The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The scene from “Faust” just presented, which comes at the end of the second act of Part II, forms the bridge for Faust's entrance into ancient Greece. Those who have gone most deeply into Goethe's world-conception will see how, through it he has penetrated deeply into the spiritual, in both universe and the mystery of man, in so far as the latter is connected with what is spiritual in the universe. It should first be emphasised, on the one hand, that what Goethe meant by saying he had put a great deal in a veiled way into Part II of “Faust”, applies especially to this profound, most significant scene. In this second part of “Faust” there is much wisdom. On the other hand, when represented on the stage, this wisdom is able through its imagery to make a great appeal to the senses.

If we are to understand Goethe's Faust, particularly the second part, we must always keep these two aspects in mind. As Goethe says, the simple minded spectator of Faust will experience pleasure and aesthetic satisfaction in its series of pictures; the Initiate, however, is meant to find there profound secrets of life. If we start with what the pictures give us, this scene represents a festival of the seas to which Homunculus has been taken by Thales. This festival, however, contains a great deal that is veiled, and is meant actually to introduce the demonic powers dwelling in the sea,—that is, the spiritual powers.

Why does Goethe have recourse to the demonic powers of ancient Greece when wishing to lead Faust to the highest point of self-knowledge and self-understanding in human evolution? It may be stated that Goethe was perfectly clear that it is impossible for man ever to arrive at a true conception of his own nature by merely acquiring knowledge received through the senses and the understanding associated with them. True knowledge of man can only be imparted through true spiritual perception. So that all the knowledge and perception of man sought simply through the external physical world, to which the senses and the physical understanding are directed, is no real knowledge of man at all. Goethe indicates this by introducing Homunculus into his poem.

Now Homunculus is the result of the knowledge of man to which Wagner is capable of aspiring with ideally conceived physical means, such ideally conceived means as would. naturally be considered by ordinary science to be its goal, from which, however, no result can be expected either today or in the future. Goethe advances the hypothesis that it might be possible to produce a Homunculus in a retort, that is, to gain such complete knowledge of combining the forces of nature that a human being could be intellectually put together out of various ingredients. But it is no man who arises thus, even when all that can be attained in the physical world is thought out to the highest point of perfection—no man arises, no homo, but only a homunculus. Considered dramatically, this homunculus is simply the image of himself that a man can form with the help of his reason, of his ordinary earthly knowledge. How can this man-made image that is a homunculus provide a true conception of man? How can it be brought about that in this conception man does not stop short at the simple homunculus but pushes on to the homo? It is clear to Goethe that this goal can only be reached through knowledge acquired by the human soul and spirit when free of the body.

Now, by most various ways Goethe endeavours to reach the realm to which a human being must come if he wishes to acquire complete knowledge of man, that is, the knowledge acquired when free of the body. Goethe really wishes to show that it is possible too out of the body to gain knowledge, decisive knowledge, concerning the nature of man. He was by no means one of those who plunges lightheartedly into such matters. His whole life through he was striving to to make his soul more profound. For it was clear to him that when a man grows old, he does not live in vain, but that the forces of knowledge are always increasing, so that in old age it is possible for us to know more than in our youth. But he realised, also the problematic nature of the sojourn of soul and spirit outside the body. Hence he sought in the most varied ways to bring man, to his Faust, knowledge in the form of pictures, that we call Imagination. And he does this first in the Romantic Walpurgis-Night of Part I, and then again in the Classical Walpurgis-Night where he takes the Imaginations from ancient Greece, whither he would transport Faust. We might perhaps say that Goethe thinks that, when a man leaves the body in order to change Homunculus into Homo, into man, he has Imaginations appearing to different people in different forms. And, in the perception of the ancient Greeks, these Imaginations in some degree still approached spiritual reality. Setting before the soul the demonic world of ancient Greece, we can see how, in this traditional realm of myths, when outside the body with his soul and spirit, in highly developed atavistic clairvoyance, man contemplated nature from whose womb he sprang. I might therefore say that Goethe, not wanting to invent an imaginative world himself, calls in the Greek world in order to tell us that, whatever a man may contrive out of his ordinary knowledge, he still remains a Homunculus; if, however, he wishes to become a real man, he must first advance to the world of Imagination, Inspiration, and so on. That is how the nature of man should first be conceived.

Why does Goethe choose a sea-festival, or rather the dream of a sea-festival? To understand his feelings, we must take ourselves back into the conceptions of the old Greeks, to which Goethe himself went back in his representation of this gay feast. We must realise that, to the Greeks, there was a special significance in foresaking the land and sailing out to the open sea. The Greeks, like all ancient peoples, still lived in the outside world. Just as a change took place in these people when they forsook the level ground, the plain, and went up into the mountains—a change experienced by modern man in an abstract prosaic way—so the was some tremendous change in their soul on leaving dry land for the open sea. This feeling that the open sea has special power to release the soul and spirit from the body was universally experienced in olden times, and much is connected with the feeling.

I must ask you, my dear friends, to remember what an important part in the various symbols, on the path of knowledge, was played by the Pillars of Hercules in ancient myths. It was constantly said that when a man has gone through various stages of knowledge he sails, through the Pillars of Hercules. This meant that he sails out into the limitless, open sea, where he no longer feels himself within reach of any coast. For man today that has ceased to mean very much, but for the Greek it meant entering a completely different world. Once past the Pillars of Hercules, he became free of all that bound him to earth, above all through his bodily forces. In olden days, when everyday matters were still experienced by soul and spirit, sailing over the open sea wan felt as freeing one from the body.

Goethe's poetical works were not like those of lesser poets; he wrote out of his feeling for the cosmos, and when he speaks of all that he transposed into the Greek world, he transposes himself there with his whole soul. It is of this that we must constantly remind those who read Goethe as if he were any other poet—those who, whey they are reading Goethe, have no consciousness of having been carried into another world.

Now as the scene begins, we see the ‘alluring Sirens.’ Goethe presents a scene that, though externally in picture-form, might equally be one of everyday life. For the Sirens are collecting wreckage for the Nereids and Tritons. Considered from the other side, however, these alluring creatures, these voices, are not only within man but also outside him. They are the voices of different stages in the world, and on these stages, as I have often shown, inner and outer flow together. The Siren-sounds are those that entice the souls of men out of their bodies, and set them in the spiritual cosmos.

Let us sum up all this. First, Goethe shows a festival of the sea, or rather, dreams evoked during this festival. Secondly, this festival took place during the night, under the influence of the Moon. Goethe arranges everything to show that here it is a question of having to gain a conception independently of the body, a conception of the kind that would be attained consciously, outside the body, is then experienced in pictures. And now we see that, while on the one hand, Goethe wishes to satisfy those who keep to the superficial—this is not said in any belittling sense—by making the Sirens collect wreckage for the Nereids and Tritons who covet it, yet these Nereids and Tritons are on the way to Samothrace to seek the Kabiri and bring them to the festival of the sea. By introducing the Gods of the primeval Samothracian sanctuary into this scene, Goethe shows that he is touching upon the highest human and cosmic secrets. What, then, must take place when Homunculus is to become Homo, when the outlook of Homunculus is to become the outlook of Homo? What must then actually happen?

Now the idea of Homunculus, as understood within the world of the senses, must be taken out of that world and transposed into the world of soul and spirit where, between falling asleep and waking, man has his being. Homunculus must be taken into the world man experiences when, free of his body, he is united with the existence of soul and spirit. It is in this picture-world that we must now find Homunculus, he must then transfer this picture of Homunculus, he must then transfer this picture into that other world, the world of Imagination, Inspiration, and so forth. There alone can the abstract idea of Homunculus be grasped by the real forces of being, those forces that never enter human knowledge when we stop short at the understanding through the senses. When Homunculus, the idea of Homunculus, is separated from the body and transferred to the world of so and spirit, then in all earnestness everything becomes real. Then we have to come upon those forces that are the real ones behind the origin and evolution of man.

In all this Goethe is showing that he had a profound and significant comprehension of the Samothracian Kabiri, that he had a feeling how, in primeval times, these Kabiri were worshipped as guardians of the forces connected with the origin and evolution of mankind. Thus, by evoking from the age if atavistic clairvoyance, pictures of the divine forces associated with human evolution, Goethe was touching upon what is highest.

When dealing with the Samothracian Mysteries, the conception of the Greeks referred back to what was very ancient. And it may be said that the ideas about these Samothracian Mysteries about the Kabiri divinities, permeated all the various ideas the Greeks held about the Gods, all their ideas concerning the connection between these Gods and mankind. And the old Greek was convinced that his idea of human immortality was a legacy bequeathed to the Greek consciousness by the Samothracian Mysteries. It was to the influence of these Mysteries he felt he owed the idea of man's immortality, the idea of man's membership of the world of soul and spirit.

Goethe therefore wishes at the same time to suggest that, were the impulses of the Greeks, that are associated with the Kabiri of Samothrace, grasped in a state free of the body, perhaps the abstract human idea of Homunculus might be united with the true evolutionary forces of man. In the Greek consciousness there was definitely something that could live again, vividly, in Goethe when he touched on this profound mystery. To take an example, this may be seen in what the Greeks used to say of Philip of Macedonia how, by watching the Mysteries of Samothrace, he found Olympia. And the Greeks had in their consciousness how, at that time, the great Alexander decided to descend to these parents when coming to earth, when soul to soul before the divinities of Kabiri Philip of Macedon and Olympia found each other. Those things must be touched upon for the awe to be felt which the Greeks actually experienced when the Kabiri were in question, an awe shared later by Goethe.

From an external point of view they are simply ocean-deities. The Greeks knew that, in an age relatively not very ancient, Samothrace had been inundated, rent asunder, and reduced to confusion by most fearful volcanic storms. The nature-demons had shown their power here in such a terrific way that it still remained in historic memory among the Greeks. And in the woods, in the forests of Samothrace, at that time very dense, the Kabiren Mysteries were concealed. Among the many different names they bore is one Axieros; a second, Axiokersos; a third, Axiokersa; the fourth was Kadmyllos. And a vague feeling existed that there were also a fifth, sixth and seventh. But man's spiritual gaze was mainly fixed on the first three. The old ideas of the Kabiri centered round the secret of men's becoming; and the initiate it in to the holy Mysteries of Samothrace was supposed to come to the perception that what is seen spiritually in the spiritual world corresponds to what happens on earth when, for an incarnating soul a man arises, a man comes to birth. In the spiritual world the spiritual correlate of the human birth was supposed to be watched.

Through such vision, Goethe believed he could change the idea of a homunculus to that of homo. And it was to this vision the Samothracian Initiates were led. We cannot see a man in his true nature when we regard him as a being enclosed within his skin and when we are under the delusion that all we are concerned with in man stands before us in external, physical human form, visible to the external eye. Whoever wishes really to know man must go beyond what is enclosed within the skin and look upon the human being as extending over the entire universe. He must have in mind, what extends spiritually outside the skin.

Now many of the ideas about the Gods depend on this impulse of the Greeks to see the human being outside his skin. And connected with these ideas there was an exoteric and an esoteric side. The exoteric side of man's becoming related, however, to the whole of nature's becoming; the connection of man's becoming with the becoming of nature was involved when, later, the Greeks spoke of Demeter, of Ceres. The esoteric side of Ceres, of Demeter, of the world in its becoming, was the Kabiri. We must know how to look at him, if in any way we are to be able to penetrate the secret of man.

You see, to look at man simply as a figure standing on the physical earth is, really, to deceive yourself about him. For the human being has been united from a threefold stream, a trinity. And as three lights cast their beams on a point—a circle—and we see the fusion of the lights and then refuse to recognise how one, perhaps yellow, another blue, and the third of reddish colour flow together into one, refuse to see this harmony, preferring to believe that what has arisen from a mingling of lights is a unity and so deceive ourselves in believing this mixed product we see before us as man in his skin to be a unity. He is not a unity and if we take him for one we shall never read the secret of mankind. At the present time man is unconscious of not being a unity. But he was conscious of it while atavistic clairvoyance glowed warmly through human knowledge. Thus, the Initiates of Samothrace put men together out of Axieros standing in the middle, and the two extremes, Axiokersos and Axiokersa, whose forces were united with those of Axieros. We might say than that there are three—Axieros, Axiokersos, and Axiokersa. These three forces flowed together to form a unity. The higher reality is the trinity; the unity springs from the trinity. This is what comes before the eye of man.

It might also be said that the Samothracian Initiate learned to know man who stood, physically perceptible, before him. He was told: You must take away from this man the two extremes, Axiokersos and Axiokersa, that only ray into him. Then you can retain Axieros. So the matter stands thus: Of the three, Axieros represents the centre condition of the human being, and the others the two invisible ones, merely shine upon him.

Thus, in the Mysteries of Samothrace, man is shown to be a trinity. Goethe asks himself: Can the idea of the abstract Homunculus perhaps be changed into that of the complete Homo by turning to what, in the Samothracian Mysteries, was regarded as the secret of man—the human trinity? And he said: This trinity can only be arrived at as a conception when man, with his soul and spirit, leaves the body. This is what he told himself.

We must, however, always emphasise that, as regards spiritual perception, Goethe was only a beginner. What is so wonderful about all that Goethe stands for will, as I said recently, only be rightly understood when we think of it as being continually developed, being necessarily developed in order to lend to ever greater heights. In Goethe himself we have the theory of metamorphosis, from leaf to leaf, from the green leaf of the foliage to the coloured petal of the flower, or from the spinal vertebrae, perhaps, to the bones of the head—this secret, if rightly understood, leading from one incarnation to another, from one earth-life to another, as I have often shown you. Hence, from the standpoint of Goethe's own conception of the world, we may ask: How then should the Mystery of Samothrace be pictured today? The Samothracian Mystery, as such, with its Kabiri-symbolism of the secret of humanity, corresponds entirely with the atavistic clairvoyant world-conception; but the living content of knowledge at any one human period, cannot be continued on in the right way, and must be re-moulded. It is not suitable for a return to old conceptions adapted to a quite different state of human evolution; the conceptions must be transformed. The Samothracian Mystery has naturally only historical value. Today we should say: We represent how in the centre of the Representative of Man there stands Axieros, how he is encircled by Axiokersa, and how Axiokersos must be placed in connection with all that is earthly—thus giving us the Representative of Man, Lucifer and Ahriman. And here we have the re-moulding suited to the present age, and on into the future, of the holy Mystery of Samothrace.

It might be said: Were Goethe to appear among us today, wishing, in conformity with all that man has since won for himself, to tell us what is able to change Homunculus to Homo, he would point to the Representative of Man, surrounded by, and in combat with, Lucifer and Ahriman. I beg of you, however, not to make an abstraction of these things, not to apply the favorite modern method of settling these matters by a few abstract concepts, and taking them for symbols. the more you feel that a whole world, containing the secret of man, lies hidden in the figure of the Representative of Man in connection with Lucifer and Ahriman; the more you repudiate the pride, the unjustified, childish pride, of modern man in his abstract scientific concepts; the more you open your soul to a world giving you a view of this image of the mystery of man—then the nearer you come to this secret.

Spiritual Science meets with all kinds of opposition today. But one of its strongest opponents is man's desire for abstraction, his desire to label everything with a few concepts. Goethe's teaching is, in feeling, the exact opposite of this mischievous modern habit of pasting concepts everywhere. One has peculiar experiences in this regard. Men come to a movement like Spiritual Science from very different motives. There are many who wish to reduce everything to abstractions. For instance, man consists of seven principles—I once had the experience, a horrible experience, of someone explaining Hamlet by attributing to him the principle of Buddhi on one place, in another, Manes, and so on. That, my dear friends, is something much worse than all materialism. These quite abstract explanations, all this symbolising of an abstract nature is, regarded inwardly, much worse than any external materialism. Anyhow, we see that, in showing his Nereids and Tritons on the way to Samothrace to fetch the holy Kabiri, Goethe wished, above all, to raise the idea of Homunculus to a very high human plane.

And so, with regard to the Kabiri, we must experience what the ancient peoples did with regard to their deities. These deities of primeval peoples appear primitive to man today—mere idols. This is so because modern man has no understanding for idols. This is so because modern man has no understanding for all that flows out of elemental forces. Not even in art does man rise today to anything really creative. He keeps to a model, or judges what is represented for him in art by the question: Is it like?—Often indeed one hears the objection that it is not natural, because, among men today, there is very little real artistic feeling. In any case, whoever wishes to understand the sometimes grotesque looking figures of the ancient Gods, must try to form an idea of the beings belonging to the third elemental world, from which our world springs, on the one hand in its mineral, on the other, in its organic products.

You know how the scene begins. The Nereids and Tritons are on their way to Samothrace to fetch the Kabiri, amongst whom Homunculus is to be transformed into Home. In the meantime, while they are on their journey, Thales, who is to be the guide of Homunculus in becoming man, betakes himself to the old sea God, Nereus. It was Thales, the old philosopher of nature, whom first Homunculus had sought out. Now, Goethe is neither a mystic in the bad sense of the word, not a mere natural philosopher, when it is a question of finding reality. Hence Thales himself cannot be made to help Homunculus to become Home. Goethe had a deep respect for Thales conception of the world, but did not attribute to him the ability, the force, to advise Homunculus how to become man, complete man. For this, one should betake oneself outside the body to a demonic power—to old Nereus. Goethe brings the most various demonic powers to Homunculus. What kind of power is this Nereus? Now we can see this by the way the old sea-God speaks in Goethe's poem. It might be said that Nereus is the wise, prophetic, but somewhat philistine inhabitant of the spiritual world nearest man, the world man first enters on leaving the body. And, we ask, does he know at all how Homunculus is to become man? Nereus has indeed understanding, even to the point of prophetic clairvoyance; and he makes noble use of this understanding, but even so does not really succeed in reaching what is innermost in the human being. Because of this he feels men do not listen to him, do not heed his counsel. He has, as it were, no access to the human soul. On many occasions he has advised men, warned men; once he warned Paris against bringing so much misery on Troy, but to no effect. Now Nereus, since he is not hampered by a physical body, has developed on the physical plane to a very high degree human understanding that is possessed in a much less degree by man. But even with this understanding he cannot help Homunculus very far on the road to becoming Homo. What Nereus is able to say does not entirely meet the case. So by that nothing is actually gained for Homunculus' task.

Nereus says, however, that although he will not concern himself in giving Homunculus advice about becoming Homo, he is expecting his daughters, the Dorides (or Nereides). In particular, he expects Galatea, the most outstanding of them; for they are to attend the ocean-festival. Galatea! and Imagination of a mighty kind.

What the question is here, is to see how things are connected in the world. It is not very easy to speak on this point, because of the soul's desire today to reduce everything to abstractions. But anyone who looks into these matters may experience a great deal. There are, no doubt, well-intentioned people who say they believe in the spirit. Certainly, it is not a bad thing at least to believe in the spirit; but how do they answer the weighty question: What do you mean exactly by the ‘spirit’ in which you believe? What is the spirit? Spiritualists generally renounce all claim to learning anything of the spirit by doing much that is quite unspiritual. Spiritualism is the most materialistic doctrine that can exist. Certain souls more finely tuned speak indeed of the spirit, but what is it exactly that they have i mind when so speaking? That is why very modern and sceptical minds prefer to forgo the spirit—I mean, of course, only in thought—prefer to give up the spirit as against what can be known today through the senses. Read the article called “Spirit” in Fritz Mauthner's Dictionary of Philosophy; there you will probably be able to get bodily conditions but not those of the head.

Now, you see, in Spiritual Science one should rise above all this abstract talking, even if it is about the spirit. Follow what is said in Spiritual Science, and you will see how it rises progressively as we work. Everything is drawn upon that, step by step, can lead into the actual spiritual world. What is said is not merely the spoken word but derives its force from a method of comparison. Only think how, by the very way Spiritual Science is presented here, it becomes comprehensible that man is pursuing a certain path in life, in the physical body. Read, for instance, what is given comprehensively in the October number of Das Reich (1918). It is shown there how, and by means of what forces, a human being while quite a child has the closest affinity to the material world; how in middle life his soul gains in importance; how in later life he becomes spiritual. This, however, he often does not recognise because he is not prepared for it. He becomes spiritual as the body falls into decay, as the body becomes dry and sclerotic the spirit becomes free, even during the waking condition. Only, a man is very seldom conscious of what he is able to experience if he grows old with a certain gift. I mean here with a gift of the spiritual; that is to say if, not simply growing decrepit in body, he experiences the soul becoming young, becoming spirit.

This makes us realise, my dear friends, that the spirit cannot be seen in an old man or old woman; naturally it is invisible. The decrepit body can be seen but not the spirit growing young and fresh. Wrinkles may be perceived in the flesh of the cheeks, but not the growing fullness of the spirit; that is supersensible. We can, however, indicate where the spirit may be found here in the world where we are leading our everyday existence. And if we then say: The whole of nature is permeated by spirit, we reach the point when we realise that outside in nature where the minerals and plants make manifest the external world, there dwells something of the same force into which we men and women grow as we become old. There you have the visible expression of it. To say, in a pantheistic way, that outside lives the spirit, means nothing at all, because spirit then remains a mere word. But if we say, not in a direct abstract way, but with the necessary and various details: To find the force that as you grow old is always becoming stronger in you, look to the innermost and most active of the forces of nature—then we are speaking of a reality. The essential thing is to set the one force by the side of the other, and to notice the place of each. These things can be livingly realised by turning one's gaze to the force-impulses in the whole connection of a physical human being's descent to earth—from conception, throughout the embryonic life till birth. The dull, dry-as-dust scientist stops short at this force; it is true, he examines it punctiliously but only in his own way, and then comes to a standstill. When a man is able to survey the world from the standpoint of Spiritual Science, he knows, however, that this force is also present in other places. Acting more quickly, the very same force makes itself felt when you wake in the morning, when you wake out of sleep. Exactly the same force, though in a more tenuous form, is present, as the one leading from conception through the embryonic life to birth; it is the identical force. This force is not only in you, in your innermost being; it is diffused outside, throughout everything and every process in the whole wide cosmos.

This force is the daughter of cosmic intelligence. You see, if we wish to describe these things, we must touch on many matters that, today, are quite out of the ordinary. What then does the modern scientist do, when wishing to come upon the secret of physical germination? He uses the microscope; he examines the germ-cell under the microscope, before it is fertilised, after it is fertilised, and so on. He has no feeling that what he thus examines in the smallest object under the microscope is constantly before his eyes in the macrocosm. The very same process that goes on, for example, in the womb of the mother, before and during conception, and during the whole embryonic life, this same process, this very same process, goes on macrocosmically when, after the seed has sunk down into the earth, the earth sends forth the little plant. The warmth of the womb, the warmth of the pregnant mother, is exactly the same as is the sun outside for the whole vegetation of the world. It is important to be able to realise that what can be seen in the smallest object under the microscope, can be looked upon macrocosmically all around in the external world. When we wander about among he growing plants, we are actually in the womb of the world. In short, the force underlying the becoming of man is outside in the whole macrocosmic world, seething and weaving there. Imagine this force personified, imagine this same force of human becoming grasped spiritually in its spiritual counterpart outside the human body, and you have Galatea, with those akin to her, her sisters, the Dorides. In these Imaginations we are led into a mysterious but quite real world. This is one of the most profound scenes written by Goethe, who was conscious that, at the most advanced age, man may have a premonition of these secrets of nature.

There is something overwhelmingly significant in Goethe beginning Faust in his youth and then, shortly before the end of his life, writing such scenes as are now being shown. For sixty years he was striving to find the way of putting into outward form what, at the beginning of that time, he had conceived. He draws upon everything he considers relevant to raise the idea of Homunculus to the idea of Homo, and to present man's becoming outside the body, in all its mystery. He draws upon the Kabiri Mystery, and the mystery of becoming man as it appeared in the figure of Galatea. And he knows that reality is so all-embracing, so profound, that the Imaginations awakened by the Kabiri impulses, by the Galatea-impulse, can do no more than hover on its surface. The mystery is far greater than what can be contained even in such impulses.

Goethe himself tried every means of approaching the secret of life in a true and living way. Thus he evolved his theory of metamorphosis, in which he follows up the different forms in nature—how one form develops out of another. Now Goethe's theory of metamorphosis must not be regarded in and abstract way. He shows us this himself. It is perhaps because it can only be conceived and brought to man's soul in a world-outlook free of the body that, with his theory of metamorphosis Goethe approaches what was atavistically experienced in the old Proteus-myth. Perhaps Proteus, who in his own becoming takes on such different forms, perhaps through his experiences it would be possible to find how Homunculus can become Homo. (You know how, in this scene, Goethe introduces him, and we present him, as tortoise, man, dolphin, three forms appearing one after another.)

But Goethe felt that there were still limitations to his theory of metamorphosis. Surely, you may say, a man with such profound, such fundamental knowledge, as Goethe could see what follows from this theory; with it one can watch one leaf of a plant changing into another, up to the petal of the flower, the spinal vertebrae transforming themselves into the bones of the head, the skull-bones? But Goethe—anyone who has worked on Goethe's world-conception knows how he wrestled in this sphere—Goethe knew he could go no farther. Yet he felt: There is something beyond all this.—We know what that something is—the head of the present man is the metamorphosis of the body of the previous man, the man of an earlier life on earth; the rest of his body in this earth-life will, in the next life, become the head. There, for man's life, we have metamorphosis—the crown of metamorphosis. He draws on what he feels about Proteus, but that can lead only to raising the idea of Homunculus to that of Homo. Goethe felt he had made a great beginning with the Protean idea of metamorphosis, but that this had to be developed were Homunculus to become Homo. Goethe in all honesty represents poetically both what he can and what he cannot do, and we see deep into his soul. It is no doubt, easier to picture an abstract, perfect Goethe and to assure ourselves he knew everything. But No! Goethe becomes all the greater by our recognising the limitations he himself so honestly admits, as may be seen, for instance, in his not allowing Proteus—that is, the way he conceives his theory of metamorphosis—to give counsel regarding Homunculus becoming Homo.

Goethe strove, indeed, form the most varied directions to approach this becoming—this growing to true man. For him, artistic conception was not, as it is for so many, fundamentally abstract. He considered that everything expressed in works of art was part of all that is creative in the world. Into this scene he puts all that was to have led him to his heart's desire—to fathoming the mystery of becoming man. As he stood before the Greek works of art, or rather, the Italian work which made Greek art real for him, he said to himself: I am an the track of what the Greeks were doing in the creation of their works of art; they acted in accordance with the same forces as does nature, in her creations. And he had the experience that, if the artist is a true artist, he unites himself in marriage, as it were, with the forces creating in nature; he creates his forms, and all that can be created artistically, out of what is working in the arising, the growing, of plants of animals, of man. But in all this there is still no inner knowledge. That is what Goethe had to admit to himself. The creative forces present themselves to our vision, allow us to feel them, but in metamorphosis we do not go right within them.

There next appear the Telchines of Rhodes. They are such great artists that, naturally. all external human art seems small in comparison. They forged Neptune's trident. They were the first who tried to represent Gods in human form, that is, to create man out of the actual cosmic forces. This art of the Telchines comes nearer reproducing man's becoming, but does not quite reach it. This is what Goethe is wishing to tell us. He expresses it through Proteus who says finally: Even this does not lead to the real mystery of man.

Thus does Goethe wish to evoke a true feeling that there are two worlds—the waking world of day, and the world that is entered when man is free of the body, the world he would see if, during sleep he became awake to this body-free condition. Everything of the kind that he would say, is indicated by Goethe in this scene most delicately and sublimely. Take, for example, the passage where the Dorides bring in the sailor-lads; read the works in which the world is described, how the physical world is set beside the world entered when man is free of the body—how this is pictured in the Dorides set beside the physical sailor boys. They have found each other and yet not found each other. Human beings and spirits meet one another, yet do not meet; they approach each other and remain strangers. In this passage, the relation of the two worlds is wonderfully indicated. Everywhere Goethe endeavours to show how essential it is to place oneself into the spiritual world to find what makes Homunculus into Homo. At the same time he delicately indicates how physical world and spiritual world are together yet apart.

One might say that in his artistic representation, Goethe sees—or rather, makes us see—how Homunculus can become Homo if the soul approaches the intimate mystery of the Kabiri, if it approach what Nereus evoked in his daughter Galatea. All that is active in the true art that works out of the cosmos. But, alas, it is as if one were grasping after reality in a dream, and the dream immediately fades away. It is as though one wished to hold fast what welds together the physical and the spiritual worlds. The Gods will not suffer it; the worlds fall apart.

This difficulty of knowing the spirit is the fundamental experience, the fundamental impulse in the soul of one who watches this scene with true understanding. It is this that leads Goethe to his mighty finale—the shattering of Homunculus against the shell-chariot of Galatea, the shattering that is at the same time an arising, a coming into being, the ascent into the elements, which is a finding of the self in reality.

We will speak again tomorrow of this conclusion of the scene, in connection with its representation.

When spiritual science investigates mankind's evolution it arrives at results which in many respects differ considerably from those presented by natural science. This applies more especially to the human soul. The view obtained through spiritual knowledge of the human soul's evolution during hundreds and thousands of years differs from the view that is possible merely through natural-scientific investigation. Looking back into earlier ages we recognize that man once possessed atavistic clairvoyance and that this made his consciousness different from what it is today. However, we must also recognize that a residue of this clairvoyance persisted right into later centuries to a far greater extent than is realized. It is particularly important to be aware of the fact that right up to the 14th, 15th, 16th and even into the 17th century a vestige of the ancient clairvoyance was still in evidence. Not with its former strength, it is true, but although weakened, it was clearly a remnant of the former atavistic clairvoyance and could be encountered over the greater part of the earth.

I have spoken in earlier lectures of the fact that even today there are people who possess atavistic clairvoyance. The reason not much is known about it is because people are usually too embarrassed to confess to their fellow men that revelations from spiritual realms enter their consciousness. I described some instances of this kind in the last lecture. However, the difference is very great between what people could still experience directly from the spiritual world in the 16th and 17th centuries and what is possible since then. And even in the 17th century most people would not have been able to describe what appeared to their clairvoyant vision to the extent of being able to say that they had seen such and such a being. Their consciousness in spiritual experiences was not strong enough to grasp the situation sufficiently to form mental pictures of it. But though the consciousness was subdued, spiritual beings did still enter into man's will, into his feeling and also into his conceptual life. This was the case to a far greater extent than is imagined today. At the present time it is really extraordinarily difficult for someone who is able to look into the spiritual world and is conversant with the nature of what is to be experienced there, to speak freely about it to his fellow men. As I have often mentioned, one's contemporaries would receive too great a shock were one to describe certain, even elementary, facts concerning man's relationship to the spiritual world. Naturally it can cause clashes of views when an initiate, from his knowledge of the spiritual world, is obliged to say the very opposite to what his contemporaries, owing to their materialistic convictions, can accept as truth.

This situation had not yet arisen in the 14th, 15th, 16th or even 17th centuries. Much of the literature from this period is interpreted quite wrongly. This is not only because modern people think they know better than their predecessors, they also no longer understand their attitude to life. This fact comes to expression in curious ways. For example it is quite extraordinary to witness the way modern philosophers, in their writings or when lecturing, castigate the Scholastics of the Middle Ages. They go out of their way to demonstrate how far they themselves have advanced beyond i what they see as prejudiced, pedantic and narrow ideas of the Scholastics. But in truth, compared to the Scholastics, the modern philosophers are incredibly ignorant and they completely misunderstand the Scholastics. What is not realized is that at the time of Thomism, when a philosopher was engaged in the subtle art of ideation, of defining and elaborating the finer points, he was in contact with the spiritual world. It must be realized that for example Thomas Aquinas,²⁶ in the 13th Century, attained the concepts and ideas he elaborated in his writings in a completely different way from the way ideas are acquired today. One must think of his books as being inspired by a spirit from the Hierarchy of the Angeloi and that he recorded what came from a higher consciousness.

A modern philosopher would find dreadful the idea of having to sit down and wait till his Angel inspired him before writing what he was to communicate to the world; that with his Angel by his side he was to be the mouthpiece, the physical human mediator for what the Angel proclaimed concerning a higher world. Yet in no other way is it possible to understand what is coming into being, what is becoming. What I am now saying is of the greatest importance and I beg you to take special note of it. Only by listening to what is inspired into us or vouchsafed through Imagination can we come to understand what is coming into being. In our ordinary consciousness, since the 16th, 17th but especially since the 18th century, we have no relationship whatever to what is evolving, coming into existence. We look directly at things, but how much of what we see do we take into our consciousness? Let us say we look at a blossoming rose; in no instance, at no moment do we see the actual coming-into-being of the rose. From the formation of the seed to the extinction of the rose what we see is the dying, the fading away. That we see the red rose at all is due to the fact that we grasp its dying aspect. The coming-into-being aspect of things can be grasped only if one is able to listen to higher beings or receive impressions from them. No one, except higher beings who at present do not incarnate in a physical body, can perceive the becoming of the rose. In the very lowest realm of perception, the subjective light, which is almost as dull as the old clairvoyance was and, when it occurs, still is, do we see something of the becoming of the rose. But not when we look at it with physical eyes and grasp what we see conceptually.

This illustrates that an essential characteristic of our materialistic age is that only what is dying, what is going towards extinction, enters our consciousness. That was not the case at the time of the Scholastics nor even in the 17th century.

In the early part of the 17th century a little-known philosopher, Henry More,²⁷ born 1614, lived in England. When we look at his external life we see him as a living proof that man does not develop his individuality from inherited qualities alone. He brings with him characteristics, not found in parents or earlier ancestors, from former lives on earth. Henry More's parents and relations were all strict orthodox Calvinists, but already as a small boy he fought Zwingli's rigid teaching of predestination. Henry More rejected it emphatically although no one in his environment maintained anything contrary to this rigid doctrine. He had also another distinguishing characteristic. When one studies his writings, which are very interesting, one discovers the remarkable fact that he spoke of the inner presence of the spiritual world in human consciousness quite differently from the way people spoke of it later. He was a philosopher of the 17th century yet he knew that only through a more receptive consciousness than the ordinary one which only grasps the dying aspect, can man unite with that living reality which expresses itself in inspired consciousness as processes of becoming. In such inspired consciousness man can know about the processes of becoming whereas otherwise he can know only about what is connected with processes of dying. What is perceived everywhere through present-day consciousness is the dying aspects of things and even Henry More was not altogether clear that he had communed with spiritual beings. When he attempted to grasp his experiences in conceptual form; i.e. form mental pictures of them, these pictures would vanish in the very process of forming them just like a dream vanishes as we wake up. Thus he could not bring his experience of meeting spiritual beings into clear consciousness; he would forget as we forget a dream. Only dimly was he aware of their presence in his inner life but the effect of these experiences remained with him.

A very interesting thought, well known to us, was expressed also by Henry More. The thought that if one wants to reach certain higher knowledge one must learn to regard one's whole being as a member of a higher organism. Just as a finger is a member of the hand and loses its existence if separated from the hand, so too is man nothing, if torn out of his organic connection with the whole cosmos. With the finger this is more obvious. However if the finger could walk freely over our body it might well also succumb to the illusion of being an independent organism. Certainly the earth is there for man, but man is equally, in the adjoining spiritual world, a member of the greater organism of the earth. Man cannot tear himself out of this connection anymore than the finger can tear itself from the hand. I have often expressed this thought as an antidote to man's misplaced and all too prevalent conceit. In Henry More it rose as a sudden revelation. The reason was because he did have a dim knowledge, like a half-forgotten dream, of man's interconnection with the whole cosmos although he could not bring it into conscious conceptual form.

When one tries to discover what helped Henry More to formulate what lived so beautifully in his soul one finds that he had been deeply impressed by a certain booklet. This small book: the “Theologia Germanica” had also made a great impression on someone else; namely Luther²⁸ who made it available to wider circles in Germany. Henry More became a student of the “Theologia Germanica” by “the man from Frankfurth.” You will find more on this subject in my book “Mysticism at the Dawn of the Modern Age.”

The question may have arisen in your mind why it should be that in the 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th and even 17th centuries people appear who know of the spiritual world through direct communion. The reason is the following: Those who in these centuries knew most about man's connection with the spiritual world had been on earth, if not in their last incarnation then as a rule in the last but one, at a time when preparation for Christianity was being made in the secret schools, in the Mysteries. Individuals such as Henry More were present on earth in the centuries prior to the Mystery of Golgotha. They then had an intermediate incarnation in the 7th, 8th or 9th century but this later incarnation had much less impact on them than that received in the previous one from the teaching in the mysteries. These teachings, preparing for the Mystery of Golgotha, made a deeper, more intense, impression on their soul. That is why so much of great significance was said concerning Christianity during those later centuries. Through their communion with the spiritual world these individuals derived an insight into the world's coming-into-being which, since the 17th century has no longer been possible. From then onwards one had to draw ever more on external accounts alone; these accounts, however, only describe what is in the process of decline. Spiritual knowledge is needed to bring insight once more to what is in the process of becoming. The preparation for Christianity, which lasted more than half a millennium during the tragic centuries leading up to the Mystery of Golgotha, made an enormous impression on these spirits. What they carried over into the later incarnation was an impulse of feeling, an inner mood of soul which they were able to give conceptual form.

European cultural development, between the 14th and 17th centuries, takes on a deeper significance when studied with this background in mind. One comes to realize that very spiritual concepts and ideas concerning Christianity and the Bible are to be found in this period. These concepts and ideas often seem strange today because they originated from spiritual experiences. To turn his attention to the essential aspect of that period is of special interest for man today. The period between the 14th and 17th centuries is really like a mighty retrospect. Forces were still present in man's soul through which experience could arise of the surging weaving life of the spiritual world. We enter the minds of those who lived in that period when, in contemplating them, we do not forget this retrospective quality of their consciousness.

If for example we want to understand Luther it is essential to keep in mind what I have just said. Recently a very interesting book: Luther's Creed by Ricarda Huch²⁹ has appeared. The reason why the book is so interesting is mainly because it is written completely out of present-day consciousness; that it is also inadequate makes it somewhat disappointing. The periodical: “North and South” contains in the July issue an article about this book entitled: “Ricarda Huch and the Devil.” The article points out that with our consciousness as it is today we cannot really comprehend the way man's mind worked in an earlier epoch. This fact makes it all the more interesting to see how Ricarda Huch deals with Luther's belief in demons. Unlike those who, when requested for an opinion concerning Luther's belief in demons, are too cowardly to voice one, she tries to treat him fairly. Others usually dismiss the issue by saying: Well, Luther was certainly a great man but his talk about demons, his belief in the devil stemmed from the fact that he shared the general superstitions of his time.

An opinion of this kind is just about as helpful as that of the honest professor who, reading with his students what Lessing had written about a drama performance, explained that Lessing had not really been able to think through what he had written; and the professor added: “Well, if only I myself had more time!” It is through this kind of superior attitude that it is concluded that Luther had shared in the superstition of his time. The fact is that no one can understand Luther who does not realize that what, out of the spirit and consciousness of his time, was called “the devil”—we would say Ahriman and Lucifer—was for him actual spiritual experience. When he spoke of these matters at Wartburg or anywhere else it was always from direct experience. Try to compare and bring together what Luther says and you will inevitably come to the conviction that only someone who has actually seen the devil, who has met him in direct experience, can speak as Luther did. Moreover he was well aware that: “Small folk never see the devil even when he has them by the collar.” Ricarda Huch agrees, with much good will but purely theoretically, against the superior attitude of the academics who, in their cleverness, know that the devil does not exist. They conclude that Luther was superstitious as were others at his time and one must excuse and forgive the great man.

Ricarda Huch does not agree with those who hold such a superior view of great spirits of the past. However it is obvious that she has no personal experience of what the devil looks like. She does believe in him although she has never seen him; so how does she visualize the devil? She believes in his existence because she knows that there are things which neither natural science nor physiology can explain, things which must come from the devil. She too feels that some excuses must be made for Luther for she says: "One ought not to imagine that Luther believed the devil walked about the streets complete with horns and tail." However, like others, she sees what she calls the devil as a combination of certain evil traits and characteristics such as stupidity, pride, untruthfulness and so on. But these are mere abstract concepts and Ricarda Huch thought Luther used his pictorial expressions in that sense. Luther was obliged to use pictures because there is no other way to express spiritual experiences. Yet he was directly acquainted with the devil through the inner battles which unavoidably must be fought when man comes face to face with the devil.

Luther clothed his experiences in pictures in the way one otherwise clothes them in words. Only the most obtuse thinkers could possibly maintain that the words one uses to depict an event contain the event itself. Yet this is precisely the objection levelled against me by professor Dessoir when he says that I have derived the various stages of mankind's evolution, not from reality, but from mental pictures. Such things are rather prevalent; in this particular case it stems from lack of insight, from utter ignorance. In the second chapter of my forthcoming book, dealing especially with moral corruption in academic circles, you will see what kind of people are among those who teach in public places of learning. These people who help shape the present, contribute to its dreadful miseries. They also create a situation in which the Royal Academy of Science awards its prize to the shoddy history of psychology submitted by Dessoir. If you read what Dessoir's colleagues have themselves said about this slatternly superficial treatise you will get an idea of the kind of literature that circulates and even wins awards in the academic world.

Luther lived at a time when the possibility still existed to have awareness of the spiritual world. All the devilry of Ahriman he experienced directly; he could not put these experiences into ordinary words because words are designed for physical things. Spiritual experiences must be described in pictures, in Imaginations. However, Imagination does express the reality of what is perceived and experienced super-sensibly. This Ricarda Huch does not understand. She thinks that though Luther spoke of the devil one must not take it to mean that when someone with spiritual sight comes among people he will, in numerous cases, find Ahriman, hunchbacked and with horns, looking at him from where he sits firmly entrenched between their shoulders. But Luther's descriptions were based on experience, and the pictures he uses are his way of describing these experiences. His personality was not such a gentle one as that of Ricarda Huch who believes he merely used symbolic pictures for man's evil upsurging passions.

One can ask what it is that gives Luther's doctrine—as it is usually called—the power it has. The answer lies in the fact that it is no mere doctrine, it must be understood very differently if one is to do it justice. In one's imagination Luther, standing there in the 17th Century, must be visualized as looking back with inner sight to a time when communion was being cultivated with the spiritual world, to a time when he himself cultivated such communion precisely in the realm of the ahrimanic. To recognize Ahriman is to free oneself from him; the danger lies in not recognizing him—you can read more about this aspect of Ahriman in my Four Mystery Dramas. To come face to face with Ahriman, the way Luther did, is to set oneself free. What Luther says can seem incomprehensible unless one recognizes that he is describing actual experiences; when it is realized then the power of his words is greatly enhanced. Even when we find certain aspects of what he said unpalatable his words strike us as genuine because he saw things in a much wider context than is normally possible today.

It is an interesting and highly significant phenomenon that Luther should appear, embodying the fruits of what was taught in the pre-Christian Mysteries. Luther was one of the greatest participants in those Mysteries that prepared the way for the founding of Christianity. What he absorbed in these Mysteries remained quite unimpaired by the later intermediate incarnation and was the source and strength of his power in his incarnation as Luther. But what was Luther's most significant revelation concerning his direct experience of Ahriman?

We must keep in mind that the essentially ahrimanic age begins only after Luther. Though people are not aware of it, present-day natural-scientific knowledge is saturated by Ahriman. The characteristic feature of today's materialistic outlook is that every concept is prompted by Ahriman. Luther was destined, at a significant turning point to make man aware of this fact. However when someone is able to look into the spiritual world he sees things in a different light from those who cannot do so. Furthermore the spiritual world affects man differently once he becomes conscious of it.

We begin to understand Luther's peculiar position once we realize that the powerful force he brought over from an earlier evolutionary stage could not be effective in later epochs. He was destined to rescue for mankind a view of Christianity before it had been weakened by unrecognized ahrimanic influences. That is the reason for the breadth of his vision and the strength of his consciousness of Ahriman.

Someone once wrote a book in which he had collected all the contradictions to be found in Luther's writings. Luther read the book and wrote a reply which is included in a letter to Melanchthon. Luther's comment was: “The silly ass only speaks of contradictions because he understands neither side of a contradiction, he does not understand that one can honour someone as a Prince yet at the same time speak of him as a devil and oppose him.”—Luther's letter to Melanchthon, where he speaks of this, is most interesting, for it also reveals his relationship to his own time. He used other expressions which would not be used today but are entirely comprehensible in view of his acquaintance with the spiritual world. These expressions are not, as historians suggest, merely a product of his time. Those who call Luther's expressions cynical or frivolous do so out of their own cynicism or frivolity.

What is important in relation to these things is to recognize that individual aspects of something may recur, although the greater issue itself is not repeated. This applies also to Scholasticism; people will only learn to relate to it when they rediscover in it the more subtly differentiated thinking than the one cultivated today. The way the spirit came to expression in Luther will never be repeated. He must be accepted just as he is, as a historical phenomenon. It would be a mistake to imagine that anyone could repeat Luther's life. What one should do is to make so thorough a study of Luther, as he appears in history, that one comes to recognize what it was that revealed itself through him in this particular incarnation. One must attempt to see beyond the individual who was active in the mysteries preparing for Christianity and then had an intermediate incarnation before appearing as Luther. We need to see that we are not dealing here only with a certain individuality but that in this one phenomenon the whole trend and law of mankind's evolution is expressed. It could happen because of his former conscious experience—even though as Luther this knowledge had become subconscious—of that realm where he encountered the devil; i.e., Ahriman.

In general Luther is seen the way academics see him: theologians are usually academics. His direct experience of the spiritual world is disregarded and his talk of the devil is seen as the weakness of a great man. But in truth the weakness lies in those who speak in this way about Luther.

Then came—and here we see how evolution runs its course—the time after Luther when Ahriman permeated the materialistic view of life. Though man was not conscious of it this was the case especially in the 19th Century. From the eastern part of Europe the possibility will first emerge for man to know once more the realm he enters when he attains insight beyond the physical plane. This seems a strange fact when we at present look towards the East. We see there aspects revealing both the baseness and the greatness of Russian nature. Over several years we have described what is preparing itself in Russia. It is indeed a remarkable experience to watch what takes place there; one has to say that these people are children still. They really are children and when they are not children they are possessed.

How can one escape the realization that Kerensky³⁰ is possessed? Naturally he considers himself far above such a superstitious idea that Ahriman has taken possession of him. But Ahriman has learned to produce from Western science a thinking which is utterly alien to the East, alien because it is a thinking related only to processes of dying. Not only does Western thinking understand nothing about the Russian people; Easterners themselves—that is, the leading people in the East—who try to judge Russians with Western thinking do not understand the Russians. There is in the Russian people still something childlike, something that points to the future. And in the future it is destined to develop into the ability to look once more into the spiritual world, to develop a relationship once more with the spiritual world.

What is preparing in Russia for the future is in complete contrast to the preparations that were made for our own epoch at the time of the Great Luther. Our age looks back, it makes manifest a force working from the past. We are looking at something very remarkable in the contrast between Luther's experience of his time and for example the childlike experience of a Russian like Soloviev³¹ during the time leading up to the revolution. We are seeing two opposite poles which are related as North to South, or if an abstract comparison is wanted, as positive and negative electricity. Two opposite directions of thoughts and views; unable to understand each other. It is obvious from the way Soloviev speaks that he is remote from any understanding of Luther, and if we remain with Luther it is quite impossible to understand Soloviev. We must widen our horizon to encompass both positive and negative.

I wanted to place these important issues before you. When next we meet I shall attempt to present Luther as a self-contained individuality—not only as he appeared in his time but as he appears within mankind's evolution as a whole—from a point of view obtainable only through Anthroposophy.

• 26. Thomas Aquinas 1225–1274 Scholastic Philosopher
• 27. Henry More 1614–1687 English Philosopher.
• 28. Martin Luther 1483–1546 Inaugurator of German Reformation
• 29. Ricarda Huck 1864–1947
• 30. Alexander Feodorowitsch Kerensky b. 1881 Russian Politician
• 31. Wladimir Soloviev 1853–1900 Russian Philosopher and Poet

You will have noticed in these lectures that we are approaching our goal step by step, but that with each step we are trying to penetrate more deeply into our subject. In the last lecture we spoke of the nature of pain, which may be connected with an illness; we also pointed out how in other cases an illness may run its course—at least in a certain sense—without being accompanied by pain.

We must now consider the nature of pain in somewhat more detail. We must keep before us the fact that pain may become apparent side by side with illness. At our last discussion we already concluded that we may not look upon disease and pain as inseparable. We must be aware that if pain is connected with an illness, there must be something more at stake than mere illness. We have pointed out that the process taking place during the transition from one incarnation to another, whereby events of earlier incarnations are transformed into causes of illness, is influenced on the one side by the luciferic principle, and on the other by the ahrimanic principle.

How do we lay the foundation of illnesses? Why do we acquire a predisposition for illness? What induces us between death and rebirth to prepare forces which will manifest as illness in our next life? We are impelled to this when we see our own weakness in the face of the temptations of Lucifer on the one hand and those of Ahriman on the other. All our greed, egotism, ambition, pride, vanity, all qualities connected with this inflation of our Ego, this desire to be in the limelight, all this is the result of luciferic temptations. In other words, if we fall victims to the forces active within our astral body so that they find expression in our egotistical greeds and passions, we are in that incarnation performing actions to which we are tempted by Lucifer. And during the period between death and rebirth, we see the results of such deeds inspired by Lucifer. We then contract the tendency to incarnate ourselves in conditions where we shall have to suffer an illness which, if it is overcome, will free us still further from the clutches of these luciferic powers. If the luciferic power did not exist, we should not fall into those temptations that lead us to seek for renewed powers.

If there were nothing else in life but the egotistical impulses and passions born of Lucifer, we should never be able to free ourselves from them, not even in successive incarnations, for we should ever again succumb to them. Suppose for instance we had been left to our own devices during Earth Evolution, but still subject to the luciferic influence. We should have the temptations of the luciferic powers in one incarnation and then after death perceive where they had led us. This would bring about an illness, but if nothing else co-operated, the illness would lead to no great improvement during the life in which it is experienced. It leads to an improvement only because other powers, adversaries of Lucifer, add something to the whole process.

When we fall into the power of Lucifer, there immediately intervenes a counteraction by powers antagonistic to the luciferic powers. These exercise an opposing force, whereby the luciferic influence may be actually driven out of us. And it is these forces, opponents of the luciferic powers, which add pain to the process resulting from Lucifer's influence. Thus, if the luciferic powers are evil, we must regard pain as something which is given us by benevolent forces, because through pain we escape from the clutches of these evil powers, and do not succumb to them again. If there were no pain connected with illnesses which result from yielding to the luciferic powers, we should feel that it was not so bad after all to succumb to these powers. And there would be nothing impelling us to escape from the luciferic forces. Pain, which is the consciousness of the astral body in a wrong waking state, is also that which prevents us from ever again falling prey to the luciferic powers in that realm where we have already succumbed. Thus pain becomes our schoolmaster in regard to the temptations of the luciferic powers.

But how can pain become our schoolmaster, if we only feel the pain and are in no way aware of its beneficent force. If this is the case it is the result of our Ego-consciousness. In that consciousness that we have described as lying beneath our Ego-consciousness, and which is not perceived in the normal state, a process is already taking place whereby we realise that we are experiencing pain, and that this is brought about by the beneficial forces to counteract our transgressions. This is a force in our subconscious mind acting truly as karmic fulfilment—as an impulse to fall no more into those deeds, inclinations, and greeds that brought about the illness.

Thus we see how karma acts, how we fall a prey to the luciferic powers, how these powers effect an illness in the following incarnation, and how the beneficent forces add pain to the organic trouble, so that through pain we may educate the subconscious. We may therefore say that in every case where pain makes itself felt, we are dealing with an illness provoked by the luciferic forces. Pain is a sign that the luciferic power lies at its roots. People who go in for classification will now be longing to distinguish these illnesses that are due to purely luciferic influence from those which can be traced to purely ahrimanic influence. For in all theorising it is most convenient to classify—to make formulae—and people delude themselves into believing that they have comprehended much in this way. In reality, however, things do not arrange themselves in such a way that they can be grasped in this convenient manner. In reality they continually intercross and interpenetrate. And it will be easy to understand that during the course of an illness there are phenomena which may be traced in part to Lucifer's influence—to the activities of our astral body—and others which are traced to the ahrimanic influence. Thus no one must believe that if we feel pain, it is traceable only to luciferic influences. Pain reveals that part of our illness is traceable to luciferic influence. But this will become clearer if we ask whence the ahrimanic influence comes.

We should not have fallen a prey to ahrimanic influence if we had not first succumbed to that of Lucifer. Through the luciferic influence there came about the relation of the four elements constituting man—the physical body, etheric body, astral body and the Ego—a relation which would not have existed if only the forces opposed to Lucifer had operated. In that case we should have developed quite differently. Thus the luciferic principle caused disorder in the inner being of man, and the position of man in relation to the external world depends upon what he is himself. Just as we cannot see the world when we have imperfect eyes, so through luciferic influence we are prevented from seeing the external world as it really is. And because of man's incapacity to see the external world as it really is, the ahrimanic influence has been able to insinuate itself into this inaccurate picture. So it is the luciferic influence on man which has made Ahriman's approach possible. Subjected to the ahrimanic influence we can fall a prey not only to egotistical passions, urges, greeds, vanity and pride, and so forth, but now egotism can affect the human organism to such an extent as to develop organs through which we can see the external world distorted and inaccurate. Ahriman has insinuated himself into this inaccurate picture, and under his influence we succumb not only to inner temptations, but also to error. We fall into untruth in our judgement of the external world and our assertions concerning it. Thus Ahriman acts from outside; but we have made it possible for him to reach us.

The ahrimanic and luciferic influences are thus never separated. They always react upon one another, and in a certain sense keep a balance. Lucifer manifests outwards from within, Ahriman acts from without, and our picture of the world is formed between the two. If in one incarnation the inner man gains in strength, if the man is more exposed to the inner influences, then he will succumb more easily to Lucifer, when his pride, his vanity, etc., will come into play. In an incarnation in which man is not through his general karma predisposed to yield to inner influences, he will be more inclined to fall a prey to error and the temptations of Ahriman. This is what actually happens. So that in daily life we at one moment fall a prey more to the temptations of Lucifer, and at another to those of Ahriman. And we oscillate between these two influences which lead us—the one to inner conceit, and the other to illusions about the external world.

Since it is a matter of singular importance, it might here be mentioned that the temptations from both sides must be especially resisted by anyone who is called to a spiritual development, and who wishes to penetrate into the spiritual world, whether by penetrating into that external spirituality which lies behind the phenomena of the external world, or whether by descending mystically into his own inner being. When we penetrate the world which lies behind the physical world, we always find those deceptive images which Ahriman conjures up. When a man tries to descend mystically into his own soul, he is exposed to the temptations of Lucifer in a special degree. When he tries to descend without having previously taken precautions against pride, vanity, and so forth; when he succeeds in living as a Mystic without having given heed to a special moral culture, he is the more liable to fall victim to the temptations of Lucifer, who acts upon the soul from within. If a Mystic has not given careful heed to his moral culture, he will be in great danger when penetrating his inner being, of calling forth even more strongly than before the reactionary forces of Lucifer, and of becoming even more vain and proud than he was formerly. For this reason it is essential first to ensure that through the forming of our character we are able to resist the temptations of vanity, conceit, and pride to which we in any case shall be exposed. We can never do enough towards the acquisition of such qualities as lead to modesty and humility. This is essential for that aspect of our development which we call ‘Mystic.’ On the other hand it is necessary to defend ourselves against the delusions of Ahriman when we attempt to reach the spiritual origin of things, by following the path which leads behind the phenomena of the external world. If we do not form a strong and steadfast character which enables us to fortify ourselves, to acquire a strong inner life, it may well happen that just at the moment when we are succeeding in going out into the spiritual world, we fall into the clutches of Ahriman, who will beguile us by illusion upon illusion, hallucination upon hallucination.

We must understand that these things must be accepted in the spirit and not in the letter. Because the fact is so often emphasised that a higher development desirous of comprehending phenomena of the external world must be accompanied by full consciousness, it happens that again and again somnambulists assure us that they perceive the spiritual world, and do so when fully conscious. The only thing that can be done is to assure them that it would be far better for them, and far wiser if they did not have this full consciousness. For people are mistaken as to the nature of this consciousness, which is merely an image or astral consciousness. If these people were not conscious in a lower degree they would not perceive anything, and what matters is that we should on entering the spiritual world maintain the integrity of our Ego-consciousness. With the Ego-consciousness however is linked our power of judgement and our faculty for acute discrimination. This is what is lacking regarding the forms which they see in the spiritual world. That they should have some consciousness is in no way remarkable, but the consciousness they should have is that which is linked to the culture of our Ego. That is why during our development towards the perception of the higher worlds we are not so keen on reaching these higher worlds as speedily as possible, on seeing a world filled with images and all kinds of forms, of hearing perhaps all kinds of voices. Rather do we emphasise the fact that entrance to the spiritual world can only bring happiness or be of advantage when our consciousness, our faculty of discrimination and discernment, and our power of judgement have been so sharpened that in the higher worlds we shall be subject to no delusion. This can best be achieved through a study of Anthroposophical truths. For this reason we insist that the study of Anthroposophy is the best safeguard against these alleged visions, which by their nature are not capable of being brought to the test of a sound judgement. One schooled in Spiritual Science will not accept everything that comes his way, but will be able to distinguish between reality and mirage. He will also know that any auditory perceptions must be treated with the greatest circumspection, for no such perceptions can correspond to reality unless the hearer has previously passed through the sphere of absolute silence. He who has not first experienced the absolute silence and calm of the spiritual world may be certain that what he perceives are delusions, even though what they convey to him seems most portentous. Only he who has taken the pains to fortify his judgement by trying to comprehend the truths of the spiritual worlds, only he can defend himself against such delusions. The means which external science offers are insufficient. External science does not provide us with the power of judgement sure enough and strong enough for true discernment in the spiritual world. That is why we say that if information concerning the higher worlds is given us by people who have not carefully fortified the power of judgement—and this can be done through the study of Anthroposophy—such information is always questionable, and must in any case first be checked by the methods attained through genuine training. From this we see that Lucifer and Ahriman do not suspend their temptations when we strive for a higher development.

There is but one power before which Lucifer retreats, and that is morality which burns him like the most dreadful of fires. And there is no means by which to oppose Ahriman other than a power of judgement and discernment schooled by Spiritual Science. For Ahriman flees in terror from the wholesome power of judgement acquired upon Earth. In the main there is nothing to which he has a greater aversion than the qualities we gain from a healthy education of our Ego-consciousness. For we shall see that Ahriman belongs to a very different region far removed from that force of sound judgement which we develop in ourselves. The moment Ahriman encounters this, he receives a terrible shock, for this is something completely unknown to him, and he fears it. The more we apply ourselves in our life to develop this wholesome judgement, the more do we work in opposition to Ahriman. This appears particularly in numbers of cases of people brought before one, who recount from dawn to sunset all they have seen in the spiritual worlds. And if one attempts to give to these people some explanation, and to develop their judgement and discernment, Ahriman generally has them so completely in his power, that they can hardly enter into the discussion. It is even more difficult to get them to listen to reason when Ahriman's temptations come to them from the auditory side. There are many more ways of dealing with delusions which appear as images than with those which come acoustically—in voices heard and so forth. Such people have a great aversion to any serious study that would contribute to the development of their Ego-consciousness between birth and death. But it is not they themselves who do not like it; it is the ahrimanic forces that drag them away from it. If one leads those people so far as to develop a wholesome discernment, and they begin to accept instruction, it soon becomes evident that the visions, voices, and hallucinations cease. They were merely ahrimanic chimera, and Ahriman is possessed by fear as soon as he feels that from out of this man there comes forth a wholesome power of judgement.

In fact, the best remedy against the particularly harmful diseases which result in visions and delusory voices induced by Ahriman is to make all efforts to induce the person to acquire a wholesome and rational judgement. In many such cases it is extraordinarily difficult to do this, for the other powers make things very easy for the deluded ones and guide them on. He who attempts to expel this power cannot make things so comfortable, and in consequence finds his task a difficult one; for they maintain that they are being deprived of that which before had led them into the spiritual world. The truth of the matter is that they are being healed and safeguarded against further encroachment by these evil powers.

We now know what the luciferic and ahrimanic forces abhor. Lucifer has an aversion for humility and modesty in man and is repulsed if we have only such an opinion of ourselves as a wholesome judgement entitles us to hold. On the other hand, he is present, like the flies in the dirty room, whenever the qualities of vanity and ambition arise. All this and the illusions which we engender about ourselves, prepare us to receive Ahriman as well. Nothing can defend us against Ahriman unless we really make an effort to think wholesomely, as life between birth and death teaches us to do. And especially we, who stand on the rock of Spiritual Science, have every reason to emphasise again and again and as intensively as possible, the fact that it is not meet for us as earth-beings to disregard that which is to be given us through life upon earth. People who disdain the acquisition of a wholesome judgement and a rational discernment, and who aspire to a spiritual world without making this effort, are really trying to shun earth life. They, being of the opinion that it is really far too trivial an occupation for them to concern themselves with matters that may lead to comprehension of this life, aspire to soar above it. They consider themselves superior and it is just this frame of mind which constitutes a fresh cause of pride. For this reason we see constantly that such people who incline towards sentimental fanaticism—‘Schwärmerei’—towards a shrinking from being touched by the things of this earth and earth life, refusing to learn because they already have the inner knowledge, have nothing in common with a movement such as ours. Such people say ‘Humanity must enter the Spiritual World.’

Certainly—but there is only one healthy path by which we can enter, and that is the morality that must be acquired upon earth, a morality in the highest sense of the word, which will keep us from over-estimation of ourselves, and will make us less subservient to our impulses, greeds and passions, but which on the other hand will be an active, wholesome co-operation with the conditions of earth life, and not a desire to soar above such conditions.

Here we have again drawn from out of the depths of karma something connected with the depths of spiritual life. This may be of great value, but nothing from the spiritual world is of value to the development of man and of his individuality unless it be brought forth from the spiritual world for a wholesome reason, and with morality.

When considering all the discussions of our last lecture and those of to-day we shall ask: Why should not the luciferic influence, just for the very reason that it worked earlier and has been transformed into illness, and then equalised through the pain, why should it not call forth in man, draw after it, as it were, the ahrimanic influence? And why should not that which causes us pain and announces the luciferic influence of a disease, why should not the ahrimanic influence take part in this as a consequence of the luciferic influence? But how does the ahrimanic influence work? How are the temptations of Ahriman turned into causes of illness? How do they manifest in later incarnations?

Whatever is to be traced to ahrimanic influence is indirectly attributable to Lucifer; when, however, the luciferic influence has been so strong as immediately to call forth the ahrimanic influence, then this influence is the more malicious. It anchors itself not only in the transgressions of the astral body, but in those of the etheric body. It manifests itself in a consciousness lying deeper than our pain consciousness, causing damage not necessarily accompanied by pain, damage that renders useless the organ which it attacks.

Let us suppose that in one incarnation an ahrimanic influence had been exercised on a being bringing with it certain consequences. Now the man passes through the period between death and a new birth, and reappears in a new incarnation. Then it will become manifest that some organ has been attacked by Ahriman; in other words, the etheric body has entered this organ more deeply than it should—more deeply than normal. In such a case, precisely because of this defective organ, the man is even more open to temptations of error which are the work of Ahriman upon earth. By means of the organ which owes its defect to ahrimanic influence, and into which the etheric body has too deeply penetrated, the man would, if he were to experience the whole of this process, become even more enmeshed in what Ahriman can effect, namely, ‘Maya.’ Since nothing however produced by the material world as Maya can be carried into the spiritual world, the spiritual world withdraws further from him. For in that world there is to be found only truth and no illusion. The more he becomes entangled in the illusions effected by Ahriman, the more are we impelled to enter even further into the external world of the senses, into the illusions of the physical senses, much further than would be the case without the defective organ.

A counteracting effect comes into play, however, just as we have the effect of pain counteracting the luciferic influence. This counteracting effect will operate in such a way that the moment there is any danger of our being linked too closely with the physical world of the senses, and of our losing the forces which lead us up into the spiritual world, in that moment the organ is destroyed; it will either be paralysed or else rendered too weak to be effective. A process of destruction takes place. Thus if we see an organ approaching destruction, we must realise that we owe this to beneficial forces; the organ is taken from us so that we may find our way back into the spiritual world. When there is no alternative of escape, certain forces do in fact destroy our organs or weaken them so that we may not become too greatly entangled in Maya or illusion and may find our way back into the spiritual world.

Let us take the case of a person who has a disease of the liver, but such as is not accompanied by pain. We are here dealing with the effect of a preceding ahrimanic influence which has resulted in this disorder in the liver. If this organ had not been taken from him, the forces connected with a deeper penetration by the etheric body would have led him too far into Maya.

Sagas and myths have always known of the deepest wisdom, and have expressed it. Of this the liver is a very good example. It is an organ which can most easily be exposed to the danger of driving man into the physical illusory world, and at the same time the liver is the organ which binds us to the earth. This truth is connected with the fact that precisely that being who, according to the legend, gave to man the force which leads him into earthly life and which makes him very active there—namely, Prometheus—should have his liver gnawed by a vulture. A vulture gnaws at his liver, not because this would cause Prometheus any severe pain, for in that case the legend would not correspond with physiological facts! The vulture gnaws at the liver because it does not hurt. By this it is indicated that Prometheus brought about something which could entangle men more deeply in the ahrimanic illusion, if a counteracting effect could not be produced. Occult records are always in accord with the truths which we make known in Spiritual Science.

I have shown you to-day by a simple analysis of facts that it is the beneficial powers which bring pain to us to react against the influence of Lucifer. Let us compare this with the records of the Old Testament. After Lucifer's influence had made itself felt, as is symbolised by the serpent's temptation of Eve, Lucifer's adversaries had to inflict pain to hinder what Lucifer was trying to achieve in men. The powers which opposed Lucifer had then to appear and disclose that thenceforth humanity should know pain. This was done by Jehovah, or Jahveh, when He said: ‘In sorrow thou shalt bring forth children.’

Usually we do not fully appreciate these sayings of the biblical records until we possess the explanations of Spiritual Science. Later we realise how profound these records are. Before we can speak about the passage: ‘In sorrow thou shalt bring forth children,’ we must study karma, for only when the time comes shall we be able to give an explanation. For this reason it is of little use to ask for an explanation of this or that passage from occult records before having attained the required state in one's occult development. It is then not good to ask what is the meaning of this or that. We must be patient and wait until we have reached the required stage. For with explanations alone we shall arrive at nothing.

Thus we see our life affected by the luciferic powers on the one side, and on the other by the powers opposed to Lucifer. Then the ahrimanic powers intrude into our lives, and we must realise that those powers which incapacitate our organs when we fall a prey to ahrimanic influences are to be counted among the beneficent powers, whose adversary is no other than Ahriman. If we set out from all that has been said here, we shall be able to get an insight into the complicated structure of human nature, and we shall arrive at the following conclusion; the luciferic powers are those that have remained behind during the ancient Moon period, and to-day during our Earth evolution they influence human life by means of forces which are really Moon forces, and which can only operate in that cosmic plan which is working in accordance with those forces which oppose Lucifer. These forces are not within our Earth evolution. Thus does Lucifer influence the plans of another being.

We can now go back to an earlier epoch. If on the one side we perceive that on the Moon, beings remained behind in their development, so as to intervene in human life upon Earth, it may seem feasible that also upon the ancient Sun there remained behind beings who played a part upon the Moon analogous to that played by the luciferic powers upon Earth at present. In the present human being we observe what may be described as a conflict—the conflict between the luciferic powers which penetrate into our astral body, and those benevolent powers which can affect us only through our Ego and through our earth achievement. For the powers opposed to Lucifer can only act upon us through our Ego. If we acquire a clear insight into, and a true valuation of ourselves, we do so only with the help of those powers which affect our Ego. For this we must make use of our Ego. Therefore we may say that while our Ego struggles with the luciferic powers, Jahveh, or Jehovah, is fighting within us against Lucifer. That which watches over the ordered cosmic design is fighting against that which rebels against this design and against its exclusiveness. Our innermost being stands in the midst of this strife, between Lucifer and other beings. We ourselves are the battlefield of this struggle, and the fact that we are the battlefield in this fight draws us into karma, but only indirectly, through the fact that this battle is fought against Lucifer. If on the contrary we turn our gaze outward, we are attracted by the influence of the ahrimanic powers. Something is enacted that comes from outside, and here Ahriman enters within us.

We know that upon the ancient Moon dwelt beings who passed that time through their human stage, as we are now passing through it in the course of Earth evolution. In the Akashic Records* and in Occult Science these beings are referred to as Angels, Angeloi and Dhyanis—the name does not matter. Within these beings took place a battle similar to the luciferic battle within our own souls—a battle provoked by those beings who had remained behind upon the Sun. This battle upon the Moon is in no way concerned with our inner Ego for on the Moon we did not yet possess our Ego. It is not concerned with anything in which our Ego takes part. Upon the Moon it took place "within the bosom of the Angels." And so these beings developed in a way which was possible only through the influence of the other beings who had stayed behind during the Sun evolution. These beings who played the same part with regard to the Angeloi that to-day the luciferic beings play with regard to ourselves were the ahrimanic beings which, during the whole of the Sun evolution, remained behind as did the luciferic beings during the Moon evolution. That is why we can only indirectly encounter these beings. It was Ahriman who, as it were, acted as tempter within the breast of the Angeloi, and he was active within them. Because of him the Angeloi had become what they then became, and they have carried over with them what they acquired through Ahriman, as well as the good they then acquired.

The good we have attained through Lucifer is the possibility of discrimination between good and evil, the free faculty of discrimination, and our free will. All this we may attain only through Lucifer. The Angels, however, have carried over into the Earth the fruits of their struggle with the ahrimanic powers, and this has fitted them for their present task as spiritual beings which surround us. Our inner Ego is not concerned with and takes no part in what these beings then experienced, nor in the effects of their experiences. We shall see, however, that we receive indirectly such experiences ourselves, because the ahrimanic influence acts upon us. Through Ahriman, therefore, these beings have attained certain results caused during their Moon existence and these results are introduced into our Earth existence. Let us try to trace in our Earth existence the effect of the ahrimanic battle of that time.

If that ahrimanic battle had not taken place on the ancient Moon, these beings could not have brought into our Earth existence that which once formed part of the ancient Moon existence. For that would have ceased to exist after the ancient Moon had perished. Through the ahrimanic influence, the Angels became entangled in the Moon existence, just as we, through the luciferic influence, become entangled in Earth existence. They received in their innermost nature something of the Moon element and transported it into our Earth existence. Because of this they are in a position to raise up the forces which will prevent our Earth from succumbing entirely to the luciferic influence. In its totality our Earth would have succumbed to Lucifer's influence if the results of the Angels' battle against Ahriman upon the Moon had not been brought into our Earth existence.

What then are the proceedings in the existence of the Earth which we describe as the normal? When our present solar system organised itself in accordance with the goal of our Earth, that which we see as the regular movements of the Earth and of the planets began, and that brought it about that the seasons of the year succeed each other in regular succession, that we have sunshine and rain, that our fruits ripen in the fields, and so on. Those are conditions which repeat themselves over and over again according to the rhythm of the Cosmos which shaped itself for the present existence after the Moon existence descended into the twilight. But within the Earth existence works Lucifer; and we shall see that he works a good deal more than merely in the domain into which we axe able to follow him in man himself, which he nevertheless has made his most important domain. Even if Lucifer were to be found only in the Earth existence, man would nevertheless, through all the conditions which are determined by the regular course of the planets round the Sun, through the changes of summer and winter, rain and sunshine and so on, have fallen into what we may call luciferic temptation. If man were to receive all that could come to him from a well-ordered Cosmos, and everything which the regular rhythmic movements of the solar system could produce, if only those laws prevailed which are adapted to our present Cosmos, man would still fall under the luciferic influence, and would prefer his comfortable life to a life of striving after his cosmic welfare, preferring the regular course to that which he ought to achieve for himself.

Therefore opposing forces had to be created. Forces were necessary which would intervene in the normal cosmic phenomena and bring about events which, on the old Moon, were highly beneficial and normal, but which, when they work on the Earth existence to-day, are abnormal and endanger its regular course. These influences appear in such a way that they correct that which would occur if the rhythm alone existed, giving the tendency to comfortable living, to comfort, to ease and luxury; and we see such forces, for instance, manifesting themselves in violent hailstorms. So when that which otherwise would be produced by the regular forces of the Earth is destroyed, a correction is in these cases brought about which on the whole works beneficially—even although man cannot at first see it—because there is a higher reason at work than can be perceived by man. When the hail drives down into the fields, we may then say: Upon the old Moon these forces which work in the hail were the regular ones, just as to-day are those which bring blessings in the rain and the sunshine; but they rush in, in order to correct that which otherwise would be produced by the luciferic influence. And when the regular course is again re-established, they rush in again to effect further correction. Everything that leads to further progressive evolution belongs to the forces of the earth itself. When the volcano throws out its lava, forces are working in it which are retarded forces brought over from the old Moon in order that they should bring about the correction in the Earth life. We shall find that much that comes from outside finds its justification in the general march of evolution. We shall see later how this is connected with the human Ego-consciousness.

But one point on which we must be clear is that these matters represent only one side of human existence, of Earth existence, and of the cosmic existence in general. If on the one hand we see in the destruction of an organ the beneficent activity of spiritual powers, and if we have found to-day that the whole course of Earth evolution must be rectified by forces springing from the ancient Moon existence, we must now ask how it is that we as Earth men on the other hand must try to rectify the harmful influences of the ancient Moon forces. We already feel that as Earth men we have not the right to wish for volcanic eruptions and earth—quakes, nor may we ourselves destroy organs in order to assist the beneficent effect of the ancient Moon forces. But we can also admit, and justifiably, that should an epidemic break out, it will lead man to seek for the balancing of some imperfection within himself, and we may surmise that man is driven into certain conditions in order to suffer some injury, the conquest of which will draw him nearer to perfection.

What then of hygienic and sanitary measures? Might not someone say: "If epidemics may prove beneficial, is it then not wrong to take measures conducive to health and preventive of disease?" One might arrive at the conclusion that nothing should be done to obviate natural catastrophes and that this conclusion is entirely supported by our lectures of yesterday and today.

We shall see that this is not the case, yet again only on certain conditions. For only now are we rightly prepared to understand in our next discussion how on the one hand beneficial forces may cause injury to an organ, so that we may escape the effect of Maya, and yet, on the other hand, to become conscious of the effect we produce by the use of sanitary and hygienic measures against disease.

We shall see that we have here arrived at a case which so often arises where there is an apparent contradiction, and where we are impelled by the entire force of this contradiction. In such a case we are nearer to the point at which the ahrimanic powers may exert the greatest influence upon us. At no time is the danger of illusion greater than when we have reached such a deadlock. For we now say that the forces which render an organ useless are beneficent forces because they work in opposition to Ahriman; therefore those who take steps against disease are working against humanity, for hygienic measures would limit this beneficial reaction.

We have reached a deadlock, and it is well that we have been led into this contradiction so that we may reflect upon the fact that such are possible, and may even constitute good discipline for our mind. For when we have seen how we can draw ourselves by our own initiative out of this seeming contradiction, then we shall have arrived at a result by which we may fortify ourselves against the illusions of Ahriman.

(Representation of a scene from Faust, Part II, Act II High-vaulted, narrow Gothic Room—Laboratory.)

It is to be hoped that the scenes just witnessed may have effect and meet with a really intelligent reception in the widest circles today. For these scenes contain many germs of the evolution within which also flows the stream of Spiritual Science. We can say that, in writing these scenes out of his long and varied experience, Goethe foreshadowed much that like a seed will spring up through Spiritual Science. These scenes from the second part of “Faust” stand before our souls not only as a record of cultural history, but also as an expression of deep knowledge. To help us to a full understanding in our approach to this deepest manifestation of Goethe's spirit we may now call to our aid the already familiar ideas of Spiritual Science. For, in these ideas, all that Goethe's inner imagination develop out of the experiences of his time is formulated and brought to full consciousness.

In the first of these two scenes, above all, we have an important document of cultural history. Goethe had been matured by all that he had absorbed from natural science, and by the deepening of all his concepts through his studies and mysticism as well as what he received from Grecian art. And, at the very time when he was giving form to the ideas thus living in him, the spirits of men were seeking with infinite enthusiasm for knowledge to grapple with the highest problems of existence. Something that should not, cannot, surprise people in our circle is the fact that a really intensive striving towards the spiritual world should actually promote caricatures of itself. Both mystical striving and the deeper striving after philosophical knowledge produce their caricatures. In Goethe's immediate circle a really important endeavor, that might be described as both philosophical and theosophical, was developing at the time when the scenes were living in unfolding in Goethe's mind. It was then that Johann Gottlieb Fichte was teaching with an immense enthusiasm for knowledge. From the brief account given in my book, and from what is said about Fichte both in the development of the “Riddles of Philosophy” and in the more recent “Riddles of Man,” you can see by all that is said there about him how he strove an elemental way to formulate the divine spiritual dwelling in man's innermost soul, in such a way that, by developing this in his soul, man may become conscious of his divine spiritual origin. Fichte tried to grasp the full life of the ego in the soul of man, the active, creative ego, and also the ego filled with God. By this means he sought to feel the union of the inner human life with the whole life of the cosmos. And out of this enthusiasm he spoke. It is very easy to understand how such a spiritual thrust should meet with opposition. Naturally Fichte could not then speak in the concrete way of Spiritual Science, the time was not yet ripe for this. We might say that he tried by abstract, all-round concepts, to give life to the feeling that can then be wakened to full life in man by the impressions of Spiritual Science. Hence his language has often much about it that is abstract; this is penetrated, however, by living feeling and experience. And for what Fichte had to say to be taken seriously at all, the strong impression was needed that a personality such as his could produce. He often expressed himself strangely and in paradox—to even greater degree than is necessary in Spiritual Science, for, to those unaccustomed to it, what is true often appears foolish. This is why such a great spirit as Fichte, who had at that time to express the truth in abstract form, was thought ridiculous.

On the other hand, those who had been strongly impressed by Fichte might easily have exaggerated things, as happens often in life. Then came caricatures of him, caricatures of others as well who, inspired by the same convictions were also teaching in Jena at the time. Among these was Schelling who, striving like Fichte, actually fought his way—as I have often stressed—to a very deep conception of Christianity, even to a very deep conception of the Mystery of Golgotha. This conception gradually developed into a kind of Theosophy then expressed—though without being understood by his contemporaries—in his “Philosophy of Manifestation.” It was embodied too in the treatise on human freedom and other subjects akin to it written round Jakob Boehme. It was already living in his discourse on Bruno, or on the Divine and Natural Principle of Things, and lived especially in his splendid treatise on the Mysteries of the Samothracian Divinities, where he gave a picture of what in his opinion had dwelt in those old Mysteries. Then there were such spirits as Friedrich Schlegel, who energetically applied to the different branches of human knowledge what to those more philosophically constituted natures sought to charm from the heart of the world order. Hegel had begun to formulate his philosophy. And all this had been going on around the Goethe. These men sought to penetrate beyond what is relative in the world, beyond all that controls mankind in day-to-day life, to the Absolute, to what is not merely the background of the relative. Thus, Fichte tried to penetrate beyond the ordinary, everyday ego to the absolute ego, anchored in the Godhead, and weaving its web in eternity. Thus Schelling and Hegel sought to press through to absolute Being.

All this was naturally taken at the time in various ways. Today, particularly, when Spiritual Science can penetrate our hearts, we are able to form a very clear idea of the frame of mind of men like Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, when on talking about all that was so vividly before their spiritual eye people remained apathetic—apathetic and hostile. One can understand, too, how the youthful Fichte, meeting antiquated pedants in Jena, who each in their own way of thought they knew everything, might sometimes flare up. Fichte often flared up, not only when he was banished from Jena but also when he saw that, giving of his best, it found no entrance into any heart, any soul; for they all thought themselves wiser with their old traditional knowledge and ideas. So we can understand that when such a spirit as Fichte was faced with the pundits of Jena and had to deal with them, that he was driven to declare that everyone over thirty should be put to death!—It was a spiritual struggle of the first magnitude raging at that time in Jena, and everything going on there was vilified. Kotzebue, a poetaster who nevertheless had his public, wrote a very interesting and witty dramatic pamphlet—witty because it describes a type of young graduate educated at Jena, who when he goes home to his mother speaks in the empty phrases he learnt there. These are all given word-for-word in the pamphlet that is called “Hyperborean Ass or the New Education”. All this appears no doubt, very witty but it is really nothing more than a vulgar attack on a fine effort. We must not, of course, confuse it with what Goethe sought to denounce—the caricaturing of what is great—for we must be clear from the correspondence between Goethe and Fichte and between Goethe and Shelling, that Goethe was well able to appreciate the spirit striving after the Absolute. Although we did not find Goethe elaborating into a system any occult principles, yet we can say that he was a spiritual dwelling wholly within the aura of the occult, and knowing that what lives in the progress of good in world-evolution may incline on the one hand to the ahrimanic, on the other to the luciferic. He does not use these particular expressions but that is of no importance; he knew that actually the pendulum of world-evolution is always swinging between the ahrimanic and the luciferic. And Goethe wished to work everything out from its very depths, and everywhere to show how, fundamentally, even the striving after the highest may at the same time be dangerous. What is there that may not be so? It stands to reason that all that is best may be dangerous. And how dangerous the best may be when Ahriman and Lucifer take a hand in things, was precisely the problem Goethe had so vividly in mind.

Thus he had his Faust in mind—the Faust who strove after the deepest secrets of existence, who was to be the realisation of what stood ever before Goethe's soul, namely, the direct perception of the living and spiritual in all nature and in all history. Goethe himself was striving to find again the spiritual secrets of the early Greek days. He wanted to unite himself with all that was alive and creative in a past epoch—in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch. This is what he wanted to put into form in the striving of his Faust after what was still living in Helen. Goethe sought the paths by which he could lead Faust to Helen. But he was quite conscious of the danger here. However justifiable, however high-minded, the striving might be, because it could so easily lead into luciferic channels it meant danger.

Thus Goethe first showed us Faust being drawn into the luciferic channel, paralyzed by the sudden appearance of Helen, paralyzed by association with the spiritual. Faust has called up Helen from the ‘realm of the Mothers’, at first having her before him only as a spiritual force. He is paralyzed by what he experiences spiritually. Inwardly he is filled with what he has absorbed. He lives in a living, spiritual element of ancient Greece but through it becomes paralyzed.

And in this condition we find him when Mephistopheles has brought him back to his cell, to his laboratory, paralyzed by his contact with the spiritual element of the past:

“Whom Helen paralyzes, use
Not likely to regain their reason.”

as Mephistopheles says. We see, too, how a certain rift has arisen between Faust, who has been drawn into the luciferic channel, and Mephistopheles. Whether the experience is altogether conscious or not, Faust with his soul, through luciferic impulse, has entered a different spiritual channel from that of Mephistopheles. They are now separated as if by the limits of their consciousness.

Faust is dreaming—as ordinary language would have it. He knows nothing of his old world in which he is presently living. But Mephistopheles is in it, through him everything ahrimanic also comes to life. Thus, in this sense we have essentially the two worlds clashing, and this is in accordance with truth. This collision is made clear to us, and it is remarkable how deeply Goethe, in his instinctive way, goes deeper than what is Spiritual Science. This collision is made clear to us through the unsuspecting Famulus now introduced, who imperturbably swings like a pendulum between the tremendous dangers surrounding him.

We may regard him as representing the type of man who is the victim of an unimaginative, unobservant nature, from which, often, he cannot escape. He sees nothing of what goes on around him. It is in the sense that we must understand all he says.

The whole milieu in which we now find ourselves is changed by Mephistopheles meeting with his former pupil who has now taken his degree. It looks as if he were right outside the picture I have just given you; however, he represents a caricature of it. He has been infused with all that the Kant-Fichte-Schelling-Hegel philosophy was able to give, and by Schlegel's interpretation of it all; but he takes this in a very narrow, egoistic sense. We may ask why he does so? This is indeed a pertinent question. Why has the graduate become what we now see? Is it possible that in him Goethe was wishing perhaps to make fun of the Jena philosophy he so much appreciated? Most certainly not! But in his opinion the student who had received from Mephistopheles the precept Eritus sicut Deus, scientes bonum et malum, would have been on this philosophical channel:

“Follow the ancient saw, follow the snake, my cousin,
God's image as thou art, thou'lt rue the way thou'st chosen.”

This impulse of the one-time student received from the Mephistopheles himself. Mephistopheles cannot complain if this old student gives him occasion to say: “How crude thou art, my friend, thou scarcely know'st” for he himself has planted all that in his soul, it is a seed of his sowing. This matured scholar has indeed taken the advice and followed Mephistopheles' cousin, the famous snake. And to begin with he has no qualms; they will come later. He is not made uneasy by the thought of his affinity with God, that he clearly refers to when announcing that he has created the world, it is he who has fashioned it.—This indeed has been accepted as the Kantian philosophy by many caricature-lovers, and even today it is still widely accepted.

Yes, my dear friends, we may indeed get to know people who take the philosophy of Kant even more egoistically than this scholar. We once knew a man who was so infected with this philosophy of Kant and Fichte that he did actually believe he had created the whole world. It had become an idée fixe with him that he had created it. I said to him at the time: Why, yes, certainly an an idea, as your idea, you have created the world, but there is something to be added to the idea. You created the idea of your own boots, but it was the shoemaker who made those boots of yours. You cannot say you made your own boots, though you may have created the idea of them.—Fundamentally, every genuine refutation, even Schopenhauer's philosophy of The World as Idea, is based on this problem of the shoemaker. Those things, however, are not always seen in the right light.

Thus the scholar meeting Mephistopheles in this way, is to some extent his victim. Philosophers have striven after the Absolute. In this man the striving after the Absolute has become a caricature. Mephistopheles has to caution him:

“Pray don't go home quite absolute.”

We see the connection with the spiritual culture of that time represented by Goethe in a very witty way. It is because the scenes are based on living reality that they are so vivid and so extraordinarily dramatic. Goethe strove again and again lead men beyond the ideas that savour rather of the tavern, ideas so often heard, such as: Ah, we should like to keep to what is good and to flee from Lucifer and Ahriman, have nothing to do with them.—It is because Goethe does not like these notions that he sometimes makes Mephistopheles quite sympathetic and kindly. For how pleasant it all is when the scholar, becoming altogether too absolute, the good Mephistopheles turns his chair round from this one scholar to the general public, to the younger pit-goers, looking there, as Goethe imagined it, for sympathy. And he makes Mephistopheles speak not merely like a devil but in a very apt way, because he knows how much of what belongs to Mephistopheles must be mixed with life for life to thrive at all, and how unwholesome are the ideas which, in the way we have shown, smell of the tavern. It is quite worth-while for once to reflect how Goethe himself did not remain cold with the coldness of the apathetic crowd. For this reason he makes his Mephistopheles expressed itself rather heatedly about the people who, as he observes, receive his wise maxims so indifferently. Goethe even then wanted to point out this coldness, though it was a long way from being as cold as the usual opinions and mood of soul today towards all that can penetrate to man from the spiritual life.

And now we see a genuine ahrimanic activity developing in the creation of Homunculus. It was not easy for Goethe to write a particular part of his Faust we have had before us here. Poets of a lesser degree can accomplish anything; circumstances permitting, such a poet would easily solve the problem of bringing Faust and Helen together. But Goethe was not a poet of that calibre; poetical creation was to him difficult and harassing. He had to find a way to bring Faust with all reality together with talent, with whom, as we have seen, he lived in another state of consciousness. He had to find some way, but was by no means clear how to find it. Faust had first to be taken down to the underworld, there to beg the help of Persephone in procuring him Helen in bodily form. But when Goethe wish to show Helen being fetched by Persephone, he felt that no ideas or concepts from the scene were forthcoming. For just think what was involved. Faust has got as far as reaching Helen imaginatively, in his soul's subconscious; he had, however, to reach her with those faculties natural to him in life. For that, Helen had to enter this sphere of consciousness. Therefore Goethe had to bring about, to a certain degree, Helen's embodiment. To this end he had recourse to what he knew from Paracelsus, whose works he had really studied, the treatise De Generatione Rerum being especially useful to him. There Paracelsus shows how homunculi may be produced by means of certain processes. It is easy, of course, for the modern man to say: Yes, but that was merely a mediaeval pre-possession of Paracelsus'. It is also easy for him to say: surely no one is asked to believe this phantasy of Paracelsus'.—True, as far as I'm concerned nobody need believe it. But it is well to consider that in this treatise De Generatione Rerum Paracelsus expressly assures us that by means of certain processes it is possible to produce something having indeed no body—mark that, please. Paracelsus expressly says that it has nobody, but faculties similar to those of the human soul, and rising to clairvoyance. Thus, Paracelsus was of the opinion that there were certain devices enabling men to produce a being that, without a physical body, develop a kind of understanding, a kind of intellectuality like human beings, and even something higher. It was of this that Goethe made use. Perhaps he thought to himself: Helen has entered the sphere of Faust's consciousness in a purely spiritual sense, but she must become more substantial.

This substantiality he brought about through the kind of being we have in Homunculus, who is as it were a bridge between the purely spiritual and the physical; for he himself has no physical body but a favorable moment originates from physical devices. So that we may say: The presence of Homunculus makes it possible to bring a quite spiritual Helen into the corporeal world where Faust has his home.

Now for all this Goethe naturally needed some kind of error, and this error is brought about in a roundabout way through Wagner. Through his materialistic mind Wagner is misled into the belief that Homunculus is entirely a material production. He could not have brought a real homunculus into being; for that, there would be required spiritual forces not at his disposal. These spiritual forces are supplied when Mephistopheles, the ahrimanic element, appears. For the ahrimanic impulse is given when something actually comes into being out of what Wagner has compounded. Had Wagner—either alone or perhaps with the help of the everywhere latent forces—succeeded in his experiment, it might have happened to him as it did to a man who wrote me some time ago saying that, at last, after endless effort, he had really brought little men to life in his room, but then could not get rid of them, he could not escape them. He wanted advice as to how he could save himself from these creatures, these living mechanisms, he had produced. They have since pursued him everywhere. One can well imagine what happens to the mind of such a man. There are, of course, still men today who have these adventures, just as there are still those who scoff at such things.

Through a coincidence, but only coincidence, at the time Goethe was writing the scene Johann Jakob Wagner, in Wurzburg, was maintaining that homunculi could be produced, and he gave the method for doing this. But it goes without saying that it is not true that Goethe took the name from him; for the name Wagner come from the old “Faust” then still in existence. This scene was first written down when Johann Jakob Wagner was still an infant.

It is due to Mephistopheles that, out of what Wagner has achieved, the Homunculus comes into being. But he does come into being, and is represented in the way Goethe had learnt from Paracelsus' instructions. And Homunculus does in fact immediately become clairvoyant, for he is able to see Faust's dream. he describes what Faust—more or less under the influence of Lucifer—is experiencing in another state of consciousness—how he has actually gained access to the Grecian world. In the description Homunculus we recognise the meeting of Zeus with Leda, the mother of Helen.

Thus we see how Goethe places a close juxtaposition the spiritual that lives in Faust, and Homunculus who knows how to grasp and interpret it. We see how Goethe works round to the ordinary physical world so that Helen can then enter it. And for all that is pictured later in the “Classical Walpurgis-night”, we see how Goethe tries to form the physical out of the eternal spiritual in Helen, with whom Faust has lived, while Homunculus traverses all the kingdoms of nature, and now taking to himself a physical body unites with Helen's spiritual element. By dint of Homunculus traversing the rounds of nature Helen becomes, externally on the physical plane, all that we find her in the third Act of the second Part of “Faust”. Thus Helen is born anew through Homunculus, through the metamorphosis is able to bring about in conjunction with all Faust is living through spiritually. This is what Goethe had in mind. This is why he introduces Homunculus and why he shows the relation between what Faust is, in a way, is dreaming, and what Homunculus sees.

With all this, Goethe comes very near true Occultism, that through Occultism of which I have often spoken, from which we are led away by abstract thinking and the desire to live in abstract concepts. I have often called attention to the way a certain one-sided cultivation of the principles of Christianity leads to the maturing of unreal, shadowy concepts as world-outlook, that are powerless to come to any understanding of real-life. And men stands to-day at the mercy of such concepts. On the one hand they have a purely mechanical knowledge of nature that, however, is no knowledge but merely a system out of which all life has been driven.

“Encheiresis naturae, Chemistry calls it,
Mocking itself, not knowing what befalls it.”

says Mephistopheles. This on the one hand that wants merely to copy down what happens outwardly, and on the other hand concepts drawn from any kind of spiritual source, either represented pantheistically or existing in some cloud-cuckoo-land of shadowy concepts, neither capable of entering right into life, nor of grasping its reality.

It is for this reason I have been pointing out how Spiritual Science is able to understand once again the real, actual, human being, for example, and to say: This human head is, from one point of view, only what the anatomist makes of it by describing it purely externally, but it is not merely what is outwardly the body for an abstract concept of a soul floating in cloud-cuckoo-land; this head must be understood as having undergone a transformation, a metamorphosis, from the body of a previous incarnation and is formed, as I have explained in recent lectures, out of the spheres of the entire cosmos. The essential thing for which concrete spiritual science must strive is to fit what is thus formed into the material world by means of concepts—concepts that do not float in the general and abstract. For what is most feared today by many bigotted Christian pastors, and people of that kind, with their unsubstantial abstractions of God and eternity, is precisely this living comprehension of the world, this concrete grasping of the material that is, indeed, at the same time a revelation of the spiritual. This diving into the real world with concepts is what man today will not have. And it is just this to which Goethe wants so vigorously to point. Hence he contrasts the spirit of Homunculus, the real, genuine spiritual that then lives on, though in a different way, in the consciousness of Faust, this way of beholding, he contrasts with the world as Mephistopheles would have it—a world derived from the association-forming tendency of the Christian middle-ages, in which is extinguished everything spiritual that approaches man's soul. Therefore Homunculus sees what is visible neither to Wagner not to Mephistopheles. Hence because Mephistopheles says:

“Marry, what moonshine dost thou not narrate!
Small as thou art, thou art a dreamer great.
Naught see I—”

Homunculus answers:

“No! The North thy heritage is,
Thy birth was in the misty ages,
The waste of priesthood and of chivalry.
And how should there thine eye be free?
In murkiness thou art at home.”

Goethe is consciously striving for a concrete grasp of reality.

I have drawn attention to the fact that here, in the passage of course where Homunculus is speaking to Mephistopheles, by some mischance a line has been left out. For in all the editions we read:

“No! The North thy heritage is,
Thy birth was in the misty ages,
The waste of priesthood and of chivalry.
And how should there thine eye be free?
In murkiness thou art at home.”

The rhyme to ‘home’ is missing.

“Dingy-brown stone-work, mouldered, horrid,
And Gothic-arched, ignoble, florid.”

Now there is no reason why the rhyme here should be missing; it must have happened therefore by some accident in the dictation that a line was missed that must perhaps have run like this:

“But what we make of this gloom?”

Thus Homunculus, having seen that Mephistopheles does not understand him, shows him clearly how by living in abstractions men have separated themselves from the concrete, spiritual world. This has arisen through the misty concepts that have been developed and have led to the narrowness in all the affairs of life in which Faust grew up, from which, however, he grew away. But the devil in Mephistopheles feels at home there. This is perhaps why Homunculus says:

“No! The North thy heritage is,
Thy birth was in the misty ages,”

By the ‘misty ages’ he means the Middle Ages, but with a play upon the old German name Nivelheim. (The line in German runs Im Nebelalter jung geworden.) Jung geworden (grown young) is an old expression—and a very good one. Just as one grows old in the physical world, so one grows young when one is born into the spiritual world. Thus, in the old German expression, to ‘become young’ meant to ‘be born,’ and is clear evidence that in language there was an understanding of the spiritual.

And now he looks about him in the gloom and sees all that is there:

“Dingy-brown stone-work, mouldered, horrid,
And Gothic-arched, ignoble, florid.”

Then:

“Awakens he here, new cares we've got.”

for he must be brought into a life that is fully living if he has no wish for merely abstract concepts. Faust has no desire, for example, to have ancient Greece pictured according to the humanists or philologists; he wants to live, really live, within ancient Greece, by having Helen, as its representative, appearing bodily before him.

Thus throughout this scent we see Goethe's wonderful feeling for the concrete. We may say indeed that every word of the poetry Goethe wrote in his old age came out of a profound experience of the world. And that gives weight to these words, enormous weight, and gives them also immortality. For how fine in this respect are the words here spoken by Mephistopheles—words acquiring their special colouring from this fact:

“Alack! Away! Forbear of yonder squabble
'Twixt tyranny and slavery to babble!
It irks me. Scarce 'tis ended when de novo
With the whole farce they start again ab ovo,
Yet none doth mark he is but made a fool
By Asmodeus who the strings doth pull.”

(By the devil of discord, with whom Mephistopheles feels himself thoroughly akin.)

“They fight for freedom—so themselves they flatter.” We feel ourselves transported almost into the present, for now too we fight for freedom. But Goethe retorts:

“Slaves against slaves, if you but sift the matter.”

To sum up, my dear friends, we might say: If only the time might come when all the striving of such a poem, as we find it revealed in Goethe by this scene, might be continued on into what should arise through present-day Spiritual Science, if only what lies in such a story of endeavour might take more hold on men, might find a haven in their souls—then we might indeed go forward as real men.

But instead, since the days of Goethe, the abstraction of all endeavour has made infinitely greater progress. Here is the point where the striver after Spiritual Science—whether or not he rises to Goethe's level—should try to become clear as to the difference between concrete spiritual endeavor and the spiritual endeavor that is abstract. You see, the study of Spiritual Science gives us concepts by means of which we can really immerse ourselves in reality and learn to understand it. Materialism gives no real concepts only the shadows of them. So how can materialism understand the difference we have made clear between the human head and the rest of the body? Or how can it understand the following, for example. Let us take a concept that is infinitely important.

We know that man has his physical body, his etheric body, his astral body and his ego. The animal has its physical body, etheric body and astral body. Let us look at the animal. It is interesting to watch animals when, having eaten their fill in the meadow, they lie down to digest. It is very interesting to watch this—and why? Because the animal with its astral being has withdrawn entirely into the etheric body. What then is its soul doing while the animal is digesting? The soul is taking part with infinity satisfaction in what is happening to the body. It lies there and watches itself digesting and this gives the animal immense satisfaction. It is interesting to see a cow, for instance, digesting spiritually as she lies there, to see how all the processes involved when foodstuffs are received into the stomach and utilised in the other parts of the body are inwardly visible to her. The animal looks on at these processes with inner satisfaction, because of the intimate correspondence between her astral and ether bodies. The astral is living in what the etheric body reflects of the physico-chemical processes whereby the foodstuffs are introduced into the organism. It is a whole world that the cow sees! True, this world consists only of the cow and the processes taking place within her, but truly, though all that this astral body perceives in the etheric body of the cow consist sonly of the processes within her own horizon, within her sphere, everything is so magnified that it is as large in the consciousness of the cow as our human consciousness when it reaches to the firmament. I should have to draw the processes taking place between the stomach and the rest of the cow's organism as a large sphere growing and expanding to a vast area, since at this moment for the cow there is nothing beyond the cow-cosmos—and this is of a gigantic size.

This is no jest but a fact. And the cow has a feeling of exaltation when seeing her cosmos thus, seeing herself as cosmos. Here we have an insight into the concrete nature of animals. For, man having an ego, the astral body is torn by it from that intimate union with the etheric body existing, for example, in the cow. Astral body and etheric body are torn asunder. Hence, when man digests after a meal he is deprived of the capacity to survey the whole digestive process of the cosmos. He remains unconscious of it all. Against that, the ego by its activities so restricts the impulses of the etheric body that they are only grasped by the astral body in the region of the sense organs. So that what in the animal forms a whole with the astral body is in men concentrated in the sense organs. That is why the sense-process in man is as great as in certain moments the animal process is for the animal.

It is in a measure a defect in man that, when he begins his afternoon nap, he cannot as he dreams look on at his digestion, for he would then see a whole world. But the ego tears man's astral body away from that world, and only allows him to see as cosmos what is going on in his sense organs.

I wanted to refer to this merely as an example, for from it we see that concrete Spiritual Science mut enter into the very essence of things with concepts that are not shadowy but go deep into reality. All concepts of Spiritual Science should be such that they go deep into reality. It is a characteristic phenomenon, however, of the materialistic age that it despises concepts of this nature; it will have nothing to do with them. Where knowledge of nature is concerned this leads in reality to lack of any knowledge at all. In life it leads to a much greater lack. It makes it impossible for man to have any sense of concrete concepts, concepts full of content. Hence, materialistic education is at the same time an education in shadowy concepts, empty of content. The two things run absolutely parallel—not to be able to understand reality in a spiritual way, to lack upon everything as a mechanism; and to be incapableof forming any concepts that can really enter into the connections of the world or of humanity.

And it is from this point of view that the present time must be understood, for that is precisely where the difficulties today arise. There are now, certainly, people with idealistic natures, but they are the idealists of a materialistic age, and for that reason talk in shadowy, general concepts, unable to gras reality, or at best grasping it only indirectly through emotion, and these idealists blow their own trumpets in the world as loudly as possible. While on the other hand as regards knowledge of nature the capacity to understand her is lacking, on the other hand we have the inevitable parallel phenomenon—the holding forth of shadowy concepts. And when men talk so, they are indeed not talking of anything that is unreal in itself but of what is connected in the worst possible way with the painful events of the present time.

In Goethe's day things had not gone so far, but today we are confronted with a wide-spread lack of power to see any difference at all between a shadowy and a real concept. Wagner, as pictured by Goethe, lives entirely in shadowy concepts, and Homunculus even tries to prove to him that he does so. For instance, when Wagner has anxiously asked:

“And I pray
What becomes of me when you all go away?”

Homunculus answers:

“Oh
Thou'llt stay at home, most weighty work to do.
The ancient parchments thou'llt unroll, no doubt,
The elements of life by precept single out,
And each to other fit with foresight due. Ponder
The what, more to the how thy thoughts apply.
Whillst through a portion of the world I'll wander
Belike I'll find the dot upon the i.”

When I read this passage it always makes me realise anew how it is taken straight from life, particularly the life of the pundits. For I know of a medical examination in which a young student came up before a very learned man, a historian, and as such pre-eminently an authority on old documents, and a professor of Historical Science. It was chiefly under him that the young medical student had studied. Among the questions he asked was this: Now, tell me, Mr X, in which papal Bull was the dot over the i first used? The student knew that at once and answered: Innocent IV's. Now another historian, of a different kind, was present. He wanted to play the part of Mephistopheles a little, so he said: Look here, my dear colleague, as I am the other examiner let me now ask the candidate a question. Tell me, Mr. X, when did this Innocent IV ascend the Papal Chair? The student did not know. Then when did Innocent IV die? The student did not know. Well then, tell me anything else at all you know about Innocent IV beyond the fact that in his Bulls the i was first dotted. But the candidate again could give no answer. Then the Professor who had to do with ancient documents and parchments said: But Mr. X, you seem to be a complete blockhead today. Then the other, still wishing to play Mephistopheles, replied: But, my dear colleague, is not this your favourite pupil? What can have turned him into a blockhead?

So then, the good Wagner, being different from Homunculus, was able to discover the dot over the i in his parchment. But since that time, thought that is abstract and purely conceptual has become universal and historic. Thus it has become possible for us to see the spectacle playing a profound part in the whole world-history—that, in an important affair, there appears before the world a document living entirely in shadow concepts. Nothing more unreal and less in conformity with the actual can be imagined thatn the note recently sent by Woodrow Wilson to the Senate of the United States of America. Today when it is only of use to understand the realities of the world, weakness is found in high places. Something different is needed from shadowy concepts, concepts that are mere shadows.

And here we may well ask ourselves whether suffering is to continue endlessly because in high places men of a materialistic civilisation flee reality, and can only grasp shadows instead of concepts? I know, my dear friends, that when we are comng up against events of such sadness as those of the present, there is little understanding to be found, for today there are very few men who can grasp the difference between shadowy concepts and reality. For the pure idealist—naturally idealism is always worthy of recognition—not understanding spiritual reality, will think it fine, infinitely fine, when people speak beautifully of Freedom and the Rights of Man, of International Federation and things of the kind. They do not see where the harm lies in these things; the lack of such insight is wide-spread.

So little understanding is there, that it makes us see the meaning of what Mephistophleles says after leaving Nicodemus. For, after all, many who rank today as people of importance speak as the scholar spoke, and even if they do not claim to have created the whole world, at any rate wish to govern it according to their dreary shadow concepts. Men have no wish to make progress in such things. They remain children forever, children who can believe that it is possible to rule the world with dummy concepts. Hence we can appreciate the meaning of those words of Mephistopheles:

“I see my word hath left you cold,
Ye artless bairns. Yet I'll not take it evil.
Think though, the Devil is old; grow old
If ye would understand the Devil.”

Those who believe the world can be governed by shadow concepts, do not understand anything of what Goethe is saying through the mouth of the Devil when the Devil speaks the truth.

We may take the Homunculus scene in the second Part of Goethe's Faust as a lecture on the understanding of the real, the actual, in our age that is dominated by dummy concepts. But these matters must really be taken very seriously. And for us in particular, my dear friends, it is most important to form really clear concepts about all the various pronouncements so plentiful in the world today and during many past decades, which have finally brought us to the present situation.

If we turn our attention to what we have often taken as the object of esoteric study, to what is described in my books, “Theosophy,” “Occult Science,” and others, as the principles of the human being, and if we consider this somewhat generally and. externally, we can look on the one hand towards all that can be called the forces, the faculties, of the human intellect. To be sure, what we comprise under the faculties of the intellect includes something entirely different from what we have described as the principles of man. But precisely through such studies as call our attention to various concepts and ideas from other points of view, we shall advance in our studies. Thus we see on the one hand activities of a more intellectual order of the human soul and spirit life, and we see on the other hand the activities of the soul and spirit life which are more applied to the appetitive faculties, to the will. Today we will turn our attention to these faculties with reference to mankind in general, that is, we will ask ourselves: what significance have the more intellectual forces, and what significance have the forces of a will nature in the life of humanity as a whole? If such a method of study is undertaken, it can only be fruitful if one does not dissociate man and mankind from the earth, but when one regards man as a member of the whole earth planet. The justification for this you will discover through statements which you find, for instance, in “Occult Science” concerning the Saturn, Sun and Moon evolutions of our Earth.

When you remember what has been said there about the Saturn, Sun and Moon evolutions you will see that the views there differ from those of the modern geologist and natural scientist, who consider the earth on the one hand geologically, as if man had no connection with it at all, and then again, mankind by itself in a kind of self-enclosed anthropology, as if this mankind walked about on a soil quite foreign to it. This is quite impossible as a really fruitful method of study. When you follow what was said about the Saturn, Sun and Moon evolution, you will see that in these evolutions the forces which worked in humanity itself and the forces which worked in the rest of the planet were not at all to be thought of as separate. The fact that humanity has reached a certain independence on the earth and walks about free of the planet, as it were upon its surface, is a phase of evolution, it must not be considered as a final standard. We must consider mankind in connection with the whole of earthly evolution. And, therefore, in the first place we must say to ourselves: if we turn our attention to the intellectual faculties and remember what has been said about the earlier metamorphoses, about the Saturn, Sun and Moon metamorphoses of the Earth's evolution then we arrive at the fact that this inner development of the intellect, which man has today, was not in existence in former stages of the Earth's development. What is today localised to some extent in our head as intellect was spread over the whole Earth planet as a universal intelligence, as an intelligence working according to law, penetrating everything. One could say that intelligence worked in the facts of the whole Earth evolution. The human being himself on the Moon, to say nothing of Saturn and Sun, had not yet, as we know, a reasoning consciousness, but instead a kind of dreamlike consciousness. This dreamlike consciousness looked out into the cosmic phenomena and man did not say to himself, “Out there the cosmic phenomena take place and I grasp them with my reason,” but man dreamed in pictures. What we find today localised in our head as intellect he saw as something which interpenetrated external facts and objects. We differentiate between the laws of nature and that which in us comprehends these laws of nature, and this latter we call our intelligence. The human being of earlier times, and that applies also to the earlier parts of our Earth evolution, lived in a soul-consciousness of pictures and he did not distinguish the laws of nature by his intelligence, but Nature herself had intelligence, Nature herself gave herself laws. There outside worked intelligence. It is an evolutionary phase of our humanity, now become independent, that we bear intelligence within us and there, outside, are the laws of nature. The sum total of these natural laws was the intelligence for the man of antiquity.

Now, as Earth humanity we have, as you know, already developed consciousness to a certain degree, so that intelligence is within us and outside exist natural laws which we only grasp with our intelligence. In pointing to these facts, we are touching upon an important evolutionary impulse of mankind. But we must be aware that this evolutionary impulse must be more and more laid hold of and perfected. Today indeed it is not yet fully perfected. We certainly say to ourselves that we have intellect within us, and there, without, the laws of nature hold sway, but we have not yet fully made intelligence our own. As humanity we have remained half-way as regards this receiving of intelligence, reason, natural law, into ourselves. And these facts which I have been touching upon are amongst those which above all must be examined from the standpoint of Spiritual Science precisely in our times. Nowadays we are still extraordinarily proud when we possess something of an intellectual nature, something pertaining to human knowledge in common with other people. Something still holds good today which is cutting very deeply into the whole development of human nature, namely, that science should be cultivated as something universal, hovering over humanity, as it were, and that when men devote themselves to science they should bring their individuality as a sacrifice, that they should think—well, as “everyone” thinks. It is an ideal, for instance, in our public educational institutions, to cultivate a science which is quite impersonal, quite un-individual, to make this science into something in respect of which one says “I” as little as possible, and says “one” as much as possible. “One” has discovered this or that, “one” must accept this or that as true. And the ideal of the official representative of science today would be just this—that one should not really be able to distinguish the separate professors very well—least of all as regards temperament—when one arrives at a college from another college far distant. It would be an ideal, if one—shall we say?—could listen to a lecture on botany somewhere in the north, then fly with a balloon towards the south and could there hear the continuation of this lecture, and if the continuation should correspond with what “one” really knows in Botany! Something quite impersonal, unindividual, it is this which people consider to be the right thing, and they have a horrible dread lest somehow or other anything personal should enter into this knowledge, into this working of the human intellect. It is just in this sphere that the levelling down of the whole of human culture is considered as of chief importance. It is a source of pride if one does not deviate from what has been formulated once and for all in a certain method. Thus, people would like to sunder science from man. It is separated from man also in still many other relations, as we know. Examples could be given of this. Just think how most men today who are connected in an official way with science write their dissertations, their professorial candidature treatises and so on. They put themselves into them as little as possible, and least of all they reckon with the fact that these books will be quite generally read. They are written; but they are scarcely read by those who have to test them in the college in question; at the most someone reads them who is obliged to do so, and then he tells the others what is contained in them. For science is something about which “one” thinks, not oneself personally. And then they are stored away in libraries. When someday someone or other writes a similar book he looks in the library catalogue and sees where he can find anything he must pay attention to and then that is stored away again, end enters least of all into the individual-personal. All of that is cut off. Yes, my dear friends, countless books abound in the libraries which have no personal interest at all. This is after all a dreadful situation. But what is worse, people have not the least idea of it, and feel quite satisfied, believing that they themselves do not need to know anything at all, for in the libraries you can find everything, if you only get the right catchword in the catalogue. There things rest. But men are withering away beside a science which is so unindividual. Science would have to be looked at differently if people wanted to keep it in their heads instead of on the library shelves.

This gives one through a few holes—so to say—for one could bring forward many things along these lines, an indication of how the ordinary intellectual culture in modern men is still unindividual, impersonal, how they would like to have it as something which carries on a sort of cloud existence above them. But what is brought about by man belongs not only to man, but to the cosmos. I have therefore said that in order to come to fruitful reflections, we must regard man in connection with the planet, and then again, the planet in connection with the whole universe.

What man brings about, therefore, by using his intellect he can deal with in two directions. He can exert it by developing sciences which all end in “one” thinks, “one” knows, “one” has attained these or those improvements. Then one writes it down in books and stores it away, then that is science, which the generations outgrow, and men can wither away with such a cultivation of the intellect. People can take the line of looking to many other things for their real interests but certainly not to what is an unreality, objective, with no personal touch, preserved in libraries—this they do not meddle with. One has known of learned assemblies who had a phrase, “one who is fond of talking shop” (Fachsimpeln). To gather in small circles and discuss scientific matters when there was an official assembly was considered as of far the least importance. Oh, no, one spoke there of all sorts of trivialities, lying far removed from anything that was really a matter of science. And those who had the weakness of being somewhat enthusiastic about their science and who then—shall we say?—when tea or black coffee was being drunk, began perhaps to speak of this or that philosophical subject, those were people who talked “shop,” whom one couldn't take quite seriously—who had not the mind of a man of the world.

I once encountered this lack of the personal in science in a very singular way. I attended an assembly where Helmholtz was giving a. lecture. At this lecture, which was read aloud word for word by Helmholtz and which had already been in print for some time, the audience listened to its being read—well, as one does listen to such a lecture. After the lecture, a journalist came up to me and said—“Why exactly that? One does not need that at all. Anyone can read such a lecture, who wants to, when it has been printed, why should it be read aloud to us as well? It would have been far more sensible if Helmholtz had simply walked about in the auditorium and given his hand to everyone. That would have done much more good.” That is a very true example of how estranged people are from what is flying about so impersonally as science. Naturally people are being dried up by it. This, then, is one way in which intellectual culture can be grasped.

The other method is this; to interest oneself in every single thing, so that one's mind catches fire and brings new life into science and the details are recast into living concepts, so to grasp everything that it is received from the first moment with the inner life of feeling. Thus, one can really imbue with an inner fire all that is given by science. By taking the various sciences one can gradually penetrate into the whole world existence, one can create something which becomes an innately personal concern of every human being who pursues it. That is the other method. On the one side impersonal, all that is carried on being cut off from humanity—in fact people would greatly prefer to find automatons for the pursuit of science. Then they would have nothing more to reflect upon with their own heads, for perhaps they would be productive without them. But all that happens in this way, or all that may happen from a fully heartfelt pursuit of science, is indeed not merely the concern of mankind, it is the concern of the whole planet and therewith of the whole universe. For what a man does, inasmuch as he cultivates something of an intellectual nature with his head, is just as much an event as when the water of a spring flows under the stream to the sea, or as when evaporation takes place, or it rains. What happens when plants sprout and so on, those are events of the one sort. What happens through the agency of man is an event of another sort. It is not merely a human concern, it is a concern of the whole planet. And this is precisely the task of man in his evolution on the earth—for the intelligence which formerly was poured out in common with the whole planet, to be drawn within by man, to be united with himself. Thus it is an evolutionary impulse of man to make knowledge his own personal concern, so that he can imbue it with enthusiasm, so that it can pass over into him and be seized by the fire of his heart. And if he does not do the latter, if he stores up knowledge in impersonal ways, then something does not happen which ought to happen in the sense of the Earth's evolution. The feeling nature of nan is not seized by the culture of the intellect» The intellectual culture only develops in the head, as it were, and hovers too far away from the surface of the earth, merely in our heads. It makes no difference if many people are short, and their heads only reach about to the hearts of others, it develops only in the heads, and it ought to sink down to the hearts. But lying in wait for what is thus not taken in by the heart, what is not seized by the feeling nature of man, are the Luciferic spirits. And this for which the Luciferic spirits are thus waiting can be received by them when it hovers thus impersonally above the earth. For the only possibility of wresting the world of intellect away from the Luciferic spirits is to imbue it with feeling and make it a personal affair. And what is happening in our age, and what has happened for a long time and must become different, is that we are letting earthly existence become the prey of the Luciferic world, by our cold, empty, dried-up intellect. In this way the Earth is checked in her evolution, and is held back at an earlier stage. She will not arrive at her goal. And if man continues for a long time the impersonality of so-called science, the consequence will be the loss of the soul-nature altogether. This impersonal science is the murderer of the human soul and spirit nature. It dries men up, it withers them. Finally, it makes of the Earth something that one can call a dead planet with automatic men on it, who have lost their spirit and soul by these means. Here too one must say: things must even now be taken in earnest; we must not look on at this cosmic murder by the abstract impersonal pursuit of knowledge on earth. That is one thing.

The other is the human desire-nature, which is connected with the will in man. What is connected with man's will-nature can again take two directions. The one path is for this will-nature to subordinate itself as much as possible to regulations or state decrees, and to unite itself with what is a kind of general law, so that this general law exists, and in addition there are only man's purely instinctive desires.

The other path is that what is reflected in man as desire, what is present as will should gradually raise itself to pure thought, expend itself in individual freedom so that it flows into the social life as love. It is the method of transmuting the forces of will and desire that I have described in the “Philosophy of Spiritual Activity.” There I have shown how the common law of humanity must proceed from each human individuality. I have described there how the social order arises through the harmony of men's acts, when what proceeds from the human individual is raised to pure thought. Men are afraid of a social order which is formed by every person giving himself his direction out of his own individuality. People like to organise what men should want. They like to establish categorical commands in the place of the love working out of each human being. Through the existence, however, of such abstract injunctions, whether they are commands on the pattern of the Decalogue, or laws of any individual State, then from out the individuality of man only instinctive desires have a value, those desires which we are seeing revive today especially, and which have become, as a matter of fact, the sole social ingredient of the present time. Again, that which happens in man when he does not make his will individual, does not raise it to pure thinking, that is not something affecting man alone, but it affects the whole planet and therewith the cosmos. And what occurs when the human will cannot become individual, this the Ahrimanic spirits are greedily awaiting. They make it their own, these Ahrimanic spirits, and they appropriate everything which lives in man of a will-nature, by way of desires not unfolded to love, and carry it over to individual demonic beings. Just as something of a more universal nature arises through that which is hovering over mankind as the intellectual faculty, so do quite individually formed demonic beings arise out of the human appetitive faculties not transformed into love.

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All this is, however, something which must be regarded today not with mere sympathy and antipathy alone, but with that sight which looks through world events, which can observe what is happening among men in connection with cosmic events. When one sees things thus, one will say to oneself: it is given to man to bring forward the planet wisely in its evolution. The particular kind of existence which has been indicated today is threatening humanity if men do not try to convert knowledge into wisdom. And that can only come about if a man personally applies himself to knowledge, if he takes it personally into himself and binds it again to what, out of the desire nature transmuted by love, becomes the common concern of humanity. One can receive these things through Spiritual Science with a strong impulse of inner understanding.

As a matter of fact, it is shown in what has remained behind in the Moon as a cosmic symbol. When we sec the Moon in its first or last quarter, in what it shows us as its sickle form we have a. picture of what the Earth could become. In the dark part, it shows to one who can see the supersensible these little demoniacal forms moving about in ghastly fashion, where the curve of the sickle bends inwards. So that one is speaking quite correctly in saying: man must preserve the Earth from the Moon existence through all that I have now explained. The Moon shows in a cosmic picture placed before us what the Earth could become. And so we must accustom ourselves to penetrate in this way with inner feeling into that too which we see outside in the cosmos. We must so look upon the Moon that we can say: it shows us something set up through cosmic evolution as a caricature of the Earth existence, as what the Earth existence can become if man does not learn to understand how to make impersonal knowledge into his personal concern, if he does not learn how, through warmth, to change individual desires into love, through which they can develop into an associated social life that is a common concern of the whole of mankind. One can understand better what happens in the cosmos if one looks into what is being accomplished in man, and conversely one can see in the right way the tasks of mankind if one is able consciously to look into the conditions of the cosmos. For they are applicable also to that which should live in humanity as morality, as ethics.

The facts that are stated concerning Lucifer and Ahriman are not meant to be taken in such a way that one should theorise about them, that one should only say Ahriman is this, and Lucifer is that. But one should so take up these ideas into oneself that really one should see in all around the activity of the Luciferic spirits who want to hold back the Earth in earlier conditions. So too in all that is Ahriman one should see something which would hold back the Earth so that it does not advance to future stages. But one must penetrate those things in detail. One must be able to value the moral in relation to the laws of nature, and the laws of nature morally. When that happens then the great bridge will be thrown across between the moral world-concept and the theoretic world-concept, of which bridge I have, as you know, often spoken from this place.

Things which happen today must also he viewed from this standpoint. For only when the free-will of man invades these cosmic events can what has been indicated to you he turned to good service. The further evolution of the world is in fact entirely the task of man and of humanity. This must not be overlooked. And one who only wants to theorise, who, for instance, only wants to see and hears after so and so many centuries or millennia this or that will happen—does not consider that we are already living in a time when it is given over to mankind to co-operate in the metamorphosis of the earthly evolution; he does not consider that there must be received into man's soul that which is the general world-intelligence, nor that what lives individually in man as the forces of desire must flow out from mankind in the form of a universal love, which, however, is only attained through the pure freedom of thought.

Herewith I have set before your mind's eye two streams of culture, which are immensely important, and have sought in so doing to show again from a certain aspect what is the task of Spiritual Science when taken earnestly. The task lies in this direction. It does not really lie in a few persons having a feeling of well-being in the knowledge of this and that, but it lies in so grasping human evolution that world events come to pass in the true way out of humanity itself.

It is often difficult for a person to find his bearings within the course of world events, especially when they are considered from a higher point of view. People are so very loath to view the truth without prejudice, which often resolves certain conflicts of life only after long periods of time. They would like only too well to be guided by the reins of the cosmic powers, even though they do not admit this to themselves. It becomes especially difficult for a person to find his bearings in an unprejudiced way when he is compelled in any single incarnation to live in such a catastrophic time as the present. He likes then to ask why the gods permit such things. He does not like to ask about the necessities of life. He always has in the background a longing to have everything as comfortable as possible.

In such a time as ours, man must behold all sorts of things that are in course of preparation from chaos. Chaos is necessary for the total course of events, and he must often take up his position in the midst of the chaotic, as well as in what has been harmonized. Especially is our fifth post-Atlantean epoch such a time as causes man to pass through much that is chaotic. But this is connected with the entire characteristic, the whole nature, of this epoch. We are living at a time in which man must pass through those impelling forces in the course of evolution that set him upon his own feet and permeate him with individual consciousness. We are living in the epoch of the consciousness soul.

Now, after all that we have considered, in connection with which we have brought together a great variety of things that may be suited to make our age understandable to us, we must ask ourselves what is the most profound characteristic of the evolution of the consciousness soul in our epoch. The profoundest characteristic of this epoch is that man must become acquainted in the most profound and the most intense way with all those forces that oppose the harmonizing of humanity as a whole. For this reason a conscious knowledge of those ahrimanic and luciferic powers working against man must gradually spread. If he should not pass through these evolutionary impulses in which the luciferic and ahrimanic forces are participating, he would not arrive at the complete use of his consciousness, and thus at the development of his consciousness soul.

This integration of the consciousness soul into human nature has to be recognized as a strongly antisocial impulse. Thus we have in our epoch the peculiar fact that the manifestation of social ideals appears as a reaction against what is striving to emerge out of the innermost nature of man, a reaction against the evolution of individual consciousness. What I mean to say is that the reason we have such an outcry about the need of socializing is that the innermost nature of man, precisely in our age, is most violently opposed to this socializing. For this reason it is necessary that we should obtain a view of everything in the cosmos, in the universe, that sustains a certain relationship to man, in order that we may become aware of the relationship existing between the antisocial impulses streaming today out of the depths of human souls and the clamor for social harmonizing, working like a reaction to what streams forth from the inner nature of the human soul. It is simply necessary that we should come to see clearly that man represents in his life a state of balance between conflicting powers. Every conception characterized by the idea of mere duality—a good and an evil principle—will always fail to illuminate life. Life can be illuminated only when we represent it from the point of view of a trinity, in which one element represents a state of balance and the two others represent the opposite poles, between which the state of balance tends to move continually like a pendulum. This is the reason for the Trinity we undertake to represent in our Group¹ ; the Representative of Man balancing Ahriman and Lucifer, which is to constitute the middle point of this building.

This consciousness of a state of balance for which one strives, but that is always in danger of swinging toward the one or the other side, must become the essential element in the world conception of this fifth post-Atlantean epoch. As man passes through the stage of the consciousness soul, he develops toward the spirit self. This epoch of the evolution of the consciousness soul will continue for a long time. But within reality things do not proceed in such a way that one always follows the other in a beautiful scheme. On the contrary, one is telescoped in a way into the other. While we are developing in ever stronger measure the consciousness soul, there is always waiting in the background the spirit self that will then develop during the sixth post-Atlantean epoch just as strongly as the consciousness soul during this fifth epoch. Just as strongly as the consciousness soul works antisocially in its development, will the spirit self work socially. Thus we may say that, during this epoch, man develops from the innermost impelling forces of his soul what is antisocial, but behind this something spiritually social exerts its influence. This spiritually social element that is exerting its influence in the background will appear in its essential nature when the light of the spirit self shall dawn in the sixth post-Atlantean epoch. It is not surprising therefore, that in this fifth post-Atlantean epoch what can enter livingly and in a well-ordered way into humanity only during the sixth epoch appears in all sorts of abstruse, extreme forms.

Man is exposed during the fifth post-Atlantean epoch to the preliminary disturbing movements of what is to come during the sixth post-Atlantean epoch. Everything will depend upon the acquisition of an understanding of what we must pass through during this fifth post-Atlantean epoch. The antisocial instincts will play a tremendous role, and they can be restrained and integrated into a true social life only in the way that I recently explained. To assist him, man shall employ the social science that is to be derived from a general spiritual science.

Behind all the many struggles, therefore, of the present time, and also of the immediate future, the social question will remain in the background because its time has not yet come. But we must repeat from all possible points of view the fact that this social formation that is demanded cannot attain to real life unless it enters into a union with two other things. In the sixth post-Atlantean epoch, this union will appear more or less spontaneously. During this fifth epoch, social life must be regulated through the fostering of spiritual science. Every effort to regulate social life outside the sphere of spiritual science will lead only to chaos and radicalism, bringing about unhappiness for humanity. As regards a social shaping of life, this fifth post-Atlantean epoch is dependent in preeminent degree upon the science of the spirit. Just consider what I referred to yesterday and also recently in a public lecture in Basel. Just consider that man has mastered a nature that is distributed over the whole animal kingdom. He is the conqueror of the animal nature; he bears the animal nature within him.

Naive Darwinism maintains that human morality is only the development of the social impulse among animals. The social impulses are inborn in the animal, and they become, just to the extent that they are social impulses in the animal, antisocial impulses in man. He can awaken again to a social life only when he grows above what has developed as an antisocial impulse in him out of the animal nature. This is the truth. Thus, if we wish to represent the human being schematically from this point of view, we may say that man overcomes and develops beyond animality. What is social in the animal becomes antisocial in man. But he grows into spirituality and within the spiritual he may again achieve the social for himself. At a higher stage than the one that man has reached in the epoch of the consciousness soul, where he has grown out of animality, he will gain the social element. This shines amid the chaos of this middle stage where he now is.

This must be supplemented by two other facts. When the socializing process becomes manifest as an elemental impulse as a demand within humanity, this socializing alone must always bring a curse. The socializing process can become a blessing only if it is linked with two other things that must develop during the entire course of our postAtlantean age, up to the seventh post-Atlantean epoch. This may occur only when it is linked with what may be called the free life of thought and an insight into the spiritual nature of the world lying behind the sensible nature. Socializing without a science of the spirit and without freedom of thought is an impossibility. This is simply an objective truth. But man must awaken to freedom of thought; he must make himself ripe for freedom of thought precisely during our epoch of the consciousness soul.

Why must he awake to freedom of thought?

During the course of human evolution, man has come in a certain respect to a decisive point in this fifth post-Atlantean epoch. Up to this fifth epoch he possessed the possibility of having the prenatal time continue its influence into the postnatal life. Let us grasp this quite clearly. Up to our epoch man has borne forces within him that are not acquired by him during the course of life but were possessed by him when, as the expression goes, he first beheld the light of the world, when he was born. These were imprinted upon him during the embryonic time. These forces that were impressed upon man during the embryonic time and that then continue to work throughout life, were possessed by man up to the fourth post-Atlantean epoch. Only now do we face a great crisis in the evolution of humanity through the fact that these forces can no longer be determinative; they can no longer work in such an elemental manner as hitherto. In other words, during this fifth postAtlantean epoch man will be in much greater measure exposed to the impressions of life, because forces opposing the impressions of life, which were acquired in the embryonic period before birth, are losing their sustaining power. This fact is something of enormous importance.

Only in one respect was life even prior to this time such that man could acquire something between birth and death, something that was not imprinted upon him during the embryonic time. But this was possible only because of the following facts. We explained yesterday the peculiar phenomena of sleep in relation to social life. When man is asleep, his ego and astral body are outside the physical and the etheric body. There is a different relationship between the ego and the astral body, on the one hand, and the physical and etheric bodies on the other hand during sleep from that existing in the waking state. While man is asleep, he stands in a different relationship to his physical and etheric bodies. Now, there is a certain resemblance between our sleep and our embryonic period—a resemblance, not an identity. In a certain sense, our life during the period from sleeping to waking is similar to the life that we live from conception—or actually three weeks thereafter—until birth—again similar, not identical. While we rest as an infant in the body of our mother, our life is similar to what we experience later during sleep, except that during sleep we breathe the outer air. For this reason I have to say only “similar” but not “identical.” We do not breathe the outer air when we rest in the body of the mother. We are stimulated to breathe the outer air when we are born.

Thus, in this way life during sleep is different from the embryonic life. Now hold firmly to the fact that, while the human being is sleeping, his life is in many respects similar to that of the embryonic state except that something is at work that can occur only between birth and death and not in the embryonic life. Breathing works here. The fact that man breathes the outer air causes his organism to be influenced in a certain way. But everything that influences our organism affects the totality of our life-expressions, even our psychic expression. Because we breathe, we understand the world otherwise than if we did not breathe.

Now, there was a cultural element in the evolution of humanity. We touch upon a significant mystery of human evolution when we undertake to explain this. This was the Old Testament cultural element, which was permeated in an especially profound way for its initiates by the fact that man is different, by reason of the breathing between birth and death, from the embryonic life, which is otherwise like the life of sleep. It was upon this inner knowledge of the nature of breathing that the relationship between the old Jewish initiates, the Hebrew initiates of the Old Testament, and their Jehovah God was based. The Jehovah God manifested himself, as we need only learn from the Bible, to his people. Which was the people of Jehovah? It was the people who had a peculiar relationship to this truth of breathing that I have just explained. This is the reason why precisely this people received the revelation that man became man when the breath of life was given to him.

We acquire a special understanding when this is developed on the basis of the nature of human breathing. We acquire an understanding of the life of abstract thinking, which was called in the Old Testament the life of law, an understanding of the reception of abstract thoughts. Strange as this may seem at present to materialistic thought, it is nevertheless true that the human power of creating abstractions is determined essentially by the breathing process. The fact that man can abstract, that he can conceive abstract thoughts, just as laws are abstract thoughts, is connected with his breathing process and even physiologically with his breathing process. The instrument of abstract thinking is, of course, the brain. This brain is involved in a continual rhythm synchronized with the breathing rhythm. I have already spoken here repeatedly in regard to this relationship of the brain rhythm with the breathing rhythm. I have explained to you how the brain is floating in the cerebral fluid, and how this fluid, when the air is breathed out, flows down through the spinal column and empties below into the abdominal cavity; how the fluid is pressed upward again when the air is breathed in so that a continual vibration occurs: with exhalation, a sinking of the cerebral fluid; with inhalation, an ascent of the cerebral fluid and the immersion of the brain in the cerebral fluid. The capacity of the human being to form abstractions is connected even physiologically with this rhythm of the breathing process.

A people who based things in special measure upon the breathing process was likewise the people of the abstraction process. For this reason the initiates could impart a special revelation to their people, as they perceived things in their Jehovah manner, because this revelation was completely adapted to the process of abstract thinking. This is the secret of the Old Testament revelation. Man received a wisdom that was adapted to the abstracting capacity, the capacity of abstract thinking. Jehovah wisdom is adapted to abstract thinking.

As regards this Jehovah wisdom, man is asleep in the ordinary state of consciousness. The Jehovah initiates simply received in connection with their initiation what man experiences through his breath from falling asleep until waking. Because of this fact, persons who love half-truths have often designated Jehovah as the divinity who regulates sleep. This is true also. He imparted to man that element of wisdom that he would experience if he should become as clairvoyant as the initiates became, and should experience consciously the life between falling asleep and waking. Now, this was not experienced by the ordinary consciousness in the Old Testament times, but was given to man as a revelation, so that he thus received as revelation in this Jehovah wisdom that through which they had to sleep. It was necessary to sleep through this, since otherwise the life process could not continue.

This is the essential element of the Old Testament culture. The night wisdom was revealed as Jehovah wisdom. To a certain extent—but I beg you to note that I say to a certain extent—this possibility for man was exhausted during the period when the Mystery of Golgotha drew near because this wisdom, which is in a sense the wisdom of sleep and breathing, is one-seventh of all the wisdom that man must develop in the course of his evolution. It is the wisdom of a single one of the Elohim, that is, Jehovah. The other six-sevenths could and can come to humanity only as the Christ impulse flows into mankind. We may thus say that, as Jehovah revealed himself, he revealed the wisdom of night and breathing in anticipation. The six other Elohim, constituting in their totality together with the seventh Elohim the Christ impulse, reveal all other wisdom, which comes to man between birth and death otherwise than through breathing.

Within the life of Old Testament culture man would have been entirely antisocial if Jehovah had not revealed the social element to his people in that abstract law that regulated and harmonized their life.

Now, Jehovah was able to gain complete control for himself by thrusting back the other Elohim, as I have explained to you, and dethroning them in a certain way. This caused other, lower spiritual entities to come in contact with human nature and to take possession of it. Man was exposed to these other entities, so that we have two conditions in the course of Old Testament evolution: first, the harmonizing Jehovah wisdom in what was given to the Jews as their Law, which included at the same time their social life; second, what opposed this social union, the lower entities coming close to human nature because the other Elohim were not yet given access in the time before the Mystery of Golgotha. These lower entities directed their powerful attacks in an antisocial sense against the Jehovah element.

It is a peculiar fact that, in the middle of the nineteenth century, in the fifth decade, Jehovah ceased in a certain sense to master the opposing spirits with his influence, so that they acquired special power. Not until the course of the nineteenth century was it really necessary for the first time that the Christ impulse, which had previously been only in a preliminary stage as I have often pointed out, should really be understood. Human culture could not progress further without this impulse and it was the social element particularly that stood face to face with this important crisis. It was necessary that the Christ impulse should be understood for the future. Without an understanding of this Christ impulse, no social demand takes the direction leading to any sort of wholesome objective.

The almost twenty centuries during which Christianity has previously been disseminated were only preparatory stages for the real understanding of the Christ impulse because the Christ impulse can be understood only in the spirit. Everything happens gradually. In our critical times, when we face a crisis in regard to just those things I have called to your attention, the situation is as follows. The instinct leading toward a mere Jehovah wisdom still extends into our age as a remnant, tending toward the wisdom that depended upon what was acquired during the embryonic life and is modified only by the unconscious breathing process. The Jehovah wisdom requires a revelation in order to enter our consciousness. This sufficed up to the time when the consciousness soul had not yet evolved to a certain degree. Now, since the consciousness soul has evolved to this degree, humanity cannot get along further with Jehovah wisdom that is adapted to the breathing, but it is invariably true that an effort is made to continue to get along with something that has become insufficient according to inner necessities. Since, for the life between birth and death, what is 'connected with the breathing remains unconscious, the Jewish culture was a folk culture, not an individualized culture of humanity. It was a folk culture in which everything is related to the descent from a common tribal father. Jewish revelation is, in its essential nature, a revelation adapted to the Jewish people, because it takes account of what is acquired during the embryonic life and is modified only through an unconscious element, the breathing process.

What is the result of this fact in our critical times? The result is that those who will not become adherents of the Christ wisdom that brings into the human being the other element, acquired during the life between birth and death apart from the breathing process, wish to continue in their relationship to the Jehovah wisdom and to have humanity established only on the basis of folk cultures. The present clamor in favor of an organization consisting of individuals from mere peoples is a retarded ahrimanic demand for the establishment of such a culture, in which all the peoples represent only folk cultures, that is, Old Testament cultures. The peoples in all parts of the world are to become like the Jewish Old Testament people. This is the demand of Woodrow Wilson.

We are here touching upon a most profound mystery, which will be unveiled in the greatest variety of forms. A social element that is antisocial as regards the whole of humanity and undertakes to base the social life upon individual peoples alone is striving to come to manifestation as an ahrimanic element. The cultural impulse of the Old Testament is to be maintained in an ahrimanic form.

Thus you see things are not so simple as people suppose in thinking that it is necessary only to think out one thing or another in order to propose ideals to men. We must be able to look into reality. We must be able to say what really governs and develops its powers amid these realities. Man is faced, in fact, with the prospect of not being able any longer to base his life upon the merely unconscious or of finding it necessary to base his life upon the conscious element within life between birth and death. The unconscious depends upon the breathing process and thus inevitably upon what is connected with the breathing process, upon the blood circulation, that is, upon the line of descent, upon connections by blood, upon heredity. The culture that must come into existence cannot base the social order upon mere blood connections because these blood connections yield only one-seventh of what must be established in the culture of humanity. The other six-sevenths must be added through the Christ impulse: In the fifth epoch, one; in the sixth epoch, the second; in the seventh epoch, the third. The rest stretch out into the following periods of time. For this reason there must gradually develop in humanity what is connected with the true Christ impulse, and what is related to the mere Jehovah impulse must be superseded.

Typically, far-reaching endeavors of the Jehovah impulse will take place, for the last time, in what the proletariat understands as international socialism. In essence, this is the last stirring of the Jehovah impulse. We face the strange situation that every people will become a Jehovah people, and every people will at the same time demand the right to spread its own Jehovah cult, its own socialism, throughout the world.

These will be the two contending forces between which a balance must be found. In all that comes to manifestation as objective necessity in the course of humanity's evolution there mingles the feeling, the sentiment, of human beings who take one relation or another to the various national groups, and who work disturbingly within the objectively inevitable course of evolution. Through the Jehovah wisdom one of the seven doors to the union of humanity has been opened. A second door will be opened when it shall come to be known that what man bears with him as the physical and the etheric nature becomes ill in the course of life. Naturally, I do not refer to an acute illness, but in our fifth epoch life is identical with a gradual process of becoming ill. This has been true since the fourth epoch; it is especially true in the fifth epoch. The life process is the same thing, only gradual in its stages, as an acute illness, except that this takes a more rapid course. If, therefore, an acute illness must be cured by a specific healing process, something must enter also into human life that brings healing.

In short, the natural life of human beings, from the fifth post-Atlantean epoch on will be a sort of continual, gradual becoming ill. All influences of education and of culture must be directed to the objective of making well. In a certain way, this is the first true activation of the Christ impulse: healing. This is the special mission of Christ in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch—to be the Healer, the One who heals. The other forms of the Christ impulse must remain in the background. For the sixth post-Atlantean epoch, the Christ impulse must work in the direction of seership. There the spirit self comes to development within which man cannot live without seership. In the seventh postAtlantean epoch a sort of prophetic nature will develop as the third element, since it must, indeed, pass prophetically over into an entirely new period. The other three members of the sixfold Christ Being will do their work in the following periods. Thus must the Christ impulse find its way into humanity, as the element that permeates mankind with social warmth in the course of the present and the two following cultural epochs, that is, as the healing process, the seer process and the prophetic process. This is the real living entrance of the Christ impulse. This will interpenetrate other things necessary for evolution that we have already mentioned. One door has been opened through the Jehovah wisdom, but this door became unusable in the middle of the nineteenth century. If mankind should pass through this door alone, the only result that can follow would be that all peoples would in a way develop Hebraic cultures, each in its own form. Other doors must be opened. Initiation wisdom, which will become known through a second, third, and fourth door, must be added to the wisdom that has become known through the Jehovah door. Only in this way can man grow into other connections than those that are regulated by the bonds of blood and breath.

This constitutes, in turn, the critical element of our age. It is a fact that human beings wish to preserve a regulation of the world order according to the bonds of blood, coming in an ahrimanic way out of ancient times, but that an inner necessity strives outward beyond these bonds of blood. In the future what controls the social life cannot proceed from anything having to do with kinship. On the contrary, only what the soul itself in its own free decision can experience as regulating the social order will be valid. An inner necessity will so guide men that everything that penetrates into the social order out of mere bonds of blood will be eliminated. All such things enter into manifestation at first tumultuously. In our age there must evolve spirit knowledge and freedom of thought, especially freedom of thought in the religious realm. The science of the spirit must develop for the reason that man must enter into relationship with man. But man is spirit. Man can enter into relationship with man only when the approach is from the spirit. The relationship into which men entered at earlier stages had its origin in the unconscious spirit vibrating in the blood, in accordance with Jehovah wisdom, which leads only to abstraction. That to which the men must next be led must be something grasped within the soul. The heathen peoples had their myths in pictorial form, created through atavism in ancient cultural forms. The Jewish people had its abstractions, not myths, but abstractions: the Law. This has continued its existence. This was the first elevation of the human being to the conceptual force and into the force of thought. But from humanity's present view of the matter, which is only the revival of the command, “Thou shalt make unto thyself no image,” man must revert to the capacity of the soul that can once more, and this time consciously, form images. It is only in images, in imaginations, that the social life also can be rightly established in the future. The social life could be regulated only as regards a single people in abstractions, and the regulation for a people in social relationships was that of the Old Testament. The next form of regulation of the social life will depend upon the capacity to exercise in a conscious way the same force that once existed atavistically, in unconscious or half-conscious form, in man's myth building capacity. Men would be completely filled with antisocial instincts if they should endeavor to continue disseminating mere abstract laws. They must come again by way of their world conception, to the pictorial. Out of this conscious myth creation there will arise also the possibility for the development of the social element in the intercourse of man with man.

You may look at such a sculptural form as that of our Group: the Representative of Man, Lucifer and Ahriman. There you confront for the first time what is working in the whole human being, because man is the state of balance between the luciferic and the ahrimanic. If you permeate yourself in actual life with the impulse to confront every person in such a way that you correctly see this trinity in him, then do you begin to understand him. This is an essential capacity, bearing within itself the impulse to evolve in this fifth post-Atlantean epoch. Thus we shall no longer pass by one another as one specter passes another, so that we form no picture of each other but merely define the other person with our abstract concepts. The truth is that we do nothing more at the present time We pass by each other as if we were specters. One specter forms the conception, “That is a nice fellow,” and the other, “That is not such a nice fellow” ... “That is a bad man” . . . “That is a good man,”—all sorts of such abstract concepts. In the intercourse of man with man we have nothing but a bundle of abstract concepts. This is the essential thing that has entered into humanity out of the Old Testament form of life: “Make unto thyself no image.” It must inevitably lead to an antisocial life if we should continue it further. What is flowing out from the innermost nature of man, striving toward realization, is that, when one individual confronts another, a picture shall stream forth in a certain way from the other person, a picture of that special form of balance manifested individually by everyone. But this requires, of course, the heightened interest that I have often described to you as the foundation of social life, which each person should take in the other person. At present we have not yet any intense interest in another person. It is for this reason that we criticize him, that we pass judgment upon him, that we form our judgments according to sympathies and antipathies and not according to the objective picture that leaps to meet us from the other.

This capacity to be mystically stimulated in a certain way as we confront another person will come to realization. It will enter as a special social impulse into human life. On the one hand, the consciousness soul is striving to come in an antisocial way to complete domination in this fifth post-Atlantean epoch. On the other hand, something else is striving outward from the nature of man, that is, a capacity to form pictures of the human beings with whom we live. It is here that the social impulses arise, the social instincts. The simple fact is that these things lie at a far greater depth than is ordinarily supposed when people talk about the social and the antisocial.

Now the question may arise in your minds as to how we shall gradually attain to the capacity of causing the picture of the other person to leap to meet us. It is in life that we must gain this capacity. Jehovah capacities are given to us at birth; we evolve them in the embryonic life. The culture of the future will not make things so comfortable for people. The capacities a person must manifest will have to be developed during the course of his life. Far more concrete and definite principles must enter into education than those that are now being brought into dominance in such an utterly confused manner in today's pedagogy. It is most important of all that the instinct shall be implanted in people to look back more frequently during this life, but in the right way. What people develop at present as memories of earlier experience is marked as yet for the most part by a selfish character. If a person looks back in a more unselfish way to what he has experienced in childhood, youth, etc.—according to the age he has reached—there emerges as if out of the gray depths of the spirit various persons who have had something to do with his life in all sorts of relationships.

Look back into your life and pay less attention to what interests you in your own respectable person and much more to those figures that have come into contact with you, educating you, befriending you, assisting you, perhaps also injuring you—often injuring you in a helpful way. One thing will then become evident to you and that is how little reason a person really has to ascribe to himself what he has become. Often something important in us is due to the fact that one person or another came into contact with us at a certain age, and—perhaps, without knowing it himself, or perhaps, being fully aware of the fact—drew our attention to something or other. In a comprehensive sense, a really unselfishly conducted survey of our lives is made up of all sorts of things that do not give us occasion to immerse ourselves selfishly in our own being, to brood over ourselves egotistically, but lead us to broaden our views to include those figures who came into contact with us. Let us immerse ourselves with real love in what has come into our life. We shall often discover that what evoked an antipathy in us at a certain period is no longer so disagreeable to us when a sufficient length of time has passed because we begin to see an inner connection. The fact that we had to be affected in an unpleasant way at a certain time by one person or another might have been useful to us. We often gain more from the harm that a person does to us than from the furtherance afforded us by another. It would be advantageous to a person if he more frequently exercised such a survey of his life, and should permeate his life with the convictions flowing from his self observation. “How little occasion I really have to occupy myself with myself! How immeasurably richer my life becomes when I look back to all those who have entered my life!” In this way we free ourselves from ourselves when we carry out such an unselfish survey. We then escape from that terrible evil of our times, to which so many fall victims, of brooding over ourselves. It is so extremely necessary that we should free ourselves from this brooding over ourselves. Anyone who has once felt the power of such self-observation as I have just described will find himself far too uninteresting to spend much time brooding over his own life. Unlimited illumination is cast over this life of ours when we see it irradiated with what enters into it from the gray depths of the spirit.

But this has such a germinating power over us that we really acquire the imaginative forces necessary to confront the contemporary human being in such a way that in him the thing is manifest that appears to us only after many years in our backward survey of those figures with whom we have lived together. We thus acquire such a capacity that pictures actually come to meet us from the individuals we confront.
The cultivation of the social life, which in earlier times had its source only in the bonds of blood, does not depend so much upon any sort of socialistic programs, but upon man's becoming a spiritual-social being. He will become such a being by awakening within himself, in the manner I have described, the deeper forces that can bring to birth within him the capacity for conceiving pictorially the other human being. Otherwise, we shall always remain antisocial beings, capable of approaching others only according to our sympathies and antipathies, incapable of approaching them according to the picture that may stream forth from each person if we only develop the picture-forming forces in our intercourse with them. Precisely in the social life of humanity must the principle come into existence, “Thou shalt make for thyself an image of thy fellow man.” Then, when we form a picture of our fellow man, we enrich our own soul life; then do we bestow a treasure upon our own inner soul life with each human acquaintanceship. Then we no longer so live that A lives there, B there, C there, but A, B and C live in D; A, B and D live in C; C, D and E live in A; etc. We gain the capacity to have other human beings live in us.

But this must be acquired; it is not born in us. If we should continue simply to cultivate those characteristics that are born in us, we should continue within the limits of a mere blood culture, not the culture to which could be ascribed in the true sense of the word human brotherhood. Only when we carry the other human being within us can we really speak of human brotherhood, which has appeared thus far only in an abstract word. When we form a picture of the other person, which is implanted as a treasure in our souls, then we carry within the realm of our soul life something from him just as in the case of a bodily brother we carry around something through the common blood. This elective affinity as the basis of social life must take the place in this concrete way of the mere blood affinity. This is something that really must evolve. It must depend upon the human will to determine how brotherhood shall be awakened among men.

Human beings have hitherto been separated. They ought to become socialized in brotherhood. In order that the manifoldness shall not be lost, the innermost element in man, thought, must be able to take form individually in every single person. With Jehovah the whole folk stood in a relationship. With Christ each individual person must stand in relationship. But the fact that brotherhood will thus awaken requires that there shall be a compensation in an entirely different field, that is, through freedom of thought.

• 1. Three figures in heroic size carved in wood by Rudolf Steiner.

Those members of the audience who wish to analyse from a philosophical point of view my lecture of yesterday might meet perhaps with difficulties, apparent difficulties, because they will have heard in the course of earlier talks on similar themes that the purpose of our entire post-Atlantean epoch and even of the later stages of Atlantean evolution was to develop gradually the human ego and bring it to fuller consciousness. In this context I have indicated that the members of the ancient Indian civilization who had been able in Atlantis to perceive the spiritual world by means of the old clairvoyance still prevalent at that time were in some respects the very first who experienced an immediate transition from this clairvoyant state to a consciousness of the physical world. Their reaction to this physical world was such that the whole of this post-Atlantean age was pervaded by the feeling that true reality was to be found in the spiritual world, whilst the phenomenal world was merely Maya or illusion. Now I pointed out in our last lecture—and the facts confirm this—that the members of this ancient Indian civilization had to some extent undergone a rich soul-development and that they had achieved this high level whilst their ego was more or less asleep, that is to say, that they only awoke to ego consciousness after they had already reached maturity of soul development.

What, then, was the destiny of these Indian peoples meanwhile? For the Indian peoples must have experienced their entire soul-development in a wholly different manner from the European and especially the Germanic peoples who were ego-conscious whilst their capacities were gradually evolving and who were conscious of the divine-spiritual power working into their souls. You may possibly find it difficult to reconcile my statements in yesterday's lecture if you were to reflect upon that lecture philosophically. For those who wish to analyse that lecture, not from a disinterested point of view, but from a philosophical angle, I must add something in parenthesis by way of explanation.

The apparent contradiction will resolve itself at once if you recall that cognition of the ego is totally different from other forms of cognition. If the ego “knows” any other object or other human being distinct from itself, then in the act of cognition one is really dealing with two factors, with the knower, the cognizing agent, and the known. In the formal act of cognition it is irrelevant whether that which is known is human being, animal, tree or stone. But it is a different matter when the ego knows itself, for then the knower and the known are one, subject and object of cognition are the same. It is important to realize that in human evolution, in the development of the individual, these two modes of cognition are distinct. Those who had developed the mature Indian culture in the post-Atlantean epoch, developed the ‘I’ subjectively as the knower, a cognizing agent, and this subjective enhancement of the ‘I’ within the human soul may exist for a long time before man acquires the power to see the ‘I’ objectively as an entity. On the other hand, the European peoples developed comparatively early, whilst they still preserved the old clairvoyance, the power to see the ‘I’ objectively, that is to say, in their clairvoyant field of vision they perceived the ‘I’ as an entity amongst other entities. If you distinguish carefully between these modes of perception your philosophical problems will be solved and those of Spiritual Science too, if you approach them in the right way. If you wish me to express it in philosophical terms: the Indian culture exhibits a soul which reached the full flowering of the subjective ‘I’ long before the objective ‘I’ was developed. The Teutonic peoples developed the perception of the ‘I’ long before they became conscious of the real inner striving towards the ‘I’. Clairvoyantly they saw the dawning of their ego in an imaginative picture. In the astral world around them they had long seen the ‘I’ objectively amongst the other beings whom they perceived clairvoyantly. Thus we must conceive of this antithesis in a purely formal manner; then we shall also comprehend why Europe in particular was destined to associate this ‘I’ of man with the other higher Beings, the Angels and Archangels, in the way I pointed out yesterday in relation to mythology.

If you bear this in mind you will realize that Europe was destined to relate the ego in a multiplicity of ways to the world perceptible to the senses and that the ego, the fundamental essence of the human being, can enter into the most varied relationship with the external world. Formerly, before man was aware of his ego, before he perceived it, these relationships were determined for him by the higher Beings and he himself remained a passive instrument. His relationship to the external world was a purely instinctive one. The decisive factor in the development of the ego is that it should progressively determine its relationship to the external world. Substantially it was the task of the European nations to determine in some way or other this relation of the ‘I’ to the whole world, and the guiding Folk Soul had, and still has the task of directing European man how to bring his ‘I’ into relation with the external world, with other egos and with the world of spiritual Beings, so that on the whole it was within European civilization that one first began to speak of the relationship of the human ego to the surrounding universe. Hence the completely different atmosphere in the old Indian cosmology from that prevailing in the mythological culture of Europe. In the East everything is impersonal, and, above all one is required to adopt a passive attitude towards knowledge, to suppress the ego in order to become merged in Brahma and to find Atman within oneself. In the East, therefore, the primary objective is to lose one's identity and seek union with the Absolute. In Europe this human ‘I’ occupies a central place in human life in accordance with its original innate tendencies and with its progressive development in the course of evolution. In Europe, therefore, particular attention is given to seeing everything in relation to the ‘I’, to showing clairvoyantly the relationship of the ‘I’ to everything that had participated in the development of the ‘I’ in the course of earthly existence.

Now you all know that two opposing forces have participated in the development of terrestrial man who was destined gradually to acquire his ‘I’. Ever since the Lemurian epoch Luciferic forces have imprinted themselves upon the inner being of man, upon his astral body. You know that these forces made man's inner life the focal point of attack by infiltrating into his desires, impulses and passions. In consequence, man benefited in two ways: he was able to become a free and independent being, to be fired with enthusiasm for what he thinks, feels and wills, whereas in relation to his own affairs he was guided by divine spiritual Beings. But on the other hand, through the Luciferic powers, man had to accept the possibility of falling into evil through his passions, emotions and desires. Lucifer, therefore, is omnipresent in our Earth-existence and finds his point of attack in the inner being of man, in the play of the human astral. Where the astral has been integrated with the ego, the ego too has been permeated by the Luciferic power. When therefore we speak of Lucifer, we are speaking of that which has thrust man down deeper into material, sensory existence than would have been the case without that influence. Thus to the Luciferic powers we owe the most precious boon to man, namely, freedom, and, at the same time a dangerous legacy, the possibility of evil.

But we also know that because these Luciferic powers had intervened in the entire constitution of human nature, other powers were able to enter later on, which could not have done so had not Lucifer first invaded the human organism. Man would see the world differently if he had not fallen under the influence of Lucifer and his followers, if he had not been obliged to submit to the influence of another power after he had opened himself to the invasion of a Luciferic power. Ahriman approached from outside and penetrated into the vast arena of the phenomenal world surrounding man, so that the Ahrimanic influence is therefore a consequence of the Luciferic influence. Lucifer, as it were, takes possession of man from within and in consequence he is the victim of Ahriman who works from without.

The spiritual science of all ages that is familiar with the real facts, speaks of both Luciferic and Ahrimanic powers. It will seem very remarkable to you that the various peoples who express these views in the form of mythology are not always aware of Lucifer and Ahriman to the same extent. For instance, there is no clear awareness of this in a religious conception built up out of the whole Semitic tradition as embodied in the Old Testament. Only a certain consciousness of the Luciferic influence can be found there. You will find evidence for this in the Old Testament account of the Serpent which is simply a picture of Lucifer. And this shows that there was a clear realization that Lucifer played a part in evolution, a realization that is undeniably present in all traditions associated with the Bible. But they do not betray an awareness of the Ahrimanic influence to the same extent; that is only to be found where spiritual science is taught. Therefore the Gospel writers have taken this into account. You will find—for at the time when the Gospels were written the word ‘devil’ or ‘daemon’ was borrowed from the Greek—that St. Mark's Gospel does not speak of the temptation of Jesus, but of a devil tempting Him; but in all references to Ahriman the word Satan is used. But who notices the important difference between these descriptions in the Gospel of St. Mark and that of St. Matthew? Exoterically these fine distinctions are not heeded at all, nor is this difference noted in external traditions.

This difference is very apparent in the contrast between India and Persia and is strikingly illustrated at a certain moment in history. The Persians were less subject to the Luciferic influence than the Ahrimanic. It was in Persia in particular that men wrestled with the powers which give us an external, false Picture of the world and which surround us with the forces of darkness, i.e. that which is concerned with man's relation to the external world. Ahriman is known chiefly as an opponent of the Good and as an enemy of the Light. What is the explanation of this? The explanation is that in the second post-Atlantean epoch man developed his perception of the external world. Remember that the task of Zoroaster was to reveal the Sun Spirit, the Spirit of Light. He has first to show that this world is compounded of Light and the Spirit of Darkness who dims our consciousness of the external world. The Persian aims primarily at the conquest of Ahriman and strives to unite himself with the Children of Light, the Spirits who are here the dominant Powers. He is organized for activity in the external world; hence he has his Ahuras or Asuras. It is, on the other hand, dangerous for the followers of the Persian religion to look inwards, to follow the inward path. Where the Luciferic powers are lurking he will not allow himself to become aware of the good powers which are present there: he senses danger. He directs his gaze outwards and believes the Asuras of Light to be in opposition to the Asuras of Darkness.

At this time the Indians pursued exactly the opposite course. They lived in a period when they endeavoured to raise themselves into the higher spheres by inner contemplation. They sought salvation by uniting themselves with the forces of inner vision. It was dangerous; they felt, to look out into the external world where they might have to wrestle with Ahriman. They feared the external world and regarded it as dangerous. Whereas the Persians eschewed the Devas, the Indians looked up to them and wanted to work in their domain. But the Persians turned away and avoided the region where the battle against Lucifer had to be fought.

Search as you will through the many different mythologies and conceptions of the world, in none of them will you find such a clear and profound awareness of the fact that there are two influences at work on man as in Teutonic mythology. As Nordic man was still clairvoyant, he really saw these two powers and took up a position midway between them. He said to himself in the course of his evolution man has seen the advent of certain powers which penetrated into his inner being and worked upon his astral body; they operated from without. And because he was destined to develop the ‘I’, to achieve independence, he sensed not merely the possibility of evil, but, in these powers which permeated his astral body in order to bring freedom and independence, he felt above all the aspiration to freedom. He felt, one might say, the rebellious element manifesting itself in these forces. He felt the presence of the Luciferic element in the power which in these Scandinavian and Germanic regions even then still participated in the creation of races, in that it gave man his external form and pigmentation and made him an independent, active being in the world. With his clairvoyance Nordic man felt Lucifer to be primarily that which makes man a free being, one who is not prepared to submit passively to random external powers, but is solid and reliant and is determined to act independently. Nordic man felt this Luciferic influence to be beneficial.

But he now realized that something else stemmed from this influence. Lucifer conceals himself behind the figure of Loki who has a remarkably iridescent form. Because Nordic man could perceive the reality, he saw that the thoughts of the freedom and independence of man could be traced to Loki. Through the old clairvoyance, however, he was also aware that that which repeatedly drags man down through his desires and actions and causes him to suffer a greater deterioration of his whole being than would have befallen him had he devoted himself to Odin and the Aesir, is to be attributed to the influence of Loki. And now he felt the awful grandeur of this Teutonic mythology; he felt with passionate conviction that which will only return gradually to the consciousness of man through Spiritual Science.

How, then, does the Luciferic influence act? It penetrates into the astral body and thus is able to work upon all the three members of man, upon his astral, etheric and physical bodies. At the present day one can only give indications of this Luciferic influence outside the Anthroposophical Society. What you will come to understand more and more clearly is that the Luciferic influence makes itself felt in three different ways: in the astral body, in the etheric body, and in the physical body of man.

It begets in the etheric body the urge to falsehood and lying. Lies and falsehood are not limited to the inner life of man. In the astral body, the vehicle of man's inner life, the self is permeated with a Luciferic influence which takes the form of selfishness. The etheric body is inwardly motivated by the impulse to be untruthful and is thus disposed to lying. In the physical body the Luciferic influence begets sickness and death. Those who were present at my last series of lectures will easily understand that.¹ I should like to emphasize once again that the signs and symptoms of physical death are karmically connected with the Luciferic influence. To recapitulate again briefly: Lucifer begets in the astral body selfishness, in the etheric body lying and falsehood, and in the physical body sickness and death.

Of course the materialists of the present day will be greatly surprised to learn that Spiritual Science attributes sickness and death to a Luciferic influence. But this too is connected with Karma. But for the Luciferic influence man would never have known sickness and death. The karmic effect of this influence is that man is more deeply immersed in corporeality and, on the other hand, the penalty for this is sickness and death.

We may say that when the Luciferic influence entered into man, the physical, etheric and astral bodies became a prey to sickness and death, lying, falsehood and selfishness. I should like to draw your attention to the fact that the materialistic scientists of today assign death in the human being or in the animal or plant to the same cause. They fail to realize that one external appearance may resemble another and yet may originate from totally different causes.

An external situation may arise from a variety of causes. The death of an animal does not supervene from the same cause as the death of a man, although externally it gives the same impression.

It would take too long to provide an epistemological proof of these things. I only wish to state here that the scientific view of causality is sadly mistaken. We meet with mistakes such as these, which arise from muddled thinking, at almost every turn. Imagine the case of a man, who climbs onto a roof, falls down, is mortally injured and is picked up dead. What would be more natural than to say: “The man fell down, was mortally injured and died of his injuries.” But there might have been a totally different explanation. The man might have had a stroke whilst on the roof and have fallen down while already dead. The injuries might have been caused by the fall, so that externally this case might appear the same as the one described before, but death would have supervened from an entirely different cause.

This is a very crude example, but scientists are very frequently guilty of this kind of mistake. Externally the real facts may often be exactly the same: the inner causes may be completely different.

We claim, then, from the results of spiritual-scientific investigation that the Luciferic influence begets in the astral body selfishness, in the etheric body lying and falsehood and in the physical body sickness and death. Now what would the Teutonic mythology have had to say if it had been obliged to ascribe this threefold influence to Loki, to Lucifer? It would have had to say that Loki has three offspring. The first, the one who begets selfishness, is the Midgard Snake through whom is expressed the influence of the Luciferic spirit on the astral body. The second is that which falsifies human knowledge. In man, on the physical plane, this consists in those things of the mind which do not accord with the external world. It is that which has no validity there. To Nordic man who lived more on the astral plane, that which to us is an illusion manifested itself at once as an astral being and lived as such upon the astral plane. The expression for everything that implied darkening of the light of truth, false perspective, was some kind of animal; and here in the North it was chiefly the Fenris Wolf. This second animal is Loki's influence on the etheric body to which man owes his inner inclination to deceive himself, to think incorrectly about things; that is to say, the objects in the external world do not appear to him in true perspective. This was generally expressed in the old Teutonic mythology in the form of a wolf. That is the astral form for lying and falsehood which proceeds from inner impulse.

Where man is related to the external world Lucifer confronts Ahriman, so that the infiltration of error into his knowledge—even into his clairvoyant knowledge—all illusion and maya, is the consequence of the tendency to falsehood which is active there. The Fenris Wolf represents the configuration surrounding man because he does not see things in their true form. Whenever the ancient Teutons experienced the darkening of the light of truth, they spoke of a wolf. This permeates the whole of Nordic consciousness and you will find that this image is used in this sense even in relation to external facts.

When the ancient Teutons wanted to explain what they saw during an eclipse of the Sun—in the epoch of the old clairvoyance of course, man saw very differently from the man of today who uses a telescope—they chose the image of a wolf pursuing the Sun and who, the moment he overtakes it, causes an eclipse. This agrees perfectly with the facts. This terminology is an integral part of the grandeur, that awful grandeur peculiar to Teutonic mythology. I can only give indications here, but if it were possible to speak for weeks on end upon this Teutonic mythology, you would then see how this is universally applied in the representations of Teutonic mythology. This is because Teutonic mythology is a consequence of the old clairvoyance into which the ‘I’ plays everywhere.

Materialists of today will reply that this is pure superstition, that there is no wolf in pursuit of the Sun. The old imaginative Nordic man sees these facts in the form of pictures and I could perhaps enumerate many so-called scientific truths which contain more Ahrimanic influence, a greater degree of error, than the corresponding astral perception which describes the wolf in pursuit of the Sun. That an eclipse occurs because the Moon interposes itself between the Earth and the Sun seems to the occultist to betray a mind that is even more superstitious. From the external point of view the explanation of the eclipse is perfectly correct, just as the case of the wolf is perfectly correct from the astral point of view. In fact the astral view is more correct than the one you will find in modern textbooks, which is even more subject to error. If at some future time man is prepared to accept the real facts instead of this external explanation, he will find that the Teutonic myth is correct. I am aware that I am saying something which is ridiculously absurd in the eyes of contemporary man, but I know too that in anthroposophical circles one is already sufficiently advanced to be in a position to show in which respects the physical view of the world is most influenced by maya, deception or illusion.

Let us now turn to the influence of Loki on the physical body. His third offspring is Hel, who begets sickness and death. Thus the figures Hel, the Fenris Wolf and the Midgard Snake are wonderful representations of the influence of Loki or Lucifer in the form in which his influence was perceived by the old dreamlike clairvoyance. If we were to follow out the whole history of Loki we should everywhere find that these things throw light upon the matter, down to the smallest details. But we must clearly understand that what the clairvoyant sees are not allegories, but real Beings.

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Now Nordic man was not only aware of Loki, of the Luciferic influence, but also of the influence of Ahriman which was the polar opposite, and he knew too that involvement in the Ahrimanic influence was a consequence of the Luciferic influence. If you now look back to the time when man did not apprehend the world through sensory perception but contemplated it with the old clairvoyance, you will find that this myth has been developed in response to this clairvoyance. What does the myth say? Man has succumbed to the influence of Loki, and this is expressed in the activity of the Midgard Snake, the Fenris Wolf and Hel. The effect was such that man's perception, his clear, luminous vision into the spiritual world, became dimmed, because the Luciferic influence increasingly asserted itself. At that time, when this view developed, man alternated between a consciousness that was able to see into the spiritual world and a consciousness that was directed to the physical plane, just as we normally alternate between waking and sleeping. When he gazed into the spiritual world he looked into the world out of which he was born. The essential point is that the myth had its source in the clairvoyant consciousness. But human consciousness consisted in this alteration between insight into, and loss of insight into the spiritual world. When man lived in a condition of dreamlike consciousness he saw into the spiritual world. When in a condition of waking consciousness, he was blind to it. Thus he alternated between the conditions of blindness to, and insight into, the spiritual world. His consciousness alternated just as a certain Cosmic Being alternated between the blind Hödur and the clairvoyant Baldur, who could see into the spiritual world. Thus man was predisposed to receive Baldur's influence and he would have developed in accordance with this influence if he had not been subject to Loki's influence. It was Loki's responsibility, however, that the Hodur nature overcame the Baldur nature. This is expressed by Loki bringing the mistletoe, with which the blind Hodur kills Baldur, the one who sees.

Loki therefore is the destructive power, like Lucifer who drove man into the arms of Ahriman. In so far as man submits to the blind Hodur, the old clairvoyant vision is extinguished. That is the slaying of Baldur. This is felt by Nordic man as the gradual extinction of the Baldur power, the loss of the vision into the spiritual world. Thus, in the loss of clairvoyance, Nordic man felt that by the death of Baldur Loki had extinguished clairvoyance and that henceforth he was powerless to revive this erstwhile clairvoyance. Thus one of the greatest historical events, the gradual loss of the old, unclouded knowledge is expressed in the myth of Baldur, Hödur and Loki. On the one hand, therefore, we have Loki with his kinsmen, the three Beings, and on the other, the tragic slaying of Baldur.

Thus, in Teutonic mythology, is reflected that which we can derive from Spiritual Science: the twofold influence—the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic. It is this which Spiritual Science always seeks to present to you as an illustration of the clairvoyant knowledge of ancient times and as a development of the myth out of the old clairvoyance which then gradually began to disappear.

It would take us too far if we were to pursue this subject further. But even in the broad outline I have presented to you, you can feel the awful grandeur of this myth, which is unsurpassed, because no other mythology adheres so closely to the old clairvoyant condition. Greek mythology is only a memory of something experienced in former times, expressed in sculptural form. Greek mythology has no longer that direct association with the facts which one finds in Teutonic mythology. It is more sophisticated, more mature, the figures show more clearly defined, more finished contours, and therefore appear markedly sculptural. They have lost the primitive simplicity of the earliest impressions. The old clairvoyance which had long vanished in the rest of Europe still survived in the North. Only slowly, step by step, has the perspective of man become limited to the picture of the physical world alone. Thus, at the time when Christianity began to spread abroad, that which is expressed in the Baldur myth, in the death of Baldur, had become true for the majority of men. There were, however, still a few who were able to perceive directly what Nordic man experienced clairvoyantly.

Thus for a long time there still existed the direct perception of the spiritual world, and because it was still so elemental and sprang so directly from clairvoyant experience, there still survived, when Christianity began to spread abroad, this conscious awareness of the spiritual world which was more developed in the Teutonic peoples than in any other. Then they felt that their erstwhile experiences of their original spiritual home were vanishing. And these spiritual experiences were lost when Nordic man received the consolations of Christianity. But Christianity did not offer him any direct vision. He had felt the fate of Baldur much too deeply to be able to console himself for this loss by exchanging Baldur for a God who had descended to the physical plane in order that the children of men who could only perceive on the physical plane, may also be allowed to rise to a consciousness of God. Unlike the peoples of the Near East the Northern peoples were unable to respond to the words: “Change your mental attitude, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!” In Palestine where Christ was born, there existed only long-lost memories of the fact that once upon a time there had been an old clairvoyance. In the East, the Kali Yuga, the Dark Age, had already lasted for three thousand years, when men could no longer see into the spiritual world. But they always yearned for that world and have ever told of a world which man was once able to perceive spiritually. But it was a world which had now vanished from their sight. Hence they had experienced the spiritual world in a much more distant past than the men of the North, and they only knew from memory that the spiritual world had once been within reach. Hence the peoples of Asia Minor could well understand the words: “Change your mental attitude for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!” They could understand the words: “The Kingdom of Heaven is nigh unto you even here upon the physical plane. Seek ye therefore the unique figure who will appear in the land of Palestine, seek ye the Messiah, the Incarnation of the Godhead, through whom you too will be able to find your relation to the Divine, even though you cannot raise yourself above the physical plane. Recognize that Figure in Palestine, know the Figure of Christ!” Those were the profound words of John the Baptist.

The Nordic man, of necessity, felt this differently; for a longer period of time he had experienced much more than the mere memory of a vision into the spiritual world. Hence there arose in him a thought of far-reaching importance, namely: this limitation to the outer physical plane, this darkening of spiritual sight, can only be an intermediate time. There must be a period of probation and man will have to discover what the physical world can teach him. This transition is necessary and he must therefore withdraw from the spiritual world. He must undergo the experience of the phenomenal world as a necessary training. But through this period of probation he will find his way back to that world whence he came. The vision of Baldur will be able to ensoul him again. In other words, the great truth which dawned in the course of the evolution of the Teutonic peoples that the world which was lost to clairvoyant vision would again become visible, he owed to the fact that man felt his sojourn on the physical plane to be a time of transition.

The Initiates had taught Nordic man that a change was taking place in the spiritual world during the intermediate time when he had lost the vision of the spiritual world and in consequence it would one day appear transformed. They explained this to him somewhat as follows: “Formerly you looked into the spiritual world and there you saw the Archangel of Speech, the Archangel of the Runes, Odin,² the Archangel of Respiration, and Thor, the Angel of Ego-hood. You were associated with them, and he who is sufficiently prepared will be able to enter the spiritual world again. But it will then appear different; other powers will have been added to it, and the spheres of power and the relationships of power of those old spiritual leaders of the human race will have changed. You will, it is true, see into this world, but you will find it transformed.”

What man will then see, the Initiates described to him as a vision of the future—the Vision that will one day appear to man when he is able to see into the spiritual world again, when he will see what has been the destiny of the old Gods and what was their relation to other powers. They described to him this vision of the future as seen by the Initiates when the Luciferic influence will to some extent override that which comes from the Gods and will, in its turn, be overcome. This was their vision of Ragnarok, the Twilight of the Gods. And again we shall see that all the events which were portrayed as future events could not, even down to the smallest details, be portrayed better or more aptly, nor in more fitting terminology than in the wonderful picture of the Twilight of the Gods. That is the occult background to the Saga of the Twilight of the Gods.

In what light, then, should man see himself? He should see himself as one who has received all that stems from earlier epochs as the origin and cause of his evolution. He should thoughtfully assimilate what he received as a gift from Odin, whilst feeling that he himself has undergone the ensuing evolution. He should receive into himself the teaching implanted in him by Odin. He should fight the good fight without delay. The Initiate, the Leader of the Esoteric School, makes that clear, particularly to Nordic man, by calling our attention to the divine-spiritual Being who appears to us so mysteriously, who in fact first plays a definite part in the Twilight of the Gods because he overcomes even that power by which Odin is at first overcome. In the Twilight of the Gods the role of Odin's avenger is a special role. When we understand this role we shall then perceive the wonderful connection between the native talents of the Teutonic peoples and our conception of our vision of the future. All this is expressed in a wonderful way, down to the smallest details in the mighty vision of the Twilight of the Gods.

• 1. Manifestations of Karma. Eleven lectures given in Hamburg, May 1910 (Rudolf Steiner Press).
• 2. See Appendix.

It is fair to warn the reader that this is not an easy book. Should he be broaching the territory, without any previous knowledge of Rudolf Steiner's work and techniques, simply as one option in his search for a convincing critique of the prevalent materialism (or, as it is more commonly called, reductionism), he might do better to begin with one or both of two other books by the same author, The Origins of Natural Science and The Boundaries of Natural Science. There is little doubt that dissatisfaction with reductionism is gradually becoming more widespread (compare the tiny minority that was touched by it in the Victorian age); and it is perhaps significant that another change in the current world-view appears to be accompanying it. I mean an increasingly wide acceptance of the notion that human consciousness itself is in process of evolution; that there has not merely been a ‘progress’ from one set of ideas (largely erroneous) about the nature of the world and humanity towards a more ‘advanced’ one, but that the very structure of consciousness, the whole relation between man and nature, has been changing through the millennia.

Nowhere is this perspective, and the revised cosmology it entails, more explicit than in the literary legacy of Rudolf Steiner, and nowhere is its importance more earnestly stressed. The title of the present work already contains the difference between evolution of consciousness and history of ideas. History is the record of a conscious process, and the term is often extended to signify the process itself. Evolution is a process occurring at a pre-conscious stage, and up to the present this has applied also to the evolution of consciousness. Thus, the karma of materialism is not the same as the history of materialism. Karma is the name of a process operating at an unconscious level in the development of a human individuality, a process normally observable only in its effects; and the Karma of materialism is such a process operating in the development of materialism. So underneath the history of materialism (which would amount to a history of ideas, culminating in reductionism) Steiner reveals an unconscious process extending both before and after that history. Reductionism as theory manifests first in natural science, but the change of consciousness underlying it began much earlier, and it continues now irrespective of theory and affects the whole life of humanity. These lectures were delivered in the year 1917, when the catalogue of global disasters, which Steiner saw as the Karma of materialism, was still not long past its dawn; and it is with the effects of materialism in the social and political life, of humanity, both national and international, that they mainly concern themselves.

Just as in Boundaries of Natural Science Rudolf Steiner argues the necessity of penetrating this hitherto unconscious realm for the future health of science itself, so here he argues its necessity in order to cope with social and political problems that are growing more and more intractable as they are less and less understood. Penetrating it with what? With strengthened and energetic thinking. Notwithstanding his admiration for the achievements of natural science, disciplined as it is by its constant relation to observable fact, he accuses it of one disastrous oversight. While it has devised and continues to devise ever more elaborate and more precise tools for investigation, it has left unexamined and unimproved the first and most essential, the most ubiquitously applied, of all its tools. It has never tried to examine the nature of thinking itself; the point at which unconscious process blossoms into, or rather “sets” as, conscious thought. In the Boundaries course Steiner describes a method by which scientists could embark on such an examination. Here he is more concerned with the effects that have stemmed from their failure to do so at the time of the scientific revolution and after it. This involves reverting to that period in history and to the period preceding it. It is no use just saying: yes, there has been an evolution of consciousness, and it has resulted in materialism. It is no use simply chronicling effects; the process itself must be penetrated, and penetrated in detail; and if this entails reference to the thought processes of such historical figures as Thomas Aquinas and Martin Luther, so be it.

The first step however is to delineate the process itself, as far as possible, and this he does in Lecture III by way of a careful treatment, both synchronic and diachronic, of the relation between intellect, perception and breathing. The lecture should be read carefully, for it is there that he lays the foundation for the doctrine which he will go on to inculcate. Namely, that the unconscious is not just ‘spirit’ (still less of course the Freudian psycho-physical jumble); nor is it simply an inferred and unknowable 'world of spirit'; it is a world of active spiritual beings, whose particular aims and influences are not wholly, and will become less and less, beyond the reach of human knowledge.

Or perhaps it would be truer to say the doctrine which he will go on to assume. That is one of the reasons why it is a difficult book, not simply because such an immaterial cosmology is repugnant to the contemporary mind-set: for repugnant it certainly is, except to a level of open-mindedness that is deplorably rare. Open-mindedness at a somewhat lower level is not so infrequent. There are many minds in our time acutely aware of the apparent impotence of the human spirit to deal with the complex and apparently insoluble problems that increasingly threaten its continued existence, and which go so far as to proclaim that a new kind of consciousness seems to be demanded of us. What is wanted, these uneasy people say, is altogether new ideas, a new kind of thinking. But they usually forget that the new is by definition unfamiliar; so that, when they are confronted with a picture of the universe that is not just a rearrangement of the old picture, but is really new and therefore wholly unfamiliar, they are offended or contemptuous. It becomes clear, Steiner repeats with emphasis and with examples to drive it home, that what they really wanted was something that looks new but is in fact old enough to feel quite comfortable. Confronted by anything beyond that they refuse even to examine the evidence for it. Exclamation marks are a sufficient refutation.

For many readers there will be the added difficulty of what they will feel as its author's tendency to plunge in medias res. Quite early in the book they will be confronted by references to named spiritual beings to whom they have not been introduced, notably certain of the spiritual hierarchies, who have been differently named in different traditions, but for whom Steiner uses the nomenclature found with their earliest recorded appearance in the extant literature of the West, that is the work of ‘pseudo-Dionysius’; and, over and above these, to the 'adversary' figures of Lucifer and Ahriman, especially the latter. If the reader is wise, he will reflect that, where knowledge of the immaterial itself is at issue, and not simply knowledge of its material effects, it is the same as with all knowledge. Neither things nor beings can be spoken of without being identified, or identified without being named: It remains true that some previous acquaintance with the literature of Steiner's anthroposophy will greatly reduce this difficulty, and will prevent the names being merely names. Nor is there much doubt that most of his original audience enjoyed such an acquaintance.

Some acquaintance then with the literature of anthroposophy is desirable in a reader of this book. But I would not say it is indispensable. There is another way of acquainting oneself with unfamiliar terminology besides starting with a set of definitions. Indeed definitions, though useful in forestalling error, may even hinder close acquaintance with the actuality of what is defined, inasmuch as they tend to substitute abstraction for experience. The other way of twigging the meanings of unfamiliar words is to plunge into contexts wherein they occur more than once, and sometimes perhaps by way of casual reference, and thus gradually to approach nearer and nearer to them by experiencing their use in those contexts. Incidentally if this way were not a way that is wide open to us, we should never have learned to speak or to understand anything at all.

I believe therefore that readers will not be lacking who will by-pass any initial stumbling-blocks as they enter into the substance of the book and become more and more impressed by its whole tone, by the authority born of wide learning, long reflection and exceptional insight and by the profound sense of responsibility, alike to the truth and to humanity, that breathe through its wide-ranging paragraphs.

Owen Barfield

My dear friends,

My dear friends, it is really difficult in our time to meet with full understanding when one speaks out of the sources of what we call Spiritual Science.

I have not in mind so much the difficulty of being understood among the individuals whom we encounter in life, but much more of being comprehensible to the cultural streams, the various world-conceptions and feelings which confront us at the present time.

When we consider European life we find in the first place a great difficulty which has sprung from the following cause. European life at the moment of passing over from mere sense perceptions to thinking about percepts—and this is effected by every individual in every moment of his waking life—does not feel how intimately connected is the thought-content with what we are as human beings.

People think thoughts, they form concepts, and they have the consciousness that through these thoughts and concepts they are, as it were, learning something of the world, that the images in fact reproduce something of the world. This is the consciousness people have. Each one who walks along the street has the feeling that because he sees the trees etc. concepts come to life, and that the concepts are inner presentations of what he perceives, and that he thus in some way takes the world of external percepts into himself and then lives them over again.

In the rarest cases, one can say practically never, is it brought to consciousness in the European world-conception that the thought, the act of thinking, is an actuality in our inner self as man, that we do something by thinking, that thinking is an inner activity, an inner work.

I called your attention here once to the fact that every thought is essentially different from what people usually believe it to be. People take it to be a reproduction of something perceptible. But it is not recognised as a form-builder, a moulder. Every thought that arises in us seizes, as it were, upon our inner life and shares (above all so long as we are growing) in our whole human construction. It already takes part in our structure before we are born and belongs to the forming forces of our nature. It goes on working continually and again and again replaces what dies away in us. So it is not only the case that we perceive our concepts externally, but we are always working upon our being through our thoughts, we work the whole time anew upon our forming and fashioning through what we conceive in ideas.

Seen with the eyes of spiritual science every thought appears like a head with a sort of continuation downwards, so that with every thought we actually insert in us something like a shadowy outline, a phantom, of ourselves; not exactly like us, but as similar as a shadow-picture. This phantom of ourselves must be inserted, for we are continuously losing something, something is being destroyed, is actually crumbling away. And what the thought inserts into our human form, preserves us, generally speaking, until our death. Thought is thus at the same time a definite inner activity, a working on our own construction.

The western world-concept has practically no knowledge of this at all. People do not notice, they have no inner feeling of how the thought grips them, how it really spreads itself out in them. Now and again a man will feel in breathing—though for the most part it is no longer noticed—that the breath spreads out in him, and that breathing has something to do with his re-building and regeneration. This applies also to thoughts, but the European scarcely feels any longer that the thought is actually striving all the time to become man, or, better said, to form the human shape.

But unless we come to a feeling of such forces within us we can hardly reach a right understanding, based on inner feeling and life, of what spiritual science really desires. For spiritual science is actually not active at all in what thought yields us inasmuch as it reproduces something external; it works in the life element of thought, in this continuous shaping process of the thought.

Therefore it has been very difficult for many centuries to speak of spiritual science or to be understood when it was spoken of, because this last characterised consciousness became increasingly lost to European humanity. In the Oriental world-conception this feeling about thought which I have just expressed exists in a high degree. At least the consciousness exists in a high degree that one must seek for this feeling of an inner experience of thought. Hence comes the inclination of the Oriental for meditation; for meditation should be a familiarising oneself with the shaping forces of thought, a becoming aware of the living feeling of the thought. That the thought accomplishes something in us should become known to us during meditating. Therefore we find in the Orient such expressions as: A becoming one, in meditation, with Brahma, with the fashioning process of the world. What is sought in the Oriental world-conception is the consciousness that when one rightly lives into the thought, one not only has something in oneself, not only thinks, but one becomes at home in the fashioning forces of the world. But it is rigidified, because the Oriental world-conception has neglected to acquire an understanding for the Mystery of Golgotha. To be sure, the Oriental world-conception of which we have yet to speak—is eminently fitted to become at home in the forming forces of thought life, but nevertheless in so doing, it comes into a dying element, into a network of abstract, unliving conceptions. So that one could say: whereas the right way is to experience the life of the thought-world, the Oriental world-conception becomes at home in a reflection of the life of thought. One should become at home in the thought-world as if one were transposing oneself into a living being; but there is a difference between a living being and a reproduction of a living being, let us say a paper mache copy. The oriental world-conception, whether Brahmanism, Buddhism, the Chinese and Japanese religions, does not become at home in the living being, but in something which may be described as a copy of the thought-world, which is related to the living thought-world, as the papier-mache organism is related to the living organism.

This then is the difficulty, as well in the West as in the East. One is less understood in the West, since in general not much consciousness exists there of these living, forming forces of thought; in the East one is not understood aright, since there people have not a genuine consciousness of the living nature of thought, but only of the dead reproduction, of the stiff, abstract weaving of thoughts.

Now you must be clear whence all that I have just analysed actually comes. You will all remember the account of the Moon evolution given in my book Occult Science. Man in his own evolution has taken his proper share in all that has taken place as Saturn, Sun and Moon evolutions, and he then further shares in what comes about as Earth evolution. When you call to mind the Moon evolution as described in my Occult Science you find that during that time the separation of the moon planet from the sun took place; that it proceeded for the first time in a distinct, definite way. Thus such a separation actually took place. We can say that whereas before there had been a kind of interconnected condition of the planetary world, at the separation of the moon from the sun there now took their course side by side the Moon evolution and the Sun evolution. This separate state was of great significance, as you can gather from Occult Science. Man as he now is could not have arisen if this separation had not taken place. But on the other hand, with every such event is intimately connected the emergence of a certain one-sidedness. It came about that certain beings of the Hierarchy of the Angeloi, who were at the human stage during the Moon evolution, at that time rebelled against, showed themselves in antipathy to, uniting again with the Sun. Thus the Moon broke away, and at the later reunion with the Sun they refused to take this step, and be reunited with the Sun.

All Luciferic staying behind rests upon an unwillingness to take part in later phases of evolution. And hence, on the one hand, the Luciferic element originated in the fact that certain beings from the Hierarchy of the Angeloi, who were human at that time, were not willing to reunite with the Sun in the last part of the Old Moon time. To be sure, they were obliged to descend again, but in their feeling, in their inner nature, they preserved a longing for the Moon existence. They were out of place, they were not at home in the existing evolution; they felt themselves to be actually Moon-beings. Their remaining behind consisted in this. The host of Luciferic beings who then in their further development descended upon our Earth naturally contained in their ranks this kind of being. They also live in us in the manner I have indicated in one of the last lectures. And it is they who will not let the consciousness arise, in our Western thinking, that thinking is inwardly alive. They want to keep it of a Moon-nature, cut off from the inner life element that is connected with the Sun, they want to keep it in the condition of separation. And their activity produces the result that man does not get a conscious feeling: thinking is connected with inner fashioning, but feels instead that thinking is only connected with the external, precisely with that which is separated. Thus in respect of thinking they evoke a feeling that it can only reproduce the external; that one cannot grasp the inner formative living element with it, but can only grasp the external. Thus they falsify our thinking.

It was in fact the karma of Western humanity to make acquaintance with these spirits, who falsify thinking in this manner, alter it, externalise it, who endeavour to give it the stamp of only being of service in reproducing outer things and not grasping the inner living element. It was apportioned to the karma of the Oriental peoples to be preserved from this kind of Luciferic element. Hence they retained more the consciousness that in thinking one must seek for the inwardly forming, shaping of the human being, for what unites him inwardly with the living thought-world of the universe. It was allotted to the Greeks to form the transition between the one and the other.

Since the Orientals have made little acquaintance with that Luciferic element I have just characterised, they have no real idea that one can also come into connection with the living element of thinking about the external. What they get hold of in this connection always seems made of paper mache they have little understanding of applying thinking to outer things. Lucifer must of course cooperate in the activity which I have just described, by which man feels the inclination to meditate on the outer world. But then it is like the swing of the pendulum to one side, man goes too far in this activity—towards the external. That is the common peculiarity of all life; it swings out sometimes to the one side, sometimes to the other. There must be the swinging out, but one must find the way back from the one to the other, from the Oriental to the Occidental. The Greeks were to find the transition from Oriental to Occidental. The Oriental would have fallen completely into rigid abstractions—has, indeed, partly done so, abstractions which are pleasing to many people—if Greece had not influenced the world. If we base our judgment simply on what we have now considered, we shall find in Greece the tendency to make thoughts inwardly formative and alive.

Now if you examine both Greek literature and Grecian art you will everywhere find how the Greek strove to produce the human form from his own inner experiencing; this is so in sculpture as well as in poetry, in fact in philosophy too. If you acquaint yourself with the manner in which Plato still sought, not to found an abstract philosophy, but to collect a group of men who talk with one another and exchange their views, so that in Plato we find no world-concept (we have only discussions) but men who converse, in whom thought works humanly, thoughts externalise, you will find this corroborated. Thus even in philosophy we do not have the thought expressing itself so abstractly, but it clothes itself as it were in the human being representing it.

When in this way one sees Socrates converse, one cannot speak of Socrates on the one hand and of a Socratic world-conception on the other. It is a unity, one complete whole. One could not imagine in ancient Greece that someone—let us say, like a modern philosopher—came forward who had founded an abstract philosophy, and who placed himself before people and said: this is not the correct philosophy. That would have been impossible—it would only be possible in the case of a modern philosopher, (for this rests secretly in the mind of them each). The Greek Plato, however, depicts Socrates as the embodied world-conception, and one must imagine that the thoughts have no desire to be expressed by Socrates merely to impart knowledge of the world, but that they go about in the figure of Socrates and are related to people in the same way as he is. And to pour, as it were, this element of making thought human into the external form and figure, constitutes the greatness in the works of Homer and Sophocles, and in all the figures of sculpture and poetry which Greece has created. The reason why the sculptured gods of Grecian statuary are so human is that what I have just expressed was poured into them. This is at the same time a proof of how humanity's evolution in a spiritual respect strove as it were to grasp the living element of man from the thought-element of the cosmos and then to give it form. Hence the Grecian works of art appear to us (to Goethe they appeared so in the most eminent sense) as something which of its kind is hardly to be enhanced, to be brought to greater perfection, because all that was left of the ancient revelation of actively working and weaving thoughts had been gathered up and poured into the form. It was like a striving to draw together into the human form all that could be found as thoughts passing from within outwards, and this became in Greece philosophy, art, sculpture. (See Diagram (a) p.8a)

A more modern age has another mission, the present time has an entirely different task. We now have the task of giving back to the universe that which there is in man. (Diagram (b)). The whole pre-Grecian evolution led to man's taking from the universe all that he could discover of the living element of the human form in order to epitomise it. That is the unending greatness of Greek art—that the whole preceding world is actually epitomised and given form in it. Now we have the task reversed—the human being, who has been immeasurably deepened through the Mystery of Golgotha, who has been inwardly seized in his cosmic significance, is now to be given back again to the universe.

You must, however, inscribe in your souls that the Greeks had not, of course, the Christian view of the Mystery of Golgotha; for them everything flowed together out of the cosmic wisdom:

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And now picture the immense, the immeasurable advance in the evolution of humanity when the Being who had formerly worked from the cosmos and who could only be known from the cosmos, and whom man could express in the earthly stage in the element of Form:—when this Being passed out of the cosmos into the earth, became man, and lives on in human evolution.

That which was sought out in the cosmos in pre-Grecian times now came into the earth, and that which had been poured out into form, was now itself in human evolution. (c) Naturally (I have therefore indicated it with dots) it is not yet rightly known—it is not yet rightly experienced, but it lives in man, and men have the task of giving it back gradually to the cosmos. We can picture this quite concretely, this giving back to the cosmos of what we have received through Christ. We must only not struggle against this giving back. One can really cling closely to the wonderful words: ‘I am with you all the days until the end of the Earth period.’

This means: what Christ has to reveal to us is not exhausted with what stands in the Gospel. He is not among us as one who is dead, who once upon a time permitted to be poured into the Gospels what he wished to bring upon earth, but he is in earthly evolution as a living Being. We can work through to him with our souls, and he then reveals himself to us as he revealed himself to the Evangelists. The gospel is therefore not something that was once there and then came to an end, the gospel is a continuous revelation. One stands as it were ever confronting the Christ, and looking up to Him, one waits again for revelation.

Assuredly he—whoever he may have been—who said: ‘I should still have much to write but all the books in the world could not contain it’—assuredly he, John, was entirely right. For if he had written all that he could write, he would have had to write all that would gradually in the course of human evolution result from the Christ event. He wished to indicate: Wait! Only wait! What all the books in the world could not contain will come to pass. We have heard the Christ, but our descendants will also hear Him, and so we continuously, perpetually, receive the Christ revelation. To receive the Christ revelation means: to acquire light upon the world from Him. And we must give back the truths to the cosmos from the centre of our heart and soul.

Hence we may understand as living Christ-revelation what we have received as Spiritual Science. He it is who tells us how the earth has originated, the nature of the human being, what conditions the earth passed through before it became earth. All that we have as cosmology, and give back to the universe, all this is revealed to us by Him. It is the continuous revelation of Christ to feel such a mood as this: that one receives the cosmos from the Christ in an inward spiritual way, drawn together as it were, and as one has received it to relate it to the world with understanding, so that one no longer looks up to the moon and stares at it as a great skittles-ball with which mechanical forces have moved skittles in the cosmos and which from these irregularities has acquired wrinkles, and so on—but recognises what the moon indicates, how it is connected with the Christ-nature and the Jahve-nature. It is a continuous revelation of the Christ to allot again to the outer world what we have received from Him. It is at first a process of knowledge. It begins with an intellectual process, later it will be other processes. Processes of inner feeling will result which arise from ourselves and pour themselves into the cosmos, such processes as these will arise.

But you gather something else from what I have just explained. When you observe this motion- (Diagram (a) p.10a) where one has gathered up out of the cosmos, as it were, the component parts of the human being, which have in the Greek world-concepts, in Greek art, then flowed together to the whole human being, then you will understand: In Greece the evolution of humanity strove towards the plastic form, sculptured-form, and what they have reached in such form, we cannot as a matter of fact succeed in copying. If we imitate it nothing true or genuine results. That is therefore a certain apex in human evolution. One can in fact say this stream of humanity strives in Greece in sculpture towards a concentration of the entire human evolution preceding Greece.

When, on the contrary, one takes what has to happen here (b) it is what could be called a distribution of the component parts of man into the cosmos. You can follow this in its details. We assign our physical body to Saturn, the etheric body to the Sun, the astral body to the Moon, our Ego-organisation to the Earth. We really distribute man into the universe, and it can be said that the whole construction of Spiritual Science is based upon a distribution, a bringing again into movement, of what is concentrated in the human being. The fundamental key of this new world-conception (diagram (b)) is a musical one; of the old world (a) is a plastic one. The fundamental key of the new age is truly musical, the world will become more and more musical. And to know how man is rightly placed in the direction towards which human evolution is striving, means to know that we must strive towards a musical element, that we dare not recapitulate the old plastic element, but must strive towards a musical one.

I have frequently mentioned that on an important site in our Building there will be set up the figure of archetypal man, which one can also speak of as the Christ, and which will have Lucifer on the one side and Ahriman on the other. What is concentrated in the Christ we take out and distribute again in Lucifer and Ahriman, in so far as it is to be distributed. What was welded together plastically in the one figure we make musical, inasmuch as we make it a kind of melody: Christus-Lucifer-Ahriman.

Our Building is really formed on this principle. Our whole Building bears the special imprint in it: to bring plastic forms into musical movement. That is its fundamental character. If you do not forget that, in mentioning something like this, one is never to be arrogant, but to remain properly humble, and if you remember that in all that concerns our work on this Building only the first most imperfect steps have been taken, you will not misunderstand what is meant when I speak about it. It is of course not meant that anything at all of what floats before us as distant ideal is also only attained in the farthest future; but a beginning can be sought in that direction,—this one can say. More shall not be said than, that a beginning is desired.

But when you compare this beginning with that which has undergone a certain completion in Greece, with the infinite perfection of the plastic principle in, for instance, the Greek you find polaric difference. In Greece everything strives for form. An Acropolis figure of Athena, or in the architecture of the Acropolis, or a Greek Temple, they stand there in order to remain eternally rigid in this form, in order to preserve for man a picture of what beauty in form can be.

Such a work as our Building, even when one day it becomes more perfect, will always stand there in such a way that one must actually say: this Building always stimulates one to overcome it as such, in order to come out through its form into the infinite. These columns and in particular the forms connected with the columns, and even what is painted and moulded, is all there in order, so to say, to break through the walls, in order to protest against the walls standing there and in order to dissolve the forms, dissolve them into a sort of etheric eye, so that they may lead one out into the far spaces of the Cosmic thought-world.

One will experience this building in the right way if one has the feeling in observing it that it dissolves, it overcomes its own boundaries; all that forms walls really wants to escape into cosmic distances. Then one has the right feeling. With a Greek temple one feels as if, one would like best to be united for ever with what is firmly enclosed by the walls and with what can only come in through the walls. Here, with our Building, one will particularly feel: If only these walls were not so tiresomely there—for wherever they stand they really want to be broken through, and lead out further into world of the cosmos. This is indeed how this Building should be formed, according to the tasks of our age, really out of the tasks of our age.

Since we have not only spoken for years, my dear friends, on the subjects of Spiritual Science, but have discussed with one another the right attitude of mind towards what is brought to expression through Spiritual Science, it can also be understood that when something in the world is criticised, one does not mean it at all as absolute depreciation, absolute blame, but that one uses phrases of apparent condemnation in order to characterise facts in the right connection.

When, therefore, one reproaches a world-historical personality, this does not imply that one would like to declare at the same time one's desire—at least in the criticism of this person—to be an executioner who cuts off his head—figuratively spoken—by expressing a judgment. This is the case with modern critics, but not with someone imbued with the attitude of mind of Spiritual Science. Please also take what I have now to say in the sense indicated through these words.

An incision had at some time to be made in mankind's evolution; it had at some time to be said: This is now the end of all that has been handed down from old times to the present: something new must being (diagram Page 109 (a)). This incision was not made all at once, it was in fact made in various stages, but it meets us in history quite clearly. Take, for instance, such an historical personality as the Roman Emperor Augustus, whose rule in Rome coincided with the birth of the current which we trace from the Mystery of Golgotha. It is very difficult today to make people fully clear wherein lay the quite essentially new element which entered Western evolution through the Emperor Augustus, as compared with what had already existed in Western civilisation till then, under the influence of the Roman Republic. One must in fact make use of concepts to which people are little accustomed today, if one wishes to analyse something of this sort. When one reads history books presenting the time of the Roman Republic as far as the Empire, one has the feeling that the historians wrote as if they imagined that the Roman Consuls and Roman Tribunes acted more or less in the manner of a President of a modern republic. Not much difference prevails whether Niebuhr or Mommsen speaks of the Roman Republic or of a modern republic, because nowadays people see everything through the spectacles of what they see directly in their own environment. People cannot imagine that what a man in earlier times felt and thought, felt too as regards public life, was something essentially different from what the present-day man feels. It was however radically different, and one does not really understand the age of the Roman Republic if one does not furnish oneself with a certain idea which was active in the conception of the old republican Roman, and which he took over into the age which is called the Roman Empire.

The ancient kings, from Romulus to Tarquinius Superbus, were to the ancient Romans actual beings, who were intimately connected with the divine, with the divinely spiritual world rulership. And the ancient Roman of the time of the kings could not grasp the significance of his kings otherwise than by thinking: In all that takes place there is something of the nature of what happened in the time of Numa Pompilius, who visited the nymph Egeria in order to know how he should act. From the gods, or from spirit-land one received the inspirations for what had to be done upon earth. That was a living consciousness. The kings were the bridges between what happened on earth and what the gods out of the spiritual world wished to come about.

Thus a feeling extended over public life which was derived from the old world conception—namely, that what a man does in the world is connected with what forms him from the cosmos, so that currents continually stream in from the cosmos. Nor was this idea confined to the government of mankind. Think of Plato: he did not chisel things out in his soul as ideas, but received them as outflow of the divine being. So too in ancient Rome they did not say to themselves: One man rules other men, but they said: The gods rule men, and he who in human form is governing, is only the vessel into which the impulses of the gods flow. This feeling lasted into the time of the Roman Republic when it was related to the Consular office. The Consular dignity in ancient times was not that genuine so-called bourgeois-element, as it were, which a state- government increasingly feels itself to be today, but the Romans really had the thought, the feeling, the living experience: Only he can be Consul whose senses are still open to receive what the gods wish to let flow into human evolution.

As the Republic went on and great discrepancies and quarrels arose, it was less and less possible to hold such sentiments, and this finally led to the end of the Roman Republic. The matter stood somewhat thus: People thought to themselves: if the Republic is said to have a significance in the world, the Consuls must be divinely inspired men, they must bring down what comes from the gods. But if one looks at the later Consuls of the Republic one can say to oneself: The gentlemen are no longer the proper instruments for the gods. And with this is linked the fact that it was no longer possible to have such a vital feeling for the significance of the Republic. The development of such a feeling lay of course behind men's ordinary consciousness. It lay very deep in the subconscious, and was only present in the consciousness of the so-called initiates. The initiates were fully cognisant of these things. Whoever therefore in the later Roman Republic was no ordinary materialistically thinking average citizen said to himself: 'Oh, this Consul, he doesn't please me—he's certainly not a divine instrument!' The initiate would never have admitted that, he would have said: He is, nevertheless, a divine instrument—Only ... with advancing evolution this divine inspiration could enter mankind less and less. Human evolution took on such a form that the divine could enter less and less, and so it came about that when an initiate, a real initiate appeared who saw through all this, he would have to say to himself: We cannot go on any further like this! We must now call upon another divine element which is more withdrawn from man. Men had developed outwardly, morally, etc., in such a way that one could no longer have confidence in those who were Consuls. One could not be sure that where the man's own development was in opposition to the divine, that the divine still entered. Hence the decision was reached to draw down, as it were, the instreaming of the divine into a sphere which was more withdrawn from men. Augustus, who was an initiate to a certain degree in these mysteries, was well aware of this. Therefore it was his endeavour to withdraw the divine world rulership from what men had hitherto, and to work in the direction of introducing the principle of heredity in the appointment to the office of Consul. He was anxious that the Consuls should no longer be chosen as they had been up to then, but that the office should be transmitted through the blood, so that what the Gods willed might be transmitted in this way. The continuance of the divine element in man was pressed down to a stage lying beneath the threshold of consciousness because men had reached a stage where they were no longer willing to accept the divine. You only arrive at a real understanding of this extraordinarily remarkable figure of Augustus, if you assume that he was fully conscious of these things, and that out of full consciousness, under the influence of the Athenian initiates in particular who came to him, he did all the things that are recorded of him. His limitation only lay in the fact that he could reach no understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha, that he only saw how human beings come down into matter, but could not conceive how the divine element should take anchor in the material of the blood. He had no understanding of the fact that something entirely new had now arisen in the Mystery of Golgotha. He was in a high sense an initiate of the old Mysteries, but he had no understanding for what was then emerging in the human race as a new element.

The point is, however, that what Augustus had accomplished was an impossibility. The divine cannot anchor in the pure material of the blood in earthly evolution, unless this earthly evolution is to fall into the Luciferic. Men would never be able to evolve if they could only do so as the blood willed, that is, developing from generation to generation what was already there before. However, something infinitely significant is connected with the accomplishment of this fact. You must remember that in early times when the ancient Mysteries were in force people possessed in the Mysteries a constant and powerfully active spiritual element, although that cannot be significant to us in the same way today. They knew, nevertheless, of the spiritual worlds; they came quite substantially into the human mind. And on the other hand people ceased in the time of Augustus to know anything of the spiritual element of the world; they no longer knew of it in consequence of man's necessary evolution. The Augustus-initiation actually consisted in his knowledge that men would become less and less fitted to take in the Spiritual element in the old way. There is an immense tragedy in what was taking place round the figure of Augustus. The ancient Mysteries were still in existence at that time, but the feeling continually arose: Something is not right in these ancient Mysteries. What was received from them was of immeasurable significance, a sublime spiritual knowledge. But it was also felt that something of immeasurable significance was approaching; the Mystery of Golgotha, which cannot be grasped with the old Mystery knowledge, with which the old Mystery knowledge was not in keeping. What could, however, be known to men through the Mystery of Golgotha itself was still very little. As a matter of fact even with our spiritual science we are today only at the beginning of understanding what has flowed into humanity with the Mystery of Golgotha. Thus there was something like a breaking away from the old elements, and we can understand that more and more there were men who said: We can do nothing with what comes to us from the Mystery of Golgotha. These were men who stood at a certain spiritual eminence in the old sense, the sense of the pre-Christian, the pre-Golgotha time.

Such men said to themselves: Yes, we have been told of one, Christus, who has spread certain teachings. They did not yet feel the deeper nature of these teachings, but what they heard of them seemed to be like warmed-up ancient wisdom. It was told them that some person had been condemned, had died on the cross, had taught this and that. This generally seemed to them false and deceptive, whereas the ancient wisdom which was handed down to them seemed enormously grand and splendid. Out of this atmosphere we can understand Julian the Apostate, whose entire mood can be understood in this way. More and more, individuals came forward who said: That which is given by the old wisdom, the way it explains the cosmos, cannot be united with that which blossoms, as if from a new centre, through the Mystery of Golgotha.—One of the individuals who felt this way was the sixth century Byzantine emperor Justinian (who lived from 527–565,¹ whose actions are to be understood from exactly this viewpoint. One must understand that he felt, through the whole manner in which he grew into his time, that something new was in the world ... at the same time there came into this new world that which was handed down from the old time. We will consider just three of these things which were thus handed down.

For a long time (five or six centuries) Rome had been ruled by emperors: The rank of consul, however, had existed for only a short time, and, like a shadow of the old times, these consuls were elected. If one looked at this election of consuls with the eyes of Justinian, one saw something which no longer made any sense, which had true meaning in the time of the Roman Republic, but was now without meaning: therefore he abolished the rank of consul. That was the first thing.

The second was that the Athenian-Greek schools were still in existence; in these was taught the old mystery-wisdom, which contained a much greater store of wisdom than that which was then being received under the influence of the Mystery of Golgotha. But this old mystery-wisdom contained nothing about the Mystery of Golgotha. For that reason Justinian closed the old Greek Philosophers' Schools.

Origenes, the Church Teacher, was well versed in what was connected with the Mystery of Golgotha, even though he still stood in the old wisdom, although not as strict initiate, yet as one having knowledge to a high degree. In his world-concept he had amalgamated the Christ-Event with the World-conception of the ancient, wisdom, he sought through this. to understand the Christ Event. That is just the interesting thing in the world concept of Origenes, that he was one of those who especially sought to grasp the Mystery of Golgotha in the sense of the old mystery wisdom. And the tragedy is that Origenes was condemned by the Catholic Church.

Augustus was the first stage. (see the lined diagram p.10a) Justinian in this sense was the second stage. Thus the earlier age is divided from the newer age, which- as regards the West—had no longer understanding for the Mystery wisdom. This wisdom had still lived on in the Grecian schools of philosophy, and had gradually to work towards the growth and prosperity of that current in mankind which proceeded from the Mystery of Golgotha. So it came about that the newer humanity, with the condemning of Origenes, with the closing of the Greek schools of philosophy, lost an infinite amount of the old spiritual treasure of wisdom. The later centuries of the Middle Ages worked for the most part with Aristotle, who sought to encompass the ancient wisdom through human intellect. Plato still received it from the ancient mysteries, Aristotle—he is, to be sure, infinitely deeper than modern philosophers—did not regard wisdom as a treasure of the Mysteries; he wished to grasp it with the human understanding. Thus what prevailed at that time in a noted degree was a thrusting back of the old Mystery Wisdom.

All this is connected with the perfecting in the new age of the condition which I described at the beginning of today's lecture. Had not the Grecian schools of philosophy been closed we should have possessed the living Plato, not that dead Plato whom the Renaissance produced, not the Platonism of modern times, which is a ghastly misconception of ^{1missing text}

• 1. According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Justinian lived from 482–565, and ruled from 527–565.

What are our aims when we gather for spiritual-scientific studies? Many ask this question because those who are connected with spiritual science devote a part of their forces to considerations that for others actually do not come into question today. Truly, we consider realms that for the majority of people simply do not exist. Yet the gathering for such work is not merely the pursuit of an “ideal” in the sense of other ideals that are prevalent in our time.

The spiritual-scientific “ideal” is different in that it seeks to answer the call, which in our time is perhaps only heard faintly and by a few but which will become more and more audible in the world. Today there are some who are able to say clearly that spiritual science is a necessity and others do so out of indeterminate feeling. But out of what depths of the soul does this arise? Surely the one follows more or less what may be termed a spiritual instinct, an urge, that he is quite unable to bring to full consciousness. Yet such an urge corresponds to a rightly directed will. This may be observed when we investigate the soul life.

It is my intention on this occasion not to unfold general theories but to deal with actual instances. This is especially necessary if we wish to answer the above question.

The seer who is able to look into the spiritual worlds also gradually gains an insight into the life between death and rebirth. This existence takes place in spiritual realms that are continually surrounding us, to which we belong with the best part of our soul life. Man lives purely in the spiritual world when he has gone through the gate of death and has laid aside his physical body. As long as he makes use of the physical senses and the intellect, the spiritual world remains hidden from him. The seer, however, can follow the different stages of life between death and rebirth.

The basic questions, which are important in relation to our ideals, do in fact stem from a consideration of life between death and a new birth. One might easily suppose that that life has nothing whatever to do with our life here on the physical plane, but in a deeper sense they are closely related. We become especially aware of this when we look at a soul that has gone through the gate of death. Let us take an actual instance and consider the relationship of such a soul to those who are still in a physical body.

A man went through the gate of death and left his wife and children behind. After a certain period had elapsed, it was possible for one able to look into the spiritual worlds to find this soul and a painful existence was revealed. The soul lamented the loss of wife and children. This expressed itself approximately in the following words, but we should remember that the earthly words used to express what a soul seeks to convey are only an approximation and are similar to a garment. One naturally cannot convey the language of the dead by means of earthly words. It is different and one has to translate it.

So this soul lamented, “I used to live with those whom I have left behind. Previously when I dwelt in a physical body and would come home in the evening after I had done my work, I would join them, and what shone from their souls was like the light of the sun. Everything that I experienced in their company used to alleviate the burden of physical existence. I was then quite unable to imagine life in the physical world without my wife and children. I am able to recall our life together as it used to be in every detail. But when I awoke in the spiritual world after death, I was unable to find my wife and children. For me they are not there. Only memories remain. I know that they are below on the earth, but their soul life as it is taking place in thinking, feeling and willing from morning until night is as if extinguished. I am unable to find my loved ones however hard I try.”

This is a genuine experience, and it is shared by many souls who cross the gate of death in our present time. It was not always so in the evolution of humanity. In ancient times it was different. Men crossed the threshold of death in another way but they also were not in their physical bodies on earth as they are today.

The difference lies in the fact that in earlier times man still possessed a spiritual heritage by means of which he was linked to the spiritual world. The farther back we go in ancient periods when souls who are incarnate today were already present on the earth, the more we discover that man then was rightly connected to the spiritual world. Man has lost increasingly the old spiritual inheritance, and today we live in a period when there is a radical change in the evolution of humanity.

Let us clarify this point before embarking on the profound facts previously described. In our time there are people who know little more about the starry heavens, for instance, than what is common knowledge today. True, there are still some who go out on a clear night and delight in the grandeur and glory of the starry heavens, but such people are in a minority. There are more and more people who are unable to distinguish between a planet and a fixed starry but that is not the most important thing. Even when people do go out to look up to the heavens, they only see stars externally in their physical appearance. This was not the case in ancient times. It was not so for souls who are here today but who in ancient times dwelt in other bodies. The same souls who now see only the physical stars formerly beheld, when they contemplated the starry heavens, not so much the physical light of the stars but what was spiritually connected with them. Spiritual beings are connected with all the stars. What we term the higher hierarchies in spiritual science today were seen clairvoyantly by the souls of primeval times—by all of you here and by all the people outside. Man then did not merely see the physical world but he also beheld the spiritual world. It would have been sheer foolishness in those times to deny the spiritual world, as much as if today a person would deny the existence of roses and lilies. The spiritual world could not be denied because it was perceived. That man has lost the immediate connection with the spiritual world marks, in a certain sense, a step forward. In its place he has gained a greater degree of independence and freedom.

In former times the human soul lived in an external spiritual world. This realm gradually has been lost but the loss has to be replaced from within. Therefore, today the soul that relies merely on the perception of the outer world feels barren and empty. How many souls are there in our time who go about in the world totally oblivious of the fact that all space is filled by the presence of spiritual beings! One nevertheless can gain an understanding of the content of the spiritual by beholding the external world only. This is possible by penetrating into the depth of the soul. Many people, however, are not willing to do so, including the family of whom I spoke to your earlier.

The man in question dwelt in the spiritual world, in the realm in which we live between death and rebirth. He longed to be reunited with the souls with whom he had lived on earth, but for him they were not existent. Why? Because the souls who remained behind on the earth did not seek a spiritual content, because they were only able to manifest their presence by way of a physical body. He longed to know something of these souls who formerly had been to him as rays of sunshine, and the seer who was acquainted with him before he passed through the gate of death was not even able to comfort him in any special way. For comfort such as the following would have been fundamentally dishonest. “The souls that are extinguished for you will join you later if you have but the patience to wait. Then you will have them again as they were on earth.” That would not have been quite true, because these souls were far removed from any form of penetration into spiritual life. They, too, after they have gone through the gate of death will have a fearful longing to be united with those whom they knew on earth. Souls who are devoid of any form of spiritual life encounter many obstacles.

We have reached the stage in the cycle of evolution of mankind when souls dwelling in a physical body must learn the language of the spirit. We must acquire a knowledge of higher worlds here. Many souls in our time despise a knowledge that may be termed theosophy in the literal sense of the word. This is truly the language that we must be able to speak after death if we wish to be rightly there for the spiritual world. After death we cannot make up for what we should have learned as the language of theosophy or spiritual science.

If the man I referred to had occupied himself with spiritual science together with his family, he would have had quite other experiences, another form of consciousness after death. In fact, he would have known that souls can be experienced there. Even is he was separated from them by a gulf they would one day join him. They would be able to find each other because they shared a common spiritual language. Otherwise he would not be reunited with them as one rightly should be after death. He would only encounter them as one meets people on earth who are dumb, who want to convey something but are quite incapable of doing so.

Truly it must be admitted that such facts are uncomfortable, and many of our contemporaries do not find them to their liking, but it is the truth that matters, not whether they sound pleasant or not.

In earlier periods of human evolution souls received much because they were still in their infancy and accepted religious traditions and ideas about the spiritual world in a childlike manner. As a result, they possessed a language for the spiritual life and were able to live in communion with spiritual beings. Now man is called upon, particularly in our age, to become ever more independent in his relation to spiritual life.

Spiritual science has not come into the world in an arbitrary way. It cannot be propagated by the means usually available and is commonly the practice of societies that seek to spread their particular aims.

Those who feel called upon to carry spiritual ideas into our contemporary cultural life have experienced the painful cry of souls after death who are unable to find the ones they have left behind because spiritually they are empty. The cry of the dead is the call that brings forth the ideal of spiritual science.

One who is able to experience by entering into the spiritual world the agony, the longing, the renunciation, but also the hopelessness that fills the souls who have passed through the gate of death, knows the reason for our gatherings. He also knows that he cannot do otherwise than to represent this spiritual life. This is a matter of the greatest seriousness and it is called forth by the deepest longing of humanity.

Today there are souls who feel, even if out of the deepest recesses of their instincts that they wish to experience something of the spiritual world! They are the pioneers of a future when souls will come who will consider it important to cultivate a spiritual life founded on the cognition of the spiritual worlds. Spiritual life must be cultivated on earth in the sense of the new spiritual science, because otherwise humanity will increasingly enter into the other world spiritually dumb, lacking the capacity to open itself rightly.

It is also a fallacy to believe that we can wait until we have crossed the threshold of death to experience something of a spiritual nature over there. In order to experience anything of this kind one must have attained the faculty to perceive. But this faculty cannot be developed after death unless one has first acquired it here on earth. We do not live in vain in the material world! It is not for nothing that our souls descend to the physical world. They descend so that we may acquire what actually can only be acquired here, namely, spiritual cognition.

We cannot regard the earth as a mere vale of despair into which our souls are transposed, so to speak. We should consider the earth as a place by means of which we can acquire the possibility of developing spiritually. This is the truth of it.

If we question the seer further regarding the nature of life after death, he will reply that it is quite different from the course of life on earth. Here we travel across the world; we see the heavenly vault spread out above us, the sun that is shining. We look out and see the mountains, the lakes, the creatures of the various kingdoms of nature. We go through the world and carry our thoughts, sensations, passions, desires within us. Then we pass through the gate of death, but here things are different. For those unfamiliar with spiritual scientific observations, it all appears most paradoxical. What Schopenhauer said is correct, that “poor truth” must bear the fact that it is paradoxical.

The thoughts and mental images that we regard as belonging to an inner realm appear to us after death as our external world. After death all our thoughts and mental representations appear as a mighty panorama before the soul. People who go through life thoughtlessly travel through the world between death and rebirth in such a way that what should be experienced as filled with wisdom and thought content appears to them as empty and barren. Only they feel filled with a content between death and a new birth who have acquired the faculty to behold the thoughts spread out in the starry realms. One acquires this faculty between birth and death by evolving a thought content within the soul.

If we have not filled our soul here on earth with what the physical senses can give us, it is as if we were to journey along the path from death to rebirth like one who has no ears and therefore cannot hear a sound, like the one who has no eyes and cannot perceive a single color. The sun in the heavens illuminates everything, but when it sets the surroundings, disappear from our view. Likewise, things that are external in life appear after death as an inner world.

Let us consider what is yet another real experience to the seer. When we contemplate people who live between death and rebirth and seek to translate into our language what torments them, they tell us the following. “Something lives in me that causes me to suffer. It rises up out of my own self. It is akin to a headache in the physical world, except that the pain is experienced inwardly. I am myself the one who causes the pain.” A human being after death may complain of much inner pain, inner suffering.

Now if the seer traces the origin of the inner suffering that strikes souls after death, he discovers that it comes from the way of life of these people here on earth. Suppose a person has felt a quite unjustifiable loathing for a fellow human being. Then the one who hated experiences inner pain after death, and he now suffers inwardly what he has inflicted on the other.

Whereas our thinking enables us to behold an outer world after death, so what we experience on earth as our external moral world, as the feeling relationships to other people, becomes our inner world after death. Indeed, it sounds grotesque and yet it is true that just as here we can feel a pain in our lungs, our stomach or our head, so after death a moral injustice can hurt. What is inner here is external there, and what is external here is inner there. We have reached the stage in the development of humanity when much can be experienced only after death.

A person who is not prepared to admit the reality of karma, or repeated earth lives, can never really accept the fact that a destiny belongs to him. How does a person go through the world? One person does this to him, the other that; he likes the one, dislikes the other. He does not know that he himself is the cause of what comes to meet him, of the painful experience inflicted by another person. This does not occur to him, for otherwise he would feel, “You have brought it on yourself!”

If during one's lifetime one is able to entertain such thoughts, then one at least will have a feeling as to the origin of the suffering one has to endure after death.

To know about karma in life between death and rebirth alleviates the pain, for otherwise the agonizing question as to why one has to suffer remains unanswered. In our time we have to begin to be aware of such things for without knowledge of them the evolution of humanity will not be able to continue.

Another instance is revealed to the seer. There are people who, between death and rebirth, are made to fulfill most unpleasant tasks. We should not imagine that we have nothing to do between death and a new birth. We have to accomplish the move varied tasks according to our individual capabilities. The seer finds, for instance, that there are souls who are forced to serve a being such as Ahriman after death.

As soon as we enter the realm beyond the physical, Ahriman appears quite clearly to us as a special being. Everything that has been portrayed as the domain of Ahriman and Lucifer in the drama, The Guardian of the Threshold, is real. Ahriman has a number of tasks to perform. The seer discovers souls who are appointed in the realm of Ahriman and have to serve that being. Why have they been condemned to serve Ahriman? The seer investigates how such people lived between birth and death, considers the principal characteristics of such souls and discovers that they all suffered from one common evil, the love of ease. Love of ease and comfort are among the most widespread characteristics of contemporary humanity.

If we should inquire the reason that most people fail to do something, the answer invariably is, love of ease! Whether we turn our attention to the most important things of life or to mere trifles, love of ease permeates them all. To hold onto the old, not being able to shake it off, is a form of ease. In this respect people are not as bad as one is inclined to believe. It was not out of bad will that Giordano Bruno and Savanarola were burned at the stake or that Galileo was maltreated as he was. It is also not out of badness that great spirits are not appreciated during their lifetime, but rather out of love of ease! A long time has to elapse before people are able to think and feel along new lines, and it is only because of a love of ease! Love of ease and comfort are widespread characteristics, and it makes it possible to be enlisted after death into the ranks of Ahriman, for Ahriman, apart from his other functions, is the spirit of obstacles. Wherever obstacles arise Ahriman is master. He applies the brakes to life and to human beings.

Those who are subject to love of ease on earth will become agents to the slowing down process of everything that comes into the world from the super-sensible. So love of ease fetters human souls between death and rebirth to spirits who, under Ahriman, are compelled to serve the powers of opposition and hindrance.

In many people we find a propensity that in everyday life we denote as an immoral characteristic, and that is lack of conscience. In the voice of conscience we have a wonderful regulator for the soul life. A lack of conscience, the inability to listen to the warning voice of conscience, delivers us to yet other powers between the period of death and a new birth. The seer discovers souls who have become the servants of particularly evil spirit-beings after death.

Here on earth illnesses occur, and they arise in a number of different ways. We know, for instance, that in olden times epidemic sicknesses such as plague and cholera swept Europe. Materialistic science is able to point to the external causes but it cannot grasp the inner spiritual origin. Yet everything that happens has a spiritual foundation. If someone should say that science has the task to discover the physical causes of happenings, then one can always add that spiritual science does not exclude the reality of outer causes when they are justified. Spiritual science supplies the spiritual causes to the phenomena.

A person once asked the following question in connection with spiritual causes. “Can we not explain Napoleon's passionate fondness for conducting battles by the fact that when his mother carried him she would often go for walks over battle fields? Is this not a case of physical heredity?” There is something in this, but Napoleon found his way to his mother; he implanted this liking in her.

For instance, someone might say, “Here is a man. Why does he live?” The materialistic might reply, “Because he breathes.” Another might respond, “But I know better. He would not be alive today if I had not pulled him out of the water three months ago!” Yet is this last statement not correct in spite of the first? One all too readily imagines that the findings of natural science are repudiated by spiritual science. Even if it is possible to show that a person owed this or that faculty to his father and grandfather by way of heredity, it is nonetheless true that he himself has created the appropriate conditions.

Thus it is possible to study the causes of illnesses on a purely scientific basis. One can also ask the question quite externally of why has this or that person died young. But this, too, has its source in the spiritual world. In order that illnesses manifest themselves on earth, certain spiritual entities must direct them from the spiritual into the physical world.

The spiritual investigator is confronted by a shattering experience when he turns his spiritual gaze to souls who have died prematurely in the flower of youth, either as a result of illness, misfortune or hardships during their lifetimes. There are many such destinies. The seer beholds a vast expanse of illness and death wholly governed by certain evil spirits who bring disease and death down to the earth. If one now seeks to trace the course of existence of those souls who lacked conscience on earth, one finds that they were forced to become the servants of the evil spirits of death, disease and hindrance who bring about premature deaths and great misfortune. That is the connection.

Life only becomes comprehensible when one considers the total picture, not merely the small segment between birth and death. For this period is again closely related to what took place during the unborn condition, during the prenatal existence in the pure spiritual world. Our whole being is dependent on what occurred previously in the spirit-world. This can be understood most readily if one studies a phenomenon by means of super-sensible cognition that might appear to many as an objection to spiritual investigation as such.

There are people who say, “You seek to trace faculties and destinies of human beings to previous earth lives, but consider the Bernoulli family in whom there were eight mathematicians! Surely that shows clearly that certain faculties are passed from generation to generation by way of heredity.”

If, however, such a phenomenon is carefully studied by means of super-sensible cognition, the following result is reached. Everything that manifests itself on earth in this or that artistic form, that permeates the human being with a sense for the spiritual—and art always does this—has its origin in the super-sensible world. A person who brings artistic gifts into the world does so because of previous earth lives, or by virtue of a special act of grace during the period before birth, before conception, when he lived in a special manner in the realm of the harmony of the spheres. Now he manifests a certain affinity towards that physical body able to provide the faculty he has perceived and thus bring it to expression in earthly life.

No soul would seek to incarnate in a body in such a family where musical gifts are in the hereditary stream unless he had acquired in a previous earth life the very faculties needed for that art, unless he had passed through the period between death and rebirth in order to be reborn in a musical body. For only the most primitive predispositions can be found in the hereditary stream. A good musical ear is inherited. The organs are transformed according to the particular faculties of the soul during the embryonic period or after birth. The first instrument on which man plays is his own organism, and this is truly a most complex instrument. Divine spiritual beings have needed the whole of the Saturn, Sun and Moon periods of evolution in order to fashion this instrument. We come into the world with a wisdom that far exceeds what we are able to acquire later.

Man imagines that he has reached a considerable degree of wisdom when he begins to be able to think. But the wisdom we develop when we begin to think is in fact far smaller in comparison to the great wisdom that we acquired but lost at a particular time. At birth our brain is still soft. The connecting links that go from the brain to the several organs are still undeveloped, and we are endowed with wisdom during childhood in order to “plan-in” the organs, the instrument.

The moment to which we look back as the first occasion on which we were conscious of ourselves marks the time when we lost the faculty to play on our instrument. This ability is much greater in early childhood than later on. A profound wisdom is utilized in order to bring us to the point at which we become this intricate instrument. This fact can permeate us with a deep sense of admiration for what we are as long as we rest within the womb of divine spiritual wisdom. Then we become aware that we actually come into life with a much greater wisdom than is normally realized. Then we can also picture the vastness of the wisdom that surrounds us in our existence that precedes the embryonic stage. This is of the utmost significance, for initiate consciousness perceives that the farther back we go the greater the wisdom and ability of man.

Now let us consider with super-sensible perception the soul of an individual who has become the servant of an evil spirit of disease and death. Such a soul enables us to see how the wisdom of which man is capable has been extinguished, how he has lowered himself. Such a soul offers a terrifying aspect. Once destined to develop the loftiest wisdom, he is now so degraded that he has become the servant of ahrimanic beings! Man has the alternative during an incarnation when he has surrounded himself with a physical body either to receive the spiritual world into himself, to participate in spiritual life, to animate his soul so that after death he experiences the spiritual world around him, or to dull himself. Such souls have dulled themselves because they failed to receive between birth and death what would have enabled them to perceive a spiritual world around them.

Thus we see how individual souls are connected with the spiritual life of the world as a whole. Thus we see ourselves membered in the totality of life on earth. So also we understand the importance of not letting our innate spirit-powers wither, but of cultivating them lest we gradually be obliterated from the world. A person could maintain, however, that he wants to obliterate himself from the surrounding world because to him life is meaningless. To extinguish oneself in this way is not destruction. It merely represents an extinguishing of oneself in relation to the surrounding world. Although one is nevertheless there for oneself. To extinguish oneself in the world means to be condemned to loneliness in the spiritual world. It is as if one lived in utter solitude, cut off, robbed of any means of communication. This is what one achieves if one excludes oneself from the spiritual world.

You may well make use of the following picture. Let it impress itself upon you for it can be considered as a sound basis for meditation.

The more a person advances in the evolution of the world, the freer he becomes. He will live more and more as if on an island and his calls, his understanding must go from island to island. Human beings who seek to partake of the future of the spiritual life of humanity will be able to understand one another, that is, those who live in freedom on other islands. Those, on the other hand, who flee the spiritual life will find themselves on their own individual islands, and when they seek to communicate with those whom they knew previously, they will be unable to do so. The voice that calls will be stifled in them. Each will sense, “Over there on those islands are those whom I know, with whom I am connected.” But nothing will penetrate to him and he will listen but hear nothing.

Spiritual science provides the language that in the future will enable men to gain the possibility to bridge the gap of loneliness and reach an understanding. The utterances that come to us out of occult writings are often more profound than we imagine. When the Mystery of Golgotha took place, humanity received the first proclamation that man needs in order to reach an understanding from one island to the other.

The second proclamation is by way of anthroposophical spiritual science, which seeks to clarify ever more the Christ mystery for the soul of man. The actual words of Christ are indicated in many of his sayings. Among the most profound of them all is, “When two are gathered in my name, I will be among them.” One will learn to understand this Name only when one masters the language of the spirit.

In the early phase of the Christian proclamation one still found it in a naïve manner. In the future only those human souls will know the Christ who recognize Him by way of spiritual science.

To many peoples it may appear ridiculous that spiritual science is termed the spiritual language that humanity needs so that people will not be isolated after death, but will find the possibility of traveling from one island to the other.

The subject with which we have dealt today will give you the reason why we gather in order to cultivate spiritual science. He who works consciously for spiritual science follows that call, that voice. He also follows it who merely feels a longing to hear something about the spiritual world. These voices, these calls come from the spiritual world, and so does the need that is experienced in the spiritual world when those who dwell between death and a new birth are heard. And the voices of the various hierarchical beings can also be heard.

These voices as they sound forth towards us will awaken in our souls what will lead humanity to cultivate increasingly the spiritual life that is also nurtured in our groups. May it also continue to be cultivated faithfully here.

That is the wish that I could like to express to you at the end of these considerations, and it is my deepest hope that it may grow ever stronger, kindling your souls so that the work of spiritual science may take fire and be carried forward out of true anthroposophical warmth.