still its fate today. I myself – if I may make a personal comment – began in the 1880s to develop something that is entirely in line with the whole direction of anthroposophical spiritual science, although it is only present in the elements, and although it was only later developed into details. What was then the guiding force is already contained in it. I was not always as much of a heretic as I am today. I was not always treated as badly by the sciences as I am today by the sciences, or from the point of view of religious denominations, but those writings that I wrote about Goethe at the time have already become known to a certain extent.

People just think that I have become a fool and a fantasist since that time, since it has become clear to me that what flowed out of that time should flow into the well-founded anthroposophical spiritual science. But what I actually often called for in my Goethe writings, and was not achieved even then, such as “Goethe's World View”, “Truth and Science”, “Philosophy of Freedom”, namely contained in my “Introductions to Goethe's Scientific Writings”, whoever assumes this, will see that for me it was not just about Goethe having this or that world view, but about standing up for this world view itself, asserting it, bringing it to its right and also developing it further.

The aim was not to develop a Goetheanism that died with the year 1832 and is merely historical, but to show the living Goetheanism as it has remained capable of development up to the present day. That Goethe's ideas were to some extent met, some have admitted. But that is also what is done out of habit in our time. People liked to boast: Yes, Goethe, Kant and so on had this or that idea. But to stand up for an idea with the full power of one's personality and help it to victory is not what lives in the thinking habit, especially not in the mental habits of the present. And so I must say that although I have been proved right in many respects in the explanation of Goethe's world view, I wanted something else: to advocate what can arise from it as spiritual science, as anthroposophical spiritual science, through the further development of Goethe's world view.

And what I wrote at the time was written entirely in the forms of science. I also spoke in this way; on the contrary, it was found to be too remote from ordinary life. At that time, those who were involved in science would have had the opportunity to address the matter. They did not take this opportunity. Therefore, it became necessary to address the educated lay public and speak to the heart and intellect of the educated lay public. Because, my dear attendees, that which is to be incorporated as truth into the development of humanity must be incorporated into it. Therefore, spiritual science must not be reproached, as is often done by its critics today, for not initially presenting itself to science as such – which it has now sufficiently done in Dornach, by the way – but in a true way, for that is what it has done. And it only approached the educated lay public when scholarship did not want to. But something like that has to happen! Why? Well, anyone who is imbued with the impulse, with the truth impulse of spiritual science, who knows the needs of our time, who knows the longings of our time, or at least believes he knows them, will have to say to himself: the truth must go out into the world, and if it does not succeed in penetrating the world through the one path, which might perhaps be the outwardly correct one, then other paths must be sought. If scholars do not want to, they may want to, when spiritual science takes hold in the hearts of educated laymen out of a natural, elementary sense of truth, and then forces those who have lagged behind it, even if they are scholars, to follow suit. Truth must come into the world. And if it does not come through one way, then the other must be sought.

I have often said in this place that in more ancient times in the evolution of humanity, science, art, and religion formed a harmonious unity. Anyone who is able in one way or another to gain knowledge of the nature of the ancient Mysteries knows that within these Mysteries, knowledge was sought as a revelation of the Spiritual in picture form, in the way that was possible in those times. That way can no longer be ours, although in this age we must again advance to a knowledge of the spiritual nature of the world. A pictorial knowledge of the Spiritual lay at the foundation of all ancient conceptions of the world. This knowledge came to direct expression, not merely by being communicated in words, but through forms which have gradually become those of our arts—bodily, plastic presentation in the plastic arts and presentation by means of tone and word in the arts of music and speech. But this second stage was followed by the third stage, that of the revelation of the nature of the world in religious cult or ritual, a revelation through which the whole man felt himself uplifted to the divine-spiritual ground of the world, not merely in thought, nor merely in feeling as happens through art, but in such a way that thoughts, feelings and also the inmost impulses of the will surrendered themselves in reverent devotion to this divine-spiritual principle. And the sacred acts and rites were the means whereby the external actions of man's will were to be filled with spirit. Men felt the living unity in science (as it was then conceived), art, and religion. The ideal of the spiritual life of the present day must be, once more to gain knowledge that can bring to realization what Goethe already divined: a knowledge that raises itself to art, not symbolical or allegorical art, but true art—which means creative, formative activity in tones and in words—an art which also deepens into direct religious experience.

Only when anthroposophical Spiritual Science is seen to contain this impulse within it, is its true being understood. Obviously humanity will have to take many steps in spiritual development before such an ideal can be realized. But it is just the patient devotion to the taking of these steps which must bring blessing to the Anthroposophical Movement.

Now I should like, in the series of lectures now being given, to speak from one particular aspect on this impulse in the Anthroposophical Movement to which reference has just been made. Perhaps, my dear friends, at the close of what I have to say, you will understand what is really the deeper cause of my words. Let me say in the first place that already for a long time now the Anthroposophical Movement has not coincided with the Anthroposophical Society, but that the Anthroposophical Society, if it would fulfill its task, must really carry the whole impulse of the Anthroposophical Movement. The Anthroposophical Movement has laid hold of wider circles than merely the Anthroposophical Society. Hence it has come about that in more recent years the way of working had necessarily to be different for the Anthroposophical Movement from what it was when the Anthroposophical Movement was essentially contained within the Anthroposophical Society. But the Anthroposophical Society can only fulfill its real nature when it feels itself as the kernel of the Anthroposophical Movement.

Now in order not to speak merely theoretically but to make what I have just said really intelligible, I must tell you a little about something that has recently taken place in connection with a Movement that is distinct from the Anthroposophical Movement, because, if I did not do this, misunderstanding might easily arise.

I will therefore narrate briefly the manner in which a certain Movement having a religious, cultic character has arisen, a Movement which indeed has much to do with the Anthroposophical Movement, but should not be confused with it: it is the religious movement which calls itself ‘The Movement for Religious Renewal,’ [This Movement was the beginning of The Christian Community as it has since been called.] for the renewal of Christianity. The position of this Movement with respect to the Anthroposophical Movement will become clear if we take our start from the forms in which this Movement for Religious Renewal has developed.

Some time ago a few enthusiastic young theological students came to me. They were about to conclude their theological studies and enter upon the practical duties of ministers of religion. What they said to me was to the following effect: When at the present time a student receives with a really devoted Christian heart the theology offered to him at the universities, he feels at last as if he had no firm ground under his feet for the practical work of a minister that is before him. The theology and religion of our time has gradually assumed forms that do not really enable it to instil into its ministers for their practical work and their care of souls the impulse that must proceed as a living power from the Mystery of Golgotha, from the consciousness that the Christ Being Who formerly lived in spiritual worlds, has since united Himself with human life on earth and now works on further in that life.—I perceived that in the souls of those who came to me there was the feeling that if Christianity is to be kept alive, a renewal of the entire theological impulse and of the entire religious impulse is necessary; otherwise Christianity cannot be the really vital force for our whole spiritual life. And it is indeed clear that the religious impulse only assumes its true significance and meaning when it lays hold of a man so deeply that it pervades everything he brings forth out of his thinking, feeling, and will.

I remarked first of all to those who came to me in this way for help in what they were seeking and could only find where anthroposophical Spiritual Science is making its way into the world today—I pointed out to them that one cannot work from the enthusiasm of a few single individuals, but that it is a question of gathering together, as it were, similar strivings in wider circles, even though the striving may be more or less unconscious. I said to these people that theirs was obviously not an isolated striving; rather was it the case that they were feeling in their hearts—perhaps more intensely than others—what countless human beings of the present day are also feeling; and I showed them that if it is a question of religious renewal, one must start from a broad basis whereon can be found a large number of persons out of whose hearts springs the impulse to strive for that renewal.

After a while the people in question came to me again. They had fully accepted what I had said to them and now they were able to tell me that they had been joined by a considerable number of other young theological students who were in the same position, that is to say, who were dissatisfied with the present theological and religious aims at the universities and yet were about to enter upon the practical duties of ministers of the church; and there seemed every prospect of the circle being increased.

I said: It is quite obvious first of all that it is not only a question of having a band of preachers and ministers, but into such a movement for religious renewal should be drawn not only those who can teach and perform the duties of pastors, but above all those—and they are very numerous—who possess more or less dimly in their hearts a strong religious impulse, a specifically Christian impulse, which, in view of the way in which theological religion has developed, cannot be satisfied. I pointed out, therefore, that there are circles of people in the population who are not within the Anthroposophical Movement, and who, from the whole tenor of their mind and heart, do not immediately find their way to the Anthroposophical Movement.

I remarked further, that for the Anthroposophical Movement it is ultimately a case of seeing clearly and distinctly that we are living in an age when, simply through the world's evolution, a number of spiritual truths, truths regarding the actual spiritual content of the world, can be found by men when they become spiritual researchers. And if men do not become spiritual researchers but strive after the truth in the way in which it must disclose itself to man when he is conscious of his human dignity, then the truths discovered by-spiritual researchers can be understood by such persons by means of their ordinary, sound human intellect—provided it is really sound.

I went on to say that the Anthroposophical Movement is founded upon the principle that he who finds his way into it knows that what is important above all is that the spiritual truths now accessible to humanity should lay hold of men's hearts and minds as knowledge. The essential thing is that knowledge should enter the spiritual life of man. It is of course not the case that one who is in the Anthroposophical Movement need be versed in the various sciences. One may be in the Anthroposophical Movement without possessing any impulse or any inclination towards natural science, for the truths of Anthroposophy are perfectly comprehensible to the human intellect if only it is healthy and unclouded by prejudice. If already at the present time a sufficiently large number of persons out of the natural tendencies of their heart and mind were to find their way to the Anthroposophical Movement, then all that is necessary for religious aims and religious ideals would also gradually develop together with anthroposophical knowledge out of the Anthroposophical Movement. But there are, as I have already said, a great number of people who have the above-mentioned urge towards a renewal of religion, that is to say towards a renewal of Christian religion, and who, simply through being in certain circles of the cultural life, cannot find their way into the Anthroposophical Movement. What is necessary for these people at the present time is that a path suited to them should be found, leading to the spiritual life appropriate to the humanity of the present day.

I pointed out that it was a matter of forming communities; that what is to be reached in Anthroposophy can be attained first of all in the single individual, but that, out of the knowledge thus gained in an individual way, there must flow by an absolute inner necessity the ethical and religious social activity that is requisite for the future of humanity.

It is therefore a question of giving something to those people who are at first unable to set out directly along the path to the Anthroposophical Movement. The spiritual path for them must be sought by forming communities in which heart and soul and spirit work together—a path adapted to human evolution at its present stage.

What I then had to say out of the needs of our human evolution to those persons who came to me may be summed up approximately in the words: it is necessary for the evolution of humanity at the present time that the Anthroposophical Movement should grow more and more, in accordance with the conditions which underlie it, and which consist especially in this—that the spiritual truths which want to come to us from the spiritual world should first of all enter the hearts of men directly, so that men may be strengthened by these spiritual truths. They will then find the way, which will be on the one hand an artistic way, and on the other a religious, ethical, and social way. The Anthroposophical Movement has gone along this path since its inception, and for the Anthroposophical Movement no other path is necessary, if only this path be rightly understood. The need for another path arises for those who cannot directly take this one, but who through community-building and corporate endeavor within the community, must follow a different path, one which only later will join the anthroposophical path.

In this way the prospect was opened for two movements to travel side by side. There is the Anthroposophical Movement, which attains its true aims when it adheres with intelligence and vigor to the meaning and purpose originally contained in it and is not led astray by any special fields of work that are bound to open up as time goes on. Even the field of scientific work, for example, must not encroach upon the impulse of the general Anthroposophical Movement. We must clearly understand that it is the anthroposophical impulse which constitutes the Anthroposophical Movement, and although various fields of scientific work have recently been started within the Anthroposophical Movement it is absolutely necessary that the power and energy of the general anthroposophical impulse should not be weakened. In particular, the anthroposophical impulse must not be drawn into the forms of thinking and ideation prevailing in various fields of science—which ought actually to be vitalized by it—and be colored by them to such an extent that Anthroposophy becomes, let us say, chemical as Chemistry is today, physical as Physics is today, or biological as Biology is today. That must not happen on any account; it would strike at the very heart of the Anthroposophical Movement. What is essential is that the Anthroposophical Movement shall preserve its spiritual purity, but also its spiritual energy. To this end it must embody the essential nature of the anthroposophical spirituality, must live and move in it and bring forth out of the spiritual revelations of the present day everything that seeks to penetrate also into the life of science.

Side by side with this—so I said at that time—there might be such a movement for religious renewal, which of course has no significance for those who find the way into Anthroposophy, but is intended for those who, to begin with, cannot find this way. And as there are numbers of such people, a movement such as this is not only justified, but also necessary.

Taking for granted therefore that the Anthroposophical Movement will remain what it was and what it ought to be, I gave something, quite independently of the Anthroposophical Movement, to a number of persons who, from their own impulse, not mine, wished to work for the Movement for Religious Renewal; I gave what I was in a position to give in respect of what a future theology needs; and I also gave the contents of the ceremonial and ritual required by this new community.

What I have been able to give to these people out of the conditions pertaining to spiritual knowledge at the present time, I have given as a man to other men. What I have given them has nothing to do with the Anthroposophical Movement. I have given it to them as a private individual, and in such a way that I have emphasized with the necessary firmness that the Anthroposophical Movement must not have anything to do with this Movement for Religious Renewal; above all that I am not the founder of this Movement, and I rely upon this being made quite clear to the world; to individuals who wished to found this Movement for Religious Renewal I have given the necessary counsels—which are consonant with the practice of an authentic and inwardly vital cult, filled with spiritual content, to be celebrated in a right way with the forces out of the spiritual world. When I gave this advice I never performed a ritualistic act myself; I only showed, step by step, to those who wished to enact the ceremonies, how they have to be performed. That was necessary. And today it is also necessary that within the Anthroposophical Society this should be correctly understood.

The Movement for Religious Renewal, therefore, was founded independently of me, independently of the Anthroposophical Society. I only gave advice. The one who started it, the one who performed the very first ceremony in this Movement, performed it under my guidance, but I had no part whatever in the founding of this Movement. It is a Movement which originated of itself but received counsel from me because, when advice is justifiably asked in any particular sphere of work, is is a human duty, if one can give the advice, to do so.

Thus it must be understood, in the strictest sense of the word, that alongside the Anthroposophical Movement another Movement has started, founded out of itself (not out of the Anthroposophical Movement), for the reason that outside the Anthroposophical Society there are numbers of people who cannot find their way into the Anthroposophical Movement itself, but who will be able to come to it later on. Therefore strict distinctions must be made between the Anthroposophical Movement, the Anthroposophical Society, and the Movement for Religious Renewal. And it is important that Anthroposophy should not be looked upon as the founder of this Movement for Religious Renewal.

This has nothing to do with the fact that the advice which makes this religious Movement into a real spiritual community in a form suited to the present stage of human evolution, was given in all love and also in all devotion to the spiritual Powers who are able to place such a Movement in the world today. So that this Movement has only originated in the right way when it considers what is within the Anthroposophical Movement as something that gives it a sure ground and when it puts its trust in the Anthroposophical Movement, and seeks help and counsel from those who are within the Anthroposophical Movement, and so on. Taking into account the fact that the opponents of the Anthroposophical Movement today consider every method of attack justifiable, points such as these must be made quite clear, and I must here declare that everyone who is honest and sincere with respect to the Anthroposophical Movement would be obliged to deny any statement to the effect that the Movement for Religious Renewal was founded at Dornach in the Goetheanum and by the Goetheanum. For that is not the case, the facts are as I have just presented them.

Thus in view of the way in which I myself have helped this Movement for Religious Renewal to find its feet, I have necessarily had to picture to myself that this Movement—which puts its trust in the Anthroposophical Movement and regards the Anthroposophical Movement as its forerunner—will look for adherents outside the Anthroposophical Society, and that it would consider it a grave mistake to carry into the Anthroposophical Society the work and aims which are indeed necessary outside that Society. For the Anthroposophical Society is not understood by one who belongs to it unless his attitude is that he can be a counsellor and helper of this religious Movement, but cannot directly immerse himself in it. If he were to do so, he would be working for two ends: firstly, for the ruin and destruction of the Anthroposophical Society; secondly, to make fruitless the Movement for Religious Renewal. All the movements which arise among humanity in a justifiable way must indeed work together as in one organic whole, but this working together must take place in the right way. In the human organism it is quite impossible for the blood system to become nervous system, or for the nervous system to become blood system. The several systems have to work in the human organism distinct and separate from one another; it is precisely then that they will work together in the right way. It is therefore necessary that the Anthroposophical Society, with its content Anthroposophy, shall remain unweakened in any way by the other Movement; and that one who understands what the Anthroposophical Movement is, should—not in any presumptuous, arrogant sense, but as one who reckons with the tasks of the age—be able to see that those who have once found their way into the Anthroposophical Society do not need a religious renewal. For what would the Anthroposophical Society be if it first needed religious renewal!

But religious renewal is needed in the world, and because it is needed, because it is a profound necessity, a hand was extended to aid in founding it. Matters will therefore go on in the right way if the Anthroposophical Society remains as it is, if those who wish to understand it grasp its essential nature and do not think that it is necessary for them to belong to another movement which has taken what it possesses from Anthroposophy—although it is true in a real sense that Anthroposophy has not founded this Movement for Religious Renewal but that it has founded itself.

Anyone therefore who does not clearly distinguish these things and keep them apart, is actually—by becoming lax as regards the essential impulse of the Anthroposophical Movement—working for the destruction of the Anthroposophical Movement and for the removal of the ground and backbone of the Movement for Religious Renewal. If anyone who stands on the ground of the Movement for Religious Renewal thinks he must extend this Movement to the Anthroposophical Movement, he removes the ground from under his own feet. For everything of the nature of cult and ritual is finally bound to dissolve away when the ‘backbone’ of knowledge is broken.

For the welfare of both Movements it is essential that they should be held clearly apart. Therefore in the beginning, since everything depends on our developing the strength to carry out what we have set our will to do, it is absolutely necessary in these early days that the Movement for Religious Renewal should work in all directions in circles outside the Anthroposophical Movement; that therefore, neither as regards the acquisition of material means—in order that the matter be clearly understood I must also speak about these things—should it encroach on sources which in any event only flow with great difficulty for the Anthroposophical Movement, nor, because it does not at once succeed in finding adherents among non-Anthroposophists, should it, for example, make proselytes within the ranks of the Anthroposophists. Were it to do so, it would be doing something that would inevitably lead to the destruction of both Movements. It is really not a matter today of going forward with a certain fanaticism, but of being conscious that we can do what is necessary for man only when we work out of the necessity of the thing itself.

What I am now stating as consequences, were also equally the preliminary conditions for lending my assistance in the founding of the Movement for Religious Renewal, for only under these conditions could I assist it. If these preliminary conditions had not been there, the Movement for Religious Renewal would never have originated through my advice.

Therefore, I beg you to understand that it is necessary for the Movement for Religious Renewal to know that it must adhere to its starting point, that it has promised to look for its adherents outside the sphere of the Anthroposophical Movements, for it is there that they can be found in the natural way, and there they must be sought.

What I have said to you has not been said because of any anxiety lest something might be dug away from the Anthroposophical Movement, and it has certainly not been said out of any personal motive, but solely out of the necessity of the case itself. And it is also important to understand in what way alone it is possible to work rightly in each of these spheres of activity. It is indeed necessary that with regard to important matters we should state quite clearly how the case stands, for there is at the present time far too great a tendency to blur things and not to see them clearly. But clarity is essential today in every sphere.

If therefore someone were to exclaim: The very one who himself put this Movement for Religious Renewal into the world now speaks like this!! ... well, my dear friends, the whole point is that if I had at any time spoken differently about these things, I should not have lent a hand towards founding this Movement for Religious Renewal, it must remain at its starting point. What I am now saying, I am of course saying merely in order that these things may be correctly understood in the Anthroposophical Society and so that it shall not be said (as is reported to have happened already): The Anthroposophical Movement did not get on very well, and so now they have founded the Movement for Religious Renewal as the right thing.

I am quite sure that the very excellent and outstanding individuals who have founded the Movement for Religious Renewal will oppose any such legend most vigorously, and will also sternly refuse to make proselytes within the Anthroposophical Movement.—But, as has been said, the matter must be rightly understood within the Anthroposophical Movement itself.

I know, my dear friends, that there are always some who find it unpleasant to hear explanations such as these—which are necessary from time to time, not in order to complain in one direction or another, nor for the sake of criticism, but solely in order to present something once and for all in its true light. I know there are always some who dislike it when clarity is substituted for nebulous obscurity. But this is absolutely essential for the welfare and growth of the Anthroposophical Movement as well as of the Movement for Religious Renewal. The Movement for Religious Renewal cannot flourish if it in any way damages the Anthroposophical Movement.

This must be thoroughly understood, especially by Anthroposophists, so that whenever it is necessary to stand up for the rights of the matter, they may really be able to do so. When, therefore, there is any question about an anthroposophist's attitude towards religious renewal, he must be clear that his attitude can only be that of an adviser, that he gives what he can give in the way of spiritual possessions, and when it is a case of participating in the ceremonies, that he is conscious of doing so in order to help these ceremonies on their way. He alone can be a spiritual helper of the Movement for Religious Renewal who is himself first a good anthroposophist. But this Movement for Religious Renewal must be sustained, in every direction, by persons who, because of the particular configuration and tendencies of their spiritual life, cannot yet find their way into the Anthroposophical Society itself.

I hope that none of you will now go to someone who is doing active work in the Movement for Religious Renewal and say: This or that has been said against it in Dornach.—Nothing has been said against it. In love and in devotion to the spiritual world the Movement for Religious Renewal has been given counsel from out of the spiritual world, in order that it might rightly found itself. But the fact must be known by Anthroposophists that it has founded itself out of itself, that it has formed—not, it is true, the content of its ritual, but the fact of its ritual, out of its own force and its own initiative, and that the essential core of the Anthroposophical Movement has nothing to do with the Movement for Religious Renewal.

Certainly no wish could be stronger than mine that the Movement for Religious Renewal shall grow and flourish more and more, but always in adherence to the original intentions. Anthroposophical Groups must not be changed into communities for religious renewal, either in a material or in a spiritual sense.

I was obliged to say this today, for, as you know, counsel and advice had to be given for a Cult, a Cult whose growth in our present time is earnestly desired by me. In order that no misunderstanding should arise in regard to this Cult when I speak tomorrow of the conditions of the life of Cult in the spiritual world, I felt it necessary to insert these words today as an episode in our course of lectures.

I have often said in this place that in more ancient times in the evolution of humanity, science, art, and religion formed a harmonious unity. Anyone who is able in one way or another to gain knowledge of the nature of the ancient Mysteries knows that within these Mysteries, knowledge was sought as a revelation of the Spiritual in picture form, in the way that was possible in those times. That way can no longer be ours, although in this age we must again advance to a knowledge of the spiritual nature of the world. A pictorial knowledge of the Spiritual lay at the foundation of all ancient conceptions of the world. This knowledge came to direct expression, not merely by being communicated in words, but through forms which have gradually become those of our arts—bodily, plastic presentation in the plastic arts and presentation by means of tone and word in the arts of music and speech. But this second stage was followed by the third stage, that of the revelation of the nature of the world in religious cult or ritual, a revelation through which the whole man felt himself uplifted to the divine-spiritual ground of the world, not merely in thought, nor merely in feeling as happens through art, but in such a way that thoughts, feelings and also the inmost impulses of the will surrendered themselves in reverent devotion to this divine-spiritual principle. And the sacred acts and rites were the means whereby the external actions of man’s will were to be filled with spirit. Men felt the living unity in science (as it was then conceived), art, and religion. The ideal of the spiritual life of the present day must be, once more to gain knowledge that can bring to realization what Goethe already divined: a knowledge that raises itself to art, not symbolical or allegorical art, but true art—which means creative, formative activity in tones and in words—an art which also deepens into direct religious experience.

Only when anthroposophical Spiritual Science is seen to contain this impulse within it, is its true being understood. Obviously humanity will have to take many steps in spiritual development before such an ideal can be realized. But it is just the patient devotion to the taking of these steps which must bring blessing to the Anthroposophical Movement.

Now I should like, in the series of lectures now being given, to speak from one particular aspect on this impulse in the Anthroposophical Movement to which reference has just been made. Perhaps, my dear friends, at the close of what I have to say, you will understand what is really the deeper cause of my words. Let me say in the first place that already for a long time now the Anthroposophical Movement has not coincided with the Anthroposophical Society, but that the Anthroposophical Society, if it would fulfill its task, must really carry the whole impulse of the Anthroposophical Movement. The Anthroposophical Movement has laid hold of wider circles than merely the Anthroposophical Society. Hence it has come about that in more recent years the way of working had necessarily to be different for the Anthroposophical Movement from what it was when the Anthroposophical Movement was essentially contained within the Anthroposophical Society. But the Anthroposophical Society can only fulfill its real nature when it feels itself as the kernel of the Anthroposophical Movement.

Now in order not to speak merely theoretically but to make what I have just said really intelligible, I must tell you a little about something that has recently taken place in connection with a Movement that is distinct from the Anthroposophical Movement, because, if I did not do this, misunderstanding might easily arise.

I will therefore narrate briefly the manner in which a certain Movement having a religious, cultic character has arisen, a Movement which indeed has much to do with the Anthroposophical Movement, but should not be confused with it: it is the religious movement which calls itself ‘Movement for Religious Renewal,’ [This Movement was the beginning of The Christian Community as it has since been called.] for the renewal of Christianity. The position of this Movement with respect to the Anthroposophical Movement will become clear if we take our start from the forms in which this Movement for Religious Renewal has developed.

Some time ago a few enthusiastic young theological students came to me. They were about to conclude their theological studies and enter upon the practical duties of ministers of religion. What they said to me was to the following effect: When at the present time a student receives with a really devoted Christian heart the theology offered to him at the universities, he feels at last as if he had no firm ground under his feet for the practical work of a minister that is before him. The theology and religion of our time has gradually assumed forms that do not really enable it to instil into its ministers for their practical work and their care of souls the impulse that must proceed as a living power from the Mystery of Golgotha, from the consciousness that the Christ Being Who formerly lived in spiritual worlds, has since united Himself with human life on earth and now works on further in that life.—I perceived that in the souls of those who came to me there was the feeling that if Christianity is to be kept alive, a renewal of the entire theological impulse and of the entire religious impulse is necessary; otherwise Christianity cannot be the really vital force for our whole spiritual life. And it is indeed clear that the religious impulse only assumes its true significance and meaning when it lays hold of a man so deeply that it pervades everything he brings forth out of his thinking, feeling, and will. I remarked first of all to those who came to me in this way for help in what they were seeking and could only find where anthroposophical Spiritual Science is making its way into the world today—I pointed out to them that one cannot work from the enthusiasm of a few single individuals, but that it is a question of gathering together, as it were, similar strivings in wider circles, even though the striving may be more or less unconscious. I said to these people that theirs was obviously not an isolated striving; rather was it the case that they were feeling in their hearts—perhaps more intensely than others—what countless human beings of the present day are also feeling; and I showed them that if it is a question of religious renewal, one must start from a broad basis whereon can be found a large number of persons out of whose hearts springs the impulse to strive for that renewal.

After a while the people in question came to me again. They had fully accepted what I had said to them and now they were able to tell me that they had been joined by a considerable number of other young theological students who were in the same position, that is to say, who were dissatisfied with the present theological and religious aims at the universities and yet were about to enter upon the practical duties of ministers of the church; and there seemed every prospect of the circle being increased.

I said: It is quite obvious first of all that it is not only a question of having a band of preachers and ministers, but into such a movement for religious renewal should be drawn not only those who can teach and perform the duties of pastors, but above all those—and they are very numerous—who possess more or less dimly in their hearts a strong religious impulse, a specifically Christian impulse, which, in view of the way in which theological religion has developed, cannot be satisfied. I pointed out, therefore, that there are circles of people in the population who are not within the Anthroposophical Movement, and who, from the whole tenor of their mind and heart, do not immediately find their way to the Anthroposophical Movement.

I remarked further, that for the Anthroposophical Movement it is ultimately a case of seeing clearly and distinctly that we are living in an age when, simply through the world’s evolution, a number of spiritual truths, truths regarding the actual spiritual content of the world, can be found by men when they become spiritual researchers. And if men do not become spiritual researchers but strive after the truth in the way in which it must disclose itself to man when he is conscious of his human dignity, then the truths discovered by spiritual researchers can be understood by such persons by means of their ordinary, sound human intellect—provided it is really sound.

I went on to say that the Anthroposophical Movement is founded upon the principle that he who finds his way into it knows that what is important above all is that the spiritual truths now accessible to humanity should lay hold of men’s hearts and minds as knowledge. The essential thing is that knowledge should enter the spiritual life of man. It is of course not the case that one who is in the Anthroposophical Movement need be versed in the various sciences. One may be in the Anthroposophical Movement without possessing any impulse or any inclination towards natural science, for the truths of Anthroposophy are perfectly comprehensible to the human intellect if only it is healthy and unclouded by prejudice. If already at the present time a sufficiently large number of persons out of the natural tendencies of their heart and mind were to find their way to the Anthroposophical Movement, then all that is necessary for religious aims and religious ideals would also gradually develop together with anthroposophical knowledge out of the Anthroposophical Movement. But there are, as I have already said, a great number of people who have the above-mentioned urge towards a renewal of religion, that is to say towards a renewal of Christian religion, and who, simply through being in certain circles of the cultural life, cannot find their way into the Anthroposophical Movement. What is necessary for these people at the present time is that a path suited to them should be found, leading to the spiritual life appropriate to the humanity of the present day.

I pointed out that it was a matter of forming communities; that what is to be reached in Anthroposophy can be attained first of all in the single individual, but that, out of the knowledge thus gained in an individual way, there must flow by an absolute inner necessity the ethical and religious social activity that is requisite for the future of humanity.

It is therefore a question of giving something to those people who are at first unable to set out directly along the path to the Anthroposophical Movement. The spiritual path for them must be sought by forming communities in which heart and soul and spirit work together—a path adapted to human evolution at its present stage.

What I then had to say out of the needs of our human evolution to those persons who came to me may be summed up approximately in the words: it is necessary for the evolution of humanity at the present time that the Anthroposophical Movement should grow more and more, in accordance with the conditions which underlie it, and which consist especially in this—that the spiritual truths which want to come to us from the spiritual world should first of all enter the hearts of men directly, so that men may be strengthened by these spiritual truths. They will then find the way, which will be on the one hand an artistic way, and on the other a religious, ethical, and social way. The Anthroposophical Movement has gone along this path since its inception, and for the Anthroposophical Movement no other path is necessary, if only this path be rightly understood. The need for another path arises for those who cannot directly take this one, but who through community-building and corporate endeavor within the community, must follow a different path, one which only later will join the anthroposophical path.

In this way the prospect was opened for two movements to travel side by side. There is the Anthroposophical Movement, which attains its true aims when it adheres with intelligence and vigor to the meaning and purpose originally contained in it and is not led astray by any special fields of work that are bound to open up as time goes on. Even the field of scientific work, for example, must not encroach upon the impulse of the general Anthroposophical Movement. We most clearly understand that it is the anthroposophical impulse which constitutes the Anthroposophical Movement, and although various fields of scientific work have recently been started within the Anthroposophical Movement it is absolutely necessary that the power and energy of the general anthroposophical impulse should not be weakened. In particular, the anthroposophical impulse must not he drawn into the forms of thinking and ideation prevailing in various fields of science—which ought actually to be vitalized by it—and be colored by them to such an extent that Anthroposophy becomes, let us say, chemical as Chemistry is today, physical as Physics is today, or biological as Biology is today. That must not happen on any account; it would strike at the very heart of the Anthroposophical Movement. What is essential is that the Anthroposophical Movement shall preserve its spiritual purity, but also its spiritual energy. To this end it must embody the essential nature of the anthroposophical spirituality, must live and move in it and bring forth out of the spiritual revelations of the present day everything that seeks to penetrate also into the life of science.

Side by side with this—so I said at that time—there might be such a movement for religious renewal, which of course has no significance for those who find the way into Anthroposophy, but is intended for those who, to begin with, cannot find this way. And as there are numbers of such people, a movement such as this is not only justified, but also necessary.

Taking for granted therefore that the Anthroposophical Movement will remain what it was and what it ought to be, I gave something, quite independently of the Anthroposophical Movement, to a number of persons who, from their own impulse, not mine, wished to work for the Movement for Religious Renewal; I gave what I was in a position to give in respect of what a future theology needs; and I also gave the contents of the ceremonial and ritual required by this new community.

What I have been able to give to these people out of the conditions pertaining to spiritual knowledge at the present time, I have given as a man to other men. What I have given them has nothing to do with the Anthroposophical Movement. I have given it to them as a private individual, and in such a way that I have emphasized with the necessary firmness that the Anthroposophical Movement must not have anything to do with this Movement for Religious Renewal; above all that I am not the founder of this Movement, and I rely upon this being made quite clear to the world; to individuals who wished to found this Movement for Religious Renewal I have given the necessary counsels—which are consonant with the practice of an authentic and inwardly vital cult, filled with spiritual content, to be celebrated in a right way with the forces out of the spiritual world. When I gave this advice I never performed a ritualistic act myself; I only showed, step by step, to those who wished to enact the ceremonies, how they have to be performed. That was necessary. And today it is also necessary that within the Anthroposophical Society this should be correctly understood.

The Movement for Religious Renewal, therefore, was founded independently of me, independently of the Anthroposophical Society. I only gave advice. The one who started it, the one who performed the very first ceremony in this Movement, performed it under my guidance, but I had no part whatever in the founding of this Movement. It is a Movement which originated of itself but received counsel from me because, when advice is justifiably asked in any particular sphere of work, it is a human duty, if one can give the advice, to do so.

Thus it must be understood, in the strictest sense of the word, that alongside the Anthroposophical Movement another Movement has started, founded out of itself (not out of the Anthroposophical Movement), for the reason that outside the Anthroposophical Society there are numbers of people who cannot find their way into the Anthroposophical Movement itself, but who will be able to come to it later on. Therefore strict distinctions must be made between the Anthroposophical Movement, the Anthroposophical Society, and the Movement for Religious Renewal. And it is important that Anthroposophy should not be looked upon as the founder of this Movement for Religious Renewal.

This has nothing to do with the fact that the advice which makes this religious Movement into a real spiritual community in a form suited to the present stage of human evolution, was given in all love and also in all devotion to the spiritual Powers who are able to place such a Movement in the world today. So that this Movement has only originated in the right way when it considers what is within the Anthroposophical Movement as something that gives it a sure ground and when it puts its trust in the Anthroposophical Movement, and seeks help and counsel from those who are within the Anthroposophical Movement, and so on. Taking into account the fact that the opponents of the Anthroposophical Movement today consider every method of attack justifiable, points such as these must be made quite clear, and I must here declare that everyone who is honest and sincere with respect to the Anthroposophical Movement would be obliged to deny any statement to the effect that the Movement for Religious Renewal was founded at Dornach in the Goetheanum and by the Goetheanum. For that is not the case, the facts are as I have just presented them.

Thus in view of the way in which I myself have helped this Movement for Religious Renewal to find its feet, I have necessarily had to picture to myself that this Movement—which puts its trust in the Anthroposophical Movement and regards the Anthroposophical Movement as its forerunner—will look for adherents outside the Anthroposophical Society, and that it would consider it a grave mistake to carry into the Anthroposophical Society the work and aims which are indeed necessary outside that Society. For the Anthroposophical Society is not understood by one who belongs to it unless his attitude is that he can be a counsellor and helper of this religious Movement, but cannot directly immerse himself in it. If he were to do so, he would be working for two ends: firstly, for the ruin and destruction of the Anthroposophical Society; secondly, to make fruitless the Movement for Religious Renewal. All the movements which arise among humanity in a justifiable way must indeed work together as in one organic whole, but this working together must take place in the right way. In the human organism it is quite impossible for the blood system to become nervous system, or for the nervous system to become blood system. The several systems have to work in the human organism distinct and separate from one another; it is precisely then that they will work together in the right way. It is therefore necessary that the Anthroposophical Society, with its content Anthroposophy, shall remain unweakened in any way by the other Movement; and that one who understands what the Anthroposophical Movement is, should—not in any presumptuous, arrogant sense, but as one who reckons with the tasks of the age—be able to see that those who have once found their way into the Anthroposophical Society do not need a religious renewal. For what would the Anthroposophical Society be if it first needed religious renewal!

But religious renewal is needed in the world, and because it is needed, because it is a profound necessity, a hand was extended to aid in founding it. Matters will therefore go on in the right way if the Anthroposophical Society remains as it is, if those who wish to understand it grasp its essential nature and do not think that it is necessary for them to belong to another movement which has taken what it possesses from Anthroposophy—although it is true in a real sense that Anthroposophy has not founded this Movement for Religious Renewal but that it has founded itself.

Anyone therefore who does not clearly distinguish these things and keep them apart, is actually—by becoming lax as regards the essential impulse of the Anthroposophical Movement—working for the destruction of the Anthroposophical Movement and for the removal of the ground and backbone of the Movement for Religious Renewal. If anyone who stands on the ground of the Movement for Religious Renewal thinks he must extend this Movement to the Anthroposophical Movement, he removes the ground from under his own feet. For everything of the nature of cult and ritual is finally bound to dissolve away when the ‘backbone’ of knowledge is broken.

For the welfare of both Movements it is essential that they should be held clearly apart. Therefore in the beginning, since everything depends on our developing the strength to carry out what we have set our will to do, it is absolutely necessary in these early days that the Movement for Religious Renewal should work in all directions in circles outside the Anthroposophical Movement; that therefore, neither as regards the acquisition of material means—in order that the matter be clearly understood I must also speak about these things—should it encroach on sources which in any event only flow with great difficulty for the Anthroposophical Movement, nor, because it does not at once succeed in finding adherents among non-Anthroposophists, should it, for example, make proselytes within the ranks of the Anthroposophists. Were it to do so, it would be doing something that would inevitably lead to the destruction of both Movements. It is really not a matter today of going forward with a certain fanaticism, but of being conscious that we can do what is necessary for man only when we work out of the necessity of the thing itself.

What I am now stating as consequences, were also equally the preliminary conditions for lending my assistance in the founding of the Movement for Religious Renewal, for only under these conditions could I assist it. If these preliminary conditions had not been there, the Movement for Religious Renewal would never have originated through my advice.

Therefore I beg you to understand that it is necessary for the Movement for Religious Renewal to know that it must adhere to its starting point, that it has promised to look for its adherents outside the sphere of the Anthroposophical Movements, for it is there that they can be found in the natural way, and there they must be sought.

What I have said to you has not been said because of any anxiety lest something might be dug away from the Anthroposophical Movement, and it has certainly not been said out of any personal motive, but solely out of the necessity of the case itself. And it is also important to understand in what way alone it is possible to work rightly in each of these spheres of activity. It is indeed necessary that with regard to important matters we should state quite clearly how the case stands, for there is at the present time far too great a tendency to blur things and not to see them clearly. But clarity is essential today in every sphere.

If therefore someone were to exclaim: The very one who himself put this Movement for Religious Renewal into the world now speaks like this!! ... well, my dear friends, the whole point is that if I had at any time spoken differently about these things, I should not have lent a hand towards founding this Movement for Religious Renewal. It must remain at its starting point. What I am now saying, I am of course saying merely in order that these things may be correctly understood in the Anthroposophical Society and so that it shall not be said (as is reported to have happened already): The Anthroposophical Movement did not get on very well, and so now they have founded the Movement for Religious Renewal as the right thing.

I am quite sure that the very excellent and outstanding individuals who have founded the Movement for Religious Renewal will oppose any such legend most vigorously, and will also sternly refuse to make proselytes within the Anthroposophical Movement.—But, as has been said, the matter must be rightly understood within the Anthroposophical Movement itself.

I know, my dear friends, that there are always some who find it unpleasant to hear explanations such as these—which are necessary from time to time, not in order to complain in one direction or another, nor for the sake of criticism, but solely in order to present something once and for all in its true light. I know there are always some who dislike it when clarity is substituted for nebulous obscurity. But this is absolutely essential for the welfare and growth of the Anthroposophical Movement as well as of the Movement for Religious Renewal. The Movement for Religious Renewal cannot flourish if it in any way damages the Anthroposophical Movement.

This must be thoroughly understood, especially by Anthroposophists, so that whenever it is necessary to stand up for the rights of the matter, they may really be able to do so. When, therefore, there is any question about an anthroposophist’s attitude towards religious renewal, he must be clear that his attitude can only be that of an adviser, that he gives what he can give in the way of spiritual possessions, and when it is a case of participating in the ceremonies, that he is conscious of doing so in order to help these ceremonies on their way. He alone can be a spiritual helper of the Movement for Religious Renewal who is himself first a good anthroposophist. But this Movement for Religious Renewal must be sustained, in every direction, by persons who, because of the particular configuration and tendencies of their spiritual life, cannot yet find their way into the Anthroposophical Society itself.

I hope that none of you will now go to someone who is doing active work in the Movement for Religious Renewal and say: This or that has been said against it in Dornach.—Nothing has been said against it. In love and in devotion to the spiritual world the Movement for Religious Renewal has been given counsel from out of the spiritual world, in order that it might rightly found itself. But the fact must be known by Anthroposophists that it has founded itself out of itself, that it has formed—not, it is true, the content of its ritual, but the fact of its ritual, out of its own force and its own initiative, and that the essential core of the Anthroposophical Movement has nothing to do with the Movement for Religious Renewal.

Certainly no wish could be stronger than mine that the Movement for Religious Renewal shall grow and flourish more and more, but always in adherence to the original intentions. Anthroposophical Groups must not be changed into communities for religious renewal, either in a material or in a spiritual sense.

I was obliged to say this today, for, as you know, counsel and advice had to be given for a Cult, a Cult whose growth in our present time is earnestly desired by me. In order that no misunderstanding should arise in regard to this Cult when I speak tomorrow of the conditions of the life of Cult in the spiritual world, I felt it necessary to insert these words today as an episode in our course of lectures.

(The following night the first Goetheanum was destroyed by fire.)

One particular fact, a fact we have been discussing here a number of times, is causing concern to anyone wishing to work along the lines of a spiritual science in the spirit of anthroposophy. I am referring to the fact that modern humankind is basically failing to pay attention to the powers of decline that are clearly in evidence, to powers that must inevitably take our present civilization to the edge of the abyss if they are allowed to come into effect.

Surely we have to admit to ourselves that many things are coming up from the profound depths of human nature and coming to realization; or in other words that there is a great deal going on at present. On the other hand many of our fellow citizens simply cannot make up their minds to pay proper attention to what is really going on.

It is reasonable to say that at the present time little effort is made in cultural life to take a wider point of view and pay genuine attention to the forces that shape our world. There is one school—I have characterized it a number of times over the years—that has its roots mainly among the English-speaking peoples and is rather secretive about its work. It is however extraordinarily effective. A second school is the movement that has come together because people want to take account of the instincts of the masses, instincts that are understandable and indeed also justifiable. In its extremes this movement is represented by people who have no idea of human evolution, who know nothing of the principles that mean progress for the world. Certain conditions, however,—I shall refer to these later—enable them to hold a position of authority in spite of their narrow-minded views and in spite of a natural inclination for criminal activities that is in fact quite considerable. They are of course clever people and able to be to the fore in public life nowadays because they impress people.

The third movement that has an effect in cultural life is based on particularly energetic representatives of the different confessions—confessions of all kinds—who also know very well what they want. They are the fountainhead of everything that usually comes under the heading of Jesuitism. Many people talk about Jesuitism and the like, but still large numbers of our fellow citizens are little inclined to pay proper attention to what is really going on.

To get a proper idea of current events one would have to take account of a number of things. One thing to be particularly taken into account however is connected with a fact I also mentioned in my first public lecture here.²⁰ It is the fact that when it comes to their frame of mind, particularly as regards the way they form ideas, present-day people are in many, many instances continuing in a way that was only suitable for the forming of ideas during the Middle Ages. That was a great and significant way of thinking, but it is now out of date. Some people have gone very intensely into the medieval way of developing sensibilities and forming ideas. These are the people who hold more or less socialist views, and there are many of them all over the globe. The ideas current among them come to expression above all in a belief in authority that is almost limitless. They cringe before anything that assumes authority by simply taking a strong line among them. This has made it possible for people like Lenin and Trotsky²¹ to impose their tyranny on millions of people with the help of just a few thousand. That particular movement is spreading from Eastern Europe into Asia at an incredible pace. It imposes a tyranny worse than anything seen during the worst periods of oriental tyranny.

All these things need to be considered in forming an opinion on current events. It has only been possible to give a rough outline. Basically the only opposition to these trends—and we are still thinking in terms of major forces in world history, forces shaping the world—comes from what should ideally be a truly honest, sincere and genuine spiritual-scientific movement. If we compare the interest brought to this spiritual-scientific movement with the interest those other movements have aroused within a relatively short time, and with the influence these movements have gained, we have to say that interest in this spiritual-scientific movement is as good as nil at the present time.

We do not fail to recognise of course that there are many people who go along with this spiritual-scientific movement, or at least tell themselves that they go along with it. There would be an enormous difference, however, if people really took note of the intensity with which those other three movements work for the things they want to bring to the fore, and then compared this with the intensity of Interest that there is for spiritual science. The spiritual-scientific movement is really approached in a very superficial way, superficial in the way people feel about it. The other movements on the other hand are arousing a limitless intensity of feeling.

Does anyone clearly understand—making it the centre of both heart and mind—that if spiritual science is to intervene to any serious extent in the forces that shape the world, people must first of all give recognition and proper value to initiation knowledge, or initiation science as we call it? Initiation science today also needs humanity's firm and decided interest. Many people believe they are sincerely devoted to it, yet the interest they muster is still rather superficial, subject to all kinds of unimportant considerations.

The people I have often called the real big shots in the Anglo-American movement have initiation knowledge, but certainly not for the benefit of humankind. Everything based on Jesuitism has initiation knowledge and in its own peculiar way Leninism also has initiation knowledge. Leninism knows how to put things cleverly, using rational ideas produced in the head, and there is a definite reason for this The cleverness of the human animal, the cleverness of human animal nature, is coming to the fore in human evolution through Leninism. Everything arising from human instincts, human selfishness, comes to interpretation in Leninism and Trotskyism in a form that on the surface seems very intelligent. The animal wants to work its way to the fore, to be the most intelligent of animals. All the ahrimanic powers that aim to exclude the human element, to exclude everything that is specifically human, and all the aptitudes that exist within the animal kingdom—I have often stressed this—are to become the forces that determine humanity.

Consider—and this is something else I have often stressed—the conceit shown by humans when they invented things such as linen paper, paper made from wood or the like; in short, paper of any kind. Well, wasps and similar creatures made this invention very much earlier, building their nests from the same materials as those from which we make paper. There you have human cleverness within animal nature. If you now take all the cleverness of this kind that exists within the whole animal kingdom, and imagine ahrimanic powers taking this up and making it come to life in human heads, in the heads of people who follow only their egotistical instincts, you can see that it may be true to say that Lenin, Trotsky and others are the tools of those ahrimanic powers. That is an ahrimanic initiation. It belongs to a different cosmic sphere than our own world does. It is however an initiation that also holds the potential for getting rid of human civilization on earth, getting rid of everything that has evolved by way of human civilization.

We are therefore dealing with three schools of initiation. Two are on the plane of human evolution and one is below that plane, though it is an initiation of tremendous will power, almost unlimited will power. The only thing that can bring order into all these developments, setting a goal that is worthy to be called human, is contained within genuine spiritual knowledge. A true goal and genuine sincerity will however only come from this spiritual science if it is made into something that involves the whole of our life, taking note how much empty chatter, how much conceit and inner egotism comes to expression in so much of what is usually said in its name. These things cannot be left unsaid. On the contrary, we need to discuss them over and over again. How else can we hope to give souls the power today that is needed to prevent civilization going into total decline.

Let me take a few minutes to give you a very concrete picture. Just a short time ago I read the following in a newspaper:

Religion is a fantasy that arises in human heads as a reflexive response to the way they relate to each other and to nature. It is doomed to die a natural death in the triumphant progress of a clear, scientific and naturalistic interpretation of the truth that is evolving hand in hand with the planned evolution of a new society.²²

Considering what one comes up against nowadays with regard to souls fast asleep in the present age, we may well ask ourselves how many people reading this kind of thing in a newspaper article pull up short as though stung by a viper, because a truly dreadful symptom comes to expression in those lines. People do not reflect on what would happen on this earth if these words came to realization:

Religion is a fantasy that arises in human heads as a reflexive response to the way they relate to each other and to nature. It is doomed to die a natural death in the triumphant progress of a clear, scientific and naturalistic interpretation of the truth that is evolving hand in hand with the planned evolution of a new society.

‘Religion’ does not refer here to some confession on other, nor to some religious movement that one may quite rightly consider to be wrong, nor merely to religion in the narrower sense, but to all that is moral. If the thoughts expressed in those lines were to come true the result would be that human society in every part of the globe would very rapidly become a herd of animals, animals capable of very sophisticated thought, however. If a way cannot be found now for opposition to arise against the principle that is growing in the East of Europe and spreading across into Asia at an incredible pace, civilization will be doomed. The ideals expressed in those lines would then become reality.

In the light of such impulses in world history I do not think it is Justifiable for people in some places to wish to continue with the mystical small talk within closed circles, small talk that against my Wishes has in the long run also come up in spiritual science working towards anthroposophy. Some people even consider it the ideal! I do not think it is right to continue with this in any form, totally disregarding what is demanded of us in the wider interest of humanity on this earth. It must be our will to consider those wider interests of humankind without bias. We must make an effort and become truly serious about certain basic principles—not merely in theory, using our intellect, but instinctively. Those principles have been obscured by all the confessions in Europe and America and the intention is to obscure them yet further.

We know about the virulent propaganda campaign being launched against spiritual science working towards anthroposophy, we hear the bullets whistling all around. If therefore opposition arises in some corner or another it would be a pity to give oneself up to the harmful illusion—an illusion indeed that today merits punishment—that we may ever hope to achieve anything by converting people who after all are the authorized agents of something or other that belongs to the past. We cannot and must not be opportunists or go for compromise. That should be our special meditation every morning, as it were. There have been well-meaning people who have said we should simply try and explain to people in one direction or another how we are endeavouring to bring the Christ Mystery to the world. The more we do this, the more bullets whistle around our ears from certain quarters. Nothing goes more against the grain for instance with certain Catholic or Protestant groups today than that humankind should today gain true understanding of the Christ Mystery. It is not in their interest that the true Mystery of Christ comes to be known; all they want is to hold on to the old ideas. If we had some kind of strange and peculiar creed concerning Christ they would treat us as a harmless sect, as odd characters, and not fight us with the intensity we have come to experience. Within the two schools, quite apart from the third, there are however quite a number of people who know that our aim is to speak of the Christ Mystery out of the truth, and of social order out of the triune principle. This makes them sit up and listen; it makes them say: ‘It would take the ground away from under our feet if we were to go for the truth; let us therefore vow to destroy it.’ People do not fight us because we are in error, they fight us because it is realized in certain quarters that we want the truth. There is no point is saying anything else about some of the things that go on today. The cultural movement I am speaking of has a profound interest in absolute clarity, particularly also clarity of thought.

Remember some of the things I have told you. What is the essential point when we come to see what humankind needs above all else today? The essential point is that our powers of thought—everything we have by way of ability to form ideas, except for sensory powers—have come down to us from our life before birth or life before conception. Everything we human beings are able to think we have brought into the physical world when we were born; we have brought it with us from the life we had before we were born. All the thoughts we evolve whilst we are in our physical bodies are faculties that govern the whole of our essential human nature between our last death and the birth process that brought us into our present life on earth. When we are thinking here and now, the powers of thought we use, not the thoughts, are a shadow image of something that was at work before we were born or conceived.

Try and think of what we call the forces of nature today, of what goes on in lightning and thunder, in the movement of waves, in the way clouds are formed, in the rising and setting of the sun, in wind and rain in the way the plants rise from the ground, in the way animals are conceived and born and grow. Think of all the natural processes You see all around; then think of them merely as a picture, not the reality. So, please, think of everything you have around you by way of natural forces casting its shadow somewhere or other, and of these shadows being taken up into a container and presenting themselves to us as pictures. The relationship that exists between nature as she actually is now and the reality that lies behind is similar to the relationship between life before birth and our faculties of thought in the present earth life. Just think that there you have everything that happens to your soul between death and rebirth—I am showing it in diagrammatic form—and then its shadow arises; a shadow arises of everything you have there and this shadow becomes the content of Your head, the content of your thoughts; it is your faculty of thought. What you are thinking now, those are the forces active before you were born. That is ‘nature’ in the spiritual world, if I may put it in such a paradoxical way. The evolution of humankind cannot progress unless we become aware that when we are thinking, the existence we had before birth influences our faculties of thought. Having entered into my present earth life, I am continuing the life I had before birth when I am thinking.

Who puts up the greatest opposition to this idea? The greatest opposition is put up by religious confessions that maintain more or less the following: ‘A human child is born. It pleases two people, a male and a female individual on this earth, to come together and God creates a soul in the spiritual world, a soul that then connects with what is created between two people in the act of begetting. That is how the human individual comes into being.’ This is of course very different from what I have just been saying. It is what confessions live on in our modern civilized worlds. They all teach that when two People copulate the spirit very kindly creates a soul up above, a fresh new soul; it is then sent down to unite with the physical body which has been created, and something new has come into existence. To whom do these confessions address themselves? They address themselves to terribly egotistical individuals who simply cannot bear the thought of being extinguished when they die. Yet they are able to bear the thought—for they have got used to it over the centuries, indeed soon it will be millenia—that it pleases God to create souls for human beings procreated here on earth. What their egotism does i not allow them to accept is the thought that death puts an end to it all.

Of course you all know what life after death is like. I do not need to go into it here. But let us turn our attention to something quite different. Preachers in their pulpits always need to assume that they are speaking to people who cannot bear the thought of death being the end of it all. The water they have to pour down from their pulpits—irrespective of the particular creed followed by the people who sit there below them—must make it clear to them—I mean unclear, of course—what happens after death. They have to choose words most liable to excite the egotism of people; they have to utter phrases that are fully in accord with the egotism in the souls of people.

Let us think what would happen for instance—to give a particular example—if someone were freely and in all seriousness to make certain aspects of the Roman Catholic confession his target, say the dogma that when two people copulate it must please God to send a freshly made soul down to them. What would happen if criticism were to be aimed at this? Someone going into the whole issue without prejudice would find that it has nothing whatsoever to do with anything to be found in the true Christian faith. They would find that during the Middle Ages the teachings of Aristotle infiltrated theology and that Aristotle represented these ideas on the basis of misunderstood Platonic ideas, saying that a fresh soul is created for every newly generated human body and unites with it. Something taken for granted as a fundamental tenet in Christian beliefs in fact has nothing to do with Christianity but is an Aristotelian principle.²³

Let us move on to something else. One element in religious beliefs is the dogma of eternal punishment in hell. Again, entirely an Aristotelian thought. Aristotle assumed that once a soul had been created, lived on earth and then come into the spiritual world, there was nothing it could do in the spiritual world, as he saw it, but look back for all eternity on what it had done during its one and only life on earth. Aristotle imagined that a fresh soul was created for every child, that this soul lived on earth until the individual died and then for all eternity occupied itself with the contemplation of what had happened during one life on earth. If someone had committed murder, they would have to look back on this for ever. That is where the dogma of eternal punishment in hell originated. It is a purely Aristotelian concept.

Just think, if the truth were to become known, instead of Aristotelian thoughts presented as Christian dogma, the people wishing to represent such Aristotelian ideas masquerading as Christian dogma would be scared out of their wits that people might find out about this, that People might find out that their priests were not teaching Christian Ideas from their pulpits, but Aristotelian ideas that had crept into Christian teachings.

Christian beliefs also contain an infinite number of ideas deriving from gnostic teachings. The Roman Catholic sacrifice of the Mass has infinitely much in it that derives from the Egyptian Mysteries. Many of the rites of the Catholic Church—and the Protestant, too, in many respects—contain things the origin of which must be sought in all kinds of oriental religions. All they are after is that people do not find out where these things come from. What do they feel compelled to do? They have to resort to slander! They have to say that the people who are presenting the truth today are plagiarists borrowing from oriental and gnostic teachings and so on. ‘Traubism’ is the order of the day. They come up with learned calumnies like those presented by the clergyman Professor Traub ²⁴ and all the people who parrot him. Why do people do such things? Because the truth is coming to light and they all have an interest in not letting it come to light. People will go on saying that what we are doing is taken from some source or other. They will provoke something that makes people go against gnosis and things that are part of the very fibre of their souls because they do not want it to come to light in its true form. Gnosis—one is supposed to say—is something terrible, something dreadful. Then people will ignore it, being afraid of it, and the preachers can talk about things that in fact have their origin in gnosis. It is the preachers who talk about things that originally came from gnosis, not the people who speak about what has grown in the soil of spiritual science working towards anthroposophy. What they are most afraid of is that there is such a thing as pre-existence of the soul, a life of the soul before birth and also conception, that the soul has its roots in the spiritual world through all the ages that any kind of knowledge and creed among humankind might cover. For if the truth were to become known there would be no room any more for such blasphemy as that the gods are obliged to send a newly made soul from the spiritual world for every single human body, so that they might unite. All these things have their origin of course in a desire for power that is getting very strong. Behind it all are thoughts of power. It is possible to put tremendous energies into such thoughts of power simply by following certain precepts.

What is going on in Dornach at the moment, for instance? All around, almost everywhere in Switzerland, articles on anthroposophy are being published not one sentence of which is true.²⁵ The whole campaign started when an article appeared that contained twenty-three lies. For weeks now, article on article has picked up on those twenty-three lies; they have appeared almost everywhere in the Catholic press in Switzerland and not a single sentence is true. Why is this happening? It happens because the many followers of these people are brought to a certain state of mind by being told untruths, a state of mind where it is no longer possible to tell the difference between truth and falsehood.

Think of all the efforts we go to in spiritual science working towards anthroposophy to form sufficiently clear ideas; for instance, as to how far the things we become aware of in human minds, in the form of dreams, may or may not be reflecting the truth. As human beings we cannot immediately distinguish truth from falsehood when something appears in the course of a dream. The same state of mind arises for a congregation when they are told lies by people who know that those lies will be believed. The soul is brought to a state, a mood. by those lies where it becomes the willing tool of those desiring power. It is easiest to get people into your power by planting illusions in their unsuspecting minds. Articles full of lies are systematically put out with the intention of creating the kind of mood that can be created with lies. That will be the inevitable consequence of the probabilism which the Jesuits have been teaching for a long time. It is merely a final consequence.

It is of course difficult to rouse modern souls from their general torpor to stand up against such people. The day before I left we were forced to arrange for a lecture—for we must fight, of course, even if we do not want to, against the lies that come up in Dornach. Dr BooS, one of the most courageous of our young protagonists, called on everyone who had anything to say on the subject of the lecture to join in the in the discussion—it was a public lecture, of course. When no one came forward he said openly and publicly that he publicly declared the cleric who had first written those twenty-three lies, a priest called Arnet in Reinach, to be unworthy of his priestly calling, for disseminating scurrilous lies.

One cannot help oneself. And then, even when this had been said, only one individual stood up among those present, a teacher, shaking in his boots if I may put it like that, and said: ‘Just wait. There are more articles to come, and in the end you will see!’ Well, all I could say was that there had been twenty-three lies to begin with, and the truth about those twenty-three lies will without doubt never emerge, however long it takes until there is an end to the matter even if the end does not come until the end of the world. Not the least attempt has been made in everything published so far—and a respectable number of articles have already appeared—to go into those twenty-three lies.

Other things have been tried, using a strange logic. The pamphlet by the Tübingen speaker was brought into play—it actually played a large role—but the people who bring professor Traub's pamphlet into play in their articles have not properly understood what he said. They will write that this man Steiner is borrowing from all kinds of ancient writings, from the Upanishads, the Egyptian Isis Mysteries and the ‘Akashic Records’—well, I suppose the typesetter may have put that in, but on the other hand the clerical gentleman may have done so. I therefore said that it was not really my concern to correct printers' errors, but that it surely is a strange way of reading Traub's Pamphlet if immediately afterwards the reader has forgotten that not even Traub says anything so stupid as that the Akashic Records are to be found on library shelves; I said that one cannot really accuse people of borrowing from that old tome, the Akashic records, for spiritual science based in anthroposophy.

Our attackers have also gained support among liberal thinkers. Dr Boos was going great guns in a liberal paper, saying that this was a deliberate untruth, since the writer must have known that there were no Akashic Records in his library. He could not possibly have them in his library and so he ought to have known; he must have written a deliberate untruth. What did the person concerned do? He wrote that Dr Boos was evading the issue, as it was self-evident that the typesetter must have been responsible for the ‘Akashic Records’ error and not he himself. In his view the kind of sophistry that made authors responsible for that kind of printing error merely showed what kind of stable people came from.

Well, you see the kind of mentality one is dealing with. But do not underestimate it! You have to realize that it is going to be a hard fight, particularly in this direction. The aim is to prevent people from finding out about what I have been saying. What I said, first of all in the medical course, is the following: It is particularly when one is making serious efforts to determine the spiritual laws of this world, doing so on the basis of present-day life, when one tries to reach the deeper secrets of human nature by making these things one's own on the basis of present-day life, and then also finds them written in ancient works—albeit arising from an intellectual life that was more instinctive and atavistic—that one feels very humble in perceiving the greatness of the instinctive, atavistic intellect that human beings once possessed; that has been lost and must now be found again. These words were spoken in awareness of the fact that knowledge which today has to be sought within life was once instinctive wisdom given to humankind. Much of that ancient wisdom has of course survived in the religious beliefs, though it has become corrupted. Yet the people professing those beliefs want to make humankind fear that original wisdom, and when they talk about it say more or less the following: `Those dreadful people who pursue anthroposophy today are borrowing everything from that ancient wisdom'. If they went into the matter they would find that the spiritual science offered to humankind in anthroposophy is very different from anything ever borrowed from anywhere, from the Upanishads or whatever. So we had to borrow indeed from that ancient tome called the Akashic Records! To prevent people getting sight of something that belongs to the present age our enemies are letting their bullets come whistling from all around.

Let us be clear about one thing. You may feel tempted now and then to stress the good points of one thing or another. The alliance between Jesuitism and the Social Democrats which is getting closer and closer by the day is something entirely natural. There is nothing unnatural about it. The Social Democrats are equipped with the same kind of ideas as the Jesuits, only they take them the other way round. One thing, however, that differs from all else that is felt is the 'eternal nature of the human being'. This has become the teaching of egotism. It is restored to its true form when the pre-existence concept, of a human soul having a life before birth, or before conception, once again becomes the effective moral principle. The knives will come out to fight this idea. We shall only be able to progress in the world if in the first place truth has inner power. This inner power can only be effective, however, if in the second place people have the courage, however few they may be in number, to carry this truth in their souls, carry it in their souls in all seriousness, uprightness and honesty and without compromise. It is useless for us to play down the tremendous difference which exists between true Christianity and the Catholic and Protestant Aristotelianism which holds the idea that souls are created for bodies as they arise through procreation. We must not play down this difference. If we do play it down we will not even notice where the idea of power, the desire for power, has its real origins.

I find myself referring again and again to the pastoral issued by a Roman Catholic bishop. This document really exists. According to it the faithful must regard their priest as ranking higher than God and Christ, for each time the priest performs the consecration at the altar Christ is forced to be present by that altar, to be present in the bread and the wine which is His body and His blood. The priest therefore has greater power in the universe than a god. That is what it says in a pastoral that really exists and has also been quoted in many other pastorals. Now you may ask me if that is consistent with the abolition of the spirit by the Council of Constantinople ²⁶ in 869. The answer is yes. A Roman Catholic saying that God is more powerful than a priest would say so because people will not accept any other view nowadays. People are so much asleep in their souls that they never ask themselves: ‘What was the person ²⁷ writing to Moleschott really saying who had the nerve to say that a criminal, a liar, a murderer is a moral person only if he can be fully himself and is an immoral person if he does not bring to expression what he has in him. for this would impose restraints on his individuality, and that an inclination to murder is just as valid as other inclinations are’? Modern souls do not have the courage to say to themselves: ‘If scientists continue to teach the kind of basic philosophy that they have been teaching, the inevitable conclusion simply has to be that criminals, murderers, are just as good as someone trying to act morally, as it were. People merely lack the courage to admit this.’ When materialism had its flowering, at the time when people like Vogt, Moleschott and Büchner,²⁸ all of them courageous men, were publishing their writings, such things were admitted. The present age is too cowardly, however, to make such admissions. Nor is there sufficient courage in the sleeping souls of the present to admit to oneself: 'If you go by the spirit of those creeds and statements a priest is indeed more powerful than a god.'

The school of thought represented by spiritual science working in the spirit of anthroposophy must above all work towards clear thinking in every respect. Its message cannot be grasped if thoughts are unclear, it cannot be grasped in a vague and vaporous mysticism but only with crystal clear thoughts, thoughts which in my Philosophy of Freedom ²⁹ I have tried to show are the starting point for genuine human freedom.

We may continue our discussion of the subject when I am able to speak to you again. I hope this will be soon.

• 20. ‘Der Weg zum gesunden Denken und die Lebenslage des Gegenwartsmenschen’ (A way to develop sound thinking and people's life situation in the present day), Stuttgart 8 June 1920. Published in Geisteswissenschaft und die Lebensfordeningen der Gegenwart No. 6, Dornach 1950. To be published in Germany in GA 355. No record of translation into English.
• 21. Lenin (formerly Ulyanov), Vladimir Ilyich, Russian revolutionary.
  Trotsky. Leon (Lev Davidovich Bronstein), Russian revolutionary leader in 1917.
• 22. Basler Vonvärts of 2 June 1920. X.N. , ‘Die Politik der Sowjetregierung auf dem Gebiete der Religion’ (Soviet government policies concerning religion).
• 23. See Franz Brentano. Die Psychology des Aristoteles (The psychology of Aristotle), Mainz 1867. S. 199 ff.
• 24. Traub, Friedrich, professor at Tuebingen University, author of Rudolf Steiner als Philosoph und Theosoph (Rudolf Steiner as a philosopher and theosophist), Tuebingen 1919.
• 25. For details relating to this see Boos, Roman, ‘Aktenmäßige Darstellung der Hetze gegen das Goetheanum’ (The virulent campaign against the Goetheanum presented in documents), in Rudolf Steiner/Roman Boos: Die Hetze gegen das Goetheanum (The virulent campaign against the Goetheanum), Arlesheim 1920.
• 26. Refers to the Council's rejection of ‘trichotomy’. Rudolf Steiner referred to this on a number of occasions, e.g. in Bausteine zu einer Erkenntnis des Mysteriums von Golgatha GA 175, 1st and 2nd lectures. English translation in Cosmic and Human Metamporphoses. H. Collison ed. London: Anthroposophical Publishing Co. 1926.
• 27. Mathilde Reichardt, a lady who published a book on science and moral philosophy in the form of letters to Moleschott in 1856, is able to lay undoubted and unenviable claim to rank first among those who turn moral concepts upside down. It is the opinion of this lady that moral philosophy merely has to ask whether a human individual develops his or her inherent traits in a balanced way. Yet nature—so she says—expresses a different intent in every human individual. She therefore does not hesitate to state ‘that when someone has an inherent tendency to cheat and to steal, such a person can only be an entirely moral person if he or she is a cheat or a thief.’ ‘Someone born to be a thief has also been born with the right to live out those inherent tendencies, developing them to the full, for that is the only way in which he or she can be a strong and moral individual. And what applies to thieves also applies to all other vices, including those born to be murderers.’
  (Quoted from Jurgen Bona Meyer, Philosophische Zeitfragen, Bonn 1874, S. 323 f.)
• 28. Vogt, Carl, champion of Darwinism.
  Moleschott, Jakob, physiologist.
  Büchner, Ludwig, German physician and materialist philosopher.
• 29. Die Philosophie der Freiheit (1894), GA. 4. English: The Philosophy of Freedom. M. Wilson tr. London: Rudolf Steiner Press 1970.

We will remind ourselves of some of the things we have been considering during the last few days. I have spoken of the significant facts that within the compass of the story of the Mystery of Golgotha we have, on the one hand, the proclamation to the simple shepherds and on the other to the Magi from the East, men who according to the ideas prevailing in those times had reached the highest wisdom that it was possible to attain. The Mystery proclaimed itself to the Magi out of the stars and the secrets which were read from the stars. The same was revealed to the unlearned, simple shepherds out of the kind of clairvoyance which could arise in those times in men of piety of heart. I said that these powers were the last remnants of faculties of vision which in much earlier times were normal in humanity and which in the epoch of the Mystery of Golgotha still existed in their final phase among exceptional men, both learned and unlearned. It may therefore be said: At the time when the last remnants of ancient faculties of vision still existed in individual man, faculties capable of grasping the super-sensible aspect of the Event of Golgotha, that Event actually took place on the earth.

Once again let us describe these forms of knowledge. On the one side we have the shepherds. They experience through their naive, instinctive visions, what is happening in the world of men. Such inner visions were due, as I told you, to the forces of the earth which work into the human being. These forces of the earth do not only work into the lower kingdoms but also within the human being. Modern men, especially those living at the present time, no longer have direct inner experiences of these earthly forces which rise as it were out of the earth and then appear as inner visions. But the further we go back in evolution the more we find these inner visions, visions which in their whole configuration and form differ according to the varying climatic conditions, the different regions of the earth, and so forth. What can be discovered externally in this connection is, however, in many ways deceptive, for the men of olden times were wanderers. The faculties of inner knowledge coming to them from the forces of the earth, developed in some region or territory and then, because of the migrations of the peoples and stocks to other territories, were propagated through heredity. It cannot always be said, therefore, that these inner visions were connected directly with the territory where they appeared in men. Just as the animal world has a certain form in a specific part of the earth—in the animals this is expressed more in the outer growth and shape, in the mode of life, etc.—so, when human beings were still closely connected with the forces of nature, they were united in their inner characteristics with the inner forces of the earth. These inner forces of the earth are not, of course, completely independent of the forces of the universe. During his life between birth and death, the human being is given over to these forces of the earth, that is to say, he is given over to them in his physical body and etheric body, not in his astral body and Ego. In his physical body and etheric body man is given over to the forces that are active in the earth kingdoms below him. And as in olden times man was much more dependent upon the physical and etheric bodies than he is today, the workings of the earth within him expressed themselves more in his consciousness and there was within him a certain instinctive activity in his understanding of the world of human beings, of the planet earth and especially of the animal world. In those olden days men had a definite picture, a definite Imagination of every species of animal. Of this Imagination we ourselves have retained only the abstract notion of the ‘species.’ We speak of the wolf-species, the tiger-species, and so forth, and this is the last, abstract remnant of the living pictures that were present in olden times in instinctive vision and perception. Nor was man's relationship to his fellow-men the abstract feeling that it is today when we pass them by without really getting to know and understand them. Through the forces living within him and through his common karma, a definite picture, a definite perception of his fellow-man arose in a man as a concrete, naive Imagination.

Within this ancient humanity there was also living perception of what concerned the earth as a whole planet or—at least it was so among many peoples—the territories on which they dwelt. It was an inward perception of the planet earth, of happenings in the world of men as they expressed themselves in the social life, and also of happenings in the animal world. Our ordinary sense-perception then developed out of this inner faculty. This inward perception, these visionary pictures have in the modern age come entirely to the surface of the senses. They have become the mode of perception that is idolised in natural science where men are only willing to believe what the intellect combines out of the sense-perceptions. This sense-perception with which we view the material world is the descendant of what we find when we study ancient times in human evolution with real insight, undeluded by the phantasmagoria of modern psychology or anthropology. The old inner vision has become our external perception of today.

The other kind of knowledge, represented by the wisdom of the Magi from the East, has become abstract. It has gone the opposite way. Inner vision went to the surface and became our sense-perception. The faculty of outward perception, expressed in the imaginative, instinctive knowledge of the world of the stars and its secrets, in the ancient astronomy which also reckoned with numbers and—to use the platonic term—‘geometrised’ with figures, this form of perception which saw a living mathematics being fulfilled in the cosmos and to which every star was a spiritual reality has gone the opposite way. The other kind of perception went to the surface of the senses and became what we call our empirical knowledge. The external perception of olden times withdrew inwards, into the human being, and became abstract mathematics, abstract mechanics or phoronomy—the mathematical-mechanistic knowledge that arises from within us.

Thus in perception based on the senses and in our mathematical view of the world we have the abstract legacies of old, instinctive visions of mankind. Since the time of the Mystery of Golgotha the last remnants of these ancient visions have disappeared, unintelligible as this fact will be to ordinary anthropology. Among the majority of peoples on the earth they had already disappeared much earlier; for we must go back many thousands of years, to very, very early times before what became the Egypto-Chaldean and Greek cultures proceeded from the Turanian highlands, if we want really to understand the nature of these primeval faculties of vision in man. Yet their last remnants still exist in Christian tradition as in the vision of the shepherds, who, through instinctive, imaginative clairvoyance came to know of a mighty event, and in the vision of the wise men from the East whose wisdom of the stars revealed the same thing. The very last remnants of these ancient modes of perception are given us as a wonderful landmark in our study of evolution. Since the Mystery of Golgotha there has been an increasingly general growth of the modern mode of perception which was already being prepared for in Greek culture; for the one does not pass abruptly into the other, these things are prepared for and die down again. What became intensive only in the modern age, revealing itself since the middle of the 15th century and reaching its zenith in the 19th, although it was last clearly present in the 18th century, especially in the West of Europe—this was prepared for in Greek culture. The ancient spirit-filled vision of the heavens has become abstract mathematics and mechanics. We look at the heavens in the sense of Galileo and Kepler, as if they were intelligible as a mere object of mathematics and mechanics, and what we call perceptions are limited to what the senses alone transmit to us. The power of perception born of the whole being of man which was instinctive in primeval times has become inactive.

It has often been said that humanity must become able once again to unfold real visions.. The mathematical and mechanical knowledge which arise in the inner being must once again be developed to Imagination. The sense-world which becomes the object of speculation and gives rise to all kinds of theories about the sense-processes, wave-vibrations and the like, must again be filled with the perceptions of Inspiration. Thereby men will find the link with their own origin, with the spiritual which is their own true being. We have evolved mathematical conceptions and external sense-perception as the final remnants of these ancient times. And what has come about in the evolution of humanity as a result of this?

Let us think of the 18th century, and of the English philosopher Locke who has had such an influence upon the development of the sciences. Locke speaks of the only form of knowledge that is valid—the knowledge that is transmitted, at the outset, by the senses. It is only a question of combining sense-perception mathematically because in the West—although the East has always resisted this—man has retained only this external sense perception, and inner vision has become purely abstract and mathematical.

And in France, in the 18th century, we find efforts being made to understand the human being, to answer the question: What is the human being in reality? Efforts were made to understand man through the power of knowledge he himself manifests; and we find such a work as Man as Machine by De la Mettrie. This was not the outcome of a sudden idea of one man but of a world-historical necessity of evolution. The corresponding phenomenon in ancient times would have been that the human being would have been understood by means of all the astronomical knowledge to be gained about the heavens—he would have been understood in the light of the whole macrocosm, by means of that ‘qualitative mathematics’ which is none other than ancient astronomy or, if you like, astrology. There would have been a concrete conception of the human being, not indeed gained with our conscious faculties of knowledge, but with the instinctive faculties of men in those times. And what has remained of this? Mathematical lines and forces spread in pure abstraction over the cosmos. The picture of the human being was that of a machine. An ingenious book which pictures man as a network of mathematical and mechanical forces cropped up in the 19th century and deluged all scientific views. Such objections as were raised were, at most, theoretical. People said: “It cannot really be so, something else must, after all, be working in man,” But although it was admitted theoretically that things could not be as they were pictured in Man as Machine, no other power was applied for understanding the human being than the powers used for understanding machines. Men were obliged to pass through this development of the spirit—of the spirit which is supremely abstract here and is able therefore only to grasp what is mathematical. Only so has the consciousness of freedom come to man. Tumultuous as was the urge for freedom in the west of Europe in the 18th century, there is an inner connection between the meagre knowledge of the human being which comes to expression in Man as Machine and the urge for human freedom which became manifest in the French Revolution. On the one side there was the worst possible decadence of knowledge arising from inner powers and, on the other, the insistent demand for recognition of the dignity of man by giving him freedom.

The vision that once arose within man was driven outwards to the senses, faded into external sense-perception. Nothing remained of what had once brought men together with vision: a mere feeling remained as a motivation in social life. And in the 19th century, particularly in Central Europe, in the West already in the 18th century, we find men like Dupuis in the West and Ludwig Feuerbach and others in Central Europe who, with the strange mentality which was then brought to bear on these things, reminded themselves that in the course of development humanity had once seen the spiritual in the macrocosm, had seen Gods or, ultimately, God. But then there arose this strong instinct: “Looking into the external world I have only the tapestry of material life, only what is revealed to sense-perception.” These men said to themselves: “These traditions, all that was once seen shining from the stars which are also things of sense, the spiritual in the world of minerals and plants—all this was fantasy, it was anthropomorphism; with this fantasy men imposed it into the external world. It was not the Gods who created man, but man who, out of his life of soul, created the Gods.” This was what was placed before man in the middle of the 19th century, first by Dupuis and then by Ludwig Feuerbach.

And then men like Darwin and others of similar mentality lent tremendous weight to the idea that man has only the external perceptions of the senses. They founded teachings based entirely on this kind of perception. But then it became apparent that the human being cannot be understood through these teachings. In a marvellous edifice of ideas we have a theory of evolution from the simplest up to the most highly complicated organisms and man is placed at the summit of the animal world. What was understood of the human being? That which could be externally seen through sense-perception.

In France, in the 18th century, man was conceived as a machine; in the 19th century he was seen only from outside and his inner nature was not reached. Only the sheath around man was there. This sheath does stand at the summit of the animal world. But what this sheath surrounds comes from quite different worlds into which there was no longer any insight, because all that remained was the sense-perception into which the ancient clairvoyance had developed, and the mathematics and mechanics into which the old spiritual science of astronomy had developed. Through the science arising from within, man could only be conceived of as a machine; and with the science relating to the external world, man could not be conceived at all, but only his sheath. Nor is there any realisation today of the extent to which the human being himself has been lost. Men study the anatomy and physiology of the animals and with certain modifications transfer this knowledge to the human being. But in the modern striving for knowledge there is no real understanding of the human being. From science—the highest authority recognised today—no conscious understanding of the human being is to be gained. Man as machine, comprehension of the material world in which the human being is not to be found—these have been the forerunners of our scientific mentality.

In one of the most recent books (another has since appeared, for the brochures aiming at refuting Anthroposophy are growing now into whole volumes)—in a fairly big book, we find it said that much in Anthroposophy is reminiscent of ancient mythologies. This is because the author simply does not understand Anthroposophy. He is a Licentiate of Theology, a very learned gentleman ... they are all learned gentlemen. This can be said as a refrain, thinking of the famous speech in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar: “So are they all honourable men ...” They are all learned men and this particular one, because he does not understand Anthroposophy at all, finds in it something similar to ancient mythologies.

You know that in Anthroposophy it is a question of a fully conscious understanding of the world, an understanding with a consciousness that otherwise occurs only in mathematics with its inner penetration of the realities, so that it is certainly not a matter of mythological poetry. Nevertheless it is precisely through Anthroposophy that we are often deeply and inwardly stimulated to realise the meaning of ancient mythologies and ancient mythological pictures. These ancient mythologies are not ‘poetry’ in the sense in which we think of poetry today; they are the outcome of naive Imaginations of a certain content of the world. This content of the world, however, was expressed in pictures. And if we let the deep significance of these pictures work upon us we find a wonderful sureness of knowledge in them. Let me remind you today of a poem of ancient India addressed to the God Varuna:

Varuna is the motive power in all beings.
Varuna is he who has spread the air through the forests.
Varuna is he who gives the swift-footed animals their swiftness.
Varuna is he who produces milk in the milk-bearing cows.
Varuna is he who quickens the Will in the heart of man.
Varuna is he who kindles the lightning in the oceans of clouds.
Varuna is he who causes the light of the sun to shine in the vault of heaven.
Varuna is he who produces the Soma-drink on the mountains.

In wonderful language this poem to Varuna contains what I described to you yesterday. Think of what enters from the inner forces of the earth into man's physical and etheric bodies; these forces played into the consciousness and produced, in those ancient times, powers of inner vision. And then think of this poem and of the deep meaning in the indication that it is Varuna, the God of changes, who causes the air to blow through the forests (the earth with her covering). This same power-giving Being, working from the earth through the animals, causes the swiftness of horses, the life-substance in creatures who bear milk, stimulating in the heart of man the will-impulse from whence came the ancient, inner clairvoyance. In these indications we have something that make intelligible the kind of vision possessed by the shepherds in the field. And then from what follows, we can understand the kind of vision living in the wise men from the East. For it is Varuna who kindles the fire of lightning in the oceans of clouds—we look out into the macrocosm and there find the forces which are understood with the knowledge possessed by the Magi. It is Varuna who causes the light of the sun to shine in the heavens and who produces the Soma-drink on the mountain—these are the forces which enable man to have vision of the world.

An observation must, however, here be made. The poem comes from an epoch when the primeval, purest form of vision of the outer world was no longer present, when vision of the cosmic spaces was no longer, as in the earliest times, achieved by purely spiritual manipulations of the breathing or by drawing these visions from the inbreathing. The poem comes from a time when, as was very usual in the later Mysteries, a certain drink prepared from plants was taken to stimulate vision of the outer world, just as later on, when inner vision was lost, man attempted to stimulate inner powers by the taking of certain substances. In the East, men tried to quicken vision of the macrocosm by drinking certain juices from plants; in the West, certain substances were taken. In the East, again by external means, by the taking of substance which they called Soma-drink, men tried to quicken the faculty which appeared, in its last remnant, in the Magi. In the West, up to the late Middle Ages and even on into modern times, what was taken inwardly in order to attain the wisdom that evokes inner perception was called the Philosopher's Stone.

In books attempting to explain oriental life you will find many indications about the Soma-drink, the Soma-juice. All kinds of ingenious explanations are given because real Initiation-wisdom never tells what the substance of the Soma-drink really is. Many books will tell you that it is not known what the substance of the Philosopher's Stone is. Neither do I myself propose to speak about these two substances. I only want to indicate the humour of the statement made by scholarship that one cannot know what Soma-juice really is, although a large number of people drink this Soma-juice by the litre. As the poem to Varuna says, it grows on mountains. It is also said that the Philosopher's Stone is a certain substance in existence but that it is not really known what the learned alchemists meant by the Philosopher's Stone. But there are people in modern times who consume this Philosopher's Stone by the kilo. It is only a matter of seeing things in the right light.

It is remarkable that something very familiar should be presented as being quite unknown because people do not understand the connection of their present mode of vision with that of times, relatively speaking, not very long ago.

But it must be realised that today we see the world through very faulty spectacles and in spite of our scientific development do not understand what is nearest at hand; we do not know the workings of many substances we use in everyday life. We stand within these workings and experience them. Modern scholarship does not know what the Soma-drink is, or the Philosopher's Stone, although there are very few people who are not quite familiar with these substances (they simply do not know what they are). Equally can it be said: People of today realise that a great deal goes on in the intercourse between the banks and industrial undertakings and most men tear off their coupons from the papers they receive, but they know as little about what this means in the complex of social life as they know about the substances mentioned above. Our mode of perception is of a kind that it befogs us, misleads us with spectacles; we have our everyday arrangements without knowing anything real about the inner connections of the world.

It is strange that people try to keep to these concepts that are so superficial, that they do not want to get down to a new inner knowledge on the one side and strive for a new outer knowledge on the other. Sometimes, out of dark emotions, that which most men really want in their conscious being struggles to make itself felt, but they are afraid to raise this will into consciousness.

A friend recently gave me a copy of the Rheinische Musik und Theater Zeitung. The first article is based on the experiences of a musician. He writes out of immediate experience in particular circumstances and what he says is extremely interesting. I will read a few sentences:

“With the general social and economic upheaval there was added to the inner problems of music, the outer problem—that of the new public that is coming to art practically unprepared. Which of the arts has permanent value and how are art and the people to be brought together? These are questions of particular importance at the moment”

Most people are still unaware of the weight of these questions: there their weight has been felt, for they are there as a terrible burden in the world.

“Many, very many problems would be better and more easily solved if the musical profession were organised. But we are still without any Music Chamber which could represent the common interests of all professional musicians; even individual groups of interests are not yet really united with each other.”

The writer now proceeds to think about a suitable organisation. He says:

“Hardly any of the associations include all the members of the profession. The best are, perhaps, the German Musicians' Union which includes particularly the orchestra players, and the Union of Music Traders where there is a common basis because of their economic objects. After a big gap come the various groups of academic and nonacademic music teachers, of singing teachers in music schools, organists, directors and critics, as well as composers and executant musicians. Self-seeking interests and rivalry have put off many people from joining these associations. As a whole, workers in cultural professions are very far from realising the need of union. Thus it has come about that in the world of music those at the head of its public affairs are not experts who are cognisant of the real needs. In the great State arrangements as in the narrower, provincial bodies, dilettantes have the authority and also, according to the strength of the parties, politicians to whom art is only a secondary interest and who, though they often have good-will, usually lack the necessary expert knowledge and freedom from bias. And so it has come about that the State has almost completely failed to meet the justified demands of music. This does not concern music alone; it is typical in all cultural affairs. In the realisation too that the economic problems of a people cannot properly be handled by the politically-minded representatives who have held positions up to now, a new ‘Economic Council’ was recently formed. Out of about 400 seats, 3 were included for the Arts—such is the estimate of its importance. And when we know that one or two votes are incapable of representing the interests of the German Musicians' Union even in purely economic and financial questions, we cannot help asking: Where then are the cultural interests of the people to be considered? Parliamentary debates are out of the question. There is not a single expert of our profession in the Reichstag and even if there were ten or twenty, they could do nothing at all in a place where people speak and vote according to party points of view.

“There is only one way that is logical and clear and it will therefore be adopted one day for the well-being of our people. Beside the Political Parliament administering the equitable position of the individual vis-à-vis the whole, and of the people vis-à-vis the international world, and beside the Economic Council to deal with the material foundations of the people's life, we need a Cultural Council for the promotion of spiritual affairs.

“The idea of this Threefoldness is not new. It was however formulated in precise terms by Dr. Rudolf Steiner and is now being worked at by a league for the ‘Threefold Social Organism,’ Champignystrasse 17, Stuttgart, where further information can be obtained.

“It will be difficult for anyone who goes into this, to get the idea out of his head, so unambiguous is it and such a certain solution of the problems with which we have long been struggling so hopelessly. Its realisation must and will bring health to the whole of our people's life.”

I have read you this because it shows the longing for the Threefold Organism in one single profession. Then there are opinions which we must reject, opinions of those who have merely a political education and think that this Threefold Social Organism is a Utopia. It is not by any means a Utopia; it grows from the innermost experience of every single profession. The writer of this article is the editor of the paper and it is seldom that editors write in such a way. Every single individual in any profession can feel that the most practical conception of life leads him finally to say to himself: “It will be difficult for anyone who goes into this to get the idea out of his head, so unambiguous is it and such a certain solution of the problems with which we have long been struggling so hopelessly. Its realisation must and will bring health to the whole of our people's life.”

This ‘Cultural Council’ was founded a year ago this May and it has already faded out, is forgotten. Those who understood it least of all were the people in official positions and having authority in science and art. What must be emphasised over and over again is the need there is today for things to be taken with deep seriousness. This goes against the grain. People choose to believe that things will continue in the same way. No, they will not. If life continues without the stimuli that come from the spiritual world, industry can go on, banks can be in existence and universities where all the sciences are taught, other professions can be developed—but everything will lead to decadence, to barbarism, to the fall of civilisation. Those who are not willing to apply in practical life what can come out of Spiritual Science are working, not for ascent but for decline. And the majority of people today want decline and simply delude themselves into the belief that an ascent can still come out of it.

That is what I wanted to stress on the occasion of this Christmas festival. Let others go on, if they so will, along the old, familiar path that is like a great lie in modern life. I confronted this lie when I was a young man. In respect of the truths and realities of life I was very much at home in an international atmosphere and in things that have nothing to do with sympathy or antipathy for any particular race, for I taught in a house belonging to a Jewish family for many years. Every year, when Christmas was near, all the relatives, distant and near, set about buying Christmas presents and a Christmas tree—and all of them were members of the Jewish religion. They did everything the same as people who call themselves Christians, in honour of Him of whom it is said: “The Saviour is born unto us this day.” Things have become phrases to this extent, my dear friends. But people will not admit it, will not admit that these things have lost all meaning. It is all one and the same today, and it has been so for a very long time, whether a man whose heart is livingly united with the Saviour lays presents under the Christmas tree or whether this is done by someone who adheres to a way of thinking which rejects the Saviour. It is such things which show us the lie in humanity that has become reality, the phrase that has become reality within our civilisation. These things must be seen in all seriousness, my dear friends. It is meaningless today to say that one should not be radical in these matters ... for not to be radical means to take part in the advance towards decline.

This is what I wanted to voice at this Christmas festival, at a place where nothing in the old style is to be found. In our architecture at the Goetheanum there are no traces of ancient architectural styles. Neither do other things at the Goetheanum contain anything connected with old-fashioned customs. It is just because there is nothing of old customs at the Goetheanum that such hatred of it prevails in many quarters. Neither should there be old customs, because there must be at least one place today—however much it is hated and however intensely its ruin is desired—where attention is called to what is necessary for mankind in our time.

The Goetheanum contains nothing of the old. The Goethean science cultivated here obviously contains hardly anything that is old. And if we establish anything in practical life ... the reaction to it shows quite clearly that it is not in the old style. Whether in the habits of all anthroposophical friends everything of the old style has been overcome ... on that point the lecturer will be silent for the sake of politeness. But he would express the hope that our habits, down to the very way we handle our children, will tend more and more to what we recognise as a necessity for the evolution of mankind.

The year we are beginning with this Christmas festival will be no easy one for our anthroposophical development. On the contrary, it will be a difficult year. The opposition against us will not diminish but increase in strength. For the powers which have an interest in ruining Anthroposophy are very active, very alert, as I have often said. And one thing particularly I would like to call to mind today. When the ‘Futurum Company’ was founded here in Dornach, our good friend Herr Molt spoke of all that should enter and be applied in the affairs of practical life. He was right in everything that he said. When I was speaking afterwards I said that I was not anxious about the incorporation of anthroposophical thoughts and ideas in practical institutions—but what did cause me anxiety was whether we should find a sufficiently large number of human beings capable and energetic enough to carry these things through.

What is so very necessary, my dear friends, is that we should always be trying to bring together those human beings who are sufficiently energetic and capable to make Anthroposophy really practical, as well. Recent centuries have not only dulled human knowledge, they have also actually suppressed the practical capacities of men. And it is essential that people should try to unfold these powers out of the deepest foundations of their being—for the powers that are needed lie in every individual. We need a renewal also of the external, practical capacities of man, out of his deepest foundations. This birth should hover before us—the birth of an energy that can be brought forth within to confront the lack of energy to be met with in the outer world today. This birth should hover before us in everything that we feel to be connected with Christmas.

Think, too, of science. A young medical student was with me a few days ago and was talking to me about his studies. All that I could say was that the very worst thing that is happening nowadays in the most important sciences is that the thinking powers of men are not being unfolded. Take any modern book on therapy or pathology—so often we find heart, lung, digestive organs and so forth, represented according to purely material observations and with as much elimination of the thought element as possible. And when some real thinking is offered we find, as in the book written by Kurt Leese, the Licentiate of Theology, that it is said: this is unbearable, irritating; for here is someone speaking about the threefold being of man and we are expected to believe that the three members are not side by side, but intermingled. So much jugglery of thought ... Such is the opinion of this Licentiate of Theology, Kurt Leese.

To be a Licentiate of Theology at our universities means that thinking is fundamentally exterminated by the studies. When a man is challenged to think, this is unbearable, irritating, unpleasant in the extreme. It has come to the point where things that come from the innermost being, truthfulness among them, appear in the form they do, even among the leaders of Christianity. For example there is this clergyman who does not say that some drunkard told him of a statue of Christ being made with Luciferic traits above and animal characteristics below ... but who gives this out as something that he knows with certainty. He puts an objective lie into a book in which he sets out to describe Anthroposophy. And people accept such things without criticism or censure. Do you think for a moment that any healing of social life is possible when such things happen? If you have any such belief, it is a false hope. What is necessary is to develop a sane outlook on a positive evil in moral life. The point is not whether Anthroposophy is attacked or not but that a book has appeared containing a whole number of similar untruths. A man who writes such lies in this book will naturally include them in other writings. This is habit. The same thing exists in teachings given to the young. We must not fail to face these things, my dear friends.

The Child in the crib says to us that the deepest things in man need a health-bringing renewal. What we need is a new proclamation of what was given to the shepherds in the field and to the Wise Men from the East; from its very foundations we must understand what it is that will bring healing into the development of mankind. Then and then only are we worthy to say: The Saviour has been born unto us.

These are the things I wanted to say before we have to make a short pause in the lectures here.

The spiritual constitution is such today that we are getting to know grave and significant truths and insights, as you have seen. I have had to emphasize that the insights which humanity currently finds acceptable will not be adequate for the future. But we must know the reasons why such insights are not adequate, if we are to connect ourselves in all seriousness and dignity with the impulses which really have to be given for the further evolution of humanity. What I want to say today is perhaps best understood if I start by going back to the fourth post-Atlantean period. As you know, this began in the eighth century before the Mystery of Golgotha and ended in the fifteenth century after the Mystery of Golgotha when human beings essentially related to the environment, the outside world, in a very different way from the way in which we inevitably must do today. I have often stressed that human evolution has to be taken seriously. Souls change much more than we believe, and it is part of the sheer modern laziness of mind to think that the inner life was just the same in ancient Greece, say, as it is today. Today I will merely consider one aspect of this: the relationship to the world around us.

Lazy thinkers will say: The Greeks and the Romans perceived the world around them and we, too, perceive the world around us; there is no appreciable difference. Oh, but there is an appreciable difference. It is actually true to say that today, at the beginning of the fifth post-Atlantean period, people perceive the world around them, in so far as it is perceptible to the senses, in quite a different way from the ancient Greeks, for example. The Greeks also saw colours and heard sounds; but they still saw spiritual entities through the colours. They did not merely think spiritual entities, for there made themselves known to them through the colours.

In my book Riddles of the Soul¹ I attempted to make this peculiarity of the Greeks into a thread running through the whole book. Modern people think thoughts. The Greeks did not think thoughts in the same degree; they saw the thoughts which came to them out of the world they perceived around them. Instead of merely being blue or red, the blue and the red in the world around them told them the thoughts which they would then think. This created an intimate relationship to the world. It also created an intense feeling of being connected with an environment which had spiritual qualities. The nature of the human constitution was totally different in the fourth postAtlantean period, and perceptions were therefore different.

In the evolution of the present earth, distinction must be made between major epochs, a general description of which is given in Occult Science—first and second age, Lemurian age, Atlantean age, our own post-Atlantean age and two which are to follow. We may say that during the Atlantean age both the earth and humanity had reached their midpoint. Up to then everything was growth and development. In some respect this has not been the case since the Atlantean age. It certainly is no longer the case where the earth is concerned. When we walk on the soil today—I have mentioned this on a number of occasions—we are walking on something which is crumbling away; it is no longer something that is growing, as it was in early times. Before and until the middle of the Atlantean age the earth was much more of a growing, sprouting organism. It then started to develop cracks and fissures, we might say; and it was only then that the rocks of today, with their cracks and fissures, developed. This is something known not only in anthroposophy today. You find an excellent description of the breaking up, shattering, of our present-day earth in Eduard Suess's outstanding scientific work The Face of the Earth.² Using broad brush-strokes he presents the outer conformation of the earth today—its face, as it were—by outlining the properties of minerals, rocks and the different formations to be found both on and in the earth, as well as the properties of organic life forms in the realm of the earth. Basing himself entirely on scientific facts, Suess comes to the conclusion that the earth is decaying and crumbling away.

This, however, is also true for all physical creatures which inhabit the earth. They are on the downward curve of evolution and have been so, essentially, from the middle of the Atlantean age. Evolution does, however, go in waves and it is possible to say that the fourth post-Atlantean period, the Greek and Roman civilization, was a kind of recapitulation of what existed in the Atlantean age. Up until the time of ancient Greece, therefore, it was not so clearly evident that humanity was on the downward curve of evolution. It was a feature of ancient Greece that the inner life was still in complete harmony with physical development—I have spoken of this before. That harmony was, of course, greatest in the middle of the Atlantean age, but it was recapitulated in ancient Greece. The total human constitution of the ancient Greeks has been discussed on a number of occasions, especially in our characterization of Greek art, which we know to have come from quite different impulses than the art of later periods.³ The Greeks still had an inner feeling for the etheric in the human form; they did not need the models we need today, because they felt the form inside themselves. We are thus able to say that until the time of ancient Greece, the living human body was determined and maintained by the immediate environment. Human beings were intimately bound up with the space immediately around them.

This changed with the beginning of the fifth post-Atlantean age. Strange as it may seem to you, it is nevertheless true to say: We really are no longer in this world to take care of our own organization. We do still incarnate, but no longer in order to take care of our own organization. This organization evolved until the middle of the Atlantean age, or until ancient Greek times. Then, human bodies were as perfect as they can be during time spent on earth. It will not be until the Jupiter epoch that humanity achieves a higher level of physical perfection. Now, we are really here to be part of a downward curve of evolution, to incarnate in order to learn and experience all manner of things by the very fact that we are in bodies which are dying, increasingly crumbling and withering away. I am using fairly radical terms. The fact is, however, that anything we inwardly develop and inwardly are, will no longer become part of the outer physical body to the same extent as it did in the past. The consequence of this will be all kinds of changes in development.

In March this year, a very important person died in Zurich—Franz Brentano.⁴ You will find a memoir in my book Riddles of the Soul,⁵ which is due to appear shortly. The book will have three parts and an appendix. In the first part I am discussing the relationship between anthropology and anthroposophy; in the second part I am showing the attitude of modern ‘scholars’ to anthroposophy, giving Dessoir⁶ as an example; and in the third part I intend to show how Franz Brentano, a man with a fine mind, was held in thrall by modern science, but nevertheless came as close as anyone can get to anthroposophy with his psychology. The appendix will give brief outlines of aspects which in the present situation can only be touched on, though they might well provide the subject matter for several volumes. I have made it into a number of short chapters in the new book because the times are getting more and more difficult today and the situation does not permit a more extensive treatment. With some of the things which are written in this manner for the present time, one does have the feeling that one is in a way writing something of a testament. Those who are inwardly conscious of the whole weight of present events will no doubt know what I mean.

One of the many things Franz Brentano's sensitive mind has produced is a treatise on genius.⁷ Oddly enough, Brentano is actually showing that there is no such thing as genius, demonstrating over and over again that a genius has the same inner qualities and impulses as anyone else, that memory and the ability to make connections are merely more flexible and comprehensive in the case of a genius, etc. Franz Brentano creates an idea of genius which differs a great deal from the usual idea. We have to admit that our usual idea of genius tends to be pretty vague, like all the stereotyped ideas people have today. In general terms we may say that Brentano's characterization of genius does not agree with the idea of a genius as it has existed until now; it does, however, agree with what genius will be in the future, for it will not be the same in the future.

In the past, people were geniuses because their souls still had the power, through heredity or education, to send impulses into the physical body which caused the Intuitions, Inspirations and Imaginations of a genius to arise unconsciously. The power of genius was therefore available when the body was still in the ascendant. In future, bodies will be in the descendant and the power will no longer be available. Anything resembling genius in the future will arise because the individuals concerned, whom we may also call geniuses, see more deeply into the spiritual world which is all around them. Thus the impulses will not come from their unconscious physical aspect but out of deeper insight into the world of the spirit. The changing nature of genius provides an excellent demonstration of the break which has occurred between evolution as it was in the past and evolution as it will be in the future. We might say that in the past genius arose from the body, but in the future this will be replaced by something which comes from insight into the realm of the spirit. A mind sensitive to present developments like that of Brentano would be aware of this, just as Suess, looking at the earth, realized that it is now in the process of dying.

What lies behind it all? The fact that human beings now relate to their environment in a different way. The space around us no longer speaks to us in the way it did when human bodies were ‘fresh’, as it were. The world around us is one of space, but it no longer yields up the spiritual element. Colours no longer speak to us as elements filled with spirit, sounds no longer reveal the spirit that is in them; they have become substantial. And human nature has become more inward. It is strange to say, is it not, that the superficial human beings of the present time really and truly have become more inward. On the other hand human beings of today may be said to be superficial because in their present incarnation their inner constitution is such that they simply cannot reach their own inner being. They do not become aware of their inner nature; they do not gain the power to know themselves; they do not discover what they really are.

Someone who sees the world with the eye of the spirit sees many people today who simply are not themselves. Bodies are walking around, and the soul is not entirely inside them. Why? Because it is no longer the soul's task to enter fully into the body, which is beginning to crumble away; instead the soul's task is to prepare for what will happen on Jupiter. Our souls are even now making preparations for the future.

This is the situation we must penetrate with a perceptive mind. We are entirely constituted to hear the words of a cosmic spirit: ‘My kingdom is not of this world.’ But it will be a long time before human beings are prepared to grasp this truth. Yet in spite of our outward superficiality we are truly less and less of this world. This, however, should not be confused with something else. People might well believe they could now walk around like Nietzsche's followers who called themselves ‘tawny beasts’, saying: We are in the world of the spirit; we do not belong to the physical world. The answer to this must be: The part of yourself of which you have knowledge does belong to the physical world; the rest is occult; it is hidden.

Nevertheless, we have the task of using all our powers of insight and all our inner strength to become aware of the essential element in us which can no longer give itself completely to the body, nor penetrate the whole body. We must see ourselves as candidates for the Jupiter age. This will only happen gradually, however. For the time being, human beings still continue in what they receive from their environment. It means that they continue in something which is below them. With every incarnation we withdraw more and more from the body, so that to some extent we are hovering above it.

If this were not the case, and people had to depend entirely on being like the ancient Greeks, the prospects for the further development of humanity would be dire indeed. Strange as it may seem, conscientious occult research aiming to penetrate the laws of human evolution reveals a truth which may well cause dismay at first sight. It shows that in a time not all that far ahead, possibly as early as the seventh millennium, all women will be infertile on earth. The withering and crumbling of human bodies will go so far that this will happen. Just think—if the relationships that can only come into their own between the inner life and the physical body were to continue unchanged, people would no longer find anything to do on earth. The fact is that women will no longer be able to have children, even before the earth has gone through all its stages. Human beings therefore have to find a different way of relating to earthly existence. The final stages of earth evolution will make it necessary for them to do without physical bodies and yet be present on earth. Existence holds more mysteries than people would like to think when they base themselves on the primitive ideas of modern science.

There was an instinctive feeling for this in the twilight of the fourth, and the dawn of the fifth, post-Atlantean age. Things were said then which relate to developments in our own age. They could not be understood, however, and people often did not even properly understand human nature. Think of the seemingly brutal teaching of St Augustine, for example, and also of Calvin, that some people were destined to be blessed, others to be condemned, some to be good, therefore, and others evil. Such was the doctrine. It seems brutal. And yet, seen in the right light, such doctrines do not seem entirely wrong. Many things which seem wrong are also to some extent relatively right. Knowledge of human nature at the time of St Augustine and in the centuries which followed did not actually relate to the human mind and spirit—as you know, the human spirit was decreed to be non-existent at the Council of Constantinople—but to the human being who walks the earth. Let one try and put as clearly as I can what this is really about.

You may meet one person and then another, and in St Augustine's terms we might say: this one is destined for good, and that one for evil. But only the outer physical body, not the individual personality. The latter was not even discussed in Augustine's day. If you have a number of people you may say—but it only has come to have meaning in more recent times and it would have been meaningless at the time of the ancient Greeks—These are human souls; they do, of course, fashion their own destinies. No impulses come to them from predestination. But they dwell in bodies destined for good or evil.

As earth evolution progresses, human beings will be less and less able to develop their souls parallel to their bodies. Why, then, should it not be possible for an individual to incarnate in a body, the whole constitution of which destines it for evil? The individual can still be good inside such a body, for the connection with the physical has become less close. This, then, is another awkward truth, but a truth which we must make our own.

In short, human beings are becoming more and more inward and we must seriously come to realize that during the final epochs of earth evolution they will withdraw from the outer physical body. It will however, need the brutal reality of the facts to get human beings to accept these things, and this can only be gradually, as I have said on a number of occasions. The facts will force them to know these things.

Looking at the way people appear on the outside today we get one image. Looking at the way they do not immediately appear on the outside we get another image. Today the two images are no longer in complete agreement, and they will agree less and less as time goes on. It is really necessary for people today not to rely entirely on outer appearances if they want to form an idea; they have to base their ideas on the things which influence human beings out of the spirit.

In the future, ideas like these will be particularly vital in everything connected with politics, the social sciences, and so on, and especially also the sphere of education. Ideas coming from the natural and not from the spiritual world can no longer adequately meet human needs. Hence the inadequate political and social theories we have today. People want to base their judgement only on their physical environment; they do not want to be inspired by anything of a spiritual nature. This is the reason why their theories and political programmes are so inadequate. We are living in an age when programmes like the one which Woodrow Wilson is presenting are no longer appropriate;⁸ the age demands world programmes created out of other depths. It will need the assistance of the spirit to make world programmes today.

People have not yet reached the point, however, where they can really be conscious of the truth of everything I have just told you. They are lumbering behind. They have been people of the fifth post-Atlantean age for a long time, but they still want to think like people of the fourth post-Atlantean age. That was right, it was great and truly in harmony in ancient Greek times. It is utterly wrong, however, to think like a Greek today.

The Greeks were given everything they needed from their environment, an environment which no longer exists today. In many respects one first of all notes a form of hatred or dislike arising—hatred being merely another aspect of fear—when it comes to taking an inward look at the human being. People want to limit themselves to the outer aspect. And so we get echoes of the past that are nothing but echoes of a time when human beings were not fully in control of their lives.

A very interesting phenomenon, one I would ask you to take a really good look at, is the following. Imagine we have a number of people putting their heads together, in a meeting, let us say—illuminated minds are meeting all the time nowadays. Well, the actual spiritual element has already separated to some extent; it really is no longer entirely present in those heads, for it has become inward. If there are thinkers present at the meeting, even superficial thinkers, the real heads are hidden from view—the people who are sitting there are not aware of them. And so it may be that you get meetings, or individuals, with old ideas running on like clockwork in those visible physical heads. These people have no idea of the demands of our time, but their automatic minds may bring up all kinds of echoes from the past. It is interesting that such things happen every now and again.

In 1912 a science called eugenetics was established in London.⁹ People tend to use high-falutin' names for anything which is particularly stupid. The ideas you find in eugenetics really came from people's brains and not from their souls. What are the aims of this science? To ensure that only healthy individuals are born in future and not inferior ones; economics and anthropology are to join forces to discover the laws according to which men and women are to be brought together in such a way that a strong race is produced.

People are really beginning to think in this way. The ideal of the London congress, which was chaired by Darwin's son,¹⁰ was to examine people of different classes to see how large the skulls of the rich were compared to those of the poor, who have less opportunity for learning; how far sensibility went in rich and poor; how far the rich could resist getting tired and how far the poor would do so, and so on. They want to gain information on the human body in this way which may at some future date enable them to establish exactly the following: This is how the man should look, this is how the woman should look, if they are to produce the true human being of the future; he should have such a capacity for getting tired and she such a capacity; this size skull for him, and a matching size for her, and so on.

Those are the rumblings, natural rumblings, in brains which are emptied of soul; ideas rumbling about which had reality in the Atlantean age. Then there really were laws which enabled people to determine size, growth, and all kinds of things by cross-breeding and the like. It was a science that was widespread in Atlantean times and—as I mentioned yesterday—sorely misused. Atlantean science worked on the basis of physical relationships and it was known that if such a man was brought together with such a woman—differences between men and women were much greater at the time—the result would be such and such a creature, and then a different variety could be produced—just as plant breeders do today. The Mysteries brought order into this cross-breeding, where related and different elements were brought together. They established groups and withdrew anything which had to be withdrawn from humanity . The blackest of black magic was practised in Atlantean times, and order was created by establishing classes and taking these matters out of human control. This was one of the factors which led to the nations and races of today. The issue of the nation as an entity is coming up again in our present time; it is an echo of the soulless brain from Atlantean times. There is so much talk about national issues today. But it is only the body speaking. The spirit has withdrawn and already belongs to a totally different world today. There you have the discrepancy between the reality and the speechifying about the ‘principle of nationality’ which goes on today. This will never lead to anything good; if politics are based on issues relating to nations, which are no longer issues of the day because the soul belongs to entirely different orders and realms than those which come to expression in our physical nature, this will inevitably take us into chaos over and over again. All this must be known, and it can only be known through anthroposophy. Those rumblings in brains emptied of soul are the reason why ideas that human beings should be produced on the basis of certain laws are now coming up again.

Something else also reveals the rumblings of outdated ideas, ideas which can still be active in dried-up brains but which no longer come from the soul. The soul needs to be made strong, so that anthroposophy can enter into it. Then people will speak out of their individual reality again.

You have no doubt heard of all the nonsense we get now, with all kinds of different people shown to be what they are in the light of psychopathology. All it needs is for someone to write a decent poem; the doctor will immediately tell you what illness he has. So we get all kinds of treatises—on Viktor Scheffel from the psychiatrist's point of view, on Nietzsche from the psychiatrist's point of view, and on Conrad Ferdinand Meyer from the psychiatrist's point of view.¹¹ Reading between the lines we feel the authors of these books are saying: Pity he did not get treatment in time. If he had had treatment at the right time, someone like Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, for example, would not have written the kinds of things he has written, for they are entirely written out of a diseased state.

It is very much in the spirit of our time that no attention is paid to the growing inwardness of individual human beings. Sometimes this must inevitably have the effect, especially in someone like Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, of the outward, physical body showing signs of disease, so that the inner life can achieve the highest spiritual level in a work of art, quite independent of the physical body.¹²

I am not bringing these things up in order to criticize them. From the purely medical point of view they are, of course, correct; there is nothing to be said against them. It is equally possible to do something else from a purely medical point of view. You can take the gospels and show, from a number of things, that Jesus Christ—that strange individual—existed because some quite specific pathological elements had come together. Such a book has in fact been written, and anyone can read it.¹³ Another book shows that everything which came from the individual called Jesus could only have come from this individual because he was suffering from a particular disease.

We must penetrate all these things with our understanding if we are to enter into present developments. I especially want to discuss the education issue in this context, to show you that today growing children cannot be considered in a way which focuses only on things which come to outward expression. If we were to do so, our efforts at education would sometimes simply fail to reach the element which is now becoming more and more inward. Such things are not properly taken into account today, and this is why there is so little understanding and so much philistinism. In some respects, philistinism is the opposite of a true understanding of human nature, for philistines always like to stick to the norm. Anything which does not fit in with this is considered abnormal. But this will not help us to understand the world around us and, above all, other human beings. One of the things we should encourage in our Anthroposophical Society is to learn to understand human beings so that we may give due regard to the individual nature of others. Individuals differ much more from each other than one thinks, for the human soul no longer relates entirely to the body and this makes human beings very complex today.

This, of course, has other consequences, though the matter is dealt with rather clumsily today; we must hope that anthroposophy will help people become less clumsy about it. Just consider, in ancient Greece the whole body was filled with the whole soul, and they were in agreement. Today this is not the case, for the bodies are partly empty. I am not saying anything derogatory about empty heads; they will stay empty as part of evolution. In reality, however, nothing stays empty in this world. The heads are merely empty of something which was destined to fill them at another time. Nothing is ever completely empty.

With the human soul withdrawing more and more from the body, the body is increasingly in danger of being filled with something else. And if human beings are not prepared to take up impulses which can only come from spiritual knowledge, the body will be filled with demonic powers. Humanity is facing a destiny where the body may be filled with ahrimanic demonic powers. So we have to add to what I said yesterday about future development: there will be people in future who are Tom, Dick and Harry in ordinary life, which is something determined by social circumstances, but their bodies will be empty to such an extent that a powerful ahrimanic spirit can live in them. One will be meeting ahrimanic demons. Human beings will not be what they appear to be. The individual person will be deep down inside, and outwardly one will get a totally different picture.

This shows the complexity of life to come. It is reasonable to say that there will be situations in future when it will be difficult to know who one is dealing with. Ricarda Huch's longing for the devil really arises from what will be coming in the future. The institutions and ideas, especially the social ideas people have today, are abstract and crude; they are clumsy in the face of the complexities that are lying ahead. And because people are not able to have ideas or concepts about the true nature of things, they are sliding more and more deeply into chaos—the events of the war make this quite clear. Chaos is arising because reality has changed; reality is becoming fuller and richer than anything people are able to think of or create in their heads. And we shall have to be clear in our minds that we are faced with a choice: To go on beating each other to a pulp, shooting at one another, in the way we do now, because we do not know how to bring order into the world or, start to develop concepts and ideas to match the complexity of the situation.

A spiritual movement must exist where people seek to develop concepts which meet the real situation. There will be vast numbers of people in future who want to stick to the rumblings of the past—today they are still in the minority. Their concepts, ideas and actions will be based on the outside world around them and on the fact that their bodies are being filled with the ahrimanic spirit which wants them to form such ideas. We should not fool ourselves, for we are faced with a quite specific movement. At the Council of Constantinople it was decreed that the spirit did not exist; it was dogmatically stated that the human being consisted only of body and soul, and it was heresy to speak of a human spirit. In the same way attempts will be made to decree the soul, the inner life, as nonexistent.

The time will come—and it may not be far off—when quite different tendencies will come up at a congress like the one held in 1912 and people will say: It is pathological for people to even think in terms of spirit and soul. ‘Sound’ people will speak of nothing but the body. It will be considered a sign of illness for anyone to arrive at the idea of any such thing as a spirit or a soul. People who think like that will be considered to be sick and—you can be quite sure of it—a medicine will be found for this. At Constantinople the spirit was made non-existent. The soul will be made non-existent with the aid of a drug. Taking a ‘sound point of view’, people will invent a vaccine to influence the organism as early as possible, preferably as soon as it is born, so that this human body never even gets the idea that there is a soul and a spirit.

The two philosophies of life will be in complete opposition. One movement will need to reflect how concepts and ideas may be developed to meet the reality of soul and spirit. The others, the heirs of modern materialism, will look for the vaccine to make the body ‘healthy’, that is, makes its constitution such that this body no longer talks of such rubbish as soul and spirit, but takes a ‘sound’ view of the forces which live in engines and in chemistry and let planets and suns arise from nebulae in the cosmos. Materialistic physicians will be asked to drive the souls out of humanity.

People who think that playful ideas will help them to look ahead to the future are very much mistaken. We need serious, profound ideas to look ahead to the future. Anthroposophy is not a game, nor just a theory; it is a task that must be faced for the sake of human evolution.

• 1. Steiner, Rudolf, Riddles of the Soul. Translated by Eva Frommer. Rudolf Steiner Press, Bristol 1994.
• 2. Eduard von Suess (1831–1914), Austrian geologist born in London, Professor of Geology in Vienna from 1875 to 1901. He was the founder of the ‘new geology’ and a member of the Lower House in Austria. His most important work, Das Antlitz der Erde, was translated into English in 1904–1910.
• 3. The major lecture given by Rudolf Steiner on this subject was in Dornach on 24 January 1917. This lecture, entitled ‘Griechische und Roemische Plastik—Renaissance-Plastik’ (Greek and Roman sculpture—Renaissance sculpture), has been published in Kunstgeschichte als Abbild innerer geistiger Impulse, GA 292. It has not yet been translated into English.
• 4. Franz Brentano (1838–1917), Catholic priest who abandoned the priesthood in 1873. Professor of Philosophy at Wurzburg 1872–1880, senior lecturer at the University of Vienna 1880–1895.
• 5. Steiner, Rudolf, Riddles of the Soul (see Note 1 above). The parts are: Anthropology and anthroposophy; Max Dessoir on anthroposophy; Franz Brentano, a memoir; outline extensions.
• 6. Max Dessoir (1867–1947), Professor of Philosophy in Berlin.
• 7. Das Genie, lecture given in the hall of the Engineers' and Architects' Society in Vienna, published in Leipzig in 1892.
• 8. Woodrow Wilson, see Note 2 of lecture I.
• 9. ‘Eugenetics’ or, more commonly, ‘eugenics’, a term coined by Francis Galton (1822–1911) in a series of articles on ‘Hereditary talent and genius’ published in 1865. The term is now generally only used in the applied sense, whilst the scientific discipline is now called genetics.
• 10. Leonard Darwin (1850–1943) was Chairman of the Eugenics Education Society from 1911 to 1928; his book The Need for Eugenic Reform was published in 1926.
• 11. Paul Moebius (1853–1907): Goethe, 2 voll, Leipzig 1903; Nietzsche, Leipzig 1904; Schopenhauer, Leipzig 1904; Ueber Scheffels Krankheit, Halle 1907.
• 12. The 1941 German edition has the following additional sentences at this point: It is easy to see why people have no mind for such things today, materialism being so prevalent. They have to be said, however, for they are realities. The future will show that all efforts which do not arise from the Spirit will not be for the good, but will increasingly lead to chaos. These are facts which have to be reckoned with.
  
  The shorthand record does not include these sentences and it is assumed they got into the earlier edition by accident.
• 13. De Loosten (Dr Georg Lomer), Jesus Christus vom Standpunkte des Psychiaters, Bamberg 1905. Also, Emil Rasmussen, Jesus. Eine vergleichende psychopathologische Studie, Leipzig 1905.

The Goal of Waldorf Education

You have seen that education must be based on a more intimate knowledge of the human being than is found in natural science, although it is generally assumed that all knowledge must be grounded in natural science. As we have seen, however, natural science cannot come even close to the reality of the human being, and it doesn’t help to base our knowledge on it.

The world is permeated by spirit, and true knowledge of the world must be permeated by spirit as well. Anthroposophy can give us spiritual knowledge of the world, and, with it, spiritual knowledge of the human being, and this alone leads to a true art of education. But don’t make the mistake (which is easy to do) that those who consider themselves anthroposophists want to establish “anthroposophic” schools that teach anthroposophy as a worldview in the place of other contemporary worldviews, regardless of whether such views are inspired more by intellect or feeling. It is important to understand and reiterate that this is not at all our intention. What we are examining is mainly concerned with matters of method and the practice of teaching. Men and women who adhere to anthroposophy feel—and rightly so—that the knowledge of the human being it provides can establish some truly practical principles for the way we treat children.

At the Waldorf school in Stuttgart we have been able to pursue an art of education based on anthroposophy for many years; and we have always made it clear to the rest of the world that anthroposophy as such was never taught there. Roman Catholic children receive religious instruction from a priest and Protestant children from a Protestant pastor. Only those children whose parents specifically request it receive religion lessons involving a freer religious instruction based on anthroposophy. Thus, our own anthroposophic worldview as such really has no place in the school work itself.

Moreover, I would like to point out that the true aim and object of anthroposophic education is not to establish as many anthroposophic schools as possible. Naturally, some model schools are needed, where the methods are practiced in detail. There is a need crying out in our time for such schools. Our goal, however, is to enable every teacher to bring the fruits of anthroposophy to their work, no matter where they may be teaching or the nature of the subject matter. There is no intention of using anthroposophic pedagogy to start revolutions, even silent ones, in established institutions. Our task, instead, is to point to a way of teaching that springs from our anthroposophic knowledge of humankind.

Understanding the Human Being

As you know, we need to gain a more intimate observation of human beings than is customary today. In fact, there are some areas where people are learning a very exact kind of observation, especially in regard to visual observation—for example, using a telescope to observe the stars, for surveying, and in many other realms of knowledge. It arises from a sense for exact, mathematical observation. Because of the scientific mindset that has ruled for the past three centuries, nowhere in contemporary civilization do we find the kind of intimate observation that sees the fine and delicate changes in the human soul or body organization. Consequently, people have little to say about the important changes that have occurred in the child’s whole physical organization, such as those that happen at the change of the teeth, at puberty, and again after the twentieth year. And so, transitions that have great significance in terms of education—such as the period between the change of teeth and puberty—are simply ignored.

These changes are mentioned, it is true, but only as they affect the actual physical body of the child or are expressed in the soul’s more superficial dependence on the physical body. This would require much more delicate observations. Anthroposophy begins by viewing the world as an expression of spiritual forces, which is seldom acknowledged today; it provides exercises that train a person’s soul to acquire direct insight into the spirit world. There are some whose destiny has not yet brought them to the point of seeing the spiritual facts for themselves, but anthroposophy has such power that merely beginning such exercises in itself helps people to learn a much more delicate and intimate observation of the human being. After all, you must remember that our soul and spirit is the part of us that, as we have seen, descends from a pre-earthly existence and unites with the inherited physical body. And spiritual research depends on this higher, supersensible part of us; we have supersensible eyes and ears—soul organs such as the eyes and ears of our physical body—so that we can arrive at certain perceptions independently of the body.

Cosmic and Human Cycles

Each night while asleep, a person is unconsciously in a condition that is similar to what is needed for spiritual investigation. When falling asleep, the human soul and spirit leave the physical body, and re-enter it when the person awakes. While awake, people use their eyes and ears and move their limbs, and the forces for this come from the spirit and soul aspects of the human being. Genuine knowledge of nature—which doesn’t exist yet—would also show that while awake, people’s physical actions are controlled by soul and spirit, and that sleep is only an interruption of this activity. Here again, the difference is too subtle to be perceived by modern scientific methods—upon which today’s education is based, even when directed toward the earliest years of childhood. A sleeping person is completely surrendered to the activities of the organism to which plant and mineral are also subject.

Anthroposophy or Spiritual Science, on the other hand, strive for precision and accuracy, and it would not be true, of course, to say that while asleep a person is a plant. In a human being, mineral and plant substances have been raised to the level of animal and human. The human organization is not like that of a plant, since a plant has no muscles and nerves, and the human of course has both muscles and nerves, even while asleep. The important thing, however, is very simple; the vegetative function of the plant has nothing to do with nerves and muscles, but it is different for a human being. Activity in a person is related to muscles and nerves, and thus transcends the physical; even human sleep activity is not merely vegetative. (In a certain sense this applies also to animals, but we cannot address this matter now.) Although we find the same impulses in the plant as in the sleeping human being, nevertheless something different happens in a sleeping person.

It may help us to form an idea of this process if we think of it this way: when we are awake, the soul and spirit are integrated with the human organism. The soul and spirit, in turn, have a certain similarity to the cosmos, the whole universe—but keep in mind that it is only a similarity. And careful observation of plant development will show us that in spring, when the snow has melted, we see plants spring out of the earth and unfold their being. Until now, plant growth was controlled by the Sun forces within the Earth, or the stored sunshine of the previous year.

In spring the plants are released, so to speak, by these earthly Sun forces and, as they shoot out of the soil, they are received by the outer sunlight and guided through the summer until the seeds become ripe. Plant growth is again given over to the Earth. Throughout the summer, the Sun’s forces gradually descend into the Earth to be stored there; thus, the Earth is always permeated by these accumulated sun forces. We need only remember that millions of years ago Sun forces shone on the plants, which then became coal within the Earth; thus, sunlight is in reality now being burned in our stoves. Likewise—though for a much shorter time—the Sun’s forces are preserved in the Earth from summer to summer. Throughout the winter, plants absorb the Sun’s forces found in the earth, and during summer, the Sun pours its rays upon them right from the cosmos. So there really is a rhythm in the life of plants—earthly sun-forces, cosmic sun-forces, earthly sun-forces, cosmic sun forces, and so on. Plant life swings from one to the other as a pendulum on a clock.

Now let us turn to the human being. When I fall asleep I leave behind in my body everything of a mineral and plant nature, though, as we have seen, the plant nature in the human being—in contrast to an actual plant—is organized so that spirit and soul can dwell within it. What is left behind in sleep is thus wholly surrendered to its own plant-like activity. It begins to blossom and sprout, and when we go to sleep it is really springtime within us. When we awaken, the plant forces are driven back, and it becomes autumn within us. As soul and spirit arise on awakening, autumn enters us.

Viewing things externally, it is often said that waking is like spring and sleeping like autumn. This is not true, however. Genuine spiritual insight into human nature shows us that during the first moments of sleep, spring life sprouts and blossoms in us, and when we awaken autumn sinks into us like the setting Sun. While awake, when we are using all our faculties of soul, it is winter within us. Again we see a rhythm, as in plantlife. In plant growth we distinguish between earthly activity and the Sun’s activity. In the human being, we find essentially the same activity imitating the plant; falling asleep—summer activity, awakening—winter activity, and around again to summer activity, winter activity; but here it takes place in only twenty-four hours. Human beings have condensed a yearly rhythm into a day and a night.

These rhythms are similar but not identical, because for a human being the life of the soul and spirit does not have the same duration as the life of spirit in the realm of nature. A year is only a day in the life of the spirits who pervade the cosmos and permeate the whole course of the year, just as the soul and spirit of human beings direct the course of their day.

As we consider this, we arrive at this hypothesis. (I must warn you, by the way, that what I am about to say may seem very strange to you, but I present it as a hypothesis to demonstrate more clearly what I mean. Let us suppose that a woman falls asleep, and within her is what I have described as summer activity. Let us suppose that she continues to sleep without waking up. What will happen then? The plant element within her—the element not of soul and spirit—would eventually become the rhythm of the plant realm. It would go from a daily rhythm to an annual rhythm. Of course, such a rhythm does not exist in the human being. Thus, if the physical body were to go on sleeping as described, the person would be unable to tolerate the resulting yearly rhythm and would die; if the human body were all plant activity, it would be organized differently. The physical body would separate from the soul and spirit, assume a yearly cycle, and take on purely vegetative qualities. When we view physical death, which leads to the body’s destruction, we see that by being born out of the cosmos, the human being passed from a grand cycle to a small cycle. If a human body is on its own and cannot animate the spirit and soul in itself, it is destroyed, since it cannot immediately find its place in the cosmic rhythm.

Therefore, we see that if we can develop a more delicate faculty for observation, we can gain true insight into the essence of human existence. This is why I said that those who have entered the path of spiritual knowledge, though they may not yet have attained spiritual vision for themselves, will nevertheless feel forces stirring within that lead to spiritual insight. And these are the very forces that act as messengers and mediators of all the spirits at work in the cosmos. Spirit is active in the cosmos where we find the beings who guide the life cycle of the year. This is a new realm to us, but when we observe a human being we can see the presence of soul and spirit in all human life, and here we are on familiar ground. For this reason, it is always easier to exercise a fine faculty of perception in regard to the human soul and spiritual qualities than it is to perceive spirit activity itself in the world.

When we think in ordinary life it is as if thinking, or forming mental images, continually escaped us. When we bump into something or feel something with our fingers—a piece of silk or velvet, for example—we immediately perceive that we have encountered that object, and we can feel its shape by touching its surface. Then we know that as human beings, we have connected with our environment. When we think, however, we do not seem to touch objects around us in this way. Once we have thought about something and made it our own, we can say that we have “apprehended,” or “grasped” it (begreifen). What do we mean by this? If external objects are alien to us—which is generally true for our thinking—then we do not say we have grasped them. If, for example, a piece of chalk is lying there, and I am standing here moving my hand as one does when speaking, one does not say, “I have grasped the chalk.” But if I actually take hold of the chalk with my hand, then I can say, “I have grasped it.”

In earlier times, people had a better understanding of what thinking really was, and out of such knowledge, words and expressions flowed into the language that expressed the real thing much better than our modern abstractionists realize. If we have had a mental picture of something, we say we have grasped it. This means we have come into contact with the object—we have “seized” it. Today we no longer realize that we can have intimate contact with objects in our environment through the very expressions in our thinking life. For example, there is a word in our language today that conceals its own meaning in a very hypocritical way. We say “concept” [Begriff in German, from begreifen]. I have a concept. The word conceive (to hold or gather) is contained within it [greifen, to grasp, or seize]. I have something that I have grasped, or gathered into myself. We have only the word now; the life has gone out of its meaning.

Examples such as these from everyday life demonstrate the aim and purpose of the exercises described as anthroposophic methods of research in my book How to Know Higher Worlds, and in the latter half of An Outline of Esoteric Science, and in other works. Consider the exercises in mental imagery. Certain thoughts are held in the mind so that concentration on these thoughts may strengthen the soul life. These exercises are based neither on superstition nor merely on fantasy, but on clear thinking and deliberation as exact as that used for mathematics. They lead human beings to develop a capacity for thought in a much more vital and active way than that found in the abstract thinking of people today.

Thinking and the Etheric Body

People today are truly dominated by abstraction. When they work all day with their arms and legs, they feel the need to sleep off their fatigue, because they recognize that their real being has been actively moving arms and legs. What they fail to understand, however, is that when we think, our being is just as active. People cannot see that when they think their being actively flows out and takes hold of the objects of their thinking; this is because they do not perceive the lowest supersensible member of the human being, the etheric body, living within the physical body, just as the physical body lives within the external world.

The etheric body can in fact be perceived at the moment when—by practicing the exercises I referred to—a person develops the eye of the soul and the ear of the spirit. One can then see how thinking, which is primarily an activity of the etheric body, is really a spiritual “grasping,” or spiritual touching, of the objects around us. Once we have condensed and concentrated our thoughts by means of the exercises mentioned, we experience spirit in such a way that we no longer have the abstract feeling, which is so prevalent today, that objects are far from us. We get a true sense of them that arises from practiced, concentrated thinking. Thinking too will then bring fatigue, and especially after using our powers of thought we will want to have our sleep.

The presence of materialistic ideas is not the worst product of this age of materialism in which we live; educators must also consider another aspect. As educators, we may feel somewhat indifferent to the amount of fatigue caused by people’s activities; eventually, people return to their senses, and things even out. But the worst thing for an educator is to watch a child go through years of schooling and receive for the soul only nourishment that bears the stamp of natural science—that is, of material things. Of course, this does not apply only to school science classes; all education today, even in the lowest grades, is based on scientific thinking. This is absorbed by children, it grows up with them, and it penetrates the whole physical organization so that in later years it appears as insomnia.

What is the cause of the sleeplessness of our materialistic time? It is due to the fact that if we think only in a materialistic way, the activity of thought—this “grasping” or “handling” of our environment through thought—does not allow the corresponding organs of the etheric body to become tired since it has become too abstract. Here, only the physical body becomes tired; we fall asleep—the physical body falls asleep—but the etheric becomes nervous and restless and cannot sleep. It draws the soul and spirit back into it, and this condition will necessarily develop gradually into an epidemic of insomnia. This is already happening today. Only by considering such matters can we understand what this materialistic time signifies. It is bad enough that people think materialistic, theoretical thoughts; but in itself this is not really that serious. It is even worse that we experience the effects of materialism in our moral life and in our economic life. And the worst thing is that through materialism, all of childhood is ruined to the point that people can no longer come to terms with moral or spiritual impulses at all.

These things must be known by everyone who recognizes the need to transform our teaching and education. The transitions we have mentioned, such as those that occur at the change of teeth and at puberty, can be understood only through intimate observation of the human being. We must learn to see how a person is inwardly active, so that people experience their etheric just as they feel their physical body; they must recognize that when they think about any object, they are really doing in the etheric what is otherwise done in the physical human body. If I want to know what an object is like, I feel it, I contact it, and thus gain a knowledge of its surface. This also applies to my etheric body. I “feel” etherically and supersensibly the object I want to “grasp,” what I wish to conceptualize. The etheric body is just as active as the physical body, and correct knowledge of human development can come only from this knowledge and consciousness of the etheric body’s activity.

The Child’s Imitative Nature

If we can activate our thinking in this way and, with this inwardly active thinking, watch a very young child, we see how every action performed in that child’s environment and every look that expresses some moral impulse (for the moral quality of a look contains something that passes into the child as an imponderable force) flows right into the child and continues to work in the breathing and the circulation of the blood. The clearest and most concrete statement we can come to regarding a child is this: “A child is an imitative being through and through.” The way a child breathes or digests in the more delicate and intimate processes of breathing or digesting reflects the actions of those around the child.

Children are completely surrendered to their environment. In adults the only parallel to such devotion is found in religion as expressed through the human soul and spirit. Religion is expressed in spiritual surrender to the universe. The religious life unfolds properly when, with our own spirit, we go beyond ourselves and surrender to a spiritual worldview—we should flow out into a divine worldview. Adult religious life depends on emancipating soul and spirit from the physical body, when a person’s soul and spirit are given up to the divine spirit of the world. Children give up their whole being to the environment. In adults, the activities of breathing, digestion, and circulation are within them, cut off from the external world. In children, however, all such activities are still surrendered to their environment, and they are therefore religious by nature. This is the essential feature of a child’s life between birth and the change of teeth; the whole being is permeated with a natural religious element, so to speak, and even the physical body maintains a religious mood.

But children are not surrounded only by beneficial forces that inspire religious devotion in later life. There are also spiritual forces that are harmful, which come from people around children and from other spiritual forces in the world. In this way, this natural religious element in a child’s physical body may also be exposed to evil in the environment—children can encounter evil forces. And when I say that even a small child’s physical body has a religious quality, I do not mean that children cannot be little demons! Many children are little demons, because they have been open to evil spiritual forces around them.

Our task is to overcome and drive out such forces by applying methods appropriate to our time. As long as a child is an imitative religious being, admonitions do no good. Words can be listened to only when the soul is emancipated to some extent, when its attention can be self-directed. Disapproving words cannot help us deal with a small child. But what we ourselves do in the presence of the child does help, because when a child sees this it flows right in and becomes sense perception. Our actions, however, must contain a moral quality.

If, for example, a man who is color-blind looks at a colored surface, he may see only gray. An adult looks at another person’s actions also in this way, seeing only the speed and flow of the gestures. We see the physical qualities but no longer see the moral qualities of the person’s actions. A child, on the other hand, sees the moral element, even if only unconsciously, and we must make sure that while in the presence of children, we not only never act in a way that should not be imitated, but never think thoughts that should not enter their souls. Such education of the thoughts is most important for the first seven years of life, and we must not allow ourselves to think any impure, ugly, or angry thoughts when in the company of little children. You may say, “But I can think what I like without altering my outer actions in the least; so the child sees nothing and cannot be influenced by what cannot be seen.” Here it is interesting to consider those very peculiar and rather stupid shows given at one time, with so-called thinking horses—horses that could count, and other animals performing tricks demonstrating “intelligence.” These things were interesting, though not in the way that most people believed.

I once saw the Elberfeld horses. (I want to speak only of my own observation). I saw the horse belonging to Mr. von Osten, and I could see how he gave answers to his master. Von Osten gave him arithmatic problems to do—not very complicated, it is true, but difficult enough for a horse. The horse had to add and subtract and would give the correct answers by stamping his hoof. Now you can look at this either from the perspective of a modern scientist—for example, the professor who wrote a whole fat book on the horse—or you can view it from an anthroposophic standpoint. The professor began by repudiating all non-professional opinions on the matter. (Please do not think that I intend to say anything against natural science, because I am well aware of its value.) In the end, the professor concluded that the horse was able to perceive very delicate movements made by the man—a slight twitch of an eyelid, the most delicate vibrations of certain muscles, and so on. From this, the horse eventually learned what answers corresponded to certain vibrations, and could give the required number of stamps with his hoof. This hypothesis is very clever and intelligent. He then arrives at the inevitable question of whether these things have actually been observed. He asks this question himself, since people are indeed learning to be very conscientious in their research. He answers it, however, by saying that the human senses are not organized in such a way that they perceive such fine delicate movements and vibrations, but a horse can see them. In fact, all he proves is that a horse can see more in a person than a professor can.

But for me, there was something else important—the horse could give the correct answers only when Mr. von Osten stood beside him and spoke. While he talked he kept taking lumps of sugar and placing them in the horse’s mouth. The horse was permeated by a taste of sweetness all the time. This is the important thing; the horse felt suffused with sweetness. In such a condition, even a horse can experience things that would otherwise not be possible. In fact, I would put it this way: Mr. von Osten himself constantly lived in the “sweetened horse,” the etheric horse that had permeated the physical horse. His thoughts were alive and diffused there, just as they were in his own body; his thoughts lived on in the horse. It was not because a horse has a finer perception than a professor, but because it is not yet as highly organized and thus more susceptible to external influences while its physical body continually absorbs the sweetness.

Indeed, there are such influences that pass from person to person, aroused by things almost—if not wholly—imperceptible to contemporary human beings. Such things occur in the interactions between humankind and animals, and they also occur very much when the soul and spirit are not yet free of the body—that is, during early childhood. Small children can actually perceive the morality behind every look and gesture of those around them, even though this may be no longer possible for those who are older. It is therefore of the greatest importance that we never allow ourselves to think ugly thoughts around children; not only does this live on in their souls, but works right down into the physical body.

There is no question that much is being accomplished these days in many medical or other dissertations, and they reflect the current state of scientific knowledge. But a time will come when there will be something very new in this area. Let me give you a specific example to demonstrate what I mean. A time will come when a person may write a doctoral thesis showing that a disease, perhaps during the forty-eighth year of a person’s life, can be traced back to certain evil thoughts in the environment of that person as a child of four or five. This way of thinking can bring us to a genuine understanding of human beings and the capacity for seeing the totality of human life.

We thus have to learn gradually that it is not so much a question of inventing from our own abstract thoughts all kinds of things for little children to do, such as using rods and so on. Children do not spontaneously do things like that. Their own soul forces must be aroused, and then they will imitate what the adults do. A little girl plays with a doll because she sees her mother nursing the baby. Whatever we see in adults is present in children as their tendency to imitate. This tendency must be considered in educating children up to the seventh year.

We must bear in mind, however, that what we educate is subject to change in the child’s organism; in children everything is done in a more living and animated way than in adults, because children are still a unity of body, soul, and spirit. In adults, the body has been freed from the soul and spirit, and the soul and spirit from the body. Body, soul, and spirit exist side by side as individual entities; in the child they are still firmly united. This unity even penetrates the thinking.

We can see these things very clearly through an example. A small child is often given a so-called “beautiful” doll—a painted creature with glass eyes, made to look exactly like a human being. These little horrors are made to open and shut their eyes and do all sorts of other things. These are then presented to children as “beautiful” dolls. Even from an artistic perspective they are hideous; but I will not enlarge on that now. But consider what really happens to a child who is presented with a doll of this kind, a doll that can open its eyes and so on. At first the child will love it because it is a novelty, but that does not last.

Now, compare that with what happens to a child if I just take a piece of rag and make a doll out of that. Tie it together for a head, make two dots for eyes, and perhaps a big nose, and there you have it. Give that to a child and the rest of that doll will be filled out by the child through imagination in soul and spirit, which are so closely connected with the body. Then, every time that child plays with the doll, there is an inner awakening that remains inwardly active and alive. By making such experiments yourself, you will see what a difference there is between giving a child playthings that leave as much as possible to the power of imagination and giving finished toys that leave nothing for the child’s own inner activity. Handwork for small children should only indicate, leaving much for the child’s own imagination to do. Working in set forms that can easily be left as they are does not awaken any inner activity in the child, because the imagination cannot get past what is open to the senses.

Physical and Psychical Effects

This shows us what kind of teachers and educators we should be if we really want to approach children in the right way. We need an art of teaching based on a knowledge of human beings—knowledge of the child. This art of education will arise when we find a doctor’s thesis that works with a case of diabetes at the age of forty by tracing it back to the harmful effects of the wrong kind of play in the third or fourth year. People will see then what we mean by saying that the human being consists of body, soul, and spirit, and that in the child, body, soul, and spirit are still a unity. The spirit and soul later become freed of the body, and a trinity is formed. In the adult, body, soul, and spirit are pushed apart, as it were, and only the body retains what was absorbed by the individual during early development as the seed of later life.

Now this is the strange thing: when an experience affects the soul, its consequences are soon visible, even when the experience was unconscious; physical consequences, however, take seven or eight times longer to manifest. If you educate a child of three or four so that you present what will influence the soul’s life, then the effect of this will appear in the eighth year; and people are usually careful to avoid doing anything with a child of four or five that may affect the soul life in an unhealthy way during the eighth or ninth year. Effects on the physical body take much longer to manifest, because the physical body must free itself of the soul and spirit. Therefore, something that influences the soul life at four or five may come to fruition in the physical body when that person is seven or eight times as old—for example, in the thirty-fifth year. Thus, a person may develop an illness during the late thirties or early forties caused by ill influences that affected that soul while at play as a child of three or four.

If you wish to understand the whole human being, you must also realize that the freeing of the body from soul and spirit in the adult, as opposed to a child’s unity of body, soul, and spirit, is not merely abstract theory, but a matter of very specific knowledge, for we are speaking of very different calendars. The time that the body requires to work something out is increasingly lengthened compared to the time needed by the soul. The physical body works more slowly, and harmful influences manifest much later there than in the soul.

Thus, we often see that when we transgress against a little child in the very early years, many things turn out wrong in the teenager’s soul-life. This can be corrected, however. It is not very difficult to find ways of helping even seemingly unmanageable children during their teens. They may even become very good and respectable, if somewhat boring, citizens later on. This is not very serious. But the body develops more and more slowly as life goes on, and in the end, long after all the soul difficulties of early youth have been overcome, the physical effects will gradually emerge, and in later life the person will have to contend with arthritis or some other illness.

Real, experiential knowledge of the human being is of the greatest importance. Truly concrete knowledge of the human being, with the power of seeing right into the person, is the only possible basis for a true art of education—an art of education whereby persons may find their place in life and, subject to the laws of their own destinies, fully develop all their powers. Education should never work against a person’s destiny, but should help people achieve the fullest possible development of their own predispositions. Often today, people’s education lags far behind the talents and tendencies that destiny implanted in them. We must keep pace with these forces to the extent that the human beings in our care can attain all that their destinies will allow—the fullest clarity of thought, the most loving deepening of feeling, and the greatest possible energy and capacity of will.

This can be done only through an art of education and teaching based on a real knowledge of the human being. We will speak more of this in the next lectures.

Dr. Steiner: I am sorry I could not come sooner, but it was not possible. We have a number of things to catch up on, and I am really very happy to be here today.

A member of the administrative committee: (After greeting Dr. Steiner) After we came back from the Christmas Conference in Dornach, we felt responsible for doing everything to make the Waldorf School an appropriate instrument for its new task. I have been asked to tell you that the members of the administrative committee now place their positions in your hands. Since it seems possible that the relationship of the school to the Anthroposophical Society may change, we would like you to redetermine from this new standpoint how the school should be run.

Dr. Steiner: I certainly understand how this view could arise among you, since the intent of the Christmas Conference was to do something for anthroposophy based upon a complete reformation, a new foundation of the Anthroposophical Society. On the other hand, the Christmas Conference gave the Anthroposophical Society an explicitly esoteric character. That seems to contradict the public presentation, but through the various existing intentions, which will gradually be realized over the course of time, people will see that the actual leadership of the Anthroposophical Society, the present board of directors [Vorstand] in Dornach, will have a completely esoteric basis. That will also effect a complete renewal of the Anthroposophical Society.

Now, it is quite understandable that the various institutions connected with anthroposophy ask themselves how they should relate to what happened in Dornach. In my letter to members published in our newsletter, I said that the conference in Dornach will have a real purpose only if that purpose is not forgotten for all time. The conference will realize its complete content to the extent individual anthroposophical institutions slowly make the intent of the Dornach conference their own.

The Christmas Conference was the second part of a decision in principle. The first part was that if anthroposophists want it, the board of directors will do some things from Dornach, and that includes a continuous questioning of life within the Anthroposophical Society. In principle, there is a decision that—to the extent that this intention is realized, that we bring it into reality—the board of directors in Dornach is justified in taking over the responsibility for anthroposophy, not just for the Society. That is the esoteric purpose, but of course the esoteric impulses must come from various directions. I would like to ask the individual institutions to understand that whatever emanates from Dornach always has an esoteric background. It is, of course, just as understandable that the Waldorf School particularly, and its representatives, question its relationship to Dornach and to the Free School of Spiritual Science.

Perhaps, as you have considered the question in more detail, you already feel there are some significant difficulties, particularly concerning the final decision about the administrative committee. The situation is this: First, we must find the form through which the Waldorf School can make the connection to the School of Spiritual Science. Formally, the Waldorf School is not an anthroposophical institution; rather, it is an independent creation based upon the foundations of anthroposophical pedagogy. In the way it meets the public, as well as the way it meets legal institutions, it is not an anthroposophical institution, but a school based upon anthroposophical pedagogy. Suppose the Independent Waldorf School were now to become officially related to the School of Spiritual Science in Dornach. Then the Waldorf School would immediately become an anthroposophical school in a formal, external sense. Of course, there are some things that would support making such a decision. On the other hand, though, we must consider whether the Waldorf School can fulfill its cultural tasks better as an independent school with an unhindered form than it can as a direct part of what emanates from Dornach. Everything that emanates from Dornach is also collected there. If the Independent Waldorf School entered a direct relationship to Dornach, all activities of the Waldorf School falling within the Pedagogical Section of the Anthroposophical Society would also be the responsibility of the leadership of the School of Spiritual Science and fall within their authority. In the future, Dornach will not be simply a decoration, as many anthroposophical institutions have been. Dornach will be a reality. Every institution belonging to Dornach will, in fact, must, recognize the authority of the leadership in Dornach. That will be necessary. At the same time, the leadership of the Waldorf School would then take on an esoteric character.

On the other hand, given the state of the world today, we could certainly weigh the question of whether the Waldorf School could best achieve its cultural goals that way. This is definitely not a question we can immediately brush aside. Weighed with nothing but the most serious feeling of responsibility, the question is extremely difficult since it could mean a radical change throughout the Independent Waldorf School.

Pedagogical life in the modern world may still be subject to the error, or better said the illusion, expressed through the various goals of all kinds of pedagogical organizations. However, everything in those pedagogical organizations is really nothing more than talk. In reality, pedagogy is increasingly falling prey to three factors of development, two of which are making giant steps today. Anthroposophy, the third factor, is very weak; it is only a shadow and is not seen by opponents as anything of any importance. Pedagogy is slowly being captured by the two main streams in the world, the Catholic and the Bolshevik, or socialist, streams. Anyone who wants to can easily see that all other tendencies are on a downward path in regard to success. That says nothing at all about the value of Catholicism or Bolshevism, only about their strength. Each has tremendous strength, and that strength increases every week. Now people are trying to bring all other cultural movements into those two, so it only makes sense to orient pedagogy with the third cultural stream, anthroposophy. That is the situation in the world.

It is really marvelous how little thought humanity gives to anything today, so that it allows the most important symptoms to go by without thinking. The fact that a centuries-old tradition has been broken in England by MacDonald’s system is something so radical, so important, that it was marvelous that the world did not even notice it. On the other hand, we from the anthroposophical side should take note of how external events clearly show that the age whose history can be written from the purely physical perspective has passed. We need to be clear that Ahrimanic forces are increasingly breaking in upon historical events. Two leading personalities, Wilson and Lenin, died from the same illness, both from paralysis, which means that both offered an opening for Ahrimanic forces. These things show that world history is no longer earthly history, and is becoming cosmic history. All such things are of great importance and play a role in our detailed questions.

If we now go on to the more concrete problem of the administrative committee putting their work back into my hands, you should not forget that the primary question was decided through the conference in Dornach. From 1912 until 1923, I lived within the Anthroposophical Society with no official position, without even being a member, something I clearly stated in 1912. I have actually belonged to the Anthroposophical Society only as an advisor, as a teacher, as the one who was to show the sources of spiritual science. Through the Christmas Conference, I became chairman of the Anthroposophical Society, and from then on my activities are those of the chairman of the Society. If I were to name the administrative committee now, that committee would be named by the chairman of the Anthroposophical Society. The highest body of the Independent Waldorf School would thus be designated by the chairman of the Anthroposophical Society. That is certainly something we could consider, but I want you to know that when we go on to discuss this whole problem. If the Waldorf School and Dornach had that relationship, then the Waldorf School would be something different from what it is now. Something new would be created, different from what was created at the founding of the Waldorf School. The Christmas Conference in Dornach was not just a ceremony like the majority of anthroposophical activities, even though they may not have a ceremonious character, particularly in Stuttgart. The Christmas Conference was completely serious, so anything resulting from it is also very serious.

The Independent Waldorf School can relate to Dornach in other ways. One of those would be not to place the school under Dornach, but instead to have the faculty, or those within the faculty who wish to do so, enter a relationship to Dornach, to the Goetheanum, to the School of Spiritual Science, not for themselves, but as teachers of the school. The Waldorf School, as such, would not take on that characteristic, but it would emphasize to the outer world that from now on the Pedagogical Section at the Goetheanum will provide the impulse for the Waldorf School pedagogy, just as anthroposophical pedagogy previously provided it. The difference would be that, whereas the relationship to anthroposophical pedagogy was more theoretical, in the future the relationship would be more alive. Then, the faculty as a whole or as individuals would conform to the impulses that would result when one, as a teacher at the Independent Waldorf School, is a member of the School of Spiritual Science. That relationship would make it impossible for the Goetheanum to name the administrative committee. The committee would, of course, need to remain as it is now because the thought behind it is that the committee was chosen, even elected, by the faculty. It may not even be possible from the perspective of the legal authorities here for the administrative committee to be named from Dornach. I do not believe the laws of Württemberg would allow the administrative committee of the Independent Waldorf School to be chosen from the Goetheanum, that is, from an institution existing outside Germany. The only other possibility would be for me to name the new administrative committee. However, that is unnecessary.

These are the things I wanted to present to you. You can see from them that you should consider the question in detail yourselves. Now I would like you to tell me your thoughts about the solution of the question. Whether you want to give me more or less control over the solution, whether you want me to decide how you should operate. You do not need to do this in any way other than to say what you have already discussed in the faculty, and what led you to say what you said at the outset.

A teacher: For us, the question was whether the Christmas Conference in Dornach changed the relationship of the Waldorf School to the Anthroposophical Society.

Dr. Steiner: The Waldorf School has had no relationship to the Anthroposophical Society. Because it was outside the Society, the Christmas Conference has no significance for the Waldorf School. That is the situation. It is different, though, for institutions that arose directly from the Anthroposophical Society. That is quite different. The Waldorf School was founded as an independent institution. The relationship that existed was unofficial and can continue with the new Society. The relationship was completely free, something that came into existence each day because the vast majority of the teachers here belonged to the Anthroposophical Society and because anthroposophical pedagogy was carried out in a free manner, since, as the representative of anthroposophical pedagogy, I also was chairman of the faculty. We need change none of that.

A teacher: How should we understand the Pedagogical Section?

Dr. Steiner: We can only slowly put into practice the intentions of the Christmas Conference, particularly those of the School of Spiritual Science. To an extent, that is because we do not have enough money right now to construct all the buildings that we will need for everything we want to do. What we need will gradually be created. For now, the various sections will be created to the extent possible with the people and resources available today. My thought was that the basis for creating the Independent University as an institution of the Anthroposophical Society would be the membership of the School of Spiritual Science. I have now seen that a large number of teachers of the Waldorf School have applied for membership; thus, they will also be members and from the very beginning become a means for spreading the pedagogy emanating from the Independent University. We will have to wait and see which other institutions join the Independent University.

Other institutions have often expressed a desire to form a relationship with Dornach. The situation is simple with those anthroposophical institutions that have either all the prejudices against them or none. For example, the Clinical Therapeutic Institute here in Stuttgart can join. Either it has been fought against from the very beginning as an anthroposophical institution, in which case no harm is done if it joins, or it has been recognized because people are forced to see that the healing methods used there are more effective than those found elsewhere, in which case it is obvious that it joins. That institution is not in the same situation in regard to the world as a school. The clinic can join without any further problems.

However, if a school suddenly became an anthroposophical school, that would upset both the official authorities and the public. There is even a strong possibility that the school officials would object. They actually have no right to do so, and it doesn’t make any sense to object to the pedagogical methods, which can certainly be those of anthroposophy. There is also no reason to object even if all the teachers personally became members of the School of Spiritual Science in Dornach. That is of no concern to the officials, and they can raise no objection to it. However, they would immediately object if an existing relationship between the Waldorf School and the School of Spiritual Science at the Goetheanum required the Waldorf School to accept pedagogical decisions made there, so that, for example, those in Dornach controlled the curriculum here. That is certainly true for the first eight grades. If we had only the higher grades, from the ninth grade on, hardly any objections could be raised except for possibly not allowing the students to take their final examinations, but the officials would hardly do that. Nevertheless, they would not allow it for the elementary school grades.

The basic thought of the School of Spiritual Science is that it will direct its primary activity toward insight and life. Thus, we can say that every member has not only the right, but, in a certain sense, a moral obligation to align him- or herself with Dornach in regard to pedagogical questions. Certainly, there will be people at the School of Spiritual Science who want to learn par excellence. However, once having learned, they will remain members, just as someone who has earned a diploma from a French or Norwegian or Danish university remains a member of the university and has a continuing relationship with it. In France, you do not simply receive a piece of paper when you earn a degree, you become a lifelong member of the university and retain a scientific connection to it. That is something the old Society members who will be members of the school under the assumption that they already know a great deal of what will be presented there should consider from the very beginning. The school will, however, continually have scientific or artistic tasks to resolve in which all members of the school should participate. To that extent, the life of each individual member of the school will be enriched. In the near future, we will send the same requests to all members of the other sections that we have already sent to the members of the Medical Section, requesting that they turn toward Dornach in important matters. We will also send a monthly or bimonthly newsletter, which will contain answers to all the questions posed by the membership. However, you would not be a member of the section, but of the class. The sections are only for the leadership in Dornach. The board of directors works together with the sections, but the individual members belong to a class.

A teacher: Should we work toward making it possible for the Waldorf School to be under Dornach?

Dr. Steiner: As with everything that can really be done, the moment we wish to join the school with Dornach we are treading upon a path we once had to leave, had to abandon, because we were not up to the situation when we undertook it. That is the path of threefolding. If you imagine the Independent Waldorf School joined with the School of Spiritual Science, you must realize that could only occur under the auspices of what lies at the foundation of threefolding. We would be working toward a specific goal if all reasonable institutions worked toward threefolding. However, we have to allow the world to go its own way after it intentionally did not want to go the other one. We are working toward threefolding, but we have to remember that an institution like the Independent Waldorf School with its objectively anthroposophical character, has goals that, of course, coincide with anthroposophical desires. At the moment, though, if that connection were made official, people could break the Waldorf School’s neck. Therefore, the way things presently are, I would advise that we not choose a new administrative committee; rather, leave it as it is and decide things one way or another according to these two questions. First, is it sufficient that the teachers here at the school become individual members of the School of Spiritual Science in Dornach? Or, second, do you want to be members through the faculty as a whole, so that you would have membership as teachers of the Independent Waldorf School? In the latter case, the Pedagogical Section in Dornach would have to concern itself with the Waldorf School, whereas it would otherwise be concerned only with general questions of pedagogy.

That is certainly a major difference. Our newsletter might then have statements such as, “It would be best to do such and such at the Independent Waldorf School.” In a certain sense, such statements would then be binding on the teachers at the Waldorf School, which would be connected with the School of Spiritual Science. There is no danger in joining all branches and groups with the Anthroposophical Society. Actually, they have to do that. All such groups of many individuals who fulfill the requirements, and such institutions as, for example, the biological institute, the research institute, and the clinic can join. You could have problems otherwise. The difficulties that would arise for the Waldorf School would not be of concern there. When the school was founded, we placed great value upon creating an institution independent of the Anthroposophical Society. Logically, that corresponds quite well with having the various religious communities and the Anthroposophical Society provide religious instruction, so that the Society provides religious instruction just as other religious groups do. The Anthroposophical Society gives instruction in religion and the services. That is something we can justifiably say whenever others claim that the Waldorf School is an anthroposophical school. Although anthroposophy believes it has the best pedagogy, the character of anthroposophy is not forced upon the school. That is a very clear situation. Had The Coming Day approached the Anthroposophical Society for exercises everyone who wanted to could do, then the remarks in the Newsletter would not have been necessary. We can clearly see the real formalities through such things.

A teacher: Hasn’t a change already occurred since you, the head of the Waldorf School, are now also the head of the Anthroposophical Society?

Dr. Steiner: That is not the case. The position I have taken changes nothing about my being head of the school. The conference was purely anthroposophical and the Waldorf School had no official connection with the Society. What might happen if, in the course of time, the leadership of the Anthroposophical Society in Dornach takes over the guidance of the religious instruction, is a different question. Were that to occur, it would be a situation of organic growth.

A teacher: Is the position we took at the founding of the Waldorf School still valid today?

Dr. Steiner: When you present the question that way, the real question is whether it is even appropriate for the faculty to approach the question, or whether that is actually a question for the Waldorf School Association. You see, the outside world views the Waldorf School Association as the actual administration of the school. You know about the seven wise men who guide the school. This is a question we should consider in deciding whether the Waldorf School is to be joined with Dornach or not, that is, should the faculty of the Waldorf School decide whether to join as a whole or as individual teachers? Everything concerning pedagogy can be decided only in that way. Under certain circumstances, this is a professional question. The Waldorf School is as it is, outside of that. You need to look at things realistically. What would you do if you, here in the faculty, decided to connect the school with Dornach, and then the school association refused to pay your salaries because of that decision? That is something that is at least theoretically possible.

A teacher asks about the final examination.

Dr. Steiner: In connection with the question of the final examination, which is purely a question of compromise, what would change through the connection to the Society?

The teacher explains his question further.

Dr. Steiner: Well, the only other viewpoint would have to be that we absolutely refuse to take into account whether a student wishes to take the final examination or not, that we consider it a private decision of the student. Until now, no one has been thinking of that, and the question is whether we should consider that as a principle. Thus, all students’ parents would be confronted with the question, “Do I dare consider sending my child into life without having taken the final examination?” Of course, we can do that, but the question is really whether we should do that. All that is quite independent of the possibility that we may have no students at all or only those who cannot go anywhere else. It seems to me very problematic whether we can bring that question into the discussion of final examinations. I do not believe a connection with Dornach would change anything in that regard. In some ways, we would still have to make a compromise.

I believe we first need to choose a form. Such things are not permanent; they can always be reconsidered. I think you should decide to become members of the School of Spiritual Science as individual teachers, but with the additional remark that you want to become a member as a teacher of the Independent Waldorf School. I think that will achieve everything you want, and nothing else is necessary for the time being. The difference is that if you join as an individual without being a member as a teacher, there would be no mention of the Waldorf School in our newsletter, and, therefore, questions specifically about the Waldorf School would not be handled by Dornach. Of course, if you add that you are joining as a teacher, that has no real meaning for you, but for the cultural task of the Waldorf School it does have some significance, because all other members of the School of Spiritual Science will receive news about what those in Dornach think about the Waldorf School. The Independent Waldorf School would then be part of anthroposophical pedagogical life, and interest would spread to a much greater extent. Everywhere members of the School of Spiritual Science come together, people would speak about the Waldorf School: “This or that is good,” and so forth. The Waldorf School would thereby become a topic of interest for the Society, whereas it is presently not an anthroposophical activity. For you, it is all the same. The questions that would be discussed in Dornach would of course be different from those that arise here. It could, however, be possible that we need to discuss the same questions here in our meetings. For the Society as a whole, however, it would not be all the same. It would be something major for anthroposophical pedagogy, and in doing that you would fulfill the mission of the Independent Waldorf School. Through such an action, you would accomplish something you actually want, namely, making the Independent Waldorf School part of the overall cultural mission of anthroposophy. It could, for example, happen that a question arises in the faculty meeting in the Waldorf School in Stuttgart that then becomes a concern of the School of Spiritual Science.

A teacher: That would mean the school would send reports about our work for publication in the newsletter.

Dr. Steiner: It would be good to make reports about the pedagogical methods so long as they do not concern personnel questions, unless, of course, these had pedagogical significance.

The teachers ask Dr. Steiner how he envisions the Easter pedagogical conference and ask him to give a theme for the conference.

Dr. Steiner: The only thing I have to say is that the conference at Easter must take into account that there will also be a pedagogical course in Zurich beginning Easter Monday.

I would like to bring up another question, which relates to something we mentioned earlier. What we can do from the Waldorf School is the following, although I need to consider what I’m now going to mention in more detail. There is another way that could immediately bring you closer to achieving your intention of a complete connection with the anthroposophical movement. The proposal is that the Waldorf School declare itself prepared to host a conference that the Anthroposophical Society would present at Easter at the school. No one could complain about that. Certainly, the Independent Waldorf School could hold an anthroposophical conference on its own grounds. That is something we can do. I would like to think some more about whether this is the proper time. However, I do not think there will be any public objection, and the officials at the ministry will not even understand the difference. They will certainly not understand what it means. That would be a beginning. I will set up the program.

There is one other thing I would like to say. The Youth Conference of the Christian Community in Kassel was quite in character in terms of the desires you now bear in your hearts. What happened was that the Christian Community priests held small meetings from Wednesday until the end of the week with those who wished an introduction to what the Christian Community, as a religious group, has to say. The whole thing closed with a service for the participants of the conference. The last two or three days were available for open discussions, so that the people who attended had an opportunity to meet officially with the Christian Community and see that it is independent of the Anthroposophical Society.

I should mention that the participants consisted of young people under the age of twenty, and others who were thirty-six and older, so that the middle generation was missing, something characteristic of our time. They participated in a Mass, followed by open discussion that assumed the topic would cover what had been experienced. What actually happened, however, was that what had been experienced awakened a longing for something more, so that the anthroposophists present then spoke about anthroposophy. It could be seen that all of what had occurred had anthroposophy as its goal. That was a very characteristic conference because it shows that what is objectively desired is a connection with Anthroposophy. There will be something about the Kassel youth conference in the next newsletter.

A teacher discusses the question of the final examination and says that some students will be advised to not take it.

Dr. Steiner: The question is how we should give the students that advice. If you handle the question from the perspective you mentioned, the principles will not be readily apparent when you give that advice. I would like to know what you have to say about the principles.

A teacher: If students are to take the final examination at the end of the twelfth grade, we cannot achieve our true learning goals in the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth grades. Instead, we will have to work toward preparing the students to pass the examination. They should take both a thirteenth school year and the examination at another school.

Dr. Steiner: On the other hand, the whole question of final examinations arose from a different perspective, namely, that the students wanted to, or their guardians wanted them to, take the test. Has anything changed in that regard? The students, of course, are unhappy, but students in other schools are also unhappy that they need to learn things they don’t want to learn. I mean that our students are unhappy about the same things all other children with the same maturity at eighteen or nineteen years are unhappy about. The question of final examinations is purely a question of opportunity. It is a question of whether we dare tell those who come to us that we will not prepare them for the final examination at all, that it is a private decision of the student whether to take the final examination or not. That is the question. For the future, it would be possible to answer that question in principle, but I do not think it would be correct to decide it for this year at the present stage.

A teacher asks whether it would be better to have the students take a thirteenth school year at another school and take their examinations there. Should a note be sent to the parents with that suggestion?

Dr. Steiner: You can do all that, but our students cannot avoid having to take an entrance examination. The question is only whether they will fail the entrance examination or the final examination.

Most of the parents want their children to have an opportunity to attend a university, in spite of the fact they gave the students to us. Both parents and students want that. At the beginning, the children did not believe it would be a problem. Their concern was that they would be able to take the final examination. That is certainly a possibility, and they can try it, but we cannot solve the problem simply by sending the students to a thirteenth school year at another school. The question is only whether we can solve it in the way we already discussed but found very problematic and therefore rejected. If we are firm about completing the school, the question is whether we could consider the alternative of creating a preparatory session in addition to the school. We rejected that because we thought it very unpedagogical. The question is whether to create a preparatory group or ignore the curriculum. I think it would be best if we did not send the students to another school. They would then need to take an entrance examination. However, if we completed the curriculum through the twelfth grade, we could use a thirteenth year to prepare them for the final examination.

Let’s consider the question pedagogically. Suppose a child comes into the first grade at the age of six or seven and completes the twelfth grade at the age of eighteen or nineteen. At that time and not later, the child should actually begin the transition into the university. Adding another year then is just about as smart as what the state does when it believes there is more material to be learned and adds an additional year for medical education. Those are the sorts of things that can drive you up the wall. Those who do not want to attend the university will need to find their own way in life. They will be useful people in life without the final examination, since they will find what they need for life here. Those who are to go to the university can use an additional year to unlearn a little. I think we can certainly think of the thirteenth year as a year of boning up. Nevertheless, we will certainly need to be careful that they pass, since we cannot put the children in a different school. We will need to separate it in some way from the Waldorf School, and we could hire instructors. We would have to enlarge the faculty to include the thirteenth grade. If we hired such people and the faculty kept control of things, we could possibly do that. That is what I think.

A teacher asks about the students who are not yet ready for the examination.

Dr. Steiner: We could suggest that, in our judgment, they are not yet ready. At other schools, the question of taking the final examination is also handled by advising the relatives of such students in the last grade not to enroll them, but to wait a year. We could also give such advice, and tell the officials that we gave it. You have always said something that is true: we have had these students only from a particular grade. We could give the ministry a report stating that it was impossible for us to properly prepare the students for the final examination during the time they were with us. We believe they need to wait a year. You should try to advise them against it, but if they want to enroll for the examination, you should inform the officials in the way we discussed by saying we think the students need to stay in school one more year.

A teacher asks about counseling students for choosing a career.

Dr. Steiner: That can be done only in individual cases. It would hardly be possible to do it in principle. In most instances, the school has little influence upon their choice of career. Determining that is really not so simple. By the time a boy is eighteen or nineteen, he should have come to an opinion about which career he should work toward; then, based on that desire, you can counsel him. This is something that involves much responsibility.

A teacher asks about pedagogical activities relating to writing essays and giving lectures.

Dr. Steiner: That would be good in many instances, particularly for eurythmy students. I think that if you held to the kind of presentations I gave in Ilkley, it would be very useful.

I do not know what you should do to revise my lectures. It is not really possible to give a lecture and then tell someone how to revise it.

A teacher asks about reports on work at the school.

Dr. Steiner: Why shouldn’t we be able to report on our work? I think we should be able to send reports to the Goetheanum on things, like those, I believe it was Pastor Ruhtenberg, has done about German class. You could give the details and the general foundation of what you as a teacher think about the specific subject. For each subject you could do things like what Ruhtenberg did and also a more general presentation about the ideas and basis of the work done up to now.

It would probably be quite good if you did some of these things the way you previously did. Keep them short and not too extended, so that the Goetheanum could publish something more often, something concrete about how we do one thing or another. the Goetheanum now has a circulation of six thousand, so it would be very good for such reports to appear in it or in some other newspaper.

A shop teacher thinks it is too bad that painting instruction cannot be done as regularly and in the upper grades as often as in the lower grades. He also asks about painting techniques for the lower grades.

Dr. Steiner: It does no harm to interrupt the painting class for a few years and replace it with sculpting. The instruction in painting has a subconscious effect, and when the students return to the interrupted painting class, they do it in a more lively way and with greater skill. In all things that depend upon capability, it is always the case that if they are withheld, great progress is made soon afterward, particularly when they are interrupted.

I think painting instruction for the lower grades needs some improvement. Some of the teachers give too little effort toward technical proficiency. The students do not use the materials properly. Actually, you should not allow anyone to paint on pieces of paper that are always buckling. They should paint only on paper that is properly stretched. Also, they should go through the whole project from start to finish, so that one page is really completed. Most of the drawings are only a beginning.

Since you are a painter, what you want will probably depend upon your discussing technical questions and how to work with the materials with the other teachers. No other practical solution is possible.

In the two upper grades, you could have the talented students paint again. There is enough time, but you would have to begin again with simpler things. That could not cause too many problems if you did it properly. With younger children, painting is creating from the soul, but with older children, you have to begin from the perspective of painting. You need to show them what the effects of light are and how to paint that. Do all the painting from a practical standpoint. You should never have children older than ten paint objects because that can ruin a great deal. (Dr. Steiner begins to draw on the blackboard with colored chalk.) The older the children are, the more you need to work on perspective in painting. You need to make clear to them that here is the sun, that the sunlight falls upon a tree. So, you should not begin by drawing the tree, but with the light and shadowy areas, so that the tree is created out of the light and dark colors, but the color comes from the light. Don’t begin with abstractions such as, “The tree is green.” Don’t have them paint green leaves; they shouldn’t paint leaves at all, but instead areas of light. That is what you should do, and you can do it.

If I were required to begin with thirteen- or fourteen-year-olds, I would use Dürer’s Melancholia as an example of how wonderfully light and shadows can be used. I would have them color the light at the window and how it falls onto the polyhedron and the ball. Then, I would have them paint the light in the window of Hieronymus im Gehäus. And so forth. It is very fruitful to begin with Melancholia; you should have them translate the black and white into a colorful fantasy. We cannot expect all the teachers to be well-versed in painting. There may be some teachers who are not especially interested in painting because they cannot do it, but a teacher must be able to teach it without painting. We cannot expect to fully develop every child in every art and science.

A teacher: Someone proposed that the school sell the toys the shop class makes.

Dr. Steiner: I do not know how we can do that. Someone also wanted to sell such things in England, with the proceeds going to the Waldorf School, I believe. However, we cannot make a factory out of the school. We simply cannot do that; that would be pure nonsense. This idea makes sense only if someone proposes building a factory in which the things we make at school would be used as prototypes. If that is what they meant, it is no concern of ours. At most, we can give them the things for use as prototypes. However, I did not understand the proposal in that way, so it really doesn’t make much sense. In the other case, someone could make working models. If someone were to come with a proposal to create a factory, we could still think about whether we wanted to work that way.

A teacher requests a new curriculum for religion class in the upper grades.

Dr. Steiner: We have laid out the religious instruction for eight grades in two groups, the first through fourth grades in the lower group, and the others in the upper. The religious instruction is already arranged in two stages. Do you mean that we now need a third?

A teacher asks whether the curriculum could be more specialized for the different grades, for instance, the fifth, eighth, and twelfth grades.

Dr. Steiner: You can show me tomorrow how far I went then.

A teacher asks about the material for religion class in the ninth grade.

Dr. Steiner: St. Augustine and Thomas à Kempis.

A teacher asks if Dr. Steiner would add something more to the ritual services throughout the year, for example, colors or such things.

Dr. Steiner: The Youth Service for Easter is connected with the entire intention of youth services. I am not certain what you mean. Were you to do that, you would preoccupy the children with a suggested mood. That is not good while they are still in school.

Through that, you would make them less open. Certainly, children need to remain naïve until a certain age, to do things without being fully conscious of them. Therefore, we should not have a complete calendar of the year, as that would suggest certain moods. Children need to be somewhat naïve about such things, at least until a certain age. You certainly could not have a small child who has just learned to walk, walk according to a vowel or consonant mood. You can work only with the Gospel texts in the Mass. I think that in the Youth Services we can proceed more objectively. The Mass is also not given according to season; it does not adhere strictly to the calendar. What was done historically comes in question only for the reading. During the period from Christmas until Easter, there is an attempt to present the story of the birth and suffering, but later, we can only take the standpoint that the listeners should learn about the Gospels. I don’t think we can do this strictly according to the calendar.

A teacher asks about creating new classes at Easter.

Dr. Steiner: It is a question of space and even more so of teachers. The problem is that there are no more people within the Anthroposophical Society who could teach within the Waldorf School. We can find no more teachers, and male teachers are nowhere to be found within our movement.

A teacher asks what they can do about the poor enunciation of the children.

Dr. Steiner: You mean you are not doing the speech exercises we did during the seminar? You should have done them earlier, in the lower grades. I gave them for you to do. It is clear the children cannot speak properly. You should also do the exercises for the teachers, but you need to have a feeling for this improper speaking. We have often discussed the hygiene of proper speech. You should accustom the children to speaking clearly at a relatively early age. That has a number of consequences. There would be no opportunity for doing German exercises in Greek class, but it is quite possible during German class. You could do speech exercises of various sorts at nearly every age.

In Switzerland, actors have to do speech exercises because certain letters need to be pronounced quite differently if they are to be understood, g, for example. Every theater particularly studies pronouncing g. Concerning the course by Mrs. Steiner, you should never give up requesting it. At some time you will have to get it from her. If you request it often enough, it will happen.

Some teachers ask about the school garden and how it could be used for teaching botany.

Dr. Steiner: Cow manure. Horse manure is no good. You need to do that as well as we can afford to do. In the end, for a limited area, there can be no harmony without a particular number of cattle and a particular amount of plants for the soil. The cattle give the manure, and if there are more plants than manure, the situation is unhealthy.

You cannot use something like peat moss, that is not healthy. You can accomplish nothing with peat. What is important is how you use the plants. Plants that are there to be seen only are not particularly important. If you grow plants with peat, you have only an appearance, you do not actually increase their nutritional value. You should try to observe how the nutritional value is diminished when you grow seedlings in peat.

You need to add some humus to the soil to make it workable. It would be even better if you could use some of Alfred Maier’s manure and horn meal. That will make the soil somewhat softer. He uses ground horns. It is really a homeopathic fertilizer for a botanical garden, for rich soil. In the school garden, you could arrange the plants according to the way you want to go through them. Sometime I will be able to give you the twelve classes of plants.

Memorandum

1. With regard to the outer constitution of the Free Anthroposophical Society, the aim should be to work towards this Society corresponding to the “Draft Statutes”. This makes it possible to unite people in a Society in which they can feel completely free individually without the Society being in constant danger of disintegration. Anyone who truly understands the 'Draft' in the right sense will have to find all this fulfilled in it.

2. First of all, it is necessary to bring together all those individuals who are already members of the Anthroposophical Society and who, in the opinion of the formed committee, have taken the points of view that legitimately necessitate the separation into two groups of the overall Society. Mere dissatisfaction with the old leadership is not enough; what is needed is a positive orientation towards an anthroposophical goal that must be assumed to be unattainable by the old leadership.

3. First of all, the circle of the Free Anthroposophical Society formed in this way is to appoint trusted individuals who are recognized by the committee. One should only appoint trusted individuals who have an interest in giving anthroposophy to contemporary civilization. Then, in addition to the personalities already in the Anthroposophical Society, there will be those who are only being accepted. But it is precisely with these that care must be taken to ensure that they have made the positive of the anthroposophical the basic direction of their own lives. People who have only a general social interest, without an intensive anthroposophical impact, should not be appointed as trusted personalities, even if they are accepted into the Society with the idea that they will grow into real anthroposophists.

4. For the admission itself, a certain degree of immersion in the anthroposophical worldview should be decisive. However, for the time being, a spirit of broad-mindedness must prevail in the Free Association. Strictness should only come into play when forming the narrower communities.

5. The Free Inc. should become a tool for spreading anthroposophy throughout the world. The lecture and other dissemination work would have to come from its bosom, and institutes and other organizations would also have to be formed from it.

6. Another is the general Free Society, and another is the communities to be formed within it. These - whether exoteric or esoteric - would bring together people who feel they belong together inwardly and who want to experience the spirit together. In addition to such communities, it is quite possible that branch life in the sense of the “Draft” will develop. The branches would then be groups of the Free AG in general. However, it is entirely possible for members of the Free Anthroposophical Society to join the branches of the AG and work together with the members of the latter.

7. The work in the life communities will be of a kind that is contained within them. It is directed towards the spiritual perfection of the united community. What a member of such a community does externally, he does as a representative of the general Free Company. Of course, such a community can still engage in a specific external activity; but it remains desirable that its individual members then act as representatives of the general Free Company. This does not, of course, require a bureaucratic administration of the association's activities, but can be a completely free fact of consciousness on the part of the individuals.

8. A committee of trust would be established for each of the two committees, one for the AG and one for the Freie AG. These two committees are responsible for the common affairs of the entire Anthroposophical Society.

9. All institutions of the overall Anthroposophical Society should fall within the sphere of interest of both the Anthroposophical and the Free Anthroposophical Societies. This can be very good if a central administrative office is created to manage the affairs of the overall Society on behalf of the two committees (mediated by their committees of trust). The division into two groups should not lead to a situation in which an anthroposophical institution, especially one that already exists, is regarded as the concern of only one group. Quotas of membership fees, to be determined by the committees, should be paid into the central fund so that the affairs of the whole society can be adequately provided for.

10. It should be understood that the two groups have come into being only because there are two distinct departments among the members, who both want the same anthroposophy but want to experience it in different ways. If this is properly understood, the relative separation cannot lead to a split, but to a harmony that would not be possible without the separation.

11. No attempt should be made by the Free A.G. to destroy the historical developmental forces of the Anthroposophical Society. Those who want freedom for themselves should leave the freedom of others completely untouched. The fact that there are imperfections in the old AG should not lead to further feuding of the latter, but to the formation of a Free Anthroposophical Society, which, in the opinion of the leading personalities, avoids these imperfections.

12. The separation means that all the conditions are in place for young people in particular to feel at home in the Free AG. This is because the life communities will be free groups of understanding people; and this will be able to form the basis for ensuring that no one in the general Free AG feels restricted in their freedom.