The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The following question is asked: “If Theosophy is really to have an impact on our lives today, its teachings must be generally comprehensible. However, it seems that in this respect, the writings and lectures on theosophical topics leave much to be desired. They all presuppose a certain level of training in thinking, and it is difficult to hope that they will find their way into wider circles. Sometimes it seems as if 'Theosophy' requires such a high level of education that it is impossible to make it popular. Or is there a way out of this danger?

It should not be denied that the concerns expressed here seem to have a certain justification. However, on closer inspection they will disappear. Above all, it must be realized that the Theosophical movement has only existed for thirty years. It has therefore not yet been able to do what is needed in all areas. It will find ways and means to speak to every level of education. For it can find a form that is understandable to the simple, naive person, as well as one that satisfies the strictest demands of the scientific thinker. But one thing must not be overlooked. Often, when the difficulty of understanding theosophical teachings is mentioned, it is not because they are intrinsically difficult to understand, but because the present-day world of ideas feels alienated by what the theosophists put forward. And then the listeners or readers do not say to themselves that the things are unusual to them, but they simply claim: we do not understand that. It is not a lack of education, but rather a lack of impartiality that is often the problem in this regard. For Theosophy says nothing that is not fundamentally inscribed in the core of every human being. And to bring this out, it is not scholarship but rather good will that is needed.

In our time, there is often a lack of awareness that one has to work one's way up to knowledge. People want everything to be presented in such a way that they can fit it into what they already think and feel without any effort. To consult with oneself, to do inner spiritual work, to exert oneself in thinking: these things have been forgotten in the broadest circles. The most popular speakers and writers are those from whom one hears or reads what, on superficial hearing or reading, appears to be something more or less familiar. However, it is not always possible for those who speak about spiritual things to respond to this characteristic of the times. They know that it is of no use if someone only makes a superficial acquaintance with what they have to say. As long as one remains in the sphere of the world of sense, it is possible to satisfy every demand for easy comprehensibility. But if one rises into the spiritual sphere, it would mean that one renounces altogether to say things as they must be said according to the truth.

One should not only demand that spiritual teachings be adapted to the understanding that one has at the time, but one should feel the obligation to adapt oneself to these teachings. One should bear in mind that the human soul is capable of development. What it cannot understand today will certainly be accessible to it tomorrow. It would be good if we heard as little as possible the objection to certain presentations of the truth: “This is too high. It should be presented in a more popular way.” It would be more correct to recognize that it is necessary to make the “high” popular as such. Man does not gain very much by simply taking note of this or that; but it is of great use to him if he refines his ideas, if he acquires concepts that he did not have before. It is certainly very desirable that, for example, the teachings of “reincarnation” and “karma”, of the “higher worlds” and so on, should become known in the widest circles. But these teachings can only be seen in the right light when they are illuminated by inner thought work. It should certainly not be believed that there are people who, due to their low level of education, are unsuitable for such thought work. All healthy-minded and sensitive people are capable of it. It would only take a little effort, and even those who have never learned to read or write could be taught the basic tenets of Theosophy. Such people often have a much stronger feeling than those who have forgotten, that they must make an inner effort to understand what leads to the spiritual worlds.

Recently, after a theosophical lecture on Christianity, a clergyman who had been listening said: yes, that is all very well and good; but these teachings can only ever be for a chosen few, whereas we speak of the spiritual worlds in such a way that 'all' can understand us. The theosophical speaker had to reply: “If you were really right, then I would not need to speak at all, and then Theosophy would indeed be the most superfluous thing in the world at the present time. But if you were right, then there could not be so many who turn away from your description of the spiritual world because they feel unsatisfied. It is clear proof of how wrong you are that such a departure is possible. And precisely those who no longer find the path to the spiritual through you, they can find it through Theosophy.” If only people would pay more attention to the “actual” truths and less to the opinions they form without paying much attention to the facts. It is not important that I imagine I have the right way to speak to “everyone”, but it is important that I really observe the facts. The above-mentioned clergyman has disregarded the latter. He is convinced from the outset that “his” way of teaching can be something for “everyone”. A look at the real world could convince him of the opposite. Similar answers can be found wherever doubts like the above are expressed. A precise examination of the nature and purpose of Theosophy will dispel doubts that it can become popular.

Before we begin our actual esoteric study we should say that we in our esoteric stream must separate ourselves completely from the other one that goes through the world and that's promoted by Ms. Besant. For reasons of truthfulness we can separate ourselves from the deeds of a personality, but we must not change our love for the personality and should direct even more sympathy towards her, precisely because we must reject her deeds. As Ms. Besant wrote in 1906: “Judge has fallen on this perilous path of occultism, Leadbeater has fallen on it, very likely I too shall fall ... If the day of my fall should come I ask those who love me not to shrink from condemning my fault, not to attenuate it, or say that black is white; but rather let them lighten my heavy karma as I am trying to lighten that of my friend and brother ...” For occultism is indeed a perilous path, and everyone should consider that forces can slumber in the depths of the human soul that may not appear in ordinary life, but that come to light if one treads the perilous path. That's why one should constantly watch one's own soul and remember the words: “Watch and pray.”

Anyone who wants to enter spiritual worlds must practice strict self-knowledge. The Essene order, whose teachers also taught the Jesus of the Luke Gospel, had two rules that can show us how far away moderns are from spiritual things. One rule said that no Essene should speak about worldly things before the sun rose or after it set. And for those who had gone up to higher grades this rule was reinforced by one that forbade one to even think profane things at the indicated times. Another rule said that before the sun comes up every Essene should ask that this might happen and that the sun's power might shine over mankind every day ... These rules show us how important the connection of our being is with the events in the spiritual world from which we emerge in the morn, and in which we submerge when we go to sleep in the eve.

How little moderns live in accordance with these laws of outer and inner cycles is no doubt shown by an outer cycle like the transition of New Year's Eve into the new year. Everything that people do there and undertake before going to sleep seems to be designed to connect oneself particularly deeply with material things, whereas people should be doing a retrospect at this moment. Corresponding to this outer cycle is an inner one in man: that of waking and sleeping. In the eve a man draws his astral body and ego out of the physical and etheric bodies and lives in a purely spiritual world. Let's take a look at the moment of going to sleep, until unconsciousness gradually sets in. An ordinary man has no consciousness in the spiritual world at night. It may happen that clairvoyant moments occur and he then sees pictures of what he's left lying behind. What he sees will depend on his temperament and character. A man who feels that his stay in his bodies is like living in a house will see the physical and etheric bodies as a house with a portal through which he has to go when he wakes up. A melancholic who experiences the perishable side of earthly existence will see the image of a coffin in which a dead man lies. One who has a strong feeling that Gods built the house of his body during the old Saturn and Sun periods may see an angel or light form that hands him a chalice, representing an ancient, primal word of mankind: We're born from God.

What the Essenes did in the morn before sunrise can't be done any more today, so when a modern esoteric comes back into his physical and etheric bodies he should permeate himself with the holy feeling that sublime Gods prepared and built up these bodies during Saturn and Sun evolution so that we can develop consciousness in them. With this consciousness an esoteric will ask the God—the spiritual sun that the physical sun represents—to maintain and leave him this physical and etheric body each morn when he steps out of the spiritual world, to develop consciousness in the physical world. For where would we be if someone would take away this physical and etheric body overnight? We would then be overpowered by a feeling of unconsciousness. If we permeate ourselves with the fact that the Gods have built us this physical and etheric body we'll then have the experience that our brain, or any other organ, is not just bound to our physical body, but that it expands to a hollow sphere in which stars are imbedded that run in their orbits, and that these stars that are travelling in orbit are our thoughts. Thereby the microcosm becomes the macrocosm. The mighty forces of the whole cosmos are compressed in our brain, and we feel their connection with us. We can describe everything that led us through Saturn, Sun and through the hereditary line to our present birth with the saying: We are born from the Gods.

Just as we would have to remain unconscious if we couldn't dive down into our physical and etheric body in the morning, so passage through the portal of death extinguishes all conscious life. Before the Mystery of Golgotha a man received a consciousness after death from reserve forces that were given to men on their way that gave him consciousness in the spiritual world. But this gift of the Gods had gradually been used up, and a Greek knew that it was his lot to live in the realm of the shades after death. This was in accordance with the will of the Gods. Consciousness was shadowy and dim, and that's why Greeks had one of their greatest men say: Better to be a beggar in the upper world than a king in the realm of the shades.

A new substance was created through the Mystery of Golgotha that could give consciousness to men when they were in the spiritual world after death. This substance flowed out of the Mystery of Golgotha. A man can develop consciousness in the spiritual world after death through an immersion in this Christ substance. That's why every evening when we go to sleep and into the spiritual world we should remind ourselves of this and permeate ourselves with the feeling: We die in Christ.—For only the Christ impulse can keep us conscious in the spiritual world after death through its death-overcoming vital force. But there's nothing in the physical world that's great and holy enough to enable one to understand this Mystery that was given through Christ Jesus, so one shouldn't use anything that belongs to the world, not even the words of language in order to refer to this Mystery, the great unfathomable secret that's contained in what flows out from the Mystery of Golgotha. That's why an esoteric is silent in word and thought at the place where the sacred, unspeakable name would have to be said. He just feels the sacredness of this moment: In ... morimur.

But even if a man has consciousness after death, he doesn't have self-consciousness yet, that through which he recognizes himself as an individual being in the spiritual world and finds himself together again with the brothers and sisters he was with in the physical world. The only thing that can help us to find our being again and to awaken with self-consciousness after we were immersed in Christ substance is our experience of our higher I that's given to us by the Holy Spirit, through whom we have to hope: We'll be resurrected in the Holy Spirit and will awaken to self-conscious life.

Esteemed attendees! The last few years have revealed the extent of feelings of hatred and antipathy that have been able to take hold of the souls of the peoples of the earth. No one can close themselves off from the realization of what is, after all, a truth: that on the path of this hatred and this antipathy, life on earth will not be able to flourish and progress. And so, among the many different points of view that I have already had the opportunity to present to you here, it may well be permissible to speak from the standpoint of spiritual-scientific knowledge about what, according to this knowledge, can happen to humanity, or at least to all civilized humanity. Of course, knowledge is not feeling. But spiritual-scientific knowledge — and this has also been said here before — is more closely connected with the whole human being, with the innermost part of the human being, than external, abstract truths, as external sensory truths. Therefore, spiritual truths are indeed also suited to release feelings, emotions and volitional impulses in people, so that the feelings of sympathy and mutual love among the different peoples of the earth can also be strengthened from the strong inner power that can reveal itself from spiritual knowledge about the unifying of nations. And since, in the course of human development, humanity is progressing more and more from instinctive, unconscious life to conscious life, to the full, arbitrary grasp of the human task, it is already the case that for the future the vague sentimental love of one people for another will not be enough to unite the nations of the earth. There must be a conscious mutual recognition of what the essence of one people can expect from the essence of another.

In one sphere at least we can today see relatively easily how necessary it is for people all over the world to be united; we only have to look at the terrible damage to economic life today. And when we ask for the ultimate reasons why this economic life has experienced such damage, what paths of destruction it is treading, we must first of all realize that out of an indefinite urge of all mankind there is a striving, a tendency, to make the whole earth an economic area. On the other hand, however, the nations of the earth are not yet ready to develop their national self-interests to such a degree that what the individual nations can produce can become a unified economic life for the earth. As a result, the old instincts of the nations give rise to subjective points of view, whereas the new instincts demand a world-wide economy for all humanity. This is a realization that is, I would say, palpable today, and it is also emphasized again and again by leading minds of the present: that this striving for a unified world economy exists, but that until until the 20th century, the national economies and that these national economies, with their opposition to the global economy, caused the process of decline of economic life, which we are facing today.

This is only to be pointed out. That is not what we are essentially concerned with today; it is something else. We are concerned with that which is to lead the nations spiritually and mentally away from the hate and antipathy that has revealed itself so frighteningly, as we have experienced it in the course of the last five to six years. They have certainly been present for a long time, but they have manifested themselves in such a terrible way in the last five to six years. But when it comes to one nation's recognition of another, when it comes to the spiritual and psychological essence of one nation being absorbed into the spiritual and psychological essence of the other, then, ladies and gentlemen, dear audience, we cannot merely go among this other people or be led by our destiny to get to know each other as peoples in this way, so to speak, through what happens in everyday interaction between people. Traveling or living among other peoples is no more sufficient for an understanding of peoples than it is sufficient for an understanding of an individual person if I merely observe his gestures and movements. If I have a sense for such things, I could guess a lot from a person's gestures and movements about what is inside them; but I will recognize them more directly if I am able to let their language affect me, if I am able to accept from them what they want to convey to me through their own, their inner strength.

Is there a similar transmission of inner strength, of inner being, from nation to nation? It cannot be mere language or what we perceive in the everyday life of one nation from another, for all this is based only on the interaction between one person and another. Something must intervene that goes beyond mere individuality, beyond recognition and comprehension of the other being in the human being. And basically we are at a loss if we want to speak in an understandable way about a unified national character. Is there anything about a unified national character that is as sensually real as external things or external beings that could cause us to speak of such a unified national character? We can speak of the individual person, of a single entity, even if we only want to engage in sensory perception. For sensory perception, folklore is nothing more than a sum of so many individual people. But if we want to recognize folklore as something real, we cannot help but rise to something supersensible.

Indeed, for anyone who undergoes the spiritual training that has been mentioned here several times, including in recent weeks, and who develops the supersensible powers of knowledge in the human soul that otherwise slumber in everyday life, what can be described as folklore becomes a real entity, albeit a real entity of a supersensible kind. But then, when he becomes receptive to the spiritual in the world at large, then the foreign folklore reveals itself to him as a spiritual entity, as something supersensible that permeates the sensual being of people like a kind of cloud that belongs to that folklore and envelops it. Only by seeking such insights rooted in the supersensible can one penetrate the essence of a people in a way that is never possible through everyday interaction between individuals. This is what I would like to try to sketch out today, at least in a few lines: how spiritual science can begin to gain a truly deep insight into the unity of the peoples of the earth across the globe. To do this, it seems necessary to me that the individual human being himself must first be truly recognized from the sources of spiritual science.

In a lecture given in Stuttgart, I have already pointed out how my book 'Von Seelenrätseln' (Puzzles of the Soul), which was published a few years ago, speaks of the fact that this human being, as he stands before us in everyday life, is not a unified being, but that in fact the human organization - I now mean the immediate natural human organization - is one that reveals three distinctly distinguishable links.

In the human organism, we first have everything that relates to the main organism as the center of everything that can be called the nervous-sensory organization in the individual human being. And the human being experiences his sensory perceptions and his ideas, his thoughts, his ideas through the tool of this nervous-sensory organization; a thinking human being on earth is through this nervous-sensory organization. Now, based on today's conventional natural science, we have the idea that the entire human soul-spiritual being is based on the nerve-sense organization and is, so to speak, superimposed on the rest of the organization like a parasite. This is not the case.

Please excuse me for making a personal comment, but I must say the following: Thirty years of studying human nature and being, a pursuit in which I have always sought to harmonize spiritual science with scientific knowledge, has led me to confirm this threefold structure of the natural human being. It is a common prejudice of today's natural science that the whole soul-spiritual life runs parallel to the nerve-sense life. In reality it is different. In reality, only the thinking life of the human being is connected to the nerve-sense apparatus, while the life of feeling and of sensation is connected to everything that proceeds rhythmically in the human organization. Not only indirectly, but quite directly, is the life of feeling and sensation bound to the rhythm of breathing and the rhythm of blood circulation, just as the life of thinking and perception is bound to the nerve-sense organism. And just as the life of feeling and emotion is bound to everything in the human being that originally runs rhythmically, so the life of will is bound to everything in the human being that is metabolism. Metabolism, which appears to be the lowest level of human nature, is the basis of the life of the will – and this is a process, not matter.

Thus, in soul and spirit, the human being is a threefold creature. Spiritual will, soul-based feeling, and thinking, imagining and perceiving that are organized in response to external material phenomena – these are the threefold nature of the human being in soul and spirit. These three members of the spiritual-soul human being correspond to the three members of the human physical organism: firstly, the nerve-sense apparatus, the nerve-sense mechanism; secondly, the organization that is given in the rhythmic life of blood circulation, breathing; and thirdly, the metabolic life, which, together with the other two, forms all possible processes that are present in the human organization.

But if we now consider the human being in a particular area of the earth, we see that this threefold organization is by no means the same for all people over the whole earth. This, again, is the great error in the thinking of humanity today, that one believes one can issue some kind of common, for example, social program over the whole earth and people would have to submit to such a common program, while in fact people over the earth are individualized and specialized. And anyone who wants to get to know the real human existence on earth, who really wants to learn to recognize his or her place on earth, must be able to develop love, not only for an abstract, general humanity – which would only be the idea of humanity, the dead, empty idea of humanity – but he must develop love for the individual forms of human nature in the different regions of the earth.

Of course, in the short time allotted to us, we cannot go to all the individual peoples and characterize them, but we can consider the main types of human organization on earth.

If we want to consider a characteristic type of human being that is among the oldest, we are first led to the oriental type of human being, which has been brought to manifestation in the most ancient people of the Indians and also in other oriental peoples in the most diverse ways. This oriental type of human being has one thing in common. It shows, especially in the Indian people, how the Oriental man has grown together with the earthly nature on which he grows. Now, as much as it appears to us that this Oriental man has absorbed the spiritual into his soul, into his mind, as much as we are impressed by Oriental mysticism, when we study the Oriental man with regard to his popular characteristics, we find that what so admirably reveals itself in his innermost being as the highest spirituality is, precisely in him, dependent on the experience of the will streaming within the human being, which in turn is bound up with the metabolism of the human being. As paradoxical as it may seem at first, it is precisely the high spirituality of the Oriental people, especially the Indians, that – if I may use a rough expression – “boils up” from the metabolism, the metabolism that is connected by its own essence with the processes that are of an earthly nature in the environment of these people. Out there, in the Indian countryside, out there are the trees, the fruits, there is that which glorious, admirable nature gave to man, especially in the older times, as if by itself, and he combines this with his metabolism so that what takes place in him as a metabolic process is, so to speak, the continuation of what is 'cooking' out there in the fruits on the trees, of what is weaving and living under the earth in the roots and so on. I would like to say that the metabolism of the people of the Orient has grown completely together with the growth and flourishing of the earth. That is what makes it so: because the metabolism is the carrier of the will, this will develops within the human being. But that which develops particularly in the human being, in which the human being is completely involved and through which he connects with his surroundings, does not so much enter into consciousness. Something else radiates into consciousness. And that is precisely what appears materialistically in the metabolism of the human being is experienced in the emotional and mental life of the Oriental – especially the characteristic Oriental, the Indian – but what is experienced in the metabolism of the human being is so that it is reflected in his spiritual mirror as a spiritual life.

Thus, what arises from the mind, from the thinking of the Oriental peoples, what they produce spiritually, appears to us as a spiritual product of the earth itself. When we immerse ourselves in the Vedas, which speak intensely to our soul and are illuminated by the light of the spirit, when we immerse ourselves in the instinctively astute Vedanta philosophy, in the yoga philosophy, when we delve into works such as those of Laotse, Confucius, if we have any sense at all to devote ourselves to Oriental poetry and Oriental wisdom, then we have no feeling that this wisdom flows from a personality in a special individual human way. Just as the Oriental is united with the surrounding nature through his metabolism, just as the surrounding nature continues to weave and live in him, indeed to boil and seethe, so it is when we allow his poetry, his poetic wisdom, his wisdom-filled poetry to take effect on us. It is as if the earth were speaking to itself, as if the secrets of the earth's growth were speaking to all of humanity through the mouth of the Oriental. One has the feeling that just as this Oriental man can be the interpreter of the inner spiritual secrets of the Earth itself, so no member of any other nation – no nation of the West and no nation of central Europe – can be the interpreter and interpreter of what the secrets of the Earth itself are. Indeed, if one wants to characterize the best members of oriental peoples, it is almost as if they walked on the earth and expressed in their inner experience what actually lives under the surface of the earth, what grows out of the earth from below the surface of the earth grows out of the earth and reveals itself in the blossoms and fruits of the earth. It is the case that in the spiritual and soul life of the Oriental human being, the interior of the earth is, as it were, represented in this person. Therefore, we understand that, in their entire being, Oriental people have less sense of what is presented on the earth's surface in physical phenomena, what is revealed in external sensual facts. They carry within their own human nature what leads to these phenomena and facts in the inner, subterranean forces of the earth. Therefore, they are not very interested in what is happening above the earth's surface. They are metabolic people. But we see that their metabolism manifests itself in a spiritual and soul way.

What happens when an ideal takes hold in these people? Oh, when an ideal takes hold in these people, what the Oriental wisdom teachers present to their students as a special discipline of the soul is expressed something like this: You must breathe in a certain way; you must feel your way into the rhythm of human life in this or that way. These teachers give their students instructions for a particular breathing rhythm, for a particular blood circulation rhythm. It is a peculiar thing how the Oriental wisdom teachers point their students to the principles of mind and feeling in order to lead them to higher things. The Oriental, as he is in ordinary life, especially if he belongs to the more southern Asian peoples, is organized around his metabolism. When he grasps a concrete ideal of how to become a higher human being, he develops the rhythmic system, seeking to educate voluntarily that which he must recognize as higher, not given to him by nature.

Now it is peculiar that the more we go from the Asian peoples to those of Europe, especially to those in the center of Europe, the more we find that in the everyday life of human beings the link of human development that we can call the rhythmic system is particularly evident. The very peoples who inhabit Central Europe, not the East, not the West, but Central Europe – and the German nation has emerged as the flower within this nation – these peoples have as their everyday characteristic that which the Indian strives for as his ideal of a higher human being. But there is a difference between something that one acquires through self-discipline and freedom and something that one has instinctively and naturally. The Central European has this in a natural way, while the Oriental must first develop it from his metabolic life, which is intimately connected with the earth. Therefore, for the European, what is an ideal for the Asian is the everyday and natural, and something else must become the ideal for him. This ideal for the European will be that which in turn is one step higher: the life of thinking, as it is connected to the nervous-sensory life.

This Central European human being - how does his striving aim at developing outwardly [in his artistic creations] that which appears to the spiritual-scientific eye to be bound precisely to the tool of rhythmic life. The Oriental has something like a rampant imagination in his artistic creations; there is really something that rises like a haze of inner earthly activity, like the mists from the water. The rhythmic, inwardly closed nature that is the essence of the life of the Central European has already been brought forth by the ancient Greek people, from whom so much has emanated for all of modern civilization, especially for that which we call the art of Europe. What the Greeks strove for is that which is expressed in the inner harmony of the earthly human being, where neither the material nor the etheric-spiritual is particularly developed, but where the middle human being is expressed. Look at the creations of oriental fantasy: they stray in either direction. It is only in Greece that the human form, artistically conceived, takes on its harmonious roundness and inner unity. This is because man in Central Europe grasps himself in the middle link of his being, in the rhythmic system. When he visualizes an ideal, it is what he strives for through inner discipline, through his dialectical logic, through his scientific education; it is the use of the organs of thought, just as it is the use of the organs connected with rhythm in the human being. Just as the Indian yogi sits and tries to organize his breathing in a spiritual way so that it carries him beyond the ordinary human being, so the Central European — in whom that which takes place in the rhythmic system, in blood circulation, in breathing, develops instinctively and makes him human — is educated out of what the life of thinking is. And these thoughts take shape, especially in the best individuals of Central Europe, to be interpreters of what man is as such. This is what strikes us when we move from delving into the artistic productions of oriental humanity to those of European humanity. In the case of oriental artistic productions, it is the case that even in the highest spiritual creations we see something like blossoms of earthly development itself; the human mouth is, as it were, only there to allow the earth to express itself. This is not the case with Central European man, even with the Greeks. Today, when Central European man follows his own nature and does not become unfaithful to himself, he expresses everything that he himself is as a human being when he wants to express the highest. He wants to be allowed to give himself to the recognition of the fact that self-knowledge of the human being is the noblest fruit of human striving. That the portrayal of humanity in the environment of man, in nature and history, is the noblest human endeavor, that is, after all, the essential thing for the Central European when he surrenders himself to his own nature and essence. Thus we see how only in Central Europe could such a wonderful idea as that which shines forth from Goethe's book on Winckelmann — I would say like the sun of newer cultural life. Where Goethe, in his book on Winckelmann, summarized everything that was alive in this prodigy in terms of higher feeling, deep thought, and strength of will as his world view, he said: “Therefore, art now enters, for by placing man at the pinnacle of nature, he again sees himself as a whole nature that has to produce a pinnacle in itself. To do this, he rises to the level of all perfection and virtue, invokes choice, order, harmony and meaning, and finally rises to the production of the work of art, which takes a prominent place alongside his other deeds and works.” Man, as it were, brings forth a new nature from his own spirituality. This directing of all human powers to the comprehension of man himself is what, according to folklore, is particularly emphasized in the man of Central Europe when he is true to himself; it has only receded in more recent times. But there is every reason for the Central European to reflect on how, precisely by following his very own nature, he must and should come to this appreciation and understanding and penetration of what is truly human.

But if we look at the Orient and its peoples from an even more spiritual point of view, we find that these oriental peoples develop the spirituality that creates an awareness of the connection between the human soul and the divine precisely because they are metabolic people, because, in order to be a whole nature, the human being must confront within himself that which he does not have from the elemental world, because he must confront in his own consciousness that which is opposed to his nature. And no other people on earth can touch the human heart in the same way that the Oriental can speak of the connection between man and the divine as if it were something self-evident. Therefore, when the members of other peoples of the earth subjugate and conquer the Oriental peoples, when they want to take away their peculiarities and give them their own laws and orders, they take up what the Oriental peoples have to say about the connection between man and the divine, as something that is also decisive for them. And we see especially in more recent times how the Western peoples, immersed in materialism, have resorted to such Eastern philosophers as the old Laotse, to the Chinese world view, to the Indian world view - not so much to find ideas there, but to find that fervor with which one can simply and strongly feel what man can feel in connection with the divine. One delves into Oriental literature more to have one's feelings warmed by the way in which the Oriental speaks of his connection with the Divine, and less to feel its philosophical content. Indeed, the abstract nature of Europeans sometimes thwarts these Europeans in their understanding of the Oriental.

Time and again, I have found that people who had read the sayings of Buddha, for example, with their endless repetitions, have told me that they should be published in abridged form, with each sentence only appearing once and the repetitions deleted so that the same sentence does not have to be read over and over again.

When we immerse ourselves in the inner nature and essence of the peoples of the earth, we find this individual essence so different that we have to say to ourselves: the comprehensively human does not actually come to light through any single person, not through the members of any single people, it only comes to light through all of humanity. And if you, human being, want to recognize what you are as a whole human being, then travel through the peculiarities of the individual peoples of the earth. Take in everything that you cannot have yourself, only then will you become a whole human being. You have it within you; just pay attention to what is within you. What is a revelation in the other person, you do not have; you have to seek it in him. But you have a need for it. You feel that, and you know that when you find in the other person what is great and unique about him, it simply affects you. Then it is a need that you cannot be without what you receive from him, because it corresponds to your inner spiritual and soul desire. The potential for becoming a whole human being is already in everyone, but we must find fulfillment by passing through the peculiarities of the nature of the different peoples as they are spread across the earth. And if we come to this spiritual, we can say to ourselves, in the Orient it is that the human being is able to express the connection between the human being and the divine as something self-evident in greatness.

But today, covered as if by a layer that must be removed, by a layer of misunderstanding, we find something highly peculiar within Central European nationality, within Central European folklore. Let us look at all our great philosophers, who, in addition to what they have thought about nature and God and man, have all, I would say, equally produced something: There is hardly a great German philosopher who has not delved with all his intensity into the question: What is the law that governs from person to person? The search for the law, whether buried or misunderstood, is precisely a peculiarity of Central European nationality. And anyone who does not recognize this does not understand this Central European nationality, and will not find the enthusiasm to find his way back from present-day materialism, which stems from something completely different, to that which actually characterizes this Central European nationality, this true Germanness, this genuine German peculiarity and essence.

Just as the Oriental man, by presenting his spiritual life as a flower or fruit of the earth, becomes the interpreter of the earth, so the German becomes the interpreter of himself. He questions himself. By doing this, he stands before every other human being as an equal, and thus for him the most burning question becomes the question of right. Not the adoption of Roman law, but the investigation of the nature of right - this comes to us from Fichte, from Hegel, from Schelling, wherever German thought penetrates into the depths of the world's being. And finally, what we encounter in the abstract pursuit of the legal question in Fichte, Hegel, Schelling, in Humboldt, is basically the same in the concrete as when Goethe seeks in all his ways the expression and representation of true human nature, closed in all directions and harmoniously complete. In this respect, I would say that Goethe is the representative of the Central European essence, the representative of the Central European, the German people. In this respect, the Oriental of the earth is like the Central European in his self-awareness. And if we go to the west of Europe and even further, to where his nature presents itself in a broader and more characteristically expressive way, to America, if we go to the character of this true Occidental, then we find that his natural being is given precisely in abstract thinking. The Westerner is primarily a head person; the Oriental is a heart person, the one who experiences the process of metabolism in the heart; the Central European is a breathing person, who is in rhythmic relationship with the outside world through his rhythm. If I may use an image that was used by the - as I believe - extraordinarily ingenious Rabindranath Tagore, the ingenious Oriental, I would like to say: Tagore compares the Westerner, the Occidental, the head person, with an intellectual giraffe - he loves him, one does not need to have any kind of antipathy when making such a characterization. He compares him to a spiritual giraffe because one has the feeling - and this is truly depicted spiritually - that the head is far removed from the rest of the body, a long neck separates the head from the rest of the body, a head that then alone comprehends in abstract terms what the world presents to it, that absorbs everything in abstract form, in such abstraction that Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points emerged. And it is a long way before these abstract concepts, these empty words, these shells of concepts and ideas find their way to the heart, to the lungs, to the respiratory system, before they find their way to those places through which they can become feelings, through which they can pass into the will. We have the human being whose characteristic feature is what I would call the system of thinking. What the Central European strives for as his ideal, what he wants to achieve in freedom, that is what the Westerner, namely the American, does not strive for in freedom; it is given to him instinctively. He is an abstract being - instinctively. And it is quite a different matter whether you have something instinctively or whether you have acquired it. When you acquire something, you have a completely different connection with your human nature; it is quite different when you have to conquer it in freedom than when it is instinctively given to you by nature.

And there lies a great danger. For you see, while the Indian can strive in his yoga philosophy for the rhythmic system, and the Central European can strive for the system of thinking, the Westerner would have to go beyond the “spiritual giraffe” if he was not to lose his humanity. It is indeed incumbent upon Western humanity to do what I recently said quite openly to an assembly in which Westerners themselves were present: it is incumbent upon them to do what must be characterized as the great responsibility that Western humanity in particular has at the present time. Western nature, Western nationality will lose itself in nothingness if it strives beyond the system of thought, if it strives into the void or into empty spiritualism and seeks the soul there where it finds a soul-nothing. Here lies the danger, but also the responsibility: the danger of falling into spiritual vanity by striving beyond what is naturally given to man, and the responsibility of ascending to real spiritual science – if one does not want to lead to the downfall of humanity through one's world domination.

For Central European humanity, on the other hand, it will be a healthy, humane striving in freedom that leads one upwards into spirituality and brings one to spiritual science.

I would like to say that the peoples of Central Europe have it as a sacred duty – because it is in their nature – to ascend the spiritual ladder to spiritual knowledge. But they achieve something by rising from their rhythm and breathing system to the thinking system, which is still in the human realm. For the Western peoples, there is a danger that they will go beyond the human, especially when they form an ideal for themselves - hence all the sectarian and similar Western endeavors that deny the universal human. In this respect, it is still not clearly seen in the present.

While in the Oriental, whose metabolic system is turned towards the earth, a spiritual work on nature's paths comes to light, in the man of the West, who has above all developed the thinking system, the view of the sensory world comes to light. In the Oriental, it is as if that which is below the earth's surface is at work in him; in the Westerner, it is as if he would only see what is above the earth's surface, what he can see of facts from what happens on earth through the sun, moon and stars, through air and water. The organization of thinking cannot be explained by what happens in this environment. In a previous lecture here, I explained how what is spiritual in man cannot be explained by the environment. The Oriental, through what emerged as the blood of the spirit of the earth through his own humanity, also knew that he, as a human being, as that which lives spiritually in him, is a member of the whole cosmos, a member not only of the earth, but of the whole cosmos. The Westerner, who particularly develops the thinking system, has no other option left to him by modern natural science than to calculate this cosmos using mathematical and mechanical formulas. So there is the region to which the Westerner must acknowledge that his soul comes from it, to which he must acknowledge that he, as a thinking human being, could not be there if his region of origin were not cosmic. To this region he must say: I have no other science for it than the dry, sober mathematics. - What flows into the Oriental's own human existence is ingrained in him like the earth itself. What he reveals as his poetic wisdom is like an earthly blossom. What the Central European must recognize as his humanity is the same thing that reveals itself in man through man himself; there man stands face to face with himself.

In the Westerner, the most valuable thing is precisely that which man does not have from the earthly, but what he has from the cosmic. But he has no other means of recognizing this cosmic, this supernatural, than through calculation or through the equally dry spectral analysis and the like, or through equally dry hypotheses. Therefore, the Westerner seeks what the Oriental seeks out of his innermost nature as an expression of his connection with the divine, what the Central European seeks as an expression of the human in the Goethean full human being or in the legal human being, who is equal to all other human beings. And what the Westerner means when he speaks of law, what he characterizes as spirit, is so developed in him that it rises like the flower of economic life alone. Therefore it was quite natural that Karl Marx from Germany, where he could have learned to recognize man in a humanistic, Goethean way if he had been gifted for it, had to go to the West, to England, to look beyond man, to look beyond what is truly human and be led to believe that what man can recognize is nothing more than an ideology, something that arises from economic life. This is not an absolute truth, but it is in fact rooted in the nature of Western man, just as it is rooted in the nature of Oriental man, to look at nature as a secondary planet of the human being and to speak of the connection of the human soul with the divine as something that is actually taken for granted. That is why it is precisely with so many Westerners, who have a need to look towards the divine, that the longing arises – when they seek to extend their conquest over the Oriental peoples – to take from these peoples what they have to say about the connection of human nature with the divine, because in people, as I said before, the full human being at least lies as a need.

And so we see – and we could also extend this to smaller peoples, to individual peoples, but we can only stick to the typical – we see that actually the whole complete human being is not expressed in the members of one people. We see that this whole complete human being lies in us only as a need and that therefore this need should grow in us into love for all human beings, especially for that human being that we do not have, that we can only acquire by devotedly seeking the knowledge of that being that lives in other peoples on earth, in order to connect it with our own people.

That was the kind of internationalism that prevailed in the Goethean era. That was the kind of internationalism that was so imbued with beautiful arguments as, for example, those of Wilhelm von Humboldt on “The Limits of the Effectiveness of the State”. This is the striving for cosmopolitanism, which ennobles and elevates the essence of one's own people by absorbing everything that can be acquired through love for all other peoples, and which seeks to understand one's own people by absorbing everything that can be found in other peoples of the earth that is ideal and great and beautiful. That is why, in Germany's period of intellectual splendor, what was born out of rhythmic life was reborn from what the seeking German found in all other peoples at that time, in the noblest cosmopolitanism. How did Herder go in his search to all peoples; how did he seek to unravel the deepest essence of all peoples of the earth! How he was imbued with the idea that at the bottom of our individual, carnal existence, there lives a great, mighty, other soul, which, however, can only be found if we are able to pour ourselves out over all peoples.

One has only to contrast what appeared at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries as the basis for greatness in Central Europe with what is preached today as internationalism, not throbbing through the world, but rather preached through the world to seduce humanity as Marxism – Marxism, which only believes in human thinking and which, even in a more or less weakened form, no longer has any idea of how all of humanity is differentiated across the earth, which believes that an abstraction can be imposed on humanity, on the human being. Marxism is not a first dawn, it is a last sunset, a last sunset because it lacks all aspiration towards real internationalism, which always [by absorbing what can be acquired through love for all other peoples] elevates the essence of one's own nationality. This internationalism, which appears in Marxism and in all that has been formed from it, is the result of a one-sided, impractical system of thought that is merely fixated on the sensual world and does not penetrate to the level of nationality. True internationalism, on the other hand, arises from that love that goes out to all peoples, in order to ignite the light that can be received by all peoples, in order to, through the deeds, feelings, creations of one's own people, to place their own people in the great choir of the peoples of the earth in such a way that they contribute to the full understanding of the peoples, an understanding that can only unite the peoples of the earth out of real, essential, mutual knowledge.

Now, my dear attendees, I wanted to speak today about what can unite the peoples of the earth out of knowledge. I did not want to speak of other things, which may be more programmatic, so to speak, or are the subject of spiritual science itself. I wanted to speak of that which, as a spiritual-scientific insight, is stimulated in the spiritual researcher through his other, spiritual research, about the possible, loving coexistence of people on earth. One can certainly characterize from the most diverse points of view what is necessary for the future of humanity. One can certainly speak of this and that impulse. But one must also recognize that to all that can be said in the socio-political, legal-state, and educational fields, there must be added - as illuminating all of this - that consolation , that spiritual consolation that can come from such insights as have been attempted today, I would like to hint at in a more cursory sketch than to give something comprehensive. And this consolation can come from insights that relate to the possible rhythm of human historical life, which we will get to know from a spiritual scientific point of view the day after tomorrow: that what has lived through history shows how it is embedded in our immediate present.

Today's reflection should show you how it is possible that a wave of international love for people and nations can develop out of the recognition of the unifying force, just as new wave crests arise from wave troughs. It is possible. But we live in an age in which what is possible must be consciously and deliberately striven for by people in freedom. Man must face the fact that the conditions of unity among the peoples of the earth must be recognized, so that each individual, out of his knowledge, can contribute to the wave of hatred being followed by the wave of human love. For only out of this human love can that which hatred has destroyed be healed. If people do not want love, then destruction will remain. This is the terrible alternative confronting the soul of the discerning man today. He who truly senses this dreadfulness says to himself: The souls must not sleep, otherwise it could happen that the healing wave of love cannot arise from the wave of hatred due to the powerlessness of the soul-sleep of the people.

He who sees through this will absorb the knowledge that can come to him from the spiritual contemplation of the relationships between nations. He will absorb this knowledge into his feelings; he will develop love for humanity from it. He will absorb it into his will; he will develop deeds for humanity from it. And he will say to himself: The development of the times itself, everything that presents itself so frighteningly, so paralyzing in the present, that presents itself to our soul as a duty: to take together what has revealed itself in the very latest times, right up to the present, as splintering in humanity, to take together everything that can unite humanity in love. To seek this loving unity, this unifying love, is not just a feeling that can arise voluntarily in us, but it appears to those who see through the conditions of the present as the greatest human duty of our present age.

[ 1 ] In the following is reproduced, in all essentials, what stood as a preface in the first edition of this book. Since it shows the mood of thought out of which I wrote this book twenty-five years ago, rather than having any direct bearing on its contents, I include it here as an appendix. I do not want to omit it altogether, because the opinion keeps cropping up that I need to suppress some of my earlier writings on account of my later ones on spiritual science. Only the very first introductory sentences of this preface (in the first edition) have been altogether omitted here, because today they seem to me quite irrelevant. But the rest of what was said seems to me necessary even today, in spite of, indeed, just because of the natural scientific manner of thinking of our contemporaries.

[ 2 ] Our age can only accept truth from the depths of human nature. Of Schiller's two well-known paths, it is the second that will mostly be chosen at the present time:

Truth seek we both—Thou in the life without thee and around;
I in the heart within. By both can Truth alike be found.
The healthy eye can through the world the great Creator track;
The healthy heart is but the glass which gives Creation back.

(Translation by E. Bulwer Lytton.)

A truth which comes to us from outside always bears the stamp of uncertainty. We can believe only what appears to each one of us in our own hearts as truth.

[ 3 ] Only the truth can give us assurance in developing our individual powers. Whoever is tortured by doubts finds his powers lamed. In a world full of riddles, he can find no goal for his creative energies.

[ 4 ] We no longer want merely to believe; we want to know. Belief demands the acceptance of truths which we do not fully comprehend. But things we do not fully comprehend are repugnant to the individual element in us, which wants to experience everything in the depths of its inner being. The only knowledge which satisfies us is one which is subject to no external standards but springs from the inner life of the personality.

[ 5 ] Again, we do not want any knowledge of the kind that has become frozen once and for all into rigid academic rules, preserved in encyclopedias valid for all time. Each of us claims the right to start from the facts that lie nearest to hand, from his own immediate experiences, and thence to ascend to a knowledge of the whole universe. We strive after certainty in knowledge, but each in his own way.

[ 6 ] Our scientific doctrines, too, should no longer be formulated as if we were unconditionally compelled to accept them. None of us would wish to give a scientific work a title like Fichte's “A Pellucid Account for the General Public concerning the Real Nature of the Newest Philosophy. An Attempt to Compel the Readers to Understand.” Today nobody should be compelled to understand. From anyone who is not driven to a certain view by his own individual needs, we demand no acknowledgment or agreement. Even with the immature human being, the child, we do not nowadays cram knowledge into it, but we try to develop its capacities so that it will no longer need to be compelled to understand, but will want to understand.

[ 7 ] I am under no illusion about these characteristics of my time. I know how much the tendency prevails to make things impersonal and stereotyped. But I know equally well that many of my contemporaries try to order their lives in the kind of way I have indicated. To them I would dedicate this book. It is not meant to give “the only possible” path to the truth, but is meant to describe the path taken by one for whom truth is the main concern.

[ 8 ] The book leads at first into somewhat abstract regions, where thought must draw sharp outlines if it is to reach clearly defined positions. But the reader will also be led out of these arid concepts into concrete life. I am indeed fully convinced that one must raise oneself into the ethereal realm of concepts if one would experience every aspect of existence. Whoever appreciates only the pleasures of the senses is unacquainted with life's sweetest savors. The oriental sages make their disciples live a life of renunciation and asceticism for years before they impart to them their own wisdom. The western world no longer demands pious exercises and ascetic habits as a preparation for science, but it does require the willingness to withdraw oneself awhile from the immediate impressions of life, and to betake oneself into the realm of pure thought.

[ 9 ] The realms of life are many. For each one, special sciences develop. But life itself is a unity, and the more deeply the sciences try to penetrate into their separate realms, the more they withdraw themselves from the vision of the world as a living whole. There must be a knowledge which seeks in the separate sciences the elements for leading man back once more to the fullness of life. The scientific specialist seeks through his findings to develop awareness of the world and its workings; in this book the aim is a philosophical one—that knowledge itself shall become organically alive. The separate sciences are stages on the way to that knowledge we are here trying to achieve. A similar relationship exists in the arts. The composer works on the basis of the theory of composition. This theory is a collection of rules which one has to know in order to compose. In composing, the rules of the theory become the servants of life itself, of reality. In exactly the same sense, philosophy is an art. All real philosophers have been artists in the realm of concepts. For them, human ideas were their artists' materials and scientific method their artistic technique. Abstract thinking thus takes on concrete individual life. The ideas become powerful forces in life. Then we do not merely have knowledge about things, but have made knowledge into a real self-governing organism; our actual working consciousness has risen beyond a mere passive reception of truths.

[ 10 ] How philosophy as an art is related to human freedom, what freedom is, and whether we do, or can, participate in it—this is the main theme of my book. All other scientific discussions are included only because they ultimately throw light on these questions, which are, in my opinion, the most immediate concern of mankind. These pages offer a “Philosophy of Freedom”.

[ 11 ] All science would be nothing but the satisfaction of idle curiosity did it not strive to raise the value of existence for the personality of man. The sciences attain their true value only by showing the human significance of their results. The ultimate aim of the individual can never be the cultivation of a single faculty, but only the development of all the capacities that slumber within us. Knowledge has value only in so far as it contributes to the all-round development of the whole nature of man.

[ 12 ] This book, therefore, conceives the relationship between science and life, not in such a way that man must bow down before an idea and devote his powers to its service, but in the sense that he masters the world of ideas in order to use them for his human aims, which transcend those of mere science.

[ 13 ] One must be able to confront an idea and experience it; otherwise one will fall into its bondage.

It will be nothing strange to many among you that one can find if the word theosophy is pronounced nothing else than a smile with many of our contemporaries. Also it is not unknown to many that just those who demand scholarship or, we say, philosophical education in the present look at theosophy as something that one must call a dilettantish activity, a fantastic belief. One can find in particular in the circles of scholars that the theosophist is regarded as a type of fantastic dreamer who bears witness to his peculiar image worlds because he has never made the acquaintance with the bases of knowledge. You find particularly in the circles which consider themselves as the scientific ones that they presuppose easily that the theosophist is basically without any philosophical education, and even if he has also acquired it or speaks of it, it is a dilettantish, a picked up matter.

These talks should not deal with theosophy directly. There are enough others. It should be a discussion with the western philosophical education, a discussion how the scientific world behaves to theosophy, and how it could behave, actually. They should disprove the prejudice, as if the theosophist is an uneducated, dilettantish person with regard to science. Who has not heard often enough that philosophers of the most different schools—and there are enough philosopher schools—state that mysticism is an unclear view filled with all kinds of allegories and feeling elements, and that theosophy has not achieved a strictly methodical thinking? If it did this, it would see that it walks on nebulous ways. It would see that mysticism could root only in the heads of eccentric people. This is a well-known prejudice.

However, I do not want to begin with a reprimand. Not because it would not correspond to the theosophical conviction, but because I do not consider theosophy as anything dilettantish from my own philosophical education and speak, nevertheless, out of the depths of its conviction. I can understand absolutely that somebody who has taken up the western philosophy in himself and has the whole scientific equipment has it hard to see something else in theosophy than what is just known. For somebody who comes today from philosophy and science it is much more difficult really to familiarise himself with theosophy, than for that who approaches theosophy with a naive human mind, with a natural, maybe religious feeling and with a need to solve certain riddles of life. Because this western philosophy puts so many obstacles to its students, offers them so many judgments which seem to be contradictory to theosophy that it makes it apparently impossible to get involved with theosophy.

Indeed, it is true that the theosophical literature shows little of that which resembles a discussion with our contemporary science and which one could call philosophical. Therefore, I have resolved to hold a series of talks on it. They should be an epistemological basis of theosophy. You will get to know the concepts of the contemporary philosophy and its contents. If you look at this in a real, true and deep sense, you see—but you must really wait till the end—the basis of the theosophical knowledge following from this western philosophy. This should not happen juggling with expert dialectic concepts, but it should happen, as far as I am able to do it in some talks, with any equipment which the knowledge of our contemporaries provides us; it should happen with everything available to give something that can be experienced of a higher world view also to those who do not want to know it.

What I have to explain would not have been possible in another age to explain in the same way. But it has been necessary to look around, maybe just in our time, at Kant, Locke, Schopenhauer or at other writers of the present, we say at Eduard von Hartmann and his disciple Arthur Drews, or the brilliant theorist of knowledge Volkelt or Otto Liebmann, or at the somewhat journalistic, but not less strictly rational Eucken. Who has looked around there who has familiarised himself with this or that of the shadings which the philosophical-scientific views of the present and the latest past took on understands and conceives—this is my innermost conviction—that a real, true understanding of this philosophical development does not lead away from theosophy, but to theosophy. Just somebody who has argued thoroughly with the philosophical doctrines has to come to theosophy.

I would not need to deliver this speech unless the whole thinking of our time were influenced just by a philosopher. One says that the great mental achievement of Immanuel Kant gave philosophy a scientific basis. One says that what he performed to the definition of the knowledge problem is something steadfast. You hear that anybody who has not tackled Kant has no right to have a say in philosophy. You may examine the different currents: Herbart, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, from Schopenhauer up to Eduard von Hartmann—in all these lines of thought only somebody can find the way who orientates himself to Kant. After different matters were striven for in the philosophy of the 19th century, the calling resounds from Zeller in the middle of the seventies, from Liebmann, then from Friedrich Albert Lange: back to Kant!—The lecturers of philosophy are of the opinion that everybody has to orientate himself to Kant, and only somebody who does this can have a say in philosophy.

Kant dominated the philosophy of the 19th century and of the present. However, he caused something else than he himself wanted. He expressed it with the words: he believes to have accomplished a similar action like Copernicus. Copernicus turned around the whole astronomical world view. He removed the earth from the centre and made another body, the sun, to the centre which was once imagined to be movable. However, Kant makes the human being with his cognitive faculties the centre of the physical world view. He really turns around the whole physical world view. It is the opinion of most philosophers of the 19th century that one has to turn around. You can understand this philosophy only if you understand it from its preconditions. One can understand what has flowed from Kant’s philosophy only if one understands it from its bases. Who understands how Kant came to his conviction that we can never recognise the things “by themselves,” because all things we recognise are only phenomena who understands this can also understand the development of the philosophy of the 19th century, he also understands the objections which can be made against theosophy, and also how he has to behave to them.

You know that theosophy rests on a higher experience. The theosophist says that the source of his knowledge is an experience which reaches beyond the sensory experience. You can see that it has the same validity as that of the senses that what the theosophist tells about astral worlds et cetera is as real as the things which we perceive with our senses round us as sensory experience. What the theosophist believes to have as his source of knowledge is a higher experience. If you read Leadbeater’s Astralebene (Astral Plane), you think that the things are as real in the astral world as the cabs and horses in the streets of London. It should be said how real this world is for somebody who knows them. The philosopher of the present argues immediately: yes, but you are mistaken, because you believe that this is a true reality. Has the philosophy of the 19th century not proved to you that our experience is nothing but our idea, and that also the starry heaven is nothing else than our idea in us?—He considers this as the most certain knowledge which there can only be. Eduard von Hartmann considers it as the most natural truth that this is my idea, and that one cannot know what it is also. If you believe that you can call experience “real,” then you are a naive realist. Can you decide anything generally about the value experience has facing the world in this way? This is the great result to which Kantianism has come that the world surrounding us must be our idea.

How did Kant’s world view come to this? It came from the philosophy of the predecessors. At that time when Kant was still young, the philosophy of Christian Wolff had the mastery over all schools. It distinguished the so-called knowledge of experience which we acquire by the sensory impressions and that which comes from pure reason. According to him, we can get to know something of the things of the everyday life only by experience, and from pure reason we have things which are the objects of the highest knowledge. These things are the human souls, the free will of the human being, the questions which refer to immortality and to the divine being.

The so-called empiric sciences deal with that which is offered in natural history, in physics, in history et cetera. How does the astronomer get his knowledge? He directs his eyes to the stars; he finds the laws which are commensurate with the observations. We learn this while opening our senses to the outside world. Nobody can say that this is drawn from mere reason. The human being knows this because he sees it. This is an empiric knowledge which we take up from life, from the experience in ourselves, not caring whether we order them in a scientific system or not; it is knowledge of experience. Nobody can describe a lion from his very reason. However, Wolff supposes that one can draw that which one is from pure reason. Wolff supposes that we have a psychology from pure reason, also that the soul must have free will that it must have reason et cetera. Hence, Wolff calls the sciences which deal with the higher capacities of the soul rational psychology. The question whether the world has a beginning and an end is a question which one should decide only from pure reason. He calls this question an object of rational cosmology. Nobody can decide on the usefulness of the world from experience; nobody can investigate it by observation. These are nothing but questions of the rational cosmology. Then there is a science of God, of a divine plan. This is a science which is also drawn from reason. This is the so-called rational theology, it belongs to metaphysics.

Kant grew up in a time when philosophy was taught in this sense. You find him in his first writings as an adherent of Wolff’s philosophy. You find him convinced that there is a rational psychology, a rational theology et cetera. He gives a proof which he calls the only possible proof of the existence of God. Then he got to know a philosophical current which had a stupefying effect on him. He got to know the philosophy of David Hume. He said that it waked up him from his dogmatic slumber.—What does this philosophy offer? Hume says the following: we see that the sun rises in the morning and sets in the evening. We have seen this many days. We also know that all people have seen sunrises and sunsets that they have experienced the same, and we get used to believing that this must take place forever.

Now another example: we see that the solar heat falls on a stone. We think that it is the solar heat which warms up the stone. What do we see? We perceive solar heat first and then the warmed up stone. What do we perceive there? Only that one fact follows the other. If we experience that the sunbeams warm up the stone, then we have already formed the judgment that the solar heat is the cause that the stone becomes warm. That is why Hume says: there is nothing at all that shows us more than a sequence of facts. We get used to the belief that there a causal relationship exists. But this belief is only a habituation and everything that the human being thinks of causal concepts exists only in that experience. The human being sees a ball pushing the other, he sees that a movement takes place through it, and then he gets used to saying that lawfulness exists in it. In truth we deal with no real insight.

What is the human being considered from the knowledge of pure reason? This is nothing else—Hume says—than a summary of facts. We have to connect the facts of the world. This corresponds to the human way of thinking, to the tendency of the human thinking. We have no right to go beyond this thinking. We are not allowed to say that it is something in the things which has given them lawfulness. We can only say that the things and events flow past us. But the things “in themselves” do not show such a connection.

How can we speak now of the fact that something manifests itself to us in the things that goes beyond experience? How can we speak of a connection in experience that is due to a divine being, that goes beyond experience if we are not inclined to turn to anything other than to the ways of thinking?

This view had the effect on Kant that it waked up him from dogmatic slumber. He asks: can there be something that goes beyond experience? Which knowledge does experience deliver to us? Does it give us sure knowledge? Of course, Kant denied this question immediately. He says: even if you have seen the sun rise hundred thousand times, you cannot infer from it that it also rises tomorrow again. It could also be different. If you inferred only from experience, it could also turn out once that experience convinces you of something different. Experience can never give sure, necessary knowledge.

I know from experience that the sun warms up the stone. However, I am not allowed to state that it has to warm up it. If all our knowledge comes from experience, it can never exceed the condition of uncertainty; then there can be no necessary empiric knowledge. Now Kant tries to find out this matter. He looks for a way out. He had made himself used through his whole youth to believe in knowledge. He could be convinced by Hume’s philosophy that there is nothing sure. Is anywhere anything where one can speak of sure, necessary knowledge? However—he says—there are sure judgments. These are the mathematical judgments. Is the mathematical judgment similar to the judgment: in the morning the sun rises and sets in the evening?

I have the judgment that the sum of the three angles of a triangle is 180 degrees. If I have given the proof with one single triangle, it suffices for all triangles. I see from the nature of the proof that it applies to all possible cases. This is the peculiar of mathematical proofs. For everybody it is clear that these must also apply to the inhabitants of Jupiter and Mars if they generally have triangles that also there the sum of the angles of a triangle must be 180 degrees. And then: never can be two times two anything else than four. This is always true. Hence, we have a proof that there is knowledge which is absolutely sure. The question cannot be: do we have such knowledge? But we must think about the possibility of such judgments.

Now there comes the big question of Kant: how are such absolutely necessary judgments possible? How is mathematical knowledge possible?—Kant now calls those judgments and knowledge which are drawn from experience judgments and knowledge a posteriori. The judgment: the sum of angles of a triangle is 180 degrees; however, is a judgment which precedes all experience, a judgment a priori. I can simply imagine a triangle and give the proof, and if I see a triangle which I have not yet experienced, I can say that it must have a sum of angles of 180 degrees. Any higher knowledge depends on it that I can make judgments from pure reason.

How are such judgments a priori possible? We have seen that such a judgment: the sum of angles of a triangle is equal 180 degrees, applies to any triangles. Experience has to submit to my judgment. If I draw an ellipse and look out into space, I find that a planet describes such an ellipse. The planet follows my judgment formed in pure knowledge. I approach the experience with my purely in the ideal formed judgment. Have I drawn this judgment from experience?—Kant continues asking. There is no doubt, forming such purely ideal judgments, that we have, actually, no reality of experience.

The ellipse, the triangle—they have no reality of experience, but reality submits to such knowledge. If I want to have true reality, I must approach experience. If, however, I know which laws work in it, then I have knowledge before all experience. The law of the ellipse does not come from experience. I myself build it in my mind. Thus a passage begins with Kant with the sentence: “Even if all our knowledge starts from experience, nevertheless, not everything does arise from experience.” I put what I have as knowledge into experience. The human mind is made in such a way that everything of its experience corresponds only to the laws which it has. The human mind is made in such a way that it must develop these laws inevitably. If it moves up to experience, then experience has to submit to these laws.

An example: Imagine that you wear blue glasses. You see everything in blue light; the objects appear to you in blue light. However the things outdoors may be made, this concerns me nothing at all provisionally. At the moment when the laws which my mind develops spread out over the whole world of experience the whole world of experience must fit into it. It is not right that the judgment: two times two is four is taken from experience. It is the condition of my mind that two times two must give always four. My mind is in such a way that the three angles of a triangle are always 180 degrees. Thus Kant justifies the laws out of the human being himself. The sun warms up the stone. Every effect has a cause. This is a law of the mind. If the world is a chaos, I push the lawfulness of my mind toward it. I conceive the world like a string of pearls. I am that who makes the world a knowledge mechanism.—You also see how Kant was induced to find such a particular method of knowledge. As long as the human mind is organised in such a way as it is organised as long everything must submit to this organisation, even if reality changes overnight. For me it could not change if the laws of my mind are the same. The world may be as it wants; we recognise it in such a way as it must appear to us according to the laws of our mind.

Now you see which sense it has, if one says: Kant turned the whole theory of knowledge, the whole epistemology. One assumed before that the human being reads everything from nature. Now, however, he lets the human mind give the laws to nature. He lets everything circle around the human mind like Copernicus let the earth circle around the sun.

Then, however, there is something else that shows that the human being can never go beyond experience. Indeed, it appears as a contradiction, but you will see that it corresponds to Kant’s philosophy. Kant shows that the concepts are empty. Two times two is four is an empty judgment if not peas or beans are filled into it. Any effect has a cause—is a purely formal judgment if it is not filled with particular contents of experience. The judgments are formed before in me to be applied to the observation of the world. “Observations without concepts are blind—concepts without observations are empty.” We can think millions of ellipses; they correspond to no reality if we do not see them in the planetary motion. We have to verify everything by experience. We can gain judgments a priori, but we are allowed to apply them only if they correspond to experience.

God, freedom and immortality are matters about which we can ponder ever so long about which we can get knowledge by no experience. Therefore, it is in vain to find out anything with our reason. The concepts a priori are only valid as far as our experience reaches. Indeed we have a science a priori which only says to us how experience has to be until experience is there. We can catch as it were experience like in a web, but we cannot find out how the law of experience has to be. About the “thing-in-itself” we know nothing, and because God, freedom and immortality must have their origin in the “thing-in-itself,” we can find out nothing about them. We see the things not as they are, but in such a way as we must see them according to our organisation.

With it Kant founded the critical idealism and overcame the naive realism. What submits to causality is not the “thing-in-itself.” What submits to my eye or my ear has to make an impression on my eye, on my ear at first. This is the perception, the sensations. These are the effects of any “thing-in-itself,” of things which are absolutely unknown to me. These produce a lot of effects, and I order them in a lawful world. I form an organism of sensations. But I cannot know what is behind them. It is nothing else than the lawfulness which my mind has put into the sensations. What is behind the sensation, I can know nothing about it. Hence, the world which surrounds me is only subjective. It is only that which I myself build up.

The development of physiology in the 19th century agreed apparently completely with Kant. Take the important knowledge of the great physiologist Johannes Müller. He has put up the law of the specific nerve energy. It consists in the fact that any organ answers in its way. If you let light into the eye, you have a beam of light; if you bump against the eye, you will likewise have a light sensation. Müller concludes that it does not depend on the things outside, but on my eye what I perceive. The eye answers to a process unknown to me with the colour quality, we say: blue. Blue is nowhere outdoors in space. A process has an effect on us, and it produces the sensation “blue.” What you believe that it stands before you, is nothing else than the effect of some unknown processes on a sense. The whole physiology of the 19th century confirmed this law of the specific nerve energy apparently. Kant’s idea seems to be thereby supported.

One can call this world view illusionism in the full sense of the word. Nobody knows anything about what has an effect outside, what produces his sensations. From himself he spins his whole world of experience and builds up it according to the laws of his mind. Nothing else can approach him, as long as his organisation is made in such a way as it is. This is Kant’s doctrine motivated by physiology. Kant calls it critical idealism. This is also that which Schopenhauer develops in his philosophy: people believe that the whole starry heaven and the sun surround them. However, this is only your own mental picture. You create the whole world.—And Eduard von Hartmann says: This is the most certain truth which there can be. No power would be able one day to shake this sentence.—Thus the western philosophy says. It has never pondered how experience basically comes about.

Somebody is only able to stick to realism who knows how experiences come about and then he comes to the true critical idealism. The view of Kant is the transcendental idealism, that is he knows nothing about a true reality, nothing of a “thing-in-itself,” but only of an image world. He says basically: I must refer my image world to something unknown.—This view should be regarded as something steadfast.

Is this transcendental idealism really steadfast? Is the “thing-in-itself” unrecognisable?—If this held true, then could not be spoken of a higher experience at all. If the “thing-in-itself” were only an illusion, we could not speak of any higher beings. Hence, this is also an objection which is raised against theosophy: you have higher beings of which you speak.

We see next time how these views must be deepened.

Fairy tale play by Hermann Sudermann
Performance at the Deutsches Theater, Berlin

"I raise my head boldly to the threatening rocky mountains and to the raging torrent of water and to the crashing clouds swimming in a sea of fire and say: I am eternal and defy your power! Break all down upon me, and you earth and you heaven, mingle in wild tumult, and all you elements, - froth and rage and in wild battle tear apart the last little sun-dust of the body which I call mine: - my will alone with its firm plan shall hover boldly and coldly over the ruins of the universe; for I have seized my destiny, and it is more permanent than you; it is eternal, and I am eternal like it." Fichte uttered these sentences in a speech that dealt with the highest goals of the human spirit. Anyone who knows them can recall them when they get to know Sudermann's latest dramatic poem "The Three Heron Feathers". For the tragedy of man, who is driven as far away as possible from the proud consciousness expressed in these sentences by an unfortunate fate, affects us in this thoughtful drama in the shattering way that we always feel when the greatest problems of life are unrolled before us with the playwright's gripping means.

A Hamlet's nature, faced not only with the problem of avenging his criminally murdered father, but with the greater problem of coming to terms with life itself, in all its mysteriousness: that is Sudermann's main character, Prince Witte. Widwolf's nefarious deed has robbed him of his fathers' ancestral heritage, the Duchy of Gorhland. He seems equipped with all his gifts to acquire what he has inherited from his fathers. But like Hamlet's will, his is paralyzed. Fate itself prevents him from earning his freedom and life by having to conquer them every day. The reason for his tragedy is that this fate throws happiness at him without struggle, without striving. But such happiness can never be pious to man.

Prince Witte has gone to a people on a northern island, where a heron is worshipped as a divine being. He has captured three feathers from it. They can bring him the three stages of development of the happiness that can only be bestowed on man. But such happiness could only belong to transient life. The life with which death is inseparably linked. The life that becomes bitter when we think of death. Yes, whose only, futile meaning is death. Sudermann has given symbolic expression to death, which alone can shed light on such transient happiness in life, in "Begräbnisfrau". She interprets the prince's fate in terms of the three heron feathers. If he lets the first one burn in the fire, the woman who makes him happy appears to him as a misty figure in the clouds. If he burns the second, she will stand before him in a dream. He will hold her in his hands and yet strive in vain to possess her. And if the third finally becomes the nourishment of the flame, the woman who represents his happiness will die before his eyes.

Like the will that is paralyzed in the prince himself, his faithful servant Hans Lorbass stands beside him. He tries to lift him up again and again. He is the strength and the fire in Prince White's life. In the first scene of the drama, he reveals his entire life's destiny to us:

"For in every great work,
That is accomplished on earth,
Strength alone shall reign,
He alone shall reign who laughs,
Never shall sorrow reign,
Never he who foams at the mouth in anger,
Never he who needs women to slumber,
And least of all he who dreams,
Therefore how I sweat and steel him
To what he can become,
I sit firmly in his soul -
I, the fighter - I, the man."

Prince Witte embarks on the path of life marked out for him by fate with his servant Lorbass, whom he has found again after capturing the heron feathers. He goes to the court of the Amber Queen of Samland, who is a widow and has a six-year-old son. She wants to give her hand to whoever wins the tournament. Widwolf, who has usurped Witte's throne, meets the robbed man here. Although Witte does not win, the loyal Lorbass stands by his side and drives Widwolf and his men away. Nevertheless, the queen gives Witte her love. She is a woman full of kindness and devotion, but she must give her love away. She can only consider the one who has conquered her heart to be the victor, and that is Prince Witte. He becomes king, even though the Samland Queen's people have grave qualms of conscience because Witte has not won an honest victory - and even though he does not feel happy because he is not keeping and defending the throne for himself, but for the young king from his wife's first marriage. But fate, which decides on the happiness of transient life, has assigned this wife to the prince as his happiness. He cannot understand this fate. The wife he has been given remains a stranger to him, and his longing yearns for the supposed stranger who is to appear to him walking in the night when he burns the second heron feather. Lorbass sees his master gradually withering away at the queen's side. He therefore gives him the idea of burning the second heron feather. And when this becomes a flame, the Amber Queen, his wife, appears "walking in the night". Even now, he cannot recognize her as the wife destined for him. Instead, he sees her as a troublemaker. He thinks that by appearing, she has driven away the unknown woman out of jealousy, who should have appeared when the heron's feather was burned. At this moment, the deeply moving spirit of this drama takes effect from the stage: we do not understand a happiness that we receive effortlessly, as if by magic, as a gift; we can only recognize the happiness we have acquired as the happiness that is due to us. Sudermann conveys this general truth to us through a purely human motif. Witte cannot find the way to his wife's heart because his son, who does not bear the mark of his blood, stands between them. He even gives Lorbass a hint to get this son out of the way. The robber Widwolf appears for the second time to covet the queen. Witte is to fight for himself and his own. He believes he cannot do this as long as he is defending not his own throne, but that of his stepchild. When Lorbass gets to know the boy king in all his excellence, he cannot kill him. And Witte is also glad that this time the faithful servant has broken faith. With all the strength in him, he rushes against the enemy Widwolf and - now really conquers the kingdom, but - to renounce it and move on to seek the woman who is supposed to be destined for him by the firepower of the heron's feathers. He does not find her, of course, but returns fifteen years later to burn the third of the feathers in the presence of the Amber Queen. At this moment, the woman destined for him falls to her death. Only now, as his happiness escapes him, does he realize that it was meant for him. He dies after his wife. Death, in the form of the funeral wife, has had no trouble in capturing the two of them for himself, for it was easy for him to give them a fleeting happiness that neither of them can recognize as their own. He receives happiness as a gift and cannot recognize it because he does not conquer it; and she gives happiness away and cannot be happy about it because she gives it away indiscriminately.

There is no dead end in this Sudermann drama. One sits there and waits for each coming moment with rapt attention. Always the background to a great thought and always a captivating image on the stage. One has the feeling that a serious person wants to communicate with serious people about an important matter in life. Full of gratitude to have seen a piece of life in a poem, we leave the theater, which today is mostly devoid of ideology.

The performance in Berlin's Deutsches Theater was such that it can be described as a dramatic phenomenon of the first rank. Kainz as Prince Witte: one may give the highest praise; Teresina Geßner was an Amber Queen who made the soul tremble, and Nissen's Lorbass should be incorporated into German stage history as soon as possible. The Deutsches Theater has much to make up for after the utterly unsuccessful Cyrano performance; but it knows how to make up for it. And only where there are strong advantages does one make such mistakes as the one severely criticized here.

[ 1 ] About the time of the beginning of his friendship with Goethe, Schiller was occupying himself with the ideas which found expression in his Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man.¹In 1794, he elaborated these letters, which were originally written for the Duke of Augustenberg, for Die Horen. The direction of thought in the verbal discussions and the correspondence which took place at that time between Goethe and Schiller approximated again and again to the orbit of ideas contained in these letters. Schiller's thoughts encountered this question: “What condition of the human soul forces corresponds in the best sense of the word to an existence worthy of man?” “It may be urged that every individual bears within himself, at least in adaptation and destination, a purely ideal man. The great problem of his existence is to bring all the incessant changes of his outer life into conformity with the unchanging unity of this ideal.

Thus writes Schiller in the fourth letter. It is Schiller's aim to build a bridge from man as he is in immediate reality, to the ideal man. There exist in human nature two impulses which hold it back from idealistic perfection when they develop in an unbalanced way—the impulses of the senses and of reason. If the sense impulse has the upper hand man is the servant of his instincts and passions. In action that is irradiated by human consciousness is mingled a force that clouds this consciousness. His acts become the result of an inner necessity. If the reason impulse predominates man strives to suppress the instincts and passions and to give himself up to an abstract necessity that is not sustained by inner warmth. In both cases man is subject to coercion. In the first his sense nature subdues the spiritual; in the second his spiritual nature subdues that of the senses. Neither the one nor the other gives man in the kernel of his being which lies between the material and the spiritual, full and complete freedom. Complete freedom can only be realised in harmonisation of the two impulses. The material sense nature must not be subdued, but ennobled; the instincts and passions must be permeated with spirituality in such a way that they themselves come to be the fulfilment of the spiritual element that has entered into them. And reason must lay hold of the soul nature in man in such a way that it imparts its power to what is merely instinctive and passional, causing man to fulfil its counsels as a matter of course from out of his instinct and with the power of passion. “When we have desire for someone who is worthy of our disdain, we have painful experience of the constraint of Nature. When we are antagonistic to another who merits our respect, we have painful experience of the constraint of the intellect. As soon, however, as he interests our affections and wins our respect, the coercion of feeling and the coercion of reason both disappear, and we begin to love him. A man whose material nature manifests the spiritual qualities of reason, and whose reason manifests the basic power of passion, is a free personality.” Schiller would like to found harmonious social life in human society upon the basis of free personalities. For him the problem of an existence really worthy of man was allied to the problem of the formation of man's social life. This was his answer to the questions facing man-kind at the time when he expressed these thoughts, as a result of the French Revolution (27th Letter). [ 2 ] Goethe found deep satisfaction in such ideas. On 26th October, 1794, he writes to Schiller on the subject of the Aesthetic Letters as follows: “I read the manuscript sent to me with the very greatest pleasure; I imbibed it at one draught. These letters pleased and did me good in the same way as a delicious drink that suits our nature is easily imbibed and shows its healthy effects on our tongue through a pleasant humour of the nervous system. How could it be otherwise, since I found such a coherent and noble exposition of what I have long recognized to be true, partly experiencing it, partly longing to experience it in life.

[ 3 ] Goethe found that Schiller's Aesthetic Letters expressed all that he longed to experience in life in order to become conscious of an existence that should be really worthy of man. It is therefore comprehensible that in his soul also, thoughts should be stimulated which he tried in his own way to elaborate in Schiller's direction. These thoughts gave birth to the composition that has been interpreted in so many different ways,—namely the enigmatical fairy tale at the end of the narrative which appeared in Die Horen under the title of Conversations of German Emigrants. The fairy tale appeared in this paper in the year 1795. These conversations, like Schiller's Aesthetic Letters, had as their subject the French Revolution. This concluding fairy tale cannot be explained by bringing all sorts of ideas from outside to bear upon it, but only by going back to the conceptions which lived in Goethe's soul at that time.

[ 4 ] Most of the attempts to interpret this composition are recorded in the book entitled Goethe's Wonder Compositions by Friedrich Meyer von Waldeck Heidelberg (Karl Wintersche Universitätsbuchhandlung). Since the publication of this book new attempts at explanation have of course been made.

[ 5 ] I have tried to penetrate into the spirit of the fairy tale, taking as my starting point the hypothesis of the Goethean school of thought from the ninetieth year of the eighteenth century onwards, and I first gave expression to what I had discovered in a lecture delivered on 27th October, 1891, to the Goethe Society of Vienna. What I then said has expanded in all directions. But everything that I have since allowed to be printed or that I have said verbally about the fairy tale, is only a further elaboration of the thoughts expressed in that Lecture and my Mystery Play, The Portal of Initiation, published in 1910, is also a result.

We must look for the embryonic thought underlying the fairy tale in the Conversations of which it formed the conclusion. In the Conversations Goethe tells of the escape of a certain family from regions devastated by war. In the conversations between the members of this family there lives all that was stimulated in Goethe's conceptual world as a result of his interchange of ideas with Schiller. The conversations revolve around two central points of thought. One of them governs those conceptions of man which make him believe in the existence of some connection between the events of his life,—a connection which is impermeable to the laws of material actuality. The stories told in this connection are in part phantom, and in part describe experiences which seem to reveal a “Wonder” element in contrast to natural law. Goethe did not write these narratives as the result of a tendency towards superstition, but from a much deeper motive. That soothing, mystical feeling which many people have when they hear of something that cannot be explained by the limited reason directed to the facts of natural law, was quite alien to Goethe. But again and again he was faced by the question: does there not exist for the human soul a possibility of emancipating itself from conceptions emanating from mere sense perception and of apprehending a supersensible world in a purely spiritual mode of conception? The impulse towards this kind of activity of the faculty of cognition may of course be a natural human aspiration based on a connection with this supersensible world,—a connection that is hidden from the senses and the understanding bound to them. And the tendency towards experiences which appear to sever natural connections may be only a childish aberration of this justifiable longing of man for a spiritual world. Goethe was interested in the peculiar direction of the soul's activity when giving way to this fondness for the sweets of superstition rather than for the actual content of the tales and stories to which these tendencies give birth in unsophisticated minds.

[ 6 ] From the second central point of thought flow conceptions concerned with man's moral life, the stimulus for which is derived not from material existence, but from impulses which raise man above the impacts of material sense existence. In this sphere a supersensible world of forces enters into the soul life of man.

[ 7 ] Rays which must ultimately end in the supersensible proceed from both these central points of thought. And they give rise to the questions about the inner being of man, the connection of the human soul with the sense world on the one side and with the supersensible on the other. Schiller approached this question in a philosophical attitude in his Aesthetic Letters; the abstract philosophical path was not Goethe's. He had to give a picture form to what he wrote, as in the case of the fairy tale of The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily. In Goethe's imagination the different human soul powers assumed the form of figures in the fairy tale, and the whole soul life and soul striving of man was personified in the experiences and the lives of these figures. When anything of this kind is said one has to be prepared for the objection which will come from certain quarters that in this way a composition is lifted out of the realer of imagination, of phantasy, and made into an inartistic, symbolical representation of abstract concepts; the figures are removed from real life and transformed into symbols or even allegories that are not of the nature of art. Such an objection is based on the notion that nothing but abstract ideas can live in the human soul as soon as it leaves the realm of sense materiality. It ignores the fact that there is a living supersensible mode of perception as well as one that is of the senses. And in the fairy tale Goethe moves with his figures in the realm of supersensible perceptions and not of abstract concepts. What is here said about these figures and their experiences is not in any sense a statement that this figure means one thing, and that another. Such symbolical interpretation is as far removed as it could possibly be from the standpoint of this Essay. For it, the Old Man with the Lamp and the Will-o'-the-Wisps in the fairy tale are nothing more nor less than the phantasy figures as they appear in the composition. It is absolutely necessary, however, to look for the particular thought impulses which stimulated the imagination of the poet to create such figures. Goethe's consciousness did not of course lay hold of these thought-impulses in abstract form. He expressed himself in imaginative figures because to his genius any abstract form of thought would have been too lacking in content. The thought-impulse holding sway in the substrata of Goethe's soul had as its outcome the imaginative figure. Thought, as the intermediate stage, lives only subconsciously in his soul and gives the imagination its direction. The student of Goethe's fairy tale needs the thought content, for this alone can enable his soul to follow the course of Goethe's creative phantasy in re-creative imagination. The process of growing into the content of this thought involves nothing more nor less than the adaptation of organs enabling us to live in the atmosphere that Goethe breathed spiritually when he created the fairy tale. This means that we focus our gaze upon the same soul world as Goethe. As a result of Goethe's control of this soul world, living, spiritual forms—not philosophical ideas, burst forth before him. What lives in these spiritual forms lives also in the human soul.

[ 8 ] The mode of conception which permeates the fairy tale is also present in the Conversations. In the discussions narrated there, the human soul turns to the two world spheres between which man's life is placed—the material and the supersensible. The deeper nature of man strives to establish a right relationship to both these spheres for the purpose of attaining a free soul understanding that is worthy of man, and of building a harmonious social life. Goethe felt that what he brought to light in the narratives did not come to expression fully in the Conversations. In the all-embracing picture of the fairy tale he had to bring those human soul problems upon which his gaze was directed, nearer to the immeasurably rich world of spiritual life. The striving towards the condition truly worthy of man to which Schiller refers and which Goethe longs to experience, is personified in the Young Man in the fairy tale. His marriage with the Lily, who embodies the realization of the world of Freedom is the union with those forces which slumber in the human soul and when awakened lead to the true inner experience of the free personality.

[ 9 ] The “Old Man with the Lamp” plays an important part in the development of the fairy tale. When he comes with his lamp into the clefts of the rocks, he is asked which is the most important of the secrets known to him. He answers, “the revealed,” and when asked if he will not divulge this secret, replies, “When I have learnt the fourth.” This fourth secret, however, is known to the Green Snake, who whispers it in the Old Man's ear. There can be no doubt that this secret concerns the condition for which all the figures in the fairy tale are longing. This condition is described at the end of the tale. A picture portrays the way in which the soul of man enters into union with the subterranean forces of its nature. As a result of this, the soul's relationship to the supersensible,—the kingdom of the Lily,—and to the material,—the kingdom of the Green Snake, is so regulated that in experience and in action it is freely receptive to impulses from both regions. In union with both the soul is able to fulfil its true being. It must be assumed that the Old Man knows this secret; for he is the only figure who is always master of the circumstances; everything is dependent on his guidance and leadership. What then can the Snake say to the Old Man? He knows that the Snake must be offered up in sacrifice if the longed-for goal is to be attained. But this knowledge of his is not unconditional. He must wait until the snake from out of the depths of her nature is ripe to make the sacrifice. Within the compass of man's soul life is a power which bears the soul's development on to the condition of free personality. This power has its task on the way to the attainment of free personality. When this is achieved the task is over. This power brings the human soul into connection with the experiences of life. It transforms into inner wisdom all that science and life reveal, and makes the soul ever riper for the desired spiritual goal. This attained, it loses meaning, for it establishes man's relation to the outer world. At the goal, however, all external impulses are changed into inner impulses of the soul, and there this power must sacrifice itself, must suspend its functions; it must, without separate existence of its own, live on now in the transformed man as the ferment permeating the rest of soul life. Goethe's spiritual outlook was particularly concerned with this power in human life. He saw it working in the experiences of life and of science. He wanted to see its application without the outcome of preconceived ideas or theories of an abstract goal. This goal must be a result of the experiences themselves. When the experiences are mature they must themselves give birth to the goal. They must not be stunted by a predestined end. This soul-power is personified in the Green Snake. It devours the gold,—the wisdom derived from life and science, which must be so worked upon by the soul that wisdom and soul become one. This soul-power will be sacrificed at the right time; it will bring man to his goal, will make him a free personality. The Snake whispers to the Old Man that it will sacrifice itself. It confides to him a mystery that is revealed to him, but of which he can make no use so long as it is not fnlfllled by the free resolve of the Snake. When this soul power in man speaks to him as the Snake speaks to the Old Man, “the time has come” for the soul to realise life experience as life wisdom; harmony between the material and the supersensible is re-established. The Young Man has had premature contact with the supersensible world, and has been paralysed, deadened. Life revives in him and he marries the Lily when the Snake,—the soul experience, is offered up in sacrifice. [ 10 ] Thus the longed for consummation is attained. The time has now also come when the soul is able to build a bridge between the nether and the further regions of the river. This bridge is built of the Snake's own substance. From now on, life experience has no separate existence; it is no longer directed merely to the outer sense world as before. It has become inner soul power which is not consciously exercised as such, but which only functions in the reciprocal illumination of the material and super-sensible life of man's inner being. This condition is brought about by the Snake. Yet the Snake by itself cannot impart to the Young Man the gifts whereby he is able to control the newly fathomed soul kingdom. These gifts are bestowed on him by the Three Kings. From the Brazen King he receives the sword with the command: “Take the sword in your left hand and keep the right hand free.” The Silver King gives him the sceptre with the words: “Feed my sheep.” The Golden King sets the Crown of Oak on his head, saying, “Acknowledge the Highest.” The fourth King, who is formed of a mixture of the three metals, Copper, Silver and Gold, sinks lifelessly to the ground. In the man who is on the way to become a free personality there are three soul forces in alloy:—Will (Copper), Feeling (Silver), Knowledge (Gold). In the course of existence the revelations of life experience give all that the soul assimilates from the operation of these three forces. Power, through which virtue works is made manifest in Will: Beauty (beautiful appearance) reveals itself in Peeling; Wisdom, in Knowledge. Man is separated from the state of “free personality” through the fact that these three forces work in his soul in alloy; he will attain free personality to the degree in which he assimilates the gifts, each of the three in its specific nature, in full consciousness and unites them in free conscious activity in his own soul. Then the chaotic alloy of the gifts of Will, Feeling and Knowledge which has previously controlled him, falls asunder.

[ 11 ] The Wisdom King is of Gold. Gold personifies Wisdom in some form. The operation of Wisdom in the life experience that is finally sacrificed has already been described. But the Will-o'-the-Wisps too, seize upon the Gold in their own way. In man there exists a soul quality,—(in many people it develops abnormally and seems to fill their whole being)—by which he is able to assimilate all the wisdom that life and science bestow. But this soul quality does not endeavour to unite wisdom wholly to the inner life. It remains one-sided know-ledge, as an instrument of dogma or criticism; it makes a man appear brilliant, or helps to give him a one-sided prominence in life. It makes no effort to bring about a balance through adjustment with the yields of external experience. It becomes superstition as described by Goethe in the Wonder Tales of the Emigrants, because it does not try to harmonise itself to Nature. It becomes learning before it has become life in the inner being of the soul. It is that which false prophets and sophists like to bear through life. All endeavour to assimilate the Goethean life-axiom: “Man must surrender his existence if he would exist” is alien to it. The Snake, the selfless life-experience that has developed for love's sake to conscious wisdom, surrenders its existence in order to build the bridge between material and spiritual existence.

[ 12 ] An irresistible desire presses the Young Man onward to the kingdom of the Beautiful Lily. What are the characteristics of this kingdom? Although men have the deepest longing for the world of the Lily, they can only reach it at certain times before the bridge is built. At noon the Snake, even before its sacrifice, builds a temporary bridge to the supersensible world. And evening and morning man can pass over the river that separates sense-existence from supersensible existence on the Giant's Shadows—the powers of imagination and of memory. Anyone who approaches the ruler of the supersensible world without the necessary inner qualification must do harm to his life like the Young Man. The Lily also desires the other region. The Ferryman who conveyed the Will-o'-the-Wisps over the river can bring anyone back from the supersensible world, but can take no one to it.

[ 13 ] A man who desires contact with the supersensible world must first have developed his inner being in the direction of this world through life experience, for the supersensible world can only be grasped in free spiritual activity.

The Prose Aphorisms express Goethe's opinion of this goal: “Everything that sets our spirit free without giving us mastery over ourselves, is harmful.” Another aphorism is: “Duty, when a man loves the commands he gives to himself.” The kingdom of pure supersensible activity—Schiller's “Reason Impulse,” is that of the Lily; the kingdom of pure sense-materiality—Schiller's “Sense Impulse” is the home of the Snake before its sacrifice. The Ferryman can bring anyone to the realm of sense but cannot convey them to the realm of spirit. All men have involuntarily descended from the supersensible world. But they can only re-establish a free union with this supersensible world when they have the will to pass over the bridge of sacrificed life-experience. It is a union independent of “Time,” of all involuntary conditions of soul. Before this free union has taken place there exist two involuntary conditions of soul which enable man to attain to the supersensible world—the kingdom of the free personality. One such condition is present in creative imagination or phantasy which is a reflection of supersensible experience. In Art man links sense existence to the supersensible. In Art he manifests also as free creative soul. This is depicted in the crossing which the Snake makes possible at noon. The Snake typifies life-experience not yet ready for supersensible existence. The other condition of soul sets in when the conscious soul of man—of the Giant in man who is an image of the macrocosm—is dimmed, when conscious cognition is obscured and blunted in such a way that it becomes superstition, hallucination, mediumistic trance. The soul power existing in this way in obscured consciousness is for Goethe one with that power that is prone by force and despotism to lead men to the state of freedom in a revolutionary sense. In revolutions the urge towards an ideal state lives obscurely; it is like the shadow of the Giant which lies over the river at twilight. What Schiller writes to Goethe on 16th October, 1794, is also evidence of the accuracy of this idea of the Giant. Goethe was on a journey which it was his intention to extend to Frankforton-the-Main. Schiller writes: “I am indeed glad to know that you are still far away from the commerce of the Main. The shadow of the Giant might well lay rough hands upon you.” The result of caprice, the unregulated “laissez faire” of historical events, is personified in the Giant and his shadow, by the side of the obscured consciousness of man. The soul impulses leading to such happenings are certainly associated with the tendency towards superstition and chimerical ideology.

The “Old Man's” lamp has the quality of only being able to give light where another light already is. One cannot but be reminded here of the saying of an old Mystic, quoted by Goethe: “If the eye were not of the nature of the light it could never see the sun; if God's own power were not within us, how could Divinity delight us?” [ 14 ] Just as the lamp does not give light in the darkness, so the light of wisdom, of knowledge, does not shine in the man who does not bring to it the appropriate organ, the inner light. What the lamp denotes will become still more intelligible if we take heed of the fact that it can in its own way shed light upon what is developing as a resolution in the Snake, but that there must first be knowledge of the Snake's willingness to make this resolution. There is a kind of human know-ledge which is at all times a concern of the highest endeavour of man. It has arisen from the inner experience of souls in the course of the historical life of mankind. But the goal of human endeavour to which it points can only be attained in concrete reality out of the sacrificed life-experience. All that the consideration of the historical past teaches man, all that mystical and religious experience enables him to say about his connection with the supersensible world,-all this can find its ultimate consummation only by the sacrifice of life-experience. The Old Man can change everything by his lamp in such a way that it assumes a new life-serving form, but actual development is dependent upon the ripening of the life-experience.

[ 15 ] The wife of the Old Man is she whose body is pledged to the river for the debt which she has come to owe it. This woman personifies the human powers of perception and conception as well as humanity's memory of its past. She is an associate of the Old Man. By her aid he has possession of the light that is able to illumine what is made evident already by external reality. But the powers of conception and of remembrance are not united in life with the concrete forces active in the evolution of the individual man and in the historical life of humanity. The power of conception and of remembrance cleaves to the past; it conserves the things of the past so that they make their claims upon all that is becoming and evolving in the present. The conditions—maintained by memory—in which the individual and the human race are always living, are the crystallisation of this power of the soul.

Schiller writes of them in the third of the Aesthetic Letters: “He (man) was introduced into this state by the power of circumstances, before he could freely select his own position. Before he could adjust it according to the Laws of Reason, necessity has done so according to Natural Laws.” The river divides the two kingdoms, of free spiritual activity in supersensible existence and of necessity in material life. The unconscious soul powers, the Ferryman, transport man, whose origin is in the supersensible kingdom, into the material world. Here in the first place he finds himself in a realm wherein the powers of conception and remembrance have created conditions in which he has to live. But they separate him from the supersensible world; he feels himself beholden to them when he must approach the power (the Ferryman) that has brought him unconsciously out of the supersensible world into the material sense world. He can only break the power which these conditions have over him, and which is revealed in the deprivation of his freedom, when with the “Fruits of the Earth” that is to say, with self-created life wisdom, he frees himself from the obligation imposed upon him by the conditions, from coercion. If he cannot do this, these conditions—the water of the river—take his individual wisdom away from him. He is swallowed up into his soul being.

[ 16 ] On the river stands the Temple in which the marriage of the Young Man with the Lily takes place. The “marriage” with the supersensible, the realisation of the free personality, is possible in a human soul whose forces have been brought into a state of regularity that in comparison with the usual state is a transformation. The life experience previously acquired by the soul is so far mature that the force directed to it is no longer exhausted in adapting man to the world of sense. This force becomes the content of what is able to stream into man's inner being from the supersensible world in such a way, that, acts in the material sense world become the fulfilment of supersensible impulses. In this condition of soul, those spiritual powers of man which previously flowed along mistaken or one-sided channels, assume their new significance in the character as a whole,—a significance adequate for a higher state of consciousness. The wisdom of the Will-o'-the-Wisps, for example, which has broken loose from the sense world and has wandered into superstitution or chaotic thought, serves to open the door of the Palace, that is the personification of the soul condition wherein the chaotic alloy of Will, Feeling and Cognition holds man in chain within a constricted inner life shut off from the supersensible world.

[ 17 ] In the wonder pictures of the composition Goethe approached the panoramic evolution of the human soul before his spiritual vision in that frame of mind which is conscious of estrangement in face of the supersensible until it attains those heights of consciousness where life in the sense world is permeated by the supersensible, spiritual world to such an extent that the two become one. This process of transformation was visible to Goethe's soul in delicately woven figures of phantasy. Through the Conversations of German Emigrants shines the problem of the relation of the physical world to a world of supersensible experience free of every element of sense with its consequences for the communal life of man. This problem finds a far-reaching solution at the end of the fairy tale in a panorama of poetic pictures. This Essay merely indicates the path leading to the realm where Goethe's imagination wove the fabric of the fairy tale. Living understanding of all the other details can be developed by those who realise the fairy tale to be a picture of man's soul life as it strives towards the supersensible world. Schiller realised this fully. He writes: “The fairy tale is full of colour and humour and I think that you have given most charming expression to the ideas of which you once spoke, namely, in reference to the reciprocal interplay of the powers and their reaction on each other.” [ 18 ] For even when it is objected that this reciprocal interaction of the powers refers to powers of different men, we can plead the well-known Goethean truth that although the soul powers from one point of view are distributed among different human beings, they are nothing but the divergent rays of the collective human soul. And when different human natures work together in a common existence we have in this mutual action and reaction nothing more nor less than a picture of the multifarious forces and powers constituting in their reciprocal relationships the one collective individual being, Man.

• 1. This essay is an elaboration of my article Goethe's Secret Revelation which appeared in the Literary Magazine in 1899, on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of Goethe's birthday.!

I believe I am indicating correctly one of the fundamental characteristics of our age when I say that, at the present day, all human interests tend to centre in the cult of human individuality. An energetic effort is being made to shake off every kind of authority. Nothing is accepted as valid, unless it springs from the roots of individuality. Everything which hinders the individual in the full development of his powers is thrust aside. The saying “Each one of us must choose his hero in whose footsteps he toils up to Olympus” no longer holds for us. We allow no ideals to be forced upon us. We are convinced that in each of us, if only we probe deep enough into the very heart of our being, there dwells something noble, something worthy of development. We no longer believe that there is a norm of human life to which we must all strive to conform. We regard the perfection of the whole as depending on the unique perfection of each single individual. We do not want to do what anyone else can do equally well. No, our contribution to the development of the world, however trifling, must be something which, by reason of the uniqueness of our nature, we alone can offer. Never have artists been less concerned about rules and norms in art than today. Each of them asserts his right to express, in the creations of his art, what is unique in him. There are dramatists who write in dialect rather than conform to the standard diction which grammar demands.

No better expression for these phenomena can be found than this, that they result from the individual's striving towards freedom, developed to its highest pitch. We do not want to be dependent in any respect, and where dependence must be, we tolerate it only on condition that it coincides with a vital interest of our individuality.

[ 2 ] Truth, too, will be sought in an age such as ours only in the depths of human nature. Of the following two well-known paths described by Schiller, it is the second which will today be found most useful:

Wahrheit suchen wir beide, du aussen im Leben, ich innen
In dem Herzen, und so findet sie jeder gewiss.
Ist das Auge gesund, so begegnet es aussen dem Schöpfer;
Ist es das Herz, dann gewiss spiegelt es innen die Welt.

A truth which comes to us from without bears ever the stamp of uncertainty. Conviction attaches only to what appears as truth to each of us in our own hearts.

[ 3 ] Truth alone can give us confidence in developing our powers. He who is tortured by doubts finds his powers lamed. In a world of riddle of which baffles him, he can find no aim for his activity.

[ 4 ] We no longer want to believe; we want to know. Belief demands the acceptance of truths which we do not wholly comprehend. But the individuality which seeks to experience everything in the depths of its own being, is repelled by what it cannot understand. Only that knowledge will satisfy us which springs from the inner life of the personality, and submits itself to no external norm.

Truth seek we both—Thou in the life without thee and around;
I in the heart within. By both can Truth alike be found.
The healthy eye can through the world the great creator track;
The healthy heart is but the glass which gives creation back.

—Bulwer

[ 5 ] Again, we do not want any knowledge that has encased itself once and for all in hide bound formulas, and which is preserved in Encyclopædias valid for all time. Each of us claims the right to start from the facts that lie nearest to hand, from his own immediate experiences, and thence to ascend to a knowledge of the whole universe. We strive after certainty in knowledge, but each in his own way.

[ 6 ] Our scientific doctrines, too, are no longer to be formulated as if we were unconditionally compelled to accept them. None of us would wish to give a scientific work a title like Fichte's A Pellucid Account for the General Public concerning the Real Nature of the Newest Philosophy. An Attempt to Compel the Readers to Understand. Nowadays there is no attempt to compel anyone to understand. We claim no agreement with anyone whom a distinct individual need does not drive to a certain view. We do not seek nowadays to cram facts of knowledge even into the immature human being, the child. We seek rather to develop his faculties in such a way that his understanding may depend no longer on our compulsion, but on his will.

[ 7 ] I am under no illusion concerning the characteristics of the present age. I know how many flaunt a manner of life which lacks all individuality and follows only the prevailing fashion. But I know also that many of my contemporaries strive to order their lives in the direction of the principles I have indicated. To them I would dedicate this book. It does not pretend to offer the “only possible” way to Truth, it only describes the path chosen by one whose heart is set upon Truth.

[ 8 ] The reader will be led at first into somewhat abstract regions, where thought must draw sharp outlines if it is to reach secure conclusions. But he will also be led out of these arid concepts into concrete life. I am fully convinced that one cannot do without soaring into the ethereal realm of abstraction, if one's experience is to penetrate life in all directions. He who is limited to the pleasures of the senses misses the sweetest enjoyments of life. The Oriental sages make their disciples live for years a life of resignation and asceticism before they impart to them their own wisdom. The Western world no longer demands pious exercises and ascetic practices as a preparation for science, but it does require a sincere willingness to withdraw oneself awhile from the immediate impressions of life, and to betake oneself into the realm of pure thought.

[ 9 ] The spheres of life are many and for each there develop a special science. But life itself is one, and the more the sciences strive to penetrate deeply into their separate spheres, the more they withdraw themselves from the vision of the world as a living whole. There must be one supreme science which seeks in the separate sciences the elements for leading men back once more to the fullness of life. The scientific specialist seeks in his studies to gain a knowledge of the world and its workings. This book has a philosophical aim: science itself is to be infused with the life of an organic whole. The special sciences are stages on the way to this all-inclusive science. A similar relationship is found in the arts. The composer in his work employs the rules of the theory of composition. This latter is an accumulation of principles, knowledge of which is a necessary presupposition for composing. In the act of composing, the rules of theory become the servants of life, of reality. In exactly the same sense philosophy is an art. All genuine philosophers have been artists in concepts. Human ideas have been the medium of their art, and scientific method their artistic technique. Abstract thinking thus gains concrete individual life. Ideas turn into life forces. We have no longer merely a knowledge about things, but we have now made knowledge a real, self-determining organism. Our consciousness, alive and active, has risen beyond a mere passive reception of truths.

[ 10 ] How philosophy, as an art, is related to freedom; what freedom is; and whether we do, or can, participate in it—these are the principle problems of my book. All other scientific discussions are put in only because they ultimately throw light on these questions which are, in my opinion, the most intimate that concern mankind. These pages offer a “Philosophy of Freedom”.

[ 11 ] All science would be nothing but the satisfaction of idle curiosity did it not strive to enhance the existential value of human personality. The true value of the sciences is seen only when we have shown the importance of their results for humanity. The final aim of the individuality can never be the cultivation of any single faculty, but only the development of all capacities which slumber within us. Knowledge has value only in so far as it contributes to the all-round unfolding of the whole nature of man.

[ 12 ] This book, therefore, does not conceive the relation between science and life in such a way that man must bow down before the world of ideas and devote his powers to its service. On the contrary, it shows that he takes possession of the world of ideas in order to use them for his human aims, which transcend those of mere science.

[ 13 ] Man must confront ideas as master; lest he become their slave.

In a previous lecture,¹ we discussed spiritual science in relation to religious records. Today we shall attempt to enter more deeply into the Bible, at least in a few instances. The Bible is after all a religious document that today is known to every educated person. From the spiritual scientific point of view, it will be easiest if, in our approach, we start with the New Testament. In the earlier lecture, we discussed how certain critical comments concerning the Bible are to be understood in the light of spiritual science, in particular those concerned with the actual writing of the four Gospels and Scriptures in the Old Testament. Today we shall look at more positive aspects and, while bearing in mind what was dealt with in the previous lecture, go straight to the subject from the spiritual scientific viewpoint.

You will be aware that someone who, out of a heartfelt need of his Christian faith, turns to the four Gospels known as the Gospel according to Matthew, to Mark, to Luke and to John, comes up against what appear to be insoluble contradictions. A modern person, however great his faith, can have no notion of how differently one approached the Bible in an earlier more religious age. Nor can a person have any idea of the significance attached to the word Bible or to the expression, the Word of God. We must realize that for centuries the faithful were in no doubt that the writers of the religious records were inspired. Consequently, every word in the Bible was regarded as holy, as from divine inspiration only truth could come. People saw the Bible as dealing with great world questions, and they fastened onto every word, for it was impossible for them to believe that fault could be found in what men of God had written under divine inspiration.

Modern human beings find it difficult to transport themselves into such a mood and attitude. They read the Gospel of Matthew and that of Luke and find two different genealogies of Jesus of Nazareth. Already in the third place, above the name of Joseph, they find in Matthew the name Solomon, in Luke the name Nathan; going further they find many more names that differ, and ask, How is it possible that a document, which for centuries has been considered a source of Truth, can contain such contradictions?

Here we see the seed of all the doubts aroused by disparities in the Gospels and consequently doubt that they were in fact inspired. By subjecting the Gospels to detailed scrutiny we believe to have discovered what can be accepted as more or less genuine. In regard to the fourth Gospel, the conclusion is drawn that as it is so different from the others it cannot be a historical record at all. It is understandable that the modern person becomes critical when faced with contradictions that are impossible to explain away by even the most open-minded individual.

However, we must ask ourselves how it came about that no one for centuries, for millennia, noticed these contradictions that are now criticized. It is difficult to believe that only very stupid people ever handled the Bible. Perhaps it could be argued that only very few people had access to the Bible; before the art of printing, the majority of the faithful did not. Consequently, they could not pass judgment on something about which they were not informed by the leading few who did have access to the Bible. But are we really to believe that those few were all so stupid that they did not notice what is pointed out by today's critics?

Some historians maintain that only slowly, through the power of the church, did these documents come to be appreciated. Reverence for the Bible arose only gradually. It is said that the Bible cannot stand up to close historical investigation. Looking at events that took place in the early Christian centuries, the conclusion is drawn that the Ecumenical Council of Nicea² decided which Gospels were true, and there it was ordained: “These are the true Holy Scripts.” Unprejudiced investigation does not bear this out. Looking back we come to personalities who lived in the early days of Christendom. From them we learn that, for example, in the year A.D. 160 a so-called harmonizing of the Gospels took place. This meant collating the Gospels and bringing them to present a uniform picture, a procedure that was later repeated. And indeed, careful examination of the Gospels as they were in the second century showed that already then they contained what we know as the New Testament. We find that the early Church Fathers in particular spoke with the deepest reverence about the Bible, which suggests that they certainly had the belief that the Bible had been inspired by a higher spiritual source. Already in Origen³ we encounter the same reverent approach to the biblical records as is later to be found in the faithful, whether of learned or of simple faith.

When these things are considered, all prejudice must be set aside. In the early centuries the attitude of learned people towards Christianity was by no means the same as that of modern people. Today one risks being accused of repudiating the true words of the Bible, of being an agnostic and unfit to call himself a Christian by people with orthodox viewpoints. These people should recognize that to interpret the Bible in ways that differ from their own is not the equivalent of doubting its truth. It was the Church Father Augustine⁴ who said: “What is known today as Christian religion is ancient; in fact, what was the true primordial religion is today called Christianity.”

These words are in great contrast to the usual experience of those who interpret the Bible in the light of spiritual science. The hostility, often coming from family and friends, is nothing short of tragic. Spiritual scientific explanations are harshly rejected as having nothing to do with the Bible. Such reactions are based on complete ignorance of the Bible itself. It is also pretentious, for it proclaims an understanding of the Bible that cannot be faulted. If only such people would recognize that their attitude to the spiritual scientific explanations is in effect like saying: “What I find in the Bible is the only truth.”

Spiritual science, far from having a negative approach to the Bible, seeks to unravel its deep truths. The main concern is that these religious records should be properly understood. Those who simply find it more comfortable to remain within views to which they have become accustomed are not in a position to oppose spiritual science. Rejection of true explanations is often based on deep seated hostility, though sometimes it is simply too much effort to learn something new.

No Christian with any understanding of a certain passage from the Sermon on the Mount, often quoted by me, could maintain that attitude. The passage, when rightly translated reads: "Blessed are those who are beggars of the spirit, for within themselves they shall find the Kingdom of Heaven." No words could better or more beautifully express the inner feeling and disposition of the spiritual scientist than this passage from the Sermon on the Mount.

What do we mean by the inner disposition of the spiritual scientist? We mean an inner impulse to strive to develop the deepest kernel of our being, our spirituality. What builds our body comes from substances that surround us; likewise our inner being comes from the spirit that lives, and always did live all about us. Just as it is true that our body is, as it were, a drop from the sea of material reality, so is it true that our soul, our spirit, is a drop from the sea of the all-encompassing Universal Spirit. As the drop of water is of the same substance as the sea from which it is taken, so is that which lives in the deepest recess of the human soul godlike. Human beings are able to recognize God because God lives within them and human beings are themselves spiritual. Furthermore, if a person truly will, he can attain that spiritual world that is all about him. However, for that to come about something is needed—something which can be simply expressed by saying: Do not ever stand still. Human beings must experience progress, must be conscious of evolving, rather than merely having faith that it will happen. It means never to lose sight of the fact that not only have human beings developed to their present stage from inferior levels, but also that at every moment they can develop further.

In this instance we are not concerned with the fact that a person's external being has altered in the course of evolution, but rather with the fact that the human soul can climb upwards from stage to stage. In striving for perfection, a human being's soul is capable of improving from day to day. Today we may learn something new; we inwardly grasp something we did not know before; through our will we become capable of achieving something we could not manage before. If we remain at what we understand today, at what our will is capable of today, then we do not evolve. We must never lose sight of the fact that as well as the forces that are already developed within us, we possess others still slumbering. It is comparable to the seeds of new plants that slumber within the seed that has already become a plant. If we never forget that we possess such forces, our will grows stronger; it reaches higher stages of development and we become aware that our soul begins to evolve spiritual eyes and ears. We must not think of this as something trivial, but recognize that the development of the human soul and spirit is of universal significance.

When we see in the physical world, a relationship between animal forms and the noble human form, it does not justify the assumption that a person has developed from the animal, even if natural science has established that, as regards the physical structure, there is greater similarity between the lowest developed human being and the highest developed ape, than between the lowest and highest developed ape. This observation, however, led natural science to regard human beings as having descended from the ape. The famous natural scientist Thomas Henry Huxley⁵ spoke about it as a great heresy in 1859. This view influenced practically everything he wrote. However, those who recognize spiritual development say: Granted that man, in regard to his external bodily form, is closer to the highest evolved ape, than the latter to the lowest of its own species, it is equally true that a human being who has reached a certain stage in spiritual development is further from the lowest developed human being, than the latter from the highest evolved animal.

When evolution is followed through, the higher stages are seen to continue up into spiritual realms where what is described by spiritual science takes place, and which to spiritual sight is as much a reality as physical evolution is to physical sight. Spiritual knowledge has always existed. Natural science today only acknowledges an evolution that starts with the lowest animal form and continues up to that of man. Spiritual science is in hin agreement with that evolution. It also acknowledges the enormous difference between the lowest form of life, barely visible even through the microscope, and the perfect structure of the human organism. A person's physical structure does indeed pass through innumerable evolutionary stages from the most imperfect to the most perfect.

However, the spiritual scientist sees the evolution of soul and spirit as just as real. The difference he sees is just as great between the highly advanced human being, the initiate, and the person who has barely begun to develop his slumbering forces. An initiate is someone who has attained spiritual faculties by developing to ever greater perfection forces that are inherent in every human soul. The difference between the lower stages of soul development and those attained by an initiate is actually greater than the difference between the lowest living structure and that of human beings. A person who knows that initiates exist also knows that the possibility to develop spiritually is a reality.

With this insight there dawns in the human soul a feeling, an attitude that says: I look up to a godlike ideal of man, the seed of which slumbers within me. I know that in the future it will become reality, though as yet it is only slightly indicated. I know also that I must exert all my powers to attain that ideal. With this insight into spiritual development man becomes a “beggar of the spirit”; he feels himself blessed. In the spiritual scientific sense the passage from the Sermon an the Mount is a truly wonderful saying: “Blessed are those who are beggars of the spirit, for within themselves they shall find the Kingdom of Heaven.”

Those acquainted with old linguistic usage will not imagine that what is here meant by heaven is something existing in an unknown beyond. In those days heaven was understood to be wherever man is. Where we are is where heaven is, that is, the spiritual world. A blind person will see the world full of color when successfully operated upon; likewise a person whose spiritual eyes are opened sees around him a new world. What a person sees was actually always about him, but he sees it in a new way. He sees the way he must be able to see if he is to attain his higher humanity. He will know that heaven is not somewhere else, is not in another place or time. He recognizes the Truth when Christ says: “Heaven is in the midst of you.”

Where we are is the Kingdom of Heaven; it penetrates everything physical. As ice swims in water out of which it has condensed, so does matter swim in a sea of spirit out of which it has condensed. Everything physical is condensed, transformed spirit.

In the animal kingdom we see the physically imperfect side by side with the physically more perfect; in the human kingdom we see all stages of spiritual development: One person has forged ahead, another remained at a lower stage. This indicates how in the spiritual scientific sense, human beings are connected with evolution. One person's interest lies in the realm of modern science, another's in the realm of human cultural development from the savage to the highly advanced individual who has attained insight into the spiritual world around him. The initiates always had insight into all the stages of human spiritual development. One spoke of the initiate as of someone who possessed greater knowledge than anyone else. Such initiates were mentioned in every epoch. Let us make it clear in what sense one spoke of those initiated into the spiritual world.

We have often discussed the fact that in ancient times people had clairvoyant consciousness. The term "clairvoyant" did not refer to clarity, but to the fact that it penetrated through the external to the soul. A residue of this dull, dim consciousness can be seen in today's consciousness in dreams. Our clear waking consciousness developed from it. At the time when in general a person's consciousness was dull and dim, though clairvoyant, a few were initiates. In what sense did this consciousness differ from that of the rest of humanity? It differed because those who were initiates already experienced something of the type of consciousness that mankind in general attained today. They reached at an earlier stage something that belonged to the future. Already they saw the world the way humanity in general sees it today. That is to say, they investigated the world through the physical organs, through sight and hearing, and grasped things through the intellect. That is the sense in which they were initiates. An initiate attained ahead of time something that belonged to the future. There are also initiates today; who have already developed the higher clairvoyant consciousness, that is, the higher perception that mankind in general will possess in the future. The initiate was looked up to in ancient times by those who understood. They said to themselves: The initiate's outlook, his understanding of the would, is the outlook and understanding all human beings will possess in the future. He is the embodiment of a future ideal; through what he is, is revealed what we shall become. In the course of time the initiate will lead a great number of human beings to attain what he has attained.

In this sense, the initiate was a prophet or a messiah. He was also called a “first-born.” But those to be initiated had to pass through many stages. Before the stage of initiation was attained, many different degrees of learning and schooling of the will must be passed through. As a plant must go through many stages from root through leaf and blossom before bearing fruit, so a human being strove upwards in stages of ever greater insight, till finally the pupil became an initiate. He attained progress by going through certain schooling that anyone can adopt. Those who deny that such a schooling is possible do so out of ignorance. They have as yet not discovered that through schooling, a person's spiritual eyes and ears can be opened so that he attains a higher kind of perception. It is the task of spiritual science to provide knowledge of such schooling. In my book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment, you will find this subject is dealt with in great detail. There are many reasons why this knowledge is essential in our time. I will mention just one.

It is a tragedy that because human intellect and reasoning power have progressed too far, he is no longer able to believe in the ancient religious records. He no longer experiences them as the embodiment of the words of God. The fact that the human soul no longer receives the ancient knowledge causes it torment and depression. What is needed is the knowledge presented in a new form, and this is what spiritual science wishes to provide. Those who are initiates today are able—as were initiates in ancient times—to foresee humanity's future evolution. However, human development must follow certain rules. Just as one must adopt a definite method if one wishes to become an astronomer, likewise must a certain method be adopted if one is to develop spiritually. No one should wish to attempt to do so without guidance; that would be like wishing to become a mathematician without consulting any authority. Someone needs show the way, but no other kind of authority is required, and it is nonsense to talk about blind faith and dependence in relation to spiritual science.

Throughout the millennia, right back to antiquity, there were always books in existence, or rather not actual books, but traditions handed down by word of mouth, of the rules of initiation. These rules were not permitted to be written down. They consisted of indications that the candidate for initiation had to follow when setting out to attain all the stages of development that lead to initiation. Even today certain indications are not written down, but imparted directly to those worthy to receive them. These indications the neophyte must observe if he is to attain the highest goal. A principle of initiation was always in existence, that is rules for the birth of the spirit in man. He who dedicated himself to spiritual striving was guided through exercises and conduct of life an ever higher levels. Once the highest was attained, the initiate would reveal to him the deepest secrets.

One word more about this codex for initiation. Today things are different; the procedure of initiation also progresses. In ancient times, the neophyte was brought to a condition of ecstasy. This word had a different meaning; it did not indicate "being out of one's mind" but becoming conscious on a higher level. The spiritual guide led the neophyte to this condition of higher consciousness. Strict rules were observed; the prescribed length for the condition to last was three and one-half days. This procedure is no longer followed; today the consciousness is not subdued. But in ancient times a state of ecstasy, of rapture, was produced during which the neophyte knew nothing of what went on about him; to the external world he was like someone asleep. However, what was experienced in this condition differed considerably from the experiences of a contemporary person when the external objects disappear from his consciousness, on falling asleep. The neophyte experienced a world of spirit; all about him there was light, astral light. This is different from physical light; it appears like a sea of spirituality out of which spiritual beings emerge. If a very high stage had been attained, sound would also be experienced. What in the ancient Pythagorean schools was called “the harmony of the spheres” was heard. (What today we understand intellectually as universal laws are experienced as a kind of spiritual music at this level of consciousness. Spiritual forces are revealed as harmony and rhythm, but must not be thought of as ordinary music. The spiritual world, the heavenly world, resounds in the astral light.) In this world into which the neophyte was led, he learned to know stages of godliness that humanity will attain in a far distant future. During the three and one-half days a person experienced all this as reality, as Truth.

These things may sound extraordinary to many, but there are, and always were people who recognize that a spiritual reality exists that is as real as the one perceived through physical senses. After three and one-half days the initiate was guided back to the sense world enriched with knowledge of spiritual existence, and prepared to bear witness of the spiritual world. All initiates on their return to the ordinary world uttered certain words that were always the same: "Oh my God, how thou has glorified me!" These words expressed the sensation felt by the one just initiated as he set foot again in the everyday world. Those who guided the initiation knew all the stages by heart; later when writing came more into use certain things were written down. But there always existed a typical or standard description of the life of an initiate. One said as it were: "He who is accepted into the cult to be initiated must live according to certain rules and pass through the experience which culminates with the words: "Oh my God, how thou hast glorified me!"

If you could depict the way an initiate necessarily had to live, the way you could depict someone wishing to carry out experiments in a chemical laboratory, then you would obtain a picture typical of someone striving to attain a higher development, typical of someone to be awakened to a higher life. Such a codex of initiation always existed or was at least known by heart by those concerned with initiation. Knowing this, we can understand why the descriptions of different initiates of various people are similar This fact contains a great secret, a great mystery. The people always looked up to their initiates, insofar as they knew of them. What was said about initiates was not the kind of thing modern biographers relate about famous people; what was told was the course of the spiritual life experienced by the initiate. We can therefore understand why descriptions of the life of Hermes, Zarathustra, Buddha, Moses and Christ are similar It was because they had to experience a certain life if they were to become initiates. Their lives were typical of that of an initiate.

In the outer structure of the spiritual biography we can always see a picture of the initiate. We can now answer the question: Who were the writers of the gospels? In my book, Christianity as Mystical Fact, you will find this question answered in greater detail from the viewpoint of spiritual science, and also indications of the spiritual authenticity of the Gospels. Here I can only give a few hints! In my book is explained that what is written in the Gospels is derived from ancient records of initiation. Naturally what initiates wrote differs in regard to incidentals, but all essentials were always the same. We must realize that the writers of the Gospels had no other sources than the ancient codex of initiation. When we look into the details, we recognize in the Gospels different forms of initiation. They differ because the writers knew initiation from different regions. This we shall understand when we consider how the writers of the Gospels were connected with Christ.

The best way to form an idea of this connection is to think of the significant words at the beginning of the Apocalypse.⁶ The One who dictates the content to John is named "The First and the Last, the Alpha and Omega." This refers to that Being who is always present, through all changes from generation to generation, from human race to human race, from planet to planet; the Being that endures through all transformations. If we call this Being God, of whom a particle lives within each of us, then we sense our relationship to this Alpha and Omega. Indeed, we recognize it as the ultimate ideal, the ultimate goal of striving human beings.

At this point we must remind ourselves of a forgotten custom. Nowadays, names are bestowed more or less haphazardly. We do not feel any real connection between a person and his name. The further back we go in human history, the greater the importance and significance of the name. Certain rules were observed when a name was given. Even not so very long ago, it was the custom to consult the calendar, and give the newly born the name mentioned on the day of its birth. It was assumed that the child had sought to be born on the day that bore that name. When someone attained initiation he was given a new name, an initiation name that expressed a person's innermost nature, expressed what the spiritual leader had recognized to be his significance to the world.

As you know, we find in the New Testament many sayings attributed to Jesus. Their deeper meaning can be understood only if approached from the viewpoint of initiation and understanding of the significance of bestowing names. For example, if someone had reached an as yet not so high level spiritually, and one wished to give him a corresponding name, it would be one that expressed characteristics of the astral body. If a person had reached a higher level, the name would express characteristics of the ether body. If it was to express something that was typical, it would be derived from characteristics of the physical body. In ancient times, names were related to the person and expressed his essential nature. You will remember that in the Gospels Jesus often describes what He is in words that refer back to the word “I.” This you find particularly in the Gospel according to John.

We must now bear in mind that we distinguish four members in a person's being: physical body, ether body, astral body and “I.” The “I” will increase more and more. It is inherent in a person's “I” to develop towards initiation. In undeveloped people it is imperfect, in the initiate perfect and powerful. You will now understand from the way names were given that Christ did not refer to Himself as an ordinary human being with an ordinary human “I.” In John's Gospel He often indicates that He is identical with the “I am, as in the sentence, "I and the Father are One." He describes Himself as identical with the human being's deepest nature. This He does because He is the Eternal, the Christ, the Alpha and Omega.

Those who lived at the time of Christ saw Him as a Divine Being who carried about Hirn a physical body, a being in whom the spirit is the all-important, whereas in human beings the physical is the all-important. For human beings the outstanding characteristic was expressed in the name. When we ponder this we find that it opens the door to many of the mysteries contained in the Bible. We shall understand what it means when Moses stands before Jehovah as messenger and asks: “Whom shall I tell the people has sent me?” And we hear the significant words: “Tell the people that the ‘I am’ sent thee.” What does Jehovah refer to? He points to the deepest and most significant aspect of a person's being, to that which lies deeply hidden in every human soul, to the human's “I.” We find that when we come to this fourth member, then the “I” is a name we must bestow an ourselves. The godlike within human beings must speak. It begins to speak in what appears to live in human beings as a mere point , aa a tiny insignificant seed, which can however develop to infinite greatness. It is this aspect of a person's being that gave Moses his task and said: “Tell them that the ‘I am’ sent thee.” A divine seed lies within every human soul enveloped inthe physical, etheric and astral bodies. It appears as a mere point to which we say: “I am. But this member of our being, which appears so insignificant, will become by far the most important. The essence of the human being teils Moses: “I am the I am.”

This illustrates the significance connected with the giving of a name. Whenever a reference is made to the “I am” it is also a reference to a certain moment in humanity's evolution that is indicated in the Bible, and often referred to in my lectures: the moment when physical man became an ensouled being. Physical man, as he is today, has developed from lower stages. Only when the Godhead had endowed him with a soul was man able to develop higher stages of his being. What descended from the bosom of the Godhead sank into the physical body and developed it further. In the Bible this moment is indicated in only a few words; it actually stretched over long epochs. Before that time, the human bodies did not possess what is essential—essential also for physical man today—if the “I” is to develop: the ability to breathe through lungs. A human being's physical ancestors did not originally breathe through lungs, which only developed in the course of time from a bladder-like organ. The human being could receive a soul only when he had learned to breathe through lungs. If this whole event is summed up in one sentence, you have the saying in the Bible: "And the Lord God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul." In regard to the name Jehovah, we find that it means something like blowing, or rushing wind. The word Jahve expresses the inrush of breath with which the spirit, the “I” drew into man. The physical breath enabled man to receive his soul.

Therefore, in the name Jahve is expressed the nature of the inrushing breath with which the “I am the I am” poured part of its Being into human beings. What we are told in the Bible truly represents a world event depicting the entry into a human being of the eternal aspect of his nature. Whether we think of man as he is today or as he was thousands of years ago, the nature, the “Being of the I” (Ichwesen) always was. Think of the highest revelation of this “Eternal I,” when all external aspects are irrelevant. Think of a human being in whom can be recognized the most inward nature of the “Eternal I” in all its greatness and might, and you have an idea how the first followers of Christ saw Hirn. What in ancient time was revealed on earth only as a spark, was revealed in Jesus of Nazareth in its highest glory. He was the greatest initiate because He was the most Godly, so that He could say: “Before Abraham was, I was.” He incorporated that which existed before Abraham,⁷ Isaac⁸ and Jacob.⁹ He is that to which striving mankind looks up as the greatest ideal. They are those mentioned in the Sermon on the Mount as: “Blessed are those who are beggars of the Spirit, for within themselves they shall find the Kingdom of Heaven.” These words applied to the followers of Christ. But how could they give a description of the life of the highest God incarnated? What description would be worthy of Hirn? Only the one that was contained in the canon of initiation, describing the rules of initiation. There was described the way the one to be initiated must from stage to stage pass through certain experiences which culminated in the words: “Oh my God, how thou hast glorified me!” (The transcript of this lecture ends at this point.)

• 1. unknown reference
• 2. Council of Nicaea was called by Emperor Constantine. It formulated the Nicene Creed in A.D. 325.
• 3. Origen (c. 185–A.D. 254) was an early Christian Church Father and writer.
• 4. Augustine, Saint (354–430) a Christian theologian and writer. The most prominent of the Latin Fathers of the Church.
• 5. Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895). He supported Darwin's theory of evolution. He coined the word “agnostic.” He also was a natural scientist.
• 6. Apocalypse was a prophetic revelation about Armageddon. Jewish and Christian writings appeared in Palestine between 200 B.C. and A.D. 1500.
• 7. Abraham, the biblical father of the Hebrew people and first of the patriarchs, was regarded as the founder of the ancient Hebrew nation.
• 8. Isaac, the son of Abraham and Sarah.
• 9. Jacob of the Old Testament was the son of Isaac and Rebecca and was the father of the twelve patriarchs.

The I is the same in man as Christ is in the world. It is the turning point in the whole evolution of mankind. Everything that preceded Christ in the development of mankind was a preparation for the appearance of Christ; everything that followed the appearance of Christ proceeded from it. Christ is the center of the world. He is the Word who stands in the center of the whole development. Like rays, the whole evolution of mankind flows toward Him, toward His embodiment.

The whole world life had gone through a descending process into the physical. At last it appeared in the physical. The Divine had completely united with its own creation when Christ descended to the personality of Jesus of Nazareth and made His entrance in Him. This Christ was an expression of the whole world life in a physical body, in the shell of the personality of Jesus, who lived in Palestine. There the whole world life was radiated together as in a center. There the world ego dwelled during three earthly years. There the world ego came to the consciousness of its whole task for the world, which had gone out from it before. If at first the Logos had let the world come out of him by the word of creation, he himself held this world flowing out of him in his arms and pulsated it with his own life, now he took upon himself the great sacrifice to no longer live only as creator and sustainer of this world and to rule over it, but he moved with his life into the center of this world. He had designed the world as a shell, as the temple in which he wanted to dwell. There the word connected itself with everything that was thought by the same. The word became flesh. Therefore it could connect [with] the human shell that walked in Palestine as Jesus of Nazareth. Never before had the I so completely embedded itself in man. The Christ-embodiment was the I-becoming of the world. Long, through millions of years, this moment had prepared itself, and through millions of years it will continue to work to bring time to completion. From this moment, the center of our whole development, all further development radiates, as in former times all development flowed together there. We can develop only rooted in the Word, in the life of Christ, which has been the heart of the world since the Incarnation of Christ. All life had flowed to this heart of the world, and now it flows out and pulsates through everything that is. What has formed out of there, at the incarnation of the divine life, is the expression of the greatest love of the Godhead for us. She did not want to have around her only dependent beings who had come forth through her power and were guided by her power; she wanted to see free beings around her, to whom she communicated so much of herself that they could become like the Deity. Her own bliss, her own power, her own wisdom she wanted to communicate to them. Therefore, the deity sacrificed itself and moved into the center of the world; it thus formed the heart of the world, in order to flow from there through everything created with its own inner being. After three years of activity, the Christ Jesus sacrificed himself on the cross. Thus the world life prepared its own descent into humanity during three world years, the first three planetary years; then it united completely with the world in the earth center, where this earth reached its greatest condensation. And now it remained at first hidden from mankind at large. Only some people, a small crowd, could recognize the world life in the Christ Jesus. Thus the world life rested in the world. It resounded incessantly as the Word and instilled its life into the world; it flowed into every human being and gave him his power to feel himself as I, to find a center in himself, to live in his I. But people did not recognize the connection between the world life and the Christ Jesus. But people did not recognize the connection with the world life, the Christ. Until the third day, Christ remained for the world the dead Christ, who had died and been buried on the cross. Just as at that time his disciples believed that he had really passed away from them, that he was dead, so also for a time people could no longer consciously feel his life. He had to be resurrected so that people could recognize him. On the third day, the Christ rose from the dead in Palestine. The certainty that he was alive was returned to the small multitude that had believed in him, Then this certainty flowed into them. And they became the bearers of this certainty. From them once this certainty should go over to all people. "All days I am with you, even to the end of the world," Christ said to them. They had experienced that he was alive and that physical death could not destroy his life. He who could overcome physical death could bring everything else to life. They realized that he was the world life. Only through him could one ascend to the Godhead. He brought the Deity to life before their eyes. There was the deity in truth there in the world. He was the truth itself, the divine truth; he was the life itself, the divine life; and so he was also the mediator, the way that could lead people to the goal. The way, the truth and the life he was for all mankind. From him alone mankind could progress towards perfection.

Just as the whole of humanity had found in Christ its center, the world ego, around which the whole of world life must be grouped, so then also men each found in himself the ego as the central point around which their own being must be grouped. Only through the appearance of Christ did I-consciousness become fully possible for man. He was, after all, the embodied I of the world. He had told men that he was closely connected with them, that his life flowed through them: "I am the vine, you are the branches." Such is the close connection of the core of our being with the Christ of the world. He gave them bread and wine, saying, "This is my flesh; this is my blood. With all that you receive into yourselves from the world, you receive my life." What is around us, everything that lives, that grows and blossoms and develops, it is a part of the Christ-life that dwells in everything created. With each thing that we take into us from the environment, the Christ life flows into us. This should become more and more conscious to humanity. When this consciousness of being one with Christ has fully entered humanity, then Christ has risen for the whole world; then he has so saturated the world with his life that everything that lives will be his temple in which he can express his own life unhindered. For the first time he expressed it fully in the appearance of the Christ Jesus. Then it came to expression in all those people who united themselves wholly with him, in those who had brought themselves so far into harmony with the world life that they became a part of the world life, that the world word spoke through them to the world. It is these who work out of the world-word in the world, who themselves embody the word and can thereby bring the word to men.

Before Christ there were great leaders and teachers of mankind; they taught mankind and guided it. Since Christ appeared, another has entered mankind. The leaders of mankind now not only instruct mankind, but they share their lives with mankind. They have a magical effect on those whom they teach. They lead humanity to freedom, therefore they must share their own lives with humanity, so that each I may develop to freedom and self-reliance, to God-likeness.

Some great leaders are in humanity who do not teach outwardly, but who give to mankind the impulses which communicate to them their own power, their life, a part of the Christ-life, of the world-ego. Humanity should learn by itself to understand the Divine and to live in the Divine, through its own knowledge, not through compulsion and dependence. Before Christ appeared, humanity could not do that. Before, it lacked the power to do so. Christ was the world impulse for the development of freedom of mankind.

The more people unite with the power of the Christ-life, the more they become free beings, the more God-like they become. There, in the center of the world, people must get all the impulses of life. The I in man is the key to this center of the world. It is the spark that connects him with the central fire of the world. It is the source from which he must draw; it is eternally renewed by the world ego, the world life itself. It is the narrow gate through which man must pass to enter the spirit world. All human forces must flow into the ego, as into a point, and only through this point, through the narrow gate of the ego, can they come forth again, just as world life could only come forth again into the world and communicate itself to it by flowing into the appearance of Christ Jesus.

The I becomes fully formed only through the flowing together of all the powers of man, through the concentration of his whole being on one point. Thereby only the I reaches the true becoming. Thereby the becoming of the I of the human being takes place. All that the Godhead has made of him, all the forces, he lets flow together into one great force; thereby a new thing arises in him, a special thing, a nucleus of being; then the world-ego, the world-life is localized in him, just as the life of the plant is localized in the seed.

Initially it is there only in the germ, but the germ contains all the possibilities of development, since it forms an extract of the world-forces. When man becomes fully aware of this truth, that he is the shell for a spark of God, for a germ of God, then the Christ has been born in him, then he is a conscious guardian of the divine treasure in his own heart, of the world-life, what has sunk into him.

From that moment on he will get all his impulses from this certainty that he lives through the world-life and for the shaping of the world-life in his own inner being. His further development is then a purification of his whole being, a ennoblement, a spiritualization of all his powers, for a temple of God he is, and he wants to work at making this temple of God more and more glorious. He now lives in the beatification of the consciousness that the world life rests in him, in his I, and that it grows and increases in him and will one day fill him completely. He then pours out this world life in every thought, every wish, every word, in his whole being; he communicates it to other beings. He helps to overcome death; he has become the redeemer, liberator of the world. Because what lives in him, he does not want to keep for himself. That would be a stagnation of life; that would mean death. Only by the passing on of the life it is possible that in him the world life generates itself anew. The more he gives of it to the environment, the stronger becomes in him the inexhaustible source of world life. Thus man forms in himself the Christ-appearance; thus all mankind will one day express the Christ, the Word, and every man will then be a sound in this world-word. And when all mankind has thus become an expression of the Christ, then this is the transition to a new stage of world development. Then all the forces that were in the world will have been formed, and now these life forces can be included anew in the center of the world, and there together they will form the plan for a new cosmos, which in a new stage of evolution will flow out from the center just as our present evolution has flowed out from the center of the world. With the completion of our earth evolution only an exhalation of the Godhead is completed. Everything will be included again in the center of the Godhead in order to arise anew at the next exhalation. But nothing that has been formed will be lost. Everything that is, remains in the consciousness of the Godhead. From the consciousness of the Godhead it enters again into life, and the life of the Godhead brings everything to new formation, in order to express in this formation the consciousness of the Godhead.

So the great world-builder builds his world-temple according to the world-plan which slumbers within him; and more and more perfect and more perfect he fashions this world-temple. We are to become co-workers of the master world builder at the world temple. Thus we, too, must bring together in our I all the experiences we have in the world, locate them there, and then transform and use them for the more beautiful shaping of our own being in connection with the development of the cosmos.