The Rudolf Steiner Archive

In earlier lectures we have heard that the imperishable part of the human being which at death leaves the physical body and, to a considerable extent, the etheric body too, passes through a life between death and the new birth, and that during this period its forces are drawn from the world of the stars. We have also heard how the human being is able to draw these forces from the world of stars to the extent to which he developed moral and religious qualities during his life on Earth. It was said that, for example, from the region which receives forces radiated from the planet known in occult science as Mercury, a man will be able to draw the requisite forces if, during his life on Earth before death, he developed a genuinely moral disposition; from the Venus region he can draw the forces he needs for his further life in the spiritual worlds, also for his subsequent life on Earth, if he developed a truly religious attitude before his death. To sum up, we may say that as long as a human being is making use of his senses, as long as he lets himself be guided and directed by the intellect that is bound to the brain as its instrument, he is connected with the forces of the Earth; in the life between death and a new birth he is connected with the forces radiating from the worlds of the stars. In man of the present age, however, there is a certain difference between his connection with the forces of the Earth during his physical life and his connection with the forces of the stars between death and the new birth. The forces which man draws into his consciousness during his earthly life, that is to say, the forces he experiences consciously during earthly life, contribute nothing essential to what he needs for the up-building and vitalising of his own being; for they give rise to catabolic processes, processes of destruction. Evidence for this is the simple fact that during sleep the human being has no consciousness. Why not? The reason is that he is not meant to witness what happens to him during sleep. During sleep the forces used up during waking life are restored and man is not meant to witness this process, which is the antithesis of what is in operation during waking life and is concealed from human consciousness. The Bible uses profoundly significant words to express this fact. It is one of the passages in the Bible which, as is the case with all occult principles in religious records, is very little understood. In the story of the expulsion from Paradise it is said that the Divine Spirit resolved that when the human being had acquired certain characteristics, for instance, the faculty of distinguishing between good and evil, insight into the forces of life should be withheld from him. That is the passage in the Bible where it is announced that the human being was not to witness the revivification of his members either during sleep or during his entire existence on Earth. While man is awake the whole life-process is one of destruction, of wear and tear. During waking life nothing in man's being is restored. In the very earliest years of childhood, when any actual inflow of life can still be observed, the child's consciousness is still dim and the whole restorative process is concealed from the human being in his later years. Evidence for this is the fact that he does not remember his earliest childhood. We can therefore say that the whole life-giving, restorative process is concealed from man's conscious life on Earth. Processes of perception, of cognition, lie within the field of his consciousness; the life-giving process does not.

This is different during the period of existence between death and the new birth. The purpose of the whole of that period is to draw into the being of man the forces which can build up and fashion the next life, to draw these forces from the world of the stars. But this process is not as things are on Earth, when man does not really know his own being. What, after all, does he know about the processes working in his organism? He knows nothing of them through direct perception and what is learnt from anatomy or biology conveys no real knowledge of his being but is something quite different. In the life between death and rebirth, however, a man beholds how forces from the world of stars work upon his being, how they gradually rebuild it. From this you can gather how greatly perception between death and rebirth differs from perception on Earth. On Earth the human being stands at a particular point, directs his senses outwards and then his sight and hearing expand into space; from the centre where he is standing he faces the expanse of space. Exactly the opposite is the case during the life after death. There man feels as if his whole being were outspread and what he perceives is really the centre. He looks at a point. There comes a period between death and the new birth when the human being describes a circle which passes through the whole Zodiac. He looks out as it were from every point of the Zodiac, that is to say from different viewpoints, upon his own being, and he feels as if he were gathering from each particular section of the Zodiac the forces which he pours upon his being for the needs of the next incarnation. He looks from the circumference towards a centre. It is as if you could duplicate yourself, move around while leaving yourself at the centre, and could drink in the forces of the Universe, the life-giving ‘soma’ which, streaming as it does from different points of the Zodiac, assumes different characteristics as it pours into your being which you have left at the centre. Translated into terms of spiritual reality, this is actually how things are during the life between death and the new birth.

If we now think of the difference between a condition that is really very similar to life between death and rebirth, namely, the condition of sleep, this difference can be characterised very simply, although people who are not accustomed to these ideas will not be able to make much of it. Put simply, the condition of sleep can be characterised as follows.

When the human being sleeps during his earthly existence, that is to say when he has left his physical and etheric bodies and is living in his Ego and astral body which are then in the world of stars, he too is actually in that world. And it is a fact that our condition in sleep is objectively far more similar to the condition between death and rebirth than is usually imagined. Objectively, the two conditions are very similar. The only difference is that during sleep in normal life the human being has no consciousness of the world in which he is living, whereas between death and the new birth he is conscious of what is happening to him. That is the essential difference. If the human being were to awake in his Ego and astral body when these members are outside his physical body during sleep he would be in the same condition as he is between death and the new birth. The difference is actually only a state of consciousness. This is a matter of importance because as long as the human being lives on Earth, therefore also during sleep, he is bound to his physical body. Nor does he become free from the physical body until it passes into the lifeless condition and undergoes a change at death. As long as the physical body remains alive, the union is maintained between the spiritual man, that is to say, Ego and astral body and the physical and etheric bodies.

Our conception of the state of sleep is, as a rule, too simple; and that is quite comprehensible because usually we describe things from one point of view only, whereas when a human being passes into the higher worlds conditions are complicated. A complete picture becomes possible only as we progress patiently in Spiritual Science and learn to view things from all sides. We generally characterise the state of sleep—and rightly so—by saying that the physical and etheric bodies remain in the bed, while the Ego and astral body move outwards and unite with the forces of the stars. But correct as this is from one point of view, it nevertheless presents only one aspect of the matter, as we can realise if we consider from the standpoint of Spiritual Science the sleep that occurs at a more or less normal time. Objectively speaking, an afternoon nap is a quite different matter from ordinary sleep at night. What I have now said is concerned not so much with a man's ordinary state of health but rather with his whole relationship to the world. We will therefore not consider an afternoon nap but the sleep of a healthy human being, let us say at midnight, regarded from the standpoint of clairvoyant consciousness.

During the waking life of day there is a certain regulated connection between the four members of man's being: physical body, etheric body, astral body and Ego. This connection can be indicated if I make sketches to show how the so-called aura of the human being appears to clairvoyant consciousness—but of course the sketches are only very rough.

The important point is that what may be called the auric picture of the Ego when a human being is asleep, actually becomes twofold. During the waking state the Ego-aura holds together in the form of an oval (A) but during sleep divides into two parts (B), one of which turns downwards as the result of a kind of gravity and spreads out below. This part of the Ego-aura appears to clairvoyance as a very dark area tinged with dark red shades. The other, upper part streams upwards from the head and then expands into the infinitudes of the world of stars. The Ego-aura is thus divided—in appearance at all events; we cannot, however, speak of an actual division of the astral aura.

This occult spectacle is a kind of pictorial expression of the fact that the human being; with the Ego-forces that permeate him in the waking condition, goes forth into cosmic space in order to be united with the world of stars and draw its forces into himself.

(Note by translator. Dr. Steiner's drawings were probably made with coloured chalks which would have indicated the several members of man's being with greater clarity than is possible in the printed reproductions. Comments made in connection with the drawings have been abbreviated as follows:

Figure A. Waking state. The physical body is indicated by the innermost darker dotted outline, the etheric body by the fainter dotted outline, the astral body by the sloping lines; the Ego-aura seems to envelop the human form.

Figure B. Indicates the difference in the auric picture while a human being is asleep. The upper part of the Ego-aura radiates outwards and upwards without defined limit, and the lower part radiates downwards without defined limit.)

Now that part of the Ego-aura which streams downwards and becomes dark and more or less opaque while the part streaming up wards is luminous and radiant—all this lower part is particularly exposed to the influence of Ahrimanic powers. The adjacent part of the astral aura is, on the other hand, particularly exposed to the Luciferic forces. The account that has been given—quite rightly from a certain standpoint—that the Ego and astral body leave the human being during sleep is, however, strictly true only as regards the upper parts of the Ego-aura and astral aura. It is not correct as regards the parts of the Ego-aura and astral aura which correspond more to the lower areas of the human figure, particularly the lower parts of the trunk. Actually, during sleep, these parts of the astral aura and of the Ego-aura are more closely bound up with the physical and etheric bodies than is the case during the waking state, and below they are denser, more compact.

Now it is extremely important to know that in view of the evolution of our Earth and all the forces that have played their part in that evolution—which you will find described in the book Occult Science—an Outline,—it was ordained that man should not participate in this more lively activity of the lower aura during sleep, that is to say he was not to witness this activity. The reason for this was that the revitalising forces needed by man for the restoration of what has been used up during the waking hours, are kindled by the lower Ego-aura and lower astral aura. The vitalising forces must be drawn from these parts of the aura. That they work upwards and revitalise the whole man depends upon the upper aura developing powers of attraction drawn from the world of stars; it can therefore attract the forces which rising from below, act restoratively. That is the objective process.

Understanding of this fact is the best equipment for understanding certain information available to one who studies ancient records or records based on occultism. You have always heard—and from a certain standpoint the statement is quite correct—that man leaves his physical and etheric bodies in the bed and goes forth with his astral body and Ego; this is absolutely correct as regard the upper parts of the Ego-aura and astral aura, especially of the Ego-aura. But if you study Eastern writings, you will find a statement that is exactly the opposite. It is stated there that during sleep what is otherwise present in man's consciousness penetrates more deeply into the body. This is the opposite description of sleep. And especially in certain Vedanta writings you will find it stated that the part of man of which we say that during sleep it leaves the physical and etheric bodies, sinks more deeply into those bodies, and that what gives us the power of sight withdraws into deeper regions of the eye so that sight is no longer possible. Why is the process described in this way in Eastern writings? It is because the Oriental still has a different standpoint. With his kind of clairvoyance he pays more attention to what goes on within the human being; he pays less attention to the emergence of the upper aura and more to the permeation by the lower aura during sleep. Hence from his particular point of view he is right.

The processes which take place in the human being in the course of his evolution are very complicated and as evolution progresses it will become more and more possible for him to picture the whole range of these processes. But evolution consists in human beings having gradually acquired knowledge of particular processes, hence the differing statements in the different epochs. Although the statements seem to differ they are not for that reason false; they relate to the particular condition prevailing at the time. But the process of evolution as a whole becomes clear only when all the various processes are taken into account.

We ourselves have now reached the point when it is possible to survey a certain definite portion of the process of evolution. There is a most significant difference in the whole attitude and disposition of man's soul when we observe its development during incarnations, let us say in the Egypto-Chaldean period, then in the Graeco-Roman period and then again in our own. Even externally it is not difficult to discover what the soul is experiencing. I think that even in this enlightened audience there will be quite a number of individuals who when they look at a star-strewn sky cannot locate the particular constellations or perceive how their positions change in the heavens during the night. Speaking generally it can be said that the number of individuals who are still well-informed about the starry sky will steadily decrease. There will even be people, among town-dwellers for example, whom one might ask in vain: Is there now Full Moon or New Moon? This does not in any way imply reproach, for it lies in the natural course of development. What holds good for the soul now would have been utterly impossible during the Egypto-Chaldean epoch, particularly during its earlier periods. In those days men's insight into the heavens was very great. Our present age, however, has a definite advantage over the Egypto-Chaldean epoch, inasmuch as logical thinking—of which most people would be capable today if they were to make efforts—was quite beyond the men of that earlier epoch. They lived their lives and carried out their daily tasks more instinctively than we do today. It would be quite erroneous to imagine that when a building or, say, an aqueduct was to be constructed, engineers would sit in their offices and work out the project with the help of plans and the other methods employed nowadays. Engineers in those times no more worked from plans than the beaver does today when with such skill and accuracy he sets about building his den.

In those early times there was no logical, scientific thinking such as is general today; the activities of men during waking life were instinctive. They had acquired their knowledge—and stupendous knowledge has been preserved from the Egypto-Chaldean epoch—in a quite different way. They knew about the secrets of the stars in the night, about the heavens, although they had no Astronomy of the kind that is available for men of the present age. They watched the spectacle presented by the stars in the heavens on successive nights and the whole power of the astral forces in space worked upon them, not merely the sensory impressions made by what they observed. For example, the passage of the Great Bear or of the Pleiades was an actual experience within them and the experience continued while they were asleep, for they were sensitive to the spiritual reality connected with the passage of a constellation such as the Great Bear across the heavens; together with the spectacle perceived by the senses they were inwardly aware of the living spiritual reality in cosmic space. Something came into their consciousness which ours today is quite unable to experience. Nowadays man has eyes only for the material picture of the stars in the sky. And being very clever he looks at a chart of the heavens into which figures of animals are inscribed, and says: The ancients inscribed symbols here and there to represent their idea of the grouping of the stars, but we have now progressed sufficiently to be cognisant of the reality. A man of the modern age does not know that the ancients had actually seen what they inscribed into their charts; they drew something of which they had had direct vision. Some of them were more skilful draftsmen than others, but they drew what they had actually perceived. They did not, however, perceive in the way that is customary in physical life. When they experienced, for example, the passage of the Great Bear across the heavens at night they saw the physical stars implanted in a mighty spiritual Being whom they could actually perceive. But it would be childish to imagine that they saw an animal moving across the heavens in the way we should see a physical animal on the Earth. This experience of the passage of the constellation of the Pleiades, for example, across the heavens affected them intimately. They felt that the experience had an effect upon their astral bodies and caused changes there.

You can form an idea of this experience by picturing that there is a rose in front of you but you are not looking at it; you are merely holding it and what you experience is your own contact with it. You then form an idea of the rose. It was in this way that the ancients ‘contacted’ as it were with their astral bodies what they experienced about the constellation of the Great Bear; they ‘felt’ the astral reality and experienced their own contact with it. This brought about changes in their very being, changes which are still brought about today but are unnoticed.

Evolution leading into our modern scientific age with its power of rationalistic judgement consists in the fact that direct experience of spiritual processes has ceased and that we are left with the world of the senses and the brain-bound intellect. Thus when in the Egypto-Chaldean epoch men spoke of the spiritual Beings in space and drew figures of these Beings, inscribing physical stars as focal points, this was in keeping with the reality—which was an actual experience. Hence in the Egypto-Chaldean epoch men had a faculty of perception far more in line with the life between death and rebirth than is our present physical consciousness. When it is realised how the astral body and the Ego experience what is happening in the heavens it is also obvious that we are then living outside our physical and etheric bodies and there is not the slightest reason for believing that a life in which such experiences occur is impossible when the physical and etheric bodies are actually laid aside (at death). Thus in the men of old it was a matter of direct knowledge that between death and the new birth they would experience the happenings in the world of stars. A man living in the Egypto-Chaldean epoch would have thought it ridiculous if anyone set out to prove to him the immortality of the soul. He would have said: ‘But that needs no proof!’ He would not even have understood what a proof is in our meaning of the word, for logical thinking did not yet exist. If he had learnt in an occult school what in the future would be meant by ‘proof’, he would still have insisted that it is unnecessary to prove the immortality of the soul, because in experiencing the nocturnal starry heavens one is already experiencing something that is independent of the body. Immortality was thus an actual experience and the men of those times knew a great deal about what we today describe in connection with perception in the disembodied state.

And now, turning from the more remote worlds of stars to the planets, these men of old experienced the spiritual sphere that is connected, for instance, with Saturn. They were able to perceive—this is true especially of the earlier periods of the Egypto-Chaldean epoch—what remains of a human being during his life in the Saturn sphere between death and the new birth. People would have thought it very strange if it had been suggested to them that they should try to establish connection with Mars as is sometimes hinted at today, for they were quite conscious of being related to these worlds. If someone has knowledge of Saturn or Mars or other planetary sphere and can follow its functions in our planetary system, this leads to knowledge of the pre-earthly conditions of Old Saturn, Old Sun and Old Moon described in the book Occult Science—an Outline. This was once a matter of actual experience. There would have been no need to lecture about it. All that was necessary would have been to make men conscious that it was simply a matter of inducing in those no longer capable of perceiving such things conditions which made perception possible. This could not otherwise have been achieved.

By the time of the Graeco-Latin epoch this state of things had already changed. Men had lost their sensitivity for everything I have been describing and remembrance of it alone remained. In the Graeco-Latin epoch, among the leading peoples, for example of Southern Europe, there was no longer any equal possibility of direct vision of the spiritual Beings of the heavens, but remembrance of that vision remained. Just as a man remembers today what he experienced yesterday, so did souls in the Graeco-Latin epoch still remember what they had experienced of the Universe in earlier incarnations. This radiated into the souls of men and was a living experience. Plato speaks of it as ‘recollection’, but men do not always call it so. Progress in evolution consisted in the suppression of this direct experience and the development during the Graeco-Latin epoch of the faculty of judgement and the formation of concepts. Hence the earlier vision was bound to recede and could survive only as recollection, remembrance. This is exemplified most clearly of all in Aristotle who lived in the fourth century BC. and was the founder of logic, of the art of judgement; he himself was no longer able to perceive anything of the spiritual realities in the worlds of the stars, but in his writings he brings all the old theories back again. He does not speak of the physical heavenly bodies as we know them today but of the ‘Spirits of the Spheres’, of spiritual Beings. And a great many of his utterances were an enumeration of the individual planetary Spirits and of the fixed stars, finally leading to the one universal Godhead. The Spirits of the Spheres still play an important role in the works of Aristotle.

But even the remembrance in Graeco-Latin times of the Spiritual Beings in the Universe was gradually lost to humanity and it is interesting to watch how the ancient knowledge disappears gradually as later epochs approach. The more spiritually minded among men still drew from their remembrance the consciousness that spiritual Beings are connected with all physical bodies existing in space—as Anthroposophy describes today. A great deal in this connection was presented magnificently by Kepler. But the nearer we come to modern times, the more does the possibility fade of even a remembrance of what the soul experienced in the Egypto-Chaldean epoch from contemplation of the heavens. As the age of Copernicanism approached even the remembrance that still survived in the Graeco-Latin epoch faded, and men had eyes only for the physical globes moving through space. Occasionally something plays into the consciousness of more modern men that there is still a possibility of gleaning from the constellations in the heavens genuine knowledge of spiritual events. Kepler, for example, set out independently to calculate from the stars the date of the birth of Jesus of Nazareth. Such a calculation was possible because Kepler's whole being was still permeated through and through with spirituality. The same applies to his realisation that a certain constellation of stars in the year 1604 would be followed by further suppression of the ancient remembrances.

The nearer we come to the modern age the more is humanity dependent upon the physical senses and the brain-bound intellect, because what the souls of men experienced in ancient times has been thrust down into the deeper strata of consciousness. The souls of all of you once harboured the experiences known to men when they were still able to be aware of the spiritual life pervading cosmic spheres. This is everywhere present in the depths of your own souls. But it is not possible today to lead souls during the hours of darkness and guide their vision, let us say, to the constellation of the Great Bear and enable them to experience as realities the spiritual forces emanating from that group of stars. It is not possible because the powers of vision and perception lie in such depths of the soul. During sleep at night man experiences the heavens with the radiating upper part of the aura but is not conscious of it. Hence for souls of the present age the right procedure is to raise into consciousness by valid methods the forgotten impressions received in olden times. And how is this done? As we do it in Anthroposophy! Nothing new is imposed upon souls but what they experienced in earlier epochs is drawn forth. What souls could no longer actually experience in the Graeco-Latin epoch but had not yet entirely forgotten—today it is entirely forgotten but can be drawn forth again. Anthroposophy is the stimulus for drawing forth the forces of knowledge which lie deep in the souls of men. All human beings who have partaken in evolution up to the time of Western culture have in the depths of their souls the conceptions which should be kindled to life through Anthroposophy; and the methods used in Anthroposophy are the stimuli for achieving this.

We will now consider the difference between these two attitudes to the world, between that of a human soul incarnated in the Graeco-Latin epoch and one incarnated today. We have heard that during the Graeco-Latin epoch, in earthly life too, the soul had a certain connection with and capacity for perception of what is lived through in the period between death and the new birth. These experiences had not yet withdrawn into such deep strata of the soul. Hence in those very ancient times there was much less difference between men's consciousness on Earth and between death and rebirth than there is today. The ancient Greeks had some remembrance of what they had once experienced, but even so the difference was already great. Conditions today have reached the stage when between death and the new birth, consciousness can still be kindled in a human being in the Venus sphere if, on Earth, he has cultivated a moral and religious attitude of soul. But in and especially beyond the Sun sphere it is impossible for consciousness to be kindled if during his life on Earth a man has made no attempt to raise to the level of waking consciousness the concepts lying in the depths of the soul. Here, in earthly life, Anthroposophy seems to be a kind of theoretical world-conception which we master because it interests us. After death, however, it is a torch which from a certain point of time onwards between death and rebirth illumines the spiritual world for us. If Anthroposophy is disdained here in the physical world, no torch is available in that other world and consciousness is dimmed. To pursue Spiritual Science is not merely a matter of imbibing so many theories; it is a living force, a torch which can illumine life. The contents of the spiritual teachings here on Earth are concepts and ideas; after death they are living forces! But this applies to consciousness only. It will be clear to you from what I said at the beginning of the lecture that already in earthly existence the spiritual ideas we acquire are life-giving forces. But a man cannot witness the outcome of these life-giving forces because knowledge of the powers from which they originate is withheld from him. After death, however, he actually beholds them. Here on Earth, Anthroposophy seems to be so much theory and the human being in his waking state has no consciousness of what is spiritually life-giving but nevertheless objectively present. After death man is a direct witness of how the forces he took into himself together with the spiritual teachings received during his life on Earth have an organising, vitalising, strengthening effect upon what is within his being when he is preparing for a new incarnation.

In this way spiritual teaching actually becomes part of the evolution of humanity. But if this spiritual teaching were to be rejected—at the present time it suffices if only a few accept it but in the future more and more individuals must do so—then, as they return to incarnations on Earth, human beings will gradually find that they lack the life-giving forces they need. Decadence and atrophy would set in during the subsequent incarnation. Human beings would quickly wither, be prematurely wrinkled. Decadence of physical humanity would set in if the spiritual forces were not received. The forces that were once drawn by men from the worlds of stars must now be drawn from the depths of their own souls and used for furthering the evolution of humanity.

If you reflect about these matters you will be filled through and through with the thought that existence on Earth is of immense significance. It was necessary that the human being should be so inwardly deepened by his union with the worlds of stars that the forces he had otherwise always drawn from those worlds would become the inmost forces of his soul and be drawn up again from its depths. But that can be done only on Earth. One could say: in primeval times the soma-juice rained down from the heavens into individual souls, was preserved there and must now be drawn forth again from those souls. In this way we acquire a conception of the mission of the Earth. And having presented this conception today we will proceed to study the life between death and the new birth in even greater detail.

The meetings at Stuttgart came to a close two days ago, and you are probably thinking that I ought to give you a report on some of the things that happened there. We arrived at a certain definite conclusion, which seemed inevitable under the conditions that prevailed.

It will be essential to an understanding of what came about that I give you a sketch of how things developed. You know from comments I have been making these past several weeks that lengthy preparations preceded the Stuttgart meetings. The aim of these preparations, which proved extremely tiring to all concerned, was to try to create a situation in which the life-needs of the Anthroposophical Society could be met, thus ensuring the Society's continuance in the immediate future.

In everything that follows it should be kept in mind that what went on in Stuttgart did not have its origin in the sad events surrounding the Goetheanum fire, nor was it influenced by them. For I had already talked with a member of the Executive Committee early in December and discussed with him the necessity of doing something to consolidate the Society, and he was given the assignment of getting the whole Executive Committee and various others to take on the problem. So what occurred in Stuttgart was a direct consequence of the talk I had on December tenth with Herr Uehli to acquaint him with my observations on the current state of affairs in the Society.

The burning of the Goetheanum came as a most painful experience while we were in the midst of these developments. But even if we still had the Goetheanum standing here in its pristine form, these things would have happened exactly as they did. For what was it we faced? We were facing the fact that the Anthroposophical Society had taken on a form in the past two decades that had undergone considerable modification since 1919 as a consequence of including various enterprises among its concerns.

My words could easily be taken as deprecating these undertakings, but nothing of the sort is intended. I need only mention the name of the Waldorf School, which is one of the enterprises I was referring to, to convince you that my remark was made for quite a different purpose than to express some superficial judgment. It implied no reflection on the worth and significance of any of these enterprises or on anyone responsible for their guidance.

The transactions in Stuttgart were meant to—and indeed did—concern themselves solely with the Anthroposophical Society from the aspect of its whole configuration and how it should be shaped.

Now it is not an easy matter to describe this configuration as it really is, since it branches out in so many directions. But I believe that everyone of you has some idea of how the Society has developed up to the present, and can picture things for himself with the help of the comments I have been making here in the past several weeks to round out the picture.

One of the especially important developments that have taken place in the Society's life has been the incurring by leading individuals—or at least by a considerable number of them—of quite specific anthroposophical tasks for the Society that have grown out of the work. These tasks have been waiting for completion since 1919, but they were not carried out. When the problem this caused became only too plain, I had to speak to the Central Executive Committee in Stuttgart as I did on December tenth last.

One of the latest undertakings to grow out of the soil of the Anthroposophical Movement was the Movement for Religious Renewal, which has contributed heavily to the current crisis in the Society. That is one aspect of the facts that have developed in the Society's life.

The other aspect is that youth has approached the movement—youth full of deep inner enthusiasm for anthroposophy and everything it includes, and university youth has also come into the picture with quite different expectations, with a quite definite picture of what is to be found in the Society, with quite definite feelings. One might say that these academic young people approach the Society with strong heart impulses and a special sensitivity to the way the anthroposophists reacted to them, and that they took everything not so much from a rational angle as in a spirit of keen feeling-judgment.

Now what lay behind all this?

The fact is, my dear friends, that young people today are having soul experiences that are making their first appearance on the stage of human evolution. This fact is not to be summed up in abstract, superficial phrases about a generation gap. That gap has always existed in some sense, and been especially marked in strong personalities while they were young and preparing themselves for life at an educational institution. We need only recall certain characteristic examples. You can read in Goethe's Truth and Science how, when he was a student in Leipzig, he stayed away from lectures because he found them so terribly boring, and went instead to the pretzel bakeshop across the street to chat with companions while Professor Ludwig and others held forth in the lecture halls on learned doctrines.

But despite the ever-present generation gap, even these somewhat radical members of the younger generation eventually took over their inheritance from their elders. The geniuses among them did likewise. Goethe most certainly remained an incomparable genius to the day he died. But when it came to taking part in the life of his time, he became not simply Goethe the genius but the fat privy councillor with the double chin. That must also be recognized.

These things have to be looked at in a completely unprejudiced way. Until the last third of the nineteenth century, the generation gap about which people talk superficially today was always there, but it was resolved in good philistine style, with youth gradually absorbing more and more philistine characteristics and entering, as it always had, into what its elders passed on to it.

Today, however, that is no longer possible. If one were to use terminology borrowed from Oriental wisdom, one would have to say that it became impossible when Kali Yuga ended, because from that time forward social life was no longer ruled by the principle of authoritarianism as it had been heretofore. Mankind's involvement in the consciousness soul phase of its development took ever more marked effect. This lived in the souls of people born in the 1890's and in the first few years of the twentieth century, perhaps not in a sharply defined form, but nevertheless in an extremely strong instinctive way. This inner life of theirs has to be really lovingly contemplated by older people if they want to understand it. That takes quite a bit of doing. For our culture, our civilization has assumed a form, especially in educational institutions, which makes the resolving of problems between youth and age that always used to take place no longer possible. Young people of the present feel this; it is their inner destiny. It shapes every aspect of their lives, and means that they approach life with a quite definite craving or demand. This predisposes present-day young people to become seekers, but seekers of a wholly different stripe than their elders.

This holds true of them in every area of life, and especially in the spiritual area. It is very strange how the older generation has been reacting to them for some time past. I have not neglected to call your attention to characteristic instances. Let me remind you of the lecture I gave on Gregor Mendel. Every now and then, scientists of the twentieth century have rather vehemently stated it as their opinion that Gregor Mendel, a Moravian, the solitary schoolmaster who later became an abbot, was a genius who had made remarkable contributions to the work of determining the laws of heredity. If we review Gregor Mendel's relationship to the educational institutions he attended, we cannot miss the fact that when he was old enough to take his examinations for the teaching profession he failed them by a wide margin. He was thereupon given time to prepare himself for a second try. Again he flunked. At that time—I am speaking of the 1850's—people were a lot more tolerant than they became later. So, in spite of his two failures to pass his teacher's examinations, Mendel was appointed to a secondary school position, and he became the man who accomplished something regarded as one of the greatest feats in the field of modern natural science.

Let us take another case closer at hand: that of Röntgen. Nowadays nobody doubts that Röntgen is one of the greatest men of modern times. But he was dismissed from secondary school as a hopeless case. He had the greatest trouble getting a position as a tutor because he couldn't finish school; he had been thrown out, and later just barely managed to get into a college, where he finally graduated. But even then he was unable to get a tutorial post in the field in which he sought it. In spite of this, he performed one of the most epoch-making feats in the fields of practical and theoretical science.

These examples could be multiplied ad infinitum. On every hand we find indications of the unbridgeable gap between what older times had to offer and what lives in youth in an indefinable way.

Putting the matter in rather radical terms, one can say that modern youth could not care less how many Egyptian kings' graves are opened; they are not much concerned with that. But they do care about finding far more original sources of serving human progress than the opening of ancient kings' graves offers. Youth feels that we have entered upon a phase of mankind's evolution in which much more elementary, more original sources will have to be drawn upon for its furthering.

Now we can certainly say that young people with this longing have done a great deal of searching during the first two decades of the twentieth century. Then they came to know of anthroposophy and felt at once that it led to the primal sources of their seeking, to the deepest origin of humanness. They then approached the Anthroposophical Society. And last Monday or Tuesday a representative of these young people said in Stuttgart that they had received a shock on approaching it, that the contrast between the Anthroposophical Society and anthroposophy had startled them. This is a very weighty fact, is it not? It cannot simply be dismissed. You have to consider what young people, especially those from the universities, have had to suffer.

Let us say, for example, that they wanted to take a doctorate in one of the freer branches of learning and teaching, such as the history of literature. How were things done in the last third of the nineteenth century? Where did most of them get the themes for their dissertations? For brevity's sake I will have to put it rather radically. The professor had undertaken to write a book about the Romantic school. So he assigned one student Novalis, another Friedrich Schlegel, a third August Wilhelm Schlegel, and a fourth Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann—if they were lucky. If they weren't, they were assigned dissertations on Hoffmann's punctuation or his use of parentheses. The professor then read through these dissertations and took the substance of his book from them. It had all become quite mechanical. The young person was just part of a mechanism, a learned mechanism, and if I may repeat myself, after the end of Kali Yuga everything that lived in an elemental way in the youthful soul rebelled against this sort of thing. I am citing just one of countless possible examples of the same phenomenon.

Now here we have these two factors side by side: the Anthroposophical Society, in the form it had assumed during its two decades—a form I need not describe, as everyone can picture it for himself from his own standpoint—and the young students. But what the Society was encountering in these young people was simply the keenest and most radical fringe of an omnipresent element. This fact stood out only too plainly at the Stuttgart meetings.

On the one hand, the leaders of the old society were committed to what had gradually taken on fixed forms. One was perhaps a Waldorf teacher, another an office manager at “Der Kommende Tag.” We have to give all due weight to the fact that all these people were overwhelmed with work. Everybody in the Society who had any free time had been drawn into these enterprises. Rightly or wrongly, this caused a certain bureaucratic spirit to spring up in the Society.

Among these undertakings was the “Union for the Threefold Membering of the Social Organism.” Right from the moment of its founding in 1919, it had a director, and after I had worked awhile with this Union I was compelled to say that I could not go on, that I would have to withdraw. As I said in Stuttgart recently, I had to strike out and simply declare that I could not go on.

Then another director, an excellent man, took things over. I was unable to get to Stuttgart for several weeks, but when I eventually arrived, I was anxious to find out what had been happening. There were a number of matters awaiting disposition, so a meeting was held and I was informed about what had transpired. I was told, “Well, we've been setting up a card file. We have small cards on the lower right-hand section of which we clip the smaller newspaper items, and then we file them in cabinets. Then there are larger cards made of heavier paper to which we attach longer magazine articles, and there are other cards of still another size for filing letters that come in.” This went on and on. Hours were spent describing the way the card file was set up, the sacrifice and devotion with which people had been working on it for many weeks, what it contained, how everything had been so neatly stowed away in it. Now I had a mental picture of this card file with all the various sizes of cards in it, and the marvellous record there of everything that had been going on in the Society and what our opponents had been up to. It was all beautifully recorded! There must have been a simply huge pile of these cards stacked up in layers. But the people sitting there vanished as though they were ghosts; only the card file was real. Everything had been recorded!

I said, “Well, my dear friends, do you have heads as well as a card file? I am not in the least interested in your files, only in what you have in your heads.”

I am sure you will understand that I am not criticizing, just reporting, for the people who had arranged the files were groaning under the tremendous burden of their work. But on the other hand, just imagine youth coming there with their hearts on fire with enthusiasm for ideals that encompassed the whole future, only to be told the story of the card files. I am not saying that it was superfluous to have files or that they were of no value; I am saying that they were excellent and vitally necessary. But that is not the way things should be going. Hearts were needed to go out to hearts.

Now this created all sorts of impossible situations. These and many other problems finally reached a point where a reorganization of the Society had to be considered. There had to be a chance for the Society to provide human beings with opportunities to work in it, to live out their special individual capacities, to find and breathe an atmosphere in which they could go on developing. These were absolutely fundamental problems that the Society was facing. A complete revision of all the conditions surrounding its life was indicated, and that it has a tremendous life-potential is shown in the fact that youth has now approached it full of teeming inner life. But the contrasts grew and grew.

Of course, there were some individuals in the older group who had never taken any interest in the card files (if I may use the files as symptomatic of the whole approach in question). Some of these others may have been very old indeed, but still not have wanted to bother with things like the files, which had gradually become a necessity. There were definitely such members who had joined the Society as early as 1902 or 1903, who, though they may have been very different from the young people in many other respects too, had also never concerned themselves with what I will term the history of the Society.

So we faced extraordinarily difficult problems at the preliminary meetings. An incalculable weight of worry burdened one's soul.

But we don't need to talk about those sessions now. The Delegates' Conference, a summons to which was the outcome of the preparatory meetings, was held in Stuttgart last Sunday. The first order of business was to hear what the provisional steering committee, which was made up for various reasons of members of the erstwhile Central Executive and called the Committee of Nine, had to say about the past and present and future of the Anthroposophical Society. Then the German and Austrian members were to be given a hearing in the persons of their delegates.

Well, things proceeded as planned. But since I want to give you just a brief sketch of what led to the final decision, I will refrain from describing what amounted to a veritable hailstorm of motions. Scarcely was one taken care of and the business of the meeting resumed than two or three more fairly flew up to the chairman's table. It can only be described as a hailstorm, and there seemed to be no end to the discussion about them. But I will skip over all this and stress instead that absolutely excellent talks were given, penetrating, deeply anthroposophical talks. Albert Steffen spoke wonderful, heartfelt, profound words. Mr. Werbeck gave a masterly description of the categories of our opponents and of their relationship to the Anthroposophical Movement and to the rest of civilization. Dr. Büchenbacher gave a vivid account of the way people who entered the Society from about 1917 on responded to what they encountered in it. As to the fact that not everything said was first-rate and as to some lesser contributions in between, it is probably better to maintain a courteous silence. But excellent, magnificent contributions were interspersed among what I will refer to as “others.” In spite of this, Sunday and Monday and Tuesday passed, and by Tuesday evening a point was reached where one could see clearly that if the next day, the final one, were to be anything like the preceding ones, the delegates would leave as they had come. For almost nothing of what lived in the many individuals assembed in the hall had really come out, even though much anthroposophical substance had been contributed in excellent speeches. This was an assemblage of human beings and the speeches all dealt with realities, but there was no living reality in the meetings, just abstraction; they were a classic example of life lived in the abstract. By Tuesday evening real chaos reigned. Everybody was talking past everybody else.

Now I had no choice but to decide to make a proposal of my own directly after the Tuesday lecture that had been scheduled for me—a proposal based on what lived in the people represented there—and almost the entire membership of the German and Austrian Societies was present. But one had to get at what was real there and pull it together. I was to speak on Tuesday about community building, a theme called for by much that had been said. So I made a proposal. I said that we could see how everyone was talking past the others and that nothing that was being said was bringing the underlying realities of the situation to the surface. Leaving other aspects aside for the moment, one could distinguish two types of feeling, two differing viewpoints, two sets of opinions. One type is represented by the old Anthroposophical Society and the committee speaking for it; the other is made up of individuals who, to put it as exactly as possible, have no real interest in the stand taken by the committee representing the Society. They are individuals completely without interest in what the committee had to say, though they are fine anthroposophists: One can scarcely imagine anything finer than the contributions made by the young people at the Stuttgart conference; they reflected an energetic, wonderful spirit. The soul of youth made a noble impression as it urgently stormed the gates of anthroposophy. But here too there was no interest in what the Society was as a society, or in what it stood for.

A phenomenon like this has to be taken as a reality. We have to learn to see it as a fact; there is no use acting like blind men and closing our eyes to it. So I had no choice but to say that since we were confronted there with these two types, any abstract talk about reaching agreement was simply false. The old society cannot be other than it is, nor can the second group. The Society as a whole will therefore have the best chance of continuance if each faction goes its own way, with the old aristocracy—no, let me rather call them the members of the older society, laden down with history—forming one group, and the stormily progressive old and young forming another.

There is in existence an ancient draft of a constitution for the Anthroposophical Society. I can recommend its study to both parties! Each of them can carry out its provisions quite literally, but the outcome will be entirely different in the two cases. That is the way things are in real life, no matter how they may look in theory.

So I made the proposal that the old Anthroposophical Society continue with its Committee of Nine. I characterized things in the following way. I said that the old society included the prominent Stuttgart members who carry on their separate undertakings in exemplary fashion and do a tremendous lot of work; in fact, one of their outstanding characteristics, demonstrated during the four days of the conference, was the weariness they brought with them from their previous labors. I said that when I come to Stuttgart and find something needing to be done, I have only to press a button; that is the way it has been in recent years. These leading personalities in Stuttgart are extremely insightful. They grasp everything immediately without one's having to say very much. There would never be time enough to discuss everything at length. Theirs is a lightning grasp; one need only touch on a matter to have it absolutely clear to them. But for the most part they do nothing about it. Then there is the other party, full of anthroposophical soulfulness, whole-heartedly immersed in anthroposophy. I can also say something to the leaders of this group. They understand nothing of what I am saying, but they do it that very instant. That is a tremendous difference. The first group understands immediately, but does nothing. The second category understands nothing; they only give promise of eventually understanding everything; they are full of energy and feeling, but they do the things at once. They do everything without understanding it.

So there will have to be two quite differently constituted groups in the Society if it is to stay united. One group should never be allowed to get in the way of the other's functioning. There is the one group—what name shall I give it, since we have to have one? It's just a question of terminology, of course. Let's call it the conservative, the traditional party, the neatly-filed members (not to limit the term to just a set of cards), the party that occupies the curule seats. People in this party have titles: president, vice president, and so on, and administer the Society. They sit there and have a routine procedure for everything. I see a man in the audience looking at me significantly who, while I was still in Stuttgart, was in a position to inform me what such procedures sometimes lead to. For example, a credit slip for a sum like 21 marks was sent out, and it cost 150 marks to send it. That is what it costs these days to send mail to foreign countries: 150 marks. If one wants to write somebody that a credit of 21 marks has been entered on the books to his account, it costs 150 marks to do it properly. That is the way things go in an orderly ABC set-up. So there we have the party of routines, the old Anthroposophical Society. One can belong to it and be a good member. Then there is the free union of individuals who care not a whit for all that sort of thing, who simply want a loose association based on a purely human element. These two streams should now be acknowledged.

I started by giving just a thumbnail sketch of this, a mere indication. That same evening a speech was made, maintaining that it would be the worst thing that could possibly happen, for it would split the Society in two, and so on. But that was the reality of the situation! If a move were to be made that fitted the facts rather than the way people thought—for what they think is seldom as significant as what they are—it had to be the one suggested, for that would fit the realities involved. As I said, a speech was instantly made about it, warning of the terrible consequences that would ensue if anything of the sort were to prove necessary, and so on.

Even in an external, purely spatial sense, the outcome was chaos. The hall was crammed with people huddled in groups, leaving no loopholes to squeeze through between them, and they all stopped me to ask what this or that had meant. The inner chaos of the situation had become outer chaos by eleven o'clock that Tuesday evening when I tried to leave the assembly hall.

I arrived, rather weary, at the place where I was staying. At midnight someone came to fetch me. I wasn't quite on the point of going to sleep. Someone came and said that a meeting was underway down in the Landhausstrasse. I was stopped again on my way to the floor where the meeting was in progress, and drawn into a side-meeting, so that it was nearly one o'clock in the morning by the time I arrived where I was supposed to be. But it was at once apparent that my proposal had been understood after all, quite correctly understood. Now the details could be profitably discussed. It had become clear that something could really be done on the basis proposed.

Certain doubts were expressed, as was perfectly natural. It was said, for example, that there were members who sympathized with the young people and wanted to go along with their aims, but who nevertheless belonged historically to the old society and even held positions in it, which they wanted to keep so they could go on working there.

I said that this could easily be solved. The only problem in the case of individuals who join both sections is to arrange that they pay only one membership fee. Surely some technical means of doing this can be worked out. There should be no question of anyone being excluded from one of the sections because he is a member of the other. In all such matters, we should simply see to it that the realities of a situation have a chance to be recognized.

I went on to say that the various institutions can also accommodate both directions. I can easily conceive the possibility of a Waldorf teacher leaning toward the looser association and becoming part of it while a colleague feels drawn to and joins the more tightly organized group. They will, of course, still work together at the Waldorf School in a perfectly harmonious spirit.

Yesterday some people were wondering how life in this or that branch of the Society would be affected. I asked why adherents of the two groups should not be able to sit beside each other at branch meetings. But the inner realities must always be given a chance to live themselves out. When a thing is conceived in a realistic spirit, there is always a way of working it out, and this makes for unity.

It took only until 2:15 a.m. for the young people to become clear on essentials. There were, however, some white-haired young ones among them who could look back over a span of quite a few decades. It became clear, as Tuesday night changed into Wednesday morning, that the proposal would work.

Wednesday was devoted to discussing these plans. And Wednesday evening witnessed their adoption—I will give you just the résumé, and then add a few supplementary comments to this report.

So there we now have the old Anthroposophical Society with its Committee of Nine as described, and the other looser, freer Anthroposophical Society whose chief striving it is to get anthroposophy out into the world and to work for a deepening of man's inner life.

Tomorrow and the following day I will review the most important aspects of the two lectures I delivered in Stuttgart. They are intimately bound up with the life in the Anthroposophical Society, for the first lecture was on the subject of community building and the second on the reasons why societies based on brotherliness are so given to quarreling.

A provisional committee was formed for the loose association. It was made up of Herr Leinhas, Herr Lehrs, Dr. Röschl, Herr Maikowski, Dr. Büchenbacher, Herr Rath, Herr von Grone, Rector Bartsch from Breslau, and Herr Schröder. You notice that not all of them are extremely young; their number includes dignified patriarchs. So the radicalism of youth will not be the only standpoint represented, but it will certainly be able to make itself felt.

That is the way things came out. Now they need only be rightly managed. The loose association undertook specifically to form smaller, closer communities—to work for anthroposophy exoterically on a big scale, and to work esoterically on a small scale forming communities held together not so much by any set system of external organization as by inner, karmic ties.

These, then, were the two groupings we came out with. I will have something more to say about them tomorrow and the next day. It was a very necessary development! Anything that is alive refuses to let itself be preserved in old, preconceived forms; arrangements must change with and adapt themselves to the living.

You remember my saying as I left for Stuttgart that the Society's whole problem was really one of tailoring. Anthroposophy has grown, and its suit, the Anthroposophical Society—for the Society has gradually become that—has grown too small. The sleeves scarcely reach to the elbows, the trousers to the knees. Well, I won't labor the analogy. The suit looked grotesque, and this was apparent to any wholehearted person who has recently joined the Society.

Now we shall have to see whether this effort to make a new, more fitting garment rather than take the old one apart—for it would certainly get torn—will succeed. It definitely has the inner capacity to do so. We shall have to see whether people develop the strength essential to this way of working. Real life presents very different possibilities from those of theory, and that holds true in this case also. We will have to create something that can really stand the test of life.

Now there we have Herr von Grone, who is a member of both committees, the committee of the free and the committee of the more tightly organized; he will serve on both. Things will work out best if we let everybody function in his own way, either as a patriarch or as a young enthusiast, and if someone wants to be both at once, why should he not be a two-headed creature? It is absolutely vital that people's energies develop freely.

Certain things won't work, of course. I was told about one such situation, where the chairman of a group once had the startling experience of yielding the floor to someone who launched out on a flaming address only to have another person talk at the same time. The chairman said, “Friends, this is impossible!” “Why that?” was the answer. “We're trying to live a philosophy of freedom here! Why should one's freedom be limited by allowing only one person to speak? Why can't several talk at the same time?” You will agree that some things won't work, but fortunately they're not always specifically called for.

I, for my part, am thoroughly convinced that things will work again for awhile. Not for always, though; nothing can be set up for eternity. As time passes we will again find ourselves confronted with the necessity of devising new garments for the anthroposophical organism. But every human being shares that destiny; one can't keep on wearing the same old clothes. An organization is actually never anything more than a garment for some living element. Why, then, should one make a special case of social organisms and try to tailor them for eternity? Everything living has to undergo change, and only what changes is alive. In the case of something as particularly teeming with life as the Anthroposophical Movement we must therefore shape a life-adapted organization. Of course we can't attempt reorganization every single day, but we will certainly find it necessary to do so every other year or so. Otherwise the chairs occupied by the leading members will really become curule seats, and when some people make a specialty of resting on the curule seats, those not occupying them begin to itch. We must find a way to make sitters on curule seats itchy too. In other words, we're going to have to start jostling these chairs a little. But if we find the right way of arranging things, everything will go beautifully.

My dear friends, my intention was to give you a report. I certainly did not feel it to be a joking matter. But things of real life are sometimes just exactly those most suited to a slightly humoristic treatment.

I have already emphasized that the human being must be placed at the center of the considerations that will be incumbent upon you in the near future. If this is done to the fullest extent, many things can be put right in the views of the present, which, as I showed again in the last lecture, must inevitably lead to catastrophes. Now it is a matter of saying a few words, by way of example, to illustrate the things that are connected with this assertion: the human being must now be placed at the center of social considerations and social action.

We have a whole range of buzzwords, phrases, and so on among us. What many people assert before their fellow human beings has gradually become almost exclusively a phrase. We live in an age of phrases. And a reality that is guided and directed by phrases must obviously disintegrate into itself. This is connected with the fundamental phenomena of our present-day development.

Let us take something out of the whole sum of what is present in social life, and let us look at it as it is very often discussed today. Today, we hear from some who want to have a say in social matters that it is important, for example, for the proletarian movement to rise up against the unemployed income, against the unemployed acquisition. - Well, of course, there is always something real behind the assertion of such claims. But mostly something quite different from what the people who very often make such an assertion mean. For it must be clear that only by observing social processes, and not through abstractions, can we discover what is actually meant by “unemployed income” or “unemployed acquisition”. People have expressed themselves about these things in the most diverse ways. There are people, even Bismarck was one of them, who expressed themselves differently – they spoke of “productive classes”, but actually meant working classes – but who were of the opinion that, for example, farmers, tradesmen who work with their hands, and representatives of similar occupations were “productive people”, but that, for example, teachers, doctors and the like were not “productive people”. That what emanates from the teacher is not “productive work”.

Perhaps you know that Karl Marx made an economic discovery which has been much discussed, precisely in order to put the “productive work” that people meant into perspective. This discovery of Karl Marx is the well-known “Indian bookkeeper”. He was the person who, somewhere in a small Indian village, where the other people worked with their hands, sowing, harvesting, picking fruit from the trees and the like, was employed to keep records of these things. And Karl Marx decided that all the other people in this village did “productive work,” but that the hapless bookkeeper did “unproductive work,” and that he lived his unproductive life on the “surplus value” that was deducted from the labor income of the others. And from this unfortunate Indian accountant, a great many deductions are made, which have recently become common in a certain field of economic observation.

Of course, the work of a teacher can be integrated into the social process in exactly the same way as the “unproductive labor” that Karl Marx said the unfortunate Indian accountant performed. But let's look at it this way: a teacher is a skilled person, skilled as a fully human person. He teaches and educates very young children, elementary school children. And for the sake of simplicity, let us assume – the theory is not affected by this – that all the children the teacher educates and teaches become cobblers. And through his skill, by developing abilities in his children through teaching, through which they think wisely, wisely engage in life with their profession as cobblers, and through his practical guidance with all kinds of educational means, he makes his children more skillful; and they now become cobblers who, let's say, make as many boots every ten days as others make in fifteen days. Now, what exactly is going on here? Surely, according to genuine Marxist doctrine, all these shoemakers who have been created are engaged in 'productive labor'. If it had not been for the teacher and his skill, if he had been an unskillful teacher, they would have performed the same productive labor in fifteen days instead of ten. Now, if you add up all the shoes that will be made by these children after they have grown up, in the five days that have been saved by having a skilled teacher, you can say: this skilled teacher has basically made all these boots made, and at least in the economic process, in all that belongs to this economic process, that is, in everything that flows out of it for the maintenance of people and so on, in all this, the teacher was the actual producer. His being actually lives on in the boots made in the five days!

The point is that here one can apply a narrow-minded way of looking at such a thing, and then one will come to call only the cobbler's work “productive work”, and “unproductive work”, that is, work that maintains itself from the surplus value, but the teacher's work. But one distorts all reality with such a way of looking at things.

We can take a different approach that does not tend to one side or the other, but rather looks at the whole process of social life. But if we think in economic terms, purely economic terms, then we have to ask: what exactly is it that the teacher draws for his physical maintenance? Is it different in an economic sense, in other words, is it different in an economic sense from any other form of income? Is it different from anything else that, to use a Marxist term, is 'withdrawn' from purely physical work and, I would add, handed over to another person? In economic terms, it is no different at all! The reason for this is as follows.

Let us assume that what is known as “added value” is used for teachers, then it flows productively into the whole economic process in the way I have just characterized it. Let us assume that it is handed over to a financier, a person who is really called a pensioner and who actually does nothing but what is usually called “cutting coupons”. But does the fact that he cuts coupons exhaust the economic process? Of course not, the man eats and drinks and dresses and so on. He cannot live on the “added value” of what is delivered to him. He lives off what other people produce for him. He is merely a switchboard for labor, for the economic process.

And if you look at the matter quite objectively, you can only say the following: such a person, who lives somewhere as a financing pensioner, through whom the economic processes are switched, is in social life roughly the same as the resting point of a scale, of a balance beam. The resting point of a balance beam must also be there. All the other points move; the one point of rest of the balance beam does not move. But it must be there. Because there has to be a switchover. In other words, this issue cannot be decided at the national economic level. At most, one could say that if the number of these points of rest, these pensioners “cutting coupons”, became too large, then the others would have to work substantially more, work longer. But in reality it is nowhere like that, because the number of pensioners in relation to any total population never comes into consideration at all in this way, and because, in the first place, as we have the social process today, hardly anything would come of it if we were to change it from our present circumstances.

So you can't think about the whole thing like that at all. And if you go through the Marxist literature, you will see that precisely because of the compulsion to blame someone for all the ills of social life, as in the so-called unemployed acquisition, you will see that all the conclusions are inconclusive. Because they don't actually mean anything. They would only mean something if the economic process were to change significantly, if the pensioners did not receive their pensions. But that would not be the case at all. So with this way of thinking, you don't get anywhere near the matter.

Rather, it is a matter of focusing attention on the fact that such resting points are necessary for switching, for turnover in economic life. For there is an added value that corresponds exactly to all of Karl Marx's definitions of added value, and which, in all its functions, corresponds to the functions of Marx's added value, insofar as one thinks only economically: that is the tax burden. In terms of its nature and function, the tax is exactly the same as Karl Marx's surplus value. And the various socialist governments have not exactly proved, where they have appeared, that they have become particularly combative against surplus value in the form of tax payments! But it is precisely in such things that the absurdity of theories is revealed.

The absurdity of theories is never revealed by logic, but always by reality. This must be said by someone who strives to judge from this reality in all situations. As long as one remains in the economic sphere, it is impossible to associate any kind of reasonable meaning with the concept of “surplus value”. As long as we remain within the economic sphere, we are concerned with the realization of economic processes. And these can only be realized if there are control points. Whether these are in the hands of the state or of individual rentiers is only a secondary difference, from a purely economic point of view. Therefore, it is necessary to point out that everything associated with such a concept as “unemployed income” or “unemployed acquisition” is not based on economic thinking at all, but merely on resentment: on looking at the person who has such an “unemployed income” and who is basically regarded as someone who is lazy, who does not work. A legal or even moral concept is simply smuggled into economic thinking. That is the fundamental phenomenon of this matter.

In reality, it is something quite different with these things, namely, that our human life process, our civilization process, could not be maintained at all if, for example, what some people are striving for were to be realized, inventing the phrase “the right to the full yield of labor”. For there is no way to speak of a “full labor yield” when you consider that if I become a cobbler and work more skillfully than I would have worked if I had not had a skilled teacher, any possibility of me vindicating the right to the “full labor yield” is eliminated. For from what does it flow? Not even from the totality of the present! The teacher who taught me may have died long ago. The past is linked to the present, and the present in turn flows over into the future. It is absurd to want to overlook such things with narrow-minded concepts, and to see how the individual achievements of a person fit into the whole economic process.

But something else immediately emerges when one says to oneself: Well, in purely economic terms, there can be no question of a person somehow receiving a “full yield of labor,” because one cannot even grasp the concept. One cannot narrow it down, contour it. It does not exist. It is impossible. But something immediately emerges when one looks at reality. In reality, there are such transition points, such people, to whom the proceeds of others who work physically flow to some extent. Now, let us assume that the person to whom it flows is a teacher, then he does a very productive job in the sense that I characterized it earlier. But let us assume that he is not a teacher, but really a coupon-cutter. Let's start with not one coupon cutter, but two. One of them cuts his coupons in the morning, then lights a few cigarettes after breakfast, reads his morning paper, then goes for a walk, then he eats lunch, then he sits down in his rocking chair and rocks a little, then he goes to the club and plays whist or poker and so on, and so he spends his day. Now let's take another fellow who also clippeds his coupons in the morning, but let's say that then he occupied himself with, well, let's say, setting up a scientific institute, who therefore devoted his thoughts to setting up a scientific institute, which would never come into existence if he couldn't cut coupons, because if it were set up by the people who are there to do the work of cutting his coupons, it would certainly never be set up. He arranges it. And in this scientific institute, perhaps after ten years, perhaps after twenty years, an extraordinarily important discovery or invention is made. Through this discovery or invention, productive work is done in a similar way, but perhaps even more extensively, than the teacher was able to do with his children who became shoemakers. Then there is a certain difference between coupon-cutter A and coupon-cutter B – a difference that is extremely important from an economic point of view. And we have to say: the whole process of coupon-cutting was extraordinarily productive in the context of human life.

The question cannot be decided at all in purely economic terms. It can only be decided if there is something else besides economic life, something that, apart from economic life, separate from economic life, causes people, when they draw their sustenance from the community in whatever way, to give back through their own nature what they ; if, therefore, there is a free spiritual life that inspires people not to become financiers, but to apply their spiritual strength in some way, just as they have it, or to apply their physical strength, just as they have it.

When one looks at things as they really are in real life, one is led to the necessity of the threefold social organism. And above all, such insight into life makes us aware that all the stuff that is often put forward in terms of political economy, even by practitioners, is basically unusable, that something else must finally be put into people's heads, namely a holistic view of life. And it is this holistic view of life that ultimately leads to the threefold social order.

We must therefore endeavor to spread such ideas ever further and further. We must not disdain to point out how short-sighted the practical life of the present day is. We must combine these two activities: on the one hand, present the positive side of the threefold order, and on the other hand, be the harshest critics of what so often exists today as spiritual currents. We must get to know these schools of thought and become harsh critics of them. Only by holding up the absurdities that exist today to people as if in a mirror image will we be able to make progress and get through to them. And what we teach people in this way must at the same time be presented in such a way that they feel how we work with real concepts.

You see, a person who produces boots is most certainly a productive person. But in Marxist terms, a person who, say, produces beauty spots is just as productive. Because if you just look at the performance of physical labor, it is just as much physical labor as the other. What matters is to consider the whole process and to get an idea of how what someone does is shaped into the process of social life. People need to get a sense of these things. It cannot be done any other way.

Now, however, we will be obliged to respect the thought habits of today's people. But they must be clear about one thing: if you go out and talk to people for an hour and a quarter about such things as I am putting before you now, they will start to yawn and they will eventually leave the room, glad that it has stopped, because they are longing for a healthy nap. You think that is difficult, much too difficult! For people have completely lost the habit of following thoughts that are borne by reality. The fact that people have only ever followed abstractions, that they have been accustomed to following abstractions since they were schoolchildren, has made humanity lazy in its thinking. Humanity is terribly lazy in its thinking in the present day. And we have to take this into account, but in a useful way.

That is why we incorporate stories into our lectures about what has already been developed from anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. Maybe we tell people fewer anecdotes! It is very useful for today's lazy humanity to interrupt a difficult lecture with anecdotes from time to time, but we can spend our time better than that. In the meantime, let us tell you about our Waldorf school, about eurythmy, about our college courses, about the coming day, by inserting this in the necessary way into the course of our thoughts. This is something that breaks up the train of thought, which is initially a pleasant change for people - they then need to think less. Because, isn't it true, the essence of the matter can then follow. We can describe for a while how the Waldorf School came about, how it is organized; we can describe how thirty lecturers in Dornach have tried to fertilize the sciences from the perspective of spiritual science in the university courses. When you tell people that science should be fertilized, they don't need to think about how that happens in chemistry, in botany and so on, but they can stick with generally hazy ideas while you talk about it. And then they have time to slip into the thought bed between the thoughts that are put forward. We have again gained the opportunity to talk about some more difficult things in the next five minutes. But the other things are still extremely useful. For example, when we tell people how we created school reports in the Waldorf school, how we tried not to write “almost satisfactory”, “hardly sufficient” - which you can't distinguish at all whether someone has “hardly” or “almost sufficient” - but where we gave each child something like a small biography and a life verse. The people don't need to think much about how difficult it is, that is, they can think about how difficult it is to find a life verse for each child; but if you just say the result, it is painless to accept. So we can tell them what has been practically developed there. And in this way we can also tell people something about the facilities at the Waldorf School, how the building gradually became too small, how we had to build barracks because we didn't have the money to build a proper building. It is useful for people to hear sometimes that we don't have enough money; this can have very pleasant consequences. If we include such things in our reflections, it will be very objective, because it is objective, and will be very justified; but it can also create a pleasant change for the listeners.

Then we can tell about the university courses in Dornach, in Stuttgart. We can weave in that all of this still has to be done today for the most part by the poor Waldorf teachers, that so few people have come together who are really doing something in the sense of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. Because the fact that Waldorf teachers are overburdened three times over is something that people are quite happy to accept, isn't it. Everyone then imagines that they too are overburdened. Well, and in this way we can, by actually speaking of what is already on the outside, show people something at the same time that they may like to hear again and again in between, but what they should also know, what they also need to know.

And then we also talk to them by name about the Day to Come. We try to give them a picture of how this Day to Come is set up. You can see from the brochures that have been distributed how it is set up. We teach people about the Coming Day with the help of the brochures that have been distributed and we tell them: Of course you will find that this Coming Day does not yet fully correspond to the associations about associations – we will talk about this tomorrow – and that it is still very much based on the present economy. But at the same time we say to people: we know that anyway, but it just shows how necessary it is for this economy to change, because no matter how hard we try, we cannot shape the ideal of an association out of the current economic system.

But it is necessary that you see our movement as a whole in your lectures. You should not be embarrassed, on the one hand, to present the spiritual side, the anthroposophical orientation to the people, but on the other hand, to also go into the practical things of the coming day and present all of this to the people. In your lecture, you do not need to make a direct appeal for money; that – I say it in parentheses – can be done by the other person, who is traveling with you and will approach the people only after the lecture; it is better that way. But although I put it in parentheses, that is how it should be done. As I said, you do not need to do it directly in the lecture, to promote the cause. But you can certainly let it be known that, without any selfish purpose behind it, in order to promote what is actually intended by the threefold order, you need, firstly, money, secondly, money, thirdly, money. And depending on which of you, according to the situation, finds this right, you can emphasize the first word money more strongly and then drop the tone or rise with the second tone. This is something that can somehow contribute to the inner formation of the matter.

I am not telling you this to imply anything more than that you have to be considerate of the way something is said. In a sense, when you walk into a room, you should sense whether you have to speak one way or the other. You can sense that, especially when you are among complete strangers. So you will have to take such things into account. If you want to achieve what is to be achieved now, you will not be able to go before the people with a finished concept, but you will have to adapt completely to the circumstances. You will only be able to do that if you approach the design and delivery of your lectures in the way I characterized yesterday. But we must not forget to keep referring back to what we have already achieved in the establishment of the school system, including practical institutions. After all, it is already the case in the present that people need this. And you would do well, especially when describing the threefolded social organism, to use the establishment of the Waldorf school for illustration, and likewise when describing the other economic life, to exemplify again and again what is intended by the coming day. I would like you to remember that the world must be pointed out very sharply to our various institutions, precisely through your lectures.

And behind all this there must be the awareness that from all corners and ends - as I have already said several times in these lectures - the opposition is there and more is to come, and that we do not have much longer time to bring to bear what we want to bring to bear and what must be brought to bear, but that we must tackle things sharply in the near future.

We must not take as an example – and I say this for those who have been in the anthroposophical movement for a long time – the way the anthroposophical movement as such has developed, because it is developing in such a way that its members are all too little interested in what is actually going on in the world. Now is the time to develop a keen interest in what is going on in the world. And we must be quite explicit and also critical of ourselves with regard to what is currently going on in the world today. Therefore, we must take an interest in these events. We must seek to explain the necessity of our movement on the basis of these events. We must repeatedly emphasize how these events are likely to lead modern civilization into decline. For people must learn to understand that if things continue as they usually do today, the decline of modern civilization will certainly result, and that the countries of Europe would at least have to go through terrible times if a foundation for a new beginning is not laid out of a truly active spiritual life and an actively grasped state and economic life.

We must also take away the phrases that are repeatedly uttered in the following way: Yes, all this may be very nice with the threefold order, but to introduce something like that, it would take not decades but perhaps centuries. - It is an objection that is made frequently. But there is no more absurd objection than this. For what is to arise in humanity, especially in the way of social institutions, depends on what people want and what strength and courage they put into their will. And what can naturally take centuries with carelessness and inertia can take the shortest possible time when active forces are applied. But for this it is necessary that we bring into more and more minds what can come from our spiritual science and be derived from observing our other institutions. Do not forget to point out such things as are to be created here in Stuttgart, for instance in the Medical-Therapeutic Institute. For it is also the case that it is precisely from such institutions that people can best learn to understand the fruitfulness of spiritual science, at least for the time being.

And if one can make such a thing plausible to people, there is also the consideration that it would actually be of no use at all for the further development of humanity if, in addition to the old Catholic religion, , the old Protestant creed, and the Jewish, Turkish creed, and so on, and in addition to many a sectarian creed, now also to establish a world view that would be “the anthroposophical” That would certainly have a meaning for people who meet every week, or twice a week, to indulge in such worldviews. It would have a subjective meaning for these people. But it would have no meaning for the world. For the world, only a worldview and outlook on life that directly engages practical questions has meaning. And that is why we find it all too often now that people are quite willing to be told something about the eternal in human nature, about life after death. One can also speak to a larger number of people without them scratching out one's eyes just because one says it, about repeated lives on earth, about the law of karma and so on. But today it is even more useful and important to teach people that anthroposophically oriented spiritual science can contribute something to medicine, for example, to therapy, so that it can be seen how truly for the material world that which one conquers in the spiritual has a certain unique significance. For it is not enough just to rise to the spirit in its abstractness, but it is important to rise in such a way that this is the living spirit, which then has enough strength and power to have an effect on the material.

You should present this thought, this placing of the spirit in material life in the most diverse variations, to people again and again in the eyes of your soul. For the spirit wants to rule matter, not flee from matter. Therefore it is in a certain respect downright nefarious when people like Bruhm, who wrote the little book Theosophy and Anthroposophy, reproach Anthroposophy for wanting to draw into the everyday life what should hover in the heights of heaven, above reality, what should not be drawn down into material reality. One can hardly imagine a greater annoyance for human life than such teachers of the people, who need the lecterns and the universities to teach such stuff to the people. But that is happening today in all, all variants.

And what is particularly on the agenda today is that people say: Yes, anthroposophy may be an attempt to deepen the individual sciences, but anthroposophy has nothing to do with religion, anthroposophy has nothing to do with Christianity. And then people come and want to prove why anthroposophy has nothing to do with religion and Christianity. Then they come up with completely arbitrary concepts that they have of religion and Christianity. And they make it clear that these concepts, which they have of religion and Christianity, must not be challenged!

If only people would at least be truthful! Then one would be able to be a little more lenient with them. If people would come and say: Anthroposophy is now emerging; it speaks from different sources than I have spoken from so far at the theological faculty or in the pulpit. I now only have the choice of either giving up my job, but then I have nothing to eat, that's a fatal thing, or I'd rather stick to my job and reject anthroposophy! One would not exactly take such people very seriously for the cultural life of humanity, but they would speak the truth, just as the Graz law teacher spoke the truth, who proved the freedom of the human will every year before his students by saying: “People have free will!” Because if people had no free will, then they would have no responsibility for their actions. And if they had no responsibility for their actions, then there would be no punishments and no criminal law. But I am a teacher of criminal law. So I would not be teaching criminal law. But now I have to. And because there has to be a me at this university, there has to be a criminal law, so there must also be punishments, and thus there must also be a responsibility of people, and consequently also a free will of people. This is roughly how the Graz law professor taught his students about the freedom of the human will years ago. What he presented was not much different.

And theologians and other people would also act according to this scheme if they said what was true. They could also still cite the other side of the matter, they would then be equally true, and one would then be more lenient, they could still say: I could perhaps also take on the inconvenience of re-founding religion and Christianity. In the case of university professors, it could then happen that they would then have to migrate from the theological faculties, perhaps if they were in a larger number, to the philosophical faculty. If they are already professors, then it is easier than if they want to get into the university. But even if the life food were to be retained, it would still be difficult. But they do not want to go to the trouble and inconvenience of re-establishing the things. But if they just wanted to say these things, then at least they would be honest. Instead, they put forward all sorts of arguments that do not correspond to reality, but are only decorative, intended to cover up reality. We, however, must not be lenient in any way on these points, but must seek out untruthfulness and mendacity everywhere in these points and ruthlessly expose it before the world.

And we must not fail to point out the sloppiness in the thinking of some people, who simply express it by not taking certain assertions with all their moral depth. Not so long ago, someone heard me publicly characterize the mendacity of Frohnmeyer, who simply described something for Dornach in a lying, tendentious way that looks quite different from the way he described it in a tendentious way. And this person said: Well, Frohnmeyer just believed that it looked like that. - That's not what matters to me, to point out precisely that Frohnmeyer is saying something untrue in this case, but rather that Frohnmeyer shows that he makes assertions about something in Dornach that fly in the face of the truth. Anyone who does this in one respect also does it in other respects. He is a theologian. He lectures at Basel University. Theology draws from sources that are claimed to be sources of truth. Anyone who bears witness in this way, as Frohnmeyer does, who describes the statue of Christ as he has described it, shows that he has no concept of how to research the truth from the sources. If it were not for the fact that it is written in the history books when Napoleon was born and died, he could also tell lies about these things if he had to research them. What matters to me is that such people are described in all their corrupting effect on contemporary history, that it is shown that they do not fit into the situation into which they have been placed by the chaotic conditions of the times. On this point, we must be in no way lenient.

That is one of the formalities of your work in the coming weeks.

Good morning, gentlemen! Perhaps someone has also thought of something for today's hour?

Question: How are we to understand the miracles related in the Bible about Moses – the stilling of the sea?

Dr. Steiner: You see, that was based not so much on a sudden miracle as on the fact that Moses was very knowledgeable. He was not just what he is portrayed as in the Bible, but he was actually a student of the Egyptian high schools, the mysteries. And in these schools they taught not only about the spiritual world, but also about the natural world from a certain point of view. Now in the sea there is the time of the ebb and the flow, of such a rising and then again going back, and the thing was just this, that Moses knew how to organize the crossing over the Red Sea so that he went over with his people at a time when the sea had gone back and a sandbank, which had become visible as a result, that is, had been laid bare, could be used to go over. So the miracle is not that Moses dammed up the Red Sea and fought it, but that he actually knew more than the others, that he could choose the time in the right way. The others did not know that. Moses had calculated the matter so that he arrived at just the right time - he knew that it took so long, or rather that it had to go quickly so that one would not be surprised by the sea again. Of course, all of this seemed like a miracle to the others. In these things, one must always make sure that knowledge actually underlies the things, not some other things, but knowledge.

This is the case with most things reported from ancient times. The people were amazed because they did not understand the matter, did not know. But then, when you know that there were very clever people in ancient times too, then you can explain things. Otherwise, there is not much to explain about these things.

Perhaps someone has a question?

Question: Can the spiritual culture that flows from Tibet into the rest of Asia still satisfy these people, or does it fall entirely into decadence?

Dr. Steiner: Well, you see, Tibetan culture is a very old culture, and it is a culture that actually comes from the ancient Atlantic period. You just have to imagine that there was a time when most of Europe was under water, and the water only receded towards Asia. In contrast, there was land where the Atlantic Ocean is today. Where we cross over to America between Europe and America today, there was land. So that was an ancient time when the ratio of land and water was quite different from what it is today.

But now, in the time that lies five, six, seven thousand years back, the same culture was in Asia as on this Atlantic continent, which was thus in the place that is now covered by the sea between Europe and America. Over there in Asia, there was a culture in those days that has been preserved in the clefts, in the subterranean caves of Tibet. This Atlantic culture was, of course, completely submerged when the sea came between Europe and America and Europe rose up; but in Tibet, over there, it was preserved. But now this culture was actually only suitable for those ancient times, where people lived under completely different conditions than today. You just have to imagine that in those days the air was not the same as it is today, that people were not as heavy as they are today, but that people had a much lower weight, that the air was much denser. Actually, in those days the air was always interspersed with a thick fog, which made it possible to live in a completely different way.

Now, writing and reading or anything like that didn't exist back then, but people had signs. These signs were not put on paper. Paper didn't exist. But they weren't put on parchment either; they were scratched into rocks. These rocks had been hollowed out by people, and into the interior of these caves they then scratched, as it were, their secrets; so that one must actually understand the signs they made if one wants to know what these people imagined.

Now you may ask: Why did these people keep it so secret? Yes, you know, the oldest architecture was not at all about building on the outside, but rather digging into the rocks and making dwellings in the rock. So that is the oldest form of architecture. It is not surprising that the oldest form of architecture in Tibet is the same. But such a culture gradually comes to decadence and decline. And what was later created in Tibet is such that it is no longer really useful in the present day, because Tibetan culture is older than Indian culture. Indian culture only emerged after the earth had taken on the form it has today. Tibetan culture is therefore very old. And this Tibetan culture has preserved in a poor form what was previously present in a relatively good form. Thus, the principle of rule in particular has been developed in Tibet in a rather unpleasant form. In Tibet, the one who is to be the ruler actually enjoys divine worship; and this divine worship is basically already prepared. One actually chooses there, I would say, in a transcendental way. The Dalai Lama, who is thus chosen as ruler, comes about in such a way that long before, when the old Dalai Lama is still there and one realizes: Now, this old Dalai Lama may soon die -, a family is determined somewhere, and one says: The new Dalai Lama must come from this family. - That was the case in Tibet in earlier times. It was not a hereditary rule. That was not the case, but a priesthood that actually rules in reality determines a new family from which a Dalai Lama should emerge.

Now, if a child was born into this family, it was kept until the old Dalai Lama died. You can imagine that the greatest mischief was done with this. If the old Dalai Lama no longer suited someone, they simply looked for a child and said: “The soul of the old Dalai Lama must now enter this soul.” But first he had to die. The priesthood took care of that at the right time, and then, for the sake of the people's faith, the soul of the old Dalai Lama entered the child. In this way the people have driven it to the fact that actually the whole nation believed: the same soul that is in any Dalai Lama was already in the Dalai Lama many thousands of years ago. It is always the same soul, they thought. Actually, for the people it has always been the same Dalai Lama; he has only changed the outer body.

It was not like that in the old culture that was there before; but that is quite extraordinary nonsense that has arisen. However, you can see from this that it has gradually become more important for the priesthood to do things in such a way that their rule was secured.

However, this does not prevent us from discovering great scientific secrets that people in ancient times once had, despite the fact that if we manage to decipher these signs that are engraved on the rocks, but to which Europeans have only rarely had access, the priesthood has gradually come to see that it was important to conduct things in such a way as to ensure their rule.

Now it is like this: the same knowledge that was once there, that came to people as if in a dream fog, this same knowledge is to come to people again through anthroposophy. But that cannot happen in the Orient. You see, in the Orient a new knowledge, a new realization, will never come about in the same way as here in Europe, because the Oriental body is not suited to it. The experiments that have to be carried out to achieve the things I have just told you about can only be done in the West, not in the East. But the Oriental is conservative to a degree that the European can hardly imagine. He does not want anything new, and so of course what we are doing here in Europe makes no particular impression on him. If, on the other hand, you can tell him that significant wisdom comes to light from the old crypts, as these rock caves are called, and that is old, then it makes a very powerful impression on him. The Europeans also have a little of this: you only have to look at the higher degrees of the Masonic lodges when you enter them! As for Anthroposophy, well, they are a little interested in that because they are also concerned with supersensible things; but they do not go into it very deeply. If, on the other hand, you tell them: This has been found, this was an ancient Egyptian wisdom or an ancient Hebrew wisdom, they are delighted! They go into it right away, because human beings are such that what is newly found does not make a real impression on them; on the other hand, what is ancient, even if it is not understood, is what makes a very considerable impression on people. Therefore, one can assume that it is quite possible, because it is a matter of ancient wisdom that can be found in Tibet, that it can be used to achieve a certain revival. Because many things have also been lost to the Asians, because the most important Asian culture, Indian culture, was only established later. So much of what Asians do not know could be found in Tibet. Now, the people there do not really have the opportunity to spread the word properly, because the old Tibetan priesthood did nothing to spread it; they just wanted to keep the old rule for themselves. Knowledge is power when it is kept secret. And when the Europeans came to Tibet, they did not understand the things. So there is not much prospect that the real Tibetan truths can be spread; they live on in old traditions. Because the thing is still so that much has just come down to posterity, and that one can already have an idea of what is actually hidden there. But it is difficult to imagine any actual dissemination. The matter is decadent, as you say in the question; but if one goes back to what is written in the crypts, and not to what the priesthood says, then one will be able to get hold of something extraordinary. It will just be extraordinarily difficult to decipher it. Without anthroposophy it is difficult to find. Anthroposophy can decipher it, but does not need to, because it finds the thing itself.

Question: How could Europe do something to turn around such a downward trend in Asia?

Dr. Steiner: That is a very good question! You see, if Europe does not do something, then the world will have to go downhill! Because in Asia, as can be seen from the words I have just said, people hold on to the old, but do not know any progress. You can see that in China. China is at the same stage as it was thousands of years ago. The Chinese had many things thousands of years ago that were only discovered in Europe much later: paper, the art of printing, and so on, they already had there. But they do not accept progress, they keep it in the old form.

The Europeans, on the other hand, when they come to Asia, what do they do? The English brought the Chinese opium and such things in the first half of the 19th century! But the Europeans have actually done nothing right so far to spread any kind of real spiritual life in Asia. It's also difficult because people just don't accept it.

You see, that's where it's interesting: you know, there are also European missionaries; they go over there with European religion, European theology and want to spread European culture in Asia. Yes, that makes no impression on the Asians! Because then these missionaries describe a Christ Jesus to them as they imagine him. The Asian says: Yes, when I look at my Buddha, he has much more excellent qualities! - So that does not impress them at all. They would only be impressed if Jesus Christ were presented as he was here in these lectures some time ago, also in response to your questions. Then, of course, it would make an impression. But the Asian would still be conservative, reactionary, and initially mistrustful.

It is also very strange, gentlemen: You see, there are individual students of the old wisdom. These students in Asia have learned something from Tibetan scholars, sages, Tibetan initiates. The initiates themselves do not deal with the Europeans; but students have dealt with them after all. Yes, sometimes one is quite extraordinarily amazed. I have already told you many things that will have amazed you, such as the influence of the universe on man. If you really want to research that, it takes a very long time. I can truly say: Some of what I can tell you today took forty years before I could say it! Because you can't find it overnight, but you have to find it over the years. Now such things are found. For example, what I have told you about the moon, that it has a population that has to do with the population of the earth in that reproduction is regulated by it. Yes, gentlemen, you really don't find that on the paths that current science takes; nor do you find it overnight, but you do find it over the course of many years. It is so! Then you have it. Yes, but then, when you have it, suddenly a strange light dawns on you about what the students of the oriental initiates say. Before that, you don't understand it at all. People talk, let's say, of spirits of the moon and their influence on the earth. The European scholars say: That's all nonsense, what they say! But when you come to it yourself, you no longer say that it is nonsense, but you are just amazed at what these old minds knew many thousands of years ago, and what has been lost to humanity again! It is even a great impression that one can get: one researches these things oneself with tremendous effort, and then one comes to the conclusion that it has already been known before, and only in a way that is incomprehensible today, sometimes even not understood by those who say it, has come down from ancient times. So one can certainly have a certain respect, a great respect, a great esteem for what was once there.

Now, if the Europeans want to do something in Asia, it would be necessary for them to start by studying anthroposophy! Otherwise they will not be allowed to do anything there. Contemporary European science and technology do not impress the Asians, for they regard contemporary European science as childish, as something that only deals with outward appearances, and they have no need for outward European technology. They say, “Why should we slave at machines? That is inhumane!” They don't find it impressive at all, and they see it as an infringement of their rights when railways and factories are built over there; that's what the Europeans are doing. But they actually hate that over there. So you can't go about it that way either. You also have to learn something from the old days. And in the old days, people actually had a certain spirit for how to proceed.

Do you see why today's European culture should not be able to do something in Asia? After all, one person did manage to do something in Asia with Greek culture! That was in the 4th century BC, before the founding of Christianity: Alexander the Great succeeded. Alexander the Great did manage to bring much of Greek culture to Asia. That is now there inside. What Alexander brought to Asia has even come back to Europe in a roundabout way, through Spain, the Arabs and the Jews! But how did Alexander the Great manage to bring these things to Asia at all? Only by not proceeding as today's Europeans do. Europeans consider themselves the clever people, the absolutely clever people. When they go somewhere else, they say: they are all stupid; so we have to bring them our wisdom. Yes, but the others can't do anything with that. Alexander didn't do that; instead, he first entered into what the people had. He only very slowly, in a small way, let something of his flow into what the others had, appreciated and respected what the others had.

And that is the secret of all successful endeavor: to bring something to the situation. Despite all the things that can be said against the English, despite the fact that it is a sad chapter in English history, for example, that the English brought opium to China out of pure selfishness in order to make money from it, and despite all the other can be said against the English, one must still say this: not exactly in the intellectual realm, but even there – but especially in the economic realm, the English always know to respect what is customary among the peoples to whom they come. They simply know how to respect that! The Germans, for example, respect that the least. The Germans are therefore unhappy in all colonization because they do not even think about what it looks like for the people where they want to have their colonies. They are supposed to adopt what the Germans themselves have in the middle of Europe, head over heels! Of course that doesn't work. That is why it is the case that development has taken this path: England is happy to maintain its colonies, even when the colonists revolt and do all sorts of things – economically, England always retains the upper hand. So the English do understand how to respond to the nature and character of foreign peoples. The English also wage war quite differently from the way the Germans wage war, for example. How does a German imagine waging war against a people? I do not want to speak out against war, but just tell how the Germans imagine it: Well, you just have to go and defeat this nation. The English do not do that, but they watch first, rather they stir up another nation and let them smash each other, and they watch as long as it possibly can, that is, they let the people finish each other. That is how history has always been. That is precisely how this English empire was founded. The others, don't they, never really know which way the wind is blowing. The English have a certain instinct for respecting the peculiarities of foreign peoples. That is why the English have succeeded in achieving such colossal economic superiority. In England, it would certainly never have occurred to anyone to do what has now been done in Germany, namely to introduce the Rentenmark. Of course, there is now a huge shortage of money in Germany. Nobody has any money. But when the Rentenmarks were issued – the so-called stable-value money – people saw it as something terribly clever! Of course, it was the stupidest thing that could have been done. Because as long as every paper money in England is covered by gold, there is no way around it, economically, than to do the same all over the world: to have gold backing for every paper money. If you create money for which there is no gold backing, then this money must either immediately decrease in value, that is, the exchange rate must fall, or if you do it artificially, as you are doing now with the stable-value money, then the goods will become all the more expensive. Isn't that right, now you have a Rentenmark in Germany; it is always worth a Mark. Yes, but, gentlemen, you only get as much as you used to get for fifteen pfennigs, so in reality it is still not worth more than fifteen pfennigs. That it does not fall, that it has “stable value”, that is just an illusion. And so it is: one thinks in Germany, but one has no sense of observing the realities.

You see, there is a very nice anecdote about how different nations study natural history, say, for example, of a kangaroo or some other animal that is in Africa. The Englishman goes to Africa – just as Darwin, in fact, in order to come to natural science, made his trip around the world – and looks at the animal where it really lives. There he can see how it lives, what its natural conditions are. The Frenchman takes this animal from the desert to the zoological garden. He studies it in the zoological garden; he does not observe the animal in its natural environment, but in the zoological garden. But what does the German do? He doesn't care about the animal at all, what it looks like, but he sits down in his study and starts thinking. He is not interested in the thing itself - according to Kantian philosophy, as I told you the other day - but only in what is in his head. Then he thinks about something long enough. And after thinking about it long enough, he says something. But that doesn't correspond to reality.

But this is only relative with regard to the English. For the way in which people in ancient times influenced people is no longer understood in Europe today - how Alexander the Great apparently left everything as it was and only very gradually and slowly did what he had to bring from Greece to Asia. This is no longer understood in Europe. But the Europeans would have to get used to it again. Therefore, the first thing the Europeans would have to learn is not just to carry over to Asia what they already have, but above all, the Europeans should learn very carefully what the Asians know; then they would know, for example, what Tibetan wisdom is. Then they would not tell people in the old way, but in the new way, but would use what Tibetan wisdom is. And then, if they respected the culture of others, they would achieve something with it. That is what Europe must learn right now. Europe is actually a large theoretical structure. Europe theorizes, but basically has no practice. It is true! Europe also does business in a theoretical way, just by thinking things up. That works for a while. It is not always possible in the long run. But Europe is particularly unhappy in the spread of spiritual culture because it does not understand how to engage with others. Here, too, spiritual science must bring about a change of heart. But how can that be done today? You see, gentlemen, the point of anthroposophy is to act in the spirit of a true practice of life. Well, you have to start somewhere. What have I done myself, gentlemen? I once wrote about Nietzsche - and people believed that I was now a follower of Nietzsche. If I had written as people would have wanted me to after some of my views, I would have written: Nietzsche is a great fool, Nietzsche has asserted this and that folly, one must fight Nietzsche to the death, and so on. I would have written a pamphlet against Nietzsche; I could have ranted almost as much as Nietzsche himself ranted, but it would have been of no use at all! I took up Nietzsche's teaching; I presented what Nietzsche himself said and only let Anthroposophy flow into it. Today people come and say: He used to be a Nietzschean, now he is an Anthroposophist. - Precisely because I am an Anthroposophist, it has been written about Nietzsche as it has been written by me! Then I wrote about Haeckel in the same way. Of course I could have written: Haeckel is a blatant materialist who understands nothing about the spirit and so on. Yes, gentlemen, in that case nothing would have been done; but I took Haeckel as he is, and did the same with everything. I did not deny the facts, but took things as they are. And so, at least through anthroposophy, we have a beginning of what we must do if we are to carry culture over to Asia! Above all, one would have to know exactly what the ancient Brahmins claimed and what the Buddhists claim. One would then have to present Buddhism and Brahmanism to the people, but also incorporate what one considers to be correct. This is how, for example, the disciples of Buddha himself did it. Shortly before the emergence of Christianity, Buddha's disciples spread Buddhism in Babylon, over by the Euphrates and Tigris, but in the way I have just described to you, by speaking to people in such a way that they could understand something. In ancient times, it was not at all a matter of pushing through theories just for the sake of being stubborn. The Asians do not understand European obstinacy at all. It is quite the case that, for example, the relationship between the Brahmins and the Buddhists is not the same as that between Catholics and Protestants. Today, Catholics and Protestants teach their doctrines in a purely theoretical way: one believes this, the other something else. There is hardly any other difference between the Brahmins and the Buddhists than that the Brahmins do not worship the Buddha and the Buddhists do. And so they actually get along with each other in a completely different way than Protestants and Catholics get along with each other in Europe.

It is now the case that you have to have a sense of reality if you want to spread culture! I would say that you can literally sweat blood when you see how Europeans are doing business in Asia today. In the process, everything that Asia has is destroyed, and nothing comes of it. Now, of course, the real misery is that Europe itself is in misery and that it is very difficult to imagine how Europe is to get out of this misery. The great misery of this is that Europe itself is now in decline, that Europe cannot really get out of all the cultural damage it is in unless people decide to embrace a real spiritual culture. Many still do not believe this today. And so it is the case today that all the people who have come to Europe from Asia, for example, have really found: These Europeans are actually all barbarians.

You have probably also heard that all sorts of Asians, cultured Asians, clever Asians, are wandering around Europe; but they all think that the Europeans are actually barbarians. And they have this opinion because so much of the old science of the spirit, of the old knowledge of the spirit, has been preserved in Asia that what the Europeans know seems childish to them. Everything that is so admired in Europe seems terribly childish to people in Asia!

You see, the Europeans have developed in such a way that even their great technical advances are actually all terribly young. For example, it is interesting that when you go to certain museums where there are remains from ancient European times, you can sometimes be terribly amazed. You can be amazed, for example, in Etruscan museums, where the remains of what was Etruscan culture are, a culture that once existed in Europe, at how skilled people were, for example, in dental treatment. They were already treating teeth quite skilfully, inserting a kind of filling, and that was made of stone! All this was lost in Europe, and a barbarism really did occur in Europe. By the time we speak of the migration of peoples – in the 3rd to 7th centuries AD – everything in Europe had actually been barbarized. And it was only after this time that things were conquered again. Of course, today we are terribly surprised at all the things that have been achieved! But they were already there once. Where did they come from back then? Back then they more or less came over from Asia! The Asians then also lost the external technology they had. The Chinese still have some of it. But in spiritual culture itself, the Asians are in fact still ahead of the Europeans today. And if we in Europe can't find anything better than what the Asians have in spiritual culture, why then should we have missions and the like in Asia at all? That is not necessary at all!

So the spread of culture in Asia only makes sense again when Europe itself has a spiritual science. If Europe can give Asians spiritual science, then perhaps the Asians will also accept that European technology be brought to them. But now, don't they just realize that the Europeans don't know anything except this technology. And it is precisely the case among Asians that it makes a great impression on them when, for example, they come to Germany - when a real Asian, who is educated, learned, comes to Germany today; it has been seen, for example, in well-educated Chinese scholars: when they come to Germany and they are told about Goethe and Schiller - they pay attention! The scholar says, “Yes, Goethe and Schiller were not as clever, not as wise as the old Asian personalities were, but still, there was something of spirituality.” But in the 19th century, all that quickly diminished, all that quickly disappeared. And today, the Chinese scholar sees in the German, for example, a terrible barbarian. He says, “With Goethe and Schiller, German culture has perished.” The fact that the railroad was invented in the 19th century does not impress him. He is still somewhat impressed by Goethe's Faust, but he still maintains that his great Asian personalities were much wiser. This is something that the European must realize first of all. He should realize that the Asian does not care about such concepts as the European has; he does not care about them at all, but the Asian wants images, like the images in the monasteries of Tibet. The Asian wants images. These abstractions, these concepts that the European has, the Asian does not want them, they hurt his brain, he does not want them.

And a symbol like the swastika, for example, the so-called swastika – this symbol was an ancient sun symbol – it was widespread throughout Asia. The old Asians still remember that. Certain Bolshevik government officials were clever enough to use this ancient swastika as their symbol, just like the German nationalists. This makes a much greater impression on the Asians than anything that Marxism is. Marxism consists of concepts for thinking; that does not impress people. But such a sign does impress people. And if you don't understand the people, if you don't engage with them, but come to them with something that is completely alien to them, then you will achieve absolutely nothing among them.

So it is that here too it is shown that in Europe everything depends on having spiritual knowledge, a spiritual science.

Perhaps you have also heard that a large two-volume book has been published by a certain Spengler – I have heard that he even gave a lecture in Basel once – a book by Oswald Spengler: 'The Decline of the West', that is, the decline of Europe and America. The man shows how everything that is now there in so-called European culture must perish. That is obvious. He regards it as sick, it must perish. Well, gentlemen, what is there today in external culture must also perish. Something new must be built from within, from the spirit. But the external must perish. That is why the book is about the decline of the West. You can hardly say anything against the book, against what he says about the decline of the West, about what is necessarily said in terms of outward appearances. But now the Spengler comes to what he regards positively, what presents itself to him as new. And what does he show, gentlemen? What is that in Oswald Spengler? That is Prussianism! So that all of Europe must adopt Prussianism; that must be the culture of Europe's future, Spengler believes.

Well, I don't know what he said in Basel, because I can't imagine that it would have made a big impression on the Swiss if he had shown that Prussianism must come out of this downfall! But you see that a very important person, a clever person, like Spengler, can very well see: yes, what is there must perish; but the future must be one of brutal force. He says this quite openly: in the future there can only be the brutal, powerful conqueror – that is what he means.

Now, if the most widely read book is one of the most widely read books in Germany is of course one of the most widely read books in Germany, that of Oswald Spengler - and the Oriental, the Asian, compares what is in it with his own intellectual culture, and has to say to himself: That is one of the smartest people in Europe! And then he considers his own highly developed spiritual science, albeit in a fantastic, ancient way, and says: Yes, what kind of people are these, these most intelligent people in Europe? They can't bring us anything!

Well, gentlemen, I now have to go on a trip to Paris; I will let you know when we will continue this matter.

The Goetheanum ^NoteNum in the Swiss town of Dornach, near Basel, is intended to be a place of higher learning for the cultivation of a science and art rooted in the spirit. All sectarian aspirations are to be excluded here. It is not intended as a new religion; but religious deepening, which is not hostile to any confession, can be promoted by an understanding of the spiritual world and by the practice of a spirit-filled art.

The construction of the Goetheanum already serves this purpose. It is not a building constructed in a historically handed-down art form. Here one beholds a new style, which may be found to be still imperfect in its kind, perhaps even still burdened with artistic errors; but it has emerged from the striving of the present day, which is directed towards a new style just as the human spirit once longed for Greek or Gothic or Baroque forms. Today there are many people in all parts of the civilized world who are convinced of the necessity of such a renewal of style. These convictions should find a center at the Goetheanum.

The architecture, painting and sculpture of this building are all inspired by this idea. The dynamics and symmetry of ancient architecture were to be brought out of the mathematical-mechanical sphere and into that of an organic-living building concept. The plastic form was to be fertilized from the world of exact observation, and the color harmony was to be transformed into a revelation of the spiritual through the experience of such observation. What was striven for in this way may account for the still imperfect character of the Goetheanum building today, but it can also become the starting point for a comprehensive will in this direction in the future.

This building provides the setting for scientific, artistic, educational and social work. The science cultivated here aims at a true spiritual knowledge. It does not stand in opposition to the recognized sciences of the present day; it allows them to express their insights where their legitimate methods must speak. But it comes to the conclusion that there are true spiritual scientific methods alongside the natural scientific ones. These do not consist of external experimental work, but in a development of the powers of the human soul that are hidden from ordinary consciousness. But this method does not lead to nebulous mysticism, but to abilities that work just as precisely as mathematical-geometric ones. That is why one can speak of an exact supersensible seeing. The mathematical ability works exactly; it develops in an elementary way in the human soul; this seeing works just as exactly; it must be attained by the human being through self-education.

For anthropology, this vision progresses scientifically from the knowledge of the transitory human nature to the immortal essence of the human being; for cosmology, the same occurs for the spiritual laws of world evolution. A comprehensive literature of the anthroposophical movement provides information about the details of the development of exact supersensible vision. There one finds the paths from anthropology to anthroposophy, from cosmology to cosmosophy.

Of the arts, only eurythmy and some declamatory and dramatic arts can be cultivated alongside music. Eurythmy, which is already being cultivated at the Goetheanum and in many other places, is not to be confused with the mimic or dance-like arts. It is based on drawing movements from the depths of the human being. These movements are drawn from human nature in the same way that nature draws language. Eurythmy is a visible language and can be artistically shaped in the same way as audible language by the poet. It then accompanies declamation, recitation and music. Poetry and music thus receive a revelation that they do not yet have through sound and tone alone.

Efforts are also being made to cultivate other arts at the Goetheanum. In particular, mystery plays are to be performed soon.

The Goetheanum also has an educational impact on young people. In Dornach itself, only children who are beyond compulsory school age can be given individual lessons. However, there is the prospect that a complete primary school can soon be established in Basel. We have such a school in Stuttgart through the Waldorf School. This was founded in 1919 by Emil Molt with about 150 children. Today it has around 700 pupils. There are about 35 teachers. Children are accepted there from the age of six, and the teaching and education is intended to continue until they are accepted into university. So far, eleven classes have been set up. The intention is to add another class each year. If conditions permit, a kind of kindergarten will be added later.

The education and teaching are based on the complete knowledge of the human being that can be provided by a true spiritual science. This pedagogy does not contradict the principles of proven educators of the most recent times. It is in full agreement with them. But it works with the knowledge that a true science of the spirit can provide. No one dogmatic direction, not even anthroposophy, should be given undue emphasis; instead, spiritual knowledge should flow into the pedagogical methodology; everything that the teacher can know through spiritual knowledge should become an art of teaching and educating. In each school year, exactly what the human nature of the child requires is cultivated. Spirit, soul and body develop in complete harmony. For example, in the early school years, it is necessary to steer pedagogical methods away from the abstract and intellectual and towards an artistic approach to teaching reading and writing. In this way, the children's capacity for concentration is far better utilized than in the conventional teaching methods.

In the Waldorf school there are children from all classes of the population; they receive a general human education and instruction.

How the spiritual science of the Goetheanum would like to influence social life can be seen in my book “The Core Points of the Social Question in the Necessities of Life Today and in the Future”. The educational work is a beginning of this effectiveness. It will depend on the understanding that the Dornach idea finds in wider circles how it will prove effective for the most diverse areas of life.

The willingness of many individuals to make sacrifices has been needed to bring about what can be found in Dornach so far. But the sacrifices that these personalities have made in abundance seem to be coming to an end in the near future; and the work in Dornach should be able to continue. To do this, it is urgently necessary that the beautiful interest that the Dornach idea has so far found in a not inconsiderable circle should extend to very wide circles, and that it should be recognized by them as a necessity of the time. This will only be possible if the Goetheanum in Dornach becomes a center where the spiritual, artistic and educational work characterized here can be carried out continuously in such a way that people will gather there from time to time to learn about the Goetheanum idea in theory and in practice. Then it will be independently cultivated by them in other places and, from its imperfect beginning, can be brought to ever more perfect stages in the civilized world. Such centralization and dissemination will be necessary if the activity of the personalities working in Dornach and Stuttgart, who are now called to the most diverse places to speak about the Goetheanum idea, is not to be too fragmented.

• NoteNum. This essay has been published before in the English journal “Anthroposophy”.

The two previous lectures dealt with important questions relating to the nature and destiny of man. We heard that the human physical body and ether-body are not connected merely with the external world perceived by the senses and that this bodily nature of man can only be understood aright when we also recognise its relation with the Zodiac. And we then tried to understand how the heaven of the fixed stars and the planetary spheres work upon what lies within the outer covering of man, shaping and imbuing it with life. In the last lecture we also heard how the inner, spiritual core of man's being is related to the world of the higher Hierarchies. It was indicated that this connection with the world of the higher Hierarchies becomes especially noticeable when we observe how in his physical life on Earth, man can achieve union with the spiritual world through morality, religious devotion and love for his fellow-men; in this way he enables his Guardian Angel so to order his descent at the end of his life between death and a new birth that he again acquires the full power of individuality and is able, as a free individual, to take hold of his human nature. We also heard that if a man has not established this relation to the spiritual world in some incarnation, his link with his nation, for example, is of a purely external kind, and that this, in its extreme form, leads to chauvinism.

Such studies show us that man's life can only be truly understood when the other side, too, is considered, that is to say, the life stretching between death and a new birth. As soon as we come to study the inner nature of man, this life between death and a new birth must be taken into consideration.. For life here on the Earth is in truth a reflection of the life between death and a new birth. Life in matter is the bodily life and what we have developed in the world of spirit-and-soul before birth expresses itself in this bodily life.

What we must acquire anew, what must be built up anew in the core of our being, is the element appertaining to the will, and in a certain respect also to the life of feeling. The faculty of thinking that is bound up with the head—this we bring with us from the spiritual world—to the extent to which thinking is unmixed with feeling. Our thinking faculty per se comes with us at birth into physical existence and we have only to develop it during physical life or allow it to be developed by education. What we mainly acquire in the new incarnation through intercourse with the outer world are the qualities inherent in feeling and in will, which for this reason play an extremely important part in education.

In the sphere of education, if through our own short-comings as teachers we are incapable of helping the child to think properly, we may leave undeveloped much that by virtue of his previous incarnations he could have brought to expression. If, however, we are unable to work on the child's life of feeling and of will through our natural authority and our example as teachers, then we fail to impart to him what he ought to receive in the physical world, and thus we do injury to his subsequent life after death. In the modern world this is a cause of deep pain to anyone who understands these things. In the world of education to-day people insist upon the importance of the child being made to use his brain, upon the cultivation of his intellect. True, much that the child brings with him through birth is brought out by these means. But it can only be of real use when earthly life, too is presented to the child in the right way, that is to say, when we are able through example and authority to impart to him the intangible qualities belonging to feeling and to will. We injure the child's eternal life if we fail to cultivate in him the right kind of feeling and. will.

The faculty of thinking which we bring with us at birth, comes to an end here, in the material world, it dies with us. Only what we cultivate through feeling and will—which is nevertheless unconsciously permeated with new thoughts—this and this only we take with us through the Gate of Death. In our present very difficult times, religion, education, indeed every domain of mental and spiritual life must begin to take account of man's eternal nature, not merely of human egotism.

Religions of the present day speculate far too much upon human egotism. On the one side they encourage inertia by not spurring men on to acquire those things which are eternal by inner individual effort in the life of feeling and of will; and on the other side they enhance egotism by speaking only of eternal life after death, not of what was there before birth or conception and has come down with us into the physical world. I have said before that this life before birth is connected with selflessness in man, whereas human egotism comes into play whenever mention is made of the life after death. Life after death assumes an egotistic form in the religious concepts of to-day. The idea is put before man in such a way that his longings are satisfied. When the religions believe that they have helped the egotistic life of soul in man, they think they have done what is expected of them. But through a truly spiritual understanding of the world, mankind must be brought to realise how essential it is for the whole life of the human being to be viewed in the light of eternity, free from every trace of egotism and moulded accordingly by those whose task it is to teach and educate.

Now this has a significant bearing upon public life too, and it is of this that I want to speak to-day. For it is in the highest degree necessary that what we gain from an anthroposophical knowledge of higher worlds should be carried into actual life, that we should know how to bring it to expression in life. Abstract theories are really of little use. Life on the Earth is many-sided, full of variety. If, for example, we consider the life of the peoples, it is not only obvious that Indians differ from Americans or Englishmen, but Swedes are often said to differ from Norwegians although they live in such near proximity. We cannot let ourselves be guided entirely by general principles; concrete, individual conditions prevail everywhere and it is these that are important. It is just these individual conditions that we shall fail to recognise if we do not take our start from the Spiritual. Modern man does not really know the world. He talks a great deal about the world but he does not know it, for he is unaware that the soul-and-spirit extends into physical existence and that, fundamentally, this physical existence is governed by the Spiritual. This knowledge is not acquired by studying abstract, general principles. These abstract principles are often perfectly correct, but they do not carry us very far in the world as it actually is.

Certainly it is quite correct to say: ‘God rules the world.’ But in face of the manifold variety of the world it is purposeless to keep repeating: ‘God rules the world in India, God rules the world in England, God rules the world in Sweden, God rules the world in Norway.’ Certainly, God rules the world everywhere, but for the purposes of life in its immediate reality, it is necessary to know how God rules the world in India, in England, in Sweden, in Norway. In spiritual study the individual conditions must be observed in every case. Of what use would it be, for example, to take a man into a Geld, show him a plant with yellow flowers and round petals and merely tell him, “That is a plant”—and then take him to a plant with thorns and pointed, tapering petals, repeating: “That is a plant.” It is the specific and individual properties of the plant that must be made clear to him. But in spiritual matters man has become so easygoing and slack that he is content with general principles. He only wants to hear: ‘God rules the world,’ or ‘Man has a Guardian Angel’ and he feels no desire for detailed knowledge of how life is differentiated in the various regions of the Earth, or how its various manifestations have been influenced by the spiritual world.

This, then, will be the theme of the lecture.

It is precisely in these days of tumult, when people all over the world are so utterly at sea in public affairs, when congresses and conferences produce no result, and in spite of high-sounding programmes, men disperse without having come to any real decision—it is precisely now that deeper questions should be raised concerning all that is revealing itself from the spiritual world in the different regions of the Earth.

Think of the peninsula which you, together with the Swedes, have as your earthly dwelling-place. There is something about it that presents a kind of riddle to those who do not live in Sweden or Norway, as well as to those who actually live here. There was certainly a great difference in the way in which since 1914, let us say, you thought about the tumultuous events going on in the world. These events have struck their blows in manifold ways but man to-day is largely unaware of their effects; he does not realise what deeper forces have been and are in operation. Looking down to Middle Europe, to the South of Europe, to Africa, even to regions of Asia, the events will have seemed to you to be the direct expression of violent, elemental passions, whereas up here you were merely experiencing the consequences and reverberations of those events. People up here in the North may well have been perplexed, for it really was as though men had suddenly become frenzied with desire to tear one another to pieces. Those who were only onlookers must certainly have been perplexed when they thought about these happenings more deeply.

But such things cannot be explained by studying only the one period—even a period fraught with happenings as momentous as those of recent years. True, someone may say that it seems to him as though he had lived through centuries in these few years, but in general there will only be a very gradual realisation that this is actually so. Most people are living and thinking to-day exactly as they did in 1914. In countries like these in the North, this is in a way understandable. But that it is also the case in Middle Europe is terrible. The normal feeling would be one of having lived through events which would otherwise have come to pass only in the course of centuries. Everything was compressed into a few short years. Events like those of 1914-1915 embraced within a brief space of time as much as about ten years of the Thirty Years War, and a measure of illumination can only be shed upon them when they are studied in a much wider historical perspective.

From the vantage-point of your Northern peninsula you will be able to realise that it is only since the beginning of the present epoch that things have been happening South of you in which your participation has been different from that of the peoples who live in the South of Europe, in Western Asia, or in Middle Europe. There has really been an utter contrast between the South and the North of Europe in this respect.

I want you to think of the fourth century A.D., or rather of the period which reaches its climax in that century. In the South, on the Greek peninsula and especially on the Italian peninsula—also in the life of Middle Europe which was in contact with Italy—you see the spread of Christianity. But something else as well is to be perceived. Christianity makes its way from the East into the Pagan world of Europe, expressing itself in many different forms. When we consider the early centuries, the first, second and even the third centuries, we find the old, inherited wisdom being brought to bear upon Christianity. Efforts are made to understand Christianity through the Gnosis, as it is called, to interpret Christianity in the light of the highest form of wisdom. A change comes about in this respect, but not until the fourth century, just at the time when Christianity begins to spread more towards the regions of Middle Europe. The Gnostic conceptions, the wisdom-filled conceptions of Christianity now disappear. A writer like Origen who wants to introduce something of the old Gnostic wisdom into Christianity is branded as a heretic: Julian, the so-called Apostate, who wants to unite the old pagan wisdom with Christianity, is ostracised. And finally Christianity is externalised by the deed of Constantine into the political form of a Church. In the fourth century, that which in Christianity had once been quite different, those secrets which were felt to need the illumination of the highest wisdom if they were to become intelligible—all this begins to take on a more superficial character. Men are called upon to lay hold of Christianity in a more elementary way, with a kind of abstract feeling. Christianity makes its way from the South towards the North. It is, of course, true, that from the fourth to the fifteenth centuries, the Christian life which develops in the South and especially in Middle Europe, is rich in qualities of soul, but the Spiritual in its living essence, has receded. The Gnosis is regarded as an undesirable element in Christianity... There you have one or two cursory flashlights upon happenings among the peoples of Europe more towards the South.

Christianity spreads out, finds its way into the Greek world, the Roman world, into the life of Middle Europe, and there, in a certain sense it is stripped of spirituality. Think now of your Northern world in the third and fourth centuries, that is to say in the same early centuries of the post-Christian era. External history gives no true account of the conditions then prevailing. This period must be studied with the help of Anthroposophy. In connection with the European Folk-Souls this was done here some years ago (1910) but to-day we will think more of the external character of the peoples.

At the time when, in the South, the Spirit withdrew more and more towards the East—that is to say, shortly after the period I have described—the old Athenian Schools of Philosophy were closed and the last philosophers of Athens were obliged to make their way to the East, where they attached themselves to the mysterious academy of Gondi Shapur from which at that time a remarkable spiritual life was spreading via Africa and Southern Europe towards the rest of Europe, deeply influencing the spiritual life of later times. Yet it can truly be said that there, in the South, men looked back to a lofty spirituality they had once possessed.. The mighty Event of Golgotha had taken place. In the first centuries it had still been found necessary to understand the Mystery of Golgotha with the help of this sublime spirituality. This spirituality had been gradually swept aside; the human element had more and more taken the place of what may be called the working of the Divine in the life of man.

The Gnosis still helped man to realise the existence of the Divine-Spiritual within him. This Divine-Spiritual reality was more and more put aside and the human element brought to the fore. In this respect much was contributed by those peoples who took part in the migrations. In their migrations towards the South, in their conquests of the Southern regions, the Germanic peoples of Middle Europe who brought with them souls more naturally bound to the physical, contributed to this repression of the Spiritual. For they did not understand the old spirituality and brought a more fundamentally human influence to the South. And so the lofty primeval wisdom which had once been alive in men receded from the spiritual culture of the West. And at the same time when this repression of the Spiritual was taking place—in the third and fourth centuries A.D.—we find that up here in the North, teachings about the Gods were being spread among men.

In those days human beings who were inspired in an instinctive way were held in high esteem. These were times which had long since passed away for the Southern people. Up here in the North it still happened that here and there a man or a woman living in isolation would be sought out and listened to, when in a mysterious way, through faculties arising from their particular bodily constitution, they gave revelations concerning the spiritual worlds. These faculties were a natural gift in certain individuals who worked in this way among their fellows. And when the people were listening attentively to these isolated seers, they realised, when they went into the hut of one of these ‘God-intoxicated,’ ‘God-revealing’ men or women, that it was not really the physical man or woman to whom they were listening, but that it was the Divine-Spiritual itself which had descended and was inspiring such individuals in order that they might give forth the teaching of the Gods to their fellow-men.

It is very striking for the anthroposophical student of European history to find that the men of the North were still so constituted as to be able to receive divine teachings, to feel that the Gods—the Beings of the higher Hierarchies—were still living realities among them; whereas in the South, during the same period, the Spirit is becoming weaker and weaker and the human element which man brings to expression in his life on the physical Earth comes to the fore and supersedes the Divine. So it was in the decisive fourth century, when the men of the South were becoming more and more eager for human doctrine.

These individual revelations, springing as they did from obscure depths of spiritual life must be taken in all seriousness. It is verily as if in those times the Gods moved as teachers among the still childlike peoples of the North. This condition which was still present in a particular form in the North during the first centuries of the Christian era had long since vanished in the South. But it is a remarkable and significant fact in the destiny of the peoples that the men of the North became for the men of the South, the bearers of what had been learnt from the Gods —not from men.

This must be taken earnestly. The people who belonged, in the main, to the population of the West of your peninsula, whose descendants are the Norwegians of to-day, journeyed towards the West, towards the South West, and as a result of their wanderings, their sea-voyages and conquests, their influence reached right down to Sicily and North Africa The sons of the Gods went to the sons of the World, bringing them what they had learned from their Gods.

It is an interesting chapter of history to study the migrations of the Northern peoples towards the South West and to see how—in continual metamorphosis, of course—the teachings of the Northern Gods spread towards the South West, deeply influencing the British Isles, France, Spain, Italy, Sicily and North Africa. Moreover, the effect of this influence is perceptible even to-day. The Roman, Latin form of life which makes its way from the South towards the North is permeated with the Northern influence. Whatever consciousness of the Divine has remained in the stream of civilisation from the South is here influenced by the Northern teachings of the Gods. But it takes on a peculiar character which is not fully noticeable until we look towards the Eastern side of this Northern peninsula—towards Sweden.

We need remind ourselves only of one fact—how the peoples of Eastern Europe turned to the Vareger, and how in the East of the Northern peninsula the trend is more towards the East. It is a really remarkable picture. The form of life that later on tends more towards the civilisation of Norway, streams towards the South West, and the life that later on tends towards the civilisation of Sweden, streams towards the South East. Everywhere, of course, there are the teachings of the Northern Gods, but they are presented in different ways.

The peoples who later on became the Norwegians, carry the element of activity, of strength, of enthusiasm, towards the South West. In this way the languishing Latin culture is stimulated and imbued with life. The influence of the Northern Gods in these migrations is such that it is a stimulus to activity in the whole life of the peoples. This is apparent everywhere and it is a most fascinating study.

But we also see what is happening in the East of this peninsula.—It is of course influenced by geographical conditions, but these geographical conditions are also reflected in the character of the people, for the human being does not grow out of the Earth but is born on the Earth, he comes down from world of soul-and-spirit and there is a real difference between being born as a Norwegian or as a Swede. We shall not get anywhere by simply saying that the geographical conditions are such and such, but we must question further as to why one soul has the urge to become a Norwegian, and another a Swede. But now think of the remarkable character—and this applies even at the present day—of the Eastern Scandinavian, the Swedish impulses which make their way towards the East.

These impulses stream towards the East but as they advance they are everywhere deflected. They do not become really active. They cannot maintain their stand against what is brought over from the East, first by other Asiatic peoples and later by the Mongols and Tartars, nor against the early, more characteristically Eastern form of Christianity. This stream flows towards the, South East but meets with obstacles everywhere and takes on a more passive character. The impulse as a whole is deeply influenced by the North. But what streams from the West of the Northern peninsula towards the South brings activity everywhere; whereas the influence that makes its way towards the East, is seized by the inactive, the more reflective element of the East and its own activity is in a way blunted.

As the Northern Gods send their impulses towards the West, they unfold, paramountly, their nature of will. As they send their impulse towards the East, they unfold their life of reflection, their contemplative nature.

External wars and conflicts are ultimately only the material images of what takes place in the way I have just indicated. Those who are abstract theorists, who view the whole world from the standpoint of some theory—and the empiricists of to-day are fundamentally the greatest theorists of all, for they never get down to realities, they think about things instead of trying to know them from inside—these theorists will bring forward all sorts of characteristics displayed by the Norwegians and the Swedes. The inhabitants of these countries themselves often emphasise the existence of outward divergencies simply because people to-day will not penetrate to the depths of human nature in order to acquire a real knowledge of life. But life must be observed in the way indicated in the two lectures I have given here. External life must be viewed not only from the standpoint of life between birth and death, but also from the standpoint of life between death and a new birth; we must be mindful not only of those things which satisfy the egotism of the human being who merely wants to be happy after death and because he still has physical life before him, does not trouble about the life before birth. We must study how we can apply in this earthly life what we have brought with us through birth from worlds of soul-and-spirit.

Then we begin to see that there are connections in the life of men and in the life of the peoples which are only revealed when we perceive what man is and has become through many earthly lives, when we have knowledge of the periods he spends between death and a new birth.

A most remarkable connection is then revealed, helping us to understand what comes to pass on Earth. In the external national character of the Norwegian of the present day there are traits which have been inherited from those men who once migrated towards the South West and by their revelations of the Gods poured life and activity into the Roman-Latin form of civilisation. At that time something developed in the great plan of the world which gave the Norwegians their special character, their particular task. And those who are born in Norway to-day will understand their destiny and task in the world as a whole, only if they look back with spiritual understanding to the times when Norway was able to develop in a particular way, when the Northern people went forth on their migrations, their raids and their campaigns of conquest towards the South West, to fulfil a task on Earth. The task sprang out of the character of the people who inhabit these countries. Their character, it is true, was different in those times but something remains as a heritage in the present-day Norwegian and endows him with certain faculties which are important from the point of view of man's eternal life, of man's immortality.

From the Eastern part of this peninsula where the Swedish character has developed, the old teachings of the Gods were carried towards the East, to men whose own religious doctrines had been preserved in a certain mystical, oriental form. What was more a revelation from Nature met with little response in the East; those who wandered towards the East, therefore, were destined to lead a more contemplative life.

But this again has left a heritage which has set its stamp upon the character of the people. And if we are to understand the western and the Eastern parts of the Scandinavian peninsula, we must look back to what these peoples have experienced through the centuries, realising what they have become to-day as a result of these experiences. We have every reason at the present time to think about these things. It is, after all, quite easy to realise in an elementary way that spiritual forces must be working in the world, in the whole international course of events, in the whole racial life of man, and that the missions of each particular people must be understood in the light of spiritual knowledge.

Now when the power of super-sensible cognition is brought to bear upon this connection between the tasks of the modern Norwegians and Swedes and the course of their historical evolution, remarkable things come to light. Norwegians have a definite gift—nor does this gift depend upon actual birth into a Norwegian milieu. What develops in the life of Norway can be seen even in the physical world; it can be described by anthropologists, historians, or even journalists. Their statements will be more or less correct but will give no true account of the forces at work in the depths of the human soul. For man has a mission not only here on Earth; he has a mission also in the spiritual worlds after death. And this mission in the spiritual worlds after death takes shape here, on the Earth.

What we experience in the period immediately following death is a consequence of our Earth-evolution. What we experience on the Earth immediately after birth—this again is a consequence of our life in the world of soul-and-spirit, and it is of the highest importance to study the mission of the Norwegian people not only on the Earth but in the period after death, with the means at the disposal of spiritual investigation.

Because of their physical and racial character, because of the special constitution of their brains and the rest of their bodily make-up, it can—I repeat, it can—fall to the lot of those souls who pass through the gate of death from the soil of the Western part of the Scandinavian peninsula, to give a very definite stimulus to other souls after death. They can give to other souls after death something that only the Norwegian characteristics are able to impart. In this epoch especially, the Norwegian character is so constituted that subconsciously and inwardly it understands certain secrets of Nature.

I am not now referring to your external, intellectual knowledge but to the kind of knowledge which you develop in your spiritual body, without using the physical senses, between the time of falling asleep and waking, when you are outside your bodies. When during sleep you experience the spirit in the plant-world, in stone and rock, in the rustling trees and the roaring of the waves, you become aware of the reality of forces living in the plants, hidden in the rocks, operating in the waves of the sea as they break in upon the shores, in the sparsely flowering rock-plants. A great picture arises in your souls during sleep, in the form of an intimate knowledge of Nature of which the intellect and the life of the senses are unconscious. And when, as I described in the last lecture, you develop a real connection with the Angel-Being, then you can bear into the spiritual world this unconscious Nature-wisdom, this concrete knowledge of spirituality in the plants, the stones and the other phenomena. of Nature.

Those who in the true and real way have lived a Norwegian life become the stimulators and teachers of their fellow-souls after death in regard to the secrets of Nature here on the Earth. For in the spiritual world, souls must be taught about the secrets of the Earth, just as here, on the Earth, they must be taught about the secrets of the spiritual world.

In the Eastern portion of this peninsula, where the heritage from olden times is as I have described it, a different mission is carried through the gate of death. What the souls there carry through death into the spiritual world is not so much what is experienced during sleep but during waking consciousness in connection with the external world, in contemplation and study of the sense-world and in a kind of understanding—permeated with feeling—of the external world.

But this after all, is something which fundamentally speaking, has significance only for the earthly life. Yet while man is developing just this element in earthly life, something very significant develops in the subconscious region of the soul. I have pointed out to you that even in waking life a certain part of our being sleeps and dreams. The life of feeling is really only another form of dream life. In our feelings we dream and in the operations of our will we are asleep. What we know of our will is only the illumination thrown upon it by our thinking. But the kind of will that is kindled in the Swedish soul is less capable of penetrating the secrets of Nature during sleep. What enters the Swedish soul more unconsciously in the life of will and of feeling during contemplation of the outer world and in the operations of intellect and reason—that is what is carried through death. So the mission of the souls belonging to the Eastern part of the Scandinavian peninsula who pass through death is to impart to other souls an element pertaining more to the will—exactly the opposite of what they were able to impart to their physical fellow-beings during the times of their old historical connection with them.

Let me put it like this—A special gift in connection with the element of will developed in the Eastern part of the Scandinavian peninsula as a primary and then as an inherited quality of the character of the people. The people of Europe have lived a long time without asking in this concrete way what they really have to do after death, for they have contented themselves with the egotistical answer: We shall be happy. But if the world is to be prevented from falling into complete decadence, this egotistical answer will not suffice. It will only be possible for men to lead a true and proper life when they are willing to accept the selfless answer, when they not only ask about the happiness in store for them after death but when they also ask: What am I called upon to do, in view of my particular situation in earthly life? Only when people are willing to frame the question in this way will they put their situation in life to proper use and so prepare truly for their mission. And then the preparation will no longer be difficult.

The two lectures—indeed the three—which I have given you here, are all connected in this respect. In view of this special mission, it is essential that the spirituality in the anthroposophical attitude to the world should be understood here in Norway. For when you consider that it is a specific task to create out of the subconscious life a natural science for the next world—however paradoxical this may seem, it is indeed so—then you must deliberately and consciously prepare your life of feeling in such a way that your souls, while you sleep every night, are not unreceptive to the knowledge of Nature which should be infused into them during sleep. But the bodies of to-day are not always a help in this process of preparation. The souls of the Northern peoples are, through ancient heritage, fundamentally fitted for the spiritual world. Here above all, the bodies must be influenced by a spiritual form of culture.

And now a great question arises which can be illuminated by comparing the mission of the peoples of Middle Europe with that of the peoples of the North.

The state of the people of Middle Europe, if they will not accept the Spiritual, was not badly described by a man who gave no thought at all to the possibility of a spiritual regeneration of humanity. Oswald Spengler has written his book on the Decline of the West, that brilliant but thoroughly pessimistic book—although he has repudiated the pessimism in a subsequent pamphlet. Of course, it is pessimism to speak of the decline of the West. But Spengler is actually speaking of the decline of culture, of something that is of the soul. Without spiritual regeneration the people of Middle Europe will suffer injury to their souls. But in this corner of Northern Europe, human beings cannot be injured only in the life of soul; when they are injured in the soul, their very bodily nature is injured at the same time. In a way this is fortunate, for if the people of Middle Europe do not accept spirituality, they become barbarian, they degenerate in soul. The Northern people can only die out, in the bodily sense, for everything depends here upon the particular constitution of the body.

The influence of a new stream of spiritual culture is profoundly necessary. For Middle Europe will degenerate, will become barbarian will go to its decline if it does not allow itself to be influenced by the spirit. The Northerner will die out, will suffer physical death if he does not allow himself to be influenced by the Spirit.

And so what is developed here, during physical life, is connected with the mission of Northern souls after death. They cannot fulfil their mission if they allow their bodies—which are so well-adapted for spirituality—to degenerate.

These earnest words must be uttered to-day for the evolution of our epoch demands that men shall speak together of such matters. And it is for this reason that I wanted to speak to you from the general, human standpoint, to say to you what a man says to his fellow-beings on this Earth if he has the destiny of Earth-evolution deeply at heart. For those human beings who do not prepare themselves selflessly for an eternal life, will not be leading their earthly life between birth and death aright.

That is the thought I should like to leave with you. Those who feel themselves Anthroposophists should realise that they are a tiny handful of people in the world who must apply all their energy to shaking a lazy humanity out of its lethargy and helping it onwards. Those who hate Anthroposophy to-day—this may be said. among ourselves—hate it because their love of comfort and ease prevents them from being willing to grapple with the great tasks of humanity. They are afraid of what they must overcome if they are to transform their easy-going thoughts and feelings and experience something much more profound. For this reason we see many a storm of opposition arising against what is taking place in Anthroposophy and developing out of it. You too will have to accustom yourselves to violent attacks being made against Anthroposophy or Spiritual Science by reactionaries of every kind, by all who love to saunter along their old beaten tracks. Those however who let this opposition deter them from developing their powers, are not firmly rooted in the real task of Anthroposophy. When people see how Anthroposophy is being attacked to-day from all sides, they may become timid and say: Would it not be better to go forward more quietly so that the opposition may be less violent? Or again they may ask, if they find praise being meted out to them by men who in a decadent age hold leading positions: What have I done wrong? This is a matter of great importance from the anthroposophical point of view. Attacks and abuse are usually explicable for the reasons given above. But if praise were to come from the same quarters, it would be a bad augury for anthroposophical world! It is just because the opponents of Anthroposophy to-day do attack it, that we can be reassured—but only, of course, in the sense that we must apply all the more energy in order to introduce Anthroposophy into the world, not out of personal idiosyncrasies but out of a deep realisation of the needs and tasks of the world.

On this note, then, we will conclude. Let me express to you my heartfelt thanks for your active and energetic co-operation. I assure you that I mean it seriously when I say that separation in space is no separation to those who know the reality of the spiritual bond between souls. In taking my leave, I remain together with you, I do not really go away from you. I believe you can always realise this, if you wish it to be so. You may be quite sure that there are already numbers of people who feel this bond and who look with love in their hearts towards this region in the North West with its special task—the importance of which is so well known to Anthroposophy.

I take leave of you with this love in my heart for those who feel that they truly belong to us, to our Anthroposophical Movement. May our next meeting, too, be full of the inner strength that is necessary and right among Anthroposophists.

[The meeting, to which all non-resident members were invited as guests (without voting rights), was opened at 10:30 a.m. by the General Secretary Albert Steffen. The morning discussions, which were devoted to questions of the Society and to the question of reconstruction, were recorded by Helene Finckh but not reported. The following report, sent out officially, is available from H. J. Heywood-Smith. Rudolf Steiner was unable to attend the morning session as he had to give the last lecture of a current pedagogical course (GA 306). For information on the lecture tours of Rudolf Steiner mentioned in the report, see: “Übersichtsbände zur Rudolf Steiner Gesamtausgabe, I: Bibliographische Übersicht”, Dornach 1984; “Das Vortragswerk Rudolf Steiners”, Dornach 1978; “Rudolf Steiner - Eine Chronik”, Stuttgart 1988.

Mr. Albert Steffen, as Secretary General of the Anthroposophical Society in Switzerland, opened the meeting by welcoming Dr. Steiner, his co-workers and the members present. He reported on the activities that had originated at the Goetheanum as the center of the Anthroposophical movement. The Goetheanum was provisionally opened in the fall of 1920 with a three-week course at the School of Spiritual Science. Dr. Steiner spoke about Anthroposophy and specialized sciences. Since that time, the whole world has looked to Dornach. With love, but also with hatred. In the wake of a hostile discussion of this event, the words were printed by the enemy side: “Spiritual sparks of fire, which hiss like lightning after the wooden mousetrap, are thus sufficiently available, and it will take some cleverness on Steiner's part to work in a conciliatory way so that one day a real spark of fire from the Dornach glory does not bring about an inglorious end.”

A second course followed in April 1921 as a supplement to the first. Then the summer course was held by Baron Rosenkrantz for English artists. Professor Mackenzie and his wife attended it and gained deeper insights into Dr. Steiner's spiritual science. They returned to Dornach at Christmas with about 40 teachers and took a course in education from Dr. Steiner, which Mr. Steffen reported on in detail in the Goetheanum. These essays were collected in a book and translated into various languages. The Swiss School Society was also founded around this time.

Another consequence of these visits by English personalities was that Dr. Steiner was invited to the Shakespeare celebrations in Stratford from April 17-24, 1922, where he gave several lectures on art and education. It was significant that a central European thinker was at the center of a celebration held in honor of the greatest English poet.

In mid-August, Dr. Steiner was invited to England for a second time to give a vacation course at Oxford on “Spiritual Values in Education and Social Life”. The Minister of Education, Mr. Fisher, took the nominal chair and had a speech read. He was unable to attend in person. The International World Association for Educational Questions, which has set itself the task of spreading anthroposophical education, was founded during this time.

A third journey by Dr. Steiner took place in November 1922, and a fourth will follow this summer.

Thus a mighty spiritual current flowed through Dr. Steiner to the West. But not only to the West, but to all directions in Europe. In the spring of 1921, Dr. Steiner traveled to Norway. In January 1922, a lecture tour throughout Germany took place. He spoke in 12 cities to over twenty thousand people. In March, he gave his help to a college course in Berlin, in April to one in the Netherlands. In May, a lecture tour through Germany took place, where the incident in Munich occurred, where an attempt was made on his life. In the harsh light of day, the intentions of his opponents to prevent his activities became apparent.

From June 1-12, the West-East Congress met in Vienna, where Dr. Steiner spoke about the current scientific and social state of Europe. Much of what he and his colleagues said in important lectures there was taken up by the public. As a result of this conference, the antagonism between Western and Eastern ways of thinking was understood by countless people as a burning problem.

In many cases, non-anthroposophical people have since stated that the anthroposophical movement is the most important spiritual movement of our time. It is indeed the only one that has a future. It has a tendency to unite peoples.

But this in no way characterizes all of Dr. Steiner's work that emanated from the Goetheanum. In addition to the already mentioned teacher training course, other courses also took place. Among other things, two medical courses, which led to the founding of the Clinical-Therapeutic Institute in Arlesheim by Dr. Wegman. Furthermore, there was the economics course (from 24 July to 6 August 1922, which Mr Leinhas reported on in the 'Goetheanum'), the French Week, a cycle on cosmogony, philosophy and religion (which Dr Jules Sauerwein translated into his brilliant French for the French guests and which Dr Steiner himself reported on in the 'Goetheanum'). At the same time, a similar course was held for German theologians. They had approached Dr. Steiner with the request that he provide them with insights into the nature and significance of religion. They had then, under their own responsibility and led by Dr. Rittelmeyer, launched a movement for religious renewal, which, however, initially remained limited to Germany. At the end of the year, a scientific course followed, organized by the circle of natural scientists at the Goetheanum, in the midst of which the catastrophe of the fire occurred.

This was not able to interrupt the work of Dr. Steiner and his colleagues. Never before had the members of the Society heard Dr. Steiner speak more powerfully.

The indomitable force of his spirit also became apparent to the public when he went on a lecture tour of Switzerland (mid-April) and spoke about the tasks of anthroposophy in Bern, Basel, Zurich, Winterthur and St. Gallen.

Even with these data, however, Dr. Steiner's work is only partially outlined. When he was not traveling, he gave lectures in Dornach every Friday, Saturday and Sunday, in which he taught the audience about the deepest problems. He showed nature and history in a light that shines nowhere else. Where could such insights be gained as he gave about the nature of color, sound and movement! Where can the religious impulses of the present and the past be more deeply grasped! He gave, to mention just one example, a cycle on Catholicism, especially on Thomas Aquinas [GA 74], in which he presented the school of thought that our opponents claim as their own in a positive way, thus fulfilling the word: “Love your enemies”.

The lectures presented the world differently to the audience, and they saw themselves differently too. In the midst of the disintegration of contemporary Europe, Dr. Steiner has brought the inner human being of most of them back into relationship with the true, the beautiful and the good, and in this way saved them.

We were able to admire this higher human nature as embodied in the art of eurythmy. Dr. Steiner raised this art to the highest level of education through many years of struggle. With her students, she has made a triumphant advance through all European countries, through England, Holland, Scandinavia and Austria, always holding high the banner of the beautiful soul. This art was cultivated in Dornach at great sacrifice. It is one of the tasks of the Anthroposophical Society to pave the way for it in Switzerland as well. It is part of the flow of life within our Society.

One beneficial effect of spiritual science impulses lies in the field of medicine. As already indicated, the Clinical Therapeutic Institute in Arlesheim owes its creation to the initiative of Dr. Wegman, who has put rare energy into putting into practice the insights and impulses that Dr. Steiner gave in the medical courses of spring 1920 and 1921. After only a short time, the clinic was always full, so the Suryhof had to be acquired and set up as a branch. Significant work was done in diagnosis and therapy. A range of excellent remedies were produced in the associated laboratories.

Eurythmy therapy should also be mentioned here. Supporting this promising approach so that it can have a healing effect is undoubtedly one of the most important tasks of the Anthroposophical Society. Our members should feel a special connection to the Clinical Therapeutic Institute by virtue of their destiny.

In the summer of 1921, the journal “Das Goetheanum” was founded. Albert Steffen was entrusted by Dr. Steiner with the editorial work. Dr. Steiner sacrificed many an hour, indeed many a night, to this new undertaking. His contributions would fill a strong book. They are gems of prose art. Readers were informed about the situation in Europe and about leading thinkers of the past and present in a unique way.

Albert Steffen reported many of Dr. Steiner's most intimate lectures in the carpentry workshop. Those who read these reports are left with the impression that Dornach is an unparalleled spiritual center. Probably no one who is accustomed to reading the journal would want to do without it in the future. However, in order to continue publishing it, the Society needs the support of the friends of our movement. This, again, indicates an important task for the Society. I only wish that all members would become subscribers.

Finally, Mr. Steffen spoke of the enemies. He quoted two passages from “Protestant” criticism to show how little these enemies care about the truth. The first was by Pastor Frohnmeyer, which read: “A statue of nine meters in height is currently being sculpted in Dornach, showing a ‘Luciferian’ face at the top and animalistic features at the bottom. “This ideal man,” said Steiner to the visitors present, ‘must necessarily be the true image of Christ!’

Of course, this statue has neither a luciferic feature nor an animalistic trait. Anyone who has seen it will attest to that. But countless people who have not seen it now carry this distorted image within them as a result of Frohnmeyer's distorting words. How distressing that they were uttered by a pastor.

The other passage is from the Neue Zürcher Zeitung [of April 15, 1923], on the occasion of Dr. Steiner's last lecture [in Zurich on April 10, 1923]. It is signed A.B.E. “It was also a gross misrepresentation to assert that anthroposophy is neither a philosophy nor a religion,” he writes. Anyone who has heard Dr. Steiner's lecture must say that he never claimed this. What A.B.E. says about “a kind of anthroposophical church” “with fifty branch communities where prayers are murmured into rising clouds of incense” is a gross distortion, unworthy of a pastor. Quite apart from the fact that the “Religious Renewal” to which this is alluding is a movement that is perfectly capable of acting on its own responsibility.

Finally, in order to give an idea of how much the opposition is forgetting itself and drawing inspiration from the sewers, Albert Steffen quoted a defamatory poem by a certain Mr. Theodor Rubischum in Dornach, who is in extensive correspondence with the enemies of anthroposophy and provides them with all kinds of untrue gossip. In the face of such ghastly fantasies, Steffen called for the development of a stronger sense of belonging and pointed to the greatest task of the society: to rebuild the Goetheanum.

After him, Dr. Blümel took the floor and vividly outlined the development of the anthroposophical school movement in Switzerland. He described how the desire for a school in which teaching would be based on anthroposophical knowledge of man was growing ever stronger among both parents and teachers, referring to the recently concluded pedagogical course for Swiss teachers. He presented it as the task of the Anthroposophical Society to support the school association, which already has over 600 members. The aim of the association is to establish such a school.

Dr. W. J. Stein, the next speaker, powerfully pointed out the methods of our opponents, their excellent organization and their extensive connections: They even place advertisements in the newspapers offering to provide anyone with the relevant material from which he can draw data if he intends to denigrate Dr. Steiner (be it in the theological, literary or social field). It is a campaign of lies of the worst kind, the origin of which the outside world has little idea about. The speaker pointed out that we should make it our task to relieve Dr. Steiner of the need to respond to each of these defamations. The aim of the enemies would be to take up Dr. Steiner's time and energy entirely with this polemic, so that his spiritual work for the anthroposophical movement would be lost.

[The afternoon session began at 2:30 p.m. This part of the protocol has been transcribed. Accordingly, at the request of those present, Rudolf Steiner introduced the meeting under the aspect: the Anthroposophical Society as such must set itself a positive task.

Dr. Steiner: I do not want to engage in a long discussion, but just say a few words that are not even intended to explicitly tie in with what has already been said today, but only, I would like to say, in terms of feeling.

The assembly in Stuttgart, which took place recently ¹ and the one here today - and I hope that in other countries there will be follow-up meetings - were, in view of what has been said here today, in particular by Dr. Stein, has been said here today, that they should proceed in a certain positive way, so that something positive really does arise out of the will of the meeting and that means, in this case, the individual Anthroposophical Societies, so here the Anthroposophical Society in Switzerland, that something positive arises out of the will of the meeting.

Attention has already been drawn to the way in which the opposition is organized. Now it must be said that the Anthroposophical Society is distinguished precisely by the fact that it is not organized, not organized at all, and that the majority of the membership has so far wanted nothing to do with any kind of human organization.

Now this was possible to a certain extent until a certain point in time. But in view of today's conditions, it is impossible for it to continue. It is necessary that something should actually happen in the Anthroposophical Society that can be taken as a sign that at least for the most part the Society's affairs are also being positively represented by the members, or at least are being followed with interest, at least to begin with. Even the latter is basically not there to any significant extent. And when I was asked recently what I myself expected of this meeting, I had to point out that it is necessary for the Anthroposophical Society to set itself a real task so that it is there as a society, so that it is still something special in addition to the anthroposophical movement; in other words, the Society must set itself a task. Because as long as this task is not there, the conditions that have been discussed today will never change; on the contrary, they will get worse and worse. Because the opponents, for example, think quite differently – Dr. Stein has already characterized some of this – than the members of the Anthroposophical Society think; with regard to the Society, of course, I am only speaking in relation to the Society today.

The organization of the opposition exists for the opponents, it is a reality. But the Anthroposophical Society is not a reality for the majority of the membership, because there is no positive task that could arise from a positive resolution of will. And that is why these negotiations were held in Stuttgart and here. In Stuttgart, because the delegates' meeting could not decide to set the Society such a task, to a certain extent to resort to the expedient of leading the membership to split into two memberships for the Anthroposophical Society in Germany, so that one could hope that the mutual relationship between these two societies would gradually develop what had not emerged from the delegates' meeting.

So that today's meeting here can have the great and beautiful goal of setting an example of how to give the Anthroposophical Society as such a positively effective task that can command the respect of people outside as well. So, something great can happen here today, if we not only listen to what individual personalities express in such a beautiful way, as has happened today, but if a common will actually emerges from the Society itself, from the whole of the Society. This could actually be the case. Otherwise this meeting will also be fruitless and inconclusive. So some kind of result must come out of this meeting.

I am saying these few words now because I think that everything that is heard in the reports should be taken in for personal knowledge from the point of view of such an aim, that everything should actually be put into this perspective. For you see, Dr. Stein once said: If it should really become necessary for me to concern myself merely with repelling the opponents — which could indeed become necessary — then that is of course a task for me that is infinitely more difficult than repelling the opponents by positively taking on a task on behalf of the Anthroposophical Society. But the decision to go about repelling the opponents myself, the decision to draw a conclusion myself from the lack of results of further anthroposophical negotiations, would of course first of all necessitate that I would have to cease my work for the Anthroposophical Society, would have to withdraw to merely personal work, so that I could no longer make the Anthroposophical Society, which is simply unable to decide on a task for itself, my field of work. This would be absolutely necessary if I were forced to take on even those tasks that Dr. Stein has just mentioned today. For the two things cannot be combined. And the fact that the opponents are clever enough to understand this has been proven to them today.²

Now I would really ask my dear friends to also realize that this is absolutely what can become a reality overnight. Things can no longer be taken for granted, they must be taken seriously. The situation is a very serious one. And the situation of the Anthroposophical Society cannot continue to tolerate the fact that we always come to a deadlock at all our meetings.

So, I do not want to say anything other than what I wanted to illustrate with these few words. I ask you, my dear friends, not to go away today without results, but to set the Anthroposophical Society as such a task that people can have a certain respect for and not always think: “The Anthroposophists let everything be done to them”.

Albert Steffen: Dear attendees! Dr. Steiner has said quite clearly here that if we do not take on the task of conquering our opponents, then he will not have the opportunity, will not have the time, will no longer be able to find the time for us, but that he wants to withdraw from us, from our society. So we have to be clear about how we are going to do this, and I would now ask that perhaps individual suggestions be put forward.

Now the business report must be dealt with first. Mr. Storrer hands over the business report.

Various speakers: Mr. Geering, Dr. Hugentobler, Mr. Stokar, Mr. Leinhas, Mr. Widmer, Mr. Rietmann, Dr. Stein, Dr. Dr. Vreede, Dr. Grosheintz, Dr. Lagutt, Dr. Usteri, Mr. Imrie, Mr. Steffen, Mr. Pfeiffer, Dr. Blümel, Dr. Wachsmuth, Mr. Vett, Mr. Gnädinger, Mr. Ebersold, Mr. van Leer, Ms. von Vacano, Ms. Hauck, Dr. Unger, a teacher from Strasbourg.

The lady from Strasbourg: There is an intention in France to found a special Anthroposophical Society. It would now be desirable to find out whether anything is already being done officially in Dornach and whether, as is being said, a secretary has been appointed by Dr. Steiner so that, if something is to happen from Strasbourg, people are aware of the matter.

Dr. Steiner: As I indicated earlier, the fact that Stuttgart is no longer seen as the center for the entire Anthroposophical Society has led to the situation that efforts are now being made in the various countries to form groups of Anthroposophists who want to have a direct connection to Switzerland, to Dornach. In order to carry out the organizational work, it is perhaps very possible that national Anthroposophical Societies will be formed in the various countries, let us say. And now, as far as I know, Mlle. Sauerwein is the one — Mlle. Sauerwein has actually offered to take over the general secretariat for France. It would be highly desirable for our French friends in particular, and of course also the people of Strasbourg, who now belong to France, to support Mille. Sauerwein in every possible way and not to view her with scepticism.

The lady from Strasbourg makes a few interjections that are not noted.

Dr. Steiner: In these matters, of course, it is important to have the right form so that people know what is going on. We cannot say that Mlle. Sauerwein has taken on this role. Because then the further question would arise as to who gave her this office and so on. In a society based on real freedom, it can only be a matter of completely different forms. Isn't that right, Mille. Sauerwein has declared herself willing to do everything possible in France to bring an Anthroposophical Society into being there. And from what I know about Miss Sauerwein, I was able to issue her with a document — and this is what you are talking about now — which states that, for everything that is required of me for an Anthroposophical Society in France, I recognize Miss Sauerwein as the General Secretary of the French Anthroposophical Society, for whom I will do what is required of me. ³ So if you see the crux of the matter in the fact that something like this can be done with absolute freedom in all directions, then the situation is as follows: if someone does not want to recognize Miss Sauerwein, they do not have to do so; it is just that in the future, Miss Sauerwein will be the one for whom I have now agreed to do what is required of me.

You just have to pay attention to the circumstances in all these matters and study them. Sauerwein will in future be the one for whom I have now declared myself willing to do what is required of me.

You just have to pay attention to the circumstances in all these matters and study how they have to be carried out in practice in the Anthroposophical Society so that you can really be free in all respects. But that has been avoided so far. These sentences, which I believe were worked out in the “Principles” of 1913, show how the Anthroposophical Society was founded on absolute freedom in all respects. If a positive task is to emerge in any way, it can only come out of such freedom.

So the thing is, if an Anthroposophical Society is formed in France and wants to work with me, I will only do what I will do in confidence with Mlle. Sauerwein. That's the way it is. Everyone is free to do something for nothing other than what they want to do.

Teacher Wullschleger talks about school issues. He thinks Baravalle's “Pedagogy of Physics and Mathematics” is excellent; about 60 teachers have come together for a course.

Mr. Storrer, Mr. Blümel, Mr. Steffen and Mr. Müller ask questions about member admissions and the associated responsibilities.

Dr. Steiner: After all, the admission of members has always been taken care of, and the fact that mistakes are made from time to time will continue to happen in the future. I think the discussion is being diverted from the main point if we deal with these questions too early, when we are actually only really dealing with them once we have a good basis for discussing the consolidation of the Society, and this may lead to the opinion that enough has been said about the consolidation itself.

I would therefore like to express what I have said in a little more concrete terms. The actual purpose of such a discussion at an Annual General Meeting of the Anthroposophical Society should really only be discussed at a later date. Think back to the times when the Anthroposophical Society presented itself to the world with its own content and basically had no need to concern itself with anything other than spreading anthroposophy within a certain circle of people. We could, if nothing else had been willed, still stand on this basis in the bosom of the Anthroposophical Society today. “Theoretically, hypothetically, that would be quite possible. But we cannot do it in reality, simply because — let us say — the very praiseworthy endeavor to build a Goetheanum was born out of the bosom of the Society. The Goetheanum was just there. As a result, the Anthroposophical Society itself has become something quite different from what it was before such a Goetheanum was built.

It does not matter whether one or the other reason, which emerged from the Society, was given with more or less good luck; but it is a fact that in a certain period of time the impulse arose within the Society to do this or that. As a result, the world has been led to form very different judgments about things related to anthroposophy than would have come about if the Anthroposophical Society had remained as it was before these things, which, so to speak, outwardly formed a revelation of the Anthroposophical Society in a very visible way. The individual things can indeed be very, as is the case with the Goetheanum, extraordinarily significant. The Goetheanum itself and other justifications that have been made – even the justifications of such journals as the Stuttgart weekly “Anthroposophie” and the earlier Dreigliederungszeitung or “Kommende Tag”, the “Futurum”, the clinics and so on – have been created out of the bosom of the Anthroposophical Society. Today, individual members might say: We didn't participate in that, we are not responsible for it. Yes, that would prove that the Anthroposophical Society does not step before the world with a common will, not as a distinct body with what it has within itself. So today it is necessary that the Anthroposophical Society's common will should accomplish what we would not have needed if we had remained in the old position. But we are no longer on the old standpoint. And so it is necessary that the Anthroposophical Society simply take on the other task of presenting itself to the world in such a way that people have a certain respect for it.

Of course, for this to happen, there must be matters concerning the Anthroposophical Society in the first place. You see, today there are matters concerning the rebuilding of the Goetheanum, there are matters concerning the Coming Day, the clinics and so on, but there is actually — as today's discussion has shown once again — extremely little that one can talk about when speaking of the Anthroposophical Society as such; at most, membership fees and so on. But the Society must give itself such a content that it is impossible for the most untrue stuff about Anthroposophy to be constantly being put into the world without the Anthroposophical Society in some way considering it its business. It would not need to consider it its business if it did not exist. But it does exist. It exists in history with what has come about over the years. And further debates should now be held on how it is possible to consolidate the Anthroposophical Society in such a way that it acquires real substance as a society.

Now, of course, individual tasks have been very well characterized; but these individual tasks do not make it up for the time being. The way the question of opponents has been dealt with shows that there is no awareness that something like this has to be raised to a much higher level. It really has to be raised to a much higher level. The way people have been talking about their opponents here reminds me of someone who has an opponent firing cannonballs at them, so they go and set up their own cannon and start firing at the cannonballs that have fallen from their opponent's side. That is how people are talking. It is as if the point were merely to take up a defense and continually refute only the opponents' writings, which they chose to write, in the usual polemical manner. This would lead us to nothing but a regressus in infinitum. For it is self-evident that whatever we reply to a refutation, the opponent replies to our reply, and so on ad infinitum. We gain nothing by firing cannonballs! Take this last writing by the Sichler in Bern. There is actually no point in refuting it, because it only contains nonsense about anthroposophy, of course. If you refute the nonsense, then of course the person who is being stupid refutes the cleverness that you have put forward from his stupid point of view, and you are immediately caught in a regressus in infinitum. Likewise, if you refute Ragaz's writing in the usual way. You see, the point is not to refute a piece of writing like the Sichler, but to show what is behind it in terms of science and method of knowledge, that behind the appearance of science there is a very ordinary, trivial dilettantism. So you have to look directly at what is behind it. In Stuttgart, they have always tried to refute the claims of General von Gleich. But it is not a matter of refuting them, but of what kind of person is behind them. The fact that the whole scientific basis from which such things are written is not scientific at all is what it is about. So we have to get used to bringing things to a completely different level.

That is one example. But in general, if the Anthroposophical Society is to take on the task of representing anthroposophy, we have to take the whole thing to a completely different level. It has to be conceived on a grander scale than has been the case so far. Not that I would demand that! It would not even occur to me to demand that of myself. I would be satisfied if it remained at the point of view at which it now stands. But that is not possible; for the reason that the Anthroposophical Society today represents anthroposophy as it represented it when there was no Goetheanum; it represents it as if there were no Goetheanum, no such foundations as the Federation for Free Spiritual Life and so on. I would say that all this has provoked the judgment of the world. And now the anthroposophical members long for “peace”; they do not want to know about any of this. That is not possible today. I would be satisfied if it were. But then we should not have had to make all these justifications. Now that society has declared its agreement, a certain reputation must be created for society. One could say: I don't care about this reputation, it's all the same to me. — But work cannot continue if this reputation is not created, if it is always done in such a way that people rightly say: Yes, what is this Anthroposophical Society? There people come together, read lectures to each other and so on; that is just a bunch of weirdos!

So that the Anthroposophical Society at least stands as other societies that do something similar do, that is what we need. But that is usually not talked about at all. And I myself can talk my lungs out about it – people simply do not address the fact that the Anthroposophical Society takes on such a physiognomy in the world that it can exist alongside its deeds, namely, that it has built a Goetheanum. It was there! A society that brings a Goetheanum into the world must itself resemble a Goetheanum, at least to a certain extent. But compare what the Goetheanum was and what the Anthroposophical Society is. I am not saying this to give anyone a hard time, because I would be quite happy with the Anthroposophical Society if it had not built a Goetheanum, had not founded a Futurum, had not published magazines. Isn't it true that when the magazine Luzifer-Gnosis appeared, it was left to me to publish it. But gradually these things have become matters for society, and so society must be there too, so that society has the same face. Today, however, society does not have the same face as its institutions have, even the unfortunate ones that have perished. Yes, the judgment of the world is there after all! That is what it is all about. We should talk about how to give society a relief! It is a terrible thought, but it can also be understood in the very best sense. But then the points of the agenda must really be grasped by the scruff of the neck. We must not talk about things that are not really there. We must look at things as they really are.

Yes, my dear friends, the Goetheanum will be rebuilt under two conditions. Firstly, if we are allowed to build here. Well, we will have to see about that, we cannot negotiate about that today. But we can negotiate about whether we can bring the Anthroposophical Society to such a relief that it cannot be denied. So we do not have to negotiate the second before we have negotiated the first.

And the other thing, my dear friends: Yes, I am completely convinced that the people we will need to build the Goetheanum, the artists and other workers, will be there when the foundation is in place. Please excuse me for having to use the word again: the Goetheanum building fund is the foundation. There is no need today to talk about making forces available or anything of the sort; that will happen the moment the building fund is in place. But really, one question leads to another. And it is necessary that finally a meeting is held somewhere in an Anthroposophical Society that really talks about these fundamental conditions. Not only the Stuttgart meeting should talk about it; it did not talk about it; hardly anyone spoke about the main issue. It was hinted at in the lectures that were given, but the assembly was not interested in these hints. They may have been given more or less unhappily; the question of opponents, for example, was treated very peculiarly. It was actually treated in such a way that a motion was made to move on to the agenda so as not to have to hear any more about the opponents. And that would have been the right moment for me to say: I am giving up the company that adopts such agendas! But one must just stick to what one has committed to. And it is indeed the case that we have to come back to the point where every single member knows that they have to do something as a representative of the company, otherwise we will not make any progress, otherwise all the meetings are unnecessary.

In Stuttgart, it was expected that if the two societies are now together and, I do not want to say, mutually abrasive, but mutually stimulating, something will happen as a result of the delegates' meeting, but that did not happen at the delegates' meeting. Now we will continue to wait for Stuttgart. But that is not what we are here to talk about. But as I said, this meeting here could set an example. Really, it would depend on whether, in addition to all the things for which one has taken responsibility and what stands there with a certain history, for my sake perhaps sometimes with a very bad one – at the Goetheanum it was certainly not the case and certainly not in the other endeavors either – that society now decides to become something other than what it was allowed to be, rightly was allowed to be, for the conditions in the period up to 1918. At that time the Goetheanum had not yet reached the point where it could present itself to the world. Since then, however, very significant changes have taken place. But today the Anthroposophical Society cannot say: We want to remain at the earlier point of view, it does not suit us to become a society like this, as it is necessary now that these reasons are there. — But the majority would like to remain at this point of view.

Then again, people come who demand closer communities. Of course, such a demand may be perfectly justified, but it remains a mere expression of personal egoism as long as society does not respond to what I am now trying to say, as I did earlier this afternoon, only more specifically. Today, it is almost irresponsible not to meet the demand for closer communities. But one cannot accommodate this will if, on the other hand, one repeatedly encounters the most absolute lethargy with regard to the affairs of society. Yes, sometimes it happens that people come forward with the pretension: We do not care about the Anthroposophical Society, we are now forming this narrower circle of anthroposophical souls! – Yes, that is selfishness of soul! It should be of the greatest concern to everyone when, for example, we come together to discuss the affairs of the Anthroposophical Society, when we talk about consolidation, about how the Society can acquire content, active content, so that it stands in the world as such and the world finally knows what the Anthroposophical Society as such wants. Otherwise there would be no need for an Anthroposophical Society with the pretensions it now has. Other societies could be founded, not even a society would be needed, but something could be undertaken in some field where a number of people are together who have no other tasks than to listen to lectures or to receive exercises. These are not the tasks of the society. But the society should have a task. I ask you to consider all this.

I just wanted to say these few words to draw attention to this again.

Albert Steffen: I see no other social issue than that we try to be more fraternal with each other, that one helps the other.

Dr. Steiner: You should just grasp what I mean. Take, for example, the Clinical Therapeutic Institute [in Stuttgart]. That did come out of the Society. But the members of the Society — I mean the majority, there are very few who see it differently — they see it as a place where they might go to be cured. But they should see it as their own affair — ideally, of course — and that is what should be there, so that they stand up for the cause. You don't stand up for anthroposophy. You don't need to do it for the individual; the individual may of course not please one or the other. There may be so many members who hate the Clinical Therapeutic Institute; they don't need to stand up for it, but they will be able to stand up for something else. But this tendency to really stand up for the Society is what matters.

Hedwig Hauck proposes collecting signatures for Mr. Steffen's article, which is very well written.

Albert Steffen: I think you misunderstand the nature of a writer. He writes more heavily than other people. It is not good to write too much, because then the word simply loses its effect.

Willy Stokar proposes forming a board of directors for the Anthroposophical Society in Switzerland from the Swiss branches.

Dr. Guenther Wachsmuth replies that this board could not be elected, but only supplemented by Dr. Steiner and Mr. Steffen's proposal.

Albert Steffen: It is necessary for each individual to think through the matter again and again, so to speak, the fate of the whole movement, and that it is also thought through in groups, that the whole society lives in it; but it must also come from within. I myself have always tried to do that. I don't know how to act differently.

van Leer thinks that it is a matter of principle for each individual to look at the enterprises as if they were his own, which he finances himself. Dr. Steiner only hinted at this.

Dr. Steiner: And yet something can be achieved if people discuss things, so that one person tells another what they know, and that person then tells another what they know.

We really have to think about things in much more concrete terms. Sometimes it seems to me as if the Anthroposophical Society is just a big hole, as if there is nothing in it at all. Please forgive me for saying something quite concrete. You will not expect me to start throwing flattery into the debate from some underground lair. But you see, this Anthroposophical Society in Switzerland once had the great good fortune to have Mr. Steffen as its General Secretary. Yes, almost to this day I have never heard anyone express an opinion about this extraordinary fact. Today, Mr. Leinhas said that we are dealing with a personality who probably writes the best German in the world. One would think that something like that would mean something to the Anthroposophical Society. That one does not just hear a judgment here and there at most: “It's good that we have Steffen, because when he signs our appeal and so on” — and then behaves in such a way that we also lose our reputation as a society. That's of no use; but that we point out the things we have in the strongest way — and we do have the things — so that people become aware of them! I have pointed this out at every opportunity. But it is really the case that no one had any idea what kind of historical fact this is in the development of the entire Anthroposophical Society, that one of the general secretaries in one of the societies is the man about whom one could say many other things than what Mr. Leinhas said today. But such a person must live in the Society if it wants to live itself. And not only that, forgive me, I know that there are also choleric people in the Society for other matters that do not directly belong to the Society, sanguine and melancholic people; but in matters concerning the Society, it often seems to me as if there were no other temperament than the phlegmatic one. This fact, that Mr. Steffen is the General Secretary of the Anthroposophical Society in Switzerland, has so far been received with such phlegm, has been considered in such a way, that one does not notice any life force. All that can be felt is phlegm, phlegm. If such things are simply allowed to happen – some time ago I emphasized the story with the Baltz brochure and so on – if such things are simply allowed to happen, if nothing happens in the Society, then we will no longer be alive in a very short time. We start by setting an example of disregarding achievements. How can they possibly evaluate the achievements of society in the world if it does not happen within society itself?

You have the strangest experiences. It's almost stupid that you have to mention things, but it's still strange. I wrote an article about Albert Steffen's poetry out of the deepest need of my heart. The Anthroposophie prints everything from the Goetheanum; it just did not print this article. One has no idea that this is connected with an important fact about society. Yes, the ability to assess things, to form a judgment about what is present in society, that is what matters; not to accept everything with tremendous phlegm, with tremendous matter-of-factness. Isn't it true that people don't understand what I mean when I talk about society having a content. What it really comes down to is not just saying that each individual should now look within themselves, but that they should tell each other things. What one person doesn't know, the other person knows, and what the other person doesn't know, right, the first person knows. If a meeting like this goes so that you feel just as much like talking about these things as you feel like talking about the differences between four or five people, then something has been done. Today not much has been done. But you can be sure: once this interest is awakened, society will change completely. In just a year and a half, society will have changed completely if only these things, which are of such a nature, are approached in a very serious way. Then it will not happen that on the other hand people can say: There is someone who has been in the Society for years, he has become a fierce opponent; why? Yes, they just idolized him while he was in the Society because they have no judgment of the true achievements within the Society. How many people have been in society to whom, because one could not say very much about this earth life, I don't know what was attributed in the previous earth life. Isn't it true that this constant missing the point is what should be seriously combated by such a gathering. Then the positive will emerge.

So please do not think that I wanted to flatter Mr. Steffen. I just wanted to present you with objective facts. This is necessary to make it clear what is meant by linking to such positive things. It is really the case that one should start here. I could say many other things about this, but I really only want to give suggestions. I did not want to speak at all at today's meeting.

Albert Steffen: You have somewhat shamed me and yet not shamed me, in that I must say that I have actually become a [good] writer or at least a writer at all, because I have always been concerned with your writings. I have actually read your writings since I was twenty years old, I can say every day, and that is how I have developed my style, as far as it was possible for a person of my lack of talent. But I think that is not so much to my credit. I have to say, it is better – I don't know – it is better to treat it with silence.

Dr. Steiner: You may treat it with silence, but the Society cannot treat it that way.

Emil Leinhas: It is somewhat depressing to hear something like that again and yet it has to be said to the Society that it is asleep, not interested in anything, when on the one hand you have so many wonderful people, a selection, so to speak, because not just anyone can approach anthroposophy – and yet the fact exists that it is the same people who have to be told again that they are not doing their duty towards society. As a society, we have a spiritual abundance, but not enough interest in society. In Stuttgart, too, the accusation has been made again that society is asleep, not taking enough interest, and that is fully justified. But we should not let ourselves be weighed down. Instead, despite this abundance, we should find the strength to awaken interest and attention to the things that are there... not just saying: They are doing everything wrong in society, but: What can I do for the cause, for the newspaper 'Goetheanum', for the Clinical Therapeutic Institute, etc., whatever it may be. That we may kindle the will in us so that we can also do what we recognize as our duty. This applies to everything: that there is a living development of the will.

Dr. Steiner: Not true, the matter will have to come to an end anyway. — There is already a great longing to leave the hall before the discussion continues. I would just like to say a few more words, which are necessary, and say in advance, my dear friends, that I would like to go much further than Leinhas. I would not just like to say: there are a great many magnificent people in society, but almost all of them are magnificent people. — But that is not the point. Let me just say it dryly: I have been with these magnificent specimens of humanity at all sorts of, shall we say, lunches, dinners, suppers and the like – yes, they are truly magnificent there. They have interests that arise even in the moment; they know how to talk, they are so passionate about one thing or another. And the society that arises in this way is also quite magnificent. But I have also been to anthroposophical general assemblies or assemblies in general, where the same people are not like that at all, where they are – forgive me – phlegmatic! They are phlegmatic about the affairs of the society, and that is what must bring the society to ruin. People are really magnificent, almost all of them, but they don't show it, especially when the affairs of the Anthroposophical Society are at stake. You can't expect anyone to have a greater interest in anthroposophy than they already have, because that is connected with the innermost part of the human being. But if a society exists and one is a member, then one must feel and act as a member. This is required by the social nature of the matter. It is not possible to feel the same obligations as one does, for example, at a dinner when one is present.

So it is absolutely necessary to take an interest in the affairs of society. I have also mentioned a few things that one could take an interest in. I am not saying that I would be compelled, for example, to criticize this phlegm in the same way in another field among the magnificent people, of whom we are almost all now. But here it is necessary. So, it is really not about the individual person. I speak, while speaking here – don't believe that – not to the individual person at all, but I speak to society as such, as it behaves. And that is actually already the case, so that one should reflect on how it should become different.

Now there is a special matter. I don't know how the Society feels about it – but this special matter can only be dealt with here in the Society. This is the case: in view of the Goetheanum fire and after it, a Swiss personality, Colonel Gertsch, approached Mr. Steffen and me with the suggestion that his country estate near Winterthur, which includes a castle, to the Society, because he believes that the Anthroposophical cause would be better served there, in a different environment, and that a Goetheanum could be built there better than here, where we have had these experiences.

So now this offer has been made. The estate is about 110 Jucharten ⁴ in size, including this castle, which is of course quite unsuitable as a representative of the anthroposophical cause. And naturally this raises the question of how one should react to such an offer. The offer has been made. I believe that neither Mr. Steffen nor I can take it upon ourselves to act either positively or negatively, but rather that it must be considered from the point of view that Dornach also has a history, that if we were to leave Dornach, there are so and so many people there who have really been very involved with Dornach, and also from the financial point of view: houses have been built, people are connected with the whole thing here. It must be considered that on the one hand, numerous circumstances within the membership make it necessary, if there is just any possibility that building can take place, that it should take place here.

On the other hand, the offer is on the table. We have been offered this property there – I am of course unable to judge at the moment whether it is relatively cheap or expensive – which we could have for 130,000,000 Swiss francs. As I said, 110 Jucharten; a large part of it is covered with vineyards. There are also some outbuildings next to the building. In short, the offer has been made. And I would ask, so that a statement from the company is available, that the company itself decides whether it wants to make a provisional or a definite decision in this regard. I request that you express yourselves frankly on this matter, for it is of course unnecessary, also in view of such things, for the individual members to serve as scapegoats, so to speak, but rather that the Society come to a conclusion on this. If anyone wants to know more about it, they can of course have information. But the most important thing seems to me that through everything that has happened since 1913, there is a connection with Dornach; so that one is not really allowed to leave here without being thrown out; and on the other hand there is the fact of this offer.

Albert Steffen: Yes, I myself cannot express an opinion on this matter, neither positive nor negative, as you said yourself, Doctor.

Emanuel van Leer is against leaving Dornach, even if many difficulties were to arise. He would like to propose a rejection in principle for the time being.

Rudolf Geering believes that everyone would agree with Mr. van Leer and that there would be little need for a great discussion on the matter.

Dr. Steiner: It would, of course, be desirable if a resolution along these lines were adopted and that this resolution - yes, forgive me, I don't know if the stenographer of the opponent is there - that this resolution is sensible. So, the resolution should be formulated and pronounced with all the severity, if that is the opinion of society. But it would be worth considering whether the subordinate clauses of this resolution are also important, whether it could be significant under certain circumstances if it were to be said: Because we absolutely want to hold on to the idea of rebuilding here, we are unfortunately prevented from responding to such a proposal from outside. Wouldn't it, then perhaps one way or another one could say: We must see that they can build in Dornach, otherwise — —

Emanuel van Leer: Yes, these are the gloves I was talking about.

Dr. Steiner: Oh no, those are not the gloves! Isn't it true that there are many people outside the Anthroposophical Society who would very much like us to build here; and if it were made known that we could build elsewhere, it could be quite useful under certain circumstances, if it were mentioned in a subordinate clause of the resolution. Isn't it true that there is a difference between telling the world that we may have the opportunity to build somewhere else and still build here! I don't know if this is understood here?

Emil Leinhas asks whether only the Swiss Anthroposophical Society should speak on this matter or whether it would also be possible for the entire Anthroposophical Society to issue the resolution.

Dr. Steiner: It would be good if the Swiss members gathered here and the non-Swiss members, that is, all the members here, could decide on this matter. It is, of course, a matter for the Society. We can't get the whole Society together anywhere, but what we have together can pass the resolution.

Dr. Steiner: Well, well, in Switzerland, the economy is cantonal.

Willy Storrer: In Switzerland, every canton is already part of a foreign country for the other.

Dr. Unger points out that Stuttgart authorities are considering making appropriate offers to attract the Goetheanum to Stuttgart. A building councilor called a few days ago with a suggestion along these lines, but he did not elaborate.

Dr. Steiner: If we knew more about it, that would of course be a wonderful development.

Dr. Unger says that nothing is definite yet; but the fact is that the Stuttgart building authorities are interested.

Dr. Steiner: Well, then perhaps the general directive will only be given in general terms, only in the sense that it has been discussed now, and it will be left to Mr. Steffen to formulate the corresponding resolution. I would be quite happy to do that with him. This is not a proposal, but just

advice. — Does anyone else wish to speak?

One speaker thinks that we should listen to all offers, buy the estate in Winterthur and then still build in Dornach, so that we have an alternative in case of difficulties.

Dr. Steiner: So you think we should buy the estate? Yes, you see, if someone buys it in order to have it up their sleeve for this eventuality, then you can't have anything against it. But we could not risk it from the Society's funds, because you have to be able to get rid of it if you buy it. I have every confidence that if we have the money we can buy it, but I don't have the confidence that we can get rid of it at the right moment when we have no more money.

Rudolf Geering would like to formally propose to the Society that we accept the matter, namely that Mr. Steffen should draft a resolution along the lines of the proposal as soon as the right moment arises – that is, after we have received more precise information from Stuttgart. Albert Steffen: I don't think we can afford to wait for this information. Mr. Gertsch is impatient and is pushing for an answer.

Dr. Steiner: They are here. I could easily wait for the answer, because I won't be here for the next few days, but Mr. Steffen is still here, so he's the poor victim. I suggest we adopt this resolution immediately in the sense we have discussed and entrust it to Mr. Steffen. And then when Stuttgart makes an offer, we'll simply repeat this process.

Albert Steffen: I can also do it so that I write to Colonel-General Gertsch first and then send the resolution afterwards. — Time is very advanced. No one else is speaking?

Dr. Steiner: I would just like to say that the main questions would still have to be discussed further and that the meeting would have to reconvene very soon here in Switzerland. Because it seems to me to be of the utmost importance that something decisive be done here in Switzerland in the Anthroposophical Society. I have been saying for many years that if something were to be done here in Switzerland for the Anthroposophical Society, it would be of very special, even spiritual, importance. And that is why I had great expectations of today's meeting.

But now it may well be that these expectations will be exceeded by a continuation as soon as possible ⁵! And so we will probably not be able to debate this further today. And now I have to tread lightly: I will therefore wait until you have had supper before beginning my lecture. Perhaps we could start the lecture at a quarter to nine?

Mr. Storrer: The collection we organized for the deficit of the Anthroposophical Society has so far amounted to CHF 459.50.

• 1. Refers to the delegates' meeting at the end of February.
• 2. In the morning lecture by Dr. W. J. Stein.
• 3. The document, see the following page.
• 4. 1 Jucharte = 36 Aren
• 5. See the meeting of June 10, 1923, page 512 ff.

Is it not, in essence, my dear friends, all of us who are here together for the purpose of our construction, not strange karma, now, in a harrowing event, to experience the connection between karma and seemingly external coincidence? We can already understand this when we take everything we have experienced in anthroposophy so far and turn it into a conviction: that human lives that are taken away early, that have not gone through the worries and sorrows, nor the temptations of life, that such human lives are forces in the spiritual world that have a certain relationship to the entire human life, that are there to have an effect on these human lives. I often said: the earth is not there as a mere vale of tears, as something where man is transferred, as it were, as a punishment, out of a higher world, the earth is there as a place of learning for human souls! - But if a life is short, with only a short period of learning, then there is just enough strength to work down from the spiritual world and to flow away...

We then also recognize the lasting value of the spiritual world's effects in such a life, which is snatched from us, like the good boy who was snatched from us for the physical plane. We honor him, we celebrate his physical departure in a dignified way, when we learn, learn a great deal, in the indicated and in many other ways from what has been experienced in the last days. Anthroposophy is learned by feeling and sensing. Then, when we face such a case, we look up into those spheres where the soul of the child whose body we have today given back to Mother Earth has been transported. What is now being sent out by many anthroposophical souls to people who sacrifice their personalities can also be spoken to those who have died for the earthly plan with a small change. For they too are reached by the request that we speak. These requests apply to the living and also to the dead. And when we are convinced that the soul has already left the body, then we speak the mantram, which most of our friends here are familiar with, with a small change, with the small change with which I will now forward it to the dear, good 7beo, to his soul, as it lives on in the spheres as a sphere-man:

Spirit of his soul, active guardian,
May your wings bring
The pleading love of our souls
To your trusted spheresman,
So that, united with your power,
Our request may helpfully shine
On the soul that lovingly seeks it.

Dear attendees!

It is my task today to speak about the place that is to be a center of activity for everything that can radiate from the work in which you have participated here in such a deeply satisfying way over the last eight days. I may say in a deeply satisfying way, for the reason that you will believe me when I say that I am connected with this work in the deepest sense and therefore may express the deepest satisfaction about the course of this congress.

Now, my dear attendees, the Goetheanum is, so to speak, a physical manifestation of that which, in the most diverse ways and in the most diverse fields, would like to emerge as the result of anthroposophical spiritual science in the world. When it first emerged in the world, anthroposophy naturally did not immediately have its own place of activity, and it could not even be thought of, not even remotely, to build a place of activity for it. After about a decade of activity, a number of people who believed in the anthroposophical worldview came up with the idea of creating such a center for anthroposophy. The idea had initially come from the impressions gained from the performance of the mystery plays, which we started in Munich in 1910. It struck a number of our friends how unsuitable the architecture of an ordinary theater, such as we had to use to stage the mysteries at the time, is for what is actually artistically intended by anthroposophy.

And so the plan arose to found a kind of college for anthroposophy. The first attempt was to build in Munich. Land had already been acquired in Munich. But now the question was that precisely because anthroposophical spiritual science wants to be what has been spoken of here again in these days, the same could not be said for such a building as is otherwise the case. You have a society or an association, as you will, that has set itself some goal and believes it needs its own building. You get in touch with some master builder, an architect, and receive his suggestions. The building is constructed in the antique, Renaissance, Gothic style or similar, and then the events of the respective association or society are held in such a building.

Those who are thoroughly connected with their own soul life, as it should be, with an anthroposophical worldview, can never agree to such an outward agreement for a framework, for a wrapping of that which is to be created through anthroposophy. Because it has been emphasized over and over again: Anthroposophy is, on the one hand, a science of the spirit, of the supersensible, arising from the deepest sources of human knowledge. But it is not a theory, it is not a sum of abstractions, it is not something about the world and about life; it becomes, as it develops, life itself, it takes hold of the deepest inner impulses of the whole, of the full human being, and pursues everything from the inner being of this full human being, whatever it can be for him. In this way, it not only stimulates the impulses for scientific research, but also for artistic creation.

Not as if out of the true anthroposophical spirit – I have already mentioned this in my evening lectures – not as if out of this spirit an allegorizing or symbolizing art wanted to arise; that would not be art at all. Not ideas are to be transformed into symbolic or allegorical forms. No, anthroposophical spiritual knowledge penetrates into the depths of the human soul and takes its origin from sources that can flow into the world in other currents than in the field of the presentation of ideas. And so the one stream of the presentation of ideas arises as the one, and the other stream, the stream of artistic creation, in addition to many others, from the same source. But it is not about the translation of spiritual science into art or into sham art, but rather about an elementary, very original, I would say, expression of the artistic. In Dornach today, one can see how nothing symbolic or allegorical is striven for, but how what is intended to be art is conceived as art and created out of the artistic.

I would like to express myself with an image: if the relationship between the anthroposophical worldview and art is really as I have just described it, then this anthroposophical worldview must not allow itself to be built a place from the outside, in some style that for the Greek, for the Renaissance, for the Gothic worldview. Instead, the anthroposophical worldview must be housed in a building that has arisen out of the most original impulses of anthroposophy. Then the matter must be such that, for example, speaking takes place from the podium, singing or reciting or acting in eurythmy takes place on the stage, and so on; that which emerges in this way to the people must, so to speak, be the one language, and the other language must be the building forms, must be the architecture that envelops that which wants to reveal itself within the space. Anthroposophy must not accept a style from outside; Anthroposophy itself, being intimately related to the artistic, must appear as a creator of style.

This is what was there, I would like to say, with the same inner spiritual necessity as - now I would like to express myself through an image - as the nutshell cannot be different in its formation, in its design, than it is. The nut fruit and also the nutshell arise from the same lawfulness, from the same forms and life forces. He who sees the one can judge the other. This must also be the case with the structure for the anthroposophical world view. Therefore, what was to become the style for such a structure could arise out of all that was alive in the ideas of anthroposophy.

It is understandable that this met with resistance at first from all those who cling to the old, who cannot imagine that the development of humanity can only come about through the constant emergence of new and new metamorphoses of human labor, human creativity and human insight, and so – and I emphasize this – it was not the police or the government that rejected us at first, but the art world rejected our styles for Munich. It is not our fault that the building was not built in Munich, where it was originally intended to be. Of course, in the end people grew tired of submitting, I might say, to the yoke of what would have been dictated to them from the old ways of thinking. Those who knew what kind of architectural style must arise from the anthroposophical worldview were not allowed to have their wings broken.

And so it happened that through the donation of a friend, our project on the hill near Basel, in Dornach, in the northwestern corner of Switzerland, could be realized, and that the foundation stone could be laid in the fall of 1913. Of course, we fell into the most difficult period of Western cultural development. But we have at least already come so far that a whole series of university courses have been held in the building since last fall, which is still far from completion.

Now I would like to characterize in just a few words how that which lives in anthroposophy has poured out into an architectural style. That, ladies and gentlemen, is precisely the essence of anthroposophical research, of anthroposophical knowledge: that the concepts, that the whole forms of knowledge live, unfold in free activity, and this led, I would like to say, in a very elementary, naive way, to transferring the old architectural styles, which are based on the geometric, symmetrical, mechanical-static, into the organic. And so the previous architectural styles are, I would like to say, external images of that which can live in the static, in the carrying, in the load-bearing and in the symmetrical, in the geometric.

Of course, the Dornach building and my words here are not a criticism – it would be foolish towards these architectural styles – but it is a matter of drawing on progress. In this case, it could only consist of the geometric, the symmetrical, the static being transferred into something that, in all its forms of expression, in all its formation, also represents the organic, just as the inorganic is otherwise represented in architectural styles. I am well aware, esteemed attendees, of all the objections that can be raised against such a thing; but it had to be done at some point, based on the fundamental impulses of an anthroposophical attitude. There had to be a building idea that is lived and woven through the contemplation of the organic.

And consider what that actually means in terms of the human body itself. Take the smallest organ, perhaps it will be most illustrative. Please take your earlobe, a very small organ, it has a certain shape and size. If you feel the whole meaning of the human organic structure, feel it artistically, then you will say to yourself: firstly, this earlobe could not be in any other place in the human organism than where it is, and secondly,

in the place where it is, it could not be other than it is. The same had to be achieved with all the individual forms in the construction of the Goetheanum. One had to connect inwardly with the metamorphosing formative forces that otherwise live in the organic, and one had to experience what must of course be observed as the basis for every building idea: the geometric, the symmetrical, the static. One had to experience this through what can be experienced in this way in harmony with organic creation. Every single shape, every door, every window, every column, every detail [of this building] had to be individually felt. And the whole, in turn, had to be the one that, as a unified organic building idea, could absorb these individual organic building elements.

One difficulty arose from the fact that the matter was initially conceived for Munich in such a way that, in fact, only interior design would have been considered in the main. The building was to be surrounded by houses that anthroposophical members wanted to acquire, so that the exterior architecture would have been of little consequence. When the building had to be moved to Dornach, the space available was a completely open field on a hill, on a Jura hill, in a Jura configuration. There were unobstructed views in all directions and a clear view of the building. The mountain formations were there, and the whole thing had to be adapted to them. Since the interior design could not be changed much due to the haste with which I promoted the matter at the time, it was necessary to design the exterior in accordance with the finished interior. That is the thing that still leaves me somewhat dissatisfied today, because the person who will fully appreciate the whole can already see a certain discrepancy between the exterior and the interior design. However, every effort has been made to overcome the difficulties as far as possible. And in such a matter, basically only something incomplete can be created in the first attempt. But that is also the only reason for the Dornach building, to start a new architectural style, which cannot arise from any other foundations than those that can be made at all for modern civilized life from the knowledge of the spirit of the world.

The way the Goetheanum presents itself to the observer when approaching from afar is connected with the overall task: one is dealing with something that arises in the depths of the human soul, be it art or science, and that the person who has fathomed it has a duty to communicate to others. We are dealing with something that comes from the bottom of the heart, with something that is taken from the whole soul by someone who truly understands. This can be felt. And it may be demanded of the one who can feel it that this is now translated into contemplation. As I said, nothing should be thought up, no idea should be cast into form. But what I have just hinted at can be felt, can be experienced inwardly, this relationship of an intimate unity to a receptive other unity and the union of the two. By feeling this, it arose for me quite naturally only in contemplation, not as an allegory or as symbolism, a double-domed building, designed in such a way that two domed spaces met in a segment of a circle. And it seems to me that in this form of construction one can feel everything that a soul can feel in relation to anthroposophy and the world, as it must actually be felt as the ideal relationship, as the blissful relationship. And I believe that, just by looking at the outer form, one can feel this when approaching the hill at Dornach, just as one feels the inner necessity of the form of the nutshell compared to the form of the nut fruit; one can feel that there is something in the two juxtaposed domes of a large and a smaller dome structure that should be explored in the most intimate way, and yet at the same time wants to openly communicate with the world. That is what is expressed first in the external forms that I will take the liberty of showing you.

Yes, please, now the first picture (Fig. 5).

You see, dear attendees, here is the road that leads to the west side of the building. The building is a concrete structure down to the upper terrace. From here on, it is a wooden structure. You first enter the concrete structure. In the concrete structure - we will see later - is stored. Then you go up the stairs and come to a foyer and from there to the actual auditorium. You can see here in this motif how an attempt has been made to transfer the otherwise existing forms of construction, which, as I said, are based on the purely geometric, symmetrical, static or dynamic, into organic forms, but not in a naturalistic sense, not in such a way that natural forms would have been imitated. No one can ask what something depicts, just as one cannot ask what a plant leaf or a human ear depicts. It is something that has its inner form of life and vitality and life force within itself; something that justifies itself through its own form and its own unfolding of life.

When you create such a form, you do not feel that you are imitating something, but rather you feel, as a human soul, inwardly connected to that which lives metamorphosing in the plant from leaf to flower to fruit, shaping and reshaping everything, if I may use this Goethean expression. And that is what we have here, not something copied, but something formed in such a way that is otherwise only formed in the organic world. Those who then see the building itself may perhaps be able to see how we have tried to sense artistically from the material all around. It was rather difficult – I will have to come back to this later – to find forms for the concrete, a new material.

The next picture (Fig. 6): You can see the entrance to the west portal again. Here you go in, here left and right up, then you enter a vestibule, then the actual auditorium. The second, smaller dome is now completely covered by the larger dome of the auditorium. All the individual such secondary forms are in complete harmony, and in fact in organic harmony with the larger forms.

The next picture (Fig. 7): Here you can see the building from the southwest side; here the entrance, here the west portal; here the south side, here a transverse building, which we will see in more detail; here the entrance from the south side. You can see how this main form reappears here in some window forms, but actually in such a way that the main form is formed quite differently than the window forms. It is really the case that, when designing in this architectural style, one has to form organic shapes in such a way that, let us say, at the bottom of the plant there is an entire unnotched leaf, further up the leaf is notched, becomes of a very different shape, then in the sepal again something else. One must have the possibility, so to speak, to slip with one's feeling through all the possible forms that arise within, which are quite different according to external sensuality, but are inwardly spiritual and yet quite the same.

Here the large dome, there the small one. One of the issues, for example, was to find the right roofing for this building. The building had to appear as a unified whole, and, I would say, fate brought it about: While I was still occupied with the idea of building, I had to undertake a lecture tour in Norway, from Kristiania to Bergen, and from a train I saw the wonderful slate quarries of Voss. And just as this Voss slate presented itself to me in brilliant sunlight at the time, I said to myself at that moment: this belongs to the covering of this building. And indeed, a certain necessity for it will be felt by anyone who comes to Dornach and sees the wonderful grey-blue of this slate, shining and radiant in the sunlight.

The next picture (Fig. 8): Here you see the building from the south side. I emphasize, here would be the entrance, here is the side wing, as there is one on each side of the building. Here are the storerooms for the equipment, dressing rooms for performances, here the dome of the stage area. This is where the two domes meet. And it is precisely at the point where they meet that these side wings are located.

The next picture (Fig. 2): Here we have the construction from the northeast, and you can see the stage area, the dressing room, the storage room, [the large dome partially covered by the small dome]. Here is the so-called boiler house, which is completely made of concrete, and it is perhaps the one that is most [challenged by individuals], and that is because, firstly, an attempt was made to find a form out of the concrete material with a real sense of the material, but then to find a form in the way that is only possible for utility buildings. The lighting and firing systems had to be accommodated in it. It was important to see what the whole thing looked like and how it would appear. That was the nut to crack, so to speak, and the concrete shell had to be built around it according to the same principles. And I tried to think it through to the point where the whole shape of this building is only complete when the smoke comes out here, when it is in full operation. The shapes of the smoke clouds actually belong to the whole shape.

The next picture (Fig. 3) offers a completely different view. There is a small domed structure nearby that had to be built for a reason that I will explain later. This composition of a building with two domes is intended to be another metamorphosis. Here the domes are intertwined, intersecting, while there they are separate, on the adjoining building. But this then means that all the details of the structure had to be designed differently.

The next picture (Fig. 20): Here you can see the floor plan. Here is the entrance; below that would be the room for storing clothes. Here are the stairs. You go up these stairs and come into the vestibule, which we will see in a moment. Now you enter the auditorium. Here is the space below the organ, which is slightly elevated, with the other musical instruments. Here are the rows of benches for about a thousand spectators, here on each side are seven columns. These seven columns are, as we shall see, only symmetrical in relation to the only axis of symmetry that the whole building has, and which runs from west to east. The whole building is symmetrical in relation to this west-east direction, so that the capital of the second and third column is not a geometric repetition of the first column, but the capitals are progressive, metamorphosing forms from the first to the seventh column, and only this column is symmetrical with this one, the second with the second here and so on, so only symmetrical in relation to the one axis of symmetry. The rest in the course of this axis of symmetry is perceived in organically progressive transformation.

The next picture (Fig. 21): Here is an average in accordance with the axis of symmetry. Here are the storerooms, the stage rooms, the smaller domed room, the large domed room, here is the floor of the auditorium rising, here the entrance, here then the anteroom, here you come in, put your things down here, here is the staircase. You come into the anteroom here and go into the auditorium under the organ here.

The next picture (Figure 22): Here I have taken the liberty of showing you the model, cut in the same section as the one I have just shown you. This is the first model of the structure, which I made in Dornach during the winter of 1913–1914, partly out of wood and partly out of wax. The structure was then built according to this model. The model contains the essential building idea.

The next picture (Fig. 10): Here we have the west portal, the main entrance, seen in more detail.

The next picture (Fig. 12) shows a detail. If you approach from the south side, you will see a similar detail here. You saw it earlier at the building itself. But here you see a concrete house, the house of the friend who provided us with the land back then. An attempt has been made to design this house as a concrete mold for the residential building in the style that it must have next to the building.

The next picture (Fig. 13): This is a side wing. You can see here the window forms in more detail, that is, the forms that the main form, which is on the west portal, takes on in metamorphosis. The next picture (Fig. 11): Here is such a metamorphosis of the main form above the west portal at one of the side entrances.

The next image (Fig. 14): Here, isolated so that it can be seen better, is a motif of one of the side entrances, and the concrete walkway, a gallery, a terrace.

The next picture (Fig. 23): Imagine, dear attendees, that you have now gone down through the gate in the concrete building that I have often pointed out to you. You enter; here are the stairs leading up to the auditorium, here is the stairwell. You see, I have dared to replace the usual pillars or columns with something that is organically designed, and in such a way that, artistically speaking, it can only be in the overall organism of the building as it is, tapering outwards with reference to its curves towards the gate, where it has little to bear, bracing itself here, as a muscle braces itself where it has to bear, because here the whole weight of the building rests. But it was not attempted to make it out of thoughts, so that one can say that something is meant to express something. It does not express anything other than, for example, the human thigh expresses in its architectural structure. It expresses itself, that is, what it is for the organism as a whole. And one must have the feeling that it cannot be otherwise.

Of course, when people with habitual ways of thinking approach something like this, their desire to ridicule is stirred up. And since they can usually only think in a naturalistic way, they don't really know what to imagine by it. It seems organic to them, but they can only imagine the organic in naturalistic terms, as an imitation. Then along came an obviously very clever critic who noticed, as it seems, that it represents a certain strength. It has to bear weight, it has to represent a certain strength. But since he can only think in naturalistic terms, an elephant's foot occurred to him. But then again, it seems to him that something of an artistic-critical conscience has arisen, and he felt that it does not look like an elephant's foot. But now he already has this idea of the elephant's foot, it was already on his mind. He thought, but it must be an elephant foot. But now it was not as thick and clumsy as an elephant foot, and he thought it was rachitic, and now, in order to do justice to both these impressions, he said it was a “rachitic elephant foot”.

The next picture (Fig. 24): You see, at this point I felt how it must be for someone who enters our auditorium via these stairs. They must, so to speak, receive the feeling that Inside, my spiritual powers will be balanced by spiritual insight. Now, the whole feeling was realized for me in such a way that I had to make three such perpendicular forms, which stand perpendicular in the three directions of space. Believe it or not, it is still true: only when I had already done it in this way, when I had the model, did it occur to me that it reminds me of the three semicircular canals that are perpendicular in the ear and that, when injured, cause people to faint. One must unite one's own experiences of the soul with the sense of the creative forces of nature, then one discovers things that are by no means – I must keep saying it – symbolic or allegorical, but that come entirely from artistic feeling and yet have an inner necessity in themselves.

It is true that I actually prefer it when what I say about the building tonight is not expressed at all, but only felt when looking at the building, because the building should speak for itself. I don't really like talking about the building the way I am doing tonight. But not everyone can see the building over and over again; in art, one speaks of artistic works, and so perhaps one may try to talk about the building through a surrogate.

The next picture (Fig. 23): you can see here the staircase that was only hinted at there, here the form just discussed, here the “rachitic elephant foot”. You can see here, for example, this curve. I hope that whoever enters the building will feel the necessity of these forms at this point from the sense and view of the entire building.

The next picture (Fig. 26): Here you see a concrete mold – formed out of the wood above, it is somewhat different – for a radiator cover. This is also a form that arises from the feeling of saying to yourself, what do I have to put in front of a radiator, which grows out of nature like an organic thing, but which does not bring it to life, only the conclusion is for a radiator.

The next picture (Fig. 27): Now we have gone up the stairs and are here in the anteroom, which is only the anteroom, which is already quite in the area of timber construction. Here you see a column, and quite distinct from the sense of space in this place, you see this one column capital with its various curves, which reach out in the most diverse ways in the most varied directions in space, formed out of the sense of space itself. When you come to Dornach, I would ask you to see that in this room which is perhaps most clearly visible because it is the simplest. You will see that the whole thing is carved out of wood and it must be said again and again wherever there is an opportunity, that friends have devotedly worked for many years to bring about this building, because all of it is carved by hand after very crude carpentry work, all of it is carved by hand by our friends themselves, including this wall, which is individually designed in a variety of curves in different directions.

What I would particularly ask you to see is precisely the treatment of the wall. The whole building idea of Dornach resulted from the fact that the wall had to be conceived differently than one has been accustomed to, always thinking of walls. Walls are something final and limiting for the old architectural styles. Here they are not, here the thought should not arise: when you are inside the Dornach building, you are in a closed room. This thought should not arise. You come in and you should feel all the walls as if they were designed in an artistic way that actually makes the walls artistically transparent, so that you feel inside as if the wall does not close you off, but through its own form, which artistically makes the wall transparent, connects you with all the secrets of the macrocosm, allows you to look out, to look out inwardly, spiritually and soulfully into the vastness of the world.

The next picture (Fig. 28): We have entered through the space below the organ, are standing in the auditorium, looking back and see here, somewhat elevated, the organ space.

The next picture (Fig. 30): But this is not yet the finished organ motif, rather it is the model, which you can see here is still unfinished. The framing of the organ should also be developed in such a way that one has the feeling that the organ has not been placed in some corner or on some side, but that one has the feeling that the organ grows out of the whole organic structure as a necessary element. This motif would then have to be added later, in keeping with the height of the organ pipes. That was the first wax-wood model.

The next picture (Fig. 29): Here is the organ motif, here you enter. This is directly above the organ. These are the two columns to the right and left of the axis of symmetry. There you can see the sequence of columns. This sequence of columns with the architrave-like structure above it, I was already able to show in the first model earlier. But here I may draw attention to the fact that you see here the simplest capital motif; now the following capital motif is somewhat more complicated, the third again more complicated and so on. It is the case that the same formative forces, the same formative maxims that can be seen in nature, ascending the plant stem, metamorphosing the leaves, are at work here. The leaves are outwardly different in shape, but inwardly, in the sense of Goethe's theory of metamorphosis, they are ideally or spiritually the same.

If you now feel this form, descending, this ascending, but not in thought, but in artistic contemplation, and then connect with the creative forces of nature in such a way that you can really can deduce one from the other in the same way that the next plant leaf, which is shaped differently, emerges from the previous one, then you get these following forms; but, as I said, they are meant artistically. And it follows from this that it is actually of no particular value to focus attention on only one capital; what is important is that each capital emerges from the one that precedes it. For it is precisely this living transformation of one into the other that brings life to the building. And the same applies to the architraves.

I might say that you make some astonishing artistic discoveries. When I had designed the capitals according to the same principles as the advancing bases and architraves, I was able to follow a line of development. The idea of development has become a central tenet of modern knowledge. But one has – just look at this in the works of Herbert Spencer or others who have developed the idea of development in an abstract form, not in an inwardly living form – one has always believed that development progresses in such a way that first there is the primitive, simple form, then comes the complicated and so on and more and more complicated, and the last form is the most complicated. You can think that up if you think abstractly, but you can't express it artistically. If you express it artistically, the most complicated form is in the middle, then it becomes simpler again. One is simply pushed by artistic feeling to ascend to a middle most complicated form, and then to pass into the simpler one.

Then, however, one comes to realize that nature itself does it that way. The human eye is indeed the most perfect in the series of living beings, but not the most complicated. In its simplification, it no longer has the organs, for example, the fan and the xiphoid process, which are found in certain animals that have less perfect but more complicated intermediate forms of eyes. That is what I would particularly like to emphasize here.

Nebulous mystics, people who want to ramble on about everything, naturally ask: Why are there seven pillars on each side? There is no other answer to that than: Why are there seven colors in the rainbow, seven tones and the octave as a repetition of the prime in the tone scale? It is an inner necessity. And precisely when one feels this inner necessity quite objectively, then one does not lapse into nebulous mysticism. That something was done in nebulous mysticism in the Dornach building is simply a calumny.

The next picture (Fig. 33): Here I present to you – here the organ motif – the two first forms, the simplest with the architrave motifs above them. I will now show the following in such a way that I always show a column, then this column together with the next, then the next in turn together with the next, and so on, so that you can see how the lively sense of progression from one column capital to the next and from one architrave motif to the next takes place.

The next picture (Fig. 34): Here, then, the first column, isolated, leaning down, rising up, but the whole thing sensed in its polyhedral spherical form.

The next picture (Fig. 35): The first and second columns, progressing from a simpler motif to a more complicated one, as well as with the motifs above them.

The next picture (Fig. 36): The next is the second column by itself. The next picture (Fig. 37): The second and third columns continue. The next picture (Fig. 38): The third column by itself.

The next picture (Fig. 39): the third and fourth columns. It is becoming even more complicated, and from these motifs one gets one such that any observer will believe that it was actually conceived as a single entity. However much it may seem familiar to you, if you have heard anything about mysticism – I hope not in a mystically nebulous way – it is simply obtained here by a metamorphic transformation of this motif. You can see it here, I would say, already in the forms.

The next picture (Fig. 40): This is the column still by itself, which was the fourth here.

The next picture (Fig. 41): Here you have the column that we just had. From this, then, by simply letting this motif continue to grow through metamorphosis, not by actually only developing this motif, this motif emerges. I believe that someone who had formed this concept intellectually, not emotionally, would have placed the same motif here [on the architrave above the fourth column] over the motif [on the fifth capital]. This did not occur to me because here [on the capital] I am dealing with columns in which the motifs that enclose a polyhedral shape can be felt. These motifs arise differently than those [of the architraves], where the surfaces are mounted; there they are distributed differently in space, and can only be understood from a sense of space.

The next image (Fig. 42): This [fifth] column on its own. It looks like a caduceus, but is simply the metamorphosis of the previous chapter.

The next picture (Fig. 43): This column and the one that emerges from its metamorphosis. When you have arrived at this most complicated one, the motif simply wants to become simpler again. It discards certain complications, it becomes more perfect, but simpler.

The next image (Fig. 44): This is the [sixth] column capital by itself.

The next picture (Fig. 45): So it has jumped over from one side to the other, it is this motif and then it becomes this through transformation.

The next picture (Fig. 46): This is the last motif.

The next picture (Fig. 47): Here you have the last column of the auditorium, here is the slit between the auditorium and the stage, here is the first stage column. Here you can see into the stage area. Here is the dome of the stage area seen from the inside. It is still equipped with scaffolding. It is under construction.

The next image (Fig. 48): I will now take the liberty of showing the metamorphosis of the pedestal figures in quick succession, so that it does not take us too long. You will see how one pedestal motif – for the columns of the auditorium – develops into the other.

The next picture (Fig. 49): So it gets more complicated. The next picture (Fig. 50): The third pedestal.

The next picture (Fig. 51): Next picture. The metamorphosis advances in this way. It is always the case with this metamorphosis, when it is felt through, that it tends to slope downwards again and new forms arise, expanding. The necessity for further development can only be felt artistically, not speculated upon.

The next picture (Fig. 52): The fifth base motif. The next picture (Fig. 53): The sixth motif. The next picture (Fig. 54). The seventh motif.

The next picture (Fig. 55): Here you can see into the stage area from the auditorium. This is the painting of the small dome, below it the stage area. The auditorium would then be here. You can see here into the small stage area from the auditorium facing east. This is the end of the auditorium. It is a motif; here the auditorium, then comes the curtain, which then belongs to the small stage area. It is the conclusion to the east. Below it will be the nine-and-a-half-meter-high wooden group, which I will talk about later, covered here by a wooden roof, which, in its various forms, synthesizes everything that is distributed over the other forms of the capitals and architraves.

I would also like to show some columns from the small domed room, i.e. the stage area. These columns are made according to the same principle, but because of the small size of the room, because of the whole complex, the capital forms are different again, but they are asymmetrical in relation to the west-east axis.

The next picture (Fig. 58): Another column from the small domed room. The next picture (Fig. 59): Yet another. The next picture (Fig. 60): Yet another.

The next image (Fig. 57): Once again, the view from the auditorium into the small domed room. Here are the columns of the stage area. Performances will take place here. I have redesigned the bases of these columns in the small domed room as twelve seats. This was possible because this room can also be used as a meeting room. And because a meeting of twelve people was not intended to be mystical, but arose from the overall architecture.

The next picture (Fig. 67): Here you can see what I just called the roofing. The columns of the small domed room would be here. Carved out of the wooden wall in various forms, these forms synthetically summarize the others. Below that is the nine-and-a-half-meter-high wooden group (Fig. 93).

Now I come to the painting of the small dome. In this small dome, what must be aimed for in painting is gradually, perhaps, already achieved, despite all imperfections, not in the sense of artistic perfection, but in the sense of artistic intention. In one of my mystery dramas, I have a character suggest how painting should actually develop, so that gradually one no longer seeks the pictorial motif from the drawing, from the forms, but that one seeks it from the color and color harmony. That is how I had the character express it, that “form becomes the work of color”.

Now, since everything depends on the color in this painting of the small dome, it cannot be shown in these black-and-white afterimages, what is meant. But I think you can gain something from the fact that you might feel that something is wrong with these reproductions, that what you see is actually nonsense. And this feeling that it is actually nonsense is just an expression of the fact that one actually feels the necessity, it must be created from the color everywhere. And the human form, no matter how individualized it is, is thoroughly felt from the color.

The next picture (Fig. 72): Here this child, which – here would be the first column, the other column of the auditorium here, here the curtain, here this orange-reddish-yellowish child painted – which stretches out its hands and its gaze towards this fist figure [Fig. 70]. Of course one can see a fist-like figure; but for the person painting, what matters is the blue bruise and how it relates to the other spots, that is, to the orange-yellow spots and so on. The colors represent a whole world, a cosmos in itself, with something creative in it; one can extract the form from what the colors speak to one another in the universe. It is the conversation of color, the color word, the creative color word. If one really feels all this artistically, then, just as the world is rightly described as emerging from the word, human, superhuman, and subhuman figures arise from color as it intensifies into the color word.

The next picture (Fig. 70): This is where the child would be, here the only word in the entire structure, here a kind of fist figure emerging out of the blue. As I said, the feeling arises from the color, and we are transported to the sixteenth century, to the culture of the sixteenth century. It is the dawning of that culture which we ourselves still carry within us in our spiritual life, the culture that rushes towards abstract knowledge. Those who do not experience it as it is largely experienced today by people, but who experience it with the whole, with the whole human being, feel the Faustian struggle within our modern knowledge. This Faustian struggle has led to the fact that only in recent times has man come to the full feeling of the I, and now of the unformed, inartistically written I, which is experienced darkly within. What can be borne is only that which one has in knowledge, when one feels it out of the fullness of the human being in the proximity of the child; for that which we will see in a moment, what is painted here, is linked from the brownish blackness below the fist, it is linked to the danger of modern knowledge for those who feel from the fullness, it is linked to death, because our knowledge only delivers the dead to us. And whoever not only thinks through theoretically, but inwardly experiences that our concepts themselves are corpses as concepts, always feels death standing beside him out of the Faustian striving, and so he longs for birth, which shows itself on the other side in the child.

The next picture (Fig. 71): Below Faust – here it would be Faust – [Death] is taken out of the black-brownish area.

The next picture (Fig. 73): Here the fist figure is merged out of the blue as a larger area, here the child, stretching out its hands, arms, and gaze, with Death below. Above it, a kind of inspirer, as these figures, which have been tried to be created out of colors, always represent - one can feel that, it is always initiated quite instinctively from the color harmony - the initiates, who receive the secrets of the world from inspirers. Here, then, is Faust, and above him is his inspirer.

The next picture (Fig. 74): This is the inspirer of Faust; below it, Faust would be taken out of the blue, yellowish, reddish colors.

The next image (Fig. 75): A Greek figure as you go further into the dome. Here there would be Faust with his inspirer, here a Greek figure with the inspirer above.

The next picture (Fig. 76): The inspirer; yellow and yellowish-white, sunny like an Apollo countenance, here below somewhat like an Athena countenance; but all this is drawn from the color word.

The next picture (Fig. 77): These are inspirers, spiritual beings that do not incarnate in the flesh, but who have an inspiring effect on those who live on earth in the flesh as human beings.

The next image (Fig. 78): An Egyptian person, inspired by the two preceding ones. An Egyptian initiate, brought out of the brownish-bluish-blackish coloration.

The next picture (Fig. 79): We are moving more and more towards the east, towards the center of the dome, so to speak. Here below is a type of human being that lived as an intellectual being in the whole zone from Persia north of the Black Sea in ancient times, and then developed in Central Europe in the Germanic being; here, in the arms of the child, is the aging human being who carries within himself the memory of the boy.

The ambivalence, the dualism that manifests itself in the Germanic nature when it becomes knowledge, reveals itself, precisely in this Germanic nature, always reveals itself by confronting powers: the Luciferic, which you see here, taken out of the yellowish-reddish, the Ahrimanic taken out of the brownish-yellowish. The Luciferic and the Ahrimanic, we shall see again later in the central figure, they are the two essential ingredients of the human being. Man can only be understood as a kind of state of equilibrium, which must be continually striven for, but which is continually in danger of falling out of itself, of falling towards what would present itself on one side, and on the other side, if the extremes were to develop one-sidedly. This is what man would be like if he had only a heart and no intellect. Then the rest of the human form would adapt to what the heart makes of the human being. This is how man would look if he only had reason and no heart: the Ahrimanic, ossified in himself.

This secret of human existence can be expressed in three ways: physically, psychologically and spiritually. In the luciferic form, which man does not become, but which he contains latently within him, towards which he always strives as towards one side of his nature, what is expressed is that which develops into pleurisy, which constantly places man in danger of fever. On the other hand, man carries within himself the forces of aging; he is always in danger; in morbid cases he succumbs to the physiological pathology of sclerosis, calcification. Between these two states man lives.

Here dualism is depicted, as it does not yet extend to the complete interpenetration of forms, in a kind of physiology that extends down to the animal kingdom, a kind of centaur. But then, something like this has been done before. I have just tried to reproduce the faces of Mr. and Mrs. Wilson in these figures, so that what is contemporary, what was particularly annoying in this period, is also immortalized to some extent.

The next picture (Fig. 81): Here we see the ahrimanic figure just discussed; that is, what the human being tends towards: physiologically in sclerosis, in calcification; psychologically, it is all that in man tends towards pedantry, towards moral intellectualism, and so on; spiritually, all that is actually most alive when man awakens and returns to his physical being.

The next picture (Fig. 82): the Luciferic figure all to itself. I have just discussed it physiologically. The psychic — that which drives people to enthusiasm, to wanting to go beyond themselves with their heads, so to speak, to falling into mysticism, into false theosophy — is something that can be found particularly in mystics and mystical societies. People are often in this mood of enthusiasm, of soulfulness, so that they are always half a meter above their physical head with their soul head, and with a certain inner arrogance - I have already spoken of this - they would then like to look down on their fellow human beings. Spiritually, this is the human being in the moment of falling asleep, of dreaming. These forces, to which the human being tends one-sidedly, are strongest in the moment of falling asleep, while the others, the Ahrimanic ones, are strongest in the moment of waking up.

The next picture (Fig. 82): The Germanic initiator, above him Mr. and Mrs. Wilson. He is holding the child by the arm, shining next to his dark figure.

The next picture (Fig. 83): Here we are already quite close to the eastern side of the small dome. Here is the Russian man, who actually always has his own shadow beside him. The one who sees spiritually actually always sees a real Russian twice, because the Russian always has the second man, the other, the double, with him spiritually. This is something that will only develop in the future; now it is rushing towards destruction, devastation and ruin. But out of this terrible devastation, out of this murder of human civilization, the good core of Russian-ness will one day develop. As here the Germanic has been shown, here is the Russian. Here the inspirer, out of the blue.

The next picture (Fig. 84): Here, if you note this point, you will find above the Russian – there is only one, as I said – the inspiring stars, above which there is a kind of cloud that forms the centaur, which, via the stars from the cosmos, stimulates that which is still present in the Russian today in an embryonic state of soul and spirit.

The next picture (Fig. 85): I will show you that from the other side in a moment. So over here [far right of the image] would be what I have just shown. Here is the actual central motif [directly to the right of the image], and here is the same inspiring angel from the north side; but it is created out of the orange and then, accordingly, this centaur figure. Below, there is again the one Russian who appears in two.

The next picture (Fig. 86): We are now in the middle. Here you see the Russian and here the inspiring blue angel and here the orange one, here in the middle the representative of humanity. Those who feel can feel the Christ in him. He stands there as the representative of human equilibrium; from his right side he sends out the rays of love, which, like serpents, entwine the ahrimanic form – that is, the sclerotic, pedantic, materialistic-intellectual human being; here above is the luciferic figure, which is physiologically, psychologically and spiritually what I have indicated.

This will be in the far east. This is painted on the inside of the dome, and below it, though differently designed, as it must be for the sculpture, is the nine-and-a-half-meter-high wooden group, which also has the Representative of Humanity in the center, who brings balance between the Ahrimanic and the Luciferic.

It so happened that the famous and influential Frohnmeyer wrote a pamphlet, a defamatory pamphlet about anthroposophy, and in this pamphlet he makes the monstrous claim that “when one comes to Dornach, one can see, as Steiner claims, that this is what the Christ looked like in objective reality.” I don't say to anyone else that I see him that way and don't impose him dogmatically on anyone, but I could only shape him as I saw him, he is the one who walked in Palestine according to my vision. Above that is the Luciferic-Ahrimanic.

Frohnmeyer now says that he depicts a Christ there as objective, who has Luciferian traits above and animalistic traits below. He [supposedly] saw it that way. Lucifer is above, the Christ is shaped entirely humanly, below is Ahriman, here is still a piece of wood, it is not yet finished in the wood. But someone writes it down who doesn't feel the slightest obligation to research the truth, just as in the other case, as Mr. Kolisko told it today, someone writes down the objective untruth and then apologizes by saying that he didn't have time to research the truth.

Pastor Frohnmeyer was confronted with the matter. He then said that he had not seen it himself, but had copied it from another pastor, and since it had already appeared a long time ago, he simply believed he could copy it. We did, in fact, send a correction from Dornach, but it was not included. This is how things are spread today; it is the level of conscientiousness with which people work today. But one must keep saying: what should a theology look like that is shaped only in this way? The person in question was also a lecturer at the University of Basel.

The next picture (Fig. 87): the figure of Lucifer in itself – here the figure of Christ would be underneath – this has been brought out of the red.

The next picture (Fig. 88): the Ahrimanic figure by itself. You see here the head, which is as it should be in a being that has only intellect and no powers of the heart.

The next picture (Fig. 90): the painted representative of humanity, the Christ.

The next picture (Fig. 91): Here is my original model of the plastic Christ, seen in profile, who is thus a wooden figure. And in the middle again this Representative of Humanity; above it, repeated twice, the Luciferic figure; below it, twice, the Ahrimanic figure. And then, on the side, an elemental being growing out of the rock, which I will show you in illustrations so that you can see how asymmetry has been attempted in the Dornach sculpture. The next picture (Fig. 92) is my original model for the Christ of the wooden figure. The asymmetry is taken so far that, because the left arm is directed upwards and the right downwards, and the whole figure, not just the face, should have physiognomy, the whole figure should be soul, that the held-up arm on the left corresponds to the forehead, and the held-down arm corresponds to the forehead. This asymmetry, which is only subtly hinted at in humans, has been attempted here. Such things had to be dared because the sensual should not be imitated, but on the contrary, the spiritual, concrete [forming] behind the sensual should be observed, which underlies the sensual formation.

The next picture (Fig. 98): This is a piece [of the execution model]. Here would be Christ. Here is Lucifer, who aspires to the right hand of Christ. Here is this being, growing out of the rock as an elementary being in complete asymmetry. You see, here it is attempted to overcome the usual way of composing. Usually, one composes figures that one puts together. Here, the whole group, which consists of a series of figures, is conceived as a unit, and the individual figures are taken out of the whole down to their fingers, noses, eyes and eyebrows, so that, of course, when the left is at the top, an asymmetry results, but one that is taken from the life of the whole.

The next picture (Fig. 101): once again the striving Lucifer. Here would be the second Luciferian figure, here the Christ figure.

The next picture (Fig. 99): This is my original Ahriman-Mephistopheles model. Mephistopheles is, of course, only a later metamorphosis of Ahriman, who signifies physiologically, psychologically and spiritually what I have said. This model underlies all the Ahriman figures. It was originally designed by me for the wood group in 1915.

The next picture (Fig. 106): Now I come back to showing you this heating house, here in profile, so to speak, since I have already told you how it came about. It is often perceived as annoying; but people do not consider what would be there if one had not tried to shape something out of the concrete material, out of this brittle material, which might be more perfect later on. There would be a red chimney here! I wonder if it would be more beautiful in reality.

The next picture (Fig. 107): the boiler house, seen from the front. As I said, it is only when the smoke comes out that you feel a certain necessity for these outgrowths.

The next picture (Fig. 103): This is the house that was built nearby, the glass house that is now used as a construction office. Some eurythmy practice rooms are inside. It had to be built originally because the glass windows for the building were cut inside it. These glass windows came about in such a way that what is otherwise only artistically executed – that the wall is artistically transparent – is formed in these glass windows right down to the physical level. The motif that had been specified was engraved with a diamond pencil from monochrome glass panes by friends who worked on it for years with tremendous dedication and devotion. This had to be done first in this house. The glass panes are large and a separate studio building had to be erected for this purpose. But it is designed entirely in the style of the whole. Two domes, standing apart from each other, determine the very different shape of the building up to the gate; the whole asymmetry, so down to the stairs, everything is individualized. Those who come here will see that the lock and the door handle are individually designed.

The next picture (Fig. 104): the gate lifted out. The staircase individualized so that it can only be as it is at this location. Here (Fig. 105) the lock, which also returns in various metamorphoses on the building, then the gate.

The next picture (Fig. 112): Here you see a sample of windows, engraved out of a [same-colored] glass pane. One could allegorize and symbolize many things from these colors; but what the person who feels the matter artistically likes best is to simply stand in front of it and let this whole interplay of the light color tone with the dark color tone take effect on them because the interplay – the glass panes are, after all, arranged in succession in different colors – this entire play of colors undulates in the building, but in such a way that it does not make anyone nervous, but on the contrary = as has been attempted – has a healing effect.

The next picture (Fig. 110): other motifs. Such Ahrimanic figures, scratched out.

Now, dear attendees, that was what I took the liberty of bringing to you as a single image from this Goetheanum in Dornach. It is precisely the place where we should find the center of what has been cultivated here for a week, through this week, which was actually dedicated to Goethe's name, Goethe's essence and Goethe's work. And everything that the Goetheanum stands for should be dedicated to this. Perhaps it will have emerged from what I dared to say in the course of these discussions, that what wants to come before the world in anthroposophy can work both artistically and cognitively.

Unfortunately, we are not yet finished; a great deal of effort and, in particular, a great deal of sacrifice from our friends is still needed; unfortunately, it cannot come from the central states at the moment because of the currency difficulties. The sacrifice of other friends is needed if the building is to be completed. It cannot be completed otherwise than by this spirit of sacrifice being renewed. But it must be said that for a long time this spirit of sacrifice has been revealed in the most beautiful, significant and understanding way for Dornach. And from the feeling of the cultural significance of our cause, we cannot thank enough – I would say, from the genius of this anthroposophical sense, we cannot thank enough – those who have been able to possess this spirit of sacrifice. May it continue to exist so that Dornach does not remain a torso, but can be completed.

In the past week, a worthy and beautiful contribution has been made by our friends in Stuttgart and those who have joined them, and this is also intended to serve Dornach; and since I do not belong to the organizing committee, but am only an invited guest, it will not out of place if I also include myself – one knows how much effort a congress committee has, how it has to consider all the details and the big picture and prepare them over a long period of time – to express my heartfelt thanks to this committee, even now that we are at the end of this event.

And then, we must indeed consider, my dear attendees, what calls are going out into the world today. Everywhere we hear, in the broadest circles, the ethical needs - if only in words - of what, in deepest reality, spiritual science wants to bring to the world. Do we not hear everywhere the yearning and speak of world brotherhood, which is to come about through all kinds of world covenants in the most diverse areas of life, but unfortunately out of the old? World brotherhood is sought; it is believed that this or that external event could lead to it.

But, my dear attendees, this world brotherhood cannot be found unless one has the deepest conviction that it actually exists, but is hidden for our time in the deepest subconscious depths of the human soul. But that is where it must be sought. That which is in the depths of the human soul must be sought and realized in the outer life, in social life. Then there will be world brotherhood, then this world brotherhood will be able to create the outer institutions that belong to it. But this world brotherhood cannot be brought about through external institutions. This world brotherhood, however, can only be found if man searches his deepest inner being in the spirit, at the point where his own being is bound together with the world spirit.

Knowledge and art, so they should arise from anthroposophical attitude and anthroposophical insight, as we tried to show in this week. Then, when knowledge and art emerge from human spirituality, which experiences world spirituality within itself, then this experience will also be a deeply religious one, one that will arise in man, entirely in the spirit of Goetheanism, that Goetheanism that sought in Goethe himself the harmony of the three most ideal fruits of life: science, art and religion.

If these fruits of life are there, then social life can also flourish for the benefit of humanity. If we speak less of the religious, it is perhaps precisely out of true religious experience, out of that religious experience that arises when science is sought in a spiritual way, art in a spiritual way.

And in this sense, esteemed attendees, the conclusion may well sound as the beginning sounded! Our dear friend Uehli began with Goethe, and may this event end with Goethe, with his words, through which he expressed his attitude towards science, art and religion; for he said what can also be our motto, which only must be developed further, in accordance with the insight that we do not have before us the Goethe who died in 1832, but the one who has developed with the world, whom we want to serve with his further education and development. But as a shining motto, everything that comes out of this work in the spirit of Goetheanism will be able to draw on what lies in his words, with which this event should come to an end:

He who possesses science and art also has religion
He who does not possess both, may have religion

Lecture 1 of 11 from the volume The Human Soul in its Connection with Godly-Spiritual Individualities.

My Dear Friends,

We will consider a certain theme today which may serve as an elaboration of the public lecture given yesterday.¹ I want to speak in greater detail of how the human being is placed within the sphere of the World Order that is connected with his destiny, with what we are accustomed to call Karma. How does the shaping of destiny proceed? In order to answer this question, not theoretically, but concretely in a vital and practical manner, it is necessary to study the being of man a little more closely.

Human life is often said to be divided into two different states of consciousness: waking life and sleep. The conception of sleep in most people's minds amounts to nothing more than this, that the human being rests during sleep. The scientific view indeed assumes that the activity of consciousness ceases when a man falls asleep and begins again when he wakes; in other words, so far as the organism is concerned, sleep is nothing but repose, a state in which human activity is at rest. But sleep is by no means merely rest; we must realise that from the time of falling asleep to the moment of waking, both the astral body and the Ego are present outside the physical and etheric bodies as active realities.

At the present stage of evolution reached by man in earthly life, it is not possible for him to have direct consciousness of what the Ego and astral body are doing during sleep; none the less their activities are, to say the least, as significant as those of waking life. The reason why the Ego and astral body cannot unfold consciousness of all the complicated circumstances in which they are immersed during sleep is that, at the present stage of the Earth's evolution, Ego and astral body have no organs wherewith to become aware of the happenings in which they are involved. Nevertheless these experiences are undergone by the Ego and astral body during sleep and they work on into the life of day, into man's conscious life.

We can most easily form an accurate conception of the way in which the experiences of Ego and astral body work into the life of day, by thinking of the beginning of man's life. During the very earliest period, as a tiny child, the human being as it were sleeps his way into the earthly life. You must not think here only of the times when a child is actually and obviously asleep, but of the whole period which cannot, in later life, be remembered by ordinary consciousness. To external observation the child may give the impression of being awake during this period, but what is going on in the child's consciousness does not take a form which can be remembered in later life. When we speak of all that is experienced by the child without his having subsequent memory of it, we are referring to this period during which the human being is ‘sleeping’ his way into earthly life.

But now, what develops out of this sleeping state at the beginning of man's life on Earth? Three things must be considered if we are to understand the workings of all that the human being brings from his pre-earthly life and proceeds to weave, in the dim consciousness of sleep, into his physical existence. There are three faculties which the human being has to acquire, differently from the animals. Animals either do not have them at all, or already possess them—in greater or lesser degree of development—when they come into the world.

Of the development of these three faculties people have usually quite a one-sided and inadequate conception. Very little of the whole process receives consideration. The first faculty is learning to walk. Man enters the world, the earthly world, as a being who cannot walk, who has to acquire this faculty. The second is speaking, and the third, thinking. One faculty may take precedence in a particular child, but in general it can be said that the human being learns to walk, to speak and to think. The faculty of thinking follows that of speaking; the faculty to grasp also in thought what is expressed in words develops, gradually, out of speaking. It is some considerable time before one can truly say that a child thinks.

The ordinary conception of walking is extremely inadequate. Walking does not merely consist in the child's learning to stand upright and propel his legs, it involves acquiring equilibrium, gaining complete mastery of the balance man has in the world. This means the child can move freely in any direction without falling over. Thus he learns to place his body into the world; he learns to control his muscles and limbs in such a way that the centre of gravity in the body, whether standing or walking, lies at the correct point. Current ideas about this faculty are, as I said, totally inadequate, for in reality something else of tremendous significance comes to pass with the learning to walk, namely differentiation of the functions of legs and arms. As a rule—and where modifications occur there is a sound explanation for them—animals make uniform use of their four limbs, whereas in the human being there is differentiation. For the purposes of equilibrium and of walking, man uses his legs, whereas his arms and hands are wonderful instruments for the expression of his life of soul, vehicles of the work he is to accomplish in the world. This differentiation between feet and hands, arms and legs, is one of the features that are ignored in the usual one-sided conception of the faculty of learning to walk. The differentiation testifies, in the physical world, to the fact that the human being has to acquire certain faculties during his physical life on Earth.

The second faculty, that of speaking, is also acquired by imitation; the little child tries to imitate—just as he does with walking, standing, equilibration, differentiation between hands and feet. It can be said with truth, that speaking is not unconnected with walking,—above all, with the use of the hand in its differentiation. It is well known that speaking is connected with the specific development of an organ situated at the left side of the brain. This however only applies to people who use their right hand for the most important activities of life; in left-handed people the organ of speech lies at the right side of the brain. These facts indicate that what comes to expression in speech is connected with the search for equilibrium. Then, out of speaking, thinking develops. A person who is born dumb can only be brought to think by artificial means; in all those who are not born dumb, thinking is a faculty that develops out of speech.

Now, the characteristic development I have just described is not really to be understood until we can follow how, in later life, the human being passes over from the waking to the sleeping state. During sleep, the physical and etheric bodies lie resting in the physical sense; the Ego and astral body have separated, in essentials, from the physical and etheric bodies. But if, with the methods of spiritual Science, we examine the astral body of man which has separated from the physical and etheric bodies during sleep, we find that this astral body contains within it the forces that are connected with learning to speak. It is extraordinarily interesting to watch the human being falling asleep and waking, during the time when, as a child, he is learning to speak; and it is also very interesting, in the case of some grown-up person who is learning to speak for the first time, to observe the intensity with which the astral body participates in the process. For when the human being is learning to speak, and even later on, too, when he is using speech in everyday life, the astral body carries with it, out of the physical and etheric bodies, the element of soul and spirit that is inherent in words and in speech.

If you can perceive how a human being speaks, how he forms his words, how he imparts to the words his own characteristic tone of voice, how he pours into words the force of his inner convictions, the experiences of his own soul—then you can also perceive how, when he falls asleep, the astral body carries this element of soul and spirit out of the physical and etheric bodies and during the period of sleep holds within itself, in the world of soul and spirit, as a kind of echoing wave, the after-workings of the psycho-spiritual qualities of speech. The forming of the words, the nuances of tone, the force of conviction which a man is able to bring into his words—all this can be perceived in the astral body during the sleeping state. There is, of course, no force of vibration such as is communicated to the physical air, and thus naturally no physical tone of voice is produced. The element of spirit and soul however, that proceeds from the human mouth on the waves of the words and is heard by the human ear, what the soul communicates in the flow of speech—all this is carried forth into the spiritual world by the astral body while the human being sleeps. It can be perceived more clearly when a child, or even a grown-up, is exerting himself to learn to speak a language. But through the whole of life, the element of spirit and soul inherent in speech during the day is taken out into the spiritual world by the astral body during the night. Thus we can say: the nuances of feeling in the spoken word—these it is above all that are carried out of the human being by the astral body during the night. This is a characteristic function of the astral body.

And now let us consider the Ego during the hours of sleep. The Ego is related, as it were, by nature to the limb-system. Just as the astral body is connected with the breast from which speech proceeds, so is the Ego involved in what the human being performs with his limbs, what he does between waking and falling asleep as he walks about or uses his arms and hands. The astral body flows into every word, carries forth the soul-quality of the word during sleep; the Ego is bound up with every movement we make as we go about the world in waking consciousness. The Ego is involved in every movement of the hands, in every act of grasping an object. Whereas, in connection with the astral body, too little attention is paid to the specific soul-element that pours into speech (speech being in itself so obviously a matter of the life of soul), when we come to the connection between the Ego and the limbs, we find an inclination to ignore altogether the working of the soul and spirit. Walking, grasping with the hands, are regarded as processes which happen entirely within a kind of physical mechanism,—for such the human organism is thought to be. But it is by no means so.

In every movement of the fingers that we make during the day, in every step we take as we go about, spirit and soul are contained, just as truly as they are contained in words. What is connected with our limbs and our movements is taken by the Ego out of our physical and etheric bodies into the spiritual world when we fall asleep; and in the process inheres a psycho-spiritual element of a very special nature. At every moment during the period of sleep, the Ego is unconsciously satisfied or dissatisfied. (You will understand this better presently, when I have explained it more fully). Although the words sound trivial, the Ego is satisfied with the legs having moved towards some place or other, or with something that has been accomplished by the arms. Not only is an aftermath of leg and arm movements carried out into sleep, but satisfaction or dissatisfaction as well. Part of the experience of the Ego during the hours of sleep is as follows: You should really not have gone to such and such a place! Or: It was very good to go there! It was good, too, that some particular thing was done with the arms! Or again: Such and such an action was not good! This is an expression of the element of soul and spirit that is added by the Ego to what it bears outwards from the limbs of man into sleep.

What underlies this? In accordance with the World Order the astral body of man is destined to come into inner contact between sleeping and waking with the Beings described in the book Occult Science as belonging to the Hierarchy of the Archangeloi—the Archangels. The Archangel Beings feel an affinity with what is carried out into sleep as an echo sounding on from human speech. It is something they need, something they long to experience.

I will put it like this.—Just as human beings in their physical life on Earth have to breathe, have to be surrounded with oxygen, and consequently feel oxygen to be something beneficial, so do the Archangeloi, who are connected with the inner nature of the Earth, experience a need that the souls of men who are asleep shall bring to them the echo of what is contained in their speech.

Human speech is in this way connected, inherently and fundamentally, via the sleeping state, with the Hierarchy of the Archangeloi. You will remember what I have said in earlier lecture courses, namely, that the Archangeloi are the Leaders, the Guiding Spirits, of the folk-languages. This is connected with what has now been given. The Archangeloi are the Guiding Spirits of folk-languages because they breathe in what the human being, as he sleeps, brings to them from his speech. And a certain human failing is revealed—it is one that is particularly observable in modern cultural life—when, with his speech, a man does not carry out into sleep the right quality.

There is in the culture of the present day very little of what we call idealism. Our words relate entirely to things of the outer, material world. The voicing of ideals—which presupposes belief in the spiritual, for the ideal is a spiritual thing—is becoming rarer and rarer. Since in their waking life men do not unfold inner enthusiasm for ideals, they speak, in reality, of nothing but what is actually present in the physical world. More and more do their words apply and refer only to things of the physical world.

In our days it is often so that people who claim to believe fanatically in the Spirit are the very ones who refute the Spirit. I refer to such as engage in spiritualistic experiments with the object of producing manifestations of the Spirit. This is because, fundamentally, they are only willing to believe in a Spirit which can manifest in the material world. But it is no Spirit that reveals itself in glimmering material light and other such phenomena! Spiritualism is veritably the most extreme form of materialism. It is really an attempt to deny the Spirit, inasmuch as these people will only acknowledge as Spirit that which enters into the world of matter. We are living in an age when words, as they emerge from the soul, lack the wings of idealism. But if this quality is absent, if, in other words, man is unable in waking life to speak of his ideals as well as of physical things, unable to turn to the ideal which imparts real aim to life and transcends physical existence, if in his daily speech he produces no words to express ideals, so that language itself lacks idealism, then it is exceedingly difficult, during sleep, for the connection—which is so necessary for the human being—to be made with the Archangeloi; in such circumstances no order prevails during sleep in the intercourse which should be established between the human soul and the Hierarchy of the Archangeloi. Yes, it is indeed the case that every night man loses the opportunity, if I may so express it, of union with the Archangel Beings. And it is difficult for him, then, to have the inner connection with the spiritual world which enables his life between death and a new birth to be full of strong and vital experiences. The life of a man between death and a new birth is weakened when no idealism is expressed in his speech.

To understand these things constitutes an integral part of the knowledge of life. Those who realise what lack of idealism in speech signifies will ultimately develop the power to make it once again an integral quality of human speech. Even during earthly life it can be observed that a man who, during sleep, fails to draw the right power from the Archangel, does not unfold the strength he should really possess. With regard to what speech should accomplish during sleep for the human being, we can therefore say: In order that speech may produce something that is beneficial to life, we must make a real effort to develop idealism of such a kind that our words do not merely voice an understanding of everyday affairs, but are also imbued with the Spiritual, in the form of idealism.

We are confronted with something even more striking when we observe the Ego in the sleeping state. The Ego carries out into sleep satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the activities of the limbs. Just as the astral body, as a result of the after-working of speech, is carried towards the Hierarchy of the Archangeloi, so is the Ego carried towards the Hierarchy of the Archai—the Powers of the Primal Beginnings—by virtue of what it takes out into the sleeping state as an echo of what has been performed by arms and legs in the daily round of life. From these Archai, the power flows to us, firstly, so to permeate the physical body that we do not only desire the Good, but are also able to exercise upon the urges and instincts of the physical body the measure of control which ensures that the physical body shall present no insuperable obstacle to the fulfilment of the duty or aim we have set ourselves in freedom of thought. In our thoughts we are free beings; but the power to use the freedom in actual life arises only when we carry out into sleep the basis for a true connection with the Archai. How can this be done? Idealism brings the astral body into right connection with the Archangeloi. And what enables the Ego to be united with the Archai? Although we ourselves, to begin with, are unconscious during sleep, the Being from the Hierarchy of the Archai is fully conscious, receives what is unconscious in us and elaborates it into a definite thought of satisfaction or dissatisfaction with what we have done during the day. But what is it that enables us to be connected rightly with these Archai, in the same way as idealism in speech leads us into right connection with Archangeloi?

One quality alone brings the Ego, during sleep, into right connection with the Archai, namely true human love, universal and unselfish love for human beings, sincere interest in every fellow man with whom life brings us into contact. I do not mean sympathy or antipathy, which are merely the outcome of something we are not willing to overcome. True and genuine love for human beings during the waking state leads us, during sleep, to the bosom of the Archai. And there, while the Ego is resting in the bosom of these Beings, karma or destiny is shaped. A verdict is passed: ‘I am satisfied with what I have performed with my arms and legs.’ And out of the satisfaction or dissatisfaction is born a power that not only plays a part in the period immediately following death, but continues on to the next earthly life—the power to shape destiny aright, so that true balance and adjustment are brought about in all those things which in one earthly life we have experienced in the Ego during sleep, in communion with the Archai.

Reflection on these things will develop insight into the mysterious connection between the Ego and the karma, or destiny. Just as the astral body of a man who is an idealist can hand over his speech to the Archangeloi as an offering that then enables the Archangeloi to guide him aright between death and a new birth, so does the Ego weave and work at the texture of destiny. Karma is elaborated in conjunction with the Archai. It is moreover in the power of the Archai to bestow upon us what we need in order that we may not only live through the period between death and a new birth, but, at our next descent to the earthly world, possess already a power which in earliest childhood, enables us, each in his own way, to learn to walk, to find equilibrium, to differentiate the functions of feet and hands, arms and legs.

It is wonderful to be able to perceive how the efforts made by a child when it stops crawling and begins to walk, when it first learns to achieve equilibrium—how these efforts represent the after-effects of the way in which, during the previous earth-life, the Ego was able, because of a universal love for human beings, to make a connection, during sleep, with the Archai. This fact manifests now in the process of learning to walk and can be observed in the very details of the process.

Suppose, for instance, a little child continually stumbles and falls. This means that in a previous life feelings of strong antipathy or even hatred were harboured. No more than an approach was made to the Archai and the effect of the absence of any real connection is expressed in the constant falls during the process of learning to walk. One who develops insight into such matters and sets himself the aim, let us say, of fitting himself to be an educator in the true sense by making close and careful observations of the way in which little children learn to walk, can indeed come to realise what a great and far-reaching task lies before him in the karmic adjustment of something brought over into the present life through the fact that in the previous life there was too little human love, or perhaps enough, but of a misdirected kind.

We have here an example of how the materialistic outlook remains altogether within the realm of the physical. It describes how the human organism raises itself like a machine to the upright position, how it learns to walk, and so on: but behind every physical phenomenon is something spiritual and those who can survey the whole process learn to recognise that the previous earthly life works over into learning to walk. For learning to walk is one expression of how the human being, at the beginning of a new earthly life, learns to control his physical body. Those who understand it fully, know that there is a great deal more in the process of learning to walk than the capacity to lift the legs and raise the body upright; they know that, in truth, this phenomenon is connected also with deeply inward processes, it has to do with the whole manner in which the human being is becoming master of his glandular activity and the like. For when a child is learning to walk, and even before, it is not a matter only of walking, but of gaining—or failing to gain—control of the glandular activities, a factor in the process being whether the child's temperament is phlegmatic or choleric, or whether certain emotions in him are too intense. This, again, is connected with the relationship established with the Archai during sleep in a previous earthly life, as the outcome of universal human love, or lack of it. Materialistic thought says that the human being rests during sleep. But he is not merely resting. When the right kind of idealism is present in a man's waking life, then the astral body will be enabled, while he sleeps, to rise to the Hierarchy of the Archangeloi, that is to say, to be connected with the spiritual world during sleep in such a way that the period leading over from death to a new birth can be lived through in the right manner. If this period is not rightly spent, it means that weaknesses are carried over into another earthly life. How the next life is framed and built, depends upon the nature of the connection established with the Archai. Universal human love carries with it creative power. To have strength to place the body wholly in the service of the soul, to have mastery and control of the physical body—upon what does this depend? It depends upon whether the human being, in the previous life, unfolded love for his fellow men—a faculty that belongs entirely to the soul.

You will remember what I have said in previous lectures: The soul-element of one earthly incarnation manifests in the physical in the next; the spiritual of one incarnation in the soul of the next. These connections are as I have just described them.

It will not do to generalise, saying merely that destiny and karma exist. What can be said, and with truth, is that we behold how the human being works at the formation of his own karma. He weaves it during sleep; but it is during waking life that he gathers what he needs for its texture. He weaves the threads that are formed out of universal human love—or he weaves threads which perpetually tear asunder and make bad karma for the next life, threads that are woven out of feelings of hatred for our fellowmen. Love and hatred—these are creative forces in the forming and shaping of karma.

Such truths must be viewed in their true light. It is but a slip-shod and easy-going conception of karma which prompts us to say: ‘I am ill—it is my karma!’ ‘A misfortune has befallen me—it is my karma.’ To make karma responsible for everything in this fatalistic way does not, it is true, afford any real peace of mind, it is merely a convenient theoretical conception; it is, however, quite incorrect.

Imagine you are considering, not this present life, but the third subsequent life, then in that life you will be able to look back to the present one, and when you say: ‘It is my karma,’ your karma, as it will be then, is to be traced back to this present earthly life where it was actually born. In other words, karma is all the time coming into being.

It is not right to throw everything back to the past. The right attitude to karma leads us to say: An illness which befalls me now, need not necessarily be the consequence of earlier weaknesses of soul; it is possible that an illness may constitute a first beginning. Karma holds good, nevertheless. If an illness, a misfortune befalls me in this present earthly life, the compensation will quite surely come,—or again the illness, the misfortune, may itself be the compensation.

In other words: the future, too, must be reckoned with, when we are speaking about karma. The right attitude towards karma is to have an unshakable conviction of justice reigning through all the worlds, a knowledge that for everything there is compensation. But the present earthly life must not be considered as breaking the on-flowing sequence of incarnations so that we relegate everything to the past. The healthy and positive attitude to the karmic flow of life's happenings rests on the sure knowledge that there is justice. What really matters most of all is the mood of soul that is born from this understanding of karma.

The whole feeling and attitude of soul that must emerge from a true understanding of karma, is one which makes us realise when, perhaps some misfortune befalls us as consequence of an earlier weakness in the life of soul—that if this misfortune had not come about, the weakness would have persisted. Looking into the depths of our soul, we must realise: It is good and right that this misfortune has come upon me, because it has enabled a weakness to be eliminated.

A man who bewails a misfortune which is really the consequence of a preceding weakness or failing, is not adopting the standpoint of true manhood, for the inference is that it matters not to him whether he remains weak or achieves some measure of strength. That man alone faces misfortune aright who says to himself: ‘If it has occurred because of an earlier weakness, it is to be welcomed, for it will make me conscious of the weakness (which expressed itself perhaps in some definite failing); I will now eradicate the weakness, I will be strong again.’

In a case, on the other hand, where a misfortune befalls one as the first step in karma, the right attitude is to say to oneself: If we were always only to encounter what we wish for ourselves, such a life would make us out and out weaklings! One or two earthly lives might continue to be comfortable and easy through the fact that only that would befall us that we desired for ourselves—but in the third or fourth life a kind of paralysis of soul and spirit would supervene, and no effort to overcome obstacles would arise in us. For, after all, obstacles would not be there for us to overcome unless the unhoped-for, the undesired came upon us. But if the right kind of strength is developed vis-à-vis the obstacles, if enough human love is carried over into sleep, then the karma that is woven by the Ego in communion with the Archai is such that the true compensation takes place in the next earthly life.

The truths of Anthroposophy need not remain in the realm of cognition; their very nature is such that they affect a man's attitude and temper of mind and heart. A man who is not thus affected has not grasped them fully; for him indeed they remain abstract and theoretical. The effect which a true understanding of karma has upon a man is to make him more sensitive to happiness and misfortune than he would otherwise be; happiness and misfortune are experienced with great intensity; but he is also able to induce in his soul an attitude to the spiritual world which arises, not out of any belief or creed but out of a perception of what the Ego and astral body are doing while they are withdrawn from the bodily life of day. Recognition of this promotes an unshakable conviction of world-justice. Understanding of karma means that a man has a true perception of world-justice. It does not mean that he becomes phlegmatic towards happiness or unhappiness, joy or pain; it means that joy and pain, happiness and misfortune are for him allotted to their proper place in life.

Observing the human being during the life of day, we can see how the Ego and astral body are working in the physical body. This means that we know something of their activity in the physical body. But we know nothing about the workings of the soul and spirit within the Ego and astral body. If, as a materialist, I am speaking to a human being, listening to his words, I say to myself: Lungs, larynx are at work as he speaks; vibrations are set up in the air and they strike on my ear. But if I see the process truly, I perceive in the words and speech the man's astral body in which his kinship with the Divine-Spiritual world is expressed. I say to myself: When, during the life of day, the astral body is within the physical body, it conceals itself in the man's speech and similar activities; during the night, however, the astral body participates in the life of the higher Hierarchies. And it is the same with the Ego.

When the human being sleeps he is not merely resting from the fatigues of his daily life. Here in the physical world, man sleeps, works and speaks with his physical body; but he is active too in the spiritual world, while he is asleep. Since materialism denies that Ego and astral body exist and operate in full reality of being during sleep, materialism cannot possibly understand the world in its entirety. What is the ‘moral world’ to materialism? To materialism the ‘moral world’ is something the human being formulates in thought—something that has nothing to do with the actively creative powers of the world. But those who have true and penetrating perception of human life know that man lives within the moral world-order during sleep just as truly as during waking life he lives in air and light. This again leads us to something more that it is essential we should understand.

The workings of speech (and the same holds good for karma, too) accompany us when we die. Through the course of our life we have been connected—rightly, or perhaps inadequately—with the world of the Archangeloi. This relationship has repeated itself in every period of sleep, and we bear with us through the Gate of Death into the spiritual world what has been given us by the Archangeloi during sleep. We can then find the way rightly into the spiritual world which is, indeed, the Logos, the world consisting of cosmic principles which have their images in the words of speech; we can find our way into the spiritual world to live out there our life between death and a new birth.

But the matter is not so simple. After death we have no physical body; we are able to turn to good account what the Archangeloi have conferred upon us from our periods of sleep. But when as physical human beings on the Earth, we wake from sleep, we have again to descend into a physical body. The Archangeloi cannot bestow upon us the power to do this. Still higher Hierarchies must add their work, namely, the Beings designated in Occult Science the Exusiai and the Kyriotetes. Into the urges, instincts and desires of the physical body—which offer resistance to us—these higher Beings must introduce the fruits of what we have achieved in communion with the Archangeloi through the spirituality of speech; and this now flames up within us, as the voice of conscience. When that which we bring out of sleep into the body lights up as the voice of conscience, there is working, in this voice, all that has been bestowed by the Hierarchy of the Exusiai and Kyriotetes—a Hierarchy more sublime than that of the Archangeloi.

Thus when we discover in the physical world a man whose conscience is so strong that instincts of a higher order arise in his physical body, we realise that as a result of idealism in his speech, Kyriotetes and Exusiai have worked upon him.

Again, when through universal human love a man forms a real link with the Archai, the results of the work that he himself does on his karma appear in the body of the next earth-life when, in early childhood, while he is sleeping his way into life, he learns to walk, acquires balance, skill in the use of his arms, control of the glandular system, and so on. All this is possible because he has been able, between death and a new birth, to work in communion with the Archai. But in order that in his life on Earth a man may develop delicate sensitivity, a quick and clear consciousness in regard to his own deeds, it is necessary for the still higher Beings referred to in the book Occult Science as the Dynamis to work together with the Archai.

When a man lacks wide-hearted love for his fellowmen, lacks interest in his human environment, he does not find a true link with the Archai. The result is that he prevents himself from weaving his karma rightly for the next earth-life, and the compensation has to wait for later incarnations. In the present earth-life such a man suffers from increasing lack of power to carry into the physical body the judgments that he forms—satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the actions performed by legs and hands. This cannot be achieved by ourselves alone; through intensified human love we need to have entered into a true relationship with the Dynamis. These Beings then bear into our physical body the requisite power; otherwise we come to grief, although we may perceive quite clearly what is right.

In thought we can be free. But in order to use this freedom aright in the physical body, the proper equilibrium must be established in waking and sleeping life because we must be united not only with the Archai but also with the Dynamis.

The highest Hierarchy of all—Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones—bear our deeds out into the universe. From out of sleep, Exusiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes bear as moral power into our bodily nature what we grasp in thoughts: Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones bear this out into the universe, so that our own moral forces become world-creative forces.

When the time comes for the Earth to pass over to the Jupiter condition and for our moral forces to perform their true functions in this great process of transformation, Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones can only play their part if we are able to offer them the necessary foundations. If, because of feebleness, we have only forces of destruction to offer them, then we are working for the destruction of the Earth, not for the upbuilding of Jupiter.

When Anthroposophy speaks of the manifoldness of the spiritual world, this is by no means a mere naming of particular stages, but we are enabled gradually to behold the whole warp and woof of the world and to perceive the connection of the human being with the spiritual world as clearly as we perceive his connections with the physical world. The power to promote and upbuild life arises in men who acquire in this way a true insight into their connection with the spiritual world, who realise that the purpose of sleep is not merely repose but that the after-workings of the physical body may bring the human being into a right connection with the spiritual world.

It is quite possible for a man to deny the spiritual and moral world because, to begin with, at his present stage of Earth evolution, he is not aware of its reality. He is asleep in this respect. A true science must evoke into the realm of consciousness, realisation of the heavenly existence which reaches into earthly life. Sleep comes over man for this very purpose—that he may, himself, draw out of the spiritual world the power he needs for his physical life.

And now, from this point of view, study the connection of what I have sketched today in outline with my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity. As I have stated with emphasis there, it is not a matter of establishing the theory that the will must be free, but that the thought must be free. The thought must control the will if man is to be a free being. But a man's life must be suitably directed and ordered if the will is not to present insuperable hindrance to the thought that is free. As men in the physical world we can make our thought free. Feeling² becomes free only when we have established a true relationship with the Archangeloi; will becomes free when we have established a true relationship with the Archai.

The living content of speech, as well as all that lives in our limbs, passes out, during sleep, together with the soul and spirit. Astral body and Ego go forth, but the ether-body remains with the physical body. The thinking that is bound up with the ether body continues within the ether-body; but we know nothing in ordinary consciousness of how this ether body thinks from the time of falling asleep to that of waking, because we are outside it. It is not true that thinking ceases during sleep; we think from the moment of falling asleep until we wake. Man's thoughts are in perpetual flow in his ether-body, only he is unaware of it. Not until the moment when he returns to the body do the thoughts light up in his consciousness. Man can become free in his life of thought because his thoughts are bound, through the ether-body, with the physical life of Earth; for he has been placed upon the Earth in order that he may become free. From the spiritual world alone can he draw the power of freedom—the power that leads to freedom in feeling and in will.

It will be clear that throughout the whole of his life on Earth the human being retains the real foundation for his thinking—the ether-body. Astral body and Ego pass out into a cosmic world during earthly life; not so, the ether-body. The ether-body emerges only at death. Then comes the backward review, lasting one, two, three days, of the life that has just ended; the human being sees his whole life as a panorama. Always, without exception, the human being looks back, after death, upon his earthly life which has now run its course. The whole ocean of the thoughts that have arisen in him between birth and death, both in sleeping and waking life—a great sea of inter-weaving thoughts—is present before him during these three days after death, but immediately thereafter the thoughts are claimed by the Cosmos; the thoughts dissolve, and after two or three days the whole panorama has passed away—into the Cosmos. We are accustomed to say that the ether-body has been detached and has dispersed, but in actual fact the Cosmos has absorbed it into itself. The ether-body has continued to expand, until finally it is completely absorbed into the Cosmos. Then, as Ego and astral body, the human being is received into the bosom of the Higher Hierarchies. Only when an ether-body is again bestowed upon him, can he descend to a new earthly life and continue the work which will make him a free human being. For it is the goal of earthly life that man shall become free. The foundation for freedom lies in the activity of pure thinking—a faculty that is bestowed upon man on Earth. Therefore is the ether-body bound to the physical body for the whole course of earthly life, releasing itself only at death in worlds where freedom is not to be acquired. Freedom is acquired during life on Earth, and moreover, as you know, during certain epochs only of Earth life.

We can thus understand that there is a true relationship between freedom and karma, for freedom is connected with those members of man's being (physical body and ether-body) which remain behind during sleep. Karma is woven by the Ego during the period of sleep,—that is to say, in a realm beyond and apart from those members wherein freedom has its foundations. Karma does not weave the texture of free or unfree thoughts; karma weaves at feeling and will. Karma emerges from the depths of human nature, out of the ‘dreaming’ feeling and the ‘sleeping’ will. Into this we can pour, or rather over against this we can place, the power that lives in the free activity of thoughts, in pure thinking, in the ethical and moral impulses as I described them in the book Philosophy of Spiritual Activity for these impulses must have their root in pure thinking.

Everything, you see, fits into a whole. It is essential to realise that the further we progress in Anthroposophy, the more completely do we find the details uniting and forming one whole. Contradictions may well be found in what is said concerning one particular domain or another; this is inevitable, because before arriving at any real insight in one domain we need, in reality, to study this domain in connection with the whole. Otherwise our conclusions are like that of a man who makes statements about a planet and is unable to understand the causes of its specific movements. In such a case it is of course necessary to reckon with the whole planetary system. Thus, if we wish really to know something about the world and about life, we must try to fathom all the connections, all the details of actual realities, both in the physical world and in the worlds of soul and spirit.

This was what I wanted to say to you today, my dear friends, when it has been possible for us to be together again in a Group Meeting. My desire has been to help you to develop that attitude to karma—that is, to universal justice—which arises in a man when he finds his true bearings in Anthroposophy. More important than the mere comprehension of theories is the feeling, the attitude of soul which we carry over into life itself. May you succeed, in ever greater and greater measure, in making the gifts of Anthroposophy the very substance of your soul, receiving them verily not into your thoughts alone, but into your heart and soul. The more Anthroposophy becomes the heart-substance of those who desire to understand it truly, the more will it be possible to introduce Anthroposophy into cultural spiritual life in the wide sense. This is a deep and urgent need, for with antiquated traditions mankind will be incapable of progress. Try to tread the path of Anthroposophy which leads from the head to the heart, for in your hearts Anthroposophy will be secure.

• 1. The Aim of the Goetheanum and the Task of Anthroposophy, Berne, 5th April, 1923
• 2. The German word here is ‘Gemut’—a word that means more than “feeling,” for it includes also the perception and understanding that belong to the heart.