The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Emil Bock asks for questions.

Constantin Neuhaus: Yesterday we heard that we must redeem ourselves from personal sin. How does that relate to karma? What place do forgiveness, sacramental penance have according to these premises?

Rudolf Steiner: Yesterday I distinguished the whole process that lies in redemption and in original sin. Now, in the case of forgiveness, it is not a matter of our receiving forgiveness for something. What we receive forgiveness for and what we experience in the forgiveness is, of course, included in karma if one absolutely wants to refer back to karma. I think that the two things, the deed and the forgiveness for it, are karmically connected. Of course, you would hardly assume that it can be a matter of forgiveness for which one does nothing at all. However, as soon as we talk about the church as a serious community, it can certainly be said, even with the inclusion of the karma current, that the church as such takes on certain things that the individual does in his actions, whereby the church would thus assume a kind of collective karma. Of course, in return, one belongs to the church.

It is always a little difficult to take karma as such so abstractly, because karma is something very complicated. For example, you can say that if you draw a line somewhere in life under the positive and negative deeds, that is, under the good and evil deeds, you get a certain life balance. But this life balance can be changed again immediately by one item or another. It is not at all a matter of this being a rigid balance, but rather a matter of the fact that one actually has a life balance at every moment of life. But there can certainly be items on one side or the other that simply exist because one belongs to some community that then takes them on. In the Catholic Church, it should be the case that if it claims to forgive sins, then it should take on this burden of sin collectively as a church. That is also the original meaning of the forgiveness of sins, the taking over of the burden from the individual and its collective assumption; of course, a strong sense of such responsibility is usually lacking, at least within the Roman Catholic Church.

Constantin Neuhaus: So evil is made good again?

Rudolf Steiner: Yes.

Constantin Neuhaus: Is that repentance, when I have been immoderate and then make amends through temperance, through abstinence?

Rudolf Steiner: Yes, that is possible.

Constantin Neuhaus: And to do good, I receive the strength from Christ for that?

Rudolf Steiner: I receive the strength from Christ to ensure that the general human original sin does not prevent me from having the strength [to do good]. I have no strength at all to do good in our time after the Mystery of Golgotha if I do not have this strength from Christ in relation to the original sin. I have no strength without the redemption of the original sin.

Constantin Neuhaus: And the mere weaknesses, are they not diminished?

Rudolf Steiner: If the mere weaknesses and the like were diminished, we would be disturbed in our personal development. Perhaps this will be most vividly illustrated by the following. Please do not be shocked by it. It can be examined what impression it makes on the dead - that is, on the human being who has passed through the gate of death - when he, as it then is, bears in his characteristics the consequences of his deeds on earth. This is something that, according to the Roman Catholic Church's doctrine, even extends into eternity, because Catholic clergy do indeed talk about the fact that a person has to look at his sins forever, or rather, has to suffer because of his sins.

Now this does not agree with the observation that can be made. The soul that has passed through death is indeed in this state. But when someone asks: Does the soul suffer from this? — then one is at a certain loss to answer. Suffering is there, but the soul desires the suffering, because strength comes from overcoming suffering. In this case, one is at a loss for words. One cannot say that the soul suffers, but the soul would be unhappy if it did not carry the consequences of its transgressions within it after death, and then as qualities. That which is action in life, or rather the character of action, is transformed into qualities, and these qualities are transformed in the life between death and new birth into powers, abilities, and so on, which are then inherited by the next birth. And these are transformed into unconscious desires, which then condition karma [in the next life] between birth and death. Therefore, it is also the case – and this has been asserted by a great many people who knew nothing at all about any repeated lives on earth – that if one examines one's early life from birth onwards from a certain point in life, one finds that the events [in life] are connected in such a way that one comes to one's unimportant and important acts in life through unconscious desires. One cannot overlook the fact that the power that brings one to experience this or that is identical with the unconscious desires that bring one to this or that.

A participant: I would like to ask whether original sin was necessary for the development of humanity or whether humanity could also develop freedom without original sin. Another question is whether there are beings, primeval men, who did not fall into this original sin?

Rudolf Steiner: Well, the question must actually be answered like this: You see, supersensible knowledge can never actually be pure teleology, but it is observational, and therefore the questions of the purpose of anything actually fall away in supersensible knowledge. This is something that was implied in your question: Can human beings [attain freedom without original sin], or did human beings incur original sin in order to attain freedom? — It is simply a fact that we, as the human race, have been living in the development of freedom from the 15th century onwards. This life in freedom is only possible under the influence, the inner influence of mere intellectuality, which actually has no content. Descartes' sentence “Cogito, ergo sum” is actually wrong. The sentence should actually read: Cogito, ergo non sum, I think, therefore I am not, because thinking never illuminates a reality, but on the contrary, it is the destruction of reality. Only when one can approach the I through imagination, inspiration and intuition, is there real certainty of the I. When we have become accustomed to applying the criteria of being to our environment, we must say: I think, therefore I am not. It is precisely in this non-being that the possibility of taking in something new lies. That is what lies in intellectuality. Intellectual concepts are actually empty in the face of reality; they are holes in the universe, and this is necessary for the development of freedom. You can see how intellectualism gradually emerges. It comes up through such thinkers who were still contemporaries of Nicolaus Cusanus. Then it goes further, but in particular Galileo, Copernicus, and Newton are the real intellectualists.

Now, this state of consciousness, which brings about freedom, could not be there if man were inwardly filled with a content, because this content would have to be a divine one. This divine content, which was to some extent strongest in the beginning, had to decrease first and reach its zero point here (it is being drawn), and now the intellectualistic development occurs here. This gives man freedom and, as we become more aware of it, will in turn give our soul a content. So passing through [the zero point], being thrown down into matter, which certain occultists call the 'fall into procreation', for example, was absolutely necessary for freedom. You can only say it afterwards: because human beings fell into original sin, they gained freedom. It would be quite wrong for me to hold back these things from you, even if they are slightly shocking for a present-day consciousness.

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Beings who know nothing of original sin do not partake of freedom either. Such beings are, for example, those who belong to the stages immediately above human beings. These beings have greater wisdom than human beings, and also have greater power, but they do not attain freedom, their will is always actually the divine will. Only under certain conditions, which have not yet occurred in the development of the world, but which may still occur during the development of the earth - they lie in a certain future - will these entities, which Catholicism calls angels and archangels, have the possibility of straying from their inner soul necessity, not in probability, but they would have the possibility of doing so. But nothing can be said about it because it will depend on what the whole world constellation is like. So we have beings that have nothing to do with original sin. Even those entities, which were the actual tempters of men in the course of the development of the earth, which are represented by the snake in paradise, these entities also have nothing to do with original sin, but with a sin freely committed by them. Only in man does it become original sin. It is that which is called original sin and then again freedom, that which is actually specific to man. We find that the establishment of each level of existence in the entire universe has its good meaning, so that nothing is repeated in a vertical direction. So what is in the animals is not in the human beings, and what is in the human beings is not in the angels, and so on.

A participant: I wanted to ask to what extent the Mass can be justified by the Gospel?

Rudolf Steiner: To what extent can the mass be justified by the Golgotha mystery? I have said something about this. The point is that, for anthroposophical knowledge too, the Golgotha mystery is not a single historical fact in a limited time. The beginning of the event of Golgotha lies, of course, in Golgotha, but then, in a sense, the effect is an ongoing one. This continued effectiveness of the Mystery of Golgotha has also been depicted in many different ways, I would even say in mythical ways. I am reminded of the legend of the Holy Grail, in which the blood of Christ was caught and carried on to Europe, and this suggests that the Mystery of Golgotha continues to have an effect. Now, in the sense that I explained yesterday as the development, the continuing effect of the Mystery of Golgotha is such that we actually have the possibility of gaining a real connection to the power that emanates from Golgotha as a counterweight against original sin. This is the continuing power of the Mystery of Golgotha.

As I have explained, the Catholic Church has now established the external act as that through which the efficacy of the Mystery of Golgotha is to pass. So it is simply through the successive sacrificial masses that the power of the Mystery of Golgotha is effective. If now the Mystery of Golgotha is a real power, that is, if a real power emanates from the Mystery of Golgotha, then we must indeed imagine the matter in this way: You see, if we are honest, then, according to the intellectualistic view, we would have to say to ourselves — because the intellectualistic view is the ultimate consequence of original sin —: We are facing the danger of the death of our morality in our earthly existence. For if the earth undergoes such a development as it would actually have to undergo in the scientific sense, if, that is, the earth has emerged from the Kant-Laplacean nebula and ends in heat death, then for anyone who wants to be honest, that is, who wants to accept this scientific view without reservation, the moral world ends with it. And for the person who accepts this, the fear that he will have to go through moral death, through the destruction of what he has acquired as morality, would have to arise with the scientific view. There would then be no further development of morality. That would mean approaching a great cemetery for everything moral. Therefore, we need not only the abstract power, which is often assumed by modern theology today, because it cannot save itself from the power with which science calculates. No one can merely predict that the moral power can take on what is really happening if the scientific view is right. According to the scientific view, the moral force is a force that lies purely in consciousness; that is to say, for the intellectualistic age and for the following ages, we need a force that works as a moral force and at the same time has the ability to take on physical forces. This power, which enters us through our elective affinity, as I said yesterday, with what has gone through Golgotha, with Christ as the spiritual ancestor, this power, which can take on [the physical powers], can be found by the individual human being, as I described yesterday. And it would never be found if the Mystery of Golgotha had not existed. So it is absolutely true what even individual theologians — they are white crows — have said, for example Martensen, a Dane: the Mystery of Golgotha will only be properly understood again when we are in a position to attach a real physical- earthly significance for the development of the earth, and all the dialectical arts that speak of the fact that despite all natural science, what has been attained in faith can assert itself, they are actually not true inwardly, they are only there to delude themselves. The power of the Mystery of Golgotha can only be effective when it works in man in such a way that it can take on the physical and earthly forces in man. And it can do that. And that is what is to be conveyed to Catholicism in the Sacrifice of the Mass. For the one who takes the rituals that I have discussed this morning, it is the case that in his consciousness, which develops through performing the action, in the knowledge of the processes, lies the power to encounter this Christ-power that emanates from Golgotha. That would then be the connection with the sacrifice of the Mass.

A participant: I wanted to ask whether we can find anything in the New Testament to justify the mass sacrifice.

Rudolf Steiner: Yes, you see, there is actually no such justification for the sacrifice of the mass in the testament itself. No passage of the New Testament can be used to justify the sacrifice of the mass. But the primeval sacrifice of the mass, of which the Gospels speak, is precisely the Mystery of Golgotha, and so we can only speak of how we correctly understand the words that are spoken in relation to the Mystery of Golgotha: “This do in remembrance of me,” that is, in remembrance of what takes place through the Mystery of Golgotha, and in such a way that first of all the Lord's Supper, which is an important part of the Mass, is already instituted. The Lord's Supper, however, is found in the Gospels; but the other must be sought in the necessity that arises more and more for the developing human being. In order to perform transubstantiation in a worthy manner, knowledge of the Gospel is essential, as are the sacrifice and the subsequent communion, which, by the way, is an integral part of the Lord's Supper if you will.

Hermann Fackler: I would like to ask a theoretical and a practical question. The theoretical question would be: How do we actually conceive of the origin of evil in the anthroposophical sense? We heard yesterday that the term “original sin” is actually blasphemous; the question arises: must not evil actually fall back on divine power in its ultimate origin, since this divine power needs sin to lead human beings to freedom?

Rudolf Steiner: I can only refer you to the question, I would like to say, facts. If we imagine what underlies our intellect in us, so if we imagine that the sphere of sensory perception is here (it is drawn on the board, bottom left), we would then form the concepts that reminiscent concepts radiate back into our consciousness, so that there (see drawing) would be a mirror, so to speak – you will understand the image, we do not look behind our memory down – so there below, under the memory lies the sphere of destruction. Here all natural laws dissolve, all earthly laws of the world dissolve there in the human being. There is indeed a center of destruction here, and this center of destruction must be in us just as a coating must be behind the mirror. We need this, otherwise the memory would not be there. So there must be a center of destruction in us. For something to be in the world, spiritual forces must be there to bring it about. In my anthroposophical view, I call the spiritual forces underlying this focus of destruction ahrimanic forces.

Now look at this matter from two different points of view. First, look at it from the point of view of human beings. Human beings are protected by the threshold that exists in their memory mirror; they do not normally enter this focus of destruction without further ado. But this focus of destruction must be there. The Ahrimanic forces, which are connected with these destructive forces, that is to say with the forces of dissolution for what takes place in the physical world, these Ahrimanic forces are not actually evil when one looks at the world from their aspect. For what they do, the destroying, is not at all evil in the divine plan of the world. But if a person is so abstracted that he lets the destructive forces pass through his mirror of memory, then something happens here in the physical world that has a good meaning in the next higher world, something that is only out of place in the physical world. So that what we call evil in physical life is a necessity in a higher world. It is only possible for man to let that enter his sphere of experience which, if he wants to remain an innocent person, is, as it were, out of place in it. So evil is only evil within the earthly world; and for man only the consequences of this evil remain when he now goes through the gate of death, that is, the consequences of the actions. In this way we arrive at the conclusion, which I believe is correct, that the existence of evil in the physical world can be reconciled with the cosmic scheme of things, if we realize that even the Almighty God can exist only under certain conditions.

Now you can say: evil is also present in another aspect; it is present as imperfection, as badness, as pain. But then the question is: If you study a real physiology – not the university physiology that is official at the universities, but a real physiology – then you learn to recognize that, for example, the eyes are initially built out of pain. Everything that is built into the human organism is actually first built in through pain. The eyes are built in this way, which you can find confirmed in animals. So what is a later perfection must be built up out of pain. And in subjective development, anyone who is just beginning to have a little knowledge of the supersensible will tell you that he has acquired the experiences of life through pain. He will tell you: I thank my Creator for the joys of my life, I accept them, but I would not want to do without my pains, because without pains I could never have become a knowing human being. Just as you cannot demand a triangle with four corners from an almighty God, you cannot demand the creation of any perfect things without the foundation of pains. It would be a completely abstract, external thought, perhaps no more than a mere phrase. And just as little can you demand freedom in the world without building it on the foundation of evil.

Hermann Fackler: How should a practical theologian behave in office who wants to serve the anthroposophical movement and, in the course of time, also implement anthroposophical worship? To what extent does anthroposophy desire the cooperation of the church, and how is such cooperation conceivable in such a way that, on the one hand, the purity of the anthroposophical idea is preserved, but on the other hand, the present form of the Protestant church is not virtually blown up? Finally, is it conceivable and possible for anthroposophical communities to come into contact with independent communities?

Rudolf Steiner: I must say that there is hardly any such practical difficulty on the part of the Anthroposophical movement. For, in view of the present stage of human evolution, the Anthroposophical movement must now stand on the standpoint of gaining the knowledge that can be gained and spreading it among humanity. This is a self-contained activity that can be carried out without anyone other than its opponents bothering about it. It is not something that causes difficulties for anything else. Things will admittedly become somewhat more difficult when, in the future, in about the sixth or seventh millennium of the earth's development, human beings will take on a completely different form. You will be surprised that I say this. But it is actually the case that in the sixth or seventh millennium woman will become infertile, will no longer reach maturity but remain infertile. Man will then be in contact with the earth in a much more spiritual form, then there will be direct practical activity, and then a separation between religion and anthroposophy is no longer conceivable. For as long as there is no practical activity, but only the mere dissemination of impulses and so on – or at most the dissemination of impulses such as threefolding, which of course works entirely through the ordinary channels – as long as anthroposophy must work as it does today, there is no difficulty from this side. From the point of view of the denominations, from the point of view of the old denominations and perhaps also from the point of view of the new communities to be founded, I can indeed imagine that this relationship will develop in such a way that the communities will take up from anthroposophy what they can take up, according to their subjective ability and discretion, and according to what they consider acceptable or unacceptable in principle. I can well imagine that this movement, which is to begin here, will relate to the general anthroposophical movement as a self-contained entity. They are two distinct movements, but each movement can accept from the other what it can only give for itself. Since the anthroposophical movement will have research as its primary goal, the attainment of certain supersensible results will come from the anthroposophical side, and practical religious exercise will come from the other side; and thereby the same relationship, which existed at a naive stage, will be reestablished, only indirectly, as soon as we return to the time before the Mystery of Golgotha, where there was no antagonism between religion and science. Their representatives were the same people, at least essentially, and that which one should experience religiously was expressed in forms that resulted from the corresponding research. So I can imagine that absolutely harmonious cooperation is possible. I do not believe, for example, that the splitting of communities, to which you, I believe, have pointed out, could ever come from the anthroposophical movement. I would like to say that the anthroposophical movement will remain neutral on this.

It could, of course, come about through [something like that] that precisely from the ecclesiastical or theological side, there is dissatisfaction with the previous theology and religious development; but then the religious, the theological movement would lead to disruption. The Anthroposophical Movement as such cannot lead to disruption. I cannot imagine it being otherwise. I can only point out that the Anthroposophical Movement only wants to respond to the signs of the times.

Once, I gave a lecture in Colmar on the Bible and on wisdom. Those who were present in Stuttgart will know this. There were two Roman Catholic theologians in the audience. Now, in that lecture - that was many years ago, when the excommunication of the anthroposophical view had not yet been pronounced, which is there today, that is only since 1918, so it was not all that is there today, today it would no longer be able to happen - there were two Catholic theologians in it at the time. Now, if you give a lecture on alcohol, for example, in organic chemistry, you don't immediately give a lecture on all the carbon compounds, and so the two dear Catholic theologians found nothing in this lecture on the Bible and wisdom that they could contradict with their dogmas. They then came to me and said: In terms of content, we have no objections at all, but the way you present it is only for a select few who have acquired a certain education; but we speak for all people. I said, Reverend Sir, I want to hold you to your claim that you believe you speak for all people; that may be true from your subjective point of view. Everyone will have the right to say, from their subjective point of view, that they speak for all people. But it is of no importance to the world what our subjective point of view is. Standpoints – although today people always say, “I have a standpoint,” there are as many standpoints as there are people – standpoints are actually highly irrelevant to humanity, and one should, to put it radically, be fundamentally ashamed of constantly revealing one's subjective standpoint to the world. So it's not really a matter of points of view. But it is a matter of something else, of what the signs of the times objectively demand, and here I ask you: Do all people still go to church with you today? They couldn't say “yes” there, they had to say that some do stay away. I said, “I am speaking for those who stay away from church and who also want to find the way to Christ.” The facts suggest that it is not right for you to say that you speak for all people.

So let us listen to what lies in the facts. That is precisely what must underlie anthroposophical work, and here I can only say to you: there can actually be no collision with anything that develops in dependence on or alongside anthroposophical work. If you follow the whole polemic and the whole fight against anthroposophy, one might almost say that one could become a naughty boy when one looks at all this; one always wants to say: but I didn't start it, never. You can follow it: if someone has been attacked in some way, the attacks always came from outside; just follow it historically and you will see that it is so.

Emil Bock: The question was raised as to how we should think about the state of existing churches in the future.

Rudolf Steiner: The future of the existing churches? Yes, the future of the churches truly does not depend on anthroposophy, and, I am convinced, it does not depend on what is founded here either, but on their own crisis of disintegration. I cannot help it, it seems to me that way. I am absolutely clear about one thing: according to what is active today in the depths of human development, we will have no church at all within the present civilized world within a century, unless something like what is is intended here, because all the present church constitutions and church communities have the seed of their own destruction within them, and that is a continuous, I would say, yes, really, a continuous apologizing of the church. Some give up as much as possible in an intellectualistic way – Harnack, for example, gives up Christ, which means that the essence of Christianity, in the sense of Harnack's book, is actually pure Judaism; in principle it is, despite the recognition of the love of Jesus and so on, but in principle I mean. On the one hand, we have the intellectualist endeavor to reveal as much as possible, until we actually arrive at what Dr. Geyer so aptly called the day before yesterday: It is an X and the X is actually a Nix. But what is still an X today will become a Nix, the other things cannot change that. On the other hand, we have the violent maintenance of the institution and the dogmatic relationships, for example, of the Roman Catholic Church by external power. How can such power be pushed back? You can see that happening now in the Orthodox Church in Russia. Then we have, I would say, the intermediate churches, such as the Old Catholic Church. These are human reactions against the existing processes of disintegration, human reactions which, I believe, already contain within them the germ of transformation, even if this cannot be realized immediately in every single moment. But the existing churches – I can't say much about what they will look like, it's just going downhill on an incline, I don't have any other idea. But I think the main reasons why the majority of you are here or all are here are that the story is going downhill.

A participant: My question is intended to dispel certain concerns. It was said in yesterday afternoon's lecture that we actually only have one way to God, and that is the way of love, and that we actually cannot have the other ways, neither the way of power nor the way of wisdom. Now the question is: How can we walk this way of love? How do we get on this path of love? And here I turn to the Gospels and find there how people are won for God precisely through this pure divine love. We find that it is precisely through the experience of love that people come to God; we see this in the case of the prodigal son: it is simply love that leads him back.

Now I actually have a concern, which is of course perhaps evoked in me by my Protestant past, whether or not through this cult that we are introducing, through this externality, through these many external things, which are of course all essentially justified, we do not turn away from the essential, namely from a proclamation of the gospel, that is, from proclaiming to people the love of Jesus Christ, which has descended from heaven to earth. As far as I can see at present, there is a danger that people will focus on the outward form of this cult and be distracted from the one way of love, which is kindled only by proclaiming the gospel.

Rudolf Steiner: The situation is as follows: the point is not merely to discuss such a question in the sense of theoretical concerns or in the sense of objective belief, but rather, in the way of love, the question is the practical question of the innermost life, of course. The content of the Gospels, made into mere doctrine, runs the risk of having a strong effect on people's selfishness. For man has not only the possibility of leaning towards something in love, but love is at the same time something that also does man subjective good. There is always an elevation of egoism in the experience of love, even of the most spiritual kind, and this devotion in love in a merely abstract, even if soul-abstract, form, is something that very strongly leads to ego and this is lived out in our time in the fact that actually the objective sense of responsibility is no longer strongly present in people, but people tend very strongly to the mere subjective sense of responsibility.

You see, when a representative of a religious confession like Frohnmeyer claims quite strictly, like an absolutely ascertainable truth, that over there [at the Goetheanum] a figure of Christ is being set up, with Luciferic features at the top and animalistic features at the bottom, that is an objective untruth. One could hear from a university professor of theology from a neighboring university: Yes, Frohnmeyer said that to the best of his knowledge and belief. One wants to refrain from convincing oneself of the reality of what one claims. Just think how different the path of humanity would be if it had not taken this strong tendency towards subjectivity, which always invokes the best of knowledge and belief and spares itself the test.

We cannot accept what is invoked in the abstract as divine love if it does not have a counterweight in something like cult. But there are other dangers as well. It is not my intention to create a backwards history, but I just want to point this out. You see, if Protestantism, which is the defining consciousness of modern times, had not abolished worship, had not done away with everything cult-like – which it has – then we would not have materialism either. Materialism is the necessary corollary of the removal of all cultic forms. In religious matters, the human being lives in the community, and so this certainly has something to do with the modern Protestantism that has increasingly come to refer people to divine love, as it has been done, for the development of the human being, which is linked to strong egoism. And with something else. Isn't it true that nothing can be done about facts? So anyone who is grounded in anthroposophical spiritual science knows about preexistence as well as postexistence. And now I would like to point out that in our practical religious practice, even for advanced Protestants, only the post-mortal existence is actually present. The other has no practical significance anywhere. It has no significance for the practical religious practice of pastoral care. But now I ask you – perhaps this is sometimes necessary – to also look at how the matter then lies in the sermon in a great many cases. Try to visualize how much of the sermon is devoted to maintaining faith in immortality by counting on that selfishness that simply does not want the soul to perish at death. Of course, you have to take that very seriously, how much the sermons rely on this egoism of not wanting to die with death, on this egoism of people for the preservation of the belief in immortality. In this, there is practically such a one-sided tendency towards the abstract. The moment you go to the other side, you practically come to preexistence. You cannot base preexistence on egoism at all; you can only base it on selflessness. Egoism is absolutely indifferent to what came before birth. That is why, in our modern language, on the one hand we have a word for immortality, but on the other hand we have no word for being unborn, because the concept of immortality is inconceivable without the word immortality, just as the concept of being unborn is inconceivable without the word being unborn.

We have now arrived at such things through what you just called the Protestant past. We must get away from it. Man must again find the way to objectivity; but he can only find it spiritually and soulfully. He can find it spiritually only through cult. I can imagine that what I am saying in this way may offend Protestant minds very much. But I cannot help that. The point is that if there are difficulties, one overcomes them; many people everywhere have gone through these difficulties.

A participant: I wanted to look at the problem from a different angle, namely, you said, Doctor, in the lecture the other day that the proximity of Jesus was a cult for his disciples, and I believe that Protestantism places more emphasis on conveying a religious feeling than on the cult. And the eternal nearness that one feels is something that has the significance of cult for a Protestant, so that the outer form of a cult is the sacrament. And I wanted to ask how that which one might call inner cult, how that relates to each other.

Rudolf Steiner: It is not the case that the mediation between inner and outer cultus is precisely that the apostles had a different relationship to Christ than their successors. The inner cultus was at the same time an outer cultus. I have just tried to prove this in my book “Christianity as a Mystical Fact”, where I have endeavored to show that what happened at Golgotha had previously taken place in the form of an image or tragic action in every true mystery, so that those leading the mysteries understood these things. We cannot say that we have only an inner cultus at Golgotha, but at Golgotha there is also an outer cultus. But naturally the distinction must arise just at the time when the Christ Jesus has become invisible; then, of course, the distinction arises. For everything that will arise from the supersensible in the immediate present, which would, so to speak, be the realized mystical fact, is actually comprehended in the outer cultus, that is, only in the sense that one sees the supersensible-living in the sensual. You place the cultus facts only as supersensibly effective facts in the midst of the other conditions of the sensually effective facts. —

But perhaps that is not quite in line with your question.

A participant: I would still like to ask one more thing: I believe that the essential opinion of Protestantism is that one should think more about the life of Jesus before the Mystery of Golgotha, that one should, I do not want to say imitate him, but emulate him, to shape one's activity in the way that Christ worked on earth. Rudolf Steiner: You think that the essence of Protestantism is that one's activity on earth should be shaped in such a way that it becomes a following of Jesus?

This is a factual error and, in addition, a terrible arrogance. It is not actually Protestant, but rather it has been more like this in a current such as the saints, which found the most beautiful expression - there was already something like this - in a figure like Francis; there we are dealing with emulation. But this emulation does not correspond to the facts. Because first of all, it is impossible to emulate Christ Jesus, because it is just not possible. It is presumptuous, basically. Besides, it has no real content, because, isn't it true, a life that takes place in a physical body is a whole. You cannot imagine one act without the other, it is a whole. Every single act, every single thought has its shading from the whole, and to the Christ Jesus life belongs precisely the death on Golgotha. I cannot grasp how one can come to a concrete concept of following. It is also no longer Christian, because in the Christian sense Christ is not the model, but the helper. I ask that this be clearly distinguished: Christ is the helper. We turn to him for help, we take him in so that he can become our helper. That is humble, that is what can be. The other, basically, includes a terrible arrogance, which is on the same path as the one who said: If there were a God, how could I stand not being a god. It is the same path. I know how tempting it is to see Christ as a role model. But He is the helper that we take within us. But I can never really connect the idea that we should become like Christ Jesus Himself; in any case, it is not Christian.

Gertrud Spörri: The question has been raised many times as to what extent women's activities will develop as independent activities, and whether it will already be possible for a woman today to found and independently lead a free community.

Rudolf Steiner: I would like to answer this question in another context as well.

Constantin Neuhaus: One does not think that one could become perfect like Christ, but nevertheless Christ is also our model, and he is also presented to us as an ideal that we should imitate in the “Imitatio Christi”.

Rudolf Steiner: “Imitatio” is not the same as emulating. Imitatio is a concept that is one step lower. Imitatio Christi is certainly a possibility, but it is something else; imitatio is an emotional concept. In the sense of Francis of Assisi, you cannot understand imitatio Christi any differently, except as an emotion. It is not a mere concept. The concept of “imitatio” actually implies that we shape ourselves in our feelings so that our feelings become similar, our inner life becomes similar to the life of Christ. This is not actually the same as regarding him as a model. Of course, in abstract thinking, we do not have these sharp distinctions between becoming similar and emulating. Thus imitation of Christ is not excluded, although I would prefer to speak of imitation of Jesus rather than imitation of Christ. In this sense, one can say that one can naturally become similar to Jesus in one's human qualities. But this similarity comes to an end when the Mystery of Golgotha enters upon its final acts. How this similarity with the Mystery of Golgotha can be achieved is something I cannot understand. The Christian can become similar to Christ in that the Christ in the Pauline sense lives in him. That is the correct Christian concept, and it cannot be understood in any other way than that the Christ comes to life in him through his presence. When a person becomes similar to Christ, it is through the Pauline “Christ in me”. This is certainly the case with anthroposophy. But the anthroposophical idea, which seeks to correspond to the facts, is that we can only become similar to Christ [through] the Christ living in us. Without this idea, becoming similar would be nothing more than an illusion. You cannot form an [abstract] concept of becoming similar. The anthroposophical idea is quite certain; it also seems to me to be the correct Christian idea: if we can become similar to something, it can only be to Christ in ourselves.

One participant points out that in educating children, only the ethical example of Christ is ever shown to them and believes that it would be necessary to bring the religious personality of Christ more vividly to life for children. But the current trend of the times is to only illustrate the ethical side of Jesus' life.

Rudolf Steiner: Well, from my point of view, which is the anthroposophical one, I consider this to be a movement that leads away from real Christianity. I consider this movement to be the most dangerous one in the present day, which actually strays from Christianity, because these lessons have nothing to do with the complete history of Christ Jesus on earth. Weinel's Jesus is indeed the teacher of something, which Weinel regards as a form of Christianity, but Weinel's Jesus is not a Christ, because he has no Christ within him. So you can say, you can of course teach Weinelianism in schools, but you cannot work in the Christian sense if you take something like that as a basis.

A participant: Yes, but the central question is: What is ultimately the heart of religious education? Is it the ethical-ideal side or is it the religious? The clergy say: The heart of religious education is to place Christ at the center as the religious personality, while the teaching staff say that only this Jesus of Weinel is to be placed at the center and only the attitude of Jesus and his pure way of life.

Rudolf Steiner: Formally, there is no question that the clergy are right. The question is whether they are giving the right portrayal of Jesus if one wants to judge the matter as a whole. But that they are formally right in contrast to the materializing un-Christian nature of Weinel's Jesus, in my opinion, and also in my anthroposophical view, there can be absolutely no doubt about that.

A participant: I for one have no doubt about it, but it is a moot point.

Rudolf Steiner: The thing is, however, that I have to go back to what I have already said here. Let us assume that this ethical teaching were actually practised; we would then only address the abilities in man that come to an end with death, that do not pass through death, and as pastors we are not allowed to do that at all. Rather, we must concern ourselves with cultivating the eternal in man before all else, so that the ideal abilities can sprout. I say this as an anthroposophist. What can be given to man in an ethical way from the Weinel views is something that has to do only with man's temporal existence between birth and death; and I see nothing in this movement but an influence of our materialistic age. They wear the most diverse masks, these outgrowths of our materialistic age.

A participant: How should we understand the words: “If anyone loves me, let them take up their cross and follow me.” This passage causes me difficulties.

Rudolf Steiner: What difficulties?

A participant: That we should follow Jesus, emulate him.

Rudolf Steiner: But precisely when this saying causes you difficulties, then this difficulty is relatively not difficult to resolve, because it is pointed out immediately what this succession should consist of: Take up your cross and follow me - then you do what you do in my interest. It does not say: Live so that your life becomes like mine. It is not commanded to emulate, but it is said: Take up your cross – which in this context means everything that one has to bear in life – take up your cross and follow in all patience. That does not mean emulating, but regarding Christ as a guide. A leader is a helper in the right direction. These distinctions must be very delicately handled. The leader in the right direction is the one who helps you to go the right way. But one cannot say that Christ said: “Seek, by following me, the Way, the Truth and the Life,” but rather, “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.” And Paul was right to add: We find the Christ only when he is in us. He is a helper, not a role model in the sense that one could speak of a complete role model.

The difficulty is easily resolved, and the other words you quoted were also to be understood in the ancient age as nothing other than following the leader.

A participant: Perhaps the first question can be answered in the course of the lecture. It concerns ritual and sacrament. Does ritual not actually have a subconscious effect on people? And how can this be reconciled with our present-day aspirations and attitudes, which seek to raise everything more consciously? And the other question: In what way do sacraments differ from other ritual acts? Does something objective happen in the spiritual realm here, so that Paul's words could be understood: Whoever eats [the bread] and drinks [the cup] eats and drinks judgment to himself if he does not distinguish the Lord's body from common food. Therefore many are weak and sickly among you (1 Cor. 11:29-30).

The first question is a single question, and the second question is asked from a very intellectual point of view: Doctor, you said that Harnack may be a very honest man, but he is no longer a Christian. There are so many people today who take Harnack's view and yet have a very strong inner religious life and also make a very strong religious impression. Now it is intellectually tempting to say: name is sound and smoke; can't people actually speak from an inner connection with Christ and just can't find the right word for him?

Rudolf Steiner: On the contrary, they use the wrong word. The wrong word in this case is “Christ”. They must, of course, address the real content of the matter. I have expressly said: where Harnack has the word “Christ”, simply put “God” in its place and you will get the right thing. This person has a strong religious life; I will never deny that such people can have a strong religious life and feeling, only they are not Christians. If one wants to be a Christian, one must profess Christ. And it is not true that Harnack says that Easter faith originated in the Garden of Gethsemane, but what really happened there is none of our business. That is not acceptable. What Harnack is doing is a misapplication of the word 'Christ'. That is what I said.

A participant: People do not have a differentiated sense.

Rudolf Steiner: They have no differentiated feeling. But one must be clear about that. One can say: Christianity is antiquated, we have no need to distinguish the Christ from the Father, we can go back to a mere monotheism that does not distinguish between Father and Son. Then one can hold the position, but then one must not make the claim in intellectualism to be a Christian.

A participant: We have a strong aversion to the view that says: a person can be whatever they want, as long as they are a believer.

Rudolf Steiner: Then we might just as well let go of Christianity; we don't need Christianity, we'll introduce Brahmanism or Buddhism. Christianity makes it necessary to have the differentiation between the Father and the Son. Go to the Russians in the East and you will have the strong experience that father and son are differentiated. It would never occur to a Russian to fall into Kant's error and speak about God from the point of view of ontology. Up to Scotus Eriugena, one still had this experience of the differentiation between Father and Son, then the whole history of the proofs of God's existence begins. The moment you start proving God's existence, you no longer have him. In the works of Scotus Eriugena, we still find [differentiated] views; there is no question at all – that is, in the period up to the 10th century – of there being any such undifferentiated perception of the Father and the Son. But today, what do people think of all this when they discuss whether or not the Son should be of the same essence as the Father? The real original concepts, the elementary concepts, they no longer seem to be there in Western or Central European civilization today. Read the philosophy...¹ there you have a sphere in which people have stopped at the point of Scotus Eriugena, there is still a differentiation there. But if you take the standpoint that you do not need differentiation, then, I want to say now, you can be a good Protestant, but not a Christian. I would like to discuss this in another context.

A participant: I think father and son are one?

Rudolf Steiner: You can indeed say that quite well about the relationship between yourself and your father, with relationship, let us say, to the whole family. If it is a matter of something being common in relation to the wider circle of your family, then you can say: I and my father are one, and what I do or what I bring to bear, my father also does. Therefore you cannot claim that you can lump together the two individualities, you and your father.

A participant: That is not meant substantially?

Rudolf Steiner: No, no.

A participant: I wanted to ask: What is the difference between a special experience of Christ and an experience of the Father? Because it seems to me that we can only experience Christ in the Mass; but how do we experience God the Father again?

Rudolf Steiner: This is something that should be mentioned in connection with sacramentalism. It is already contained in what I have said, but I will deal with it in context, because, as I said, the two, Father and Son, must exist specifically as two non-numerically identical perceptions. The perception of the Father must not be numerically identical to the perception of the Son.

Yes, then there would be the question of the woman's participation, but I would also ask to be allowed to answer that in the next few days, because, as I have already said personally, this question is really connected with a great many other individual questions, above all with the question: How does the woman participate? We must not only ask whether the woman participates, but how the woman participates best. And how do we get beyond the calamity that has occurred in the so-called women's issue when it comes to something as serious as this: the participation of women in male professions?

In the nineties, I had a discussion in Weimar with Gabriele Reuter that was along these lines, but for a completely different area than theology. I had to say that from a certain point of view, the whole approach to the women's issue is wrong, because women have not actually brought that into civilization and culture that they can bring in on their own, but have adopted the culture of men. They have become physicians, as medicine was established by men; they have become philologists, as philology was established by men. So women have not contributed what they can contribute in women's clothing, but they have put on trousers and thus carried out this emancipation. This is something that naturally belongs to a completely different area. We have to answer this in a broader sense; we have to be absolutely clear that women's participation must happen in such a way that women do not simply put on trousers, but that women really — you will of course understand that this is only an image — bring what can be brought in dresses, not in trousers. But I will also address this question; it is again a very profound question.

• 1. The stenographer's transcript has a gap here. In the reproduction of the Christian Community, the name “Solowjew” was inserted.

To the members who are attending today's eurythmy performance!

The poem Eleusis, which Hegel addressed to his friend Hölderlin, is associated with significant memories of the early days of anthroposophical work. Our joint work in the art of word creation began with this poem, which Marie von Sivers (Marie Steiner) recited in the first year of this work. As we are now at such an important point in relation to this art within the development of anthroposophy, I wanted to remind everyone of this fact and to express my regret that I still have to be physically absent. I wanted to send our members who are attending today's presentation our warmest thoughts.

My warm greetings are joined by my dear friend Dr. Ita Wegman, who is being kept away from me.

With all my heart
Rudolf Steiner

The following lectures were given by Rudolf Steiner to audiences attending the Fifth Congress of the Federation of European Sections of the Theosophical Society, held in Budapest between May 30th and June 12th, 1909. Those present at the lectures were therefore somewhat familiar with the background of his anthroposophical teachings. He constantly emphasized the distinction between his written works and reports of lectures that were given as oral communications and were not originally intended for print.

At the time when the following lectures were given, Rudolf Steiner was still General Secretary of the German Section of the Theosophical Society and was using the terms “theosophy” and “theosophical,” although always in the sense of the anthroposophical spiritual science presented by him from the beginning. In accordance with a suggestion he made later on, these designations have in many cases been replaced by “anthroposophy,” “spiritual science,” “anthroposophical” or “spiritual scientific,”

See GA 228

...that tomorrow a discussion will begin here that will make itself felt within the Anthroposophical Society, that there is a real desire to shape this society in such a way that there is a very lively consciousness in this society of what the fully human being should be, the fully human being who must correctly understand himself as the human being of the future. For these three are also one. And what man has been in the past, is in the present, and will be in the future, that will only be, I might say, before the divine order of the world, embrace the whole Anthropos. But it will have to be striven for in such a way that an enthusiastic, wholehearted grasp of anthroposophy leads to the right, true Anthropos, the total human being, the full human being.

DR STEINER:

My dear friends!

Once again as before we begin with the verses we have taken into ourselves:

Soul of Man!
Thou livest in the limbs
Which bear thee through the world of space
In the spirit's ocean-being.
Practise spirit-recalling
In depths of soul,
Where in the wielding will
Of world-creating
Thine own I
Comes to being
Within God's I.
And thou wilt truly live
In the World-Being of Man.

Soul of Man!
Thou livest in the beat of heart and lung
Which leads thee through the rhythm of time
Into the realm of thine own soul's feeling.
Practise spirit-awareness in balance of the soul,
Where the surging deeds
Of the world's becoming
Thine own I
Unite
With the World-I,
And thou wilt truly feel
In the Soul-Weaving of Man.

Soul of Man !
Thou livest in the resting head
Which from the grounds of eternity
Opens to thee the world-thoughts.
Practise spirit-beholding
In stillness of thought,
Where the eternal aims of Gods
World-Being's Light
On thine own I
Bestow
For thy free willing.
And thou wilt truly think
In the Spirit-Foundations of Man.

And drawing all this together in the remembrance of the Event of Golgotha which gives meaning to the whole of earthly evolution:

At the turning of the time
The Spirit-Light of the world
Entered the stream of earthly being.
Darkness of night
Had held its sway,
Day-radiant light
Streamed into souls of men.
Light that gives warmth
To simple shepherds' hearts,
Light that enlightens
The wise heads of kings.

Light Divine Christ-Sun
Warm thou our hearts,
Enlighten thou our heads,
That good may become
What we from our hearts would found
What we from our heads would direct
In light-filled
Willing.

And we imprint this into ourselves:

[Rudolf Steiner writes on the blackboard as he speaks. See Facsimile 4, Page XVI bottom.]

Light Divine,
Christ-Sun,

We imprint it in such a way that we especially relate to it the closing words, which will be spoken in their threefoldness once more tomorrow: how this Light Divine, this Sun of Christ shine forth so that like shining suns they can be heard from East, West, North, South. To this Light Divine and this Sun of Christ we relate especially the closing words which were spoken on the first day:

The spirits of the elements hear it
from
East, West, North, South:
May human beings hear it!

[As shown on the blackboard]

Light Divine
Chr.-Sun
The spirits of the elements hear it
from
E. W. N. S.
May human beings hear it!

DR STEINER: We come now, my dear friends, to the reports announced yesterday. Would Herr Maier please give his report first.

Dr Rudolf Maier, Stuttgart, speaks about ‘The Connection of Magnetism with Light’. [Note 66]

DR STEINER: It will be of the greatest importance that a truly anthroposophical method should be made customary in the different branches of scientific life by those individuals who are called to these branches within our anthroposophical circles. Indeed, seen from a certain point of view, this is of the utmost importance. If you seek the source of the great resistance of our time that has been appearing for decades against any kind of spiritual-scientific view, you will find that this resistance comes from the different branches of natural science. These different branches of natural science have developed in isolation, without any view of the world in general.

Round about the middle of the nineteenth century a general despair began to gain ground in connection with an overall view of the world. People said: All earlier overall views of the world contradict one another, and none of them has led anywhere; now it is time to develop the sciences purely on an exact foundation, without reference to any view of the world.

Half a century and more has passed since then, and now any inclination to unite a view of the world with science has disappeared from human minds. Even when scientific research itself urges an attempt to be made, it turns out to be quite impossible because there is insufficient depth in the spiritual-scientific realm.

If it should become possible for Anthroposophy to give to the different branches of science impulses of method which lead to certain research results, then one of the main obstacles to spiritual research existing in the world will have been removed. That is why it is so important for work of the right kind to be undertaken in the proper anthroposophical sense.

Today there is an abyss between art and science; but within science, too, there is an abyss between, for instance, physiology and physics. All these abysses will be bridged if scientific work is done in the right way in our circles. Therefore from a general anthroposophical point of view we must interest ourselves in these different things as much as our knowledge and capacities will allow. A scientific impulse will have to emanate from the Anthroposophical Society. This must be made evident at the moment when we want to take the Anthroposophical Society into entirely new channels.

Now, dear friends, since our stomach needs a very tiny interval between the courses of this feast of spirit and soul, we shall ask Frau Dr Kolisko to give her report in two or three minutes' time.

DR STEINER: May I now ask Frau Dr Kolisko to give her report on her special field.

Frau Dr Kolisko speaks about the biological work of the research institute in Stuttgart, ‘The Effects of Microorganisms’. [Note 67]

DR STEINER: Now, my dear friends, you have seen that quiet work is going on amongst us on scientific questions and that it is indeed possible to provide out of Anthroposophy a stimulus for science in a way that is truly needed today. But in the present situation of the Anthroposophical Movement such things are really only possible because there are people like Frau Dr Kolisko who take on the work in such a devoted and selfless way. If you think about it, you will come to realize what a tremendous amount of work is involved in ascertaining all these sequences of data which can then be amalgamated to form the curve in the graph which is the needed result.

These experiments are, from an anthroposophical point of view, details leading to a totality which is needed by science today more urgently than can be said. Yet if we continue to work as we have been doing at present in our research institute, then perhaps in fifty, or maybe seventy-five, years we shall come to the result that we need, which is that innumerable details go to make up a whole. This whole will then have a bearing not only on the life of knowledge but also on the whole of practical life as well.

People have no idea today how deeply all these things can affect practical daily life in such realms as the production of what human beings need in order to live or the development of methods of healing and so on.

Now you might say that the progress of mankind has always gone forward at a slow pace and that there is not likely to be any difference in this field. However, with civilization in its present brittle and easily destructible state, it could very well happen that in fifty or seventy-five years' time the chance will have been missed for achieving what so urgently needs to be achieved. In the face of the speed at which we are working and having to work, because we can only work if there are such devoted colleagues as Frau Dr Kolisko—a speed which might lead to results in fifty, or perhaps seventy-five years—in the face of this speed, let me therefore express not a wish, not even a possibility, but merely, perhaps, an illusion, which is that it would be possible to achieve the necessary results in five or ten years. And I am convinced that if it were possible for us to create the necessary equipment and the necessary institutes and to have the necessary colleagues, as many as possible to work out of this spirit, then we could succeed in achieving in five or ten years what will now take us fifty or seventy-five years. The only thing we would need for this work would be 50 to 75 million Francs. Then we would probably be able to do the work in a tenth of the time. As I said, I am not expressing this as a wish nor even as a possibility, but merely as an illusion, though a very realistic illusion. If we had 75 million Francs we could achieve what has to be achieved. This is something that we should at least think about.

In a few minutes I shall continue by starting to give a few indications about the idea of the future building in Dornach, indications which I shall continue tomorrow.

(A short interval follows, before Dr Steiner's lecture.)

Circular letter from Carl Unger, Stuttgart, [July 13, 1920]

Dear friends!

A few weeks ago, you received a circular letter informing you of the plan to hold a General Assembly of the Anthroposophical Society. This was accompanied by a request to indicate the likely number of participants in a non-binding way and to make suggestions for the proceedings. Today, I regret to have to inform you that this plan has had to be abandoned because the circumstances do not allow it to be pursued at present. It cannot be the intention of the Anthroposophical Society to convene a meeting that consists of the few members who “can just come” under the current difficult circumstances; our cause is too serious for that. An effective meeting is not to be hoped for under the present conditions. However, it is very important to me to take this opportunity, and precisely in view of the current circumstances, to address the situation of the Anthroposophical Society, even if only briefly today, and I ask that the following be communicated to the members of your working group, and only to them.

On various occasions during his presence in Stuttgart in June, Dr. Steiner pointed out that the work of our movement has entered a new phase of development for some time now, and that this is entirely in the closest connection with the present world situation. The Anthroposophical Society was founded on purely spiritual goals, encompassing a movement without a fixed organizational form, burdened with all kinds of legacies from the former Theosophical Society. In the period immediately following the founding of the Society, we found ourselves still in the midst of discussions about the aims and paths of the Anthroposophical Society for quite some time; even the two general assemblies that had so far been held had to serve these discussions,but they did not come to a conclusion, and indeed it was advisable to keep these matters in a certain fluidity. I myself was able to travel around a lot at the time and discuss the aims and ways, many of my lectures at that time dealt with the draft of the principles of an Anthroposophical Society written by Dr. Steiner, in which the indications of the ideal cohesion of the members are given. Unfortunately, I had to leave this preparatory work, which was intended to help prepare a healthy foundation for the Society, unfinished after the 1914 General Assembly for the sake of other work, and the affairs of the Society had to be suspended during the long war, if only for the reason that the Anthroposophical Society is only justified on an international basis.

Since then, the world situation has changed fundamentally, and the fact that it is still not possible to hold an international general assembly of our society today, 20 months after the armistice, can be seen as a characterization of the situation in a certain direction. If Stuttgart were chosen as the venue for the General Assembly, a considerable number of our German members would come together, but the members from non-German countries would be underrepresented. If, however, Dornach were chosen as the venue for the meeting, where the spiritual center of our movement is located at the Goetheanum, then, with a few negligible exceptions, the German members would be excluded. The only remaining option would be to invite the German members to Stuttgart and to organize a corresponding event in Dornach. But there are very important reasons against such a plan, which are again related to the world situation.

From the very beginning of our movement, Dr. Steiner repeatedly pointed out in his lectures that the time would come when it would be necessary to use anthroposophy to exert our full influence on practical life. The harrowing events of our time have precipitated this point in history more quickly than we could have imagined, and the circumstances are laden with such terrible tragedy that the responsibility is growing to gigantic proportions. From the real life of our movement, forms are beginning to emerge that are turning outward with all their might. Here, above all, the Goetheanum in Dornach must be mentioned, with its various societies: the “Verwaltungsgesellschaft des Goetheanum Dornach”, the “Treuhandgesellschaft des Goetheanum Dornach, Sitz Stuttgart” , the “Verein Goetheanismus Dornach”. The Goetheanum attracts the greatest attention of the thousands of visitors who come from all directions, and as the spiritual center of the movement it begins to radiate its strong forces; but it also has the effect of arousing bitter opposition, for which any means are justified in order to destroy the spiritual movement. Officially, however, the Goetheanum is not yet appreciated for its significance, and distressing evidence of this is coming from many sides. If this were different, many things could indeed be undertaken in Dornach that cannot be undertaken at present. Every effort would have to be directed towards completing the Goetheanum, which unfortunately the Mittelland members, who have largely supported the construction up to now, are no longer able to do; they are virtually excluded from visiting the construction site.

The “Federation for the Threefold Social Organism” turns completely outward, and does so on an international basis, although for the time being it still has to work from different centers. The idea of the threefold social order, as presented by Dr. Steiner in his 'Key Points of the Social Question', is drawn entirely from the sources of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, and the members of our movement feel responsible for ensuring that the threefold movement is fed by the life of spiritual science. It is all the more surprising when one hears from time to time that individual members of the Anthroposophical Society want nothing to do with the threefold social order, although it should be clear that if the ideas of the threefold social order are not implemented in the spiritual, political and economic institutions in the near future, there will soon be no opportunity to pursue anthroposophy at one's own convenience. Conversely, there are also people who profess to appreciate the ideas of threefolding but want nothing to do with spiritual science. But of course you cannot expect to draw from a stream if you deny its source. We are fully open to public criticism regarding the threefolding, it must be propagandized so that a sufficiently large number of people are seized by this idea. The anthroposophical movement must supply it with strength, and everything must be avoided that could compromise this idea in public from within the Anthroposophical Society.

The Waldorf School, an initiative of our friend Emil Molt, now offers the long-awaited opportunity for a larger number of teachers from among our members to apply the educational principles in the manner of an art under the direct guidance and instruction of Dr. Steiner. These principles are designed to educate people who can truly rise to the great challenges of the future. The Free Waldorf School has already gained a certain amount of respect from the public, but of course it will also face hostility, especially when it proves its spiritual significance. This is already becoming clear. The newly founded Waldorf School Association has made the support of the school its special task, but it has also set itself further goals. The Waldorf School calls for its continuation up to the university level. It will connect with research institutes that have also been set up. Since eurythmy is used in a pedagogically hygienic way at the Waldorf School, the urgent necessity is already emerging for the school, as well as for our movement in general, to provide a place for the cultivation of this universal art as a 'Eurythmeum'. The archives that are being set up in Dornach and Stuttgart are also part of our spiritual arsenal. It is hoped that spiritual impulses will be provided from such spiritual centers for humanity, which is rushing towards the abyss, and which it needs to bring about a possible future.

The necessity to safeguard such spiritual centers and at the same time to show practical ways of implementing the threefold social order led to the decision to found the “Kommenden Tag, Aktiengesellschaft zur Förderung wirtschaftlicher und geistiger Werte” (a joint-stock company for the promotion of economic and spiritual values). With this, however, we are beginning to work from the spiritual science into the most practical of circumstances, which have their significance in everyday life. A prospectus to be published soon will provide more details about the current situation of this joint-stock company. Here, of course, any possibility of shyness in public must be completely abandoned, and we find ourselves in the most real relationships with our environment; indeed, we must strive to expand the influence of these enterprises as far as possible.

The Anthroposophical Society has always been a purely spiritual movement and within such a movement many things can be tolerated because the purely spiritual has its own laws for enforcement. But now that we are going public in a wide variety of directions, we are not allowed to embarrass ourselves in any way or to be embarrassed by dilettantism and cliquishness, or by sectarian desires. Everything the Anthroposophical Society wants to undertake must be considered from the point of view of how it will be received by the public. But such actions must not fail or fizzle out. Even a general assembly of the Anthroposophical Society must be an action that commands respect, and therefore all possibilities must be carefully considered in advance. But such a success, as we absolutely need it, could not be safely anticipated for this time, so, quite apart from the reasons given above, the holding of a general assembly had to be postponed for the time being. However, every effort should be made to work towards the goal of holding such an assembly as soon as possible, one that can negotiate on a very serious basis.

In view of the seriousness of the situation, I felt compelled to go into all these matters in some detail. Unfortunately, there is no possibility of visiting the working groups in the near future to discuss these matters; but I will try to establish a connection between the working groups through such reports. If this letter gives rise to any questions or comments, I will be happy to answer them after discussing them with a trusted group of colleagues.

With warmest anthroposophical greetings, Dr.-Ing. Carl Unger. Correspondence to Dr.-Ing. Carl Unger, Stuttgart, Werastraße 13.

[ 1 ] With the "intentional relation" characterized in chapter 3, a soul element enters into Brentano's psychology but only as a fact of ordinary consciousness, without this fact being further explained and incorporated into our experience of the soul. I would like to be allowed here to sketch out some things about this fact that are based for me upon views that I have worked out in many different directions. To be sure, these views still need to be brought into more detailed form and to be fully substantiated. My situation until now, however, has only made it possible for me to present certain salient points in lectures. What I can bring here are only some findings sketched out in brief. And I beg the reader to take them as such for now. These are not “sudden fancies”; We are dealing here with something that I have worked for years to substantiate, employing the scientific means of our day.

[ 2 ] In that soul experience which Franz Brentano calls “judging,” an acceptance or rejection of our mental pictures comes to meet this mere mental picturing (that consists in an inner shaping of pictures). The question arises for the soul researcher: What is it in our soul experience by which there does not merely arise the mental picture "green tree," but also the judgment "this is a green tree"? The something that accomplishes this cannot lie within the narrower circle of our life in mental pictures circumscribed by our ordinary consciousness. The fact that we cannot find it here has led to the epistemological thought that I describe in the second volume of my Riddles of Philosophy in the chapter “The World as Illusion.” At issue here is an experience lying outside this circle. The point is to discover the “where" in the realm of our soul experiences.

When a person is confronting a sense-perceptible object and unfolding his activity of perception, this something cannot be found anywhere in all that he receives in the process of perception in such a way that this receiving is grasped through the physiological and psychological pictures that relate to the outer object on the one hand, and to the pertinent sense organ on the other. When someone has the visual perception “green tree,” the fact of the judgment “this is a green tree” cannot be found in any directly evident physiological or psychological relation between “tree” and “eye.” What is experienced in the soul as the inner fact of judging is actually an additional relation between the “person” and the “tree” different from the relation between “tree” and “eye.” Nevertheless, only the latter relation is experienced in all its sharpness in ordinary consciousness. The other relation remains in a dim state of subconsciousness and only comes to light in its result as the recognition of the “green tree” as something that exists. With every perception that comes to a head as a judgment one is dealing with a twofold relation of man to objectivity.

One gains insight into this twofold relation only if one can replace today's fragmentary science of the senses with a complete one. Anyone who takes into consideration everything that pertains to a characterization of a human sense organ will find that one must call other things “senses” besides what is usually designated as such. What makes the “eye” a “sense organ,” for example, is also present when one experiences the fact that someone else's ‘I’ is observed or that someone else's thought is recognized as such. With respect to such facts one usually errs in not making a thoroughly justified and necessary distinction. One believes, for example, that when hearing the words of another person, it suffices to speak of a “sense” only insofar as “hearing” comes into question and that everything else is to be ascribed to a non-sensory, inner activity. But that is not the actual state of affairs. In hearing human words and understanding them as thoughts, a threefold activity comes into consideration. And each component of this threefold activity must be studied in its own right, if a valid scientific view is to arise. Hearing is one of these activities. But hearing as such is just as little a perception of words as touching is a seeing. And if, in accordance with the facts, one distinguishes between the sense of touch and the sense of sight, one must also make distinctions between hearing, perceiving words, and then apprehending the thought. It leads to a faulty psychology and to a faulty epistemology if one does not make a sharp distinction between our apprehension of a thought and our thought activity, and if one does not recognize the sensory nature of the former. One makes this mistake only because the organ by which we perceive a word and that by which we apprehend a thought are not as outwardly perceptible as the ear is for hearing. In reality sense organs are present for these two activities of perception just as the ear is present for hearing. If one follows through on what physiology and psychology can find in this regard if they investigate fully, one arrives at the following view of the human sense organization. One must distinguish: the sense for the T of another person; the sense for apprehending thoughts; the sense for perceiving words; the sense of hearing; the sense of warmth; the sense of sight; the sense of taste; the sense of smell; the sense of balance (the perceptive experience of finding oneself in a certain state of equilibrium with respect to the outer world); the sense of movement (the perceptive experience of the resting state or movement of one's own limbs on the one hand, and the state of rest or movement with respect to the outer world; the sense of life (the experience of the state of one's own organism; the feeling of how one is); the sense of touch. All these senses bear the traits which lead us, in truth, to call eyes and ears “senses.”

Anyone who does not acknowledge the validity of these distinctions falls into disorder in his knowledge of reality. With his mental pictures, he succumbs to the fate of their not allowing him to experience anything truly real. For someone, for example, who calls the eye a sense but assumes no sense organ for the perception of words, even the picture he forms of the eye will remain an unreal configuration.

I believe that Fritz Mauthner, in his critique of language, speaks in his clever way of a “sense for chance” only because he is looking at a fragmentary science of the human senses. If this were not the case, he would notice how a sense organ places itself into reality.

Now, when a person confronts a sense-perceptible object, the situation is such that he never receives an impression through only one sense, but always through at least one other sense as well from the series listed above. The relation to one sense enters ordinary consciousness with particular distinctness; the relation to the other sense remains dimmer. A distinction exists between the senses, however: a number of the senses allow our relation to the outer world to be experienced more as an outer one; the other senses allow us to experience the outer world more as something closely connected to our own existence. The senses that find themselves in close connection to our own existence are, for example, our sense of balance, our sense of movement, our sense of life, and even our sense of touch. In the perceptions of these senses with respect to the outer world, our own existence is dimly felt along with them. Yes, one could say that a dullness of our conscious perceiving occurs just because the relation out into the world is drowned out by the experiencing of our own being. If there occurs the seeing of an object, for example, and at the same time our sense of balance is communicating an impression, what is seen will be sharply perceived. What is seen leads to a mental picture of the object. As a perception, our experience through the sense of balance remains dull; nevertheless it manifests in the judgment that “what I see exists” or “that is what I see.”

In reality, things do not stand beside each other in abstract differentiation; they pass over into one another with their characteristics. Thus it comes about that, in the full complement of our senses, there are some that transmit less a relation to the outer world and more an experience of one's own being. These latter senses dip down more into our inner soul life than do, say, the eye or ear; therefore the results of what they transmit as perceptions appear as inner soul experiences. However, even with them, one should distinguish the actual soul element from the perceptual element just as, when seeing something, for example, one distinguishes the outer fact from the inner soul experiences one has in connection with it.

Anyone who takes the anthroposophical point of view must not shrink from such subtle distinctions in mental pictures like those made here. He must be able to distinguish between perceiving the word and hearing, on the one hand, and between perceiving the word and understanding it through his own thoughts, on the other, just as ordinary consciousness distinguishes between a tree and a rock. If one would take this more into account, one would recognize that anthroposophy does not just have the one aspect— usually called the mystical side—but also the other, by which anthroposophy leads to a research no less scientific than that of natural science; it leads in fact to a more scientific approach which requires a more subtle and more methodological elaboration of our life in mental pictures than even ordinary philosophy does. I believe that in his philosophical research Wilhelm Dilthey was on his way to the science of the senses that I have sketched out here, but that he could not attain his goal because he did not push through to a complete elaboration of the pertinent mental pictures. (Please see what I said about this in my Riddles of Philosophy).

Address by Rudolf Steiner regarding point 4 of the agenda [Election of the Supervisory Board]:

I myself will have something to say regarding this point, ladies and gentlemen. It concerns the fact that the affairs of the Anthroposophical Movement have recently taken on such a form that In the future, it will be impossible for me to take on other activities of this kind, such as the position of chairman of the supervisory board of “Kommenden Tages”, in addition to my work for the Anthroposophical Movement in the narrower sense. The esteemed attendees – and they are, of course, the more numerous – who are members of the Anthroposophical Society, know that the circumstances of the Anthroposophical Movement have changed a great deal, especially in recent years. On the one hand, it is absolutely clear that a spiritual movement such as anthroposophy – and I do not want to say specifically anthroposophical, but a spiritual movement such as anthroposophy – lies at the lies at the very bottom of the innermost needs of an ever-greater number of people, and that therefore the Anthroposophical Movement, which has existed for more than 20 years now as a partial movement, so to speak, in this great stream, that the Anthroposophical Movement makes, one might say, more demands on those who have already been destined by fate to care for it and it has been clear for some time that, in addition to everything that is incumbent upon me for the anthroposophical movement, it is no longer possible to engage fruitfully in other activities without the tasks that I already have for the anthroposophical movement being disturbed or compromised. The latter must not happen under any circumstances, on the one hand because of the increasing demands on the Anthroposophical Movement and because of the ever-widening interest, which demands an expansion of my work precisely in this regard, in this direction. On the other hand, this Anthroposophical Movement, through countless things that can only be described as misleading, has to reckon with an opposition today that, well, I would say, if it is to be countered in the right way, will cause work and, above all, worry and the like.

So, taking all these things into account, I had no choice, esteemed attendees, but to recently decide to resign from my position as chairman of the supervisory board of “The Coming Day” and from the supervisory board in general, which I hereby do in a very official manner. The situation is such that, in practical terms, I have recently had to limit my work for the “Coming Day” to that which - precisely because of the other demands - will have to remain so in the coming period. If I am to do the work for the “Day to Come” that is to flow into its various institutions, and if I am to do the work for the Waldorf School, in which the “Day to Come” is also extremely interested in a certain respect, if I am to do this work , which will have to be provided in a positive and substantial way in the form of my advice to 'Der Kommende Tag', then I will have to admit to myself that I will withdraw all the more from the activity, which will be able to take place in the future without me and perhaps better without me than with me.

The supervisory board and the board of directors of “Tomorrow” are, after all, an absolutely sure guarantee for all those who, as shareholders and otherwise, have an interest in “Tomorrow” , that this Coming Day will continue to work in this direction even after my resignation, in the fruitful way it has set itself, and in the way it is in the interest of the shareholders and the world in general. I must say that the situation of the “Kommende Tag” is such that today I can only ask those shareholders whose trust in the “Kommende Tag” is perhaps somewhat connected with the fact that I took over the position of chairman of the supervisory board years ago, I can only urgently ask those whose trust is connected with this fact not to lose an ounce of that trust, but on the contrary to continue to place it in a greatly increased measure in the excellent management of “The Coming Day”. I would like to say that it was clear to me from the very beginning, when I took over the position of Chairman of the Supervisory Board three years ago, that this could only be for a relatively short time.

For the situation that now exists was entirely foreseeable, and although it was of course clear to me at the time that a large part of my work for the Anthroposophical Movement would be affected, ... I did it anyway.

Isn't it true that “Der Kommende Tag” came about because a number of personalities who had emerged from the Anthroposophical Movement wanted to support an undertaking that was designed to be socially sustainable in the future. The “Kommende Tag” was to be founded as a kind of model example of what should be done by combining enterprises, in particular combining personalities who are interested in social issues in economic life. Through this union, the “Kommende Tag” was to be established as a kind of model example. The personalities who founded it turned to me for advice at the time. We hammered out the preliminary details, the intentions and the principles together, and in the early days we tried to steer the “Coming Day” in the direction in which it should be steered.

The actual initiative did not come from me. From the very beginning, I was, so to speak, in the role of an advisor. At the time, I found it quite natural that friends approached me and wanted me to take over the position of Chairman of the Supervisory Board, and for me to be on the Supervisory Board at all. But what made it desirable for the first period of time, even if it was entirely decisive for the decisions at the time, cannot be decisive for continued membership of the Supervisory Board. And all this together with the fact that I am quite certain of the excellent management - I can tell you that I would not resign if “Der Kommende Tag” did not stand on absolutely secure feet and was in a future-proof situation - since that is the case is the case, because you can have full confidence in the “Day to Come”, even if I withdraw, perhaps even more so, as I have already mentioned, then, my dear attendees, you will not withdraw your confidence in the “Day to Come”. So you will understand that the reasons for my resignation are decisive, and I ask you to accept this resignation in the sense in which it has just been characterized.

Above all, it is my duty at this moment to express my heartfelt thanks to the other members of the supervisory board for their dedicated work, for the extraordinarily difficult work that had to be done in the early years, for the work that, I would say, suffered from ever-increasing opposition and caused serious concern.

I would also like to thank these members of the supervisory board in a special way for the warm way in which this collaboration has taken place; both those members of the supervisory board who are the originators of the original ideas of “The Day to Come” and those who, as members of the works council, have joined the supervisory board in accordance with the law. Those who have worked on the organization and further implementation of the ideas and affairs of “The Day to Come” over the last three years know just how much dedicated work is needed to accomplish things in an appropriate and proper manner. But I believe that more and more people will feel how grateful we are to the members of the supervisory board for their dedication, and it will therefore be understandable that I express my heartfelt thanks to the supervisory board and wish that its work in the near and distant future will be rewarded with the most beautiful fruits.

Secondly, I would like to express my warmest thanks to the board of directors, above all to the prudent, dedicated and extremely objective director of the board, Mr. Emil Leinhas, and to the other members of the board as a whole for their dedicated work. It has not exactly become easier for social and economic enterprises to carry out their management activities in recent times. It requires not only an extremely exhausting amount of work, but above all, constant thoughtfulness and constant prudence, which it is neither necessary nor even possible to describe in detail here. But if you have seen all this, if you have had to go through all this, so to speak, if you have had to see from day to day how things have actually been worked on, especially by the management of our board in recent times and since the beginning, it will also be understood that, out of a very special inner satisfaction and heartfelt feeling, I would also like to express my warmest thanks to the members of the board, above all to the director, Mr. Emil Leinhas, when I leave. In doing so, I would also like to express my heartfelt thanks to all those who, from the inner circle of the Anthroposophical Movement and from further afield, have turned their interest and attention to the endeavors of “Der Kommende Tag” and have simply given “Der Kommende Tag” the opportunity to survive through their sympathy and participation within the circle of shareholders. I would like to express my most sincere thanks to all of you on my resignation! I now ask you to take note of my resignation from the position of Chairman of the Supervisory Board and from the Supervisory Board in general. This brings us to the fourth item on the agenda. Since I have now resigned and no longer bear responsibility, I ask the Deputy Chairman of the Supervisory Board, Dr. Unger, to take over the chairmanship of this Annual General Meeting.

When a wholly untranslatable word occurs in a text there is no adequate alternative to retaining it. The dictionary translates Gemüt as “heart, soul, mind,” seeming to imply, “take your choice.” But the word Gemüt must not be thought of as having these three separate meanings, but rather as a unified concept embracing all three. Let us think of Gemüt, then, as meaning something like

the mind warmed by a loving heart and stimulated by the soul's imaginative power.

Or again, it might be described as

the soul in a state of unconscious intuition arising from the working together of heart and mind.

It is a very beautiful and comprehensive word with which every student of anthroposophy should be on intimate terms—a statement amply confirmed by a sentence that occurs in the text:

“This human Gemüt dwells in the very center of the soul life.” (Steiner)

In this historic sketch of the life of thought in the Middle Ages, the author tries as far as possible in three short lectures to show how Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas and the Scholastics of the twelfth century gave an impetus towards what in the twentieth century has come to be known as Spiritual Science, or Anthroposophy.

A system of thinking and a method of investigation, in order to be effective, must go forward with the requirements of the century, otherwise philosophy and religion lag behind and miss their object. The theories of Thomas Aquinas, which were intended to be progressive, have become the property of a mighty sect, and the method, instead of being an instrument for progress, becomes an impediment in the machine.

Rome, while glorifying Thomas Aquinas as a Church Father, has relegated his stupendous thought to a closed compartment only to be opened by those specially authorized. Rudolf Steiner puts him in the forefront of evolution, and, by Spiritual Science, endeavours to liberate him from the fetters of dogma.