The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Recently I have endeavored to sketch the being of man and the three worlds surrounding him, namely, the actual physical world, the soul world and the spirit world. Later on, I plan to speak about the main anthroposophical concepts regarding the origin of man, the earth and the heavenly bodies in general. Thus, the overall outlook on the theory of life as developed by anthroposophy will have been outlined.

Today however, I would like to present a few suggestions on how man's inner development must progress if he desires to reach conclusions of his own concerning the statements proclaimed by an anthroposophical world outlook. It must be kept in mind that there is a great difference between arriving at an understanding of the concepts presented by a spiritual scientist as truth gained through his cognition and experience, and the inner development of the human soul and spirit that enables a person to attain to such cognition and perceptions on his own. One has to distinguish between an elementary level of development leading to comprehension of an experienced spiritual teacher's statements, following them as it were in thought and feeling and acknowledging them as truth within certain limits, and an advanced level on which one attains the personal experiences in soul and spirit realm. This elementary level shall be the subject here. The advanced level concerns actual clairvoyance and to the extent that indications pertaining to such actual clairvoyance can be given at all in public, they will form the topic of a later presentation. The problem of how one may gain personal comprehension of anthroposophical truths shall occupy us today.

Only a few mere hints can be given here since the training that the human soul and spirit must undergo for attainment of the understanding mentioned above is an extensive one. It requires a long period of inner study and the many necessary details involved in such training can certainly not be elaborated upon in the course of a brief lecture. The information that can be related here is but a scant outline of what would be conveyed in personal instructions. Thus it must initially be noted that most people require the aid of a personal teacher in this field. Some might be of the opinion that a person can develop in himself inner abilities, soul forces and spiritual perception by his own attempts, and it might seem unfortunate that in this vital area of life personal guidance is supposedly necessary. The nature of such guidance, however, gives sufficient guaranty that no person comes by any means under any sort of dependence upon another. Nobody evaluates and honors the dignity of man and the respect for the individual more highly than the occult teacher. The instructor of mystical and anthroposophical development never gives anything but advice. Indeed, the greatest teachers in this field never did more than advise and suggest. It is left entirely to the judgment of the individual to what extent, if at all, he intends to follow such advice. It is left up to the individual what task he sets before his soul and spirit; the consideration of human freedom is too pronounced on the part of the teacher to do more than advise and guide. Everything that can be conveyed in any manner in this area must be understood with this reservation.¹

Another important point is that the main part of this schooling does not express itself in any particular external formalities, nor does it require any definite external measures. This schooling is, rather, a completely intimate development of the human soul, and all the significant degrees of development one must undergo take place in the innermost depth of being. Precisely here a transformation takes place in a person, but nobody, not even his closest friend, need notice anything different. Thus, in privacy, tranquility and seclusion the mystic trains himself to acquire understanding of soul and spirit worlds. It cannot be emphasized enough that nobody devoting himself to inner spiritual development needs to change his everyday occupation in any respect whatever, nor neglect his daily duties in any sense, nor take time away from them. On the contrary, he who is of the opinion that a special amount of time must be spent on his inner training and consequently neglects his ordinary duties and, by his attempts at insight into spiritual worlds, becomes an anti-social, inferior member of human society, will soon discover that by these means least is achieved.

This inner training quietly progresses without undue haste in complete inner tranquility. I must stress at this point that no “extra-special” rules or directions are being given here but rather the descriptions of such a path of inner development. The directions when followed do require one thing of the aspirant without which no higher personal experience can ever be attained. That is endurance. He who has no patience and endurance, who cannot persevere over and over again and follow with complete calm the inner rules that are applicable here, will generally achieve nothing at all. There is one rare exception that allows for success without compliance to these rules. This is the case in which an individual is far advanced on his path of evolution as a human being. The course that the inner training takes is quite different and much shorter in the case of an individual who in a former incarnation had already attained to a certain level of clairvoyance. He who gives the corresponding rules for inner development will soon be aware of this fact and his task will then be only one of eliminating the obstacles blocking the path to enlightenment.

Since the directions for the road to enlightenment vary with each individual, it is as a rule not advisable to seek mystic development without personal guidance. He who sets forth the guide-lines must be closely acquainted with his pupil, not in the ordinary sense of the word but in a spiritual sense. While the occult teacher need not know anything about his pupil's profession, manner of living, family members or experiences, he does need to acquire an intimate knowledge of his soul and spirit conditions and their level of development. It would lead too far today to disclose the ways and means by which the occult teacher acquires this knowledge. They will be discussed in future lectures on clairvoyance.

Inner development is connected with certain definite consequences for those who set out on this path and they must realize that, resultingly, certain definite qualities will appear in their personality. These qualities are symptoms and direct results of the level of inner development and require careful observation. The occult teacher must know how to interpret these symptoms so as to assure the proper manner of progress of this inner development.

The development of the inner man is birth on a higher level. It is the birth of soul and spirit, not in a figurative, allegorical sense, but as a fact in the literal sense of the word. Even in this area a birth is not without consequences and the occult teacher must know how to deal with them. All this had to be mentioned in advance.

After initial acquaintance with some of the basic teachings of anthroposophy such as reincarnation and karma—the teaching that the human soul has in the past been incarnated repeatedly in a physical body and will continue to return in future incarnations, and the teaching of karma, of compensatory justice—most people will ask how one can comprehend these teachings and how one can acquire an understanding of these on one's own. This is the big question that now confronts each person. There is one golden rule that must be followed that will eventually lead anybody to the desired comprehension This has been the common experience of all who have earnestly subjected themselves to the exercises in question. There is nobody who cannot in the easiest manner possible acquire this comprehension of reincarnation and karma. One is inclined, however, to say with Goethe, “Though it is easy, the easy is hard.” This is so because few are those who resolve to call forth the will-power, endurance and patience necessary for achieving certain definite conditions of soul and spirit essential for this comprehension. The golden rule is this, “Live your life as if reincarnation and karma were truths and they will become truths for you.” It appears as if this is to be achieved by a form of self-suggestion but this is not the case. The mystic symbol of the snake that bites its own tail is a familiar one. This symbol has several profound meanings but among the many interpretations it contains is the one expressed here in the golden rule.

It is evident that the supposition inherent in this golden rule negates itself in a sense in like manner as the snake that curls up around itself. How are we to understand this? If reincarnation is a fact, then certain efforts made by man that have an effect on his soul cannot be made in vain, but should become the soul's nature later on. One of the great laws of man that must be intimately tried out on his own self, is expressed in an ancient Indian text, “What you think today you will be tomorrow.” He who believes in reincarnation must realize that a quality that he develops within himself, a thought that he imprints in himself by constantly holding it in his mind, becomes something permanent in his soul that will emerge ever again. Therefore, a person seeking mystical development must first of all make the attempt to give up certain formerly held inclinations. Then, new inclinations must be acquired by constantly holding the thought of such inclinations, virtues or characteristics in one's mind. They must be so incorporated into one's being that a person becomes enabled to alter his soul by his own will-power. This must be tried as objectively as a chemical might be tested in an experiment. A person who has never endeavored to change his soul, who has never made the initial decision to develop the qualities of endurance, steadfastness and calm logical thinking, or a person who has such decisions but has given up because he did not succeed in a week, a month, a year or a decade, will never determine anything within himself about these truths.

Such is the intimate path the soul must tread. It must be able to acquire new characteristics, thoughts and inclinations. A person must have the ability to emerge in due time with brand new habits acquired through sheer force of will. A formerly careless person must get accustomed to being neat and exacting and this he must accomplish not through any external pressure but by steadfast resolve of will. It is particularly effective in the case of insignificant characteristics and small matters. The clearer the issues that a person perceives concerning himself, the better his comprehension in the area of truth. If, for example, a person is able to objectively observe a gesture, a facial expression or some other insignificant habit, if he becomes aware of it as if observing another person, and then by sheer will-power puts in the place of the habit or gesture something of his own choosing, incorporating it into himself, such a person is well on the way to comprehending the great law of reincarnation on his own. A chemist can give descriptions of processes taking place in a laboratory. Similarly, a person can establish directions to be tried on himself. Through insignificant alterations the loftiest heights are indeed reached.

Regarding karma, the great law of just compensation, perception and understanding of it can be gained if one lives one's life as if karma was a fact. If a disaster or a sorrow befall you, try keeping in mind the thought that this sorrow or accident has not occurred by some miraculous chance but that there must be a cause, a reason for it. You need not probe for the cause. Only he who clairvoyantly can command a view of karma would be able to actually perceive the cause of a joyful event, a sorrow or some mishap. You do need a mood, a certain feeling to which you can surrender yourself so that you can sense how a given sorrow or joy must have a cause and, in turn, can cause future events. He who permeates himself with this mood and looks at his life and all that happens to him as if karma was a fact, will find that his existence becomes increasingly comprehensible to him. He who suppresses his anger when something annoying happens to him and thinks instead that just as a stone rolls if pushed so the annoying matter must have come about due to some inevitable set of laws of the universe, attains to comprehension of karma. As certain as it is that you will wake up tomorrow morning, provided circumstances and your health remain unchanged, so it is equally certain that you will comprehend the laws of karma if you view life in this manner.

These are the two prerequisites for a person desirous of spiritual schooling; the aspirant must view life in these ways. He does not, however, have to give himself up to these thought attitudes as if they were the gospel truth. On the contrary, he must leave it open as to whether or not they are really true. He must have neither doubt nor superstition because these two are the worst obstacles. Only a person who views life thus with an open mind is prepared to receive mystical instruction.

Still a third aspect must be considered. No occult teacher will ever instruct a person who is filled with superstition or common prejudice, or one who is prone to senseless judgment or apt to fall prey to any illusion. The golden rule applying here is that, before even taking the first step in the direction of higher learning, a person must free himself from any flighty thinking or possibility to mistake illusion for reality. Above all an aspirant for spiritual enlightenment must be a person of common sense wire only devotes himself to disciplined thinking and observations. If a person leans toward prejudice and superstition in the world of sense reality, it soon tends to be corrected by sense reality itself. If, however, a person does not think logically but indulges in fantasies, correction is not so simple. It is essential, therefore, that one have one's thought-life completely in hand and be able to exercise strict control over one's thoughts before ever venturing into soul and spirit worlds. One who easily leans to fantasies, superstitions and illusions is unfit to enter into the schooling prerequisite for spiritual teaching. It would be simple to reiterate that one were free of fantasies, illusion and superstition. But it is easy to deceive oneself here. Freedom from fantasies, illusions, prejudices and superstitions is gained by stern self-discipline. Such freedom is not easily attained by anyone. It must be remembered to what extent most people tend to sloppy, careless thinking and are unable to control their thought-life through their own will-power.

In pondering the demands everyday life makes it becomes clear that it is an impossibility to completely free one's mind from outside impressions. To do so, it becomes necessary, therefore, to set aside a short period of time every day. This short time, which is needed and which must not conflict with one's obligations, is sufficient. Even five minutes or, indeed, even less is enough. For this brief period, a person must be able to tear himself away from all sense impressions, from what flows into him through his eyes, ears and his sense of touch. For this brief duration of time he must become blind and deaf to his outer surroundings. Everything that crowds into us from the outside world unites us with sensuality and the ordinary everyday world. All this must be silenced and total inner calm must take its place. When this inner silence, this shedding of all sense impressions has occurred, all memory of past sense impressions must in addition be extinguished. It suffices to ponder for a moment how completely we are tied up with matters of time and space, with all that is temporal and mortal. Check the thought that passed through your head a moment ago and see if it is not associated with something of a transitory nature. Such thoughts have no value for inner development.

So all thoughts that connect us with finiteness and transitory matters must be silenced. Then, when such silence has been produced in the soul and for awhile all our surroundings, be they of the era, the nation, the race or the century we live in, are subdued and eliminated, the soul will begin to speak of its own accord. This will not happen immediately. First, the soul must be prepared for this point and there are means and directions that will call forth this inner sounding. Man must give himself up to thoughts, concepts and sentiments that originate not in the temporal but in the eternal. Their content must be true not only for today, yesterday, a century or tomorrow but forever. Such thoughts are found in the various religious books of all people. They are found as an example in the Bhagavad Gita, the hymn of human perfection. Too, they are found in the Old and New Testaments, particularly in the Gospel of St. John beginning with the thirteenth chapter. Again, effective thoughts are to be found in the first four sentences of the book, Light on the Path, by Mabel Collins, familiar to members of the Theosophical and Anthroposophical Movements.²

These four sentences, which are carved into the inner walls of every temple of initiation, are not dependent on time and space. They belong not to one man, one family. They are not part of one generation or one century, but they extend over the whole of evolution. They were true thousands of years ago and will be true thousands of years hence. They awaken the slumbering soul faculties; let them arise out of the inner realm. Certainly this has to be correctly understood. It is not sufficient to assume that one comprehends the meaning of these sentences. One must allow such sentences to quicken and come to life in one's inner self. One must permit the whole significance of such sentences to radiate in one's inner being, must surrender oneself to it completely. One must learn to love such sentences. If a person believes that he comprehends them, then only has the right moment arrived to let the sentences rise resplendent again and again in himself. The intellectual comprehension is not important; the love for such a spiritual truth is. The more the love for such inner truths streams through us, the more the power of inner sight grows in us. Such sentences must not occupy us one or two days, but weeks, months and years until finally such powers of soul awaken in us. Then at last comes a certain definite moment when still another illumination takes place.

He who proclaims spiritual truths by his own experiences is familiar with this contemplative inner life. The great spiritual truths that he proclaims day by day are part of a vast spiritual world panorama that he can view with the inner power of his soul and spirit. He turns his gaze into soul and spirit realms. He turns his sight away from earth to the solar systems to explore them. This inner power would, however, soon be extinguished if he did not give it new nourishment every new day. This is the secret of the spiritual investigator that the immense panorama of universe and humanity, which he has let pass through his soul hundreds and hundreds of times, must pass through his soul anew every morning. Again, it is not important here that he comprehends it all but that he learns to love it more and more. Thus he performs a divine worship every morning during which he gazes up in reverence to the great Spirits. He has learned to survey the whole panoramic picture in a few minutes. Thankfulness for what it has given his soul permeates him. Without treading this path of reverence one does not arrive at clarity. It is essential that the spiritual investigator's utterances are formed out of this clarity. Only if this has become the case is he truly appointed to speak about the truths of mysticism, the truths of anthroposophy and spiritual science. In this way does the spiritual investigator function and thus must everybody begin, that is, in the simplest, most elementary manner until he comes to comprehension of these teachings.

Human individuality and that of cosmic beings is profound, unfathomingly profound. One cannot achieve anything in this area save by patience, perseverance and loving devotion toward the cosmic powers. These are forces which, like electricity in the external world, are powerful in the internal world. They are not only moral forces but forces of cognition. When the aspirant for enlightenment has become proficient in allowing such truths to dwell within his being for some time, if he has accepted them in thankfulness toward those who revealed them to him, then he will at last reach a special point, which sooner or later becomes available to everybody who has allowed tranquility and silence to come to fruition in his soul. This is the moment when his soul begins to speak, when his own inner being begins to perceive the great, eternal truths. Then, suddenly the world around him lights up in colors never seen before. Something becomes audible that he had never heard before. The world will radiate in a new light. New sounds and words will become audible. This new light and radiance ray toward him from the soul realm and the new sounds he hears come to him from the spirit realm. It is characteristic of the soul world that one “sees” it. It is equally characteristic of the spirit world that one “hears” it.

If self-development is sought for in this area, then part of it comes about through obedience to and observation of a great sum of rules and directions. Here I could only sketch in sweeping lines how something like this comes about and is experienced. These individual rules must be followed diligently, just like the chemist must weigh and measure with the most delicate instruments the minutest substances needed for a chemical compound. A description of the rules that can be made public will be found in my book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment. These rules offer specific instructions for treading this path. They, too, require most diligent patience and perseverance.

The rules presented in this book were never made public in former times when, it must be understood, occult instruction was only taught in occult schools. Such instruction is still being given out in occult schools today because it is an intimate teaching process that takes place between two persons. It does no good to seek instruction on one's own initiative by hearing or reading special rules in fragmentary form in one place or another. All the instruction that one can receive from various places, and there are indeed shops advertising such instructions, are no more than tiny fragments torn from the great book of occult schooling. A person who makes use of them must realize that he is leaving himself open to certain dangers. It is not expedient to be introduced to matters that refer to an actual alteration of the soul, that relate to the most profoundly important aspects of soul life, through commercial channels. Occult training methods that are advertised for monetary gain are not only worthless but can be dangerous under certain circumstances. This had to be said because in this present age so much of this sort of thing confronts man. Precisely because so many so-called occult methods crowd the scene today, it has become necessary to present a picture of the truth.

The rules that are put down in the book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment, stem from ancient traditions. Because it is essential that the truth become known, the guiding spirits of evolution have given permission for the publication of these rules. Still, it is only possible to publish a certain amount. The rest had to be excluded because the most important rules can only be disclosed by word of mouth.

What is found in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment is apart from other books of instruction in that it is harmless. Only those guide lines are disclosed that cannot do damage to a person, even if they are not followed with patience and perseverance. They can do no harm even if a person practices them improperly. This had to be mentioned because the question has arisen as to why and by what authority a set of esoteric rules was published.

Another point of consideration is that in order to awaken in the soul world, one must have sense organs for this soul world just as one has sense organs for the material world. Like the body, which possesses eyes and ears, the soul and the spirit must possess organs to perceive the radiance of the soul realm and the soundings of the world of spirit. A person with experience in this field, who is clairvoyant, can actually perceive the process of development of such soul organs in a person engaged in inner training. They are perceived in his aura enveloped in a cloud of light. The aura of a spiritually undeveloped person is seen like a nebulous cloud formation. When a person sleeps, the aura hovers above the physical body because the astral body³ separates in sleep from it. The aura's appearance is that of two entwined spirals like rings of mist. They wind around one another and disappear in continuous spirals into indefinable realms. When a person undertakes occult training, his aura becomes increasingly definable. The indefinable ends of the spirals disappear and the two entwined spiral formations become clearly organized. They become increasingly defined, compact structures. Certain organs appear in the aura that are called chakrams in esoteric language. These are the sense organs of the soul. Their structure is delicate and in order to come into bloom they must be cared for and guarded. Under no other circumstances can they develop. He who rails in this will never enjoy true spiritual perception. A person must suppress all negative sensations and feelings within himself in order to nurture these soul eyes. The chakrams cannot emerge if a person becomes angry at every opportunity. Equanimity must be preserved, patience must be practiced. Anger and fury prohibit the soul eye's appearance; nervousness and haste will not permit its development.

Furthermore, it is necessary that man rid himself of something that is difficult to cast aside in our civilization, namely, the urge to learn “what is new.” This has tremendous influence on the soul-organ. If one cannot get hold of a newspaper fast enough and tell the news to somebody else, if a person also cannot keep what he has seen and heard to himself and cannot suppress the desire to pass it on, his soul will never achieve any degree of development. It is also necessary that one acquire a certain definite manner of judging one's fellowmen. It is difficult to attain an uncritical attitude, but understanding must take the place of criticism. It suppresses the advancement of the soul if you confront your fellowman immediately with your own opinion. We must hear the other out first, and this listening is an extraordinarily effective means for the development of the soul eyes. Anybody who reaches a higher level in this direction owes it to having learned to abstain from criticizing and judging everybody and everything. How can we look understandingly into somebody's being? We should not condemn but understand the criminal's personality, understand the criminal and the saint equally well. Empathy for each and everyone is required and this is what is meant with higher, occult “listening.” Thus, if a person brings himself with strict self-control to the point of not evaluating his fellowman, or the rest of the world for that matter, according to his personal judgment, opinion and prejudice and instead lets both work on him in silence, he has the chance to gain occult powers. Every moment during which a person becomes determined to refrain from thinking an evil thought about his fellowman is a moment gained.

A wise man can learn from a child. A simple-minded person can consider a wise man's utterances in like manner as a child's babblings, convinced that he is superior to a child and unaware of the practicality of wisdom. Only when he has learned to listen to the stammering of a babe as if it were a revelation, has he created within him power that wells forth from his soul.

Finally, one cannot expect the soul eyes to open immediately. A person who combats rage, anger, curiosity and other negative qualities, is first of all removing hindrances that walled up his soul. Ever and again must this effort be repeated. A clairvoyant person can evaluate to what extent the delicate soul organs are emerging. When human utterances have lost their edge and have become kind and filled with understanding for fellowmen, the spiritual organ located in the vicinity of the larynx is awakened. It takes long practice, however, before a person becomes aware of this himself. It took millions of years for the physical eye to develop in man, from tiny pin-points to early beginnings of a lens to the complicated structure of the eye. The soul eye does not take as long. It requires several months in one, longer in another person. One must have patience. The moment when these delicate soul structures first begin to perceive comes to everybody sooner or later. That is, if a person continues the exercises and particularly if he develops certain virtues, which sometimes the hardships of life itself can develop. There are three virtues in particular that must be developed that nearly turn man into a clairvoyant. Only they must he practiced with the necessary intensity and emphasis. They are: Self-confidence paired with humility, self-control paired with gentleness, and presence of mind coupled with perseverance. There are the great levers of spiritual development.. The three first-mentioned virtues, however, will lead to dreadful vices if they are not each coupled with the three other virtues, humility, gentleness and perseverance.

All this must be taken in the sense of broad outlines. They are examples of the directions that the spiritual pupil must follow on the three levels toward spiritual awakening. The three stages of occult schooling are called preparation or catharsis, enlightenment and initiation. During the first stage or level, man's being is prepared in such a manner as to allow the delicate structures of the soul to emerge. On the level of enlightenment man gains the means of perceiving in the soul realm, and through initiation he attains the faculty of expressing himself in the spirit realm. What I have had to say today might be considered as difficult to understand by some, and though it is really easy, it does hold true here that the easy is difficult.

Everybody can tread the occult path; it is not closed to anybody. The secrets lie in each person's own inner being. Only earnest inner endeavor is required and man must make the attempt to free himself from all the fetters obstructing this inner life. We must realize that the loftiest and grandest truths come to us in the most intimate way. The greatest sages of mankind did not discover the great truths by any other than the path described above. They found these truths because they found the path leading into their inner being and because they knew that patience and perseverance were required in practicing the various exercises.

Thus, when a person reaches down to the depth of his being, when he turns away from the thoughts that assail him from outside and instead arises to the thoughts belonging to eternity, he kindles the flame within himself that will light up the soul worlds for him. When a person develops within himself the qualities of equanimity, inner calm and peace, as well as the other virtues mentioned above, he nourishes this flame with the right sustenance. If a person is able to keep silent and utter only significant, lofty thoughts, if he lives a love-filled existence and his life becomes one of divine worship, all the world around him will begin to “sound.” This is what Pythagoras called, “Music of the spheres.” This is by no means meant symbolically, it is a reality.

Only mere hints could be given here that point the direction to the path leading to a narrow gate. Everybody can reach this narrow gate and to him who is not afraid of trials and hardships, the gate will be opened. Then he will find what all the great religious and philosophical ideologies have proclaimed: The Eternal One Truth and the Way of Life!

• 1. In a foreword to the 1918 edition of Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment, Rudolf Steiner wrote in regard to the matter of personal instruction: “The statement that the student needs personal instruction should be understood in the sense that this book, itself, is personal instruction. In earlier times, there were reasons for reserving such personal instruction for oral teaching; today we have reached a stage in evolution of humanity in which spiritual scientific knowledge must become far more widely disseminated than formerly. It must be placed within reach of everyone to a quite different extent from what was the case in older times. Hence, the book replaces the former oral instruction ...”
• 2. The first four sentences ofLight on the Path are: "Before the eyes can see, they must be incapable of tears. Before the ear can hear, it must have lost its sensitiveness. Before the voice can speak in the presence of the Masters it must have lost the power to wound. Before the soul can stand in the presence of the Masters its feet must be washed in the blood of the heart."
• 3. See Theosophy: an Introduction to the Super-sensible Knowledge of the World and the Destination of Man for a clarification of this, and other, anthroposophical terminology.

The more deeply we penetrate into the occult records of the various ages and peoples, that is to say, into the truly occult records, the more we are struck by one feature of them which meets us again and again. I have already indicated it in discussing the Gospel of St. John, and again on a later occasion in speaking of the Gospel of St. Mark. I refer to the fact that on looking deeply into any such occult record it becomes ever clearer that it is really most wonderfully composed, that it forms an artistic whole. I could show, for instance, how St. John's Gospel, when we penetrate into its depths, reveals a wonderful, artistic composition. With remarkable dramatic power the story is carried up stage by stage to a great climax, and then continues from this point onward with a kind of renewal of dramatic power to the end. You can study this in the lectures I gave at Cassel on St. John's Gospel in relation to the three other Gospels, especially to that according to St. Luke.

Most impressive is the gradual enhancement of the whole composition while the super-sensible is placed before us in the so-called miracles and signs; each working up in ever-increasing wonder to the sign that meets us in the initiation of Lazarus. It makes us realize how we can always find artistic beauty at the foundation of these occult records. I could show the same for the structure of St. Mark's Gospel. When we regard such records in their beauty of form and their dramatic power, we can indeed conclude that just because they are true such records cannot be other than artistically, beautifully composed, in the deepest sense of the word. For the moment we will only indicate this fact, as we may come back to it in the course of these lectures.

Now it is remarkable that the same thing meets us again in the Bhagavad Gita. There is a wonderful intensification of the narrative, one might say, a hidden artistic beauty in the song, so that if nothing else were to touch the soul of one studying this sublime Gita, he still could not help being impressed by its marvelous composition. Let us begin by indicating a few of the outstanding points—and we will confine ourselves today to the first four discourses—because these points are important both for the artistic structure and the deep occult truths that it contains.

First of all Arjuna meets us. Facing the bloodshed in which he is to take part, he grows weak. He sees all that is to take place as a battle of brothers against brothers, his blood relations. He shrinks back. He will not fight against them. While fear and terror come over him and he is horror-stricken, his charioteer suddenly appears as the instrument through which Krishna, God, is to speak to him. Here in this first episode we already have a moment of great intensity and also an indication of deep occult truth. Anyone who finds the way, by whatever path, into the spiritual worlds, even though he may have gone only a few steps—or even had only a dim presentiment of the way to be experienced—such a person will be aware of the deep significance of this moment.

As a rule we cannot enter the spiritual worlds without passing through a deep upheaval in our souls. We have to experience something which disturbs and shakes all our forces, filling us with intense feeling. Emotions that are generally spread out over many moments, over long periods of living, whose permanent effect on the soul is therefore weaker—such feelings are concentrated in a single moment and storm through us with tremendous force when we enter the occult worlds. Then we experience a kind of inner shattering, which can indeed be compared to fear, terror and anxiety, as though we were shrinking back from something almost with horror. Such experiences belong to the initial stages of occult development, to entering the spiritual worlds. It is just for this reason that such great care must be taken to give the right advice to those who would enter the spiritual worlds through occult training. Such a person must be prepared so that he may experience this upheaval as a necessary event in his soul life without its encroaching on his bodily life and health, because his body must not suffer a like upheaval. That is the essential thing. We must learn to suffer the convulsions of our soul with outward equanimity and calm.

This is true not only for our bodily processes. The soul forces we need for everyday living, our ordinary intellectual powers, even those of imagination, of feeling and will—these too must not be allowed to become unbalanced. The upheaval that may be the starting-point for occult life must take place in far deeper layers of the soul, so that we go through our external life as before, without anything being noticed in us outwardly, while within we may be living through whole worlds of shattering soul-experience. That is what it means to be ripe for occult development: To be able to experience such inward convulsions without losing one's outer balance and calm. To this end a person who is striving to become ripe for occult development must widen the circle of his interests beyond his everyday life. He must get away from that to which he is ordinarily attached from morning to night, and reach out to interests that move on the great horizon of the world.

We must be able to undergo the experience of doubting all truth and all knowledge. We must have the power to do this with the same intensity of feeling people generally have only where their everyday interests are concerned. We must be able to feel with the destiny of all mankind, with as much interest as we usually feel in our own destiny, or perhaps in that of our nearest connections of family, nation, or race. If we cannot do this, we are not yet completely ready for occult development.

For this reason modern anthroposophy, if pursued earnestly and worthily, is the right preparation in our age for a true occult development. Let those who are absorbed in the petty material interests of the immediate present, who cannot find sufficient interest to follow the anthroposophist in looking out over world and planetary destinies, over the historical epochs and races of mankind—let them scoff if they will! One who would prepare himself for an occult development must lift up his eyes to the heights where the interests of mankind, of the earth, of the whole planetary system become his own. When a person's interests are gradually sharpened and widened through the study of anthroposophy, which leads even without occult training to an understanding of occult truths, then he is being rightly prepared for an occult path.

In our time there are many who have such interests for the whole of mankind. More often they are not to be found among the intellectuals but are people who appear to lead quite simple lives. Yes, there are many today who have a humble place in life and as if by natural instinct feel this interest in the whole of mankind. That is why anthroposophy is in such harmony with the spirit of our age.

First, then, we must learn of the mighty upheaval of the soul that has to come at the beginning of occult experience. With wonderful truth the Bhagavad Gita sets such a moment of upheaval at the starting-point of Arjuna's experience, only he does not go through an occult training but is placed into this moment by his destiny. He is placed into the battle without being able to recognize its necessity, its purpose, or its aim. All he sees is that blood relations are about to fight against each other. Such a soul as Arjuna can be shaken by that to its innermost core, for he has to say to himself, “Brother fights against brother. Surely then all the tribal customs will be shaken and then the tribe itself will wither away and be destroyed, and all its morality fall into decay! Those laws will be shaken that in accordance with an eternal destiny place men into castes; and then will everything be imperiled—man himself, the law, the whole world. The whole significance of mankind will be in the balance.” Such is his feeling. It is as though the ground were about to sink from under his feet, as though an abyss were opening up before him.

Arjuna was a man who had received into his feeling something that the man of today no longer knows, but that in those ancient times was a primeval teaching of tradition. He knew that what is handed on from generation to generation in mankind is bound up with the woman nature; while the individual, personal qualities whereby a man stands out from his blood connections and his family line are bound up with the man nature. What a man inherits as common, generic qualities is handed on to the descendants by the woman, whereas what forms him into a unique, individual being, tearing him out of the generic succession, is the part he receives from his father. “Must it not then have an evil effect on the laws that rule woman's nature,” says Arjuna to himself, “if blood fights against blood?”

There is another feeling that Arjuna has absorbed, on which for him the whole well-being of human evolution depends. He feels that the forefathers of the tribe, the ancestors, are worthy of honor. He feels that their souls watch over the succeeding generations. For him it is a sublime service to offer up fires of sacrifice to the Manes, to the holy souls of the ancestors. But now what must he see? Instead of altars with sacrificial fires burning on them for the ancestors, he sees those who should join in kindling such fires assailing one another in battle. If we would understand a human soul we must penetrate into its thoughts. Above all we must enter deeply into its feelings because it is in feeling that the soul is intimately bound up with its very life. Now think of the great contrast between all that Arjuna would naturally feel, and the bloody battle of brother against brother that is actually about to take place. Destiny is hammering at Arjuna's soul, shaking it to its very depths. It is as though he had to gaze down into a terrible abyss. Such an upheaval awakens the forces of the soul and brings it to a vision of occult realities that at other times are hidden as behind a veil. That is what gives such dramatic intensity to the Bhagavad Gita. The ensuing discourse is thus placed before us with wonderful power, as developing of necessity out of Arjuna's destiny, instead of being given us merely as an academic, pedantic course of instruction in occultism.

Now that Arjuna has been rightly prepared for the birth of the deeper forces of his soul, now that he can see these forces in inward vision, there happens what everyone who has the power to behold it will understand: His charioteer becomes the instrument through which the god Krishna speaks to him. In the first four discourses we observe three successive stages, each higher than the last, each one introducing something new. Here in these very first discourses we find an accent that is wonderful in its dramatic art, apart from the fact that it corresponds to a deep occult truth. The first stage is a teaching that might appear even trivial to many Westerners in its given form. Let us admit that at once. (Here I should like to remark, especially for the benefit of my dear friends here in Finland, that I mean by “Western” all that lies to the west of the Ural Mountains, the Volga, the Caspian Sea and Asia Minor—in fact the whole of Europe. What is to be called Eastern land belongs essentially in Asia. Of course, America too forms part of the West.)

To begin with then we find a teaching that might easily appear trivial, especially to a philosophical mind. For what is the first thing that Krishna says to Arjuna as a word of exhortation for the battle? “Look there,” he says, “at those who are to be killed by you; those in your own ranks who are to be killed and those who are to remain behind, and consider well this one thing. What dies and what remains alive in your ranks and in those of the enemy is but the outer physical body. The spirit is eternal. If your warriors slay those in the ranks over there they are but slaying the outer body, they are not killing the spirit, which is eternal. The spirit goes from change to change, from incarnation to incarnation. It is eternal. This deepest being of man is not affected in this battle. Rise, Arjuna, rise to the spiritual standpoint, then you can go and give yourself up to your duty. You need not shudder nor be sad at heart, for in killing your enemies you are not killing their essential being.”

Thus speaks Krishna, and at first hearing his words are in a sense trivial, though in a special way. In many respects the Westerner is short-sighted in his thinking and consciousness. He never stops to consider that everything is evolving. If he says that Krishna's exhortation, as I have expressed it, is trivial, it is as though one were to say, “Why do they honor Pythagoras as such a great man when every schoolboy and girl knows his theorem?” It would be stupid to conclude that Pythagoras was not a great man in having discovered his theorem just because every schoolboy understands it! We see how stupid this is, but we do not notice when we fail to realize that what any Western philosopher may repeat by rote as the wisdom of Krishna—that the spirit is eternal, immortal—was a sublime wisdom at the time Krishna revealed it. Souls like Arjuna did indeed feel that blood-relations ought not to fight. They still felt the common blood that flowed in a group of people. To hear it said that “the spirit is eternal” (spirit in the sense of what is generally conceived, abstractly, as the center of man's being)—the spirit is eternal and undergoes transformations, passing from incarnation to incarnation—this stated in abstract and intellectual terms was something absolutely new and epoch-making in its newness when it resounded in Arjuna's soul through Krishna's words. All the people in Arjuna's environment believed definitely in reincarnation, but as Krishna taught it, as a general and abstract idea, it was new, especially in regard to Arjuna's situation. This is one reason why we had to say that such a truth can only be called “trivial” in a special sense. That holds true in another respect as well. Our abstract thought, which we use even in the pursuit of popular science, which we regard today as quite natural—this thinking activity was by no means always so natural and simple.

In order to illustrate what I say, let me give you a radical example. You will think it strange that while for all of you it is quite natural to speak of a “fish,” it was by no means natural for primitive peoples to do so. Primitive peoples are acquainted with trout and salmon, cod and herring, but “fish” they do not know. They have no such word as “fish,” because their thought does not extend to such abstract generalization. They know individual trees, but “tree” they do not know. Thinking in such general concepts is by no means natural to primitive races even in the present time. This mode of thinking has indeed only entered humanity in the course of its evolution. In fact, one who considers why it was that logic first began in the time of ancient Greece, could scarcely be surprised when the statement is made on occult grounds that logical thinking has only existed since the period that followed the original composition of the Bhagavad Gita. Krishna impels Arjuna to logical thought, to thinking in abstractions, as if to a new thing that is only now to enter humanity.

But this activity of thought that man has developed and takes quite for granted today, people have the most distorted and unnatural notions about. Western philosophers in particular have most distorted ideas about thought, for they generally take it to be merely a photographic reproduction of external sense reality. They imagine that concepts and ideas and the whole inner thinking of man simply arises in him out of the external physical world. While libraries of philosophical words have been written in the West to prove that thought is merely something having its origin in the stimulus of the external physical world, it is only in our time that thought will be valued for what it really is.

Here I reach a point that is most important for those who would undergo an occult development in their own souls. I want to make every effort to get this point clear. The medieval alchemists used to say—I cannot now discuss what they really meant by it—that gold could be made from all metals, gold in any desired amount, but that one must first have a minute quantity of it. Without that one could not make gold. Whether or not this is true of gold, it is certainly true of clairvoyance. No man could actually attain clairvoyance if he did not have a tiny amount of it already in his soul. It is generally supposed that men as they are, are not clairvoyant. If that were true they could never become clairvoyant at all, because just as the alchemist thought that one must have a little gold to conjure forth large quantities, so must one already be a little clairvoyant in order to be able to develop and extend it more and more. Now you may see two alternatives here and ask, “Do you think then that we all are clairvoyant, if only slightly, or, do you think that those of us who are not clairvoyant can never become so?” This is just the point. It is most important to understand that there is really no one among you who does not have this starting-point of clairvoyance, though you may not be conscious of it. All of you have it. None of you is lacking in it. What is this that all possess? It is something not generally regarded or valued as clairvoyance. Let me make a rather crude comparison.

If a pearl is lying in the roadway and a chicken finds it, the chicken does not value the pearl. Most men and women today are chickens in this respect. They do not value the pearl that lies there in full view before them. What they value is something quite different. They value their concepts and ideas, but no one could think abstractly, could have thoughts and ideas, if he were not clairvoyant. In our ordinary thinking the pearl of clairvoyance is contained from the start. Ideas arise in the soul through exactly the same process as what gives rise to its highest powers. It is immensely important to learn to understand that clairvoyance begins in something common and everyday. We only have to recognize the super-sensible nature of our concepts and ideas. We must realize that these come to us from the super-sensible worlds; only then can we look at the matter rightly.

When I tell you of the higher hierarchies, of Seraphim and Cherubim and Thrones, right down to Archangels and Angels, these are beings who must speak to the human soul from higher spiritual worlds. It is from those worlds that concepts and ideas come into the human soul, not from the world of the senses. In the 18th century what was considered a great word was uttered by a pioneer of thinking, “O, Man, make bold to use thy power of reason!” Today a great word must resound in men's souls, “O, Man, make bold to claim thy concepts and ideas as the beginning of thy clairvoyance.” What I have just expressed I said many years ago, publicly in my books Truth and Science and The Philosophy of Freedom, where I showed that human ideas come from super-sensible, spiritual knowledge. It was not understood at the time, and no wonder, for those who should have understood it were—well, like the chickens! We must realize that at the moment when Krishna stands before Arjuna and gives him the power of abstract judgment, he is thereby giving him, for the first time in the whole of evolution, the starting-point for the knowledge of higher worlds. The spirit can be seen on the very surface of the changes that take place within the external world of sense. Bodies die; the spirit, the abstract, the essential being, is eternal. The spiritual can be seen playing on the surface of phenomena. This is what Krishna would reveal to Arjuna as the beginning of a new clairvoyance for men.

One thing is necessary for men of today if they would attain to an inwardly-experienced truth. They must have once passed through the feeling of the fleeting nature of all outer transformations. They must have experienced the mood of infinite sadness, of infinite tragedy, and at the same time the exultation of joy. They must have felt the breath of the ephemeral that streams out from all things. They must have been able to fix their interest on this coming forth and passing away again, the transitoriness of the world of sense. Then, when they have been able to feel the deepest pain and the fullest delight in the external world, they must once have been absolutely alone—alone with their concepts and ideas. They must have had the feeling, “In these concepts I grasp the mystery of the worlds; I take hold of the outer edge of cosmic being,”—the very expression I once used in my The Philosophy of Freedom! This must be experienced, not merely understood intellectually, and if you would experience it, it must be in deepest loneliness. Then you have another feeling. On the one hand you experience the majesty of the world of ideas that is spread out over the All. On the other hand you experience with the deepest bitterness that you have to separate yourself from space and time in order to be together with your concepts and ideas. Loneliness! It is the icy cold of loneliness. Furthermore, it comes to you that the world of ideas has now drawn together as in a single point of this loneliness. Now you say, I am alone with my world of ideas. You become utterly bewildered in your world of ideas, an experience that stirs you to the depths of your soul. At length you say to yourself, “Perhaps all this is only I myself; perhaps the only truth about these laws is that they exist in the point of my own loneliness.” Thus you experience, infinitely enhanced, utter doubt in all existence.

When you have this experience in your world of ideas, when the full cup of doubt in all existence has been poured out with pain and bitterness over your soul, then only are you ripe to understand how, after all, it is not the infinite spaces and periods of time of the physical world from which your ideas have come. Now only, after the bitterness of doubt, you open yourself to the regions of the spiritual and know that your doubt was justified, and in what sense it was justified. For it had to be, since you imagined that the ideas had come into your soul from the times and spaces of the physical world. How do you now feel your world of ideas having experienced its origin in the spiritual worlds? Now for the first time you feel yourself inspired. Before, you were feeling the infinite void spread around you like a dark abyss. Now you begin to feel that you are standing on a rock that rises up out of the abyss. You know with certainty, “Now I am connected with the spiritual worlds. They, not the world of sense, have bestowed on me my world of ideas.”

This is the next stage for the evolving soul. It is the stage where man begins to be deeply in earnest with what has today come to be a trivial, commonplace truth. To bear this feeling in your heart will prepare you to receive in a true way the first truth that Krishna gives to Arjuna after the mighty upheaval and convulsion in his soul: The truth of the eternal spirit living through outer transformations. To abstract understanding we speak in concepts and ideas. Krishna speaks to Arjuna's heart. What may be trivial and commonplace for the understanding is infinitely deep and sublime to the heart of man.

We see how the first stage shows itself at once as a necessary consequence of the deeply moving experience that is presented to us at the start of the Bhagavad Gita. Now the next stage.

It is easy to speak of what is often called dogma in occultism—something that is accepted in blind faith and given out as gospel truth. Let me suggest to you that it would be quite simple for someone to come forward and say, “This fellow has published a book on Occult Science, speaking in it about Saturn, Sun and Moon evolutions, and there is no way of controlling these statements. They can only be accepted as dogma.” I could understand such a thing being said, because it corresponds to the superficial nature of our age; and there is no getting away from it, our age is superficial. Indeed, under certain conditions this objection would not be without foundation. It would be justified, for example, if you were to tear out of the book all the pages that precede the chapter on the Saturn evolution. If anyone were to begin reading the book at this chapter it would be nothing but dogma. If, however, the author prefaces it with the other chapters, he is by no means a dogmatist because he shows what paths the soul has to go through in order to reach such conceptions. That is the point, that it has been shown in the book how every individual man, if he reaches into the depths of his soul, is bound to come to such conceptions. Herein all dogmatism ceases.

Thus we can feel it natural that Krishna, having brought Arjuna into the world of ideas and wishing to lead him on into the occult world, now goes on to show him the next stage, how every soul can reach that higher world if it finds the right starting-point. Krishna then must begin by rejecting every form of dogmatism, and he does so radically. Here we come up against a hard saying by Krishna. He absolutely rejects what for centuries had been most holy to the highest men of that age—the contents of the Vedas. He says, “Hold not to the Vedas, nor to the word of the Vedas. Hold fast to Yoga!” That is to say, “Hold fast to what is within thine own soul!”

Let us grasp what Krishna means by this exhortation. He does not mean that the contents of the Vedas are untrue. He does not want Arjuna to accept what is given in the Vedas dogmatically as the disciples of the Veda teaching do. He wants to inspire him to take his start from the very first original point whence the human soul evolves. For this purpose all dogmatic wisdom must be laid aside. We can imagine Krishna saying to himself that even though Arjuna will in the end reach the very same wisdom that is contained in the Vedas, still he must be drawn away from them, for he must go his own way, beginning with the sources in his own soul. Krishna rejects the Vedas, whether their content is true or untrue. Arjuna's path must start from himself, through his own inwardness he must come to recognize Krishna. Arjuna must be assumed to have in himself what a man can and must have if he is really to enter into the concrete truths of the super-sensible worlds. Krishna has called Arjuna's attention to something that from then onward is a common attribute of humanity. Having led him to this point he must lead him further and bring him to recognize what he is to achieve through Yoga. Thus, Arjuna must first undergo Yoga. Here the poem rises to another level.

In this second stage we see how the Bhagavad Gita goes on through the first four discourses with ever-increasing dramatic impulse, coming at length to what is most individual of all. Krishna describes the path of Yoga to Arjuna. We shall speak of this more in detail tomorrow. He describes the path that Arjuna must take in order to pass from the everyday clairvoyance of concepts and ideas to what can only be attained through Yoga. Concepts only require to be placed in the right light; but Arjuna has to be guided to Yoga. This is the second stage.

The third stage shows once more an enhancement of dramatic power, and again comes the expression of a deep occult truth. Let us assume that someone really takes the Yoga path. He will rise at length from his ordinary consciousness to a higher state of consciousness, which includes not only the ego that lies between the limits of birth and death but what passes from one incarnation to the next. The soul wakens to know itself in an expanded ego. It grows into a wider consciousness. The soul goes through a process that is essentially an everyday process but that is not experienced fully in our everyday life because man goes to sleep every night. The sense world fades out around him and he becomes unconscious of it. Now for every human soul the possibility exists of letting this world of sense vanish from his consciousness as it does when he goes to sleep, and then to live in higher worlds as in an absolute reality. Thereby man rises to a high level of consciousness. We shall still have to speak of Yoga, and also of the modern exercises that make this possible. But when man gradually attains to where he no longer, consciously, lives and feels and knows in himself, but lives and feels and knows together with the whole earth, then he grows into a higher level of consciousness where the things of the sense world vanish for him as they do in sleep.

However, before man can attain this level he must be able to identify himself with the soul of his planet, earth. We shall see that this is possible. We know that man not only experiences the rhythm of sleeping and waking but other rhythms of the earth as well—of summer and winter. When one follows the path of Yoga or goes through a modern occult training, he can lift himself above the ordinary consciousness that experiences the cycles of sleeping and waking, summer and winter. He can learn to look at himself from outside. He becomes aware of being able to look back at himself just as he ordinarily looks at things outside himself. Now he observes the things, the cycles in external life. He sees alternating conditions. He realizes how his body, so long as he is outside himself, takes on a form similar to that of the earth in summer with all its vegetation. What material science discovers and calls nerves he begins to perceive as a sprouting forth of something plant-like at the time of going to sleep, and when he returns again into everyday consciousness he feels how this plant-like life shrinks together again and becomes the instrument for thinking, feeling and willing in his waking consciousness. He feels his going out from the body and returning into it analogous to the alternation of summer and winter on the earth. In effect he feels something summer-like in going to sleep and something winter-like in waking up—not as one might imagine, the opposite way round. From this moment onward he learns to understand what the spirit of the earth is, and how it is asleep in summer and awake in winter, not vice versa. He realizes the wonderful experience of identifying himself with the spirit of the earth. From this moment he says to himself, “I live not only inside my skin, but as a cell lives in my bodily organism so do I live in the organism of the earth. The earth is asleep in summer and awake in winter as I am asleep and awake in the alternation of night and day. And as the cell is to my consciousness, so am I to the consciousness of the earth.”

The path of Yoga, especially in its modern sense, leads to this expansion of consciousness, to the identification of our own being with a more comprehensive being. We feel ourselves interwoven with the whole earth. Then as men we no longer feel ourselves bound to a particular time and place, but we feel our humanity such as it has developed from the very beginning of the earth. We feel the age-long succession of our evolutions through the course of the evolution of the earth. Thus Yoga leads us on to feel our atonement with what goes from one incarnation to another in the earth's evolution. That is the third stage.

This is the reason for the great beauty in the artistic composition of the Bhagavad Gita. In its climaxes, its inner artistic form, it reflects deep occult truths. Beginning with an instruction in the ordinary concepts of our thinking it goes on to an indication of the path of Yoga. Then at the third stage to a description of the marvelous expansion of man's horizon over the whole earth, where Krishna awakens in Arjuna the idea, “All that lives in your soul has lived often before, only you know nothing of it. But I have this consciousness in myself when I look back on all the transformations through which I have lived, and I will lead you up so that you may learn to feel yourself as I feel myself.” A new moment of dramatic force as beautiful as it is deeply and occultly true!

Thus we come to see the evolution of mankind from out of its everyday consciousness, from the pearl in the roadway that only needs to be recognized, from the particular world of thoughts and concepts that are a matter of everyday life in any one age, up to the point from where we can look out over all that we really have in us, which lives on from incarnation to incarnation on the earth.

What I said yesterday about the path of the human intellect toward the future, rests upon definite facts that can be brought to light through spiritual-scientific knowledge. Today we shall deal with some of these facts. You must be conscious in a practical way, I might say, of the following.

When a man confronts you, he is that being we speak about in spiritual science. That is to say, above everything we must always be aware that he is a four-membered being, as you know from my book Theosophy. We have before us the ego, the astral body, ether body, and physical body. The fact that every time a person stands before us we are confronted by these four members of the human entity, brings it about that ordinary human perception does not know what it faces in man. Ordinarily one thinks: “What I see before me, filling space, is the physical body.” But what is physical in it we would not see as we usually see it if it were to confront us merely as physical body. We see it as it usually is today only because it is permeated by the ether body, the astral body, and ego. Strange as it may sound, that which is the physical body proper is a corpse, even during our lifetime. When we are confronted by a human corpse we are actually confronted by the physical body. In the corpse we have physical man not permeated by ether and astral body and ego. It is forsaken by them and shows its true nature. You do not visualize yourself properly if you believe you carry what you consider to be the physical body of man with you through space. A more correct view would be if you thought of yourself as a corpse with your ego, astral and etheric bodies carrying this corpse through space.

A consciousness of the true nature of man's being becomes more and more important for our age. For the conditions existing in the present cycle of mankind's evolution were not the same in earlier periods. What I am now relating cannot be ascertained by outer physical science, but spiritual-scientific cognition does observe these facts. As you know, the fourth post Atlantean age begins in the eighth century B.C.; further back we come to the Egypto-Chaldean period. At that time human bodies had a constitution different from that of today. Those you find now in the museum as mummies had a much more delicate constitution than present-day human bodies. They were much more permeated by the plant element; they were not so completely corpse as is the modern human body. As physical bodies they were akin to plant nature, whereas the present-day physical body, since the Greco-Latin age, is akin to the mineral world. If through some cosmic miracle the bodies of that ancient population were to be bestowed upon us, we would all be ill. We would carry proliferating growths in our body. Many a disease consists in the fact that the human body atavistically returns to conditions that were the normal ones in the Egypto-Chaldean age. Today we find tumorous formations in the body which are caused by the fact that a part of this or that person's body develops the tendency to become what the whole body was for the ancient Egypto-Chaldean population.

This is closely connected with human evolution. We as modern men carry a corpse in our body. The ancient Egyptian carried as his body something of a plant-like nature. The result was that his knowledge was different from ours, his intelligence acted differently. What do we know through our science that we are so proud of? Only that which is dead. Science shows that life cannot be grasped with ordinary intelligence. To be sure, certain research scientists believe that if they continue with their chemical experiments the moment will come when they will be able, through complicated combinations of atoms, molecules, and their interactions, to know the processes of life. This moment will never come. On the chemico-physical path one will only be able to grasp the minerally dead; that is to say, one will only grasp that aspect of the living which is a corpse.

Yet, what in man is intelligent and gains knowledge is nevertheless this physical body, this corpse. What then does this corpse do as we carry it about? It achieves most in a knowledge of mathematics and geometry. Everything is transparent there. The further we move from the mathematical-geometrical the more un-transparent do matters become. The reason for this is that the human corpse is the real knower today; the dead can only recognize the dead. Today what the ether body is, the astral body, the ego, does not think in man; it remains in obscurity. If the ether body would be able to know in the same way that the physical body knows the dead, it would know the life of the plant world. This was the peculiar thing with the Egyptian, that with his plant-like, living body he had knowledge of the plant world in a way quite different from ours. Much instinctive knowledge of the plant world can be traced back to what was embodied in Egyptian culture through their instinctively knowing consciousness. Even what is known today in botany about substances for medicinal use comes often from traditions originating in ancient Egyptian wisdom. You know how a number of so-called lodges, not founded on genuine fundamentals, call themselves Egyptian lodges. That is because they refer back to Egypt if they want to impart certain knowledge—which, however, is no longer very valuable. In these circles there still live certain traditions stemming from the wisdom which could be had through the Egyptian body. One can say, as humanity gradually progresses into the Greco-Latin period the living, human plant-body gradually died out. We carry an extremely dead body in us; especially is this true for the head. The science of the initiates perceives the human head as a corpse, as something continually dying. More and more will humanity become conscious of the fact that its vehicle for knowledge is a corpse; that it therefore knows only what is dead.

For this reason, the further we go into the future the more intensively will we feel a longing to know what is living. But the living will not be known through ordinary intelligence bound to the corpse. Much will be needed to make it possible for man again to penetrate the world in a living way. We must know today what it is that man has lost. When he passed over from the Atlantean to the post Atlantean age there was much he could not do that he can do today. Since a certain time in your childhood you are able to say “I” in referring to yourself. You may say it without any great respect. But in former ages of mankind's evolution this “I” was not referred to with so little respect. There were times, prior to the Egyptian age, when a name for “I” was used which, when pronounced, stupefied a person. Pronouncing it, therefore, was avoided. If people right after the Atlantean epoch had experienced the pronouncing of the name for “I”—at that time it was only known to the initiates—the whole congregation would have fainted, so powerful was the effect of uttering this name for “I.” An echo of this fact lingered with the ancient Hebrews who spoke of the unutterable name of the Deity in the soul; a word which only the initiates were permitted to speak, or that was expressed before the congregation in a kind of eurythmy.

The ineffable name of God had its origin in what I have just told you. Gradually this fact was lost, and the deep effect of such practices diminished. In the first post-Atlantean epoch a deep effect in the ego; in the second epoch a deep effect in the astral body; in the third epoch a deep effect in the ether body, but the effect was bearable—an effect which, as I stated yesterday, brought men into connection with the cosmos. Today we can say “I”—we can say anything—without its having a deep effect upon us, because we grasp the world with our corpse. That is to say, we grasp what is dead, what is mineral in the world. But we must arouse ourselves to rise again to those regions in which we can take hold of the living. Whereas the Greco-Latin period created more and more dead knowledge for the corpse, in our time intelligence follows the path I mentioned yesterday. We must, therefore, resist mere intelligence; we must add something to it. It is in the nature of our time that we have to retrace the path of development, so that in the fifth post-Atlantean period we learn to know the plant, in the sixth period the animal, and in the seventh the truly human. Thus, it will be our present task to pass beyond a knowledge of the mineral and learn to know the plant element.

Now after realizing this, ask yourself who is the person who exemplifies this search for plant knowledge. It is Goethe. Contrary to the preoccupation of all outer science with what is dead, he occupied himself with the life, the growth, the metamorphosis of plants. Thus, he was the man of the fifth post-Atlantean period in its elementary beginnings. In his small treatise of the year 1790, An Attempt to Explain the Metamorphosis of Plants, you will see how Goethe tries to comprehend the plant from leaf to leaf as something developing, unfolding, not as something completed, dead. That is the beginning of the knowledge that should be sought in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch.

In Goetheanism we have the keynote for this. Science will have to wake up in the Goethean sense, will have to pass from the dead to the living. This is what is meant when I say again and again that we must acquire the ability to leave behind the dead, abstract concepts and arrive at those that are living and concrete. What I said two days ago and yesterday is basically the way to these living, concrete concepts.

It will not be possible to enter into these concepts and ideas if we are not ready to develop our general world view and concept of life as a unity. Through the special con-figuration of our culture we are forced to let the various currents of our world view run side by side in a disorganized fashion. Just think how man's religious view of the world and his scientific view often run parallel, completely disconnected. He builds no bridge between the two; in-deed, he is afraid of doing so. We must make it clear that this state of affairs cannot continue.

I have drawn your attention to the egotistical way man forms his world view at the present time. I have described how men today are chiefly interested in the life of the soul after death. This interest springs from pure egotism. I have said we must pass on to interest in the life of the soul from birth onward, seeing it as a continuation of the life prior to birth. If we were to observe the child's growth into the world as a continuation of his pre-natal existence, with the same concern we feel for his soul after death, our thinking about the world would be much less egotistical than it is today. But this egotism in our world view is connected with many other things.

Here I come to a point where men today must become ever more clear about underlying facts. In the period of time culminating in our age the egotistic element was chiefly developed. The ego has permeated man's viewing of the world; it has also permeated his will. We must not deceive ourselves about that. The religious denominations in particular have become egotistical. This you can see even in externalities. Just consider how modern preachers have to reckon with people's egotism. The more they make promises concerning the life of the soul after death the more they reach their goal. People today have little interest in other spiritual questions; in, for instance, that creative flow of life which shows itself so wonderfully after birth in the soul that previously was in the spiritual world.

A result of this lack of interest is the way man thinks about the Divine in the various religious denominations. The fact that we visualize a God as The Highest has no special meaning. Here it is essential that we free ourselves from deception. What do most people mean today if they say “God?“ What kind of being do people refer to when they speak of God? It is an Angel; nothing else but their own Angel whom they call God. People have just a bare intimation that a protective spirit guides their life; they look up to him and call him their God. This is the egotism of the churches, that they do not pass beyond the Angel with their concept of God. A narrowing of interests is caused by egotism; and this narrowing of interests is to be clearly seen in public life.

Do people today ask about the general destiny of man-kind? Oh! it is often very sad if one wants to speak to people about human destiny. No one has any idea of the degree of change that has taken place in this respect in a comparatively short time. Today we may say to people: The military conflict that has spread over the earth during the last four or five years will be followed by the mightiest spiritual battle, which will cover the earth in a form never experienced before. Its origin lies in the fact of the Occident naming as illusion or ideology what the Orient calls reality, and the Orient feeling as reality what the Occident calls ideology. We may draw people's attention to this weighty matter and it does not even dawn on them that if something similar had been said only a hundred years ago it would have so taken hold of people's souls that they would never have gotten over it.

This change in humanity, this growing indifference to the great questions of destiny, is the most striking phenomenon. Everything bounces off mankind, so to say. The most comprehensive, incisive facts are accepted like a sensation. People are not deeply shaken by them. The reason for this is the clever, ever increasing egotism that constricts men's interests. We may have whatever fine democracies where men meet in parliaments, but concern for the fate of man-kind does not permeate them, because the people who are elected to these parliaments do not feel the urgency to know mankind's destiny. Egotistical interests hold sway. Every-one has his own egotistical interest. Similarities in outer interests such as often arise from one's profession, lead people to form groups. When the groups are large enough, majorities arise. In this way a concern not for human destinies but only for egotism, multiplied by the number of persons involved, becomes active in parliaments and men's proposals.

Because of the way egotism lives in people now, even their religious professions are under its influence. They will have their necessary renewal if people's interests broaden; that is, if men will again look beyond their personal destiny to the destiny of mankind; if they will be deeply moved when one tells them that in the West a culture develops that is different from that of the East, and that the culture of the Middle is again different from that of both East and West. Or if one tells them that in the West the great goals of mankind are sought, when they are sought, through the use of mediums who are put into a trance and are thereby consciously brought into a sub-earthly relationship to the spiritual worlds, out of which they speak of great historical aims. We could tell this repeatedly to Europeans, yet they will not believe that in English-American countries there really exist societies in which the attempt is made to find out through questions cleverly put to mediums what the great goals of mankind are. People likewise do not believe that the Oriental obtains knowledge about the destiny of mankind not through mediums but on the mystical path. In the beautiful speeches of Rabindranath Tagore, easily available today, you can read what the Oriental thinks on a grand scale about the goals of mankind. These speeches are read as one reads the feature articles of any hack journalist; because today people distinguish little between a journalistic hack and persons of great spirituality like Rabindranath Tagore. They are not aware, I might say, that different racial substances can live side by side. What is valid for Middle Europe I have put forward in public lectures for many years. It was not received as it should have been.

With this I only wish to point out that one may become aware of something that reaches beyond the egotistical fate of a man and is connected with the destiny of groups of men, so that we can make specific differentiations across the face of the earth. If one lifts his view toward comprehending human destiny in mankind as a whole, if one concerns himself intensely with what thus passes beyond personal destiny, then one tunes his soul to comprehending a higher reality than the Angel; actually, that of the Archangel. Thoughts concerning the significance of an Archangel do not arise in one's soul if one remains in the regions concerned with egotistical man. Preachers may talk ever so much about the Divine; if they only preach within the confines of egotistical man they speak merely of the Angel. Calling it by a different name is just an untruth; it does not put the matter straight. Only if one begins to be interested in man's destiny as a unity over the whole earth does his soul begin to elevate itself to the Archangel.

Now let us pass on to something else. Let us feel what I have indicated in these lectures about the successive impulses of mankind's evolution. You will find that most of our leading citizens were educated in the classical schools—Gymnasium—during the years when the soul is pliable and flexible. These classical schools were not born out of the culture of our age but of the Greco-Latin age. If those Greeks and Romans had done what we did, they would have established Egypto-Chaldean classical schools. They didn't do that; they took the subjects for their teaching from immediate life. We take them from the previous period and educate people accordingly. This is very significant, but we haven't recognized it. Had we done so a note would have sounded within the feminist movement that did not resound, and that is: Men, if their intelligence is to be specially trained, are sent into antiquated schools. There their brains become hardened. Women have the good fortune of not being admitted into the classical schools. We want to develop our intelligence in an original way; we want to show what can be developed in the present age if we are not made dull in our youth by Greco-Latin classical education.

These words did not resound, but in their place: Men have crept into and hidden under the Greco-Latin classical education, let us women do the same. Let us also become students of the classical schools.

So little has understanding spread for what is necessary! We must realize that in our present time we are not educated for our age but for the Greco-Latin culture. This is inserted into our lives. We must sense it. We must sense what, as Greco-Latin culture, acts in the leading people of today, in the so-called intellectuals. This is one aspect of what we carry within us in our spiritual education. We read no newspaper that does not contain Greco-Latin education; because, although writing in our national idiom, we actually write in the Greco-Latin form.

And in regard to our concept of rights we live in Romanism, again something antiquated. To be sure, the old national rights battle at times against Roman law, but they do not prevail. We must feel how a time that has passed lives in what man calls right and wrong in public life.

Only in economic life do we live in the present. This is a significant statement. Perhaps I may say in passing that many women use the concepts of the present in their cooking, in managing their households. In doing so they actually are the people of the present age; everything else that is carried into the present is antiquated. I do not present this matter of their cooking as something particularly desirable, but the other aspect is much less desirable, namely, that the souls of women also want to go back from the present to antiquated cultures. In looking upon our cultural surroundings we have not only what acts in space but also the effects of bygone eras. If we acquire a feeling for this, not only the past affects us but the future as well. It is our task to let the future work into us. Because, if there did not live in every person, however slightly aware of it, a kind of rebellion against the Hellenism of education and the Romanism of rights, if the future were not to ray in upon us, we would be pathetic creatures, really very pathetic creatures.

Besides space we must also consider time in our culture; that is to say, what as history reaches over into our present from the past and from the future. We, as people of the present, must realize that past and future play into our souls. Just as America, England, Asia, China, India—the East and the West as two opposites—have their effect upon us as Europeans, so do we carry Greece, Rome, and the future in us. If we are willing to focus our attention on the future by becoming aware of how what is past and what is coming into being live in our souls, then another attitude arises in us concerning human destiny, an attitude that transcends egotism and is different from what is aroused by a merely spatial consideration. Only if we develop this soul attitude is it possible for us to form concepts about the sphere of the Time Spirits, the Archai. That is to say, we come to the third rank of divine beings in the order of the Hierarchies.

It is good if man by such means places before himself these three Hierarchies in concepts and ideas, because the Spirits of Form who come next are much harder to comprehend. But it suffices for modern man if he attempts to penetrate beyond egotism into the sphere of the unegotistic, doing this repeatedly, and occupying himself with what I have just explained. I must emphasize again, that especially the training of teachers should make use of these facts. A teacher should not be permitted to instruct and educate without having acquired an idea of the egotism that strives toward the closest God, the Angel; without also having acquired a concept of the unegotistic, destiny-determining powers who are side by side in space above the earth, the Archangel beings; and without having acquired a concept of how past and future reach over into our culture, the Roman life of rights, the Greek spiritual substance, and the undefined rebel of the future, which saves us.

Mankind at present has little inclination to enter into these matters. Some time ago I repeatedly emphasized that it is one of our social tasks to derive from the present our educational subjects to be used during the time spent today in classical schools. To do as the Greeks themselves did, namely, take the subjects for education from present-day life.

Shortly after the time, and in the same place where I had spoken about the social importance of this problem (I do not wish to imply a causal connection, but the matter has symptomatic meaning) there appeared in all the news-papers in that place a number of advertisements propagandizing the modern classical schools. I had delivered lectures characterizing classical education in the way I have done here. The advertisements declared what the German nation owes to the classical education of its youth, for “strengthening the national consciousness,” “the national power,” and so on. This was a few weeks before the Treaty of Versailles. These advertisements were signed by a variety of local figures from the schools and the department of education. What has to be brought out today as to the factual basis of mankind's evolution, is rejected. People let it bounce off; it does not touch the depths of the soul. For this reason, it is so difficult to be active in the social sphere. One will never be able to take hold of the social question with the superficialities employed today. It is a deeply significant question that cannot be grasped if one will not look deeply into the nature of man and the world. Because this is so it should be evident how important are certain proposals offered by the threefold social order.

We must acquire an organ for what is necessary for our age, and it is difficult to acquire this organ in the spiritual sphere. For an education that has gradually been taken over by the State has deprived man of active striving; it has made him into a devoted member of the State structure. How do the majority of people live? Up to the sixth year of age man may live unhindered because the State does not yet consider him sanitary enough. The State would not like to devote itself to the tasks that have to be carried out in the first childhood years. Man is still left to the powers outside the State. But then it lays claim to him and he is trained to fit the pattern of the State; he ceases to be a person and bears the stamp of the State. He strives to fit this pattern because it is instilled in him. He not only gets his keep from the State while he works but beyond the working age up to his death, in the form of a pension. It is the ideal of many people today to have a position that entitles them to a pension. The soul too becomes entitled to a pension, even beyond death, without any effort on its part, because it receives eternal bliss through the activity of the church. The church sees to that. Now it is very uncomfortable to hear that salvation lies in free spiritual striving which must be independent of the State. The State must only serve civil rights, where there will be no claim to a pension. This is reason enough for many to reject it, as we have occasion to notice again and again.

Concerning the most intimate spiritual life, the religious life, the world of the future will demand of man that he work for his immortality; that he let his soul be active so that it may receive into itself, through activity, the Divine, the Christ-impulse.

In the course of my life I have received many letters from church people who state that anthroposophy is fundamentally a fine thing, but it contradicts the simple Christian faith; that Christ has redeemed the soul, that one can attain salvation in Christ without any effort on one's part. People cannot let go of the “simple belief in the attainment of salvation through Christ.” They believe themselves to be especially pious if they say or write something like that. But they are egotistical, extremely egotistical. They want to be passive in their souls and let it be the concern of the Divine to transport the soul, nicely pensioned, through the portal of death.

Matters are not so easy in that world conception in which, in future, the religious element must be created. Here one must understand that the presence of the Divine in the soul must be worked for. One will no longer be able just to surrender passively to the churches, which promise to carry the souls into the beyond. (The involvement of money for such service, a scandal in the past, has now fallen into disuse, but secretly it still plays a role in this process, also in obtaining special blessings.) But the transition to inner activity is what is needed for mankind, something it doesn't yet cherish very much.

In order to gain a feeling for what is necessary in this regard we must keep in mind, first, the metamorphosis of humanity since the time of ancient Egypt when the body was more of a plant-like nature. Should there be a relapse into that state in the present age, man would become sick and develop tumors and such things. Secondly, the fact that we carry our body as a corpse which can think, can under-stand. In this way we gain a feeling for what mankind needs, which is, to advance in the solving of social problems in the way this has to be done in the present time. We must no longer allow ourselves to consider such a matter as the social question as being utterly simple.

You see, this is what is so difficult at present: That people would like to be enlightened on the most important aspects of life by a few abstract statements. If a book like The Threefold Social Order contains more than a few abstract statements, if it contains the results of an observation of life, then people say they do not understand it. They consider it confusing. But this is the misfortune at present, that people do not wish to enter into what precisely they ought to enter into. For abstract sentences, completely lucid, refer to what is dead; the social element, however, ought to be alive. Here we must employ flexible ideas, flexible sentences, flexible forms. Therefore, it is necessary that we not only reflect upon the transformation of single institutions, but that we really adjust ourselves to a genuine transformation in our thinking and learning, down to their innermost structure.

This is what I would like to leave with you today when I have to leave again for a few weeks. We must feel ourselves influenced by the working together of our anthroposophical and our social movement. I should like you to comprehend more and more why it is that the anthroposophically oriented science of the spirit must flow into the souls of men if anything is to be achieved in the social field. And I would bring close to your hearts what I have said repeatedly in various ways: It is of utmost importance to acknowledge that what we can acquire of anthroposophical knowledge is the true guide-line now for all action and striving; that we must have the courage to will to prevail with anthroposophy. The worst thing is that people in these days have so little courage for willing to prevail with what is needed. They permit their best will-forces to break down; though it is so necessary they do not will to carry through.

Learn to represent anthroposophy with courage. Receive graciously the people who show an interest in looking at this building which represents our spiritual striving. Rejoice in every single individual who shows even a little understanding. Meet with him. But do not take it to heart if your efforts are fruitless, and people meet our activities with evil intention, or, what is more frequent, with lack of understanding. Just resist it suitably. It is courage that is needed to bring our efforts through to good results. Let us think of ourselves as the handful of people whose destiny it is to know and to communicate to the world what it so sorely needs today. Let the people ridicule us and say that it is presumption to believe all this. It is true nevertheless. Saying to oneself, “It is true nevertheless,”—saying it so earnestly that it fills one's whole soul, this needs the inner courage we must have. May it permeate us as anthroposophical substance. Then we shall do what we have to do, everyone at the place where he is. This I wanted to say to you today.

We are longing for the day when our activity through this building brings us closer to the outside world; our activity which in any case is very difficult. This building is the only one that takes into account the great destinies of mankind even in its forms, and it is very gratifying to see that attention is being paid to it. Something else, however, is necessary for favorable progress in social problems, and that is, that this building through its very forms, which are stronger than other modern architectural forms, should aid in the strengthening of humanity's spiritual powers; making men more amenable to what one wishes them to know, so that they may rise not only to the nature of the Angel, but to the Archangel, and to the Spirit of the Time.

With these words I take leave of you for a few weeks. I hope to be able then to continue these considerations, and that during this time we shall come into an intensive activity for our building itself. Because, my dear friends, we are justified in emphasizing on every hand that readiness for work, that joy in work is needed for all men. This will not come if people are not moved by great purposes. I believe that if people can be convinced that through the three-folding of the social organism they can attain an existence worthy of man, they will begin to work again. Otherwise they will continue to strike. For in the field of physical labor people need an impulse that takes hold of them in their inmost souls.

But we must show that our work has been fruitful in attaining at least one objective, and this radiates into the world. Only then can we give the impulse to mankind to overcome spiritually what is dead in our time. Let us think this over, my dear friends, until the time when we are together again and can speak further about these questions.

Yesterday I spoke of the teacher’s encounter with the children. Today I will try to describe the child, as a growing being, and the experience of encountering the teacher. A more exact observation of the forces active in the development of the human being shows that at the beginning of a child’s earthly life we must distinguish three distinct stages of life. After we have gained a knowledge of the human being and the ability to perceive the characteristics of these three stages, we can begin to educate in a way that is true to the facts—or rather, an education that is true to the human being.

The Nature of Proof in Spiritual Matters

The first stage of life ends with the change of teeth. Now I know that there is a certain amount of awareness these days concerning the changes that occur in the body and soul of children at this stage of life. Nevertheless, it is not sufficient to enable perception of all that happens in the human being at this tender age; we must come to understand this in order to become educators. The appearance of teeth—not the inherited, baby teeth—is merely the most obvious sign of a complete transformation of the whole human being. Much more is happening within the organism, though not as perceptible outwardly; its most radical expression is the appearance of the second teeth.

If we consider this we can see that contemporary physiology and psychology simply cannot penetrate the human being with any real depth, since their particular methods (excellent though they may be) were developed to observe only outer physical nature and the soul as it manifests in the body. As I said yesterday, the task of anthroposophic spiritual science is to penetrate in every way the whole human development of body, soul, and spirit.

First, however, we must eliminate a certain assumption. This preconception is inevitably a stumbling block to anyone who approaches the Waldorf education movement without a basic study of anthroposophy. I do not mean for a moment that we simply ignore objections to this kind of education. On the contrary. Those who have a spiritual foundation such as anthroposophy cannot be the least bit fanatical; they will always fully consider any objections to their viewpoints. Consequently, they fully understand the frequent argument against anthroposophic education. But, these things still must be proven.

Now, people have a lot to say about proofs with no clear idea of what that means. I cannot present a detailed lecture on the methods of proof in the various spheres of life and knowledge; but I would like to be clear about a certain comparison.

What do people mean when they say that something requires “proof”? The whole trend of human evolution since the fourteenth century has been to validate judgments through visual observation—that is to say, through sense perception. It was a very different matter before the current era, or before the fourteenth century. But we fail to realize today that our ancestors had a very different view of the world. In a certain sense we feel proud when we consider the development that has occurred in recent centuries. We look condescendingly at what people did during the Middle Ages, for example, considering them childish and primitive. But it is an age about which we really know nothing and call the “Dark Ages.” Try to imagine how our successors will speak of us—if they are as arrogant in their thinking as we are! If they turn out to be so conceited, we will seem just as childish to them as medieval people appear to us.

During the ages before the fourteenth century, humans perceived the world of the senses, and also comprehended with the intellect. The intelligence of the medieval monastic schools is too often underestimated. The inner intelligence and conceptual faculty was much more highly developed than the modern and chaotic conceptual faculty, which is really driven by, and limited to, natural phenomena; anyone who is objective and impartial can observe this. In those days, anything that the intellect and senses perceived in the universe required validation from the divine, spiritual realm. The fact that sense revelation had to be sanctioned by divine revelation was not merely an abstract principle; it was a common, very human feeling and observation. A manifestation in the world of the senses could be considered valid only when knowledge of it could be proven and demonstrated in terms of the divine, spiritual world.

This situation changed, gradually at first, one mode of knowledge replacing the other. Today, however, it has come to the point where we only acknowledge the validity of something—even in the spiritual world—when it can be proven through the senses. Something is validated when statements about spiritual life can be confirmed by experiment and observation. Why does everyone ask for a demonstration of matters that are really related to spirit? People ask you to make an experiment or sense observation that provides proof.

This is what people want, because they have lost faith in the reality of the human being’s inner activity; they have lost faith in the possibility that intuitions can emerge from the human being when looking at ordinary life, at sensory appearances and the intellect. Humanity has really weakened inwardly, and is no longer conscious of the firm foundation of an inner, creative life. This has had a deep influence on all areas of practical life, and most of all on education.

Proofs, such as external sensory appearances, through observation and experiment, may be compared to a man who notices that an unsupported object falls, and that it is attracted by the Earth’s gravity and therefore must be supported until it rests on solid ground. And then this man says, “Go ahead, tell me that the Earth and the other heavenly bodies hover freely in space, but I cannot understand it. Everything must be supported or it will fall.” Nevertheless, the Earth, Sun, and other heavenly bodies do not fall. We must completely change our way of thinking, when we move from earthly conditions into the cosmos. In cosmic space, heavenly bodies support one another; the laws of Earth do not apply there.

This is also true of spiritual facts. When we speak of the material nature of plants, animals, minerals, or human beings, we must prove our statements through experiment and sense observation. This kind of proof, like the example mentioned, suggests that an object must be supported. In the free realm of the spirit, however, truths support one another. The only validation required is their mutual support. Thus, in representing spiritual reality, every idea must be placed clearly within the whole, just as Earth or any other heavenly body moves freely in cosmic space. Truths must support one another. Anyone who tries to understand the spiritual realm must first examine truths coming from other directions, and how they support the one truth through the free activity of their “gravitational force” of proof, as it were. In this way, that single truth is kept free in the cosmos, just as a heavenly body is supported freely in the cosmos by the countering forces of gravity. A capacity to conceive of the spiritual in this way must become an essential inner quality of human beings; otherwise, though we may be able to understand and educate the soul aspect, we will be unable to understand and educate the spirit that also lives and moves in the human being.

The Individual’s Entry into the World

When human beings enter the physical world of sensation, their physical body is provided by the parents and ancestors. Even natural science knows this, although such discoveries will become complete only in the remote future. Spiritual science teaches that this is only one aspect of the human being; the other part unites with what arises from the father and mother; it descends as a spirit and soul being from the realm of spirit and soul.

Between the previous earthly life and the present one, this being passed through a long period of existence from the previous death to rebirth; it had experiences in the spiritual world between death and rebirth, just as on Earth, between birth and death, we have bodily experiences communicated through the senses, intellect, feelings, and will. The essence of these spiritual experiences descends, unites at first only loosely with the physical nature of the human being during the embryonic period, and hovers around the person, lightly and externally like an aura, during the first period of childhood between birth and the change of teeth. This being of spirit and soul who comes down from the spiritual world—a being just as real as the one who comes from the body of the mother—is more loosely connected with the physical body than it is later in human life. This is the why the child lives much more outside the body than an adult does.

This is only another way of expressing what I said in yesterday’s lecture, namely, that during the first period of life the child is in the highest degree and by its whole nature a being of sense. The child is like a sense organ. The surrounding impressions ripple, echo and sound through the whole organism because the child is not so inwardly bound up with its body as is the case in later life, but lives in the environment with its freer spiritual and soul nature. Hence the child is receptive to all the impressions coming from the environment.

Now, what is the relation between the human being as a whole and what we receive from the father and mother strictly through heredity? If we study the development of the human being with vision that truly creates ideas instead of mere proofs as described—a vision that looks at the spiritual and the evolution of the human being—we find that everything in the organism depends on hereditary forces in exactly the same way as the first, so-called baby teeth do. We only need to perceive, with precise vision, the difference in the ways the second teeth and the first are formed. In this way, we have a tangible expression of the processes occurring in the human being between birth and the change of teeth.

During this stage the forces of heredity hold sway in the physical body, and the whole human being becomes a kind of model with which the spirit and soul element work, imitating the surrounding impressions. If we place ourselves in the soul of a child relative to the environment and realize how every spiritual impulse is absorbed into the whole being—how with every movement of the hand, every expression, every look in the eyes of another the child senses the spirit inherent in the adult and allows it to flow in—then we will also perceive how, during the first seven years, another being is building itself on the foundation of the model provided by heredity. As human beings, the earthly world actually gives us, through hereditary forces, a model on which to build the second human being, who is really born with the change of teeth. The first teeth in the body are eliminated by what wants to replace them; this new element, which belongs to the human being’s individuality, advances and casts off heredity. This is true of the whole human organism. During the first seven years of life, the organism was a product of earthly forces and a kind of model. As such it is cast off, just as we get rid of the body’s outgrowths by cutting our nails, hair, and so on. The human being is molded anew with the change of teeth just as our outer form is perpetually eliminated. In this case, however, the first being, or product of physical heredity, is completely replaced by a second, who develops under the influence of the forces that the human being brings from pre-earthly life. Thus, during the period between birth and the change of teeth, the human hereditary forces related to the physical evolutionary stream fight against the forces of a pre-earthly existence, which accompany the individuality of each human being from the previous earthly life.

The Religious Nature of Childhood

It is essential not to merely understand these things theoretically, which is the habitual way of thinking today. This is the kind of fact that must be understood by the whole inner human being from the perspective of the child, and only then from the standpoint of the educator. If we understand what is happening from the perspective of a child, we find that the soul-being of the child—with everything brought from preearthly life from the realm of soul and spirit—is entirely devoted to the physical activities of human beings in the surroundings. This relationship can be described only as a religious one. It is a religious relationship that descends into the sphere of nature and moves into the outer world. It is important, however, to understand what is meant by such term.

Ordinarily, one speaks of “religious” relationships today in the sense of a consciously developed adult religion. Relevant to this is the fact that, in religious life, the spirit and soul elements of the adult rise into the spiritual element in the universe and surrender to it. The religious relationship is a self-surrendering to the universe, a prayer for divine grace in the surrender of the self. In the adult, it is completely immersed in a spiritual element. The soul and spirit are yielded to the surroundings.

To speak of the child’s body being absorbed by the environment in terms of a religious experience thus seems like we are turning things around the wrong way. Nevertheless, it is a truly religious experience—transposed into the realm of nature. The child is surrendered to the environment and lives in the external world in reverent, prayerful devotion, just as the eye detaches itself from the rest of the organism and surrenders to the environment. It is a religious relationship transferred to the natural realm.

If we want a picture, or symbol, of the spirit and soul processes in the adult’s religious experience, we should form a real idea in our souls of the child’s body up to the change of teeth. The life of the child is “religious,” but religious in a way that refers to the things of nature. It is not the soul of the child that is surrendered to the environment, but the blood circulation, breathing activities, and the nutritional process through the food taken in. All of these things are surrendered to the environment—the blood circulation, breathing, and digestive processes pray to the environment.

The Priestly Nature of Teaching

These expressions may seem contradictory, but their very contradiction represents the truth. We must observe such things with our whole being, not theoretically. If we observe the struggle unfolding in the child before us—within this fundamental, natural religious element—if we observe the struggle between the hereditary forces and what the individual’s forces develop as the second human being through the power brought from pre-earthly life, then, as teachers, we also develop a religious mood. But, whereas the child with a physical body develops the religious mood of the believer, the teacher, in gazing at the wonders that occur between birth and the change of teeth, develops a “priestly” religious attitude. The position of teacher becomes a kind of priestly office, a ritual performed at the altar of universal human life—not with a sacrificial victim to be led to death, but with the offering of human nature itself, to be awakened to life. Our task is to ferry into earthly life the aspect of the child that came from the divine spiritual world. This, with the child’s own forces, forms a second organism from the being that came to us from the divine spiritual life.

Pondering such things awakens something in us like a priestly attitude in education. Until this priestly feeling for the first years of childhood has become a part of education as a whole, education will not find the conditions that bring it to life. If we merely try to understand the requirements of education intellectually, or try to rationally design a method of education based on external observations of a child’s nature, at best we accomplish a quarter education. A complete educational method cannot be formulated by the intellect alone, but must flow from the whole human nature—not merely from the part that observes externally in a rational way, but the whole that deeply and inwardly experiences the secrets of the universe.

Few things have a more wonderful effect on the human heart than seeing inner spirit and soul elements released day to day, week to week, month to month, year to year, during the first period of childhood. We see how, beginning with chaotic limb movements, the glance filled with rapture by the outer, the play of expressions that do not yet seem to belong to the child, something develops and impresses itself on the surface of the human form that arises from the center of the human being, where the divine spiritual being is unfolding in its descent from pre-earthly life. When we can make this divine office of education a concern of the heart, we understand these things in such a way that we say: “Here the Godhead Who has guided the human being until birth is revealed again in the impression of the human organism; the living Godhead is there to see; God is gazing into us.” This, out of the teacher’s own individuality, will lead, not to something learned by rote, but to a living method of education and instruction, a method that springs from the inner being.

This must be our attitude to the growing human being; it is essential to any educational method. Without this fundamental attitude, without this priestly element in the teacher (this is said, of course, in a cosmic sense), education cannot be continued. Therefore, any attempt to reform the methods of education must involve a return of the intellectual element, which has become dominant since the fourteenth century, to the domain of soul and feelings, to move toward what flows from human nature as a whole, not just from the head. If we look at the child without preconceptions, the child’s own nature will teach us to read these things.

The Effects of a Teacher’s Inner Development on the Child

Now, what has been the real course of civilization since the fourteenth century? As a result of the great transition, or cultural revolution, that has occurred since then, we can only perceive what is exprEssentialEd, as it were, from internal to external existence. Grasping at externals has become a matter of course for modern human beings to the degree that we are no longer aware of any other possibility. We have arrived at a condition in historical evolution that is considered “right” in an absolute sense—not merely a condition that suits our time.

People can no longer feel or perceive in a way that was possible before the fourteenth century. In those days, people observed matters of the spirit in an imbalanced way, just as people now observe the things of nature. But the human race had to pass through a stage in which it could add the observation of purely natural elements to an earlier human devotion to the world of spirit and soul that excluded nature. This materializing process, or swing downward, was necessary; but we must realize that, in order that civilized humanity not be turned into a wasteland in our time, there must be a new turn, a turning toward spirit and soul. The awareness of this fact is the essence of all endeavors such as that of Waldorf school education, which is rooted in what a deeper observation of human evolution reveals as necessary for our time. We must find our way back to the spirit and soul; for this we must first clearly recognize how we removed ourselves from them in the first place. There are many today who have no such understanding and, therefore, view anything that attempts to lead us back to the spirit as, well, not really the point, shall we say.

We can find remarkable illustrations of this attitude. I would like to mention one, but only parenthetically. There is a chapter (incidentally, a very interesting chapter in some ways) in Maurice Maeterlinck’s new book The Great Riddle. Its subject is the anthroposophic way of viewing the world. He describes anthroposophy, and he also describes me (if you will forgive a personal reference). He has read many of my books and makes a very interesting comment. He says that, at the beginning of my books, I seem to have a level-headed, logical, and shrewd mind. In the later chapters, however, it seems as if I had lost my senses. It may very well appear this way to Maeterlinck; subjectively he has every right to his opinion. Why shouldn’t I seem levelheaded, logical and scientific to him in the first chapters, and insane in later ones?

Of course, Maeterlinck has a right to think this way, and nobody wants to stop him. The question is, however, whether such an attitude is not really absurd. Indeed, it does become absurd when you consider this: I have, unfortunately, written a great many books in my life (as you can see from the unusual appearance of the book table here). No sooner have I finished writing one, than I begin another. When Maurice Maeterlinck reads the new book, he will discover once again that, in the first chapters I am shrewd, levelheaded and scientific, and lose my senses later on. Then I begin to write a third book; the first chapters again are reasonable and so forth. Consequently, if nothing else, I seem to have mastered the art of becoming at will a completely reasonable human being in the early part of a book and—equally by choice—a lunatic later, only to return to reason when I write the next book. In this way, I take turns being reasonable and a lunatic. Naturally, Maeterlinck has every right to find this; but he misses the absurdity of such an idea. A modern man of his importance thus falls into absurdities; but this, as I say, is only an interpolation.

Many people are completely unaware that their judgments do not spring from the source of human nature but from elements implanted in our outer culture since the fourteenth century as a result of the materialistic system of life and education. The duty of teachers, of educators—really the duty of all human beings that have anything to do with children—is to look more deeply into the human being. In other words, we need to become more aware of how anything acting as a stimulus in the environment continues to vibrate in the child. We must be very clear that, in this sense, we are dealing with imponderables.

Children are aware, whenever we do something in their environment, of the thoughts behind a hand-gesture or facial expression. Children intuit them: they do not, obviously, interpret facial features, since what operates instead is a much more powerful inner connection between the child and adult than will exist later between adults. Consequently, we must never allow ourselves to feel or think anything around children that should not be allowed to ripple on within the child. The rule of thumb for all relationships in early education must be this: Whether in perception, feeling, or thought, whatever we do around children must be done in such a way that it may be allowed to continue vibrating their souls.

The psychologist, the observer of souls, the person of broad practical experience, and the doctor thus all become a unity, insofar as the child is concerned. This is important, since anything that makes an impression on the child, anything that causes the soul’s response, continues in the blood circulation and digestion, becoming a part of the foundation of health in later years. Due to the imitative nature of the child, whenever we educate the spirit and soul of the child, we also educate the body and physical nature of the child. This is the wonderful metamorphosis—that whatever approaches children, touching their spirit and soul, becomes their physical, organic organization, and their predisposition to health or illness in later life.

Consequently, we can say that if Waldorf schools educate out of spirit and soul, it is not because we choose to work in an unbalanced way with only the soul and spirit; rather, it is because we know that this is how we physically educate the inner being in the highest sense of the word. The physical being exists within the envelope of the skin.

Perhaps you recall yesterday’s examples. Beginning with the model supplied by the human forces of heredity, the person builds a second human being, experienced in the second phase of life between the change of teeth and puberty. During the initial phase of life, human beings win for themselves a second being through what resulted of a purely spiritual life between death and rebirth. During the second stage of life, however, between the change of teeth and puberty, the influences of the outer world struggle with what must be incorporated into the individuality of the human being.

During this second stage, external influences grow more powerful. The inner human being is strengthened, however, since at this point it no longer allows every influence in the environment to continue vibrating in the body organization as though it were mainly a sense organ. Sensory perception begins to be more concentrated at the surface, or periphery, of the being. The senses now become more individual and autonomous, and the first thing that appears in the human being is a way of relating to the world that is not intellectual but compares only to an artistic view of life.

The Teacher as Artist

Our initial approach to life had a religious quality in that we related to nature as naturally religious beings, surrendered to the world. In this second stage, however, we are no longer obligated to merely accept passively everything coming from our environment, allowing it to vibrate in us physically; rather, we transform it creatively into images. Between the change of teeth and puberty, children are artists, though in a childish way, just as in the first phase of life, children were homo religiosus—naturally religious human beings.

Now that the child demands everything in a creative, artistic way, the teachers and educators who encounter the child must present everything from the perspective of an artist. Our contemporary culture demands this of teachers, and this is what must flow into the art of education; at this point, interactions between the growing human being and educators must take an artistic form. In this respect, we face great obstacles as teachers. Our civilization and the culture all around us have reached the point where they are geared only to the intellect, not to the artistic nature.

Let us consider the most wonderful natural processes—the description of embryonic life, for example, as portrayed in modern textbooks, or as taught in schools. I am not criticizing them, merely describing them; I know very well that they had to become the way they are and were necessary at a certain point in evolution. If we accept what they offer from the perspective of the spiritual force ready to reawaken today, something happens in our feeling life that we find impossible to acknowledge, because it seems to be a sin against the maturity attained by humanity in world-historical evolution. Difficult as it may be, it would be a good thing if people were clear about this.

When we read modern books on embryology, botany, or zoology, we feel a sense of despair in finding ourselves immediately forced to plunge into a cold intellectuality. Although the life and the development of nature are not essentially “intellectual,” we have to deliberately and consciously set aside every artistic element. Once we have read a book on botany written according to strict scientific rules, our first task as teachers is to rid ourselves of everything we found there. Obviously, we must assimilate the information about botanical processes, and the sacrifice of learning from such books is necessary; but in order to educate children between the change of teeth and puberty, we must eliminate what we found there, transforming everything into artistic, imaginal forms through our own artistic activity and sensibility. Whatever lives in our thoughts about nature must fly on the wings of artistic inspiration and transform into images. They must rise in the soul of the child.

Artistically shaping our instruction for children between the change of teeth and puberty is all that we should be concerned with in the metamorphosis of education for our time and the near future. If the first period of childhood requires a priestly element in education, the second requires an artistic element. What are we really doing when we educate a person in the second stage of life? The I-being journeying from an earlier earthly life and from the spiritual world is trying gradually to develop and permeate a second human being. Our job is to assist in this process; we incorporate what we do with the child as teachers into the forces that interwove with spirit and soul to shape the second being with a unique and individual character. Again, the consciousness of this cosmic context must act as an enlivening impulse, running through our teaching methods and the everyday conditions of education. We cannot contrive what needs to be done; we can only allow it to happen through the influence of the children themselves on their teachers.

Two extremes must be avoided. One is a result of intellectualizing tendencies, where we approach children in an academic way, expecting them to assimilate sharply outlined ideas and definitions. It is, after all, very comfortable to instruct and teach by definitions. And the more gifted children learn to parrot them, allowing the teacher to be certain that they retain what has been taught them in the previous lesson, whereas those who don’t learn can be left behind.

Such methods are very convenient. But it’s like a cobbler who thinks that the shoes made for a three-year-old girl should still fit the ten-year-old, whereas only her toes fit into the shoes but not the heels. Much of a child’s spiritual and psychic nature is ignored by the education we give children. It is necessary that, through the medium of flexible and artistic forms, we give children perceptions, ideas, and feelings in pictorial form that can metamorphose and grow with the soul, because the soul itself is growing. But before this can happen, there must be a living relationship between child and teacher, not the dead relationship that arises from lifeless educational concepts. Thus, all instruction given to children between approximately seven and fifteen must be permeated with pictures.

In many ways, this runs counter to the ordinary tendencies of modern culture, and we of course belong to this modern culture. We read books that impart much significant substance through little squiggles we call a, b, c, and so on. We fail to realize that we have been damaged by being forced to learn these symbols, since they have absolutely no relationship to our inner life. Why should a or b look the way they do today? There is no inner necessity, no experience that justifies writing an h after an a to express a feeling of astonishment or wonder.

This was not always the situation, however. People first made images in pictographic writing to describe external processes, and when they looked at the sheet or a board on which something had been written, they received an echo of that outer object or process. In other words, we should spare the child of six or seven from learning to write as it is done today. What we need instead is to bring the child something that can actually arise from the child’s own being, from the activities of his or her arms and fingers. The child sees a shining, radiant object and receives an impression; we then fix it with a drawing that represents the impression of radiance, which a child can understand.

If a child strokes a stick from top to bottom and then makes a stroke on the paper from top to bottom, the meaning is obvious. I show a fish to a child, who then follows the general direction of the form, followed by the front and back fins that cross in the opposite direction. I draw the general form of the fish, and this line across it, and say to the child, “Here, on the paper, you have something like a fish.” Then I go into the child’s inner experience of the fish. It contains an f, and so I draw a line crossed by another line, and thus, out of the child’s feeling experience, I have a picture that corresponds to the sound that begins the word fish. All writing can be developed in this way—not a mere copying of the abstract now in use, but a perception of the things themselves as they arise from a child’s drawing and painting. When I derive writing from the drawing and painting, I am working with the living forces of an image.

It would be enough to present the beginning of this artistic approach; we can feel how it calls on the child’s whole being, not just an intellectual understanding, which is overtaxed to a certain extent. If we abandon the intellectual element for imagery at this age, the intellect usually withdraws into the background. If, on the other hand, we overemphasize the intellect and are unable to move into a mode of imagery, the child’s breathing process is delicately and subtly disrupted. The child can become congested, as it were, with weakened exhalation. You should think of this as very subtle, not necessarily obvious. If education is too intellectual between the ages of seven and fourteen, exhalation becomes congested, and the child is subjected to a kind of subconscious nightmare. A kind of intimate nightmare arises, which becomes chronic in the organism and leads in later life to asthmas and other diseases connected with swelling in the breathing system.

Another extreme occurs when the teacher enters the school like a little Caesar, with the self-image of a mighty Caesar, of course. In this situation, the child is always at the mercy of a teacher’s impulsiveness. Whereas extreme intellectualism leads to congested exhalation, the metabolic forces are thinned by overly domineering and exaggerated assertiveness in the teacher. A child’s digestive organs are gradually weakened, which again may have chronic effects in later life. Both of these excesses must be eliminated from education—too much intelectualizing and extreme obstinateness.

We can hold a balance between the two by what happens in the soul when we allow the will to pass gently into the child’s own activity and by toning down the intellect so that feelings are cultivated in a way that does not suppress the breathing, but cultivates feelings that turn toward imagery and express the buoyant capacity I described. When this is done, the child’s development is supported between the change of teeth and puberty.

Thus, from week to week, month to month, year to year, a true knowledge of the human being will help us read the developing being like a book that tells us what needs to be done in the teaching. The curriculum must reproduce what we read in the evolutionary process of the human being. Specific ways that we can do this will be addrEssentialEd in coming lectures.

In the preceding lectures I have repeatedly spoken of how important it is that teachers turn their attention in particular toward the drastic changes, or metamorphoses, that occur during a child’s life—for example, the change of teeth and puberty. We have not fully developed our observation of such changes, because we are used to noticing only the more obvious outer expressions of human nature according to so-called natural laws. What concerns the teacher, however, arises in reality from the innermost center of a child’s being, and what a teacher can do for the child affects a child’s very inner nature. Consequently, we must pay particular attention to the fact that, for example, at this significant change of teeth, the soul itself goes through a transformation.

Memory Prior to the Change of Teeth

Let us examine a single aspect of this soul-life—the memory, or capacity for remembering. A child’s memory is very different before and after the change of teeth. The transitions and developments in human life occur slowly and gradually, so to speak of the change of teeth as a single fixed event in time is only approximate. Nevertheless, this point in time manifests in the middle of the child’s development, and we must consider very intensively what takes place at that time.

When we observe a very young child, we find that the capacity to remember has the quality of a soul habit. When a child recalls something during that first period of life until the change of teeth, such remembering is a kind of habit or skill. We might say that when, as a child, I acquire a certain accomplishment—let us say, writing—it arises largely from a certain suppleness of my physical constitution, a suppleness that I have gradually acquired. When you watch a small child taking hold something, you have found a good illustration of the concept of habit. A child gradually discovers how to move the limbs this way or that way, and this becomes habit and skill. Out of a child’s imitative actions, the soul develops skillfulness, which permeates the child’s finer and more delicate organizations. A child will imitate something one day, then do the same thing again the next day and the next; this activity is performed outwardly, but also—and importantly—within the innermost parts of the physical body. This forms the basis for memory in the early years.

After the change of teeth, the memory is very different, because by then, as I have said, spirit and soul are freed from the body, and picture content can arise that relates to what was experienced in the soul—a formation of images unrelated to bodily nature. Every time we meet the same thing or process, whether due to something outer or inner, the same picture is recalled. The small child does not yet produce these inward pictures. No image emerges for that child when remembering something. When an older child has a thought or idea about some past experience, it arises again as a remembered thought, a thought “made inward.” Prior to the age of seven, children live in their habits, which are not inwardly visualized in this way. This is significant for all of human life after the change of teeth.

When we observe human development through the kind of inner vision I have mentioned—with the soul’s eyes and ears—we will see that human beings do not consist of only a physical body that can be seen with the eyes and touched with the hands. There are also supersensible members of this being. I have already pointed out the first so-called supersensible human being living within the physical body—the etheric human being. There is also a third member of human nature. Do not be put off by names; after all, we do need to have some terminology. This third member is the astral body, which develops the capacity of feeling.

Plants have an etheric body; animals have an astral body in common with humans, and they have feeling and sensation. The human being, who exists uniquely as the crown of earthly creation, has yet a fourth member—the I-being. These four members are entirely different from one another, but since they interact with one another they are not generally distinguished by ordinary observation; the ordinary observer never goes far enough to recognize the manifestations of human nature in the etheric body, the astral body, or I-being. We cannot really aspire to teach and educate, however, without knowing these things. One hesitates to say this, because it may be regarded as fantastic and absurd within the broader arena of modern society. It is nevertheless the truth, and an unbiased knowledge of the human being will not disagree.

The way that the human being works through the etheric body, astral body, and I-being is unique and is significant for educators. As you know, we are used to learning about the physical body by observing it—living or dead—and by using the intellect connected with the brain to elucidate what we have thus perceived with the senses. This type of observation alone, however, will never reveal anything of the higher members of human nature. They are inaccessible to methods of observation based only on sense-perception and intellectual activity. If we think only in terms of natural laws, we will never understand the etheric body, for example. Therefore, new methods should be introduced into colleges and universities. Observation through the senses and working in the intellect of the brain enable us to observe only the physical body. A very different training is needed to enable a person to perceive, for example, how the etheric body manifests in the human being. This is really necessary, not just for teachers of every subject, but even more so for doctors.

The Etheric Body and the Art of Sculpting

First, we should learn to sculpt and work with clay, as a sculptor works, modeling forms from within outward, creating forms out of their own inner principles, and guided by the unfolding of our own human nature. The form of a muscle or bone can never be comprehended by the methods of contemporary anatomy and physiology. Only a genuine sense of form reveals the true forms of the human body. But when we say such things we will immediately be considered somewhat crazy. But Copernicus was considered a bit mad in his time; even as late as 1828 some leaders of the Church considered Copernican theories insane and denied the faithful any belief in them!

Now let’s look at the physical body; it is heavy with mass and subject to the laws of gravity. The etheric body is not subject to gravity—on the contrary, it is always trying to get away. Its tendency is to disperse and scatter into far cosmic spaces. This is in fact what happens right after death. Our first experience after death is the dispersal of the etheric body. The dead physical body follows the laws of Earth when lowered into the grave; or when cremated, it burns according to physical laws just like any other physical body. This is not true of the etheric body, which works away from Earth, just as the physical body strives toward Earth. The etheric body, however, does not necessarily extend equally in all directions, nor does it strive away from Earth in a uniform way. Now we arrive at something that might seem very strange to you; but it can in fact be perceived by the kind of observation I have mentioned.

When you look up into the heavens, you see that the stars are clustered into definite groups, and that these groups are all different from one another. Those groups of stars attract the etheric human body, drawing it out into the far spaces. Let’s imagine someone here in the center.

The different groups of stars are drawing out the etheric body in varying degrees; there is a much stronger attraction from one group of stars than from another, thus the etheric body is not drawn out equally on all sides but to varying degrees in the different directions of space. Consequently, the etheric body is not spherical, but, through this dispersion of the etheric, certain definite forms may arise in the human being through the cosmic forces that work down from the stars. These forms remain in us as long as we live on Earth and have an etheric body within us.

If, for example, we take the upper part of the thigh, we see that both the form of the muscle and the form of the bone are shaped by influences from the stars. We need to discover how these very different forms can arise from different directions of cosmic space. We must try to model these varying forms in clay, and we will find that, in one particular form, cosmic forces act to produce length; in another the form is rounded off more quickly. Examples of the latter are the round bones, and the former are the more tubular bones.

Like sculptors, therefore, we must develop a feeling for the world—the kind of feeling that, in ancient humankind, was present as a kind of instinctive consciousness. It was clearly expressed in the Eastern cultures of prehistory, thousands of years before our era; but we still find it in Greek culture. Just consider how contemporary, materialistic artists are often baffled by the forms of the Greek sculptors. They are baffled, because they believe the Greeks worked from models, which they examined from all sides. But the Greeks still had a feeling that the human being is born from the cosmos, and that the cosmos itself forms the human being. When the Greeks created their Venus de Milo (which causes contemporary sculptors to despair), they took what flowed from the cosmos; and although this could reveal itself only imperfectly in any earthly work, they tried to express it in the human form they were creating as much as possible. The point is that, if you really attempt to mold the human form according to nature, you cannot possibly do it by slavishly following a model, which is the contemporary studio method. One must be able to turn to the great “cosmic sculptor,” who forms the human being from a feeling for space, which a person can also acquire.

This then is the first thing we must develop. People think they can gauge the human form by drawing a line going through vertically, another through the outstretched arms and another front to back; there you have the three dimensions. But in doing this, they are slaves to the three dimensions of space, and this is pure abstraction. If you draw even a single line through a person in the right way, you can see that it is subject to manifold forces of attraction—this way or that, in every direction of space. This “space” of geometry, about which Kant produced such unhappy definitions and spun out such abstract theories—this space itself is in fact an organism, producing varied forces in all directions.

Human beings are likely to develop only the grosser physical senses, and do not inwardly unfold this fine delicate feeling for space experienced in all directions. If we could only allow this feeling for space to take over, the true image of the human being would arise. Out of an active inner feeling, you will see the plastic form of the human being emerge. If we develop a feeling for handling soft clay, we have the proper conditions for understanding the etheric body, just as the activity of human intellect connected with the brain provides the appropriate conditions for understanding the physical body.

We must first create a new method of acquiring knowledge—a kind of plastic perception together with an inner plastic activity. Without this, knowledge stops short at the physical body, since we can know the etheric body only through images, not through ideas. We can really understand these etheric images only when we are able to reshape them ourselves in some way, in imitation of the cosmic shaping.

The Astral Body in Relation to Music

Now we can move on to the next member of the human being. Where do things stand today in regard to this? On the one hand, in modern life the advocates of natural science have become the authorities on the human being; on the other hand we find isolated, eccentric anthroposophists, who insist that there are also etheric and astral bodies, and when they describe the etheric and astral bodies, people try to understand those descriptions with the kind of thinking applied to understanding the physical body, which doesn’t work. True, the astral body expresses itself in the physical body, and its physical expression can be comprehended according to the laws of natural science.

However, the astral body itself, in its true inner being and function, cannot be understood by those laws. It can be understood only by understanding music—not just externally, but inwardly. Such understanding existed in the ancient East and still existed in a modified form in Greek culture. In modern times it has disappeared altogether. Just as the etheric body acts through cosmic shaping, the astral body acts through cosmic music, or cosmic melodies. The only earthly thing about the astral body is the beat, or musical measure. Rhythm and melody come directly from the cosmos, and the astral body consists of rhythm and melody.

It does no good to approach the astral body with what we understand as the laws of natural science. We must approach it with what we have acquired as an inner understanding of music. For example, you will find that when the interval of a third is played, it can be felt and experienced within our inner nature. You may have a major and minor third, and this division of the scale can arouse considerable variations in the feeling life of a person; this interval is still something inward in us. When we come to the fifth interval, we experience it at the surface, on our boundary; in hearing the fifth, it is as though we were only just inside ourselves. We feel the sixth and seventh intervals to be finding their way outside us. With the fifth we are passing beyond ourselves; and as we enter the sixth and the seventh, we experience them as external, whereas the third is completely internal. This is the work of the astral body—the musician in every human being—which echoes the music of the cosmos. All this is at work in the human being and finds expression in the physical human form. If we can really get close to such a thought in trying to comprehend the world, it can be an astonishing experience for us.

You see, we are speaking now of something that can be studied very objectively—something that flows from the astral body into the human form. In this case, it is not something that arises from cosmic shaping, but from the musical impulse streaming into the human being through the astral body. Again, we must begin with an understanding of music, just as a sculptural understanding is necessary in understanding the etheric body’s activities. If you take the part of the human being that goes from the shoulder blades to the arms, that is the work of the tonic, the keynote, living in the human being. In the upper arm, we find the interval of the second. (You can experience all this in eurythmy.) And in the lower arm the third—major and minor. When you come to the third, you find two bones in the lower arm, and so on, right down into the fingers.

This may sound like mere words and phrases, but through genuine observation of the human being, based on spiritual science, we can see these things with the same precision that a mathematician uses in approaching mathematical problems. We cannot arrive at this through any kind of mystical nonsense: it must be investigated with precision. In order that students of medicine and education really comprehend these things, their college training must be based on an inner understanding of music. Such understanding, permeated with clear, conscious thinking, leads back to the musical understanding of the ancient East, even before Greek culture began. Eastern architecture can be understood only when we understand it as religious perception descended into form.

Just as music is expressed only though the phenomenon of time, architecture is expressed in space. The human astral and etheric bodies must be understood in the same contrasting way. We can never explain the life of feeling and passion with natural laws and so-called psychological methods. We can understand it only when we consider the human being as a whole in terms of music. A time will come when psychologists will not describe a diseased condition of the soul life as they do today, but will speak of it in terms of music, as one would speak, for example, of a piano that is out of tune.

Please do not think that anthroposophy is unaware of how difficult it is to present such a view in our time. I understand very well that many people will consider what I have presented as pure fantasy, if not somewhat crazy. But, unfortunately, a socalled “reasonable” way of thinking can never portray the human being in actuality. We must develop a new and expanded rationality for these matters. In this connection, it is extraordinary how people view anthroposophy today. They cannot imagine that anything exists that transcends their powers of comprehension, but that those same powers can in fact eventually reach.

Recently, I read a very interesting book by Maeterlinck translated into German. There was a chapter about me, and it ended in an extraordinary and very amusing way. He says: “If you read Steiner’s books you will find that the early chapters are logically correct, intelligently thought-out and presented in a perfectly scientific form. But as you read on, you get the impression that the author has gone mad.” Maeterlinck, of course, has a perfect right to his opinions. Why should he not have the impression that the writer was a clever man when he wrote the first part of the book, but went mad when he wrote the later part? But simply consider the actual situation. Maeterlinck believes that in the first chapters of these books the author was clever, but in the last chapters he had gone mad. So we get the extraordinary fact that this man writes several books, one after the other. Consequently, in each of these books the first few chapters make him seem very smart, but in later chapters he seems mad, then clever again, then mad, and so on. You see how ridiculous it is when one has such a false picture. When writers—otherwise deservedly famous—write in such a way, people fail to notice what nonsense it is. This shows how hard it is, even for such an enlightened person as Maeterlinck, to reach reality. On the firm basis of anthroposophy we have to speak of a reality that is considered unreal today.

I-being and the Genius of Language

Now we come to the I-being. Just as the astral body can be investigated through music, the true nature of the I-being can be studied through the word. It may be assumed that everyone, even doctors and teachers, accepts today’s form of language as a finished product. If this is their standpoint, they can never understand the inner structure of language. This can be understood only when you consider language, not as the product of our modern mechanism, but as the result of the genius of language, working vitally and spiritually. You can do this when you attempt to understand the way a word is formed.

There is untold wisdom in words, way beyond human understanding. All human characteristics are expressed in the way various cultures form their words, and the peculiarities of any nation may be recognized in their language. For example, consider the German word Kopf (“head”). This was originally connected with the rounded form of the head, which you also find in the word Kohl (“cabbage”), and in the expression Kohlkopf (“head of cabbage”). This particular word arises from a feeling for the form of the head. You see, here the I has a very different concept of the head from what we find in testa, for example, the word for “head” in the Romance languages, which comes from testifying, or “to bear witness.” Consequently, in these two instances, the feelings from which the words are formed come from very different sources.

If you understand language in this inward way, then you will see how the I-organization works. There are some districts where lightning is not called Blitz but Himmlitzer. This is because the people there do not think of the single flashes of lightning so much as the snakelike form. People who say Blitz picture the single flash and those who say Himmlitzer picture the zig-zag form. This then is how humans really live in language as far as their I is concerned, although in the current civilization, they have lost connection with their language, which has consequently become something abstract. I do not mean to say that if you have this understanding of language you will already have attained inward clairvoyant consciousness, whereby you will be able to behold beings like the human I. But you will be on the way to such a perception if you accompany your speaking with inner understanding.

Thus, education in medical and teacher training colleges should be advanced as indicated, so that the students’ training may arouse in them an inner feeling for space, an inner relationship to music, and an inner understanding of language. Now you may argue that the lecture halls are already becoming empty and, ultimately, teacher training colleges will be just as empty if we establish what we’ve been speaking of. Where would all this lead to? Medical training keeps getting longer and longer. If we continue with our current methods, people will be sixty by the time they are qualified!

The situation we are speaking of is not due in any way to inner necessity but is related to the fact that inner conditions are not being fulfilled. If we fail to go from abstractions to plastic and musical concepts and to an understanding of the cosmic word—if we stop short at abstract ideas—our horizon will be endless; we will continue on and on and never come to a boundary, to a point where we can survey the whole. The understanding that will come from understanding sculpting and music will make human beings more rational—and, believe me, their training will actually be accelerated rather than delayed. Consequently, this inner course of development will be the correct method of training educators, and not only teachers, but those others who have so much to contribute to educational work—the doctors.

The Therapeutic Nature of Teaching

Given what I spoke of in the introductory lectures concerning the relationship between educational methods and the physical health of children, it should be clear to you that real education cannot be developed without considering medicine. Teachers should be able to assess various conditions of health or disease among their children. Otherwise, a situation will arise that is already being felt—that is, a need for doctors in the schools. The doctor is brought in from outside, which is the worst possible method we could adopt. How do such doctors stand in relation to the children? They do not know the children, nor do they know, for example, what mistakes the teachers have made with them, and so on. The only way is to cultivate an art of education that contains so much therapy that the teacher can continually see whether the methods are having a good or bad influence on the children’s health. Reform is not accomplished by bringing doctors into the schools from outside, no matter how necessary this may seem to be. In any case, the kind of training doctors get these days does not prepare them for what they must do when they are sent into the schools.

In aiming at an art of education we must provide a training based on knowledge of the human being. I hesitate to say these things because they are so difficult to comprehend. But it is an error to believe that the ideas of natural science can give us full understanding of the human being, and an awareness of that error is vital to the progress of the art of education. Only when we view children from this perspective do we see, for example, the radical and far-reaching changes that occur with the coming of the second teeth, when the memory becomes a pictorial memory, no longer related to the physical body but to the etheric body. In actuality, what is it that causes the second teeth? It is the fact that, until this time, the etheric is almost completely connected with the physical body; and when the first teeth are forced out, something separates from the physical body. If this were not the case, we would get new teeth every seven years. (Since people’s teeth decay so quickly nowadays, this might seem to be a good thing, and dentists would have to find another job!) When the etheric body is separated, what formerly worked in the physical body now works in the soul realm.

If you can perceive these things and can examine the children’s mouths without their knowledge, you will see for yourself that this is true. It is always better when children do not know they are being observed. Experimental psychology so often fails because children are aware of what is being done.

You can examine a child’s second teeth and find that they have been formed by the etheric body into a modeled image of the memory; and the shape of the teeth created by the etheric will indicate how the memory of the child will develop. Except for slight alterations in position here or there, you cannot physically change the second teeth once they are through—unless you are able to go so far as, for example, the dentist Professor Romer. He has written a book on dentistry—a new art of medicine based on anthroposophic principles—where he speaks of certain changes that can be effected even after the second teeth are established. But this need not concern us further.

When the etheric body is loosened and exists on its own after the change of teeth, the building of memory leaves the physical realm and remains almost entirely in the element of soul; indeed, this fact can put teachers on the right track. Before this change, the soul and spirit formed a unity with the physical and etheric. After this, the physical—previously acting in conjunction with the soul—is expressed as the second teeth, and what collaborated with the physical in this process separates and manifests as an increased power to form ideas and as the formation and reliability of memory.

Once you have acquired such insight into human nature, you will discover much that will help in your teaching. You must permeate yourselves with this spiritual knowledge of the human being and enliven it in yourselves; your observations of children will then inspire you with ideas and methods for teaching, and this inner inspiration and enthusiasm will penetrate your practical work. The rules established in introductory texts on education produce only abstract activity in the soul. But what arises from anthroposophic knowledge penetrates the will and the efforts of teachers; it becomes the impulse for everything done in the classroom.

A living knowledge of the human being brings life and order to the soul of a teacher. But if teachers study only teaching methods that arise from natural science, they may get some clever ideas of what to do with the children, but they will be unable to carry them out. A teacher’s skill and practical handling of children must arise from the living spirit within, and this is where purely scientific ideas have no place. If teachers can acquire a true knowledge of the human being, they will become aware of how, when the etheric body is freed at the change of teeth, the child has an inner urge to receive everything in the form of images. The child’s own inner being wants to become “image.” During the first stage of life, impressions lack this picture-forming tendency; they are transformed instead into habits and skills in the child; memory itself is habit and skill.

Children want to imitate, through the movement of the limbs, everything they see happening around them; they have no desire to form any inner images. But after the change of teeth, you will notice how children come to know things very differently. Now they want to experience pictures arising in the soul; consequently, teachers must bring everything into a pictorial element in their lessons. Creating images is the most important thing for teachers to understand.

Teaching Writing and Reading

When we begin to view the facts, however, we are immediately faced with certain contradictions. Children must learn to read and write, and when they come to school we assume they will first learn to read, and after that they will learn to write in connection with their reading. Let’s consider, however, the reality of letters—what it means when we take a pen to paper and try to express through writing what is in the mind. What is the relationship between the printed letters of today and the original picture-language of ancient times? How were we taught these things? We show children a capital A and a lowercase a, but what in the world do these letters have to do with the sound “ah”? There is no relationship at all between the form of the letter A and the sound “ah.”

When the art of writing arose, things were different. In certain areas, pictorial signs were used, and a kind of pictorial painting was employed. Later, this was standardized; but originally those drawings copied the process and feeling of the sounds; thus, what appeared on paper was, to some extent, a reproduction of what lived in the soul. Modern characters, however, are alien to a small child’s nature, and it is little wonder that when certain early peoples first saw printed letters, it had a peculiar effect on them. When the people of Europe came among the Native Americans and showed them how they expressed their thoughts on paper, the Native Americans were alarmed and considered it the work of the devil; they were afraid of the little demons lurking behind those written letters. They immediately concluded that the Europeans engaged in black magic, since people have a habit of attributing to black magic whatever they cannot understand.

But what is the truth of the matter? We know that when we utter the sound “ah,” we express wonder and admiration. Now, it is very natural to try to reproduce this sound with the whole body and express it in a gesture of the arms. If you copy this gesture (stretching the arms obliquely above the head) you get the capital A. When you teach writing, you can, for example, begin with a feeling of wonder, and proceed with the children to some kind of painting and drawing, and in this way you can bring their inner and outer experiences into that painting and drawing.

Consider another example. I tell a girl to think of a fish and ask her to paint it (awkward though this may be). It must be done in a particular way, not simply as she might prefer, but with the head of the fish in front, like this, and the rest of the fish here. The child paints the fish, and thus, through a kind of painting and drawing, she produces a written character. You then tell her to pronounce the word fish—“fish.” Now take away the ish, and from fish you have arrived at her first written letter, f.

In this way a child will come to understand how pictorial writing arose, and how it developed into contemporary writing. The forms were copied, but the pictures were abandoned. This is how drawing the various sounds arose. You do not need to make a special study of how such things evolved. This is not really necessary for teachers, since they can develop them out of their own intuition and power to think. Have a boy, for example, paint the upper lip of a mouth, and then pronounce the word mouth. Leave out the outh, and you get the m. In this way you can relate all the written characters to some reality, and the child will constantly develop a living, inner activity.

Thus, you should teach the children writing first, and let today’s abstract letters arise from tangible reality; when a child learns to write in this way, the whole being is engaged in the process. Whereas, if you begin with reading, then only the head organization participates in an abstract way. In writing, the hand must participate as well, and in this way the whole human being is aroused to activity. When you begin with writing—writing developed through the formation of images and drawing forms—your teaching will approach the child’s whole being. Then you can move on to teaching reading; and what was developed out of the child’s whole being through drawing can be understood by the head. This method of teaching writing and reading will naturally take longer, but it will have a far healthier effect on the whole earthly life from birth to death. These things can be done when the practical work of the school flows out of a real spiritual knowledge of the human being. Such knowledge can, through its own inner force, become the teaching method in our schools. The desires of those who earnestly seek a new art of education live in this; but its essence can be truly found only when we are unafraid to look for a full knowledge of the human being in body, soul, and spirit.

Today's lecture will be an assortment of various topics I would like to add to what I have already said to you, including reference to our remedies. I would like to begin by saying that processes related to the mineral element that affect the human being can be interpreted similarly to the way done yesterday regarding the plant world. However, the insights we must gain here are more complicated, because as soon as we move on to the mineral world we are no longer dealing with definite, self-contained entities encountering each other, as was the case with plants and the human being; instead we are dealing with a realm in which one object passes directly into the other, so that it is difficult to make distinctions.

In the preparation of remedies—to this you must pay particular attention in our remedies—it is not merely a question of using some substance or other; the process in which the substance lives must be captured in another process. Thus when the effect of some remedy is known to you, it is often a matter of taking the effect you evoke on one side and damming it in from the other. You can see this clearly, for example, with the remedy we prepare from lead and treat in a certain way with honey (you will find this process described in detail elsewhere). You can see how the effect of lead must be held in check in one direction by the effect of the honey. Lead exerts a very strong influence on the formative process proceeding from the ego in the human being. We have spoken of the fact that in the head formation of the human being—or, said better, in the head formation proceeding from the human being—there lies a physical influence, but also an etheric imprint, an astral imprint, and an ego imprint. We said that the ego essentially imprints itself into the system of movement. The effect of lead works especially strongly on this imprint of the ego and takes place in conjunction with the astral imprint.

In the effect of lead we have a force of nature that is extraordinarily well-hidden, and for occult observation it is of exceptionally deep significance to experience this effect of lead. The effects of lead are extraordinarily important for the human being before he prepares to descend into physical life. This is when the effects of lead must be taken into account. Indeed, lead acts not only in the ways we know, but it has effects that are the polar opposite as well.

These polar effects radiate in from the cosmos, whereas those known to us radiate into the cosmos from the earth. This could be represented schematically like this. If this is the surface of the earth, the lead activities known to us radiate outward from the earth (see figure 1, arrows); the polar opposite effects stream in from all sides. They have no center from which they radiate, for they are not central forces but forces operating from the periphery (red). These peripheral forces are especially concerned with the formation of the soul-spiritual in the human being, and their domain must essentially be left when the human being prepares to descend into the earthly sphere. Hence in the earthly sphere lead is induced to unfold its opposite forces, and these are the poisonous ones. Everything connected spatially with the soul-spiritual in the human being, that is everything that can be spoken about in relation to space, is poison in the human organism.

This is a universal mystery to which one cannot pay too much attention. The meaning of the concept of poisoning must be sought here. We have to do with a strong stimulation, a powerful excitation of these ego-imprinting forces in human nature. Everything that arises in lead poisoning tends to destroy the form of the human being in so far as he is an ego. It dehumanizes him. In fact, all the symptoms of lead poisoning terminate in an individual gradually passing into nothingness corporeally. These symptoms include failure of the voice, stupor, and syncope, and attest to the fundamental destruction of the inborn formative force in the human being. Of course a person dies before this point is reached. The human formation is being destroyed from the upper human being, which is the polar opposite of the lower human being. What in greater quantities acts destructively in the upper human being acts in small quantities—in dilutions—constructively in the lower human being.

At this point I would like to interject something. I believe the never-ending conflict between homeopathy and allopathy will not be set right until one is able to enter into a study of man's constitution as given by spiritual science. On the one hand, the rich treasure of experience does not—or at least, should not—allow us to doubt the principle of homeopathy; on the other hand, people who are not in the habit of judging purely by experience but are swayed by all sorts of prejudices and opinions about the human organism cannot easily understand that what can make a person ill in larger doses in smaller doses makes him well. The homeopath is always more of a phenomenalist than the allopathic physician, who is always swayed in his therapeutic rationale by all sorts of prejudices. The facts are not fully revealed by this simpler statement, however. They are discovered only when we say: what makes a person ill when working in large quantities in the lower system will make him well when working in small quantities if its effect can proceed from the upper system and vice versa. This restatement of the homeopathic rule is the means to set right the conflict between homeopathy and allopathy.

Let us return now to the attempt of preparing a remedy from lead and honey. You can see how lead, greatly diluted and acting from below up, works against the destructive force acting on the human form. This is part of lead's effect. However, if one tries to build up this ego-shaping force, one transfers the activity of the ego into the physical organism and, while making the patient healthy bodily, one renders him psychically weak regarding everything that should work from below upward, that should work even organically. This weakening can go so far that one may, on the one hand, restore the individual to his human form, as it were, having been led by certain processes of disease to use the effect of lead because the formative processes are lacking. On the other hand, one may easily undermine the forces proceeding from the ego and astral body—especially those from the ego—when one causes the individual to develop his formative forces again. You could say that one brings about a cure for what the individual has not acquired, or has acquired only incompletely on entering life, but one weakens him regarding what he ought to do organically for himself during life. The effect of the honey when added to the remedy, however, opposes this weakening, that is, it strengthens the forces radiating from the ego. You see, in arriving at such a remedy, it is essentially a question of gaining insight into what is really taking place in the human being.

If we wish to understand the effects of the mineral element in the human being, however, we must look at the general effect of the mineral in the earth. It is necessary first to become acquainted with the significance of salts in the evolution of the earth. The significance of the salts in earthly evolution is that the earth actually produces them. In salt processes we find what the earth brings into being. In developing salts, the earth builds itself up. And when we turn from the salts to the acids—looking, for example, at the acid's element present in the watery earth regions, we have the earthly process corresponding to, though the polar opposite of, the inner digestive process in the human being, that is, the digestive process beyond the stomach.

We need to study all these processes taking place in earthly development, inasmuch as they represent a relation between acids and salts. When we consider the process that develops from bases through acids to salts, which can be observed outwardly today in chemistry, we see that, regarded in this way, the process leading from base to acid to salt coincides with the earth-forming process.

This process is essentially a negative electrical process. To put it more exactly: this process, expressed in its external, spatial aspect—i.e., as a process working its way out of the spiritual into the physical—can be represented schematically as follows. We have here an effect proceeding from the bases through the acids to the salts; it is indicated only in its direction here (see figure 2, red arrows), but it is actually a process of deposition expressed schematically. Now, when we express this process in reverse, passing from the salts through acids to bases, we must always remove these lines of deposition. They would act in a compressing way, and the opposite radiations appear, which radiate out (see figure 2 on right, arrows). Then we have to do with a positive electrical process. If you look at this sketch, I believe you will hardly doubt that it has been drawn by nature herself. Just look once at the anodes and cathodes and you will find this picture sketched by nature herself.

Now, if we approach the metallic process, that is, if we approach the metals themselves, we find in the metals that element by which the earth “unbecomes” (“ent-wird”) most, if I may use this expression, though it has long disappeared from the German language, despite the fact that it corresponds to reality: werden—entwerden—to become—to unbecome. With metals we find the tendency for the earth to disintegrate, to shatter in pieces, rather than the tendency to preserve or consolidate themselves in the earthly kingdom. They actually represent the “unbecoming” or passing away of the earth, and as a result they develop hidden radiating events, concealed even to external observation. You have this radiating effect everywhere. It is very important to observe this wherever we approach the metallic element with our interpretations of nature in an attempt to derive remedies.

It is especially interesting to study individual metals from this viewpoint. Such a study leads us to the viewpoint represented outwardly by this table of the mineral remedies we consider valuable. To arrive at these things it is necessary to gather everything yielded by such a correct interpretation of observations. They will be reliable, because we have prepared only those remedies that have their basis in a comprehensive interpretation of observations. Here we can elaborate on this interpretation, for I am really not concerned with simply repeating this list to you. Any additions that have to be made can be given in a written exposition. At some point this will have to be done. I am less concerned with repeating this list than with guiding your thoughts in the direction that could lead to such a list in the first place.

Let us now study the metals—I would prefer to say: the metallic nature—from this viewpoint. There we find what I have just described as a radiation, and it is present in the most varied forms. It can exist in the emanating form of radiation, destroying the earthly and passing into cosmic space. This is especially the case with the lead-activity. Through this lead-activity the human being has implanted into his organism those forces that would like to disperse him into the world. This dispersing into the world is an aspect of lead-activity, so that we can best regard this effect as a radiating one. Such radiating effects appear in a different way in other metals, for example, magnesium. This can be seen clearly and is the basis for the role magnesium plays in the teeth. Through the human organism this must be brought to the point of a metallic activity. This actually happens, but the radiation must then be able to metamorphose itself again. And when this radiation has metamorphosed, it becomes what I would like to call simply “direction.” The radiation is now only “direction,” what happens, however, is an oscillation, a pendular movement to and from this direction.

We must study such effects in the healthy and sick person. In the healthy person, these radiating effects are present in the radiations of the sense organs, as remnants, you could say, of the life before birth, of prenatal existence. These are always present. What radiates from the sense organs consists basically of after-effects of lead, in which lead itself is no longer present. These radiations occur throughout the entire organism wherever there is sense activity. Nerve activity, that is, the functional activity going on in the nerves, has its basis essentially on a weakening of the sense activity in this direction. This activity is therefore based on a weaker radiation. You can see from this why I said in my book, Riddles of the Soul (Von Seelenrätseln), that it is difficult to describe the actual nerve-sense activity, because I would first have had to introduce everything I have now presented to you.

In this oscillatory process, this pendular movement, in which the radiation is only considered in regard to its direction, we have to do with what functionally underlies all breathing in the human organism, in fact all rhythmic activity. Rhythmic activity is based on setting up such pendular movements, on setting up a movement more consolidated in itself than the movement of radiations. Among the metals or metallic nature, tin, for example, has such a movement. The beneficial effect of tin in fairly high potencies on everything that bears upon the rhythmic system is based on this fact.

This radiating, pendular movement can be modified further, however, and this third modification is of great significance. This third modification maintains its direction and also its pendular motion only latently. On the other hand, it consists of spheres continually forming and dissolving in the direction of the radiation. What has an effect on the metabolism in the human being depends on these forces, and among metals it is iron that develops especially these forces. Hence the iron in the blood works against the effect of metabolism as a third metamorphosis of the radiating activity.

When we are dealing with the first metamorphosis, the effect is especially on everything that organically concerns the ego; when dealing with the second metamorphosis, the effect is organically on everything that concerns the astral body; and with regard to the third metamorphosis, the effect is organically on everything related to the etheric body (see figure 3).

Now let us go further. What develops there as the continuous “radiation of spheres”—if I may call it so—must be continually received because it acts, in a sense, from the upper human being toward the lower. It only goes as far as the etheric. Now it must also be received by the physical by means of a force acting polarically, for something that envelops the spheres from outside must come to meet such a sphere-formation. The sphere must be taken hold of and enveloped (see figure 4).

It can be that the sphere-formation and this enveloping action are approximately balanced. This is naturally the case in a normal person, where everything that works downward from the upper human being is counterbalanced by the effect of the lower human being on the upper. This adjustment takes place especially in the damming-up activity of the heart. When this balance is disturbed, however, the metal that can bring equilibrium is gold, au rum. This restores the balance between this enveloping process and what lies in the middle. One will have to use gold when disturbances of the circulation and breathing occur that do not appear as results of something else; that is, when the causes are not to be found in the rest of the organism, gold will be applied. If, on the other hand, you notice that the causes proceed from a region other than the boundary between the lower and upper human being, you will be led to say, “There are not enough of these enveloping material processes coming from the individual to meet the more etheric-spiritual processes taking place here.” And if the activity you find here lies more toward the inside, in the digestive processes beyond the intestinal wall, you will assist this enveloping process by applying copper.

This leads us to the ways of using copper, which is included among our remedies. It is generally used in connection with a form of malnutrition manifesting outwardly in disturbances of the circulation that are consequences of the malnutrition. If we are dealing with circulatory disturbances that cannot be regarded as results of malnutrition, then we give gold; if circulatory disturbances are connected with malnutrition, we use copper.

Now, there must be counterprocesses also for the other processes of radiation, material counterprocesses to the etheric-spiritual processes. Consider the process that we must now regard as an inner process, which brings about this pendular movement, this oscillation. When it becomes abnormal, when it grows too strong, it can be observed in everything constituting the digestion, in working through the absorbed food by the intestines, and, coming more to the outside, all that is situated on this side. This therefore includes what occurs in sexuality, for example. The sexual processes are radiations from the human being that run their course in this way (see figure 3) like the staff of Mercury. This played a part in establishing the ancient so-called symbols. If what is active here is not to degenerate, it must be opposed by material, formative forces holding it in check and preventing this degeneration. These formative forces are essentially to be found in mercury. We are here pointing to a realm in which it is extremely important to bring together what I said in the last course with what a more inner study now teaches us. If you bring these two things together you will have the whole process before you. This is now something that plays entirely into the astral, arising through such pendular, radiating movements and through the corresponding counter-images. It now passes over entirely into the astral (see figure 3).

We may also be concerned with the actual radiation process that is present in the human organism in the most manifold ways. On the one hand, we find this process in everything that radiates out through the skin, in everything that has this directional radiation in it. We find this process in everything that causes urination, in everything that has an evacuating action in the human being. Just as in the gastrula stage of embryonic development the outside is drawn inward, so in this radiation we have to do with something that acts toward the outside through the skin but that also takes on the opposite direction and works in the processes causing urination and bowel evacuation. Usually we find the polar process expressing itself in an opposite direction, but here we have something that is, in a sense, reversed and yet similar. You see, one must not try to treat things in the world schematically. Errors always arise when we start from theories. It is impossible to start from a theory and not succumb to error. Thus if someone says to himself, “Polarity is at work in the world,” and then proceeds to construct a scheme or formula for polarity, saying that polarity must act in this or that way, he will be able to coordinate certain series of facts but he will have to abandon his formula in the face of other phenomena, where things are different. If only we could gain insight into this terrible tyranny exerted by theorizing in science!

Of course, one must be willing to make theories, for otherwise it would be impossible to coordinate any realm of phenomena. At the same time, however, one must be willing to drop one's theory in the right place and penetrate further to the point where this theory has no more value. Natural science must also pay heed to this. If one wishes to work on the theory of evolution in an outer sense, one must keep to the outer theory, modifying it where necessary. If one wishes to understand the human being from within, one must keep to what anthroposophy has to offer. But neither an anthroposophical nor an anthropological theory can be applied in any other way than by leaving it behind at the right point and passing into the other domain. With what we call anthroposophy, of course, we enter the soul-spiritual domain and return again to outer, sense-perceptible phenomena. You can observe how, in my early writings, I followed this path as a matter of course, and how in my more recent writings I am now trying to embrace the other domain as well. Only fools find devious contradictions in this and so construct their idiotic attacks. Then German journals, run by people who are incapable of judgment, publish idiotic attacks as a serious discussion on anthroposophy.

The point is that we must take into account this process that can be described as a radiation, as I have just done. Then we have to work against this, and we can do so by appealing to the opposite radiation, one active in silver, for example. In this connection we must realize that silver must be applied as an ointment if it is to have an effect on the kind of radiation that expresses itself through the skin; however, it must be injected in some form if it is to deal with the other activity that follows the direction of evacuation in some way. Here you have what I might call a “guideline” for the particular way in which to handle such matters. Basically, just as much depends on the way such things are handled as on the quality of the remedy.

This study has led us to the remedies, and I would like to conclude it with some comments in reply to questions that have been posed. If I have not been able to complete our program this time, I must ask you to excuse this due to the shortness of time. If you pay attention to my method of answering questions, however, I believe you will see from it that I have tried to shape the lectures of the last few days so as to lead to the answers to these questions. To demonstrate this, I will select a characteristic question that someone has posed. It was asked about the widespread popular notion that women during menstruation have a kind of withering effect on flowers nearby, particularly if they touch them. This notion has its basis in reality, though it has not been observed often enough and is therefore frequently overlooked. All you need to do is to take the view of the human being that we have developed here, and you will find the inner cause of this phenomenon. Just consider that what works in the flower and the formation of the blossom strives upward from the earth; in the human being, what corresponds to this blossoming force works from above downward. This is certainly a cosmological-organic polarity. You need only picture that this normal process striving upward in the blossoms of plants is the opposite of the human process working from above downward (see figure 5). There must be a balance, and this is present in the normal human being.

Now picture the forces from above downward intensified, which is what manifests during menstruation. Then you have an intensification of forces in the human being that work against the blossoming forces of plants. So you see how an understanding of the connection of these facts enables you, if you proceed in this way, to understand this remarkable relationship that finds expression in popular views surviving from ancient, instinctive perceptions.

Here is another question: “What can one do for a type of asthma that starts with cramp state and includes among its symptoms a surplus of blood below and a deficiency of blood above?” How do we treat this form of asthma? What is going on in such a case? In such a case, the nerve-sense process has slipped down into the breathing process. This is nothing other than an excessive activity within the breathing process, and clearly this excessive activity is due to the slipping down of the nerve-sense process. You must work against this polarically; you must approach from the other side. You must oppose what has entered from outer nature with forces that have the opposite direction. You call forth such forces when you introduce the acid process through the skin, that is, by giving carbonic acid baths or other acidic baths. These will be especially beneficial in asthmatic diseases of this type. If you keep in mind the other things I have spoken about, you will be led to use many other remedies as well.

Now, a question has been asked about milk injection in cases of excessive mucous discharge. This procedure has indeed caused tremendous astonishment and satisfaction in clinics. From what I have presented in these lectures about milk secretion you will readily see that in a large number of cases this treatment is connected with what I said. You need only recall what we said about the secretion of milk: that it is also a sense-process, but one that has slipped down deeper. I have already described the abnormalities that arise there. Now, directive forces remain, of course, in the secreted product. This is a process in which what has taken place within the organism continues. If you now inject a patient with milk, you can obviously work against a process that depends on fairly similar things. This is a case in which empirical chance has in fact worked in an extraordinarily ingenious way, for this treatment has only been discovered by chance, that is, by experimenting. It is generally of the greatest importance to look into the metamorphosis of a process. If a person cannot gain insight into how processes are metamorphosed, he will be unable to judge the simplest things correctly.

A question has surfaced about the causes of colds, of all those things designated by the somewhat diffuse concept of a “cold.” Here also a sense activity is displaced, pushed down into the breathing activity, but now in a different way from before. The secretions that arise are only reactions to this. This is something that takes place in the organism more toward the surface, something that continually takes place within the organism through the interaction of the nerve-sense activity and the metabolic activity. This is going on inside continually. You should not be surprised that these things are treated by the simplest methods, with poultices and the like, in which a kind of nerve-sense activity is inserted where otherwise it is not present. All poultices and so on push a nerve-sense activity into the organism, an activity that is half-conscious and otherwise would not be there.

I have also been asked how muscle forces are related to bone forces. Their relationship is such that the effects that have come to rest or are dying in bone forces are in full movement in muscle forces. Bones are simply transformed muscles, not in the genetic sense, but from the point of view of the idea. For this reason it is really absurd to look for a genetic connection between bones and muscles, or even between cartilage and bone. Many people have correctly drawn attention to the difficulty of finding a genetic connection here. Bunge, for instance, has pointed to this difficulty in finding a genetic connection between cartilage and bone, but he has not, of course, pointed to the source of this difficulty. It is due to the fact that there is a metamorphosis here. Just picture, however, the time when the whole muscle formation has not yet passed into the organic-visible sphere (see figure 6, red). This is also the case with cartilage formation, only much less so. Picture the time when the muscle and bone formation are still undifferentiated (see figure 6, light). When differentiation proceeds into this state of undifferentiation, these processes are subject at the same time to polarity, and it is naturally extraordinarily difficult to detect this metamorphosis. You can detect an outer, genetic metamorphosis only if, in the differentiation of one tissue from another, polarity does not have an essential effect during the transformation, but the original direction is maintained. When polarity immediately exerts influence on differentiation, quite another structure will naturally result, and this will no longer resemble the first.

We will address some of the other questions in the next lecture. There is however a question which I beg you to recognize as typical for questions which lead to a realm where confusion sets in strongly and where one ought to avoid drawing analogies. The question is whether one could construct something like a spectrum of taste, going from sweet through bitter, sour, chalky, to salty, and then also perhaps a spectrum of smell. There is so little objectivity regarding taste and smell, in fact, that it is especially useless to try to find analogies. Such things are of minor significance in practical application. On leaving the domain of the eye and ear and passing into the domain of taste and smell, we come into a totally different realm. In visual perceptions one has to do with revelations entirely from the etheric world, whereas in the processes of smell and taste one has to do with something involved very powerfully in material processes, in effects of substances, in metabolic processes. Thus in passing over to these sense activities, one can keep to the more robust processes that come to expression in metabolism.

Another question has been posed that deals with a significant principle: “Can a human being, without taking anything, produce out of himself bromine, morphine, iodine, quinine, arsenic, and other remedies?” This is a question that leads to very deep foundations of man's whole organization. One cannot produce the substances, but one can produce the processes. It can be said emphatically that one is, of course, quite unable to produce the substance ‘lead’ in oneself. However it is quite possible to produce the lead process in oneself from out of the etheric and then to let it radiate into the physical body. Here it may be asked whether it is not possible then to dilute a substance homeopathically to such a degree that by this process I try to work into the etheric body, calling forth this process of ‘self-metallization,’ of ‘self-radiation,’ that corresponds to a process of metallic radiation? In a certain sense this is absolutely possible, but it is a matter of advancing to the process of radiation that proceeds from the metallic element.

If you remain stuck in the allopathic way of thinking, you cannot approach these things, of course. You must think of them as follows: The radiating forces of magnesium are present in the process of tooth formation. These are forces that have a significance for the whole human organism, for the teeth are pushed out of the whole human being. You may use magnesium salt, any magnesium salt—magnesium sulphate, let us say—applying it in such a way that you put aside all allopathic approaches and prepare an especially strong dilution. Here we are led to the necessity of using quite high dilutions. You now have a twofold effect: you have first the effect of magnesium that basically stops where the teeth are. In the normal person the magnesium forces do not extend beyond this region. You must intensify them so that they extend their effect further, irradiating the whole human being. One can achieve this especially well by using the salt, magnesium sulphate, for this furthers the magnesium radiation even into the head forces. You allow it to radiate back from there. In fact, this process that proceeds from the etheric—remaining in the etheric by this homeopathizing process—is called forth where one has only the forces but not the substance, where one has proceeded from a totally different substance. You know, of course, that magnesium sulfate has been used empirically here, but one will only be able to use it rationally if this connection is borne in mind. It will then be noticed that one can depend on the sulfate only halfway; one must also depend on the magnesium for the other half, so that anyone who believes another sulfate would do as well will be making a mistake. This is the sort of thing that results if one proceeds from considerations that are supported only by the methods of the outer sense world and a combining intellect.

I would now like to point out briefly that all these matters that have been presented to you must be studied in the following way: In order to get behind the effects that must be observed, one must first select single features; then, however, one must see them again as a whole. With these lectures in particular, I am requiring you to exert yourselves to see things in their interrelationships. And now I would like to suggest how you might do this. I have been asked, for example, about exophthmalic goiter, Graves' disease. You may turn to what I explained in the first lecture on curative eurythmy, where I pointed out that the thyroid gland is a brain that has not attained completion. If you recall this and notice how the forces that act abnormally in Graves' disease tend toward the thyroid gland and, in doing so, produce all the other symptoms associated with Graves' disease, you will find how to work against it by measures that oppose this overly strong tendency of the human being to become a “head.” Here we are led to what is to occupy the next lecture. We are led to see that such conditions can really be opposed beneficially by significant movements, especially by significant movements associated with consonants. And you will achieve results in the initial stage of Graves' disease if you thoroughly apply what we have just spoken about in the curative eurythmy lecture. You see, in connecting all these things you must also look in that direction. We will not bring these studies to a close with these lectures but will continue with them another time. There is still one lecture remaining, however.

We have been dealing with the various force currents that shape the human organism and give it form in a manner enabling us to comprehend it. If we really learn to know these formative forces, we must perceive that they could not function otherwise, that our heart, our eyes, inevitably had to become exactly what they are. We have traced the sense image of ourselves back to those super-sensible currents that flow back and forth in different directions, from above downward, from right to left, from the back forward, and so forth. At this point someone may try to catch me out by objecting that while dealing with the currents I had failed to explain a certain significant phenomenon in the human organism, that in addition to the asymmetrical organs (heart, liver, stomach, etc.) there are those that are arranged symmetrically. You might say that my description could at a pinch be accepted if the whole organism were laid out asymmetrically, but not in connection with the symmetrical organs. This objection, however, can be cleared away, too, as follows.

We have learned that the physical and etheric bodies stream from left to right and from right to left respectively, that is, in the plane in which the human being is formed symmetrically. Spiritual science teaches us that the physical body is an ancient entity, stemming from the old Saturn, while the germs of the etheric body, the astral body, and the ego were prepared on the old Sun, the old Moon, and the Earth respectively. In its first appearance on Saturn the physical body was asymmetrical, conditioned by a current corresponding to the one active today from left to right, and the first germ of the etheric body was also asymmetrical, with a current from right to left. Thence development proceeds; the physical body is further formed on the old Sun, the old Moon, and so on. Had this not occurred, the physical body would have remained lopsided, asymmetrical. As it actually happened, however, the further development of the physical body and of the other members continued on the old Moon and on the Earth, during which something occurred that altered the whole previous development and brought about a turnabout, so to speak, a reversal of the direction. If the physical body were to be formed, not into a lopsided but into a symmetrical structure, the Saturn current running from left to right had to be opposed by one running from right to left. How was this brought about? By the separation of the old Sun from the old Moon. The Sun forces, which hitherto had worked on the physical body from within, acted henceforth from without, that is, from the opposite direction. The physical body, as it was constituted up to the time of the old Moon, was then influenced by the Sun from without.

The etheric body experienced a similar transformation. You might ask why it is that this other side of the physical body, the result of Sun forces acting from without, is not much smaller, in a sense stunted, in comparison with the first, the older portion? It is because those beings that left the Moon and passed over with the Sun could develop stronger influences from their new sphere of action, owing precisely to this separation that meant a higher development for them. They had a more difficult task than the Saturn beings, for they had to counteract what was already developed in one direction. This condition obstructed the whole process of formation, so they had to become more powerful if they were to fulfill their task. This, in turn, necessitated their acting from the Sun during the Moon period, whereby their influence was intensified. In this way these younger but more powerful currents—from right to left—balanced the weaker ones—from left to right—and the physical body became a symmetrical structure.

We will now examine more closely some important details of the effects of those force currents, remembering that the sentient body sends its forces into the human organism from the front backward, but that the emanations of the sentient soul run forward from the back. Given the existence of the physical and etheric bodies and the general background, we ask in what manner these forces proceed to build the human organism?

By being dammed up, stopped by the physical body, the backward-flowing currents of the sentient body could now bore into the human organism and build divers organs into what was already there. At the same time the sentient soul works in the organism from the back toward the front. The currents of the sentient body are dammed by the physical organism and bore their way in. In this way they are obstructed by the physical body, so they really had to bore holes, as it were.

In front (cf. sketch) we have the currents of the sentient body boring their way in. They form the sense organs. In the rear the formative forces are active that build the brain over them; this gives us the diagram of the human head seen in profile. The openings represent the eyes, ears, organs of smell, etc., and the brain is superimposed behind and above them. If spiritual science tells the truth, it is clear that the human head could not possibly appear different from the way it actually does. If a human head were ever to come into being at all it would have to look as it does. It does look that way, and that is evidence proffered by the world of outer phenomena itself.

In that connection there is another point to mention. The work of the sentient body proceeds inward, that of the sentient soul outward, or at least, it has that tendency. As a matter of fact, it is obstructed before emerging; it remains in the physical body of the brain and emerges only at those points where previously the sentient body had, so to speak, bored the holes for the sense organs in the front of the physical body. What we find, then, is that a part of our inner life flows outward as sentient soul.

The intellectual soul would not be capable of this. It is completely dammed up within, and no currents come to meet it from the opposite side. That is why human thinking takes place wholly within. Objects don't think for us; they don't show us the thoughts from without, nor bring them to us. That is the great secret of the relation of human thought to the outer world. With our sense organs we can perceive outer objects, and if these organs are healthy they do not err. The mind, on the other hand, which cannot directly contact objects, is the first inner member of the human being that can err, because its activity is completely dammed up within the brain and does not emerge. From this it follows that our thoughts about the outer world cannot be correct without an inner tendency to permit right thoughts to arise within us. What the outer world can give us is correct sense perception but not right thoughts. Thought is subject to error, and the power of right thinking is something we must have within ourselves.

For the thinker this fact alone points to an earlier, prehistoric existence of man. It is incumbent upon him to form right thoughts concerning the wisdom of the outside world, but his thoughts cannot emerge or come in contact with what he perceives. Nevertheless, that wisdom must be within him as well as without; it must permeate him just as it does what surrounds him. The two currents, therefore, belong together, though they are now separated.

At some time, however, they must have been united. That was before the human ego had begun to dam up the currents within us, at a time when it still received the wisdom of the world directly. There was a time when the currents of the mental soul were not held up but flowed out, and that was the time when man directly envisioned the wisdom of the world. What is now relegated to the brain as thinking was once in contact with the outer world, like our sense perception, so that man could look at his thoughts. That was a form of clairvoyance, though not a conscious one irradiated by the ego. Man must have passed through earlier stages in which he possessed a dim clairvoyance, and again it is the human physical organization itself that shows us that in bygone times he was differently constituted.

Something important for practical life follows from the foregoing. In all cases involving the sense world, sense perception (apart from illusions) can be taken as truth, for there the human being is in direct contact with the outer world. But concerning all that is within him, his knowledge is limited to what he acquires by thinking. Now, the separation that exists between our intellectual soul and the objects in space, and that makes it possible for our thinking about those objects to err, does not apply to the ego. When the ego streams into us it is within us, and it is natural that we should have a voice in its activity. The meeting of the intellectual soul and the ego is what produces the purest thinking, the thinking that is directed inward. This form of thinking, having itself as the object, cannot be exposed to error in the same way as can the other kind, which is occupied with outer objects and roves about in an endeavor to form judgments by observing them. The only thing they can yield is sense perception. What we must do is meet them with concepts, as though holding up their mirrored reflection to them. Thinking is herein free from error only in so far as it is attracted to the tendency to truth. Out of a right tendency to truth we must let concepts of things, thoughts about things, rise up in us.

In the first instance we can form a judgment only of such things in the outer world as are encountered by the senses. The senses themselves cannot judge what is beyond their reach; no such judgment can be arrived at from the physical plane. If the intellectual soul nevertheless does just that, unless it be guided by the inner tendency to truth, it must inevitably fall into all sorts of errors.

To clarify these conditions by an illustration, let us turn to the various doctrines of the descent of man. Here we distinguish between two kinds of ancestors. You are familiar with one of them from theosophical research, which tells us of the different forms we passed through in former periods, such as the Lemurian. That is disclosed by spiritual science. We have seen how wonderfully comprehensible everything perceived by the senses becomes when we have made this teaching our very own, and it will reveal more and more.

In contrast, we will now consider material research, the materialistic doctrine of descent, the crux of which is the so-called biogenetic law. According to this, man in his germinal states passes through all forms recalling animal stages, thereby repeating, in a sense, the various forms of the whole animal kingdom. At the time when this doctrine was rampant the conclusion was drawn that man really passed through these forms that thus appear in the germ state. In itself that is not erroneous because in prehistoric times man actually did develop through such forms. Fortunately, as we can say in view of the materialistic doctrine of the descent, the foresight of the gods kept this fact secret until such time as the opinions regarding it could be corrected by spiritual science. The development of man before he became outwardly perceptible on the physical plane could not have been observed. It was shrouded by the gods and withdrawn from observation, otherwise people would have evolved even wilder theories regarding it than they do now. The facts are there, but they are frequently misinterpreted because the senses that speak the truth cannot perceive them. In reasoning, however, the power of the intellectual soul becomes active, and this cannot reach what is imperceptible to the senses. In reality, the facts referred to prove the exact opposite of what people try to infer from them. Here we have a striking example of the way the power of judgment can plunge into a sea of errors when its approach to external matters is purely by way of the mind.

What is shown by the fact that on a certain plane man resembled a fish? Precisely that he never was a fish; indeed, that he had no use for the fish nature, that he had to expel it before entering upon his human existence, because it in no way pertained to him. This he did in turn with all the animal forms, because they were not of his nature. He could not have become a human being if he had ever appeared on earth in one of those animal forms. He had to discard these in order to become what he did. The fact that in the germ the human being resembles a fish is the very proof that never in his whole line of descent was he like a fish or any other animal form. He had to expel all these forms because they were inadequate and he therefore must never resemble them. He had to slough off these forms, eject them. They are images he never resembled. All these forms of germinal life show shapes he never bore. Thus we can find out precisely through embryology how prehistoric man never looked. He cannot be descended from something he had expelled. To infer that he passed through these forms would be the same as to imagine that the father is descended from the son. The father is not descended from the son, nor the son from himself, but the son is descended from the father.

That is one of the cases in which the mind has proved wholly incapable of thinking the facts of reality through to the end. It has exactly reversed the order of development. Certainly these pictures of the remote past are extraordinarily important, because they show us how we never looked. But that is something that can be learned even more readily in another way, namely, through realms that lie open in the sense world, that are not hidden from us. There we have all those forms—fishes and so forth—and they can be properly studied with the ordinary means of human observation. As long as men restricted themselves to observing outer objects with the senses, and did not occupy their minds with matters concealed from sense perception, they avoided arriving at false conclusions; they were rightly guided by their natural sense of truth. They would look, for instance, at a monkey and doubtless experience the queer sensation that every normal human being would have, a certain sense of embarrassment. This judgment expressed through feeling means that the monkey is really a retarded being, having remained behind in the evolution of man. This feeling is nearer the truth than is the later judgment of the erring mind because it embodies the realization that the monkey is a being that dropped out of the human current, that had to be divided off from man if the latter was to achieve his goal. The moment our fallible mind approached this fact it inverted it; instead of realizing that the monkey was eliminated from the evolutionary human current it concluded that the monkey was the starting point of human descent.

Here the error comes to light. In judging external things accessible to the senses we should never forget that they are built up from within, through the agency of spiritual currents. Suppose we are observing those parts of the human being that are accessible to perception proper, or we observe part of another person that the eye can see—his face, for example. In studying this face we must not imagine it as having been built up from without. On the contrary, we must realize the need to distinguish between two currents flowing into each other, the current of the sentient body running backward from the front, and that of the sentient soul running forward from the rear. In so far as we perceive the human countenance by means of the senses, the sense image is true. That is given us by sense perception and we will not go astray there. But now the human mind joins in, at first subconsciously, and is at once misled. It regards the human countenance as something merely fashioned from without, whereas in reality, this fashioning occurred from within, through the agency of the sentient soul. What you see is not really outer body; it is the outer image of the sentient soul.

Disabuse your mind of the notion that the human face might be outer body, and you will see that in truth, it is the image of the soul. A fundamentally false interpretation results from reasoning in a way that ignores the true nature of the countenance as being the outer image of the sentient soul acting outward. Every explanation of the human countenance based solely on physical forces is wrong. It must be explained through the soul itself, the visible through the invisible. The deeper we penetrate into theosophy the more we will see in it a great school for learning to think. The chaotic thinking that today dominates all circles, particularly science, finds no shelter in theosophy, which is therefore able to interpret life correctly.

This ability to interpret phenomena correctly will further stand us in good stead when, in the course of our investigations, we come to phenomena that lead us out of the region of individual anthroposophy into the realm of the anthroposophy that concerns the whole of mankind.

Returning once more to the sense of sound and the sense of visualization, let us ask ourselves which of these came into being first in the course of human development? Did man learn first to understand words or to perceive and understand the conceptions that came to him? This question can be answered by observing the child, who first learns to talk and only later to perceive thoughts. Speech is the premise of thought perception because the sense of sound is the premise of the sense of visualization. The child learns to talk because he can hear, can listen to something that the sense of sound perceives. Speech itself is at first mere imitation, and the child imitates long before he has any idea of visualization whatever. First the sense of sound develops, and then, by means of this, the sense of visualization. The sense of sound is the instrumentality for perceiving not only tones but also what we call sounds.

The next question is how it came about that at one time in the course of his development man achieved the ability to perceive sounds and, as a result, to acquire speech? How was he endowed with speech? If he was to learn to speak, not just to hear, it was necessary not only that an outer perception should penetrate, but that a certain current within him should flow in the same direction as that taken by the currents of the sentient soul when they press forward from the rear. It had to be something acting in the same direction. That was the way in which speech had to originate, and this faculty had to appear before the sense of visualization, before man was able to sense the conception contained in the words themselves. Men had first to learn to utter sounds and to live in the consciousness of them before they could combine conceptions with them. What at first permeated the sounds they uttered was sentience.

This development had to take place at a time when the transposition of the circulatory system had already occurred, for animals cannot speak. The ego had to be acting downward from above with the blood system in a vertical position. As yet, however, man had no sense of visualization, consequently no visualizations. It follows that he could not have acquired speech through the agency of his own ego, but rather, he received it from another ego that we can compare with the group ego of animals. In this sense speech is a gift of the gods. It was infused into the ego before the latter itself was capable of developing it. The human ego did not yet possess the organs needed to give the impulse for bringing about speech, but the group ego worked from above into the physical, etheric and astral bodies, and as it encountered an opposing current, a sort of whorl came into being at the point of contact. A straight line drawn through the center of the larynx would indicate the direction of the current employed by the speech-giving spirits, and the larynx itself represents the physical substance, the dam, that resulted from the encounter of the two currents. That accounts for the peculiar shape of the human larynx.

It was under the influence, then, of a group soul that man had to develop speech. In what manner do group souls operate on earth? In animals the current of the group soul passes through the spinal cord horizontally, and these force currents are in continual motion. The force currents running downward from above move constantly around the earth, as they did around the old Moon. They don't remain in one spot but move around the earth retaining their vertical direction of influence. If men were to learn to speak under the influence of a group soul, they could not remain in one place, they had to migrate. They had to move toward the group soul. Never could they have learned to speak if they had remained in one spot.

What direction, then, would men have to take if they were to learn to speak? We know that the etheric currents flow from right to left and the physical ones from left to right, and this is the case not only in man but on the earth as well. Now, where are the group souls that endow man with speech? Let us look at the earth in its peculiar development. Man learned to speak at a time when his outer structure was already complete. Strong currents were therefore needed because the larynx had first to be transformed from a soft substance that in no way resembled a larynx. This called for special conditions on earth. Suppose we stand facing east. There flow in us from left to right the currents connected with the formation of the physical body. This current exists outside us as well; it was present during the formation of the earth. Running from north to south are those strong currents that produce solid physical matter. From the other direction, from the south, flow the etheric currents that lack the tendency to solidify the earth. This explains the lopsidedness, the lack of symmetry on the earth. In the northern hemisphere we find the great continents, in the southern, the vast oceans; the tendency of the earth was asymmetrical.

From the south the current acts that is of the same nature as the one that runs from right to left in man, but while the current from back to front streams outward, the one from front to back originates in the sentient body and enters the sentient soul. With all this in mind we understand why the attainment of speech called for a current passing outward from within; this current had to encounter a group soul current in order that the two could be dammed up in man's own organism. Man had to move toward a current that could act upon his astral element. He could therefore go neither toward the north nor toward the south, but had to take a direction at right angles to these. It was latitudinally that man had to proceed when he was acquiring speech, that is, from east to west. At that time he inhabited ancient Lemuria, where today we have the ocean lying between Asia and Africa. Thence, in order to learn to speak, he migrated westward into old Atlantis, to meet the group soul that was to engender speech in him. There he had to develop the organism suitable for speech, and thus it was in old Atlantis that he learned to speak.

The next step was to develop the sense of visualization by means of the speech man had acquired, but in order to do this he could not continue in the same direction. He had to proceed in a way that would cause the same current to act from the opposite direction. Recall here what was said in the last lecture concerning the origin of sound and of visualization. Sound comes into being when we subconsciously convert a melody into a harmony, ignore the fundamentals themselves, and mentally hear only the harmony produced by the harmonics (overtones); visualization arises when we push back and disregard this harmony of the harmonics as well. So, if we are to develop the sense of visualization, we must destroy on the one hand what we had built up on the other. We must face about and proceed in the opposite direction. One element of speech has to be suppressed, the harmonics must be pushed back, if we are to develop visualization. The old Atlanteans had to face about and migrate eastward; by doing this they were able effectively to develop the sense of visualization. This could not have been accomplished if they had continued westward. It was the tragic fate of the American aborigines to migrate in the wrong direction. They could not hold their ground, but had to yield to those who had migrated properly and returned to them only later.

In this way a great deal becomes clear. When we know the secret of those currents that fashion man and the earth we can understand the organization of the earth, the distribution of oceans and continents, the migrations of men. Anthroposophy leads us into that life through which the outer world becomes transparent and comprehensible.

Evolution proceeds. Humanity was not destined to stop at visualizations but to achieve concepts as well, and in order to accomplish this it had to ascend from mere visualizations to the soul life proper. After the sense of visualization, the sense of concepts had to be developed, and again a new direction had to be taken. In order to gain the life of visualizations, humanity—or as much of it as comes into consideration—moved eastward, but pure concepts could be acquired only by returning in a westward direction. We could similarly present the migrations of peoples in the four post-Atlantean periods from an anthroposophical viewpoint, and you would see a wondrous interplay of spiritual forces at work upon the whole shaping of man, and of what comes to expression in forming the earth.

But this is not the end. We have dealt with the currents running downward from above, forward from the rear, etc., but in a sense we now appear to have reached a dead end. Spiritual science, however, discloses higher forces holding sway above the capacity for visualization and forming concepts, that is, the imaginative, the inspirative, and the intuitive senses. We have learned that as a rule these stream inward, but in clairvoyants, outward. All these currents must operate too, and for that purpose must develop the necessary organs. So we ask how they do this? How do they live and operate in the physical human being?

In order to answer this question we will first consider a force possessed only by the human being, not by animals: the inner soul force of memory. Animal memory is a pure figment of the scientists' imagination. Animals have no memory; they merely manifest symptoms to be explained by the same principle as those of human memory. In order to produce human memory, the main position of animals would have to be raised to the vertical, so that the ego could stream in. Since their principal position is horizontal, they can have no ego. But in certain animals the forward part of the body is in the same position as that of the human being, hence it can act intelligently, although this intelligence is not permeated by an ego.

This is the beginning of a vast region of misconceptions. When an animal manifests a capacity similar to that of memory and acts intelligently, nothing more is proved by these facts than that a being can be guided by an intelligence without being intelligent itself. Phenomena resembling memory can appear in the animal world, but not memory itself.

In memory we see something special, something quite different from what we find in mere intelligent thinking, for example, or in visualization. The essence of memory lies in the retention of a visualization we have had; it is still present after the act of perception has passed. The repetition of an action previously performed is not memory. A clock would in that case be endowed with memory, for it does today exactly what it did yesterday. If memory is to come about, the ego must seize a conception and retain it.

If the ego is to seize a conception in this way, an organ must be formed for the purpose, and this is accomplished as follows. Out of its own essence the ego must engender special currents and must pour and bore these into the various horizontal currents already active minus the ego. The ego must overcome currents. When a current appears running inward from without, the ego must be able to produce within itself a counter-current.

That the ego was originally not capable of this we learned when studying the origin of speech; then the group ego had to co-operate. But when the soul life proper commences, beyond visualization, when a higher faculty such as memory is to be developed, the ego must activate new currents independently, currents that bore into others already there. Of this process the ego is clearly aware. In developing the senses up to and including visualization, this activity of the ego is not required, but when a higher activity is to be brought about, the ego must oppose the currents already functioning. This becomes manifest through the addition of a fourth phenomenon to the three currents at right angles to each other in space. This boring in of the ego becomes perceptible in the consciousness of time, and that is why memory is linked with temporal conceptions. We do not follow time in any spatial direction, but into the past. The direction of the past is bored into the directions of space. That is what occurs in all that the ego develops out of itself. Through spiritual science we can even indicate the current that comes into play when the ego evolves memory. It runs from left to right, and when habits are developed by the ego, the currents run from left to right as well. The ego bores its way into the opposing currents, those that were formed without the ego. Here the law is exemplified that tells us that the higher activities of the soul always have currents running in the opposite direction from that of the next lower activity.

To gain inner contact with the ego, the intellectual soul had to develop up to the ego plane. Now we ascend to the consciousness soul. When this functions consciously its active current runs in the opposite direction from that of the intellectual soul, which is still able to function subconsciously. Under certain earthly conditions the following law in human evolution can be proved. Learning to read is an intelligent activity, but one that does not necessarily proceed from the consciousness soul. The idea of learning to read and write occurred to men before the consciousness soul was developed. Reading by means of the intellectual soul had its inception in the Greco-Latin epoch. Then followed the ascendancy of the consciousness soul, and the direction of the current had to be reversed. Arithmetic could only develop with the consciousness soul. The European peoples read and write from left to right, but they figure from right to left, as in adding. It will be seen from this how the currents of the intellectual soul and of the consciousness soul overlap, and we can actually understand the nature of the European peoples by pondering the matter.

But there have been other peoples with other missions. They were advance guards, so to speak, and their task was to develop, or at least prepare, the feature of the intellectual soul that the European peoples, who had postponed their cultural development, did not evolve until after the consciousness soul had become active. Those were the Semitic peoples, who write from right to left. They were the peoples who were to prepare in advance the later period of the consciousness soul.

In such considerations we find the means for comprehending all cultural phenomena on earth. We shall learn to know everything of that sort, down to the letter formations of the various languages. The reason why peoples write from top to bottom, from right to left or from left to right follows from an understanding of the underlying spiritual facts. It is the mission of spiritual science to see that light dawns in the minds of men, and that the obscure becomes clear.

Today, I should like to add depth to what has recently been discussed by linking it to an old theme already familiar to many of you. Years ago, I once characterized the totality of the human senses.¹⁵ You know that in speaking of the senses one usually lists sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch. In more recent times, even some scientists have been driven to refer to other senses that are located, as it were, further within man, a sense of balance, and so on. This whole concept of the human senses lacks coherence, however, and, above all, inner integration. When we focus on the conventionally enumerated senses, we actually are always dealing only with one part of the human sense organization. It is not until twelve senses are taken into consideration that we have completely explored the sensory organization of man. First of all, we wish today to enumerate and to describe briefly these twelve senses.

Since one can begin anywhere with the enumeration and characterization of the senses, let us start, for instance, by considering the sense of sight. First, we will consider its nature in an external way that everyone can substantiate for himself. The sense of sight transmits to us the surface of external corporeality which confronts us in color, brightness or darkness. We might describe these surfaces in a great variety of ways to arrive at what the sense of sight mediates. If we now penetrate through sense perception into the inner being of external corporeality, if, through our sense organization, we convey to ourselves what does not lie on the surface but continues more into the interior of the body, then this must take place through the sense of warmth. Again, drawn more closely to us, linked to us, inclined towards us from the surface of the corporeality, we perceive certain qualities through the sense of taste. It is located, as it were, on the other side of the sense of sight. When you consider colors, brightness and darkness, and when you consider taste, you will realize that what confronts you on the surface of corporeality is something mediated by the sense of sight. What meets you in the interplay with your own organism, what frees itself in a way through sensation from the surface and moves towards you, is mediated by the sense of taste.

Now let us imagine that you go still further into the inner corporeality than is possible through the sense of warmth and that you focus not only on what permeates a body from outside, but on what inwardly pervades it like warmth, that by its very nature is an inner quality of bodies. You strike a metal plate, for example, and hear its sound. You then perceive something of the substantiality of this metal plate, that is, of the inner metallic essence. When you perceive warmth the sense of warmth conveys to you what permeates the bodies as general warmth but certainly is within them; you perceive through the sense of hearing what is already bound up with the inner nature of things. If you go to the other side, you arrive at something that the body in question exercises upon you as an effect, but which is a much more inward quality than what is perceived through the sense of taste. Smelling is, materially speaking, much more inward than tasting. Tasting comes about by bodies just stimulating, as it were, our secretions which then unite themselves superficially with our inner being. Smelling signifies quite an important change in our inner being, and the mucous membrane of the nose is organized in a much more inward way, materially speaking of course, than the organs of taste.

If you penetrate still further into the interior of the outer bodily nature to where the external corporeality becomes more soul-like, you enter then through the sense of hearing into the nature of the metallic element; you arrive at what is, in a way, the soul of the latter, but you penetrate still further, particularly into the external, when you perceive not only with the sense of hearing but with the word sense, the speech sense. It is a total misconception to believe that with the sense of hearing we exhaust the contents of the word sense. One may well hear something but need not grasp the content of the words to the point where they are understood. Even in regard to the organic organization, a difference exists between the mere hearing of sounds and the perception of a word. The hearing of sound is transmitted through the ear; the perception of a word is mediated through other organs that are as much of a physical nature as are those transmitting the sense of hearing. We also penetrate deeper into the essence of something external when we understand it through the word sense than when we merely hear its inner nature through sound.

Mediation through the sense of touch is still more inward, already quite separate from the objects, much more so than is the case with the sense of smell. When you touch objects, you actually perceive only yourself. You touch an object and if it is hard it presses forcibly on you; if it is soft its pressure is only slight. You perceive nothing of the object, however; you sense only the effect upon yourself, the change in yourself. A hard object pushes your organs far back into you. You perceive this resistance as a change in your own organism when you perceive by means of the sense of touch. You see, do you not, that as we move in there with our inner sensing, we are going out of ourselves. With the sense of taste, we are only outside ourselves to a slight degree; with the sense of sight, we are further outside and on the surface of objects. Through the sense of warmth, we already penetrate into the body. We enter into its being even more so with the sense of hearing, and we are poured into its essence through the word sense. By contrast, we penetrate our own interior already somewhat with the sense of taste; this is more the case with the sense of smell and still more with that of touch. Then, if we press still further into our interior, we come upon a sense which is usually no longer mentioned, at least not often. It is a sense by which we differentiate between our standing up or lying down, and through which we perceive when we are standing on our two feet, that we are in a state of balance. This experience of equilibrium is transmitted by the sense of balance. There, we penetrate completely into our interior; we perceive the relationship of our own inner being to the world outside, within which we experience ourselves in a state of equilibrium. We perceive this, however, entirely within our inner being.

When we penetrate further into the external world than we can by means of the word sense, this occurs through the sense of thought. To perceive the thoughts of another being actually requires another sense organ differing from the mere word sense. On the other hand, if we penetrate still further into ourselves we find a sense that inwardly reveals to us whether we are at rest or in movement. We don't only observe whether we are remaining still or moving simply by virtue of the external objects moving past us; through the extension or retraction of our muscles and through the configuration of our body insofar as the latter changes when we move about, we can inwardly perceive to what extent we are in motion, and so forth. This happens through the sense of movement.

When we confront human beings, we not only perceive their thoughts but the ego itself. The ego, too, is not yet perceived when one merely perceives the thoughts. For the same reason that we separate the sense of hearing from that of sight, we must recognize a special ego sense upon entering into the more subtle configuration of the human organization—a sense with which to perceive an “I” or ego. When we penetrate the ego of another person with our perception, we go out of ourselves the most.

When do we enter the most into ourselves? When, within the general feeling of life, we perceive what we always have as our consciousness in the waking condition; when we perceive that we are; when we experience ourselves inwardly; when we sense that we are we. All this is mediated by the life sense.

Here I have written down for you the twelve senses that constitute the complete sensory system. You can readily see from this that a certain number of our senses are directed more toward the outside, adapted more for penetrating the outer world. When we consider this circle (see drawing) the extent of our sense world, we can say: Ego sense, sense of thinking, word sense, sense of hearing, sense of warmth, sense of sight and sense of taste are the outwardly directed senses. On the other hand, where we predominantly perceive ourselves through the things and where we perceive more the effects of things in us, we have the remaining senses: Life sense, sense of movement, sense of balance, and the senses of touch and smell. They form more the sphere of man's inner being. They are senses that open themselves in an inward direction and, through perception of what is within, transmit to us our relationship to the cosmos (see dark blue area in drawing). Thus, when we have the complete system of the senses we can say: We have seven senses that are directed more toward the outside. The seventh sense is already doubtful—the sense of taste that stands right on the boundary between what refers to the external bodies and what they exercise upon us as an effect. The other five senses are senses that show us completely inward processes taking place within us, which are, however, effects of the external world upon us. Today, I should like to add the following to this systematic arrangement of the senses which is familiar to most of you.

You know that when man rises from the ordinary knowledge of the senses to higher knowledge he is able to do that by emerging out of his physical body with his soul-spiritual part. Then the higher forms of cognition appear, namely, Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition. They have already been described in my Occult Science, an Outline and in my book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment.¹⁶ You will easily be able to represent to yourselves, however, that since we have this membering of the senses before us, we are able to arrive at a special characterization of what perception of the higher worlds is. We emerge out of ourselves. But what boundary do we cross over then? If we remain within ourselves, our senses form our boundary. When we emerge out of ourselves, we penetrate outward through the senses. It is, of course, a matter of fact that when our soul-spiritual part leaves the corporeal sheath, it penetrates outward through the senses. We therefore pass through the external senses in an outward direction, through the senses of taste, sight, warmth, hearing, the word sense, the thought and ego senses. We shall see later what we reach when we penetrate inward through the other boundary where the senses open in the inward direction. So we penetrate through the senses to the outside when we leave our bodily boundary, as it were, with our soul-spiritual entity. Here, for example (indicating the drawing), we pass outward by the sense of sight. It signifies that we penetrate outward with our soul-spiritual being by leaving behind our organs of sight. Particularly, when we leave our corporeality through the eyes and move about the world, seeing with our soul eyes, yet leaving the physical eyes behind, we arrive in that region where Imagination holds sway (see drawing).

And when, through initiation, we are actually capable of penetrating through the eye in particular out into the spiritual world, then we attain to pure Imaginations, imaginations that are pictures, so to speak, just as the rainbow is a picture—pure pictorial imaginations weaving and living in the soul-spiritual realm.

When we pass out through the organ of taste, the pictures appear tinged with the last remnants of material existence. We can say that the imaginations are then colored, literally touched here and there with materiality. We do not have pure images as in the rainbow; we get something that is tinged, containing in a kind of image something like a last residue of material substance. We come to ghosts, real specters, when we depart the physical body through the organ of taste.

When one leaves the physical body through the sense of warmth, one also receives pictures that are tinged. The images that are otherwise as pure as the rainbow, for instance, appear so that they affect our soul in a certain way. This is what their tinge now consists of. In case of the organ of taste, the image becomes condensed, so to speak, into something spectral. On the other hand, when we emerge through the sense of warmth, we also attain to imaginations but to a kind that have sympathetic and antipathetic soul effects, affecting us with warmth or coldness of soul. These images, therefore, do not appear passively, as did the others; they appear warm or cold in terms of the soul.

Now when we leave our body through the ear, through the sense of hearing, we come out into the soul-spiritual world and experience Inspiration. Previously, here (indicating the drawing) we experienced imaginations tinged by what affects our soul. When we leave our body through the sense of hearing, we penetrate into the sphere of Inspiration. Although these senses are directed more to the outside, now, when we leave the body, what passes over from the sense of warmth to the sense of hearing penetrates more into our soul-spiritual inner being, for inspirations belong more to the inner nature of soul and spirit than do imaginations. We are closely touched, not only emotionally, but we feel ourselves permeated by inspirations. Just as we feel ourselves permeated corporeally by the air we inhale, so we feel our soul permeated by inspirations when we enter those regions where they are to be found upon leaving the body through the sense of hearing.

The inspirations are once again tinged when we leave the body through the word sense, the sense of speech. It is of particular importance for anyone who acquires a feeling for the sense of speech to become familiar with this organ, which is just as real in the physical organization as is the sense of hearing. When the soul and spirit leave the physical body through this organ, Inspiration is tinged with inner experience, with a feeling of oneness with the foreign being.

When we leave the body through the sense of thinking, we penetrate into the sphere of Intuition. And when we leave the body through the ego sense, the intuitions are tinged by the beingness of the spiritual outer world.

Thus, we penetrate more and more into the essence of the spiritual outer world as soon as we leave the body with our soul and spirit. More and more, we become aware that everything surrounding us is in fact the spiritual world. Man, however, is in a sense forced out of the spiritual world. What is behind the senses he only perceives when he leaves the body with his soul-spiritual being. What is perceived, however, is molded by the senses. Intuitions appear through the ego sense and the sense of thinking but only as impressions of intuitions; inspirations appear as impressions through the word sense and sense of hearing; imaginations appear through the sense of warmth and sight and, to a lesser degree, through the sense of taste, but toned down, taken and transformed into the sensory element. Schematically, one could sketch it like this. On the boundary is the perception of the sense world (red). If one emerges with one's soul and spirit, one penetrates into the spiritual world (yellow) through Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition. And what is to be perceived in imaginations, inspirations and intuitions is out there. Yet, as it penetrates us, it turns into our sense world.

You see, there are no atoms out there as materialists imagine. Out there is the world of imaginative, inspired and intuitive elements, and as this world affects us, the impressions of it arise in the outward sense perceptions. From this you realize that when we penetrate through our skin which encloses the sense organs to the outside, as it were, but in the various directions in which the senses are effective, we arrive in the objective soul-spiritual world. Through the senses, which we have recognized as the ones opening to the outside, we penetrate into the external world.

Thus you see that when the human being enters into the outer world through his senses, when he crosses over the threshold—which, as you can see from all this, is quite near—in the direction of the external world, he penetrates into the objective world of soul and spirit. This is what we try to attain through spiritual science, namely to enter into this objective soul-spiritual world. We come into a higher sphere by penetrating through our outer senses into that which is covered for us by a veil within the sense world.

Just as we penetrate outward through the outer senses, what happens when we now penetrate into our inner nature through the inner senses, the life sense, the sense of movement, of balance, of touch and smell? Here, the matter is very different. Let us write down these inner senses once again: Sense of smell, touch, balance, movement and life. In everyday life, we do not actually perceive what occurs in the realm of these senses; it remains subconscious. What we do perceive with these senses is already radiated upward into the soul.

If this is the external spiritual world of Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition (see drawing below, red), it shines its rays, in a manner of speaking, upon our senses. Through these senses, the sensory world is produced and placed before us. The external world of spirit is thus moved inward by one degree. What surrounds these senses, however, what stirs below in the corporeality (orange), is not directly perceived. Just as the objective outer world of spirit is not directly perceived but is perceived only in its condition of being pushed into our senses, so we do not directly perceive all that stirs in our body, but only what is pushed up into the soul region. One perceives the soul effects of these inner senses to a certain extent. You do not perceive the life processes themselves. What you do perceive of the life sense is what of it is expressed in a feeling of inner well-being pervading us in waking consciousness, which is something you are not aware of in sleep, and which is only disturbed when something within hurts us. It is the life sense normally radiating upward as a feeling of comfort that is disturbed through pain in the same way as an external sense is disturbed when a person has a hearing loss. Generally, however, the life sense is experienced in a healthy person as a feeling of being comfortable. This feeling of overall well-being, which is heightened after a good meal, and somewhat lowered by hunger, this undefined inner sense of self is the effect of the life sense that has rayed into the soul.

The sense of movement is expressed in what takes place in us when, through contraction and elongation of our muscles, we perceive whether we are walking or standing still, jumping or dancing. We perceive whether or how we are in motion through this sense of movement. When it is radiated into the soul, this sense results in that feeling of freedom which allows man to sense himself as soul, namely, the experience of one's own free soul element. The fact that you experience yourself as a free soul is due to the effects of the sense of movement. It is due to what streams into your soul from the muscular contractions and elongations, just as inner comfort or discomfort is brought about by the results, the experiences of the life sense flowing into your soul realm.

When the sense of balance streams into the soul, the soul element is already considerably detached. Unless we have just fainted and are completely unconscious, just think how little we actually become aware of how we are placed into the world in a condition of equilibrium. How then do we sense the experiences of the sense of balance which radiate into the soul? That is entirely a soul experience. We feel it as inner tranquility, that inner tranquility which brings it about that when I go from one place to another I do not leave behind the being contained within my body but take it along; it remains, quietly, the same. Thus, I could fly through the air and yet quietly remain the same person. This is what makes us appear to be independent of time. I do not leave myself behind today, I am the same tomorrow. This sense of being independent of the corporeality is the inpouring of the sense of balance into the soul. It is the sensation of experiencing oneself as spirit.

Still less do we perceive the inner processes of the sense of touch which, in fact, we project entirely to the outside. We can sense whether bodies are hard or soft, rough or smooth, made of silk or wool. We project the experiences of touch entirely into external space. What we have in the sense of touch is actually an inner experience, but what takes place within remains completely in the subconscious. Only a shadow of it is present in the properties of the sense of touch ascribed to the objects. The organ of the sense of touch, however, causes us to feel whether the things are silken or woolen, hard or soft, rough or smooth. This, too, sends it effects within. It radiates into the soul, but the human being is not aware of the connection of his soul experiences with what the sense of touch attains in touching, because the two aspects are greatly differentiated—namely, what streams to the soul within and what is experienced on the surface outside. What does, however, stream into the soul is nothing else but being permeated with the feeling of God. Without the sense of touch, man would have no feeling for God. What is felt by the sense of touch as roughness and smoothness, hardness and softness, is the element streaming outward. What is turned back as a soul phenomenon is the condition of permeation with universal cosmic substance, with being as such. It is precisely through the sense of touch that we ascertain the existence of the outer world. When we see something, we do not immediately believe that it is indeed present in space; we are convinced of its spatial existence when the sense of touch can grasp it. What permeates all things and penetrates into us also, what holds and bears all of you—this all-pervading substance of God—enters consciousness and is the inwardly reflected experience of the sense of touch.

You are familiar with the outward radiation of the sense of smell. When the sense of smell radiates its experiences towards man's inner being, however, he no longer takes note of how these inner experiences coincide with the external ones. When a person smells something, it is the extension of his sense of smell to the outside; he projects the images to the external realm. This effect is also projected within; man, however, is aware of it less frequently than of the outward effect. Many people like to smell fragrant things and experience the outward emanation of the sense of smell. There are also people who surrender themselves to what grips the inner being as the effect of the sense of smell so intensely that it not only pervades the human being like the feeling of God, but places itself in him in such a manner that he experiences it as the mystic oneness with God.

5. sense of smell = mystical union with God
4. sense of touch = permeation by the feeling of God
3. sense of balance = inner rest, feeling oneself as spirit
2. sense of movement = experience of one's own free soul nature
1. sense of life = feeling of well-being

Thus you see that if we penetrate to the heart of things as they really are in the world, we must free ourselves from a great deal of sentimental prejudice. Some aspiring mystics will certainly have a funny feeling when they hear what this mystical experience actually represents in relation to the sense world, for it is the experience of the sense of smell sending its effects into the soul's inner being.

There is no need to be alarmed by these things, for we shape all our sensations according to the external, conventional world of semblance, of Maya. And why should one cling to this Maya-conception of the sense of smell, even though the sense of smell is not, to begin with, considered to be a part of the most sublime aspects? Why shouldn't we be able to consider the loftiest aspect of this sense of smell where it becomes the creator of man's inner experiences? Mystics in fact are often inveterate materialists. They condemn matter and wish to ascend above it because it is so lowly. So they raise themselves above it by pleasurably surrendering to the effects of the sense of smell within.

When confirmed mystics of the sensitive kind, such as Mechthild von Magdeburg, Saint Theresa or Saint John of the Cross, describe their inner experiences—and such individuals give quite vivid descriptions—one who possesses a great sensitivity and susceptibility for such matters will “smell” or sense what is going on because of the particular nature of these experiences. The mysticism, even of Meister Eckhart or Johannes Tauler,¹⁷ can be “smelled”—indeed, more adequately—as it can be absorbed sensually through the soul's experience. A person who perceives matters in an occult sense will sense a sweetish aroma within when he considers the descriptions of the mystic experiences, for instance, of Saint Theresa or Mechthild of Magdeburg. When he considers the mysticism of Tauler or Meister Eckhart, he experiences a scent reminiscent of rue, a herb with a tart, but not unpleasant, odor.

In short, the particular and striking thing we discover is that when we move outward through our senses we come into a higher world, an objective spiritual world. When we descend through mysticism, through permeation by the feeling of God, through the inner tranquility of experiencing oneself as spirit, through feeling oneself free in soul, and through inner comfort, then we come to corporeality, to material substance. I have already indicated this to you in these considerations. In terms of Maya, we attain to ever more lowly regions in our inner experience than those we already have in ordinary life. In lifting ourselves outward beyond the senses, we enter into higher regions. This can indeed show you how important it is not to harbor illusions concerning these matters. Above all, we should not delude ourselves into believing that we penetrate into a special kind of spirituality when we descend into our inner being through the mystical sense of union with the divine. No, there we merely descend into what our nose gives us within; and the most beloved mystics offer us something in their descriptions of what they felt within themselves through the sense of smell continuing its effects inwardly.

You can see that when one speaks from beyond the threshold, speaking out of the spiritual world about the affairs of this world, one must speak in words that differ completely from the conceptions about the physical world formed by people from this side. This really should not surprise you, for you ought not to expect the spiritual world beyond the threshold to be a mere duplication of the physical world. Such duplications are experienced in only one instance, namely, when you read the descriptions of the higher worlds given in Islamic esotericism, or those of the Devachan by Mr. Leadbeater,¹⁸ There, with very few changes, you basically come across duplications of this world. People find this very comforting, especially among those who enjoy a certain elegant life style with fine clothes and sufficient satisfaction of their appetites here an the physical plane. One frequently notes that they expect to enter after death into a life style in Devachan that is not unlike the one here, as Mr. Leadbeater does indeed describe it to them. One who has to outline the truths concerning the spiritual worlds is not in this comfortable position. He has to tell you that permeation with the feeling of God leads to the inward projection of smell, and that the mystic actually reveals nothing more to the genuine occultist than the manner in which he smells within. There is no room for sentimentality in an actual observation of the world from the spiritual standpoint. I have mentioned it many times. If one really penetrates into the spiritual world, matters become serious to such a degree that even small things must be given different words from those applied to them here, and that words themselves acquire a completely opposite meaning. To penetrate into the spiritual world does not merely mean describing specters of this physical world. Instead, we have to brace ourselves, for much of what is experienced there is the opposite of the physical world here; above all, it is the reverse of what is pleasant.

I wished to place this viewpoint before you today in order to convey to you a more general feeling for what is really required for our age. When one listens to what is being said today in the West (it is somewhat different the farther east one goes), when a thought is interpreted in a Western manner, one frequently hears the following: One cannot express oneself this way in French; one cannot say that in English. The farther West one goes, the more prevalent is this opinion. But what does this opinion imply other than an attachment to the physical, the condition of having already become rigid in the physical as opposed to the real world? Of what consequence are words? What matters is that people go beyond words and arrive at a mutual understanding. Then, however, one must be capable of freeing the words from objects, but not only this, one must even be able to free the subjective feelings acquired in the sense world. If the sense of smell is looked upon as a lowly sense, this is a value judgment arrived at in the sensory world. Likewise, if the inner correlate of it, namely mysticism, is regarded as something nobler, this is also an opinion gained in the sense world. Considered from yonder side of the threshold, the organization of the sense of smell is of extraordinary significance, whereas mysticism, beheld from beyond the threshold, is nothing so sublime. This is because mysticism is in fact a product of the material, physical world, for it represents the manner in which human beings who actually remain materialistic try to penetrate into the spiritual world. They regard everything existing here on the physical plane as nothing but matter. It is all too lowly, too materialistic for them. If they were to penetrate into what does in fact exist outside, they would come directly into the spiritual world, into the realm of the hierarchies. Instead, they sink into their inner being, fumbling about in the pure matter within their own skin. It is true that this appears to them as the higher spirit. But it is not a question of our penetrating mystically into our Body through our soul-spiritual phenomena; rather, it is a matter of penetrating through our material phenomena, the phenomena of the sense world, to the spiritual world, entering the world of the hierarchies, the world of spiritual entities. We shall never arrive at impulses that lead again to an ascent until humanity will accept opinions such as these and permit one to speak in different terms about the world than those of the last four hundred years. Nothing will be gained until our social views are also formulated out of such completely transformed concepts. If we wish to remain in what we have acquired so far, basing our social activity only on that, we shall slide deeper and deeper into decline, into the decline of the Western world.

On what is something like Oswald Spengler's¹⁹ judgment based? It rests on the fact that although he has a brilliant mind, he can think only in terms of the ordinary concepts of the Western world prevalent today. These he analyses and thus figures out—and quite correctly in terms of these concepts—that by the beginning of the third millennium barbarism will have taken the place of our civilization. If one speaks to him of anthroposophy, he turns red in the face, for he cannot stand it. Were he to comprehend what can enter into men through anthroposophy and how it can invigorate them, then he would see that the decline can be prevented only through anthroposophy, that it is the one and only way to come to an ascent again.

• 15. Rudolf Steiner: Wisdom of Man, of the Soul, and of the Spirit, GA 115 (New York, Anthroposophic Press, 1971); Human and Cosmic Thought, Human and Cosmic Thought, GA 151 (London, Rudolf Steiner Press, 1967); Kosmische und menschliche Geschichte, Vol. I and II, GA 170/171 (Dornach, Rudolf Steiner Verlag, 1964). Not translated.
• 16. Rudolf Steiner: Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment, GA 10 (Spring Valley, Anthroposophic Press, 1983).
• 17. Mechthild von Magdeburg: 1207–1290, mystic; St. Theresa, 1515–1582, Spanish saint; Johannes vom Kreuz (Juan de la Cruz): 1542–1591, mystic and theologian, reformer of the Carmelite Order; Meister Eckhart: 1260–1327, Dominican mystic; Johannes Tauler: 1300–1361, student of Meister Eckhart, mystic, Dominican preacher.
• 18. Charles Webster Leadbeater: 1847–1934, prominent personality of the Theosophical Society.
• 19. Oswald Spengler: 1880–1936, The Decline of the West, Munich, 1922.

To-day I wish to speak to you of some fundamental pieces of knowledge of the science of initiation, which will then supply to us a kind of foundation for that which we shall consider tomorrow and the day after tomorrow. To-day we shall first speak of something which lies in the consciousness of every human being, but is not grasped clearly enough in the ordinary course of life. When we speak of such things, we always speak of them from the standpoint of our present time, in the sense and meaning which I have often explained to you: namely, that knowledge is not in any way valid for all time and for every place, but that it is only valid for a certain definite time, indeed, only for a definite region of the earth. Thus, certain standpoints of knowledge would be valid, for instance, for the European civilisation, and other standpoints would be valid—let us say—for the knowledge of the East.

Everybody knows that we live, as it were, between two poles of our knowledge. Everyone feels that, on the one hand, we have the knowledge gained through our senses. A plain, unprejudiced person learns to know the world through his senses, and is even able to sum up what he sees and hears, and, in general, what he perceives through his senses. After all, that which science supplies to us, in the form in which science now exists in the Occident, is merely a summary of that which the senses convey to us.

But everyone can feel that there is also another kind of knowledge, and that it is not possible to be in the full sense of the word a real human being living in the ordinary world, unless another kind of knowledge is added to the one which has just been characterized. And this kind of knowledge is connected with our moral life. We do not only speak of ideas pertaining to the knowledge of Nature, and explaining this or that thing in Nature, we also speak of ethical ideas, ethical ideals. We feel that they are the motives of our actions, and that we allow them to guide us when we ourselves wish to be active in the ordinary world. And every man will undoubtedly feel that this knowledge of the senses, with the resulting intellectual knowledge (for, the intellectual knowledge is merely a result, an appendix of the knowledge transmitted by the senses) is a pole of our cognitive life which cannot reach as far as the ethical ideas. The ethical ideas are there, but when we pursue, for instance, natural science, we cannot find these ethical ideas by contemplating the plant-world, the mineral world, or by following any other branch of modern natural sciences. The tragic element of our time consists, for instance, in trying to discover, upon a natural-scientific basis, ideas which are to be applied to the social sphere. If sound common sense were adopted, this would never be possible. The ethical ideas exist as if on another side of life. And our life is indeed under the influence of these two streams: on the one hand, the knowledge of Nature, and on the other hand, the ethical knowledge.

From my The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity you will know that the highest ethical ideas required by us as human beings are given to us when we grasp moral intuitions, and that when we begin to gain possession of these ethical ideas, they are the foundation of our human freedom. On the other hand, you may perhaps also know that for certain thinkers there has always been a kind of abyss between that which is given, on the one hand, by the knowledge of Nature, and on the other hand, by ethical knowledge. The philosophy of Kant is based upon this abyss, which he is unable to bridge completely. For this reason, Kant has written a Critique of Theoretical Reason, of Pure Reason, as he calls it, where he grapples with natural science, and where he says all that he has to say about natural science, or the knowledge of Nature. On the other hand, he has also written a Critique of Practical Reason, where he speaks of ethical ideas. We might say: The whole human life is born for him out of two roots which are completely severed from one another, which he describes in his two chief critical studies.

Of course, it would be unfortunate for the human being if there were no connecting bridge between these two poles of our soul-life. Those who earnestly pursue, on the one hand, spiritual science, and on the other hand, earnestly consider the tasks of our present time, must eagerly ask themselves: Where is the bridge connecting ethical ideas and the ideas of Nature?

To-day we shall adopt the standpoint which I would like to characterize as a historical standpoint, in order to come to a knowledge of this bridge. You already know from the explanations which have recently been given here, that in past times man's soul-constitution was essentially different from that of a later time. The origin of Christianity really forms a deep incision in the whole evolution of humanity. And only if we understand what has really arisen in the evolution of humanity through the birth of Christianity we shall understand human reason.

That which lies behind the rise of Christianity—not to mention Jewish history—is the whole extent of pagan culture. Jewish culture was, after all, a preparation for Christianity. This whole extent of pagan culture is essentially different from our modern Christian culture. The more we go back into time, the more we shall find that this pagan culture had a uniform character. It was principally based upon human wisdom. I know that it is almost offending for a modern man to hear that, as far as wisdom is concerned, the ancients were far more advanced than modern man; nevertheless it was so. In ancient pagan times a wisdom extended over the earth, which was far nearer to the origin of things than our modern knowledge, particularly our modern natural sciences. This ancient, this primeval knowledge, was very concrete, it was a knowledge intensively connected with the spiritual reality of things. Something entered the human soul through man's knowledge of the reality of things. But the special characteristic of this ancient pagan wisdom was the fact that the human beings obtained it in such a way (you know that they obtained it from the Mysteries of the Initiates) that this wisdom contained both a knowledge of Nature, and an ethical knowledge. This extraordinarily significant truth in the history of human evolution, this truth which I have just explained to you, is ignored to-day only because people cannot go back to the truly characteristic times of the ancient pagan wisdom. A historical knowledge does not reach back so far as to enable us to grasp the times when the human beings who looked up to the stars really received from the stars, on the one hand, a wisdom explaining to them in their own way the course of the stars, but on the other hand, it also told them how they were to behave and act here upon the earth. Metaphorically speaking, (yet it is not entirely metaphorical, but quite objective up to a certain degree), we might say, that the ancient Egyptians and the ancient Chaldean civilisations were, for instance, of such a kind that men could read the laws of Nature in the course of the stars, but in the star's course they could also read the rules governing that which they were to do upon the earth.

The codices of the ancient Egyptian Pharaohs contain, for instance, rules concerning that which was to become law. It was so that for centuries ahead that which would later on become law was foretold prophetically. Everything contained in these codices was read from the course of the stars. In those ancient times there was no astronomy such as we have it now, merely containing mathematical laws of the movements of the stars or of the earth, but there was a knowledge of the cosmos which was at the same time moral knowledge, ethics.

The doubtful element of modern astrology, which does not go beyond the stage of dilettantism, is that people no longer feel that its contents can only be a complete whole if the laws discovered in it are at the same time moral laws for the human beings. This is something extraordinarily significant.

In the course of human evolution, the essence of that primeval science was lost. This lies at the foundation of the fact that certain Secret Schools—but the schools of an earnest character have really ceased to exist at the end of the 18th century—and even certain Secret Schools of the Occident, have again and again pointed back to this lost science, to the lost Word. As a rule, those who came later no longer knew what was meant by the expression “Word”. Nevertheless, this conceals a certain fact. In Saint-Martin's books we may still find an echo showing that up to the end of the 18th century it was very clearly felt that in ancient times men possessed a spiritual wisdom which they obtained simultaneously with their knowledge of Nature. Their spiritual wisdom also contained their moral and ethical wisdom; this had already disappeared in the eight centuries preceding the rise of Christianity. We may even say: Ancient Greek history is, essentially, the gradual loss of primeval wisdom.

If we study the philosophers before Socrates, namely Heraclitus, Thales, Anaximenes, Anaxagoras, the philosophers of the tragic epoch, as Nietzsche called them—I have dealt with them in my book Riddles of Philosophy, and have tried to give as good as possible a picture, from an external standpoint—if we study these philosophers (but the external writings tell us very little about them), we shall find again and again that the passages which have remained like oases in a desert, re-echo a great, encompassing wisdom and knowledge which existed in the remote past of human evolution. The words of Heraclitus, of Thales, Anaxagoras and Anaximenes, appear to us as if humanity had, as it were, forgotten its primeval wisdom and only remembered occasionally some fragmentary passages. The few passages of Thales, Anaxagoras, of the seven Greek sages, etc., which have been handed down to us traditionally, appear to us like fragmentary recollections.

In Plato we still encounter a kind of clear consciousness of this primeval wisdom; in Aristotle everything has been transformed into human wisdom.

And among the Stoics and Epicureans this gradually disappears. The ancient primeval knowledge only remains like an old legend. This is how matters stood with the Greeks.

The Romans—and they were by Nature a prosaic, matter-of-fact nation—even denied that this primeval knowledge had any meaning at all, and they transformed everything into abstractions. The course which I have just described to you in regard to the primeval knowledge, was necessary for the evolution of humanity. Man would never have reached freedom in the course of his development, had the primeval wisdom, which came to him indirectly through atavistic clairvoyance, remained in its original intensity and significance. Nevertheless, this primeval knowledge was connected with everything which could reach man from divine heights in the form, I might say, of moral impulses. This had to be rescued. The moral impulse had to be rescued for man.

Among the many things which we have already explained in regard to the Mystery of Golgotha we have also explained that the divine principle which descended to the earth trough the man, Jesus of Nazareth, contained the moral power which was little by little dispersed and cleft through the waning and gradual dying out of the ancient primeval wisdom. It is indeed so—although this may seem paradoxical to a modern man—that we can say: Once upon a time there was an old primeval wisdom. Man's moral power and moral wisdom were connected with primeval knowledge; this was contained in it as an integrant. The ancient primeval wisdom then lost its power, it could no longer be the bearer of a moral impulse

This moral impulse had, as it were, to be taken under the wing of the Mystery of Golgotha. And for the civilisation of the Occident, the further continuation was the Christ Impulse which has arisen from the Mystery of Golgotha containing that which had remained as a kind of moral extract from the ancient primeval wisdom.

It is very strange to follow, for instance, that which Occidental civilisation contains in the form of true science, true wisdom, up to the 8th or 9th century after Christ. Try to read the description of Occidental wisdom up to the 8th and 9th century, as contained in my book, Riddles of Philosophy, and you will see that, after all, this course of development contains nothing of what may be designated as knowledge, in our modern meaning. For this arises towards the middle of the 15th century, at the time of Galilei. Until that time, knowledge has really been handed down traditionally from the primeval wisdom of the past. It is no longer a wisdom gained through inner intuition, no longer a primeval wisdom experienced inwardly, but an external wisdom handed down traditionally. I have often told you the story of Galilei, the story which is not an anecdote, namely, how Galilei had to make a great effort in order to convince a friend of the truth of his statements. Like all the other people of the Middle Ages who pursued wisdom, this friend was accustomed to accept what was contained in the books of Aristotle, or in the other traditional works. Everything which was taught at that time was traditional. That which was contained in the books of Aristotle was handed down traditionally. And the learned friend of Galilei agreed with Aristotle that the nerves go out from the heart. Galilei endeavoured to explain to him that according to the knowledge he had gained by studying a corpse, he was obliged to say something else: namely, that in the human being the nerves go out from the head, or the brain. This Aristotelian thinker could not believe it. Galilei then led him to the corpse, showed him that the nerves in fact go out from the brain and not from the heart, and felt sure that his friend would now have to believe what he saw with his own eyes. But his friend said: “Indeed, this appears to be true; I can see with my own eyes that the nerves proceed from the brain. But Aristotle says the opposite, namely that the nerves proceed from the heart. If I have to choose between the evidence of the senses in Nature and Aristotle's statements, I prefer to believe in Aristotle, and not in Nature!” This is not an anecdote, but a true occurrence. After all, in our time we simply experience the same thing, only the other way round.

You see, at that time all knowledge was traditional. A new knowledge only began with the time of Galilei, Copernicus, and so forth. But throughout these centuries the moral impulse was borne by the Christian impulse. It was essentially connected with the religious element. This was not the case in pagan times. The pagans realised that when they obtained cosmic wisdom, they obtained at the same time a moral impulse.

A new impulse arose towards the middle of the 15th century, an impulse which completely severed the connection with everything that existed in the form of ancient wisdom, even though this merely existed traditionally. It is very interesting to see the passion with which those who brought to the surface this new science—for instance, Giordano Bruno—abuse everything which existed in the form of old traditional wisdom. Bruno almost begins to rave when he rails against the recollections of ancient wisdom. Something entirely new arises. In fact, we shall be far from understanding human evolution if we are unable to look upon this new element which thus arises, as a beginning.

We may say (a drawing is made on the blackboard): If we indicate, here, the Mystery of Golgotha ... the moral impulse will continue from there, but what was that which the Mystery of Golgotha carried from an older into a more recent time? What was it, in reality, while it was being borne in that direction? It was an end. The more we progress, the more the ancient wisdom disappears, even in its traditional form. We may say that it continues to drip like water, in the form of traditional knowledge; but a new element, a beginning, arises with the 15th century.

Indeed, we have not advanced very far in this new direction. The few centuries which have elapsed since the middle of the 15th century have brought us some natural science, but we have not progressed far since that beginning.

What is this new wisdom? You see, it is a wisdom which, to begin with, in the form in which it has appeared, has this peculiarity: Contrary to the ancient pagan wisdom, it does not contain a moral impulse. You may study as much as possible of this new wisdom, of this Galilei wisdom—mineralogy, geology, physics, chemistry, biology, etc. etc.,—but you will never be able to draw a moral impulse out of this knowledge of Nature.

If modern people think that they can establish sociology upon the foundation of natural sciences, this is a tremendous illusion. For it is impossible to squeeze out of natural science, such as it exists to-day, that kind of knowledge which can be an ideal for human actions. For natural science is altogether in an elementary stage, and we can only hope that by developing more and more, it will again come to the point of containing, as natural science, moral impulses.

If the knowledge of Nature were to continue only in accordance with its own form, it would not be able to produce moral impulses out of its own nature. A new super-sensible knowledge will have to develop by the side of this knowledge of Nature. This super-sensible knowledge will then contain once more the rays of a moral will. And when the beginning which was made towards the middle of the 15th century will have reached its end at the conclusion of the evolution of the earth, then super-sensible knowledge will flow together with the knowledge of the senses, and a unity will arise out of this.

When the old pagan sage, or the follower of pagan wisdom received pagan wisdom from his initiate in the Mysteries, he received at one and the same time a knowledge of Nature, a cosmic knowledge, an anthropogenesis and a moral science, and this was simultaneously a moral impulse. All this was one.

To-day it is necessary to admit that we obtain on the one hand, a knowledge of Nature, and on the other hand, super-sensible knowledge. This knowledge of Nature is, as such, devoid of moral impulses. Moral impulses must be gained through a super-sensible knowledge. Since the social impulses must, after all, be moral impulses, no true social knowledge, and not even a sum of social impulses can be imagined, unless man rises to super-sensible knowledge.

It is important that modern man should realise that he must strike out a new course in regard to social science; he must tread a different path than that of natural science. But I am at the same time obliged to draw your attention to a strange paradox:—I have often explained to you here that the deepest truths of the science of initiation appear strange to the ordinary every-day consciousness, may even appear crazy to an extreme materialist, but in our time it is necessary to grow acquainted with this wisdom which appears so paradoxical to-day. For in our time many things which appear foolish to men are wisdom before God. It would be a good thing if this bible passage were to be considered a little by those who brush aside Anthroposophy with a supercilious smile, or who criticize it in a vile way. They should consider that what they look upon as foolishness may be “wisdom before the Gods”. It would be a very good thing if several people—and by “several” I mean many—particularly those who go to church with their prayer book and revile Anthroposophy, were to insist less upon their proud faith and look more closely into that which is really contained in the Christian faith. In our time it is necessary to become acquainted with several things which appear paradoxical. You see, two things are possible to-day. Someone may become acquainted with the natural science of to-day (I shall now characterize these two things rather sharply), he may, for instance, take up the facts supplied by the science of chemistry, physics, biology, etc. He may study diligently and eagerly the Theory of Evolution which has arisen from the so-called Darwinism. If he studies all this he may become a materialist, as far as his world conception based on knowledge is concerned. Indeed, he will become a materialist; this cannot be denied. Since men, as it were, so quickly arrive at an opinion, they become materialists if they give themselves up wholly to the external knowledge of Nature, according to the intentions of some of their contemporaries. But it is also possible to do something else. In addition to that which physics, chemistry, mineralogy, botany, geology, biology, offer, in addition to that which these sciences teach, we may also direct our attention to what we do in the physical laboratory, to our behaviour during an experiment; we may watch carefully how we behave in the chemical laboratory and what we do there; we may watch the way in which we investigate plants, animals, and their evolution.

Goethe's knowledge of Nature is chiefly based upon the fact that he has deeply studied the way in which others have come to their knowledge. The greatness of Goethe depends upon this very fact, namely, that he has deeply occupied himself with the way in which others have attained to their knowledge. And it is very, very significant to penetrate really into the essence and spirit of an essay by Goethe, such as “The Experiment as Mediator between Object and Subject”. Here we may see how Goethe carefully follows the way in which phenomena of Nature are handled. What we may call the method of investigation, this is something which he has studied with the greatest attention. If you read my Introduction to Goethe's Natural-Scientific Writings you will find what great results Goethe has reached by thus pursuing the natural-scientific method.

In a certain way, that which Goethe has done can be developed further for the achievements of the 19th century and up to the 20th century ... but Goethe was no longer able to do this.

I therefore state: Two things are possible. Let us keep to this, to begin with. We remain by the results which natural science supplies, or else we investigate the attitude needed in order to arrive at these natural scientific results. Let us keep to what we have said in regard to the knowledge of Nature; let us now observe the human striving after knowledge from another standpoint.

You know that beside natural science there is also a spiritual knowledge; in the form of Anthroposophy, the knowledge of man, we may pursue cosmology, anthropology, etc., in such a way that they lead to the kind of results described, for instance, in my Occult Science. There, we may find positive knowledge pointing to the spiritual world. Just as we obtain positive knowledge in natural science, in mineralogy, geology, etc., so we have, here, a positive knowledge referring to the spiritual world. In our anthroposophical movement it was particularly important for me to spread also this kind of positive knowledge concerning the spiritual world in the various books which I have written. Now we may also tackle things in such a way that we observe chiefly the way in which these things are done, and do not merely aim at obtaining knowledge. We observe how a person describes something, how he rises from external observation to inner observation; how he arrives to a higher spiritual conception, not through scientific investigations in the laboratory, in the clinic, in the astronomical observatory, but through his inner soul-development, along a mystical path. This would be parallel to the observation of the natural-scientific method, of the handling, of the way in which things are done. Also here we have this twofold element: to watch the results, and to watch the way in which our soul comes to these results.

Let us take hypothetically something which may seem rather paradoxical. Let us suppose that someone were to pursue the natural-scientific methods, like Goethe: he will certainly not become a materialist, but will undoubtedly accept a spiritual world-conception. An infallible way of overcoming materialism in our modern time is to have in insight into the natural-scientific methods of investigation. In the natural-scientific sphere, men become materialists only because they do not observe, because they insufficiently observe the way in which they carry on their investigations. They are satisfied with results, with what the clinic, the laboratory, the observatory supply. They do not progress as far as Goetheanism, i.e. the observation of their manner of research; for those who allow themselves to be influenced by the natural-scientific manner of contemplating the world and of handling things in order to reach knowledge, will at least become idealists, and probably spiritualists, if they only proceed far enough.

If we now try to avoid reaching the positive results of spiritual science, if we find it boring to enter into the details of spiritual science, and only like to hear again and again how man's soul becomes mystical, if we concentrate our chief attention upon the methods leading to the spiritual sphere, this will be the greatest temptation for really becoming materialists. The greatest temptation for becoming materialists is to ignore the concrete results of spiritual science and to emphasize continually the importance of mystical research, mystical soul-concentration, and the methods of entering the spiritual world.

You see this is a paradox. Those who observe natural science, natural research, become spiritualists; those who disdain to reach a real spiritual knowledge and who always speak of mysticism and of how spiritual knowledge is gained, are exposed to the great temptation of becoming more than ever materialistic. This should be known to-day. We cannot do without the knowledge of such things.

To-day we have monistic societies. Those who give themselves the air of leaders in these monistic societies spread a very superficial world-conception. They condense the external materialistic results of natural science to a superficial world-conception. This is so easy for modern men who do not wish to make a great effort, who prefer to go to the “movies” rather than to other places, and consequently prefer to accept a kind of cinema-science—for materialism is nothing else—they prefer this to something which must be worked out inwardly. These leaders of monistic societies therefore supply a superficial materialism. Undoubtedly they are, at least for a time, temporarily noxious creatures, for they spread errors. It is not good if they flourish, for of course they turn the heads of people in a materialistic way. Nevertheless they are the less dangerous elements, for to begin with they are generally honest people, but this honesty does not protect them against this spreading of errors; however, they are for the most part frankly honest and their errors will be overcome. They will only have a temporary significance.

But there are other people who systematically, knowingly, refuse to lead man towards the concrete positive results of spiritual-science. Indeed, they nourish the aversion which exists to-day through a certain love of ease, the aversion of penetrating into the positive concrete results of spiritual science. You know that the things described in my Occult Science must be studied several years if we wish to understand them, they are not comfortable for a modern man, who may indeed send his son to the university, if he is to become a chemical scientist; nevertheless, if he is to recognize and grasp heaven and earth in a spiritual way, he expects him to do this in a twinkle, at least in one evening, and from every lecture on the super-sensible worlds he expects to have the whole sum of cosmic wisdom. Concrete results of a positive spiritual research are uncomfortable for most men, and this aversion is made use of by certain personalities of the present time who persuade men that they do not need these things, that it is not necessary to pursue the positive concrete details of spiritual facts. “What is this talk of the higher hierarchies which must first be known? What is this talk of Saturn, Sun, Moon, Earth, Jupiter, Venus, Vulcan etc.? All this is unnecessary.” They will tell you: “If you concentrate deeply, if your soul becomes quite mystical, you shall reach the God within you”. They will tell you these things, give general indications on the connection of the material and the super-sensible world. They nourish man's aversion to penetrate into the concrete spiritual world. Why do they do this? Because apparently, apparently they wish to spread a spiritual mentality, but in reality they aim at something else: Along this path, more than ever, they seek to produce materialism. For this reason the leaders of the monistic societies are less harmful. But the others who so often spread mysticism to-day, and who always speak of all kinds of mystical things, they are those who truly foster materialism, who foster it in a most refined way. They put into the heads of men that one or the other way leads into the spiritual world, and they avoid speaking about it concretely. They chiefly speak in general phrases and if they remain victorious they will undoubtedly succeed in making the third generation entirely materialistic. To-day, the more certain and also more refined way leading into materialism is to transmit mysticism traditionally, a mysticism which despises to penetrate into positive spiritual-scientific results. Many things which appear to form part of the spiritual literature of to-day foster materialism far more strongly than, for instance, the books of Ernst Häckel.

You see, these things are uncomfortable to hear, because in setting them before men we strongly appeal to their power of discernment, but men do not wish to listen to this appeal to their power of discernment. They are much more satisfied if every kind of mystical nonsense stimulates an inner lust of the soul. This is why there are so many opponents, particularly of those efforts which to-day honestly pursue spiritual life by disdaining to approach men with a shallow mysticism of a general nature. True spiritual science arouses opposition. In the present time there are numerous people and communities who do not in any way wish that a true spiritual regeneration and elevation should take hold of humanity, and who make use of the fact that materialism is undoubtedly festered if they speak to men of mysticism in general terms. They make use of this fact. For this reason they wage war to the knife where they encounter honest paths which are meant to lead into spiritual science.

I have thus characterized an extensive literature which exists to-day. In reality everyone who takes up a mystical book, no matter of what kind, should appeal strongly to his own judgment. This is strictly necessary. For this reason we should not be led astray by the fact that the many pseudo-mystical scribbles of our present time seem to be so easily accessible. Of course, people will easily understand us if we tell them, for instance: “You only need to penetrate deeply into your inner being and God will be within you; your God whom you only find by treading your own path; no one can show you this path because every other man speaks of another God”, or similar stuff. To-day you will find this in many books, and it is described in a most tempting and misleading manner.

I would like you to take to heart these things very deeply. For that which is to be reached through our anthroposophical movement can only be reached through the fact that you are at least a small number of people who strive to cultivate the characterized power of discernment; it would be fatal for humanity if no effort were made to develop this power of discernment. To-day we must try to stand firmly on our feet, if we do not wish to lose our foothold in the midst of the confusion and chaos of the present. We may often ask to-day after the cause of so much confusion in humanity. But we can almost touch these causes. We may find them in insignificant facts, but we must be able to judge these little facts on the right way.

It is uncomfortable to see this immediately, in the many forms in which it exists on all sides. Many grotesque paradoxes can be found not only in rather loathsome places, but also in the modern life of humanity. They undoubtedly exist also in the modern life of humanity. And it is necessary to-day to strive to obtain a clear understanding, an understanding as sharp as a blade, if we wish to gain a firm foothold. This is the essential thing.

In some of the lectures I have recently held here I have dealt from several aspects with the now urgent, burning social question. Everyone who does not sleep through the events that weave themselves into his life, can be aware that this so-called social question has long been, and continues to be, an urgent and burning one for all mankind. From lectures I have held here and also from extracts of some given publicly by me in different parts of Switzerland, it can be seen how far in man's modern necessities of life, and in his most recent development, this social question has taken a definite form, a most incisive form, for life. In our Anthroposophical Movement, therefore, it behooves us to arrive, from our point of view, at a judgment about human destiny especially in regard to the social question, a judgment which in a way possible to us could be put into actual effect.

For a considerable time certain of our members have endeavoured to make their powers of use in our difficult times. Many things have been considered and put under review. Naturally for each of us it is possible to intervene in affairs only in the way his fate, his karma, and his position in life allow. As a result of the various aspirations among us, the following has now evolved. Three well-known members, who set themselves the special task of working in Stuttgart to meet the demands of modern life, Herr Mott, Dr. Bock, and Herr Kühn, came to me early in February and decided to put into practice, as far and as suitably as possible, what we have been able to learn from our world-outlook and conception of life. When we are dealing with a matter not of mere consideration but of practical application, the question can only be what at a definite point of time is suitable, what answers the purpose, what in a certain relation is the fitting thing with which to begin. If one does not make a suitable beginning one will rush in where angels fear to tread and, as a rule, accomplish nothing. For us at the present moment it is a matter of doing something in accordance with what has gone before, something the hard-pressed German people will find justified. In the events of the present day, above all appears one thing that is most significant—the existence of a deep gulf between the classes of men. On one side of this gulf stand the circles that have hitherto more or less led men's destiny; on the other side, the proletariat pressing forward with the reality of their social claims. The proletariat, it is true, appears to the observant in two forms, the workers themselves, and their leaders. I have often shown here how all the thoughts, aspirations and impulses in the heads of the leaders, by the help of which they gain their influence over the workers, are fundamentally a legacy from the middle-class thinking of the previous century. We have spoken of this here from various points of view, and sought to confirm it.

Now one of the most significant phenomena is this deep gulf between the two human groups. In recent days this has been clearly visible to those who follow the history of the times; on the one side Paris, where the standpoint of the formerly leading circles of mankind prevails, where man's destiny and that of the present time are dealt with; on the other side, Berne with its Conference in which lives everything that is divided from the other by the deep gulf. Whoever has carefully followed what has issued from Paris and what on the other hand has been attempted in Berne, at the socialist Congress, could not but confess that the essential thing, the significant and lasting thing, that will make itself felt in human evolution, is not the result of what is thought and hoped for in Paris or Berne, but the fact that in these two places two such very different social languages have been spoken. To be really honest one has to confess that here we have two totally different languages, languages up to now mutually incomprehensible.

On due consideration this significant phenomenon may strike everyone as justifying what I have so often said here, namely, that if we are to understand these things and share in the working out of possible solutions, many root causes must be looked for that are deeper than those sought today by either side. Time and again we have the opportunity of seeing what I referred to two days ago in a public lecture at Basle—that the social question, the social movement, is already an actual question, a question of present events for a great part of civilised mankind, in as deeply decisive a way as anything in the history of mankind. It presents itself in this way to all those of insight. And how often have I pointed out here that the deeper causes are to be found only through those considerations of reality that result from the Movement here for Spiritual Science, Anthroposophy—the deeper causes also for the social study of life and of things.

At the beginning of the year [ Note 1 ] I pointed out something I believe to be significant, namely, that today it is possible for mankind to be thoroughly pessimistic not just from emotional reasons but on actual social grounds. At the time, I read to you an excellent article by a man [ Note 2 ] who in this way is really able to estimate social matters. I have told you that it is profitable to think pessimistically only when one is not conscious of the other side of the fact—that help can be found by turning to the spirit. For that, a consciousness must be cultivated more and more that there is only ground for belief in destructive forces, which can produce terrible results in the coming decades, if men refuse to turn to the consideration of the realities arising from Spiritual Science. Naturally we do not mean by this the dogma of some spiritual movement or other, what we mean is an appeal to any forces of the spirit that alone can heal and help at this critical juncture in human evolution.

Thus, in a particular way, because it is not called forth arbitrarily but by observation of the forces of the times, the spiritual knowledge of Anthroposophy becomes in the anthroposophical members the needed healing power in the highest sense. It is not indeed the programme of one individual or of several individuals, but the result of observing what the spiritual leadership of the world dictates as necessary for mankind's present progress. It is on that account only that we can speak of Spiritual Science, of Anthroposophy, otherwise it would obviously be presumptuous. But what springs from true modesty need not be deterred when making itself felt, by the reproach of the presumptuous.

What has come from Paris can be said to be in keeping with an attitude towards life that in the last four-and-a-half years has led ad absurdum. From Berne has streamed what seems salvation to many, but has originated in an insufficiently deep source. From Paris there flows what occasions fear in almost all mankind; from Berne was meant to stream what in a great number of men can arouse hope and belief. And these two things speak quite different languages; there is no possibility of mutual understanding across the abyss. That will come only from the soul's inner appeal to Spiritual Science.

From such impulses arose the thought first at least to speak to the understanding of part of mankind. For it is a question of understanding. I have continually emphasised that in our social chaos we shall make no headway until we succeed in our appeal to the understanding of a sufficiently large number of men before instincts become too uncontrolled. This is what inspired my lectures in Zurich, Berne and Basle. Recently, various people with whom I have talked have given frequent opportunity for discussing how to approach the understanding and whether it be possible to discover the way before there is complete disaster? Now the latter question is one that cannot be raised by anyone who thinks in realities. For anyone thinking in realities does not speak with hypotheses about what is possible or not possible, but seizes on what he considers necessary to be done. When one one sets out on some road, a first step has to be taken; and we should not think, when the first step seems incompatible with the desired goal, that this step is useless. On a long road the first step can only take us a very short way. When going towards a specified goal it is first simply a question of not going in the wrong direction, either to right or left of the goal. Secondly, having once started on, the path, it is a question of having the will to keep to it and not to stumble against anything either left or right. If we would take our stand on realistic ground, we must also be in touch with what is happening at the time, what is already there, and not build castles in the air. Our though must be linked with something showing that from a certain direction a real stream is flowing. The first step may often seem most unfortunate, and only after a time perhaps turn out to be otherwise.

Now the three men previously named—Herr Mott, Dr. Boos, Herr Kühn, have discussed this matter with me. Since a spiritual appeal is to be made to the understanding of mankind, it must first be asked where anything of the sort has been seen to have an effect on men's thinking. You may remember an appeal made to the so-called world of culture, issued by ninety-nine German personalities, for the most part professors, or so I believe. Judged from the point of view of reality and not of emotion, this appeal can only be considered very clumsy. Yet for the most part they were professors: The appeal made an impression, however, and influenced thought in an unfortunate way. And it still haunts us. Being in a certain sense a reality it was a reality that had a worse effect than many others for it set waves in motion.

This makes one wonder how it might be in the present urgency to send out an appeal in contrast to this untimely set of antiquated notions, an appeal to man's understanding, arising out of the real conditions of modern human life. First, arising out of the facts themselves, an appeal to the German people, who have experienced the fate of seeing swept away the whole framework of a State in which they had hoped to realise their appointed task. They should be appealed to in a way to make them see that facts are speaking to them and not just a collection of words or some particular opinion or idea. Whereas perhaps the greater part of mankind would be loath to listen as long as old forms still remain, it can be assumed that the Germans would be more likely to listen, because no longer able to remain on the old ground they must perforce seek out a new basis for their life's task. For men are like that; so long as anything of the old remains—when it is not just a matter of clothes—they will unquestioningly hold firmly to it, unconscious of any sign that this is no longer possible. No one believes what a part love of comfort plays in the inner life of man.

Out of these thoughts I have composed a sort of Manifesto, and imagine it may be listened to by those souls who, where our own particular cultural questions are concerned, can be brought to an understanding based on reality. Above all I hope it may be understood by those Germans who are intelligent; to these it is addressed. But I mean it to be read by the enemies of Germany also, as something that has been considered and found fit by the people of Germany to be translated into reality. I thought of the ninety-nine signatures; if another ninety-nine of the Germans of the old Germany and of the old Austria can be found, and if the ninety-nine could perhaps be increased by a few personalities having an understanding of the present necessities of life—people in neutral countries, in Switzerland for example,—then something positive might be done in contrast to the former negative undertaking of the ninety-nine.

I beg you to understand me aright. This is first and foremost an appeal to the German people. But it is thought that what will be discussed in this form among the Germans themselves should be heard by the whole cultural world. I shall read this appeal here. The ideas will be known and familiar to you, since we have often discussed them. It is not meant to give advice, but it should show people that there is a way and how this way may be found. Certainly the presentation can be criticised as too short. But it is not a question of a textbook, it is an indication that there is something within mankind that can be of help.

The Appeal is addressed: “TO THE GERMAN PEOPLE AND TO THE CULTURAL WORLD”

The German people believed the structure of their empire, set up half a century before, to be secure for an unlimited time. At the outbreak of this catastrophic war, in August 1914, they saw this structure firmly established and imagined it would prove invincible. Today they see only its ruins. After such an experience must come reflection, heart-searching. For this experience has shown that the thoughts prevailing for half a century and more, especially those holding good over the war years, to have been tragically misleading. The question necessarily, arising in the souls of the German people is: where lie the reasons for this tragic error? This question must promote inner reflection in souls, and on their power for such reflection depends the very survival of the German people. Their future depends upon how far they are able to consider the question in all seriousness: How did I fall into this error? If today they face this question, the knowledge will dawn on than that, half a century earlier they founded a realm but omitted to set it the tasks arising from the essential nature of the German people. The realm was set up. In its early years all efforts went to the adjustment, as far as life allowed, of demands remaining over from the old tradition and yearly arising from new needs. Later men went on to confirm and increase their outer predominance in material strength. With this they combined measures concerned with the social claims born of the times, measures that certainly took into account the needs of the day but lacked the larger aims which should come from knowledge of the evolutionary forces to which modern man must turn. Thus the realm was established in a world-connection that lacked a real goal to justify its survival. The course the catastrophe of the war took has revealed this in a tragic way. Until the very outbreak of hostilities the world outside Germany could not see in the conduct of the realm anything to suggest that its rulers were fulfilling a world mission of historic import, not to be lightly swept aside. The failure of the rulers to find such a mission has necessarily given rise in the non-German world to the opinions that to those of insight have been the deeper grounds for the German downfall.

For the German people infinitely much now depends upon their impartial judgment of this state of affairs. In misfortune there must arise the insight which, in the last fifty years, has not been willing to show itself. Instead of the feeble thinking about day-to-day demands, a greater impulse must arise towards an outlook on life that with vigorous thought strives to understand the forces at work in evolution, and devotes itself to these with courageous will. There must be an end to the petty desire to sweep aside as unpractical idealists all those who pay heed to evolutionary forces. So too must cease the pride and presumption of those who imagine themselves to be practical people, who through their narrow vision in the guise of the practical have brought about disaster. Heed must be paid to what the truly practical men—decried as idealists—have to say about the present requirements of evolution.

The ‘practical’ men in all directions have for a long time seen that quite new human demands are being made, but they have tried to fit them within the frame of ordinary traditional thinking end organisation. The economic life of the day has produced demands that private initiative seems incapable of satisfying. One class of men consider it necessary that private enterprise should in individual spheres be transferred to companies; and this would be carried out wherever it appeared profitable according to the outlook on life of this particular class. The drastic transference of all individual work to associations became the aim of another class who, through the development of modern economic life, have no interest in retaining the handed-down aims of private persons.

In all the endeavours in connection with the modern demands of mankind up till now, there is something in common. They press for the socialisation of private undertakings, and count on the latter being taken over by the community (State, Commune) that has sprung from conditions having nothing to do with modern demands. Or men think in terms of newer associations, such as companies, that are nevertheless not formed in complete accordance with these new demands but copy old forms,out of traditional habits of thought.

The truth is that no associations formed in the sense of these old habits of thought can take up what one would like to see accepted. Prevalent forces press towards recognition of a social structure of mankind having something quite different in view from what is customary. Until now the social communities have for the most part been formed out of man's social instincts; the task of our time is to penetrate the forces of these instincts with full consciousness.

The social organism is membered in the same way as the natural organism. And as the natural organism must manage its thinking through the head and not through the lungs, so in the social organism the membering into systems must be such that no system can take over the task of another; all must work together but maintain its own independence.

The economic life can thrive only in developing as an independent member of the social organism in accordance with its own laws and its own forces, and avoids creating confusion in its structure by allowing itself to be absorbed by another member, the political member, of the social organism. The member that works politically must have a completely independent existence alongside the economic life, just as in the human organism the breathing system exists alongside that of the head. Their mutual work cannot be carried on beneficially if the two systems are under a single set of laws and administration; each must have its own, working, however, in a living way with the other. For the political system must destroy the economic life if it wants to take it over, and the economic system loses its forces of life when it becomes political.

To these two members of the social organism must be added a third, completely independent and formed out of the possibilities of its own life. This member is all that is produced spiritually, in which the spiritual part of the two other spheres also have a share. The spiritual part must be given over to them by the third member that is provided with its own laws and administration, but this spiritual part cannot be governed nor influenced by the other spheres more than member organs of a whole organism are influenced by one another.

Already today what has been said here to be necessary for the social organism can be quite scientifically substantiated and developed. Here there can only be given the guiding principles for all those who would follow up what is necessary.

The establishment of the German Empire happened at a time when these necessities were first appearing to modern humanity. Its Government did not understand how to give the Empire a task through insight into these necessities. This insight would alone have given it the right inner structure, it would also have given its foreign policy a competent direction, and enabled the Germans to live in common understanding with other peoples.

Insight must now ripen out of misfortune. We must develop the will for a social organism that is possible. It is not a Germany that no longer exists that should have to face the world outside, but a spiritual, political and economic system in its representatives must have the will to negotiate as independent delegations with those who have cast down that Germany which has been made into an impossible social form through the confusion of the three systems.

One fancies one can hear the ‘practical men’ becoming eloquent over the complexity of what has been said and finding it troublesome even to think about the working together of three corporate members. This is because they have no wish to know of the real demands of life, preferring to fashion everything according to the easier demands of their own thinking. They must come to see that they must accommodate themselves in their thought to the claims of reality or they will have learnt nothing from misfortune and in what arises further, will go on repeating the past ad infinitum.

While I was lecturing in Zurich, Basle and Berne, Herr Mott, Dr. Boos and. Herr Kühn were busy in Germany obtaining signatures for the Appeal. And in Austria others were similarly employed.

So far, although it is only a short time since we began, we can be well satisfied with our progress. For we have an Appeal as well supported as the former unfortunate one. And in the lectures recently given in Zurich—held there because Switzerland is the pivot for the connections of the civilised world—my object was to show that here and there people were to be found whose understanding was ripening. Thus, naturally it was important to learn the results before the last Zurich lecture. By 11th February I could make the happy announcement that about a hundred names had been collected, exclusive of those in Switzerland and Vienna. The news came from Germany where our fiends had been working everywhere, in a suitable way, to make this thing a reality. At the same time I received the following telegram from Vienna: “By midday 11th, 73 signatures, more certain tomorrow”. And on the following day: “Total 93 signatures”. That could be announced from Vienna, and more signatures were reported later. Results so far have been satisfactory. What we need next will be to find among them a number of signatures of well-known personalities capable of making the Appeal public, so that it is seen by those it concerns. For in a case of this kind much depends upon this. It actually concerns everyone today. And it may indeed be said that in the subconscious of man's soul something is calling upon him to understand such an affair as this. As I have told you in the course of these lectures, the idea appearing in this form is no new one to me. At the time when this catastrophic war was taking a decisive turn, I tried to help, on this necessary impulse towards reality wherever it came to my notice. I have described to you how this took place. I told those who had to do with the matter that this is not just a programme, not just an ideal, but that it should be considered as something having evolutionary force for modern mankind, something that certainly will be made a reality in the next ten, twenty or thirty years. It is not a question whether it is realised but solely how it is realised. I said to many of these people: You now have the choice either of having recourse to reason and of bringing about something through that, or of undergoing cataclysms and revolutions. It did not take long for people to be convinced that this was no false prophecy. It is hard, however, for the easy-going man of today to find the way from a certain understanding to that courage in life which, in accordance with his situation, is necessary for him to carry on the matter into the realm of reality.

Here in Switzerland, too, several signatures have already been obtained. We have always to consider here that in the first part of this Appeal something is said of the necessity for the German people to reflect about themselves and the errors in which they have been implicated. Thus, it has been said that it is impossible for the Swiss to give instructions across the frontier to the Germans. I do not believe that today we should still think like that. Before 1914 such things might have had a certain significance as old mummified thought, but now they have lost that significance. In these times the narrow-mindedness that comes from judging on national grounds must cease. The misfortunes of the last four-and-a-half years should have taught men this. Today even in Switzerland one should be able to think differently from the way one did four-and-a-half years ago. For here, too, something should have been learnt if thinking is to correspond to the picture we get by following the last four-and-a-half years with a little insight. They really appear like centuries which have been poured over mankind. And it seems most remarkable that people today have been willing to set up a new world-order, a new map of Europe, out of old national prejudices of a former age, or out of mummified thought, which really by 1914 should have come to an end. This map-building in Europe will be very quickly upset by other forces, the only ones with power at the present time and the only determining forces for what is called politics, that is, the social factors. For today all the rest is a mask. That, however, is the reality. The Europeans will very greatly deceive themselves if they form their judgments and criticisms out of ancient mummified, thinking.

Of course the objection can be made—I myself could easily give you a whole catalogue of objections—that with this impulses are given to all the States; that this can only come to pass when all States make a beginning. No! One single so-called State can make a beginning; it is indeed so, one single State can begin. And the beginning once made, the State will have done something for all mankind. It is indeed a misfortune for the German people that its Empire should have been set up at the start of more modern history, when at the time of its foundation the necessity already existed for the Empire to be given this as its task. And because the Empire did not accept this task it has never been understood why it should have any place in the world. Had it undertaken the task everything would have happened differently, for then men would have had before their very eyes the conditions of their existence and seen this existence justified.

Today people make their decisions out of mummified thoughts. There are many in Europe who cannot free themselves from mummified thinking and today regard the world-famous personality, Wilson, as a savior—perhaps out of some fear, it is difficult to express it. Nevertheless, if people should think without condemning Wilson, and put their question on a basis of fact, they must ask themselves why he has become such an influential man in his own country. This is because he is against all other Parties, and out of sound American instinct has carried out a policy utterly opposed to that of a great part of Europe. A great part of Europe wants to steer towards a community, the politics of a social community, in which the individual forces of liberty will go under. Wilson owes his election and his influence entirely to the circumstance that as an American democrat he has contributed to the release of the individual forces in economic life.

Let us suppose that Europe realised the ideal of Bolshevism, the ideal of the Berne social democracy, which means the social democracy of the Socialist Congress. What would be the consequence should these people achieve what they are dreaming of? Europe would take on a form so that despite every national prejudice all free forces would of necessity flood over into free America, where Wilson has become great by means of his opposite policy. Between Europe and America terrible competition would have to arise, making it impossible for anything to happen but pauperism in Europe and wealth in America—not from any injustice but out of the foolishness of European social politics. That would be the shape of things if Europeans do not, in accordance with their task, interpret and bring to realisation the social forces so that they meet the demands of a healthy social organism.

In this Appeal we have not to do with something merely thought out, but we are indicating forces everywhere present in what is reality, forces that must be brought to realisation, without which the fate not only of Germany and Austria but of all Europe can be simply a fall into poverty, suffering and alienation. from the spirit. We are living in serious times from which we cannot escape by trivial thinking. In men there lives something that attracts them to what is said in this Appeal, something that can already be observed. Because this is so, because one can hope to find the way to the hearts and souls of men, we are seeking now to reorganise what, as I said, was a necessary form to be sought during the catastrophe of the war, into the form necessary for present-day conditions.

I only hope no one thinks that this kind of Appeal has a significance that is absolute. I spoke of this to someone—concerned with it later—in January, 1918, as it was then drafted, and ended by saying: This can of course take on many different forms according to the different conditions prevailing at the time. It has nothing to do with a theory, nor a programme, nor an ideal, but with what has been thought out of reality. I said further that because the thought comes out of reality, for me it is nothing Utopian. Utopians who set up their programmes imagine everything to be bad that is not carried out according to their plan. It does not strike me at all in this way. It may happen, for example, that such a matter touches men's souls, and because they consider it practical they begin to put it into practice. And today it can be said quite clearly that a beginning has been made to put it into a practical form, suitable for life everywhere. I can quite well imagine that nothing may remain of all I have said here and in the lectures in Zurich, Berne and Basle, but that everything will take on a different form. For anyone who thinks in realities it is not a matter of his forms and phrases being put into practice, but that they should somewhere be laid hold of by reality. Then it will soon be seen what becomes of it. Perhaps it will go another way, there is always that possibility, but it is certain that the result must be in conformity with the conditions. For it is not any abstract ideal, any programme striven for, but simply a seizing hold of the forces of reality. What we are concerned with here should be as far removed as possible from all fantasy, from all dogmatising. Therefore I was much astonished when a well-known personality, whose signature one of the three friends mentioned above had undertaken to procure, let it be known that he would have thought, in making the appeal, I should have addressed it more to men's spirit, and went on to say that mankind's salvation could only come by their finding the way back to the Spirit.

Thus people want one always to be repeating spirit, spirit, spirit! But that is not what is of importance; what matters is that the Spirit should be shown and proved able really to give form to the facts. They are fundamentally dangerous who keep on speaking of the spirit without giving any indication of its reality; for they refer to it simply in the sense of an ideology. We have reason to be thankful that in the midst of our society personalities have been found with understanding, active understanding, at what is aimed at here, so that they will also actually do something. One hears constant echoes of this.

Our friend, Dr. Boos, after in my last lecture in Zurich I had referred to the results of our Appeal, issued an appeal on his own account that, from among the audience, people willing to take a practical part in this matter should come forward and give their addresses. The result of that evening, too, was extraordinarily satisfying. There were of course objections but I could well understand them. They were, however, of a nature to make one see that men today do not take their stand upon reality, they are carried away by enthusiasm. And this applies precisely to those considered the most practical. Hence, at Zurich, in a lecture when speaking of enthusiasts, I gave General Ludendorf as a good modern example. That is the type, the representative, of an enthusiast, a man who may be good or bad, but to my thinking bad at understanding strategy, and in regard to everything else remote from life and all reality, having no idea of the conditions of the reality in which he should have been active. He was an abstract idealist in a way that only a socialistic utopian can be. One should pay good heed to this insane concept of the ‘practical man’ which has done such harm to mankind. This being practical, up to now in such favour, is nothing but enthusiasm carried into actual fact through brutality, an unrealistic way of thinking, and it is above all this that must vanish. What has to come must be created spiritually, and the bearer of this will be the Anthroposophical Movement.

This is what I wanted to tell you on this eventful evening of our Lecture Cycle, as something that has proceeded out of the inner being of our movement.

Notes:

1. Lecture of December 31, 1981 not translated

2. Walther Rathenau