The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Report on the First Public Anthroposophical Congress in Stuttgart

My dear friends!

As I said yesterday and the day before, I will not be giving a regular lecture today, but intend to speak about what has happened in Germany in relation to our Anthroposophical Movement. Above all, I have to report on the Stuttgart Anthroposophical Congress.

This Stuttgart Anthroposophical Congress is indeed a milestone for our Anthroposophical Movement. It has shown that today we can speak of an Anthroposophical Movement that is desired by the world and that fully corresponds to certain longings that exist in the world. This Anthroposophical Congress was entirely the sporadic idea of the leading personalities in Stuttgart. I myself had very little to do with this Stuttgart congress, its intention or its overall organization. With the exception of being present at an initial consultation and having individual aspects of the program discussed with me, the congress was entirely the initiative of the Stuttgart leaders, above all Ernst Uehli. The point was that for Ernst Uehli and those who joined him in holding the congress, the main thing was to first hold a kind of examination to determine the extent to which the anthroposophical movement as such can take root in our time, in the consciousness of people of our time. And I myself, as you may know, was not even present in Stuttgart at the very beginning of the congress. I only arrived on the evening of the second day, when I was to give my own first lecture there. So everything concerning the organization of this congress was taken care of in Stuttgart. And it turned out that this congress really did become a kind of milestone for our anthroposophical movement, because it was attended by far more people than we had expected. 1600 people took part in this congress.

Now, my dear friends, try to find a conference these days that 1600 people attend! From the outset, the conference was not just intended for members of the Anthroposophical Society, but was intended for a broad audience, for all those who are currently interested in the anthroposophical movement. And so this conference is a kind of milestone because it has brought together people who are interested in the anthroposophical cause in general, and because it was not just held for the members of the Anthroposophical Society.

It has become apparent in the most eminent sense that the interest that exists today in anthroposophy extends far, far beyond the membership of the Anthroposophical Society, which has now grown to over eight thousand members. But, as I said, this is about the anthroposophical movement as such. I ask you to bear this in mind, especially in connection with some things that I will have to say later.

When I came to Stuttgart, I was informed that the beginning of the congress had been promising in terms of content, that a lecture by Dr. Unger, in particular, had been extremely well received, and it was clear that there was not just a general sensational interest in what was to come to light at the conference, but that people really did have an inner relationship to what was presented. In particular, it was clear that the majority of those present took the endeavors seriously that aim to truly introduce anthroposophy into contemporary scientific life.

But one has only to imagine how difficult this task is. Nowhere is there more aversion to - if I may put it this way - an invasion of something new than in scientific circles. Nowhere is there more talk of dilettantism and amateurism than in these scientific circles. Nowhere is there more reluctance to allow a voice to anything that cannot prove its right to be heard by its own qualities than in these circles. Whether this reluctance is justified or not is not what we want to discuss today; today we just want to point out the fact. But one can say: If it were possible to get more and more positive collaborators, people who, with a completely scientific training, can bring the cause of anthroposophy into the world, then the situation is such that one can say that anthroposophy has the potential to achieve this goal of penetrating into the individual sciences and being taken seriously in them.

We must also be clear about how those who, in the usual sense, practice criticism or want to pass judgment on something like what took place in Stuttgart are completely at a loss and deeply hostile to such a thing. The benevolent assessments were those that actually remained silent. The others have continued to put forward all sorts of things from their unobjective, untruthful bases, which basically had nothing at all to do with what was discussed at this congress.

At this congress, a lecture activity was initially developed in a very serious way. In the mornings, lectures were given on the various branches of science from an anthroposophical point of view. Philosophical, scientific, medical and historical problems were discussed, as were economic, linguistic and historical-philosophical problems. And it is fair to say that the seriousness with which the issues were treated here must have made a serious impression on 1600 people. In this respect, the fact that 1600 people were simply brought together was something eminently significant.

Just imagine what the helpless journalists – I mean the helpless journalists in the face of such a thing – would have done if a congress had taken place under some old flag, in whatever field, at which 1,600 people were present!

We then organized the matter in such a way that in the morning the positive lectures on the most diverse branches of scientific life were held. The afternoon lectures were arranged in a special way, in such a way that one imagined that one of the luminaries of contemporary science had given a lecture or written a book here or there, and that a counter-presentation from an anthroposophical point of view should now be given against this lecture or this book. These counter-lectures were held in the afternoons. So, the idea was not to speak in some kind of theoretical way from some kind of background, but to introduce oneself in a very specific way: from this or that direction of contemporary science, this or that would have been discussed by very specific representatives, and one would have had to comment on it.

These co-presentations were, I believe, an especially good idea. And above all, these co-presentations have given us all sorts of extraordinary things worth listing. I leave it to others to judge other co-presentations; I would just like to mention two of these co-presentations here, as I have already done in other places.

First, there was a lecture by Dr. von Heydebrand. This lecture was directed against something that has been advocated by so-called experimental psychology and pedagogy of the present day. This is something that almost dominates today's pedagogical direction: experimental pedagogy, experimental psychology. And Dr. von Heydebrand had set out to give a counter-lecture. This counter-lecture – I do not shy away from making such judgments because it is necessary to make such judgments in the present – was indeed an epoch-making act. In this counter-presentation, we were dealing with a complete destruction of what is unjustified in experimental psychology and experimental pedagogy; of what is currently occupying all pedagogical circles so much and which, basically, is only proof of how the human soul has become inwardly alienated from the human soul, and how one wants to get at the child's soul through all kinds of external machinations, because the human soul is so alien to the child in teaching. It is no longer possible to approach it inwardly; man has gradually acquired an intellectualistic soulless nature; therefore, by experimenting on the child externally — which, in fact, in individual cases, it should not be denied, bears good fruit, especially when it is immersed in anthroposophy. We try to achieve what we can no longer achieve inwardly in an outward way, and we do not even know how to put the useful results of experimental education and experimental psychology into the right perspective.

My dear friends, if Dr. von Heydebrand had given this lecture at a teachers' conference, or even at a teachers' club, it would have been discussed at length in all the teachers' journals. The pros and cons would have been debated at length. This is the kind of judgment that one has to form at some point. We must be clear about one thing: what has emerged from earlier times, what was still significant just a few years ago, what was still a matter of time, must be replaced by something else; and we must decide to recognize where there is recognition to be had. We will not make progress in our movement, my dear friends, if we move forward in isolation from the world and do not consider what our movement can actually be in the here and now. We must be clear about the fact that it is of great significance that such an achievement is being brought into the world by the Waldorf teaching profession. That is what characterizes anthroposophy and the anthroposophical movement today. Anyone who today tries to find something radical in what is recognized as spiritual life will not be able to find it, and we must have the courage to make initial judgments.

My dear friends, if the Anthroposophical Society wants to fulfill its task, it must not limit itself to engaging in sectarianism in small circles here and there, but must go with the great tasks of the time. Then, however, this Anthroposophical Society must decide to offer disinterested recognition – not of the person, but of the matter – where such disinterested recognition is justified. And one must also have the courage to say: Here is an epoch-making achievement! That is what I wanted to mention as an aperçu emerging from the Stuttgart conference.

My dear friends, it cannot be the sole task of an Anthroposophical Society to hold introductory courses; they must be held, of course; everything that is customary must be done; but it cannot be the only task to do such things, but the task is to keep an open and alert eye for what is really emerging from the bosom of the anthroposophical movement and what is happening that fits into the overall spiritual movement of the present day. And only when we do not just sit down at such a congress and listen, sleepily listen, as if it were taken for granted, when we then go away and in our branches begin to , but if we actually spread the possibility within the entire Anthroposophical Society of bringing what is happening to direct consciousness, then the Anthroposophical Society fulfills its real task in relation to the present-day Anthroposophical Movement. It is not only important that we read books, not only that we pass on what is in the books, but that we grasp the movement as a living one, that we become aware that something like this lecture has happened; that we have to be a living work, that we have to come to such an understanding of the anthroposophical movement as an immediate reality, as something living.

And I would like to mention a second lecture. This is the one that Emil Leinhas gave in response to Wilbrandt's latest book “Economics”. I would like to say that this lecture by Emil Leinhas on Wilbrandt's “Economics” needs to be discussed from a wide variety of perspectives. You see, in Robert Wilbrandt we are dealing with a university political economist who is perhaps the most amiable and likeable of this body of political economists at the university, and his book “Oekonomie” is, after all, something that, in addition to the theoretical discussions, also contains many human nuances. Therefore, it is a book that is characteristic in the best sense, not in the worst sense, of contemporary university economics. But precisely by giving the counter-lecture against this book, Emil Leinhas was able to show how this whole economics, which even appears in an amiable way in one respect, how this whole economics is absolutely useless for anything alive. Our universities reflect on economic matters. These reflections seep out until they shape the popular lay theories that then take hold of millions and millions of people, who are now pouring over the civilized world in a destructive manner. The whole hollowness, the whole uselessness of this national economy has been exposed here, and indeed by a man who has spent his whole life immersed in the living economy, who always emphasizes, when asked, that he never actually attended a university, but who has gained all that he has gained from direct practice; a practitioner who, however, through his practical genius, has understood that which is contained in the “key points of the social question” and is inaugurated with it, to consider it with full seriousness; he has succeeded in delivering something in this co-presentation - I would characterize it as follows: If this had been said at any other congress, even in a restricted assembly for my sake, the first columns of all the major newspapers would have been talking about it for weeks, and then only further weeks with many pros and cons would have come. Because in fact, the whole university economics will be destroyed on the ground if what has come to light in this co-lecture is further developed.

My dear friends, if things are taken as they have often been spoken of here, then one must say: the courage must be mustered within the Anthroposophical Society to take a stand on such things, to make an initial judgment, to immediately recognize the value of such a thing, in order to feel in the Society as in such a community where something like this happens. Because it is not just a matter of developing theories, but of shaping a very specific life. We must have the courage to say what is and what is going on within the Anthroposophical Society. As I already indicated, the whole Corona cannot just sit there and then endure these things and afterwards take it for granted that two epoch-making deeds have occurred at such a congress. If we sleep through this as something self-evident, then, my dear friends, little by little the Anthroposophical Society will prove to be something that will gradually become a serious obstacle to the spread of the anthroposophical cause. This Stuttgart Congress must at least teach that the Anthroposophical Society must not be an obstacle to the spread of the anthroposophical movement. Today we can say that the anthroposophical movement is here, in the world. The Anthroposophical Society has been here for decades. Today it must grow into the anthroposophical movement. In a sense, it has seen the anthroposophical movement growing beyond it. It must grow into it, and it can only do so if it finds the courage to really recognize the things that need to be recognized. I consider myself particularly fortunate that we now have Emil Leinhas as managing director at the head of the “Kommender Tag” in Stuttgart - this has come about through various circumstances. After my return from Berlin, it was my task to assist in the appointment of Emil Leinhas as General Director of “Kommender Tag.” It must be considered a significant matter that this could happen immediately after this epoch-making “act” had been performed. But it must be said again and again about such things: What can the individual do when the sounding board is not there?

These things must be understood, because only when they are understood will they be met in the right way. And then the help will be there that even the most capable person needs if they are to apply their abilities in a single place. But at any rate, it should be clear in the souls of anthroposophists that it means something that a personality is now at the helm of the 'Der Kommende Tag' enterprise, whose capacity for such a task is to be discussed in the way that I have tried to do here tonight. I am reporting in this way, my dear friends, because I see the necessity for the Anthroposophical Society to grow into its necessary task, to grow into what the Anthroposophical Society can become when its stars are seen in the right way. The anthroposophical movement, by virtue of what it has been from the very beginning, tolerates no kind of sectarianism, no kind of obscurantism; it tolerates only an open, truthful, honest effort to work into the civilization of the present. But for this it is necessary to have the courage to fully recognize human values.

That, my dear friends, is what I would like to say in this regard. The Anthroposophical Congress in Stuttgart showed that anthroposophy can indeed have a broad cultural impact, and so it was not only our task to give two very well-attended eurythmy performances at the “Wilhelma Theater” in Stuttgart, but we also followed up the lectures presentations with short satirical and humorous eurythmy performances, in such a way that the mood that had developed in response to the serious presentations could continue during the short eurythmy performances that followed immediately.

So, what might it have been like? First came the serious lecture, where each afternoon we dealt with contemporary spiritual currents. One could be outraged by what was unhealthy, or perhaps even see the humor in what was coming out of this or that corner. When the eurythmic-satirical performances followed after a quarter of an hour's break, one could simply continue in this mood, but it then just erupted into laughter. It is always a very beautiful continuation when something that must be taken seriously can continue in laughter in a very dignified way. And from the mood with which 1600 people received all these things, one could see that strings in the soul are actually struck when the arrangements are made in just such a way - if I may use the philistine expression.

Then the intervals between the lectures were filled with negotiations: negotiations among the students, negotiations among the medical doctors, and so on, and so on, among the natural scientists, among the teachers. I could not be present at these negotiations because I was always involved in eurythmy rehearsals during this time. This is often overlooked, that things also need to be prepared. But overall, it seems that these discussions also took place in an extremely objective and animated manner.

During the course of the conference, we also had an anthroposophical assembly. Of course, the actual General Assembly of the Anthroposophical Society still cannot be held due to the current circumstances. So, in a sense, we had an independent anthroposophical assembly that was only open to members of the Anthroposophical Society. The living conditions of the Anthroposophical Society were discussed at this assembly. It became clear that the Central Board had to reorganize itself. I say had to reorganize itself because those who know the principles of the Anthroposophical Society as I drafted them at the time will already know that this is the right expression. The Anthroposophical Central Council is not based on election, but on the fact that the first three members of the Central Council simply went public and asked for members, so that those people who wanted to come did come and joined the Central Council of their own free will. I recall the words of our friend Michael Bauer, who said at the time: We are standing here, and anyone who wants to join, may do so! It is therefore something that is based on freedom in the broadest sense, but which should prevent impossibilities from occurring with regard to the composition of such a central committee.

You know that the first members of the central committee were: Dr. Unger, Dr. Steiner and Michael Bauer. Michael Bauer was sickly and for a long time was unable to fully perform the duties of a member of the Executive Council. Dr. Steiner resigned earlier because from a certain point on she did not want to associate matters of a purely business nature with my name, because everything concerning the Anthroposophical Society must be done independently of me. I have always emphasized that I attach a certain importance to the fact that I myself am not a member of the Anthroposophical Society. So Dr. Steiner resigned years ago, and she requested Mr. Walther in Berlin to manage the business until such time as the central board could be reorganized, so that Dr. Unger was left alone on the central board, so to speak. When the Stuttgart conference approached, Mr. Walther resigned his office into the hands of the central committee, namely into the hands of Dr. Steiner, who had entrusted it to him as her successor. The problem was that Dr. Unger was now actually alone and had to co-opt the other two members. And of course something like that has to happen – I would like to say – with the consent of a certain majority, but they don't need to be elected in a certain philistine sense. And so the Stuttgart Central Council came about – it is called the “Stuttgart” because it has to be together if it is to be effective – so the Stuttgart Central Council came about through Dr. Unger, Emil Leinhas and Ernst Uehli. These personalities are, in their work, a sufficient guarantee that everything that must lead to certain results, which are necessary today for the anthroposophical movement, but can also lead to them if the necessary support is provided by the membership, will now happen from the center of the Anthroposophical Society.

I was then asked to say my piece at this anthroposophical meeting; but I had to point out precisely those things that are connected with what I have already said here today: that a living life must actually come about within the Anthroposophical Society, such a living life that what is happening is really seen and presented to the world everywhere. There will be enough to present to the world if the individual branches really take up what the central committee approaches them with, since it is the central committee's responsibility to ensure that this vibrant life reaches every single member. But that must happen. I can say: my speech, which I was asked to give, became a kind of diatribe; but that is what was expected of me after some of the things I have said over the years. Because, my dear friends, there has not always been enough preparatory work for what needs to be demanded. This unsparing, uncompromising recognition of what is happening, and above all the effort to judge when such things happen, as in the case of Miss Doctor von Heydebrand or Emil Leinhas, that, that is not sufficiently widespread. We will first have to get used to these things, because they cannot rest on that eye-rolling following, which has always formed out of a certain nebulous mysticism, and which works in small circles here or there or also in larger circles; these things have no real significance for the seriousness of the anthroposophical movement. What is to be recognized in the anthroposophical movement must be based on sound judgment and, above all, on something that is viable in the present state of the world.

So the tenor of the anthroposophists' assembly was actually that the anthroposophists were asked to take on the anthroposophical movement, to not lose this anthroposophical movement out of their hands, so to speak. To do that, the Anthroposophical Society needs to be reformed. And there is every reason to hope – and the names vouch for this – that the present central council will indeed leave all the drivel and ramblings unconsidered. : disregarded; of course it cannot be forbidden, that goes without saying - disregarded all the prattling and rambling in order to devote itself to the serious great tasks that really exist in all areas of life. But he must also find a willing response. And just as little as the individual can do anything, so three wise men can do something if the others do not exceptionally accommodate them and, above all, join in. It is this living interaction that must come into the anthroposophical movement as a reform before anything else.

The Stuttgart Congress, which was also dedicated to the memory of Goethe, took place in just such a way. I would like to mention only what, so to speak, was a kind of underlying theme running through the discussions at this congress.

My first lecture, which I gave on Monday, August 29, immediately after my arrival in Stuttgart, started with a description of the prevailing agnosticism of our time. What actually prevails in the present is a worship of agnosticism. You find it in the natural sciences, you also find it in the historical sciences, in the economic sciences, you find it in art, you find it in religion – you find this agnosticism everywhere. And it is only in the last third of the nineteenth century that a person who was a serious thinker was actually only considered to be one who was an agnostic, who said: It is right to observe the world of phenomena, to abstract the laws of nature from this world of phenomena, but for knowledge to renounce both what the phenomenon is in the world of external phenomena and what is deeper in the world. No Gnosticism, Agnosticism, that is what has emerged in all fields. One need only mention two pillars of agnosticism in Central Europe, as has already been mentioned here: the lecture given forty-nine or fifty years ago in Leipzig by the natural scientist Du Bois-Reymond, who concluded with the now famous words “Ignorabimus”, “We shall not know”, namely, we shall know nothing about that which is behind the external phenomena and which we call matter, and we shall know nothing about what is in the depths of human nature itself. That was the proclamation of agnosticism for Central Europe. For the West, Spencer and others have done it.

In the present day, all life is fundamentally dominated by this agnostic mood. In the field of history, this agnosticism found expression in the person of Leopold von Ranke, who said that one should follow the phenomena of history from the oldest times, as far as records are available, to the present day; but then there is the phenomenon of Christ Jesus; as Ranke says, he belongs to the “primal elements”. Here history cannot set about it, here history must pronounce its “Ignorabimus”, here we will never know anything.

Thus, in the face of that which, according to our anthroposophical view of all historical development on earth, basically stands as the primal factum on which all others depend, in the face of this primal factum, one of the greatest historians, Leopold von Ranke, “Ignorabimus,” as one of the greatest naturalists of modern times, Du Bois-Reymond, would say when he raised himself to the level of the essential entities that are active in the workings of nature, as the former said, “Ignorabimus”.

This agnosticism was not opposed by the work of the entire Stuttgart congress, not by the old Gnosticism, as slanderous people say, not by anything old at all, but by something completely new, something that has flowed from the spirit of contemporary science, that does not tie in with old traditions, which is thoroughly the spirit of the present, which must not be confused with all the mumbo jumbo and drivel that is constantly linked to ancient Egyptian and Oriental, but which is directly from the present, but which is a gnosticism against agnosticism.

And now, my dear friends, if I turn to the content of the Stuttgart conference, I would say that the general mood of the conference showed that the people who, for decades, have been the sign [gap in shorthand] that these have representatives among them again, have people within them who accept a new Gnosticism, who have an understanding for it, an understanding for the word: Man is there to know – and to act fully consciously and deliberately out of this knowledge. Gnosticism, in turn, has land in the world. This should be the conclusion drawn from what came to light in Stuttgart, for the reason that, although Gnosticism is also discussed elsewhere, it is done in an unscientific way; in Stuttgart it was done in a strictly scientific way, and not only in an abstract-general but in a strictly scientific way, in the most concrete fields of medical science, psychology, philosophy, linguistics and so on. So this Stuttgart congress was held under the sign of asserting Gnosticism against agnosticism.

I believe, my dear friends, that after what had preceded it, those who had not yet seen the Goetheanum in Dornach, when I presented the pictures of the Goetheanum in a slide lecture, could feel that these people were already in the right mood to sense what is actually wanted here in Dornach for contemporary civilization, as they could also feel from the eurythmy performances and other things, that anthroposophy is not some nebulous mysticism to which individual mavericks turn, but something that is primarily working on the great tasks of the time and in all different fields, for example, in the fields of art and the arts. That is what I would like to say to your souls, my dear friends.

Of course, many of you were not present at the Stuttgart Congress. But that is not the point. I used his example only to draw attention to the way in which members of the Anthroposophical Society should now take a living stand on what is happening, what is happening every day; how they should not just make themselves the bearers of theories or of something that satisfies them personally, but how they should feel as members of the Anthroposophical Society. If the members feel that they are members of this Anthroposophical Society, then what must come about will come about: the Anthroposophical Society will grow into the Anthroposophical Movement; because that is what we need, my dear friends.

Now, my dear friends, you see, there are also other symptoms that testify to the fact that the anthroposophical movement as such is now self-supporting. It is indeed precisely because of what happened in Stuttgart that much has been done to ensure that we have an anthroposophical movement today. But now that the anthroposophical movement is here, it is working through its own strength. This is shown, for example, by the fact that my Berlin lectures in the “Philharmonie” were not arranged by any anthroposophical group or branch or even by any anthroposophists, but entirely from outside, from the world, by people completely uninvolved in the Anthroposophical Society, namely from the Wolff'schen Konzertbureau, without anyone from the Anthroposophical Society having any part in the arrangement, and this lecture was truly sold out many days before it took place, and I was requested by the organizers, who were not Anthroposophists, to repeat it on the 22nd in Berlin. And I was asked to give these lectures in ten other German cities, immediately following that event, which was also not organized by the Anthroposophical Society or anything like that. Now, my dear friends, I could not do all that. I had all sorts of other tasks; many of you are here today. And so I could not give the second lecture and, of course, now that I have tasks burning on my fingers, I could not even do anything to give these lectures in the other ten German cities. I had to postpone it all. And I would say that it is necessary, my dear friends, that it be postponed. Why? Yes, my dear friends, because I have to return to the concerns here. Of course, I am always happy to return to what Dornach has become, but because I have to return to the concerns here! I spoke of these concerns when the general assembly of the “Goetheanum” was held here. At the time, I made an appeal to the members, which said: It is truly necessary that, now that the Mittelland can no longer make sacrifices because of the foreign currency issue, sacrifices be made from elsewhere so that we can continue this building in Dornach. Otherwise, as I said at the time, we will have to close this building within a short time. You can imagine that I could not possibly travel around Germany with a calm heart and simply forget these worries.

So far, I have not heard much that my appeal at the time has been met. Of course, my dear friends, I know all the things that are said as a justification for this lack of response, so to speak, but I also know how many things are not done that could already be done. And finally, it should not be the case that the central point remains in a state of limbo when the movement in those areas that are currently most in turmoil and suffering takes the course that I have just been able to tell you about. Well, I hope that you can imagine in your own souls what it would mean now that, precisely where everything is at its lowest point with regard to the old, people are longing for the new, how precisely there, I would say, how from the very core of the world's being the call comes that one should not abandon what wants to arise here as a central point.

Since that General Assembly, a few months have passed, and it should actually be seen whether that appeal has borne any fruit, or whether it must be the case that the anthroposophical movement must simply flee there – it does not need to flee, but I can put it that way – to where it is desired.

You may say: This has now become a diatribe. Yes, but my dear friends, we are also facing a serious matter, and in such a serious matter it is not always possible to speak only of beauty, but rather to speak the truth. But I would like to separate the latter completely from what the moral side of the matter is, which after all consists in the fact that the Anthroposophical Society must become an instrument that is the bearer of the anthroposophical movement. Then we can go through all the enmities that are blossoming in such abundance in all possible places in the world. But within the Anthroposophical movement itself, this must become our attitude, especially in view of what has happened in Germany.

You see, my dear friends, a whole series of eurythmy performances has been grouped around my lecture in Berlin. These eurythmy performances — how they were reported to you just a few weeks ago in the “Basler Nachrichten”! What vulgar attacks these eurythmy performances have suffered! Eight days ago today, we had a eurythmy performance in Berlin at the “Kammerspiele” theater. It was sold out many days in advance, and in the days leading up to it, requests for tickets kept coming in — the phone didn't even want to stop ringing —. It was completely sold out. And it can be said that this eurythmy performance was a success, a real, unfeigned, honest success, which can perhaps only be compared with the successes that Gerhart Hauptmann has had in the Deutsches Theater in recent decades, a completely undivided success. And the same was true of the performance that took place the day before in our own space on Potsdamer Strasse. The Potsdam venue is not smaller than the “Kammerspiele”, but larger, and it was not just for anthroposophists, but for the general public. I was unable to attend the following performances. There have been two more performances in Berlin so far, and I have been told that the success is increasing. Yesterday there was a performance in Dresden, but I have not yet received any report on how it went. Then two more performances will take place in Berlin.

So you see, we can move forward. What follows from anthroposophy as an art form is what is needed today. Don't think that I am deluding myself; I know how much sensationalism and how much sensation there is in these things, but that doesn't matter in this case because the thing is not calculated on sensation because the matter is serious, and if the supporters of the matter take it seriously, then now is the time to keep the matter warm; otherwise, of course, what has been achieved will mean a kind of culmination, and it will pass because there is a lot of sensation on the part of the outside audience. But many of those who today take up the matter only as a sensation will one day become serious people if the Anthroposophical Society finds the strength to support the matter.

So the fact that something has been achieved does not mean anything other than that a possibility has been given. But for us today, this possibility is a task, a task that will certainly lead forward if we show ourselves to be up to it. And it is a matter of rising to this challenge. In order to emphasize this in the right way, my dear friends, I wanted to give you this report today, which should stand out from the series of regular lectures, and which should show how the Anthroposophical Society should think about its reform and its progress. And basically, it should be one of the tasks of the Anthroposophical Society to constantly take care of what is happening, to know what this Anthroposophical Society actually is. My dear friends, the essence of the Anthroposophical Society is not something that is mentioned here or there in a brochure or that appears in the title “Principles of the Anthroposophical Society”, one, two, three and so on. The essence of the Anthroposophical Society is what happens every day. What is printed as statutes and so on — well: in all philistine honor. I don't want to say anything else. But that is not reality; reality is what happens every day in reality, and furthermore, how what happens every day lives in our souls. And so the Anthroposophical Society should take it upon itself to care about what happens, to know what is going on.

Sometimes this Anthroposophical Society seems very strange to me. You ask: Anthroposophical Society, yes, what are its principles? Then you want to have a little booklet that tells you what it is. It seems to me as if I were presented with an 18-year-old person and did not take him or her as a living human being with all that he or she is, and say: I want his or her baptismal certificate, I want his or her birth certificate; in these I find everything worth knowing, and perhaps some notes that were made at the time or in the course of his or her life. That is what matters: always living in the present, because the eternal must be realized in the present, and not in things that have become acts.

It is something that matters – I hope that others will do it differently – it is important to me to emphasize these two achievements of the Stuttgart Congress that I have highlighted today; but everything that happens should be evaluated and understood in this way.

Really, my dear friends, I know that something like this can be misunderstood. It can be misunderstood on the numerous sides where ill will against us is so strong today. Recently in Dornach we had a special occasion to reflect on who now has authority in relation to the representation of a matter, and to which names one should turn. Nothing was found that was right, and in fact, all the names have been used up. Those who still had a full sound in 1914 are gone, especially if you look at it seriously. Now one should also dare, one should have the courage to say: something is coming! For try to find a teacher today who gives a lecture like Fräulein Doctor von Heydebrand! Try to find an economist or a political economist who gives a lecture like the one Emil Leinhas gave in Stuttgart! We must have the courage to recognize the significance of something even when we have the opportunity to listen to it ourselves, and not just accept it as an order from some authority, even if that authority is the fact that the people concerned hold a professorship or are directors of some famous bank or belong to this or that group, and so on. We also need the courage to judge. This is precisely what the Stuttgart conference and all the events in Germany are now proving. We must have no respect for what today, in any case, cannot begin to do, such as the Stuttgart conference, the Stuttgart congress. But we must have all the more feeling for what is actually there as living life.

And so, my dear friends, I would ask you to take this to heart, what happened in Stuttgart, for these things must have an effect. Hopefully in the future we will be able to bring about a congress here in Dornach; but for that we must maintain the continuity of the building of Dornach. For that we must really be able to continue building the building of Dornach. You will say: We have had courses here at the School of Spiritual Science and so on. We certainly have had those, but we also had them in Stuttgart; I did not speak of them today, but rather of the Stuttgart congress, which addressed everyone oriented to anthroposophy and which was attended as a congress, and which was something else again, which above all showed: There, there they come, there they have their longing. We cannot really say that about the summer course that immediately preceded it, and I would very much like to say so, because anthroposophy must not be a matter of necessity, which it is to a large extent in the Central European countries. Anthroposophy must be a matter of insight, of insight into the necessity for humanity to renew its spiritual life.

That is what I wanted to show by this example today.

The human soul's experiences in ordinary consciousness during its existence on earth come to expression in thinking, feeling and willing. Their actual background, however, must be sought in what I have described here as man's astral organism and ego being. I have shown how the part of the soul that does the thinking relates in a specific way to the head organization; how the part of the soul that produces the feelings has a somewhat different connection to the rhythmic system, to the breathing, the circulation and other rhythmic processes. In a much looser way, the will nature of the soul is connected with the physical and etheric organisms.

When we examine how the nature of the thinking-soul is connected with the head system, we find that it is devoted entirely to it, it is transformed, as it were, into the head organization. The head organization forms a physical and etheric replica of the part of the soul involved in thinking: therefore, when man really thinks in waking everyday life, he cannot actually observe the process of thinking in himself but must seek it in its replica in the physical and etheric processes of the brain and the rest of the nervous system. This is why the anatomy and physiology of the brain are the real domain for the physical part of a science of the soul, because the replicas of what goes on in thinking can really be observed in the structure of the brain, and thereby also in its processes.

The part of the soul expressed in feeling is not devoted in the same way to the physical and etheric organisms, neither has it become a part of them. We can say of it that at times it is devoted entirely to the breathing and the blood circulation, streaming into them so that it becomes as if invisible to imaginative and inspired vision; we focus on it and see that it slips into the breathing and circulatory processes. At times, the feeling-soul tears itself away from these processes, it becomes independent and exhibits within itself a formative activity of its own. Thus, the feeling-soul slips, so to speak, into the circulatory system and then withdraws, slips in again, and so on.

The part of the soul that is the basis for the human will behaves quite differently. It is neither devoted continually to the physical and etheric organisms, nor does it become involved in an alternation of permeating the two organisms and withdrawing from them; rather, by its own powers, it holds itself aloof from the physical and etheric parts of man's organism. It has an independent existence of its own by means of its own capacities. By virtue of these forces, it actually remains within the soul and spirit realm, and would stay there if nothing else intervened. We can therefore say that in this willing-soul, the soul's nature always remains soul-spiritual, even during life on earth. When, through intuition, you receive insight into the actual reality that exists behind the willing-soul, you are able to study the lasting soul-spiritual being of man in this will element. There is, nevertheless, a kind of surrendering of the willing-soul to the physical organism, an out-pouring into it, but it is neither continuous as is the case with the thinking-soul, nor is it a rhythmical alternation as with the feeling-soul. Instead, it is like this: When, for example, our thinking-soul takes hold of a thought by means of the head organization, which, because of its content, is in itself an impulse for willing something, then, the process that takes place in mere contemplation does not occur. Only the head organization is involved when a person ponders the affairs of the world without arriving at an act of the will. Through the thinking activity, the head organization is worn down, or is at least brought toward a tendency to a breakdown, to dissolution and death, as I described yesterday. But if we formulate the thought, “I will this or that,” then the activity that belongs to the thinking-soul spreads out from the head organization into the metabolic and limb organism. When a man has a thought that represents an intention of the will, intuition perceives how an astral activity pulses into some part of the metabolic or even the limb system. Then, through such a thought that arouses the will, a degenerative process takes place not only in the head system but also the metabolic organs and the limbs. Destructive processes arise through such thoughts. These destructive processes in turn cause the willing-soul that underlies the human will as reality to pour into the metabolic or limb system and to restore a balance by rebuilding what has been worn down by the thought.

If I want to illustrate this clearly, this is what happens: I have the thought: I will lift my arm. This thought then shoots out of the head organization into the arm, there it induces a degenerative process of destruction. It can be called a form of combustion. Something in the configuration of my arm is destroyed. The part of the astral organism that corresponds to the willing-soul follows in the wake of the degenerative process, enters the arm and repairs the damage. The lifting of my arm takes place during this regeneration,—what was burned up is restored and the actual act of the will occurs during this restoration.

Now the true ego being is contained in that part of the astral organism that underlies the soul's will impulses; so, whenever the will is stirred into action, the ego is aroused. When we observe how man unfolds his will, we gain insight into how the human astral organism and the ego being stream into the physical and etheric bodies in response to a certain stimulus. This also happens when an expression of the will occurs that does not require that I set my limbs in motion, but that is perhaps a supplementary impulse or maybe a fairly vivid wish. There, something similar also takes place, only much more inward parts of the human organism are permeated by the actual will nature of the soul.

You can see that the unfolding of the will can be studied in all its details, but in order to do so you require a knowledge of man's actual soul and spirit being. Without this insight, you cannot study the willing-soul, nor arrive at the ego being, for the latter expresses itself only in a weak replica in thinking, it appears on as an impulse in feeling, and has its true reality in earthly life only in the will. Aside from this unfolding of the will that follows a certain inducement, an element that corresponds to the human will as a reality is the continuous desire in the whole human organization for the physical body. Subconsciously, in the will nature of the soul, man longs, as it were, to be enclothed in the metabolic and limb systems of his body. If we go further into this part of the human soul, we see through this will nature into depths, into substrata of the human soul life, into processes of the soul that are completely hidden from ordinary consciousness.

I have already shown that ordinary consciousness remains completely unaware of the processes of degeneration and regeneration which take place in the human body. But aside from these activities that the human soul unfolds and that come into consideration in regard to the ordinary impulses of the will, there exist other processes, subconscious processes in man's being which are very real, but do not project their effects up into ordinary consciousness at all during earthly life. They are described below.

We saw yesterday how a continuous evaluation of the moral and moral-spiritual nature of man takes place in the feeling-soul. The process that only lights up as a weak reflection in consciousness as stirrings of conscience, as evaluations of one's own actions, is a very significant, incisive activity in the subconscious sphere. Everything that a person does, he also evaluates in his subconscious soul organization; on this level, it only comes to an assessment. But something additional and quite different occurs in the part of the soul that corresponds to the will. In the course of earthly life, we see how the astral body and ego, which are linked to this will nature, actually build up an inner entity of man—it is only dully alive—by means of the astral and ego forces in the cosmos. Indeed, it is like this: By inwardly evaluating our own capabilities, we bring to birth an astral being that exists within us and grows increasingly larger. This being contains these evaluations as facts, whereas the feeling-soul only causes the evaluations to arise, as it were, like a thought process, or—after it has happened—like a subconscious memory-thought. After the deed has been done, something additional arises in the willing-soul. The judgement, “I have perpetrated an evil deed,” turns into a being in us. With this being, we possess something within us that is the actualized evaluation of man's deeds.

Now, as you have just seen from this description, something lasting is contained in this will nature of the soul, something that was also present before man descended from the soul-spiritual world into a physical-etheric organism. In this spirit-part of the soul, this willing-soul, the after-effect of the soul-spiritual existence is at work to build up a human organism once again, for that was its activity in pre-earthly life. It is hindered now only by the presence of the physical organism; its activity cannot unfold since it bumps against all the protrusions and walls, so to speak, of the physical organization, but the tendency remains. Now, the reality that I have just described, the being that represents the actualized evaluation of the moral and moral-spiritual nature of man, unites with this tendency. Thus, we bear within us an entity in which flow together the impulses to form a new organism and the realized moral evaluation. We bear this being through the portal of death when our earthly life has come to an end.

From my descriptions you have seen that regenerative and degenerative forces are constantly present in the human organism, forces that cause dying and revitalizing, forces that dampen and arouse life. We find benumbing forces in the thinking-soul, revitalizing ones in the willing-soul. This battle between death and life accompanies us throughout our sojourn on earth. When we bring it to a close we carry the unconsciously developed result of our moral qualities into the spiritual world.

You have seen from the descriptions that I gave in the past few days that in the moment when man passes through the gate of death his consciousness, until now only an earthly one, expands into a cosmic consciousness. Just as man becomes accustomed on earth to live in a physical organization and feels himself enclosed within the skin of his body, he finds his way after death into the expanses of the cosmos. His former surroundings now become his inner content. His consciousness becomes a cosmic consciousness. The question then arises: What happens to the evaluation of the moral qualities of man, when, having passed through the portal of death, the human being receives this cosmic consciousness and has the desire to form a new physical and etheric organism? The answer to this will be given in the second part of today's considerations.

Before I can answer the question that I have just posed, I have to characterize several points concerning the course of man's earthly life in the light of the above described conditions. You have seen that continuous degeneration and regeneration go on in the human organism. This destruction and revitalization take place throughout life between birth and death. Inasmuch as we are thinking soul beings we must deteriorate, as beings of will we must restore what has been worn down. As feeling beings, we bring about an interplay between degeneration and regeneration. Therefore, the soul elements represented inwardly as thinking, feeling and willing are expressed as processes of destruction, recreation and an interplay between the two. These processes in the human organization, which are extremely complicated, are different for each period of life. They come to expression in a child in one way, in another way in an adult. It is especially important for anyone who raises and teaches children to see by means of a spiritual knowledge of man into this continuous interplay of degenerative and regenerative processes of man. It is important to be aware of this in-streaming of constructive processes into the destructive ones, of destructive ones into the constructive ones; to see how they constantly intermingle in certain parts of the human organization and to discern their effects on it. For you can only educate and teach correctly when you can discern how these forces work in a child and what effect can be brought to bear on them through upbringing and education.

I shall cite just one example of this. There is a big difference between making a child memorize only so much as is good for it, or making it memorize too much so that its memory is over-burdened. Because of the opinion prevailing today concerning the interplay of constructive and destructive processes, one could easily believe that they exert an influence only on the soul organism of the young person. That is not the case. When we make a child memorize too much, it forms thoughts that pertain to memory in an irregular fashion. They find their way into the head system. There, they cause irregularities by continuing on into thoughts of the will, even reaching into the metabolic and limb organism. We can discover that if we have raised and educated a child wrongly in regard to its memory, this error manifests itself, perhaps as late as the age of thirty, forty, or forty-five, in poor digestion and metabolic disturbances.

I only mention this as an example that is close at hand. These matters are most complicated. It is a fact that out of a spiritual insight into man a true teacher can estimate and survey the extent of what he undertakes with a child in respect to both body and soul. Genuine, true pedagogy can therefore only be established on the basis of a knowledge of man that views the physical corporeality and the soul and spirit, and also comprehends the interplay between these three members of man's total being. Such a pedagogy has been created within our anthroposophical movement. It becomes a reality in the Waldorf School, also in certain attempts at continuing education here at Dornach. But it must be stated once and for all that the mere sense-derived science that is generally accepted today can never establish a true pedagogy. This becomes possible only through an anthroposophical deepening of scientific life. Some of the details of what has now been touched upon will be further elaborated upon in the lectures tomorrow and the day after tomorrow.¹

Furthermore, clairvoyant sight beholds a certain interplay of destructive and constructive activities, an intermingling in one way or another of the two in the whole human body and in the individual organs depending on the state of a man's health. We can only learn to understand illnesses and their various symptoms by tracing the manner in which degenerative processes gain the upper hand over the whole organism, over one organ or a group of organs, causing the organism to become unyielding and hard; or how regenerative processes gain control, leading to unrestrained life and growth. We also learn to recognize how the destructive processes penetrate the constructive ones in erratic ways and permeate them with undigested products of the metabolism. In short, just as it is important for the teacher to be able to judge the normal course of these processes in a child, so it is important for one dealing with the sick to have insight into the abnormal processes of degeneration and regeneration.

Now, if we gain insight into the various kingdoms of nature around us in the physical world—the mineral, plant, and in part the animal kingdom—we find everything permeated by hidden soul-spiritual elements. In a particular kind of plant, for example, we find regenerative forces, which, when prepared in a certain way and introduced into the human organism, are effective against such destructive, pathologically abnormal processes. In short, we find medications for the abnormal processes in outer nature. The connection between medicines and an illness can only be perceived by looking into man's organism in the way just characterized. In everything that can be undertaken in some way for an ailing organism—be it the application of external medications, or that the ailing organism is treated in a manner one does not treat the healthy organism, or that supplements are found for what the body itself cannot do—whether it is such correctly employed measures or what I have put forward as Curative Eurythmy, one always seeks by such means to bring into balance again in the organism the rampant processes of regeneration or the destructive processes that exceed the norm.

You see that medicine that is based merely on a sense-oriented science must be supplemented and expanded by what can result from spiritual insight, from a knowledge of the total human being. Since, in physiology and anatomy, physical science is able to judge only the outer aspects of man's organization, it is able to find the relationship of a medication to an illness only through external experimentation. Inspiration, imagination and intuition make it possible to view simultaneously the inner connection of a medication or a healing process with the nature of the sickness. In place of a merely experimental, empirical therapy, it is possible to attain to a rational therapy that has insight into the human being and the healing processes. I can only refer to this in passing today, but from this you can see that a starting point for an extension of pathology as well as therapy along the lines described above is contained in what is being established as anthroposophical knowledge. These matters have already assumed practical form within our movement. We do not practice in a spirit of medical dilettantism in our therapeutic institutes in Stuttgart and here in Arlesheim. Present-day medicine is fully acknowledged and applied, but our methods of treatment are permeated by what spiritual perception and a spiritual point of view can add to them.

Critics who rely merely on physical science today still claim that what this spiritual science, working out of anthroposophy, has to say about illness and processes of healing is childish. This is quite understandable, coming from people who choose to base their ideas and their work on physical science alone. But I must say that when such people call our methods “childish,” they have no idea of the true facts. Indeed, what physical science produces as anatomy, pathology and therapy is only a substructure for what results for medicine from spiritual observation. I would like to say—not in a derogatory sense, only in reference to certain critics—that if anything is childlike in some respects it is medicine that tries to rely only on physical phenomena. I do not deride what is childlike with this remark, I only want to point out how it is supplemented by what arises out of a spiritual perception regarding man's total being. If you consider all this, you will realize how one must go into details if insight is to be attained into the activities of man's etheric, astral and ego organisms during physical life.

Now, at death, man lays aside his physical organism; it is lost to him. A condition then commences in which man is no longer clothed in a physical body, but in which his ego being and astral organism are still ensheathed in the etheric organism. I have already outlined that what constitutes man's etheric organism is not strictly separated by clear-cut boundaries from the general organization of the etheric cosmos. Streams from this etheric cosmos flow continually in and out of the human etheric organism. This is why, in the moment when man passes through the gate of death, but still carries his etheric organism within him, his consciousness expands into the etheric expanses yet he still feels that the etheric body which has just been drawn out of the physical corporeality is his own. During this state, man is wholly devoted to the etheric experiences of the cosmos, which, for his consciousness, contract now and then into the mere etheric experience of his own organism. After having passed through death, man is, as it were, overpowered by what this cosmic consciousness represents for him. As yet, there arises no conscious contemplation for what I have described as an entity which develops in us and represents the actualized valuations of man's moral qualities. This moral-spiritual being, which has incorporated itself in the astral body, is carried by us through death, but we do not perceive much of it in the very first period after death. Instead, passing in and out of the cosmic element, we are absorbed in beholding the course of our life just completed on earth, for that is the content of the etheric body. For a while, we look back on this earthly life that we have just completed. The course of our life appears directly after death in its inner nature in the same way that it represents itself to imaginative consciousness, as I described it already during the past several days. This condition, however, lasts only a few days, about as long as a person's daytime experiences stimulate the shaping of dreams, which is something that varies with each individual.

As to the form that dreams take, they always correspond directly to the experiences of the day before or the second or third one before that. Just as we dream about something from the day just past, which is linked, however, in an association of thoughts with other, earlier experiences of ours, in the same manner these other experiences also arise in a dream. We dream, for example, about having spoken to someone yesterday about one thing or another; this experience of the past day still enters directly into the life of dreams. We perhaps talked to him in an animated way about someone we met maybe ten years ago and have not seen since. Because this experience has woven itself into the conversation, we dream up all kinds of things about that person. Dreams are not studied correctly. If they were one would recognize these experiences of dream-life for what they are. Now dreaming does vary with different people. One person dreams only about what happened yesterday, another dreams about what he experienced the day before, still another dreams about what happened three or four days earlier. Insofar as this possibility exists for each individual person, this determines the length of the condition after death that a man still remains in the etheric body. I could also characterize it differently and say: The length of this time coincides with the length of time that a man does not require sleep, the time lasting through as many days and nights as he can remain awake without falling asleep. One person falls asleep when he goes only one night without sleeping. Another can stand to be awake for two, three or four nights. Just as long does the experience last during which the human being still remains in his ether body after death.

Then, however, it comes about that we are increasingly caught up by our consciousness which has lived its way into the cosmic-etheric world. Since our etheric organism is now not strictly separated from the cosmic-etheric world, it flows out into it, so to speak. We feel ourselves to be in this cosmic-etheric world, and when we look back upon our etheric body, it already appears larger to us. This continues until at last we no longer possess the etheric body. Then, clad in our astral organism, we find our way into the cosmos and into our new consciousness. It is then that there emerges in man what I have characterized as a being which represents the actualized valuation of man's moral-spiritual qualities. Man feels himself burdened with this being. His nature is then composed of what flows out of him into the cosmos, and the being to which he must return again and again in his experiences after death, namely the being that actually represents the sum total of his moral qualities.

Now, because, in a manner of speaking, the compensatory forces work continually out of the cosmic consciousness in a very real way, an extraordinarily strong tendency arises to say: You must now confront the wrong, foolish things you have done with the right action! Therefore, in the further course of the life that I have characterized yesterday as the soul world, man finds his way into the rhythm that alternates between his moral-spiritual qualities and the cosmic qualities. In this rhythm, a sum of tendencies develops in him to experience again the possibility of creating compensations for what he finds to be morally inferior, and so on. If, for instance, he has done something that affected another person in one way or another, the tendency develops to make amends for it in an action in the next earth life. In short, the seed of destiny which passes through repeated earth lives is created in this manner. But at the same time, the purely cosmic consciousness grows quite dark and dim because we carry this element within us. During the whole passage through the soul world, the human soul must remain in a dull—at least a duller—state of consciousness, until it becomes necessary for it to enter spirit land and to cast off the being that I have described. Then we can live for a while in the amoral cosmos into which we cannot bring what we have experienced in the soul world as the sum total of our moral or immoral spirit being.

If I wish to describe this transition from the soul experience to the spiritual experience after death, I can present it from the standpoint of human earth life in this way by saying: As long as man passes through the soul world, where he experiences a cosmic rhythm and the moral-spiritual being contained within him from the past earthly life, namely the interacting pulse beat of these two manifest realities, so long does he remain in a kind of affinity, as if spellbound to his last earth life. The being that he has brought with him, which represents his moral-spiritual qualities, has, after all, flowed out of his last earth life. He clings to it with all the inclinations of his soul. He can pass on into the pure experience of the cosmos only after he has freed himself inwardly from these inclinations. Spiritual beings can live together there with the human being in such a way that he gains for himself from their powers the forces that can develop the universal cosmic-spiritual part of a physical human organism for his future incarnation.

This is spoken from the standpoint of human earth experience. But the same relationship can be characterized from the standpoint of the cosmic consciousness and experience. Then one must say: After man has laid aside his etheric body, and while the inclination toward earth life continues to live on in his ego being and astral organism as I have described it, he is inwardly penetrated by the spiritual moon forces that pervade the cosmos. I already had to mention the moon forces when I characterized the condition of sleep.

Now they confront us again in man's existence after death. These moon forces are the element that brings or wishes to bring man into a certain connection with earth existence. Here, after death, they express themselves by trying to prevent man from leaving earth existence. He has laid aside his physical body, but he is anxious to return again to earth. This happens because the moon forces of the cosmos permeate him. Ordinary earthly thinking has ceased after death, for it is bound to the head organism of the physical body. Pre-earthly man flowed into this head system. Upon laying aside the physical body, everything that was brought about merely in a material way ceases to function. Man is therefore no longer an earth-bound being in a direct sense, though he is indirectly because the moon forces continue to affect him. For a long while after death, they still produce, as it were, a tendency in him to turn back to earth because it was there that he prepared the being now enclosed within him.

After death, however, it is necessary for man to struggle free of the moon forces and to reach beyond them, to become free inwardly from their influences that flow into him and affect him. They always preserve in him a kind of cosmic memory of the rhythmic forces, that is, in inspirations and imaginations they continually confront him with what is happening in the movements of the planets and their relationships to the fixed stars. But they hold man back from experiencing those spiritual beings who have their physical replica in the constellations of the fixed stars. Yet, he now faces the necessity of entering the pure, spiritual world. As long as the moon forces influence him, they prevent him from entering. He is, however, not supposed to view the cosmos he experiences merely from the side turned to him in physical existence; it is his task to view it from the other side. Man actually arrives at this condition if he develops a purely spiritual cosmic consciousness. Then, he reaches a position where he is, so to speak, at the periphery of the cosmos. Just as we stand here at the center and look out everywhere into the cosmos, so, in this spiritual perception, we look from the periphery inward into the cosmos. But now we do not see the physical replicas of the spiritual beings in question, we behold the beings themselves. We do not look into the cosmos from the periphery in a spatial manner. Just as we look out into the cosmos from the focal point of our two eyes here on earth, there, we look in from a spherical surface. Yet, it is in a way after all a spatial experience. We behold it qualitatively. We look out into the realm of the fixed stars and observe this universe from the outside.

Between death and a new birth, we must become independent of the physical world where we spent our earthly existence. In the period of humanity's development prior to the Mystery of Golgotha, man entered the spirit world in a manner that was quite different from that of the time that followed this event. During the course of human evolution on earth, a tremendous metamorphosis has taken place in man's inner life. The Christ event represents a turning point in the development of earthly humanity. Therefore, in the fourth part of my considerations and as a culmination of this evening, I would still like to describe how this entrance of man's soul-spiritual being into spirit land appears since the beginning of Christian evolution.

Before man enters the actual spiritual world where he engages in a life in common with other human souls who are not incarnated and are in a condition similar to his own—as it happens, he lives together with these souls even earlier—that is to say, before he can enter into a common life with those spiritual beings of the highest rank, whose physical replica is expressed in the starry constellations, he must leave behind in the moon sphere the being that constitutes his moral evaluation. Without it, he must enter the region of the stars where the moon forces no longer prevail. There, through the companionship with spiritual beings of the highest kind, the forces are born in his soul that enable him now really to prepare and work at the spirit germ of the future human physical organization.

Prior to the Mystery of Golgotha, when the old initiates wished to characterize the manner in which this transition into spirit land took place for the humanity of that time, they had to say to those who were willing to listen: “When, after death, you are to pass out of the soul world into the spirit land, you must leave behind you in the moon sphere the destiny-forming part of your good and bad deeds. But the forces of your own human organization are not enough to give you the power to bring about the transition from the moon sphere to that of the stars. Therefore, the Sun Being intercedes for you; He, Whose physical reflection is the physical sun. Just as your outer life proceeds under the influence of the physical sun's light and warmth, so, after death, the lofty Sun Being claims you, sets you free from your burden of destiny and bears you into the sphere of the stars. There, with the help of your Sun Guide, you can work out the spirit germ of your future physical organization. Then, after having worked sufficiently under the guidance of your Sun Leader on the formation of your physical organism in the spiritual realm, you can return again to life on earth. On this return to earth, you are again received by the moon sphere. In it you find the destiny being which you carried out of your earlier life on earth through the gate of death. You unite with it again and now, after having prepared the spirit germ of your future physical organism together with the great Sun Being, you can control it quite differently. You can unite this destiny being with the forces in you that are drawn toward your physical organism. You stride again through the moon sphere. “ Then follows the entrance into earth life as I have described it already earlier.

The initiates who were contemporaries of the Mystery of Golgotha, or who lived in the following centuries up until the third and fourth century, could say to their followers: The form which the human physical organism assumes in earth life increasingly shapes and develops the ego. But man loses the power to enter that region where the high Sun Being could be his guide above in the spiritual realms of the stars. Therefore, the Christ descended to earth and accomplished the Mystery of Golgotha. The power that the human soul gains by having in its feelings a bond with the Mystery of Golgotha works on after death. It tears the soul free of the germinal being of destiny and the moon sphere. Under the after-effect of the earthly Christ Event, the soul shapes its future physical organism with the other beings of the starry worlds and finds in turn the seed of its destiny, into which is placed the tendency for the destiny that will develop in the earth lives to come. The force that the human soul has received from the Christ Impulse enables it to pass through the spiritual realm in the right way and to take up the seed of destiny correctly.

A person who speaks out of initiation science today must add the following to this: “Indeed, it is the Christ Impulse Whose effects continue on beyond death. Under Its influence man wrenches himself away from the moon sphere and penetrates into the sphere of stars and the sun. There, out of the impulses given to man by the beings of the stars, he is able to work at molding the physical organism for his next earth life. But he frees himself from the moon sphere by means of the forces that he has accumulated in his ego by having turned on earth to the Christ Being and the Mystery of Golgotha. He struggles free of the moon sphere in such a way that he can in turn work in the starry sphere in a specific manner so that, when he returns again to the moon sphere and the core of his destiny confronts him, he can incorporate into himself as a free spiritual deed this seed of destiny. For he must tell himself: World evolution can only proceed in the right way if I incorporate into myself the seed of my own destiny and adjust what I have thus prepared as my destiny as compensation in future earth lives.”

This is the main element of the new experience in the life after death in the moon sphere. There comes a moment in cosmic existence when man in a self-reliant manner brings his destiny, his karma, into relation with his own advancing being. In the following earth life, the earthly reflection of this deed, which is accomplished in the supersensible realm, is human freedom, the feeling of freedom during earthly life. A true understanding of the idea of destiny, which traces this idea right into the spiritual worlds, does not establish a philosophy of determination but an actual philosophy of freedom, as I set forth in the nineties of the last century in my book, The Philosophy of Freedom.

Thus, when man finds his way into the spiritual regions after death in the right way, he brings back with him to earth—incorporated into his organism and linked with his universal destiny—the after-effects of having been permeated with the spiritual worlds, something he has experienced in the spirit land. Inasmuch as he experiences the Christ within him, modern man can experience freedom; and in connection with freedom he can also have the feeling of being pervaded by God, the permeation with the divine on earth which can be a recollection of what he has undergone in passing through the world of the stars to the moon sphere, and through the moon sphere itself.

Spiritual science strives towards a knowledge of all these relationships, inasmuch as intuition is brought about through soul exercises of the will. In ancient times, this intuition was produced according to instructions by those who were then initiates. These instructions directed man to mortify his outer physical organism through asceticism. By mortifying and subduing his physical body, man's independent will, which otherwise only expresses a craving for the physical organism, emerged with all the more intensity. Through asceticism, the physical organism becomes so mortified that it is difficult for the will to enter into the body and there to express itself. The will is driven back, as it were. The more difficult it becomes for the will to submerge and live in the physical organism, the more it finds its way into the spiritual world and develops intuitions. This is what was brought about by asceticism. It is wrong, however, to continue with this old asceticism in modern times. Since the Mystery of Golgotha, the human physical body has assumed a form that is no longer able to tolerate a successful practice of asceticism. By means of such asceticism, modern man would at the same time deaden his physical organism to the point where the ego consciousness that must develop could not properly do so. Man would then never attain a consciousness of freedom. He would also be unable to unite himself in a proper, free manner with the Christ Impulse.

Therefore, the will exercises must be undertaken in such a way that the physical body is not subdued as was the case in ancient times; instead, by means of these exercises, man's pure soul-spiritual capacities are strengthened so much that the body does not withdraw from the soul, but the soul can find its way into and live in the spiritual worlds. Not only has what the old initiates told their followers about experiences between death and rebirth changed, but also what has to be said about the exercises that men have to take up in order to acquire knowledge leading into the higher worlds. These exercises also have changed in accordance with humanity's progressive development. The ascetic of ancient times could not attain the royal consciousness of freedom which modern man must reach through his present organization. Nor could the old ascetic between death and rebirth encounter the Sun Being, Who at that time had to accomplish for him after death what now, ever since the Christ passed through the Mystery of Golgotha, the human being can find within himself the strength to accomplish.

With the entrance of Christianity into human evolution, religious consciousness has therefore changed, for this consciousness is the earthly after-image of what man must experience as permeation with God in the spiritual world between death and a new birth. In all respects we are led by modern initiation science to a deeper comprehension of Christology. Therefore, we can speak of a renewal of religious consciousness by means of anthroposophic insight, just as we have spoken in the past few days of a renewal of philosophy, which turns into a living philosophical science; likewise, we spoke of a deepening of cosmology through the inclusion of the insight into the higher worlds that can only be attained by means of intuition and inspiration. Through enhancement by anthroposophy, a renewal of religious consciousness, which only then will become a fully conscious Christian awareness, can be attained for the whole of mankind. Anthroposophy would like to contribute to the further rightful development of Christianity; this is meant in the sense that it does not want to become a new religion but wants to help in the development of the Christian religion that came into the world through the Mystery of Golgotha. This Christian religion has in itself the power to develop further, and anthroposophy wishes to understand this in the right way and be a true aid in this further development.

So, in these lectures I have sought to describe for you how philosophy, cosmology and religious knowledge are to be fructified by anthroposophy. Naturally, knowledge of religion is not religion. Religion can also be experienced if you devote yourself with your heart (Gemüt) in an open-minded way to what intuitive knowledge communicates, for the heart (Gemüt) can understand it. Therefore, the renewal of religious knowledge can bring about a new deepening of religious life.

I could describe all this only in a sketchy way during these days. Naturally, these matters can only be penetrated completely if one becomes acquainted with the details. Then, much that had to remain sketchy here could appear in its full coloring and with all the possible nuances. That alone would present a complete picture.

Most esteemed ladies and gentlemen! In concluding these lectures, I am deeply gratified when I think of the fact that you actually came from a foreign country to attend these lectures. This feeling leads me to express my heartiest thanks for your attention. I would like to express heartfelt thanks especially to Dr. Sauerwein for the trouble he took to present a faithful translation, and to ask him to fulfill one more wish of mine, namely to translate my thanks to him also, just as he translated everything else. I would be especially happy if you took home with you the feeling that the time spent here was not a waste of time for you.

• 1. Steiner gave eight lectures on the 16th and 17th of September 1922. They are currently unavailable in English, see table at the end of this lecture.

In a lecture Kurt Eisner recently gave to students in Basle we find a remarkable sentence. Eisner starts with a really curious question about the present external world, namely, whether what can be expressed as the present situation of mankind is a reality or a mere dream; whether what mankind is now experiencing is not actually a sort of dreamed reality? What he said about it ran something like this: “Do we not hear, do we not see clearly that pressing for realisation there lives a longing in our life to know that this life, as we have to live it today, is only the outwardly expressed invention of some evil spirit? Picture to yourselves, gentlemen, some great thinker living about 2000 years ago and knowing nothing of our times, who dreamed what the world would look like in 2000 years. With the most vivid imagination he could never have a thought-out a world like the one in which we are destined to live. Nevertheless what persists is the one Utopia in the world, and what we want, what lives in us as this longing, is the final and deepest reality, and everything else is horrible. Only we are confusing dreaming and waking. Our task is to shake off the old dream of our present useless existence . Look at the war—can it reasonably be thought possible that such a thing could be thought-out? If the war were not what is called reality it was perhaps a dream out of which we are now waking. We are in a society in which, in spite of railway, steam and electricity, we men see nevertheless only a small part of the star on which we were born.” And so on and so forth …

This is what Kurt Eisner felt, and what he said about it shortly before his death in Basle. The reality makes us ask ourselves today whether we are awake or dreaming. Is this reality a reality at all? It would be a good thing today were the mass of humanity to set themselves such questions. Above all it is of importance that we should be in a position to discern the actual truth about what surrounds us in the external world. It is particularly important that what the world needs and above all what is needed for our social life should no longer be judged according to the old customary way of thinking during recent centuries. For it is this customary thinking that has led to the present catastrophe, which becomes plain when one really studies all the conditions. With this way of thinking many of those who think themselves really practical have started out with mere abstractions which they have tried to carry out in real life. And it is because such men have applied their customary way of thinking to social conditions in the common life of men that reality has gradually become unreality, a mere image incapable of dealing with life. And there man stands regarding it as reality, and he lacks the forces to bring about conditions possible for life.

These are things that cannot be too strongly emphasised today; they must be given clear and unmistakable expression by everyone who without prejudice looks facts in the face. These facts, working in the external everyday world, speak to us clearly and show us that the cure for existing conditions can come only from impulses out of the spiritual world. For what has become estranged from the spiritual world, what has held sway economically without regard to the spiritual world, has today lost its way in a blind alley. Believing as men do today that they can continue their economic life in the way that has brought the world to this catastrophe is simply refusing to think.

We have been living through a time in which existence was believed to have come to the highest point of material civilisation, Looking back before August, 1914, how comfortable life was, how easily, if we had the means, we could travel from country to country. Consider how simple it was to communicate by telegraph or telephone between the most distant places and across national frontiers. Think of all men called modern civilisation. And then think of what since August, 1914, has become of this modern European civilisation, consider the conditions in which we now live. Truly it does not need much thought to see that the one does not exist without the other, that in the life we led until August, 1914, so comfortable, so civilised, was contained the present situation, so much so indeed that in lectures given in Vienna before the war I referred to it as a carcinoma, a cancerous growth, in human society. [ Note 01 ] We should give due weight to the fact that at the time everything was so ‘comfortable’ and the world so ‘civilised’ and all going according to the wishes of those whose social position allowed of their fulfillment, at that time Spiritual Science forced those who saw into the real state of affairs to say: this is not a healthy society we are living in, but an unhealthy one. It has long been offered the anthroposophical way of thinking for its healing. For this healing nothing will serve but the realisation that all other ways of thinking, not directed to what is really spiritual, are more or less quackery. Reality must come into the dreams men dream today. Whence is this reality to come? It does not exist in the region whence practical men derive their thoughts. Reality exists only where the spirit can be seen. From there the principles and impulses flowing into social life must be found. That is why the connection between such things must continually be stressed.

Now in connection with these lectures I have often mentioned the name Fritz Mauthner. When in a series of catchwords he classified alphabetically the thinking of the present-day, he made of this two volumes and called them a Philosophical Dictionary. In this philosophical dictionary, in Mauthner's own style, with his criticisms that were often caustic and biting, a description of present-day thinking was contained. There, among other things, he deals with the State, the res publica. From his outlook Mauthner even arrives at some sort of answer to the question: What exactly is the State? And his particular definition is that the State is a necessary evil, the necessity of which there is no denying. But it has dawned on some people that the social structure we today call the State has led to what we are living in the midst of now. That is why people call it a necessary evil, for its evil character in its present form is before their very eyes. The question, however, is how a positive conception is to be arrived at in contrast to all that is negative.

If something be rejected, what would be acceptable in its place must be indicated. If someone says that the State is a necessary evil it is important to define the good, in contrast to this evil of the State. What is this something of which this State should be the opposite: In the spiritual-scientific connection something very remarkable appears. To understand the State one must have insight into the form of the rights that prevail in the State, which is regulated according to possession, work and so on. One has also to ask to what this form of rights can be compared.

Now the conditions existing in the spiritual world in the time lived through by man between death and a new birth have often been described to you. How do these conditions existing between man and man between death and a new birth stand in relation to the conditions of rights established within the State community on the physical plane? As soon as this question is put intelligibly, we get the answer: All that the State consists in is the exact opposite of this. The human relations that are State-controlled are the exact opposite of those in the spiritual world. This gives you a true idea of the State. Men who know nothing of the spiritual world can get no idea of the State, because they have a purely negative attitude towards the relation between man and man. What is positive is the relation arising between one soul and another in the spiritual world. With this in view, read the chapter on the soul-world in my book Theosophy; you will there find a certain regulation existing in the relation of soul to soul, which may be described as the mutual working of soul to soul, continuing into what is called spirit-land, and governed by forces going from sympathy end antipathy. Read in this same chapter how sympathy and antipathy bring about a certain connection between the souls in the spiritual world. You will see that there in the spiritual world everything depends on the inner life, namely on what through the forces of sympathy and antipathy is working from soul to soul. In man on the physical plane the forces of antipathy between soul and soul are concealed by the physical body, and because this is so its place in the State has to be taken by all that is most external—what has to do with rights, Whereas we must describe the unfolding of the innermost forces of the soul as belonging to the actual spiritual world, what can live in the State is all that is most external in the relation between men. And the State is not in a healthy condition when seeking to establish anything beyond the external relation of rights. Therefore everything should be eliminated by the State that does not concern this most external relation. As opposed to the State itself on the one side must be the spiritual sphere, the administration of the affairs of spiritual culture, and on the other side the third member, the purely economic life of the social organism. Whereas the actual State represents the exact opposite of the spiritual world, the spiritual life signifies a continuation of what we experienced before we descended through birth into earthly existence. What we experience here in religion, schooling, education, art, science, and so forth, in company with others, what develops from our mutual relation as between man and man, all this, though a mere reflection, is the earthly continuation of the real spiritual life before birth.

And in the economic life, in what we call ordinary material life, we find the origin of much that we shall have to experience beyond the gate of death, that is, in the life after death.

But the State has nothing to do with spiritual life. It is its very opposite. To understand the terrible facts of today men must learn to penetrate this fact in all its significance. Present-day man must learn to grasp that, to come to a conception of external reality, it is essential once more to have in mind spiritual reality. In the spiritual world sympathy and antipathy work together. What persists in us from the spiritual world as antipathy, what has to go on working as antipathy, is experienced down here as spiritual culture. Through speech we learn as men to understand each other and to create a spiritual bond between man and man. And by understanding one another in speech we have to overcome certain antipathies still left over from the spiritual world. We learn to speak among ourselves in certain conceptions, developing thoughts in common, in a common art, in a common religious belief, thereby overcoming certain mutual antipathies we had in the spiritual world. We learn here in our economic life to help one another, to work for one another, to be of advantage to each other economically, thus laying foundations for certain sympathies to be woven into the life after death between souls who, through their ordinary karma have found no previous bond.

In this way we have to understand how to unite this earthly world with the spiritual world. Ultimately, the deepest and most active cause of our present time of catastrophe is that man has lost his connection with the spiritual world, which has largely become for him mere empty words. It has become so for the upper classes to an increasing degree during the last four centuries. And there has developed more and more in the dumb instincts of great masses of the proletariat a subconscious, unconscious yearning for something different from what the upper classes can offer as so-called culture, science, art, religion, and so forth.

Where the spiritual life is concerned people become accustomed with such difficulty to the necessity of gradually learning to understand a new language. They would prefer to go on speaking the old one for they think that will serve their purpose.

And we hear unctuous prophets today holding forth on their views—I have often referred to these views. One such prophet, greatly respected today, says for example how this war has shown that men have been living in a kind of external organisation but have not inwardly come nearer each other. And so in the guise of this war there has come a lapse into barbarism.—To rescue us from this barbarism only empty and sentimental words are forthcoming, exhorting men to return to a kind of inward spirituality. But today it is not a question of reprimanding people, telling them they should once more become good Christians, learn to love their fellow men, and to find an inward bond between man and man. It is far more important now to develop a power of the spirit able to give external relations a form in which the social organism can prosper. One cannot with honesty say that the real reason for man's sickness today is first and foremost his not believing in the spirit. There are still plenty of men who believe in the spirit. And every little village still has its church where I fancy there is much talk of the spirit. Even those who struggle against it have a certain respect for the spirit. In ordinary thought, too, there are still certain references to it. Those who would say in the true Anzengruber manner: “As sure as there is a God in Heaven I am an atheist” are no great rarity though they may not put this into words. The point is not whether the spirit is spoken of nor whether people believe in the spirit, but that the spirit should become effective in all material life and that it should be realised how there can never be any matter without spirit.

At present, however, we are farther than ever from such insight. One man may affect superiority, despise external material life, consider it a necessary evil and turn his attention to the inner life, perhaps becoming a theosophist so that he can develop an inner life alongside the external one. He thinks the external life to be without spirit and that it behooves him to give himself up to a life of inner contemplation. Another does not go directly this way—said by the socialist to be very middle-class and decadent—but still believes that on the one side there is material reality in which there lives all that is capital, human labour-power, credit, mortgages and money in any form; in short, spiritless reality. And on the other side he sees spiritual reality which has to be striven for out of the depths of the heart.

We could quote many variations of this particular way of understanding the connection between the material life and that of the spirit, as it holds sway today. For people generally feel that, to reach the spiritual, they have to turn away from external material reality. Ultimately this is all connected with the fact that in these days we see so many broken lives, so many people discontented with external existence. My dear friends, indeed I am not speaking just for the honour of the cause—pro domo—for it is my karma alone that obliges me to do this work. Had my karma led me to something different, I should be able to understand that too. No, I am speaking quite objectively. In spite of this I venture to say that there is nothing in life that is not interesting if only we have a healthy social organism in which man is rightly placed in accordance with his karma. Strictly speaking, no one has cause to consider any world-current of less worth than another. The healing of the social organism must, it is true, be brought about by every single worker having as much connection with the spiritual life as those who can now have the good fortune to occupy themselves with it. For it is one of the greatest defects in present social life that certain interests inaccessible to ethers are cultivated in exclusive circles. Just realise how today this exclusiveness has been increasingly fostered in religion, in art, and in everything else, in bourgeois circles, and how the proletariat stand outside all this. That is why the proletariat have been given ‘People's Institutions’, ‘People's Houses’, ‘People's Art’, and so forth. But all this has arisen out of the experiences of the middle-class. Received by the proletariat it becomes one of the lies of life, for only what has arisen out of general experience can become a common spiritual life. There is no general experience where one member of the community stands at a machine eight hours a day (you see I take the eight-hour day as an actual fact) whereas another is able to build a social life peculiar to his class, and then throws as crumbs to those working at the machines what, in its inner structure, can really be understood only by those who have always belonged to the governing classes.

Within these governing classes it is possible, with its up-bringing and education, to speak of the Sistine Madonna—to take a concrete example. I have taken working men into galleries and have seen how false it is to show them anything arousing the kind of impression the Sistine Madonna creates upon the bourgeoisie. It is an impossibility. By trying to do so one brings about a false situation, since there is no common life between the two classes. And where there is no common life there is no common speech. Those who up to now have formed the upper classes were destined during man's former evolution to receive something, even in art for example, that can take root in the experiences of their life. Through the way mankind has lived. until now, a picture like the Sistine Madonna has become a real gift for the upper classes. For the others it is incomprehensible. There has first to be sought a speech common to both, and that means efforts have to be made to find a cultural life common to all men. At present our schools and universities are very far from such a cultural life. In these there will never be realised what is so often striven for—a universal school for the people. In a school common to all must be taught what is derived from a free life of the spirit which, as an independently working member, has its roots in the social organism. We must teach something very different from what is taught today, for in his innermost being the proletarian does not understand what is now taught in the ordinary schools.

Now you may be right in saying that I am contradicting myself, and you may tell me that in the schools the people all are on a level, so why should the proletarian child understand less than the bourgeois child? But the bourgeois child in reality does not understand anything either, for the teaching in our ordinary schools is so unsound that everything is incomprehensible. And it is only because members of the upper classes, who have the means to go to the better schools, reflect something of what they learn there, like a shadow, on to the people's schools so that something of what was formerly learnt is understood. Those who have no opportunity to receive the reflection of what was learnt earlier cannot profit by the education which is present in our life like the dream of something real.

Due attention should be paid to this; it is deeply connected with the gravity of the present times and the present situation. And can we not actually feel that our only salvation lies in a new life of the spirit. Now try to be honest about what concerns one sphere or another. Consider what has happened in the course of the last centuries in the sphere of art, for example, and the appreciation of art. Try to look intelligently at what has been said about art, what artists themselves have said about the arts of painting and sculpture and so on, how critics have influenced public opinion. Follow this, than try to make it clear to the working-man, who is supposed to listen to it, after eight hours at a machine—for him it is just meaningless rubbish! For him it is a life lived by others from which he is excluded in an anti-social way, and he can form no idea of its necessity for human existence; to his mind it is simply luxury. It is not that I am giving judgment; I am merely stating facts that are comprehensible.

But now let us consider what fruits have been produced by this worthy middle-class society which continued to develop so comfortably up to the year 1914. I was still experiencing it in the eighties when, for instance, the young people of Vienna were imitating everything originating at the time in Paris as the new trend in art. These young people wrote a great deal of verse, and having done everything calculated to make dark rings under their eyes, wandered about in pensive mood declaring their preference for the decadent and their desire to sleep in rooms scented with hothouse flowers, and so forth. Then with this background they propounded how verse should be written. I have no wish to criticise all they did; it is just one side of the human being coming to expression in an extreme way. But eventually it was carried so far that something resulted which to a great many people today may seem merely an impulse towards cultural extravagance, cultural luxury, which in any case could not appear to them as necessary for a dignified human existence. Everything in life finally depends upon what pulsates in the human soul, and upon the way in which human souls can be moved in life. It was indeed a cancer breaking out in a dreadful way in human society. From all these things we must recognise that these facts are now so firmly established that we no longer speak with the some conceptions; we must learn a new language. And it is clearly manifest that we have to strive for something that besides being human is universal.

In our building we have striven for something universally human, but how far this is so will not immediately be understood. Within it there is meant to be nothing of interest only for the middle-class and incomprehensible to the proletariat. Even if the very highest spiritual claims are made, what is striven for is something everyone can understand. Much is certainly imperfect and what is middle-class still meets us in much of it, but on the whole—naturally I am not here referring to the people—the chief thing striven for is quite generally human. It can be understood from the point of view of life. And because men have various standpoints in life today we must speak to each one differently. But it is possible now to bring to the simplest, most primitive hearts and minds what is meant to be expressed in the forms and other features of our building. Thus the attempt has really to be made in every sphere of life to leave behind what is old, to speak a new language , and to see how it was the old ideas that landed us in this catastrophe.

Today it is often said that to oppose the aims of modern Socialists, really frightening to many people, we might hold up the spirit of the Sermon on the Mount, where not by class struggles but by love, the weary, heavy-laden should be led to a new world-order. This is not something just thought-out but the way of speaking adopted in the moral sermons of well known tub-thumpers and repeated over and over again in recent weeks. Only a few days ago in Berne you could have heard someone saying that we should go back to the pure spirit of Christianity, to the spirit of the Sermon on the Mount, which is not to be found in the modern class struggle. Unfortunately the speaker went on—The Christian spirit prevails only in private lives; it ought, however, to do so in the life of the State too; external public, life must be christianised.—Then people get up and say: Ah, that is spoken out of the spirit! And they finally show the path modern man must take to free himself from all this unfortunate materialism and turn back to the spirit of love. The fact remains, however, that for nearly two thousand years people have been talking thus, and it has not helped a whit, so that at last they ought to be able to see how today what we need in a new language.

But today the difference between the two languages often remains unnoticed. It is still unnoticed that something different is represented by this new life of the spirit that directly penetrates material reality. This is because the new spiritual life is convinced that spirit lives in all matter, and that matter must be regarded as matter and not in an unreal way as a thing to be despised. Where there appears to be nothing but matter one is simply not seeing the spirit. Therefore today we must be conscious of the pressing need to develop the spirit that can master reality and penetrate material life. This spirit will not teach us to say: Deepen yourself within and you then discover the God there; you will be able to unfold the source of love within you. You will then find the way out of the present social order to one in which men will stand inwardly united with one another! No, today it is a matter of finding such spirit, such speech, such Christianity, that we shall not merely talk of ethics and religion bit be so strong in spirit hat we are able to comprehend the most everyday things. Out of this spirit it must be asked: What should we do to discover the right way to heal the wastage, the ravages of this capitalism to which man's labour power is exposed?

As things are, people feel what is destructive and unsound in the social organism without knowing the causes. In matters great and small it can be seen how money is the root of much that is harmful. Many who may not themselves have money can see today in small matters around them that something is wrong with it. The time has come to end the old indifference when things were brushed aside with the saying: “One holds the purse, the other the money”. The time has come when this saying no longer holds good. People even when seldom crossing the frontier notice that much harm is created by money. Is it not true that though we now have peace, people cannot cross this frontier even as easily as during the war? Beyond it the mark has a certain value, here it is worth very little. With the money question is united that of standard values. In big things and small, people are realising that with money a situation has arisen that has to do with the most ordinary affairs of men. They wonder what the remedy may be for the harm done today, but they do not see the necessity of shaking off the ordinary superficial thoughts bound up with the situation, and of penetrating the thoughts that are original, primal. For certain primal thoughts are the basis of all human affair. It is, however, inherent in human life that these affairs gradually grow farther and farther away from the thought originally behind them. Then these original thoughts withdraw into the inner regions of man's being, and turn into feelings, instincts, that then express themselves in such a way that their original nature is no longer recognised. The social demands made today are the reaction of the primal thoughts on modern human relations. Men who formulate their thoughts merely in accordance with these relations are the most vexatious of all fanatics; for all the demands made by the proletariat are nothing but veiled feelings having their roots in primal thoughts. To such thoughts belongs the separation of the spiritual, political and economic spheres of life as we have seen it here, for which the instincts strive. And they will not rest until that direction at least is now taken again towards these archetypal thoughts. For it is because we have come so far from them that we are now going through this difficult crisis.

All other remedies are quackery, even where the most external material questions are concerned. For today the question is often put, even from the lecture platform, what actually is money? And there are innumerable discussions as to whether money is a commodity or a mere token of value. One person deems it a commodity among other commodities to be bartered in the economic market and considers that men have simply chosen a convenient commodity to avoid certain other difficultly in modern economic life. Suppose you were carpenter and there were no such thing as money. You would have to eat, to have vegetables, butter, cheese, but being a carpenter you would make only tables and chairs. So you would have to betake yourself with your tables and chairs to the market , and try, for example, to get rid of a chair so that someone will give you a certain amount of food in exchange for it. You have to get a table taken in exchange for something else, perhaps a suit of clothes. Imagine what all that would mean! In reality, however, it is exactly what one does. Only it is disguised by an ordinary marketable commodity, money, being there, for which one can exchange everything else, so that the other goods can then wait until needed.

Now it appears as if money were only there as a medium for the exchange of commodities. Thus many national economists hold the view that money is a commodity. Paper money is looked upon as a substitute for this commodity. For the commodity on which it depends is really gold and States have been obliged to introduce the gold-standard, having had today to follow the leading economic State, England, because it chose gold as its medium of adjustment and its sole standard of value. Thus the medium of exchange is there and the carpenter has no need to take his chairs to market, but sells his wares to those who want them, and gets money with which he can then, on his part, buy his vegetables and cheese.

Others hold a contrary opinion about money. For them it is not a question whether one has a piece of gold or not, but a matter of the existence of a substitute medium bearing a certain stamp. Our modern paper money, for example, bears a stamp stating its value. And there are economists who consider it quite unnecessary that the corresponding value in gold should be lying at the back. There are also, as you may know, individual States having only paper values with no corresponding gold. With it, however, under present conditions they can to a certain extent carry on their economy.

In any case you see—in our sphere we must take our stand on the basis of a purely human point of view—that now-a-days there are clever people who consider money to be a commodity, whereas other clever people regard it merely as something stewed, marked, a mere mark. But which is it in reality? Under present conditions it is actually both! It comes to this, that as things are today we see that on the one hand in international trade money has the character of a mere commodity, while on the other hand it represents outstanding debt. What serves as the real covering is the exchange of gold as a commodity carried on between States. Everything else depends upon there being the assurance that when a certain amount of paper or barter goes from one State to another, whoever has been responsible for this possesses the gold also, that the commodity gold is also there to be dealt with in the some way as any other commodity. A merchant is given credit no matter whether he possesses gold or fish or anything else, if only there is something real behind this as a covering. In this sense therefore money is a commodity in international trade.

But the State has interfered and has gradually made money into something assessed, something stamped. Thus the two things work together. The trouble that arises comes from the control of money not being given over to what we have called the third member of the social organism. Were money entirely controlled by the economic part of the organism, that means freed from the State member of the organism, money would then have to be a commodity and derive its commodity value in the commodity market. The present curious dependence expressing itself in the remarkable relation between value and wages would no longer exist. The curious thing now is that when wages rise, values fall, so that the worker often derives no benefit from higher pay, since he is unable to buy more than he could with his former smaller wage. When both wages and cost of living rise at the same time, which means that a change takes place in values, no other conditions can help. Help can come only by the economic commodity, money, being freed from the political State, and when the money that exists for the purpose of balance can be controlled by the third member, the economic member of the healthy social organism.

Thus on the path of the threefold order special problems too are resolved in the right way. Therefore whoever wants to work out sound ideas for the social organism must go back to the primal thought. Those administering the State today are asking what they should do in face of the chaos that has arisen in values. The answer, and the only answer, is that as long as they have to do with the control of the political State they should not meddle with values at all, but leave the control of money and values to the economic organism. Only there can the sound basis be created for these affairs. We must be able to get back to what today will create a healthy state of things. Before the catastrophe of the war there was the strange fact that because a condition existed between States upon which the internal political taxation had no influence, we had relations between individual States which, for example, in the economic life resulted from the economic life itself. Thus these relations arose internationally between the States. They did not take effect within the individual States because the States extended their control over the economic life, Therefore the conflict broke out from which the world can be freed only by real striving towards the threefold order. Then every time adjustment is needed facts of one member of the organism will be corrected by the facts of another. There are no other means possible than a return to primal ideas, to the practical trinity—spiritual life, political life, economic life. Only those so placed in a community thus organised will be able to solve our present problems from one or another point of view. The health of the social organism can be brought about only when economic matters are regulated by one member, democratic rights discussed in another, and all cultural, spiritual relations arranged by the third. For, as in the human being the three members, head-system, heart- and lung-system and digestive-system, work together naturally, so also do the three members in the healthy social organism. They work over into each other. And as in the head you can trace disorder in the stomach in spite of the separation of the systems because the stomach is not taking care of the head, so too in the healthy social organism one member, say the economic, works over into the rights member and the cultural member. They work together in the right way only when relatively independent. But this correct mutual working, when in order, really takes place only when the three members are independent and each governed by its own laws. How, for example, how does the spiritual life work into that of the economic? You know what is the spiritual element in the economic life? Capital is the spirit in economic life: And a great part of the present evil rests on the control of capital, the fructifying of capital, being withdrawn from the spiritual life. The relation between the physical workers to those organising with the help of capital, must in a healthy social organism be managed on a basis of mutual trust and understanding. Take, as an example of this, the election in our Waldorf School. In a healthy social organism the existing gulf between employer and worker will necessarily cease. Today the worker stands at a machine without knowing what it is producing. For this reason outside the factory he naturally wastes his time in trivialities. The employer, again, has his own life that corresponds to what he has made of it. I have already described the young men who went about with dark circles under their eyes and slept with tuberroses beside their beds! The employer leads this freed spiritual life, freed, that is, not for himself but for others. But when a spiritual, cultural life has been built up, which includes those who work physically and spiritually, capitalism will be out on a social basis, not, it is true, in the way the modern sentimentalist would approve, but so that a possibility is created for every individual worker to have a spiritual life in common with all those who organise his work in the social organism, and distribute the products throughout the world.

It must be regarded as essential that with the same degree of regularity with which work is done at the machine, discussions take place concerning business relations between employer end employed, so that the worker can have a comprehensive grasp of all that is happening. In future the aim must be to oblige the employer to have frank and full explanation of all details to the employed, so that factory and management may be limited in a common spiritual life. This is what is important. Only than will it be possible for the situation to arise when the worker will say: The employer is just as necessary as I am; for what would my work be in the social organism without him. He gives it its right place. But he is also obliged to give the worker his right place end to allow him to come into his own. Then everything will become quite clear.

There you see how the spiritual life must play into the working of capitalism. Everything else today is simply talk, sheer sentimentality. Sound relations between work and capital cannot come about in the social bureaucratic way, but only through a spiritual life common to all men having the individual capacity for it, all men who are in a position to out it into practice and to produce capital for a sound social organism. With this will come the free understanding of those who do the physical work. Understanding will then be able to arise for the initiative of the individual faculties which, in a free life of spirit, are socialised from the start. Today they work in an anti-social way because of unnatural relationships. Socialism must rest upon the free initiative of individual faculties and the free understanding of what these faculties promote. There is no other socialism that is genuine. From symptoms already appearing in the social organism we can realise the truth of this.

There are two things in the world the value of which for everyday life can be, and is, very differently estimated. The one is a piece of bread, the other a world-outlook. About a piece of bread everyone will admit that it is the means for satisfying man is hunger; there is no disputing the fact that he will have bread. But about a piece of world-outlook there is a great deal of despite what one man finds true the other thinks false. And however true a world-outlook is it cannot have universal value. There can be strife about the spirit but not about affairs of, the economic life. This is merely because the spirit is not working as a reality but only as something connected with the economic life and the life of the State. When it is based upon itself it will have to display its reality to the world and to reveal itself, and then reality will flash out from the spiritual. And then it will certainly not be found in the idle talk of the would-be moralist, in what is said by those who, because they regard as spiritual only what is entirely divorced from reality, exhort people to be good Christians, and uphold all manner of virtues having nothing to do with external, material reality. There must be a bridge between this abstract form of the spirit and the spirit working in capital, for capital is also spirit in its organising of labour. This organising, however, must in actual fact be the result of spiritual direction.

Thus on the one side the control of money must be left to the economic life, whereas the organising of labour by capital should be under the control of the life of the spirit. There you see the interworking of things which, to outward appearance, are separate; for naturally in industry capital is represented by money. The relation, however, between employee and employer, this whole relation based on trust and especially the fact that the employer has a certain position as giver of work—all this is organised from the spiritual sphere. The equivalent of a certain commodity in money will be regulated by the economic life, and for the health of the organism things will be woven into each other, just as they are in the three systems of the human organism.

In this way you will be able to penetrate into the things of everyday life, and you will see that what your attention has been called to here comes from the actual and real archetypal thoughts which must be the basis for the cure of the social organism.

Notes:

1. See The Inner Being of Man and Life Between Death and a New Birth, Lecture 6

Lyrical speaking for spiritual life; dramatic speaking for rights-relationships; epic speaking for economic conditions. About economic life within the social organism. The formulation of key sentences. Speech exercises.

I have tried to characterize how one can formulate a lecture on the threefold order from out of one thought, and then arrange it in sections. What one can generally say concerning the whole social organism, as well as references to what can occur in the first two realms—namely that of the spiritual life and that of the judicial, the body politic was contained in what I said. [Note 1] You will have understood from that, how preparing oneself for the content of such a lecture, one can proceed.

Now, one can also prepare oneself for the form of delivery by immersing oneself into the thoughts and feelings. We shall perhaps understand each other best if I say that the preparation should be such that we try hard first to sense and then to utter what is related to the spiritual life in a more lyrical language (without, of course, resorting to singing, recitation, or some such thing),—in a lyrical manner of speech, with quiet enthusiasm, so that one demonstrates through the way of delivering the matters that everything one has to say concerning the spiritual life comes from out of oneself. One should by all means call forth the impression that one is enthusiastic about what one envisions for the spiritual part of the social organism. Naturally, it must not be false, mystical, sentimental enthusiasm; a made-up enthusiasm. We achieve the right impression if we prepare ourselves first in imagination, in inner experience—even so far as to modulation—how, approximately, something like that could be said. I say specifically, “how, approximately, something like that could be said,” for the reason that we should never commit ourselves word for word; rather what we prepare is, in a sense, a speech taking its course only in inward thoughts; and we are certainly ready to re-formulate what we finally come out and say.

But when we speak about rights-relationships, we should make the attempt to speak dramatically. That implies: when we lecture about the equality of men, discussing it by means of examples, we should try as much as possible to put ourselves into the other person's position with our thinking. For instance, we should call to mind the image of how a person who seeks work, asserts his right to work in the sense of Kernpunkte der sozialen Frage (the threefold social order). By making it evident that on one hand we are speaking from the other person's position, from out of his assertion of rights, we should then make it evident how through a slight change in the tone of voice we pass on to the topic of how one ought to meet such an assertion out of general humanitarian reasons. So it is dramatic speaking, very strongly modulated, dramatic lecturing, that calls forth the impression in listeners that one could think one's way into the souls of other persons; that is the manner we should employ in speaking about the rights-relationships.

When lecturing on economic conditions, the main point is that we speak directly from experience. If, in the spirit of the threefold social organism, one speaks about economic relationships, one should not permit the belief to arise that there even could be such a thing as a theoretical political economy. Instead, one should limit the main discussion to describing cases taken from the economic life itself; either cases that one repeats, or cases that one construes as to how they should be or could be. But with the latter cases—saying how they should or could be—one must never neglect to speak out of economic experience. Actually, when lecturing on the economic life, one should speak in an epic style. Particularly, when presenting what is written in the Kernpunkte, one should speak as if one had no preconceived ideas at all concerning the economic life, and had no notions that this should be thus and so; instead, one should speak as if one were informed on all and everything by the facts themselves.

One can evoke a certain feeling, for example, that it is correct to permit the transfer of the administration of monetary funds from one who is not involved in it himself anymore, to somebody who once again can participate in it. But one can only speak about something like that if one presents it to people by means of descriptions of what takes place if there are legacies merely due to blood-relationships, or what can take place when such a transfer is occasioned in the way it is described in the Kernpunkte. Only by placing such a matter before people in a living way, as if one were copying reality, can one speak in such a way that the speech truly stands within the economic life. And just in this way, one can make the idea of “associations” [Note 2] comprehensible and plausible. One will make it plausible that an individual person really knows nothing about the economic life; that if he wants to arrive at a judgement as to what must be done in the life of the economy, he is basically completely dependent on communicating with others. A sound economic view can only emerge from groups of people and one is therefore dependent on associations.

Then, one will perhaps meet with comprehension if one calls attention to the fact that much of what exists today actually came out of ancient, instinctive associations. Just consider for a moment how today's abstract market brings things together, whose combination and redistribution to the consumer cannot be surveyed at all. But how has one arrived at this market-relationship in the first place? Basically, from the instinctive association of a number of villages located around a larger township, at a distance that one could travel back and forth on foot in one day, where people exchanged their products. One did not call that an association. One did not coin any word for it, but in reality it was an instinctive association. Those people who here came together for the market were associated with all of those who lived in the surrounding villages. They could count on a set circulation of goods that resulted from experience. Therefore they could regulate production according to consumption in truly alive relationships. There certainly existed such associative conditions in such primitive economies; they just didn't call themselves that.

All this has become impossible to over-see, with the enlargement of the economic territories. In particular, it has become senseless in regard to the world economy. The world economy which has come into being only in the last third of the 19th century, has reduced everything into an abstract realm; that is, it has reduced everything in the economic life to the turn-over of money or its monetary value, until this reduction has proven its own absurdity.

Indeed, when Japan fought a war with China and Japan won the war, one could very simply pay the war reparations by way of the Chinese Minister's handing a check to the Japanese Delegate, which the latter then deposited in a bank in Japan. This is an actual course of events. There were values contained in this check, which is money and has monetary value. It represented values. If you imagine how at that time everything should have been transported from one territory into the other this would have been a difficult process under modern-day conditions. But owing to the manner in which Japan and China were placed within the whole world economy, it could be done this way. However, all this has led itself to a point of absurdity. In the dealings between Germany and France, it has proven itself to be impossible. [Note 3] I am therefore of the opinion that the state of affairs can best be explained out of the economic relationships themselves, and then one can explain the necessity for the associative principle.

Once again, one should have to divide this subject matter regarding the economic life in a certain way, and one would have to pass on to several concluding sentences of which I have already said that they again should be conceived verbatim or at least almost word for word.

So, how will the preparation for a speech appear, in fact? Well, one should try one's best to get into the situation or the subject that the audience is prepared for, by formulating the opening sentences in a way one considers necessary. One will have greater difficulty in the case of completely unprepared listeners; less difficulty, if one addresses a group that one finds already involved in the matter, at least possessing the corresponding feelings concerning the assertions one makes. Then, one will neither write down the rest of the speech nor jot down mere catch-words. Experience shows that neither the verbatim composition nor the mere noting down of catch-words leads to a good speech. The reason for not writing down the speech is because it ties one down and easily causes embarrassment when the memory falters; this is most frequently the case when the speech is written down word for word. Catch-words easily mislead one to formulate the whole preparation too abstractly. On the other hand, if one needs to have such a support, what one should best write down and bring along as notes are a number of correctly formulated sentences that serve as catch-phrases. They do not make the claim that one delivers them in the same way as a part of the speech; instead, they indicate: first, second, third, fourth, and so on; they are extracts, so to speak, so that from one sentence perhaps ten or eight or twelve will result. But one should write such sentences down. One should therefore not write down, “spiritual life conceived as independent”; instead, “the spiritual life can only thrive if it freely works independently out of itself.” (Catch-phrases, with other words.) If you do something like this, you will then have the experience yourself that owing to such catch-phrases, you can in a relatively short time most readily attain to a certain facility of speaking freely, a speaking that only contains the ladder of catch-phrases.

Concerning the conclusion, it is often very good if, in a certain sense, at least gently, one leads back to the beginning; if therefore the end, in a sense, contains something that, as a theme, was also contained in the beginning.

And then, such catch-phrases readily give one the opportunity to really prepare oneself in the way indicated above by having noted these sentences down on one's piece of paper. So, let us say, one ponders the following: what you have to say for the spiritual life must have a sort of lyrical nature within you; what you have to say concerning the rights-relationships must have a kind of dramatic character in your mind; and what concerns the economic life must live in your mind in a narrative, epic form; a quiet, narrative, epic character. Then, the desire, as well as the skill, to word the catch- phrases in the formulation that I have indicated, will indeed begin to arise instinctively. The preparation will result quite instinctively in such a way that the manner in which one speaks merges indeed into what one has to say concerning the subject. For this it is, however, necessary to have brought one's command of language to the level of instinct, so that one indeed experiences the speech-organs the way one would, for instance, feel the hammer, if one wanted to use the hammer for something. That can be achieved, if one practices a little speech-gymnastics.

It's true, isn't it, when one practices gymnastics, those are not movements that are later executed in real life; but they are movements that make one flexible and dextrous. Similarly, one should make the speech-organs pliable and adroit; but making the latter pliable and dextrous is something that must be accomplished so that it goes together with the inner soul life, and so that one learns to be aware of the sound in speaking. In the seminar courses that I held over two years ago in Stuttgart for the Waldorf school teachers, I put together a number of such speech exercises that I now want to pass on to you. They are mostly of a kind that, by their content, does not prevent one from learning to merge oneself purely into the element of speech; they are only designed for practicing speech-gymnastics. If one tries again and again to say these sentences aloud, but in such a way that one always probes: how does one best use his tongue, how does one best use his lips so as to produce this particular sequence of sounds?—then one makes oneself independent of speaking and, instead, places that much more value on mental preparation for lecturing.

I shall now read you a number of such sentences whose content is often senseless, but they are designed to make the speech-organs pliable and fit for public speaking. [Note 4]

Dass er dir log, uns darf es nicht loben.

(That he told lies, 't'is not to be lauded.)

is the easiest one.

Something a bit more complicated:

Nimm nicht Nonnen in nimmermuede Muehlen.

(Take not nuns in never-tired mills.)

One should increasingly try, along with the sequence of sounds, to make the organs of speech pliable; to bend, to hollow, to take possession of them [Note 5]

Another example:

Rate mir mehrere Raetsel nur richtig.

It is naturally not enough to say something like this once, or ten times; but again and again and again, because even if the speech-organs are already pliable, they can become still more so.

An example that I consider to be particularly useful is the following:

Redlich ratsam
Ruestet ruehmlich
Riesig raechend
Ruhig rollend
Reuige Rosse

With this, one has the opportunity to regulate the breath in the pauses, something one has to pay attention to and that can be particularly well done through such an exercise.

In a similar way, not all the letters, nor all the sounds, have the same value for this practicing. You make progress if you take the following, for example:

Protzig preist
Baeder bruenstig
Polternd putzig
Bieder bastelnd
Puder patzend
Bergig bruestend

If you succeed in finding your way into this sequence of sounds, you gain much from it.

When one has done such exercises, then one can also try to do those exercises that cannot but result in bringing a mood into the speaking of the sounds. I have tried to give an example of how the sounds can pour into the mood in the following:

and now it passes more into the sounds, through which, here in particular, the mood in the sound itself is held fast:

You will always discover, when you do these exercises in particular, how you are able, without letting the breath disturb you, to regulate the breathing by simply holding yourself onto the sounds. In recent times, one has thought up all kinds of more or less clever methods for breathing and for all kinds of accompanying aspects of speaking and singing, but actually, all of those are no good, because speech with everything that belongs with it, with the breath, too, should by all means be learned through actual speaking. This implies that one should learn to speak in such a way that, within the boundaries that result from the sound sequence and the word relationships, the breath also regulates itself as a matter of course. In other words, one should only learn breathing during speech—in speaking itself. Therefore, the exercises of speech should be so designed that, in correctly feeling them regarding their sounds, one is obliged—not by the content but by the sounds—to formulate the breath correctly because he experiences the sound correctly.

What the verse below represents, points once again to the content of the mood. It has four lines; these four lines are arranged so that they are an ascent, as it were. Each line causes an expectation, and the fifth line is the conclusion and brings fulfilment. Now one should really make an effort to execute this speech movement that I have just characterized. The verse goes like this:

In den unermesslich weiten Raeumen,
In den endenlosen Zeiten,
In der Menschenseele Tiefen,
In der Weltenoffenbarung:
Suche des grossen Raetsels Loesung.

(In the immeasurably wide realms,
in the never-ending ages,
in the human soul's depths
in the world's revelation:
seek the great riddle's answer.)

There you have the fifth line representing the fulfillment of that escalating expectation that is evoked in the first four lines.

***

Speech exercises and speech gymnastics; the effect of coffee and tea upon the speaker; respect for the audience through proper preparation.

One can also attempt to, well, let me say, bring the mood of the situation into the sounds, into the mode of speaking, the how of speech. And for that I have formulated the following exercise. One should picture a sizable green frog that sits in front of him with its mouth open. In other words, one should imagine that one confronts a giant frog with an open mouth. And now, one should picture what sort of reactions, effects, one can have regarding this frog. There will be humor in the emotion as well as all that should be evoked in the soul in a lively manner. Then, one should address this frog in the following way:

Lalle Lieder lieblich
Lipplicher Laffe
Lappiger lumpiger
Laichiger Lurch

Picture to yourself: that a horse is walking across a field. The content does not matter. Naturally, you must now imagine that horses whistle! Now you express the fact that you have here in the following manner:

Pfiffig pfeifen
Pfaeffische Pferde
Pflegend Pfluege
Pferchend Pfirsiche

and then you vary that by saying it this way:

Pfiffig pfeifen aus Naepfen
Pfaeffische Pferde schluepfend
Pflegend Pfluege huepfend
Pferchend Pfirsiche knuepfend

And then—but please, do learn it by heart, so that you can fluently repeat the one version after the other—there is a third version. Learn all three by heart, and try to say them so fluently that during the speaking of one version you will not be confused by the other. That is what counts. Take as the third form:

Kopfpfiffig pfeifen aus Naepfen
Napfpfaeffische Pferde schluepfend
Wipfend pflegend Pfluege huepfend
Tipfend pferchend Pfirsiche knuepfend

Learn one after the other, so that you can do the three versions by heart, and that one never interferes when you say the other.

Something similar can be done with the following two verses:

Ketzer petzten jetzt klaeglich
Letztlich leicht skeptisch

and now the other version:

Ketzerkraechzer petzten jetzt klaeglich
Letztlich ploetzlich leicht skeptisch

Again, learn it by heart and say one after the other!

One can achieve smooth speech if one practices something like the following:

Nur renn nimmer reuig
Gierig grinsend
Knoten knipsend
Pfaender knuepfend

One has to accustom oneself to say this sound sequence, ‘Nur renn ...’. You will see what you gain for your tongue, your organs of speech, if you do such exercises.

Now, such an exercise that lasts a bit longer, through which this flexibility of speech can be attained—I believe actors have already discovered afterwards that this was the best way to make their speech pliable:

Zuwider zwingen zwar
Zweizweckige Zwacker zu wenig
Zwanzig Zwerge
Die sehnige Krebse
Maher suchend schmausen
Dass schmatzende Schrnachter
Schmiegsam schnellstens
Schnurrig schnalzen

And then: one occasionally requires presence of mind in direct speech. One can acquire it by something like the following:

Klipp plapp plick glick
Klingt Klapperrichtig
Knatternd trappend
Rossegetrippel

Then, for further acquisition of presence of mind in speaking, the following two examples can be placed together:

Schlinge Schlange geschwinde
Gewundene Fundewecken weg

The ‘Wecken weg’ is in there, too, but as a sound-motif, thus:

Gewundene Fundewecken
Geschwinde schlinge Schlange weg

The following example is useful for putting some muscle into speech, so that one is in a position, in speaking, to slap somebody down in a discussion sometimes (something that is quite necessary in speaking!):

Marsch schmachtender
Klappriger Racker
Krackle plappernd linkisch
Kink von vorne fort

Then, for somebody who stutters a little, the following two examples should still be mentioned:

Nimm mir nimmer
Was sich waesserig
Mit Teilen mitteilt

For everyone who stutters, this example is good. When stuttering, one can also say it in the way below:

Nimmer nimm mir
Waesserige Wickel
Was sich schlecht mitteilt
Mit Teilen deiner Rede

The point is, of course, that the person who stutters must make a real effort.

One should by no means believe that what I want to call speech-gymnastics, can or should only be practiced with sentences that are meaningful for the intellect. Because in those sentences that contain sense for the intellect, the attentiveness for the meaning instinctively outweighs anything else too much, so that we do not rely correctly on the sounds, the saying. And it is really necessary that, in a certain sense, we tear speaking loose from ourselves, actually manage to separate it from ourselves. In the same way as one can separate writing from one's self, one can also tear speaking loose from oneself.

There are two ways to write for the human being. One way consists of man's writing egotistically; he has the forms of the letters in his limbs, as it were, and lets them flow out of his limbs. One emphasized such a style of writing for a certain length of time—it is probably still the same today—when one gave lessons in penmanship for those who were to be employed in business offices or people like that. I have, for example, observed at one time how such a lesson in writing was conducted for employees of commercial establishments so that the persons in question had to develop every letter out of a kind of curve. They had to learn swinging motions with the hand; then they had to put these motions down on paper; this way, everything is in the hand, in the limbs; and one is not really present with anything but the hand in writing. Another form of writing is the one that is not egotistical; it is the unselfish style of writing. It consists of not really writing with the hand, as it were, but with the eye; one always looks at it and basically draws the letter. Thus, what is in the formation of the hand is of importance to a lesser degree: one really acts like one does when sketching, where one is not the slave of a handwriting. Instead, after a while, one has difficulty in even writing one's name the same way one has written it just the time before. For most people it is so terribly easy to write their name the way they have always written it. It flows out of their hand. But those persons who place something artistic into the script, they write with the eye. They follow the style of the lines with the eye. And there, the script indeed separates itself from the person. Then—while it is in a certain respect not desirable to practice that—a person can imitate scripts, vary scripts in different ways. I do not say that one should practice that especially, but I mean that it results as an extreme when one paints one's script, as it were. This is the more unselfish writing. Writing out of the limbs, on the other hand, is the more selfish, the egotistic way.

Speech is also selfish, in most people. It simply emerges out of the speech-organs. But you can gradually accustom yourselves to experience your speech in such a way that it seems as if it floated around you, as if the words flew around you. You can really have a sort of experience of your words. Then, speaking separates itself from the person. It becomes objective. Man hears himself speak quite instinctively. In speaking, his head becomes enlarged, as it were, and one feels the weaving of sounds and the words in one's surroundings. One gradually learns to listen to the sounds, the words. And one can achieve that particularly through such exercises. That way, there is in fact not just yelling into a room anymore—by yelling, I do not mean shouting out loud only; one can yell in whispering, too, if one actually speaks only for one's own sake, the way it emerges out of the speech-organs—instead one really lives, in speaking, with space. One feels the resonance in space, as it were. This has become a fumbling mischief in certain speech-theories—theories of speech-teaching or speech-study, if you will—of recent times. One has made people speak with body-resonance, with abdominal resonances, with nasal resonances, and so forth. But all these inner resonances are a vice. A true resonance can only be an experienced one. One experiences such a resonance not by the impact of the sound against the interior of the nose; instead one feels it only in front of the nose, outside. Thus, language in fact attains to abundance. And of course, the language of a speaker should be abundant. A speaker should swallow as little as possible.

Do not believe that this is unimportant for the speaker; it is rather of great significance for the speaker. Whether we present something in a correct way to people depends most certainly on what position we are able to take in regard to speech itself. One doesn't have to go quite so far as a certain actor who was acquainted with me, who never said “Freundrl” [Austrian dialect for “Friend”—note by translator] but always “Freunderl”, because he wanted to place himself into every syllable. He did that to the extreme. But one should develop the instinctive talent not to swallow syllables, syllable-forms, and syllable-formations. One can accomplish that if one tries to find one's way into rhythmic speech in such a way that, placing one's self into the whole sound-modulation, one recites to oneself:

Und es wallet und siedet und brauset und zischt,
Wie wenn Wasser mit Feuer sich mengt ...
(Quote from Schiller's The Diver)

So: it is a matter of placing one's self not only into the sound as such but into the sound-modulation, into this “growing round” and the angularity of sound.

If somebody believes that he could become a speaker without putting any value on this, then he labors under the same misconception as a human soul that has arrived at the point between death and a new birth, when it once again will descend to the earth, and does not want to embody itself because it does not want to enter into the moulding of the stomach, the lungs, the kidney, and so forth. It is really a matter of having to draw on everything that makes a speech complete.

One should at least put some value on the organism of speech and the genius of language as well. One should not forget that valuing the organism of speech, the genius of language, is creative, in the sense of creating imagination. He who cannot occupy himself with language, listening inwardly, will not receive images, will not be the recipient of thoughts; he will remain clumsy in thinking, he will become one who is abstract in speaking, if not a pedant. Particularly, in experiencing the sounds, the imagery in speech-formation, in this itself lies something that entices the thoughts out of our souls that we need to carry before the listeners. In experiencing the word, something creative is implied in regard to the inner organization of the human being. This should never be forgotten. It is extremely important. In all cases, the feeling should pervade us how the word, the sequence of words, the word-formation, the sentence-construction, how these are related to our whole organism. Just as one can figure out a person from the physiognomy, one can even more readily—I don't mean from what he says but from the how of the speech—one can figure out the whole human being from his manner of speech.

But this how of his speech emerges out of the whole human being. And it is by all means a matter of focusing—delicately of course, not by treating ourselves like we were the patient—on the physical body. It is, for example, beneficial for somebody who, through education or perhaps even heredity, is predisposed to speaking pedantically; to try, with stimulating tea that he partakes of every so often, to wean himself from pedantry. As I have said, these things must be done with care. For one person, this tea is right; for another, the other tea is good. Ordinary tea, as I have repeatedly mentioned, is a very good diet for diplomats: diplomats have to be witty, which means having to chat at random about one thing after another, none of which must be pedantic, but instead has to exhibit the ease of switching from one sentence to another. This is why tea is indeed the drink of diplomats. Coffee, on the other hand, makes one logical. This is why, normally not being very logical by nature, reporters write their articles most frequently in coffee-houses. Now, since the advent of the typewriter, matters are a little different, but in earlier days, one could meet whole groups of journalists in coffee-houses, chewing on their pen and drinking coffee so that at last, one thought could align itself with the next one. Therefore, if one discovers that one has too much of what is of the tea-quality, then coffee is something that can have an equalizing effect. But, as was mentioned before, all this is not altogether meant, as a prescription, but pointing in that direction. And if somebody, for example, is predisposed to mix some annoying sound into his speech—let's say if somebody says, “he,” after every third syllable, or something like that—then I advise him to drink some weak senna-leaf-tea twice a week in the evening, and he will see what a beneficial effect that will have.

It is indeed so: since the matters that come to expression in a lecture, in a speech, must come out of the whole person, diet must by no means be overlooked. This is not only the case in an obvious sense. Of course, one can hear by the speech whether it comes from a person who has let endless amounts of beer flow down his gullet, or something like that. This is an obvious case. He who has an ear for speech knows very well whether a given speaker is a tea-drinker or a coffee-drinker, whether he suffers from constipation or its opposite. In speech, everything is expressed with absolute certainty, and all of that has to be taken into consideration. One will gradually develop an instinct for these matters if one becomes sensitive to language in one's surroundings the way I have described it.

However, the various languages lend themselves in different ways, and in varying degrees, to being heard in the surroundings. A language such as the Latin tongue is particularly suitable for the above purpose. The same with the Italian. I mean by this, to be heard objectively by the one who is speaking himself. The English language, for example, is little suited for this, because this language is very similar to the script that flows out of the limbs. The more abstract the languages are, the less suitable they are to be heard inwardly and to become objective. Oh, how in former times the German Nibelungen-song sounded:

Uns ist in alten maeren von heleden lobebaeren, von freude unt hôchgezîten, von küener recken strîten		Wunders vil geseit von grôzer arebeit; von weinen unde klagen, müget ir nu wunder hoeren sagen.
Ez wuohs in Buregonden daz in allen landen Kriemhilt geheizen; Dar umbe muosen degene		ein vil edel magedîn, niht schoeners mohte sîn, diu wart ein schoene wîp, vil Verliesen dën lîp.

That hears itself while one is speaking! Through such things one must learn to experience language. Naturally, languages become abstract in the course of their development. Then one must bring the concrete substance into it from within, permeate it with the obvious. Abstractly placed side by side, what a difference:

Uns ist in alten maeren Uns wird in alten Märchen

wunders vil geseit Wunderbares viel erzählt

and so forth!

But if one becomes accustomed to listening, this can certainly also be brought into the more modern language, and there, much can be done in speech towards the latter's becoming something that has its own genius. But for that, such exercises are required, so that listening in the spirit and speaking out of the spirit fit into one another. And so, I want to repeat the verse one more time:

Erfuellung geht
Durch Hoffnung
Geht durch Sehnen
Durch Wollen
Wollen weht
Im Webenden
Weht im Bebenden
Webend bindend
Im Finden
Findend windend
Kuendend.

Only by placing the sound into various relationships, does one arrive at an experiencing of the sound, the metamorphosis of the sound, and the looking at the word, the seeing of the word.

Then, when something like what I have described today as creating a disposition through catch-sentences, as our inner soul-preparation, is united with what we can in the above way gain out of the language, then it all works toward public speaking.

One more thing is required besides all the others I have already mentioned: responsibility! This implies that one should be aware that one does not have the right to set all of one's ill-mannered speech-habits before an audience. One should learn to feel that for a public appearance one does require education of speech, a going-out of one's self, and plasticity in regard to speech. Responsibility towards speech! It is very comfortable to remain standing and to speak the way one normally does, and to swallow as much as one is used to swallow; to swallow (verschlucken), to squeeze (quetschen), and to bend (biegen) and break (brechen), and to pull (dehnen) at the words just the way it suits one. But one may not remain with this squeezing (Quetschen) and pushing (Druecken) and pulling (Dehnen) and cornering (Ecken) and similar speech-mannerisms. Instead, one must try to come to the aid of one's speaking even in regard to the form. If one supports one's speaking in this manner, one is quite simply also led to the point where one addresses an audience with a certain respect. One approaches public speaking with a certain reserve and speaks to an audience with respect. And this is absolutely necessary. One can accomplish this if, on the one side, one perfects the soul-aspect; and, on the other side, formulates the physical in the way I have demonstrated in the second part of the lecture. Even if one only has to give occasional talks, such matters still play an important part.

Say, for example, that one has to give discussions on the building, the Goetheanum. Since one naturally cannot make a separate preparation for each discussion, one should basically, in that case, properly prepare oneself, the way I have explained it, at least twice a week for the talk in question. One should actually only extemporize, if one practices the preparation, as it were, as a constant exercise.

Then one will also discover how, I should like to say, the outer form unites itself with the substance. And we shall have to speak about this point in particular one more time tomorrow: about the union of the form-technique with the soul-technique.

The course is brief, unfortunately; one can barely get past the introduction. But I would find it irresponsible not to have said what I did say in particular in the course of these lectures.

Notes:

Note 1.The threefold social organism, as depicted by Rudolf Steiner, is composed of three parts: the two mentioned above and the economic realm.

Note 2.(See The Threefold Social Order for details on “Associations.”)

Note 3.Rudolf Steiner refers here to the war-reparations demanded of Germany by France.

Note 4.The speech-exercises are rendered in the original German, since the emphasis is on their sound, primarily; a translation is often useless as well as extremely difficult.

Note 5.In trying to illustrate how one must take hold of one's speech-organs via the exercises. Rudolf Steiner modifies the four words in a manner that is highly original and unusual, and untranslatable as well. But they thus indicate a living working, an active doing. “Gesehmeithgen,” to make pliable; “zu biegen,” to bend; “zu hohlen,” to make hollow; “zu erhabenen,” to have or possess by effort.

Dear attendees! Anthroposophy, of which I can, of course, only sketch a meager and inadequate picture in the context of a short lecture this evening, does not want to talk about worldviews merely out of theoretical considerations or emotional impulses, but this anthroposophy wants to penetrate the most diverse branches of scientific and other life in a fruitful way. At present, anthroposophy is not only being discussed, but in Dornach, near Basel, we already have a School of Spiritual Science where a series of experts gave lectures and lecture courses on a wide range of scientific topics last fall and this spring. A therapeutic institute is being founded in Stuttgart to gradually introduce into medical practice the medical applications of anthroposophical spiritual science. And I could mention many more examples of this kind, which show that anthroposophy does not arise from some kind of sectarian sentiment or emotional impulse, but that it wants to place itself in life as a fact of life. Since it is based on such premises, it feels thoroughly permeated by the obligation to justify itself before the strictest demands that have gradually arisen in the scientific life of humanity. And it may well be said that anthroposophy seeks to take up precisely those points where the most diverse branches of science are currently showing that they demand a continuation from within their own structure. I would like to go straight to the point.

The great triumphs of modern science, which, as I have mentioned time and again, are fully recognized and appreciated by anthroposophy, these great triumphs of modern science are partly due to the fact that we have understood how to transform mere observation of the external sense world into scientific systematic experiment. And it is not only the results of the sciences of modern times that arise from experimentation, from the methodology of the experiment, from the experimental design, but at the same time, from the experimental design, from the way the experiment is conducted, arises what I would like to call the modern scientific attitude, which one must have if one wants to have any say in modern scientific life.

Anthroposophy now seeks to fully meet these requirements in a field other than that of recognized natural science.

What, then, is the actual basis of the certainty that we gain from experimentation in relation to the external world? It is based on the fact that we are able to compose the conditions of the experiment from our considerations, from our insights, in such a way that we are able to have a clear overview of what now emerges as a series of facts from these conditions that we ourselves have composed. What follows from this special characteristic of the experiment has now been worked out in the modern scientific world view, so that a knowledge of certain conditions, especially of the inorganic conditions of the external world, has indeed been achieved to a certain extent. The special esteem in which experiments were held has, however, led to what may be called scientific materialism. But this scientific materialism is justified in a certain sense. For, insofar as one aims to methodically get to know the laws of the course of material phenomena, it is really a matter of getting to know what we encounter in material existence as objectively material, as actual, and in its lawfulness. Great, tremendous progress has been made in this way.

But in more recent scientific life, we are confronted with another fact, a fact that does not stand alone, but which I would like to emphasize as a particularly symptomatic one: it was in the first half of the 19th century, in the age in which just that way of thinking emerged, of which I have just given a very brief description; it was in the age when one said goodbye to talking about a certain force that had always been assumed in the past and without which one did not think one could get along. What earlier natural philosophers or naturalists called the “life force” was abandoned. In the 19th century, this life force was already understood to be something very nebulous. The idea was that compounds of chemical elements and chemical processes in general should take place in the organism under the influence of this life force in a way that was only vaguely understood. And to the same extent that the newer experimental science emerged, to the same extent people no longer found satisfaction in speculating about such a life force. Because gradually all the talk about such a life force had become speculation. So around the middle of the nineteenth century, the scientific consideration of this talk about a special life force disappeared, and rightly so – at least if one is able to grasp things historically and scientifically.

But in more recent times, we are once again confronted with a different fact. The certainty that has been gained in experimental science, and what has been acquired there in terms of knowledge of material connections – it is gradually becoming apparent that this is not enough. The material connections, insofar as they can be traced into the organic, even into the life of the soul, these connections cannot be grasped with what can be gained from the experimental science that has been customary up to now. And there is more: one gradually gets the feeling that it is impossible to approach what is already manifested in the living organism, let alone the ensouled organism, with the concepts and ideas, with the summaries of phenomena that are gained as natural laws. And so there has emerged what is called neo-vitalism, which in turn appeals to something similar to the old life force that has been abandoned.

Anyone who looks impartially at everything that is being attempted in this field of penetration, or, as it is also called, the overcoming of the science that grew up in the second half of the 19th century, will see it as a hybrid, a half-measure, because the same kind of thinking that has been developed for external experimental science is being used to penetrate more or less hypothetically into the living organism. And by observing without prejudice everything that presents itself in this respect as a kind of hybrid, one must actually come to the conclusion that the same thinking that one has developed in the usual experimental science is really not suitable for penetrating into the laws, into the essence of what lives in the organic, in the animated, and in the spiritualized. Can we get by with a renewal of the concept of the life force when we want to grasp the organic, the ensouled and the spiritualized with the same thoughts that we are accustomed to rightly apply to the external sensual nature?

Those who have correctly grasped the anthroposophical spiritual science meant here are fundamentally convinced that we cannot get by with this. They are convinced that it is perfectly justified to assume that the phenomena of life demand, precisely when they are observed with the strictest science of the 19th and 20th centuries, a going beyond this science; but at the same time they require a transformation of knowledge itself, a transformation of the whole soul disposition, a transformation of the whole position of the human observer to that which is to be observed. Therefore, the anthroposophical spiritual science referred to here does not start from the same knowledge that must rightly be assumed in external natural science, but seeks to grasp that which obviously lies beyond this natural scientific field through other powers of knowledge. And these other powers of cognition – this is for her a thoroughly empirical, an experiential fact – these other powers of cognition are not present in ordinary life, in ordinary scientific research; they lie, so to speak, dormant in the soul, they must first be brought out of this soul. And until one recognizes that every speculative reconstruction of something like the old life force is of no use, until one recognizes that only the transition to a special kind of knowledge, the development of a special kind of knowledge that lies dormant in the soul in ordinary life and in ordinary science. Otherwise, one will not advance from the comprehension of the inorganic to the comprehension of the organic, of the ensouled, of the spiritualized.

How should one imagine the development of such powers lying dormant in the soul? What I shall now have to characterize in a few words as a matter of principle – the path to supersensible knowledge – can be found described in detail in my book How to Know Higher Worlds and in the second part of my Occult Science, as well as in other books of mine. I shall only emphasize here what is of fundamental importance in the matter.

Two things should be aimed for first. To a certain extent, human soul life must be developed systematically and consciously in two poles if such higher knowledge is to emerge in man. One side is this, which is best understood by building on the human capacity for memory. We need this memory for ordinary life, and we need it to establish a scientific life. If a person's ability to remember, if their memory, is disturbed, they lose their normal mental health. You only need to familiarize yourself with what a pathologist tells you about people whose recollection of their life events is somehow interrupted, so that they can no longer see their past life. What makes us a whole person inwardly, in our soul, is actually the ability to remember. But this ability to remember is at the same time what must now be overcome in a certain respect for higher knowledge. One must tie in with what comes to light in memory. In memory, so to speak, our ideas become something permanent. Again and again, memories can arise arbitrarily or involuntarily from the stream of our experiences, and this is precisely how our soul life is constituted. What arises there, the making permanent of the ideas, can be recreated in a certain way by means of the method that I called the meditative method of knowledge in the books mentioned. I mean this in the technical sense, not in the nebulous, mystical sense in which it is often meant today. Then, with full and free will, one must imitate what arises in the memory, namely, the fact that certain images enter into consciousness. One must present such easily comprehensible ideas to oneself, which may not be reminiscences, which may not themselves be memory images, which one can therefore either have recommended by another, or which one must put together in such a way that they are thoroughly comprehensible, so that nothing from the subconscious can arise and mix in; and these ideas must then be given duration at will. To a certain extent, one must be able to rest with the whole life of the soul on such images. It does not depend on the actual content of such images, but on this act of the soul. It depends on bringing the whole life of the soul together in looking, inwardly looking at such images. In this way, one acts on this life of the soul in a similar way to how one acts, for example, on a muscle that performs work and thereby experiences a strengthening. What matters is this intensification of the soul life. Therefore, what I have now briefly described is, in practice, a very extensive exercise, something to which one must devote oneself for a long time and in a very orderly fashion. Then forces develop that otherwise would not be drawn out of the soul life. Under the influence of the modern scientific spirit, we are actually striving more and more not to evoke these kinds of images into the field of our consciousness and to rest on them, but rather we have come to life or through observation, so that this soul power, to which I have particularly referred, and which must be strengthened, has actually been little practised in the modern scientific and life attitude. But it is this soul power that is important.

Now, I would like to add something here, so to speak in parentheses: Those who hear that such soul forces are being developed that otherwise lie dormant in the soul will be inclined, out of certain foundations of today's thinking, to say with a light heart: Well, yes, a certain pathology of the soul is being developed; hallucinations or illusions or other unjustified soul content are being created. And those people who have not seriously studied what is actually meant here have presented their misunderstandings to the world in the most inaccurate way [for example, by claiming] that, to a certain extent, such exercises provoke pathological states of consciousness. If you are a true observer of the soul and understand how auto-suggestion, illusions and hallucinations come about – I would have to give many lectures to describe it in detail – if you know these pathological phenomena – for they are all pathological – if you know these pathological phenomena of the soul life and the forces that lead to them, then you also know that what is developed in the soul life through anthroposophy, through anthroposophical methodology, points in precisely the opposite direction. Everything that leads to illusion, to suggestion, points in the direction of illness. What is cultivated in the soul through the anthroposophical method points in the opposite direction. All the powers that heal and restore health in the life of the soul and, through it, in the organic life are called forth by the exercises I am referring to here.

What I have described here leads to a certain emergence of soul forces that grow stronger. This leads to the first stage of supersensible knowledge, which I call the imaginative stage. Not because one is dealing with “imagination” in the sense in which the word is often used, but because through such exercises one gradually comes to images without being forced to do so by external sensory perceptions. These images are purely mental images that cannot be compared to hallucinations, but only to memory images. One comes to such images gradually, but in the experience of the image one knows at the same time that this image, unlike a memory, does not refer to anything we have experienced in the life between birth and death, but that these images come from the depths of the soul when one gradually appropriates these images. These pictures do not arise from morbid sources, for in that case one would be subject to an inner compulsion, but in completely free creation, but they arise in such a way that one knows: they point to a spiritual reality. That is the essential thing, that one rises to the realization: just as our memories point to ordinary experiences that we have gone through in a healthy, level-headed way, so these imaginations, these images, point to a spiritual world. A spiritual world enters our consciousness by bringing this soul power up from its depths.

Now, the important thing is not to stop at such an exercise, but to proceed to call up such images at will, in the same way as one has formed them. I would like to say: just as one develops a kind of higher, a kind of artificial memory within oneself, so one must develop in a higher way the power that would otherwise lie in forgetting. It is even more difficult to bring this power of forgetting under the control of the will, but this must be practiced. In this one has only just begun, and just as one would otherwise relate an impression to an object through an external sense organ, one now learns to relate what one experiences in the imagination to a spiritual object. Only through this does one then attain the next higher level of supersensible knowledge, even if only partially at first. One reaches the level that I — please do not take offense at this term, it is often misused, I use it only in the sense in which I have often characterized it — which I call the inspired stage; inspired for the reason that one now comes to relate that which was previously only subjectively experienced, only subjective imagination, to an objective, spiritual external world.

Now, my dear audience, something arises that is a new inner experience. It arises that a judgment, an approval or a denial of any fact that one experiences in this way in the spiritual, takes on the form of an inner fact. One now knows: One no longer lives in such an abstract inner soul life as one was accustomed to and as it must be for the outer world, which merely has to be depicted, which cannot be experienced, but one now lives in an inner world of facts, which is, however, a purely soul-spiritual world of facts. One experiences agreement with a judgment in such a way that what otherwise appears in one's soul life as what is primitively called the power of sympathy clearly emerges. One experiences rejection as antipathy; only that these experiences are not something that occurs so subjectively in relation to the objects as in ordinary life, but as something that is incorporated into that spiritual world that one is now beginning to experience.

To these exercises, which I have described, must now be added others that can be described in principle – the details can be found in the books mentioned – as belonging to human inner self-discipline. We surrender to the outer life in our ordinary existence. We surrender to our educators as children, we surrender to the living out of inherited traits, and in later life we surrender more or less to this life itself. One should only be honest with oneself and say how much inner self-discipline there actually is for a person in ordinary life. This self-discipline is what the spiritual researcher must tackle in a systematic, methodical way. I can only emphasize a few individual points here; in my books I have presented many such exercises, all of which must be applied to a greater or lesser extent if one is to arrive at a certain degree of the knowledge I am referring to here.

It is a matter of, for example, clearly and calmly investigating what is a particular idiosyncrasy of one's own self, what is a habit that has developed, and so on. Now, out of a purely inner impulse, one sets about completely mastering this habit, that is, not leaving it in such a way that it leads one, so to speak, that one is under its compulsion, but in such a way that one can say: I follow this habit or I don't follow it. There are all kinds of exercises that can be done, which in turn are entirely up to the person recovering – also because they introduce the person to a certain sphere of freedom, to a way of moving freely in life and also in relation to themselves. One can carry out such exercises in such a way that, for example, if one is a slave to one's handwriting, one can decide to change one's handwriting thoroughly. This is also a change of habit. In this way, one really takes one's inner being into one's own hands, so to speak. When such exercises are carried out systematically – but not as in the previously described exercises, where the soul life is more reshaped on the intellectual side, but now more on the will side – then it happens that it becomes much more difficult for us inwardly, let us say, to come to a decision or to let go of something than it is otherwise in life. In everyday life, the impulses of the will lie in the depths of our nature; we follow them directly; we are led by them. The spiritual researcher must, for the times when he wants to devote himself to spiritual research - naturally only for these times - be able to withdraw from the constraints of his soul life.

And if I were to describe the whole path, I would finally come to say: the spiritual researcher comes to distinguish precisely between rest and the transition from rest to activity in relation to his life of will. This is what one now comes to know: this summoning of oneself to action, this fully conscious surrender of the will, which can then no longer be guided by the instincts, which is completely distinct from the organic life, which becomes independent, such an effort of the will, as is otherwise only present in external action, where the muscles must be strained, this strengthening of the inner life of the will by raising it out of the bodily: into the soul. And when we get to know this, then the possibility arises to fully develop the inspired knowledge of which I spoke earlier, that is, to now really gain the ability to relate the imaginations to spiritual facts, to spiritual entities, just as we otherwise relate our outer sense impressions to outer physical objects or physical facts. And then we learn to recognize the nature of the spiritual; we stand face to face with it when we acquire an inner culture in this way, also on the part of the will.

I have so far described to you, my dear audience, what emerges — more on the level of the soul — in human experience as a result of doing such exercises. But one need not stop at that. And however paradoxical it may still appear to some people today, it is simply a fact of the empirically developing soul life, which can be systematically trained to become supersensible research.

What we gain by transforming the intellectual more, as I have described it, is that we not only work our way into an actual experience of the soul, but that we also arrive at the transition - and not through external observation, but through inner experience - to what we have now grasped purely in spirit. For we have gone through imagination, inspiration and intuition and have grasped the spiritual. And we are now able to follow up what we really grasp imaginatively – if we add the other types of knowledge – in relation to the physical processes that take place in the human organism through this soul-spiritual life. In short, through actual research, through observation or, if I am not misunderstood, I can also express myself by saying: through inner experiment, we are now able to see in reality what psychologists and soul scientists are striving for through speculation. The question is always: Yes, how does the external world affect the human organism? Does it work indirectly through observation, through thinking? How, on the other hand, does the human being work through the will into the activity, into the mobility of the organism, and so on? —

These things — call it interaction or parallelism or whatever all the words are called, but they remain words — these things, which one seeks in a speculative way but for which one can never arrive at a result through speculation, one simply penetrates to them through inner vision when one has attained to imagination. Then one recognizes that this imagination is nothing other than a higher stage of development of what I called in my Philosophy of Freedom, which appeared in the early 1990s, “pure thinking,” that pure thinking that I used as the basis for the concept of human freedom. This pure thinking, in which pure will also actually lives, is the thinking from which the impulse of free action must proceed. In ordinary life it often goes unnoticed when it occurs, and it occurs when there is freedom in some part of our otherwise determined action. We cannot ask whether we are free or not; we are always only free in some part, but freedom lives in our actions. Developing this thinking upwards to a real reality, which is now of a spiritual nature, results in the possibility of finding, in inner vision, the relationship of thinking not only to the soul, as I have just described it, but also to the physical organism. As I said, as paradoxical as it may seem to modern man, it is nevertheless the case that the one who experiences thinking in this way knows that there is something in the development of thinking that is in the human organism – it is quite different in animals — in a consolidation of the material, it represents a process that is essentially a nervous process and which, in its connection with thinking, can be seen right into its physical aspect. It is a process that can be compared to a consolidation of matter, to what happens when some substance that is dissolved in another settles. This material consolidation, this becoming denser of the material, this separating out of the material from a medium, that is what is now actually experienced.

The other side, the development of the will, is experienced differently when the experience is extended into the physical-organic. One experiences now: every real act of the will, everything that corresponds to the will, has an effect in the organic that can be compared to a kind of dissolution, a kind of atomization of the material. One could also say that it is something that is realized in a kind of material process that begins with warming and leads into a process that starts with warming and then gradually leads into that which, in ordinary life, our will development also more or less consciously represents. While in ordinary life, full consciousness is linked to the fact that very fine consolidations of matter take place inwardly, dissolutions of the material take place when more or less unconscious acts of will take place in ordinary life; not so in the spiritual life, where they unfold transparently.

In anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, as it is meant here, it is not about those nebulous things that are talked about in ordinary mysticism, but here it is about an equally strict development of an inner soul condition, as it occurs, for example, in the development of mathematical methodology. There it is a matter of learning to dispense with beating about the bush, with mystifying, if I may use the expression, for the purpose of supersensible research; there it is a matter of proceeding with inner systematic strictness in relation to the development of the soul, as one has become accustomed to doing out of the scientific conscience and the scientific discipline of modern times. Therefore, in spiritual science, those who have first truly acquired a scientific conscience and scientific discipline in external research will be called upon to say something above all.

Lest I be misunderstood, I must say the following: What I am describing here are the states of the soul that the spiritual researcher attains, but these are not his ordinary states. No, the spiritual researcher must be grounded in ordinary life with all composure, with all reasonableness, with all inclination to ordinary scientific thinking and research. And that which I have described to you as higher cognitive power, so to speak, only occurs at the moment when the spiritual researcher devotes himself to these higher cognitions. It is not something that captivates him or makes him a mystical enthusiast who always lives outside of life, but it is something that he can handle, that he consciously goes to, just as one goes to an external scientific experiment and then goes away again into ordinary life, in which one is a reasonable person with all the sobriety that is necessary in this life. Precisely the one who in ordinary life tends towards some pathological states of mind, who in ordinary life cannot employ his full personality like any other person, cannot be a spiritual researcher in the true sense of the word.

But now, when you consider this strict inner methodology, what do you get from it? Unfortunately, due to the limited time, I can only hint at what the further continuation of this research is.

On the one hand, you get the opportunity, I said, to see the connection between the thought, which is initially grasped as a purely spiritual one, and material existence. One comes to see how the thought unfolds in the material inner life. This is the primitive fact from which one starts, the experiential axiom, which in its further pursuit now gives that which allows one to recognize — as imaginative and inspired recognition develops more and more — what our soul life is like before birth or before conception in a spiritual-soul world. What lives in us in a spiritual-soul world, what connects with what comes to us from our ancestors through the material of heredity, we now learn to recognize in its context as a further continuation of the primitive connection between thinking and the material processes within us. In a sense, one learns to experiment inwardly. One learns to penetrate into the living experimental process, albeit in a higher, metamorphosed art of experimentation. Just as we create the conditions in the experiment under which the results develop, so we get to know their consequences in the material-inner life through arbitrary thought processes. And by learning to develop this, one recognizes how the spiritual and soul life, the supersensible life of the human being, which continues from life to life, lived in a spiritual and soul world before birth, or rather before the conception of the present life. This cannot be achieved through any kind of speculation, nor from dark mysticism, but only through a systematic inner development of initially latent soul forces, as I have described it.

And the other side: one learns how the will works, how the will, as it were, leads to the dissociation of matter, how the will initiates a warming process that then passes into something else. From this one learns to recognize how the spiritual extricates itself from the material, how the spiritual as volitional extricates itself from the material. And that, in turn, can be compared to the process that confronts us when a person dies, when the volitional spiritual breaks free from the physical body. One comes to recognize this complete process of passing through death, of the immortal part of man passing over into a spiritual world.

They see that the point is to pursue a spiritual science in such a way that one does not want to go into the abstract, into the nebulous spiritual, and only talk about it, but that one follows the living activity and creation of this spiritual, the transition of the spiritual into the material life, the wresting of the spiritual from the material. Thus presents itself a spiritual science that does not prattle and ramble on about some abstract spiritual, but which seizes the living spirit, which finds its transition to material activity. That is why true spiritual science is not at all an enemy of materialism, because it recognizes matter as that which fits into the general spirituality. It allows materialism to remain in its own field, as I said before, and it learns to recognize its justification. This will also give you the opportunity to see, if I can only briefly hint at it, how the fact that one learns to see the soul-spiritual functions in their expression in the details of the whole human organism provides an opportunity to follow the effect of the material itself in this human organism. I would like to say: He who knows how thought and will work in the human organism also learns to recognize how a substance or remedy works in the whole human being, which consists of body, soul and spirit. One learns to see through, to see through the human organism inwardly. This, however, is the entrance to an anthroposophically oriented therapy, to a truly rational therapy, which starts from a knowledge of the human being that has been acquired by seeing through the whole human being.

In the same way, it could be shown for the other sciences, as it has indeed been indicated, at least, to those who have taken part in this course, by various experts from our circle for the individual sciences.

This, then, is what I want to give at least a hint about, albeit a meagre and insufficient hint: how anthroposophy can have a fertilizing effect on the individual specialized sciences. But notice what actually arises in the cognition that is formed in such a way. I will present only one property of this cognition.

First of all, when we have struggled up to imagination and see through something imaginatively, when we see through a realm of facts, a realm of entities in the spiritual world, as one sees through a genus, a species of plants, or animals or crystals, then we are confronted with a real perception of external spiritual reality, with which the human being is connected; when we understand something in the external sense world, we also know how the human being as a whole is integrated into this external world. But by living in this external spiritual reality, we come to see through the world's interconnections as such. And here I would just like to hint at something. It should only be highlighted as an example.

The science that I characterized at the beginning leads us to the so-called heat death, into which the events of the earth will one day end. Yes, my dear audience, we can certainly grant a certain justification to everything that external science can tell us about this heat death. But this external science lacks that which man himself introduces into the events that external science describes to us. And by learning to recognize how human will works within the warmth being — I have described how it intervenes in a warming process — we can sense, and this suspicion becomes a certainty through spiritual science, that in this process towards entropy can mix in that which emanates from human morality, from human ideality, from human volitional impulses; we can surmise that this then plays an essential role when considered in connection with its effect on the outer physical nature. And then one comes to say to oneself: Just as the individual human being rises as a soul out of his physical body and enters into a spiritual world, so the totality of human souls and human spirits will live beyond the heat death, indeed beyond the end of the earth, into other cosmic conditions; they will experience what is no longer earthly, but what belongs to a metamorphosis of the earth's development itself. All these things result in a certain change, a metamorphosis of our cognition itself. And there it is a striking fact that I must now touch upon.

When one has already come to see something in the external spiritual world, then one notices what it actually means: one has metamorphosed one's own ability to remember, one has transformed it into something else. For the peculiar thing is that At first, spiritual observations do not enter into the ordinary realm of memory. If one wants to recognize what one has once seen in the spiritual world, one cannot remember it in the ordinary sense. This shows precisely that it is an observation, not an ordinary concept or a fantasy. If one wants to go again to that which one has observed and of which one has only an image, one must also here again take the same spiritual path. One can only remember the way in which one brought about this spiritual observation, but it does not pass over into the immediate spiritual observation. That is surprising for beginners who devote themselves to spiritual science, who come to see and then forget what they have seen because it is an observation and not a mere concept. One must remember all the details through which one has brought about the vision, then, if one has the necessary strength and if the meditative exercise was sufficient, one can bring it about again. Thus, however, the spiritual researcher is obliged to make the ascent into the spiritual world again and again and again. What we see in the spiritual world does not become a memory; if I may express it this way, it can only be the cause to bring about the same processes again and again, through which one has risen to spiritual vision. I would also like to mention: One can even — and that is not the worst thing about this spiritual science, because it protects against illusions —, one can, when one has already achieved a great deal for oneself in this respect, come to skepticism and can be repeatedly compelled to overcome this skepticism. One must always work inwardly, in inner activity. And this inner activity also flows from what is communicated, what is written down by the spiritual researcher, and what the other person can accept based on his common sense. For spiritual science can be received by every layperson with common sense, without needing to be a spiritual researcher, just as astronomical truths can be received by the layperson who can see through them, even without being an astronomer. But through what is developed in spiritual science as a concept, as an idea, as a mental picture, an inner activity is transferred to the human being, which is transferred to the whole person. In other words, what is transferred to the human being is what could be called a spirit-filled contemplation of the world. This presence of mind, this apprehension of the concrete, this leaving behind of the merely abstract, is what one particularly cultivates in spiritual science. But through this one is prepared for life in a living realization.

It must be said again and again: in modern times it is difficult for people to come out of their inner individuality to a social life such as I have described in my Philosophy of Freedom, which I have already mentioned, because this beginning must be made by looking at spirituality, even if it is in a primitive way, but still by looking at spirituality itself. But when one finds one's way into it by studying spiritual science, by living into spiritual science, then one is led to the concrete. But this concrete must be grasped if one wants to understand this life, which we can call social life in the sense of modern times. We need only look back a few centuries to recognize the transformation that has taken place in the social life of human culture. In earlier times, social associations and social ties emerged from certain instinctive foundations that lived in human beings. And from these social ties, one might say, from what one human being experienced in another, , that particular degree of love also emerged, which is no longer appropriate in today's world, of course, but which in earlier centuries, even in those that we do not want to conjure up, did live from person to person. This degree of love must be understood from the instinctive relationships from person to person.

The more recent period, with its advances in natural science, with the justified applications of natural science in the field of technology, with what in turn technology has demanded in terms of world trade and world economy, in everything we can call the modern technology of life, and in everything that man sees himself in this modern life, - all this has emerged, at the same time as man has found himself in the modern spirit of science. But this modern scientific spirit tends first towards theory. Spiritual science, as it can appear today in anthroposophical orientation, moves away from theory, it moves towards observation, towards the concrete, towards the grasping of the momentarily given. But through this, this spiritual science will not only be able to serve the sciences, of which I was able to give a rough outline, but it will also be able to provide essential services to modern life. This modern life has indeed taken on forms that clearly show how forces of decline and destruction have entered the modern world. One need only study their destructive frenzy in the East. Far too little study is being done in the Center and West regarding the destructive forces that have entered humanity. How did these forces enter humanity? We shall see how not science itself – which has its full justification – but how what has asserted itself as a scientific way of thinking wanted to extend itself to thinking about social life. You see how people like the leaders of the radical socialist parties, the Leninists, the Trotskyists, say that what they now want to develop in social life, they have appropriated from the scientific spirit. — Theories applied to social life — that is what we see approaching today as something much more destructive than what has already been in effect: this will to apply theories to life, to want to theorize about life, to want to spin all kinds of utopias in life. But what is given to us in social human life is everywhere the living human beings. And it is only an illusion, a sociological illusion, not to see how today, out of a certain inclination towards the theoretical, man also tends towards the theoretical shaping of reality. Even if he wants to be a practical man, he shapes according to theoretical prejudices. Today, the worst practitioners do this, that is, those who consider themselves to be practitioners; their practice becomes routine. One can see how humanity is in danger of growing into a social machine, a mechanism. What is well suited to the external art of experimentation cannot be transferred to the way people live together. By asserting himself today, the human being wants to be an individual. This is what causes the bitter struggles of the present, which one only has to understand. One can understand them as a rebellion of the human being against what wants to envelop humanity like something objectively external, like a social madhouse. That is where the human being rebels. It is the human being that matters. But the human being that matters is the human being who acts through his or her impulses of will and who can only be understood if one starts from a love and a feeling that are inspired by spiritual knowledge. For it is the spirit that works through people in social life. What is at work in social life cannot be grasped by anthropology, but only by anthroposophy, because anthropology starts from the general, while anthroposophy starts from in his individual freedom; because anthroposophy knows how to look everywhere, right down to the individual human being, and see how this human being is the one who places himself in social life. In this sense, anthroposophical spiritual science also wants to serve the most practical aspects of life. This tendency has given rise to what was first attempted in my 'Philosophy of Freedom', for example, as a foundation of the subjective in man for a contemporary social life adapted to the present historical period of humanity , which was then in turn presented in my “Key Points of the Social Question” not as utopia but as the fullest expression of life, from empirical observation of life, but one that is borne by the spirit.

What flows into life that fully takes into account the human being, that has understanding for the individual, that shows how the individual human being cannot be pressed into the general human mold, how national stocks are just national stocks, how other small associations are small associations with their peculiarities — all this flows from the spirit. And only an education that springs from the ideas and concepts of true anthroposophy can look into social human life in such a way that a living, vital, enduring, and inwardly fruitful sociology can arise, which can then also shape social associations. In my “Key Points”, I have attempted to develop such a sociology by eliminating all utopia.

And on such foundations, this anthroposophical spiritual science may believe that it can work in the direction indicated in today's lecture; in the direction that it can be fruitful — not by talking about world view out of theoretical or sentimental considerations —, but that it can have a fertilizing effect on the one hand, for science, which after all underlies our life more and more, and that it has a fertilizing effect on the other hand, for life itself, in its social shaping in particular; that anthroposophical spiritual science can not only create knowledge, but an actual spiritual-soul reality that is fruitful for science and for life.

First, as in previous lectures here, I must take a moment to ask for apologies, as I cannot give the lecture in the language of this country. Since this is not possible for me, I must make the attempt to be understood in my customary language. Secondly, I beg to apologize as I've arrived here with a cold, and so perhaps there will also be interruptions here and there throughout the lecture.

When one speaks in the present time of the question that has been announced for today's topic, a question that is indeed related to the deepest needs, the deepest yearnings of the human soul, then there emerges out of today's education the objection that questions so bereft of discovery cannot be spoken of scientifically at all, that one must be satisfied to let such questions remain within traditional beliefs, within the same things said about these things as are perception and feeling on the fingers. This is the familiar view nowadays, and therefore everything that is put forward from the point of view of a truly spiritual knowledge will be perceived as somewhat strange. Yet all that is brought forward here, that has arisen from valid points of view, can absolutely stand on the same ground as the accustomed scientific views over the course of the last three or four centuries, when the natural sciences actually climbed and arrived at the point of their highest success. But if one applies only the same methods of knowledge that are allowed by science today, then a way cannot be found into those areas for which answers must be sought, as far as is possible for people regarding such matters as those that we want to deal with today, questions of the soul's eternity, of the eternity of the innermost being of man.

Now the point of view here submitted wants nothing further than to continue within those natural scientific methods set down, but not just to those points from which one can gain a glimpse into the supersensory world, from which alone a possible view into the eternal nature of the inner man can be won. One must initially want to succeed in the acquisition of such knowledge so as to set the sights overall on the expectation of the knowledge itself. One must ask whether the insight, the inner realization, will stop within the ordinary consciousness as we apply it towards the phenomena of nature by measuring, by experiments in balance, through counting, arithmetic and so on, or whether a further glimpse into the supersensory is possible; whether an entirely different cognitive perception ought to be gained or not. So that we understand by such means this different cognitive perception, allow me next to make a comparison. I do not from the start want to prove anything by this comparison, but only to make myself understandable so that what I want to add as more evidence of any nature can be captured in just the right way.

Even in ordinary life we know of two states of consciousness within the human being that are strongly different from one another. We know the state of wakefulness, where we are from morning till night, and we know the state of sleep, in which we are outside of the ordinary circumstances of life, and from which arise colorful iridescent dreams. If we maintain a reasonable point of view, we do not attribute the same perspective of reality to these dreams that we experience in the waking state.

But let us consider: by what means in general do we come to speak of the dreams that arise out of the sleeping state—in general so to speak—so that they often carry, namely, an interesting character, but have a lower reality value, or perhaps in a certain sense they do not quite have the reality value compared to what we experience when awake? We come to an assessment of the dream world only by the fact that we wake up, and by awakening we come to an entirely different state of consciousness. What happens because of this awakening? We switch our will on, especially in our body, in our physical tasks. These depend on the will. After all, what we perceive through the awakened senses is also essentially caused by the awakening of the will in the senses, in the switching on of the sense organs. To a certain extent this goes on in our entire organism, our entire organism is taken hold of; we are able to turn ourselves to the natural world through our organism. And by what we experience because of this activity we are quite capable of assessing the value of the dream's reality. We could never come within the dream to any other insight about the dream than that which the dream itself presents as full reality. So long as we dream we see everything as real, what the dream presents to us in its colorful, dazzling variety.

Let us allow ourselves, once, to take up a certain correct, daring, paradoxical hypothesis. Allowing for this even once we would never awaken throughout our entire earthly life, but would constantly dream. Then we would fill ourselves during our conscious life on earth with all the ideas that we know only from our dreams. And one with such a problem could therefore definitely think that any force of nature—or by my account any spiritual being—could drive us to our actions, and in everything that we do from morning until evening our outer life thus proceeds as it proceeds. We would be accompanied not only with waking concepts, we would be doing something completely different of which we know nothing. However, we would dream our entire lives through, and we would come only to the thoughts that are not true reality. For that which occurs when we grasp things, when we see with the eyes, such as we have in the waking state, would not occur at all.

Thus we know our dream state only from the point of view of the Guardian's judgement. If such a thing is taken seriously, if we do not pass lightly out of habit over the usual events of life, then there arises just opposite the deeper soul questions this hypothetical view: Yes, is it not then perhaps also possible to some extent from a higher point of view to turn from our habitual everyday Guardian and awaken to something new, to a higher state of consciousness? Can we not allow ourselves to think that, if we can wake up out of the dream into everyday reality, we can also awaken out of everyday reality into a higher consciousness? Just as a higher consciousness is given with which we can judge the reality of the everyday world—where we are from morning until evening—can we not also judge the reality value of the dream from the standpoint of wakefulness?

I have put this before you first of all as a question, as an entirely hypothetical question. The same scientific point of view that I have here asserted now shows that it is actually possible for the human being to come to such a second awakening. Just as the shift from sleeping to dreaming in life occurs out of ordinary wakefulness, so this occurrence can increase to another higher level whereby one awakens out of this ordinary everyday life to a higher state and, from this, everyday life likewise appears as though out of dreams.

Now in order to take such a point of view at all, something is necessary that I always call, in this context, intellectual humility. This intellectual humility, however, does not belong to present-day man. Indeed, present-day man says to himself: “Well, when I was a small child, I dreamed in a certain way within life. Then I left childhood, I had to do so, yes, and I came to parenting through becoming older, through life itself. I was then in my entire soul constitution a different person. Each intellectual point of view that I had won for myself I had not brought into the world, for I had first developed it within myself out of the dull, dreamy state of the child's consciousness.” This is indeed the man of today, but here he stops, and then he says: “Well, I have this point of view. What appears to me to be true from this point of view is true; what appears to me to be false from this point of view is false. Through this point of view that I once won for myself, I am the sovereign ruler over truth and falseness, error and accuracy.”

Yes, one should not have this gesture of immodesty if one really wants to ascend to true knowledge of the supersensory world. So care must be taken: just as the human being has evolved out of the dull, dreamy soul-state of the child, so must it be presumed that from the standpoint of the soul—where he has already come once—he can continue to develop himself when he becomes an adult. Now it will be shown whether such a second awakening as I have hypothetically constructed is possible, whether such a development can be produced.

First of all, we naturally use those cognitive and mental powers that are already there when we want to enter into true, exact spiritual research. For there is nothing else the human being can use in relation to his soul constitution than what is already there; this he can try to develop further. Now there is a soul force that the more perceptive philosophers admit to, even in respect to our day, and if one looks at this properly it is already pointing clearly to the eternal essence of man. This suggests, however, that man will not develop even this soul force further; he will merely engage in philosophical speculations about it. That is to say, he wants just enough to stop in ordinary reality, and it is as though he, the dreamer, does not want to wake up, but wants to dream further about the dream in order to give himself an insight about the dream. He does not want to wake up a second time. The soul force I refer to is indeed beyond the power of memory. I do not want to engage in wide-meshed philosophical arguments here—naturally there is no time for it; in other circumstances there could very well be—I want to remain entirely within the popular consciousness. Let us imagine once that this popular consciousness actually works in man just as the power of memory and the power of perception do. Events that we may have gone through decades ago are accordingly brought up from the depths of the soul—or, preferably, we should say out of the depths of the human being so that we do not present a hypothesis about the soul. Out of the depths of the human being thought pictures will be conjured before the human soul that are the same as those that perhaps years ago were experienced in all of their vitality. What is actually occurring here? There lies before us something in memory that is different from what had been perceived in the outer world. In order to perceive the outer world it must be there. When the eye sees, that which is seen must be there. When the ear hears, that which is heard must be there, and so forth. What is experienced by the one perceiving is provided by the perception. With memory we have something in the soul that is not now present. What began as a perception, perhaps a long time ago, but is now no longer there, is conjured up before our souls by the memory.

From these facts intended here to emanate from spiritual science and not from philosophical speculation, connections can now be taken up and developed further through exercises of the soul. The question is this: if we are capable through ordinary memory of having something of the perceptions and the thoughts that are no longer there, but once were there in our earthly life, could we not perhaps also, through further development of such soul exercises, arrive at what refers to something that was never in earthly life, to something that is a more highly developed memory, yet is not actually a memory but an Imagination where the memory is so far advanced that something is presented that was not originally there? This can be achieved the more that we really develop the thought life that is used for ordinary consciousness.

This is not to criticize, but only to show the facts of mental life. Because for natural science and for the ordinary consciousness of the practical human being, only the external impressions of his consciousness are taken into consideration, and it is entirely correct that he surrenders to and passively experiences the thoughts of these external impressions. However, through this second process the higher awakening of which I have spoken can come about, but one must surrender all of the work and activities of thought life, surrender the forces of thought.

There then occurs that which should not be confused with what today is often called clairvoyance, which of course is based upon all possible associations dependent upon human organic functions. That which is acquired here presupposes that each step during practice is completed with as much prudence as the mathematician takes with his arithmetic for the mathematical sciences; so it is known exactly and precisely how to practice every forward step of the soul, just as the mathematician customarily carries out his work. Only the works of the mathematician are in objective forms, while here the work is to bring forward your own soul forces. In this manner you are finally led to remember. You live in an entirely different mental power than previously. Previously the power of thought was just abstract; you could think about something through your thoughts, but now, now you are internally experiencing the power of thought as a real force, just as you experience the pulsation of your blood. Now you experience thinking and action as a reality within you—now you see that the power of memory also lives in thought, only it is a dilution—if I may express myself figuratively—of that which is seen as a much greater power of thought, like the pulse of organic forces. You experience the reality of thought. And you can experience this reality of thought in so far as you really feel something that has not yet been felt. It has been felt in the physical body, and now one begins to feel a second, higher person. And this second, higher person then takes on a very definite shape.

So you have more than life in this time-body, the head is free: you have a human being in the etheric cosmos. That which I now recognize and know only in its importance as the earthly human being—and it actually has the I-sense—this is the human being as earth man, this is only the physical body that evaporates in space.

What we are as human beings as we go around in ordinary life, we are in that we carry a space-body with us, a fleshly space-body. Then we experience what I would call a time-body. One can also call this an etheric or formative forces body, as I have done in my books.

We experience namely that which emerges as a powerful tableau, an overview of our previous life on earth, from the point of time that we have reached, going backwards until the beginning of childhood. As otherwise we experience only a space tableau, now we experience a time tableau that occurs suddenly and is an overview of the entire previous life on earth. This is the first supernatural experience that the human being can have, his own earth lives suddenly appearing before him as a tableau.

Now someone can say: Yes, but perhaps this is only a somewhat complicated picture from memory. Indeed, one could likewise place together in thoughts what has been experienced and then form a continuous stream of memory; yes, one could just receive this picture as a memory picture. And perhaps we are brought to a state only of some self-deception here, to nothing other than such a memory picture from what you describe to us on the basis of your active guidance.

This would assuredly be so if there were no differences in accordance with the content! Indeed, if these things were really faced as though one were a scientist, confronting scientific things in laboratories, in physical cabinets, at the clinic and so forth, and then considering: is this an ordinary memory image? Imagine how people have approached us, how they have done this or that to us, how this or that has touched us with sympathy or antipathy, and so on. This can perhaps also provide us with a memory image that represents how natural phenomena has approached us. But it is always this that comes to us: what the thing mainly is when it is merely recollected.

In this tableau to which I have just drawn attention, it is not that the things draw near to us, but rather that everything comes out of us. This appears chiefly to be like that which we confront out of the inner forces of the soul as natural phenomena and the human being, yet everything appears from within us. This is real self-knowledge, real, concrete self-knowledge, which in fact occurs initially out of the previous earth life. And if we compare what we see overall, then we must say: that which we have produced from our previous life on earth does not behave like an ordinary recollection, but—like a sealing wax impression in a signet—it is the correct reverse image. And whoever simply makes this comparison will know that this is the first step of a new knowledge, of an increased memory that is not just more memory but represents an overall Imagination of a previous earth life. This is the first stage where one feels that he is this higher human being who carries within himself this time-body; this is not just something that the space-body has conjured out of itself, but something that has worked itself into this space-body ever since we have been on earth as human beings. For we recognize that the powers that lie in this space-body are of the same nature as the power of growth, the same kind that, in addition—for instance, when we were children—has wonderfully modeled our first—I want to say—unplastic, amorphous brain to the wonderful form that this brain gradually becomes, and so on.

And in settling into this time-body of the human being, into this first stage of the supernatural experiences of the human being, what must be rejected are all of the narrow-minded notions of the ego that one has, such as that the I is resting inside of the human skin. Now one feels as though he belongs together with the entire cosmos. Now one feels that he really is in his etheric body, in his time-body as a member of the entire cosmos, and he has a concept that is very real: if I cut off a finger of my body then it is no longer a finger; the finger has meaning only in the context of the organism. So by focusing on this time-body, you have a clear awareness: as a human being within this higher being you have the sense of being a member of the entire etheric cosmos, you belong to the etheric cosmos. It is really correct that the I now recognizes itself in its significance as an earthly human being; knows that it is actually owing to the physical space-body that the human being has the I-sensations as earthly man.

However, this is only the first stage of a super-sensible knowledge that can be acquired in order to feel the eternity of the human soul. The following higher stage actually leads, in truth, to a second awakening. For in the first stage we have reached nothing other than the self-knowledge of the earthly human being. The higher level will now be achieved with the same power with which one has initially, through active thinking, concentrated fully on concepts, and, with the same intensity of soul life, now carries away in turn such concepts from consciousness; only one has to come back to them time and again.

In the handling of all of these processes there is nothing suggestive; it proceeds as something with the fullest deliberation, like the course of mathematical procedures. But still, the one who finds himself surrendering such concepts, such thoughts in a strong manner, the one who moves as in the described example into the center of his consciousness, this is the one who at first is wholly devoted to these concepts.

And it is more difficult to get rid of these than the passively acquired ideas of ordinary consciousness. Therefore, in order to forget or carry away something from your consciousness, a stronger force must be applied than would otherwise be applied. But this is good, because through the fact that you apply this stronger force you can reach yet another higher state of consciousness.

You need only think honestly about what occurs in human consciousness when the familiar, passively acquired conceptions stop. Think first of all about stopping these visual concepts and you know that the person will fall asleep—such attempts have indeed also been made in psychological laboratories. This is exactly what now occurs in the human being when he, as a spiritual investigator, has first concentrated all of the powers of his soul on certain conceptions and then clears them away again. There then occurs in him a state which I call the deepest silence of the human soul, empty consciousness. And within this deepest silence of the human soul something very significant is actually said. Thus, the concepts that were first brought into consciousness with all of your strength are again released, and then you have an empty consciousness. This is simply so. You can wait in mere wakefulness for that which the inner life of the soul then reveals, but in that which I can only describe as the deep silence of the soul, something else enters in.

If we can agree on this soul experience, allow me to make the following comparison. Think to yourself: at first we are in one of the big, modern cities, where, if we go out onto the street, such real noise and tumult reign that we cannot understand our own words. Then, removed from the city, five minutes away, it is always silent, and another five minutes away it is even more silent, and more silent. Let us imagine then that we come to the deep, silent solitude of the forest. We can say: all around is silence. With the environment itself in silence our soul comes to silence.—But you see, we have not yet attained that silence which I now speak of as the deep silence of the soul. When one speaks of the silence of the forest over the din of the city, it is said that sounds very gradually cease. At the state of zero—having arrived at the zero state over the loud din—we call this, then, rest. But there is something that goes beyond the zero! Distract yourself, once, with one who has a fortune; he gives continuously of this wealth until he has little, yes, until he has less than nothing.

Nowadays we see that one does not particularly stop when he has nothing, but goes further. How does he do this? He goes below the zero, goes—as the mathematician says—into the negative, into debts that are made against the assets, into that which is negative in respect to zero, which is less than zero. Regarding the silence, think of this: we can go from the loud roar to the rest—zero—yet we can go still further, so that we enter into the regions of silence where the silence is stronger than the mere zero-silence. And the life of the soul enters into such regions, where there is a greater peace within than the mere zero-silence. If this occurs as I have indicated, the complex concepts of the consciousness are first powerfully extinguished; then the soul moves into the growing emptiness toward the inner experiences. There then emerges from the deep silence of the soul, contrary to the opposite sensual world, the objective spiritual world. Thus the spiritual researcher has arrived at the level I have described, and from the deep silence of the soul he meets the spiritual world, and he is gradually within the spiritual world, just as the human being through his eyes, through his ears, is in the physical-sensory world. And in the deep silence of the soul the objective spiritual world is revealed.

And then one can go further in the exercises. Just as one can get rid of a concept, so can one get rid of this entire picture of life that he had at the first stage of his super-sensible cognition, as I have described it, and that was experienced as real self-knowledge. This he can now clear away with all of his strength, clear away this time-person just as when, in the moment of realization when he had come to the time-person, he had already rid himself of the space-person with his strong I-feeling. Now the time-person can be removed. And out of the silence of the soul one is inflamed when one compares his own self-knowledge, the real self-knowledge, to the waking consciousness that has come in the deep silence of the soul. There is now revealed nothing spiritual, but through the outer work of his time-person he enters into the same world where he was before he descended to take on the physical body that had been prepared by his parents and forefathers. And from the deep silence of the soul there is revealed, in addition to the simultaneous spiritual world events, one's own spiritual and soul being, what he was before he descended to this earthly existence. Now he looks into the life that he went through with others before an earthly garment, if I may call it so, was accepted, purely spiritual-soul beings. The existence of the human being prior to birth or prior to conception actually occurs before the soul seeks to connect with others.

It is this that is the point of view represented here. One does not begin to speculate on any viewpoints so as to determine whether or not the soul is immortal. Nothing can be expected from this, because that would be as though one had pulled oneself out of the dreams, out of the dream that had won enlightenment. One must awaken in order to educate himself about the dream. Now one can awaken in the deep silence of the soul to a higher stage and clarify what life on earth is. It is formed from that existence that he had gone through before the step through birth—or rather through conception—and the descent to this earthly existence.

Spiritual science in the sense meant here wants to show the methods by which the vision of the eternal can be acquired by the human soul. This however is the second stage of spiritual knowledge by which we can climb to the secrets of the world, and which can also give us, in addition, the secrets of our own being.

A third stage is scaled through the fact that something is now a power of knowledge, although it is not a power of knowledge in ordinary consciousness, nor is the power of memory an actual power. We remember what we have experienced.

Just as little is another power of the soul a power of cognition. And when I say it is to be a power of cognition, then any scientist who sits here—I can understand quite well, because you have first to think as a scientist about these things, I know very well, and no one should actually speak with full responsibility about the exact spiritual knowledge asserted here who is not fully familiar with the usual scientific methods. So if scientists do not receive from the above the silent "goose bumps," they will at least receive a little if I now also claim that a force which otherwise plays a huge role in ordinary life—but should not be scientifically availed upon in ordinary life—that this will be now be taken as a power of knowledge for the soul to complete: the power of love.

Yes, certainly love plays a huge role in existence, but it is said that she is blind. It may not be taken as some sort of complete power of knowledge. But if one has driven the power of knowledge so far that we have come to the deep silence of the soul, then there occurs above all within this deep silence of the soul what one might call a distinct impression: When you want to see you have first to deprive your sight of the outer sense world.

You must pull it out of your physical body, pull it out even from the time-body. And then it fades so to speak, that coarser part that is bound to the physical body; the I-feeling very strongly goes yet further, as I have described earlier, where you feel that the time-body is already one with the entire cosmic existence.

But if—through the exercises that are described in detail in the books mentioned—you become acquainted with this deprivation, in which there occurs, in a very real sense, deprivation of the physical, deprivation of the time-body—if you look to existence as it was before you descended into physical existence on earth then you will experience something like a deep pain of the soul. And the true higher knowedge is actually born out of this pain.

Do not believe, if you are honest, that you can describe higher knowledge as being born out of desire! It is born out of pain. And you must gradually acquire the endurance to win against this pain.

If one acquires the endurance to win against the pain, then he will learn as a spiritual researcher to turn back repeatedly to physical-sensory existence in a slightly different way. Because he will understand, yes, that he will have what I have described as a higher knowledge—that may be acquired in the characterized example—for only a very short time. It is not about getting caught in a higher world if you are a spiritual researcher, for when you have stepped through the higher world you must return ever and again to the ordinary physical-sensory world.

However, one returns from the moments of higher intuition in which one has first learned, in deepest pain, to do without this physical-sensory world. Then you get a very different stance with respect to this physical-sensory world, since you actually get to know what may be called the feeling of being a victim. One really has this feeling, that remains within, of being a victim, and with full awareness—not only out of instinct but with full awareness—he surrenders himself to other beings or even to other natural processes.

While the instinct of love so acts that the sensation of love is felt to a certain extent in the physical body, then the love can be so developed that it runs in bodily-free activity if it is carried up and formed as a sacrifice to the other, in the spiritual world and also in the physical-sensory world. Then this love itself gradually becomes the power of knowledge. And then you get to know just what you can really only know when love becomes the power of knowledge.

You see, through love we come into a relationship with another being who may at first be foreign to us, and we feel ourselves standing next to the other being if we carry across our own existence into that existence. We need the certainty of the sense of our building a bridge to the unknown being through love. If love—at a higher level, I would like to say—so awakens as I have just indicated, then we obtain our ego again, like a foreign being that—yes—we have lost along the way, as I have described.

But how do we obtain our ego? As the one whom we were in former earth lives, who is as strange to us in this earth life as a different personality, taken to a higher scale by the spiritualized, refined level of love. Our ego is not given back earlier to us, not until we can grasp it in love as entirely foreign. We have not desired to see this ego as it has lived in former lives on earth, and then passed through the time that lies between death and a new birth.

However, we discover our ego where we are able to perceive ourselves out of the deep silence of the soul, before we descended to earth life, and look back to the previous earth life as it was before this purely spiritual-soul life.

But, I want to say—we must first have developed an entirely selfless higher love as a power of knowledge; this then gives us an unsought insight into a former life on earth. Then we know that we had to go through these former lives on earth. And we have so risen that we can see the ego, how it was and how it had a body other than the body that we have now, that has carried us since birth to this point of time in earthly life. Then we have arrived at this moment, to be able to really comprehend ourselves as entirely free of the body—that is, recognizing the moment to live through that we then live through as real when we pass through death. For we have placed the physical body into reality.

In the stage of knowledge that is gained in love, we remove the physical body of knowledge and we experience ourselves in the same elements where we will be with our eternal inner being when we pass through the gate of death into the spiritual world, from which we have descended into physical existence on earth. And so we experience immortality when we—forgive me when I use the term—first recognize the experience of unbornness.

But the eternity of the human soul consists of these two: from unbornness, for which we do not even have a word in our contemporary educated language, and from immortality. Only when one comprehends these two as two sides of the eternity of the human soul can one really approach understanding. In the intellectual conceptions of today, people unfortunately treat these things with a certain egoism. They say to themselves—without having to voice this—more unconsciously they say to themselves: Well, that which has preceded our life on earth does not interest us, for we are here. It interests us that we are here. But we are interested in what happens after death because we do not yet know this.

This is egotism, but the results are not knowledge. Knowledge results only from unegotistical essence. Therefore, no one can gain a real knowledge of the immortality of the soul who does not have the will to achieve knowledge of the soul's unbornness. Because the eternity of the human soul is composed of the soul's unbornness and the soul's immortality.

This also results in the outlook of repeated earth lives, as indicated at the third level of knowledge after full awakening out into the spiritual world; the memory not only extends into premortal existence, it also extends into the stages of existence in the previously-lived earth life.

Thus we know that there really is before us a second awakening of the soul. Out of the dreams we switch our will on in the body. As a result we live in the world of space while the images otherwise proceed, and we accept these passing dream images as realities; we recognize the awakened nature of the image. But by what means are the images images? By the fact that they stand as images. As we awaken, we switch on our bodily functions. I want to say, we see red as red, the same whether we are awake or asleep; we hear tones the same way, whether we are dreaming or awake. But while we are awake, having turned our will on to bodily functions, we go over to some extent to the realities—in crossing over the hard things we are not speaking now of philosophical speculations, but are entirely within the popular consciousness. Thus to a certain extent when we are awake we do not retain the picture in sensory perceptions, but cross broadly over the hard things. We are switched on to the same element that presents to us the things of the world, in the sense of physical existence.

Now we have gradually switched into a new world as a spiritual researcher. Why have we done this?

When you compare the thinking, the feeling, and the will of the human being as they exist in the soul and also in the waking state, they are actually a dream. We actually only wake up with sensory thoughts and ideas together in the outer world, and these are combined as sensory perceptions. As soon as we look within ourselves with ordinary consciousness, we are dreaming. Even our thoughts, when we turn inward, are more or less dream perceptions. This remains so dreamlike, even the will is asleep. For when we have decided upon any action we know how this action that we initially had as an idea continues down into our limbs as an idea, so that we begin to move the limbs. Only through spiritual science can one see what is going on in the muscles, what is going on in the entire organism; usually that which is a voluntary action remains inhibited during sleep. First we have only the idea. Then it all goes down into an unconscious state. Then the idea of the action occurs again. And what the soul by itself can only dream about even in the waking state, we gradually switch on through reinforced thinking, through the deep silence of the soul, through the power of knowledge awakened by love in the spiritual existence of the human being, as we switch on the ordinary awakening of the will in bodily existence.

Thus we learn to judge the eternal in the human being from the point of view of the ordinary physical-sensory life that we absolve between birth and death, as we judge the content of the dream from the point of view of physical-sensory life. We advocate recognizing the eternal in this way!

Again and again I have to say on such an occasion: of course the objection is given that these things only apply to those who want to be a spiritual researcher, who look into these worlds.—No, ladies and gentlemen, the spiritual researcher actually has these things for himself as a human being only slightly, when he brought them down with the usual introduction into ordinary language, into ordinary life. And this can happen as well for everyone who hears these things from the spiritual researcher.

Just as one has grown accustomed to accept the things that the botanist or the astronomer has explored with his difficult methods, so one will gradually have to get used to the things that the spiritual researcher has explored after he gives an account of his method, as I have described today—to accept, to accept more readily, for there is the same relationship between ordinary common sense and these truths as there is between the right aesthetic taste and a beautiful picture.

You have to be a painter to paint a beautiful picture, but you do not have to be a painter to judge the beauty of its image! One needs only to have healthy taste.

One must be a spiritual researcher in order to know the things as they have been portrayed. But just as little as one needs to be a painter in order to judge the beauty of a picture, just as little does one need to be a spiritual researcher in order with complete common sense to be in agreement with what the spiritual researcher says. Apart from this, for people today at a certain level it is possible that each one can be a spiritual researcher. The one who delves into the books I have mentioned, who does the corresponding exercises, can today—no matter in what profession, in what life situation—get as far at the least as to control in a completely satisfactory manner that of which I have spoken this evening, and many other things.

What is this knowledge that leads into the eternal soul? It is a realization that is not only grasped in the head of the human being, it affects the entire person. For that which is the world of color, the eye will grasp. For that which is the world of tone, the ear will grasp. For that which is the law of nature, the human mind will grasp. For that, however, which is the spiritual world—as I have indicated here today—that will be grasped by the entire human being.

Hence, allow me in conclusion to say something personal by way of illustration, although this is not meant to be personal, but is meant rather to be entirely objective.

If you really want to capture that which is disclosed by the spiritual world, you need presence of mind, because it slips so to speak, turns away quickly; it is fleeting. That which is to a certain extent advanced through an improvement in the power of memory imprints itself only with difficulty upon the ordinary memory. One must use all of his strength to bring down what he beholds in the spiritual world, to bring this down to ordinary language, to ordinary memory-thought.

I would not be able to lecture about these things if I did not try by all means to bring down what arises in me of what can be beheld in the spiritual world, especially to really bring these thought-words down into physically audible regions. One cannot comprehend with the mere head, because the entire human being must to a certain extent become a sense organ, but a spiritually developed sense organ. Therefore I attempt every time—it is my custom, another has another one—I attempt every time if something is given to me from the spiritual world, not merely to think it through as I receive it from the spiritual world, but to write it down as well, or to record it with some characteristic stroke, so that the arms and hands are involved as well as the soul organs. So something else other than the mere head, which remains only in abstract ideas, must be involved in these findings: the entire person.

I have in this way entire truckloads of fully-written notebooks that I never again look at, which are only there in order to be descriptions, in order to provide preliminary work in the physical world for that which is from the spiritual world, so that the spiritually beheld world can then really be clothed in words; whereby the thoughts of which memories are usually formed or that usually apply in life can actually be penetrated—Thus one obtains a science that relates to the whole person.

I will have to show you tomorrow how this science provides us with the opportunity not only to understand the cultural development of humanity, but it might also socially promote namely a foundation, a true, real foundation for a true, real education, for a true, genuine pedagogy, for Waldorf education.

These things, how the development of the humanity and the education of humanity in light of this spiritual-scientific world view is excluded, this I will have to describe tomorrow. Today I wanted only to evoke the idea of how this spiritual-scientific point of view, through knowledge, is based to a certain extent on a second awakening, the soul of the human being in its eternity again returning to the full life.

Yes, we have to experience this out of our awareness of time, that scholarship has just spoken of a doctrine of the soul without soul, in a certain sense.—I will have to touch upon this question tomorrow—even of religion without God.

Spiritual science as it is meant here wants in turn to enter into the fullest intensity of the soul of the human being, into the eternity of the soul; it wants religious consciousness, the godly-religious content to enter again into the development of humanity and the education of humanity, precisely so that man can come through awareness to his full dignity. And he, conscious of his dignity which results from his knowledge of the connection of his soul with the eternal, with the ur-eternal powers of the world, realizes that this is part of his true nature, as the physical body, as something that stands in everyday life, is connected with him, is part of his life.

This is that which people themselves have followed as knowledge, and already many, many of them crave the equivalent, if it is not fully conscious to them. That which today torments people, what they feel as the uneasiness of life that makes them basically nervous about what drives them so that they feel undermined in their whole existence, this is the burning question of the eternal forces underlying the temporal forces that we need to develop in normal and in social life. This spiritual science is here so that people who want to have knowledge of these eternal forces—that spiritual science here intends—can find methods to lead others to this realization, so that others can also engage in this knowledge in social life; that they and their fellow man not only see something as it were that is borne by the stream of life on earth, to be born with birth and die with death, but that they learn rather of something that will go through all eternity, guided by the stars and the aims of people through the cosmic goal so that this cosmic goal gives the correct meaning to all earthly goals.

Anthroposophy wants to speak to people of this cosmic sense, the sense of the goals of earth. This is what it would awaken in souls again as feeling and sensation in the relationship of the human soul with all of the forces of eternal life, for people of the present and of the future.

And this, ladies and gentlemen—if you are going on honest advice you will have to admit—is what one needs as a human being at the present time. And what one will need more and more as a human being of the future.

What I am going to say today is intended to deal with primary and secondary education, and to deal with it in such a way that what is of essential value can be useful for the present time, the grave times, in which we are now living. I believe you will have seen for yourselves that what could be given only as outline in my book The Threefold Commonwealth has many deep contributing factors—indeed very many, if we take into consideration all that arises from the new shaping of the world. So that actually in everything that must be said on this subject, preeminently where fresh activity has to be aroused, only guiding lines can be given to begin with instead of anything of an exhaustive nature.

When we look at the times in which we are living—and we need to do so for we have to understand them—it must constantly strike us what a gulf there is between what must be called a declining culture and a culture that may be described as chaotic, but all the same on the up-grade. I expressly draw attention to the fact that today I am wanting to deal with a special aspect of my subject, and therefore ask you to take it in connection with the lectures as a whole, once they are brought to completion.

I should like to start by drawing your attention to something that is clearly noticeable, namely, how the culture based on bourgeois social contract is in rapid decline, whereas we are witnessing the dawn of another culture based on what is largely not understood and represented by the proletariat. If all this is to be understood—it can be felt without being understood but will then lack clarity—we must grasp it in its symptoms. Symptoms are always a matter of detail; I ask you to remember this in what I am saying today. I shall naturally be forced by the subject itself to take details out of their context, but I shall take pains so to shape this symptomatology that it will not be able to work in the way of agitators or demagogues, but will really be shaped by the relevant circumstances. We may meet with much misunderstanding in this direction today, but that we shall have to risk.

Now in the course of years I have often asked you to bear in mind that, on the ground of the world-outlook represented here, it is perfectly possible to be a real upholder and defender of the modern natural scientific approach to the world. You know how frequently I have referred to all that can be said in defense of this approach! At the same time, however, I have never failed to point out what a fearful counterpart it has. Quite recently I reminded you that this can be seen at once when anyone, as a result of what we call here the symptomatic method of study, points to some particularly telling example and goes to work quite empirically. Now in another connection I have had to sing the praises of a recent remarkable work by the outstanding biologist Oskar Hertwig, Das werden der Organismen—Eine Wiederlegung der Darwinischen Zufallstheorie. Then, to avoid misunderstanding after the publication of a second book of his, I have had to remark how this man has followed up a really great book on natural science with a quite inferior work on social conditions. This is a fact fraught with meaning for the present time. It shows that even on the excellent foundation of the natural scientific approach to the world, what is pre-eminently necessary for an understanding of the present times cannot arise, namely, knowledge of the social impulses existing in our age. I want today to give you another example to bring home to you with greater emphasis how, on the one hand, bourgeois culture is on the decline and can be saved only in a certain way; how, on the other hand, there exists something that is on the ascent, something that must be carefully tended with understanding and judgment if it is to be a sarting point for the culture of the future.

Now I have before me a book that is a symptomatic and typical product of the declining bourgeoisie. It appeared immediately after the world war with the somewhat pretentious title The Light Bearer. This light bearer is admirably adapted to spread darkness over everything which today is most necessary for social culture and its spiritual foundation. A remarkable community of people have foregathered, who in separate articles have written remarkable things about a so-called rebuilding of the social organism. Naturally I can quote only certain passages from this rather voluminous work. To begin with we have a scientist named Jakob von Uexkull, really a good typical scientist who—and this is the important point—has not only a certain knowledge of natural science, is not merely well versed in it, but in his research work is recognised as an accomplished scientist of the day. He feels impelled, however, like others bred in the scientific tradition, to treat us to his views upon organising the world socially. He has learnt about the 'cell-state' as the organism is often called in scientific circles. He has certainly learnt to develop his mind, with which he then observes the social life. I want to refer you just to a few instances from which you may be able to see how this man, not from his knowledge of natural science but as a result of his scientific method of thinking—really quite correct but wholly absurd for practical life—how he now looks at the structure of modern society: he turns to the social organism, to the natural scientific organism, the organism as it is in nature, and finds that "the harmony in a natural organism can at times be disturbed by processes of disease"—and referring to the social organism goes on to say:

“All harmony can be disturbed through disease. We call the most terrible disease of the human body cancer. Its characteristic is the unrestrained activity of the protoplasm which, without considering the preservation of the organs, goes on producing more and more protoplasmic cells. These press upon the bodily structure; they cannot, however, fulfil any function themselves for they are lacking in structure.

“We recognise the same disease in the human community at large when the people's motto: liberty, equality, fraternity, replaces the motto of the state: compulsion, diversity, subordination.”

Now here you have a typical scientific thinker. He looks upon it as a cancerous disease when the impulse towards liberty, equality and fraternity arises out of the people. In place of freedom he wants to put compulsion, in place of equality, diversity, in place of fraternity, subordination. This is what from the 'cell-state' he has learnt to adopt as his method of viewing things, and which he then applies to the social organism. The rest of what he puts forward too is not without significance when considered from the symptomalogical point of view. He goes so far as to find something in the social organism that corresponds in the natural organism to the circulation of the blood, not at all in the way I have described it in various lectures, but as he himself pictures it. He goes to the length of looking upon gold as blood circulating in the social organism and says: “Gold possesses the faculty of circulating independently of commodities, finally reaching the collecting centres represented by the great banks (Gold heart)”. Thus this scientist seeks a heart for his social organism and finds it in the collecting centres of the great banks, “which can exercise an overwhelming influence on the movements of both gold and commodities”.

Now I particularly stress that I have no intention of making fun of anything here. I want just to let you see how a man, who from this point of view has the courage to think things out to their logical conclusion, is actually obliged to think. If today many people deceive themselves about our having during the last three or four centuries brought evolution to the point of making this kind of thinking quite intelligible, then it is evident that these people are asleep in their souls, that they give themselves up to cultural narcotics which prevent their looking with wide awake souls at what is concealed in bourgeois culture. For this reason I have shown you a symptom that sheds light on this light bearer, sheds light on the elements of present-day culture, in so far as, out of the scientific method of thinking, this culture understands the social life. In a further examnple I want to show you how different a result we experience from what we meet within the spiritual sphere.

Among those belonging to the society just mentioned there is a man with a more spiritual bent, by name Friedrich Niebergall. Now this Friedrich Niebergall is quoted because his attitude towards certain things we consider of value is most sympathetic. But I should like to say here that what matters is the nature of the sympathetic attitude with which from such a side certain matters are approached. If we know this, and if we are not mere egoists but understand the great social impulses, perhaps we do not value this sympathetic attitude very highly; and it would be good if in these matters we were not to give ourselves up to illusion. We know, some of us at least could know, that what we carry on here and call spiritual science, or anthroposophy, we have for some time considered to be the true spiritual foundation of what today is on the ascent. Here, it is true, extremes meet; and I have always been forced to experience how some of those very people who participate in our anthroposophical endeavors turn to other movements they feel to be closely akin, but which differ from our endeavors in that they belong to the worst phenomena of the bourgeois decline, whereas spiritual science has from the first been strongly opposed to all that is behind this. So we find confused together in a certain Johannes Müller, who has no power of discriminating the different streams—like Niebergall for example—we find in this Johannes Müller a phenomenon showing just the characteristics of our decadent culture; and on the other hand (you know I do not say these things out of mere foolishness) you find mention of my name. It is true that all kinds of elegant things, most elegant things, are said about what I try to accomplish. You must, however, realise how in all that is put forward in anthroposophy my every effort is directed towards taxing man's understanding and fighting in a pronounced way against anything in the way of nebulous mysticism or so-called mystic theosophy. This could be done only by approaching the highest spheres of knowledge with clear insight, lucid ideas, which will be striven for when through natural science we have learnt, not the natural scientific outlook of today, but true thinking. After the gentleman in question has declared how fine much of anthroposophy is, he adds: “Round this basis of practical truth there then springs forth a confused medley of alleged knowledge concerning the life of the soul, of mankind and of the cosmos—as once was the case in the all-embracing gnostic systems offered out of the secret wisdom of the East to an age seeking in like manner inner depths and peace of soul.” It is not possible to say anything less to the point than this. For the fact that the author describes this as confused nonsense, a confused medley, rests solely on his lacking the will to adopt the mathematical method of our spiritual science. This is generally the case with those wishing to gain conceptions from a knowledge that is on the decline. The result of disciplining inner experience by mathematical method appears to this author therefore to be a confused medley. But this conf used medley that brings into the matter mathematical clarity, perhaps indeed mathematical dryness, is what is essential, for it preserves what is meant to be pursued here from all fantastic mysticism, all nebulous theosophy. Without this so-called confused medley there can be no real foundation for the future life of spirit. It is true that by reason of our social conditions there had to be a struggle to make it possible for spiritual science to be carried on in the very modest dimensions it has reached today. We had to struggle with what very often appears as a result of most people—who now have time, and nothing but time, for the affairs of spiritual science—still having those old habits of thinking and perceiving which are on the decline. Hence, we have to struggle so hard against what easily spreads in a circle such as ours, namely, sectarianism, which naturally is the very opposite of what is meant to be cultivated here, and against every kind of personal wrangling which, it goes without saying, leads to the systematic slandering that has flourished so exuberantly on the soil of this movement.

Now whoever studies the life of spirit today from symptoms such as these will soon come to the point of saying: What is particularly needed in the sphere of spiritual endeavour is a return to original sources. The clamor for a new form of social life is always heard at a time when people harbor the most widespread anti-social impulses and anti-social instincts. These anti-social impulses and instincts are particularly evident in people's private intercourse. They are to be seen in what men give or do not give—to each other. They are to be seen in the characteristic way people ignore the thoughts of others, talk others down, and finally pass them by. In our day the instinctive capacity really to understand the people we meet is extraordinarily rare. The following also is a disappearing phenomenon—the possibility of people nowadays being convinced of anything unconnected with their social status, education or birth. Today people have the most beautiful thoughts, but it is very difficult for them to be enthusiastic about anything. In thought they pass by all that is best, and this is a deeply rooted characteristic of our age. As consequence of this fact—you know that recently I have talked of logic based on fact as being important for the present time in contrast to mere logic of thought—as consequence of this a longing exists in men today to have recourse to authority and the pronouncements of feeling rather than by their own inner activity to work through to things. Those today who talk a great deal about freedom from authority are the very people who, at heart, believe in it most firmly and long to submit themselves to it. Thus we see, only it is generally unnoticed because most people are asleep, a rather questionable tendency among those who, without finding any way out of it, are involved in this cultural decline, namely the tendency to sink back into the bosom of the old Catholic Church. Were people to realise what lies in this tendency to return to the Catholic Church they would be much astonished. Under the present conditions, if this tendency were to increase, at no very distant date we should have to witness a mighty swing over to the bosom of the Catholic Church by masses of the people. Whoever is able to observe the special features of our present culture knows that this is threatening us.

Now whence does all this arise? Here I must draw your attention to an essential phenomenon of our present social life. The special feature of what in the last few centuries has increased to ever wider dimensions, and will increase further in those lands which will preserve their civilisations throughout the present chaos—this special feature is the technical coloring of the culture, the particular technical shade taken on by the culture of recent times. Were I to speak exhaustively on this subject, I should have to point in detail to all that now is referred to just in passing; and one day I shall do so. This technical culture has indeed one quite definite quality; this culture in its nature is through and through altruistic. In other words there is only one favourable way for technical accomplishments to be wide­spread, namely, when the men actively engaged in them in contrast to egoism, develop altruism. Technical culture makes it increasingly necessary—and those who are able to observe these things see the necessity on every fresh advance of technical culture—for work organised on a technical basis to be entirely free from egoism. In contrast to this there has developed at the same time what has had its origin in capitalism, which must not necessarily be linked to technical culture or remain so linked. Capitalism, when it is private capitalism, cannot work other than egoistically, for its very being consists in egoistic activity. Thus in recent times two streams meet in diametrical opposition to one another: modern technical life which calls upon men to be free from egoism, and, coming from the past, private capitalism, which can prosper only by the assertion of egoistic impulse. This is what has made its way into our present situation, and the only means of extricating ourselves is to have a life of spirit which has the courage to break away from the old traditions.

Now today there are many people concerned with the problems of future primary and secondary education, school education, and of professional training for human beings. Especially when we are studying the question of primary and secondary education we must say to these people: Well and good, but with the best will in the world, can you interest people at large in primary and secondary education if you do nothing to change present conditions of education and matters of the spirit? Have you the material for the work? What actually are you able to do? With your principles—perhaps socialistic in a good sense—you may be able to found schools for a great mass of the people and to found institutions for their higher education. You may organise everything of this kind to which your good will impels you. But have you the material really to organise for the benefit of the people what you want with good will to extend to them? You tell us that you found libraries, theatres, concert halls, exhibitions, lecture courses, and polytechnics. But the question must arise: What books do you have in your libraries? What kind of science is dealt with in your lectures? You place on your library shelves those very books which belong to the bourgeois culture that is on the decline; you hand over the scientific education in the polytechnics to men who are products of that bourgeois culture. You give the nature of education new forms, but into these new forms you cast what you have absorbed of the old. For instance you say: For a long time we have been trying to give primary and secondary education a democratic form; up to now the various states have been against this for they want to educate men to be good civil servants.—True you are opposed to this education of good civil servants; you allow the people to be educated by them, however, for up to now you have nothing else in mind but these civil servants whose books are on the shelves of your libraries, whose scientific method of thinking you propagate by means of your lectures and whose habits of thinking permeate your colleges.—You see from this that in these serious times the matter must be taken far more profoundly than it generally is today.

Now let us just look at certain details to have at least something clear before us. We will begin with what we may call primary and secondary education. Under this heading I include everything that can be given to the human being when he has outgrown the education to be acquired in his family, when to this must be added the education and instruction obtained at school. Those who know the nature of man are clear that school education should never be a factor in the evolution of the human being until approximately the change of teeth has taken place. This is just as much a scientific law as any other. Were people to be guided by the real nature of human beings instead of by mere dummies, they would make it a regulation that school instruction should not begin till after the change of teeth. But the important question is the principles upon which this school instruction of children is to be based. Here we must have in mind that whoever is able to bring his thoughts and efforts into harmony with the ascending cultural evolution can really do nothing today bµt recognise, as inherent in the principles holding good in school education and instruction, what lies in the nature of the human being himself. Knowledge of human nature from the change of teeth until puberty must underlie any principles in what we call primary and secondary education. From this, and from a great deal of the same nature, you will realise that, if we take this as our basis, the result will be the same education for everyone; for obviously the laws which hold good in human evolution between approximately the seventh and fifteenth years are the same for all human beings. The only question we need answer concerning education and instruction is: To what point have we to bring human beings by the time they reach their fifteenth year? This alone may be called thinking in terms of primary and secondary education. At the same time this alone is thinking in a modern way about the nature of instruction. The consequence of this today will be that we shall no longer ignore the necessity of making an absolute break w1th the old school system, that we shall have in all earnest to set to work on organising what, during the years specified, is to be given to children in accordance with the evolution of the growing human being. Then a certain basis will have to be created—something that , when social goodwill exists , will not be a nebulous idea for the future but something practical which can be immediately acted upon. The basis for this will have to be created in the first place by a complete change in the whole nature of examination and instruction of the teacher himself. When today the teacher is examined, this is often done merely to verify whether he knows something that, if he is at all clever and doesn't know it, he can read up in a text book. In the examination of teachers this can be entirely omitted, but with it will go the greater part of such examinations in their present form. In those that will take their place the object will be to discover whether the man, who has to do with the education and instruction of the developing human being, can establish with him a personally active and profitable relation; whether he is able to penetrate with his whole mentality—to use a word much in fashion—into the soul of the growing human being, into his very nature. Then the teacher will not just teach reading, arithmetic or drawing; he will be fit to become a real moulder of the developing human being.

Thereupon, from all future examinations, which will take a very different form from their present one, it will be easy to discover if the school staff are really creative in this sense. For this means that the teacher will know: I must help this pupil in some particular way if he is to learn to think; another in another way if he is to unfold his world of feeling.—For the world of feeling is intimately bound up with the world of memory, a thing few people know today, most modern professors .being the worst possible psychologists . The teacher must know what to give to his pupil if the will is to unfold in such a way that the seeds, sown between his seventh and fifteenth years, may bring about the strengthening of the will for the whole of his life. The cultivation of will is brought about when everything that has to do with practical physical exercises and artistic pursuits is adapted to the developing being. Whoever is a teacher of those who are in process of development will concentrate all his effort on enabling the human being to become man. In this way he will discover how to utilise all that is conventionally called human culture—speaking, reading and writing. All this can best be utilised in the years between seven and fifteen for the development of thinking. However strange it may seem, thinking is the most external thing in man, and it must be developed on wha tever establishes us in the social organism. Consider how the human being on coming into the world through birth lacks any propensity towards reading and writing and how these belong to his life as a member of a community. Thus, for the development of thinking we must, comparatively early, have good instruction in languages, naturally not in what was spoken formerly but in languages as used today by the civilised peoples with whom we have contact. This efficient teaching in languages would naturally not consist in teaching the grammatical anomalies as is done today in the grammar school; it must be started in the lowest classes and continued. It will be important too that teaching should be given in a conscious way to unfold the feeling and the memory bound up with it. Whereas everything relating to arithmetic and geography—of which children can absorb an extraordinary amount when it is given them rightly—stands between what has to do with thinking and what has to do with feeling, everything taken into the memory has more to do with pure feeling, for instance, the history that is taught, the myths and legends that are told. I can only touch on these things.

But it is also necessary in these first years to give particular attention to the cultivation of will. Here it is a matter of physical exercises and artistic training. Something entirely new will be needed for this in these early years. A beginning has been made in what we call eurythmy. Today we witness a great deal of physical culture that is decadent and belongs to the past; it pleases many people. In its place we shall put something that so far we have had occasion to show only to the employees of the Waldorf—Astoria factory through the sympathetic help of our good Herr Molt; we shall put what—if it is given to the growing human being instead of the present gymnastics—promotes culture in both body and soul. It can so develop the will that the effect remains throughout life, whereas cultivation of the will by any other means causes a weakening of it when vicissitudes and various experiences are met with in the course of life. In this sphere particularly, however, we shall have to go to work with common sense. In the way instruction is given, combinations will have to be made little dreamt of today; for instance drawing will go hand-in-hand with geography. It would be of the greatest importance for the growing pupil to have really intelligent lessons in drawing; during these lessons he would be led to draw the globe from various sides, to draw the mountains and rivers of the earth in their relation to one another, then to turn to astronomy and to draw the planetary system. It goes without saying that this would have to be introduced at the right age, not for the seven-year-olds but certainly before they reached fifteen, perhaps from the twelfth year onwards, when if done in the right way, it would work on growing youth very beneficially.

What in a didactic and pedagogical way I have just now been discussing concerning primary and secondary education will, in accordance with the logic of facts, have a quite definite consequence, namely that nothing will play a part in teaching that is not in one form or another retained for the whole of life. Today, as a rule, only what is included among the faculties plays its part rightly—what is done by learning to read is concentrated in the faculty of reading, what is done in learning to count is concentrated in the faculty of arithmetic. But just think how it is when we come to things having rather to do with feeling and memory. In this sphere children today learn a great deal only to forget it, only to be without it for the rest of life. In future, stress must be laid on this—that everything given to a child will remain with him for life.

We should then come to the question: What is to be done with the human being when having finished with the primary and secondary school he goes out into life? Here it is important that everything unsound in the old life of spirit should be overcome, that at least where education is concerned the terrible cleft made by class distinction should be abolished.

Now the Greeks, even the Romans, were able to devise for themselves an education that had its roots in their life, that was bound up with their way of life. In our time we have nothing which binds us in our most important years with our quite different mode off living. Many people, however, who later take up positions of authority, learn today what was learnt by the Greeks and Romans, and thus become divorced from life today; added to which this is spiritually the most uneconomical thing possible. Besides, we are today at a point in human evolution—if people only knew it—when it is quite unnecessary for preserving our relation to antiquity that we should be brought up in their ideas. What people in general need of the old has for a long time been incorporated in our culture, in such a way that we can absorb it without years of training in an atmosphere foreign to us. What we should imbibe of Greek and Roman culture can be improved upon, and this has also been the case; but that is a matter for scholars and has nothing to do with general social education. What is to be imbibed from antiquity for our general social education, however, has been brought to such a stage through the work of great minds in the past, and is so much in our midst, that if we rightly absorb what is there for us we have no need to learn Greek and Latin to deepen our knowledge of antiquity; it is not in the least essential and is no help at all for the important things in life. I recall how, to avoid misunderstandings, I found it necessary to say that, though Herr Wilamowitz is most certainly a Greek scholar of outstanding merit, he has nevertheless translated the Greek plays in a way that is really atrocious; but, of course, these translations have been acclaimed by both the press and scholars. Today we must learn to let people participate in life; and if we organise education so that people are able to participate in life, at the same time setting to work on education economically, you will find that we are really able to help human beings to a living culture. This, too, will enable anyone with a bent towards handicraft to take advantage of the education for life that begins about the fourteenth year. A possibility must be created for those who early show a bent towards handicraft or craftsman ship to be able to participate in what leads to a conception of life. In future, pupils who have not reached their twenty-first year should never be offered any knowledge that is the result of scientific research and comes from scientific specialisation. In our day, only what has been thoroughly worked out ought to have a place in instruction; then we can go to work in an out-and-out economic way. We must, however, have a clear concept of what is meant by economy in didactic and pedagogical matters. Above all we should not be lazy if we want to work in a way that is economic from the pedagogical point of view. I have often drawn your attention to something personally experienced by me. A boy of ten who was rather undeveloped was once given over into my charge, and through pedagogical economy I was enabled to let him absorb in two years what he had lacked up to his eleventh year, when he was still incapable of anything at all. This was possible only by taking into account both his bodily and his soul nature in such a way that instruction could proceed in the most economical way conceivable. This was often done by my spending three hours myself in preparation, so as in a half-hour or even in a quarter to give to the boy instruction that would otherwise have taken hours—this being necessary for his physical condition. If this is considered from the social point of view, people might say that I was obliged in this instance to give all the care to a single boy that might have been given to three others who would not have had to be treated in this way. But imagine we had a social educational system that was reasonable, it would then be possible for a whole collection of such pupils to be dealt with, for it makes no difference in this case whether we have to deal with one or fourteen boys. I should not complain about the number of pupils in the school, but this lack of complaint is connected with the principle of economy in instruction. It must be realised, however, that up to his fourteenth year the pupil has no judgment; and if judgment is asked of him this has a destructive effect on the brain. The modern calculating machine which gives judgment the place of memorising and calculating is a gross educational error; it destroys the human brain, makes it decadent. Human judgment can be cultivated only from and after the fourteenth year when those things requiring judgment must be introduced into the curriculum. Then all that is related, for example, to the grasping of reality through logic can be begun. When in future the carpenter or mechanic sits side-by-side in school or college with anyone studying to be a teacher, the result will certainly be a specialisation but at the same time one education for all; but included in this one education will be everything necessary for life. If this were not included matters would become socially worse than they are at present. All instruction must give knowledge that is necessary for life. During the ages from fifteen to twenty everything to do with agriculture, trade, industry, commerce will have to be learnt. No one should go through these years without acquiring some idea of what takes place in farming, commerce and industry. These subjects will be given a place as branches of knowledge infinitely more necessary than much of the rubbish which constitutes the present curriculum during these years. Then too during these years all those subjects will be introduced which I would call world affairs, historical and geographical subjects, everything concerned with nature knowledge—but all this in relation to the human being, so that man will learn to know man from his knowledge of the world as a whole.

Now among human beings who receive instruction of this kind will be those who, driven by social conditions to become workers in a spiritual sense, can be educated in every possible sphere at schools specially organised for such students. The institutions where people today are given professional training are run with a terrible lack of economy. I know that many people will not admit it but there is this lack of economy; above all validity is ascribed to the most curious conceptions belonging to the world-outlook that is on the decline. Even in my time I have experienced this—people have begun to press where it is a question in the universities of historical and literary subjects, for fewer lectures and more "seminars"; today we still hear it said that lectures should be given as little space as possible on the programme but seminars encouraged. One knows these seminars. Faithful followers of a university tutor gather together and learn strictly in accordance with the ideas of this tutor to work scientifically. They do their work under his coaching and the results of the coaching are forever visible. It is altogether another matter if a man, in the years when he should be learning a profession, goes of his own free will to a course of intelligent lectures, and then has the opportunity of embarking upon his own free exposition—though certainly this would be connected with what the lectures contained. Practical application can certainly be included in the programme but this exaggerated emphasis on seminars must be stopped. That is just an undesirable product of the second half of the nineteenth century, when the emphasis was on the drilling of human beings rather than on leaving them to develop freely.

Now when we are discussing this stage in education it must be said that a certain educational groundwork ought to be the same for everyone, whether he is destined to be a doctor, a lawyer or a teacher; that is one aspect of the matter; in addition to this, everyone must receive what contributes to the general culture of man, whether he is to become a doctor, a machine maker, architect, chemist or engineer; he must be given the opportunity of receiving general culture, whether he is to work with his hands or his head. Today little thought is given to this, though certainly in some places of higher education many things are better than they were. When I was at the Technical College in Vienna a Professor was giving lectures on general history. Each term he started to give his general history; after three or perhaps five lectures he ceased—there was no longer anyone there. Then, at this college, there was a Professor of history of literature . Thus there were the means to receive what was universally human besides specialised subjects. To these lectures on the history of literature, which included exercises in rhetoric and instruction on how to lecture, like those given, for example, by hand—to these lectures I always had to drag someone else, for they were held only if there was an audience of two. They could be kept going, therefore, only by a second being dragged in, and this was someone different practically every time. Except for this, the only attempt to provide students with the information they needed about conditions in life was by lectures on constitutional law or statistics. As I said, these things have improved; what has not improved is the driving force that should exist in our whole social life. This will improve, however, when there is a possibility for all that constitutes the universally human not to be made intelligible only to those with a definite professional view but intelligible from a universally human aspect. I have often been surprised how distorted my lectures on anthroposophy have been by my audience; for if they had taken them in a positive way they could have said: we won't bother about the anthroposophy in these lectures, but what is said about natural science, which receives great praise when coming from the ordinary natural philosopher—that is enough for us. For as you all know these lectures are always interspersed with general information about nature. But there are many people who are not interested in taking things from a positive angle, preferring to distort what they have no wish to accept. What they refused to accept, by the very way in which the thoughts were formed, by the whole mode of treatment, as well as the necessary interspersing of natural science, could be taken as contributing to universal human knowledge, which the manual worker could receive just as well as the scholar, and which was also generally intelligible as natural science. Just consider other endeavors towards a world-outlook. Do you imagine that in monistic gatherings, for instance, people can understand anything if they have not a scientific background? No, and if they have not, they merely gossip. What here we pursue as anthroposophy is something that can change all knowledge of nature, and even of history, so that everyone will be able to understand them. Just think how intelligible to everyone what I have shown to be a great leap historically in the middle of the fifteenth century can be. That, I think, is intelligible to everyone. But it is the groundwork without which there can be no understanding at all of the whole social movement in our time. This social movement is not understood because people do not know how mankind has developed since the middle of the fifteenth century. When these things are mentioned people come forward and declare: Nature does not make leaps, so you are wrong to assume there was such a thing in the fifteenth century. This foolish proposition that nature never makes a leap is always being harped upon. Nature continually makes leaps; it is a leap from the green leaf of a plant to the sepal which has a different form—another leap from sepal to petal. It is so too in the evolution of man's life. Whoever does not teach the history that rests on senseless conventional untruth, but on what has really happened, knows that in the fifteenth century men became different in the finer element of their constitution from what they were before, and that what is brought about today is the development of what they have grasped in the centre of their being. If there is a desire to understand the present social movement, laws of this kind in historical evolution will have to be recognised. You have only to call to mind the way in which matters here are dealt with and you will say: To understand all this no special knowledge is necessary; there is no need to be a man of culture; everyone can understand it. This indeed will be what is demanded in the future—that no philosophies or world-conceptions should be propagated which can be understood only by reason of a form of education belonging to a certain class. Take up any philosophical work today, for example, by Eucken or Paulsen, or anyone else you want information about, take up one of those dreadful works on psychology by university professors—you will soon drop it again; for those who are not specially trained in the particular subject do not understand the language used. This is something that can be set right only by universal education, when the whole nature of education and instruction will be absolutely changed in the way I have tried to indicate today.

You see, therefore, that in this sphere too we can say: here we have a big settling-up—not a small one. What is necessary is the development of social impulses or, rather, social intincts, through instruction, through education, so that people do not pass by one another. Then they will understand each other so that a practical living relation is develcped—for nowadays the teacher passes his pupil by, the pupil passes his teacher. This can happen only if we run our pen through what is old—which can be done. The facts of the case do not prevent this; it all goes back to human prejudice. People cannot believe that things can be done in a new way; they are terrified that their life of spirit may lose what was of value in the old way. You have no idea how anxious they are on this score. Naturally they are unable to take all this in; for instance they cannot see all the possibilities created by having an instruction that is economical. I have often told you that provided this is done at the right age it is possible from the beginning of geometry—the straight line and the angle—up to what used to be called the pons a sinorum, the Pythagorean theorem. And on my attempting this you should have seen the joy of the youngsters when, after three or four hours work, the theorem of Pythagoras dawned upon them. Only think what a lot of rubbish has to be gone through today before young people arrive at this theorem. What matters is the enormous amount of mental work wasted, which has its effects in later life; it sends its rays into the whole of life, right into its most practical spheres. Today it is necessary for people to come to a decision in these matters—fundamentally to re-organise their way of thinking. Otherwise—well, otherwise we simply sink deeper into decline and never find the path upwards.

The matters which we are now discussing are connected with a fact that sounds strange at first hearing but which corresponds to a deep and significant truth—namely, man wanders over the earth but has in reality no true understanding of himself. One could say that this statement applies particularly to our own time. We know that once in ancient Greece the great and significant inscription ‘Know thyself’ stood on Apollo's temple as a challenge to those who sought for spiritual things. Nor was this inscription on the Delphic temple ‘Know thyself’ merely a phrase at that time, as we know from our various studies. For even in this Grecian age it was still possible to bring about a deeper knowledge of man than is possible at the present time. This present time, however, is also a challenge to us to strive again for a real knowledge of man, for a knowledge of what man on the earth actually is.

Now it seems as if the things that must be said in connection with this question are difficult to understand. In reality they are not, in spite of the fact that they sound as if they were difficult. They are only so for the present day because people are not accustomed to let their thinking and feeling flow into such currents as are necessary for a right understanding of something of this nature. The point is, that what we call understanding at the present day is actually the result of our always seeking to understand through abstract concepts. But one cannot understand everything through abstract concepts. Above all one cannot understand the human being through abstract concepts; one requires something different for the understanding of man. One must put oneself in the position of taking man as he wanders about over the earth, as a picture, as a picture which expresses something, which discloses something, which wants to reveal something to us. One must revive the consciousness that the human being is a riddle that wants to be solved. We shall not, however, solve the riddle of man if we are content to continue to be so indolent, so theoretic in our thinking as we now prefer. For you see, the human being is—this we have stressed again and again—a complicated being. Man is more, vastly more than the physical form that wanders about before our eyes as man—far, far more is man. But this physical structure that wanders round before our eyes as man, and all that belongs to it, is none the less an expression for the whole comprehensive being of man. And one can say: Not only can one recognize in the human form, in the physical man that goes about among us, what man is between birth and death here in the physical word, but, if one only will, one can also recognize in the human being what he is as immortal, as eternal being of soul. One must only develop a feeling that this human form is a complexity. Our modern science, which is made popular and so can reach everyone, is not fitted to call forth a feeling of what a miraculous structure this human being actually is, who wanders about on earth. One must regard man quite differently.

You have assuredly all seen a human skeleton—remember then that the human skeleton is actually twofold, if one disregards everything else. One could speak much more exactly, but if one disregards all the rest, the skeleton is a duality. You can easily lift up the skull from the skeleton; it is really only set upon it, and then the rest of the human being remains skull-less. The skull is very easily lifted off. The rest of the man without the skull is still a very complicated being, but we will now grasp it as a unit and leave aside its complexity. But we will first consider the duality which we see when we look at a human being, as, let us say, head-man, and for the rest trunk-man. And so too is the complete flesh and blood man a duality, though it is there less clearly shown.

Now in spiritual science we need not be so fond of comparisons as to treat them as absolute, develop them metaphysically—that we will not do. But by employing comparisons we wish to make various things clear. And so it is very natural, since it actually corresponds to what we see, to say: man in respect of his head is above all ruled by the spherical form. If one desires to express in a diagram what the human head is, we can say: man is ruled by the spherical form (see diagram).

If we wish to have a diagrammatic picture for the rest of man, we should naturally have to pay attention to the complications, only we will not do that today. You will, however, easily see that disregarding certain complications, just as schematically one can picture the human head as a sphere, so one can picture the rest of man in such a form as this (see diagram: moon form), only, of course, the two circles must be placed in varied positions according to the corpulence of each individual.

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

But we can, as it were, really conceive of man so—as spherical form and as moon-form. This has a deep inner justification; however we will not discuss this, but only think of the fact that the human being falls into these two members.

Now, man's head is in the first place a true apparatus for spiritual activity, for all that man can produce by way of human thoughts, human feelings. The head, the apparatus ... but, if we were committed to the thoughts, the feelings, that the head as apparatus can supply, we should never be in the position of really understanding the being of man. If we were committed to use the head alone as an instrument of our spiritual life, we should never be in the position of really saying ‘I’ to ourselves. For what is this head? This head is in truth, as it meets us in its globular form, an image of the whole cosmos, as the cosmos appears to you with all its stars, fixed stars, planets and comets; even meteors—irregularities, as we know—make their appearance in many heads. The human head is an image of the macrocosm, an image of the whole world. And only the prejudice of our time—I have indicated this in another connection—knows nothing of the fact that the whole world has a share in the coming about of a human head. But now, if through heredity, through birth, this human head is transposed to the earth, it can be no apparatus for comprehending the being of man himself. We have been given in our head an apparatus, as it were, which is like an extract of the whole world, but which is not competent to comprehend man. Why? Well, by reason of the fact that man is more than all that we can see and can think through our head. Many people say nowadays ‘there are limits to human knowledge, one cannot get beyond these limits!’ But this is only because they merely reckon with the wisdom of the head, and the wisdom of the head, it is true, does not get beyond certain limits. This wisdom of the head, my dear friends, has also made what a few days ago we described as the Greek Gods. The Greek Gods have proceeded from the wisdom of the head. They are the upper Gods; they are therefore only Gods for all that the head of man can encompass with its wisdom.

Now I have often brought to your attention that besides this external mythology the Greeks had their Mysteries. The Greeks revered in the Mysteries other Gods as well as the celestial Gods, namely, the Chthonic Gods. And of one who was initiated in the Mysteries one could say with truth: he learns to know the upper and the lower Gods, the Upper and the Lower Gods. The upper Gods were those of the Zeus-circle; but they only have rulership over what is spread out before the senses, and what the intellect can understand. The human being is more than this. Man is rooted with his being in the kingdom of the lower Gods, in the kingdom of the Chthonic Gods.

But it is no good, my dear friends, if one only looks at the part of man which I have drawn here in the sketch. If one is to turn one's mind to the rooting of man in the kingdom of the lower Gods then one must complete this drawing and make it so: one must also, as it were, include the unillumined moon. (See drawing below.) In other words, one must regard the head of man differently from the rest of the organism. With the rest of the organism one must far more have in mind what is spiritual, what is super-sensible and invisible. The head of man as it confronts us is externally complete. All that is spiritual has formed for itself an image in the head. In the rest of man that is not the case; the remaining part is only a fragment as physical man, and it is not enough for the rest of man if one takes this bodily fragment which wanders visibly about on earth.

Now this already shows us that we must accept man as complicated. But, does what I have just said ever come before us in life? What I have just said seems to be abstract, it seems paradoxical and hard to understand, but yet the question

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

must arise: does it ever come before us in life? That is the important thing: it appears in life quite clearly. The head is the instrument of our wisdom; it is so strongly the instrument of our wisdom, that our immediate wisdom is connected with its development. But even external anatomical physiological observation—look how a head develops, how a man grows up—shows that the head goes through a quite different development from the rest of the organism. The head develops quickly, the remaining organism slowly. The head in a child is relatively already quite finished, it develops very little further. The rest of the organism is still little perfected and goes slowly through its stages. This is connected with the fact that in life as well we are really a duplex being. Not only does our skeleton show the head and the remaining organism, but life itself shows this twofold nature: our head develops quickly, the rest of our organism slowly. At our present time the head develops practically up to our twenty-eighth or twenty-seventh year, the rest of the organism needs the whole of life up to death to do this. One can in fact only experience in a whole lifetime what the head acquires in a relatively short time. This is connected with many mysteries.

The spiritual investigator has a special knowledge of these things if he is able to observe a fatal accident... again it sounds strange but it expresses the full truth, in a fatal accident. Imagine that a person is struck down, dies by an accident. Let us suppose that a man is struck dead in his thirtieth year. To outer physical observation such a sudden death is a kind of accident: but from a spiritual science outlook it is simply absurd to regard such an affair as accidental. For in the moment when from outside, from any external cause, a man suddenly meets with death, an immense amount rapidly takes place. Think to yourselves: this same man who has been killed at the age of thirty would have become in the ordinary course of things perhaps seventy, eighty, ninety years old. If he had still lived from thirty to ninety years he would slowly have gone through, one after another, many life experiences. What he would thus have experienced during sixty years of life, he now goes through rapidly, it might even be in half-a-minute, if he is killed at the age of thirty. When it is a matter of the spiritual world, time relationships are different from what they seem to us here on the physical plane. A sudden death caused by external circumstances—one must treat the matter quite exactly—can cause the experience, I say the experience, the life-wisdom of the whole life that might still have been lived, to be passed through under certain circumstances very rapidly.

One is in this way enabled to see how a man assimilates life-wisdom, life-experience all his life through. And one can study through it the relation between what the head can provide with its short development, and what the rest of the human being can furnish with its long development in the social life. It is really true that during his young days a man takes in certain ideas and concepts that he learns; but he then only learns them. They are then head-knowledge. The rest of life that runs more slowly, is destined to transform the head-knowledge gradually into heart-knowledge—I now call the other man not the head-man, I call him the heart-man—to transform head-knowledge into heart-knowledge, knowledge in which the whole man shares, not only the head.

We need much longer to transform head-knowledge into heart-knowledge than to assimilate the head-knowledge. Even if the head-knowledge is an especially clever knowledge, one needs today the time into the twenties, is it not so? then one is a quite clever person, academically quite clever. But in order to unite this knowledge fully with the whole man, one must keep flexible one's whole life through. And one needs just as much longer to change head-knowledge into heart-knowledge as one lives longer than to the twenty-seventh or twenty-sixth year. In so far is the human being also of a twofold nature. One quickly acquires the head-knowledge and can then in the course of life change it into heart-knowledge.

It is not quite easy to know what this actually signifies. And, perhaps I may venture to instance an experience of the spiritual investigator through which something may be more easily known concerning these things than through other results of spiritual research. If one makes oneself acquainted with the speech which the human souls speak who have gone through the gate of death, who live in the spiritual world after death, one understands to some degree the speech of the dead, the so-called dead, one can then make the experience that the dead express themselves in a very special way upon many things connected with human life. The dead have a speech today that we who are living cannot yet quite understand. The comprehensions of the dead and the living lie somewhat far apart from one another today. The dead have a thorough consciousness of how man develops quickly as headman and slowly as heart-man. And if the dead wish to express what really happens when the quickly gained head-knowledge lives itself into the slower course of the heart-knowledge, they say there wisdom-knowledge is transformed through what ascends from man as heart-warmth or love. Wisdom is fructified in man by love. So say the dead.¹

And that is in fact a profound and significant law of life. One can acquire head-knowledge rapidly, one can know a tremendous amount precisely in our age, for natural science—not the natural-scientist—natural science has made very great advances in our time and has a rich content. But this content has remained head-knowledge, it has not been transformed into heart-knowledge because people—I pointed this out yesterday—no longer pay attention to what approaches in life after the twenty-seventh year, because people do not understand how to become old—or I could say, to remain young in growing old. Because men do not keep the inner livingness their heart grows cold; the heart warmth does not stream up to the head; love, which comes from the rest of the organism, does not fructify the head. The head-knowledge remains cold theory. There is no necessity for it to remain cold theory, all head-knowledge can be transformed into heart-knowledge. And that is precisely the task of the future; that head-knowledge shall gradually be transformed into heart-knowledge. A real miracle will happen if head-knowledge is transformed into heart-knowledge! One is completely right if one vigorously declaims today against the materialistic natural science, or, really, natural-philosophy—one is completely right, but all the same, something else is true. If this natural science which has remained mere head-knowledge in Haeckel, Spencer, Huxley, etc. and is therefore materialism, became heart-knowledge, if it were absorbed by the whole man, if humanity were to understand how to become old, or younger in old age as I showed yesterday, this science of today would become really spiritual, the true pursuit for the spirit and its existence. There is no better foundation than the natural science of the present day, if it is transformed into what can flow to the head from the rest of man's organism, that is to say from the spiritual part of the organism. The miracle will be accomplished when men also learn to feel the rejuvenation of their etheric body so that the materialistic natural science of today will become spirituality. It will the sooner become spirituality the greater the number of people who reproach it with its present materialism, its materialistic folly.

But together with this will be linked a complete transforming which can be felt by one who has but a slight feeling for what is taking place at the present time: linked with it will be a complete transforming of the nature of education and instruction. Who could deny, if he has an open eye for the social, moral, historical conditions of the present, who could deny that mankind as a whole is not in a position—though it sounds grotesque—to give children an adequate education, especially an adequate instruction? We can, to be sure, make children officials, industrialists, we can even make them pastors, etc. etc., but we are but little in a position to make children today into complete human beings, into all-round developed men. For it is a deep demand of the time that if man is to be a complete all-round developed organism of soul and spirit, he must be in the position to transform all his life through what he took in quickly, rapidly as a child. The whole life through must the human being remain fresh in order to transform what he has absorbed.

For what do we really do today in later life? (These things are not looked on unprejudicedly [?] enough). We have learnt a certain amount in youth, the one more, the other less; we are proud, are we not, that we have no more illiterates in Western Europe? One learns much, another less, but all have learnt something in youth. And what do we do in later life with what we learnt, no matter whether it was much or little? It is all of such a nature that one only remembers what one has learnt, it is present in man in such a way that one can remember it. But what do men work on there? It is not conveyed to the human soul so as to work in the soul, so that heart-contents may arise from head-knowledge. It is in no way fitted for that. Much water must still flow down the Rhine, if what we can give to youth today—(let us observe it only in one field, but it is applicable in all fields) is to be something that is fitted really to be transformed into heart-knowledge. What must that be? We have in fact today no possibility at all of giving our children anything that could really become heart-knowledge. For that we lack two conditions, and only Spiritual Science rightly understood can bring about these two conditions.

Two conditions are lacking for really giving to children today something that refreshes life, something which throughout life can be a source of joy in life and a supporting of life. Two things are lacking. The one is that, from all the current ideas that we have today, that modern culture can give us, man can gain no conception of how he stands in relation to the universe. Just think of all that is conveyed to one in school. It is imparted even to the smallest children—at least, what they are told is put into such words as contain what I am now expressing to you. Reflect that the human being grows up today under these ideas: there is the earth, it swings with such and such a velocity through universal space, and beyond the earth there are the sun, planets, fixed stars. And then what is said of the sun, the planets, the fixed stars, is at most a kind of cosmic physics—it is no more—cosmic mechanics, cosmic physics. What the astronomer says today, what our general culture today says about the structure of the universe, has that anything to do with this human being who walks about here below upon the earth? Most certainly not! Is it not true that for the natural scientific idea of the world, man goes about as a somewhat more highly developed animal; he is born, dies, is buried, another comes, is born, dies, is buried, etc. etc. and so it goes from generation to generation. Out in the great cosmic space events take place which are calculated purely mathematically as in a great world machine. But for the modern clever men what has all that takes place out there in the universe to do with the fact that here on earth this somewhat more highly evolved animal is born and dies? Priests, pastors, know no other wisdom to put in place of this comfortless wisdom. And since they do not know that, they say that they do not occupy themselves in any way with science, but that faith must have an entirely different origin.

Well, we need not enlarge on this. But they are two utterly different things that are spoken of by atheistic science and by the so-called religious faith of this or that Confession at Church, feebly upholding the theistic element. It was essential that for a certain time in humanity's evolution the present world conception should take the place of the earlier ideas. We need not go back very far—only people don't think of it today—and men were then still aware that they did not wander on the earth as higher animals who were just born and buried. Rather did they bring themselves into connection with the star-world, with the whole universe, and knew in their own way, in a different way from that in which it must be striven for now, of the connection with the universe. But one must therefore also conceive of the universe differently.

You see, such a world conception as is imparted even to children today would be unthinkable in the twelfth, thirteenth centuries; they could not in the least imagine having such an opinion of the world of the stars. They looked up to the stars, to the planets as we do today, but they did not merely calculate, as the modern mathematical astronomer does, the orbits of the planets, and believe that up there is a globe which passes through world space—the science of the Middle Ages saw in each globe the body of a spiritual being. It would have been simply a piece of folly to represent a planet as a mere material globe. Read about it in Thomas Aquinas.² You will find everywhere that in each planet he sees an Angelic Intelligence. And so in the other stars. Such a universe as modern astronomy fabricates was not imagined. But for a certain length of time, in order to progress, one must drive the soul, as it were, out of the universe, in order to conceive the skeleton, the pure machinery of the universe. The Copernicus, the Galileo, the Kepler world conceptions had to come. But only the foolish see them as something valid for all time. They are a beginning, but a beginning that must evolve further.

Many things are known already to Spiritual Science which official astronomy does not yet know. But it is important that just these things which Spiritual Science knows and official astronomy does not yet know, should pass over into the general consciousness of humanity. And although these concepts may seem difficult today they will become something that one can impart to the children, they will be an important possession for the children, to keep the soul full of life. We still have to speak of these things, however, in difficult concepts. For as long as Spiritual Science is received, as it is at present by the external world, it has no opportunity of pouring things into such concepts and such pictures as are needed if they are to become the subject of children's education.

There is something, for instance, of which modern astronomy knows nothing. It knows nothing of the fact that the earth speeding through the universe, speeds too fast. She rushes too fast, the earth! And since she rushes too fast, since the earth moves quickly, we also have our head-development quicker than we should have if the earth were to move as slowly as to correspond with our whole life's duration. The rapidity of our head-development simply depends on the fact that the earth races too quickly through universal space. Our head takes part in this speed of the earth, the rest of our organism takes no part in it, the rest of our organism withdraws itself from cosmic events. Our head which, as a sphere, is an image of the heavens, must also participate in what the earth performs in celestial space. Our remaining organism which is not formed on the model of the whole universe, does not participate, it makes its development more slowly. Were our whole organism to participate today in the speed of the earth, were it to develop in correspondence to the speed of the earth, then none of us could ever be older than twenty-seven years. Twenty-seven years would be the average life of man. For in fact our head is finished when we are twenty-seven years old; if it depended on the head, man would die at the age of twenty-seven. Only because the rest of man is planned for a longer life time, and continually sends its forces to the head after the twenty-seventh year, do we live as long as we do. It is the spiritual part of the remaining organism which sends its forces to the head. It is the heart portion that exchanges its forces with the head.

If humanity knows some day that it has a twofold nature, a head-nature and a heart-nature, then it will know too that the head obeys quite other cosmic laws than the rest of the organism. Then the human being takes his place again within the whole macrocosm, then man can do no other than form concepts that lead him to say ‘I do not stand here upon earth as merely a higher animal, to be born and to die, but I am a being formed from out the whole universe. My head is built up for me out of the whole universe, the earth has attached to me the rest of my organization, and this does not follow the movements of the cosmos as my head does.’ Thus, when we do not look at man abstractly, as modern science does, but regard him as picture in his duality, as head-man and heart-man in connection with the universe, then the human being is placed again into the cosmos. And I know, my dear friends, and others who can judge such things know it also: if man can make heart-warm concepts of the fact that when one looks at the human head it is seen to be an image of the whole star-strewn space of the world with its wonders, then there will enter the human soul all the pictures of the connection of man with the wide, wide universe. And these pictures become forms of narrative which we have not yet got, and which will bring to expression, not abstractly, but linked with feeling, what we can pour into the hearts of the youngest children. Then these hearts of young children will feel: here upon earth I stand as human being, but as man I am the expression of the whole star-strewn universal space: the whole world expresses itself in me. It will be possible to train the human being to feel himself a member of the whole cosmos. That is the one condition.

The other condition is the following: when we are able to arrange the whole of education and instruction so that man knows that he is an image of the universe in his head, and in the remaining organism is withdrawn from the universe, that with his remaining organism he must so work upon what falls down like a rain of the soul—the whole universe—that it becomes independent in man here upon earth, then this will be a particular inner experience. Think of this two-fold human being, whom I will now draw in this curious fashion.

When he comes to know that from the whole universe there flow unconsciously into his head, stimulating its forces, the secrets of the stars, but that all this must be worked upon his whole life through by the rest of his organism, so that he may conserve it on earth, carry it through death back again into the spiritual world—when this becomes a living experience, then man will know his twofold nature, he will know himself as head-man and heart-man. For what I am now saying means that man will learn to solve his own riddle, to say to himself: inasmuch as I become more and more heart-man, inasmuch as I remain young, I view in later years through what my heart gives me, that which in childhood and youth I learnt through my head. The heart gazes

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

up to the head and will see there an image of the whole starry heavens. The head however will look to the heart and will find there the mysteries of the human riddle, will learn to fathom in the heart the actual being of man. The human being will feel as regards his education: To be sure, I can learn all sorts of things with my head. But as I go on living, as I live on towards death that is to bear me into the spiritual world, what I learn through the head is fructified in the future through the love ascending from the rest of the organism and becomes something quite different. There is something in me as man that is only to be found in me as man; I have to await something. Very much lies in these words and it means very much when man is so educated that he says: I have something to await. I shall be thirty, forty, fifty, sixty years old, and as I grow older from decade to decade, there comes towards me through growing older something of the mystery of man. I have something to await from the fact that I live on.

Imagine if that were not mere theory, if it were life-wisdom, social life-wisdom. Then the child is educated in such a way that he knows ‘I can learn something; but he who teaches me possesses something that I cannot learn; I must first be as old as he before I can find it in myself. If he relates it to me, he gives me something which must be a sacred mystery for me, since I can hear it from his mouth, but cannot find it in myself.’ Just think what a relationship is created again between children and their elders, which is entirely lost in our age—if man knows that age offers something that is to be awaited. If I am not yet forty years old, that sum of mysteries cannot lie in me that can lie in one who is already forty years old. And if he imparts it to me, I receive it just as information, I cannot know it through myself. What a bond of human fellowship would be formed, if in this way a new earnestness, a new profundity came into life!

This earnestness, this depth, is precisely what is lacking to our life, what our life does not possess. Our present life only values head-knowledge. But true social life will in this way die out, approach dissolution, for here on earth men wander about who have no idea what they are, who really only take seriously what there is up to the age of twenty-seven, and then employ the remainder of life in carrying about the corpse in them, but not in transforming the whole man into something which can still carry youthfulness through death.

Because people do not understand this, my dear friends, because an age has come that could not understand this, everything that refers to spiritual things remains so unsatisfying, as I had to say yesterday concerning Friedrich Schlegel. He was a gifted man, he had understood much, but he did not know that a new revelation of the spirit was necessary, he thought that one could simply take the old Christianity. In many respects he could even express right ideas with ringing words—I will read you a passage from the last lecture by Friedrich Schlegel in the year 1828. He sought to prove, as he said, ‘that in the course of world-history a divine guiding hand and disposition is to be recognized, that not merely earthly visible forces are co-operating in this evolution, or opposing and hindering it, but that the conflict is in part directed under divine assistance against invisible powers. I hope to have established a conviction of this, even I though it is not proved mathematically, which would here be neither proper nor applicable, and that it will nevertheless remain active and vigorous.’

He had a presentiment, but not a living consciousness that man, by living through history, has to become familiar in history with divine forces, and together with these divine forces fights against opposing spiritual powers—he says expressly, ‘opposing spiritual powers’. For in certain respects people flee from the real science of the spirit. Since the third century of our era, when in the West the prejudice as it was called, arose against the persuasion of the false gnosis (so they called it: the persuasion of the false gnosis!) people have gradually begun to turn aside from all that can be known of the spiritual worlds. And so it came about that even religious impulses prepared materialism, and that these religious impulses could not prevent the fact that we have really nothing to give to youth. Our science does not serve the young; in later life one can only remember it, it cannot become heart-wisdom.

In the religious field it is just the same. Man has finally come, one might say, to two extremes. He seems to have forgotten how to conceive of the super-sensible Christ and desires to know nothing of that cosmic power of which spiritual science must speak again as the power of Christ-Jesus. On the other hand there is the quite delightful, really lovely and charming picture which developed in the course of the Middle Ages and modern times through poets and musicians—a charming poetic picture which has developed round the Infant-Jesus. But pictures and ideas related to the dear Jesus-Babe cannot satisfy a man religiously his whole life through! It is in fact characteristic that a really paradoxical love for the sweet little Jesus is expressed in countless songs and so on. There is nothing to be objected to in this, but it cannot remain the only thing.

That is the one aspect, where man, in order to have at least something, has clung to the smallest, since he cannot raise himself to the great. But it cannot fill up life. And on the other hand the ‘bon Dieu citoyen’, as at Christmas we learnt to know him in Heinrich Heine's words, the ‘bon citoyen’ Jesus, who is divested of all divinity, the God of the liberal pastors and liberal priests. Now do you believe that he can really grip life? Do you believe in particular that he can take youth captive? He is from the outset a dead theology-product, not even a theology-product, but a theology-history-product. In this sphere, however, mankind is far removed from directing its gaze to what is spiritual power in history.

Why is this so? Simply because for a time mankind must go through a stage of gazing into the world purely from a materialistic standpoint. The time has also come when modern natural science which is so fitted for spirituality must be transformed into heart-knowledge. Our natural science is either execrable, if it remains as it is, or it is something quite extraordinarily grand, if it changes into heart-knowledge. For then it becomes spiritual science. The older science which is involved in all sorts of traditions had already transformed head-science into heart-science; the modern age has had no gift for transforming into heart-science the science it has acquired up to the present, and so it has come about that head-science, especially in the social field, has performed the only real work, and has thus brought about the most one-sided product it is possible to have.

You see, man's head can know nothing at all of the being of man. Hence when man's head ponders over the being of man and his connection with the social life, it has to bring something quite foreign into the social common life. And that is the modern socialism, expressed as social-democratic theory. There is nothing that is such pure head-knowledge as the Marxist social-democracy. This is only because the rest of mankind has shirked any concern in world problems, and in the Marxist circles they have only occupied themselves with social theories. The others have only—no, I will be polite—let themselves be prompted by professorial-thoughts, which are purely traditional. But head-wisdom has become social theory. That is to say, people have tried to establish a social theory with an instrument which is least of all capable of knowing anything about the human being. This is a fundamental error of present-day mankind, which can only be fully disclosed when people know about head-knowledge and heart-knowledge. The head will never be able to refute socialism, Marxist socialism, because in our times the head's task is to think out and devise. It will only be refuted through Spiritual Science, since Spiritual Science is head wisdom transformed through the heart.

It is extraordinarily important that one should realize these things. You see why even such a man as Schlegel suggested unsuitable means—since he was willing to accept the old, although he realized that man must re-acquire vision for the invisible that goes about amongst us. But our age is a challenge to direct the gaze to what is thus invisible. Invisible powers were always at hand as Schlegel divined: unseen powers have taken part in working upon what is being accomplished in mankind. Humanity, however, must evolve. Up to a certain degree it did not matter so much if people in the last few centuries gave no thought to the super-sensible, invisible forces, for instance, in social life. That will not do in the future. In the future, in face of the real conditions, that won't do! I could quote many examples to show this; I will bring forward one.

In the course of the last decade and a half I have spoken of this from other points of view. Anyone who observes the social state of Europe, as it has developed since the 8th, 9th centuries, knows that many different things have worked into the structure of European life, into this complicated European life. In the West it has retained the Athanasian Christianity, it has thrust back eastwards (as I said here a few weeks ago) an older Christianity, originally linked with Asiatic traditions, the Russian Christianity, the Orthodox Christianity. It has developed in the West the various European members of this European social totality—inasmuch as it has gradually created a member out of the preserved Roman element with the newly revived German and Slav elements in Europe—altogether a complicated organism. One could find one's way about in it up to now, if one disregarded what lives there unseen; for the configuration of Europe has much force in its structure. But an essential and important force in this structure is, among others, the relation in which France has stood to the rest of Europe. I do not now mean merely the political relation, I mean the whole relation of France to the rest of Europe, and by this I mean all that any European could feel in the course of centuries, since the 8th, 9th centuries, with regard to anyone belonging to the French nation. There is this peculiarity, my dear friends, that, so far as the relation of the rest of Europe to France is concerned, it comes to expression in feelings of sympathy and antipathy. We have to do with sympathy and antipathy, and hence purely with a phenomenon of the physical plane. One can understand the human relationship coming into play between France and the rest of Europe if one studies what hearts, what human souls live out on the physical plane. What has developed for France, at any rate outside France, is to be understood through physical plane conditions. Hence it did no harm—there were similar relationships in Europe in the last centuries—it did no harm if people neglected to see the super-sensible powers playing into things, since the sympathies and antipathies were caused by relations of the physical plane.

Much of what has thus played its part for centuries will become different. We are standing before mighty revolutions, even in regard to innermost relations that are coming over the European social structure. One need not believe it to have been lightly spoken if I have once again stressed the fact that things are to be taken more earnestly than men nowadays are inclined to take them. We are standing before mighty revolutions—and it will be necessary in the future for men to turn their eyes—the eyes of the mind—to spiritual relationships; for it will no longer be possible merely from physical plane relations to understand what is going on. It can only be understood if one can take spiritual relations into consideration.

What took place in March—the fall of the Czar—has a metaphysical character. One can only understand it if one has in mind its metaphysical character. Why then was there a Czar at all? The question can be grasped in a higher sense than in the external trivial-historical sense. Why was there a Czar at all? If one disregards individual pacifist cranks who have seen something serious in the tomfoolery of the Czar's Peace-Manifesto, then one must say: even those who from all sorts of reasons have ranged themselves with the Russian realm have not loved Czardom. And in those who loved it, the love was certainly not very genuine. But why was there a Czardom? There was a Czardom—my dear friends, I will now express it paradoxically, somewhat extremely:—so that Europe had something to hate. It was necessary to provoke those forces of hatred. There was a Czardom, and the Czardom behaved as it did, so that Europe had something to hate. Europe needed this hate as a sort of fresh impetus to something else. The Czar must be there in order in the first place to serve as the point on which the hatred concentrated; for a wave of hatred was prepared, as may now even be seen externally. What is now taking place will be transformed into powerful feelings of hatred. It will no longer be possible to understand these, as the sympathy and antipathy of former times were to be understood—from the aspect of the physical plane. For, my dear friends, not mere human beings will hate. Central and Eastern Europe will be hated, not by men, but by certain demons which will dwell in men. The time will certainly come when Eastern Europe will perhaps be hated even more than Central Europe.

These things must be understood and they must not be taken lightly. They can only be understood if men lift themselves to seek a connection with the spiritual world. For what has already been to some extent divined by such spirits as Friedrich Schlegel, will certainly come to pass, though they have not seen the foundations and the roots. Things must be grasped without prejudice in the eye of the soul, so that man can look back over the last centuries and what they have brought ... and then they will be able to co-operate in what must be founded.

Among the fine passages that occur from time to time in Schlegel's addresses there is this: ‘In the evolution of mankind all depends on the inner being of the soul and on the sincerity in the soul, and harmful above all is every kind of political idolatry.’ That is a fine passage of Friedrich Schlegel's. This political idolatry, how it has laid hold of our time! How it rules our time! And the political idolatry has created a fine symptom for itself, by which one is able to recognize what is there.

But one must look through circumstances! Yes, my dear friends, one must perceive what is living in our times. We have no possibility today, if we do not deepen knowledge through the heart, of giving children what they need in order to keep young and fitted for life all their life through. We have not yet this possibility³—and we understand that as soon as we look at the true nature of the head-man and heart-man. It must be established, it must come. If we want to put things in a few words we can say: Schoolmastering is utterly and entirely unable to fulfil its mission today. What ranks as Schoolmastering is completely foreign to the true being of man. But the world threatens to be ruled by a schoolmaster,⁴ revered through political idolatry. Schoolmastering, the least of all fitted for guiding men in the modern epoch, is supposed to be high politics.

At least some few people ought to realize these things. For they are things which are profoundly connected with the deep knowledge which man can only gain if he seeks a little to penetrate the secrets of humanity. The world today can neither be grasped nor in any way governed through desires and instincts, through Chauvinism and nationalism, but solely through the good will which tries to penetrate into true reality.

• 1. See also ‘The Inner Nature of Man and Life between Death and Rebirth’.
• 2. Compare ‘The Philosophy of Thomas Aquinas’.
• 3. The first of over eighty Waldorf Schools was not founded until 1919.
• 4. Woodrow Wilson.

What I have to say today will be somewhat related to the remarks I was allowed to present here last time, and will therefore also have to tie in with some of the ideas presented then. Today I would like to speak about the materialism of present-day religious creeds, but I would like to do so in connection with a certain aspect of the Christ problem. It is precisely with the Christ problem that a whole series of misunderstandings about anthroposophical research work begins. Although the dispelling of these misunderstandings is not to be expected from those who reveal them with a certain interest, a great deal may depend on it with others.

In the latest phases of the development of Western civilization, we have seen all sorts of inclinations towards distinctly atheistic views of the world. It cannot be my task today to point out the various nuances of the atheism that has emerged; but I would like to draw attention to something that is a common basis of every atheistic world view. This is the failure to look at the source of the content of the consciousness of God. The consciousness of God cannot come from the contemplation of external nature alone, but from the whole of man's coexistence with external nature, with the world of the senses. It may seem paradoxical that I say that the consciousness of God must come from man's coexistence with the world of the senses. But this God-consciousness must not be taken as the fulfillment of a moment, so to speak, but as the content of earthly life from birth to death. In this earthly life, we feel ourselves to belong to nature through heredity. We entered this earthly existence as physical human beings through purely natural processes. As we go through this earthly existence, we perceive a certain development of what we have received through our birth into this existence. Now it is a matter of whether we are careful enough - of course I do not mean this only intellectually, but also in terms of feeling and from the will impulses that we also have and must experience - whether we gain a certain awareness of our consciousness for living together with the outer world of the senses in the course of our earthly existence. If we summarize purely through popular experience what the world of the senses can give us, we will certainly never come to feel our full human nature if we do not think spiritually about the world of the senses and what it can be with us. No matter how carefully we examine all the secrets that the external sense world can give us through sensory perception, we can never come to understand that the human being is also placed in this sense world. But since we, as physical beings on earth, have nevertheless emerged from this sense world, but can never find ourselves as human beings in its ingredients, it simply follows that for a healthy consciousness, this consciousness is filled with the divine being, or rather, with the contemplation of the divine being.

This is precisely what modern natural science, despite its great and comprehensive achievements, has brought to humanity: that because it refuses to recognize a spiritual element within the world of sense-perception, it effectively excludes the human being from the totality of existence that it seeks to embrace. I have already expressed this before you by saying: If we consider, for example, the in many respects tremendous theory of evolution of modern times, we do not actually find it treated of man as 'man', but as the conclusion, as it were, the crowning of the animal world. If we ask natural science, as it is constituted today, about the essence of man, it does not actually answer us, if we understand it correctly. It only answers the question: What is the highest of the animals? That is, it only considers man in relation to his animality. In many respects she is right in what she has to say about this, but in so doing she places man, as it were, outside the sphere of her consideration. She cannot answer the question about the essence of man with her means; indeed, she can only understand herself correctly if she declares this question about the essence of man as being outside her realm.

This is, of course, only an indication of the feeling that arises from the wholeness of a healthy person, that precisely in so far as he regards himself in connection with the whole of nature, he must actually come to the consciousness of God, but only to the consciousness of God, not to the consciousness of Christ.

Thus, by applying his healthy understanding and healthy intuitive perception, man can by no means be an atheist. I have already expressed this here by saying that even if, of course, not every slight illness can be diagnosed by ordinary means, it is nevertheless clear to anyone who can distinguish the healthy person from the sick person that, first of all, atheism can only find its place in a morbid disposition of human nature as a whole. Therefore, one could say that denying God is actually the result of being sick. But now the following applies: We arrive at this awareness of God in the present epoch of human development, I would say, only in a wavering, doubting way when we survey everything; for here attention must be drawn to a significant defect in our present pedagogy, the defect that the Waldorf school movement, for example, seeks to correct. When one speaks of the decline of present-day civilization, one cannot actually ignore the present youth movement. This youth movement means much more than is usually thought, and I consider it to be something extraordinarily significant that, at a number of events of our anthroposophical movement in recent times, including the last Stuttgart congress, a impressive number of members of the youth movement had actually come and made the very positive decision, from the point of view of the youth movement, to join forces with what is intended by the anthroposophical spiritual movement. Whatever one may think of the details of this youth movement, one must recognize that in a large part of our youth the authority of the older generation has faded, and that someone must guide the young. No matter how much one may criticize today's youth, one cannot ignore the fact that when young people say that they can no longer recognize any authority, then it is not only the youth who can be blamed for it, but also the older generation, who should be the guides of the youth. Recently, during a lecture I gave in Aarau, Switzerland, the very question of the lack of authority among today's youth was discussed. After the lecture, a religious representative appeared who thoroughly scolded the current youth. But scolding does not really achieve much when dealing with something that is so elementary. You have to understand things. It was interesting when a very young lad from the cantonal school stood up afterwards — the cantonal school there is definitely a secondary modern school — who, in my opinion, actually gave the best speech in the discussion. He spoke with great fire and said: We want authority, we actually crave authority, but when we look to the old people, do we see anything other than that no authority can come from these old people? We see how they quarrel with each other at every opportunity, how they fight. – And then he listed all sorts of things that today's youth notice about their elders, and in the end he said: We do crave authority, but we cannot have it!

But if you look at what it is about, you find that today's civilization has become highly intellectualistic, that actually everything that considers itself to be leading and authoritative today has become intellectualistic, purely intellectual. Basically, natural science and intellectual culture belong together. Natural science is the objective, intellectual culture is the subjective. But intellectualism only occurs naturally at a certain age. You cannot be an intellectual as a child. Children are not intellectuals. Intellectualism can only occur after sexual maturity. And since humanity has now fully grown into intellectualism, everything is dominated by it today. Those aspirations that often reject intellectualism today and grumble about it do so only out of a different intellectualism. Today, all those who claim intellectualism are abstract beings. But one only grows into intellectualism at a later age, and because we are overwhelmed by it, children no longer understand us and cannot have anything left for the forms of thought that we adopt under the influence of intellectualism. We ourselves no longer feel what we took in when we were children. Childhood is no longer fully alive in us. We have become so terribly intellectually clever that childhood no longer plays any role in us. But we cannot be educators or teachers if we have been thoroughly abandoned by what we ourselves experienced as children. So we no longer have anything to say to children, and they grow up without any special care for their being. We declaim that we have to be vivid, but the vivid is only the objective side of intellectualism. Thus we create an abyss between us and the youth, and this is what we encounter in the youth movement. But again, nothing is done by just scolding intellectualism. For it has now entered Western civilization as a necessary phenomenon since the last three to five centuries, actually since the 13th to 15th century. It had to arise so that humanity could truly live into the impulse of freedom. So it is not a matter of merely criticizing the intellectual impulse, but of understanding it in the right way, in order to be able to strive for further development through understanding in a way other than the intellectualistic one.

And now we must say: What is the essence of this intellectualism? It is actually already indicated by the fact that one points to the connection of this intellectualism with the feeling of freedom. And the feeling of freedom is in turn inconceivable without the full development of the human ego. It is actually the development of the ego that has emerged in a certain way in modern times in humanity and takes hold of the ego from the consciousness soul. This is the essential factor that provides the impulse for modern Western civilization. However, this I, of which human beings have become fully aware over the past three, four, five hundred years, can initially only come from the human body. The experience of the I between birth and death can only come from the human body; this can be examined in particular through anthroposophical spiritual research.

One of the most significant moments for the whole of life after death is the moment of dying itself. This moment of dying is, of course, only known to the earthly human being on the outside. It must be recognized from the inside out of the consciousness that the dead person has between death and a new birth. Whether this occurs more or less later after death is not our concern now. Today we want to consider in general the consciousness that a person has between death and a new birth. This consciousness depends entirely on whether the person has an extraordinarily significant impression at the moment of dying. Consider, for a moment, that during the whole of life between birth and death, the human being only comes out of his physical and etheric body with his ego and his astral body, and that is in a state of sleep; so that during life between birth and death there is a constant, uninterrupted connection between the physical body and the etheric body. At death, the human being leaves his physical body with his etheric body – you know that he remains with his etheric body for days – so that he only has this experience of his full physical body at the moment of dying. If you want to have knowledge of something, you cannot have it otherwise than by having what you want to know outside of you. What they have in mind, you do not see, you only see what is outside the eye. So you also do not see spiritually-mentally anything that you have within you. You must first go out of yourself with the spiritual-mental part of your being, then you see the outside of your body. This happens in the moment of dying in relation to the separation of the etheric body and the physical body. When falling asleep, the human being never has a conscious, complete view of his physical and etheric bodies. These two remain behind when falling asleep. This is why, when one attains the conscious view during sleep, one can only see the human head and part of the trunk, and that one cannot actually see the limb-human being in ordinary sleep. Only in death, in dying, is the moment when man, in relation to his physical body, has himself completely as an object before him, and the whole time from death to the new birth, this impression remains, I might say, as the end of perspective, to which one looks back after death. One sees this moment of dying, for one would not recognize an ego for oneself if one were no longer, if one did not have the ego as an object in that one has before one, as the object of knowledge at the moment of dying, that which one brings to consciousness here in the physical world, namely the full physical body. This tremendous impression, that one can say to oneself: What your ego-consciousness has given you, your whole, your total physical body, you have seen that at the moment of dying! — that remains and forms the content of the ego-consciousness between death and the new birth, where everything becomes temporal, where the spatial, in a certain respect, is no longer there. After death, one looks back from that point and sees, as an important point, the direction then continues, but the rays cross at the moment of the final death, that moment of dying. This is what, as a “time element”, I would like to say, has the same effect after death as the spatial physical organism gives the sense of self between birth and death. So that we can say: The sense of self here in earthly life actually comes from the physical body.

Now the following is present. You look out through your senses into the external nature. You see the three kingdoms of external nature, the mineral, the vegetable, the animal, and in addition the physical human kingdom. You see clouds, rivers, mountains, stars and so on. Everything you can see can be considered 'nature', and what you cannot see is continually supplying the elements that also penetrate the human organism, both in the physical and in the etheric. With food, you take in substances from the physical and sensory world. These substances unfold their physical and chemical forces and activities even when they are in the human organism. In terms of his physical organism, the human being is, so to speak, what he takes in from the outside world. The minerals, plants and animals are, if I may put it this way, allowed to be “nature”. They have the right to be nature. But when what is present in them enters the human organism with food, breathing and so on, it becomes something other than nature. Then, in the human organism, it can be said that What lives in nature must not, if man is to remain 'human', allow itself to remain nature. Nature beings have the right to be only outside of man; within man, nature becomes a destructive element. It seeks to continually dissolve the human being and to bring about a state in which the soul can also acquire powers that work towards destruction.

In this respect, the older instinctive consciousnesses of men saw much more correctly than today's intellectualism. Today's intellectualism starts from concepts, not from facts, and when the facts do not agree with the concepts, it reinterprets the phenomena according to its concepts. Today, people do not talk about the fact that plants, animals and humans come to an end, but they say that death should be examined. The fact that the end of plants, the end of animals, the end of humans could be something completely different, that cannot be grasped under the common concept of the “dead”, is not considered by anyone today. You become grotesque for today's world, you become paradoxical when you draw attention to such things. But it is absolutely the case in this regard. Today someone says: a knife is a knife – and then he gets a razor and wants to carve his meat with it, because – a knife is a knife! Today, when we believe that we have both feet firmly planted in reality, it is important to realize that reality cannot be grasped through abstract concepts. Intellectualism does not take this into account, starting only from concepts instead of from facts. It therefore also fails to recognize how justified it was from older levels of consciousness to speak of the fact that nature, in its effects and processes, by continuing its existence in man, no longer has the right to remain nature, but that it should be transformed, and that in man, if it is to retain its validity as nature, it becomes “sin”. The concept of sin in connection with natural phenomena is no longer understood at all. The connection between the natural and that which is rooted in the human being as spiritual-soul is not considered. The animals, plants and minerals have the right to be outside in nature; that which moves from them into the human being must be transformed by the human being, because if it remains nature, it would be transformed into destruction. That is to say, if it is mere nature and man has not the strength to transform it, it becomes illness, and in imparting itself to the soul, sin.

If now man, who looks at his relationship to the world of the senses without prejudice, consults with himself and takes into account everything that can be taken into account, he must say the following to himself: When I look out into nature and first consider my origin from it, I cannot be an atheist. But on the other hand, precisely as a man of the present, as a man of the newer epoch, I cannot but attribute my ego-consciousness to the mere physical body, to the natural existence in me. What I express here in thought is present in feeling and emotion in every healthy person who is not afraid of coming to self-knowledge today. He comes, if only he does not avoid it out of fear or comfort, to look into his own soul, to this conflict, that he says to himself: If I consider myself as a being of nature, emerging from nature, then a divine being must underlie the whole world, which also contains me. But this healthy sense is actually contradicted by the modern development of the ego, because this can only come from the natural existence of the physical body and - as I have even shown you - through the impression that dying makes on a person. Thus nothing less follows from this than that modern man must instinctively come into doubt about God-consciousness, not because something in the observation of nature leads away from God-consciousness, but because in the present epoch, when one considers his entire being in terms of body, soul and spirit, man cannot be completely healthy because of his ego-consciousness. Because: nature in man, if it remains as it is and has an influence on the soul, means something that causes illness, and on the soul it has the influence of aberration, of sinning.

Of course, this should not be viewed in a philistine way, but rather, one must keep in mind the facts as they speak from existence. In other words, if we go back to ancient times, when the sense of self did not yet exist, the divine being — regardless of whether it was imagined as modified in one way or another — was always conceived under the concept of the Father. One could not imagine the divine essence other than as a unified divine essence, which more or less embraced the world, which one sought to grasp from the concept of the Father; and since the sense of self was not yet there, since it can only arise from the natural, nothing disturbed this Father-consciousness. Modern man can only have this father consciousness if he perhaps through moral reinforcement, but nevertheless dampens his ego and withdraws somewhat, but which must arise through the development of freedom, with the development of modern humanity. Therefore, man as he lives today cannot be satisfied with the one consciousness, the father consciousness. He must say: I would have this father-consciousness if I could still be instinctive like that humanity that existed before the heightened sense of self developed. But as a person of the present, this sense of self prevents me from fully confronting myself in dependence on the father-consciousness.

This is where what the modern human being can very well experience by reflecting on his ego comes into play, when he is clear that the ego, if it does not have the body, extinguishes itself. It extinguishes itself when falling asleep; in death, it only maintains itself by having the contemplation of the dying body. The human being knows that it is precisely through his consciousness of self that he is turned away from the divine consciousness of the Father. But he must feel this as a sickness, and when he feels this in the right way as a sickness, the impulse arises for him that leads him to the Christ present today. The consciousness of the Son must arise out of the inner soul experience to the consciousness of the Father. This son-consciousness can only come into us through an act of freedom. And we must always bear this in mind: if atheism is actually a manifestation of illness, then what can be called agnosticism in the face of the mystery of Golgotha, agnosticism in the face of the present Christ in particular, is a misfortune, a stroke of fate! You don't have to be completely healthy if you are abandoned by the Father-consciousness – but in this respect, modern humanity is not completely healthy –; but you need an act of freely finding the Christ-spirit if you want to come to the Christ.

Two experiences are absolutely necessary: First, the consciousness of the Father, but I would like to say that in the present development of humanity, there is a clouded consciousness of the Father. If I had not acquired the consciousness of the I in the course of the development of humanity, the divine consciousness of the Father would be there; but because the consciousness of the I actually wells up and must well up from that which, is left to itself, is ill in the human being, therefore the divine Father-consciousness is clouded for the present, and one must come to the consciousness of the Christ through a free deed that is different from finding the Father.

These two experiences are not distinguished from each other in Western civilization, as I have already indicated here. Solowjow, in particular, strictly distinguishes the Father-consciousness from the Son-consciousness, which arises from a different kind of consciousness. In the West, the two are so little distinguished that a presentation of the essence of Christianity, which is decisive for many, could even say: The gospels do not belong to the Son, but only to the Father, the Son actually only as the teacher of the Father. - So there is no awareness that one can have two acts of experience: one in relation to the experience of the Father, which is clouded today, and the other in relation to the Son. Now, if one has this experience in relation to the son, one would initially only come to a present encounter with the Christ, and to this present encounter with the Christ, so to speak to the eternal Christ, everyone can come from the subjective relationship of the present. But anyone who rejects the present encounter with the Christ and lives dull, as in the earlier times of humanity, will not gain that inner constitution that leads him to the encounter with the Christ. But he who truly feels what the newer time can give him, comes to this inner deed of the meeting with the Christ and thereby proves that the Christ is there.

But the historical Christ still remains to be investigated. There one must also have the possibility of looking at history from a different point of view than is possible today in the age of materialism for outer consciousness. I must draw your attention to something here that should be strictly observed. This upward shining into higher worlds is usually taken too much for granted. People still do not listen enough to how the one who speaks of the higher worlds must actually speak in a different style than one speaks of the physical world, and not just in a different external style, but in a different inner style. When we live here in the physical world and let this world have its effect on us, we distinguish, for today's consciousness, what is logical, I might say, right and wrong; we also call it true and false. And we test whether something is right or wrong, true or false, according to logical or external principles of reality. But in doing so, we enter into abstraction, into an intellectualistic life. For all logical distinguishing of whether something is true or false moves precisely in abstract concepts, if one only takes external sense perception, in observation or in experiment, as a basis. Nevertheless, with our cognition we still move in abstract concepts. We cannot retain the same abstractness of concepts when we go up into the higher worlds. There everything becomes much more alive and is perceived as something living, not merely as something thought. Therefore, he who beholds the higher worlds must not speak merely of true or false, right or wrong — of course one must do that too! But one must speak, for example, of something that is right here in its reflection in the physical world as something healthy, and of something that is wrong here in its reflection as something unhealthy. One is not quite right when speaking of true and false for the next higher world; one has to deal everywhere with healthy and unhealthy, wholesome or unwholesome. Therefore, anyone who speaks of the higher worlds with reference to abstract logic as if they were the physical world shows that he does not have a real conception of the higher worlds.

Now, however, something very peculiar occurs in relation to the historical development of mankind. If we look at it impartially, it shows us ancient epochs full of wisdom, and if we have a healthy feeling, we will feel deep reverence for the ancient wisdom of these older epochs. If, for example, we consider the reflection of this in the Vedas and Vedanta philosophy, we find that the reasons for which this wisdom was revealed are so profound that one must have the deepest reverence for them. We approach this primal wisdom of humanity differently than the abstract scholarship of today is able to. But this primal wisdom is, as it were, increasingly dulled the further humanity advances in its development, and we see that the greatest dulling of this most original human consciousness, so full of wisdom, comes in the age in which the Mystery of Golgotha takes place. There is no need to take into account the external records, insofar as these records, such as the Gospels, speak literally of the Mystery of Golgotha. One need only look impartially, but now with a higher gaze, at the historical development of humanity to find this primal wisdom becoming darker and darker in the human soul the further back one looks. What was fully expressed in the 15th century is already hinted at in the Greek, in the Latin-Roman epoch. Humanity basically only still has traditions of primordial wisdom; it no longer experiences them, and what is slowly emerging is the full consciousness of the self. In this respect, our external science has actually come up against little of what is to be studied in this epoch, which on the other hand includes the mystery of Golgotha. Enormous problems arise when, for example, we look at the Greek alphabet today, where the letters still have names, alpha, beta, gamma, and follow the path to the later Latin alphabet, where they no longer have names. These transitions, which point deeply to historical developmental states, are not at all taken into account. For example, no attention is paid to what our word “alphabet”, which is still taken from Greek, actually means. If we look into this, and a real linguist will be able to follow up these things, it will turn out that the Greek alpha basically expresses the same thing as is expressed in the Old Testament with the words: “The living breath was breathed into man” - so that in the breath, in the breathing, one will see that which first makes man. When the word Alpha, which is a word, is properly examined, it will be found that That is man! The first letter of the alphabet is nothing other than the expression of the human being. And the Beta is the “house”, and the beginning of the alphabet means: man in his house. — This view of the alphabet was completely lost in later times, when intellectualism developed more and more. Letters came to be used merely as a means of distinguishing external objects. What lay in the revelation of Primordial Wisdom was lost sight of; the “Word” of the Primordial Revelation was externalized, and people no longer understand what was revealed to humanity in the letters — and specifically in the words. In the traditional lodges and orders of today, people do talk about the “hidden word”; but little do people know of what this hidden word had as a reality, how the alphabet itself spoke of the hidden word, and how it has been atomized, divided.

I could, of course, also start from something else to show what a deeply incisive developmental impulse was present at the time of Greek and Latin culture. How Greek culture tried to help itself through a special art to overcome this, I would say, illness that occurred in humanity, is palpable for those who want to see. I would just like to draw attention to one thing.

Today, when people hear about drama, for example, they think: it is something to watch, something that belongs to the luxuries of life. You watch it and then call it beautiful. But the Greeks had the idea of catharsis for the most important thing that takes place in drama, the purification, the cleansing. This was something that not only meant an external, fantastic process, but also clearly pointed to its medical origin. Catharsis is the crisis that one overcomes, and through the tragedy of the Greeks, the soul was brought to the crisis, so that it underwent a purification in the experience of fear and compassion, in that it was surrendered to the effects of these opposing forces through the course of the drama. The Greeks did not think of their art in a banal sense, but rather as something healing. For they still perceived the rule of an ancient wisdom in it. For them, a healthy ancient wisdom still existed, but it was paralyzed in the course of time, and a kind of disease process then occurred. With his art, the Greek wanted to express something, and Nietzsche sensed this. You can read about it in his book The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music. He said something like the following: There is something in humanity that can be healed. And the therapists, the Essenes, assumed everywhere that there was something in humanity that could be healed. And if the Mystery of Golgotha had not occurred in humanity, we would live today in such a way that I would have to speak as if the Mystery of Golgotha had never occurred, so we could only point to a process of illness in humanity. So that in view of the Mystery of Golgotha, something dawns on us when we apply the concepts of healthy and sick in relation to human history. That is the significant thing: you can apply all concepts in relation to right and wrong, but you come to a point in the course of development where you have to look at things differently. For when you enter the Greek epoch, you enter a time when humanity has become ill, and from which health emanates from the Mystery of Golgotha. Therapists have pointed this out and said: “There arises the great therapist, the savior, who in the literal sense has to heal humanity.” — It is only a matter of delving deeply enough into the course of human development and not stopping at the usual abstract concepts, but grasping historical life with medical concepts, according to the categories of healthy and sick. Then one will understand the necessity of a healing process and will also understand how the “Savior” - it is no other word than the “therapist” - intervenes in humanity. One will then understand how something must intervene in the development of humanity on earth that could not intervene through the forces that were present in humanity earlier. A new impulse from outside had to come to heal humanity.

This is how one can and must look at historical development if one looks only at the configuration of how humanity has developed, without getting involved in the content of the historical documents. Then one comes to the concept of the extraterrestrial Christ, who connected with the evolution of the earth from extraterrestrial regions through the Mystery of Golgotha. This perspective must be adopted if we want to understand history. Those who do not want to apply this perspective to the development of history, according to the concepts of healthy and sick, should simply admit that history remains incomprehensible to them. They cannot understand how that which once lived in the Orient came to Africa and then became Greco-Roman. We see the Greek development, and rightly so, as an extraordinarily healthy one. And why? Because the Greek had the feeling that one has to fight disease and that he wanted to shape his life accordingly. And there is a particularly remarkable harmony between the individual Greek personalities in that they felt: here there is something to fight. And this feeling of no longer feeling and the ever-increasing descent into the abstract, which even makes the gods abstract, is the peculiarity of Romanism and remains its peculiarity. Europe was educated by Romanism until the 15th century, when it came to accepting the cosmic Christ into consciousness; before that, Christ was carried into the Occident through Romanism.

I just wanted to contribute a few things today so that we can gradually come to understand what is written in the Mystery of Golgotha: how we cannot actually stop at something that has developed from ancient times to the Mystery of Golgotha. One then finds that, if one proceeds in this way, there is actually no longer any difference between what certain theologians have in their Jesus-logia and what a secular historian, such as Ranke, has. What certain theologians have in terms of the story of Jesus can no longer be distinguished from what a man like Ranke, for example, presents about it. But everything depends on our being able to see how the Christ, as an extra-terrestrial being, united with Jesus of Nazareth, who was born as a human being in the course of time. It is precisely here that something occurs which has led to the greatest misunderstandings with regard to this necessary path of anthroposophy to the Mystery of Golgotha. It was characteristic of all ancient instinctive wisdom that it did not separate the spiritual and the physical. For if one separates the two, one arrives at an impossible concept of matter in the physical and, in the spiritual, that is, in the spiritual experience of man, one arrives at abstraction, at the lifeless system of concepts. It has only become characteristic of more recent humanity to separate the material and the spiritual in this way. And so anthroposophy leads us back to an understanding of how we have to look at the whole of nature, I would even say, how we look at a physiognomy. We look at a physiognomy in such a way that we think of it as ensouled. We read from it the soul-imbued quality. This was once the case in ancient wisdom, and in the same way, today, the newer, light-imbued wisdom also leads us to a physiognomic view of the world of the stars, for example. This leads to something that allows us to speak of Christ as the being of the sun, although this means just as little that Christ is the physical being of the sun as man is the physical being of the body. But only in this way can it be recognized how something extraterrestrial was able to live in Jesus of Nazareth, who lived in Palestine. But this is shrouded in the greatest misunderstanding, especially among theologians. They even find it 'offensive' that anthroposophy connects the Christ with the sun and with the outer cosmic world in general. Why do they find this offensive? It is extremely characteristic. Anthroposophy says that it leads from the Christ back to the sun. But for these people, the sun is only the burning ball of fog out there; so it is offensive to associate this burning solar nebula with the Christ. But we know that theology has become materialistic, and therefore it can only see the material world in the cosmos. But anthroposophy shows how this material world is spiritualized everywhere. However, theology is unable to detach itself from the material, and therefore it feels offended when anthroposophy speaks of Christ as a being of the sun. From materialism, from the deepest materialism about the world building, precisely this point about Christology is found offensive. Here you can see how materialism permeates everything. It has now taken hold of theology, and because theology has become materialistic, it leads to misunderstandings about anthroposophy. Coming from the ordinary world, we can only be materialists, and when someone from this world talks about Christ in a materialistic way, it is bound to be taken in that way, and that is offensive. At this point, one must point out the materialization of the whole culture, which is only afraid of admitting its underpinnings. But we will not emerge from decline to a new ascent if we do not face these underpinnings quite impartially, fearlessly, without fear. We must get out of what European and Western humanity has brought into this movement of decline in the first place, what has led to these terrible catastrophes. For this, only fearless knowledge of everything that man can learn from the world is suitable. For this it is also necessary to approach the subject in an unprejudiced way, and to discard whatever is really useless from the sphere of intellectualism when entering into the higher worlds.

Many people still say today: Yes, what is communicated from the higher worlds is strange; one must enter into these worlds oneself, otherwise one cannot understand it. — But it is not like that. People believe that it is so only because they absolutely want to abandon those concepts that only apply to the physical world, which we have between birth and death. For example, the belief prevails today, precisely because people everywhere develop everything out of concepts, despite believing that they are being inductive and empirical, that they think they can express themselves absolutely at all. Of course, we have to say: when a person falls asleep, the I and the astral body emerge from the physical and etheric bodies, and the person remains unconscious until awakening occurs. This is a very healthy message for present-day humanity, but it does not apply to the entire development of humanity. If we look back, for example, to the times from which Indian and ancient Persian culture emerged, we find that a different idea was prevalent everywhere, namely that when a person falls asleep, his ego and astral body descend deeper into his physical and etheric bodies than is the case when he is awake during the day. The old Indian did not say: Man goes out of his physical and etheric body with his ego and astral body when he falls asleep. Only the Theosophists try to make people believe that the Indian spoke in this way. He said: When people fall asleep, they go deeper into their physical and etheric bodies. And that is basically quite correct, because the situation is actually the same as if one were to say in an absolute sense that for the earth the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. But that is not the case, because for the other half of the earth the process takes place in reverse. You can also call it east and west, but the directions are different. Therefore, it is quite possible that for a certain period of time the I and the astral body plunged deeper into the physical body and ether body, and that therefore the impression was quite different. That is why the Indian speaks quite differently, because the person was in a different state of consciousness, namely in that of which the modern person also has no full consciousness, in his rhythmic and metabolic functions. He has no consciousness of these, because it is quite the case, in terms of consciousness, for the modern person that he dreams his rhythmic functions, but sleeps through his metabolic functions.

Therefore, one can say: It must be understandable that people at different times had to experience different things about something that people today believe they can speak about absolutely; and one only understands the development of history if one also lets the facts speak about these things, not the concepts that one has constructed for oneself. Today, when East and West, Occident and Orient, are confronting each other in such a burning way that a balance must be found, today humanity must be able to go back to these backgrounds; otherwise you can experience as many Washington conferences as you like, they will all end in failure if the fundamental impulses of human development are not taken into account. People today do not yet believe this, but it is true that if one wants to move from decline to ascent, one must address the issues that are most deeply moving humanity. What is demanded here seems impractical today. But people do not realize how impractical that is, which has proven itself as such, which has developed in its extreme, has become impractical from 1914 to 1918 and continues to be impractical. But in addition to all this, one must familiarize oneself with how religious consciousness can be illuminated and deepened by what anthroposophical insight is.

Today I could only sketch one of the paths to the cosmic, extraterrestrial Christ. But you will see how a deeper understanding of history can develop from it later on, but one that regards humanity as a living being. And just as one otherwise speaks of a healthy and a sick being in the case of a living being, so one must also speak of a healthy and a sick humanity if one does not want to stop at materialism. One cannot say that it is difficult to come to the Christ when one sees how the corresponding paths have not been followed. A concrete, realistic view of history will try to approach the Mystery of Golgotha from the most diverse sides. Today, however, since one cannot come up with reasons against spiritual science, everything possible is used to denigrate its bearers: they become personal. And it is indeed - and I say this without rancor - a terrible indictment of those who today oppose anthroposophical spiritual science that they actually refrain from addressing the spiritual science, that they always approach it only from the outside, for example, portray the Christ event and the Christ experience as if anthroposophy rationalized the mysterious, as if it were to approach it in shy awe, in the sphere of ordinary rationalist knowledge. But just think: when you are face to face with another person and look at him, the mystery that every person is to us does not have to be lost just because you not only hear about him but are also able to look at him. The individual human being cannot be measured with rationalistic concepts, so how much less can we do so with that which confronts us as the highest meaning of earthly development: the Mystery of Golgotha! But the mysterious is not lost by being brought to view; and anthroposophy aims to lead from that which is only communicated or believed to that which makes itself understood in contemplation. Nothing is taken away from what constitutes the mystery. The mystery remains, but it is not merely to be 'spoken' of, but is to be presented to contemplative humanity.

Thus today's criticism is rambling, instead of going into what is so literally contained in the anthroposophical literature itself. It is not necessary to get involved in every issue that comes from such quarters, but within anthroposophical circles there should be a strong awareness that the hatred for the anthroposophical movement will increase all the more the more it asserts itself. What they have done so far is quite a feat in terms of opposition; but you can be assured that it will be surpassed. And even if there is as much grumbling as there has been in recent days about eurythmy, then it seems to me that the only thing necessary is to say to yourself: It would only be worrying if there were praise from this quarter. I would then begin to ask myself: What needs to be done differently now? That is something those who want to be in the right way in the Anthroposophical Movement should acquire as a healthy feeling.

What I wanted to present today is something that, in a certain respect, appears to be a supplement to what I was allowed to speak about during my last visit. Of course, that does not mean that it is finished. What I have hinted at today will also help you to make some progress in Christology.

In this course of lectures I want in the first place to speak about the way in which the art of education can be furthered and enriched by an understanding of man. I shall therefore approach the subject in the way I indicated in my introductory lecture, when I tried to show how anthroposophy can be a practical help in gaining a true knowledge of man, not merely a knowledge of the child, but a knowledge of the whole human being. I showed how anthroposophy, just because it has an all-embracing knowledge of the whole human being—that is to say a knowledge of the whole of human life from birth to death, in so far as this takes place on earth—how just because of this it can point out in a right way what is essential for the education and instruction of the child.

It is very easy to think that a child can be educated and taught if one observes only what takes place in childhood and youth; but this is not enough. On the contrary, just as with the plant, if you introduce some substance into the growing shoot its effect will be shown in the blossom or the fruit, so it is with human life. The effect of what is implanted into the child in his earliest years, or is drawn out of him during those years, will sometimes appear in the latest years of life; and often it is not realised that, when at about the age of 50 someone develops an illness or infirmity, the cause lies in a wrong education or a wrong method of teaching in the 7th or 8th year. What one usually does today is to study the child—even if this is done in a less external way than I described yesterday—in order to discover how best to help him. This is not enough. So today I should like to lay certain foundations, on the basis of which I shall proceed to show how the whole of human life can be observed by means of spiritual science.

I said yesterday that man should be observed as a being consisting of body, soul and spirit, and in yesterday's public lecture I gave some indication of how it is the super-sensible in man, the higher man within man, that is enduring, that continues from birth until death, while the substances of the external physical body are always changing. It is therefore essential to learn to know human life in such a way that one perceives what is taking place on earth as a development of the pre-earthly life. We have not only those soul qualities within us that had their beginning at birth or at conception, but we bear within us pre-earthly qualities of soul, indeed, we bear within us the results of past earthly lives. All this lives and works and weaves within us, and during earthly life we have to prepare what will then pass through the gate of death and live again after death beyond the earth, in the world of soul and spirit. We must therefore understand how the super-earthly works into earthly life, for it is also present between birth and death. It works, only in a hidden way, in what is of a bodily nature, and one does not understand the body if one has no understanding of the spiritual forces active within it.

Let us now proceed to study further what I have just indicated. We can do so by taking concrete examples. An approach to the knowledge of man is contained in anthroposophical literature, for instance in my book Theosophy, in An Outline Of Occult Science or in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds. Let us start from what can lead to a real, concrete knowledge of man by taking as a foundation what anthroposophy has to say in general about man and the world. There are two examples which I should like to put before you, two personalities who are certainly well known to you all. I choose them because for many years I made an intensive study of both of them. I am taking two men of genius; later on we shall come down to less gifted personalities. We shall then see that anthroposophy does not only speak in a general, abstract way, but is able to penetrate deeply into real human beings and is able to get to know them in such a way that knowledge of man is shown to be something which has reality in practical life. In choosing these two examples, Goethe and Schiller, and so making an indirect approach, I hope to show how a knowledge of man is acquired under the influence of Spiritual Science.

Let us look at Goethe and Schiller from an outward point of view, as they appeared during the course of their lives, but let us in each case study the whole personality. In Goethe we have an individuality who entered life in a remarkable way. He was born black, or rather dark blue. This shows how extraordinarily difficult it was for his soul-spiritual being to enter into physical incarnation. But once this had taken place, once Goethe had overcome the resistance of this physical body, he was entirely within it. On the one hand it is hard to imagine a more healthy nature than Goethe had as a boy. He was amazingly healthy. He was so healthy that his teachers found him quite difficult; but children who give no trouble are seldom those who enjoy the best health in later life. On the other hand, children who are rather a nuisance to their teachers are those who accomplish more in later life because they have more active, energetic natures. The understanding teacher will therefore be quite glad when the children keep a sharp eye on him. Goethe from his earliest childhood was very much inclined to do this, even in the literal sense of the word. He peeped at the fingers of someone playing the piano and then named one finger “Thumbkin,” another “Pointerkin,” and so on. But it was not only in this sense that he kept a sharp eye on his teachers. Even in his boyhood he was bright and wide-awake; and this at times gave them trouble. Later on in Leipzig Goethe went through a severe illness, but here we must bear in mind that certain hard experiences and some sowing of wild oats were necessary in order to bring about a lowering of his health to the point at which he could be attacked by the illness which he suffered at Leipzig. After this illness we see that Goethe throughout this whole life is a man of robust health, but one who possesses at the same time an extraordinary sensitivity. He reacts strongly to impressions of all kinds, but does not allow them to take hold of him and enter deeply into his organism. He does not suffer from heart trouble when he is deeply moved by some experience, but he feels any such experience intensely; and this sensitivity of soul goes with him throughout life. He suffers, but his suffering does not find expression in physical illness. This shows that his bodily health was exceptionally sound. Moreover, Goethe felt called upon to exercise restraint in his way of looking at things. He did not sink into a sort of hazy mysticism and say, as is so often said: “O, it is not a question of paying heed to the external physical form; that is of small importance. We must turn our gaze to what is spiritual!” On the contrary, to a man with Goethe's healthy outlook the spiritual and the physical are one. And he alone can understand such a personality who is able to behold the spiritual through the image of the physical.

Goethe was tall when he sat, and short when he stood. When he stood you could see that he had short legs. [The German has the word Sitzgrösse for this condition.] This is an especially important characteristic for the observer who is able to regard man as a whole. Why had Goethe short legs? Short legs are the cause of a certain kind of walk. Goethe took short steps because the upper part of his body was heavy—heavy and long—and he placed his foot firmly on the ground. As teachers we must observe such things, so that we can study them in the children. Why is it that a person has short legs and a particularly big upper part of the body? It is the outward sign that such a person is able to bring to harmonious expression in the present earth life what he experienced in a previous life on earth. In this respect also Goethe was extraordinarily harmonious, for right into extreme old age he was able to develop everything that lay in his karma. Indeed he lived to be so old because he was able to bring to fruition the potential gifts with which karma had endowed him. After Goethe had left the physical body, this body was still so beautiful that all who saw him in death were fulfilled with wonder. One has the impression that Goethe had experienced to the full his karmic potentialities; now nothing more is left, and he must begin afresh when again he enters into an earthly body under completely new conditions. All this is expressed in the particular formation of such a body as Goethe's, for the cause of what man brings with him as predisposition from an earlier incarnation is revealed for the most part in the formation of the head. Now Goethe from his youth up had a wonderfully beautiful Apollo head, from which only harmonious forces streamed down into his physical body. This body, however, burdened by the weight of its upper part and with too short legs was the cause of his special kind of walk which lasted throughout his life. The whole man was a wonderfully harmonious expression of karmic predisposition and karmic fulfilment. Every detail of Goethe's life illustrates this.

Such a personality, standing so harmoniously in life and becoming so old, must inevitably have outstanding experiences in his middle years. Goethe was born in 1749 and he died in 1832, so he lived to be 83 years old. He reached middle age, therefore, at about his 41st year in 1790. If we take these years between 1790 and 1800 we have the middle decade of his life. In this decade, before 1800, Goethe did indeed experience the most important events of his life. Before this time he was not able to bring his philosophical and scientific ideas, important as they were, to any very definite formulation. The Metamorphosis of the Plants was first published in 1790; everything connected with it belongs to this decade 1790-1800. In 1790 Goethe was so far from completing his Faust that he brought it out as a Fragment; he had no idea then that he would ever finish it. It was in this decade that under the influence of his friendship with Schiller he conceived the bold idea of continuing his Faust. The great scenes, the Prologue in Heaven among others, belong to this period. So in Goethe we have to do with an exceptionally harmonious life; with a life moreover that runs its quiet course, undisturbed by inner conflict, devoted freely and contemplatively to the outer world.

As a contrast let us look at the life of Schiller. From the outset Schiller is placed into a situation in life which shows a continual disharmony between his life of soul and spirit and his physical body. His head completely lacks the harmonious formation which we find in Goethe. He is even ugly, ugly in a way that does not hide his gifts, but nevertheless ugly. In spite of this a strong personality is shown in the way he holds himself, and this comes to expression in his features also, particularly in the formation of the nose. Schiller is not long-bodied; he has long legs. On the other hand everything that lies between the head and the limbs, in the region of the circulation and breathing is in his case definitely sick, poorly developed from birth, and he suffers throughout his life from cramps. To begin with there are long periods between the attacks, but later they become almost incessant. They become indeed so severe that he is unable to accept any invitation to a meal; but has to make it a condition—as for instance on one occasion when coming to Berlin—that he is invited for the whole day, so that he may be able to choose a time free from such pains. The cause of all this is an imperfect development of the circulatory and breathing systems.

The question therefore arises: What lies karmically, coming from a previous earthly life, in the case of a man who has to suffer in this way from cramping pains? Such pains, when they gain a hold in human life, point quite directly to a man's karma. If, with a sense of earnest scientific responsibility, one attempts to investigate these cramp phenomena from the standpoint of spiritual science, one always finds a definite karmic cause underlying them, the results of deeds, thoughts and feelings coming from an earlier life on earth. Now we have the man before us, and one of two things can happen. Either everything goes as harmoniously as with Goethe, so that one says to oneself: Here we have to do with Karma; here everything appears as the result of Karma. Or the opposite can also happen. Through special conditions which arise when a man descends out of the spiritual world into the physical, he comes into a situation in which he is not able fully to work through the burden of his karma.

Man comes down from the spiritual world with definite karmic predispositions; he bears these within him. Let us assume that A in the diagram represents a place, a definite point of time in the life of a man when he should be able in some way to realise, to fulfil his karma, but for some reason this does not happen. Then the fulfilment of his karma is interrupted and a certain time must pass when, as it were, his karma makes a pause; it has to be postponed until the next life on earth. And so it goes on. Again, at B there comes a place when he should be able to fulfil something of his karma; but once more he has to pause and again postpone this part of his karma until his next incarnation. Now when someone is obliged to interrupt his karma in this way pains of a cramping nature always make their appearance in the course of life. Such a person is unable fully to fashion and shape into his life what he always bears within him. Here we have something which shows the true character of spiritual science. It does not indulge in fantasy, neither does it talk in vague, general terms about the four members of man's being; physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego. On the contrary, it penetrates into real life, and is able to point out where the real spiritual causes lie for certain external occurrences. It knows how man represents himself in outer life. This knowledge is what true spiritual science must be able to achieve.

I was now faced with the question: In a life such as Schiller's, how does karma work as the shaper of the whole of life if, as in his case, conditions are such that karma cannot properly operate, so that he has to make continual efforts to achieve what he has the will to achieve? For Goethe it was really comparatively easy to complete his great works. For Schiller the act of creation is always very difficult. He has, as it were, to attack his karma, and the way in which he goes to the attack will only show its results in the following earthly life. So one day I had to put to myself the following question: What is the connection between such a life as Schiller's and the more general conditions of life? If one sets about answering such a question in a superficial way nothing of any significance emerges, even with the help of the investigations of spiritual science. Here one may not spin a web of fantasy; one must observe. Nevertheless if one approaches straight away the first object that presents itself for observation, one will somehow go off on a side track. So I considered the question in the following way: How does a life take its course when karmic hindrances or other pre-earthly conditions are present?

I then proceeded to study certain individuals in whom something of this kind had already happened, and I will now give such an example. I could give many similar examples, but I will take one which I can describe quite exactly. I had an acquaintance, a personality whom I knew very well indeed in his present earthly life. I was able to establish that there were no hindrances in his life connected with the fulfilment of karma, but there were hindrances resulting from what had taken place in his existence between death and a new birth, that is in his super-sensible life between the last earthly life and the one in which I learned to know him. So in this case there were not, as with Schiller, hindrances preventing the fulfilment of karma, but hindrances in the way of bringing down into the physical body what he had experienced between death and a new birth in the super-sensible world. In observing this man one could see that he had experienced much of real significance between death and a new birth, but was not able to give expression to this in life. He had entered into karmic relationships with other people and had incarnated at a time when it was not possible fully to realise on earth what he had, as it were, piled up as the content of his inner soul experience between death and conception. And what were the physical manifestations which appeared as the result of his not being able to realise what had been present in him in the super-sensible world? These showed themselves through the fact that this personality was a stutterer; he had an impediment in his speech. And if one now takes a further step and investigates the causes at work in the soul which result in speech disturbances, then one always finds that there is some hindrance preventing what was experienced between death and a new birth in the super-sensible world from being brought down through the body into the physical world. Now the question arises: How do matters stand in the case of such a personality who has very much in him brought about through his previous karma, but who has it all stored up in the existence between death and a new birth and, because he cannot bring it down becomes a stutterer? What sort of things are bound up with such a personality in his life here on earth?

Again and again one could say to oneself: This man has in him many great qualities that he has gained in pre-earthly life, but he cannot bring them down to earth. He was quite able to bring down what can be developed in the formation of the physical body up to the time of the change of teeth; he could even develop extremely well what takes place between the change of teeth and puberty. He then became a personality with outstanding literary and artistic ability, for he was able to form and fashion what can be developed between puberty and the 30th year of life. Now, however, there arose a deep concern in one versed in a true knowledge of man, a concern which may be expressed in the following question: How will it be with this personality when he enters his thirties and should then develop to an ever increasing degree the spiritual or consciousness soul in addition to the intellectual or mind soul? Anyone who has knowledge of these things feels the deepest concern in such a case, for he cannot think that the consciousness soul—which needs for its unfolding everything that arises in the head, perfect and complete—will be able to come to its full development. For with this personality the fact that he stuttered showed that not everything in the region of his head was in proper order. Now apart from stuttering this man was as sound as a bell, except that in addition to the stutter, (which showed that not everything was in order in the head system) he suffered from a squint. This again was a sign that he had not been able to bring down into the present earthly life all that he had absorbed in the super-sensible life between death and a new birth. Now one day this man came to me and said: “I have made up my mind to be operated on for my squint.” I was not in a position to do more than say, “If I were you, I should not have it done.” I did all I could to dissuade him. I did not at that time see the whole situation as clearly as I do today, for what I am telling you happened more than 20 years ago. But I was greatly concerned about this operation. Well, he did not follow my advice and the operation took place. Now note what happened. Very soon after the operation, which was extremely successful, as such operations often are, he came to me in jubilant mood and said, “Now I shall not squint any more.” He was just a little vain, as many distinguished people often are. But I was very troubled; and only a few days later the man died, having just completed his 30th year. The doctors diagnosed typhoid, but it was not typhoid, he died of meningitis.

There is no need for the spiritual investigator to become heartless when he considers such a life; on the contrary his human sympathy is deepened thereby. But at the same time he sees through life and comprehends it in its manifold aspects and relationships. He perceives that what was experienced spiritually between death and a new birth cannot be brought down into the present life and that this comes to expression in physical defects. Unless the right kind of education can intervene, which was not possible in this case, life cannot be extended beyond certain definite limits. Please do not believe that I am asserting that anybody who squints must die at 30. Negative instances are never intended and it may well be that something else enters karmically into life which enables the person in question to live to a ripe old age. But in the case we are considering there was cause for anxiety because of the demands made on the head, which resulted in squinting and stuttering, and the question arose: How can a man with an organisation of this kind live beyond the 35th year? It is at this point of time that one must look back on a person's karma, and then you will see immediately that it in no way followed that because somebody had a squint he must die at 30. For if we take a man who has so prepared himself in pre-earthly life that he has been able to absorb a great deal between death and a new birth, but is unable to bring down what he has received into physical life, and if we consider every aspect of his karma, we find that this particular personality might quite well have lived beyond the 35th year; but then, besides all other conditions, he would have had to bear within him the impulse leading to a spiritual conception of man and of the world. For this man had a natural disposition for spiritual things which one rarely meets; but in spite of this, because strong spiritual impulses inherent in him from previous earth lives were too one-sided, he could not approach the spiritual.

I assure you that I am in a position to speak about such a matter. I was very friendly with this man and was therefore well aware of the deep cleft that existed between my own conception of the world and his. From the intellectual standpoint we could understand one another very well; we could be on excellent terms in other ways, but it was not possible to speak to him about the things of the spirit. Thus because with his 35th year it would have been necessary for him to find his way to a spiritual life, if his potential gifts up to this age were to be realised on earth, and because he was not able to come to a spiritual life, he died when he did. It is of course perfectly possible to stutter and have a squint and yet continue one's life as an ordinary mortal. There is no need to be afraid of things which must be stated at times if one wishes to describe realities, and not waste one's breath in mere phrases. Moreover from this example you can see how observation, sharpened by spiritual insight, enables one to look deeply into human life.

And now let us return to Schiller. When we consider the life of Schiller two things strike us above all others, for they are quite remarkable. There exists an unfinished drama by Schiller, a mere sketch, called the Malteser. We see from the concept underlying this sketch that if Schiller had wished to complete this drama, he could only have done so as an initiate, as one who had experienced initiation. It could not have been done otherwise. Up to a certain degree at least he possessed the inner qualities necessary for initiation, but owing to other conditions of his karma these qualities could not get through; they were suppressed, cramped. There was a cramping of his soul life too which can be seen in the sketch of the Malteser. There are long powerful sentences which never manage to get to the full stop. What is in him cannot find its way out. Now it is interesting to observe that with Goethe, too, we have such unfinished sketches, but we see that in his case, whenever he left something unfinished, he did so because he was too easy-going to carry it further. He could have finished it. Only in extreme old age, when a certain condition of sclerosis had set in would this have been impossible for him. With Schiller however we have another picture. An iron will is present in him when he makes the effort to develop the Malteser but he cannot do it. He only gets as far as a slight sketch. For this drama, seen in its reality, contains what, since the time of the Crusades, has been preserved in the way of all kinds of occultism, mysticism, and initiation science. And Schiller sets to work on such a drama, for the completion of which he would have had to bear within him the experience of initiation. Truly a life's destiny which is deeply moving for one who is able to see behind these things and look into the real being of this man. And from the time it became known that Schiller had in mind to write a drama such as the Malteser there was a tremendous increase in the opposition to him in Germany. He was feared. People were afraid that in his drama he might betray all kinds of occult secrets.

The second work about which I wish to speak is the following. Schiller is unable to finish the Malteser; he cannot get on with it. He lets some time go by and writes all manner of things which are certainly worthy of admiration, but which can also be admired by so-called philistines. If he could have completed the Malteser, it would have been a drama calling for the attention of men with the most powerful and vigorous minds. But he had to put it aside.

After a while he gets a new impulse which inspires his later work. He cannot think any more about the Malteser, but he begins to compose his Demetrius. This portrays a remarkable problem of destiny, the story of the false Demetrius who takes the place of another man. All the conflicting destinies which enter into the story as though emerging out of the most hidden causes, all the human emotions thereby aroused, would have had to be brought into this drama, if it were to be completed. Schiller sets to work on it with feverish activity. It became generally known—and people were still more afraid that things would be brought into the open which it was to their interest to keep hidden from the rest of mankind for some time yet.

And now certain things take place in the life of Schiller which, for anyone who understands them, cannot be accounted for on the grounds of a normal illness. We have a remarkable picture of this illness of Schiller's. Something tremendous happens—tremendous not only in regard to its greatness, but in regard to its shattering force. Schiller is taken ill while writing his Demetrius. On his sick bed in raging fever he continually repeats almost the whole of Demetrius. It seems as though some alien power is at work in Schiller, expressing itself through his body. There is of course no ground for accusing anyone. But, in spite of everything that has been written in this connection, one cannot do otherwise than come to the conclusion, from the whole picture of the illness, that in some way or another, even if in a quite occult way, something contributed to the rapid termination of Schiller's illness in his death. That people had some suspicion of this may be gathered from the fact that

Goethe, who could do nothing, but suspected much, dared not participate personally in any way during the last days of Schiller's life, not even after his death, although he felt this deeply. He dared not venture to make known the thoughts he bore within him.

With these remarks I only want to point out that for anyone able to see through such things Schiller was undoubtedly pre-destined to create works of a high spiritual order, but on account of inner and outer causes, inner and outer karmic reasons, it was all held back, dammed up, as it were, within him. I venture to say that for the spiritual investigator there is nothing of greater interest than to set himself the problem of studying what Schiller achieved in the last ten years of his life, from the Aesthetic Letters onwards, and then to follow the course of his life after death. A deep penetration into Schiller's soul after death reveals manifold inspirations coming to him from the spiritual world. Here we have the reason why Schiller had to die in his middle forties. His condition of cramp and his whole build, especially the ugly formation of his head, made it impossible for him to bring down into the physical body the content of his soul and spirit, deeply rooted as this was in spiritual existence.

When we bear such things in mind we must admit that the study of human life is deepened if we make use of what anthroposophy can give. We learn to look right into human life. In bringing these examples before you my sole purpose was to show how through anthroposophy one learns to contemplate the life of human beings. But let us now look at the matter as a whole. Can we not deepen our feeling and understanding for everything that is human simply by looking at a single human life in the way that we have done? If at a certain definite moment of life one can say to oneself: Thus it was with Schiller, thus with Goethe; thus it was with another young man—as I have told you—then, will not something be stirred in our souls which will teach us to look upon every child in a deeper way? Will not every human life become a sacred riddle to us? Shall we not learn to contemplate every human life, every human being, with much greater, much more inward attention? And can we not, just because a knowledge of man has been inscribed in this way into our souls, deepen within us a love of mankind? Can we not with this human love, deepened by a study of man which gives such profundity to the most inward, sacred riddle of life—can we not, with this love, enter rightly upon the task of education when life itself has become so sacred to us? Will not the teacher's task be transformed from mere ideological phrases or dream-like mysticism into a truly priestly calling ready for its task when Divine Grace sends human beings down into earthly life?

Everything depends on the development of such feelings. The essential thing about anthroposophy is not mere theoretical teaching, so that we know that man consists of physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego; that there is a law of karma, of reincarnation and so on. People can be very clever, they can know everything; but they are not anthroposophists in the true sense of the word when they only know these things in an ordinary way, as they might know the content of a cookery book. What matters is that the life of human souls is quickened and deepened by the anthroposophical world conception and that one then learns to work and act out of a soul-life thus deepened and quickened.

This then is the first task to be undertaken in furthering an education based on anthroposophy. From the outset one should work in such a way that teachers and educators may become in the deepest sense “knowers of men,” so that out of their own conviction, as a result of observing human beings in the right way, they approach the child with the love born out of this kind of thinking. It follows therefore that in a training course for teachers wishing to work in an anthroposophical sense the first approach is not to say: you should do it like this or like that, you should employ this or that educational knack, but the first thing is to awaken a true educational sense born out of a knowledge of man. If one has been successful in bringing this to the point of awakening in the teacher a real love of education then one can say that he is now ready to begin his work as an educator.

In education based on a knowledge of man, such for instance as the Waldorf School education, the first thing to be considered is not the imparting of rules, not the giving advice as to how one should educate, but the first thing is to hold Training Courses for Teachers in such a way that one finds the hearts of the teachers and so deepens these hearts that love for the child grows out of them. It is quite natural that every teacher believes that he can, as it were, impose this love on himself, but such an imposed human love can achieve nothing. Much good will may be behind it, but it can achieve nothing. The only human love which can achieve something is that which arises out of a deepened observation of individual cases.

If someone really wishes to develop an understanding of the essential principles of education based on a knowledge of man—whether he has already acquired a knowledge of spiritual science or whether, as can also happen, he has an instinctive understanding of these things—he will observe the child in such a way that he is faced with this question: What is the main trend of a child's development up to the time of the change of teeth? An intimate study of man will show that up to the change of teeth the child is a completely different being from what he becomes later on. A tremendous inner transformation takes place at this time, and there is another tremendous transformation at puberty. Just think what the change of teeth signifies for the growing child. It is only the outer sign for deep changes which are taking place in the whole human being, changes which occur only once, for only once do we get our second teeth, not every seven years. With the change of teeth the formative process taking place in the teeth comes to an end. From now on we have to keep our teeth for the rest of our lives. The most we can do is to have them stopped, or replaced by false ones, for we get no others out of our organism. Why is this? It is because with the change of teeth the organisation of the head is brought to a certain conclusion. If we are aware of this, if in each single case we ask ourselves: What actually is it that is brought to a conclusion with the change of teeth?—we are led, just at this point, to a comprehension of the whole human organisation, body, soul and spirit. And if—with our gaze deepened by a love gained through a knowledge of man such as I have described—we observe the child up to the change of teeth, we shall see that during these years he learns to walk, to speak and to think. These are the three most outstanding faculties to be developed up to the change of teeth.

Walking entails more than just learning to walk. Walking is only one manifestation of what is actually taking place, for it involves learning to adapt oneself to the world through acquiring a sense of balance. Walking is only the crudest expression of this process. Before learning to walk the child is not exposed to the necessity of finding his equilibrium in the world: now he learns to do this. How does it come about? It comes about through the fact that man is born with a head which requires a quite definite position in regard to the forces of balance. The secret of the human head is shown very clearly in the physical body. You must bear in mind that an average human brain weighs between 1,200 and 1,500 grammes. Now if such a weight as this were to press on the delicate veins which lie at the base of the brain they would be crushed immediately. This is prevented by the fact that this heavy brain floats in the cerebral fluid that fills our head. You will doubtless remember from your studies in physics that when a body floats in a fluid it loses as much of its weight as the weight of the fluid it displaces. If you apply this to the brain you will discover that our brain presses on its base with a weight of about 20 grammes only; the rest of the weight is lost in the cerebral fluid. Thus at birth man's brain has to be so placed that its weight can be brought into proper proportion in regard to the displaced cerebral fluid. This adjustment is made when we raise ourselves from the crawling to the upright posture. The position of the head must now be brought into relationship with the rest of the organism. Walking and using the hands make it necessary for the head to be brought into a definite position. Man's sense of balance proceeds from the head.

Let us go further. At birth man's head is relatively highly organised, for up to a point it is already formed in the embryo, although it is not fully developed until the change of teeth. What however is first established during the time up to the change of teeth, what then receives its special outer organisation, is the rhythmic system of man. If people would only observe physical physiological processes more closely they would see how important the establishing of the circulatory and breathing systems is for the first seven years. They would recognise how here above all great damage can be done if the bodily life of the child does not develop in the right way. One must therefore reckon with the fact that in these first years of life something is at work which is only now establishing its own laws in the circulatory and breathing systems. The child feels unconsciously how his life forces are working in his circulation and breathing. And just as a physical organ, the brain, must bring about a state of balance, so must the soul in the first years of life play its part in the development of the breathing and circulatory systems. The physical body must be active in bringing about a state of balance proceeding from the head. The soul, in that it is rightly organised for this purpose, must be active in the changes that take place in the circulation and breathing. And just as the upright carriage and learning to use the hands and arms are connected with what comes to expression in the brain, so the way in which speech develops in man is connected with the systems of circulation and breathing. Through learning to speak man establishes a relationship with his circulation and breathing, just as he establishes a relationship between walking and grasping and the forces of the head by learning to hold the latter in such a way that the brain loses the right amount of weight. If you train yourself to perceive these relationships and then you meet someone with a clear, high-pitched voice particularly well-suited to the recitation of hymns or odes, or even to declamatory moral harangues, you may be sure that this is connected with special conditions of the circulatory system. Or again if you meet someone with a rough, harsh voice, with a voice like the beating together of sheets of brass and tin, you may be sure that this too is connected with the breathing or circulatory systems. But there is more to it than this. When one learns to listen to a child's voice, whether it be harmonious and pleasant, or harsh and discordant, and when one knows that this is connected with movements of the lungs and the circulation of the blood, movements inwardly vibrating through the whole man, right into the fingers and toes, then one knows that what is expressed through speech is imbued with qualities of soul. And now something in the nature of a higher man, so to say, makes its appearance, something which finds its expression in this picture relating speech with the physical processes of circulation and breathing. Taking our start from this point it is possible to look up and see into the pre-natal life of man which is subject to those conditions which we have made our own between death and a new birth. What a man has experienced in pre-earthly conditions plays in here, and so we learn that if we are to comprehend the being of man by means of true human understanding and knowledge we must train our ear to a spiritual hearing and listen to the voices of children. We can then know how to help a child whose strident voice betrays the fact that there is some kind of obstruction in his karma and we can do something to free him from such karmic hindrances.

From all this we can see what is necessary for education. It is nothing less than a knowledge of man; not merely the sort of knowledge that says: “This is a gifted personality, this is a good fellow, this is a bad one,” but the kind of knowledge that follows up what lies in the human being, follows up for instance what is spiritually present in speech and traces this right down into the physical body, so that one is not faced with an abstract spirituality but with a spirituality which comes to expression in the physical image of man. Then, as a teacher, you can set to work in such a way that you take into consideration both spirit and body and are thus able to help the physical provide a right foundation for the spirit. And further, if you observe a child from behind and see that he has short legs, so that the upper part of the body is too heavy a burden and his tread is consequently also heavy, you will know, if you have acquired the right way of looking at these things, that here the former earthly life is speaking, here karma is speaking. Or, for instance if you observe someone who walks in the same way as the German philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte, who always walked with his heels well down first, and even when he spoke did so in such a way that the words came out, as it were “heels first,” then you will see in such a man another expression of karma.

In this way we learn to recognise karma in the child through observation based on spiritual science. This is something of the greatest importance which we must look into and understand. Our one and only help as teachers is that we learn to observe human beings, to observe the bodies of the children, the souls of the children and the spirits of the children. In this way a knowledge of man must make itself felt in the sphere of education, but it must be a knowledge which is deepened in soul and spirit.

With this lecture I wanted to call up a picture, to give an idea of what we are trying to achieve in education, and what can arise in the way of practical educational results from what many people consider to be highly unpractical, what they look upon as being merely fantastic day-dreaming.