The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Dr. Steiner: We need to look more closely at the ninth grade. After I more thoroughly considered yesterday’s discussion, I do not think we can take care of that class if we burden one teacher like Dr. Schubert, which is what would undoubtedly happen. I think we need to hire another teacher for the 1b class, and, in my opinion, Dr. Plinke would do well as a Waldorf teacher. She was here just today. I asked about her a few days ago, but could not obtain any real information about her stay here. I think she should take over the 1b class, and then Dr. Schubert’s work could be done differently.

Concerning the curriculum of the tenth grade, we need to take into consideration German language and literature. That would be a continuation of what was done in the ninth grade.

A teacher: I had them read Jean Paul.

Dr. Steiner: You had them read and complete Jean Paul.

A teacher: They completed the chapter about humor.

Dr. Steiner: What is now important is that you begin a comprehensive presentation of meter and poetics. Upon the basis of what they have learned from Jean Paul, the children will be able to learn a great deal here. In any event, we must avoid normal pedantic school methods. We must teach living poetry in a living way and treat it in a reasonable manner.

The class could then study The Song of the Niebelungs and Gudrun. Where possible, you should study it in Middle High German. As time allows, go through it in Middle High German, but also speak about the entire context of the poem, its artistic and folk meaning and, aside from the passages that you read, go through it so that the children learn the entire content. Of course, with The Song of the Niebelungs, you could do some Middle High German grammar and compare it with that of modern High German. That would be sufficient for the tenth grade, but begin with meter.

A teacher: Could you perhaps recommend a German book about meter?

Dr. Steiner: They are all equally good and equally bad. Take a look at Göschen’s anthology, one of the worst methods, but you will find the concepts there. There isn’t a good book on meter and poetics—Bartsch, Lachmann, and so forth. Simrock attempted to maintain that in his Germanized version of The Song of the Niebelungs.

I gave the basics in a lecture in Dornach and showed how meter is connected to the interactions of the pulse and breathing look at the caesura when you study hexameter. You can see it as a harmony of the pulse, and, breathing. Today, we can’t go into metric theory.

It would still be good if we could arrange things in the eighth, ninth, and tenth grades so that the class teachers would relieve one another.

A teacher: We did that.

Dr. Steiner: So, when one begins at 8 o’clock in the tenth grade, the others would begin in the ninth and the eighth. It would not be good to change weekly. You need a longer period for each block. Our principle is to begin a block of learning and remain with it as long as possible. See if you can do that. We will also need to see that Dr. Schwebsch joins you as a fourth teacher when he comes. For the remaining classes, the plan will remain as it was. 1. Bartsch and Lachmann were more concerned with the scientific study of The Song of the Niebelungs. Simrock’s translation was published in 1827. Now Schubert can take over the whole subject of history, since he no longer has the 1b class.

Now we have history in the tenth grade. In order to teach economically, it will be important to be well-prepared. In the eighthand ninth-grade classes, do the same as before. In the tenth grade, we should return to the earliest period of history. Beginning with the earliest period, take history through the fall of free Greece, that is, beginning with the earliest Indian Period, go through the Persian, the Egypto-Chaldeaic and Greek until the end of Greek freedom, that is, until the battle of Charonea in 338 B.C.

For tenth-grade geography, describe the Earth as a morphological and physical whole. In geology, you will need to describe the Earth so that the form of the mountains is presented as a kind of cross, that is, the two rings of mountains in the east-west and north-south directions that cross one another. In morphology, discuss the forms of the continents, the creation of mountains, everything that enters into the physical realm, and then the rivers. Take up geological questions, physical characteristics, isotherms, the Earth as a magnet, the north and south magnetic poles. You need to do this in morphology. Continue on with the ocean currents, the air currents, the trade winds, and the inside of the Earth. In short, everything encompassed by the Earth as a whole.

How far have you come in mathematics?

A teacher: In algebra, exponents and roots, geometric drawing, and the computation of areas. We also did simple equations, equations with multiple unknowns, quadratic equations, and the figuring of the circumference and area of a circle.

Dr. Steiner: You could also teach them the concept of __. When you teach that, it is not important that you teach them about the theories of decimal numbers. They can learn the number __ to just one decimal place.

A teacher: We studied the number __ by looking at the perimeters of inner and outer regular polygons.

Dr. Steiner: What lines do the children know?

A teacher: Last year we studied the ellipse, hyperbola, and parabola from a geometrical perspective.

Dr. Steiner: Then, the children will need to learn the basics of plane trigonometry. I think that would be enough for now. How far did you come in descriptive geometry?

A teacher: The children learned about interpenetrating planes and surfaces. The children could certainly solve problems involving one triangle penetrated by another. They can also find the point of intersection of a line with a plane.

Dr. Steiner: Perhaps that is not necessary. You should actually begin with orthogonal projections, that is, from a point. You should go through the presentation of a plane as a plane, and not as a triangle.

You should then go on to the theory of planes and intersection of two planes and then, perhaps, to the basics of projective geometry. It is important to teach children about the concepts of duality, but you need to teach them only the most basic things.

A teacher: In trigonometry, wouldn’t it be necessary to go into logarithms?

Dr. Steiner: What? They don’t understand logarithms yet? You must do that in mathematics, it belongs there. They would know only the basic concepts of sine, cosine, and tangent, you need to say only a few sentences about that. They should learn only a couple of the relationships, for instance, sin 2a + cos 2a = 1, but they should understand that visually.

A teacher: Should the goal be to teach logarithms in the ninth grade?

Dr. Steiner: They should know enough about logarithms to be able to perform simple logarithmic computations.

Then we have physics.

A teacher: I was supposed to teach them to understand the locomotive and telephone.

Dr. Steiner: Yes, that was the goal, so that the children would have a preliminary overview of all of physics.

The teacher then describes what was done.

Dr. Steiner: With a grain of salt, it appears you did go through most of physics. That was when we should have gone through all that. It is sufficient if the children have an idea of it.

A teacher: I covered mechanics the least.

Dr. Steiner: Now is just the right time for that. You need to begin with mechanical forms [perhaps formulas]. It is best if you treat it mathematically. You need to go only far enough for the children to have a basic understanding of simple machines.

Then we have chemistry.

A teacher: The main thing we attempted to do was to present the differences between acids and bases.

Dr. Steiner: That is, of course, good. Do the children have a clear idea about the importance of salts, bases, and acids? Such things need to be done first. It is really terrible to speak about organic chemistry. We need to get away from that and expand our concepts. We could accomplish a great deal if we simply did what belongs to this year and did it by observing in detail basic and acidic substances as well as salts. We should, therefore, look at alkalines and acids, and then subsequently at the physiological processes so that the children understand them. We could begin with opposite reactions which we can see in the contrasting behavior of bee’s blood and digestive juices, since they are acidic and alkaline. In this way, we would touch upon physiological processes. You only need to work through the concepts of bitter and sour, base and acid with them. That is, take up the blood of the bee and its stomach acid because they react in opposite ways. Stomach acid is sour and the blood is bitter. Bees have these opposites of blood and stomach acid in their digestive organs. The same is true of human beings, but it is not so easy to demonstrate. It can be easily done, however, with bees in a laboratory.

How far have you come in natural history? Remember, we now have fourteen- and fifteen-year-olds.

A teacher: I have not done much there.

Dr. Steiner: Well, we will need to assign classes differently and have a fourth teacher.

A teacher: I will have at most a third of the year available to do all of this.

Dr. Steiner: You can do it in a third of a year. You could save some time if, in the future, we had two and a half hours in the morning for these three classes and compress the material somewhat. Then we could include a fourth teacher. We need to begin these three classes a little earlier and end them a little later.

A teacher: But then we will have difficulties for the other subjects because they change classrooms at the 10 o’clock recess.

Dr. Steiner: In the future we will not need as many hours of language instruction in all the grades as we have had. We do not need as much English and French in the tenth grade, that is absolutely unnecessary. We use too much time for modern languages. If we do languages so much in the lower classes as we have, we will not need to do so much in the upper grades. We can limit foreign languages somewhat in the upper grades.

It is important to consider minerals in natural history. In the tenth grade, we should also discuss the human being. We should also do mineralogy.

A teacher: What should we do about anthropology in the tenth grade?

Dr. Steiner: You will need to make the human being understandable, in a certain sense. Of course, you have to create a context in which you can make the human being as an individual understandable, so that you can later go on to ethnology. In making the individual human being understandable, you can take a great deal from Anthroposophy without getting the reputation of teaching Anthroposophy. That is the objective truth. Teach about the physical human being and its organs and functions in relation to the soul and spirit.

We also need to create a transition from shop into what is truly artistic. You have already done that with modeling, but now you can alternate that with painting. Paint with those children who are adept. We can look at the tenth-grade children as though they were in a college preparatory school, and thus we can move them into the various arts. I think we need some sort of class on aesthetics, and that is something that Dr. Schwebsch could do since he created an aesthetic connection between sculpture, painting, and music. He has done a great deal with music. In connection with musical aesthetics, you need to form a kind of sub-faculty: shop classes that move into the artistic and then into the musical, so that the aesthetic, but not musicology, is of concern. I think we should give the children as early as possible an idea of when a chair is beautiful or when a table is beautiful. You should do that in such a way as to stop all this nonsense about a chair needing to be pleasing to the eye. You should be able to feel the beauty of a chair when you sit upon it. You need to feel it. It is just the same as I said yesterday in the handwork class that the children need to be able to feel one way or another about what they have done, for instance, in cross-stitching. I think that in general, these things will all merge: handwork and shop with a feeling for art and music. Of course, this all must be done properly.

That has all been done in the most horrible manner in the college preparatory schools. Herman Grimm always complained that when people came to him, and he showed them pictures, they couldn’t tell whether a person was standing toward the front or back in the picture. People did not have the slightest idea about how to view them. The high-school students could not tell whether someone was standing toward the front or toward the back. We will see how things move in regard to instrumental music in the tenth grade.

A teacher: We need to begin it earlier.

Dr. Steiner: For the tenth grade, in any event.

A teacher: In the tenth-grade class, all of the children are doing instrumental music and I want to put them together and form a small orchestra. Most of the children belong.

Dr. Steiner: For those who are not participating, you would need to be certain that they willingly participate.

A teacher: We would certainly need two periods for the tenth grade, otherwise we could hardly do anything in choir.

Dr. Steiner: In the tenth grade, we could teach some harmony and counterpoint, so the children would want to perform. But, don’t force the issue. Wait until they come to it themselves.

In eurythmy, we need to work toward an ensemble. There are already some young men and women who can do complete ensemble forms. In music, it is important that when we begin working on something, we bring it to a certain degree of conclusion. It is better to complete three or four things in the course of the year than to simply begin all manner of things. You will soon get past the hurdle of boredom.

We must also teach children the simplest concepts of drafting. We could do that in the periods we otherwise use for languages. We need only one period per week for drafting and for surveying, also only one hour per week. We could do drafting for a half year and then surveying. In drafting, you should begin with screws, something that is not normally done. We should do that because we should begin with the character of what is material, with the poetic in drafting, and only later go onto dynamic subjects. You will certainly have enough to do in a half year without that, so teach all about the screw in drafting. You will, of course, have to guide the children so that they can draw screw forms. Work on drills and screws and worm gears.

In surveying, it will be enough if you bring the children so far along that they can determine the horizon and then simple landscapes, vineyards, orchards, and meadows, so they have an idea of how they are drawn.

Concerning spinning, you should begin with the tools, like the spinning wheel or hand loom and so forth, and first teach primitive spinning and weaving. They won’t be able to do much more than learn the simplest things and ideas. They do not need to come much further than to understand how a thread is created and how a piece of cloth is woven. You should be happy if they acquire some skill in the years. They should have some understanding of the fibers, also. And, in addition, you should teach them the historical development. To give it some spice, they should also learn about more complicated forms, since the simpler forms are no longer used.

In health class, teach simple bandaging, roughly what is needed in first aid. Let the boys do it also, tenderly and decently, and things will move along. It is not important whether they think they can do it, it is sufficient if they simply acquire an idea about it. For this, you will need one period a week for half a year.

You should see to it that the girls watch the tomboys and the boys, the more effeminate girls. The boys should not do it, they should simply become accustomed to it. They could talk a little bit among themselves about which girls do it best.

While the boys are drawing screws, the girls should talk about that in a more theoretical way. One problem with drafting is that it takes so much time to do so little. You do all kinds of things, use a great deal of time, but not much gets done. You could make the period quite exciting since the boys won’t do very much otherwise. There is certainly a lot we could do in this period of life to make things more exciting. I have noticed that they are a little bit sleepy, the boys and girls.

Tenth-grade French: Do literature and culture. I would do it by beginning with the more modern and going backward to older things, that is, in reverse. What can the children do in French?

A teacher: Simple conversation.

Dr. Steiner: They could read Le Cid. The children should begin to have some concept of classical French poetry. Do Molière later. I would prefer that you do not rush from one thing to another. If you like Le Cid, then do all of it. We can add other things during the year.

A teacher: What should I do in English? I have covered all of the background information about the text.

Dr. Steiner: Continue with that. Then see if the children can freely write a paragraph. There are some students in the language class who think they can do it better than the teacher. That is easy to see. Foreign language teachers are seldom accepted if they are not foreigners and speak with an accent. You need to pay a little attention here. This is a difficult problem, but we will need to stick with the principle that things will come with time.

When we do not teach efficiently, we burden the students. We should avoid wasting time for that reason. We should not do everything as though we had an endless amount of time. It is apparent that we too often assume we have an endless amount of time.

A teacher asks if he should do Dickens.

Dr. Steiner: Our plans are good enough. Now we have only Latin and Greek. What can the children do there?

A teacher: Ovid, without always translating.

Dr. Steiner: Continue that. They need to be able to understand at least simple things in Greek.

We should give as much Latin and Greek as we can. It is not so important that we use the encapsulated methods used at the college preparatory schools. That is nonsense. We should give somewhat more emphasis to Latin and Greek and somewhat less to modern languages. In the lower grades, we need to come so far that later we do not need to use so much time. Our job is to make it clear to as many students as possible that it is something beautiful. I cannot understand why more boys do not want to learn it. Use more time in the upper grades for Latin and Greek.

A teacher makes a remark.

Dr. Steiner: Such problems come up. If we add stenography to our curriculum, we need to start now.

A teacher: Most of them already do it.

Dr. Steiner: That doesn’t concern us. We need to ask ourselves if we should use these two periods a week to teach stenography in the tenth grade and, then, which system. Gabelsberger? The boundary for that is here. Gabelsberger predominates here and in Bavaria also. I think the Gabelsberger method would do the least damage. If only stenography had never been created! But now that it exists, people cannot live without it, just like the telephone. Well, Gabelsberger it is. Two periods of stenography.

We can no longer address the girls in the tenth grade with the informal “you.” It’s bad enough when a teacher is not old enough.

Evening lectures: One or two hours for those who have completed the eighth or ninth grades and have left the school. The children will learn the practical things they need to know outside. It would be good for the health of the children, though, if they were taught about aesthetics and art and literary history.

In the independent religious instruction, we have not yet taught the children the Psalms. The ten-year-olds could understand the Psalms. Discuss everything in the Psalms. Give a kind of inner contemplation of the Psalms so you can crown it by singing them.

A teacher: What should I do now? I am getting past fairy tales.

Dr. Steiner: Use the symbolism that comes from the material, for instance, the meaning of the festivals. There is so much information in the lectures about Christmas, Easter, and Whitsun. You could discuss most of what those lectures contain. If you present it properly, it would be quite good for children, particularly at that age. Try to stay connected with the times of the festivals. You could begin a little earlier and end a little later, though. Spend four weeks on Christmas.

A teacher: Could we use Michelangelo’s statues when we do the prophets?

Dr. Steiner: Yes, that is possible.

A teacher: Should we work from the sculptural perspective?

Dr. Steiner: It would be good to know how far you have come, and how you would continue.

Transition to consideration of the Psalms. Then take up the Laocoön group, so that the tragic and lofty are expressed. It is the moment of death.

A teacher: Can I continue teaching religion in the same way in the third and fourth grades?

Dr. Steiner: You should not believe you can leave out Christ.

A teacher: I have done Old Testament history.

Dr. Steiner: Do not limit yourself to Old Testament history.

A teacher: How should I begin with the first grade?

Dr. Steiner: In the past, we have always tried to begin with natural phenomena. That was even the theme of the lower grades. Then, we slowly went on to stories and to tales we made up. From that, we went on to the Gospels and created scenes from the Gospel of St. John. We began with a kind of natural religion. It is important that we create a religious feeling in the children in a natural way by connecting all things together.

Comments are made about a religion teacher’s teaching methods. He was unable to keep the children under control, so they just walked around in class.

Dr. Steiner: That cannot occur again. That is a tremendous setback. Things certainly cannot be the way they were in Haubinda. Some of the students were lying about on the floor and stretching their legs up into the air, others were lying on the window sill, and still others on the tables. None of them sat in their chairs properly. A short story by Keller was read aloud, but there was no hint of a religious mood. That was in 1903.

A teacher: We have done Jean Paul in the ninth grade. We were also to do Herman Grimm. What should we read in the eighth grade?

Dr. Steiner: Also Herman Grimm.

A teacher: I am beginning with Jean Paul. You suggested doing the chapter on humor.

Dr. Steiner: You have to do the whole thing, including the historical context and literary history.

A teacher: What should I read in seventh-grade French class? I chose poetry.

Dr. Steiner: Read stories, La Fontaine.

A teacher asks about anthropology in the fourth grade.

Dr. Steiner: You should do what is appropriate there. In the fourth grade, you will have to remain more with external things. That is possible in nearly every class. The skeleton is, of course, the most abstract thing. I would not consider it for itself, but include it with the entirety of the human being. I would not handle the skeleton by itself, even in the tenth grade. I would begin more with the picture of the whole human being. The way Dr. von Heydebrand did it was good. You should try to make a plausible group of ideas about the human being.

A handwork teacher: Should we try to teach the new children knitting, or could we simply integrate them into the regular classwork?

Dr. Steiner: It would be best to have them learn to knit first, and then have them do the same thing as the rest of the class.

A teacher: Is it best to study commerce and finances in connection with mathematics?

Dr. Steiner: Yes, do it with mathematics, and also in other areas. A question is asked about business writing.

Dr. Steiner: I recently asked that The Coming Day do something and received the reply yesterday. I told them I could not accept it as it was. I have to be able to understand what happened. Usually you can’t tell what happened. In the first case, the address was incorrect, and secondly, instead of what I wanted to know, namely, if something had been moved to a different location, other things were included. The third thing it included was something that did not interest me at all, namely, the charges they had incurred. I could not find out what I wanted to know, namely, whether the task was done, from what was written in the reply. A different address was given. That comes from a superficiality because people do not believe things need to be exact.

You only need to say what happened. You should try to understand the course of a business relationship, and then write from that perspective. That can best be done in a critical way. You should try to probe, to get behind all this gibberish, and see if you can’t bring some style into it.

Concerning business writing: If you need an expert opinion about something, then that opinion is a business report. Information of various sorts, sales reports and so forth, those are all business reports. It is not so terribly bad if you do something wrong. Someone who can do something will find their way better than someone who can do nothing. Those who do things are the ones who most often cannot do them.

Using simple expressions is better than normal “business style.” Some of the things I have experienced myself, I could not repeat here, they were so terrible. It is really not so bad if you simply summarize the situation and repeat it. Everyone can understand that. This is not connected with business alone. You need only read some legal opinion or legal judgment. I once read that a railway is a straight or curving means of movement on a plane or a number of planes with greater or lesser degree of elevation from a particular goal, and so forth. It was sixteen lines.

When you create your lessons, always consider how you can draw them out of the nature of the children.

Be careful when a school inspector comes that he does not leave with his questions unanswered. He may ask questions in such a way that the children cannot answer them. We should work so that the children can handle even the most surprising questions. We certainly want to hold good to what our official plan is, namely, that the children know what they might be asked at the end of the 3rd and sixth grades without preparing them for that specifically. We certainly do not want to work like those teachers do who drill the children about specific questions. The school inspector comes and asks a child if he believes in God. “I believe in God.” The inspector then asks if he believes in Jesus Christ. “No. The one who believes in Jesus Christ sits behind me.” That must not happen here.

We should also be careful that the class teachers do not enter the classroom too late. That is one of the main reasons why the children get into such an uproar, namely, that they are left to themselves because the teacher is not there.

A comment.

Dr. Steiner: (Speaking to a teacher whose class is to be divided) You should try to make the division yourself. It’s best, since you know the children, that you try to do what is best according to your feeling. Otherwise, you could simply take the children who have been here the longest, and the new teacher would take the new children.

A comment concerning the student library.

Dr. Steiner: Do Grillparzer, Hamerling, and Aspasia as late as possible. Do König von Sion as soon as you have done history. You can let them read Ahasver and Lessing at fifteen. Recently, you could have had them read the Zerbrochenen Krug (The broken pitcher). You don’t need to emphasize the Prussian dramas. You could have them read Shakespeare in English. Your goal in such things should be to have them read such things as Shakespeare in the language in which they were written. When the children are so old that they normally do not learn a new language, they should read things in translation, things that are as important as Shakespeare is for English. You should not have the children read Racine and Corneille in German except when they can’t read it in French. Include Fercher von Steinwand and also the twenty-four volume history by Johannes Müller. They should become accustomed to that style. You can also include other things for the children. Fairy tales and mysteries about good and evil are good for children, but you cannot give them the whole book.

We need to consider the faculty. We need a new teacher, and Dr. Plinke might be good. It would be good—you will excuse me—if we alternate, man, woman; man, woman, as otherwise this school will become too feminine.

A teacher is suggested.

Dr. Steiner: He is only “half grown” and will still grow. Isn’t it true that we have men and women equally?

A teacher: There are more men.

Dr. Steiner: I am certainly in favor of equality, but not in a forced way. That is also dangerous. We should have Miss Michels come as a gardener. We could telegraph her.

A comment about the opening ceremony on the coming Saturday is made.

Dr. Steiner: I could speak first, and then all the teachers. I think we should take all the class teachers beginning with the higher grades downward, one after another, and then representatives of the different subjects. We could begin with the top, that is, with the 10th grade. The subject teachers should also speak. We could present the 10th, 9th, and 8th-grade teachers, then the eurythmy, music, foreign language, handwork and shop teachers. We should invite somebody from the ministry, though I don’t think he will come. But, that is another question. Others will also be here.

Someone asks what they should say.

Dr. Steiner: You will find that your goals and intentions for your class at the beginning of the school year fill you with inspiration. Perhaps I should say more about what you should leave out. Everyone is thinking about their goals and intentions. I don’t think it would be proper for me to tell you what to say. It is too bad we cannot do something original in eurythmy, that would certainly be a nice thing to do. The ceremony should be very dignified. It is a problem that we have to hold it in the hall in the botanical gardens. It is a problem that we cannot have the ceremony here. We could not even fit all the children in here, let alone the other people. They could only stand. The faculty should do something at the beginning of school. We will divide the children into the 1st through sixth grades, and seventh through tenth. We’ll have to do that next year.

As we consider the education of the older children, it will be especially necessary to address ourselves to the deeper aspects of human life and the cosmos. Without such a deeper understanding of life, we cannot really in good conscience accept the tasks connected with the high school.

We must understand that life is actually a totality, a oneness, and that by removing any one part of it, we do harm to it. As children, we grow into this life as we find it. We are placed into it by, in a way, sleeping into it. Just think of the absolutely unconscious way children confront the world during their first years. They then gradually increase their consciousness. But what does this mean? It means that the children learn to adapt their inner life to the world outside, to connect the outer world to the inner, the inner to the outer. They also learn to be conscious of the outer objects and to differentiate themselves from those objects.

This dichotomy between inner and outer grows ever stronger. The children look up, beyond the horizon, at the sky, they perceive the cosmos, they may even sense the existence of cosmic laws; but as a rule, the children grow into the totality of the world, into which they are received, without in any way getting close to the mystery of the connection between the human being and the cosmos.

The children continue to grow, they are cared for by the people around them, they are educated and instructed. The children develop in such a way that the necessity of participating in world events in some form or other rises from their whole individuality.

We prepare the children for world events by letting them play during the early years, thus awakening their activity. We make every effort to do things with them that meet and satisfy their needs, to educate them healthfully, hygienically—body, soul, and spirit. We try to do something else. We try to adapt them to the demands of the social and technological life. The attempt is made to educate the children in a way that allows them, later in life, to work, to participate in events, to interact with other people. We try to teach them skills and facts that allow them to participate in the technological life, so that their work can be meaningful and valuable for society, so that they themselves may find their place in life, their connection to the social life, to other people.

We do all of this. And in order that we do this in the right way, so that we, on the one hand, really meet the needs of human nature, so that we do not place human beings into the world with spiritually, psychologically (soul), and physically sick or stunted organisms, we must, on the other hand, admit to ourselves that human beings must grow into the social life in such a way that they can do something by which they may advance both themselves and the world. We must see to meeting both these demands.

And yet we have to tell ourselves that it is not easy today to accomplish this, to give the children what they need in these two areas. And if we take an unbiased look at our situation as teachers, it even causes us a certain skepticism, a certain doubt. We can easily understand today’s concerns and the many discussions on the subject. How should our children be educated? What should we do?

All these questions and problems that arise in our culture with such vehemence did not exist in older civilizations. You only need to study these old cultures without bias. Of course, there were a lot of things in those cultures that are incomprehensible to us today. We quite justifiably reject the slave and helot system of ancient Greece. But when we study the Greeks’ views on education, we shall soon see that such discussions as we have today—discussions in which so many diverse and opposing opinions are thrown about—would have been unthinkable then.

Beyond the effort we put into teaching, we need educational methods, and we need to develop teaching skills. But when we watch the heated discussions and see the impossibility of agreement—some emphasize the physical, some the mental-academic aspects, some these, some those methods—we arrive at the conclusion not only that teaching has become difficult but that in regard to our position as teachers and educators we cannot break away from being ignoramuses.

We should really have this feeling of helplessness; and it will, I believe, be even more pronounced if we take a wider view of the situation. You will get this wider view when you study how the current outpouring of educational principles and ideas has its roots in central European culture. I suggest that you make yourselves familiar with everything that was said about spiritual, psychological, and physical education by individuals steeped in central European cultural life. Read the books by Dittes and Diesterweg; read about their views on education.

I recommend to you the interesting essay in Karl Julius Schroer’s book Aspects of Education [Unterrichtsfragen], in which—quite correctly, I believe—he speaks of the place of physical education in the curriculum and offers a detailed program for this subject. During your perusal, I would like for you to consider the mode of thinking and the attitudes from which the thoughts arise. Consider how despite the real understanding of physical human nature and of the need to prepare the children for becoming practical and efficient adults, there is nonetheless also a strong consciousness of the reality of the soul and of the necessity to consider the human soul in all aspects of education.

Then compare—not the outward features; as anthroposophists you ought to be above doing that—compare what lies embedded in the depths of the soul, compare the basic attitudes contained in any of the numerous treatises on education in the Anglo-American literature. Everywhere in this literature you will find chapters on intellectual, aesthetic, and physical education. Think of the deeply held conviction from which they are written. You will get the feeling that the word “education” no longer applies. Everywhere in this culture—even when spiritual or intellectual education is mentioned—the human being is thought of as a kind of mechanism; it is thought that if the physical/corporeal organism, or mechanism, is properly developed, all the moral and intellectual development will follow as though by itself. We have with this view a much stronger inclination to the physical/corporeal in the human being.

I would like to suggest that the central European writers assume that it is possible to include soul and spirit in education and that by doing this the correct treatment of the physical will follow. The Anglo-Saxon idea emphasizes physical education. One then ignores a kind of tiny room inside the human being; one “educates” around the physical, along the periphery, and assumes that there is a tiny room in which the intellect and the moral and religious life are locked up, a kind of instinctive and logical religious and moral life. Once the physical body has been sufficiently educated, its forces will spread to within and dissolve the walls of this room, and the intellectual, moral, and religious life will by itself rush out. We must learn to read between the lines when we study these books and thus discover the underlying reasons and attitudes.

It is necessary to pay attention to these differentiations across the world today. It is much more important than merely observing superficially, in the modern fashion, when one considers these symptoms. Try to understand these symptoms of our transitional culture by following the extraordinarily important debates that have taken place in England during recent weeks. The debates have been triggered by the worsening social conditions and by the general industrial actions (strikes) that have threatened the whole social life. The press was reporting these discussions in full. And then, suddenly, a complete change of interest. Why? A season of ball games has begun, and interest in sport overshadows the interest in the most important social matters. Those involved in the discussions try to get away from the debating rooms as quickly as possible, rushing to the tennis courts, the football fields, and so on, with the feeling: “I want to move in a way that my muscles can grow as strongly as possible; I am interested in such important things.” I am probably describing the feeling in an amateurish way, but I cannot be bothered about detailed facts in this cultural phenomenon: “I am interested in such important matters as watching how somebody throws a ball-like object and how somebody else can catch it correctly with his big toe or another part of his body.”

The picture we get from studying these differentiations is indeed a peculiar one. Reading the papers is of little use. What the journalists are writing is of little significance. It is far more important to discover their reasons for writing about a subject. To enter a discussion with people, to listen to their opinions, is quite useless today. It is far more profitable to discover what is living deep down in their souls, to discover what induces them to act in a certain way, to have this or that opinion. It is this that matters today. What the French and German ministers are saying to each other, if one agrees with either the one or the other, is of no importance whatsoever. It cannot be the concern of someone who wishes to participate in the progress of our civilization. What matters is to discover the differing nature of the untruths expressed by these individuals. We must keep in mind the intentions behind the lies of both speakers.

We must know that we are living at a time when the words people are speaking have no longer any meaning; the forces behind and between the words are significant. A teacher wishing to educate modern youths must understand this, must become part of his or her age in this way, must do so in an ever deeper sense. But the teacher must not share the current basic characteristic attitudes and mode of thinking. When we today—permeated even a little with anthroposophical consciousness—take a walk in the streets, we no longer see human people; rather we see moles that move about in the smallest of circles, circles into which they were placed, moles whose thinking is limited to these narrow circles, cannot reach beyond them, moles who take no interest in what is happening outside these circles. If we do not succeed in growing beyond this molelike existence, if we cannot do more than reproduce the judgments and opinions—from various points of view—to which we have been conditioned through the events at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, then we cannot positively participate in what ought to be done, in order to overcome this unhappy situation.

If there is anyone who ought to be gripped by what I have just outlined, it is the teacher in charge of the young, who wishes especially to help the students to come to terms with their more mature age in the ninth and tenth grade classes. The whole school must be so structured that such ideas can be included. To do this, it is necessary to understand them even better, so that all of us, not only those directly involved in the higher classes, but all the teachers, can say to ourselves that what matters is that we have an elementary feeling for the whole of education and its practical application, that we experience the whole weight and force of our task—to place human beings into the world. Without this experience of our task, our Waldorf School will be no more than a phrase. We shall say all sorts of beautiful things about it, until the holes have become so large that we shall lose the ground under our feet. We must make it inwardly true, and we can do this only by getting ourselves to the stage at which we can have a thorough understanding of the teaching profession.

As we do this, the question will surely arise: As human beings at the present time, what are we really? We were placed into our age through the way we were brought up, conditioned by the events during the last third of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century. And what are you today, my dear friends? Some of you have studied philosophy or history in the way these subjects were taught in the high schools and universities at the beginning of this century. Some of you have studied mathematics or other practical subjects. Some of you have become teachers of singing or physical education. Various methods were used in teaching these subjects. There are those among you who, according to the predilection of the staff, accepted the model of the gentleman or lady, but with a physical/corporeal understanding. There are those of you who have preferred what could be called a more inward path, but a path made inward through intellectualism. We are the sum total, the result of the ways we were conditioned—as far as into our fingertips and toes.

We must be quite clear about our task today—namely, to take full charge of what has been implanted in us through our education. This is possible only through a timely exploration of conscience that extends beyond the individual aspects. Without such exploration we cannot grow beyond what our time can provide us with. And we must grow beyond what our time can give us. We must not become puppets of the trends developed at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century. Above all, we must admit to the limitations of what is given us by today’s culture; through a comprehensive exploration of conscience, we must attain the correct knowledge, knowledge that will allow us to find our place in life.

At this point we ask: Has not everything that has made us the way we are been infected by the materialistic attitudes of our time? Certainly, there is no shortage of goodwill. But even this goodwill has been infected by the views that are the result of the natural-scientific world conception. And our knowledge of physical education has emerged from such views.

Humankind has really always wanted to hide from, to avoid, the necessity of exploring its conscience. Humankind has wanted to avoid the exploration that would thoroughly stir up its inner life by asking: How do we older people confront the young? When we look at the girls and boys reaching the age of sexual maturity, when we see them coming to us after having attained this maturity—if we wish to be honest with ourselves, we can only have one answer to the question: We don’t know what we should do for them, unless we educate and teach on the basis of fundamentally new concepts. Otherwise, we produce nothing but a wide gap between the young and ourselves.

This great question has practical dimensions. Take a good look at the youth movements as they have developed today. They are nothing else but documentation that our various experimentations have resulted in the loss of our leadership in education. Just look at what has happened. At the age we are now discussing, the young feel inwardly urged to withdraw from the leadership of the old, to take their guidance into their own hands; this happened with tremendous rapidity. We cannot fault the young for this. Discussion of this phenomenon is of great spiritual-scientific interest but not initially of pedagogical interest. Our pedagogical interest must be limited to the fact that the old have been responsible for their loss of leadership and understanding of the young.

Since the old no longer have anything of substance to give to the young, the teenagers and adolescents have formed themselves into groups [Wandervögel] that traverse the countryside with singing and conversing, searching in a vague way for what the older generation has failed to provide. Thoughts and words have become hollow; the older generation having nothing to give to the young, the young then roam the woods, searching among themselves for what they cannot receive from the words and models of their elders. It is one of the most significant phenomena of the present time. The young find themselves confronted by the great question that used to be answered in the past by the older generation but that now can no longer be answered by them, because their language is no longer comprehensible.

Remember your own youth? You had, perhaps, more courage than the members of such groups, took less interest in traipsing through the countryside. You managed to survive somehow. You pretended to listen to the older generation and adhered to the status quo. But the Wandervögel do not pretend. They have withdrawn from the older generation and have taken to the woods. We have seen this happen, and we have also witnessed the results of this youth movement. Not so long ago, they felt the need to make contact among themselves, wishing to discover for themselves what they could not get from their teachers, wishing to escape them and take refuge in nature. They mean to find their answers in some vague, undefined sphere. They make contact among themselves, forming small cliques.

It really is a strange phenomenon that is immensely instructive. The old have lost their leadership, have become philistines. They cannot accept the fact that this deep longing has awakened in the young, in the members of such groups. And how have the old reacted to this, those among them who are at least a little affected by modern times? They do not say to themselves: “We must advance to a deep exploration of conscience; we must from our mature stage of development find a way to the young.” No, they react differently: “Since the young,” they say, “do no longer wish to learn from us, we shall learn from them.” And you can see this happening in all our educational institutions—the old adapting to the will and demands of the young. When you look at this new phenomenon without prejudice, you will see that the old wish to be led by the young, that they have placed the leadership into their hands—representatives of the student body are now counselors and members of boards and trusts in educational institutions.

We must consider the deeper implications of this phase. What has it done to the young? They have passed from their need for contact, from their wish to find themselves in cliques, to searching for their inner (soul) life in a hermit existence. The final stage of this development is a kind of fear of contact, everyone feeling the necessity of relying only on himself or herself. The former certainty of finding answers in the world outside has given way to a kind of atomizing longing, a brooding: “What is the reason for my inability to do justice to the human being in me?” You can see this feeling spreading everywhere; you only need to be awake enough to see it. You can see this growing uncertainty in the fragmentation of soul forces. You can perceive a special fear, a horror vacui, that makes the young shudder and feel scared in view of their future. They are fearful of the life ahead of them. There is basically only one answer, one remedy—the deep exploration of conscience. And this cannot limit itself to externalities but must lead to the question: How has it come to pass that we, when we wish to lead and guide the young, no longer understand them with the forces of the old?

Let us, by contrast, take a look at a distant age, such as that of the ancient Greeks. The older Greeks, as we know from history, still had a certain understanding for the young. If you try to understand Greek culture, you will find a peculiar and very definite relation between the period from the thirteenth or fourteenth to the twentieth or twenty-first year and the period from the twenty-eighth to the thirty-fifth year. This is characteristic of both the Greek and Roman cultures—that people in their late thirties had a fine understanding for children between seven and fourteen and that people in their early thirties felt a special affinity for, an understanding for the needs of, teenagers and adolescents. There was this relation according to different age groups—a relation of those in the third seven-year period with those in the fifth and a relation of those in the second seven-year period with those in the sixth.

It really is not easy to see behind the mysteries of human evolution. But we can indeed clearly feel that for the Greeks when the girls and boys arrived at sexual maturity they looked up to the twenty-eight- and twenty-nine-year-olds, choosing the ones they liked best, the ones they wished to emulate in freedom. They could no longer obey an authority as such, only one of their choosing in this specific age group. As humanity evolved through the Middle Ages to our time, this relation became ever weaker until it disappeared altogether. People were thrown together in a helter-skelter way; a spiritually given structure gave way to chaos. This very real situation has, then, prompted a social problem in our world; in education, it has prompted a pedagogical/didactic problem. Without keeping in mind the whole of evolution, we cannot make any progress.

I would like to show you the cause for this phenomenon by pointing to a concrete fact. All you have then to do is to generalize this concrete fact in order to discover the causes for this lack of understanding between the old and the young. You see, during our current preparation for life, during our education, we are, for example, taught that there are some one hundred elements. We learn this, and when we become teachers we are, as a rule, aware of these chemical elements—that they exist, even though this theory has recently come under attack. But we have absorbed this knowledge, carry it within us, the knowledge that there are these one hundred or so elements, that through their synthesis and analysis everything in the world comes about. We even develop a world conception on this basis. And this is the farce, that during the last third of the nineteenth century a world conception was constructed on the basis of the then seventy chemical elements. This prompted the question: How could the planets, everything that solidified, arise through chemical and physical changes? How did abiogenesis come about through an especially complicated chemical synthesis? It was the wish to comprehend the whole world with thoughts that had their roots in such elements.

The Greeks would have thought of this one-sided intellectual (head) approach to the world as nonsense, as inhuman. If they had been told to imagine the world as the result of the synthesis and analysis of these one hundred elements, they would have felt, deep down, as though the human being would disintegrate into dust during the process. The Greeks would not have been able to comprehend it. What indeed would a human being do with such a world that consists of these elements that synthesize and analyze? What does it mean? What would happen? The world could well be there, be a gigantic cosmic test tube, but the human being, how would the human being exist in it? Is is as though we were to put a large test tube in a room, allow all sorts of elements to boil in it, and then open a door and push a human being through an opening into the tube, into this mixture of salts and acids. This the Greeks would have imagined if they had been asked to think of the world as structured by these elements. They would not have accepted this idea, their feelings would have resisted it. The picture I have just characterized would have arisen instinctively in their minds.

But we are not merely heads. It was only at fairgrounds that living, talking heads used to be shown as exhibits. No, we don’t exist as head only but as complete human beings. And if we wish to develop such ideas with only the head, if our life of feeling, of will, and of the whole physical organism were to be so constituted that we could believe in a world made up of such stuff, we would have to feel very differently, would have something different in our fingertips than what the Greeks had, the Greeks who would have dismissed such a notion as pure nonsense. One feels differently about, places oneself differently into, a world if one believes that the world is something that is fit for a test tube but not for the universe. The same point applies with regard to the social life in ancient Greece. We must consider these things.

We don’t just think that the world consists of one hundred elements. We carry this feeling into everything we do during the day—even when we wash and dry our hands. The fact that it is possible for our head to have such an inhuman world conception while we wash ourselves—thinking in this way impresses a definite quality into our feelings. And then—when we can think and feel in this way, when there is no room for the human being in such a world conception—when we then confront the fifteen-year-old girls and boys with this thinking and feeling, it should come as no surprise that we cannot reach them, that we don’t know what to do with our feeling and thinking. With this world conception we can lecture in universities and colleges, teaching what we believe to be right, but we cannot live with it. The graduates of our universities then become teachers who have no idea of their connection with the young. This is the terrible abyss that has opened up before us.

But as far as human beings are concerned, there is something in us at the age of fifty or fifty-five that bears a certain resemblance to today’s teaching of chemistry and physics. We then have become sclerosed to the extent that our inner organism faintly resembles the world outside. The cosmic powers are gradually doing something with us during the course of our lives on earth. We, too, harden in our physical organism in older age. At about fifty, we become dissociated; we, as it were, disintegrate inwardly into dust. But this dissolution is a gradual, slow process, not as cruel as what would be happening to us in a test tube. Neither does it go that far—although it has the same tendency; it is a more humane process. But at the age when we approach death something does begin to be active in us that is synonymous with the teaching of modern science. Our world conception is such that only the very old may comprehend it. Nature is kind. It compensates the old by making them childish.

Talking about such things in this way may make it seem as though one wishes to poke fun at the world. No, it is not a matter of humor; it is a matter of the deepest tragedy. It is true. We are describing the world today as processes that are synonymous with those in human corpses, no more. After our death something similar takes place. In older age, we have a presentiment of the processes in our physical body after death. And we describe nothing else in our modern sciences. Our cultural institutions are full with such knowledge that applies to the physical human being after death. But such knowledge does not live in our limbs. Such are the feelings we absorb from the thoughts given us today. And the traditional theological beliefs have become mere words, because they have no place in the teaching of natural science about the human corpse.

As long as we limit this teaching to a theory of knowledge, it is more or less harmless. If, however, we consider the human being as a totality and ask what happens to the human being when he or she is influenced by such a life, the question is one of life and death. And this we must not ignore, must not evade. The forces active in the children in our classrooms are quite different from those we learned about. We no longer know anything of what is active in them; we are separated from them by a gulf.

Yes, the Greeks would have considered our talk about the elements nonsensical. What did they say? They believed not that the structure of the world consists of some one hundred elements but that four elements—earth, air, fire, and water—are interacting in it. Our academics, our professors, the leaders of our culture and education will tell us: “This is a childish world conception. We left it behind and no longer bother with it.” Someone who has begun to think a little will tell us: “Oh well, we too are working with these things. Today we call them aggregate conditions—solid, gaseous, liquid. We see warmth differently from the naive way the Greeks did. Yes, we have them all, but we have developed them correctly. Of course, we admire the Greeks for their knowledge.” This is a benevolent, patronizing, condescending attitude: “We are fortunate in having progressed so far, in having discovered all these elements, whereas the ancients used to practice all sorts of animism and talked of earth, air, fire, and water.”

But these leaders are wrong. There is a deeper meaning to the conception of the Greeks. When the Greeks spoke of earth, air, fire, and water, they did not look at them as we do today. If you had asked one of those people who lived within the Greek world conception—and there were still a good number of them in the fifteenth century, the later ones having read about it in books; our modern people sometimes take a look at it without understanding it—if you had asked one of them: “What is your idea of fire, of warmth?” the Greek would have answered: “I think of fire as being warm and dry.” “What about air?” “I see air as warm and damp.” The Greek did not think of the physical properties in fire and air but rather formed an idea. This idea contained the sub-ideas: warm and dry, warm and damp. The Greeks did not limit themselves to the physical appearance but imagined the elements as inner qualities. One had to raise oneself to something that could not be seen by physical eyes, that had to be grasped by thinking, in order to get to a knowledge of the elements, of what one then called the elements.

What did they achieve by this? They arrived at an understanding that corresponded to the etheric in the human being—the etheric body in its effectiveness. This understanding of the elements as inner qualities allowed them to experience the etheric body. Their experience was not that of being in the etheric body but rather in how the etheric body worked in the physical. It is not possible to achieve this understanding merely by studying the interactions of oxygen and carbon intellectually. It is impossible to arrive at an understanding of the way the etheric body is working in the physical if one only studies the interactions of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and sulfur. Such studies take one away from the activities of the etheric, keep one within the physical. This means that one remains in the sphere in which the processes in the human being take place after death. The life processes, in which the etheric body is working in the physical, can only be understood by imagining warm and dry, cold and damp, warm and damp—by inwardly grasping the qualities with which the etheric body takes hold of the physical, by having this living comprehension of nature in the four elements. This is not a childish idea that regards only the physical but one that regards the working of the etheric. And this idea was lost in later times. But this has an effect on the whole of the human being. Think about it. People are growing up, are told that the world consists of one hundred or so elements—iodine, sulfur, selenium, tellurium, and so forth—all whirling into each other. This affects our feelings, to the extent that we, as human beings, are removed from the process. The elements are there, and we are not part of any of them.

One could have the justified idea of being a part of the other way of looking at the world, of looking at the four elements—earth, air, fire, and water—in the ancient Greek way: earth as cold and dry, air as warm and damp, fire as warm and dry, water as cold and damp. When one imagines these qualities and makes them live in oneself, they grip one—qualitatively. One becomes permeated by them, they take hold of the limbs; they take hold of us. Such ideas that reach as far as into the limbs make us into beings different from beings for whom the ideas affect the limbs only after death. The corpses in the graves may well feel in line with the one hundred or so elements that combine according to chemical laws. But such a concept does not do anything for the life of human beings. By contrast, in having this idea of the four elements, we perceive ourselves in our etheric bodies.

You see from such reflections that education has really become quite unnecessary today for us human beings. We have a culture, an education, that at best prepares us to be able to function outwardly, mechanically, to maintain the status quo in society. For this we are prepared. As human beings we get nothing. Our education does not reach our limbs but remains stuck in the intellect. It does not affect our feelings and will.

If we wish to have any effect at all, we must resort to sermons and the like. We must approach people from without. But we do not give them anything that affects their inner life. The way we deal with the young today involves a terrible untruth. We tell them to be good without providing the means whereby they can be good. All they can do is to obey us as their authority. If we can manage to cow people throughout their lives in one way or another, some order can be maintained. The police will deal with the recalcitrants.

Head knowledge has no meaning for the inner life. This is the reason for our impotence in relating to the young at the important time in their lives when they are supposed to connect the spirit and soul to the physical/corporeal, to bring them into a reciprocal relationship. What indeed are today’s adults to do with the young who wish to relate spirit and soul to the physical, to the life around them?

This is the situation we shall take as our starting point in tomorrow’s talk, when we shall further acquaint ourselves with this problem. My intention today has been to evoke in you the feeling that as soon as we are supposed to find a way to the hearts of children at a definite and important time in their lives, we are dealing with the important issue of a world conception.

I would like today to try as it were to round off our introductory studies, so that we may be able, from tomorrow onwards, to pass on to the practical consideration of particular cases; for it is indeed so, that a faithful study of the nature of so-called illnesses of the soul will of itself afford clues for the discovery of their right treatment.

The treatment of adult patients by our methods still presents difficulties. As I explained yesterday, the treatment would require certain conditions for the patients which, so long as things are in the world as they are today, cannot be realised within the work of our Society. For children, on the other hand, a very great deal can be achieved—by education.

It will already be clear to you, dear friends, that in illnesses of the soul we have to do with karmic connections which come to manifestation in the illness. This is, of course, true of other illnesses too, but it is true in a much deeper sense, and more specifically, of illnesses of the soul. We are therefore perfectly justified in asking the question—we do not formulate it in so many words, but it is bound to arise in the unconscious, and we must have a feeling for what lies behind it—the question, namely: how far can we expect to bring about an improvement? Any degree of improvement that we are able to bring about is so much gain for the patient. We must never take refuge in the thought that, owing to the patient's karma, things are bound to take their course in such and such a way. We can say this about the external events; that a person encounters on the path of destiny; but it is never possible to speak so in regard to the free flow within him of his thoughts and feelings and deeds. For here karma can take different roads; karma can even be turned aside, so that the fulfilment comes in some quite other way. Not that it ever fails to come, but karma can be fulfilled in many ways. I have frequently said, when people have raised the question of pre-natal education—meaning education in the embryonic time—that so long as the child does not yet breathe, it is the education and whole manner of life of the mother that is of importance. For the rest, we should not intervene in the work of God. In the embryonic period, it is entirely a matter of how things are with the mother.

We can now usefully carry further the study we began yesterday when we were considering the epileptic disorder—the study, that is, in regard to physical body, ether body, astral body and ego organisation. What conclusion did we come to as regards all those forms of illness in children, that are of an epileptic nature? We found that in these illnesses we have to do with a congestion of astral body and ego organisation in some organ. The surface of the organ does not allow the astral body and ego organisation to make their way out, and they become congested. They are, as it were, jammed in the organ. An astral and ego atmosphere of high pressure arises there. This causes fits. For what is really taking place, when a fit occurs?

Suppose you have an organ with its ether body within it. For each single organ there is a definite relationship that should obtain between physical body and ether body on the one hand and astral body and ego on the other hand. Now I assume of course that all of you are familiar with the fact that in inorganic external Nature, substances combine with one another in certain definite relationships. The descriptions of this that you find in the chemistry books are not correct; nevertheless there are these well-defined relationships. I purposely do not say relationships of weight, nor do I say atomic relationships for there we would come into the realm of theory; nevertheless it is a fact that hydrogen and oxygen, for example, combine in a certain definite relationship. If we have sulphuric acid (H₂S0₄), we have in it hydrogen, sulphur and oxygen in a particular relation to one another. If this relation were to change, then the combination might under certain circumstances give rise to an altogether different substance. We can, for example, if we have a certain relation of hydrogen, sulphur and oxygen that is different from the relation in sulphuric acid, obtain sulphurous acid (H₂S0₃)—obtain, that is to say, a different substance, although composed of the same three original substances.

In a similar way, physical body and ether body stand in a certain definite relation to astral body and ego in the so-called normal human being. (I say “so-called”, because the expression “normal human being” is a purely conventional one, founded on the belief that there is a fixed boundary dividing human beings into normal and abnormal.) This relationship is, within limits, a variable one. But if it exceeds a certain limit of variability—and this again can be individual for the particular human being—we have abnormality, a state of illness; in some organ astral body and ego organisation will be present, but in such a way that they cannot fill it in a right relationship. This will mean, that they are unable to come forth from it, they cannot get out. You will remember, we recognised yesterday the necessity for astral body and ego organisation to come forth again out of an organ, out of the physical body. When the astral body and ego are jammed and squeezed in this way in some organ, then there is too much astral body, too much ego in that organ; there is not the proper amount, there is a surplus—with the result that the organ cannot help feeling the astrality. If the organ has in it the right and proper amount, it does not perceive or feel the astrality, it does not sense the presence of astrality within it. But if there is in an organ an activity of astral body and ego organisation that does not belong there, then the organ is bound to feel it. If something is there in the organ that does not pass over into consciousness, if there is congestion, so that a great amount of astrality and ego organisation is present which does not go over into consciousness, then a fit takes place. The very description I have given you contains an indication of the accompanying phenomenon—namely, disturbance of consciousness. Disturbance of consciousness is bound to occur whenever this congestion happens in an organ that is in any way connected with consciousness.

When such congestion of astral body and ego organisation takes place in an organ that has not direct positive connection with consciousness—for there are organs that are not directly but inversely connected with consciousness, organs that in fact hinder or arrest consciousness—then we have, not loss of consciousness, but pain. Pain is heightened—not lessened—consciousness. A fit as such is not painful, as you know; that is simply a fact. Pain occurs when the congestion takes place, not in an organ that promotes consciousness, but in an organ that retards or arrests consciousness. Here the congestion will lead to enhanced consciousness—to pain. That is the real nature of pain.

We have now arrived at some understanding of all those forms of disorder which, occurring in childhood, lead to epileptic and related illnesses; we shall afterwards have to speak more specifically of these illnesses, but that we can do better when we have individual cases before us.

But now you will easily see that we may also have a quite different state of affairs. Instead of an organ whose surface holds back within the organ the ego organisation and the astral body, we could have an organ whose surface lets too much through, an organ that does not, as it were, keep back sufficient for its own use. Here the astrality, with which is associated also the ego organisation, is not dammed up, but tends, on the contrary, to overflow the organ. The surface becomes, as it were, porous for the astrality and the ego organisation; they “leak” out of the organ. With imaginative consciousness we do actually see rays streaming forth from the organ. In an organ that “leaks” in this way you will always find also the physical correlate of secretion; even where the secretion is not strikingly present, you will find that it can occur and can be detected. We shall have more to say about this later. When a human being is affected with this condition in childhood, the condition can be healed only if we are able to hold fast the astral body and ego organisation—bring them back, as it were, into the organ.

To what forms of illness, to what outwardly perceptible complexes of symptoms does such an inner condition lead? Here we come to a chapter in our study, where the phenomena that show themselves differ according as we are dealing with children or adults. For we come to illnesses that are bound to assume quite special forms for the period in human development between birth and puberty. We come, in effect, to the various kinds of hysteria. Now it is just in the realm where we are concerned with the forms of hysterical disorder, that the deplorable lack of clarity in modern science proclaims itself. Words are coined to name the various forms without any regard for reality. This shows itself at once in the first picture people begin to make of the matter; for in conformity with the modern way of looking at such things they are, of course, bound to bring this hysterical condition into connection somehow or other with the sexual life, and more so in the case of the woman than of the man; and then the forms of illness are named accordingly. The words by which the various forms are designated are of no importance. What is important for us is to make sure whether all the cases that are today reckoned under these names really deserve to be called hysteria, in the way the word is understood, or whether we do not rather need to have recourse to a much wider classification.

Now, as a matter of fact, the child who has not yet attained puberty cannot possibly have the form of disorder from which he is frequently said to suffer. He cannot have hysteria—if it is assumed that hysteria is associated with sex. The child can, however, certainly have in his earliest childhood what I have described as a protrusion of astral body and ego organisation beyond an organ. That he can have, but only that. We must turn a deaf ear to the various descriptions that have been given for the better comprehension of hysterical disorder. All these descriptions are made with reference to one ruling idea; and when an idea is set up in this way and all descriptions are made with reference to it, then these descriptions cannot but be false. Countless descriptions in psychiatry today are false just on this account. You cannot do things that way.

Let us see what it is we really have before us in a young child who is said to be suffering from hysteria. He has difficulty in making contact with the external world. I explained yesterday what this means. He has difficulty in taking hold rightly of the equilibrium that belongs to the fluid element, of the equilibrium that is associated with air, of the differentiations in warmth, in light, in chemical action, and in the universal cosmic life. But instead of grasping all these too weakly, as is the case with the epileptic, the child takes hold too strongly, he puts his astral body and Ego into his whole environment—into weight, into warmth; he seizes hold of all the elements more intensely than is really possible for a so-called normal person. And what is the result?

You have only to remind yourself how it is with you when you have grazed your skin at some spot. Suppose you then grasp hold of some object with the sore surface, where the skin has been rubbed away. You know how it hurts! The reason for your being so sensitive is that at that spot (where the surface is raw) you come up against the external world too vigorously with your inner astral body. Only in moderation are we able to contact the external world with our astral body (and ego organisation). The child who from the first brings his astral body right out—such a child will touch and take hold of things delicately, just as though he had been wounded. Nor shall we be surprised to find in him this hyper-sensitiveness, this hyper-sensitive response to the world around him. A human being in this condition is bound to feel his environment much more keenly, much more intensely; and he will moreover have within him a much more powerful reflection of his environment.

And now ideas will begin also to arise in the child which are painful in themselves. It comes about in the following way. The moment he begins to develop will in any direction, the child has to reach out into something in regard to which he is hyper-sensitive. And then as soon as the will begins to develop, a strange condition arises in the conscious part of him. He becomes super-conscious of the unfolding of the will; in other words, the unfolding of the will causes him pain. Pain is present in nascent state as soon as the will begins to appear, and the child tries to hold back the pain. This happens with great intensity. He makes restless, struggling movements, because he is trying to hold back the pain. Here, you see, I have given you descriptions of inner conditions which find their outlet in life in a clearly recognisable manner. A child wants to do something but feels a pain and cannot do it; instead of the soul-life flowing out into action, he has a terribly powerful inward experience before which he shudders—he shudders at himself. But now it may equally well be a question, not of an outward action, but of a concealed or disguised action in the sphere of thought—for the will lives also in the sphere of thought. When it is a question of an action in the life of thought, when it is ideas that should unfold, it may be that in certain forms of illness these ideas, at the moment they should develop, evoke fear, evoke anxiety and fear and are unable to arise in the mind. Every such idea which, at the moment when it should come to consciousness, evokes fear—every such idea simultaneously causes the life of feeling to develop below it; feelings surge up, and depression invariably sets in. Feelings which are not comprehended, not taken hold of by ideas, give rise to depression; only those feelings are not of a depressing nature, which, as soon as they arise, are immediately apprehended by the life of thought and ideation.

The condition that has been described as arising out of the nature of the case can be seen in the patient; it is there before us as a complex of symptoms. If we have learned to know an abnormality for what it really is, then we shall find that this true and essential nature of the abnormality shows itself to us quite plainly in the patient. And that is how it should be, when we take with us into the practical spheres of life perceptions that have been arrived at in Spiritual Science. When speaking to those who will have to intervene in illnesses of this kind with practical help, descriptions must leave the realm of the abstract entirely and enter right into the realm of living reality, so that the person who listens to the description can see it taking place in the patient before him. And in such a case as we are considering, you do actually see what is happening; in some organ, or nexus of organs, you perceive an outflowing of the astrality or ego organisation.

A phenomenon in a child, which brings the complex of symptoms to expression with somewhat rude plainness, is nocturnal enuresis. It happens quite naturally; but only in the light of what has been explained will you see the phenomenon of bed-wetting in a child in its right perspective. For it has its origin in the condition we have been describing. Whenever you have a case of bed-wetting, you can assume that the astral body is running out, is overflowing. As a matter of fact, secretions and excretions of every kind are always connected with the activity of the astral body and ego organisation. These must therefore be in order, if we want the secretions and excretions to be in order.

Now it is through the physical body that the ego organisation and astral body are connected with the four elements (as they are called), whilst in the etheric body, the ego organisation and astral body are connected more with the higher elements, with a part of the warmth, with the light, with the chemical ether and with the universal life-ether. If now we may borrow from the physical realm a word which can be most expressive when we extend its application to the spiritual (as was continually done in earlier times, when men had instinctive clairvoyance and made no such sharp distinction as we do between physical and spiritual), let us take the word “soreness” and speak of a child having soreness of soul. The child is sore in his soul, and this soreness of soul becomes a dominant idea in him, overriding everything else. If it cannot be made better by means of curative education, then, when the child attains puberty, either the feminine or the masculine form of this soreness will appear. The feminine form will have the character of hysteria, as it was called when there was still a true perception of it. The masculine form will have a different character. We shall be able to speak about that also; we shall find that it assumes quite other forms.

Whenever therefore you have a case where the conditions are the opposite of what are found in epileptic or epileptoid trouble, you will always have to give your attention to the excretions. And you will find you need to observe particularly how the child sweats. Whenever you want to bring something home to the child, to call up ideas in him, then watch carefully to see whether the inner soreness of soul, that is experienced at the origination of an idea, does not express itself in conditions of sweating. There is a certain difficulty here. In the ordinary way, one might imagine that when something like sweating had been stimulated by an inner condition of soul, the sweating would be noticeable immediately afterwards. It may be so in some circumstances but it is not necessarily so. For, the peculiar thing is that the inner anxiety or shrinking, the feeling of tenderness and soreness, does not work as does an outer feeling of soreness; but what arises as the result of it is first of all “digested” in the human being, and will sometimes take then the strangest paths in the interior of the human being, making its appearance not at all quickly but, curiously enough, only after some time, in the course of the next three to three and a half days.

Now, everything that is caused by expansion of astral body and ego organisation, is connected with what meets us in the normal expansion of astral body and ego organisation at death. When it is a question of congestion, the opposite condition from dying sets in. In epileptic phenomena there is the attempt to damn up life within the organism, to imitate, under abnormal circumstances, the process of creeping into the physical organism when the descent to earth takes place. But in the condition of which we are speaking now, we have to do with an imitation of what happens at death. After death the astral body and ego expand at the same time as life flows away; and it is with an imitation of this condition that we are here concerned. When once we are able to feel this, we come to acquire, little by little, something that is important in the observation of such cases. We acquire, namely, an organ of smell for what is present in the child; we smell this outflow. For it can really be smelled, and it belongs to the esoteric side of our work to acquire this perception and to experience how the aura of these children smells differently from the aura of normal children. There is actually something faintly corpse-like in the auric sweatings of these children. Such a fact can help to bring it home to you that we do indeed have here a kind of imitation of death; the accompanying phenomena of “dying” appear, in the sweatings that occur in consequence of this or that symptom. Such phenomena can make their appearance in the course of the next three days, approximating to the period during which the backward review after death takes place, when the astral body and ego organisation are expanding.

Working with this knowledge, you will have to accustom yourselves to imprint in your memory something you have noticed in the connections of mind or will of such a child, and then go on observing him for the next three or four days. This will enable you to discover whether you have before you the form of abnormal soul-life of which I have been speaking. And now we are at last rightly equipped for tackling the question: How am I to treat such a child?

The soul of the child lies open to my view in his every action. His soul flows into everything I see him doing around me. In such a case, where the soul of the child comes streaming towards you, you will realise that the education must more than ever depend upon what the teacher, on his part, is able to bring to the child in his own attitude of soul—in his whole mood, when he is dealing with something in his own surroundings, when he is himself doing something. Suppose you are a very nervy teacher, a person who is continually doing things in such a way as to give a shock to other people. This quality of character or temperament is much more widespread than one imagines; it is exceedingly frequent among teachers. If I may use a frivolous expression—are not most teachers today inclined to be “jumpy”? This state of nerves, where people are so easily put out or upset, simply cannot be avoided, so long as the training of teachers continues to be as it is today, where the student is overloaded with an enormous amount of undigested knowledge. Those who take teachers' training courses (we are concerned here with the training of teachers, so I say nothing about other courses of training!) ought never on any account to have to go in for an examination. The examination in front of them puts them into the frame of mind which leads to this nervy condition.

You will see at once in what a difficult position we are placed when we have to develop our work on the background of present-day conditions! We are at this moment faced with the question of organising the Lauenstein Home for backward children. In view of the government regulations, those who are to take charge would be well advised to take the examination. One of them, at any rate, will have to do so. And yet there is no sense in it; because it is, of course, only another opportunity of becoming nervy. This is a situation which we must face quite dispassionately—unless we want to go through the world blindfold! There is nothing to be done but to take the examination, and after it gradually get rid of the nervous tendencies. That is, however, what most people do not succeed in doing.

Anything in the environment that may cause even a slight shock to the child—if it originates in the unconscious, in the temperament, of the teacher—must be avoided. And do you know why? Because the teacher must also be capable of inducing shock, consciously and deliberately; shocks are often the very best remedy for these conditions! They take effect, however, only if they do not proceed from unconscious habit, but are given consciously and deliberately, the teacher watching intently all the time to observe the effect on the child.

Suppose you have observed this complex of symptoms in a child. You must take the child and get him to write, or read, or paint. Well, and what then? Having first tried to bring him to do as much as he with his particular constitution is capable of doing, then, at a certain point, try to bring the work into a quicker tempo. This will mean that the child is then obliged to let, not the feeling of soreness, but the anxiety connected with the soreness, retire, because you are there in front of him and he cannot help getting into a fresh state of anxiety on that account. The fact that the child is at this moment compelled to come into a new state of anxiety, compelled to enter into an experience that has been artificially promoted and is different from the previous one, brings it about that he strengthens within him, consolidates within him, the ego and astral that are trying to flow out. If you repeat such things systematically with a child, over and over again, a consolidation of ego and astral body will take place. But you must not grow tired! You must do the thing over and over again, preparing your whole teaching in such a way that, as it proceeds, at certain moments it suddenly takes a new turn.

For this, it is, of course, essential that you have the arranging of the teaching in your own hands. If, let us say, every three-quarters of an hour you are obliged to take a different subject, then all your plans will be frustrated. A form of teaching for abnormal children can be built up on the basis of what we have introduced in the Waldorf School—period lessons where, during the main teaching hours, one subject is continued for weeks at a time. For we have, as you know, no set curriculum for the early morning hours between 8 and l0 a.m.; the teacher can take what he chooses, what he sees to be right, in accordance with the principles on which he works. On this basis you can also work out what you must do for abnormal children. You will be able, for instance, to introduce such a method as I was describing, where you are continually changing the teaching, altering the tempo. By such means you will find you can work very strongly indeed upon glandular secretion, and therewith on the consolidation of the astral body in the child. But you will have to practise a certain resignation, for where this kind of treatment has been given and healing has begun, people will not notice that the children have begun to grow healthy. They will notice only that in a particular case there has been in their view no healing, since “becoming normal” is regarded by them as the right and natural thing to expect. What the world calls “becoming normal” is however not at all a thing to be so taken for granted.

So you see, whereas in cases of epileptic or epileptoid trouble it was a question (as I explained yesterday) of adopting rather methods that call for bodily activity, or else methods that work purely in the moral sphere, it is mainly didactic methods that will be needed for combating this other trouble of which I have been speaking today. To give these “shocks”—that is one thing you must do. And the other is as follows.

Observe carefully how the condition alternates between depression on the one hand, and on the other hand a kind of excitement or mania, outbursts of mirth and cheerfulness. What is the cause, when they occur in these forms of illness, of such alternation between states of depression and mania? Owing to the inward soreness, there is a perpetual longing not to let the will come to expression. If the will fails to unfold in the life of ideas, then conditions of depression arise. But when this has been happening for a long time and the child can no longer restrain himself but must give vent, there arises—because the inner soreness is repressed and the child can now flow right out, together with the astral outflow—an enhanced feeling of well-being. So we have in this way alternating conditions of sadness and hilarity, which, when they occur in a child who has also the other symptoms of sweating and bed-wetting, should be carefully watched. For this is where we must intervene as teachers.

Suppose we are faced with depression in the child. The first step will have been taken, the moment the child feels that we are strongly united with him inwardly, that we understand him. But because we are dealing here with a kind of hypertrophy of the life of thought and will, what the child needs is more than that we simply share his sorrow. If we are merely dejected and sorrowful with the child—that is no good to him! We can help him only if we are ourselves competent to cope with the depression we are experiencing with him, and able therefore to give him effective consolation, so that he feels comfort and relief.

A teacher who can understand these things will learn to find for himself the methods he can use. He will know, for example, that a constant idea in such children is that they think they ought to do something, and yet they cannot do it. It is a complicated idea, but one must be able to study it and understand it. They ought to do something and cannot do it; but they have to do it notwithstanding, and then it turns out differently from how they would have liked. Examine the soul-life of such children and try to get hold of the idea in their soul. One could express it in the following words: “I want to do it. I cannot do it. And yet I must do it ... And then it turns out differently from what it ought to be.”

In this complex of ideas the whole of the child's illness is really contained. The child detects in himself the peculiar constitution which consists in the out-flowing of astral body and ego organisation. It manifests as a kind of working outwards-into-the-world of the astral body—“I will do it.” But the child knows that then he comes immediately up against the external world and its reagents. Here is the soreness, here it hurts. The child is forced to perceive: “I cannot do it!” Then he knows that it has to be done, nevertheless. He feels: “I have to reach out with my astral body into the agents of the world. But I have no control over what I take in hand, I am so unskilful with my out-flowing astral body. The thing turns out different, because I am not in full control; the astral body flows out too strongly.”

It is precisely in such children that we can observe, in the most wonderful way, what the sub-consciousness, which reaches up into the life of feeling, is really doing. The sub-conscious is so terribly clever! It stamps into the clearest concepts what is going on in the inner constitution of the child, and in his relationship with others as well as with his environment. All this is, so to speak, disentangled in the child's sub-consciousness. But it does not rise up into consciousness. We have to go in search of it. We have to put forth all our efforts to discover these inner, unconscious complexes of ideas in the child. And now suppose the moment comes when such a complex shows itself to you. You notice it. As a matter of fact, it is there almost every time the child is about to begin something in the way of outer action or even also in the way of thought; it is nearly always there. If you intervene at this moment by gently helping in what the child has to do—doing it with him, feeling, as it were, every movement of his hand in your hand, then the child will have the feeling that the second stage is being corrected for him by what you are doing. Naturally the child is not helped at all if you simply do for him the things he has to do. You must intervene only fictitiously. Say, you get the child to paint. You do not paint yourself; but you sit down by him and move your paint brush, accompanying with your brush each movement he makes with his. The child will have the idea that you are gently guiding him, while thus, with love in your heart, you do with him what he has to do; the fact that you are there beside him in this way—he will feel it like a gentle caress in his soul. Even down to intimate details of this nature, we shall be able to find, if we practise a really careful observation, the right thing to do.

In everything Spiritual Science can give, you will always find that there is at last this summons to the individual human being; he must do his part. People are for ever wanting prescriptions: Do this in this way, do that in that way! But the fact is, anyone who sets out to educate abnormal children will never have finished learning. Each single child will be for him a new problem, a new riddle. And the only way he can succeed in finding what he must do in the individual case, is to let himself be guided by the being in the child. It is not easy, but it is the only real way to work. And this is the reason why it is of such paramount importance that, as teachers, we should take in hand our own self-education.

The best kind of self-education will be found to consist in following the symptoms of illness with interest, so that ever and anon we have the feeling: there is something quite wonderful about that symptom! Not that we should go about the world, proclaiming with a flourish of trumpets that it is the insane who are the really divine human beings. One must not do that—not in our time! We should however be fully awake to the fact that when an abnormal symptom makes its appearance, something is there which, seen spiritually, stands nearer to the Spiritual than the things that are done by man in his healthy organism. Only, this standing-nearer-to-the-Spiritual cannot become active in the healthy organism in the corresponding way. If we have once grasped this, then many intimate truths will reveal themselves to us.

It is, as you see, indeed the case that in every domain diagnosis and pathology lead—of themselves—to a real therapy, provided the diagnosis can succeed in penetrating to the essence of the trouble.

My dear Friends,

I am told that the phenomenon with the prism—at the end of yesterday's lecture—has after all proved difficult for some of you to understand. Do not be troubled if this is so; you will understand it better by and by. We shall have to go into the phenomena of light and colour rather more fully. They are the real piece de resistance, even in relation to the rest of Physics, and will therefore provide a good foundation.

You will realize that the main idea of the present course is for me to tell you some of the things which you will not find in the text-books, things not included in the normal lines of the scientific study and only able to be dealt with in the way we do here. In the concluding lectures we shall consider how these reflections can also be made use of in school teaching.

What I was trying to explain is in its essence a special kind of interplay of light and dark—i.e. the unimpaired brightness and on the other hand the dimming or clouding of the light. I was trying to show how through the diverse ways in which light and dark work together—induced especially by the passage of a cylinder of light through a prism—the phenomena of colour, in all their polar relation to one-another, are brought about.

Now in the first place I really must ask you to swallow the bitter pill (I mean, those of you who found things difficult to understand). Your difficulty lies in the fact that you are always hankering after a phoronomical treatment of light and colour. The strange education we are made to undergo instils this mental habit. Thinking of outer Nature, people will restrict themselves to thoughts of a more or less phoronomical character. They will restrict their thoughts to what is arithmetical, spatially formal, and kinematical. Called on to try and think in terms of qualities as you are here, you may well be saying to yourselves: Here we get stuck! You must attribute it to the unnatural direction pursued by Science in modern time. Moreover—I speak especially to Waldorf-School and other teachers—you will yourselves to some extent still have to take the same direction with your pupils. It will not be possible, all at once, to bring the really healthy ideas into a modern school. We must find ways of transition.

For the phenomena of light and colour, let us now begin again, but from the other end. I take my start from a much disputed saying of Goethe's. In the 1780's a number of statements as to the way colours arise in and about the light came to his notice. Among other things, he learned of the prismatic phenomena we were beginning to study yesterday. It was commonly held by physicists, so Goethe learned, that when you let colourless light go through a prism the colourless light is analyzed and split up. For in some such way the phenomena were interpreted. If we let a cylinder of colourless light impinge on the screen, it shows a colourless picture. Putting a prism in the way of the cylinder of light, the physicists went on to say, we get the sequence of colours: red, orange, yellow, green, blue—light blue and dark blue,—violet. Goethe heard of it in this way: the physicists explain it thus, so he was told—The colourless light already contains the seven colours within itself—a rather difficult thing to imagine, no doubt, but that is what they said. And when we make the light go through the prism, the prism really does no more than to fan out and separate what is already there in the light,—the seven colours, into which it is thus analyzed.

Goethe wanted to get to the bottom of it. He began borrowing and collecting instruments,—much as we have been doing in the last few days. He wanted to find out for himself. Buettner, Privy Councillor in Jena, was kind enough to send him some scientific instruments to Weimar. Goethe stacked them away, hoping for a convenient time to begin his investigations. Presently, Councillor Buettner grew impatient and wanted his instruments back. Goethe had not yet begun;—it often happens, one does not get down to a thing right away. Now Goethe had to pack the instruments to send them back again. Meanwhile he took a quick look through the prism, saying to himself as he did so: If then the light is analyzed by the prism, I shall see it so on yonder wall. He really expected to see the light in seven colours. But the only place where he could see any colour at all was at some edge or border-line—a stain on the wall for instance, where the stain, the dark and clouded part, met the lighter surface. Looking at such a place through the prism he saw colours; where there was uniform white he saw nothing of the kind. Goethe was roused. He felt the theory did not make sense. He was no longer minded to send the instruments back, but kept them and went on with his researches. It soon emerged that the phenomenon was not at all as commonly described.

If we let light pass through the space of the room, we get a white circle on the screen. Here we have cut it out very neatly; you see a pretty fair circle. Put a prism in the way of the body of light that is going through there,—the cylinder of light is diverted, (Figure IIc), but what appears in the first place is not the series of seven colours at all, only a reddish colour at the lower edge, passing over into yellow, and at the upper edge a blue passing over into greenish shades. In the middle it stays white.

Goethe now said to himself: It is not that the light is split up or that anything is separated out of the light as such. In point of fact, I am projecting a picture,—simply an image of this circular aperture. The aperture has edges, and where the colours occur the reason is not that they are drawn out of the light, as though the light had been split up into them. It is because this picture which I am projecting—the picture as such—has edges. Here too the fact is that where light adjoins dark, colours appear at the edges. It is none other than that. For there is darkness outside this circular patch of light, while it is relatively light within it.

The colours therefore, to begin with, make their appearance purely and simply as phenomena at the border between light and dark. This is the original, the primary phenomenon. We are no longer seeing the original phenomenon when by reducing the circle in size we get a continuous sequence of colours. The latter phenomenon only arises when we take so small a circle that the colours extend inward from the edges to the middle. They then overlap in the middle and form what we call a continuous spectrum, while with the larger circle the colours formed at the edges stay as they are. This is the primal phenomenon. Colours arise at the borders, where light and dark flow together.

This, my dear Friends, is precisely the point: not to bring in theories to tamper with the facts, but to confine ourselves to a clean straightforward study of the given facts. However, as you have seen, in these phenomena not only colours arise; there is also the lateral displacement of the entire cone of light. To study this displacement further—diagrammatically to begin with—we can also proceed as follows.

Suppose you put two prisms together so as to make them into a single whole. The lower one is placed like the one I drew yesterday, the upper one the opposite way up (Figure IIIa). If I now made a cylinder of light pass through this double prism, I should of course get something very like what we had yesterday. The light would be diverted—upward in the one case, downward in the other. Hence if I had such a double prism I should get a figure of light still more drawn out than before. But it would prove to be rather indistinct and dark. I should explain this as follows. Catching the picture by a screen placed here, I should get an image of the circle of light as if there were two pushed together, one from either end. But I could now move the screen farther in. Again I should get an image. That is to say, there would be a space—all this is remaining purely within the given facts—a space within which I should always find it possible to get an image. You see then how the double prism treats the light. Moreover I shall always find a red edge outside,—in this case, above and below—and a violet colour in the middle. Where I should otherwise merely get the image extending from red to violet, I now get the outer edges red, with violet in the middle and the other colours in between. By means of such a double prism I should make it possible for such a figure to arise,—and I should get a similar figure if I moved the screen farther away. Within a certain distance either way, such a picture will be able to arise—coloured at the edges, coloured in the middle too, and with transitional colours.

Now we might arrange it so that when moving the screen to and fro there would be a very wide space within which such pictures could be formed. But as you probably divine, the only way of doing this would be to keep on changing the shape of the prism. If for example, taking a prism with a larger angle, I got the picture at a given place, if I then made the angle smaller I should get it elsewhere. Now I can do the whole thing differently by using a prism with curved instead of plane surfaces from the very outset. The phenomenon, difficult to study with the prism, will be much simplified. We therefore have this possibility. We let the cylinder of light go through the space and then put in its way a lens,—which in effect is none other than a double prism with its faces curved. The picture I now get is, to begin with, considerably reduced in size. What then has taken place? The whole cylinder of light has been contracted. Look first at the original cross-section: by interposing the lens I get it narrowed and drawn together. Here then we have a fresh interaction between what is material—the material of the lens, which is a body of glass—and the light that goes through space. The lens so works upon the light as to contract it.

To draw it diagrammatically (Figure IIIa, above), here is a cylinder of light. I let the light go through the lens. If I confronted the light with an ordinary plate of glass or water, the cylinder of light would just go through and a simple picture of it on the screen would be the outcome. Not so if instead of the simple plate, made of glass or water, I have a lens. Following what has actually happened with my drawing, I must say: the picture has grown smaller. The cylinder of light is contracted.

Now there is also another possibility. We could set up a double prism, not as in the former instance but in cross-section as I am now drawing it (Figure IIIb),—the prisms meeting at the angle. I should again get the phenomenon described before, only in this instance the circle would be considerably enlarged. Once again, while moving the screen to and fro within a certain range, I should still get the picture—more or less indistinct. Moreover in this case (Figure IIIb, above and on the right) I should get violet and bluish colours both at the upper and at the lower edge, and red in the middle,—the opposite of what it was before. There would again be the intermediate colours.

Once more I can replace the double prism by a lens,—a lens of this cross-section (Figure IIIb). The other was thick in the middle and thin at the edges; this one is thin in the middle and thick at the edge. Using this lens, I get a picture considerably bigger than the cross-section of the cylinder of light would be without it. I get an enlarged picture, again with colours graded from the edge towards the centre. Following the phenomena in this case I must say: the cylinder of light has been widened,—very considerably thrust apart. Again: the simple fact.

What do we see from these phenomena? Evidently there is an active relation between the material—though it appears transparent in all these lenses and prisms—and what comes to manifestation through the light. We see a kind of interaction between them. Taking our start from what we should get with a lens of this type (thick at the edge and thin in the middle), the entire cylinder of light will have been thrust apart,—will have been widened. We see too how this widening can have come about,—obviously through the fact that the material through which the light has gone is thinner here and thicker here. Here at the edge, the light has to make its way through more matter than in the middle, where it has less matter to go through. And now, what happens to the light? As we said, it is widened out—thrust apart—in the direction of these two arrows. How can it have been thrust apart? It can only be through the fact that it has less matter to go through in the middle and more at the edges. Think of it now. In the middle the light has less matter to go through; it therefore passes through more easily and retains more of its force after having gone through. Here therefore—where it goes through less matter—the force of it is greater than where it goes through more. It is the stronger force in the middle, due to the light's having less matter to go through, which presses the cylinder of light apart. If I may so express myself, you can read it in the facts that this is how it is. I want you to be very clear at this point it is simply a question of true method in our thinking. In our attempts to follow up the phenomena of light by means of lines and diagrams we ought to realize that with every line we draw we ourselves are adding something which has nothing to do with the light as such. The lines I have been drawing are but the limits of the cylinder of light. The cylinder of light is brought about by the aperture. What I draw has nothing to do with the light; I am only reproducing what is brought about by the light's going through the slit. And if I say, “the light moves in this direction”, that again has nothing to do with the light as such; for if I moved the source of light upward, the light that falls on the slit would move in this way and I should have to draw the arrow in this direction. This again would not concern the light as such. People have formed such a habit of drawing lines into the light, and from this habit they have gradually come to talk of “light-rays”. In fact we never have to do with light-rays; here for example, what we have to do with is a cone of light, due to the aperture through which we caused the light to pass. In this instance the cone of light is broadened out, and it is evident: the broadening must somehow be connected with the shorter path the light has to go through in the middle of the lens than at the edge. Due to the shorter path in the middle, the light retains more force; due to the longer path at the edge, more force is taken from it. The stronger light in the middle presses upon the weaker light at the edge and so the cone of light is broadened. You simply read it in the facts.

Truth is that where we simply have to do with images or pictures, the physicists speak of all manner of other things,—light-rays and so on. The “light-rays” have become the very basis of materialistic thinking in this domain. To illustrate the point more vividly, we will consider another phenomenon. Suppose I have a vessel here (Figure IIId), filled with liquid—water, for example. On the floor of the vessel there is an object—say, a florin. Here is the eye. I can now make the following experiment. Omitting the water to begin with, I can look down at the object and see it in this direction. What is the fact? An object is lying on the bottom of the vessel (Figure IIIc). I look and see it in a certain direction. Such is the simple fact, but if I now begin explaining: there is a ray of light proceeding from the object to the eye, affecting the eye, and so on,—then, my dear Friends, I am already fancying all kinds of things that are not given.

Now let me fill the vessel with water or some other liquid up to here. A strange thing happens. I draw a line from the eye towards the object in the direction in which I saw it before. Looking in this direction, I might expect to see the same as before, but I do not. A peculiar thing happens. I see the object lifted to some extent. I see it, and with it the whole floor of the vessel lifted upward. We may go into it another time, as to how this effect can be determined, by which I mean measured. I now only refer to the main principle. To what can this effect be due? How shall I answer this question, purely from the facts? Having previously seen the thing in this direction, I expect to find it there again. Yet when I look, I do not see it there but in this other direction. When there was no water in the vessel I could look straight to the bottom, between which and my eye there was only air. Now my sighting line impinges on the water. The water does not let my force of sight go through as easily as the air does; it offers stronger resistance, to which must give way. From the surface of the water onward I must give way to the stronger resistance, and, that I have to do so, comes to expression in that I do not see right down as before but it all looks lifted upward. It is as though it were more difficult for me to see through the water than through the air; the resistance of the water is harder for me to overcome. Hence I must shorten the force and so I myself draw the object upward. In meeting the stronger resistance I draw in the force and shorten it. If I could fill the vessel with a gas thinner than air (Figure IIIe), the object would be correspondingly lowered, since I should then encounter less resistance,—so I should push it downward. Instead of simply noting this fact, the physicists will say: There is a ray of light, sent from the object to the surface of the water. The ray is there refracted. Owing to the transition from a denser medium to a more tenuous, the ray is refracted away from the normal at the point of incidence; so then it reaches the eye in this direction. And now the physicists go on to say a very curious thing. The eye, they say, having received information by this ray of light, produces it on and outward in the same straight line and so projects the object thither. What is the meaning of this? In the conventional Physics they will invent all manner of concepts but fail to reckon with what is evidently there,—with the resistance which the sighting force of the eye encounters in the denser medium it has to penetrate. They want to leave all this out and to ascribe everything to the light alone, just as they say of the prism experiment: Oh, it is not the prism at all; the seven colours are there in the light all the time. The prism only provides the occasion for them to line up like so many soldiers. The seven naughty boys were there in the light already; now they are only made to line up and stand apart. The prism isn't responsible. Yet as we say, the colours are really caused by what arises in the prism. This wedge of dimness is the cause. The colours are not due to the light as such.

Here now you see it again. We must be clear that we ourselves are being active. We, actively, are looking with our eye,—with our line of sight. Finding increased resistance in the water, we are obliged to shorten the line of sight. What say the physicists on the other hand? They speak of rays of light being sent out and refracted and so on. And now the beauty of it, my dear Friends! The light, they say, reaches the eye by a bent and broken path, and then the eye projects the picture outward. So after all they end by attributing this activity to the eye: “The eye projects ...” Only they then present us with a merely phoronomical conception, remote from the given realities. They put a merely fancied activity in place of what is evidently given: the resistance of the denser water to the sighting force of the eye. It is at such points that you see most distinctly how abstract everything is made in our conventional Physics. All things are turned into mere phoronomic systems; what they will not do is to go into the qualities. Thus in the first place they divest the eye of any kind of activity of its own; only from outer objects rays of light are supposed to proceed and thence to reach the eye. Yet in the last resort the eye is said to project outward into space the stimulus which it receives. Surely we ought to begin with the activity of the eye from the very outset. We must be clear that the eye is an active organism.

We will today begin our study of the nature of the human eye. Here is a model of it (Figure IIIf). The human eye, as you know, is in form like a kind of sphere, slightly compressed from front to back. Such is the eye-ball, seated in the bony cavity or orbit, and with a number of skins enveloping the inner portion. To draw it in cross-section (Figure IIIf). it will be like this. (When looking at your neighbour's eye you look into the pupil. I am now drawing it from the side and in cross-section.) This then would be a right-hand eye. If we removed the eye from the skull, making an anatomical preparation, the first thing we should encounter would be connective tissue and fatty tissue. Then we should reach the first integument of the eye properly speaking—the so-called sclerotic and the transparent portion of it, the cornea. This outermost integument (I have here drawn it) is sinewy,—of bony or cartilaginous consistency. Towards the front it gets transparent, so that the light can penetrate into the eye. A second layer enveloping the inner space of the eye is then the so-called choroid, containing blood-vessels. Thirdly we get the inner-most layer, the retina so-called, which is continued into the optic nerve as you go farther in into the skull. Herewith we have enumerated the three integuments of the eye, And now behind the cornea, shown here,—embedded in the ciliary muscle—is a kind of lens. The lens is carried by a muscle known as the ciliary muscle. In front is the transparent cornea, between which and the lens is the so-called aqueous humour. Thus when the light gets into the eye it first passes through the transparent cornea, then through the aqueous humour and then through this lens which is inherently movable by means of muscles. From the lens onward the light then reaches what is commonly known as the vitreous body or vitreous humour, filling the entire space of the eye. The light therefore goes through the transparent cornea, through the aqueous humour, the lens itself and the vitreous humour and from thence reaches the retina, which is in fact a ramification of the optic nerve that then goes on into the brain, This, therefore, (Figure IIIf),—envisaging only what is most important to begin with—would be a diagrammatic picture of the essential parts of the eye, embedded as it is in its cavity within the bony skull.

Now the eye reveals very remarkable features. Examining the contents of this fluid that is between the lens and the cornea through which the light first has to pass, we find it very like any ordinary liquid taken from the outer world. At this place in the human body therefore—in the liquid or aqueous humour of the eye, between the lens and the outer cornea,—a man in his bodily nature is quite of a piece with the outer world. The lens too is to a high degree “objective” and unalive. Not so when we go on to the vitreous body, filling the interior of the eye and bordering on the retina. Of this we can no longer say that it is like any external body or external fluid. In the vitreous humour there is decided vitality,—there is life. Truth is, the farther back we go into the eye, the more life do we find. In the aqueous humour we have a quite external and objective kind of fluid. The lens too is still external. Inside the vitreous body on the other hand we find inherent vitality. This difference, between what is contained in this more outward portion of the eye and what is there in the more contained parts, also reveals itself in another circumstance. Tracing the comparative development of the eye from the lower animals upward, we find that the external fluid or aqueous humour and the lens grow not from within outward but by the forming of new cells from the surrounding and more peripheral cells. I must conceive the forming of the lens rather in this way. The tissue of the lens, also the aqueous humour in the anterior part of the eye, are formed from neighbouring organs, not from within outward; whilst from within the vitreous body grows out to meet them. This is the noteworthy thing. In fact the nature of the outer light is here at work, bringing about that transformation whereby the aqueous humour and the lens originate. To this the living being then reacts from within, thrusting outward a more living, a more vital organ, namely the vitreous body. Notably in the eye, formations whose development is stimulated from without, and others stimulated from within, meet one-another in a very striking way.

This is the first peculiarity of the eye, and there is also another, scarcely less remarkable. The expanse of the retina which you see here is really the expanded optic nerve. Now the peculiar thing is that at the very point of entry of the optic nerve the eye is insensitive; there it is blind. Tomorrow I shall try to show you an experiment confirming this. The optic nerve thence spreads out, and in an area which for the right-hand eye is a little to the right of the point of entry the retina is most sensitive of all. We may begin by saying that it is surely the nerve which senses the light. Yet it is insensitive to light precisely at its point of entry. If it is really the nerve that senses the light we should expect it to do so more intensely at the point of entry, but it does not. Please try to bear this in mind.

That this whole structure and arrangement of the eye is full of wisdom—wisdom, if I may so put it, from the side of Nature—this you may also tell from the following fact. During the day when you look at the objects around you—in so far as you have healthy eyes—they will appear to you more or less sharp and clear, or at least so that their sharpness of outline is fully adequate for orientation. But in the morning when you first awaken you sometimes see the outlines of surrounding objects very indistinctly, as if enveloped with a little halo. The rim of a circle for example will be indistinct and nebular when you have just awakened in the morning. What is it due to? It is due to there being two different kinds of things in our eye, namely the vitreous body and the lens. In origin, as we have seen, they are quite different. The lens is formed more from without, the vitreous body more from within. While the lens is rather unalive, the vitreous body is full of vitality. Now in the moment of awakening they are not yet adapted to one-another. The vitreous body still tries to picture the objects to us in the way it can; the lens in the way it can. We have to wait till they are well adapted to each other. You see again how deeply mobile everything organic is. The whole working of it depends on this. First the activity is differentiated into that of the lens and the vitreous body respectively. From what is thus differentiated the activity is thereupon composed and integrated; so then the one has to adapt itself to the other.

From all these things we shall try gradually to discover how the many-coloured world emerges for us from the relation of the eye to the outer world. Now there is one more experiment I wish to shew today, and from it we may partly take our start tomorrow in studying the relation of the eye to the external world. Here is a disc, mounted on a wheel and painted with the colours which we saw before—those of the rainbow: violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange and red. First look at it and see the seven colours. We will now bring it into rotation. I can turn fairly quickly and you still see the seven colours as such—only rotating. But when I turn quickly enough you can no longer see the colours. You are no doubt seeing a uniform grey. So we must ask: Why do the seven colours appear to us in grey, all of one shade? This we will try to answer tomorrow. Today we will adduce what modern Physics has to say about it,—what is already said in Goethe's time. According to modern Physics, here are the colours of the rainbow: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. We bring the disc into rotation. The single impression of light has not time enough to make itself felt as such in our eye. Scarcely have I seen the red at a particular place, the quick rotation brings the orange there and then the yellow, and so on. The red itself is there again before I have time to rid myself of the impressions of the other colours. So then I get them all at once. The violet arrives before the impression of the red has vanished. For the eye, the seven colours are thus put together again, which must once more give white.

Such was the scientific doctrine even in Goethe's time, and so he was instructed. Bring a coloured top into quick enough rotation: the seven colours, which in the prism experiment very obediently lined up and stood apart, will re-unite in the eye itself. But Goethe saw no white. All that you ever get is grey, said Goethe. The modern text-books do indeed admit this; they too have ascertained that all you get is grey. However, to make it white after all, they advise you to put a black circle in the middle of the disc, so that the grey may appear white by contrast. A pretty way of doing things! Some people load the dice of “Fortune”, the physicists do so with “Nature”—so they correct her to their liking. You will discover that this is being done with quite a number of the fundamental facts.

I am trying to proceed in such a way as to create a good foundation. Once we have done this, it will enable us to go forward also in the other realms of Physics, and of Science generally.

To lead our present studies to a fruitful conclusion we must still pursue the rather subtle course I have been adopting, bringing together a great variety of ideas from different fields. For this reason we shall have to continue with this course also while the other course¹ is going on—between the 11th and 15th January. We must arrange the times by agreement with the Waldorf School. There is so much to bring in that we shall need these days too. Now I am also well aware how many queries, doubts and problems may be arising in connection with this subject. Please prepare whatever questions you would like to put, if you need further elucidation. I will then try to incorporate the answers in one of next week's lectures, so as to make the picture more complete. Working in this way we shall be able to continue as heretofore, bringing in what I would call the subtler aspects of our theme.

Let us envisage once again the course we have been pursuing. Our aim is to gain a deeper understanding of Astronomy—the science of the Heavens—in connection with phenomena on Earth. To begin with, we pointed out that as a rule the Astronomy of our time only takes into account what is observed directly with the outer senses aided, no doubt, by optical instruments and the like. Such, in the main, were all the data hitherto adduced when seeking to explain and understand the phenomena of the Heavens. They took their start from the ‘apparent movements’, as they would now be called, or the celestial bodies. First they considered the apparent movement of the starry Heavens as a whole around the Earth and the apparent movement of the Sun. Then they observed the very strange paths described by the Planets. Such, in effect, is the immediate visual appearance; portions of the planetary paths look like loops (Fig. 1) the planet moves along here, reverses and goes back, and then forward again, here ... And now they reasoned; if the Earth itself is moving and we have no direct perception of this movement, the real movements of the heavenly bodies cannot but be different from the visual appearance. Interpreting along these lines—applying mathematical and geometrical laws—they arrived at an idea of what the ‘real’ movements might be like. So they arrived at the Copernican system and at its subsequent modifications. Such, in the main, were the methods of cognition used; first, what our senses when looking out into the Heavens, and then the intellectual assimilation, the reasoned interpretation of these sense-impression.

We then pointed out that this procedure can never lead to the adequate penetration of the celestial phenomena, if only for the reason that the mathematical method itself is insufficient. We begin our calculations along certain lines and are then brought to a stop. For as I was reminding you, the ratios between the periods of revolution of the several planets are incommensurable numbers,—incommensurable magnitudes. By calculation therefore, we do not reach the innermost structure of the celestial phenomena. Sooner or later we have to leave off.

It follows that we must adopt a different method. We have to take our start not only from what man observes when he looks out into the Universe with his senses; we must take man as a whole in his connection with the Universe, and perhaps not only man, but other creatures too,—the kingdoms of Nature upon Earth. All these things we pointed out, and I then showed how the whole organization of man can be seen in relation to certain phenomena in the evolution of the Earth, namely the Ice-Ages in their rhythmical recurrence. They also have to do with the inner evolution of man and of mankind. This too, I said, will give us indications of what the real movements in celestial space may be. These are the kind of things we must pursue.

Before continuing the rather more formal lines of thought with which we ended yesterday's lecture, let us consider once again this connection of man's evolution with the evolution of the Earth through the Ice-Ages. We saw that the special kind of knowledge or of cognitional life which the man of present time calls his own has only come into being since the last Ice-Age. Moreover all the civilization-epochs, of which I have so often told, have taken place since then—namely the Ancient Indian, the Persian, the Egypto—Chaldean, the Graeco-Latin and then the epoch in which we are now living. Before the last Ice-Age, we said, there must have been developing in human nature what in the man of today is more withdrawn, less at the surface of his nature, namely his power of ideation—the forming of mental pictures. The inner quality, we said, of this part of our inner life is truly to be understood only if we compare it with our dream-life. It is through sense-perception that our mental pictures receive clear and firm configuration and, as it were, a fully saturated content. The mental pictures are being formed in a more inward region of our bodily organic life—farther back, as it were behind the sense-perceptions,—and this activity is dim and hazy like our dream-life. Our forming of mental pictures would be as dim as it is in dreams, if the experiences of the senses did not strike in upon us every time we awaken. (We may allow the supposition, to help explain what is meant.)

More dim and hazy than our life in sense-perception, this inner life of ideation, mental imagery, is related to those earlier phases in the evolution of man's nature which preceded the last glacial epoch, or which—to speak in anthroposophical terms—belonged to old Atlantis.

What must it then have been like for man? In the first place he must have had a far more intimate inner connection with the surrounding world than he has today through sense-perception. We can control our sense-perception with our will. It is with our will at any rate that we direct the vision of our eyes, and by deliberate attention we can go even farther in governing our sense-perception by our own will. At all events, our will is very much at work in our sense—perceptions, making us to a large extent independent of the outer world. We orientate ourselves by our own arbitrary choice. Now this in only possible because as human beings we have in a way emancipated ourselves from the Universe. Before the last Ice-Age we cannot have been thus emancipated. (I say ‘cannot have been’ since I am wanting now to speak from the empirical aspect of external Science.) During that time, as we have seen, the power of ideation—the forming of mental images—was especially developed, and in his inner conditions man must have been far more dependent on all that was going on around him. Today we see the world around us shining in the sunlight, but the way we see it is considerably subject to the inner culture and control of our own life of will. In Atlantean time the way man was given up to the outer world must have been somehow dependent on the illumined Earth and its illumined objects, and then again—at night-time when the Sun was not shining—on the darkness, the gloaming. He must in other words have experienced periodic alternations in this respect. His inner life of mental imagery, which as we saw was then in process of development must alternately have been lighting up and ebbing down again. This inner periodicity, brought about by man's relation to the surrounding Universe, was indeed not unlike the peculiar periodicity of woman's organic functions of which we spoke before, which is related to the Lunar phases though only as regards length of time. This inner functioning of the woman's nature (I said, you will remember, it is there in man too but in a more inward way and therefore less easily perceived) was at one time actually linked with the corresponding events in the outer Universe. It then became emancipated—a property of human nature on its own,—so that what now goes on in the human being in this respect need not coincide with the outer events. yet the periodicity—the sequence of phases—remains the same as it was when the one coincided with the other.

Something quite similar is true of the rhythmic alternation in our inner life—in our ideation, our forming of mental images. The whole way we are organized in this respect, implanted in us in a far distant past, is to this day more or less independent of the life of the outer senses. Day by day we undergo an inner rhythm, our powers of mental imagery alternately lighting up and growing more dim; it is a daily ebb and flow. We only fail to notice it, since it is far less intense than that other periodicity which runs parallel to the Lunar phases. Nevertheless, in our head-organization to this day we have an alternation between a brighter and a dimmer kind of life. We carry in our head a rhythmic life. We are at one time more and at another less inclined to meet our sense-perceptions actively from within. It is a 24-hour rhythmic alteration. It would be interesting to observe—it might even be recorded in graphically—how human being vary as regards this inner period of the head, the forces of ideation and mental imagery alternating between brighter and more lively and then again dimmer and more sleepy times. The dim and sleepy times represent, so to speak, the inner night of the head, the brighter ones the inner day, but it does not coincide with the external alternation of day and night. It is an inner alternation of light and darkness, or relatively bright and dim conditions. And people vary in this respect. One human being has this inner alternation of light and dark in such a way that he tends rather to connect the lighter period of his mental image-forming power with his sense-perceptions. Another tends to it with the darker. Individuals are organized in one way or the other, and differ accordingly as to their power of observing the outer world. One human being will be inclined sharply to focus the phenomena of the outer world; another tends to do so less,—is more inclined to an inner brooding. All this is due to the alternating conditions I have been describing. Notably as educators, my dear Friends, we should cultivate the habit of observing things like this. They will be valuable signposts, indicating how we should treat the individual children both in our teaching and in education generally.

What interests us however here and now is the fact that man thus makes inward, as it were, what he once underwent in direct mutual relation with the outer world; so that it now works in him as an inner rhythm, the phases no longer coinciding with the outer yet still retaining the periodicity Before the Ice-Age, man's periods of brighter and more intimate participation in the surrounding Universe,. and then of dim withdrawal into himself, will have coincided regularly with the processes of the outer world. He still retains an echo of this rhythm, which in those long-ago times proceed from his living-together with the Universe around him, where at one moment his consciousness was lightened and filled with pictures while at another he withdrew into himself, brooding over the pictures. It is an echo of this latter state whenever we today are inclined to brood more or less melancholically in our own inner life. Once again therefore, what man experienced in and with the world in those older times has been driven farther back into his inner bodily nature, while at the outer periphery a new development has taken place in his faculties of sense-perception. He had these faculties, of course in earlier epochs too, but not developed in the way they now are.

While looking thus at what has taken place in man through his connection with the phenomena of the world around him, we are in fact looking into the Universe itself. Man then becomes the reagent for a true judgment of the phenomena of the Universe. But to complete this we need the other kingdoms of Nature too. Here I should like to draw your attention to something well-known and evident to everyone, the essential significance of which, however, remains unrecognized.

Consider the annual plant,—the characteristic cycle of its development. We see in it quite evidently what I was mentioning yesterday—the direct and indirect influences of the Sun. Where the Sun works directly, the flower comes into being; where the Sun works in such a way that the Earth comes in between, we get the root. The plant too makes manifest what we were speaking of yesterday as regards the animal and then applied in another way to man.

Yet we shall only see the full significance of this if we relate it to another fact. There are perennial plants too. What is the relation of the perennial plant to the annual, as regards the way in which plant-growth belongs to the Earth as a whole? The perennial retains its stem or trunk, and the truth is: Year by year a new world of plants springs, so to speak, from the trunk itself. Of course it is modified and metamorphosed, yet it is a vegetation growing on the trunk, which in its turn grows out of the Earth (Fig. 2). If you have morphological perception you will see it as clearly as can be,—it almost goes without saying. Here on the left I have the surface of the Earth, and the annual plant springing from it. Here on the right is the stem or trunk of the perennial, from which new vegetation, new plant-growth springs in each succeeding year. I must image something or other (to leave it vague, for the moment) continued from the Earth into the trunk. I must say to myself—what this plant here (Fig. 2 on the left) is growing on, must somehow be there in the trunk too (on the right). In other words there must be some element of the Earth—whatever it may be—entering into the trunk. I have no right to regard the trunk of the perennial as a thing apart, not belonging to the Earth; rather must I regard it as a modified portion of the Earth itself. Only then shall I be seeing it rightly; only then shall I discern the inner relationships, such as they really are. Something is there in the perennial plant, which otherwise is only in the Earth. It is through this that the plant becomes perennial. In effect, precisely by taking something of the Earth into itself it frees itself from dependence on the yearly course of the Sun. For we may truly say: The perennial wrests itself away from its dependence on the Sun's yearly course. it emancipates itself from the yearly course of the Sun, in that it forms the trunk, receiving into its own Nature—becoming able, as it were, to do for itself what otherwise could only come about through the working of the whole cosmic environment.

Do we not here see prefigured in the plant world, what I was just describing with regard to man in preglacial times? For in those times, as I was showing, the inner rhythm of the man's ideation—his life in mental pictures—developed by relation to the surrounding world. What then lived in the mutual relation between man and the surrounding world has since become a feature of his own inner life. There is an indication of the same kind of change in the plant kingdom, in that the annual is changed to a perennial. This is indeed a universal tendency in evolution; the living entities are on the way to emancipation from their original connections with the surrounding world.

Seeing the perennials arising, we have to say: It is as though the plant, when it becomes perennial, had learned something it you will allow the expression—learned from the time when it depended on cosmic environment, something which it can now do for itself. Now it is able of itself to bring forth fresh plant-shoots year by year. We do not reach an understanding of the phenomena of the world by merely staring at the things that happen to be side by side, or that are crowded into the field of view under the microscope. We have to see the larger whole and recognize the single phenomena in their connection with it.

Look at it all once more. The annual plant is given up to the cycle of the year, with all the changing relations to the Cosmos which this involves. This influence of the Cosmos beings to fade away in the perennial. In the perennial, what would otherwise vanish in the further course of the year is, as it were, preserved. In the trunk we see springing from the ground the working of the year, made permanent and lasting. This transition of what was first connected with the outer Universe into a more inward way of working we see it throughout the whole range of Nature's phenomena, in so far as they are cosmic. Hence too there are phenomena in which we can more quickly find the living connections between our Earth and the wider Cosmos, whilst there are others in which the cosmic influences are more concealed. We need to find out which of them are sensitive reagents, telling of the cosmic influences. The annual plant will tell us of the Earth's connection with Cosmos, the perennial will not be able to tell us much.

Again, the relation of the animal to man can give us an important clue. Look at the animal's development. (Though we might also include it, we will for the moment disregard the embryonic life.) The animal is born and grows up to a certain limit. It reaches puberty. Look at the animal's whole life, until puberty and beyond. Without any added hypotheses—taking the simple facts—you must admit that it is strange, what happens to the animal once puberty has been attained. For in a way the animal is finished then, so far as the earthly world is concerned. Any such statement is of course an approximation to the truth, needless to say; yet in the main we must admit that in the animal no further progression is to be seen, not after puberty. Puberty is the important goal of animal development. The immediate consequence of puberty—all that happens as an outcome of it—is there of course, but we cannot allege that anything takes place thence forward, deserving to be called a true progression.

With man it is different. Man remains capable of development far beyond puberty; but the development becomes more inward. Indeed it would be very sad for man if in his human nature he were to end his development at puberty in the way animals do. Man goes beyond this. He holds something in reserve by means of which he can go farther,—can undertake quite other journeys, unconnected with sexual maturity or puberty. This again is not unlike the “inwarding” of the cycle of the year in the perennial as against the annual plant. What is in evidence in the animal when puberty is reached, we see it transmuted into a more inward process in man, from puberty onward. Something therefore is at work in man, that is related to a cosmic process in his development from birth until puberty, and that then gets emancipated from the Cosmos—just as it does in the perennial plant—when puberty has been outgrown.

Here then you have a subtler way of estimating the phenomena among the kingdoms of Nature; so will you presently find signposts, indicating the connections between the creatures upon Earth and the Cosmos. We see how, when the cosmic influences cease as such, they are transplanted into the inner nature of the several creatures. We will take note of this and set it on one side for the moment; later we shall find the synthesis between this and quite another aspect.

Let us now take up again what I have frequently mentioned: The incommensurable ratios between the periods of revolution of the planets of the solar system. We may ask, what would the outcome be if they were commensurable? Cumulative disturbances would arise, whereby the planetary system would be brought to a standstill. This can be proved by calculation, though it would lead too far afield to do it now. Only the incommensurability between the periods of revolution enables the planetary system, so to speak, to stay alive. In other words, the solar system contains among other things a condition even tending to a standstill. It is precisely this condition which we are calculating. When in our calculations we get to the end of our tether, there is the incommensurable—and there, withal, is the very life of the planetary system! We are in a strange predicament when calculating the planetary system. If it were such that we could fully calculate it, it would die,—nay, as I said before, would have died long ago. It lives by virtue of the face that we can not calculate it fully. What is alive in the planetary system is precisely what we cannot calculate.

Now upon what do we base these calculations, from which once more, if we could pursue them to the end, we must deduce the inevitable death of the whole system? We base them on the force of gravitation—universal gravitation. Suppose we take our start from gravitation and nothing more, and think it out consistently. We get the picture of a planetary system subject to the force of gravitation. Then indeed we do arrive at commensurable ratios. But the planetary system would inevitably die. We calculate, in other words, to the extent that death prevails in the planetary system, basing our calculations on the force of gravity. In other words there must be something in the planetary system—different from gravitation—to which the incommensurability is due.

The planetary orbits can be brought into accord with the force of gravity very nicely, even as to their genesis, but their periods of revolution would then have to be commensurable. Now there is something which cannot be brought into accord with the force of gravitation, and which moreover does not so tidily fit into our planetary system. I mean what reveals itself in the cometary bodies. The comets play a very strange part in the system, and they have recently been leading scientists to some unusual ideas.

I leave aside the kind of explanations which often tend to arise, where anything most recently discovered is seized on to explain phenomena in other fields. In physiology for instance there was a time when they were fond of comparing the so-called sensory nerves to telegraph-wires leading in from the periphery. Through some central switch or commutator the impulse was supposed to be transmitted, leading to impulses and acts of will. From the centripetal nerves it was supposed to be switched over to the centrifugal; they compared it all to a telegraphic system. Maybe one day something quite different from telegraph-wires will be invented and by this way of thinking quite another picture will be applied to the same thing. So do the scientific fashions change. Whatever happens to have been discovered is quickly seized on as a handy way of explaining the phenomena in other fields. Much as they do in medicine! Scarcely has any new thing been found,—it is “discovered” to be a valuable remedy, though little thought is given to the inner reasons. Now that we have X-rays, X-rays are the remedy to use; we only use them because we happen to have found them. It is as though men let themselves be swept along chaotically, willy-nilly by whatever happens to turn up from time to time.

So for the comets: By spectroscopic investigation and by comparison with the corresponding results for the planets, the idea arose that the phenomena might be explained electromagnetically. Such ideas will at most lead to analogies, which may no doubt have some connection with the reality, but which will certainly not satisfy us if we are looking into it more deeply.

Yet as I said, leaving this aside, there was one thing which emerged quite inevitably when the phenomena of comets were studied in more detail. While for the rest of the planetary system they always speak of gravitational forces, the peculiar position of the comet's tail in relation to the Sun inevitably drove the scientists to speak of forces of repulsion from the Sun—forces, as it were of recoil. The terminology is not the main point; it will of course vary with the prevailing fashion. The point is that science was here obliged to look for something in addition to—and indeed opposite to gravity.

In effect, with the comets something different enters our planetary system,—something which in its nature is in a way opposite to the inner structure of the planetary system as such. Hence it is understandable that for long ages the riddle of the comets gave rise to manifold superstitions. Men had a feeling that in the courses of the planets laws of Nature, inherently belonging to our planetary system, find expression, while with the comets something contrary comes in. Here something disparate and diverse makes its way into our planetary system. Thus they inclined to see the planetary phenomena as an embodiment of normal laws of Nature, and to regard the cometary apparitions as something contrary to these normal laws. There were times—though not the most ancient times—when comets were associated, as it were, with moral forces flying through the Universe, scourges for sinful man.

Today we rightly look on that as superstition. Yet even Hegel could not quite escape associating the comets with something not quite explicable or only half explicable by ordinary means. The 19th century, of course, no longer believed the comets to appear like judges to chastise mankind. Yet in the early 19th century they had statistics purporting to connect them with good and bad vintage years. These too occur somewhat irregularly; their sequence does not seem to follow regular laws of Nature. And even Hegel did not quite escape this conclusion. He though it plausible that the appearance or non-appearance of comets should have to do with the good and bad vintage years.

The standpoint of the people of today—at least, of those who share the normal scientific outlook—is that our planetary system has nothing to fear from the comets. Yet the phenomena which they evoke within this planetary system somehow have little inner connection with it. Like cosmic vagrants they seem to come from very distant regions into the near neighborhood of our Sun. Here they call forth certain phenomena, indicating forces of repulsion from the Sun. The phenomena appear, was and wane, and vanish.

There was a man who still had a certain fund of wisdom where by he contemplated the Universe not only with his intellect but with the whole human being. He still had some intuitive perception of the phenomena of the Heavens. I refer to Kepler. He was the author of a strange saying about the comets—a saying which gives food for thought to anyone who is at all sensitive to Kepler; way of though and mood of soul. We spoke of his three Laws—a work of genius, when one considers the ideas and the data which were accessible in his time. Kepler arrived at his Laws out of a feeling for the inner harmony of the planetary system. For him it was no mere dry calculation; it was a feeling of harmony. He felt has three planetary Laws as a last quantitative expression of something qualitative—the harmony pervading the whole planetary system. And out of this same feeling he made a statement about the comets, the deep significance of which one feels if one is able to enter into such things at all. Kepler said: In the great Universe—even the Universe into which we look by night—there are as many comets as there are fishes in the ocean. We only see very, very few among them, while all the rest remain invisible, either because they are too small or for some other reason. Even external research has tended to confirm Kepler's saying. The comets seen were recorded even in olden time and it is possible to compare the number. Since the invention of the telescope ever so many more have been seen than before. Also when looking out into the starry Heavens under different conditions of illumination—that is to say, making provision for extreme darkness—a larger number of comets are recorded than otherwise. Even empirical research therefore comes near to what Kepler exclaimed, inspired as he was by a deep feeling for Nature.

Now if one speaks at all of a connection between the Cosmos and what happens on the Earth, it surely is not right to dwell one-sidedly on the relation to our Earth of the other planets of our system and to omit the heavenly bodies which come and go as the comets do. It is especially one-sided since we must now admit that the comets give rise to phenomena indicating the presence of quite other forces—forces opposite in kind to those to which we usually attribute the coherence of our planetary system. The comets do in fact bring something opposite into our system, and if we follow it up we must admit that this too is of great significance. Something in some way opposite in nature to the force which holds it together, comes with the comets into our planetary system.

In an earlier lecture-course about natural phenomena I drew attention to something of which I must here remind you. Those who were present—the course was mainly about Heat or Warmth²—will no doubt recall it. I said that when we look at the phenomena of warmth in their relation to other phenomena of the Universe we are obliged to form a far more concrete idea of the Ether, of which the physicists generally speak in rather hypothetical terms. I said that in the formulae of Physics, wherever the force of pressure occurs as regards ponderable matter, we have to replace it by a force of suction as regards the ether. In other words, if we insert a plus sign for the intensity of a force in the realm of ponderable matter, we must give a minus sign to the corresponding intensity in the ether. I suggested that the well-known formulae should be looked through with this end in view; for one would see how remarkably, when this is done, they harmonize with the phenomena of Nature.

Take for example that whole game of thought, if I may call it so, the Kinetic Theory of Gases, of of Heat itself,—the molecules impinging on each other and on the walls of the containing vessel. Take all this brutal play of mutual impact and recoil which is supposed to represent the thermal condition of gas. Instead of this phenomena will become clear and penetrable the moment we perceive that within warmth itself there are two conditions. akin to the conditions that prevail in ponderable matter; the other must be thought of as akin to the ether. Warmth is in this respect different from Air or Light. For light, if we are calculating truly we must use the negative sign throughout. Whatever in our formulae is to represent the effects of light, must bear a negative sign. For air or gas the sign must be positive. For warmth on the other hand, the positive and negative will have to alternate. What we are wont to distinguish as conducted heat, radiant heat and so on will only then become clear and transparent.

Within the realm of matter itself, these things reveal the need for a qualitative transition from the positive to the negative in characterizing the different kinds of force. And we now see, very significantly, how for the planetary system we also have to pass from the positive—that is, gravitation—to the corresponding negative, the repelling force.

One more thing I will say today, if only to formulate the problem. For the moment I will carry it no further, but only put the problem; we shall have time to go into these things in later lectures. Now that we have ascertained all this about the cometary bodies, let me compare the relation between our planetary system and the comets to what is there in the ovum, the female germ-cell, in its relation to the male element, the fertilizing sperm. Try to imagine, try to visualize the two processes, as you might actually see them. There is the planetary system; it receives something new into itself, namely the effects of a comet. There is the ovum; it receives into itself the fertilizing effect of the male cell, the spermatozoid.

Look at the two phenomena side by side without prejudice, as you might do in ordinary life when you see two things obviously comparable, side by side. Do you not find plenty of comparable features when you contemplate these two? I do not mean to set up any theory or hypothesis, I only want to indicate what you will see for yourselves if you once look at these things in their true connection.

Taking our start from this, tomorrow we may hope to enter into more concrete and more detailed aspects.

• 1. Examples of the relation of Spiritual Science to the different branches of Science. Four lectures to students, Stuttgart, 11th to 15th January, 1921. Published (in the original German) in the Swiss periodical “Gegenwart”, Vol. 14, nos. 2 to 8, Berne, 1952.
• 2. Stuttgart, 1st to 14th March 1920, generally known as the “Second Scientific Lecture-Course”. Issued (in the original German) by the Science Section of the Goetheanum, Dornach, Switzerland, 1925.

We shall now have to build up gradually the principles outlined in the last lecture. You will have seen, no doubt, from what was discussed yesterday that much will have to be changed and revised even in the details of instruction.

Now just think back a little on what I brought to your notice in the previous lecture.¹ With my analysis in mind you can really see man as a being with three centres, in which sympathy and antipathy meet. We can then say: “Antipathy and sympathy meet even in the head.” We can simply take as a formula the case of the nervous system being intercepted at a certain point in the head for the first time, so that the sense-perceptions penetrate, and encounter antipathy from the individual. In such a case you see that you must think of each separate system as repeated again in the whole person, for the activity of the senses as such is really a fine activity of the limbs, so that the sphere of the senses is primarily pervaded by sympathy, and antipathy is sent out from the nervous system. If, for instance, you imagine sight, a kind of sympathy develops in the eye itself: the blood vessels of the eye; antipathy radiates through this sympathy: the nervous system of the eye. This is the origin of sight.

But a second, and for us a more important encounter, between sympathy and antipathy, occurs at the centre of the human system. Here, again, sympathy and antipathy encounter one another, so that a meeting between sympathy and antipathy ensues midway in the human system, in the breast-system. Here, again, the whole individual is active; for while sympathy and antipathy meet in us, in our breast we are conscious of their conflict. But you also know that this meeting is expressed in our carrying out—let us say—an instantaneous reflex action on receiving an impression, and in this reflex action we do not think much about it, but we swiftly repulse something or other which threatens us with danger; we repulse it purely instinctively. Other more subconscious reflex movements are then further reflected in the brain, in the soul, and the whole again acquires the character of an image. We accompany with imagery the conflict in action between sympathy and antipathy in our breast-system. In so doing we no longer realize clearly that a meeting between sympathy and antipathy is in question. But the breast is the scene of a process intimately bound up with the whole life of the individual. A meeting between sympathy and antipathy is in progress which is significantly bound up with our external life.

We develop a certain activity of the whole individual which expresses itself as sympathy, as an activity of sympathy. We allow the constant interplay between this activity of sympathy and a cosmic antipathy to take place in our breast-system. The expression of these conflicting sympathetic and antipathetic activities is human speech. And a distinct accompaniment by the brain of this encounter of sympathy and antipathy in the breast is the comprehension of speech. We trace speech with an understanding of it. In speech there are really present an activity which takes place in the breast and a parallel activity which takes place in the head, only that the breast is much more positive in this activity; in the head it has faded into an image. When you speak, you have all the time the breast-activity, and you accompany it at the same time with an image of it, with an activity of the head. You will easily see from this that speech is really built up on a persisting rhythm of sympathetic and antipathetic activity—like feeling. Speaking, too, is primarily anchored in feeling. The thought content of our speech is introduced by our accompanying the content of feeling with the content of knowledge and perception. But we shall only learn to understand speech if we really see it as fundamentally anchored in human feeling.

Now, as a matter of fact, speech is doubly anchored in human feeling: once, in all the feeling with which the individual confronts the world. With what feelings does he confront the world? Let us take a clear feeling, a clear shade of feeling: for instance, astonishment, amazement. As long as we remain in the individual, in this microcosm, with our soul, we experience astonishment, amazement. If we find ourselves able to establish the cosmic link, the cosmic relation, which can be bound up with this feeling-shade of astonishment, this astonishment becomes the sound o.²

The sound o is really nothing less than the action of breath in us when this breath is caught inwardly by astonishment, by amazement. You can understand the o, therefore, as the expression of astonishment, of amazement.

Lately the world's superficial method of observation has linked speech with something external. People have asked themselves: “What is the origin of the connections between sounds and the meaning of sounds?” People have not realized that everything in the world makes a feeling-impression on the individual. In some manner every single thing reacts upon human feeling, even if often quite delicately, so that it remains half-unconscious. But we shall never have a thing in front of us which we can describe by a word containing the sound o, unless somehow we feel astonishment, even if this astonishment is very subdued. If you say “stove” (German: Ofen) you say a word with o in it, because in “stove” there lies something which excites a subdued astonishment in you. Speech is grounded in this way in human feeling. You stand in a relation of feeling to the whole world and you respond to the whole world with sounds which express the relation of feeling in some way. As a rule, you see, people have only dealt with these things very superficially. They imagined that we imitated in speech the barking or growling of the animal. Accordingly a theory was evolved—the famous “Bow-wow theory”—according to which everything is imitation. These theories are dangerous because they are quarter-truths. When I imitate the dog and say “bow-wow”—that expresses the shade of feeling which lies in “ow”—I transpose myself into his condition of soul. Not in the sense of this theory, but on a detour, by transposing oneself into the condition of soul of the dog, is the sound formed. Another theory supposes that every object in the world conceals a tone; as, for instance, a bell contains its own tone. Based on this conception, the so-called “Ding-dong” theory was evolved. These two theories exist: the Bow-wow theory and the Ding-dong theory. But a person can only be understood by entering into the nature of speech as the expression for the world of feeling, for the relations of feeling, which we develop in response to things.

Another shade of response is that feeling-shade which we experience in the face of emptiness, or blackness, which, of course, is related to emptiness: this is the feeling-shade of fear, the feeling-shade of alarm. It is expressed by u, oo as in room. For fullness, for whiteness, light, and everything related to light or whiteness, including sound related to light, we have the feeling-shade of marvelling admiration, of wonder, of reverence: the a. If we have the feeling that an external impression is to be warded off, that we have, as it were, to avert our gaze from it, to protect ourselves, if, that is, we have the feeling that we must put up a resistance, this expresses itself in e. And if, again, we have the opposite feeling, of indicating, of approaching, of union, this expresses itself in i.

With these (we may go into all details later, as well as into diphthongs) we have the most important vowels, with the exception of one which is less common in European countries and which expresses a stronger emotion than all the others. If you try to produce a vowel by forming a sound in which a, o, u are all sounded, it means a feeling, at first, it is true, of fear, but an identification of oneself, in spite of it, with the former object of fear. The profoundest veneration would be expressed by this sound. The sound, as you know, is especially frequent in Oriental languages, but it also proves that the Orientals are people capable of developing great veneration—whereas it is absent from Occidental languages, because in the Occident we find people whose veneration is not their strongest point.

This survey gives us a picture of inner soul-stirrings expressed in vowels. All vowels express inner soul-emotions as experienced in sympathy with things. For even when we are afraid of a thing our fear is founded on some secret sympathy. We should not have this fear at all unless we had some secret sympathy with its object. In considering these facts you must be careful to take one complication into account. It is comparatively easy to observe that o is connected with astonishment, u with fear and alarm, a with wonder, reverence, e with resistance, i with approach, and aou with awe. But you will find the observation obscured by the facility with which confusion arises between the feeling-shades which you experience on hearing the sound and those you experience in making the sound. They are different. Of the feeling-shades which I have mentioned, you must remember that they are valid for communicating the sound. If, then, you wish to convey some emotion to someone by sound, these observations hold good. If you want to convey to someone that you yourself are afraid, or have had anxiety, you express it by u. One's own fear, and one's desire to excite fear in another person by making the и sound, are not the same feeling-shade. You will much more easily excite the echo of your own fear, if you want to excite fear, by saying to a child, for instance: “U-u-u-!” It is important to consider this in the light of the social significance of speech. If you take it into account you will readily make the above observation.

This experience through the vowels is manifestly a pure inward soul-process. This soul-process, actually the direct outcome of some sympathy, is often encountered by antipathy from outside. This occurs through the consonants, through the accompanying sounds. When we combine a vowel with a consonant, we always combine sympathy and antipathy, and our tongue, our lips, and our palate are really intended solely to function as antipathy-organs, to ward things off. If we spoke only in vowels, in self-sufficing sounds, we should have a simple relation of surrender towards things. We should actually identify ourselves with the flux of things, we should be very unegoistic, for we should develop the deepest possible sympathy with them; we should only draw back in response to the shade of sympathy in our feelings, for instance when we felt fear or horror, but in this very withdrawal sympathy would still be present. In the degree in which the vowels refer to the sound made by ourselves do the consonants refer to the description of the things themselves; the sound of things accompanies them. That is why you will find that the vowels must be sought out as shades of feeling.

Consonants fbm, etc., must be sought out as imitations of external things. Therefore, in showing you, yesterday, f by the fish, I was right in so far as I imitated the outward form of the fish. Consonants can always be traced back to imitations of external things; vowels, on the other hand, to the quite elementary expression of human shades of feeling about things. Consequently, you literally can understand speech as a meeting between sympathy and antipathy. The sympathies always reside in the vowels, the antipathies in the consonants, the accompanying sounds.

But we can understand speech formation in still another way: what really is that sympathy which is expressed in the “breast-man,” so that he brings antipathy to a standstill and the “head-man” merely accompanies it? It is essentially music exceeding certain limits. An experience of music disintegrates, exceeds a certain limit, “outwits” itself, as it were, becomes something more than a mere musical experience. That is: in the degree in which speech consists of vowels, it contains something musical, but in the degree in which it contains consonants, it contains something plastic, a painter's experience. And speech expresses a real synthesis, a real fusion of musical with plastic elements in man. You can see from this that in speech not only the natures of separate individuals are expressed by a kind of unconscious nuance, but, in fact, the natures of human communities. In German we say “Kopf.” “Kopf” expresses in its whole setting “roundness” form. Thus not only for the human head do we say “Kopf,” but for cabbage “Kohlkopf.” In German we express the form of the head in the word “Kopf.” The Roman did not express the form of the head; he said “caput,” and thereby expressed something psychic. He expressed the comprehending, understanding power of the head. He drew his name for “head” from a quite different source. He indicated on the one hand the sympathy of soul, mind (gemüt), and on the other the fusion of antipathy with the outer world. Just try to get a clear idea from the principal vowel of the source of the difference: “Kopf”—astonishment, amazement! The soul feels some astonishment, some amazement about anything round, because roundness in itself is bound up with all that produces astonishment, amazement. Take “caput:” the “A”—reverence. When a person makes a statement you have to accept its demand to be understood. You have to accept another person's statement in order to comprehend it.

In this way, in taking these things into account, you will be saved from the abstraction of going by what stands in the dictionary: For one language this word, for another language that. But the words of the separate languages have been derived here and there from quite different relations. It is utterly superficial to wish to compare them directly, and translating by the dictionary is really the worst translating. If in German we have the word “Fuss” (foot), that is because in our step we make a void, a furrow (Furche). Fuss is connected with Furche. We derive the name for foot from the action of making a furrow. The Romance languages derive “pes” from standing firm, having a point of stability. This linguistic study, so illuminating in teaching, this linguistic study of meanings, is completely absent in science, and it is easy to answer the question: Why is science still not enriched by things which, after all, could be of real practical help?

The reason is that we are still in the process of working out what is necessary for the fifth post-Atlantean period, particularly for education. If you take language in this way, as expressing something inward in its vowels, as indicating something external in its consonants, you will find yourself easily able to make drawings of consonants. Then you will not only need to use the material I give you in the next lectures, but you will be able to make pictures yourself, and so establish by yourself the inner contact with the children, which is far better than merely assimilation adopting the outer picture.

We have, then, recognized that speech is a relation of man to the cosmos. For man by himself would be content to admire, to be astonished; but his relations to the cosmos demand sound from his admiration, from his astonishment.

Now man is embedded in the cosmos in a peculiar way. It is easily possible from quite superficial comparisons to observe his rooted-ness in it. I say what I am saying now because—as you already saw from my previous lecture—much depends on the nature of our feelings to the growing human being, on our reverence for the growing being as a mysterious revelation of the whole cosmos. It is tremendously important to develop this sense as educators and teachers.

Now take, again, from a rather wider point of view the significant fact that the human being takes 18 breaths in a minute. How many breaths does he take in a day? 18 ×60 ×24 = 25,920 breaths in a day. But I can also calculate it by taking the number of breaths in 4 minutes, that is, 72. I should then, instead of multiplying 24 by 60, only have to multiply 6 by 60, that is multiply by 360 the number of breaths in 4 minutes, and my result would still be 25,920 breaths in a day (360 ×72 = 25,920). We can say: Every 4 minutes the process of breathing—breathing in, breathing out, breathing in, breathing out—is, as it were, a little day, and in multiplying this number by 360, the sum 25,920 is like a year in comparison, and the day of 24 hours is a “year” for our breathing. Now take our larger breathing-process which takes place in our daily alternation from waking to sleeping. What do waking and sleeping really mean? The meaning of waking and sleeping is that we are “breathing something in” and “breathing something out.” We breathe out the ego and the astral body when we fall asleep, and we breathe them in again when we wake up. We do this within the space of 24 hours. If we take this day, to have a corresponding year we must multiply it by 360. That is, in the course of a year we accomplish in this breathing something similar to the little day-long breathing-process in which we multiplied the breath of 4 minutes by 360: if we multiply by 360 the time between waking and sleeping which is passed in a day, we have the time spent between waking and sleeping in a year: and if, further, we multiply one year by our average span of life, that is by 72, the result is again 25,920. Now really you already have a twofold breathing-process: our fourfold breathing in and out, occurring 72 times, and making 25,920 times in a day; our waking and sleeping, occurring every day, 360 times in a year, and 25,920 times in our whole life. Then you have a third breathing-process, if you follow the sun in its revolution. You know that the point at which the sun rises every spring appears to proceed gradually every year, and the sun takes in this way 25,920 years to go round its whole orbit: here, too, then, in the “Platonic cosmic year” (Precessional Period), the same number 25,920.

How is our life poised in the world? We live 72 years on an average. Multiply this number by 360, and again you get 25,920. So you can visualize that the “Platonic year,” the sun's revolution round the worlds, which takes 25,920 years, has for its day our human life, so that we, in our human life, can look on the process which takes a year in the whole universe, as one breath, and can understand our human span of life as a day in the great year of the universe, so that again we can reverence the minutest process as a reflection of the great cosmic process. If you look at it more closely, the “Platonic year,” that is the course which is completed in the “Platonic year,” is a reflection of the entire process, which, since the old Saturn-evolution, through sun, moon, and earth-evolution, etc., up to Vulcan, has been taking place. But all the processes which take place in the way I have described are arranged as breathing-processes in terms of the number 25,920. And the process which takes place with us between waking and sleeping expresses again the process which took place during the moon-evolution, which is taking place during the earth-evolution, and which will take place during the Jupiter-evolution.³ It is an expression of our kinship with what is beyond earth. And our minutest breathing-process, which takes four minutes, expresses the force which makes us earthly beings. We must say, then: “We are earthly beings through our breathing-process; through our alternation from waking to sleeping we are moon, earth, and Jupiter beings; and through the interplay of our life's course with the conditions of the cosmic year we are cosmic beings. In the cosmic life, in the whole planetary system, one breath embraces a day of our existence; our seventy-two years of life are one day for that Being whose organs form the planetary system.” If you rise above the illusion that you are a limited being, if you comprehend what you are, as a process, as an interplay in the cosmos, what you are in reality, you can then say: “I myself am a breath of the cosmos.”

You may understand this in such a way that its theoretical aspect remains a matter of complete indifference to you, and it is simply a process about which once in a while you were quite interested to hear, but if you retain from it a sense of infinite reverence for what is mysteriously expressed in every human being, this sense will deepen within you to form the necessary inspiration for teaching and education. We cannot, in the education of the future, proceed by introducing into the process of education the external life of the adult. The scene is fearful to contemplate if in future people are to assemble in parliaments on a basis of democratic election, in order to decide the manifold question of teaching and education, acting on the opinions of those whose sole claim to a thorough realization of the situation is their democratic sense. If the situation were to develop as it promises now in Russia, the earth would abandon her appointed task, would be withdrawn from its fulfilment, would be unseated in the universe, and be frozen up.

The time is now ripe for man to extract what is necessary for education from his knowledge of the relation of man to the cosmos. We must permeate our whole education with this feeling: the growing being stands before us, but he is the continuation of what has taken place in the super-sensible before he was born or conceived. This feeling must arise from a knowledge such as we have just applied in the consideration of vowels and consonants. This feeling must permeate us. And only when, in actual fact, this feeling permeates us, shall we really be able to distinguish rightly. For do not imagine that this feeling is unfruitful! Man is so organized that with rightly directed feeling he can himself from these feelings derive his own guiding forces. If you do not achieve this vision in which every human being is a cosmic mystery, you can alternatively only get the feeling that each human being is a mere mechanism, and the cultivation of this feeling that the human being is a mere mechanism would, of course, mean the collapse of earthly civilization. The rise of this civilization, on the contrary, can only be sought in the permeation of our impulse for education by the experience of the cosmic significance of the whole being. We only acquire this cosmic feeling, however, as you see, by looking on the contents of human feeling as pertaining to the time between birth and death, and by regarding our human thinking as an indication of pre-natal processes, and on the human will as an indication of life after death, of the embryonic future or the embryo-to-be. In the threefold human being before us we have first the pre-natal experiences, then the experiences between birth and death, and thirdly what is after death; only that the pre-natal experiences loom into our life in the form of pictures, whereas what is after death is already present in us before death, like a seed.

Again, only through these facts do you get an idea of what really happens when one human being enters into a relation with another. If you read the old authorities on the art of teaching, for instance Herbart, so excellent for bygone times, you always have the feeling: They are operating with concepts with which they cannot approach reality at all; they remain outside reality. Only think how sympathy, rightly cultivated in the earthly sense, penetrates all willing. What lies in us as a seed of the future, as a seed of the after-death, through the will, prevails through love and sympathy. Because of this all that is involved in the will—so that it can be rightly checked or cultivated—must be pursued in education with quite peculiar love. We shall have to assist the sympathy already present in the individual by appealing to his will. What, then, will have to be the real impulse prompting the education of the will? It can be no other than the cultivation of our own sympathy with the pupil. The better the sympathies we cultivate with him, the better will be our educational methods.

And now you will say: “But as the education of the intellect, because it is permeated by antipathy, is the opposite of the education of the will, we should have to cultivate antipathies if we wish to educate the pupil from the point of view of his reason, his intellect!” And that is true; only you must understand it rightly. You must establish these antipathies on the proper footing. You must try to understand the pupil himself correctly if you wish to educate him correctly for the life of ideas. Your understanding itself contains the element of antipathy, for this is inherent in it. By understanding the pupil, by trying to penetrate into the feeling-shades of his being, you become the educator, the teacher, of his reason, of his perception. Here already reside the antipathies, but you make them good by educating the pupil. And you can rest assured: We are not brought together in life unless our meeting is conditioned beforehand. What appear to be external processes are really always the external expression of something inward, however extraordinary this may seem to the superficial view of the world. The fact that you are here to instruct and educate the Waldorf children and all that they represent, certainly points to the Karmic kinship of this group of teachers with just this group of children. And you are the right teachers for these children because you have formerly developed antipathies for these children, and you free yourself from these antipathies by educating the reason of these children now. And we must cultivate sympathies in the right way by producing the right kind of will-training.

Be clear, then, as to this: You can best try to penetrate to the dual being, “man,” by the methods tried in our discussion of training.⁴ But you must try to penetrate to every side of the human being. By following out the methods practised in our teachers' training course,⁵ you will only become a good educator for the child's life of ideas. You will be a good teacher for the child's life of will if you try to surround each individual child with sympathy, with real sympathy. These things belong to education, too: antipathy, which enables us to comprehend; sympathy, which enables us to love. Because we have a body, and through it centres at which sympathy and antipathy meet, these insinuate themselves into that social human intercourse which is expressed in education and teaching. I beg you to feel this through and through.

• 1. Rudolf Steiner: The General Study of the Human Being as the Basis of Pedagogy, Second Lecture. Phil.-Anthrop. Press, Dornach, Switzerland.
• 2. Extract from Eurythmy as Visible Speech referred to at end of this volume. (see inset)
• 3. See Rudolf Steiner, Occult Science, World-evolution and Man, Philosophical-Anthroposophical Press of the Goetheanum, Dornach, Switzerland.
• 4. See The Art of Education, periodical of the pedagogy of Rudolf Steiner, fifth year, numbers 5 and 6.
• 5. The discussion was on the study and treatment of children's temperaments.

Today we will try an exercise in which we have to hold the breath somewhat longer. Speech exercise:

Fulfilling goes
through hoping
goes through longing
through willing
willing flows
in wavering wails in quavering
waves veiling
waving breathing
in freedom
freedom winning
kindling

You can only achieve what is intended by dividing the lines properly. Then you will bring the proper rhythm to your breath. The object of this exercise is to do gymnastics with the voice in order to regulate the breath.

In words like fulfilling and willing, both “l’s” must be pronounced. You shouldn’t put an “h” into the first “l”, but the two “l’s” must be sounded one after the other.

You must also try to avoid speaking with a rasping voice, and develop instead tone in your voice, bringing it up from deeper in your chest, to give full value to the vowels. (All Austrians have tinny voices!)

Before each of the above lines the breath should be consciously brought into order. The words that appear together also belong together when you read.

You know that we usually do the following speech exercises also:

Barbara sass stracks am Abhang
or: Barbara sass nah am abhang
or: Abraham a Sancta Clara kam an¹

The Steed and the Bull.

An impudent boy came flying along on a fiery steed. A wild bull called out to the horse, “Shame on you! I would not be governed by a lad!” “But I would,” replied the horse, “for what kind of honor would it bring me to throw the boy off?”

They all read the fable aloud.

RUDOLF STEINER: After hearing this fable so often you will certainly sense that it is written in the particular style of fables and many other writings of the eighteenth century. You get the feeling that they didn’t quite finish, just as other things were not fully completed then.

Rudolf Steiner read the fable aloud again.

RUDOLF STEINER: Now, in the twentieth century the fable would be continued something like this: “That may be the honor of bulls! And if I were to seek honor by stubbornly standing still, that would not be a horse’s honor but a mule’s honor!” That is how it would be written in these days. Then the children would notice immediately that there are three kinds of honor; the honor of a bull, the honor of a horse, and the honor of a mule. The bull throws the boy, the horse carries him quietly along because that is chivalrous, the mule stubbornly stands still because that is the mule’s idea of honor.

Today I would like to give you some material for tomorrow’s discussion on the subject of your lessons, since we will then consider particularly the seven-to-fourteen-year-old children.²

So we will now speak of certain things that can guide you, and after I have presented this introduction, you will only need an ordinary reference book to amplify the various facts we have spoken of in our discussions. Today we will consider not so much how to acquire the actual subject matter of our work, but rather how to cherish and cultivate within ourselves the spirit of an education that contains the future within it. You will see that what we discuss today focuses on the work in the oldest classes.³

I would therefore like to discuss what relates to the history of European civilization from the eleventh to the seventeenth century. You must always remember that teaching history to children should always contain a subjective element, and this is also true, more or less, when you work with adults. It is easy enough to say that people should not bring opinions and subjective ideas into history. You might make this a rule, but it cannot be adhered to. Take aspect of history in any country of the world; you will either have to arrange the facts in groups for yourself, or you will find them already thus assembled by others in the case of less recent history.

If, for example, you want to describe the spirit of the old Germanic peoples, you will turn to the Germania of Tacitus. But Tacitus was a person of very subjective thought; the facts he presents were clearly arranged in groups. You can only hope to succeed in your task by marshalling the facts in your own personal way, or else by using what others have done in a similar way before you. You can find examples, from literature for example, to substantiate what I have said.

Treitschke wrote German History of the Nineteenth Century in several volumes; it delighted Herman Grimm, who was also a competent judge, but it horrified many adherents of the entente. But when you read Treitschke you will feel immediately that his excellence is due to the very subjective coloring of his grouping of facts. In history the important thing is the ability to form a judgment of the underlying forces and powers at work. But you must realize that the judgment of one is more mature, that of another less so, and the latter should not pass any judgment at all because nothing has been understood about the underlying forces. The former, just because an independent judgment has been formed, will very well describe the actual course of history.

Herman Grimm portrayed Frederick the Great, and Macaulay also portrayed him, but Macaulay’s picture is completely different. Grimm even composed his article as a kind of critique of Macaulay’s article, and speaking from his perspective he said, “Macaulay’s picture of Frederick the Great is the grotesque face of an English lord with snuff on his nose!” The only difference is that Grimm is a nineteenth-century German and Macaulay a nineteenth-century Englishman. And any third person passing judgment on both would really be very narrow-minded if one were found to be true and the other false.

You might as well choose examples even more drastic. Many of you know the description of Martin Luther in the ordinary history books. If one day you try the experiment of reading it in the Catholic history books, you will get to know a Martin Luther whom you never knew before! But when you have read it you will find it difficult to say that the difference is anything but different viewpoints. Now it is just such points of view arising from nation or creed that must be overcome by future teachers. Because of this we must earnestly work so that teachers are broad-minded, so that the point will be reached of having a broad-minded philosophy of life. Such a mental attitude gives you a free and wide view of historical facts, and a skillfull arranging of these facts will enable you to convey to your pupils the secrets of human evolution.

Now, when you want to give the children some idea of cultural history from the eleventh to the seventeenth centuries, you would first have to describe what led up to the Crusades. You would describe the course of the first, second, and third crusades, and how they gradually stagnated, failing to achieve what they should have. You would describe the spirit of asceticism that spread through much of Europe at the time—how everywhere, through the secularization of the church (or in any case in connection with this secularization), there arose individuals such as Bernard of Clairvaux, natures full of inner piety, such piety that it gave the impression to others that they were miracle-workers. From reference books you could try to become acquainted with biographies of people of this kind and then bring them to life for your pupils; you could try to conjure before them the living spirit that inspired those great expeditions to the East—because they were powerful in the views of the time. You would have to describe how these expeditions came to be through Peter of Amiens and Walter the Penniless, followed by the expedition of Godfrey of Bouillon and others.

Then you could relate how these Crusades set out toward the East and how enormous numbers of people perished, often before they reached their destination. You can certainly describe to boys and girls of thirteen to fifteen how these expeditions were composed, how they set out without any organization and made their way toward the East, and how many perished because of unfavorable conditions, and having to force their way through foreign countries and peoples.

You will then have to describe how those who reached the East had a certain degree of success at first. You can speak of what Godfrey of Bouillon accomplished, but you will also have to show the contrast that arose between the Crusaders of the later Crusades and Greek policy—how the Greeks became jealous of what the Crusaders were doing, feeling that the Crusaders’ goals were contrary to what the Greeks themselves were planning to do in the East; how fundamentally the Greeks, as much as the Crusaders, wanted to absorb the interests of the East into their own sphere of interests. Paint a graphic picture of how the goals of the Crusaders roused the Greeks’ opposition.

Then I suggest that you describe how the crusading armies in the East, instead of taking up arms against the Eastern peoples in western Asia, began to fight among themselves; and how the European peoples themselves, especially the Franks and their neighbors, began to quarrel about their claims to conquests and even took up arms against each other. The Crusades originated in fiery enthusiasm, but the spirit of inner discord seized those who took part in them; furthermore, antagonism arose between the Crusaders and the Greeks.

In addition to all this, at the very time of the Crusades we find opposition between church and state, and this became more and more evident. It may also be necessary to acquaint the children with something that is true, although in all its essential points it is veiled by the bias of historical writers. Godfrey of Bouillon, the leader of the first Crusade, really intended to conquer Jerusalem in order to balance the influence of Rome. He and his companions did not say this openly to the others, but in their hearts they carried the battle cry, “Jerusalem versus Rome!” They said among themselves, “Let us exalt Jerusalem so that it may become the center of Christianity, so that Rome no longer holds that position.” This, the underlying motive of the first Crusaders, can be conveyed to the children tactfully, and it is important to do so.

Those were great tasks that the Crusaders undertook, and great too were the tasks that gradually arose from the circumstances themselves. Little by little it came to be that the Crusaders were not great enough to bear the burden of such tasks without harm to themselves. And so it happened that, at the time of the fiercest battles, licentiousness and immorality gradually broke out among the Crusaders.

You can find these facts in any history book, and they serve to illustrate the general course of events. You will notice that in my arrangement of facts today, I am actually describing them without bias, and I will try also to describe in a purely historical way what took place in Europe from the eleventh to the seventeenth century.

It is often possible to make history clear through hypothesis, so let’s suppose that the Franks had conquered Syria and had established a Frankish dominion there—that they had reached an understanding with the Greeks, had left room for them, and had relinquished to them the rule of the more western portion of Asia Minor. Then the ancient traditions of the Greeks would have been fulfilled and North Africa would have become Greek. A counterbalance to subsequent events would have thus been established. The Greeks would have held sway in North Africa, the Franks in Syria. Then they wouldn’t have quarrelled with each other, and thus they wouldn’t have forfeited their dominions, and the invasions of the worst Eastern peoples—the Mongols, the Mamelukes, and Turkish Ottoman—would have been prevented. Because of the immorality of the Crusaders, and inevitably their inability to rise to their tasks, the Mongols, Mamelukes, and Ottomans overran the very regions that the Crusaders were attempting to “Europeanize.” And so we see how the reaction toward the great enthusiasm that led to the Crusades, spread over vast regions, is counterattacked from the other side. We see the Moslem-Mongolian advance, which set up military tyrants, and which for a long time remained the terror of Europe and cast a dark shadow over the history of the Crusades.

You see, by describing such things and acquiring the necessary pictorial descriptions from reference books, you can awaken in the children themselves pictures of the progress of civilization—pictures that will live on in them. And that is the important thing—that the children be given these pictures. They will initially be conjured in their minds through your graphic descriptions. If you can then show them some works of art, notable paintings from this period, you will find this supports what you say.

Thus, you will make it clear to the children what happened during the Crusades, and enable them to make their own mental pictures of these events. You have shown them the dark side of the picture, the terror caused by the Mongolians and Moslems, and now it will be well to add the other side, the good things that developed.

Describe vividly to the children how the pilgrims who had migrated east, came to understand many new things there. Agriculture, for example, was at that time very backward in Europe. In the East it was possible for these Western pilgrims to learn a much better way of farming their land. The pilgrims who reached the East and afterward returned to Europe (and many did return), brought with them a skilled knowledge of agricultural methods, which raised the standard of agricultural production considerably. The Europeans owed this to the experience that the pilgrims brought back with them.

You must describe this to the children so graphically that they actually see it there before them—how the wheat and other cereals flourished less before the Crusades, how they were smaller, more sparse, the ears less full, and how after the Crusades they were much fuller. Describe all this in pictures! Then you can also tell how the pilgrims really came to understand industries found in the East at the time, and still unknown in Europe. The West was in many ways more backward than the East. What grew and flourished in such a fine way in the industrial activity of the Italian towns and other places further north, was all due to the Crusades; we also have to thank them for a new artistic impulse. Thus you can call on pictures of the cultural and spiritual progress of that time.

There is something else you can describe to the children: you can say to them, “You see, children, that was when the Europeans came to know the Greeks; they had fallen away from Rome in the first thousand years after Christ, but had remained Christians. All over the West people believed that no one could be a Christian without viewing the Pope as the head of the church.” Now explain to the children how the Crusaders, to their astonishment and edification, learned that there were other Christians who did not acknowledge the Roman Pope. This freeing of the spiritual side of Christianity from the temporal church organization was something very new at the time. This is something you can explain to the children.

Then you can tell them that even among the Moslems, who could scarcely have been called very pleasant denizens of the world, there were also noble, generous, and brave people. And so the pilgrims came to know people who could be brave and generous without being Christians; thus a person could even be good and brave without being a Christian. For the Europeans of that time this was a great lesson that the Crusaders brought with them when they returned to Europe. During their stay in the East they gained many things that they brought back to Europe to further its spiritual progress.

You can then continue, “Just imagine, children, there was a time when the Europeans had no cotton cloth, they did not even have a word for it; they had no muslin—that too is an Eastern word; they could not lie down or laze about on a sofa, for sofas and the word for them were brought back by the Crusaders. They had no mattresses either. Mattress is also an Asian word. The bazaar also belongs to the East, and this suggests immediately an entirely new view of the public display of goods, and it initiated large scale exhibitions of goods. Bazaars (of an Eastern kind) were very common in the East, but there was nothing of the kind in Europe before the Europeans went on their Crusades. Even the word magazine [the word for “storeroom” in German] bound up though it now is with our trade life, was not originally European; the use of great warehouses to meet the growth of trade is something that the Europeans learned from the Asians.

“Just imagine,” you can say to the children, “how restricted life was in Europe; they hadn’t even any warehouses. The word arsenal too has the same origin. But now look; there is something else that the Europeans learned from the East and that is expressed in the word tariff. Until the thirteenth century the European peoples knew very little about tax-paying. But payment of taxes according to a tariff, the payment of all kinds of duties, was not introduced into Europe until the Crusaders learned about it from the Asians.

“Thus you see that a great number of things were changed in Europe due to the Crusades. Not much of what the Crusaders intended to do was realized, but other things were brought about, and transformations of all kinds occurred in Europe as a result of what was learned in the East. And further, this was all connected with what they observed of the Eastern political life. Political life—the state as such—developed much earlier in the East than in Europe. Before the Crusades the forms of government in Europe were much freer than they were afterward. Because of the Crusades it also happened that wide areas were grouped together as political units.”

Always assuming that the children are of the age I indicated, you can now say to them, “You have already learned in your history lessons that in former times the Romans became rulers over many lands. When they were extending their dominions, at the beginning of the Christian era, Europe was very poor and becoming even poorer. What was the cause of this increasing poverty? The people had to hand over their money to others. Central Europe will become poor again today because it must also hand over its money to others. At that time the Europeans had to give up their money to the Asiatics; the bulk of their money went to the borders of the Roman Empire. Due to this, barter became more and more the custom, and this is something that might happen again, sad though it would be, unless people rouse themselves to seek the spirit. Nevertheless, amid this poverty the ascetic, devotional spirit of the Crusades evolved.

“Through the Crusades, therefore, in faraway Asia, Europeans learned to know all kinds of things—industrial production, agriculture, and so on. In this way, they could again produce things that the Asians could buy from them. Money traveled back again. Europe became increasingly rich during the Crusades. This growth of wealth in Europe occurred through the increase in its own productions; that is a further result of the Crusades. The Crusades are indeed migrations of peoples to Asia, and when the Crusaders returned to Europe they brought with them a certain ability. It was due only to this ability and skill that Florence, Italy arose and became what it did, and also due to this, such figures as Dante and others emerged.”

You see how necessary it is to allow impulses of this kind to permeate your history lessons. When it is said today that more should be taught about the history of civilizations, people think they should give dry descriptions of how one thing arises from another. But even in these lower classes, history should be described by a teacher who really lives in the subject, so that through the pictures created for the children, this period of history will live again before them. You can conjure the picture of a poverty-stricken Europe, with acres of poor and sparsely sown crops, where there were no towns—only meager farms in poor condition. Nevertheless, an enthusiasm for the Crusades arises out of this same poor Europe. But then you will have to tell them how the people found this task beyond their powers and they began to quarrel and fall into evil ways, and even when they were back in Europe discord and dissension arose again. The real purpose of the Crusades was not achieved; on the contrary, the ground was prepared for the Moslems. But the Europeans learned many things in the East: how towns—flourishing towns—arise, and in the towns a rich spiritual life and culture; agriculture improved and the fields became more fertile, the industries flourished, and a spiritual life and culture arose.

You will try to present all this to the children in graphic pictures and explain to them that, before the Crusades, people did not lounge on sofas! There was no bourgeois life at that time with sofas in the best parlors and all the rest of it. Try to make all these historical pictures live for the children, and then you will give them a truer kind of history. Show how Europe became so poor that people had to resort to bartering goods, and then it became rich again because of what people learned in the East. This will bring life into your history lessons!

One is often asked these days what history books to read—which historian is best? The reply can only be that, in the end, each one is the best and the worst; it really makes no difference which historical author you choose. Do not read what is written in the lines, but read between the lines. Try to allow yourselves to be inspired so that, through your own intuitive sense, you can learn to know the true course of events. Try to acquire a feeling for how a true history should be written. You will recognize from the style and manner of writing which historian has found the truth and which has not.

You can find many things in Ranke.⁴ But what we are trying to cultivate here is the spirit of truth and reality, and when you read Ranke in the light of this spirit of truth, you find that he is very painstaking but that his descriptions of characters reduce them to mere shadows; you feel as though you could pass through them, because they have no substance—they are not flesh and blood, and you might well say that you don’t want history to be a series of mere phantasms.

One of the teachers recommended Lamprecht.⁵

Rudolf Steiner: Yes, but in him you have the feeling that he does not describe people, but figures of colored cardboard—except that he paints them with the most vivid colors possible. They are not human beings, but merely colored cardboard.

Now Treitschke on the other hand is admittedly biased, but his personalities do really stand on their two feet!⁶ He places people on their feet, and they are flesh and blood—not cardboard figures like those of Lamprecht, nor are they mere shadowy pictures as with Ranke. Unfortunately Treitschke’s history only covers the nineteenth century.

But, to get a feeling for truly good historical writing, you should read Tacitus.⁷ When you read Tacitus, everything is absolutely alive. When you study the way Tacitus portrays a certain epoch of history—describing the people as individuals or in groups—and allow all of this to affect your own sense of reality, it exists for you as real as life itself! Beginning with Tacitus, try to discover how to describe other periods as well.

Of course you can’t read what is out of date, otherwise the fiery Rotteck would always be very good.⁸ But he is dated, not merely because of the facts, but in his whole outlook; he considers as gospel the political constitution of the Baden of his time, as well as liberalism. He even applies them to Persian, Egyptian, and Greek life, but he always writes with such fire that one cannot help wishing there were many historians like Rotteck today.

If, however, you study the current books on history (with a sharp eye for what is often left out), you will gain the capacity to give children living pictures of the process of human progress from the eleventh to the seventeenth centuries. And, for your part, you can omit much that is said in these histories about Frederick Barbarossa, Richard Coeur de Leon, or Frederick II. Much of this is interesting but not particularly significant for real knowledge of history. It is far more important to communicate to the children the great impulses at work in history.

We can continue now to the question of how to treat a class where several boys and girls have developed a foolish kind of adoration for the male or female teacher.

Idolization of this kind is not really unhealthy until the age of twelve to fourteen, when the problem becomes more serious. Before fourteen it is especially important not to take these things too seriously and to remember that they often disappear again very quickly.

RUDOLF STEINER: I would consider that exposing the children to ridicule in front of the class is very much a two-edged sword, because the effect lasts too long, and the child will lose a connection with the class. If you ridicule children it is very difficult for them to regain the proper relationship with the rest of the class. The result is usually that the children succeed in being removed from the school.

Prayer was mentioned, along with other possible ways of helping these children.

RUDOLF STEINER: You are quite right!

It was suggested that one might speak to the child and attempt to divert such affection.

RUDOLF STEINER: The principle of diverting the devotion and capacity for enthusiasm into other channels is proper—except that you will not gain much by talking with such children, because that is exactly what they want. Precisely because this foolish adoration arises much more from feelings—and even passions—than from thinking, it would be extremely difficult to work against it effectively by being with the child frequently. It is certainly true that unhealthy feelings of this kind are due to the qualities of enthusiasm and devotion having taken the wrong path—enthusiasm in the gifted children and devotion in the less gifted. The whole thing is not very important in itself, but it will have repercussions in the way the children participate in the lessons, and this is the more serious aspect. When all of the children are affected by this foolish adoration, it is not so serious and will not last long; it will soon disappear. The class gets ideas that do not materialize; this leads to disappointment, and then the thing dies naturally. In this case it could be very good to tell a humorous story to the whole class. It only becomes detrimental when groups of children yield to this unwholesome idolization.

It became necessary to think this matter over thoroughly, because it can play a role in the entire life of the school. Affectionate attachment is not so bad in itself, but it weakens the children when it becomes unhealthy. The children become listless and lethargic. In some cases it can lead to serious conditions of weakness in the children. It is a very subtle and delicate matter, because the treatment could result in turning the children’s feelings toward the exact opposite—into hatred. In some cases it could be very good to say, “You look too warm. Perhaps you should go outside for five minutes.

In any case, this problem should be handled individually and each child treated individually. You should try anything that common sense tells you may help. There is one thing however that you should be extremely careful about—that such children do not get the idea that you notice their adoration. You really have to acquire the art of making them think you are unaware of it. Even when you take steps to cure them, the children should think you are merely acting normal.

Let’s suppose that several children have this foolish feeling for a man who has four, five, maybe six children of his own. In this case he has the simplest remedy; he can invite the “adoring” children to go for a walk with him and bring his own children along. This would be a very good remedy. But the children should not know why they were invited. You should use concrete things like this.

In a situation like this, it’s most important that you yourself act correctly, not treating those children who idolize you any differently than the others. When you remain unaffected by such foolish behavior, it disappears after awhile. It becomes serious, however, when a certain antipathy replaces adoration. This can be minimized by ignoring it. Don’t let the children know you have noticed anything, because if you call them on it or ridicule them in front of the class, the hatred will be that much greater. If you tell a story it must appear as though you would have told it anyway, otherwise certain antipathy will certainly arise afterward as a result; that can’t be avoided. But when you work with the same class for several years you will be able to restore a normal sympathy over time.

You cannot prevent another consequence, either, because when this foolish adoration assumes a serious form, the children will be somewhat weakened by it. When it is finished, you must help them to get over this weakness. This will indeed be the best therapy that you can apply. You can make use of all the other remedies—sending the children out for five minutes, taking them for walks, and so on, but your attitude must always be to ignore the whole matter in a healthy way. The child will be somewhat weakened, and afterward the teacher will be able to help the child through love and affection. If the matter were to become very serious, the teacher, because of being the object of adoration, could not do much; such a teacher would then have to seek the advice and help of others.

Tomorrow’s subject has to do with actual teaching rather than educational principles as such. Will each of you imagine that several children in your class are not doing very well in one subject or another—for example, arithmetic, languages, natural history, gymnastics, or eurythmy. How, through special treatment of the children’s human capacities, would you try to meet a misfortune of this kind during the early school years? How could you use the other subjects to help you?

• 1. The entire verse: “Barbara sass nah am Abhang, / Sprach gar sangbar—zaghaft langsam; / Mannhaft kam alsdann am Waldrand / Abraham a Sancta Clara!” is from material given by Julius Hey in Die Kunst der Sprache, Mainz-Leipzig, 1914. Rudolf Steiner found that these sound-sequences could be used and also mentioned the exercise of Hey’s for E (eh). While Hey’s exercises have a certain meaning, the exercises given by Steiner come purely from the element of sound.
• 2. Practical Advice to Teachers, lecture 8.
• 3. The Waldorf School began with grades 1–8 only. The oldest children in the school were thus fourteen to fifteen years of age.
• 4. Leopold von Ranke (1795–1886), German historian and founder of the modern school of history. He championed so-called “objective” writing based on source material instead of legend and tradition.
• 5. Karl Lamprecht (1856–1915) wrote a German history in nineteen volumes.
• 6. Heinrich von Treitschke (1834–1896), German historian and publicist. Considered the successor to Ranke as Prussian historian, he advocated authoritarian “power politics” (i.e., German unity through force), favored colonial expansion, and promoted anti-British sentiment in Germany.
• 7. Cornelius Tacitus (A.D. 56–120; not to be confused with Tacitus, the Roman emperor from A.D. 275 to 276), Roman orator, politician, and historian. His main work was Historiae.
• 8. Karl von Rotteck (1775–1840) wrote numerous volumes on national and world history.

In the last lecture the endeavour was made to show how necessary it is for men of the present day to turn the eye of the soul towards spiritual science, to those spheres of existence, of reality, in which the rule of the spirit within human evolution is clearly perceptible to anyone who has the faculty of sight in such regions.

As I said, the middle of the fifteenth century brought with it a complete change in the relation of civilized man's soul to the three Hierarchies next above man, the Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai. Hitherto it has been out of their own interests and impulses that they worked in human evolution. In our times, this connection has come to an end. They have for the moment no interest in continuing to work as before on the evolution of man. They will only enter into a new relationship to us when human beings begin to develop an interest in the spiritual worlds, out of free will and of their own accord. If we would not lose all connection with the spiritual worlds, we must occupy ourselves with them in the near future, for the spiritual beings who have been connected with us so far have of themselves no reason to be further interested in us. We can only arouse their interest anew if out of our own souls we again concern ourselves with the spiritual world, fostering thoughts, sentiments, and impulses of will, into which spiritual forces can flow. The question may and must be asked, how can human beings manage so to concern themselves with the spiritual worlds as to maintain their connection with the higher Hierarchies as the Earth evolution proceeds. The answer may deal with things which apparently have little to do with the question; but we shall see that they do provide the foundation on which we can rebuild onwards into the future our, connection with the spiritual world.

The first thing which we must examine is the effect of the various confessions, the creeds, existing among civilized people. Hitherto they were necessary, to guide the heart and, mind to spiritual realms, but in future they will help to detach man from the spiritual world, unless they admit something entirely new into their efforts. Fundamentally speaking, the creeds of the present day are based on the egoism of man, as we shall realize if we put before our souls one question of such great importance that it forms, and always must form, a touchstone for their views, the question of the immortality of the human soul. We can see, from the way in which this question is generally handled by the creeds, that they appeal largely to man's egoistic instincts. Of course there are deeper foundations for their speech, but these we are not discussing today: as a rule the creeds speak of the “continued existence of the soul after death"—that is, the continuation of the life of the human soul.

To deal with the subject of immortality from this point of view is comparatively easy, for human egotism asserts itself there emphatically. Man simply cannot bear—apart from all truth about the question—the thought of utter extinction at death, so that a certain response is always to be found in man’s soul when "life after death" is mentioned. The treatment generally given today to the idea springs from an egoistic interest in people. They would prefer not to die as souls at physical death. Naturally, the soul's continued existence after death will be assumed in all our future discussions on immortality, but the way in which anthroposophical spiritual science speaks of the continued existence of the soul after death is very far from being accepted by the creeds.

But this also is important: that people of our day must hear a very different language about immortality from that to which they are accustomed. One who discusses the question of immortality should not only speak of life after death, but also of that life which is lived here in the physical world between birth and death. For as you know, this life is also a "continuation"; it is a continuation of the life passed between our last death and that birth through which we are now in the physical world. That is the view which men must learn to hold—that the life here is a continuation of the spiritual life before birth. In the growth of a child from day to day, from week to week, from year to year, we must notice forces from the spiritual world arising from its inner being, forces which have come with birth and work so as gradually to form the being of man as time goes by. In a sense we lift the veil of the God in man when we enter into the life of the child to develop it. Social relations must take on something of a religious impulse permeating the whole of life between man and man. For this the important, the essential thing is an attitude which never forgets that physical life is a continuation of a pre-natal life, of spirit and soul.

Many things will follow on this. For one thing we shall recognize that our real humanity lies in the depths of our being, gradually emerging. I have referred to ancient times of human evolution, known from an anthroposophical standpoint as the first and second post-Atlantean epochs. People in those days were as capable of development right into their old age as only the young are nowadays. A child goes through a physical evolution about its seventh year with the change of teeth; through another metamorphosis when puberty occurs; but after that what goes on in his evolution is outwardly less noticeable. In olden times this was not so; what man went through in soul and spirit expressed itself into much later stages of life. Nowadays old age sets in at seventeen or eighteen, and we are amazed at its evidences. Here is an example: a short time ago, in Stuttgart, at a meeting of the Cultural Committee where present-day education was discussed from the most varied points of view, a young man got up (let us call him "a young man" though he might equally well be called an "old boy"!) who told us we needed instructing about the true ideals of education! He began by uttering some very high-sounding words, then read out the programme of a modern Educational Society. After much stumbling he finally broke down, and, having no more to say, gathered up the threads with "I must there­fore claim to have proved that old age no longer understands its own youth," and went out. I replied that I quite saw we had not understood him, for the simple reason that his speech and behaviour had been those of an old man; he had in fact enunciated as principles, like an ancient grey-beard, the last word in abstractions. Old age, nowadays, means the limit up to which a man can develop. Up to a particular age a person can absorb all sorts of things, and is not ashamed to develop himself. But at about twenty years of age he feels shame at the idea of developing farther. Seldom nowadays do we find people with grey hair and wrinkles welcoming with joy the dawn of each year because each year brings new possibilities of development to the organism and new knowledge, unattainable before, is within reach. At the inconsiderable age of thirty men are ashamed to make themselves capable of development, or to learn anything more. The point is that we should actually retain the possibility, all through life, of rejoicing in the coming year, because each year charms forth the divine-spiritual content of our own inner being in ever new forms.

I want to emphasize this point. We should really and truly learn to experience our life as capable of development not only in youth, but through its whole span between birth and death. For this a new education will be necessary. We elders find that to look back at our own schooldays evokes few pleasant thoughts. We must manage to shape school­days for the children of today so that to remember them will provide an ever new and invigorating source of life. Now this will bring, as you can see, the possibility of opening for mankind real perception of the soul-spiritual within themselves, of experiencing something extending beyond the everyday life which is stirred and stimulated from without.

Other knowledge will be recognized as necessary. There is a secret, intimately connected with the present stage of human evolution, which is not known today. In earlier times, before the middle of the fifteenth century, it was not necessary to take much notice of it, but today it must be reckoned with. This mystery of life is that man, constituted as he is today in body, soul and spirit, every night looks, to a certain extent, at the events of the coming day, but without always carrying that vision over into full day-consciousness. It is his "Angel" who has that clear consciousness. But what is experienced at night in community with that being whom we call the Angel is a pre-vision of the coming day. This is no subject for human curiosity, but a matter for practical life. Only when the feeling of this fact fills our inner being can we make right decisions and bring right thoughts into the course of daily life. Let us assume that a man has something definite to do, say at noon. This that he has to do has already been arranged by his Angel and himself during the preceding night, though the fact is not necessarily kept in consciousness and human curiosity has no part in it. People should be filled with the conviction that during the day they should realize in a fruitful way what they have arranged at night in co-operation with this Angel being.

Much that has happened of late might draw men's attention with almost shattering force to what I have just said. The last four or five years of agony should have taught men that the consciousness of their association with higher beings through the experiences of the night did not, alas! exist. If the feeling had permeated men that their doings in the day were in harmony with the decisions made with their Angels in the preceding night, how different events would have been! These things must be spoken of now, to point out how man must learn to regard this life between birth and death as a continuation of the life of spirit and soul which was his before birth. It must be made known that man in future should be able to experience throughout his whole life the revelation of the Divine in his own being, and that through all his life in the day this vivid consciousness should persist as: "What I do from morning till evening I have discussed with my Angel, while I slept." Men must turn to feelings which are more concrete with regard to the spiritual world than the modern abstractions of various creeds, which at the same time claim that they appeal to unselfish, not to egoistic human instincts. From such feelings will arise that which will provide the necessary relation to the beings belonging to the Hierarchy of the Angels, who will once more be able to interest themselves on our behalf. Men's attitude to the spiritual world must move in this appointed direction.

Yet again we must observe something. The creeds speak much about "God" and "The Divine." What do they really mean? Surely something of which a vague conscious­ness, at least, exists in the soul of man. After all, it is not, what name is given to a thing that matters, but what it means to a man's soul. Men talk of “God" and of "Christ," but all the time they only mean the "Angel"—the Angel to which they turn because they meet a response in their souls. Whatever the creeds may speak of today, whether of God or Christ or other divine being, the substance of the thought only relates to the Angel Beings who are connected with man, the Angeloi. Higher it cannot rise, since people are disinclined to seek any wider relation to the spiritual world than an egoistic one. The relation to the Archangeloi, the Hierarchy of the Archangels, must indeed be sought in another way. Men's interests today must be considerably widened. I will show you how that extension must take place, so that from making response only to the Angeloi, they may rise in their feelings to the Archangeloi.

They must realize that they have passed through terrible experiences all over the civilized world during the last few years. Many have asked about the "causes" of, these events, with mutual imputations of "guilt " and " innocence ": yet we need only look below the mere surface of things and we shall have little interest in all this talk about “causes " and "war-guilt" or " innocence," simply because we can see that what has come up to the surface in these last four or five years is, like waves of the sea, always there, but brought up from the depths to the surface by the forces below. An upheaval of human forces had been going on; one people after another shared in the enormous folly of those years; one could but say: "Some turmoil of elemental forces is surging upwards into view. The sea of human life has become unquiet—What is it?"

We shall never get things clear if we do not connect this fact of humanity's unrest with the whole period we call "history." We must convince ourselves that the armed struggle of the last few years is only the beginning of events which will take place in quite other spheres, but which have never before existed among us in this particular form. We are not at the end of a stage of evolution—only superficial observation could lead to that conclusion—we stand at the beginning of the greatest conflicts, the greatest spiritual conflicts of the civilized world, and we must put forth our best efforts to be equal to them. Increasing opposition is threatened in the soul-attitude of East and West in the near future, for East and West have developed in two quite different directions. If we would see into these things, we must set before our­selves certain phenomena in their deepest, most fundamental form as riddles to be solved.

For decades we have heard repeated in socialist circles holding the Marxian theory, that everything man experiences as art, religion, custom, law or science is just "Ideology " (I have discussed this at greater length in the first chapter of The Threefold Commonwealth). This means that a view which had been developing amongst the middle classes for the last three or four hundred years, but which they were too timid to admit, has been frankly acknowledged by the socialists of the last half-century. They assert that the genuine reality of social life consists in actual happenings; therefore the real lies only in the economic forces. All conceptions of art, religion, custom, science, law, morality, merely form a kind of vapour rising from true reality, and are mere ideology, with nothing but a semblance of reality. The socialists conclude that it is only necessary to change economic life and all other changes will ensue, since everything else—morality, law, religion and so forth—is only an unreal vapour arising from the events in the economic sphere, which is the "only reality."

If, however, the world be considered in no restricted sense but as a great whole, we shall defend this word "ideology " which, but for their timid dislike of facts, the middle classes might have been using for three or four hundred years. They did feel that the economic life was the "only reality" and what displayed itself as science, art or religion was like a vapour; all life was based on this, and it was reserved for their pupils to carry their reasoning to its logical conclusion. Socialists are, after all, only extreme pupils of the middle-class world. This is the view which, forming in the West, reached its climax in the second half of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Other impulses have formed the Eastern view of the world, and an Oriental would say: "I look at what is going on in the external world: I see what my senses convey to me, what I use as an instrument for transforming the world around, what shines down on me from the stars, and what I myself am as to my bodily nature—what is it all? It is Maya! What then is reality, and not illusion? Only what is experienced in the human soul—that is reality!" One who does not translate in terms of a dictionary, but according to the inner meaning, knows that the words "Maya" in the East and "Ideology " in the West mean one and the same thing. For thousands of years the Oriental has regarded the outer world which affects the senses—including economics—as Maya. The Westerner, on the other hand, sees his reality in what for the Oriental is "Maya," and what arises in his soul is for him "Ideology." Both views of the world have developed to a certain point. Talk with the leading men in the socialist parties especially in those places where the first Revolution (known here as the "November " Revolution) has not yet taken place, and it is evident that this revolution altered their ideas somewhat, but not their feelings. You hear the same views as obtained right up to the war, that it is not necessary to con­tribute anything from the will towards trans­forming, revolutionizing the world, but that all that will happen of itself. Something fatalistic has appeared in the West. People are convinced that they need only wait until the means of production are sufficiently developed, and then by a natural metamorphosis all that is concentrated in private capital will pass over into other forms. Thinking of this sort is as sensible as saying: "This room is full of bad air. I cannot breathe. The window could be opened, but I am not going to open it; I am waiting until the air improves of itself."

Fatalism of the West, Fatalism of the East—we know them well. In the East, though not at the very beginning, men fell into complete fatalism, as the philosophy of Maya developed. Every world-philosophy has, in its inner law, the impulse towards fatalism at some time, but we stand today at a point where we must get rid of fatalism. We must pass from mere observation and contemplation to the exertion of will and intention. We must rouse our wills by developing impulses from the truths I have described regarding birth as a continuation of pre-natal life, remaining young notwithstanding white hair and wrinkles, the playing in of the nightly work of the Angel into daily life. Man needs to acquire impulses for his life of will by widening his sphere of interest, by seeing not only what touches his own personal life but what affects the civilized world in manifold forms. Look­ing at the West, to which we ourselves belong, we see the inner world as ideology, the outer world as reality: in the East, ideology, Maya, in the outer world, reality in the inner world alone.  In the interaction of human beings at the present time, we have the task of finding the way of escape from that aspect of these philosophies which has already turned to fatalism. We must look for this way, and we shall only find it if we are in earnest about something which annoys people terribly today.

There was a remarkable example of this once, when my hearers were greatly vexed by something I said in a lecture in a South German town, though it was a truth necessary for the present time. The context of my lecture necessitated the remark that the leading classes of the present day have a decadent physical brain. Such statements are unpleasant both to utter and to listen to, but it is necessary that people should realize this fact. The very people to whom the present con­figuration of our times is due have, in achieving it, acquired a decadent physical brain. It is so, and we are in one sense in the same case as were the people of Europe during the, great migrations and the spreading of Christianity. The Christian impulse came over from the East, by way of Greece and Rome. Naturally the Greek and Roman world was far more highly developed than the. German. The Germans were barbarians. But the brains of the Greeks and Romans were decadent, there­fore the surge of Christianity was not absorbed by them in the same way as it was when it reached the Germans. That is a migration of peoples which went horizontally. today it is "vertical." today a wave of spiritual life is coming from the spiritual world. Just as Christianity was at first reflected from the Greeks and Romans, so the spiritual world is reflected from the bourgeoisie today, and that is decadent. The proletariat are not so yet; they are still able to understand what is meant by the spiritual world. But the others will need preparation through anthroposophy, through that part of the brain which is not yet physical that is the etheric brain. We are at present confronted with the fact that the leading classes are not only menaced with a decadent brain, but with entire decadence, if they do not realize that they must grasp the spiritual view of the world by supersensible means.

The tragedy of the bourgeois system is that it would grasp everything "physically," whereas our task today is to grasp things with the etheric brain, to take spiritual truths into our being. Modern humanity must steer in this direction, and the West must take the lead. Here we must take into account some­thing very important.

Observe the development of language, passing from East to West. Take the German language, today dreadfully misused. If we look back at the language of Goethe, of Lessing, we can see that not so long ago in the very words, through their peculiar quality, it was possible to express what of spiritual life lay within them. today we have dreadfully neglected our language, degraded it into phrases only; but that it can no longer express spirituality is not due to the language alone. The farther West we go as regards language, the more we find in speech, with its tunes and sounds, even with its grammar, a complete rejection of what is really spiritual. From this rejection of the quality of soul and spirit from the Anglo-American idiom follows the mission of the Anglo-American peoples. Their world­ mission consists in this: in learning, maybe instinctively, yet still learning (as they listen to other men, in course of acquiring world dominion), not only to comprehend the sound, but to interpret the gesture of the language, to hear more than the mere physical sound, to hear something which passes from man to man in speech, going beyond the spoken word. That works from etheric body to etheric body. Here lies the secret of the Western languages, that in them the physical tone loses its significance, while the spiritual gains it. It is part of their task to let the spirit filter into speech, not merely to hear physically, but to hear intuitively more than passes over into the sound. In the West, the spiritual must be sought behind language itself.

If we look at the East, we shall notice an ever-increasing urge among the peoples who, as we have seen, sink themselves into their own inner being, not to be bound by the old forms of conception as to "Karma," " Reincarnation," and so forth, but to look out into the world, and in that outer world to perceive something spiritual, even to establish a sort of Philosophy of Nature.

These are only trivial instances through which we can widen our interests from our own personality and our nationality to take in the whole of humanity, saying to ourselves "Here in the West is Ideology, though quite another Ideology from the Eastern one," and seeing how elemental forces are stirred up within earthly humanity as a result, of these antitheses. We learn to take our stand within the whole civilized world, and when we develop such knowledge of our position within it at the same time we build in our souls the means of acquiring feelings which lead higher than the sphere of the Angeloi. Our interests will be so much extended that we shall incline to ideas which ascend to the sphere of the Archangeloi, for all that I have been saying about the opposition of Ideology-Maya, etc., works in its primal force in the sphere beyond that of the Angeloi. We can see from this what is really needful for modern humanity. What will the so-called clever people call anyone who speaks of these things—Maya, Ideology and so forth—as having primal forces which function in the sphere of the Archangeloi? Just a fool, quite naturally, since men are so hide-bound by their acquired spiritual outfit that they feel no concern in the wider interests of mankind. That can only be achieved from a spiritual standpoint, by penetrating into everything which works for the great interests of humanity.

I have given you an idea of how to work up into the sphere of the Archangeloi. It is possible to rise stilt higher, and present-day humanity must learn that also. Our educated classes have, always been taught to look back to Ancient Greece. Young men (and in recent times young women also) have had to go through a certain schooling to absorb Greek culture, and have thus acquired an impulse which was enough to lead them to feel more and more deeply into the Greek world. This has a great significance for our civilization, that in our most important years of development we have learnt what Greece accomplished for the world. The Greeks did otherwise; it never entered their heads to teach their children the Egyptian tongue: they occupied themselves with immediate reality, for which they possessed a clear, sense. We occupy our young people, not with instruction concerning their environment and the impulses of reality, but with those of an olden time. We have no idea what we are really doing. It is not only that we teach our young children (I suppose I should say our "young ladies " and "young gentlemen ") the Greek language: for in a language, in the configuration of its sounds and its grammar, lies also the character of a whole people. In absorbing the Greek language, as is done today, man acquires the same soul-attitude in the world as was held in Greece. There all cultural life was such that only a small top-stratum shared in the culture; the rest were slaves. In Greece no occupation was worthy of a free man but science, politics and—even then in a supervisory capacity agriculture: everything else was a matter for slaves. This is hidden in the language, and when we take Greek culture and language into our own spiritual education, we unite aristocracy with it at the same time. For the Greek it was quite natural to construct his whole social organism in accordance with his intellectual tendency, for in his case that was connected with his blood. There were the ordinary masses: then those people of a higher type, who possessed the higher life of the mind through their blood. This finds expression even in Greek sculpture. Compare the position of nose and ears in the Hermes-type with that of the Zeus- or Athene-type. The Greeks knew perfectly well what they wanted to express when they set the Hermes-type over against the Aryan Zeus-type.

We are permeated with all this more than we think. When we form our views of the world, we really construct ideas still suited to what in the Greeks came through the blood. Our intellectual, our cultural life is saturated with what we absorb from the Greeks. Hellenism intrudes into our times luciferically. Hellenism, in the period which immediately followed it, was metamorphosed into Roman­ism. Compared with the Greeks the Romans were dull, prosaic people, but they did develop other aspects of life. They lived out in an abstract fashion what came to the Greeks from the blood. Unlike the Greeks they made even man into an abstraction, a "citizen of the State." A man, in the Roman sense, is not really "man"; he is a citizen of the State: an incomprehensible thing to the Greeks. To be born a human being did not make him a man, but being registered in some kind of State archives. This sometimes appears today in grotesque fashion. I once had an old friend, sixty-four years of age; one day he said to me that he had saved such and such a sum—he had always been very poor—and that he wanted to marry the love of his youth. He had become engaged at eighteen, but had no money to marry, and the couple had vowed to wait until they could. He returned to his birthplace, now that the way was open, but found that the marriage could not, take place because his community doubted his existence. Years before, the parsonage, with all the parish registers, had been burned down and there was no one alive who could give evidence as to his identity. My friend assumed that his existence was proved by his presence, but he had no "legal evidence." It is true the marriage did eventually take place, but the difficulties had shown him the much greater importance of a "birth-certificate " than of his own personality.

Men then are "citizens." They are what they are in an abstract connection. This view is essentially Roman, as is everything of this sort which we come across in ordinary life. Our education has been taken in hand by the State, which is already abstract, but will become more so under socialist influence. People are not educated today to take their place in the world as free human beings, but to have a professional calling and take their place in that. The State takes young people in hand, not at once, for then they are too “shapeless," so it leaves them for a time to their parents, then, stretching out its talons, it trains them to be useful to it, taking good care that they are so. It gives them an economic life, gives them everything prescribed, and then pensions them off. It means a great deal when a man can assure himself of a pension as well as an income—something substantial, which binds him to the abstract State and affects the rest of his mental attitude. The Roman attitude has passed into men of other times. Say to a man today: "to partake of immortality needs an activity of soul, that thou thyself mayst carry thy soul wide awake through the gates of death"; he will not understand. He has been made wholly un­accustomed to direct his understanding to such a question. Instead of this he is told: "You need only believe in Christ and in what the State does." First he will be looked after by the State, with a pension when he has worked long enough then the Church goes one bit farther; it offers a pension for his soul after death, so that neither in his lifetime need he do anything for his own soul nor when he carries it through the gate of death: A man is "registered " nowadays, and the political essence of Rome, already taken into our own being, will increase.

All sorts of dreadful experiences are possible because of this. Helping with the institution of the Waldorf School at Stuttgart, I have had to look at the various School Regulations. Looking back, I must admit that in the 'seventies and 'eighties of last century, the regulations were very small: they included what had to be studied in each class, the aim and the subject matter being given, but in everything else the teacher was left quite free. Nowadays we get an enormous syllabus with "Official," "Ordinance," written on the first page, and specific instructions as to the manner of teaching. So that what should only work on one living personality from out of another, is set down in rules and orders; it has become "official," it is "decreed "! That is the death of mind and spirit, directly traceable from Central Europe to Ancient Rome. This is the second thing we have absorbed—with Romanism, the politico­legal element.

In addition to this, however, there is some­thing which could not be transplanted from the old life into the new—the economic life, which can only be modern. It is possible to chew the cud of Greek knowledge, to allow the Roman political ideas to influence us, but we cannot "eat" what the Greeks and Romans have eaten. Economic life must be modern. We have gradually woven into our economic life the Greek life of intellect and the Roman life of rights, and our task is to disentangle them again. To understand that these three strata brought out of different epochs have, as it were, been joined together and must be separated means to extend one's interest in time (as, in the East and West in space) down to the present; that means to make ourselves capable of feelings which can raise us to the Archai! How few develop an interest for these things, an impartial interest in how the Zeitgeist (Time-Spirit) acts by thrusting one period into another. I spoke at Stuttgart on the artificial nature of our classical education. It may have been mere coincidence that a few days after there appeared in the papers great announcements signed by all kinds of Zöpfen—professors—(I beg their pardon!) to the effect that a classical education should not be undervalued, seeing that it had contributed to the greatness of the German people, so gloriously displayed in the latter days. This, literally, was to be read as the alleged opinion of educationists in April, 1919—after what happened in October, 1918! And to think that this and other things should be possible in our times!

Unless we reach a stage at which we can see things so as to absorb the impulses which work into our physical world out of the spiritual—unless we realize that man, just as he is connected through his bodily organization with the animal, plant, and mineral kingdoms, is also connected in his spiritual organization with the Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai (Angeloi as the guardians of personal development, Nation Spirits as guardians of development of peoples in space, Spirits of Time as guardians of development through­out the ages)—unless we can understand these things from their spiritual foundations, we can advance no farther. Everything depends on man having courage and force today to look into the spiritual world. We are at the beginning of a hard struggle, in which will be stirred up all the instincts spring­ing from the one half-truth that economic reality is the only reality, that everything belonging to soul and spirit is Ideology; and from the other half-truth that the only reality is the psychic spiritual, all outside it is Ideology, Maya. These contradictions will let loose in human nature such instincts that the spiritual conflict will blaze for long periods in forms of which people at present have no idea. We must grasp this; and, further, learn how we are to raise ourselves, in harmony with our time, to a view of the spiritual world as we conceive it. It is this which the times themselves ordain and demand; to this we must turn our attention.

Rudolf Steiner opens the meeting by saying that it was no longer possible for him to attend the works council meeting in person; however, he asks that everything that is deemed necessary be brought forward at this moment.

[The question of the rights and duties of the works councils within the “coming day” is raised and Rudolf Steiner is asked to clarify this.]

Rudolf Steiner remarks that it is indeed very important and very good to bring about such discussions, and it will always be very good. He would also be willing, as far as possible, to accept such invitations to discuss, only it would be necessary to be able to determine what the subject of the discussion actually is.

He says: I believe you are still suffering to a great extent from the assumption that the “Coming Day” could somehow be a realization of what was expressed as an idea in the lectures back then. I can only say that the idea that was expressed has, of course, not been realized in the slightest today. Just consider what would have been needed to realize this idea: in those days, it would have taken a united labor force – without that, nothing could have been done – and that did not materialize. And one can only say: the idea that was expressed has basically been dropped for the time being. And today, we must be particularly sorry about that, because in reality, we are now in a position in German economic life that we can say: what is present in German economic life today is actually only an illusion, a sham.

The world today can no longer exist as anything other than a unified economic entity. There must be unified economic entities that combine to form a distinct world economy. The artificial borders of national and state economies today make it all the more clear that it is no longer possible to manage without a world economy. In today's world economy, which nevertheless exists, the situation is such that basically the whole of economic life today is based on appearances. Take the following: we still have a wage economy today; it finds its opposite pole, as does the capitalist economy in general, in that idea which I tried to propagate at the time. As long as we have a pure wage economy, the whole economy is dependent on the wage economy. Wages are, so to speak, a barometer of what is happening in the economy as a whole.

You see, the working class is pretty much the largest number of people on earth, as far as economic life is concerned. If you convert today, for example – and somehow you have to convert – if you convert wages today according to the value of the Swedish krona, the American worker receives a daily wage of about 120 to 123 Swedish kronor, the German worker 19 to 21 Swedish kronor. This is roughly true, even though some small changes have occurred in recent weeks. The workers of all other countries or states fall between these two limits. Now, I ask you: the American worker receives a wage six times higher than the German worker, although it has been proven that he does not produce more than the German worker if he works accordingly.

In this way, it is impossible to speak of being within economic life; all this is conceived under the assumption that we have a world economy, because the fact that we still have a country or state economy should mean nothing at all, since a large part of the available values circulates throughout the world. It is clear that major disruptions must occur as a result.

We are living today in impossible economic conditions, in Central Europe in the most impossible of all. And one can feel sorry when one considers that our ideas were propagated at that time out of this realization. These ideas have actually fallen by the wayside to this day, because, as you will understand, the “Coming Day” cannot be much different from any other undertaking, as capitalist as all other undertakings are. We can only plan to be there for a future where something can perhaps be done, to intervene, so that a number of people are together who can intervene. As long as conditions remain as they are now, the economic principle itself will not allow the “Day to Come” to bring about many changes.

The whole world is curious to see how the “Day to Come” will cope with the very idea of how the working class can work in the “Day to Come”. Basically, no information can be given yet, nothing essential can be shown. And so I thought we could very well talk about what your individual complaints are, what could be different in detail. Realized what was propagated as ideas back then – I would not want this misunderstanding to arise, as if it were said of me that the “Coming Day” [had] realized something of the ideas of threefolding: That is nonsense! We should talk about what is bothering you, because there seem to be some pressing shoes that could cause discomfort. But if we talk about what is bothering you, then I also want everything to come out and nothing to remain closed. And so, before I say anything, I would like the gentlemen to speak freely.

[They do not want to raise complaints, but to discuss whether “statutory” works councils should be elected, since the existing works councils had been elected from the threefold social order movement before the Works Councils Act came into force. If these do not work to satisfaction, new ones would have to be elected.

Rudolf Steiner means the same. The question is whether the employees of Waldorf-Astoria at the time the law came into force agreed to the continued existence of the old, previously elected works council. But this was the case here.

[Further comments on this.]

Rudolf Steiner: Today it is certainly difficult to ask the question of whether statutory works councils should be introduced or not, because the Works Councils Act simply prescribes works councils that are elected in accordance with the law. As long as this law is not changed, no works councils as envisaged by the idea of threefolding can actually be considered, because this would then only be a corporate body that exists alongside a statutory corporate body. We would then have to resume the whole threefolding movement in the first place, because basically we no longer have an actual threefolding movement. If we want to elect works councils based on the idea of threefolding, then we also have to assign them a task, because in the current economic life these works councils have or would have no task to fulfill.

[Further discussion and expressions of dissatisfaction to the effect that the works councils are not taken seriously enough by the plant managers.

Rudolf Steiner points out that it depends on the degree to which the employees are convinced that things can go better with the “Coming Day” than with any other undertaking, and says: I myself am not an entrepreneur myself and therefore cannot take the entrepreneurial point of view in my personality, but on the other hand, when questions arise, I have to take a position on them so that what is said is really meaningful. What I mean is that if you are arguing, if you are arguing about something, then you have to know what you are arguing about, because for me it is not the argument that is important, but what we are arguing about. If I am to speak about the rights and duties of the workers' councils, I cannot do so in general terms, about any workers' councils that may be on the moon. I would have to do it for the workers' councils that are in the 'coming day'. And I can only do that based on very real circumstances. And here it is urgently necessary that we talk about it today, because you will have been informed about how you feel that the “dawning day” cannot do anything in the coming economic struggles and that the workers in our individual companies will therefore be forced to proceed with the rest of the working class. Then you will get a real character. Before that, it is of course something that cannot be said one way or the other – I will tell you later why I think so, one can look at it that way. We can talk about it today in such a way that none of the labor-friendly ideas of the “Coming Day” have been realized, even though the general attitude is benevolent. But as long as we don't go into individual things, nothing comes of it. And I would therefore like to see it as a condition for me to speak, that you present very specific, concrete complaints, which I will then address. Without knowing what your concerns are, I will not be able to say anything about them.

[Further comments to the effect that people wonder whether the “coming day” could give the working class a secure existence, that the works council is not trusted enough, that one is only seen as a worker, not as an equal human being.

Rudolf Steiner: Yes, my dear friends, that is the feeling I meant; I wanted to be aware of it before I go into the question raised in more detail.

[Further discussion about this and about trade union issues.]

Rudolf Steiner: So you meant that we should establish tangible, fixed sentences about the rights and duties of the works councils. This would certainly not be so difficult if we just had the good will to draft such a paragraph, in which we say that these are the rights and these are the duties of our works councils. Unfortunately, however, that is not the case. I believe that if we really managed to create such an ideal paragraph, all employees would agree with it – and not only that, they would also be highly satisfied with it. But in such a short time, conditions will not have changed and the mood will not have changed either. The point is not to take measures, one should have these and these rights and duties. But the point is to achieve something at such meetings that also corresponds to the conditions outside. To give you an idea of my way of thinking, I would like to share the following with you.

Since we last met here, I myself had to initiate a matter that arose from the needs in Dornach. I have also spoken here about lectures, and these have been given in Dornach [to the workers on the Goetheanum building site] by a prominent person. Not much has come of this, except that after we held works council meetings, we realized that the people in Dornach have a strong need to hear something about economic life. I then decided that I would give these myself. You have to bear in mind the circumstances, as I have already described them, at the Dornach building. The Dornach building is not what an economic-capitalist enterprise is. The Dornach building is a prime example of a non-capitalist enterprise and cannot be compared as such with the 'Kommenden Tag' or the 'Futurum AG' in Basel or with any other similar association. The Dornach Building belongs to no one; there is no entrepreneur there. Therefore, everything that is processed in it is transformed into wages for those who work there. Is it not the case that what still comes into consideration at the Dornach Building is that present-day economic life reaches into it from two sides; but there it is “refracted”. On the one hand, it is this: It has to be built with the capital that is made available. If the Dornach building exploits anyone, it is the capitalists, because they have to provide the capital. I would almost like to say that a large part of it goes 'perdu', as a large part of it never gets returned. In any case, the workers can see clearly there, and that is the one side where capital shines in and refracts: capital ceases to be capital as soon as it comes to Dornach.

Secondly, our workers belong to trade unions. And you will admit that, for example, if you yourself have the sense to give our workers 2/3 more wages by exploiting capital even more, it would make no sense in the economy as a whole and would be most strongly opposed by the trade unions. They would then say: There is the Dornach building, it does not want to be characterized as a capitalist enterprise, it wants to realize something of what is present in the idea of threefold social order. So you can see that this cannot be a question of wages or capital, but rather the question of price, as the conditions here protrude from two sides. People would think we were crazy if we paid wages that we were not forced to pay.

But what makes things easier, especially during the lectures, is something that is of course child's play to see: this is not a capitalist enterprise. This kind of mistrust that you have towards the “Kommenden Tag” – and that cannot be denied – cannot exist in the Dornach building. It makes no sense for the workers there to be mistrustful, and the workers there speak out in good faith. Some who are not entirely objective would like to think differently, but this trust is already there; it makes it possible to speak freely. That is why I have – the lectures have only been given recently, in the meantime I also had the trip to Norway, and something like that cannot be done very quickly if you want to achieve something – but the main emphasis is on the workers in Dornach learning about the reality of economic life. I must confess that it gives me the greatest satisfaction to see how more and more people are beginning to understand that we have all been misjudging economic life.

When faced with the task of educating laypeople, one is aware of the current situation. Let us assume, and it would be very interesting if later on a person would like to touch on this point by asking a question, let us assume we have the workers of some company, they draw up some guidelines about the rights and duties of the workers of this company, the management can approve the question or not. I say it is right, and I believe that any honest person must say this: Whatever the employers say, it has no value at all; they can say, 'We agree to everything', or 'We agree to nothing' – the way today's economic life is, the economic structure is nonsense. No entrepreneur today knows how profitable his business is or how it is doing; he does not know what he can promise and what not if he wants to be honest. That is the situation, and if economic struggles are imminent today, then an entrepreneur cannot say whether or not he can offer his workers a guarantee, because he cannot know, because economic life has been ridden into the dirt.

As soon as someone concretely tackles economic life as it is today and addresses such things, something comes out that is tremendously instructive. Imagine someone thinking about calculation and writing an essay about it, which in and of itself is extremely instructive. The content of this essay must, of course, be to assess economic life, but at the end of this essay, there is the very significant question, the conclusion to which he has come by thinking about calculation: Can we calculate or can we not? Does something come of it? — We cannot cope with today's conditions. That is what can be read in the essay, and it is the confirmation of what I have observed for ten years: that we have arrived at a complete deadlock in economic life. In this context, it seems to me to be of little importance whether one can say today that we must reach an agreement with the eight million organized workers if we do not want to be marginalized, or because we cannot reach an agreement and be left hanging in the air.

I tell you that when you understand the nonsense of today's economy, you can say: When the next economic struggles come and go as they will, the eight million organized workers are united, then nothing will happen but that our economic life will be led or pushed even further down its slippery slope and that all the bankrupt enterprises will collapse as a house of cards. The organizations, which comprise eight million people, cannot believe that under the present conditions they can achieve anything at all that needs to be achieved; there is no question of that. Economic life will be destroyed even more.

What is needed first today is to be able to do business at all, because in the business itself, one has really come to the “non-sense” today: There is really no sense to what is being done in economic life, because nothing is in context: we are faced with a brick wall. This can be seen, and the Dornach workers have also seen this; they have gained an appreciation that we have entered into 'non-sense' in economic life. If you look at a business enterprise today, do you think you will find anyone who has any sense of the word when you talk sensibly about economic life? If you take an economist with whom you want to talk about a company, he will point you to the bookkeeping, because everything is in there. In reality, however, nothing is in it; it is nonsense to believe that anything can be seen from the accounting about the course of a business.

These things have become very clear to me through my observations over the last few years, and it is not so easy to talk about them. Take a balance sheet, the result is nonsense. It is similar to that famous Prussian privy councillor who calculated that if you invested the actually small amount of 300,000 marks for three hundred years in interest and compound interest, you could then pay off the entire debt of the Prussian state. You can do the math if you want, but the reality is that after three hundred years you won't find a button made out of the money. Because it is not enough to believe that you can keep adding interest to the accumulated capital; after all, the money cannot come from anywhere other than from economic life, from production, from working with capital, and by then not only the banks that are entrusted with the safekeeping of the money, but also the money itself will have perished. Reality is therefore quite different from the calculation.

Today, the will to such nonsense is present in the whole of economic life; reality wears it down and shatters it. What goes on in a factory today is something completely different in economic life than what is written in the books. No one wants to go into it, no one wants to be bothered with a real insight into economic life, which is needed today. That was also why the idea of the works council had not been maintained at the time. You just have to start from the beginning, but I don't want to talk about how the matter was settled back then. I actually presented it as the most important question.

But now we should talk about the rights and duties of the workers' councils. The important thing here is the standpoint that arises from the circumstances. That is precisely the one that says: the way things are going now, they cannot go on like this anyway. The workers will therefore have to remain in the organizations; you cannot tell them to leave because you cannot help them if they leave; the circumstances are not there for that. You cannot look at the movement that has been there for about 25 years, because you won't get anywhere; but you have to look at it that way, and that is what I have to keep drawing your attention to.

Once, as a very young boy, I was standing at the window of our apartment in Neudörfl, near Wiener Neustadt, when a small group of Lassalleans, who at that time still held their meetings in relative secrecy, , because we have to bear in mind that this was at a time when there was nothing of the trade union life that exists today; so there were only a few people. Meanwhile, however, everything that is in this movement in Austria and Germany today has come about. We can say that it has progressed relatively slowly from this small group. We cannot say that the conditions were against our movement, as they were then. It was not that the conditions were against it; the conditions were in favor of it, in that large masses were open to the threefold order. What was against it was the slight deception practised by the labor leaders, and it is certain that the eight million will not do anything either – they cannot do anything. My opinion is this: Regardless of whether we are in the unions or not, it is not a matter of leaving the union, but rather of uniting, however small, in a reasonable way within all those who participate in the “Kommenden Tag”. It would set an example, and we must work towards such examples. I believe that there is something positive in this idea, and this can best be shown if, quite independently of the union principle, the workers of all the companies that belong to “The Coming Day” can do something sensible on their own initiative. But for that, unity is necessary, as well as a real insight into the “non-sense” of the current economic system. A reasonable economic life must be rebuilt, because nothing can be made out of today's economic life.

And so I think – no, I would like to say – you say: Rights and duties of the works councils should be established. If I now say: No, rights and duties can only be granted by someone who has rights and duties to do so. If you were to ask me what rights and duties I have in the “coming day,” I would have to say that I know nothing about it, any more than you do; it also depends entirely on the circumstances. Actually, everyone should have as many rights and duties as they can assert, and that would indeed come about. But if you want to set up paragraphs, if you want to have insights into the course of production, that doesn't have much content, and not much comes of it either. Isn't it true that the point of the course of production is that the person who regulates it also knows how the wind blows – not to keep some secret. First of all, it must be made possible for all those who want to work together to know something about economic life.

You see, if I disregard the “day after tomorrow”, where the most insightful people are – we cannot take our examples from the “day after tomorrow”, but you can take any other company. There you just have to have the insight to be able to have a say in production. I am convinced that if you wanted to ask questions in your way, the people concerned would not be able to provide any insight because they don't have any themselves. Today's economic life is a game of chance, and that is precisely what makes it difficult. Here we come to realize that it is much more important to discuss with the workers, so that we can understand what we are supposed to do in economic life, which is so dependent on the state.

I would also like to remind you of something: [the entrepreneur] Stinnes. When we started the threefold order, Stinnes was not yet there. I did not make light of the threefold order. Stinnes only came about because the threefold order fell through; the whole Stinnes movement is based on that. Stinnes is a really ingenious fellow. I wouldn't want to say that he is a crook; he is just a “seedling” of entrepreneurship, but in any case he has much greater insight than others. Stinnes once said: Yes, we can manage things that way. But if you want to do things the way German workers want to do them, you won't get anywhere. He knows that the workers cannot manage, and this should create insight. They debate all sorts of things, but not production. And so he continued: We can wait until the workers are at our doors begging for work. Stinnes is counting on the workers being at the doors begging for work.

With regard to the rights and duties of works councils, it is certainly true that they can have the most extensive rights; and as soon as something really positive can be put forward here, we can always express ourselves here when the opportunity arises; it can be discussed here. But to set a paragraph about this, in my opinion, is of no use at all, because we are doing it in an economic life in which we have arrived at “positive nonsense”. We live from hand to mouth today; after all, no one can do more than is already being done. But that will soon burst. What the employers are counting on today is the disunity of the workers, and the employers will always have ways and means to maintain the disunity of the workers and ensure its continued existence. Even if there were no economic chaos, the German labor force could only hope to achieve partial success by acting in unison, but something substantial could still be done. However, if things continue as they have done so far – strikes here and there – it will only weaken the labor force, not strengthen it. This non-uniform approach is something that significantly worsens the position of the workers. I don't think much of the fact that there could be fear of the eight million.

Something that could have prospects is if the workers of our companies in Stuttgart really came together, that they could come together and talk sensibly about economic life for once. In my opinion, this is the greatest task that needs to be accomplished. And it cannot be done by finding the lectures a little better or a little worse. Because anyone who wants to talk about economic life today really has to be an experienced person who can see into the circumstances. Today, this experience cannot be drawn from all kinds of writings, because of all the sciences that are practiced today, the one that is presented as political economy is the most “mindless”.

Mr. Leinhas, in his lecture at our anthroposophical congress, did an exemplary job of 'killing off' Robert Wilbrandt, at least in scientific terms. But Wilbrandt is still a perfectly decent guy. If we were to name just one of our other clients, however, we would come up with something much worse. And this is only because we have no economics, no knowledge, and today it must necessarily be formed out of experience. Almost nothing that is said in this field is useful; apart from the individual flashes of light that appear on the basis of the threefold social order. But the possibility should be created for a large number of people to see how things actually are in economic life.

When I gave my lectures here at the beginning, the wife of a socialist minister told me that she could not understand why so many people came to my lectures, that I did not promise people anything and only ever told them what they had to do. And that is how it is, dear attendees. You cannot define the rights and duties of the workers' councils if the circumstances are simply not right. If we really want to start from a center to determine what is worth doing, then this is it: that all of you can help to achieve something from here, how best to operate, by preparing the ground. We can promise ourselves that the matter may have an immense practical value in a year's time, if the working class unites in unity, independently of the trade union question, in order to achieve something. We have seen that in Dornach, for example, it is necessary to first agree on insights. If one were to examine the conditions of economic life independently of whether one is a worker or an entrepreneur, then one would be able to make progress. Then one might also be able to cut Stinnes off at the source. It will depend on whether you come to an agreement with 'Der Kommende Tag'; then perhaps the day will come for 'Der Kommende Tag' when Stinnes takes it over. Such are the circumstances. If you can create something positive by joining forces, then we can talk about the question, then there must be agreement. The managers of our operations are striving to make progress in social relations. The managers of the individual operations are also sighing. But if the workers of the individual operations join forces, then there is a core that can make progress.

[In the following comments, reference is made to the difficult situation that also makes it difficult for the plant managers to gain insight into production. Reference is made to the efforts to set up a company health insurance fund and a pension fund and to provide food from the agricultural enterprises of “The Coming Day” to the workers.

Rudolf Steiner: The question of setting up a pension fund and of utilizing the agricultural operations for the workforce is very interesting and can certainly be fruitfully discussed, but it must be ensured that the right people are put in charge.

[It is reported that the company health insurance fund is as good as certain thanks to the benevolent support of the government. With regard to the deliveries of agricultural produce, it should be borne in mind that such things can drive people apart.

Rudolf Steiner expresses his hope that these institutions, which are in preparation and have often been beneficial in other companies, will be well developed here as well. He also mentions, with regard to the company health insurance fund, that it is very desirable in our efforts to achieve a rational art of healing that something be done in this area in particular. With regard to agricultural enterprises and their utilization for the workforce, he points to an example that occurred in the Anthroposophical Society.

He was the owner of a mill and also a baker who baked excellent bread. The circumstances forced the man to make his bread more expensive, and it was clear that no one had the will to make just a small sacrifice to help the cause. On the contrary, they said, “Yes, the bread is so good, you eat so much of it.” And if I take the other bread, you don't use nearly as much.” Now, of course, precisely this bread distribution had to be stopped due to the war conditions; otherwise, however, the attitude would have been the same.

Rudolf Steiner continues by saying that an article had recently appeared in an English newspaper about a businessman who owned a large farm and wanted to prove that it was no longer possible to make a profit. He calculated all the profits that the business could bring him in a year and then came to the conclusion that only 17 pence would remain for him at the end of the year.

[Emil Leinhas adds another example. It is hoped that the works councils will now be able to work productively after these explanations, which Rudolf Steiner confirms.

Rudolf Steiner: You see, Mr. Biehler was right to speak of the tax issue, which the workers must oppose. But now, you have woven in a small sentence, to which I must actually attach a little significance. You said: If the workers unite, then the eight million organized people will achieve something from the government. I must say that today the government basically does not care what it taxes; it just wants to have taxes. Only through this senselessness has the entire economy come to where it is today, by simply caring about how something is done. As long as this government lasts, it is also out of the question that the working class will achieve even a fraction of what it really needs.

The most important question today is the question of unemployment, and a lot has been said about it, but ultimately no one has yet considered that unemployment as it exists today cannot exist at all in a regulated economic life. Isn't it true that people who work for each other, everyone works for the other. So if unemployment were justified, so many people would no longer need anything at once. On the other hand, there is no correction at all from the current circumstances; one cannot say that unemployment exists to the extent that it exists in Switzerland, at the Entente and so on for this and that reason. The atrocious conditions we are facing can only be appreciated when you consider that so many people have been killed by the terrible war. But unemployment cannot be a consequence of this war, because if so many people are dead, it should only lead to unemployment becoming less and less.

Recently there was an economic meeting; there was talk that there are a number of recipes for remedies that are available to us. Isn't it true that the utilization of these remedies will one day be productive, but today they are just a thought. And then someone came up with the idea that you could simply copy the recipes and include them in the assets of a company. This item would be honestly meant under certain circumstances, because you could really bring it out. On the other hand, however, if no one can be found to support the matter, it is of no value at all.

But there is a way in which it can be safely included in the books, and that is to take out patents for it and pay for them, and then you can put it in the books at that value. After all, that is not what happened here with the recipes for the remedies, and yet a way is provided to exploit the value of the recipes. When someone earns a lot or a little money, they don't want to distribute profits right away, so they make write-offs or set aside reserves. With us, what can be raised under certain circumstances goes into real reserves, which can then, at a time when many of the things being produced today will have collapsed, can then support many things again.

[Words of thanks to Rudolf Steiner for his remarks and emphasis on the will of the workers' council to penetrate the economy.

Rudolf Steiner once again briefly refers to the already mentioned desirable union of all workers in the “coming day” and that something truly valuable for economic life could certainly arise from it in the not too distant future, if everyone has the will to work together in the right way. We must always be mindful of the “non-sense” of our present economic life; this would provide the right incentive for the right work. He would be happy to accept the invitation of the workers again as soon as the opportunity arose, in order to support them with any advice.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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