The Rudolf Steiner Archive

[ 1 ] If we reflect upon ourselves, we soon come to realize that, in addition to the self we encompass with our thoughts, feelings, and fully conscious impulses of will, we bear in ourselves a second, more powerful self. We become aware that we subordinate ourselves to this second self as to a higher power. At first, this second self seems to us a lower being when compared to the one we encompass with our clear, fully conscious soul and its natural inclination toward the good and the true. And so, initially, we may strive to overcome this seemingly lower self.

A closer self-examination, however, can teach us something else about this second self. If periodically we look back on what we have experienced or done in life, we make a strange discovery, one that becomes more meaningful for us the older we become. Whenever we think about what we did or said at some time in the past, it turns out that we did a great many things we actually understood only at a later date. When we think of things we did seven or eight years ago—or perhaps even twenty years ago—we realize that only now, after a long time, is our mind sufficiently developed to understand what we did or said then.

Of course, there are people who do not make such self-discoveries because they do not try to. Nevertheless, this sort of soul-searching is extraordinarily fruitful. For in such moments as we become aware that we are only now beginning to understand something we did in our earlier years-that in the past our minds were not mature enough to understand what we did or said then-a new feeling emerges in our soul. We feel ourselves as if sheltered by a benevolent power presiding in the depths of our own being. We begin to trust more and more that, in the highest sense of the word, we are not alone in the world and that whatever we can understand or do consciously is fundamentally only a small part of what we accomplish in the world.

[ 2 ] After we have gone through this process of discovery a number of times, an insight that is theoretically easy to understand can become part of our practical lives. We know, in theory at any rate, that we would not get very far in life if we had to do everything in full consciousness, rationally understanding all the circumstances and ramifications in every case. To see that this is so we need only consider how and when we accomplish those acts that are the wisest and most important for our existence. A moment's thought will reveal that we act most wisely in the time between birth and the moment at which memory, that first moment we can remember when in later years we try to recall our early life, begins.

This is to say that, as we think back to what we did three, four, or five and more years ago, we reach a certain point in childhood beyond which our memory does not extend. Our memory does not go back any further. Parents or other people can tell us what happened before that time, but our own memory does not go back beyond a certain point. This is the point in our lives when we first began to perceive ourselves as an I. People whose memory is intact can usually remember back to, but not earlier than, this moment.

Our souls, however, have already performed their wisest deeds before this time. Never again in later life, after we have attained full consciousness, will we be able to accomplish such splendid and tremendous deeds as those we accomplished out of the unconscious depths of our souls in the first years of childhood. As we know, we bring the fruits of earlier lives on earth with us into the physical world at birth. For example, at birth our physical brain is still an incomplete and unfinished instrument. The soul must then work on it, adding the finer, detailed structures that make it the medium of all the soul's faculties. In fact, before the soul is fully conscious, it works on the brain to transform it into an instrument to express all the capacities, aptitudes, characteristics, and so on, that it has as a consequence of earlier lives. This work on our own body is guided from a perspective that is wiser than anything we can achieve later with our full consciousness. Moreover, during this time when the brain is being transformed, we must also acquire the three most important capacities for life on earth.

[ 3 ] The first capacity we must learn is to orient our body in space. People today do not realize what this means and that it touches on the most essential differences between human beings and animals. Animals are destined from the beginning to achieve their equilibrium in a certain way: one is destined to be a climber, another a swimmer, and so on. Animals are so constituted that from the outset they can orient themselves in space correctly. This is true even of primates. If zoologists were aware of this, they would put less emphasis on the number of similar bones, muscles, and so forth that human beings and animals have. After all, this is not nearly as important as the fact that human beings are not given an innate way to achieve equilibrium in space but must develop it out of their total being.¹

It is significant that we must work on ourselves to develop from beings that cannot walk into ones that walk upright. We achieve our vertical position, our position of equilibrium in space, by ourselves. In other words, we establish our own relationship to gravity. Those who do not wish to consider the question deeply will, of course, easily dispute our explanation on apparently good grounds. They may claim, for example, that we are just as well constituted for walking upright as climbing animals are for climbing. Upon closer examination, however, we find that animals' orientation in space is determined by their physical organization. In human beings, however, it is the soul that establishes the relationship to space and shapes the organization.

[ 4 ] The second capacity we learn out of ourselves from our essential being—which remains the same through successive incarnations—is language. This allows us to relate to our fellow human beings and makes us bearers of the spiritual life that permeates the physical world primarily by means of human beings. It has often been emphasized, and with good reason, that someone stranded on a desert island who had had no contact with other human beings before learning to speak would never learn to do so. What we receive through heredity, on the other hand, what is implanted in us for development in later years, does not depend on our interactions with other human beings. For example, we are predisposed by heredity to change teeth in our seventh year. Even on a desert island our second set of teeth would grow if we reached that age. But if our soul being, the part of us that continues from one life to the next, is not stimulated we will not learn to speak. In a sense, we must sow the seed for the development of the larynx in the time before our earliest memory-before we attain full I-consciousness-so that the larynx can then become an organ of speech.

[ 5 ] There is still a third, even less well known, capacity that we learn on our own through what we bear within us through successive incarnations. I am referring here to our ability to live within the world of thoughts and ideas, the world of thought itself. Our brain is formed and worked on because it is the tool of thinking. At the beginning of life, the brain is still malleable because we must shape it ourselves to make it an instrument for the thinking appropriate to our essential being. The brain at birth is the result of the work of forces inherited from our parents, grandparents, and so on. It is in our thinking that we bring to expression what we are as individuals in conformity with our former earthly lives. Therefore, after birth, when we have become physically independent of our parents and ancestors, we must transform the brain we have inherited.

[ 6 ] Clearly, then, we accomplish significant steps in the early years of life. We work on ourselves in accordance with the highest wisdom. In fact, if we had to rely on our own intelligence, we could not achieve what we must accomplish without our intelligence in the first few years of our lives. Why is this so? Why must all these things be accomplished from soul depths that lie outside our consciousness? Because, in the first years of our lives, our souls, as well as our whole being, are much more closely connected with the spiritual worlds of the higher hierarchies than is the case later.

Clairvoyants, who can trace the spiritual processes involved because they have undergone spiritual training, discover that something tremendously significant happens at the moment when we achieve I-consciousness, that is, at the moment of our earliest memory. They can see that, during the early years of childhood, an aura hovers about us like a wonderful human-superhuman power. This aura, which is actually our higher part, extends everywhere into the spiritual world. But at the earliest moment we can remember,² We can experience ourselves as a coherent I from this point on because what had previously been connected to the higher worlds then entered the I. Thereafter, our consciousness establishes its own relationship to the outer world.

This conscious relationship to the outer world does not yet exist in early childhood. In childhood, a dream world still seems to hover about us. We work on ourselves with a wisdom that is not in us, a wisdom that is more powerful and comprehensive than all the conscious wisdom we acquire later. This higher wisdom works from the spiritual world deep into the body; it enables us to form the brain out of the spirit. We can rightly say, then, that even the wisest person can learn from a child. For the wisdom at work in children does not become part of our consciousness in later life. It is obscured and exchanged for consciousness.

In the first years of life, however, this higher wisdom functions like a “telephone connection” to the spiritual beings in whose world we find ourselves between death and rebirth. Something from this world still flows into our aura during childhood. As individuals we are then directly subject to the guidance of the entire spiritual world to which we belong. When we are children—up to the moment of our earliest memory—the spiritual forces from this world flow into us, enabling us to develop our particular relationship to gravity. At the same time, the same forces also form our larynx and shape our brain into living organs for the expression of thought, feeling, and will.

[ 7 ] During childhood, then, we work out of a self that is still in direct contact with the higher worlds. Indeed, to a certain degree, we can still do this even in later life, although conditions change. Whenever we feel that we did or said something in earlier years that we are only now coming to understand, we have an indication that we were guided by a higher wisdom at that earlier time. Only years later do we manage to gain insight into the motives of our past conduct. All this indicates that at birth we did not entirely leave behind the world we lived in before entering into our new, physical existence. In fact, we never leave it behind completely. What we have as our part of higher spirituality enters our physical life and remains with us. Thus, what we bear within us is not a higher self that has to be developed gradually, but one that already exists and that often leads us to rise above ourselves.

[ 8 ] All that we can produce in the way of ideals and artistic creativity—as also the natural healing forces in our body, which continuously compensate for the injuries life inflicts—originate not in our ordinary, rational minds but in the deeper forces that work in our early years on our orientation in space, on the formation of the larynx, and on the development of the brain. These same forces are still present in us later. People often say of the damages and injuries we sustain in life that external forces will not be of any help and that our organism must develop its own inherent healing powers. What they are talking about is a wise, benevolent influence working upon us. From this same source also arise the best forces that enable us to perceive the spiritual world—that is, to have true clairvoyance.

[ 9 ] We can now ask why the higher powers work on us only in the early years of childhood. [ 10 ] It is easy to answer one half of this question, for if these higher forces continued to work on us in the same way into later life, we would always remain children and could never achieve full I-consciousness. What worked previously from without must be transferred into our own being.

But there is a more significant reason, one that can tell us more about the mysteries of human life. Spiritual science teaches that we have to consider the human body at the present stage of the earth's evolution as having developed from earlier conditions. People familiar with spiritual science know that in the course of this evolution various forces have worked on our whole being—some on the physical body, others on the etheric body, and others again on the astral body.³ We have evolved to our present condition because beings we call luciferic and ahrimanic have affected us. Through their forces, our essential being became worse than it would have been if only the forces of the spiritual guides of the world, those who want to advance our development in a straight line, had worked on us. Indeed, suffering, disease, and death can be traced to the fact that, in addition to the beings who advance our development in a straight line, luciferic and ahrimanic beings are also at work and continuously thwart our progress.

What we bring with us at birth contains something that is better than anything we can make of it in later life. [ 11 ] In early childhood, the luciferic and ahrimanic forces have only a limited influence on our being. Essentially, they are active only in what we make of ourselves through our conscious life. If we retained the best part of ourselves in its full force beyond the first phase of childhood, its influence would be too much for us because the luciferic and ahrimanic forces opposing the part of ourselves that is better than the rest would weaken our whole being. Our constitution as human beings in the physical world is such that, once we are no longer soft and malleable as children, we can no longer stand to have the forces of the spiritual world continue to affect us directly. The forces that underlie our orientation in space and the formation of the larynx and the brain would shatter us if they continued to influence us directly in later life. These forces are so powerful that our organism would waste away beneath their holiness if they continued to work on us. However, for the activity that brings us into conscious contact with the supersensible world, we have to call upon these forces again.

[ 12 ] This leads us to a realization that is very significant if we understand it rightly. In the New Testament it is put thus: “Unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 18:3) What then seems to be the highest ideal for a human being if the above statement is correctly understood? Surely that our ideal must be to approach ever closer a conscious relationship with the forces that worked on us, without our awareness, in the first years of childhood. At the same time, we must realize that we would collapse under the power of these forces if they were immediately and too easily to affect our conscious life. That is why a careful preparation is necessary to achieve the capacities that lead to a perception of supersensible worlds. The goal of this preparation is to enable us to bear what we simply cannot bear in ordinary life.

[ 13 ] Our passing through successive incarnations is significant for the overall evolution of our essential being, which has undergone successive past lives and will continue to go through future lives. The evolution of the earth runs parallel to our own. At some point in the future, the earth will have reached the end of its course; then the planet earth, as a physical entity, will have to separate from the totality of human souls—just as when we die the body separates from the spirit, and the soul, in order to live on, enters the spiritual realm between death and rebirth.⁴ From this point of view, our highest ideal must be the striving to make all the fruits to be gained in earthly life truly our own before we die.

[ 14 ] The forces that make us too weak to bear those forces that work on us in childhood originate in the organism of the earth. By the time this separates from humanity, we must have advanced to the point of giving over our whole being to the forces that presently work on us only in childhood. Only when we have reached this level can we claim to have attained our goal. Thus, through successive earthly lives, we must gradually make our entire being, including our consciousness, an expression of the forces that work on us under the guidance of the spiritual world in early childhood. This is the purpose of evolution.

After such considerations, the realization that we are not alone takes hold of our soul. This realization imbues us with humility, but also with a proper consciousness of our human dignity. We realize at the same time that something lives in us that can prove at all times that we can rise above ourselves to a self that is already surpassing us and will continue to do so from one life to the next. As this realization assumes a more and more definite form, it can have a very soothing, heartwarming effect and, at the same time, imbue the soul with the appropriate humility and modesty. What lives within us is truly a higher, divine human being, and we can feel ourselves pervaded by this being as by a living presence of whom we can say, This is my inner guide in me.

[ 15 ] Given this, the thought easily arises that we should strive in every way possible to achieve harmony with that part in us that is wiser than our conscious intelligence. Thereafter, our attention will no longer be directed to the conscious self but will be focused instead on an expanded self, and from this perspective we can then combat and eradicate all our false pride and arrogance. From this feeling we will gradually come to a right understanding of our present incompleteness. We shall come to see that we will become complete when the comprehensive spirituality at work in us has the same relationship to our adult consciousness that it had to our unconscious soul life in early childhood.

[ 16 ] Even though we may not remember anything from our first four years of life, we can safely say that the active influence of the higher spiritual realms lasts for about the first three years. By the end of this period we have become able to connect the impressions from the outer world with our I-concept. To be sure, this coherent I-concept cannot be traced back beyond the first moment we can remember. This is a moment that is difficult to locate, for with the awakening of distinct I-consciousness, our memory may be so weak that it cannot be recovered later. Nevertheless, we may say that people generally remember as far back as the beginning of the fourth year. In other words, we are justified in saying that the higher forces that have a decisive influence on us in childhood can work on us for three years. It follows that our constitution in the present, middle phase of the earth's evolution enables us to absorb these higher forces for only three years.

[ 17 ] Now if, through some special cosmic powers, we could somehow remove the ordinary I from a person—if the ordinary I that has accompanied a person through successive incarnations could be separated from that person's physical, etheric, and astral bodies—and we could then replace the ordinary I with an I that is connected with the spiritual worlds—what would happen? After three years this person's body would fall apart! If such a thing were to happen, world karma would have to do something to prevent the spiritual being connected to the higher worlds from living in this body for more than three years. [During the transition from childhood to the following stages, our organism retains its viability because it can still change during this period. In later life it can no longer change, and therefore cannot survive with the self connected directly to the spiritual worlds.] Only at the conclusion of our earthy lives will we be able to retain the forces within ourselves that allow us to live with that spiritual being for more than three years. Then we will be able to say, Not I but this higher self in me, which has been there all along, is now at work in me. Until then, we will not be able to experience this. At most, we will be able to feel the presence of this higher self, but our actual, real human I will not yet be able to bring the higher self fully to life.

[ 18 ] Let us now assume that a human organism were to enter the world at some moment in the middle of the earth's lifetime, and that, at a certain point by means of certain cosmic powers, this organism was freed of its I and received in its stead the I that is usually active only in the first three years of childhood—the I that is connected to the spiritual worlds we live in between death and rebirth. How long would such a person be able to live in an earthly body? Such a person would be able to survive in this earthy body only for about three years. After three years, world karma would have to intervene and destroy this human organism.

[ 19 ] What we have assumed here did actually occur at one time in history. When the human organism known as Jesus stood on the banks of the Jordan to be baptized by John, his I left his physical, etheric, and astral bodies. But after the Baptism, that organism bore within itself the higher self of humanity in fully conscious form. The self that works on us with cosmic wisdom in childhood, before we are conscious of it, was then fully conscious in Jesus of Nazareth. And by this very fact, this self, which was connected to the higher spiritual world, could live in this human body for only three years. Events then had to follow a course that brought an end to Jesus' physical life three years after the Baptism.

[ 20 ] Indeed, we have to understand the external events in the life of Jesus Christ as resulting from the inner causes discussed above. They are the outer expression of these causes. [ 21 ] This reveals the deeper connection between the guide in us—which radiates into our childhood as into a dark room and always works under the surface of our consciousness as our best self—and what once entered into human history to live for three years in a human sheath.

[ 22 ] This “higher” I, which is connected to the spiritual hierarchies, entered history in the person of Jesus of Nazareth—an event that is symbolized by the spirit descending in the form of a dove, saying: “This is my well beloved Son, today I have begotten him” (Matthew 3: 17). (Such is the original meaning of the words). What is revealed here? If we hold this image of the Baptism before our eyes, we have before us the highest human ideal. That is what is meant when the gospels tell us that Christ can be seen and known in every person. Even if there were no gospels and no tradition to report that a Christ once lived, our knowledge of the nature of the human being would tell us that Christ is alive in us.

[ 23 ] To know the forces at work in childhood is to know the Christ in us. The question then arises whether this realization also leads us to acknowledge that Christ at one time really lived on earth in a human body? We can answer “yes” to this without requiring any documents, because true clairvoyant self-knowledge convinces people in our time that there are forces in the human soul that come from Christ.

In the first three years of childhood these forces are active without any effort on our part. They can also work on us in our later life—if we seek Christ in ourselves through contemplation. It was not always possible to find the Christ within; indeed, as clairvoyant perception reveals, prior to Christ's life on earth, there were times when no amount of contemplation would have helped people to find the Christ. Clairvoyant cognition teaches us that this is so. Between the time when Christ could not be found within and the present, when he can be found in this way, lies Christ's life on earth. It is because Christ lived on the earth that we can now find him within, in the way I have indicated. Thus, for clairvoyant perception, the fact that Christ lived on the earth is proven without recourse to any historical documentation.

[ 24 ] It is as if Christ had said: Human beings, I want to be an ideal for you that presents to you on a higher, spiritual level what is fulfilled in the body. In the early years of life we learn out of the spirit, first, to walk—that is, we learn, under the guidance of the spirit, to find our way in earthly life. Then we learn to speak—to formulate the truth—out of the spirit. In other words, we develop the essence of truth out of speech sounds. Finally, we also develop the organ for our life as earthly I-beings. Thus, in the first three years of life, we learn three things. We learn to find the “way,” that is, to walk; we learn to represent the “truth” with our organism, and we learn to express “life” in our body through the spirit. There is no more meaningful paraphrase imaginable of the words “Unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 18:3)

Most meaningfully, therefore, the I-being of Christ is expressed in the words: “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life!” The higher spiritual forces form our organism in childhood—though we are not conscious of this—so that our body becomes the expression of the way, the truth, and the life. Similarly, the human spirit gradually becomes the conscious bearer of the way, the truth, and the life by permeating itself with Christ. Thereby we transform ourselves in the course of our earthly life into the power at work in us in childhood.

[ 25 ] Words such as these about the way, the truth, and the life can open the doors of eternity for us. Once our self-knowledge has become true and substantial, these words will resound for us from the depths of our soul.

[ 26 ] What I have presented here opens up a twofold perspective on the spiritual guidance of the individual and of humanity as a whole. First, as individuals, we find the Christ, the guide in us, through self-knowledge. We can always find Christ in this way because, since his life on earth, he is always present in us. Second, when we apply the knowledge we have gained without the help of historical documents to these documents, we begin to understand their true nature. They are the historical expression of something that has revealed itself in the depths of the soul. Therefore, historical documents should be regarded as part of that guidance of humanity that is intended to lead the soul to itself.

[ 27 ] If we understand the eternal spirit of the words “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life” in this way, we do not need to ask why we have to enter life as children even after having passed through many incarnations. For we realize that this apparent imperfection is a perpetual reminder of the highest that lives in us. We cannot be reminded often enough—we need to be reminded at least at the beginning of each new life – of the great truth of what we really are in our innermost essential being, that underlies all our earthly lives but remains untouched by the imperfections of earthly existence.

[ 28 ] It is best not to present too many definitions or concepts when talking about spiritual science or theosophy [anthroposophy] or about occultism in general. It is better to describe things and to try to convey an idea of what they really are like. That is why I have tried here to give you a sense of what is characteristic of the first three years of life and of how this relates to the light that radiates from the cross on Golgotha. The description I have given bespeaks an impulse in human evolution that will make St. Paul's words “Not I, but Christ in me” come true. All we need to know is what as human beings we really are; on the basis of this knowledge we can then gain insight into the being of Christ. Only after we have arrived at this Christ-idea through a real understanding of humanity, and after we have understood that to find Christ we must seek him in ourselves, will turning to the Bible be useful for us. No one has a greater or more conscious appreciation of the Bible than those who have found Christ in this way.

Imagine that a Martian who had never heard anything about Christ and his works, came down to earth. This Martian would not understand much of what happened here, and much of what interests people today would not interest this visitor. However, this Martian would be interested in what is the central impulse of earthy evolution, namely, the Christ-idea as expressed in human nature. Once we understand this, we will for the first time be able to read the Bible correctly, for we will then see that it expresses in a wonderful way what we have first perceived within ourselves. You see, we do not need to be taught a particular appreciation of the gospels. When we read the gospels as fully conscious individuals, what we have learned through spiritual science enables us to fully realize their greatness.

[ 29 ] I am hardly exaggerating when I claim that there will come a time when the general opinion will be that people who have learned to understand and appreciate the content of the gospels through spiritual science will see them as scriptures intended for the guidance of humanity and that their understanding will do the Bible more justice than anything else has so far. It is only through understanding our own inner being that we can come to see what lies hidden in these profound scriptures. Now, if we find in the gospels what is so completely part of our own being, it follows that it must have entered the scriptures through the people who wrote them. Thus, what we have to admit concerning ourselves—and the older we get, the more often we have to admit it—namely, that we do many things we don't understand fully until many years later: this must also be true for the writers of the gospels. They wrote out of the higher self that works on all of us in childhood. Thus, the gospels originate in the same wisdom that forms us. The spirit is revealed physically in the human body as well as in the writing of the gospels.

[ 30 ] In this context, the concept of inspiration becomes meaningful once again in a positive sense. Just as higher forces work on the brain in the first three years of childhood, so the spiritual worlds imbued the writers of the gospels with the forces out of which they wrote their gospels. These facts reveal the spiritual guidance of humanity. After all, if there are people in the human race who write documents out of the same forces that wisely shape human beings, then humanity as a whole is truly being guided. And just as individuals say or do things they understand only at a later age, so humanity as a whole produced evangelists as mediators who provided revelations that can be understood only gradually. These scriptures will be understood more and more as humanity progresses. As individuals, we can feel a spiritual guidance within us; humanity as a whole can feel it in persons who work as the gospel writers did.

[ 31 ] The concept of the guidance of humanity we have just established can now be expanded in many ways. Let us assume a person has found students or disciples, that is, people who declare their faith in him and become his loyal followers. Such a person out of genuine self-knowledge will easily realize that having found students gives him the feeling that what he has to say does not originate within him. Instead, spiritual forces from higher worlds want to communicate with the students and find in the teacher a suitable instrument for revealing themselves.

[ 32 ] Such a teacher may then reason as follows: When I was a child, I worked on myself by means of forces that came from the spiritual world. The best I can now contribute here must also come from higher worlds. I must not consider it as part of my ordinary consciousness. Indeed, such an individual may feel that something like a daemon—the word daemon here refers to a benevolent spiritual power—works from the spiritual world through him on the students.

According to Plato, Socrates felt something like this when he spoke of his daemon as something that guided and directed him.⁵ Many attempts have been made to explain Socrates' daemon. However, to explain it we must accept the idea that Socrates could feel something akin to what emerges from the above considerations. Based on this, we then realize that during the three or four centuries when the Socratic principle prevailed in Greece, Socrates introduced a mood into the Greek world that served as preparation for another great event. The mood I am referring to accompanied the realization that what we perceive of an individual does not comprise the whole of what enters this world from the higher one. This mood continued to prevail long after Socrates' death. The best people who had this feeling later also best understood the words “Not I, but the Christ in me.” They realized that Socrates had to speak of a daemon-like force working out of the higher worlds, but through the ideal of Christ it became clear what Socrates had really meant. Of course, Socrates could not yet speak of Christ because in his time people could not yet find the Christ-being within.

[ 33 ] Here again we feel something of a spiritual guidance of humanity; nothing can enter the world without preparation. Why did Paul find his best followers in Greece? Because Socratism had prepared the ground there. That is, more recent events in the development of humanity can be traced back to earlier events that prepared people to allow the later events to work upon them. This gives us an idea of how far the guiding impulse of human evolution reaches; it puts the right people at the right time in the place where they are needed for our development. In facts such as these the guidance of humanity is evident in a general way.

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• 1. For a further description of the essential differences between human beings and animals, see Wolfgang Schad, Man and Mammals, (Garden City, NY: Waldorf Press, 1977) and Rudolf Steiner, Study of Man, (London: Rudolf Steiner Press, 1966).
• 2. Steiner describes the aura in Theosophy, 140–153.
• 3. The physical body is the corporeal aspect of the human being, related to the mineral kingdom. The etheric body, or body of formative forces through which life unfolds, is related to the plant kingdom. The astral body bears desires, pleasure and pain, and the qualitative world of emotions, and is related to the animal kingdom. See Occult Science, 21–28.
• 4. For a description of earth evolution, see Occult Science, chap. 2.
• 5. Socrates, 470–399 B.C., Greek philosopher and teacher. Plato, 427–347 B.C., Greek philosopher, the most famous student of Socrates.

Today I shall have to continue with some of the topics I discussed the last time I was here. It is particularly important, indeed necessary, to stress the connection between what I have said before and what I wish to add today. I have explained that the road to spiritual science calls for recognition to be given to two facts. One fact is that it is impossible to imagine that matter, physical substance, can be found to the outer world of our human environment. This can be clearly understood on the basis of many different things that can be learned through spiritual science. Our eyes behold the outside world, our ears hear the outside world, and we come to understand nature in a way when we use the intellect to combine the things we see, hear and Perceive with the other senses. We then think we know something about outer nature. Yet we are in error if we think and believe some form of science will help us to find physical matter and the laws pertaining to it in that outer nature. Materialism was in error not because it was speaking of physical matter but because materialists thought they could find physical matter and the laws of physical matter, its infrastructure and essential nature, in the outside world. People saying they do not want to know about the outside world because it is a material world, and that they want to follow the inner mystical path to a world of the spirit, are therefore materialists just as much as people who simply interpret the outside world in materialistic terms. Their search along the path of mysticism shows that in their view, too, Physical matter is to be found in the outside world. The people of more recent times are in error when they look for the essential nature of matter in the outside world. To put things right essentially means that we must no longer look for the nature of matter in the outside world and be very clear in our minds that however far we extend our sensory perceptions we shall never discover the nature of matter and its infrastructure, its laws. It has to be understood that all that exists in the outside world is Maya. It is the world of phenomena. Look as we may we shall never find anything material in that outside world.

On the other hand we must grasp a second, quite different fact. It is that the nature of matter, which materialism is erroneously looking for in the outside world, may be found within ourselves. We shall find it particularly if we become one-sided, abstract mystics. The contents of a certain mysticism coming to our awareness—experiences we think we are having—are nothing but the flame, I would say, that is lit within us by processes involving our physical organs. Considering the mysticism of Tauler and of Meister Eckhart, one is right in thinking that these men had a special faculty for experiencing these things and interpreting the physical matter in their bodies when the flame of awareness was ignited. They found the material world through mysticism. Until we know that external observation reveals only the world of phenomena, Maya, and that inward observation reveals only physical matter and its flame, we cannot get a clear, true picture of the nature of the world and the way human beings relate to this world. Physical matter is not to be found by applying science to the outside world, it must be sought within us, through mysticism. There we shall find its laws. The essential nature of gravity is not to be found with the aid of Atwood's machine.⁵¹ Instead we can try—in our thirty-second year, or perhaps at another time in our lives—to become inwardly aware of gravity, so that we know from inner experience what it really means to experience gravity. Concrete inner experience should show us that between the thirtieth and fortieth year we grow heavier and heavier inside. We can gain inner experience of a property of matter that merely comes to expression in mystical experiences. I have tried to demonstrate the essential point by saying that anyone finding himself in the midst of the chaos of the planet, the way modern scientists do, cannot get a clear idea concerning these things. We see the plants, the animals, the cloud cover; we see the glittering light of the stars, we see rivers, hills and valleys and so on. Yet if someone were to observe the earth from Mars, for instance, none of these would matter. An inhabitant of the planet Mars observing the earth through some instrument or other—we may well imagine, and it would be in accord with the truth, though in a different way, that those who inhabit Mars have the kind of organization that enables them to observe the earth—would perceive nothing of the cloud formations, rivers and mountains we see, nothing of the phenomena relating to the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms. He would only perceive what goes on inside the skin of the human beings living on earth. Everything else would vanish before the eye of an inhabitant of Mars. He would perceive only what goes on inwardly in the organic life of human beings and for him that would be the material world of the earth. When we grow aware of a mystical element within us it is not what many mystics think it is but the flame that is cooked inside us. That is the place where we can find out about the physical matter of the earth. This form of self-perception takes us into the sphere of matter and of energy, an area where the people of the Western world have arrived at exactly the opposite view over the last centuries.

This gives an indication of the extent to which we have to change our thinking if the decline is to become an upward movement again. People think they are materialists or idealists or spiritualists because they follow a particular philosophy. That is not the case. We are far from being spiritualists when we say we contemplate the inner and not the outer life. It could indeed happen that someone is concentrating on his inner life and exactly by doing so comes to observe matter; the way it turns into a flame inside us. To find the right path it will be necessary to grasp what I mean, and to do so with the right inner attitude. The outer world as we perceive it with the senses offers only phenomena; it does not reveal the root and origin of the phenomena. Their root and origin lies inside our own skins. Anything we see outside should be regarded in the same way as we regard a rainbow. Anyone who believes a rainbow to be more than merely a phenomenon, thinking it to be something material spanning the heavens, is taking the wrong view. In the same way we are in error If, due to the fact that our sense of touch is also involved when we perceive the world around us, we believe we are surrounded by material things and not mere phenomena. The only difference compared to a rainbow is that other senses are also involved. Materiality cannot be found there, however, just as it does not exist in a rainbow. Everything outside us is phenomenon. The root and origin of the phenomena therefore is inside the human skin. The processes that carry the affairs of the earth from one age to another take place inside the human skin.

It may seem highly improbable and paradoxical to modern minds but it is nevertheless true that the phenomena which surround us today, and the laws apparent in these phenomena, are not the outer consequence of material events that occurred three thousand years before the Mystery of Golgotha. They are the consequence of what went on inside the bodies of Egyptians, of Chaldeans and others three thousand years before the Mystery of Golgotha. Those inner events have become outer ones. The outside world of those times has vanished, disappeared. Human bodies hold the germ for a future that may be reckoned in thousands of years. It is possible to see this by considering the natural phenomena of today, drawing a conclusion that may be bold but nevertheless revealing. People talk about the properties of the element radium. To someone able to perceive the reality of the spirit this sometimes sounds like children talking about something adult minds have long since come to understand on the basis of different facts. Modern physicists know that the radium which existed on the earth's surface up to AD 140 has since disappeared and no longer is radium. The radium that is found today has only formed since AD 140. Physicists are actually teaching this now. These things present themselves to human minds to force them, as it were, finally to give up the erroneous ways of thinking which had to be pursued for centuries for the sake of human freedom.

All this shows that it is necessary to consider the things spiritual science working towards anthroposophy presents to human minds in a totally different way from the way we usually look at things. It is necessary to abandon mere theory and consider the reality: to progress at all levels from abstract intellectual knowledge to active perceptiveness, to doing things, really doing something in relation to the world. As I have said before—but it is essential to make this point with real forcefulness—people think that some are materialists nowadays and others are spiritualists. A spiritualist will say: ‘He's a materialist and has to be opposed because it is not true that the soul is the product of physical matter. What the materialist says is wrong and we have done enough when we have refuted his arguments. The materialist is in error and therefore must be opposed.’ That is not the point, however. It is not a question of logic, of theories. Yet people always think spiritual science is all theory. Spiritual science working towards anthroposophy always bases itself on reality, sometimes of course seeking it in the place where it is to be truly found: in the true realm of the spirit. People who look to the outside world and seek to find matter everywhere by the methods now used in molecular and atomic theory—it makes no difference if they see matter as point sources of energy or as tiny building stones—are not merely subject to an error in logic that can be refuted. True spiritual science has nothing to do with purely theoretical concepts. It is concerned with reality. Anyone looking for more than phenomena in the outside world Is on the road not only to logical error but to organic illness affecting the whole of his person. We should not say that to follow this road Is an error in logic. We should say that anyone searching for truth In that direction is on the road to organic illness, on the road to feeblemindedness. Spiritual science working towards anthroposophy often has to change theoretical views into views that relate to reality. The search for clarity of ideas and concepts has nothing to do with merely agreeing or disagreeing with the views of others; it has to do with sickness and health, very real things in our lives. It therefore has to be said that a seeker who looks to phenomena for more than mere phenomena, for physical matter, is on the road to feeblemindedness, to organic illness. This is entirely within the sphere of reality.

In the same way we cannot simply oppose people who look to find abstract spirituality within themselves. Someone looking for the spirit by following the path of mere one-sided inner mysticism, failing to realize that when he comes to see through the tissue of this mysticism it is materiality he finds, is on the way to becoming infantile, to developing an organic illness taking the form of childishness. (I have given it the name that may well be given when one perceives this from beyond the threshold.) If we call this the threshold from the Physical to the non-physical world, with the Guardian of the Threshold standing there, the quality we call inspiration, or genius, on this side may justifiably be called childishness on the other side of the threshold. Childishness goes the wrong way in the physical world if it persists throughout life. Genius on the other hand means that a certain childlike quality persists in the background throughout life. Genius is achieved when we are able to retain into ripe old age a quality of soul that normally belongs to childhood. This is seen in its true form from beyond the threshold. If however that childlike soul quality persists one-sidedly into subsequent life stages, then this element, which in its rightful place in the human sphere is genius, becomes childishness instead. Once again we see that purely logical ideas must be replaced with ideas relating to reality as soon as we enter the sphere of spiritual science. They must be replaced with concepts that not merely change our views but produce inner organic changes.

Spiritual science working towards anthroposophy is a very serious matter. The seriousness of it is not given full recognition when people approach the work of spiritual science with their ordinary mental attitudes. They want to agree or disagree the way they usually do in the outside world; they want to continue in their habitual ways as they approach spiritual science. Spiritual science working towards anthroposophy can however only be taught by speaking in the terms of the world beyond. There words have entirely different meanings. Gravity, which exerts a downward pull here on earth, exerts an upward pull in that world. In the spiritual world we have to speak of what draws us down in a way that makes it the exact opposite. It is not surprising then that anyone taking spiritual science seriously is, to begin with, completely misunderstood by people who want to proceed in the customary way—a way that was inevitable in the age of materialism—when they approach spiritual science. The inevitable result is that things like those I dared to put to you yesterday are misunderstood.

Someone presenting his own views in opposition to Oswald Spengler would simply refute him. A spiritual scientist finds himself obliged not to refute Spengler's view in the usual way. He has to assume points of view rather than follow a rigid line; he will have to say that Oswald Spengler speaks from a different point of view, one that offers no prospects for the immediate future. We do justice to such phenomena if we do not simply refute them but show the genius that is in them, speaking with inner concern about the things one would like to see overcome. Spiritual science has much more to do with the way in which we deal with these things than with bald statements, with the kind of mystical platitude that the person who produces it even believes to be a particularly inspired truth. We have to consider these things, for we are moving into an age where we have to get beyond the mere contents of intellectual life. This is something I want to stress over and over again: we must get beyond the mere content of intellectual life.

Going just by the content, even a fool would find it relatively easy to refute Oswald Spengler's ideas. That is by no means difficult, but it is not what matters. What matters is to establish the concrete reality of Spengler's work and show how it can be overcome in a real and concrete way. In future the essential point in characterizing a person Will be more and more to consider what they are actually saying rather than to respond in sympathy or antipathy to what he or she has to say. We should not consider whether certain contents please or displeases us, but whether there is a spiritual quality to them. It is more important for the overall outcome of world evolution that there is someone who is an inspired materialist, a genius in representing materialism, for that calls for a brilliant mind whilst it often needs very little intelligence to represent platitudinous mysticism. A platitudinous mystic may on occasion do more to make the world materialistic than an inspired materialist. It is the quality of mind that matters. Recognition of this fact will count for much more in future than the actual content. This is something we have to learn. We must not seek for the spirit as though it were a system of logic; we must look for its reality. Let me ask you this. Would it not be possible for You to see that more of the spirit is alive in an inspired materialist than in a spiritualist full of platitudes? These are the things spiritual science working towards anthroposophy must come to see clearly. It is the reality of the spirit that matters, not the abstract statements made by one person or another. People fail to realize how important it is to consider realities and not theories!

Some of the things we see in ordinary life simply must be considered from the point of view of spiritual science today if we are to get them clear in our minds. Consider the parties which have formed in public life in our everyday world. Let us first of all consider the ordinary political parties. You know that the most miserable, sterile cliches are to be found in party politics. Yet to some extent we are all part of this, willy-nilly, unless we want to withdraw completely from public life or perhaps cannot have a vote because we are stateless and have not been given the right to vote anywhere. Everybody who has the right to vote is forced to support one line or another, i.e. to work along party lines. Parties are a fact of life. They go back to better times, to the English see-saw system when there was the Conservative Party on one side and the Liberal Party on the other. It may be said that all the parties that now exist are different combinations of those two shades. Sometimes the liberal element which is to the left takes on some colour from conservatism on the right, and conservatism is coloured with liberalism from the left, as in the case of the Social Democrats, or conservatism turns radical, as we have seen in the present time. All in all it can be said that the conservative-liberal seesaw is the pattern on which all our parties are based. That is the picture one gets when looking at this in an outer way. The most dreadful things are happening in those party organizations—everybody would admit this. The thing exists, however, and the question is why it exists. What does it rally represent? What in fact are parties?

Everything that presents itself in the physical world is an image of the non-physical world. What is it that exists in the non-physical world with the result that in the physical world we have parties as an image of it? The matter can only be properly understood if we grasp the conditions which apply when we go across the threshold to the spiritual world. There we arrive at something very different, at the real nature of things. Here in the physical world we are idealists, sceptics, realists, spiritualists or any other kind of -ists. We are something that can be summed up in a manifesto, as a political or sociological system. In short, we are something-ists. We base ourselves on an abstract notion, for parties always base themselves on manifestos, systems and the like, i.e. on abstract notions. As soon as we cross the threshold to the spiritual world we are no longer dealing in mere logic and abstract notions, we are dealing with realities. It is merely that this is not usually taken seriously. You cannot give your allegiance to a party programme when you have gone past the Guardian of the Threshold, you can only hold to the essential spirit of things, for there everything has to do with the essential spirit. You can merely hold to a spirit of the higher hierarchies and say: That is the one I follow, the one I unite with. Let others present their affairs in their own way, I am uniting with that one, I take his side. The term 'to side with one or another' achieves very real significance then; it is no longer merely abstract. Being human we are inclined to say that as soon as we look beyond the threshold we find three essential spirits: the Christ, Ahriman and Lucifer. It is of course possible to prepare oneself carefully to gain comprehension of the spiritual world and then to say: I choose Christ's party, or Ahriman's or Lucifer's Party. It is however also possible to obscure the issue, being badly Prepared, and choose Ahriman but call him Christ. We follow a spiritual entity, however—everything is of the essence beyond the threshold! We are always dealing with realities there, not with anything by way of a programme or system.

These words I say to characterize the relationship of the human being to the non-physical world are weighty words. In one particular respect it is not yet possible to say the final word on the subject, because that would be too provocative. Very few people on this earth however are aware that basically it is an illusion to follow party lines, to accept the abstract notions of parties. There is no reality to it and when we begin to follow something that is real we must in fact follow something that lies in the spiritual world beyond the threshold. There is however one party that may immediately be characterized as being well aware of this secret and indeed acting upon it. This was said in public in the course of lectures given at Karlsruhe in 1911⁵² and has brought me the hatred of the party in question. These are the Jesuits. They know very well that to follow a party programme—forgive me for using a term commonly used in Germany—is nonsense. One follows a spiritual entity in the non-physical world! That is why their exercises start with the Jesuit having to visualize the spirit whom he is to follow in the Society of Jesus, forming a military corporation for him. When I say that the last word cannot yet be said, I want to hold back concerning the nature of what is called 'Jesus' there. The point is to show that Jesuitism forms a party that follows a spiritual entity and that Jesuits are very well aware that to follow some party or other that goes no further than a programme to be followed in the physical world is a nonsense. The effectiveness of the Society of Jesus is due to the fact that it trains its followers to be the soldiers of a spiritual entity. The do not say this is right and this is wrong. They say: ‘It is part of the mission of the spiritual entity I am following; I shall defend it. I shall oppose anything that is not part of the Mission of the spiritual entity I am following, even if it is logically defensible; it is just as possible to defend what Lucifer and Ahriman are about as it is to defend the things Christ is about. There are exactly three logical defenses and they are all equally valid.’

We therefore have the strange phenomenon that the Jesuits are of course aware that anthroposophy is taking a spiritual line that is wholly defensible and yet they oppose it. They know full well that logical argument is no effective opposition, for it merely means playing with logic. They know that they are facing an adversary in this battle of minds and they will use all available means. It is therefore pointless to join battle by refuting the refutations of the Jesuits. They know exactly what objections we can raise; the fact that they know them and consider them to be fair makes no difference, however, for they follow another spirit than the one anthroposophy must now follow for the weal of humankind. As soon as one is in the realm of the spirit it is reality that counts. What counts is that one really gets a clear understanding of the spiritual paths, using the whole human being in arriving at such understanding—which certainly can be achieved with healthy common sense nowadays—and not the human dwarf who tends to be the end product of the kind of educational establishments we have today.

The parties which exist in physical life are therefore caricatures of something that rightfully exists in the spiritual world. That is what is so difficult about it. Things appearing in the physical world may be a reflection of something of genuine significance in the spiritual world. In the physical world it is pernicious and abominable, because every world has its own laws, and today we face the growing necessity to work our way up into the spiritual world again. The first stage consists of caricatures of spiritual life appearing in physical life; of people setting up party banners and following party idols when in fact they should be giving their allegiance to spiritual entities. It is truth and reality when it occurs in the non-physical world, and a lie and illusion when it occurs here in the physical world. You see I am not using empty words when I tell you that what matters is to transform purely theoretical things into the reality whenever we wish to speak of the truths that exist beyond the threshold.

Mere refutation of materialism will not achieve anything, because the situation is like this where the human being is concerned: In their whole make-up human beings are really spirit and soul. This element of spirit and soul exists even before we are conceived, before we are born. It has evolved out of our previous earth incarnation; it has gone through the spiritual world. It now assumes flesh, creating a physical Image of itself that consists of nervous system, skeletal system, blood system. So we now have two things: the human being in soul and spirit and the human being of flesh and bone that is its image. When we are thinking the usual abstract thoughts, what is it that thinks in us? Not the human being of soul and spirit. It is particularly when we think abstract thoughts, above all using earthly logic, that the Physical brain in us is thinking. It is important to know that when materialists say that the brain does the thinking they are quite correct as far as abstract thoughts ar concerned. The physical brain is an image of the spiritual brain, and this image creates an image, abstract thinking being merely an image. It may thus be said that when it comes to abstract ideas the physical brain does the thinking.

This is simply a special case of what I have said before. Materialism has merely found out that the brain is thinking the thoughts that from the middle of the 15th century onwards have become standard in Western civilization. The materialism presented by Moleschott, Buechner and that fat man Vogt cannot be simply refuted by saying it is wrong. It is quite appropriate for human beings who, from the middle of the 15th century onwards, have turned more and more to mere materialism. Human beings of the Western world are in the process of becoming beings that think only with the physical brain. The prophets of such physical brain thinking, Moleschott and Buechner, merely stated what Western humankind was going to be. They were wrong only in so far as they applied this to humankind as a whole. What they said applies only to people living after the middle of the 15th century, and in their case it does apply. People have got used to thinking only with their brains; it is the common way of thinking nowadays. Everything to be found in our ordinary literature, in the whole of modern science, is material thinking, is that kind of thinking. The materialists are quite right, and we could say that Buechner and Vogt would have been unfair to their colleagues if they had said that they thought with the spirit. That is not the case; they think merely with their brains. This cannot be argued against, and it has to be recognized that the road to materiality is not merely a false philosophy but something with a very real effect. That is also the reason why, when something like spiritual science working towards anthroposophy appears on the scene, those people will say: ‘These are thoughts beyond comprehension; they cannot be grasped.’ Well, they want to think with their brains: the thoughts of spiritual science are however thought with a soul and spirit element that has torn itself away from the brain. People must make efforts to tear their soul and spirit away from the brain with the help of thoughts that have been produced in this way; they must think those thoughts through. People must make an effort to think those thoughts through, to use the opportunity that still exists of tearing the element of soul and spirit away from the physical aspect of the brain. This element is on the way to being chained to the physical brain. People must tear themselves free. It is not a question therefore of right views and wrong views but of a process. The thoughts of spiritual science working towards anthroposophy are given to the world in the hope that people who are still capable of handling the old faculty of tearing themselves away that lies in them, will indeed make use of it and try and understand thoughts that are independent of the physical body, so that their souls may grow free of the body. It is therefore a question of having the will to understand anthroposophy; anthroposophy is intended to tear the element of spirit and soul away from the physical body. Our mission therefore is not merely to refute views that are wrong; but we must face the fact that very many people want to slither into them, want to be sheer matter and want to think, use their will and feel out of matter. We want to give spiritual science working towards anthroposophy to the world as something real, so that spirit and soul may be torn away from matter. The aim is to prevent the possibility of people losing their spirit and soul, for they now run the risk of slithering entirely into the ahrimanic sphere. People face the risk of losing soul and spirit and of losing themselves as human beings when the material world vanishes into nothingness, as I have described on an earlier occasion.

It is not a question therefore of replacing the old with the new, but to become active in the search for truth. This saves the soul from slithering into mere materiality; it saves the spirit and soul element from slithering into the ahrimanic sphere, where egoity would be lost. It is not a question therefore of refuting materialism, but of saving humankind from materialism coming true. Materialism is in the process of developing into something that is true rather than false. When People say that materialism is wrong they are not talking about what really matters. No, we have to say that materialism is coming to be more and more right; in our present culture it is coming to be more and more right. We may well find that by the beginning of the 3rd millenium humankind will have developed in such a way that materialism is the correct view. It is not a question of refuting materialism, for it is in the process of becoming right. It is a question of making it not right, because it is on the way to becoming a fact and no longer merely a wrong theory.

Certain people are trying to ignore these things. They want to make It as easy as possible for others, telling them to see how wrong materialism is and inviting them to turn to an abstract mysticism that Will give them everything they need. We could take up such abstract mysticism, but that would encourage materialism to become real and not mere theory. We do not have to overcome materialism because it is wrong, using words that remain theory; we have to overcome it because it is right and we must fight against it being the right thing. This puts another face on things, and this is also where we find ourselves in the reality of the spiritual world—not with theories, but with a living approach to the truth that in the cosmic scheme of things is an active deed. People find it unpalatable to have to listen to such things, yet that is the light in which everything should be regarded, even individual events. Believe me, the old methods of combat are finished with; everything that could be the habitual way in the past Is now finished. We must consider things in the light of the spirit.

What is conservatism? What is liberalism? Here on earth they are caricatures of the spiritual world. Conservatives are followers of Ahriman, liberals of Lucifer. Having passed the Guardian of the Threshold one can see how the whole of conservatism is running after Ahriman and the whole of liberalism after Lucifer. That may seem peculiar to the sophisticated people of today. It is however because this seems so peculiar that spiritual science working towards anthroposophy is so difficult to understand. We shall never understand spiritual science by merely thinking it; we shall only come to understand it if every one of its concepts makes us suffer and rejoice, when we feel lifted up and cast down, when we want to despair over a word, or think we shall be redeemed because of a word, when we see destiny at work in what normally appears as a shadowy theory just as we see it at work in things that are done in the outside world, when what spiritual science working towards anthroposophy has to say goes beyond being mere words and becomes reality. Then, when the inner impulse alive in this spiritual science is understood and felt, it will be rightly seen why things that for a time were maintained as mere theory, because people first had to come to know about them, must now become reality, why we have to be serious about the reality that lives in the words of spiritual science working towards anthroposophy. It will be seen that the necessity arises in our age to make the substantial essence of those words come to reality.

It is still the case that what is really intended with such a Waldorf School is not at all seen in the light of reality, that it is far too little considered in the sense which I have tried to characterize for you. Believe me, this is not to touch your hearts, nor to gain a little more support. Things have been said that had to be said now because humankind must know them. That is why I have said the things I have been saying. I merely wish that the opportunity would arise to say these things to a sufficiently large number of people, so that these people develop an inner impulsiveness where they take words as realities and do not merely listen in the belief that one is speaking theories.

This is what I have wanted to put to you on these two occasions. It will have to happen that outer events follow not on the external contents of spiritual science as it is presented, but out of inner impulses. Fighters like the Jesuits know very well what many followers of anthroposophy still fail to realize: that spiritual science working towards anthroposophy is a reality. Since they have come to realize this—they have done so for some time now, from about 1906 or 1907—since they have come to realize it they are opposing this spiritual science with increasing vigour. Many anthroposophists have no idea of the methods that are used, the sheer ingenuity, because there is a refusal to be really sure in one's mind of the seriousness of the situation. Words will only evoke a little bit of the things one really wishes people to take to heart; I have tried, however, to present just a little of it to you on these two occasions. If we reflect on what has been said, if we progress from reflection to feeling, to letting it become part of the whole of our being, there will be an end to abstract mysticism and to modern science. It will become the essential inner nature of the human being, it will be the power that releases spirit and soul again from physical matter, it will overcome a materialism that unfortunately is not wrong but is indeed true.

• 51. Atwood, George. English mathematician, invented a machine to illustrate the motion of a body falling under the action of gravity.
• 52. Von Jesus zu Christus GA 131. English translation: From Jesus to Christ. H. Collison tr., C. Davy rev. London: Rudolf Steiner Press 1973.

As we begin to view the human organism increasingly in the way that I unfortunately have been able to indicate only very briefly, many things become terribly important concerning judgment of the human being in health and disease, things not otherwise appreciated in their full significance. Very little attention is paid nowadays to what I have called in my book, Riddles of the Soul, the threefold nature of the physical being of man. Yet a proper assessment of this threefold nature of the physical human being is of the greatest significance for pathology and therapy.

In accordance with this threefold nature of the physical human being, the nerve-sense system is to be pictured as localized mainly in the head, though of course this head organization really extends over the entire human being. The nervous and sensory functions of the skin, and also those within the human organization, must be included. However, we cannot arrive at a well-founded conception of the modes of activity in the human organism unless we differentiate, theoretically to begin with, the nerve-sense system from the rest of the organization as a whole.

The second system in the human being, the rhythmic system, includes in the functional sense everything that is subject to rhythm—primarily, therefore, the breathing system and its connection with the system of blood circulation. In the wider sense, too, there are rhythms that are of essential significance to the human being, although these can be disrupted in many ways; I am referring to the rhythms of day and night, of sleeping and waking, as well as everything else rhythmical, the rhythmic assimilation of food and so on. These latter rhythms are constantly disrupted by the human being, but the consequences of such disturbances have to be brought into equilibrium by certain regulative factors found in the organism. As a second member of the human organization, then, we have the rhythmic human being, and, as a third member, the metabolic organism, in which I include the limb organism, because the functional processes that arise as a result of the movements of the limbs are inwardly connected with the metabolism in general.

When we consider this threefold nature of the human being, we find that the organization described in the last lecture as being mainly connected with the ego has a definite relationship to the metabolic human being in so far as the metabolic human being extends over the whole being of man. The rhythmic human being has a definite relationship to what I designated this morning as the system of heart and lungs. The functions of the kidneys, the forces that proceed from what I called the kidney system, are related to the astral organization of the human being. In short, in his threefold physical nature the human being is related to the individual members of his super-sensible being and thereby also to the individual organ systems, as I showed this morning. These relationships, however, must be studied in more precise detail if they are to prove of practical value for understanding the human being in health and disease. Here we will do best to begin with a consideration of the rhythmic human being, the rhythmic organization of man.

This rhythmic organization of the human being is very frequently misunderstood in relation to one of its definite characteristics, namely the ratio that is established between the rhythm of the blood circulation and the rhythm of the breath. In the adult human being, this ratio is approximately four to one. This, of course, is only the average, approximate ratio, and its variations in individuals are an expression of the measure of health and disease in the human organism. What is revealed in this rhythmic human being as a ratio of four to one continues in the entire human being. We again have a ratio of four to one in the relationship of the development of the metabolic human being (including the limbs—for simplicity's sake I say “metabolic”) to the nerve-sense human being. This can be verified by empirical data, as is the case with other things mentioned in these lectures. Indeed, so far-reaching is this ratio that we may say that all the processes connected with human metabolism take their course four times faster than the work done by the nerve-sense organization for the growth of the human being.

The second teeth that appear in the child are an expression of what is taking place in the human metabolic system as a result of its coming continually into contact with the nerve-sense system. Everything that flows from the metabolic system toward the middle, rhythmic system, set against that which flows from the nerve-sense system into the rhythmic system, takes place in a tempo of four to one. To speak precisely, we may take the breathing system to be the rhythmic continuation of the nerve-sense system and the circulatory system to be the rhythmic continuation of the metabolic system. We can say that the metabolic system sends its effects, as it were, up into the rhythmic human being. In other words, the third member of the human organization works into the second, and this expresses itself in daily life through the rhythm of the blood circulation. The nerve-sense system sends its effects into the breathing system and this is expressed through the rhythm of the breath. Thus in observing the ratio of four to one in the rhythmic human being—for there are some seventy pulse beats to every eighteen breaths—we see the encounter between the nerve-sense system and the metabolic system. This can be observed in any given life period of the human being by studying the ratio of everything that proceeds from the human processes of metabolism in their impact on everything that proceeds from the head system, the nerve-sense system. This is a ratio of exceptional significance.

We may therefore say that in the child's second teeth there is an upward thrust of the metabolic system into the head, but in such a way that in this meeting of the metabolic system with the nerve-sense system the latter gets the upper hand to begin with. The considerations that follow will make this clear to you. The second dentition at about the age of seven represents a contact between the metabolic system and the nerve-sense system, but the effect of the nerve-sense system predominates. The outcome of this collision between what proceeds from the nerve sense system and the metabolic system is the development of the second teeth.

Again, in the period when the human being reaches puberty, a new collision occurs between the metabolic system and the nerve-sense system, but this time the metabolic system predominates. This is expressed in the male sex, for example, by the change in the voice itself, which up to this period of life has essentially been a form of expression for the nerve-sense system. The metabolic system pulses upward and makes the voice deeper.

We can understand these effects by observing the extent to which they encompass the radiations in the human organism that originate in the kidney system and liver-gall system on the one hand, and in the head and skin organizations on the other (everything that therefore forms the nerve-sense system). This is an extremely interesting ratio, one that leads us into the deepest depths of the human organization. We can picture the building and molding of the organism in this way: radiations proceed from the side of the kidney-liver systems, and they are met by the plastic, formative forces proceeding from the head system. If we were to try to draw what takes place schematically, we would have to do it in this way (sketching). The radiations from the kidney-liver system (naturally they do not stream only upward but to all sides) have the tendency to work in a semi-radial direction, but they are thwarted everywhere by the plastic, formative forces that proceed from the head system. We can thus understand the form of the lungs by thinking of them as shaped sculpturally by the liver-kidney systems which are met by the rounding-off forces proceeding from the head system. The entire structure comes into being in this way: radial formation from the kidney-liver systems, and then the rounding off of the radial formation by the forces proceeding from the head system.

In this way we arrive at a fact of the greatest importance and one that can be confirmed empirically in every detail. In the process of man's development, in human growth, two force components are at work: (1) the force components that proceed from the liver-kidney systems and (2) the force components that proceed from the nerve-sense system, rounding off the forms and shaping their surfaces. These two components collide with each other, but not with the same rhythm. They collide with each other in varying rhythms. Everything that proceeds from the liver-kidney systems has the rhythm of the metabolic human being. Everything that proceeds from the head system has the rhythm of the nerve-sense human being. This means that when the human organization is ready for the emergence of the second teeth, at about the seventh year of life, the metabolic organization, with all that proceeds from the kidney-liver systems (which is met by the rhythm of the heart), is subject to a rhythm that is related to the other rhythm, proceeding from the head, in the ratio of four to one. Thus not until the twenty-eighth year of life is man's head organization developed to the point reached by the metabolic organization at the age of seven. This means that the plastic principle in the human being develops more slowly than the radiating principle, the non-plastic principle. In effect it develops four times as slowly. This is connected with the fact that at the end of the seventh year of life, regarding what proceeds from our metabolism, we have developed to the point reached by growth in general (in so far as this is subject to the nerve-sense system) only at the twenty-eighth year.

Man is a thus a very complicated being. Two streams of movement subject to totally different rhythms are at work in him. And so we can say that the emergence of the second teeth, for example, is due in the first place to the fact that everything connected with the metabolism comes into contact with the slower but more intensive plastic principle, so that in the teeth the plastic element predominates. At the time of puberty, there is a predominance of the metabolic element; the plastic element withdraws more into the background, which is expressed in the male sex by the familiar phenomenon of the deepened voice.

Many other things in the human organization are connected with this: for instance the fact that the greatest possibility of illness fundamentally occurs during the period of life before the arrival of the second teeth—the first seven years of life. When the second teeth appear, the inner tendency of the human being to disease ceases to a great extent. The system of education that it has been our task to build up* has compelled me to make a detailed study of this matter, for it is impossible to found a rational system of education without these principles concerning the human being in health and disease. In his inner being, the human being is in the healthiest state during the second period of life, from the change of teeth to puberty. After puberty, a period begins when it is again easy for him to fall prey to illness.

• Referring to the Waldorf education movement, founded in Stuttgart, Germany in 1919, and now a worldwide independent educational movement.

The tendency to illness in the first period of life until the change of teeth is quite different from the tendency to illness after puberty. These two possibilities of falling ill are as different, you could say, as the second dentition is from the change in the male voice. During the first period of life, up to the change of teeth, everything proceeds from, the child's nerve-sense organization to the outermost periphery of the human organism. Everything proceeds from the nerve-sense organization. The nerve-sense organization, which predominates until the change of teeth, is the origin for pathological phenomena in the first period of human life. You will be able to form a general conception of these pathological phenomena if you say to yourselves: it is quite evident here that the radiations from the kidney-liver systems are rounded off, sculpturally rounded off by the plastic principle working from the nerve-sense human being. This plastic element is the main field of action of everything that I have described as being connected with the ego organization and the astral organization of the human being.

Now it may seem strange that I previously spoke of the ego organization as proceeding from the liver-gall system and the astral organization as proceeding from the kidney system, and that I now say: everything connected with the ego and astral organizations emanates from the head organization. We shall never understand the human organization with all its tremendous complexities if we say baldly that the ego organization proceeds from the liver-gall system and the astral organization from the liver-kidney systems. We must realize that in the first period of life, up to the change of teeth, these radiations from the liver system and the kidney system are rounded off by the nerve-sense system. This rounding-off process is the essential thing. Strange to say, the forces supplied to the ego and astral organizations by the liver-gall system and the kidney system reveal themselves as a counterradiation, not in their direct course from below upward but from above downward. Thus we have to conceive of the child's organization as follows: the astral nature radiates from the kidney system and the ego organization from the liver system, but these radiations have no direct significance. Both the liver system and the kidney system are, as it were, reflected back from the head system, and only this reflection into the organism is the active principle.

How, then, are we to think of the astral organization in the child? We must think of the workings of the kidneys as being radiated back from the head system. What of the the ego-organization in the child? The workings of the liver-gall system are also radiated back from the head system. The physical system proper and the etheric system work from below upward, the physical organization having its point of departure in the digestive system and the etheric organization in the heart-lung system. These organizations work from below upward and the others from above downward during the first epoch of human life, and the radiation from below upward works into the radiation working from above downward in a rhythm whose ratio is four to one.

It is a pity that the indications here have to be so brief, but they really are the key to the processes of childhood. If you want to study the most typical childhood diseases, you may divide them into two classes. On the one side you will find that the forces streaming from below upward meet the forces streaming from above downward with a rhythm of four to one, but there is no coordination. If it is the upward streaming forces with their rhythm of four that refuse to incorporate themselves into the human individuality, while the inherited rhythm of the head organization is in order, then we find all those diseases in the child's organism that are diseases of the metabolism, arising from a kind of damming-up against the nerve-sense system in which the metabolism is not quite able to adapt itself to what radiates out from the nerve-sense system. Then we get, for example, that strange disease in children that leads to the formation of a kind of purulent blood. All other children's diseases that may be described as diseases of the metabolism arise in this way.

On the other hand, suppose the metabolic organism is able to adapt itself to the individuality of the child and that the hygienic conditions are such that the child is properly adapted to its environment—if, for example, we feed him in a regular way. If however, as a result of some inherited tendency, the nerve-sense system working from above downward does not harmonize properly with the radiations from the liver-gall system and the kidney system, diseases accompanied by cramp-like conditions arise, the cause of them being that the ego and astral organizations are not descending properly into the physical and etheric organizations.

Childhood diseases, therefore, arise from two opposite sides. Nevertheless, it is always true that we can understand these diseases of the child's organism only by directing our attention to the head and nerve-sense organization. The metabolism in the child must be shaped so that it is brought into harmony not only with outer conditions but also with the nerve-sense organization. In the first period of human life, up to the change of teeth, a practical and fundamental knowledge of the human nerve-sense system is necessary and we must be aware that despite the fact that everything in the child radiates from the head organization, it is nonetheless possible for the metabolism to press too far if the metabolism is normal while the head organization, through hereditary circumstances, is too weak.

Now when the second period of life sets in, from the change of teeth to puberty, it is the rhythmic organism from which everything radiates. The astral and etheric organizations of the human being are essentially active here. Into the astral and etheric organizations between the change of teeth and puberty streams everything that arises from the functions of the breathing and circulatory systems. The reason that the human organization itself can offer the human being the greatest possibility of health during this period of life is that these two systems can be regulated from outside. The health of school children of this age is very dependent on hygienic and sanitary conditions, whereas during the first period of life external conditions cannot affect health in the same way.

Out of a real knowledge of the human being we become aware of the tremendous responsibility resting upon us with regard to the medical aspect of education. We become aware that we may have dealt wrongly with the causes of disease that make their appearance between the seventh and fourteenth years of life. During the elementary school years, the human being is not really dependent upon himself; he is adapting himself to his environment in his breathing, by inhaling the air and by means of all that arises in his circulation through metabolism. Metabolism is connected with the limb organization. If children are given the wrong kind of gymnastics or are allowed to move wrongly, outer causes of disease are cultivated. Education during the elementary school age should be based upon these principles, which should be taken into strictest account in all our teaching.

This is not done in our time, as you can conclude from the following. Experimental psychology—as it is called—has a certain significance which I well appreciate, but among other transgressions it makes the mistake of speaking like this: such and such a lesson causes certain symptoms of fatigue in the child; such and such a lesson gives rise to different symptoms of fatigue, and so forth. And according to the conditions of fatigue thus ascertained, conclusions are drawn as to the right kind of curriculum. Yes—but, you see, the question is put incorrectly, it must be posed in a different way. From the seventh to the fourteenth years, thank God, all that really concerns us is the rhythmic human being, which does not get tired. If it were to tire, the heart, for instance, could not continue to beat during sleep throughout the whole of earthly life. Nor does the action of breathing get tired. So when it is said that we must pay attention to whether more or less fatigue arises in an experiment, the conclusion should be that if there is fatigue at all, something is amiss. Between the seventh and fourteenth years our ideal must be to work not primarily upon the head system but upon the rhythmic system. We do this when we form our education artistically. Then we are working upon the rhythmic system, and we will see that it will be quite possible to correct all the conditions of fatigue arising from false methods of teaching that are being researched today. Excessive strain on the memory, for example, will always exert an influence on the breathing action, even if only in a mild way, and the results will appear only in later life.

At puberty and afterward, the opposite is the case. Causes of disease may then arise again in the human being himself, particularly in his metabolic-limb organism. This is because the food substances assert their own inherent laws, and then we are faced with an overpowering effect of the physical and etheric organisms in relation to the human organization.

In the organism of the very young child, therefore, we are essentially concerned with the ego organization and the astral organization working by way of the nerve-sense system; in the period between the change of teeth and puberty we are concerned mainly with the activity of the astral and etheric organizations, but now arising from the rhythmic system; after puberty we have to do with the predominance of the physical and etheric organizations arising from the metabolic-limb system. We can see how pathology confirms this absolutely. I need only call your attention to certain typical diseases of the female sex; actual metabolic diseases arise from within the human being after puberty, so that we can say that the metabolism predominates. The products of metabolism get the better of the nerve-sense organization instead of duly harmonizing with its activities. In childhood diseases before the change of teeth there is an inappropriate predominance of the nerve-sense system. The healthy period lies between the change of teeth and puberty; and after puberty the metabolic-limb organism, with its quicker rhythm, begins to predominate. This quicker rhythm then expresses itself in everything connected with deposits of metabolism which form because the plastic organization from the side of the head does not meet them properly. The result of this is that the products of metabolism invariably get the upper hand.

I am very sorry that I can speak of these things only in a cursory, aphoristic way, but my aim is to indicate at least the goal of such thoughts, which is to see that the functional aspect in the human being is primary, and that formations and deformations must basically be regarded as proceeding from this functional aspect. This is expressed outwardly in the fact that up to the seventh year of the child's life the plastic, shaping forces work with particular strength. The plastic structure of the organs is developed by the nerve-sense system to such a point that the plastic molding of teeth, for example, up to the time of the second dentition, is an activity that is not repeated. In contrast to this, the permeation of the organism by the metabolism enters an entirely new phase when—as happens at puberty—a portion of the metabolism is given over to the sexual organs. This leads to a thorough change in the metabolism.

It is terribly important to make a methodical and detailed study of the matters I have indicated to you. The results thus obtained can then be coordinated in a truly scientific sense if they are brought into line with what I told you at the end of the last lecture, if they are related to the working of the cosmos outside the human being.

How, then, can we approach therapeutically everything that radiates out in such a complicated way from the kidney system, from the liver system? We simply need to call forth changes by working on it from outside. We can approach it if we hold fast to what can be observed in the plant—I mean, the contrast between the principle of growth that is derived from the preceding year or years, and those principles of growth that stem from the immediate present. Let us return once more to the plant. In the root and up to the ovary and seed-forming process we have what is old in the plant, belonging to the previous year. In everything that develops around the petals we have what belongs to the present. And in the formation of the green leaves the past and the present are working together. Past and present, as two component factors, have united to produce the leaves.

Now everything in nature is interrelated, just as everything is interrelated in the human organism, in the complex way I have described. The point is to understand the relationships. Everything in nature is related reciprocally, and by a simpler classification of these relationships revealed in the plant we come to the following.

In the terminology of an older, more instinctive medicine (which we by no means want to renew; I only mention it so that we can understand one another better), we find constant mention of the sulfurous or the phosphoric. These sulfurous or phosphoric elements exist in those parts of the plant that represent the forces of the present year—in the blossom, not in the ovary and stigma. When you therefore make a tea from these particular organs of the plant (thereby extracting also what is minerally active in them) you obtain the phosphoric or sulfurous aspect. It is totally incorrect to imagine that the doctors of ancient times thought of phosphorus and sulfur in the sense of modern chemistry. They conceived of them in the way I have indicated. According to ancient medicine, a tea prepared from the petals of the red poppy, for instance, would have been “phosphoric” or “sulfurous.” On the other hand, in a preparation derived from a treatment of a plant's leaves (naturally you get totally different results depending on whether you use pine needles, for example, or cabbage leaves for your decoction) we get the mercurial element, as it was called in ancient terminology. This mercurial element is not the same as what is also called quicksilver. And everything that is connected with the root, the stem, and the seed was for ancient medicine connected with the salt-like element.

I am saying these things only for the sake of clarity, for with our modern natural scientific knowledge we cannot go back to older conceptions. A series of investigations should be made to show, let us say, the effects of an extract prepared from the roots of some plant on the head organization, and hence on certain diseases common to childhood.

A highly significant regulating principle will come to light if we investigate the effects of substances drawn from the roots and seeds of plants on the organization of the child before the change of teeth. For illnesses of the kind that are acquired from outside—and, fundamentally speaking, all illnesses between the change of teeth and puberty are of this kind—we obtain remedies, or at least preparations that have an effect upon such illnesses, from leaves and everything akin to the nature of leaves in the plant. I am speaking in the old sense here of the mercurial element, which we meet in a stronger form in mercury, in quicksilver itself, though it is not identical with this substance. The fact that mercury is a specific remedy for externally acquired sexual diseases is connected with this.

What manifests in sexual diseases is really nothing but the intensification of illnesses that may arise in an extremely mild form in the second period of life. The sexual diseases themselves are only a more potent form of what can be acquired externally from age seven to fourteen, until puberty. Before puberty they do not develop into sexual diseases proper, because the human being is not yet sexually mature. If it were otherwise, a great many diseases would attack the sexual organs. Those who can really observe this transition from the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth years, on into the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth years, will see that symptoms that arise in earlier life in quite another way express themselves at this age as abnormalities of the sexual life.

Then there are diseases that have their origin primarily in the metabolism, in so far as the metabolism is bound up with the physical and etheric systems of the human being. These diseases must be considered in connection with the workings of the petal nature of plants.

The cursory way of dealing with these matters that is unfortunately necessary here may make a great deal appear fantastic. Everything can nevertheless be verified in detail. The obstacles that make these things so unapproachable to orthodox medicine are really due to the fact that, to begin with, they all seem beyond the range of verification. This is because we have to reckon with complicated phenomena in the human organism such as the particularly striking example that I spoke about at the beginning of this lecture. I described it in such a way that it appeared irreconcilable with what I said yesterday. This confusion clears up, however, when we see that what proceeds from the liver-kidney organization appears first in its counterreactions, and in this sense it represents something quite essential for the ego organism and astral organism of the human being. In this case it is especially evident, but in a similar way there is a direct cooperation and counterreaction between the rhythms of the blood circulation and of the breathing in man's middle system. Here, too, many an influence that proceeds from the rhythm of the blood must first be looked for in the beat of the breathing rhythm, and vice versa.

Now connect this with the fact that the human organization, for example, really lives in the inner warmth-man, as I said this morning, and that this warmth-man then permeates the airy, the gaseous man. In the forces proceeding from the ego and astral organisms, we then have seen physically something that is working primarily from the warmth organization and the airy, gaseous organization. This is what we have to see in the organism of the very young child. We must see the cause of childhood diseases by studying the warmth and airy organizations in the human being. The effects that appear if we approach the warmth and airy organizations with preparations derived from roots and seeds are caused by the fact that two polar ways of working collide with each other, the one stimulating the other. Substances arising from the seed or root organizations and introduced into the organism stimulate everything that emerges from the warmth organization and the airy organization of the human being.

Through this I merely wished to indicate to you that in the influences working from above downward, so to speak, we can discern in the human being, from the very outset, a warmth-air vibration that is strongest in childhood, although in reality it is not a vibration but an organic structure taking its course in time. What goes from below upward in the physical-etheric organism is the solid and fluid organization of the human being. These two are in mutual interaction, inasmuch as the fluid and gaseous organizations permeate one another in the middle, bringing forth an intermediate phase of the states of aggregation by their mutual penetration, just as there exists in the human organism the well-known intermediate stage between the solid and the fluid. So likewise in the living and sentient organisms we must look for an intermediate phase between the fluid and the gaseous, and again a phase between the gaseous and the element of warmth.

Please note that everything I am expressing here in a physiological sense has a significance for pathology and therapy. When we look into the human being who is organized in such a complex way, we find that one system of organs is continually pouring its influences into another system of organs. If you now study the whole organic action expressed in one of the sense organs, in the ear, for example, you will find the following: ego organization, astral organization, etheric and physical organizations are all working together in a certain way so that the metabolism permeates the nerve-sense being; this is then permeated by rhythm through the processes of breathing, in so for as they work into the organ of hearing; it is permeated by rhythm and organization through the blood rhythm, in so far as this penetrates the organ of hearing. Everything that I have thus tried to make transparent for you in these ways, threefold and fourfold (in the three members of the human being and in the four organizations that I have explained)—all this finds expression in definite relationships in every single organ. And in the long run, everything in the human being is in metamorphosis.

For instance, consider what appears normal in the region of the ear—why do we call it normal? Because it appears precisely as it does in order that the human being can come into existence, can come into existence as he lives and moves on earth. There is no other reason for us to call it normal. But consider now the special relationships that work in shaping the ear by virtue of the ear's position, notably by virtue of the fact that the ear is at the periphery of the organism. Suppose that these relationships were working in such a way that a similar relationship arose by metamorphosis at some other place within the organism, a similar reciprocal relationship to all these members. Instead of the reciprocal relationship that is appropriate to that place within the body, something incorporates itself into this place that wants to become an ear. (Forgive this very sketchy way of hinting at the facts. I cannot express what I want to say in any other way, as I am obliged to say it in the briefest outline. ) For instance, this may incorporate itself in the region of the pylorus, in place of what should arise there. In a pathological metamorphosis of this kind we have to see the origin of tumorous formations. In fact, all tumorous formations up to carcinoma are really displaced attempts at the formation of sense organs. If you penetrate the human organism in the right way regarding such a pathological formation, you will find what part is played in the child's organization—even the embryonic organization—by the organisms of warmth and air in order to bring these sense organs into being. These organs can indeed be brought into being in the right way only through the organisms of warmth and air encountering the solid and fluid organisms, which results in a formation composed of both factors. This means that it is necessary for us to look into this relationship existing between the physical organism (in so far as this expresses itself in the metabolism, for example) and the formative, plastic organism (in so far as this expresses itself in the nerve-sense system). We must see, so to speak, how the metabolic organism radiates out that which carries the substance in a radial way, and how the substance is plastically molded in the organs by what the nerve-sense system carries to meet it.

Bearing this in mind, we shall learn to understand in what way we can really approach a tumor formation. We can only approach a tumor formation by saying that there is a false relationship between the physical-etheric organism on the one side, in so far as it expresses itself in metabolism, and the ego organism and astral organism on the other side, in so far as they express themselves in the warmth and airy organisms respectively. Ultimately, therefore, we have above all to deal with the relationship of the metabolism to the warmth organization in the human being, and in the case of an internal tumor—although it is also possible with an external tumor—The best treatment is to envelop the tumor with a mantle of warmth.(I shall speak of these things tomorrow when we come to consider therapy.) We must succeed in enveloping the tumor with a mantle of warmth. This brings about a radical change in the whole organization. If we succeed in surrounding the tumor with a mantle of warmth, then—speaking primitively—we shall also succeed in dissolving it. This can actually be achieved by the proper use of certain remedies that have probably been suggested to you by our physicians, which are then injected into the human organism. We may be sure that in every case a preparation of viscum (mistletoe), applied in the way we advise around the abnormal organ (for instance around the carcinomatous growth) will generate a mantle of warmth, but we must first have ascertained its specific effect upon this or that system of organs. We cannot, of course, apply exactly the same preparation to carcinoma of the breast as to carcinoma of the uterus or of the pylorus. One must study the path taken by what is produced by the injection, but you will achieve nothing unless you bring about a real reaction. This reaction comes to expression as a state of feverishness. The injection must be followed by a feverish condition. You can at once expect failure if you do not succeed in evoking a condition of feverishness.

I wanted to lead you to this principle so that you could see that these things depend upon a ratio; but the ratio is merely a regulating principle. You will see that these regulating principles can be verified, as all such facts are verified by the methods of modern medicine. There is no question of asking you to accept these things before they have been verified, but anyone who really looks into these things today can make remarkable discoveries.

Although this brief exposition may at first be somewhat confusing, everything will become clear to you if you go into the subject deeply. Everything that I have presented to you today can be verified in a remarkable way if only you take the proper facts that are reported in the literature. These things are reported somewhere, and you need only connect them then with the picture presented today. This is particularly the case if you bring this into connection with something else, with the many comments found in the literature that one can only reach a certain point in these matters and then go no further. Thus you will find confirmation from two sides in existing medicine for what I have suggested sketchily today.

Tomorrow I will allow myself to speak about therapeutic matters, and then things will be clarified further that may not be clear to you today because of the sketchy method of presentation.

Before we pass on to another case, I would like to say a little more about the boy we were considering yesterday. For in this boy we can really see a whole series of psychic facts demonstrated. Right at the beginning of his stay with us—indeed, he brought it with him—he would speak of a little sprite that he had on the forefinger of his right hand. He has always, quite consistently, called this little sprite “Bebe Assey”. He carries on conversations with it just as one does with one's fellow beings, speaking to it, talking with it and altogether treating it as a real being. And then I must tell you of another idiosyncrasy. The boy will every now and then suddenly undergo a change, something like the changes we read of in the Werewolf stories. For a considerable time, for instance, he thought he was a lion and went about roaring like a lion. Has he changed into any other kind of animal? His favourite animal, anyway, has been a lion. We have here a sign that the boy's astral body is not in good working order. The astral body should by rights dive right down into the physical body. Instead of this, remnants of it have got left behind. For obviously, this “Bebe Assey” is (to begin with) nothing else than a remnant of the boy's own astral body. Then of course it can happen that this piece of astral body, which is left hanging out loose, becomes ensouled by an objective elemental being from the world outside. Subject and object then merge completely in one another.

What is of main importance for us as educators is the fact that, owing to the organism having become hardened, the astral body does not entirely enter it. Supposing you were to draw your astral body out of your physical body, so that you no longer had it pulsating there in its entirety within your physical body, then that astral body of yours would begin to show itself in all possible metamorphoses, it would begin to assume animal-like shapes. For when the astral body loosens itself from the physical and etheric—it may be still quite near to them, it may perhaps be still half or even three-quarters united with them—but so soon as the astral body becomes to any extent independent of the physical and ether bodies, it begins to manifest in animal form.

All these symptoms are particularly characteristic of the boy's condition, and they go to show how very difficult it will be to establish in him the right and proper harmony between the astral and etheric and physical bodies.

Now we will go on to consider another child. Let me give you the history of the case. The mother says that the child was born four weeks late. In the first four months of pregnancy the mother was on the stage and sometimes had to jump a great deal. Later on, she had a fall. At the age of two and a quarter, the child suffered from a digestive disturbance. Not until two years old was he able to stand. Throughout the first four years he was apathetic, but greedy for food. The first sound he uttered was R, which is most unusual. He even cried in R. Up to the fourth year he could only stammer out isolated words. Then he was given speech exercises; he had to speak sentences forwards and backwards. This was done by my advice. At the same time that he was learning to speak, he began to be restless, to make restless movements. He sleeps little, and does not fall asleep at all easily. In the evening he is very excited and tired, and cannot go to sleep. He takes his food greedily.

You would not be able to tell, from looking at the boy, how old he is. He is now six and three-quarters—not far off seven years old. As you see, he is backward in the development of his whole physical organisation. The head is rather too big, though scarcely enough to be noticeable. Taken altogether, the boy is backward. In the first period of life, from birth to change of teeth, the period during which the physical organisation ought to be particularly active—just in this period the physical organisation has in his case been inactive. Let me remind you of what I said about the physical organisation in the first period of life—that it is the inherited organism. So you see, it is an inherited organism that the child has had in the epoch through which he has already lived. The I (ego) organisation is now beginning to come forward, but it lacks the ability to bring about much deviation from the first physical organism. For it is the ether body that is active now, and the boy's ether body has adapted itself extraordinarily closely to the model body of the first seven years. The boy is behind-hand also with the change of teeth; that has not yet begun. So that there too we have to note a retardation of development.

Before going any further let us see that we are quite clear about the objective facts of the case. We find in this boy a relatively very weak astral body and a weak ego organization, which cannot make headway against the inherited organism. And we have also to note that this inherited organism has itself remained small. Now there is room for doubt whether the information given us is correct—for we are not at all obliged to assume that it was correct!—the information namely, that the child was born four weeks late. If this was so, then it was owing to the child's being too small; the child will have remained an embryo longer than usual because it was too small, because at the end of the ten lunar months it was not fully developed.

And now we have to ask ourselves the question: how has it come about that the child is in this condition? The explanation is given to us in the fact that the mother was acting on the stage during the first four months of pregnancy. She was a member of an independent troupe, who worked enthusiastically, and there can be no doubt that she was following her calling with enthusiasm and devotion. This meant that a considerable strain was put upon the astral body of the mother, which actually affected the form of the astral body of the child and turned its activity in a direction where it cannot do much in the way of growth—in the direction, namely, of intellectual capability. And so the process of intellectualisation begins in this boy even before birth, with the configuration that was given to the astral body during the embryonic period. We have then to do with a case of retardation, the causes of which lie right back in the embryonic period.

And now we have to consider how we are to treat a child of this kind who is altogether behind-hand in his development. As you will see for yourselves, the body has remained quite powerless. Throughout his earliest years, the boy was apathetic and developed nothing but the purely animal instincts of the physical organism. He was greedy, and late in learning to speak. And then, as I told you, the very first sound he learned to say was R. (Turning to the boy) Say “Robert runs!” (The boy says it in a deep, growling voice.) He is, you see, completely at home in the sound R. Do not forget that in a symptom like this a whole life can be expressed! Think of the mother during pregnancy. Think how she was continually in movement on the stage. And then try to enter into the being and character of R, which we have described in the Eurythmy lectures as the sound that has to do with turning and you will discern in the boy's speech a continuation of the play-acting of his mother. This one fact is of such overwhelming significance as to throw all others into the background. In this one fact opportunity is given us to acquire an extraordinarily deep insight into connections that need to be grasped and understood if we want to be clear in our minds about the condition of this child.

Let me remind you that what ought to happen during the first years of life is that the metabolism-and-limbs system of man is ordered and regulated by a strong astral body and ego. In this child the astral body is weak, and fails in its task; hence we find in him two symptoms to which we must give careful attention.

I do not know whether all of you were present at the lectures where I explained the true significance of the human brain.¹ I spoke of how the entire human organisation—all that we carry within us—is divided into upbuilding processes and breaking-down processes. With the latter are always connected products of excretion, for these are simply relics or traces that have been left behind by the process of disintegration. Let us look, first, at the boy's head. In the head a process of disintegration, a process of breaking down, is taking place. As you know, the intellectual activity of the soul, the whole thought-and-feeling activity of the soul, in so far as it makes use of the head as its organ of support, originates in a disintegration process. In this boy, the process of disintegration, having to be carried out by a weak astral body, is itself irregular. Waste products are not carried away with regularity, they remain; moreover, they do not harden as much as they should. We have not here to do with an actual case of hydrocephalus, but you see before you a head that holds within it too soft a brain. And now turn your attention to the reflected image of the brain—the content, that is, of the intestines. This too cannot be in order, and will not be. The activity of the intestines cannot ever have been in good order. Irregular brain activity and irregular intestinal activity go parallel with one another, especially in a child. This does not mean that you can set out with the resolve: I will see to it that the intestinal activity becomes regular—and imagine that thereby you will bring order into the activity of the brain. If you want to adjust the latter and bring it also into good harmony, you will have to work with medical knowledge.

Then there is a certain impurity in the relation and behaviour of the soul to the outside world. Try asking the boy to do something which he quite well understands; he will just grin a little, he won't meet what you say with openness and candour.

I shall have more to say afterwards about this case. I would like now only to add, in regard to the speech exercises that were begun with him at four years of age, that whenever speech exercises are done in this way, first forwards and then backwards, they help to regulate the connection of ether body with astral body. The exercises that were given to the boy at that time had this end definitely in view: to induce a harmonious co-operation of astral and ether bodies.

What the child needs is to be brought to feel and perceive his own physical organism. For as he does so, forces of growth will begin at the same time to insinuate themselves, as it were, into this physical organism. We must therefore choose for him exercises in Curative Eurythmy, which bring it about that he “discovers” his own physical organism. E (Eh, as in gate) is particularly helpful here, for in Eh man touches himself in his own organism; also U (as in rune) and O. O is chosen for its regulating influence. U and Eh are chosen for the purpose of helping the child to become aware of himself in himself. In his case, everything that makes for the realisation and apprehension of one's own organism can be of help. What else have we been doing with him besides Curative Eurythmy and Speech exercises? He has painting with the group. He must of course have painting; he is just about reaching school age. Progress with this child may be slow but it will be sure.

(The next child is brought in.)

I got to know this boy on a Journey. A rather difficult child! He is eleven years old. And now let me tell you where the trouble lies. The boy is an only child. Birth is reported to have been normal, although the mother is said to have lived unwisely during pregnancy; it seems she even drank a good deal. Development is said to have taken its course in the first three years without any marked individual feature. We will say more about that later. As a matter of fact, it cannot have been quite as represented, for at three years old the child fell suddenly ill, with high fever, and had convulsions during the night, the attack lasting only a short time. Such attacks became then for a while very frequent, coming on as a rule at night; later they grew much less frequent, occurring on an average once in three months. The attacks have, as you see, the characteristic symptoms of convulsions, that we spoke of earlier. Characteristically also, they began in the fourth year. Before that, the organism had not developed so far as to push back the astral organisation; the point had not been reached when the outside coverings—the walls—of certain organs began to repel the astral organisation. During the convulsions there is complete unconsciousness. This too, we saw, is quite usual. The child has violent spasms of twitching, particularly over the left half of the body; the eyes are also turned to the left. Afterwards he is very exhausted, and vomiting often occurs.

This means, you see, that by the time the child reached the third year, the walls of the organs were beginning to hold back the astral organisation, not allowing it to get through. Hence the convulsions. And with the convulsions—for the reason I explained to you—is associated loss of consciousness. But now in his case the astral organisation does succeed after a time in breaking through the walls of the organs to some extent. The child, unconsciously or semi-consciously, strains every effort to bring this about, and this struggle on his part lasts exactly as long as the attack. Then he has won through; but there is in consequence a certain emptiness in the organism in comparison with the previous condition, and this anomaly finds expression in the violent twitchings and spasms.

Now, as you know, the left half of the body of man is rather weaker than the right. When, the attack being over, the astral body is wanting to get free, it will naturally try to escape in the direction of the weaker part of the organism—that is, it will seek escape to the left. This finds expression also in the fact that the child turns his eyes to the left.

According to the diagnosis of doctors in Jena, the boy had encephalitis—a year ago, in January, was it? At that time, he had severe convulsions following on digestive disturbance and fever. So that here we have, preceded by stomach trouble, a major fit. Two weeks after the child was better again, paralysis of the left arm and leg showed itself—a most characteristic symptom, and easily explained. For, you see, what happens is this. The child goes on wanting to push the astral body through; but each time he puts forth these efforts and succeeds, he becomes aware afterwards of an emptiness behind the place where he succeeded in pushing the astral body through. Then he gets twitchings, and lets his astral body escape—to the left.

A process is taking place here which it is important to observe. Anything that enters into the organisation from without—that is to say, that has not been duly prepared by the organisation itself, but has forced its way in—is poison for the human organism. Suppose the astral organisation has suffered a displacement from right to left, and this displacement is continued—as it may well be, when it is a serious one—into the etheric organism, with the result that the physical organism also becomes involved. Then a slight infiltration of poison is set up towards the left side of the body, and this manifests outwardly in the symptom of paralysis. The child was given massage, and after three months the paralysis showed signs of improvement. The affected part was left a little weak, as one can still observe. (Turning to the boy and holding out an object) Take hold of it like this! As you see, he is clumsy with the left arm.

Since January 1923, the fits have essentially changed in character. They last now only a very short time, coming on as a rule nine hours after falling asleep. Suddenly the child will cry out, wake up, and stand up on his feet. At such moments you can observe also that extreme flatulence is present—a characteristic symptom. At the present time the boy has a fit nearly every week, but there is no longer the disturbance of consciousness. Neither do the twitchings occur. The fits pass and he jumps up all right. In 1924 a puncture was made in the corpus callosum, but with no result. The latest thing we have tried is treatment with calcium lactate.

The child is late in going to sleep and often talks in his sleep, especially if he has had a late meal. Appetite is good.

He has no liking for fruit or vegetables or anything acid, but shows a marked preference for meat. Digestion is at present fairly good; earlier on, he was inclined to be constipated and was also very quickly tired. The boy has a lively fantasy. He is friendly with everyone, but has no special affection for anyone in particular, not even for his parents. He is quick-tempered, and loves animals and plants. And we must not omit to note a trait that is strikingly characteristic of his condition, namely that he is a great chatterbox! That is part of the illness. It is for him a real need; he simply must chatter.

I think the very behaviour of the boy will have revealed to you the facts of his condition; you cannot help seeing them all simply by looking at him. There is however another feature of the case to which I must call your attention.

The child is now at the stage where the second body has already been developed for a long time, for he is eleven years old; but the condition in which we find him suggests that the model organism had itself become decadent, owing to the fact that the mother did not live wisely and carefully during the time of pregnancy, but drank a good deal. The whole manner and condition of the child now, makes it highly probable that the first body, the model body, was exceedingly irregular. And we are strongly inclined to the view that, although no such information has been given us, the birth may have occurred too soon, perhaps early by as much as two weeks—the mother failing to maintain her own organism in a condition that would render it a right and fit home for the embryo, which requires of course plenty of room to develop on all sides. This is frequently the case when alcohol is taken during pregnancy.

It is stated in the report given us that development in the first three years was without any peculiar features or symptoms. What seems to me more probable is that there has not been the readiness or ability to watch for more delicate deviations and irregularities. The astral (and the ego) organisation have been hanging out about the neck or mouth, and it is clear from this that the child must at any rate have felt, comparatively early, a need to speak. He must always have found difficulty in diving down into the ether and physical bodies. A certain nervous excitement, that manifests externally and that tends to hold back the principle of imitation and to allow more play to the inner organic impulses in evolution, must have already been present in the first three years.

And then we have, manifesting especially as the age of three-and-a-half approaches—the age that is halfway through the first seven-year epoch—the reactions that naturally arise when during the first seven years the ego and astral body are unable to work as they should from the direction of the head organisation. These organs here, which were at that time slowly and gradually coming into being—for they are finished and complete at seven years of age—turn out to be stunted in their growth. Why should they be so? The organs are stunted because the child did not finish the embryo period. They would have been more complete and more perfectly shaped if the child had gone through the whole embryo period. As it was, he had no fully developed model. When therefore, at the important age of three-and-a-half, the organs are beginning to take shape, the model comes short, and a condition develops where the astral body wants to penetrate the whole organisation and make its way through the walls of the organs, but is unable to get through; and there follow all the symptoms of which we have spoken. That in such a case the stomach and intestines must also inevitably become disordered ought not to be difficult to understand. For if the astral body does not succeed in bringing about the right streamings from the head to the limbs, then the intestines and the whole digestive organisation must necessarily remain weak. The ego organisation is not properly in them.

Consider now for a moment this weak digestive organisation—that is to say, a digestion that is weak in its forces, not having the ego organisation properly in it. Such a digestive system simply cannot tolerate just the particular kind of food that should find its specific field of activity in the digestive organisation. Imagine you have before you the plant.

Where in man does the root of the plant have its field of activity? In the head organisation; and the foliage in the rhythmic system; and all that develops above in the way of fruit or flower works in the intestines, in the whole digestive organisation. There is however no affinity between such a weakly developed digestive organisation and these upper parts of the plant. On the other hand, the boy's astral body, which is lying freely, as it were, in the whole belly without making its way right into the digestive organisation, has a hankering for meat. (The astral body of man is, you know, by its very nature strongly attracted to meat). We saw also that the boy shows a dislike of anything acid or sour. That again is understandable. Acid substances work with particular force upon the astral body. If the latter has dived down properly into the organism, then it unloads, as it were, upon the physical organism the acid influences it has received. But if it has not entered rightly into the physical organism, then this astral body is left painfully sensitive to the acid influences that reach it.

It is from observations such as these that you can obtain a true picture of how the organism works. When there is an irregularity of the kind I have described, one need not be at all surprised when stomach disorders occur. Stomach disorder is only a symptom of the presence in the metabolism of this irregularity. The illness consists entirely in the irregularity; the symptoms are occasioned by it, and there is naturally always the possibility that the onset of a fit should be preceded by stomach disturbance.

Since January 1923, there has, as I said, been an important change in the character of the fits. These last now only a short time, coming on about nine hours after the boy has fallen asleep. He suddenly starts screaming and crying, and wakes up. There is also extreme flatulence in the bowels. At present a fit occurs about once a week. With such a state of affairs, the outlook seems at first distinctly serious; it has nevertheless hopeful features. For there are signs of recovery, there are signs that a natural betterment is taking place. We have in fact reached a kind of crisis, that is expressing itself inwardly in an explosive manner; it takes its course slowly, but we could not expect anything else.

Why do the fits occur nine hours after falling asleep? Because that is the time when the astral body is beginning to set out on its return journey into the physical body. It still has difficulty in returning, it cannot make its way in; it keeps diving down, and then being driven back again. You can well imagine how all the symptoms follow from this—the starting up and the screaming. When however the astral body is once inside the whole physical organism, it is an easier matter for it to remain there throughout the day. The extreme flatulence arises from the fact that the astral body is not completely membered into the bowels organisation. To the relative independence and detachment of the astral body are due also the characteristic features of the boy's soul life—his continuous chattering, his excitability, his lively fantasy. And now the question is: what are we to do in such a case?

Important before all else is to remove from the astral body—which works powerfully and independently—all possibility of its developing forces that hinder it in the process of adaptation to ether body and physical body. When you have the child standing before you as you did today, you can see at once the first thing that needs to be done—his toy must be taken from him. That toy is a veritable poison for his soul. What he needs above all, is to have his imagination stimulated—as it can be only when he has to handle something that is not already complete and perfect. He must be got to paint as much as possible, but especially also to fashion forms, to carve. He should simply be given a piece of wood, and encouraged to “form” it in the shape of a human being. Here then will be our point of attack, as it were, in the educational sense. We must avoid bringing him in contact with things that are finished and perfect, and have it as our aim that he shall be constantly making things himself. This will bring his limbs into movement. We have not yet hit upon quite the right ways to achieve this; that still needs to be done.

A peculiar feature of this boy's condition is that one cannot say it is some particular organ which does not let the astral body through; the totality of the organs is formed and developed in such a way that they all equally hold back the astral body. Hence the slight tendency to deformity. And since, when the astral body does succeed in diving down, it is by the left side that it manages to escape, the danger is always present that symptoms of paralysis will show themselves on the left side. At his age they do not matter very much—as long as they are slight. They could, however, lead on to a more severe paralysis.

It would be good if along with foods for which he has a liking, the boy could be given sour fruit in exceedingly small quantities. (You will remember, we explained how his very constitution obliges him to have a strong dislike of all acid foods.) If this is done, then, while grabbing at the food he likes, he will take also with it your little dose of acid. All you have to do, before you give him some meat, is to pour on to the plate a small quantity of some dish that contains acid fruit juice. In this way you will find you can accustom him to eating very small helpings of stewed fruit with his meat.

And then it will be important that he should begin—or continue—to receive regular teaching on a right and sensible method, such as the method followed in the Waldorf School—irrespective of whether he makes rapid progress or not. We shall give him Eurythmy exercises, not limiting ourselves to particular sounds, but doing with him whatever brings the limbs especially into movement. In this way we can strengthen the limbs in their efforts to give form to the astral body.

In his present condition the boy himself helps in his own progress.

On the other hand, a child like the one we were considering earlier is extraordinarily difficult to deal with, the reason being that you have there before you a kind of little demon. What you must realise is that while the child remains small in his physical body, his astral body is all the time growing in inverse proportion. It does not adapt itself to the physical organism, but is as big as the latter is small. Now as a matter of fact, the child is, without knowing it, well on the way to become an actor in his astral body. Supposing you decide to appoint, instead of one teacher, a whole staff of teachers to train actors for speaking on the stage, assigning a particular task to each member of the college—then, if you were to develop him in a one-sided way, this squat little fellow could quite well be trained to teach the actors the sound R and related sounds. In spite of his apparent quietness and calm, the child is in reality very excited and agitated. You have before you, as I said, a kind of demonic being. An absolutely real super-sensible being is present in this boy. What you had sitting there in front of you was just a dwarfish little fellow, a mere Tom Thumb. But the actor is present there too all the time in full force, turning all kinds of somersaults etc., while the boy is perhaps sauntering along in an indolent manner.

You have here, you see, to do with a child who is most difficult of access. Whatever you attempt with the physical body meets with no response there, but only from the mercurial astral body—with the exception of Curative Eurythmy and speech exercises. These do contact the physical body and bring the intellect into activity; but it is no good trying to approach the child via the physical body by any other means. Indeed, it is quite possible you may fare like the “sorcerer's apprentice” who split the broomstick which would not behave and then found he had two broomsticks to deal with instead of one. For if you should ever succeed in making some sort of approach via the physical body—apart from Curative Eurythmy and Speech exercises—it may easily happen that through your intervention the constant restlessness is actually aggravated. That, then, will be your main problem in connection with this boy—that you are dealing all the time with an extraordinarily mobile and restless astral body.

How must we proceed, if we want to educate the boy? We must arrange our lessons so as to achieve a reversal of what we very frequently set out to achieve. Very often, as you know, we attach particular importance to making the course of the lesson lead up gradually to a dramatic climax. But for the boy we are considering, this gradual enhancement of interest must then at once be followed by a decline of interest. The dramatic quality must ebb away and subside. And this principle must be observed throughout all the teaching we undertake with him. We must have the patience and perseverance to carry it through. First, we must bring it about that the boy's attention is thoroughly roused. He, of course, has no knowledge at all of what is going on in his astral body; but anything that has the quality of true fantasy and imagination will help you to make your approach to this astral organism. You must invent the most delightful stories, full of vivacity and movement. When you are with this child, you must really become a poet, rich in imagination. And then, having gradually worked your story up to a high pitch of dramatic movement, and having succeeded at last in gaining entrance into the sub-conscious astral organisation—then you must, as it were, reverse and try to tone it all down, try to push back the stream of interest. Perhaps you hold up to ridicule some incident in the story, so that the charm of the thing is a little spoiled. Let us say, you begin to poke fun at the one who is the hero of the story and with whom the child has been enraptured. You could say: This great hero, you know, whenever he sets out to do his valiant deeds, he cannot begin until he has first blown his nose! With some such remark or other, you raise a smile at the person or thing that has aroused such enthusiasm and interest. And you go on in this way, until at last the whole thing evaporates like a soap-bubble. But beware that you do not at the same time spoil the child's enjoyment; you must see to it that the anticlimax, the discovery of how it all vanishes like a soap bubble, is also followed with pleasure and delight. And now while this is taking place, while you are undoing, as it were, the inner process which you yourself first stimulated the child's astral body is all the time gradually adapting itself to the physical body.

If you have the patience to undertake this kind of education with the child—first becoming a poet, and then again turning round on yourself and pulling your poetry to pieces with your irony until no shred of it remains—if you can have the patience to do this, you will manage to bring it about that by his ninth or tenth year the child will begin to grow in quite a natural manner. And that would be a great achievement. The super-fantastic organism that was created long ago during embryonic development would then be changed back again. The symptoms now present would gradually disappear in the course of your treatment. On the other hand, the very least result of all will be obtained by making direct attack on the symptoms themselves. To set about trying to break the child of his R would be as hopeless as it was once with a certain actor in Weimar—although he was no child!—who had a habit of emphasising each single syllable in every word. This actor would never say “Fréunderl” as we say it, but adhered strictly to the principle of giving equal emphasis to both syllables. Thus he used to say “Fréundérl”, “Kópfchén”, “Kíndléin”.² It is impossible to combat symptoms of this kind by direct attack. Any attempt to break our boy of saying and living in R would be utterly futile. It would only leave him empty and lazy and indolent. If, on the other hand, you carry out the measures I have described, the predilection for R will disappear of itself.

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• 1. On 2nd March, 1924.
• 2. Comparable English words would be friendship kitten, darling.

Education in any given epoch is naturally dependent on the general form of civilization prevailing at the time. What the general form of civilization has to offer, that can be passed on to the child in its education by the teacher. When I was speaking of the Greeks, I told you that they possessed an intimate knowledge of the whole human being, and from this intimate knowledge were able to educate the child in a way that is no longer possible for us to-day. The knowledge of the whole human being possessed by the Greek was derived entirely from the human body. The body of man was in a certain sense transparent to him. The body revealed both soul and spirit in so far as the Greeks comprehended these. And we have seen how the Greeks educated the whole human being by taking the body as the starting-point. All that could not be made to proceed from the body, in the sense in which I showed that music proceeded from it, was imparted to the human being comparatively late in life, indeed only after his bodily education had been completed, at about the twentieth year or even later.

We to-day are in quite a different position. The very greatest illusions in human evolution are really due to the belief that ancient epochs, which had to do with a totally different humanity, can be renewed. But particularly in this present age it behoves us to turn with practical commonsense to reality. And if we understand this historical necessity, we can only say: just as the Greeks had to direct their whole education from the standpoint of the body, so must we direct our education from the standpoint of the spirit. What we have to do is to find the way to approach even bodily education from out of the spirit. For whether we like it or not, mankind has now come to a point where the spirit must be grasped as spirit and attained to by human effort as the true essence of the human being.

Now it is just when we desire to educate in accordance with the needs of our epoch, that we feel how little progress has been made by civilization in general, in respect of this permeation by the spirit. And then there arises precisely in respect of education the longing to make the spirit more and more man's own possession.

Where do we find, let us say at a comparatively high level, the conception of the spirit possessed by modern humanity? You must not be shocked if I characterize this by examples from the height of modern spiritual life. That which appears at the top merely symbolically, and within the limits of the cultural life, rules, in reality, the whole of civilization. In the course of our endeavour to grasp what ‘spirit’ is, we have to-day only reached the stage of apprehending the spirit in ideas, in thinking. And perhaps the best way to understand human thinking in our age in its greatest scope is to observe this modern thought as it appears, let us say, in John Stuart Mill or in Herbert Spencer. I asked you not to be shocked by the fact that I point to the highest level of culture. For that which in John Stuart Mill and Herbert Spencer appears merely, so to say, as an outstanding symptom, in reality dominates every sphere, and is the characteristic thinking of our civilization. When, therefore, we ask to-day: How do men come to understand the spirit from which education should proceed just as the Greek educated the body? We have to answer that men conceive of the spirit just as John Stuart Mill or Herbert Spencer conceived of it. Now what was their conception? Let us think for a moment of the idea people have to-day when they speak of the spirit. I do not here mean a nebulous and absolutely indefinite image hovering somewhere ‘above the clouds.’ This is something that tradition has imparted and there is no actual experience connected with it. We can only speak of the spirit in humanity when we observe the attitude men have towards it, how they work and what they do with it. And the spirit in our present civilization is the spirit which John Stuart Mill and Herbert Spencer had already worked into their philosophies. There indeed it is and there it had to be sought. What we must observe is the way in which men apply the spirit, not the way in which they speak about it in the abstract.

And now let us consider this ‘thought out’ spirit, for in our time the spirit is really only a mental conception—a spirit that can at most think philosophically. Compared with the full content perceived by the Greek when he spoke of man, of Anthropos, the element of spirit in which we whirl around when we think, is something—well—distilled, unsubstantial to the highest degree. When he spoke of man, the Greek had always the picture of bodily man before him and the bodily man was at once a revelation of soul and spirit. This man was somewhere, at some time; this man had limits to his being; he was bounded by his skin. And those who trained this man in the Greek gymnasia covered his skin with oil in order to emphasize this boundary. Man was strongly outlined. He was a wholly concrete entity, existing at some particular point in space and time, with some particular form.

And now think of the kind of thought we have about the spirit to-day. Where is the spirit, what is its form? It is all indefinite, there is never a ‘how’ or ‘when;’ never any definite form, never any imagery. People do try indeed to build up some kind of image, but let us look at John Stuart Mill's idea of imagery, for instance. He said: When a man thinks, one idea is followed by a second and a third. Man thinks indeed in ideas—which are the inward images of words. He thinks in ideas and the ideas get associated with one another. This really is the essence of the discovery: one idea leads to a second, fourth, and so on. The ideas associate themselves. And modern psychology speaks in the most varied ways of associations of ideas as the real inner essence of spiritual life. Now suppose we were to ask: What kind of feeling and perception of our own being should we have if this association of ideas were indeed our spirit? We stand in the world; now the ideas begin to move; they associate themselves. And now we look back upon ourselves, upon what we really are, as spirit, in these associated ideas. This leads to a consciousness of the self that is exactly like the consciousness a man would have if he were to look at himself in a mirror and see a skeleton and moreover a dead skeleton. Think of the shock you would have if you were to look in the mirror and see a skeleton! In the skeleton, the bones associate, they are held together by external means and are fixed one above the other, according to mechanical law. Our idea of the spirit, therefore, is merely a copy of mechanics. To those who have a full sense of manhood, who feel healthy and are healthy, it is actually as though they were to look at themselves in a mirror and see their spirit composed of bones; for in the books describing association-psychology one sees oneself as in a mirror. We may have this pleasure constantly (not of course in the external, bodily sense) for it arises whenever we compare the modern state of affairs with that of the Greeks. Spiritually, we have this experience again and again. We go to our philosophers, thinking that they may be able to give us self-knowledge, and they place their books before us as a mirror in which we see ourselves as a bony spectre in associations of ideas.

This is what a man experiences to-day when he tries to think in a practical way about education and to approach the real essence of education from the standpoint of general civilization. No indication of what education ought to be is given him but he is shown how to find a heap of bones and how to piece together a skeleton. This is how the ordinary man feels to-day. He longs for a new education, and everywhere the question arises: How ought we to educate? But where can he turn? He can only turn to the general form of civilization and this civilization shows him that all he can build up is a skeleton. And now a strong feeling for this civilization overwhelms the human being. If his feeling is healthy he should be able to feel himself permeated by this intellectualistic nature of modern thought and ideas. And it is this that confuses him. He would like to think that what the mirror reveals is sublime and perfect; he would like to be able to make something of it, above all, he would like to make use of it in education—but he cannot. One cannot educate with this.

If we are to have the necessary enthusiasm as educationalists, therefore, we must learn in the first place to perceive all that is not living, but dead, in our intellectualistic culture—for the skeleton is a dead thing. And if we saturate ourselves with the knowledge that our thinking is dead we very soon discover that all death proceeds from the living. If you were to find a corpse, you would not take it as the original. You would only think of a corpse as something in itself if you had no conception of a human being. If, however, you have a conception of what a human being is, you know that the corpse is something that has been left behind. From the nature of the corpse, you do not only infer the human being, buy you know also that the human being was there. If you recognize the kind of thinking that is cultivated to-day as being a thing dead, as being a corpse, you can relate it to something living. Moreover you then have the inner impulse to make this thing living and so to re-vitalize the whole of civilization. It will then be possible once more for something practical to emerge from our modern civilization, something that can reach the living man, just as the Greeks reached him in their education.

Let us not undervalue perceptions with which a teacher can set out and, indeed, must set out. The teachers at the Waldorf School were first of all given a Seminary Course. It was not merely a question of following the points of a given programme, but of imparting an understanding in the soul of how to bring back all that is the most treasured heritage of our age into relation with the innermost being of man, in order to make dead thinking, colourless thinking into thinking full of character—primitive, inorganic thinking into truly ‘human’ thinking. In the first place, then, thoughts must begin really to live in the teacher.

Now when a thing lives, something follows from this life. The human being who has definite place in space and time, who has spirit, soul, body, a definite form and boundary, does not merely think; he also feels and wills. And when a thought is communicated to him, this thought is the germ both of a feeling and of an impulse of will; it becomes a complete thing. The ideal of our modern thinking is to be what people call ‘objective,’ as passive and calm as possible, in short to be a passive reflection of the outer world and a mere handmaiden of experience. It contains no force; no impulse of feeling and of will arises from it.

The Greek took his start from the bodily man who was there before him. We must take our start—and everyone feels this to be true—from ideal man, but this ideal must not be merely theoretical; it must live and it must contain the force of both feeling and will. The first thing needful when we think about reform in education to-day is that we grow beyond abstract and theoretical ideals.

Our thoughts do not become gestures and they must become so once more. They must not only be received by the child who sits passively, but they must move his arms and hands and guide him when he passes out into the world. Then we shall have unified human beings, for we must again educate unified human beings; we shall have human beings who experience their bodily education as a continuation of what we have given them in the schoolroom. People do not think like this nowadays. They think that what is given in the schoolroom is so much intellectualism, something that it is necessary to give. But it fatigues and strains the human being, perhaps even causes nervous troubles. Something else must be added, so it is felt, and then follows physical training. And so to-day we have two separate branches: intellectualistic education and bodily training. The one does not promote the other. We have two human beings in point of fact, one nebulous and hypothetical and the other real, and we do not understand this real man as the Greek understood him. We squint, as it were, when we observe a human being, for there seems to be two in front of us. We must again learn to ‘see straight,’ to see the whole being of man as a unity, a totality. This is the most important thing of all in education.

***

What we must do, therefore, is to press forward beyond the more or less theoretical maxims of education in existence to-day to an education that is practical in the real sense of the word. From what I have said, it follows that much depends upon how we again bring the spirit which we really only grasp intellectually, to the human being, how we make the spirit human in the true sense, so that this nebulous spirit by means of which we observe men, shall become human. We must learn how to behold man in the spirit, as the Greeks beheld him in the body.

As a preliminary to-day, let me give an example which will explain how, from out of the spirit, we can begin to understand the human being right down into the body. As an example I will choose the way in which the spirit may be connected with a definite organ in the human being. I choose the most striking example, but merely provisionally. These things will become more definite in the following lectures. Let me show you the connection between the spirit and a process which the Greeks too considered to be deeply symbolical and of extraordinary significance in the development of the child: the coming of the teeth. The time of the change of the teeth was, in Greece, the age at which the child was given over to public education. And now let us try to envisage this contact of the spirit with the human being, the relation of the spirit to the human teeth. It will seem strange that in discussing man as a spiritual being, I speak first of the teeth. It only seems strange because as a result of modern culture, people are quite familiar with the form of a tiny animal germ when they look through the microscope, but they know very little about what lies before them. It is realized that the teeth are necessary for eating; that is the most striking thing about them. It is known that they are necessary for speech, that sounds are connected with them, that the air flows in a particular way from the lungs and the larynx through the lips and palate, and that certain consonants have to be formed by the teeth. It is known, therefore, that the teeth serve a useful purpose in eating and speaking.

Now a truly spiritual understanding of the human being shows us something else as well. If you are able to study man in the way I described in the first lecture, it will dawn on you that the child develops teeth not only for the sake of eating and speaking, but for quite a different purpose as well. Strange as it sounds to-day, the child develops teeth for the purpose of thinking. Modern science little knows that the teeth are the most important of all organs of thought. For the child, up to the time of the second dentition, these teeth constitute the organ of thought. As thinking arises spontaneously in the child in its interplay with its environment, as the life of thought rises from the dim sleeping and dreaming life of very early childhood, this whole process is bound up with what is happening in the head where the teeth are pressing through; it is bound up with the forces that are pressing outwards from the head. The forces that press the teeth out from the jaw are the same forces that now bring thought to the surface from the dim, sleeping and dreaming life of childhood. With the same degree of intensity as it teethes, the child learns to think.

Now how does the child learn to think? It learns to think because it is an imitative being and as such is wholly given up to its environment. Right into its innermost being it imitates what is going on in its environment and what happens in this environment under the impulses of thoughts. In exactly the same measure as thought then springs up in the child, in exactly the same measure do the teeth emerge. In effect, the force that appears in the soul as thinking lies within these teeth.

Let us now follow the further development of the child. At about the seventh year, the child undergoes the change of teeth. He gets his second teeth. I have already said that the force which produces the first and second teeth has been present in the whole organism of the child—only it shows itself in the strongest form in the head. The second teeth only come once. The forces which drive the second teeth out from the organism of the child do not work again as physical forces in the course of earthly life up till death. They become powers of the soul, powers of the spirit; they vivify the inner being of the human soul. Thus, when we observe the child between the seventh and fourteenth years of life, with particular regard to his characteristic qualities of soul, we find that what now appears between the seventh and fourteenth years as qualities of soul, namely in the child's thinking, worked up to the seventh year upon the organs. It worked in the physical organism, forced out the teeth, reached its culmination as physical force with the change of teeth and then changed itself into an activity of soul.

These things can, of course, only be truly observed when one presses forward to the mode of cognition which I described in a previous lecture as the first stage of exact clairvoyance, as Imaginative Knowledge. The abstract intellectual knowledge of the human being that is common to-day does not lead to this other kind of knowledge. Thought must vivify itself from within so that it becomes imaginative. Nothing whatever can really be grasped by intellectualistic thinking; with it everything remains external. One looks at things and forms mental images of what one sees. But thinking can be inwardly re-enforced, it can be made active. Then one no longer has abstract intellectualistic thoughts but imaginative pictures which now fill the soul in place of the intellectual thoughts. At the first stage of exact clairvoyance, as I have described it, one can perceive indeed how, besides the forces of the physical body, there is working in man a super-sensible body, if you will forgive the paradoxical expression. One becomes aware of the super-sensible in man, and one of its characteristics in comparison with the physical is that it cannot be weighed. This super-sensible body I call the etheric body, which strives away from the earth out into cosmic spaces. It contains the forces that are opposed to gravity and strives perpetually against gravity.

Just as ordinary physical knowledge teaches us of the physical body of man, so does Imaginative Knowledge, the first stage of exact clairvoyance, teach us of the etheric body that is always striving to get away from earthly gravity. And just as we gradually learn to relate the physical body to its environment, so do we also learn to relate the etheric body to its environment.

In studying the physical body of man, we look outside in Nature, in material Nature, for the substances of which it is composed. We realize that everything in man which is subject to gravity, his heaviness, his weight, all this has weight in outer Nature as well. It enters into man through the assimilation of nourishment. In this way we obtain, as it were, a natural conception of the human organism in so far as the organism is physical. Similarly, through Imaginative Knowledge we obtain a conception of the relationship of the individual etheric body or body of formative forces in man to the surrounding world. That which in Spring drives the plants out of the soil against gravity in all directions towards the Cosmos; that which organizes the plants, brings them into relation with the upward-flowing stream of light, with that part of the chemistry of the plant, in short, which works upwards, all this must be related to the etheric body of man, just as salt, cabbage, turnip and meat are related to the physical body. Thus in the first stage of exact clairvoyance, this rich, comprehensive, unified thought is able to approach the etheric body or body of formative forces of man, this ‘second Man,’ as it were. Up to the change of teeth, this body of formative forces is most intimately bound up with the physical body. There from within, it organizes the physical body; it is the force which drives out the teeth. When the human being gets his second teeth, the part of the etheric body that drives the teeth out has no more to do for the physical body. Its activity is emancipated, as it were, from the physical body. With the change of teeth the inner etheric forces which have pressed the teeth out, are freed and with these etheric forces we carry on the free thought that begins to assert itself in the child from the seventh year onwards. The force of the teeth is no longer a physical force as it was in the child during the time when the teeth are the organs of thought; it is now an etheric force. But the same force which produced the teeth is now working in the etheric body as thought. When we perceive ourselves as thinking human beings and feel that thinking seems to proceed from the head (many people only have this experience when thinking has brought on a headache), a true knowledge shows us that the force with which we think from out of the head is the same as the force which was once contained in the teeth.

Thus our knowledge brings us near to the unity of the being of man. We learn once again how the physical is connected with what is of the soul. We know that the child first thinks with the forces of the teeth and this is why teething troubles are so inwardly bound up with the whole life of the child. Think of all that happens when the child is teething! All these teething troubles arise because the process of teething is so intimately connected with the innermost life, with the innermost spirituality of the child. The growth-forces of the teeth are freed and become the forces of thought in the human being, the free, independent force of thought. If we have the necessary gift of observation, we can see this process of becoming independent; we see how with the change of teeth, thinking emancipates itself from bondage to the body. And what happens now? In the first place the teeth become the helpers of that which permeates thought, speech. The teeth, which had, at first, the independent task of growing in accordance with the forces of thought, are now pressed down one stage, as it were. Thinking, which now no longer takes place in the physical body but in the etheric body, descends one stage. This already happens during the first seven years, for the whole process goes on successively, merely reaching its culmination with the coming of the second teeth. But then, when thought seeks expression in speech, the teeth become the helpers of thought.

And so, we look at the human being; we see his head; in the head the growth-forces of the teeth free themselves and become the force of thinking. Then, pressed down, as it were, into speech, we have all the processes for which the teeth are no longer directly responsible, because the etheric body now takes over the responsibility. The teeth become the helpers of speech. In this, their relationship with thought is still apparent. When we understand how the dental sounds find their way into the whole process of thinking, how man takes the teeth to his aid when through sounds like d or t, he brings the definite thought-element into speech, we again see in the dental sounds, the particular task performed by the teeth.

I have shown you by this example of the teeth—which may perhaps seem very grotesque—how we come to understand the human being from out of the spirit. If we proceed in this way, thinking gradually ceases to be an abstract drifting in associated ideas, but connects itself with man, it goes into the man. Then we no longer see merely physical functions in the human being, such as biting by the teeth or at most movement in the dental sounds of speech, but the teeth become for us an outer picture, a Nature Imagination of the process of thinking. Thinking points to the teeth and says to us, as it were: There in the teeth is my outer countenance! When we really come to understand the teeth, thought that is otherwise abstract and nebulous assumes definite picture-form. We see how thought is working in the head at the place where the teeth lie and how thought develops from the first to the second teeth, The whole process again takes on definite form. A real image of the spirit begins to arise in Nature herself. The spirit is once again creative.

We need something more than modern anthropology, for modern anthropology studies the human being in a wholly external way, and associates the elements of his being just as the different properties of ideas are associated. What we need is a kind of thinking that is not afraid to press onwards to the inner being of man nor to speak of how the spirit becomes teeth and works in the teeth. This indeed is what we need, for then we penetrate into the being of man from the spirit. And then the element of art arises. The abstract, theoretical and unpractical mode of observation, which merely evolves a human being with a skeleton-like thinking must be led over into imaginative thought. Theoretical observation passes over into artistic feeling and becomes artistic, creative power. To see the spirit actively at work within one must, to begin with, mould the teeth. The element of art, then, begins to be the guide to the first stage of exact clairvoyance—that of Imaginative Knowledge. Here we begin to understand man in his real being. Man is only an abstraction in our thinking to-day.

Now in education, the being with whom we find ourselves confronted is the real man. He stands there, but there is an abyss between us. We stand here with our abstract spirit, and we must cross this abyss. We must before all else show how we can cross it. All we know of man to-day is how to put a cap on his head! We do not know how to put the spirit into his whole being, and this we must learn to do. We must learn how to clothe the human being inwardly, spiritually, just as we have learned how to clothe him externally, so that the spirit is treated just as the outer vesture is treated. When we approach the human being in this way, we shall attain to a living Pedagogy and a living Didactic.

***

Just as the period of life at about the seventh year is significant in earthly existence on account of all the facts which I have described, so, similarly, is there a point in the earthly life of man which on account of the symptoms which then arise in life, is no less significant. The actual points of time are, of course, approximate occurring in the case of some human beings earlier in others later. The indication of seven-yearly periods is approximate. But round about the fourteenth or fifteenth year, there is once more a time of extraordinary importance in earthly existence. This is the age when puberty is reached. But puberty, the expression of the life of sex is only the most external symptom of a complete transformation that takes place in the being of man between the seventh and fourteenth years. Just as we must seek in the growth-forces of the teeth, in the human head, for the physical origin of thought that frees itself about the seventh year of life and becomes a function of soul, so we must look for the activity of the second soul-force, namely feeling, in other parts of the human organism.

Feeling releases itself much later than thinking from the physical constitution of the human being. And during the time of tutelage from the seventh to the fourteenth year, the child's feeling-life is really still inwardly bound up with its physical body. Thinking is already free; feeling is, between the seventh and fourteenth years, still bound up with the body. All the feelings of joy, of sorrow and of pain that express themselves in the child still have a strong physical connection with the secretions of the organs, the acceleration or retardation, speed or slackening of the breathing system and so on. If our perception is keen enough, we can observe in these very phenomena the great transformation that is taking place in the life of feeling, when the outer symptoms of the change make their appearance. Just as the appearance of the second teeth denotes a certain climax of growth, so at the close of the subsequent life-period, when feeling is gradually released from its connection with the body and becomes a soul function, these processes are expressed in speech. This may be observed most clearly in boys. The voice changes; the larynx reveals the change. The head, therefore, reveals the change which lifts thinking out of the physical organism, and the breathing system, the seat of the organic rhythmic activity, expresses the emancipation of feeling. Feeling detaches itself from the bodily constitution and becomes an independent function of soul. We know how this expresses itself in the boy. The larynx changes and the voice gets deeper. In the girl different phenomena appear in bodily growth and development; but this is only the external aspect.

Anyone who has reached the stage of exact, imaginative clairvoyance, knows, for he perceives it, that the male physical body transforms the larynx at about the fourteenth year of life. The same thing happens in the female sex to the etheric body, or body of formative forces. The change occurs in the etheric body and the etheric body of the female takes on, as etheric body, a form exactly resembling the physical body of the male. Again, the etheric body of the male at the fourteenth year takes on a form resembling the physical body of the female. However extraordinary it may appear to a mode of knowledge that clings to the physical, it is nevertheless the case that at this all-important point of life, the male bears within him the etheric female and female the etheric male from the fourteenth year onwards. This is expressed differently through the corresponding symptoms in the male and female.

Now if one reaches the second stage of exact clairvoyance (it is described in greater detail in my books), if beyond Imagination, one attains to Inspiration—the actual perception of the purely spiritual that is no longer bound up with the physical body of man—then one becomes aware of how in actual fact at this important time round about the fourteenth and fifteenth years a third human member develops into a state of independence. In my books I have called this third member the astral body according to an older tradition. This astral body is more essentially of the nature of soul than the etheric body; indeed the astral body is already of the soul and spirit. It is the third member of man and constitutes his second super-sensible being.

Up to the fourteenth or fifteenth years, this astral body works through the physical organism and, at the fourteenth or fifteenth year, becomes independent. Thus there devolves upon the teacher a most significant task, namely to help the development to independence of this being of soul and spirit which lies hidden in the depths of the organism up to the seventh or eight years and then gradually frees itself. It is this gradual process of detachment that we must assist, if we have the child to teach between the ages of seven and fourteen. And then, if we have acquired the kind of knowledge of which I have spoken, we notice how the child's speech becomes quite a different thing. The crude science of to-day—if I may call it so—concerns itself merely with the obvious soul qualities of the human being and speaks of the other phenomena as secondary sexual characteristics. To spiritual observation, however, the secondary phenomena are primary and vice versa.

This metamorphosis, the whole way in which feeling withdraws itself from the organs of speech, is of extraordinary significance. And as teachers and educationalists it is our task, a task that really inspires one's innermost being, gradually to release speech from the bodily constitution. How wonderful in a child of seven are the natural, spontaneous movements of the lips which come from organic activity! When the seven-year-old child utters the labial sounds, it is quite different from the way in which the child of fourteen or fifteen utters them. When the seven-year-old child utters the labial sounds, it is an organic activity; the circulation of the blood and of the fluids into the lips is entirely involuntary. When the child reaches his twelfth, thirteenth or fourteenth years, this organic activity is transferred into the organism proper and the soul activity of feeling has to emerge and to move the lips voluntarily, in order that the element of feeling in speech may come to expression.

Just as the thought-element in speech, the hard thought-element is manifested in the teeth, so is the soft, loving element of feeling manifested in the lips. And it is the labial sounds which impart warmth and loving sympathy to speech, sympathy with another being and the conveying of it. This marvellous transition from an organic functioning of the lips to a functioning conditioned by the soul, this development of the lips in the organic soul nature of the human being is a thing in which the teacher can take part and thereby a most wonderful atmosphere can be brought into the school. For just as we see the super-sensible, etheric element that permeates the body emerging at the seventh year of life as independent thinking-power, so do we see the element of soul and spirit emerging at the age of fourteen or fifteen. As teachers we help to bring the soul and spirit to birth. What Socrates meant is seen at a higher level.

In the following lectures I shall explain the new elements that appear in walking, in movement, even when the human being is twenty or twenty-one years old in the third period of life. It is enough to-day to have shown how thinking emancipates itself from organic activity and how feeling goes on emancipating itself from organic activity until the fourteenth or fifteenth year; to have shown how this gives us insight into man's development and how an otherwise merely abstract mode of thinking becomes a picture, an ‘imagination;’ to have shown also how that which finds expression in human speech, in words, actually appears in its true form as soul and spirit when the human being reaches his fourteenth or fifteenth year.

Hence it can be said that if we would reach the human being from the standpoint of living thought, we must soar into the realm of art. If we would bring the living spirit, the spiritual essence of feeling to the human being, we must not merely set about this with an artistic sense as in the former case, but also with a religious sense. For the religious sense alone can penetrate to the reality of the spirit.

Education between the seventh and fourteenth years, therefore, can only be carried on in the truly human sense when it is carried on in an atmosphere of religion, when it becomes almost a sacramental office, not of course in a sentimental, but in a truly human sense. And so we see what happens when a man brings life and soul to his otherwise abstract thinking, thinking that merely arises from the association of ideas. He finds the way to an artistic apprehension of man; to an apprehension of man within the religious life. Art and religion are thus united in education. Light is thrown not only on the question of the pupil, but on that of the teacher as well when we realize that pedagogy should become so practical, so clear and so living a knowledge that the teacher can only be a true educator of youth when he is able inwardly to become a thoroughly religious man.

From the lectures which have been given here, dealing with an art of education built upon the foundation of a knowledge of man, you formed a clear idea of what should be the relation between teacher and taught. What lives in the soul, in the whole personality of the teacher, works in hundreds of unseen ways from the educator over to the children his pupils. But it only works if the educator bears within his soul a true and penetrating knowledge of man, a knowledge which is approaching the transition leading over into spiritual experience. And today I must precede my lecture with a few remarks which may serve to clarify what is to be understood in the anthroposophical sense by spiritual experience, for just in regard to this the most erroneous ideas abound.

It is so easy to think that in the first place spiritual perception must rise above everything of a material nature. Certainly one can attain to a deeply satisfying soul experience, even though this may be coloured by egotistical feeling, when, rising above the material, one ascends into the spiritual world. We must do this also. For we can only learn to know the spiritual when we acquire this knowledge in the realm of the spirit; and anthroposophy must deal in many ways with spiritual realms and spiritual beings which have nothing to do with the physical world of the senses. And when it is a question of learning to know what is so necessary for modern man, to know about the life between death and a new birth, the actual super-sensible life of man before birth or conception and the life after death, then we must certainly rise up to body-free, super-sensible, super-physical perception. But we must of course act and work within the physical world; we must stand firmly in this world. If we are teachers, for instance, we are not called upon to teach disembodied souls. We cannot ask ourselves, if we wish to be teachers; What is our relationship to souls who have passed through death and are living in the spiritual world?—But if we wish to work as teachers between birth and death, we must ask ourselves: In what way does a soul dwell within the physical body? And indeed we must consider this, at any rate for the years after birth. It is actually a question of being able to gaze with the spirit into the material. And Anthroposophy, Spiritual Science, is in this respect largely a matter of looking into the material with the spirit.

But the opposite procedure is also right: one must penetrate with spiritual vision into the spiritual world, penetrate so far that the spiritual seems to be every bit as full of “living sap” as anything in the sense world; one must be able to speak about the spiritual as if it radiated colours, as if its tones were audible, as if it were standing before one as much “embodied” as the beings of the sense world. In anthroposophy it is first this which causes abstract philosophers such intense annoyance. They find it exceedingly annoying that the spiritual investigator describes the spiritual world and spiritual beings in such a way that it seems as if he might meet these beings at any moment, just as he might meet human beings; that he might hold out his hand to them and speak with them. He describes these spiritual beings just as though they were earthly beings; indeed his description makes them appear almost as if they were earthly beings. In other words, he portrays the spiritual in pictures comprehensible to the senses. He does this in full consciousness, because for him the spiritual is an absolute reality. There is some truth in it, too, because a real knowledge of the whole world leads to the point at which one can “give one's hand” to spiritual beings, one can meet them and converse with them. That strikes the philosopher, who is only willing to conceive the spiritual world by means of abstract concepts, as being paradoxical, to say the least of it; nevertheless such a description is necessary. On the other hand it is also necessary to look right through a human being, so that the material part of him vanishes completely, and he stands there purely as a spirit. When however a non-anthroposophist wishes to look upon a man as spirit, then this man is not only a ghost, but something much less than a ghost. He is a sort of coat-hanger on which are hung all kinds of concepts which serve to activate mental pictures and so on. In comparison a ghost is quite respectably solid, but a human being as described by such a philosopher is really indecently naked in regard to the spirit. In anthroposophy physical man is contemplated by means of purely spiritual perception, but nevertheless he still has brains, liver, lungs and so on; he is a concrete human being; he has everything that is found in him when the corpse is dissected. Everything that is spiritual in its nature works right down into the physical. The physical is observed spiritually, but nevertheless man possesses a physical body. He can even “blow his nose” in a spiritual sense; spiritual reality goes as far as this. Only by becoming aware that in contemplating the physical it can become completely spiritual, and in contemplating the spiritual it can be brought down again so that it becomes almost physical, only by this awareness can the two be brought together. The physical human being can be contemplated in a condition of health and illness; but the ponderable material vanishes, it becomes spiritual. And the spiritual can be contemplated as it is between death and a new birth and, pictorially speaking, it becomes physical. Thus the two are brought together.

Man learns to penetrate into the real human being through the fact that there are these two possibilities, the possibility of beholding the spiritual by means of sense-perceptible pictures and the possibility of beholding spiritual entities in the world of the senses. If therefore the question arises: How may spiritual vision be understood in its real and true sense?—the answer must be: One must learn to see all that appertains to the senses in a spiritual way, and one must look at the spiritual in a way that is akin to the senses. This seems paradoxical, but it is so. And only after entering into what I have just said and realising its truth, can one reach the point of looking at the child in the right way.

I will give you an example. A child in my class becomes paler and paler. I see this increasing pallor. It shows itself in the physical life of the child, but we gain nothing by going to the doctor and getting him to prescribe something that will bring back the child's colour; for, should we do so, the following may well be the result: The child grows pale and this is observed, so the school doctor comes and prescribes something which is intended to restore the lost colour. Now even if the doctor has acted perfectly correctly and has prescribed a quite good remedy, which he must do in such cases, nevertheless something rather strange will be observed in the child who is now “cured.” Indeed in a sense he is cured, and anyone in a position of seniority to the doctor, who might be called upon to write a testimonial for the authorities, could well say that the doctor had cured the child—later, however, it is noticeable at school that the child who has been cured in this way is no longer able to take things in properly; he has become fidgety and restless and has lost all power of attention. Whereas previously he used to sit in his place, pale and somewhat indolent, he now begins to pommel his neighbour; and whereas previously he had clipped his pen gently into the inkwell, he now sticks it in with so much force that the ink spurts up and bespatters his exercise book. The doctor did his duty but the result was the reverse of beneficial, for it sometimes happens that people who have been “cured” suffer later on from extraordinary after-effects.

Again, in such a case it is important to recognise what actually lies at the root of the trouble. If the teacher is able to penetrate into the soul-spiritual cause of what finds its outer physical expression in a growing pallor, he will become aware of the following. The power of memory which works in the soul-spiritual is nothing else than the transformed, metamorphosed force of growth; and to develop the forces of growth and nourishment is just the same, albeit on a different level, as it is, on a higher level, to cultivate the memory, the power of recollection. It is the same force, but in a different stage of metamorphosis. Pictured systematically we can say: During the first years of a child's life both these forces are merged into one another, they have not yet separated; later on memory separates from this state of fusion and becomes a power in itself, and the same holds good for the power of growth and nourishment. The small child still needs the forces which later develop memory in order that he may digest milk and the stomach be able to carry out its functions; this is why he cannot remember anything. Later, when the power of memory is no longer the servant of the stomach, when the stomach makes fewer demands on it and only retains a minimum of these forces, then part of the forces of growth are transformed into a quality of soul, into memory, the power of recollection. Possibly the other children in the class are more robust, the division between the power of memory and of growth may be better balanced, and so, perhaps, the teacher pays less heed to a child who in this respect has little to fall back on. If this is the case it may easily happen that his power of memory is overburdened, too much being demanded of this emancipated faculty. The child grows pale and the teacher must needs say to himself: “I have put too much strain on your memory; that is why you have grown so pale.” It is very noticeable that when such a child is relieved of this burden he gets his colour back again. But the teacher must understand that the growing pale is connected with what he has done himself in the first place, by overburdening the child with what has to be remembered. It is very important to be able to look right into physical symptoms and to realise that if a child grows too pale it is because his memory has been overburdened.

But I may have another child in the class who from time to time becomes strikingly red in the face and this also may be a cause for concern. If this occurs, if a hectic red flush makes its appearance, it is very easy to recognise certain accompanying conditions in the child's soul-life; for in the strangest way, at times when one would least expect it, such children fall into a passion of anger, they become over-emotional. Naturally there can be the same procedure as before: A rush of blood to the head—something must be prescribed for it. Of course, in such cases too, the doctor does his duty. But it is important to know something else, namely, that this child, in contrast to the other, has been neglected in respect of his faculty of memory. Too many of these forces have gone down into the forces of his growth and nourishment. In this case one must try to make greater demands on the child's power of memory. If this is done such symptoms will disappear.

Only when we take into our ken the physical and the spiritual as united do we learn to recognise many things in the school which are in need of readjustment. We train ourselves to recognise this interconnection of physical and spiritual when we look at what lies between them as part of the whole human organisation, namely, the temperaments. The children come to school and they have the four temperaments, varied of course with all kinds of transitions and mixtures: the melancholic, the phlegmatic, the sanguine and the choleric. In our Waldorf education great value is laid on being able to enter into and understand the child according to his temperament. The actual seating of the children in the classroom is arranged on this basis. We try for instance to discover which are the choleric children; these we place together, so that it is possible for the teacher to know: There in that corner I have the children who tend to be choleric. In another, the phlegmatic children are seated, somewhere in the middle are the sanguines and again somewhere else, grouped together are the melancholies. This method of grouping has great advantages. Experience shows that after a while the phlegmatics become so bored with sitting together that, as a means of getting rid of this boredom, they begin to rub it off on one another. On the other hand the cholerics pommel one another so much that quite soon this too becomes very much better. It is the same with the fidgety ways of the sanguines, and the melancholies also see what it is like when others are absorbed in melancholy. Thus to handle the children in such a way that one sees how “like reacts favourably on like” is very good even from an external point of view, quite apart from the fact that by doing so the teacher has the possibility of surveying the whole class, for this is much easier when children of similar temperament are seated together.

Now however we come to the essential point. The teacher must enter so deeply into the nature of the human being that he is able to deal in a truly practical way with the choleric, the sanguine, the melancholic temperament. There will naturally be cases where it is necessary to build the bridge of which I have already spoken, the bridge between school and home, and this must be done in a friendly and tactful way. Let us suppose that I have a melancholic child in the class, with whom I can do scarcely anything. I am unable to enter into his difficulties in the right way. He broods and is withdrawn, is occupied with himself and pays no heed to what is going on in the class. If one applies an education that is not founded on a knowledge of man one may think that everything possible should be done to attract his attention and draw him out of himself. As a rule however such a procedure will make things still worse; the child broods more than ever. All these means of effecting a cure, thought out in such an amateurish way, help but little. What helps most in such a case is the spontaneous love which the teacher feels for the child, for then he is aware of sympathy, and this stirs and moves what is more subconscious in him. We may be sure that anything in the way of exhortation is not only wasted effort, but is actually harmful, for the child becomes more melancholic than before. But in class it helps greatly if one tries to enter into the melancholy, tries to discover the direction to which it tends, and then shows interest in the child's attitude of mind, becoming in a certain way, by what one does oneself, melancholic with the melancholic child. As a teacher one must bear within oneself all four temperaments in harmonious, balanced activity. And this balance, which is in direct contradiction to the child's melancholy, if it is continued and is always present in one's relationship to the child, is perceived by him. He sees what kind of man his teacher is by what underlies his words. And in this way, creeping in behind the mask of melancholy, which the teacher accepts, there is implanted in the child his teacher's loving sympathy. This can be of great help in the class.

But now we will go further, for we must know that every manifestation of melancholy in a human being is connected with some irregularity in the function of the liver. This may seem unlikely to the physicist, but it is nevertheless a fact that every kind of melancholy, especially if it goes so far in a child as to become pathological, is due to some irregularity of this kind. In such a case I shall turn to the parents of the child and say: “It would be good to put more sugar in his food than you usually do.” He needs sweet things, for sugar helps to normalise the function of the liver. And by giving the mother this advice: “Give the child more sugar”—I shall get school and home working together, in order to lift this melancholy out of the pathological condition into which it has sunk and so create the possibility of finding the right constitutional treatment.

Or I may have a sanguine child, a child who goes from one impression to another; who always wants what comes next, almost before he has got hold of what precedes it; who makes a strong start, showing great interest in everything, but whose interest soon fades out. He is not dark as a rule, but fair. I am now faced with the problem of how to deal with him at school. In everything I do I shall try to be more sanguine than the child. I shall change the impressions I make on him extremely quickly, so that he is not left hurrying from one impression to another at his own sweet will, but must come with me at my pace. This is quite another story. He soon has enough of it and finally gives up. But between what I myself do in bringing impressions to the child in this very sanguine way, and what he does himself in hurrying from one thing to another in accordance with his temperament, there is gradually established in him, as a kind of natural reaction, a more harmonious condition. So I can treat the child in this way. I can present him with rapidly changing impressions, always thinking out something new, so that he sees, as it were, first black, then white, and must continually hurry from one thing to another. I now get in touch with the mother and I will certainly hear from her that the child has an inordinate love of sugar. Perhaps he is given a great many sweets or somehow manages to get hold of them, or maybe the family as such is very fond of sweet dishes.

If this is not so, then his mother's milk was too sweet, it contained too much sugar. So I explain this to the mother and advise her to put the child on a diet for a time and reduce the amount of sugar she gives him. In this way, by arranging with the parents for a diet with little sugar, co-operation is brought about between home and school. The reduction of sugar will gradually help to overcome the abnormality which, in the case of this child also, is caused by irregularity in the activity of the liver in respect of the secretion of gall. There is a very slight, barely noticeable irregularity in the secretion of gall. Here too I shall recognise the help given me by the parents.

So we must know as a matter of actual fact where, so to speak, the physical stands within the spiritual, where it is one with the Spiritual.

It is possible to go into more detail and say: A child shows a rapid power of comprehension, he understands everything very easily; but when after a few days I come back to what he grasped so quickly and about which I was so pleased, it has vanished; it is no longer there. Here again I can do a good deal at school to improve matters. I shall try to put forward and explain something which demands a more concentrated attention than the child is accustomed to give. He understands things too quickly, it is not necessary for him to make enough inner effort, so that what he learns may really impress itself on him. I shall therefore give him hard nuts to crack, I shall give him something which is more difficult to grasp and demands more attention. This I can do at school. But now once more I get in touch with the child's parents and from them I may hear various things. What I am now saying will not hold good in every case, but I want to give some indication of the path to be pursued. I shall have a tactful discussion with the mother, avoiding any suspicion of riding the high horse by talking down to her and giving her instructions. From our conversation I shall find out how she caters for the family and I shall most likely discover that this particular child eats too many potatoes. The situation is a little difficult because now the mother may say, “Well, you tell me that my child eats too many potatoes; but my neighbour's little daughter eats more still and she has not the same failing, so the trouble cannot be caused by potato-eating.” Something of this kind is what the mother may say. And nevertheless it does come from eating potatoes, because the organisation of children differs, one child being able to assimilate more potato and another less. And the curious thing is this. The condition of a particular child shows that he has been getting too many potatoes; it is shown by the fact that his memory does not function as it should. Now in this case the remedy is not to be found by giving him fewer potatoes. It may even happen that this is done and there is some improvement; but after a time things are no better than before. Here the immediate reduction of the amount of potato does not bring about the required effect, but it is a question of gradually breaking a habit, of exercising the activity needed in order to break a habit. So one must say to the mother, “For the first week give the child a tiny bit less potato; for the second week a very little less still; and continue in this way, so that the child is actively engaged in accustoming himself to eating only a small amount of potato.” In this case it is a question of breaking a habit, and here one will see what a healing effect can be induced just by this means.

Now idealists, so-called, very likely reproach anthroposophy and maintain that it is materialistic. They actually do so. When for example an anthroposophist says that a child who comprehends easily but does not retain what he has learnt, should have his potato ration gradually decreased, then people say: You are an absolute materialist. Nevertheless there exists such an intimate interplay between matter and spirit that one can only work effectively when one can penetrate matter with spiritual perception and master it through spiritual knowledge. It is hardly necessary to say how greatly these things are sinned against in our present-day social life. But if a teacher is open to a world conception which reveals wide vistas he will arrive at an understanding of these things. He must only extend his outlook. For instance it will impress a teacher favourably and help him to gain an understanding of children if he learns how little sugar is consumed in Russia and how much in England. And if he proceeds to compare the Russian with the English temperament he will readily understand what an effect sugar has on temperament. It is advantageous to learn to know the world, so that this knowledge can come to our assistance in the tasks of every day. But now I will add something else. In Baden, in Germany, there is a remarkable monument erected as a memorial to Drake. I once wanted to know what was specially significant about this Drake, so I looked it up in an encyclopaedia and read: In Offenburg a monument was erected in memory of Drake because he was thought, albeit erroneously, to be the man who introduced the potato into Europe. There it stands in black and white. So a memorial was erected in honour of this man because he was considered to be the one who introduced the potato into Europe. He didn't do so, but nevertheless he has got a memorial in Offenburg.

The potato was, however, introduced into Europe in comparatively recent times. And now I am going to tell you something about which you can laugh as much as you like. Nevertheless it is the truth. It is possible to study how the faculties of intelligence in human beings are related in their development from the time when there were no potatoes to the time when they were introduced. And, as you know, the potato is made use of in alcohol-distilleries. So potatoes suddenly began to play an important part in the development of European humanity. If you compare the increasing use of the potato with the curve of the development of intelligence, you will find that in comparison with the present day people living in the pre-potato age grasped things with less detail, but what they grasped they held fast. Their nature tended to be conservative, it was deeply inward. After the introduction of the potato people became quicker in regard to intelligent mobility of comprehension, but what they took in was not retained, it did not sink in deeply. The history of the development of the intelligence runs parallel with that of potato-eating. So here again we have an example of how anthroposophy explains this materialistically. But so it is. And much might be learned about cultural history if people everywhere could only know how in man's subconsciousness the external physical seizes hold of the spiritual. This becomes apparent in the nature of his desires.

Let us now choose as an example someone who has to write a great deal. Every day he has to write articles for the newspapers, so that he is obliged “to chew his pen” in order to produce what is necessary. If one has been through this oneself one can talk about it, but one has no right just to criticise others unless one speaks out of personal experience. While cogitating and biting one's pen one feels the need of coffee, for drinking coffee helps cohesion of thought. Thoughts become more logical when one drinks coffee than if one refrains from doing so. A journalist must needs enjoy coffee, for if he does not drink it his work takes more out of him. Now, as a contrast, let us take a diplomat. Call to mind what a diplomat had to acquire before the world war. He had to learn to use his legs in a special, approved manner; in the social circles in which he moved he had to learn to glide rather than set his foot down firmly as plainer folk do. He had also to be able to have thoughts which are somewhat fleeting and fluid. If a diplomat has a logical mind he will quite certainly fail in his profession and be unsuccessful in his efforts to help the nations solve their dilemmas. When diplomats are together—well, then one does not say they are having their coffee but they are having tea—for at such times there is the need to drink one cup of tea after another, so that the interchange of thought does not proceed in logical sequence, but springs as far as possible from one idea to the next. This is why diplomats love to drink tea; tea releases one thought from the next, it makes thinking fluid and fleeting, it destroys logic. So we may say: Writers are lovers of coffee, diplomats lovers of tea, in both cases out of a perfectly right instinct.

If we know this, we shall not look upon it as an infringement of human freedom. For obviously logic is not a product of coffee, it is only an unconscious, subconscious help towards it. The soul therefore remains free.

It is just when we are bearing the child especially in mind that it is necessary to look into relationships such as these, about which we get some idea when we can say: Tea is the drink for diplomats, coffee the drink for writers, and so on. Then we are also able gradually to gain an insight into the effects produced by the potato. The potato makes great demands on the digestion; moreover very small, almost homeopathic doses come from the digestive organs and rise up into the brain. This homeopathic dose is nevertheless very potent, it stimulates the forces of abstract intelligence. At this point I may perhaps be allowed to divulge something further. If we examine the substance of the potato through the microscope we obtain the well-known form of carbohydrates, and if we observe the astral body of someone who has eaten a large portion of potatoes we notice that in the region of the brain, about 3 centimetres behind the forehead, the potato substance begins to be active here also and to form the same eccentric circles. The movements of the astral body take on a similarity with the substance of the potato and the potato-eater becomes exceptionally intelligent. He bubbles over with intelligence, but this does not last, it is quite transient. Must one then not admit, provided one concedes that man possesses spirit and soul, that it is not altogether foolish and fantastic to speak of the spirit and to speak of it in images taken from the world of sense? Those who want always to speak of the spirit in abstract terms present us with nothing of a truly spiritual nature. It is otherwise with those who are able to bring the spirit down to earth in sense-perceptible pictures. Such a man can say that in the case of someone bubbling over with intelligence potato-substance takes on form in the brain, but does so in the spiritual sense. In this way we learn to recognise subtle and delicate differentiations and transitions. We discover that tea as regards its effects on logic makes a cleavage between thoughts, but it does not stimulate thinking. In saying that diplomats have a predilection for tea one does not imply that they can produce thoughts. On the other hand potatoes do stimulate thoughts. Swift as lightning they shoot thoughts upwards, only to let them vanish away again. But, accompanying this swift up-surging of thoughts, which can also take place in children, there goes a parallel process, an undermining of the digestive system. We shall be able to see in children whose digestive system is upset in this way, so that they complain of constipation, that all kinds of useless yet clever thoughts shoot up into their heads, thoughts which they certainly lose again but which nevertheless have been there.

I mention these things in detail so that you may see how the soul-spiritual and the physical must be looked upon as a whole, as a unity, and how in the course of human development a state of things must again be brought about which is able to hold together the most varied streams of culture. At the present time we are living in an epoch in which they are completely sundered from one another. This becomes clear to us however when we are able to look somewhat more deeply into the history of the evolution of mankind.

Today we separate religion, art and science from one another. And the guardians of religion, do all in their power to preserve religion from being encroached upon in any way by science. They maintain that religion is a matter of faith, and science belongs elsewhere. Science has its base where nothing is based on faith, where everything is founded on knowledge. But if one is to succeed in separating them in this way, the spiritual is cut off from science and the world is cut off from religion, with the result that religion becomes abstract and science devoid of spirit. Art is completely emancipated. In our time there are people, who, when one would like to tell them something about the super-sensible, assume an air of clever superiority and regard one as superstitious: “Poor fellow! We know all that is sheer nonsense!”—But then a Björnson or someone else writes something or other in which such things play a part; something of the kind is introduced into art and thereupon everybody runs after it and enjoys in art what was rejected in the form of knowledge. Superstition sometimes appears in strange guise. I once had an acquaintance—such actual examples should most certainly be brought into the art of education, an art which can only be learned from life—I once had an acquaintance who was a dramatist. On one occasion I met him in the street; he was running extraordinarily quickly, perspiring as he went. It was 3 minutes to 8 o'clock in the evening. I asked him where he was going at such a pace. He was, however, in a great hurry and only said that he must rush to catch the post, for the post office closed at 8 o'clock. I did not detain him, but psychologically I was interested to know the reason for his haste so I waited until he returned. He came back after a while in a great heat, and then he was more communicative. I wanted to know why he was in such a hurry to catch the post, and he said, “Oh, I have just sent off my play.” Previously he had always said that this play was not yet finished, and he said the same again now; “It is true that it is still unfinished, but I wanted particularly to get it off today, so that the director may receive it tomorrow. I have just written him a letter to this effect asking him to let me have it back. For you see, if a play is sent off before the end of the month it may be chosen for a performance; there is no chance otherwise!”—Now this dramatist was an extremely enlightened, intelligent man. Nevertheless he believed that if a play was despatched on a definite day it would be accepted, even if, owing to being unfinished, it had to be returned. From this incident you can see how things which people are apt to despise creep into some hole and corner, out of which they raise their heads at the very next opportunity.

This is especially the case with a child. We believe we have managed to rid him of something, but straightaway there it is again somewhere else. We must learn to look out for this. We must open our hearts when making a study of man, so that a true art of education may be based on an understanding and knowledge of the human being. Only by going into details shall we be able to fathom all these things.

Today then, as I was saying, religion, art and science are spoken about as though they were entirely unrelated. This was not so in long past ages of human evolution. Then they were a complete unity. At that time there existed Mystery Centres which were also centres for education and culture, centres dedicated at one and the same time to the cultivation of religion, art and science. For then what was imparted as knowledge consisted of pictures, representations and mental images of the spiritual world. These were received in such an intuitive and comprehensive way that they were transformed into external sense-perceptible symbols and thereby became the basis of cultic ceremonial. Science was embodied in such cults, as was art also; for what was taken from the sphere of knowledge and given external form must perforce be beautiful. Thus in those times a divine truth, a moral goodness and a sense-perceptible beauty existed in the Mystery Centres, as a unity comprised of religion, art and science. It was only later that this unity split up and became science, religion and art, each existing by and for itself. In our time this separation has reached its culminating point. Things which are essentially united have in the course of cultural development become divided. The nature of man is however such, that for him it is a necessity to experience the three in their “oneness” and not regard them as separate. He can only experience in unity religious science, scientific religion and artistic ideality, otherwise he is inwardly torn asunder. For this reason wherever this division, this differentiation, has reached its highest pitch it has become imperative to find once more the connection between these three spheres. And we shall see how in our teaching we can bring art, religion and science to the child in a unified form. We shall see how the child responds in a living way to this bringing together of religion, art and science, for it is in harmony with his own inner nature. I have therefore had again and again to point out in no uncertain terms that we must strive to educate the child out of a knowledge that he is in truth a being with aesthetic potentialities; and we should neglect no opportunity of demonstrating how in the very first years of life the child experiences religion naturally and instinctively.

All these things, the harmonious coming together of religion, art and science must be grasped in the right way and their value recognised in those teaching methods about which we have still to speak.

Roman Boos would like to discuss how, in the opinion of those in the economic world, we can arrive at a point in economic terms where the work done here during the college course can have fruitful consequences.

Carl Unger: I would like to suggest that people with economic experience, skills and knowledge try to reach out from the various centers, so that the experiences can penetrate to where there is a possibility of establishing real economic relationships. A list has already been set up at “Futurum” where economists can sign up so that economic issues can be addressed in real terms.

I would like to cite certain typical phenomena from economic life itself, taking a small company in the machine industry as an example. The company was founded by me in 1906 to manufacture certain machine parts that were in high demand at the time. After opening, there was a major crisis in 1907, when sales slowed. Then large amounts of capital had to be invested to create the technical basis to meet demand. 1914 was initially a high point; with the outbreak of the war, everything came to a complete standstill; the war itself then led to a kind of stormy demand; raw material difficulties arose, and premises had to be created. And so large capital entered the scene, in particular large bank capital interest had to be created. With the end of the war, a seemingly favorable economic situation set in; there was an abnormally high level of economic activity. It was necessary to seek new ways of working with the labor force, to incorporate new points of view; the threefold social order proved itself in practice. I can only hint at all this. There was a great need for capital. The demand set in without it being possible to counteract it on the other side. In this situation, it became apparent that the industrial plant was a capital guzzler, and one had to ask oneself: Is such a plant viable in the sense of a self-organizing economic life in the future or not? One was faced with various alternatives: either one had to seek affiliation with some neighboring plants in order to have something to offer the economy instead of the overwhelming need for capital, which had to be covered from elsewhere, something that would give hope for the future. Or, in order to avoid being crushed by capitalism, one had to sell to industrial collectives. Or, thirdly, there was the possibility of tearing the business out of the whole economy and tearing it down, letting the plow go over the land. But this was not feasible because of the people working in it.

Out of this situation developed the necessity for an associative enterprise; the real connection to an association proved to be absolutely necessary, so that the enterprise is now affiliated to the Coming Day. Naturally, this is only the beginning of what is to be developed out of the Coming Day. But at least it is possible to keep such a business going in an economically sound way and, by joining forces with the Coming Day and forming a center, to survive the impending crises. In this way, the experiences of individuals can be exchanged with the operating results and so on, which will certainly lead to real economic relationships arising between people who come together from different sides. This is an example from real economic life as it presents itself today.

Roman Boos gives the floor to the banker Adolf Koch.

Adolf Koch: Dear Sirs and Madams! After Dr. Steiner's impressive presentation yesterday, there is no need to dwell on the how and the possibility of associations spreading. The question is, firstly, what can we put into such an associative economy today? For example, the artificial flower industry? It is also forced to take on capital and so on. For us it is necessary to recognize what needs of the German people are to be satisfied at all. When we look at life in a practical way and see that on the one hand we have to eat rotten bread and on the other hand the luxury industry is flourishing and enormous amounts of raw materials are being used for it, then we, who want to rebuild, have to ask ourselves everywhere: What do we include in our association economy first? If the coming day is able to incorporate farms, that is certainly desirable; but we must see to it that we can incorporate machine or other industries as well. This is the foundation on which all of humanity can build. Today in Germany, we are dependent on ourselves, and we have to get back on our feet; food, clothing, coal, and so on are necessary. Secondly: The Coming Day as such. I speak here as a banking expert and, as I said, without any real connection to the Coming Day; I speak here in fact quite objectively from my experiences. If we want to free ourselves from the corrupt state of affairs in Germany, then an enterprise like the Coming Day, as it is conceived, is the given to free us from all the rotten stuff that now has the upper hand in Germany. Everyone who has to do with capital must get out of the old and into the threefold order.

German paper money is ultimately nothing more than a claim on the great corrupt state itself. If we withdraw from it, we free ourselves from this paper money, which annoys everyone because of its dirtiness, not only on the outside but also on the inside. The big banks in Berlin have about 40 billion foreign savings; they sit there like a big spider and suck out what free money is available. Of these 40 billion, about 60% are invested in government treasury bonds, to which municipalities and cities contribute a further 15%, so that theoretically every person is 'married' to the state to the tune of 750 marks. How do we get out of this? – It is passed on to the next day, on the condition that the next day will invest it in productive enterprises. This provides the possibility that in the event of an overall collapse, people can say to themselves: then I have the connection to productive enterprises. So the egoism of capitalism helps; with capitalism, you also have a means of educating people. It is not at all reprehensible, as the situation stands today. I speak as a banking expert. I have no connections with either side that would lead me to speak in favor of one or the other. If you put people in charge who actually want what is beneficial, then this is the nucleus for reconstruction, the original cell for reconstruction. I speak as a practitioner to people from whom I assume that they want to hear about banking practice.

I would ask the gentlemen with whom I sat in Stuttgart in January of this year and with whom I negotiated to remain at the end. I have a few personal remarks to make.

Rudolf Steiner: You have now heard in a very clear and appropriate way what can be said about a certain problem from the point of view of economic thinking. And I would also like to contribute something to this.

Today, as time teaches us, we have to approach every economic problem from two sides. One side has been very appropriately presented here, and the other side is the social side. Even enterprises such as the Kommende Tag or the Futurum, even if they are managed skillfully and appropriately, depend on being supported by the social side when the situation increasingly prepares the ground for a time when we will no longer be able to work. Because, of course, no matter how much money we can put into productive enterprises, if we cannot work more, we will not be able to overcome the economic crisis. What can be done on one side must also be supported on the other by social action. At the very least, they must go hand in hand. You only have to hint at what could happen today. Let us assume that a factory owner is as philanthropic as possible and does as much as possible for his workers. But when it comes to a general strike, the workers either go on strike or not?

Interjection: Yes!

And as long as we do not get beyond this question, it is not possible to have any prospect of a real recovery of economic life. Here the social question must be brought in without fail.

Now, that is precisely the mistake that has always been made; one has thought economically in such a way that one has actually thought only within production and not to the actual manual laborer. In our present economic system, the manual laborer actually receives deductions from capital, not wages. You just have to think about it, it's true. That is the real state of affairs, but it is something we cannot make progress with. And that is why it is necessary to tackle the associative principle energetically and objectively, immediately, after we have gained the experience that we have been able to gain since April last year. It is necessary that we finally abandon the old fallacy that, on the one hand, there is big business, which at most acts in a patriarchal sense, and that, on the other hand, there is the working class, tightly organized in trade unions, so that the individual worker is under terrible pressure. This gap must first be bridged, and that cannot happen otherwise than if you prepare real associations. Real associations, which consist of an association of people from one side – from the business side, the leadership side, the side of intellectual workers – and on the other side, people from the workforce. Initially, an economic, a truly social economic association, which must inherently bear the character of [a collaboration between] consumers and producers, will not be able to be formed. Well, the associations must have this goal, and this goal must be pursued with rigorous agitation. Otherwise we will not make any progress. And this goal must consist of dissolving the trade unions and the current one-sided proletarian and labor associations in order to allow the associations to emerge between the one and the other side, so that in the economic crisis we have companies in which we workers can maintain ourselves. You may say: This is not possible, if the economic life is not to collapse altogether. But it must be tried. Without setting ourselves the goal of breaking up the unions and keeping it in mind, we will not make any progress in economic life. And organizations must be founded. And this practical approach could be discussed much more usefully than by drawing up utopian plans about how associations could be formed in the state of the future. It is always a matter of seizing the next task. The next task is the dissolution, the breaking up of the entire trade union life.

Oskar Schmiedel: It is very difficult to speak after Dr. Steiner, because he has already expressed the best thoughts.

It is quite true that we will not move forward unless the trade union organizations are broken up. But how do we achieve that? That is the question. The coming day should be the sponge to absorb the 40 billion savings. I am convinced of the excellence of Mr. Koch's idea to support and consolidate our efforts in a capitalist way. But for outsiders, the coming day is nothing more than a capitalist, a capitalist who needs capital and needs profit to further his endeavors. I can't be fooled. I have already spoken about this with people who are far removed from the endeavors here, and they say: the end justifies the means.

Of course, the Coming Day wants to make a profit, but it wants to use the profit for something quite different from what capitalists use it for; it wants to use it for the common good. Even before I knew Dr. Steiner's book on the threefold social organism, I had asked myself the question: How can we escape from the horror of socialism and capitalism? After reading the book, I breathed a sigh of relief and wondered: How does this work for others? That the material is extremely dry when it comes to passing it on to others is certain. And it cannot be any different. The question is: How do you teach it to others in a way that they understand? I have had little success with it so far, and that is why I have to ask those gathered here, who have probably known and spread the ideas much longer than I have, to share their thoughts. I think it is most important that new people are won over to the idea of threefolding, that new people are always won over.

Interjection: Absolutely!

You come up against a brick wall when you meet the workers. Even if the individual workers are approachable and reasonable, you immediately meet with resistance when you want to introduce the ideas into a factory; you come up against a closed wall of shop stewards and the workers' leaders themselves. For the head of the industry, if he is to be responsible, this is all the more difficult if he is not the owner himself. In the past, people were supported with food and clothing; that is no longer the case. The labor leaders, who usually have a very limited horizon, only want to be in charge. The worker is an egoist; he asks himself: What do I get materially out of it? In the threefold order, nothing is offered for the present, only for the future at best. Then, often out of selfishness, they say: Of course I will voluntarily give up none of the rights that my father and I have acquired.

The material is, as I said, extremely dry. In Württemberg you undoubtedly have a much more enlightened situation than in Upper Austria; they are half farmers and half industrial workers — not open to spiritual inspiration. But there must be a way. And that is what interests me. The whole question of the threefold social order is actually also a question of power; force is needed to teach even the best thoughts to humanity; even for the good, for the best, one must force them. If I had some regiments of cavalry, it might be possible, or money, a lot of money is needed. There is almost no coverage in the press. We have no time to lose. The question is how to approach this practically in order to make progress through the strength of thought.

Wilhelm von Blume: I am not an economist and would perhaps not be speaking here today at all if it were not for the words of the last speaker. I would like to explain one thing right away: I do believe that the question of threefolding is ultimately not a question of power, but a question of trust, and it will depend above all on winning the trust of those who are concerned.

Now, for my part, I have tried to make a personal impact on business people and also on those who mean something today; especially in the Rhineland and in Westphalia, and I have learned a great deal. From a very specific point of view, a thought quickly occurs to the gentlemen, and that is the thought of self-management of the economy. Contact was immediately established. However, the thinking was still capitalist; they thought that they could use their power to push aside this state, which is a nuisance to them in every way, and create their own economic state, with Hugo Stinnes at its head. After all, when a clean divorce between state and economy is demanded, they still allow the matter to be filled with the necessary spirit. But they also see the social side of the whole matter, which Dr. Steiner emphasized so strongly, very clearly. However, they have worked out the following: they want to further expand the “working community” — this keyword is used — they want an economic community between the capitalists and the workers. And the workers go along with this here and there. I need only remind you of the coal industry, which the workers themselves basically think of in very capitalist terms – in many ways the workers think more capitalistically than the capitalists – and they are very aware of the profit they make from it. But the economy as a whole is moving further and further into the abyss. Only those sectors of the economy, such as the coal industry, are on the rise, as is the entire banking sector, because credit is constantly needed to operate companies. The other sectors of the economy are gradually perishing. This is where we have to start, we have to make it clear to the workers that they are not just producers, but also consumers, that working communities are being created in the way that Dr. Steiner described yesterday. The first and greatest danger is that people are merely pointed out to it: entrepreneurs and workers should agree with each other. You have to pursue producer and consumer policies under all circumstances and pursue production from consumption.

In this way, the right ideas can be introduced to the working class. The trade unions are indeed a serious obstacle today because they are imbued with an old spirit. But this evil Works Council Constitution Act will ruin the trade unions. In the not too distant future, the trade unions will be completely destroyed by this law, which was not meant that way at all, which was meant quite differently.

Interjection: Very true!

so that perhaps we do not need to do much to help in this direction, so that we only need to point out the positive, the constructive. Perhaps one can hope that it will be the same in the other questions. We must be aware of the dangers and under no circumstances tolerate the matter being pushed to the end in the wrong direction.

Hans Schwedes: I can tell you a few things about the trade unions. I was led there as a teacher to educate people about threefolding and the idea of associations. The union leaders, in conjunction with the party leaders, are fighting tooth and nail against new ideas, and the union leaders fear that their union positions and posts will be lost as a result of new ideas. The workers themselves, who generally think little about these things, allow themselves to be led completely without will. If we educate and organize in the right way, it would be possible to reach the working class. We must arrive at such an associative economy in the shortest possible time because circumstances demand it. Under no circumstances can we afford to wait a few more years for some event to help us. Such action must be closely linked to social action, to generous social action that introduces the idea of the threefold social organism into public opinion. Consumer groups are also becoming increasingly restless and are demanding more and more of a say in shaping conditions, especially in pricing. It is precisely in order to take up this mood and to bring something into this soil that a generous action for the threefolding of the social organism should be set up.

We have heard from Dr. Steiner that a bridge must be created between the workers on the one hand and the entrepreneurs on the other. How about if we, perhaps here, I mean those of you who are here as entrepreneurs, who are practitioners in economic life, if we were to found an association here that would set itself the goal of bringing about associations, that is, to do everything possible to lead to such a formation of associations. Perhaps someone of you could come to Darmstadt, someone who knows exactly what is going on, and give a lecture there to invited entrepreneurs and discuss the idea of associations in detail. There are bound to be some here who would take up this idea and discuss with these entrepreneurs how to educate the workers. If the employers were to take on the various educational endeavors desired by the workers, for example, higher education endeavors, if the employers were to cooperate so that lectures could be organized, for example - of course, these would have to deal with precisely what is covered by the associations - then a way to act can be found through mutual trust, and it would also be possible to influence public opinion.

So, to find a practical starting point, I propose founding an independent association of entrepreneurs that aims to promote the idea of association in every way, through events in Darmstadt, in order to gain a foothold that can be connected.

Roman Boos: It seems to me that a different approach is needed to promote the idea of association. With associations, it is only important to establish them in some practical way, not to propagate the idea itself. And to found a specific employers' association purely for the purpose of propaganda would not be the right thing either; Futurum and Künftiger Tag have to be practically involved, so that these very diverse organizations work together, that what is being worked on in the Waldorf School and by the Federation for School of Spiritual Science and what is being advocated by the Threefolding Association is represented with the greatest intensity, but by all these groups together. Not that the threefold order as such might be compromised by appearing merely as a matter for employers' circles!

It has been repeatedly shown that contact with members of these various circles has torn workers away from the world of ideas of their trade unions and parties. For example, an event was held at the Basel Youth Organization here, where it was discussed how this kind of thinking requires a different kind of thought formation. Similarly, a few weeks later, a meeting was held with members of the Protestant Workers' Association. In both cases, the way people wrote in the newspapers afterwards showed that they were torn out of their usual circles of thought.

And now the question of Director Schmiedel: How do you actually get the idea of threefolding into people's heads? It makes a tremendous impression on a worker when he is told: “Scientific results and insights into medicine come from these thoughts” - because he lives in these things, albeit in a popular way. That makes an extremely strong impression on him. And precisely because he puts everything on the scientific edge, even if only in word, one must try to make progress on a broad front, if possible to work on the broadest front.

Emil Leinhas: Professor von Blume has already referred to the power that he says “always intends evil but always creates good”. I believe that no one can deny that this power is active in an extraordinarily strong way. I do not believe that it is enough just to help a little, but as things stand today, it will take the most intensive work and effort to ensure that good comes out and not evil. We have the ideas of the threefold social order for this, and if we are properly grounded in them, we can also pass these ideas on. And here I must say, in answer to Mr. Schmiedel's remark that the material we have before us is “brittle”: I am of exactly the opposite opinion; we ourselves are brittle at first, in that we do not really understand the subject. That is the actual brittleness, and it is not the “Key Points” and not the threefold social order that are brittle. In the last few weeks I have had to deal with rather brittle material, with the history of capitalism. I then sat down late at night and read a few pages in the “Key Points”. Fresh air suddenly flowed in from all sides; you realize that you are immersed in real life. Don't worry: the material we have in the “key points” is not dry; the dryness lies elsewhere.

But we must not forget one thing: there should be many more people here, then things could move forward. Dr. Unger and Dr. Koch have already given some hints: This appeal to those who want to join their business because it can no longer exist on its own is certainly necessary in the general interest. It is also necessary to call on those who have capital not to give it to the banks, where it only serves to destroy. It is necessary not only to tie in with this in a one-sided economic way, but to work in a comprehensive way to educate economically and socially. Very little has been done in this regard, and an enormous amount remains to be done in the near future. Therefore, we who are involved in economic life must begin with concrete facts and educate humanity. It would be necessary to be able to provide answers to questions such as the connection between overproduction and entrepreneurship, or the original cell of economic life, or how much social work would actually be necessary at all if work were distributed in the right way, or the whole question of pricing – these are just a few of the many questions to which no answers have yet been given.

I would like to make a specific request to those present. I would ask those who believe they are able to work on this topic to help by giving lectures and the like, but above all to write about the specific aspects of economic life, which would have to take into account not only the economic but also the social. I would like to ask you to contact me for economic or economic contributions.

Roman Boos: I would like to second Mr. Leinhas' suggestion and ask whether it would not be possible to establish a permanent economic department at the coming day, which would then have its organs in the federation for threefolding, a kind of center that would have the task of connecting what is economic practice with economic science.

Emil Leinhas: The form in which people work together will find itself.

Rudolf Steiner: Just a few words. It is always unfortunate when an important thought is thrown into the discussion and then not followed up. Dr. Schmiedel threw out an important thought regarding the question: How do we actually get the threefold social order into people's heads and into their actions? I believe I have understood the idea correctly. And above all, I would like to draw attention to something that has hardly ever been thoroughly considered.

You see, basically we have not developed any skill, any real rational skill in agitation. We simply cannot agitate. Firstly, we have no practice; we also have no inclination to acquire practice in agitation. Secondly, with most personalities, we also have no inclination to really decide to do what is necessary on their part: to develop personal effectiveness. Of course we must also work through the printed word, and we have shown, by founding the Threefolding Newspaper, that we also take into account the fact that we must do this. But all this remains ineffective if we cannot move on to real personal agitation. Dr. Schmiedel will probably agree with me when I say: I know exactly how to approach the oak trunks from the Horn region (I know the people there); I know roughly, if I were to limit myself to this area, how I would have to present the threefold order to the local farmers if only I could be there and work. But that is just it: today, we are at a point in human development, especially in Central and Western Europe, where we are not understood at all if we do not speak in the language of the people. Just think about it: it is impossible today to speak in a workers' meeting the way you would speak in a meeting of entrepreneurs – not because you want to tell people what to do, but simply because you want to be understood. And in this regard, it must be said that a large number of our friends really need to acquire a certain skill, a certain technique. You see, I gave the Daimler speech, didn't I? The first fortnight of our work in Stuttgart showed that if we had continued in this direction, our following would have grown considerably. Instead of that, the Daimler lecture was printed and, well, then you got the echo of the Daimler lecture from some rustic pastor; yes, that he cannot understand what was said for the Daimler workers on his own initiative, that is quite natural. So above all, get to know life, that is what it is about.

We have always made the most important mistakes ourselves. In the threefolding agitation, we made them by not carrying out a technique of agitation, but only having a certain preference for this or that direction of agitation, and always believing that people would follow this direction, that they would think in this direction and that it would then be right. Well, then you go into a meeting of ironworkers and say the same thing to them [as you said to the other people]. Of course you can do that, but you have to say it in the language of each group. We have not adopted this, and I find a certain opposition to it within the threefolding movement itself. The majority is such that they do not want to get out of it, above all they do not want to get out of this, I would say monism of agitation, they do not want to admit that they need to create the possibility of really finding access to people. This inner opposition is what must be overcome, we must get beyond it. It is a kind of practical opposition that is being waged within wide circles of the threefolding movement. People want to agitate as they please, and not as the world requires. I have pointed out again and again: What matters is not that we like the thing, but that we do it as the facts require. And I showed this in practice by trying to do something in a new way. I wanted to have an agitator community; I wanted fifty people to be selected in Central Europe to undergo an agitator course in Stuttgart, so that it could then be determined personally how things should be handled. It simply does not work with the printed word, where the same thing is presented to the worker as to the entrepreneur. An agitators' course should have been organized, but this very important undertaking came to nothing simply because no people could be found who could be brought to spread the art of personal agitation in this way. Until we have really tackled this work of personal agitation, the question raised by Dr. Schmiedel remains valid. But it cannot be answered by discussion, but only by such activity

A participant in the discussion: Dr. Steiner says that the workers themselves do not know what they want. And if I now try to formulate what the workers want, it does not come out systematically, but rather in fits and starts. When workers agitate, they have a certain sense of solidarity among themselves; this comes from the fact that people have worked together. Dr. Steiner said that it depends on breaking up the unions. I was in Berlin for a few weeks and saw how rotten things are and that people are searching everywhere. Why not show people the way through a practical deed? Won't it be possible for the worker, who has nothing to offer but his labor, to have a place where he can say, It is good when I can take my labor somewhere, when I [in the coming day] can work, have a position as a laborer there, then I am already prepared to think my way into spiritual science. If someone thinks about his work, he can do twice as much. And we can help each other, intervene here and there, we can say: leave that for once, I will help you. - If we could say: If you want to break away from the union, then you can find a place somewhere, even if it is in agriculture. — If only we had the opportunity to work in the coming day! Isn't it possible for the coming day to create this opportunity, so that workers can be employed there? I know that people will object that not everyone should move to Stuttgart; we also need workers elsewhere. But we have to start there. We need people who, when the time comes, will not go on strike but will continue the work out of their consciousness. The way forward is shown by The Coming Day. The task at hand is to find the manual laborers, and once we have them, the project will develop from this nucleus.

Roman Boos: We are not competent to vote for the coming day. Furthermore, it depends, of course, on the circumstances of the coming day whether what is ideal can be realized in practice. I ask that you be as brief as possible. We still have four speakers scheduled.

Another participant: I would like to share that I have been active in labor unions for many years as one of the agitators of the old school. And I would like to suggest that we continue the conversation so that I can share some of my experiences with these people. I assumed that today's participants were only economists, so to speak, employers among themselves.

Roman Boos: Perhaps another event can be organized in the next few days.

Franz Dreidax: If we were to satisfy the workers' need for housing by having them start building the houses themselves and obtaining all the materials from the factories of the Coming Day, this would seem to me to be a way of drawing ever wider circles on a completely natural basis. Of course, the Coming Day would have to launch this.

Roman Boos: We are now getting a little too involved in building policy, which is a problem in itself; a great deal of literature and practice has been written about it. Whether we should be talking here about the possibilities of building cooperatives is a different matter.

Franz Dreidax: The intention is to blow up the trade unions. But anyone who is not in a union today will no longer find work anywhere; he will starve with his wife and children. The other workers will kill him if they catch him. The workers must be given the opportunity, the security and the confidence that he can continue to work. And if we now start building houses, at the same time also building on agricultural land and so on, then perhaps a trade could gradually develop with the surrounding villages. The factory workers in the city can be supplied with agricultural products. And vice versa. I don't yet know how it can be done on a large scale, but I see a possibility of how we can achieve mutual interest and how trust can take hold, real trust. It is also already stated in the Key Points that trust is necessary. I don't know of any other way out. I don't want to talk about breaking up the unions if there is no certainty that the workers will be able to survive afterwards.

Roman Boos: I would like to remind you that all these enterprises must also be financed by the Coming Day. If the financing operation succeeds as it should objectively succeed, it would of course be very valuable to create such economic entities. As soon as these economic enterprises flourish here...

A speaker from Breslau: We should discuss again the question of breaking up the trade unions and training agitators. I would ask the gentlemen to speak directly at the next meeting about finding ways to ensure that this action can actually be carried out. We have already missed one opportunity.

Rudolf Steiner: I would just like to note that one should not turn something I have said here into a slogan that can easily be turned into dogma. If, in connection with what I have said, something is said to the effect that only by breaking up the trade unions will the workers be helped on their way, then that is not right. For a not very far-reaching consideration would immediately show that only by following the path I have indicated, namely by bringing about the associations of employers and employees, can the unions be undermined and something else be put in their place. The unions will never be thrown out on the street just by repeating a socialist, Marxist slogan when you speak of “breaking up the unions”. It is not that that matters, but positive thinking; it is a matter of being able to think concretely in such matters.

A senior government official, who is in a kind of ministry of a German state and who wanted to discuss with me the measures that would have to be taken, was with me just recently. I said to him: That's all very well what you say; but you will achieve practically nothing if you sit in your office and concoct all sorts of things that always look different from reality. But you will achieve nothing even if you invite party and trade union leaders to your office. Go to the workers' meetings; speak there! There you will have the opportunity to become the people's confidant. Then you can achieve something. Today there is only one such agitation.

But what have we experienced in Württemberg? When we have been promised ten times, I would say, when some higher-level worker in the labor ministry or even a minister from the Socialist Party has promised ten times that he would come to something – at the moment he was expected, it was always said, especially at the beginning: Yes, it's just another ministerial meeting. The gentlemen always sit together in meetings, it does not even occur to them to come. And those who have outgrown the Socialist Party have tried least of all.

Of course, you shouldn't think that just because you're talking to trade unionists, you could come up with the same program. It does grow out of that, but it's about how it grows out of it. And the main point is that the slogan, “the worker is thrown out onto the street by the breaking up of the trade unions,” no longer applies.

A participant in the discussion: On the one hand you have all the entrepreneurs and on the other all the workers who are dependent on them, and the two groups should sit together in the organically structured tripartite organism.

Roman Boos: We cannot elevate economic group selfishness to the principle of organization; that is not possible!

Question: Is it possible to hear more about the personality of Jesus Christ?

Dr. Steiner: You see, gentlemen, that the question that is being asked is timely, and so we will discuss it today. I must say from the outset that what I am going to say will only be fully understandable to those who have been here for a long time, while those gentlemen who have only come today will slowly find their way into what we are discussing.

So the question that has been put to me and that we will discuss is about the personality of Christ, who was thirty-three years old when he died.

“On the third day he rose from the grave, resurrected. How did that happen, and where did this personality acquire the strength and power? And then you would be so kind as to talk about his ascension after forty days.”

Since time is just right, I will discuss this as it really happened, after we have already discussed the other thing; but, as I said, it can only be fully understood by those who have been here longer. The others will also understand it once we are together here more often.

Well, you see, at first the whole thing about Christ's personality and his destinies was actually quite unknown in the very early days after it happened. You don't have to look at it the way we look at it today, because today we have the feeling that the events in Palestine that are linked to the personality of Jesus became known throughout the world in one fell swoop. This is not the case. Rather, the situation is that in the time when the fate of Christ Jesus was unfolding, the so-called Roman Empire was widespread, a mighty world empire, and Palestine also belonged to this mighty Roman world empire.

You know that we still have a rather unfortunate legacy from this Roman Empire, the so-called Roman law. Perhaps you know that students at universities of so-called legal scholarship have to study for a very long time the so-called Roman law. Now, Roman law was conceived at a time when social conditions were quite different, so that Roman law has naturally become something highly unsuitable for today. But justice is still being done according to Roman law today.

So we have just this one inheritance from this Romanism. We have many other things as well; but this one inheritance, the so-called Roman law, is something that can be noticed by all of you.

Now, this Roman rule was extraordinarily widespread. I will just give you a small idea of how widespread Roman rule was. You just have to imagine the south of Europe: here we have Spain (it is being drawn), here we have Italy; then we have Greece, then we have the Black Sea. Then we have a lot of small islands. There Asia Minor comes over, and over there, in the area I want to mark, there was the small country of Palestine with Jerusalem, Nazareth and so on.

Roman rule now extended over all these lands. The Romans had occupied all these lands with their rule. So it was a very extensive Roman rule! Rome is located there. Of course, everything that was government-related and so on took place in Rome, so it was very far away from Palestine. And what happened in Palestine was very little known in Rome at that time. And those writers who wrote in Rome did not write about it for about a hundred years after the fact that had occurred with Christ Jesus in Palestine! It was only about a hundred years later that people in Rome understood the significance of what had happened in Palestine. And they did not treat it much differently in Rome at the time, except to say: Well, an unknown person has been crucified over there in Palestine. At that time, being crucified meant something like being hanged later. So it didn't cause any particular sensation. It was only after a hundred years had passed, and Roman rule had become more and more tyrannical and luxurious, that it became apparent that, while the people in Rome were enjoying their luxurious lives, Christianity had slowly spread here, and it was only then that they first noticed the Christians. And the Christians in Rome were initially not tolerated at all. Whoever was a Christian was something very much persecuted in Rome. And now I have to tell you why Christians were persecuted in Rome, because otherwise you would not be able to understand at all what the idea is behind the view that arose at the time: that a god died in Palestine, in Jerusalem. You have to realize what the views in the world actually were at that time.

You see, for a Roman in this first Christian century, that is, for a Roman at the time when it was written - they didn't write it back then, they calculated according to the Roman calendar, but if it had been our calendar, they would have written 1 or 10 or 50 for all I care - so if you had asked a Roman back then: Who is God? — he would have said: Emperor Augustus, or: Emperor Tiberius. — Just as today [1923] a Chinese, when you ask him: Who is God? — points to the Chinese emperor. So you must be clear about the fact that in those days for the Romans the ruler, the one in power, was at the same time their god. And that was the first thing the Romans noticed about the Christians: that they were not aware that a human being on earth could be a universal god. The Romans only knew that some human being sitting on the throne, who had powerful rule, was the god, was the highest thing, that had to be worshipped. And so the Romans did honor their emperor in a way that amounted to worship.

Yes, it was the same all over the world in those days. Over there in the Orient, where the great empires once were, the Persian Empire, the Assyrian, the Babylonian Empire and so on in the old days, it was also the case that the ruler was the god. “God” meant nothing more than the one to whom one turned when one needed something. He was the supreme one. He was seen as a helper. He was not always a helper, but he was seen as a helper.

I would like to point out that you are likely to know the word “God” in your language. When children are baptized, people have to be godparents. Now there are areas, I believe also here in Switzerland, where the man is called the Lord and the woman is called Gottel. This means that the godparents have to provide help. This is the same “God”. And the god was only the one who was the general god of the world. If you want to understand the things of the earlier times, you must always go back to the earlier times. So the god was the general god of the world. The name Goethe, the name of the German poet Goethe, also comes from the same word.

And that was the first thing one heard about the Christians: that the Christians did not believe that a human being on earth could be a universal god. For the Romans, this was something they could not grasp at all. Such terrible people, who do not accept the emperor as god, yes, they are very dangerous people. And the Christians, on the other hand, referred to the saying: Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's. — So, they referred to Jesus' saying, where the matter of Caesar and God is cut apart. God is the invisible. God is that which does not dwell in a visible man on earth. That is what the Christians claimed. And that was the big difference between the Romans and the Christians. And the consequence of that was that the Romans considered the Christians to be the most dangerous people of all, undermining the authority of the state because they did not offer sacrifice to the emperor in the temple. The sacrifices in the temples were offered to the emperor by the people. Now, the Christians sacrificed to a God who died in Palestine and who cannot be seen anywhere. That was something the Romans could not understand. And so the first Christians had to perform their sacrifices underground, under the earth. And these underground passages that they dug out there, in which they buried their dead and performed their sacrifices, are called catacombs. There are such extensive catacombs under the earth in Rome, in Italy in general, like small cities. The first Christians performed their sacrificial services there in the first centuries, while above, the Romans had large circuses, huge circuses. And there they had, for example, in such circuses, made a point of somehow tying a person they despised to a stake, to a pillar, and, after smearing him with pitch, setting him on fire and burning him alive. And they watched it in the circuses, just as people watch bullfights today. It was something that was quite common.

Just imagine this picture: above, the wild Romans in the circuses, who tied the pitch-coated man to the column and burned him alive. That amused them very much. And below, the Christians who performed their religious services in the catacombs. That was the difference, gentlemen, between below ground and above ground, which could not be more sharply defined. One must only consider that.

It is true that things were also quite terrible in the Middle Ages with the Inquisition. But as bad as the Romans behaved in the heyday of their imperial era, the Christians did not behave as badly as that later on. You just have to hold on to that. That is just true.

So the first thing one heard in Rome was that the Christians do not want to recognize a visible God. Now, of course, more and more has become known about what was actually meant by this Christ Jesus, and I have already told you some of it. For example, I have pointed out to you that there were actually two Jesus boys – the name Jesus was just as common a name in Palestine as Sepperl or Michel are today – one of whom died very young, and they were, one might say, playmates, extraordinarily capable, talented children.

Now, this story, which you all know from the Bible, about how the twelve-year-old Jesus taught the scribes in the temple, is something that is based on a truth. Of course, you don't have to tell yourselves: if a twelve-year-old boy goes to university today, the professorial council would not have much respect for him. Today's teachings cannot be compared with those of that time. You should not think that I am conservative or even reactionary, but I have to tell you the facts as they are. Nowadays we take it for granted that we have to send our children to school. Gifted children in particular learn an enormous amount of material that is not suited to them. We have to prepare things in such a way that they suit the children, as we do in the Waldorf school. But in general, children learn an extraordinary amount of material that does not suit them. Of course, adults are better at doing the things that do not suit them than children are. But what is driven out of children when they learn our present-day reading and writing, well, gentlemen, people today pay no attention to that. Children, if you know how to listen to them properly, will say extraordinarily clever things. They have brought this with them from the spiritual life before they descended to earth. And this one Jesus boy, he brought an extraordinary amount with him. And because the two Jesus boys were playmates, they actually always knew the same things. Now one of them has died. And so now the Gospels tell only of one Jesus boy, because people liked that better. But that doesn't help us understand the Gospels. If you read the Gospels of Matthew and Luke today, they contradict each other. The whole genealogy of Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew is described differently than in the Gospel of Luke. Why? Yes, because the things really refer to two Jesus boys.

I have told you that I have really been dealing with this question from a spiritual-scientific point of view for years, and I have come to the conclusion that there are two Jesus boys, and that the Gospel of Matthew is about a different Jesus boy than the Gospel of Luke.

Now one of them died in his twelfth year, while the other remained. So when it says in the Gospel: “Jesus increased in wisdom, spirit and power,” this is only true of the one.

You see, I found that long before I told you that there were two such Jesus children. It was not known that somewhere in history it is reported that there are two Jesus children until we came across a picture in northern Italy. There this story is depicted of Jesus in the temple, where he teaches the scribes. And there, strangely enough, is this second Jesus child. He is leaving. The one who is teaching and the other who is leaving – that is not the usual Jesus child, we know him! So there are two Jesus children in it, so you can say that in certain centuries people still knew: a second Jesus child existed. He walks away. Only after I had found that out could I know that this second Jesus child is depicted. So you see, gentlemen, for centuries people have known this. But the church has never actually allowed such things, which correspond to the real truth, to come up.

Now, as I have already told you, there are simply certain things in the life of man where one says, there is an enlightenment. Of course, people don't accept that. But you see, there are such revelations, and I will give you an example that was given to me only yesterday by a member of this group. I could give you hundreds of examples, but I will give you this latest example. Mr. Pfeiffer, you don't mind if I do, do you?

There is a very important chemist, Kekulé, an impeccable scholar, simply a real chemist who has written many books on chemistry. Now there are two important scientific views that come from Kekulé. I don't need to explain these views to you in more detail; that would take us hours, it's not important now. These two

important chemical views relate to the structure of substances, such as benzene, in their smallest parts. And these views, which Kekulé established, play an extraordinarily important role in chemistry. Anyone who knows chemistry knows that today everyone is talking about Kekule's theories.

But what did Kekulé himself experience? Kekulé recounts that he was once in London, where he lived quite a distance out of town – before he had formulated any of his theories – and had to take one bus after another to get to the other end of the city at night. He had an acquaintance there whom he visited in the evening. He always had to take one bus after another because he spent the night there. Once he was driving home after spending a long time talking about chemistry with an acquaintance who was also a chemist. He was driving home and sitting on the top of the bus. He dozed off and began to fall asleep. And as he began to fall asleep on top of the omnibus, he dreamt: There is an atom, there is another, there is a third atom; and there are then small atoms that are held together by the large ones (it is drawn). He dreamt of the substance, the matter, how it is made. He dreamt all this on the top of the omnibus. As soon as he comes home, he writes it down carefully. That was the one theory. You see, it was a dream to him. It was given to him, a completely materialistic theory.

The second is the so-called benzene theory. He dreamt that at another time, though not in London, but when he had dozed off at another place.

Yes, gentlemen, you see, a completely materialistic chemist had to confess that he could not have come up with his ideas and inventions through thinking, but that he was enlightened about these two things through a dream. It was all a real inspiration.

Now I would like to know why people object when it is said that the Jesus who was left behind became something completely different in his thirtieth year. Of course, Kekule did not immediately become a completely different person because the inspiration was only a small one. But the knowledge of the whole world entered into Jesus when he was thirty years old. In those ancient times, this was something that was entirely possible, and similar things are still possible today. So you just have to imagine that the Jesus of Nazareth, who had been left behind, was enlightened in his thirtieth year with all that is called the Christ. It entered into him, just as Kekulé's benzene theory entered into him. As a result, he had become a completely different person. And those who now understood something of the matter said: the Romans have a god on the throne. The god on the throne, they said, came into being through the ordinary powers of the earth. Such gods on the throne do not usually have revelations; at least not usually, do they; they do not have such revelations at the age of thirty.

Now, the Christians said: Our God is not appointed by men, He is appointed by the world powers themselves.

But now they had to say something else. You see, what was said about Jesus in those days was not as vague as what I am telling you now. I have to tell you slowly and gradually, which is why the matter is only vague at first. But it was more specific in the following way. You see, today, in order for individual people to become wise according to the view of our time, we have universities. After being made clever for a long time in the so-called grammar school or in secondary school, one comes to the university. There one is now given the finishing touches of cleverness. But you will not always find that the people who come out of the university have become different people in the university, but rather they have learned something externally.

This was certainly not the case in older times. In older times there was no distinction between churches and theaters and schools, but it was all one, and that was called mysteries. That is where people were educated back then. And the most important thing that people were taught in the mysteries was the so-called knowledge of the sun.

You see, when we were talking about natural science, I always told you what influence the sun has on everything that happens on earth. Plants do not grow merely because they are driven out of the ground below, but because the sun drives them out. The power of the sun is in all of us, as is the power of the earth. And I have drawn your attention to the fact that this solar power is not just a dead force, but a wise, living force. I have given you many examples. You have seen that what happens among animals happens wisely, intelligently, judiciously. Yes, when you look up at the sun, the learned imagine it is a ball of gas. Yes, gentlemen, that is about as clever as if we could all get on a big airplane and fly to the moon, as Jules Verne described. We could sit on the moon and look for our work and I would say to you: There, gentlemen, down there, you see, there is the earth. The Earth is a single body, there is nothing else on it. — You would not believe me, gentlemen, because you came up with me. You would believe that there are people on it after all. People who have souls are on Earth.

But that is exactly what the scholars are doing with the sun today. You sit there on the earth, look up at the sun and say: There is nothing up there but burning gas. — But that is real nonsense. The sun is inhabited, even if not by such people as can be seen with the eyes, but it is inhabited.

And this knowledge of the sun was the main thing taught to students in the ancient mysteries. And that is why these students were called sun disciples. It was said: Up there on the sun, there are the forces, the spring forces, the sun forces, there is that which draws everything out of the earth. And so someone who had learned in ancient times the secrets of the sun was called a sun disciple, and later, when he was fully trained, a sun master. And what Jesus of Nazareth suddenly knew at the age of thirty was this solar wisdom. This solar wisdom had come over him. Now you may have already seen that when plants that are beautifully green and full of energy on the earth are below ground in the cellar, they turn completely whitish and appear paralyzed. This is because the solar power does not enter them. This solar power in the mystical, spiritual sense is drawn into Jesus. And those who understood this said: Now the Christ is drawn into Jesus.

You see, now this remarkable thing happened. The Jews, who mainly lived here in Palestine (please refer to the board), had long since heard from their prophets that something must happen so that the earth can be taught from outer space itself. But you can be quite sure that if someone were to write a “Wilhelm Tell” today, as Schiller wrote it, and it were to be performed in the theater, people would say: That's nonsense, it's something very bad. They would not recognize it. And 'Wilhelm Tell' was first recognized by the few people who knew Schiller; then it spread. It is always the case in our social order, it has always been the case, that the majority of people let themselves be led by the hair. So the Jews also let themselves be led by their hair and, when that happened, and they were no longer led by the mysteries, but when someone appeared who had this solar knowledge, they said: But there is someone who claims that everything he says is true! You know, of course, what is done to people who speak a truth that is not yet known among the people. It was a great truth and wisdom that Jesus of Nazareth, in whom the Christ now lived, had to proclaim. Well, and then they crucified him. And he actually went through death.

And now I come to the question as it was put to me directly. You see, gentlemen, today's enlightened theologians are often even worse than their unenlightened counterparts. The unenlightened theologians say: Well, they laid Christ in the grave, and after three days he rose again with flesh and blood, just as he was. Well, of course, the enlightened people said: We don't believe that because no one comes out of the grave. But, I would like to say, it is at least something to profess. It may be debatable, but it is something to profess.

But what do enlightened theologians say? You see, one of the most enlightened theologians, who is well known and named, is Harnack. What does he say about the resurrection? You see, Harnack says: What happened on the third day in the garden of Gethsemane – that is where the grave was – you can't know. So the enlightened theologian says: What happened there on the third day in the garden of Gethsemane, that cannot be known. But many people have gradually come to believe that Christ was resurrected there. So that is the Easter belief, and we assume that we should hold to this Easter belief.

You see, I once raised this question - it was a long time ago - in the Berlin Giordano Bruno Association. The chairman was an academic who thought he knew a great deal about these matters, and he said: Harnack could not have asserted that, because what would that mean if Harnack asserted that one should not believe what really happened, but only in what people believe about it! That would be just like the Holy Robe of Trier, where people also say: Well, whether the Holy Robe of Trier is really the one that Christ wore, nobody knows, but so and so many believed in it, so we believe in it too! — Thus said the Protestant about the Catholic belief in the Holy Shroud of Trier. Or another example is that of the bones of St. Anthony. When they were examined closely, they were found to be veal bones. So the people who believed in them did not make much of it either, but said that it did not matter whether it was reality or not, but whether people believed it.

But it does not depend on that at all; what matters is what happened! Now the Bible actually tells the story in a wonderful way, only people do not pay attention to how it is told. The Bible does not say that such and such happened, but everywhere it says: such and such people have seen, really seen. That is what is told.

So it is related that the women came out, and what they saw at the grave – take that as sophistry if you want! It is related that the Christ met the disciples at Emmaus, and so on; that the Christ was seen, that is related.

Now, remember that I told you that a person does not consist only of this material body that is laid in the grave, but that a person also consists of the etheric body, the astral body, and the I. I have described this to you in detail. Now the physical body of Jesus of Nazareth has indeed been laid in the grave. I have studied this question a great deal, and it is extraordinarily significant that it is stated in the Gospel itself that an earthquake occurred. There was such an earthquake. It made a split and the body was taken up by the earth, so it was really no longer there. And the disciples did not see this physical body, but the etheric body, the supersensible body. The women and the disciples saw Christ in the etheric body, no longer Jesus of Nazareth, but Christ, that which was now the transformed inner man.

Of course, you have to imagine that what happened there was something extraordinarily magnificent for the disciples. You just have to consider that if there is someone among you with whom you have grown so close as friends, who is snatched from you by crucifixion, or as we would say today, by the gallows, you are intimately connected with him – that must have created a state of mind. This state of mind made the disciples almost clairvoyant for these things. And they really saw Christ again and again in the early days, more often than is mentioned in the Gospels. But it was the supersensible Christ.

And you see, when you read the letters of Paul, you read about the famous event of Damascus that Paul experienced. Near Damascus he came into a kind of sleeping state, and there the Christ appeared to him in the clouds. And pay attention to how Paul tells it. He once said: You can't take away my faith in the Christ, because I, like the other apostles, have seen the Christ.

So Paul is not saying that the other apostles saw Christ in the physical body; otherwise he would have to claim that he too saw Christ in the physical body. He explicitly claims that he saw the Christ in the clouds, thus the supersensible Christ, and by saying that he and the other apostles saw the Christ, he is already indicating that the other apostles, like him, saw the Christ in his supersensible body. And isn't it true that people believe that the unbelieving Thomas had to place his hands in the wounds as an objection to this? That just wants to say: the presence of the Christ, that he was there, this experience was so strong that Thomas himself could have the strong faith to touch him. So everything was related to the supersensible Christ.

The wounds were something that touched the hearts of the disciples, especially the apostles. It would be much less vivid if it were not mentioned that the wounds could be touched. Why the wounds in particular? Why not lay his hands on the face or something like that? He would have sensed that something was there. He laid his finger on the wounds because the wounds made a special impression, and what the disciple really became aware of in the Christ actually depended on the higher vision.

So that one can say: For forty days in a row, the disciples were clear about one thing: the Christ is still there.

And from this the Christian teaching arose – which is the original Christian teaching, and which ties in with what I told you last Monday. The Christian teaching arose from this: When Christ is buried, there is only the body in the grave, which of course disappears; Christ showed us the immortal in Himself; He walked around in His immortality for forty days. We have seen him. And he appeared to Paul even much later. So he is always there.

And so we can say today: He is always there. Only the disciples, because this power of vision has disappeared in them, have not seen him after forty days. That's when they said, “Now he has left us: Ascension.” This is an event that naturally filled the disciples with great sadness. They said: Even though he died, even though his enemies crucified him, he was still with us for forty days. Now he is no longer with us. Now he has returned to the vastness of the world.

And then they became truly sad. Not in an ordinary sadness, but in a very deep sadness. And the ten days that are now being talked about, these ten days were for the disciples and apostles something where they went very deeply into their hearts, where they reflected with inner strength on everything the Christ had ever said to them. These ten days were enough for them to say to themselves afterward: Yes, we can know all of this ourselves; this wisdom – they said to themselves, impressed by the strong impression – this wisdom itself resides in us. And now, after ten days, they felt the strength to teach this wisdom as well. The fiery tongues – that is the image of it – came upon their heads. That is Pentecost, the Pentecostal idea, the fiery tongues. Through their great sorrow, when they had lost sight of everything except the Christ, they had reflected so deeply that they were able to teach themselves.

And it is beautifully told that they now began to “speak in all languages”. But here we must realize something about the way people spoke in those ancient times. Of course we must not suppose that it is claimed that the apostles began to speak Chinese or Japanese or even German, but rather that it is meant that, through the way they spoke in those ancient times, they had now become tolerant through all that they had thought in the ten days between Ascension Day and Pentecost. Now, for them, there was no longer any difference between religions, but they proclaimed one religion for all people. That is what is meant by being able to speak in all languages; they proclaimed one religion for all people.

And that is the most beautiful thought of Pentecost; one religion for all people. You see, the thing that has done the most harm to people is always fanaticism in religion, the exclusiveness in religion, that you have Christianity and Buddhism and Judaism and all sorts of things. Why is it that you have so many religions? That you have so many religions comes from the fact that these religions are earth religions, real earth religions.

What do I mean by that when I say: earth religions? Now, you see, there is a time when we go back, let's say – it's 1923 today – to the time when I told you that Christ Jesus lived in Palestine, so at the turn of the age. Now we go further back, let's say, to the year 3500 before Christ Jesus, so back to ancient times, there are people down there in Egypt who also spoke of their God about 3000 or 3500 years before Christ, only in old words. They called him Ra, for example. They spoke of their god, but they said: the god is in the city of Thebes, for example, and in the city of Thebes there was a kind of building with a special artistic, tomb-like structure. The god lived in there. That was the oldest form of worship, that he was in a certain place.

Yes, gentlemen, if someone lived where we live today, he probably did not say: the god is in Thebes; because that was something that not only could not be reached in ancient times, but of which nothing was known at all. They knew nothing of Thebes. So those who were down here, in Egypt, where the Nile flows, said: the god who lives in Thebes. And those who were here, in our area, they also had such local deities. For example, there was a local deity in what is now Alsace, or in Münster. So people worshiped God in a particular place. Yes, that is the reason why there are different religions: the Theban religion, the religion of Münster, the religion of Alsace. There the religions split.

And later, when people wandered more on earth, they could no longer accept any place for God, because then they would have contradicted themselves. They had migrated, and there they no longer accepted the place as God, but the man who led them. And so, gradually, the dignity of God passed to the emperor and the princes. For the people, the prince was emperor. Many princes arose.

You see, in Rome there was still something of this religion, in that the Romans still worshiped their emperor as a god.

But what was Christianity? Christianity said nothing of the sort. What is to be worshipped is not bound to a place on earth, not to a person on earth, but to the power of the sun, the sun's vitality, which the Christ has taken up in himself. And the sun is precisely universal. For no one in Europe can say that when the sun shines on his head it is a different sun from that of the Egyptians, the Chinese or the Australians. Those who truly recognize that the power of Christ comes from the sun must recognize the universal religion for all people.

It was the universal religion for all people, even if people did not always understand it. And it dawned on the disciples that the religion of the sun is there. This is expressed by the fact that they were able to speak in all languages. They were able to bring a religion of reconciliation and tolerance for all people. That is the idea of Pentecost. But as you know, the idea of Pentecost has not yet been fulfilled today. And it must be fulfilled. It must still become quite clear that what the Christ brought to Earth does not depend on a doctrine at all, but on a fact.

When today European missionaries come to an Indian or a Chinese, they demand of them that they believe in what is said about the Christ in Rome. The Indians or Chinese cannot bring themselves to do that, because it has been developed from European conditions. You cannot get people to do that. But if it were said as I have told you today, it could be understood all over the world. Because what applies to all people is the idea of Pentecost.

I have now tried to explain to you the idea of Ascension Day and the idea of Pentecost, which is what the Lord, who recorded the question, wanted to know. I also find it very fitting because today is the day before Ascension Day and in ten days the Pentecost follows. I was very happy to be able to tell you this.

Now I have to go to Norway. I will let you know when the next lecture will be. Goodbye.

In the gathering held here just after the Christmas Course we turned our attention to things that can deepen medicine in an esoteric sense. And we tried—to the extent to which this is possible in such brief meetings—to penetrate into the esotericism of medicine, in the way that is suitable for younger medical aspirants today. In formulae for further contemplation and elaboration, we received things that can quicken the sense for medicine and emphasis was laid upon the necessity of having this sense for medicine.

I picture to myself that you have worked upon these things for a time, my dear friends. Naturally, my idea of this work is not that people sit down and ponder about such things theoretically, but that from time to time, when the inner need is felt, they let these things work upon and develop the soul. It was inevitable, from the very way in which these things came before us, that one perfectly definite fact should emerge—a fact which I believe to be of importance for our gathering now. Because of the very concentrated form in which the esoteric things were given at the first gathering, one or another, to a greater or lesser degree, must have realized that it was necessary to face certain inner difficulties. The purpose of esoteric teachings is not always to make life as easy as possible for us. In a certain respect the opposite is certainly the case. They are also there in order to make life more difficult, to make us realize the difficulties of understanding the world, of really getting to know the world and human beings. So that when we become alive to these difficulties, we take the opposite path of development from that which is so often taken in our civilization today. We take the opposite to a superficial path of development. It is only by becoming alive to the difficulties existing as between the outside world and the human being that a person can be deepened in soul. I think, therefore, the best way now will be if, bearing these inner difficulties in mind, you will bring them forward in the form of questions and we will then make matters that can really promote the development of our subject into the theme of our discussions. I would ask you, to begin with, to tell me what inner and outer difficulties have arisen in your own circle. Difficulties will have arisen both for the practitioner and for the student. There are a number among you who are now approaching the end of their studies; they will have found quite specific difficulties and we will try to find their solution. All of you have received the first circular letter and you will have realized that in connection with definite questions there is a very great deal to say. I would like to ask if any question, definite or indefinite, has arisen, for such questions will surely lead us further. In this way we shall get away more from theoretical study and reach matters which lie in the realm of actual experience.

Question: A participant asked about the course of the year, the Calendar of the Soul, definite constellations of the stars and whether one must be consciously aware of these.

That is not essential. You mean observation of the constellations as they are at a particular time. It is, of course, a help if one is able to look at the visible constellations. But if I have understood you aright you mean: How are things, really, if we allow the formulae we have been given to work upon the soul? These things work through their own inherent mantric power; orientation in the outer world according to the stars can, of course, be a help but you must remember the following. Take the most striking example of a human-cosmic relationship that can still be observed today, namely the menses. It is obvious that they are determined cosmically yet they are not so determined in the present epoch. They were cosmically determined in a much earlier phase of cosmic evolution in which our earth was also involved. Then, in the course of time, they became independent, were emancipated from the external cosmos, so that nowadays there is no direct dependence. Therefore, one cannot say nowadays that the phases of the moon are coincident with menstruation. This cannot be said. But it is certainly true to say that there was once a time when the one coincided with the other; then they separated. The moon phases exist on their own. Menstruation takes its own independent course. Here is one example of separation. The other that I will mention is not governed by the phases of the moon but by the daily phases of the moon. Ebb and flow were once coincident with certain influences of the moon. Again there was separation. The moon is on its own, ebb and flow on their own.

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These things also hold good in the working of mantric power. Mantric power is certainly of such a nature that what happens in the human being as a result of it was at one time coincident with cosmic processes, but separation has now taken place, so that a proper orientation is necessary. If we want this help from the outside world we must say to ourselves first of all: What is to happen in the inner being is inscribed in the cosmos. But in contemplating this we must make ourselves inwardly independent and be able to experience inwardly and quite on our own, emancipated from the cosmic happenings. Therefore it is not unconditionally necessary to reckon with the constellations of the stars in the working of a mantram. Equally it cannot be a question of the menses being regulated according to the external phases of the moon, because the menses have become a process of the world of nature. Today it is the case that the whole of our inner life that is to be influenced by mantrams must take place in emancipation from the outer cosmos.

In connection with other subjects I have often had to speak of this as the difference between Eastern and Western esotericism. The whole standpoint of the oriental is this: the human being has come forth from the cosmos, he must return there, he must be united with the cosmos again. Think of the posture of the Buddha. It is a return to earlier conditions. This is shown by the Buddha's whole posture, the crossing of the legs one over the other, the elimination of the limb structures. The position of the arms, too, is such that the whole relationship to the earth is paralyzed. We see how the human being again members himself into the cosmos. He goes back again. So it is, in reality, with the whole of Eastern esotericism. It is a going backwards. Our Western esotericism can only be a going forward, an ever-increasing emancipation. For this reason it is not so inwardly comfortable and when applied in certain domains particularly it does not make for inner ease.

Of course, if you have some specific, pathological condition before you, and when you look at the constellations you find, for example, that the condition definitely set in when Saturn was in opposition to the moon, this naturally has a certain significance. For if you now come as a healer with Saturn and moon, that is to say, in earthly terms, with lead and silver, saying: I will apply the lead cosmically and the silver in the earthly form, trying to pulverize it, to dissolve it; I will change it into the earthly form, thereby producing the same constellation that is expressed in the heavens in the opposition to the moon, then you can heal in the sense of the cosmic forces. But at the same time you bring the human being into a condition which throws him back into earlier stages of evolution. Whereas if you take your start directly from the given earthly state—the connection of the human being with lead, with silver—then you are working in something that is in a process of emancipating itself within the human being and you are looking not into the past but into the future. In this case you will certainly be doing something similar, but you get at it from within, by getting to know the nature of the lead and the silver, realizing that the lead works as substance, the silver through what it actually becomes when it is broken into pieces, dissolved, resolved into atoms. But you are comparing it with the human nature that is already emancipated, not with the cosmos. This is the way in which one must proceed. Therefore it may certainly be a help to think about the actual constellations of the stars. But to begin with, we shall have to use all our power to lend ourselves to the inner activation of soul by the mantric formulae we have been given, and seek for everything more from within.

Question: What must I do out of the ego when I am meditating?

From out of the ego? Meditation consists, does it not, in the following. As a modern person you feel that you must understand every sentence. This is emphatically an activity of the ego in the present incarnation. Everything you do intellectually is an activity of the ego. In the present incarnation the intellect predominates and everything else is overshadowed by the ego, works upwards at the most like a dream, and is unconscious. In contrast with this, meditation means elimination of this intellectual striving and, to begin with, taking the content of the meditation just as it is given—purely according to the sounds of the words. When you approach the content of the meditation intellectually you bring your ego into movement before you absorb the meditation, for you think about the content; it is outside you. If you let the meditation be present in your consciousness just exactly as it is given, not cogitating over it at all but simply letting it be in your consciousness, then your ego is working in you not from the present incarnation but from the past. You hold the intellect still, simply transporting yourself into the word-content which you hear inwardly, not outwardly; you transport yourself into this word-content and as you do so your inner being works within the content of the meditation—the inner being which is not that of the present incarnation. But thereby the content of meditation becomes—not something for you to understand merely—but something that works within you in reality; so that finally you become aware of: Now I have experienced something I was unaware of earlier.

Take a simple meditation which I have often given: “Wisdom lives in the Light.” If we think about this we can extract many very clever things but equally frightfully stupid things from it. “Wisdom lives in the Light” is there in order to be heard inwardly. When you hear this inwardly that within you which listens does not come from your present incarnation but what you have brought with you from former earthly lives. It is this that thinks and experiences, and after some time there lights up within you something you did not know before, that you cannot think out with your own intellect. Inwardly you are much further than your intellect. Your intellect contains only a tiny extract of what is really there.

After all, you must take what is given in Anthroposophy absolutely concretely and objectively. Just think about the following: With the change of teeth the human being really renews his whole physical body. This must be taken as a fundamental fact. That the human being gets second teeth is really only the most external symptom of all, merely, a fragment of what is going on. Just as the so-called milk teeth are replaced, so is the whole human organism replaced. After the change of teeth, so far as his physical substance is

concerned, the human being is entirely new in comparison to what he was when he was born. The modern view which jumbles everything together is that the human being is born, passes through a metamorphosis with the change of teeth and then goes on developing. It is not like this. The truth is that when the human being comes physically into the world he has, as well as the so-called milk teeth, a body that is a product of hereditary development. He has received a body that is the product of what is contained in the whole line of ancestry. The physical body of the first seven years—if we express it in figures—comes from here. From the seventh to the fourteenth year the human being has a body, too, but this body has not been produced from the first by transformation. What the human being has brought with him to the earth has intervened here.

Picture it as follows: the human being has had his body. This body which has come to him from the line of heredity is a model; he has it as a model. Into this body he takes earthly substance. If he were to work only with the forces he brings with him from pre-earthly existence he would elaborate this earthly substance which he takes into his body in the first seven years into quite a different form. He would call forth quite a different form. He does not come at birth with the tendency to give form to a being with eyes, ears, nose, like the being who stands on the earth. He enters with the tendency to structure the human being in such a way that very little is structured by way of the head through his pre-earthly being; it is especially upon everything else that the greatest care is expended. What is stunted in the embryonic life is developed in the astral, in the ego organization. Of the physical embryo, therefore, we must say: Physical nature in the embryo is developed in a wonderful way but the pre-earthly human being has very little indeed to do with it. On the other hand the pre-earthly human being plays the very greatest part in all that lies around the embryo. It lives in what is demolished in the physical world, amnion, chorion, and so on. Within this lives the pre-earthly man.

You can picture it rather like this. To begin with, the cosmos is copied. This is what the human being wants, in reality, to do when he has come down from the pre-earthly into earthly existence. Why does he not do it? Because a model is already provided. And in accordance with this model, with the substances received, he transforms the pre-earthly during the first seven years of life. His inherent tendency would be to form a more spherical being, a being organized into a sphere. This is transformed in accordance with the model and so the pre-earthly forces work out this second physical man who is there from the seventh to the fourteenth years, but to begin with, by adhering to the model which comes from the forces of heredity.

There, you see, you have two, actually distinguishable entities of forces in the human being. How can you understand these force entities? Take, with the outlook and feeling of the physician, the book Occult Science and read where the earth's evolution is spoken of. At first there is a Saturn evolution, then a Sun evolution. If you follow the description of the Earth evolution you will find that until the separation of the sun, sun, moon and earth were one, combined together in one. Afterwards there is a separation of earth and sun, earth and moon. Up to the middle of this evolution, therefore, the human being lives in the cosmos. He lives in sun and moon just as he lives in the earth. After the separation of the sun he lives outside the sun; after the separation of the moon, outside the moon. Until the separation of the sun, therefore, the cosmic forces were working upon man's nature; those forces, too, which are today outside the earth in the moon and in the sun were working in the human being because he belonged to the world in which the sun and moon were still present. There followed for the human being an evolution during which sun and moon were outside.

There was a phase of evolution which contained within it all that today is both earthly and of the nature of sun and moon; later on, the extra-earthly emancipated itself from the earthly. The earthly went on along its own path, it dried up, hardened, became physical—and you find this today in the stream of heredity; it has densified within the stream of heredity. What the human being has received since the separation of the moon and sun lies in the forces working in from the cosmos. That is the point. So that in the model that is received in order that the second man may be elaborated, you have a model that really represents a primeval, artistic principle given by father and mother, originating when sun and moon were still united with the earth. It was then that the forces which really give the human being his earthly configuration were developed. For you will readily understand that the configuration of the human being is an earthly one. Try to think of the being of man entirely removed from the earth. What could be done with it? You would be extremely unhappy if after death you were to make use of anything like legs. Legs have purpose only when the earth's forces of attraction pass through them, when the legs are within the sphere of the earth's forces of attraction. Legs—and arms and hands, too—have meaning and purpose only on the earth. So that a whole section of the human organism, in the way it is developed, has purpose only when we are earthly man. What we are as Earthly man has no meaning so far as the cosmos is concerned. Therefore when we come to the earth as beings of spirit and soul, our wish, to begin with, is to form quite a different organization. We want to build a sphere and to generate all kinds of configurations within this sphere, but we have no wish for this being with whom the cosmos itself can do nothing. This being is given us as a model and we build up the second man in accordance with this model.

In the first life-period, therefore, there is a perpetual struggle between what comes from us out of the previous incarnation and what comes from hereditary development; the two elements fight with each other. The illnesses of childhood are the expression of this fight. Just think how intimately the whole inner being of soul and spirit is bound up with the physical organization during early childhood. When the second teeth appear you can see how they push up against the first, how they still have tussles with each other, and in this same way the whole second man has tussles with the first. But within the second man there is the super-earthly being; in the first a foreign, earthly model. These two work into one another and if you observe this inter-working truly you can see how, if the inner man, who as a being of soul and spirit was present in pre-earthly existence, has too much the upper hand for a time, working into the physical very strongly and having, willy nilly, to adjust itself by dint of effort to the model, that it damages the model by striking up against it everywhere, saying: I want to get this particular form out of you—then the fight expresses itself as scarlet fever. If the inner man is tender, so that there is a continual shrinking back, a wish to mold the in-taken substances more in accordance with their own nature, and resistance is put up to the model, the struggle comes out as measles. What is, in reality, a mutual struggle expresses itself in the illnesses of childhood. Moreover, it is only possible to understand truly what comes later if these things can be properly reckoned with.

It is, of course, very easy for the materialists to say that all this is stupid, because children still retain a likeness to their parents after the change of teeth and not only up till that time. Such talk is nonsense. The fact is that one being is weaker, directs himself more in accordance with the forces of heredity, builds up the second man with a greater resemblance to the model. This naturally comes out in the appearance, but the same thing has been going on when the being has adjusted itself more in accordance with the model. On the other hand, there are human beings who after the change of teeth become very unlike what they were before. In such cases what comes from the pre-earthly life of soul and spirit is strong and they adhere less to the model. We have therefore simply to see these things in their right connection.

The following, too, must be remembered. Everything that has to be taken in must, in the first place, be taken in by the child and elaborated inwardly in such a way that the ego and astral body enter into intimate contact with the foodstuffs. Later on this need not be the case any longer. The human being is never afterwards in the position of being so strongly compelled to work out, according to a model, something that is independent as is the case during the first seven years of life. During those years he must work up in his ego and astral body everything he takes in; he must work it up in such a way that it can be molded in accordance with the model. This process must be helped; and the world has arranged for it, inasmuch as milk is able to bear a very great resemblance indeed to an etheric structure. Milk is a substance which really still has an etheric body and because this substance, when it is taken by the child, still works up into the etheric, the astral body is able at once to take hold of the milk and then there can arise the close inner contact between what is thus taken in and the astral body and ego organization. For this reason there is an inward, intimate connection in the child between the external foodstuffs and the inner organization of spirit and soul.

In the whole way in which the child drinks milk you can actually see how his astral body and his ego are taking hold of the milk you can see it with your very eyes. And now, as a physician, you must realize the remarkable process of working up what is going on. On the one side, meditate in mantrams, letting the mantram work upon you, freeing your forces of soul on the one hand; and on the other hand, meditate simply upon the child. Picture to yourself how the being of spirit and soul comes down and makes its way to the physical foodstuff, ignoring the model to begin with, and then picture what is going on between the being of spirit and soul and the foodstuff—a process that is now directed in accordance with the forms contained in the model. If you form a true picture of an excessively strong working of the spirit and soul, the picture crystallizes into that of scarlet fever. A picture of a too feeble working of the spirit and soul which wavers in the face of the model and becomes the picture of measles.If you picture these things in meditation you carry over ordinary meditation into medical meditation. It is dreadful that people today want to grasp everything with the intellect. In medicine really nothing can be grasped with the intellect. With the intellect one could at the very most grasp the diseases of the minerals—and there it is not a question of curing. Everything medical must be grasped by direct perception and the faculty for this has to be developed.

You cannot notice this process in a grown-up person. The digestive tract takes over the foodstuffs—it is a process transacted inwardly; whereas in the child, astral body and ego take over the foodstuffs. Unfinished forms of human nature have there to be directed and fashioned in accordance with the model. When you meditate upon the child, you see a mighty metamorphosis going on. You see the spirit and soul lighting up, as it were, and the in-taken foodstuffs cast into darkness and shadows; you see there how the second man is formed out of light and darkness, in colors, as it were. You see how the pre-earthly in man is a brightness and how the external foodstuffs are a darkening. In the child a brightness comes upon the darkness, a brightness that comes from the pre-earthly. The milk goes in as darkness. The brightness and the darkness together give rise to manifold colors. What is white in the physical is black in the spiritual; always the opposite.

These things make it possible for the ego to be active in quite another way than is usual in life. What a feeble effort it is that we make in the act of ordinary, intellectual thinking. Intellectual activity is man's greatest weakness. He simply carries one concept to another. But if you observe the child in the way now described you will meditate in such a manner that your ego organization is thoroughly involved in the effort.

These things, in their further course, must also be heeded in our pedagogy. In a school like the Waldorf School we have children between the ages of seven and fourteen. At this age things have changed. The second man has been developed. The child before us has been molded out of pre-earthly existence according to the model that has been cast off; forces of heredity, naturally, have remained in the child. They have been brought into the model, into the imitation of the model. The child is now much too unearthly. For now the forces that come from beyond the earth have worked on the child with special strength and the swing of the pendulum has gone to the opposite side. Formerly, this was externally visible in the human being; he was entirely the product of heredity. Now that which is to be seen externally has arisen entirely from within. It is the external world that has now to be mastered. What has hitherto worked without consideration for the earthly world, with consideration only for the human model, must direct itself to the outer world. Between the seventh and fourteenth years, astral body and ego organization must work in such a way that this super-earthly being is again adjusted to the external conditions of earth existence. This process has its culmination at puberty. At that age the human being is placed wholly within earthly conditions; he enters into his relationships with earthly conditions; the earthly is membered into his being. Therefore the element of greatest importance in the generation of the second man between the seventh and fourteenth years is what the human being brings with him from pre-earthly existence. For this reason his own specific karma only begins to work after puberty. Then the earthly works in. A culmination is reached at puberty and the third man now begins to develop.

The second man—so far as the substance is concerned—is thrown off and the third man is developed. The process does not reach so far as actual form, it only gets as far as life. If it were to get to form, we should get third teeth, because the human being is now governed by external conditions. Within these outer conditions it is the case that the human being again takes in what is extra-human. When he was being governed by the model he was directed entirely in accordance with the human. So long as he was governed by the model he was governed by something passed on by heredity. But in this there lies, in reality, something that is dried up. Since the separation of the sun it has really broken off from the root of his being and is dried up, withered. Therefore the forces of heredity contain the most pathological forces and when he is governed by the model the human being really absorbs innumerable causes of illness. He absorbs few such causes during the period after the change of teeth because then he is governed by the external world; climate, everything contained in the outer air, etc., are less harmful. Between the seventh and fourteenth years the human being is healthy; then again there begins a period when he is again susceptible.

All these conditions must be observed in such a way that you have the picture of man in your mind. If you have this picture of man in mind, then you also meditate rightly. Then you will be able to combine what you learn with what you meditate upon and what you have learned does not remain theory but becomes practice, because you uncover the power that enables you to perceive these things. This is what is so urgently needed today. It is impossible to achieve anything in medicine so long as we persist in thinking that evolution goes forward in a straight line. The human being is in reality constituted from separate streams of development which take their course in periods of seven years; what comes later is linked to what is earlier; it is not a one-sided continuation but different conditions are always intervening. Continuous evolution in this sense, where the earlier alone is the cause of the later, is only to be found in the mineral kingdom, less in the plant kingdom and least of all in the human kingdom.

Let us try to picture the plants. How do people proceed today when they picture the plants? There is the soil of the earth. The seed is pictured as being laid into the soil and then the plant grows out of this. People are naive enough to think as follows: Hydrogen is a very simple molecule, consisting of two atoms. All kinds of things are imagined to form combinations. Alcohol is certainly a very complicated molecule. Carbon is there combined with hydrogen and oxygen and then one has something more complex. And now there come still more complicated substances with more and more complicated molecules. There was a period during the eighties and nineties of the last century when the titles of these were very complicated, consisting of more than three lines in length. Yes, the molecule has become terribly complicated! And now still more so. Then it becomes a seed, and a seed is a most highly complicated combination. Then the plant grows out of the seed. But all this is nonsense. The basis of the seed formation is, in reality, that earthly matter tears itself away from the principle of structure and passes over into chaos, becomes chaotic, contains no more forces of matter in itself. Then, when no earthly structure is present, what is working out of the cosmos can assert itself. The cosmic declares its readiness to mirror the cosmic structure in the minute. In the seed formation the “nothingness” asserts itself over against the earthly and the cosmos works into the nothingness.

Frau Dr. Kolisko could tell you an interesting fact which entirely confirms this. During investigations into the function of the spleen we took small rabbits and excised the spleen. In spite of this the rabbits were quite well. They did not die of the operation, but a long time afterwards, from colds. It was quite possible to see how the rabbits live on without the spleen. When one of the rabbits died, we were able to see what had happened and in the place of the spleen there had appeared tissue which had assumed a decidedly spherical form. What had really happened? We had excised the physical spleen and by doing this had artificially driven earthly substance into chaos, made it accessible to the cosmic forces, and something resembling a seed formation had come into being. There had arisen, in an extremely primitive form, something that resembled the structure of a seed—an image of the cosmos. This quite harmless vivisection, therefore, confirmed a matter of great significance, for this is what appears to spiritual-scientific observation.

Take a quartz crystal. It is an earthly thing. Why? Why is the quartz crystal an earthly thing, retaining its form really in a very pedantic, rigid way? The quartz gets its form from an inner force and if you break it apart with a hammer the single parts always retain the tendency to be six-sided prisms, self-contained, six-sided pyramids. This tendency is present. You can as little rid the quartz of this tendency as you can get pedantry out of a man who is pedantic by nature. You may atomize a pedantic person, but he will still remain pedantic. The quartz does not allow itself to come to the point where the cosmos can do anything with its forces. Therefore the quartz has no life. If the quartz could be pulverized to such a degree that in the single fragments it no longer had the tendency to be governed, in the single fragment, by its own forces, something living and cosmic would grow out of the quartz. This is what happens in the formation of a seed. In the seed, matter is driven out to such a degree that the cosmos can intervene with its etheric forces. The world must be seen as a perpetual entering into chaos and again an emergence from chaos. What is contained in quartz also came at one time from the cosmos, but it remained at a standstill, has become Ahrimanic. It no longer exposes itself to the cosmic forces. As soon as anything enters into the realm of the living it must always pass through chaos.

This again is something which will help you to meditate in the sense of medicine. And you can also picture the developed plant—how it grows from leaf to leaf, and so on. You come to the formation of the seed in the fruit. Whereas you otherwise picture the seed plant as brightness it now becomes dark, quite dark. Then again comes the light, when the forces from outside take hold. In this way, too, you can make an imaginative picture from the being of the plant. When you are aware of an object which you call “plant”—then it is an imaginative meditation. You should not remain in the sphere of the intellectual but in the sphere of the concrete, inner picture. The intellectual element is merely there for the purpose of presenting what is known, in the form of thoughts.

Suppose you write down the word Menschenkind. This word is taken from something that has been perceived. Very well. The word Menschenkind reminds you of a Menschenkind (a human child). But suppose you take the word and say: I like the i, so I will put that first, I like the n, so I will put that next, then the sch and so on. You can put the word together in a different way but nothing that you can make anything of will come out of it. This is what people are doing with concepts all the time. The concept is only the spiritual term for the perception. People separate and combine concepts and think in acts of thinking. They do this, too, when they are observing the external world. They cover up observation with thinking and so they live today outside reality. This is possible as long as one is working with the science that stands outside reality, with geometry and arithmetic. But if we want to go in for medicine we cannot stand outside reality. If we do, then we also stand outside reality in medical practice itself.

Anthroposophy and Threefolding: Their Nature and Their Defense

Dear attendees! It has not been my custom to say a special word of thanks after greetings. Today I want to do it because I really thank you very much for this greeting in the interest of the matter. Anyone who is attached to the matter I represent here may also express his thanks when he sees that it has retained its old sympathies despite the attacks it has suffered here. For almost two decades I have been giving lectures here in Stuttgart every year on the anthroposophical worldview, and in these lectures everything has been mentioned that makes it possible to form an opinion about the anthroposophical movement. More recently, I have also spoken about things that are more loosely connected with what I represent as the anthroposophical worldview: the so-called threefold social order. And I do not believe that any of the words I have spoken in the latter context have in any way violated the spirit and content of what, as I said, I have been advocating for almost two decades as an anthroposophical worldview.

Today, however, I face the outside world as if before a caricature of what I myself have to describe as the anthroposophical worldview. From all sides, I am confronted with descriptions of what this anthroposophical worldview is supposed to be. I must confess that most of these descriptions are such that I do not recognize the picture of the anthroposophical world view that I have drawn here. Everything seems so alien to me, just as what has been said in numerous personal attacks from all sides seems alien to me. It will therefore be forgiven if today I depart from the custom I have otherwise almost always observed here of speaking purely impersonally about the anthroposophical world view, and that I also take into account in a few places the personal attacks that have been made against me. But I promise you that I will not go into these things any further than they are related to the matter in hand in any direction.

First of all, dear ladies and gentlemen, I would like to talk about the origin and starting point of the anthroposophical world view. This origin and starting point lies entirely in the scientific world view of modern times. Anyone who goes through the somewhat long series of my writings will be able to see that my starting point never lies in any religious problems, even though, of course, anthroposophy, by its very nature, as we shall see, must lead to religious feeling and religious views. The starting point was not religious views, the starting point was the scientific world view that I grew into in my younger years. Anyone who grows into this scientific worldview of the present day will initially feel an extraordinary respect for what science has achieved in modern times, and above all, they will gain an even greater respect for both the experimental and observational methods of scientific research and for the training in thinking and methodical schooling that contemporary science can introduce to people. And I must confess that, for me, since I entered the natural sciences, the most valuable thing about them was this training of thought, this conscientious discipline of thinking and researching. And more than from individual results of natural science, I have always started from what natural science research brings up in you as a training in thinking. But in doing so, one thing became clearer and clearer to me. When I — and I believe that what I am about to say is sufficiently clear from my 'Introduction to Goethe's Scientific Writings', which appeared in the 1880s — when I repeatedly looked at what lives in the human soul in terms of yearning for the spiritual world, what views of a spiritual world live in the human soul, then the fundamental question arose for me: How can that which undoubtedly forms the great triumph of modern times, scientific research, be reconciled with these longings, with these justified impulses of the human soul?

Dear attendees! This question has brought me together with personalities in particular who, familiar with the scientific way of thinking of modern times, led a tragic inner life of the soul in dealing with the same question. An example: In my early youth, I encountered a person who, I might say, was completely infiltrated by the scientific way of thinking - a way of thinking that is fully justified in its field and points to the origin of our planet Earth, our entire world system, as a purely material primeval nebula, through whose inner forces all being has gradually formed, ultimately including man. But in man, so this personality said to himself, the processes of this concentrated nebula world took on very special forms; ideals arise in man, religious convictions, the longing arises in man to know something about that which lies beyond birth and death, because a life that only covers the period between birth and death seems so meaningless. But everything that appears in the so-called life of the soul in a human being is, as this personality put it, just smoke and fog, something that arises like a haze from what alone can be scientifically accepted. And the mental life of this personality was tragic, for it said to itself: It must be a mere deception, a mere illusion, what emerges from material life and presents itself to man as a mirage.

One may find such a way of thinking more or less justified, more or less opposed, it was there in numerous cases, and it was there in such personalities, for whom it was in vain to object: Yes, natural science on the one hand is an exact science, on the other hand the world of faith is the subjective world. Our ideals arise from this subjective world, our religious convictions arise from this subjective world. One must know the one, believe the other. There were just so many such personalities who could not do this, who said to themselves: If it is the case that the human being has arisen from what science presents to us, then ethical ideals and religious convictions are illusions. I could cite many examples along these lines. But what I want to say with it is sufficiently indicated. And so the question arose for me more and more out of life itself: Is there not a possibility, between what lives inside of man in terms of spiritual aspirations and what natural science has established, is there not a connection in between, is there not a bridge from one to the other?

And now, what offered me above all the possibility of finding such a bridge, that was not, at first, looking at inner, subjective visions; that had become clear to me from the beginning. No matter how convincingly or intensely subjective visions may present themselves to the soul, one has no right to accept them as objective on account of their subjective appearance, if one is not in a position to build a bridge from the scientifically established to the spiritual world. I have already tried to build this bridge in my “Introductions to Goethe's Scientific Writings”. I then devoted special attention to this in the elaboration of my small work “Truth and Science” and my larger book “The Philosophy of Freedom”.

It is quite certain that if the scientific world view alone is right, then we as human beings are the works of a necessity, then the idea of freedom is impossible, then even in this so convincing experience of our inner life, the fact that we have free will seems to stand only as a deception before our soul. And so for me the question of the justification of freedom became one of those problems, one of those riddles that occupied me intensely as a young man, and I saw that it is impossible to find a foundation for the question of freedom without a foundation for all of philosophical thinking. That was therefore the task I set myself at the end of the 1880s and the beginning of the 1890s: to find a foundation for philosophical thinking. I first put aside everything that might arise to me as visions of a spiritual world. Above all, I wanted to have a secure philosophical foundation that was in harmony with the scientific research of modern times. And starting from this point of view, I examined above all the nature of human thinking. I tried all possible ways of arriving at the answer to the question: What is human thinking essentially according to its nature?

Anyone who reads my “Philosophy of Freedom” will find how these paths to fathoming the nature of human thinking were sought. And for me it turned out that only someone who sees something in the highest expressions of this thinking that takes place independently of our physicality, of our bodily organization, can understand human thinking correctly. And I believe I succeeded in demonstrating that the processes of pure thinking in man take place independently of bodily processes. In bodily processes, natural necessities prevail. What emerges from these bodily processes in the way of dark instincts, will impulses and so on is, in a certain respect, determined by natural necessity. What a person accomplishes in his thinking ultimately turns out to be a process that takes place independently of the physical organization of the person. And I believe that through this “Philosophy of Freedom” nothing less has emerged than the supersensible nature of human thinking. And once this supersensible nature of human thinking had been recognized, then the proof was provided that in the most ordinary everyday life, when man rises to real thinking, through which he is determined by nothing other than the motives of thinking itself, then he has a supersensible element in this thinking. If he then directs his life by this thinking, develops himself in this way, is educated in this way, that he goes beyond the motives of his physical organization, beyond drives, emotions, instincts, and bases his actions on motives of pure thinking, then he may be called a free being. To explain the connection between supersensible pure thinking and freedom was my task at that time.

One can stop at this point and pursue such a train of thought merely in theory. But if such a train of thought is not pursued merely in theory, but becomes a fulfillment of one's whole life, if one sees in it a revelation of human nature itself, then one pursues it not merely in theory, but in practice. What is this practical pursuit? Well, once one has grasped the supersensible nature of thinking, one learns to recognize that the human being is capable of becoming independent of his bodily organization in a certain activity. One can now try whether, in addition to pure thinking, the human being is also capable of developing an activity that is modeled on this pure thinking. Anyone who calls the method of research that I use to underpin my anthroposophical spiritual science clairvoyance must also call ordinary pure thinking, which flows from everyday life into human consciousness and into human action, clairvoyance. I myself see no qualitative difference between pure thinking and what I call clairvoyance. My view is that through the process of pure thinking, man can first develop a practice of how to become independent of one's physical organization in one's inner processes, how to accomplish something in pure thinking in which the body has no part. In 1911, at the Philosophers' Congress in Bologna, I explained in a very philosophical way that pure thinking is something that is carried out in man without the physical organization having any part in it. And here, in a large number of lectures, I have confirmed this from the most diverse points of view.

But then, when one knows the process by which one arrives at such pure thinking, something can be developed through what true, deeper philosophy gives, which I then presented in the most diverse ways as a method of knowledge for the higher worlds in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds” and in my “Secret Science”. Just as pure thinking ultimately emerges from the ordinary everyday activities of the human soul, for which no special training is needed, so, by further developing this process, one can arrive at what I have called in the above-mentioned book and in the second part of my “Occult Science” the stages of higher knowledge — that is, imagination, inspiration, intuition. What is expressed in pure thinking becomes our own simply by virtue of being born; it is inherited by us in our present stage of human development. That which, in accordance with the pattern of pure thinking, can appear as imagination, inspiration, or intuition, must likewise be cultivated in the adult, just as certain abilities are cultivated naturally in the child.

If some people find it astonishing, some paradoxical, and some even curious, what I describe as methods in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds,” then it must be clear that when a person tries to develop an inner life within himself, he needs something other than what is available in everyday life. Therefore, other terms are needed. Anyone who penetrates the meaning of these terms without being malicious from the outset will see that the only intention of my book “How to Know Higher Worlds” is to show people how to develop certain abilities that are latent, that is, dormant, in every soul: the ability to have certain images present in consciousness. The fact of the matter is that through those methods – which I will not describe again today, I have described them here very often – that through those methods, which I have described in the books mentioned, the human being makes himself capable not only of attaining such abstract concepts as are contained in pure thinking, but that he makes himself capable of presenting to his soul fully substantial, if I may use the expression, more saturated contents of consciousness, which are as full of content as otherwise only sensual impressions. What is called for here is essentially a strengthening of ordinary thinking power, and if one wishes to call it clairvoyant power, so be it. Certain exercises must be done to develop such abilities, just as certain exercises must be done by the child to develop certain abilities.

Professor Wilhelm Bruhn, who lectured on anthroposophy and related subjects in Kiel for a semester, has observed that the preparations to be made in order to arrive at such imaginative and then at an inspired knowledge are, in a certain respect, of an ethical nature, that certain ethical forces must be applied, must be trained if man is to penetrate to the knowledge of the higher worlds. And this Wilhelm Bruhn, who is an opponent of the anthroposophical world view in the strongest possible terms, emphasizes the ethical seriousness of these preparations, which is unmistakable. Bruhn alone – and I may well base myself on him here precisely because in his small work, which appeared in the collection 'Aus Natur und Geisteswelt' (From Nature and the Spiritual World), he has a kind of compendium of everything that can be said against anthroposophy – he particularly asserts that by encouraging people to develop their inner soul abilities, I am in fact leading them to initially have pictorial representations that are expressed in colors, lines or figures. This is one of the gross misunderstandings that must be corrected if Anthroposophy is not to be completely misunderstood.

In my “Theosophy” I expressly pointed out what is important here. I said: It is not important that the one who, as a spiritual researcher, seeks the way into the higher worlds, sees exactly the same thing that is described in the sensual life as yellow and red, as pointed or blunt, but rather, said: the person who has a somewhat finer perception does not simply gaze at yellow, at green, at red, but has an inner experience of the yellow, of the green, of the red. You can read about these interesting inner experiences of colors in Goethe's Theory of Colors in the chapter “Sensual-moral Effect of Colors.” When you have this experience, this particular specific experience of yellow, green, red, blue, then you know something that is purely spiritual. And you get this experience when you rise to imaginative knowledge. By soaring to imaginative knowledge, one has, as I say in my Theosophy, an experience such as one has with yellow, an experience such as one has with blue; the experience is a purely soul process. If one wants to have designations for it, then one expresses oneself in such a way that one experiences something that is illustrated by yellow, by blue, and one speaks just as little of this color yellow and blue as one speaks of a reality, as one, when one draws a triangle or a square on the blackboard, which is to depict something, confuses this triangle or square with the reality that is to be depicted.

Everything that is striven for in this anthroposophical schooling is striven for in full consciousness; nothing unconscious or subconscious prevails in it. Everything is striven for in such a way that one emulates those inner soul processes that one has acquired through mathematical schooling. In such consciousness, in such inner development of the will, one strives for that which is to lead up into the higher worlds. One simply comes to a visualization that one depicts through colors. And when one has progressed so far in a certain way that one can have a new world, a completely new world before oneself, a world that one is urged to represent by colors or by other sensualizations, then one is ripe to advance to inspired knowledge. When one develops the element of love, which is present even in ordinary life, to its highest expression as an inner soul power, then one is given the opportunity not only to have such images arising in one's consciousness, but also to be able to remove them from one's consciousness. One is not a slave to these images, nor is one a mere psychic; one is in full command of them. But just as one knows when one puts one's finger on a hot iron that one is not just dealing with the idea of the hot, but with a reality, as one can only state this through life, through the context of life, it turns out that what one experiences inwardly in this way in imaginative experience refers to an objectively spiritual reality. And if one develops the ability to love in the appropriate way, then one comes to erase these images from one's consciousness, so to speak, and then one has spiritual substance in one's pure, inner experience.

This spiritual essence, as far as it is accessible to me, I have described in my books, and at the same time I have followed the method that on the one hand, through books like my “Theosophy” and my “Secret Science”, I have described what arises from such research. And on the other hand, in such a book and in some other books, such as 'How to Know Higher Worlds', I have described exactly the path by which every human being can come to such knowledge. And I have expressly made it clear that every person can come to such realizations; but I have also made it clear that the one who handles the inner essence of pure thinking does not need schooling of the mind, but he can, when the knowledge gained by such schooling of the mind is communicated to him and he receives it without prejudice, he can receive it inwardly as a conviction, just as he receives what astronomy gives, without becoming an astronomer himself.

This, esteemed attendees, is the method for entering the spiritual world. One enters the spiritual world as into a reality, which one then knows to be a reality as that which is handed down to us by science. If we now turn back to the method of natural science, we say to ourselves: After all, we do not really apply any other method, any other inner soul activity, to the supersensible world than the one we have already applied in natural science, but adapted to things outside ourselves that can be perceived by the senses. Yes, one finally realizes that natural science has become great precisely because, I would say, the same inner training of thought was used in the first stage, which can then be applied to supersensible knowledge.

That is why I said that what interested me most about science was what emerged from it as a training in thinking. I have wrestled with such problems as those presented by Du Bois-Reymond in his “Grenzen der Naturerkenntnis” (The Limits of Natural Knowledge), where he comes to the conclusion that one can only arrive at the supersensible by going beyond science. But I have seen that one can only make such a statement as Du Bois-Reymond does here if one believes that the way in which one masters scientific facts, brings them into laws, is not already dominated by thinking, which is similar to the supersensible capacity for knowledge.

As for how the world judges such things, there are only a few hints. I must start by saying that Wilhelm Bruhn fundamentally misunderstands much of anthroposophy. He reproaches me, for example, with offering nothing more than a kind of filtered sensuality in supersensible knowledge. What I say in the passages quoted in my Theosophy and what I say in my Occult Science cannot be applied to words such as Bruhn utters. He says:

In any case, Steiner also teaches a sufficient knowledge of reality in some sensory form.

No, I have never taught that. Every such statement as Bruhn's is simply a misunderstanding of what I have always said as the most essential thing. When someone misunderstands so thoroughly, it seems understandable that he should make the strange statement: 'What I am giving as exercises to get up into the supersensible worlds is exactly the same as the spiritual exercises that Jesuit pupils have to do. Now, yet another Protestant theologian has found a similarity between what I write in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds” and the Jesuit spiritual exercises. But a Catholic theologian, Canon Laun, firmly rejects this and says that anyone who claims that my exercises are similar to those of the Jesuits does not know the exercises of the Jesuits.

Dear attendees! In this case, I must absolutely agree with Canon Laun, even though I do not agree with him on anything else, but what I have now explained to you in principle has truly nothing to do with the Jesuit retreats. No wonder that when something is misunderstood in the way I have indicated, people are led to believe that I am describing the content of the spiritual world as a series of cinematic images – that is how Bruhn expresses himself. Now, it is true that Whoever rises to the spiritual world, as I have described, also grasps his own spiritual soul, grasps this spiritual soul as it is as eternal. Through contemplation, he penetrates the riddles of death and immortality, for whom a scientific path to the eternal forces of that which lives in man reveals itself.

But if we consider the temporal forces that live in man between birth and death, what do we find? Well, we do not just have a consciousness of the moment. In our ordinary life, we look back to a very early point in our childhood, and we know that the human soul would be ill if one could not look back to this point in childhood in a continuous stream of memory. If we are honest with ourselves, we have to admit that, fundamentally, we are nothing more at this moment than what we have become through our experiences, which can be brought up again through the memory stream. If one delves into one's temporal existence between birth and the present moment and reveals to oneself, not cinematically but in inner experience, the recent past of one's own self, then, if one sees through this process in the right way, it will no longer wonderful that if you now familiarize yourself with the eternal, with the immortality of the soul, which was present in all processes that preceded even our formation on earth, you can also familiarize yourself with what this eternal part of the soul has experienced. If you familiarize yourself with what the soul has experienced eternally, then you have the cosmic environment around you, just as you have your personal environment around you through ordinary memory. This supersensible ability to read is in the so-called Akashic Chronicle, that is, in what one surveys through the experiences of the soul in relation to the soul's eternal; it is nothing other than that the soul these experiences are presented and revealed, so that one's ordinary memory, which otherwise reaches back to birth – or at least to a point near birth – is expanded to cosmic vision.

That, my dear audience, people who listen to ordinary mystics cannot see through in its true essence. These ordinary mystics usually take what has been seen by others and embellish it with all kinds of nebulous things. And in this way, what I would like to call the justified rejection or even the justified caution towards everything that appears as spiritual-scientific results has also come about. Nebulous mystics have brought too much all kinds of number symbolism and the like to that which is observed just as accurately, only by applying the developed soul abilities of man, as for example in physics the rainbow or the seven-color spectrum. The true spiritual researcher, when speaking of the sevenfold human being, can only speak as one speaks of the seven-coloured rainbow, and he means nothing mysterious by it, any more than the physicist means anything mysterious when he speaks of the seven-coloured spectrum. But then come the mystics, the nebulous ones, who attach all kinds of stuff to these things; as a result, much of honest spiritual research has been discredited. And if one is forced to use the number seven or the number nine somewhere, it is resented.

You see, Bruhn, as I said, provided the compendium for the opposition. Bruhn, the Kiel professor, finds a kind of mythology in what I present and finds, affirms what he says about mythology by the fact that I have to use such numbers as 7 and 9 and the like. I find this strange in a gentleman who, for his part, admits: there is intuitive knowledge, there are intuitive truths, supersensible truths – and who now lists what he calls supersensible truths in this way, and he numbers them : 1. one's own ego, 2. the ego of others, 3. the existence of things in space, 4. events in time, 5. beauty, 6. morality, 7. the divine.

Yes, my dear audience, it does not occur to me to accuse Mr. Bruhn of some nebulous number mysticism just because he mentions seven truths. However, these truths are, I would say, very meager. And even though he admits that the content of these seven truths was attained intuitively, that is, in a way that signifies a purely inner vision, he must also admit the possibility that this path, which leads to these simple, meager truths, can perhaps be developed as a very exact path like the mathematical one, and that one can then also come to other, richer, more substantial truths. Instead, such seven truths are nailed up, and what is basically drawn from the same sources – only after these sources have first been sought in the right way – is called mythology.

In a peculiar way, one relates to what appears here as an anthroposophical worldview. Recently, a newspaper here turned to an authority so that this authority, which belongs to a neighboring university, would give an authoritative judgment on anthroposophy. Now, among the many things – and you really can't read them all – that now appear to be opposed, I just got this article and read it. I came across a passage where the author objects to my statement about supersensible facts and supersensible beings. He says that in my spiritual realm, supersensible beings move just as tables and chairs move in the physical realm! Now, ladies and gentlemen, just imagine the logic that leads to saying that tables and chairs move by themselves in physical space. I am aware of states of human life in which there is a subjective appearance of tables and chairs moving by themselves, but I do not believe that the good theologian meant to refer to such a state. Now, Bruhn also betrays himself through a similar kind of logic, but I would like to say explicitly, just so that I am not misunderstood, that the earnest way in which he approaches anthroposophy is thoroughly commendable. You have to take Bruhn seriously, so I take him seriously. But now he also says that I am clinging to the gross-sensual and that I only present the supersensible, the spiritual, as a sensual, which is why one has to object that one does not get closer to the unknown spiritual through such a method. You get just as little close to this unknown spiritual as a mountaineer – so says Bruhn – who moves away from the earth and climbs up a mountain; he may move away from what is below, but the sky is still just as far above him.

Now, my dear audience, the sky that arches above us is, as is well known, not there at all; one looks out into the infinite space of the universe. One can see from the sensualizations that these people give when they want to hit something that comes from spiritual science that their logic is in a strange way ordered. And so I would like to point out right away that it is said that in the account I give of the course of the world through supersensible knowledge, one could understand Christ in the same way as any other particularly distinguished personality, such as Socrates, Plato or Buddha. — This is simply an objective untruth compared to what I have presented in my book “Christianity as Mystical Fact”. There I showed how everything in the pre-Christian era was directed towards the mystery of Golgotha, but how nothing in the pre-Christian era can be compared with what appears in the being of Christ Jesus. I have characterized it concretely in the course of spiritual history, and I have further shown how everything that has happened since the mystery of Golgotha is thoroughly impelled by this event. I have expressly shown that anthroposophy leads to the placing of this event of Golgotha in the center of the becoming of the earth. But this is what must be taken into account, what must not and should not be criticized by simply applying quite different, alien thoughts to the same.

And so a critic like Bruhn also finds that what I present as supersensible intuitions I actually only get through my thoughts operating in some way unknown to me, that I construct them out of thoughts without knowing, however, that what then becomes an image only proceeds in the unconscious, that thus, so to speak, the intuitions are only ideas after all. In his essay on Theosophy and Anthroposophy, Bruhn says that Schiller had already objected to Goethe's Urpflanze, saying that Goethe's image of the Urpflanze was an idea and not a vision. In my books and lectures, I have often described how Goethe defended himself against Schiller's statement, and Bruhn says that I must accept the same objection. Well, I am happy to do so! But I would like to point out that such an objection arises from the fact that the objector does not recognize how imaginative knowledge, how beholding, rises from the abstract idea to something more saturated, to something more fully substantial, and only in this way can that which is still a formal element in the abstract become a visualization of higher spiritual realities.

If one misunderstands in such a way what is expressed by the spiritual science meant here, then one can also very easily come to the conclusion that this spiritual science wants to be a substitute for religion. And then one says, as Bruhn has often said, that religion must not be something that one grasps in clear recognition, but that religion must be something irrational. Bruhn expresses it, I admit, very beautifully. He says it should be a blissful enjoyment as a closeness to God and a homesickness as a distance from God. It should not be a supersensible knowledge, but it should be a touch of the divine.

Now, the error lies in the fact that anthroposophy does not want to be a substitute for religion. Religion is formed, however, through a personal relationship with the founder of the religion. This personal relationship to the founder of the religion is irrational, just as, on a smaller scale, every relationship we have with any human being is irrational. The relationship we have with any human being is something we naturally refrain from reducing to any kind of idea, however supersensible, because we would accept any tittle-tattle from him. Thus the relationship one has to the Christ Jesus is something irrational, something that should not be conceptualized, not even in supersensible concepts, but should become a fact in the inner, fully human experience alone. On the other hand, especially for those who have knowledge of nature, there is the necessity to strive for supersensible knowledge in order to have the possibility of penetrating to the soul and spiritual as something real. Once one is familiar with supersensible knowledge, one will seek to find through this supersensible knowledge that which is most valuable to one in the world. And so many people have the urge to understand that which they have as an irrational nature, which they blissfully enjoy as being close to God, which they feel homesick for as being far from God, in terms of its historical and cosmic reality. It can be understood in a philological way; this has been achieved through external science. It can also be approached through supersensible knowledge; this has been achieved through anthroposophy. The aim is not to shake people out of their irrational relationship with religion, but to seek a path of knowledge to Christ Jesus. The human being who needs it - and many people already need it today, and more and more will need it - must, on the one hand, form his view of the world of the senses and of the spirit, and on the other hand, of that which has become religiously valuable to him, in order to then find harmony between the two.

This is what tears the soul apart if one is not able to bring one's knowledge to what has become religiously valuable to one. Anthroposophy is not intended to found a religion. Anthroposophy is neither a sect nor the founding of a religion, but rather the realization of the supersensible. And since that which has embodied itself through Christ Jesus in the Mystery of Golgotha is a supersensible being, and since the event of Golgotha itself is a process in which the supersensible lives, there must be a path from supersensible knowledge to this Mystery of Golgotha. The aim is not to create a substitute for religion, but to expand our knowledge so that we can also understand what we experience religiously. This does not make religious experience more superficial, nor does it strip religious experience of its piety. Rather, it allows us to turn our inner gaze to what is religiously valuable to us in the mystery of Golgotha through contemplation, with firm inner strength.

Dearly beloved attendees, I can only give examples of what I have to say about the nature of spiritual science, of anthroposophy, and what I have to say in its defense. But just as the points I have touched on, others could be presented here if I were able to give many lectures and did not have to content myself with one lecture. Therefore, I will now move on to what has been added in recent years to what I have previously presented here over many years as the anthroposophical worldview: the idea of social threefolding.

The fact that this social threefolding exists at all can be traced back to the fact that a number of people came to me during the sad days of the war and afterwards and wanted to know my thoughts on how social life could progress from these tragic events of the war. I was asked, people came to me, ladies and gentlemen. I mention this explicitly for the reason that it is far too little seen, because usually things are presented as if I were some kind of fanatical agitator who would forcefully bring things to people. I have never done anything else in the anthroposophical worldview, except give lectures, dear attendees. I appealed to those people who wanted to come to these lectures; they came – whether they were from the aristocracy or the proletariat, they were always equally welcome to me. And those who then became my so-called followers became so because they heard me. I did not go after anyone – I would not say such a thing if I were not compelled to do so. And if anyone presents these things as if I, as a fanatical agitator, had followed one person one time and another person another time, then it must be said that I have never followed anyone with any idea. The social threefolding is even used today to cast suspicion on that aspect of the anthroposophical world view from which it actually draws its very best roots. And here I would like to come back to Bruhn, who at least is to be taken more seriously than other critics.

Bruhn says: No matter how much he may have to fight it, something like anthroposophy has its origin in the “bankruptcy of our intellectual culture”. One has to get out of this intellectual culture, and he attributes to me that I did not strive to get out of this intellectual culture in the same way as those whom I 97 as the nebulous Theosophists, but that I had gone through Goethe and Haeckel, had struggled through German idealism, that I was “occidentally” oriented, that the roots of my view would rest in “western-Germanic culture” and in “scientific training.

I am not saying this out of immodesty – you can read it in Bruhn's small writing, and you will find that this can be important to me in the face of the various hostilities that are now coming from all sides. As a young man, I was among those who, in Austria in the 1880s, had to fight a difficult battle in defense of Germanness against the other nationalities. I edited the Viennese “Deutsche Wochenschrift” for a short time. I got to know all the difficult struggles that one had to go through, especially in Austria, if one wanted to make the German character and German abilities, which are considered valuable for humanity, part of the content of the whole of human culture.

Dear attendees, I only refer to such small episodes in a spirit of urgency: when I was once asked to speak at a Bismarck Commers in Weimar, where I was in the 1890s, I concluded with the words of our Austrian poet Robert Hamerling – one only needs to know his works to know that his Germanness could not be doubted – I concluded at the time, when I spoke in Weimar, in Germany, as an Austrian at the Bismarck Commers, with the words of Hamerling: “Germany is my fatherland, Austria is my motherland!”

Dearly beloved, in all my life I have never for a moment deviated from this view. And those who approached me in 1918 to ask me what Anthroposophy thought about how to proceed from there knew full well that my answer was rooted in German spirituality. I have – I make no boast of this, but in the face of the fierce attacks it must be said – I have given lectures from Bergen to Palermo, from Paris to Helsinki; I have given them everywhere in German. In May 1914 – please note the date – I gave a public lecture in Paris in German, based on German spirituality, not to a German colony but to the French. Every sentence had to be translated afterwards.

Now, out of the same spirit, what was then called the “threefold social order” has emerged. I would like to start by quoting something, again from an opponent, so that one can see how opponents think about the threefold order, which actually does not even belong to the most serious ones, because they overlook something, although they are nevertheless trained in thinking, as for example the Jena professor Rein. To begin with, he is preaching to the converted when he says: All ideas are sterile when the concept of humanity plays a decisive role in them. I quite agree, because the abstract, nebulous, mystical concept of humanity makes no sense. Humanity consists of people, of nations, and anyone who wants to work for humanity must, of course, move out of the national and into the general human. How one can do that, everyone who has any impartiality at all should admit that one can have a definite opinion based on one's own assumptions. And now Professor Rein goes on to say that the state cannot be overcome without further ado, because the state has already developed to such an extent among us Germans that one cannot go back to earlier conditions. Again, I agree! Yes, one can even completely agree with what Rein now cites as individual state demands. He says: The state must, first of all, be responsible for the care of art and science, morality and religion. Secondly, it must advocate the equalization and reconciliation of contradictions, the cooperation of the estates and professions, of employees and employers. All this, says Rein, must work together in the state as the three limbs work together in the human organism, of which Rein says - in a discussion of threefolding - that it is also threefold.

Now, just to make it clear how the three limbs should work together in the threefold social organism, I used the comparison with the threefold human being. It never occurred to me to speak of a “tripartite division”. Just as one cannot have the head separately from the human being, one cannot have the circulatory system separately, one cannot have the metabolic system separately, so one cannot have spiritual life, economic life and legal life separately in the social organism. Just as the blood supplies everything in the human organism, so within the state there are impulses that supply everything in all three limbs. And the opinion was that the three limbs of the social organism – spiritual life, legal life, economic life – work together in the right way when they exist in relative independence, just as the three limbs of the human organism are characterized by relative independence.

What, for example, does someone like Professor Rein want, who admits all this but then says that he must nevertheless fight the threefold order? He says, for example, that the state cannot be creative, but only regulatory and controlling. So what does he demand for spiritual life? A cultural parliament! And Professor Rein imagines this cultural parliament to consist of school chambers, state school chambers and so on; he imagines it to a certain extent as self-governing. And if I examine objectively how this cultural parliament of Professor Rein differs from what I have stated as the self-government of the spiritual member of the social organism, I find no difference other than that Professor Rein - and and this is open to discussion - wants to have the parents elected to his cultural parliament, but I would like to hand over the self-administration to those who are experts in this field, to the teachers and educators themselves. I do not want a cultural parliament, but something that arises without parliamentary chatter as a proper administrative organism made up of experts.

It is indeed strange that people like Professor Rein should fight against the threefold order. I really must ask myself why Professor Rein fights against the threefold order and describes it as dangerous to the state. Well, one may well ask why he does so. For in the same article in which he does so, he says: We Germans have every need to consolidate the freedom and unity of the national state. – So says Professor Rein, and then he says: Threefolding, rightly conceived, shows the way in which this can be done – namely, to consolidate the freedom and unity of the national state. And further: This way will be especially welcome to those who aim to eliminate the political parties, together with parliamentarism, which they repeatedly present as a corrupting institution.

I asked: What does Professor Rein want more than for threefolding to fulfill this ideal task of his? I cannot find any reason why he opposes it, since he says that, properly understood, threefolding points the way for what he wants to happen. I cannot find any other explanation than the one that emerges from a few words of Professor Rein: He says that he has explained his understanding of this threefold order in the new edition of his “Ethics”, which will be published soon. I am very interested to see when this threefold division appears in his Ethics, but I could not help speaking of this threefold division earlier, since I was asked about it earlier. And it seems to me that gentlemen like Rein are only angry because I forestalled them. I cannot help that.

Now, there is one more point I must mention: I have spoken here again today - and as I said, for 15 to 16 years - about supersensible knowledge. I have not only spoken of these supersensible insights as something that is, so to speak, shot from a pistol, but I have spoken of them in such a way that I have given precise details of the paths by which one comes to such insights. And with that, everyone is given the opportunity to verify it. Anyone who wants to go this way can come to the verification. And it is therefore quite unjustified when, today, out of the thought habits of the present — the thought habits that I have to fight against in many respects — the demand arises that what I call clairvoyant knowledge should be examined in a different way than the way I have indicated. I have said in my book “Theosophy”: For everything that I present in this book, I advocate that it be presented as a fact to me, as external sensory facts are. The one who has written them down does not want to present anything that is not a fact for him in a similar sense to how an experience of the external world is a fact for the eyes and ears and the ordinary mind.

Dear attendees, through such a method, the way is to be found to create a bridge from one human inner being to another. Above all, a pedagogical path is to be sought, the pedagogical path on which we base our teaching at the Freie Waldorfschule, founded by Emil Molt and led by me, the path without which a truly free spiritual life in the three-part social organism is not possible. We must seek such a path for the child too. But such a path is far removed from today's materialistic age; it is so far removed that it seeks the path to the child in a completely different way. And this has given rise to a strange psychology of the soul, which, according to many people, should also find its way into education. Because it is no longer possible to find the way to the child's soul through inner experience, the child is to be subjected to all kinds of procedures according to the methods of experimental psychology, whereby one determines what abilities the child has, for example, from the speed with which it absorbs certain words or with which it forgets words — quite externally, as if one were experimenting on an object because one can no longer do it inwardly. This examination of abilities is applied in a particular way in that area of Europe that has reached the extreme development of social materialism in social terms; this principle of examining children externally - as one examines external apparatus - is applied in a particular way in Bolshevik Russia. This has already been officially introduced there as a method of testing children's abilities – basically a terrible procedure, an indictment of the ability of the human soul to build a bridge to a person's mental abilities. And it is quite characteristic that it is precisely Bolshevism, this destructive worldview that destroys everything human, that is advancing to this pedagogical practice.

Now there are certain people who would like to apply this method to spiritual vision as well. They demand that I or one of my students should submit to such tests as one examines external apparatus. My dear audience, I have presented to humanity for decades what is created through my methods. I have indicated the methods by which it can be tested. I have shown how people who think of such tests, such as Professor Dessoir, who now even wants to form a society for such tests, approaches the anthroposophical spiritual science that I mean. I have shown in my book 'Von Seelenrätseln' how he has presented objective untruth about objective untruth about anthroposophy. Well, anyone who wants to test any kind of fortune teller, card reader or sorcerer may demand such methods. I have never presented fortune telling, sorcery or such so-called soul abilities or clairvoyance, which Professor Dessoir or Professor Oesterreich or similar people speak of, who might also want to test mathematical abilities in such an external way. I can only say: anyone who demands such tests does not understand the slightest thing about what lives in anthroposophical spiritual science. And it would not occur to me to engage in what arises from a Bolshevist attitude. No, my dear audience, people may behave as German national as they like – but they shall be recognized by their fruits! If they make such demands as these, then it is not worth discussing their Germanness with them, and I will not engage in any further discussion. I have given my answer.

Now I come to something else. And there I would have to demand that the gentleman who asked the question, “What evidence can you give for your clairvoyant abilities?” First explain who “Mr. Winter” was, by whom I was supposedly converted to anthroposophy in 1900, before he acquires the right to ask me such questions. Dear attendees, the gentleman who wants to ask me questions today once spun his audience a yarn about how I was converted to anthroposophy by lectures given by a “Mr. Winter” in Berlin in 1900. He has probably read as closely as one reads when one only reads the first words of my writing about these winter lectures. In fact, I myself gave these lectures in Berlin in the winter of 1900/1901, through which I am said to have been converted. These, my winter lectures, became “Mr. Winter's” lectures in this gentleman's mind.

Ladies and gentlemen, I further demand that my Jewishness not be mentioned again and again in any insidious allusion, after I have spoken here in sufficient detail about my family tree. And I further demand that I not be slandered by saying that I worked under the tutelage of Mr. Liebknecht. What I experienced at the beginning of this century, however, is that I was thrown out of the proletarian schools where I taught because of my representation of a spiritual conception of history by the satellites of old Liebknecht; I was thrown out of the workers' training schools because I never bought into [the materialist conception of history] and the like.

And I demand that the claim of any kind of suggestive influence or even of post-hypnotic suggestion, as it has been raised by this side, be retracted. And I further demand that the first thing to be done is to clarify what has been stated by this side about my relationship with the late Chief of Staff, Field Marshal von Moltke. My dear audience, I have no need to entertain you this evening with these matters, but I do want to say something about some of the things that have been said here. I have, as I have already said this evening, never followed anyone. I never appeared at Mr. von Moltke's house without having been invited, without having been requested to do so; and so I have been a guest at Mr. von Moltke's house almost every week since 1904. I have learned to respect Mr. von Moltke, I have learned to respect him so much that I may describe him as one of the noblest of men; I want to leave no doubt about that. I have never been to his house without having been invited. Before the outbreak of the war, I never had a conversation with Mr. von Moltke about anything military or political. Whatever was discussed arose from Mr. von Moltke's need to get to know spiritual science. That was his personal matter; I accommodated him.

I was asked to come to Berlin in the first few days of August, as I was not in Berlin when the war broke out. I refused, in anticipation of what might come from a malicious source about these things. For only once, on August 27 [correctly: 26] of 1914, was I in Koblenz, but not at headquarters, but with a family of friends. Herr von Moltke visited me there for half an hour. My dear attendees, there was truly no reason to talk about war at the time. We were in the midst of the triumphal march; it was still relatively far to the Battle of the Marne. Not a word was spoken about military or political matters during that half-hour conversation that Herr von Moltke had with me back then, certainly not at a time when he could have missed something, because the triumphal march continued even afterwards. I did not see Herr von Moltke again until October, long after the Battle of the Marne. There is no way to place anything I discussed with Herr von Moltke before his dismissal in a political or military context. But what was said between Mr. von Moltke and me is one of those personal matters that no one should allow another to prohibit; and it would be sad if we had come to a point where snooping into such matters were considered justified today. From this, the objective untruth arose that some kind of theosophical events in Luxembourg had a paralyzing effect on Mr. von Moltke's health. Mrs. von Moltke herself has now stated that this is an objective untruth. None of this really concerns me; I have no business to speak about it.

Other untrue things have come to light in connection with the threefold social order. And it will be considered justified that, after I have been personally insulted in this way – I do not usually need the word personally – after I have been personally insulted in this way, I would not find it dignified to enter into a discussion with these people before these things are not taken back – despite the fact that I am open to any other discussion.

That is why I sent a registered letter that arrived a few days ago, with “General von Gleich” as the sender, back unopened by return of post. Ladies and gentlemen, I don't know how individuals would behave in such a case; I know how I behave. General von Gleich then wrote an open postcard – which of course I could not return because it was put in the letterbox – in which he repeated what he had said in his letter and in which he expressly confirmed that he had received the letter I had returned. Well, my dear attendees, with my understanding of the mutual relationship between people, I cannot understand such intrusiveness.

My dear attendees, it has been said at this time, and even in a well-known German weekly magazine, that the former minister Simons is supposed to be my student, that he was inspired by me for all the horrible things he did in London. Now, it seems to me necessary to look at this matter a little more closely. Some time ago I came across an interview with a French journalist. This French journalist said that he had just had an interview with Minister Simons. Minister Simons had spoken to him about the threefold order and said that he found something agreeable in it, just as he did in the views of the Italian minister Giolitti. It seemed to me that there was something fishy about it – I had never got to know Minister Simons very well before – and for me there was only one thing, and I said it in front of many people at the time, even in public meetings, long before the accusations against Simons started here. I said that a German minister would be more likely to know about the threefold order than a French journalist. You see, perhaps out of a prejudice that comes from national backgrounds, I had more sympathy for a German minister than for a French journalist. Then, however, I was urged to talk to Mr. Simons, and lo and behold, Mr. Simons told me that he had not known about the threefold order, that the French journalist had only just told him about it. Well, then I saw Mr. Simons again when he spoke here in Stuttgart about the politics of the time. He wanted to see the Waldorf School. How this visit went has been presented here in a public announcement.

No one who is familiar with what happened at the time will be able to deny that I did anything other than be courteous to the German Reich Minister of Foreign Affairs. Politeness, especially in such a case, does not seem to me to be particularly punishable. And anyone who claims that a different relationship existed is claiming an objective untruth. In this case, however, I am not surprised at this objective untruth. For when this public notice was posted, a letter was produced that was said to have been written in Cologne and which stated that I had boasted in Cologne that I had spoken to Minister Simons here in Stuttgart about the threefold order before his London mission. Well, ladies and gentlemen, I have not been to Cologne for many years, and I have not been to Cologne at all recently.

Bruno Roos: Here is the letter!

That may be. The letter can only be a forgery! And that is no wonder, because a lot of work has been done here with forged letters. I don't care what the letter says. The truth is that there was never any relationship between me and Minister Simons other than the one I have described here, and that I have not been to Cologne at all in the last few years, I don't think I've been there for four or five years. So it is a lie that I could have said anything in Cologne. Someone may read or show you a letter – if it says what appeared in the newspaper, then the content of the letter is a blatant forgery. There is no need to engage with people who use such letters to wage a fight.

Dear attendees, many other things have been brought up recently. It is late, and I will only be able to address a few of them. The aim of all these opposing arguments is to distort the essence of threefolding and to present it as questionable by slandering me. For example, there is repeated mention of certain changes that I am supposed to have undergone in my world view. Now, anyone who reads what is contained in my first “Introduction to Goethe's Scientific Writings” about my engagement with Haeckel will see that I was not a blind admirer of Haeckel in my entire life, but that I did struggle with it in the nineties, trying to come to terms with the things said, even in the details, by such a brilliant naturalist as Haeckel. At that time, it was around the time when Haeckel's “Welträtsel” had not yet been published, but his Altenburg speech on “Monism as a bond between religion and science” had been published. At that time, I gave a speech against this monism at the Vienna Scientific Club about my spiritual monism. And at that time I wrote an essay on ethical questions in the “Zukunft”, and it was Haeckel who approached me at that time, at the beginning of the nineties. I answered his letter and later sent him a copy of the lecture I gave on spiritual monism. Then Haeckel developed the material that became his one-sided book 'The World Riddles'. This led to a fierce battle against Haeckel, especially on the part of philosophers. And I still admit today: the one who was the greater at that time, on whose side the principal right was, was not Haeckel's opponents, it was Haeckel. And I stood up for the one who was relatively more in the right. And from this point of view one must understand what I have often said. Anyone who wants to do spiritual scientific research must be able to immerse himself in everything. This must not be just a phrase; one must also be able to immerse oneself in foreign worldviews. That was always my endeavor: to be able to be objective about foreign worldviews. This may have justified the view of those who from the outset held malicious opinions that I somehow stood in the position myself, in which I found myself; no one who cannot find themselves in foreign points of view can come to spiritual-scientific views. This reproach regarding “changes” is settled by what I presented in an issue of Das Reich, where I showed how what I represent as spiritual science grows out of my original epistemological views in a completely consistent way.

However, I only want to point out these things. It has even been claimed – and this shows how everything is dug up today that can somehow lead to the disparagement of the bearer of the threefold idea – that I was connected with an occult society that practices some evil practices. Dearly beloved, whatever I have advocated, internally or externally, is contained in what I have said in my “Theosophy”: the person who has written it down - and I must say, who has spoken it - does not want to represent anything that is not a fact for him in a similar sense to which an experience of the external world is a fact for the eye and ear and the ordinary mind. The fact that a gentleman, who later in Berlin even became the director of a larger theater, once introduced me to a person as being in need of support does not change that, and that person then received support from me for years through a kind of, I would like to say foolish, good-naturedness. No other relationship than that I supported this person, who would otherwise have had nothing to eat, has led to the assertion that worthless things, which were spoken and agreed between me and this person, have led to the assertion that I had some kind of occult relationship with this person or with an order he represented. I never had a single spiritual scientific conversation with this personality, not least because this personality understood nothing of spiritual science. And when the brazen claim is now made that I received something of the content of my spiritual science from that side, it means that one has understood nothing of what courses through my writings and my speeches.

When such things are stated, one need not be surprised if the claim has also been made that the un-German, the un-national nature of anthroposophy has been revealed in its position on the Upper Silesian question. No one who has sought advice from us in any way has been given any advice other than that those who stand in our ranks should vote for Germany when it comes to the vote. No one was ever given any other advice. What was said in addition to this was, however, that one should not only bring about this vote, but that one should bring about such a relationship for Upper Silesia as an integral country, so that it would be united internally with the German spirit. The idea was not just to call for a plebiscite, but at the same time to introduce a nuance into the agitation that would not only result in a worthless yes-saying in the face of the terrible will of the Entente, but would also lead to something being established that would show Upper Oberschlesien as a region turns out to be, which, through its inner structure, through what it can develop in terms of German spiritual impulses precisely in these difficult struggles, can, I would say, establish its inner affiliation with Germany in the germ. That, my dear attendees, I say in response to all those variously nuanced and from all sorts of dark backgrounds emerging accusations regarding the Upper Silesian question.

This question has been used particularly as a slander because one knows how it works, even by those who then added: One does not get the impression that Steiner's mother tongue is German. - Well, my dear attendees, I have not yet shown anyone outside of this room a document that I have here right now. Those who know me are aware that I do not use such documents to boast about myself or to engage in any kind of self-aggrandizement, but I may read out a sentence here from a letter I received many years ago, immediately after the publication of my first independent work, 'The Epistemology of the Goethean Worldview':

I can only say here that your struggle to gain a firm point of view between idealism and realism is extremely interesting to me, that your booklet has revealed a meaningful life of thought to me, that so many fine and pretty remarks have spoken to me from it and that the tone and style of the whole - despite some content-related suggestions for objections - has touched me sympathetically from beginning to end.

Dear attendees, I have only ever made use of this document in my thoughts when people complained about my style. I have not yet responded to it, but I have remembered that what I have read to you was written to me from Graz on January 30, 1887 by the German poet Robert Hamerling, who probably also understands something about the German style and the German mother tongue. So when the threefold social order emerged here, it was born out of German idealism, oriented towards the West, and it is born out of the longing to present to the world what has emerged from the world forces in Goethe, Schiller, in German Romanticism, in German philosophy, as a German creation, as German power.

Dear attendees, do you think it was easy to work on an eminently German construction in the northwestern corner of Switzerland during the entire war, in a highly visible location? Do you think it was easy to be labeled a Pan-German, that is, an All-German, by the French and the English throughout the entire period? That is what happened to me: across the border I am an Alldeutsche, within Germany I am an enemy of the Alldeutsche and their like-minded people, a traitor to Germanness. Well, that is how the views face each other, just as the views of the Protestant and Catholic priests face each other. Whether I give people Jesuit or anti-Jesuit exercises, both are essentially a distortion and have nothing to do with what threefolding really wants to be. It wants to bring to independent existence that which is genuine German spiritual life. Therefore, it wants the self-administration of spiritual life. In order that man may rightly relate to man, everything that can exist among equals and that can sustain the other two members of the social organism, which must shape themselves out of their own specialized activities in self-government, must unfold in the state. The threefold social organism in Germany will certainly be a vital organism, arising out of the genuine German spiritual life, and if it is only understood, it will bear its fruits. It will work in such a way that German spiritual power will become for the whole world what it can be by its very nature. Much of this German spiritual power has now been shaken, and much of it is slandered, which wants to work precisely from the deepest German essence.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, they go to great lengths in this regard. And I would like to share the latest product of such processes with you at the end. Just a few days ago, an article appeared in the Chicago Daily News with the following content:

Chicago Daily News

The Germans have a pale pink theory about losing the war. The Battle of the Marne was lost because Moltke was studying science.

By Georg Witte. Spezial Kabel: Chicago Daily News, field service. Copyright. 1921. By the Chicago Daily News Co.

Berlin, Germany, May 4. – “Anthroposophy”, a new communist theory of the pale pink variety, is directing the fortunes of Germany according to the enemies of Foreign Secretary Simon. Yesterday they came out with the confirmation that he was only a puppet in the hands of his anthroposophical directors. The Vossische Zeitung, which has continually attacked Dr. Simon during the past week, prints the following:

"Dr. Steiner, creator of a new theory.

Recently, during a meeting of opponents of the new theory, it was confirmed that the influence of Dr. Steiner, the creator of the Theosophical theory, extended as far as Wilhelmstrasse and Dr. Simons, who, before leaving for the London conference, visited Dr. Steiner in Stuttgart and also had lunch with Director Molt, the founder of the Waldorf-Astoria School, where Anthroposophy is taught.

It has also been established that Dr. Simons is in constant touch with the exponents of the new theory, who are never refused entry to his house, even at this critical time.

Was General von Moltke a victim?

The anthroposophical theory was first widely noticed when its enemies claimed that the Battle of the Marne was lost because General Moltke, the chief of staff, neglected to go to the front because he was too absorbed in studying the new theory, which completely governed all his actions. General von Gleich, who makes this accusation, describes Anthroposophy as a “very dangerous idea, destined to have a pernicious influence on both the individual and family life, undermining the authority of the state and dissolving national unity.”

Dr. Steiner's theory, according to the Vossische Zeitung, provides for a division of national strength into three parts, with a communist system under anthroposophical auspices as the ultimate goal.

Now, you see, when someone spreads such a slander that General von Moltke lost the Battle of the Marne because of anthroposophy, and then makes a weak retraction of this claim, this does not prevent this disparagement of General von Moltke's personality from crossing the ocean to America, and that as a result of this slander, General von Moltke's good name is dragged through the mud across the sea.

I also had to mention this fact here, because I was asked by a certain party whether I had inspired a writing that was written against General von Moltke by a person close to him. Just as Hofrat Seiling once became an enemy and wrote a book full of objective untruths against me – because a book by him could not be accepted by our publishing house and was returned to him – so, basically, all of General von Gleich's hostility stems from the fact that a person close to him married someone whom he probably does not consider to be his equal. I am supposed to be responsible for this fact. Well, I can only say that the lady to whom that personality married spoke to me only once, long before the marriage; if she were introduced to me today, I would first have to get to know her again. I knew so little about this connection, and so far I have not been notified of the marriage by an announcement in the papers. I believe that in those circles where such outward appearances are highly valued, one could even argue that I know nothing about this marriage at all, because it has never been objectively indicated to me. And when the writing in question was composed, it was sent to me in Dornach. But I forgot about it. And when I was asked on the telephone about this writing - there are witnesses for it - I said: I completely forgot to read this writing. - That was just before it appeared in print. I have no connection whatsoever with this writing, and I am very far from infringing on anyone's freedom.

My Philosophy of Freedom, ladies and gentlemen, is meant seriously and honestly, and therefore do not count it as immodesty on my part if I - to affirm that threefolding originated in the attitude I have described to you today, I quote here the judgment of an opponent of my Philosophy of Freedom, for ultimately the idea of threefolding rests on my Philosophy of Freedom. I will read to you at the end, because time is already so short and I do not want to bother you any longer with going into all kinds of details - perhaps this will come up in the question - I will therefore read to you at the end the judgment of a fierce opponent of my “Philosophy of Freedom.” In this judgment, it says right at the beginning:

These lines are addressed exclusively to the philosopher, not to the anthroposophist Steiner. And in the main, to his by far most important book, 'Philosophy of Freedom', which the later work 'The Riddles of Philosophy' does not come close to. It goes without saying that Steiner the person is not considered here. I count myself among Steiner's most outspoken opponents and have also publicly expressed this opposition (in my writing “The Thinker”). But the form in which the polemic against Steiner often degenerates into wild agitation is more than unpleasant. And there it must be said...

— Please do not accuse me of immodesty, here it is written:

... that a man capable of a book like “The Philosophy of Freedom” could not possibly have the small and lowly character that is made out of him. In their clarity and noble calm, Steiner's philosophical and anthroposophical writings are among the most formally noble products of our new philosophical literature.

Dear attendees, in no other situation than the one in which anthroposophy and threefolding find themselves today would I somehow bother you with reading such a passage, which might seem immodest; but today it seems to me to be a duty to point out how someone can be an opponent but at the same time a decent person.

It has been said that I do not expose myself to scientific discussions. My dear audience, take the long series of my writings; they are available to the world. It is not my fault that the internal lectures are only now beginning to appear in public. They were urgently requested, but I did not have time to review them. It is not because of the slanderous intentions that they state that they have not been reviewed by me – for my sake they could always have been published for the greatest possible public after I had reviewed them – but I really have not had the time to review them, just as I really do not have the time to deal with all the possible hostile writings that have sprung up from all sides in recent times.

After today's allusions and after what a large number of you have heard in my many lectures over the past years, allow me to say: I stand for what I stand for because, from the innermost strength of my soul, I cannot stand for anything else, and because what I stand for lives in me in such a way that I must stand for it. If it is the truth, it will work its way through despite all opposition. If it is not the truth, which is, however, quite unlikely, then it will be replaced by the truth, because that which is truth will find its way through even the greatest obstacles. But anyone who believes that they can represent the truth from any side must do so. I have always stood before you from these underground bases, I stand before you today from these underground bases, and I will work from these underground bases as long as it is granted to me. No matter how many attacks are made, I will always use honorable means against honorable opponents. But what has emerged in recent times cannot claim that it can be dealt with by means of personal vilification, because it tries to attack the cause indirectly.

But I have to think in terms of standing up for this cause. I will stand up for it. That is what I must express to you today at the end of this discussion, and I have the confidence that if what I have to advocate is the truth, it will prevail because truth itself is something spiritual, something divine, and that which must triumph over all hostile powers is, after all, divine, spiritual truth.

After the previous great unrest in the hall.

Dear attendees, after this heated discussion, I would now like to answer the questions put to me in peace.

How is it possible, if, as you quite rightly noted, our thoughts are a resultant of previous impressions in the cerebral cortex, i.e. changes in a part of our body, that one can free oneself from the influence of the body with one's thoughts, as you explained at the beginning of your lecture. Do you have the ability to free your thoughts in this way?

Now, I have already spoken quite clearly about this matter; I now want to state here some more that follows from spiritual science itself for this question. We humans have in us, in a physical sense, an ascending life and also a descending life. This, I might say two-fold current of our life is usually not sufficiently taken into account. All ascending life consists in our developing growth forces and those forces that drive the absorbed nutrients to all, even the finest, organizational links in our organism. Now, alongside these processes, which are thoroughly constructive, others take place that are destructive, so that we constantly have destructive processes within us. This too is something that can only be established through spiritual science, which is not yet sufficiently known to ordinary materialistic physiology today. Now, all those phenomena that dampen our consciousness and put us into a state of partial or complete sleep are connected with the organic anabolic processes. The processes of our thoughts now go hand in hand with the catabolic processes in our organism, and all the other mental processes, such as instinctive perceptions, perceptions of drives, which actually always put us in a down-tuned state of consciousness, are connected with the organic ascending processes; the actual life of thinking is connected with the catabolic processes. This thinking life is already so in every single person that it develops independently of the organism; there must only be a process of degradation, that is, a process of dissociation in the brain, if thinking is to take hold in us.

If you consider this, my dear audience, you will say to yourself: Our organic building processes extend as far as thinking, then they recede, and thinking is precisely tied to the organic processes limiting themselves. So one becomes free of the organic processes through thinking, and one then continues this freedom by rising from thinking to higher spiritual knowledge. It is therefore absolutely the case – as is explained in more detail in my “Philosophy of Freedom” – that thinking, when it is practiced as pure thinking, is already a clairvoyant process. Even if people do not recognize it in ordinary life, we learn to know the peculiar true nature of higher knowledge precisely when we grasp ordinary thinking in terms of its essential being.

Why were you in a neutral country during the war and not in your homeland?

Dear attendees, I have had my work in Dornach. During the war, I was really, I may say it, more in Germany here than in neutral foreign countries, and I have done what could be done by me as a job, which has been recognized from various sides, during the war. And those who want to know about it, look at the events. It is not true that I did not work for the German people during this time.

Is it true that the ideas of threefolding are partly based on extrasensory knowledge and insights gained through it? And what are these extrasensory experiences and insights?

Dear attendees, I have specifically said that the idea of threefolding has loosely connected to the anthroposophical worldview because what appears in the anthroposophical worldview is a result of supersensible knowledge. For threefolding and for everything that I have presented in my “Key Points of the Social Question”, one does not need clairvoyance. Look through the entire Kernpunkte and see if at any point it appeals to anything other than common sense. Any association of clairvoyance with the threefold order is pure nonsense and malicious slander.

Anyone who follows the method according to your books “Geheimwissenschaft” and “Erkenntnisse höherer Welten” and so on, you claim that he will achieve supersensory knowledge or vision. As a master of this method, I can demand of you that you can do this. And so I ask you, tell me the feeling, not the physical one, that I have gained from you through your lecture: the feeling is, I ask you, is...

The rest cannot be read. Well, what the questioner asks on this piece of paper cannot be brought out, cannot be read.

Why does a doctrine, if it is good, have to defend itself? Good never needs to defend itself.

Ladies and gentlemen, no one would be happier than I if I did not need to defend myself in any way. And to the one who asks why the good must defend itself – if he regards what I have just presented as the good – I refer him to the address of my opponents, because what one clings to with all the fibers of one's soul must, when it is attacked, be defended.

If anthroposophy has nothing to do with Buddhism and Theosophy, then why are the Sanskrit words karma, reincarnation and so on used?

Reincarnation is not a Sanskrit word. And I use the word karma only because — and not even I always use it, those who have heard my lectures often will know this — because in an old, instinctive spiritual vision, the word “karma” was used. However, I very often replace it by saying: fate as it unfolds through successive earthly lives. I do not attach any importance to these words, but they are often used by others and by myself for the reason that our modern world view is intimately connected with our coinages and therefore one often has to go a long way for the words one has to form.

At the beginning of his speech, Mr. Steiner said that anthroposophy has nothing to do with religion. Why then does anthroposophy not remain neutral?

Dear attendees, I did not say that. I said: Anthroposophy, as I represent it, has arisen from natural science; it has its sources in natural science. — I said: It is not a substitute for religion. —- And I have said: It leads from the side of knowledge to that which is irrationally as a religious experience in the human soul. — And there I can say nothing other than: Just as external philology leads to the dissection of the Bible, so does a supersensible knowledge lead to the knowledge of the spiritual that underlies world development in a religious way. I did not say that anthroposophy has nothing to do with religion, I only said that it did not arise from it and that it does not want to be a substitute for religion.

Why is the neutrality of true and pure theosophy and Christianity not more sharply outlined and clearly presented?

Well, I have never lacked clarity in this respect in the various lectures I have given here, for those who are at all able to grasp the fundamentals of the anthroposophical worldview. And to anyone who demands that anthroposophy should relate to some religion in some subjective way, I can say nothing other than that, according to what I can discern, Christianity is at the center of earthly evolution , that all the other religions of antiquity are moving towards Christianity, culminating in the Mystery of Golgotha, and that everything we have in the way of civilization since then comes from the Christ impulse and is influenced by it. If someone wants a different neutrality, I cannot offer a different neutrality. It is not out of some subjective wish that I place Christianity at the center of earthly development, but out of what I believe I can support as objective knowledge.

I distinguish between what lives irrationally in man as Christianity, as a religion, and what then leads to the spiritual interpretation of the content of this religion. Anthroposophy is concerned with the latter in the sense in which I have expressed it. I will not allow myself to be influenced by the fact that non-Christians may not take kindly to my placing Christianity at the center of attention. For me, this is not a subjective fact, but an objective one. Those who disagree in any direction may be willing to go along with Anthroposophy as far as the discussion of religious questions; after that, they can leave.

But I believe I have presented the relationship between my anthroposophical worldview and the Christian religion very conscientiously in my book “Christianity as a Mystical Fact”. And in addition to all that I have said, I will only add this: When a malicious source says that I have taken something from Anglo-Indian Theosophy, the fact is that I wrote “Mysticism at the Dawn of Modern Spiritual Life” entirely on my own, before I had any relationship to Anglo-Indian Theosophy before I had read any book that had emerged from the Theosophical Society, I wrote my “Mysticism in the Dawn of Modern Spiritual Life” and that I was invited to give lectures to Theosophists.

I said in the lecture: I did not follow anyone; I did not follow the Theosophists either. They came to me because they wanted to hear me. I did not tell you anything that I learned from the Theosophical Society; I said what came from me, and I will defend that in the future everywhere where people want to hear it. I will not ask what views or what kind of societies prevail among those who want to hear me, but I will take it as my right to speak whenever I am wanted in any circle.