The Rudolf Steiner Archive

My dear friends! You have requested that we meet here to discuss matters that are closely related to your profession, and I may assume that this request of yours has arisen from the realization of the seriousness of our situation, a seriousness that becomes particularly apparent when one tries to work from a religious point of view in the civilizing life of our time. And I may further assume that you are primarily not concerned with what could be called a theological matter, but with a religious matter. It is indeed true that the burning question of our time is not only a theological one. One might think that even with a good deal of goodwill, some people could come to terms with the theological question in a relatively short time. But what must be clear to anyone looking impartially at our time is precisely not the question of dogma, not the question of theology, but the question of preaching and everything connected with it, the question of religion and especially of religious work as such. But with this we are pointing to a much broader and more comprehensive question than the theological one could ever be.

If one takes the religious standpoint from the outset, then the aim is to find a way of making the spiritual worlds with their various forces of activity accessible to people, initially – if we limit ourselves to the religious – through the word. And here we must be clear about the fact that the whole of our more recent development in this respect presents us with a question of the very deepest seriousness. He does not overlook the question who thinks that from the starting point on which the older people among us still place themselves today, something else could arise than actually the complete disintegration of religious life within our modern civilization. Anyone who believes that religious life can still be saved from the old assumptions is actually taking an impossible point of view. I say this in the introduction not because I want to start from some kind of spiritual-scientific dogma from the outset – that should not be the case – but because what I say simply shows up the unbiased observation of life in our time.

We must be clear about whether we can find an echo in the hearts of our contemporaries today when we preach, when we speak of those things that must one day be spoken of within true Christianity. And I assume that these days here will be such that we will discuss the matters that are actually on your minds in question and answer and disputation, but today I would like to touch on some of the issues that are actually at hand.

We must be clear about the fact that what has emerged in the last three to four hundred years as scientific education in humanity has already drawn a wide circle around itself. Those who are older can still notice the difference that exists in this respect between what was available in the 70s or 80s of the last century and what surrounds us today. In the 70s and 80s of the last century, you could still talk to a large part of the population about questions of spiritual life that arose from the traditions of various denominations and sects, and you could still find hearts and souls in which such talk resonated. Today, we are basically facing a different time. Of course, there are still many people who have not taken in much of the newer education that has found its way into our civilization; and we could still speak to these people about such concepts as Christ, the effect of grace, redemption, and so on, without something like resistance immediately asserting itself in these hearts. But even this will not last much longer. For a certain popular view of education is spreading with lightning speed, penetrating into the broadest masses of people through the literature of newspapers and popular magazines, and basically also through our school education. And even if this educational outlook does not directly develop ideas, feelings that rebel against such concepts as Christ, redemption, grace, and so on, do flourish, we must not forget that these ideas, which are absorbed, are cast in forms that simply give rise to an inner resistance to actual religious life in the broadest circles, unless a new starting point is sought for it. We should not deceive ourselves on this point.

You see, if the view of education continues to spread, which, based on seemingly established scientific premises, describes the universe in such a way that it began in a certain mechanical way, that organic life developed from mechanical tangles, and then, for my sake, the external-physical , then, if the facts are traced that have led to such hypotheses, so that one forms ideas about a corresponding end of the earth or our planetary system from them, then, for all those who seriously and honestly accept these ideas, the religious ideas, especially of Christianity, no longer have the possibility to flourish.

That this is not already very much in evidence today is only because there is so little inner honesty in people. They simply allow the mechanical-physical order of nature and Christianity to coexist and even try to prove theoretically that the two things can go side by side. But this only serves to obscure what is felt in every unbiased soul. And even if the intellect seeks all possible harmonies between Christianity and modern science, the heart will extinguish all these attempts at mediation, and the consequence can only be that there will be less and less room for religion in the hearts and minds of our fellow human beings.

If we do not consider the question from these deeper perspectives, we fail to appreciate the seriousness of the situation in which we currently find ourselves. For the difficulties indicated are encountered not only in theology, but most of all where they are not clearly expressed, where they remain hidden in the subconscious of our fellow human beings; one encounters them precisely when one does not want to practice theology but religion. And that is the important thing that must be understood above all else.

You see, the Ritschl school with all its offshoots is particularly characteristic of what has happened in this field in more recent times. This Ritschl school is still regarded today by many people working in the field of religion as something extraordinary. But what exactly is the Ritschl school? The Ritschl school takes the view that the last few centuries, especially the 19th century, have brought us a large amount of scientific knowledge. This scientific knowledge is dangerous for religious life. The Ritschl school is clear on this: if we let scientific knowledge into religious life, whether it be for criticism or for the formation of dogmas, then religious life will be undermined by it. So we have to look for a different starting point for religious life, the starting point of faith.

Yes, now, in a sense, we would have split the soul in two. On the one hand, we would have the soul's theoretical powers of knowledge, which deal with science, and on the other hand, we would have the establishment of a soul realm that develops very different abilities from the realm of knowledge: the realm of faith. And now there is a struggle, a struggle by no means for harmony between science and religion, but a struggle to exclude science from religion, a struggle for an area in which the soul can move without letting scientific thinking in at all. To allow as little as possible – if possible, nothing at all – of any scientific knowledge to enter religious life: that is the ideal of the Ritschlians.

But now, regardless of whether something like this can be established theoretically, regardless of whether one can persuade oneself that something like this dichotomy of the soul could exist, it is nevertheless true that for the actual life of the soul, so much rebellious power comes from the subconscious against this dichotomy of the soul that precisely religious life is undermined by it. But one could disregard it oneself. One need only go to the positive side of Ritschlianism itself, then one will see how this view must ultimately lose all content for religious feeling itself.

Let us take the most important forces that play a role in religious life. First, there is the realm of faith – whether or not this leads into knowledge is a question we will discuss later – secondly, there is the realm of actual religious experience – we will also take a closer look at this realm of religious experience later – and thirdly, there is the realm of religious authority. Now, one might say that since Luther, Protestantism has done an enormous amount to clarify, explain and so on the concept of authority. And in the struggle against the Catholic Church, one might say that Protestant life has extracted a pure perception with regard to the concept of authority. Within Protestant life, it is clear that one should not speak of an external authority in religion, that only Christ Jesus Himself should be regarded as the authority for individual souls. But as soon as one comes to the content of religious life, that is, to the second point, from the point of view of the Ritschlian school, an enormous difficulty immediately arises, which, as you know, has very, very significantly confronted all the newer Ritschlians. Ritschl himself does not want to have a nebulous, dark, mystical religious experience, but rather he wants to make the content of the Gospels the soul content of religious life. It should be possible for the religious person to experience the content of the Gospel, which means, in other words, that one should also be able to use the content of the Gospel for the sermon. But now the newer Ritschlians found themselves in a difficult position. Take, for example, the Pauline Epistles: in them, of course, there is contained a whole sum of Paul's religious experience, of a religious experience that is, from a certain point of view, entirely subjective, that is not simply a universally human religious experience to which one can relate only by saying to oneself: Paul had this experience, he put it into his letters, and one can only relate to it by saying: I look to Paul, I try to find my way into what his religious experience is, and I enter into a relationship with it. But that is precisely what the newer Ritschlians want to exclude. They say: what is subjective religious experience in this way cannot actually be the content of general Protestant belief, because it leads to simply recognizing an external authority, albeit a historical authority, but one should appeal to that which can be experienced in every single human soul. Thus the Pauline letters would already be excluded from the content of the gospel. For example, the Pauline letters would not be readily accepted into the content of general preaching.

Now, if you look at the matter impartially, you will hardly doubt that what the Ritschl School now presents as the rest that is to remain as objective experiences can, for an impartial consideration, only be considered a subjective experience. For example, it is said that the account of the life of Christ Jesus, as related in the Gospels, can basically be relived by everyone, but not, for example, the doctrine of vicarious atonement. So one must include in general preaching that which relates to the experiences of Christ Jesus, but not something like the doctrine of vicarious atonement and other related things. But on unbiased examination, you will hardly be able to admit that there is such a core of general experience in relation to Christ Jesus that could be appealed to in a very general sermon. The Ritschlianers will just end up, if they are unbiased enough, feeling compelled to drop piece after piece, so that in the end there is hardly much left of the content of the gospel.

But if the content of the gospel is no longer part of the sermon, if it is no longer part of religious instruction at all, then we are left with nothing of a concrete content that can be developed; then we are left only with what could be described as the general – and as such it always becomes nebulous – as the general nebulous mystical experience of God. And this is what we are encountering more and more in the case of individual people in modern times, who nevertheless believe that they can be good Christians with this kind of experience. We are encountering more and more that any content that leads to a form — although it is taken from the depths of the whole person, it must still lead to a certain formulation — any such content is rejected and actually only looked at from a certain emotional direction, an emotional direction towards a general divine, so that in fact in many cases it is precisely the honest religious-Christian endeavor that is on the way to such a vague emotional content.

Now, you see, this is precisely where the Protestant church has arrived at an extraordinarily significant turning point, and even at the turning point where the greatest danger threatens that the Protestant church could end up in an extraordinarily bad position compared to the Catholic church. You see, the Catholic principle has never placed much emphasis on the content of the Gospels; the Catholic principle has always worked with symbolism, even in preaching. And with those Catholic preachers who have really risen to the occasion, you will notice to this day – yes, one might say, today, when Catholicism is really striving for regeneration, even more so – how strongly symbolism is coming to life again, how, so to speak, dogmatic content, certain content about facts and entities of the supersensible life, is clothed in symbols. And there is a full awareness, even among the relatively lower clergy, that the symbolum, when pronounced, penetrates extraordinarily deeply into the soul, much deeper than the dogmatic content, than the doctrinal content and that one can contribute much more to the spread of religious life by expressing the truths of salvation in symbolic form, by giving the symbols a thoroughly pictorial character and not getting involved with the actual teaching content. You know, of course, that the content of the Gospel itself is only the subject of a lecture within the context of the Mass in the Catholic Church, and that the Catholic Church avoids presenting the content of the Gospel as a teaching to the faithful, especially in its preaching.

Anyone who can appreciate the power that lies in a renewal of the symbolic content of the sermon will understand that we are indeed at this important turning point today, that the main results of Protestant life in recent centuries have been very, very much put in a difficult and extremely difficult position in relation to the spreading forces of Catholicism.

Now, when you see how the Protestant life itself loses its connection with the content of the Gospels, and on the other hand you see how a nebulous mysticism remains as content, then you can indeed say: the power of faith itself is actually on very shaky ground. And we must also be clear about the fact that the power of faith today stands on very shaky ground. Besides, one really cannot avoid saying to oneself: No matter how many barriers are erected around the field of faith, no matter how much effort is put into them, no matter how much barriers are erected against the penetration of scientific knowledge, these scientific findings will eventually break down the barriers, but they can only lead to irreligious life, not religious life. What the newer way of thinking in science can achieve, insofar as it is officially represented today, is this – you may not accept it at first, but if you study the matter historically, you will have to recognize it – that ultimately there would be such arguments as in David Friedrich Strauß's 'Alter und neuer Glaube' (Old and New Belief). Of course the book is banal and superficial; but only such banalities and superficialities come of taking the scientific life as it is lived today and trying to mold some content of belief out of it.

Now, as I already indicated earlier, we absolutely need such concepts as Christ, the effect of grace, redemption, and so on, in the realm of religious life. But how should the unique effect of the mystery of Golgotha be possible in a world that has developed as it must be viewed by today's natural science in its development? How can you put a unique Christ in such a world?

You can put forward an outstanding man; but then you will always see, when you try to describe the life of this outstanding man, that you can no longer be honest if you do not want to avoid the question: How does the life of this most outstanding man differ from that of Plato, Socrates or any other outstanding man? One can no longer get around this question. If one is incapable of seeing any other impulses in the evolution of mankind on earth than those which science, if it is honest, can accept today, then one is also incapable of somehow integrating the Mystery of Golgotha into history. We have, of course, experienced the significant Ignorabimus of Ranke in relation to the Christ question, and it seems to me that here the Ignorabimus of Ranke should play a much more significant role for us than all attempts, emanating from Ritschlians or others, to conquer a particular field as a religious field, in which Christ can then be valid because barriers are erected against 'scientific life'.

You see, I would like to get straight to the heart of the matter in these introductory words; I would like to get you to think about it: how can one speak of ethical impulses being realized in some way in a world that operates according to the laws that the scientist must assume today? Where should ethical impulses intervene if we have universal natural causality? — At most, we can assume that in a world of mechanical natural causality, something ethical may have intervened at the starting point and, as it were, given the basic mechanical direction, which now continues automatically. But if we are honest, we cannot think of this natural mechanism as being permeated by any ethical impulses.

And so, if we accept the universal mechanism of nature and the universal natural causality, we cannot think that our own ethical impulses trigger anything in the world of natural causality. People today are just not honest enough, otherwise they would say: If we accept the general natural causality, then our ethical impulses are just beautiful human impulses, but beautiful human impulses remain illusions. We can say that ethical ideals live in us, we can even say that the radiance of a divinity that we worship and adore shines on these ethical ideals, but to ascribe a positive reality to this divine and even to state any kind of connection between our prayer and the divine and its volitional impulses remains an illusion.

Certainly, the diligence and good will that have been applied from various sides in order to be able to exist on the one hand, on the side of natural causality, and on the other hand to conquer a special area in religious life, is to be recognized. That is to be recognized. But there is still an inner dishonesty in it; it is not possible with inner honesty to accept this dichotomy.

Now, in the further course of our negotiations, we will probably not have to concern ourselves too much with the very results of spiritual scientific research; we will find content for the religious questions, so to speak, from the purely human. But I would like to draw your attention to the fact that spiritual science, which does indeed produce positive, real results that are just as much results as those of natural science, is not in a position to stand on the ground of general natural causality. Let us be clear about this point, my dear friends.

You see, the most that our study of nature has brought us is the law of the conservation of matter and the conservation of energy in the universe. You know that in the newer science of the soul, in psychology, this law of the conservation of energy has had a devastating effect. One cannot come to terms with the soul life and its freedom if one takes this law of the conservation of matter and the conservation of energy seriously. And the foundations that today's science gives us to understand the human being are such that we cannot help but think that this law of the conservation of matter and the conservation of energy seems to apply to the whole human being.

Now you know that spiritual science – not as a dogma of prejudice, but as a result of [spiritual research] – has the knowledge of repeated earthly lives. In the sense of this knowledge, we live in this life, for example, between birth and death, in such a way that, on the one hand, we have within us the impulses of physical inheritance (we will come back to these impulses of physical inheritance in more detail). The world in which we live between death and a new birth includes facts that are not subject to the laws of the conservation of matter and the conservation of energy. If we seek the spiritual connection between our present life and our next life on earth and further into the lives that no longer proceed physically, but that, after the end of our earthly existence, proceed spiritually, if we draw this connecting line, we encounter world contents that do not fall under our natural laws and therefore cannot be conceived under the law of the conservation of matter and the conservation of energy. What, then, is the connection between that which plays out from an earlier life into a later one, and that which a person then lives out in his deeds under the influence of earlier lives on earth? This connection is such that it cannot be grasped by natural laws, even if they extend into the innermost structure of the human body.

Every effect of that which was already present in me in earlier lives, in the present life, is such that its lawfulness has nothing to do with the universal laws of nature. This means that if we have ethical impulses in our present life on earth, we can say with certainty that these ethical impulses cannot be fully realized in the physical world, but they have the possibility of being realized from one life on earth to the next, because we pass through a sphere that is released from the laws of nature.

We thus arrive at a concept of miracle that is indeed transformed, but can certainly be retained in terms of knowledge. The concept of miracle in turn takes on meaning. The concept of miracle can only make sense if ethical impulses, and not just natural laws, are at work. But when we are completely immersed in the natural world, our ethical impulses do not flow into the natural order. But if we are lifted out of this natural context, if we place time between cause and effect, then the concept of miracle takes on a completely new meaning; indeed, it takes on a meaning in an even deeper sense.

If we look at the origin of the earth from a spiritual scientific point of view, we do not see the same forces at work as in the universal context of nature today. Rather, we see the laws of nature being suspended during the transition from the pre-earthly metamorphosis to the present-day earthly metamorphosis of the earth. And when we go to the end of the earth, when, so to speak, the Clausiussche formula is fulfilled and the entropy has increased so much that it has arrived at its maximum, when, therefore, the heat death has occurred for the earth, then the same thing happens: we see how, at the beginning of the earth as well as at the end of the earth, natural causality is eliminated and a different mode of action is present. We therefore have the possibility of intervening precisely in such times of suspension, as they lie for us humans between death and a new birth, as they lie for the earth itself before and after its present metamorphosis, the possibility of intervention by that which is today simply rejected by natural causality, the possibility of intervention by ethical impulses.

You see, I would say that humanity has already taken one of the two necessary steps. The first step is that all reasonable people, including religious people, have abandoned the old superstitious concept of magic, the concept of magic that presupposes the possibility of intervening in the workings of nature through this or that machination. In place of such a concept of magic, we now have the view that we must simply let natural processes run their course, that we cannot master natural causality with spiritual forces. Natural causality takes its course, we have no influence on it, so it is said, therefore magic in the old superstitious sense is to be excluded from our fields of knowledge.

But, as correct as this may be for certain periods of time, it is incorrect when we look at larger periods of time. If we look at the period of time that lies between death and a new birth for us humans, we simply pass through an area that, before spiritual scientific knowledge, appears in the following way: Imagine we die at the end of our present life; we first step out of the world in which we perceive the universal natural causality through our senses and our intellect. This universal natural causality continues to rule on earth, which we have then left through death, and we can initially, after death, when we look down from the life in the beyond to this one, see nothing but that effects grow out of the causes that were active during our life; these effects, which then become causes again, become effects again. After our death, we see that this natural causality continues.

If we have led a reasonably normal life, then this life continues after death until all the impulses that were active during our earthly life have experienced their end in earthly activity itself and a new spiritual impact takes place, until, that is, the last causalities cease and a new impact is there. Only then do we embody ourselves again when the spiritual gives a new impact, so that the stream of earlier causalities ceases. We descend to a new life, not by finding the effects of the old causes of our former life again – we do not find them then – but we find a new phase of rhythm, a new impact. Here we have, so to speak, lived spiritually across a junction of rhythmic development. In the next life we cannot say that the causes that were already present in the previous life are taking effect, but that in our human life they have all been exhausted at a crossroads – not yet the effects of the animal, plant and mineral kingdoms, which will only be exhausted at the end of the earth's time. But all that concerns us humans in terms of ethical life has been exhausted, and a new approach is needed. And we take the impulses for this new approach from the spiritual life that we go through between death and a new birth, so that we can connect with those impulses that shape the earth out of the ethical-divine. We can connect with them when we are in the world ourselves, from which the new impulse then flows. So that we have to say: If we now look at our life between birth and death, there is certainly no room for the superstitious-magical, but in the next life the connection is such that one can really speak of magic, but not of an immediate influence of the spiritual into the physical. That is the important thing that one gets to know through spiritual science, that there is not simply a continuous stream of causalities from beginning to end, but that there are rhythms of causality that pass through certain periods of time, which are not even terribly long in relation to the entire development of the earth; they arrive at the zero point, then a new causality rhythm comes. When we enter into the next rhythm of causality, we do not find the effects of the earlier rhythm of causality. On the contrary, we must first carry them over into our own soul in the form of after-effects, which we have to carry over through karma.

You see, I just wanted to suggest to you that spiritual science really has no need to accept anything from those who want to regenerate religion today – for many, this would mean the acceptance of a new dogmatism –; I just wanted to suggest that it is possible for spiritual science, for the science of the outer world, without prejudice to the seemingly necessary validity of the laws of nature, to give such a configuration that man in turn fits into it, and fits into it in such a way that he can truly call his ethical impulses world impulses again, that he is not repelled with his ethical impulses towards a merely powerless faith. At least this possibility must be borne in consciousness, for without it one is not understood by those to whom one is to preach.

I would also like to make a point for you here that I have often made for the teachers at the Waldorf School, which forms an important pedagogical principle. You see, if you want to teach children something, you must not believe that this something will be accepted by the child if you yourself do not believe in it, if you yourself are not convinced of it. I usually take the example that one can teach small children about the immortality of the soul by resorting to a symbol. One speaks to the child of the butterfly emerging from the chrysalis and draws the comparison by saying: Just as the butterfly lives in the chrysalis, our soul lives in us, only we do not see it; it flies away when death occurs. Now, there are two possible approaches to such teaching. One is to imagine: I am a terribly clever guy who doesn't think that using this comparison says anything about immortality, but I need it for the child, who is stupid, you teach them that. If you are unbiased, you will soon recognize that this sublimity of the child's perception cannot lead to fruitful teaching. What you do not have as a conviction within yourself will not convince the child in the end. Such are the effects of imponderables. Only when I myself can believe that my symbol corresponds to reality in every single word, then my teaching will be fruitful for the child. And spiritual science, of course, provides sufficient occasion for this, because in spiritual science the butterfly that crawls out of the chrysalis is not just a fictitious symbol, but it is actually the case that what appears at a higher level as immortality appears at a lower level. It is ordained by the Powers That Be that what is the transition of the soul into the immortal appears in the image of the butterfly crawling out.

So, if you look at the picture as if it were a reality, then the teaching is fruitful, but not if you imagine that you are a clever fellow who forms the image, but if you know that the world itself gives you the image. Thus the imponderable forces work between the soul of the teacher and the soul of the child; and so it is also in religious instruction, in preaching. One must have in one's soul the full content of the foundations for that which one presumes will be understood by those to whom one speaks. Indeed, one must not even have concepts that contradict this matter. I would like to express myself as follows: Suppose you are a person in the sense of today's Ritschlianer or something like that, who is thoroughly religious in terms of soul immortality, the existence of God and so on, but at the same time you are weak enough to accept the Kant-Laplace theory, and in fact as it is taught by today's natural science. The mere fact that this Kant-Laplacean theory is in your mind and is an objective contradiction of what you have to represent as the content of your Christian confession, already that impairs the convincing power that you must have as a preacher. Even if you are not aware of the contradictions, they are there; that is to say, anyone who wants to preach must have within himself all the elements that make up a consistent worldview. Of course, theology will not be of much use to us in preaching; but we must have it within ourselves as a consistent whole, not as one that exists alongside external science, but one that can embrace external science, that is, relate to it sympathetically.

We can look at the matter from another side. You see, in philosophy, in science, they talk today about all possible relationships between man and the world around him; but the things they talk about are hardly found in the people who, as simple, primitive people, even among the urban population, are listening to us today, uneducated. The relationships that our psychologists, for example, posit between the person who observes nature and the person himself are not real at all; they are actually only artificially contrived. But what lives in the simplest farmer, in the most primitive person in our world, is that deep within himself he seeks — I say seeks — something deep within himself that is not out there in nature. He searches for a different world view from the one that comes from nature, and one must speak to him of this world view if the feeling that he has as a religious feeling is to arise at all. Primitive man simply says, as it lives in his subconscious: “I am not made of this material that the world is made of, which I can see with my senses; tell me something about what I cannot see with my senses!” This is the direct appeal that is made to us if man is to make us his religious guides: we should tell him something about the positive content of the supersensible world.

All our epistemology, which says that sensory perceptions and sensations are subjective or more or less objective and so on, is of little concern to the vast majority of people. But the fact that something must live in the world that does not belong to the sensory world by its very nature is something that people want to learn about from us. And here the question is: How can we meet this need of the human being? We can only do so by finding the right path from the subject-matter of teaching to the cultus; and I will say a few introductory words about this question tomorrow. Today, I would be very grateful if you would express yourselves so that I can get to know your needs.

Perhaps we will arrive more at formulating questions than at answers, but it would be quite good if we could formulate the main questions. During my time here, I would like to give you what can lead to such a handling of the religious, which, I would say, lies in the profession of the religious leader, not in theology. So it should be aimed at religious practice, at the establishment of religious institutions, not so much at theological questions. But if such questions are on your mind, we can also talk about them. I would ask you, if we are talking about what is particularly on your mind today, to at least formulate the questions first.

A participant suggests that Mr. Bock from Berlin formulate the questions.

Emil Bock: Last night I reported on what we in Berlin have tried to make clear to ourselves in our inner preparation, and we have tried to distinguish between different sets of questions. And in connection with what we have heard, we can now formulate the one question that combines three of the areas we had distinguished: the questions of worship and preaching and the question of the justification of the community element in the community. Yesterday evening I tried to make this clear by referring to the church-historical trend of the community movement. And there we actually found that for us it is about a clarity of the relationship between anthroposophical educational work on religious questions and purely religious practice, so either in worship, the relationship between ritual and sermon, or, with a transformation of what must take place outside of the cult, the relationship of the service as a whole to the religious lecture work or the religious ritual to teaching children, because what is ultimately gained through symbolism has not yet been realized by the human being. Now the question for us is: to what extent does it have to become conscious at all, and if it has to become conscious, how does it have to be done and balanced between the symbolic work on the part of the person and the part of the person that simultaneously tries to develop an awareness of it, which in turn will be divided into several problems when we consider the diversity of those we will face later? For many people may not have the need to raise the impulses into consciousness, while many people may first have the problem of consciousness at all.

And so the question arose for us: How do we actually harmonize the striving for a communal religious life with the striving for a vitalization of the I-impulse? For we have to reckon with the fact that, as far as we can see, in the case of many people who belong to bourgeois life, what would first come into question would be a proper independence for the individual through religious practice, a connection to the forces of the I, while in the case of many other people we would have to bring about a regulation of a lost sense of self. This is what we sensed in the question of communal forces, in a way that we could understand in relation to the Moravian Church in church history.

This is how I have now described the one complex of questions that was important to us last night. But we also had three other areas that raised a number of questions for us, and the first of these was the purely organizational. If we prepare ourselves, make ourselves capable and draw the consequences for our personal field of work, which then arise when we realize that, after all, it is a matter of founding communities according to a new principle, then the question is before us, and this is in every case, of course, differentiated in practice, depending on the situation in which the individual stands: What preparatory work do we have to do? Can we do preparatory work through lecturing? How can we practically distribute ourselves to the points where something needs to be worked on, and how can we work out something together about these things? It was clear to us that, of course, we do not expect things to be made easy for us now and that we will get a place. We are prepared to create such fields of work. But perhaps there is something to be learned about how this can be made easier for us in a certain sense. Then there is a great deal that is perhaps purely organizational that we would like to ask about during our discussion.

The second point, in addition to purely organizational matters, was our relationship to theological science. Above all, there were two questions: firstly, the theological training of those who later have to work in such communities, insofar as such training can come into contact with university activities and we can learn from it. Then there is the question of the new understanding of the Bible, which, after all, presupposes a theological education that goes beyond a knowledge of the anthroposophical worldview to a certain extent, as a technical education. Perhaps there are some practical questions in one heart or another; perhaps one or the other has more of an inclination for scientific work, and it would be interesting for all of us to see how this theological-scientific work can perhaps be made fruitful for the religious life of the present.

And then, last of the six areas we see – and this is probably the one that can least be formulated directly in questions – is the question of the quality of the priesthood that we must expect of ourselves if we set out to work on something like this. But then something practical comes together again very closely, about which one should already ask, that would be the question of the selection of the personalities who should then finally enter into this work, because somehow we must also orient ourselves as to how we should select ourselves, quite apart from where the decision about this will initially lie for the direction of self-evaluation. I think I have roughly said what it was about last night.

Rudolf Steiner: These are the questions that must be asked at this turning point, to which I have alluded, and this will actually be the content of our being together. We must, in particular, be clear about these questions and also about some things that, I would say, form the prerequisite for them. I would just like to point out a few things after the questions have been formulated, before we discuss them: It is the case that we are living in a time in which such questions must be judged from a highest point of view, also from a highest historical point of view. It is not at all in the direction of the spiritual scientist to always use the phrase; “We live in a transitional period.” Of course, every period is a transition from the earlier to the later, but the point is to look beyond what is considered a transition to what is actually passing away. And in our time, there is something that is very much understood in the process of transition: human consciousness itself. We are very easily mistaken if we believe that consciousness, as it still manifests itself in many ways today, is, so to speak, unchangeable.

We say to ourselves today very easily: Yes, there are people who, through their higher education, will want to become aware of the content of the cult; other people will have no need for it, they will not strive to bring it into conscious life at all. You see, we are living at a point in the historical development of humanity when it is characteristic that the number of people who want to be enlightened in a suitable way about that which is also a cult for them is increasing very rapidly. And we have to take that into account. We must not form the dogmatic prejudice today that you can enlighten him, but not her. For if we assume today that people who have attained a certain level of education do not want to be enlightened, then we will usually be mistaken in the long run. The number of people who want to achieve a certain degree of awareness of the symbolic and of what is alive in the cultus is actually growing every day, and the main question is quite different, namely this: How can we arrive at a cult and symbolic content when we at the same time demand that, as soon as one consciously enlightens oneself about this symbolic content, it does not become abstract and alien to the mind, but rather acquires its full value, its full validity? — This is the question that is of particular interest to us today.

If it is not too religious, you can refer to Goethe's fairy tale of the green snake and the beautiful lily, which emerged from a person who, if you want, if you want to squeeze the concepts, can be spoken of as a person who always dreamed about such things. One also speaks of the fact that Schiller interpreted Goethe's dreams. In a certain respect, however, Goethe was much more aware of what lived in his fairy tale than what Schiller became. But his consciousness is one that can live in the image itself; it is not that abstract consciousness that one experiences today solely as consciousness. Today one confuses understanding with consciousness in general. The one who visualizes is believed to be not as conscious as the one who conceptualizes. Conceptualization is confused today with consciousness.

We will have to talk about the question of the consciousness and unconsciousness and superconsciousness of a cult and a symbolism, which must indeed occupy our present time in the very deepest sense. For on the one hand we have the Catholic Church with its very powerful cult and its tremendously powerful and purposeful symbolism. What tremendous power lies in the sacrifice of the Mass alone, when it is performed as it is performed in the Catholic Church, that is, when it is performed with the consciousness of the faithful, which is present. And the sermon by the Catholic priest also has a content that relates to symbolism, and in particular it is very much imbued with will. [On the other hand,] the Protestant development of the last few centuries has led to the development of the cultus being transferred to the actual teaching content, to the teaching content. The teaching content is now that which tends to have an effect only when it is attuned to the understanding of the listener or reader. That is why Protestant churches face the danger of atomization, the danger that everyone forms their own church in their hearts, and precisely because of this no community can be formed. And this danger is one that must be countered.

We must have the possibility of forming a community, and one that is built not only on external institutions but on the soul and inner life. This means that we must be able to build a bridge between such a cult, such a ritual, that can exist in the face of modern consciousness and yet, like the Protestant confession, leads to a deeper understanding of the teaching.

The teaching content individualizes and analyzes the community until one finally arrives at the individual human being, and even analyzes the individual human being through his or her tendencies. A psychologist can see the conflicted natures of the present day; they are individualized right down to the individual. We can actually see today people who not only strive to have their individual beliefs, but who have two or more beliefs that fight each other in their own souls. The numerous conflicted natures of the present day are only a continuation of the tendency that individualizes and analyzes the community. Cult, symbol, and ritual are synthetic and reuniting; this can be perceived everywhere where these things are practically addressed. Therefore, this question is at the same time the one that must be really underlying the question of the community movement.

The question of anthroposophical enlightenment and purely religious practice must in turn be detached from our present-day point in time. Today, however, we are experiencing something tragic; and it would be particularly significant if a force could emanate from your community here, so to speak, that could initially lead us beyond this tragedy. If one has such an explanation, as it arises, I would like to say, as a religious explanation in consequence of the entire anthroposophical explanation, which, after all, has not only religious but also historical explanations, scientific explanations, and so on, if one considers these religious explanations of Anthroposophy , the ideas one encounters and, as a consequence, the feelings that arise from them, cannot but lead to a longing for external symbols, for images, in order to take shape. This is so often misunderstood that Anthroposophical ideas are already different from those ideas that one encounters today. When one is exposed to other ideas today, whether from science or from social life, they work in the sense that they are called enlightened in the absolute sense, and in the sense that they criticize everything and undermine everything. When one is exposed to anthroposophical ideas, they lead to a certain devotion in people, they are transformed into a certain love. Just as red blood cannot help but build up the human being, so the anthroposophical ideas cannot help but stimulate the human being emotionally, sensually, even volitionally, so that he receives the deepest longing for an expression of what he has to say, in the symbolic, in the pictorial at all. It is not something artificially introduced when you find so much pictorial language in my “Geheimwissenschaft”, for example; it just comes about through expressing oneself pictorially.

In Dornach — those who have been there have seen it, later on it will be seen in its perfection — we have at the center of the building a group of Christ figures: Christ with Lucifer and Ahriman, both of whom are defeated by him. There, in the Christ, a synthesis of all that is sensual and supersensual is presented to the human eye. Yes, you see, to develop such a figure plastically, that does not come from the fact that one has once decided to place a figure there, so that the place should be adorned. It is not at all like that, but when one develops the anthroposophical concepts, one finally comes to an end with the concepts. It is like coming to a pond; now you cannot go any further, but if you want to get ahead, you have to swim. So, if you want to go further with anthroposophy, at a certain point you cannot go on forming abstract concepts, you cannot go on forming ideas, but you have to enter into images. The ideas themselves demand that you begin to express yourself in images.

I have often said to my listeners: There are certain theories of knowledge. Particularly among Protestant theologians there are those who say: Yes, what one recognizes must be clothed in purely logical forms, one must look at things with pure logic, otherwise one has a myth. Isn't that how people like Bruhn speak? He works very much against anthroposophy by saying that it forms myths, a new mythology. Yes, but what if someone were to ask the counter-question: just try to fathom the universe with your logic, without passing over into the pictorial. If the universe itself works not only logically but also artistically, then you must also look at it artistically; but if the universe eludes your logical observation, then what? In the same way, the outer human form eludes mere logical speculation. If you take the true anthroposophical concepts, you get into the picture, because nature does not create according to mere natural laws, but according to forms.

And so it can be said that as anthroposophy comes to fruition today, it takes into account what is at play in the hearts of our contemporaries, [the need] to get beyond intellectualism. This is actually admitted by every discerning contemporary who is following developments. They realize that we have to move beyond intellectualism, in theology too, of course. But most do not yet realize that this flowing into the pictorial, which then becomes ritual cultus in the sphere of religious practice, has just as much justification and just as much originality as the logical.

Most people imagine that pictures are made by having concepts and then clothing them in symbolism. This is always a straw-like symbolism. This is not the case [in Dornach]. In Dornach, there is no symbol based on a concept, but rather, at a certain stage, the idea is abandoned and the picture comes to life as something original. It is there as an image. And one cannot say that one has transferred a concept into the image. That would be a symbolism of straw.

This striving to overcome intellectualism is there today, this striving for a spiritual life that, because of objectivity, passes into the pictorial. On the other hand, there is no belief in the image at all today. This makes it tragic. One believes that one must overcome the image if one is really clever; one believes that one only becomes conscious when one has overcome the image. — Such images as in Goethe's Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily are always divested of their reality when one tries to explain or interpret them by mental maziness. One can only lead to the fact that the person concerned can take up these images, that they can become concrete for him, but not mentally comment on them. This is what distinguishes what I have contributed to the interpretation of Goethe's fairy tale from what the other commentators do. They make comments and explain the images mentally.

For what the real imagination is based on, the mental explanation is just as foreign as what I say about the Chinese language in German, for example. If I want to teach someone Chinese, I have to lead him to the point where he can grasp the Chinese language in its entirety to such an extent that he can enter into it. And so one must also prepare for real pictorial thinking; one must proceed in such a way that the person concerned can then make the images present within himself and not have to attach an explanation to them.

That is the tragedy, that on the one hand there is the deepest need for the image, and on the other hand all belief in the image has actually been extinguished. We do not believe that we have something in images that cannot be given in the mind, in intellectual concepts. We must first understand this when we talk about the question of symbolum and consciousness in the near future. In particular, we will only be able to fruitfully answer the question of how to balance the subconscious and the conscious, which plagues so many people today, when we are clear about this matter.

So I would like to ask you to consider what I have now suggested about the relationship between the concepts of the intellect and the real images until tomorrow. From this point of view, we will also find that we can enter into community building, because community building depends very much on the possibility of a cult. The practical successes of community building also depend on the possibility of a cult.

You see, when people get to know India and the Indian religions, one thing is always emphasized with great justification: Of course there are many sects in India; these have a very strong sense of community that extends to the soul and can manifest itself in practical community life. In some respects, of course, the version that has to take place in the East can compete with many of the principles on which the brotherhood is based. This is often based on the fact that the Oriental in his individual life does not really know what we call subjective, personal conviction in relation to the community around him. The Oriental, if he participates at all in spiritual life, does not understand at all that one cannot have one's own opinion about everything, for example about a community and a body of teaching; that is something he does not understand at all. Conceptually, everyone can have their own opinion; the only thing that is common there is only the image, and one is only aware that the image is common. It is peculiar that in the West there is a tendency to place the emphasis on conviction, and that this leads to atomization. If one seeks conviction and places the main emphasis on it, then one comes to atomization. This does not occur if one seeks commonality in something other than conviction. Conviction must be able to be completely individual.

We must ask ourselves the question: On the one hand, the self stands as the pinnacle of the individual life, while on the other hand, Christ stands as the power and essence that is not only common to all Christians, but of which the claim must be made that it can become common to all human beings. And we must find the way to bridge the gap between the very individual self, which to a certain extent wants to believe what it is capable of, and the commonality of Christ.

We shall then have to devote special attention to the question of forming communities, and, as the Lord very rightly said, to the preliminary work for this. For these are, of course, matters that will meet with quite different difficulties. On the one hand, we are today almost dependent on conducting preliminary work through instruction in such a way that we find a sufficiently large number of people in whose souls there is initially an understanding of what can actually be wanted. On the other hand, we are faced with humanity that is completely fragmented. The simple fact that we appear with the pretension of knowing something that another person might have to think about for a day to judge is almost enough to get us dismissed right now. The effect from person to person is extremely difficult today. And of course this also makes the formation of communities more difficult.

Nevertheless, if you want to achieve something in what you have only been able to strive for by appearing here, then we will have to talk at length about the question of forming a community and, above all, about the preparatory work for it, which should essentially consist of us feeling, already spiritually, as community builders. And we can hardly do this other than by – perhaps it will not be immediately understandable at first hearing what I want to say, because it touches on one of the deepest questions of the present – first of all trying to refrain from lecturing other people as much as possible. People just don't take lectures today; this should not be our main task.

You see, however small the success of anthroposophical work may be, which I have had to set myself as my task, in a sense this success is there, albeit in a small circle; it is there. And what is there is based on the fact that I actually — in the sense in which it is understood at our educational institutions — never wanted to teach anyone in a primarily forceful way. I have actually always proceeded according to a law of nature, I always said to myself: the herrings lay an infinite number of eggs in the sea, very few of them become herrings, but a certain selection must take place. And anyone who knows that that which goes beyond the materialistic continues to have an effect, knows that even the unfertilized herring eggs already have their task in the world as a whole – they have their great effect in the etheric world, the selections only take place for the physical world – then comes to terms with this question: Why do such herring eggs remain unfertilized? That which remains unfertilized has its great task in another world. These unfertilized herring eggs are not entirely without significance. And that is basically how it is with teaching people. I have never believed, whether I have spoken to an audience of fifty or to one of five hundred (I have also spoken to larger audiences), that one-half or one-quarter of them can be taught. Rather, I have assumed that among five hundred there will perhaps be five who, at the first stroke, will have their hearts touched by what I have to say, who are, so to speak, predestined for it. Among fifty people, one, and among five people, one in ten. It is no different, and one must adjust to that. Then what happens through instruction in the present time cannot happen through selection. People come together with whom one has found an echo. Selection is what we must seek first today; then we will make progress.

It takes a certain resignation not to live in this sense of power: you want to teach, you want to convince others. But you absolutely must have this resignation. And why people so often lack it depends precisely – I am only talking here about people who practise religion – depends precisely on their theological training. This theological training is basically based entirely on the fact that one can teach everyone, that one should not actually make selections. Therefore, ways and means must be found to include in the theological training, above all, the emotional relationship to the content of the spiritual.

You see, unfortunately even theology has arrived at the point of view that knowledge of God is always more important than life in God, the experience of the divine in the soul. The experience of the divine in the soul is what gives one the strength to work with the simplest, most unspoiled people, and that is what should actually be developed. Recent times have worked against this completely. The more we strive to seek abstract concepts of some kind of supersensible being, and the less we absorb this supersensible being into our souls, the more we will work against it. We really need a life-filled preparation and education for theological science. And of course something esoteric comes into play here, you see, where we have to point to a law that already exists. First of all, you have to have within you what I mentioned earlier: not only as a clever person, how are you supposed to teach a picture or something to someone else – you have to have that to the full – but you must also have the other, that you must always know more than what you say. I don't mean that in a bad way at all. But if you take the standpoint that is actually held today in the professorial world, that one should only appropriate that which one then wants to communicate to others, then you will certainly not be able to achieve much with religious communication. For example, when you speak about the Bible, you must have your own content, in which you live, in addition to the exoteric content, which is nothing other than an esoteric content expressed. There is no absolute boundary between the esoteric and the exoteric; one flows into the other and the esoteric becomes exoteric when it is spoken out.

This is basically what makes Catholic priests effective. That is what praying the breviary consists of. He seeks to approach the divine in a way that goes beyond the layman by praying the breviary. And the special content of the breviary, which goes beyond what is taught, also gives him strength to work in preaching and otherwise. It has always been interesting to me – and this has happened not just once, but very frequently – that Protestant pastors who had been in office for a long time came to me and said that there should be something similar for them [to the Catholic breviary]. Please do not misunderstand me; I am not speaking in favor of Catholicism, least of all the Roman one. There are pastors who have been in office for a long time who have said to me: Why is it that we cannot come into contact with souls in the same way as a Catholic priest, who of course abuses it? — That is essentially because the [Catholic priest] seeks an esoteric relationship with the spiritual world.

This is really what we are striving for in the threefold social organism. The spiritual life we have today as a general rule — we are not talking about the other one — the spiritual life we have is not really a spiritual life, it is a mere intellectual life. We talk about the spirit, we have concepts, but concepts are not a living spirit. We must not only have the spirit in some form or other in the form of concepts that sit in our heads, but we must bring the spirit down to earth, it must be in the institutions, it must prevail between people. But we can only do that if we have an independent spiritual life, where we not only work out of concepts about the spirit, but work out of the spirit itself.

Now, of course, the Church has long endeavored to preserve this living spirit. It has long since disappeared from the schools; but we must bring it back there and also into the other institutions. The state cannot bring it in. That can only be brought in by what is at the same time individual priestly work and community work. But it must be priestly work in such a way that the priest, above all, has within himself the consciousness of an esoteric connection with the spiritual world itself, not merely with concepts about the spiritual world. And here, of course, we come to the great question of selection, to the judgment of the quality of the priests. Now, this judgment of the quality of the priests is such that it can very easily be misunderstood, because, firstly, many more people have this quality than one might think, it is just not developed in the right way, not cultivated in the right way; and secondly, this question is often a question of fate. When we come to have a living spiritual life at all and the questions of fate come to life for us again, then the priests will be pushed out of the community of people more into their place than out of self-examination, which always has a strongly selfish character. It is true that one must acquire a certain eye for what objectively calls upon one to do this or that.

Perhaps I may also tell you what I have said in various places as an example. I could also tell other examples. I gave a lecture in Colmar on the Bible and wisdom. Two Catholic priests came to me after the lecture. You can imagine that Catholic priests have not read anything by me, because it is actually forbidden for them, and it is basically the case that it is considered an abnormality for a Catholic priest to go to an anthroposophical lecture. But they were probably harmless at the time; they approached me quite innocently, since I did not say anything in this lecture that would have opposed them. They even came to me after the lecture and said: Yes, actually we cannot say anything [against what you have presented, because] we also have purgatory, we also have the reference to supersensible life after purgatory. Now in this case I thought it best to give two lectures. 'Bible and Wisdom' I and II, and in the first lecture nothing was said about repeated lives on earth, so they did not notice that there was a contradiction to the Roman Catholic view. Now they came and said that they had nothing against the content, but the “how” I said it was very different, and so they believed that they could not agree with this “how”. Because the “how” would be right for them, because they spoke for all people and I only spoke for certain prepared people, for people who therefore have a certain preparation for it. After some back and forth, I said the following: You see, it doesn't matter whether I or you—you or I, I said—are convinced that we speak for all people. This conviction is very understandable. We might not speak at all if we didn't have the conviction that we formulate our things in such a way and imbue them with such content that we speak for all people. But what matters is not whether we are convinced that we speak for all people, but whether all people come to you in church. And I ask you: do all people still come to church when you speak? Of course they could not say that everyone still comes, but they had to admit that some do not come. That is objectivity. For those who do not go to you and who also have the right to seek a path to Christ, I have spoken for them. — That is how one's task is derived from the facts.

I just wanted to show a way to get used to having one's personal task set by the question of destiny and also by the great question of objectivity. I wanted to show how one should not brood so much, as is the case today, over one's own personality – which, after all, is basically only there so that we can fill the place that the divine world government assigns us – but rather we should try to observe signs from which we can recognize the place we are to be placed. And we can do that.

Today, when people speak from their souls, they repeatedly ask: What corresponds to my particular abilities, how can I bring my abilities to bear? This question is much, much less important than the objective question, which is answered by looking around to see what needs to be done. And if we then really get seriously involved in what we notice, we will see that we have much more ability than we realize. These abilities are not so much specific; we as human beings can do an enormous amount, we have very universal soul qualities, not so much specific ones. This brooding over one's own self, and the over-strong belief that we each have our own specific abilities that are to be particularly cultivated, is basically an inward, very sophisticated egoism, which must be overcome by precisely the person who wants to achieve such qualities as are meant here.

Now I think I have told you how I understand the questions. We can think about the matter until tomorrow; and if it is all right with you, I would like to suggest that we meet again tomorrow at around 11 o'clock. And I would ask you not to hold back on any matter, but we want to deal with the things that are on your mind as exhaustively as possible.

Dear attendees, When one speaks, as I have done in these lectures, of the relationship between anthroposophical spiritual science and the individual specialized sciences, one is perhaps least inclined to emphasize the necessity of also mentioning the technical sciences as such, which, like the other sciences, are to be fertilized by this spiritual science – of which I have already characterized examples in the last lectures. Even if I can only sketch out these outlines, I would still like to point out how there is an important inner relationship between the spiritual science I am referring to here and what can be called the technical sciences with their practical consequences for modern life. I may refer to this – it is not meant personally, it is entirely relevant – and I already tried to do so in the early 1890s with my Philosophy of Freedom.

This “Philosophy of Freedom” is intended, first of all, as a foundation for ethical and social life. It is intended as such a foundation that is to be thoroughly modern. And if I were to characterize the meaning of this “Philosophy of Freedom,” I would have to point out the way in which it has grown out of contemporary life. It is not built on traditional philosophical presuppositions. It did not come into being in the way that much of this kind of work does, namely by presupposing some philosophical current, by becoming a follower of this or that school of philosophy and then trying to form some kind of direction that is supposed to have a certain validity but what I was trying to develop as the Philosophy of Freedom, as the ethical and social foundation of life, arose out of a very special way of thinking, which was formed first through the contemplation of modern social life. And here I must interject a few personal remarks, because they may more easily characterize what I want to say than a discussion would, and because the time allotted for these four lectures is too short for a discussion, which would otherwise be possible.

My school, my most important school, was the study of modern commercial life, which I faced every day from early childhood as the son of a minor railway official who had been introduced to everything related to railways from a technical point of view, and also to everything that was directly related to such a situation in commercial terms, even if it was perhaps from a narrow perspective at the time. Then again, I was able to continue my studies more than through any school, since for years I had to deal with the sons of people who were essentially involved in important industrial and transport sectors of the present day or the last decades of the 19th century. What I saw there in terms of thinking and feeling, I would say, what was flowing out of the forces that were incorporated into the most modern human endeavor, that demanded a certain grounding in ethical and social views of life.

When you look at life from the points of view that I have just described, you see it in those functions in which it becomes more and more detached from human subjectivity, so to speak, and in which it becomes more and more external, so to speak, technical. I would like to say that in life you are constantly confronted with what is repeatedly and repeatedly demanded as a principle in modern science. In modern science, it is postulated that phenomena should be treated entirely separately from the human being. And if we allow life to take its course, especially when technical achievements are involved, then we are primarily dealing with what takes place through the machine, through traffic and so on, with something that is very distinct from human subjectivity, that is very much only in the objective – so very much only in the objective that we can say: Here man loses his subjectivity, here much of his personality is lost, here man is placed in the objective driving wheels of life.

On the one hand, this emerged in modern scientific life in that one wanted to completely ignore in such sciences as optics or thermodynamics or similar what arises from the interrelation of the human being with the outside world, and wanted to found a science that then leaned in the last third of the 19th century towards atomistic theories, the dominance of which has by no means been overcome today. That is on the one hand. On the other hand, however, we also see that something is underlying the whole development of modern life, something that is separate from life and from the human being, from subjectivity, from the personality of the human being. In such a context, one can either thoughtlessly integrate oneself into the wheels of life, or one can believe that the old traditional beliefs and views could still provide certain ethical forces for this modern life, separated from man, and one can then demand such an objective science from certain subconscious depths, as has just been demanded in atomism, in physics, chemistry and even in biology.

But one can also come to something else. One can look at this life of modern times, which is separate from the human being, from the full, complete human sense of personality. One can feel it and sense it with all the effects it has on the human personality, and one can feel it best when one oneself acquires a technical education, when one goes through precisely those spiritual currents that are effective in technology. If I may add a personal comment: my university education was a purely technical one, not a philosophical one in some way, but a technical-scientific one. When one grows into this life, so to speak, completely separated from the human being, then, in the center of the personality, that which I believed I had to present as the other force of modern social life in the “Philosophy of Freedom” will stir. For the more, on the one hand, this technical life of modern times develops as an historical necessity (and one can certainly have an affirmative attitude towards this), the more man must, as it were, lose himself in external events, and the more must the inner reaction assert itself: to build up ethics, to build up religious feeling, too, on the innermost core of the human personality, on that which can be extracted from the conceivably deepest recess of the inner human being. And one can perhaps imagine how, on the one hand, one can be fully engaged in modern technical life and precisely for this reason say to oneself: Yes, man loses more and more of his personality there; all the more he must resort to the innermost source of his soul life, all the more he must shape out of it that which then brings light into what the personality otherwise completely discards. And from this innermost core of human life there emerged an ethical individualism — an ethical individualism, to be sure, that appeals first to a very significant social force.

Today it is very easy to criticize such ethical individualism, as it is founded in my “Philosophy of Freedom,” to the ground. Of course, one can do so if one clings to old traditions, if one does not want to counter external progress in humanity with inner progress. But on the other hand, one can also say to oneself: the stronger external progress is, the greater and stronger must be the power of inner striving in the human soul. And so one comes to say to oneself: That way of summarizing groups of people, as it was present in the old ethics, is no longer possible within modern human development, because within such summaries, man relies too much on what flows into his soul from the environment and from elsewhere to provide the ethical impulses. In our time, it is necessary for the human being to reach much deeper into his soul life in order to extract ethical impulses. But then it is indeed necessary to appeal to the power that, in the social life of man, we may call trust. This trust must become an ethical power. For only when people are called upon to appeal to the innermost core of their being, when they are called upon to draw their ethical motives from there, only then can they work together socially in freedom, yes, they will work together socially in freedom precisely when one can have confidence in this kind of sincerity, in this kind of uprightness and fertility of the human personality, then one finds, solely and exclusively, the forces that are necessary to make the social life of the present time progress in the right way.

One might say that we would have to wait a long time for people to mature to such ethical individualism. Those who say such a thing usually suffer greatly from personal arrogance, because they consider themselves mature and the others immature. But besides, theoretical consideration stops when these questions begin, because there is only an either-or. Either we go down the path of decline of our ethical and social and thus also of our technical life in the manner of Spengler, or we decide to draw those ethical impulses from the depths of the human soul that are necessary for the further progress of humanity. All the declaiming and theorizing about whether this is possible is of no value; only the will to such ethical individualism has value, because it appeals to the will that is permeated by pure thinking. And so I think that in fact the contemplation of the most modern way of life should evoke this particular kind of ethics. Therefore, I also have the idea that this ethical individualism, this freedom, should basically assert itself precisely there as a science that addresses the human being, the whole human being, who is to engage in social life, just where, on the other hand, it is seen that people are introduced to technical, commercial, modern economic life and to the other branches of life, which, by the way, are all mechanized in a modern way. Such a conception is needed alongside what has emerged from the scientific way of thinking and attitude that has developed to the point of technology. What is needed is the greatest deepening and strengthening of human life, where, on the other hand, what has been separated from the human being has been strengthened.

Therefore, it was necessary to found a philosophy that could not be like the other philosophies. These other philosophies traditionally came more or less from the old science. This old scientific approach had still retained something, one could say, of the perception of inner concepts and ideas and so on. We need only think back a few centuries to see that people did not look at nature the way we do. Whatever you want to call it, for example an “animistic worldview,” it lasted well into the 15th century and was quite common, perhaps much later — but that people always thought of something spiritual when they thought of natural entities; then, from what they thought, they were able to draw fresh principles from the details of inorganic nature and, in turn, ethical impulses from these principles. Until well into the 19th century, and even into the second half of the century, people were not yet dependent on drawing ethical and philosophical impulses entirely from within, because they still associated something spiritual with the observation of the external world and the technical manipulation of the external world, something that was also connected with the human being. The last third of the 19th century has produced a technology that demands ways of thinking that are completely detached from the human being. There is nothing more to be gained from impulses that could become ethical impulses. Therefore, these ethical impulses must be drawn entirely from the human being himself; the whole of individual ethical intuition must be placed at the center of the ethical view of the world. The age of natural science, which has been spoken of so often, demands such a purely scientific basis for ethics.

That, ladies and gentlemen, to shed some light on how there is a very real connection between what modern life is – insofar as this modern life has been shaped by science – and what this modern life makes necessary as an ethic that is strictly based on science. Now, such an ethic is only possible if one develops within oneself what I tried to characterize just yesterday: flexible concepts, concepts that are so flexible that one really does not get stuck in contexts that are completely separate from the human being, but which are capable, I might say, of turning around to embrace that which pulses from the depths of the human being as something real. But in order to make sufficient progress in such a scientific world view, many other obstacles must be overcome. Above all, it is necessary that we also find ideas, scientific laws, which have grown out of a scientific world view on the one hand and an historical, a historical world view on the other.

History, as we understand it today, is a young science. Even in the 18th century, it was something quite different. It is therefore no wonder that what we call the science of history is still poorly developed and has no inner driving force of its own. For example, people talk about the guiding ideas in history. Now, only pure intellectualism can talk about the guiding ideas in history, which believes that thoughts, as people think them, then also materialize as forces of history, that thoughts could somehow be driving forces in history. Thoughts are purely contemplative; thoughts cannot achieve anything. On the one hand, people talk about the driving powers of thought, and when they say “powers of thought”, they are already saying something that is actually a contradiction in terms. And on the other hand, they fall into the other extreme: they actually only represent what happens historically by presenting the external, material transformations of cultural life. One then goes as far as the materialistic conception of history has taken it, or one makes compromises by trying to build history out of the mere pursuit of external cultural phenomena; one then imbues this with some symbolic ideas, as many a historian of the 19th and early 20th centuries has done. But one could not yet arrive at such knowledge about how one should even attempt to arrive at ideas in this science about what actually underlies the historical development of humanity. And if one draws attention to this today – I will be drawing attention to it in a leitmotif – if one draws attention to this, then, yes, today one is still decried as a fantasist, because what is regarded as reality today is far different from what real reality is.

Today, anyone who has done a little research in this field will readily agree when it is said that the human being as a physical being must be understood in his formation by going back to embryology. And in a certain way one will then try – even though much that is unjustified has been introduced into the corresponding sciences – one will nevertheless try with a certain right to compare those forms that arise as the developmental forms of the human embryo with the forms found in the extra-human organic world; and one will then try to find a connection between the animal series and the human form. There is no doubt that much of what was called the “biogenetic law” was unjustified. But there is something in the methodological consideration based on this that is extraordinarily promising for a realistic consideration of human development. It is pointed out that One must consider the beginning of life if one wants to understand the physical form of the human being; one must consider the beginning of human life in order to understand its further development.

At best, one can only use a kind of analogy for the historical approach. This analogy has indeed been used very often. The fanciful interpreters of the biogenetic law, in particular, have also wanted to apply this law to a certain materialistic way of thinking with regard to the historical development of humanity. And so we have seen those strange views that trace back what is the content of our civilization today to the earlier developmental phases of humanity — in a way similar to the approach taken in the formulation of the biogenetic law. They said to themselves: What the child goes through leads back to very early stages of development, to very early cultures; and what is then later experienced in later childhood leads back to the later stages of development, and so on, until man has achieved what he has in the present as his civilization. This is an external analogy; and much more than is usually believed, such external analogies are present in the scientific view when we come up in the historical, because today what is not really close to man is what I would call a faithful observation of reality, an engagement with the conditions of reality. That is why the spiritual science referred to here endeavors to develop pure phenomenalism within inorganic and organic natural science and to present the processes themselves purely, without speculation, without underlying atomic or other hypotheses, as they present themselves.

Phenomenology is the ideal of scientific endeavor that is present in anthroposophy. The aim is not to move from what are basically only modifying sensations to all sorts of wave vibrations and the like, which are hypothetically assumed and speculated upon. The aim is to remain within the pure phenomena, because they mean a great deal. And all the talk about the “thing in itself” is basically unfathomable. For example, people say: Yes, but you can't see the underlying reality from the phenomena; after all, a phenomenon always points to what underlies it, and so you have to go beyond the phenomenon, that is, assume something that the phenomenon causes in interaction with human subjectivity. Those who speak in this way do not realize that they are applying a completely wrong way of thinking. I would like to characterize this wrong way of thinking by means of an analogy: the one who sees individual letters, for example S, I, F, will say that this S or I or F means nothing, they must point to something else. Those who have an overview of a written context, which also consists only of individual letters, will not relate this written context to something that lies behind it – along the lines of the atomic world supposedly lying behind sensual phenomena. will not relate this context of letters to something contrived or to something standing behind it, but he will read the context and know that, when he has the whole context, it points him to the corresponding reality.

It is also a matter of leaving these natural phenomena in their purity within the world of natural phenomena, because by learning to read natural phenomena purely, in a way that corresponds to the inner nature of the phenomena themselves, one learns to look into that which underlies reality – not by speculating about a “thing in itself” or the presupposition of some “thing in itself”, as it always underlies the atomistic theories and hypotheses. By developing the habit of pure observation of phenomena, by breaking the habit of mere speculation, of living in some hypothetical assumptions, by remaining in the inorganic and organic fields with pure observation, one develops the ability to observe in the field of human spiritual development. One then learns to see that one cannot transfer the biogenetic law to historical development by means of an analogy, but one learns to recognize that one must consider the whole human being, the whole human life – just as in natural science, if one wants to recognize something, one should not pick out one thing, but consider the totality of related phenomena. Then one is urged, for the understanding of historical life, not to go to the beginning of individual existence, as one would for the understanding of the natural life of man, but to the end. One must also consider the end. Even if it is a kind of self-contemplation, this self-contemplation is a thoroughly objective one: when one has become accustomed to observing the life of the soul as concretely as one otherwise observes the external natural life, one finds that, when one is past the middle of life has passed the age of thirty-five or forty, this life of soul, quite apart from all external manifestations, shows certain phenomena within itself – phenomena which run their course in such a way that one can truly say one is surprised by them.

The life of the soul itself takes on a certain configuration. That this is so little noticed today is due to the fact that the power of observation is little developed in youth. Therefore, such things are seen by very few people in old age. Very few people are still endowed with such a fresh power of observation in old age that they take these things into account. If you do not disregard them, you will notice how something rises up from the depths of the soul, which can be said to be like a repetition, like an inner repetition of what old cultural epochs of humanity show in terms of mental attitude and mental structure. In doing so, I am pointing to a phenomenon that is eminently important for the historian to observe. It is not necessary to do much outwardly, for it is not necessary that old people should make their signs of aging the basis of life. But it is necessary that life be observed in its entirety, and it shows itself in that we ascend in life, becoming ever older and older, that something wants to enter into consciousness that is initially similar to the way of thinking of immediately preceding cultural epochs. One becomes similar to the Greeks. And if one lives through this entire middle age, as did Goethe, for example, then under certain circumstances one can also have such a longing to live through the Greek age, as Goethe did, in whom this longing became irresistible. And if one then goes further back and observes what arises within the human being, then one comes to even earlier cultural epochs. At that age one notices that one understands all the better the special nature of the views of the even older times. And one is transported back into a prehistory of human development that is no longer recorded in documents when one considers this biogenetic law, which is now polaric. This is not carried over from natural science into human life by analogy, but is borrowed from direct observation.

If we continue to develop this path of research – I can only give guidelines – then we will come to understand an extraordinarily important guiding principle for the historical development of humanity. We come to see that there have been older cultures in which people, by simply developing their physicality, developed their spiritual and soul life right up to an advanced age, so that their spiritual and soul development was, as it were, born out of their physical development. We, in our advanced human civilization, still find ourselves dependent on our physical development in early childhood, even in later adolescence, but not anymore. In the twenties, this dependency ceases. How the child is still dependent on its physical development in its entire soul configuration! How can we observe how intimately the two are connected, and what a profoundly significant effect sexual maturity, the age of sexual maturity, has on a person's mental and spiritual development! And if we go further, we hardly even notice that something is clearly changing again, that, for example, at the beginning of the 1920s, there is a more inward dependence of the mental and spiritual on the physical. But then this connection becomes so unclear that we can say: Today it is the case that until the twenties, and in some people until the thirties, the soul and spirit remain dependent on the development of the body, but then the soul and spirit emancipate themselves, rely more on themselves, and undergo a development that is more or less independent of the physical. This was not the case in earlier ages of human life. We come back to the early ages of human development, when people, after the age of fifty, still felt into the sixties what was taking shape inwardly and spiritually in dependence on external physical development. These were the ages in which people could, as it were, still wrest from their own nature the inner experiences that one has in the declining years of life. What they gained in soul and spirit through their disintegrating bodies, these people still went through.

If I now want to express myself through a law that has yet to be formulated – even if every formulation can be challenged – I would like to say: These people of the oldest cultural ages remained young well into their fifties and sixties. If we follow this thread, we find that in Egyptian and Indian civilization there was an age when people only remained young in this respect until their forties. And the Greek-Latin age, from which we have inherited such remarkable artistic and scientific ways of looking at things, can be understood when we know how these Greeks were still so youthful between the ages of thirty and forty, because in their case the soul and spirit were dependent on their physical development until that age. Then came our age, when this only goes into the twenties. And one must realize that we can only draw on our physical development until the twenties, that at most, contemplatively - as an inverted biogenetic law - the subtle observer of life inwardly perceives what is a repetition of things humanity has gone through before. The way in which the biogenetic law was formulated – even if it is completely disputable – there is a healthy core to it. As formulated, that man in his development from birth briefly passes through what is tribal development, so it must be said that in historical life, man inwardly, spiritually and mentally, repeats the way of thinking that was the actual impulse of history at earlier ages.

Here we have the connection between the observation of spiritual life and the observation of the physical life of humanity. Here we have a science that does not develop one-sided concepts of natural phenomena on the one hand and, on the other, forms concepts about spiritual phenomena that cannot be related to natural phenomena and vice versa. There you have a unified way of thinking that, by not becoming one-sidedly materialistic or one-sidedly spiritualistic, but by encompassing the whole of reality, regards external physicality as the one current of this reality and the spiritual-soul as the other current, but considers both purely phenomenologically.

This also opens up extraordinarily promising perspectives for the individual spiritual scientific research, but one must have the courage to go to real laws in history as well. What is still often discussed today as a historical method is a way of talking around the issue, something that is not based on real ground. One finds a real foundation only when one has grown out of a phenomenalistic, a phenomenological, observation of nature, which then creates such flexible concepts that these concepts are also suitable for penetrating into the phenomena of spiritual life.

What is meant here by anthroposophical spiritual science – I must emphasize this again and again – is not amateurish dabbling. It is a form of research that carries pure observation of phenomena over from the field of natural science into the spiritual, and in this way will find precisely that reconciliation for which the best souls today are longing: the reconciliation of outer life with inner life, the reconciliation of science and art, the reconciliation of science and religious feeling. But if one simply occupies oneself with the continuation of the old, traditional religions, one cannot create what modern man demands for his religious life. Today, we need a science that is capable of penetrating into the realm of the spirit as we otherwise penetrate into the realm of nature. We need people who have the scientific courage to search, even if it is often seen as fantasy, because it is not considered to apply the same strict scientific method that is demanded for the realm of external nature to the realm of spiritual events.

That is one side of it, which follows from a human view of life for the view of historical life. The other side is that the person who gains such a view also develops this view within himself into social impulses. It is only out of such a view that the liveliness of soul life actually arises, which finds ethical impulses, but ethical impulses that are so devoted to human nature that they can also be transformed into social impulses. We cannot make our ideas so vivid with the concepts we draw from science alone that they also work as ideas if they are to underpin social action.

In a very learned contemporary book, there is a remarkable quote, which admittedly comes from a man who was not particularly learned, namely Georg Brandes, but the quote is accepted by a very learned personality. In his work, attention is drawn to why it is so difficult to teach people ethics, to teach them something, for example, about essential necessities, and this difficulty is emphasized to have a spiritual effect on social life. Attention is drawn to the fact – and this is said quite as if one fully agreed with what Brandes says – that the masses of people do not act according to reason, but according to vague instincts. Well, it is very easy to make such a statement. It is very easy to criticize what is living out, not in the life of the individual, but in the field of human interaction. It is very easy to condemn it as mere instinctive living out of some impulses, if one is not able to look at the essence of social life in a truly scientific spirit. If one is able to do the latter, then one knows: however much rationality there may be within the intellectual sphere of man, however clever people may be in the pattern of that cleverness that can be gained in the one-sided natural sciences, social life would still always contain many, many unconscious moments, so that it could still be criticized in the way Brandes does and as is found even in books on the principles of political economy.

But what is the real basis for this? The fact is that reason, which people like to talk about so much, is something that develops within the human personality, something that is suitable for looking at the world, something that is also suitable for evoking certain impulses for action from within the human being, but something that is not at all suitable on its own for bringing about social coexistence. If you believe that this inner rationality is suitable for this, then you end up with those social theories that are so common today and that do not promote life, do not sustain life, but destroy life. And such life-destroying theories, which can only shine as long as they remain criticism, but which immediately show their absurdity when they are to be introduced into real life, they often flow from that attitude that has emerged with the facts of modern scientific life, which are quite rightly perceived as a triumph. The point at issue is this: in human cooperation, even in language, there is something that permeates and warms human action and feeling, but also hates it, and that cannot be reduced to intellectualistic concepts of reason.

And on the other hand, something is asserting itself in economic life itself that appears much more complicated than what must be taken as a basis in the natural sciences. I am merely drawing your attention to everything that has occurred within economic life, everything that has occurred within political economy in the way of definitions of commodity value and commodity price, everything that has occurred in the way of definitions of the functions of value and price in economic life, and so on. In particular, I would like to draw attention to how vague and indeterminate such definitions, such characteristics of the value and price of goods, of other functions in economic life are.

What is the underlying reason for this? The reason is that it is impossible to understand the social being at all with the concepts based on mere intellectuality. What is needed is an inner education of the soul towards those modes of conception which I have described in the course of these lectures as imaginative knowledge, and then in Higher Fields as inspired knowledge. An education in such ways of thinking is necessary in order to grasp that which should now arise not from the individual, but that which should arise in the social interaction of people. And the way in which people interact socially – even if one wants to call it instinct – cannot be seen or influenced with intellectual concepts. One can only influence it with living, meaningful views of social life itself. These substantial views of social life, however, can only be opened up to the life of imagination through the imaginations that I have also described in these lectures about the other reality. Therefore, there will only be a real social science that can be the basis for social work when it is developed from the method of anthroposophical spiritual science.

You must not think that I, who am able to present what I myself can advocate today as anthroposophical spiritual science, somehow regard it as something already perfect that can remain as it is. Rather, I am talking about what is to become of this anthroposophical spiritual science, quite independently of the form it now has. It will certainly be shaped much better than it is now by those who practise it. But it must be pointed out again and again that only it can be that, with its methods, it finds such flexible concepts that these flexible concepts themselves can go, can flow on the waves of social life, can invigorate these waves of social life. And only when one can see through the social structure in this way, in direct contemplation, can it be divided into a spiritual life that needs independence, a legal life, a practical state life that must in turn be self-contained and need independence, and an economic life which must be based on associations, because an economic life can only develop when people think together, while the spiritual life can only develop when the individual is able to contribute to the social organism that which flows from his spiritual impulses.

These three areas, which today are lumped together in the unified, abstract social organism, are clearly distinguishable for a living imagination, a living view. They are lumped together only because today one does not think practically, but theorizes, because one relates to reality more or less hypothetically and, if one wants to shape that reality, one constructs hypotheses instead of pouring real impulses into that reality. Those who are inclined to hypothesize in the theoretical sciences do not come to bring fully real concepts into social life. Therefore, especially those who have ceased to think practically often regard as utopian what is found in my “Key Points of the Social Question”, which has now been republished, and in other books , in everything that is published in our newspaper, the weekly journal “Dreigliederung des sozialen Organismus” (Threefold Order of the Social Organism), and in everything that emanates from the Federation for Threefold Order of the Social Organism. It is regarded as utopian because those people who see it that way do not themselves know how utopian they are, how they regard as utopian precisely that which is completely saturated with reality. Today, in the intellectualization of the sciences, one has come so far that one no longer senses or feels when true reality is pulsating somewhere. If we really open ourselves to what comes out of true reality, we will find that we do not need to say that decades are necessary for its realization, but we will see that it can be transferred directly into social life as soon as it is in people's heads.

This is what I wanted to say about how the ideas and impulses that arise from spiritual science can be carried into ethical, historical and social thinking and feeling, and then also into ethical and social volition. And when a person truly recognizes historical laws, when he surveys human life as it is surveyed when the phenomena of spiritual life are considered, not just the external cultural phenomena, then one learns with the character of inner necessity to recognize what has been lived in a particular age. And from this awareness of a connection with one's age, one's task for this age arises. One is imbued with one's inner life task. And today we need people who can be imbued with a real, meaningful life task.

I have been able to share only a little of what is being striven for in the field of spiritual science, and only in outline, in the sense that the individual specialized sciences are to be fertilized. You will hear again and again how individual groups are working to enrich the individual sciences, from astronomy to social insights, and how they are striving to develop this spiritual science for the individual fields in a very specialized way. Such endeavors are still only met with very limited understanding today. And especially when giving lectures like these, when one considers that here in Stuttgart, through the efforts of our Waldorf school teachers and other personalities, an attempt is being made to show how the individual scientific disciplines can be enriched by anthroposophical spiritual science and how absolutely necessary this fertilization is absolutely necessary if we do not want to go into decline but strive for an ascent, then one must also consider how such efforts are met with hostility and rejected, especially by older people who are involved in scientific life today.

And now, in conclusion, I would like to address that part of you to whom I would like to make an initial appeal, particularly in the present situation, for very specific reasons. Especially now, when anthroposophically oriented spiritual science is facing so much hostility, one hears it emphasized again and again: Why does this spiritual science not turn to science itself in a strictly scientific way? Well, a lot could be said about that. Above all, it could be said that those who express such views care little about how this spiritual science actually works in the individual scientific fields. But perhaps something else may be said. What I myself represent today in this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science began in the early 1880s. At the time, I tried to introduce what needed to be said into the scientific currents in an elementary way, using viable scientific methods. I took up Goethe in an interpretation that was taken very seriously and conscientiously. Now, I have not always been met with such hostility as I am now – what I have written in reference to Goethe has often been described as something very good. But how was it received? It was received in such a way that I could not be satisfied with this acceptance. People said: Yes, some of what Goethe meant is being addressed, Goethe is being interpreted in the right way. But they did not notice, or did not want to notice, that something else was meant by it. It was not meant that one merely wanted to interpret the man who died as Johann Wolfgang Goethe in 1832, but rather that one should seek in Goethe, in his world view, what can experience a continuation, what flows out when one regards Goethe as still alive today, when one develops him further. A position was to be taken on the problems of scientific, philosophical and social life.

What is often called “pure science” today was not at all inclined to do so, today when one can read in scientific works statements such as that science does not have the task of forming ethical, political or social life, for example, but only to consider all these branches of life objectively. In an age when people just want to sit down at some seat to observe the world and only accept as science what has arisen from the observation of the world, but not what passes into our soul life to become will, action, and social deed, it may seem understandable that science initially did not take a stand on what was actually meant. Therefore it was necessary that appeals be made to the larger circles of humanity, that thought be given to the larger circles of humanity, because the truth must in some way present itself to humanity. And when, out of certain intuitive perceptions, the larger circles of humanity had found their way to what is here called anthroposophical spiritual science, then people again deigned to say that what was being said was not scientific. They did it, for example, like the Jena professor Rein, who in 1918 characterized the 'Philosophy of Freedom' as a work that could only have been born out of the war period. This man only just got hold of “The Philosophy of Freedom” and found the date 1918, the year of the new edition. In his usual conscientious manner, he characterized this work, which was published in 1893, as a product of wartime thinking.

You can find many examples of such scientific conscientiousness in the present day. I could point out many similar facts to show you why I feel particularly satisfied today to see that there is now some interest coming from the younger generation in the present, even if there is not much interest from those who shine in science because of their venerable age or because they have not yet reached a venerable age. From this side, there is still little engagement with anthroposophical spiritual science, but all the more misunderstanding.

Therefore, from among those gathered here today, I would like to address those who, coming out of their student life, want to turn to this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, which is certainly not to be presented to you authoritatively or dogmatically, which only wants to be taken so that it is examined. Because it is convinced that the more it is examined, the more it will be found to be well-founded. It does not shrink from exact testing; it has only to defend itself against what is truly very far removed from exact testing. If one were fainthearted, one could become discouraged in the field of anthroposophical spiritual science in the face of the inexact tests that are so prevalent in the present day. Those who represent spiritual science, as it is meant here, are not afraid of truly exact testing. It will prove itself all the more the more precisely it is tested, because it knows that it has emerged from the spirit of science.

This is what I wish to say to you today, especially to you, my dear fellow students, who are gathered here today; especially to you I wish to say that the anthroposophically oriented spiritual science that comes from me has arisen from a faithful contemplation of what I myself have gone through. I look back on a student life that took place at the time of the heyday of atomism, the heyday of that world view in which all optics, all thermodynamics, and so on, were based on hypotheses in which one indulged — but hypotheses that led away from the grasp of reality because they based something on mere thought, on something that was merely thought up. In many cases, people have moved away from this; today, we are realistic, especially in the field of natural science. But the fruits of thinking that have been developed there can still be seen in the historical and social sciences, and they are often partly responsible for the misery of our present catastrophic life. During my time as a student, the concepts, ideas and soul impulses were not developed by science that could then swim powerfully on the waves of social life. That is what we lack today: impulses. People get very annoyed when you talk about impulses. But the word 'impulse' should mean nothing other than what lives powerfully in the soul - in contrast to the abstract life of thoughts or ideas. It should be thoughts and ideas that arise from such an anthroposophical spiritual science, but thoughts that are imbued with full life, so that they can become ethical, religious, but especially social reality.

Anyone who has been through what has happened in our scientific development over the decades, who knows the connection between the scientific theories of the 1870s and 1880s and the helplessness of today's ethical and social thinking, truly speaks from the heart to those who are young today, my dear fellow students. He then remembers the reasons why the youth of that time was spoken to in vain. They had not yet been confronted with what has since emerged as a dazzling abundance of life, as it were, that which resounds from all sides with the words “how we have come so gloriously far” in terms of external culture. Today, however, young people see something different around them; today they see material need all around them, and in this material need they also see spiritual need. On the whole, the situation today is quite different from what it was in my youth. In those days, one was quite alone with these thoughts. Today, my dear fellow students, if you really find the way to impulses full of life, today you will perhaps be able to find understanding in quite a number of people who are shaken by the present life. Today life speaks: I need living ideas born out of science that can become ethical and social impulses. Today the world needs such leaders who can work out of the spiritual, because only this spiritual can be meaningful.

My esteemed audience, dear fellow students, those who are touched by what anthroposophical spiritual science actually wants will understand me, each in their own way. This is what fills me with a certain satisfaction when I am allowed to speak today to those to whom I actually feel very close, despite the fact that the age of life that is yours today is long behind me, dear fellow students. But anyone who has lived through these last decades with full consciousness also knows how strongly one must build on those who are still young today and who want to have a powerful effect in their youth today. One can always contribute only very little to that to which one would like to contribute a lot.

I have been able to say little in these few lectures; may this little be further developed by our local colleagues in the university courses. And may this little be valued more for its intention than for what it could become in these four lectures. But I would like to have touched the hearts of today's fellow students, I would like to have spoken to their hearts. Not only – even if in the fullest sense – from the spirit of science would I speak, but to warm hearts would I speak, for when these two things are joined together, the will for true science with the strength of brave hearts, then, my dear fellow students, then we shall make progress. If one is allowed to speak to people from such a background, then one can still have hope for a fruitful development in the near future, especially for our German people, who have been so sorely tried and are therefore perhaps particularly called upon to develop spiritually.

Answering questions

Question: Does Dr. Steiner understand “reminiscences” in the same way as “associations of ideas” when it comes to imagination?

Rudolf Steiner: If you follow what I have discussed in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds”, you will find that the greatest efforts are required of those who want to progress to imaginative life , especially in the direction of combating everything that is reminiscence, that is mere association of ideas, in fact, to combat everything that is drawn from the ordinary unconscious or subconscious life of the soul. In this respect, it may be said that much is well recorded in today's scientific literature. I myself have emphasized some of my own observations in the book mentioned. I will only highlight one example from a well-known publication that appeared in the Wiesbaden collection to show how such reminiscences actually work, how difficult it is to pay attention to them, and how necessary it is to pay attention to them.

A scholar - who describes the matter himself - walks past a bookshop, certainly the delight of many a scholar. And he finds - he is a zoologist - a book about lower animals, something that is certainly closely related to his immediate present life. He is surprised himself that he suddenly has to start laughing at the most serious title. He laughs – just think, a zoologist, a learned man, laughing at a learned title. He feels quite funny himself. And he tries to find out why he has to laugh like that. He closes his eyes; that helps, because now he hears a hurdy-gurdy in the distance, playing a melody to which he danced in his youth. At that time, however, he was thinking of other things, which he has long forgotten, which have long since been drawn down into the deepest depths of his soul, but now they have risen up and made him laugh at the sight of the solemn title. So something that has been in the soul for decades comes to the surface again as reminiscence.

We have to think about such things when we emphasize that the development of the imaginative life must be based on comprehensible ideas, and specifically on comprehensible ideas that can be made directly present in consciousness in all their parts. For only when one has developed the ability to bring such comprehensible ideas into consciousness with the kind of thinking that one otherwise only trains in comprehensible mathematical, geometric concepts, and when one has the will to deal with these ideas inwardly, only then does one gradually succeed in really having a practice in rejecting all reminiscences, all associations of ideas and all life in some subconscious soul content. This overcoming of reminiscences and the like must indeed first be acquired. And only then, when one has conscientiously overcome what reminiscences and the like are, is one actually able to develop that which imaginative life is, and this imaginative life proves itself by its own quality to be related to reality in just such a way as I characterized in the first lecture.

Here too, the objection is often raised – and the objections are sometimes almost typical – that something like this can only be an autosuggestion or something, the origins of which one does not suspect. Yes, you see, in the outer life too one can indulge in illusions, deceptions, and only the context of life, the whole of life as such, makes one gain a judgment about reality. So one must also educate oneself to a sure judgment in what appears to one as imaginative life. And if it is objected that it could not be the same with the imaginations as it is with some people, for whom their mouths water when they just think of or hear about lemonade, it is said that it is still not reality, even though the subjective experience of the taste of lemonade is there. Of course they have this subjective experience. If objectivity is judged only by this subjective content, one is naturally not yet ready to take from the content of the imagination that which represents it objectively, objectively spiritually. But one must still say: If one introduces something like autosuggestion into full, real life, not remaining with a cut-out piece, then the relationship to reality arises. For one can assume that people get an intense taste of lemonade when they think of lemonade, but I don't think that anyone has actually quenched their thirst with the imagined lemonade. When one progresses from a piece of reality to total reality – and this must be done in the realm of outer reality as well as in the realm of inner spiritual reality – then it ceases to be the case that one can be beguiled by mere illusions, mere autosuggestions. Recently, it has been said time and again that what is asserted as spiritual content is based on repressed imaginative life, and that what is repressed in repressed ideas would be brought to life, driven up into consciousness, and that this would lead to personifications and so on. This is how it is described, and to someone who sees through it, it sounds amateurish.

Yes, something like personifications and the like can arise in some nebulous mystics. For there are indeed some mystics who talk about all kinds of soul content and yet mean nothing other than reminiscences. It is true that some claim to have mystically experienced the unio mystica, the union with some divine within. But such experiences, which one had decades ago, can arise as reminiscences in consciousness, not only in the old form, but also in a transformed form; one can experience that what was experienced decades ago, and which has sunk into the depths of the unconscious, emerges after decades in a sublime form. What some mystics describe as the content of their experiences in mystical union need be nothing more than a barrel organ seen decades ago.

These things are carefully avoided in the truly subtle process of spiritual research, and the methods are clearly developed so that such errors can be avoided. People could also be convinced by the fact that the anthroposophical spiritual science referred to here does not just tell of what is in the spiritual worlds, but also talks about the things of ordinary science just like other people. If one can talk about the subjects of ordinary science in the same way as others, then the scientists have no right to claim that the additional findings of spiritual research are mere fantasy or stem from repressed mental images.

Furthermore, with regard to the so-called inner vision, what actually comes out of true spiritual vision is not at all what the nebulous mystics believe. The nebulous mystics speak of all kinds of inner experiences. In true spiritual insight, when one penetrates down through the ordinary life of the soul, one's own material, bodily inner life is more and more filled. One really learns anatomy and physiology through inner vision and does not prattle on about some mystical secrets. One comes to know the real spiritual life by looking at the world and living with the world, not through false, introverted asceticism or through lazy withdrawal into an unworldly life, but precisely by immersing oneself in real life and thus also through a kind of self-inspection that experiences in the inner being of the human being precisely that which the nebulous mystic does not seek.

The imaginative life that is meant here does not culminate in unworldly mysticism, not in a cloud cuckoo land, not in a spirit that is sought by saying: outer reality is so bad that one must withdraw from it, true reality is in the beyond.

A true spirituality is seen in such a way that it is connected with the will to immerse oneself in life. It is therefore not alien to life, but life-friendly. It is from this overall context of life that I ask you to judge what is meant here as anthroposophical spiritual science.

Question: What is the difference between monocotyledons and dicotyledons?

Rudolf Steiner: The question regarding the difference between monocotyledons and dicotyledons cannot be answered briefly. I would just like to say the following: I generally avoid answering isolated questions just like that, because this gives the impression that spiritual science is making judgments out of the blue, when in fact everything is structured in an appropriate way and is pursued from its elements. I would just like to say about this: for the spiritual scientific investigation, it is also necessary to set up a different plant system as real than the one that we find set up in many cases today. You have already seen that When I spoke of the human being yesterday, I had to point out that the human being cannot be viewed in such a way that one simply takes the whole human being and then does some kind of phylogenetic research, as is done today. Rather, one must start from the main organization of the head and trace it back, and there one must consider a complete transformation of animal forms, whereas one must consider later developments in the organization of the limbs. And yesterday I also first dealt with the morphological contrast between the spinal cord and the brain in order to show that one cannot proceed in the history of development as is usually done.

So it is also the case in botany that one starts from plant stages that are now more in the middle of the system. And on the one hand, one will look at these plant stages, which are where monocotyledons and dicotyledons split, and one will go down through the monocotyledons to the lowest plants, the fungi, algae and so and on the other side go up to the fully developed plants and so on; this will provide a system of plants that really includes in the morphological consideration the understanding of why the plants develop one organ downwards and the other upwards. In general, it will be found how two polar forces act on the plants, but in a different way on the plants of the different levels. And there we shall see that a certain force, which we must regard as running parallel to the terrestrial radius, is combined with another force, which has often been sensed in earlier times. We have only to recall the older speculations on the spiral tendency, such as those of Sprengel and others at the beginning of the nineteenth century. But these explanations are incomplete; they are multiple speculations, and what has been developed as morphology will have to be developed differently. If we proceed in this way, we will recognize why one organ is directed in one way and another in another. Efforts are definitely being made within our spiritual community to identify a plant system that will contain the information needed to explain the individual morphological phenomena. Then it will be easier to answer such questions in context from a natural arrangement than if one has to refer to them in an aphoristic way as one does today.

Question: What is the connection between the climbing plants and the heavenly bodies acting on them?

Rudolf Steiner: It is impossible to answer such questions, which necessarily require an explanation of the special nature of the influence of the heavenly bodies on plants, in an aphoristic way now. For one exposes oneself to the accusation of dilettantism if one speaks somehow about the influence of the heavenly bodies without having said in what sense this is taken. It is absolutely necessary that anthroposophical spiritual science be taken as a real method. Just as one cannot explain anything in a scientific way without going into the whole subject — as one would not, for example, expect someone who starts explaining chemistry to start with the most complicated things —, nor can it be done in the way that such attempts at explanation have been made here, and nor can such questions be answered. And one could almost believe that such questions are asked in reference to these lectures out of certain mystical inclinations, which basically should not be accommodated. You will understand me: it is absolutely essential to protect the spiritual science meant here from the accusation of dilettantism. And if such questions are answered without being put into context - they can of course be answered - then the accusation of dilettantism arises.

These questions are not even formulated in such a way that the same words can be used in answering them; they are formulated in an amateurish way. Therefore it is not possible for me to speak to them in this way. I suspect that these questions are based on something that has been heard elsewhere, because they are not in the least connected with what has been presented here about the individual tests of the relations of spiritual science to the individual specialized sciences. You must understand that it is not possible to answer these questions without having discussed the basic elements of them. It is like this: if people want to have such questions answered, then it is – I cannot put it any other way – amateurish. You must not hold this against me, but it is my job to put the scientific nature of this spiritual science in its proper perspective, and that includes its attitude. Therefore, I will not allow myself to be tempted in the future either, by those who would like to be followers but do not want to get into the subject, to expose this spiritual science to the accusation of dilettantism by talking about all sorts of things. That is the character of charlatan movements, that they talk about all sorts of things. Spiritual science also wants to be thoroughly scientific in its attitude.

Question: How does the movement of the muscle come about, since the motor nerve does not transmit the will impulse to the muscle? Is there a connection to be seen with the metabolic system?

Rudolf Steiner: I would have liked to have given the fifth lecture on this question, if possible, because it is a question that is directly related to what I have dealt with in these four lectures, only this question must be treated in the following way:

The difference between the sensitive and the motor nerves has been mentioned, more or less merely to provide direction. It has been emphasized that the so-called motor nerves are also sensitive nerves, only their task – and this can even be seen from their anatomical structure – is to sense inwardly, that is, to sense what underlies a movement process, for example, not to impulse this movement process itself, but to sense what underlies it, what happens in the metabolism – which is always part of a movement process. If you follow all this research on the nervous system and want to use the image of wireless telegraphy for it, then that is not in the sense of spiritual science, you leave that to others. Not true, in the time when telegraphy came up, all kinds of comparisons were also made from the telegraphy to compare the centripetal and centrifugal nerves with telegraphic feeders and pathways and so on. Such comparisons are not applied by spiritual science. It wants to go into the matter itself and not play with analogies.

The point is this: whenever there is a nerve pathway that appears empirically to be a supply line, say to the spinal cord or brain, and its continuation is found in the so-called motor nerve, it is always a matter of sensing inwards and outwards – let us assume, for example, a reflex movement –; what the nerve conveys is merely sensation, only either from the outside or from one's own physical interior. And the transition, which is usually regarded as the end of the transmission and the beginning of the impulsation, is merely what I would like to call a switchover, and not by taking an example from telegraphy. In this process, the whole process is experienced inwardly by the soul. We are then speaking of something very real when we say: something jumps over, just as an electric spark jumps over when I cut a telegraph wire. - This is the process that takes place in the so-called central nervous organs.

If we summarize what can be determined about the nature of the nervous system, then this will become the basis for further research into the nature of volitional impulses. It is, after all, only a hypothetical theory that what we call 'will' is in some way represented by the motor nerve, which is also a sensory nerve. Rather, the fact that we really understand the phenomena leads us to seek the relationship of the will to organs quite different from nerves. But this leads one to study precisely that which is so often treated with hostility – the higher members of human nature; one comes to see how the will cannot be understood at all if one regards it in the same relation to materiality as one regards, for example, the images in relation to materiality. In the study of the will, one then becomes acquainted with something that must essentially be viewed spiritually, while the life of imagination is really present in it in a material context. While the structures of the brain can be shown to parallel the structures of the imagination, the same cannot be said for the life of the will. However, if one wants to find the material correlates, one must look for metabolic processes, but one is led to completely different insights, which then lead upwards to spiritual contemplation. This is approximately how the answer to the question can be formulated here.

It is somewhat shocking to realize that the life of the imagination, which since scholastic philosophy has been regarded as the spiritual life in man, is so closely related in its structure to the material life of the body – although, as I have shown in these lectures, it is based only on it. But that is just how it is. On the other hand, we are led into a much more spiritual region when we consider the structures of the emotional life. There everything is so intimately connected with the rhythmic life of the body. And then one is led into the region of metabolism when it comes to the will; but in truth it is a matter of the mastery of matter through spiritual forces, which one has before one in direct contemplation when one rises up to what the will is - undeceived by the motor nerves. One sees how the will does not intervene in the material world in such a differentiated way as the life of the imagination.

I remember a discussion that followed a lecture by a real, solid materialist. He had explained the whole life of imagination from the brain, so that in the end nothing remained of the life of imagination, because he had actually only described brain processes, but described them very well, and then also drew figures on the blackboard, which in turn the chairman, who was a solid Herbartian, looked at. He then said that he was not as materialistic as the lecturer, but that if he were to draw the associations and suppressions of associations based on his Herbartian teaching, the figures would be exactly the same as those of the materialistic lecturer. So when a staunch opponent of materialism draws the structures of the representations, the same figures emerge as in the materialist, who only records what he has learned from Meynert about nerve phases, nerve centers, and so on.

From this, however, one can clearly see how similar what can be observed in the Herbartian sense as phenomena and connections between phenomena in pure mental life is to what someone who disregards this and describes the brain with Meynert's or similar hypotheses draws on the board. You cannot do that with the emotional life, and least of all with the life of the will. There you have to go to things that are made vivid, but made vivid mentally, but not in the way that what can be drawn in direct connection with material life.

Question: Why, according to the anthroposophical approach, does one suddenly have to work with opposite signs in the Einstein problem, where one passes from ponderable to ether?

Rudolf Steiner: Of course, this can be done quite without an anthroposophical approach, simply by doing things as in numerous other fields of science: one studies the phenomena. In a course I gave a few months ago to a small audience here, I showed how to look at the phenomena of so-called thermodynamics without prejudice. The aim is to try to express in mathematical formulas what is presented to us as phenomena. The peculiar thing about such expressions in mathematical formulas is that they are only correct if they correspond to the process that can then be observed, if, so to speak, what results from the mathematical formula also applies in reality, if it can be verified by reality. If you have a sealed chamber containing heated gas under pressure and you want to understand the phenomena that arise, you can apply Clausius's and other formulas, albeit in a very contrived way, but you will see - and this is also admitted today - how the facts do not match the formulas. In Einstein's theory, the strange thing is that experiments are available first; these experiments are set up because a certain theory is assumed; the experiments do not confirm this theory, and then another theory is constructed, which is actually based on imagined experiments. If, on the other hand, you try to treat the phenomena of heat in such a way that you insert corresponding positive and negative signs into the formulas, depending on whether you are dealing with conductive or radiant heat, then you will find these formulas verified by reality. However, when we proceed to other imponderables, we cannot stop at mere positive or negative signs, but must then add other conditions. We must, as it were, imagine a force that acts in the ponderable in a radial direction, and that which belongs to the realm of the ethereal, as coming from the periphery, acting only in the circular area, but still with a negative sign. And so, when we turn to other factors, we have to express the magnitude concerned differently; then we find that we arrive at formulas that can be verified through the phenomena. This is a path that anyone can take, even if they do not have an anthroposophical attitude.

But there is something else I would like to emphasize: do not think that the things I have told you in these four lectures were told to you because I was in an anthroposophical frame of mind. I told you these things because they are so. And the anthroposophical attitude follows only from the fact that one properly surveys things; the anthroposophical attitude does not precede things, but follows afterwards. One wants to recognize and understand things impartially, and then the anthroposophical attitude can follow. It would be badly ordered what I have said if one had to start from a prejudiced attitude. No, that is not the point at all. The point is to follow the phenomena in a strictly empirical way. The anthroposophical attitude must then be the last thing — even if I do not want to claim anything other than that it can nevertheless always be the best.

Question: What can be said about Schleich's works?

Rudolf Steiner: I prefer to talk about things in concrete rather than abstract terms. I have discussed many things with Professor Schleich and found that he is really very open to many ideas and has extremely interesting views on some subjects. But he cannot make the transition to the latter because he forms theories out of certain presuppositions - not out of a lack of presuppositions, but out of assumed presuppositions. Most of all, this confronted me – and I will now speak of an example – in a case he described to me; Professor Schleich described it to me before his book was published. A man came to him once who had pricked himself somewhere in an innocuous place with an ink pen, and he imagined that he had blood poisoning and would have to die during the night. He came to Schleich and wanted to have his arm amputated. Schleich looked at the arm and said: “That's not possible, it's not necessary at all, the sting is harmless, and I can't take your arm away.” The man went crazy with fear that he would die, he absolutely wanted to have his arm cut off, but Schleich sent him away. The man then went to another doctor, but he did not want to amputate the arm either. The next morning Schleich, who is a great philanthropist and humane man and, when he starts something, does not just leave it, went to the man. The man had actually died during the night. There was no trace of blood poisoning, and Schleich diagnosed: death by autosuggestion. Yes, that is easy to diagnose. But this is something completely different. It is a pity – or perhaps it was not possible – that the autopsy did not determine the real cause of death with certainty. It lay in something completely different. The man felt a certain presentiment, a certain premonition, that did not come to consciousness in such a way that one could have grasped it as a fully articulated presentiment. In the man's case, the approach of death was expressed not as some kind of physical sensation, but only in a mad fear; and the stabbing with the feather was nothing more than the man becoming clumsy and stabbing himself. And his whole behavior was nothing more than a certain presentiment; he would have died — stabbed or not. What was present was the premonition of the death living in the body, and the other was only symptomatic. One should also examine the case more closely from a psycho-physical point of view and not simply say: death by autosuggestion. - The matter was as I have now explained it, at least most likely. But this is something that Schleich did not want to be persuaded of; he stuck to his auto-suggestion, for which there is no evidence and which can only be said to be a daring hypothesis.

The same applies to other problems. Spiritual science wants to investigate everything empirically and not start from assumptions, while Schleich in particular really does have such favorite ideas in many cases. He is a witty and very humane man, but he cannot bring himself to be completely impartial and unprejudiced. But that is what must be striven for in anthroposophy, even with regard to such things that one values. And I can assure you, I appreciate Schleich's thoughts and work, which I know well; but if one asks, it must be pointed out that he always stops at something in this way. Anthroposophy wants to observe the phenomena in full impartiality in order to get to the bottom of reality, so that one can penetrate this reality with mathematical clarity.

I must again and again emphasize that it is not in the sense of any kind of sectarianism or amateurishness that anthroposophically oriented spiritual science wants to assert itself here in Stuttgart. What is being striven for, even if it can only be done with the weakest of forces today, is genuine, true science. And the more spiritual science is examined in this way, the more it will be recognized as fully equal to every scientific method of examination. Spiritual science is not heaped with such misunderstandings out of real scientificness, as it is heaped today; its opponents truly do not fight it because they are too scientific, but - one goes after the thing -, because they are too little scientific. But in the future, we need not a drying up, but an increase, a real true progress of science, and in the end this can only be a progress that leads not only into the material, but also into the spiritual with complete precision.

In the preceding meditations I have spoken to you about three successive but interrelated supersensible modes of knowledge: imaginative knowledge, inspired knowledge and intuitive knowledge. And I have tried to explain to you the views of the world and life that can be arrived at by applying these modes of knowledge. Today I will only add to what I said yesterday the knowledge to be gained through such supersensible insight into the innermost nature of the human being himself, the knowledge about which the human being longs for an answer because not only does the satisfaction of a religious or theoretical need somehow depend on it, but the possibility that the human being may only become fully human at all. All human striving ultimately aims at this: Man wants to become fully human.

That which forms the actual center of our being and which we initially face with the ordinary consciousness that we, so to speak, summarize it in the only point that we then express with the word “I”, we actually face in ordinary life as something unknown. And it is precisely this mode of knowledge, as it is meant and characterized here, that gradually leads to the self-knowledge that is initially accessible to the human being. I would like to use a comparison to make it clear what I actually mean. When we look around us with our eyes, we see things through light, which itself is supersensible, but which, in its effects in the colors of objects, makes them perceptible to us for this one sense. But we can also say that we see that which is not illuminated by light. If we have a white surface somewhere with a dot in the middle, we see the white through the effect of light, as we can imagine. But we also perceive the black dot, that which confronts us as dark. We know something of this black point. If we reflect properly, it is something like this in our ordinary lives with our perception of the self. We perceive the things around us. We also bring thoughts, feelings and impulses of the will from our own soul life to our consciousness. That is, so to speak, the illuminated part. But what belongs to us in all of this, the I, that we actually perceive only as a black spot. In our ordinary consciousness, we only know about it through the fact that we perceive nothing. I would like to expand the comparison even further. I would like to remind you how you actually have to put together your entire life on earth so far in your memory from the parts that you can see because you have lived through them in an awake state. But when you look back, you connect these experiences, which you have spent while awake during the day, in a single continuous stream of reminiscence. But these experiences are everywhere interspersed with what happened while you were asleep, let's say, dreamless sleep. And dreams also mostly belong to what has been forgotten, so that we can say in general: while you were asleep. In fact, in remembering you would always have to imagine these intermediate pauses if you wanted to place the complete stream of your experiences before your soul. But yesterday we saw that the I with the astral body - that is the actual soul being with its center, the actual self - dwells outside the physical body from falling asleep to waking up. They only emerge from their unconsciousness, in which they are during sleep, when they are not left to their own devices, but when they can submerge into the etheric body, the time body, and into the spatial or physical body. With the help of these supports – we cannot call them tools in the proper sense, as we saw yesterday – they have thoughts, mental images and, through mental images, feelings and impulses of will, which are more dream-like and also asleep. In order for the I and the astral body to truly unfold the forces that they have within them, it is necessary for them to submerge into the etheric body and the physical body. Thus, when we look back on our life on earth in our ordinary consciousness, we never actually remember the true form of the I and the astral body, but only what arises when this I and this astral body have support in the physical and etheric bodies.

From this you will see that it is more than a mere comparison when I speak of the fact that the I and the astral body, that is, the actual soul being, is like a dark point within that which is actually perceived. We would have to see the true form and capacity of this ego and this astral body in retrospect if we saw them not only as dark inclusions, but as realities, as we otherwise perceive realities. But we lift these soul entities out of their indeterminacy, their imperceptibility, through imaginative, inspired and intuitive knowledge. As I discussed yesterday, we first lift the thinking part of our soul out of the dark uncertainty by immersing it in the physical body. This thinking part initially only uses the physical body as a kind of thinking power, which is present in this physical body in the form of air-like substance. And then, when sensory perceptions, emotional experiences, will impulses or desires are added to thinking when fully awake, where the soul must fully submerge into the physical body, where everything in the physical body must be utilized by the soul, then what would otherwise would otherwise be mere fleeting thoughts, as long as the processes take place only in the airy substance of the body, can, as it were, condense into the ability to remember and into that which, as thoughts, as mental images, connects with sensory perception or emotional experiences or volitional impulses.

We can study the human organism in a much more detailed way with the means of knowledge I have mentioned than we can without them. Ask yourself what a person usually has as a mental image of their physical body when they do not think about it too much. Of course, if you think about it a little, something else immediately arises. He has the mental image that the physical body is limited by the skin, and that inside it is actually a closed mass, which one thinks of as more or less solid or semi-solid. But we must take into account that hardly ten percent of the human body is really solid, that for the most part we are a column of liquid, that we constantly carry air within us, that through the airy we are constantly not separate from the outside world, connected to the outside world. The air that was just outside is then inside me; the air that I have inhaled, that has been processed in the body, is then outside. So that man, if he is to be understood completely in terms of his physical body, must be seen as a solid, liquid, air-like substance. And all this is permeated by the warmth element, which works in these different substances.

When, upon awakening, the soul descends into the body, it is the case with the purely conceptual that it does not descend further than what is present in our body as air-like substance. The thought takes hold of the airy element. It is quite wrong to speak of the thought merely in terms of vibrational nerve processes and the like. All this is revealed to the imaginative view that the mere thought, which also lives in dreams, first takes hold of the airy element. Then, as this air-shaped element enters into certain processes, the thoughts are transferred to the watery element, and from there they imprint themselves on the solid, salt-like element. This makes it possible for the reflexes to arise later as memories, and this through processes that I unfortunately do not have time to describe, although they are very interesting.

In this way one can gain an intimate insight into the workings and weavings of the soul within the body, graduated according to the aggregate states of the human physical body. This physical body gradually becomes transparent. One sees the weaving and workings of the soul within it. One sees that which I had to say remains actually obscure to ordinary consciousness. I put it like this yesterday: When we have the simplest volitional impulse, we first have the mental image that something should be carried out, for example, that the arm should be raised. Then this mental image shoots into our organism to become will. This eludes ordinary consciousness, just as sleep states do. In relation to the will, ordinary consciousness also sleeps in the waking state of the human being. But then one sees the effect again, and that again as a mental image. But then, when one studies the matter with the means of knowledge characterized here, one sees that when the thought becomes an impulse of will in us, this thought first has an effect in the air element of the human physical body. Then it is transferred again to the solid and liquid elements, and it is through the impulse of will that matter is, as it were, burned. In the liquid part of the human physical organism, matter is reduced to nothingness, as I described it yesterday. But because this is taking place, because matter is being reduced to nothingness, empty spaces are created in our physical body, so to speak. These empty spaces create a completely different dynamic. We become immersed in them. So that when we see through something with these means of knowledge, which becomes an act of will, we first perceive the thought, then perceive how the thought shoots into the body, how it destroys matter there, how we witness the rearrangement of the material. This is how the other state of equilibrium comes about, namely that matter is returned to nothing. This witnessing of a different equilibrium leads to the physical body also following this evocation of a different equilibrium in its movements, so that action then occurs, the action that is directly bound to the human being's physical body. In this way, the human being's will also becomes transparent in the soul, transparent down to the last details.

Just to show you that anthroposophy is truly not something that just rambles and rambles in vagueness, but that it enters into the very concrete facts of the world, I would like to give you a small example where there is also a will impulse. This example is taken from language. We have - I will choose a characteristic word, I could also choose another word - we have the German word “hier”. I say: “The box lies here.” What actually happens in the human organism when it comes to pronouncing the word “hier”? The first thing that happens is that what lives in the breath is first grasped in the subconscious. And this, what lives in the breath, is now the thought. The thought lives in the breath. We only have a real mental image of the thought when we know, from anthroposophical knowledge, that the thought can really live in the inhaled air, that it is a force that can act on the inhaled air. Only when we cannot go into these details do we come up against all the difficulties of psychology, taken physically. If we believe that thought can directly move a bone, that is, can have such a robust effect on physical matter, we cannot get by. But if we know that thought is something that is transmitted in a roundabout way through the warmth element into the air element, then what is stimulated there is continued into the rest of the organism, and we begin to grasp what is there with an impulse of will. So we can say: First of all we have the experience of breathing. This experience remains unconscious. Only the insight characterized here can transcend it. Then the second element is added: we inwardly experience that which now continues out of the breathing process into the liquid element of the organism. We experience that which signifies a direction in the speech organism. In the arm, it would mean an outstretching of the arm. We perceive this in the i. So we perceive the continuation of the thought-air into the watery element, so to speak the stretching movement. We see through imagination the transition from the breathing movement into the stretching movement. And then this stretching movement is formed in the right. If I were to say only “here,” I would have to draw it: 1st breathing process 5, 2nd stretching movement ie (the horizontal is drawn). But if I now draw the stretching movement as it is experienced unconsciously when I pronounce “here,” I must draw it like this: I perceive the breathing process, perceive the direction of the stretching, which is not carried out, but rolls along in the r. And then I have really experienced inwardly what is present as a volitional impulse when I pronounce the word “here”. In this way, we can follow the impulses of will that express themselves in language when we use our imagination to look into the whole weaving and ruling of the soul that permeates the physical body and the etheric or formative body.

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With imagination, we can initially gain an overview of the kind of things I have described here. When inspiration comes into play, we see how the soul plays within; how the physical body and the etheric body are something that exists externally in space and time, and how, on this, yes, I cannot say it well: like on an instrument, because this is in turn constantly being created by the soul processes, but like on a support, a ground that is constantly being worked on, the soul plays. Through inspiration, we thus advance to the actual seeing of the work of the soul in a physical organism.

When we then ascend to intuition, we perceive something else. Then we perceive: there is a law in the world that has nothing to do with physical law, but a law that certainly takes hold of people. I can perhaps express myself best about this fact in the following way: When one looks back at a later age on the way in which one's life on earth has passed, then one finds that, if one is honest with oneself, one must admit that one is actually nothing other than what one has become here in one's physical existence on earth as a result of one's experiences. Consider only: solely from this life. Consider how you learned to think, how you learned to feel, how you may have been stimulated to do this or that by meeting a particular person at a particular point in your life, which in turn may have had an effect on your character. Put together all the individual experiences you have gone through and ask yourself whether you would have become something different in relation to what you are for the outside world if different experiences had entered into your existence. If you follow this train of thought properly, you will soon see how something has been living in you from the very beginning, unconsciously drawing you to that which has become so important in your life. It is interesting how sometimes people who have reached a certain age and who have not used their lives to dream, but to grasp the facts of life that have come to them in a deeper sense, how such people, when they look back on their lives, came to say - Goethe's friend Knebel, for example, was such a person - “When I look back on my life, everything is like a dream.” , when they look back on their lives, came to say to themselves: When I look back on my life, everything is so systematically ordered. Not even the smallest event could be missing if I were to be exactly the same in my earthly existence as I am today. If the smallest event were missing, there would be a slight change, but a change nonetheless. Just think what, say, the sixty-year-old Goethe would have been if he had not experienced Italy. With Goethe, it is almost tangible. He did not go to Italy on a whim, but because there was a deep yearning within him. But these deep longings are not just there, if we want to analyze them precisely, so that we can always explain them, the following from the earlier, but they are born with us. We really find something planned in life. Of course, one could be deceived about that at first. I have only mentioned this because, after all, one can approach through the most ordinary observation that which is now given by intuitive knowledge. Intuitive knowledge really does give a full insight not only into what is going on in our organism in terms of the soul, but it also gives an insight into what works in us as the center, the I, the actual self-being. And this self-being reveals itself to intuitive insight at the third stage of supersensible knowledge. It reveals itself in such a way that we really do not stand passively in relation to the facts of the external world, but that we are drawn to them through that which is in us, and not through heredity, but from the deepest central soul being, which has been drawn into us from a spiritual-soul world at birth and has taken on a physical earthly body. Through intuitive insight one comes to realize that this I does not actually enter into earthly life in such a way that it would have to be passively surrendered to the random facts that come its way, but that it is strongly attracted by one fact and strongly repelled by another. It positively seeks its way in the world. In short, it is born carrying within itself the predisposition to its destiny.

And if we then further develop this intuitive insight into the nature of the human self, we come to realize that this ego has undergone repeated earthly lives. These repeated lives on earth did, however, begin at a certain point in time, before the I was so little different from its surroundings in its ancient form of existence that there was no such thing as a change between life on earth and spiritual-soul life. The repeated lives on earth will continue to be experienced until a point in time when the ego will again be so similar in its entire inner makeup to the spiritual world that it will no longer need an earthly life.

Thus, when we fully recognize the ego, we look back on repeated earthly lives. In other words, we look at the entire life of a person as proceeding in such a way that we have parts of that life between birth and death or conception and death, other parts between death and a new birth; that is, in repeated earthly lives the person lives out his full existence.

The usual objection is that people do not remember these repeated lives. This only applies to the ordinary consciousness. The moment intuition sets in, what happens through the repeated lives on earth becomes just as much an inner view of the soul as memories within a single life on earth. So it is here that anthroposophy does not come to its results through abstract proofs, as is the case with ordinary philosophy, but by first preparing the soul for higher knowledge and then recognizing these things through intuition. But this means that anthroposophical knowledge proves to be a continuation of the knowledge we have today in science, but it is a continuation that must work in a completely different way from the mere scientific knowledge that is recognized today.

Often the question is asked: how does anthroposophy prove what it asserts? Those who ask this question and who, because the usual form of proof is not available in anthroposophy, deny that anthroposophy is scientific, do not consider the following – I can only explain these things approximately, but they are absolutely and precisely true. The person who proceeds to prove something shows, by the very fact of proceeding to prove, that what has to be proved is not present in his intuition. Actually, we prove everywhere where we have no intuition. If I have to prove that yesterday a human being was here in this room, I shall need proof only if I myself have not seen the person here. This is basically the case with all proofs, and this is also the case with the proofs in the historical development of mankind. When, in their older, more instinctive knowledge, men had a view of what they called the divine being, they needed no proofs. The proofs of the existence of God began their life in historical evolution only when the view was lost. Proofs begin everywhere when there is no view.

The anthroposophical method, however, consists in first preparing the human soul so that it can then be perceived. When this is described – and this is the peculiar thing about anthroposophy – it can be brought into the forms of common sense and understood in the same way that a non-artist can understand a work of art, even though he cannot make it. Therefore, it cannot be objected that Anthroposophy cannot be grasped with common sense. It can only be investigated by someone who is an anthroposophical researcher himself. It can be understood by anyone who wants to apply their common sense without prejudice.

Thus we see that it is first of all knowledge of man, self-knowledge, knowledge of what the I really is, whereas otherwise, with our ordinary consciousness of the I, we have only a void, a darkness, a gloom, so that a knowledge is imparted of the real I, but that this I can then be seen in its eternity, and in this eternity as continuous through repeated earthly lives. Just as I have shown you that the human organism becomes transparent to the soul right down to the will, so too – as I have already hinted at in the previous days – the outside world is also made transparent. The soul-spiritual of the outside world is recognized through imagination, inspiration and intuition.

Many people who get to know superficially what is presented through anthroposophy, perhaps even only from the writings of its opponents, very often say that anthroposophy is a rehash of old worldviews, for example, of Gnosticism, which, after all, still prevailed among very many people in the first Christian centuries. They therefore say that we are dealing with something that has basically been refuted by the evolution of humanity over time, or at least has been overcome. Anyone who really focuses only on what has been presented in these lectures will not be tempted, even if they are also familiar with Gnosticism and anthroposophy, which certainly appears with new means and methods of knowledge and takes into account the consciousness of present-day humanity, to somehow combine it with Gnosticism. This anthroposophy works in such a way that it presupposes the scientific development of the last centuries. Of course, Gnosticism did not take this into account, because its existence preceded the development of science. But there is something else that could lead one to the temptation to lump anthroposophy together with gnosticism. The only way to avoid doing so is to really delve into the essence of anthroposophy. The only thing that anthroposophy might have in common with gnosis is that it also takes into account, in a certain way, what is a prevailing worldview in our time, and that is agnosticism, which is in a certain respect the opposite of gnosis and is also the opposite of anthroposophy, but in a different respect.

This agnosticism can first be characterized in terms of its theoretical aspect. It is present when a person speaks in the way, for example, Herbert Spencer spoke. Many others have followed in his footsteps, but they are not fully aware that they are agnostics, although they are actually agnostic in their entire way of thinking. He said: We see the world of the senses around us. We have the intellect, which rises from observation and experiment to the contemplation of the laws in this world. - To this we add what we can survey from ordinary consciousness as phenomena of the soul. Here too, a makeshift search is made, for it is only makeshift, for some kind of law. But then those who do not simply reject every supersensible reality, contenting themselves with the intellectual comprehension of sense perceptions and inner soul experiences as they present themselves to ordinary consciousness, , said: Yes, but one cannot penetrate with human abilities to what now lies as some or many origins behind these appearances; one cannot achieve a real gnosis, a real gnosticism, no knowledge. One is an enlightened person precisely because one admits that the origins of things cannot be known or investigated. Agnosticism in this form has taken hold in wide circles. It also exists in different variations. This agnosticism, when it appears philosophically, is a kind of opposite to anthroposophy, and I could, if I felt like it, start from this point in time to turn polemically critical, abusive if you will, against contemporary agnosticism, depending on my mood. What can be said about it, insofar as it really brings corruption to the human forces of progress in civilization, can soon be read in the journal “Die Drei”. I explained it in a lecture I gave at a Stuttgart School of Spiritual Science course. As I said, one could also approach the matter from this side. But I do not wish to do that today. I should like to show that this agnosticism also has its origin in the evolution of the human spirit.

Of course, errors can arise in the individual spheres of life. Then we become critics of these errors. We must root out these errors and illusions. But when something arises with such widespread popularity as agnosticism, then we can indeed fight it, the fight can be justified, but we must also ask: Yes, how is it that within the spiritual development of humanity something like agnosticism has arisen?

Now, anyone who sees more deeply into these matters must ask themselves the following: We once had to advance to that in the development of humanity, which I strictly defended on one of the last lecture evenings for the external natural sciences, especially the inorganic natural sciences; we had to advance to pure phenomenalism, as Goethe also demanded. To that pure phenomenalism, which no longer uses thinking to construct all kinds of atomic worlds behind sense perceptions that can no longer be perceived; which uses thinking merely to read sense perceptions, to remain within the phenomenal world, to arrange the phenomena in such a way that they appear to us as archetypal phenomena in the Goethean sense. All this has been done in the most diverse variations here in recent days. I do not want to deny that something of the kind does not live in a great number of people of the present time. Nevertheless, on the one hand, there is a definite tendency to theorize, where we, so to speak, once we have entered into thinking, pierce through the sensory carpet and continue with thinking for a while beyond sensory perception, where there is no longer anything for thinking to create. There we then posit atoms and all sorts of other things. This corresponds to a kind of law of inertia. Thinking will, in accordance with our present position, our present relationship to the world, actually only be applicable in such a way that we can apply it in the service of grouping, of interpreting phenomena in relation to one another, thus remaining within the phenomenal world, so to speak, reading the phenomenon and not underlying things with all kinds of explanations.

When someone writes down the word “table”, they have details. They try to combine the individual letters into a word. They read. They would start the wrong activity if they said: T, and then had to assume that processes were taking place that combined the T. Then the i. Thus he who, in following an inner law of thought, penetrates the sensory tapestry with his thoughts, instead of reading in the sensory world, exempts himself from having to do so. One penetrates the sensory world and puts forward hypotheses, which is not to say anything against phenomenal atomism. Some people in the present are well aware that there must be a pure phenomenalism. That is simply the direction in which natural science is tending. The natural scientists themselves, after all, are more concerned with experimenting and observing than with reflecting on the methods. Therefore, one cannot really blame them when all kinds of constructs are added to the phenomena. Then they believe they have facts in these constructs. But certain philosophical minds feel that it must come to pure phenomenalism. In particular, among Western thinkers – in the East it is quite different – we often have such personalities who see clearly that the science of the external world must ultimately come to a pure grasp of phenomena and use thinking only to allow the phenomena to interpret themselves reciprocally. “All fact is already theory,” says Goethe. And in William James, the American who established pragmatism, a philosophical interpreter arose in response to pragmatism. In Europe, he has emerged somewhat more blatantly in the so-called “as-if philosophy,” where it is said that one should not interpret anything into the phenomenon. But one must still ascend to something that is no longer an appearance, so one does not say of what arises: it is there, but one acts as if it were there. Much clearer than this “as-if philosophy” is that of William James, who actually gives up any substantial effect of the power of thought. He is clear about the fact that with thinking one can only group external facts and come to a point where one can then control these external facts in practice in the service of human development, of civilization. So that he actually sees nothing in all the laws that man penetrates to but practical guidelines, so to speak, for getting along with the world.

In principle, this is something that phenomenology tends towards. If we study it in its purity in Goethe, where it appears in a wonderful way with its full justification, we recognize that it was bound to arise, it must be there. Only through pure phenomenality can man fully enlighten himself about what is actually in his environment. But then everything that goes beyond the phenomenon is initially something that man cannot cope with. If one knows nothing of methods of knowledge that ascend into the supersensible worlds, that is, that ascend from phenomena as facts to other, but now supersensible facts, then, by tending towards phenomenalism, one must ultimately say to oneself: Only phenomena exist at all. When I examine them with my thinking, I do not discover anything that lives on behind them, other than the phenomena themselves. For the archetypal phenomena are ultimately also only phenomena. So that I actually get nothing out of them but practical principles for using the phenomena in the service of human beings.

Assuming that this were already fully developed; that phenomenalism were there, and thinking were to consist only in regulative principles ordering phenomena, then we have something that we could no longer call knowledge in the sense of the older concepts of knowledge, for example, gnosis. For what did that consist of which, in the past, out of instinctive human worldview, was always called knowledge? In my book 'The Riddles of Philosophy' you can read more about this in Greek times: Cognition consisted in the fact that when one looked at the world, one did not merely perceive the sense perceptions - sounds, colors, qualities of warmth - but that one perceived the thought objectively outside, outside oneself, like a color. Goethe still claims for himself that he sees his ideas in the world as the Greeks saw the ideas in the world, namely as sense perceptions. But now imagine a person in this mental-sensual activity. He looks at something, not just the colors, but the thoughts. By looking at the thoughts, he feels within himself, he experiences within himself not something passive as today, where we have only the sensual before us, but he felt activity within himself. This is the reason for Plato's assertion that there is something active in seeing, something like grasping. He felt something like activity, something that connected him as a human being with what he saw as an object outside. And this was knowledge, this feeling, this experience of an activity, it was not merely the acceptance of a passive thing. This way of experiencing knowledge is today found only in some retarded individuals, in some people who live more by their instincts than by their intellects, or it can be newly acquired by those who, in the anthroposophical sense, work their way up again into higher knowledge, but now fully consciously and not instinctively, as was still the case with gnosticism. But today ordinary consciousness is increasingly approaching the point where it is passively surrendered to external phenomena, where thinking is no longer considered a phenomenon, where it lives only in it as a guiding principle for ordering phenomena more and more practically and putting them at the service of humanity.

What is accomplished there with the phenomenal world does not lead to knowledge in the old sense. Those who, for example, still have the religious content with the God impulse from old traditions, like Spencer, for example, and then see what is called knowledge today, but which is no longer knowledge, gnosis, they profess that they say: One does not actually come to the source in this phenomenal existence. Agnosticism! And basically this agnosticism has two sides. On the one hand, it takes away everything that makes us strong as whole human beings when we have an activity in cognition. On the other hand, however, we have to go through this phase of human development, to be purely passively devoted to the phenomena. It is part of the overall development of the human race to develop this phenomenalism in the Goethean sense, because it conveys to us a level of truth that is necessary for the overall development of humanity.

What follows from the fact that we come to the phenomena and are thus, if we know nothing but the external phenomena, drawn into agnosticism? It follows that if we want to remain human, we have to approach the spiritual world in a different way than by interpreting the external sense world. And for that part of the external world that underlies the sense world, we cannot find it within the sense world. There was a time in my life when I was acquainted with a number of so-called teleologists. These people would come and say that the mechanistic worldview, pure phenomenalism, was not enough for the external world. One of these people even wrote a book, which was admired by many, about “empirical teleology.” He tried to show that mere causality is not enough, that one can also determine a certain purpose in natural phenomena, purely empirically. People felt very exalted about the mere mechanism, which has a certain justification in external natural science, by introducing a kind of teleology in this way.

I said to people at the time, including this Nikolaus Cossmann: just look at a clock. This clock can be explained completely mechanistically when it is in front of you. There is nothing there that causes us to assume little demons inside that make the wheels turn or anything like that. Any nebulous mysticism is excluded if you just look at the thing. I strictly held the view that the world of phenomena must be explained from itself. All interpretation and carrying in of teleology and the like is harmful. But the clock was made by a clockmaker. I will not get to know the clockmaker from the clock, but I can get to know him as a person. I choose methods other than analyzing the clock to get to know the clockmaker. I seek him out, perhaps in a social context, somewhere other than his shop. - At the moment when one is clear about the fact that the external world is to be grasped phenomenally, at that moment one has not, so to speak, demystified it, but one has shown the necessity of seeking this spirit, this supersensible, on other paths, through other means and methods of knowledge. And these are precisely the ones I have described. They must be added to the phenomenalist methods of knowledge.

As you can see, anthroposophy is currently endeavoring to fully establish and accept phenomenalism because it is clear that what leads to spiritual worlds must be achieved with these other methods of knowledge. This also includes what underlies the external sense world as a spiritual being.

So you see, on the one hand I could have repeated what I said in Stuttgart, as I mentioned earlier. I could have said: mental images become weak within agnosticism, because they are only passively devoted to the external world. But because we have weak mental images, we also have weak feelings. Feelings live in man in such a way that he must stir them up himself. They become sentimental, or else they remain dull, so that they become untruthful. Feelings thus become nebulous, sentimental or dull. As a result, a naturalistic or untruthful tendency has entered into our art, because art particularly emanates from the world of feeling. But because mental images do not enter into the impulses of the will as strong forces, we lack the right kind of determination today. In particular, we lack determination when it comes to taking on something new. We let what seems unfamiliar to us pass us by as a sensation. This is basically how it has been with anthroposophy for twenty years. Many people have heard about it, but they cannot decide, out of their usual experiences of the soul, to let it be more than a sensation. Agnosticism weakens us in our will. It even weakens us in the face of religious experience today. As a result, many people who have long aspired to have an elementary religious experience end up immersing themselves in traditional religions. How many honest seekers have recently returned to Catholicism. Or one returns to oriental mysticism. Because agnosticism weakens our mental images, we do not feel strong enough for elementary religious experiences.

Anthroposophy adds to the passive processing of the world in phenomenalism the impetus of imagination, inspiration and intuition, and thus even comes to a real grasp of that which, as supersensible, enters into our historical existence. She comes to a real grasp of the Mystery of Golgotha. She comes to a grasp of the Mystery of Golgotha in such a way that she can see how the pure, divine being, the Christ-being, has taken possession of the body of Jesus of Nazareth. This in turn gives real meaning to the mental images of the resurrection, of the connection between the living Christ and our own human development on earth, while it is actually deeply significant that theologians, who are considered enlightened in recent times, have said: Yes, one must just look at the life of Jesus. The resurrection, they say, arose as a belief, but one can only speak of an arising faith. What actually happened in the Garden of Gethsemane cannot really be spoken of. Anthroposophy, on the other hand, will speak of these things, which can only be grasped as supersensible, which cannot be grasped if one wants to grasp them with the usual historical methods taken from the world of the senses. I could speak at length about the deadening of our religious life through the widespread agnosticism of today. But I will only hint at that. It has already been discussed elsewhere.

But there are two sides to every coin. One can also speak of agnosticism in such a way that it has emerged as a necessary phase of development in the more recent history of mankind; that it is, so to speak, the accompanying phenomenon of pure phenomenalism, which we have to work our way towards. But even if this pure phenomenalism is of extraordinary interest to us as we work our way into it, we cannot gain from it that which is most important to us for our innermost humanity. We must gain that in a different way.

Now let me add something personal, not out of vanity or silliness, but because it is relevant. I have already mentioned that I completed my “Philosophy of Freedom” in 1894. I am convinced that this “Philosophy of Freedom” could not have been written by someone who is not a pure phenomenalist in relation to natural science. For, although I am a pure phenomenalist in the field of natural science, what was I compelled to do in order to found the moral truth? I was compelled to introduce into this “Philosophy of Freedom” the moral intuition, which I have already characterized here as something thoroughly supersensible and spiritual. Especially resented was my ethical individualism. But it was necessary. I had to show that in the individual human being, the moral impulse can be intuitively experienced in an individualistic way through ordinary consciousness, whereas otherwise intuition can only be attained through higher exercises. This was how it had to be done in order to give the moral world a foundation, if one was a pure phenomenalist who already ascended into the spiritual world at that time. For in the face of pure phenomenalism, the moral impulse disappears when a person is only completely honest with himself. If he is dishonest, he succumbs to all kinds of illusions.

But anyone who has met people who have wrestled with worldviews not in theory but in every fiber of their emotional life knows what the tendency towards phenomenalism, which has agnosticism in its wake, can mean for today's people. I have met people who say to themselves: If we grasp the world with today's scientific means, we see only natural processes in it. We can hypothetically trace it back to a primeval nebula or something similar, which is the event of our earth. We can follow it to the end, to the heat death or something similar. But then we see how we can develop the moral world within us for a long time - it is only a haze and fog that rises above the only real thing, which begins with the primeval nebula and ends with the heat death. And after the heat death there will be the great field of corpses for all that not only lived on earth, but also what strove there for moral impulses, for religious inwardness. All this will be buried. Certainly, not many people feel this discrepancy for their own spiritual life, but there are people who feel it. I have met them, with all the inner tragedy that made them doubt not only the reality of what could be grasped in religious terms, but also the reality of a moral world order. They are haze and mist, rising from the merely externally phenomenal facts.

Now let me add something personal, not out of vanity or silliness, but because it is relevant. I have already mentioned that I completed my “Philosophy of Freedom” in 1894. I am convinced that this “Philosophy of Freedom” could not have been written by someone who is not a pure phenomenalist in relation to natural science. For, although I am a pure phenomenalist in the field of natural science, what was I compelled to do in order to found moral truth? I was compelled to introduce into this “Philosophy of Freedom” the moral intuition which I have already characterized here as something thoroughly supersensible and spiritual. My ethical individualism was particularly resented. But that was necessary. I had to show that in the individual human being the moral impulse can be intuitively experienced in an individualistic way through ordinary consciousness, whereas otherwise intuition can only be attained through higher exercises. This was how it had to be done in order to give the moral world a foundation if one was a pure phenomenalist who already ascended into the spiritual world in those days. For in the face of pure phenomenalism, the moral impulse is lost if a person is only completely honest with himself. If he is dishonest, he comes to all kinds of illusions. But anyone who has met people who have wrestled with worldviews not in theory but in every fiber of their soul knows what the tendency towards phenomenalism, which has agnosticism in its wake, can mean for today's human beings. I have met people who say to themselves: If we grasp the world with today's scientific means, we see only natural processes in it. We can hypothetically trace it back to a primeval nebula or something similar, which is the event of our earth. We can follow it to the end, to the heat death or something similar. But then we see how we can develop the moral world within us for a long time - it is only a haze and fog that rises above the only real thing, which begins with the primeval nebula and ends with the heat death. And after the heat death there will be the great field of corpses for all that not only lived on earth, but also what strove there for moral impulses, for religious inwardness. All this will be buried. Certainly, not many people feel this discrepancy for their own spiritual life, but there are people who feel it. I have met them, with all the inner tragedy that made them doubt not only the reality of something grasped in religious terms, but also the reality of a moral world order. They are haze and mist, rising from the merely outwardly phenomenal facts.

This is rooted in the way our society is organized. Millions and millions of people, especially those in proletarian circles, only see reality in external, economic phenomena. What is spiritual – law, morality, art – is nothing, as they say, but an ideological superstructure, something that arises merely as a sham, an ideology. And so we have progressed in the agnostic direction to the point where one speaks of ideology. I myself, having been very active in working-class circles, have experienced the sense in which ideology is spoken of there, which, after all, is basically only the fault of those who, today, also from the direction of science, speak of everything spiritual, not quite clearly, not quite honestly, but actually in the sense of an ideology. We have arrived at the opposite pole of human development compared to the one that was once the oriental worldview. It spoke of Maya and of the true essence. Everything that is only accessible and attainable to the senses was Maya to it, was illusion. And the real, the truly real, was that which is now graspable for man above the sensual. Today we live in a worldview that presents exactly the opposite. For those who are agnostic, the sensory world is the only reality. They could just as easily say maya as ideology about that which can be grasped beyond the sensory world. We should translate this word in this way. Our maya is the spiritual; once the maya was the sum of sensory phenomena.

But this forces us, precisely because we had to arrive at this point, to take our paths of knowledge to the other side. For if we now ascend through imagination, inspiration, and intuition into the spiritual world, then we recognize precisely that which leads us to the actual essence of humanity. And we find the strong impulse to ascend into these worlds when we become fully aware that the sense world may only be explained from within itself, with its own methods. This gives us the impetus. But then, if the sense world can only be explained from its own methods, then thinking serves only as a tool of explanation in it. Then thinking has significance for the sense world only as a servant, for the mutual interpretation of phenomena, in order to bring the phenomena together in such a way that they explain each other. Then thinking, as we have it in pure phenomenalism or agnosticism, is merely an image. Then it no longer contains any reality. The Gnostic felt the reality of thought by looking at it. Our thinking has a mere image existence.

What follows from this if we really ascend to this pure thinking and grasp our moral impulses in it? Now, if I have a mirror here, with images in it, the mirror images cannot force me to do anything through causality. If I want to be led by mirror images, my thinking in the world development of humanity has progressed so far that it really only has the character of an image, so it no longer contains causality for me. Then, when I have moral impulses, pure thinking is formed into impulses of human freedom. By arriving at phenomenalism, and thus at pure image-thinking, and by being able to grasp moral impulses through the power of pure image-thinking, we also pass through the stage of freedom. We educate freedom into our human nature by going through this phase of human development. This is what I wanted to present in my Philosophy of Freedom. But we only become free when we have a thinking that is image-thinking, that proceeds entirely within the physical body, as I have described. At the moment we look further back, we see not freedom but fate. You see, here we have the opportunity to recognize that which we call human destiny, because it rules in the unconscious, because we only come to its rule when we ascend to intuition. Because we find spiritual laws in this destiny that work through repeated lives on earth, we have a spiritual necessity in it. But by entering into life on earth, we free ourselves from necessity for certain actions, and only follow the image-containing thinking, and in the present epoch of humanity we are thereby educated to freedom. There is no contradiction, if one looks into the matter properly, between destiny and freedom. However, in order to be able to present the concept of fate to the world correctly later on, it was necessary that the concept of freedom be presented first in the “Philosophy of Freedom”.

You see, what needs to be done is not a blind railing against agnosticism, because in a certain respect it is only the other side of phenomenalism. We read in natural phenomena, but if we merely read them, we do not find in them what we have to seek on the higher paths of knowledge. But precisely for that reason we need them fully only when we no longer bring forth instinctively from our human nature that which is the impulse of our thinking. In ancient times, even in the times of Gnosticism, man brought forth not only hunger and thirst from within himself, but also active thinking. He was not yet a technician in the modern sense. One only becomes one when one embodies pure thought outwardly in matter. I am even convinced – please forgive me for bringing up something very personal – that if I had studied philosophy in the conventional sense, instead of being educated at a technical university and finding my way into this technical life of the present, I would not have written the Philosophy of Freedom, because it is precisely the opposite pole to the experience of pure fact. And the pure fact, which is experienced in the outwardly mechanistic, and which then also leads to phenomenalism, is absolutely what, on the other hand, first evokes the full opposite pole. Otherwise, we instinctively bring something from within us that dreams little demons into the clock. We first seek the truly spiritual through inner powers of knowledge, which we must first gain when we can no longer approach our physical environment through instinctive forces and bring into it what arises from instinctive observation. On the one hand, the age of technology, with its machines, is precisely the fertile soil for a spiritual, anthroposophical worldview. And in this sense, a clear knowledge of the spirit must be brought about through anthroposophy, precisely from a non-mystical view of the world. We must not arrive at a new gnosis, based on active thinking by instinct, but we must seek for true spirituality in the outer sense and the inner human being, on a path of knowledge to be attained by practice.

We must close this course at some point, and since I wanted to present to you today what anthroposophy is in contrast to the prevailing agnosticism, we who have participated in this course are obliged to part.

Anthroposophy, as I have already mentioned, arose entirely out of the scientific spirit of modern times. Anyone who compares my earliest writings with my later ones will recognize this. It then took on the form in which simple human minds found each other and tried to satisfy certain religious needs within this anthroposophy. It may be said that there have been quite a number of such simple human souls who have found what is most essential, what is absolutely necessary for the human being, already in this anthroposophy.

It has always been a strange relationship with the scientists themselves. I can still see some of them sitting in front of me – I like to be specific – I can see a botanist sitting in front of me, for example. He was a theosophist in the sense that you may also be familiar with, in the sense of orientalizing mysticism, as it prevails in theosophical societies, for example. I had one of the most learned botanists in front of me, so it was natural for me to talk to the gentleman about botany. For me it was something natural. But he did not want to hear about it. No, no, botany must remain what it is in the university cabinet, not only with him, but also with other botanists. It should remain precisely in the way one acquires practical knowledge through the botanizing drum and works with the microscope. He should not interfere with that! Immediately, when I started a botanical topic, he talked about the etheric body, the astral body and even higher bodies. It was the rule in this theosophical movement that one first talked about all possible bodies, until far up, where they became more and more misty. They did not characterize things as I have done here, by pointing out that the etheric body is a time organism, by trying to present the matter concretely, by characterizing the astral body as that which comes from the spiritual-soul realm and inwardly shapes the body. I have tried to give a characteristic of sleep, even if it is still incomplete. I have always tried to give a concrete description. But people like those I am talking about now were not interested in that. If only one had the words for it: physical body, etheric body, astral body, then further kama manas, and then one went into the highest regions, which became thinner and thinner, but always remained material. It was a strange theosophical materialism that confronted me particularly crudely once when I was at a theosophical congress in Paris. Various lectures were held there. I asked a personality, who was actually very advanced, how she had liked the lectures. She said: Yes, it left wonderful vibrations, wonderful resonances. I felt as if she had said: One smells something extraordinarily good in this room after these lectures. — It was all transferred into the material. One knew nothing of the real spirit. And the man of whom I have just spoken always started from what lay in this direction. I always started from something else, for example, the secrets of root formation, stem formation, flower formation, the spiral tendency of plants, their germination or the like. Nothing, nothing - anthroposophy must not come into it, away with it! The astral body and buddhi and atma kept coming up, as did the rounds and the globes and everything else that is doing the rounds in the world in this sense. In short, I am only giving these as specific examples, but it was actually quite futile to approach scientists in their own scientificness.

But then, with the exception of a few people who had been involved in philosophical work from the very beginning, such as Dr. Unger, more and more younger people were coming forward. And we would never have been able to found the Freie Waldorfschule in Stuttgart if a number of people had not been truly seized by the anthroposophical spirit in the individual subjects of science in the anthroposophical sense. For only in this way could it also be transferred into pedagogy and didactics. This has also made it possible to expand more and more what used to be available only to simple minds, and to really return to science in a certain way. Today we can already see a broader field. And you were to be given a sample of this broader field, in which we can already work today, thanks to a number of younger forces who are working with extraordinary dedication on the development of the anthroposophical spirit in the individual concrete sciences. One may say that much would also be desirable in another direction. Work in the therapeutic-medical field is still in its infancy. We have also made all kinds of attempts, for example in the economic field. However, it is precisely in the latter that it is clear – and this can perhaps also be seen from events in recent weeks – that it is still not possible to work fully in the practical economic sphere. Hopefully, the things we have begun will continue to progress, and it will eventually be possible to work in this field in the same way as work is being done today in some areas of science itself, and as work can be done in a thoroughly future-proof way in education and didactics through the Waldorf school.

Following on from this, I would now like to express my heartfelt thanks to those here in Holland who, as friends of the anthroposophical movement, have made these college courses possible. It is certainly no easy task to organize such an event, and above all, in order to muster the necessary work in such a case, a deeper understanding of the matter is needed. That this has come about here, fills us - and I am convinced that I also speak from the hearts and souls of all those who were allowed to speak here during this course week - with a deep feeling of gratitude, and I would like to express this to you; first of all to you, who are the organizers of this course. And I would like to combine this feeling of gratitude with the hope that those who have now turned their attention to what has been discussed here over the last few days will feel that some suggestions have been given to them with the little that could be achieved here in such a short time. We cannot do more than give such individual suggestions. If you have the opportunity to develop these suggestions by trying to penetrate further into what has already been worked out, but which is still little known to the world, what has been worked out through the anthroposophical movement, the anthroposophical work, then you will see that this anthroposophical movement is not only not what its enemies and opponents would like to present it as, who mostly, because they cannot be objective, become personal, but that the anthroposophical movement not only is it not what its enemies and opponents would have us be, but that the Anthroposophical Movement is at least sustained by a truly serious scientific spirit.

And on the other hand, I may perhaps indulge in the hope that the lectures I have tried to formulate here this evening may contribute something to showing how unconscious longings live in a large part of civilized humanity in our time, which, when brought to consciousness, represent nothing other than the desire for something like anthroposophy. But the fact that such a longing exists can also be seen from all kinds of negative instances.

There is a personality in our time, Oswald Spengler, who is also known here in Holland, who wrote the book about the necessary decline of the Occident. I have witnessed how, especially among the youth of Central Europe, this book about the “Decline of the Occident” has made a deep, devastating impression. In this book, however, we are dealing with the work of a man who is fully at home in twelve to fifteen sciences, who truly does not speak from lightly-basted knowledge, but who speaks only from the negative authorities that are effective in our time.

One such negative instance is, for example, agnosticism, when it represents the other side of phenomenalism and one only wants to stop at this phenomenalism. The other, the positive, is part of it. This positive seeks to reach anthroposophy on the spiritual path of knowledge. In this sense, I would like at least a little bit of anthroposophy to have spoken to your souls, given your sincerity. Often, when representing anthroposophy, one has the feeling that it has been around for decades, but we are always at the beginning. And now, after decades, we are talking about the very beginning again, despite having spoken to thousands upon thousands of people over the decades. One feels this — not because of anthroposophy, which can wait — one feels it because of the longings of the time as something tremendously oppressive. But that is also why there is such deep satisfaction when people do come together who want to know what anthroposophy is and who, through their studies and serious engagement with life, have a certain ability to judge. Anthroposophy does not have to fear judgment. I can assure you of that from the spirit of anthroposophy. Critics with the ability to judge will always be most welcome to anthroposophy. Up to now, they have mostly become its adherents after they have got to know it. The more objectively one engages with anthroposophy, even if it means criticizing it, the better for anthroposophy. Anthroposophy is not something that works on the basis of blind faith in authority or that counts on a lack of criticism. It prefers those listeners and readers and collaborators who bring their full, discerning soul nature to it, not the kind that often comes from the agnosticism of the present, but the kind that comes from the truly unbiased human soul.

If one can have the feeling that, even if it was a beginning, such beginnings must ultimately lead to something that is connected with the deepest longings and necessities of human development, then one can say that one leaves such a course with a certain satisfaction. And so I believe that those who have spoken here will leave with a certain satisfaction and, above all, with a grateful heart from what has taken place here. But they would like to hope that some stimulating things may also have taken place for the honored audience.

In this spirit, allow me to conclude this course by saying to you in the warmest possible way, out of this anthroposophical spirit: If we have perhaps connected with each other through some thoughts, then we seek the ways to continue to be together, to work together in spiritual work. In this spirit, I bid you farewell for today.

Question and Answer Session

The Hague, April 12, 1922

Question about multidimensional space.

Rudolf Steiner: If I have the usual coordinate system, I have characterized three-dimensional space. Now, let us just discuss it schematically, we proceed from certain algebraic assumptions by abstractly continuing the same process that leads from the plane into three-dimensional space, and we arrive at the fourth dimension, the fifth and so on, at an n-dimensional space. And then it is even possible, let's say, to construct bodies – Hinton did that – to construct the tessaract, but that is not a real body, but the projection of the real tessaract into three-dimensional space. Now the thing is this: in purely theoretical-abstract terms, of course, there is nothing to be said against such derivations. In theory, one can also pass from three-dimensional space to the fourth dimension of time, if one proceeds within the calculation formulas in such a way that one takes into account the leap that is actually made, because it is different after all, if one passes from the first to the second dimension and to the third dimension of space, than if one passes into time. But if you refine it, ... then you can pass over into time. In this way one arrives at an abstract four-dimensional space. If one remains abstract, one can go on doing this as long as one remains in the purely intellectualistic, as long as one is not compelled to follow the matter vividly. But then one is confronted with a problem which, while the purely abstract train of thought leads to a regressus ad infinitum, vividly becomes an elasticity problem. We could also think of the pendulum as continuing to swing forever. But in the dynamic, we will get a state of vibration. That is how it is in reality. If you can get into imaginative thought, you simply can no longer carry out the process in infinitum by assuming a fourth and so on dimension. Then, if I call the first dimension +a, the second +b, the third +c, if I take real space, I am obliged not to write the fourth +d, but by the nature of things I am obliged to write -c. So that the fourth dimension simply cancels out the third bit by bit and only two remain. So instead of four, I end up with two dimensions. And so I am also forced, if I assume the fifth, to set - b, and with the sixth - a. That is, I come back to the point. Elasticity has struck back to the starting point. And that is not something that exists only in the imagination, for example, that is, a subjective experiment, but it is realized in the way I described the day before yesterday. As long as we have, let us say, the earth here and look at the root of the plant, we are really dealing with a special formation of gravity. Here one is in the ordinary dimensionality of space. But if one wants to explain the form of the blossom, then one cannot get away with that. Then, instead of taking the point of origin of the co-ordinates, one must take infinite space, which is, after all, only the other form of the point. And then one comes to going in centrifugally instead of going out centrifugally. You come to this wave surface. Instead of the thing spreading out, it pushes in from the outside, and then you get those movements, which are sliding or scraping movements or pressure movements, where you would go wrong if you took coordinate axes from the center of coordinates, but you have to take the infinite sphere as the center of coordinates and then all the coordinates going towards the center. So, one also gets the qualitatively opposite coordinate axis system as soon as one enters the etheric. The fact that this is not taken into account is the mistake in the ordinary ether theory. Herein lies the difficulty in defining the ether. Sometimes it is seen as liquid, sometimes as gas. The mistake here is that one starts from the coordinate system seen from the center. But as soon as one enters the ether, one must take the sphere, and construct the entire system not from the inside outwards, but the other way around.

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Things become interesting when they are followed mathematically and cross over into the physical, and much could still be contributed to the solution of borderline problems if these theories, which begin to become very real here, were developed. But there is still a terrible lack of understanding for this. For example, I once gave a lecture at a mathematical university society where I tried to introduce these things. I explained that if you have the asymptotes of a hyperbola here and the branches of the hyperbola here, what you have to imagine on the right here, spreading out, you have to imagine on the left here, spreading together, so that a complete reversal takes place. These things gradually lead to a more concrete treatment of space. But today there is little understanding for this. Even pure analysts often show a certain dislike of synthetic geometry. And this newer synthetic geometry is the way to get out of the purely formal mathematical and to the problem where one has to grasp the empirical. As long as one calculates with mere analytical geometry, one does not approach the realms of reality. There one has only developed the end points of the coordinates, the geometric location of the coordinates and so on. If one remains with constructing with the linear and with circles, then one stands in lines within them, but is compelled to take a certain visualization to help. This is what makes synthetic geometry so beneficial for getting out of the formal and showing how to think the mathematical in nature.

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Question: What does Dr. Steiner mean when he says that the physical body is a spatial body and the body of formative forces is a temporal body? The physical body also lives in time, growing and decaying.

Rudolf Steiner: Yes, that is only imprecisely thought, if I may say so. In order to trace this back to an exact thinking, you would first have to undertake an analysis of the concept of time. Just consider: as the usually meant reality stands before us, space and time are interwoven. One can only think such things when one distinguishes between space and time. In ordinary objective knowledge, you have not given time at all. You measure time with nothing but spatial quantities, and changes in spatial quantities are the means of recognizing what then counts as time. Just imagine a different way of measuring time. Otherwise, you always measure time according to space. This is not the case in the moment when you move on to the real experience of time. People usually do this unconsciously. Actually, thinking is elevated into consciousness through imaginative knowledge. But you have a truly temporal experience when, for example, let us say, on April 12, 1922 at 4:4 minutes and so many seconds, you take your soul life.

When you take your soul life in this moment, it has a temporal cross-section. You cannot say that there is any spatial cross-section within this temporal cross-section. But within this temporal cross-section lies your entire earthly past, and if you want to draw schematically, if that is the flow of your experience from a to b, you have to draw the cross-section A to B. You cannot avoid placing all of your experience in this cross-section, and yet there is a perspective in it. You can say that experiences that lie further back in time are represented with less intensity than those that are closer in time. But all of this is represented in the one cross-section. So that you get different relationships when you really analyze time. We can only form a mental image of time if we do not use the analysis that we are accustomed to in physics, according to space-cognition means, but only by reflecting on our soul life itself. But in your soul life, even if you only have abstract thoughts, you are in the time body. What is important is that we are now able to understand this time body as an organism. You see, when you experience any indisposition, let us say a digestive disorder, in the stomach, you may be able to see that it affects other areas of your spatial organism as well. The spatial organism is such that the individual areas are spatially dependent on each other. In the case of the temporal organism, although we have a later and an earlier, later and earlier are connected in an organic way. I sometimes express this by saying: Let us assume we have a very old person. We find that when such an old person speaks to younger people, for example to children, that his words bounce off the children, that his words are of no use to the children. And we find another person. When he speaks to children, it is something quite different. His words flow by themselves into the child's soul. If you now study — one only does not study these things because one very rarely considers the whole human being, one does not, so to speak, pause with one's attention long enough to observe, for example, the basis of the blessing of an older man or woman, one must sometimes go back to early childhood. Today, observation does not extend that far. Anthroposophy has to do that. Go back and you will find that those who can bless in old age, who have this peculiar spiritual power in them that their words flow into young people like a blessing, have learned to pray in their youth. I express it figuratively: folded hands in youth become blessing hands in old age.

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There you have a connection between what influences other people at a later age and what, let's say, pious feelings and the like were present in the life in early childhood. There is an organic connection between the earlier and the later. And only when you know the whole person do you see how he has an infinite number of such connections. Today we are stuck with our whole life outside of this reality. We imagine that we are full of reality, but we are abstract creatures in our culture of life. We do not pay attention to true reality. For example, we do not pay attention to such things. We also do not pay attention to the fact that when we teach a child, we must avoid, if possible, giving him sharply contoured concepts, especially in primary school. These are really for a later age, as if one were to constrict the limbs and prevent them from growing larger. What we pass on to the child must be an organism, must be mobile. Now you are gradually approaching what I mean by an organism. Of course, it is only possible within the imagination. But one can still arrive at a mental image of an organism, if one is clear about the fact that what takes place in time in the human being does not relate to the spatial organism, but to the temporal organism. Now you see that there is a reality in time. You can also see this in mathematics. There was once a very nice discussion about this. I believe it was Ostwald who pointed out - not a supporter of the humanities, but someone who is not exactly a materialist - that the organic processes that take place in time cannot be reversed with the mechanical process. But the fact is that you can't even get close to the time processes with the usual calculations. You actually always remain outside of the time processes with the usual calculations. They do not follow the processes as such. If, for example, you insert negative quantities into a formula for the lunar eclipse, you get the more distant things, but you do not move away with the things. You only move in the spatial sphere. And so you only get a correct concept of what the human physical body actually is if you can separate the spatial from the temporal. In the case of man it is of fundamental importance, because one does not arrive at any understanding at all if one does not know that with him everything temporal proceeds as an entity for itself, and the spatial is ruled by the temporal as by something dynamic, while with a machine the temporal is only a function of that which has a spatial effect. That is the difference. For humans, the temporal is real, while for a mechanism, the temporal is only a function of space. That is what it ultimately comes down to.

in view of the imminent founding of the International Anthroposophical Society at Christmas

(following Rudolf Steiner's evening lecture) Minutes taken by Helene Finckh

Albert Steffen greets Dr. Steiner and those present and says: Today's meeting is an assembly of delegates to which every member has been invited. He proposes the election of a committee of elders: Dr. Steiner, Mr. Geering, Dr. Grosheintz, Albert Steffen, Dr. Lagutt, and adds: “Now I would like to ask this committee of elders to discuss the question of how many delegates each branch should appoint.

Rudolf Geering comments.

Dr. Steiner: So now we will probably come to an understanding in the bosom of old age as to how many delegates each branch would like to nominate. And I will then take the liberty of asking the delegates themselves whether they will also give their consent. But I would ask you to bear in mind that if an elders' committee is elected, it is always elected on the basis that it is considered wise. So it is assumed that it has extremely good reasons for what it does. So it will simply be a matter of deciding how many delegates should be nominated by each branch.

Albert Steffen proposes allowing two delegates from each of the Swiss branches.

Dr. Steiner: It has been proposed to allow two delegates from each of the Swiss branches. This would mean that each branch represented here would have two delegate votes. So even if only one delegate is present from any one branch, he would also have two votes, including for this evening. However, if there is no delegate at all, I don't know who should cast the two votes.

Now I ask the most honored elders whether they agree with this proposal? (The answer is affirmative.) Since the elders agree, I now ask the delegates to express whether they have any objections or want to make a different proposal. — It seems that this is not the case. Then we would need to record the votes of the individual branches. We have the following branches: the branch at the Goetheanum. The two votes are present, but who exercises them?

Albert Steffen: We could do it this way, Doctor, that these two votes be represented by the whole working committee.

Dr. Steiner: So: the working committee! — Then there is the “New Generation” branch. Are these two votes represented? Who exercises them?

Answer: Mr. Stokar and Mr. Storrer.

Dr. Steiner: Basel branch: Dr. Lagutt, Mr. Geering; substitutes: Mr. Rudolf Hahn and Dr. Oskar Grosheintz. Bern branch: Miss Ramser, Miss Knüpfer. Zurich branch: Ms. Weiß, Dr. Hugentobler. St. Gallen branch: Mr. Dürler, Mr. Knopfli. Olten: Mr. Wulschleger is present and [probably Mr. Widmer]. Romanshorn:? Rorschach:? Neuchâtel: Mr. Hotz. Kreuzlingen: Miss Müller. Schaffhausen: Mr. Gnädinger. There is no one present from Lugano.

That makes 22 votes. So the simple majority: 12 votes, two-thirds majority: 15 votes. So the voting ratio would be: simple majority with 12 votes, two-thirds majority, if any comes into consideration, with 15 votes. The meeting is now constituted. And the next step would be for this meeting to elect its officers. Does anyone wish to speak on this matter?

Albert Steffen: Perhaps I may propose Dr. Steiner himself as chair of this assembly of delegates?

Dr. Steiner: If there is to be a discussion about this, I would ask you to take the chair for a moment. (This happens. Mr. Steffen's proposal is accepted.)

Albert Steffen: So it is unanimously approved.

Dr. Steiner: Then thank you very much and I will try to lead the chairmanship. — There will then be further elections for a secretary and two assessors.

Willy Stokar would like to propose Dr. Guenther Wachsmuth as secretary.

Dr. Steiner: It has been proposed that Dr. Wachsmuth be elected as secretary. If any of the delegates have any objections, I would ask them to raise their hands. – That does not appear to be the case. Then I would ask Dr. Wachsmuth to take on the role of secretary.

Now I would like to ask you to propose two assessors. Does anyone wish to comment on this? — Dr. Hugentobler and Dr. Grosheintz have been proposed. Does anyone wish to speak on this?

Dr. Grosheintz: Proposes Mr. Steffen. Dr. Lagutt: Proposes Mr. Steffen.

Dr. Steiner: Does anyone else wish to make a proposal? — Does anyone wish to speak about the proposals? — If not, we will proceed to the vote. Shall we vote by acclamation? — I ask those friends who are in favor of voting by acclamation to raise their hands. — (The vote is by acclamation.) The following have been proposed: Dr. Hugentobler and Dr. Grosheintz.

Albert Steffen: I ask those friends who are in favor of electing the two gentlemen as assessors to raise their hands. (It happens.) – The two gentlemen have been elected as assessors.

We had actually intended that the delegates who have come from outside should be given the floor first, so that they themselves can speak about what we have recommended they study.

Dr. Steiner: So it has been suggested that the esteemed delegate friends express themselves about what they have brought with them from their branches. So I ask them to take the floor.

Edgar Dürler, St. Gallen, has a point of order: We have received an invitation in which two points are on the agenda. I would like to explain them in more detail and would like to mention that I am speaking on behalf of Neuchâtel, St. Gallen, Schaffhausen, the “New Generation” and a working group in Winterthur. — He proposes as an agenda item that the only item to be discussed today should be the transformation of the Anthroposophical Society in Switzerland into a Swiss Anthroposophical Society. I would like to briefly explain the reasons for this: We are on the threshold of founding the International Anthroposophical Society. At this founding, the individual national societies, represented by their delegates, will have to declare their accession to the International Anthroposophical Society here at Christmas. It is necessary that the Swiss Anthroposophical Society also make such a declaration of accession. The fact is that we do not have a unified Swiss Anthroposophical Society. The new international society that is to be established will create a completely different situation. I believe that the Swiss Society must be able to take up a position corresponding to the particular position of the individual national societies. I would like to emphasize that the branch at the Goetheanum, which also belongs to the Anthroposophical Society in Switzerland, represents something very special and that this branch at the Goetheanum, which also has many foreign members, occupies a very special position. Just as there is an Anthroposophical Society in the Netherlands, in England and so on, and these are members of the International Anthroposophical Society, there should also be a Swiss Anthroposophical Society, autonomous but with the same rights and the same duties. I would like to repeat the proposal: transformation of the Anthroposophical Society in Switzerland into a Swiss Anthroposophical Society.

Dr. Steiner: I would just like to note, so that the discussion is not conducted in an erroneous way, that I am not interfering with the esoteric of the discussion, but I would like to note that it would be quite natural if an International Anthroposophical Society were founded at Christmas, that it would not be identical with the Anthroposophical Society in Switzerland, but that the present Anthroposophical Society in Switzerland, as it now exists, would then have the same relationship to the international society to be founded as, for example, the English or Dutch Anthroposophical Societies. That is one thing. — So there would be no ambiguity in this respect.

Of course, it is a different matter to discuss whether the branch at the Goetheanum – this one branch at the Goetheanum – will remain a co-branch of the – call it either the “Anthroposophical Society in Switzerland” or the “Swiss Anthroposophical Society” – because by its very nature it will always include members from all countries. That would be a different matter, that would be a different question. But as I said, it would not be the case that the International Anthroposophical Society would coincide with the Anthroposophical Society in Switzerland. If the International Anthroposophical Society were founded in Switzerland, it would have two completely separate administrations and so on, and would be two completely different things. I think the actual establishment of what you mean would have to be formulated in a different way, something like: one would have to be clear about how the branch at the Goetheanum should be treated. Just imagine: if the branch at the Goetheanum is eliminated, then you will immediately notice that the Anthroposophical Society in Switzerland has exactly the same position in relation to the International Anthroposophical Society as the Dutch or any other.

Walter Knopfli (St. Gallen) would like to add briefly: We believe that precisely this should be kept separate. If there is a Swiss Society that really exists independently, and a branch at the Goetheanum, then the Swiss Anthroposophical Society can also be better represented. There should be a truly Swiss General Assembly one day. We have never really had that; there have only ever been two or three delegates here who live around Dornach, and the actual Swiss part has not been represented. What happens here in Dornach has more of an international character, is more directed towards the general human. It is necessary that the Society in Switzerland be recognized as a Swiss Anthroposophical Society. I therefore wish to see a separation of the Swiss Society and the branch at the Goetheanum.

Willy Storrer believes that the motion put forward by the representative of the St. Gallen, Mr. Knopfli, can also be justified by saying: It is important to us that an Anthroposophical Society in Switzerland or a Swiss Anthroposophical Society exists not only in theory — the name is not important to us — but that such a society exists in practice, in reality. And that to this end, a further change is made on a larger scale. We thought that today would be a good opportunity for this. We wanted to propose that a general assembly of Swiss members take place as soon as possible, perhaps in Olten or Zurich, where it is more likely that members from all over Switzerland will be able to attend in larger numbers, and then use this opportunity to discuss the affairs of the entire Swiss Society in detail – not just after a lecture, but perhaps starting in the morning and continuing with discussions throughout the afternoon, as is the practice in the Netherlands and other countries. We believe that everything must be done to ensure that a concrete Swiss Society comes into being. This is also because the reconstruction of the Goetheanum is to begin soon, and safeguards for this reconstruction should be created here in Switzerland, where the Goetheanum is to be located, and this should be done now. We must, after all, reproach ourselves for not having such safeguards in place, for not having a real society around the Goetheanum in Switzerland, but only quite unconnected branches and individual members. We would now like to make certain proposals to change this.

Dr. Steiner: I would just like to add: the things we regulate must be right inwardly. And there is no question that, for example, if the delegates agree, what you and the representative of St. Gallen understand by a Swiss Anthroposophical Society must come about. It goes without saying that this must come about if the delegates determine it. However, it must be clear that it is simply impossible in terms of the rules of procedure if we follow the path proposed by Mr. Storrer.

The Anthroposophical Society in Switzerland currently exists, and includes the branch at the Goetheanum. So if a general assembly is convened, there is no way around the branch at the Goetheanum being represented at it. In its current constitution, there is no other option than for it to be represented! So if the matter is to be decided before the Christmas delegates' meeting, it would be necessary not to convene a general assembly – because it would then also include the members of the branch at the Goetheanum – but to convene an assembly, so to speak, a gathering of the Swiss members, and for these Swiss members to then decide to found a Swiss Anthroposophical Society without the branch at the Goetheanum. That is one thing. But that would initially be tantamount to a kind of exclusion of the branch at the Goetheanum. Therefore, it would probably not be very well received. Of course, the other option would be to call a general assembly and, if the branch at the Goetheanum were to appear, to propose expelling the branch at the Goetheanum, and of course to expel it if the proposal were to be accepted. That would be the second way.

But the third, I think it is the most viable and the one that seems to me the most correct. The most opportune, it seems to me, would be if the Swiss members who believe that this should happen actually held a meeting and that the assembly, through its members or delegates or a number of delegates, would aim to achieve the following: the delegates' meeting at Christmas proposes to enable a Swiss Anthroposophical Society to consist of actual Swiss members, which means that the passage should be written that the branch at the Goetheanum should become an international branch, and thus be removed. If the Swiss members were to propose this at the Christmas assembly of delegates, I would consider that the best way forward: namely, to make the branch at the Goetheanum an international branch, if that is what it is all about. Then it is out. Then the question would be resolved – which I think is desirable for other reasons, quite apart from your proposal – by the fact that the branch at the Goetheanum is not a national but an international one. That is something that can be decided then. And then, on the basis of this decision, you would be able to found the Swiss Anthroposophical Society in whatever way you wish; the branch at the Goetheanum would no longer be involved because it would have become an international one beforehand. — Well, I would think that this would also be the friendliest way, it seems to me, simply because any other way looks as if the Swiss want to throw out those who are also members of the Anthroposophical Society in Switzerland today. And, isn't it true, that would somehow leave a sting behind.

I do not want to make this a proposal on my part – otherwise I would not remain as chair but hand it over for the time being – but I just want to throw this into the discussion for the sake of clarification, so that the discussion is not based on false premises; because the proposal has been made that a general assembly should be convened. But a general assembly can only be convened with the members. So this is a simple explanation of the necessary management that I am making.

Albert Steffen says that two points are not quite clear to him: Is it impossible for a foreigner to join?

Will, Storrer: No, that's a misunderstanding. We did not mean that the Swiss Society would then consist only of Swiss people, but that it would be set up in such a way that the Swiss character of the Society would be expressed much better than has been the case so far. And we believe we can achieve this by actually holding the Swiss meeting in a place where we can all get to better than if it is in Dornach. Of course, I could well imagine that the members of the branch at the Goetheanum would also be present. I consider the second piece of advice from Dr. Steiner to be absolutely right. And the representatives of the various branches that Mr. Knopfli mentioned would also have understood that a general assembly of all Swiss members would take place, that is, of all members affiliated with the Swiss Society, regardless of whether they are French, Germans or Swiss – and that the organization of the Society would then be newly elected at this General Assembly from the majority of the members, and specifically as an organ of the Members' Assembly, the Assembly of Delegates, and then an actual active working committee. And we do not envision this as being identical to the already existing working committee, but rather it would have to be a new working committee, provided that it is elected.

Dr. Steiner (to Mr. Knopfli): Are the remarks of Mr. Storrer in line with yours?

Walter Knopfli: Not quite. I mean, the members of the branch at the Goetheanum should have the feeling that they are something different than, say, the members of the St. Gallen branch, because we in St. Gallen have different tasks. Of course one can be a member of both places, but then one has to pay the dues twice. It is not a matter of personal mistrust, but only a legal question, that one keeps it separate. I think it is good when a society is properly there with a seat, in legal registration, so that it can act as something that exists and is recognized. And that is what we want. It will only be properly recognized if it comes from the Swiss and if the headquarters of the new Anthroposophical Society is not here in Dornach but somewhere in Switzerland, in Zurich for example. It would be a better solution and would lead to much better collaboration.

Dr. Steiner: I would just like to note: This proposal to internationalize the branch at the Goetheanum will come in any case, because it would actually be out of character if Dornach were to become an international center and not have an international branch here. I think the possibility of achieving what you want will actually be better achieved if this branch is internationalized. But that does not, of course, prevent a kind of founding meeting from being convened now, in Zurich or as far away as possible from Basel, from Dornach, if you like, which then decides on something or other in its nature. — But that is not true, you do not have to do such things in such a way that you think: just by convening a meeting in Zurich, it will then already have a Swiss character! What would you do if the people of Dornach all decided to go there? There is no difference at all! I believe that the question can only be resolved - and I have also gathered this from your discussion - if the branch at the Goetheanum is executed and

comes out of the matter. Then it will already be a Swiss matter.

Albert Steffen: But I still don't see how this society can have a Swiss character when there are so many foreigners in it. For example, all the members of the “New Generation” are in this society, and a fairly large percentage of the members are foreigners. So how is this branch Swiss then?

Walter Knopfli: We are 40 members in St. Gallen and have at least 5 foreigners. That does not matter. The delegates of the Swiss branches should express whether they might agree in principle to establish a Swiss society and in principle agree to internationalize the branch at the Goetheanum. Then, as Dr. Steiner suggested, we could convene a founding assembly of these members and decide on the founding of the Swiss Anthroposophical Society from the bosom of this founding assembly and then come here at Christmas with a proposal: that on the one hand there is the Swiss Anthroposophical Society and on the other hand the branch at the Goetheanum is an independent branch at the Goetheanum, with the same rights. And that from the outset it is made clear at a founding meeting: this is not a general assembly, but a founding meeting. Those who are at the Goetheanum will of course want to belong to this branch at the Goetheanum, I am completely convinced of that. Very few will want to pay twice.

Albert Steffen: I fear only that the branch at the Goetheanum will no longer be supported by the Swiss and that it will have a harder time with the authorities than it does now.

Dr. Steiner: That is a point of view that will be very much in question.

Dr. Emil Groshbeintz: As far as I understand, you want to give Swiss society a special task, a task that is different from the one represented by the Goetheanum branch, for example. Isn't it clear that nationality cannot play a role on Swiss soil, but different countries can set themselves different tasks? And for Switzerland it is a question of opportunity, whether it should be done in such a way that there is a Swiss Society in Switzerland in general and an international branch at the Goetheanum on top of that.

Dr. Steiner: The form must then be found. And I am convinced that, for example, today's applicants would not object to the mode that the Swiss Anthroposophical Society is formed and that the branch at the Goetheanum nevertheless belongs as a branch of the Swiss Anthroposophical Society, but without voting rights and without representation at the general meetings. Then the concerns you have would be eliminated. — So it would be necessary to find a way to do it, wouldn't it? There is a difference between how the administration is within the Anthroposophical Society itself and how it is externally. To have a completely separate branch at the Goetheanum on the outside, that is, a directly international branch on Swiss soil, would not be advisable. But your request is fully met if the branch at the Goetheanum is merely a member of the Swiss Anthroposophical Society, but does not have a seat and voting rights at the general meetings of the Swiss Anthroposophical Society. Because if I understand you correctly, you are merely concerned that the Swiss character in the Swiss Anthroposophical Society should come to the fore, which you see as being endangered if the Society consists only of a few Swiss people who are outside Dornach, and then of the majority of those who are in Dornach at the time. Because those who are only temporarily in Dornach do not allow themselves to be taken, even if they are there. And that is what — if I understand you correctly — is embarrassing about the whole thing.

Willy Storrer: This would mean that the Swiss members would lose their voting rights, and there are quite a few of them.

Dr. Steiner: That is not possible at all. Willy Storrer: Since they live in Switzerland, it is probably the right thing to do.

Dr. Steiner: They can join the Swiss Anthroposophical Society if they want to have voting rights!

Dr. Lagutt: I would like to ask Mr. Knopfli if there are any regulations for the five members of other nationalities? If there are 20, for example, would you still accept the 21st? Assuming you get 21, would you still accept the 21st? Do you have any regulations about that? Or would you accept him too?

Walter Knopfli: Yes.

Dr. Lagutt: I don't understand why the Swiss branch at the Goetheanum cannot be included! If one wanted to be consistent, one would have to insist that you absolutely could not have a majority of foreigners over the Swiss in St. Gallen.

Rudolf Geering: I was pleased today that right from the start the delegates were counted and the voting rights distributed. That is progress. I believe that if this is done in future at the delegate meetings of the Anthroposophical Society in Switzerland, then all the deliberations about what has been proposed here will become unnecessary. Today we see the fruits of something that has occurred at the last few delegates' meetings in Switzerland: that actually no one knew who was actually a delegate and had a say in the voting. Proposals have been made by all kinds of people who have nothing at all to do with Switzerland and who were purely business-like. This gave the impression throughout Switzerland: When we meet in Dornach, we are not a Swiss society at all, but an international society. We are simply at their disposal. And if we continue to act as we are doing today, we can remain in the old circumstances.

Dr. Steiner: I would just like to say one thing about this. Switzerland is naturally in a somewhat different position to the Anthroposophical Society, to the world society that is now to be founded, than the other countries. And every country where the Goetheanum stands would be in the same relationship to it as Switzerland, because the Goetheanum is to become a kind of center for the world society. So of course Switzerland has a special relationship to what is now being formed as the Goetheanum. And I could imagine that there might be more will than there is now to support the Goetheanum if the Swiss Anthroposophical Society felt homogeneous – I could imagine that – if it knew where the boundary is between the Swiss Anthroposophical Society and the Goetheanum, which of course belongs just as much to the Swiss Society as it does to the Dutch Society, and so on. But they are simply protected by the fact that they are further away. And now the Friends want to erect a wall that puts Switzerland in the same position in relation to the Goetheanum as the Netherlands or England. I can well imagine the motives behind this proposal, and I think it will only be a matter of finding the right way to do it. Because members from all over the world will always meet here for shorter or longer periods of time. So it will have to be negotiated on the basis that it is desirable to simply create a proper boundary here between Swiss members and those who may only be here by chance. It's not an easy matter!

You see, if a general assembly of the Swiss Anthroposophical Society is convened in Dornach, the guests from all over the world who happen to be present will of course not be there, but there will always be a place in the branch at the Goetheanum where they can meet again – that is desirable – and where they can also meet with Swiss friends. Isn't that right? Clearer conditions can be created than they are now. And precisely what you have now criticized is, of course, something that has come about, like so much in the Anthroposophical Society unfortunately comes about: namely, much comes about simply because people do not feel bound by the practices that arise naturally for our meetings. It cannot happen anywhere else in the world that you actually do not know who belongs to a meeting. At the meeting you just mentioned, no one knew – in practice, of course – who belonged to the meeting, because everyone who was there spoke, and the whole thing was an absolutely heterogeneous mass. But everyone felt they had equal rights, everyone voted and so on. After all, no one knew who was entitled to vote, what a majority was, and so on. Today it was only abandoned because yesterday I proposed that it be done so that people know who is actually in the assembly.^{2Apparently there was a preliminary discussion on December 7, but there is no report of it.} So today it is only different on the basis of a precise understanding of the facts. But if you do not do something that clarifies the situation, who can guarantee that you will not have meetings like the last ones again in the future?

Walter Knopfli believes that when something happens here at the Goetheanum, a course or a lecture event, then every member has access, whether they are from Holland or Switzerland; there is no difference. But when it comes to other questions, such as contributions and so on, business to be done, then it is done separately in Holland, and Switzerland also has to do it for itself. Many more people will settle here, and he takes it for granted that the branch at the Goetheanum must take on a different position because mainly foreigners are here. If this branch becomes independent and international, then cooperation can still take place.

Dr. Steiner: That is quite right. It will then also turn out that this Swiss Society will preferably have Swiss representatives on its board, or at least representatives of the Swiss branches. So an office will emerge that has the character you want, whereas, if I'm not mistaken, the matter has now been taken over by an office that consisted largely of non-Swiss, except for Mr. Steffen.

Albert Steffen: The board members of the branches were always the same.

Dr. Steiner: I mean the office that convened the meeting. Of course, Mr. Steffen is signed here. But the conveners, apart from Mr. Steffen, are they all Swiss?

Albert Steffen: Not all of them, but Mr. Storrer, Mr. Stokar and Dr. Grosheintz.

Dr. Steiner: Do you now wish to make a specific proposal that can then be voted on?

Walter Knopfli: I would first like to propose a vote on whether, in principle, a Swiss Anthroposophical Society should be considered in this way and should be established in the future, and whether the branch at the Goetheanum should become international in this sense.

Dr. Steiner: The proposal has been made. — I now just have to ask: Does anyone wish to propose a differently formulated proposal on the same subject?

Rudolf Geering: I would just like to request, in the interest of the Goetheanum itself, that, after all, the branch at the Goetheanum belongs to the Swiss Anthroposophical Society in relation to the outside world. I believe that this is necessary for the sake of the branch's security, for the sake of the reputation it is to enjoy in Switzerland.

Dr. Steiner: That's right, we can find a way to do this, since what you actually want does not exclude the proposal. We can find a way to do this. And it will be easy to find: the Goetheanum branch belongs to the Swiss Anthroposophical Society without having a seat and vote there. Now Mr. Knopfli has proposed a motion to vote on whether to continue negotiations in principle on a demarcation between those present here and members who are permanently present but represent Switzerland to a lesser extent. I would now vote on this motion if a specially modified motion were not submitted.

Albert Steffen: We are all here quite unprepared, so that the matter should be thought through a little better and this motion should not be submitted until Christmas. I do not yet see the pros and cons clearly, I do not yet understand them completely.

Miss Emma Ramser would like to join Mr. Steffen because she believes that for most people this proposal comes as a bit of a surprise, so that they need time to think about it.

Dr. Steiner: I think that is not excluded, because the motion is to be put as to whether this question of founding a Swiss Anthroposophical Society should be approached or whether it should be negotiated. I think it does not exclude that. — Nor does it exclude yours! The proposal is not being made now to do this or that, but only to approach the question of whether a proposal to that effect should be made at the delegates' meeting. - If someone would like to make a modified proposal to that, I would ask them to do so.

Dr. Lagutt would like to propose that we only establish a Swiss Society and leave it to the branch at the Goetheanum to decide whether it wants to join the branch or not. So not that we decide to exclude a branch, but leave it to the branch. Because depending on how it corresponds to the statutes, this will become possible or impossible.

Dr. Steiner: That is not possible, even according to the rules of procedure, because the Anthroposophical Society in Switzerland exists. So you can't establish it, you can only change the name. Whether it is called the “Swiss Society” or the “Society in Switzerland” is a mere name change. Something must therefore be done in the direction that the branch at the Goetheanum does not participate in the negotiations of the Society, which is supposed to represent what is meant here. — One must feel this more, it is not so precisely defined — I cannot say how it should be named. But otherwise it would only be a matter of a name change.

Dr. Lagutt: I believe that it will basically only be a name change.

Dr. Steiner: But if it is only a name change, it is immediately somewhat different. If a Swiss Anthroposophical Society is established that has the branch at the Goetheanum as a co-branch, but this branch in the Swiss Anthroposophical Society does not have a seat and vote, whereas the Swiss Anthroposophical Society is represented in the international society just like any other national society, I think that would be a very clear fact! And then the only question would be whether this would be opportune in terms of external representation. Because I could well imagine that this, just as it might complicate dealings with the authorities on the one hand, could also facilitate them on the other. So if we say to the authorities: We have a Swiss Anthroposophical Society — and those who are not Swiss, who are international, we want to avoid the word international altogether — do not have a seat and vote in the Swiss Society. That could also make a favorable impression, could it not? Isn't it true that things are always more to be weighed than to be discussed? Don't you agree, Dr. Lagutt?

Dr. Jan Lagutt is somewhat reluctant to the idea that one should exclude a branch. That should be left to that branch.

Rudolf Hahn believes that if a Swiss national association is formed without the association at the Goetheanum, then the association at the Goetheanum will carry more weight with the Swiss authorities, otherwise the authorities will regard the association at the Goetheanum directly as a foreign organization. And then our opponents will have a very strong weapon, namely to say: “These foreign Fötzel should get out!” — These expressions are already heard a lot in our country. — If, on the other hand, the association at the Goetheanum remains in the national society, then the latter may have a somewhat more difficult position vis-à-vis the authorities, but at the same time it protects the branch at the Goetheanum. I believe it needs this protection! I believe that this is worth more than if the Society in Switzerland were to face its authority without a branch at the Goetheanum. Therefore, I believe that the branch at the Goetheanum should remain inside, so that it has the support it needs from Swiss society.

Dr. Steiner: But would that not also be the case if this branch at the Goetheanum - it will not be an association, only a branch - had no seat or vote in the Swiss Anthroposophical Society? Rudolf Hahn: That would of course be correct.

Dr. Steiner: Yes, the way the gentlemen here see it, they would have to agree if this branch at the Goetheanum were a “co-branch” and only had no seat or vote in the Swiss Society.

Rudolf Hahn has not yet heard that this has been discussed. Dr. Steiner asks: Have you not done that?

Albert Steffen: It is perhaps possible that Swiss people, precisely because they are anthroposophists, no longer feel so nationally. And is it not perhaps conceivable that such Swiss people would want to join the branch at the Goetheanum in the event of such a separation? That is quite conceivable, namely — - so that this branch would grow very much. And then, under certain circumstances, the Swiss Society as such could also

be damaged and might lose a certain spiritual weight.

A gentleman proposes that Mr. Knopfli's proposal not be considered. If this proposal is not necessary, then it is a matter for the assembly itself, and then a general assembly of the Swiss should be convened, and the matter should be discussed and voted on in this general assembly of the Swiss. The proposer believes that Mr. Knopfli's view is certainly not shared by all anthroposophists, but only by some of them. He believes that Mr. Steffen tends to think much too internationally rather than having a character that is too strongly chauvinistic.

Dr. Steiner: If I understand this correctly, is this a motion to move on to the agenda? Does anyone wish to speak about this?

Willy Storrer: I would like to speak again and emphasize that he finds Dr. Steiner's advice Steiner as the real solution, and this is also the opinion of his friends: that the branch is internationalized in fact, but formally belongs to the Swiss Society; but then the members of the branch at the Goetheanum have no voting rights in the Swiss Anthroposophical Society, but Swiss members of that branch should then have the option of becoming members of another branch with a more Swiss orientation. And because many do not have the option of paying contributions twice, they should be allowed to be members of the other branch without paying contributions. But what matters is: We regard the present form and organs of the Society as provisional, and our proposal is that a general assembly of Swiss members should take place somewhere, in Olten or Zurich, and that the organs of a Swiss Society be elected there – that is, the delegates and the actual leadership of the Swiss Society, a kind of working committee – so that a strong Swiss Society will exist in public view as the Goetheanum is being rebuilt, and that it will have the possibility, through its organs, through its active leadership, to confront all the obstacles and opposition that exist in Switzerland with strength. We believe that this is not as possible with the previous forms as it would be in the future if the proposals and motions we are about to put forward are implemented.

Dr. Steiner: As far as I know, no one else has come forward? — We now first have to discuss the motion to move on to the agenda. Does anyone wish to speak on this motion?

Walter Knopfli would like the motion of principle questions to be voted on first: whether the question of principle should be approached.

Dr. Steiner: If a motion is made to move on to the agenda, then it must be dealt with first and voted on. There is no other way. Of course, if the transition to the agenda is accepted, it would mean that things would simply be pursued in a different way. There is no other way. But of course the motion to move on to the agenda can be discussed.

Willy Storrer proposes that we vote on this motion to move on to the agenda.

Dr. Steiner: That goes without saying! But if no one else wishes to speak, then I ask those delegates who are in favor of moving on to the agenda to represent the two votes, to raise both hands. Those who only have one vote, raise one hand. - (It happens.) 13 votes in favor of moving on to the agenda. A simple majority would be 12 votes. The request is accepted, so nothing can be done. The next point would be ——

Albert Steffen: Yes, there is something that is closely related to this question. We had intended to bring a resolution or to propose to the delegates, which reads something like this:

"On the day of the inaugural meeting of the International Anthroposophical Society in Dornach, the Anthroposophical Society in Switzerland would like to express its gratitude and enthusiasm that the Goetheanum, which serves the cultural life of all humanity, may once again be built in Switzerland. It sees this as a good fortune and a great honor for its country. She wishes to express her determination to do everything possible to transmit from here to the whole world the inexhaustible wealth of spiritual impulses that Rudolf Steiner's work brings to the world. She is pleased to be able to work together with the other national societies to help ensure that this pure and healing source is accessible to all who seek it. The Anthroposophical Society in Switzerland.

Dr. Steiner: Since my name appears in this motion and Mr. Steffen is the proponent, I will ask Dr. Grosheintz to take the chair.

Dr. Emil Grosheintz: Does anyone wish to speak on this motion? Rudolf Geering thinks that this resolution should be accepted without further ado.

Dr. Emil Grosheintz: It has been proposed that this resolution be adopted.

Willy Stokar: Excuse me, but I would like to ask you to state the purpose of the resolution again.

Albert Steffen: The purpose of the resolution is precisely that our Society in Switzerland has an easier time dealing with the authorities if, for example, our Society shows that it has a certain standing in Switzerland and that we stand up for it, so that it is recognized that we mean something as an Anthroposophical Society in Switzerland.

Dr. Emil Grosheintz: Is it intended to be published? Albert Steffen: Yes.

Willy Stokar: In that case, if it is to be done, I would at least like to wish, from my own feelings, that it should only happen when the whole founding story is behind us, when we can present ourselves as a society that is really capable of emphatically representing something like this as a resolution, and that it should only happen after Christmas, when we are over the hill.

Albert Steffen: I have actually considered this too, since I started like this: “In the days when the founding meeting of the Anthroposophical Society took place in Dornach...” So I don't think it will be published now, but around Christmas.

Dr. Elisabeth Vreede: I would like to say that the Anthroposophical Society in Switzerland still exists! A decision may be taken to transform it into something else, but for the time being it still exists and could adopt the resolution. And it can then perhaps proclaim this once more in its last days or hours. The new society can adopt and proclaim the resolution again. But the Anthroposophical Society in Switzerland still exists! I think it is a resolution that could find a little more approval and enthusiasm.

Dr. Emil Grosheintz: So it is a matter of whether you want to agree to this resolution or reject it. Those in favor, please raise your hand. — It is the vast majority.

Dr. Steiner: Now, the next item on the agenda, which would be the point listed in our report in the July session of the ^{3rd International Delegates' Assembly of the Anthroposophical Society in Dornach from July 20-23, 1923, see page 557.}.

Albert Steffen: It would be particularly important, Doctor, that the delegates now tell us who will speak at the relevant morning discussions on the areas related to anthroposophy, and who will report on the school or on medical achievements and so on, as it is stated here in the program.

Dr. Wachsmuth: May I say a few words about this? It says something like this: We will now appoint a person who will report, let's say, on education, medicine, literature and so on. First, let's say what has been reported in the Netherlands or England or somewhere else in the field of education, school studies or the preparation that has now been made in England in the field of schools. Secondly, what is planned for the future in the subject. And thirdly, what is expected from the international society for help. Another speaks more about the medical, founding of the clinic in Holland or report on this work in England. Another more about the literary work.

It would be conceivable that on the days set aside for discussion, one speaker at a time, also in Switzerland, would report on what has been achieved so far and what can be expected in the future, so that a picture of the international work can emerge.

Dr. Steiner: Does anyone else wish to speak on this? Then it could only be a matter of whether someone from the assembly of delegates has something to announce for these topics, whether they have something to report.

Willy Storrer would like to register a short presentation about the work on the weekly journal “Das Goetheanum” for the assembly of delegates.

Dr. Steiner: Does anyone else wish to register a topic? It seems not. Then we come to the next item on the agenda: the 12 points listed in our report on the July conference. Does anyone wish to say anything about them? Does anyone have a specific suggestion regarding them? (To Mr. Steffen:) Would you like to make a suggestion regarding them?

Albert Steffen: I expect these from the ranks of the delegates.

Dr. Steiner: Does anyone wish these 12 points to be read out? ^{4See page 571 ff.}

Willy Storrer would like to suggest that perhaps Mr. Steffen could indicate a few of these 12 points that should be discussed, because it is only a few points that can be discussed here.

Dr. Wachsmuth: Item 8 is the following: It has been discussed in the Netherlands: statement of the Secretary General. - Then there are some things regarding the admission of new members; an extremely important point. You know that it was proposed that the members, i.e. new members, be admitted by the Secretary General of the country and that then these membership cards be countersigned by the international chairman or the official. This was proposed in Holland at the time, also in England, and will be proposed here at Christmas, purely formally. Now it will be necessary' to ask whether this is also to be the practice in Switzerland or whether it is to be left to the meeting.

The tenth point: fending off opponents.

The eleventh point: collaboration of members in all countries in supporting the initiatives launched by the Anthroposophical Society.

The twelfth point is the rebuilding of the Goetheanum and whatever can be done for it.

Dr. Steiner: Does anyone wish to address any other points?

Albert Steffen: A manuscript has arrived here regarding a proposal for regulating the financial capacity of the Society. I don't know whether it should be read out; it is from Mr. Hahn. Would you like to read it yourself, Mr. Hahn?

Rudolf Hahn reads out the proposal. He recalls that Dr. Steiner once mentioned that not the tax on income but the tax on expenditure would be the right thing to do to bring in money. He proposes that the members pay a tax on expenditure.

Dr. Steiner: I would just like to note that the sentence that was in it, in which I spoke of “taxation of expenditure”, did not refer to taxation on the part of anthroposophical members of the Society. — It could very easily give rise to the opinion that I had somehow spoken of such taxation before, but that is not the case at all. I have only said that when public taxes, state taxes, are levied, a calculation cannot, in all fairness, be made according to income, but according to expenditure. I say this so that the opinion does not arise that I had something to do with the request or had said this before.

Rudolf Hahn says that he proposed it entirely on his own initiative.

Dr. Steiner: Does anyone else wish to speak about points 8, 10, 11, 12, or about Mr. Hahn's proposal?

Mrs. Weiss (Zurich) cannot, however, represent the branch's view, but only speak personally, because the branch was not yet aware of the proposal. But she would just like to say that she personally does not like this proposal from Mr. Hahn at all. It would look very much like coercion if taxation were to be introduced as it is otherwise in churches, as a poor tax, as a school tax. She would really not welcome such taxation based on income and wealth for the Anthroposophical Society in Switzerland. This should be left to the freedom of the individual.

Dr. Steiner: Does anyone else wish to speak? — Are you putting this forward as a proposal, Mr. Hahn?

Rudolf Hahn proposes to see to it that money is raised in some way in order to increase the financial capacity of the Society. He sees this as a possibility for improvement. And we need to have money; we can't survive on our current income. Perhaps someone has another idea? — He doesn't see why we have to talk about taxation. We contribute 24 francs, which is not enough. But we have a large number of members who can't contribute any more. It has been suggested that voluntary contributions should be made, but nothing comes of that.

Walter Knopfli cannot agree with this proposal either. He believes that one must distinguish between membership fees of an association and donations made available to the institution. Contributions are necessary for management, administration and so on. What one gives for the Goetheanum or for the school is something else, that is, donation money. And here the freedom of the individual should be preserved.

Dr. Steiner: Does anyone else wish to speak?

Walter Knopfli: The contribution of 10 francs should actually suffice. It will then be up to the international society to decide how much the members of the foreign societies contribute to the central office of the international society. I believe that these contributions will then make it possible to manage the business.

Dr. Steiner: So you think that the Anthroposophical Society in Switzerland should propose that the international society determine what the individual national societies should contribute? Of course, there is also the difference between having a fixed amount delivered or a certain percentage of the membership fee of the respective national societies. I don't think it would be possible to introduce such a measure in the Anthroposophical Society. I believe that the antipathy to a taxation system, quite apart from how it is to be carried out in practice, would be extremely great. But that is not true. A society like the Anthroposophical Society in its present form should really be based on the freedom of its members with regard to membership fees and payments in general. It cannot be said that setting a fixed membership fee goes against the principle of freedom, because those who do not want to pay do not join in the first place, or they leave if they are already members. It is up to each person to pay the membership fee if it is not too high for them. But if you introduce a paragraph, a tax, I believe that would make us appear in a very strange light. And finally, I must say: the things that are mentioned here in point 11 will hardly flourish if that is the only way they are solved. The individual branches can of course dispose of their membership fees or decide from the bosom of their members what they like. But for all these special movements such as Waldorf schools, medicine and so on, it will always be necessary that special contributions be made, which will be made by those who can afford them. One can really only appeal to goodwill here. To exert any kind of compulsion there – which would only be possible with some members who are already inside the society – such a measure in the statutes would, of course, erect a fortress wall around the society, and no one, or very few people, would join. It's a bit strange, but I would still like to say: after all, you can't base the payment of contributions on making people look into their wallets.

Rudolf Hahn says that this was not meant. If you say that it is desirable to give 1 or 1% of your income, it is entirely left to the freedom or conscience of the individual. We have to have the money anyway!

There will be further negotiations.

Dr. Steiner: What is the difference in terms of merit between what you are talking about here and what the association actually charges? If, for example, the membership fee is set at a certain amount and people who cannot afford it are exempt, but people are free to pay a higher membership fee? We have a paragraph that says: ...can pay more! What is the difference?

Rudolf Hahn: The suggestion that perhaps more should be paid. It is just possible that no one pays 100 or 200 francs; but there are members who could afford that. On the other hand, there are members who could be forgiven a waiver of the contribution.

Dr. Jakob Hugentobler: Mr. Hahn has actually only mentioned a single example where the contributions are insufficient. He spoke of the library. It is his opinion that the contribution should not be used to finance the other purposes of the Society, but that the 24 francs should be sufficient for the actual business. Mr. Hahn should try to work in his branch in Basel in such a way that he receives his contributions for these special purposes from case to case. He will certainly succeed, as in other branches.

Rudolf Hahn says that in Basel you can have bad experiences with this.

Dr. Steiner: But this is not even a suggestion. One must, I would say, bring a moral impulse into it. I do not mean that it is immoral, but I do mean that one must think of more moral impulses than that. For you see, it is not possible for anyone to be asked to calculate something like a membership fee for the Anthroposophical Society according to their income or even according to their livelihood! Because it does come into consideration how much he is able to make deductions from a real income. Just imagine: if someone has an income of 1,000 marks a month and he is a single bachelor, and another has just as much and has ten children: how can one think of proceeding there?

Rudolf Hahn: Perhaps through a special commission?

Dr. Steiner: I think that would be the most dangerous thing. Apart from the fact that I already feel that the tax commission is sufficiently dangerous – do we then need another tax commission in the Anthroposophical Society? I cannot imagine that this would give us any special prestige.

Ms. Weiß asks whether the question was not completely settled at the last meeting, so that the office is submitting the proposals.

Dr. Wachsmuth says that he would like to mention that the proposal does not come from the office.

Rudolf Hahn: Dr. Blümel said that not 10, but 20 percent was needed. I, for one, already know what I have to do with the money.

Dr. Steiner: I am even convinced that you will not use it for yourself, but for society. But I don't know – it's really not appropriate to have a paragraph or a statute or something like that worded that way. Because it would actually have a deterrent effect on those people who want to become members first.

Question: Can't Dr. Steiner put this motion to the vote on a trial basis?

Dr. Steiner: But that would only mean that it is the motion to end the debate. The motion has been put. — Please raise your hand! Please raise your hand! It is adopted. — Then the motion is put to the vote. I therefore put Mr. Hahn's motion to the vote and ask those in favor to raise their hands. — It is unanimously rejected — by one vote, I think. |

Isn't it the case – I'm really not being pedantic, but I would like to point this out – that it is best to follow these small nuances during the proceedings: There will be an immediate vote if someone proposes to end the debate. So those things that have already been properly introduced into parliamentary life contribute greatly to the meeting running in a proper manner. Does anyone have anything to add to any of these points? I think that the esteemed delegate friends will be a little unprepared to speak about these 12 points right now, because they probably haven't thought about them yet. It is probably in the invitation, but these things can only be fruitfully discussed at the Christmas meeting of delegates. If anyone has any further suggestions, I would ask them to do so.

One gentleman is not clear about why the admission of a new member should be countersigned by the international secretariat regarding point 8. What value should this have?

Dr. Steiner: This does have a certain value. I must say, however, that it is not made clear enough in point 8. But this point will, of course, be discussed at the Christmas meeting of delegates. It does have a certain value. It would be significant if all membership cards issued for the Anthroposophical Society had a uniform signature. As I said, it would have a value. And won't the responsibilities arise from the way in which the office of the international society is organized at Christmas? I cannot imagine that this responsibility arises in any other way than by the responsible officials here in Dornach having the necessary trust for the international society in the officials present in the individual countries: For example, where general secretaries have been appointed, as in Norway, England and the Netherlands. Of course, the person who is responsible for the Society here must have confidence in the respective general secretaries there. Only in this way can there be mutual responsibility. This was also recently established at the meeting of delegates of the Dutch Society, where it was stated: The founding assembly elects a general secretary. He has been elected. And now, isn't it true, of course, that this is subject to the proviso that the official in question, who will be at the head of the international society, gives his consent afterwards and that, if there is a change in the society - the Dutch society has decided this - then the question is put to Dornach as to whether they agree with it. Of course, that would not prevent the board of the respective national society from feeling completely autonomous. But those officials of the national society who mediate the contact with Dornach must somehow be designated or elected in agreement with Dornach, must they not? Otherwise we would not have the international society if something like that were not established.

Walter Knopfli would like to hear more about the first point of these 12 provisions, which has not yet been discussed at all. He says: We are here now as delegates of the Swiss Society and should be able to summarize what the Swiss Society is representing at this international conference. But if we now close the assembly of delegates and I have to report to my branch on what has just happened, I would have nothing to report. There has been some discussion, but a request has been made for the debate to be closed. It is precisely this point 1 that was declared necessary to discuss at the beginning of the agenda.

Dr. Steiner: It has been proposed that item 1 be discussed. Does anyone wish to speak in favor of this?

Willy Storrer: We would like to repeat our proposal regarding this point: the previous form of the Anthroposophical Society in Switzerland should be regarded as provisional, and perhaps a founding, a primal assembly of Swiss members should be held next Saturday or Sunday in Zurich or Olten, at which the organization of the Society should be decided and those should be elected who are then to be represented at the Assembly of Delegates.

Dr. Steiner: Does anyone wish to speak on this?

Edgar Dürler would just like to strongly support Mr. Storrer's request and hope that it will not be destroyed again with buzzwords like “chauvinism”.

Miss Emma Ramser would like to request that this be postponed until after Christmas. She also thinks it necessary to discuss this thoroughly. There seems to be a lot of opposition to the current company. The reasons for the formation of a new Swiss company will then become clear. But in any case, the time before Christmas is too short to organize everything.

Miss...? says that if every delegate here reports back home, then at Christmas the delegates can also report on how the branch views this question.

Mrs. Weiss also thinks that this meeting should take place before Christmas so that everyone will know how to join the international society.

Albert Steffen: I don't see any reason why the Swiss members shouldn't gather. They should really gather.

Willy Storrer: I also don't see why this shouldn't be done. After all, the delegates and members of the surrounding area have also been invited to attend the meeting in order to carry out all the preparations for the delegates' meeting, and this invitation has been issued for a time that does not actually allow for such a discussion, namely at 10 o'clock at night. If it was thought that the matter could be dealt with in this relatively short period of time, a whole week should be allowed for the members to express their views. He thinks there is enough time, especially if a Saturday or Sunday is chosen as the meeting date.

Dr. Steiner: Yes, but who should call the meeting? The matter is this: at present the Anthroposophical Society exists in Switzerland. It is represented today by its delegates. So far we have counted on them when it was a matter of bringing together the individual national societies. So formally everything would be in order for the Christmas Conference, and the suggestion that Mr. Knopfli first made can certainly be made at the Christmas Conference. So there are only two possibilities: either the same body could convene another meeting like the one today, or, for all I care, a meeting of Swiss members, or else a general meeting would have to be convened. And that can only be done if someone calls it.

Willy Storrer believes that this question could be resolved by saying: the previous delegates of the Swiss branches go home and call a general meeting and inform this general meeting that the previous delegates have decided to hold a meeting in Zurich for the individual members, who will then join. The secretariat could take care of this.

Dr. Steiner: That is not possible, of course, from a formal point of view. The delegates who are here now are delegates of the Anthroposophical Society in Switzerland. They cannot decide to convene a general assembly. They can only decide to convene a meeting of those who are now members of the Anthroposophical Society in Switzerland. A general assembly can only be convened by someone who does so, well, from the original state. An original assembly can only be convened by someone taking responsibility – alone or with a number of comrades whom they elect themselves with – to issue a call to all those members whom they want and with whom they intend to hold an original assembly; and this assembly can then bring a proposal to the delegates' assembly at Christmas. But the Society's Assembly of Delegates cannot in any way propose the convening of a general assembly, because there is no such thing as a “general assembly” of an existing society.

Willy Storrer: In this case, we, that is, the representatives of the St. Gallen, Neuchâtel, Schaffhausen and “New Generation” branches who are present here, would convene this original assembly.

Dr. Steiner: Then you can convene it from these branches, but you must also create an independent office out of yourselves, out of your idea. But an “original assembly” cannot be convened from something that already exists. It can be decided to convene a second assembly, somewhere for my sake, but not an original assembly.

Walter Knopfli: A decision should not be made here, but the procedure should be followed in such a way that the branches agree among themselves on who wants to take charge of the matter. Then the person concerned, outside the Anthroposophical Society in Switzerland, outside the Assembly of Delegates, will issue this invitation and then convene it outside, in a completely neutral way, based entirely on the original state. Those who wish to do so can no doubt agree among themselves on who will do this. In the meantime, the delegates who are here can be asked to invite their members at home to take a preliminary position on the matter.

Dr. Steiner: That can certainly be done, but no resolution can be passed on it. Don't you see that? It is not possible to pass a resolution on it!

Walter Knopfli: Yes, that is a point that is very important to me regarding point 1: reporting on the national associations. There is a certain mood in favor of it.

Dr. Steiner: Yes, but is it really the case that so little is known about this intention to found an international society here? Is it really the case that so little is known about it?

Walter Knopfli: The intended founding of the international society is of course known to all members, but the question is how we as the Swiss society relate to it. The question is –

Dr. Emil Grosheintz (interrupts): But you are now opposing the Swiss Society! What you are asking for here is quite impossible. We are the delegates of the Anthroposophical Society in Switzerland. Now you do not like this Society and you are saying: We want to strangle ourselves by convening another assembly or by doing something else with the Society. It is simply that the present form of the Society does not suit you! Do you want us ourselves to strangle ourselves, as I can't say it any other way, to decide to form a primary assembly and start again immediately? And then it is impossible to understand how Mr. Storrer can say that this Society, as it now exists, is a provisional arrangement. It is not a provisional arrangement, it exists! And I believe that if something else is to happen in society, if it is to modify itself in such a way that the Swiss members join together more closely, then the group here, because it has an international character, this character of internationality, as it naturally exists in Dornach, this character is best expressed when an international branch is formed at the Goetheanum. If it can be done in the way Dr. Steiner has suggested, that is the very best and most natural way. I don't know why you are now pushing and insisting on bringing about this revolution before Christmas.

Dr. Steiner: But earlier it was quite possible to discuss the matter! Everything was absolutely clear, and in fact there was no reason to come back to the proposal again. It even seems — since it is being revisited — that ulterior motives are still at play that one does not want to express. Because now we are at a point where it is actually no longer possible to understand what is wanted. For example, I don't understand what Mr. Storrer wants.

Willy Storrer: All we want is for a members' meeting to take place.

Dr. Steiner: But a members' meeting can only be decided here by the Anthroposophical Society in Switzerland.

Willy Storrer: That is what we want, Doctor! It is immaterial to us whether the meeting is an ordinary or an extraordinary one. The branch at the Goetheanum is represented here by Dr. Grosheintz and someone else. For example, I have not heard that it has been carried out that these representatives of their members are now taking a stand.

Dr. Steiner: You can of course decide here that a general meeting of the Anthroposophical Society in Switzerland should be convened.

Martha Schelling says that she believes that only a few members will be able to respond to the call, because they cannot come twice in the short time available.

Dr. Steiner: We really ought to speak objectively on this question. Now that we have already elected the chairmen of the meeting, I would like to point out that it would be really necessary to give reasons for things when discussing such matters. Simply saying that we want this and that is not really a statement of reasons. I believe that now – today is December 8, and the delegates' meeting begins on the 24th – that calling a members' meeting in Switzerland in some place is such a drastic measure, something so incisive, that one should of course consider it very carefully. And above all, I believe that one should not proceed carelessly in such a matter. Because it is quite absolutely this to consider that every choice of a place that you make today can be made in such a way that a group can outvote the whole of Switzerland and the whole Anthroposophical Society in Switzerland. You simply choose the place accordingly. You know, in some place nearby, there are members who want something specific. They want to create a majority for themselves, and to do that they choose a location. They know: if we choose St. Gallen, we have the majority there; if we choose Olten, we have the majority there, and so on. These things are of such importance that they must be considered in the face of the other point, which should actually be brought forward. Is there really such widespread dissatisfaction with the Anthroposophical Society in Switzerland that an extraordinary general meeting should be convened at such short notice? Is this dissatisfaction really so great? Or can what Mr. Knopfli has put forward, which I very much understood, simply be introduced in the form of a proposal put forward by those members who consider it necessary? — It can very well be put forward in the form of a proposal by individual members, then you have a very clean thing. Then there is a motion, which, for my part, is supported by 30 or however many members. There is a proper motion, and you do not now call a meeting with some ulterior motive through the will of an unequal majority, the will of individual members, that is, a vanishing minority! You have to take all that into account! Of course I have no right to interfere in this matter in any way. But I think it is absolutely dangerous if, after nothing has been said about the matter so far, after a long period of satisfaction with the Anthroposophical Society in Switzerland, a meeting is now to be convened from December 8 to December 24 with no explanation. At the very least, they should explain why they need a general meeting. Because they don't need a general meeting to make the request that Mr. Knopfli has made. I am completely convinced that - Walter Knopfli says he can agree to this. He thinks that individual representatives will also take a stand at Christmas - the delegate of the branch at the Goetheanum has taken a stand. If the decision is then made to establish the new Anthroposophical Society, as assumed, and to join the international Society, then the existing Society in Switzerland will formally give its consent, and only after that should the change take place.

Dr. Steiner: You see, something will be done about this at Christmas. A certain internationalization of the branch at the Goetheanum would take place, and in my opinion, conditions will then be created with which you can be satisfied. I do believe that in general – whether you change the name or not, that is really a secondary question – I do believe that you can have what you want, if there is no ulterior motive! What you say you want can certainly be achieved with the resolutions that deal with the right things.

Miss Emma Ramser: The gentlemen have stated that if their proposal is accepted, they will make specific proposals. If the proposal is accepted in such a way that the separation is addressed, they would like to make specific proposals.

Dr. Steiner: But you can't address the separation! That's quite impossible.

Miss Emma Ramser: Could the gentlemen not perhaps communicate what they have to say to the branches point by point over the next week, so that it can be discussed, so that the delegates are not, so to speak, faced with a fait accompli again, I don't want to say taken by surprise. But if the number of members cannot come at Christmas... so that we know what is to be discussed...

Dr. Steiner: It would have been quite good if the opinion had been expressed that, apart from what has been said, there are still some deficiencies in the Anthroposophical Society in Switzerland, it could have been brought up today!

Walter Knopfli: It was not meant as a vote of no confidence, I only said what had been said. And the specific proposals were to consider something like a primeval assembly and how society has to be reconstituted, how to do that to avoid misunderstandings. There are no hidden agendas

. Willy Storrer requests the floor.

Dr. Steiner: What you have proposed can indeed be arranged in the simplest way, also with regard to point 1. It is true that I have read this abbreviated report of the International Assembly of Delegates in Dornach with this appendix on the founding of the International Anthroposophical Society in Dornach [see $. 557]; but I must say: these 12 points look terrible, of course! And if we continue to debate this in the same way as now, we will not be finished by tomorrow morning. We will have to discuss the merger of the individual national societies that have already been founded. This first point can be dealt with in five minutes at the delegates' meeting. It just doesn't look like that, because there are four lines here; but all that is needed is to express the will to found this international society. And the reports on the various forms taken by the societies in different countries will not take up much time either. If there is the will to found this International Anthroposophical Society, then I believe we should not talk much about the formalities at all, but should find the transition to talking about a number of really important things in the anthroposophical field, which should then be discussed. I do not think it would be good to talk at length about these questions at all during this meeting at Christmas, questions which have been bandied about so much this evening and about which one usually does not know what is actually wanted. Isn't that right? According to the rules of procedure, I didn't even have to allow the motion to be discussed again. It was a concession that I allowed it to be discussed again, but then the reasons should have been presented.

Willy Storrer: Yes, Doctor, we have presented these reasons! Because we believe that it is necessary for the Anthroposophical Society in Switzerland to re-establish itself, that it must do so, and we wanted to make proposals in this direction. We wanted this general meeting to express its opinion on this.

Dr. Emil Grosheintz: Mr. Storrer! We are now at a meeting of delegates of the Anthroposophical Society in Switzerland. If you make the request that this society should reconstitute itself - do not say “must”, it must re-establish itself - but then say the reasons why you believe that this should happen and what its shortcomings and damages are, other than those that have already been mentioned.

Willy Storrer says that Mr. Knopfli, Mr. Stokar and he agree that it would be better for the effect on the outside world if the leadership of the Swiss Anthroposophical Society consisted more of Swiss members, if there were another working committee instead of the working committee, which could still exist quite well at the Goetheanum, perhaps even composed of the individual branches in Switzerland.

Dr. Steiner: Please, then nominate other people at the next meeting where there is an election. That is not an item for discussion. You can't just make a request at any old time!

Willy Stokar: I request that the debate be closed.

Dr. Steiner: The motion to end the debate has been made. I ask those delegates who are in favor to raise their hands. - I now ask those who are against it to raise their hands. — The motion to end the debate has therefore been adopted.

Is there anything else? That does not appear to be the case. Then we come to the end. I thank the honored friends for attending this meeting of delegates. I hope that, despite the fact that we have spoken a little “opaque” about many things, that nevertheless what we have spoken about will bear good fruit at the very important meeting of delegates at Christmas.

Roman Boos: Dear attendees! The aim of these lectures was to attempt to show, from the perspective of specialized science, how anthroposophically oriented spiritual science could lead to the fertilization and further development of the individual specialized scientific fields. The visitors will have had the thoroughly consistent impression throughout the whole event that something is not being hatched in a narrow circle, but that from a central point a real spiritual fertilization into the individual subject areas can take place. Even if not everyone was able to recognize this at the very beginning of their efforts, surely everyone who looked, as it were, at the driving forces present here, who looked at the fertilizing forces that radiate out and not on the value of the first formulated formulations, could be convinced that here is something in relation to our spiritual life, which deserves attention and, as far as possible, also cooperation and goodwill from wide circles – especially here in Switzerland. This is so because it is precisely here that a spiritual force is struggling to the light that can actually claim to have a spiritually fertilizing effect on the social community.

There will be an opportunity for discussion following Dr. Steiner's lecture on “Hygiene as a Social Question.

Rudolf Steiner: Dearly beloved! That the social question is one of the most pressing issues of our time is not doubted in the broadest circles. And wherever there is even a modicum of concern for the issues arising from the development of human history in the present day, wherever there are threatening or unresolved impulses for the future, all of this can be summarized under the heading of the social question. But we must admit that the consideration and treatment of this social question in the present suffers from the fundamental defect that afflicts so much of our intellectual and moral life, and indeed of our whole civilized life, namely, the intellectualism of our time. It suffers from the fact that its problems are so often viewed only from the standpoint of an intellectualistic consideration. The social question is discussed more from the point of view of the right or the left. The intellectualism of these discussions is shown by the fact that they start from certain theories, from the assumption that this or that must be so or so, that this or that must be abolished. In doing so, little consideration is given to the human being himself. One treats people as if there were something general like “the human being”, as if there were not something that is individually developed in a particular way in each person. One does not turn one's attention to the uniqueness and peculiarity of the individual human being. Therefore, our whole consideration of the social question also takes on something abstract, something that today so rarely translates into social feelings, into the attitudes that play between person and person. The defect in our social thinking is most clearly seen when we focus on a specific area, one that is perhaps more suitable than many others for social reflection, for example, the area of hygiene, insofar as hygiene is a public matter that concerns not the individual but the human community.

Of course, we are not lacking in hygienic instructions, treatises and writings on health care as a public matter. But one must ask: how do these instructions, these considerations of hygiene, fit into social life? And here one must say: they are so introduced that individual discussions about proper health care are published as the result of medical, physiological, and scientific knowledge, whereby the trust that one has in a field whose inner essence one is not able to test is supposed to form the basis for the acceptance of such rules. On the basis of authority alone, the broadest sections of the population can accept the rules on hygiene that emerge from the study chambers and examination rooms, the medical laboratories, and are then made public.

If one is convinced, however, that in the course of modern history, in the course of the last four centuries, a yearning for a democratic order in all matters has arisen in humanity, then, even if it seems grotesque to many today, one is confronted with the undemocratic nature of the pure belief in authority that is demanded in the field of hygiene. The undemocratic nature of this blind faith in authority is juxtaposed with the yearning for democracy, as it has often - albeit, one might say, in a very paradoxical way - culminated in the present day.

I know very well that the sentence I have just uttered is perceived by many as paradoxical, because one simply does not combine the way someone receives health care-related information with the democratic demand that the community of emancipated people should judge public affairs that concern every emancipated person, whether directly or through their representatives. Of course it must be said that something like a hygienic view, a hygienic cultivation of public life, cannot be fully realized in a democratic way, because it depends on the judgment of the person seeking knowledge in a particular field. But on the other hand, the question must arise: should we not be striving for a greater democratization in such a field as this, which concerns every single person and thus the human community as closely, as infinitely closely as public health care does? Today, we are certainly told a great deal about the way in which man should live in terms of air and light, in terms of nutrition, in terms of the disposal of waste products produced either by man himself or by his environment, and so on and so forth. But the rules governing these things that are thrown upon humanity are mostly unworkable for the people to whom they are supposed to apply.

Now I do not wish to be misunderstood; I do not wish to be misunderstood as taking a particular stand on anything in this lecture, which is supposed to be dedicated to the topic “Hygiene as a social issue”. I do not wish to deal one-sidedly with what today tends to be treated one-sidedly from the point of view of a party or of a certain scientific conviction. I would like – perhaps you will permit this small apparent departure from the role in the introduction – I would like neither to take any party for the old superstition that devils and demons go around and move in and out of people as diseases, nor would I like to take sides for the modern superstition that the bacilli and bacteria move in and out of people and cause the diseases. Whether one is dealing with a spiritualist, spiritual superstition of old or with a materialistic superstition, that may concern us less today. But I would like to touch on something that permeates our entire education, especially insofar as this education depends on the fundamental scientific beliefs of our time.

Even if it is asserted from many sides today that scientifically materialism, as it asserted itself in the middle and still in the last third of the 19th century, has been overcome, this assertion cannot apply to the one who really sees through the essence of materialism and its opposite , because this materialism has been overcome at most for some people who see that today's scientific facts no longer allow us to declare in a sweeping way that everything that exists is just some mechanical, physical or chemical process taking place in the material world. It is not enough that, forced by the power of facts, some people have come to this conviction. For in the face of this conviction stands the other fact that now, despite this conviction, those who have it - and the others even more so - when it comes to explaining something specifically, to forming an opinion about something specific, then they do include the materialistic direction in their way of thinking. It is also said that atoms and molecules are harmless accounting coins, of which one does not want to claim anything other than that they are thought-things. But the consideration has therefore remained an atomistic, a molecularistic one. We explain the phenomena of the world in terms of the behavior and the mutual relationship of atoms or molecular processes, and it does not matter whether we now imagine that any thought, feeling or other process is only related to the material processes of atoms and molecules, but rather it depends on the direction of our entire state of mind, the direction of our spirit, when it takes as a basis for its explanations only what is thought in terms of atoms, what emerges from the smallest, the contrived smallest. What matters is not whether one has the conviction, literally or mentally, that there is something other than atomistic effects, than material atomic effects, but what matters is whether one has the possibility of making other explanations of the world the guiding principle of one's mind than deriving phenomena from the atomic. It is not what we believe, but how we explain, how we behave in our souls, that matters. And here, at this point, it must be stated with conviction that only genuine spiritual science, anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, can help us to overcome the evil that can be characterized in this way, as I have just done.

I would like to prove that this can now be the case in concrete terms. There is hardly anything that confronts us with more confusion than the differences that are often asserted today between the human body and the human soul or the human spirit, between what are physical illnesses and what are so-called mental or spiritual illnesses. It is precisely the appropriate distinction and the appropriate interrelationship of such facts of human life as those of the sick body or the seemingly sick soul that suffer in terms of understanding under the materialistic-atomistic way of thinking. For what, then, is actually the essence of the materialism that has gradually emerged as the newer world view of many people and that has by no means been overcome, but is in fact in its heyday today? What is its essence? The essence of materialism is not that one looks at material processes, that one looks at the material processes that take place in the human body and that one devotedly studies the miracle-working and miracle-working of the human nervous system and the other human organs or the nervous system of animals or the organs of other living beings; it is not that studying these things makes one a materialist, but it is abandoning the spirit in the study of material processes that makes one a materialist, that one looks into the world of matter and sees only matter and material processes.

But this is what spiritual science must assert - today I can only speak about this point in summary - that wherever material processes appear to us externally for the senses, those processes which today's science alone wants to accept as observable and exact, that wherever these material processes are only the external appearance, the external manifestation of spiritual forces and powers at work behind and within them. It is not the hallmark of spiritual science to look at a person and say: Oh, there is the body; this body is a sum of material processes, but within it the person cannot exist alone, he has his immortal soul independently of it ; and the fact that one is now beginning to develop all kinds of abstract theories and views about this immortal soul, which is independent of the body, in a rather mystical way, does not characterize a spiritual worldview at all. One can certainly say: Man has, in addition to his body, which consists of material processes, an immortal soul that is taken to some spiritual realm after death. One is therefore not yet a spiritual scientist in the sense of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science.

One is only a spiritual scientist when one realizes that this material body with its material processes is a creature of the soul, when one understands in detail how the soul, which was there before birth or, let us say, before conception of the human being, works, how this soul forms, how it sculpts the structure, indeed the substantiation of the human body. If we can truly see the direct unity of this body and the soul everywhere, and if we can see how the soul's activity in the body wears out this body as such, how this body partially dies every minute, and how then, in the moment of death, I would say, the radical realization of what what happens to the body every moment through the influence of the soul and spirit, if one sees through this living interplay, this constant working of the soul in the body, in the individual concrete case, if one strives to say: the soul breaks down into very concrete processes, then it passes over into the processes of liver activity, then it passes over into the processes of breathing, then into the processes of heart activity, then into the processes of brain activity – in short, if one is able to present the physical body as the result of a spiritual one when describing the material in the human being, then one is a spiritual scientist. Spiritual science comes to a true appreciation of the material precisely because it does not see only what today's science sees in the individual concrete material process, what the eye ascertains or what is then recorded as the result of external observation in abstract terms. Rather, spiritual science is spiritual science solely because it shows everywhere how the spirit works in the material, how it looks devotedly at the material effects of the spirit.

That is the one thing that matters. On the other hand, it is important that one is thereby saved from all the abstract, chatty talk about a soul independent of the [physical] human being, about which, as far as life between birth and death is concerned, one can only fantasize. For between birth and death, with the exception of sleep, the soul and spirit are so devoted to the bodily effects that they live in them, through them, and present themselves in them. One must come to the point of being able to study the soul and spirit outside of the human life cycle and to accept the human life cycle between birth and death as a result of the soul and spirit. Then one looks at the real, concrete unity of the spiritual-soul with the physical-bodily. Then one does anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, because then one has the prospect that this human being, with all his individual structures, stands before one as a result of the spiritual-soul, also for knowledge. The mystical theosophical view, which puts forward beautiful theories about all kinds of body-free spiritualities, cannot serve the concrete sciences of life, it cannot serve life at all, it can only serve intellectualistic or soul-based lust, which wants to get rid of life, of the outer life, as quickly as possible and then, in order to have an inner satisfaction, to be able to indulge in an inner lust, weaves all kinds of fantasies about the spiritual and soul.

Here in this anthroposophically oriented spiritual movement, it is a matter of working very seriously, of cultivating a spiritual science that is able to enliven physics, mathematics, chemistry, physiology, biology and anthropology, so that it is not a matter of stating religiously or philosophically on the one hand that the human being an immortal soul, and then to pursue anthropology, biology, physics and chemistry as if one were only dealing with material processes, but rather it is a matter here of applying what can be gained in knowledge about the soul and spirit to the details of life, of looking into the miracle of the body itself. It may well be said, even if it sounds paradoxical to some: there are those who want to be good mystics or good theosophists and want to talk about everything under the sun, how the human being consists of a physical body, etheric body, astral body, I and so on, but they don't even have a clue about what expression of the soul it is when you sneeze, for example. It depends on seeing matter, not as matter, but as the manifestation of the spirit. Then one also receives sound, content-filled views about the spirit, but then one also receives a spiritual science that can be fruitful for the science of life.

But something else is also achieved with this. It achieves the ability to overcome what, in recent times, precisely because of the materialization of scientific knowledge, has driven us into specialization. I certainly do not want to deliver a diatribe against specialization, because I am well aware of its justification. I know that certain things today must be practiced by specialists simply because a specialized technique is needed for them. But the point is that if someone clings to the material, he can never become a specialist and gain a world view that can be applied in life, because material processes are an infinite field. They are an infinite field out in nature, and they are an infinite field within the human being. If you just study the human nervous system based on what is currently known, you can spend a long time on it, at least as much time as specialists are usually willing to spend on their studies. But if one has only what the material processes are in what happens in the nervous system, only what is expressed in the abstract terms that are the subject of science today, then nothing leads one to anything universal that can become the basis of a worldview. The moment you begin to observe spiritually, let us say, the human nervous system, you cannot observe this nervous system without what you find active in it as spirit leading you immediately to what underlies the muscular system, the bone system, the sense of the nervous system as something spiritual, because the spiritual is not something that can be broken down into individual parts like the material. Rather, the spiritual is something that – and this is only the most basic way of characterizing it – spreads out like a limb or an organism. And just as I cannot look at a person by merely looking at his five fingers and otherwise covering him, so too in spiritual science I cannot look at a single detail without what I perceive in this detail as spiritual-soul leading me to a totality. If we are led to such a totality — even if it is perhaps only a specialist in brain or nerve research — then we will be able to get an overall picture of the human being from the observation of this individual link in the human organism; then we will be led into the position to arrive at something truly universal for a world view, and then the peculiar thing is that we can begin to speak of something that can be understood by all people who have common sense and sound understanding.

That is the great difference between how spiritual science can speak about man and how specialized, materialistic science must speak about man. You see, let us take the simple case of how specialized, materialistic science is presented to you in any of the textbooks in use today. If you, as an ordinary person who has not learned much about the nervous system, take a manual about the nervous system in your hand – well, you will probably soon stop reading or, in any case, you will not gain very much that can give you a basis for looking at the human being as a real human being in his value, in his dignity. But if we listen to what spiritual science has to say about the human nervous system, then what leads to the whole human being follows everywhere. It provides such enlightenment about the whole human being that the idea that arises in one's mind presents something of the value, essence and dignity of the human being with whom one is dealing. And this applies even more when we look at the human being not just in terms of one of his or her many parts, but it applies especially when we look at the sick person, this sick person with his or her many deviations from the so-called normal, especially when we are able to look at the whole person, when he or she is under the influence of this or that disease. What nature presents to our soul in the sick person is apt to lead us deep into the world's interconnections, to show us how this person is organized and how, because of his organization, the atmospheric and even extraterrestrial influences can affect this person, how this human organization is connected to these or those substances of nature, which then turn out to be healing agents, and so on.

We are led into broad contexts, and it may be said that if we supplement what can be recognized in this way about the healthy human being with what can be recognized through the sick human being, then a deep insight into the whole context and the deeper meaning of life will open up. But everything that comes to light in this way is the basis for a knowledge of human nature, and can be expressed in such a way that it can be spoken to all people. Of course, we have not yet reached this point, because spiritual science, in the sense in which it is meant here, has only been working for a short time. Therefore, as Dr. Boos said in his introductory words just now, the lectures given here can often only be seen as a beginning. But the tendency of this spiritual science is to work out what is present in the individual sciences in such a way that what every human being should know about the human being can actually be brought to every human being.

And now imagine if spiritual science first has such a transforming effect on science and if spiritual science then succeeds in developing forms of knowledge for the healthy and sick human being that can be made accessible to general human consciousness If this succeeds, how different human beings will be in social life, how differently understanding one person will be confronted with another than today, when everyone passes by the other and has no understanding for the special individuality of this other person. The social question will only be taken out of its intellectualism when it will emerge from the most diverse areas of life based on factual knowledge, when it is based on the concrete experiences of life. This is particularly evident in the field of health care. Just imagine the social impact of fostering an understanding of what is healthy and what is sick in other people; just imagine what it means when health care is taken into the hands of all of humanity with understanding. Of course, the aim is not to cultivate scientific or medical dilettantism – that must be avoided – but imagine, it simply awakens sympathy, not just feeling, but understanding for the healthy and the sick in our fellow human beings, understanding based on an insight into the human being. Imagine the social effect of such a thing, and you will have to say to yourself: There you can see that social reform, the social reconstruction, must arise out of specialized knowledge in the individual fields, not out of general theories, whether they be Marxist, be they Oppenheim theories, be they theories of any kind that look beyond the human being and want to shape the world out of abstract concepts. Salvation cannot come from this, but from the dedicated study of the individual fields. And health care, hygiene, is such a very special field, because it leads us, I would say, closest to everything that our fellow human being experiences in terms of joy through his healthy, normal way of life or in terms of pain and suffering, of restrictions due to what lies within him as more or less sick.

This is something that immediately points us to the special social way in which spiritual science can achieve results in the field of hygiene. For if in such a way the cultivator of the knowledge of humanity, the cultivator of the knowledge of the healthy and the sick human being, is also the one who specializes as a doctor, with such knowledge in human society, then he will be able to create enlightenment within this human society, because he will be understood. And not only will the doctor develop a relationship with the community in which, if they are not a friend or relative, they will send for the doctor when they have a pain or have broken a leg, but the relationship with the doctor will develop in such a way that the doctor is the constant teacher and instructor of prophylactic health care, that in fact a constant intervention of the doctor is available not only to heal the person when the illness goes so far that he notices it, but also to keep people healthy as far as possible. A lively social activity will take place between the physician and all the rest of humanity. But then health itself will radiate from such knowledge, for it is precisely because materialism has extended to the medical view of life that we have truly come up against strange conceptions.

On the one hand, we have physical illnesses. They are studied by finding degenerations of the organs or whatever else is supposed to be physically perceptible or physically imagined within the human body's skin, and attention is drawn to the fact that any damage found can be repaired. In this direction, thoughts now turn quite materialistically to the physical body of the human being in its normal and abnormal states. Alongside this, the so-called soul or spiritual illnesses arise. These soul or spiritual illnesses have now been reduced, on the one hand, to mere brain illnesses or to illnesses of the nervous system because of materialistic thinking, and the foundations for this have also been sought in the other organ systems of the human being. But because they did not develop any kind of conception about the way in which spirit and soul work in the human body, they could not gain any conception of the relationship between mental illnesses, the so-called mental illnesses, and what the human being otherwise is. And so, I would like to say, mental illnesses stand on one side, even today they are grasped by a strange hybrid science, psychoanalysis, which thinks in a materialistic way but does not understand the materialistic at all; they stand there, these mental and soul illnesses, without being able to be brought together in any reasonable way with what actually happens in the human organism.

Spiritual science can now show – and I have drawn attention to this – that what I am saying here is not just a program, but that it is being pursued in detail – precisely on the occasion of the course for physicians that has been taking place here during these weeks. Spiritual science can indeed show in detail how all so-called mental and soul diseases are based on organ disorders, on organ degeneration, organ enlargement, organ reduction in the human organism. Somewhere in the heart, in the liver, in the lungs, something is not right if at the same time or later something occurs that is a so-called mental illness. A spiritual science that penetrates to recognize the spirit in the normal heart in its effectiveness is also capable of - and need not be ashamed of - seeking a cause for the so-called sick mind or soul in the degeneration of the heart, in the failings of the heart.

The main mistake of materialism is not that it denies the spirit - in which case religion could still ensure that the spirit is recognized - the main mistake of materialism is that it does not recognize matter, because it only observes its exterior. This is precisely the defect of materialism, that it gains no insight into matter, for example in the purely psychoanalytic treatment, in the mere observation of something that has taken place in the soul, which psychoanalysis calls islands of the soul, and thus an abstraction. Rather, one must follow how certain impressions of the soul, which a person receives at this or that time in his life and which are normally bound to the normal organism, impinge on defective organs - instead of, for example, on a healthy liver, on a diseased one; such an impingement may perhaps show itself at a completely different time than when the defect has become organically noticeable.

Spiritual science need not shy away from showing how so-called mental or psychological illnesses are always connected with something in the human body. Spiritual science must strictly point out that if one merely studies the soul, the psychological complex, the deviations of the soul from the so-called normal psychological life, one has at most a one-sided diagnosis. Therefore, psychoanalysis can never be anything more than diagnostic; it can never lead to real therapy in this field. For this reason, because therapy for mental illnesses must begin with the physical examination, we must know the ramifications of the spiritual in matter down to the individual parts if we want to know where to start in the material body – which is, however, spiritualized – to cure that which only shows symptoms in abnormal mental conditions. Spiritual science must most decidedly emphasize that the so-called mental and soul diseases must be traced back to the organology of the human being. However, one can only see into the abnormal organology of the human being if one can follow the spirit into the smallest parts of matter.

And the other way around: what appear to be merely soul phenomena or phenomena that act in the soul, let us say what emerges in the temperaments and in the activity of the human temperaments , in the whole way in which a person plays as a small child, how he walks, what he does, all this, which today is only understood in a mental-spiritual sense, also has its physical side. And a failure in relation to some aspects of a child's education can appear later in a very ordinary physical illness. Indeed, in certain cases, when one is dealing with mental illnesses, one is led to look at the physical aspects in order to explore what is important, and in the case of physical illnesses, to look at the spiritual aspects and explore what is important. For that is the essential thing in spiritual science, that it does not speak in abstractions of a nebulous spiritual, as mystics and one-sided theosophists do, but that it follows the spirit into its material effects, that it nowhere grasps the material as as it is grasped by today's external science, but everywhere, in the contemplation of the material, it penetrates to the spirit and can thus also observe where an abnormal soul life must express itself in that an abnormal bodily life is present, even if it is perhaps hidden externally.

In the broadest circles today, people have completely false ideas about seriously anthroposophically oriented spiritual science – perhaps sometimes rightly so, when one hears those who do not truly want to go into what it is actually about, and only talk about abstract theories, that man consists of this and that, and that there are repeated earth lives and so on. These things are, of course, extremely important and very nice. But when it comes to working very seriously in this spiritual-scientific movement, then the individual chapters, the individual areas of this life, must be dealt with. And in the broadest sense, this in turn leads to a socially minded gathering of people. For when one sees how the soul, appearing sick, radiates its impulses into the organism, when one can feel this connection between the organism and the soul that appears to be sick - feel with understanding - and when, on the other hand, one knows how the institutions of life also affect the physical human being's physical health, how the spiritual, which apparently only exists externally in social institutions, has an effect on the physical health of the human being, if one has an overview of all this, then one is involved in human society in a completely different way. You begin to gain a real understanding of people, and you treat others quite differently; you pursue their character quite differently. You know that certain qualities are connected to this or that, you know how to behave towards these qualities, you know how to place people's temperaments in human society in the right way, and especially how to develop them in the right way, especially when you have associated tasks with them.

One social area in particular will need to be intensively influenced in terms of hygiene by a knowledge of human nature gained in this way: the area of education. Without really knowing people very well, it is impossible to appreciate what it means when children sit in school with stooped backs, causing their breathing to become irregular, or when they are not encouraged to speak loudly and distinctly, clearly vocalizing and clearly consonanting. The whole of later life depends essentially on whether the child breathes correctly at school and whether he is encouraged to speak loudly and distinctly and with articulation.

In such matters – I am only giving examples here, as the same could be said for other areas – the specialization of overall hygiene in the school system is evident, and this in particular shows the full social significance of hygiene. It also shows, however, how life demands that we do not further specialize, but that we bring together the specialized into an overall view. We need not only the knowledge that enables a teacher to educate a child in a particular way according to certain pedagogical norms, but we also need the knowledge that enables a teacher to judge what it means when he or that sentence of the child's clearly articulated utterances or when he lets the child, after saying half a sentence, lets out another breath and so on and does not ensure that the air is used up while the sentence is being spoken. Of course, there are many clues and rules about this too, but the right way of mutual recognition and the right application of these things only enter our hearts when we grasp the full significance for human life and for social health, for only then does the matter become a social impulse.

These considerations were the basis for the pedagogical-didactic course I gave to the teachers at the Stuttgart Waldorf School, which was the starting point for the founding of the school. Teachers are needed who can work from the full depth of a humanistic worldview for the education and teaching of children. Everything that has been incorporated into the sentences that have been expressed as a pedagogical-didactic art strives to turn the children who are being educated and taught into people who, later on, by being encouraged to perform the functions of life in the right way as a child, will have lungs and liver and heart and stomach in order because the soul has been worked on in the right way.

This world view will never interpret the old saying, “A healthy soul lives in a healthy body,” in a materialistic way.

A materialistic interpretation would say that if you have a healthy body, if you have made it healthy with all possible physical means, then it will automatically become the bearer of a healthy soul. That is nonsense. It makes sense if you proceed in the following way, that is, if you say to yourself: “There is a healthy body in front of me, which shows me that the power of a healthy soul has built it up, shaped it, and made it healthy.” I recognize from this body that an autonomous healthy soul has worked in it. That is the meaning of the saying. But only in this way can this saying also be the basis for healthy hygiene. In other words, we do not need a school doctor who visits the school once a fortnight, if that, and doesn't know what to do with himself, in addition to teachers who only work from an abstract pedagogical science. No, we need a living connection between medical science and the art of teaching. We need a pedagogical art that educates and teaches children in a hygienically correct way in all its measures. That is what makes hygiene a social issue, because the social issue is essentially an educational issue, and the educational issue is essentially a medical issue, but only a question of that medicine that is spiritually fruitful, of a hygiene that is spiritually fruitful.

These things then point to something else that is extraordinarily significant, especially with regard to the topic of “hygiene as a social question”. Because, my dear attendees, when spiritual science is cultivated and when spiritual science is something concrete for the human being, then he knows that in what he receives in spiritual science there is something that differs from what he receives in mere intellectualism and in the natural science of the present, too, is mere intellectualism. He knows that what he has in mere intellectualism or in the merely intellectualistically developed natural science or in the merely intellectualistically developed history or jurisprudence of today is different from what he has in mere intellectualism. All of today's sciences are intellectualistic; if they claim to be empirical sciences, it is only because they interpret the empirically observed results of experience in an intellectualistic way. What is given in the humanities differs quite essentially from these natural science or other results interpreted in an intellectualistic way. It would even be quite sad if that which lives in our intellectualistic culture were not merely an image, but a real power that has a deeper effect on people. Anything intellectualistic remains only on the surface of the human being. This sentence is meant to be very comprehensive.

Those who pursue spiritual science only intellectually, that is, who only make notes: there is a physical body, an etheric body, an astral body, an ego, repeated earthly lives, karma, and so on and who notes these down in the same way as in natural science or in today's social science, is not seriously engaged in spiritual science, for he merely transfers the way of thinking he otherwise has to what confronts him in spiritual science. But the essential thing about spiritual science is that it must be thought in a different way, felt in a different way, and experienced in a very different way than the intellectualistic way. Therefore spiritual science is something that, through its very nature, maintains a living relationship to the healthy and the sick person, albeit in a somewhat different way than one might often dream of. People will surely have become sufficiently convinced of how powerless one is with what one, whether as admonishment or as encouragement, begins in the purely intellectualistic culture in relation to the so-called mentally ill. The mentally ill person claims that voices are speaking to him; you tell him all kinds of things that you find based on your intellectual reason – in vain, because he has all kinds of objections for you. This alone could indicate that we are not dealing with an illness of the conscious or even the subconscious soul life, but with an illness of the organism. Spiritual science teaches us to recognize that one cannot, however, use such methods, which are supposed to be so-called spiritual ones, in which, for example, one resorts to hypnosis and suggestion, to treat so-called mental or soul diseases, but that one must treat them in so-called physical ways, that is, by healing the organs, for which, however, one really needs spiritual knowledge of the human being. Spiritual knowledge knows that it should not actually intervene at all in the field of so-called mental illnesses with mere spiritual or psychological procedures, because the mental illness consists precisely in the fact that the spiritual element of the human being is suppressed, as it is otherwise only in sleep, and is weak in this suppression, but that one must cure the organ so that it in turn takes back the soul and the spirit in a healthy way. On the other hand, that which does not arise from the intellect, from the head, but from the whole human being as a spiritual-scientific result, when it appears as imagination, inspiration, intuition, and when it is taken up by the human being, engages the whole organism. It really engages the physical organization of the human being in a healing way, which is what spiritual science really is.

On the other hand, there is no proof that some spiritual scientists feel ill within spiritual science or show the opposite of what I have just said. There are so many who are not spiritual scientists, but who are intellectualistic collectors of notes on spiritual-scientific results. But to spread spiritual science in its true substance is itself a social hygiene, for it affects the whole human being, it normalizes his organology when it threatens to develop this or that tendency towards deviation into the abnormal after dreams or after another side. This is the tremendous difference between what is given in spiritual science and what occurs in mere intellectual science: that the concepts emerging in the field of intellectualism are much too weak because they are merely pictorial to intervene in the human being, to be able to have a healing effect on him. The concepts of spiritual science, on the other hand, are such that they are drawn from the whole human being. In the formation of spiritual-scientific concepts, it is truly not only the brain that has been involved, but also the lungs and liver and heart and the whole human being. And if one imbues oneself with these spiritual-scientific concepts, if one assimilates them through healthy human understanding, they in turn have a hygienic effect on the whole human being. This is what, starting from spiritual science, can intervene in a directive way in hygiene as a social matter.

But in many other ways too — I can only give a few examples — spiritual science will intervene in a guiding way in the whole of humanity's health life, when this spiritual science really takes root among humanity in its full seriousness. I will point out just one example. The relationship between the awake human being and the sleeping human being is one of the chapters that must be studied again and again through spiritual science. The same applies to the enormous difference that exists between the human organization in waking and in sleeping. How spirit and soul behave when we are awake, when the physical and spiritual and soul aspects of the human being interpenetrate each other, and how they behave when they are temporarily separated from each other, as in sleep – this is carefully studied through spiritual science.

Now I can only give a certain sentence, but it is a very certain result of spiritual science. We see so-called epidemic diseases occur in life, diseases that affect whole crowds of people, which are therefore also a social matter at the same time. Ordinary materialistic science studies them in terms of the human physical organism. It knows nothing of the tremendous significance for epidemics and for the predispositions for epidemic diseases that lies in the abnormal behavior of humans in terms of waking and sleeping. What happens in the human organism during sleep is something that, when it happens in abundance, for example, predisposes to a high degree for so-called epidemic diseases. People who, by sleeping too long, set processes in motion in the human organism that should not be there because sleep should not interrupt waking life for so long are predisposed to epidemic diseases in a completely different way and they also engage with epidemics in a completely different way.

Now you can see for yourself what it means to educate people about the correct distribution of sleep and wakefulness. You cannot do that by means of regulations. At best you can order people not to send their children to school when they have scarlet fever; you cannot give lectures when there is an outbreak of influenza: people do not respond to that - because today man tends towards freedom, I mean, because the sense of authority is not as great as in former times - people do not respond to that. I am not saying that they are not right to do so, I am not saying anything against what happens in this way, but you cannot possibly tell people in the same way: you must sleep seven hours. Nevertheless, it is more important than the other rules that people who need it sleep seven hours, the others who do not need it may sleep much shorter and so on. But such things, which are so intimately connected with the most personal aspects of a person's life, have a social effect in a magnificent way. It actually depends on the most intimate aspects of a person how the social effects occur, whether, for example, a larger or smaller number of people are withdrawn from this or that occupation or not, which may have an effect in a completely different place under certain circumstances. Hygiene really does have a tremendous impact on social life. Quite apart from what one thinks about contagion or non-contagion, this element intervenes in social life during epidemics. You cannot work through external regulations, you can only work if you bring a lay audience into human society, but one that has an understanding of people that stands in contrast to the physician's educational prophylaxis, wherever a lively interaction between the expert physician and the layman can occur to maintain health.

If we take all these things into consideration, we can say: Here we have described one side of hygiene as a social question, which in the most eminent sense depends on our having a free spiritual life, on our actually having a spiritual life in which, within the spiritual realm, those who are engaged in the cultivation of the spiritual life, including its practical aspects such as hygiene, are completely independent of everything else that does not give pure knowledge, that does not cultivate the spiritual life itself. What each individual can do for the good of his fellow human beings must arise entirely from his abilities. There must be no state standards for this, nor must there be any dependence on economic powers. This must be placed in the personal sphere of dependence of the individual human being and must continue to be placed in the understanding trust that others who need the application of his abilities can place in the capable person.

What is needed is a spiritual life that is completely independent of all authority, of the state and of the economy, and that works purely from within its own spiritual forces in an expert manner.

If you think about what hygiene can really achieve, which is closely connected with insightful human knowledge and insightful social behavior, and if you look at the individual branch of hygiene with expert insight , then you will come to the conclusion - and this is precisely what the individual, concrete subject area demands, and it could be demonstrated for other areas as well as for hygiene - that the spirit must be taken into administration by those who are involved in its cultivation. No matter what abstract theories may say against the independent position of intellectual life, the individual concrete subject demands that the administrators of intellectual life are not merely experts who work for the ministries, but that those who are active in intellectual life must also be the administrators of that intellectual life, and indeed the sole administrators of that intellectual life. Then, when social insight arising out of a free spiritual life has created a hygiene that really exists as a social institution, it will be possible to work economically for this hygiene in a completely different way, precisely in an independent economic life, in an economic life that is structured as I have described in my “Key Points of the Social Question”, as it has been repeatedly described in the journals that serve this idea of the threefold social organism, for example in the Swiss “Social Future”, which is published by Dr. Boos.

If the forces for the cultivation of hygiene that lie dormant in the bosom of human society are received by society with understanding, if this is accepted with human understanding by society, if this becomes general order, then everything that can be carried out of this independent economic life, without regard to any dependence on impulses of gain or state impulses, everything that can be worked out of this independent economic life purely, can be carried into economic life, into independent economic life, everything that can work purely out of this independent economic life, without any consideration of any dependence on profit impulses or on state impulses, can be carried into economic life, and that which must be cultivated in the service of genuine, true hygiene. But then, and only then, will it be possible for that high spirit to enter into economic life, which is necessary in order for hygiene to be cultivated in human life. If the mere acquisitiveness of our economic life is dominant, which has an ever-increasing tendency to be incorporated into the unified state, and if the general opinion is that one must produce that which earns the most, then the self-contained impulses of a free spiritual life cultivated in this field of hygiene cannot assert themselves; then this spiritual life becomes dependent on the extra-spiritual, on the state or economic, then the economic becomes master over the spiritual. The economic must not become master over the spiritual. This is best seen when one is to produce what is required by the spirit in economic life, when one is to serve a genuine, true hygiene.

The forces of economic life, of free economic life, will be added in the threefold social organism to the insight that becomes a public matter and to the understanding of the human being that becomes a public matter. And when, on the one hand, people are immersed in a free spiritual life in which a hygiene truly based on objective ground can be cultivated, and when, on the other hand, people develop that high spirit through which everyone in economic life will in turn approach production with understanding – but with such understanding does not arise merely from the sense of acquisition, but from the insights that arise in free spiritual activity - then, once this insightful social understanding of people will be there, then people will be able to come together democratically in parliaments or otherwise, because then the insight into the necessity of hygiene as a social phenomenon will be shaped from the free spiritual life. And what is necessary for the maintenance of hygiene will be shaped by the economic life, which is based on practical and professional considerations, through the high spirit that will be developed in it. Then people, having come of age, will be able to negotiate on the basis of the legal system, on the one hand from their insight and understanding of human nature, and on the other hand from their relations with the economic system that serves hygiene. Then people will be able to negotiate as equals on the basis of state or legal life about the measures that can be taken with regard to hygiene and public health care. Then, of course, it will not be laymen, dilettantes, who will be healing, but the person who has come of age will face the expert as an equal with understanding when the expert tells him this or that. But the layman's understanding of human nature makes it possible for him, in the context of what is cultivated together with the physician in social life, to approach specialized knowledge with understanding in such a way that he can say “yes” in a democratically conceived parliament not merely on the basis of authority but on the basis of a certain understanding. If we take a close look at such a specialized field and see how the three members of the social organism interact, then, my dear audience, we find the full justification of this idea of the threefold social organism. One can only fight this idea of the threefold social organism if one has first grasped it only in the abstract.

Today, I could not give you more than a sketchy indication of what follows from the threefold social order in a specific area, the area of hygiene, if one thinks correctly about it. But if the paths I have only been able to hint at today are pursued further, it will be seen that although those who approach the impulse of the threefold social organism with a few abstract concepts may, to a certain extent, oppose it – as a rule, they present reasons that one has long since accepted as objections oneself. But anyone who approaches the individual areas of life with full inner understanding and the living out of these individual areas with all that they bring into human life - that is what social life is about - anyone who really understands something in a specific area of life, who makes an effort to understand something of true life practice in any field, will be led more and more into the direction indicated by the idea of the threefold social organism.

This idea did not arise out of a reverie, out of abstract idealism; it arose as a social demand of the present and the near future precisely from the concrete, appropriate consideration of the individual areas of life. And again, when one penetrates these individual areas of life with what emerges from the impulse of the threefold social organism, then one finds for all these areas that which, it seems to me, is needed for them today. And I just wanted to give you a few brief indications this evening of how the field in which blind submission to authority is still accepted today, can be enriched by the spiritual science that follows from the threefold social organism. For this reason it may be said here: Through this enrichment, which the field of hygiene can receive from a spiritually expanded medicine, hygiene can become a social, a truly social matter, and it can also be cultivated in the most genuine sense in a highly democratic way as a general matter of the people.

Following his lecture, Rudolf Steiner answers a series of questions submitted in writing.

Dear attendees! With regard to the matters discussed today, it is important to first address the whole spirit of what has been said. It is sometimes difficult to answer questions that are formulated from the present way of thinking and feeling without reformulating them or at least without explaining them properly. This first question, which probably seems terribly simple to you or many of you, so that it could be answered in a few sentences or with one sentence, is:

How do you get rid of sleeping too long?

Well, to answer this question, I would have to give an even longer lecture than the one I have already given, because I would first have to gather the various elements in order to answer this question properly. But perhaps the following can be said: Today, there is an intellectualistic state of mind in almost all people. Those who believe that they judge or live from their feelings, or who believe that they are not intellectualistic because of some other reason, are intellectualistic all the more. Now the basic character of intellectualistic soul life is that our instincts are ruined by it. Man's right instincts are ruined. It is actually the case that if you want to point to instincts that have not been completely ruined, you either have to point to primitive man or even to the animal kingdom.

For you see, on another occasion these days I was able to point to an example that says a great deal. There are birds that, out of their greed, eat insects, for example, cross spiders. But they fall into convulsions, into spasms, from eating these cross spiders, which are poisonous to them; they must die miserably very soon after swallowing the cross spider. But if henbane is nearby, the bird flies to it, sucks out the healing juice and saves its life with it. Now think about how something has developed that in us humans has shrunk to the few reflex instincts we have. For example, when a fly lands on our nose, we make a movement to get rid of it without first pondering the situation. A defensive instinct takes effect on the insult stimulus. In the bird that eats the cross spider, the effect that the cross spider has on its organism is followed by such an instinctive defense that it drives it to do something quite reasonable. We can still find such instincts in people who lived in the dim and distant past, if we understand their history correctly. But in our time, we have different experiences. I have always found it extremely painful when I came to someone who sat down at the lunch table and had a scale next to their plate. A scale, you really do experience something like that – I was otherwise accustomed to knife and fork and similar implements lying next to the plate – a scale, and with that he weighed the piece of meat, because only then did he know how much meat he should eat according to his organism, when he had weighed it. Just imagine how far removed from all real, original instincts a humanity has now become, to which something like this has to be prescribed.

It is therefore important not to stop at intellectualism, but to ascend to spiritual-scientific knowledge. You will now believe that I speak pro domo, even if it is pro domo of this great house, but I do not speak pro domo, but I actually express what I believe to have recognized as truth, quite apart from the fact that I myself represent this truth. One can see that if one penetrates not only into the merely intellectual, but into that which is to be grasped spiritually, and which therefore comes before humanity more in a pictorial sense, one you realize that by grasping such knowledge, which is not accessible to the mere intellect, you are led back to healthy instincts, not in individual cases, but more in the things that lie in the depths of life. He who spends at least some time, even if it be ever so little, on developing the quite different frame of mind that is needed to really understand spiritual science, will be led back to sound instincts in such matters as, for instance, the need for sleep. The animal does not sleep too much in normal living conditions. Primitive man did not sleep too much either. One need only educate oneself to healthy instincts, which are being unlearned in today's so intellectualized culture, so that one can say: A really effective way to get rid of sleeping too long is to be able to absorb spiritual truths without falling asleep in the process. If you fall asleep at once when you hear spiritual truths, then you will indeed not be able to get rid of sleeping too long. But if you succeed in really taking an inner human interest in the spiritual truths you are learning, then this inner human interest is activated in such a way that you can actually find out what bedtime is for your organism.

On the other hand, it is extremely difficult to give intellectualized rules, for example, to say that a person who has this or that about his liver or kidneys, which does not exactly make him ill in the usual sense, but which is there nonetheless, must sleep for such and such a length of time. As a rule, this does not lead to anything special. And artificially inducing sleep is not the same as when the body, out of its need for sleep, only denies the mind entry for as long as it needs to. So one can say: Proper hygiene, which follows directly from spiritual science, will also lead people to measure their sleep in the right way. Therefore, the other question that has been asked here cannot be answered so easily:

How can you know how much sleep you need?

I would like to say that you don't need to know this through discursive thought, it's not necessary at all, but you do need to acquire such instincts, which you acquire not by collecting notes from the humanities, but by the way you understand humanities when you take it in with full participation. Once you have developed this instinct, you can then measure the right amount of sleep for you individually. That is what is usually said about it. As I said, I can only give you a guide to answering this question, not what is perhaps expected. But what is expected is not always the right thing.

Is sleeping with the window open healthy?

It is not always possible to give a general answer to such questions. It is quite possible that for one person sleeping with the window open is very healthy, depending on the particular structure of their respiratory organs, but that for another person, for example, a room that is well ventilated before sleeping but then has the windows closed while they sleep is better. It is actually a matter of gaining an understanding of the relationship between the human being and the extra-human environment, in order to be able to judge in individual cases on the basis of this understanding.

How do you explain the occurrence of mental disorders caused by crimes committed from a spiritual point of view, that is, how can the physical illness that underlies the mental disorders be recognized here?

Well, here it would be necessary to go into the whole criminal and, basically, psychiatric anthropology if the question is to be dealt with exhaustively. I would just like to say the following: Firstly, when considering such things, it is important to assume that there are abnormalities among the organ dispositions of a person who becomes a criminal. You only have to follow the studies of Moriz Benedikt, the first important criminal anthropologist, who was really quite objective in his research in this direction, and you will see how, through pathological examination, the forms of individual human organs can indeed be linked to a disposition to commit crimes. So there is an abnormality inherent in it, although, of course, materialistic thinkers like Moriz Benedikt draw false conclusions from it, because someone who shows such signs in this direction is by no means a born criminal from the outset. The point is that one can work on the existing defects in the organism - these are organ defects, not the already existing mental illness - precisely through education and later through appropriate spiritual means, that is, in a spiritual-mental way, if only the facts are examined in a spiritual-scientific way. So the conclusions that Benedikt draws from the pathological investigations are not correct. One can indeed point to such organ defects, but then one must be clear about the fact that in ordinary human life, those things that are not intellectual but are emotional or affective do have an effect. These have an effect, to be sure, first on the glandular activity or the like, on the secretory activity, but in turn also on the organs. In this regard, I advise you to read, for example, an interesting booklet written by a Danish physician about the mechanics of emotional movements. There are many useful things in it in this regard. And now imagine the bodily disposition that can be traced in every person who comes into question as a criminal, and add to this everything that follows for the caught criminal in terms of emotional upheaval and what as a continuation of these mental shocks now in turn affects the organs, then you have the way to look for the defective organs for what produced a mental illness as a consequence, which can occur when a crime is committed. In this way, one must gain an understanding of such connections.

How does Theosophy relate to Anthroposophy? Is the former Theosophy no longer fully recognized here?

In answer to this I would simply say: Nothing but anthroposophically oriented spiritual science has ever been advocated here, and what is advocated here today has always been advocated here, and if this has been identified with what is advocated on many sides as so-called Theosophy, then that is simply due to a misunderstanding. This misunderstanding will also remain a misunderstanding because anthroposophically oriented spiritual science has, within certain limits, been within the framework of the Theosophical Society for some time; but even within the framework of this Theosophical Society, the representatives of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science at that time advocated nothing other than what I advocate here today. They just watched for a long time, as long as it didn't look too heretical. But when they realized that anthroposophy is something quite different from the abstract mysticism that often claims to be theosophy, they threw out the anthroposophists. This procedure has been adopted from the other side, while what is represented here has never had any other form than the one it has today.

Of course, those who deal with things only superficially or who have gained their knowledge only from those members of the Society who themselves have only dealt with it superficially – for one does not always have to stand outside in order to have a superficial understanding of anthroposophy or to confuse anthroposophy with theosophy, one can also stand inside with it in society - those who only acquire knowledge in the way of such superficially grasped activity come to such confusions. But here that is represented, which I have today characterized for a particular area, and never has anything else been represented here, even if, of course, work is constantly being done and certain things today can be characterized more precisely, more fully, more intensely than they could have been fifteen, ten or five years ago. That is precisely the nature of the work: that one progresses, that one progresses in particular in the formulation of making oneself understood in something as difficult as spiritual science. One really need not concern oneself with those people who, out of ill will, have twisted the fact that what was previously expressed in an imperfect way is later expressed more perfectly, and who derive all kinds of transformations of world views from it. For spiritual science, as it is meant here, is something living and not something dead, and the one who believes that it cannot progress, who wants to nail it down to where it once stood, in a way that often happens, does not believe in the living, but wants to make it into something dead.

Would you please explain how an epidemic like the flu or scarlet fever comes about if not through the transmission of germs. For many diseases, the pathogen has been scientifically identified. What is your position on this?

Well, if I were to discuss this question, which I have indicated that I do not want to take sides on, then I would have to give a whole lecture. However, I would like to draw attention to the following. The person who, through his knowledge, is compelled to point out that for illnesses accompanied by the appearance of bacilli or bacteria, there are deeper causes as primary causes than just the appearance of the bacilli, does not yet claim that the bacilli are not there. It is quite another thing to claim that the bacilli are there and that they appear in the wake of the illness than to look for the primary cause in the bacilli. What needs to be said in this regard has just been developed in detail in this course for physicians, which is now being held. But it takes time. This also applies to certain elements that need to be dealt with first. This cannot be quickly settled in a question and answer session. Nevertheless, I would like to point out the following. The human constitution is not as simple as one often imagines. Man is a many-sided being. In my book 'Riddles of the Soul' I show at the beginning that man is a threefold being, a being that can be called, firstly, the nerve-sense human being, secondly, the rhythmic human being, and thirdly, the metabolic human being. That is what man is. And these three aspects of human nature interact with each other; and if the human being is to be healthy, they must not interact in any other way than that there is a certain degree of separation between the areas. For example, the nerve-sense human being, who is more than what today's physiology imagines, cannot simply transfer his effects on the metabolic human being in a different way than that these effects are mediated by the rhythmic movements of the circulation and breathing processes, which extend to the outermost periphery of the organism. But this interaction can be interrupted in a certain way.

Now, this interaction brings about something very specific. For example, when such questions are asked, you will forgive me for having to answer them appropriately. I will be as discreet as possible, but it is necessary to say some words that have to be heard appropriately. For example, it is quite true that processes take place in the human abdomen that are integrated into the whole organism. If they are integrated into the whole organism, then they work in the right way. If they are either directly increased in the abdomen, so that they become more active there, or if the corresponding processes in the human head or in the human lungs become less intense, then something very peculiar occurs. Then it becomes apparent that the human organism, in order to live normally, must develop processes within itself that are only allowed to develop to a certain extent so that they take up the whole person. If the process is increased, then it localizes itself, and then, for example, a process occurs in the human abdomen whereby what takes place in the human head or in the lungs and what corresponds to certain processes in the abdomen is not properly separated. The processes always correspond in such a way that they run parallel to each other. But as a result, what may only be present in man to a certain extent in order to maintain his vitality, the vitality carried by spirit and soul, is, so to speak, raised above a certain level. Then, I would say, it becomes the atmosphere for all kinds of lower organisms, for all kinds of small organisms, and these small organisms can then develop there. That which is the creative element of the small organisms is always present in the human being, it is only extended throughout the whole organism. When it is concentrated, it provides a breeding ground for small organisms, microbes; they find a home in it. But the reason why they can thrive there is to be found in extremely fine processes in the organism, which then turn out to be the primary ones.

I am not speaking out of antipathy to the germ theory; I fully understand the reasons that people have for believing in germs. Believe me, if I did not have to speak as I am speaking now for factual reasons, I would recognize these reasons, but here it is the realization that necessarily leads to the recognition of something else and that then forces one to say it. [For example, I can say:] I see a certain landscape, there are many extraordinarily beautiful cattle, well cared for. I now ask: Why are these living conditions in the area? They come from the beautiful cattle. I explain the living conditions of this area by explaining that beautiful cattle have moved in from somewhere; they have spread there. I will not do that, but I will examine the primary causes, the diligence and understanding of the people, and that will explain to me why these beautiful cattle are developing on this land. But I would be making a superficial explanation if I just said: It's beautiful here, life is good here because beautiful cattle have moved in.

The same logic basically applies if I find the typhoid bacillus and then declare that one has typhoid fever because the typhoid bacillus has moved in. Much more is needed to explain typhoid fever than simply to refer to the typhoid bacillus. But one is misled in a completely different way if one succumbs to such false logic. Certainly, the primary processes, which provide the typhoid bacillus with the basis for its existence, are in turn the basis for all kinds of other things that are not primary. And it is very easy to either completely confuse or conflate what is secondary with the actual original clinical picture. These are the things that lead to the right point here, or show how what is justified in a certain sense can be shown to have its limits.

Perhaps you can see from the way I have given this answer – although I can only sketch it out and am therefore easily misunderstood – that this is really not about the all-too-popular ranting against the germ theory, but that it is really about examining things very seriously.

Could you give us some examples of how physical organic disorders can cause mental and spiritual suffering?

Well, if it were to be answered in detail, that too would, of course, be taking us much too far today. But I would like to point out just one thing. You see, the development of medical thought in the history of medicine is not as it is presented today, with Hippocrates as the beginning of medicine and Hippocraticism as its further development. As far as we can trace it, we know that Hippocrates was much more the last outpost of an old instinct-based medicine than merely the beginning of today's intellectual medicine. But we find something else as well. You see, in this old instinctive medicine, as long as it was still in force, people did not speak, for example, of a certain kind of mental depression, which is a very abstract way of expressing it, but rather of hypochondria - abdominal cartilaginousness. So they knew that hypochondria is a disorder of the abdomen, a hardening of the abdomen. We cannot say that the ancients were more mystical than we are.

Likewise, it is easy to show how certain chronic lung defects are definitely connected with what could be called a false mystical sense in people. And so we could point out all sorts of things, quite apart from the fact that – again, in line with a correct instinct – the ancients definitely pointed to something organic when it came to the temperaments. They derived the choleric temperament from bile, from white bile, the melancholic from black bile and all that black bile causes in the abdomen. They then derived the sanguine temperament from blood and the phlegmatic temperament from what they called mucus. But then, when they saw degenerations of the temperaments, they were absolutely things that indicated the degenerations of the organic matter concerned. How this was done in instinctive medicine and in instinctive hygiene can certainly be taken up in a strictly scientific way into the state of mind and, from the point of view of our present knowledge, cultivated.

Here is a question that could lead to further misunderstanding: Do you recognize eye diagnosis? Do you accept it as a science?

Now, it is generally true that in the case of an organism, and especially in the case of the complicated human organism, if you look at it in the right way, you can draw conclusions about the whole from all the possible individual parts. And again, the way these individual parts are arranged in the human organism has a great significance. In a sense, what the eye diagnostician examines in the iris is, on the one hand, so very isolated from the rest of the human organism, and on the other hand, it is so peculiarly integrated into the rest of the organism that it is indeed an expressive organ. But precisely with such things, one must not schematize; and the mistake with such things is that one does just that. For example, it is quite true that people of a different mental and physical constitution show different characteristics in their irises than other people. If one wants to apply something like this, one needs such intimate knowledge of what happens in the human organism that, if one has this intimate knowledge, one actually no longer needs to search from a single organ. And if you are instructed to adhere to some intellectualized rules and to do such things schematically, then not much of value will come of it.

What relation do diseases have to the progress of world history, especially the newly emerging diseases?

A chapter of an entire cultural history! Well, I will just note the following. When studying history, one must have a sense for practicing symptomatology, that is, to understand much of what is taken as history today only as a symptom for much that lies much deeper behind it, which is really the spiritual current that only carries these symptoms. And so that which is in the depths of human development does indeed appear symptomatically in these or those diseases of the time. It is interesting to study the relationships between what prevails in the depths of human development and what takes place in the symptoms of this or that disease. One can also conclude from the presence of certain diseases that impulses are at work in historical development that cannot escape a symptomatology of this kind. But the question could then also point to something else that is not insignificant when pursuing the historical development of humanity. This is this: Diseases, whether they occur in individual human beings or take the form of an epidemic in human society, are often also reactions to other degenerations, which may be regarded as less serious from a health point of view, but which must nevertheless be regarded as very serious from a moral or spiritual point of view. What is said here must not be applied to medicine or hygiene – that would be quite wrong. Diseases must be cured. In hygiene, one must work to benefit people. One cannot say, “First I will check whether it is perhaps your karma to have this illness; then I will let you have it, if not, I can cure you.” These views do not apply when it comes to healing. But what does not apply to us humans in our intervention in nature does, therefore, objectively apply in the outside world. And there one must say that, for example, many things that exist as a predisposition to moral excesses are so deeply ingrained in the human organization that reactions occur which then appear in certain illnesses, and that the illness is the suppression of a moral excess.

In the case of the individual, it is not even of such great importance to follow these things, because they should be left to one's individual destiny and one should not interfere in them any more than one interferes with the secrecy of other people's letters - unless one is guided by the view that is so prevalent at the moment: “opened by the authorities under the laws of war”. Just as little as one should interfere with a person's letter secrets, so little should one interfere with his individual karma. But in world history, that is again something else. There it is important because in world history, the individual human being plays only a, I would say statistical role in its laws. It must always be pointed out that statistics provide a good basis for life insurance companies to assess mortality rates, on which their premiums are based. The matter is quite accurate and the calculation is quite correct, it is all quite scientific. But now – one does not have to die at the very moment that has been calculated by the life insurance statistics, nor does one have to live as long as has been calculated. When the individual comes into consideration, other things occur. But when groups of people or even the whole development of humanity comes into consideration, then it may very well be that one is not a superstitious person, but very much a scientific person, when one examines the extent to which symptoms of illness, illnesses that occur are corrective of other excesses, so that one can indeed see a certain reaction of the disease or at least a disease caused by something that, if the disease had not come, would have developed in a completely different form. These are just a few points on how what is touched upon by this question can be considered.

But now our time is so far advanced that we too will now follow the others who have already left in such large numbers.

I hope you will permit me to insert into today’s proceedings at this Pedagogical and Artistic Congress an example taken from the art of recitation and declamation, and to make some observations of an interpolated nature.

Art is always a particularly difficult theme on which to speak, in that art is conveyed through immediate sensation – through immediate perception. It must be received as a direct impression. We are thus in a quite special position in speaking about art at a Congress where our aim is a clarification that is reached both through knowledge and through a whole style of education and teaching-practice. Certainly all the lectures that have been held here have stressed the necessity, in the case of Waldorf education, of introducing an artistic quality into the art of education and teaching in general. But when confronting art itself, one would prefer, as I hinted in a former lecture, to preserve a chaste silence. Now every argument, every show of feeling, every human volition ultimately passes over to form the ongoing stream of human civilisation. They are contained in the three greatest impulses behind all human evolution and all historical events: the ideals of religion, art and knowledge. And in our day an attempt is quite justifiably made to make art the bearer of our ideal of knowledge, so that some possibility may once more be found of our rising upward with our understanding from the realm of substance, of matter, into the spiritual. I have tried to show how art is the way to gain a true knowledge of man, in that artistic creativity and sensitivity are the organs for a genuine knowledge of man. Nature herself becomes a true artist the moment she ascends from the multiplicity of facts and beings of the universe to bring about man. This is not said merely as a metaphor, but as a deeper knowledge of the universe and of man. And again, confronted with art, it may be said that it is an intrusion when we want to speak artistically about art. To speak about art is to lead what is spoken back to a sort of religious perception. Thereby religion is grasped in its widest sense, in which it does not only embrace what we today rightly regard as explicitly religious – the quality of reverence in man – but also includes humour, as understood in the highest sense. [Note 29] A sort of religious feeling must always prepare the mood for art. For when we speak about art we must speak out of the spirit. How can we find words for works of art of the sublimest kind, such as Dante's Commedia, if our language does not embody moments of religious insight?

This was indeed felt, and rightly felt, when art came into being. Art originated at a time when science still formed a unity, a common whole along with religion and art. At the beginning of certain great works of art we hear words which, I would say, seem like a confirmation of these comments from world-history. It is truly out of a cosmic awareness that Homer begins his poem with the words:

Sing, O Muse, of the anger of Peleus’ son Achilles.

Homer himself does not sing: Homer is conscious that he must raise his soul to the superhuman, the super-sensible; that he must place his words as a sacrificial gift before the higher powers he serves, if he is to become a truly artistic poet. (Of course, the question of Homer’s identity has nothing to do with this.) And if we survey a longer period, and come to one of the modern poets, we hear how Klopstock begins his Messiah with words that are indeed different, but formally sound quite similar:

Sing, immortal soul, of sinful man’s redemption,

Which the Messiah on earth in human form accomplished.

When we begin from the one poem and progress to the other, we pass through the period in which man traversed the great, immeasurable distance from complete surrender to the divine spiritual powers, whose earthly sheath he felt himself to be, to the point where man in his freedom started to feel himself a sheath only of his own soul. But there too, at the beginning of the great epoch of German poetry, Klopstock appealed to the invisible – as Goethe constantly did, even if he did not overtly say so. Thus among poets themselves we can observe the consciousness of a sort of translation into the super-sensible.

The super-sensible, however, does not speak in words. Words are in every instance prose. Words are in every instance components of a discourse, components of a psychic act which submits to the conditions of logic. Logic exists in order that we may become aware of external beings and occurrences in their external sense-reality; logic must not, therefore, intrude upon spiritual reality. The moment we arrive by means of logic at a prose sentence we must feel the solid earth under our feet. For the spiritual does not speak in human words. The spiritual world goes only as far as the syllable, not as far as the word. Thus we can say that the poet is in a curious position. The poet has to make use of words, since these are after all the instruments of human speech: but in making use of words he necessarily deserts his proper artistic domain. He can only achieve his aim if he leads the word back to syllable-formation. In the quantities, metres and weight of syllable-formation – this is the region where the word has not yet become word, but still submits to the musical, imaginative and plastic, to a speech-transcendent spirituality – there the poet holds sway. And when the poet has to make use of words, he feels inwardly how he has to lead word-formations back to the region that he left under the necessity of passing from syllable to word. He feels that through rhyme, through the entire configuration of the verse, he must again make good what is lost when the word abandons the concrete quantities and weight that belong to the syllable, and round it out artistically, imparting form and harmony.

Here we are vouchsafed a glimpse into the intimacies of the poet’s soul. This disposition is truly felt by a real poet. Platen is not alone in having left us some remarkable comments on what I have just attempted to describe:

Only to rambling dilettantes

Are formal strictures ‘senseless’. Necessity:

That is thy sacrificial gift, O Genius.

Platen invokes Genius, observing that it is inherent in Genius to fashion the syllables in accordance with quantity, metre and weight. Rambling off into prose is merely the foolishness of the half-talented. (Although, as I have mentioned, these make up ninety-nine per cent of our versifiers.) And not only Platen, but Schiller, too, puts it rather beautifully when he says:

It is the peculiar property of an untainted and purely quantitative verse that it serves as the sensible presentation of an inner necessity of thought; and conversely, any licence in the treatment of syllable quantities makes itself felt in a certain arbitrariness. From this perspective it is of particular importance, and touches upon the most intimate laws of art.

It is to the necessity inherent in syllable-quantities that Schiller refers in this pronouncement.

The declaimer or reciter, as the interpreter of the poet’s art, must give special attention to what I have just described. He has to conduct what comes before him as a poetical composition, which obviously communicates through words, back to quantity, metre and the weight of the syllables. What then flows out into the words has to be consciously rounded out so as to accord with the verse-structure and rhyme. In our own age, with its lack of artistic feeling, there has arisen a curious kind of declamatory-recitative art – a prosaic emphasis on the prose-sense, something quite unartistic. The real poet always goes back from the prosaic or literal to the musical or plastic. Before he committed the words of a poem to paper, Schiller always experienced a wordless, indeterminate melody, a soul-experience of melody. As yet without words, it flowed along melodically like a musical theme, onto which he then threaded the words. One might conjecture that Schiller could have conjured the most varied poems, as regards verbal content, out of the same musical theme. And to rehearse his iambic verse-dramas, Goethe stood in front of his actors with a baton, like a conductor, considering the formation of sound, the balance of the syllables, the musical rhythm and time-signature to be the essential, rather than the literal meaning. For this reason it has become necessary for our own spiritual stream to return to a true art of recitation and declamation, where what has been debased through the means of expression imposed upon the poet to the level of mere prose can once again be raised, so as to regain the level of a super-sensible formative and musical experience.

This work was taken in hand by Frau Dr. Steiner, who over the last decades has tried to develop an art of recitation and declamation in which something that transcends prose to become inwardly eurythmic, the imaginative and musical configuration of syllable-quantities, the imaginative quality of the sound, whether plastic or musical – in which all this is once more made apparent. This comes out differently in lyric, epic and drama – I shall deal with that presently. But we would first like to show how what is indicated here can in general be derived from poetry that is truly artistic.

As a first example you will hear “Ostern”, by Anastasius Grün, a poem particularly suited to such a passing-beyond-the-content and approach to the aesthetic form. It is a somewhat old-fashioned poem that is (in a rather narrow sense) topical, in being a poem dedicated to Easter. On the other hand it is not topical, in the sense that it dates back to the first half of the nineteenth century, an age when the poet still felt bound to acknowledge the necessity of plastic and rhythmical formative power. Let us accept the poem as it is – though it will nowadays be found tedious by those who attend to the prose content alone, as being rather antiquated in its imagery. Even allowing for its tediousness as prose, however, a genuine poet has here attempted to comply with the inner aesthetic necessity of the poem.

We shall then continue with a modern poet, with “An Eine Rose”, a sonnet by Albert Steffen. It is precisely in the sonnet that, with good will, we can discern how the verbal presentation is compensated by the strictly bounded form – this atones for the sin committed with regard to the words, and the whole is then rounded out and rendered euphonious. In the case of a poet like Albert Steffen, whose explorations extend into the hidden depths of his view of the world, it is interesting to observe how he simultaneously feels the necessity of transmuting what comes to light as a way of knowledge into the strictest aesthetic forms.

In the “Terzinen” of Christian Morgenstern we shall see how a peculiar poetic form – free terzetti – subsists on the basis of a feeling for continuity, for openness of form, in contrast to the sonnet which is based on a rounding-off of feeling. We shall see how the terzetti, albeit towards the end of the poem, have a quality of openness, while yet constituting a bounded whole from what flows into the words.

And then perhaps I may adduce three poems of my own: “Frühling”, “Herbst”, and “Weltenseelengeister”, in which I have tried to bring into strict forms the most inward experiences of the human soul – not the forms of conventional prosody or metrics, but forms which stem from the actual emotion, while at the same time they try to contain the amorphous, fluctuating, glittering life within the soul in internally strict forms.

Frau Dr. Steiner will now demonstrate these six, more lyrical poems. (“Ostern” is, of course, a long poem of which we will present only Part V.)

OSTERN

Und Ostern wird es einst, der Herr sieht nieder

Vom Ölberg in das Tal, das klingt und blüht;

Rings Glanz und Fühl’ und Wonn’ und Wonne wieder,

So weit sein Aug’ – ein Gottesauge – sieht!

Ein Ostern, wie’s der Dichtergeist sieht blühen,

Dem’s schon zu schaun, zu pflücken jetzt erlaubt

Die Blütenkränze, die als Kron’ einst glühen

Um der noch ungebornen Tage Haupt!

Ein Ostern, wie’s das Dichteraug’ sieht tagen,

Das überm Nebel, der das Jetzt umzieht,

Die morgenroten Gletscherhäupter ragen

Der werdenden Jahrtausende schon sieht!

Ein Ostern, Auferstehungsfest, das wieder

Des Frühlings Hauch auf Blumengräber sät;

Ein Ostern der Verjüngung, das hernieder

Ins Menschenherz der Gottheit Atem weht!

Sieh, welche Wandlung blüht auf Zions Bahnen!

Längst hält ja Lenz sein Siegeslager hier;

Auf Bergen wehn der Palmen grüne Fahnen,

Im Tale prangt sein Zelt in Blütenzier!

Längst wogt ja über all’ den alten Trümmern

Ein weites Saatenmeer in goldner Flut,

Wie fern im Nord, wo weisse Wellen schimmern,

Versunken tief im Meer Vineta ruht.

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

Emil Molt: I have the honor of welcoming you this evening and thanking you for the large attendance, which shows us that our invitation has fallen on fertile ground. The “Federation for the Threefold Social Organism” has seen fit to invite a number of prominent figures here this evening to put all the questions that the individual members of the audience have on their minds - questions that have arisen, for example, from the lectures - so that these questions can be clarified by Dr. Steiner himself. We believe that the lectures that have been held here in Stuttgart for four to six weeks are not only given to bring something interesting to the listeners, but above all to allow something to mature in the listeners that can be turned into action. We also believe that in order to bring such a movement into being, it is not enough to have only a few people as the driving force; rather, we need collaborators from all walks of life.

Now I ask you to take the floor, and I ask Dr. Steiner to answer any questions that arise.

Dr. Schmucker: I would like to make it clear from the start that I am asking purely as a private person. The resolution that has been formulated from the various lectures calls upon the government to appoint Dr. Steiner to implement the threefold social order that he has been advocating as quickly as possible. Now I must honestly confess that I have not yet had enough time to delve into his book and follow all the lectures. So I apologize if my question reveals that I don't know whether Dr. Steiner has perhaps already commented on the matter that is close to my heart. My question is this: Let us assume that one day the government takes the position that we want to work together with Dr. Steiner. Let us assume that Dr. Steiner comes to some ministry, for example the Ministry of Labor. He is seated in a room that is full of government papers and commentaries. He finds all the codes of law that deal with the solution of the social question, for example the Workers' Protection Act, the Law on Employee Insurance and so on, but above all the many laws that were brought to light by the new government after the great upheaval, and which all point in the same direction, namely, to satisfy as much as possible the social aspirations of the workers and employees. How does Dr. Steiner envision this work – the transition from the current mode of governance to the future one? What should happen to the current popular representations, to the provincial assemblies, to the National Assembly?

Rudolf Steiner: You have approached the question from a certain perspective, from the government perspective. Therefore, I can only answer it from this perspective. And the answer is that, of course, at the first act of government, one would have to foresee a great deal that could happen as a result of this first act of government.

As a first act of government, I would have something to think about – isn't that right, we are of course talking quite openly here – which of course has little to do with the question of what I would do if, for my sake, I were placed in the Ministry of Labor, found law books and the like in there and now had to continue working there. I would just like to formally state in advance that I had absolutely nothing to do with the wording of the resolution you are talking about. I would not be able to accept this interpretation of the resolution, but only be able to characterize my position on this question.

For example, I would first have to state that I do not belong in a labor ministry at all, that I have nothing to do there, for the simple reason that there can be no labor ministry within the unified state community in the near future. That is why I recently said in a lecture that the first act of government should be to take the initiative on various matters, in order to create a basis for further action.

First of all, it must be understood that a present-day government is, to a certain extent, the continuation of what has emerged as a government from previous conditions. However, only part of this government lies in the straightforward continuation of previous conditions, namely that which would include the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of the Interior - for Internal Security - and the Ministry of Hygiene. These things would lie in the continuation of what has arisen from previous government maxims. In all other respects, such a government would have to take the initiative to become a liquidation ministry, that is, a ministry that takes the initiative to the right and to the left in order to create the conditions for a free spiritual life that would be based on its own administration and constitution and would have to organize itself once the transition from the present to the following conditions has been overcome. This administration would also have a corresponding representation, which of course could not be shaped like today's popular representations, but would have to grow out of the special conditions of intellectual life. This would have to be formed purely out of the self-administration of intellectual life; in this context, the system of education and culture is particularly important. On the one hand, it would have to be handed over to the self-administration of intellectual life.

On the other hand, a liquidation ministry would have to hand over to the autonomous economic life everything that is, for example, traffic and trade; the Ministry of Labor would also have to find its administration in organizations that would develop out of economic life. These would, of course, be very radical things, but from this point of view they can only be radical things. Only then would a basis be created for any kind of treatment of specific questions.

What I have dealt with now does not change anything with regard to what has been built from below. It only indicates the path by which something new can be created out of what already exists. Only when those organizations have been created out of economic life that would continue what is in the codes of law you mentioned, only then could [further] be tackled. That would only be a step that could come later. I am not thinking of a program, but of a sequence of steps, all of which are real actions, real processes. All I say in my books and lectures are not indications of how to do it, but how to create the conditions for people to enter into the possible interrelationships in order to do the things. Economic laws can only grow out of economic life itself, and only if all those corporations are expressed in their impulses in economic life that can contribute something to the shaping of this economic life from the individual concrete circumstances of economic life.

So, on the part of the government, I would consider that as the first step: to understand that it must be a liquidation government.

I am happy to go into further specific issues that arise from this.

Dr. Schmucker: Suppose you were to get some kind of self-government to regulate economic life. Could the works councils, which are now to be introduced for individual companies under the Reich bill, serve as a means of achieving this self-administration if – which is at least the intention – the works councils were expanded upwards, for example by combining the Württemberg works councils into a state workers' council or state works council and, at the highest level, into a Reich works council or Reich economic council? The bill uses the term “works council” for a representation that would become a pure workers' representation in which employers would not be included. Just as the works council works together with the employer, so too could employers and employees sit together at the higher state level, and then not only employees but also employers would be represented in a Reich Economic Council, so that here too there would be equal representation. Could Dr. Steiner see the possibility that such an organization would fulfill some of the wishes of economic life and that these economic self-governing corporations would be assigned all further tasks that Dr. Steiner believes should be performed by economic corporations as self-governing corporations?

Rudolf Steiner: I would ask you not to take the few introductory sentences I am about to say as abstractions, but as a summary of experiences. These can only be summarized in just such sentences.

The way in which the structure of economic life has developed means that this economic life suffers from the fact that harmonization of interests is not possible within the existing structure. I will only hint at some of it. For example, under the development of our economic life, the worker is not interested in production - I am ignoring the really foolish interest, for example, in profit sharing, which I consider impractical. The worker is interested in economic life, as things stand today, only as a consumer, while the capitalist, in turn, is basically only interested in economic life as a producer, and again only as a producer from the point of view of profit - that is his point of view, economically speaking, it cannot be otherwise. So today we have no way of organizing a real harmonization of consumer and producer interests; it is not part of our economic structure.

What we must achieve is that we actually make those people who are involved in shaping the economic structure equally interested in consumption and production, so that no one who intervenes in a formative way – not only through judgment but also through action – has a one-sided interest in production or consumption, but rather that through the organization itself there is an equal interest in both. This can only be achieved if we are able to gradually let people form small corporations out of economic life itself, and out of all forms of economic life, which then naturally continue to grow. They must be corporations because trust must be established. This is only possible if larger corporations are gradually built up uniformly from smaller ones, that is, only if we have personalities with their judgments and also with their influence based on the economic foundation, who work in all areas of social life through their aptitude for managing economic life as such. If we want to socialize, we cannot socialize economic life through institutions, but only by being able to interest people in the institutions in the way described and by having them participate in them continuously.

Therefore, I consider it most necessary today that we do not create laws by which works councils are established, but that we have the possibility to create works councils from all forms of economic life – so that they are initially there – and to let a works council emerge from these works councils, which only has a true meaning when it forms the mediation between the individual branches of production. A works council that only exists for individual branches is of little significance. It is only when the activities of the works councils unfold primarily between the branches of production that are in interaction that they have a meaning.

I therefore said: the individual works council actually only has a purpose in the company if it has an informational significance. What must be done with this idea of works councils in economic life can actually only be done by the works councils as a whole, because it can only result in a blessing for the individual companies in the future if the works councils emerge from the structure of the whole economic life. So I think that the real focus is on the works council as a whole, in other words, on what is negotiated between the works councils of the individual factories, and not on what happens only in the individual factories.

But then I can only expect this institution to be a blessing if these works councils – which, of course, have to be set up on the basis of existing conditions, which must not arise from blue-sky hopes but from what exists today – if they are elected, for example, from all those who are somehow involved in the company. I do not want to speak of “employers” and “employees”, but of people from the circle of all those who are really involved in the business, either intellectually or physically. So all those who participate in the business would form the basis for such councils to develop out of themselves. If the matter were approached from this economic angle, the reasonable employers to date would naturally be included in their capacity as spiritual leaders, and we would have a works council that would at least not initially have elected representatives from all [areas] – that would only be the case after some time – but which could represent the interests of the most diverse people involved in economic life. However, I could only imagine that such a workers' council would nevertheless focus its main attention on the conditions of production, so I actually cannot imagine that a mere workers' council would be anything meaningful. I can only imagine that in addition to the workers' council – not overlooking the objection that one might say: Where will work still be done if all this is to be done in practice? I can only imagine that the workers' councils will be supplemented by transport councils and economic councils, because the workers' council will primarily deal with production, but the economic council with consumption in the broadest sense. For example, consumption would also have to include everything that we consume from abroad, everything that is imported; everything that is imported would be subject to the economic council. I am not saying that everything is exemplary today, but these are the three most important [types of] workers' councils that must be established first: the workers' council, the transport council, and the economic council. To do this, only one wing of the government would have to take the initiative, but it would have no laws to create, but would only have to see to it that these workers' councils are set up. These councils would then have to begin to create their own constitution, that is, to create what flows from independent economic life, what they have experienced in it. The constitution of the three councils would arise entirely from the circumstances themselves. This is what I would consider the first step: the creation of workers' councils out of the circumstances. Only then would these have to give themselves their constitution. That, in practice, is what I would call breaking up the economy in a given area. As long as there is the idea that laws concerning workers' councils are issued by a central government, I consider that to be something that has nothing to do with what should happen. Taking the first step first – that is what the time demands of us.

Dr. Schmucker: In my opinion, this work, which the participants themselves should carry out in order to form and manage organizations, requires a highly developed workforce. However, the experiences we have had with the workforce during the war and with the labor force in recent months make me hesitant to assume that the majority of the workforce – or at least the vast majority – is up to this great task. When you have experiences like the ones we have had recently, where the workers of a company come and demand under threat of violence: You have made so much profit now. You may be doing badly now, but the state will take a large part of what you have earned if you do not share it. We are now demanding cost-of-living allowances! This whole process is well known to everyone, this continued increase in wages, food prices and so on, one thing becoming more expensive as a result of another. These experiences cast doubt on whether workers and employees are at this high level of development to fulfill the task that is required of them here.

Rudolf Steiner: If we start from the principle that we always want to do the best we can possibly imagine or that we can envision in any ideal way, then we will never carry out in practice what really needs to be done. I naturally admit that a great deal of what you have just said is absolutely right. But I would ask you to consider the following: in the last few weeks and months, I have had the opportunity to talk to a great many workers, and I have found that when you really speak to them in their language, they come up with things that really have a real basis. I have found that he then proves to be inwardly receptive and realizes that what is to be done can only be something that does not undermine economic life or cause it to die, but builds it up. It is extremely easy to make the worker understand what needs to be done if you address what he himself has experienced. And from there he will easily grasp certain interrelations in economic life. Of course, there is still a great deal that he cannot grasp, for the simple reason that the circumstances never allowed him to see into certain interrelations, into which one simply cannot see when one stands at the machine from morning till night. I already know that too.

But now, of course, there is the added factor that even our most experienced principals do not delve very deeply into the real conditions of economic life. I would like to quote Rathenau not as an economist [oriented towards the whole], but almost as a principal, because his writings actually reveal on every page that he really speaks from the standpoint of the principal, the industrial entrepreneur. Now, basically, from this point of view, there are no absolute objections to be made against these statements, because basically all the facts are correct. I would like to mention just one thing: Rathenau calculates the actual meaning of surplus value. Of course, today it is very easy to prove that the concept of surplus value as it existed some time ago is now obsolete. Rathenau also does this calculation very nicely in detail, and comes to the quite correct conclusion that basically none of the surplus value can be claimed. Because if the worker gets it, he would have to give it back, because the institutions make it necessary for it to be used as a reserve. This calculation is, of course, simply correct. The question is whether it is possible to escape the result of this calculation, whether it is economically possible to find a way to escape the result of this calculation. The point is that there is no way to escape Rathenau's calculation other than to realize what I have given as an answer in my book: that the moment any given sum of means of production is completed, it can no longer be sold, that is, it no longer has any purchase value. Then the whole calculation collapses, because the Rathenau calculation is only possible if the means of production can be sold again at any time for a very specific value. So the right prerequisite is missing for the actual conclusion, for which the principal is not yet available today. They would first have to understand that we will get nowhere because we are at an impasse if we do not make major changes. And it would be immediately apparent if we were to find common ground, but on ground where the only interest is in continuing economic life and not in serving the interests of the individual; we would see that the principals know something, but that they have one-sided knowledge that can be supplemented by the others.

I believe I can say, with reference to everything that an individual can produce intellectually in the way of beautiful ideals: “One is a human being, two are people, more than two are beasts.” As soon as we come to the kind of thinking that is supposed to be realized in the social order, the opposite principle applies: “One alone is nothing, several are a little something, and many are those who can then do it.” Because when twelve people from the most diverse party-political directions sit together with the goodwill to summarize their individual experiences as partial experiences, we not only have a sum of twelve different opinions, but by these opinions really taking action, a potentiation of these twelve impulses arises. Thus a quite tremendous sum of economic experience is formed simply by our socializing human opinion in this way. That is the important thing. Well, I must say, I believe that what you say is right, so long as you are dealing with a class of workers who demand simply from their standpoint as consumers. Because the fact that they have demands will of course not lead to anything that can lead to any kind of socialization. This is the only way to dismantle the economy. We must not imagine that we will achieve ideal conditions the day after tomorrow, but a condition that is possible to live in if we do things this way. At this point in particular, we should think: What is possible to live in? – and not: Are people smart enough? Let us take people as they are and do the best we can with them, and not speculate about whether people are highly developed, because ultimately something must always happen. We simply cannot do nothing; something must happen from some quarter. I do not see why, if we take people out of economic life, they should be less highly developed than, for example, the government people and the members of the former German Reichstag in all the years in which what happened then had terrible effects. There, too, only what was possible happened. The point is that we do what is possible with the majority of people who are there. I do not imagine that an ideal state could be created, but an organism that is possible to live in.

Dr. Riebensam: I would like to address the question of the works councils. What still gives us the opportunity to talk to the workers? The situation is now escalating to the point where we need to find a lightning rod. I want to get to the practical point and ask: Why do you want to put a car on the road without a steering wheel? In my opinion, such a machine is our workforce. I have spoken to many of them about this and expressed my view that I consider it impossible to come to any kind of cooperation with a large workforce in this way. For the moment a committee of workers makes itself the representative of a certain opinion, every member of the committee will be stoned by the workers. You assume goodwill on the part of the workers. I have tried everything, and not without success at first, because I have the trust of the workers, ever since I have been able to speak to them and they have been able to hear me. But the people who do not come are in the majority. I can perhaps talk to two thousand, the others do not have the good will. From experience, I know that the great multitude is capable of confusing those who are initially convinced. The wisest of the workers' committees, with whom I have spoken privately and who expressed positive views, are now back to the point where I ask myself: has all the work I have done for six months been in vain? I have made certain proposals to the government with the intention that they be implemented in such a way as to satisfy the workers. If these proposals are issued as decrees by the government, all this work will be in vain. But I think it is useless to establish works councils without any tax; the craziest things happen then. Since you yourself say that we have to start at some point, we would have to start in such a way that it could be implemented.

Rudolf Steiner: All that you have said actually amounts to the fact that it is basically not possible at present for the management of the companies to cope with the workforce. This has of course not come about without preconditions, it has of course only gradually become so. I believe that you misjudge the situation if you rely too much on the goodwill of the workforce. Because the workers will demand goodwill from you, for the reason that they have learned through agitation - to a certain extent justifiably - that nothing will come of it. The workers will say: We can have this goodwill, but the entrepreneur will not have it. This mistrust is already too great today. Therefore, there is no other way than to gain as much trust as possible. The moment someone is found who really knows something about social objectives that the workers can understand, and not just based on good will but on insight, even for two thousand workers – or for eight thousand, for that matter – the situation changes. Of course, if you talk to two thousand workers, they in turn may be confused by the other side, but the situation will still turn out like this: If you really talk to the workers about what they understand, you are not just talking to two thousand people who are confused by the people they last talked to, but these will in turn have an effect on the others.

But if we ask ourselves whether this path has even been taken yet, we have to say that basically it has not been taken at all. And everything is done to make this path unattractive over and over again. Naturally, when the worker sees that works councils are decreed from above by law, this is a complete denial of trust. So let something come from the central authorities today in a truly audible way, something that makes sense, so that the worker can see that it makes sense. But nothing like that is happening. And that is why the movement for the threefold social order actually exists, because something is to be created that really constitutes a conceivable goal. You will not reach the worker by just talking about concrete institutions, because he has been pushed out into a mere consumer position. This is not explained to the worker by anyone. Everything that is being done is moving in exactly the opposite direction. Let the institutions arise on their own initiative today. If this works council is really to be constituted, just let it come, perhaps only in the form of proposals - after all, many proposals can be put forward here -; not just one single type of bill. That is, of course, the best way to have the entire working class against the works councils. Today there is no way to make any headway in this way. Today we can only succeed if we want something other than to use force against force, namely to confront personalities with personalities, to gain personal trust. That is what the worker can do. The one who understands how to talk to the worker in his language in such a way that the worker realizes that nothing will come of it if he only ever pushes up the wage scale, and he also sees that there is a will to finally move in this [new] direction, then he will go along with it and work as well. He will not work with you if you just make legislative proposals, but he wants to see that the personalities in the government actually have the will to move in a certain direction.

This is what the current government is also being criticized for; people have the idea that they want to do something, but what is happening is all moving along the same tracks as before. There is nothing new in it anywhere. On the other hand, when people are involved, it is not a matter of somehow setting a car in motion and not giving it a steering wheel. It really must have a steering wheel if it is to be able to move. We cannot help but say: either we try to move forward and go as far as we can, or we are heading for chaos. There is no other way to do it.

Dr. Riebensam: I agree with all that. I go along with the idea that the worker should be shown this goal to begin with, but not be led down the same old paths. I think it's possible that today you will see that the workers in a factory are throwing a great deal together. But perhaps it would be possible to find a way for the workers to play a fruitful role. We are willing to take the workers into account, but they must also take our point of view into consideration if they do not want all faith in a possibility of understanding to disappear. Somehow we have to find a way. [But it's not that easy.] When the workers come to set up works councils and we tell them we want to sit down together and do the right thing, then that is basically an abstract template; they don't meet our advice at all. I was at a workers' meeting the other day when the workers demanded too much. They said that we should not approach the matter with narrow-minded thinking; it would no longer be useful to make any arrangements; they wanted to decide everything themselves in the future. This realization must be the basis for my future actions. However, I could imagine a works council that meets every eight days and with which I discuss everything before tensions arise. But we should also tell the workers: we cannot simply create a works council on our own.

Rudolf Steiner: You see, in these matters it is important to take systematic experiences, not unsystematic ones. We have had a whole series of workers' meetings, almost every day, because we had no other option. One thing emerged again and again in these workers' meetings. It was very noticeable that, as an extreme, the workers themselves said: Yes, if we are alone, how are we supposed to cope in the future? Of course we need those who can lead; we need the spiritual worker. This matter does not arise from dictating, but only from really working with people. That is why I considered the fact (Molt will be able to confirm this) that from the very beginning, when he came with other friends to put this matter into effect, I told him: the first requirement is that honest trust be acquired, but not in the usual way of: I am the principal and you are the worker, but rather from person to person, so that the worker is really initiated step by step into the management of the whole business and also gets an idea of when the business ceases to be economically viable. That is something that is indispensable, and I openly ask the question: where has it happened? Where is it being done? — Nowadays, a lot of things are done in government by individual commissions getting together and thinking about the best way of doing this or that. In this case, forgive the harsh word, the horse is being put before the cart. It is impossible to make progress with that. Today it is necessary to create a living link between those who work with their hands and those who can understand it. It is much more necessary than holding ministerial meetings for individual men to go among the people and talk from person to person. That is the ground on which one must begin first. One must not be put out if success does not come at the first attempt; it is bound to come by the fourth or fifth time. So, wouldn't it be true that if only some kind of beginning had been made in what is actually practical today, one would be able to see [that something is emerging]; but there is no beginning, people are opposed to it.

Emil Molt: A start has been made. May I point out to those gentlemen who are interested that we have been introducing this kind of works council for weeks. Even though I am well aware that the matter is still in its infancy, it has been shown that we have already gained the trust while we are negotiating here on how to gain that trust. This is essential because we set out to make fewer cigarettes and more people. We have used the factory to make people. Making cigarettes is only a means to an end. We set out to really get in touch with people and to do this during working hours. You just have to take that time. It's about realizing things from the bottom up. If things are like this elsewhere now - a lot has been missed in the last six to eight weeks. If we had started earlier, a lot could have been avoided.

The situation now is as follows: the people who are in the factory not only want to work, they also want to know. We must be clear about this: the more we give in to this urge and are not afraid to steer this power current into the right channels, the more this power can be utilized again. Therefore, we should not be afraid to tell every factory owner to lay out his business like an open book, because that is where trust begins to be put into practice. As long as we only talk about what we should do, we will not win the trust of the people. We must provide insight and show them: Today we have nothing more to hide. In the past, the factory owner had more to hide. Now the worker can see at most that nothing is being earned. Only if he comes to it himself will he believe it – he will not believe it from the factory owner. When people demand higher wages, they are driven only by a desire for knowledge; they want to gain insight. But if you yourself are the helmsman and provide insight into the production process, you will see that people will concern themselves with issues other than wages. I would ask you to bear in mind that we [from Waldorf-Astoria] are not speaking as theorists; we have experience, we have proof of this. Even if not all our ideals have been realized so far, we are on the way to doing so. And the difficulties that other companies are now facing – we will never have them.

Yesterday I spoke to a large workforce from another company. I saw the enthusiasm with which people received my report as soon as things were viewed from a comprehensive point of view. I heard from my workforce today that the news of this meeting is spreading like wildfire among the workforce. People see for themselves that if it were like this everywhere, the conditions would be quite different. For days we have had continuous visits from the workers' committees of all the major plants, and they say: Yes, if only we had that! There is a great failure on the part of the bourgeoisie; if you really talk to our colleagues, you will encounter blinkers and narrow-mindedness everywhere.

Dr. Schmucker: I had imagined the government's bill to be dreadful, but not so dreadful; it is a real monstrosity. If you study the matter, you can see that the law-makers in Berlin do not know the situation; they do not even know what it is about. Now they want to abolish the employee and worker committees and set up works councils of 40 to 80 people who are incapable of working.

Mr. Geyer: There is no one present who is not touched by Dr. Steiner's proposals. But I must openly admit that I deal with the question every day of why we always face new problems when I think we have overcome them. We are in the midst of a spiritual revolution. People are becoming more and more concerned with the spiritual side of the social structure than has been the case so far, when the interest of the individual in general was only directed towards an economic revolution. But I must say that this spiritual revolution, in my opinion, is not moving in the right direction. The worker and many employees are by no means aware of what is at stake today. Their consumer interests keep them so firmly in their grip that they do not allow other people who do not work with their hands to be considered alongside them. It is true when Dr. Steiner says that social policy cannot be driven from above. But we must come to a point where the human being enters into a closer relationship with other human beings. Unfortunately, however, we are already so one-sided in the culture and in the state organism and in the world organism that a return to the original culture, to the original state, is necessary – not in the spiritual sense, but in relation to the relationship between human beings. There is no longer any control that stands above the human being. All people should enter into relationship with each other, forming small circles, a kind of crystal, which combine to form larger units. This forming of crystals should then continue until we have reached the summit, where the liquidation of the state organism has come to its end. I believe that this is how Dr. Steiner imagines the process of developing threefolding until it is complete. But a considerable time will pass before that [and a problem will arise]: councils will be formed, but these councils will change very often, just as people now often change their jobs, so that chaos will ensue. There will not only be friction between the small organizations, but also collisions within the liquidation ministry. This can lead to the whole tower, which is to be built from below, collapsing. I believe that our general education of the people as a prerequisite [for this reform work] does not yet make it possible to hope for the development of genuine trust between people. I believe that a general education of the people should start first, although I readily admit that this general education of the people will also face obstacles from above and below. The one who is supposed to be educated, the worker, regards not only the employer as an enemy, but everyone who is intellectually superior, because he fears that he will have to persuade him to do something that is contrary to his interests. This is an experience that is made many times. I do not believe that even if Molt has had good experiences with the works councils in his company, it will always remain so. Man is man, and since I have known man in his ten-thousand-year development, I must say: Man is not a mere earthly creature, but a being that once reaches the point of culture where one can truly say that now man is culturally so educated that his earthly existence will be a happy one. To bring this about, however, a person would have to come along who has superhuman spiritual powers to capture the souls of people.

Rudolf Steiner: I would like to say that all of this could actually be used to present a view of the value of the human being. But for those who are thinking practically about what can be done in these chaotic times, it is not at all a matter of whether a person is sufficiently culturally educated or can be educated, but only of making what can be made out of people. And above all, when we speak of the social organism, we should abandon the notion from the outset that we want to somehow establish happiness in the social organism or bring happiness to people through social institutions. The aim of social transformation is therefore not to create happy people, but to get to know the living conditions of the social organism, that is, to create a viable social organism. The fact that we cannot make progress with popular education as it is today has led to the demand for total emancipation from the other limbs for popular education, for the impulses of the threefold order.

Now, if you really want to know people, you cannot speak of tens or thousands of years, but of what is really manageable. If you consider the development of public education in the last few centuries – three to four centuries is all you need to take if you want to get to the bottom of today's problems – you can see that the ever-increasing nationalization of the entire education system has led to the public ignorance that we have today. We have gradually created an education in our leading circles that leads to nothing but false concepts. Consider that the leading circles have driven the worker into mere economic life. Because what you throw at him in the way of popular education, he does not understand. I was a teacher at the Workers' Education School and I know what the worker can understand and what is done incorrectly. I know that he can only understand something that is not taken from bourgeois education, but from the general human existence. You said that the worker regards everyone as an enemy who is spiritually superior. Of course, he regards everyone as an enemy who merely represents a spiritual life that is conditioned by the social structure of a small number of castes and classes. He senses this very well in his instinct. As soon as he is confronted with the spiritual life that is drawn from the whole human being, there is no question of him being an enemy of the spiritually superior; there can be no question of that; on the contrary, he realizes very well that this is his best friend. We must find a way to achieve a truly social education for the people through the emancipation of spiritual life. We must not be afraid of a certain radicalism. We must have an inkling of how concepts, ideas, the whole essence of what our education is today has rubbed off on people, to put it trivially. There has been much discussion about the grammar school system. What is this grammar school system? We have established it by staging a kind of paradox. The spiritual life is, after all, a whole. The Greeks absorbed the spiritual life from everything, because it was the spiritual life that adapted to the circumstances. We do not teach anything in school that is in the world, but rather what was in the world for the Greeks, that is imagined by our culture. From this paradox we now demand: We want to offer people enlightenment. We can only offer it to them if we go back to ourselves in this area, if we approach man as a human being. There should be no return to a speculative original state; only what the times demand can be considered. Today it is necessary that we really learn from such things. When I taught my students - and I can say that there were a great many of them - what I could not get from any branch of grammar school knowledge or education, but what had to be built up from scratch, they learned eagerly. Of course, because they also absorb the judgment of the educated, which [actually comes from high school knowledge], so they knew exactly that this is a cultural lie; of course they don't want to learn anything about that.

We will never have the opportunity to actually move forward if we are unable to make the radical initial decision to implement this threefold order, that is, to really wrest spiritual life and economic life from state life. I am convinced that today a great many people say that they do not understand this threefold order. They say this because it is too radical for them, because they have no courage to really study the matter in detail and carry it out. That is not the case, it is really a matter of the fact that we are not dealing with supermen, but with human beings as they really are, and doing what can be done with them. Then you can do a great deal if you do not want to start from this or that prejudice. You really ought to put the education system on its own basis and let those who are in it manage it. But people can hardly imagine what that is, while it is actually a thing that, if you want to imagine it, already exists.

So, the school system must first be thought of as completely separate from the state system. It is out of the question for us to make any progress if we do not embrace this radical thinking of bringing the school, indeed the whole education system, out of the state.

Dr. Riebensam: I want to get back to the real issue, to what we are trying to achieve. I would like to speak very personally and reply to Mr. Molt that I consider his view – although he experienced it in his factory – to be somewhat unrealistic. It is based on experiences in a small circle. Twenty years ago, I implemented principles in a small factory that no one else was thinking of at the time. I openly showed what I did in the factory. We had the Taylor system, which seems good. I then tried the same in a much larger factory – the people went with me. I then tried the same here – there was a lack of trust. Because of these circumstances, I have expressed my concerns, and I must stick to them. Let us return to what we want. The question was asked: How should we begin? I will assume that we call together the workers with the aim of founding works councils. How do we do that? It is possible that you, Dr. Steiner, will tell me that we could even give the workers self-management. I am not yet convinced that this is possible. I would like to see a concrete example of a works council being formed in a large factory.

Rudolf Steiner: I would like to say in advance that everything that can be done in detail within a company today can really only be a preparation for what the works council means. I would just like to say, because Dr. Riebensam started from this point, that experiences such as those in the small group described by Mr. Molt should not be celebrated too soon as a victory. But let us not be deceived: what these experiences can prove in the first instance is that trust can be established within a certain group. And that is what Mr. Molt primarily meant. It cannot be a victory because, when a systematic socialization is considered, a victory cannot be achieved in a single company. The victory of a single company, even if it were to increase the standard of living of its workforce, could only be achieved at the expense of the general public if a single company were to achieve it unilaterally.

Dr. Riebensam: I did not want to speak in detail about the Taylor system.

Rudolf Steiner: I only meant that this Taylor system could lead to something positive under certain circumstances, if it were applied under different conditions; but under our present system it would only increase all the system's damage.

Regarding the specific question of how we deal with works councils, let us not forget that we only want to make demands. We must observe the demands and distinguish the essential from the inessential. The system of councils is actually a given reality today, that is, perhaps it only exists in embryo, but anyone who properly observes the social forces at work in our social organism will understand this. So it is with the idea of councils in this particular case: works councils, transport councils and economic councils will assert themselves of their own accord. Now, to begin with, we only have a presentiment of the working class. The real issue is that the social constitution of the works council is to emerge, that general principles cannot be established for it. In fact, the issue is that we finally get used to making initiatives possible, and such initiatives will arise the moment they are unleashed. They need do nothing at all except popularize the idea of works councils – and that is very important today. Then the question will surely have to be answered in the most diverse concrete enterprises in the most diverse ways: How do we do it? – It can be done in one enterprise in one way and in another way, depending on the goals and people. We must come to the possibility that a workers' council is constituted from within the enterprises, that a workers' council separates itself from the enterprises and acts between the enterprises. That is where the work of the council actually begins. The question of how to do it would have to be resolved by you in each individual case. We just have to understand the idea in general and implement it in each individual case.

The general tenor that we have heard here today, our experience, we are not gaining any trust -: I believe that if one were to examine each individual case, one would come to see that the matter would have to be approached differently after all. First of all, we would have to really embrace the full necessity of putting economic life on its own feet. Just think, if you do that, then it is only goods and the production of goods; you no longer have anything to do with wages. Of course, this cannot be done overnight. But the worker understands that when you tell him: you cannot abolish the wage system overnight. But if the tendency exists to abolish the wage system, to transfer the worker's labor power to the constitutional state, so that it is decided there - because it does not belong in economic life - then there is only a contract between management and workers regarding distribution. That is a concrete thing, that must first of all become real, it must be carried into every single company; then one can make progress with the people. Unfortunately, however, there is no will to do this. For example, there is no understanding [among employers] that the wage system can be replaced. This is regarded as a conditio sine qua non of economic life.

Dr. Riebensam: I say that the workers do have works councils in mind, but they do not take them into account in their [fundamental] goal. [This would have to be shown to them]. You do this here by giving lectures.

Rudolf Steiner: Not with the leaders [of the workers], who think in the old ways, who think in bourgeois terms.

Dr. Riebensam: Of course we have to tell the workers all these things, but first I have to be clear about them myself, I have to think about these thoughts. Then I can also try to talk to the workers and influence them. But I would like to ask you if you also know the works councils in the other factories?

Rudolf Steiner: I only know the Molt system, which was introduced on the basis of this idea [about the works council].

Emil Molt: One fine day, we saw that there was a need, we convened the people, discussed the aim and purpose and then said: the most capable can join the works council, but they must know that they still have to learn. Those who come in must learn from day one, but under supervision. They must learn what is necessary to run a business. Confidence comes, people then see that it is not as easy to run a business as people now realize that it is not so easy to govern. People then understand that the director is the first works councilor in his business because he is the only one who knows the business from the bottom up. Then you work through fundamental questions with the people so that they feel the imponderables.

Dr. Riebensam: How many people do you have in your company?

Emil Molt: Seven hundred.

Dr. Riebensam: Who should I sit down with?

Emil Molt: They will come to me.

Dr. Carl Unger: I could contribute some experiences, even if they are only specific ones, because my company has metalworkers who have a slightly different mentality than the other workers. My experiences go in the direction that we have set up a program that is not a program in and of itself, but it is only about working out the basic features for a works council before the government comes, because otherwise nothing will come of it. You said that you consider it essential for the works council to seek contact with the outside world and to get in touch with other works councils. The prerequisite was the call that appeared at the time and was circulated in our company. In all the possible questions that have now been discussed here, the point of view of threefolding was always sought. [In our company, however, we were forced] to do it the old way — but that doesn't really belong here. The whole matter of the workers' councils must be approached from the legal point of view. It is actually a good thing when people ask about the threefold order, because in this way they are instructed and pass on their knowledge in their circle, because the threefold order idea is something that must work from man to man.

Dr. Fritz Elsas: Dr. Schmucker first asked Dr. Steiner what he would do if he were now appointed to the government in accordance with the workers' resolution. I would like to speak purely personally, not politically, because from a political point of view, I do not consider this demand to be a good one, and that is because it would mean nothing less than asking the government to dismiss itself. Because such a government will not, without disavowing itself, appoint the representative of modern ideas without resigning. Since that would be irresponsible and since such a significant movement should not arise with something that has no chance of success, I have never hidden these concerns and regret that such a resolution was passed at all. However, that should not prevent us from extracting what is useful from this unreasonable demand. As far as I know, Dr. Schmucker is in the Ministry of Labor. We have had ministers during the war and afterwards who were not there before; these are signs that the old state of civil servants, the old state of lackeys, has not mastered this tremendous economy that has been emerging for 60 years and which must seek other forms, whether we like it or not, because these forms have now actually suffered a fiasco. The states themselves have shown that it is impossible for them to build themselves up into economic states in this way. That is the meaning of this catastrophe.

Now all the gentlemen, especially Dr. Riebensam, have rightly assumed that we are in an extremely difficult situation in which the whole building can collapse. We are in a transitional stage and must first remain in the area that is of current interest and that must be tackled immediately. These are not spiritual questions, but economic ones. Mr. Molt has earned the trust of his workers; but they are not from the metalworkers' structure. They have in fact, as we hear, already arrived at the point of nihilism, which will bring about the sharpest dangers for Württemberg. One of these dangers, Dr. Riebensam, lies in the fact that you view the matter too sharply from a purely industrial point of view, because you forget that the state of Württemberg does not only have 8,000 [Daimler] and 5,000 Bosch workers, but also farmers. And if they come, we will have a civil war. What will happen then, I do not know.

The question arises: if the workers demand the impossible without reason, not only the workers but also the bureaucracy, if they take the mere consumer point of view, [what happens then]? We would have to try and say to the workers in the sense of threefolding: You metalworkers – and that means all companies – get together, form a production cooperative – this is something completely new – you bring all the assets of your company, your labor, and a new organization will be created. I do not want to say that this is necessary, but I can imagine that the worker can be persuaded to advocate the abolition of wages as the equivalent of labor without having to make a final decision, because a single state can hardly abolish wages. If these enterprises, which are important in Württemberg, were to set up such a production cooperative and thereby reassure the workers, we would have gained time for the implementation of Dr. Steiner's ideas. This merger would be an organized merger that manifests itself in some legal form. This could be organized differently for you, Dr. Riebensam, than for small businesses.

And now the other question: Can a small or medium-sized state like Württemberg, which belongs to a closed economic area [with its own money], even form such a structure for itself? Will foreign countries supply raw materials to such cooperatives? The danger is that foreign countries, which are much larger and stronger “capital countries” than Germany at the moment, will decide not to enter into economic relations with such a structure. But we cannot feed ourselves. So the question must be considered: where do we start with these organizations?

Rudolf Steiner: It would perhaps be going too far if I were to go into the details of the previous summaries; I would rather go into the questions.

It would not yet be possible to regard it as a particular realization of what is meant by threefolding if, for my sake, all metalworkers in Württemberg were treated in the way you have described, although it could be formally implemented. But when I speak of the threefold social order, I must expressly emphasize that I regard a one-sided separation of economic life from state life, with the spiritual life remaining with the state life, as the opposite of what is sought, because I consider a two-way division to be just as harmful as a three-way division is necessary. If a single branch of the economy were to be separated out in this way, I would not regard it as being in line with the threefold order. However, it could formally take place in a social organism that is working towards threefold order. Well, it would also be a fundamental test of the principle if such things were to be considered.

As a detail, I would just like to note that the abolition of wages, consistently thought through, does not at all lead to the view that a single state cannot abolish wages because the relationship of the economy in such a state, which abolishes wages, to the entire economic outside world, does not need to change at all. Whether the worker receives his income internally in the sense of economic liberalism or whether he receives it in some other form, for example from the proceeds of what he produces, for which he is already a partner with the manager, does not change the other economic relations with the outside world. It is therefore not true that a single state cannot abolish wages. But it is equally untenable to claim that a small or large state cannot implement this on its own. On the contrary, in a small or large state you certainly cannot socialize in the sense that the old socialists had in mind. I believe, in fact, that socialization in the sense of the old socialists can lead to nothing more than the absolute strangulation and constriction of a single economic area. If you draw the ultimate consequences from the old socialization, then basically a single economic area is nothing more than what is dominated by a single ledger. You can never come to a positive trade balance with that, but only to a gradual, complete devaluation of the money. Then you can abolish the money. Then the possibility of an external connection ceases altogether.

So all these things have been the basis for thinking of this threefold order, because it is the only way that each individual area, the economic, the legal and the spiritual, can carry it out. The external relationships will not change in any other way than that it will no longer be possible, for example, for political measures to disrupt the economy. The economic sphere will have an external impact, and it will no longer be possible for things to happen, as in the case of the Baghdad Railway problem, where all three interests became entangled, with the result that the Baghdad Railway problem became one of the most important causes of the war. There you see these three things tied together.

I would like to point out once again that the tripartite division is intended for foreign policy, that is, it has been conceived to offer the possibility of conducting economic life according to purely economic aspects, beyond political boundaries, so that political life can never interfere with it. This means that in the areas where the threefold order is not implemented, the damage would be there, but there would be no real reason for the [separate] economic life not to get involved abroad if the economic situation is profitable for the foreign country. It will depend on this alone, even if an economic area is not independent, if it is entirely impulsed by the political; for all these things that affect other countries are not affected by the threefold social order.

Today there is great concern: let us take a specific case. Let us assume that Bavaria would now carry out its socialization, then with such a bureaucratically and centrally conceived socialization, a whole range of free connections between domestic companies and foreign industry would be made impossible and undermined. On the other hand, through the threefold social order, the labor force is removed from the economic sphere, which thus gives the worker the opportunity to face the work manager as a free partner. But this is how the worker comes to be able to really have the share that arises within the economic sphere when everything is no longer mixed up. Today, we no longer have objective prices, but rather the wage relationship in economic life. If you take this out, you have, on the one hand, eliminated the disquiet caused by the workers. And if you now take out the capital relationship, you have, on the other hand, the intellectual organism that always has to take care of the abilities of those who are supposed to be there to run the businesses. So you have removed the two main stumbling blocks from the economic body, and yet you have not touched on something that takes place in economic relations with foreign countries. Therefore, there is no reason for foreign countries to be hostile, because they lose nothing and can conduct economic life exactly as before.

This reorganization [through the works council] is intended precisely with economic life in mind. If we think of Germany, a whole host of fine threads that exist with foreign countries will organize themselves in one fell swoop, from all companies. There is really nothing else to be done but to reorganize social life in such a way that in the future, goods will actually regulate themselves through goods, so that there will be a precise index around which goods group in terms of their value. This will create the possibility that what the individual produces has the value that all products must have in order to meet his needs. In our organism, which is based on the division of labor, all socialization must ultimately result in what the individual person produces in the course of a year equaling what he needs to sustain his life. If we throw out the wage and capital relationship, then we get the pure commodity relationship. However, this is something that one must decide to think through completely. At that moment, one will find that it is quite easy.

Dr. Fritz Elsas: I am not opposed to the spiritual organism administering itself; I am just saying that it will take longer and is not urgent.

Rudolf Steiner: It is urgent because we have the necessity to create a basis for the education of spiritual workers, which we do not produce with our current state spiritual life. That is the terrible thing today, that our state-stamped spiritual life is very far removed from real practical life. Even at the universities, people are trained in such a way – they are not trained practically, but only theoretically – that they are not rooted in life. Isn't it true that I imagine, for example, this school system in the future in such a way that the practitioner, who works in the factory, will be particularly suited as a teacher, and possibly, I think, these [teachers] will continually change [between school and factory]?

Dr. Stadler: I came here today by chance, and I would like to take the liberty of expressing my opinion as a guest. What you are doing here is currently being done in a similar way in many parts of Germany. What I am currently experiencing in Berlin is an unprecedented intellectual struggle of the German people with the problems of the revolution. In Berlin, there are masses of circles, organizations, associations, loose groups, all of which meet in a similar way to you this evening and discuss these matters. For we are not only experiencing the political and economic collapse in Germany, but also the intellectual disintegration of the entire old system. And in this collapse, the German people are once again so far along that they are trying to go their own way. The practitioners are causing difficulties for the theorists and thwarting their goals with their practical questions. They are also right, because they live in practice. The difficulty lies in the fact that in the whole of Germany long-term goals are being set that would take one or two generations to achieve, while we are in the midst of an actual collapse. If, in contrast to Rudolf Steiner and others, I state that Dr. Steiner has actually thought up an idea that a large proportion of those present can emotionally agree with, but that pure practitioners cannot be satisfied with - I say practitioners because one of them is a government councilor [Dr. Schmucker] and the other a top entrepreneur [Dr. Riebensam] —, because they have to ask themselves: What is the way forward tomorrow, because we are not getting anywhere with this? The solution will not be found [so easily]; it is so extraordinarily complicated that with a system of thought one remains in the unreal and it is no longer suitable for solving real questions. All these action programs repeatedly encounter resistance from industrialists, politicians and lawyers. In Germany, we are fortunate that thought and research are being done at all, unlike in Russia, where there has been no real thought during the entire revolutionary period. Thus, Russia is indeed doomed - both as a state and economically. I suspect that the same thing will happen to us in Germany, despite all our intellectual efforts, because the way things are going it is impossible for us to arrive at a political synthesis in time. There are theorists who cling to some system or other, while there are practical people who put the brakes on; so it can only happen by force, because between the two extremes German politics is now only drifting and letting everything happen. Our party politicians have no idea about the spiritual. I have the honor of knowing leading statesmen personally. I leave with the sad belief that they have nothing of the spirit of the times in them, that they have no faith in the future and only think about how to hold on to the rudder from today to tomorrow.

But you should consider whether there are possibilities for quickly linking what you are trying to achieve here with similar efforts being made throughout Germany, so that you do not feel isolated. It would be right for you to be aware that Germany is not the small circle that is currently gathered here. If you do not succeed in forming a phalanx, this attempt is doomed to failure because it can only be a local one. You cannot shape something in Württemberg, carry out the threefold order, when the whole of Germany is going to the devil. You cannot introduce works councils if the entire political system does not go along with it. Either you join together in a spiritual renewal movement and refrain from engaging in the realpolitik of the day – in which case you have to accept ruin and chaos – or you not only want to strive for renewal, but also to work practically and realpolitically for today and tomorrow, then you have to form a phalanx with all the similarly minded forces of the German people and make concessions to the realities of life. That means, for example, you must begin to work out a very concrete system of workers' councils and make specific foreign policy proposals. Please excuse me for criticizing as an outsider, but I mean well by you and the German people, whose preservation is important to me.

Mr. Jaeger: I would like to be brief. I have gained the impression in the discussion that the question tends to be asked quite generally: How do we initially tread the path that leads to the goal that Dr. Steiner presents to us? This question concerns us all. If the creation of the works councils, as Dr. Steiner demands, is proving so difficult, we must not forget that this is only a very small beginning. To shape economic life, we need not only works councils for the factories, but a whole system of councils in general. But when we talk about it today, we must be clear about the fact that no council system exists at all yet, because what has been practiced by the councils in our country so far is not yet a system at all; it is a lack of system. We would first have to discuss individual questions and make an effort to get started and begin with these councils.

And now a specific question: the representative of Daimler-Werke spoke at length about the works council there and about the relationship with the workers. Dr. Riebensam asked how he should proceed in order to properly get in touch with the workers at Daimler and gain the trust of the workforce. I believe that if you want to achieve a big goal, you first have to look at the small things by taking a practical step like Mr. Molt. [So I would like to ask]: Is it not possible for Dr. Steiner, together with the gentlemen who want this suggestion, to work with the workers at the Daimler factory themselves, in order to inspire others by achieving this goal? We need not only the trust of the workers, but also the cooperation of the industrialists, the factory managers, who are opposed to [such things at first.

Rudolf Steiner: This question can only be answered if this practical experiment could actually be carried out – it could certainly be carried out – but I would like to think that one would first have to be inside the Daimler works.

A speaker: Once you are inside, the problem is a lack of trust. Leading personalities find it difficult to gain trust. Those who are elected by the workers are opposed when they come to an understanding with the management. The point is to explain to the workers: Through this threefold structure we can achieve practical goals; we only want to be the link to bring you together and show you the way.

Rudolf Steiner: The only way to do this is to win over the workers, for example, to an understanding of a common goal that can be achieved outside the walls of the company concerned. If one wanted to go further — and that is what would give it a purpose in the first place; it would have to be possible to lead the workers to this goal — one would have to try to achieve something oneself, somehow. That would only lead to the management of the Daimler-Werke throwing me out. I was told that it was highly peculiar that I had gained the trust of the workers, and that I would actually do things quite differently from the way they were usually done. This different way of doing things is based on the fact that I basically do not promise the workers anything, but only explain the processes to them and such like. That is the big difference: in fact, I don't promise anything – I can really do the same with the workers at the Daimler factory as I am doing now – I can't promise anything because I know for sure that if I make promises to the management I will be thrown out. We must not forget that today it is not about some nebulous abstractions such as “all of Germany” or “what is collapsing,” but rather that it is about actually bringing understanding to the individual point and working from that individual point. If a true understanding of the demands inherent in the really real conditions and their satisfaction were to be awakened in a single point, then the prejudice would not always arise again: This is some kind of general idealism that has nothing to do with practice. If people would take the trouble to study the actually practical impetus of this not thought- but life-principle, then we would make progress. What harms us today is that this so-called system, which is not a system at all, but really something else that is rooted in real life, is taken everywhere merely as a system of thoughts. I can only do what is based on real circumstances. But the right impetus to win over the entire workforce of the Daimler factory would be based on that today. The next step, however, would have to be to come to an agreement with the management. But that would get them fired. And that makes it impossible for someone on the outside to implement anything. It is important that we work on bringing these things to real understanding. Then it will move forward. But I don't think we will make progress with mere abstractions. It is also an abstraction to say that a practical attempt should be made when there is no basis for it.

Mr. Jaeger: I must insist that once the workers' understanding is won, the management would not throw the personality out, but once the personality has gained the trust, then these proposals would be taken up by both sides. It is not a matter of promises here, but only of the works council first reaching an agreement among the management and an understanding between the management and the workers.

Rudolf Steiner: The whole matter is hopeless if there is no understanding of the real threefold social order. This understanding is generally found today among the working class, because these people do not cling to anything that comes from old conditions, but own nothing but themselves and their labor. This understanding is still lacking, however, among the other [people] today; perhaps only when they come to grief will they be forced to let go of what consists only in clinging to the old conditions. Today, they actually find widespread support for the threefold order among the working class, even though the leaders of the working class are not at all able to think in terms of progressive thinking, but basically think much more bourgeois than the bourgeoisie.

When people say that these things cannot be understood because they are too outlandish, it is because they have forgotten how to understand things based on life. When it comes to things that arise in life, people must respond with experiences of life. Today, they only respond with what they have based on party judgments and concepts. But if someone has nothing of that, but only what comes from the whole breadth of life, then one says: that is impractical, that does not answer individual questions, one would have liked to have answered individual concrete questions. My “key points” were not written to steer [the social question] into the theoretical or philosophical, but to start somewhere. When you start, you will see that it continues.

Dr. Riebensam: I do not think that Dr. Steiner would be thrown out by me – I am the one who decides, but the commercial management also has something to say – but the current workers' committee would probably throw Dr. Steiner out. It appears as if I wanted to thwart Dr. Steiner's ideas with my real concerns. That was not the aim or the intention of my explanation. I just wanted to discuss the whole matter here. My view is that today we need some way to avoid a struggle with the workers if possible. Now it is a fact that Dr. Steiner has won the trust of a large number of workers today. And that should be enough in Stuttgart to take further steps. This could also pave the way for a way forward that might not require a fight for a while. The workforce is willing to go along with this, even with the plant managers. It would be a great mistake not to pursue such a path. That is my personal opinion.

Mr. Reitz: How can this be done?

Emil Molt: To answer that, we have come together. After Dr. Riebensam has said an important word, after the way is clearly laid out, how two classes come together to form one human race, after these clear ways are laid out here, it is now up to each individual to actually follow the way. The death in all these things is always that there is much more talk than action. Dr. Stadler is right when he says that if we only come together and talk without taking action, then time will rush by so quickly that events will sweep over us. We all agree that the great collapse will come in three to four weeks, when we must be ready to take action to realize the New. For this we need every single person, so that thoughts can be put into action hourly and every minute in daily life. Therefore, in the interest of the people, of humanity, we ask you not only to ask, what does Dr. Steiner think about it, but that each individual is very clear about the fact that the path lies within himself and he must tread it. The old Germany perished because of this non-treading and the present Germany will perish. I believe that when we go home today, we should do so with the firm resolution to move from mere deliberation to action, even if it cannot be perfect – imperfect action is still better than clever thinking, with which we only remain on the surface again and do not reshape things in reality, because reshaping things is what it is all about today.

Perhaps there is still a need to comment on the cultural side of the problems. We would like to create an opportunity for this soon; perhaps individual areas could be worked on separately or together. I would like to hear your opinion on this so that we can go home with a result.

Dr. Weiss: I am very much in favor of continuing the discussion along these lines. However, I think it would be better not to work on the individual areas separately; it is important for us, who are neither entrepreneurs nor tradesmen, to look at all the issues. The opportunity should be created to work on all the issues together, even at the risk of thinning out the ranks. We should not only speak, but also try to work through the press. We should have a very loosely organized press committee that comments in the various party organs, not to fuel polemics. There should also be a special organ of the federation for threefolding to check the manuscripts before sending them to the relevant editorial office, so that the subsequent procedure is not complicated. The Federation for Threefolding should not, of course, restrict freedom of expression, but we must organize ourselves in such a way that everyone uses their contacts with the press to comment on the issues in question, but the articles should be sent in beforehand so that we can proceed in a concentrated manner.

Emil Molt: That is precisely what we are aiming for; we should actually be commenting every day.

A speaker: We came here today for a discussion. It would be desirable if a number of industrialists, as representatives of the owners, and plant managers, and employees, as representatives of the employee committees, came together to talk.

Emil Molt: In my opinion, this should really be attempted; it would be the first step in preparing a functioning works council.

Dr. Riebensam: I think the approach should be somewhat different; your works councils should invite our workers' committees.

Emil Molt: You can do both; the workers would have to see that the initiative comes from the factory owners.

Dr. Riebensam: It should come from the workers' committees, not from the factory owners.

Emil Molt: But otherwise the factory owners would not come; but it would be best to discuss this afterwards.

A speaker: Couldn't we, so to speak, issue certain guidelines to give the factory owners something to work on? That way, the management of the large companies could process the matter and discuss it with the workers' committees. Perhaps this would be a way to shorten the whole thing.

In response to the question of whether they would like to meet again next Thursday, it was decided to meet again at 7 p.m. that day.

Dear fellow students, If I attempt to present to you today something from the field of what for a number of years I have been calling anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, I do so in the knowledge that this evening, in what is effectively a first lecture, I will be able to give nothing more than a few suggestions and that I am under no illusion that such a presentation will instantly create any kind of conviction. But perhaps it will be possible, after the general description that I will give, to satisfy specific wishes and to address specific questions in the discussion that follows.

In order not to take up too much of our time, I would like to address the most important point first, and that is to give a characteristic of what spiritual science in an anthroposophically oriented sense actually wants to be. It differs from what is usually called science in the method of its research. And it is convinced that, in the latest period of time, a serious and honest striving in science, if consistently pursued, must ultimately lead to its method. I would like to speak to you in a thoroughly scientific sense, since I myself truly did not start from any theological point of view, nor from any world-view questions or philosophies in the sense in which they are usually cultivated, but rather I myself started from technical studies. And out of technical studies themselves, this spiritual science presented itself to me as a necessity of our historical period of development. Therefore, I am particularly pleased to be able to speak to you this evening.

When we do natural science, in the sense of today's thinking, we first have something in front of us that extends around us as the world of sensual facts. And we then use our thinking, we use in particular our methodically trained thinking, to find laws from a corresponding pursuit of these sensual facts. We look for what we are accustomed to calling natural laws, historical laws and so on. This way of relating to the world is not something that the humanities reject, but they want to stand on the firm ground of this research. But it does its research, standing on this firm ground, I might say, by starting from the point of view of human life itself. It comes, precisely because it wants to do serious scientific research, simply to the limit of scientific knowledge, which is fully admitted by level-headed natural scientists. And with regard to what natural science can be, it is entirely on the side of those who say: In the summary of external facts, we advance to a certain level with scientific methodology, but we cannot go beyond a certain limit if we remain on the ground of this natural scientific research itself.

But then, when what is sought in ordinary life and also in ordinary natural science is achieved, only then does the goal of spiritual science as it is meant here begin. We come to certain boundary concepts by thinking about and understanding the facts around us. I am mentioning here only such limiting concepts, whether they are conceived as mere functions or as realities, limiting concepts such as atom, matter and so on. We operate at least with them, even if we do not seek demonic entities behind them. These limiting concepts, limiting ideas, which confront us particularly when we follow the scientific branches that are fundamental to technology, stand there as it were like pillars. And if you want to stop at the limits of ordinary science, you will remain standing right in front of these boundary pillars.

But for the spiritual researcher, as I mean him here, the actual work begins only at these border pillars. There it is a matter of the spiritual researcher, in what I call meditation - please do not take offense at this, it is a technical term like others - entering into a certain inner struggle, an inner struggling of life with these concepts, more or less with all the border concepts of natural science. And this inner struggle does not remain unfruitful for him.

In this context, I must mention a man who taught here in this city, at this university, in the second half of the last century, and who repeatedly emphasized this struggle that man enters into when he comes to the limits of ordinary science. It is Friedrich Theodor Vischer who knew something of what the human being can experience when he arrives at the concepts of matter, atom, natural law, force, and so on. What I mean here does not consist in brooding, but in consulting everything in the depths of our soul that has led to these concepts, in trying to live with these concepts in meditation.

What does that actually mean? It means establishing the inner discipline within oneself to be able to look, just as one otherwise looks at external objects, at what one finally has in one's soul when one arrives at such a borderline concept; I could name many others to you besides those I have just mentioned. Then, when one tries to concentrate the whole range of the soul on such concepts, abstracting from all other experiences, one makes an inward discovery. And this inner discovery is something quite overwhelming. It shows us that from a certain point in life, in our inner life, our concepts become something that grows in our soul through itself, that is different after such inner meditative work than it is when we take it only as the result of external observation. Just as we observe in the growing child how certain organs, which first appear more undifferentiated, become more differentiated, how we perceive how organs grow, so in such meditative devotion to the results of scientific experience we feel how an inner growth of the soul takes place. And then comes the shocking realization that it is not through speculation, not through speculative philosophy that one goes beyond what is called the limit of natural knowledge, but through direct experience, that is, by transforming what one has gained through thinking into inner experience of beholding.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is the first step that is taken. It can be clearly felt how the method becomes quite different and how, therefore, something completely new occurs in comparison to the usual scientific method, which can be objectively recognized more than by anyone else, but also by me, in that mere thinking, mere comprehension, passes over into inner experience. And then, through consistent, patient, persistent experience in this direction, what occurs cannot ultimately be called anything other than an experience of spiritual existence. One cannot speak about the experience of the spiritual world in any other way from an anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. For this experience of the spiritual world is not something that is innate in man. It is something that must be achieved by man. When one has reached a certain level of this experience, one realizes that our thinking, which we otherwise use to grasp our environment, is in a different relationship to our entire physical being than one is forced to assume from mere knowledge of nature.

From the mere knowledge of nature, one notices how the physical changes and transformations, with youth, with old age and so on, also change the states of the soul. With scientific thinking, one can go further physiologically. It can be shown how the nervous system and the brain actually express the structure and configuration of our thinking. And if you follow this matter consistently from one side, you can say: Yes, something emerges from something else, which of course today could only be established hypothetically, that which is thinking, that which is life in thought.

The one who has experienced this inwardly, which I have characterized as being able to be experienced, speaks differently, saying: When one walks, for my part over a soggy road or when a car drives over a soggy road, then one has the impression of furrows, of footsteps. It would obviously be quite wrong to put forward the theory, just because you don't know, that it must have been an extraterrestrial being that created these footsteps, these furrows, or to put forward the hypothesis that there are certain forces below the earth's surface that work in such a way that they have caused these footsteps, these furrows.

Thus one says – and I say expressly, with a certain right – from a scientific point of view: That which is the physiological formation of the brain is what, in the end, is expressed in the function of thinking. The person who has experienced what I have characterized does not say it that way; they say: Just as these grooves and furrows are not raised from within by the inner forces of the earth, but rather as if something has passed over them, so the physical brain has been placed in its furrows by the body-free thinking. And that which, in a certain way, when we entered physical existence through birth, changes these furrows, that is also what, descending from spiritual worlds, does the work of shaping these furrows in the first place.

In this way, it is established that the soul is absolutely the active principle, that it is what first gives form to the body. I know, my dear audience, that hundreds of objections can be raised against what I am saying, if one starts only from the intellectual-theoretical point of view. But spiritual science must point to the experience. It must point out that until this experience takes place, one is justified in believing that thought life arises as a function from the physical brain, whereas when one experiences this thought life oneself, one knows how it is active in itself, how it is substantial and moving in itself, and how it is actually active in relation to the passivity of the physical body.

So what is presented as a first initial experience is not something that is gained through a straightforward continuation of ordinary scientific methods, but only through a metamorphosis, only through a transformation of the ordinary scientific method into a method that can only be experienced, which consists not in speculation but in an inner experience.

That is one side of it. The other side of this inner experience relates more to the inner development of the human will. By looking at our lives, we can see the transformations we have undergone in life. We think back to how we were in our inner soul and outer bodily state one, five, ten years ago, and we say to ourselves: we have undergone changes, transformations. These changes, these transformations that we undergo, how do we undergo them? We passively surrender to the outside world in a certain way. We just need to say: hand on heart, how active are we in what we have initially become through the outside world? The outside world, heredity, education and so on, shapes us; and what shapes us in it continues to have an effect. As a rule, we are actually the passive ones. If we now transform this into activity, if we form out of it what one could call in the most eminent sense self-discipline, and in the way I will characterize it in a moment, then the second element is added to what we have characterized as the first element in the path of spiritual research. If one brings it to that - and this can only be achieved through methodical schooling in the sense presented in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds” and in other books - if one brings it to that through methodical schooling, to say to oneself, “I will plan, even if only a small part of what that is to arise in me, I will resolve that this or that quality shall become mine. And if I succeed in actually producing such a quality in me, perhaps only after years, by a strong arousal of the will, if I make of myself that which I would otherwise only passively experience in life , if I take my will, if I may express it somewhat paradoxically, into my own hands and take full control of my development – in a certain part one can of course only do so – then what otherwise is merely memory, in a certain way, also comes together to form a real area. You get a kind of overview of your life, as if you were looking at a series of things, and you then come to know the will in its true character.

While one gets to know thinking as something that actually detaches itself from the physical the more one enters into life, one comes to recognize one's will in such a way that it actually encompasses the physical more and more, permeates us more and more, flows through us, and that basically death is nothing more than a struggle of the will with the physical functions have reached a certain limit when we pass through an earlier or later death, and that then that which can no longer work our body in this way, the will, is completely absorbed in what the body does, that this will detaches itself and that an element of the soul now actually enters a real, a spiritual world when we pass away.

So it is a matter of the fact that what is usually called the idea of immortality is not pursued by any speculation of the spiritual science meant here, that basically this spiritual science completely breaks with the way in which the world usually approaches this idea. The point is that spiritual science, as a continuation of scientific research through the training of thought and will, actually manages to grasp what we carry within us, thinking and willing, in such a way that we can also grasp it when this soul, which lives in thinking and willing, lives in a disembodied way that can no longer be reached by the senses.

Of course, what I have briefly explained here will be regarded by the widest circles of our present time as something fantastic and visionary. But how could it be otherwise? Everything that comes into the world as something new and seemingly contradicts what was already there is initially regarded as something fantastic and visionary. But I do not believe that it will remain so for all time, that people will not recognize that what has been described here as the method of spiritual science, at least in two of its characteristic elements, is only a continuation, but a lively continuation, of what natural science actually achieves, but with which natural science comes up against a certain limit.

Today, when one speaks of the spirit in general, it is no longer entirely taken amiss. This was still the case in the last third of the 19th century, when a certain materialistic way of forming a world view out of scientific knowledge was used to draw the only logical conclusion of scientific thinking itself. Today it is again permitted to speak of the spirit, at least in a speculative way. But one is still very much taken aback when one speaks of the spirit in the way I have just done, because that has a certain consequence.

When one has acquired what I have called in my book “The Riddle of Man” the “seeing consciousness,” when one has acquired what arises out of such developed thinking and willing, then one knows oneself in a spiritual world through this seeing consciousness - just as one knows oneself through one's eyes and ears in a world of color and sound. In a sense, the world around us is filled with spirit. Just as the world around a person who was born blind is filled with something new when, after undergoing an operation, he begins to see colors at a certain point in his life, so it is when this seeing consciousness occurs. The world, to which one was accustomed to look upon as the world of the senses and of the combining intellect, is filled with spirituality. And the spirit becomes something concrete. The spirit becomes something that one can follow in its concrete formation. One no longer speaks of the spirit in general. When someone speaks of the spirit in general, it is as if a person were walking across a meadow where flowers are growing. If you ask him: what kind of flower is that and what kind is that, he will answer: they are all plants, plants, plants. So today we also allow people to say: behind the sensory world there is a spiritual world. But spiritual science cannot stop there. It must examine the spiritual facts in the concrete – because the spiritual world is around us just as the colored or the sounding world is – in the same way that one otherwise examines the colored and sounding world with the senses and the combining intellect. And in doing so, one acquires, above all, a very specific way of relating to the world. It is also the case that if you are born blind and suddenly gain your sight, you acquire a different relationship to the world. You first have to find your bearings; you know nothing about spatial perspective, you have to learn it first. So, of course, you also have to acquire a certain relationship, a certain position to the world when you pass over into the seeing consciousness. Then many things appear to you in a peculiar way. That is why the spiritual researcher is still misunderstood by his contemporaries.

You see, the spiritual researcher never says that what has been gained through the method of strict natural science, or what has been drawn from the consequences of these results of strict natural science, is in any way logically incorrectly followed or anything of the sort, but he is compelled to add something from his spiritual insight, which is then not merely added on, but which in many respects completely changes the results of natural science.

Take geology, for example. I will pick out one example. It is better to talk about specific questions than to use general phrases. I understand completely and was able to follow this method myself: if you examine the geological layers that lie on top of each other from what is happening around us today in the formations of rocks, in the deposits of rivers and water and so on, and then calculate - even if the subject is not always a real calculation, but only something approximate – when you calculate how long these rock layers have existed, then you get the known figures. And then, as you all know, we arrive at the beginning of the earth's development, where the earth - as is hypothetically assumed - formed out of something, out of a kind of primeval nebula or something similar. I do not need to go into this in more detail. You are familiar with all this.

But for the spiritual researcher it is so, simply because he has experienced such things as I have described to you - though only in outline, to stimulate interest, not to convince - for the spiritual researcher it is so that he must say to himself: I assume that someone is examining the changes in a human organism, say the changes in the heart every five years. I follow how the human heart or another organ changes over the course of five or ten years, what happens there. And now I calculate what I have seen, if I simply consistently deduce from what I have calculated what it was like three hundred years ago. I get a certain result, albeit purely arithmetical, of what this human heart was like three hundred years ago. The only objection to this is that this heart did not even exist at that time. Just as correct as the geological approach would be to conclude from the small changes in the human heart what that heart was like three hundred years ago, only it was not even there at that time. Equally correct – for I fully recognize that what geology reveals has at least a relative correctness – is also everything that is deduced from the geological facts for the development of the earth. But we then transpose what arises for us as a consequence of our calculation into times when the earth did not yet exist in its present form. Or we transpose what arises from our observations, which were made over a limited period of time, into an epoch that lies millions of years ahead, by calculating an end state and speaking of entropy or the like. For the spiritual researcher, this is the same as if he were to calculate what the nature of the human heart will be after three hundred years.

That is what you arrive at when you convert the ordinary scientific method into something that can be experienced. Because, you see, man is actually like an extract of the whole cosmos. In man you find - somehow changed, somehow extracted, compensated or the like - what is present in the cosmos as a law. You will ask me: Yes, how can you, a dreamer, claim that the earth has not yet existed in its present form? You must show us a way to arrive at such a claim.

I will attempt to characterize, albeit only sketchily, how one arrives at such assertions as I have put forward. One discovers, by experiencing the volition, the thinking, as I have described to you, that man really is a kind of microcosm. I do not say this as a phrase, as the nebulous mystics say, but in the awareness that it has become as clear to me as any solution to a differential equation, out of complete logical clarity. Man is inwardly a compendium of the whole world. And just as in our ordinary life we do not know only what is sensually surrounding us at the moment, just as we, by looking beyond what is sensually surrounding us at this moment, look at the image of something we have experienced about ten or fifteen years ago , how it emerges before us as something that no longer exists – but something of it is present in us, which enables us to reconstruct what was present back then – it is the same with the expanded consciousness that arises from the transformation of ordinary thinking and willing. In that man was actually connected with all that is past, only in a more comprehensive sense, in a completely different sense, in a more spiritual sense, was connected with what is past than he was connected with experiences ten or fifteen years ago, which he can bring up again from his inner being, so it is possible, when consciousness is broadened, we simply find out what was there from a cosmic memory, where we were present, and what does not live on in us for ordinary consciousness, but what lives on for the consciousness that has arisen through the metamorphosis that I have described.

It is therefore nothing more than an expansion, an increase of that power which is otherwise our power of remembrance, whereby man inwardly, simply from his own nature, which is a summary of the macrocosm, constructively resurrects that which actually was on our earth in a certain period of time. Man then looks at a state of the earth when it was not yet material. And whereas he would otherwise have to construct something from the present-day experiences of geology that was supposed to have existed at that time, he now looks at a point in time when the earth was not yet there, when it was in a much more spiritual form. He sees, by constructively recreating what lives in him, that which actually underlies the formation of our earth.

And it is the same with what can emerge in us in a certain constructive way from a future state of the earth. I know how unsatisfactory such a sketchy description must be, but you can see from it that what I characterize as spiritual science is not drawn from thin air or from fantasy.

It is, of course, something unusual. But then, once you have completed the metamorphosis of consciousness, what you constructively represent inwardly is just as clear to your consciousness as what you conjure up in mathematics or geometry, which is also constructed from within the human being.

And when someone comes and says, “Yes, but you have to assert something that all people can understand,” I say, “Yes, that is also the case, but the first thing to be considered is that the person who wants to understand something must first go through everything that is necessary to do so – just as someone who wants to solve a differential equation must first go through what will enable him to solve it.

And if someone objects on the other hand: Yes, mathematical geometry only presents something to our consciousness that we apply when we follow the reality of the external world – then I say: Yes, that is so, but if we constructively present this to ourselves, then we arrive at the conviction that it is a mere formality. If you are aware of what is being characterized, you know that it is a reality. And if someone says that this might be self-suggestion, then I say: everything that gives us the possibility of saying that something is real is only a result of experience. And when some people object that someone could be mistaken, that someone could, for example, have the vivid thought of citric acid when drinking something and if they are sensitive, they could even have the taste of lemon – I say: that is possible. But just as in ordinary life one can distinguish the mere thought of heat from the heat that comes from actually touching a hot iron, so too, through inner experience, if one has the seeing consciousness, one can distinguish between what is mere imagination, what is mere suggestion, and what is reality, because the grasping of all reality is an inner experience. And it is necessary to follow things through to the end, not to stop somewhere. Anyone who stops short of where the path should actually lead may succumb to suggestion. I therefore say: It is indeed possible, if someone is sensitive and gives themselves over to autosuggestion, to say: I have the thought of lemonade, I even feel the taste – but the thought of lemonade will not quench one's thirst. What matters is that one passes from the sensation of taste to quenching one's thirst, that one follows the path consistently. The experience must be pursued consistently, then the fact that one designates something as reality in the spiritual sense is also entirely the result of the experience. The designation of a sensual reality or reality cannot be theoretically established, but is a result of experience.

Now, dear attendees, I have characterized the spiritual science that comes to a modern, natural scientific person when they go through what life offers today. This life has truly changed extraordinarily in the last thirty to fifty years, especially through the advances in technology. When I think back to the time when the first chair of technology was established in Vienna in the early 1880s, and consider all that has happened since then, I get some idea of how much this modern man has changed as a result of everything that has been drawn into our cognitive, our moral, but especially our social life. Those who have honestly gone through this, who do not say out of some prejudice: Oh well, science can't give us anything! but who takes the view that natural science can give us a great deal, who is completely absorbed in the triumphs of modern natural science, can come to realize that what underlies the world spiritually must be grasped in the way I have tried to present to you today.

Then one looks back to earlier times in the development of humanity and says to oneself: In these earlier times of human development, people hardly spoke of the spirit at all. And the way in which they spoke of the spirit has been preserved traditionally in various religious beliefs, which, if one is completely honest and does not want to keep double accounts of life, one truly cannot reconcile with the results of ordinary natural science today. These spiritual experiences, it must be said, arise from a completely different state of consciousness in people. What we have learned through the three to four centuries in which scientific methods have been developed, what we have become as a state of mind through the Copernican and Galilean way of thinking, through Kepler, we have gone through everything that has subtracted the technical laws from the laws of nature in more recent times, through Kepler, by The entire configuration of the soul has changed, not by becoming more theoretical, but by becoming more conscious. Through the development of humanity, we have necessarily left certain instinctive states of earlier ages. And we look back at what earlier ages sensed as spirituality, which has been preserved in religious traditions, and we say to ourselves: What was there then as spirituality was grasped by human instinct. One could not say that this was dependent on such a heightening of consciousness through the methods of natural science, through the methods of social experience in modern times. People spoke in such a way that, when they saw natural phenomena, these natural phenomena, as it were, endowed them with the spirit of what they were speaking about. How did an ancient civilized Egyptian relate to the world? He looked up, followed the course of the stars, the configuration of the starry sky. He saw not only what Copernicus, Galileo and Kepler saw in this starry sky, but he saw something that at the same time revealed a spiritual reality for him. Just as, when I move my arm, a soul-active underlies this hand movement, so the human being of earlier epochs felt in what happened externally that which underlies this external event as a spiritual, but instinctively.

Then came the more recent period, the time of natural science. I would like to say that we look back on a long period of human development that did not actually reach its conclusion until around the middle of the 15th century, when people could not help but see what was around them with their senses as something spiritual at the same time. When we speak of physical states today, of solid, liquid, gaseous forms, we speak in such a way that we consider the material. Ancient man, when he spoke of what are for us today the physical states, saw them as elements, but these elements were not merely material; they were the spiritual that manifested itself in them. What surrounded man as the material world was for him just as much the external physical-spiritual expression of the spiritual-soul as the physical organism is for us an expression of the spiritual-soul - but all instinctively. This path has necessarily been abandoned in the last three to four centuries, when humanity passed over to something quite different, which then became guiding in civilization. Mankind moved on to what distinguished the observation of nature from mere observation, which is always connected with the instinctive, with the spiritual observation of nature, which is still hidden in the name 'contemplation'. Man moved on from mere observation of nature to what could be called experimental comprehension of nature.

Since Bacon and others have been working, the mere observation of nature has been replaced by the experimental comprehension of nature. We do the experiment in the laboratory, in the physics cabinet, which we then extend to the technical work. In that which we ourselves bring about as a condition for some natural event, we survey these very conditions. Through the experiment, we are in a different position than in mere observation of nature. In nature, I cannot know whether what is revealed to me, be it for my mind or for my imagination, whether that is also some totality or whether I have to delve into it, much, much deeper than the thing initially presents itself to me. In short, despite all exact observation, what I observe in nature remains before me as an unknown. When I have an experiment before me, I establish the conditions myself; I follow how one thing is evoked out of another, and what is then still unknown is basically what is actually of interest. When you design an experiment and then observe what can be observed, you are actually looking at the result of what follows from the conditions that are manageable for you. In the experiment, everything is transparent in a completely different way than what I observe in nature.

And so, little by little, people have become accustomed to regarding themselves as interpreters of nature in the manageable context of the experiment, to some extent to tracing the law of nature where they themselves can trace the conditions of its manifestation. However, this experimental method is still linked to a certain inner yearning that used to underpin knowledge through and through. In those ancient times, when there was as yet no technology, no natural science in our sense, what was regarded as science had emerged primarily from the desire to know, from the desire to recognize, to explore, “what holds the world together in its inmost being,” if I may express it in this way. Now that the experimental method has emerged, it is not only the desire for knowledge that drives us, but also the desire to recreate what nature forms. But the old desire for knowledge still lives on. We recreate what we want to see in the experiment in order to unravel nature itself through what we can see. In recent times, technology has emerged from this experimental method with a certain matter-of-factness, and with technology we have entered a new phase.

We can therefore say that in the history of human development, we first have research determined by the desire for knowledge, then the experimental method, which, however, still combines the longing of the old quest for knowledge with the recreation of nature. But if we trace the path from what can be experienced through experimentation to what happens as a result of the laws of nature that are recognized through experimentation, to what then happens through technical design, which so deeply intervene in human and social life, we have to say to ourselves: there is a third element present that passes from what we still have in recreating nature to what is now creative in man himself. This creative power – I do not believe that I am speaking to completely insensitive souls when I say the following about this creative power: the person who, with that peculiar characteristic style, with that peculiar state of soul constitution is undergoing a technical training, feels differently in this training than someone who is undergoing, for example, a theological training, which is a reproduction of the oldest methods of knowledge, or an already experimental scientific training. Those who undergo an experimental scientific training apply the mathematical, the geometrical, the theoretical-mechanical, the photometric, and so on, to what they observe there. He, as it were, recalculates nature.

One stands on a completely different level of consciousness when one first has before one that which is, as it were, completely inwardly transparent: the mathematical, the geometrical. And when one applies this not only in experiment, that is, in reproducing nature, but when one applies it in completely free creation to the design of machines. When you see that what you have experienced as mathematics, as theoretical-mechanistic chemistry, penetrates into the design of a technical structure, you experience the world in a completely different way than the mere naturalist or the theorizing technician.

What is the actual difference? One often fails to consider this. Imagine that in our ordinary, trivial lives we describe everything as “real”, even that which is not real in a higher sense. We call a rose “real”. But is a rose real in a higher sense? If I have it here in front of me, torn from the rose stem, it cannot live. It can only be shaped as it is when it grows on the rose stem, when it grows out of the rose root. By cutting it off, I actually have a real abstraction in front of me, something that cannot exist as I have it in front of me. But this is the case with every natural structure to a certain extent. When I look at a natural formation, even at a crystal, which is the least likely to exist, I cannot understand it just by looking at it, because it basically cannot exist by itself any more than the rose can. So I would have to say: this crystal is only possible in the whole environment, perhaps having grown out of a geode in the mountain formation.

But when I have before me something that I myself have formed as a technical structure, I feel differently about it. You can feel that, even feel it as something radically significant in the experience of the modern human being, who looks at what technology has become in modern life from the perspective of his or her technical education. When I have a technical structure that I have constructed from mathematics, from theoretical mechanics, I have something in front of me that is self-contained. And if I live in what is basically the scope of all technical creation, then I have before me not just a reflection of the laws of nature, but in what has become technical entities out of the laws of nature, I actually have something new in front of me. It is something different that underlies the laws of the technical structures than what also underlies inorganic nature.

It is not just that the laws of inorganic nature are simply transferred, but that the whole meaning of the structure in relation to the cosmos becomes different, in that I, as a freely creating human being, transfer what I otherwise experience from the design of physical or chemical investigations into the technical structure.

But with that, one can say: in that modern humanity has come to extract the technical from the whole scope of the natural, in that we had to learn in modern times to live in the realm of the technical in such a way that we we stand with human consciousness in a completely different relationship to the technical than to that which is produced in nature, we say to ourselves: Now it is for the first time that we stand before a world that is now, so to speak, spiritually transparent. The world of nature research is in a certain way spiritually opaque; one does not see to the bottom of it. The world of technology is like a transparent crystal - spiritually understood, of course. With this, a new stage in the spiritual development of humanity has truly been reached, precisely with modern technology. Something else has entered into the developmental history of humanity. That is why modern philosophers have not known how to deal with what has emerged in this modern consciousness precisely through the triumphs of technology. Perhaps I may point out how little the purely philosophical, speculative way of thinking could do with what has seized modern human consciousness, precisely from the point of view of technology. Today we are much more seized by what emanates from the leading currents of human development than we realize. What is now general consciousness was not yet there when there were no newspapers, when the only spiritual communication was that people heard the pastor speak from the pulpit on Sundays. What is now general education flows through certain channels from the leading currents into the broad masses, without people being aware of it. And so, basically, what came through technical consciousness has, in the course of a very short time, shaped the forms of thought of the broadest masses; it lives in the broadest masses without them being aware of it.

And so we can say that something completely new has moved in. And where a consciousness has become one-sided - which, fortunately, we have not yet achieved in Europe - where a consciousness has become one-sided, almost obsessed with this abstraction, a strange philosophical trend emerged, the so-called pragmatism of William James and others, which says: truth, ideas that merely want to be truth, that is something unreal at all. In truth, only that which we see can be realized is truth. As human beings, we set certain goals for ourselves; we then shape reality accordingly. And when we say to ourselves: This or that is real according to a natural law, we form a corresponding structure out of it. If we can realize in the machine, in mechanics, what we imagine, then it is proved to us by the application in life that this is true. But there is no other proof than that of application in life. And so only that which we can realize in life is true. The so-called pragmatism, which denies all logical internal pursuit of truth and actually only accepts the truth of truth through what is accomplished externally, figures today in the broadest circles as American philosophy. And that is something that some people in Europe have also grasped for decades, even before the war.

All those philosophers who still want to think in the old ways know of no other way to proceed with what has emerged as a newer technique, as the awareness of newer techniques, than to set the concept of truth aside altogether. By stepping out of the instinctive grasping of nature, out of the experimental recreation of nature, towards the free shaping of nature, nothing remains for them but free external shaping. The inner experience of truth, that spiritual experience of the soul that can permeate the soul, is actually denied, and only that which can be realized in the external, purposeful structures is considered truth. That is to say, the concept of truth that is inherent in the human soul is actually set aside.

Now, another development is also possible; it is possible that we will experience how something is emerging from the actual substance of technical structures, something that is no longer natural, in which there is now nothing that we can intuit, but only what we can survey. For if we cannot grasp it, we cannot shape it. By experiencing this, by thoroughly permeating ourselves with what can be experienced in it, a certain need must awaken in us all the more. This new external world presents itself to us without the inner realization of the ideas, without the inner experience of the ideas. Therefore, through this new experience, we are prepared for the pure experience of what spirituality is, of what man, abstracted from all external observation, must experience within, as I tried to outline at the beginning of my reflections today.

And so I believe that, because we have advanced in the developmental history of humanity to a view of that reality that we can survey externally, where we can no longer see any demoniacal, ghostly aspect in externality, because we have finally arrived at the point where we can no longer interpret the external sensual in such a way that we say it is opaque to us and we can assume that behind it there is something spiritual. So we must seek to find the forces for the spirit within us through the development of the soul.

It has always seemed to me that a truly honest experience of the consciousness that comes to us precisely from technology calls upon us – because otherwise what is intimately connected with our human nature would almost would otherwise be lost to us - to experience in our inner being what spirituality is, and thus to add to the one pole of transparent mechanics and transparent chemistry that which can now be attained through spiritual insight, that which can be presented to people in the spirit. It seems to me that it is necessary in our time for the spiritual insight of Anthroposophy to reveal itself for the reason that we have indeed reached a certain stage of development in human history.

And there is another factor, honored attendees: with this newer technology, a new social life has emerged at the same time. I do not need to describe how modern technology has created modern industrialism, how this modern technology has produced the modern proletariat in the form it is in today. But it seems to me that if we only want to take the standpoint of the earlier scientific method, the standpoint of that which emerges from observation, then our thoughts fall short. We cannot grasp what is truly revealed in social life. To grasp what emerges in social life from the human, it is necessary that we come to truths that reveal themselves only through human nature itself. And so I believe that Marxism and other similar quackery, which today put people in such turmoil, can only be overcome if one finds special methods that are applied as a necessary counterbalance to technology applied to the social life of human beings, and if, through this, it becomes possible to bring spirituality into the outer life, into the broad masses, because one has found this spirituality through inner experience, hard,

Therefore it is no mere accident that out of the same soil out of which anthroposophically oriented spiritual science arose for me, there also grew, truly unsought, what I tried to present in my book 'The Core Points of the Social Question'. I simply tried to draw the consequences for social life from what spiritual-scientific knowledge is. And what I have presented in this book emerged quite naturally.

I do not believe that without spiritual science one can find the methods to grasp how man stands to man in social life. And I believe that, because we have not yet been able to recognize social life, this life will not allow itself to be conquered by us and that we will therefore initially be plunged into chaos at the moment when, after the terrible catastrophe of war, people are faced with the necessity of rebuilding it. It is necessary to carry out what is to be carried out on the basis of spiritual laws, not on the basis of the law that a misconceived understanding believes can be based on natural laws, as is the case in Marxism and other radical formulations of social science.

So, dear attendees, I was able to give a reason for something that is actually quite personal to me, right here in front of you. And I may say: Speaking to you now, I feel transported back to an earlier time, to the 1880s, when we in Central Europe were living in a time that was felt by all to be a time of ascent. We – those people who, like me, have grown old – have now arrived at a point in time where the hopes of the springtime that emerged back then take on a rather tragic form in our minds. Those who look back on what then seemed like an invincible ascent now look back on something in which, for many people, something reveals itself that was in fact an error in many respects.

In speaking to you, I am speaking to fellow students who are in a different situation. Many of you are probably the same age as I was when I experienced that springtime hope; now you are experiencing something that is very different from the fantasies that arose from the springtime hopes of that time in the human soul. But someone who is as filled with the possibility and necessity of spiritual knowledge as the one speaking to you can never be pessimistic about the power of human nature; he can only be optimistic. And that is why it does not appear to me as something that I do not present as a possibility before my soul, that once you have reached the age at which I am speaking to you today, you have gone through the opposite path – that opposite path that now leads upwards again from the power of the human soul, above all from the spiritual power of the human soul. And because I believe in man out of spiritual knowledge, I believe that one cannot speak, as Spengler does, of a downfall, of a death of Western civilization. But because I believe in the power of the soul that lives in you, I believe that we must come to an ascent again. Because this ascent is not caused by an empty phantom, but by human will. And I believe so strongly in the truth of the spiritual science described to you that I am convinced: This will of men can be carried, can cause a new ascent, can cause a new dawn. And so, my honored audience, I would like to close with the words that first fell on my ears as a young student when the new rector for mechanics and mechanical engineering in Vienna delivered his inaugural address. At that time, for people who also believed in a new ascent, and rightly believed in it, even if only a technical ascent came later, not a social, not a political ascent. But now we are in a period in which, if we do not want to despair, we can and must think only of an ascent. That is why I say what that man said to us young people back then: “Fellow students, I conclude by saying that the one who feels honestly about the development of humanity in the face of what is to arise from all science and all technology can only say: Always forward!”

Discussion

Question: What entitles us to go beyond the limits of thinking, to leave the unity of thinking and to move from thinking to meditation?

Rudolf Steiner: Dearly beloved! It seems to me that this question is about something very significant, which, however, can only be fully understood through thorough epistemological and epistemological reflection. But I will try to point out a few things that come into consideration when answering this question.

Perhaps I may draw attention to the last chapter that I added to the second edition of my book “The Riddles of Philosophy”, in which I described the development of philosophy itself and in which I then tried to show how, at the present moment in human development has arrived at the point where philosophy, so to speak, demands of itself this going beyond of thinking about the point of view of thinking that arises precisely when one has reached the limits of the knowledge of nature. I tried to show the following at the time:

People can, if they study the methods of knowledge acquisition in detail, as the great physiologist Du Bois-Reymond did, arrive at the point of view that Du Bois-Reymond expressed in his lecture “On the Limits of Natural Knowledge” at the famous natural science conference in Leipzig in the 1870s and also repeated in his lecture on “The Seven World Riddles”. I will only briefly point out that at that time Du Bois-Reymond spoke of the fact that with the application of what has been called “unified thinking” here, one comes to develop the so-called Laplacian mind, that is, to develop such thinking about matter as is possible when one seeks to grasp the course of the planets of a solar system using astronomical-mathematical methods.

If we now turn our attention, through a certain inner contemplation, to what takes place within ourselves, if we try to make the subject into the object, then it turns out that this thinking, which we develop, cannot be defined as being there to depict some external world or to combine the facts of an external world. In what is thought about thinking, I must still see a last remnant of that old teleology, that old doctrine of purpose, which everywhere asks not why but for what purpose, which does not ask how it comes that the whole organization of man or any other organism or an organ like the hand is formed in a certain way, but which asks how this hand would have to be formed for a certain purpose. This is also extended to the consideration of thinking, although today people are no longer aware of this or have not yet become aware of it. One asks: What is thinking actually for? One does not always realize this, but unconsciously one asks it. Thinking, one thinks, cognition in general, is there to draw an outer world into oneself, so that what is first outside, is then within, even if only as an image. But now, through realism, but of course spiritual realism, one can follow what thinking actually is. Then one realizes that this thinking is a completely real force that shapes us ourselves.

You see, this spiritual science of which I speak here is not an abstract theory, not something that merely wants to be a world view in ideas. Among other things, I have recently given a pedagogical course here in which I tried to apply spiritual science to pedagogy. It was a course for teachers before the Waldorf School was founded. In addition to this pedagogical course, I also gave a course that tried to take the therapeutic aspect of medicine from spiritual science and show how spiritual research can shed light on something that can never be fully understood by using only today's methods of physiology and biology. Now, I do not want to tell you something specifically therapeutic, but there is one thing I would like to mention to characterize the method. That is, in current philosophy today, there is actually only speculation about the connection between the spiritual-mental and the physical-corporeal. There are all kinds of theories about interactions, about parallelism and so on, all kinds of materialistic interpretations of the soul processes. But actually, in a certain abstraction, we always have on the one hand the observation of the spiritual-mental, on the other hand that of the bodily-physical, and then we speculate how these two can come into a relationship with each other. Spiritual science really studies methodically - but precisely with the thinking that is awakened there - how the soul-spiritual works in the bodily-physical. And even if I expose myself to some misunderstanding, that what I say is taken as paradoxical, I want to emphasize one thing:

When we observe a child growing up until the change of teeth around the seventh year, we notice that not only does the change of teeth take place, but that the configuration of the soul and spirit also undergoes a significant change. If you now think back over your own life, you will find – even if you are not yet conducting methodical research – that the sharply contoured thoughts, which then solidify into memory and reproduce themselves for the course of life, that these sharply can only be formed out of the power of thought at the time when the organism is driving out what are called second teeth – it is something that comes from the whole organism, not just from the jaw. If one pursues this methodically, one comes to say to oneself: Just as, for example, in physical processes, some kind of force, such as mechanical force, can be converted into heat and one then says: heat is released, heat appears - so in the course of human life one has to what remains in the organism – we have completely lost the expression for this – in the change of teeth, and what is then released when the change of teeth gradually takes place, what then passes from the latent state to the free state, what initially only worked internally. The second teeth have appeared; there is a certain connection of forces at work, a system of forces within, until these second teeth emerge. Then this interrelatedness of forces is released, and in its release it appears as that spiritual-soul element which then gives the sharply contoured thoughts of memory.

With this example I only want to show how this spiritual science is actually applied to areas that one does not think of today. It is a continuation of the natural sciences. It is exactly the same form of thinking that is applied when one speaks of the release of warmth. The same form, which has only just emerged, is then applied to human development, and one says to oneself: that which appears as memory, as thinking power, that pushes the second teeth out - if I may express myself trivially.

In this case, one is not speculating about the connection between body and soul, but rather one is pursuing, in a completely empirical way, as one is accustomed to doing as a natural scientist, only with more highly developed methods of thought, that which can be observed. Only the whole of what one has around one is also observed spiritually. And so one comes to speak no longer in an abstract, nebulous way about the interaction of body and soul and spirit, but one states how at a certain age a force works physically, which then emancipates itself as a spiritual-soul force at a different age. And one comes to enter with the spirit into the material, to understand the material spiritually. That is the peculiar thing, that materialism has not understood the material, that it actually stands opposite matter in such a way that it remains incomprehensible to it. Materialism has not understood matter. Spiritual science, which is meant here, advances to the understanding of the material through its spiritual method. And it was indeed extremely interesting for the doctors and medical students who attended the course for physicians to be shown how one can really get to effectively represent the spiritual and soul in the physical, how, for example, one can show how the heart, in its function, can be understood from spiritual science in a completely different way than with the methods of today's physiology or biology.

So it is a matter of developing thinking not just through some kind of fanciful elaboration, but through a real continuation, which must simply pass through a borderline or critical state. In this passage through the borderline state, thinking becomes something else. You must not say that the unity of thinking is somehow destroyed by this. For example, the power that works in ice does not become something that should no longer be when the ice melts and turns into water. And the power that works in water does not become something else when the water passes through the boiling point and through vaporization. So it is a matter of the fact that at the point that I have characterized as a point of development for thinking, this thinking power passes through such a borderline state and then indeed appears in a different form, so that the experience differs from the earlier experience like steam from water. But this leads one to understand the thinking power itself, thinking – I could also prove the same for willing – as something that works realistically in man. In the thinking power that one has later in life, one then sees what has been working in the body during childhood. So everything becomes a unity in a remarkable way.

I readily admit that spiritual science can err in some individual questions. It is in its early stages. But that is not the point. The point is the direction of the striving. And so one can say: an attempt is made to observe what reveals itself in thinking in its shaping of the human being, to observe it as a real force that shapes and forms the human organism. Thought is observed in its reality. Therefore, one can say in conclusion: Those who still look at thought in a cognitive way, asking only one question: Why is thought such that it combines outer sense perceptions? – they are succumbing to a certain error, an error that I would like to characterize for you now.

Let us assume that the grain of wheat or the ear of wheat grows out of the root tip through the stalk; the plant-forming power manifests itself and can shape a new plant out of the seed, which in turn grows into a seed and so on. We see that the formative power at work in the plant is continuously effective in the plant itself, from formation to formation, as Goethe says: from metamorphosis to metamorphosis. In spiritual science, we try to follow thinking, which expresses itself in human beings, as a formative force, and we come to the conclusion that, in so far as thinking is a formative force in the human being, a side effect also comes about, and this side effect is actually ordinary cognition. But if I want to characterize thinking in its essence according to this secondary effect, then I am doing exactly the same as if I were to say: What do I care what shoots up through the root, the stalks into the ear of corn as a formative force in the plant; I do not care about that; I start from the chemistry of nutrition and examine what appears in the wheat grain as a nutritional substance. This is, of course, also a legitimate way of looking at the wheat grain. You can also look at it that way. But if I do, then I disregard what actually flows continuously in plant formation. And so it is with cognition. In what is usually thought by epistemologists, by philosophers and by those who want to ground natural science with some kind of observation, there are the same effects that occur when thinking, which actually wants to shape us, expresses itself outwardly in a side effect. It is as if what grows in the wheat plant is only thought of as the basis for the nutrition of another being. But it is wrong to examine the wheat only in terms of this. This has nothing to do with the nature of the wheat grain. I am introducing a different point of view.

Thus, philosophy today is on the wrong track when it examines cognition only in terms of the apprehension of the external world. For the essential thing is that cognition is a formative force in man, and the other thing appears as a mere side effect. And the way of looking at it that wants to leave thinking only in the state in which it abstracts natural laws, collects perceptions, is in the same position as someone who would claim that one should not do plant biology to get to know the nature of the plant, but nutritional chemistry.

These are things that are not thought about today, but they play a major role in the further development of the scientific future, that scientific future that is at the same time also the future for such a social organization through which man, in grasping social life through the spirit, can truly intervene in this social organization. For it seems to me that this is precisely what has led to the catastrophe: that we no longer master life because we do not think that we have entered a state of human development in which life must be mastered from the spirit, from that spirit that is recognized from within and thereby also recognizes what confronts us in the external world.

Yes, my dear audience, with such things one is considered an eccentric in the broadest circles today, a dreamer, and in any case one does not expect such a person to really see through the outside world realistically. But I believe that I am not mistaken when I say: the application of spiritual science to the entire external world can be compared to the following. If someone lays down a horseshoe-shaped piece of iron, a farmer comes and says: I will shoe my horse with that. Another, who knows what kind of object it is, says to him: That is not a horseshoe, it is a magnet, it serves a completely different purpose. But the farmer says: What do I care, I will shoe my horse with it. This is how science appears today, refusing to admit that the spiritual lives everywhere in the material. Those who deny the spiritual in the material are like the man who says, “What do I care about the magnet, I shoe my horse with the iron.” I believe, however, that we must come to the realization that in all material things we have to recognize not only an abstract spiritual essence, but also a concrete spiritual essence, and that we must then be willing to study this concrete spiritual essence in the same way as we do in the material world, and that this will mean progress in cognitive and social terms for the future.

But it is easier to express speculative results and all kinds of philosophies about what the spirit is, it is easier to be a pantheist or the like out of speculation, than to follow the example of strict natural science, only with the experiential method, as I have described it, to continue the scientific research and then to find the spiritual in the material - just as one brings warmth to light, even if it does not express itself, by showing under which circumstances that which is latent reveals itself. If we apply this method, which is usually applied externally, to the internal, but especially to the whole human being, then we will understand the spiritual in the material from the inside out. And above all, that which has actually been resonating to us from ancient times and yet, for human beings, is a profound necessity, that which still resonates from the Apollonian temple at Delphi to the ears of the spirit: “Man, know thyself!” And just as philosophers and theologians have spoken of this “know thyself”, so too has the naturalist Ernst Haeckel, who was more or less inclined towards materialism. This “know thyself” is deeply rooted in human nature. And modern times have now reached a point where this “know thyself” must be approached in a concrete way.

With these suggestions, I believe I have shown that it is not a matter of violating the unity of thought, but of continuing the thought beyond a boundary point. Just as it is not impossible to bring the forces in water to a completely different manifestation after passing through the boiling point, so too, there is no sin against what is experienced in the combining thinking with the perception when this thinking is taken beyond the boundary point. It is quite natural that a metamorphosis of thinking is then achieved. But by no means has a uniformity of thinking been violated. You will not find at all that spiritual science leads to the rejection of natural science, but rather to a deeper penetration of it. One arrives precisely at what I consider to be particularly important for the development of humanity: the introduction of scientific knowledge into the whole conception of the world, which fertilizes life, but which can only be achieved by our ascending from the spiritual observation of nature to the pure experience of the spiritual, which can then also pour into our will and become a living force in us. Because it can do this, because living knowledge makes us not only wise but also skillful, I believe in a future for humanity, in human progress, if in the future more attention is paid to the spiritual in the material than has been the case so far, if the spiritual is sought in the material, which can then also be transferred to the social, so that in the future the solution of the social question will appear to us as the spiritualization of social life, as spiritualization with that spirit which we can achieve precisely as a continuation of scientific research.

Professor Dr. Th. Meyer: I am in complete agreement with Dr. Steiner that the limiting concepts of scientific knowledge are not the limiting concepts of existence and reality. I have also heard him speak with warm and moved heart of the hopes that the German people may cherish for the future despite their collapse. But I do have some doubts on the point of whether spiritual science oriented towards anthroposophy will possess precisely the ability to lead to a new height to which Germany should aspire. And I think the concern lies in the following: Dr. Steiner has repeatedly emphasized that the path to the higher worlds, of which he has spoken, is achieved through vision, through a seeing consciousness, through an experience, and that this path is absolutely scientific, not imaginative. This inner vision naturally has the same status as something that is evident in logic. That is to say, what I have seen with my outer or inner eyes cannot be disputed. I see a tree and do not need to prove that the tree must be there. There is no metaphysical proof for it, it is evident that the tree is there. Dr. Steiner now claims this evidence for his inner vision. That means he sees the higher world and sees the connections of the higher world, and because he sees them, precisely for that reason this higher world is there; it is indisputable. I do not want to dispute that the higher world is evident to him who beholds it. The only question is whether it is evident to everyone, and here I have a reservation. Ever since I have known anthroposophy, it has been based on the fact that this inner vision, this seeing consciousness, is ancient, that there have long been people who rise to the height of this seeing consciousness, have long since risen to it in India. That is why anthroposophy also adopts a whole series of expressions from the Indian language. It needs Indian expressions for the various spiritual insights it imparts. But the fact of the matter is that Dr. Steiner claims that he is bringing something new. However, there were a number of Theosophical Societies in Germany and England before Dr. Steiner came on the scene. Dr. Steiner originally belonged to these Theosophical Societies, then he came into conflict with them and resigned from these associations. He just, because he came into inner conflict with them, no longer referred to his view of things as theosophy, but because his inner vision is different from the inner vision of the other theosophists, he called it anthroposophy.

Now I would like to say: If the earlier intuitive consciousness was mistaken, if Dr. Steiner was the first to bring the right thing, who guarantees me that another will not come and say: This higher intuitive consciousness that Dr. Steiner brought has not reached the ultimate goal. Another person may arrive at a quite different goal. In that case Steiner's vision becomes subjective. It is the vision of an individual. It is doubtful whether one can rely on it.

This is my concern, which arises in relation to the supersensible of the whole movement, that there is a different inner vision. There should be no discord between the different visionaries. But I do not want to conclude without expressing my sincere and warm thanks to Dr. Steiner for the many fine suggestions he has given in his speech tonight.

Rudolf Steiner: Ladies and Gentlemen, I do not need to keep you any longer, for I will only have to point out that the esteemed gentleman who spoke before me has made a few errors in the most important point that he has raised.

First of all, I would like to start from the end and correct a few errors. The fact is not that what I have presented to you here was preceded by the teachings of other theosophical societies to which I belonged. It is not like that. Rather, I began writing my interpretations of Goethe's world view in the 1880s. At the time, they were published as an introduction to Goethe's scientific writings in Kürschner's “Deutsche National-Literatur” in Stuttgart. Anyone who follows them will find that the germ of everything I have presented to you today lies in those introductions. You will then find that in my “Philosophy of Freedom”, in the first edition of 1894, I tried to show how man gradually develops his thinking to a certain level and how, after that, what then leads discursive thinking into intuitive thinking follows.

Then it happened, in Berlin around 1902, that I was once asked to present what I had to say about the spirit in a circle that called itself theosophical. At that time I had become acquainted with various Theosophists, but what they had to say did not really prompt me to follow with any attention the Theosophical literature that was common in this Theosophical Society. And so I simply presented what had emerged from my own intuitive research. The result was that people in England who had read my book Mysticism in the Dawn of Modern Spiritual Life very soon translated these lectures into English and published them in an English newspaper. I was then invited to give lectures to a number of people in the society that called itself the Theosophical Society. I have never hesitated to speak to those who called upon me, whether they called themselves by this or that name, about what I had to say. But I have never advocated anything in any of these groups other than what I had to say on the basis of my own research. Thus, during the time that I belonged to the Theosophical Society, I advocated nothing other than what I have to advocate on the basis of my own research.

That I called what I presented “Anthroposophy” even then may be gathered from the fact that at the same time - not only later, when I had come to a different view from that of this society - I also presented to a different circle of people in Berlin, and I did not present a single iota of what I had to present from my research. And there I announced my lectures – so that people could not possibly be in error – as anthroposophical observations on human development. So for as long as any human being can associate me with Theosophy, for as long have I called my worldview “Anthroposophy”. There has never been a break. That is what I would like to say about it now, so as not to keep you waiting too long.

Now, dear ladies and gentlemen, some people say that if you study the history of philosophy, you find that philosophers - starting with Thales and going up to Eucken or others - have put forward all sorts of views and that they have often contradicted each other; how can you arrive at a certainty of knowledge? This is precisely what I set out to do in my book “Riddles of Philosophy”: to show that the matter is not so, but that what appear to be deviations in the various philosophies worthy of the name only ever come from the fact that one person looks at the world from one point of view, while another looks at it from a different point of view. If you photograph a tree from one side, what you see in the picture is only from a certain side. If you photograph the tree from a different side, you get a completely different picture – and yet it is the same tree. If you now come to the conclusion that many truly truthful philosophies do not differ from one another in that one deviates from the other, but that they simply look at one and the same thing from different points of view, because you cannot come to a single truth at all, then you realize that it is a prejudice to say that the philosophies contradict each other.

In my book “The Riddles of Philosophy”, I have shown that it is a prejudice to say that philosophers contradict each other. There are, of course, those who are in a certain contradiction, but these are only those who have made a mistake. If two children in a class solve a problem differently, one cannot say that it is therefore not certain who has found the right solution. If one understands the correct solution, one already knows what the right thing is. So it cannot be deduced from the fact that things are different that they are wrong. That could only be deduced from the inner course of the matter itself. One would have to look at the inner course of the matter itself. And it is an external consideration when one says: Steiner resigned from the Theosophical Society. First of all, I did not resign, but after I was first dragged in with all my might to present my own world view, nothing else at all, I was - perhaps I may use the sometimes frowned-upon expression in front of you - thrown out, and for the reason, my dear dear attendees, because the “other kind of truth”, namely the madness of those theosophists, prevailed. These theosophists had finally managed to present an Indian boy who was claimed to be the newly appeared Christ; he was brought to Europe and in him the re-embodied Christ had appeared. Because I, of course, characterized this folly as folly and because at that time this folly found thousands of followers throughout the world, this following took the opportunity to expel me. I did not care. At any rate, I did not believe that what one had gained through inner research seemed uncertain simply because a society that calls itself theosophical expelled me, a society that claims that the Christ is embodied in the Indian boy.

Such things should not be considered superficially, simply overlooking the specifics and saying, “Well, there are different views.” One must take a closer look at what is occurring. And so I would like to leave it to you, when you have time - but you would have a lot to do with it - to compare all the quackery that has appeared in the so-called theosophical societies with what I have always tried to bring out of good science. I say this not out of immodesty, but out of a recognition of the reality of the matter and out of spiritual struggle. And bear in mind that I myself said today: “Some details may be wrong, but the important thing is to show a new direction.” It does not have to be the case that the absolutely correct thing is stated in every detail. So someone could well say that they are looking at a right-angled triangle and getting all sorts of things out of it. Then someone comes along and says: The square of the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides. You can't be sure whether it could be universally true just because he is the only one saying it. No, if it has become clear to you through an intuitive insight into the nature of mathematics that the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides, then a million people may say it is otherwise, but I know it is so and I will contradict a million people. For the truth has not only an external basis for agreement, but above all a basis in its inner substantiality.

Of course, anyone can check this. And I have never claimed anything other than that anyone who wants to can learn about the spiritual scientific method just as easily as they can learn about the methods of chemistry. But once the things have been researched, they can be verified by any thinking person. And so what I say or write and have written from the spiritual science can be verified by every thinking person. There will certainly be many errors in it, of course, but that is the same as with other research. It is not about these errors in detail, but about the basic character of the whole.

Have I used a single Indian expression to you today? And if something is sometimes referred to by using some old expression, then that is just a technical term used because there is no such expression in current usage. Even if I can prove the Pythagorean theorem on the blackboard or something else, can one be reproached for the fact that it was already there centuries ago? For me, it is not a matter of putting forward ancient Indian or similar ideas, but of putting forward what arises from the matter itself. Just as today, anyone who grasps and understands the Pythagorean theorem grasps it from the matter itself, even though it can be found at a certain point in time as the first to emerge, so of course some things must, but only seemingly, agree with what was already there. But it is precisely this that I have always most vigorously opposed: that what is being attempted here from the present point in the development of human consciousness has anything to do with some ancient Indian mysticism or the like. There are, of course, echoes, because instinctive knowledge found much in ancient times that must resurface today. But what I mean is not drawn from old traditions. It is really the case that what is true, what is true for me, is what I wrote down at the time when I wrote the first edition of my book Theosophy in 1904: I want to communicate nothing but what I have recognized through spiritual scientific research, just as any other scientific truth is recognized through external observation and deductive reasoning, and which I myself can personally vouch for. Some may certainly hold a different opinion, but I put forward nothing but what I can personally vouch for. I do not say this out of immodesty, but because I want to appear as a person who does not want to present a new spiritual science out of a different spirit than out of the spirit of modern science and also of newer technology, and because I think that one can only understand this new consciousness in terms of its scientific and technical nature, when one is driven by both to the contemplation of the spirit.

I ask that my words not be taken as if I had wanted to avoid what the honorable previous speaker said. No, I am grateful that I was given the opportunity to correct some factual errors that have become very widespread. But much, very much even, of what is being spread today about what I have been presenting in Stuttgart for decades is based on errors. And it seemed necessary to me, as the previous speaker commendably did, to address what was presented, because it is not just a matter of correcting what affects me personally, but also something that the previous speaker brought together with the substance of the question, to correct it through the historical.

Question: If Dr. Steiner proves just one point of spiritual science to me in the same way that the Pythagorean theorem can be proved, then I will gladly follow him, then it is science.

Rudolf Steiner: Dear attendees, who can really prove the Pythagorean theorem? The Pythagorean theorem cannot be proved by drawing a right-angled triangle on the blackboard and then using one of the usual methods of proof. That is only one illustration of the proof. The point is that anyone who wants to prove the Pythagorean theorem is put in the position of having to have what can be constructed mathematically in their mind's eye - even if only in the inner vision of the geometric space vision. So imagine a consciousness that did not have this spatial vision. He would not have the essential part of the Pythagorean theorem before him, and it would make no sense to prove the Pythagorean theorem. We can only prove the Pythagorean theorem by having the essential part of the spatial perception and spatial organization before us. The moment we ascend to another form of consciousness, something else is added to the ordinary spatial view (space view) (space view) (space view) (space view) (space view) (space view) (space view) (space view) (space view) (space view) (space view) (space view) (space view) (space view) (space view) (space view) (space view) (space view) (space view) (space view) (space view) (space view) (space view) (space view) (space view) (space view) (space view) (space view) (space view) (space view) (space view) (space view) (space view) (space view) (space view) (space view) (space view) (space view) (space view) (space view) (space view) (space view) (space view) (space view) (space view) (space view) (space view) (space view) ( Only, as long as one has no conception of the configuration of space, one cannot at all arrive at the observation that leads to the proof of the Pythagorean theorem. And only as long as one has not yet made the transition from ordinary consciousness to experiencing consciousness, as I have described it, does one believe that the results of spiritual scientific research cannot be proved in the same way.

I started from the assumption that the experiencing consciousness is there first. And just as he who does not have a spatial view cannot speak of the Pythagorean theorem, so one cannot speak of the proof of any proposition of spiritual science if one does not admit the whole view. But this view is something that must first be attained. It is not there by itself. But our time demands that we decide on something completely new if we want to move towards this progress in science. And I do believe that there is still a great deal to be overcome before spiritual science is advocated in broader circles in the way that Copernicus's world view was advocated over all earlier ideas of the infinity of space. In the past, people imagined space as a blue sphere. Now we imagine that there are limits to our knowledge of nature that cannot be overcome, or that we cannot go beyond ordinary thinking. Such things are well known to anyone who follows the history of human development. And I can only say: either what I have tried to present is a path to the truth – not the finished truth – in which case it will be trodden, or else it is a path to error, in which case it will be overcome. But that does no harm. What must not be extinguished in us, not be swept away by hasty criticism, is the everlasting striving upwards and onwards. And it is only this striving that really animates what I have tried to characterize today as the path that anthroposophically oriented spiritual science wants to take.

Question: We must have the firm belief that the effort we expend will also be worthwhile. Is it at all possible to recognize spiritual life in and of itself? Dr. Steiner says that it is possible to recognize the spirit of the world, the spirit of all life and of all nature, and to come into contact with it. Is that possible with our spirit, with our thinking? I doubt it. Thought consists of images. I think in pictures.

Rudolf Steiner: If I were to go into the question, I would have to keep you very busy for a long time. I do not want that and I will not do it. I only regret that this question was not asked earlier, then I could answer it more thoroughly.

You can find in my writings everywhere those things that I hypothetically object to and that are also discussed there, so that you can find a remedy for your doubts in the literature. Here, however, I would just like to say the following: It is the case with certain people that they make it virtually impossible for themselves to get ahead of the phenomenon through preconceived notions. They point to the phenomena and then say: What lies behind them, we do not recognize. The whole of Kantianism is basically based on this error. And my whole striving began with the attempt to combat this error. I would like to make clear to you, by means of a comparison, how one can gradually come to a resolution of these doubts.

When someone looks at a single letter, they can say: This single letter indicates nothing other than its form, and I cannot relate this form to anything else; it tells me nothing else. And when I look at, say, an electrical phenomenon, it is exactly the same as when I look at a letter that tells me nothing. But it is different when I look at many letters in succession and have a word, so that I am led from looking at them to reading them. I also have nothing in front of me other than what is being looked at, but I advance to the meaning. There I am led to something completely different. And so it is also correct that as long as one only grasps individual natural phenomena and individual natural elements – elements in the sense of mathematical elements – one can rightly say that one does not penetrate to the inner core. But if one tries to bring everything to life in context, to set it in motion with a new activity, then, as in the transition from the mere individual letter to the reading of the word, something quite different comes about. That is why that which wants to be spiritual science is nothing other than phenomenology, but phenomenology that does not stop at putting the individual phenomena together, but rather at reading them in the context of the phenomena. It is phenomenology, and there is no sin in speculating beyond the phenomena; rather, one asks them whether they have something to say about a certain inner activity, not only in terms of details but also in context.

It is understandable that if one only looks at the individual phenomena, one can take the same standpoint as Haller when he said: No created spirit penetrates into the innermost part of nature; blessed is he to whom nature only reveals the outer shell. But one also understands when someone grasps phenomenology as Goethe did – and spiritual science is only advanced Goetheanism – that Goethe, in view of Haller's words, says: “Into the innermost nature – oh, you philistine! — “No created spirit penetrates the innermost nature, blessed he to whom she shows only the outer shell.” I have heard this repeated for sixty years; I curse it, but furtively; I say to myself a thousand, a thousand times: She gives everything abundantly and willingly; nature has neither core nor shell, she is all at once. You, most of all, test yourself, whether you are core or shell."

Public lecture given to students at the Technical University

Dear students, If I attempt to present to you today something from the field of what for a number of years I have called anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, I do so in the knowledge that this evening, in what is effectively my first lecture, I will be able to give nothing more than a few suggestions, and that I am under no illusion that such a presentation will instantly create any kind of conviction. But perhaps it will be possible, after the general description that I will give, to satisfy specific wishes and address specific questions in the discussion that follows.

In order not to take up too much of our time, I would like to address the most important point first, and that is to give a characteristic of what spiritual science in an anthroposophically oriented sense actually wants to be. It differs from what is usually called science in the method of its research. And it is convinced that, in the latest period of time, a serious and honest striving in science, if consistently pursued, must ultimately lead to its method. I would like to speak to you in a thoroughly scientific sense, since I myself truly did not start from any theological point of view, nor from any world-view questions or philosophies in the sense in which they are usually cultivated, but rather I myself started from technical studies. And out of technical studies themselves, this spiritual science presented itself to me as a necessity of our historical period of development. Therefore, I am particularly pleased to be able to speak to you this evening.

When we do natural science, in the sense of today's thinking, we first have something in front of us that extends around us as the world of sensual facts. And we then use our thinking, we use in particular our methodically trained thinking, to find laws from a corresponding pursuit of these sensual facts. We look for what we are accustomed to calling natural laws, historical laws and so on. This way of relating to the world is not something that the humanities reject, but they want to stand on the firm ground of this research. But it does its research, standing on this firm ground, I might say, by starting from the point of view of human life itself. It comes, precisely because it wants to do serious scientific research, simply to the limit of scientific knowledge, which is fully admitted by level-headed natural scientists. And with regard to what natural science can be, it is firmly grounded in the view of those who say: In summarizing external facts, we advance to a certain level with scientific methodology, but we cannot go beyond a certain limit if we remain on the ground of this natural scientific research itself.

But then, when what is sought in ordinary life and in ordinary natural science is achieved, only then does the goal of spiritual science as it is meant here begin. By thinking about and understanding the facts around us, we arrive at certain boundary concepts. I am mentioning here only such limiting concepts, whether they are conceived as mere functions or as realities, limiting concepts such as atom, matter and so on. We operate at least with them, even if we do not seek demonic entities behind them. These limiting concepts, limiting ideas, which confront us particularly when we follow the scientific branches that are fundamental to technology, stand there as it were like pillars. And if you want to stop at the limits of ordinary science, you will remain standing right in front of these boundary pillars.

But for the spiritual researcher, as I mean him here, the actual work begins only at these border pillars. There it is a matter of the spiritual researcher, in what I call meditation - please do not take offense at this, it is a technical term like others - entering into a certain inner struggle, an inner struggling of life with these concepts, more or less with all the border concepts of natural science. And this inner struggle does not remain unfruitful for him.

In this context, I must mention a man who taught here in this city, at this university, in the second half of the last century, and who repeatedly emphasized this struggle that man enters into when he comes to the limits of ordinary science. It is Friedrich Theodor Vischer who knew something of what the human being can experience when he arrives at the concepts of matter, atom, natural law, force, and so on. What I mean here does not consist in brooding, but in consulting everything in the depths of our soul that has led to these concepts, in trying to live with these concepts in meditation.

What does that actually mean? It means establishing the inner discipline within oneself to be able to look, just as one otherwise looks at external objects, at what one finally has in one's soul when one arrives at such a borderline concept; I could name many others to you besides those I have just mentioned. Then, when one tries to concentrate the whole range of the soul on such concepts, abstracting from all other experiences, one makes an inward discovery. And this inner discovery is a shattering one. It shows us that from a certain point in life, in our inner life, our concepts become something that grows in our soul through itself, that is different after such inner meditative work than it is when we take it only as the result of external observation. Just as we observe in the growing child how certain organs, which first appear more undifferentiated, become more differentiated, how we perceive how organs grow, so in such meditative devotion to the results of scientific experience we feel how an inner growth of the soul takes place. And then comes the shocking realization that it is not through speculation, not through speculative philosophy that one goes beyond what is called the limit of natural knowledge, but through direct experience, that is, by transforming what one has gained through thinking into inner experience of beholding.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is the first step that is taken. It can be clearly felt how the method becomes quite different and how, therefore, something completely new occurs in comparison to the usual scientific method, which can be objectively recognized more than by anyone else, but also by me, in that mere thinking, mere comprehension, passes over into inner experience. And then, through consistent, patient, persistent experience in this direction, something occurs that cannot be called anything other than an experience of spiritual existence. One cannot speak about the experience of the spiritual world in any other way from an anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. Because this experience of the spiritual world is not something that is innate in man. It is something that must be achieved by man. When one has reached a certain level of this experience, one realizes that our thinking, which we otherwise use to grasp our environment, is in a different relationship to our entire physical being than one is forced to assume from mere knowledge of nature.

From the mere knowledge of nature, one notices how the physical changes and transformations, with youth, with old age and so on, also change the states of the soul. With scientific thinking, one can go further physiologically. It can be shown how the nervous system and the brain actually express the structure and configuration of our thinking. And if you follow the matter consistently from one side, you can say: Yes, something emerges from something else, which today could only be stated hypothetically, that which is thinking, that which is life in thought.

The person who has experienced this inwardly, which I have characterized as being able to be experienced, speaks differently, saying: When one walks, for my part over a soggy road, or when a car drives over a soggy road, then one has the impression of furrows, of footsteps. It would obviously be quite wrong to put forward the theory that it must have been an extraterrestrial being that created these footsteps, these furrows, just because one does not know, or to hypothesize that there are certain forces below the earth's surface that work in such a way as to have caused these footsteps, these furrows.

Thus one says – and I say expressly, with a certain right – from a scientific point of view: That which is the physiological formation of the brain is what, in the end, is expressed in the function of thinking. The person who has experienced what I have characterized does not say it that way; they say: Just as these grooves and furrows are not raised from within by the earth's inner forces, but rather as if something has passed over them, so the physical brain has been placed in its furrows by the body-free thinking. And that which, in a certain way, when we entered physical existence through birth, changes these furrows, that is also what, descending from spiritual worlds, does the work of shaping these furrows in the first place.

In this way, it is established that the soul is absolutely the active principle, that it is the soul that gives form to the body. I know, esteemed readers, that, of course, hundreds of objections can be raised against what I am saying, if one starts only from the intellectual-theoretical point of view. But spiritual science must point to the experience. It must point out that until this experience takes place, one is justified in believing that thought arises from the physical brain as a function, whereas when one experiences this thought life oneself, one knows how it is active in itself, how it is substantial and in motion in itself, and how it is actually active in relation to the passivity of the physical body.

So what is presented as a first initial experience is not something that is gained through a straightforward continuation of ordinary scientific methods, but only through a metamorphosis, only through a transformation of the ordinary scientific method into a method that can only be experienced, which consists not in speculation but in an inner experience.

That is one side of it. The other side of this inner experience relates more to the inner development of the human will. By looking at our lives, we can see the transformations we have undergone in life. We think back to how we were in our inner soul and outer bodily state one, five, ten years ago, and we say to ourselves: we have undergone changes, transformations. These changes, these transformations that we undergo, how do we undergo them? We passively surrender to the outside world in a certain way. We just need to say: hand on heart, how active are we in what we have initially become through the outside world? The outside world, heredity, upbringing and so on, shapes us; and what shapes us in it continues to have an effect. As a rule, we are actually the passive ones. If we now transform this into activity, if we form out of it what might be called in the most eminent sense self-discipline, and in the way I will characterize it in a moment, then the second element is added to what we have characterized as the first element in the path of spiritual research. If one can bring it to that, and that can only be achieved through methodical schooling in the sense described in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds” and in other books, if one can bring it to say to oneself: I will plan, even if only a small part of what what is to arise in me, I will resolve that this or that quality shall become mine; and if I can bring it to produce such a quality in me by a strong arousal of the will, perhaps only after years, when I make out of myself what I would otherwise only passively encounter in life , if I take my will, if I may express it somewhat paradoxically, into my own hands and take full control of my development – in a certain part one can of course only do so – then what otherwise is merely memory, in a certain way, also comes together to form a real area. You get a kind of overview of your life, as if you were looking at a series of things, and you then come to know the will in its true character.

While one gets to know thinking as something that actually detaches itself from the physical the more one delves into life, one comes to recognize one's will in such a way that it actually encompasses the physical more and more, permeates us more and more, flows through us, and that basically death is nothing more than a struggle of the will with the bodily functions have reached a certain limit when we pass through an earlier or later death, and that then that which can no longer work our body in this way, the will, is completely absorbed in what the body does, that this will detaches itself and that an element of the soul now actually enters a real, spiritual world when we pass away.

So it is a matter of the fact that what is usually called the idea of immortality is not pursued by any speculation of the spiritual science meant here, that basically this spiritual science completely breaks with the way the world usually approaches this idea. The point is that spiritual science, as a continuation of natural science through the training of thought and will, actually manages to grasp what we carry within us, thinking and willing, in such a way that we can also grasp it when this soul, which lives in thinking and willing, lives in a disembodied way that cannot be reached by the senses.

Of course, what I have briefly explained here will be regarded by the widest circles of our present time as something fantastic and visionary. But how could it be otherwise? Everything that comes into the world as something new and seemingly contradicts what was already there is initially regarded as something fantastic and visionary. But I do not believe that it will remain so for all time, that people will not recognize that what has been described here as the method of spiritual science, at least in two of its characteristic elements, is only a continuation, but a lively continuation, of what natural science actually achieves, but with which natural science comes up against a certain limit.

Today, when one speaks of the spirit in general, it is no longer entirely taken amiss. This was still the case in the last third of the 19th century, when a certain materialistic way of forming a world view out of scientific knowledge was used to draw the only logical conclusion of scientific thinking itself. Today it is again permitted to speak of the spirit, at least in a speculative way. But one is still very much taken aback when one speaks of the spirit in the way I have just done, because that has a certain consequence.

When one has acquired what I have called the “seeing consciousness” in my book “The Human Council,” when one has acquired what arises from such developed thinking and willing, then one knows oneself in a spiritual world through this seeing consciousness — just as one knows oneself through one's eyes and ears in a world of color and sound. In a sense, the world around is permeated with spirit. Just as the world around a person who was born blind undergoes a transformation when, after an operation, he begins to see colors at a certain point in his life, and the world that was previously around him is now filled with something different, so it is when this seeing consciousness occurs. The world that one was previously accustomed to seeing as the world of the senses and of the combining mind is filled with spirituality. And the spirit becomes something concrete. The spirit becomes something that one can also follow in its concrete form. One no longer speaks of the spirit in general. When someone speaks of the spirit in general, it is as if a person were walking across a meadow with flowers. If you ask him, “What kind of flower is that and what kind is that?” He will say, “They are all plants, plants, plants.” So today people are also allowed to say: Behind the sensory world is a spiritual world. But spiritual science cannot stop there. Rather, it must examine the spiritual facts in the concrete — because the spiritual world is around us just as the colored or the sounding world is — in the same way as one otherwise examines the colored and sounding world with the senses and the combining intellect. And there one acquires, before everything else, a quite definite way of relating to the world. It is also the case that if one is born blind and suddenly gains sight, one acquires a different relationship to the world. One must first find one's bearings; one knows nothing about spatial perspective, one must first learn it. So, of course, one must also acquire a certain relationship, a certain position to the world when one passes over into the consciousness of observation. Then many things appear in a peculiar way. That is why the spiritual researcher is still misunderstood by his contemporaries.

You see, the spiritual researcher never says that what has been gained through the method of strict natural science, or what has been drawn from the consequences of these results of strict natural science, is in any way logically incorrectly followed or anything of the sort, but he is compelled to add something from his spiritual insight, which is then not merely added on, but which in many respects completely changes the results of natural science.

Take geology, for example. I will pick out one example. It is better to talk about specific questions than to use general phrases. I understand completely and have followed this method myself: if, from what is happening around us today in the formations of rock, in the deposits of rivers and water and so on, we examine the geological layers that lie on top of each other and then calculate – even if it is not always a real calculation, but only something approximate, if you calculate how long these respective rock layers have existed, then you get the known figures. And then, as you all know, we arrive at the beginning of the earth's development, where the earth - as is hypothetically assumed - formed out of something, out of a kind of primeval nebula or something similar. I do not need to go into this in more detail. You are familiar with all this.

But for the spiritual researcher it is so, simply because he has experienced such things as I have described to you - though only in outline, to stimulate interest, not to convince - for the spiritual researcher it is so that he must say to himself: I assume that someone is examining the changes in a human organism, say the changes in the heart every five years. I follow how the human heart or another organ changes over the course of five or ten years, what happens there. And now I calculate what I have seen, if I simply consistently deduce from what I have calculated what it was like three hundred years ago. I get a certain result, albeit purely arithmetical, as to what this human heart was like three hundred years ago. The only objection to this is that this heart did not even exist at that time. Just as correct as the geological approach would be to conclude from the small changes in the human heart what that heart was like three hundred years ago – only it was not even there at that time. Equally correct – for I fully recognize that what geology reveals has at least a relative correctness – is also everything that is deduced from the geological facts for the development of the earth. But then we transpose what presents itself to us as a consequence of our calculations into times when the earth did not yet exist in its present form. Or we transpose what arises from our observations, which were made over a limited period of time, into an epoch that lies millions of years ahead, by calculating an end state and speaking of entropy or the like. For the spiritual researcher, this is the same as if he were to calculate what the nature of the human heart will be after three hundred years.

That is what you arrive at when you convert the ordinary scientific method into something that can be experienced. Because, you see, man is actually like an extract of the whole cosmos. In man you find - somehow changed, somehow extracted, compensated or the like - what is present in the cosmos as a law. You will ask me: Yes, how can you enthusiast claim that the earth has not yet existed in its present form? You must show us a way to claim something like that.

I will, however only sketchily, characterize how one comes to such assertions as I have put forward. One discovers, by experiencing the volition, the thinking, as I have described to you, that man really is a kind of microcosm. I do not say this as a phrase, as the nebulous mystics say, but in the awareness that it has become as clear to me as any solution to a differential equation, out of complete logical clarity. Man is inwardly a compendium of the whole world. And just as in our ordinary life we do not know only what is sensually surrounding us at the moment, just as we, by looking beyond what is sensually surrounding us at this moment, look at the image of something we have experienced about ten or fifteen years ago , how it emerges before us as something that no longer exists – but something of it is present in us, which enables us to reconstruct what was present back then – it is the same with the expanded consciousness that arises from the transformation of ordinary thinking and willing. In that man was actually connected with all that is past, only in a more comprehensive sense, in a completely different sense, in a more spiritual sense, was connected with what is past than he was connected with experiences ten or fifteen years ago, which he can bring up again from his inner being, so it is possible, when consciousness is broadened, we simply find out, as from a cosmic memory, that which we were part of, which simply does not live on in us for ordinary consciousness, but which lives on for the consciousness that has arisen through the metamorphosis that I have described.

It is therefore nothing more than an expansion, an increase of that power which is otherwise our power of remembrance, whereby man inwardly, simply from his own nature, which is a summary of the macrocosm, constructively resurrects that which actually was on our earth in a certain period of time. Man then looks at a state of the earth when it was not yet material. And while he otherwise has to construct something from the present-day experiences of geology that is supposed to have existed at that time, he now looks at a point in time when the earth was not yet there, when it was in a much more spiritual form. He sees, by constructively recreating what lives in him, that which actually underlies the formation of our earth.

And it is the same with what can emerge in us from a future state of the earth as something constructive in a certain way. I know how unsatisfactory such a sketchy description must be, but you can see from it that what I characterize as spiritual science is not drawn from thin air or from fantasy. It is, of course, something unusual. But once you have undergone the metamorphosis of consciousness, what you constructively represent inwardly is as clear to your consciousness as what you conjure up in mathematics or geometry, which is also constructed from within the human being.

And when someone comes and says, “Yes, but you have to assert something that all people can understand,” I say, “Yes, that is also the case, but the first thing to be considered is that the person who wants to understand something must first go through everything that is necessary to do so – just as someone who wants to solve a differential equation must first go through what will enable him to solve it.

And if someone objects on the other hand: Yes, mathematical geometry only presents something to our consciousness that we apply when we follow the reality of the external world – then I say: Yes, that is so, but if we constructively present this to ourselves, then we arrive at the conviction that it is a mere formality. If you are aware of what has been characterized, you know that it is a reality. And if someone says that this is perhaps self-suggestion, then I say: everything that gives us the possibility of saying that something is real is only a result of experience. And when some people object that someone could be mistaken, that someone could, for example, have the vivid thought of citric acid when drinking something and if they are sensitive, they could even have the taste of lemon – I say: that is possible. But just as in ordinary life one can distinguish the mere thought of heat from the heat that comes from actually touching a hot iron, so too, through inner experience, if one has the seeing consciousness, one can distinguish between what is mere imagination, what is mere suggestion, and what is reality, because the grasping of all reality is an inner experience. And it is necessary to follow things through to the end, not to stop somewhere. Anyone who stops short of where the path should actually lead may succumb to suggestion. I therefore say: It is indeed possible, if someone is sensitive and gives themselves over to autosuggestion, to say: I have the thought of lemonade, I even feel the taste – but the thought of lemonade will not quench one's thirst. What matters is that one passes from the sensation of taste to quenching one's thirst, that one follows the path consistently. The experience must be pursued consistently, then the fact that one designates something as reality in the spiritual sense is also entirely the result of the experience. The designation of a sensual reality or reality cannot be theoretically established, but is a result of experience.

Now, dear attendees, I have characterized the spiritual science that comes to a modern, natural scientific person when they go through what life offers today. This life has truly changed extraordinarily in the last thirty to fifty years, especially through the advances in technology. When I think back to the time when the first chair of technology was established in Vienna in the early 1880s, and consider all that has happened since then, I get some idea of how much this modern man has changed as a result of everything that has been drawn into our cognitive, our moral, but especially our social life. Those who have honestly gone through this, who do not say out of some prejudice: Oh well, science can't give us anything! but who takes the view that natural science can give us a great deal, who is completely absorbed in the triumphs of modern natural science, can come to the realization that the spiritual foundations of the world must be grasped in the way I have tried to present to you today.

Then one looks back to earlier times in the development of humanity and says to oneself: In these earlier times of human development, people hardly spoke of the spirit at all. And the way in which they spoke of the spirit has been preserved traditionally in various religious denominations, which, if one is completely honest and does not want to keep double accounts of life, one truly cannot reconcile with the results of ordinary natural science today. These spiritual experiences, it must be said, arise from a completely different state of consciousness in people. What we have learned through the three to four centuries in which scientific methods have been developed, what we have become as a state of mind through the Copernican and Galilean way of thinking, through Kepler, we have gone through everything that has subtracted the technical laws from the laws of nature in more recent times, through Kepler, through the Copernican and Galilean way of thinking, through Kepler, The entire configuration of the soul has changed, not by becoming more theoretical, but by becoming more conscious. Through the development of humanity, we have necessarily left certain instinctive states of earlier ages. And we look back at what earlier ages sensed as spirituality, which has been preserved in religious traditions, and we say to ourselves: What was there then as spirituality was grasped by human instinct. One could not say that this was dependent on such a heightening of consciousness through the methods of natural science, through the methods of social experience in modern times. People spoke in such a way that, when they saw natural phenomena, these natural phenomena, as it were, endowed them with the spirit of what they were speaking about. How did an ancient civilized Egyptian relate to the world? He looked up, followed the course of the stars, the configuration of the starry sky. He did not just see what Copernicus, Galileo and Kepler saw in this starry sky, but he saw something that at the same time revealed a spiritual reality to him. Just as, when I move my arm, a soul-active underlies this hand movement, so the person of earlier epochs felt in what happened externally that which underlies this external event as a spiritual, but instinctively.

Then came the more recent period, the time of natural science. I would like to say that we look back on a long period of human development that did not actually reach its conclusion until around the middle of the 15th century, a long period in which people could not help but see what was around them with their senses as something spiritual at the same time. When we speak of physical states today, of solid, liquid, gaseous forms, we speak in such a way that we consider the material. Ancient man, when he spoke of what are for us today the physical states, saw them as elements, but these elements were not merely material; they were the spiritual that manifested itself in them. What surrounded man as the material world was for him just as much the external physical-spiritual expression of the spiritual-soul as the physical organism is for us an expression of the spiritual-soul - but all instinctively. This path has necessarily been abandoned in the last three to four centuries, when humanity passed over to something quite different, which then became guiding in civilization. Mankind moved on to what distinguished the observation of nature from mere observation, which is always connected with the instinctive, with the spiritual observation of nature, which is still hidden in the name 'contemplation'. Man moved on from mere observation of nature to what could be called experimental comprehension of nature.

Since Bacon and others have been working, the mere observation of nature has been replaced by the experimental comprehension of nature. We do the experiment in the laboratory, in the physics cabinet, which we then extend to the technical work. In that which we ourselves bring about as a condition for some natural event, we survey these very conditions. Through the experiment, we are in a different position than in mere observation of nature. In nature, I cannot know whether what is revealed to me, be it for my mind or for my imagination, whether that is also some totality or whether I have to delve into it, much, much deeper than the thing initially presents itself to me. In short, despite all exact observation, what I observe in nature remains before me as an unknown. When I have an experiment before me, I establish the conditions myself; I follow how one thing is evoked out of another, and what is then still unknown is basically what is actually of interest. When you design an experiment and then observe what can be observed, you are actually looking at the result of what follows from the conditions that are manageable for you. In the experiment, everything is transparent in a completely different way than what I observe in nature.

And so, little by little, people have become accustomed to regarding themselves as interpreters of nature in the manageable context of the experiment, to some extent to tracing the law of nature where they themselves can trace the conditions of its manifestation. However, this experimental method is still linked to a certain inner yearning that used to underpin knowledge through and through. In those ancient times, when there was as yet no technology and no natural science in our sense, what was regarded as science arose above all out of the desire for knowledge, out of the desire to recognize, to explore, “what holds the world together in its inmost being,” if I may express it in this way. Now that the experimental method has emerged, it is not only the desire for knowledge that drives us, but also the desire to recreate what forms nature. But the old desire for knowledge still lives on. We recreate what we want to see in the experiment in order to unravel nature itself through what we can see. In recent times, technology has emerged from this experimental method with a certain degree of implicitness, and with technology we have entered a new phase.

We can therefore say that in the history of human development, we first have research determined by the desire for knowledge, then the experimental method, which, however, still combines the yearning of the old quest for knowledge with the recreation of nature. But when we pass over - one need only follow what has actually happened - from what can be experienced with the experiment to what then happens out of the experiment with the recognized laws of nature through the technical designs, which intervenes so deeply in human and social life, we must say to ourselves: there is a third element present that passes over from what we still have in recreating nature to what is now creative in man himself. This creative power – I do not believe that I am speaking to completely insensitive souls when I say the following about this creative power: the person who, with that peculiar characteristic style, with that peculiar state of soul constitution is undergoing a technical training, feels differently in this training than someone who is undergoing, for example, a theological training, which is a reproduction of the oldest methods of knowledge, or an already experimental scientific training. Those who undergo an experimental scientific training apply the mathematical, the geometrical, the theoretical-mechanical, the photometric, and so on, to what they observe there. He, as it were, recalculates nature.

One stands on a completely different level of consciousness when one first has before one what is, as it were, completely inwardly transparent: the mathematical, the geometrical —, and when one applies this not only in experiment, thus in imitating nature, but when one applies it in completely free designing machines, when you see that what you have experienced as mathematics, as theoretical-mechanistic chemistry, penetrates into the design of a technical structure, you experience the world in a completely different way than the mere naturalist or the theorizing technician.

What is the actual difference? One often fails to consider this. Imagine that in our ordinary, trivial lives we describe everything as “real”, even that which is not real in a higher sense. We call a rose “real”. But is a rose real in a higher sense? If I have it here in front of me, torn from the rose stem, it cannot live. It can only be shaped as it is when it grows on the rose stem, when it grows out of the rose root. By cutting it off, I actually have a real abstraction in front of me, something that cannot exist as I have it in front of me. But this is the case with every natural structure to a certain extent. When I look at a natural formation, even at a crystal, which is the least likely to exist, I cannot understand it just by looking at it, because it basically cannot exist by itself any more than the rose can. So I would have to say: this crystal is only possible in the whole environment, perhaps having grown out of a geode in the mountain formation.

But when I have before me something that I myself have formed as a technical structure, I feel differently about it. You can feel that, even feel it as something radically significant in the experience of the modern human being, who looks at what technology has become in modern life from the perspective of his or her technical education. When I have a technical structure that I have constructed from mathematics, from theoretical mechanics, I have something in front of me that is self-contained. And if I live in what is basically the scope of all technical creation, then I have before me not just a reflection of the laws of nature, but in what has become technical entities out of the laws of nature, there is actually something new before me. It is something different that underlies the laws of the technical entities than that which also underlies inorganic nature. It is not just that the laws of inorganic nature are simply transferred, but that the whole meaning of the structure in relation to the cosmos becomes different, in that I, as a freely creative human being, transfer what I otherwise experience from the design of physical or chemical investigations into the technical structure.

But with that, one can say: in that modern humanity has come to extract the technical from the whole scope of the natural, in that we had to learn in modern times to live in the realm of the technical in such a way that we we stand with human consciousness in a completely different relationship to the technical than to that which is produced in nature, we say to ourselves: Now it is for the first time that we stand before a world that is now, so to speak, spiritually transparent. The world of nature research is in a certain way spiritually opaque; one does not see to the bottom of it. The world of technology is like a transparent crystal - spiritually understood, of course. With this, a new stage in the spiritual development of humanity has truly been reached, precisely with modern technology. Something else has entered into the developmental history of humanity. That is why modern philosophers have not known how to deal with what has emerged in this modern consciousness precisely through the triumphs of technology. Perhaps I may point out how little the purely philosophical, speculative way of thinking could do with what has seized modern human consciousness, precisely from the point of view of technology. Today we are much more seized by what emanates from the leading currents of human development than we realize. What is now general consciousness was not yet there when there were no newspapers, when the only spiritual communication was that people heard the pastor speak from the pulpit on Sundays. What is now general education flows through certain channels from the leading currents into the broad masses, without people being aware of it. And so, basically, what came through technical consciousness has, in the course of a very short time, shaped the forms of thought of the broadest masses; it lives in the broadest masses without them being aware of it.

And so we can say that something completely new has moved in. And where a consciousness has become one-sided — which, fortunately, we have not yet achieved in Europe — where a consciousness has become one-sided, almost obsessed with this abstraction, a strange philosophical trend emerged: the so-called pragmatism of William James and others, which says: truth, ideas that merely want to be truth, that is something unreal at all. In truth, only that which we see can be realized is truth. — We as human beings form certain goals; we then shape reality according to them. And when we say to ourselves: this or that is real according to a natural law —, we form a corresponding structure out of it. If we can realize in the machine, in mechanics, what we imagine, then it is proved to us by the application in life that this is true. But there is no other proof than that of application in life. And so only that which we can realize in life is true. The so-called pragmatism, which denies all logical internal pursuit of truth and actually only accepts the truth of truth through what is carried out externally, is presented today in the broadest circles as American philosophy. And that is something that some people in Europe have also been grasping at for decades, even before the war.

All those philosophers who still want to think in the old ways know of no other way to proceed with what has emerged as a newer technique, as the awareness of newer techniques, than to set the concept of truth aside altogether. By stepping out of the instinctive grasping of nature, out of the experimental recreation of nature, into the free shaping of nature, nothing remains for them but free external shaping. The inner experience of truth, that spiritual experience of the soul that can permeate the soul as a spiritual being, is actually denied by this, and only that which can be realized in the external functional forms is considered truth. That is to say, the concept of truth that is inherent in the human soul is actually set aside.

Now, another development is also possible; it is possible that we will experience how something is emerging in the actual substance of technical structures from that which is natural, which now contains nothing that we can intuit, but only that which we can comprehend. For if we cannot grasp it, we cannot shape it. By experiencing this, by thoroughly permeating ourselves with what can be experienced in it, a certain need must awaken in us all the more. This new external world presents itself to us without the inner realization of the ideas, it presents itself to us without the inner experience of the ideas. Therefore, through this new experience, we are prepared for the pure experience of what spirituality is, of what man, subtracted from all external observation, must experience within, as I tried to sketch out for you at the beginning of my reflections today.

And so I believe that, because we have advanced in the developmental history of humanity to a view of that reality that we can survey externally, where we can no longer see any demoniacal, ghostly aspect in externality, because we have finally arrived at the point where we can no longer interpret the external sensual as being opaque to us, behind which we can assume something spiritual. We must seek the forces for the spirit within us through the development of the soul.

It has always seemed to me that a truly honest experience of the consciousness that comes to us precisely from technology calls upon us - because otherwise what is intimately connected with our human nature would almost have to be lost - to experience that what spirituality is, to experience it inwardly, in order to add to the one pole of transparent mechanics, of transparent chemistry, that which can now be attained through spiritual insight, which can be presented to people in the spirit. It seems to me that it is necessary in our time for the spiritual vision of anthroposophy to reveal itself, for the reason that we have indeed reached a certain stage of development in human history.

And another thing, honored attendees, is added: with this newer technology, a new social life has emerged at the same time. I do not need to describe how modern technology has created modern industrialism, how this modern technology has produced the modern proletariat in the way it is today. But it seems to me that if we only want to take the standpoint of the earlier scientific method, the standpoint of that which emerges from observation, then our thoughts fall short. We cannot grasp what is truly revealed in social life. In order to grasp what emerges in social life from the human, it is necessary that we come to truths that reveal themselves only through human nature itself. And so I believe that Marxism and other similar quackery, which today put people in such turmoil, can only be overcome if one finds special methods that are necessary as a counterbalance to technology, applied to the social life of human beings, and if, through this, it becomes possible to bring spirituality into the outer life, into the broad masses, because one has found this spirituality through inner experience.

Therefore it is no mere accident that out of the same soil out of which anthroposophically oriented spiritual science arose for me, there also grew, truly unsought, what I tried to present in my book 'The Core of the Social Question'. I simply tried to draw the consequences for social life from spiritual-scientific knowledge. And what I presented in this book emerged quite naturally.

I do not believe that without spiritual science one can find the methods that grasp how man stands to man in social life. And I believe that, because we have not yet been able to recognize social life, this life will not allow itself to be conquered by us and that we will therefore initially be plunged into chaos at the moment when, after the terrible catastrophe of war, people are faced with the necessity of rebuilding it. It is necessary to carry out what is to be carried out on the basis of spiritual laws, not on the basis of the law that a misconceived understanding believes can be based on natural laws, as is the case in Marxism and other radical formulations of social science.

So, dear attendees, I was able to give a reason for something that is actually quite personal to me, right here in front of you. And I may say: Speaking to you now, I feel transported back to an earlier time, to the 1880s, when we in Central Europe were living in a time that was felt by everyone as a time of ascent. We – those people who, like me, have grown old – have now arrived at a point in time where the hopes of spring that emerged back then stand before our spiritual eyes in a certain, quite tragic form. Those who look back on what seemed like an invincible ascent at the time now look back on something that reveals to many people that it was, after all, a mistake in many respects.

In speaking to you, I am speaking to fellow students who are in a different situation. Many of you are probably the same age as I was when I experienced that springtime hope; now you are experiencing something that is very different from the fantasies that arose from the springtime hopes of that time in the human soul. But someone who is as filled with the possibility and necessity of spiritual knowledge as the one speaking to you can never be pessimistic about the power of human nature; he can only be optimistic. And that is why it does not appear to me as something that I do not present as a possibility before my soul, that once you have reached the age at which I am speaking to you today, you have gone through the opposite path – that opposite path that now leads upwards again from the power of the human soul, above all from the spiritual power of the human soul. And because I believe in man out of spiritual knowledge, I believe that one cannot speak, as Spengler does, of a downfall, of a death of Western civilization. But because I believe in the power of the soul that lives in you, I believe that we must come to an ascent again. Because this ascent is not caused by an empty phantom, but by human will. And I believe so strongly in the truth of the spiritual science described to you that I am convinced: This will of men can be carried, can cause a new ascent, can cause a new dawn. And so, my honored audience, I would like to close with the words that first fell on my ears as a young student when the new rector for mechanics and mechanical engineering in Vienna delivered his inaugural address. At that time, for people who also believed in a new ascent, and rightly believed in it, even if only a technical ascent came later, not a social, not a political ascent. But now we are in a period in which, if we do not want to despair, we can and must think only of an ascent. That is why I say what that man said to us young people back then: “Fellow students, I conclude by saying that anyone who feels honestly about the development of humanity in the face of what is to arise from all science and all technology can only say: Always forward!”

Pronunciation

Question: What entitles us to go beyond the limits of thinking, to leave the unity of thinking and to move from thinking to meditation?

Rudolf Steiner: Dearly beloved! It seems to me that this question is about something very significant, which, however, can only be fully understood through thorough epistemological and epistemological reflection. But I will try to point out a few things that come into consideration when answering this question.

Perhaps I may draw attention to the last chapter that I added to the second edition of my book “The Riddles of Philosophy”, in which I described the development of philosophy itself and in which I then tried to show how, at the present moment in human development has arrived at the point where philosophy, so to speak, demands of itself this going beyond of thinking about the point of view of thinking that arises precisely when one has reached the limits of the knowledge of nature. I tried to show the following at the time:

People can, if they study the methods of knowledge acquisition in detail, as the great physiologist Du Bois-Reymond did, arrive at the point of view that Du Bois-Reymond expressed in his lecture “On the Limits of Natural Knowledge” at the famous natural science conference in Leipzig in the 1870s and also repeated in his lecture on “The Seven World Riddles”. I will only briefly point out that at that time Du Bois-Reymond spoke of the fact that with the application of what has been called “unified thinking” here, one comes to develop the so-called Laplacian mind, that is, to develop such thinking about matter as is possible when one seeks to grasp the course of the planets of a solar system using astronomical-mathematical methods.

If we now turn our attention, through a certain inner vision, to what is taking place within ourselves, if we try to make the subject into the object, then it turns out that this thinking, which we develop, cannot be defined as being there to depict some external world or to combine the facts of an external world. In what is thought about thinking, I must still see a last remnant of that old teleology, that old doctrine of purpose, which everywhere asks not why but for what purpose, which does not ask how it comes that the whole organization of man or any other organism or an organ like the hand is formed in a certain way, but which asks how this hand would have to be formed for a certain purpose. This is extended, even if one is no longer aware of it today or is not yet aware of it, to the consideration of thinking. One asks: What is thinking actually for? One does not always realize this, but unconsciously one asks. One thinks that thinking, and cognition in general, is there to enable one to draw an external world into oneself, so that what is outside is within, even if only in the form of an image. But now, one can follow realistically, but of course spiritually and realistically, what thinking actually is. Then one notices that thinking is a real power that shapes us.

You see, the spiritual science I am talking about here is not an abstract theory, not something that just wants to be a world view in ideas. Among other things, I have recently given a pedagogical course here in which I tried to apply spiritual science to pedagogy. It was a course for teachers before the Waldorf School was founded. In addition to this pedagogical course, I also gave a course that tried to take the therapeutic aspect of medicine from spiritual science and show how spiritual research can shed light on something that can never be fully understood if one only uses today's methods of physiology and biology for research. Now, I do not want to tell you something specifically therapeutic, but there is one thing I would like to mention to characterize the method. That is that today in conventional philosophy there is actually only speculation about the connection between the spiritual-mental and the physical-corporeal. There are all kinds of theories about interactions, about parallelism and so on, all kinds of materialistic interpretations of the soul processes. But actually, in a certain abstraction, we always have on the one hand 'observation of the spiritual-soul' and on the other hand 'observation of the physical body', and then we speculate how these two can come into a relationship with each other. Spiritual science really studies methodically - but precisely with the thinking that is awakened there - how the soul-spiritual works in the physical body. And even if I expose myself to some misunderstanding, that what I say is taken as paradoxical, I want to emphasize one thing:

When we observe a child as it grows up until the change of teeth around the seventh year, we notice that not only does the change of teeth take place, but that the configuration of the soul and spirit also undergoes a significant change. If you now think back over your own life, even if you are not yet conducting methodical research, you will find that the sharply contoured thoughts that then solidify into memories and reproduce themselves in the course of life, that these sharply can only be formed out of the power of thought at the time when the organism drives out what are called second teeth - it is something that comes from the whole organism, not just from the jaw. If one pursues this methodically, one comes to say to oneself: Just as, for example, in physical processes, some kind of force, such as mechanical force, can be transformed into heat and one then says: heat is released, heat appears, so in the human course of life one has to observe what is released in the organism – we have completely lost the expression for this – in the change of teeth, and what is then released when the change of teeth gradually takes place, what then passes from the latent state to the free state, what initially only worked internally. The second teeth have appeared; a certain connection of forces is at work, a system of forces within, until these second teeth emerge. Then this interrelatedness of forces is released, and in its release it appears as that spiritual-soul element which then gives the sharply contoured thoughts of memory.

With this example I only want to show how this spiritual science is actually applied to areas that one does not think of today. It is a continuation of the natural sciences. It is exactly the same form of thinking that is applied when one speaks of the release of warmth. The same form, which has only just emerged, is then applied to human development, and one says to oneself: that which appears as memory, as thinking power, that pushes the second teeth out - if I may express myself trivially.

In this case, one is not speculating about the connection between body and soul, but rather one is pursuing, in a completely empirical way, as one is accustomed to doing as a natural scientist, only with more highly developed methods of thought, that which can be observed. Only the whole of what one has around one is also observed spiritually. And so one comes to speak no longer in an abstract, nebulous way about the interaction of body and soul and spirit, but one states how at a certain age a force works physically, which then emancipates itself as a spiritual-soul force at a different age. And one comes to enter with the spirit into the material, to understand the material spiritually. That is the peculiar thing, that materialism has not understood the material, that it actually stands before matter in such a way that it remains incomprehensible to it. Materialism has not understood matter. Spiritual science, which is meant here, advances to the understanding of the material through its spiritual method. And it was indeed extremely interesting for the doctors and medical students who were listening [to the course for medical professionals] that they were able to be shown how one can really arrive at an effective representation of the spiritual and soul in the physical, how one can, for example, show how the heart, in its function, can be understood in a completely different way from the methods of today's physiology or biology, based on spiritual science.

So it is a matter of developing thinking not just through some kind of fanciful elaboration, but through a real continuation, which must simply pass through a borderline or critical state. In this passage through the borderline state, thinking becomes something else. You must not say that the unity of thinking is somehow destroyed by this. For example, the power that works in ice does not become something that should no longer be when the ice melts and turns into water. And the power that works in water does not become something else when the water passes through the boiling point and through vaporization. So it is a matter of the fact that at the point that I have characterized as a point of development for thinking, this thinking power passes through such a borderline state and then indeed appears in a different form, so that the experience differs from the earlier experience like steam from water. But this leads one to understand the thinking power itself, thinking – I could also prove the same for willing – as something that works realistically in man. In the thinking power that one has later in life, one then sees what has been working in the body during childhood. So everything becomes a unity in a remarkable way.

I readily admit that spiritual science can err in some individual questions. It is in its early stages. But that is not the point. The point is the direction of the striving. And so one can say: an attempt is made to observe that which reveals itself in thinking, in its formation of the human being, to observe it as a real force that forms and develops the human organism. Thought is observed in its reality. Therefore, one says to oneself in the end: Those who still look at thought in a critical way, asking only one question: Why is thought such that it combines external sense perceptions? – they are succumbing to a certain error, an error that I would like to characterize for you now.

Let us assume that the grain of wheat or the ear of wheat grows out of the root tip through the stalk; the plant-forming power manifests itself and can shape a new plant out of the seed, which in turn grows into a seed and so on. We see that the formative power at work in the plant is continuously effective in the plant itself, from formation to formation, as Goethe says: from metamorphosis to metamorphosis. In spiritual science, we try to follow thinking, which expresses itself in human beings, as a formative force, and we come to the conclusion that, in that thinking is a formative force in human beings, a side effect also comes about, and this side effect is actually only ordinary cognition. But if I want to characterize thinking in its essence according to this side effect, then I am doing exactly the same as if I say: What interests me is what shoots up through the root, the stalks into the ear as a formative force in the plant; that does not interest me; I start from the chemistry of nutrition and examine what appears in the wheat grain as a nutritional substance. Of course, this is also a legitimate way of looking at the wheat grain. You can look at it that way. But if I do, then I disregard what actually flows continuously in plant formation. And so it is with cognition. In what is usually thought by epistemologists, by philosophers and by those who want to ground natural science with some kind of observation, there are the same effects that occur when thinking, which actually wants to shape us, expresses itself outwardly in a side effect. It is as if what grows in the wheat plant is only thought of as the basis for the nutrition of another being. But it is wrong to examine the wheat only in terms of this. This has nothing to do with the nature of the wheat grain. I am introducing a different point of view.

Thus, philosophy today is on the wrong track when it examines cognition only in terms of the apprehension of the external world. For the essential thing is that cognition is a formative force in man, and the other thing appears as a mere side effect. And the way of looking at it, which wants to leave thinking only in the state in which it abstracts natural laws, collects perceptions, is in the same position as someone who would claim that one should not do plant biology to learn about the nature of the plant, but nutritional chemistry.

These are things that are not thought of today, but they play a major role in the further development of the scientific future, that scientific future that is at the same time also the future for such a social organization through which man, in grasping social life through the spirit, can truly intervene in this social organization. Because that seems to me to be precisely what led to the catastrophe: that we no longer master life because we have entered a state of human development in which life must be mastered by the spirit, by that spirit that is recognized from within and thereby also recognizes what confronts us in the external world.

Yes, my dear audience, with such things one is considered an eccentric in the broadest circles today, a dreamer, and in any case one does not expect such a person to really see through the outside world realistically. But I believe that I am not mistaken when I say: the application of spiritual science to the entire external world can be compared to the following. If someone lays down a horseshoe-shaped iron, a farmer comes and says: I will shoe my horse with that. Another, who knows what kind of object it is, says to him: That is not a horseshoe, it is a magnet, it serves a completely different purpose. But the farmer says: What do I care, I will shoe my horse with it. This is how it seems today: a scientific attitude that refuses to admit that the spiritual lives everywhere in the material. Those who deny the spiritual in the material are like the man who says, “What do I care about the magnet? I'll shoe my horse with the iron.” I do believe, however, that we must come to the realization that in all material things we have to recognize not only an abstract spiritual essence, but also a concrete spiritual essence, and that we must then be willing to study this concrete spiritual essence in the same way as we do the material, and that this will mean progress in cognitive and social terms for the future.

But it is easier to express speculative results and all kinds of philosophies about what the spirit is, it is easier to be a pantheist or the like out of speculation than to follow the example of strict natural science, only with the experiential method, as I have described it, to continue the scientific research and then to come to it, [to find the spiritual in the material] - just as one brings warmth to light, even if it does not express itself, by showing under which circumstances that which is latent reveals itself. If we apply this method, which is usually applied externally, and continue it internally, but especially to the whole human being, then we will understand the spiritual in the material from the inside out. And above all, that which has actually been resonating to us from ancient times and yet, for human beings, is a profound necessity, that which still resonates from the Apollonian temple at Delphi to the ears of the spirit: 'Man, know thyself!' And just as philosophers and theologians have spoken of this “know thyself”, so too has the naturalist Ernst Haeckel, who was more or less inclined towards materialism. This “know thyself” is deeply rooted in human nature, and the modern age has now reached a point where this “know thyself” must be approached in a concrete way.

With these suggestions, I believe I have shown that it is not a matter of sinning against the unity of thought, but of continuing thought beyond a boundary point. Just as it is not impossible to bring the forces in water to a completely different manifestation after passing through the boiling point, so too, there is no sin against what is experienced in the combining thinking with the perception when this thinking is taken beyond the boundary point. It is quite natural that a metamorphosis of thinking is then achieved. But by no means has a uniformity of thinking been violated. You will not find at all that spiritual science leads to the rejection of natural science, but rather to a deeper penetration of it. One arrives precisely at what I consider to be particularly important for the development of humanity: the introduction of scientific knowledge into the whole conception of the world, which fertilizes life, but which can only be achieved by our ascending from the spiritual observation of nature to the pure experience of the spiritual, which can then also pour into our will and become a living force in us. Because it can do this, because living knowledge makes us not only wise but also skillful, I believe in a future for humanity, in human progress, if in the future more attention is paid to the spiritual in the material than has been the case so far, if the spiritual is sought in the material, and this can then be transferred to the social, so that in the future the solution of the social question will appear to us as the spiritualization of social life, as spiritualization with that spirit which we can gain precisely as a continuation of scientific research.

Professor Dr. Th. Meyer: I am in complete agreement with Dr. Steiner that the limiting concepts of scientific knowledge are not the limiting concepts of existence and reality. I have also heard him speak with warm and moved heart of the hopes that the German people may cherish for the future despite their collapse. But I do have some doubts as to whether spiritual science oriented towards anthroposophy will precisely possess the ability to lead to a new height to which Germany should strive. And I think the concern lies in the following: Dr. Steiner has repeatedly emphasized that the path to the higher worlds, of which he has spoken, is achieved through vision, through a seeing consciousness, through an experience, and that this path is absolutely scientific, not imaginative. This inner vision naturally has the same status as something that is evident in logic. That is to say, what I have seen with my outer or inner eyes cannot be disputed. I see a tree and do not need to prove that the tree must be there. There is no metaphysical proof for it, it is evident that the tree is there. Dr. Steiner now claims this evidence for his inner vision. That means he sees the higher world and sees the connections of the higher world, and because he sees them, precisely for that reason this higher world is there; it is indisputable. I do not want to dispute that the higher world is evident to him who beholds it. The only question is whether it is evident to everyone, and here I have a reservation. Ever since I have known anthroposophy, it has been based on the fact that this inner vision, this seeing consciousness, is ancient, that there have long been people who rise to the height of this seeing consciousness, have long since risen to it in India. That is why anthroposophy also adopts a whole series of expressions from the Indian language. It needs Indian expressions for the various spiritual insights it imparts. But the fact of the matter is that Dr. Steiner claims that he is bringing something new. However, there were a number of Theosophical Societies in Germany and England before Dr. Steiner came on the scene. Dr. Steiner originally belonged to these Theosophical Societies, but then came into conflict with them and resigned from these associations. Because he came into inner conflict with them, he no longer referred to his view of things as theosophy, but rather, because his inner vision differs from the inner vision of the other 'theosophists', he called it anthroposophy.

Now I would like to say: If the earlier seeing consciousness was mistaken, if Dr. Steiner was the first to bring the right thing, who guarantees me that another will not come and say: This higher seeing consciousness that Dr. Steiner brought has not reached the ultimate goal. Another can come to a completely different goal. In that case Steiner's vision becomes subjective. It is the vision of an individual. It is doubtful whether one can rely on it.

This is my concern, which arises in relation to the supersensible of the whole movement, that there is a different inner vision. There should be no discord between the different visionaries. But I do not want to conclude without expressing my sincere and warm thanks to Dr. Steiner for the many fine suggestions he has given in his speech tonight.

Rudolf Steiner: Ladies and Gentlemen, I do not need to keep you any longer, for I only wish to point out that the esteemed gentleman who spoke before me has made a few errors in the most important point that he has raised.

First of all, I would like to start from the end and correct a few errors. The fact is not that what I have presented to you here was preceded by the teachings of other theosophical societies to which I belonged. It is not like that. Rather, I began to write my interpretations of Goethe's world view in the 1880s. At the time, they were published as an introduction to Goethe's scientific writings in Kürschner's “Deutsche National-Literatur” in Stuttgart. Anyone who follows them will find that the germ of everything I have presented to you today is to be found in those introductions. You will then find that in my “Philosophy of Freedom”, in the first edition of 1894, I tried to show how man gradually develops his thinking to a certain level, and how this is followed by what then leads discursive thinking into intuitive thinking.

Then it came about, in Berlin around 1902, that I was once asked to present what I had to say about the spirit in a circle that called itself a theosophical one. At that time I had become acquainted with various Theosophists, but what they had to say did not really prompt me to follow with any attention the Theosophical literature that was common in this Theosophical Society. And so, at that time, I simply presented what had emerged from my own intuitive research. As a result, people in England who had read my book Mysticism in the Dawn of Modern Spiritual Life very soon translated these lectures into English and published them in an English newspaper. I was then invited to give lectures to a number of people in the society that called itself the Theosophical Society. I have never hesitated to speak to those who called upon me, whether they called themselves by this or that name, about what I had to say. But I have never advocated anything but what I myself had arrived at through my own research. During the time that I belonged to the Theosophical Society I advocated nothing but what I myself arrived at through my own research.

That I called what I presented “Anthroposophy” even then may be gathered from the fact that during the same period - not only later, when I had come to a different view from that of the Theosophical Society - I also presented to a different circle of people in Berlin, and I did not present a single iota of what I had to present from my research. And I announced my lectures there – so that people could not possibly be in error – as anthroposophical observations on the development of humanity. So for as long as any human being can bring me into contact with Theosophy, I have called my world view “Anthroposophy”. There has never been a break. That is what I would like to say about it now, so as not to keep you waiting too long.

Now, dear ladies and gentlemen, some people say that if you study the history of philosophy, you find that philosophers - let's start with Thales and go up to Eucken or others - have put forward all sorts of views and that they have often contradicted each other; how can you arrive at a certainty of knowledge? — That is precisely what I set out to do in my “Riddles of Philosophy”: to show that the matter is not so, but that what appear to be deviations in the various philosophies worthy of the name only ever come from the fact that the one looks at the world from one point of view, [the other from a different point of view]. If you photograph a tree from one side, what you see in the picture is only from a certain side. If you photograph the tree from a different side, you get a completely different picture - and yet it is the same tree. If you now come to the conclusion that many truly truthful philosophies do not differ from one another in that one deviates from the other, but that they simply look at one and the same thing from different points of view, because you cannot come to a single truth at all, then you realize that it is a prejudice to say that the philosophies contradict each other.

In my book “The Riddles of Philosophy”, I have shown that it is a prejudice to say that philosophers contradict each other. There are indeed some who contradict each other to a certain extent, but these are the ones who have simply made a mistake. If two children in a class solve a problem differently, one cannot say that it is therefore not certain which of them has found the right solution. If one understands the right solution, one already knows what the right thing is. So it cannot be deduced from the fact that things are different that they are wrong. That could only be deduced from the inner course of the matter itself. One would have to look at the inner course of the matter itself. And it is an external consideration to say that Steiner resigned from the Theosophical Society. First of all, I did not resign. After I was first dragged in with all my strength to present my own world view, nothing else at all, I was thrown out, and I may perhaps use the sometimes frowned-upon expression before you, ladies and gentlemen, for the following reason: dear attendees, because the “other kind of truth,” namely, the madness of those theosophists who finally managed to present an Indian boy who was said to be the newly appeared Christ; he was brought to Europe and in him the re-embodied Christ had appeared. Because I, of course, characterized this folly as folly and because at that time this folly found thousands of followers all over the world, these followers took the opportunity to expel me. I did not care. At any rate, I did not believe that what one had gained through inner research seemed uncertain simply because a society that calls itself theosophical expelled me, a society that claims that the Christ is embodied in the Indian boy.

Such things should not be considered superficially, simply overlooking the specifics and saying, “Well, there are different views.” One must take a closer look at what is occurring. And so I would like to leave it to you, when you have time - but you would have a lot to do with it - to compare all the quackery that has appeared in the so-called theosophical societies with what I have always tried to bring out of good science. I say this not out of immodesty, but out of a recognition of the reality of the matter and out of spiritual struggle. And bear in mind that I myself said today: “Some details may be wrong, but the important thing is to show a new direction.” It does not have to be the case that the absolutely correct thing is stated in all the details. So someone could well say that he is looking at a right-angled triangle and getting all sorts of things out of it. Then someone comes along and says: The square of the hypotenuse [of a right-angled triangle] is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides. You can't be sure whether it could be universally true just because he is the only one saying it. No, if it has become clear to you through an intuitive insight that the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides, then a million people may say that it is not so, but you know it to be so and contradict a million people. For the truth does not merely have an external justification for its agreement, but above all it also has a justification in its inner substantiality.

Of course, anyone can check this. And I have never claimed anything other than that anyone who wants to can learn about the spiritual scientific method just as easily as they can learn about the methods of chemistry. But once the things have been researched, they can be verified by any thinking person. And so, too, can what I say or write and have written from the perspective of spiritual science be verified by any thinking person. There are bound to be various errors in it, of course, but that is the same as with other research. It is not about these errors in particular, but about the basic character of the whole.

Have I used a single Indian expression to you today? And if something is sometimes referred to by using some old expression, then that is just a technical term used because there is no such expression in current usage. Even if I can prove the Pythagorean theorem on the blackboard, or something else, can I be criticized for the fact that it was already there centuries ago? For me, it is not a matter of putting forward ancient Indian or similar ideas, but of putting forward what arises from the subject itself. Just as today, anyone who grasps and understands the Pythagorean theorem grasps it from the subject itself, even though it can be found at a certain point in time as the first to emerge, so of course some things must, but only seemingly, agree with what was already there. But it is precisely this that I have always most vigorously opposed: that what is being attempted here from the present point in the development of human consciousness has anything to do with some ancient Indian mysticism or the like. There are, of course, echoes, because instinctive knowledge found much in ancient times that must resurface today. But what I mean is not drawn from ancient traditions. It is really the case that what is true, what is true for me, is what I wrote down when I wrote the first edition of my book “Theosophy” in 1904: I want to communicate nothing other than what I have recognized through spiritual scientific research, just as any other scientific truth is recognized through external observation and deductive reasoning, and which I myself can personally vouch for. There may well be those who disagree, but I am presenting only that which I can personally vouch for. I say this not out of immodesty, but because I want to appear as a person who does not want to present a new spiritual science out of a different spirit than out of the spirit of modern science and also of newer technology, and because I think that one can only understand this new consciousness in terms of its scientific and technical nature, when one is driven by both to the contemplation of the spirit.

I ask that my words not be taken as if I had wanted to avoid what the honorable previous speaker said. No, I am grateful that I was given the opportunity to correct some factual errors that have become very widespread. But much, very much even, of what is being spread today about what I have been presenting in Stuttgart for decades is based on errors. And it seemed necessary to me, as the previous speaker has commendably done, to address what has been presented, because it is not just a matter of correcting what affects me personally, but also something that the previous speaker brought together with the substantive of the question, by correcting the historical.

Question: If Dr. Steiner proves just one point of spiritual science to me in the same way that the Pythagorean theorem can be proved, then I will gladly follow him, then it is science.

Rudolf Steiner: Dearly beloved attendees, who can really prove the Pythagorean theorem? The Pythagorean theorem cannot be proved by drawing a right-angled triangle on the blackboard and then using one of the usual methods to prove it. That is only one illustration of the proof. The point is that anyone who wants to prove the Pythagorean theorem is forced to have what can be constructed mathematically in their inner vision - even if only in the inner vision of the geometric spatial vision. So imagine a consciousness that did not have this spatial vision. He would not have before him the substantial element of that Pythagorean proposition, and it would be quite senseless to prove the Pythagorean theorem. We can only prove the Pythagorean theorem by having before us the substantial element of the conception and shaping of space. The moment we ascend to another form of consciousness, something else is added to the ordinary view of space. [...] The point, then, when it comes to the Pythagorean theorem, if it is to be proved, is that this view of space must underlie it. But for this it is first necessary to find one's way, as it were, into this new configuration of consciousness. But as long as one has no conception of the configuration of space, one cannot arrive at the observation that leads to the proof of the Pythagorean theorem. And one believes that the results of spiritual scientific research cannot be proved in the same way only as long as one has not yet made the transition from ordinary consciousness to the experiencing consciousness that I have described.

I have assumed that the experiencing consciousness is there first. And just as someone who does not have a spatial view cannot talk about the Pythagorean theorem, so one cannot talk about the proof of any proposition of spiritual science if one does not admit the whole view. But this view is something that must be achieved. It is not there by itself. But our time demands that one resolves to do something completely new if one wants to proceed to this progress of science. And I do believe that there is still a great deal to be overcome before spiritual science is advocated in broader circles in the way that Copernicus's world view was advocated over all earlier ideas of the infinity of space. In the past, people imagined space as a blue sphere. Now we imagine: there are limits to the knowledge of nature that cannot be overcome, or: we cannot go beyond ordinary thinking. Such things are well known to anyone who follows the history of human development. And I can only say: either what I have tried to present is a path to the truth – not the finished truth – in which case it will be trodden, or else it is a path to error, in which case it will be avoided. But that does no harm. What must not be extinguished in us, not be swept away by hasty criticism, is the everlasting striving upwards and onwards. And it is only this striving that really animates what I have tried to characterize today as the path that anthroposophically oriented spiritual science wants to take.

Question: We must have the firm belief that the effort we expend will also be worthwhile. Is it at all possible to recognize spiritual life in and of itself? Dr. Steiner says it is possible to recognize the spirit of the world, the spirit of all life and of all nature, and to come into contact with it. Is that possible with our spirit, with our thinking? I doubt it. Thinking consists of images. I think in pictures.

Rudolf Steiner: If I were to answer the question, I would have to take up a great deal of your time. I do not want to do that and I will not do it. I only regret that this question was not asked earlier, then I could have answered it more thoroughly.

You can find in my writings everywhere those things that I hypothetically object to and that are also discussed there, so that you can find a remedy for your doubts in the literature. Here, however, I would just like to say the following: It is the case with certain people that they make it virtually impossible for themselves to get ahead of the phenomenon through preconceived notions. They point to the phenomena and then say: What lies behind them, we do not recognize. The whole of Kantianism is basically based on this error. And my whole striving began with the attempt to combat this error. I would like to make clear to you, by means of a comparison, how one can gradually come to a resolution of these doubts.

When someone looks at a single letter, they can say: This single letter indicates nothing other than its own form, and I cannot relate this form to anything else; it tells me nothing more. And when I look at, say, an electrical phenomenon, it is just the same as looking at a letter that tells me nothing. But it is different when I look at many letters in succession and have a word, so that I am led from looking to reading. I also have nothing else in front of me than what is being looked at, but I advance to the meaning. There I am led to something completely different. And so it is also true that as long as one only grasps individual natural phenomena and individual natural elements — elements in the sense of mathematical elements — one can rightly say that one does not penetrate to the inner core. But if one tries to enliven them all in context, to set them in motion with a new activity, then, as in the transition from the mere individual letter to the reading of the word, something quite different will come about. That is why that which wants to be spiritual science is nothing other than phenomenology, but phenomenology that does not stop at putting the individual phenomena together, but at reading them in the context of the phenomena. It is phenomenology, and there is no sin in speculating beyond the phenomena; rather, one asks them whether they have something to say about a certain inner activity, not only in terms of details but also in context.

It is understandable that if one only looks at the individual phenomena, one can stand on the point of view that Haller stood on when he said:

No created spirit penetrates into the innermost part of nature,
happy he to whom it only shows the outer shell.

But one also understands when someone grasps the phenomenology as did Goethe – and spiritual science is only advanced Goetheanism – that Goethe, in view of Haller's words, says:

“Into the innermost recesses of nature –”
Oh, you philistine!
“No created spirit can penetrate,
Happy the one to whom she shows only
the outer shell."

I have heard this repeated for sixty years,
I curse it, but furtively;
Tell me a thousand, a thousand times:
She gives everything abundantly and gladly;
Nature has neither core
nor shell,
She is all at once everything.
Only you, most of all, test her,
Whether you are core or shell.

The Truth About Anthroposophy and How to Defend It Against Untruth

Dear attendees, I would like to say at the outset that this lecture truly gives me no satisfaction. It is perhaps one of those that are least likely to give me satisfaction – none of those that I desire to hold – but it has been provoked in a certain way by events that have been taking place for quite some time here in the immediate vicinity. And I may also say that it has increasingly become the case in the movement in which I stand that I have been given the task of developing the spiritual current in question, and that I am fully occupied with this development in the most diverse directions. Therefore, I truly have neither the time nor the inclination to undertake these or those attacks against the outside world. On the other hand, the attacks that others are making on this movement have recently increased in a quite monstrous way, not only in number, but above all in content. I will endeavor to keep today's lecture as objective as possible. Unfortunately, the abundance of material will force me to proceed more or less aphoristically. But I would like to divide my remarks into two parts. In the first part, I would like to present, so to speak, the historical development of the spiritual movement that I call anthroposophical, and in doing so, I will only cast a few highlights on what has aggressively asserted itself against this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science from here or there. In the second part of the lecture, I will then go into more detail, summarized more or less into types, and mention only very individual cases where it is absolutely necessary.

First of all, I would like to note that there is truly the most perfect right to call the spiritual movement in question, of which this structure is supposed to be a representative, the “anthroposophically oriented” one. And not only is there every right to do so, but also to describe this spiritual movement as a completely independent one in relation to all other spiritual movements of the present day. Both, ladies and gentlemen, are being disputed. The justification of the term “Anthroposophy” is disputed in a way that is truly recognized immediately as impossible if one makes even the slightest effort to look at the whole matter historically. You must forgive me if today I have to pepper what is objective with all manner of seemingly personal observations. But in this case these seemingly personal observations are also objective and belong to the matter at hand. Anyone who wants to see the truth and follows my writings, who follows what I have written since the beginning of the 1880s in connection with Goethe's scientific writings, will find that the spiritual path is already hinted at everywhere in terms of its method, which then, as is natural, has been further developed over time (it has now been four decades since then). What from here on out will be called Anthroposophy can be distinguished in two directions. One is the way of presenting, the way of seeking, of researching; the other is the content, the results of this research, insofar as they have been able to be developed to date. It would, of course, be a poor testimony to the anthroposophical school of thought if, after four decades, we had to say that nothing had been achieved over this long period of time, but that we were merely repeating the same things that had been discussed in the publications of the 1980s.

But, ladies and gentlemen, anyone who considers the direction of thought, the direction of research, or, if I want to express myself more eruditely, the method that is considered here, will find that everything that comes into consideration was already expressed as a preliminary stage in the 1880s; I would even go so far as to say that the basic nerve of what is called spiritual science here was already hinted at then. It was natural that this spiritual research, which I mentioned in the 1880s, should first deal with that which set the particular tone for the heights of modern spiritual development. And that was the scientific world view. I had nothing but a dispute with the scientific world view in mind, which of course also made a dispute with contemporary philosophy of the time necessary. Anyone who believes otherwise misunderstands the content of what I wrote until the 1890s. There they will find little consideration of any religious beliefs or the like; but they will find repeated efforts to spiritualize the prevailing scientific direction.

Now it was self-evident that a critical examination of certain dominant factors of scientific thought at that time was necessary. But how was this examination carried out? I would like to present only the facts that, in my opinion, come into consideration. First of all, it was the case that, especially at the beginning of the 1880s, what could be called Darwinism, Haeckelism, or Darwinist Haeckelism, was, so to speak, the prevailing trend in certain scientifically minded circles. At that time, Haeckel was a factor that had to be reckoned with. Not long ago – I am now talking about the beginning of the 1890s – he had given a lecture that caused a sensation in educational circles at the time and had it published: “Monism as a Bond between Religion and Science”.

Dear attendees, the following may serve to illustrate how I have engaged with such movements. I gave a speech in Vienna – which was the nearest platform to which I had access before I went to Weimar – which is, in the most eminent sense, the rectification I undertook of what at the time could be called Haeckelism. I opposed materialistic monism with spiritual monism. A few weeks before I delivered this speech, a movement was spreading across wide areas of the educated world that was then called the “Movement for Ethical Culture”. This movement aimed essentially to treat ethics separately from world-view, to spread moral views among people as something that should exist without religious or other world-views. I opposed such a view because an ethics without a foundation seemed impossible to me. Today I can only report; the evidence will be found if one ever studies my writings historically in sequence. The essays to be mentioned today will soon be published in order, according to the year of publication, so that everyone can see how things are. I objected because, according to my insights, I could not assume that ethics, the doctrine of morals, could be anything other than that which is based on a worldview. I discussed the subject in question at the time in one of the first issues of “Zukunft”, which was just being launched. It was then that Haeckel - I had been in Weimar for quite some time when I wrote this essay and had passed Haeckel by, had not concerned myself with Haeckel, who was in Jena in the immediate vicinity - turned to me after this essay on ethical culture. I answered him at the time and later sent him a copy of my lecture in Vienna, which essentially consisted of opposing spiritual monism to materialistic monism. I never made any attempt to offer myself to any contemporary direction in any way. And if there was any kind of rapprochement with Haeckelism, it was because Haeckel approached me first; and it was also natural that a discussion with natural science took place.

Dear attendees, anyone who can read will see from all that is written in my “World and Life Views in the 19th Century”, which is dedicated to Ernst Haeckel, and from a certain reverent feelings for this courageous personality, who, despite all his downsides, was a man of great vision. It will be seen that I agreed to nothing more than could be agreed to on account of the scientific significance of Haeckel's findings. It can never be inferred from that book that I agreed with Haeckel philosophically or in terms of the highest worldview issues. On the contrary, I may relate a personal experience here. I was once in Leipzig with Haeckel and told him that it was actually a shame that he evoked in so many people the very thing he did not actually want, namely the opinion that he completely denied the spirit. He said: Do I do that? I just want to lead people to a retort and show them what happens in the retort when this and that occurs, how everything starts moving.

One could see that Haeckel imagined nothing of the workings of the spirit other than the workings of movement; but in his naivety, he could not help it. He saw matter coming to life and called that “spiritual” manifestation. He was basically naive about everything that is called spirit and the like. This gives a judgment of what I wrote in the nineties up to the small writing “Haeckel and his opponents”. Anyone who can really read will have to find, in the face of this writing, how I insert at a crucial point what a scientific foundation can never offer. Everyone will see that at that time in the 1890s I was seeking nothing more than a discussion between what I had indicated in the general direction in my Goethe writings in the 1880s, which I then further expanded in the 1897 publication “Goethe's World View,” and the scientific direction of the time.

Now, my dear audience, nothing less than a straightforward continuation of all that was at stake at the time is then given in the writing “Mysticism in the Dawn of Modern Spiritual Life and its Relationship to Modern Worldviews”, which was written almost simultaneously with “World and Life Views”. It was simply a matter of the straightforward progress of serious research that the path had to lead from the natural scientific presuppositions to what was tackled in this writing. I believe that one cannot emphasize this orientation more strongly and clearly than it was done in the preface to this writing 'Mysticism in the Dawn of Modern Spiritual Life'. One consequence of this writing was that it was translated into English in a short time. It appeared in an English journal. I had first presented the content of this writing in the form of lectures in Berlin, at the invitation of a group of Berlin Theosophists. That was in the winter of 1900 to 1901.

Dear ladies and gentlemen, consider what it means when you now put two facts together: two facts that are, of course, put together quite differently today. I was invited in the winter of 1900 by a group of Theosophists to give them these lectures, which are now available in print. These lectures are delivered solely from the intentions that were mine, before a group of Theosophists, at whose invitation, after I had written three years earlier:

I would advise anyone who meets a Theosophist to begin by putting themselves completely in a state of faith and to try to hear something of the revelations that such an enlightened person, steeped in Oriental wisdom, experiences within himself. One hears nothing, nothing but phrases borrowed from Eastern writings, without a trace of content. The inner experiences are nothing but hypocrisy.

Now, my dear audience, it cannot be said that I predicted flattery to those who then invited me to speak before them. I once hinted at the fact at issue here in a lecture given here in the vicinity. I said at the time: When I gave my lectures in Berlin during the first years, and also in other places, I had not read any of Blavatsky and Besant's writings. I had not read them either. And above all, the lectures on “Mysticism in the East” were spoken and written before I had even decided to read anything by Blavatsky and Besant. And today, for example, it is said that I claimed not to have even known the names of Blavatsky and Besant fifteen years before the Liestal lecture. I had not read anything by them. It is a peculiar way in which polemics are conducted from some quarters. While I said – and it is important to draw attention to such things from time to time, because such things are used to throw dust in people's eyes – while I said that I had not read the writings of Besant and Blavatsky, and what is quoted is what I said, a few lines later it is said that I claimed that fifteen years ago I did not even know the name Blavatsky and Besant. — So my attackers are in stark contradiction to the facts, to their own statements made a few lines earlier.

Indeed, I wonder how many readers of the attacks that appear here, for example, will not even notice that they are being fobbed off in this way. Of course I am familiar with Blavatsky and Besant by name and I have known enough of their followers personally. But, ladies and gentlemen, it is said with a certain leathern irony that I said on the one hand that I did not know Blavatsky and Besant by name, but would have nevertheless passed this damning judgment on the Theosophists; that would be a contradiction. — Well, my esteemed audience, I never passed judgment on Blavatsky and Besant, I passed judgment on Theosophists who were their followers and whom I knew all too well. You will admit that it was nothing more than that those people, whom I had addressed in such an unflattering way, invited me to lecture to them. The lectures were so successful that, as I said, they were translated into English and I was invited by the same group, which had now grown in number, to give them another series of lectures the following winter.

I have to insert something here. In the meantime, I had also given another series of lectures to a different group, one that I had belonged to for a long time and that had been founded by my friend Ludwig Jacobowski. I had given a whole series of lectures to this circle, which called itself the “Kommende” (Upcoming), under the title “From Buddha to Christ”, in which I had already presented essentially the same main content as in my present talks: the tremendous upsurge that has taken place in the development of the earth from Buddha to Christ, and how Christ Jesus cannot be compared with anyone else who has appeared in the field of earth development. It was essentially an apology for Jesus Christ, in which sounded that which I then held before a society of worldlings, of worldlings who were more inclined to make fun of such a subject than to accept it with faith. For me, it was not a matter of whether people made fun of it or not, but rather a matter of saying what seemed true to me about something that I felt needed to be said.

As I said, I was asked to give a second cycle before the circle of Theosophists, which in the meantime had grown to include all sorts of other people, and this second cycle was essentially the content that is now in my book 'Christianity as Mystical Fact'. It so happened that the first lectures I gave along the lines one might call theosophical or anthroposophical contain a vindication of Christianity. In my series of anthroposophical lectures, I started from a vindication of Christianity. From the very beginning, in answer to the accusation of oriental hypocrisy (for that is what it was), everything I have said and written on this theme has been that the whole ancient mystery religion was a preparation for the Christ event. I did not call my book “The Mysticism of Christianity”; I consciously called my book “Christianity as a Mystical Fact” to suggest that no one can understand the fact of the event of Golgotha who does not - for my part call it mystical or call it spiritual or anthroposophical, it does not matter - who does not, in a spiritual way, in a kind of meta-history, meta-history, grasp the course of world history. And what has been emphasized as something radically different from the old mysteries is what I called the Mystery of Golgotha. And if it is said today that I have ever presented the matter as if the Mystery of Golgotha were a transformation of the old mysteries, then this is an objective untruth, a hair-raising objective untruth.

The two lecture series led to me being asked by the Theosophical Society to represent within its ranks what I had to represent. No one there was left in any doubt that I would never say a word that had not arisen from my own research. I did not concern myself with any of the Theosophical Society's regulations, because I did not approach the Theosophical Society – it approached me. This must also be said, not out of immodesty, but because of today's untrue attacks. And I was faced with the fact that I had to present what I personally had to say to people who wanted to hear it, regardless of whether they were Theosophists or not. And when in Berlin the people who had, as it were, provided me with an audience from their ranks, founded the German Section of the Theosophical Society, I gave a lecture from my then cycle on 'Anthroposophy' on the same day that this German Section of the Theosophical Society was founded. That is to say, I spoke about anthroposophy on the day the German Section of the Theosophical Society was founded. And I gave a lecture at the Berlin Giordano Bruno Bund before the founding of this German Section, in which I said: there is no connection to all the stuff that existed in the Theosophical movement. But I said, one should read Immanuel Hermann Fichte, the son of the philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte, the definition of 'theosophy', which will give my efforts direction.¹

So I have left no one in any doubt about the exact definition and exact objective involved, neither in relation to the examination of Christianity nor in relation to what else I want to present. And to anyone who claims that I have presented anything that is not based on my own research, I can say without hesitation: they are telling an objective untruth, a hair-raising objective untruth. This untruth is all the more hair-raising, dear attendees, since I may be the one who has truly told the Theosophical Society the densest truths, that is, who has given it the densest denials, even during the time when I was, so to speak, lecturing to it. Perhaps no one has had to take as much abuse as I have from the Theosophical movement that calls itself that. And not just before I became General Secretary, but also while I held the position. My dear attendees, is it then a possible approach to put together a selection of the most stupid things that can be found not in my writings but in the writings of theosophists, and to put that on my account today? Is that a fair and honest approach? Everyone should ask themselves that. And I ask that of every person who has a sense of truth.

Dear attendees, I then wrote my “Theosophy”. I ask whether anyone who writes a book under any title and defines the title exactly, whether he can be named after a single title of a book. If someone writes a theory of cockchafers, for example, can he then only be called a cockchafer man for the rest of his life? I wrote a book about Theosophy because the content of this book corresponds to the title “Theosophy”. Just as one gives a book on chemistry a certain title and a book on physics another, so I gave the title 'Theosophy' to a book that was devoted to this particular part of general spiritual science. And anyone who says that there has been any change of flag is lying.

So that, ladies and gentlemen, is what I have to say about assertions such as those recently made by the Protestant pastor and theologian Traub: that in 1897 I wrote against the Theosophists, and that in 1902 I myself was one of their number. No, ladies and gentlemen, the fact is this: in 1897 I wrote what I thought was right, and in 1902 I said exactly the same thing to those who wanted to hear it. I always said the same thing. And in 1902 I was not in the ranks of the Theosophists, but in 1902 the Theosophists were standing before me and wanted to hear what I had to say to them. On the other hand, I never reflected on anything the Theosophists had to say, which those who had joined the Theosophical movement glued together.

Now, with the book “Theosophy”, I began to present the content of what I had to say in a spiritual scientific direction in a literary way. In this book, 'Theosophy', which was first published in 1904, I stated exactly why I called the book 'Theosophy', and no one is entitled to use the word 'Theosophy' in relation to me in any other sense than the one I defined at the time. For in this book from 1904 there is nothing about my wanting to use the word “theosophy” in the sense of the nonsensical theosophical movement, but it says: “The highest that man is able to look up to, he designates as the ‘divine’. And he must connect his highest destiny in some way with this divine. Therefore, the higher wisdom that reveals to him his nature and thus his destiny may well be called “divine wisdom or theosophy.”

I would like to ask those who harp on about the word theosophy whether they do not know, for example, that Dante called his poem the “Commedia” and that “Divina” is an epithet. The “Divine Comedy” is merely intended to express how this poem is appreciated. From the definition I gave at the time, everyone can see how I took the word from the literary usage of the world. But I did not take it according to any complicated ideas that people here or there might have about it. But such complicated ideas arise everywhere. They arise here in a way that we will discuss in a moment, at least in a few examples. They do appear in a peculiar formulation. Regarding this formulation, ladies and gentlemen, I would just like to say the following right here. This formulation is such that I cannot decide for the time being to believe the rumor that is circulating here, that the man who is named is really the author of the Spectator articles. Until this rumor is proven to me, I do not want to believe it, because to me these articles appear to be devoid of any education, devoid of any moral conscience. And so I cannot assume anything other than that the “Katholisches Sonntagsblatt” had these articles written by a completely uneducated person who had never been touched by academia. As I said, I could never bring myself to believe that the man who would have to be academically educated to write these articles, which many people attribute to him, could have written them, because they make the most uneducated impression on me, I can actually only imagine.²

In my “Theosophy” of 1904, however, I also said:

Out of the spirit hereby implied, an outline of a theosophical world-view is sketched in this writing. The one who has written it does not want to represent anything that is not a fact for him in a similar sense as an experience of the external world is a fact for the eyes and ears and the ordinary mind.

I wanted to suggest at the time that I set myself the task – others may set themselves other tasks – that I set myself the task of saying nothing but what I myself could vouch for with my whole person as something I had investigated. When a mathematician presents a particular area of research, he occasionally has to repeat in his presentation what the ancient Euclid wrote, for example. Then those who are completely devoid of historical sense might come and say: he is not offering anything new, because he is just copying the ancient Euclid. It is quite natural that in the presentation one takes from history what has already been said; but nothing has been said by me that has not been carefully checked. Everything that I could not carefully check myself has been eliminated, so that all the talk of borrowing, whether it comes from Protestant or Catholic theologians, is nothing more than objective untruths. Not just errors, but objective untruths, ladies and gentlemen. For anyone can see that although a man like Leadbeater, who is often mentioned in theosophical circles, copied almost every line of his nonsensical book about Christianity from Iamblichus, no one who proceeds with real scientific conscientiousness can accuse my books of borrowing. Everything that refers to such is talk, albeit a talk that occurs in a strange way. It was mentioned, for example, among those things that were supposed to influence my anthroposophy: Buddhism, Nagazena, the Upanishads, the Egyptian Isis Mysteries, the Mysteries of Eleusis , Gnosticism, Manichaeism, “Apollinaris of Tyna” — literally —, Islam; and that from which I am said to have mainly copied is the Akasha Chronicle.

Now, dear attendees, I do not know how the writer of the article found out that I had said before how strange it is to say that anthroposophy is copied from this Akashic Chronicle. This Akashic Chronicle does not exist as an external book. The Akasha Chronicle is something quite different from any external book. What is it? If we apply the methods, which I will say a few words about in a moment, but which I always discuss in all public lectures, we can acquire a kind of meta-historical picture of the processes not only of human development but also of the cosmos. One can spiritually survey in intuitions — in corresponding images, of course — what has happened and is happening on earth or in the cosmos. Today, of course, I cannot give you all the reasons for accepting such a view, because that would take hours, but these can be found in my books. I also mention them every time I talk about the principles of anthroposophy in public lectures. So this Akashic Chronicle is something that only exists in the spirit. This Akashic Chronicle does not exist as some old book that could be compared to the Upanishads or to the yoga philosophy literature of the Indians and so on. No, this Akasha Chronicle is something purely spiritual. The person who wrote these articles, which are distributed here in the area, has no idea that he is talking about something that only exists in the mind as if it were an actual book.

Now the following has happened: I have not objected to this so far because I assumed that it was a printing error. The person in question, who is so well informed about the Akasha Chronicle, also writes or has printed or is printed instead of “Akasha” Chronicle “Akasha” Chronicle. That could be a printing error. But what happens? Isn't it true that the person who claims that anthroposophy copied from the Akasha Chronicle, since this Akasha Chronicle does not physically exist, has obviously lied, because he is leading people to believe that he has the Akasha Chronicle in his library or that other people have it in their library. Dr. Boos, in order to pick up the gauntlet, wrote: That is a deliberate untruth. — It is, of course, a deliberate untruth, because you have to know that you cannot find the Akasha Chronicle in any bookcase, because it cannot be had as a physical document. It does not exist as such. So if you claim that it is there like the Upanishads, you are telling a deliberate untruth. How is Dr. Boos now polemicized against? It is said: Dr. Boos has avoided the fact by harping on the misprint “Akasha” Chronicle. But the attacker does not indicate that Dr. Boos said that there was a deliberate untruth. And then the talk continues about the Akasha Chronicle as a real old writing that is said to have been found in a country called Atlantis. Strangely enough, according to the articles that are in circulation here, this country of Atlantis is said to have been situated between Australia and Asia and at the same time between Europe and America. Now, my dear audience, there are truly many reasons why the person who wrote these articles cannot really be considered an academically educated man; nor can he be considered a man who can think.³

The attacks that have come from a certain quarter in Munich, from a Jesuit priest born in Switzerland and living in Munich, are directed against the method, and I must, because I must speak about the whole character of the attacks, also go into these remarks about the method of spiritual research to some extent. I would just like to say this beforehand: the same man who undertook this attack on the method and later also on the content of anthroposophy claimed a few years ago that I was a runaway priest. Now this is, of course, an unscrupulous untruth, because I would never have been able to enter any monastery, which is clear from the fact that I never had a grammar school education, but only acquired the necessary grammar school education later, when I needed it. I attended a secondary modern school and did my studies at the Technical University in Vienna, so that my whole education naturally speaks against the fact that I could ever have been considered for a priestly career. So what is being said in this regard is also an unscrupulous untruth. What did the priest in question do when it was pointed out to him from some quarter – not from mine, because I cannot engage with someone who proceeds in such an unscrupulous manner unless it is necessary – what did the priest in question do when it was pointed out to him from some quarter that he had told an untruth? He could find no other way than to say in his newspaper: This is something that was claimed earlier, which can no longer be maintained today. Well, my dear audience, I was always somewhat impressed by what Deputy Walterskirchen threw in the face of an Austrian minister at a certain moment: Once a liar, never believed, even when telling the truth. One must understand what it means that there are people who spread such shameless untruths, built on nothing, plucked out of thin air, and then believe they are justified when they say: the matter can no longer be maintained.

The same man – and I would not go into his arguments, for the reasons I have now sufficiently explained, but others take up things and spread them around, because today the public reads with a sleepy soul – he attacks the method and says that one must consider this method to be something that, from a Catholic point of view, must not be, and fights against the particular way in which I describe how, through a certain development of human thought, one comes to recognize a spiritual world alongside the physical-sensual one. Nor can I go into the special characteristics of this spiritual vision here. The necessary points have often been explained in my public lectures. I now have to deal only with the question: Does someone who takes the standpoint, and really takes it, of Catholic research methodology have the right to turn against this method of research in anthroposophy?

Dear attendees, anyone who is familiar with Catholic philosophy knows that a distinction is made within it between two types of inner abilities. Every person can aspire to one type of inner ability if they organize their lives accordingly. Of course, in Catholic teaching, it is called a grace when the person in question rises to such a level. But what a person can rise to, to immerse themselves in a spiritual world, to the point of living with the deity – I am explicitly mentioning the latter – Catholic teaching calls this the “gratiae sanctificantes”. The Catholic Church carefully distinguishes these gratiae sanctificantes, as effects of grace within the soul of man, which can be granted to every man who rises to them through work, from the gratiae gratis datae. These are the effects of grace to which only individual people can rise through a special influence from the spiritual world. Such is the meaning of the matter in the writings of Catholic teachers of old. I remark this first, regardless of whether, because progress has taken place, things have to be described differently today. According to the writings of Catholic teachers such as John of the Cross or Thomas Aquinas, that is, according to the most orthodox Catholic theology, for the Catholic himself, if he does not contradict his Catholic teaching method, what is presented in my book “How to Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds?” should be presented as a special case of the ‘gratiae sanctificantes’, not of the ‘gratiae gratis datae’, so that from the Catholic point of view the matter is absolutely incontestable with regard to the method. You can read about it in John of the Cross and Thomas Aquinas, and you will find that they say that the one who wants to do spiritual research rises up into a spiritual world, so that he experiences something there that does not just arise from his inner being as a kind of haze, but that it is as objective an external reality in the world as the sensual world is in its own way. That is why Thomas Aquinas characterizes what is bestowed on man in this way with the words: “Inspiratio significat quandam motionem ab externo.” These inspirations do not come from within, but from without. There is no other fact here than that which has only been given in a correspondingly advanced form for the 20th century in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds?” What is the situation here?

Simply this, my dear audience: that anyone who works towards what Thomas Aquinas defines as inspiratio is considered a heretic today. Read my Theosophy. You will find it written in such a way that no one who does not come into discord with his own Catholic method of teaching can dispute what is presented there as a method. What is presented there as a method in the sense of the present is what Catholic theologians have correspondingly recognized and called “contemplation” for earlier centuries. In this way one arrives at the results presented in this book “Theosophy”. And so exactly does this correspond to the correctly understood old description that in the whole book the Divine Being is not spoken of in such a way as to give a theory about the Divine. And now read the definitions that can be found in canonized Catholic theologians, and you will see: According to their view, one can come not only to a definition, but to a coexistence with the deity, if one really practices that which can be bestowed on every human being. That is, someone once dared to make real that which has been preached by the Catholic Church for so long until this Catholic Church has taken on a different character for the present time. Nothing else has happened. And anyone who today does not want to admit that through the special method of contemplation, man today comes to results that may be erroneous in the details, but which on the whole are correct, as I have presented them in my books, he must prohibit the method of Catholic contemplation; he must forbid his faithful by force of measures to do that which the fathers and theologians of earlier centuries have presented as something entirely in line with the Catholic Church.

If I had ever needed to agree with anyone – which goes without saying, even today – I would be able to prove that, for example, what is referred to as the method of being oriented towards the present day does not contradict the teachings of Thomas Aquinas or John of the Cross in any way. It is not methods that the Catholic Church is entitled to dispute, for these methods are nothing other than a further development of something that the Catholic Church itself once held to be true. The fact that this method, when applied correctly, leads to different results from those of the scholastics today is what is causing offence. But then one should not claim to represent scholasticism, but to have left it within the church.⁴

Now, anyone who has the necessary seriousness and conscientiousness to deal with factual matters - but, ladies and gentlemen, in our time it is a strange thing about this objectivity and this conscientiousness - anyone who, for example, reads my little Truth and Science, written at the end of the 1980s and published at the beginning of the 1990s, anyone who reads it will see that it steers in an epistemological direction towards what later became anthroposophy. At the time, I had to do away with all the epistemological prejudices associated with Kantianism. And anyone who has followed my writing throughout the decades, insofar as it is philosophical, can see that the rejection of Kant's philosophy is an organic part of what I wanted. Everything I have to say is based on a rejection of Kant's philosophy. Such are the facts. Nevertheless, in our time it is possible that someone - because I, who have devoted my whole life, among other things, to refuting Kantian philosophy, had to discuss the contrast between Thomism and Kantianism in the Whitsun lectures on Thomas Aquinas that I gave here - that someone dares - I cannot use any other expression - to say that this was done for contrast. That characterizes the level of those bushes from which anthroposophy is viewed today.

And how many people are inclined to examine things on the basis of the facts? How many people are inclined to look at how it was taken for granted that when absurdity triumphed within the Theosophical Society in 1912 and anthroposophy was declared a heresy – after all, things have been declared heresy before – that the long-prepared became a fait accompli, namely that all those who believed that I had something to say about these things turned their backs on the Theosophical Society. Nevertheless, it is possible that, for example, the following will be printed:

Annie Besant's claim that a new Christ was on the horizon in the form of Krishnamurti, a thirteen-year-old Hindu boy whose previous lives, starting with a monkey existence, Besant had clairvoyantly researched, also contributed to the split. National sensitivities also played a role. During the war, the Englishwoman Besant is said to have conducted anti-German propaganda. She is said to have stated in a proclamation: “The chosen people of God (meaning the Germans) stink in the nostrils of Europe. This embryo world empire, conceived by hatred and formed in the womb of greed, must never be born. It is the new barbarism, the opposite of everything that is noble, compassionate and human.”

Now, ladies and gentlemen, this is what Annie Besant said during the war. What was said before: that anthroposophy was thrown out by the Theosophical Society, that was before these national events took place. Nevertheless, it continues here:

Steiner founded a separate society with a so-called “separate” doctrine and gave it the proud name of “spiritual science” with its “university” in Dornach. The Swiss lodges joined him.

Dear attendees, the belief is created that the separation of the Anthroposophical and Theosophical Societies had something to do with these national sensitivities. So a smorgasbord of objective untruths is written up to refute Dr. Boos' claim that 23 lies have been spread; the lies are left behind, and the defense is conducted in such a way. 23 objective untruths about anthroposophy are stated. This fact is characterized by Dr. Boos in an appropriate way, although not very delicately – but it would truly have been a sin to be delicate in this case. Now, my dear audience, it has often been demanded by those who are attacked as anthroposophists that they should refute all the stuff that is hurled at them as untruths. I ask: Where in the world is there such a thing that it can be demanded that the one about whom untruths are asserted is obliged to provide the proof of truth? The attacker has to prove; otherwise one could throw anything at anyone and he would have to prove that the assertion was untrue. Those who have spread the 23 untruths have to prove them, not those to whom they have been thrown. What do these attackers do instead of proving? They write objective untruths again, and the 23 original untruths are not touched. That is the method of those who speak about anthroposophy here.

Yes, as I said in the introduction, what I have to say today does not give me any satisfaction. I would much rather be working on the building than compiling these things, and basically I don't have time to follow all these absurdities and defamations. For, you see, my dear ladies and gentlemen, even when people of some intelligence come up with such things – and Professor Traub is certainly more intelligent than certain others – then one has to say: strange views indeed! This Professor Traub, who wrote the book 'Rudolf Steiner as Philosopher and Theosophist', who – I will not touch on the rest – finds it appropriate to say: Yes, Steiner claims things that cannot be verified. – But, ladies and gentlemen, Steiner does not claim any different things from those that can be verified by someone who uses the same methods as he does and who has publicly stated them. That is to say, anyone who procures the means to do so – although he must be diligent and have good will – can verify the matter.

But what does Professor Traub say? He says:

I may have to become a historian, physicist, chemist, in order to be able to check independently.

He admits that if he doesn't understand a thing about chemistry, then of course he can't talk about chemistry, and if he doesn't understand a thing about history, then of course he can't talk about history. He admits all of this. But now, my dear audience, he continues:

The theosophical truths, on the other hand, I cannot verify if I am not clairvoyant.

But I cannot verify the chemical truths either if I am not a chemist. Yet Traub says:

I can only check them in a negative way, ...

— that is, he can only say that he does not know them —

... I can determine whether they contradict logic.

It is interesting that anthroposophy is supposed to be different from physics, history and so on. For chemistry, Professor Traub claims that you have to be a chemist to test what it says; for history, he claims, you have to be a historian, and so on. For anthroposophy, he claims that he has to be able to test it, even though he has never bothered with its methods. He then says quite naively:

The question is whether they

— he prints this in bold letters —

... have been or can be verified by me, and that, apart from the formal-logical criticism, I must deny.

I believe that he cannot verify them! But it does not mean anything if some person who has never sniffed around a chemical laboratory and has not studied a chemical book cannot verify chemical truths. But you see what is being demanded and what people are saying about formal logic when they use such logic.

Some time ago, there were attacks from the Protestant side, and as a result of these attacks, some Protestant pastors and theologians became aware of anthroposophy. Now, if I wanted to talk in detail about the matters at hand here, I would have to characterize the development of the entire Protestant theological movement in the 19th and 20th centuries. But it is well known that within Protestant theology, not only a strong skepticism but also a strong nihilism has taken hold. And one day things were so that a whole number of Protestant theologians said to themselves: From the side of anthroposophy, a fertilization can come for theology. Something could come that would lead people back to Jesus Christ in a way that theology can no longer do today. And so it came about that a number of followers emerged among Protestant theologians, which of course terribly annoyed the majority of Protestant theologians. Then, gradually, those who approach it from today's Catholic theological perspective came forward. This was despite the fact that for a long time, and out of a certain prejudiced notion, it has been said that anthroposophy is Catholic and that therefore those who think in an evangelical way cannot find any favor in it.

I have already dealt with some of the ways in which people approach it. But first I would like to highlight two examples as really quite interesting details. Everything that I have presented since 1900, since my lectures 'From Buddha to Christ' to the 'Kommenden' in Berlin, was such that no one can say that there is no fundamental difference between what emerged as the culmination of earthly development in the Mystery of Golgotha and what is a teaching for many other people, Buddhism. At the time, I characterized the current from Buddha to Christ and pointed out that no one who stands on an anthroposophical point of view must confuse what appeared in Christ and what only allows for a single appearance in the world with what is seen as the ever-recurring Buddhas. I then repeatedly pointed this out in lectures given only to members. Nevertheless, the following is asserted today:

Buddhism speaks of transmigration of souls, ...

- I have never spoken of transmigration of souls, but always of repeated lives on earth.

... Steiner of reincarnation. Both are the same.

Dear attendees, transmigration and repeated earthly lives, as I represent them, are as different as black and white. It is further said:

Whether one says: such and such a person reincarnates or such and such a person's earthly life repeats itself, it comes out the same.

So please, now consider the logic that prevails here. First it is said that transmigration of souls and reincarnation, repeated lives on earth, are the same. Transmigration of souls is understood to mean that after death, human souls migrate into various animals. I have never even hinted at such nonsense in any way. The repeated lives on earth mean something quite different. They are what follows from spiritual-scientific foundations, just as the theory of evolution in the physical world follows from physical research foundations.

According to this theory...

- it is said -

... Christ is nothing more than a reincarnated Buddha or a re-appeared Buddha.

A blatant objective untruth of the boldest kind, because every time I have spoken about Christ and Buddha, I have said the opposite, and because anyone who wanted to listen must clearly have known that what I am being imputed here was rejected every time, firmly rejected.

The whole long argument reveals Steiner's sophistry and his alleged “scientific” approach.

Now I would like to know where the sophistry is. Admittedly, the sophistry that is revealed on that page is already one of the moral evils, not just one of the logical ones.

Furthermore, in those lectures that were only given to members - for a very simple reason, which I will discuss in a moment - it is expressly emphasized from all the sources that are only accessible to me that a certain forerunner of Christ Jesus was Jeshu ben Pandira. It is pointed out there as clearly as possible that the physical earth personality, spirit and soul, is also something quite different with that Jeshu ben Pandira than with the Christ Jesus. Nevertheless, my dear attendees, we read in that attacker:

This small example shows how far Steiner is removed from the true Christ impulse, proving that for him Christ is not a divine master (the way, the truth and the life), but only the “Sage of Nazareth” or, in theosophical language, a Jeshu ben Pandira or a Gautama Buddha, in German a re-embodied Buddha.

So the opposite of what I have said countless times is trumpeted out into the world as my opinion.

My dear attendees, when teaching elementary school students, you call every child into the elementary school; when teaching at the gymnasium, those who are to come to the gymnasium must have attained a certain level of maturity. When people are accepted into the medical or philosophical faculties, they are required to pass the school-leaving examination. No other principle underlay the fact that certain lecture cycles were printed only for a narrower circle of people who were sufficiently prepared, just as those who listen to higher mathematics must be prepared by lower mathematics. Anyone who wanted to listen to a lecture on elliptic functions without knowing the lower mathematics would naturally understand nothing of it and would have to mistake the whole thing for cabbages if he wanted to judge it according to what he could think. Nothing else was the basis for this selection of the one for a limited circle, which presupposed the foregoing. All that was presupposed has been presented by me again and again in public lectures for decades, and has been presented almost every year since 1907 in Basel.

I ask you: could anyone have expected that the Basel lectures, which have been held publicly in Basel for this same world view since 1907, would be discontinued after the construction in Dornach began, or that something other than anthroposophy would be done here in this building? What is it other than foolish talk when it is claimed that propaganda is now being done when it was said that no propaganda would be done? Nothing else is being done than what has been done in Basel since 1907, of course on a smaller scale.

Nor has anyone been attacked in the way that I am now. Go through everything I have ever said or written – I was never the first to attack anyone in this way. Everything I have ever written against anyone was always provoked. Check the facts. And it must be said that the attack that is taking place here, for example, was provoked. For no one here has attacked these attackers. Nevertheless, one of the articles is emblazoned with the title: “Defense and reply to the omissions of the theosophist lawyer Dr. Boos,” in order to throw dust in people's eyes in bold letters, to awaken in them the belief that the other side is defending itself, while we are truly being showered with buckets of foul-smelling objective untruths here, to our great dissatisfaction. We are not to make a sound, while we know full well what these objective untruths are intended for.

And, ladies and gentlemen, the fact that they do not just mean that they want to refute something with honest weapons – the last statement from the side of these attackers can prove that to you. From the statement that has just appeared, I would like to read you just a few sentences that begin:

Have you never walked past a swamp at night? You saw will-o'-the-wisps there. They appeared and disappeared. Such will-o'-the-wisps mainly appear after great catastrophes, also in the spiritual realm in world history. Be it Protestantism in and during the unfortunate Peasants' War, in the era of the Thirty Years War, be it the Kulturkampf during and after the Seven Years War. Today, the Jew, the Freemason and the Theosophist are emerging as the main opponents. ... The Church is a militant church.

Dear attendees, yesterday I read a new encyclical of the current Pope, where he calls for love and unity, where he says that the church strives to reconcile people and not to quarrel. Here we read:

The church is a militant church.

But then it is said – so the Church is a militant Church:

This time is today, when the triumvirate, the Jew, the Freemason and the Theosophist, is attacking the Church. Let us look the three in the face. The Jew, Judaism is old. Judaism fought against our Savior from the beginning. It was guilty of the deicide at Golgotha, it was guilty of the persecution of Christians...

— and so on and so on. And further it is said:

Another worse opponent has risen today, the theosophist. We do not hide the fact that Theosophy, based in Dornach, is perhaps the greatest danger for Switzerland, greater than Bolshevism, greater than any other danger. Theosophy is well enough known. Every believer could be educated in our newspaper.

Yes, let yourself be instructed, my dear audience, as one does when disregarding any factual material. That one wants something completely different than merely fighting against insights or supposed insights for my sake, you can see from such an omission. Well, I have presented you with some examples of what the “spirit” of these attacks is: the polar opposite of what one can hear here at the Goetheanum at least once a week is claimed outside that it is being said here. That is the fact. The polar opposite of what is actually said here is presented to the people in the local area as the opinion held here, as an explanation of Theosophy or Anthroposophy – the name is not important. For example, they talk about an interpretation I have given of the Lord's Prayer. Well, my dear audience – yes, things are very strange – for example, a tidbit is served up, a few verses of mine that only have a meaning if you know them in their full context:

It speaks to the universe,
Forgetting itself
And mindful of its origin...

- but the article of attack says “his emergency”. My dear audience, this continues line by line in terms of truth and accuracy. What is said with regard to my interpretation of the Lord's Prayer goes beyond anything imaginable in this direction.

As the most typical and practically instructive example of Steiner's exegesis, we mention his interpretation of the Lord's Prayer. First, the theosophical text. Or is there a new anthroposophical one? The improved “theosophical” Lord's Prayer reads: “Our Father, who permeates the universe! Your name resound! Your kingdom of peace come to us! Thy will be done on earth! (Theosophists do not believe in a heaven.) Give us all your bread of life! In you we forget our sins and forgive our brothers their faults. Lead us through the trials! Deliver us from all error! For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory from eternity to eternity! Amen.

The person who wrote the following and the following, namely, counts on the fact that no one from his readership will pick up my little booklet about the Lord's Prayer, because everything he writes here is not in it, because I give the text that Catholics pray every day for themselves - I hope at least - at home and every Sunday in church. No other text is interpreted than this. They are counting on the fact that this little booklet will not be picked up, that this check will not even be carried out.

The fact that they are not dealing with a highly educated person can be seen from another sentence. For example,

Just as light expresses itself in the world in seven colors, the fundamental tone in seven tones, so the seven-part nature of man (spirit self, life spirit and spirit man, physical body, etheric body, astral body and I) is expressed in the seven petitions of the Lord's Prayer. Listen!

This “Hear!” is a phrase we read again and again in these articles. We know why. It is fair to say that even people who have read my booklet on the Lord's Prayer but have only superficially thought about it do not immediately realize how subtly the objective untruth is expressed here. For it is clever to say that I had claimed that the seven-part nature of man is expressed in the seven petitions of the Lord's Prayer. That is simply not true. I stated something quite different. I tried to show that seven qualities of feeling arise in one who experiences the seven petitions one after the other, and that these point to seven nuances of feeling in the soul. And in these seven nuances of the soul there is a certain indication of the seven-part nature of man. So I did not say that the seven petitions of the Lord's Prayer indicate the seven parts of man's nature, but that the seven petitions of the Lord's Prayer represent seven nuances of feeling, and these seven nuances of feeling point to the seven-part nature of man.

If the article of attack had been written by a Catholic theologian – and I can tell you, I know Catholic theology very well, and I appreciate the strict logic that it used to have and still retains to some extent – he would have had to notice what the insertion of a link in the conclusion means. I cannot believe that a real theologian would write such a thing, unless I am proved wrong.⁵ Only someone who deals with my Father Our Exegesis with very clumsy logic can write something like that.

We must focus on how it has come about in recent times that such things have become possible at all. What is emerging here is basically only an imitation of what can be observed in many circles today. I avoid it, even though it is an absolute objective untruth to lump me together with all the excesses and aberrations of the Rosicrucians and the like, that it is nonsense to forge the sentence that I am dependent on Blavatsky and to prove it with the words:

Steiner also draws from Blavatsky's Theosophy. He supplements it...:

– all in the same breath! –

... 'We work best...

– now my words are quoted –

... if we bring what was closed to Blavatsky.

This is quoted as my words, as proof that I am bringing what Blavatsky brought! They claim that Blavatsky brought it, and as proof they quote a line from it that I want to bring what was closed to Blavatsky. Such is the logic of the attackers. One would like to understand, from a certain larger context, how such things are even possible.

Now I can only talk about this in aphorisms. I can only point out that around the middle of the 19th century, but especially at the beginning of the last third of this century, Catholic theology did absorb genuine spiritual-scientific seeds which, if they had been further developed, could have worked to the benefit of humanity. Perhaps, if such things as Möhler attempted in his Symbolik had met with progress instead of retrogression, something might have come of it that would have resembled the emergence of a spiritual-scientific school. Even if it had not come to the recognition of the truths of repeated earth-lives and of the fate of man's life conditioned by repeated earth-lives, which, objectively and scientifically, can be proved (as you can see in my books), there might still have been a certain progress in the direction of spiritual science. But no, Catholicism has broken with a very well-known world policy for the sake of what was moving in the indicated direction.

These are things that have become very clear to me, who have had a lot of contact with Catholic theologians and have come to know the ways of thinking of tolerant and educated Catholic theologians very well. It means a lot, for example, that the philosopher Franz Brentano was a Catholic priest before taking off the cassock and leaving the Catholic Church just after the declaration of the dogma of papal infallibility.⁶ He examined — and those who are familiar with this remarkable work will know this — certain truths concerning the Incarnation and the Trinity. He came up with quite different things that did not correspond to the infallibility dogma, as they are, on which one must indeed come, at least if one does not consider very specific formulations, for example that in 1773 a Pope has abolished the Jesuit order as harmful to humanity and in 1814 another Pope has reinstated it. Well, these are the things that lie on the surface. But also the very subtle things about the Trinity and the Incarnation, which 19th-century minds were also very much concerned with, they remained a mystery to someone like Brentano in the version of certain Catholic theologians. And in particular, it remained a mystery to him how the most diverse dogmas on these matters could have been established and recognized by the popes. It has always been a Catholic principle that only that which is generally recognized in Catholic Christendom may be established as a dogma. The Immaculate Conception was not, yet it was made into a dogma. And it is a straight ascent from the Immaculate Conception to the encyclical of 1864 and the Syllabus and further to the declaration of the infallibility dogma. Then it was natural for a man as great and in some respects as important as Leo XII to issue the encyclical Aeterni Patris. This then led with logical consistency to the demand for the anti-modernist oath from all those who were allowed to teach in Catholicism.

All you have to do, dear attendees, is go through the literature that has been published as a result of this anti-modernist oath and you will soon come across some amazing things, of which I can only mention a very few today, as time is running out. The following is characteristic, for example. There is a very learned doctor, the theology professor Simon Weber at the University of Freiburg im Breisgau. He has to justify that the freedom of science is perfectly compatible with swearing the anti-modernist oath, which, for example, also contains a paragraph stating that anyone who represents Catholic doctrine, whether as a theologian or as a pulpit orator, should never believe that anything can be proven through history that has not been recognized by the Church as correct doctrine. He does not merely have to swear that he has not yet recognized anything that testifies to such a contradiction, but he must swear that it is his opinion that he will never be able to come to studies that could somehow represent a contradiction to what has been established by the teaching authority of the Roman Catholic Church. In order to justify the fact that there is a given body of teaching, a body of teaching that is simply commanded to be believed and that must be sworn to be believed, and in order to reconcile this with the freedom of scientific teaching, very strange views had to be put forward. Among other things, a view had to be adopted that is very strangely presented in the book “Theology as a Free Science” by Weber. If one proceeds conscientiously, one can conduct strange examinations of these things. There is now the Catholic scholar theologian who is obliged to prove that, as a mathematician, one must also teach the correct mathematics and yet not violate the freedom of science; so one must also be able to teach the teaching material ordered by Rome. He writes that it would not violate the freedom of science if a scholar were expected to test his new findings by refuting conflicting findings and not expecting any indefinite acceptance of his findings without this refutation, nor claiming them to be absolutely true. We will deal with this first sentence less now. But now comes the other sentence:

Furthermore, is it against the freedom of science as a path to truth if, on the basis of proven findings and results, the disciple of science is encouraged to take the starting point of his studies from the ground of such findings and results? I believe that one should not affirm the first question, nor deny the second.

That is what it said in this book. Now, my dear audience, let us read the second question again:

Furthermore, is it against the freedom of science as a path to truth if, on the basis of proven knowledge and results, the disciple of science is encouraged to take the starting point of his studies to the ground of such knowledge and results?

That is to say: is it contrary to the freedom of science to make a theologian swear that he may only teach a very specific body of doctrine? Then he can do whatever he wants, but he must always come back to this body of doctrine. The author then says:

I believe that one cannot affirm the first question, nor deny the second.

One could now believe that this is the case. But you see, the good Professor Simon Weber wrote these two questions one after the other, and he got so tangled up in a knot that he then wrote with a single logical thread:

I believe that one should not affirm the first question and deny the second.

People are very happy to grant him that you can't say no to the second. He just couldn't hold on to the thread – he only noticed that once the book had already been published, which is why there's a thick, black line stamped over the second “not”! You see, these sentences are written in such a way that they are not very consistent or logically coherent. Only when perhaps a friend of his came afterwards and said: Hey, what have you written there! All modernists agree on the “not”, and you have sworn the anti-modernist oath! - Now a thick line had to be printed over the “not” in every copy here with the stamp.

You see, you have to be more conscientious than our opponents are if you want to get at the facts of the matter. But the general public does not go in for such things; you can throw a lot of dust in their eyes. One of the sentences in which the freedom of science is justified as compatible with the fact that one has to teach a very specific, firmly and dogmatically defined body of teaching is the following. It says: Does it violate the freedom of the soldier, who has sworn to be with his regiment at a certain point in time, if he is given the freedom to choose whether to travel by coach or by passenger train or by express train? That is entirely up to him. It is the same with the Catholic theologian. He has sworn to arrive at his teaching material. He must prove it, no matter how he proves it, he must prove it, because whether he travels by express train or by passenger train or by coach is irrelevant. And this is the style in which the whole of “Theology as Free Science” is written.

Dear attendees, I have tried hard in my lecture, which I gave in Liestal, “Human Life from the Point of View of Spiritual Science”, to prove that it is impossible, if one really further development of Thomism, not to extend what Thomas Aquinas regards as the Präambula fidei to what is asserted through anthroposophy on the basis of truly attainable human spiritual powers. But what use is all that? Such matters are not taken into account. And what is compiled column by column is such that it runs directly counter to objective facts everywhere.

Summarizing what has been presented here today in aphoristic form, I may say: Catholic teaching, if it engages with its own method, has no right to say anything against anthroposophy, because it has no right to oppose the method of contemplation. But if it has no right to oppose the method of contemplation, then it must also leave untouched that which, from the points of view offered by today's human development, results from this method of contemplation.

Furthermore, I must summarize some of what has been said in such a way that for decades I have been careful to create something that should stand alongside scientific knowledge as spiritual-scientific knowledge. Everything I have envisaged has been envisaged with a view to elevating natural science to the spirit. Whatever has been done in this way has always been done with the intention that people who want to be enlightened about Christianity from a point of view that corresponds to the present day should be able to receive such enlightenment from the sources that spiritual science can provide. Therefore, everything that is undertaken by the attackers of Anthroposophy is merely rash. No cause has been given for it. When I hear these attacks, a word that Cardinal Rauscher, one of the first church princes in Europe, spoke to me about some progress resounds again. This word sounded to me when I came to Vienna as a very young student. It was still at that time, in which the great Catholic reaction had not yet fully taken effect, but was just beginning to assert itself. Then I heard the word that Cardinal Rauscher spoke in the Austrian House of Lords through his virile voice in the face of some progress that was also being attempted at the time by Catholic theology: The Church knows no progress.

No matter how hard I try, I cannot find anything other than the facts that I described here at Pentecost in my Thomas lectures: that in the time of high scholasticism, in the time of the scholastic realism of an Albertus Magnus and a Thomas Aquinas, a magnificent logic was present, but that nothing remains of it - as with many modern philosophers, so also within Catholic thought. The training that one can have, if one knows how to carefully distinguish between substance, hypothesis, essence, nature, person and so on, has also escaped from Catholic theology. More recent philosophers, such as Wundt, for example, polemicize against the substance of the soul because they know nothing of a substance. Therefore, they say, it does not exist at all – according to the principle: What I know nothing about does not exist. But precise thinking, which was highly developed in scholasticism, has not been resurrected from the encyclical Aeterni Patris either. Instead, there was the contortion of thought that was necessary to prove the anti-modernist oath.

If one must prove such a thing, my dear audience, then one cannot have much time for what one can learn through the strict logic of high scholasticism. And then it may well be said, as I have said here in the Whitsun lectures: Yes, in spiritual science there is a real continuation of what high scholasticism strove for in the 13th century. But is it not the case that Thomas Aquinas could not, of course, deal with natural science? It did not exist at that time. But anthroposophy wanted to engage with natural science. If one were to enter into such an engagement, a truly fruitful work would unfold from a spiritual scientific treatment of nature. I attempted such a thing here in the physicians' course, which wanted to carry methodically into the medical, into the therapeutic science, what can be carried in from the anthroposophical point of view. In Stuttgart, when the Waldorf School was founded, an attempt was made to illuminate education from an anthroposophical point of view. My dear audience, anthroposophy wants to do positive work; it has never wanted to attack anyone. Anyone who says otherwise is objectively speaking untruthfully. And anyone who acts as if they had been attacked and needed to defend themselves against any attacks is telling an objective untruth. Anyone who acts as if this were the case, as is happening now, against anthroposophy, anyone must start the reasons for attacks.

I was obliged to speak some harsh words today. Now, I believe that, in view of the attacks in question, the words I have spoken are not too harsh, for among the various attacks that have been made here, there are some that do not even address what I have said, but instead achieve the incredible feat of attributing to me the Theosophical nonsense that has been put forward here and there, and which I myself have always opposed. But my attackers lack the courage to discuss my views; they only have the courage to defame the person who champions anthroposophy. And among the many things that have come up, there is, for example, the claim that I am demonstrably Jewish. Well, ladies and gentlemen, here sits the man who presented the photograph of my baptism certificate from the lectern in Stuttgart, which shows how I was baptized immediately after my birth, out of a Catholic family, was baptized Catholic; and everyone was invited to see for themselves when the baptism certificate was shown. What was done about it? Just one example of the way they are fighting at present: they wrote all kinds of letters to my Austrian hometown to find out whether I really was a Jew or not. And after even the pastor of that Austrian hometown testified that I was an “Aryan,” as he put it, they did indeed find the objection that Jews are also Aryans. But leaving that aside, ladies and gentlemen, they did not shy away from having the following printed: Yes, of course, the baptismal certificate is available, the siblings also testify and the people of the hometown that he is descended from Catholic parents, but what prevents us from assuming that he is an illegitimate child, that he a Jewish father, who was unknown to his real father, was born out of wedlock to the mother, which neither his siblings nor the local pastor need know.

My dear attendees, today even such things are not shunned. Such things have become possible in the world in which we have come so gloriously far. I ask you: can we still hope to achieve anything by revealing the opponent's facts? — No. It is precisely the facts that are most unpleasant to the opponents. Therefore, they do not rely on the facts, but on what is objective untruth in every line they themselves have invented. And that is what they call “enlightenment of the people”.

Never would anyone have heard me say a word of attack, as I had to say today – seemingly attacking, however, only if each of these words were not challenged ten times as a defense. I would never have used such words in my defense if they had not been challenged in such an outrageous way. Because, ladies and gentlemen, what I am supposed to represent, what I have tried to explain to you today in a positive way through the historical events, what I have tried to explain to you in the spirit in which it arose from the underground from which it really emerged, as the polar opposite of what is being served up by the attackers, is something that I believe I have recognized as the truth that is appropriate for our present era. And anyone who has grown together in his soul with the search for truth will not let anything stop him from this search, but he also feels obliged to express this truth to everyone who wants to hear it from him. Therefore, when those people whom I characterized in 1897 as I have repeated to you today demanded the truth from me in 1902, I was obliged to present it to them. That is what matters: the inner connection with a real, honest striving for truth.

Anyone who, after having put forward such arguments as have been characterized today, can still find words like these:

Another even worse opponent has risen today, the theosophist. We do not hide the fact that Theosophy, based in Dornach, is perhaps the greatest danger for Switzerland, greater than Bolshevism, greater than any other danger....

- and so on, he may perhaps achieve something for some time. It may be that when those who are friendly towards Anthroposophy sleep, such opponents, who do not shy away from such outrageousness, may achieve much of what they want to achieve. But I have often said, as the words of a deceased Catholic theologian friend of mine, who was a professor of Christian philosophy at the University of Vienna, still ring in my ears - I have also had quite dogmatic discussions with many theologians, right down to the most intimate details - that a Christian never has to fear that the glory of God or of Christ will be diminished by gaining more knowledge about their creation. I have often said that those who admit this show more courage for Christianity than those who, at every opportunity, when new truths arise, even if only supposed ones for my sake, complain about the endangerment of Christianity – and now even about the endangerment of being Swiss. I have always said that to me a Christian and Catholic who speaks constantly of dangers seems a pusillanimous person, while to me a true Christian seems to be someone who says: No matter how many billions of new insights are gained, Christianity stands so firmly - and this has been said countless times on anthroposophical ground - that it cannot be shaken by anything. I would like to know who in truth is the better Christian.

But as I said, those who boldly dare to tell humanity that what they pass off as Theosophy and what has nothing to do with Anthroposophy is a greater danger than Bolshevism, in order to frighten people, and who speak many objective untruths to do so, may achieve something in the short term. But untruthfulness cannot be effective in the long run. My dear audience, from here, as long as it is possible, the truth that is meant as anthroposophy will be sought and taught. But nothing will be taught that is presented by those attackers as the view taught here through defamation. No matter what success may be achieved on their side, I shall at least see to it that an Anthroposophy be taught here that is in keeping with the demands of the present time. I have repeatedly endeavored to characterize such an Anthroposophy in my public lectures. I declare it to be an objective and very audacious untruth that I would ever have referred to Mahatmas for that which I personally stand for; this, like everything else in the attacks that have prompted today's words, is also untrue. This anthroposophy is, of course, also a human work. And even if it were a mistake, which would be incomprehensible to me, I know that in the universe only truth will ultimately triumph. Then the opposite truth will triumph over the error here, and then anthroposophy would meet the fate it deserves, for errors can never achieve lasting victories. Therefore, if it were an error, anthroposophy could not harm the truth, it would be refuted. But if it is the truth, then for some time and perhaps quite a long time, those who dare to pursue it, as I have had to characterize today, may achieve their goal through the persecution of individuals. But in the long run, my dear audience, the laws of the world will not speak differently than that in the end truth must triumph, not untruth.

Roman Boos: After the last lectures by Dr. Steiner on Thomas Aquinas, which were held here at Pentecost, a review in a newspaper criticized the fact that there was no opportunity for discussion. Anyone who wishes to enter into a discussion about today's lecture should be aware that the following things are available, which I would like to record for the record:

There is material here for a discussion. I have brought it with me physically in these four pages of the “Katholisches Sonntagsblatt”, where at least two full pages were devoted to each of the topics presented to you. Anyone who, like the reviewer of the last lectures, is present today, may pick out any point from these lectures and may demand that this point be discussed and accounted for. And then, when it is discussed, he may form his own opinion. This is a topic that has been put forward for discussion. The discussion will begin in a few minutes in such a way that? the opportunity will be given to ask oral or written questions or to take the floor.

Break

Roman Boos: For the discussion to be conducted in a formally correct manner, in accordance with the rules of procedure, those who wish to speak orally and not just to ask a brief question are asked to come to the front and speak from there. Furthermore, it is requested that those who speak here state their names. It goes without saying that the form of decency must be maintained in every respect.

Who would like to have one of these four numbers or all four for review in order to pick out points on which he wants to demand accountability? - Who would like to claim on a single point that what has been said today in opposition to what has been written down in those four long articles does not correspond to the truth? Who would like to claim that the other corresponds to the truth? Who would like to claim that a single one of those twenty-three whopper lies that I nailed in the “Tagblatt für das Birseck-, Birsig- und Leimental” is not a lie? Who would contradict the assertion that people who do what has happened here and write what is now being written Sunday after Sunday in the “Katholisches Sonntagsblatt” of the Canton of Baselland, edited by Father Arnet in Reinach, that such people are grossly abusing their priestly duty? Who would object to this?

I state: I have publicly accused Father Arnet of Reinach of having seriously violated the trust placed in him as a Catholic clergyman by those who read his newspaper. I have to state: Not a single assertion has been proven. Then another paper, the Spektator, came to his aid and claimed that it would provide proof of the accuracy of the allegations that Arnet had made in his paper. I declare that it is therefore right and justifiable that Father Arnet in Reinach has gravely and grossly violated the duties assigned and imposed on him as a Catholic clergyman. I declare that he continues to declare his solidarity with the content of the Spektator articles and that I therefore personally call him a slanderer and moral poisoner. I ask anyone who wants to contradict me to please tell Mr. Arnet.

Karl Sauter: Mr. President, esteemed attendees! You also requested that anyone who wishes to take part in the discussion go to the podium. I only have one sentence to say for the time being, so I will remain here. I object to the fact that such a meeting at the Goetheanum is considered public. A public meeting would be when the gentlemen, the friends of this direction, came down to Arlesheim and asked to present their case in the community hall. That is public. And then you also have to expect an opposition not only from one speaker, which may serve the truth in the sense of the public. But up here, the matter is not satisfied if you transplant the discussion up there - that is not public. I have closed for the time being.

Rudolf Steiner: I can only say in response what I have already said this evening: when someone is confronted with twenty-three lies, it is the duty of the person who has told these twenty-three lies to prove them. And it is impossible to ask those who are being confronted with these twenty-three lies to chase after the liars and tell them, wherever the liars wish, that they have lied. That is a strange way of demanding that those who have been attacked in this way chase after their attackers.

Karl Sauter: You cannot oblige the speaker, nor oblige Catholics, to go up there to speak up to the word. You are certainly given the freedom to take part in the discussion orally or in the sense of the press, and it is certainly an honor for us Catholics that you are scrutinizing the “Katholisches Sonntagsblatt” in this way. It is not finished; development continues. That is why neither I nor you can finish speaking this evening. Come down to Arlesheim next time, and we will meet again.

Rudolf Steiner: That is a strange way to behave. Just when one has said that one has no reason to go down to Arlesheim, then to say that we should come.

But I would like to say the following in conclusion: Just consider that it has been said again that we should go down to Arlesheim to do I know what. From that side, twenty-three objective untruths have been spread in the world. These objective untruths were identified as such by us. This was done very much in public. In response, four articles have been published to date. None of these articles addressed any of the twenty-three points, but new untruths were added to the old ones. This is how things develop, this is how they progress. Now, my dear audience, in almost every article you will find the phrase that has just been spoken again: we should just wait until the last article comes. Well, ladies and gentlemen, until the last one comes! But it is not possible for anyone to demand that those to whom twenty-three lies have been thrown in the face should run after the other, so that the other can say new untruths in his own way before an audience that is willing to listen. Everyone is free to come up here and hear the truth from us. We only want to spread the truth from here.

Dear attendees, just think about the logic behind this. We are told: you said you don't do propaganda. — We have, I said this evening, not built this building to merely stage musical comedies in it, but to do anthroposophy. We did not agree to somehow carry down to Arlesheim what we have to say here, what we want to say here, but we said it here. What has been attacked has been presented here. And I must describe it as an outrageous audacity when what has only been presented here is embellished with lies. They demand that we should now go down to Arlesheim to clear up the untruth there. Or is this perhaps another cunning trick, so that they can later say: Now they are even starting their propaganda down in Arlesheim!

Roman Boos: Does anyone wish to speak? Please, Mr. Hartwig.

Walther Hartwig: Dear attendees! Allow me to say a few words. This evening you have heard what can be done against the spiritual good that we strive for. I can only add a few things: From this evening it can only follow that we must pull ourselves together and stand firm, each one of us like a rock, and do what we can to undermine this brood of liars. Roman Boos: I would still like to make one more observation. It was just stated by the teacher Sauter that the matter is not finished, but will continue. I will always insist that the matter started with the twenty-three whoppers, and that what is continuing is just a continuation of what started there. And that is why, above all, it will be important to allow something to take its course that does not have such a starting point. Would anyone else like to take the floor?

Curt Englert: Dear attendees, it is also about time that we Swiss said a word here. So far, Dr. Steiner has been speaking and he has presented his case. He could not speak as he might have done if he had been Swiss. And so it is the duty of those people who adhere to anthroposophy and are Swiss to say publicly what they have to say about what is going on from up here. I am Swiss and not a paper Swiss, but from good Swiss blood. And everywhere in our country, since the agitation began, we have always been accused: From Dornach, there is Pan-German spiritual imperialism represented, there Switzerland is contaminated with ideas from the “great canton”, as it is popularly called; Swissness, the Swiss way of life is in danger of being overwhelmed and destroyed by German spiritual imperialism. These reasons are given by all parties, both by the Catholic side, which stirs here, and by the nationalists, who stir and make their machinations.

In response to this, it should be said that purely in what is represented here, no national matters are ever represented. On the contrary, Dr. Steiner says that every people and every nation has its own value and its own task to help in the spiritual development of humanity. And if you are asking how it is that those who rail against foreigners here in Switzerland, and in particular against what comes from here, how is it that they get their instructions? Who listens to Rome? Is that Swissness, to listen to Rome? Or do those people in Switzerland who joined the League of Nations on May 16 still have the right to speak of Swissness? No, they no longer do. And it is our task, we who are free Swiss, to take up the thoughts of humanity in their true form and not to represent any group of nationalities. Therefore, we are Swiss and we will remain Swiss without giving up a single iota of Swissness. On the contrary, our nationality can only remain Swiss if we ennoble and deepen it from the depths of our spiritual science. And if our nation perishes from foreignness, if it is not healthy and strong enough to resist all foreign influences, then it is worthy of perishing.

Roman Boos: Mr. Sauter has the floor.

Karl Sauter: I would like to ask the assembly whether it has been unpleasant for her to have heard a different voice on the matter for a change. That is the first fact. And secondly, it is clear – I want to acknowledge this at the end – that this direction is one of those that have helped and are helping to dematerialize the spirit of the times, and also science. I am happy to admit that today. And I am not the one who would have wanted to start a fight on this matter; but you are calling for the discussion, and I have taken the liberty of using this. It will not be finished by tonight. I can believe you, and you will believe us, and it is perhaps good that the discussion is also being promoted among the general public through the press, be it from the left or the right, from above or below. So there will probably be clarity in the course of this year, and then next year we can talk about what remains. So in this sense I would like to conclude.

Roman Boos: Isn't Mr. Sauter perhaps the “Catholic teacher” who made the comment in the “Volksblatt”: “No opportunity was offered for a discussion”?

Karl Sauter: There was no discussion about that either.

Roman Boos: That was registered there in the sense that Catholics who would have liked to speak were not allowed to do so by us. That is why the opportunity was offered today. And now it is being said that we are challenging a discussion. If this is to be continued, this tactic will probably become more entrenched. Before a reasonable discussion can take place, the first thing to do is to clean up and remove the dirt, otherwise it could happen that a party with so much dirt on its weapons could cause an explosion. For it is by no means certain that victory must be on that side. It now depends on whether our Swiss people still have so much decency and inner feeling for cleanliness that they also judge by whether or not the weapons are clean. Does anyone else wish to speak?

A number of written questions have already been submitted before the lecture. Perhaps Dr. Steiner will be able to address them. This is meant in the sense of a final word, after which no further discussion will take place.

Rudolf Steiner: The questions that have been asked, my dear attendees, were asked before the lecture. First:

How is it that your science ascribes so much power to evil, since God is almighty and no power exists besides him?

Well, my dear attendees, that means positing a proposition that is, to begin with, extremely vague, because it is said: How is it that your science ascribes so much power to evil? — how much, then? But then the question here is only in the sense of how far one can comprehend evil, which after all represents a power, despite the fact that certain creeds speak of the omnipotence of God. I would like to hear someone who ascribes sole power to God and recognizes no other power besides him and who then identifies God only with what is not evil, I would like to hear that person explain how he reconciles the existence of evil with the existence of God. From our point of view, from what is advocated here at the Goetheanum, one can only say that the obligation is felt to explain the existence of evil despite the divinity of the world. Secondly:

Does reincarnation lead all people to the divine-spiritual? What about the sentence: Many are called, but few are chosen?

Now, dear assembled ladies and gentlemen, I actually spoke about the sentence, “Many are called, but few are chosen” – in its most abrupt form, in the form in which Augustine advocated it in his Whitsun lectures. And what is said here can now be linked to another question that was asked here, even before the lecture:

Why did Christ die for us after all, since in each person, through many earthly lives, that is balanced out which was incurred in past earthly lives?

Now, my dear audience, you must bear in mind that the Christ, the Christ-act, the event of Golgotha, has to do with humanity, with humanity as such, and you must above all consider what is said here about St. Paul's words: “Not I, but the Christ in me”. By understanding these two things together: that the Christ died for humanity and that the Christ in me – not me – is what is actually effective in the world process, lies the possibility of gaining insight into the difference that exists between the fate of humanity and the fate of the individual human being. Just imagine the consequences if it were proposed that man could remain purely passive and still be redeemed by Christ. But all these things are not at issue; rather, the issue is that spiritual science investigates repeated earthly lives quite independently of everything else, just as, for all I care, the physical sciences investigate mutation or some other process, and that spiritual science simply conquers this knowledge of repeated earthly lives. The question then is to investigate what power the Christ impulse has within world evolution, into which the repeated earthly lives are placed.

The way of thinking that leads to such questions is related to what now arises as a further question:

How does anthroposophy come to speak of the re-embodiment of man, since nowhere in the Bible is this said?

Dear attendees, just consider that the Bible also does not say that America exists - or is it said? I don't think so. Nevertheless, no one will be deterred from recognizing America's existence, even though they stand on the ground of the Bible. There is a big difference between really standing on the ground of the Bible and standing on the ground of people who imagine that they alone are allowed to represent the content of the Bible identically. You see, my dear attendees, in the Catholic Church it was forbidden for a long time to even give the Bible to the faithful to read. And one could tell a lot about what then led to the Bible now also being given to Catholic believers. But all the results of conscientious research would lead nowhere if the discussion were always to be based on the same principles as those we are discussing with. For someone need only glance through my writings to find what I said in my lecture: that a good part of my life has been spent refuting Kant's theory of knowledge. If someone then objects that I have introduced Kant into the lectures on St. Thomas Aquinas merely as a contrast for the sake of contrast, then, my dear audience, it must also be said: Everyone is free to think and express their thoughts as they please in their own circles, but anyone who goes public with their ideas must first convince themselves that they are allowed to make such an assertion before doing so. And one certainly cannot make such an assertion to someone who has been fighting against Kantianism for forty years.

Another question was asked:

Is Christianity the continuation of Oriental, theosophical wisdom? If so, how can the two be combined?

Well, I have already said a good deal about this in my lectures. In my writings, especially in my book “Christianity as Mystical Fact”, you will find a great deal about this, as the literature that comes from me says a great deal about these questions in particular. You see, it has been said that the lectures on Thomism have remained without discussion. Now, my dear audience, if I were to speak again, say, about Scotus Eriugena or, say, about Augustine or, say, about the later nominalism, about the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas and Kant, or if I were to speak about Schelling or Hegel or about Lessing, then, ladies and gentlemen, it must be up to me whether I want to express what I have acquired through decades of research or not, and whether or not a discussion can follow from it. That must be entirely up to me, and I will not allow anyone to take away my right to give lectures in the future, even if no discussion can follow from them. One could really lose all interest in discussions if one had to make the experience of being confronted with such a level in the discussion, as it is when someone says - I don't know from which side it was said, but it was said - when someone who has spent forty years trying to determine the relationship between Kant and other worldviews is told that he is only doing it for the sake of contrast. That is indeed difficult to discuss. When one has fought for every word one utters with one's heart's blood, then, ladies and gentlemen, one also thinks somewhat differently about the value of discussions than those who enter into discussions out of such motives, as I have just characterized them, can think - can I say emphatically. And so I must say once more: I find it at least very strange when someone who takes the side of those who have spoken twenty-three objective untruths against us, who has not yet made even a start at justifying anything of these twenty-three lies, despite four articles - not in the “Bayerischer Vaterland”, one could mistake it for that based on the style confused with it, no, in the “Katholischen Sonntagsblatt” it says - despite these four articles has not even made an attempt to somehow justify any of these twenty-three lies, if this someone says: Just wait and see, the matter will come up.

Well, my dear attendees, the twenty-three assertions that were made at the time are simply untrue, and no subsequent discussion will be able to prove them true. What do you want to discuss? Prove, try to prove, if you want to discuss, a single one of those twenty-three points! Start sometime and don't keep referring us to the end, otherwise you might end up coming to that end only when the matter has actually become too boring for us or when the matter has taken a different turn in some way.

I find it very strange, and others probably do too, that people are being asked to wait for the end when the beginning was done in such a way as it was done. What end should do anything differently from the twenty-three lies at the beginning, which can never be proven as truth? Is the discussion over when someone says, “Wait for the end”? The discussion would at least attempt to justify any of the twenty-three untruths. It would not be successful in any case, because they are untruths.

Roman Boos: This concludes the event.

• 1. Footnote by Rudolf Steiner in the first edition: Anyone who is in a position to allow their views to be dictated by the society or community in which they live can hardly understand the position I have adopted towards the Theosophical Society. I have never allowed it to impose a view on me, but I have presented my views in it, as I do everywhere, where my views are wanted. This seems fully justified to me.
• 2. Footnote by Rudolf Steiner in the first edition: I was able to speak these last sentences at the time because the essays referred to here had been published anonymously; I did not have to believe that they were written by Pastor Kully. They were later published in a collected brochure, and Pastor Kully confessed himself as the author. I leave the sentences as they are so that no one can say that I suppressed anything of what was said. 2
• 3. footnote by Rudolf Steiner in the first print: The crowning achievement of objective untruths in Catholic newspapers in the local area is achieved with the article that has now been published: ‘The stolen threefold social order’. It is printed in the ‘Leuchtturm’ in Lorch. It is claimed that before I began to advocate the threefold social order, I received a written communication from a lady in which this threefold order was already contained. Now, firstly, this is all a lie, because I did not receive anything of the kind, secondly, I advocated the threefold order in front of many people even before the time when I am said to have received that written communication. Thirdly, for me – I received the pamphlet of that lady, which has only recently appeared, a few days ago – what that lady claims about her threefolding is complete nonsense, foolish, amateurish, unclear chatter. But the best thing is that even this lady cannot claim that my threefold order has anything to do with hers. That is why she says that I was familiar with her cause but botched it. The whole thing is too foolish to find it malicious. But the Catholic press thinks it good enough to print it. I advise every reader of this foolish talk to read the writing of that lady in which she accuses me of theft; it is called “3:5,5:8 = 21:34. The secret of being able to pay off the debts in the foreseeable future” and is by Elisabeth Metzdorff-Teschner. If anyone still believes in the stolen threefolding after reading this writing, whose content is as mystical as the title, I would like to know.
• 4. Footnote by Rudolf Steiner in the first edition: It must be admitted that the method of the older church teachers, applied today by people, does not lead to the results that those claim as dogmas who declare anthroposophy to be heresy. But a truly logical way of thinking cannot but reject this slap in the face of logic.
• 5. footnote by Rudolf Steiner in the first : As stated above, it was later proved.
• 6. Footnote by Rudolf Steiner in the first edition: Perhaps, in order to not to give rise to misunderstandings, it is necessary that I should expressly say that by the “Catholic theologians” of whom I have just spoken I do not mean Franz Brentano.