The Rudolf Steiner Archive

In my attempt to describe the career of the various societies, or associations, with which the Anthroposophical Society has a certain connection (though one, which at the present day is much misunderstood), I was led yesterday to allude to the phenomenal appearance of H. P. Blavatsky, and I tried to give some idea of the manner in which this personality entered into the spiritual life of the closing nineteenth century. I was obliged to go back to this particular personality, because, after all, the impulse which, at the end of the nineteenth century, led to the association of the people, whom I classed two days ago under the name ‘homeless souls’, came from those works of which Blavatsky was the author.

Although Anthroposophy, and its appearance on the scene, has in reality scarcely anything to do with the works of Blavatsky, still I do not merely want in these lectures to describe the historic aspect of the anthroposophic movement only; I want also to point out its associative features, as we have them before us in the anthroposophic movement to-day. And this makes it necessary to take such points to start from, as I have selected in the past two days.

Now of course, as regards everything that may be said about Blavatsky, it is very easy to-day, if one wants to discredit the kind of spiritual aspirations that manifested themselves, say, in the ‘Theosophical Society’,—it is easy enough to dismiss a phenomenon like Blavatsky by pointing out the very dubious character of what one finds in this individual's personal biography.

I might instance a great number of things. I only need allude to the notions, which arose amongst the society that had gathered round Blavatsky and her spiritual life, that certain information about the spiritual world had been made known through the transmission of physical letters, physical communications,—by means, that is, of writings on paper,—from a quarter not situated within the physical world. They used to call these documents ‘Masters' Letters’,—used to exhibit them, and declare them not to have been written in the ordinary way, or at least not conveyed in the ordinary way to the place from which they were then produced. It was therefore an affair which made a considerable stir, when subsequently, in the house in which these letters had been exhibited under H. P. Blavatsky's leadership, a whole conjuror's apparatus of sliding doors was disclosed, by means of which the letters could simply be pushed in, through these doors, in the ordinary physical way, but fraudulently, into the room where they then turned up as magic documents; and other things of the sort.

It is, of course, exceedingly easy for people in our times to point to such things, and to find in them plain evidence that such a personality as Blavatsky's can be simply settled with the words: ‘She was just a swindler’.—Well, as to this aspect of the phenomena that. played around Blavatsky, we shall still have several things to say. But, for the moment, there is another standpoint still that we may take, namely, of not troubling ourselves for the moment with all that went on on the external side of the affair.

Certainly, there are things in it which have raised objection. But let us just neglect these objections for a while; say that we don't trouble ourselves about all the things which went on on the exterior, and simply consider the written works themselves. And, if one does so, one will then come to the conclusion which I described to you recently,—to the conclusion, namely, that in Blavatsky's works one is largely dealing with a mass of chaotic, dilettante stuff, which has been scribbled down amongst the rest; but that, along with all this, there are things which unmistakably, when they come to be tested by proper methods, are in every way to be regarded as reproductions—by some means or other—of a very extensive knowledge of the spiritual world, or from the spiritual world. This is something which cannot be denied, despite any objections that may be raised.

And here then arises the exceedingly important and, as I think, crucial question for the inner history of civilized evolution: How and from what cause could it happen that, at the end of the nineteenth century, from—let us say so far—a questionable quarter, there could come actual tidings from a spiritual world? that there could come revelations of a spiritual world, which at the least, when taken as occasions for examining into the state of the facts, do show themselves, even to a spiritual observation of the objective and scientific kind, to be in every way deserving of most studious attention?—revelations which, about the fundamental laws of the world, the fundamental forces of the world, have more to tell, than everything which in modern times has been brought to light about the world's secrets, either by philosophy, or by any other of the different tendencies of world-conception. The question may well seem a crucial one,

And then, to face this, there is another problem again in civilized evolution, which must not be forgotten when speaking of the life-conditions of anything such as the Anthroposophical Society, or indeed in connection with any endeavours to find a way into the spiritual world. And this phenomenon of civilized evolution is: that the capacity for judgment, the power of conviction in any judgment, has altogether suffered very greatly in our age,—has gone back.

People allow themselves to be deceived in this respect by the great steps that have been made in progress. But if one considers these very steps of progress, and what the connection has been between these great steps forwards, that have been made in our day, and the course followed by its spiritual life, in so far as the individual human personalities have intervened as judgmatic persons in this spiritual life's course,—then one gets a background, so to speak, for observing with what capacity our age approaches phenomena of any kind, that appeal to the human powers of judgment.

There is really uncommonly much that might be mentioned. I will only pick out just a few instances. I would ask, for instance, those who have had anything to do with applied electricity, whether as professionals or amateurs,—I would ask them, what the so-called Ohm's Law means to-day for applied electricity? The answer would be, of course, that Ohm's Law forms one of the fundaments on which the whole system of applied electricity is built up.—When Ohm produced his first work, which was the basis for his later, so-called Ohm's Law, this work was rejected as ‘unusable’ by a distinguished learned faculty at one of the universities. Had things gone according to this learned faculty, there could be no applied electricity to-day.

Again, to take perhaps something more directly obvious to you:—you all know what the telephone means for us to-day in the whole of our civilized life. When Reis, who was outside the ring of official science, put on paper for the first time his idea of the telephone, and sent in his manuscript to one of the best-known periodicals of the day, the Poggendorff Annals, the work was returned as unusable.

So great, you see, is the power of conviction residing in people's judgment to-day,—and one might multiply such instances indefinitely. Great is the judgment of our times in its powers of conviction. One must simply look at these things with perfect objectivity.

One may pick out anything, lying, so to speak, on our top-peaks of civilization, and one will find everywhere the same kind of thing. Or, if one goes more into the hidden corners, well, there too very pretty examples may often be found, to illustrate the capacity of judgment in those quarters which have the leading voice to-day in all that may be termed the management of spiritual life.

And the public again, the mass of the public, who follow along the broad high-road of which I spoke two days ago,—they are entirely under the impress of all this, which is accepted as the recognized thing to-day.—Well, civilization is common to all countries; in no country is it better nor worse than in another.

Take an illustration such as this: Adalbert Stifter is a poet of some distinction. I don't, however, want now to go into his distinction as a poet, but to tell something out of his life. He passed,—extremely well indeed,—through the classical side of the secondary school, and then studied natural science, with the intention of qualifying as a secondary school teacher. But he was judged to be quite unsuit-able for a secondary school teacher. His talents were not judged adequate for a secondary school teacher. In the judgment of the authorities he was not talented enough to become a teacher at a secondary school.

Now strangely enough it happened, that a certain Baroness Muenk, who had nothing whatever to do with judging the qualifications of secondary school teachers, heard of the poet, Adalbert Stifter, made him read to her the poems which he had so far written, and to which he himself attached no great value, and downright compelled. him to publish them. They made at once a great sensation. And the authorities now said: We can have no better man to make school inspector for the whole country. And so it came about, that the very person, who but a little while before had been deemed incompetent to be himself a teacher, was now appointed chief superintendent over the whole of these teachers.

It would be extremely interesting, some time or other, to describe a series of such things, collected from all the various departments of spiritual life, beginning with a phenomenon like that of Julius Robert Mayer. The law connected with his name, that of the conservation of energy, is one, as you know, which I am obliged to contest in certain of its fields of application. Modern physics, however, does not contest it; it upholds it indeed in every particular, and is altogether built up on this law of the conservation of energy. Julius Robert Mayer, who to-day figures as a hero (you have heard me mention others before, such as Gregory Mendel, who had a similar fate),—Julius Robert Mayer, born at Heilbronn on the Neckar, was always at the bottom of his class; and at the University, to which he went on,—it was Tuebingen,—he one fine day was advised, on account of his performances, that it would be better for him to with-draw from the university. It is certainly no merit of the university's, that he came upon his discoveries; for, at the university, they wanted to turn him out, before ever he had a chance to take his degree and become a doctor.

Beginning with such things, down to the vast tragedy attending the name of that man, to whose immense desert it is owing, that puerperal fever,—which simply swept its people away until Semmelweiss appeared,—is to-day reduced to a minimum,—down to this whole vast tragedy of Semmelweiss, which finally resulted, as in the case of Julius Robert Mayer, in Semmelweiss' ending his days in a mad-house, despite the fact that he is one of mankind's greatest benefactors ... if one were to put all these things together, one would have an extremely important element in the history of civilization in recent times, and would thence be able to judge, how little power this externally progressive age had for hitting the facts, in its estimation of spiritual phenomena,—how little readiness there was, really, to enter into any signs that showed themselves on the horizon of its spiritual life.

Such things as these have to be taken into account, if one wishes to form a true picture of the antagonistic forces opposed to the intervention of any spiritual movement. And then one learns to know, what capacity there is for any sort of judgment in this, our present age, which is so specially proud of these powers of judgment that it does not possess.

Now it is really a remarkably symptomatic phenomenon, that what otherwise had only existed traditionally, hoarded up in all manner of secret societies, who had no intention whatever of letting it become public,—that all this hoarded store, or a great part of it, should suddenly appear openly published in the book of a woman, Blavatsky,—in a book bearing the title Isis Unveiled.

Naturally, it gave alarm to all the people who said to themselves: ‘This book contains a whole mass of things, that we have always kept under lock and key.’ And these societies, I may say, paid more heed to their locks and keys than our present Anthroposophical Society does.

In the Anthroposophical Society there most certainly was never any intention of keeping the contents of the cycles totally and absolutely secret; but what happened was, that, at a particular time, I found myself required to let those things, which otherwise I give by word of mouth, he made accessible to a larger circle. And since there was no time to go through the things and edit them, one simply let them be printed as ‘manuscript’ in the form they were in, which was not that in which one would otherwise have published them,—not, however, because one did not want to publish the material, but because one didn't want to publish the material in this form, and also because, after all, one wanted to see that these things should he read by people who have the preparatory training, for otherwise they are inevitably misunderstood.

But in spite of this, every one of the cycles is to be had to-day by anyone who requires it for antagonistic purposes. Those societies I am speaking of, who kept a certain spiritual treasure under lock and key, and put their people under oath to betray no word of it, they knew better how to take care of things. And they knew, that something very particular must be behind it, when a book suddenly appears, which this time really gave something of importance, such as I indicated. As for the things which have no importance, you need only go down a side-street in Paris to pick up basketfuls of the writings of the secret societies on sale; but the publication of these writings will occasion no alarm to the people who have kept the traditional knowledge locked up in their secret societies; for as a rule they are very valueless things that one finds published in this way.

Isis Unveiled, however, was not something valueless. This Isis Unveiled, indeed, delivered itself with a certain substantiality, that made the knowledge seem original which it imparted, and which had been so carefully preserved over from an ancient wisdom until now.

Well, as I said, those people, who were alarmed, could but think that there was something very particular behind it,—a betrayal from some quarter. I do not so much want now, in these lectures, to emphasize the inner side of the affair, which I have repeatedly discussed at one time or another in previous lectures from this or that aspect. I want more to-day to deal with the outer side of it, as the world judged it, which is of special importance for the history of the movement,—to describe how the world judged it, rather than what went on as facts behind the scenes.—This, then, the people could tell: namely, that somebody or other, who was initiated in these things, who had received traditional knowledge of them, must for some reason,—not necessarily a particularly good one—have given hints to Blavatsky. This, it was very easy to tell, without being wide of the truth, that somewhere or other, from some secret society, or group of societies, there had been a betrayal; and that then Blavatsky had been the means of making the thing public.

There would quite well, though, have been other ways of giving such things to the public, than by employing a lady of Blavatsky's kind as the means of publication.

There was, however, a reason, of which again I will only give the outer aspect, for employing this particular lady. And here I come to a chapter in our spiritual history, which is really a very curious one. At that time, when Blavatsky and her books came on the scene, there was but very little talk of what is in everybody's mouth to-day, namely, of Psycho-Analysis. But I can assure you, my dear friends, that the people, who had any powers of judgment,—that these people experienced in living truth, through this same phenomenon of Blavatsky, something, compared with which all that ever yet was written by any of the leading lights of Psycho-Analysis is really—as I said lately in another connection—a dilettanteism to the second degree.—For what does Psycho-Analysis propose to show?

In the point wherein Psycho-Analysis is in a sense right, it shows, that down below, at the bottom of the human being, there lives something, which,—whatever this ‘down below’ may be,—can be brought up to consciousness, and, when brought up, extends beyond what man has in his conscious-ness originally. So that one may say, if you like, that, hidden in the corporeal body, there is something which, when brought up into consciousness, looks like spirit. Through the corporeal body runs a rumble of spirit.—It is of course extremely elementary for the psycho-analyst in this way to fish up a few fragmentary leavings of life-experience from the bottom of the human being,—leavings, that is, remnants of life-realizations, which have not been lived through with quite sufficient intensity for the emotional requirements of the person in question,—which, as it were, have deposited themselves, form dregs in the man, and thereby bring him into a state of unstable, instead of stable equilibrium; and that then, what has thus collected during a man's life should be fished up, although it rumbles down below in unconsciousness, and when fished up into consciousness proves to be something spiritual, something which simply is not, so to speak, properly assimilated to the human being, and therefore rumbles in a disagreeable manner. When it becomes conscious, however, it can then be dispelled by the proper reaction, and so the man gets rid of the disagreeable rumbling.

It is interesting, though, what a point this psycho-analytic, dilettante method of investigation has reached to-day. With Jung, particularly, it is extremely interesting. Jung has found out, that down below,—the ‘down below’ can't, of course, be very exactly determined, but somewhere down below (its whole being is after all very indeterminate!),—that somewhere then, man has within his being everything in the nature of undigested experience that he may have lived through since his birth; that there, down below, within his human being, he has all sorts of things, that go back to his early forefathers, that may take us back indeed all the way through the life-experiences of the various races, and further back still. So that it seems to the psycho-specialists to-day by no means improbable, for instance, that some experience which they met with, like the OEdipus problem say, in Greece, left an impression on the people; and that then it was transmitted by heredity, on and on. And to-day some poor devil comes to the psycho-analyst's clinic, and he psycho-analyses him, and gets up something that is seated so deep down in the patient, that it doesn't come out of his own, present life, but from his father and forefather and fore-forefather, and so on, away back to the time of the ancient Greeks who lived in the days of the OEdipus problem. And so it has run down through the whole blood-stream, and can be psycho-analysed out again to-day. There are the OEdipus sensations, rumbling about in the man, and can be psycho-analyzed out of him. And then they think that they will come on really very interesting trains of connection, and on something that will lead back far into the races, if they psycho-analyse it out.

Only,—you see,—these are altogether dilettante methods of investigating. For you only need a little acquaintance with Anthroposophy to know, that it is possible to bring up a very great many things out of the under depths of man's life: his pre-natal life to begin with, his pre-earthly life, what the man went through before he came down into the physical world; that one can bring up out of him what he went through in previous earth-lives. There one comes out of dilettanteism and into actual reality!

And there, too, one comes to recognize, that in Man the whole secret of the Universe is contained, involved, rolled up together, as it were, in him. It was the view, after all, of ancient times as well, that the secret of the Universe is un-rolled, when Man brings up from within him all that lies hid in his own inner depths. That was why they called Man a Microcosm, not for the sake of a fine phrase, such as people are so fond of to-day, but because it was a fact of actual experience, that from the bottom depths of Man every conceivable thing can be fetched up whatsoever, that lies spread as a secret through the width and breadth of the Cosmos.

It is in reality the merest elementary dilettanteism, which one finds to-day as psycho-analysis. For, firstly, it is psychologic dilettanteism,—they don't know, that, when you get to a certain depth, physical and spiritual life are one. They merely regard the soul-life swimming on the top, and apply abstract notions to this surface soul-life; they never get down to those lower depths, where the soul-life lives creative, weaving, pulsing in blood and in breathing, where it is one, in fact, with the so-called material functions. They study the soul's life in a dilettante way. And again, they study the physical life in a dilettante way, inasmuch as they study it merely in its external appearance to the senses, and don't know that everywhere, in all sense-life, and above all in the human organism, there is hidden spirit.

And when two dilettanteisms are so interwoven, that the one is used to throw light on the other, as is done in psycho-analysis, then the dilettanteisms do not merely add, but they multiply together, and one gets dilettanteism squared.

Well, what displays itself in the form of this squared dilettanteism, was, in a way, to be seen unmistakably in the psychologic problem of Blavatsky. From some quarter or other there may have been something betrayed, which gave an incentment; and this incentment worked practically in the same way as though an invisible psycho-analyst—but a wise one this time!—had fetched up out of Blavatsky, by means, namely, of a sudden jerk, a whole mass of knowledge; which this time came from the actual person herself, and not from old writings that had been handed down by tradition from olden times. Something had here been brought to light out of the actual human being itself, by what I might call the invisible psycho-analyst. For, whether there was any traitor in the question, he, at any rate, was not the psycho-analyst; he only gave the jerk. The circumstances, however, themselves gave the jerk.—And what were the circumstances?

Look back at the evolution of the ages, to about the fifteenth century, and you will find, my dear friends, that it still, indeed frequently, happened, if people were stirred and roused by something or other (it merely needed to be some external phenomenon, that specially struck them), that then out of their own inner being there rose up before them some revelation of world-secrets. Later on, this has become something mystical and legendary; and the story told by Jacob Boehme, of how he had a marvellous revelation from gazing at a pewter plate, is thought very wonderful, simply because people do not know how things were in earlier times, and that down even into the fifteenth century it was still possible, through a comparatively, to all appearance trifling occasion, to call forth out of the inner man stupendous revelations of world-secrets, which the man then saw in a vision.

But ever more and more has the possibility decreased for men to have inner revelations through incentments of such a kind. This comes, you see, from the increasing ascendancy of intellectualism. Intellectualism, is of course, involved with a definite form of development in the brain; the brain becomes ... one cannot, of course, prove it physiologically in externals, by anatomic means, but one can prove it nevertheless spiritually ... the brain becomes in a way calcified, stiver. And, in matter of fact, the brains of civilized mankind have grown considerably stiver since the fifteenth century. And this stiff brain does not allow man's inner revelations to come to the surface in his consciousness. And now I must say something exceedingly paradoxical, but which nevertheless is true. This greater stiffness of brain showed itself, as a fact, mostly in male humanity;—which I do not say as a special ground of rejoicing for any particular female brain, for towards the last half of the nineteenth century the women's brains too began to be stiff enough;—still, the vantage in respect of intellectuality and stiffness of brain lay with the men. And with this is connected the decrease in judgment.

Now this was the very time, when the practice of keeping secret the old knowledge was still very largely maintained. And the case then turned out to be, that the men were not much affected by this knowledge; for they learnt it by memory, in grades, and it did not much affect them;—besides, they kept it under lock and key. Supposing, how-ever, there were someone, who in some way wanted to set this old knowledge working once more with peculiar activity, then he might quite well make the peculiar experiment of administering this old knowledge (which he himself need not perhaps even understand), just in a small dose maybe, to a woman,—and to one moreover, whose brain was very specially prepared; for the Blavatsky brain was, after all, somewhat different from other woman-brains of the nineteenth century. And then it might be, that,—just from the contrast of it with everything else that was there as education in these woman-brains,—what was otherwise old, dried-up knowledge might catch fire and so,—just as the psycho-analyst gives some particular lead, that stirs up the whole human being,—so it might stir up the peculiar personality of Blavatsky. And. then, through this stir, she out of her-self discovered what had been altogether forgotten by the whole of mankind, except those who were in secret societies, and by the others, who were in secret societies, had been kept carefully under lock and key,—to a great extent indeed not even understood. In this way it could all come out, as though, one might say, through a cultural vent-hole.

But at the same time there was no sort of foundation there, for the things to have been worked up in a reasonable form. For Madame Blavatsky was certainly anything but a logical reasoner. In logic she was exceedingly weak; and whilst in actual fact she could produce out of her total human being revelations of world-secrets, she was by no means also adequate to describing these things in a form for which one could be answerable to the scientific conscience, say, of the modern age.

And now, consider for a moment. Seeing the scant measure of judgment that was brought to hear upon spiritual phenomena, what possibility was there for a thing such as this,—which only showed itself again one might say, twenty years later, in a quite primitive, dilettante fashion at most, in psycho-analysis, and then only in a very tiny field,—how was it possible for a thing such as this, that could grow to a living experience of gigantic size and grandeur, such as psycho-analysis will only one day be able to rise to, when it has been purified, clarified, when it is placed on a reasonable basis and conducted really scientifically, when people no longer psycho-analyse out of the blood, that comes from men who lived in the days of the OEdipus problem and has run through the veins down into our present generation, but when they really understand how the web of the world is woven ... yes, indeed, how could such a living experience, which, in the face of to-day's degenerate psycho-analysing, displays what I might call its grand, gigantic counterpart, freed of all its caricature,—how, at a time when the capacity for judgment was what I have described to you, how could this thing hope, in any wide circle of people, to meet with an adequate measure of under-standing?

In this respect, one could really make many experiences as regards the comprehension to be met with in our days, when one made the least attempt to appeal to a somewhat larger measure of judgment.

To give an instance as illustration. These illustrations are necessary, and you will see as the lectures go on, how necessary it is that I should enter into these seemingly quite personal matters. I should like to tell you an example of how hard it is in these modern times to make oneself at all understandable, directly there is some point about which one desires to appeal to a somewhat larger measured, larger hearted judgment.

There was a time, about the turn of the century, in Berlin, where I was then living, when Giordano Bruno Associations used to be founded, and amongst others was a ‘Giordano Bruno League’. There were other Giordano Bruno Associations, but this, that was founded, was a ‘Giordano Bruno League’. It had in it truly admirable people, according to the fashion and notions of the time,—people really with a profound interest in every sort of thing in which one could possibly take an interest in those days, and round which one could centre the whole range of one's thoughts and feelings and will. Indeed, in the abstract fashion which is usual in modern times, there was even reference made in this Giordano Bruno League to the Spirit. A notable personage in this Giordano Bruno League prefaced its foundation with an introductory lecture on, ‘Matter is never without Spirit.’ But it was all so hopeless! For this ‘Spirit’, and all that went on there, was at bottom a pure abstraction, nothing which could ever get near any actual reality in the world. The whole way of thinking was terribly abstract!—What in particular seemed to me very irritating, was the way in which the people every moment, on every possible occasion, dragged in the word monoism: One must worship the one-and-only reasonable and man-befitting Monoism; and Dualism is a thing of the past. And then came always a reference to the way in which in these modern times we had emancipated ourselves from the Dualism of the Middle Ages.

These, you see, were things which at the time I found uncommonly irritating. I found them irritating for the reason ... in the first place, all this gassing about monoism, and dilettante rejection of any dualism ... and then I found it irritating to talk about the Spirit in this general, pantheistic way,—that the Spirit is ... well, that there is, after all Spirit too everywhere,—until nothing was left of Spirit but the word. I found all this considerably irritating.

As a matter of fact, after the delivery of the very first lecture on ‘Matter never without Spirit’, I came to words with the man who had delivered the lecture; which brought me already at the time into very bad odour. But this whole monistic business went on ever further, and grew more and more irritating,—interesting, but irritating,—until I decided once for all to lay hold of the people at a salient point, and so at least, as I hoped, shake up their powers of judgment a little. And after a whole series of lectures, through which the tirades had gone on about the darkness of the Middle Ages and the horrible dualism of the Scholastics, I determined,—it was just at the time, in which people now declare, at that very time, that I was a rabid Haeckelite!—I determined for once to do something which should give the people's judgment a little shaking-up. And so I held a lecture on Thomas Aquinas, in which—to put now into a couple of sentences what I then expounded at length—I said somewhat as follows: There was absolutely xiii justification,—I said,—as regards the spiritual life of the past and its ideas, for talking of the darkness of the Middle Ages and in particular of the Dualism of Thomas Aquinas and the Scholastics; for that, if Monoism was the order of the day, I would undertake to show that Thomas Aquinas was a thorough monoist. Only then one must not give the name of Monoism only to what the present age understands by it, as materialistic Monoism; but one must give the name of Monoist to everyone, who looks on the Universal Principle as residing in a Monon, in a Unity. And that—I said—Thomas Aquinas most certainly did; for he obviously saw in the Unity of the Godhead the Monon underlying everything that exists as creation in the universe. Here—said I you have a basis of the purest Monoism. Only that Aquinas according to the method of those times, drew this distinction: that the one half could be comprehended by ordinary human knowledge, through the senses and the understanding,—the other half by means of another kind. of knowledge, which in those days was called Belief. But what the Scholastics still understood by Belief, is not understood by mankind to-day at all. And so one must be clear, I said, that Thomas Aquinas wanted to approach the Universe on its one side by this investigation and knowledge of the understanding but that, on its other side, he wanted to supplement and complete this investigated knowledge of the understanding by the displayed truths of revelation. And it was precisely by this means that he sought to penetrate to the Monon of the Universe. He only sought to proceed by two roads. And it was all the worse for the present age, I said, that this present age had. not sufficiently large-hearted ideas to look round about it a little in history.

In short, I wanted to assist the dried-up brains to a little moisture. Rut it was all in vain; for the effect was a most extraordinarily curious one. The people could make nothing at all of the matter to begin with. They were all thorough-going evangelical protestants, and thought: here was an attempt to smuggle in Catholicism. It's a defence of Catholicism,—they thought,—with its horrible Dualism! It is really dreadful!—they said:—Here are we, taking every possible pains to deal Catholicism its death-blow; and now comes a member of this very Giordano Bruno League, and takes Catholicism into defence!

Really, the people didn't know at the time, whether I had not gone mad in the night, when I gave this lecture. They could make nothing at all of the affair. And. they were really people of the most enlightened brains, at that time. In fact, there was only one, really, who afterwards came forward as a sort of apologist. It was the poet Wolfgang Kirchbach. He was the only one, who then devised a formula, under which the lecture could enjoy civic rights in the Giordano Bruno League. And this was the formula he devised: He said: What Steiner wanted, was not by any means to smuggle in Catholicism; but he wanted to show, that in that ancient scholastic wisdom of Catholicism there still lay something much weightier, than all that we have ourselves to-day in our superficial ideas. That was what he wanted to show. He wanted to show us, that the reason why Catholicism is such a powerful enemy, is because we are such weak opponents, that we must furnish ourselves with stronger weapons. That was what his lecture was intended to show.

And this was the only formula, under which the lecture then, by one-third, by a minority, so far managed to obtain civic rights, that I was at any rate not excluded from the Giordano Bruno League. But with the majority I passed for a man, who had had his brain turned by Catholicism.

Well, you see, this is just an episode out of the same period, at which I am now said. to have been a rabid disciple of Haeckel. Through such things, however, one gained practical experience as to the capacity of judgment, namely as to the largeness of judgment, with which anything was welcomed, which was not bent in the first place upon theoretic formulas, but was bent on actually pursuing the road to the spirit, on actually getting into the spiritual world.

For, getting into the spiritual world really does not depend on what particular theory one has about Spirit or Matter, but on whether one is in a position to bring about an actual living experience of the spiritual world. As I have often pointed out before, the Spiritualists most certainly believe that all their proceedings make for the spirit; but their theories all the same are so empty of spirit!—they certainly do not lead men spiritwards. One may be a materialist even, and yet inspired with a great deal of spirit; it is real spirit, too, even though it be spirit mistaken in error. One need not of course set up self-mistaken spirit as something very valuable; but self-mistaken spirit, spirit which cheats itself by taking Matter to be the one and only reality, can at any rate be much richer in spirit, than that spiritual poverty which seeks the spirit after a material fashion, because it can find no spirit whatever within itself.

In looking back, then, to its first beginnings, which must be rightly grasped in order to understand the whole meaning and life-conditions of the movement, one must know, in the lit st place, in what an exceedingly problematic manner the spiritual world's revelations made their entrance at first—if I may use the expression—into the earth-world, in the last third of the nineteenth century, and how little people's judgment in general was ripe for the reception of these spiritual revelations,—and then, above all, how strong the determination was in certain definite circles, that nothing whatever which really leads to the spirit should be allowed to get out amongst the people. Most undoubtedly, there were a large number of by no means negligible persons, on whom the apparition of Blavatsky could not fail to act with rousing effect.

And that is what it did do at first. The attitude of the people who still preserved some judgment, was, that they said to themselves: This, after all, is something that speaks for itself: It is strange that it should come into the world just in the way it has now; but it is a thing that speaks for itself. One need only apply sound ordinary understanding to it, and it speaks for itself.

There were, however, many people, as I said, whose interest it was, that just this kind of arousing influence should on no account be allowed to come into the world.

And now the thing was there; there, in a person such as Blavatsky, who in a certain sense again was quite naive and helpless in the face of her own internal revelation. This can be seen from the very style of her writings.—The thing was there, then: and this was how she herself stood towards it: naive and helpless in a sort of way, and at the mercy of much that afterwards took place in her surroundings. For do you think it was especially difficult,—especially with H. P. Blavatsky it was not very difficult,—for people, whose desire it now was, so to manipulate the world that it should be proof against every sort of spirituality,—for these people to get at Blavatsky and form her surroundings. Just because she was so naive and helpless before her own internal revelations, she was in a way credulous. In the affair of the sliding-doors, for instance, through which were shoved letters ostensibly from the Masters, but which some person outside—whether B ... or another—had written and shoved in, it is by no means a necessary assumption that Blavatsky had said in the first instance to B ... : You shove them in!—but rather, she was again, in a way, native, and believed, herself, in letters of the kind. The same person, who shoved them in, deceived Blavatsky, It was then of course very easy to say before the world: The woman is a swindler. But don't you see, my dear friends, Blavatsky herself might very well be swindled. For there was a certain capacity in her for quite uncommon credulity, as a consequence just of this peculiar, let me say, non-hardness of her brain. The problem therefore is altogether an extremely complicated one; and really demands,—as everything genuinely spiritual does, which comes into the world to-day,—really calls for power of judgment, for a certain soundness of human understanding.—It is not exactly sound human understanding, when people first judge Adalbert Stifter not even competent to be a teacher, and then afterwards ... in this case again it was a woman,—probably one again with a softer brain than those committee-men all had in the government offices, or the school-boards, ... afterwards, when a hint came from this quarter, they then declared him qualified to inspect all the very people to whose ranks he might not even belong.

To perceive the truth in such matters does, you see, amongst other things, require sound human understanding. About this sound human understanding, however, there are peculiar notions. Last year, when I was holding a fairly big course of lectures in Germany, I made frequent use of the expression ‘sound human understanding’, and said, that everything which Anthroposophy has to say from the spiritual world can be tested by sound human understanding. One of the critics, and by no means the worst of them, caught this up, and made the following criticism. He said, almost word for word: To talk of sound human understanding was, after all, bait for gudgeons; for everybody to-day, who has had any sort of scientific training, knows very well, that the human understanding, when it is sound, knows next to nothing; and when it fancies that it knows something, then it is not sound.—This was the sub-stance of a critical judgment, written with no lack of esprit.

Put more into general words, then, this means, that anyone, who to-day is as clever as he should be, after all the steps that have been made in human progress, is aware that one can know nothing: if he thinks that he knows anything, he is mad.—So far have we come already in our reception of the gifts of the spirit.

And now that I have given you some instances, before the anthroposophic movement began, of the capacity for apprehending a spiritual manifestation, and have given you now the judgment of an at any rate standard critic only a year ago, you have a tolerable picture of how this disposition of the age has pursued the whole movement. For, after all, seeing the general atmosphere of the age, and especially that a personage so hard to understand as Blavatsky was there in addition, to point to as an illustration,—there could but proceed from this atmosphere of the age the one judgment, which is simply the same as is repeated to-day in all manner of variations,—only that one person says it in one way, another in another: Everyone to-day, who is clever, who has sound human understanding, says, Ignorabimus. Everyone, who doesn't say Ignorabimus, is either mad, or a swindler.

One must not look on this as simply proceeding from ill-will. In order to be able to take one's place rightly in the age, in order to perceive a few of the necessary life-conditions of the anthroposophic movement, or e must not see in all this merely the ill-will of private individuals, but one must recognize it as something that belongs to the colour of the times in all countries, amongst the whole of modern mankind, and that must be recognized for what it is.

Then, it is true, in the whole stand which one takes up,—and which one must take up vigorously and boldly!—one will then also be able to mingle what must be there besides, when speaking about the age from the anthroposophic standpoint,—what, after all, must be present in all refutation, however sharp—sharp in soul,—of our opponents: and that is, compassion. One must, nevertheless, have com-passion, because the judgment of the age is clouded.

How things now went with the anthroposophic movement, and were bound to go, circumstances being as they are,—of this we will speak more tomorrow.

[ 1 ] In accordance with what has been said in the preceding chapters, the spiritual guidance of the course of human evolution may be sought for amongst those beings who went through their stage of humanity during the previous embodiment of the Earth-planet, during the ancient Moon period. This guidance stood contrasted with another which checked, and yet in a certain sense furthered it, and which was carried out by those beings who had not completed their own evolution during the Moon-period. Reference is made in both these cases to those guiding beings immediately above man; to those who lead humanity forward, and to those who provoke resistance, thereby strengthening and confirming the forces arising through the progressive beings, by bestowing on them balance and individuality. In Christian Esotericism, these two classes of superhuman beings are called Angels (Angeloi). Above these beings in ascending order, stand those of the higher hierarchies, the Archangels, the Archai, and so forth, who likewise take part in the guidance of humanity.

Within the ranks of these different beings there are all possible gradations in regard to perfection. At the beginning of the present Earth-evolution, some in the category of the Angels stand high, while others are less developed. The former have progressed far beyond the minimum of their Moon-development. Between these and those who had just reached this minimum when the Moon-evolution had come to an end, and the Earth-evolution had begun, are all possible gradations. Conformably with this gradation of rank, the beings in question entered during the Earth-period upon the leadership of human evolution. Thus the evolution of the Egyptian civilization was effected under the guidance of beings who had become more perfected on the Moon than those who were the leaders of the Graeco-Roman period, and these again were more perfect than those who have the leadership at the present time. In the Egyptian as also in the Greek Period, those who later on assumed the direction, were meanwhile developing, and making themselves ready to guide the civilization of later periods.

[ 2 ] Since the time of the great Atlantean catastrophe, seven consecutive epochs of civilization have to be differentiated; the first is the ancient Indian epoch, and it is followed by the ancient Persian.¹ The third is the Egypto-Chaldæic, the fourth is the Graeco-Roman, and the fifth is our own, which, since about the twelfth century, has been gradually developing and in which we are still living. And since the separate periods overlap, we see already in our times those early events preparing which will lead over into the sixth post-Atlantean epoch. And a seventh epoch will succeed the sixth in due course. On closer observation we find the following evidence with regard to the guidance of mankind. It was during the third epoch of civilization, the Egypto-Chaldæic, that the Angels (or lower dhyanic beings according to Oriental mysticism) were to some extent independent leaders of humanity. They were not so during the ancient Persian civilization. For then they were subject to a higher direction in a much greater degree than in the Egyptian times, and had to regulate everything in conformity with the impulses of the hierarchies immediately above them. In this way everything was under the immediate guidance of the Angels, who themselves submitted to the rulership of the Archangels. And in the Indian epoch when post-Atlantean life had reached such a height in spiritual matters as has never been attained since—a natural height under the direction of great human teachers—the Archangels themselves were subject in a similar sense to the guidance of the Archai or Primal Powers. [ 3 ] Thus if we trace the evolution of humanity from the Indian epoch through the ancient Persian and Egypto-Chaldæic civilizations, we may say that certain beings of the higher hierarchies withdrew ever more and more from the direct guidance of humanity. In the fourth post-Atlantean period, the Graeco-Roman, man bad become quite independent. The guiding superhuman beings were certainly intervening to develop humanity, but only in such a way that the reins were tightened as little as possible, and also that the spiritual leaders themselves might profit as much through the deeds of men as men profited through them. Hence arose that peculiar and quite “human” civilization in the Graeco-Roman time in which man was made to rely entirely on himself. For all the distinctive characteristics of art and political life in Greek and Roman times are traceable to the fact that man had to live out his own life in his own way.

[ 4 ] So, when we look back to the most ancient times of civilization, we find evolution guided by beings who, in earlier planetary conditions, had accomplished their development as far as the human stage. But the fourth post-Atlantean period of civilization was intended as a time when man should be put to the test as much as possible. Consequently the whole spiritual guidance of humanity had to be reorganized. We are now living in the fifth post-Atlantean period of civilization. The leading beings of this period belong to the same hierarchy as that which ruled the ancient Egyptians and Chaldæans. In fact those beings who then took the lead, have again begun to be active in our times. As has been stated certain of these beings remained behind during the Egypto-Chaldæic civilization, and are to be found manifest in the materialistic feelings and perceptions of our own period.

[ 5 ] Now the progress made by the two classes of Angels or lower dhyanic beings—the class which leads mankind forward and that which obstructs—consisted in their being able to be leaders among the Egyptians and Chaldæans. They achieved this by means of those qualities which they had acquired in primordial times, and which they had further developed by their work as leaders. The progressive angels are intervening to guide the fifth post-Atlantean civilization by means of capacities which they themselves had won during the third or Egypto-Chaldæic civilization. Through the progress they make they are acquiring for themselves quite special capabilities, for they are qualifying themselves to receive the influx of forces emanating from the most important Being in the whole evolution of the Earth.The power of the Christ is working in them; for that power works not only on the physical world through Jesus of Nazareth, but also in the spiritual worlds upon the super-human beings. The Christ exists not only for the earth but also for these beings. The beings who guided the old Egypto-Chaldæic civilization were not under the direction of the Christ. It is only since that period that they have placed themselves under His guidance. Their progress consists in their following Him in the higher worlds, so that they may guide our fifth post-Atlantean period of civilization in accordance with His influence. Those beings who operate as obstructive powers remain behind because they failed to put themselves under the leadership of the Christ. Thus they continue to work independently of Him. More and more in human evolution will become evident a materialistic movement under the guidance of these backward Egypto-Chaldæic spirits. This movement will have a materialistic character and the greater part of contemporary science is under its influence. There are, for example, people today who say that our earth in its final essence consists of atoms. Who instills this thought into men's minds? It is the super-human angel beings who had remained behind during the Egypto-Chaldæic period. But, side by side with this movement, there is another making itself felt, the one which has as its goal the eventual finding of the Christ-principle by man in all that he does.

[ 6 ] Now what will those beings teach who attained their goal in the old Egypto-Chaldæic sphere of civilization, and who then learned to know the Christ? They will be able to instill into man other thoughts than those that assert that there are only material atoms; they will be able to teach that, even to the minutest particle of the world, the substance is permeated with the Spirit of the Christ. And, strange as it may seem, there will be in the future chemists and physicists who will not teach chemistry and physics as they are now taught under the influence of the backward Egypto-Chaldæic spirits; but who will teach that ‘matter is built up in the way in which the Christ gradually ordained it,’ The Christ will be found working even in the very laws of chemistry and physics. It is a spiritual chemistry and spiritual physics that will come in the future. Today such a statement may appear to many people as fanciful or worse. But often the sense of the future seems folly to the past. [ 7 ] The factors which enter into the evolution of human civilization are there for the careful observer. But be will know quite well the objections which may, with apparent justice, be urged against such alleged folly from the modern scientific or philosophic point of view.

[ 8 ] From such hypotheses we are able to understand the advantage the guiding super-human beings have over man. Humanity learned to know Christ in the fourth civilization period of the post-Atlantean times, the. Graeco-Roman epoch, for it was in the course of this civilization that the Christ-event found its place in evolution, and it was then that man learned to know the Christ. The guiding super-human beings, however, learned to know Him during the Egypto-Chaldæic times, and worked themselves up to Him. Then during the Graeco-Roman civilization they had to leave man to his own fate in order that, later on, they might re-enter the sphere of human evolution. And if nowadays anthroposophy is cultivated, this constitutes recognition of the fact that the super-human beings who formerly guided humanity are now continuing their task as leaders in such a way as to be themselves under the direct guidance of the Christ. Thus it is with other beings also.

[ 9 ] In the ancient Persian epoch, the leadership of humanity was apportioned to the Archangels. They put themselves under the direction of the Christ earlier than did the beings in the rank next below them. Of Zarathustra it can be said that pointing to the sun, he spoke to his followers and his people in some such words as these: “In the sun there lives the great Spirit Ahura Mazdao, who will one day come down to the earth.” For the beings out of the region of the Archangels who guided Zarathustra, pointed to the great sun-leader who had not at that time come down upon the earth but had only begun his journey thither in order, later on, to enter directly into the earth evolution. And the guiding beings who directed the great teachers of the Indians, also pointed out to these the Christ of the future; for it is a mistake to think that these teachers had no foreknowledge of the Christ. They said that He was “beyond their sphere” and that they “could not attain” unto Him.

[ 10 ] As now in our fifth period of civilization, it is the Angels who bring down the Christ into our spiritual evolution, so the sixth period of civilization will be directed by beings belonging to the ranks of the Archangels who guided the ancient Persian civilization. And the spirits of Personality—the Primal Powers—or Archai—who guided humanity during the ancient Indian epoch will have to guide humanity in the seventh period of civilization. In the Graeco-Roman period the Christ descended from the heights of the spirit-world and revealed Himself in the physical body of Jesus of Nazareth. He then came down as far as the physical world. It will be possible to find Him in the world immediately above ours when humanity shall have become sufficiently ripe. It will not be possible in the future to find Him in the physical world, but only in the world immediately above, for human beings will not always remain the same. Having become more mature, they will then find the Christ in the spiritual world, as Paul found Him in his experience before Damascus, which event prophetically foreshadowed the future means of finding the Christ. And since in our times the same great teachers who have already guided mankind through the Egyptian civilization are working, so also in the twentieth century it will be these same teachers who will lead men out to behold the Christ as Paul beheld Him. They will show mankind how the Christ not only works upon the earth, but how He spiritualizes the whole solar system. And those who will be the reincarnated holy teachers of India in the seventh period of civilization will proclaim the Spirit Who was foreshadowed by the undivided Brahma. To such teaching, however, the right content and meaning can only be given through the Christ, as the great, the immense Spirit, of Whom these teachers formerly said He hovered above their sphere. Thus will humanity be led upwards from stage to stage into the spiritual world.

[ 11 ] To speak in this way about the Christ—how He is the leader of the higher hierarchies also in the successive worlds, is to teach the science which, under the sign of the Rose Cross, has endured in our civilization since the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. If from this aspect we observe more closely the Being Who lived in Palestine, and Who consummated the Mystery of Golgotha, we shall find the following: [ 12 ] up to the present time many ideas concerning the Christ have found expression. There was for instance the idea of certain Christian Gnostics in the first centuries who said that the Christ Who lived in Palestine was not present in any physical body of flesh at all; that He had only an apparent body—an etheric body which had become physically visible; so that His death on the Cross had been no real death but only an apparent one. Then we find diverse disputes among those who professed Christianity, as for example, the well-known controversy between the Arians and Athanasians, and the most varied explanations concerning what the Christ really was. Indeed, right up to our own times people express and have expressed the most different ideas concerning the Christ.

[ 13 ] Now spiritual science must recognize in Christ not merely an earthly but also a cosmic Being. In a certain sense man is, taken as a whole, a cosmic being. He lives a twofold life—one in a physical body from birth to death, another in the spiritual worlds between death and a new birth. When he is incarnated in a physical body, he is living in dependence on the earth, because the physical body is restricted by the forces and conditions of existence belonging to the earth. The human being, however, does not only take the substances and forces of the earth into himself, but is joined to the whole of the earth's organism. When he has passed through the gate of death, he no longer belongs to the forces of the earth; but it would be incorrect to imagine that he belongs to no forces at all, for he is then connected with the forces of the solar system and the more distant star-systems. In this way, between death and a new birth, he lives in the domain of the cosmic, just as in the period between birth and death he lived in the domain of the earthly. From death to a new birth he belongs to the cosmos, as on the earth he belongs to the elements—Air, Water, and Earth. Accordingly, while he is passing through a life between death and a new birth, he comes into the region of cosmic influences. For the planets send forth not merely the physical forces of what astronomy teaches, such as gravitation and others, but also spiritual forces. With these spiritual powers of the cosmos man is connected, each person in a special manner according to his own individuality. If he is born in Europe, he lives in a different relation to warmth conditions, and so forth, than if he had been born, let us say, in Australia. Similarly, during his life between death and a new birth, one person may stand more closely related to the spiritual powers of Mars, another to those of Jupiter, others again to those of the whole planetary system in general, and so on. It is also these forces which bring man back again to the earth. Thus before he is born he is living in connection with the collective whole of stellar space.

[ 14 ] According to the way in which a man stands individually related to the cosmic system, so are the forces directed which lead him to this or that set of parents and to this or that locality. The impetus, the inclination to incarnate here or there, in this or that family, in this or that people, at this or that time, depends on how the person was organically connected with the cosmos before birth. [ 15 ] In former times, in that territory where the German tongue was spoken, a specially apt expression was used to indicate a person's entrance into the world through birth. When a person was born, people said that in such and such a place he had “become young” (junggeworden). Therein lies an unconscious reference to the fact that man in the time between death and a new birth continues at first to be subject to the powers which had made him old in a previous incarnation, but that before birth there come iii their place such forces as again make him “young.” Thus Goethe in “Faust” still uses the expression “to become young in Nebelland.”—Nebelland being the old name for mediaeval Germany.

[ 16 ] The truth underlying the casting of a horoscope is that those who know these things can read the forces which determine a person's physical existence. A certain horoscope is allotted to a person because, within it, those forces find expression which have led him into being. If for example in the horoscope Mars stands over Aries (the Ram), this signifies that certain of the Aries forces are not allowed to pass through Mars, and are weakened. Thus is a man put into his place within physical existence, and it is in accordance with his horoscope that he guides himself before entering upon earthly existence. This subject, which in our times seems so much a thing of chance, should not be touched upon without our attention being called to the fact that nearly everything practised in this connection today is simply dilettantism. It is pure superstition, and for the external world the true science of these matters has been for the most part completely lost. Consequently, the principles expressed here are not to be judged according to that which nowadays frequently leads a questionable existence under the name Astrology.

[ 17 ] Now it is the active forces of the stellar world that impel a man into physical incarnation; and when clairvoyant consciousness observes a person, it can perceive in his organization how this has resulted from the cooperation of cosmic forces. We may now attempt to illustrate this hypothetically, but in a form corresponding entirely with clairvoyant observation. [ 18 ] If a person's physical brain were extracted and its construction clairvoyantly examined, so that it might be seen how certain parts are situated in certain places and how they send out appendages, it would be found that each individual's brain is different from that of every other. No two people have brains alike. Let us imagine further that such a brain could be photographed in its complete structure so that one would have a kind of half sphere in which every detail was visible. In a series of such pictures each would be different according to the brains of the different individuals. And if one were to photograph a person's brain at the moment of birth and then photograph also the heavens lying exactly over the person's birthplace, this latter picture would be of exactly the same appearance as that of the human brain. As certain centers were arranged in the latter, so would the stars be in the photograph of the heavens. Man has within himself a picture of the heavens, and every man has a different one, according to whether he was born in this place or that, and at this or that time. This is one indication that man is born from out of the whole cosmos.

[ 19 ] When we keep this clearly in view we can rise to the idea of how the macrocosm manifests itself in each separate individual, and then, starting from this point, we can attain a conception of how it showed itself in the Christ. But if we were to imagine the Christ after the Baptism of John as though the macrocosm had then been living in Him in the same way as in other people, we should be mistaken.

[ 20 ] Let us first consider Jesus of Nazareth. His conditions of existence were quite exceptional. At the beginning of our era two boys were born and named Jesus. The one came through the Nathan line of the house of David,¹ the other through the Solomon line of the same house.² These two children were not born quite at the same time, but nearly so. In the Jesus descended from Solomon, described in the Gospel of St. Matthew, there was incarnated the same individuality who had formerly lived on the earth as Zarathustra, so that in this Child Jesus there appears the re-incarnated Zarathustra or Zoroaster. The individuality of Zarathustra grew up in this Child until, as St. Matthew says, His twelfth year. In that year, Zarathustra left the body of this Child and passed over into that of the other Child Jesus Whom the Gospel of St. Luke describes. In consequence of this the latter Child became suddenly quite different. The parents were astonished when they found Him in Jerusalem in the temple after the spirit of Zarathustra had entered into Him. This is intimated when it is said that the Child, after having been lost and found again in the temple, so spake that his parents did not recognize Him. They only knew Him, the Child descended from Nathan, as He had been up to this time. But when He began to reason with the doctors in the temple, it was possible for Him to speak as He did because the spirit of Zarathustra had come into Him. Until the thirtieth year did the spirit of Zarathustra live in the Jesus who was descended from the Nathan line of the house of David. In this body He ripened to a still higher perfection. The following remark must here be added: as regards this personality in which the spirit of Zarathustra now lived, an extraordinary feature was that into his astral body the Buddha rayed forth his impulses from the spiritual worlds.

[ 21 ] The oriental tradition is correct which says that the Buddha was born as a “Bodhisattva” and only during his time on earth, in his twenty-ninth year, rose to the dignity of a Buddha. [ 22 ] When the Gautama Buddha was a little child, the Indian sage Asita came weeping into the royal palace of his father, Suddhodana. He wept because, as a seer, he knew that this King's son would become the Buddha, and because as an old man, he felt that he would no longer be living to see that event take place. Now this sage was born again in the time of Jesus of Nazareth. It is he who is brought before us in the Gospel of St. Luke as the priest of the temple who saw the revelation of the Buddha in the Child Jesus descended from Nathan. And seeing this he was able to say: “Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace for I have seen my Master,” What he had not been able to see previously in India, he saw through the astral body of the Boy Jesus, Who comes before us in St. Luke's Gospel: the Bodhisattva become Buddha.

[ 23 ] All this was necessary in order that that body might be produced which received the baptism of St. John in the Jordan. At that moment the individuality of Zarathustra left the threefold body, the physical, the etheric and the astral body of that Jesus Who had grown up in so complicated a manner, in order that the spirit of Zarathustra might be able to dwell in Him. The reincarnated Zarathustra had to pass through two possibilities of development which were given in the two Jesus children. Thus there stood before the Baptist the body of Jesus of Nazareth and in it from that time onwards there acted the cosmic individuality of the Christ. Now, as we have shown, in the case of any other human being, the cosmic spiritual laws work upon him only in so far as they give him a start in earth-life. Afterwards there appear in opposition to these laws, others which arise out of the conditions of the earth-evolution. In the case of the Christ-Jesus, after the baptism of John the cosmic-spiritual forces alone remained effective without being influenced in any way through the laws of the earth evolution.

[ 24 ] Thus in Palestine during the time that Jesus of Nazareth walked on earth as Christ-Jesus—during the three last years of his life, from his thirtieth to his thirty-third year, the entire Being of the cosmic Christ was acting uninterruptedly upon Him, and was working into Him. The Christ stood always under the influence of the entire cosmos—He made no step without this working of the cosmic forces into and in Him. That which here took place in Jesus of Nazareth was a continual realization of the horoscope, for at every moment there occurred that which otherwise happens only at a person's birth. This could be so only because the whole body of Jesus descended from Nathan had remained open to the influence of the sum total of the forces of the cosmic spiritual hierarchies which direct our earth. If thus the whole spirit of the cosmos worked into the Christ Jesus, who was it that went, for example, to Capernaum? He who went about as a being upon the earth appeared quite like any other man. The forces active within Him, however, were the cosmic forces, coming from the sun and stars; and these directed His Body. And it was always in accordance with the collective Being of the whole Universe with whom the earth is in harmony, that all which the Christ Jesus did took place. It is because of this that in the case of the acts of the Christ-Jesus there is so often some slight hint given in the Gospels about the relative grouping of the stars at the time. We read in St. John's Gospel how the Christ finds His first disciples. There we are told: “It was about the tenth hour,” because in this fact the spirit of the whole cosmos found expression in conformity with the appointed moment of time. Such intimations are less clear in the other Gospel passages, but he who can truly read the Gospels finds them everywhere. [ 25 ] From this point of view also the miracles are to be judged. Let us take one passage—the one that runs thus: “When the sun was set, they brought the sick unto Him, and He healed them.” What does that mean? The evangelist is drawing attention to the fact that this healing was connected with the whole position of the constellations and that, at the time in question, the constellations throughout the heavens stood as they only could have when the sun had set The meaning is that, at the time, the requisite healing forces could make themselves felt after sun-set, and the Christ Jesus is represented as the intermediary Who brought the sick into connection with the forces of the cosmos which, just at that time, could work curatively. These forces were the same as those which worked as Christ in Jesus. It was through the presence of Christ that the healing took place. Only thus could the sick person be exposed to the healing forces of the cosmos which could only work as they did when they were in the right relationship to time and space. Thus these forces worked on the sick person through their representative, the Christ. [ 26 ] But it was only just during the time of Christ on earth that they could so work. It was only then that such a connection existed between the cosmic constellations and the powers of the human organism that for certain illnesses, healing could intervene when through the instrumentality of the Christ Jesus the cosmic grouping of the same forces was able to work on men. A repetition of this relationship in the evolution of the cosmos and the earth is as little possible as is a second incarnation of the Christ in a human body. Regarded in this way, the life of the Christ Jesus appears as the earthly expression of a definite connection between the cosmos and the forces of man. The tarrying of a sick person by the side of Christ means that through the proximity of Christ this sick person found himself in such a relation with the macrocosm that the latter could work upon him curatively.

[ 27 ] Herewith the points of view have been stressed which enable us to discern how the guidance of humanity has come under the influence of the Christ. The other forces, however, which had remained behind in the Egypto-Chaldæic times worked on side by side with those that are permeated by the Christ. This is evident even in the attitude frequently adopted today towards the Gospels. Literary works appear in which great pains are taken to show that the Gospels can be understood through an astrological interpretation. The greatest opponents of the Gospels employ this astrological interpretation to prove, for example, that the way taken by the Archangel Gabriel from Elizabeth to Mary signifies merely the progress of the sun from the constellation of Virgo to another. This, in a certain sense, is correct, except that these thoughts were poured in this manner into our age by the beings who had remained behind during the Egypto-Chaldæic period. Under such an influence people are induced to a make-belief that the Gospels present only allegories in the place of definite cosmic relations. The truth really is that in the Christ the whole cosmos finds expression. Therefore one can express the life of the Christ by connecting its separate events with the cosmic relations which work into earth existence unceasingly through the Christ. A right understanding of this matter will thus lead to a full recognition of the Christ as having lived on earth. Whereas if the interpretation were true that the Christ life as expressed in the Gospels is only a matter of constellations being treated allegorically, then we should have to conclude that there was no real earthly Christ at all.

[ 28 ] If a comparison were to be used, we might think of each human being as represented by a spherical mirror—which, if it were set up, would give pictures of all its surroundings. Let us suppose we were to trace with a pencil the outline of all that is shown from the surroundings. We could then take the mirror and carry the picture about with us wherever we went. Let this be a symbol for the fact that when a person is born, he brings with him a copy of the cosmos in himself, and afterwards carries about with him all through his life the effect of this one picture. The mirror might, however, be left untouched by the pencil, so that wherever the person carried it, it would depict the immediate surroundings. It then would always be giving a picture of the collective environment. This would be a symbol of the Christ from the baptism of St. John up to the Mystery of Golgotha. That which, in the case of any other person, passes into his earthly existence only at birth, flowed into the Christ-Jesus at every moment. And when the Mystery of Golgotha was consummated, that which had been radiating from the cosmos passed over into the spiritual substance of the earth, and has from that time forward been united with the spirit of the earth.

[ 29 ] When St. Paul became clairvoyant before Damascus, he could recognize that That Which had formerly been in the cosmos has passed over into the spirit of the earth. Of this every one can be convinced who can bring his soul into such a condition that he can have the same experience as had St. Paul. It is in the twentieth century that those people will first appear who will have St. Paul's experience of the Christ event in a spiritual way.

[ 30 ] Whereas up to our times this event could be experienced only by such persons as had gained clairvoyant powers by means of an esoteric training; hereafter to look upon the Christ in the spiritual sphere surrounding the earth will be possible for the advanced powers of the soul in the course of the natural evolution of humanity. This—as a repetition of the experience of the event before Damascus—will be possible for some people from a certain point of time in the twentieth century. The number of such people will afterwards increase, until in the distant future, it will be a natural faculty of the human soul.

[ 31 ] With the entrance of Christ into the evolution of the earth an entirely new impulse or direction was given to this evolution. External facts of history also express this. In the early times of post-Atlantean evolution men knew very well that above them there was not merely a physical Mars, but that what they saw as Mars, Jupiter, or Saturn was the expression of a spiritual being. In later times this perception was completely forgotten. The heavenly bodies became, according to human ideas, mere bodies to be estimated according to their physical condition. In the Middle Ages people saw in connection with the stars what only the eyes can see—the sphere of Venus, the sphere of the Sun, the sphere of Mars and the other planets, up to the sphere of the fixed stars. Then came the eighth sphere like a solid blue wall behind. Later Copernicus appeared and broke down the idea that only that which is perceptible to the senses can be authoritative. The modern physical scientists may indeed say: “It is madness to declare that the world is Maya, or illusion, and that you must look into a spiritual world in order to see the truth, for in spite of all you say true science is that which relies on the senses and records what these senses tell.” But when did astronomers rely only on the senses? Surely at the very time when that astronomical science was dominant which is attacked by the science of today! It was at that time when Copernicus began to think out what exists in the cosmic space beyond the evidence of the senses, that our modern astronomy as a science began. And so it is in every domain of science. Wherever science, in the most modern sense of the word, has arisen, it has done so in opposition to what had been apparent to the senses. When Copernicus declared “what you see is Maya or deception; rely on what you cannot see”—that was the moment when the science came into being which is recognized as such today. It might thus be said to the representative of modern science “your science itself only became ‘science’ when it was no longer willing to depend upon the senses only.”

[ 32 ] Giordano Bruno came as philosophical interpreter of the teachings of Copernicus. He led the gaze of man out into cosmic space, and announced that what people had called the limitations of space, what they had placed there as the eighth sphere limiting everything in space—was in reality no limitation; it was Maya, or illusion; for an infinite number of worlds had been poured forth into cosmic space. That which was formerly considered to be the boundary of space was shown to be only the boundary of the sense-world of man, and if we direct our gaze beyond the sense-world, we shall no longer see the world only as known to the senses, but we shall also recognize Infinity.

[ 33 ] From this it is apparent that in the course of human evolution man originally started from a spiritual view of the cosmos and in time lost it. In its place there came a mere sense-perception of the world. Then there came into evolution the Christ Impulse. Through this, mankind was led to stamp the spiritual view once more upon the materialistic. At that moment when Giordano Bruno burst the fetters of sense illusion, the Christ evolution was so far advanced that the soul power which bad been kindled by the Christ Impulse could then become active within him. An indication is thus given of the whole significance of the manner in which the life of Christ penetrates all human evolution, at the mere beginning of which humanity stands today.

[ 34 ] To what then does spiritual science now aspire? [ 35 ] It completes the work begun for external science by Giordano Bruno and others in that it says: that which external science is able to perceive is Maya, or illusion. Just as formerly one looked to the “eighth sphere” and thought that space was thereby bounded, so contemporary human thought believes that man is shut in or enclosed between birth and death. Spiritual science, however, expands man's vision by directing his attention out and beyond the limits of birth and death.

[ 36 ] There is a continuous chain in human evolution which such ideas as these make us recognize. And in the true sense of the words, that which resulted in the conquest of sense illusion through Copernicus and Giordano Bruno proceeded from the inspiration arising from that spiritual current now working in the modern spiritual science of anthroposophy. What one might call the newer esotericism worked in a mysterious manner on Copernicus, Bruno, Kepler and others. Those therefore who now base their thought on foundations laid by Giordano Bruno and Copernicus and do not wish to accept anthroposophy, are unfaithful to their own traditions in desiring to hold fast to sense illusion. As Giordano Bruno forced a way through the blue firmament of heaven, even so does spiritual science break down the barriers of birth and death for man by showing how he originates from out of the macrocosm, lives in a physical existence, passes through death, and reenters macrocosmic life. And what we see in a limited degree in each individual meets us unrestrictedly and in a larger sense in the representative of the spirit of the cosmos—in the Christ-Jesus. Once and once only could that impulse be given which the Christ gave. Once only could the whole cosmos be thus reflected, for the conjunction of the stars which then took place can never be repeated. In order to give an impulse to the earth, this conjunction was obliged to work through a human body. As it is true that this same grouping cannot occur a second time, so it is equally true that the Christ was only once incarnated. Only if one did not know that the Christ is the representative of the whole universe and only if it were impossible to win one's way to this Christ-Idea, the elements for which are given through spiritual science—only then would it be possible to maintain that Christ could appear more than once upon the earth.

[ 37 ] Thus we see how an idea of Christ arises out of the new spiritual science, which reveals to man in a new form his connection with the whole macrocosm. Certainly, in order to gain a true knowledge of the Christ, those inspiring forces are absolutely necessary which are now being bestowed by the same super-human beings who formerly guided the Egypto-Chaldæic epoch and who have now put themselves under the Christ. There is need of a new inspiration of this kind, of an inspiration which the great esoteric teachers of the middle ages had prepared from the thirteenth century onwards, and which from this time forth must ever come more and more into publicity. When man, according to the meaning of this science, prepares his soul aright for the knowledge of the spirit-world, he can then hear clairaudiently and he can see clairvoyantly what is revealed by the old Chaldæic and Egyptian angel beings who are now again acting as spiritual leaders under the guidance of the Christ. That which humanity will some time later actually gain thereby, could only be prepared in the first centuries of Christianity and up to our times.

Consequently we may say that in the future there will live in the hearts of men an idea of the Christ incomparable in greatness with anything which humanity has so far recognized. That which arose as a first impulse through the Christ, and has lived as an idea of Him up to the present time—even in the case of the best representatives of the Christ-principle—is only a preparation for the true understanding of the Christ. It would be strange indeed if, against those who in the West gave expression in such a way as this to the Christ-idea, it were brought as a reproach that they do not stand on the foundation of western Christian tradition. But it is quite possible, for this western tradition does not by any means suffice to help us to comprehend the Christ of the near future.

[ 38 ] From the hypothesis of western esotericism we can see the spiritual direction of humanity gradually flowing into what may be in a real, true sense called the guidance which comes from the Christ-impulse. That which is appearing as the new esotericism will flow slowly into the hearts of men, and the spiritual guidance of men and of humanity will ever more and more be consciously seen in such a light. We realize within ourselves how at first the Christ-principle flowed into the hearts of men because the Christ had gone about Palestine in the physical body of Jesus of Nazareth. Because men by that time were gradually surrendering themselves to reliance on the world of sense, they could receive the impulse which corresponded to their perception. Afterwards that same impulse so worked through the inspiration of the new esotericism that such spirits as Nicholas of Cusa, Copernicus, and Galileo were inspired, and Copernicus, for instance, was enabled to make this assertion: “That which is evident to the senses cannot teach the truth about solar systems; if we want to find the truth we must investigate behind sense appearances” At that time men, even spirits like Giordano Bruno, were not yet ripe enough to join consciously to the new esoteric stream. The spirit of the movement had to work in them unconsciously. Yet powerful and magnificent was the announcement of Giordano Bruno: “When a human being enters into existence by means of birth, then it is something macrocosmic that concentrates itself as a monad; and when a human being passes through death the monad spreads itself out again; that which was enclosed within the body spreads itself out in the cosmos in order to draw itself together again in other stages of existence, and again to spread itself out.” There Bruno gave expression to mighty conceptions which, even if expressed in stammering tongue, were in entire accord with the sense of the new esotericism.

[ 39 ] The spiritual influences which lead humanity need not work in such a way that man is always conscious of them. For example, they put Galileo in the cathedral of Pisa. Thousands had seen the old church lamp there, but they had not seen it as did Galileo. He saw the church lamp swinging; compared the time of its oscillation with the beat of his own pulse; found that the church lamp swung in a regular rhythm resembling his pulse-beat; and from this discovered the laws of the pendulum in the sense of modern physics. Anyone acquainted with contemporary physics knows that this science would not be possible without Galileo's principle. In this way the force was then working which is now appearing as spiritual science; Galileo was placed in the cathedral of Pisa before the oscillating church lamp, and modern physics gained its principles. In such a mysterious way do the guiding spiritual forces of humanity perform their work.

[ 40 ] We are now approaching the time when people are to become conscious of these guiding powers. We shall always come to a better and better understanding of what has to happen in the future if we rightly understand what is working inspirationally as the new esotericism. We must recognize that those same spiritual beings indicated as their gods by the ancient Egyptians when the Greeks asked them about their teachers, are now again assuming control through having placed themselves under the leadership of the Christ Ever more and more will men feel how they can cause to reappear in a brighter lustre, in a nobler style and on a higher level, that which was pre-Christian. The consciousness necessary for the present time, which must be an intensified consciousness, ought to give us a feeling of our high duty and great responsibility in reference to the recognition of the spiritual world. This can only penetrate our souls when we have recognized, in the sense indicated, the task of spiritual science.

• 1. By “ancient Persian” is not meant “Persian” in the usual historic sense, but a pre-historic Asiatic (Iranian) civilization which developed in that land over which, later on, the Persian Kingdom extended.
• 1. Luke III, 23–38.
• 2. Matthew 1, 1–17. See also Appendix.

[ 1 ] Passing on to-day to the paintings in the smaller dome, it has not been possible to make lantern slides from the photographs of the paintings of the larger dome—as we pass on to the paintings in the smaller dome, I am indeed in a peculiar position, and everyone will be in this position who wishes to present an idea from these copies of what is meant by the paintings of the dome, to the wider public who has not first seen them here. The attempt has been made in accordance with that artistic point of view referred to, in my Mystery Play The Portal of Initiation, to evolve form in the painting entirely out of colour, so that, as regards the painting of the smaller dome, as far as possible, the influence of this point of view is actually felt—even then of course everything is only at the initial stages. [ 2 ] To allow form to appear as the creation of colour is that which is aimed at here. If we follow the history of painting we see that this fundamental principle to draw forth all that is pictorial from colour, can really only be at the very beginning of its development. Yen tried in the art of painting because it offers the special temptation—this was even so in the most brilliant period—to express some naturalistic theme in reproduction. Even though it must be admitted—and who would not willingly admit, in reference to the production of Raphael, Leonardo, Michael Angelo and others?—that the greatest heights of pictorial art have been reached in striving for expression in this way, and it must be admitted that the whole modern cosmic conception which is unspiritual can scarcely do otherwise than somehow strive for expression, yet the time has come when a spiritualization of our cosmic conception must be sought; another principle, another way of artistic thinking, especially in the art of painting must make itself felt. [ 3 ] This artistic feeling certainly will only be admitted by him who has a presentiment that in this world each element represents a creative whole. If we have a right sense for the world of colour we find something truly world-creative in colour. Anyone able to sink himself into the world of colour is able to soar up to the feeling, that from this mysterious world of colour a world of beings spring up, that the colour itself through its own inherent forces will develop into a world of beings. I might say: as we see the growing man in embryo in the little child, so can we see a world of beings in embryo if we have a right sense for the world of colour.

[ 4 ] Certainly it does not mean that we should have merely a feeling for the single colour; the single colour, as a rule, establishes only a relationship between man and colour as such. To see blue means to feel an intense desire, longing, to go out into the space in which the colour is manifesting, to follow the colour; to look at red calls forth a feeling of being attacked, as if one had to defend oneself against something, and so on with the other colours. Colours have also a certain relation with that which can be formed in colour, if we are able to draw the form out of the colour. Blue, for instance will always help if we wish to express movement, red will always help if we wish to express physiognomy. But what I mean has to do much less with single colours at with what the colours have to say to one another, whet red has to say to blue, green to blue, green to red, orange to lilac, etc. In this exchange, I might say, of speech, and exchange of activity between the colours, an entirely new world would come to expression. And we do not fully perceive this interchange of speech and interplay of: colours, if me are not. able to perceive colours as ocean-waves rising and falling, and at the same to perceive, playing upon the waves of colour, coming into life from the colour-waves, the elemental beings which develop their forms of themselves out from the colour-waves.

[ 5 ] Thus the attempt has been made to show in painting the secret of how to create out of the very nature of colour. For a greater part of that which is living, which we look out on, is born wholly out of the creative colour-world. As our vegetation has sprung forth from the ocean, so that which is living grows out of the colour-world.

[ 6 ] I might say, it is always pitiful to see how those who are possessed of artistic feeling truly feel that the old forms of art are bankrupt, that they can go no further, and how in spite of this the world is not willing to respond to the impulse which can only be explained through the anthroposophical interpretation of the world. Certainly this anthroposophical interpretation of the world must be something more than a mere intellectual idealistic set of ideas. It must be an intuitive perception. We must be able to think in colours, in forms, just as we think in ideas and thoughts. We must be able to live in colours, in forms. [ 7 ] If our Building is to be what it is intended to be, it must in a certain sense, bring to expression, as in one living being, the spiritual, the psychic and the physical. The spiritual is essentially brought to expression in the forms of the pillars, the architrave and the capitals, etc. In these is reflected the spirit, out of itself creating form. The psychic finds its manifestation, for example, in the glass-windows. In this interplay of the external light with the engraving on the coloured sheets of glass may be dimly apprehended by the play of the psychic, and the physical, that shows itself in its own configuration if one has the right-vision for what is painted in the domes. The paintings in the domes express to a certain extent the physical substantiality. It is, of course, the case that in the arrangement of the Building, which strives to give an understanding of the world to come extent, there is a reversed order, as compared with the ordinary comprehension of the three world principles. This follows naturally in contrast to what one generally imagines, i.e. the spiritual above, the physical below. In that which should develop in the human soul as force of inspiration through the whole artistic structure of the Building there must be a reversed relationship.

[ 8 ] But this very creation from colours is of course just what I cannot show you in lantern slides, and therefore with lantern slides we do not get what is really essentially purposed in the painting in the domes. We get as it were inartistic ideas, effects of what is intended to he artistic. But of course that cannot be helped, and it is to be hoped that those who see these lantern slides of colour-pictures will regard there pictures as it were as crying out for something else, as not really giving expression to that which is intended. If we take them in the right way we must say, as regards these lantern slides of colour-pictures somewhat as follows: “What is really in these pictures, really wishes to speak to us in a totally different language”, and then we shall be led to see the Building itself in the original conception of it. And out of the contemplation of these lantern slides, this will be a longing that will then arise in him who has artistic perception. Hence I do not think it quite superfluous to produce even these lantern slides.

[ 9 ] We start from here in the small dome, where as a beginning there is, on the surface of the walls, a kind of flying child, immediately at the junction of the large and small domes. You see this flying child, which in its composition belongs to what follows on here on your left. The composition is of course entirely derived from the colour; yet it also forms an element in the configuration of the small dome. You understand the whole figure of this child here if you keep in mind the two adjacent forms.

We will now put on the next picture.

[ 10 ] You see here as it were a figure of Faust. Here we are in the riddle Ages, just at the time when our fifth post-Atlantean age begins and here you find the only word written in letters, the Ich or I or Ego. In the whole Building you find nothing anywhere expressed in written letters. The intellectual method of representing a word, of this foundation word I or Ego, has so far its justification here, in that, with the commencement of the fifth post-Atlantean civilisation that in which ourselves stand—in the 15th century, developing further into the time of Faust, in the 16th century, that which was invisible appeared, that which expressed by mere symbols, by what had detached itself from Reality. That which lay at the bottom of the real ego-being of man was not grasped. In the universal spiritual evolution of humanity no image of the ego had been evolved. For, when man said “I” he had only an abstract idea in his mind. This is therefore the justification for introducing a wholly unreal representation of the ego through letters. And it falls into place naturally by the side of the Faust-figure. [ 11 ] Do not, I beg you, attach any special value to my expression Faust-figure. The main thing is that in the whole composition this figure expresses what the spirit of .the age in that very epoch produces in the seeking man. You see it brought to expression especially in the eye, in the countenance, in the attitude of the hand, you see it expressed in the whole gesture of the figure. That we are reminded of Faust is what one might say—purely arbitrary. It is the man who in the fifth our post-Atlantean age actually seeks, which is the characteristic of our age. Of the real fundamental character of this seeking few men as yet are conscious. Since the 15th century we have evolved ever more a sort of philosophy of death, which is no longer capable of grappling with life. [ 12 ] This is the result of the whole training which humanity had to pass through at the beginning of the fifth post-Atlantean period. During this period humanity has to develop the inner force of freedom. self-consciousness. Humanity can only do this by breaking adrift from nature. But to break adrift from nature means to identify oneself with the forces which in perceiving, alone understand death, recognise what is dead. All our ideas, all concepts which are the actual concepts of civilisation lead to death, are concerned with what is dead. And he who to-day is not himself dead, as most learned men are in soul, he who to-day is not himself dead as regards his seeking, finds in the seeking of these principles an incentive to what makes man free but is at the same time, I might say, the abyss or the dead. He has constantly the feeling: Thou makest thyself indeed free, but in so doing thou comest into proximity with death. Thus Death had to be brought into proximity with the Faust-figure.

[ 13 ] This is below. Hero you see the seeking man, who to-day is under the impress, under the feeling of death, death which always accompanies the most important ideals in the search for knowledge. It would be unbearable to a feeling soul to have a sort of Faust-figure above and below to have death, and no counterpart in the composition. Therefore, before we come to this composition of Faust and Death, we have this flying child, which to some extent represents the contrast to the feeling of Death. Thus a Trinity is to be understood: Death, the Seeking Man and the young Child full of life. With this is painted in the small dome what may be presented as the Initiation of the fifth post-Atlantean time. The Initiation-wisdom of the fifth-post Atlantean time is not to be won without one's having as it were full consciousness of the significance of Death, not only in human life, but in the life of the whole world as well. We possess indeed our powers of thinking because we continually bear the forces of death in our head. Were these forces which are active in our head for the purpose of thinking to penetrate our whole organism we should not be able to live, we should continually die. We only live because the tendency in our head to death is continually balanced by the tendency to life in the rest of our organism. That is, I may say briefly and lightly expressed in the abstract, the law of our time. [ 14 ] When I tell you this, I can understand that it does not penetrate specially deeply into your hearts, into your souls. To have experienced, signifies something fearful; to have experienced that impulse which in every effort for knowledge says: What thou canst acquire as knowledge at the present time, thou owest to Death which penetrates more and more into the earth-life. What really must enter into the earth-life of humanity will only enter when this initiation-principle, now at the very beginning of its growth—the power of Death!—extends further and further and engenders the vital longing of the newer future humanity for the compensating spirit, for a youth who is already Jupiter, which is no longer earth-youth, which is already the youth of the next planetary embodiment of the earth.

[ 15 ] We now go back to what can-be pictorially represented of the fourth post-Atlantean (the Graeco-Latin) period of civilisation. A sort of form is given here in the paintings of the small dome, which in its whole configuration - you will particularly feel this when you look at the colouring of this figure in the small dome—which, in its whole configuration, in its whole nature, portrays the shining-in of the spiritual world into humanity during the fourth post-Atlantean period, as it was to be at that time. Above this figure you find those who gave the inspiration, of which I have not been able to obtain lantern slides from the photographs. You always find those who inspire, over the corresponding figures, only in the case of the fifth post-Atlantean period of civilisation, Death itself, appears from below and approaching man above is the real Being which inspires.

[ 16 ] Here you see above a kind of God, an Apollo-like form, as the inspirer. That which, through inspiration, is able to enter a human form of the fourth post-Atlantean period of civilisation comes into this figure. Thus you see the actual human history of the inner soul-development is painted in the small dome. Of course you must give up asking inartistic questions. When an artist paints a form on the wall, there is nothing in his soul that,can meet such a question as: What does this or that mean? The inartistic man will stand before this figure and say: What do there two or three heads mean on the left of the principal figure? That it not the question of an artist; it is the question which he who paints it will least of all be willing to answer, because for him visions have to form pictorially, they simply appear in space as forms in a vision. He perceives nothing whatever with which to meet the question: What does that mean?—but he feels a necessity from the creative cosmic forces to place a form, which is inspired just like this one, in the neighbourhood of that which has already been-represented in human form.

[ 17 ] I spoke of the creative forces themselves inherent in the colour-world. At the present time, if one sees any painting, one always has the image in one's mind. This is just what must be overcome. There are many more elementary impressions which must possess the artistic soul. (I will explain more clearly in detail what I have to say). Suppose I simply make a smudge of colour, a yellow smudge, and add to it a blue smudge (see illustration). He who perceives colour as something actually living cannot experience other than, when he so perceives a colour in this way, a yellow smudge with a blue border, to see a head in profile.

[ 18 ] This follows of itself for him who carries the life of colour within him. Just two smudges of colour are, to him who possesses the creative idea of colour, that which at the came time leads to the experience of its essence. But anyone cannot, let us say, paint a face according to colour in such a way that he can say: I have seen a face, or indeed, have a model, and after this model I have formed a face, and it resembles it. Not in this way will painting be done in the future, but colour will be experienced, and the artist will turn away from everything naturalistic, from all copying, and from the colour itself that will be drawn out which already lies in it and which must necessarily be drawn out, if one has a living feeling with the life of colour itself.

[ 19 ] Here you find a combination of what you have seen singly before: here above, the Flying Child, this Figure of the 16th century, below Death, the remainder less distinct. You see here above, the one inspiring, you can recognise him the higher inspirer of the figure you have just seen on this sheet but which is here very indistinct. It is, of course, difficult to reproduce in this rough way of colourless pictures things which have really only been lightly breathed into the colours on the walls. Such can only be understood, I might say, as a description of what is actually intended.

[ 20 ] Here you see the inspiring figures of the third post-Atlantean (the Egyptians) period of civilisation, those which inspire from the spiritual world that figure which will now appear in the next picture.

We have here, inspired by the previous figures, the Initiates of the third post-Atlantean period of civilisation.

[ 21 ] Thus in the small dome the actual psychic evolution of humanity is painted, certainly not according to historical time, that you will see at once, but in an inner way. For now we are not going back simply to the earlier second post-Atlantean period of civilisation, but we are going back indeed to the Persian principle of Initiation, which also had developed out of the primeval Persian principle of Initiation, and is the Germanic principle of Initiation.

So when we pass on to the next picture we have the Germanic principle of Initiation. This Germanic-Persian principle of Initiation is founded on a dualism, and everything depends on the understanding of the fact that the initiation of of the period of civilisation which took its rise in the primeval Persian period, continued its development in the Goethean period of civilisation. It spread geographically from Asia Minor, across the Black Sea northwards into Europe, and this Initiation-stream reaches its fulfilment in recognising the principle of man's effort to seek the balance between Lucifer, whom you see on the right, and Ahriman on the left. The essential point is that we understand that this current of civilisation crust derive all force in the finding of the condition of equilibrium between the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic. And an attempt has been made, in this very figure, which is inspired by the Ahrimanic-Luciferic principle itself, by that which you see here on the right as Luciferic, and here on the left as Ahrimanic, to show in the attitude, in the whole physiognomy, that spirituality that must result from the realisation of this dualism, the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic, between which man has to find the balance.

[ 22 ] The fact that you see here the child as it were held up by the Initiate, for this there is no good foundation. For what flows into man through the inspiration of the dual principle, could not be endured, it would kill him inwardly, if he had not always the vision of youth, of the child. When you see this in the dome, you will observe that an earnest attempt has been made to draw out of the colours just what is meant here. An attempt has been made to draw out of the colours even the contrast between what is Luciferic and what is Ahrimanic. Only you must not analyse minutely, but seek what is essential in the artistic perception.

[ 23 ] Picture 8: Here you see Ahriman presented. There are not two Ahrimans, but Ahriman and his shadow. That is to say, Ahriman does not go about without his constant shadow accompanying him. Ahriman himself would be a much too freezing, too drying-up a principle of he appeared for instance in his full nature. It is most necessary to have near him his shadow which qualifies his freezing influence. If you study the colours in the small dome, you will see that in this particular shade of colour, the brownish-green, an attempt has been made to expi.ess the freezing effect of Ahriman; an attempt has been made to bring everything out of the colour.

[ 24 ] Here you see the Lucifer-theme. You will only understand the Luciferic and Ahrimanic principles fully if you see them in connection. If you simply look at Ahriman alone and Lucifer alone you will really understand neither; only when you have them side by side, because really Ahriman and Lucifer create and work in such a way in the universe that always whatever the one accomplishes is taken and made use of by the other, and vice versa. Thus their figures can only be rightly understood if one sees them in their living relationship to each other.

The inspiration that come from these will be shown in the next picture.

[ 25 ] I had hoped to express in this countenance with its adequate colour what is possible to express in a figure standing under the influence of this dual principle. It is the need,of inner stability, and at the same time self-possession in temperament, in character and the joyous inclination towards that which is young and childlike, in order to bear all that which one experiences under the actual inspiring influence of the dual principle.

Here we have the same again in another aspect.

[ 26 ] Here you see that into which our Period of civilisation will resolve itself. This picture is to be found nearer to the central Group, that of the representative of Humanity with Ahriman and Lucifer We have attempted to represent what had to be shown here as an Initiate, i.e. such a man who could embody the spiritual revelation of the coming 6th post-Atlantean period of civilisation, even now in advance, and we have attempted to represent such an Initiate through the medium of form and colour. For this reason we had to picture not a Russian of to-day: but that which is to be seen to a certain extent in every Russian to-day. every such Russian has his own shadow continually as his companion. He has always his second self who accompanies him, and that is what is here expressed.

[ 27 ] But you must realise that that which is here inspiring him is more spiritual compared with the earlier source of inspiration. Hence this angel-like form which here appears in its whole outline growing out of the blue. You will see more clearly in the next picture the kind of centaur-figure which is essentially necessary to the inspiring Being. You see, this inspiration leads at the same time out into the starry world. We recognise again man in his connection with that in the Cosmos which is external to the earth. But the Being which inspires is no longer to be conceived of in human likeness. In our attempt to show form we come to figures which are no longer human-like which have certain qualities of form which recall the qualities and temperament of man but are no longer human as such.

[ 28 ] Here is this inspiring figure which is a figure of the Cosmos and at the same time in connection with that which still tends towards the human, but is an angel-like Being born wholly out of the colour of the clouds. This is what we see as the colour Inspirer.

The same Being; only there is more to see; the Initiates are here to be seen. Of course the whole effect lies in the colour composition, which, naturally, is here wholly lacking.

[ 29 ] Here we see the upper portion of the Central Group. The middle figure shows the Representative of Humanity, above it, Lucifer.

The middle figure is represented in the painting—under it the Group which is the Chief Group stands—is here represented in painting where the space is small, so as to represent the Luciferic and Ahrimanic principles in one figure only; while, in the plastic Group, on account of the weight, on account of the proportions of the space they are given in double form.

This figure is only to be understood through the colours, through the Red colour out of which it is chiefly composed together with some other shades of colour. And here we are shown how man is seeking the state of equilibrium between that which is Luciferic and that which is Ahrimanic. This search for the state of balance is to certain extent to be found in man as much physically and physiologically as also in his soul and spirit.

[ 30 ] From a physiological, from a physical point of view, man is not that simple growing being that he is often represented to be in superficial science. an inclines continually on the one hand towards ossification, and on the other hand towards .a softening gelatinous condition.

The tendency in a man towards softening, which arises when the blood gains the upper hand, comes from Luciferic influences. Where the Luciferic influence tends to gain the upper hand physiologically in the human being, where feverish phenomena appears physiologically in man as actual formative principles, the Luciferic influence is predominant. As a result, the human form approximates more and more to this form. Man had this form during the ancient-moon period. In other words: if that principle which is specially the principle of growth in heart and lungs were alone to rule the human being, man would preserve such a form. Only through the fact that the Ahrimanic principle is found at the opposite pole to the Luciferic, the physiological state of equilibrium is maintained between that which the blood brings about and that which is produced by the ossifying tendency. This is the case viewed physiologically, from the point of view of the physical body.

[ 31 ] From the point of view of the soul one may say: man is continually on the search for the state of balance between excessive enthusiasm, which is Luciferic, and that which is prosaic, materialistic, abstract, which is Ahrimanic. From the point of view of the spirit: man is continually seeking the balance between theca conditions of consciousness which are specially permeated with Light where the consciousness is awakened through the irradiation, through the illumination of the soul; through the Luciferic. And the opposite pole is that through which weight, gravity, electricity, magnetism, in short, all that which holds one down, bring about the consciousness of self, the attainment of consciousness: all this is Ahrimanic. Man is always seeking the balance between these two conditions, and we may observe how that all that man can make man more conscious, that can bring him away, from the middle.path always inclines either to the one side or the other, the Luciferic or Ahrimanic. It would be of immense importance even for the study of human physical organism, if we discarded the merely theoretical principle of growth, that of the One principle, and took into consideration that polarically-opposed impulses of growth are present in man as if interwoven, intermingled with each other. The other impulse of growth is Ahrimanic.

[ 32 ] Picture 17: Here is the exact opposite. In every shape, in every line you will see the exact opposite of Lucifer, in this Ahriman, who as it were grows out of the masses of rock, i.e. out of the solid conditions of the earth. His aim is to approach man and so lay hold of him with his force of gravity, (his solidity) that at the same time he slays him with ossification or presses him to death in barren materialism. This is what is expressed in this figure of Ahriman. He appears as if slain by light, hence the rays of which bind him wit) cords so that he is fettered by them. In between we have man - man himself.

[ 33 ] The real man, who represents the condition of equilibrium, under him Ahriman, above him Lucifer.

I expressly draw your attention to this, that here again it is not essential to aim at the visionary conception of the Christ. The essential is that we feel what is here presented in this figure. Then we shall arrive ourselves, through the art representation, to the Christ. That is, we shall discover the central being of all earth's existence, the Christ, when we experience that which is to be felt in this form. The Christ may to-day discovered purely spiritually. But we must rightly understand man and rightly perceive him.

[ 34 ] On the other hand it may be said: he who to-day understands and smypathises with that which man can suffer, with that which he can enjoy, he who fully realises how man can go astray or raise himself towards one side or the other, he who is striving after a real self-knowledge, if he only goes far enough along the road of feeling, perception and will, he will discover the Christ. And he will then be able to find again in the Gospels, in all historical documents, the Christ he has discovered. We cannot to-day really attain to true knowledge of man without attaining to the knowledge of the Christ.

[ 35 ] Even along physiological, biological lines if we rightly conceive of man in his physical form we shall come to the understanding of the Christ. It is just the task of the fifth post-Atlantean time to attain more and more to this understanding of the Christ. Hence there could not be a visionary Christ-figure, concerning which one merely enquired its significance, in the central point of our Building, but the Representative of Humanity, in which the Christ to a certain extent appears in his essence. This is what I would beg you always to consider concerning these things; not to start out from the prosaic intellectual, riot from the symbolic, not from the visionary to set out from that which is really there on the wall, not from that which may be imagined about it. That which should fill our thought should come forth from that which is on the wall itself.

[ 36 ] Of course that which is on the wall is only imperfectly executed, but every beginning must be imperfect; even the gothic architecture, when it first appeared was imperfect. The perfect will undoubtedly follow out of that which has here been attempted. This is not to say that earnest effort has not been made to find the true Representative of, Humanity by every means of the art of occult investigation. You see, that figure of Christ which is the traditional one arose only in the 6th century after Christ. For myself, I only give this out as a fact, but do not require from anyone that he accept it as a dogma of belief, for myself I am quite clear on the point, it is for me a fact, that the Christ Jesus who walked in Palestine had this countenance, which you may see on the carved figure. And the attempt has only been made to represent in the expressive gesture that which one sees more when the etheric body is observed than when one observes the physical body. Hence also, the strongly-marked asymmetry which we have dared to portray. This asymmetry is present in every human countenance, naturally not in this strength, but the human countenance is thus indeed, especially as at present man wears in many respects an untrue mask. When humanity will have reached a certain spiritualisation in the 6th and specially the 7th post-Atlantean period where physical man will no longer live on the earth, then man will wear his true countenance, i.e. will express in his countenance what he is really worth within.

[ 37 ] But all this—I should like to point out—is very difficult for the paint-brush or chisel to represent in the painting and sculpture and that which we have attempted to express as the Representative of Humanity. As imperfect as these things may be, he who studies them will find that the secrets, the mysteries of human evolution are actually sainted in this little cupola. He will certainly find that which is meant to be expressed., may be experienced from out of the colour, and that these pictures can only indicate to you what you are capable of feeling, when, on receiving the information which I have given you to-day, you expect nothing symbolic, nothing about which man can enquire the meaning, but when you—rather, with the information I have given you to-day, seek to feel that which is painted into this little cupola.

[ 38 ] Picture 19: Now I want to show the other view of the heating-house. Yesterday I showed the front view, and you see that this heating-house is thought out as a whole, so that its side-view to a certain extent stands full in harmony with the whole, as I yesterday, through the comparison with the nutshell, explained to you.

[ 39 ] I have tried to give you to-day what we have up to the present in pictures. I should like to say that the actual attempt has been made with this Building to make the conception of the Building as far as possible a unity. For example, you see the Building covered over with Norwegian slate. Once when I was travelling on a lecture tour from Christiania to Bergen, I saw on the mountain slopes the wonderful slate-quarries of the neighbourhood of Voss, and the thought came to me that our Building must be covered with this slate. You will find, if you strike a favourable day, and desire to see the thing, that the particular blue-grey glistening of the dome—the covering of this slate—in the sun, makes an impression which is suited to the Building in its dignity.

[ 40 ] This is what I am able to say concerning the Building, in reference to these pictures. I wanted.to make this Building comprehensible to our friends who are willing to undertake the,risk of making it known to and understood by those to whom the Goetheanum in Dornach is perhaps nothing but a name they have heard, and to whom the place is only a geographical idea. I wanted to give this exhibition for those friends who are willing to bring before the understanding of those who are thus placed what will proceed from the Goetheanum for , the future of the evolution of humanity. It is of great importance that this visible token of Spiritual Science from the point of view of Anthroposophy should be accurately brought to the knowledge of the world, and that it is made to a certain extent the centre-point of our considerations and of our feeling within our anthroposophical world-conception.

[ 41 ] He who truly feels at what a turning-point the evolution of humanity has arrived in the present day, he will really indeed find within himself the necessary stimulus to make known what is here being carried out in Dornach. There are not many to-day who see how strongly the forces of human historical forms, coming from the past, act as destructive forces. We have indeed submitted to the destructive forces in Europe during the last 4 or 5 years; only the very few have wished actually to think over and appreciate what really happened. Those who do appreciate it will surely feel that nothing is to be gained for the further development of humanity from that which has been brought over from old times, that literally the new revelation which presses in upon us since the last third of the Nth century must be received by this world of ours.

[ 42 ] No one can think socially to-day without taking up the impulses which come to us from this knowledge which has been described. We must painfully, really painfully, realise, when we hear that there are to-day men who say: Oh Spiritual Science according to Anthroposophy was very pleasant, as long as it was Spiritual Science ,as long as it did not bother itself with outride things, as for example, “The Threefold State” does. There have arisen individual men among the earlier followers of Anthroposophical Spiritual Science who say: Spiritual Science was very acceptable to us by itself; with the social aspect we cannot and will not identify ourselves. Such an attitude of mind is sectarian, and that is what our movement truly never wished to be; this sectarianism only strives after a certain spiritual voluptuousness. I should like to know how anyone can be so without heart, so terribly heartless in the presence of such impulses as are appearing in the evolution of humanity as to say: I want something that comforts my soul, that assures me of immortality, but I won't touch it if this spiritual striving is to have a practical social result. Is it not heartless in such a time as this, not to wish for a practical result from that for which we are striving spiritually?

[ 43 ] Is it not the most confused mysticism to as it were fold the hands and say to oneself: For my soul I will have Spiritual Science but this Spiritual Science must have no social result. It is heartlessness. For how terrible it is to think that to anyone this Spiritual Science should be the most important thing in life, and that it should have no counsel to give in the present-day burdened social condition of humanity. That is the good of this Spiritual Science if it contains no help towards which humanity to-day may turn! Shall it be quite unfruitful, this Spiritual Science, for life? Does it only exist to pour into men a spiritual bliss? No, only thus can it preserve itself, by creating out of itself actual practical results. And it means that true Spiritual Science is not understood if men will not advance to practical results. And Spiritual Science must not be mere visionary knowledge, Spiritual Science must be actual life. Therefore it is always such a great pain that not very many more human souls are able to rouse themselves out of the impulses of Spiritual Science to the great interests of humanity to-day. To-day that which affects the individual is of such infinitesimal importance as compared with that which is fermenting and working in humanity, and the moment one occupies oneself with anything personal, the thought is immediately directed the great interests of humanity. But how many people think like this? For I must remember, how necessary it really is to communicate certain esoteric truths to humanity, and yet how impossible this is because there is really no set of people in whom really the impersonal objective principles have the value that they should have. It is a pressing necessity to communicate certain truths of Initiation to humanity. Only it cannot be done, when one has to do with men who the whole day long are only occupied with their own personal interests, as if they were of the highest importance. To turn our eyes to the human interests, that is what is of such immense importance. He who does this will see very very much to-day.

[ 44 ] I have to draw your attention again and again to the beginning of this battle-storm which will arise with all sorts of slander and lies against Anthroposophical Spiritual Science. Men do not want to believe this, but it is true; Spiritual Science will not be fought primarily on account of its faults; these would be forgiven it; Spiritual Science will be attacked just when it succeeds in accomplishing something good. And the hottest and most infamous attack will be directed against that which Spiritual Science can do of good.

[ 45 ] Each one must examine himself, whilst continually observing with true inner force that which can only be criticised as relentless opposition to Spiritual Science, whether he does not perhaps carry in himself too much of that attitude which does not attack the failings but rather the good sides of Spiritual Science. Much of this sort might be pondered over to-day: And this sort of thing must continually be pointed out. And the time must certainly come firstly, in which it will be possible not to have to approach closed doors with the communication of certain esoteric truths, because men are only occupied with their own personal interests, and secondly in which it will also be possible to bring the most important things when they are spoken, actually home to the hearts of men. As a rule one may proclaim things of the greatest significance—men take them only as a kind of theoretical knowledge, and hence they do not penetrate into, their hearts and affect them deeply; whilst everyday things, humdrum things even perhaps relatively big things, penetrate easily into the hearts of men.

[ 46 ] This is what we must before all else strive for; that that which is drawn from the Spirit shall truly penetrate right into the heart, into the soul, that it does not remain merely in our understanding. Much of the most important of that which has been spoken to-day, which may already be found in the teachings of Spiritual Science or Anthroposophy, bears no fruit on this account, that men let it get no further than their understanding, and then they say perhaps: This is something which should only be grasped by the understanding: But that is their own desire—to leave it only to the understanding, because they only take it as a wisdom for the head, and do not let it reach their hearts. This observation I wish to link on to the Introduction I have given you of the Building.

One spring day in 1860, an autocratic Hungarian magnate, a certain Count Hoyos, who owned several large estates in Austria, dismissed his game-keeper, because this game-keeper, Johannes Steiner wanted to marry Franziska Blie, one of the Count's innumerable housemaids. Perhaps the old Count had a foreboding as to what a great spiritual revolution would be born of this marriage. (The baroque palace of Hom, where it happened, is still in the possession of the Hoyos family, and stands today just as it was one hundred years ago.) So Johannes Steiner had to look for another occupation, and got himself accepted as a trainee telegraphist and signalman by the recently opened Austrian Southern Railway. He was given his first job in an out-of-the-way request stop called Kraljevic (today in Yugoslavia), and there his first child, Rudolf, arrived on February 27, 1861. On the same day the child was taken for an emergency baptism to the parish Church of St. Michael in the neighboring village of Draskovec. The baptismal register was written in Serbo-Croat and Latin, and the entry still can be read today as of one Rudolfus Josephus Laurentius Steiner. “Thus it happened,” Rudolf Steiner writes in his autobiography, “that the place of my birth is far removed from the region where I come from.”

In later life, particularly in his lectures on education, Steiner frequently made the point that the most prodigious feat any man achieves at any time is accomplished by him in the first two or three years of his life, when he lifts his body into the upright position and learns to move it in perfect balance through space, when he forms a vital part of his organism into an instrument of speech and when he begins to handle and indeed to fashion his brain as a vehicle for thought. In other words, when the child asserts his human qualities which set him dramatically apart from the animals.

This initial achievement the boy Rudolf performed in Kraljevic. Kraljevic (meaning King's Village) is situated in the western outskirts of the vast Hungarian plain, the Puszta. Even today endless fields of maize and potatoes extend in every direction, and the solemn monotony of the country is more enhanced than relieved by the lines of tall poplars flanking the primitive, dead straight roads. It is basic three-dimensional space at its severest, domed over by the sky, which local people say is nowhere else so high nor so blue as over the Puszta. One might almost say that nature provided laboratory conditions in which the boy learned to stand, to walk, to speak and to think. One could justifiably say of Rudolf Steiner what the biographer, Hermann Grimm, said of Goethe: “It seems as if Providence had placed him in the simplest circumstances in order that nothing should impede his perfect unfolding.”

From the severity of the Puszta the family moved, when the boy was two years old, into one of the most idyllic parts of Austria, called “the Burgenland” since 1921. Comprising the foothills of the eastern Alps, it is of great natural beauty, very fertile, and drenched in history. It takes its name from the many Burgen, i.e. castles which at different times of history were erected on nearly every hill. During recent excavations coins bearing the head of Philip of Macedonia, the father of Alexander the Great, have been found near Neudörfl, where the Steiners now settled, and where a daughter and a younger son were added to the family.

The management of the Austrian Southern Railway seems to have taken a sympathetic view toward the promising boy, and agreed to move father Steiner as stationmaster to several small stations south of Vienna, so that the eldest son was able to attend good schools as a day student, and finally in 1879 could matriculate at the Technical University of Vienna, then one of the most advanced scientific institutions of the world. Until then Rudolf Steiner's school life had been fairly uneventful, except that some of his masters were rather disturbed by the fact that this teen-ager was a voracious reader of Kant and other philosophers, and privately was engrossed in advanced mathematics.

In his first year at the University Rudolf Steiner studied chemistry and physics, mathematics, geometry, theoretical mechanics, geology, biology, botany, and zoology; and while still an undergraduate two events occurred which were of far-reaching consequence for his further development.

In the train in which the young student travelled daily to Vienna he frequently met a curious personality, an herb-gatherer, who turned out to be a latter-day Jacob Boehme. He was filled with the most profound nature lore to which he had first-hand access. He understood the language of plants, which told him what sicknesses they could heal; he was able to listen to the speech of the minerals, which told him of the natural history of our planet and of the Universe. In the last winter of his public life, in December 1923, Steiner provided something of a historic background for this wisdom, notably in his lectures on the Mysteries of Eleusis. Steiner immortalized the herb-gatherer in his Mystery Dramas, in the figure of “Father Felix.” But “Father Felix” was instrumental in bringing Steiner together with a still more important and mysterious personality.

“Felix was only the intermediary for another personality,” Steiner tells us in his autobiography, “who used means to stimulate in the soul of the young man the regular systematic things with which one has to be familiar in the spiritual world. This personality used the works of Fichte in order to develop certain observations from which results ensued which provided the seeds for my (later) work ... This excellent man was as undistinguished in his daily job as was Felix.”

While these fateful meetings occurred on the inward field of life, a very consequential relationship developed on the outward field. The Technical University of Vienna provided a chair for German literature, which was held by Karl Julius Schröer, a great Goethe enthusiast and one of the most congenial interpreters of Goethe. Schröer recognized Steiner's unusual gifts, and anticipated that he might be capable of doing some original research in the most puzzling part of Goethe's works, i.e. his scientific writings.

Only two years ago, Dr. Emil Bock, of Stuttgart, Germany, one of the most eminent Steiner scholars, discovered the correspondence between Professor Schröer, Steiner, and the German Professor Joseph Kürschner, who was engaged in producing a monumental edition of representative works of German literature from the 7th to the 19th century. In the first letter of this correspondence, dated June 4, 1882, Schröer refers to Steiner as an “undergraduate of several terms standing.” He says that he has asked him to write an essay on Goethe and Newton, and if this essay is a success, as he thinks it will be, “we have found the editor of Goethe's scientific works.” Steiner was then twenty-one years of age. Schröer's letter is reminiscent of the letter Robert Schumann wrote to the great violinist Joachim, after he had received the first visit of the then twenty-one year old Brahms: “It is he who was to come.”

The introductions and explanatory notes to the many volumes of Goethe's scientific works which Steiner was now commissioned to write were much ahead of their time. They blazed a trail into the less familiar regions of Goethe's universal genius which only today begins to be followed up by other scholars.

The young Steiner wrote these, his first works, in outward conditions of great poverty. The family lived in two rooms, which are still shown today. The larger one of the two was kitchen, dining, sitting and bedroom for the parents and his younger brother and sister, and off this larger room a few steps led into a narrow, white-washed, unheated cubicle where the young Steiner worked as in a monk's cell. No wonder that a Viennese celebrity of the time refers to him in his memoirs as one “who looked like a half-starved student of theology.”

However, this first literary success led to Steiner's call to the central Goethe Archives at Weimar, where despite his youth he now became one of the editors of the great Standard Edition (Sophien Ausgabe) of Goethe's Complete Works. This concentrated occupation with Goethe, continued for seven years in Weimar, from 1889 to 1896, had a profound effect upon the unfolding of Steiner's own mind and philosophical consciousness. Goethe was the catalyst which released new mental and spiritual energies in Steiner s own personality. It was during these years that Steiner's fundamental philosophical works were conceived and written.

In 1886 he published An Epistemology of Goethe's World Conception. In 1891 his small concentrated thesis on Truth and Science earned him his Ph.D. In 1896 his comprehensive Philosophy of Spiritual Activity opened a completely new approach to the understanding of the human mind and the nature of thought. It represents the first really fresh step in philosophic thought and in the philosophic interpretation of the human consciousness since Kant. It is no wonder that in those years Steiner began to be looked upon in Germany as “the coming philosopher” upon whom before long the mantle of the dying Nietzsche would fall. But his genius led him a different way.

In his thirty-sixth year—“Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita,” as Dante calls it, Steiner moved to Berlin, and the next seven years were perhaps the most dramatic period in his life. His new position in Berlin was that of editor of the weekly, Das Magazin für Litteratur, founded in 1832 (something equivalent to the London Saturday Review). He wrote the leading article and the dramatic reviews, occupying in Berlin a position somewhat similar to that of Bernard Shaw (who was five years his senior), with his weekly dramatic criticism in the Saturday Review. This assignment brought Steiner into close social contact with the intellectual and artistic élite of Berlin at the time, and for some years he pitched his tent among them. In the last years of his life, during rare moments of relaxation, he would at times tell stories of this exciting and often amusing period.

Side by side with these literary circles, or perhaps in polarity to them, Steiner was also drawn by objective interest and personal attraction into the camp of Haeckel and the militant monists. To move in this manner abreast of the spirit of the time would be a most interesting experience for anyone. For Steiner it was more. And I must now touch upon that side of his life about which I shall have to speak presently in greater detail. From childhood while for others such “being involved in this or that fashion of thought would be no more than an ideology,” for anyone standing in the spiritual world it means, as Steiner says in his autobiography, that “he is brought close to the spirit-beings who desire to invest a particular ideology with a totalitarian claim.” Steiner refers to his experience as a “Soul's Probation” which he had to undergo. (He later chose The Soul's Probation as the title of one of his Mystery Dramas.) He speaks of the “tempests” which during those years in Berlin raged in his soul, a rare expression in the otherwise very even and dispassionate style of his autobiography. At the end of those “forty days in the wilderness”—which were in fact four years—the thunderclouds lifted, the mist cleared, and he stood, to use his own phrase. “in solemn festival of knowledge before the Mystery of Golgotha.” He had come to a first-hand experience of Christ and His active presence in the evolution of the world.

We have now reached the point where we must venture into the great unknown: Steiner the seer, the Initiate.

It is a plain fact that in some form or other spiritual knowledge has existed throughout the ages. Secret wisdom has never been absent from human history. But in Steiner it assumed a totally new form. In order to appreciate this revolutionary novelty, we must first have a picture of the old form.

The faculty of spiritual perception and secret wisdom is obtained through certain organs in the “subtle body” of man, to borrow a convenient term from Eastern Indian medicine. In Sanscrit these organs are called “chakrams,” generally translated into English as “lotus flowers.” They fulfill a function in the “subtle body” similar to our senses in the physical body. They are usually dormant today, but can be awakened. We can disregard for the moment the rites of Initiation which were employed in the Mystery Temples of the ancient world, and confine ourselves to the survival of more general methods which today are still practiced in many parts of the world. They all have one thing in common: they operate through the vegetative system in man, through bodily posture, through the control of breathing, through physical or mental exercises which work upon the solar plexus and the sympathetic nervous system. I realize that I am presenting a somewhat crude simplification. But nevertheless I am giving the essentials.

Steiner broke with all this. He began to operate from the opposite pole of the human organism, from pure thought. Thought, ordinary human thought, even if it is brilliant and positive, is at first something very weak. It does not possess the life, say, of our breathing, let alone the powerful life of our pulsating blood. It is, shall we say, flat, without substance; it is really lifeless. It is “pale thought,” as Shakespeare called it.

This relative lifelessness of our thoughts is providential, however. If the living thoughts filling the Universe were to enter our consciousness just as they are, we would faint. If the living idea in every created thing simply jumped into our consciousness with all its native force, it would blot us out. Fortunately, our cerebro-spinal system exerts a kind of resistance in the process; it functions like a resistor in an electric circuit; it is a sort of transformer, reducing the violence of reality to such a degree that our mind can tolerate it and register it. However, as a result, we see only the shadows of reality on the back wall of our Platonic cave, not reality itself.

Now one of the magic words in Steiner's philosophy with which he attempts to break this spell, is “Erkraftung des Denkens.” It means putting force, life into thinking, through thinking, within thinking. All his basic philosophic works, notably the Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, and many of his exercises, are directed to this purpose. If they are followed, sooner or later the moment arrives when thinking becomes leibfrei, i.e. independent of the bodily instrument, when it works itself free from the cerebrospinal system.

This is at first a most disturbing experience. One feels like a man who has pushed off from the shore and who must now strive with might and main to maintain himself in the raging sea. The sheer power of cosmic thought is such that at first one loses one's identity. And perhaps one would lose it for good, if it were not for a fact which now emerges from the hidden mysteries of Christianity. One does not finally lose one's identity because He Himself has walked the waves and extended a helping hand to Peter who ventured out prematurely. Gradually the waves seem to calm down, and a condition ensues which Steiner expresses in a wonderful phrase: “Thinking itself becomes a body which draws into itself as its soul the Spirit of the Universe.”

This is a stage which, broadly speaking, Steiner had attained at the point of his biography which we have reached. Now he made a discovery which was not known to him before. He discovered that this “living thinking” could awaken the chakrams from “above,” just as in the old way they could be stimulated from “below.” Thought which at first in the normal and natural psychosomatic process “died” on the place of the skull, but which through systematic exercises had risen again to the level of cosmic reality, could now impart life to the dormant organs of spiritual perception which have been implanted into man by Him who created him in His image. From about the turn of the century Steiner began to pursue this path with ever greater determination, and gradually developed the three forms of Higher Knowledge which he called Imagination: a higher seeing of the spiritual world in revealing images; Inspiration: a higher hearing of the spiritual world, through which it reveals its creative forces and its creative order; Intuition: the stage at which an intuitive penetration into the sphere of Spiritual Beings becomes possible.

With these unfolding powers Steiner now developed up to his death in 1925, in twenty-five momentous years, that truly vast and awe-inspiring body of spiritual and practical knowledge to which he gave the name “Anthroposophy.” (Incidentally, this word was first coined by Thomas Vaughan, a brother of the English mystical poet, Henry Vaughan, in the 17th century.) Anthroposophy literally means wisdom of man or the wisdom concerning man, but in his later years Steiner himself interpreted it on occasion as “an adequate consciousness of being human.” In this interpretation the moral achievement of Steiner's work, his mission, his message to a bewildered humanity which has lost “an adequate consciousness of being human,” to which Man has become “the Unknown,” is summed up. This monumental work lies before us today and is waiting to be fully discovered by our Age—in some 170 books and in the published transcripts of nearly 6,000 lectures.

Three characteristic stages can be observed in Steiner's anthroposophical period. In a lecture given at the headquarters of the German Anthroposophical Society at Stuttgart (on February 6, 1923) he himself described these stages. Stage one (approximately 1901-1909): to lay the foundation for a Science of the Spirit within Western Civilization, with its center in the Mystery of Golgotha, as opposed to the purely traditional handing down of ancient oriental wisdom which is common to other organizations such as the Theosophical Society. Stage two (approximately 1910-1917): the application of the anthroposophical Science of the Spirit to various branches of Science, Art and practical life. As one of the milestones for the beginning of this second stage Steiner mentions the building of the Goetheanum, that architectural wonder (since destroyed by fire) in which his work as an artist had found its culmination. Stage three (approximately 1917-1925): first-hand descriptions of the spiritual world. During these twenty-five years of anthroposophical activity, Steiner's biography is identical with the history of the Anthroposophical Movement. His personal life is entirely dedicated to and absorbed in the life of his work.

It was during the last of the three phases that Steiner's prodigious achievements in so many fields of life began to inspire a number of his students and followers to practical foundations. Best known today are perhaps the Rudolf Steiner Schools for boys and girls, which have been founded in many countries and in which his concept of the true human being is the well-spring of all educational methods and activities. There are some seventy Steiner schools in existence with well over 30,000 pupils. A separate branch are the Institutes for Curative Education which have sprung up both in Europe and Overseas, and whose activities have been immensely beneficial to the ever increasing number of physically and mentally handicapped children and adults. Steiner's contributions to medical research and to medicine in general are used by a steadily growing number of doctors all over the world, and his indications are tested and followed up in a number of research centers and clinics. Another blessing for humanity flowed from his method of Biodynamic Agriculture, by which he was able to add to the basic principles of organic husbandry just those extras which, if rightly used, can greatly increase both fertility and quality without those chemical stimulants which in the long run poison both the soil and its products.

In the field of Art there is hardly an area he did not touch with the magic wand of creative originality. The second Goetheanum which replaced the first one destroyed by fire shows the massive use of reinforced concrete as a plastic material for architecture a generation before this use was attempted by others. Steiner's direct and indirect influence on modern painting with the symphonic use of color, on sculpture, on glass-engraving, on metal work and other visual arts is too far-reaching for anyone even to attempt to describe in condensed form. Students and graduates of the Steiner schools for Eurythmy and for Dramatic Art have performed before enthusiastic audiences in the cultural centers of the world, ably directed by Marie Steiner, his wife.

To those who have been attracted to this present publication by its title and its reference to Christianity, it will be of particular interest to hear that among those foundations which came into being during the last phase of Steiner's anthroposophical work was a Movement for Religious Renewal, formed by a body of Christian ministers, students and other young pioneers who had found in Rudolf Steiner “a man sent from God,” able to show the way to a true reconciliation of faith and knowledge, of religion and science. This Movement is known today as “The Christian Community” and has centers in many cities in the Old and New World. Apart from the inestimable help this Movement received from him in theological and pastoral matters, Rudolf Steiner was instrumental in mediating for this Movement a complete spiritual rebirth of the Christian Sacraments for the modern age and a renewal of the Christian priestly office.

Christianity as Mystical Fact and the Mysteries of Antiquity holds a special place in the story of his remarkable and dedicated life. The book contains the substance of a series of lectures Rudolf Steiner gave in the winter of 1901–1902 in the “Theosophical Library” of Berlin at the invitation of the President, Count Brockdorff. This series had been preceded by another on the German mystics from Master Eckhardt to Jacob Boehme (published in the Centennial Edition of the Written Works of Rudolf Steiner under the title Mysticism at the Dawn of the Modern Age) in which Steiner had ventured for the first time to present publicly some measure of his spiritual knowledge.

After these lectures on the mystics which was something of a prelude, Christianity as Mystical Fact now ushered in a new period in the understanding of the basic facts of Christianity as well as in Steiner's own life.

Compared with the free flow of spiritual teaching on Christianity offered by Steiner in his later works, the book may appear somewhat tentative and even reticent in its style. But it contains as in a nutshell all the essential new elements he was able to develop and unfold so masterfully in his later years.

Steiner considered the phrase “Mystical Fact” in the title to be very important. “I did not intend simply to describe the mystical content of Christianity,” he says in his autobiography. “I attempted to show that in the ancient Mysteries cult-images were given of cosmic events, which occurred later on the field of actual history in the Mystery of Golgotha as a Fact transplanted from the cosmos into the earth.”

It will not be out of place to round off this biographical sketch with a few personal reminiscences of the last four years of his life when I met Steiner as man and Initiate among his friends and students, and saw quite a good deal of him.

What was Rudolf Steiner like?—In the first place there was nothing in the least pompous about him. He never made one feel that he was in any sense extraordinary. There was an astonishing matter-of-factness about him, whether he spoke at a business meeting of the Anthroposophical Society, presided over faculty meetings of the Waldorf School^*, lectured on his ever increasing discoveries in the spiritual field, or spoke in public discussions on controversial subjects of the day.

I attended small lecture courses of less than fifty people, heard him lecture in the large hall of the first Goetheanum, was present at large public meetings when he expounded his “Threefold Commonwealth” ideas in the electric atmosphere of the Germany of 1923, during the occupation of the Ruhr and the total collapse of the German Mark. He was always the same: clear, considerate, helpful, unruffled. In those days he could fill the largest halls in Germany, and his quiet voice was strong enough to be heard without artificial amplification in the last rows of the gallery.

His hair remained jet black to the end; I cannot remember a strand of grey in it. His brown eyes, they sometimes had a shimmer of gold in them, looked with sympathy upon everything. And he possessed a wonderful buoyancy of carriage.

From 1913 Steiner lived permanently at Dornach, near Basel, Switzerland, in a house known locally as “Villa Hansi.” However, he spent most of his time in his studio, which was really nothing but a simple wooden building adjoining the large carpentry-shop where much of the woodwork of the first Goetheanum was prefabricated. In this studio he received an unending stream of callers. One would, perhaps, be shown into the room by a helping friend, but at the end he would always conduct one to the door himself. He put one at ease with such courtesy that one was in danger of forgetting who he was. And he gave the impression that he had no other care nor interest in the world than to listen to one's immature questions.

He would sit on a simple wicker chair, his legs crossed, perhaps occasionally moving one foot up and down. On the lapel of his black coat one might see a slight trace of snuff, because he indulged in the Old-World pleasure of taking snuff, but he neither drank nor smoked. I have never met anyone, and I am sure I shall never meet anyone who seemed so constantly at rest and in action simultaneously, all the time perfectly relaxed and absolutely alert.

The last summer of his life, in 1924, was the most prolific of all. He gave specialized courses on agriculture, on curative education, on Eurythmy. Then followed a summer school in August at Torquay in England; and when he returned to Dornach in early September, he increased his activities still further and gave as many as five, sometimes six different lectures each day. There was a daily course on the New Testament Book of Revelation for the priests of the Christian Community, another on pastoral medicine for priests and doctors combined, another on dramatic art, where I remember him one morning acting singlehanded the whole of Dantons Tod, a drama of the French Revolution by the German writer, Buchner. On another morning he acted the Faust fragment by Lessing. And in addition to all this, he also held lectures for the workmen of the Goetheanum.

Besides these specialized courses, the general lectures and other central activities of the Goetheanum School for the Science of the Spirit continued without interruption.

But the inevitable moment approached when even his resilient body showed the strain of his immense work. Sometimes for the period of a whole week he would hardly sleep more than two hours each night. I believe that he knew what he was doing. He well knew why he burned the candle not only at both ends but also in the middle.

My last memory of him is of the night when I was privileged, together with another friend, to keep vigil at the foot of his bed on which his body was laid out. It was the night before his funeral. The bed stood in his simple studio where he had been confined during the last six months of his life. Looking down on him was the great wooden statue of Christ which he had carved and nearly finished. Even in the literal sense of the word he had laid down his life at the feet of Christ.

The dignity of his features was enhanced by the marble whiteness of death. In the stillness of the night, with only a few candles burning, it was as if ages of human history converged to do homage. With a deep sense of reverence I wondered who he was. I am wondering still.

ALFRED HEIDENREICH

London, England
August 1961

• *. The first Rudolf Steiner School was called the “Waldorf School” because it was sponsored hy the Waldorf Astoria Cigarette Factory in Stuttgart, Germany, and its managing director, Dr. Emil Molt.

In the lectures which it has been my lot to deliver, I have often drawn attention to an observation which might be made in real life, and which shows the necessity of seeking everywhere below the surface of life's appearances, instead of stopping at first impressions. It runs somewhat as follows.—A man is walking along a river bank and, while still some way off, is seen to pitch headlong into the water. We approach and draw him out of the stream, only to find him dead; we notice a boulder at the point where he fell and conclude at first sight as a matter of course that he stumbled over the stone, fell into the river and was drowned. This conclusion might easily be accepted and handed down to posterity—but all the same it could be very wide of the mark. Closer inspection might reveal that the man had been struck by a heart-attack at the very moment of his coming up to the stone, and was already dead when he fell into the water. If the first conclusion had prevailed and no one had made it his business to find out what actually occurred, a false judgment would have found its way into history—the apparently logical conclusion that the man had met his death through falling into the water. Conclusions of this kind, implying to a greater or lesser degree a reversal of the truth, are quite customary in the world—customary even in scholarship and science, as I have often remarked.

For those who dedicate themselves heart and soul to our spiritual-scientific movement, it is necessary not only to learn from life, but incessantly to make the effort to learn the truth from life, to find out how it is that not only men but also the world of facts may quite naturally transmit untruth and deception. To learn from life must become the motto of all our efforts; otherwise the goals we want to reach through our Building¹ as well as in many other ways will be hard of attainment. Our aim is to play a vital part in the genesis of a world-era; a growth which may well be compared with the beginning of that era which sprang from a still more ancient existence of mankind—let us say the time to which Homer's epics refer. In fact, the entire configuration, artistic nature and spiritual essence of our Building attempts something similar to what was attempted during the happenings of that transitional period from a former age to a later one, as recounted by Homer. It is our wish to learn from life, and, what is more, to learn the truth from life.

There are so very many opportunities to learn from life, if we wee willing. Have we not had such an opportunity even in the last day or two? Are we not justified in making a start with such symptoms, particularly with one that has so deeply moved us? Consider for a moment!² On Wednesday evening last, many of our number either passed by the crossroads or were in the neighbourhood, saw the wagon overturned and lying there, came up to the lecture and were quite naturally, quite as a matter of course, aware of nothing more than that a cart had fallen over. For hours, that was the sole impression—but what was the truth of the matter? The truth was that an eloquent karma in the life of a human being was enacted; that this life so full of promise was in that moment karmically rounded off, having been required back in the worlds by the Spiritual Powers. For at certain times these Powers need uncompleted human lives, whose unexpended forces might have been applied to the physical plane, but have to be conserved for the spiritual worlds for the good of evolution. I would like to put it this way. For one who has saturated himself with spiritual science, it is a plainly evident fact that this particular human life may be regarded as one which the gods require for themselves; that the cart was guided to the spot in order that this karma might be worked out, and overturned in order to consummate the karma of this human life. The way in which this was brought home to us was heartrending, and rightly so. But we must also be capable of submerging ourselves in the ruling wisdom, even when it manifests, unnoticed at first, in something miraculous. From such an event we should learn to look more profoundly into the reality. And how indeed could we raise our thoughts more fittingly to that human life with which we are concerned, and how commemorate more solemnly its departure from earth, than by forthwith allowing ourselves to be instructed by the grave teaching of destiny which has come to us in these days.

Yet it is a human trait to forget only too promptly the lessons which life insistently offers us! It is on this account that we have to call to our aid the practice of meditation, the exercise of concentrated thinking, in order to essay any comprehension of the world at all adequate to spiritual science; we must strive continually towards this. And I would like to interpose this matter now, among the other considerations relative to our Building, because it will serve as an illustration for what is to follow concerning art. For let us not hold the implications of our Building to be less than a demand of history itself—down to its very details.

In order to recognise a fact of this kind in full earnest, it must be our concern to acquire the possibility, through spiritual science, of reforming our concepts and ideas, of winning through to better, loftier, more serious, more penetrating and profound concepts and ideas concerning life, than any we could acquire without spiritual science.

From this standpoint let us ask the downright question What then is history, and what is it that men so often understand by history? Is not what is so often regarded as history nothing more at bottom than the tale of the man who is walking along a river's bank, died from a heart attack, falls into the water, and of whom it is told that he died through drowning? Is not history very often derived from reports of this kind? Certainly, many historical accounts have no firmer foundation. Suppose someone had passed by the cross-roads between 8 and 9 o'clock last Wednesday evening and had had no opportunity of hearing anything about the shattering event which had taken place there: he could have known nothing, only that a cart had been overturned, and that is how he would report it. Many historical accounts are of this kind. The most important things lying beneath the fragments of information remain entirely concealed; they withdraw completely from what is customarily termed history. Sometimes possibly one can go further and say that external reports and documents actually hinder our recognition of the true course of history. That is more particularly so if—as happens in nearly every epoch—the documents present the matter one-sidedly and if there are no documents giving the other side, or if these are lost. You may call this an hypothesis but it is no hypothesis, for what is taught as history at the present time rests for the most part upon such documents as conceal rather than reveal the truth.

The question might occur at this point: How is any approach to the genesis of historical events to be won? In all sorts of ways spiritual science has shown us how, for it does not look to external documents but seeks to discern the impulses which play in from the spiritual worlds. Hence it naturally cannot describe the outward course of events as external history does, It recognises inward impulses everywhere. Moreover, the spiritual investigator must be bold enough, when tracing these impulses on the surface, to hold fast to them in the face of outer traditions. Courage with regard to the truth is essential, if we would take up our stand on the ground of spiritual science, The transition can be made by attempting to approach the secrets of historical “coming into being” otherwise than is usually done.

Consider all the extant 13th and 14th century documents about Italy, from which history is so fondly composed. The tableau, the picture, obtained by thus assembling history out of such documents brings one far less close to the truth one can get by studying Dante and Giotto, and allowing what they created out of their souls to work upon one. Consider also what remains of Scholasticism, of its thoughts, and try to reflect upon, to reproduce in yourself, what Dante, Giotto and Scholasticism severally created—you will get a truer picture of that epoch than is to be had from a collection of external documents. Or someone may set himself the task of studying the rebellion of the Protestant spirit of the North or of Mid-Europe against the Catholicism of the South. What can you not find in documents! Yet it is not a question of isolated facts, but of uniting one's whole soul with the active, ruling, weaving impulses at work. You come to know this rising up of the Protestant spirit against the Catholic spirit through a study of Rembrandt and the peculiar nature of his painting. Much could be brought forward in this way.

And so it comes about that historical documents are often more of a hindrance than a help. Perhaps the type of history bookworm who subsists upon documentary evidence would be elated by a pile of material on Homer's life, or Shakespeare's. From a certain point of view, however, one could say: Thank God there is no such evidence! We must only be wary not to exaggerate a truth of this kind, not to press it too far. We must indeed be grateful to history for leaving us no documents about Homer or Shakespeare. Yet something might here be maintained which is one-sidedly true—one sided, but true, for a one sided truth is nevertheless a truth. Someone might exclaim: How we must long for the time when no external documents about Goethe are available.

Indeed, with Goethe it is often not merely disturbing, but an actual hindrance, to know what he did, not only from day to day but sometimes even from hour to hour. How wonderful it would be to picture for oneself the experience undergone by the soul of a man who at a particular time of life spoke the fateful words:

“ I've studied now Philosophy
And Jurisprudence, Medicine,
And even, alas! Theology,
From end to end, with labour keen;
And here, poor fool! with all my lore
I stand, no wiser than before.”

“Faust”, Part I,
(Tr. Bayard Taylor)

If one wished to find the answer oneself in the case of such men, one might well yearn for the time when all the Leweses, and so on, whatever their names may be, no longer tell us what Goethe did the livelong day in which this or that verse was set down. And what a hindrance in following the flight of Goethe's soul up to the time in which he inscribed these words:

“The sun-orb singe, in emulation
‘Mid brother spheres, his ancient round. . .”

What a hindrance it is that we are able to refer to the many volumes of his notebooks and correspondence, and to read how Goethe spent this period. This view is fully justified from one angle, but not from every angle; for although it is fully justified in the case of Homer, Shakespeare, and so on, it is one sided with regard to Goethe, since Goethe's own works include his “Truth and Poetry” (“Dichtung und Wahrheit”). An inherent trait of this personality is that something about it should be known, since Goethe felt constrained to make this personal confession in “Truth and Poetry”. Hence the time will never come when the poet of “Faust” will appear to humanity in the same light as the poet of the “Iliad” or the “Odyssey”. So we see that a truth brought home to us from one side only can never be given a general application; it bears solely on a particular, quite individual case.

Yet the matter must he grasped still more profoundly. Spiritual science tries to do this. By pointing out certain symptoms, I have repeatedly endeavoured to show that modern culture aspires towards spiritual science. In my Rätsel der Philosophie³ I have tried to show how this is particularly true of philosophy. In the second volume you will notice that the development of philosophy presses on towards what I have sketched in the concluding chapter as “Prospect of an Anthroposophy”. That is the direction taken by the whole book. Of course this could not have been done without some support from our Anthroposophical Society, for the outer world will probably make little of the inner structure of the book as yet.

I said that Goethe must be regarded differently from Homer. On the same grounds I would like to add: Do we then not come to know Homer? Could we get to know him by any better means than through his poems, although he lived not only hundreds but even thousands of years ago? Do we not get to know him far better in that way than we ever could from any documents? Yes, Homer's age was able to bring forth such works, through which the soul of Homer is laid bare. Countless examples could be given. I will mention one only one, however, which is connected with the deepest impulses of that turning-point during the Homeric age, much as we ourselves hope and long for in the change from the materialistic to the anthroposophical culture.

We know that in the first book of the Iliad we are told of the contrast between Agamemnon and Achilles: the voices of these two in front of Troy are vividly portrayed. We know further that the second book begins by telling us that the Greeks feel they have stood before Troy quite long enough, and are yearning to return to their homeland. We know, too, that Homer describes the events as if the Gods were constantly intervening as guiding divine-spiritual powers. The intervention of Zeus is described at the beginning of this second book. The Gods, like the Greeks below, are sleeping peacefully; so peacefully, indeed, that Herman. Grimm, in his witty way, suggests that the very snoring of the heroes, of the Gods and of the Greeks below, is plainly audible. Then the story continues:

Now all other gods and chariot-driving men slept all night long, only Zeus was not holden of sweet sleep; rather was he pondering in his heart how he should do honour to Achilles and destroy many beside the Achaians' ships And this design seemed to his mind the best, to wit, to send a baneful dream upon Agamemnon son of Atreus. So he spake, and uttered to him winged words: ‘Come now, thou baneful Dream, go to the Achaians' fleet ships, enter into the hut of Agamemnon son of Atreus, and tell him every word plainly as A charge thee Bid him call to arms the flowing-haired Achaians with al' speed, for that now he may take the wide-wayed city of the Trojans. For the immortals that dwell in the halls of Olympus are no longer divided in counsel, since Hera hath turned the minds of all by her beseeching, and over the Trojans sorrows hang.’

So spake he, and the Dream went his way when he had heard the charge. With speed he came to the Achaeans' fleet ships, and went to Agamemnon son of Atreus, and found him sleeping in his hut, and ambrosial slumber poured over him. So he stood over his head in seeming like unto the son of Neleus, even Nestor, whom most of all the elders Agamemnon honoured.”⁴

Zeus, then, sends the Dream down from Olympus to Agamemnon. He gives the Dream a commission, The Dream descends to Agamemnon, approaching him in the guise of Nestor, who we have just learned, is one of the heroes in the camp of the allies.

“In his likeness spake to him the heavenly Dream: ‘Sleepest thou, son of wise Atreus tamer of horses? To sleep all night through beseemth not one that is a counsellor, to whom peoples are entrusted and so many cares belong. But now hearken straightway to me, for I am a messenger to thee from Zeus, who though he be afar yet hath great care for thee and pity. He biddeth thee call to arms the flowing-haired Achaians with all speed, for that now thou mayest take the wide-wayed city of the Trojans. For the immortals that dwell in the halls of Olympus are no longer divided in counsel, since Hera hath turned the minds of all by her beseeching, and over the Trojans sorrows hang by the will of Zeus. But do thou keep this in thy heart, nor let forgetfulness come upon thee when honeyed sleep shall leave thee.’ ”

This, then, is what takes place. Zeus, the presiding genius in the events, sends a Dream to Agamemnon in order that he should bestir himself to fresh action. The Dream appears in the likeness of Nestor, a man who is one of the band of heroes among whom Agamemnon is numbered. The figure of Nestor, whose physical appearance is well-known to Agamemnon, confronts him and tells him in the Dream what he should do. We are further told that Agamemnon convenes the elders before he calls an assembly of the people. And to the elders he recounts the Dream just as it had appeared to him:

“Hearken, my friends. A dream from heaven came to me in my sleep through the ambrosial night, and chiefly to goodly Nestor was very like in shape and bulk and stature. And it stood over my head and charged me saying: ‘Sleepest thou, son of wise Atreus tamer of horses?’ ”

(Atreus' son then tells the elders what the Dream had said. None of the elders stands up excepting Nestor alone, the real Nestor, who utters the words:)

“My friends, captains and rulers of the Argives, had any other of the Achaians told us this dream we might deem it a false thing, and rather turn away there from; but now he hath seen it who of all Achaians avoweth himself far greatest. So come, let us call to arms as we may the sons of the Achaians ...”

Do we not gaze unfathomably deep into Homer's soul, when we know—are able to know, to perceive, by means of spiritual science—that he can recount an episode of this kind? Have we not described how what we experience in the spiritual world clothes itself in pictures, and how we have first to interpret the pictures, how we should not permit ourselves to be misled by them? Homer spoke at a time when the present clairvoyance did not yet exist; at a time, rather, when the old form of clairvoyance had just been lost. And in Agamemnon he wanted to portray a man who is still able to experience the old atavistic clairvoyance in certain episodes of life. As a military commander he is still led to his decisions through the old clairvoyance, through dreams. We know what Homer knows and believes and how he regards the men he writes about; and suddenly, in pondering on what is described in this passage, we see that the human soul stands here at the turning-point of an era.

Yet that is not all. We do not only behold in Agamemnon, through Homer, a human soul into which clairvoyance still plays atavistically, nor do we only recognise the pertinent description of this clairvoyance; but the whole situation lies before us in a wonderfully magical light. Homer is humorous enough to show us expressly that it is Nestor who appeared to Agamemnon; the same Nestor who is subsequently present and himself holds forth, Now Nestor has spoken in favour of carrying out the Dream's instructions. The people assemble; but Agamemnon addresses them quite differently from what is implied in the Dream, saying that it is a woeful business, this lingering before Troy: “Let us flee with our ships to our dear native land”, he exclaims. So that the people, seized by the utmost eagerness, hasten to the ships for the journey home. Thus it rests finally with the persuasive arts of Odysseus to effect their about-turn and the beginning of the siege of Troy in real earnest. Here, in fact, we gaze into Homer's soul and discern in Agamemnon a lifelike portrayal of the transition from a man who is still led by the ancient clairvoyance to a man who decides everything out of his own conclusions. And so with an overwhelming sense of humour he shows us how Agamemnon speaks to the elders while under the influence of the Dream, and later how he speaks to the crowd, having bade farewell to the spiritual world and being subject now, to external impressions alone. Homer's way of depicting how Agamemnon outgrows the bygone age and is placed on his own feet, on the spearhead of his own ego, is wonderful indeed. And he further implies that from henceforward everything must undergo a like transition, so that men will act in accordance with what the reason brings to pass, with what we term the Intellectual or Mind Soul, which must be ascribed pre-eminently to the ancient Greeks. Because Agamemnon is only just entering the new era and behaves in a quite erratic and contradictory way, first in accordance with his clairvoyant dream and then out of his own ego, Homer has to call in Odysseus, a man who reaches his decisions solely under the influence of the Intellectual Soul. Wonderful is the way in which two epochs come up against each Other here, and wonderfully apposite is Homers picture of it!

Now I would ask you: Do we know Homer from a certain aspect when we know such a trait? Certainly we know him. And that is how we must come to know him if we want rightly to understand world-history—an impossible task if nothing but external documents were available. Many other traits could be brought forward, out of which the figure of Homer would emerge and stand truly before us. We can come close to him in this way, as we never could with a personality built up only from historical documents. Just think what is really known of ancient Greek history! Yet through traits of this kind we can approach Homer so closely that we get to know him to the very tip of his nose, one might say! At one time there were men who approached Homer in this way, until a crude type of philology came in and spoilt the picture. Thus does one know Socrates, as Plato and Xenophon depict him; so also Plato himself, Aristotle, Phidias. Their personalities can be rounded off in a spiritual sense. And if we thus hold these figures before our mind, a picture arises of Hellenism on the physical plane. To be sure, one must call in the aid of spiritual science. As the sun sheds its light over the landscape, so does spiritual science illumine for us the figure of Homer as he lived, and equally of Aeschylus, Socrates, Plato, Phidias.

Try for a moment to visualise Lycurgus, Solon or Alcibiades as a part of Greek history. How do they present themselves? As nothing but spectres. Whoever has any understanding of an Individuality in the true sense must recognise that in the framework of history they are just like spectres, for the features that history sets itself to portray are so abstract as to have a wholly spectral quality. Nor are the figures of later ages which have been deduced from external documents any less spectral in character.

I am saying all this in the hope that gradually—yes, even in things that people treat as so fixed and stable that the shocks of the present time are treated as mere foolishness—spiritual science in the hearts of our friends may acquire the strength and courage to bring home an understanding that a new impulse is trying to find its way into human evolution. But for this we shall need all our resources; one might say that we shall need the will to penetrate into the true connections that go to make up the world, and the power of judgment to perceive that the true connections do not lie merely on the surface. In this regard it is of surpassing importance that we should learn from life itself. For very often—to a far greater extent than one might at first suppose—error finds its way into the world through a superficial reliance on the external pattern of facts, which really can do nothing but conceal the truth, as we saw in the cases described. In the field of philosophy particularly, it is my hope that precisely through the mode of presentation in the second volume of the “Rätsel der Philosophie” many will find it possible to recognise the connection between the philosophic foundations of a world-conception, as presented in the “Philosophy of Spiritual Activity” and the “Outline of Occult Science”. If on the one hand we are looking for a presentation of the spiritual worlds as this offers itself to clairvoyant knowledge, then on the other hand there must be added to the reception of this knowledge a penetration of the soul with the impulses which arise from the conviction, that man does not confront the truth directly in the world, but must first wrest the truth from it. The truth is accessible only to the man who strives, works, penetrates into things with his own powers; not to the man who is ready to accept the first appearances of things, which are only half real. Such a fact is easily uttered in this abstract form, but the soul is inclined over and over again to back away from accepting the deeper implications of what is said.

I believe many of those who have tried to enter into spiritual science with all the means now at their disposal will understand how in our Building, for example, the attempt has been made through the concord of the columns with their motifs and, with everything expressed in the forms, to enable the soul to grow beyond what is immediately before it. For a receptive person, beginning to experience what lies in the forms of the Building, the form itself would immediately disappear, and, through the language of the form, a way would open out into the spiritual, into the wide realms of space. Then the Building would have achieved its end. But in order to find this way, much has still to be learnt from life.

Is it not a remarkable Karma for all of us, gathered here for the purpose of our Building, to experience through a shattering event the relationship between Karma and apparently external accident? If we call to our aid all the anthroposophical endeavours now at our disposal, we can readily understand that human lives which are prematurely torn away—which have not undergone the cares and manifold coarsenings of life and pass on still undisturbed—are forces within the spiritual world which have a relationship to the whole of human life; which are there in order to work upon human life. I have often said that the earth is not merely a vale of woe to which man is banished from the higher worlds by way of punishment. The earth is here as a training-ground for human souls. If, however, a life lasts but a short while, if it has but a short time of training, then forces are left over which would otherwise have been used up in flowing down from the spiritual world and maintaining the physical body. Through spiritual science we do not become convinced only of the eternality of the soul and of its journey through the spiritual world, but we learn also to recognise what is permanent in the effect of a spiritual force by means of which a man is torn from the physical body like the boy who was torn from our midst on the physical plane. And we honour, we celebrate, his physical departure in a worthy manner if, in the manner indicated and in many other ways, we really learn, learn very much, from our recent experience, Through Anthroposophy, one learns to feel and to perceive from life itself.

• 1. The First Goetheanum, later destroyed by fire.
• 2. Note by translator: A seven-year old boy was smothered by an overturned horse-drawn removal van, quite unnoticed since darkness had already set in. The boy, who was in the habit of running an errand for his mother at this hour, normally went another way.
• 3. Riddles of Philosophy
• 4. The Iliad, Book II. (Macmillan, 1949)

Ladies and Gentlemen,

In Economic Science, as I explained yesterday, it is essential to take hold of something that is for ever fluctuating—namely: the circulation of values and the mutual interplay of fluctuating values in the forming of Price. Bearing this in mind, you say to yourselves: Our first need is to discover what is really the proper form of the science of Economics. For a thing that fluctuates cannot be taken hold of directly. There is no real sense in trying to take hold by direct observation of something that is for ever fluctuating. The only sensible procedure is to consider it in connection with what really lies beneath it.

Let us take an example. For certain purposes in life we use a thermometer. We use it to read the degrees of temperature, which we have grown accustomed in a certain sense to compare with one another. For instance, we estimate 20° of warmth in relation to 5° and so on. We may also construct temperature curves. We plot the temperatures for instance during the winter, followed by the rising temperatures in summer. Our curve will then represent the fluctuating level of the thermometer. But we do not come to the underlying reality till we consider the various conditions which determine the lower temperature in the winter, the higher temperature in the summer months, the temperature in one district, the different temperature in another, and so forth. We only have something real in hand, so to speak, when we refer the varying levels of the mercury to that which underlies them. To record the readings of the thermometer is in itself a mere statistical procedure. And in Economics it is not much more than this when we merely study prices and values and so forth. It only begins to have a real meaning when we regard prices and values much as we regard the positions of the mercury—as indications, pointing to something else. Only then do we arrive at the realities of economic life. Now this consideration will lead us to the true and proper form of Economic Science.

By ancient usage, as you are probably aware, the sciences are classified as theoretical and practical. Ethics, for instance, is called a practical science, Natural Science a theoretical one. Natural Science deals with that which is; Ethics with that which ought to be. This distinction has been made since ancient time: the Sciences of that which is, the Sciences of that which should be. We mention this here only to help define the concept of Economic Science. For we may well ask ourselves this question: Is Economics a science of what is, as Lujo Brentano, for instance, would assert? Or is it a practical science—a science of what ought to be? That is the question.

Now, if we wish to arrive at any knowledge in Economics it is undoubtedly necessary to make observations. We have to make observations, just as we must observe the readings of the barometer and thermometer to ascertain the state of air and warmth. So far, Economics is a theoretical science. But at this point, nothing has yet been done. We only achieve something when we are really able to act under the influence of this theoretical knowledge.

Take a special case. Let us assume that by certain observations (which, like all observations, until they lead to action, will be of a theoretical nature) we ascertain that in a given place, in a given sphere, the price of a certain commodity falls considerably, so much so as to give rise to acute distress. In the first place, then, we observe—“theoretically,” as I have said—this actual fall in price. Here, so to speak, we are still only at the stage of reading the thermometer. But now the question will arise: What are we to do if the price of a commodity or product falls to an undesirable extent? We shall have to go into these matters more closely later on: for the moment I will but indicate what should be done and by whom, if the price of some commodity shows a considerable decrease. There may be many such measures, but one of them will be to do something to accelerate the circulation, the commerce or trade in the commodity in question. This will be one possible measure, though naturally it will not be enough by itself. For the moment, however, we shall not discuss whether it is a sufficient, or even the right measure to take. The point is: If prices fall in such a way, we must do something of a kind that can increase the turnover [Umsatz].

It is in fact similar to what happens when we observe the thermometer. If we feel cold in a room, we do not go to the thermometer and try by some mysterious device to lengthen out the column of mercury. We leave the thermometer alone and stoke the fire. We get at the thing from quite a different angle; and so it must be in Economics too. When it comes to action, we must start from quite a different angle. Then only does it become practical. We must answer, therefore: The science of Economics is both theoretical and practical. The point will be how to bring the practical and the theoretical together.

Here we have one aspect of the form of Economic Science. The other aspect is one to which I drew attention many years ago, though it was not understood. It was in an essay I wrote at the beginning of the century, which at that time was entitled: “Theosophy and the Social Question.”¹ It would only have had real significance if it had been taken up by men of affairs and if they had acted accordingly. But it was left altogether unnoticed; consequently I did not complete it or publish any more of it. We can only hope that these things will be more and more understood, and I trust these lectures will contribute to a deeper understanding. To understand the present point, we must now insert a brief historical reflection.

Go back a little way in the history of mankind. As I pointed out in the first lecture, in former epochs—nay, even as late as the 15^th or 16^th century—economic questions such as we have today did not exist at all. In oriental antiquity economic life took its course instinctively, to a very large extent. Certain social conditions obtained among men—caste-forming and class-forming conditions—and the relations between man and man which arose out of these conditions had the power to shape instincts for the way in which the individual must play his particular part in economic life. These things were very largely founded on the impulses of the religious life, which in those ancient times were still of such a kind as to aim simultaneously at the ordering of economic affairs. Study oriental history: you will see there is nowhere a hard and fast dividing line between what is ordained for the religious life and what is ordained for the economic. The religious commandments very largely extend into the economic life. In those early times, the question of labour, or of the social circulation of labour-values did not arise. Labour was performed in a certain sense instinctively. Whether one man was to do more or less never became a pressing question, not at any rate a pressing public question, in pre-Roman times. Such exceptions as there may be are of no importance, compared to the general course of human evolution. Even in Plato we find a conception of the social life wherein the performance of labour is accepted as a complete matter of course. Only those aspects are considered which Plato beholds as Wisdom-filled ethical and social impulses, excluding the performance of labour, which is taken for granted.

But in the course of time this became more and more different. As the immediately religious and ethical impulses became less effective in creating economic instincts, as they became more restricted to the moral life, mere precepts as to how men should feel for one another or relate themselves to extra-human powers, there arose more and more the feeling in mankind which, pictorially stated, might be thus expressed: “Ex cathedra, or from the pulpit, nothing whatever can be said about the way a man should work!” Only now did Labour—the incorporation of Labour in the social life—become a question.

Now this incorporation of Labour in the social life is historically impossible without the rise of all that is comprised in the term “law” or “right.” We see emerge at the same historical moment the assignment of value to Labour in relation to the individual human being and what we now call law. Go back into very ancient times of human history and you cannot properly speak of law or rights as we conceive them today. You can only do so from the moment when the Law becomes distinct from the “Commandment.” In very ancient times there is only one kind of command or commandment, which includes at the same time all that concerns the life of Rights. Subsequently, the “Commandment ” is restricted more to the life of the soul, while Law makes itself felt with respect to the outer life. This again takes place within a certain historic epoch, during which time definite social relationships evolve. It would take us too far afield to describe all this in detail, but it is an interesting study—especially for the first centuries of the Middle Ages—to see how the relationships of Law and Rights on the one hand, and on the other those of Labour, became distinct from the religious organisations in which they had hitherto been more or less closely merged. I mean, of course, religious organisations in the wider sense of the term.

Now this change involves an important consequence. You see, so long as religious impulses dominate the entire social life of man-kind, human Egoism does no harm. This is a most important point, notably for an understanding of the social and economic life. Man may be never so selfish; if there is a religious organisation (and these, be it noted, were very strict in certain districts in oriental antiquity) such that in spite of his egoism the individual is fruitfully placed in the social whole, it will do no harm. But Egoism begins to play a part in the life of nations the moment human Rights and Labour emancipate themselves from other social impulses or social currents. Hence, during the historical period when Labour and the life of legally determined Rights are becoming emancipated, the spirit of humanity strives as it were unconsciously to come to grips with Egoism, which now begins to make itself felt and must in some way be allowed for in the social life. And in the last resort, this striving culminates in nothing else than modern Democracy—the sense for the equality of man—the feeling that each must have his influence in determining legal Rights and in determining the Labour which he contributes.

Moreover, simultaneously with this culmination of the emancipated life of Rights and human labour, another element arises which—though it undoubtedly existed in former epochs of human evolution—had quite a different significance in those times owing to the operation of religious impulses. In European civilisation, during the Middle Ages, it existed only to a very limited degree, but it reached its zenith at the very time when the life of Rights and Labour was emancipated most of all. I refer to the Division of Labour.

You see, in former epochs the division of labour had no peculiar significance. It too was embraced in the religious impulses. Everyone, so to speak, had his proper place assigned to him. But it was very different when the democratic tendency united with the tendency to division of labour—a process which only began in the last few centuries and reached its climax in the nineteenth century. Then the division of labour gained very great significance.

For the division of labour entails a certain economic consequence. We shall yet, of course, have to consider its causes and the course of its development. To begin with, however, if we think it abstractly to its conclusion, we must say that in the last resort it leads to this: No one uses for himself what he produces. Economically speaking, what will this signify? Let us consider an example.

Suppose there is a tailor, making clothes. Given the division of labour, he must, of course, be making them for other people. But he may say to himself: I will make clothes for others and I will also make my own clothes for myself. He will then devote a certain portion of his labour to making his own clothes, and the remainder—by far the greater portion—to making clothes for other people. Well, superficially considered, one may say: It is the most natural thing in the world, even under the system of division of labour, for a tailor to make his own clothes and then go on working as a tailor for his fellows. But, economically, how does the matter stand? Through the very fact that there is division of labour, and every man does not make all his own things for himself—through the very fact that there is division of labour and one man always works for another, the various products will have certain values and consequently prices. Now the division of labour extends, of course, into the actual circulation of the products. Assuming, therefore, that by virtue of the division of labour, extending as it does into the circulation of the products, the tailor's products have a certain value; will those he makes for himself have the same economic value? Or will they possibly be cheaper or more expensive? That is the most important question. If he makes his own clothes for himself one thing will certainly be eliminated. They will not enter into the general circulation of products. Thus what he makes for himself will not share in the cheapening, due to the division of labour. It will, therefore, be dearer. Though he pays nothing for it, it will be more expensive. For on those products of his labour which he uses for himself, it is impossible for him to expend as little labour—compared to their value—as he expends on those that pass into general circulation.

Well, I admit, this may require a little closer consideration, nevertheless it is so. What one produces for oneself does not enter into the general circulation which is founded on the division of labour. Consequently it is more expensive. Thinking the division of labour to its logical conclusion, we must say: A tailor, who is obliged to work for other people only, will tend to obtain for his products the prices which ought to be obtained. For himself, he will have to buy his clothes from another tailor, or rather, he will get them through the ordinary channels: he will buy them at the places where clothes are sold.

These things considered, you will realise that the division of labour tends towards this conclusion: No one any longer works for himself at all. All that he produces by his labour is passed on to other men, and what he himself requires must come to him in turn from the community. Of course, you may object: If the tailor buys his suit from another tailor, it will cost him just as much as if he made it for himself: the other tailor will not produce it any more cheaply nor more expensively. But if this objection were true, we should not have division of labour—or at least the division of labour would not be complete. For it would mean that the maximum concentration of work, due to the division of labour, could not be applied to this particular product of tailoring. In effect, once we have the division of labour, it must inevitably extend into the process of circulation. It is in fact impossible for the tailor to buy from another tailor; in reality he must buy from a tradesman and this will result in quite a different value. If he makes his own coat for himself, he will “buy” it from himself. If he actually buys it, he buys it from a tradesman. That is the difference. If division of labour in conjunction with the process of circulation has a cheapening effect, his coat will, for that reason, cost him less at the tradesman's. He cannot make it as cheaply for himself.

To begin with, let us regard this as a line of thought that will lead us to the true form of Economic Science. The facts themselves will, of course, all of them, have to be considered again later.

Meanwhile it is absolutely true—and indeed self-evident—that the more the division of labour advances, the more it will come about that one man always works for the rest—for the community in general—and never for himself. In other words, with the rise of the modern division of labour, the economic life as such depends on Egoism being extirpated, root and branch. I beg you to take this remark not in an ethical but in a purely economic sense. Economically speaking, egoism is impossible. I can no longer do anything for myself; the more the division of labour advances, the more must I do everything for others.

The summons to altruism has, in fact, come far more quickly through purely outward circumstances in the economic sphere than it has been answered on the ethical and religious side. This is illustrated by an easily accessible historical fact.

The word “Egoism,” you will find, is a pretty old one, though not perhaps in the severe meaning we attach to it today. But its opposite—the word “Altruism,” “to think for another ”—is scarcely a hundred years old. As a word, it was coined very late. We need not dwell overmuch on this external feature, though a closer historical study would confirm the indication. But we may truly say: Human thought on Ethics was far from having arrived at a full appreciation of altruism at a time when the division of labour had already brought about its appreciation in the economic life. Taking it, therefore, in its purely economic aspect, we see at once the further consequences of this demand for altruism. We must find our way into the true process of modern economic life, wherein no man has to provide for himself, but only for his fellow-men. We must realise how by this means each individual will, in fact, be provided for in the best possible way.

Ladies and gentlemen, this might easily be taken for a piece of idealism, but I beg you to observe once more: In this lecture I am speaking neither idealistically nor ethically, but from an economic point of view. What I have just said is intended in a purely economic sense. It is neither a God, nor a moral law, nor an instinct that calls for altruism in modern economic life—altruism in work, altruism in the production of goods. It is the modern division of labour—a purely economic category—that requires it.

This is approximately what I desired to set forth in the essay I published long ago.² In recent times our economic life has begun to require more of us than we are ethically, religiously, capable of achieving. This is the underlying fact of many a conflict. Study the sociology of the present day and you will find: The social conflicts are largely due to the fact that, as economic systems expanded into a World-Economy, it became more and more needful to be altruistic, to organise the various social institutions altruistically; while, in their way of thinking, men had not yet been able to get beyond Egoism and therefore kept on interfering with the course of things in a clumsy, selfish way.

But we shall only arrive at the full significance of this if we observe not merely the plain and obvious fact, but the same fact in its more masked and hidden forms. Owing to this discrepancy in the mentality of present-day mankind—owing to the discrepancy between the demands of the economic life and the inadequate ethical and religious response—the following state of affairs is largely predominant in practice. To a large extent, in present-day economic life, men are providing for themselves. That is to say, our economic life is actually in contradiction to what—by virtue of the division of labour—is its own fundamental demand. The few who provide for themselves on the model of our tailor do not so much matter. A tailor who manufactures his own clothes is obviously one who mixes up with the division of labour something that does not properly belong to it. But this is open and unmasked. The same thing is present in a hidden form in modern economic life where—though he by no means makes his products for himself—a man has little or nothing to do with the value or price of the products of his labour. Quite apart from the whole economic process in which these products are contained, he simply has to contribute, as a value to the economic life, the labour of his hands. It amounts to this: To this day, every wage-earner in the ordinary sense is a man who provides for himself. He gives only so much as he wants to earn. In fact, he simply cannot be giving as much to the social organism as he might give, for he will only give so much as he wants to earn. In effect, to provide for oneself is to work for one's earnings, to work “for a living.” To work for others is to work out of a sense of social needs.

To the extent that the demand which the division of labour involves has been fulfilled in our time, altruism is actually present—namely: work for others. But to the extent that the demand is unfulfilled, the old egoism persists. It has its roots in this—that men are still obliged to provide for themselves. That is economic Egoism. In the case of the ordinary wage-earner we generally fail to notice the fact. For we do not ask ourselves: What is it that values are really being exchanged for in this case? The thing which the ordinary wage-earner manufactures has after all no-thing to do with the payment for his work—absolutely nothing to do with it. The payment—the value that is assigned to his work—proceeds from altogether different factors. He, therefore, works for his earnings, works “for a living.” He works to provide for himself. It is hidden, it is masked, but it is so.

Thus one of the first and most essential economic questions comes before us. How are we to eliminate from the economic process this principle of work for a living? Those who to this day are still mere wage-earners—earners of a living for themselves—how are they to be placed in the whole economic process, no longer as such earners but as men who work because of social needs? Must this really be done? Assuredly it must. For if this is not done, we shall never obtain true prices but always false ones. We must seek to obtain prices and values that depend not on the human beings but on the economic process itself—prices that arise in the process of fluctuation of values. The cardinal question is the question of Price.

We must observe prices as we observe the degrees of the thermometer, and then look for the underlying conditions.

Now to observe a thermometer we need some kind of zero point, from which we go upward and downward. And for prices a kind of zero-level does in fact arise in a perfectly natural way.

It arises in this way. Here we have Nature on the one side. (Diagram 2) It is transformed by human Labour. Thus we get the transformed products of Nature, and this is one point at which values are created. On the other side we have Labour itself. It, in its turn, is modified by the Spirit, and there arises the other kind of value. Value 1, Value 2. And, as I said on a previous occasion, price originates by the interaction of Value 1 and Value 2.

Now these Values on either hand—Value 1 and Value 2—are in fact related to one another as pole to pole. And we may put it as follows: If a man is working in this sphere, for example (Diagram 2 right-hand side), or mainly so—in an absolute sense it is of course impossible, but I mean mainly in this sphere—if in the main his work is of the type that is organised by the Spirit, then it will be to his interest that the products of Nature should decrease in value. If on the other hand a man is working directly upon Nature, it will be to his interest that the other kind of products should decrease in value. Now when this “interest” becomes an effective process (and so, in fact, it is, for if it were not so, the farmers would have very different prices, and vice versa; the actual prices on both sides are, of course, very “occult”) we may be able to observe a kind of Mean Price midway between the two poles where we have two persons (there must always be two, for any economic dealings) with little interest either in Nature or Spirituality or Capital. When is it so in practice? We have the case in practice if we observe a pure trader, a pure middleman, buying from and selling to a pure middleman. Here, prices will tend towards a mean. If under normal conditions (we shall yet have to explain this word “normal ”) a middleman trading in boots and shoes buys from a middleman trading in clothes and vice versa, the prices that emerge will tend to assume the mean position. To find, the mean price-level, we must not go to the interests of those producers who are on the side of Nature, nor of those who are on the Spiritual side. We must go to where middleman trades with middleman, buying and selling. Here it is that the mean price will tend to arise. Whether there be one middleman more or less is immaterial.

This does not contradict what we have said before. After all, look at the typical modern capitalist. Are they not all of them traders? The industrialist is after all a trader. Incidentally he is a producer of his particular goods; but economically he is a trader. Commerce has developed very largely on the side of production. In all essentials, the industrial capitalist is a trader. This is important. In actual fact, modern conditions amount to this: All that arises here in the middle (Diagram 2) rays out to the one side and to the other. On the one side you will soon recognise it if you study the typical business undertaking; and we shall see how it appears on the other side in the course of the next few days.

• 1. now published as “Anthroposophy and the Social Question.”
• 2. see “Anthroposophy and the Social Question.”

The event I have been referring to in the preceding lectures, the occasion when certain spirits of darkness were cast out of the spiritual realm and down into the human realm in the autumn of 1879, holds great importance. We have to reflect again and again what it really means to say that a battle raged for decades in the spiritual realms. The battle started in the early 1840s and ended when certain spiritual entities, which had been acting like rebels in the spiritual world during those decades, were vanquished in the autumn of 1879 and cast down as dark spirits into the realm of human evolution. They are now among us and the effect of this is that they send their impulses into our view of the world, not only into the way we think about the world, but also into our inner feelings, our will impulses and even our temperaments. Human beings will be unable to get even a partial understanding of the significant events of the present time and the immediate future, unless they are prepared to recognize the relationship which exists between the physical world and the spiritual world and take as much account of important events like this as they do of natural phenomena. At the present time people generally give validity only to natural phenomena, phenomena of the physical world which are part of historical evolution. They will have to give validity again to spiritual events, which can be perceived with the aid of spiritual science, for only then can the events in which human beings are caught up be really understood.

With reference to this important event it is quite easy to establish how seriously people are in error if they base themselves only on concepts and definitions when considering the world and not on direct observation of reality. One always has the feeling one ought to base oneself on defined concepts—what is Ahriman, what is Lucifer, what are the particular spirits in one hierarchy or another? Those are the questions we ask, and we believe that having got the definitions we have also understood something about the way these entities work. An extreme example of the inadequacy of definitions is the following, which I have quoted before. It may not have been the ideal way of defining the human being, but it is the definition which was given in a school in Greece: A human being is a creature who walks on two legs and does not have feathers. The next time the pupil came to school he brought a plucked cockerel: a creature who walked on two legs and had no feathers. This is a human being, he said, according to the definition.

Many definitions of this kind are generally accepted, and many of our scientific definitions are therefore more or less in accord with the truth. We must not base ourselves on such definitions in anthroposophy, however. Perception will be poor if we base ourselves on abstract definitions. Yes, it is possible to define the term ‘spirits of darkness’, but this will not get us far. Spirits of darkness were cast down from heaven to earth in 1879. This may give a general idea of the spirits of darkness, but it does not get us far in understanding the real issue. The spirits of darkness now walking among us are of the same kind as the spirits of darkness which had been cast down from the spiritual world, that is from heaven to earth, in earlier times; they had specific tasks to perform during the whole of the Atlantean age and right into Graeco-Latin times.

Let us try to use the different insights we have gained and determine the task those spirits of darkness had to perform through millennia, through the whole Atlantean age and on into Graeco-Latin times. It has to be kept in mind that the great scheme of things will only work if higher spiritual entities who have the task of guiding human evolution make use of such spirits, putting them in the right place, as it were, to enable them to do what is necessary. As you will remember, the ‘luciferic temptation’ of old held major significance for human evolution. It did, of course, arise from Lucifer's specific aims—and from Atlantean times onwards Lucifer was in league with Ahriman. These aims gave rise to counter-aims of, let us call them ‘good spirits’, the spirits of light. Fundamentally speaking, the spirits of darkness also wanted the best for humanity in those early times, they wanted human beings to have the capacity for absolute freedom; but humanity was not ready for this at the time. They wanted to provide humanity with impulses which would make every human being an independent individual. It was not to be, however, for humanity was not yet ready.

A counter-force had to be set up by the spirits of light; this was done by taking human beings from the heights of the Spirit and putting them on to the earth, which is symbolically described in the expulsion from Paradise. In reality, human beings were being placed in the stream of hereditary traits. Lucifer and the ahrimanic powers wanted every human being to be an independent individual. This would have meant that people would have become spiritual very rapidly while still immature, but it was not to happen. Human beings were to be educated on earth, brought to full development through the forces of the earth. This was achieved by placing them in the stream of heredity, where they would physically descend from others. In this way they were not independent, but inherited certain traits from their forebears. They were weighed down with earthly qualities which Lucifer did not want them to have. Anything to do with physical heredity was given to humanity by the spirits of light to counterbalance the luciferic stream. A weight was attached to human beings, as it were, and this connected them with the earth. In everything connected with heredity, with the begetting of children, procreation, with love in the earthly sense, we must therefore see ourselves connected with the entities which are under the leadership of Yahveh or Jehovah.

This is the reason why we find so many symbols of procreation and earthly heredity in the ancient religions. The laws of Judaism—which was to prepare the way for Christianity—as well as those of pagan religions, clearly show the importance attached to regulating everything to do with the laws of heredity here on earth. People had to learn to live together in tribes, nations and races, with blood relationship as the signature for the way affairs were ordered on earth.

This had been in preparation during the Atlantean age and was to be repeated in the fourth epoch of civilization, the Graeco-Latin epoch, mainly on account of the measures taken in the third, Egypto-Chaldean epoch. We can see that specifically during epochs which were to recapitulate the Lemurian and Atlantean ages, account was taken of race, nation and tribal connections in all the ways in which human affairs were ordered; in short, account was taken of hereditary traits arising from blood bonds. The priests of the ancient Mysteries were mainly responsible for the ordering of affairs—today we would say for affairs of state—and they took care to observe the way in which customs, inclinations and habits had to develop in various places to take account of blood relationships, of people belonging to a particular nation or tribe. Their laws were based on this. We shall not be able to understand what issued from the Mysteries of the third and fourth post-Atlantean ages unless we consider the careful study of racial, national and tribal relationships on which the priests based the laws they made for different regions of the earth. What really counted in each individual region was to establish order in the blood relationships.

In those times, when the spirits of light made it their concern to order human affairs on the basis of blood relationships, the spirits of darkness which had been cast down from heaven to earth with humanity, made it their concern to work against anything connected with heredity through blood relationship. They were the source of all rebellion against ordinances based on blood relationship in those ages, and of all teachings of rebellion against heredity and against tribal and racial relationships, insisting on the independence of the individual and seeking to establish laws based on this, laws which did, of course, come from human beings but were inspired by the spirits of darkness. Those ages extended as far as the fifteenth century. Echoes still persist, of course, for systems do not come to an abrupt end when there is a major break in evolution. Up to the fifteenth century in particular, we see teachings come up which rebel against purely natural bonds, against the bonds of relationship, family, nationality, and so on.

Thus we have two streams: the ‘protector’ of everything to do with blood relationship, which is the stream of light; it is opposed by the stream of darkness as the ‘protector’ of everything which wants to abandon the bonds of blood relationship and help people to be free of the bonds of family and heredity. All this does not, of course, come to an abrupt halt any more than it does in the natural world, and in 1413, the year when the break occurred which marks the boundary between the fourth and fifth post-Atlantean ages, the old ways did not stop immediately. We can see the influence of the two streams continuing right into our own time. For from the nineteenth century onwards, from the time of the significant events I have described to you, we see something entirely different emerge—I have already made some mention of this. Angelic spirits, members of the hierarchy of the Angels have been active among us since 1879. They follow on after the old spirits of darkness, are related to these and are of a similar kind, but have only been cast down from heaven to earth because of the event which occurred in 1879. Until then they had their function up above, whilst their relatives, who acted in the way I have just described, have been among human beings from Lemurian and Atlantean times.

Thus there was a break in evolution in about 747 before the Mystery of Golgotha; another one came in 1413 after the Mystery of Golgotha, and the break which is particularly important to us, in 1879.

Throughout the whole of this time spirits of darkness were active on earth, whilst certain other spirits of darkness, which are related to those down on earth, were still in the spiritual world. 1841 saw the beginning of the mighty battle of which I have spoken. Then the spirits which are related to those others descended to join them below. The power of the old rebels, of the continuing stream of spirits of darkness who had their tasks to perform from Lemurian and Atlantean times, is gradually dying down as the powers of their brothers begin to take effect. This means that from the last third of the nineteenth century the situation has been completely reversed. The spirits of light who have been continuing in their activities have done enough where the establishment of blood, tribal, racial and similar bonds is concerned, for everything has its time in evolution. In the general and rightful scheme of things, enough has been done to establish what needed to be established through blood bonds in humanity. In more recent times, therefore, the spirits of light have changed their function. They now inspire human beings to develop independent ideas, feelings and impulses for freedom; they now make it their concern to establish the basis on which people can be independent individuals. And it is gradually becoming the task of the spirits who are related to the old spirits of darkness to work within the blood bonds.

The function which was right in the past or, better said, belonged to the sphere of the good spirits of light, was handed over to the spirits of darkness during the last third of the nineteenth century. From this time onwards, the old impulses based on racial, tribal and national relationships, on the blood, became the domain of the spirits of darkness, who had previously been rebels in the cause of independence. They then began to instil ideas in human minds that affairs should be ordered on the basis of tribal relationships, of blood bonds.

You can see that definition is impossible. If you define the spirits of darkness on the basis of the function they had in the past, you get exactly the opposite of their function in more recent times, that is from the last third of the nineteenth century. In the past, it was the function of the spirits of darkness to work against hereditary traits in humanity; from the last third of the nineteenth century they have been lagging behind, wanting to lag behind, wanting over and over again to make people aware of their tribal, blood and hereditary bonds and to insist on these.

These things simply are the truth, though it is a truth which people today find extremely unpalatable. For millennia, human beings have instilled the insistence on blood bonds into themselves, and out of sheer inertia they are letting the spirits of darkness take control of these habitual ideas. We therefore see insistence on tribal, national and racial relationships particularly in the nineteenth century, and this insistence is considered idealistic, when in reality it is an early sign of decline in humanity. Everything based on dominance of the blood principle meant progress for as long as it was under the authority of the spirits of light; under the authority of the spirits of darkness it is a sign of decline. The spirits of darkness made special efforts in the past to implant a rebellious feeling of independence in human beings at the time when hereditary traits were passed on in a positive sense by the progressive spirits. In the three ages of human evolution which now follow and will continue until the time of the great catastrophe, the spirits of darkness will make extreme efforts to preserve the old hereditary characteristics and inculcate human beings with the attitudes which result from such preservation; in this way they introduce the necessary signs of decline into human evolution.

Here is another point where we have to be watchful. In particular, it is not possible to understand the present time unless one knows the change of function which came in the last third of the nineteenth century. A fourteenth-century person who spoke of the ideals of race and nation would have been speaking in terms of the progressive tendencies of human evolution; someone who speaks of the ideal of race and nation and of tribal membership today is speaking of impulses which are part of the decline of humanity. If anyone now considers them to be progressive ideals to present to humanity, this is an untruth. Nothing is more designed to take humanity into its decline than the propagation of ideals of race, nation and blood. Nothing is more likely to prevent human progress than proclamations of national ideals belonging to earlier centuries which continue to be preserved by the luciferic and ahrimanic powers. The true ideal must arise from what we find in the world of the spirit, not in the blood.

The Christ, who is to appear in a specific form in the course of the twentieth century, will know nothing of the ‘ideals’ proclaimed by people today. In earlier times Michael, the spirit from the hierarchy of Archangels was the representative of Yahveh; thanks to the functions given to him in 1879, he will be the earthly representative, the vicar, of the Christ, of the Christ impulse to create spiritual bonds between human beings which will take the place of the purely physical blood bonds. For only the bonds of spiritual communion will bring a progressive element into the entirely natural element of decline. Please note, the element of decline is natural. Human beings cannot remain children as they get older, and their bodies then follow a downward curve of development. In the same way the whole of humanity has entered into a downward trend of development. We have passed the fourth post-Atlantean age and are now in the fifth; this, together with the sixth and seventh, will be old age in the present stage of world evolution. To think that old ideals can live on is no more intelligent than to think people should continue to learn their letters throughout the whole of their lives just because it is good for children to learn their letters. It would be equally unintelligent for people in the future to speak of a social structure for the whole world based on the blood bonds of nations. It is Wilsonianism, of course, but also ahrimanism—of the spirits of darkness.

It is no doubt far from easy to accept the truth of this; it is easier today to share in the phraseologies in common use all over the world. Reality takes no account of phrases; it follows the true impulses. We shall not be able to change the labels on things which no longer hold true for the fifth, sixth and seventh periods, even if they are still being poured into Wilsonian world programmes in a form which still has power to convince a humanity that likes to take the easy way.

There are still enough people, even today, who simply do not want to get to the point where they are prepared to accept such universal human truths, which are independent of all blood bonds. These are universal human truths because they have not come from the earth but have been brought down from the spiritual worlds. How terrible is the reaction already occurring as almost the whole world is resisting the true progress of humanity, and the phrase ‘freedom of nations’ is used for something which goes against the stream of evolution. It has always been the destiny of Mystery-truths that they have had to go against the stream of comfortable ease and with the stream of evolution. And we shall have to see if there will not be at least a small group of people free of all blood prejudices who are able to recognize the phraseology that goes round the world today, phrases signifying that something which in spiritual terms presents itself as the event of November 1879 is now coming to the surface with might and main.

The events of the present time have been foreseen by the initiates of all nations. They were foreseen and forecast, and it was said that a highly reactionary mood would bubble up from the blood and people would believe it to be highly idealistic. We must be able to observe on the large scale, as in small things; we must not allow ourselves to be deflected by the opinions and phrases one hears in the world today. We have to be able to rise a little above ourselves to understand the signs of the times. Yes, you may choose the other road and continue in your blood-prejudices; you will then join the streams which lead downwards. These are coming. You need to know how to be watchful where they are concerned and oppose them with elements which follow the upward trend. The downward trend comes of its own accord.

We must have a feeling for life on the upward and life on the downward trend. Do not fall prey to the foolish inclination to escape from the downward trend, saying, ‘I will have nothing to do with Lucifer, nor with Ahriman.’ I have often censured this foolish inclination, for we must certainly take account of the Spirits which serve the great cosmic scheme of things. Our failure to do so, assuming an attitude where they remain outside our conscious awareness, make them all the more powerful. We shall only be able to judge human affairs if we are able to take a broader view of the impulses of life in the ascendant and also in the descendant. It is important, however, to keep clear of sympathies and antipathies.

Two streams have arisen in modern science; one of these I have called Goetheanism, the other Darwinism. If you study everything I have written, from the very beginning, you will see that I have never failed to recognize the profound significance of Darwinism. Some people were foolish enough to think I had fallen under the spell of materialism, and so on, when I wrote anything in favour of Darwin. We know, of course, that this was not from conviction, but had quite different reasons; and the people who say such things only need to think about it and they will know better than anyone else that they are not true. But if you really study everything I have written you will see that I have always done justice to Darwinism, but have done so by contrasting it with Goetheanism, the view of the evolution of life. I have always sought to see such things as the theory of descent in the Darwinian sense on the one hand and the Goethean on the other, and I have done so because Goetheanism presents the ascending line, with organic evolution raised above mere physical existence.

I have often referred to the conversation between Goethe and Schiller.¹ Goethe drew a diagram of his archetypal plant and Schiller said, ‘That is not empiricism—learning from experience—it is an idea.’ Goethe's reply was: ‘In that case I have my idea in front of my eyes!’² For he saw the spiritual element in everything. Goethe thus initiated a theory of evolution which holds the potential for elevation to the highest spheres, for being applied to soul and spirit. Goethe may only have made a start with organic evolution in his theory of metamorphosis, but we have the evolution of the spirit to which humanity must attain from this fifth post-Atlantean age onwards—for human beings are becoming more inward, as I have shown. Goetheanism can have a great future, for the whole of anthroposophy is on those lines. Darwinism considers physical evolution from the physical side: external impulses, struggle for survival, selection, and so on, and in this way outlines an evolution which is dying down—everything you can discover about organic life if you give yourself up to impulses which came up in earlier times. To understand Darwin, one merely has to make a synthesis of all the laws discovered in the past. To understand Goethe, one has to rise above this to laws which are ever new in earth existence. Both are necessary. It is not Darwinism which is the problem, nor Goetheanism, but the fact that people want to follow one or the other rather than one and the other. This is what really matters.

In future, human beings, the older they get, will need to take in spiritual impulses if they want to be able to grow younger and younger and really develop their inner life. If they do so, they may have grey hair and wrinkles and all kinds of infirmities, but they will get younger and younger, for their souls are taking in impulses which they will take with them through the gate of death. People who relate only to the body cannot grow younger, for their souls will share in everything the body experiences. Of course, it will not be possible to change the habit of going grey, but it is possible for a grey head to gain a young soul from the wellsprings of spiritual life. This is how human evolution will proceed in the fifth, sixth and seventh post-Atlantean ages in terms of Darwin's grey-haired theory, if you will forgive the expression. But in order to go through the catastrophe which is comparable to the earth's death—the catastrophe lying ahead—people must gain the power of youth which lies in Goetheanism, in the theory of metamorphosis and of spiritual evolution. This has to be taken through the future catastrophe, just as in the case of the individual the rejuvenated soul is taken through the gate of death.

Humanity was able to unite with the earth because when it came down from heaven to earth, if we may put it like this, the spirits of darkness which came down with it laid an adequate foundation for human independence during the time when the laws of heredity, nationality and race prevailed. What Lucifer and Ahriman had done became a good thing in so far as humanity was enabled to unite with the earth. To show this in diagrammatic form, we may put it like this: before Lucifer took action, humanity was united with the whole cosmos including the earth (see diagram, violet); human beings united with the earth (yellow) because hereditary traits—original sin in biblical terms, hereditary traits in scientific terminology—were implanted into them. This made human beings—I am using crosses to indicate them—part of the earth. You see, therefore, that Lucifer and Ahriman are servants of the progressive powers.

Evolution then continued. We are now at the time when human beings live on earth and are united with it. Luciferic and ahrimanic spirits, spirits of darkness, have been cast down from heaven to earth. Because of this, human beings must be released from the earth, torn away from it, with part of their essential nature taken back into the spiritual world. Humanity must develop awareness of not being of this earth, and this must grow stronger and stronger. In future, human beings must walk on this earth who say to themselves: ‘Yes, at birth I enter into a physical body, but this is a transitional stage. I really remain in the spiritual world. I am conscious that only part of my essential nature is united with the earth, and that I do not leave the world where I am between death and rebirth with the whole of my essential nature.’ A feeling of belonging to the spiritual world must develop in us.

In earlier years this merely cast a false shadow in so far as people did not want to understand physical life and practised a false asceticism, believing this to consist in mortifying the physical body in all kinds of ways. It has to be understood that it is not through false asceticism, but by uniting themselves with things of the Spirit, with the essence of things, that people will be able to perceive themselves as not merely earthly creatures but belonging to the whole cosmos. Gaining knowledge of the physical world has merely been a preparation for this. Just think how dependent people were on the soil where they had grown, as it were, right into the fifteenth century, the end of the Graeco-Latin epoch, and how much their development depended on the soil. This was good, but it must not dominate our lives now.

Physical science has torn human beings away from the earth in the physical sense with Copernicanism, and soul awareness must also be torn away from the earth. The earth has become a small body in space; but initially this is only in terms of space. Through Copernicanism human beings were shifted out into the cosmos, as it were, though in entirely abstract terms. This must continue, but it should not be applied to physical life in the wrong way. The physical will take its own course. Take America, for instance, though not the population native to its soil for centuries. As you know, a new population consisting entirely of Europeans has arrived there in recent times. Careful observation shows that physical life continues to be bound to the soil. The Americans who are Europeans transplanted to America are gradually acquiring traits which recall the old Indian population—this has not yet progressed very far, but it is true nevertheless. The arms are a different length from what they were in Europe because these people have been transplanted to America. The physical human being does adapt to the soil. It even goes so far that there is now a considerable difference in physical form between Americans who live in the West and those who live in the East. This is adaptation to the soil. If the soul were to go along with this physical process the American Indian culture would be revived in time, though in a European form. This sounds paradoxical, but it is true. In future, humanity cannot be bound to the soil; the soul has to become independent. All over the world people may then assume the physical characteristics given by the soil, and the bodies of Europeans may become indianized when they go to America, but in their souls human beings will tear themselves away from the physical and earthly element and be citizens of the worlds of the spirit. And in those worlds there are no races or nations, but relationships of a different kind.

These things must be understood today when great, tremendous events happen in the world, unless you are going to be mulish—excuse the expression—and present old-established prejudices as new ideals.

• 1. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832), German poet, dramatist, scientist and statesman. His scientific writings were edited by Rudolf Steiner in the 1880s and provided with introductions and commentaries.
  
  Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller (1759–1805), German dramatist, poet and historian. Schiller and Goethe had an interesting correspondence on aesthetics and collaborated in writing for a literary magazine called Die Horen, which was against bourgeois attitudes.
• 2. For instance, in Goethe's World View (GA 6), translated by W. Lindemann, Mercury Press, Spring Valley, NY, 1985. Goethe's account of the conversation appears in Steiner's Goethean Science (GA 2), translated by W. Lindemann, Mercury Press, Spring Valley, NY, 1988.

As in recent years at the beginning of our Munich lecture course, may I be allowed to use this first lecture as a kind of introduction to what we are going to deal with in the coming days.

It may well be that the first thought that occurs to you at the beginning of this cycle should refer to what for several years has been the introduction to these Munich lectures, that is, our artistic dramatic productions. If I may be allowed to give expression to the thought that comes before my own soul on this occasion, it is that it gives me the deepest satisfaction to see how, this year as well as last, we have been able to open these productions with a reconstruction of the Mystery of Eleusis. Seeing that this year we have the pleasure of a still larger audience than before, perhaps it will not be superfluous to repeat a few words I have already spoken here in Munich.

All that is bound up with the Eleusinian Mystery is intimately connected with what we call our anthroposophical striving. We began with quite a small circle of which only a few have remained faithful to the movement. We began years ago in Berlin, actually connecting the representation of initiation and initiation principles of the various epochs and races to all that has been accomplished for the Anthroposophical Movement by our revered friend Edouard Schuré with regard to the reconstruction of the Eleusinian Mystery. It was with all this that we made a kind of introduction to this movement of ours. Now that for some years past we have been able to give dramatic productions of what has issued from Edouard Schuré's soul, we have been able to stamp a kind of impression of the feelings, sentiments and thoughts that, for rather a smaller circle of us, have formed themselves around this starting point of our movement. If I am to define all this, I should say that an inner confidence, an inner faith, flowed out of the spiritual purity and chastity of the way in which these things entered our souls. So that we might say that if we allow these sentiments and feelings to flow into us, together with all that we feel in our souls with regard to our anthroposophical striving, we can at least hope for some measure of success. This is what the things themselves told us in the beginning, what they told us by the deep and serious way they penetrated into the spiritual, and what the years that have since passed have also told us.

What belief were we able to hold at the beginning, and later in the course of the recent years? It was the importance of the moment in the evolution of humanity—I mean the moment in relation to world history—that was able to arise before the soul. The idea could arise that it was quite in accordance with the laws of human evolution that in our present age new forces, and particularly forces of spiritual life, should wish to enter the souls of men if they were to hold their own in face of what the present and immediate future may demand of their inmost being. In giving voice to this thought, may I be allowed to refer to something personal, which is, nevertheless, by no means personal to me.

Years ago, before we started our movement, I often had occasion to speak about all kinds of spiritual matters with the German art historian, Herman Grimm, who, as you know, has since passed into higher worlds. In our walks together from Weimar to Tiefurt, or around Berlin, a good deal was said about the demands of the spiritual life in our time relative to nature; how humanity has sought its goal during the course of European evolution and has tried to find harmony in its soul life. There was one thought that kept coming to the fore in conversation with Herman Grimm, who was so deeply interested in all the spiritual life of the West. When we go to the root of the matter, this one thought was how the European man can look back over a number of centuries, or over the last 2000 years, how the European can look back in such a way that when he probes into his own soul and examines its needs and asks himself, “What can I understand, what is comprehensible to me in human affairs that transpired then that I need for my own life of soul?” He can then answer, “However many of the details of life at that time may be incomprehensible, somewhere there is a link with what I myself experience, if I let the new age pass historically before my soul.” Even the complications that arose in the Roman Empire at the time of Caesar, or in the still more remote time of Republican Rome, appear comprehensible to European consciousness today. We find our bearings when we try to understand the souls of those times, even though in many respects they may be far removed from what present day man can feel or think. But when the soul looks back into ancient Greece it becomes quite a different matter. It is only if we do not go sufficiently deep into things with what we call our human understanding that we, as modern men, can say that the days of ancient Greece may be as easily understood as Roman times or as the times that followed. When in going back we come to ancient Greece and let the historical records of it work on our souls, we begin to meet with what is incomprehensible. I should like to repeat, as something clear and easily understood, what Herman Grimm often used to say, “A man like Alcibiades is a mere prince in a fairy story compared with Caesar or with those who lived in Caesar's day.” Greek life appears in quite a different light, and human and divine bear a different relation to each other. Everyday life and all that might be called the divine enlightenment of everyday life seems quite different. The whole life of soul existing on the soil of ancient Greece seems entirely different. These things become particularly striking when we let those personalities work on our souls who can in truth become far more living in the modern soul than the people of whom history relates—those personalities we find in the works of Homer, Aeschylus or Sophocles.

Starting from such a thought, the results of our modern culture will certainly enable us to say that the further back we go in human evolution, the more does man appear to be directly connected with the super-sensible and all that radiates into and works within his soul. For we can already perceive the beginning of a quite new humanity when, not superficially but fundamentally, we get near the soul of the Greek. Something quite special appears, too, when we allow the historical works of literature that have arisen in the course of European civilization to work upon us. The historians write about the various ages back into Roman times as of something they have grasped and mastered. When you open a history book, you will find that the writer, when desiring to give life and form to the personalities he is representing, is able to apply the feelings and sentiments of his own age as far back as ancient Rome. In purely historical writings, even among the best historians, Greek figures, even those of the later Greek period, are like silhouettes, shadow-pictures that cannot come to life. How could anyone with genuine feeling for what it means for a man to have his feet firmly on the ground, maintain that any historian has really succeeded in thus planting Lycurgus or Alcibiades on their feet, as can be done in the case of Caesar. The Greek soul appears full of mystery when we look back into Grecian times, or so it appears to the man who merely tries to grasp it with his ordinary consciousness. Those who feel this mystery have the right feeling.

In this connection we may well ask how a Greek soul would have felt with respect to many things that are fully comprehensible to the modern soul. Let us consider an early Greek soul. Let us try by means of much that spiritual science gives us to feel our way into this soul. What would the Greek souls have said to the image, the old traditional story, that is so easily comprehended by the later European soul the story of the Fall, the old story of Paradise, and all that later ages received as the Old Testament. This would have been absolutely foreign to the Greek soul, as foreign as the Greek soul itself is to modern man. You cannot think the story of the temptation in Paradise, the story of Adam and Eve, into the Greek soul, so that it would be fully understood there as it lived for instance in the Middle Ages and on even into modern times. Therefore, it is first necessary even for us to prepare our own souls before we can understand that age, so different from our own.

It is when we cherish thoughts like these that we first begin to have a real sense of what it is that our present moment has brought us. Last Sunday when the curtain went down after the last scene of the Eleusinian Mystery, I could not help thinking how thankful we may be that we are able today to turn our eyes and minds to the course of events that show us the Greek soul in its life of feeling and experience. Moreover, that we are able to fill the auditorium with those who can imagine how, in the course of man's evolution on earth from epoch to epoch, the human soul has assumed different forms, and how it has learned to experience in different ways its environment and its own life. For many years we have been striving to understand the life that human souls had to live in the beginning of earthly evolution when the external body, and with it the inner soul life, were quite different from what they afterward became. We have been striving to understand how the human soul lived in Atlantean times, how it lived in post-Atlantean times, and we have grown to realise in what manifold ways the soul has lived and experienced itself within us. The soul that is in each one of us, the soul that has passed through one incarnation after another, not in order to experience the same things over again but to keep on having fresh experiences—in what various ways its life has been lived! So it is possible for us to sit in this auditorium, and to forget the things directly affecting us in this age in order to absorb objectively and dispassionately what was peculiar to souls of a different age. We need not set our understanding to work; we need only give ourselves up to immediate feeling to see that the events enacted in the reconstructed Eleusinian Mystery contain within them all that man's soul lived through from the darkest depths of life up to the light of the spirit, from deep sorrow to heights of bliss, experienced, however, in various ways in the course of time. Then we may get a simple and unprejudiced, but perhaps all the more certain, feeling of what the Greeks felt when such names were spoken, such images awakened, as those of Demeter, Persephone, and Dionysos. It may be possible for whole worlds to arise before us from within the soul when these images are awakened.

As human beings we find ourselves in the external physical world. We learn to know it through our physical senses, through the experiences of our soul, and through what we experience with our understanding and with our reason. We feel today, in quite a distinct way, that our soul is in a measure independent of the external life of surrounding nature, and of all that is concealed in it. The Greeks could never have felt this in the way man feels it today. At that time they never could have understood this estrangement from nature, this emphasis on the need of forsaking the world of the senses in order to press on into spiritual worlds. But in his own way the Greek felt a significant difference, a significant cleft, between what may be called the spirit in man and what may be called the soul. For the things of the soul and the things of the spirit are the expressions we use for human experience, and are two spheres closely impinging on one another.

Let us turn to the scene at the very beginning. Demeter stands in her proud spiritual chastity before Persephone, warning her not to taste the fruits that Eros can give. We turn our gaze to Demeter and see in her all that man calls spiritual, everything as he says in which “he as spirit has part.” But man also sees that in the realm of the earth all that is spiritual is bound up with all that has most to do with the senses and is the most material. Demeter, the Goddess, who brings forth the fruits of the earth and presides over the external and moral ordering of mankind—Demeter, human spirit, chaste and proud in face of much that generally lives in men, but inwardly bound up with and permeating the external world of the senses—it is thus that Demeter stands before us. Persephone appears before our inward vision as something that awakens an image of the human soul principle in our soul. It is connected with all that concerns man's individual existence as he stands there with his soul in the midst of earthly joys and sorrows. If it would picture what lives in Persephone, the soul must feel its connection with all that pulsates through earthly joys and sorrows. Persephone is all soul, Demeter all human spirit. If we then allow the course of the Eleusinian Mystery to work upon us, if the basic tones struck in the very first dialogue between Demeter and Persephone go on resounding in us, become intermingled and then clear, finally leading up to the figure of Dionysos—then, how the whole human being is to be found in Dionysos! How all that becomes living in us when we confront Demeter and Persephone lives again in Dionysos! Then, in the last scene, we see man's soul striving toward harmony of soul and spirit. The whole Dionysian play becomes a striving out of the darkness of life into the light of the spirit.

I have no wish to be a commentator nor to pull to pieces a work of art. I only wish to put into words the feelings that can arise in man with regard to the most intimate secrets of his soul when confronted with the Eleusinian Mystery. I should never think of saying that Demeter was the personification or symbol of a primal form of the human spirit, or that Persephone symbolised the human soul. That would be an insult to the plastic, living nature of a work of art. That would mean applying rigid concepts of the intellect to all that lives in a work of art that is just as living as man or any other living being. But what we may and can feel about the secrets of the soul—of that we may speak.

Now let us set two pictures before ourselves. Let us picture the later European consciousness that is now beginning to free itself and that henceforth will thirst after the forms revealed by the truths of spiritual science. Let us picture this European consciousness as it has been working through the centuries, this European soul that felt the riddle of life on being told how the first human being was there (man and woman), so far removed from the God he had come to fear, and upon hearing the alluring voice of a being strange to him, to his own human soul. Whence did this being come? What is it? How is it related to man's own soul being? The European soul, the European consciousness, hardly attempts any explanation. It accepts the strangeness of Lucifer, and it suffices it to know that from Lucifer came knowledge, but also the voice of temptation. And the words decreeing the divine judgement after the temptation—how they resound as from infinite cosmic space! How little they are suited by their very setting to draw this question from the soul: “Where can I find in the most intimate life of my own soul what is resounding through the wide spaces of the macrocosm?” Try to imagine the drama of Paradise as a living picture. Try to feel inwardly how unnatural it would be to represent the figures in the drama in purely human form. On the other hand, now try to imagine how, in speaking of the deepest and most intimate concerns of the Greek soul, it is a foregone conclusion that you should have before you the human figure of Demeter, the human figure of Persephone, even that of Dionysos or of Zeus! Try from this to experience how infinitely near to the Greek soul came all that permeated the macrocosm! We can characterise this in a few words. All that we need say is that before the Eleusinian Mystery was reconstructed by Edouard Schuré it simply did not exist in the form in which we can now see it. But now we have it! We need only feel what is contained in these two statements to grasp the whole significance of the matter. This to my mind transcends all mere trivial expressions of gratitude because we have also pointed to the whole significance that this reconstruction of the Eleusinian Mystery has for modern spiritual life. All that is connected with the Mystery of Eleusis, and all that has been achieved by the author in the historical re-awakening of the principles of initiation in the various epochs, corresponds to what is deepest and most intimate in the European soul. Everyone who takes spiritual life in a sincere and earnest way is under an obligation of a sacred, serious kind to carry precisely this kind of attitude into the present life of the soul.

My dear friends, you may talk a great deal with people outside in the world about all manner of things concerning anthroposophy, and some may even seem to find satisfaction in such conversation. But when one is able to look into the depths of the soul, one knows that the soul needs to be given, though perhaps unconsciously, what it truly desires in the innermost recesses of the heart.

It was feelings such as these that filled my soul last Sunday when we saw the curtain fall on the last scene of the Mystery of Eleusis, and the weeks preceding our Munich performance showed me that I was not alone in these feelings. All of us sitting here may feel the warmest gratitude toward those who for weeks past have been sacrificing themselves to the work of studying and entering into the personalities they had to represent. The consciousness lives in all those whom you have actually seen on the stage that they are servants of the spiritual world, and that it is necessary in our age that every effort be made to introduce spiritual values into the general culture of mankind. Reverence for spiritual things enabled the players gladly to bear much that preparations for the performances demands. We must also remember with special thanks those who have for years been working behind the scenes, though perhaps even more visibly than the individual players. They have devoted their efforts, and especially their ability, which is more than their efforts, to the service of this particular task. We may regard it as a kind of inner karma of our movement that we are able to have among us one who provides all that the scenes require in the way of drapery and clothing for the players, and who does it all in such a manner that it is not only in keeping with the intentions that I have at heart but is also accompanied by true spirituality. We may take it as a favourable karma of our movement in Central Europe that we have such a personality among us. That this karma has a yet deeper foundation, we can see from the fact that the same person was able to co-operate so successfully in all that has been done, for instance, for our Calendar during the past months. Like all our undertakings it is to serve the great purpose. So that first among those who were able to collaborate in such an outstanding manner, not only as players but in the whole of our work, we may mention Fraulein von Eckardstein. Then I think with deepest gratitude, and I should like to evoke this gratitude in your hearts, too, of our self-sacrificing painters, Volkert, Linde, Hass and this year Steglich of Copenhagen, as well. And many must remain unnamed for they are too numerous.

My dear friends, anthroposophy does not consist merely in theories and prophecies. It consists in the will to sacrifice oneself for the demands of the present age. A feeling for this ought to be awakened so that by real human work the seed may be planted for the spiritual life that is so necessary for the future of mankind. If such is our feeling, we shall understand better and better how those who would call themselves anthroposophists must grow together in the concrete and immediate working together toward worthy and serious aims. First in value is what the individual does, what the individual creates and all that he is prepared to bring as his own offering. Here, perhaps, I may speak of the following.

There were free days between our performances when many of our friends were busy rehearsing from morning to night, and on those days Dr. Unger gave lectures here in Munich. It was a source of deep satisfaction to me when our good managing director, Sellin, came to me behind the scenes yesterday morning full of enthusiasm for Dr. Unger's two lectures with the remark, “A movement with such inspired representatives does not come to naught.” What is it that gives me such great pleasure in such an occurrence? Allow me to say this quite honestly and sincerely. It is the independent force, the absolutely independent way in which a human personality is here presenting the matter out of himself, quite freely, by means of his own faculties, without limiting himself to what I myself would say. To one who himself wishes to work independently, nothing can give truer joy than to find someone else who is independent, shoulder to shoulder with him, giving out according to his own ability once he has recognised that it fits into the whole.

A short while ago I received a letter practically saying that much needed to be done within the German anthroposophical movement if anyone was ever to do anything but repeat quite literally what has been said by me. The way truth is represented out in the world is often like that. I do not want to criticise this remark that objectively contains what is untrue in the strictest sense of the word. I do not mention it in order to blame or condemn. But the other side, which is for us the positive side, must be repeatedly emphasised. Let us feel bound to truthfulness, to the testing of what is. Let us feel that we must never speak of any matter until we have learned about it, until we have gone into it. Otherwise, there can be no blessing in occult development, in occult striving. Truth and truthfulness! That is the first and foremost law. What is the good of any prophet, of any description of super-sensible facts, if they are not permeated by honest and sincere truthfulness. From the place from which I speak to you, it may be that you will accept many things that I have to say, but it will please me best if you accept them out of the conviction that it will always be my own deepest endeavour toward you to make no statements except those that can be made with the most candid truthfulness, since I can see no blessing for any occult movement unless one is dedicated to the truth! It may be contrary to what we desire, contrary to the demands of our ambition or our vanity, contrary to many other things in our soul; it may be against the grain to submit ourselves to any kind of authority, but all the same it may be right. For there is one authority to which we should submit ourselves willingly and of our own free will, and that is the authority of truth, so that all we can achieve, not only in what we say but also in what we do, in all our individual deeds, may be permeated by truthfulness. You must also look for that truthfulness in what is put before you in our anthroposophical artistic and dramatic efforts. Try to find it, and although you may realise that there are some things we have failed to attain, you will see that we have striven to permeate all that we do by an atmosphere of truthfulness. We have tried never to let ourselves speak of “tolerance” if tolerance is not really there and if we do not really practice it. Calling others intolerant does not constitute tolerance; to relate something of someone that is not what he represents does not constitute tolerance; to stress continually that one should “be tolerant” does not constitute tolerance. But if one is truthful one knows one's own value and how far one may go. If we are servants of the truth, it will follow as a matter of course that we shall be tolerant.

We may well speak of these things by way of introduction, although it is not generally my custom to enter into all manner of warnings and admonitions. But, on such an occasion as this, how could these words not flow forth from the heart, these words that would point out how, from an inwardly associated impulse, we were able gradually to make this reconstruction of the Mystery of Eleusis in a certain respect into something from which we may start. We wished to be open and honest with European souls, we wished to be truthful, seeking with a sense of truthfulness for what the European soul is thirsting. The deepest thoughts are often revealed in the simplest words, formulated in the simplest language. Let us learn, with an honest and sincere conviction of the needs of our age, to recognise what a deed it was to recreate the Eleusinian Mystery out of the dark spiritual depths, which begin just at the point where we go back from ancient Rome to ancient Greece. We may then leave it to each individual soul here present to rejoice in the thought as I am sure many will, very deeply—that the creator of this reconstruction of the Mystery of Eleusis is with us during our time in Munich.

I want to speak in a rather aphoristic way this evening about a subject which I consider of importance, especially at the present time.

Many of our studies have been concerned with the Christ Impulse, with the Impulse which since the Mystery of Golgotha has been working in the evolution of humanity. And this evening I want to speak of the Impulse itself and of its significance for evolution. It must be emphasised at the outset that the Christ Impulse is a difficult subject because if even an approximately adequate conception of it is to be acquired, the teachings still being given in the various Christian denominations must be left out of account. Perhaps you will ask: How can the Christ Impulse be studied at all if such teachings are to be entirely disregarded? How can we learn about the working of this Impulse from any sources other than the beliefs that have been held for centuries? The answer must be this.—Everyone will admit that it would be unfortunate if the effects of the Sun upon human beings living on the Earth were dependent upon some generally accepted teaching about the nature of the Sun. No matter what hypotheses are put forward, the effects of the Sun are quite evident. Science admits that it does not yet know precisely what electricity is, yet electricity is put to innumerable practical uses. Therefore it is certainly justifiable to speak of the effects of the Christ Impulse without believing that the study is in any way dependent upon what has been thought about Christ in the different centuries.

The Mystery of Golgotha, the penetration of the Christ impulse into the Earth sphere, into the evolution of humanity, took place in a particular epoch. The point of time at which it occurred has been determined with at least approximate accuracy, for our time-reckoning in the West is based upon it. What kind of epoch was it? We know that different civilisations have taken their course in the process of evolution—in the post-Atlantean era, the ancient Indian, ancient Persian, Egypto-Chaldean, Graeco-Roman and our own. One of the characteristics distinguishing these culture-epochs is that a different form of human understanding, human wisdom, existed in each of them. In the ancient Indian epoch, for example, men were possessed of penetrating insight into certain cosmic mysteries. In those times the etheric body was the most active member of man’s constitution. Then, as evolution proceeded, the etheric body receded more into the background and in the ancient Persian epoch the sentient body, the astral body, became predominantly active. In the Egypto-Chaldean epoch the sentient soul was predominant, in the Graeco-Latin epoch the intellectual or mind-soul, in our own epoch the spiritual or consciousness soul, and the epoch of the Spirit-Self lies in the future. Because different members of man’s constitution are predominantly active during the several epochs, individuals confront the world in each epoch with a different kind of understanding.

Now there is a certain striking and very illuminating fact in connection with the Graeco-Latin epoch. This was the epoch of the intellectual or mind-soul, and it lasted from the eighth century B.C., approximately from the time of the founding of Rome, until the fifteenth century A.D. Because the intellectual or mind-soul was developing during that epoch, the forces in individuals who were essentially typical of this function of soul-life became particularly important. This province of the soul was undergoing a special process of development for a little more than two millennia. Since the fifteenth century mankind has been living in the epoch of the development of the consciousness-soul. Not very much of this epoch has passed as yet, for not until the present century and two more centuries have taken their course will a third of the time appointed for the development of the consciousness-soul have elapsed. Quite different faculties will develop in man’s soul during the following epochs. Seven such epochs constitute the post-Atlantean age.

Let us now ask: Which of those epochs was least qualified to understand the Christ Being? Conceptions of the nature of man differed in all of them. The epoch least qualified to form adequate conceptions of the nature of Christ was the epoch of the intellectual or mind-soul, from the eighth century B.C. to the fifteenth century A.D. And the remarkable fact is that this is the very epoch when the Mystery of Golgotha took place!

If, to speak hypothetically, the Christ had appeared on the Earth in the days, let us say, of the holy Rishis of ancient India, there would have been widespread understanding of who He was. So too in ancient Persia, where men had been taught of the Sun Spirit. Had the Christ descended into a human body during that epoch men would have known that the Sun Spirit had come down into the body of a man on the Earth. And in the epoch of the Egyptian Temple Wisdom, something equivalent might still have been possible. But in the epoch when understanding of the nature of Christ was farthest from men’s reach—in that very epoch the Christ appeared on Earth.

It is not easy to add anything to this strange fact by way of illustration, for the conclusion to be drawn is that obviously hardly anything about the real nature of the Christ Being is to be found in the teachings formulated in that epoch and that understanding can therefore be expected only in later centuries.

Since the fifteenth century men may have begun to pride themselves on their intellectual acumen and to believe that in respect of an understanding of Christ better times have come with the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. In a certain sense it is so, but in another sense it is not.

What is there to be said about the intellectual faculties of men of the present age, since the fif-teenth century? Generally speaking these faculties have in no sense become more spiritual than they were in earlier times. In a certain respect man’s life of soul has sunk still more deeply into matter—as indeed was necessary in order that the stage of the consciousness-soul might be attained. So we find that Spiritual Science—which before the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries was still a matter of remembrance, of recollection—fell into the background and materialism steadily increased. Spiritual Science blossomed in certain personages of the Middle Ages, reached a certain height as it were through the elemental forces working in individual mystics, and then receded. But from the eleventh and twelfth centuries onwards it is obvious that something else is beginning to appear. A symptom is that men attempt to ‘prove’ the existence of God. Only people with very strange ideas about the world could fail to recognise what that means. As a rule we try to ‘prove’ what we do not know or understand. We try to prove that someone has stolen when we did not actually see him commit the theft. And when men lost all inner experience of God, when they no longer knew by what paths to seek for the Divine, they set about trying to ‘prove’ the existence of the Divine. This is irrefutable proof that men were beginning to lose all knowledge of God. The fifth post-Atlantean epoch must necessarily be the epoch of materialism because since it began man has been obliged to view nature as presented to the senses and intellect; for only so can the Ego in its full power become conscious.

To understand what I mean, let us think back to the epoch of ancient Persia. In the epoch of ancient India it would have been still more clearly in evidence, and even in the Egyptian epoch it was still apparent to a certain extent. A man belonging to the ancient Persian civilisation would have been astonished that a cosmological system such as that of Copernicus should be derived from observation of the planetary movements.—I must here say something highly paradoxical.—A man in ancient Persia would have been very surprised if attempts had been made to teach him astronomy in anything faintly resembling its modern form. He would have said: Am I supposed to be so stupid that if I want to walk about, someone must show me how to do it? When the Sun is moving along its path through cosmic space, my soul accompanies it.—He knew this just as a man today knows which way he is going when his body moves. Out of his innate knowledge the ancient Persian drew a spiral corresponding exactly with the course of the Sun through cosmic space. In that epoch the human soul felt united with the Earth-soul and the path taken by the Earth was indicated by the Caduceus, the Staff of Mercury. Not until later was man thrust out of his spiritual environment so drastically that he was obliged to plan and calculate the path of the Earth, his own planet.

On the other hand, if man’s relation to the external world had remained at the earlier stage, he would never have been able to develop full self-consciousness. He would have lived through the Graeco-Latin civilisation-epoch, when intellect and soul-life in general would have been left to their own resources, as it were smouldering inwardly; a condition would have come about in which the soul has no longer any direct knowledge of its relation to the world but makes progress only in itself. It was necessary for the human soul to emerge from that condition too, and pass into the epoch of the consciousness-soul. Man was to learn to live altogether in his ‘I’, in his Ego. He was to disassociate everything external from his ‘I’ and cognise the world through logic alone. He was thrust out of the spiritual content of the world.

In the Graeco-Latin epoch the soul still contained the active intellectual principle which although it no longer experienced the happenings in the external spiritual world directly, nevertheless did still experience the Divine. In the modern age men lost the Divine! It would never have occurred to Aristotle to attempt to ‘prove’ the existence of the Divine. The intellectual or mind-soul still experienced the indwelling Divine, although it could offer no proof of Christ. Then from the fifteenth /sixteenth century onwards even that experience was lost. Nevertheless when this stage too is over man will be capable with his own powers of evolving a conception of the Divine.

From the fifteenth century, for four hundred years, the self-dependent human intellect has been unable to penetrate to the idea of the Divine. Something very strange has happened—and the fact that we commented upon it caused great offence. Immanuel Kant, the philosopher, lived in the eighteenth century. What happened to him was that he confused the particular nature of the human soul since the fifteenth century with the nature of the human soul in general. Hence he came to the conclusion that it is impossible for man, by means of his own powers, to acquire knowledge of the Divine. What he ought to have said was that this had been impossible only since the beginning of the fifteenth century. But as Lucifer had Kant firmly by the collar and had made him an arrogant individual, he believed that what he said applied to the whole human race!

It might be thought from this that the prospects of understanding the Christ Being are even less hopeful than in the previous centuries. But it is not so. Men have faculties of knowledge other than those they possessed in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, and different, too, from the only faculties that are used today for grasping the nature of the Ego. The other powers of cognition lie more in the underground province of the soul and have to be drawn up from there. But a modern man does this only under coercion. As long as it was possible for the human soul at surface level to cognise the Divine, men did not make efforts to bring their deeper forces into action. But now, in our present time, as man can make no real approach to the Divine, reaction compels him to delve to greater depths within himself and to summon into activity forces other than those operating on the surface of the soul. Connected with this is the fact that we are approaching an age when an understanding of the Christ Being through the deeper forces in man’s nature is beginning-to take root.

A few days ago in Oslo I ventured to speak of a Fifth Gospel.¹ Through the Fifth Gospel information is given in addition to what is contained in the other four Gospels. The Fifth Gospel tells us still more of the nature of Christ. There can be no question of presumptuousness when this apparently new information about the nature of the Christ Being is given, for communications of this kind are made only when the times demand it. What has been said about the Christ Being here in Copenhagen, for instance, and printed in the booklet The Spiritual Guidance of Man and of Mankind, and in various lecture-courses—this too belongs in a certain way to the Fifth Gospel. Such communications are made when the times demand that they shall come to the knowledge of men. If you think only of what was said in that booklet about the two Jesus children, you will agree that all the intelligence of our present age—consisting as it does of the forces operating on the surface of man’s soul—not only does not understand these things but rages against them when they are communicated.

We are on the threshold of a new conception of Christ. It will not be an intellectual understanding. People will certainly be able to grasp its meaning but it will be discovered through the more deeply lying forces of soul. When the eye of clairvoyance desires to have any prevision of the future of humanity in the next centuries, also of the next incarnations of individuals now living, it must be remembered that the forces operating on the surface of soul-life will become increasingly less effective. Mankind will feel more and more drawn to the revelations of the deeper forces of the soul.

Of the Graeco-Latin epoch it is rightly said that the nature of the human beings then living was inwardly whole, inwardly complete. Fundamentally speaking, this can no longer be said of even healthy souls today and will in future be less and less the case. If humanity in the future were to be taught only of matters accessible to the superficial forces of cognition, the life of soul would become increasingly barren, barren in a remarkable respect.

We have not yet reached the point when religious teaching is no longer given in schools, but already there are demands that only what is authenticated by science shall be taught. The demands made by people of this mentality will become so powerful an influence in outer life that very soon mankind will become dangerously superficial. Human beings today still learn to write, but in a future not far distant people will have to remind themselves of the fact that once upon a time hand-writing was a custom! A kind of mechanical stenography will become general—executed, furthermore, on machines. Mechanisation of life! I will indicate it by just one symptom. Think of a civilisation at its prime, when the historic truth will be unearthed that once upon a time there were human beings who wrote by hand. This historic truth will be unearthed just as we today unearth the contents of the Egyptian temples. Handwritten texts will be excavated as we excavate the hieroglyphs of the Egyptians. But a reaction of the life of soul against mechanisation will also take place. True as it is that in future times our handwriting will be no less a wonder than the Egyptian hieroglyphs are a wonder to us, it is also true that the souls of men will long once again for the direct revelations of the spirit. Outer life will become more and more superficial but the inner life will claim its rights.

People may scoff today at Spiritual Science but the materialists will eventually be forced to retreat before man’s cry of longing for the spiritual world. And so a real understanding of Christ will begin in times when the doors are open for spirituality, although admittedly through reaction against the conditions prevailing in external life.

Let us now consider still another aspect of the subject. Maybe the following picture will evoke an echo in your souls. We can think of the women who, according to the Gospels, seek for the body of Christ and find the grave empty. The Angel says to them: He whom ye seek is not here; He is risen! That is, He lives in the Spirit. The One for whom they were seeking in the physical world appeared subsequently to the Apostles, teaching them for a time as exceptional individuals who had responded to Him with a certain measure of understanding. Christ appeared to them as a spiritual figure. And in the spirit He moved through Greece, Rome, to the Germanic peoples, moved from East to West and then to the North. We shall not look for an intellectual, abstract or scientific interpretation of the Christ Being among the great Roman philosophers who speak of Him without understanding. Nor among the somewhat inarticulate Germanic peoples shall we find evidence of understanding. The souls of men are drawn to Christ but without intellectual understanding. He lives in their hearts, only in their hearts.

In the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth centuries the picture is not of the women who go to the grave to seek for the body of Christ and do not find it. Whole hosts of European peoples feel urged to seek for the grave of Christ. This is the age of the Crusades. Men journey from the West to the East to find the grave where the women had once sought. And what do these hosts experience?—He for whom ye seek is not here!—Truth to tell they were seeking for something that was living in their souls, but they understood it so little that they journeyed to the East to look for the physical grave, and finally, after many disillusionments and sufferings, were destined to know: He whom ye seek is not here!—Where, then, was the object of their quest?

On the one side there are the journeys to the East and on the other side European Mysticism at its preparatory stages in Tauler and Meister Eckhart, reaching its prime later on in Jacob Boehme. There was the one for whom men had sought in the East and had not found. Thither He had gone, but His Presence took effect in a particular way. What is the most significant characteristic of this medieval Mysticism?

Eckhart, Tauler and the others do not claim to understand the Divine Being, the Christ, but they resolved to lead a life of piety in order to experience Christ in their souls. And the greater the intensity of this experience, the more deeply they longed to be permeated by the Divine, by the Christ, in the way suitable for their time. The Crusaders had experienced no more than this: He whom ye seek is not here!—What they were seeking came to life in the form of European mysticism.

We too are living in an epoch with very definite characteristics. Not only the peoples of Europe but also those of America participate in the remarkable conditions now prevailing. Let me give one striking example—from Berlin. On February 1st, 1910, a famous modern theologian came out with the following ‘ingenious’ utterance: “Ladies and Gentlemen, I challenge you to bring me a single sentence attributed to Christ Jesus which I cannot prove to have been current in pre-Christian spiritual life.”—That is an entirely typical attitude today. Evidence is brought forward in attempts to prove that the content of Christianity, including even the Lord’s Prayer, was previously in existence. The words of the theologian quoted are in complete conformity with the current attitude, and similar utterances will become more and more common. What kind of impression is made by the statement that all Christ’s sayings were already current before His coming?—I was once listening to an address by a very erudite scholar and a child happened to be present. Someone asked the child: “What have you been told?” His answer was: “He has told me nothing new. I already knew all the words!”—Theologians too are familiar with the words and detect nothing new resounding through them.

These things should really be self-evident but nowadays are invariably met with resistance. The attitude that a cultured individual may still have something to learn is seldom present but it is widely held that everyone is capable of judging according to his own standard. We have witnessed a striking exhibition of this attitude. When materialism came to the fore, theology began to eliminate all divinity from Christ Jesus and to speak only of the man Jesus, although acknowledging his superiority. This view became widespread in the nineteenth century and was given grotesque expression in Ernst Renan’s famous book, The Life of Jesus, published in 1863. He spoke of Jesus in wonderfully beautiful language but his description of the Lazarus miracle suggests that in reality no awakening of a dead man had taken place, that Jesus had simply allowed His followers to spread reports to this effect; hence the so-called miracle was in the nature of a swindle! Thus something resembling a chapter from a cheap novel has been inserted into an otherwise genuinely fine work. There seems to be no reason for Renan having written any words of reverence, for the figure he describes merits no particular veneration. But for half a century this was all accepted without thought and it is only one example from literature in which tribute is paid to Christ Jesus as a man—but simply as a man.

Now, however, it has been realised that a great deal of what is reported of Jesus Christ would be impossible if He had been a mere man—especially the assertion made by Jesus that He himself was the Christ—therefore more than a man. Many contradictions were found. Then, more recently, God—an imaginary God—was again substituted for man. Christ Jesus became a phantom, a fetish—but a limited fetish. This was a truly remarkable state of things! For centuries men had eliminated Divinity from Christ Jesus and had made Him a man, and now the Divinity made the manhood an impossibility. Such arguments will go on ad infinitum and there is ample evidence that we are taking a path along which understanding is beyond the reach of the forces at the surface of human nature. To put it differently.—In the twentieth century men have attempted a kind of crusade in search of the historical Christ Jesus. And once again the answer will be: He whom you seek is not to be found here!—Those who seek in this way for the historical man Jesus will no more be able to find Him than could the women at the tomb or the Crusaders who thronged thither. The Crusaders could not find Christ because they were not seeking for Him inwardly; nor can the modern crusaders find Him because they do not seek with the inner forces of the soul by which alone Christ can be found.

Within the stream of spiritual life a deepening of the forces of soul-and-spirit is in process. And whereas the spiritual forces lying at the surface will deny the Christ more and more insistently, deeper forces of soul will rise up and seek for Christ. Increasing numbers of people will see the Christ, who will appear in the etheric realm and will be found by those who are sensitive to this experience. We therefore speak of an etheric appearance of Christ in the twentieth century. Those who have this experience will have direct knowledge that at the moment when the Mystery of Golgotha was fulfilled the Christ Being entered in very truth into the Earth sphere and in ever greater numbers individuals will know with certainty who the Christ is.

Knowledge of Spiritual Science will deepen souls to such an extent that men’s vision will be awakened and the Christ revealed. A wonderful prospect opens for the eye of prophetic clairvoyance. The forces belonging to the superficial activities of the soul will become more and more ineffective and human beings born as time goes on will comparatively soon have finished with these surface-forces of their souls. An epoch reminiscent in a remarkable way of the Christ Event is approaching.

In the thirtieth year of the life of Jesus of Nazareth, Christ entered into him. A new life of soul began in the body of Jesus of Nazareth, for the Christ had taken the place of the Zarathustra-Ego which had departed from that body. That was at the beginning of our era. An epoch is now approaching when into increasing numbers of men from their thirtieth year onwards, knowledge of Christ—not Christ in His full reality—will penetrate as though through enlightenment. In the thirtieth year of the life of these men a new, all-embracing soul-life will begin because they will have vision of the Christ in His etheric form.

We understand our epoch in the sense of Spiritual Science when we realise what this prospect signifies. When the souls now living are again incarnated—and this will happen to many sooner than the normal period—numbers of individuals, from a particular age onwards, will feel through actual experience that something has penetrated into them of which they could previously have known only by having been informed of it. They will be able to say: I myself know through actual vision who Christ is; vision has enabled me to understand. When that time comes, efforts to prove the existence of Christ will cease, for the number of those who can testify to direct experience of Christ moving over the Earth as it Spirit Being, will constantly increase. Men will no longer search for the historic Christ.

There are two aspects to the picture of the future: On the one side barrenness will become more and more widespread owing to the activity of the superficial soul-forces; on the other side, as reaction against the barrenness, the soul-forces lying in the depths of man’s being will be evoked. We spread Anthroposophy in order that this shall be made known.

Men should not heedlessly allow impressions however faint to pass them by, for strong impres-sions are rare. As a result of the spread of true Anthroposophy the souls of men will not allow enlightenment, when it comes, to elude them, for if they do it would be beyond their reach for several incarnations. Other people, however, who make use of the superficial soul-forces will speak of those who have known enlightenment as fools or lunatics. A terrible beginning in this direction has already been made. Psychiatrists have already begun to investigate the problem of Christ Jesus. The Gospels are studied with the aim of discovering in Him symptoms of insanity! Such phenomenal occurrences should not be ignored; they should rather lead to the insight that Christ, who came into humanity in an age when He could least be understood, is working perpetually to prepare the understanding that will come in future ages.

A person who looks into the future should not generalise about it in abstract phrases. The future reveals two aspects: the aspect of barrenness of soul, of complete absorption in materialism, but also the aspect of the birth of a new spiritual world, not only in thoughts or in vision but in existence itself. For Christ will come to the side of men and be their counsellor. This is not a mere image. In actual reality men will receive the counsels they need from the Living Christ who will be their adviser and friend, who will speak to their souls just like someone who is physically near. If men needed a prophetic proclamation at the time when He was to appear in a human body, they need such a proclamation even more at this time, when He will come in an etheric form. What has now been said should be regarded as a preparatory announcement of what will and indeed must come to pass.

Have no illusion about the future. We are not giving way to illusion when we picture what outer, material life will be like in a future when handwriting will be spoken of in the same sense as we today speak of the hieroglyphs of the Egyptians. The last vestiges of a spiritual culture still survive, even today, for writing still expresses characteristics of the soul; but the traces of soul will soon have disappeared from external culture as completely as Egyptian culture has vanished from our ken. People will speak of many things which in our time are still imbued with soul, as of something belonging to a far distant past. But the same voice that will proclaim the existence in the past age of a kind of hand-writing, will proclaim out of spiritual knowledge that in the spirit the living Christ is again moving among humanity. Men will have to exchange the spirit of mere intellectual conjecture for the spirit of direct vision, of direct feeling and experience of the Living Christ moving as a reality in the spirit by the side of the souls of men.²

• 1. See, The Fifth Gospel. Seven lectures given in Oslo and Cologne in 1913. (Rudolf Steiner Press.)
• 2. See also The True Nature of the Second Coming. Rudolf Steiner. (Rudolf Steiner Press.)

As we live through the day and realize all that we owe to the Sun, and to what extent the tasks of life are connected with the sunlight, we forget that through the whole pleasure and satisfaction we derive from the sunlight, there runs the thread of sure knowledge that on the following morning, after we have rested through the night, the Sun will rise again. This is a token of the confidence that lives in our soul—confidence in the lasting reality of the world-order. We may not always consciously realize it, but if asked, we should certainly answer in this sense. We devote ourselves to our work today because we know that the fruits of our work are assured for tomorrow; that after the night's rest the Sun will reappear, and the fruits of our labor will ripen.

We turn our eyes to the Earth's covering of plants; we admire its display; we know the world-order ordains that the plants and fruits for next year will arise from the seeds of this year. If asked why we live on with such a sense of security, we should reply that the reality of the world-order seems to us assured; we feel certain that from the ripening of the old seeds a new flowering will emerge into full reality.

But if we are thinking of this kind of reassurance from external reality, there is something in face of which we need a support. It is something of quite special significance for our soul-life. And only one phrase need be uttered—”our ideals”—to make us feel the need for assurance, since to those who truly think and feel it will be obvious that the phrase carries no such assurance in itself. When we think and feel in a higher sense, our ideals belong to those things that are more important to our souls than external reality. It is our ideals which fire our souls, and in many connections make life valuable and precious. And when we look at the assured reality of external life, we are often troubled by the thought: does this reality include anything that guarantees the most precious thing in life—the realization of our ideals?

Innumerable conflicts in the human soul proceed from the fact that people doubt more or less strongly in the realization of their ideals, although it is precisely on this that they would like to rely with every fiber of their being. We need only consider the world of the physical plane in an unprejudiced way and we shall find innumerable human souls passing through the hardest, bitterest conflicts because they are unable to bring to fulfillment their cherished ideals. For we cannot conclude from the course of evolution that our ideals in life will prove to be the seeds of a future reality in the same way as the plant-seeds of this year foretell next year's flowering. These plant-seeds, we know, bear within them a potential which next year will yield a manifest reality on the widest scale. But if we consider our ideals, we may indeed cherish the belief that they will have some significance, some value for life; but certainty in the same sense we cannot have. As human beings we should like our ideals to be the seeds of a later future, but we look in vain for anything that can give them assured reality. When we look at the physical plane, we find that our souls, with their idealism, are often in a state of despair.

Let us pass from the world of the physical plane into the world of the occult, the world of hidden spirituality. A man who has become a spiritual seer learns to know souls in the period through which they have to pass between death and a new birth, and it is very revealing to look with the eyes of the spirit at those souls who in their earthly life were imbued through and through with high ideals, with ideals born from the fire and light of their hearts.

A man who has passed through the gate of death has before him the well-known life-tableau, the memory-picture of his past Earth-life, and interwoven with it is the world of ideals. This world of ideals can come before a man after death in such a way that his feelings concerning it might be expressed as follows: “These ideals, which have fired and illumined my inmost heart, have been my dearest, most intimate treasure; they now wear a strange, unfamiliar aspect. They look as though they did not rightly belong to all that I remember as actual Earth-experience on the physical plane.” Yet the dead man feels himself magnetically attracted to these ideals of his; he feels as though he were under their spell. But they may also contain an element that gives him a mild shock; he feels that this element may be dangerous, that it may alienate him from the Earth-evolution, and from what is connected with Earth-evolution in the life between death and a new birth.

In order to express myself quite clearly, I should like to connect what I have said with concrete events. To some of those sitting here they will be known already, but this evening they require to be specially illumined from a certain aspect, that they may be brought into connection with what I have said concerning the nature of human souls. Of recent years, a man of poetic nature joined us [Christian Morgenstern]. Coming from a life that was dedicated to the purest idealism and had already undergone a mystical deepening, this man joined our Anthroposophical Movement. Although his soul dwelt in a failing body, he devoted himself heart and soul to our spiritual Movement. In the spring of this year we lost him from Earth-life; he passed through the gate of death. He left to mankind a series of wonderful poems, published in a volume that came out shortly after his death.

Owing to the difficulties of his bodily life he was separated in space from our Movement for long periods, either in a lonely spot in the Swiss mountains, or in some other place recommended for his health. But he remained attached to our Movement, from however far away, and his poems, which in certain anthroposophical circles have lately been recited over and over again, are the poetic reflection, as it were, of what we have been developing in Anthroposophy for more than ten years.

Now he has passed through the gate of death, and something very remarkable comes from occult observation of this soul. The significance of the soul's life in that ailing body has become apparent only since death. While working faithfully with us for the progress of our Movement, this soul absorbed something that developed very great strength below the surface of the gradually dying body. This strength was concealed by the ailing body as long as the soul dwelt within it; but now, when one comes into the presence of this soul after death, there shines forth, as it can shine forth only in the spiritual life, the content of the life which this soul absorbed. The cloud-like sphere in which our friend now lives, after having passed through the gate of death, presents itself as a mighty cosmic tableau. For the occult observer this is a most striking sight.

It might perhaps be said that the occult seer is able to cast his gaze round the whole wide sphere of the cosmic world. But it is one thing to allow the gaze to wander round the whole sphere of the cosmic world, and quite another to see, separated out from a particular human soul, something that has the appearance of a mighty tableau, like a painting of what would otherwise be there on its own account in the spiritual world. Just as we have the physical world around us, and then see it reflected in the magnificent paintings of a Raphael or a Michelangelo, so is it in the spiritual world in the case we are speaking of. Just as one never says in the presence of a picture by Michelangelo or Raphael, “Oh, this picture has nothing to give me, for I have all the real world to look at”—so, in observing the tableau that mirrors in a soul what can otherwise be seen in contemplating spiritual reality, one does not say that this soul tableau is not an endless enrichment. And it may be said that there is infinitely more to be learnt in the presence of this friend, who after death contains in his soul a reflection of all we have described from out of the spiritual world in the course of many years, than from direct contemplation of the vastness of spiritual reality.

This is an occult fact. I have repeatedly mentioned it to our friends in other places, and I have now taken from it elements that will be important for our considerations today. And this occult fact, as it presents itself in Christian Morgenstern, shows me something else. Anyone who sees how much opposition there still is to the promulgation of occult teaching, as we give it, will often ask questions—I will not call it doubt, but the questions are asked: “What progress will this occult teaching make in human hearts and souls?”, and “Is there any guarantee, any assurance, that the work of the Anthroposophical Society will have a continuing influence on the course of the spiritual evolution of humanity?” The sight of what the soul of our friend has become is one such assurance from the occult world. Why? Our friend, who has left behind him the poems, Wir fanden einen Pfad (“We found a Path”) lives in the immense cosmic tableau that is like a kind of soul-body for him after death; but while he was connected with us, he absorbed into his being our teaching about the Christ. He absorbed this anthroposophical teaching, binding it to his soul until it became the very spiritual heart-blood of his soul; he received it in such a way that for him it was enfilled with the substance of the Christ. The Christ Being flowed into him in the teaching. The Christ, as He lives in our Movement, passed over likewise into his soul.

In contemplating this occult fact, the following presents itself. The man who goes through the gate of death can indeed live in a cosmic tableau of this kind; he will go forward with it through the life that lies between death and a new birth. It will work and be embodied in his whole being, or rather it will “ensoul” his whole being, and it will permeate his new Earth-life when he again descends to a life on Earth. Moreover, such a soul receives a germ of perfection for its own life, and progresses in the evolution of the Earth's existence.

All this comes to pass because such a soul has absorbed the teaching into his being. But this particular soul accepted all the teaching, steeped through and spiritualized by the Christ-Being, by the conception of the Christ-Being that we can make our own. All that such a soul absorbed, however, is not merely a treasure stimulating the further evolution of this single soul, but through Christ, who is there for everyone, it works back again upon all mankind. And that cosmic tableau which for clairvoyant eyes is being developed in the soul of him who this spring passed through the gate of death—that Christ-enfilled soul-tableau is for me an assurance that what may be spoken today from out of the spiritual world will, through the love of Christ, radiate into souls who will come later. They will be set on fire, inspired by it. Not alone will our friend carry forward the Christ-enfilled anthroposophical teaching for his own greater perfecting, but because it has become part of his being it will become an impulse from the spiritual world to the souls who will live in the coming centuries; into them will pour the rays of that which is Christ-enfilled. Our souls cannot take in for themselves alone the Christ-filled spiritual science which is their most precious possession, but they will bear it through epochs of civilization yet to come. If you enfill this teaching with Christ, it will stream forth as a seed into the whole of humanity because the Christ Being belongs to all mankind. Where Christ is, the treasures of life are not isolated; their fruitfulness for individuals is always there, but at the same time they become a treasure for all mankind.

We must place this clearly before our souls. We see then what a significant difference there is between wisdom that is not filled with Christ and wisdom that is illuminated by the light of Christ. When we come together in a narrower circle of our Society, we are not there for the sake of abstract considerations, but in order to cultivate true occultism, undismayed by what the modern world has to say against it. Hence we are able to touch on matter which can come to our knowledge only through investigation in the spiritual.

A second example calls for mention. In recent years we have had occasion in Munich to perform what we call the Mystery Plays, and Swedish friends have often been present. The performances of these Mystery Plays had to differ in many respects from other performances; that had to be a sense of responsibility to the spiritual world. One could not attend these Mystery Plays as if one were going to an ordinary theatre. Certainly, whatever is accomplished in such a case must proceed from one's own soul-powers. But let us understand clearly that when in our physical life we want to carry out something through the will of our souls, we have to use our muscular power, which is imparted to us from outside and yet belongs to us. If we lack this muscular power, which comes to us from outside, there are some things we cannot do. In a certain sense muscular forces belongs to us and yet again not to us. So it is with our spiritual faculties, but our physical forces, our muscular powers, are of no help to us if these spiritual faculties are to be active in the spiritual spheres. The powers of the spiritual world itself must come to our aid; the powers and forces which stream out of the spiritual world into our physical world must irradiate and permeate us. It is true that other enterprises somewhat similar in character to our Munich Mystery Plays may be based on a different consciousness, but it was always clear to me that our project could be carried through only in the course of years, that the various impulses might be used only when definite spiritual forces, moving in this direction, flowed into our human forces; when spiritual “Guardian Angel” forces flowed into our human forces.

At the beginning of our spiritual-scientific work, when our very small circle came together at the beginning of this century, it was always easy to count the number present. For a short time a faithful soul was always among them, a soul who through her Karma possessed a special talent for beauty and art. [Maria Spettini, actress at the German Imperial Theatre in St. Petersburg.] Even though it was for a short time, the bearer of this soul worked with us, especially in connection with the more intimate spiritual-scientific work that needed to be done at that time. With an inner depth of feeling and an enlightened enthusiasm she worked among us, and absorbed particularly certain cosmological teachings which it was possible to give at that time. And I still remember today how at that time a fact came before my soul which may perhaps seem unimportant, but may be mentioned here.

When our Movement began, a periodical which, for well-considered reasons, was called Lucifer, came into being. At that time I wrote an article under the title of “Lucifer” which was meant to indicate, in tendency at any rate, the direction in which we wished to work. This article, even if it did not say so in words, laid down the lines which our Anthroposophical Society should follow, and I may say: that article, too, is Christ enfilled. The life-blood of Christianity can flow into those souls who absorb what is in that article. I may now perhaps remark that, at the time, this article met with the most violent opposition in the circle of the few who had joined us from the old Theosophical Movement. By all of them this article was considered entirely “untheosophical”. The personality of whom I have been speaking entered into this article with the warmest possible heart and the deepest inner feeling, and I was able to say to myself: When it is a question of the actual truth, her agreement is of more importance for the progress of the Movement than all the opposition put together. In short, this soul was deeply interwoven with all that was to flow into our spiritual stream.

She soon died; in 1904 she passed through the gate of death. For a while after death she had to struggle through in the spiritual world to find her real identity. Not as early as 1907, but from the time of our Mystery Plays in Munich, from 1909 onwards, and then to an increasing degree as time went on, this soul was always there, guarding and clarifying what I was able to undertake in connection with the Munich Festival Plays. All that this soul, owing to her talent for the beautiful, was able to give to the artistic realization of our spiritual ideals, worked down out of the spiritual world, as though from the Guardian Angel of our Mystery Plays, in such a way that one felt in oneself the power to take the necessary initiative. Just as in the physical world our muscular energy supports us, so the spiritual force streaming down from the spiritual worlds flowed into one's own spiritual force.

Thus do the dead work with us, so are they present with us. This was yet another case—and here comes the point I must specially speak about today—this was again a case in which all that the personality had absorbed in the field of Anthroposophy was not used only to assist her own progress, for it clearly flowed back to us again in something that we ventured to do for the whole Movement. Two possibilities existed. This personality had taken in all that she could, she had it in her soul, and so she could apply it for the sake of her further progress through life and also through the life after death. This is right—it ought to happen so—for if the human soul is to attain its divine goal, it must become ever more and more perfect; it must do all it can to help forward this perfecting. But because this soul had taken into herself the whole purpose of what it is to be “Christ-enfilled”, what she had absorbed was able not merely to work for herself but to flow down to us—and to become an effective kind of common possession for us all.

That is what Christ brings about when He permeates the fruits of our knowledge. He does not take away all that these fruits of knowledge represent for an individual, for the Christ died for all souls. When we rise up to that knowledge which must be possessed by all true Earth-men—”Not I, but Christ in me”—when we realize the Christ within us in all that we know, and when we attribute to Christ the forces which we ourselves employ, then all we take into our being works not for ourselves alone, but for the whole of humanity. It becomes fruitful for the whole of humanity. Look at the souls of men all over the Earth. Christ died for them all, and that which you receive in His Name you receive for your own perfecting, but also as a most precious possession that is effective for all mankind.

And now let us return to our introductory words this evening. It was said that when, after death, we look back upon our life-tableau, on all that we have lived through, it appears to us as though our ideals might have something strange about them. We feel in regard to our ideals that they really do not bear us forward to the common life of men, that they have no inherent guarantee of reality in the general life of men; they carry us away from it. Lucifer has a powerful influence over our ideals because they flow in such beauty out of the human soul, but only out of the human soul. They are not rooted in external reality. That is why Lucifer has such power, and it is really the magnetic impulse of Lucifer which we experience in our ideals after death. Lucifer approaches us, and the ideals we have are specially valuable to him, because by the indirect path of these ideals he can draw us to himself. But when we permeate with Christ all that we attain spiritually, when we feel the Christ in us, knowing that what we receive is also received by the Christ in us—”Not I, but Christ in me”—then, when we pass through the gate of death we do not look back upon our ideals although they tended to alienate us from the world. Our ideals have been committed to Christ, and we know that it is Christ who makes our ideals His own concern. He takes our ideals upon Himself. And the individual can say: “Not I alone can take my ideals upon myself so that they are seeds for humanity on Earth as surely as the plant-seeds of the present summer are seeds for the earthly plant-robe of the summer to come, but the Christ in me can do this; the Christ in me permeates my ideals with the reality of substance.” And of those ideals we can say: “Yes, as men we give expression to ideals on Earth, but in us lives the Christ and He takes them upon Himself.” These ideals are true seeds of future reality. Christ-enfilled idealism is permeated with the seed of reality, and he who truly understands Christ looks upon ideals in this way. He says: “Ideals have not yet in themselves that guarantee of their own reality, their own actuality, which inheres in the plant-seeds for the coming year; but when our ideals are committed to the Christ within us, they are real seeds.” Whoever has a true Christ-consciousness and makes his life-substance St. Paul's words “Not I, but Christ in me—He is the bearer of my ideals”, he has this realization. He says: “There are the ripe, germinating seeds, there are the streams and seas, the hills and valleys—but close by is the world of idealism; this world of idealism is taken over by Christ, and then it is like the seeds of the future world in the world of the present, for the Christ bears our ideals on into the future world as the God of Nature bears the plant-seeds of this year on into the coming year.”

This gives reality to idealism; it removes from the soul those bitter, gloomy doubts which can arise from the feeling: What becomes of the world of ideals that are inwardly bound up with external reality and with all that I most value? He who takes the Christ Impulse into himself perceives that everything which ripens in the human soul as idealism, as wisdom-treasure, is permeated, saturated through and through with reality. And I have brought the two examples before you in order to show you, out of the occult world, how different is the working of that which is entrusted, Christ-enfilled, to the soul, from that which is entrusted to it only as wisdom which is not Christ-enfilled. What the soul has permeated with Christ in this Earth-life flows down to us quite differently from that which is not Christ-enfilled.

A terrible impression is received when with clairvoyant consciousness one looks out into the spiritual world and sees souls, in whom full Christ-consciousness has not arisen during their last incarnation, fighting for their ideals—fighting for what is dearest to them, because in their ideals Lucifer has power over them, which enables him to separate them from the fruits, the real fruits, which the whole world ought to enjoy.

Quite different is the aspect of those who have allowed their soul-wealth, their wisdom-wealth, to become Christ-enfilled. These souls work down into our bodies in this life; they kindle warmth and vitality in our souls. Permeation with the Christ Impulse can be felt as most precious inner soul-warmth, as comfort in the most difficult circumstances, as support in the worst abysses of life. And why? Because he who is truly permeated with the Christ Impulse finds that in whatever conquests his soul achieves, however imperfect they may appear in earthly life, there lies this Christ impulse as the assurance and guarantee of fulfillment for them. That is why Christ is such a consolation in the doubts of life, such a support for the soul. How much for the souls on Earth remains unfulfilled in life! How much seems to them precious, although in relation to the outer physical world they cannot but regard it as resembling vain hopes of spring. But anything we honestly feel in our soul, anything we can unite with our soul as a valued possession—all this we can commit to Christ; and whatever may be its prospects of realization, when we have committed it to Christ He bears it forth upon His wings into reality. It is not always necessary to have knowledge of this, but the soul that feels the Christ within it, as the body feels its life-giving blood, feels the warmth, the promise of realization in this Christ Impulse in respect of all that cannot be realized in the external world, although the soul, with perfect justification, longs for it to be realized.

The fact that clairvoyant consciousness sees these things when it surveys souls after death is a proof of how justifiable is the feeling of the human soul when in all that a man does, in all that he thinks, he feels himself Christ-enfilled, takes the Christ into his soul as comfort, as support, saying in Earth-life: “Not I, but Christ in me!” For a man may indeed say that in this Earth-life! Recall a passage at the beginning of my book, Theosophy, which is meant to indicate one of these points where, at a certain stage of the spiritual life, there is a realization of what fills the soul in this earthly life. In a certain place in this book I have drawn attention to the fact that Tat twam asi (“Thou art that”) upon which the Eastern sages meditate, comes before man as a reality at that moment when the transition from the so-called soul-world into the spiritual world takes place. Look up the passage in question.

But something else can become a reality, in a way that is of immense human significance in relation to St. Paul's words, “Not I, but Christ in me”, which the Christ-enfilled soul may say in this life. If a man knows how to experience as inner truth this “Not I, but Christ in me”, it comes to powerful fulfillment after death. For what we receive through the words “Not I, but Christ in me” becomes our endowment, our inner nature between death and a new birth, to such an extent that we may impart it as fruit to the whole of humanity. What we so take that we receive it under the aspect of “Not I”, Christ makes into a common possession for all humanity. What I receive under the aspect of “Not I”, of this I may dare, after death, to say and feel, “Not for me alone, but for all my human brethren!” And then only may I say the words: “Yes, I have loved Him above all, even above myself,” and therefore I have hearkened to the command, “Love thy God above all.” “Not I, but Christ in me.”

And I have fulfilled that other commandment, “Love thy neighbor as thyself”, for whatever I have attained for myself will become through the fact that Christ carries it into reality, the common property of all mankind.

We must allow such things as these to work upon us, and then we experience what Christ has to signify in the human soul—how Christ can be the bearer and supporter, the comforter and illuminator of the soul of man. And so we gradually come to enter through our feelings into that which may be called the relation of Christ to the human soul.