The Rudolf Steiner Archive

It may seem strange to some, if an anthroposophist, of all people, feels himself called upon to speak of practical training in thought. For people very often imagine Anthroposophy to be something highly unpractical, having nothing whatever to do with real life. That is because they look at the thing externally and superficially. In reality, what we are concerned with in the anthroposophical movement is intended as a guide for everyday life, for the most matter-of-fact affairs of life. We should be able to transform it at every moment into a sure sense and feeling, enabling us to meet life confidently and find our footing in the world.

People who call themselves practical imagine that their actions are guided by the most practical principles. When you look into the matter closely, you will, however, frequently discover that what they call their practical way of thinking is not thinking at all, but the mere “jogging along” with old opinions and acquired habits of thought. You will often find there is very little that is really practical behind it. What they call practical consists in this: they have learned how their teachers, or their predecessors in business, thought about the matter in hand, and then they simply take the same line. Anyone who thinks along different lines they regard as a very unpractical person. In effect, his thinking does not accord with the habits to which they have been brought up. In cases where something really practical has been invented, you will not generally find that it was done by any of the “practical” people.

Take for instance our present postage stamp. Surely the most obvious thing would be to suppose that it was invented by a practical post-office official. But it was not. At the beginning of last century it was a very long and troublesome business to post a letter. You had to go to the office where letters were posted, and various books had to be referred to; in short, there were all manner of complicated proceedings. It is hardly more than sixty years since the uniform postal rate to which we are now accustomed was introduced. And our postage stamp, which makes this simple arrangement possible, was invented, not by a practical man in the postal service, but by a complete outsider. It was the Englishman, Rowland Hill. When the postage stamp had been invented, the Minister who had to do with the Postal Department said in the English Parliament: In the first place, we can by no means assume that as a result of this simplification postal communication will really increase so enormously as this unpractical man imagines; and secondly, even assuming that it did, the main Post Office in London would not be big enough to hold it.

It never dawned on this very practical man that the Post Office building ought to be adapted to the amount of correspondence, and not the amount of correspondence to the building. Yet in what was, comparatively speaking, the shortest imaginable time, the thing was carried out. One of the unpractical people had to fight for it against a practical man. To-day we take it as a matter of course that letters are sent with a postage stamp.

It was similar in the case of the railways. In the year 1887, when the first German railway was to be constructed between Nuremberg and Fürth, the Bavarian College of Medicine, being consulted, pronounced the following expert opinion. In the first place, they said, it was inadvisable to build railways at all; if, however, it were intended to do so, it would at any rate be necessary to erect a high wall of wooden planks to the left and right of the line, in order that passers-by might not suffer from nerve and brain shock.

When the line from Potsdam to Berlin had to be built, the Postmaster-General Stengler said: I send two mail coaches a day to Potsdam and they are not full up; if these people are bent on wasting their money, they might as well throw it out of the window without more ado.

In effect, the real facts of life leave the “practical” people behind, or rather they leave behind those who so fondly call themselves practical.

We have to distinguish true thinking from the so-called practical thinking, which merely consists in opinions based on the habits of thought in which people have been brought up.

I will tell you a little experience of my own, and make it a starting-point for our considerations to-day.

In my undergraduate days, a young colleague once came to me. He was bubbling over with that intense pleasure which you may observe in people who have just had 'a really brilliant idea. “I am on my way,” he said, “to see Professor X. (who at that time occupied the chair in Machine Construction), for I have made a wonderful discovery. I have discovered a machine whereby it will be possible by the use of a very little steam-power to exert an enormous amount of work.” That was all he could tell me, for he was in a tremendous hurry to go to see the Professor. However, he did not find him at home, so he came back and set to work to explain the matter to me. Of course, from the very start the whole thing had sounded to me suspiciously like perpetual motion; but, after all, why shouldn't such a thing be possible one fine day? So I listened; and after he had gone through the whole explanation, I had to answer: “Yes, it is certainly very cleverly thought out; but you see, in practice it surely comes to this. It's as though you were to get into a railway truck and push tremendously hard, and imagine that the truck would thereby begin to move. That is the principle of thought in your invention?” And then he saw that it was so, and he did not go to see the Professor again.

That is how it is possible to shut oneself up, as it were, in one's thought. People put themselves in a neat little box with their thought. In rare cases this is perfectly evident; but people are continually doing it in life, and it is not always so clear and striking as in the instance we have taken. One who is able to look into the matter a little more intimately knows that this is the way with a great many human processes of thought. He constantly sees people standing, as it were, in their truck, pushing from the inside, and imagining that it is they who are propelling it.

Much of what happens in life would happen altogether differently if people were not such pushers, standing in their trucks!

True practice of thought requires us in the first place to have the right attitude of mind, the right feeling about thought. How can we gain this? No one can come to a right feeling about thought who imagines that thought is something which merely takes place within man, inside his head, or in his mind or soul. Anyone who starts with this idea will have a wrong feeling, and will continually be diverted from the search for a truly practical way of thought. He will fail to make the necessary demands on his thinking activity. To acquire the right feeling towards thought, he must rather say to himself: “If I am able to make myself thoughts about the things, if I am able to get at the things through thoughts, then the things must already contain the thoughts within them. The thoughts must be there in the very plan and structure of the things. Only so can I draw the thoughts out of them.”

Man must say to himself that it is the same with the things in the world outside as with a watch. The comparison of the human organism to a watch is frequently used, but people often forget the most important thing. They forget the watchmaker. The cogs and wheels did not run together and join up of their own accord and set the watch in motion, but there was a watchmaker there first, to construct the watch. We must not forget the watchmaker. It is through thoughts that the watch has come into being. The thoughts have, as it were, flowed out into the watch, into the external object. And this is the way in which we must think of all the works of nature of all the natural creation, and of all natural processes. It can easily be illustrated in a thing that is human creation: in the things of nature it is not quite so easy to perceive. And yet they too are works of the spirit; behind them are spiritual beings.

When man thinks about things, he is only thinking after, he is only re-thinking, that which has first been laid into them. We must believe that the world has been created by thought and is still in continual process of creation by thought. This belief, and this alone, can give birth to a really fruitful inner practice of thought.

It is always unbelief in the spiritual content of the world that underlies the greatest impracticality of thought. This is true in the sphere of science itself. For example, some one will say, our planetary system came about as follows: “First there was a primeval nebula. It began to rotate, drew together into one central body from which rings and spheres split off, and by this mechanical process the whole planetary system came into being.” People who speak like that are making a grave error in thought. They have a pretty way of teaching it to the children nowadays. There is a neat little experiment which they show in many schools. They float a drop of oil in a glass of water, stick a pin through the middle of the drop and then set it in rotation. Thereupon little drops split off from the big drop in the middle, and you have a minute planetary system. A nice little object lesson, so they think, to show the pupil how such a thing can come about in a purely mechanical way.

Only an unpractical way of thinking can draw this conclusion from the experiment. For the man who transplants the idea to the great cosmic planetary system generally forgets just one thing—which at other times it is perhaps quite good to forget—he forgets himself. He forgets that he himself, after all, set the thing in rotation. If he had not been there and done the whole thing, the drop of oil would never have split off the little drops. If the man would observe that too, and transfer the idea to the planetary system, then, and then only, would his thought be complete.

Such errors in thought play a very great part to-day—and they do so especially in what is now called science. These things are far more important than people generally imagine.

If we would make our thinking practical, we must first know that thoughts can only be drawn from a world in which thoughts already are. Just as you can only draw water from a glass that does really contain water, so you can only draw thoughts from things that already contain thoughts. The world is built up by thoughts, and it is only for that reason that we can gain thoughts from the world. If it were not so, then there could be no such thing as a practice of thought at all. When a man really feels what has here been said, and feels it to the full, then he will easily transcend the stage of abstract thinking. When a man has full confidence and faith that behind things there are thoughts, that the real facts of life take place according to thoughts—when he has this confidence and feeling, then he will readily be converted to a practice of thought that is founded on reality.

We will now set forth some elements of practice in thought. If you are penetrated by the belief that the world of facts takes its course in thoughts, you will admit how important it is to develop true thinking.

Let us assume that someone says to himself: “I want to strengthen my thought, so that it may find its true bearings at every point in life.” He must then take guidance from what will now be said. The indications that will now be given are to be taken as real practical principles—principles such, that if you try again and again and again to guide your thought accordingly, definite results will follow. Your thinking will become practical, even though it may not appear so at first sight. Indeed, if you carry out these principles, you will have altogether fresh experiences in your life of thought.

Let us assume that someone makes the following experiment. On a certain day he carefully observes some process in the world which is accessible to him, which he can observe quite accurately—say, for example, the appearance of the sky. He observes the cloud formations in the evening, the way in which the sun went down. And now he makes a distinct and accurate mental image of what he has observed.

He tries to hold it fast for a time in all its details. He holds fast as much of it as he can, and tries to keep it till the following day. On the morrow, about the same time, or even at another time of day, he again observes the appearance of the sky and the weather, and he tries once more to form an exact mental image of it.

If in this way he forms clear mental images of successive conditions, he will soon perceive with extraordinary distinctness that he is enriching his thought and making it inwardly intense. For what makes a man's thought unpractical is the fact that in observing successive processes in the world he is generally too much inclined to leave out the actual details and to retain only a vague and confused picture in his mind. The essential, the valuable thing for strengthening our thought is to form exact pictures above all in the case of successive processes and then to say to ourselves: “Yesterday the thing was so; to-day it is so.” And in doing this we must bring before our minds the two pictures which are separated in the real world, as graphically, as vividly as possible.

To begin with, this exercise is simply a particular expression of our belief that the thoughts are there in reality. We are not immediately to draw some conclusion—to conclude from what we observe to-day what the weather and the sky will be like tomorrow. That would only corrupt our thinking. No, we must have faith that outside in the reality of things they have their connection, and that tomorrow's process is somehow connected with to-day's. We are not to speculate about it, but first of all to think, in mental images as clear as possible, the scenes which in the external world are separated in time. We place the two pictures side by side before our minds, and then let the one gradually change into the other.

This is a definite principle which must be followed if we would develop a truly objective way of thinking. It is especially valuable to take this line with things which we do not yet understand, where we have not yet penetrated the inner connection. Particularly with those processes—the sky and the weather, for example—which we do not understand at all, we must have the belief that, as they are connected in the outside world, so will they work their connections within us. And we must do it simply in mental pictures, refraining from thought. We must say to ourselves: “I do not yet know the connection, but I will let these things grow and evolve within me, and if I refrain from all speculation, I am sure they will be working something within me.”

You will not find it difficult to imagine that something may take place in the invisible vehicles of a human being who, refraining from thought in this way, strives to call forth clear mental images of processes and events that succeed one another in time in the outer world. Man has an astral body as the vehicle of his life of thought and ideation. So long as he speculates, this astral body of man is the slave of his Ego. But it is not completely involved in this conscious activity, for it also stands in relation to the whole Universe. Now as we refrain from giving play to our own arbitrary trains of thought, and simply form in ourselves mental images, clear pictures of successive events, in like measure will the inner thoughts of the universe work in us and impress themselves upon our astral body, without our knowing it. As, by observation of the processes in the world, we fit ourselves to enter into the world's course, and as we take its scenes and pictures into our thoughts clearly and faithfully in their reality and let them work in us, so do we become ever wiser and wiser in those vehicles and members of our being that are outside our consciousness.

So it is with processes in nature that are inwardly connected. When we are able to let the one picture change into the other just as the change took place in nature, we shall soon perceive, that our thought is gaining a certain flexibility and strength.

That is how we should proceed with things that we do not yet understand. For things that we do understand—events, for example, that take place around us in our daily life—our attitude should be slightly different.

For instance, someone—your neighbour, perhaps—has done something or other. You consider: Why did he do it? You come to the conclusion: Perhaps he did it in preparation for such and such a thing that he intends to do tomorrow. Very well; do not go on speculating, but try to sketch out a picture of what you think he will do tomorrow. You imagine to yourself: That is what he will do tomorrow; and now you wait and see what he really does. It may be on the following day you will observe that he really does what you imagined. Or it may be that he does something different. You observe what really happens and try to correct your thoughts accordingly.

Thus we select events in the present which we follow out in thought into the future, and we wait and see what actually happens. We can do this with the actions of men, and with many other things. Where we feel that we understand a thing, we try to form a picture of what, in our opinion, will take place. If it does take place as we expected, our thinking was correct; that is good. If what happens is different from what we expected, then we try to think where we made the mistake. Thus we try to correct our wrong thoughts by quiet observation, by examining where the mistake lay, and why it was that it happened as it did.

If, however, we were right, then we must be careful to avoid the danger of mere self-congratulation and boasting of our prophecy: “Oh yes, I knew that was going to happen, yesterday.”

Here again you have a method based on the belief that there is an inner necessity lying in the things and events themselves—that there is something in the facts themselves which drives them forward. The forces working in things, working on from one day to the next, are forces of thought. If we dive down into the things, then we become conscious of these thought-forces. By such exercises we make them present to our consciousness. When what we foresaw is fulfilled, we are in attunement with them. Then we are in an inner relationship to the real thought-activity of the thing itself.

Thus we accustom ourselves not to think arbitrarily, but to take our thought from the inner necessity, the inner nature of things.

There is yet another direction in which we can train our practice of thought.

An event that happens to-day is also related to things that happened yesterday. For example, a child has been naughty. What can have caused it? You follow the events back to the previous day, you construct the causes which you do not know. You say to yourself: “I fancy that this thing which has happened to-day was led up to by such and such things yesterday or the day before.”

You then make inquiries and find out what really happened, and so discover whether your thought was correct. If you have found the real cause, then it is well; but if you have formed a wrong idea of it, then you must try to see the mistake clearly. You consider how your thought-process developed, and how it took place in reality, and compare the one with the other.

It is very important to carry out such principles and methods. We must find time to observe things in this way—as though with our thinking we were in the things themselves. We must dive down into the things, into their inner thought-activity.

If we do so, we shall gradually perceive how we are entering into the very life of things. We no longer have the feeling that the things are outside, and we are here in our shell, thinking about them; but we begin to feel how our thought is living and moving in the things themselves. To a man who has attained this in a high degree, a new world opens up. Such a man was Goethe. He was a thinker who was always in the things with his thoughts. In 1826 the psychologist Heinroth said in his book, Anthropology, that Goethe's was an objective thinking. Goethe was delighted with this description. Heinroth meant that Goethe's thought did not separate itself off from the things or objects; it remained in the objects, it lived and moved in the necessity of things. Goethe's thought was at the same time contemplation; his contemplation, his looking at things, was at the same time thought.

Goethe developed this way of thinking to a high degree. More than once it happened, when he was intending to go out for some purpose or other, that he went to the window and said to whoever happened to be by: “In three hours it will rain”—and so it did. From the little segment of the sky which was visible from his window he could tell what would happen in the weather in the next few hours. His true thought, remaining in the things, enabled him to sense the later events that were already preparing in the preceding ones.

Far more can be achieved by practical thinking than is generally imagined. We have described certain principles of thought. A man who makes them his own will discover that his thought is really becoming practical. His vision widens, and he grasps the things of the world quite differently than before. Little by little his attitude to things, and also to other human beings, will become different. A real process takes place in him, one that alters his whole conduct of life. It can be of immense importance for a man to try to grow into the things with his thought in this way. In the fullest sense of the word it is a practical undertaking to train our thinking by such exercises.

There is another exercise which is particularly valuable for people who fail to get the right idea at the right moment.

Such people should try, above all, to think not merely in the way suggested by every passing moment. They should not merely give themselves up to what the ordinary course of things brings with it. When a man has half an hour to lie down and rest, it nearly always happens that he simply gives his thoughts free play. They spin out in a thousand different directions. Or perhaps his life is just occupied by some special worry. Suddenly it flies into his consciousness, and he is completely absorbed in it. If a man lets things happen in this way, he will never arrive at the point where the right thing occurs to him at the right moment. If he wants to succeed in this, he must do as follows. When he has half an hour to lie down and rest, he must say to himself: “Now that I have time, I will think about something which I myself will choose—something which I bring into my consciousness by my own will and choice. For example, I will think about something that I experienced at some earlier date—say on a walk two years ago. I will bring it into my thought and think about it for a certain time—say even only for five minutes. All other things—away with them for these five minutes! I myself will choose what I am going to think about.”

The choice need not even be as difficult as the one I have just suggested. The point is, not that you try to work upon your processes of thought by difficult exercises to begin with, but that you tear yourself away from all you are involved in by your ordinary life. You must choose something right outside the web of interests into which you are woven by your everyday existence. And if you suffer from lack of inspiration, if nothing else occurs to you at the moment, then you can have recourse, say, to a book. Open it, and think about whatever you happen to read on the first page which catches your eye. Or, you say to yourself: “Now I will think about what I saw at a certain time this morning just as I was going into the office.” Only it must be something to which in the ordinary course you would have paid no further attention. It must be something beside the ordinary run of things, something you would otherwise not have thought about at all.

If you carry on such exercises systematically and repeat them again and again, the result will soon be to cure you of your lack of inspiration. You will get the right idea at the right moment. Your thought will become mobile, which is immensely important for a man in practical life.

Another exercise is especially adapted to work on the memory.

First you try to remember some event—say, an event of yesterday—in the crude way in which one generally remembers things. For, as a rule, people have the greyest of grey recollections of things. As a rule you are satisfied if you only remember the name of someone you met yesterday. But if you want to develop your power of memory you must no longer be satisfied with that. You must set to work systematically and say to yourself: “I will now recall the person I saw yesterday, clearly and distinctly. I will recall the surroundings, the particular corner at which I saw him. I will sketch out the picture in detail; I will have an accurate mental image of what he was wearing—his coat, his waistcoat, and so on.” Most people, when they try this exercise, will discover that they are quite unable to do it. They will notice how very much is missing from the picture. They are unable to call up a graphic idea of what they actually experienced on the previous day.

In the vast majority of cases it is so; and this is the condition from which we must start. As a matter of fact, people's observation is generally most inaccurate. An experiment which a University Professor made with his class showed that, of thirty people who were present, only two had observed a thing correctly; the other twenty-eight had it wrong. But good memory is the child of faithful observation. To develop our memory, the important thing is that we should observe accurately. By dint of faithful observation we can acquire a good memory. Through certain inner paths of the soul a true memory is born of a good habit of observation.

Now suppose that, to begin with, you find you are unable to call to mind, exactly, something that you experienced on the previous day. What is the next thing to do? Begin by remembering the thing as accurately as possible; and where your memory fails you, try to fill in the gaps by imagining something which is, probably, incorrect. For instance, if you have absolutely forgotten whether a person you met had on a grey coat or a black one, then imagine him in a grey coat, and say to yourself that he had such and such buttons to his waistcoat, and a yellow tie; and then you fill in the surroundings—a yellow wall, a tall man passing on the left, a short man on the right, and so forth.

Whatever you remember, put it in the picture, and then fill it in arbitrarily with the things you do not remember. Only try to have a complete picture before your mind. The picture will, of course, be incorrect, but by the effort to gain a complete picture you will be stimulated to observe more accurately in the future. Continue doing such exercises—and when you have done them fifty times, then the fifty-first time you will know exactly what the person you met looked like and what he had on. You will remember exactly, to the very waistcoat-buttons. You will no longer overlook anything, but every detail will impress itself upon your mind. By this exercise you will first have sharpened your powers of observation, and in addition you will have gained a truer memory, which is the child of accurate observation.

It is especially valuable to pay attention to this. Do not merely content yourself with remembering the names and the main outlines of things, but try to get mental images as graphic as possible, including the real details; and where your memory fails you, fill in the picture and make it whole. You will soon see—though it seems to come in a roundabout way—that your memory is becoming more faithful.

Clear directions can thus be given, whereby a man can make his thought ever more and more practical.

There is another thing of great importance. Man has a certain craving to reach a definite result when he is considering some line of action. He turns it over in his mind, how should he do the thing, and comes to a definite conclusion. We can well understand this impulse; but it does not lead to a practical way of thinking. Every time we hurry our thought on, we are going backward and not forward. Patience is necessary in these things.

For example: there is something you have to do. It is possible to do it in one way or in another; there may be various possibilities. Now have patience; try to imagine exactly what would happen if you did it in this way, and then try to imagine what would happen if you did it in that way.

Of course, there will always be reasons for preferring the one course of action to the other. But now refrain from making up your mind at once. Try, instead, to sketch out the two possibilities, and then say to yourself: “Now that's done—now I will stop thinking about it.”

At this point many people will become fidgety, and that is a difficult thing to overcome. But it is no less valuable to overcome it. Say to yourself: “The thing is possible in this way and in that way, and now for a time I will think no more about it.” If the circumstances permit, defer your action to the next day, and then once more bring the two possibilities before your mind. You will find that in the meantime the things have changed, and that on the following day you are able to decide quite differently—far more thoroughly, at any rate, than you would have done the day before.

There is an inner necessity in the things themselves, and if we do not act impatiently and arbitrarily, but let this inner necessity work in us—and it will work in us—then it will enrich our thought. And our thought, being thus enriched, will appear again the next day and enable us to form a more correct decision. That is immensely valuable.

Or to take another example: someone asks your advice about some point that has to be decided. Do not burst in with your decision straight away, but have the patience to lay the various possibilities before your own mind quietly and to form no conclusion on your own account. Let the different possibilities hold sway. An old proverb says: “Sleep on it before deciding”—but sleeping on it is not enough. It is necessary to think over two or even more possibilities (if there are more than two, so much the better). These possibilities work on in us, when we ourselves, so to speak, are not there with our conscious Ego. Later on, we return to the thing. We shall see that by this means we are calling to life inner forces of thought, and that our thinking grows ever more practical and to the point.

Whatever it is that a man is seeking to find, it is there in the world. Whether he stands at the lathe or behind the plough, or whether he belongs to the so-called privileged classes and professions, if he does these exercises, he will become a practical thinker in the most everyday affairs of life. Practising his thought in this way, he begins to look at the things in the world with a new vision. And though these exercises may at first sight appear ever so inward and remote from external life, it is precisely for external life that they are so useful. They entail the greatest imaginable significance for the external world; they have important consequences.

I will give you an example to show how necessary it is to think about things practically. A man climbed a tree and was doing something or other up above; suddenly he fell down and was dead. The thought that lies nearest at hand is that he was killed by the fall. Most probably, people will say: “The fall was the cause, and his death the result.” Such is the apparent connection between cause and effect. But this conclusion may involve an utter inversion of the facts. For it may be that he had a fatal heart attack, and fell down as a consequence. Exactly the same thing happened as though he had fallen down alive. He went through the same external processes that might really have been the cause of his death. So it is possible to make a complete inversion of cause and effect.

In this example the fault is very evident, but often it is not so striking. Such mistakes in thought occur very frequently. Indeed, it must be said that in modern Science conclusions of this kind are drawn day by day, with a complete reversal of cause and effect. It is only not perceived because people fail to put before them the possibilities of thought.

One more example may be given, to show you as vividly as possible how such mistakes in thought come about, and how they will no longer happen to a man who has done the kind of exercises which have here been indicated.

A learned scientist says to himself that man, as he is to-day, is descended from an ape. That is to say, what I learn to know in the ape—the forces at work in the ape—evolve to greater perfection and so result in the human being. Now in order to indicate the significance of this as thought, let us make the following supposition. Suppose that by some circumstance the man who will propound this theory be placed on the earth alone. There are no other human beings around him; there are only those apes of which the said theory declares that human beings can originate from them. Let him now make an accurate study of them. Entering into the minutest detail, he forms a conception of what there is in the ape. Albeit he has never seen a man, let him now try to develop the concept of a man out of his concept of an ape. He will see that he cannot. His concept “ape” will never transform into the concept “man.”

If he had right habits of thought, he would say to himself: “I see that the concept of an ape will not transform itself within me into the concept of a man. Therefore what I perceive in the ape is also not capable of becoming man, for if it were, the same power of evolution would be latent in the concept. Something more must come in, something that I am unable to perceive.” Thus, behind the visible ape, he would have to imagine something invisible and super-sensible—something which he could not perceive, but which alone would make the transformation into man a possible conception.

The impossibility of the whole thing need not here concern us; we only wanted to reveal the faulty thinking which lies behind that theory. If the man's thinking were right, he would be led to the conclusion that he could not think the theory at all without postulating something super-sensible.

If you consider it, you will readily see that in this matter a whole succession of thinkers have committed a grave error. Such errors will no longer be committed by one who trains his thinking in the way here indicated.

A large proportion of modern literature (and particularly of the scientific literature) is positively painful to read, for a man who is able to think rightly. Its crooked, perverted ways of thought are distressing to have to follow. In saying this, we are by no means depreciating the wealth of observation and discovery that has been accumulated by modern Natural Science with its objective methods.

All this has to do with short-sightedness of thought. It is a fact that men seldom know how very little to the point their thinking is, and to what a large extent it is the result of mere habits of thought. And so, one who penetrates the world and life will judge differently from one who lacks this penetration, or who has it only to a very small degree—a materialistic thinker, for example. It is not easy to convince people by grounds and arguments, however good, however genuine. It is often a thankless task to try to convince by grounds and reasoned arguments a man who knows little of life. For he simply does not see the reasons which make this or that statement possible. If, for instance, he has grown used to see nothing but matter in things, he simply adheres to this habit of thought.

As a rule it is not the alleged reasons which lead people to their statements. Beneath and behind the reasons, it is the habits of thought which they have acquired, and which determine their whole way of feeling. While they put forward reasons, they are only masking feelings that are instinctive with thoughts that are habitual. Thus often, not only is the wish father to the thought, but all the feelings and habits and ways of thinking are parents of the thoughts. A man who knows life, knows how little possibility there is of convincing people by logical grounds and arguments. That which decides in the soul is far deeper than the logical reasons.

And so there is good reason for this anthroposophical movement, working on in its different groups and branches. Everyone who works in this movement will presently perceive that he has acquired a new way of thinking and feeling about things. For by our work in the groups we are not only finding the logical reasons for this and that; we are acquiring a wider mental outlook, a deeper and more far-reaching way of feeling.

How, for example, did a man scoff a few years ago, when he heard a lecture on Spiritual Science for the first time! And to-day, perhaps, how many things are clear and transparent to him, which a short time ago he would have considered highly absurd! By working in this anthroposophical movement we not only transform our thoughts; we learn to bring all our life of soul into a wider perspective.

We must understand that the colouring of our thoughts has its origin far deeper than is generally imagined. It is the feelings which frequently impel a man to hold certain opinions. The logical reasons he puts forward are often a mere screen, a mask for his deeper feelings and habits of thought.

To bring ourselves to the point where logical reasons really mean something to us, we must first learn to love the logic in things. Only when we have learned to love what is real and objective, only then will the logical reasons be the decisive thing for us. We gradually learn to think objectively—independently, as it were, of our affections for this thought or that. Then our vision widens and we become practical—not in the sense of those who can only think on along the accustomed lines, but practical in the sense that we learn to draw our thoughts from out of the things themselves.

Practical life is born of objective thinking—that thinking which flows out of the things themselves. It is only by carrying out such exercises that we learn to take our thoughts from the things. And these exercises must be done with sound and healthy things—things that are least perverted by human civilisation—things of Nature.

Practising our thought as here described in connection with the things of Nature, will make us practical thinkers. This is a really practical thing to do. And we shall take hold of the most everyday occupations in a practical way, if once we train this fundamental element in life: our thinking. A practical frame of mind, a practical way of thinking, forms itself, when we exercise the human soul in the way here indicated.

The spiritual-scientific movement must bear fruit: it must place really practical men and women out into the world. It is less important for a man to feel able to accept the truth of this or that teaching. It is more important that he should develop the faculty for seeing things and penetrating things correctly. It is not a matter of theorising away beyond the things visible to the senses,—spinning theories into the spiritual realm. Far more important is the way in which Anthroposophy penetrates our soul, stimulates our activity of soul, widens our vision. It is in this that Anthroposophy is truly practical.

The First Sign

In a consideration of the Gospel of St. John, we should never lose sight of that most important point which was brought out in the lecture yesterday namely, that in the original writer of the Gospel we have to do with the “Beloved Disciple,” initiated by Christ-Jesus Himself. One might naturally ask if, aside from occult knowledge, there exists, perhaps, some external proof of this statement by means of which the writer of this Gospel has intimated that he came to a higher order of knowledge about the Christ through the “raising,” through the initiation which is represented in the so-called miracle of the raising of Lazarus. If you will read the Gospel of St. John carefully, you will observe, that nowhere previous to that chapter which treats of the raising of Lazarus is there any mention of the “Disciple whom the Lord loved.” In other words, the real author of the Gospel wishes to say: What precedes this chapter does not yet have its origin in the knowledge which I have received through initiation, therefore in the beginning you must disregard me. Only later does he mention the “Disciple whom the Lord loved.” Thus the Gospel falls into two important parts, the first part in which the Disciple whom the Lord loved is not yet mentioned because he had not yet been initiated, and that part which comes after the raising of Lazarus in which this Disciple is mentioned. Nowhere in the document itself will you find any contradictions of what I have presented in the previous lectures. Naturally, anyone who considers the Gospel only superficially will easily pass this by, will not notice it and at the present time when everything is popularized, when all manner of knowledge is forced upon us, we can often experience as an extraordinary spectacle much of a very doubtful character in this knowledge.

Who would not consider it a blessing if all kinds of knowledge could be brought to the people through such inexpensive literature as the Reclam'sche Universal Bibliothek. Among the last volumes, one has appeared on the Origin of the Bible. The author entitles himself a Doctor of Theology. He is, then, a theologian! He believes that throughout all the chapters of the Gospel of St. John, from the 35th verse of the 1st Chapter, John, the author of the Gospel, is the one referred to. When this little book came into my hands, I really could not believe my eyes and said to myself: there must be something very extraordinary under consideration here that repudiates all previous occult points of view that the Beloved Disciple is not mentioned before the “raising of Lazarus.” Still, a theologian ought to know! In order not to pass judgment too quickly, take up the Gospel of St. John and see for yourselves what stands there: “Again the next day after, John stood and two of his disciples.” Here John the Baptist and two of his disciples are spoken of. The most generous point of view that one can take toward this theologian is that his consciousness was filled with an ancient exoteric tradition which declares that John, the author of the Gospel, is one of these two disciples. This tradition is supported by Matthew IV 21. But, the Gospel of St. John cannot be explained by means of the other Gospels. A theologian therefore was responsible for introducing into popular literature a very harmful book. And if one knows how such a thing which is brought to the people in just this way continues to spread, it is possible to measure the harm which arises out of it. This is just an interpellation, in order that a certain protective wall may be erected against all kinds of objections which might perhaps be brought forward in refutation of what has been said here.

Now let us hold in mind that what preceded the “raising of Lazarus” is a communication of weighty matters, but that the writer has reserved the most profound matters for the chapters subsequent to that event. Nevertheless, he wished throughout to indicate that the content of his Gospel is something which will be thoroughly understood only by one who has attained a certain degree of initiation. Therefore he indicates in various passages that what is communicated in the first chapters has to do with a certain kind and degree of initiation. You already know that there are different degrees of initiation. For example, in a certain form of oriental initiation, seven degrees can be distinguished and these seven degrees were designated by all sorts of symbolical names. The first was the degree of the “Raven,” the second that of the ”Occultist,” the third of the “Warrior,” the fourth that of the “Lion.” Amongst different peoples, who still felt a kind of blood relationship as the expression of their group-soul, the fifth degree was designated by the name of the folk itself; thus among the Persians, for example, an initiate of the fifth degree was called in an occult sense, a “Persian.” When we understand what these names signify, then the justification of these titles will soon be evident.

An initiate of the first degree is one who constitutes an intermediary between the hidden and the outer life, one who is sent from place to place. In this first degree the neophyte must devote himself with complete resignation to the outer life, but what he ascertains there, he must bring back into the Mystery Places. One speaks of the “Raven” when words have something to communicate to the inner world of the Mystery Places from the world outside. Just call to mind the ravens of Elias, or the ravens of Wotan, even the ravens of the Barbarossa Saga, that had to discover when it was time to come forth. The initiate of the second degree stood fully within the occult life. One who was of the third degree was allowed to defend occult knowledge. The degree of the “Warrior” does not mean one who fights, but one who defends occult teaching, what the occult life has to give. One who is a “Lion” embodies the occult life within himself in such a way that he defends occultism, not only in words, but also in acts, that is, with deeds of a magical sort. The sixth degree is that of the “Sun-hero” and the seventh that of the “Father.” The fifth degree is the one we shall now consider.

The human being of ancient times was especially a part of his community and therefore when he was conscious of his ego, he felt himself more as a member of a group-soul than as an individual. But the initiate of the fifth degree had made a certain sacrifice, had so far stripped off his own personality that he took the folk-soul into his own being. While other men felt their souls within the folk-soul, he took the folk-soul into his own being, and this was because all that belonged to his personality was of no importance to him but only the common folk-spirit. Therefore an initiate of this kind was called by the name of his particular folk.

Now we know that in the Gospel of St. John it is said that Nathaniel also was one of the first disciples of Christ-Jesus. He was brought before the Christ. He is not so highly developed that he is able to comprehend the Christ. The Christ is, of course, the Spirit of all-inclusive Knowledge which cannot be fathomed by a Nathaniel, an initiate of the fifth degree. But the Christ could fathom Nathaniel. This was shown by two facts.

How did Christ designate him? “This man is a true Israelite!” Here we have the designation according to the name of the folk. Just as among the Persians, an initiate of the fifth degree is called a Persian, so among the Israelites, he is called an Israelite. Therefore Christ calls Nathaniel an Israelite. He then says to him: “Even before Philip called thee, when thou wast under the fig-tree, I saw thee!” That is a symbolical designation of an initiate like the Budha sitting under the Bodhi Tree. The fig-tree is a symbol of Egyptian-Chaldean initiation. He meant with these words: I well know that thou art an initiate of a certain degree, and canst perceive certain things, for I saw thee! Then Nathaniel recognized Him: “Rabbi, Thou art the Son of God; Thou art the King of Israel!” This word “King” signifies in this connection: Thou art one who is higher than I, otherwise thou couldst not say, “I saw thee when thou sattest under the fig-tree.” And Christ answered, “Thou believest in me because I said that I saw thee under the fig-tree: thou shalt see greater things than these.” The words “verily, verily” we shall speak about later. Then He said: “I say unto you, ye shall see the angels of Heaven ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.” Yet greater things than they had already seen would be seen by those who were able to recognize the Christ. Again, one may ask: What significant words are these?

In order to make this clear, let us call to mind what the human being really is. We have said that he is a different creature by day than by night. During the day his four human members, physical body, ether body, astral body, and ego are bound closely together. They react upon each other. We may say that when the human being is awake during the day, in a certain way his physical and etheric bodily parts are permeated and cared for by his astral and ego spiritual parts. But we have also shown that something else must be active within the etheric and physical bodily parts in order that the human being be able to exist at all in his present phase of evolution. For we have called attention to the fact that every night he draws out those members which care for this physical and ether body, namely, the astral body and ego, thus leaving his physical and ether bodies to their own fate. You all, as astral body and ego, faithlessly desert your physical and ether bodies every night. Hence you will see that Spiritual Science points out with a certain correctness that divine-spiritual powers and forces stream through the physical and ether bodies during the night so that they are, as it were, invested by these divine-spiritual forces and beings. We have also pointed out that when the astral body and ego were outside the physical and ether bodies in those periods which we call the Jahve or Jehova epochs, that Jehova was active as an inspirer. But it was the true Light, the Fullness of the Godhead or of the Elohim, the Pleroma, that was also constantly radiating through the physical and ether bodies. However, the human being, not having yet received the necessary impulse from the Christ-principle before the appearance of this Principle upon the earth, was not able to recognize it. Those principles which are to come to expression in the physical body, dwell in the higher spiritual regions of Devachan. The spiritual beings and powers which work upon the physical body are at home in the higher heavenly spheres, in higher Devachan, and those powers which work upon the ether body are in their own sphere in the lower heavenly realms. So we may say that in this physical body there are constantly active, beings from the highest regions of Devachan and in the ether body, beings from the lower devachanic regions are active. Men can recognize them only after having received the Impulse of the Christ into themselves. “If you truly understand the Son of Man, you will perceive how the spiritual forces descending from and ascending to the heavenly spheres work upon mankind. This you will know through the impulse which the Christ gives to the earth.”

What now follows, was mentioned in the lecture yesterday. The Marriage at Cana in Galilee is often called “the first of the miracles”—it were better to call it “the first sign” which Christ-Jesus made. Now in order that we may understand the stupendousness of the significance of the Marriage at Cana, we shall need to consider as a whole, much of what we have been hearing in the last lectures.

In the first place we have here a marriage—but why a marriage in Galilee? We shall understand why it is a marriage in Galilee if we call to mind once more the whole mission of the Christ. His mission consisted in bringing to mankind the full force of the ego, an inner independence in the soul. The individual ego should feel itself fully independent and separate, existing completely within itself and people should be united in marriage because of a love which they freely and voluntarily bestow upon one another. Through the Christ-Principle there should come into the earth-mission a love that would rise ever higher and higher above the material and constantly mount toward the Spirit. Love had its beginning in its lowest form which was bound up with the senses. In the earliest periods of human evolution, those who were bound together by the tie of blood loved each other and they made a great deal of the idea that love was based upon this material blood relationship.

The Christ came in order to spiritualize this love; in order, on the one hand, to loosen the bonds in which love had been entangled through the blood-relationship and on the other hand to give force and intensity to spiritual Love. Among the followers of the Old Testament we still see expressed most completely what we may call membership in the group-soul acting as the foundation of the individual ego within the Universal Ego. We have seen that the expression “I and Father Abraham are one” had a definite meaning for the adherents of the Old Testament. It meant that they felt themselves safe in the consciousness that that blood which ran through the veins of Father Abraham flowed on down even to themselves. Therefore they felt themselves secure within the whole and only those were considered members of the whole who came into being through human propagation maintained by means of this blood relationship. In the very beginning of human evolution upon the earth, marriage took place only within very narrow circles, within families related by blood. Endogamy, (marriage within the tribe) was closely adhered to. Then the narrow blood-circle gradually widened and men began to marry outside the family, but not yet within other peoples or folk. The folk of the Old Testament held fast to the idea that the folk blood relationship should be maintained. One is a “Jew” who in his blood is a Jew.

Christ Jesus did not advocate this principle. He appealed to those who had broken this principle of mere blood relationship, and the important thing He had to demonstrate, He demonstrated not in Judea, but outside in Galilee. Galilee was the region where peoples of every race and tribe had mixed together. The term Galilean means “mixed-breed,” “mongrel.” Christ Jesus went to the Galileans, to those who were most mixed. Out of a human reproduction such as this, brought about by a mingling of blood, something arose that was no longer dependent upon a physical basis of love. Therefore what He wished to say, was said at a marriage. But why at a marriage? Because at the time of a marriage reference can be made to the reproduction of human beings. And what He wished to demonstrate, He did not wish to show at a place where marriage took place within narrow boundaries, within the blood-bond, but where it was entered into independently of the tie of blood. Therefore what He had to say was said at a marriage—and at a marriage in Galilee. If we wish to understand what is expressed here, we must again turn our attention to the whole of human evolution.

It has often been said that for the occultist there is no such thing as the merely external, the purely material. All materiality is for him the expression of something of a soul-spirit nature, and just as your face is the expression of something of a soul-spirit nature, so too is the light of the sun the expression of a soul-spirit light. All that occurs apparently only in the material physical world is at the same time the expression of deeper spiritual processes. Occultism does not deny matter. For it, even the grossest matter is the expression of a soul-spirit something. Thus material facts correspond to the spiritual evolutionary processes of the world, always running parallel with them.

If in spirit we look back over human evolution to the time when mankind still lived upon an ancient Continent lying between Europe and America, upon ancient Atlantis, passing over from there into the later post-Atlantean period, we can see how generation after generation has at last led right up to ourselves. If we consider from the standpoint of race the whole significance of human evolution from the 4th to the 5th Root-race, we can see, as it were, that out of an Atlantean humanity, wholly or completely immersed in the group-soul, the individual ego of the human personality gradually evolved and slowly matured in the post-Atlantean period. What the Christ brought spiritually through His powerful spiritual impulse had to be prepared gradually through other impulses. What Jahve did was to implant the group-soul ego in the astral body and by gradually maturing it, prepare it for the reception of the fully independent “I AM.” But men could only comprehend this “I AM” when their physical body also became a fit instrument for sheltering It. You can easily imagine that the astral body might be ever so capable of receiving an ego, but if the physical body is not a fit instrument for truly comprehending the “I AM” with a waking consciousness then it is impossible to receive it. The physical body must also always be a suitable instrument for what is imprinted upon it here upon the earth. Therefore when the astral body had been matured, the physical body had to be prepared to become an instrument of the “I AM,” and this is what occurred in human evolution. We can follow the processes through which the physical body was prepared to become the bearer of the self-conscious, ego-endowed human being.

Even in the Bible it is pointed out that Noah who, in a certain sense was the progenitor of his race in the post-Atlantean period, was the first wine-drinker, the first to experience the effect of alcohol. Then we come to a chapter which may be really very shocking for many people. In the post-Atlantean period an extraordinary cultus arose; this was the worship of Dionysos. You all know that this worship was connected with wine. This extraordinary substance was first introduced to human beings in the post-Atlantean period and produced a certain effect upon them. You know that every substance has some effect upon the human creature and alcohol had a very definite action upon the human organism. In fact, in the course of human evolution, it has had a mission. Strange as it may seem, it has had the task, as it were, of preparing the human body so that it might be cut off from connection with the Divine, in order to allow the personal “I AM” to emerge. Alcohol has the effect of severing the connection of the human being with the spirit world in which he previously existed. It still has this effect today. It was not without reason that alcohol has had a place in human evolution. In the future of humanity, it will be possible to see in the fullest sense of the word that it was the mission of alcohol to draw men so deeply into materiality that they become egoistic, thus bringing them to the point of claiming the ego for themselves, no longer placing it at the service of the whole folk. Alcohol performed a service, the contrary of the one performed by the human group-soul. It deprived men of the capacity to feel themselves at one with the whole in the spirit world. Hence the Dionysian worship which cultivated a living together in a kind of external intoxication, a merging into the whole without observing this whole. Evolution in the post-Atlantean period has been connected with the worship of Dionysos, because this worship was a symbol of the function and mission of alcohol. Now, when mankind is again endeavouring to find its way back, when the ego has been so far developed that the human being is again able to find union with the divine spiritual powers, the time has come for a certain reaction, an unconscious one at first, to take place against alcohol. This reaction is now taking place and many persons today already feel that something which once had a very special significance is not forever justified.

No one should interpret what has been said concerning the mission of alcohol at a special period of time as, perhaps, favoring alcohol, but it should be understood that this has been stated in order to make clear that this alcoholic mission has been fulfilled and that different things are adapted to different periods. In the same period in which men were drawn most deeply into egotism through alcohol, there appeared a force stronger than all others which could give to them the greatest impulse for re-finding a union with the spiritual whole. On the one hand men had to descend to the lowest level in order that they might become independent and on the other hand a strong force must come which can give again the impulse for finding the path back to the Universal. The Christ indicated this to be His mission in the first of His signs. In the first place He had to point out that the ego must become independent; in the second place, that He was addressing Himself to those who had freed themselves from the blood relationship. He had to turn to a marriage where the physical bodies came under the influence of alcohol, because at this marriage wine would be drunk. And Christ Jesus showed how His mission had to proceed in the different earthly epochs. How often we hear extraordinary explanations of the meaning of the changing of water into wine. Even from the pulpit one hears that nothing else is meant than that the insipid water of the Old Testament should be superceded by the strong wine of the New. In all probability it was the wine-lovers who always liked this kind of an explanation, but these symbols are not so simple as that. It must be kept constantly in mind that the Christ said: My mission is one that points toward the far distant future when men will be brought to a union with the Godhead—that is to a love of the Godhead as a free gift of the independent ego. This love should bind men in freedom to the Godhead while formerly an inner compelling impulse of the group-soul had made them a part of It.

Let us now grasp in accordance with the prevailing thought of that time what men then experienced. Let us especially understand the thoughts that they held. It was declared that people were at one time united with the group-soul and felt their union with the Godhead. Then they developed a downward tendency and this was considered as an entanglement in matter, as a degeneration, a kind of falling away from the Divine, and the question was asked: whence came originally what the human being now possesses? From what has he fallen away? The further we go back in earthly evolution, the more we find the solid, earthly matter passing over into a fluidic state under the influence of warmer conditions. But we know that when the earth was much more fluidic than it became later on, human beings also existed, but they were much less detached from the Godhead than at a subsequent period. To the degree that the earth hardened, human things became materialized. At the time the earth was in a fluidic condition, the human being was contained within the watery element, but he could only walk about upon the earth after it had already deposited solid portions. Therefore, people felt the hardening of the physical body and could say: the human being was born out of the earth when it was still in its fluidic state, but at that time he was still wholly united with the Godhead. All that brought him into matter defiled him. Those who are to remember this ancient connection with the Divine were baptized with water. This was its symbol: Let yourself become conscious of your ancient union with the Godhead, conscious that you have become defiled, that you have descended to your present condition.

The Baptist also baptized in this way in order to bring mankind into a closer union with the Godhead. And this is what all baptism signified in ancient times. It is a radical expression, but one which brings to our consciousness what is meant. Christ Jesus had to baptize with something different. He had to direct men, not to the past, but to the future through the development of a spirituality in their inner being. Through the “holy,” the undimmed and undefiled Spirit, the human spirit could be united with the Godhead. Baptism by water was a baptism of remembrance, that of the Holy Spirit is one of prophecy pointing to the future. That relationship which has been wholly lost, and which baptism by water recalls to mind has also been lost in all that was expressed in the symbol of the wine, of the sacrificial wine. Dionysos was the dismembered God who was drawn into the individual souls, separate parts no longer knowing anything of one another. Humanity was split into many pieces and thrown into matter through what alcohol has brought to the world, alcohol the symbol of Dionysos. In the Marriage at Cana, a great principle was preserved, the instructive principle of evolution. There are, to be sure, absolute truths, but they cannot at all times be revealed to men without preparation. Each age must have its special function, its special truths. Why is it that we can speak today of reincarnation, etc.? Why are we able to sit together in such an assembly as this and foster Spiritual Science? We can do so, because all of the souls which are present within you today have been incarnated upon the earth in so and so many bodies and so and so many times. Very many of the souls which are within you now lived at one time in the Germanic countries where the Druid priests walked among you and brought to your souls Spiritual Wisdom in the form of myth and saga. And because your soul received it in that form at that time, it is now in the position to receive it in another form, the Anthroposophical. At that time it was in the form of pictures—today it is in the form of Anthroposophy. But then it would not have been possible to impart truth in its present form. Do not imagine that the ancient Druid priest would have been able to impart the truth in the form in which it is presented today. Anthroposophy is the form befitting the humanity of the present or of the immediate future. In later incarnations truth will be proclaimed, and men will work for it in quite different forms, and what is now called Anthroposophy will be related as something remembered, just as we now relate the Sagas and Fairy-tales. Anthroposophists should not be foolish enough to say that in ancient times there existed only stupidities and childish ideas, and that we alone have advanced the world so gloriously. Those, for example, who pretend to be monists do this. But we are working in Spiritual Science in preparation for the next epoch. For if our present age were not here, the next would likewise not come. No one should, however, make the future an excuse for present conduct. Much nonsense is indulged in also in respect of the teaching of Reincarnation. I have met people who said that in their present incarnation they did not need to be respectable human beings, because for this they had time enough later on. If, however, one does not begin with it today, the consequences will appear straightway in the next incarnation.

So we must understand clearly that there is nothing absolutely fixed in the forms of truth, but that what corresponds to a particular epoch of human evolution, always becomes known. That greatest impulse of evolution had, as it were, to descend even into the life customs of that time. For it had to clothe the highest truth in language and functions befitting the understanding of the particular period in question. Therefore by means of a kind of Dionysian rite or wine sacrifice, the Christ had to tell how mankind could raise itself to the Godhead. One should not fanatically ask why Christ changed the water into wine. The age should be taken into consideration. Through a sort of Dionysian rite, Christ had to prepare for what was to come.

Christ goes to the Galileans who are jumbled together out of all kinds of nationalities that were not bound by the blood-tie and there He performed the first Sign of His mission and He adapted Himself so fully to their habits of life that he turned water into wine for them. Let us hold clearly in mind what the Christ really wished to say by this: Those who have descended to the stage of materialism, symbolized by the drinking of wine, will I also lead to a union with the Spirit.—So He will be there, not alone for those who can be raised by means of the symbol of baptism, by water. It is very significant that we are shown at once that here are six vessels of purification. We shall return to this number. Purification is what is accomplished by means of baptism. If in those epochs in which the Gospel had its origin one wished to express the fact of baptism, it was spoken of as a purification. The word “baptism” was never actually used, but they said “to baptize,” and what resulted through baptism was called “purification.” Never will you find in the Gospel of St. John the corresponding ΒαπτιζΩ, except in verb form. But when it is used as a noun, it is the cleansing that is always meant, the process through which the human being is reminded of his state of purification, his relationship with the Godhead.

Even to the symbolical vessels of the rite of purification, Christ-Jesus undertook the Sign through which He indicated His mission as far as it was possible at that time. Thus in the marriage at Cana in Galilee, something of the profound mission of the Christ is expressed. He said: “My time will come in the future, it is not yet come. What I have to accomplish here has to do in part with what must be overcome through My mission.” He stands in the present and at the same time points to the future, thereby showing how He works for the age, not in an absolute but in a cultural, educational sense. It is the mother, therefore, who besought Him and said, “They have no wine.” But He replied: “What I have now to accomplish has still to do with ancient times, with me and thee, for My proper time has not yet come when wine will be transformed back again into water.” How could it have had any meaning at all to say, “Woman, what have I to do with thee?” when He then complied with what the mother had asked! It only has a meaning if we are shown that the present condition of humanity has been brought about because of the blood relationship and that a Sign has been performed in accordance with ancient usages which still needs the employment of alcohol in ordcr to point to the time when the independent ego shall have risen above the tie of the blood; it has a significance only when we are shown that for the present we must still reckon with ancient times which are symbolized by wine, but that a later time is coming which will be “His time.”

And chapter after chapter of the Gospel reveals to us two things. First it shows that what was communicated was for those who, in a certain way, were able to comprehend occult truths. In our times, exoteric Spiritual Science is presented in lectures, but at that period spiritual-scientific truths could only be understood by those who had been in a certain way actually initiated into this or that degree. Who were those who were able to understand something of what Christ-Jesus was saying about profound truths? Only those who were able to perceive outside of the physical body—those who could withdraw from the body and become conscious in the spirit world. If Christ-Jesus wished to speak to those who could understand Him, it had to be to those who were in a certain way initiated, those who could see spiritually. When, for example, He speaks of the re-birth of the soul in the chapter concerning His conversation with Nicodemus, we see that He is revealing these truths to someone who perceives with spiritual senses. You only need to read the following words:—

But there was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews; the same came to Jesus by night.

Let us accustom ourselves to accuracy in dealing with words. We are told that Nicodemus came to Jesus “by night;” this means that he received outside of the physical body what Christ-Jesus had to communicate to him. “By night” means that when he makes use of his spiritual senses, he comes to Christ-Jesus. Just as in their conversation about the fig-tree, Nathaniel and Christ-Jesus understood one another as initiates, so too a faculty of understanding is indicated here also.

The second thing shown us in the Gospel is that Christ has always a mission to perform that has nothing to do with the mere blood tie. That is very clearly shown by His approaching the Samaritan woman at the well. He gave her the instructions which He gave those whose ego had been lifted above the common blood tie:

Then cometh He to a city of Samaria which is called Sychar, near to the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph.

Now Jacob's well was there. Jesus, therefore, being wearied with His journey, sat thus on the well: and it was about the sixth hour.

There cometh a woman of Samaria to draw water: Jesus saith unto her, “Give me to drink,” for His disciples were gone away into the city to buy meat.

Then saith the woman of Samaria unto Him, “How is it that thou, being a Jew, asketh drink of me, which am a woman of Samaria, for the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans.”

Here is indicated that it was something very strange that Christ should go to a people whose egos had been withdrawn, uprooted from the group-soul. That is the important thing.

In the narrative about the nobleman, we read further that the Christ not only breaks the bond of blood that binds men together in a marriage within the folk, but he breaks also that bond that separates them into classes. He came to those whose ego had been uprooted. He healed the son of the nobleman who, according to the interpretation of the Jews, was a stranger to Him. Throughout the Gospel it is pointed out that Christ is the missionary of the independent ego which is present in every human individual. Therefore, He could say:—“When I speak of Myself in a higher sense, of the I AM, I do not at all refer to my own ego residing within me, but to a being, to something which everyone possesses within himself. My ego is one with the Father, but in general the ego present in every personality is also one with the Father.” That is also the deeper meaning of the instructions which the Christ gave to the Samaritan woman at the well.

I should like to call your attention especially to a passage, which if rightly understood will enable you to come to a deep understanding. It is the passage from the 31st to the 34th verse of the 3rd chapter which naturally must be read so that the reader is conscious of its being John the Baptist who speaks these words:—

He that cometh from above is above all: he that is of the earth is earthly and speaketh of the earth; he that cometh from heaven is above all. And what he hath seen and heard, to that he testifieth: and no man receiveth his testimony.

But he that hath received his testimony hath set his seal that God is true.

For he whom God hath sent speaketh the words of God: for God giveth not the Spirit by measure unto him.

I should like to meet anyone who understands these words according to this translation. What a contradiction! “He whom God hath sent, speaketh the word of God, for God giveth not the Spirit by measure unto him.” What is the sense of these words?

In countless utterances, Christ says: “When I speak of My Ego, I speak of the Eternal Ego in men which is one with the spiritual foundations of the world. When I speak of this Ego, I speak of something which dwells in the innermost depths of the human soul. If any man hears Me (and now He is speaking only of the lower ego which feels nothing of the Eternal) he receiveth not My testimony. He understands nothing of what I say, for I can speak of nothing that flows from Me to him. Otherwise he would not then be independent. Every one must find within himself as his own eternal base, the God which I proclaim.” A few verses back we find the passage:—

And John also was baptizing in Enon near to Salim, because there was much water there: and they came and were baptized.

Then there arose a question between some of John's disciples and the Jews about purification (this means about the form of baptism).

When such a question was raised in these circles, they were always speaking of the union with the Divine and of the submersion of humanity into matter and of how, according to the old idea of God, union with the Divine took place through the group-soul. Thus others came and said to John: “Jesus also baptizes!” And John had to make it clear to them that what had come into the world through Jesus was something very special and this he did by saying that Jesus does not teach that union symbolized by the ancient form of baptism, but teaches how men will be their own guides through the free gift of the now independent ego. And each individual must discover the “I AM,” the God, within himself. Only in this way is he in the position to find the Divine in his inner being. If these words are read thus, then the reader will be aware that He, the “I AM,” was sent from God. He who was sent from God, who was sent to enkindle the Divine in this way, also preached God in the true sense, no longer according to the blood tie.

Let us translate these passages according to their true meaning, for we have now the basis for such a translation, if we understand how the teachings of the ancients were presented. They were poetically portrayed in many books. We need only recall the Psalms of the Old Testament where in beautifully constructed language, the Divine was proclaimed. At that time the ancient blood-relationship was spoken of only as a relationship with a God. This could all be learned, but all that was learned through it was nothing more than that one was related to this ancient divinity. But, if there was a desire to comprehend the Christ, then all the ancient laws, all the ancient artificialities were unnecessary. What the Christ taught could be understood to the degree that men understood the spiritual ego within themselves. At that time, it is true, it was not possible to have full knowledge of Divinity, but one could understand what was heard from the lips of Christ-Jesus. The preliminary conditions for understanding were there. The Psalms were not then necessary, nor all the poetically constructed teachings, for all that was needed was the simplest means of expression. One needed only to speak in halting words to become a witness of God. Even in the simplest, stammering words it was possible to become a witness of the Divine; it need be only single words without metre. Anyone who felt in his ego that he was sent from God, even though he were halting in his speech, could understand the words of the Christ. Anyone knowing only the earthly relationship with God speaks in the poetic measure of the Psalms, but all his metre leads him to nothing but the ancient gods. However, anyone who felt himself deeply rooted in the spirit worlds is above all, and can bear witness of what has been seen and heard in those worlds. But those who accepted a testimony only in the accustomed way did not accept His. If there were those who accepted it, they showed by their acceptance that they felt themselves sent from God. They not only believed, they understood what the other one said to them, and through their understanding they bore witness of their words. “He who feels the ego, reveals even in his stammering words the Word of God.” This is what is meant, for the spirit here referred to does not need to express itself in metre, in any form of syllabic measure, but it can declare itself in the simplest, halting manner. Such words can easily be taken as a license for folly. But whoever refuses wisdom just because, in his opinion, the most sublime mysteries should be expressed in the simplest form possible, does so, although often quite unconsciously, merely from an inclination toward psychic ease. When it is said, “God giveth not the spirit by measure” (metre), it only means that the “measure” or metre does not help towards the spirit. But where the spirit really exists, there also is “measure.” Not everyone who has “measure” has the “spirit;” but one who has the “spirit” will come most certainly to “measure” or metre. Naturally, certain things cannot be reversed. It is not an evidence of possessing the “spirit” if one has no “measure;” nor is the possession of “measure” a proof of the “spirit.” Science is certainly no sign of wisdom, nor is a lack of science a proof of it.

So we are shown that Christ appeals to the independent ego in every human soul. “Measure” you must consider here as metre, poetically constructed speech. Then the foregoing sentence will read: “He who finds God in the ‘I AM, bears witness of Divine Speech or God's language, even in his stammering words”—and he finds the way to God.

Spiritual Science should above all things be conceived of, by those who have already noted for a long time, in the sense that the question should come before the soul as to how Spiritual Science can be most intensely effective for human life. This has certainly often been emphasized, but we cannot often enough to bring forward the side of the reality of Spiritual Science and its significance for our age. Spiritual Science is certainly in a sense a Science, and as such it is, we may say, still in a “fragmentary” stage at the present day, only partly established; what it may eventually become can really only be present in the first beginnings at the present time.

What I mean by this is the content of Spiritual Science, through which we can learn something of man in so far as this has its life on the other side of the gates of physical life: which are birth, or conception, and death. Through spiritual Science we can also learn something about the evolution of the Earth and the Cosmos, and as to how this evolution of Earth and the Cosmos is connected with man, and so on. Thus, through Spiritual Science the human desire for knowledge can be satisfied in a more comprehensive and complete manner than is possible through external sensible science. We can answer the questions which weigh on man's soul and so on.

Besides this significance of Spiritual Science from the view of ‘content’ there is another very essential one. This can be observed if we keep in view what we can become, what can be made of our soul-life, our soul-disposition, our soul-constitution, when we busy ourselves with the thoughts and ideas which come to us from Spiritual Science. It might even be—in what science has this not been the case in the course of the development of mankind!—that much of what can and must be proclaimed today quite conscientiously from the sources of Spiritual Science might have to be corrected; that much may appear in another form in the future through the further progress of Spiritual Science. Then perhaps there may be a different content in one or another department of this Spiritual Science. But what it may become for the disposition and constitution of our soul through its ideas and its thoughts, would not be affected thereby, and this is fundamentally connected with certain basic qualities of our present day. We will today review certain basic characteristics of our time, particularly as regards the constitution of the soul of man. We will dwell on the four most important soul-activities which we know well from our observation: the perception of man with respects to outer sense-processes; imagination (the forming of ideas) through which we then work upon these outer sense-impressions; our feeling; and our willing. Our soul-life runs its course from waking till going to sleep in perception, imagination, feeling and willing.

First we will consider perception. When the soul's eye is sharpened by Spiritual Science we can observe what has of necessity developed as the basic cultural characteristic of the human soul in the course of the last three or four centuries, in those countries which come into our consideration. (What I say is not setting criticism: it is only a characterization.) It may be asked what this is. It only needs a superficial observer of life to discover that men, in regard to their faculty of perception (in respects to the immediate relation of the soul to the outer world through the senses), have come to a point when they constantly need livelier, more violent, more fascinating impressions, to satisfy the faculty of perception of their senses. Those of you who are somewhat older may think back to your youth; just compare many of the phenomena of life in your youth, which you could perceive around you, with similar phenomena of life now—the further you go back the more striking this is—and ask yourselves to what a high degree that which is known as the impulse, the tendency to the ‘sensational,’ has not gained the upper hand! What is really this sensational element? It rests on the fact that man needs today forceful, exaggeratedly quick-changing and purely sensuous impressions, so that he may be thrilled and carried away from the outer world; he wants to be taken hold of and fascinated. The sensational has gained the upper hand to an uncommon extent. But something significant is connected with this. Through the domination of the sensational, the strength and energy of the human Ego is modified. Spiritual Science alone can lead to an understanding of what comes under consideration here; for he shows what perception of the outer world really is.

If we search through philosophical literature we find nothing more spoken of in the nature of external perception, or ‘sensing’ as it is called. All sorts of theories have been set up as to what sensing, perceiving really is, within the human physical soul life. I need not enlighten you as to that. But the point of view of Spiritual Science in this respect shall be indicated.

I have already mentioned here in Berlin, in a public lecture, that the development of natural science in the 19th century and into our own times has accomplished great things, great things in regard to the understanding of certain sensible connections of the external world of realities. But it sees the evolution of man in particular as far too direct and simple. It simply imagines that at one time there were only the lower animals, then higher animals, then still higher ones, and out of these men finally developed as, in a sense, the highest animal all. The evolution of man, however, is not so simple as this. We have often pointed out that man, who must appear to us in his external bodily form has an image of the divine reality of the Cosmos, can be thought of as represented in the most varied manner. He can even be thought of, in regard to certain natural-scientific points of view, as being divided into three parts: first the head- or senses-man (this is not exact but as the most important senses lie in the head, we may say ‘head-man’). Secondly, the trunk-man; and thirdly, the extremities-man. Of these three members of the human organization, the trunk-man, the heart- and lung-man, alone is really formed as natural science imagines him today. The head-man is really not in the process of progressive development but of a retrogressive one. The head of man arrests the progressive development at a certain stage and turns it back again. It has been repeatedly said that such an idea is difficult, and it has been asked how one can simplify it for oneself. I have pointed out in several places even the external rightly understood facts of natural science confirms my statements—only one must be a real natural scientist and not merely follow the pattern of certain scholars of the present day. Observe the human eye, and compare it with the eye of animals which have reached a certain stage of evolution. We cannot say that the human eye is more complicated in its outer form than the eyes of these animals, for that would not be true. There are animals which have, for example, in the inside of their eye—where we, from an outer physical point of view, have nothing at all—the ‘cell-apophysis’ and the ‘sword-apophysis.’ These are certain organs in the inside of the eye which are continuations of the blood vessels into the inside of the eye. Through these an intimate connection between the whole life of feeling of the animal and his perceptive life is established in the eye. The animal feels much more intensely in the eye than man does. In man there is no ‘cell-apophysis’ or ‘sword-apophysis.’ The human eye is simplified. In its form is not merely progressive, it is retrogressive. One could prove in the smallest details of the human head-organism that man is really retrograding in respect to his head, especially compared with the rest of the human make-up, which is progressive.

Someone who thought that this backward development of the head was difficult to imagine asked me whether I could point to a significant fact or clue by which one could understand this better. I told him to think of the following: In the process of development of the different animals ending with man, it comes about a certain period of the embryonic stage that the human being turns back to the hairy state. Man himself is not hairy, but the head belongs to the hairy portions, in general; the fact that man, as regards the formation of his head, reverts to the rank of the animal, likewise shows the retrograde development of the head. This is a superficial, external indication. The inner signs speak much more distinctly. I beg you to keep in mind the vast importance of these facts.

For the very reason that the head is retrogressive, that evolution does not progress in a straight line but is retrogressive in the head, is dammed up and turned back, room is thereby created for the psycho-spiritual development of man. Those natural scientists who are of the opinion that the psycho-spiritual life of man is only a result of his physical organism, do not understand their own natural science aright. They do not understand that in order to bring his soul and spirit nature into being it is necessary that the physical organization of man should not shoot and sprout, but that it should withdraw. It flags and is turned back and makes room for the psycho-spiritual development. Where man most develops his soul and spirit nature, there the physical development draws back.

One becomes inwardly aware, when one has gone through a psycho-spiritual development, that, simply through inner observation, one can get an answer to the question: What really is ordinary imagination and perception? What is the ordinary waking life, in which imagination and perception are mingled?

As regards the head of man, perception and imagination and the waking life in general is a state of ‘hungering.’ Man is so peculiarly organized that, in his inner equipoise, from waking till sleeping, the head, that is his inner organization, is continually ‘hungry’ as compared with the rest of the body. Certain ascetics who seek an increase of psycho-spiritual life have made use of this; they allow the whole body to be hungry, because the hunger-process, extended to the whole body, is said to bring about certain inner illumination. This is false. The normal state is that our head in the waking state is nourished less through the inner processes than the rest of the organism, and we can only be awake and perceive because the head is less nourished than the rest of the body.

Now the question arises: if our head hungers whilst we are undergoing this backward development of the head—in sleep there is an attempt to arrest this process—what then do we perceive? Through Spiritual Science we learn to distinguish between two things which in practice are always linked together, but which are two quite different things. There is first the mere waking life, and then the outer perceptions and the ordinary concept of memory. What then goes on when in waking consciousness we are hungering in our head?

First of all we are aware on the one hand of our Ego from the last incarnation. When we are merely awake we are aware of what we brought with us from the spiritual world, and with which we entered into existence through birth or conception. That enters and fills the space made for it in our organism; but when we perceive outer sensible objects, these external objects step into the space of the Ego, which otherwise we perceive when we have no external impression but are merely awake. In ordinary life these two things are intermingled: we are continually perceiving external objects, and are very seldom in such a state of soul that we are merely awake. The state of soul directed to external things is however always interwoven with an inclination to perceive our former Ego and to replace it by something, by external colors and sounds; then again, to perceive the former Ego and then again the external things. As soon as we perceive externally, as soon as an outer object works upon us, it suppresses our tendency, our power, to perceive the Ego of our last incarnation. It remains unconscious, we know nothing of it; but in this sense-perceiving there is really a conflict between the object which now stands before us and the Ego from our last incarnation.

Now you can imagine what it means when we are developing a striving after the sensational, when we wish to give ourselves up to the outer world. That never makes us stronger in life, but always weaker; for in so doing we weaken our Ego from the past incarnation, which in a certain sense constitutes our strength. Thus you can clearly see that with the inclination of man towards the sensational, a certain weakening of the human nature appears, and the Ego becomes weaker.

Now when we do not perceive, but think, imagine, what process takes place? Either our thoughts are silent or—which is not so frequent in present-day man—they link onto some external perception. When they are silent in waking-life, all we have gone through between the last incarnation and the present one works in us, in that which is able to work where room has been made for it by the body. Thus the last incarnation works in the place where perception arises; and in the place where conceptions arises, works the life which we have spent between death and the present birth. If we develop powerful thoughts within ourselves, it means that we are trying to develop these out of what we brought with us from the last birth, upon which we must take our stand. If only we have all thoughts which are called up within us from an external stimulus, which only revolve in our soul because we receive them from outside, we continually weaken what we have brought over from the time he dreamed death and birth, that is to say, our Ego. The search for sensation weakens our present life. The desire to animate our Club evenings with the dusky pints of beer so that we need to make as little demand as possible on ourselves, or the excitement of playing games, in short all this seeking for excitement from without, is not a strengthening but a weakening of the Ego, and it rests fundamentally on the fact that we do not feel strong enough to occupy ourselves with something pertaining to our soul-life. Through Spiritual Science we can clearly see the underlying reason why people are so desirous of sensation and in need of stimulus at the present time. What enters from this side into our present-day culture can be designated by a common name. Do not be offended by this name; it betokens a fundamental feature of many of the currents in the life of the present day: a limitation and narrowness of outlook. No one can deny, even taking present-day science and other activities into consideration, that one of the chief characteristics of the present-day man is his limited outlook, that limitation which prevents him from seeking the rich material in his own soul which comes from his past life and from his prenatal life. He does not believe, and he would have first to believe it, that one could be incited to do this through Spiritual Science.

Let us observe from this point of view what thoughts and ideas of Spiritual Science can be for the mood and disposition of the soul. They are certainly not external stimuli, nor anything sensational, and they decidedly did not aim at this. They do not take possession of the senses through external sensations. Many people miss this. In matters of Spiritual Science people must themselves reflect, and if they do not bring forth anything from the fund of their own soul, they are likely to fall asleep over Spiritual Science.

Spiritual Science gives us just this animation and shaking up of the soul-life, so that we gain the possibility of developing thoughts from our own inner self. It works against the sensational. It does this specially by giving us the possibility of thinking much about a few impressions of the senses. We need not hasten from sensation to sensation. We can give much thought to all possible sorts of sense-impressions. All the simple things which approach us personally become a riddle. Every detail makes us think a great deal; and thoughts about Saturn, Sun, Moon, the different Earth and so on, which many find so complicated, make the mind active and mobile and do not allow narrow-mindedness to any extent. Thus does our Spiritual Science work against a certain attribute of culture; it fights against a narrow outlook in the realm of perception and imagination. That is different again from the content which one can get from Spiritual Science; it is something that it can make up our soul, and we should take note of that.

Now in regard to the life of feeling. What is the most noticeable thing about a person who approaches Spiritual Science in any way? And what is the most noticeable thing about most people who do not wish to know anything about it, and who turn aside from it altogether? In the latter it is lack of interest in the great circumstances of the world. We must first of all enlarge our interests beyond what lies nearest, if we are to become interested in Spiritual Science. For what do most people in our time care about what the Earth was before it became “Earth”? What do most people of the present day care what civilization was before our own time? To do so one must develop more comprehensive interests. It is a question of extending one's interests beyond the thing lying nearest. Our age has the tendency to narrow the sphere of our interests as much as possible. What is really the tendency of our age? Allow me to use the following expression: it is not at all flattering, but I do not wish to criticize, only to characterize. Our time is striving in all ways towards narrow-mindedness, towards Philistinism, and if this takes hold of the majority of people, the consequence will be that the Philistinism will gradually be introduced into the most public departments. In this respect we have a remarkable example, which in respect to the things of the present day, must have a most depressing effect on those who can see through things.

In the East we have a nation which today is certainly in its infancy as regards the basic forces of its soul, but which possesses basic forces which in the future—in the sixth Post-Atlantean epoch of culture—are to develop to a remarkable height; basic soul forces which will work spiritually and have a spiritual character, and which we ought to recognize and cultivate as such. But what has established itself as public life in a remarkable manner today over a great part of this national force? Leninism! One cannot imagine anything more grotesque than the coupling together—I do not now refer to the man but to the thing—of this “aping of the civilization of the West” with the prophetic civilization of the East. There are no two things more opposite, and yet they are coupled together here. It is the most grotesque expression of materialistic striving; for out of the Folk-Spirit of the East something absolutely anti-philistine will be formed; but Leninism is the most absolute basic force of philistinism, the negation of all cultural interests of a far-reaching nature and the limitation of the interests of civilization to the narrowest realm of philistinism. We must clearly understand that. Nothing can better help us to penetrate these things, then the knowledge of Spiritual Science. Spiritual Science also works against philistinism, by appealing to the wide comprehensive interests of man. For one cannot possibly become a Spiritual Scientist without taking an interest in what binds man to the Cosmos, in what passes beyond all that is narrow and pulses into all that is great. So, in the realm of the life of feeling, spiritual knowledge is also the opponent of philistinism and of narrow-mindedness, which must inevitably result from materialism; as in the realm of the perceptive and conceptual life is also the opponent of narrow-mindedness and limitation.

In the domain of the will-life also, he who observes life even but to a small extent, can make a noteworthy observations. In respect to the expressions of the will, not materialism itself but what it brings in its train leads to the development of something remarkable in collective human life. The will must indeed always express itself with the help of the bodily nature, if it is to have an effect on the outer world. In regard to the will, present-day materialism makes man awkward. By reason of man's directing his bodily forces only in to quite distinct channels in his earliest youth and wielding them only in some particular directions, he becomes awkward in wider spheres. There are men today who, when they first find themselves in need of it, cannot even sew on a trouser-button for themselves, let alone anything else, strange as this may sound. If a man does not regard Spiritual Science as theory or doctrine but as something that works warmly within him and is taken into his whole personality, he will find that this passes over into the muscles and the pulsation of the blood and makes him dexterous. If we imparted a spiritually-scientific way of picturing things to our children, we should see the result; we should see that they would become adroit, that they would be able to do things more easily, their fingers would become more flexible. The possibility of making the ideas more mobile, occasions the will also do become more active in its methods of expression. Thus in the sphere of the will-life, Spiritual Science fights against that which threatens mankind: awkwardness. This is a characteristic of our time to a far greater extent than we realize. Just observe how little fitted men are today to do anything at all outside the narrow concerns of their professions; they are no longer able to do anything else besides; and they only do more or less work in their professions for the reason that their soul's course has been laid out for them. Confront a man who is thoroughly routine in his profession with something different, and you will see how very one-sided our present-day culture is. That cannot be obviated by external means; for the whole political economy tends towards specializing everything. To try to fight against this would be absurd. It is possible, however, so to fortify men's inner nature that they would receive the impulse of dexterity from the center of there being. For that it is necessary however to be quite permeated, thoroughly permeated, with the knowledge of the super-sensible world, and chiefly of the super-sensible nature of man. We cannot understand perception and conception, even from a spiritually-scientific point of view, if we do not know what I have said before, that the human organism makes room, through the backward activity of the head-organism, for the past life and also the life between death and rebirth to flow in. The life after death also close into our organism.

The opinions of natural science about the human organization are, as I have already said, far too one-sided. The trunk-man alone might be thus one-sidedly observed, but not so the extremities-man. If we observe the extremities: arms, hands, feet, legs (which organism is continued inwardly), this extremity-organism is seen to be the reverse of the head-organism: and over-development exists there which forces the development beyond the normal. If we accurately study man's development in regard to these relations we shall see that it shoots beyond the needs between birth and death. Let us consider only what is external: the armed organism in connection with the breasts; the secondary organs which serve propagation; the legs in connection with the primary sexual organs—the extremities in connection physically with that whereby man even physically looks out beyond himself. The extremities organism at its center serves not nearly what is poured out over the individual human life, but that by means of which his vision extends beyond himself: the psycho-spiritual. What lies—as soul and spirit—beyond the extremities extends beyond what serves human life between birth and death. Thus, just as man physically out of his own organism functions into that of the child through the center of his extremities, so that is present in him spiritually as imagination which he carries through the portal of death by virtue of his being an arm- and leg-man. Through imaginative cognition it can be very clearly seen that man bears quite distinctly—and even anatomically—his future state after death, spiritually in his extremities-organism. If we study natural science properly, we shall gradually cease to say that Spiritual Science is something that we cannot understand. If we really observe the human organism not as rectilinear, for that it is not, but as it really is, then natural science itself will make it necessary to turn to Spiritual Science. Mankind will of course have to overcome something—the belief in the similarity of all other sense-impressions. The similarity of all external sense-impressions is believed today, not only by the unlearned, but also by the scientific investigator who has a man before him in the clinic and examines him anatomically. To him the heart is a similar organism to the head, but this is not correct; the head as compared with the heart stands at the retrogressive stage in its whole organization. Only we do not know how to observe; that is the trouble. If we want to learn to observe correctly, we can gain from natural science itself fundamental conviction of the spiritual in man, which passes through births and deaths. When however we arrive at this, we shall also take into account this soul and spirit nature in the whole movement and growth of culture and we shall then understand the importance of the struggle against having a narrow outlook, against philistinism, and gaucherie, and we shall copperhead much else as well. Above all we shall learn to reckon with the spirit in practical life. The physicist is allowed to speak freely today of positive and negative electricity, of positive and negative magnetism; and yet it is taken amiss when the spiritual scientist in his domain speaks of two currents of force in the human soul, the Luciferic and Ahrimanic. But these two currents of force are just as much a polarity for the human soul as positive and negative magnetism or electricity in the physical. If we wish to understand humanity in its development we must take the trouble to observe what is at work in regard to the Luciferic and Ahrimanic element in life. An example:

Our social structure was for a long period of time influenced in a one-sided manner by Luciferic beings. Yet we could not simply eradicate the Luciferic element from life! A person who is always saying, “I will protect myself from the Luciferic element” is the very one to fall into it. There can only be a question of conceding it the right place in life and of knowing what is Luciferic and what is Ahrimanic: then we shall not exaggerate their effects and not put them in a false light. For centuries our social structure in Europe and also in other parts of the world has been ruled by strong one-sided Luciferic impulses. These strong Luciferic impulses lay hold of the instincts and habits of man, of that which works from within. All this is not criticism, only a characterization of these times. How did the Luciferic element work? Now great consideration has been given to determining social culture, the position of a man in life by laying great value on his vanity, on his ambition. These are Luciferic impulses. The vanity and ambition of a man had been stimulated. I would remind you how much weight is attached to pride and ambition in schools, even up to our times; and pride and ambition has led a man in many respects to acquire this or that, in order to gain an important place in life.

We have now reached an important point in life. It can scarcely escape the notice of a close observer that these Luciferic impulses are on the decline. To use a superficial expression, they no longer draw. But now something else is to be brought in, something essentially Ahrimanic; and one Ahrimanic feature is creeping into the customs of our present day. Our beloved populist so free from authority, which never wants to believe in authority, and which therefore, as a matter of course, falls a victim to all authorities, will again unsuspectingly allow to pass unobserved what is now about to take root as a one-sided Ahrimanic power in regard to the form the social structure. Something quite remarkable is now making itself felt, so-called “Intelligence tests.” Experimental psychology, which at the universities is doubtless to a certain extent justifiable, can discover many things as regards the working of the human body and as to how it expresses various things. But this psychology desires to have a certain occupation, and testing is easier than any other examination of the soul. The experimenter has a certain instrument which makes records on an electrical course; it places students at certain points and notes how long it takes for an impression to be received and to be brought to their consciousness. He thus works, from he an external clinical point of view, in a business-like way. That is easier than to investigate inwardly. For certain things the value of this experimental psychology is undeniable, but it wants to have a wider field. It now wants to take in hand “Intelligence tests.” For that, a number of children are taken from various grades of school classes and are tested as regards their “talents,” their memory, their power of observation, and so on; but the way in which the test is carried out by the methods of experimental psychology is very remarkable. Memory, for instance, is tested in the following way: On the blackboard two rows of words are written which have no connection with one another; for example, “head” and “crystal,” then two other disconnected words, and so on. After they have all been rubbed out again, the first word only is written down and the child has quickly to add the second one from memory. Those children who have best observed which word came next are considered to have the best memories, and the others who can recollect nothing at all or need a longer time are supposed to have a worse one. That is how the memory or the intelligence is tested. I will read a prize example of this (from the newspaper “German Politics,” 1918: “The discovery of the psycho-technique in Germany during the War” by Dr. Curt Piorkowski):

“For instance, in getting the concepts of ‘mirror,’ ‘murderer,’ ‘escape,’ a whole row of different connections between the mirror and the escape assert themselves, for the discovery of which no sort of special knowledge is necessary, only a distinct combination. The obvious connection (which will be made by the less intelligent persons) is of course that the person threatened sees in the mirror the murderer creeping along. Yet quite other suggestions are also possible! A stealthy murderer can for instance knock up against a mirror and waken the threatened sleeper by the clatter, so that he can escape; or the designing murderer may be blinded by a reflecting mirror.”

Imagine how intelligent a boy or girl must be if they are to hit upon such an idea!

“But motives of feeling may also be related. So for instance the murderer may be so terrified at his own image, indistinctly seen in the mirror in the semi-darkness, that he desists from the carrying-out of the deed, be it that horror or prickings of conscious seize him at the sight of himself in the mirror, or that in the dim light he takes his own reflected image for that of another.”

It is considered quite especially intelligent if the person under examination thinks that the murderer might see himself in the mirror, and take his own face for that of another.

“Another idea is the discovery of the stealthy murderer reflected in the water of the calm peaceful forest lake near threatened man, and so on.”

Just according to whether the examinee interpolates the obvious thing or not is he considered more or less intelligent, and as a child who is shown to be the more intelligent in this respect will be supported by scholarships or in some other way; while the one who could think of nothing further then that one might see a murderer in the mirror receives no scholarships. In such a way is the intelligence to be tested today and with regard to these tests there is enthusiasm. By this means social order is to be influenced even if not arranged. The dear public however will welcome such things with all their hearts as the issue of the true and sincere science of the present day, for these things create a great stir today. In this way sought to find ways and means of methodically “putting the right man in the right place,” and essays are written beginning as follows: “More than almost any other science has applied psychology blossomed during the war. It is not a chance appearance, for war with its waste of men and its various requirements has proved the importance of not using human forces extravagantly and aimlessly; but using them to the best advantage. Up till now pedagogy alone dealt practically with exact psychology; now three new questions are added: for what vocation as the man best suited? (Problem of the suitability of a profession) How is a substitute be found for the many intelligences that have been destroyed? (Selection of talent); What possibilities of healing are there for those wounded in the head or those with otherwise damaged nerves? (Practice of psychical therapy).”—And so it goes on in the style. An error of the times is coupled with a significant phrase and the matter will be less noticed, because there are, of course, vocations which must be conducted according to this method. It is quite obvious that airmen for instance have to be examined in a similar way, with a certain justification. But this should not be applied to all. For in such a one-sided development something Ahrimanic will thereby be brought into our social structure. All that comes from the soul-nature, from the elemental, impulsive soul-nature, would thus be eliminated from human aspirations and endeavor. To put the matter roughly: Do we believe that if such intelligence tests could really be determinative, a phrase like “Joy and Love are the wings of great deeds” could still have significance? If people would only think of their own great men! We can be quite sure that if such an examiner had to examine Helmholtz he would have represented him quite certainly as a fellow without talent. Read the biography of Helmholtz!

That is an Ahrimanic feature. Things appear disguised as well. If people are not able to observe things through Spiritual Science, they cannot see where the harm is. It does not suffice that in our time people like to wallow in all kinds of sensual feelings, it is necessary they should wake up in regard to their judgment of life. A great deal would be gained in regard to this nonsense of intelligence tests if there were at least a few people who formed an objective opinion about it. For it will blossom and flourish, you may be quite sure of that! It will become what the “prejudice-free soul-test” has at last made it, and it will be glorified as one of the finest outcomes of that philosophical tendency which has at last stripped off the old idealistic prejudices and methods and now goes in for “the real.” Spiritual Science must work practically in this sense.

Now much is connected with these things, and above all this, that breadth of interest and reality must at last become fundamental attributes of the human soul. I should like to give you two pretty examples of the way in which reality works in our day, and how a certain interest is not present. If I choose personal examples I take it for granted that you will not take it amiss, for you indeed know that I do not do so from any personal foolishness. Recently I held a lecture in Munich on the experiences which the seer makes in art. I have never supposed that any newspaper reporter would be able to understand the subject of Spiritual Science or to write anything in praise of it. If a newspaper reporter should begin to write about Spiritual Science in a flattering manner I should think that something was not in order; but we may study some examples of their work. In the lecture mentioned I also spoke of the art of music and of how musical experience affects the whole man in a remarkable way, that really whenever there is a musical experience a rhythm is set up in the inner man. I then spoke on the one hand in reference to the physiological side, explaining the flowing to and fro of the brain-fluid through the arachnoidal space and further demonstrated how the spinal-marrow canal is elastic to a greater or less degree and how a wonderful inner rhythm is in fact brought about thereby. Musical experiences create a glorious rhythm in life; I mentioned these rhythmical movements of the brain-fluid as being connected with inspiration and expiration; and as I also spoke in this lecture of symbolic ideas, a newspaper reporter wrote that I myself used symbolic ideas which were untenable: the idea of ‘brain-fluid’! We need only recollect that without the ‘brain-fluid’ the brain, which according to the principle of Archimedes becomes lighter than the brain-fluid, would compress and crush to pieces the blood vessels lying beneath it. Thus the ‘brain-fluid’ is a very real thing. But thus do matters stand with respect to the interests which men have, and such is the nonsense written in consequence.

Then an example, only a small illustration, of truth and untruth. I have often mentioned that the remarkable scholar Max Dessoir has also written a chapter about Anthroposophy in his book “The Other Side of the Soul.” I tried to point out to him the many different misrepresentations. Even from an external point of view his method of relating is really very comical by reason of its absolute superficiality. Thus for instance he mentioned my “Philosophy of Spiritual Activity” and said of it that it was my first literary production. I could not do otherwise than reply, although it was out of place to do so, that for 10 years before it appeared I had already written and had my books published. But “The Other Side of the Soul” by Max Dessoir aroused attention; it was discussed everywhere by the journalists (who consider the brain-fluid as a symbolical idea). It caught on, and now a second edition has appeared. In the preface to this, Max Dessoir tries to justify himself, and again in the same fashion. He cannot get out of it and says the context proved quite clearly that I did not grasp what he meant; he meant that the “Philosophy of Spiritual Activity” was my first “theosophical” book. Thus apart from the fact that everyone must smile at his statement that he did not mean my first literary work, everyone must again laugh when the “Philosophy of Spiritual Activity” is called my first “theosophical” book. For a far-reaching discussion exists as to whether I abandoned philosophical authorship in my theosophical works. That is how far veracity is regarded, and it is necessary to attract people's notice to it. But without veracity we cannot progress, and we dare not let such things simply pass in this manner. To anyone who has knowledge of the things concerned, the whole book of Max Dessoir is compiled like the chapter on Anthroposophy . And yet, what happened? A newspaper, the “Kant Studien,” which regards itself as extremely serious (I mention this because in this paper no attack is made on Anthroposophy)—the “Kant Studien”—which prides itself tremendously on its purely scholarly scientific bent, speaks of this product of Dessoir as a serious scientific book in many ways. One of the saddest experiences one can have is to find a book which evinces the greatest superficiality considered by a philosophical magazine as a “serious scientific book,” as it is called there. Now I ask: What then is the public, the public which has no belief in authority, to do today? It takes such works as the “Kant Studien” (Studies of Kant) and so on, as a matter of course out of the libraries. And yet such things are to be found in it.

We must go back to what lies at the base of human nature through the spirit if the will be present. And this foundation is only touched by the strivings of Spiritual Science today. In this one cannot do otherwise than work towards reality, breadth of interest, towards anti-philistinism and activity as regards life. I wished to speak to you again of these things so that our consciousness may not grow faint; in Spiritual Science it is not merely the content that matters, but also the special nature of the concept, ideas and thought in our soul, so that it may be raised out of limitations, philistinism and awkwardness. That is something which the observer of the special impulses which lie in Spiritual Science must consider more and more. We must grasp the practical value of Spiritual Science. In the next lecture we shall speak further of these things.

As human beings, we can only know the deeper mysteries of the soul if we consider the totality of a person's experience. This totality of a person's experience is divided into the time during which the person is on the earth, the time between waking up and falling asleep, that is, the ordinary waking state during the day, and the time between falling asleep and waking up, the life that a person spends in a dark state of consciousness, from which the waves of dream life initially arise for the ordinary consciousness.

It is now a matter of really considering this state of transition between sleeping and waking from the most diverse points of view from which it can be observed. If we start from the usual way of looking at life, we can say: In the dream state there is a transition from waking to sleeping. And if we examine the course of dream life, we must make a significant distinction between the content of the images, so to speak, the content of the ideas in the dream, and the course of the dreaming. I have often pointed this out as well.

We can dream this or that according to the content. But we must also see what the inner course of the dream is. Let us say that it unfolds with a certain drama, that we initially have a kind of state of tension in the dream, which becomes ever greater or ever stronger and stronger, and that then a certain resolution comes, or even that such a resolution does not arise in the end, but that the tension gives rise to waking. We must distinguish this dramatic process from the actual content of the dream.

Let us say, for example, we dreamt that we are going on a journey. We come to a mountain cave. We enter the mountain cave. It becomes more and more eerie and eerie for us because it gets darker and darker. Finally, we are overcome by a real state of fear, and then, although we know we have to go on, we come up against some obstacle. The state of fear grows and grows. We see how tension builds up. But the content, the content of the dream, is something quite different. For example, we can also dream the following: We see something approaching in the distance that threatens us. It comes closer and closer, and the individual details become clearer and clearer, and with that our anxiety grows, finally discharging in a mighty state of fear. In terms of the drama of the dream, the same is present in both cases: that which builds up internally as tension. The images in which the dream is clothed according to our imagination are somewhat different.

Now, if we go further, we will often find that, at least for most of our dream life, the imaginative nature of dreaming is in some way taken from our experiences during our earthly existence. Of course, some things may have been transformed, some things may appear in a very disguised form, but in some way or other we will still be able to understand how the conditions on earth that we have experienced come into the dream as images.

What actually takes place during such dreams, let us say, when we dream while waking? Well, during the time from falling asleep to waking up, we are, with our soul-spiritual part – we also call it the astral body and the I - outside of our physical body and the etheric body. We dwell with our ego and our astral body in this world, in which, at first, we cannot perceive as our consciousness is in our earthly existence, because the astral body and the ego in which we are are somewhat indefinite and its organs of perception are not developed. But that is not to say that something is not constantly happening in what is outside the physical body during sleep. In fact, between falling asleep and waking up, a richer life takes place in the astral body and in the I than during waking hours. We just cannot become aware of it. And what we experience in dreams as states of tension, as states of discharge, as fear, perhaps also as anger, rage and so on – all this can play into the dream, clothe it in the most diverse images, and this goes on with us from the moment we fall asleep until we wake up.

In these extra-bodily states, we live in a world whose movements we participate in, just as we participate in the processes of the physical external world through our senses during the waking hours. When we now return to our physical body with our soul-spiritual, that is, with the astral body and the I, when we wake up, we take hold of the organs of our physical body. We sink into these organs. In this moment we are again able to perceive an external world, the external world of the nature kingdoms, minerals, plants, animals, the physical human being. We permeate these organs, which organize the physical body, with our soul. Thus we are in relationship to this external world.

If we do not immediately submerge ourselves completely in our physical body, but if we penetrate the etheric body for a moment before we take hold of the whole physical body, then the forces that form the images of the 'dream' come to us from this etheric body. These images are carried by the forces of the etheric body. They are reminiscences of life, memories of life.

When we dream as we fall asleep, it may be that we leave our physical body and, due to some abnormality, do not immediately leave the etheric body as well. Then, before we enter into a state of complete unconsciousness, we live in the images of the etheric body. But the surging of the astral body and the ego, which takes place during the state between falling asleep and waking up, is already beginning. So we have to strictly separate the images contained in the dream and the dynamic, the flow of energy of the dream, the drama of the dream. We must keep the two strictly separate. And when we are able, through soul exercises, to carry out this separation in practice, as I have just described to you in theory, when one is able to make one's astral body and one's ego so strong through exercises that one does not passively into the etheric body and then into the physical body, but if you learn to make use of the general cosmic ether outside of the body, then you can perceive things that you would otherwise not be able to perceive.

The ether that is secreted and forms our etheric body is, after all, only a part of the general cosmic ether. Ether is everywhere. Some time before our birth, we separate some of the general ether to form our etheric body, which we then carry within us between birth and death. The general cosmic ether remains imperceptible. It only becomes perceptible when we are able to strengthen our astral body and our ego to such an extent that we can hold them outside our physical body, even when we are not sleeping, but we do not merely receive the kinds of dream impressions that we have when falling asleep and otherwise for the ordinary consciousness, but we can perceive in the external etheric. Then the following is present:

The physical world is spread out around us. At first, it is of no concern to us. It remains available to us when we do the right exercises, just as memories remain available. We can survey it; we do not step out of it like a hallucinator, but at first it is of no concern to us. We have strengthened our astral body and our ego. We perceive what takes place in the etheric world, not in the physical world. And what now takes place in the etheric world, that is, what is now perceptible to us, is actually nothing other than what you find, of course only partially, at least in terms of nature, in my book “Occult Science”.

Seen in this light, one sees with the strengthened astral body and I, which now, instead of using the eyes and ears to perceive physically outside the body, perceive ethereally. This ethereal quality presents itself in such images, which can then be described in the same way as I have described in my “Occult Science”.

I would therefore like to say: If one is able to bring the astral body and the I into the body-free state, as they are otherwise every night in sleep, but if one has strengthened them through exercises so that one perceives in the cosmic ether, then one initially has the world in imaginations, in pictures, before oneself. What one otherwise sees only as a small part of the physical world is so expanded that one can depict the existence of Saturn, the Sun, the Moon, and so on, in addition to the earthly existence. This is the first thing that can be perceived from the supersensible world.

But now everything that can become the content of the imaginative world lies in this. We are already emerging from the world of ether when, through what I have described as empty consciousness, we no longer merely live in imaginations that arise, but when we learn to dispel the imaginations in turn, when we are able to both, let us say, receive an imagination in the soul and also to let it fall.

This results in a state of mind that can be controlled completely at will, a state of mind in which one lives in the image, then suppresses the image, and lives in the image again, suppressing the image. This is the state of inspired experience of the world. But here one experiences a world that is not completely foreign to man either. He experiences it every night in dreamless sleep. He is just not able to grasp with his consciousness what is going on in it. In this world, one does not just perceive images, but as the images flood in, flood out, arise, pass away, as it becomes still even in the flooding image, and in the flooding-out image a kind of inner so that the world also becomes manifold in relation to our perceptions, we perceive in this inspired world, if I may say so, the actions and deeds of real spiritual beings. In the description I have given in Occult Science, these deeds of spiritual beings are already implied, although essentially the pictures of the evolution of the world are given there. But attention is drawn to the beings of the higher hierarchies, angels, archangels and so on, which appear in this surge of the world, of arising and passing imaginations. I would like to say that on the waves that one experiences in inspired life, those beings who are the beings of the higher hierarchies weave at the same time.

Now one realizes how one's own existence, but that part of existence that only actually becomes free in the time between falling asleep and waking up during physical life on earth, how this essential part of the human being is integrated into a world of supersensible entities. Indeed, between falling asleep and waking up, we are indeed members of this world. As souls, we move among beings.

In imaginative consciousness, it is the case that one really only has an idea of what these beings do. I would like to say that the first stage of supersensible consciousness presents itself in such a way that these beings, so to speak, sketch out their images for us. These are the imaginations. Then one comes to the point where one is not only confronted with images, but images arise and flood in, and in this arising and flooding the deeds of the beings take place. But we ourselves are now in this world of spiritual events. When consciousness breaks through, we are in a state in which we are as free from the body as we otherwise are for ordinary consciousness in dreamless sleep; we actually belong to such a world in which spiritual deeds occur. This world, in which spiritual deeds take place, and in which we ourselves are interwoven, makes clear to us that from which we come out when we hurry towards birth on earth to begin another earthly existence after having lived for some time in the spiritual-soul world.

In fact, the onset of earthly existence at birth is the extinction of this world. Man returns to this world every time he falls asleep, but the inner activity of the astral and the ego within him has become so weak in the course of life between death and a new birth that he is compelled to have the deepest desire, the deepest longing, that something will come to his aid, for he would have to die in the spiritual idleness when birth approaches again and something would not come to his aid.

Let us assume, then, that man has developed from death through spiritual events. At first, his consciousness is very much alive, even reminiscent of earthly consciousness in the early days. Then he rises more and more, as his consciousness takes part in spiritual deeds. But this consciousness later weakens. When the time for an earthly birth approaches again, the person comes into a state as a spiritual being that can only be compared, if we want to characterize it by something that exists on earth, to someone who begins to suffer from amnesia, who thus, so to speak, grabs for his memories and cannot find them. So when earthly life approaches again, the person reaches for reality, for being filled with reality. For at this moment his emotional and volitional life is strong, but the perceptions are dull and he has no inner content. He reaches, as it were, for the perceptions, which become duller and duller, while the will becomes more and more powerful. And this desire now drives him to earthly embodiment, to an earthly organism that is given to him through the current of inheritance. He can now use this as a tool, it gives him the opportunity to think again, although now only about a physical external world, but it does allow the development of the life of imagination, which has become dull. It is through this desire to be able to think again that man enters into physical embodiment on earth. And there he passes through the state of sleep, in which he slowly develops to be able to live again as a spiritual being when he passes through the gate of death, and to begin the cycle anew.

What one experiences now, by rising in the body-free state to this perception of the world, which presents itself in inspiration, that is the whole secret of how man lives in a supersensible world between death and a new birth: how this supersensible world really is.

Some of it, how man in turn comes to an earthly embodiment, I have indeed described in the Vienna cycle of 1914, “Inner Being of Man and Life between Death and Rebirth”. If one rises even further, then what is actually not known in the ordinary consciousness of man arises. In the waking state, we have three distinctly different states of soul: thinking, feeling, and willing. We also have three such states in sleep. But usually only two are distinguished, the one where sleep is so thin, I would say, that we can dream, the lightest sleep, and the dreamless sleep. But very few people know that if you can compare the light sleep of dreaming with the thinking of waking, and the dreamless sleep with the feeling of waking, then there is still a deep sleep. This difference between the middle state of sleep and that deep sleep, which can then be compared with the will of the waking state, is simply overlooked. But this state of deep sleep also exists.

Some people will certainly notice a certain difference, at least when waking up. It does happen that a person goes through nights in which they only experience the two sleep states, dream sleep and dreamless sleep, but not the deeper sleep, which is clearly different from the mere dreamless sleep. When waking up, I said, some people will already notice when they sometimes emerge from sleep, by feeling quite as if they are new, that they are already rising from deeper regions of being than is usually the case. It is necessary to indicate this difference, which, as I said, is not taken into account in ordinary consciousness. It is like this: When we are in a state of dream sleep, then we actually live in a world - we are, after all, outside our physical and our etheric bodies - which can certainly be compared to that world which otherwise takes place invisibly in the earth's environment, where the flowers of the plants unfold, interacting with the sunlight. This weaving and living of the flowering plants escapes ordinary consciousness. But it is into this world that man first plunges. It is, after all, the world that is nearest to the ordinary world of the day. It is everywhere, and by plunging into this world, he lives in the dream sleep.

The deeper, dreamless sleep is the one in which man submerges himself in a world that would be around us in the interior of plants. We are completely in such a world when we sleep dreamlessly, as we would be if we could creep as ghosts into the interior of plants.

But when we are in that deeper sleep, which is a third state of sleep, then we are completely immersed in the mineral kingdom. Then the mineral processes - the earlier alchemy called them the salination processes - also take place most strongly in the human organism. Then, in a sense, the human being is not only given over to the plant kingdom, but also to the mineral kingdom.

For those who can consciously enter this world, in which the human being is otherwise in this deepest state of sleep, it really becomes clear what lives inside the minerals. And when the human being lives in a world like that inside the minerals, it is as if he is now looking at a mineral from the inside, whereas he otherwise always looks at it from the outside. You will understand that this is what I wanted to say in a certain description of the spirit world in my Theosophy. You will find this reversal in this description of the spirit world. And by living into this reversal, man lives into that world in which he can take part not only in the deeds of the higher hierarchies, but in the beings of the higher hierarchies, where he can get to know the beings of the higher hierarchies in the same way as he perceives the soul qualities of people in the physical world. There we are no longer in the inspired world, there we are in the world of intuition. There we not only devote ourselves to the actions, the spiritual actions of the spiritual entities, but to the essence of these entities themselves.

But then we are also in the world in which karma becomes a reality for us. Every time a person enters this third state of sleep, if he were suddenly able to become conscious, he would perceive his karma. He would perceive how past earthly lives play a part in the present earthly life. Man experiences his karma in deep sleep, and he also carries the results of this experience into the physical body. But the physical body is not suited to perceive something like that. It has no organs for that at first. Just as he develops eyes to see outwardly and ears to hear outwardly, so he would have to develop organs of perception inwardly.

These inward organs of perception, however, would kill him if he developed them, if he had to look inward physically, because the human organism cannot live if it sends the forces that lead to the formation of sensory organs inward. If he were to send them inward, he would be able to see his karma with physical organs, so to speak. One can only see it with spiritual organs, precisely in intuitive recognition.

But we see from this that during his life on earth, man lives both in the forces that form his environment in the time between death and a new birth, which work in him in order to then incorporate him into a physical earthly body, and in the world in which his destiny unfolds from life to life. This fate is veiled from our ordinary consciousness because, if a person were to perceive his fate unprepared, he would enter into a very special state.

If a person could perceive his destiny without practising for it – it may not happen, but I will hypothetically assume it – then the desire would immediately arise in him from this perceptibility to develop organs that perceive inwardly, so to speak. He would want to develop eyes and ears that see and hear inwardly. But this would mean forces for his organism. He would not only wake up as he does now, but he would bring with him from his sleep the strength to rebuild his organism inwards. That is, he would kill his organism.

The human organism is designed in such a way that the soul and spirit, the astral body and the I, can only submerge in the etheric body for a moment; then they must immediately submerge in the physical body, after dream images have arisen from submerging in the etheric body. But even there, the etheric body must give what the images are about. A person cannot take in what he otherwise experiences outside. Then he must delve into his physical body, which he must leave as it is, to which he must devote himself, having decided to use it when he descended from the spiritual-soul world, precisely in order to make use of a physical body and its organs. That which lies beyond the threshold, which is imperceptible but is still experienced, is in a sense a reflection of what we go through between death and a new birth.

Only through such a contemplation does the image of the complete human being emerge. And at the same time it emerges that man, as he is in physical life on earth, is so weak spiritually that he would drift through the world in a dull sleep, if I may say so, without perceiving anything at all, if he did not use his physical body to perceive. Between birth and death, man can actually only be seen to live in a dull state and to only inwardly enlighten himself when he makes use of the body. This is the relative justification of materialism, which is quite relatively justified for life on earth, because that which is actually spiritual-soul remains dull for life on earth.

Now we can ask: Is there perhaps a way to look even more sharply at what lives as spiritual-soul and participates in the world as I have described it to you, participates in a world of flowing images, dying away and dying up again, dying up and dying away again, but into which — as you know from my description in Occult Science — there also mingles what can be compared to taste perceptions and so on in the physical world. In this world, man lives from falling asleep to waking up. From this world, he can also become aware of how his karma lies, what his destiny is, how it unfolds from one earth life to the next, when his consciousness is strengthened.

But how one can see more precisely into this world can be seen when one first looks at those beings who, in earthly life, essentially have the astral body, not a distinct ego in earthly life. These are the animals. These animals also have sleeping and waking. If we now look at sleeping in animals, the following emerges. So let us take a sleeping animal. The astral body moves out. This astral body, by moving out of the animal, is immediately absorbed into a world that then presents itself to the senses as this floating world of approaching and disappearing imaginations, of colorations. Then again, when waking up, it withdraws into the animal. But if we observe more closely, this flooding life of imagination with the tints does move in the earthly air while the animal sleeps. From the moment the animal wakes up, the soul moves on the waves of the breathing process, through the respiratory organs in the broadest sense, back into the animal body again. Then it stimulates the senses so that they take part in this life. But when it awakens, it is essentially a flooding in of the soul, whereby skin breathing must of course be taken into account, but one has the exit through the breathing processes, and then the entrance again through the respiratory organs. Once this has been seen, one begins to understand how the astral body unites with the animal in its embryonic life when the animal first comes into being. It unites in such a way that one might say: it is the reverse of the process by which the astral body goes outwards on the waves of breathing. It goes inwards and first builds itself plastically within the body.

If you bear in mind that the animal actually takes its form from its respiratory organs, you will learn a great deal about the formations of the animal. Look at animals and how they are the result of their respiratory organs in the broader sense. But it is only the way in which the soul of the animals lives in them. Compare, say, a proboscis animal with any animal whose head organs are more mouth-shaped than proboscis-shaped. The rest of the animal's form is shaped accordingly, and the way the animal can breathe is decisive for its form. The soul lives on the waves of the air-like substance taken in by the animal.

When we look at a human being, something else comes into play. Even if a child cannot yet speak, it has the ability to speak. Its respiratory organs are already prepared for this. They are different from the respiratory organs of an animal. These respiratory organs enable the air to enter in such a way that not only an astral body but also an ego can envelop the human being and take possession of him.

Anyone who sees through this, however, comes to know the truth: the animal is formed by its respiratory organs in the broadest sense to its shape, but the human being is formed by breathing, modified into speech, into words, to his shape. In man the word becomes flesh in the most literal sense, his form is a result of the word. I have already described how human souls move between the beings of the supersensible worlds. Between death and a new birth, between falling asleep and waking up, human souls belong to the same worlds as the higher spiritual beings. When we observe human souls, we find that they move in a way that can then be transferred to the waves of the air. The same thing that a person unfolds when he speaks, this kind of air movement that he unfolds when he speaks, is also unfolded in his inhalation, which shapes him when it enters him. In a sense, one can see human souls in this way, floating on the waves of air. This is because the I does not merely grasp the air. In the case of an animal, the astral body is there, it grasps the air and grasps the air with its states of warmth. The human astral body takes hold of the air and is able to move on the waves of the air, but it also takes hold of the warmth, the warmth ether. As the I streams through the world on the waves of the warmth ether, it colors breathing, becomes speech from the inside out, human form from the outside in. If we grasp the concrete reality of speech life, we learn to recognize in the speech life, in the cosmic formation of words, what enters the human being as formative, what works plastically, especially in the embryo and then in the child, in that the human being gives himself his form through inner forces, working plastically. And this connection between the word and the human form is something that can be spoken of as something absolutely real, because it can be seen in the way I have described it to you now.

One can also note the following. When you fall asleep, your astral body moves on the waves of the air and remains within the airspace; your ego goes into the indefinite, so to speak, disappears into the warmth of the outside world. The soul is already able to live in the warmth of the ether and the air during the time when a person is between falling asleep and waking up. And so we have the physical body of the human being, which actually belongs entirely to the earth, the etheric body of man, which belongs to the watery, liquid element of the earth, which has a special relationship to it, the astral body, which belongs to the airy element, and the I, which belongs to the warm element, the fire element. And this is what can be perceived when the word of the world enters the human being and brings together the forces of air and warmth, connecting them with the forces of water and earth. All of this interplay of forces is then unfolded by the inner soul when the human being descends from the spiritual and soul world to an earthly existence.

These things can, of course, only be seen inwardly, but they can really be seen inwardly. And one would like to say: It is indeed difficult because today's language is actually formed entirely for materialism and for a materialistic world view, to express oneself in the words of the present languages, but by succeeding more and more in what is seen there, to clothe it in words in such a way that clear thoughts can settle into the human soul, it will become comprehensible to everyone what can be said about the higher worlds through the science of initiation. It is indeed the case that these things can only be found through supersensible research, but supersensible research is not necessary to understand these things.

I have often compared it to saying that you can judge a picture aesthetically without being a painter yourself. In the same way, one can also judge spiritual science, anthroposophy, without being a researcher oneself, although today, to a certain extent, anyone can become one through the instructions in “How to Know Higher Worlds” and so on, so that one can already come to the point of checking the results of spiritual scientific research. But the real value for life is not gained from the content of spiritual truths by researching the facts, but by understanding them, by absorbing them.

Those who truly absorb the ideas clothed in true spiritual research can be said to have the ability to absorb these things within themselves, even if they only have ordinary common sense, just as those who have not learned the chemical composition of sugar also have a taste for it. What one should get from sugar is independent of whether one knows its chemical composition or not. It is the same with supersensible truths. What one should get from them is through their being clothed in the world of ideas, that is how one takes them in. The other is something that has to be done to attain them, but it is of as little help as if I were to say to a child: I will not give you sugar, but I will give you instructions so that you can understand the chemical composition of sugar. The child would not be satisfied. Nor can people be satisfied with mere research into the spiritual worlds; rather, the spiritual results must be translated into formulable ideas. For it is only through these that our soul nature can be so enlivened that a real meaning of life arises from the results of anthroposophy.

When a person takes in what is given through anthroposophy – to begin with, they can take in, let us say, what is described in imagination – they are already doing their common sense a great service, because their personality becomes freer, more independent within. In this way they acquire something that will be very useful for the present and the near future. People today are really quite, quite dependent on uncontrollable ideas and so on that they absorb.

I just want to remind you how the people who attend political or other meetings today are actually just a flock of sheep that fall for the slogans thrown at them by the speakers and then follow them. In this respect, humanity today is terribly dependent. It is also dependent in that it simply absorbs what has been set. As a result, people gradually come to the point where they can no longer think in reality at all, but only seemingly think, because their thinking can no longer, I might say, be seen in the spiritual light. One experiences strange things.

For example, after a eurythmy performance in Berlin, a witty critic recently said: First they presented serious pieces and then humorous pieces. You can see that eurythmy is impossible just from the fact that the humorous pieces are performed with the same movements as the serious pieces.

Now it had first been explained that eurythmy is a visible language, so it really does matter to grasp the content that the eurythmy gives as language. What would be the consequence of what such a witty critic says? The consequence would be that he would have to say: If, for example, a declaimer uses ordinary spoken language, then he must not present serious poems with the same sounds that he uses for comic poems, for example in the German language. In this he would find just as much contradiction as if the same movements occurred in visible speech for comic and serious, for reputable poems. So it is absolute nonsense. People read this, but do not even realize that these are no longer thoughts at all, but that it is just a rolling out of brain processes that are reflected as thoughts but are no longer thoughts; it is the most absolute folly. This shows how people have lost their inner activity. Real life in thoughts must come precisely from people living in the imaginative life and pursuing what comes from the imaginative life with common sense. This makes a person more active, he becomes a personality again in the fullest sense of the word.

But it is of particular importance to engage with what is revealed from the inspired consciousness. If one follows with one's common sense what is described as inspiration, then gradually — as I have already indicated in various ways in other contexts — what is true and false is transformed into healthy and unhealthy judgment. One has the feeling that something that is untrue is morbid. With what is true, one has the feeling: it is something healthy. The logic of truth and falsehood actually only has a meaning for the physical world. As soon as we enter into the spiritual world, we perceive what is true as something healthy and what is false, an error, as something morbid.

But by acquiring a sense of healthy and unhealthy judgment through the study of the truths of inspiration, we prepare the way to understand the Christ event. For the Christ event entered the world because the evolution of humanity was in danger of becoming diseased. From the Christ-event, from the Mystery of Golgotha, there proceeds the power that man may turn again to the Truth, to healing. Through the inspired truths, we really do acquire the possibility of gaining a sense of religious truths again, especially the truths of Christianity. We learn to understand again why the being of Christ was celebrated as a savior, as one who truly heals, has healed and continues to heal humanity. The word really originated in this context. Because at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha the old clairvoyant abilities were still there, which then faded away in the fourth century after the Mystery of Golgotha, and only existed in concept, that is why people at that time still understood what the Mystery of Golgotha meant.

Today we must first struggle to come to this realization. Christ lived in the world until the Mystery of Golgotha, which we contemplate in dream sleep, so that the Christ was perceptible to every person in dream sleep before the Mystery of Golgotha. But no human being was allowed to think – this was something that was made absolutely clear to people in the mystery schools – that the being that lives in Christ could be reached with earthly thoughts, that it could also be found in the waking state. This only became possible through the Mystery of Golgotha, through Christ's death. Since that time He may be remembered as an entity belonging to earthly life itself. A real conception of the God who has come out of the land of dreams into the physical land was created.

This is a real process: the God who has come to know that which the gods otherwise do not know, who has learned to die, who has incorporated the fact of dying into himself, that is the Christ, the God who enters into the world where there is birth and death, the descent of the God into human nature. God becomes man. This is precisely the formula in which what the Christ has become can be expressed: for the earth, the archetype of humanity; for the earth, that through which humanity acquires meaning. And if the other had taken place, if at the same time that God became man, a human being had also felt the urge to become God, that is, to no longer die, to no longer be subject to the laws of earthly life, then, while God became the most perfect human being by descending, he would naturally have become the most miserable God. This polar opposite you have! It is not without reason that, alongside the Christ who ascends to Golgotha, stands Ahasver, the man who becomes God, but a bungling God who loses the possibility of dying, who now walks the world but cannot die, the God who remains on the physical plane but develops on the physical plane the same peculiarities that were actually only allowed to be developed in the realm of dreams.

It is a tremendous, spiritual thing that is presented to our souls: that the God has been given the man who has become God, but, as is to be expected, in a way that makes him miserable. The man who has become God also maintains within the evolution of the earth the principle that the Godhead should not descend to the physical plane: Judaism, the Old Testament world view.

Here we already have a mystery. Those who know these things know that Ahasver is a real entity and the Ahasver legends are based on real impressions of perceptions of Ahasver, which have occurred here and there, for Ahasver exists and is the custodian of Judaism after the Mystery of Golgotha has occurred. He is the man who has become God. We must be quite clear that we can only arrive at a complete knowledge of history by including the spiritual.

On the one hand, we look at the incarnation of God in the event of Golgotha; we look at the incarnation of man in Ahasverus. And the initiate can know that Ahasuerus is really wandering. Of course, he cannot be seen as a human being. After all, he has become a god. But he wanders around. He is present in earthly existence. And real historical representations, which grasp the full reality, make it necessary to look at what also passes as a spiritual reality through the historical becoming of human development.

Of course, many things only exist in images. It is only important to know that these images correspond to realities. It is foolish to say that one should not express oneself in such images. After all, we always express ourselves in images when we speak. Take the Sanskrit word 'Manas'. Whoever understands 'Manas' has before him in sound the picturesque image of the bowl that carries the moon and the sun, because when one pronounced 'Manas' in primeval Sanskrit, one felt the human being in his will-nature as the bowl that was then carried by the thinking being. All words can also be traced back to images, only they are more elementary, simple images. What is expressed through words is not contained in them. When there are more complicated entities that cannot be expressed in words, then images have to be formed. When we speak of Ahasver and the legends of Ahasver, as we otherwise speak of images, these are only more complicated forms of expression that point to the spiritual side.

Anyone who rails against mythology in this sense should also rail against the fact that humans have developed a language through which they want to express a content. He should order them to become mute, because the next step after forbidding them to develop a mythology would be to forbid people to speak. For it is the very same process of visualization in ordinary language as in the higher visualization, when one posits something like the Ahasver, who goes through the evolution of the world as a being, but precisely as a spirit being, and continually prevents man from returning to the spiritual world in the way that is in his evolution, through the Christ, back to the spiritual world from which he went out when he lost atavistic clairvoyance.

That is what I wanted to say today, on the one hand to point out man's true place in the spiritual world, through a correct characterization of the state of sleep and dreams, and on the other hand to point out that spiritual beings live in history that only make the full course of history understandable.

The following lecture was formerly in GA 136 entitled, The Spiritual Beings in the Heavenly Bodies and in the Kingdoms of Nature, published in German as, Die Geistige Wesenheiten in den Himmelskoerpern und Naturreichen. In Bn/GA 158, it is the 2nd of 12 lectures in the series, The Human's Connection with the Elemental World, published in German as, Der Zusammenhang des Menschen mit der Elementarischen Welt. Kalewala. Olaf Asteson. Das russische Volkstum. Die Welt als Ergebnis von Gleichgewichtswirkungen.

First of all I must apologise to you that I cannot give my lecture in the language of this country. The fact of this lecture being given is in response to the wish of the friends of our Theosophical Society, by whom I have been summoned hither to give a series of lectures lasting a fortnight, and who had the idea of making it possible within that time of adding the two announced public lectures. Hence I must crave your pardon if many of the names and designations which are borrowed from the national epic of the Finns are not rightly pronounced by me who have no language. Only in the lecture of next Friday shall we touch upon Occult Science or Theosophy; the consideration of this evening will rather have to do with a sort of neighbouring realm which in the profoundest sense of the word belongs to the most interesting of human historical considerations, of human historical thought.

The National Epics! We need only to think of some of the well-known national epics, of the epics of Homer, which have become the epics of Greece; of the legends of the Niebelungen in Central Europe; and finally of the Kalevala, and immediately the fact shines forth, that by means of these national epics we are led more deeply into the soul of humanity and the striving of humanity than by any other historical investigation; we are so led into the soul of humanity and the striving of humanity that ancient times are brought powerfully before our souls, as vividly as the present time, but in such a way that they affect us in the immediate present just as the fate aid life of the present day humanity living around us. How uncertain and dim from the historical point of view are the descriptions of the ancient people of Greece of whom the Epics of Homer tell us, and how, when we let the contents of the Iliad—of the Odyssey work upon us, do we look into the souls of those people who are far beyond the grasp of ordinary historical observation! No Wonder that the study of the National Epics is somewhat of a puzzle to those who are occupied with the scientific or literary aspect of them! We need only point to one fact with regard to the Greek Epics, to a fact which has been repeatedly expressed by an enlightened observer of the Iliad in a very beautiful book on Homer's Iliad which appeared only a few years ago,—I mean Hermann Grimm, the nephew of the great philologist of German myths and legends, Jacob Grimm. By letting the figures and facts of the Iliad work upon him, Hermann Grimm is again and again obliged to say: “Oh! this Homer!” We do not need to-day to go into the question of the personality of Homer; When he describes anything which is borrowed from a handicraft, from an art, it is as though he were an expert in that handicraft, in that art. If he describes a battle, a contest, he seems to be perfectly acquainted with all the strategic and military principles which come into consideration in the conduct of war. And rightly does Hermann Grimm point out that a stern judge in such matters, namely Napoleon, was an admirer of the reality of the description of battles in Homer; and he was a man who without doubt was qualified to give an opinion whether or not the military point of view is presented before our souls in a directly expert and vivid way. From the general human standpoint we know how plastically the figures are presented to our soul by Homer as if they were immediately in front of our physical eyes. And how does such a national epic as this continue to manifest itself through the various periods? For truly, he who observes dispassionately will not receive the impression that human artific or pedagogic cult could have maintained all through the centuries up to our own days, interest in the Iliad and the Odyssey,—for this interest is self-evident and universally human. Yet these epics set us in a certain sense a task; directly we study them they present to us a very definite—even an interesting task. They must be taken quite accurately in all their details. We at once feel that there is something obscure in such national epics if we try to read them as we read any modern work of art, a modern novel, or such-like. We feel even at the first lines of the Iliad that Homer speaks with exactitude. What does he describe to us? He tells us even at the beginning what he is describing. Much is known from other descriptions not contained in the Iliad, of events which form the connecting link with the facts of the Iliad. Homer wishes only to describe to us that which he states so pregnantly in the first lines,—the wrath of Achilles. And when we go through the whole of the Iliad and consider it impartially, we have to say to ourselves:—In very deed it contains nothing but what can be shown to be the result of the wrath of Achilles. Further, another peculiar fact appears at the very beginning of the Iliad; Homer does not begin simply with facts, he does not even begin with any personal opinion, but he begins with something which in modern times would perhaps be taken as mere words; he begins by saying:—Sing to me, Oh Muse, of the wrath of Achilles:—And the more deeply we penetrate into this national epic, the more clear does it become to us that we cannot at all understand the sense, and spirit, and meaning of it all unless we take these words at the beginning quite seriously But then we have to ask ourselves:—What do they actually mean?

And now to consider the manner of representation; the whole way in which the events are brought before our souls! For many, not only professional students, but even for artistic spirits like Hermann Grimm, there was a question in those words “Sing to me, oh muse, of the wrath of Achilles,” a question which penetrated deeply into the heart. How in this Iliad, as well as in the Niebelungen or in the Kalevala, are the deeds of spiritual-divine Beings—in Homer's poems chiefly the deeds and purposes and passions of the Olympic Gods—enacted in unison with the deeds, purposes and passions of men, men who like Achilles are far removed in a certain sense from ordinary humanity, and again with the passions, purposes and deeds of men who are nearer to ordinary humanity like Odysseus, or Agamennon? When Achilles appears before our souls, he appears to us to stand alone among the human beings with whom he lives; as the Iliad continues, we very soon feel that in Achilles we have before us a personality who feels himself unable to discuss his inner life with the other heroes. Homer also brings before us how Achilles has to settle his real affairs of the heart with divine spiritual beings who do not belong to the human kingdom; how the whole way through the Iliad he stands alone with regard to the human kingdom, and on the other hand stands close to super-sensible, superhuman powers. On the other hand how strange it is, that when we focus all our human feelings in the form and manner of thinking and perceiving we have acquired in the process of civilisation, and then direct our gaze towards this Achilles, he often appears such that we are obliged to say: How egotistical! How self-centred! A being in whose soul divine-spiritual impulses are at work acts, absolutely from personal motives for a long time, so important a war for the Greeks as the Trojan war of legend, was only carried on, only produced the special episodes which are described in the Iliad because Achilles fought out for himself what he personally had to fight out with Agamemnon. And we continually see superhuman powers taking part; we see Zeus, Apollo, Athene imparting the impulses, allotting to the people, so to speak, their places. It was always remarkable to me before I took up the task of approaching these matters from the standpoint of Occult Science or Theosophy, how a very intellectual man such as Hermann Grimm with whom I had often the pleasure of personally discussing this matter, should look at these things as he did. Not only in his writings but often in personal conversation, and then much more exactly expressed he used to say: “If we only take into consideration what historical powers and impulses perform in the evolution of humanity, we do not succeed in getting at what lives and creates there, especially in the great national epics.” Hence, for Hermann Grimm, the intellectual student of the Iliad and the national poems, there was something which transcends the ordinary powers of human consciousness, the intellectual, reasoning sense-perception, the ordinary feelings; something which was for him a real power as creative as the other historical impulses. Hermann Grimm spoke of an actual creative imagination permeating human evolution just as one speaks of a being, of a reality, of something which governs man and could say more to him at the beginning of the ages which we are able to observe, which could say more to him during the development and growth of the individual races that what the ordinary soul-forces mean to man. Thus Hermann Grimm always spoke of the creative imagination as the glimmering of a world which does not expend itself in the ordinary human soul-forces; an imagination which to him in some way fulfilled the role of a co-creator in the process of human development. It is strange however, that when we consider this field of battle in the Iliad, when we consider this description of the wrath of Achilles with all the interaction of the super-sensible, divine spiritual powers, we do not arrive at such an opinion as Hermann Grimm has; and in his book on the Iliad itself we find many a word of resignation which shows us that the ordinary point of view which is taken to-day in a literary or scientific way is not reconcilable with these matters. What does Hermann Grimm arrive at with regard to the Iliad and the Niebelungen saga? He ends by assuming that the historical dynasties, the races of rulers were preceded by other such races; this is literally what he thinks. Thus he considers that probably Zeus and his whole circle represent a sort of race of rulers which had preceded the race of rulers to which Agamemnon belonged. Thus he considers that there is a certain uniformity in the history of humanity, so to speak; he considers that in the Iliad or Niebelungen saga are represented Gods or Heroes of primeval humanity whom later humanity only attempted to represent by clothing their deeds, their characters, in the dress of superhuman myths. There is much that one cannot reconcile if one takes as a basis such an hypothesis, above all the special form of the intervention of the Gods in Homer. Let us take one case. How do Thetis the mother of Achilles, Athene, and other figures of the Gods intervene in the events in Troy? They so intervene by taking the forms of mortal men, inspiring them as it were, leading them on to their deeds. Thus they do not appear themselves, but permeate living men. Living men were not only their representatives but sheaths permeated by invisible powers which could not appear in their own form, in their own being on the field of battle. Yet it would be strange to admit that primeval men of the ordinary kind should be so represented that they had to take representative men of the race of mortals as a sheath. This is only an intimation which can prove to us all that in this way we shall not arrive at a true understanding of the ancient national epics. Just as little shall we succeed if we take the figures in the Niebelungen saga, Siegfried of Xanten on the lower Rhine who was removed to the Burgundian court at Worms, who then wooed Kriemhilde the sister of Gunther, but who by virtue of his special qualities can alone woo Brunnhilde. And in what a remarkable way are described such figures as Brunnhilde of Iceland, and Siegfried: Siegfried is described as having conquered the so-called family of the Niebelungen, as having acquired, won, the treasure of the Niebelungen, By means of what he has acquired through his victory over the Niebelungen, he gains special qualities which are expressed in the epic when it is said that he can make himself invisible, that he is invulnerable in a certain respect, that he has, moreover, forces which the ordinary Gunther has not! For the latter cannot win Brunnhilde who is not to be conquered by an ordinary mortal. By means of his special powers which he has as the possessor of the treasure of the Niebelungen Siegfried conquers Brunnhilde, and on the other hand, because he can conceal the powers which he has developed, he is in a position to lead Brunnhilde to Gunther his brother-in-law. And then we find how Kriemhilde and Brunnhilde whom we meet at the same time at the Burgundian court are two very different characters—characters in whom obviously forces are at work which are not to be explained by the ordinary soul forces. Therefore they quarrelled, and therefore also it came about that Brunnhilde was able to seduce the faithful servant Hagen to kill Siegfried. That again shows us a feature which appears so remarkably in the Sagas of Central Europe. Siegfried has higher superhuman forces; these superhuman forces he has through the possession of the treasures of the Niebelungen. Finally they make of him not an absolutely victorious figure, but a figure which stands before us as a tragedy. The powers which Siegfried possesses through the treasures of the Niebelungen are at the same time a fatality. Still more remarkable do things become if we take in addition the Northern Saga of Sigurd, the slayer of the dragon, but this is enlightening. In this, Sigurd, who is none other than Siegfried, appears as the conqueror of the dragon; as he who thereby wins from an ancient race of dwarfs the treasures of the Niebelunger. And Brunnhilde meets us as a figure of a superhuman nature, as a Valkyrie figure.

Thus we see that there existed in Europe two ways of representing these things; the one which directly connects everything with the divine-super-sensible, which shows us that in Brunnhilde is meant something which belongs directly to the super-sensible world; and the other way which represents the sagas in a human form. But we recognise even here, how the Divine resounds through everything.

And now from these sagas, these national epics, let us glance into that realm of which I really ought to speak only as one who can look at things from outside; only in such a way as one can understand them if one does not speak the language in question. I beg you to take into consideration that with regard to everything which in the Kalevala has to do with Western Europe, I can only speak as one who fixes his eyes on the spiritual contents—the great, mighty figures, and whose observation of course the undoubted fineness of the epic which can only appear when one has mastered the language in which it was written, must escape. But even in such a consideration how characteristically do we encounter the Trinity in the three—it is difficult to use a name for them; one can not say Gods, one cannot say Heroes, so we will say—in the three beings whom we encounter:—Väinemöinen, Ilmarinen, and Lemminkäinen. These figures utter a remarkable language when we compare them in character with one another; a language in which we recognise that the things which are to be said to us surpass what can be accomplished with the ordinary soul-forces. If we only consider these three forms externally, how they increase till they become monstrous! And yet it is peculiar that while they increase to the point of monstrosity, every individual feature stands before our eyes, so that in nowise have we any feeling that the monstrosity is grotesque, or a paradox; everywhere we have the feeling that of course that which has to be said must appear in superhuman size, in superhuman significance. And then what enigmas in the contents! Something which spurs on our souls to think of all that is must human, but which on the other hand, surpasses all that the ordinary powers of the soul can grasp. Ilmarinen, whom one often calls the Smith, the clever, artistic smith, forges for a region in which dwell the—so to speak elder brothers of humanity, or at least more primitive humanity than the Finns, forges for a strange region at the instigation of Väinemöinen, the Sampo. And we next see this remarkable thing, namely, that far from the field of action on which the facts take place of which we are speaking, many things are happening; we see how time goes by; and we see how after a definite time, Väinemöinen and Ilmarinen are induced to fetch back that which has remained in the strange land—the Sampo. He who lets the peculiar spiritual language work upon him which speaks in the forging of the Sampo, in the removal of it, and the regaining of it, has directly the impression—I must beg you to consider that I am speaking as a stranger, and as such can only speak of the impression—that the most essential thing in this magnificent poem is the forging, the removal, and the later recovery of the Sampo. And what affects me very specially and remarkably in the Kalevala is the ending. I have heard that there are people who believe that this ending is perhaps, a later addition. I feel that this ending of Mariata and her son, this entry as it were, of a very remarkable Christianity into the epic—I say expressly a very remarkable form of Christianity—belongs to the whole; and because this ending is there, the Kalevala gains a very special “nuance”, a colouring, which can so to speak, make the whale matter comprehensible to us. I may say that to my idea, such a delicate, impersonal representation of Christianity is nowhere to be found as in the ending of the Kalevala. The Christian principle is detached from anything local, the coming of Mariata to Herod, who is called Rotus in Kalevala, is expressed so impersonally that one is scarcely reminded of any locality or personality in Palestine. Indeed one might say, one is not once reminded of the historical Christ Jesus. As a most intimate concern of the heart of humanity, we find delicately indicated at the end of Kalevala the penetration of the most precious pearl of civilisation into the civilisation of Finland. And with it is connected the tragic touch which can work so deeply upon our souls, that at the moment when Christianity enters, when the Son of Mariata is baptised, Väinemöinen bids farewell to his people in order to go to an undefined locality, leaving to his people only the purport and power of that, which as a bard he had been enabled to relate of the primeval events which were included in the history of this people. This withdrawal of Väinemöinen before the Son of Mariata seems to me so significant that one might see therein the living cooperation of all that which fundamentally governed the Finnish race, the Nation-soul of the Finns, from primeval times up to the moment when Christianity found admittance into Finland; and this primeval force relates itself tom Christianity in such a way-that everything which was then enacted in the soul can be felt with wonderful intimacy. That I state as something of the objectivity of which I am conscious, something which I could never state to give pleasure in the way of flattery. We in the West of Europe have in these national epics one of the most wonderful examples of how the members of a race actually live before us in the immediate present, with their complete souls; so that through Kalevala, Western Europe learns to know the soul of Finland in such a way as to become perfectly familiar with it.

Why have I said all this? I have said it in order to characterise how in the national epics something speaks which cannot be explained through ordinary soul-forces, even if one speaks of imagination as a real power. And if, to many what is said sounds only like an hypothesis, so may that which Occult Science or Anthroposophy has to say with regard to the being of these national epics, so may the same perhaps be alleged with regard to this consideration of the national epics. Certainly I am conscious that what I have to say aims at something to which in our present day few can give their assent. Much of it will probably be regarded as fancy, as imagination; but some will at least accept it among other hypotheses which are brought forward with regard to the growth of humanity. But for those who penetrate into spiritual science as I shall permit myself to describe it in the next lecture, for them it is not an hypothesis, but an actual result of scientific investigation. The things sound strange which have to be said, because that scientific method which is to-day believed to stand quite firmly on the ground of facts, of truth, of the attainable, restricts itself to what is perceived by the external senses, to what the intellect connected with the senses and the brain can tell of things. And to-day it is simply regarded as unscientific if a method of investigation is spoken of which employs other forces of the soul, forces whereby it is possible to look into the super-sensible, at the interplay of the super-sensible with the sensible. By this method of investigation, by Spiritual Science or Anthroposophy, one is led not merely to the abstract imaginings to which Hermann Grimm was led with regard to the national epics, but one is led to something which far surpasses imagination, which represents quite a different condition of soul or consciousness from that which man can have at the present point of time in his evolution. And thus by means of Spiritual Science or Anthroposophy, we are led back in quite a different way to human antiquity than by ordinary science. Ordinary science is accustomed to-day so to look retrospectively at the growth of humanity that what we call man to-day has gradually developed from lower, animal-like creations. Spiritual science does not at all pretend to combat this modern investigation, but acknowledges fully the magnitude and the power of the acquisitions of this natural science of the 19th century: it acknowledges the importance of the idea of a transformation of animal forms from the most imperfect to the perfect; and it acknowledge the connection between the external human form and the most perfect animal form; but it cannot at all remain at such a view of the growth of humanity, of the growth of the organism as would be presented if with an external material gaze one could view that which has been accomplished in the course of the earth's happenings in the organic world up to man. For spiritual science, the humanity of today stands beside the animal world. We look into the world which surrounds us, at the various animal forms; we look at the—in a certain way—uniform human race distributed over the earth; in spiritual science we too have unprejudiced views of the fact that in the external form everything tells in favour of the relationship of man with other organisms on the earth; but in spiritual science, when we trace the growth of humanity backwards, we cannot do so in such a way that in the grey antiquity we let the stream of humanity flow directly into the animal train of evolution. Indeed we find if we go back from the present to the past that nowhere can we directly rank the present human form, the present man, as arising out of any animal form which we know in the present. If we go back into the evolution of humanity, we find first of all—one might say—the soul-forces, the forces of intellect feeling and will, which we have in the present day developed in man in more and more primitive form. Then we get back to hoary antiquity of which ancient documents tells us so little. Even when we go back as far as the Egyptians, or the early Asiatic races, we are led back everywhere into a primeval humanity which—certainly in a more primitive but yet in a great and noble form—has the same forces, the forces of feeling, intellect and will, which of course have only found their present-day development towards the present time, but which we discover as the most powerful impulses of humanity, as the most powerful historic impulses so far as we can trace humanity backwards when we take the present-day soul into consideration. Nowhere do we find it possible to place even the most remote human race in a special relationship with the present-day animal forms. This, which spiritual science must assert is recognised to-day by thoughtful investigators of nature. But when we go further back, and consider how the human soul has changed, when we compare how a present-day man—let us say—thinks scientifically or otherwise, how he uses his intellect and his mental powers,—when we trace that back, we can trace it fairly accurately; it first teamed forth in humanity at a definite time—we might say that it shone forth in the sixth and seventh centuries before Christ. The collective configuration of the present-day feelings and thoughts does not actually reach back further than to that time which is recorded as the period of the first Greek natural philosophy.

If we go back still further, and have a sufficiently unprejudiced view we find without reference to occult science, that not only does all present-day scientific thought cease, but we find that the human soul in general is in quite a different condition, in a much more-impersonal condition; and also in such a condition that we have to describe its powers as much more instinctive. Not indeed as if we meant to say that before this time men acted from such instincts as the present-day animals have, but that guidance by the reason and intellect as it exists to-day was not there then; instead of it there was a certain instinctive, direct certainty in man; he acted from direct elementary impulses, he was not then controlled by the intellect connected with the brain. And then of course we find that in the human soul those forces still ruled unalloyed which we have now detached as the forces of intellect on the one hand, and those forces which to-day we carefully separate from the forces leading to intellectuality and science, the forces namely, of imagination. Imagination, intellect and reason worked simultaneously in those old times. The further we go back, the more do we find that what then ruled in the soul of man, what then worked, was not separated into imagination and intellect; we ought no longer to describe it as we designate a soul-force to-day when we speak of imagination. We know quite well to-day that when we speak of imagination we are speaking of a soul-power whose expressions we cannot really make use of, to which we cannot ascribe reality. The modern man is careful in this matter; he takes care not to confuse what imagination gives him with what the logic of reason tells him. If we look at that which the spirit of man manifested in those pre-historic times, before imagination and intellect were separated, then we can perceive a primeval, elementary, instinctive force ruling in the soul. In its characteristics we can find the present-day imagination, but—if we may use the expression—what at that time gave imagination to the human soul had something to do with an actuality, a reality; imagination was not yet imagination; it was still—I must not shrink from using the expression directly—clairvoyant power, was still a special capacity of the soul, the gift of the soul whereby men saw things, facts, which to-day in his epoch of civilisation when intellect and reason are to be specially developed, are hidden. More deeply did those forces which were not imagination but clairvoyant powers, penetrate into the hidden forces of existence, into the forms of existence which lie behind the sense-world. It is to this that an unprejudiced consideration must lead us when we consider the evolution of humanity retrospectively. We have to say to ourselves:—Truly we must take the world evolution, development, seriously. That the humanity of the present day has come in the last hundreds and thousands of years to its present lofty powers of reason and intellect, is a result of evolution. These soul-forces have been developed out of others. And whilst these, our present soul-forces are limited to the impressions received from the external sense-world, a primeval humanity who laid no claim to science in the present-day sense, or to the use of the intellect in the present-day sense, a primeval human soul-power at the basis of every individual race saw into the background of existence, into a realm which as a super-sensible lies behind the sensible. In all peoples clairvoyant powers were once the property of the human soul, and out of these clairvoyant powers have been developed the present-day powers of human intellect and reason—the present manner of thinking and feeling. Those soul-forces which we have to describe as clairvoyant were such that man felt at the same time:—It is not I myself which thinks in me, feels in me. Man felt as if entirely subjected physically and spiritually to higher super-sensible powers which worked and lived within him. Man felt himself to be a vessel by means of which super-sensible powers expressed themselves. If one considers that, then one also grasps the meaning of the progressive evolution of humanity. Man would have remained a dependent being who would only have felt himself as a vessel, as the sheath of powers and beings had he not progressed to the proper use of intellect and reason. Man has become more independent by the use of intellect and reason, but at the same time has been cut off for a short period of his evolution, from the spiritual world in a certain respect, cut off from the super-sensible background of existence. In the future it will be different again. The further we go back, the further does the human soul by means of the clairvoyant forces see into the background of existence, see how, out of this background of existence those forces have also emerged which have worked on man himself in pre-historic times, up to a point of time in which all the relations of the earth were still quite different from what they are to-day, when they were such that the forms of living beings were much more changeable, much more subject to a sort of metamorphosis than they are now. Thus we must go back far beyond that which one at present calls the period of human civilisation, we must trace human development and animal development side by side. And lying much farther back than is usually believed to-day, is the separation of the animal forms from the human. The animal then became rigid, more immovable, at a time in which the human form was supple and flexible, and could be modeled and impressed by that which was experienced inwardly in the soul. Then indeed we come back to a period in the development of humanity which did not reach the consciousness of the present day, but in which another consciousness existed in the soul, which was in connection with the clairvoyant forces which have just been described. Such a consciousness which could survey the past, and which saw the development of humanity emerging from the past into complete separation from all animal life, this consciousness also saw how the human forces ruled, but still in active connection with the super-sensible forces which acted with them; it saw that which in the times, for instance, when Homer's epics arose, existed only as an ancient echo, and which in still earlier times existed in much greater measure. If we go back beyond Homer we find that men had clairvoyant consciousness, which as it were, recollected human pre-historic events, and in the recollection was able to relate the circumstances of human development. In Homer's time the circumstances were such that one felt that the ancient clairvoyant consciousness was disappearing; but one still felt that it existed. It was a period in which man did not speak from himself as an independent ego-being, but in which the Gods, super-sensible, spiritual powers, spoke out of him. Thus we must take it seriously as if Homer were not speaking of himself when he says “Sing to me oh Muse, of the wrath of Achilles”; “Let a higher being sing within me, who takes possession of me when I sing and speak.” This first line of Homer is a reality. Thus we are not referred to ancient dynasties of rulers who in the ordinary sense resemble present-day humanity, butt we are referred by Homer to the fact that in primeval times there was a different humanity, in whom the super-sensible lived. Achilles is absolutely a personality of the transition period from the ancient clairvoyant to that modern mode of vision which we find in Agamemnon, in Nestor and Odysseus, and which is then led on to a higher vision. We can only comprehend Achilles when we know that Homer wished to represent in him one belonging to the ancient humanity who lived in a time which lies between that period when man still reached directly up to the ancient Gods, and the present-day humanity which indeed begins with Agamemnon. Just in this same way we are referred to a human antiquity in the Niebelungen Saga of Central Europe. The whole representation of this epic shows us that in it we have not do with men of our present time, in a certain respect, but with such men of out present time who have still presented something from the period of ancient clairvoyance. All the qualities of which Siegfried had command, whereby he could make himself invisible, whereby he had the power to conquer Brunnhilde who could not be conquered by an ordinary mortal—side by side with the others of which we are informed in him, show us that in him we have a man who has brought over into present-day humanity as if in an inner human remembrance, the achievement of the ancient soul-powers which were connected with clairvoyance and the union with Nature. At what period of transition does Siegfried stand? That is shown to us in Brunnhilde's relation to Kriemhilde, the wife of Siegfried. What the two figures signify cannot be more clearly worked out here, but we shall understand all the sagas if in the forms which are brought before us, we see symbolical representations of inner clairvoyant, or remembered clairvoyant relations. Thus, in Siegfried's relation to Kriemhilde, we have to see his relation to his own soul forces which govern within him. His soul is in a certain measure a transitional soul, because with the treasures of the Niebelungen, that is, the clairvoyant secrets of the ancient times, Siegfried brought over into the new period something which at the same time made him quite unfit for his present time. The men of ancient time could thus live with these treasures of the Niebelungen, that is, with the ancient clairvoyant powers. The Earth has altered her conditions. Hence, Siegfried, who still carries within his soul an echo of the ancient ages, does not fit into the present time, hence he is a tragic figure. How can the present age stand in relation to what is still active in Siegfried? Something of the ancient clairvoyant powers are still active in him; for when he is overcome, Kriemhilde remains behind; the treasure of the Neibelunge is brought to her, she can make use of it. We learn how later, the treasure of the Niebelungen is taken from her by Hagen. We can see that Brunnhilde also is in a certain way capable of working with the old clairvoyant forces. Hence she stands in opposition to those human beings who are suited to the present time—Gunther and his brothers, Gunther above all, of whom Brunnhilde thinks nothing. Why is that? We know from the saga that Brunnhilde is a kind of Valkyrie figure, there we have something again in the human soul: and indeed that with which in ancient times the clairvoyant powers in man could still be united, but which has withdrawn from man, which has become unconscious, so that man as he lives in the present day in the age of intellect, can only be united with it after death. Hence the union with the Valkyrie at the moment of death. The Valkyrie is the personification of active soul-forces to which the ancient clairvoyant consciousness attained, but which present-day man only experiences when he passes through the gates of death. Only then is he united with this soul which is represented in Brunnhilde. Because Kriemhilde knew something from the ancient time of clairvoyance, and knew something of the powers which the soul receives through the old clairvoyance, she is a figure whose wrath is described as the wrath of Achilles is described in the Iliad. It is amply indicated that the men who in the ancient times were still gifted with clairvoyant powers were not controlled by the intellect, did not let the intellect rule, but worked directly from their most elementary, most intense impulses. Hence the personal element, the direct egoism of Kriemhilde, as of Achilles.

The whole matter of consideration of the national epics becomes specially interesting when we add the Kalevala to those already mentioned: We shall be able to show (to-day it can only be indicated owing to the shortness of time) that spiritual science in the present day can point to the ancient clairvoyant condition of humanity only because it is becoming possible again now—of course in a higher manner permeated by intellect, not as in a dream—to call forth the clairvoyant condition by means of spiritual education. The man of the present day is gradually growing again into an age in which from the depths of the human soul hidden forces which again point into the super-sensible,—of course henceforth guided by reason, not left uncontrolled by it—will grow up, when man will be guided into super-sensible regions; so that we shall again learn to know the region of which the ancient national epics speak to us from the dim consciousness of ancient times. Hence we can say:—One learns to know that it is possible to attain to a manifestation of the world not merely by means of the external senses, but by means of something super-sensible which lies behind the external physical human body. There are methods—of which we are to speak in the next lecture—by means of which man can make the spiritual, super-sensible inner being, that which is so often denied to-day, independent of the sensible, external body, so that man, when he is independent of his body lives not in an unconscious condition as in sleep, but perceives the spiritual world around him. Hence modern clairvoyance proves to man the possibility of living consciously in a higher super-sensible body which fills the ordinary body like a vessel. In spiritual science it is called the etheric or ether body. This etheric body lies within our sense body. By means of it we come even to-day, when we inwardly detach it from the physical sense body, into that condition of perception whereby we become aware of super-sensible facts. We become aware of two kinds of super-sensible facts. First of all, at the beginning of this clairvoyant condition we become aware of the super-sensible when we begin to know that we no longer see by means of our physical body, we no longer hear through our physical body, we no longer think by means of the brain connected with the physical body. Then we still know next to nothing of all the external world—I am telling you just the facts, the more exact proofs of which will only be possible in the next lecture—we know next to nothing of an external world. On the other hand, the first stage of clairvoyance leads us so much the more to a view of our own etheric body; we see a super-sensible body of human nature which underlies it, and we can only express it as something which works and creates like a sort of inner master-builder—which permeates our physical body in a living, active manner. And then we become aware of the following:—

We become aware that what we perceive in ourselves as the true activity of the etheric body is, on the one hand limited, modified by our physical body; that it is as it were, clothed on the physical side, the etheric body as it were filling and giving shape to eyes and ears, and to the physical brain; thereby be belong in a certain measure to the earthly element. In this way we perceive how the etheric body becomes a special, individual, egotistical human being sheathed in the physical body. But on the other hand we perceive how this our etheric body leads us into those regions where we encounter impersonally something higher, something super-sensible, something which is not us, but which is present in us at this very time, which works through us as spiritual, super-sensible power and force. Hence, according to the consideration of spiritual science, the inner soul life is divided for us into three principles which are as it were, enclosed in three external sheaths, filling them. In the first place, we live in such connection with our soul that in it we experience that which our eyes see, our ears hear, our senses can grasp, what our intellect can comprehend; we live with our souls in our physical body. In so far as our soul lives in the physical body, in occult science we call it the spiritual (or consciousness) soul, because only through a complete familiarity with the physical body has it become possible in the course of human development for man to advance onwards to the “I” consciousness. Then specially does the modern clairvoyant also learn to know the life of the soul in that which we have called the etheric body. The soul so lives in the etheric body that it certainly has its forces, but the soul forces so work there that we cannot say:—these are our personal forces; they are universal, human forces, they are forces through which we stand much closer to the collective hidden facts of Nature. In so far as the soul perceives these forces in an external sheath, in the etheric body, do we speak of the intellectual soul, or rational soul as the second soul principle. So that just as we have the consciousness soul enclosed in the sheath of the physical body, so have we the intellectual or rational soul enclosed in the etheric body. And then we have a still finer body, by means of which we reach up into the super-sensible world. Everything that we experience inwardly as our own original secrets, as well as that which to-day is concealed from the consciousness, and which in the time of the old clairvoyance was perceived as the growing forces in the process of human evolution, which was so perceived as if one could look back at the events of hoary antiquity,—all this we assign to the sentient soul, assign it to this, so that it is enclosed in the finest human body, in that which we call the astral body—please do not take offence at this expression, but accept it as a technical term .I t is that part of the being of man which as it were, in him connects the external, earthly part with that which works inspiringly in his inner being, that which he cannot perceive with his external sense, cannot even perceive when he looks through his own inner being into the etheric body, but which he can perceive when he is independent of himself, of the etheric body, and is connected with the forces of his origin. Thus we have the sentient soul in the astral body, the intellectual or rational soul in the etheric body, and the spiritual or consciousness soul in the physical body. In the times of the old clairvoyance these things were more or less instinctively known to man, for they looked into themselves, they saw this three-principled soul-being. Not that they had by the use of reason analysed the soul, but when they had clairvoyant consciousness, the three-principled soul stood before them; the sentient soul in the astral body the intellectual soul in the etheric body, and the consciousness soul in the physical body. And when they looked back, they saw how the external part of man, the outer form—when the animal forms had long before hardened—developed out of what we encounter to-day in its results as the three-fold soul forces. Then they perceived that this threefold organisation is born from super-sensible, creative powers; they perceived that the sentient soul is born from super-sensible, creative powers which gave the astral body to man, that body which he not only has like his etheric and physical bodies between birth and death, but which he takes with him when he passes through the gates of death, and which he already had before he entered into existence through birth. Thus the old clairvoyant saw the sentient soul connected with the astral body; and that which, so to speak works inspiringly on man from the spiritual worlds and creates his astral body, they saw as the first creative force which built up man from the Cosmic whole. And as a second creative force they saw that, the result of which we have to-day in the intellectual or rational soul, and which so created the etheric body that this etheric body transforms all external substance, all external matter, so that it, can permeate the physical human form, in the human, and not in the animal sense. The creative spirit for the etheric body which in its results appears in our intellectual soul, was seen by the old clairvoyants as a superhuman Cosmic Power, working in man somewhat like magnetism in physical matter. They looked up into the spiritual worlds, saw the divine, spiritual power which framed, forged the etheric body of man, so that this etheric body became the master-builder which transforms external matter, breaks it up, pulverises it, grinds it, so that what formerly existed as matter is organised into man, and man receives human capabilities. The old clairvoyant saw how this creative power remodelled all matter in an artistic way, so that it could become human matter. Then again, they looked upon the third, upon the spiritual or consciousness soul which really makes the ego-man, which is the transformation of the physical body, and they ascribed those powers which rule in the physical body solely to the line of heredity, to that which is derived from father and mother, from grandfather and grandmother and great-grandfather, in short, to that which is the result of the human powers of love, of the human powers of propagation. In that they saw the third creative power. The power of love works from generation to generation. The old clairvoyant looked up to three powers, to a creative being who ultimately calls forth the sentient soul, in that it fashions the astral body in man which man had before he became a physical being through conception, the body which man will have when he has passed through the gates of death. This structure of forces—we might rather say—this heavenly structure in man which lasts on when the etheric body and physical body pass away, was at the same time to the old clairvoyants their direct experience proved this—that which could bring all culture and civilisation into human life. Therefore in the producer of the astral body they saw that power which brings in the divine, which itself only consists of the permanent, and by means of which the Eternal rings and resounds into the world. And the old clairvoyants from whom—I say it without fear—the characters in Kalevala have sprung, have represented in Väinemöinen the active, plastic form of that creative power whose results we encounter in the sentient soul which inspires the divine in man, Väinemöinen is the creator of that principle of the human body which endures beyond birth and death, and which brings the divine into the earthly. And we look at the second figure in Kalevala, Ilmarinen; if we go back to the old clairvoyant consciousness, we find that Ilmarinen brings forth everything that is copy or image, in his active moulding of the etheric body, from out of the forces of the earth, and from that which does not belong to the material earth, but to its deeper forces. We see in Ilmarinen the producer of that which fashions and grinds matter. We see in him the forger of the human form. And we see in the Sampo, the human etheric body, forged by Ilmarinen out of the super-sensible world, whereby material matter is pulverised, and can then be tarried on from generation to generation, so that in the powers which are given by the third super-sensible divine being, through the powers of love continued from generation to generation, the human spiritual or consciousness soul works on further in the human physical body. We see this third super-sensible divine power in Lemminkäinen. And thus in the forging of the Sampo we see the profound mysteries of the origin of humanity. We see profound mysteries from the ancient clairvoyant consciousness at the back of Kalevala, and thus we look back into human antiquity of which we have to say; that was not the age when one could have analysed the phenomena of Nature by means of the intellect; everything was primitive; but in the primitive lived the perception of what stands behind the material. Now it was so that when these bodies of man were forged, especially when the etheric body of man—the Sampo, was forged that it had first to be wrought upon for a time; did not at once possess the forces which were prepared for him by the super-sensible powers. Whilst the etheric body was being forged, it had first to grow accustomed to itself inwardly; just as when a machine is being prepared it must first be made ready, them as it were, fully matured, in order to be made use of. In human development—this shown in all evolution—there had always to be an interval between the creation of the principle in question, and the using of it. Thus man's etheric body was fashioned in remote primitive times; then came an episode when this etheric body was being sent down into human nature. Only later did it shine out as the intellectual soul, and man learnt to use his powers as external powers of nature; he brought forth from his own nature the Sampo which had remained concealed. We see symbolically in a wonderful way this secret development in the forging of the Sampo, in the concealment of it, in the inefficiency of the Sampo, in the episode which lies between the forging, and the rediscovery of it. We see the Sampo first sunk into human nature, then brought forth to the external powers of civilisation, which appear first as primitive forces just as they are described in the second part of Kalevala. Thus everything in this great national epic gains a profound significance when we see in it clairvoyant descriptions of the ancient occurrences in human development, of the coming into being of human nature in its various principles. I can assure you that to me who only learnt to understand Kalevala long, long after these facts regarding the development of human nature stood clearly before my soul, it was a wonderful, amazing fact to find again in this epic that which I had been able to represent more or less theoretically in my “Theosophy”, which was written at a time when as yet I knew not a line of Kalevala.

And thus we see how the secrets of mankind appear in that which Väinemöinen gives, he who was the creator of super-sensible inspiration, the history namely, of the fashioning of the etheric body. But there is yet another secret concealed. Now mark, I understand nothing of Finnish, I can only speak from spiritual science. I should be able to express the word “Sampo” only by endeavouring to form a word which could be formed in the following way:—In the animals we see the etheric body so active that it becomes the master-builder of the most varied forms, from the most imperfect to the most perfect. Into the human etheric body was forged something which collected all these animal forms as in a unity, with the one exception only, that over the earth the etheric body, that is the Sampo, is fashioned according to climatic and other conditions, so that this etheric body has the special national character, the special national peculiarities in its forces, so that it forms one nation differently from another. The Sampo is, to every nation that which determines the special form of the etheric body; which so places this special nationality in life that its members have the same appearance as regards that which shines out through them, through life-being, and physical-being. Just as similarity of appearance in the human form is modeled from the etheric, so do the forces of the etheric body lie in the Sampo. Thus in the Sampo we have the symbol of the cohesion of the Finnish people; that which in the depths of human nature has made the Finnish nationality assume a definite form.

But it is so with every national epic. National epics only arise when the culture is still enclosed in the forces of the Sampo, in the forces of the etheric body. As long as the culture depends upon the forces of the Sampo, so long does the nation bear the stamp of this Sampo. Hence this etheric body bears in all culture the national character, the nationality. When, in the course of the process of civilisation was it possible for a breach to occur in this nationality, this national character? It could occur when something entered into the process of civilisation which was not for one man, for one family, for one nation, but for the whole of humanity; which came froth from such depths of human nature, from such fine and intimate depths (and is then incorporated with the process of civilisation) that it influenced all mankind without distinction of nationality, of race, and so on. And that was given when those powers spoke to mankind which do not speak to a nation, but to the whole of humanity; those powers which are so impersonally alluded to even in the national sense, so finely and so delicately at the end of Kalevala, when the Christ is born in Mariata. When He is baptised, Väinemöinen leaves the land, for something has entered which connects the special national character with the universal-human. And here at this point where one of the most significant, most pregnant, most magnificent national epics ends in the description, the wholly impersonal—pardon the paradoxical expression—un-Palestine-like description of the Christ-impulse, then Kalevala becomes very specially significant. Here we are led specially into that which can be perceived when the benefits, the felicity of the Sampo are actively experienced as continuing to work through all human development, and at the same time in co-operation with the Christian idea, the Christian impulse. That is the infinite delicacy at the end of Kalevala, it is also that which explains to us clearly that what preceded this conclusion belongs to pre-Christian times. But as truly as universal humanity will only continue by preserving its individual character, so truly will the individual national civilisations which derive their being from the old clairvoyant conditions of the people, continue to live in the universal human; so truly will everything which is indicated at the end of Kalev as pertaining to the Christ, always be connected, keep up its special results through the endless working referred to in the inspirations of Väinemöinen. For Väinemöinen means something which belongs to that part of the human being which is raised above birth and death, which passes with man through the whole of human development. Thus, such epics as Kalevala represent something to us which is immortal, which can be permeated by the Christian conception, but which will make itself of value as something individual, and will always furnish the proof that the universal-human will continue to live in the many national civilisations just as the white light of the sun breaks up into many colours. And because this universal-human permeates the individual in the being of the national epic, and illuminates every man, therefore the individualities of the nations live so strongly in the spirit of their national epics. Therefore do the men of ancient times appear so vividly before our eyes, who, in their clairvoyance have looked upon the Beings of their own nationality as described in all the epics, and where it is still so wonderfully brought home to us in the conditions which surround humanity in its intimate life and nature as they exist in the Finnish nation; in the representation of that which lies in the depths of the soul, so that it can, as it were, be placed side by side with the latest revelations of spiritual science of the mysteries of humanity. At the same time, such national epics are in their very being a living protest against all materialism, against all derivation of man from merely external forms, material conditions, material beings. Such national epics, especially Kalevala, inform us that man has his origin and primitive state in the spiritual; therefore a renewal, a re-fructification of the old national epics in the most active sense of spiritual culture, can perform immeasurably great service. For as Spiritual Science or Anthroposophy to-day desires above all the renewal of human consciousness in the direction which roots humanity not in matter but in spirit, so an accurate consideration of such an epic as Kalevala shows us that the best which man has, the best that man is, is derived from the spirit-soul world. In this sense it was interesting to me that one of the Runic writings, the “Kantela,” raises a direct protest against interpreting the Kalevala in a materialistic sense. That instrument, that kind of harp, to which the ancient bards sang in olden times, is alluded to in the representation as if it were formed from the material of the physical world; but the ancient Runic writings protested in the sense of spiritual science, one might say, that the stringed instrument for Väinemöinen was not constructed of natural products which are visible to the senses. In reality, say the ancient Runic writings—the instrument upon which men played the melodies which came to him straight from the spiritual world, was derived from the spirit-soul world. In this sense the ancient Runic writings are to be explained in quite an occult sense as an active protest against the interpretation in a material sense, of what man may become; an indication that that which man possesses, that which is his being, and that which is only symbolically expressed in such an instrument as that ascribed to Väinemöinen that such an instrument is derived from spirit, and with it the whole being of man. The old Finnish Folk-Rune which is translated into German as follows, may serve us as a motto for the principles of occult science, and sums up in main outline and colouring what I was desirous of expounding in this lecture on the subject of the national epics.

“They certainly speak falsely and are in error, who believe that Väinemöinen fashioned the Kantela, our beautiful stringed instrument, from the jawbone of the like, and spun the strings from the tail of the Hiisi-horse; it was fashioned from sorrow, trouble bound its parts together, the tears of bitter longing and suffering wove its strings.”

Thus all being is not born of matter, but of spirit and soul; so says this Old Folk-Rune, so also says occult science which is to take its place in the active development of culture in our time.

German translation of Folk-Rune:—

“Falsches sagen die gewisslich and befinden sich in Irrtum die da glauben, Wainemoinen hab gezimmert die Kantele, unsere schönen Saitenspiele, aus den Kinnbacken des Hechtes, and dass Saiten er gesponne aus den Schweif des Hiisi-Rosses; sie ist aber aus der Not gezinmert, Kummer band dann ihre Teile, bittere Schmsuchstränen spannen and die Leiden ihre Saiten.”

Dr. Steiner: Today I want you to summarize all your experiences of the last ten days and then we will discuss what is necessary.

Stockmeyer (the school administrator) reports: We began instruction on September 16, and Mr. Molt gave a short speech to the students. We had to somewhat change the class schedule we had discussed because the Lutheran and Catholic religion teachers were not available at the times we had set. We also had to combine some classes. In addition, we needed to include a short recess of five minutes in the period from 8-10 a.m.

Dr. Steiner: Of course, we can do that, but what happens during that period must remain the free decision of the teacher.

A teacher: During the language classes in the upper grades, it became apparent that some children had absolutely no knowledge of foreign languages. For that reason, at least for now, we must give three hours of English and three hours of French instead of the 1½ hours of each that we had planned. We also had to create a beginners’ class as well as one for more advanced students.

Dr. Steiner: What are you teaching in the eighth grade?

A teacher: The computation of interest. I plan to go on to the computation of discounts and exchanges.

Dr. Steiner: The two seventh- and eighth-grade teachers must remain in constant contact so that when one teacher leaves the class, he brings things to a kind of conclusion. When he returns, he then leads the class through a repetition. In the past few days, have you been able to determine how much the students already know?

A teacher: I was able to make an approximation.

Dr. Steiner: With your small class that certainly would have been possible, but hardly for the other teachers. Certainly, we can try to make it possible for you to change classes an average of once a week, but we must be careful that the exchange takes place only when you finish a topic.

A teacher: The seventh grade knows very little history.

Dr. Steiner: You will probably need to begin something like history from the very beginning in each class, since none of the students will have a proper knowledge of history. The children have probably learned what is common knowledge, but, as I have mentioned in the past, it is unlikely that any of them have a genuine understanding of history. Therefore, you must begin from the beginning in each class.

A teacher: Many parents have been unable to decide whether they should send their children to the independent religious instruction or the Lutheran or Catholic. Many of them wrote both in the questionnaire, since they want their children confirmed for family reasons.

Dr. Steiner: Here we must be firm. It’s either the one or the other. We will need to speak about this question more at a later time. A teacher: An economic question has arisen: Should those students who are paying tuition also purchase their own books? The factory takes care of all of these things for its children, but it could happen that children sit next to one another and one has a book he or she must return and the other a book he or she can keep. This would emphasize class differences.

Dr. Steiner: Clearly we can’t do things in that way, that some children buy their books and then keep them. The only thing we can do is raise the tuition by the amount of the cost of books and supplies, but, in general, we should keep things as they are with the other children. Therefore, all children should return their books.

A teacher: Should we extend that to such things as notebooks? That is common practice here in Stuttgart. Also, how should we handle the question of atlases and compasses?

Dr. Steiner: Of course, the best thing would be to purchase a supply of notebooks and such for each class. The children would then need to go to the teacher when they fill one notebook in order to obtain a new one. We could thus keep track of the fact that one child uses more notebooks than others. We should therefore see that there is a supply of notebooks and that the teacher gives them to the children as needed.

For compasses and other such items, problems arise if we simply allow the children to decide what to buy. Those children with more money will, of course, buy better things, and that is a real calamity. It might be a good idea if all such tools, including things for handwork, belong to the school and the children only use them.

As for atlases, I would suggest the following. We should start a fund for such things and handle the atlases used during the year in much the same way as the other supplies. However, each child should receive an atlas upon graduation. It would certainly be very nice if the children received something at graduation. Perhaps we could even do these things as awards for good work. A larger more beautiful book for those who have done well, something smaller for those who have done less, and for those who were lazy, perhaps only a map. That is certainly something we could do; however, we shouldn’t let it get out of hand.

A teacher: How should we handle the question of books for religious instruction? Until now, instructional materials were provided, but according to the new Constitution, that will probably no longer be so. We thought the children would purchase those books themselves and would pay the ministers directly for their teaching.

Dr. Steiner: I have nothing against doing it that way. However, I think that we should investigate how other schools are handling that, so that everything can move smoothly, at least this year. In the future, we must find our own way of working, but at least for this year, we should do it like the other schools. We need to act in accordance with the public schools. If they do not require the purchase of religion books and separate payment for instruction, we must wait until they do. It would certainly be helpful if we could say we are doing what the public schools are doing.

A teacher: Should we use the secondary schools as our model? Dr. Steiner: No, we should pay more attention to the elementary schools.

A teacher: Nothing is settled there yet.

Dr. Steiner: True. However, I would do what is common in the elementary schools, since the socialist government will not change much at first, but will just leave everything the way it has been. The government will make laws, but allow everything to stay the same.

A teacher: It seems advisable to keep track of what we teach in each class. But, of course, we should not do it the normal way. We should make the entries so that each teacher can orient him- or herself with the work of the other teachers.

Dr. Steiner: Yes, but if we do that in an orderly manner, we will need time, and that will leave time for the children to simply play around. When you are with the children as a teacher, you should not be doing anything else. What I mean is that you are not really in the classroom if you are doing something not directly connected with the children. When you enter the classroom, you should be with the children until you leave, and you should not give the children any opportunity to chatter or misbehave by not being present, for instance, by making entries in a record book or such things.

It would be much better to take care of these things among ourselves. Of course, I am assuming that the class teachers do not get into arguments about that, but respect one another and discuss the subject. If a teacher works with one class, then that teacher will also discuss matters with the others who teach that class. Each teacher will make his or her entries outside of the instructional period. Nothing, absolutely nothing that does not directly interact with the children can occur during class time.

A teacher: Perhaps we could do that during the recesses. Dr. Steiner: Why do we actually need to enter things? First, we must enter them, then someone else must read them. That is time lost for interacting with the students.

A teacher: Shouldn’t we also record when a student is absent?

Dr. Steiner: No, that is actually something we also do not need.

A teacher: If a child is absent for a longer time, we will have to inquire as to what the problem is.

Dr. Steiner: In the context of our not very large classes, we can do that orally with the children. We can ask who is absent and simply take note of it in our journals. That is something that we can do. We will enter that into the children’s reports, namely, how many times a child was absent, but we certainly do not need a class journal for that.

A teacher: I had to stop the children from climbing the chestnut trees, but we want to have as few rules as possible.

Dr. Steiner: Well, we certainly need to be clear that we do not have a bunch of angels at this school, but that should not stop us from pursuing our ideas and ideals. Such things should not lead us to think that we cannot reach what we have set as our goals. We must always be clear that we are pursuing the intentions set forth in the seminar. Of course, how much we cannot achieve is another question that we must particularly address from time to time. Today, we have only just begun, and all we can do is take note of how strongly social climbing has broken out.

However, there is something else that I would ask you to be aware of. That is, that we, as the faculty—what others do with the children is a separate thing—do not attempt to bring out into the public things that really concern only our school. I have been back only a few hours, and I have heard so much gossip about who got a slap and so forth. All of that gossip is going beyond all bounds, and I really found it very disturbing. We do not really need to concern ourselves when things seep out the cracks. We certainly have thick enough skins for that. But on the other hand, we clearly do not need to help it along. We should be quiet about how we handle things in the school, that is, we should maintain a kind of school confidentiality. We should not speak to people outside the school, except for the parents who come to us with questions, and in that case, only about their children, so that gossip has no opportunity to arise. There are people who like to talk about such things because of their own desire for sensationalism. However, it poisons our entire undertaking for things to become mere gossip. This is something that is particularly true here in Stuttgart since there is so much gossip within anthroposophical circles. That gossip causes great harm, and I encounter it in the most disgusting forms. Those of us on the faculty should in no way support it.

A teacher: In some cases, we may need to put less capable children back a grade. Or should we recommend tutoring for these children? Dr. Steiner: Putting children back a grade is difficult in the lower grades. However, it is easier in the upper grades. If it is at all possible, we should not put children back at all in the first two grades.

Specific cases are discussed.

Dr. Steiner: We should actually never recommend tutoring. We can recommend tutoring only when the parents approach us when they have heard of bad results. As teachers, we will not offer tutoring. That is something we do not do. It would be better to place a child in a lower grade.

Dr. Steiner: You should place these children at the front of the class, close to the teacher, without concern for their temperaments, so that the teacher can keep an eye on them. You can keep disruptive children under control only if you put them in a corner, or right up at the front, or way in the back of the class, so that they have few neighboring children, that is, no one in front or behind them.

A teacher: Sometimes children do not see well. I know of some children who are falling behind only because they are farsighted and no one has taken that into account.

Dr. Steiner: An attentive teacher will observe organic problems in children such as short-sightedness or deafness. It is difficult to have a medical examination for everything. Such examinations should occur only when the teachers recommend them.

When conventional school physicians perform the examinations, we easily come into problems of understanding. For now we want to avoid the visits of a school physician, since Dr. Noll is not presently here. It would be different if he were. Physicians unknown to the school would only cause us difficulties. The physician should, of course, act as an advisor to the teacher, and the teacher should be able to turn to the physician with trust when he or she notices something with the children.

With children who have learning difficulties, it often happens that suddenly something changes in them, and they show quite sudden improvement. I will visit the school tomorrow morning and will look at some of the children then, particularly those who are having difficulty.

A teacher: My fifth-grade class is very large, and the children are quite different from one another. It is very difficult to teach them all together and particularly difficult to keep them quiet.

Dr. Steiner: With a class as large as that, you must gradually attempt to treat the class as a choir and not allow anyone to be unoccupied. Thus, try to teach the class as a whole. That is why we did that whole long thing with the temperaments.

That children are more or less gifted often results from purely physical differences. Children often express only what they have within themselves, and it would be unjust not to allow the children who are at the proper age for that class (ten to eleven years old) to come along. There will always be some who are weak in one subject or another. That problem often stops suddenly. Children drag such problems along through childhood until a certain grade, and when the light goes on, they suddenly shed the problem. For that reason, we cannot simply leave children behind. We must certainly overcome particularly the difficulties with gifted and slow children.

Of course, if we become convinced that they have not achieved the goal of the previous grade, we must put them back. However, I certainly want you to take note that we should not treat such children as slow learners. If you have children who did not really achieve the goals set for the previous grade, then you need to put them back. However, you must do that very soon.

You can never see from one subject whether the child has reached the teaching goals or not. You may never judge the children according to one subject alone. Putting children back a grade must occur within the first quarter of the school year. The teachers must, of course, have seen the students’ earlier school reports. However, I would ask you to recognize that we may not return to the common teaching schedule simply in order to judge a student more quickly. We should always complete a block, even though it may take somewhat longer, before a judgment is possible.

In deciding to put a child back, we should always examine each individual case carefully. We dare not do something rash. We should certainly not do anything of that nature unthinkingly, but only after a thorough examination and, then, do only what we can justify.

Concerning the question of putting back a child who did not accomplish the goals of the previous school, I should also add that you should, of course, speak with the parents. The parents need to be in agreement. Naturally, you may not tell the parents that their child is stupid. You will need to be able to show them that their child did not achieve what he or she needed at the previous school, in spite of what the school report says. You must be able to prove that. You must show that it was a defect of the previous school, and not of the child.

A teacher: Can we also put children ahead a class? In the seventh grade I have two children who apparently would fit well in the eighth grade.

Dr. Steiner: I would look at their report cards. If you think it is responsible to do so, you can certainly do it. I have nothing against putting children ahead a grade. That can even have a positive effect upon the class into which the children come.

A teacher: That would certainly not be desirable in the seventh grade. Now we can educate them for two years, but if we put them ahead a grade, for only one.

Dr. Steiner: Just because we put the children ahead does not mean that we cannot educate them for two years. We will simply not graduate them, but instead keep them here and allow them to do the eighth grade again. When children reach the age of graduation in the seventh grade, the parents simply take them away. However, the education here is not as pedantic, so each year there is a considerable difference. Next year, we will have just as many bright children as this year, so it would actually be quite good if we were to have children who are in the last grade now, in next year’s last grade, also.

It is certainly clear that this first year will be difficult, especially for the faculty. That certainly weighs upon my soul. Everything depends upon the faculty. Whether we can realize our ideals depends upon you. It is really important that we learn.

A teacher: In the sixth grade I have a very untalented child. He does not disturb my teaching, and I have even seen that his presence in the class is advantageous for the other children. I would like to try to keep the him in the class.

Dr. Steiner: If the child does not disturb the others, and if you believe you can achieve something with him, then I certainly think you should keep him in your class. There is always a disturbance when we move children around, so it is better to keep them where they are. We can even make use of certain differences, as we discussed in detail.

A teacher: In the eighth grade, I have a boy who is melancholic and somewhat behind. I would like to put him in the seventh grade.

Dr. Steiner: You need to do that by working with the child so that he wants to be put back. You should speak with him so that you direct his will in that direction and he asks for it himself. Don’t simply put him back abruptly.

A teacher: There are large differences in the children in seventh grade.

Dr. Steiner: In the seventh and eighth grades, it will be very good if you can keep the children from losing their feeling for authority. That is what they need most. You can best achieve that by going into things with the children very cautiously, but under no circumstances giving in. Thus, you should not appear pedantic to the children, you should not appear as one who presents your own pet ideas. You must appear to give in to the children, but in reality don’t do that under any circumstance. The way you treat the children is particularly important in the seventh and eighth grades. You may never give in for even one minute, for the children can then go out and laugh at you. The children should, in a sense, be jealous (if I may use that expression, but I don’t mean that in the normal sense of jealousy), so that they defend their teacher and are happy they have that teacher. You can cultivate that even in the rowdiest children. You can slowly develop the children’s desire to defend their teacher simply because he or she is their teacher.

A teacher: Is it correct that we should refrain from presenting the written language in the foreign language classes, even when the children can already write, so that they first become accustomed to the pronunciation?

Dr. Steiner: In foreign languages, you should certainly put off writing as long as possible. That is quite important.

A teacher: We have only just begun and the children are already losing their desire for spoken exercises. Can we enliven our teaching through stories in the mother tongue [German]?

Dr. Steiner: That would certainly be good. However, if you need to use something from the mother tongue, then you certainly need to try to connect it to something in the foreign language, to bring the foreign language into it in some way. You can create material for teaching when you do something like that. That would be the proper thing to do. You could also bring short poems or songs in the foreign language, and little stories. In the language classes we need to pay less attention to the grades as such, but rather group the children more according to their ability.

A teacher: I think that an hour and a half of music and an hour and a half of eurythmy per week is too little.

Dr. Steiner: That is really a question of available space. Later, we will be able to do what is needed.

A teacher: The children in my sixth-grade class need to sing more, but I cannot sing with them because I am so unmusical. Could I select some of the more musical children to sing a song?

Dr. Steiner: That’s just what we should do. You can do that most easily if you give the children something they can handle independently. You certainly do not need to be very musical in order to allow children to sing. The children could learn the songs during singing class and then practice them by singing at the beginning or end of the period.

A teacher: I let the children sing, but they are quite awkward. I would like to gather the more musically gifted children into a special singing class where they can do more difficult things.

Dr. Steiner: It would certainly not violate the Constitution if we eventually formed choirs out of the four upper classes and the four lower classes, perhaps as Sunday choirs. Through something like that, we can bring the children together more than through other things. However, we should not promote any false ambitions. We want to keep that out of our teaching. Ambition may be connected only with the subject, not with the person. Taking the four upper classes together and the four lower classes would be good because the children’s voices are somewhat different. Otherwise, this is not a question of the classes themselves. When you teach them, you must treat them as one class. In teaching music, we must also strictly adhere to what we already know about the periods of life. We must strictly take into consideration the inner structure of the period that begins about age nine, and the one that begins at about age twelve. However, for the choirs we could eventually use for Sunday services, we can certainly combine the four younger classes and the four older classes.

A teacher: We have seen that eurythmy is moving forward only very slowly.

Dr. Steiner: At first, you should strongly connect everything with music. You should take care to develop the very first exercises out of music. Of course, you should not neglect the other part, either, particularly in the higher grades.

We now need to speak a little bit about the independent religious instruction. You need to tell the children that if they want the independent religious instruction, they must choose it. Thus, the independent religious instruction will simply be a third class alongside the other two. In any case, we may not have any unclear mixing of things. Those who are to have the independent religious instruction can certainly be put together according to grades, for instance, the lower four and the upper four grades. Any one of us could give that instruction. How many children want that instruction?

A teacher: Up to now, there are sixty, fifty-six of whom are children of anthroposophists. The numbers will certainly change since many people wanted to have both.

Dr. Steiner: We will not mix things together. We are not advocating that instruction, but only attempting to meet the desires. My advice would be for the child to take instruction in the family religion. We can leave those children who are not taking any religious instruction alone, but we can certainly inquire as to why they should not have any. We should attempt to determine that in each case. In doing so, we may be able to bring one or another to take instruction in the family religion or possibly to come to the anthroposophic instruction. We should certainly do something there, since we do not want to just allow children to grow up without any religious instruction at all.

A teacher: Should the class teacher give the independent religious instruction?

Dr. Steiner: Certainly, one of us can take it over, but it does not need to be the children’s own class teacher. We would not want someone unknown to us to do it. We should remain within the circle of our faculty.

With sixty children altogether, we would have approximately thirty children in each group if we take the four upper and four lower classes together. I will give you a lesson plan later. We need to do this instruction very carefully.

In the younger group, we must omit everything related to reincarnation and karma. We can deal with that only in the second group, but there we must address it. From ten years of age on, we should go through those things. It is particularly important in this instruction that we pay attention to the student’s own activity from the very beginning. We should not just speak of reincarnation and karma theoretically, but practically.

As the children approach age seven, they undergo a kind of retrospection of all the events that took place before their birth. They often tell of the most curious things, things that are quite pictorial, about that earlier state. For example, and this is something that is not unusual but rather is typical, the children come and say, “I came into the world through a funnel that expanded.” They describe how they came into the world. You can allow them to describe these things as you work with them and take care of them so that they can bring them into consciousness. That is very good, but we must avoid convincing the children of things. We need to bring out only what they say themselves, and we should do that. That is part of the instruction.

In the sense of yesterday’s public lecture, we can also enliven this instruction. It would certainly be very beautiful if we did not turn this into a school for a particular viewpoint, if we took the pure understanding of the human being as a basis and through it, enlivened our pedagogy at every moment. My essay that will appear in the next “Waldorf News” goes just in that direction. It is called “The Pedagogical Basis of the Waldorf School.” What I have written is, in general, a summary for the public of everything we learned in the seminar. I ask that you consider it an ideal.

For each group, an hour and a half of religious instruction per week, that is, two three-quarter hour classes, is sufficient. It would be particularly nice if we could do that on Sundays, but it is hardly possible. We could also make the children familiar with the weekly verses in this instruction.

A teacher: Aren’t they too difficult?

Dr. Steiner: We must never see anything as too difficult for children. Their importance lies not in understanding the thoughts, but in how the thoughts follow one another. I would certainly like to know what could be more difficult for children than the Lord’s Prayer. People only think it is easier than the verses in the Calendar of the Soul. Then there’s the Apostles’ Creed! The reason people are so against the Apostles’ Creed is only because no one really understands it, otherwise they would not oppose it. It contains only things that are obvious, but human beings are not so far developed before age twenty-seven that they can understand it, and afterward, they no longer learn anything from life. The discussions about the creed are childish. It contains nothing that people could not decide for themselves. You can take up the weekly verses with the children before class.

A teacher: Wouldn’t it be good if we had the children do a morning prayer?

Dr. Steiner: That is something we could do. I have already looked into it, and will have something to say about it tomorrow. We also need to speak about a prayer. I ask only one thing of you. You see, in such things everything depends upon the external appearances. Never call a verse a prayer, call it an opening verse before school. Avoid allowing anyone to hear you, as a faculty member, using the word “prayer.” In doing that, you will have overcome a good part of the prejudice that this is an anthroposophical thing. Most of our sins we bring about through words. People do not stop using words that damage us. You would not believe everything I had to endure to stop people from calling Towards Social Renewal, a pamphlet. It absolutely is a book, it only looks like a pamphlet. It is a book! I simply can’t get people to say, “the book.” They say, “the pamphlet,” and that has a certain meaning. The word is not unnecessary. Those are the things that are really important. Anthroposophists are, however, precisely the people who least allow themselves to be contained. You simply can’t get through to them. Other people simply believe in authority. That is what I meant when I said that the anthroposophists are obstinate, and you can’t get through to them, even when it is justified!

A teacher: My fifth-grade class is noisy and uncontrolled, particularly during the foreign language period. They think French sentences are jokes.

Dr. Steiner: The proper thing to do would be to look at the joke and learn from it. You should always take jokes into account, but with humor. However, the children must behave. They must be quiet at your command. You must be able to get them quiet with a look. You must seek to maintain contact from the beginning to the end of the period. Even though it is tiring, you must maintain the contact between the teacher and the student under all circumstances. We gain nothing through external discipline. All you can do is accept the problem and then work from that.

Your greatest difficulty is your thin voice. You need to train your voice a little and learn to speak in a lower tone and not squeal and shriek. It would be a shame if you were not to train your voice so that some bass also came into it. You need some deeper tones.

A teacher: Who should teach Latin?

Dr. Steiner: That is a question for the faculty. For the time, I would suggest that Pastor Geyer and Dr. Stein teach Latin. It is too much for one person.

A teacher: How should we begin history?

Dr. Steiner: In almost every class, you will need to begin history from the beginning. You should limit yourself to teaching only what is necessary. If, for example, in the eighth grade, you find it necessary to begin from the very beginning, then attempt to create a picture of the entire human development with only a few, short examples. In the eighth grade, you would need to go through the entire history of the world as we understand it.

That is also true for physics. In natural history, it is very much easier to allow the children to use what they have already learned and enliven it. This is one of those subjects affected by the deficiencies we discussed. These subjects are introduced after the age of twelve when the capacity for judgment begins. In the subjects just described, we can use much of what the children have learned, even if it is a nuisance.

A teacher: In Greek history, we could emphasize cultural history and the sagas and leave out the political portion, for instance, the Persian Wars.

Dr. Steiner: You can handle the Persian Wars by including them within the cultural history. In general, you can handle wars as a part of cultural history for the older periods, though they have become steadily more unpleasant. You can consider the Persian Wars a symptom of cultural history.

A teacher: What occurred nationally is less important?

Dr. Steiner: No, for example, the way money arose.

A teacher: Can we study the Constitution briefly?

Dr. Steiner: Yes, but you will need to explain the spirit of the Lycurgian Constitution, for example, and also the difference between the Athenians and the Spartans.

A teacher: Standard textbooks present Roman constitutionalism.

Dr. Steiner: Textbooks treat that in detail, but often incorrectly. The Romans did not have a constitution, but they knew not only the Twelve Laws by heart, but also a large number of books of law. The children will get an incorrect picture if you do not describe the Romans as a people of law who were aware of themselves as such. That is something textbooks present in a boring way, but we must awaken in the children the picture that in Rome all Romans were experts in law and could count the laws on their fingers. The Twelve Laws were taught at that time like multiplication is now.

A teacher: We would like to meet every week to discuss pedagogical questions so that what each of us achieves, the others can take advantage of.

Dr. Steiner: That would be very good and is something that I would joyfully greet, only you need to hold your meeting in a republican form.

A teacher: How far may we go with disciplining the children?

Dr. Steiner: That is something that is, of course, very individual. It would certainly be best if you had little need to discipline the children. You can avoid discipline. Under certain circumstances it may be necessary to spank a child, but you can certainly attempt to achieve the ideal of avoiding that. You should have the perspective that as the teacher, you are in control, not the child. In spite of that, I have to admit that there are rowdies, but also that punishment will not improve misbehavior. That will become better only when you slowly create a different tone in the classroom. The children who misbehave will slowly change if the tone in the classroom is good. In any event, you should try not to go too far with punishment.

A teacher: To alleviate the lack of educational material, would it be possible to form an organization and ask the anthroposophists to provide us with books and so forth that they have? We really should have everything available on the subject of anthroposophy.

Dr. Steiner: We are planning to do something in that direction by organizing the teachers who are members of the Society. We are planning to take everything available in anthroposophy and make it in some way available for public education and for education in general. Perhaps it would be possible to connect with the organization of teachers already within the Anthroposophical Society.

A teacher: We also need a living understanding about the various areas of economics. I thought that perhaps within the Waldorf School, we could lay a foundation for a future economic science.

Dr. Steiner: In that case, we would need to determine who would oversee the different areas. There are people who have a sense for such things and who are also really practical experts. That is, we would need to find people who do not simply lecture about it, but who are really practical and have a sense for what we want to do. Such people must exist, and they must bring the individual branches of social science together. I think we could achieve a great deal in that direction if we undertook it properly. However, you have a great deal to do during this first year, and you cannot spread yourselves too thin. That is something you will have to allow others to take care of, and we must create an organization for that. It must exclude all fanaticism and monkeying around and must be down to Earth. We need people who live in the practicalities of life.

A teacher: Mr. van Leer has already written that he is ready to undertake this.

Dr. Steiner: Yes, he could certainly help. A plan could be worked out about how to do this in general. People such as Mr. van Leer and Mr. Molt and also others who live in the practicalities of economic life know how to focus on such questions and how to work with them. The faculty would perhaps not be able to achieve as much as when we turn directly to experts. This is something that might be possible in connection with the efforts of the cultural committee. Yes, we should certainly discuss all of this.

A teacher: In geology class, how can we create a connection between geology and the Akasha Chronicle?

Dr. Steiner: Well, it would be good to teach the children about the formation of the geological strata by first giving them an understanding of how the Alps arose. You could then begin with the Alps and extend your instruction to the entire complex—the Pyrenees, the Alps, the Carpathians, the Altai Mountains, and so forth—all of which are a wave. You should make the entirety of the wave clear to the children. Then there is another wave that goes from North to South America. Thus you would have one wave to the Altai Mountains, to the Asian mountains running from west to east and another in the western part of the Americas going from North to South America, that is, another wave from north to south. That second wave is perpendicular to the first.

We can begin with these elements and then add the vegetation and animals to them. We would then study only the western part of Europe and the American East Coast, the flora and fauna, and the strata there. From that we can go on to develop an idea about the connections between the eastern part of America and the western part of Europe, and that the basin of the Atlantic Ocean and the west coast of Europe are simply sunken land. From there, we can attempt to show the children in a natural way how that land rhythmically moves up and down, that is, we can begin with the idea of a rhythm. We can show that the British Isles have risen and sunk four times and thus follow the path of geology back to the concept of ancient Atlantis.

We can then continue by trying to have the children imagine how different it was when the one was below and the other above. We can begin with the idea that the British Isles rose and sank four times. That is something that is simple to determine from the geological strata. Thus, we attempt to connect all of these things, but we should not be afraid to speak about the Atlantean land with the children. We should not skip that. We can also connect all this to history. The only thing is, you will need to disavow normal geology since the Atlantean catastrophe occurred in the seventh or eighth millennium.

The Ice Age is the Atlantean catastrophe. The Early, Middle and Late Ice Ages are nothing more than what occurred in Europe while Atlantis sank. That all occurred at the same time, that is, in the seventh or eighth millennium.

A teacher: I found some articles about geology in Pierer’s Encyclopedia. We would like to know which articles are actually from you.

Dr. Steiner: I wrote these articles, but in putting together the encyclopedia there were actually two editors. It is possible that something else was stuck in, so I cannot guarantee anything specifically. The articles about basalt, alluvium, geological formations, and the Ice Age are all from me. I did not write the article about Darwinism, nor the one about alchemy. I only wrote about geology and mineralogy and that only to a particular letter. The entries up to and including ‘G’ are from me, but beginning with ‘H,’ I no longer had the time.

A teacher: It is difficult to find the connections before the Ice Age. How are we to bring what conventional science says into alignment with what spiritual science says?

Dr. Steiner: You can find points of connection in the cycles. In the Quaternary Period you will find the first and second mammals, and you simply need to add to that what is valid concerning human beings. You can certainly bring that into alignment. You can create a parallel between the Quaternary Period and Atlantis, and easily bring the Tertiary Period into parallel, but not pedantically, with what I have described as the Lemurian Period. That is how you can bring in the Tertiary Period. There, you have the older amphibians and reptiles. The human being was at that time only jelly-like in external form. Humans had an amphibian-like form.

A teacher: But there are still the fire breathers.

Dr. Steiner: Yes, those beasts, they did breathe fire, the Archaeopteryx, for example.

A teacher: You mean that animals whose bones we see today in museums still breathed fire?

Dr. Steiner: Yes, all of the dinosaurs belong to the end of the Tertiary Period. Those found in the Jura are actually their descendants. What I am referring to are the dinosaurs from the beginning of the Tertiary Period. The Jurassic formations are later, and everything is all mixed together. We should treat nothing pedantically. The Secondary Period lies before the Tertiary and the Jurassic belongs there as does the Archaeopteryx. However, that would actually be the Secondary Period. We may not pedantically connect one with the other.

[Remarks by the German editor: In the previous paragraphs, there appear to be stenographic errors. The text is in itself contradictory, and it is not consistent with the articles mentioned and the table in Pierer’s Encyclopedia nor with Dr. Steiner’s remarks made in the following faculty meeting (Sept. 26, 1919). The error appears explainable by the fact that Dr. Steiner referred to a table that the stenographer did not have. Therefore, the editor suggests the following changes in the text. The changes are underlined:

You can find points of connection in the cycles. In the Tertiary Period you will find the first and second mammals, and you simply need to add to that what is valid concerning human beings. You can certainly bring that into alignment. You can create a parallel between the Tertiary Period and Atlantis, and easily bring the Secondary Period into parallel, but not pedantically, with what I have described as the Lemurian Period. That is how you can bring in the Secondary Period. There, you have the older amphibians and reptiles. The human being was at that time only jelly-like in external form. Humans had an amphibian-like form.

Yes, all of the dinosaurs belong to the end of the Secondary Period. Those found in the Jura are actually their descendants. What I am referring to are the dinosaurs from the beginning of the Secondary Period. The Jurassic formations are later, and everything is all mixed together. We should treat nothing pedantically. The Secondary Period lies before the Tertiary and the Jurassic belongs there as does the Archaeopteryx. However, that would be actually the Secondary Period. We may not pedantically connect one with the other.]

A teacher: How do we take into account what we have learned about what occurred within the Earth? We can find almost nothing about that in conventional science.

Dr. Steiner: Conventional geology really concerns only the uppermost strata. Those strata that go to the center of the Earth have nothing to do with geology.

A teacher: Can we teach the children about those strata? We certainly need to mention the uppermost strata.

Dr. Steiner: Yes, focus upon those strata. You can do that with a chart of the strata, but certainly never without the children knowing something about the types of rocks. The children need to know about what kinds of rocks there are. In explaining that, you should begin from above and then go deeper, because then you can more easily explain what breaks through.

A teacher: I am having trouble with the law of conservation of energy in thermodynamics.

Dr. Steiner: Why are you having difficulties? You must endeavor to gradually bring these things into what Goethe called “archetypal phenomena.” That is, to treat them only as phenomena. You can certainly not treat the law of conservation of energy as was done previously: It is only a hypothesis, not a law. And there is another thing. You can teach about the spectrum. That is a phenomenon. But people treat the law of conservation of energy as a philosophical law. We should treat the mechanical equivalent of heat in a different way. It is a phenomenon. Now, why shouldn’t we remain strictly within phenomenology? Today, people create such laws about things that are actually phenomena. It is simply nonsense that people call something like the law of gravity, a law. Such things are phenomena, not laws. You will find that you can keep such so-called laws entirely out of physics by transforming them into phenomena and grouping them as primary and secondary phenomena. If you described the so-called laws of Atwood’s gravitational machine when you teach about gravity, they are actually phenomena and not laws.

A teacher: Then we would have to approach the subject without basing it upon the law of gravity. For example, we could begin from the constant of acceleration and then develop the law of gravity, but treat it as a fact, not a law.

Dr. Steiner: Simply draw it since you have no gravitational machine. In the first second, it drops so much, in the second, so much, in the third, and so on. From that you will find a numerical series and out of that you can develop what people call a law, but is actually only a phenomenon.

A teacher: Then we shouldn’t speak about gravity at all?

Dr. Steiner: It would be wonderful if you could stop speaking about gravity. You can certainly achieve speaking of it only as a phenomenon. The best would be if you considered gravity only as a word.

A teacher: Is that true also for electrical forces?

Dr. Steiner: Today, you can certainly speak about electricity without speaking about forces. You can remain strictly within the realm of phenomena. You can come as far as the theory of ions and electrons without speaking of anything other than phenomena. Pedagogically, that would be very important to do.

A teacher: It is very difficult to get along without forces when we discuss the systems of measurement, the CGS system (centimeter, gram, second), which we have to teach in the upper grades.

Dr. Steiner: What does that have to do with forces? If you compute the exchange of one for the other, you can do it.

A teacher: Then, perhaps, we would have to replace the word “force” with something else.

Dr. Steiner: As soon as it is clear to the students that force is nothing more than the product of mass and acceleration, that is, when they understand that it is not a metaphysical concept, and that we should always treat it phenomenologically, then you can speak of forces.

A teacher: Would you say something more about the planetary movements? You have often mentioned it, but we don’t really have a clear understanding about the true movement of the planets and the Sun.

Dr. Steiner: In reality, it is like this [Dr. Steiner demonstrates with a drawing]. Now you simply need to imagine how that continues in a helix. Everything else is only apparent movement. The helical line continues into cosmic space. Therefore, it is not that the planets move around the Sun, but that these three, Mercury, Venus, and the Earth, follow the Sun, and these three, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, precede it. Thus, when the Earth is here and this is the Sun, the Earth follows along. But we look at the Sun from here, and so it appears as though the Earth goes around it, whereas it is actually only following. The Earth follows the Sun. The incline is the same as what we normally call the angle of declination. If you take the angle you obtain when you measure the ecliptic angle, then you will see that. So it is not a spiral, but a helix. It does not exist in a plane, but in space.

A teacher: How does the axis of the Earth relate to this movement?

Dr. Steiner: If the Earth were here, the axis of the Earth would be a tangent. The angle is 23.5×. The angle that encloses the helix is the same as when you take the North Pole and make this lemniscate as the path of a star near the North Pole. That is something I had to assume, since you apparently obtain a lemniscate if you extend this line. It is actually not present because the North Pole remains fixed, that is the celestial North Pole.

A teacher: Wasn’t there a special configuration in 1413?

Dr. Steiner: I already mentioned that today. Namely, if you begin about seven thousand years before 1413, you will see that the angle of the Earth’s axis has shrunk, that is, it is the smallest angle. It then becomes larger, then again smaller. In this way, a lemniscate is formed, and thus the angle of the Earth was null for a time. That was the Atlantean catastrophe. At that time, there were no differences in the length of the day relative to the time of year.

A teacher: Why should the celestial pole, which is in reality nothing other than the point toward which the Earth’s axis is directed, remain constant? It should certainly change over the course of years.

Dr. Steiner: That happens because the movement of the Earth’s axis describes a cone, a double cone whose movement is continuously balanced by the movement of the Earth’s axis. If you always had the axis of the Earth parallel to you, then the celestial pole would describe a lemniscate, but it remains stationary. That is because the movement of the Earth’s axis in a double cone is balanced by the movement of the celestial pole in a lemniscate. Thus, it is balanced.

A teacher: I had changed my perspective to the one you described regarding the movement of the Earth’s axis. I said to myself, The point in the heavens that remains fixed must seem to move over the course of the centuries. It would be, I thought, a movement like a lemniscate, and, therefore, not simply a circle in the heavens during a Platonic year.

Dr. Steiner: It is modified because this line, the axis of the helix, is not really a straight line, but a curve. It only approximates a straight line. In reality, a circle is also described here. We are concerned with a helix that is connected with a circle.

A teacher: How is it possible to relate all this to the Galilean principle of relativity? That is, to the fact that we cannot determine any movement in space absolutely.

Dr. Steiner: What does that mean?

A teacher: That means that we cannot speak of any absolute movement in space. We cannot say that one body remains still in space, but instead must say that it moves. It is all only relative, so we can only know that one body changes its relationship to another.

Dr. Steiner: Actually, that is true only so long as we do not extend our observations into what occurs within the respective body. It’s true, isn’t it, that when you have two people moving relative to one another, and you observe things spatially from a perspective outside of the people (it is unimportant what occurs in an absolute sense), you will have only the relationships of the movement.

A teacher: It is certainly curious in connection with light that at the speed of light you cannot determine your movement relative to the source of light.

Dr. Steiner: One of Lorentz’s experiments. Read about it; what Lorentz concludes is interesting, but theoretical. You do not have to accept that there are only relative differences. You can use absolute mechanics. Probably you did not take all of those compulsive ideas into account. The difference is simply nothing else than what occurs if you take a tube with very thin and elastic walls. If you had fluid within it at the top and the bottom and also in between, then there would exist between these two fluids the same relationship that Lorentz derives for light. You need to have those compulsive interpretations if you want to accept these things.

You certainly know the prime example: You are moving in a train faster than the speed of sound and shoot a cannon as the train moves. You hear the shot once in Freiburg, twice in Karlsruhe, and three times in Frankfurt. If you then move faster than the speed of sound, you would first hear the three shots in Frankfurt, then afterward, the two in Karlsruhe, then after that, one shot in Freiburg. You can speculate about such things, but they have no reality because you cannot move faster than the speed of sound.

A teacher: Could we demonstrate what you said about astronomy through the spiral movements of plants? Is there some means of proving that through plants?

Dr. Steiner: What means would you need? Plants themselves are that means. You need only connect the pistil to the movements of the Moon and the stigma to those of the Sun. As soon as you relate the pistil to the Moon’s movements and the stigma to those of the Sun, you will get the rest. You will find in the spiral movements of the plant an imitation of the relative relationship between the movements of the Sun and the movements of the Moon. You can then continue. It is complicated and you will need to construct it. At first, the pistil appears not to move. It moves inwardly in the spiral. You must turn these around, since that is relative. The pistil belongs to the line of the stem, and the stigma to the spiral movement. However, because it is so difficult to describe further, I think it is something you could not use in school. This is a question of further development of understanding.

A teacher: Can we derive the spiral movements of the Sun and the Earth from astronomically known facts?

Dr. Steiner: Why not? Just as you can teach people today about the Copernican theory. The whole thing is based upon the joke made concerning the three Copernican laws, when they teach only the first two and leave out the third. If you bring into consideration the third, then you will come to what I have spoken of, namely, that you will have a simple spiral around the Sun. Copernicus did that. You need only look at his third law. You need only take his book, De Revolutionibus Corporum Coelestium (On the orbits of heavenly bodies) and actually look at the three laws instead of only the first two. People take only the first two, but they do not coincide with the movements we actually see. Then people add to it Bessel’s so-called corrective functions. People don’t see the stars as Copernicus described them. You need to turn the telescope, but people turn it according to Bessel’s functions. If you exclude those functions, you will get what is right.

Today, you can’t do that, though, because you would be called crazy. It is really child’s play to learn it and to call what is taught today nonsense. You need only to throw out Bessel’s functions and take Copernicus’s third law into account.

A teacher: Couldn’t that be published?

Dr. Steiner: Johannes Schlaf began that by taking a point on Jupiter that did not coincide with the course of the Copernican system. People attacked him and said he was crazy.

There is nothing anyone can do against such brute force. If we can achieve the goals of the Cultural Commission, then we will have some free room. Things are worse than people think when a professor in Tübingen can make “true character” out of “commodity character.” The public simply refuses to recognize that our entire school system is corrupt. That recognition is something that must become common, that we must do away with our universities and the higher schools must go. We now must replace them with something very different. That is a real foundation.

It is impossible to do anything with those people. I spoke in Dresden at the college. I also spoke at the Dresden Schopenhauer Society. Afterward, the professors there just talked nonsense. They could not understand one single idea. One stood up and said that he had to state what the differences were between Schopenhauer’s philosophy and anthroposophy. I said I found that unnecessary. Anthroposophy has the same relationship to philosophy as the crown of a tree to its roots, and the difference between the root and the crown of a tree is obvious. Someone can come along and say he finds it necessary to state that there is a difference between the root and the crown, and I have nothing to say other than that. These people can’t keep any thoughts straight. Modern philosophy is all nonsense. In much of what it brings, there is some truth, but there is so much nonsense connected with it that, in the end, only nonsense results. You know of Richert’s “Theory of Value,” don’t you? The small amount that exists as the good core of philosophy at a university, you can find discussed in my book Riddles of Philosophy.

The thing with the “true character” reminds me of something else. I have found people in the Society who don’t know what a union is. As I have often said, such things occur. If we can work objectively in the Cultural Commission, then we could replace all of these terrible goings on with reason, and everything would be better. Then we could also teach astronomy reasonably. But now we are unable to do anything against that brute force. In the Cultural Commission, we can do what should have been done from the beginning, namely, undertake the cultural program and work toward bringing the whole school system under control. We created the Waldorf School as an example, but it can do nothing to counteract brute force. The Cultural Commission would have the task of reforming the entire system of education. If we only had ten million marks, we could extend the Waldorf School. That these ten million marks are missing is only a “small hindrance.”

It is very important to me that you do not allow the children’s behavior and such to upset you. You should not imagine that you will have angels in the school. You will be unable to do many things because you lack the school supplies you need. In spite of that, we want to strictly adhere to what we have set out to do and not allow ourselves to be deterred from doing it as well as possible in order to achieve our goals.

It is, therefore, very important that in practice you separate what is possible to do under the current circumstances from what will give you the strength to prevail. We must hold to our belief that we can achieve our ideals. You can do it, only it will not be immediately visible.

The subject I addressed last Monday here in Utrecht was the question of how anthroposophically oriented spiritual science can provide a method, a scientific path for penetrating the spiritual, supersensible world.

I have pointed out how it is only possible to penetrate into this environment if man brings forth from this soul certain abilities and powers that indeed lie dormant in every soul, and if he lifts up what is ordinary knowledge to the level of vision; to a vision that, for example, comes to develop full awareness of what it means to have a soul-spiritual life independent of all corporeality. We know precisely through modern science - and with regard to the everyday life of the soul, this science is absolutely right - that this ordinary life of the soul is bound to the instrument of the body. And only spiritual scientific methods can tear the spiritual-soul life away from the body, can thereby penetrate to the being in the human being that dwells in the spiritual world before it has united with a physical body through conception or birth, that passes through the gate of death, discards the human body and again consciously enters a spiritual world.

And I continued last Monday by saying that anyone who makes such an acquaintance with man's own supersensible being is also able to perceive, behind nature's sensuality and behind everything that can be explored with the ordinary mind, a supersensible environment, an environment of spiritual beings.

What is recognized in this way as the spiritual and soul life in man, what is recognized as the spiritual essence of the world in which we live, is what actually enables us to gain a true knowledge of the human being.

Over the last three to four centuries, we have acquired a complete natural science, but we have not been able to draw any knowledge about human beings from this natural science. In developmental theory, we start from the lowest living creatures. We ascend to the human being; we regard him, so to speak, as the end link in the animal series. We learn what humans have in common with other organisms, but we do not learn what humans actually are in the world as a separate being. We can only learn this through anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. And what asserts itself in this way in knowledge ultimately also asserts itself in the feelings and impulses that modern humanity has developed in social life.

Just think how many people who, through modern technology, have developed as a new class of people, through the whole modern economy - actually under the influence of certain socialist theories - believe that what lives in people as morality, as science, as religion, as art, is not drawn from an original spiritual source, but that it is only drawn from what economic, material processes are. The theory professed by modern social democracy, the theory that has sought to become reality in such a destructive way in Eastern Europe, this theory basically sees the forces that rule history as being outside of the human. And what man brings forth in art, custom, law, religion, that appears only as a kind of smoke. People call it a superstructure that rises up on the substructure. It is like a smoke that comes out of the purely economic-material. There, too, in this placing of the human being in the practical world, the actual human being is extinguished. If we are to characterize what modern education and the modern social consciousness have brought about, we cannot say otherwise than: the human being has been extinguished.

What spiritual science, as it is meant here, is to bring to humanity again is the knowledge of the human being, the appreciation of the human being, the connection of the human being as a supersensible being to the supersensible, universal being of the world.

And only with this do we stand in true reality. Only with this do we stand on ground that leads into a truly practical life. This is what I would like to substantiate today, first in the question of education and teaching. And here, in the way it has emerged from the School of Spiritual Science in Dornach, this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science has from the very beginning been conceived not as something unworldly and far removed from the world, but as something thoroughly realistic and practical. And one of the first practical foundations was in the field of education with the Free Waldorf School, which Emil Molt founded in Stuttgart and which I myself have the educational and didactic responsibility for. In this Free Waldorf School, the impulses of a true knowledge of the human being that can flow from anthroposophically oriented spiritual science are developed pedagogically and didactically.

For a long time people have been talking about the fact that education and teaching should not graft this or that into the child's soul, but rather develop what is in the human being out of the human soul. But when it is expressed in this way, it is, of course, initially only an abstract principle. The point, however, is not to have this principle intellectually, to extract something from the human soul, but to be able to truly observe the developing human soul in the child. And for that, one must first develop a sense for it. This sense is only developed by someone who is aware of how the actual individuality of the human being, the actual spiritual-soul entity from a spiritual world in which it has lived for a long time, descends; how from day to day, from week to week, from year to year, in all that develops physically and psychically in the child, a supersensible element lives; how we, as educators, as teachers, have been entrusted with something from a supersensible world that we have to unravel. When we see from day to day how the child's physiognomic traits become clearer and clearer, when we can decipher how a spiritual-soul element, sent down to us from the spiritual world, gradually unravels and reveals itself in these physiognomic traits , it is important to develop, above all, a sense of reverence for the supersensible human being descending from the spiritual worlds as the basis of a pedagogical-didactic art.

Anthroposophically oriented spiritual science makes it possible to observe the child's development from year to year. First of all, I would like to show the main stages of human development.

It is often said that nature or the world does not make any leaps. Such things are constantly repeated without actually looking at what they are supposed to mean. Does not nature constantly make leaps when it develops the green leaf and then, as if with a leap, the sepal and the colored petal and then again the stamens and so on? And so it is with human life. For the person who, unbiased by all the stimuli and impulses that anthroposophically oriented spiritual science can give him, observes this developing human life in the child, he finds, above all, not out of mystical grounds, but out of faithful observation, a leap in development around the seventh year, when the child begins to get the second teeth. Here we see how our knowledge of the soul, as it is currently used in science, has basically become somewhat exaggerated. Unless one has become completely materialistic, one differentiates between body and soul. But one speaks of the relationship between body and soul in an extraordinarily abstract way. One does not get used to observing in this field with the same kind of faithful and unprejudiced observation as one has learned in natural science. In natural science, for example, one learns that when heat appears through some process, and one has not added it, this heat was in some other form in the body. In physics one says “latent”. One says that the latent heat has been released. This attitude, which is provided by natural science, must also be adopted for the science of man, which, however, must then be spiritualized in relation to natural science. Thus, one must observe carefully: What then changes in the human being when he passes the age of changing teeth?

Now, if we really have the necessary impartiality for observation, we can see how the child, when it passes the age of seven, actually only begins to have outlined, contoured ideas, whereas before that it had no such ideas. We can see how it is only with this period that the possibility of thinking in actual thoughts, however childlike they may be, begins. We see how something emerges from the child's soul that was previously hidden in the human organism. Anyone who has acquired a spiritual eye for this matter can see how the child's soul life changes completely when the second dentition begins; how something emerges from the deepest, most hidden part of the soul and comes to the surface. Where did it come from, this thinking that now appears as a definite life of ideas? It was there as a principle of growth in the human being; permeating the organism; living as a spiritual-soul element in the growth that then comes to an end when the teeth are pushed out from within and replace the earlier teeth. When an end is put to this growth, which finds its conclusion in the change of teeth, then, so to speak, only one growth remains, for which less intensive forces are necessary. We see, then, how that which later becomes thinking in the child was once an inward organic growth force, and how this organic growth force is metamorphically transformed and comes to light as soul power.

By adopting this approach, we arrive at a science of the soul that is not clichéd, which, when it comes down to it, is simply transposed into the spiritual and is based on the same methods as those on which natural science is also based. Just as natural science is a faithful observation of a physical nature, so in order to understand the human being, a faithful observation is necessary, but now of the soul and spirit. If one learns to see through the human being in this way, then this way of looking at the human being is transformed into an artistic way of looking. It is indeed the case that today people often say, when someone expresses something like I just did: Yes, one should just look at something scientifically, in terms of knowledge; one should stick to sober logic; one should work through the intellect to arrive at abstractly formulated natural laws. This may be a comfortable human demand. It may appear to man that he would like to grasp everything in the wide-meshed logic of concepts in order to get to the bottom of things. But what if nature does not proceed in this way? What if nature works artistically? Then it is necessary that we follow her on her artistic path with our capacity for knowledge. Anyone who looks into nature and the world in general will perceive that what we bring about in natural laws through sober logic bears the same relation to the whole, full, intense reality as a drawing made with charcoal strokes does to a painting done in full color.

Anthroposophically oriented spiritual science draws from the full physical and spiritual reality. Therefore, it transforms mere logical recognition into artistic comprehension. But this also enables one to turn the teacher, the instructor, the educator into a pedagogical-didactic artist who acquires a fine sense for every single expression of the child's life. And indeed it is the case that every child has their own particular, individual way of expressing themselves. These cannot be registered in an abstract pedagogical science, but they can be grasped if one receives anthroposophically oriented impulses from the fullness of humanity and thereby gains an intuitive view of the spiritual and soul life in the human being, which then has an effect on the physical and bodily life. For what works roughly as the power of thought before the change of teeth in the growth of the child, we see more finely as a spiritual-soul activity in the child. As teachers and educators, we must pursue this from day to day with an artistic sense, then we will be able to be for the child what a real educator, a real teacher should be for the child.

I would like to give a brief description of how the first period of life, from birth to the change of teeth, and the second period of life, from the change of teeth to sexual maturity, now emerges.

In the first period, from the first to the seventh year of life, the human being is primarily an imitative being. But we must understand this in the fullest sense of the word. The human being enters the world and gives himself completely to his surroundings. In particular, he develops what he initially brings to light as his impulses of will and instinct in such a way that he imitates what is around him. Language, too, is initially learned in such a way that it is based on imitation. Between birth and the age of seven, the child is entirely an imitator. This must be taken into account. In such matters, one must be able to draw the right conclusions. If you associate with the world in these matters, people sometimes come to you for advice on one matter or another. For example, a father once told me that he had a complaint about his five-year-old child. “What did the five-year-old child do?” I asked. “He stole,” said the father sadly. “But then you have to first understand what theft actually is.” He told me that the child had not stolen out of ill will. He had taken money from his mother's drawer and bought sweets, but then distributed them to other children on the street. So it was not blind selfishness. What was it then? Well, the child had seen his mother take the money out of the drawer day after day. At the age of five, the child is an imitator. It did not steal, it simply imitated the things that its mother does day after day, because the child instinctively regards what its mother always does as the right thing to do. - This is just one example of all the subtle things one needs to know if one is to understand the art of education in a way that truly corresponds to the human being.

But we also know that children play at imitating. Basically, the play instinct is not something original, but an imitation of what is seen in the environment. If we look with unbiased eyes, we can see that imitation is at the root of play. But every child plays differently. The teacher of a small child before the age of seven must acquire a careful judgment about this, and one necessarily has to have an artistic sense to make such a judgment, because it is different for each child. Basically, each child plays in its own way. And the way a child plays, especially in the fourth, fifth, or sixth year, goes down into the depths of the soul as a force. The child grows older, and at first we do not notice how one or other of the special ways of playing comes to light in the child's later character traits. The child will develop other powers, other soul abilities; what was the special essence of his play slips into the hidden part of the soul. But it comes to light again later, and in a peculiar way, between the ages of twenty-five and thirty, in the period of life when the human being has to find his way into the outer world, into the world of outer experience, of outer destinies. Some people adapt to this world skillfully, others awkwardly. Some people come to terms with the world in such a way that they derive a certain satisfaction from their own actions in relation to the world; others cannot intervene with their actions here or there, and they have a difficult fate.

You have to get to know the life of the whole person, you have to see how, in a mysterious way, the sense of play comes out again in this sense of life in the twenties. Then you will gain an artistically oriented idea of how to direct and guide the play instinct, so that you can give something to the person for a later period of life.

Today's pedagogy often suffers from abstract principles. By contrast, anthroposophically oriented spiritual science aims to give pedagogy an artistic-didactic sense, to work in the earliest youth in such a way that what is formed there is a dowry for the whole life of the human being. For anyone who wants to teach and educate children must get to know the whole of human life. The magnificent scientific development of the last few centuries has not taken this kind of knowledge of human nature into account. Consider the social significance of really being able to give children the kind of education I have described.

When the child has now changed its teeth, or at least has got them, the second epoch of the child's life begins. Then the actual school age sets in, that which one has to study particularly carefully if one wants to pursue pedagogy from the point of view of true human knowledge. While the child up to the age of seven is essentially an imitator, from the age of seven until sexual maturity, that is, from about the age of thirteen to sixteen, there develops (and this varies from individual to individual) what the unbiased observer recognizes as a natural urge to submit to an authority, a human authority, a teacher or educator. Today, it is a sad day when one hears from all sorts of political parties that some kind of democratic spirit should enter the school; that children should, to a certain extent, already practice a kind of self-government. With such things, which arise from all kinds of partisan views, one rebels against what human nature itself demands. Those who truly understand human nature know what it means for one's entire later life if, between the ages of seven and fifteen, one has been able to look up with devoted veneration to one or more human authorities; if one has called true that what these human authorities said was true; if one felt that what these human authorities felt was beautiful; if one found that what such revered personalities presented as good was also good. - Just as one imitates until the age of seven, so one wants to believe in what comes from authority until sexual maturity. This is the time when one must be open to the imponderable influences that can come from a soul, from a personality.

We founded the Free Waldorf School in Stuttgart. Many people say they would like to attend the Waldorf School to get to know something of the method and so on of this Waldorf School. Imagine a copperplate engraving of the Sistine Madonna, and someone cuts a piece out of it to get an idea of the Sistine Madonna. That would be the same as perhaps looking at what happens in the Waldorf School for a fortnight or three weeks. You wouldn't even see anything special. Because what happens in the Waldorf School is a result of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. Those who are teachers there have acquired their artistic pedagogy and didactics from the impulses of anthroposophical spiritual science. If you want to get to know the Waldorf school, you have to get to know anthroposophically oriented spiritual science above all. But not in the way one gets to know it from the outside, where people are led to believe that it is some kind of complicated, nebulous mysticism, some kind of sectarianism; no, one has to get to know this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science from the inside, how it draws from the full humanity what the human being really is as a sensual and supersensible being within the world and within time.

These things do, however, lead one to perceive the supersensible nature of the working of such an authoritative personality. Let me give an example. One could imagine a picture – and it is best to speak in pictures to children from seven to fourteen years of age, especially up to the age of ten. Let us take any picture by which we want to teach the child an idea, a feeling, about the immortality of the soul. One can think up this picture. But one can also point out to the child the butterfly pupa, how the butterfly crawls out of the pupa. And one says to the child: the human body is like the pupa. The butterfly flies out of the chrysalis. When a human being dies, the immortal soul leaves the body as the butterfly leaves the chrysalis. It passes over into the spiritual world. There is much to be gained from such a picture. But a real intuitive perception of the immortality of the soul can only be conveyed to a child under very definite conditions. If, for example, a teacher thinks, “I am clever, the child is stupid, it must first become clever” – and the teacher thinks something like this in order to make the child understand something – then the teacher may perhaps achieve something, but what really brings the child to a sense of immortality will certainly not be achieved. For only that which one oneself believes, in which one oneself is completely immersed, has an effect on the child. Anthroposophically oriented spiritual science gives you the opportunity to say: I myself believe in this image; for me, this crawling out of the butterfly from the chrysalis is absolutely the one that I did not think up, but what nature itself presents at a lower level for the same fact that, at a higher level, is the emergence of the immortal soul from the body. If I myself believe in the picture, if I stand within the content of the picture, then my faith has the effect of awakening faith, imagination and feeling in the child. These things are absolutely imponderable.

What happens on the outside is not even as important as what takes place between the feelings of the teacher and those of the pupil. It matters whether I go into the school with noble thoughts or ignoble ones, and whether I believe that simply what I say is what has an effect. I will give what I say a nuance that does not affect the soul if I do not enter the classroom with noble thoughts and, above all, with thoughts that are true to what I am saying. - That, first of all, about the relationship between the pupil and the teacher in the second epoch of life from the seventh to the fifteenth year. There would be much more to say about this, but I will only highlight a few specific points so that you can get to know the whole spirit that inspires the pedagogy and didactics that flow from anthroposophically oriented spiritual science.

Then we started at the Waldorf school with really bringing out what the child should learn. We are faced with very significant questions, especially when we take the child into primary school. We have to teach the child to read and write; but when it comes to what lives in the human being, writing, the printed word, has long since become something quite abstract within human civilization, something that has taken on the nature of a sign and is no longer intimately connected with the full, original, elementary soul life of the human being. The external history of civilization does provide some information about such things, although only to a limited extent. If we go back to the various cultures, we find pictographic writing, where, however, what was fixed externally was pictorially recorded, which is what was actually meant. In older cultures, writing had not been developed to the point of the mere sign being as abstract as it is today. In fact, when we teach reading and writing in the usual way, we introduce something to the child that is not initially related to his nature. Therefore, a pedagogy and didactics that is truly based on a full knowledge of the human being will not teach reading and writing as it is usually done. Instead, we start from the child's artistic nature in our method. We do not begin with reading at all, not even with writing in the usual sense of the word, but with a kind of painting-drawing, drawing-painting. We lead the child to learn to form letters not only from the head, but from the whole human being, bringing lines and forms, even in colored drawing, onto paper or some other surface; lines and forms that naturally emerge from the human organism. Then we gradually introduce what has been taken from the artistic into the letter forms, first through writing, and from writing we only then move on to reading. That is our ideal. It may be difficult to implement in the early days, but it is an ideal of a true didactics that follows from a full knowledge of the human being. And as in this case, the essence of human nature is the basis for all education and teaching.

We start, for example, from the child's musical and rhythmic abilities because these flow from human nature and because we know that a child who is properly stimulated in a musical way around the age of seven experiences a particular strengthening and hardening of the will through this musical instruction.

Now, we try to teach the child in pictorial form what is to be taught to the child, so that the child is not introduced too early into an intellectualized life. We also note that there is an important turning point between the ninth and tenth to eleventh year of the child's life. Anyone who can observe childhood in the right way knows that between the ages of nine and eleven, there is a point in a child's development that, depending on how it is recognized by the educator and teacher, can influence the fate, the inner and often also the outer destiny of the person in a favorable or unfavorable sense. Up to this point, the child does not isolate itself much from its surroundings, and it must be borne in mind that a plant described by a child before the age of nine must be described differently than afterwards. Before this time, the child identifies itself with everything around it; then it learns to distinguish; only then does the concept of the self actually arise – before that, it only had a sense of self. We must observe how the child behaves, how it begins to formulate certain questions differently from this point on. We must respond to this important point in time for each individual child, because it is crucial for the whole of the following life.

We must also be aware, for example, that subjects such as physics and the like, which are completely separate from the human being and only attain a certain perfection by excluding everything subjective from the formulation of their laws, may only be introduced to the child from the age of eleven or twelve. On the other hand, we teach our children the usual foreign languages in a practical way right from the beginning of primary school. We see how, by not teaching a foreign language by translation but by letting the child absorb the spirit of the other language, the child's entire soul structure is indeed broadened. This is how an artistic didactics and pedagogy is formed out of this spirit. I could go on talking here for another eight days about the design of such a pedagogy and didactics as art. But you can see how what comes from anthroposophically oriented spiritual science flows directly into the practical side of education.

And how does this apply to the individual teacher? It applies in such a way that he actually gets something different from this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science than can be obtained from the rest of today's scientific education. And here we touch on one of the most significant social issues of the present day.

The social question is said to be the fundamental question of our time, but it is usually understood only as an external economic question, not really grasped in its depth. This depth only comes to mind when one becomes aware of how, in the broad masses of today's proletariat, one word can be heard again and again. That word is ideology. What does the modern proletarian mean when he speaks of ideology, according to his Marxist instruction? He means: When we develop any ideas about custom, law, art, religion, it is not something real in itself, it is only an abstraction, it is only an unreal idea. Everything we have in this way is not reality, it is an ideology. Reality is only the external, material production processes.

From this fact one can sense the radical change that has taken place in human development in terms of world view and state of mind. Consider the basic tenet of ancient Oriental wisdom. Last time I spoke here, I said that we should not long for the past, but there are many things we can take from it for our own orientation. The ancient Oriental spoke of Maja. What did Maja mean in the ancient Orient? It meant everything that man can recognize in the external sense world. For reality was that which lived within him, which sprouted within as custom, religion, art, science. That was reality. What the eyes saw, what the ears heard, what one otherwise perceived, that was Maja. Today, in the Orient, only a decadent form of that which, from a certain point of view, can be characterized as I have just done, is present. Our broad masses of people have come to the opposite through Marxist guidance. One could say that the development of humanity has taken a complete turn. The external, the sensual, is the only reality, and that which is formed within, custom, religion, science, art, is Maya. Only one does not say Maya, but one says ideology. But if one were to translate Maja in a general sense, then one would have to translate it with ideology, and if one wanted to translate into the language of the old world view of the Orient what the modern proletarian means by ideology, then one would have to translate it with Maja, only that the application is the opposite.

I mention this because I want to show what an enormous turn human development has taken, how we in the West have in fact developed the final consequences of a world view that runs directly counter to what is still contained in the Orient in a decadent way. Those who are able to observe the conflicts of humanity from such depths know what potential for conflict exists between East and West today. Things appear differently in the various historical epochs; but however materialistic the striving of today's East may be, in a certain way it is the striving that was also present in ancient Buddhism and the like, which has now become decadent. And our Western culture has undergone a complete turnaround in relation to this. We have now arrived at a point where broad masses of people do not speak of the fact that spiritual reality fills them within, but that everything that fills them within is only Maya, ideology.

This is what anthroposophically oriented spiritual science gives back to humanity: not just thoughts that can be seen as ideology, not just unrealities; but man is again filled with what he was filled with at that time, with the consciousness: Spirit lives in my thoughts. The spirit enters into me; not a dead, ideological spirit, but a living spirit lives in me. To lead people back to the direct experience of the living spirit is what anthroposophically oriented spiritual science wants to give. This is then what is incorporated into anthroposophical pedagogy and didactics. This is what should live in the teacher's dealings with the pupil.

But it is also that which is directly involved in dealing with the social question. Those people who talk about ideology today have gone through our schools. But we need a humanity that actually develops social impulses from the very depths of its being. This humanity must emerge from other schools. What has emerged from the schools we so admire has led to the social chaos we see today. We need a humanity that has been educated in such a way that the education corresponds to a real, comprehensive knowledge of the human being. This is what makes the question of education a universal social question. Either we will have to decide to see the question of education in this sense as a social question, or we will be blind to the great social demands of the present.

But we must sense what is necessary for the teacher, for the educator, in order to practise such an education, in order to allow knowledge of the human being to be transformed into a pedagogical-didactic art. We must sense that this is only possible if the teacher, the educator, does not need to follow any other norm than the norm that is within his or her own inner being. The teacher and educator must be answerable to the spirit that he experiences. This is only possible within the threefold social organism, in a free spiritual life. As long as the spiritual life is dependent on the economic life on the one hand and on the state life on the other, the teacher is in the thrall of the state or of economic life. You will find, when you study the connections, what this thrall consists of.

In truth, one can only establish a surrogate for a free school today. It was possible in Württemberg to establish the Waldorf School as a free school in which only the demands of the pedagogical art prevail, before socialism created the new school law.

If freedom is to prevail, then every teacher must be directly involved in the administration; then the most important part of spiritual life - like all spiritual life, in fact - must have its free self-government. One cannot imagine a spiritual life in which such free schools are common other than in such a way that from the teacher of the lowest elementary school class to the highest teacher, everything falls into corporations that are not subordinate to any state or economic authorities and that do not receive instructions from any side. What happens in the administration must be such that every teacher and instructor needs only so much time to teach or instruct that he still has so much time left to help administer. Not those who have retired or who have left the field of teaching and education, but those who are currently teaching and educating should also be the administrators. Hence the authority of the capable arises as a matter of course. Just try self-administration and you will find that because you need someone who can really achieve something, their authority will naturally assert itself. If the spiritual life administers itself, it will not be necessary to use this authority or the like. Just let this free spiritual life develop and you will see that because people need the capable, they will also find them.

I have only been able to sketch out the issues here, but you will have seen how a truly artistic approach to education requires a free spiritual life. We can see how it is necessary to first separate the free spiritual life from the entire social organism.

Just as Karl Marx or Proudhon or other bourgeois economists base what they want to base, so one does not base things of life experience, things of life practice. What is said in my book “The Key Points of the Social Question” or in other writings on the threefold social organism is based on decades of all-round observation of life, and is spoken and written from practice. Therefore, one cannot grasp it with lightly-draped concepts. I know exactly where one can easily start a logical critique. But what has just been taken from reality is as multifaceted as reality itself. And just as little as reality can be captured in lightly-draped logical concepts, so little can something that is supposed to fit reality be captured in such concepts. But anyone who has ever inwardly felt what it means to be in school, in class, in education, as it is necessary to do so through a true understanding of the developing human being, the child, has, in their feeling, in the whole experience, full proof that the spiritual life must be given its free administration. And all the objections do not apply, so that one simply raises them, but only so that one must eliminate them through reality.

Then people come and say: If spiritual life is to be based on free recognition, people will not send their children to school, so you cannot establish a free spiritual life. — That is not what someone who thinks realistically says. Above all, he feels the full necessity of liberating spiritual life. He says: spiritual life must be freed; it may perhaps have the disadvantage that some people do not want to send their children to school; then one must think of means to prevent this from happening. One must not treat this as an objection, but one must raise such a thing and then think about how it can be remedied. In many things that concern the full reality of life, we will have to learn to think like this.

They sense that a complete turnaround must occur, especially with regard to intellectual life – and public intellectual life is, after all, essentially provided in its most important parts through teaching and education. Those who are accustomed to working in today's intellectual life will not go along with these things. I know that certain teachers at secondary schools, when they were approached with the suggestion of moving towards self-management, said: I would rather be under the minister than manage with colleagues; it's not possible. I am less likely to be with my colleagues from the faculty than with the minister, who is outside.

Perhaps one will not exactly get the necessary impetus in this direction. But just as, with regard to the big questions of life today, it is not the producer but the consumer who is becoming more and more decisive, so one would like the consumers of the educational system to reflect on what is necessary in the teaching and educational system as the most important public part of intellectual life. These are, above all, people who have children. We have seen the impression that parents have gained from the end of the school year, from everything else that children have experienced during the school year at the Waldorf School. We have seen how, when these children come home, their parents have realized that a new social spirit is actually emerging that is of tremendous importance for the next generation — provided, of course, that the Waldorf School does not remain a small school in a corner of Stuttgart, but that this spirit, which prevails there, already becomes the spirit of the widest circles.

But it is not only parents who are interested in what goes on in schools and educational institutions. Basically, every person who is serious about human development has an interest in it. Every human being must care about the next generation. Those who think this way and who have a sense of how we need a spiritual renewal today, as I explained in the last lecture here in Utrecht, should become interested in this new education that can be achieved through the school system from the lowest to the highest levels.

At the School of Spiritual Science in Dornach, we are trying to establish an educational institution in the highest sense of the word, based on this spirit. We still have a hard time of it today. We can give people renewal and inspiration in the individual specialized sciences; we can give them something like our autumn courses were, like our Easter courses will be. We can show them how, for example, medicine, but also all the other sciences of practical life, can receive through anthroposophically oriented spiritual science what is necessary for the present and especially for the near future.

But for the time being we can give nothing but spirit, and that is not yet highly valued today. Today, people still value the testimonies that we cannot yet give. We must fight for what is recognized as a necessity for the development of humanity and for the near future to become official. This can only come about if a mood develops in the widest international circles for what I would call a kind of world school association. Such a world school association need not limit itself to founding lower or higher schools, but should include all impulses that lead to something like what has been attempted in Dornach in a certain special way. Such a world school association would have to embrace all those people who have an interest in the forces of ascent entering into the developmental forces of humanity in the face of the terrible forces of descent that we have in humanity today. For such a world school association would not become a kind of federation from the impulses that are already there; it would not try to shape the world according to the old diplomatic or other methods. Such a union, such a world school association would try to form a world union of humanity out of the deepest human forces, out of the most spiritual human impulses. Such a union would therefore mean something that could really give a renewal of that life, which has shown its fragility so much in the terrible years of the second decade of the 20th century.

The people who are educated there will have the social impulses, and they will be the ones who can develop the right strength in the other areas of social life, in the area of an independent legal or state or political life and in the area of an independent economic life. Just as a free spiritual life can only be built on objectivity and expertise, and not on what comes to the fore through the majority, economic life can only be beneficial for humanity if it is separated from all majority rule, from all those areas in which people judge simply from their humanity, not from their knowledge of the subject or field. In economic life we need associations where people who belong to the sphere of consumption, people who belong to the sphere of production, and people who belong to the sphere of trade, join together. I have shown in my writings that these associations, by their very nature, will have a certain size. Such associations can truly provide that in economic life which I would call a collective judgment, just as it is true [on the other hand] that in spiritual life everything must come from the human personality. For through birth we bring with us our gifts from the spiritual world. Every time a human being is born, a message comes down from the spiritual world into the physical world. We have to take it in, we have to look at the human individuality; the teacher at the human individuality in the child, the whole social institution at the free spiritual life, in which the teacher is so situated that he can fully live out his individuality.

What can turn out to be a blessing for humanity in this free spiritual life would turn out to be a disaster in economic life. Therefore, we should not have any illusions. As much as we have to strive for a comprehensive and harmonious judgment through our individuality in spiritual life, we can do so much less in economic life. There we are only able to form a judgment together with the other people, to form a judgment in associations. One knows, by having worked, in a certain area, but what one knows there is one-sided under all circumstances. A judgment comes about only by not merely dealing theoretically with the others, but by having to supply a certain commodity to the other, to satisfy certain needs for the other, to conclude contracts. When the real interests face each other in contracts, then the real, expert judgments will form.

And what is basically the main thing in economic life is also formed from what works within the associations: the right price level. You can read all this in more detail in my books “The Key Points of the Social Question” and “In the Execution of the Threefold Order”, as well as in the journals. There is even a Dutch magazine about threefolding. There you can read about how a collective judgment must be sought in economic life. Since we have had a world economy instead of the old national economies in economic life, it has become necessary for the organization of economic life to be based on free economic points of view, for economic life to be lived out in associations that deal only with economic matters, but in such a way that majorities are not decisive anywhere, but rather expertise and professional competence are decisive everywhere. The result will be a division of labor. Those who have the necessary experience or other reasons will be in the right place. This will happen naturally in the associations, because we are not dealing with abstract definitions but with the activity of a contract. For example, if an article is being overproduced in a particular area, it must be ensured that people are employed in other ways; because where this is the case, the article becomes too cheap, and the one that is underproduced becomes too expensive. The price can only be set when a sufficient number of people are employed by associations in a particular area. If such a thing is to become real, it requires an intense interest in the entire economic life of humanity. It is a matter of developing, not merely as an empty phrase, what is called human brotherhood, but of bringing about this human fraternization in associations in the economic sphere.

Today I can only sketch out the main lines. The literature on threefolding already discusses the details. But what I want to suggest is only how spiritual science oriented to anthroposophy can practically take hold of life here as well.

And so, in the social organism, we have on the one hand the free spiritual life based on the human individuality; on the other, economic life based on associations that come together to form the global economy as a whole – without taking into account the political state borders, which today contradict economic interests. This may still be uncomfortable for some people to think, but it is what can bring about change from the chaotic conditions.

Between the two, the free spiritual life and the associative economic life, stands the actual political life, the actual state life, where majority decisions have their justification; where everything, including human work, comes up for negotiation, for which every mature person is competent. In the free life of the spirit, not every mature person is competent; here, majority decisions could only spoil everything, as they can in economic life. But there are, for example, the nature and measure of work, of human work; there are areas where every human being, when mature, is competent, where one person stands before another as an equal. This is the actual state-judicial, political area in the threefold social organism. This is what spiritual life is already pointing to most clearly today, but it can also be pursued in the other areas of social existence in accordance with the demands and necessities.

Threefold social organism: a free spiritual life, based on the full and free expression of the individual human personality; a legal or state life that is truly democratic, where people face each other as equals and where majorities decide, because only in this link of the social organism does it come to a decision on which every adult person is competent; an economic life that is built on associations, which in turn decides on the basis of factual and technical knowledge, where the contract applies, not the law.

There are people who say that this would destroy the unity of the social organism. For example, someone objected to me that the social organism is a unified whole and must remain so, otherwise everything would be torn apart. At that time I could only answer the objection: A rural family is also a unit. But if one claims that the state must also manage the economy and administer the schools, then one could also claim that a rural household, which is also a unit with master and mistress and maid and cow, because the whole is a unit, everyone should give milk, not just the cow. The unity would arise precisely from the fact that each one does the right thing in its place. The unity arises precisely from the fact that the three links arise. One should just not rush into a matter that is based on correct observation of those things that are pressing for transformation in contemporary social life, based on a partial or incomplete understanding.

Liberty, equality, fraternity – these are the three great ideals that resound from the 18th century. What human heart would not have felt deeply about the three ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity. Nevertheless, there were always clever people in the course of the 19th century who constructed a contradiction between freedom and equality: How could one be free if, after all, all people had to develop their abilities to the same extent and how that was also not true of fraternity? — Much clever and concise things have been said in favor of the contradictory nature of these three ideals. Nevertheless, we feel them and feel their justification. What is actually at issue here? Well, people have formed the three ideals of freedom, equality and fraternity out of the intense depths of the soul, and these are truly as justified as anything historical and human can be justified. But for the time being people remained under the suggestion of the unitary state. In the unified state, however, these three ideals contradict each other. Nevertheless, they must be realized. Their realization will lead to the tripartite social organism. If one realizes that this is something that can be started tomorrow, that it is thought out and formed out of practice, that it does not remotely have a utopian character like most social ideas, that it is thoroughly practical, if one realizes how the unity state today, out of itself, creates the necessity to divide itself into three parts: then one will also understand the historical and human significance of the three great ideals that have been resonating in humanity since the 18th century. Then we will say to ourselves: the threefold social organism is what first consolidates these three ideals, it is what gives these three ideals the possibility of life. In conclusion, let me express, as a summary of what I wanted to say today about the practical development of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, how it must come about in humanity: the threefold social organism, Spiritual life administered for itself, economic life administered for itself, and in the middle the state-legal-political life administered for itself. Then, in a genuine, true sense, humanity will be able to realize itself: freedom in spiritual life, equality in democratic state life, brotherhood in associatively shaped economic life.

Answering questions

Question: How can we differentiate in the spiritual-scientific field between human and animal blood? The I expresses itself in human blood, but not in animal blood?

Rudolf Steiner: Yes, the materialistic way of thinking, which had been in preparation since the middle of the 15th century, but which became particularly strong in the 19th century and developed into the 20th, has gradually caused the sense of it to die away, that the external expression [of a thing] is not decisive for the inner structure and for the whole context [in which it stands]. I have to refer to some of this, which of course I cannot explain in detail today. You can find it in the spiritual scientific literature, but I have to say a few words about the question.

We have to distinguish between the physical body, which can be seen with the eyes and which is also considered in ordinary science through anatomy and physiology, for example. We then distinguish the etheric or life body, which we become aware of when we observe something like the release of thinking during the change of teeth; this is how we get to know the life of the etheric body. We must not confuse this with the old, hypothetical life force; it has nothing to do with it. This is the result of direct observation. Then we learn to recognize what part of the soul governs this etheric body, what one can call the soul organism, and the actual I.

These four members, however, express themselves in turn in the physical. For example, the etheric body has a particular effect on the glandular system, the I has a particular effect on the blood system in humans. Now one can raise such a question as the one asked here, but one must first acquire something that I would like to make clear through the following comparison. Imagine someone were to say: a knife is just a knife, it is used to cut meat. You cannot say that. Nor can you say: man has red warm blood, animals have red warm blood – the expression for the I. Suppose someone finds a razor and uses it to cut meat because it is a knife. It is not a matter of how something is outwardly and materially formed, but how it fits into a whole context. For an animal, the red warm blood is the expression of the soul organism; for a human being, the same red blood is the expression of the I, just as the razor is a knife for shaving and the knife on the table is a knife for cutting meat. One should not ask: What is blood as blood? It can be an expression for this in one context and for something else in another context.

Question: Is it also possible in other countries to establish schools like the Waldorf School?

Rudolf Steiner: Whether such schools can be founded in other countries depends on the laws of the country concerned. I have already expressed myself appropriately with regard to the Waldorf School. I said: Before the new democratic, republican school constitution came into being, it was possible to found the Waldorf School. Recent developments have been such that we are gradually forfeiting one freedom after another. And if we in Central Europe were to arrive at Leninism, then the Central Europeans would also get to know what the grave of human freedom means. But it depends everywhere on the laws in question whether you can found schools like the Waldorf School. So it depends entirely on the individual state laws. You can try to go as far as possible. Recently, for example, I was asked to appoint teachers for a kind of initial school in another place, and I said that we would of course have to do a trial first. I initially appointed two very capable teachers for the first class, but they had not taken an exam, so that people could see whether they could implement such teachers. It is certainly not out of the question in a Waldorf school to employ teachers who have not taken the exam. For example, when I was recently asked by a teacher whether it would be possible to employ her even though she had not yet passed her exams, but was on the exam list, I said: That doesn't matter; you will also have the exam one day.

Now, the point is to work towards a real liberation of the spirit and of school life on a large scale. For this, something like a world school association is needed. It must become possible that the question of whether schools like the Waldorf School can be established in different countries will no longer arise, but that this possibility will be created everywhere through the power of conviction of a sufficiently large number of people. We also experienced the same in other areas, as is also beginning today in the area of education. Many people do not agree with conventional medicine, so they turn to those who want to go beyond conventional medicine – not in a quackish way, but in a thoroughly appropriate way. I even met a minister of a Central European state who trumpeted the monopoly of conventional medicine in his parliament with all his might, but then came himself and wanted help in a different way. This is the striving, on the one hand, to leave what the feeling actually wants to overcome, but to leave it and to achieve the other through all possible back doors. We have to get beyond that. We don't have to want to set up private schools, but we have to create the opportunity everywhere to set up a free school in the sense described today. If we do not have the courage to do this, then those who understand these things will not allow themselves to be used to establish private schools or to appoint teachers for them. A great movement should arise in which every person who reflects on the tasks of the time should become a member, so that through the power of such a world federation, what could lead to the creation of such schools everywhere.

But above all, in the case of such a world school association - please allow me to mention this only in passing, in parentheses - a certain idealism in humanity must disappear, I mean the kind that says: Oh, spiritual things, anthroposophy, that's so high, the material must not approach it; it would defile anthroposophy if the material were to approach it. This idealism, which is so idealistic that it uses all kinds of phrases to describe the spiritual and elevates it to heaven, to a cloud-cuckoo-land, while keeping a firm hand on the purse, does not go together with the reasoning of a world school association or the like. Here one must muster an idealism that does not disdain the purse in order to do something for the ideals of humanity. Anthroposophically oriented spiritual science must think its way into practical life, that is, not just into the clouds, but also into the stock market. There are also nooks and crannies there that belong to practical life. —- That is just a characteristic of what a right worldview is.

Question: Are there contradictions between anthroposophical spiritual science and Protestant Christianity?

Rudolf Steiner: There is no need to construct contradictions. Two things must be distinguished: The Mystery of Golgotha is a fact: that a spiritual being from the supermundane worlds descended to earth and united with the man Jesus of Nazareth. This spiritual fact, which alone gives meaning to our earthly development, will be grasped in different ways by each age. Our age needs a new understanding of this fact. We can best grasp this fact if we learn to understand spiritual facts in general. Anyone who believes that some discovery, whether in the physical or spiritual realm, should somehow shake Christianity, thinks little of it. If the official representatives of Christianity, or rather of the traditional denominations, turn so fiercely against anthroposophy today, it only speaks against these official representatives, who do not really have true Christianity in mind, but the rule of their respective church. True Christianity has indeed grasped anthroposophical spiritual science, but only in a supersensible way, through supersensible knowledge. You can read more about this in my book 'Christianity as Mystical Fact' and in other writings.

Question: Does spiritual life have a kind of supremacy over the other two areas in the threefold social organism?

Rudolf Steiner: You can see in my book on “The Core Points of the Social Question” how capital is used in the threefold social organism. It enters into a kind of circulation, like blood in the human organism, and remains with the one who is best qualified to manage it and thus also manages it in the interest of the community. For this, however, spiritual life must constantly interact with the other limbs. This is the peculiar thing about such a natural structure of the social organism as the human organism. The human organism – and this is the result of thirty years of research for me – is tripartite by nature. Firstly, there is the nervous-sensory organism, which is mainly localized in the head; secondly, the rhythmic system, which is localized in the chest as breathing and blood circulation; and thirdly, the metabolic system, which is connected to the limbs. But these three limbs work together in such a way that, in a sense, the head is indeed leading, but in another sense, the other two limbs are leading as well. So one cannot say that something has supremacy, but precisely because of the way the three limbs are structured according to their essence, a harmonious wholeness will arise in the social organism. Question: Should children from seven to fourteen believe what the teacher says, or are they taught freely?

Rudolf Steiner: The nature of the human being demands what I have expressed in the lecture: a certain self-evident authority. This demand for a self-evident authority is based, in turn, on a certain development of human life as a whole. Certainly, no one can develop more feeling for the social rule of human freedom than I, who wrote my “Philosophy of Freedom” in 1892, which is intended to provide the foundations for a liberal, social human life. But still, if a person is to face life freely in the right way, he must develop a sense of authority within himself between the ages of seven and fifteen. If one does not learn to recognize others through this self-evident authority, then the later demand for freedom is something that leads precisely to the impossibility of life, not to true freedom. Just as man only comes to a true brotherhood if he is educated in the appropriate way, by being guided in the right way in his imitation in the childhood years until the seventh year, so the sense of authority is necessary if man is to become free. Everything that is said today about governing school communities in a republican form is only asserted out of party considerations. That would destroy human nature. I say this out of a thorough knowledge of the human being. Such a demand for a healthy, authoritative way of teaching between the ages of seven and fifteen must be made. Only objectivity can be considered. Buzzwords should not be the deciding factor. It is precisely those who stand on the ground of freedom who must demand an authoritative education for this age group.

Without doubt, the questions raised by social problems are among the major concerns of many today. We are dealing with social issues wherever there is a genuine concern with present conditions in humanity's evolution and with the impulses that threaten the future. The contemporary way of viewing and dealing with social issues, however, suffers from a fundamental defect. This is the same defect that afflicts so much of our mental and moral life and indeed our entire civilization: the prevailing intellectualism of our age. The social problems are so often examined merely from the limited viewpoint of intellectualism. Whether the social question is approached from the "left" or from the "right," the overly intellectual aspect of each approach is revealed by the fact that certain theories become the starting point from which it is said that this or that ought to be established, that this or that ought to be abolished. Generally, little account is thereby taken of the human being himself, as if there were no individually distinctive qualities in each human being, as if there were only a generality, "man." No attention is paid to the uniqueness of the individual human being. This is why the entire consideration of social issues has become so abstract, something that rarely affects the social feelings and attitudes that are active between one person and another.

The inadequacy in our consideration of social issues is most clearly evident in the domain of health care, of hygiene. In so far as it is a public matter, concerning not the individual so much as the whole community, health care or hygiene—possibly more than any other social domain—is a subject suitable for social consideration.

It is true that there is no lack of advice, available either in talks or in the literature, concerning hygiene in public health. It should be asked, however, how does such advice about hygiene come into the social life? It must be mentioned that whenever individual rules concerning the proper care of health are promulgated as the result of medical or physiological science, it is generally the trust in a scientific field that provides the basis for accepting such rules, rules whose inner validity one is not actually in a position to test. It is purely on the basis of authority that statements about hygiene emerging from libraries, examining rooms, and research laboratories are accepted by large segments of the population. There are those who are convinced, however, that in the course of modern history over the last four centuries a longing for democratic regulation of all issues has arisen in humanity. Then they encounter this entirely undemocratic belief in authority demanded in the domain of health care or hygiene. This undemocratic attitude of belief in an authority conflicts with the longing for democracy that has reached a kind of culmination today, although often in a highly paradoxical way.

I know very well that what I have just said may seem paradoxical, because issues of health care are often simply not considered in relation to the democratic demand that matters of public interest concerning every mature citizen be judged by that community of citizens, either directly or indirectly through representation. It must certainly be said that it may not be possible for the views concerning hygiene, the hygienic care of public life, to be fully subject to democratic principles, because such matters do, in fact, depend on the judgment of specialists. On the other hand, should one not strive toward greater democratization than contemporary circumstances permit in a domain that is as close, as infinitely close, to the concerns of every individual, and thus to the whole community, as the care of public health?

We certainly hear a great deal today about the necessity for proper air, light, nourishment, sanitation, and so forth, but the regulations laid down to order these things cannot, as a rule, be tested by those to whom they apply.

Now please do not misunderstand me. I would not like to be accused of taking any particular side in this lecture. I would not like to treat in a one-sided way what today is generally treated one-sidedly, in a partisan way or from the standpoint of a certain scientific conviction. I have no desire to uphold ancient superstitions of devils and demons passing in and out of human beings in the form of disease, nor to support the modern superstitions that the bacilli and bacteria pass in and out of human beings, causing the different diseases. We need not occupy ourselves today with the question of whether we are really faced with the results of the spiritualistic superstitions of earlier times or with the materialistic superstitions prevalent today. I would prefer to consider something that permeates the whole culture in our time, especially in so far as this culture is determined by the convictions of modern science. We are assured today that the materialism of the middle and last third of the nineteenth century has been overcome, but this statement is not very convincing to those who really know the nature of materialism and its opposite. The most one can say is that materialism has been overcome by a few people here and there who realize that the facts of modern science no longer justify the general explanation that everything in existence is merely a mechanical, physical, or chemical process taking place in matter.

The fact that a few people here or there have come to this conclusion, however, does not mean that materialism has been overcome, for usually when it comes to a concrete explanation or forming a view of something concrete, even these people—and the others as a matter of course—still reveal a materialistic tendency in their way of thinking. True, it is said that atoms and molecules are merely harmless, convenient units of calculation about which nothing more is asserted than that they are abstractions; nevertheless, the considerations are atomistic and molecular in character. We are then explaining world phenomena out of the behavior or interactions of atomic and molecular processes, and the point is not whether we picture that a thought, feeling, or any other process is connected only with material processes of atoms and molecules; the point is the orientation of the entire attitude of our soul and spirit when our explanation is based only on atomic theory, the theory of smallest entities. The point is not whether verbally or in thought a person is convinced that there is something more than the influence of atoms, the material action of atoms, but whether he is able to give explanations other than those based on the atomic theory of phenomena. In short, not what we believe is essential but how we explain, how we orient our souls within. Here I must say that only a true, anthroposophically oriented spiritual science can help eliminate the defect of which I have spoken.

That this must be the case I would now like to show concretely. There is hardly anything more confusing today than the distinctions that are so often emphasized between man's bodily nature and his soul and spirit, between physical illnesses and the so-called psychological and mental illnesses.¹ This view of the relevant relationships and distinctions between such facts of human life as a diseased body and an apparently diseased soul suffers from the materialistic, atomistic way of thinking. For what is really the nature of the materialism that has gradually come to be the world view of so many of our contemporaries and that, far from being overcome, is today in its prime? What is its nature? The nature of this materialism does not lie in observing material processes, in looking into the material processes that also take place in the human corporeality, in reverently studying the marvelous structure and activity of the human nervous system and other human organs, of the nervous system of the animal or organs of other living beings. This does not make one a materialist. Rather one is made a materialist through omitting the spirit from the study of these material processes, through looking into the world of matter and seeing only matter and material processes.

What spiritual science must assert, however, is this (and today I am only able to summarize this point): wherever material processes appear outwardly to the senses—and these are the only processes that modern science will admit as observable and exact—they are but the outer manifestation, the outer revelation, of activities behind which and in which lie spiritual forces and powers. It is not characteristic of spiritual science to look at a human being and say, "There is his physical body—this body is a sum of material processes, but the human being does not consist of this alone. Independent of this he has his immortal soul." It is far from characteristic of it to speak like this and to build up all kinds of abstract and mystical theories and views about this immortal soul that is independent of the body. This does not at all characterize a spiritual world view. It can definitely be said that, in addition to his body, which consists of material processes, the human being also has an immortal soul, which then enters some kind of spiritual realm after death. This does not make one a spiritual scientist in an anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. We can be spiritual scientists in the true sense only if we realize that this material body with its material processes is a creation of the soul element. We must learn to understand, down to the smallest detail, how the soul element—which was already active before birth, or, let us say, before conception—fashioned and molded the structure and even the substantiality of the human body. We must really be able to perceive everywhere the immediate unity of this body and the soul element and how, through the working of the soul-spiritual in the body, the body as such is gradually destroyed. This body undergoes a partial death with every passing moment, but only at the moment of death is there a radical expression, you could say, of what has been happening to the body in each moment as the result of the soul-spiritual. We are not spiritual scientists in the true sense until we perceive concretely and in detail this living interplay, this continuous influence of the soul in the body, and endeavor to say: the soul element incorporates itself into the entirely concrete processes, into the functions of the liver, the process of breathing, the action of the heart, the working of the brain, and so forth. In short, when we describe the material part of the human being we must know how to portray the body as a direct result of the spiritual. Spiritual science is thereby able to place a true value on matter, because in the separate concrete, material processes it observes not merely what is confirmed by the eyes or yielded by the abstract concepts of modern science through outer observation; spiritual science is spiritual science only when it shows everywhere how the spirit works in matter, when it regards with reverence the material workings of the spirit.

Such a view guards one against all the abstract chit-chat about a soul independent of the bodily nature, for where the life between birth and death is concerned, man can only spin fantasies about this. Between birth and death (with the exception of the time of sleep), the soul-spiritual is so utterly given up to bodily activity that. it lives in it, lives through it, manifests itself in it. We must be able to study the soul-spiritual outside the course of earthly life, realizing that human existence between birth and death is but the outcome of the soul-spiritual. Then we can behold the really concrete unity of the soul-spiritual with the physical bodily element. This is an anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, for then it becomes possible to see the human being with all his individual members as an outcome of the soul-spiritual.

The mystical, theosophical views that evolve all kinds of noble-sounding, beautiful theories about a spirituality that is free of the body can never serve the concrete sciences of life, they can never serve life. They can serve only the intellectual or psychological craving to be rid of the outer life as soon as possible, and then they weave all sorts of fantasies about the soul-spiritual in order to induce a state of inner satisfaction.

In this anthroposophically oriented spiritual movement it behooves us to work earnestly and sincerely to develop a spiritual science that will be able to enliven physics, mathematics, chemistry, physiology, biology, and anthropology. No purpose is served by making religious or philosophical statements to the effect that the human being bears an immortal soul within him and then working in the different branches of science just as if we were concerned only with material processes. Knowledge of the soul-spiritual must be gained and applied to the very details of life, to the marvelous structure of the body itself. You will come across many mystics and theosophists who love to chatter about the human being as composed of physical body, etheric body, astral body, and ego, and so forth, yet they haven't the least inkling what a wonderful manifestation of the soul life it is when a person blows his nose! The point is that we must see matter not simply as matter but as the manifestation of the spirit. Then we will begin to have healthy views concerning the spirit, views that are full of content, and with them a spiritual science that may be fruitful for all the other sciences.

This in turn will make it possible to overcome the specialization in the various branches of science resulting from the materialistic trend of scientific knowledge. I have no desire whatever to deliver a diatribe against specialization, for I am well aware of its usefulness. I know that certain things must be dealt with by specialists simply because they require a specialized technique. The point I would make is that the person who holds fast to the material can never reach a view of the world that is applicable to life if he becomes a specialist in the ordinary sense. For the range of material processes is infinite, both outside in nature and within the human being.

For instance, we may devote a long time—as long, at any rate, as professional people devote to their training—to the study of the human nervous system. If material processes are all we see in the working of the nervous system, however—processes described according to the abstract concepts of modern science—we shall never be led to any universal principle upon which a world view can be based. As soon as you begin to look at the human nervous system, for example, from the viewpoint of spiritual science, you will find at once that this nervous system cannot be considered without your finding the spirit active there, which leads us inevitably to the soul-spiritual underlying the muscular, skeletal, and sensory systems, and so on. The spiritual does not separate into single parts as does the material. Characterized very briefly, the spiritual unfolds like an organism with its members. Just as I cannot truly study a human being if I look merely at his five fingers and cover the rest of him, so in spiritual science I cannot study a single detail without being led by perceiving the soul-spiritual within this detail to a whole. If I were to become a brain or nerve specialist, I would still be able, in observing this single member of the human organism, to form a picture of the human being as a whole—I would reach a universal principle in relation to a world view, and I could then begin to speak about the human being in a way comprehensible to every healthy-minded, reasonable human being.

This is the great difference between the way that spiritual science is able to speak about the human being and the way that specialized, materialistic science is bound by its very nature to speak. Take the simple case of a textbook in common use today that is based on such a specialized, materialistic science. If you do not know very much about the nervous system and try to read a textbook on the subject, you will probably lay it aside. If you do manage to get through it, you will not learn much that will help you to realize the worth and dignity of the human being. If, however, you listen to what can be said about the human nervous system on the basis of spiritual science, you will be led everywhere to the entire human being. Spiritual science so illuminates the entire human being that the idea arising within you suggests the worth, the essence, and the dignity of the human being.

The truth of this is nowhere more evident than when we observe not the healthy human being in his single parts but a person who is ill, where there are so many deviations from the so-called normal condition. When we are able to observe the whole human being under the influence of some disease, everything nature reveals to us in the sick person leads us deeply into cosmic connections. We are led to understand the particular constitution of this human being, how the atmospheric and extraterrestrial influences work upon him as the result of his particular constitution, and we are then able to relate his human organization to the particular substances of nature that will act as remedies. We are thereby led into wider connections. When we add to our understanding of the healthy person all that we are able to learn from observation of the sick person, a profound insight will arise into the interconnections and deeper significance of life. Such insight, however, becomes the foundation for a knowledge of the human being that can be shared with everyone. True, we have not as yet accomplished very much in this direction because spiritual science has only been able to be active for a short time. The lectures given here must therefore be thought of merely as a beginning.² By its very nature, however, spiritual science is able to work upon and develop what is contained in the separate sciences in such a way that what everyone should know about the human being can be introduced to everyone.

Think what it will mean if spiritual science succeeds in transforming science in this way, succeeds in developing forms of knowledge about the human being in health and illness that are accessible to general human consciousness. If spiritual science succeeds in this, how different will be the relations of one human being to another in social life; what a greater understanding one person will have for another, far greater than there is today when people pass one another without the one having the slightest understanding for the particular individuality of the other. Social issues will be removed from intellectual considerations when the most diverse realms of life are based upon objective knowledge and concrete experiences of life. This is evident especially in the domain of health care. Think what a social effect it would have were there to be a real understanding of what is healthy in one person, what is unhealthy in another; think what it would mean if health care were taken in hand with understanding by the whole of humanity. Certainly this does not mean that we should encourage scientific or medical dilettantism—most emphatically not—but imagine that a sympathetic understanding of the health and illness of our fellow man were to awaken not merely feeling but understanding, an understanding that grows from a view of the human being—think of the effect it would have in social life. Then indeed it would be realized that social reform and reconstruction must proceed in their separate realms from expert knowledge, not from general theories—whether from Marx or Oppenheimer—which lose sight of the human being as such and want to organize the world on the basis of abstract concepts.³ Healing can never spring from abstract concepts but only from a reverent awareness of the individual spheres of life. And hygiene, the care of health, is very special because it leads us most closely to the joy of our fellow man through his healthy, normal way of life, or to his sufferings and limitations through what lives in him more or less as illness.

This is something that directs us immediately to the particularly social way in which spiritual science can be active in the domain of hygiene or health care. For let us say that someone nurtures the knowledge of the human being in this way, the knowledge of the healthy and sick human being; if he now specializes to become a physician, and if such a person is placed within human society, he will be in a position to bring about enlightenment within this society, he will find understanding. The relationship of such a physician to society will not be merely the usual one in which, unless one is the doctor's friend or relative, one goes to the physician's house only when something hurts or has been broken; rather a relationship will develop in which the physician is continuously the teacher and advisor for a prophylactic health care. In fact, there will be a continual participation of the physician not only in treating an illness that he discovers in someone but in maintaining a person's health in so far as this is possible. A living social interaction will take place between the physician and the rest of society. In turn, medicine itself will be illuminated by the health of such a knowledge. Because materialism has extended itself even into medical considerations in life we have become truly entangled in some strange conceptions.

Thus on the one hand we have all the physical illnesses. They are investigated by observing the abnormalities of the organs or the various processes that are thought to be of a physical nature and are to be found within the boundaries of the human skin. Then the goal is to seek to rectify what is found to be wrong. In this case, the view of the human body in its normal and abnormal conditions is completely materialistic. Then, on the other hand, there are the so-called psychological or mental illnesses.' As a result of materialistic thinking, these are considered to be merely diseases of the brain or nervous system, although efforts have also been made to find their causes in the organ systems of the human being. Because there is generally no conception of the way in which the soul and spirit work in the healthy human body, however, it is impossible to arrive at a conception of the relationship of mental illness—so-called men-tal illness—to the rest of the human being. Thus mental illness is even thought about materialistically by that curious hermaphroditic science, psychoanalysis, though it definitely does not understand the material either. Mental illness stands there without our being able to bring it together in any meaningful way with what actually takes place in the human organism. Spiritual science is now able to show—and I have recently drawn attention to this—that what I have been speaking about here is not merely a program but is something that can be pursued in detail, as has been attempted during the opportunities offered here in the recent course for physicians.⁴ Spiritual science is able to show in detail how all so-called psychological and mental illnesses have their source in disturbances of the organs, in organ deterioration, in enlargement and shrinking of the organs in the human organism. A so-called mental illness arises sooner or later whenever there is some irregularity in an organ, in the heart, in the liver, in the lungs, and so on. A spiritual science that has penetrated to the point of knowing the spirit's activity in the normal heart is also able to discover in the deterioration or irregularity of the heart the cause of a diseased life of spirit or soul, called mental illness today.

The greatest fault of materialism is not that it denies the existence of the spirit; religion can see to it that due recognition is given to the spirit. The greatest error of materialism is that it provides us with no knowledge of matter itself, because, in effect, it considers only the outer side of matter. It is just this that is the defect of materialism, that it lacks insight even into matter. Take, for example, psychoanalytical treatments where attention is merely directed to something that has taken place in the soul and is described as a "complex,"" which is a pure abstraction. A more appropriate way to pursue this would be to study how certain soul impressions, which were made on a person at some period of his life and are normally bound up with the healthy organism, have come into contact with defective organs, e.g., with a diseased rather than a healthy liver. It must be considered that this may have happened long before the moment when the defect becomes organically perceptible.

There is no need for spiritual science to be afraid of showing how so-called psychological or mental illness is invariably connected with something occurring in the human body. Spiritual science must show emphatically that when merely the soul element, the soul "complex""—a deviation from the so-called normal soul life—is studied, the most that can be achieved is a one-sided diagnosis. Psychoanalysis, therefore, can never lead to anything more than something diagnostic, never to a real therapy in this domain. In mental illness, therapy must proceed by administering therapy for the body, and for this reason there must be detailed knowledge of the ramifications of the spiritual in the material. We must know where to take hold of the material body (which is, however, permeated with spirit) in order to cure the disease of which abnormal conditions of soul are simply symptoms. Spiritual science must emphasize again and again that the root of so-called mental or psychological illnesses lies in the organ systems of the human being, but it is possible to understand abnormal organ function of the human being only when the spirit can be pursued into the minutest parts of matter.

Looked at from the other side, all those phenomena of life that seemingly affect merely the soul or work in the soul element—for instance, all that is expressed in the different temperaments and the activity of the temperaments in the human being, what is expressed in the way the child behaves, plays, walks—all this is studied today only from a soul-spiritual point of view, but it also has its bodily aspect. Faulty education of the child may come to expression in later life in some familiar form of physical illness. In certain cases of mental illness, we must often look to the bodily element and look for the cause there; however, in certain cases of physical illness, we must look to the spiritual in order to find the cause. The essence of spiritual science is that it does not speak in abstractions about a nebulous spiritual aspect as do mystics or one-sided theosophists; rather it traces the spirit right down into its material workings. Spiritual science never conceives of the material as modern science does today, but it always penetrates to the spirit in all study of the material. Thus it is able to observe that an abnormal soul life must inevitably express itself in an abnormal bodily life, although the abnormality may, to begin with, be hidden from outer observation.

On all sides today, people form entirely false pictures of a serious, anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. This may have a certain justification when they listen to people speak who do not truly penetrate to what is actually important but speak only of abstract theories such as that the human being consists of such and such, that there are repeated earthly lives, and so forth. These things are, of course, full of significance and beauty; but the point is that we must work earnestly in this spiritual scientific movement, truly entering into a particular subject, into the individual spheres of this life.

In the widest sense, such a spiritual scientific movement leads again to a socially minded community of human beings, for when one is able to perceive how a soul that appears sick radiates its impulses into the organism, when one can really feel this connection between the organism and the soul that appears to be ill—feels this with understanding—and when on the other hand one knows how the general ordering of life affects the physical health of the human being, how the spiritual, which apparently exists in social arrangements only outwardly, works into the physical care of health of the human being, then one will stand in a completely different way within human society.

A true understanding of the human being will be gained, and we will treat each other quite differently. Individual character will be understood quite differently, knowing that one person possesses certain qualities and another possesses quite different ones. We will learn how to respond to all variations, to see them in relation to particular tasks; it will be known how to make use of the different temperaments in human society in the right way and particularly how to develop them in the right way.

In relation to health care or hygiene, one domain of social life in particular—that of education—will be most strongly influenced by such a knowledge of the human being. We cannot, without a comprehensive knowledge of the human being, evaluate the consequences of allowing our children to sit in school with bent backs so that they never breathe properly, or the repercussions of never teaching children to speak the vowel or consonant sounds loudly, clearly, and in a well-articulated way. As a matter of fact, the whole of later life depends on whether the child in school breathes in the right way and whether he is taught to speak clearly and with good articulation. I say this merely by way of example, for the same thing applies in other realms. It is an illustration, however, of the specific application of general hygienic principles in the sphere of education. The whole social significance of hygiene is revealed in this example.

It is also apparent that, rather than further specialization, life demands that the specialized branches of knowledge be brought together to form a comprehensive view of life. We need something more than educational norms according to which the teacher is supposed to instruct the child. The teacher must realize what it means for him to help the child to speak clearly and articulately. He must realize what it will mean if he allows the child to catch his breath after only half a phrase has been spoken and does not see to it that all the air is used up in the phrase being uttered. There are, of course, many such principles. A proper appreciation and practice of them, however, will live in us only when we are able to measure their full significance for human life and social health; only then will they give rise to a social impulse.

We need teachers who are able to educate children on the basis of a world view that understands the true being of man. This was the thought underlying the course I gave to the teachers when the Waldorf School in Stuttgart was founded.⁵ All the principles of the art of education that were expressed in that course strive in the direction of making human beings out of the children who are being educated, human beings in whom lungs, liver, heart, and stomach will be healthy in later life because as children they were helped to develop their life functions in the right way, because, in effect, the soul worked in the right way.

This world view will never give a materialistic interpretation to the ancient saying, "A healthy soul lives in a healthy body"" (Mens sana in corpore sano). Interpreted materialistically, this means that if the body is healthy, if it has been made healthy by every possible physical method, then it will, of itself, be the bearer of a healthy soul. This is pure nonsense. The only true meaning is that a healthy body shows me that the force of a healthy soul has built it up, has molded it and made it healthy. A healthy body proves that an autonomous, healthy soul has worked in it. This is the true meaning of this saying, and only in this sense can it be an underlying principle of true hygiene. In other words, it is quite inadequate to have, in addition to teachers who are working from an abstract science of education, a school doctor who turns up every fortnight or so and goes through the school with no real idea of how to help. What we need is a living alliance between medical science and the art of education. We need an art of education that teaches the children in a way conducive to real health. This is what makes hygiene or health care a social issue, because a social issue is essentially an educational issue, and this, in turn, is essentially a medical issue, but only if medicine, hygiene, are fructified by spiritual science.

These matters are extraordinarily significant in relation to the theme of hygiene or health care as a social issue. For if one works with spiritual science and if spiritual science is something concrete for the human being, then one knows that contained within spiritual science is something that distinguishes it from what is contained in mere intellectualism—and natural science in the present is also mere intellectualism—from what is contained in mere intellectualism or in a merely intellectually developed natural science or in a merely intellectually developed history or jurisprudence today. All the sciences today are intellectualistic; if they claim to be experiential sciences, this is based only on the fact that they interpret intellectually their experiences based on sense observation. What is offered in spiritual science is essentially different from these intellectually interpreted results of natural science; it would be most unfortunate if what lives in our intellectualistic culture were not merely a picture but a real power that worked more deeply on the human being. Everything intellectualistic remains only on the surface of the human being. This sentence is to be taken very comprehensively.

There are people who study spiritual science only intellectually, who make notes: there is a physical body, etheric body, astral body, ego, reincarnation, karma, and so forth. They make notes of it all, as is the custom in modern natural or social science, but they are not sincerely devoting themselves to spiritual science when they cultivate this way of thinking. They are simply carrying over their ordinary way of thinking into what they encounter in spiritual science. What is essential about spiritual science is that it must be thought in a different way, felt in a different way, must be experienced not in an intellectual way but quite differently. It is for this reason that by its very nature spiritual science has a living relationship to the human being in health and illness, but a relationship altogether different from what is often imagined.

By now, some people must be sufficiently convinced of the impotence of our purely intellectual culture in dealing with those suffering from so-called mental illnesses. One who suffers from such an illness may say to you, for example, that he hears voices speaking to him. No matter what intellectual reasoning you use with him, it proves useless, for he makes all kinds of objections, you may be sure of that. Even this might indicate that one is dealing here with an illness not of the conscious or unconscious soul life but of the organism.

Spiritual science teaches, moreover, that one cannot come to grips with these so-called psychological and mental illnesses by means of the kinds of methods that take recourse to hypnotism, suggestion, and the like; one must rather approach mental illness by physical means, which means by healing the organs of the human being. This is exactly where a spiritual knowledge of the human being is essential. Spiritual knowledge knows that so-called mental illnesses cannot be affected by soul or spiritual procedures, because mental illness consists precisely of the fact that the spiritual member of the human being has been pressed out, as it were, as is normally the case only in sleep. As a consequence, the spiritual member grows weak, and we must cure the bodily organs so that the soul and spirit may be taken up again in a healthy way.

When, as a result of spiritual scientific work, Imagination, Inspiration, and Intuition arise, they are able to penetrate into the whole organism, as they proceed not from the intellect or the head alone but from the entire human being.⁶ Through real spiritual science, the physical organization of the human being may be permeated with health. The fact that there are dreamers who feel ill or show signs of the opposite of health in their spiritual scientific activities is no proof to the contrary. There are so many who are not really spiritual scientists at all but who simply amass intellectually vast collections of notes about the results of spiritual science. Spreading the real substance of spiritual science is in itself a social hygiene, for it works upon the whole human being and regulates his organic functions when they develop extreme tendencies in one direction or another, either toward dreaminess or the reverse. Here we have the overwhelming difference between what is given in spiritual science and what appears in merely intellectual science. The concepts arising in the domain of intellectualism are far too weak to penetrate the human being and to work healthily upon him, because they are merely analogies. Spiritual scientific concepts, on the other hand, have been drawn from the entire human being. Lungs, liver, heart, the entire human being and not the brain alone have participated in building up spiritual scientific concepts, and what they have derived from the strength of the entire human being adheres to them, penetrates them, as it were, in a sculptural way. If one then permeates oneself with such concepts, if one receives them cognitively through the sound human intellect, they work back again onto the entire human being in a hygienic, health-engendering way. This is how spiritual science can penetrate and give direction to hygiene, health care, as a social concern.

In many other ways too—now I can only offer an example—spiritual science will be able to lay down guidelines for the life of humanity in the domain of health, if it gains a firm footing in the world. Here let me give just one brief indication. The relationship of the waking human being to the sleeping human being, the great difference between the human organization in waking and sleeping, is one of the subjects that spiritual science must study again and again. How the spirit and soul act in waking life, when they permeate each other in the bodily, soul, and spiritual aspects of the human being, how they act when they are temporarily separated from each other in sleep—all these things are studied conscientiously by spiritual science. Here I can do not more than refer to a certain principle that is a well-founded result of spiritual scientific investigation.

In our life we occasionally see so-called epidemic illnesses that affect whole masses of the population and are therefore essentially a social concern. Ordinary materialistic science studies these illnesses by examining the physical organism of the human being. It knows nothing of the tremendous significance that the abnormal attitude of the human being to waking and sleeping has for epidemics and the susceptibility to epidemic illnesses. What takes place in the organism during sleep is something that, if it becomes excessive, predisposes the human being to so-called epidemic illnesses. There are people who, as the result of too much sleep, initiate certain processes in the human organism, processes that ought not be set in motion because waking life should not be broken up by such long periods of sleep. These people have a much stronger predisposition to epidemic illnesses and are less able to resist them.

You yourselves can assess what it would entail to explain to people the proper proportion of sleeping to waking. Such things cannot be dictated. You can, of course, tell people that they must not send children with scarlatina to school, but you cannot possibly dictate to people in the same way that they must get seven hours of sleep. And yet this is much more important than any other prescription. People who need it should have seven hours of sleep, and others for whom this is not necessary should sleep much less, and so on.

These matters, which are so intimately connected with the personal life of human beings, have a tremendous effect upon social life. How these social effects come about, whether a larger or smaller number of people are obliged, owing to illness, to be absent from their work, whether or not a whole region is affected: all these things depend upon the most intimate details of man's life. Here hygiene plays an immeasurably important part in social life. Regardless of what people may think about infection or non-infection, with epidemics this element really plays a part in social life. Here external regulations are of no avail; the only thing you can do is to educate people within society so that they are able to understand the physicians who are trying to explain prophylactic measures. This can give rise to an active cooperation in the maintenance of health between the physician who understands his profession and the layman who understands the nature of the human being.

I have described here an aspect of hygiene or health care as a social issue that is utterly dependent on a free spiritual life. We must have a spiritual life in which within the spiritual realm there are those engaged in nurturing this spiritual life, even in so far as it extends into the various practical domains such as hygiene; they must be completely independent of everything that does not yield pure knowledge, that does not bring about the nurture of the spiritual life. What the individual can achieve for the greatest benefit of his fellow man must grow entirely out of his own capacities. There should be neither governmental norms nor a dependence on economic powers. The individual's achievements must be placed entirely in the sphere of the intimate, personal connections that only exist between individuals, in the trust, based on understanding, that those who require the services of a capable person can bring to that person. There, a spiritual life is needed—independent of all authority, governmental or economic—which is active in a manner that arises purely out of spiritual forces. If you consider what can bring about a hygiene intimately united with insight into human nature and social behavior, you will also recognize that the spirit obviously must be managed by those who nurture it; not the specialists active as experts in governmental agencies but rather those active in spiritual life must be the sole managers of this spiritual life. This becomes especially clear if one goes into the individual branches of activity, such as hygiene, with real experience, as is required by the separate, concrete realms "“ and this could be shown to hold good in other realms as it does for hygiene. When hygiene or health care exists as a real social institution, based on social insight arising from the free spiritual life, then the economic aspects of such a hygiene can be handled in a totally different way, especially if the independent economic life is constituted as I have described in my book The Threefold Social Order.⁷

If the forces for the nurture of hygiene or health care that are latent in society, resting in its womb, as it were, are taken up with human understanding, if they result in social institutions, then out of the independent economic life, without consideration of dependence on profit or governmental impulses, can emerge what is necessary to support a genuine hygiene. Only then will the kind of idealism enter economic life that is necessary for the nurture of hygiene in human life. If the mere profit motive prevails in our economic sphere, it always has the tendency to become increasingly incorporated into the political state, and the generally accepted opinion is that one must produce what yields the most profit. If this idea continues to prevail, then the independent impulses of a free spiritual life cannot manifest in the domain of hygiene or health care, and spiritual life will then become dependent on political or economic forces; then the economic will govern the spiritual, but the economic must not prevail over the spiritual. This fact is most evident to one who wants to arrive at what the spirit demands in the economic life, to one who wants to serve a genuine and true hygiene.

The forces of the free spiritual life in the threefold social organism arrive at the insight which becomes a matter of public concern; an understanding of the human being becomes a public concern in the threefold social organism. The human being must stand within a free spiritual life in order that a firmly grounded hygiene can be nurtured. On the other hand, people must develop the idealism through which the products of the economic life are met with an understanding that results not merely from a sense for profit but out of insights emerging from the free spiritual management of hygiene or health care. Once this insightful, social human understanding has arisen, this human idealism, there will emerge a willingness to work economically simply because the social situation of humanity requires hygienic service. If these requirements are met, people will be able to meet democratically in parliaments or other such gatherings. For then, out of a free spiritual life, the recognition emerges of the necessity for hygiene as a social phenomenon; attention to what is necessary for hygiene as a social issue emerges from an impartial and professionally managed economic life through the high intentions that would be developed within it. Then mature human beings will deliberate on the ground of the economic life out of their insight and understanding of the human being as well as out of their relations to an economic life at the service of hygiene. Then people will be able to meet as equals within the legislative, rights, or economic life concerning the measures that are necessary regarding hygiene and the care of public health.

Were all this to come about, however, laymen or dilettantes would not do the healing; rather, the mature person will encounter as an equal and with understanding whoever advises him on matters of hygiene, namely, the experienced physician. For the layman, the understanding of the human being that is nurtured in social life, with the help of the physician, makes it possible to meet expert knowledge equipped with understanding, so that in a democratic parliament the layman is able to say "yea"" with a certain understanding and not merely out of pressure from authority.

When we consider impartially how the spiritual, legislative, and economic members of the social organism work together in such a special domain, we discover the complete justification of the idea of the threefold nature of the social organism. This idea is met with disapproval only when it is understood merely abstractly.

Today I was able to give you no more than a sketchy indication of what speaks for the necessity of the threefolding of the social organism if one thinks correctly about a particular, concrete domain such as hygiene. If those paths are followed, toward which I have only been able to point today in their beginnings, one will see that whoever meets the impulse of the threefold social organism with abstract concepts will work against it in a certain way. Such a person will generally bring up the obvious objections. Whoever enters the various domains of life with a full inner understanding, however, entering into the individual realms that matter so much in social life, whoever truly understands something in a concrete realm of life and takes the trouble to understand something about true practical life in any domain, will be led again and again in the direction that has been suggested by the idea of threefolding the social organism.

This idea did not arise out of a dreamy or abstract idealism; it arose as a social demand of our time and of the near future, especially out of the concrete and sober observation of the individual domains of life. By penetrating these individual domains of life with what is active out of the impulse for threefolding the social organism, one will find for all these domains just what they so desperately need today. This evening I only wished to give a few indications concerning how what emerges out of spiritual science regarding the social life can penetrate human society as a social concern, arising out of a socially nurtured understanding of the human being. Striving for a realization of the threefold social organism can fructify what can be accepted today only on the basis of belief in authority, through a completely blind subjection. Through the enrichment that hygiene or health care can receive from a medicine fructified by spiritual science, it can become a social, a truly social concern. It can become a democratically nurtured, common public concern in the truest sense.

In the discussion following the lecture, Rudolf Steiner added the following comments in response to prepared questions.

In matters such as I have discussed today, it is essential that one be able to enter into the whole spirit of what has been expressed. For this reason, it is difficult at times to give appropriate answers, for the questions have already been formulated in such a way that they bear the stamp of contemporary thinking and attitudes. Before answering such questions, it may first be necessary to reformulate them or at least to provide some sort of appropriate explanation. Having said this, I will begin at once with the question that may appear to many of you to be so exceedingly simple that it ought to be able to be answered with a few sentences or even with one sentence:

"How can a person rid himself of the habit of sleeping too long?"

In order to answer this question appropriately, it would be necessary for me to give an even longer lecture than I have already given, because I would first have to bring various elements together. It is possible to say the following, however. The intellectual attitude of soul is almost universal in humanity today. It is particularly those who believe they are judging or living out of feeling or who believe, for one reason or another, that they are not intellectual who are most subject to the intellectual attitude of soul. The fundamental character of the intellectual soul and organ life is that through it our instincts are destroyed. The correct instincts of the human being are destroyed. It is actually so that one must point to primeval humanity, or even to the animal kingdom, to discover instincts that are not yet entirely destroyed. On another occasion a few days ago, I pointed to a very telling example. There are birds who, out of greed, feed on certain insects, for instance spiders. After consuming these spiders, which are poisonous to them, the birds get convulsions, seizures, and die a miserable, agonizing death soon after swallowing the spider. If henbane is in the vicinity, however, the bird flies there, sucks the healing sap from the plant, and thus saves its own life.

Now, just think how there we see developed something that in the human being is shriveled down to the few reflex instincts such as the movements we make without any deep deliberation to encourage the departure of a fly that has alighted on our nose. A defensive instinct arises in response to this insulting stimulus. In the bird feeding on the spider, the consequence of the effect the spider has in the bird's organism is a defensive instinct to this insult, driving it to do something very reasonable. We would still be able to find such instincts among ancient populations if only we interpreted history properly. In our time, however, we have different experiences.

It has always been exceedingly painful to me, accustomed as I am to seeing a fork, knife, and spoon next to a plate, to see instead a scale next to the plate of someone sitting down to eat. This really happens! Such a person weighs the piece of meat and only then knows how much meat he should eat for his particular organism. Just think how bare of all truly original instincts humanity has become to require such a measure! The important thing, then, is that one not remain stationary within intellectualism but rise instead to a spiritual scientific way of knowing. You will now believe that I am speaking pro domo, even if also pro domo of this great house, but I am not speaking pro domo. I am really speaking about what I believe to have recognized as the truth, quite apart from the fact that I myself represent this truth. It can readily be seen that if one penetrates not only into what is intellectual but into what needs to be grasped by way of spiritual science and which therefore confronts humanity more in a pictorial sense, it becomes noticeable that by taking hold of knowledge not accessible to the mere intellect one is again led back to healthy instincts, if not in a single life then perhaps -more so in those matters that lie in the underpinnings of life. Whoever concerns himself, be it ever so briefly, with developing this completely different soul attitude, which must be developed if one really wants to understand something of spiritual science, will again be led back to healthy instincts in matters such as the proper requirement for sleep. Animals do not sleep too much under normal conditions, and primeval man did not sleep too much either. It is only necessary to educate oneself again to have healthy instincts, which were lost by virtue of the intellectual culture prevalent today. It can be said that a truly effective means of ridding oneself of the habit of sleeping too long is to be able to take up spiritual scientific truths without falling asleep as a result. If a person falls asleep at once upon hearing spiritual scientific truths, then he will be unable to rid himself of the habit of sleeping too long. If one succeeds, however, in being truly present inwardly while working through spiritual scientific truths, then this inner human aspect will be activated in such a way that one can actually discover the exactly appropriate time needed for sleep for one's own organism.

Again, it is exceedingly difficult to give intellectual rules prescribing the amount of sleep an individual person requires who is suffering, let us say, from a kidney or liver disorder that has not made him ill in the ordinary sense. As a rule, such a prescription would not lead to anything of consequence. To induce sleep in an artificial way is not the same as when the body, out of its own need for sleep, refuses the entry of the spirit only for as long as is necessary. It can thus be said that a proper hygiene emerging out of spiritual science will also bring the human being to the point at which he can determine in the right way the proper amount of sleep for his own organism.

The other question that was posed here also cannot be answered so simply: "How can a person know how much sleep he needs?"

I would like to say that it is not at all necessary to reach the answer through discursive thinking; that is not necessary at all. It is necessary to acquire those instincts that can be acquired not by receiving collections of notes out of spiritual science but by the way in which one understands spiritual science if it is understood with full inner participation. Once this instinct is achieved, a person is able to discern in an individual way how much sleep is appropriate for him. This is what can be said as a rule in response to such a question. As I said, I can give only a kind of direction for how questions like this can be answered; this may not be what is expected, but what is expected is not always what is right.

"Is it healthy to sleep in a room with the window open?"

Such a question, too, cannot actually be answered in general terms. It is certainly conceivable that for one person, sleeping in a room with an open window is very healthy, depending on the particular construction of his respiratory organs; for another person, however, it might be better to air out the room before sleeping and then close the windows while sleeping. What is necessary, in fact, is to gain an understanding of the relationship the human being has to his environment in order then to be able to make a judgment in each individual case in accordance with this understanding.

"How, from a spiritual scientific point of view, do you explain the development of mental disturbances associated with crimes that are committed, that is, how, in such a situation, can one recognize the bodily illness which lies at the foundation of the mental disturbance?"

If one were to try to deal with this question thoroughly, it would really be necessary to enter into a discussion of all criminal and psychiatric anthropology. I would simply like to say the following: first, in considering such matters, one must presuppose that the organic predisposition of someone who becomes a criminal is abnormal right from the outset. In this direction, you need only follow up the relevant studies by Moriz Benedikt "“ the first really significant criminal anthropologist⁸ "“ and you will see how in fact the pathological investigation of the forms of single human organs can be brought into connection with this predisposition to criminality. There you already have an inherent abnormality, although materialistic thinkers, such as Moriz Benedikt, naturally draw the wrong conclusions from their findings, because it is certainly not an absolute requirement that whoever shows signs in this direction is inevitably a born criminal. What is important is that one is definitely able to work on the defects within the organism "“ I mean the organ defects, not the already existing mental illness, but the organ defects "“ and to have an effect especially through education and later through the appropriate spiritual element, if only the state of affairs is studied from a spiritual scientific point of view. Therefore the conclusions arrived at by Benedikt are not correct. Such organ defects can already be discovered, however.

Then one must also be clear about the fact that there are also non-intellectual elements in ordinary human life, more in the realm of feelings or emotions, which set off reactions. These work first on the glandular activity, the secretory activity, but from there they have an influence on the other organs. In connection with this issue, I would advise you to read an interesting little book concerning the mechanics of emotions that has been put out by a Danish physician.⁹ There you can read much that is of value for the topic under consideration. Take the bodily predisposition that can be traced in everyone who truly comes into consideration as a criminal; add to that everything that has had consequences for the apprehended criminal, consisting of emotional disturbances and the continuation of these emotional disturbances into the organs; then you have the path by which to seek for those defective organs which as a consequence bring forth mental illness, specifically the mental illness associated with committing a crime. In this way, we must attempt to obtain a clear idea about such connections.

"What is the relationship of theosophy to anthroposophy? Is the theosophy which was presented here previously no longer fully recognized?"

I would simply like to say that nothing has ever been presented here other than an anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, and what has been presented here today has always been presented in this way. The common identification of our presentations with so-called theosophy is simply based on a misunderstanding. This will remain a misunderstanding because, within certain limits, anthroposophically oriented spiritual science moved for a time within the framework of the Theosophical Society; even in the framework of that society, however, the representatives of an anthroposophically oriented spiritual science never presented anything other than what is presented here today. This was tolerated in the Theosophical Society only so long as matters didn't look too heretical. The anthroposophists were thrown out, however, as soon as it was noticed that anthroposophy was something completely different from the abstract mysticism manifested so often in theosophy. This expulsion was undertaken by the other side, but what is presented here never had any other form than it has today. Of course, those who concern themselves with matters superficially and who listen only to those who haven't gotten beyond a superficial comprehension as members of the Anthroposophical Society "“ for one needn't always be outside in order to understand anthroposophy superficially or to confuse anthroposophy with theosophy; one can also be in the Society "“ those who therefore achieve only a superficial knowledge of what is going on get confused about the issues. What I have characterized here today regarding a particular area has never been presented here in any other way.

Of course there is continuous work, and certain things may be said today in a much more precise, thorough, and intensive way than was possible fifteen, ten, or even five years ago. This is just the nature of working, that one progresses in the formulation of making oneself understood in such difficult matters as spiritual science. It is really unnecessary to engage in any discussion with those who, out of ill will, attribute to us all kinds of changes of world view because of a more recent, more complete expression of something said incompletely on an earlier occasion. Discussions with such ill-willed persons are really a waste of time, because spiritual science, as it is meant here, is something living and not something dead. And whoever believes that it cannot progress and wants to nail it down where it is and where it once was, as happens so often, does not believe in what is living; he would prefer to make it into something dead.

"Would you please say something about the origin of an epidemic such as influenza or scarlet fever? How does it come about if not by the spreading of bacteria? In many illnesses the causative agent has been scientifically determined. What is your position in relation to this issue?"

If I were also to deal with this question concerning which I have indicated that I do not wish to take sides, I would have to give another entire lecture. Nevertheless, I would like to direct your attention to the following: a person may be impelled, in accordance with his knowledge, to direct attention to the fact that for illnesses accompanied by the occurrence of bacilli or bacteria, there are deeper causes "“ acting as primary causes "“ than the mere occurrence of bacteria; such a person does not assert that bacteria don't exist. It is one thing to assert that bac-teria exist and that they increase during the course of an illness; it is quite another to seek the primary cause of the illness in the bacteria. What needs to be said regarding this I have developed in great detail in the course that is being held here now [4], but it takes time to deal with the issues properly. This also applies to certain elements that must be considered before this question can be dealt with, and this cannot be done so quickly in a question-and-answer period such as this. Nevertheless, I will point out the following, the human constitution is not such a simple matter as one often imagines. The human being is a multi-membered being. Right at the beginning of my book, Riddles of the Soul,¹⁰ I stated that man is a threefold being. First there is what can be called the nerve-sense man, then the rhythmic man, and thirdly the metabolic man. This is the human being. These three members of human nature work into one another and may not, if the human being is to be healthy, interact with one another without in a certain way maintaining a separation of the different realms. For example, the nerve-sense man, which is far more than contemporary physiology imagines it to be, may not extend its influence without consequences on the metabolic man, unless its effects are mediated by the rhythmic movements of the circulatory and respiratory processes which, as is well known, extend into the outermost periphery of the organism. This working together, however, can be interrupted in a certain way. This working together is brought about by something very specific. (When such questions are posed "“ if you will pardon me "“ one must also answer in accordance with the facts; I will attempt to be as decent as possible, but it is nevertheless necessary to say a few words that must also be listened to as related to the facts.) It is so, for example, that in the lower man processes occur that are incorporated into the entire organism. If they are incorporated into the entire organism, then they will work in the right way; if, however, they are heightened by various processes, either directly in the lower body, so that they become more active, or through the corresponding processes, which are always there in the human head or in the human lung being diminished in their intensity, then something very curious takes place. Then it becomes evident that, in order to have a normal life, the human organism must develop processes that may develop to the extent that they are integrated into the entire human being. If a process is heightened excessively, however, then it becomes localized; a process arises, for example, in the lower body of the human being, through which there is an improper separation of what goes on in the head or lung, which corresponds to certain processes in the lower body. Processes always correspond to one another in such a way that they proceed parallel to one another; thereby what ought to be present in the human being only to a certain extent, whereby he maintains his vitality, the soul- and spirit-bearing vitality, is brought beyond a certain level. This then encourages an atmosphere, as it were, in which all kinds of lower organisms, all kinds of tiny organisms, can develop. The nurturing element for these small organisms is always present within the human being, only it is spread out over the whole organism. If it becomes concentrated, it provides the life soil for small organisms, for microbes. The reason they can thrive there, however, must be sought in the exceedingly fine processes in the organism which then prove to be the primary cause.

I am really not speaking out of an antipathy for the bacillary theory. I certainly understand the reasons people have for believing in the bacillary theory. You must believe that if I did not have to speak this way because of the facts I could well recognize these reasons. Here, however, we have a knowledge that necessarily leads to the recognition of something else which impels one to speak in the following way: I see a certain landscape in which there are many exceedingly beautiful and well cared-for cattle. I now ask, why are there favorable conditions in that area? They come from the beautiful cattle, I determine. I explain the conditions of life in this area by explaining that beautiful cattle have moved in from somewhere and then spread over the landscape. "“ Don't you agree that such an explanation does not correspond with the facts? Instead, I must look for the primary causes: the diligence, the understanding of the people in that area, and they will explain to me why such beautiful cattle develop on this soil. I would give quite a superficial explanation if I were to say: here it is beautiful, a nice place to live, because beautiful cattle have moved in. The same logic is applied when I find a typhus bacillus and then claim that a patient has typhus because typhus bacilli have moved in. To explain typhus, entirely different factors are necessary than merely to draw attention to the typhus bacillus. In submitting to such erroneous logic one is led astray in many other ways. The primary processes that provide typhus bacillus with the foundation for its existence certainly bring about all kinds of other problems that are not primary. And it is very easy to confound completely or even interchange what is secondary with the actual original form of illness. This is as much as I can say now that could lead to a proper perspective on these issues and show what must be done in order to put in its proper place what is justifiable within limits.

Maybe you can see, nevertheless, from the way in which I have given this answer "“ even if I have done so only sketchily and could easily be misunderstood "“ that I am not at all concerned here with the popular hollering about the bacillary theory; we are interested rather in studying these matters very seriously.

"Please give us a few examples of how bodily organic disturbances bring about soul-spiritual illnesses."

This question would naturally, if it were answered thoroughly, lead much too far, but here, too, I will point out just a few things. You see, in the historical development of medical thinking it is not, as is presented today, that the healing art began with Hippocrates and then developed further. So far as can be traced, very curious things are found in Hippocrates' writings, and rather than the mere beginnings of contemporary intellectual medicine we have in Hippocrates remnants of an ancient, instinctual kind of medicine.

In addition, we find something else, however. In this ancient, instinctual medicine, as long as it was still valid, one did not speak of psychological depressions of a certain kind, which is indeed a very abstract kind of expression; rather one spoke of hypochondria, i.e., cartilage in the lower body. It was known, therefore, that when hypochondria occurred, one was dealing with disturbances in the lower body, with a hardening in the lower body. One cannot say that the ancients were more materialistic than we are.

Similarly, it can very easily be shown that certain chronic lung defects are definitely connected with what could be called a false mystical sense of the human being. And so one could point to all kinds of things completely apart from what the ancients suggested for the organic realm with the temperaments, again all corresponding to a proper instinct. For them, the choleric temperament originated out of the white gall; the melancholic temperament arose out of the black gall and whatever the black gall brings about in the lower body; the sanguine temperament arose out of the blood; and the phlegmatic temperament arose out of the phlegm, what they called phlegm. When they saw deviations of the temperaments, these suggested deviations in the corresponding organic aspects. How this was regarded in the instinctual medicine and hygiene may again become part and parcel of a soul attitude in a strictly scientific way and can be supported from the standpoint of our contemporary knowledge.

Here is another question concerning which great misunderstandings can arise: "Do you know about iris diagnosis? Do you acknowledge it as a valid science?"

It is generally correct that in an organism, and especially in the complicated human organism, conclusions regarding the whole can be arrived at out of all kinds of details, if these details are looked at in the right way. Furthermore the role that the isolated part plays in the human organism is very significant. What the iris diagnostician investigates in the iris is on the one hand very isolated from the rest of the human organism; on the other hand, it is inserted into the rest of the organism in a remarkable way so that it is actually a very expressive organ. Especially in such matters, however, one ought not to schematize, and the error in such matters often lies in the fact that a schema is made. It is definitely so, for example, that people with different soul and bodily constitutions show different signs in the iris from other people. A prerequisite, then, for a meaningful application of this technique would be such an intimate knowledge of what happens in the human organism that whoever had this knowledge actually would no longer need to look into a single organ. To be dependent on an intellectual adherence to certain rules and schemas is of little, if any, value.

"What relation do diseases have to the course of world history, especially those that have arisen more recently?"

A whole chapter of cultural history! Well, I will only comment on the following: in order to study history one must have a sense for what can be called symptomatology; that is, much of what is taken today as history can be considered only a symptom for what lies much deeper, that is, the spiritual stream carrying these symptoms. Thus what resides in the depths of the development of humanity is also symptomatic or comes to expression in this or that disease of an era. It is interesting to study the relationships between what works in the depths of the evolution of humanity and what takes its course in the symptoms of this or that disease. The existence of certain diseases may point to impulses in historical development that could elude a symptomatology not applying such a method.

This question, however, could lead to something else, which is "˜also not unessential when one pursues the history of humanity. Diseases, regardless of whether they occur in a single person or in a society by way of an epidemic, are in many instances also reactions to other excesses. From the point of view of public health, these other excesses may be taken as much less serious; from a moral or spiritual point of view, however, they are nevertheless considered to be very serious. But you must not apply what I just said to the question of healing or hygiene, for that would be very wrong. Diseases must be healed. In hygiene, it is important to be active in furthering or helping the human being. One may not say, "I will first see whether it may be your karma to have this illness. If so, I must let you have this illness; if not, then I can cure it." This way of looking at the issue is not valid if one is concerned with healing. What may not be valid regarding our intervention in the case of helping another human being, however, may nevertheless be objectively valid in the world outside. And there it must be said that much of what develops as a disposition to moral excesses engraves itself so deeply into the organization of the human being that reactions then appear in certain diseases and that the disease is the suppression of a moral excess.

In the individual person it is not of much significance to pursue these things, because the individual ought to be allowed to go through his individual destiny, and one really ought not to meddle in this, just as one doesn't meddle with the personal mail of other persons, unless, from the viewpoint that is so close at hand, it is "opened by government decree in times of war." Just as little as one ought to snoop into other people's personal mail, so little ought one to meddle with another person's individual karma. With the history of the world it is a different matter, however; there one ought to be concerned, because there the individual human being plays, you could say, only a statistical role. One must always point out that statistics are very helpful in letting life insurance companies know what the mortality rate is according to which they can determine their rates. These things are quite accurate. The calculations are correct and everything is very scientific. But one needn't simply die at the moment that has been specified by statistics; one also needn't live as long as has been calculated. Other issues arise when the individual human being comes into consideration. If groups of human beings, or even the whole historical development, come into consideration, however, it can be very helpful not to be superstitious but rather to be very scientific. If one studies to what extent symptoms of an illness occur that are corrective for other excesses, then one can, in fact, already look for certain repercussions of the illness or at least a calling forth by the illness of something that would have occurred in a completely different form if the disease had not arisen.

These are only a few indications of how something might be considered that is touched on by this question.

Now, however, our time has progressed so far that we will follow the others who have already left us.

• 1. In German, these illnesses are called Seelen-oder Geisteskrankheiten, diseases of the soul or spirit as opposed to diseases of the body. As Steiner is speaking here of the role of soul and spirit in bodily phenomena, it may be helpful to keep in mind the thought of soul-spiritual illnesses, though in the translation we have chosen the more commonly used English equivalents, psychological and mental illnesses.
• 2. Rudolf Steiner is referring here to a number of lectures given by various scientists during the medical course at the Goetheanum in Dornach.
• 3. Karl Marx (1818-1883); Franz Oppenheimer (1864-1944), an economist.
• 4. Rudolf Steiner, Spiritual Science and Medicine, 20 lectures given in Dornach, 1920, Rudolf Steiner Press, London, 1975.
• 5. Rudolf Steiner, The Study of Man, lectures given at the founding of the Waldorf School in Stuttgart, 1919; Rudolf Steiner Press, London, reprinted 1981.
• 6. See chapter five in Rudolf Steiner's An Outline of Occult Science, Anthroposophic Press, Spring Valley, N.Y., reprinted 1984.
• 7. Rudolf Steiner, The Threefold Social Order, Anthroposophic Press, Spring Valley, N.Y.
• 8. Moriz Benedikt (1835-1920), professor of neuropathology at the University of Vienna; founder of criminal anthropology.
• 9. Carl Georg Lange (1834-1900), professor of pathology in Copenhagen.
• 10. Rudolf Steiner, Von Seelenrätseln, 1917; excerpts of this are published in English under the title, The Case for Anthroposophy, Rudolf Steiner Press London, 1970.

When Goethe in ripe old age looked back upon the whole development of his life, he named three men who had had most influence upon him; Linné, the Naturalist, Spinoza, the Philosopher, and Shakespeare, the Poet.

To Linné he placed himself in opposition and through this reached his own point of view regarding the forms of plants and animals. From Spinoza he borrowed a mode of expression which enabled him to give out his ideas in a thoughtful language which was deeper and richer than that of Philosophers. In Shakespeare he found a spirit that fired his own poetic gift according to the inmost demands of his own being.

Anyone who can gain an insight to the soul strivings of Goethe as these comes to light in his Götz and Werther, where he reveals what he had gone through inwardly, can also see what took place in him when first he absorbed himself in Hamlet.

A vivid impression of this is to be obtained from his statement that Shakespeare is an interpreter of the World-spirit itself. Goethe holds that Shakespeare's genius openly reveals what the World-spirit hides within Nature's activities. His whole attitude towards Shakespeare is expressed in this statement.

It is only within the last five hundred years that what we to-day call Intellectualism has taken possession of our soul life. In the outlook which obtained earlier the soul of humanity was active in a different way. Understanding through thinking played a secondary part.

A battle against the overlordship of thought is visible in Goethe's soul. He still wishes to experience the world inwardly with different soul forces. But the mental life which surrounds him makes thought the basic element in the activities of the soul. So Goethe asks himself: Can one get into intimate touch with the surrounding world through thought? Such a possibility stirs him deeply and out of the overwhelming effect it has upon his soul, his Faust is born.

Goethe presents Faust to us as a teacher who had worked for ten years in a period which saw the advent of Intellectualism. As yet however Intellectualism had only a slight hold upon human nature, and in Philosophy, Jurisprudence, Medicine and Theology Faust does not as yet recognize it as a power which could carry conviction. He could, as a man of science, fall back upon the understanding of an earlier time when men realized spirit in Nature without the intermediary of intellectuality. He wishes to obtain direct vision of spirit. What Faust went through in vacillation between thinking experience and spiritual vision became for the young Goethe an inner battle.

Hamlet and other Shakespeare characters arose before Goethe's soul as he passed through this inner battle. Hamlet, who obtains his life's tasks through soul experiences which appear to him as expressive of relationship to the Spiritual world and who not only is thrown through doubt into inaction, but also through the power of his intellect. The deep abyss of the soul life is contained in Hamlet's words:

The native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought.

The youthful Goethe had often looked into this abyss and the glimpses he had caught of it intensified his sympathy with Hamlet's character.

By following the soul life of Goethe one is led from the Hamlet frame of mind to that of Faust and thus one can experience a bit of Goethe biography. It has not got to be proved through documents, neither need it be historic in the ordinary sense of the term. And yet it will reflect history better than what is usually so named.

One gains a picture of Faust as he lived in Goethe, as the teacher born out of a soul condition which oscillates between intellectualism and spiritual vision. During ten years Faust instructs his pupils under these conditions of wavering and one can well imagine to oneself Hamlet as one of these pupils; not the Hamlet of the Danish Saga but Shakespeare's Hamlet. For Goethe has represented in his Faust the teacher who could have Hamlet's 'native hue of resolution sickled o'er with the pale cast of thought.' In this light Shakespeare is the poet who has before his soul a character born out of the waning of consciousness of the Middle Ages and a New Age. Goethe is the one who wants to penetrate into that world outlook in which such characters develop fully.

In many Shakesperian characters Goethe could feel the reflection of this waning consciousness. This brought Shakespeare so near to him, for it was connected with his feelings for Art. Into this feeling for Art Spinoza's intellectualism penetrated and in Spinoza there existed already that mental activity which gives the thought life of modern humanity its soul bearings.

This 'Spinoza-ism' became tolerable to Goethe only when he came to stand before Italian works of art and could feel in these works as an artist that necessity of material creating which Spinoza could clothe only in pure thought.

Together with Herder he had adopted Spinoza's philosophy but only in Italy could he write from the aspect of art what was impossible through reading Spinoza; 'There is necessity, there is God.'

In order to feel on sure ground in Art, Goethe realized the need of an outlook upon the world, but this outlook would have to include Art as one of its most important elements and not relegate it to an inferior place. The creative spirit in the world revealed itself to Goethe in Nature but he found in Shakespeare the artist who revealed the Spirit in his own creation.

Goethe felt deeply how from his inmost being man must strive toward scientific knowledge, but he felt no less deeply how in this striving thought can wander away in error. He felt himself thus in danger with Spinoza. With Shakespeare he felt himself within the world of direct, artistic outlook. Goethe has himself spoken of his relation to Shakespeare in these words: 'A necessity which excludes more or less or entirely all freedom, as with the ancients, is no longer endurable to our way of thinking; Shakespeare came near this however, for he made necessity moral and thus joined the old world to the new world to our joyful astonishment.'

In his youth Goethe found the way to the 'New World' through Shakespeare because Shakespeare understood in his dramatic characters how to hold the balance between the impelling necessity of Nature's activities in man and his freedom in his thought life. The mutual relationship of these two elements must be experienced to-day if we do not want to loose hold of reality through our life of thought.

NOTE BY EDITOR: In the last lecture of the recent course on dramatic art¹ Dr. Steiner put before us an interesting point of view regarding the representation of Hamlet's character on the stage.

It has always been the custom to make of Hamlet a deeply philosophic character and in rendering the great soliloquies this side of his being has always been brought into evidence. But Dr. Steiner in a reading which he gave of the 'To be or not to be' soliloquy, showed a new aspect of the Hamlet mind which amplifies what he has written in the above article. Hamlet's mental penetration was not that of a New World philosopher. He did not 'reason out' as a modern thinker does. His thoughts oscillate as do his feelings and it is an error to attribute ponderous weight to the statements in this particular speech where the man himself was merely reflecting his passing, changing feelings and ideas. A modern thinker would never have spoken of death as 'the undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveller returns,' when but a few moments previously he had encountered and spoken with his dead Father.

Hamlet is typical of a transition state when the ascendancy of logical reasoning over inner feeling as a perceptive faculty was not established as it became in times nearer our own.

Dr. Steiner's rendering of the speech in what one might name a 'homely' way would probably offend such actors who only see the philosopher in Hamlet, but it is true to the historic aspect of human development in which Hamlet stands as a remarkably complete symbol.

The full significance and true aspect of Hamlet's outlook therefore can be grasped through Anthroposophy.

• 1. Speech and Drama, 19 lectures, Dornach, 5th to 23rd September, 1924.

Men could not reject a spiritual knowledge such as Anthroposophy, if they would but observe with the necessary attention the everyday phenomena of their own mental life. For these phenomena are eloquent witnesses to its reality.

On the one side, looking towards the inner life of man, there stands the fact of Memory. In memory, the experiences man has with the things of the world are preserved in the soul. On the other side is external Perception, behind which the thoughtful human soul feels irresistibly impelled to surmise and seek the inner secrets of the World of Nature.

In both directions, the conscious experience of man comes up against a 'nothingness.'

That which comes to us in memory is no longer there in the outer world. External perception can indeed stimulate, but it cannot bring forth the memories of past experience. On the other hand, careful observation will shew that for the experience of memory man is in every case dependent on his own bodily nature. We feel the memory rising up into consciousness from an exercise of our bodily nature. Science can indeed confirm this, but the feeling is sufficiently certain even without it. Science will shew for instance how memory is impaired by a diseased condition of certain parts of the body. These proofs however only corroborate what is directly evident to the naïve consciousness of man,—provided this be combined with accuracy of observation, which may very well be the case, for the naïve feeling need not be superficial; it is quite able to perceive deeply and truly. Thus in the act of memory man feels how there arise out of his body the forces which—as though with unseen spiritual hands take hold of facts which are no longer there in the world of external Nature. This experience is certainly more delicate, less tangible than others which we have through the immediate sense of life. Yet in its way its evidence is no less certain than that of pains or pleasures, for example, where we know with the sureness of a direct experience that their source is in the body.

On the other side we have our perceptions of the outer world. The life of the soul comes up against these perceptions; it cannot penetrate through them to that which they reveal. Impelled as it is to surmise that something is there revealing itself,—with its own activity it can go no further. Here it has reached its 'nothingness.' It cannot but surmise that it stands at the frontier of a world full of inner content, and yet, as it seeks to penetrate through the perceptions, it feels itself—spiritually—reaching out into the void.

We need only take one more step in this reflection. Behind Memory there begins the region where our own body—for the ordinary consciousness—vanishes into the unknown. Behind Perception, external Nature does the same. The relations of these two to the conscious inner experience of man are of the same kind. Now in Memory, with its foundation in a bodily activity, there arises Thought. For it is in thought that our memories of past experience come forth into conscious life. But thought is also kindled by outward Perception. That which manifests itself to us from without, is brought home to our inner consciousness in thought. Thus do the inner life of Man and the external world of Nature meet in the element of Thought.

And is not this a meeting as it were of old acquaintances? With what a happy sense of kinship does the soul contrive to understand new things perceived in the light of old experience remembered. The strongest sense of the reality of life comes to the soul when it can do this. The inner life of memory, the outer world in perception, meet not as strangers but as friends, who have something to tell one another upon a common subject.

Now the inner force which lives in memory can be intensified. By working upon his soul, man can strengthen the force that shews itself in memory. This possibility, and the way in which it can be realised, are subjects which have frequently been dealt with in these columns.

In doing this, man strikes and penetrates into his bodily nature more deeply than in the process of ordinary consciousness. With the deepened, strengthened force of memory he now perceives himself to be discovering those bodily activities which—as we saw—are always involved in the normal memory process. Indeed, lie not only approaches but penetrates right into them. Vet it is nothing of a bodily nature which comes before the soul at this point. We must picture it as follows. It is as though a shadow-figure, seen against a wall, were suddenly to come to life and step towards us. It is familiar to its because thought is familiar. For it stands there in the soul in just the same way as a thought in ordinary consciousness. But while a thought is not alive, this is alive. It is an 'Imagination.' Like a thought, it is justified by its relationship to a reality. It is therefore not in the least what we should ordinarily call a fancy or imagination. For we perceive at once that it relates to a reality,—in the very same way as the thought in which we hold a memory relates to a reality.

But there is this difference. The thought refers to a reality which was once there in our experience and is now no longer there. The Imagination—though in the very same manner—brings before our soul a reality which in the ordinary experience of life has never yet occurred to us. We have in fact entered a sphere of spiritual perception.

We have penetrated into our own body, yet it is not' Body' but 'Spirit' which we have struck here. It is indeed the Spirit which underlies the Body. We take hold of it 'with spiritual hands,' in the same way as we take hold of past experiences when they arise in ordinary memory.

And as in Thought external Nature meets the inner life of Man, so in Imagination the Spirit of Nature meets the human Spirit. The Spirit that is in Man, taken hold of in Imagination, goes out to meet the Spirit that is in Nature, and this Spirit too reveals itself now in Imagination. To the ordinary consciousness, Thought arises in the act of Memory and kindled by Perceptions from the outer world. To the strengthened consciousness, Imagination arises in the living inner experience of the soul itself, and kindled by a no less living experience of the outer world.

All this can be achieved in the full light of consciousness, where self-deception, suggestion, auto-suggestion and the like are quite impossible. Anyone who reaches true Imagination, lives in it as he lives in the most certain thought, the reference of which to a reality is unmistakable. When we have ceased to allow the slightest vagueness or unconscious element in our experience of the relation of our thoughts to reality, we shall certainly not fall into illusions in our experience of Imagination.

Herein lies the reason why the man who has attained true 'Imaginative Experiences' can speak of them to one who has not yet done so, while the latter can accept his statements with full conviction without giving himself up to any blind belief in authority. In effect, he who tells of Imaginations is only speaking of what is there in the listener himself—beneath the level of his memories—as his own reality of Spirit. In every-day life when a memory is recalled to a man, not by his own thought alone but by another man in conversation with him, he will say to himself, 'I certainly did have that experience in the course of my life, in my ordinary consciousness.' So when he listens to a statement of Imaginative Experience he can say, 'That is I myself in my spiritual perceptions, hitherto unknown to my ordinary consciousness. The man who tells of true Imaginations has only helped me to call up into consciousness what my consciousness had not yet called up for itself. My relation to him is of the same kind as my every-day relation to a man who might remind me of something that had slipped my memory.'

The World of the Spirit, in effect, is simply a thing 'forgotten' by the ordinary consciousness, which—strengthened and intensified—can rediscover it like a returning memory of past experience.