The Rudolf Steiner Archive

In the last lecture¹ I drew your attention to the necessity, as a point of departure in teaching, for a certain artistic shaping, to engage the whole being, above all, the “will-life.” From the discussions which we have pursued you will see at once why it is important, and you will see, further, that teaching must be managed so as always to take into account that man contains a dead, a dying element, which must be transmuted into something living. When we approach nature and other realms of the world in a merely contemplative attitude, by mental pictures, we are in the line of death; but when we approach nature and other world-beings with our will, we take part in a process of vivification. As educators, then, we shall have the task of continually vivifying dead substance, to protect from total expiration that quality in man which gravitates towards death; even, in a sense, to fertilize it with what vivifying element the will can give rise to. For this reason we must not be afraid of beginning our work with the child with a certain artistic form of teaching.

Now everything which approaches man artistically falls into two streams—the stream of the plastically formative and the stream of the musically poetical. These two domains of art, that of the plastically formative and the musically poetical, are really poles apart, although precisely through their polar antithesis they are well able to be reconciled in a higher synthesis, in a higher unity. You will be familiar, of course, with the fact that this duality of the artistic element comes to light even in racial terms during the course of the evolution of the universe. You need but remember certain writings by Heinrich Heine for this duality to be evident—he showed that what proceeded from the Greek people, or was related to them, that is what grew racially from their inner nature, is pre-eminently disposed towards the plastically formative shaping of the world, whereas all that sprang from the Jewish element is especially disposed to the really musical element in the world. You find, then, these two streams racially distributed, and anyone who is sensitive to these things will very easily be able to trace them in the history of art. Naturally there are continually arising aspirations, justified aspirations, to unite the musical with the plastically formative. But they can only really be completely united in a perfectly developed Eurhythmy, where the musical and the visible can become one—naturally not yet, for we are only at the beginning, but in the aims and ultimate achievement of Eurhythmy. It must, therefore, be remembered that the whole harmonious nature of man contains a plastically formative element towards which the will-impulse in man inclines. How, then, can we properly describe this human talent for becoming plastically creative?

Were we to be purely intellectual beings, were we only to observe the world through conceptions, we should gradually become walking corpses. We should, in actual fact, make the impression here on earth of dying beings. Only through the urge we feel within us to animate plastically-creatively with the imagination what is dying in concepts, do we save ourselves from this dying. You must beware of wanting to reduce everything to unity in an abstract way, if you wish to be true educators. Now you must not say: “We are not to cultivate the death-giving element in man, we are to avoid cultivating the conceptual, the thought-world in the human being.” In the psychic spiritual realm that would result in the same error as if doctors, turning into great pedagogues, were to contemplate the course of civilization and to say: “The bones represent the side of death in man; let us, then, protect man from this dying element, let us try to keep his bones alive, soft.” The opinion of such doctors would end in giving everyone rickets. It always implies a false principle to proceed to say, as many theosophists and anthroposophists like to do, if there is any talk of Ahriman and Lucifer² and their influences on human evolution; they say these things harm human nature, therefore we must beware of them. But that would be equivalent to excluding man from all the elements which should form his constitution. In the same way, we cannot prevent the cultivation of the conceptual element; we must cultivate it, but at the same time we must not neglect to approach human nature with the plastically formative. In this way there results the desired unity. It does not result from the extinction of the one element, but from the cultivation of both, side by side. In this respect people to-day cannot think in terms of unity. For this reason, too, they do not understand the Threefold State.³ In social life the only right solution is for the spiritual life, economic life, and the life of rights, to stand side by side and for their union to take place of itself, creatively, and not through human abstract organization. Only imagine what it would mean if people were to say: “As the head is a unity, and the rest of the body, too, the human body is really an anomaly; we ought to evolve the head from the rest of the body and allow it to move freely in the world!” We only act in accordance with nature when we allow the whole to grow out of one-sided aspects.

The question, then, is to develop the one isolated aspect, conceptual education. Then the other isolated aspect, the plastically formative, animates what is developed in the mere concept. The question here is to elevate these things into consciousness without losing our naivety, for this age always annihilates consciousness. There is no need to sacrifice our naivety if we fashion things concretely, not abstractedly. For instance, it would be a very good thing from all points of view to start as early as possible with the plastically formative, by letting the child live in the world of colour, by saturating oneself as a teacher with the instructions given by Goethe in the didactic part of his “Theory of Colour” (Farbenlehre). What is the basis of the didactic part of Goethe's Farbenlehre?⁴ The secret is that Goethe always imbues each separate colour with a feeling-shade. He emphasizes, for instance, the rousing quality of red, he emphasizes not only what the eye sees, but what the soul experiences in red. In the same way he lays stress upon the tranquillity, the self-absorption, experienced by the soul in blue. It is possible, without jarring on the child's naivety, to introduce him into the world of colour so that the feeling-shades of the world of colour issue forth in living experiences. (If, incidentally, the child gets itself at first thoroughly grubby it will be a good step in his education if he is trained to get himself less grubby.)

Begin as early as possible to bring the child in touch with colours, and in so doing it is a good idea to apply different colours to a coloured background from those you apply to a white surface; and try to awaken such experiences in the child as can only arise from a spiritual scientific understanding of the world of colour.⁵ If you work as I have done with a few friends at the smaller cupola of the Dornach building,⁶ you acquire a living relation to colour. You then discover if, for instance, you are painting with blue, that the blue colour itself possesses the power to portray inwardness. We can say, then, that in painting an angel impelled by his own inwardness you will feel the spontaneous urge to keep to blue, because the shading of blue, the light and dark of blue, produces in the soul the feeling of movement pertaining to the nature of the soul. A yellow-reddish colour produces in the soul the experience of lustre, giving a manifestation towards the external. If, then, the impression is aggressive, if we are encountered by a warning apparition, if the angel has something to say to us, if he desires to speak to us from his background, we express this by shades of yellow and red. In an elementary fashion we can invite children to understand this living inwardness of colours.

Then we ourselves must be very profoundly convinced that mere drawing is something untrue. The truest thing is the experience of colour; less true is the experience of light and shade, and the least true is drawing. Drawing as such already approaches that abstract element present in nature as a process of dying. We ought really only to draw with the consciousness that we are essentially drawing dead substance. With colours we should paint with the consciousness that we are evoking the living element from what is dead. What, after all, is the horizontal line? When we simply take a pencil and draw a horizontal line, we do an abstract, a dead thing, something untrue to nature, which always has two streams: the dead and the living. We extract the one trend and affirm that it is nature. But if I say: “I see green and I see blue, which are different from each other,” the horizontal line emerges from the contiguity of the colours and I express a truth. In this way you will gradually realize that the form of nature really arises from colour, that therefore the function of drawing is abstraction. We ought to produce already in the growing child a proper feeling for these things, because they vivify his whole soul's being and bring it into a right relation with the outside world. Our civilization is notoriously sick for lack of a right relation to the outside world. There is absolutely no need, I wish to remind you, to return to one-sided-ness again in teaching. For instance, it will be quite wise gradually to pass from the purely abstract art which people produce in their delight in beauty, to concrete art, to the arts and crafts, for humanity to-day sorely needs truly artistic productions in the general conditions of civilization. We have in actual fact reduced ourselves in the course of the nineteenth century to making furniture to please the eye, for example to making a chair for the eye, whereas its inherent character should be to be felt when it is sat on. To that end it should be fashioned; we should feel the chair; it must not only be beautiful; its nature must be to be sat on. The whole fusion of the sense of feeling with the chair, and even the cultivated sense of feeling—with the way in which the arms are formed on the chair, etc.—should be expressed in the chair, in our desire to find support in the chair. If, therefore, we were to introduce into school-life teaching in handiwork and manual skill with a decided technical-industrial bias, we should render the school a great service. For just imagine what a great cultural problem the individual who means well to humanity is faced with to-day, when he sees how, for instance, abstractions are on the point of inundating modern civilization: there will no longer be even a residue of beauty in civilization; this will be exclusively utilitarian! And even if people dream of beauty, they will have no sense of the compulsion we are under to emphasize more emphatically than ever the necessity for beauty, because of the socializing of life towards which we gravitate. This has to be realized.

There must, therefore, be no reservations with the plastically formative in teaching. But just as little must there be reservations in the true experience of that dynamic element which is expressed in architecture. It is very easy here to fall into the error of introducing the child too early to this experience. But, in a sense, even this must happen; I had addressed a few words to the children of Münich who were on holiday at Dornach, eighty of them, and who had had twelve lessons in Eurhythmy from Frau Kisseleff,⁷ and who were able to demonstrate what they had learnt to a group of their staff and Dornach anthroposophists. The children had their hearts in their work, and at the end of the complete Eurhythmy performance, which also included demonstrations by our Dornach Eurhythmists, the children came up and said: “Did you like our performance too?” They had the real urge to perform as well. It was a beautiful thing. Now at the request of the people who had arranged the whole entertainment, I had to say a few words to the children. It was the evening before the children were to be taken back again to Münich and district. I expressly said: “I am saying something to you now which you do not understand yet. You will only understand it later. But notice if you hear the word ‘Soul’ in future, for you cannot understand it yet!” This drawing of the child's attention to something which he does not yet understand, which must first mature, is extraordinarily important. And the principle is false which is so much to the fore in these days: We are only to impart to the child what he can at the moment understand—this principle makes education a dead thing and takes away its living element. For education is only living when what has been assimilated is cherished for a time deep in the soul, and then, after a while, is recalled to the surface. This is very important in education from seven to fifteen years of age; in these years a great deal can be introduced tenderly into the child's soul which can only be understood later. I beg you to feel no scruple at teaching beyond the child's age and appealing to something which he can only understand later. The contrary principle has introduced a deadening element into our pedagogy. But the child must know that he has to wait. It is one of the feelings we can promote within the child that he must be ready to wait for a perfect understanding until much later. For this reason it was not at all a bad idea in olden times to make the children simply learn 1 × 1 = 1, 2 × 2 = 4, 3 × 3 = 9, etc., instead of their learning it, as they do to-day, from the calculating machine. This principle of forcing back the child's comprehension must be overthrown. It can naturally only be done with tact, for we must not depart too far from what the child can love, but he can absorb a great deal of material, purely on the teacher's authority, for which understanding only dawns later.

If you introduce the plastically formative element to the child in this way you will see that you can vivify much of what is sapping away life.

The musical element, which lives in the human being from birth onwards, and which—as I have already said—expresses itself particularly in the child's third and fourth years in a gift for dancing, is essentially an element of will, potent with life. But, extraordinary as it may sound, it is true that it contains as it plays its part in the child, an excessive life, a benumbing life, a life directed against consciousness. The child's development is very easily brought by a profoundly musical experience into a certain degree of reduced consciousness. One must say, therefore: “The educational value of music must consist in a constant inter-harmonizing of the Dionysian element springing up in the human being, with the Apollonian. While the death-giving element must be vivified by the plastically formative element, a supremely living power in music must be partially subdued and toned down so that it does not affect the human being too profoundly.” This is the feeling with which we should introduce music to children.

Now this is the position: Karma develops human nature with a bias towards one side or the other. This is particularly noticeable in music. But I want to point out that here it is over-emphasized. We should not insist too much: This is a musical child; this one is not musical. Certainly the fact is there, but to draw from it the conclusion that the unmusical child must be kept apart from all music and only the musical children must be given a musical education, is thoroughly false; even the most unmusical children should be included in any musical activity. It is right without a doubt, from the point of view of producing music more and more, only to encourage the really musical children to appear in public. But even the unmusical children should be there, developing sensitiveness, for you will notice that even in the unmusical child there is a trace of the musical disposition which is only very deep down and which loving assistance brings to the surface. That should never be neglected, for it is far truer than we imagine that, in Shakespeare's words

The man that hath no music in himself
Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils; ...
Let no such man be trusted.

The Merchant of Venice, Act V, Scene I.

That is a very fundamental truth. Nothing should therefore be left undone to bring in touch with music the children considered at first to be unmusical.

But of the greatest importance, particularly socially, will be the cultivation of music in an elementary way, so that, without any paralysing theory, the children are taught from the elementary facts of music. The children should get a clear idea of the elements of music, of harmonies and melodies, etc., from the application of the most elementary facts, from aural analysis of melodies and harmonies, so that in music we proceed to build up the structure of the artistic element as a whole in just the same elementary way as we do with the plastically formative element, where we begin with the isolated detail. This will help to mitigate the persistent intrusion into music of dilettantism; although it, must not for a moment be denied that even musical dilettantism has a certain utility in the social life of the community. Without it we should not with ease be able to get very far, but it should confine itself to the listeners. Precisely if this were done it would be possible to give due prominence within our social life to those who can really produce music. For it should not be forgotten that all plastically formative art tends to individualize people: all the art of music and poetry, on the other hand, furthers social intercourse. People come together and unite in music and poetry; but they become more individual through plastic and formative art. The individuality is better preserved by the plastically formative; social life is better maintained in common enjoyment and experience of music and poetry. Poetry is created in the solitude of the soul—there alone; but it is understood through its general reception. With no intention of inventing an abstraction we can say that man discloses his innermost soul in the creation of poetry, and that his inner soul finds response again in the innermost soul of other people who absorb his creation. That is why pleasure, above all things, in, and yearning for, music and poetry, should be cultivated in the growing child. In poetry the child should early become familiar with real poetry. The individual to-day grows up into a social order in which he is tyrannized over by the prose of language. There are to-day innumerable reciters who tyrannize over people with prose, and place in the foreground of the poem nothing but the prose-content. And when the poem is so recited that the emphasis is laid on the thought content, we consider it nowadays the perfect recitation. But a really perfect recitation is one which particularly emphasizes the musical element. In the few words with which I sometimes introduce our Eurhythmy demonstrations, I have often drawn attention to the way in which in a poet like Schiller a poem arises from the depth of his soul. In many of his poems he first feels the lilt of an undefined melody, and only later into this undefined melody does he sink, as it were, the content, the words. The undefined melody is the element in which the content is suspended, and the poetical activity lives in the fashioning of the language, not in the content, but in the measure, in the rhythm, in the preservation of the rhyme, that is in the music which underlies poetry. I said that the present mode of recitation is to tyrannize over people, because it is always tyranny to attach the greatest value to the prose, to the content of a poem, to its abstract treatment. Spiritual-scientifically we can only escape the tyranny by presenting a subject, as I always try to do, from the most different angles, so that comprehension of it is kept fluid and artistic. I felt particular pleasure when one of our artistically gifted friends said that certain cycles of my lectures, purely in virtue of their inner structure, could be transformed into a symphony. Something of this kind actually does underlie the structure of certain cycles. Take, for instance, the cycle given in Vienna⁸ on the life between death and a new birth, and you will see that you could make a symphony out of it. That is possible because an anthroposophical lecture should not make a tyrannical impression, but should arouse people's will. When, however, people come to a subject like the “Threefold State,” they say that they cannot understand it. In reality it is not difficult to understand; only they are not used to the mode of expression.

It is consequently of extreme importance to draw the child's attention in every poem to the music underlying it. For this reason the division of teaching should be arranged so that the lessons of recitation should come as near as possible to those of music. The teacher of music should be in close contact with the teacher of recitation, so that when the one lesson follows the other a living connection between the two is achieved. It would be especially useful if the teacher of music were still present during the recitation lesson and vice versa, so that each could continually indicate the connections with the other lesson. This would completely exclude what is at present so very prominent in our school-life, and what is really horrible—the abstract explanation of poems. This detailed explanation of poems, verging perilously on grammar, is the death of all that should influence the child. This “interpretation” of poems is a quite appalling thing.

Now you will object: But the interpreting is necessary to understand the poem! The answer to that must be: Teaching must be arranged to form a whole. This must be discussed in the weekly Staff-meeting. This and that poem come up for recitation. Then there must flow in from the rest of the teaching what is necessary for the understanding of the poem. Care must be taken that the child brings ready with him to the recitation lesson what he needs to understand the poem. You can quite well—for instance, take Schiller's Spaziergang—explain the cultural-historical aspect, the psychological aspect of the poem, not taking one line after the other with the poem in your hand, but so as to familiarize the child with the substance. In the recitation lesson stress must be laid solely on the artistic communication of art.

If we were to guide the artistic element like this, in its two streams, to harmonize human nature through and through, we should have very important results. We must simply consider that when a human being sings it is an infinitely valuable achievement of companionship with the world. Singing, you see, is itself an echo of the world. When the human being sings he expresses the meaningful wisdom from which the world is built. But we must not forget that when he sings he combines the cosmic melody with the human word. That is why something unnatural enters into song. This can easily be felt in the incompatibility of the sound of a poem with its content. It would mean a certain progress if one were to pursue the attempt already begun, to maintain sheer recitative in the lines, and only to animate the rhyme with melody, so that the lines would pass in a flow of recitative and the rhyme be sung like an aria.⁹ This would result in a clean severance of the music of a poem from its words, which, of course, disturb the actually musical person.

And again, when the musical ear of the individual is cultivated he himself becomes more disposed to a living experience of the musical essence of the world. This is of the supremest value for the evolution of the individual. We must not forget: In the plastically formative we contemplate beauty, we live it; in music we ourselves become beauty. This is extraordinarily significant. The further back you go into olden times the less you find what we really call music. You have the distinct impression that music is only in process of creation, in spite of the fact that many musical forms are already dying out again. This arises from a very significant cosmic fact. In all plastic or formative art man was the imitator of the old celestial order. The highest imitation of a world-heaven order is the plastic formative imitation of the world. But in music man himself is creative. Here he does not create out of a given material, but lays the very foundations for what will only come to fulfilment in the future. It is, of course, possible to create music of a kind by imitating musically, for instance, the rushing of water or the song of the nightingale. But true music and true poetry are a creation of something new, and from this creation of the new will arise one day the Jupiter, Venus, and Vulcan evolutions.¹⁰ In linking up with music we retrieve, in a sense, what is still to be; we retrieve it for reality out of the present nullity of its existence.

Only in linking up in this way with the great facts of the world do we acquire a right understanding of teaching. Only this can confer on it the right consecration, and in receiving this consecration it is really transformed into a kind of divine service.

I have set up more or less an ideal. But surely our concrete practice can be ranged in the realm of the ideal. There is one thing we ought not to neglect, for instance, when we go with the children we are teaching—as we shall, of course—into the mountains and the fields, when, that is, we take them out to nature. In introducing these children like this to nature we should always remember that natural science teaching itself only belongs to the school building. Let us suppose that we are just coming into the country with the children, and we draw their attention to a stone or a flower. In so doing we should scrupulously avoid allowing so much as an echo of what we teach in the school-room to be heard outside in nature. Out in the open we should refer the children to nature in quite a different way from what we do in the class-room. We ought never to neglect the opportunity of drawing their attention to the fact that we are bringing them out into the open to feel the beauty of nature and we are taking the products of nature back into the school-room, so that there we can study and analyse nature with them. We should, therefore, never mention to the children, while we are outside, what we explain to them in school, for instance, about plants. We ought to lay stress on the difference between studying dead nature in the class-room—and contemplating nature in its beauty out of doors. We should compare these two experiences side by side. Whoever takes the children out into nature to exemplify to them out of doors from some object of nature what he is teaching in the class room is not doing right. Even in children we should evoke a kind of feeling that it is sad to have to analyse nature when we return to the class-room. Only the children should feel the necessity of it, because, of course, the disturbance of what is natural is essential even in the building up of the human being. We should on no account suppose that we do well to expound a beetle scientifically out of doors. The scientific explanation of the beetle belongs to the class-room. What we should do when we take the children out into the open is to excite pleasure in the beetle, delight in the way he runs, in his amusing ways, in his relation to the rest of nature. And in the same way we should not neglect to awaken the distinct sense in the child's soul that music is a creative element, an element that goes beyond nature, and that man himself becomes a fellow-creator of nature when he creates music. This sense will naturally have to be formed in a very rudimentary manner as an experience, but the first experience to be felt from the will-like element of music is that man should feel himself part of the cosmos.

• 1. Allgemeine Menschenkunde als Grundlage der Pädagogik, third lecture (the accompanying course. See Preface).
• 2. R. Steiner, Outlines of Occult Science, Philosophical-Anthroposophical Press of the Goetheanum, Dornach, also the Four Mystery Plays.
• 3. R. Steiner, The Threefold State.
• 4. See the Introduction to Goethe's works on Natural Science, edited by Rudolf Steiner.
• 5. R. Steiner's Theory of Colour.
• 6. Wege zu einem neuen Baustil (“Ways to a New Style in Architecture”) five lectures by Rudolf Steiner, with 104 illustrations. The Philosophical-Anthroposophical Press of the Goetheanum, Dornach, Switzerland.
• 7. Eurhythmy teacher at the Goetheanum, 1913–27.
• 8. Inneres Wesen des deuschen und Leben zwischen Tod und neuer Gebrut, 1914.
• 9. Paul Baumann, Songs of the Free Waldorf School.
• 10. R. Steiner, Outlines of Occult Science.

It has often been emphasized that one must distinguish between progress in esoteric development and noticing the progress. Every esoteric gets ahead if he does his esoteric exercises faithfully and regularly, even if he's dissatisfied with the success of the same. Honest endeavour is the important thing. We actually become different men through these exercises. This definitely happens even if we don't notice it. For the forces that loosen the etheric body and pull it out of the physical body are in all of these exercises, whether they're given orally or in books. But it's another matter to also notice these changes. A soul may actually have organs already, but it makes a difference whether it's sleeping or waking in its spiritual surroundings. It requires a strong force and preparation to wake up and become conscious. That's why descriptions are given in these lectures of what a soul experiences on waking up in the spiritual world. Many make it difficult for themselves to become conscious because they keep on thinking that the spirit land is like a second physical world, only finer and more diffuse. This is a big hindrance, because then they don't notice the fine symptoms of awaking. Such prejudices must be eliminated. One who still has them is like a man who goes up in a balloon and thinks that he can get out up there at any time and rest on a mountain top. But one who takes in esoteric explanations rightly can understand how the spiritual world is experienced when the soul awakens. To get to this point one has to ask oneself the question: What is thinking really? What thinks in me? A materialist who denies the existence of the spiritual world says: The body, the brain thinks. But one should ask him: Have you ever perceived thinking with your senses? Of course he hasn't. No one has ever heard or seen or felt thinking as warmth or the like. Therefore it's not corporeal. For what belongs to the body is sense perceptible. And so thinking is super-sensible. So the materialist would either have to accept the spiritual world or he should give up thinking because it's an absurdity—which might even be good. So we're always in the super-sensible world with our thinking, but in such a way that we don't experience it. With man's thinking it's as if someone went out to sea but didn't see himself and his boat. We don't experience it directly, for the thoughts we experience are reflections of thinking in the body. Just as someone facing a mirror sees his reflection, so a thinking soul sees the mirror image of its thinking. The brain is a mirror.

Through esoteric training a man is supposed to experience thinking and not just thoughts. Just as someone standing before a mirror sees the mirror's reflecting surface when he steps to one side, so the soul must learn to look upon the body as a reflecting apparatus. Then the man knows how thoughts come into being, and he experiences himself in the world from which thinking projects into the sense world as thought. All of this can be understood by every healthy intellect. And it's important for a theosophist to make it quite clear to himself to be armed against the objection that theosophy is based on belief, that one must believe in the existence of the super-sensible world. That's not true. Everyone can understand this existence if he uses his thinking properly. One who can't understand it is foolish, even if he's a philosopher. But it's still a big step from this possibility of experiencing thinking and the super-sensible world to a knowing of the latter. This can only be attained if the soul works on itself for a long time, but it is attained.

The first sign of an awakening in the spiritual world is a feeling of expansion, as if one were spreading and flowing out. In the sense world I'm here, the object is over there and it makes an impression on me. Consciousness comes about when we bump into objects through the organs of touching, hearing, seeing. However in the spiritual world the condition of being closed off in oneself ceases. One feels as if one were spread out in other beings. In the physical world we experience everything inside our skin, as for instance the prick of a needle. Not so in the spiritual world. There thinking and feeling flow out. One experiences pleasure and pain in others. For instance if one runs into a deceased person who's in pain, one has to experience the pain with him as long as one is in spiritual contact with him. One's relation to the sense world also becomes quite different through this change. The way in which we ordinarily experience the physical world is conditioned by the fact that the body through which we experience things is sensorial. If we hit our head against a hard object we feel it because the head doesn't yield, that is, because it's hard or similar to the object. But no impression is made if one confronts the sense world with super-sensible experience. Spiritual organs are too soft and flexible, as it were. That's why all physical things seem like empty spaces. A comparison can give one a perception of this. The water in a glass is invisible. The gas pearls in soda water are visible even though the bubbles are much more rarefied than water; they're nothing in comparison with the denser fluid. So the nothing is visible and the something is invisible. For a spiritual gaze that's the way things really are with the physical world. Like these pearls in water, all atoms are holes or empty bubbles in the spiritual world. All physical things are composed of countless numbers of such holes. When we touch things we bump into these holes, this nothing. That's the way things are with man's body also. Seen spiritually, for instance, the brain is a spiritual form. There are countless empty pearls or holes in it, and they make up what a scientist investigates with his instruments. Another thing is that a man feels that all the good, right and true things that he thinks stream out from him. He feels as if they're growing into the future, that they're germ-forming for the future. But the wrong, bad, ugly things that he thinks and feels also grow out like this. He really feels them streaming out of him, and he knows that the bad thoughts streaming from him will later serve as food for the good ones. So they're also necessary. Then he begins to understand why so many bad, wrong and ugly thoughts and feelings assail him during meditation. When he knows that they're necessary forces and food for the future he'll also assess them correctly. He won't have to complain about them if he's strong enough to not let them flow into his willing and action. There is a big secret connected with this. The same forces that underlie our bad thoughts were rayed out by hierarchical beings on old Moon, from angels up to Spirits of Form. Thereby they brought about Moon existence. But Lucifer and Ahriman remained behind and are only raying out these forces now. They now work into physical things that have condensed further, right into man's physical blood, and that's how evil arises. They're not evil in themselves; an esoteric must let them work on him but not let them become physically condensed. Then they remain of value for future good thoughts.

The following formulas are given to promote an experience of these first steps into the spiritual world. Budding esoterics should do the first one in the AM, the second after the day's retrospect and the third once every few days. More advanced esoterics should only do them occasionally, the first and second together and the third maybe only on Sundays.

The 7-line form of the verses arose by itself, that is, the spiritual material reveals itself in such a way that it presses into this form. (The verse in the lesson from March 5th 1914 in Stuttgart, is included here for reference.)

Lines one and two of the third formula give one much to think about. They were revealed like that, although it seems to be grammatically incorrect, since it says floats instead of float. Later it became clear that this is intended. “Shining I and luminous soul” should be thought of as a single entity. Likewise “what was thought, what was known” are treated as one. Thinking and knowing are not one in the physical world, but in the spiritual one they flow together. Something that's thought is either wrong—then it destroys itself—or it's right—then it's also something that's revealed: knowledge.

Formulas like these or the ones in Occult Science, for instance, are not made up or fabricated. The intellect isn't involved in this at all to begin with. A seer gets things revealed to him. They stand there. Only then does he elaborate them with his intellect. The first formula describes the experience where physical things seem to consist of nothing, like bubbles in water. The soul sees that ordinary sensory existence is an illusion, and it tries to gain knowledge of what is truly real.

The second formula describes the experience of the raying out of good and bad thoughts.

The third formula should be used as a test of the progress one has made. When one meditates it one must speak the words inwardly so that everything resounds meaningfully. With these lines one tries to see how far one has gotten; whether for instance one already experiences something from:

What was thought, what was known

Now becomes dense spirit existence.

Of course this must be continued patiently and without flagging week after week. One can also look upon these formulas as a different form of what's always said at the end of these classes. The first one describes how sensorial things become non-existent when one grows into the spiritual world, and spiritual reality is seen to be what we come from: Ex Deo nascimur.

The second formula describes the experience of good and bad thoughts as forces that'll work in the future. This is only possible if the soul is embraced and illumined by spiritual light—Christ—after it has released itself from the physical world: In Christo morimur.

And the third formula describes how real knowledge becomes revealed to the soul that's waking up in the spirit: Per Spiritum Sanctum reviviscimus.

An interview by "Matin" reporter Jules Sauerwein with Dr. Rudolf Steiner about the unpublished memoirs of the late German Chief of Staff von Moltke October 1921

[ 1 ] "You know that, if your opponents are to be believed, the Chief of the General Staff is said to have lost first his head and then the Battle of Marne through you."

[ 2 ] This is the question I put to the famous spiritual researcher and sociologist Rudolf Steiner, born a German-Austrian. I have had sincere admiration and friendly feelings for him for more than fifteen years. It gave me great satisfaction at the time to translate several of his theosophical works into French. Whenever my travels permit, I never fail to pay a brief visit to Dr. Steiner in Dornach when passing through Basel.

[ 3 ] This time, too, I met him at the strange and imposing building that was given the name Goetheanum by his students in honor of Goethe as a forerunner of spiritual science. I have already written in the "Matin" about the man as well as the building and its wonderful location on the last foothills of the Jura, crowned by castle ruins.

[ 4 ] Rudolf Steiner had just returned from Germany after giving lectures on his teachings to thousands of enthusiastic listeners in Stuttgart and Berlin. In Dornach on the same day he received a group of 120 theologians with whom he had entered into a discussion of theological and religious questions. Quite a number of these theologians intended to tackle a reorganization of religious life on the basis of the teachings advocated by Dr. Steiner.

[ 5 ] Dr. Steiner was working on a huge group of wooden sculptures depicting Christ and the underlying seductive powers, Lucifer and Ahriman. It is one of the most impressive creations I have ever seen; it will form the central end of the smaller domed room in the Goetheanum. As I watched the listeners coming up the hill in small groups at dusk to gather for the lecture, Dr. Steiner told me about the attacks of his opponents. Clerics and all-Germans and fanatical followers of various religious denominations are fighting against him with every weapon and at every opportunity.

The fear of the truth

[ 6 ] When I asked him the question about General von Moltke straight away, he turned his penetrating eyes on me, which looked at me from a face furrowed by forty years of intense spiritual struggle.

[ 7 ] "What you tell me does not astonish me. No means will be spared to drive me out of Germany and possibly also out of Switzerland. These attacks are based on a wide variety of grounds. But insofar as they extend to my relations with Moltke, they have a very specific aim. They want to prevent the publication of some notes that Moltke made for his family before his death and whose publication in the book trade I was supposed to arrange in agreement with Mrs. von Moltke.

[ 8 ] These memoirs should have been published in 1919. Immediately before its publication, a person in charge of Prussia's diplomatic representation in Stuttgart came to see me to tell me that this publication was impossible and that they would not want it in Berlin. Later, a general who had been in positions around General von Moltke and Wilhelm II came to me and gave me the same ideas. I protested against this and wanted to disregard it. I thought of turning to Count von Brockdorff-Rantzau, who was present in Versailles at the time, but could achieve nothing. My efforts were all the more unsuccessful as at the same time Mrs. von Moltke was approached with ideas that she could not resist.

[ 9 ] Why these fears? These memoirs are by no means an indictment of the imperial government. But it is clear from them, what is perhaps worse, that the imperial government was in a state of complete confusion and under incomprehensibly reckless and ignorant leadership. One can apply to the responsible personalities the sentence I wrote down in my preface: 'It was not what they did that contributed to bringing about the disaster, but the whole nature of their personalities.

[ 10 ] I might add that it was the peculiar circumstances which caused the weight of the decisive decisions to rest finally on a single man, the Chief of the General Staff, who saw himself compelled to do his military duty because politics had come to a standstill. I never spoke to him about political or military issues before Moltke's resignation. It was only later, when he was seriously ill, that he naturally spoke openly to me about all these matters, and since this will interest you, I will tell you what he told me himself and what is also evident from his unpublished memoirs.

[ 11 ] At the end of June 1914, Moltke, who had been Chief of the General Staff since 1905, went to Carlsbad for health reasons. Until his death, he knew nothing of a Potsdam consultation on July 5 or 6. He had only returned to Berlin in good health after the ultimatum to Serbia. Since his return he had, as he said, been firmly convinced that Russia would attack. He clearly foresaw the tragic development that things were bound to take, that is, he believed in the participation of France and England in the world conflict. He wrote a memorandum for the Kaiser pointing out the necessity of measures to be taken. The plan of the German General Staff had essentially been laid down for a long time. It had been drawn up by Moltke's predecessor, von Schlieffen. You know its main features: Large masses were to be thrown against France in order to achieve a quick decision in the west at any cost. A weak defensive army was planned against Russia, which was to be replenished later after the decision on the western theater of war.

Disturbed people

[ 12 ] Von Moltke had changed his predecessor's plan on one important point, however. While Schlieffen had envisaged a simultaneous march through Belgium and Holland, Moltke had renounced Holland in order to give Germany breathing space in the event of a blockade.

[ 13 ] When Moltke arrived at the castle on Friday, July 31, he found people completely confused. He had the impression, as he said, that he found himself in the position of having to make a decision all by himself. The Kaiser had not yet signed the mobilization order that day, an order which in Germany was tantamount to a declaration of war, for as soon as this order was given, everything, including the first operation, was carried out at specific times with a relentless automatism. Wilhelm II contented himself for that day with proclaiming the imminent threat of war. The following day, on Saturday, August 1, at four o'clock in the afternoon, he summoned Moltke again, and in the six hours that followed, the following drama unfolded.

[ 14 ] Moltke met the Emperor in the presence of Bethmann Hollweg, whose knees were literally trembling, the War Minister Falkenhayn, General von Plessen, Lyncker and several others. The Emperor voiced strong opposition to the intentions of the Chief of Staff. He had, he said, received the best news from England. England would not only remain neutral - as George V informed him - but would even prevent France from taking part in the war. Under these conditions, it would be logical to throw the whole army against Russia. No, replied Moltke, the plan must be carried out in the East as well as in the West as it is laid down, if we do not wish to bring about the greatest misfortune.

The technical reasons

[ 15 ] The objections do not affect Moltke; he refuses to change anything. He asserts that the mobilization order must be complied with without delay. He does not believe in the English telegrams, and with the mobilization order in his hand, which Wilhelm II has just signed, he is dismissed, leaving the others in a state of complete confusion. Thus it came about that the decision on the outbreak of war had to be made for purely military reasons. On the way from the palace to the General Staff, his car was overtaken by an imperial automobile. Moltke is recalled on behalf of the Emperor. The Emperor is more excited than ever. He shows his Chief of Staff a telegram from England. He believes he can see with absolute certainty from this telegram that the conflict is confined to the East and that England and France will remain neutral. 'An order must be sent immediately to the army,' he concludes, 'not to proceed in the west. Moltke's reply was that an army could not be exposed to the alternative of orders and counter-orders. While Moltke was standing there, the Kaiser turned to the wing adjutant on duty and ordered him to immediately transmit an order to the command of the 16th Division in Trier that it was not to march into Luxembourg. Moltke went home. Shaken, because he expects the greatest disaster from such measures, he sits down at his table. He declares that he cannot take any measures for the army in accordance with the Emperor's telephonic order. This order is brought to him by an adjutant for his signature. He refuses to sign and pushes the order back. He remained in a state of dull exhaustion until 11 o'clock in the evening, even though he had returned from Karlsbad in good health. At 11 o'clock he is rung up. The Emperor asks for him again. He immediately goes to the palace. Wilhelm II, who had already retired, throws on a robe and says: "Everything has changed. Disaster is on its way. The King of England has just declared in a new telegram that he has been misunderstood and that he will not accept any obligation on behalf of himself or France. He concludes with the words: "Now you can do what you like. And now the war begins.

Bloomy omens

[ 16 ] In the month of August, I saw General von Moltke only once, on August 27 in Koblenz. Our conversation revolved around purely human matters. The German army was still in full victory mode. There was no reason to talk about what was not yet there. The Battle of Marne unfolded later. I had not seen von Moltke until then. It took place under conditions which must have shaken von Moltke's expectations to the core. During the trial maneuvers he had several times ordered a cautious advance on the right wing, which could have been considered in a march on Paris. Three times Kluck, who had supreme command of the right wing, had advanced too quickly. Each time Moltke said to him, "If you advance just as quickly at the decisive moment, we will lose the war in an emergency. When Kluck's army was threatened with being surrounded, Moltke was seized by a terrible premonition. The thought came to him: the war could be lost for Germany. This seems to me to be part of the 'psychology' of the course of the war. When von Moltke returned to headquarters on September 13, he gave the impression of a deeply shaken man. Those around the Kaiser thought he was ill. From that moment on, Falkenhayn, without having the official title, was in fact in command. Later, when Moltke was confined to bed, Wilhelm II visited him. Is it still me who is in charge of the operations? he asked the Emperor. I do indeed believe that it is still you, replied Wilhelm II. For weeks, the Kaiser did not even know who was the actual commander-in-chief of his troops.

[ 17 ] But now a new example of the opinion people had of Wilhelm II in his own environment. One day, when von Moltke was describing to me the feelings of deep sorrow he was experiencing on his return to Belgium after the capture of Antwerp, I asked him for the first time about the invasion of Belgium. How was it, I asked, that a Minister of War could claim in the Reichstag that the plan to invade Belgium had not existed? This minister, Moltke replied, did not know my plan, but the Chancellor was up to date. And the Kaiser? Never, said Moltke: he was too talkative and indiscreet. He would have blabbed it to the whole world!"

Jules Sauerwein

Note from the editors, Rudolf Steiner, whom we informed of our intention to publish his conversation with Jules Sauerwein here as well, writes the following

Our time can be understood in its spiritual aspect only if it is recognized that external events must be seen as symbols, and that far deeper impulses are at work in the world. These deeper impulses can be difficult to discern and spiritual knowledge alone can enlighten us about them.

I would like to begin by speaking about an interesting personality of the 19th Century, someone who as a thinker is extraordinarily fascinating because he is one of those who, in a characteristic way, reflects what is alive in our time and also what has in a certain sense died out. This interesting thinker known only to a few: African Spir,¹ died in 1890. In the mid 1860s in Leipzig he began to consider how he could best convey his philosophy of life to his fellow men.

African Spir was an original thinker and he gained nothing of significance from his contact with Masonic circles. When we study him, which to begin with can be done through his writings, we find that he was very little influenced by the 19th Century cultural life around him On the contrary there comes to expression in his view of life an inner quality peculiar to himself. The most significant of his writings: “Thinking and Reality” was published in 1873. African Spir came to recognize, intuitively as it were, what thinking actually is. Not an all-embracing recognition perhaps but significant all the same. What interested him was the true nature of thinking. He wanted to discover what actually happens in man while he is thinking. He also wanted to find out how man is related, while he is engaged in thinking, on the one hand to external reality and on the other to his own inner experience.

Thinking can be understood only when it is seen as a power in man which, in its own essential nature, does not belong to the external physical world at all. On the contrary in its own being and nature it belongs to the spiritual world. We already experience the spiritual world, though not consciously, when we really think; i.e., when our thinking is not merely acting as a mirror reflecting external phenomena. When we are engaged in real thinking then we have the possibility to experience ourselves as thinkers. If man becomes conscious of himself within thinking he knows himself to be in a world that exists beyond birth and death. Few people are aware of it, but nothing is more certain than when man thinks, he is then active as a spiritual being.

African Spir was one of the few and he expressed it when he said: “When I form thoughts, particularly the loftiest thoughts of which I am capable, then I feel myself to be in a world of permanence, subject to neither space nor time; a world of eternity.” He enlarged on this observation saying: “When one turns away from the world of thinking as such and contemplates what we experience when the external world acts upon us, then we are dealing with something which is qualitatively utterly different from the thoughts we apply to it. This is the case whether we contemplate external phenomena, man's evolution, his history or his life in society. Thoughts themselves lead me to the recognition that they, as thoughts, are eternal. In the external world everything is transitory; what is earthly comes into being and passes away. That is not true of any thought. Thinking itself tells me that it is absolute reality for it is rooted in eternity.”

For African Spir this was something he simply experienced as a fact. He argued that what we experience as external reality does not agree, does not accord with the reality we experience as thinking. Consequently it cannot be real in the true sense; it is semblance, illusion. Thus, along a path, different to that followed by the ancient Oriental, different also from that followed by certain mystics, African Spir comes to the realization that everything we experience in space and time is fundamentally semblance. In order to confirm this from another aspect he said something like the following: “Man, in fact all living creatures, is subject to pain. However, pain does not reveal its true nature for it contains within itself a power for its overcoming; it wills to be overcome. Pain does not want to exist, therefore it is not true reality. Pain as such must be an aspect of the transitory world of illusion and the reality is the force within it which strives for painlessness. This again shows us that the external world is an illusion, nowhere is it completely free of pain so it cannot be true reality. The real world, the soul-world, is plunged into semblance and pain.”

African Spir felt that man can only reach a view of life that is inwardly satisfying if he becomes conscious, through his own resolve and effort, that he bears within himself an eternal world. He maintains that this eternal world proclaims itself in man's thinking and in the constant striving to overcome pain and reach salvation. Spir insists that the external world is semblance, not because it appears as such to him, but because he is convinced that in thinking he lays hold of true reality. It is because the external world does not conform, is not of like nature, to thinking that he says it is semblance.

If we survey the various world views held by those 19th-century thinkers who lived in the same milieu as Spir, we do not find any of such subtlety as his. So how does Spir come to experience the world the way he did? If we look for an explanation in the light of spiritual knowledge, we must make the following comments: Insofar as we are surrounded by the external material world, by events of history and also by our life in society we live on the physical plane. Whereas in thinking, that is to say, when we really live in thinking, we are no longer on the physical plane. It is only when we think about external material existence that we turn to the physical plane and in so doing we actually deny our own nature. When we become conscious of what really lives in thinking we cannot but feel that within thinking we are in a spiritual world.

Thus when Spir became aware of the real nature of what in man is the most abstract: pure thinking, he felt that there is a definite boundary between the physical and the spiritual world. Basically he asserts that man belongs to two worlds, the physical and the spiritual and that the two are not in agreement. Spir comes to the realization, out of an elemental natural impulse as it were, of the existence of a spiritual world. He does not express it in so many words, but declares that everything around us, be it our natural, historical or social life, is mere semblance. And he finds that this semblance does not agree with the reality given in thinking. So although his experience of the spiritual world is not of direct vision, but an experience within abstract thinking, he nevertheless establishes that these two spheres are divided by a sharp boundary.

Looking closer at the way Spir presented his view of the world one realizes that his 19th-century contemporaries were bound to find it difficult; and it is natural that he was not understood. It could be said that he tried to contract the whole spiritual world into a single point within thinking; draw it together so to speak from a spiritual world otherwise unknown to him. He put the whole emphasis on the fact that, in his experience of thinking, he found proof that the spiritual world exists and that the physical world is semblance. This led him to stress that truth, i.e., reality, could never be found in the external world, for that world is in every aspect untrue and incomplete. According to his own words he was convinced that his discovery was a most significant event in history for it proved once and for all that reality is not to be found in the external world. He met no understanding. He was even driven to the expediency of offering a prize to anyone who could disprove his claim. No one took up the challenge, no one tried to refute him. He suffered all the distress that a thinker can experience from being entirely ignored; killed by silence as the saying goes. He lived for a long time in Tübingen, then in Stuttgart and finally in Lausanne due to lung trouble. He was buried in Geneva in the year 1890. On his grave lies a Bible carved in stone, showing the opening words of St. John's Gospel: “And the Light shineth in the darkness and the darkness comprehended it not,” followed by “Fiat Lux” (Let there be light) which were his last words before he died.

One could say that Spir's whole philosophy was a kind of premonition. In concerning oneself with such thinkers one comes to recognize that there were many who, in the course of the 19th Century, had a premonition that something like spiritual science must come. These thinkers were prevented from reaching spiritual knowledge themselves by the circumstances and conditions prevailing in that century. African Spir was such a thinker. If we read his writings, without concerning ourselves with his life, we are faced with a riddle: How does a man come to recognize the reality of the spiritual world so decisively merely by means of thinking? How does he come to recognize the spiritual within himself with such certainty? How does he come to know that his inner being is so firmly rooted in true reality that it convinces him the external world is unreal? The explanation lies in Spir's life, in the simple fact that he was born in Russia (1837). His real name was African Alexandrovitch. He was a Russian transplanted into Central Europe, a Russian who, being influenced by Central and Western European views of life, represented a wonderful blend of the latter with Russian characteristics. He did not learn German till he came to Leipzig in the mid 1860s but then wrote all his works in that language.

Let us now remember that within the peoples of Western Europe there has gradually come to expression during the course of mankind's evolution the sentient soul in the Latin peoples of the South, the intellectual or mind soul in the Latin peoples of the West, the consciousness soul in the Anglo-American peoples, the 'I' in people of Central Europe; while the Russian people of Eastern Europe are waiting to Develop the Spirit Self. One could say that in the Russian people the Spirit-Self is still in an embryonic state. Bearing this in mind we realize that African Spir was born with an inner disposition to await the Spirit-Self. This aspect of his soul life was stirring within him but it came to expression colored by the world conceptions prevailing in Western Europe.

The time will come when the Eastern European will have developed his true nature. It will then be an impossibility for him to look upon the external physical world as a world that is real in the true sense. He will experience his own inner being as rooted in true reality. And this he will experience not just in thinking but in the Spirit-Self within the spiritual world. He will know himself to be a citizen of the spiritual world and it will seem sheer nonsense to him to regard man the way the West does: as a being evolved from the animal kingdom. That aspect of man the people of the East will recognize to be merely man's outer covering. The Eastern European, as he develops the Spirit Self, will ascend to the realm of the Hierarchies just as the Western European descends to the kingdom of nature. African Spir knew instinctively that his being was rooted in the spirit. This instinctive sense of living in spiritual reality is to be found today in Eastern Europe, but is as yet not able to come to expression in an appropriate view of life. This will become possible only when spiritual science, developed in Central Europe, becomes absorbed into Eastern European culture. What is as yet experienced only instinctively, in Eastern Europe, as life in spiritual reality, will then find expression.

African Spir was unable to express this instinctive experience in spiritual-scientific terms; instead he clothed it in concepts he took over from Spencer, Locke, Kant, Hegel and Taine. This means that instead of clothing it in images obtained through living thinking he used the kind of abstract concepts which are in reality no more than mental images reflecting the physical world. What in African Spir was leading an embryonic existence had as it were withdrawn from Western culture, but it had left its imprint in which could be recognized what had been there before as a living reality. African Spir is such an interesting figure because he incorporates both past and future. He is also a clear demonstration of the deep truth, continually stressed by spiritual science, i.e. that the European peoples are in reality like a human soul with its members placed side by side. The peoples towards the West constitute the sentient soul, intellectual soul and consciousness soul placed next to one another. In the Central Europeans the ‘I’ comes to expression and the Eastern Europeans prepare for the Spirit Self.

At present history is dealt with in a most unsatisfactory fashion. However, it can be foreseen how it will be dealt with in the future. At present external facts are always emphasized but they are not the essential. To hold on merely to external facts is comparable to undertaking a study of “Faust” by describing the letters page by page. An understanding of “Faust” is not dependent on the letters but on what is learnt through them. Similarly a time will come when consideration of history will depend as little on external facts as reading a book depends on a description of the letters. Behind the external facts the real history will be discerned, just as the meaning in “Faust” is discerned behind the printed letters. This is radically expressed but it does illustrate the situation. Ordinary history will be seen as a history that describes the symptoms; a man like African Spir will be seen as a symptom of the soul element of Eastern Europe merging with that of Central Europe.

The present age is as yet a long way from studying either history or life in this way. Yet only by bringing things of this nature together, and relating them with a deeper understanding to current events, can one become conscious of what is really happening in the world. The present age has to an unprecedented degree robbed the first half of the 19th Century of its spiritual achievements; this also applies to the second half but to a lesser degree. It is indeed justified to speak about forgotten aspects of spiritual life in relation to the 19th Century; even more than I have done in my book Vom Menschenrätsel. Some day the history of the 19th Century will have to be rewritten. This was felt by Hermann Grimm² when he said: “A time will come when the history of the last decades will be completely rewritten. When this happens those who are now looked upon as great figures will appear rather puny and others, quite different figures, which are now forgotten will emerge as the great ones.” One comes to realize what a “fable convenue” the official history of the 19th Century is when one attempts to study its history as it truly is and can recognize the forces that were at work. The reason I said that our time has robbed the 19th Century of its spiritual achievements is because that century produced many thinkers who, for lack of recognition, were condemned to isolation. African Spir is a characteristic example. In saying this I am not referring to the public in general but to those who, through their vocation, had a duty to be interested in him and his work. When such human beings die and their souls pass into the spiritual world they do not just vanish. They continue to be influential from the spiritual world in ways of which there is usually little inkling.

Can anyone really believe that when a thinker such as African Spir dies he simply disappears as far as the world here is concerned? The spiritual world is no cloud-cuckoo-land; just as our individual bodies are permeated by soul and spirit, so does soul and spirit permeate the whole cosmos. Soul and spirit live all around us like the air. What a man has produced, in a life of strenuous thinking while in a physical body, does not just disappear when he dies and passes into the spiritual world. In such cases something very remarkable happens. A thinker who here on earth has met with much acclaim is in a different position to a solitary neglected thinker like Spir. A thinker, who receives much popular recognition, has as it were finished with his thoughts when he dies. Not so a thinker like Spir, he strives to protect his thoughts—what I am now saying is of the greatest importance—which are present spiritually in the physical world. Such a thinker remains with his thoughts. He protects them for a period lasting decades; during this time they are not accessible to human beings living in physical bodies.

When a thinker like African Spir dies his thoughts stay with him, he as it were protects them so that those who are living have no immediate access to them. This causes an unconscious longing for these thoughts to arise in human beings which they cannot satisfy. In other words there are human beings whose forefathers paid no attention to such a thinker and allowed him to die unrecognized. He had produced thoughts which ought to be developed further, but because he protects them he prevents them being reached by human beings and this causes an undefined longing for these thoughts. Because the longing cannot be satisfied it results in a feeling of deep inner dissatisfaction. In earlier times there were many who experienced such unsatisfied longing. In our time it is present to a particularly high degree because the last third of the 19th Century produced a great number of highly significant thinkers to whom the world paid no attention, thus robbing them of their spiritual achievements.

What should be done? That is a most important question. What one must do is to speak about such forgotten aspects of cultural life. When, in a few strokes, I place before your mind's eye such a thinker as African Spir, it is not for any arbitrary reason or merely to tell you something interesting. It is to draw attention to the fact that we are surrounded by a spiritual world of real thoughts, thoughts which a thinker has preserved and which he now protects. What we must do is to turn with a feeling of reverence to the thinker concerned. He may then give us his thoughts himself, thus enabling our thinking to become creative. That is why in the course of our studies I like to call your attention to such forgotten thinkers. A link of real significance is forged thereby. If I manage to some extent to inscribe in your souls a picture of African Spir, something comes about which acts in a certain sense as a corrective of a wrong, and that is a task of spiritual science.

The spiritual world is not a nebulous pantheistic abstraction. It is as concretely real as the external sense-perceptible phenomena. We come in contact with the spiritual world not by constantly talking about spirit, spirit, spirit, but by pointing to concrete spiritual facts. And one such fact is that especially at the present time we can bring to life in ourselves a connection with forgotten thinkers so that fruits of their thoughts can enter our souls. On their side these souls become released from protecting their thoughts.

We therefore perform a real deed when, with the right feeling and attitude, we speak of these thinkers who in recent times have been victims of spiritual isolation and robbed of the fruits of their work. Our age will thereby receive, at least it may receive, spiritual thoughts which it so sorely needs. A thinking which merely mirrors the external world in the usual pedestrian manner is unfruitful. Thinking which in the customary way is applied to nature, history or social life has finished its task as soon as the external phenomena have been understood. Nowadays so many thinkers are unproductive because all that occupy their thoughts are external or historical events. Thinking is fruitful only when it takes its content from the spiritual world. A thought is like a corpse as long as it only mirrors nature or history. It becomes alive and creative when it is receptive to what the Hierarchies pour down from the spiritual world.

At present there is no inclination to seek union through thinking with the spiritual world. That is something which is positively avoided whereas pride is taken in pursuing “genuine” science. The view is that now at last science has arrived after mankind has remained for so long in a stage of infancy. It must be said though that this science, particularly when it forms the basis for a view of life, has produced some strange results. For one thing it cannot come to grips with what thinking actually is. Natural science dissects man's body and comes to amazing conclusions about the structure of the brain and its function. Thinking itself is disregarded. As a result thinking as such has gradually become a ghostly something of which science is afraid. As a consequence modern science is particularly against thinkers whose lives were steeped in thinking, thinkers like Hegel, Schelling, Jacob Boehme and other mystics whose view of life was built on thoughts. The modern researcher takes the attitude that these people no doubt did think, but thoughts do not lead to certainty. A scientist feels eerie when he must leave the sense world, i.e., the realm which African Spir called a world of semblance and illusion. Yet the scientist cannot establish science if he refuses to think, so he is caught in a dilemma. This dilemma caused one of science's elite, who felt himself especially suited to represent scientific opinion, to utter an aphorism which, when the history of the second half of the 19th century comes to be rewritten, could well be inserted as characteristic of many aspects of this period. At a scientific congress this scientist declared: “We men of medicine have to admit that, like educated folk in general, exact science cannot do completely without thinking.”

Thus in the 19th century, at a serious gathering of scientists it is admitted with regrets that thinking cannot be dispensed with altogether, at least not if one is a medical man or a well educated person. In other words thinking is something very awkward that causes uncertainty the moment one looks at it.

This attitude to thinking causes in people strange feelings when they hear that a spiritual world penetrates the physical world. They are afraid of thinking because they sense that this is where the spiritual world enters, and, as they insist that there is no spiritual world, they will have nothing to do with thinking. You may remember my explaining that what is understood by the word genius will change in the course of evolution. I pointed out that what makes someone a genius can only be understood by assuming that more spirit is active in him than in a non-genius. When the discoveries of a genius happen to be of a mechanical nature he meets great admiration. If his genius takes other forms people are nowadays apt to vent their aversion to such proof of spiritual power on the genius himself. A rather interesting essay has appeared on the subject of genius. After arguing that a genius is someone partly sick, partly mad the essay culminates with this curious sentence: “Let us thank God we are not all geniuses!”

These things must be seen as symptoms of our time, for they are characteristic of a general trend. Yet such things are usually ignored or not taken seriously because their true significance is not recognized. They may even be laughed at and the present miseries are not seen to be related to them. Far from attempting to bring order into the chaos through spiritual insight, man is allowing his contact with the spiritual world to deteriorate. As a consequence he also loses contact with the reality of the external world because without spiritual insight he can reach only its outer shell. In saying this I am pointing to a significant phenomenon of our time: catastrophes occur because thoughts, which ought to relate to external events, do not. As a result the external events take over and go their own way independent of man. They do this even when man has created the events himself. Then the thoughts of man, which may be excellent, often have no effect, they can find no foothold in the external events. It has gradually come about that the individual may have fine ideas but they have a life of their own while external reality also has a life of its own. A dreadful discrepancy exists between what takes place in many heads and what goes on all around them, a disharmony of such proportions as has never before occurred.

When such things are discussed one is invariably accused of exaggeration. But they are not exaggerated and one must speak about them, for they are the truth and must be recognized. There is evidence of these things everywhere but the awareness of them is not great enough to realize their implications. Take the following example which could be multiplied a thousandfold: In the year 1909 in Russia a conversation took place between two men concerning the relation of Russia to Central Europe. This was soon after Austria's annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina.³ The conversation took place as feelings in Russia were running high, threatening already then to bring about the terrible situation which finally erupted in 1914. That the 1914 war did not break out already in 1909 hung on a thread. It was prevented, but this was not thanks to certain quarters in Russia. These things must be seen as they truly are. The two men, one a Croatian, the other Russian, discussed in particular the relation between Russia and Austria. After they had looked at all existing possibilities for stabilizing relations between Central and Eastern Europe the Russians summed up his own view by saying: “A war between Russia and Austria-Germany would be, not only utterly inhuman, but also completely senseless.” These sensible words, which were by no means based on emotions, summed up well-thought-out, well-considered judgements about the structure of Central and Eastern Europe. When I now mention the name of the Russian who spoke them you will have confirmation of what has just been discussed. The Russian who so vehemently rejected war in 1909 was Lvov.⁴ Five years later in 1914—when he could not after all have changed into someone completely different—we find him as the president of the first revolutionary Russian Government. In other words he was by then the person at the very center of all the events that have led to the present miseries in Europe.

Just imagine the situation: we see external events run their course and we see human beings, active in the midst of these events, who think quite differently. Human beings with sensible ideas are active in these events but are overwhelmed by them. Why are they overwhelmed? Because of the failure to relate concepts and ideas to spiritual reality. Thoughts are powerless unless they are united with the spiritual element of the world. According to the general opinion held nowadays it is a drawback for someone, active in social or political life, to be a thinker. A thinker is regarded as unpractical, incapable of understanding the realities of life. Yet the truth is that those who are usually regarded as practical have only the kind of abstract thoughts which cannot lay hold of reality. One must ask if it really is sensible to select for high political office someone who is more renowned for fly-fishing than his thinking ability? “Fly-fishing” is the title of a book written by Sir Edward Grey⁵ and fly-fishing is what fills his mind. A ministerial colleague once said about him, not without justification: “The reason Grey has such excellent concentration is because he simply repeats what others put into his mind; no thought of his own ever disturbs his concentration.”—That colleague hit the nail on the head. So you see, according to modern opinion, someone who understands fly-fishing must also understand politics for it would be a drawback if he had any real thoughts. However, as I have said, so often it is just such opinions which at present reveal their futility for they have brought about the disastrous conditions we are in.

It is obvious that the capabilities which today are regarded as adequate for political office and statesmanship are in fact inadequate. This is because modern man has no interest in turning his thoughts to anything other than external phenomena. Many years ago I called this condition “fact-fanaticism”; earlier still I called it “the dogma of practical experience.” You can read about it in my books Goethe's Conception of the World and Goethe the Scientist.

We must be clear about the fact that those whose thinking merely reflects natural processes, historical events or external social life, develop thoughts which are purely ahrimanic. That does not necessarily mean that they are wrong or incorrect, but they are ahrimanic. The ahrimanic element must of necessity exist. The whole content of natural science is ahrimanic and will only lose its ahrimanic nature when it becomes imbued with life. This will happen when man's thinking ceases merely to mirror external phenomena in a mechanical way. Thinking must become creative, it must become saturated through and through with spiritual content. Social laws, laws of rights, etc. will be ahrimanic if, when formulating them, one relies solely on that capacity, on that aspect of thinking which mirrors the external events and reflects upon them. When, as in such instances, ahrimanic forces are active in spheres where they do not belong they become destructive. Healing will come to our age when the thoughts and ideas that are applied to social conditions and political life are in living contact with spiritual reality.

Because of the demands it would make upon them there are few people today who are able to accept these facts. When one speaks about the spirit it is noticeable that people are on their guard. What goes on in their consciousness on such occasions is not so important; what goes on in their sub-consciousness is of great importance. What lives there is bad conscience which they experience only subconsciously. Because they are unable to admit to themselves that their thoughts are lifeless and ahrimanic they avoid becoming conscious of the fact. The moment one's thinking attains a living grasp of spiritual reality one can no longer avoid the recognition that thoughts, which merely mirror external phenomena, are ahrimanic. This recognition causes fear. It is fear that holds man back from attaining creative thinking. Creative thinking is only attained when man is inspired—even unconsciously—from the spiritual world.

Thus we see that, apart from all the many other ills that beset mankind, nothing less than a war against the spirit is waged in our time. It is a war which, under the influence of certain circles, will become more and more widespread; and is being promoted in the strongest possible way by what may be termed the spirit of our time.—I have to admit that it is extremely difficult to speak about things belonging to this domain, at the same time it is not enough merely to hint at them or avoid calling them by their proper names. In this world nothing can be said to be absolute good or absolute evil; it always depends on the aspect from which it is viewed. The important thing is to recognize that in their right place at the right time things are good; shifted out of the right place and time they are no longer good. Nowadays people all too readily take things in a dogmatic or absolute sense, which so easily leads to misunderstanding about such matters. There is no question of levelling criticism at the age as such, only of drawing attention to facts.

There is an inclination in our time to turn away from the spirit and towards the ahrimanic—the ahrimanic is also spirit but it is spirit which is dead and reveals only what is material. Life has become immensely differentiated and there is more and more need for discrimination. Many examples could be given of different aspects of social life through which one can become aware of the kind of impulses that are at work in our time. Impulses of which we all partake. I shall mention just two such impulses.

One impulse is noticeable mainly in people who have strong links with the land, with the soil. If we travel eastwards we shall find more and more people of this type. If we go westwards we find more and more conditions of emancipation from the soil. In recent decades the Central European has made rapid strides from attachment to the soil to emancipation from it. Country folk have a close connection with the soil; town folk have emancipated themselves from it. One could say the country type of person is agrarian, the city type industrial. These two terms, agrarian and industrial, have taken on a different meaning in the last decade to what they once meant. It is difficult to explain these things because they tend to be taken in a dogmatic, absolute sense, but that is not what is meant. What is meant is a characterization of general tendencies. They are streams within human evolution and we are all involved in them.

Whatever we do in life we have an inclination towards one or the other of these two tendencies in man. Both are naturally good in themselves but under the influences that exist in our time they deteriorate. In the agrarian the deterioration takes the form of a disinclination to rise to anything spiritual; there is a tendency to let the spirit in man lie fallow, wanting to remain as one is and unite with what is not yet spirit. The industrial type develops an opposite tendency; he loses connection with the spirit active in nature and lives more and more in abstractions. His concepts become ever more rarefied and insubstantial. In our time the agrarian is in danger of suffocation for lack of spirituality. For the industrial the danger is of an opposite kind, he lives in spirit which is too rarefied, his concepts have lost all connection with true reality; he could be compared with someone living in air which is too thin.

These are the shadow-sides, especially in our age, of the two tendencies in man. We see that the agrarian type all too easily develops aversion for the spirit, i.e. for cultural development. One cannot however just stand still and avoid participating in evolution. If one remains at the level of nature by turning away from the spirit one sinks below nature and comes into relationship with demonic beings who make one into a real hater of the spirit. As a consequence a view of life develops based on ahrimanic demonology.

The extreme industrial type on the other hand, living in concepts that are completely abstract, develops an attitude of superiority; he sees himself as a kind of superman—though not in the Nietzschean sense—he comes into the realm of Lucifer. Ahriman hands him over to luciferic powers and he becomes steeped in luciferic concepts and emotions. The tendency in the agrarian is towards brutishness; in the industrial it is towards an abstract recklessness of concepts. These phenomena are very conspicuous in our time. They are also serious matters that bring home the fact that our age cannot be understood without spiritual knowledge. Human beings must live together; to do so they must find common ground of understanding by rubbing off their one-sidedness on each other, and certainly both agrarians and industrials have their place.

Already at the time when the Gospels were written it was foreseen that human beings would become more and more differentiated. St. Luke's Gospel is written more with regard for agrarians, St. Matthew's Gospel more for industrials. However, not only the Gospel of St. Luke or that of St. Matthew should speak to us, but all the Gospels. There are “clever” people who find contradictions between the Gospels; they fail to take into account that the Gospels were written by human beings of different inner dispositions. The soul experiences of the writer of St. Luke's Gospel were akin to those of the agrarian type; whereas those of the writer of St. Matthew's Gospel were akin to the inner disposition of the industrial type. The essential thing is not to remain one-sided but to recognize that things which contradict each other are also complementary.

Unless man seeks to unite with the Universal Spirit, which today can be found only through spiritual knowledge—the Spirit which, though it pervades everything, does not live in any individual entity—the time will come when he will resemble the environment he lives in and identifies with. Eduard von Hartmann⁶ once made the apt remark that, when one goes into a rural district and catches sight of an ox with the peasant beside it, there is no great difference in their physiognomy. That is to express it radically, the remark is also derogatory, but one sees what is meant. In our time, because man turns away from the spirit, an intimate relationship develops between his soul and the environment. When one is able to observe life's more subtle aspect it is obvious that the mental life of the agrarian is influenced by his association with the soil, just as the industrial is influenced by his kind of environment. When either of these two types of people thinks about politics or religion, their thoughts are invariably colored by their particular kind of environment. Man's concepts and ideas are dependent today to an awful extent on his external physical environment; they must be set free by the knowledge and insight spiritual science can provide.

A thinker like African Spir would feel things of this kind very strongly. When he said that everything in the external world is semblance, illusion, it was because he became aware, by observing his own inner life, that man comes to experience his inner being as semblance. Through participating in external semblance he comes to feel his inner self as unreal.—How can one expect healing or solutions to come from the semblance in which man is immersed? His inner life is so entangled in conflicting impulses that it is no wonder external conflicts are rife.

To be a spiritual scientist, not just in name or because of some indefinite feeling, but in the deepest and truest sense, life must be observed with the insight of spiritual knowledge. Life today is not seen as it truly is; people shun the spirit and attempt to shape their life purely on the basis of what is unspiritual. It is useless to harbor spiritual knowledge as an abstract general truth, paying no need to it when trying to understand life. To know that man consists of physical body, etheric body, astral body and 'I' or that Lucifer and Ahriman exist, is not enough. One should be able to apply concepts such as ahrimanic or luciferic scientifically, like a physicist applies the concepts of positive and negative electricity when testing these phenomena.

Agrarian and industrial are concepts which cease to be abstract when we, in looking at life, recognize them as luciferic and ahrimanic tendencies, as we have just done. One takes risks when describing things in this way, for people do not want to hear the truth. Yet the truth has to be faced if mankind is ever to find a cure for all the confusion in the world. Salvation from and the healing of the evils of our time are closely related to understanding human life.

• 1 . African Spir 1837–1890 Philosopher.
• 2 . Herman Grimm 1828–1901 Cultural Historian.
• 3 . Bosnia and Herzegovina were occupied by Austria 1878. They remained Turkish territory until annexed in 1908.
• 4 . Georgi Evegenievich Lvov 1861–1925 Russian politician. Became leader of the first provisional government on March 15, 1917.
• 5 . Sir Edward Grey 1862–1933 English politician 1905–1916 British Foreign Minister.
• 6 . Eduard von Hartmann 1842–1906 Philosopher

To-day and in the next few days I should like to draw from our recent studies some conclusions about human life itself. I will first mention certain thoughts which are brought against Anthroposophy from outside, and will then show how with regard to these ideas we should lay hold of and emphasise certain conceptions.

Now in the life of nature, in the natural order, everyone to-day recognises—in terms of the natural order, certainly—the same kind of thing that we want to establish through Spiritual Science for the spiritual life, the spiritual order. The anthroposophical outlook would be wrongly interpreted if it were to infuse modern Spiritual Science with any kind of old errors or mystical ideas, bordering on superstition. We must accustom ourselves to use such terms as Ahrimanic, Luciferic—now familiar to us—for the spiritual order, in the same way, though certainly on a higher level, that a natural scientist speaks of positive and negative electricity, positive and negative magnetism, and so on. In contradistinction to the prejudices of present-day natural science, however, we must be clear that directly we rise to consideration of the spiritual order of the world, those concepts which in natural science have a fixed and highly abstract content, must be grasped in a more concrete and spiritual sense.

Now we know that during the life between birth and death man has what we are accustomed to call his physical body; beyond this is the etheric body or—to use the more workable expression I am trying to introduce—the body of formative forces; then comes the astral body which has a conscious character, but not yet that of our present-day consciousness. What many people to-day call the subconscious appertains to the astral body. Then comes what is called our ordinary consciousness, which alternates between the states of sleeping and waking. In the sleeping state it is represented only by chaotic dreams. In the waking state, not content with perceptions only, it has recourse to abstract judgments and concepts.

All these aspects of consciousness belong to the part of man's being we call the “I,” or ego. At the present time it is only in this last member of the human organism, in the ego itself, that man can find his bearings. The ego is mirrored for him in his consciousness. It is in this ego that are really enacted all the thinking, feeling and willing of the soul. Everything else—astral body, etheric body, and the physical body in its true form—lies outside his consciousness and also outside the ego. For all that is stated about the physical body in ordinary science, in anatomy, physiology and so forth, refers only to its outer aspect—to as much of it as enters our consciousness in the same way as other external objects are perceived. What we consciously perceive is an external picture of the physical body, not the physical body itself.

Thus the three members of man's being which, in accordance with their evolution, we call pre-earthly—you know about this evolution from my Occult Science—these three members are outside the field of normal human consciousness. Now you know that with regard to the spiritual order we speak of Beings who, as members of the various Hierarchies, are ranged above man, just as below him are ranged the three kingdoms of nature—the animal, plant and mineral kingdoms. As soon as we consider man in a spiritual sense, we can no longer speak only of those contents of the astral, etheric and physical bodies of which ordinary science or even Anthroposophy speak when they are concerned only with human life in the sense-perceptible world. Therefore in our earlier studies this autumn I mentioned that if we look at these lower members of man's nature (let us call them that) as they truly are, we find that Spirits of the individual Hierarchies are essentially connected with them.

In the sense of my recent remarks on Goethe's world-conception, we may say: In so far as through these three members man develops himself in the course of time, in so far as he goes through the evolution open to him between birth and death, he is connected with certain spiritual forces which lie behind his evolution. I tried to make this clear to you by saying: If we look upon this as man's present-day being

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(diagram), we have to think of it as connected from its evolutionary past with the spiritual Powers whom we have recognised as belonging to the higher Hierarchies. As you know, in a normal man these spiritual Powers, with the exception of the Spirits of Form, the Exusiai, do not work directly within the ego. Thus, except for the Spirits of Form, the Powers who endow man with his original form, the remaining spiritual Powers do not work into his present consciousness.

We can get some idea of the Spirits of Form—a very meagre idea but in some degree relevant—if we look at one aspect of the human bodily form which is acquired during the earliest period of physical life. We are all born as more or less crawling beings, with no power to stand vertically. Now a great deal in the whole being of man is connected with his upright posture, or rather with the force which makes this posture the true one for him. And when we consider the merely outward features which distinguish man from the animals, we should not look at the things usually seen, the bones, muscles, and so on, which in essentials are common to both man and animal; we should focus our attention on this force of uprightness which gives the growing human being his form. It is only part of the difference, but it is an essential part. This force of uprightness that intervenes in our physical development is of the same nature as all the forces that bestow on earthly man his form. It is only forces of this kind that penetrate into our ego.

But there are also the forces of cosmic movement, cosmic wisdom, cosmic will—Dynamis, Kyriotetes and Thrones, if we use their ancient names while approaching them in a modern spirit. These forces intervene in the unconscious parts of man's being—those therefore that appertain to his astral body, his body of formative forces or etheric body, and his physical body. And so, when these members of man's nature are observed without the spiritual content to which I have referred, we are concerned with mere illusions, mere phantoms. In truth, we are not to be found in our outward appearance; our real being is in the aforesaid spiritual forces.

Now—as I said recently in connection with Goethe's world-conception—there are forces which work upon man for a time, without being directly involved in his evolution. These two forces we call the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic, the Luciferic working more spiritually (see red in diagram), the Ahrimanic more in the subconscious (lilac in diagram).

Hence we have a threefold cosmic intervention in human life. We can say: In man's nature there are certain spiritual

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forces connected directly with the course of his evolution. And there are two other kinds of forces, the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic, not directly connected with his evolution; they work upon him for a time and are thus an addition to his inherent constitution.

Let us now consider life. When we consider life, we do not see only the stream of forces that actually belongs to us; we always see something flowing together out of the three streams. Whatever we survey, the outer world of the senses, or the historical life of man taking its course between pleasure and pain, joy and sorrow, action and inaction, we see it in such a way that the three streams are flowing into one another. In ordinary life we do not go in for what the chemist does when, instead of leaving water as the simple liquid it appears to be, he analyses it into hydrogen and oxygen. Spiritual science must undertake this analysis. Spiritual science must go in for spiritual chemistry; otherwise it will never be possible thoroughly to understand human life.

From various points of view we have described the special characteristics of the type of being we call Luciferic, and those of the type of being we call Ahrimanic. Our task now is to go into these things from yet another point of view, so as to relate them directly to human life. Where in man's life is the point at which Luciferic forces acquire particular influence, and where the point at which particular influence is acquired by the Ahrimanic forces?

Now if man could give himself up to the quiet development proper to his original being (you know from earlier studies that he would then be able to acquire self-knowledge only in the second half of life) he would not have been exposed to the periodic ingress of Luciferic and Ahrimanic powers. But in real life, as we have to live it, man is exposed to the periodic ingress of these powers—yes, he must indeed reckon with the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic. Now in all that belongs more to the sphere of the conscious in man, but in such a way that he does not strive after this consciousness through nature but by going beyond nature (we go beyond nature when, for example, we acquire self-knowledge during the first half of life)—in everything he strives for through consciousness there lies something we can describe only as super-consciousness. But for this element of super-consciousness, our consciousness would appear quite different. It is super-consciousness that enables man to introduce into historical life more than he could do if he had to depend solely on his physical development. At the present juncture in man's earthly evolution we should have a very different form of culture if this super-consciousness had not flowed in. With this super-consciousness, however, the possibility of ingress is quite definitely given to Luciferic powers.

We must recognise in the right way how these powers work into human consciousness. Without them, man would never be induced to develop a form of thinking different from that which I recently described to you as the ideal of the Goethean world-conception. With the aid of Luciferic powers, he forms hypotheses, builds imaginative pictures that transcend reality. He does not simply seize upon reality; with his consciousness he unites super-consciousness. He forms all manner of ideas about reality—ideas that enable him to come to closer grips with reality than he otherwise would do. And if we turn our gaze to the whole sphere of art, where the super-conscious plays so large a part, we must emphasise that if art is not to degenerate into mere naturalism, the highest possible degree of Luciferic activity must come in. It is no use saying—I have emphasised this again and again—that man should keep the Luciferic away from his life. If he could do so, he would be unable to lead a real life; he would have to become an arch-philistine. It is the Luciferic activity which like a leaven saves him over and over again—spurs him on to struggle out of Philistinism.

This Luciferic activity, however, is at the same time the cause of man's tendency to look at the world from the airy viewpoint of a bird, as it were. All that arises in the course of history as wonderful programmes, marvellously beautiful ideas, by which it is always believed that in some way or other a return can be made to the Golden Age—all this has its origin in the Luciferic tendencies which flow into man. Everything by which he tries to loosen his connection with reality, to soar above his actual circumstances—all this points to the Luciferic. So, too, does the impulse that is always tending to diminish the interest we take in our fellow-men. Were we to follow our original nature, in accordance with the evolutionary forces that truly belong to us, we should feel an interest in our fellow-men far beyond the usual measure. The Luciferic element in our nature produces a certain lack of interest in other people. And if we study the real being of man, we ought to lay great emphasis on the following point—that a great deal in the world would be different if we were to recognise in its reality this urge of ours towards an excessive interest in our own concoctions and a much too meagre interest in what other people think and feel and will. Knowledge of man in the right sense is acquired only if we permeate our approach with the question: What is it that impels me to lose interest in other people? It must be a future task of human culture to develop this knowledge of man. To-day, knowledge of man is often said to consist in what anyone may say about people in accordance with his own idea of what they are or what they should be. Taking people as they are and being quite clear that everyone is as he is, even the criminal—we must go as far as that—tells us more important things about the world than any personal fancies we may have about the being of man, however beautiful they may be. To say this to ourselves is to set up a counterpoise to the Luciferic element within us.

An endeavour to gain a knowledge of man in this way would reveal an endless amount. And a genuine interest in the real nature of man has never been further off than it is to-day. But what is meant here is not to be confused with a lack of critical attitude towards human beings. Anyone who starts out with the idea that all men must be looked upon as good and have to be given equal affection is dealing with the matter in a most comfortably Luciferic way, for all that is pure fantasy. This notion of regarding all men as equal is sheer Luciferic fantasy; the point is not to cherish a general idea but to penetrate to the actual character of every individual man and to develop for it a loving—or, perhaps better, an interested—undemanding.

Now you may ask: What is the object of the presence of this Luciferic force in us, if it prevents us from being tolerant towards human nature in a wise sense and from developing interest in it? What is this Luciferic force in us meant for? In the household of the spirit it is thoroughly justified. The Luciferic force has to be there because if we were only in the progressive stream of cosmic influence and were to develop a tendency to know each individual man in accordance with his nature and spirit, then we should be drowned in ail our knowledge about man. We should go under and never be able to find ourselves properly. A fact connected with many of the secrets of existence is that there is truly nothing in life which, if carried to an extreme conclusion, does not turn into something bad or unfortunate. That which rightly draws us to other people, and enables us to find the other man in ourselves, would have the effect of drowning us in our knowledge of man if the Luciferic goad were not always there, ready again and again to save us from drowning, to raise us to the surface, bringing us back to ourselves and kindling interest in our own being. It is just in our human relations that we live in a continuous fluctuation between our own original force and the Luciferic force. And anyone who says: Would it not show more intelligence if man were to follow his own original force without being touched by the Luciferic force?—anyone who maintains this ought also to maintain that if he had scales with two pans he would prefer to dispense with one pan and weigh simply with the other. Life runs its course in states of balance, not in absolutely fixed conditions. This is what can first of all be said of the Luciferic grip upon human life. It lays hold of human consciousness, but in such a way that super-consciousness intermingles with consciousness.

The Ahrimanic element, on the other hand, exerts its influence chiefly in the subconscious. In all the subconscious impulses in man's nature, often subtle impulses, the Ahrimanic fortes mingle. If we want to characterise Ahriman and Lucifer we might say: Lucifer is a proud Spirit who likes to soar away into the heights where lofty visions open out. Ahriman is a morally lonely Spirit who does not readily make his presence known; he sets his nature to work in man's subconscious, works upon man's subconscious, conjures judgments out of it. People then believe that they judge out of their own consciousness, whereas they often derive an opinion from subconscious instincts, out of subtle subconscious impulses, or they even allow it to be conjured forth by the Ahrimanic forces themselves.

Religious descriptions have, as we know, often sprung from old conceptions which have now been taken over by Spiritual Science. And Peter was not far wrong in calling Ahriman a “prowling lion seeking whom he might devour.” For Ahriman really does prowl in the hidden parts of man's nature, in his subconscious; he strives to reach his earthly goal by diverting man's subconscious force to himself, so as spiritually to attain different ends in world-evolution from those lying in the direct human stream.

Where historical life is concerned it is always Luciferic forces that lead us to hatch out far-reaching world-dreams which fail to reckon with the nature of man. In the course of human thought what a vast number of ideas have been devised for making the world happy! And in the firm opinion of those who devise them, the world can become happy only through these particular ideas. This is because such Luciferic thinking is of an airy kind, soaring aloft and taking no account of all that is swarming around below, and believing that the world can be organised on the lines of these airy notions. Such ideas of how to make the world happy, resting always upon a defective knowledge of man, are of a Luciferic nature; dreams of world power derived from particular realms of human activity are of an Ahrimanic kind. For these dreams are developed out of the subconscious. It is Ahrimanic to take a certain realm of human activity and to wish to bring the whole world under its aegis. All that is connected with man's lust for ruling over his fellows, all that is in opposition to healthy social impulses, is of an Ahrimanic nature. The man of whom it could be said—not in a superstitious way but in our own sense—that he is possessed by Lucifer, loses interest in his fellow-men. The man possessed by Ahriman would like to have as many men as possible in his power and then to proceed—if he is clever—to make use of human frailty in order to rule over men. It is Ahrimanic to seek in the sub-earthly, in the subconscious, for human weaknesses as a means of ruling men.

Now we must ask: Where does all this come from? That above all is the question which must interest us: Where does it all come from? We have to ask: Of what nature are such forces as the Ahrimanic and Luciferic in their true being? Now we know that our Earth is—to use a Goethean expression—a metamorphosis of previous cosmic world-bodies, the fourth metamorphosis. And in order to have names for them, we have said: The Earth was first incorporated as Saturn, then as Sun, then as Moon, and is now incorporated as Earth.¹ Thus we know that this Earth is the fourth incorporation of its cosmic being, the fourth metamorphosis; and it will go through further metamorphoses. We must take this into consideration if we now go on to ask: In the whole cosmic framework which embraces man, what significance have the forces of the Luciferic and Ahrimanic Beings? We know that with the formation assumed by that part of the cosmos most nearly concerning us—our Earth—the Spirits of Form are connected. And if we examine a particularly characteristic feature of this Earth-formation, we find it—as I said before—to be identical, though only in a limited respect, with the way in which we overcome gravity through our own power of standing upright. These Spirits of Form are in a certain sense the ruling forces in earthly existence—that is, in the present metamorphosis of our planet. As we know, however, these Spirits of Form work through other Spirits whom we call Archai, Archangeloi, Angeloi, using old names in a modern connotation.

Now, with regard to these Beings, we are interested above all in the Archai, the Primal Forces, Primal Beginnings. We know that in the ranks of spiritual Beings, the Spirits of Form come immediately above the Archai. Hence we find that in the course of man's original evolution the forces of the Archai are to a certain extent in the service of the Spirits of Form. Into the being of man there work Archai and Exusiai—the Spirits we also call Primal Forces and those we call Spirits of Form. Besides this, however, there are also certain Spirits of Form who are disguised as Archai. They can be Exusiai, but they act only as Archai; they take on that rôle. This is an essential fact we discover—how spiritual Beings can take on a certain rôle which differs from the actual stage of their own evolution.

This has a quite definite consequence. Earthly form can be just as dependent on those Primal Forces who are really Spirits of Form, as it is upon the ordinary Spirits of Form. But the important thing is that everything in our earthly existence which is connected with space through taking shape in space is shaped out of the non-spatial. We comprehend the spatial only if we trace it back in its picture-nature to primal pictures that are outside space. Naturally, one of the difficulties for Western thinking is to form a conception of the spaceless. Yet it is true that everything connected with our primeval manhood, everything proceeding from the Spirits of Form, when it takes shape in space, is an effect of the spaceless. To speak concretely, when as individual human beings, who first crawl on all-fours, we learn to stand upright and thus overcome gravity in our upright posture, we place ourselves into space. But the force that is fundamentally responsible for this makes its way into space out of the spaceless.

If therefore as men we were subject only to the Spirits of Form proper to us, we should in every way place ourselves into space, bring the spaceless to realisation in space, for the Spirits of Form do not live in space. Anyone who seeks the Divine in space will not find it ... that goes without saying. Anything which arises as form in space is a realisation of the spaceless.

Those Beings who are Spirits of Form but act as Archai, as Primal Forces, should really, according to their essential nature, belong to the spaceless. But they enter space, they work in space. And this is characteristic of the Ahrimanic—that spiritual Beings who in their true nature are intended to be spaceless have preferred to work in space. This enables forms to arise in space that do not ray in directly out of the spaceless. Thus the spatial is portrayed in the spatial, so that one spatial form reflects another.

Perhaps I may take a concrete case. We men are all different from one another because we are placed here out of the spaceless. Our archetypes are in the spaceless. Everything is different from everything else. You have heard the famous story of how, at the instigation of Leibniz, certain princesses—for sometimes princesses have nothing better to do—searched the garden for two leaves absolutely alike and did not find them, for there are no two identical leaves. We also are forms created out of the spaceless, in so far as we do not resemble each other. But from another aspect we are alike—especially when we are blood relations. We resemble one another because there are spiritual Beings who form the spatial according to the spatial, not merely the spatial according to the spaceless. We resemble each other because we are permeated by Ahrimanic forces. This must be recognised, or we shall merely inveigh against Ahrimanic and Luciferic forces without any wish to understand them.

This example illustrates very clearly how Ahriman plays into our life. In so far as you can venture to say to yourself, “According to my form I am individual man, different from any other,” you are in the direct line of evolution. And were this the only fact valid in the world, and if there were no Ahrimanic side-streams to it, a mother would not be able to rejoice that her little daughter resembles her so wonderfully, for it would strike her that each individual human being is a spatial image of something outside space, that nothing spatial is a replica of anything in space. The entry into space of certain Spirits of Form gives the Ahrimanic its opportunity. Naturally this Ahrimanic element is not confined to similarity among human beings—it extends to many other things; we have simply taken one example of it.

Now I will ask you to call to mind what I added—not for your comfort but as arising out of our subject—after having told you that man really becomes apt for self-knowledge only in the second half of life. I said: In so far as our life takes this course in time, and if nothing else worked upon us, we could, in fact, arrive at self-knowledge only in the second half of life. But—so I said at the time—in the first half of life Luciferic forces work on us and produce a self-knowledge that is not the result of our own original human nature. In contrast to human life as it would be if it followed its original pattern, I set what I have called the realm of duration. In regard to everything that belongs to our original human nature we are different persons at fifty from what we were at twenty; we develop. In regard to everything in us that we do not develop, we belong not to our bodily nature but to the realm of soul and spirit and are connected with the realm of duration, with that realm in which time plays no part. Just as the spaceless lies at the basis of everything spatial, so at the basis of everything temporal there is duration.

We should be quite different human beings if we were not connected with the realm of duration. As I said a short while ago, we should wake out of a certain life of dreams only at twenty-eight or twenty-nine years old. We live, however, in the realm of duration, and this gives balance to our dozing through the first half of life and the terrible intellectual brightness of the second half.

Now to this realm of duration belong, as we know, all the spiritual Beings of the higher Hierarchies, with the single exception of the Spirits of Form. They play into the kingdom of evolution in time. But because they live both spatially and spacelessly, because they pass their life between space and the spaceless, they call spatial forms into existence out of the spaceless. This admits of a time-process; their life plays into time. The other Beings, however, of a higher rank than the Spirits of Form among the Hierarchies, belong entirely to duration. It is only by way of comparison that they can be spoken of as Beings of time; if this is meant to correspond to reality, it is nonsense. It is most difficult to talk about these things for the simple reason that, at the present stage of evolution, so very few men have any lively sense of concepts and ideas developed outside space and outside time. Most people would explain away the spaceless as sheer fantasy; and it is the same with the timeless, the enduring, the imperishable, and even the immutable.

Beings above the rank of the Exusiai, accordingly, belong only to the realm of duration. But there are those among them who take on the role of Beings in time, who enter time. Just as those other Beings, the Ahrimanic Beings I have described, enter space, so there are Beings who enter time. These are Luciferic Beings, who really belong to the ranks of Spirits of Wisdom, but because they work in time they do so in the character of Spirits of Form. And that which would otherwise work timelessly in man's soul during life is brought into time by these Spirits. Hence it comes about that certain things which could always be in existence for us were we allowed to take our course according only to the realm of duration, succumb to time. For instance, we may forget them, or remember them either more or less well, and so on, and this remembrance depends only upon our bodily-soul nature, not upon our soul-spiritual nature.

Spirits of Duration, therefore, who act as Spirits of Time—they are Luciferic powers; in the cosmic order they are really of a much higher rank than those Powers of whom many clergymen, however highly educated in theology they may think themselves, speak when they talk of the divine. ... In reality they are referring to much less exalted Powers, as I have indeed said before.

These Luciferic Beings are able to transfer into time what would otherwise appear to our human perception as purely spiritual and timeless—they give it the semblance of running its course in time. And this temporal semblance, imparted to certain phenomena in ourselves, is the sole reason why people maintain that their spiritual activity has a material origin. Were we not permeated in our souls by Luciferic Beings, our spiritual activity would appear to us as coming directly from the spiritual. We should never imagine that spiritual activity could depend on the material. We should see that the image I often use is the only right one—that whoever believes his spiritual activity arises from the material is like a man who goes up to a mirror and thinks that the reflection arises from a being behind it. Certainly the image depends upon how the mirror is constructed, and so is our thinking dependent upon our bodily nature. The body, however, does nothing more than the mirror does; if the Luciferic semblance were absent, the mirror would directly reveal to human perception that spiritual activity is merely given its form by the material. In so far as Lucifer is implicated in our super-consciousness, he calls forth the semblance that leads us by the nose in the same way as if we were to go up to a mirror and break it in order to find out how whoever was behind it had managed to get a hold there.

This illusion that the spiritual can originate in the material is essentially Luciferic. And anyone who maintains that the spiritual is a product of the material is in fact declaring—though he may not say so—that Lucifer is his God. The assertion that the spiritual comes forth from the material, which is exactly the same as saying that a mirror produces a reflection, as if there were beings behind the mirror ... this assertion that the material produces the spiritual, the spiritual in man, is identical with declaring, even if not in words: Lucifer is God.

Now we can also seek knowledge about the opposite pole. A Luciferic misrepresentation is that the mirror, the material, drives out the spiritual from itself. The opposite pole is this—the illusion also exists among men that the content of the physical world of the senses has power to work upon the inner being of man. If the Ahrimanic illusion, which arises through forces entering space out of the spaceless were not present, man would perceive how no influence could ever be exercised upon his inner being by forces anchored in the material. The assertion that in the material there are forces, energies, which are able to work on further in man, is an entirely Ahrimanic assertion; whoever makes it, even without words, is declaring Ahriman to be his God.

Nevertheless man sways between these two illusions. First, the illusion that repeatedly deceives him—that the mirror itself produces pictures of real beings, as if the material were able to bring forth spiritual activities. And the other illusion—that in the external existence of the senses energies are contained which are somehow transformed so as to bring about human activities. The first is the Luciferic illusion; the other, the Ahrimanic.

What is so characteristic of our present time is that it has no inclination to go into the spiritual in the same way that it goes into the natural order. It is certainly easier to speak about the spirit from the standpoint of a nebulous mysticism, or in terms of abstract ideas, than to enter concretely into spiritual processes and spiritual impulses in a truly scientific way, as is done in the case of nature itself.

We live now in an age when man must consciously begin to make clear to himself what is working in his soul. We know why the time is past when man could draw from an unconscious source the impulses he needed to guide him further. To-day he must begin consciously to enter the realm in which lives his soul-nature, and this soul-nature is generated by consciousness.

Thus we are able to say that if man were to follow in his evolution only his original nature and the good spiritual forces in the world, he would be a very different being from what he now is, when he pursues this age-old development in conjunction with the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic forces working upon him in time.

The question now is this: How is a balance set up between these three forces? In order to set up this balance, or at least to recognise how it can be done, we must look at the following.

External natural science is quite content to judge in certain realms according to this principle: a knife has to do with eating, so one goes to the razor-case for a razor and cuts up the food. That is how many judgments in natural science are formed nowadays—for example, about death. Modern natural science does not go much further with its ready-made ideas about the phenomenon of death than to call it the cessation of an organism. That is easy, for then—as is done in a grotesque way to-day by many so-called scientists—we can speak of plant death, animal death, human death, all in the same sense. That, however, is really no different from speaking of a knife and putting a table-knife and a razor in the same category. In truth, what can be called death is different in plants, different in the animal, different in the case of human beings. But because in all three a cessation of organic functions is seen, people generalise.

When we study human death—and we have very often talked of it—then we find that it can be looked upon in a certain sense as the counterpoise for the Luciferic forces. Death, as you know, is not just a once-only phenomenon, for a man actually begins to die the moment he is born. The impulses of death are already laid in him and death itself comes about at a certain point of time. Everything in the way of impulses leading to death is at the same time a force which sets up a counterpoise to the Luciferic forces. For through death man is led out beyond the temporal into the realm of duration.

Now we know that the Luciferic forces really belong by nature to the realm of duration, and that what they are meant to do in the realm of duration they carry into the temporal. This would not be balanced if death, which leads man out of the temporal into the realm of duration, were not introduced into the kingdom of the temporal. Death balances the Luciferic. The Luciferic force carries duration into time; death carries time out into duration. There we have it in abstract words—but in this abstraction there is a very great amount of the concrete.

And what have we had to say of Ahriman? He is responsible for similarity. I have given you a concrete case of human similarity which is connected with Ahriman. And here, too, a counterpoise must be set up. But strangely enough, similarity is often related to this counterpoise through one of those confused concepts that arise when one does not enter into the deeper connections. The counterpoise to human similarity is the force of heredity; we are not alike merely in the shaping of our outward form, but we bear inner forces of heredity within us. Through these forces we actually work against similarity of form. It is only a confused science that identifies similarity with heredity. We look like our parents, but at the same time in our inner man we have certain forces inherited from them which strive to recapture the original image of the human being. These inherited forces do actually fight against similarity. A more subtle observation of man's life can show us this, without any supersensible powers, but solely through external observation. Just try to ask the question of life in the right way; try to observe men who in some outward characteristic particularly resemble their parents, grandparents and so on; and then look at the inherited moral impulses. You will soon see that these inherited moral impulses are, as a rule, working against similarity of outward appearance.

If in the case of distinguished personalities mentioned in history you are impressed by how much their pictures make them look like their forefathers, you will always notice that their biographies bring out attributes of soul—and these are precisely the inherited attributes—which are opposed to those from which the similarities of form have come. This is essentially one of the mysteries of life. Forebears would understand their descendants far better, and parents their children, if they were able to look this fact in the face completely without prejudice. If, for example, a mother has a little son who is very much like her, she can be pleased; but when it comes to education it might be useful for her to say: “What will happen if my son develops those qualities which are like the qualities that make for quarrels between my husband and me?” These concrete impulses have a tremendous importance in life and should be noticed. To know of them will be particularly necessary for the task of education, for the evolution of human beings in the future. For it will not be possible in the future to derive our education from abstract principles; we shall have to educate on an empirical, concrete basis. And we do not discover these empirical, concrete bases if we have no power to read life. We must be able to read life; but for that we must learn its alphabet. As you know, there is much more to it than that, but the most necessary alphabet that will suffice for the immediate future is to know three letters—normal evolution, Ahrimanic evolution, Luciferic evolution. Just as no-one can read a book without knowing his ABC, so anyone who is ignorant of these three letters cannot read—they are simply the letters through which one learns how to read life. Only by our learning to read life will the Utopian spirit so widespread among men be overcome. And people will then have to embark on a study of those forces which play into life.

Now naturally someone may say: “You have been talking here about the original being of man, but it is nowhere to be found.” That goes without saying; but as an objection it is no different from this: “You have been telling me here of how in the flowing water of a river there is hydrogen and oxygen, but I see nothing of all that.” It is indeed necessary to go into these things, above all to have a correct concept of what form is. I have previously used a comparison which I should now like to repeat.

One can arrive at Coblenz, or some other place, even at Basle, and admire the Rhine, perhaps feeling impelled to say: “This Rhine, it flows on, we don't know for how long it has done so but certainly for centuries, perhaps for an incalculable time. How old this Rhine is!”—What part of it is actually old? The water you look at will be at a quite different place in a few days; it will be far away; so it is certainly not old, for a few days ago it was not yet there, but somewhere quite else. What you see there is definitely not old; you have no right to call it centuries old. And when you speak of the Rhine, you probably do not mean its bed, the channel where its waters flow. In reality you are speaking of something not present before you. When you speak of reality, you cannot indeed refer to what you have before your eyes, for that is a confluence of forces working through the world and is merely a state of equilibrium. In whatever direction you may look, there is merely a state of equilibrium. You have to work through to the realities. And only by working through to the realities is it possible to learn the alphabet of life.

To-morrow I shall be speaking of the connection of the Luciferic and Ahrimanic impulses with the Christ-Jahve impulse, so that you may see how, in reality, the Christ-Jahve impulse flows into these streams.

• 1. Op. cit. Chapter IV of Occult Science—an Outline.

If among my hearers there are some who wished to analyze yesterday's lecture philosophically they might perhaps meet with difficulties, apparent difficulties, and indeed for the reason that they will have heard from former presentations given on similar themes, that the whole of our post-Atlantean epoch, and in fact even the later ages of Atlantean evolution existed for the purpose of gradually developing the human ‘I’ as such, and bringing it more and more to consciousness. In connection with this it has been said, that in some respects those belonging to the ancient Indian civilization were the very first who, after they had been able in old Atlantis to look into a spiritual world by means of the old clairvoyance then still to be found in humanity, were transposed straight out of this clairvoyant state into the physical world. They saw this physical world in such a way that over the whole of the first post-Atlantean age of civilization there came the feeling, that what lay behind them in the spiritual world was the true reality; that which was outside in the world was merely maya or illusion.

Now it was explained in our last lecture, quite in accordance with the facts, that the people belonging to this ancient Indian civilization had to some extent gone through a rich soul development, and it was said that they had gained this while their ‘I’ was more or less asleep, that is to say, that the ‘I’ only awoke after this mature soul development had already been acquired.

Now you might possibly ask: What then happened to these Indian peoples in the interval? For the Indian peoples must, so to say, have passed through the whole of this soul development in a completely different manner from the European, and especially the Germanic peoples, who were present with their ‘I’ whilst they were gradually evolving capacities, and who looked on and saw how the divine spiritual powers worked into their souls. You might possibly find it difficult to make this agree with what was said, if you were to think philosophically about yesterday's lecture. For those who wish to analyze the lecture not altogether impartially, but out of a philosophical way of thinking such as this, I must add something in parenthesis, by way of explanation.

The apparent contradiction will at once disappear if you reflect that, as regards the ‘I’ and the possibility of knowing it, man is in a totally different position from what he is with regard to every other object. If you ‘know’ any other object, or any other being than the ‘I’, you are then, in the act of cognition, always really dealing with two things, with the knower, the power of knowing, and that which is known. Whether that which is known is a man, an animal, a tree or a stone, makes no difference to the purely formal act of cognition. But it is a different matter as regards the ‘I’. There that which knows and that which is known is one and the same. The important thing is, that in human evolution, in human development these two things are separate. Those who had developed the mature Indian culture in the post-Atlantean epoch, developed the ‘I’ subjectively as a knower, and this subjective raising of the ‘I’ to a certain height within the human soul-power may exist for a long time before man also acquires the power to see the ‘I’ objectively as an entity. On the other hand the peoples of Europe developed comparatively early, whilst still in their old clairvoyance, the power to see the objective ‘I’; that is to say, they perceived within that which they surveyed clairvoyantly, the ‘I’ as an entity among other entities. If you distinguish carefully between these things you will be able to understand it philosophically also, as you will all the things of Spiritual Science, if you only do it properly. If you like philosophical formulas, we might express it thus: The Indian culture represents a soul which reached a high degree of the subjective ‘I’, long before it was able to see the objective ‘I’. The Germanic peoples of Europe developed the vision of the ‘I’ long before they became conscious of the real inner striving towards the ‘I’. Clairvoyantly they saw the dawning of their own ‘I’, the imaginative picture of it. In the astral world which was around them they had for a long time seen the ‘I’ objectively, among 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 was the ground destined to bring this ‘I’ of man into relation with the other beings, the Angels and Archangels, in the way I pointed out yesterday in connection with mythology. If you bear this in mind you will understand why Europe was destined to bring the ‘I’ into relation in many different ways, as well as to the world which appeared to man as the sense-world, and also that the ‘I’, the real kernel of the human being, can enter into the most varied relations to the outer world. Formerly, before man saw his ‘I’, before he perceived it, these relations were regulated for him by the higher Beings, and he himself could do nothing in the matter. The relation in which he stood to the external world was an instinctive one. The essential thing in the development of the ‘I’ is, that it takes more and more into its own hands the task of regulating its own relation to the outer world.

It was essentially the task of the European nations to bring about 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 the European how to bring his ‘I’ into relation with the outer world, with other men, and with the Divine Spiritual Beings; so that on the whole it was within European civilization that one first began to speak of the relation of the ‘I’-man to the whole universe.

Hence the completely different fundamental tone in the old Indian cosmology from that prevailing in the European mythological culture. Over there in the East everything is impersonal, and above all one is required to become impersonal in one's knowledge, to suppress the ‘I’, so to say, in order to merge into Brahma and to find Atma within oneself. The chief requirement there is to be impersonal.

Here in Europe this human ‘I’ is everywhere placed in the centre of human life, according to its tendencies from the beginning and as it has gradually developed in the course of evolution. Therefore here in Europe special attention is given to considering everything in its relation to the ‘ I ‘, to explaining clairvoyantly with relation to the ‘I’ everything that had taken part in this development of the ‘I’ in earthly existence.

Now you all know that two forces coming from different directions have taken part in the development of the earthly man, who was destined gradually to acquire his ‘I’. Ever since the Lemurian epoch those forces we call Luciferic have imprinted themselves in the inner being of man, in his astral body. Regarding these forces you know that they made their chief attack on man by slipping into his desires, impulses and passions. Through this man gained two things: he gained the capacity to become an independent free being to glow with enthusiasm for what he thinks, feels and wills; whereas as regards his own concerns he was guided by divine spiritual Beings. But on the other hand, through the Luciferic powers man had to take into the bargain the possibility of falling into evil through his passions, emotions and desires. Lucifer's activity, therefore, in our earth-existence is such, that his point of attack is within man, where the human astral plays; and where the astral nature has affected the ‘I’ this too has been permeated by the Luciferic power. When, therefore, we speak of Lucifer, we are speaking of that which has caused man to sink deeper down into material sense-existence than he would have done without that influence.

Thus we have to thank the Luciferic powers for something which is most valuable to man, viz., freedom, and something which is very clangorous, the possibility of evil. But now we also know, that in consequence of these Luciferic powers having intervened in the whole constitution of human nature, later on other powers were able to enter which could not have done so, had not Lucifer first settled himself in the human organism. Man would see the world differently if he had not fallen under the influence of Lucifer and of those who were his followers, if he had not been obliged to allow another power to approach him after he had made it possible for the Luciferic power to enter into him. Ahriman approached from outside and stole into the great world of Nature surrounding man; so that the Ahrimanic influence is therefore a consequence of the Luciferic influence. Man is, as it were, attacked by Lucifer from within, and in consequence of that he is attacked by that which works from outside, by Ahriman. The spiritual science of all ages, that really knows the facts, speaks of both Luciferic and of Ahrimanic powers.

It will seem very remarkable to you that in the views of the various peoples, where these views are expressed in the form of mythology, there is not always to be found an equally clear consciousness of Lucifer on the one side and of Ahriman on the other. There is, for instance, no clear consciousness of this in the religious conception built up out of the whole Semitic tradition as set forth in the Old Testament. Only a certain consciousness of the Luciferic influence appears there; you may gather that from the account given in the Old Testament of the Serpent, which is nothing else than a picture of Lucifer. From this you can see that there was a distinct consciousness of Lucifer having played a part in evolution. This consciousness is clearly traceable in all the traditions which are connected with the Bible. But the consciousness of the Ahrimanic influence is not to be found there in the same way; that is only to be found where spiritual science has been taught. Therefore those who wrote the Gospels have also taken note of this. You will find,—for at the time of the writers of the Gospels the word ‘devil’ (dämon) was taken from the Greek,—that in St. Mark's Gospel, where the temptation is spoken of, a ‘devil’ is spoken of; but whenever Ahriman is in question, the word ‘Satan’ is used. But who notices the important difference between the Gospel of St. Mark and that of St. Matthew? Exoterically these fine distinctions are not noticed at all. In external tradition this difference does not exist.

This difference is very noticeable in the contrast between India and Persia. There at a certain period it is expressed in a very remarkable manner. Persia knew little of the Luciferic influence; the Ahrimanic was more to be seen there. There in particular is the battle with the Powers which give us an external, false picture of the world, and which leads us into gloom and darkness regarding the relation of man to the outer world. Ahriman is preferably called an opponent of the Good and an enemy of the Light. How does that come about? It comes about because in the second post-Atlantean age of civilization the human capacities of perception developed as regards the vision of the outer world. Bear in mind that Zoroaster made it his task to understand and make known the Sun-Spirit, the Spirit of Light. He had therefore to begin by pointing out that into this world is mingled, in addition to the Spirit of Light, the Spirit of Darkness, who dims our knowledge of the outer world. The Persian directs his chief attention to the conquest of Ahriman and to uniting himself to the Spirits who in this country are the great Powers, the Luminous Ones. He is organized for becoming active in the domain which lies outside. Hence he has his Ahuras or Asuras. It is, on the other hand, dangerous for the followers of the Persian religion to descend into that world to which a man can attain by plunging into his own inner being; there, where the Luciferic powers lie hidden, he will have nothing to do even with the possible presence of good powers. There he perceives danger; he directs his gaze outwards and pictures the Asuras of Light as opposing the Asuras of Darkness.

The Indians at this time pursued exactly the opposite course. They were at a period in which they endeavored to raise themselves by inner contemplation, in order to come into the higher spheres. To them salvation lay in uniting themselves with the forces that are to be found in the sphere of inner vision. They therefore considered it dangerous to look out into the external world in which they had to fight with Ahriman. They feared the outer world, they considered it dangerous. Whereas the Devas were avoided by the Persians, the Indians sought for them and wanted to be at work in their domain. But the Persians turned away, and avoided the region in which the battle against Lucifer had above all to be fought.

You may search as you will through the many different mythologies and concepts of the world, but in none of them will you come across such a clear and profound knowledge of the fact that there are two influences at work on man, as in the Germanic Scandinavian mythology. As the Germanic Scandinavian could still see clairvoyantly, he was really able to see these two powers, and he placed himself between the two. He said to himself: ‘In the course of his evolution man has seen the approach of certain powers which entered his inner being, entered his astral body;’ and because he was destined to develop the ‘I’, the independence of man, he felt not merely the possibility of evil, but above all he felt, in these powers which approached the astral body in order to bring it to freedom and independence, the element of freedom; he felt, one might say, the rebellious element revealing itself in these forces. The Luciferic element was felt in that power which was even then still participating in the formation of the races in Germanic Scandinavian countries, inasmuch as it gave the external form and coloring to man and made him an independent, active being in the world. With his clairvoyant vision the Germanic Scandinavian felt Lucifer primarily as that which makes a man free, one who does not merely yield himself to some external power, but who possesses within himself the firm kernel of existence and wishes to act out of himself.

This Luciferic influence was felt by the Germanic Scandinavian to be beneficial. But he became aware that something else proceeded also from this influence. Lucifer conceals himself behind the figure of Loki, who possesses a remarkably iridescent form. Because the Northman could then see the reality, he saw that the thoughts of the freedom and independence of man can be traced back to Loki; but through the old clairvoyance he was aware also that that which again and again drags man down through his desires and actions, and brings his whole being into a lower position than he would have held if he had only devoted himself to Odin and the Asa, is also to be traced back to the influence of Loki. And so one felt above all the awful grandeur of this Germanic Scandinavian mythology, one felt with compelling accuracy that which will only gradually return to the consciousness of man through spiritual science.

How then does the Luciferic influence act? It encloses itself in the astral body and thence works upon all the three members of man, upon the astral body as well as upon the etheric and physical bodies. Outside the Anthroposophical Society one can at the present day only give hints as to this Luciferic influence. What you will 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. In the etheric body is produced that in man which urges him to untruthfulness and to lying. Lies and untruthfulness extend beyond the inner part of man. In the astral body, the purely inner part of man, the self is permeated with the Luciferic influence and this appears as selfishness. The etheric body is inwardly permeated by the impulse to be untruthful and thus it is given the possibility of lying. In the physical body sickness and death are produced. That will easily be understood by those who were present at my last series of lectures.¹ I shall once more point out that everything that appears in the physical body as sickness and death is karmically connected with what we call the Luciferic influence. Let us again recapitulate briefly: Lucifer brings about in the astral body selfishness, in the etheric body lying and untruthfulness, and in the physical body sickness and death. Naturally all persons of the present day whose thoughts are materialistic will be greatly surprised that Spiritual Science should trace back sickness and death to a Luciferic influence. But this too is connected with karma. Sickness and death would never have come to man if the Lucifer influence had not come in. The karmic working out of the Luciferic influence has brought about the deeper descent of man into the physical; and that on the other hand is compensated for by sickness and death.

Hence we may say: that through the entrance of the Luciferic influence into man, the physical, etheric and astral bodies have been seized by sickness and death, lying and untruthfulness, and selfishness. I should like to draw your attention to the fact that the material scientists of the present day give the same explanation of death in animal and plant bodies as it does in that of man. These persons cannot comprehend that one external phenomenon may look like another, and yet come from quite different causes. External facts may proceed from entirely different grounds. The death of an animal does not proceed from the same original causes as the death of a man, although externally it has the same appearance.

It would require a great deal too much time to prove these things in accordance with the theory of knowledge. I only wished to state here that what science calls causality is often very wrongly interpreted. Mistakes such as these, which rise from want of clearness, are made at almost every step. Imagine the case of a man who climbs up on to a roof, falls down, receives a mortal injury, and is picked up dead. What would be more natural than to say: the man fell down, was mortally injured and died from his injuries? But the case might have been quite different. The man might have had a stroke whilst on the roof and fallen down when already dead; the injuries might have been caused by the fall, so that outwardly the case may have been as described, and yet death would have come about from an entirely different cause. This is a very crude example, but scientists frequently make this kind of mistake.

The outer facts of the case may often be exactly the same, and yet the inner causes may be entirely different. We simply make the statement, as being the result of scientific spiritual research, that the result of Luciferic influence in the astral body is selfishness, in the etheric body lying and untruthfulness, and in the physical body illness and death. Now what would the Germanic Scandinavian mythology have had to say if it had had to ascribe this threefold activity to Loki, to Lucifer? It had to say that Loki has three offspring. The first is the one who brings about selfishness. That is the Midgard Serpent, by which is expressed the influence of the Luciferic spirit upon the astral body. The second is that which mingles into human knowledge as error. In man on the physical plane, this consists in those things which are in his mind and are not in agreement with the outer world. There it is that which is not true. To the Scandinavians, who still dwelt more upon the astral plane, that which to us is an abstract lie, expressed itself at once as an astral being and lived as such upon the astral plane.

The expression for everything that was dimness of vision, that was not correct seeing, was some animal; and here in the North it was principally the Fenris Wolf. This second animal is Loki's influence on the etheric body, which causes man to have the inclination (coming from within) to deceive himself, to think incorrectly about things; that is to say, the objects in the external world do not appear to him in the right way. This was generally expressed in the old Germanic Scandinavian mythology as the figure of a Wolf. That is the astral shape for lying and all untruthfulness proceeding from inner impulse. Where man comes into relation with the external world, Lucifer meets Ahriman, so that all the errors which insinuate themselves into his knowledge, even into his clairvoyant knowledge, all illusion and all maya, is the consequence of the tendency to untruthfulness which is active there. In the Fenris Wolf we must therefore see the shape surrounding man, through his not seeing things in their true form. Whenever any part of the external light, i.e., the truth, appeared darkened to the old Northman, he then spoke of a wolf. That goes through the whole Northern consciousness, and you will find this image made use of in this sense, even to the external facts.

When the old Scandinavian wished to explain what he saw during an eclipse of the sun, (of course a man at the time of that old clairvoyance saw very differently from a man of the present day, who sees with the aid of a telescope), he chose the picture of a wolf pursuing the sun, and who the moment he reaches it brings about the eclipse. That is in perfect harmony with the facts. This terminology belongs to what is grandest, yea, even to that grandeur which positively awes one in the Scandinavian Mythology. I can only give indications here; but if it were possible to speak for weeks at a time upon this mythology, you would then see how it carried this out all through. That is because Scandinavian mythology is a result of the old clairvoyance, into which, however, the ‘I’ plays everywhere.

Materialistic people of to-day will say that this is a mere superstition; that there is no wolf pursuing the sun. The old imaginative Scandinavian sees these facts in pictures; and perhaps I could enumerate many so-called scientific truths which contain more of the influence of Ahriman, i.e., greater error than does the corresponding astral vision, which says that the wolf is pursuing the sun. To the occultist there is something which is still greater superstition. That is, an eclipse which occurs because the moon places itself in front of the sun. From the external point of view that is quite correct, just as the case of the wolf is quite correct to astral perception. In fact the astral view is more correct than the one you will find in modern books, for the latter is even more subject to error. If a man were to perceive the true state of affairs instead of this external one, he would find that the Scandinavian myth is right. I know that I am saying something that is utterly absurd to the present-day point of view, but I know also that in anthroposophical centers one is sufficiently advanced to make it possible to indicate wherein our physical view of the world is most influenced by maya, deception or illusion.

Now we proceed to the influence of Loki on the physical body, in which he brings about sickness and death. His third off-spring is, therefore, that which produces sickness and death. That is Hela. Thus you have, in fact, expressed in a wonderful way—in the figures: Hela, the Fenris Wolf, and the Midgard Serpent—the influence of Loki or Lucifer, in the form in which the old clairvoyance, which we may describe as a dreamy clairvoyance, perceived it. If we were to go through 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 therein that what the clairvoyant sees is not merely an allegorical symbolical description, but he sees real entities, Beings.

Now the Germanic Scandinavian did not know merely of Loki, of the Luciferic influence; he was also aware of the influence of Ahriman which came from another direction; and he knew more, he knew that the exposure to the Ahrimanic influence is the consequence of the Loki influence. You must now transpose yourselves back to the time when man did not look at the world with external physical vision, but contemplated it with the old clairvoyance, and you will then find that this myth is formed for that clairvoyance. What does the myth say? Loki's influence has come upon man, and this is expressed in the action of the Midgard Serpent, the Fenris Wolf and Hela. Man has become such that his view, his clear luminous vision into the spiritual world has become dimmed by the increasing pressure of the Luciferic influence. At the time when this view developed, man alternated between seeing into the spiritual world and living on the physical plane, just as one now alternates 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 originated from the clairvoyant consciousness. But human consciousness consisted in this alternating state of seeing into and not being able to see into the spiritual world. When the condition of dream-consciousness was there, one saw into the spiritual world; when the condition of waking day consciousness was there, one was blind to it. Thus the conditions of blindness and of being able to gaze into the spiritual world alternated. The consciousness alternated, just as a certain cosmic being alternated between the blind HSnir and the clairvoyant Balder, who could see into the spiritual world. Thus man had the tendency to receive Balder's influence, and he would have developed in accordance with this influence if he had not received Loki's influence. Loki, however, brought it about that the HSnir nature overcame the Balder nature. That is expressed by Loki bringing the mistletoe with which blind HSnir kills Balder, the one who sees.

Loki is therefore the death-bringing power, like Lucifer who has driven man to Ahriman. When man is devoted to the blind HSnir, the old clairvoyant vision is extinguished. That is the slaying of Balder. This is felt by the Northman as the gradual loss of the Balder-powers, the vision into the Northern Germanic world. Thus the Northman felt the disappearance of his clairvoyance as though it were Loki having killed the clairvoyant power in Balder, and all that remains to him is his impotence as regards this clairvoyance. Thus one of the greatest historical events, the gradual disappearance of the old unclouded knowledge, is expressed in the myth of Balder, HSnir and Loki. On the one side we have Loki with his kinsmen, the three Beings, and on the other the tragic act of the slaying of Balder.

Thus, reflected in the Scandinavian mythology we have that which we can draw from spiritual science: the twofold influence, the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic. That it is which spiritual science always tries to place before you as a presentation of the clairvoyant knowledge of ancient times, and as a working out of the myths from the old clairvoyance, which then began gradually to disappear.

It would carry us too far if we were to pursue this theme further; but even in the broad outline I have laid before you, you can feel that which is so thrillingly grand in this myth, the like of which cannot be found, 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 plastic form. In Greek mythology there is no longer a direct connection with the facts such as there is in the Germanic Scandinavian mythology. The Greek is more clarified, the figures appear with much more rounded outlines and therefore in a very plastic manner, and thus the elemental nature of the original impressions has been lost. The old clairvoyance had for a long time vanished in the rest of Europe, while it was still preserved in the North. Only very gradually, slowly and by degrees has the outlook of man become limited to the picture of the physical world. Thus at the time when Christianity began to spread abroad, that which is expressed in the Balder myth, in the death of Balder, had become true for the majority of men. There were, however, still a few who were able to see directly that which the Scandinavian experienced clairvoyantly.

Thus for a long time there still existed a direct vision of this spiritual world, and because it was still so elemental and came so directly from clairvoyant experience, when Christianity began to be spread abroad, that consciousness also remained which could in no other people be as strong as it was in the old Germanic Scandinavians. They then felt: ‘Everything we formerly experienced in connection with our divine spiritual home is now vanishing.’ This only disappeared from the North when the Germanic-Scandinavian received the comfort of Christianity.—But that did not contain for him any direct vision; he had felt the fate of Balder much too deeply to be able to comfort himself by having a God offered him, who had descended to the physical plane in order that those human beings, who could only perceive the physical plane, might also be able to ascend to divine co-consciousness. It was not possible in Northern lands to feel, as did the men in Asia Minor, the words, ‘Change your attitude, repent, for the kingdom of Heaven is come nigh unto you.’ Over there, where Christ had appeared, one could only find old memories of the fact that there was once upon a time an old clairvoyance. In the East the Kali Yuga, the Dark Age, had already lasted for three thousand years, during which men could no longer see into the spiritual world; but they always longed for it, and they have ever told of a world which men were once able to see 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 had the men of the North, and they only knew from memory that the spiritual world had once been accessible. Hence in Asia Minor one could well understand the words: ‘Change your view, for the kingdom of Heaven is come nigh unto you.’ One could understand when it was said:. ‘The kingdom of the heavens has descended even here to the physical plane, look ye therefore upon the unique Figure Who will appear in the land of Palestine, look ye upon the Messiah, who contains God within Him, through Whom ye will be able to find the connection with the Divine, even if ye are not able to rise above the physical plane; understand ye that Figure in Palestine, understand ye the figure of Christ.’ That is the profound utterance of John the Baptist.

The Scandinavian necessarily felt this differently, for he had for a much longer time experienced considerably more than merely the account from memory of a vision into the spiritual world. Hence there came to him a thought of very great and far-reaching importance, viz., ‘This stepping out on to the physical plane, into the physical world, this incapacity to see into the divine spiritual world, can only be an intermediate state. Man must pass through it as through a school and must see what he can acquire in the physical world. This transition is necessary for him and he must therefore step out of the spiritual world; he must go through the experience of the physical world as a training. But just by going through this as a training, he will return again into that world from which he came forth. Balder's vision will be able to ensoul him again.’ In other words, the great idea which originates in the course of the Germanic Scandinavian evolution,—that the world which vanished away and withdrew from clairvoyant vision, will again become visible,—brought about the feeling that the time spent on the physical plane was a time of transition.

The Initiates of the Northmen made them understand that in the divine spiritual world, during the time in which they could not see into it, something was taking place through which it would one day appear different from what they were formerly accustomed to see. They explained it to them in somewhat the following words: ‘Formerly you looked into the divine spiritual world, and there you saw the Archangel of Speech, the Archangel of the Runes, the Archangel of Respiration, Odin; and Thor, the Angel of the ‘I’-hood. You were connected with these, and he who is sufficiently prepared will acquire the possibility of re-entering this spiritual world. But it will then appear different; other powers will have been added to it, and the spheres of power and the conditions 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 see something different from what you have hitherto experienced.’

That which man will then see, they describe to him as vision of the future, that vision which will one day appear before the human soul when man is again able to see into the spiritual world, when he will see what the destiny of the old figures of the Gods has been, and how they entered into relation with other powers. This vision of the future as seen by the Initiates, arose from Lucifer having come into conflict with that which comes from the Gods and which will also produce its effects. This vision of the future was painted for man by the Initiates in the picture of the ‘Twilight of the gods.’ Ragnarok, the Twilight of the Gods (Götterdämmerung), is therefore the picture placed before the Germanic Scandinavians by the Initiates as a vision of the future. And again we shall see that all the events thus presented as future events could not, even down to the smallest details, be given better, could not be more terminologically correct or more to the point, than in the wonderful picture of the Twilight of the Gods. That is the occult background of the Saga of the Twilight of the Gods.

How then should man regard himself? He should regard himself as receiving all that comes from former ages as the origin and cause of his evolution, and should thoughtfully accept what he received from Odin as a gift, but he should regard himself as having gone through the evolution following after that. He should receive into himself the teachings implanted in him by Odin, who came to him as an Archangel. He should make himself a son of Odin. He should take part in the battle and that right soon. The Initiate, the leader of the Esoteric School, makes that clear, particularly to the Northman, by indicating the divine spiritual Being Who appears to us so mysteriously, Who really plays a definite part only in the ‘Twilight of the Gods’ because he overcomes even that power by which Odin himself is overcome. The avenger of Odin is given a special rôle and he plays it in the Twilight of the Gods. When we understand this rôle we shall then see the wonderful connection between the capacities of the Germanic Scandinavians and that which we can conceive as the Vision of the Future. All this is expressed in a wonderful way, down to the very smallest details, in the great vision of ‘The Twilight of the Gods.’

• 1. Manifestations of Karma

In recent years, anthroposophical spiritual science has found an external center for its work in Dornach, near Basel. The creation of this center, called the Goetheanum, the School of Spiritual Science, was the result of the expansion of anthroposophical spiritual science. After many years of me and others spreading this spiritual science in the most diverse states and places, initially in an ideal form through lectures or similar, around 1909 or 1910 the inner necessity arose to bring to the souls of our fellow human beings what is meant by this spiritual science by means of other means of revelation and communication than those of mere thoughts and words. And so it came about that a series of mystery dramas were performed, initially in Munich. These were written by me and were intended to present in pictorial, scenic form the subject matter that anthroposophical spiritual science must speak of in its entirety.

We have been accustomed throughout the entire course of education in the civilized world over the last three to four centuries to seek knowledge primarily through external sensory observation and by applying the human intellect to this external sensory observation. And basically, all our newer sciences, insofar as they are still viable today, have come about through the effects of the results of sensory observation with intellectual work. After all, the historical sciences do not come about in any other way today either. Intellectualism is the one thing the modern world has confidence in when it comes to knowledge. Intellectualism is the one thing that people have become more and more accustomed to.

And so, of course, people have increasingly come to believe that all the results of knowledge that come before the world can be completely revealed through intellectual communication. Indeed, there are epistemological and other scientific disputes in which it is apparently proven that something can only be valid before the cognitive conscience of contemporary people if it can be justified intellectually. That which cannot be clothed in logical-ideational intellectual forms is not accepted as knowledge. Spiritual science, which really did not want to stop at what is rightly asserted in science as the limits of scientific knowledge, and which wants to penetrate beyond these limits of knowledge, had to become more and more aware that the intellectual way of communicating could not be the only way. For one can prove for a long time with all possible sham reasons that one must imprint all knowledge in intellectual form if it is to satisfy people; one can prove this for a long time

prove it and back it up with spurious reasons – if the world is such that it cannot be expressed in mere concepts or ideas, that it must be expressed through images, for example, if you want to know the laws of human development, then you have to get at something other than the presentation through the word in the theoretical lecture; you have to move on to other forms of presentation than the presentation in intellectual forms.

And so I felt the necessity to express that which is fully alive, namely in the development of humanity, not only in theory through the word, but also through the scenic image. And so my four mystery dramas came into being, which were initially performed in ordinary theaters. This was, so to speak, the first step towards a broader presentation of that which actually wants to reveal itself through this anthroposophical spiritual science, as it is meant here, through the cause of spiritual science itself.

Not in my own case – I may say that without hesitation – but in the case of friends of our cause, the idea arose in the course of this development, which made an external, theatrical presentation necessary, to prepare a place of our own for the work of this spiritual science. And after many attempts to found such a place here and there, we finally ended up on the Dornach hill near Basel, where we received a piece of land for this purpose from our friend Dr. Emil Grosheintz, and we were able to build this ach Hill, we were able to establish this School of Spiritual Science, which is also intended to be a house for presenting the other types of revelation of what is to come to light through this spiritual science; this School of Spiritual Science, which we call the “Goetheanum” today.

Now, if some association or other had set about creating such a framework, such a house, such an architecture, prompted by the circumstances, what would have happened? They would have turned to this or that architect, who might then, without feeling or sensing anything very intensely and without recognizing the content of our spiritual science, have erected a building in the antique or Gothic or Renaissance style or in some other style, and they would have handed down in such a building, which would have been built out of quite different cultural presuppositions, the content of spiritual science in the most diverse fields. This could well have happened with many other endeavors of the present time and would undoubtedly have happened. However, this could not happen with anthroposophically oriented spiritual science.

When we opened our first series of courses on a wide range of subjects at the School of Spiritual Science in Dornach last year, I was able to speak of how, through this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, not only what is science in the narrower sense is to come before humanity, how this spiritual not only draws from the achievements of human sensory observation and the human intellect, but draws from the whole, from the fullness of humanity, and draws from the sources from which religion on the one hand and art on the other also emerge.

This spiritual science does not want to create an abstract, symbolic or a straw-like allegorical art, which merely forces the didactic into external forms. No, that is absolutely not the case. Rather, what is expressed through this spiritual science can work through the word, can shape itself through the word. Spiritual processes and spiritual beings in the supersensible world can be spoken of by resorting to ideas and the means of expressing ideas, to words. But that which stands behind it, which wants to reveal itself in this way, is much richer than what can enter into the word, into the idea, pushes into the form, into the image, becomes art by itself, real art, not an allegorical or symbolic expression. This is not what is meant when we speak of Dornach art.

When Dornach art is mentioned, it is first of all a reference to the original source from which human existence and world existence bubble forth. What one experiences in this original source, when one gains access to it in the way often described here, can be clothed in words, shaped into ideas, but it can also be allowed to flow directly into artistic expression, without expressing these ideas allegorically or symbolically. That which can live in art or, as I could expand on but need not today, in religion, is an entirely identical expression of that which can be given in an idealized representation. This anthroposophically oriented spiritual science is thus predisposed from the outset to flow as a stream from a source from which art and religion can also flow in their original form. What we mean in Dornach when we speak of religious feeling is not just a science made into a religion, but the source of elementary religious power, and what we mean by art is, in turn, also an elementary artistic creation.

Therefore, when some visitors to the Goetheanum or especially those who only hear about it defame our Dornach building and say that one finds this or that allegorical, symbolic representation there, it is simply defamation. There is not a single symbol in the entire Dornach building. Everything that is depicted has been incorporated into the artistic form, is directly sensed. And basically, I always feel somewhat as if I am merely presenting a surrogate when I am expected to explain the Dornach building in words. Of course, if one speaks outside of Dornach, one can make statements about it as one might speak about chapters of art history, for example. But when one sees the building in Dornach itself, I always feel that it is something surrogate-like, if one is also supposed to explain it. This explanation is actually only necessary to convey to people the special kind of language of world view, but the Dornach building has flowed out of it just as, let us say, the Sistine Madonna has flowed out of the Christian world view, without anything being symbolized, but only in such a way that the artist has truly lived in accordance with his feelings, his ideas.

Hamerling, the Austrian poet, was also reproached for using symbolism after he wrote his “Ahasver”. He then rightly replied to his critics: What else can one do when one portrays Nero quite vividly, as a fully-fledged human being, rather than as the symbol of cruelty! For history itself has portrayed Nero as a symbol of cruelty, and there is no mistake in giving the impression of the true, real symbol of cruelty when Nero is portrayed as a living being. At most, there could be an artistic defect in presenting some straw allegory instead of a living entity. Even if the world depicted in Dornach is the supersensible world, it is the supersensible reality that is portrayed. It is not something that seeks to symbolically or allegorically implement concepts. This is the underlying reality, and at the same time it indicates why a house could not be placed here in any old way for this anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. Any architectural style would have been something external to it, because it is not mere theory, it is life in all fields and was able to create its own architectural style.

Of course, one can perhaps draw a historical line retrospectively by characterizing the essence of ancient architecture in terms of its load-bearing and supporting function, then moving on to the Gothic period and showing how architecture there moves beyond mere load-bearing and supporting, and how the buttress is freed from mere load-bearing and supporting by the pointed arch and the cross-ribbed vault, how a kind of transition to the living is found. In Dornach, however, an attempt has been made to develop this life to such an extent that the pure dynamic, metric and symmetrical of earlier forms of building have been truly transferred into the organic.

I am well aware of how much can be written from the point of view of ancient architecture against this allowing of the geometric, metric, symmetrical forms to be transformed into organic forms, into forms that are otherwise found in organic beings. But nothing is naturalistically modeled on any organisms; rather, it is only an attempt to immerse oneself in the organically creative principle of nature. Just as one can become familiarized with the bearing and supporting when the columns are covered by the crossbeams, and with the entire configuration of the Gothic style in the buttresses, in the ribbed vaulting and so on, so one can also familiarize oneself with the inner forms, the forming of nature that is present in the creation of the organic. If one can find one's way into this, then one does not arrive at a naturalistic reproduction of this or that surface form found in the organic, but one arrives at finding surfaces from what one has directly represented architecturally, which are integrated into the whole structure in the same way that, say, the individual surface on a finger is integrated into the whole human organism.

This is therefore the basic feeling that can be gained from the Dornach building, to the extent that this has been achieved in the first attempt at this new architectural style. What has been striven for is perhaps best expressed as follows: In relation to the smallest detail, the greatest formal context is conceived in such a way that each thing is, at the place where it is situated, as it must be. You need only think, for example, of the earlobe on your own body. This earlobe is a very small organ. If you understand the whole organism, you will say to yourself: the earlobe could not be any different than it is; the earlobe cannot be a little toe, it cannot be a right thumb, but in the organism, everything is in its place, and everything in its place is as it emerges from this organism.

This has been attempted in Dornach. The entire structure, the entire architecture, is conceived as part of a whole, and each individual part is formed in its own place in such a way that it is exactly what is needed at that place. Although there are many objections that could be raised, the attempt has been made, as I said, to make the transition from mere geometric-mechanical construction to building in organic forms. As I said, this architectural style could be incorporated into other architectural styles, but that doesn't really get you anywhere. In particular, the creator doesn't get anywhere with it. Something like this simply has to arise from the naive, from the elementary. Therefore, when I am asked how the individual form is conceived from the whole, I can only give the following answer. I can only say: look at a nut, for example. The nut has a shell. This nut shell is formed according to the same laws around the nut, around the nut kernel, according to which the nut itself, the nut kernel has come into being, and you cannot imagine the shell differently than it is, once the nut kernel is as it is.

Now one knows spiritual science. One presents spiritual science out of its inner impulse. One forms it into ideas, one brings them together in ideas. So you live in the whole inner being of this spiritual science. Forgive me, it is a trivial comparison, but it is a comparison that illustrates how you have to create out of naivety if you want to create something like the building in Dornach: you stand inside it as if in the nut kernel and have within you the laws by which you have to execute the shell, the building.

I often used to make another comparison. You see, in Austria we have a special kind of cake called 'Gugelhupf'. I don't know if that expression is also used here. And I said that one should imagine that anthroposophical spiritual science is the Gugelhupf and the Dornach building is the Gugelhupf pan in which it is baked. The cake and the pan must harmonize with each other. It is right when both harmonize, that is, when they are according to the same laws as nut and nut shell.

Because Anthroposophical spiritual science creates out of the whole, out of the fullness of humanity, it could not have the discrepancy within itself of taking an arbitrary architectural style for its construction and speaking into it. It is more than mere theory; it is life. Therefore, it had to provide not only the core but also the shell in the individual forms. It had to be built according to the same innermost laws by which one speaks, by which mysteries are presented, by which eurythmy is now presented. Everything that is presented in words, that is seen performed in eurythmy, that is seen performed in mystery plays, that is otherwise presented, must resound and be seen throughout the hall in such a way that the walls with their forms, that the paintings that are there, say yes to it as a matter of course; that the eyes, so to speak, absorb them like something in which they directly participate. Each column should speak in the same way as the mouth speaks, proclaiming anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. Precisely because it is science, art and religion at the same time, anthroposophically oriented spiritual science had to establish its own architectural style, disregarding all conventional architectural styles. Of course, one can criticize this to no end; but everything that appears for the first time is imperfect at first, and I can perhaps assure you that I know all the mistakes best and that I am the one who says: if I were to rebuild the building a second time, it would be based on the same spirit, on the same laws, but it would be completely different in most details and perhaps even as a whole. But if anything is to be tackled, it must be tackled once, as well as one can at that particular moment. It is only by carrying out such a work that one really learns to know the actual laws of one's being. These are the laws of destiny of spiritual life and spiritual progress, and these have not been violated in the erection of the building at Dornach.

Now the building rises up on the Dornach hill (Fig. 1). Its basic forms had to be sensed first, emerging from the Dornach hill. That is why the lower part is a concrete structure (Fig. 4). I tried to create artistic forms out of this brittle material, and yet some have felt how these forms connect to the rock formations, how nature merges with the building forms with a certain matter-of-factness. Then, on the horizontal terrace, up to which the concrete structure extends, the wooden structure rises. This wooden structure consists of two interlocking cylinders, which are closed off by two incomplete hemispheres that are, as it were, interlocked in a circle, so that two hemispheres, two consecutive hemispheres, enclose the two cylindrical spaces as if they were placed one inside the other. A larger room, the auditorium, a smaller room, the one from which eurythmy is performed, mysteries are played and so on. Between the two rooms is the speaker's podium. This is initially the main building.

Of course, I must not fail to mention that in recent years numerous friends, particularly from this or that scientific field, have now found each other from almost all scientific fields, who have seen through and recognized how natural science, mathematics, history, medicine, jurisprudence, sociology, and the most diverse fields can be fertilized by anthroposophical spiritual science. So that a real Universitas must attach itself to Dornach, and for this the building, for which we have been able to provide for the time being, is nothing more than a large lecture hall, with the possibility of working in this lecture hall, which is intended for about a thousand people, in other ways than through the mere word.

That the building has this dualistic form, I would say, consisting of two cylinders crowned by hemispheres, can be sensed from the whole task that spiritual science, as we understand it in Dornach, must set itself. After all, this is based on what is called inner human development. One does not arrive at this anthroposophical spiritual science by merely using one's ordinary everyday power of judgment - although, of course, full reliance is placed on this - or by using the ordinary rules of research; but rather by

you must bring to the surface the powers slumbering in the soul, as described in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds”, and really ascend to that region where the supersensible powers and entities of existence reveal themselves to you. This revealing of the supersensible world to the sensory world, which expresses itself in the fact that the thousand listeners or spectators sit there and on the other side exactly that which gives knowledge of supersensible worlds is communicated, this whole thing, transformed into feeling, expresses itself in the double-dome building in Dornach. It is not meant to be symbolic in any way. That is why I can also say: Of course one could also express this thought differently, but that is how the artistic expression of this basic thought presented itself to me at the time when it was needed.

In a sense, by approaching it from the environment, in the external form of the wooden structure growing out of the concrete, which is a double dome, one sees in the configuration, in the design of the surfaces, what is actually meant by anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. The fact that they really tried not to calculate with abstract concepts, but with artistic perception, may become clear to you from the fact that - in the time when it was still possible before the war - Norwegian slate was obtained with all possible efforts to cover the two domes. Once, when I was on a lecture tour in 1913 between Christiania and Bergen, I saw the wonderful Voss slate. And this Voss slate now shines in the sunshine from the double domes, so that one actually has the feeling: this greenish-greyish shine of the sun, which reflects itself there, actually belongs in this whole landscape. It seemed to me that the care that had been taken to bring out the shine of the sun in the right way in such a landscape was something that showed that account had been taken to present something worthy in this place, which, as a place, as a locality, has something extraordinary about it.

I will now take the liberty of showing you a series of slides of what has been created as this Goetheanum in Dornach. They are intended to show in detail how what I have just explained, how the Dornach building idea has actually been realized. The Dornach building idea should present the same thing to the beholder in the outer spatial form in the picture, as it unfolds to the listener through the word, so that what one hears in Dornach is the same as what one sees in Dornach. But because it should really present a renewal out of spiritual life, a renewal of everything scientific, it also needed, in a sense, a new art.

Now the first picture (Fig. 4): You see here the building, the dome is somewhat covered here, here the concrete substructure. When one approaches via a path that leads from the northwest towards the west gate, one has this view. This is therefore the concrete substructure with the entrance; here one goes in first. Further back in this concrete building are the storage rooms. After you have taken your things off, you go up the stairs that lead through this room, to the left and right, and first come to a vestibule – which you can also enter from the terrace through the main gate – and from there to the auditorium. Here you see, starting from this terrace and going up, the wooden structure covered with Nordic slate (Fig. 10). You can see from the shape above the main entrance in the west that an attempt has been made to incorporate something here that really does look like an organic form growing out of the whole of the building. It is not some random thing found in the organic world, copied from nature, but an attempt to explore organic creation itself. The aim is to devote oneself to organic creation in nature in order to have the possibility of forming such organic forms oneself and to shape the whole into an organic form without violating the dynamic laws. I would like to emphasize: without violating the dynamic or mechanical laws.

Anyone who studies interior architecture with us in Dornach will see everywhere that, despite the fact that columns, pillars and so on are organically designed, it is precisely in this organic design that what is properly supported and properly weighted is expressed, without it being expressed in the thickness of the columns or in the heaviness of any load. The correct distribution of load and support is achieved without the aid of organic forms, so that one has the feeling, as it were, that The building feels both the load and the support at the same time. It is this transition to the appearance of consciousness, as it is in the organic, that had to be striven for in this building, out of the anthroposophical-spiritual-scientific will. So without in any way violating the mechanical, geometric, symmetrical laws of architecture, the form should be transformed into the organic.

The next picture (Fig. 5): Here you see the concrete structure from a slightly further point and more from the west front; here the terrace, then the main entrance. The same motif appears here. The second dome, the smaller one, which is for the stage, is covered here; on the other hand, you can see, as it were, what is adjacent to it. Where the two domed structures connect, there are transverse structures on the left and right with dressing rooms for the actors in mystery plays or eurythmy performances, or offices and the like. These are therefore ancillary buildings here. We will see in a moment in the floor plan how these ancillary buildings fit into the overall building concept.

The next picture (Fig. 7): Here you see the building from the southwest side: again the West Gate, the great dome, another tiny bit of the small dome, to the south the southern porch; here the whole front between west and south.

The next picture (Fig. 3): Here you see the two domed rooms, the auditorium, from the other side, from the northeast, one of the transverse buildings from the front, here the small domed room and here the storage rooms that adjoin the small domed room to the east; furthermore, the terrace, and below the concrete building. This is the porch that leads to the west gate, which you have just seen.

The next picture (Fig. 2): This is the strange building that is particularly heavily contested. This is what you see when you look at the building from the northeast side: you then see this heating and lighting house. It is also the case that one was obliged to form something out of the brittle concrete material, and that one said to oneself, out of artistic laws, out of artistic feelings: There I am given everything that is necessary as a lighting machinery, as a heating machinery: that is the nut kernel to me, around which I have to form the nutshell, to form the necessary for the smoke outlet. It is, if I may express myself in such a trivial way, this principle of the formation of the nutshell is fully implemented. And anyone who complains about something like that should consider what would be there if this experiment had not been carried out, which may still have been imperfectly successful today. There would be a red chimney here! A utilitarian building should be created in such a way that one first acquires the necessary sense of material and then finds the framing from the determination.

The next picture (Fig. 20): Here I take the liberty of showing the layout of the whole. The main entrance from the west: you enter the auditorium through a few vestibules. This auditorium holds chairs for nine hundred to a thousand listeners or spectators. Here you can see a gallery that is closed inwards by seven columns on each side. Only one thing is symmetrical here: namely, in relation to the west-east axis. This is the only axis of symmetry. The building's motifs are only designed symmetrically in relation to this axis of symmetry, the east-west axis; otherwise there is no repetition. Therefore, the columns are decorated with capital and base motifs that are not the same, but are in progressive development. I will show this in detail later. So if you have a first column on the left and right, a second column on the left and right, the capital and base are always the same as those of the right column when viewed from the left, but the following columns always have different capitals, different bases and different architrave motifs above them (Figs. 33-54).

This is absolutely the case, and it has emerged as a necessity from organic building. And this is based on an artistic interpretation of Goethe's principle of metamorphosis. Goethe has indeed developed this metamorphosis theory - which, in my firm conviction, will still play a major role in the science of the living - in an ingenious way. Anyone who still reads his simply written booklet “Attempt to Explain the Metamorphosis of the Plant” from 1790 has before them a grandiose scientific treatise that, according to today's prejudices, simply cannot be sufficiently appreciated. If one wants to express it simply, one must say: Goethe sees the plant as a complicated leaf. He now begins with the lowest leaf, which is closest to the ground, follows the leaves upwards to the heart leaves, which are shaped quite differently than the foliage leaves, then the petals, which are even colored quite differently, then the stamens and pistils, which are shaped quite differently. Goethe says: “Everything that appears in such seemingly different metamorphoses in the leaves of the plant is such that it can be traced back to an ideal similarity and only appears in different metamorphoses for the external sense impression. Basically, the plant leaf always repeats the same basic form; only in the external sensual perception is the ideal similarity differently formed, metamorphosed.

Now, of course, people come and see seven columns – deep mysticism! Yes, there are definitely members of the Anthroposophical Society who, in all sorts of dark, mysterious allusions, talk about the deep mysticism of these seven columns and so on. But there is nothing in it but artistic feeling. When you arrive at the seventh column, this motif of the seventh column is exactly the same as that of the first column – if you really create as nature has created – as the seventh is to the first. And just as the first motif is repeated in the octave, the seventh, you would have to repeat the first motif if you were to move on to the eighth.

Here you can see the boundary between the large and small domes; there is the lectern, which can be retracted because it has to be removed when the theater is in use. Here again there are twelve columns in the perimeter, here the boundary of the small domed room, here the two transverse buildings for dressing rooms and so on.

The next picture (Fig. 21): Here I have made a section through the middle. One enters from the west through the vestibules. Here is the stage area, and rising up from here is the auditorium, the rows of seats, again the seven columns, and here the great dome is connected to the small one by a particularly complicated mechanical structure. Here are the storerooms, the concrete substructure, the dressing rooms for taking off clothes. Here you go in, and then there are the stairs; here you come up and there is the main gate through which you enter.

The next picture (Fig. 22): Here I have taken the liberty of presenting my original model in cross-section. The whole building was originally modeled by me in 1913. Here you see the auditorium with its seven columns, the vestibules, here only hinted at the interior of the great dome, which was then painted; here in the small dome room, the capitals everywhere – I will show them in detail in a moment – here the architrave motifs above them; here the plinth motifs, always emerging metamorphically from one another. So, as I said, it is 'only' a line of symmetry, the central axis of the building. Otherwise, no repetitions can be found, except for what is located on the left and right.

The next picture (Fig. 10): seen from the terrace, the view of the West Gate, the main entrance gate, with two wings, which are necessary [gap in shorthand].

The next picture (Fig. 12): there is such a wing structure, the northern one [seen from the northeast]. Dr. Großheintz's house is also located here, an entire concrete building with about 15 rooms, a family house where I tried to create a residential house out of the concrete material by integrating it into this concrete material. It is near the Goetheanum and was built for the person who donated the land. You can see here how I tried to metamorphose the motif. Everything about this building emerges from the other, like a plant leaf, so to speak, in its form from the other form: it is entirely in the artistic sense the work of metamorphosis.

Next image (Fig. 14): This is one of the side wings, the south wing. Here you can see how the motif above the west entrance appears in a completely different form. It is the same idea, but completely different in form. It is just as, say, the dyed flower petal is the same idea as the lowest green leaf of the plant, and yet in external metamorphosis it is something completely different. In this way, one can indeed sense this organic building-thought by living and finding one's way into the metamorphic by giving oneself up to it, but understanding it in a feeling-based way, not in an abstract, intellectual way. This should not actually be explained, but everything should be given by the sight itself.

Once the building is finished, those who are familiar with the anthroposophical attitude and feeling will not perceive the building as symbolic at all, but as something that flows from this overall attitude. Of course one would say that it should flow out of the “generally human”; but this generally human is only a foggy and fanciful construct, a fantasy. The human is always the concrete. Someone who has never heard of Christianity naturally does not understand the Sistine Madonna either. And someone who has no sense of Christianity would never understand the Last Supper in Milan in the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie. It is certainly possible to use language to imagine what was given, but apart from that, there is nothing symbolic about the entire structure; all the forms are metamorphosed variations of one another.

Next picture (Fig. 11): Here you see such a lateral transverse structure, viewed from the front, that is, here from the south side. Up here in a substantially modified metamorphosis is the motif that is also above the west entrance. All these motifs are in various metamorphoses, so that the whole architectural idea is carried out organically. Likewise, if you were to study the columns, you would find a basic form, and this is always metamorphosed, just as, in the end, the skull bones of humans are a metamorphosed transformation of the bones of the spinal cord, as everything in the organism is a metamorphosed transformation right down to the last detail.

The upper part (Fig. 14) of the southern transverse structure seen on its own; this motif, which was just a little smaller there, is now a little larger.

Next picture (Fig. 23): Here you can see part of the staircase. You would enter through the main entrance below, into the concrete building, and go up these stairs. Here you can see the banister and here a pillar. On this pillar you can see how the attempt is made to shape the supporting pillar in an organic form, how the attempt is made to give the pillar the form that it must have after the opposite exit, because there is little to carry; the form that it must have where it is braced, where the entire weight of the staircase lies. Of course, something like this can only be formed geometrically. But here, for once, an attempt should be made to shape the whole thing as if it were alive, so that, as it were, the glow of consciousness of bearing and burdening lies within; with every curve, everything is precisely and intuitively measured for the place in the building where it is located.

Especially if you look at this motif here (Fig. 24): there are three half-circular channels on top of each other. Believe it or not, but it is true: when someone goes up there and enters the auditorium, they must have a certain feeling. I said to myself, the one who goes up there must have the feeling: in there, I will be sheltered with my soul, there is peace of mind to absorb the highest truths that man can aspire to next. That is why, based on my intuitive perception, I designed these three semicircular channels in the three perpendicular spatial directions. If you now go up these stairs, you can experience this feeling of calm. It is not modeled on it – it is not that at all – but only later did I remember that the three semicircular channels in the ear also stand in these three directions perpendicular to each other. If they are violated, a person will faint: they are therefore connected with the laws of equilibrium. It was not created out of a naturalistic desire for imitation, but out of the same desire, which is modeled on the way the channels are arranged in the ear.

You enter from the west side, go up the stairs, here are the three perpendicular semicircular canals, and here again these pillars. Of course, it often happens in life – I have experienced it many times – that when people in a city have seen an actor or actress in certain roles, and later another actor or actress has come along who could be good, better, more interesting or different, they judge them based on the earlier ones. If they did everything exactly like the earlier ones, they were good; if they did it differently, they were bad, no matter how good they might be in themselves. And so, of course, people judge such a thing according to what they are accustomed to, and do not know that when something like this is erected, every effort is made to make it look as if it were supported in different ways on different sides, and that this is derived from the overall organic structure of the building. Some found it thin and called it rachitic, others thought it resembled an elephant foot, but could not call it an elephant foot either, and so someone came up with the name “rachitic elephant foot” based on their own intuitive feeling. This is what happens so often today when some attempt is made to bring something new out of the elementary.

Next image (Fig. 27): If you go up the stairs, you will come to the vestibule before entering the large domed room. Here you can already see the beginning of the timber construction. At this height, there would be a concrete terrace, with the concrete structure below. You can see from this column how the capital, with all its curves, is precisely adapted to the location, not just schematically in space, but dynamically. The curves at the exit have to express a different form of support than those on the opposite side of the building, where the columns have to brace against them. That is why all these wooden forms, column capitals, architraves and so on had to be made by our friends from the Anthroposophical Society over many years of work. All this is handcrafted, including, for example, the ceiling, which does not have just any schematic form, but is individually designed on all sides in its curves and surfaces, hollowed out differently in one spatial direction than in the other spatial direction. And all this according to the law, just as the ear is hollowed out differently at the front than at the back, and so on.

Next picture (Fig. 30): Now we have entered and are standing in the room that is the auditorium. If we turn around and look backwards, we see the organ room here, which you can see in more detail in other pictures. But here you only have the model, not as it can be seen now in the building, where a lot has been added. I have tried to integrate this organ in such a way that one does not have the feeling that something has been built into the rest of the space, but rather that at this point what is presented here as the organ case and the organ itself has literally grown out of the whole. That is why the architecture and sculpture are adapted to the lines created by the rest, i.e. the organ pipes and so on.

Next image (Fig. 28): You are now, so to speak, in the auditorium, looking from the auditorium at the columns. Here is the organ motif, here are the first two columns with their capitals. We then come to the altered, metamorphosed capitals of the second, third, fourth columns and so on – I will show this in detail in a moment – above them always the architrave motif and below the base motif. Next image (Fig. 29): The pictures were taken at different times. The construction has been going on since 1913, when the foundation stone was laid, and the pictures show it in various stages. Here again, if you turn around in the auditorium and look to the west, the upper part, the organ motif; the first and second columns with capitals on the left and right, the capitals and the architraves above them are quite simply designed. In the following, I will show one column and the one that follows, and then each column with the column capital on its own, so that you can see how the following column capital always emerges metamorphosically from the preceding one. This particularly emphasizes the fact that, basically, the individual column cannot be judged on its own, but only the entire sequence of columns in their successive form can be judged.

Next image (Fig. 34): Here you see the first column by itself, simply from bottom to top in the forms, simply from top to bottom. You see a very simple motif.

Next image (Fig. 35): Here you see the first motif, the first capital with the architrave above it; here the second, emerging organically from the first. The motif, which goes from top to bottom, grows; in growing, it metamorphoses, and so does the motif from bottom to top. To a certain extent, one has to feel one's way into the forces that are at work when an upper plant leaf is created in its form, metamorphosed compared to the lower one; in the same way, this first simple plant motif develops into a more complicated one. What matters is that you take the whole sequence of motifs, because each one always belongs with the other; in fact, all seven belong together and form a whole.

Next image (Fig. 36): Here you see the second column by itself. The next motif always emerges metamorphically from the previous one. I will now show the second and third columns.

Next picture (Fig. 37): the second and third columns, again the third capital motif with the architrave motif above it is more complicated, so that you really get this complicated form in your feeling if you do not want to explain it symbolically or approach it with some intellectual things, but with feeling. Then you will see the emergence of one from the other.

Next image (Fig. 38): The third column by itself.

Next image (Fig. 39): The third and fourth columns, that is, the capitals of these with the architrave motif. Here one could believe that the search was for this architrave motif to form a kind of caduceus. But it was not sought, it is simply sensed, as these meeting forms, when they continue to grow, continue to complicate, as they become there, and then the sensation of this motif, which resembles the caduceus, arises by itself. Likewise, as if this continues to grow: from bottom to top, things simplify, from top to bottom they complicate; then this form arises, which I will now show again in isolation.

Next image (Fig. 40): The fourth column.

Next image (Fig. 41): The fourth and fifth column. As can be seen from this, if you imagine it growing downwards, this form emerges, and it becomes simpler from the bottom up, and I would say that it grows in a more complex form upwards. That is the strange thing! When you think of development, you believe, from a certain false idea of development that has gradually formed, that development proceeds in such a way that you first have a simple thing, then a more complicated one, and then an increasingly complicated one, and that the most perfect thing is the most complicated. If you now put yourself in the right place in the developmental impulses with artistic perception, you see that this is not the case at all; that you must indeed advance from the simple to the more complicated; but then you arrive at the most complicated in the middle of the development, and then it becomes simpler as it approaches the more perfect.

That was, my dear attendees, while I was working on the models for these things, an extraordinary surprise for me. I had to go from the simple to the complicated - you see, we are here at the fourth and fifth pillars, so roughly in the middle of the seven pillar forms - and I had to have the most complicated thing in the middle and then go back to the simpler. And if I go back, as nature itself creates, I also find the human eye, but the human eye, although it is the most perfect, is not the most complicated. In the eye of certain lower animal forms, for example, we have the fan, the xiphoid process. The eye of certain lower animal forms is more complicated in some respects than the perfect human eye. In nature, too, it does not happen that one goes from the simpler to the more complicated and then further to the most complicated, but by observing things further, one comes back to the simpler. The more perfect is simpler again. And that turns out to be an artistic necessity in such a creative process.

Next image (Fig. 42): The fifth column in itself.

Next image (Fig. 43): Now the fifth and sixth columns. You can see that here the capital of the fifth column is still relatively complicated; if it continues to grow, it becomes simpler again: so that this sixth column, although more perfect in its design, is nobler, is simpler again. The same applies to the architrave motif.

Next image (Fig. 44): This sixth column stands alone.

Next image (Fig. 45): Sixth and seventh column, considerably simplified again. Next image (Fig. 46): The seventh column on its own, again simplified.

Next image (Fig. 47): This is the seventh column, the architrave motif; here is the gap between the large and small domed rooms; here is the curtain. Then the first column of the small domed room, and here we enter the small domed room.

Now that we have gone through the orders of the columns in the large domed room, I will show you the figures on the pedestals, which have also grown out of each other in a metamorphosing organic way. I will show them in quick succession.

Next image (Fig. 48): Here I show the figures on the pedestals in succession. First pedestal.

Next image (Fig. 49): Each one always emerges metamorphically from the other: Second plinth.

Next image (Fig. 50): If you now imagine the changes, this is what happens: Third base.

Next image (Fig. 51): Fourth pedestal, again more complicated. And now the simplifications begin with the pedestal figures, in order to arrive at perfection.

Next image (Fig. 52): Fifth pedestal. Next image (Fig. 53): Sixth pedestal. Next image (Fig. 54): This seventh pedestal figure is relatively simple again.

Next image (Fig. 55): Now, here you can see into the small dome room from the auditorium. You can still see the last column of the auditorium, then the columns and architraves of the small dome room. That is the end of the large dome room, here the center of the small dome room. Here, a kind of architrave is formed between the two central columns of the small dome, but [above it] is not some kind of symbolic figure. If you want to see a pentagram in it, you can see it in every five-petalled flower. We have [below] synthetically summarized all the lines and curves that are distributed on the individual columns. Above, the small dome is then painted. I will have more to say about this coloring.

The next picture (Fig. 56): individual columns of the small domed room. Here the gap [for the curtain]. It is seen here on the left when entering from west to east. Here is the architrave of the small domed room. Here, as you can see, the capitals of the large domed room are not repeated, they correspond to the overall architectural concept. Since the small dome room is smaller and every organ that is smaller in the organic context also has different forms, this is also clearly evident here in the formation of the whole.

The next picture (Fig. 64): Here again is the view into the small domed room, the last two columns of the large domed room; the same motif that you have just seen in a different aspect, and here the small dome. Of course, nothing of the paintings can be seen here, only the situation could be hinted at. The bases of the small columns have been converted into seats.

The next picture (Fig. 67): Here the orders of columns continue to the left and right; this is in the middle in the east, directly under the small domed room, where all the lines and curves found elsewhere are synthetically summarized in the most diverse forms. This is a kind of architrave, a central architrave; below it is the group I will talk about, a nine-and-a-half-meter-high wooden group, the central figure of which represents a kind of human being. Above it is the small domed room.

The next picture (Fig. 69): We now come to the painting of the small domed room. Now, by speaking to you about the painting of the small domed room, I can only show you the pictures of this small domed room. In the painting of the large domed room, I have not yet fully succeeded in doing this, but in the painting of the small domed room, I have tried to realize to a certain extent what I had a character in my mystery dramas express about the new painting: that the forms of color should be the work, that is, that one should really pull oneself together to fully perceive the world of color as such.

Dear attendees! If you look at the world of colors, it is indeed a kind of totality, a world of its own. And if you feel very vividly into the colorful, then I would say red and blue and yellow speak to each other. You get a completely lively feeling within the world of colors and you get to know, so to speak, a world of colors as an essential one at the same time. Then drawing stops, because in the end you perceive drawing as something insincere. What then is the horizon line? If I draw it with a pencil, I am actually drawing an untruth. Below is the green surface of the sea, above is the blue surface of the vault of heaven, and when I put these down as color, the form arises, the line arises as the boundary of the color.

And so you can create everything out of the colored that you essentially want to bring onto the wall as painting – be it the wall of the spheres as here or the other wall. Do not be deceived because there are motifs, because there are all kinds of figures on it, even figures of cultural history. When I painted this small dome, it was not important to me to draw these or those motifs, to put them on the wall; what was important to me was that, for example, there is an orange spot here in different shades of orange: the figure of the child emerged from these color nuances. And here it was important to me that the blue was adjacent: the figure emerged, which you will see in a moment. It is definitely the figure, the essence, drawn entirely from the color. So here we have a flying child in orange tones, here would be the gap between the large and small domed rooms, and the child is, so to speak, the first thing painted on the surface of the small dome. But by seeing these motifs, you will best understand the matter if you say to yourself: I can't actually see anything in it, I have to see it in color. Because it is felt and thought and painted entirely out of color.

The next picture (Fig. 70): Here you see the only word that appears in the whole structure. There is no other inscription to be found anywhere; everything is meant to be developed into art, into form. But here you will find the “I”. Out of the blue, a kind of fist figure has emerged, that is, the 16th-century human being. The whole cognitive problem of modern man has really emerged from the perception of color before the soul. This cognitive problem of modern man can only be perceived in the abstract, if one perceives as it is often portrayed today; it is different from what we can grasp of natural laws today.

It [the problem of knowledge] intrudes into our soul when we do not merely view things scholastically as abstractions, but when we strive with our whole being to immerse ourselves in the riddles and secrets of the world, as we must in order to be fully human, in order to become aware of our human dignity. Then it places itself beside the striving human being, the one striving for knowledge, who in Faust really, I would say, strives out of the mysterious, mystical blue, strives for the fully conscious I that speaks. The older languages have the I in the verb; for this epoch one is justified in letting a word appear; otherwise there is no word, no inscription or the like in the whole structure, everything is expressed in artistic forms. But the child and birth, and the other end of life, death, are placed alongside the person striving for knowledge. Above it would be the Faust figure you have just seen, below it Death, and further over towards us this flying child. This skeleton here (Fig. 71) in brownish black, in the Faust book in blue, the child (Fig. 72) in various shades of orange and yellow.

The next picture (Fig. 73): Here you see a compilation: below the skeleton, here Faust, here this child, whom you saw individually, above it a kind of inspirer, an angel-like figure, which I will show as an individual, then other figures join here. As I said, the necessity arose for me to depict the striving of the people of the last centuries from the color surfaces that I wanted to place in just that position. Here then is the striving of the Greeks. You will see it in detail.

The next picture (Fig. 74): the genius in blue-yellow, who is above the fist-shape, as if inspiring the fist-shape from above. We would then come across the striving child. The next picture (Fig. 75): then a kind of Athena figure, taken out of a brownish-orange with light yellow. It is the way in which Greek thinking has become part of the whole world of knowledge and feeling. This figure that we have here is inspired by a kind of Apollo figure, just as Faust was previously inspired by his angel (Fig. 76); this brings us back to Greek thinking.

The next picture (Fig. 76): The inspiring Apollon. Particular care has been taken here with the bright yellow, through which this Apollo figure has been created out of color. I tried to give this bright yellow a certain radiance through the type of technical treatment.

The next picture (Fig. 77): Here you see two figures, which now inspire the Egyptian initiate, who recognizes the tables and feels the world. The man on the right is depicted in a somewhat darker color, I would say a reddish brown, and the Egyptian initiate, who is below him, is also depicted in this way.

The next picture (Fig. 78): The Egyptian knower, that is, the counter-image for those ancient times, which in our case is Faust, who strives for knowledge.

The next picture (Fig. 79): Here you see two figures that I am obliged to always assign certain names to in spiritual science because they keep recurring. One should not think of nebulous mysticism here, but only of the necessity of having a terminology; just as one speaks of north and south magnetism, so I speak of the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic. When we stand face to face with a human being, we cannot grasp his whole being at once, nor with all the powers of knowledge. He has within him two opposing polarities: that which in him constantly strives towards the rapturously false mysticism, false theosophy, that which always seeks to rise above itself towards the unreal , the unfounded, the nebulous - the Luciferic - and that which makes him a Philistine, that which predisposes him to the spirit of heaviness - the Ahrimanic, which is painted here with its shadow. The Luciferic is painted in the yellow-reddish color, the Ahrimanic in the yellow-brownish. It is the dualism of human nature. We can have it physically, physiologically: Then the Ahrimanic in man is everything that ages him, that brings him to sclerosis, to calcification, that makes him ossify; the Luciferic is everything that, when it develops pathologically, brings one to fever, to pleurisy, that thus develops one towards warmth. Man is always the balance between these two. We do not understand the human being if we do not see in him the balance between these two, the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic.

In particular, however, the Germanic-Central European culture that came over Persia is confronted with this duality in its knowledge. Hence the recognizing Central European, who has the child here (Fig. 82) – we will see him in more detail – is inspired by this duality of the Luciferic-Ahrimanic, with which he must come to terms through his inner tragic destiny of knowledge. Here this kind of dualism is seen again in the smaller figure, shaped like a centaur. I painted this during the war, and one sometimes has one's private ideas; the ill-fated fabric of Woodrow Wilson's fourteen points grew out of the abstract transformation of dualism. Here in Switzerland, too, I have repeatedly spoken of the world-destroying nature of these fourteen points: Therefore, I took the private pleasure of immortalizing Mr. and Mrs. Wilson in these figures. But, as I said, this is of little importance.

The next picture (Fig. 81): Here you see the Ahrimanic figure brought out and the shadow above it. In spiritual terms, this is everything that drives man to materialism, to philistinism, to pedantry, what he becomes when – be it expressed in the extreme – he has only intellect and no heart, when all his powers, his soul powers, are directed by the intellect. And if man did not have the good fortune that his outer body is more in balance, his outer body would actually be determined by the soul, he would be an exact expression of the soul: All those people who feel materialistically, feel pedantically, who are almost completely absorbed in the intellect, would look like that on the outside. Of course, they are protected from this by the fact that their body does not always follow the soul, but the soul then looks like this when you see it, when you feel it physically.

Next image (Fig. 80): The Luciferic, worked out of the yellow, worked out of the yellow into the bright. This is what a person develops when he shapes himself one-sidedly according to the visionary, one-sidedly according to the theosophical, when he grows beyond his head; one often finds it developed in some members of other movements who always grow half a meter with their astral head above their physical head so that they can look down on all people. This is the other extreme, the other pole of man.

Here at the bottom, so to speak, is the Germanic initiate (Fig. 82), the Germanic knower in his tragedy, which lies in the fact that duality has a particularly strong effect on him: the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic; as an addition, again, the naivety of the child. This is what emerged for the artistic sensibility. It was worked out of the brown-yellow; the child is kept in the light yellow.

Next picture (Fig. 83): Here we are already approaching the center of the domed room. This man would stand here with the child, and further towards the center are these two figures, which are one. Of course, this does not refer to the current Russian culture or lack of culture, which is corrupting people and the world, but rather the Russian culture actually contains the seed for something future. At present it is overshadowed by what has been imported from the West, by what should indeed disappear from the earth as soon as possible if it does not want to drag the whole of Europe with it into the abyss. But at the bottom of Russian nationality lies something that is guaranteed a future. It should be expressed through this figure, which has its double only here. That which lives in Russian nationality always has something of a double about it. Every Russian carries his shadow around with him. When you see a Russian, you are actually seeing two people: the Russian, who dreams and who is always flying a meter above the ground, and his shadow. All of this holds future possibilities. Hence this characteristic angel figure, painted out of the blue, out of the various shades of blue. Above it, a kind of centaur, a kind of aerial centaur. Here this figure, everything in the indefinite, even the starry sky above this Russian man, who carries his doppelganger with him.

Next image (Fig. 85): We have now passed the center here. This is the same centaur figure – when facing east, located on the left – as the earlier one on the right of the center. This angel figure is the symmetrical one to the one you have just seen. This one, however, is painted in a yellowish orange, and below it would now be the Russian with his doppelganger, but symmetrical to what was shown before.

Next image (Fig. 86): Now we are standing in the middle of the small domed room. Once again, on the other side, the Russian motif. Here, you can see the figure of Ahriman lying in a cave; and here, at the top, the representative of humanity. One can imagine him as the Christ. I have formed him out of my own vision as a Christ-figure. Lightning flashes come out of his right hand and surround Ahriman like the coils of a snake. His arm and hand go up to Lucifer, who is painted emerging from the reddish-yellow.

Next image (Fig. 87): Here you can see the figure of Lucifer a little more clearly. Below would be the figure of Christ, reaching up with his arm; this is the face, painted in yellow-red. So it is the Luciferic in man that strives beyond his head, the enthusiastic, that which alienates us from our actual humanity by making us alien to the world, bottomless.

Next image (Fig. 88): Ahriman in the cave. His head is surrounded by lightning serpents that emanate from the hand of Christ, who is standing above them. Here the wing, the brownish yellow, is painted more in the brownish direction, in places descending into the blackish blue.

Next picture (Fig. 89): Here I am now showing you my first sketch for the plastic figure of Christ. You see, I tried to make Christ beardless, but Christ pictures have only had a beard since the end of the fifth or sixth century. Of course, no one has to believe me. It is the Christ as he presented himself to me in spiritual vision, and there he must be depicted beardless.

Next image (Fig. 90): The painted head of Christ between Ahriman and Lucifer, the images that I have just shown. Painted in the dome room above is Christ between Ahriman and Lucifer, and below it will later be – it is still far from finished – the nine-and-a-half-meter-high wooden group (Fig. 93), in the middle of which is the representative of humanity, the Christ, with his right arm lowered and his left arm raised, in such a way that this position, like embodied love, is placed between Ahrimanic and Luciferic forces.

Next picture (Fig. 92): This is the first model, made in plasticine, for the Christ, en face, that is, for the representative of humanity, who is to stand in the middle of the wooden group (Fig. 93). But I would like to explicitly note that it will not be somehow obvious that this is the Christ; rather, one will have to feel it from the forms, from the artistic aspect. Nothing, absolutely no inscription, except for the “I” that I mentioned earlier, can be found in the entire structure.

Next image (Fig. 98): This is from the left side of this group of woodcuts [taken from the execution model]: Here is Lucifer striving upwards, and above him a rock creature emerging from the rock, so to speak, the rock transformed into an organ. Here is Lucifer; here Christ would stand; here is the other Lucifer, and that is such a rock creature. It is a risk to make it completely asymmetrical, as asymmetries in general play a certain role in these figures, because here the composition is not conceived in such a way that one takes figures, puts them together and makes a whole – no, the whole is conceived first and the individual is extracted. Therefore, a face at the top left must have a different asymmetry than one at the top right. It is a daring thing to work with such asymmetries, but I hope that it will be felt to be artistically justified if one ever fully comprehends the overall architectural idea.

Next image (Fig. 99): Here you can see the model of the Ahriman head. It is the original wax model that I made in 1915. It is an attempt to shape the human face as if the only things present in the human being were the aging, sclerotizing, calcifying forces, or, in the soul, that which makes the human being a philistine, pedant, materialist, which lies in him by being an intellectualizing being. If he had no heart at all for his soul life, but only reason, then he would present this physiognomy. We do not get to know the nature of a human being by merely describing it in the way that ordinary physiology and anatomy do. This one-sided approach provides only a limited insight into the human being. We must move on to an artistic appreciation of form, and only then do we get to know what lives and breathes in a person, what is truly there. You can never get to know the human being, as is attempted in the academies, anatomically or physiologically; you have to ascend to the artistic – that is part of artistic recognition – and must recognize, as Goethe says: “When nature begins to reveal her secrets to him who is open to them, he feels the deepest yearning for her most worthy interpreter, art.” Not only the abstract word, not only the abstract idea and the abstract thought, but also the image gives something of what the forces of nature are, what is really contained in the secrets of nature. One must ascend to the artistic, otherwise one cannot recognize nature. The building may rightly call itself the “Goetheanum” for the reason that precisely such a Goethean understanding of nature also strives for an understanding of the world. Goethe says: Art is a special way of revealing the secrets of nature, which could never be revealed without art.

Next image (Fig. 101): The figure of Lucifer above, here the chest, wing-like. It is the case that one really has to immerse oneself in all of nature's creativity if one wants to give plastic form to something like this figure of Lucifer. Nothing can be symbolized, nothing can be allegorized, nothing can be thought and the thought put into earlier forms, but one must really delve into how nature creates, one must know the nature of the human rib cage, the lungs, one must know the organ of hearing, then the atrophied flight tools that the human being has in his two shoulder blades. All of this must be brought into context, because a person would look quite different if they were not intellectually developed, if the heart did not hypertrophy and overgrow everything: The heart, the hearing organs, wing-like organs, everything would be one. Those who do not merely accept the naturalistic, but also what is ideal, spiritual in the beings, will see in such art only that which reveals the secrets of the world and of existence in the Goethean sense. Up there you can see the hands of this asymmetrical rock creature.

Next image (Fig. 103): Here you can see a building in the vicinity of the Goetheanum. It was originally built to carry out a kind of glass etching. Now it serves as a kind of office space, and eurythmy rehearsals and eurythmy lessons are also given there. In the wooden wall of the large domed room, there are glass windows between every two columns, and these glass windows are not made in the old glass window art, but in a special art, which I would call glass etching. Panes of glass of the same color are engraved with a diamond-tipped stylus that is clamped into an electric machine, and the artist actually works here as an etcher on glass, as he otherwise works as an etcher on a plate, only on a larger scale. So that you scratch out in the monochrome glass plate, thus working the motif in question into the light. This is how we got these glass windows, which have different glass colors, so that there is a harmonious effect. When you enter the building, you first come to one glass color, then to the other, to certain color harmonies. These glass windows had to be ground here; accordingly, this house was built, which, except for the gate and the staircase, is individually designed in every detail. Here we do not have the earlier castles that are otherwise present, but a special form of castle has been used (Fig. 105). So it is individually designed down to the last detail. Next picture (Fig. 104): The gate to this house just shown; below the concrete staircase.

Next image (Fig. 110): Here you see one of these glass windows, which is executed in green. The motifs here are created out of green panes of the same color. The etching is actually only, I would say, a kind of score. This is then a work of art when it is in its place and the sun shines through. So the artist does not finish the work of art, but only a kind of score: when the sun shines through, this etching achieves what, together with the sunbeam shining through, actually creates the work of art. This again marks something that emerges from the whole building idea of Dornach and is physically expressed here.

The Dornach building is built on a fundamentally different architectural idea from other buildings. The walls of the previous buildings are closing walls, artistically also conceived as closing walls. No wall in Dornach is conceived in this way; the walls in Dornach are designed in such a way that they are artistically transparent, so that one does not feel closed in when one is inside the building. All the walls, so to speak, open up through the artistic motifs to the whole great world, and one enters this building with the awareness that one is not in a building but in the world: the walls are transparent. And this is carried out in these glass windows right down to the physical: they are only a work of art when the sun shines through them. Only together with the sunbeam does what the artist has created become artistic.

Next picture (Fig. 113): Another window sample, taken from the same-colored glass pane. The fact that these windows are there means that the room is again illuminated with the harmoniously interwoven rays, and one can, especially when one enters the room in the morning hours, when it is full of sunshine, really feel something through the light effects in the interior, which cannot be called nebulous, but in the best sense inwardness, an impression, an image of the inwardness of the existence of the world and of human beings. For just as, for example, in Greek temple architecture there stands a house that can only be conceived as the house that no human being actually enters, at most the forecourt as a hall of sacrifice, but which is the dwelling place of the god, just as the Gothic building, regardless of whether it is a secular or a church building, is conceived as that which is not complete in itself, but which is complete when it has become a hall for assembly and the community is within it, the whole building idea of Dornach, as I have developed it here in its details, should work so that when a person enters this space, they are just as tempted to be in the space with other people who will look at what is presented and listen to what is sung, played or recited.

Man will be tempted, on the one hand, to feel sympathy with those who are gathered, but the question or the challenge that is as old as Western culture will also arise: know thyself! And he will sense something like an answer to this in the building around him: know thyself. The attempt has been made to express in the building forms, in an artistic and non-symbolic way, that which the human being can inwardly experience.

We have already experienced it: when, for example, an attempt was made to recite - to eurythmy or to recite to oneself - the space that I showed you as the organ room, when an attempt was made to recite into it, or when an attempt was made to speak of the intermediate space between the two dome spaces, the whole room took these things in as a matter of course. Every form is adapted to the word, which wants to unfold recitatively or in discussion and explanation. And music in particular spreads out in these plastic-musical formal elements, which the building idea of Dornach is meant to represent.

In conclusion, I would just like to say, my dear attendees: With these details, which I have tried to make clear to some extent through the pictures, I wanted to present to your souls what the building idea of Dornach should be: a thought that dissolves the mechanical, the geometric, into the organic, into that which itself presents the appearance of consciousness, so that this consciously appearing element willingly accepts that which arises from the depths of human consciousness.

However, this means that something has been created that differs from previous building practices and customs, but in the same way that spiritual science oriented towards anthroposophy also wants to place itself in the civilization of the present day: as something that feels related to the emerging forces of the rising sun, and at the same time wants to strongly oppose the terribly devastating forces of decline of our time. Thus, that which wants to live in the teaching of anthroposophy, the whole world view of anthroposophy, also wants to express itself through the building forms. What is to be heard in Dornach through the spoken word should also be seen in the forms. Therefore, no arbitrary architectural style was to be used, no arbitrary building constructed: it had to grow out of the same spiritual and intellectual background from which the words spoken in Dornach arise. The whole idea behind the building, the whole of the Dornach building, is not to be a temple building, but a building in which people come together to receive supersensible knowledge.

People say that just because one is too poor to find words for the new, one often says: that is a temple building. But the whole character contradicts the old temple character. It is entirely that which is adapted in every detail to what, as spiritual science in the anthroposophical sense, wants to step out into the world. And basically, every explanation is a kind of introduction to the language, to the world view, from which the artistic concept has emerged. I believe that artistically, the building expresses its own essence and content, even if it is still often perceived today as something that is not justified in terms of what is considered acceptable in terms of architectural style, forms and artistic language. Only someone who has already absorbed the impulse, the entire civilizing character of spiritual science, will understand that a new architectural idea had to emerge from this new world view. And as badly as contemporaries sometimes take it, something like this had to be presented, just as anthroposophical spiritual science had to be talked about.

And so, in the manner of a confession, today's discussion, which sought to point to the building of Dornach and to these thoughts, may simply conclude with the words: something was ventured that had not been done before as a building idea, but it had to be ventured. If something like this had not been ventured, had not been ventured at various points in time, there would be no progress in the development of humanity. For the sake of human progress, something must be ventured first. Even if the first attempt is perhaps beset with numerous errors – that is the very first thing that the person speaking here will admit – it must nevertheless be said: something like this must always be ventured again in the service of humanity. Therefore, my dear attendees, it has been ventured out there in Dornach, near Basel.

After the welcoming address by the chairman, the report on the technical work, the statement of accounts and an exchange of views between the members, Dr. Steiner takes the floor.

Now, if no one else wishes to speak, I would just like to add a few aphoristic comments in connection with the meeting of the Goetheanum Association.

I would like to touch on the moral side of our cause. First of all, following on from what has been said, I would like to emphasize that those who see it as their task to work on the completion of the Goetheanum are, as is basically self-evident, also of gratitude to the leading personalities of the Executive Council, who for many years have devoted themselves to the task in often quite difficult circumstances, providing the foundation for the entire undertaking with their personalities and their work. I believe that it is not always considered what it means that here, for example, in Dr. Grosheintz himself and all that belongs to him, we have a personality who, already connected with the area on which the Johannesbau stands, , has become connected with the idea of creating the Johannesbau here, which then transformed into the Goetheanum, and which has devoted itself to this work in such a self-sacrificing way for many years, which must stand behind everything. And so I would like to express my gratitude to him and to all those who, in a similar way to him, selflessly devote their strength and time to this work in a board-related and connected way, and to express my thanks to them, which certainly comes from all of your hearts. Above all, I would like to emphasize the hope that we can continue to find such noble and understanding support from this quarter in particular. [Applause]

When our artistic work here is discussed, it would always be of particular importance not to lose sight of the way in which the artistic work of the Goetheanum in particular is to relate to the world today. Whenever I have the opportunity to guide any outside visitors through the building, I repeat over and over again, almost at every point where something is said and explained to people, that with regard to everything that is artistically and otherwise considered for the building, it is first and foremost a transition, an intention that should be thought of as a continuation.

It is particularly important that we see ourselves as a beginning for many things related to our movement. It is also particularly important to always teach the world, which is so hard of hearing today, so that judgments can be formed from this point of view about this Goetheanum and everything related to it.

Our spiritual scientific endeavor is itself a beginning. And if this is misunderstood, false judgments will be formed in the world over and over again. Therefore, it is important to me that this be emphasized in all its details: It is intention, beginning, and the intentions that are to find further expression and independent development in the world that matters. I tried to somehow represent this in every detail.

I would like to mention one of the last details, one of the details that unfortunately came to grief. When we were in the very satisfactory position of being able to organize a public eurythmy performance in Zurich, the question arose as to whether — well, how should I put it, it's always on the tip of my tongue, to say something disrespectful — for the philistines who were to be invited, introductory words that could then be printed. And I also wanted to emphasize for this matter of eurythmy, which will certainly be extraordinarily important for the world one day, that with what is now to be presented to the public, one has a beginning, an intention, which is to be worked out, which is to undergo its development, which is to progress. Criticism of beginnings can only be directed in this direction if we always remain aware that they are beginnings.

And so I believe that much of the gossip that is spread about our movement could be replaced if our dear friends were to thoroughly impress upon the world, which is so hard of hearing today, that we are not at all foolish enough to bring anything even remotely perfect into the world in any direction, but that we just want to give a start, something that is an intention, which is not at all regarded by us as something perfect. In more recent times, as I said, when I have the opportunity to show people around, I repeatedly emphasize that now that the matter has progressed so far, I recognize the errors most precisely, and that a second time such a building is erected, it would not be done as it has been done now, and as it must now, of course, be continued accordingly, since one cannot build on top of each other contradictory things.

Above all, however, something else is also necessary in connection with this. Isn't it true that I must emphasize it again and again, because it should lead to the understanding that is to be conveyed, on the one hand, by the members of the Anthroposophical Society, but, on the other hand, by all those friends who are interested in the building. The point is that the inner structure of the building, the artistic inner structure of the building, in a certain respect – why should we not speak quite freely when we are among ourselves? – that the artistic structure could actually only be brought to the stage it has reached today through a kind of struggle.

We must not forget that, due to a peculiar karma, which I will perhaps talk about in these days, the Anthroposophical Society — not Anthroposophy, but the Anthroposophical Society — grew out of the Theosophical Society. Time and again during the years when we were still a “Theosophical Society”, artists made certain objections to the Society, and I emphasize that I still value their judgment particularly valuable to me now, for the reason that artists themselves are only in a few cases, let me say – I want to be polite for once – in a few cases, completely seized by the general philistinism, philistrosity of the world.

The artist, in so far as he is an artist, always retains – I won't say anything about in so far as he is a human being – he always retains something of a certain still freer judgment, which is now one of the rarities in the world. And so it may be said that especially in the last decades of the 19th century and in what has passed so far in the 20th century, in an age of the most widespread philistinism with regard to public judgment in all areas, he has already developed a somewhat – or much – freer, more independent judgment that is more closely related to the intellectual. This still existed in the world of artists. And in the artistic field there are still phenomena of a literary, scientific or critical nature that one likes to follow; while even the most proficient work in the technical, especially the scientific, field, which one must of course recognize as a great achievement of the time, is almost enough to make one sick to death of it, due to the way in which it presents itself to the world in a philistine manner. Because even the most accomplished work in these fields, what must necessarily be accomplished in these fields, in the fields of science and technology, is presented to the world in such a philistine way, in such a way of thinking, that it can really get on one's nerves if one is forced to follow it.

It is different with regard to much of what comes from the world of art. It is connected with this that it has always pained me when, during the years of our affiliation with the Theosophical Society, artists repeatedly and repeatedly tried, sometimes with great goodwill, to look at what was hanging on the walls as such stuff, not true, such huge rose crosses with the correct seven roses, where the question was always: How should these roses be attached? How should one do this and that? What is the right symbolism? and so on. When they had looked at these things and seen what had actually been achieved, artistic natures naturally always came and said: Yes, of course, one cannot object to this spiritual movement of Theosophy, one is interested in it; but one is so taken aback when such artistic Botokudentum prevails precisely within the Theosophical Society. And of course it was painful, because I was the last person who could be inclined to contradict such a judgment. Because such a judgment was entirely justified in the broadest sense with regard to the artistic impulses that lived in the Theosophists.

Of course, it was only possible to fight against it – not theoretically, not through teaching, since you can't achieve anything in these areas through teaching – but slowly and gradually. Of course, we could only achieve something by having truly artistic natures in our midst. I need only think of one personality who must be remembered again and again, who must remain unforgettable for all those things that have been and are being undertaken as vital things in certain areas within our movement. I need only remind you of Fräulein Stinde, but I could also remind you of others. I will only say that by combining what was there from the artistic side, it was possible to take up the fight against all the symbolizing, all the abstract, idealistic stuff in the shaping of our things. And of course, today there is still the need to turn against it when people come again and again and ask: What does that mean? What does this mean? In the sense in which people ask, “What does this mean?” nothing means anything to us! What matters at the Goetheanum – even if it is only a beginning and a rather incomplete one – is to really bring something into the world that is truly artistic in color, form, and so on.

What matters is not where artistic feeling is concerned. I say it again and again, and when people come and see our [sculptural] group over there [under construction], that at the center stands the Christ, and above is Lucifer and below is Ahriman. That is a private feeling, and basically has nothing to do with the artistic feeling and the whole work. Of course, it can be seen as a discussion drawn from the artistic to further explain the matter itself; but it has nothing to do with the matter as a work of art. The line that was added to express the falling Lucifer, the line that breaks away in its harmony with the whole structure in its organism, is infinitely more meaningful than the artistically actually boring explanation: This is Lucifer, this is Ahriman, and so on and so on. What is important is a line that goes from right to left and is felt as a line!

I could, of course, go on in this direction for a long time and draw attention to many things that actually occur in the assessment of these things, but I do not want to put anyone off. Of course, everything is heard with love, no matter what is said, even if it happens that someone holds the raised hand of Ahriman over his head because he thinks Ahriman is a snake and so on: that is even in some circumstances quite interesting in itself; but it does show that with regard to what is actually to be achieved here through the building, there is a lot to be done. And what it comes down to is – I have expressed it for one area in my first mystery drama, for example, that the form of the color is the work and so on.

Of course, saying such things has no particular value, but it does have value if the opportunity is really given to implement such things in reality, in fact.

But that is what I would like to emphasize. I have actually had a great deal of experience in this field, not only in the artistic field, but also, for example, in the field of individual scientific achievements. My aim has always been to introduce spiritual science, but as a living force, not as something dead, into the various branches of life.

If you express any spiritual-scientific idea in an external form, you kill the idea. What is at stake is that, through the intensity of spiritual-scientific inner attainments, one becomes a different person who, in relation to everything in him, learns to feel differently than one can learn anywhere else today. Then, in the particular field in which he is working, he abandons himself to the impulse that has been placed within him, and a different art arises from the roots of spiritual science, but always indirectly through the human soul, so on the detour through the human soul, that all the idealism of spiritual science first disappears, is transformed in the human soul and only in the transformation does art become art. If you still see any forms that are created, anything of what must be given as an idea in spiritual science, then it is artistic nonsense, it is not real art.

That is what I would like to emphasize. And that is why my ideal in this area would be – as I said, I want to emphasize the moral side of our meeting today – my ideal would be if, by everyone reflecting on: What is intended here? What has not been achieved? How could we achieve what we actually want? if, above all, there were a truly fruitful effect on artistic judgment, if there were a real intention to educate oneself artistically through what this Goetheanum wants. This is something that has so far been rejected by the minds of many of our friends — my dear friends, I have to say it. And there is a danger that people will ask: Why are there seven pillars, why exactly seven pillars? And so on. All of this should really be secondary to how one should feel. And then one must also feel the initial intention behind it.

My dear friends, what our very dear Mr. Linde said about my contribution to the small dome is not something I myself value particularly highly, and I also stand by the fact that it is quite a beginning, a beginning that is a bit of picturesque scribble, but a beginning that may perhaps show what is actually wanted, perhaps better in this than in anything else. And I may well make the confession to you that I would perhaps achieve what I want if I were not fifty-eight years old today, but if I could still learn for thirty-five years, in order to then carry out approximately what I would like to carry out and what I would like to see in the small dome. This will also make it clear to you that I myself do not have such an enormous desire to do something in the great dome either.

Of course, I will do whatever is desirable in the given case for each individual part of the building, whatever I consider to be my duty, and I will lend a hand wherever possible. But I also want everyone to know how I myself think about these things, which I view with a fair amount of modesty on the one hand, but on the other hand with a bit of immodesty: because I do believe that what could be achieved by people after a long period of independent work, after a long time when we ourselves can no longer be there, in a way that is fruitful for the future, as intended by this building, inaugurated, initiated. So that one could get a great deal out of what is wanted here, if one understood it in precisely this way. Whether there are external possibilities to intervene in the large dome as well, depends on powers that I am not inclined to call the wise world powers, but which currently force one to live from day to day, in whose goings-on – well, I just don't call them the wise world powers – in whose goings-on one cannot intervene so directly. I will, of course, do everything I can to be on site as much as possible; but one cannot even know whether one might not be prevented from doing so in the coming weeks due to current events and have to be absent for a while. Well, somehow it may be possible that the dawn of a new era will bring greater freedom here as well. But for the time being, precisely for this reason, one cannot say anything particularly definite. I can only say that I will do everything that is necessary to make this building what it should be and what it can become after what has been started.

Then I would like to say a few words about the trust company, which I welcome with such great joy, my dear friends. The first thought of this trust company occurred to me through a conversation that Mr. Molt, on his own initiative, had with me in Stuttgart at the beginning of this year. I do not need to share the content of this conversation with you, because the content was then practically included in the actual reasoning of the trust and in what has been shared with you today. I will just say that at the time I welcomed the establishment of this trust with tremendous satisfaction, for the following reason.

Please understand me correctly, my dear friends. I welcome it with deep joy when there are many idealists and spiritualists in the best sense of the word within our society – even if many of them are quite impractical people who do not always carry so-called practice, especially not business practice, on their noses – when there are many people within this society who get their intentions from a certain idealistic point of view. But if you just look at this financial account, you will understand that the Johannesbau, which has now become the “Goetheanum”, is something that also requires quite a strong intervention of practical impulses. Our friends who initially turned to the Johannesbau out of their idealism cannot always bear this in mind. And I would be the very last person to want to introduce even the slightest discord into the very deep, honest gratitude that I feel for those who, as I said at the beginning of my words, have dedicated themselves to the Johannesbau in the background, so to speak, in the role of directors.

However, my dear friends, the progress of the work over the years has shown that the intervention of a certain practice is necessary. It is so difficult to bring together idealism and practice in an individual. As I said, I don't want to introduce the slightest discordant note. But the esteemed and dear chairmanship will not take it amiss if I now, for example, mention a small but truly kindly intended damper that I felt during the meeting. This does not in any way affect my deep, honest gratitude. But isn't it true that I, who am accustomed to seeing meetings go in the way they should, winced inwardly at the failure to touch on the very first necessary point on the agenda and to request that the minutes of the previous general assembly be read or at least that a vote be taken on whether or not they should be read. These formalities must not be omitted. And so there are many things that must be considered. Right? You have to be a stickler at the right moments, and you won't hold it against me if I say such things. It's just a personal problem, and it really doesn't do any harm in practice today. But that's the way it is with these and other things.

Well, my dear friends, in February of this year, the idea of the trust company approached me, and I will now tell you quite frankly why I welcomed it with particular joy. You see, all that is said there, interest on loans and so on, is certainly very nice, but that actually goes without saying when you set up a trust company; what else could you do if you didn't do that? But that is not what impressed me about the idea of the trust company back then, my dear friends. I believe that it will be realized and could perhaps be particularly important for our time. What was important to me was that precisely those personalities in our society who are somehow involved in the rest of the world, who are involved in it through one or other social aspect, should come together under a certain aspect.

A cause such as ours, when it is as tangible to the world as the Johannesbau, can only flourish if the members do not just pursue it in the way that many do. I am not criticizing them, that's just the way it is; they are members of the Anthroposophical Society or the Johannesbau Association in secret, so to speak, but they don't want it to be known, do they? I believe that there are some who even like to come to the lectures of the Anthroposophical Society, but are very reluctant to have it known at their bank office that they are members, and so on. Well, there are such things. But you can't get anywhere with that. Of course you can have an ideal society, but you won't get anywhere with it if you want to create something like the Goetheanum, which has to be run in a business-like manner. You can only make progress if the personalities who belong to it also really make use of the other social affinities they have in the outside world, in other words, if someone is this or that, they use the respect they have in their circle to create a foundation, a real foundation, for what is to be created there for the good of humanity.

So I welcomed the trust company as a collaboration between personalities who have a position in the rest of the world and who use this position in the interest of the Goetheanum. Therefore, my dear friends, it was immediately plausible to me that the name “Goetheanum” emerged precisely in connection with our society. There will be many idealists in our Society who do not like the fact that the beautiful biblical name, or whatever it is, 'Johannesbau' is being changed to the name 'Goetheanum'. But, my dear friends, everyone can carry in their hearts what is actually being achieved here for humanity. The matter is to be presented to the world in such a way that the world understands it as simply as possible. And to attach importance to something happening differently, so that the world understands it, I think that is very damaging to our cause. Therefore, it was quite right for the trust company to say to itself: if we call ourselves 'Johannesbau', everyone thinks: well, that's just something, well, 'something'! And if we call ourselves “Goetheanum”, then that connects with something [recognized], and those people who would say about “Johannesbau”: well, that's just “something”, would at least be embarrassed not to acknowledge Goethe.

I am certainly not overestimating our contemporaneity, because, after all, they may well think of the “Goetheanum” as “something” in their hearts, but then they feel a little embarrassed. And we also have to be aware of such impulses from our revered contemporaries. All kinds of things come together. As for why one should say 'Goetheanum' for spiritual and intellectual reasons, I have dealt with this sufficiently in my lectures. But I wanted to mention the example of the trust company to show that there is also a very practical reason for doing so. And if, in the present difficult times, when we are heading towards such chaos, everyone in the trust company uses what they have to stand in the world, to connect with it and to bring it into the building of St. John, which will certainly also have a difficult position in the world, then the trust company will do something good. Otherwise, it would, of course, be necessary to set up a super-trust company for the trust company at a later date, so that the super-trust company would relate to the trust company in the same way that the Johannesbau relates to the trust company, and so on.

Emil Grosheintz: Does anyone else wish to speak? - If not, I would like to close today's meeting.

[ 1 ] The inner soul's conflict which Goethe has embodied in the personality of Faust comes to light at the very beginning of the Drama, when Faust turns away from the sign of the Macrocosm to that of the Earth Spirit. The content of the first Faust Monologue up to this experience of the soul is preliminary. Faust's dis-satisfaction with the sciences and with his position as a man of learning is far less characteristic of Goethe's nature than the kinship which Faust feels to the Spirit Universal on the one side and to the Earth Spirit on the other. The all-inclusive harmony of the universe is revealed to the soul by the sign of the macrocosm:

How each the Whole its substance gives,
Each in the other works and lives!
Like heavenly forces rising and descending,
Their golden urns reciprocally lending,
With wings that winnow blessing
From Heaven through Earth I see them pressing,
Filling the All with harmony unceasing!

[ 2 ] If we take these words in conjunction with Goethe's knowledge of the sign of the Macrocosm, we come upon an experience of great significance in the soul of Faust. There appears before Faust's soul a sense picture of the Universe,—a picture of the sun itself, of the earth in connection with the other planets of the solar system, and of the activity of the single heavenly bodies as a revelation of the Divine Being guiding movement and reciprocal interplay. This is not a mechanical heaven, but a cosmic weaving of spiritual hierarchies whose effluence is the life of the world. Into this life man is placed, and he comes forth as the apotheosis of the work of all these Beings. Faust, however, cannot find in his soul the experience for which he is seeking even in the vision of this universal harmony. We can sense the yearning that gnaws in the depths of this soul: “How do I become Man in the true sense of the word?” The soul longs to experience what makes man consciously truly Man. In the sense image hovering there, the soul cannot call up from the depths of being that profound experience which would make it able to realise itself as the epitome of all that is there as the sign of the macrocosm. For this is the “knowledge” that can be trans-formed through intense inner experience, into “Self-Knowledge.” The very highest knowledge cannot directly comprehend the whole being of man. It can only comprehend a part of man. It must then be borne through life, and in inter-relation with life its range is gradually extended over the whole being of man. Faust lacks the patience to accept knowledge with those limitations which, in the early stages, must exist. He wants to experience instantaneously a soul-realization which can only come in the course of time. And so he turns away from the revelation of the Macrocosm:

[ 3 ] How grand a show! but, ah! a show alone.

[ 4] Knowledge can never be more than a picture, a reflection of life. Faust's desire is not for a picture of life, but for life itself. He turns therefore to the sign of the Earth Spirit, in which he has a symbol before him of the whole infinite being of man as a product of earth activity. The symbol calls forth in his soul a vision of all the infinitude of being which man bears within him, but which would stun him, overwhelm him, if he were to receive it gathered up into the perception of a single moment of discovery rather than drawn out into the many pictures of that knowledge which is discovered to him in the long course of life.

In the phenomenon of the Earth Spirit Faust sees what man is in reality, but the result is confusion when in the weakened reflection of the forces of cognition it does not penetrate to the consciousness. There was present in Goethe, not of course in a philosophical form, but as a living concept, that spiritual fear which overtakes man in his life of thought: what would become of me if I suddenly were to behold the riddle of my existence and had not the knowledge to master it!

[ 5 ] It was not Goethe's intention to express in his Faust the disillusionment of a misguided yearning for knowledge. His aim was rather to represent the conflict associated with this yearning—a conflict that has its seat in the being of man. Man in every moment of his existence is more than can be disclosed if his destiny is to be fulfilled. Man must evolve from his inner being; he must unfold that which he can only fully know after the development has taken place. The constitution of his forces of knowledge is such that when brought to bear prematurely upon what at the right time they must master, they are liable to deception as the result of their own operations. Faust lives in all that the words of the Earth Spirit reveal to him. But this, his own being, confuses and deceives him when it appears objectively before his soul at a time when the degree of maturity, to which he has attained, does not yield him the know-ledge whereby he can transform this being into a picture:

Thou'rt like the Spirit which thou comprehendest. Not me!

[ 6 ] Faust is profoundly shocked by these words. He has really looked upon himself, but he cannot compare himself to what he sees, because he does not know what he really is. The contemplation of the Self has deceived and confused the consciousness that is not ripe for it. Faust puts the question: “Not thee? Who then?” The answer is given in dramatic form. Wagner enters and is himself the answer to this, “Who then?” It was pride of soul in Faust that at this moment made him desire to grasp the secret of his own being. What lives in him is at first only the striving after this secret; Wagner is the reflected image of what he is able at the moment to know of himself. The scene with Wagner will be entirely misunderstood if the attention is merely directed to the contrast between the highly spiritual Faust and the very limited Wagner. In the meeting with Wagner after the Earth Spirit scene Faust has to realise that his power of cognition is really at the Wagner stage. In the dramatic imagination of this scene Wagner is the reflected image of Faust.

[ 7 ] This is something that the Earth Spirit cannot immediately reveal to Faust, for it must come to pass as a result of development. And Goethe felt compelled not to allow Faust to experience the depths of higher human existence only from the point of view of forty years of life, but also to bring before his soul in a kind of retrospect, all that had escaped him in his abstract striving for knowledge. In Wagner Faust confronts himself in his soul vision. The monologue uttered by the real “Faust,” beginning with the words:

How him alone all hope abandons ...

contains nothing but waves beating up from subconscious depths of soul, expressing themselves finally in the resolve to commit suicide. At this moment of experience Faust cannot but draw the inference from his life of feeling that “all hope” must “abandon” men. His soul is only saved from the consequences of this by the fact that life invokes before him something that to his abstract striving for knowledge was formerly meaningless: the Easter Festival of the human heart in its simplicity and the Easter Procession. During these experiences, brought back to him in retrospect from his semi-conscious youth, the contact with the spiritual world that he has had as a result of the meeting with the Earth Spirit, works in him. As a result he frees himself from this attitude of soul during the conversation with Wagner when he sees the Easter procession. Wagner remains in the region of abstract scientific endeavour. Faust must bring the soul experiences through which he has passed into real life in order that life may give him the power to find another answer than “Wagner” to the question “Not thee? Then who?

[ 8 ] A man who, like Faust, has had contact with the spiritual world in its reality, is bound to face life differently from men whose knowledge is limited to the phenomenona of sense existence and consists of conceptions derived from this alone. What Goethe has called the “eye of spiri” has opened for Faust as a result of experience. Life brings him to “conquests”, other than that of the Wagner being. Wagner is also a portion of that human nature which Faust has within him. Faust conquers it in that he subsequently makes living within him all that he failed to make living in his youth. Faust's endeavour to make the word of the Bible living is also part of the awakening. But during this process of awakening still another reflected image of his own being—Mephistopheles—appears before Faust's soul. Mephistopheles is the further, weightier answer to the “Not thee? Then who?” Faust must conquer Mephistopheles by the power of the life experiences in the soul that has had contact with the spiritual world. To see in the figure of Mephistopheles a portion of Faust's own being is not to sin against the artistic comprehension of the Faust Drama, for it is not suggested that Goethe intended to create a symbolical figure and not a living, dramatic personage in his Mephistopheles. In life itself man beholds in other men portions of his own being. Man recognises himself in other men. I do not assert that to me John Smith is only a symbol when I say: ‘I see in him a portion of my own being.’ The dramatic figures of Wagner and of Mephistopheles are individual, living beings; what Faust experiences through them is Self Perception.

[ 9 ] What does the School Scene in Faust really bring before the souls of those who allow it to work upon them? Nothing more nor less than the nature which Faust manifests to the students—the Mephistophelian element in him. When a man has not conquered Mephistopheles in his own nature he can be manifested as this figure of Mephistopheles who confronts the pupils. It appears to me that in this scene Goethe allowed something from an earlier composition to remain—something that he would certainly have remodelled, if as he remodelled the older portions he had been able completely to understand the spirit which the whole work now reveals. In accordance with the import of this spirit all Mephistopheles' dealings with the students must also be experienced by Faust. In the earlier composition of Faust, Goethe was not intent upon giving everything so dramatic a form that it appears in some way as an experience of Faust himself. In the final elaboration of his poem he has simply taken over a great deal that is not an integral part of the spirit of the later dramatic composition.

[ 10 ] The writer of this Essay belongs to the ranks of those readers of Faust who return to the poem again and again. His repeated reading has afforded him increasing insight into the infinite knowledge and experience of life which Goethe has embodied in it. He has, however, always failed to see Mephistopheles—in spite of his living dramatic qualities—as an unitary, inwardly uniform being. He fully understands why the commentators of Faust do not know how they should really interpret Mephistopheles. The idea has arisen that Mephistopheles is not a devil in the real sense, that he is only a servant of the Earth Spirit. But this is contradicted by what Mephistopheles himself says: “Fain would I go over to the Devil, if only I myself were not a Devil!” If we compare all that is expressed in Mephistopheles, we certainly do not get a uniform view.

[ 11 ] As Goethe worked out his Poem he found that it drew nearer and nearer to the deepest problems of human experience. The light streaming from these problems of experience shines into all the events narrated in the poem. Mephistopheles is an embodiment of what man has to overcome in the course of a deeper experience of life. In the figure of Mephistopheles there stands an inner opponent of what man must strive for from out of his being. But if we follow closely those experiences which Goethe has woven subtly into the creation of Mephistopheles, we do not find one such spiritual opponent of the nature of Man, but two. One grows out of man's willing and feeling nature, the other out of his intellectual nature. The willing and feeling nature strives to isolate man from the rest of the universe wherein the root and source of ais existence exist. Man is deceived by his nature of will and feeling into imagining that he can traverse his life's path by relying on his inner being alone. He is deceived into a disregard of the fact that he is a limb of the universe in the sense that a finger is a limb of the organism. Man is destined to spiritual death if he cuts himself off from the universe, just as a finger would be destined to physical death if it attempted to live apart from the organism. There is a rudimentary striving in man in the direction of such a separation. Wisdom in life is not gained by shutting the eyes to the existence of this rudimentary striving, but by conquering it, transforming it in such a way that instead of being an opponent, it becomes an aid to life. A man who like Faust, has had contact with the spiritual world, must enter into the fight against this opposing force in human life much more consciously than one who has had no such contact. The power of this Luciferic adversary of man can be dramatised into a Being. This Being works through those soul forces which strive in the inner man for the enhancement of Egoism.

[ 12 ] The other opposing force in human nature derives its power from the illusions to which man is exposed as a being who perceives and forms conceptions of the outer world. Experience of the outer world that is yielded by cognition is dependent upon the pictures which, in accordance with the particular attitude of his soul, and other multifarious circumstances, a man is able to make of this outer world. The Spirit of Illusion creeps into the formation of these pictures. It distorts the true relation to the outer world and to the rest of humanity into which man could bring himself if its operations were not there. It is also, for instance, the spirit of dissension and strife between man and man, and sets human beings into that state of subjection to circumstances which brings remorse and pangs of conscience in its train. In comparison with a figure of Persian Mythology, we may call it the Ahrimanic Spirit. The Persian Myths ascribe qualities to their figure of Ahriman which justify the use of this name.

[ 13 ] The Luciferic and Ahrimanic opponents of the wisdom of man approach human evolution in quite different ways. Goethe's Mephistopheles has clearly Ahrimanic qualities, and yet the Luciferic element also exists in him. A Faust nature is more strongly exposed to the temptations both of Ahriman and of Lucifer than one without spiritual experiences. It may now appear that instead of the one Mephistopheles Goethe might have placed two characteristic beings there in contrast to Faust. Faust would then have been led through his life's labyrinth in one way by the one figure, and in another by the second. In Goethe's Mephistopheles, the two different kinds of qualities, Luciferic and Ahrimanic, are mingled. This not only hinders the reader from making an uniform picture of Mephistopheles in his imagination, but it proved to be an obstacle to Goethe himself when again and again he tried to spin the thread of the Faust poem through his own life. One is conscious of a very natural desire to witness or hear much of what Mephistopheles does or says, from a different being. Of course Goethe attributed the difficulties which confronted him in the development of his Faust to many other things; but in his sub-consciousness there worked the twofold nature of Mephistopheles, and this made it difficult to guide the development of the course of Faust's existence into channels which must lead through the powers of opposition.

[ 14 ] Considerations of this kind call forth all too readily the cheap objection that one wants to put Goethe right. This objection must be tolerated for the sake of the necessity for understanding Goethe's personal relation-ship to his Faust poem. We need only be reminded of how Goethe complained to friends of the weakness of his creative power just at the time when he wanted to bring his “life-poem” to an end. Let us remember that Goethe in his advanced age needed Eckermann's encouragement to rouse him to the task of working out the plan of the continuation of Faust which he intended to incorporate as such into the third book of Poetry and Truth. Karl Julius Schröer rightly says (page 30, Third Edition, Part II., of his Essay on Faust): “Without Eckermann we should really have had nothing more than the plan which possibly would have had some sort of form like the ‘scheme of continuation’ of the ‘Natural daughter’ that is embodied in the work.” We know what such a plan is for the world “an object of consideration for the literary historian and nothing else.” The cessation of Goethe's work on Faust has been attributed to every kind of possibility and impossibility. People have tried in one way or another to reconcile the contradictions that are felt to exist in the figure of Mephistopheles. The student of Goethe cannot well disregard these things. Or are we to make a confession like that of Jacob Minor in his otherwise interest ing book Goethe's Faust (Vol. II., p. 28): “Goethe was approaching his fiftieth year; and from the period of his Swiss journey comes, as far as I know, the first sigh which the thought of approaching age drew from him in the beautiful poem Swiss Alps (Schweizeralpe). Thought as a harbinger of the wisdom of old age came more to the foreground even in him—with his eternal youth—who hitherto was only accustomed to behold and create. He makes plans and schemes on his Swiss journey like any real child of circumstance, just as he does in Faust.” But a consideration of Goethe's life can lead us to the view that in a poem like Faust, certain things must be presented which could only be the result of the experience of mature age. If poetic power can wane in old age—even in a Goethe—how could such a poem have some into being at all?

[ 15 ] Paradoxical as it may seem to many minds, a serious study of Goethe's personal relationship to his Faust and to the figure of Mephistopheles seem to force us to see in the latter an inner foundation of the difficulties experienced by Goethe in his life poem. The dual nature of the figure of Mephistopheles worked in the depths of his soul and did not emerge above the threshold of his consciousness. But because Faust's experiences must contain reflections of the deeds of Mephistopheles, obstacles were continually being set up when it was a question of developing dramatically the course of Faust's life, and as a result of the working of the dual nature of the opposing forces, the right impulses for the development would not come to light.

[ 16 ] The Prologue in Heaven, which with the Dedication and the Prologue of the Theatre now forms an introduction to the first Part of Faust, was first written in the year 1797. In Goethe's discussions with Schiller on the subject of the poem, and their outcome which is to be found in the correspondence between the two men, we can see that about this time Goethe altered his conception of those basic forces which revealed themselves as the life of Faust. Until then everything that comes to light in Faust flows out of that inner being of his soul that is urging him towards the consummation and widening of life. This inner impulse is the only one in evidence. Through the Prologue in Heaven Faust is placed in the whole world process as a seeking man. The spiritual powers that temper and maintain the world are revealed and the life of Faust is placed in the midst of their reciprocal co-operation and reaction. And so for the consciousness of the poet and of the reader, the being of Faust is removed into the Macrocosm where the Faust of Goethe as a youth did not wish to be. Mephistopheles appears “in Heaven” among the active cosmic beings. But just here the twofold being of Mephistopheles comes clearly into evidence. The “Lord” says:

Of all the bold denying spirits
The waggish knave least trouble doth create.

There must therefore be yet other spirits who “deny” in the world struggle. And how does this agree with Mephistopheles' unrest at the end of Part II. in reference to the corpse, when he says “in Heaven:

I much prefer the cheeks where ruddy blood is leaping
And when a corpse approaches close my house.

Let us imagine that instead of one Mephistopheles, a Luciferic and an Ahrimanic spirit oppose the “Lord” in the fight for Faust. An Ahrimanic spirit must feel unrest before a “corpse,” for Ahriman is the spirit of illusion. If we go to the sources of illusion we find them to be connected with the mortal, material element working in human life. The forces of knowledge, of cognition, which become active to the degree in which the impulses appear in them which finally bring about death, underlie the Ahrimanic illusion. The impulses of Will and of reeling work in opposition to these forces. They are connected with budding, growing life; they are most powerful in childhood and youth. The more a man preserves the impulses of youth, the more vitally do these forces emerge in his old age. In these forces lie the Luciferic temptation. Lucifer can say: “I love the cheeks where ruddy blood is leaping”; Ahriman cannot “close his house” to a corpse. And the “Lord” can say to Ahriman:

Of all the bold denying spirits
The waggish knave least trouble cloth create.

The scoffing nature is akin to the nature of illusion. And so far as the “Eternal” in man is concerned, the Ahrimanic being governing the material and transitory, is less significant than the other denying spirit who is inwardly bound up with the kernel of man's being. The perception of a dual nature in Mephistopheles is not the result of an arbitrary fancy but the self-evident feeling of the existence of a duality in the constitution of man's universe and life. Goethe could not help being aware subconsciously of an element which made him feel: I am confronting the universal form of life with the Faust-Mephistopheles paradox, but it will not harmonise.

[ 17 ] If what has here been said were taken in the sense of the pedantic, critical suggestion that Goethe ought to have drawn Mephistopheles otherwise, it could easily be refuted. It would only be necessary to point out that in Goethe's imagination this figure grew as unity,—nay had to grow as such, out of the tradition of the Faust Legend, out of Germanic and Northern Mythology. And over against the evidence of “contradictions” in a living figure, apart from the fact that what is full of life must necessarily contain “life and its contradictions,” we could adduce Goethe's own clear words: “If phantasy (imagination) did not produce things which must for ever remain problematic to the intellect, there would not be much in it. This is what distinguishes poetry from prose.” What is here suggested does not in any sense lie in this region. But what Karl Julius Schröer says (page xciv., 3rd edition of Part II. of his Essay on Faust) is indisputable: “Sparkling, witty, brilliantly descriptive, and manifesting a penetration of the obscure background of the most sublime problems of humanity ... the poem stimulates in us feelings of the most intense reverence ...” This is the whole point: all that lay before Goethe's imagination in his Faust poem appeared to him against the “obscure background of the most sublime problems of humanity” which he penetrated again and again. The attitude in which Schröer, with his deep knowledge and rare love of Goethe's genius, makes these statements is unassailable, because Schröer cannot be reproached with having wished to explain Goethe's poem in the sense of an abstract development of ideas. But because the background of the most sublime problems of humanity stood before Goethe's soul, the traditional figure of the “Northern Devil” expanded before his spiritual gaze into that dual Being to which the profound student of life and the universe will be led when he realises how Man is placed within the whole world process.

[ 18 ] The Mephistopheles figure which hovered before Goethe when he began his poem was in line with Faust's estrangement from the import of the Macrocosm. The conflicts of the soul then rising from his inner being led to a struggle against the opposing power that lays hold of man's inner nature and is Luciferic. But Goethe was bound to lead Faust into the struggle with the powers of the external world also. The nearer he came to the elaboration of the second part of Faust, the more strongly did he feel this necessity. And in the “Classical Walpurgis Night” which was meant to lead up to the actual meeting between Faust and Helena, world powers and macrocosmic events entered into connection with human experiences. Mephistopheles entering into this connection must assume an Ahrimanic character. As a result of his scientific world conception Goethe had built for himself the bridge over which he was able to bring world events into connection with human evolution. He did this in his “Classical Walpurgis Night.” The poetic value of this will only be appreciated when it is fully realised that in this part of Faust Goethe so completely succeeded in moulding Nature's conceptions into artistic form that nothing of a conceptual, abstract nature remained in them; everything flowed into imagery, into an imaginative form. It is an esthetic superstition to reproach the “Classical Walpurgis Night” with containing a distressing element of abstract scientific theories. And perhaps the bridge between supersensible, macrocosmic events and human experiences is more marked in the mighty concluding picture of the Fifth Act of Part II.

[ 19 ] There seems no doubt that Goethe's genius underwent a development in the course of his life as a result of which the dual nature of the cosmic powers opposing man came before his soul's vision and that in the development of his Faust he realised the necessity for overcoming its own beginning, for the life of Faust is turned again to the Macrocosm, from which his incomplete knowledge had at first estranged him.

A wondrous show! but ah! a show alone.

[ 20 ] Yet into this show there played the forces of all embracing macrocosmic events. The “show” became Life, because Faust strove towards goals that lead man, as a result of the life struggle in his inner being, into conflicts with Powers that make him appear not only as a struggling member of the universe, but as a match for the struggle.

In addressing a public audience today on the most important question of our time, it makes a great difference if one speaks from a knowledge of the deeper forces of world-historical evolution, that is, from initiation-science, or if one speaks without such knowledge. It is relatively easy to speak about modern questions if one relies upon data of external knowledge which are considered scientific, practical, and so on. It is, however, extraordinarily difficult to speak about these questions from the standpoint of initiation-science—from which indeed everything is derived with which we have to deal at such gatherings as ours today. For he who speaks from that standpoint about problems of the time knows that he is opposed not only by the casual, subjective opinions of those to whom he speaks. He knows too that a great part of mankind today is already under the control, from one side or another, of Ahrimanic forces of a cosmic nature which are growing stronger and stronger. To explain what I mean by this, I must give you a kind of historical survey of a fairly long period of human history.

From various statements which have been made here and which you will also find in some of my lecture-courses, you know that we have to place the beginning of our modern age in the middle of the fifteenth century. We have always called this period—of which we are really only at the beginning—the Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch. It has replaced the Greco-Latin Epoch, which we reckon from the middle of the eighth century B.C. to the middle of the fifteenth century; and further back still, we have the Egyptian-Chaldean epoch. I have merely indicated this so that you may remember where, in human evolution as a whole, we place the epoch in which we feel ourselves standing as modern men.

Now you know that at the close of the first third of the Greco-Latin Epoch, the Mystery of Golgotha took place. And from many different aspects we have characterized what really came about for human evolution through the Mystery of Golgotha, in fact for the whole evolution of the earth. Today, into this broad historical survey, we will place various things concerning mankind which are connected with this Mystery.

With this in view, let us glance back into far earlier times, let us say, into the ages about the beginning of the third millennium B.C. You are aware how little is said in external historical tradition about this early evolution of the human race on earth. You know, too, how external documents point over to Asia, to the Orient. From many anthroposophical sources, you will know that the further we go back in mankind's evolution, the more we find a different constitution of the human soul, and something like an ancient, original wisdom underlying the whole evolution of humanity. You know, further, that certain traditions of an ancient wisdom of mankind were preserved in close, secret circles, right into the nineteenth century. They have even been preserved into our own time—but not, for the most part, at all faithfully.

When a man of today learns to know something of this original wisdom, he is astounded at the depths of the realities to which it points. Yet in the course of the studies we have been pursuing for many years, it has been shown that this widespread wisdom-teaching of ancient times must always be contrasted with the understanding of life and the world that was possessed by the old Hebrew people and bore a completely different character. With a certain justice the widespread original wisdom is described as the heathen, pagan element, and to this is opposed the Hebrew, Jewish element. From external traditions and literature you are aware how the Christian element then arose out of the Jewish.

You can already gather from these external facts something that I beg you to bear in mind, namely, that it was essential in humanity's evolution to confront the ancient heathen element and its wisdom with the Jewish element out of which Christianity evolved partially, at all events. The primeval heathen or pagan wisdom in its totality was not destined to have the sole influence on the further evolution of mankind. And now the question must arise: Why had the ancient pagan wisdom, which is in many respects so wonderful, to experience a new form, a transformation, through Judaism and Christianity? This question inevitably arises.

The answer is supplied for Initiation-wisdom only through a very, very weighty fact, through an event which took place far over in Asia at the beginning of the third millennium of the pre-Christian era. Clairvoyant vision finds in looking back that an incarnation of a super-sensible Being in a human being had taken place there, just as in the Event of Golgotha an incarnation of the super-sensible Christ Being had taken place in the man Jesus of Nazareth. The incarnation that took place at the beginning of the third millennium B.C. is extraordinarily difficult to follow up, even with the science of seership, of initiation. It gave humanity something of immense brilliance, having an incisive effect. What it gave to humanity, in fact, was the primeval wisdom.

Viewed externally, one can say that it was a wisdom penetrating deep into reality; cold, based purely on ideas, permeated little by feeling. The actual inner nature of this wisdom can be judged only by going back to that incarnation which took place over in Asia at the beginning of the third pre-Christian millennium. It is revealed to the retrospective clairvoyant gaze that this was an actual human incarnation of the Luciferic Power.

And this incarnation of Lucifer in humanity, which in a certain way has been achieved, was the origin of the widely extended ancient wisdom based on the Third Post-Atlantean civilization.

There was still an after-effect, even in Grecian times, of the widespread cultural impulse that was derived from this Asiatic, Luciferic human being. Luciferic wisdom was of the utmost benefit to man in that epoch of evolution—brilliant in a certain way, graduated according to the different peoples and races among which it was spread. It was plainly recognizable throughout the whole of Asia, then in the Egyptian civilization, the Babylonian civilization and even in the culture of Greece.

All that was possible to the humanity of that time in thought, in the realm of poetry, in deeds, was in a certain way determined through the entry of this Luciferic impulse into human civilization.

It would, of course, be extraordinarily philistine to wish to say: That was an incarnation of Lucifer, hence we must flee from it! Such philistinism could make one also flee from the beauty and greatness that has come to mankind from this Luciferic stream, for the fruits of Greek culture with all their beauty, proceeded, as already said, from this stream of evolution. The whole of Gnostic thought existing at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, an impressive wisdom shedding light deep into cosmic realities—this whole Gnostic knowledge was inspired by the impulse coming from Luciferic forces. One must not say that Gnostic thought is therefore false; one is merely characterizing it by saying that it is permeated by Luciferic forces.

Then, considerably more than two thousand years after the Luciferic incarnation, came the Mystery of Golgotha. It may be said that the men among whom the impulse of this Mystery spread were still fully imbued in their thinking and feeling with what had come from the impulse of Lucifer. And now there entered into the evolution of civilized humanity an entirely different impulse, the impulse proceeding from the Christ. We have often spoken of what this Christ Impulse signifies within civilized humanity. The Christ-Impulse—I will only touch on this today—was taken up by the hearts and minds that I have just characterized. One might say that it shone into all the best that came to man from Lucifer. And in the first Christian centuries, men understood the Christ through what they had received from Lucifer. These things must be faced without prejudice; otherwise it is not really possible to understand the particular way in which the Christ Impulse was received in the first centuries of our era.

As the Luciferic impulse began to fade more and more, men were also increasingly unable to absorb the Christ Impulse in the right way. Consider how much has become materialistic in the course of modern times. But if you ask yourself what in particular has become materialistic, you must receive the answer: a great part of modern Christian theology. For it is simply the starkest materialism to which a great part of modern Christian theology succumbs when it no longer sees the Christ in the man Jesus of Nazareth. It sees only the human being, the ‘simple man of Nazareth,’ the man whom one can understand if one will only raise one's self a little to some sort of higher understanding. The more the man Jesus of Nazareth could be regarded as an ordinary human being, one belonging to the ranks of other noted human personalities, the better it pleased a certain materialistic trend of modern theology. Of the super-sensible element of the Event of Golgotha, modern theology is willing to recognize little, very little.

The impulses entering humanity from a Luciferic source sank down gradually into the soul. On the other hand, however, another impulse, which we call the Ahrimanic, is growing stronger and stronger in modern times. It will become increasingly strong in the near future and on into future ages. The Ahrimanic impulse proceeds from a super-sensible Being different from the Being of Christ or of Lucifer. Equally with ‘super-sensible’ one can say ‘subsensible’—but that is not the point here. The influence of this Being becomes especially powerful in the Fifth Post-Atlantean Epoch. If we look at the confused conditions of recent years we shall find that men have been brought to such chaotic conditions mainly through the Ahrimanic powers.

Just as there was an incarnation of Lucifer at the beginning of the third pre-Christian millennium, as there was the Christ Incarnation at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, so there will be a Western incarnation of the Ahriman being some little time after our present earthly existence, in fact, in the third post-Christian millennium. To form a right conception of the historical evolution of mankind during approximately 6000 years, one must grasp that at the one pole stands a Luciferic incarnation, in the center, the incarnation of Christ, and at the other pole the Ahrimanic incarnation. Lucifer is the power that stirs up in man all fanatical, all falsely mystical forces, all that physiologically tends to bring the blood into disorder and so lift man above and outside himself. Ahriman is the power that makes man dry, prosaic, philistine—that ossifies him and brings him to the superstition of materialism. And the true nature and being of man is essentially the effort to hold the balance between the powers of Lucifer and Ahriman; the Christ Impulse helps present humanity to establish this equilibrium.

Thus these two poles—the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic—are continuously present in man. Viewed historically, we find that the Luciferic preponderated in certain currents of cultural development of the pre-Christian age and continued into the first centuries of our era. On the other hand the Ahrimanic influence has been at work since the middle of the fifteenth century and will increase in strength until an actual incarnation of Ahriman takes place among Western humanity.

Now it is characteristic of such things that they are prepared long in advance. Ahrimanic powers prepare the evolution of mankind in such a way that it can fall a prey to Ahriman when he appears in human form within Western civilization—hardly then to be called ‘civilization’ in our sense—as once Lucifer appeared in human form in China, as once Christ appeared in human form in Asia Minor. It is of no avail to give oneself illusions today about these things. Ahriman will appear in human form and the only question is, how he will find humanity prepared. Will his preparations have secured for him as followers the whole of mankind that today calls itself civilized, or will he find a humanity that can offer resistance. It does not help at all to give oneself up to illusions. People nowadays flee the truth, and one cannot give it to them in an unvarnished form because they would ridicule it and scoff and jeer. But if one gives it to them through the “Threefold Social Organism” as one now tries to do, then they will not have it either—not the majority, at any rate. The fact that people reject these things is just one of the means which the Ahrimanic powers can use and which will give Ahriman the greatest possible following when he appears in human form on earth. This disregard of the weightiest truths is precisely what will build Ahriman the best bridge to the success of his incarnation. And nothing will help us to find the right position in regard to the part played by Ahriman in human evolution except an unprejudiced study of the forces through which Ahriman's influence works, as well as learning to know the forces through which mankind can arm itself against being tempted and led astray. For this reason we will cast a brief glance today at various things which would foster support of Ahriman and which Ahrimanic powers, working out of super-sensible worlds through human minds down here, will particularly employ in order to make his following as numerous as possible.

One of the means is this—that it is not realized what is the actual significance for man of certain kinds of thought and conception which predominate in modern times. You know, indeed, what a great difference there is between the way a man felt himself to be within the whole cosmos in the Egyptian age, let us say, and even in the time of Greece, and how he feels since the beginning of the modern age, since the close of the Middle Ages. Picture to yourselves a well-instructed ancient Egyptian. He knew that his body was constituted not merely of the ingredients which exist here on earth and are embodied in the animal kingdom, plant kingdom, mineral kingdom. He knew that the forces which he saw in the stars above, worked into his being as man; he felt himself a member of the whole cosmos. He felt the whole cosmos not only quick with life, but ensouled and imbued with spirit; in his consciousness there lived something of the spiritual beings of the cosmos, of the soul-nature of the cosmos and its life. All this has been lost in the course of later human history. Today man gazes from his earth up to the star-world and to him it is filled with fixed stars, suns, planets, comets, and so on. But with what means does he examine all that looks down to him out of cosmic space? He examines it with mathematics, with the science of mechanics. What lies around the earth is robbed of spirit, robbed of soul, even of life. It is a great mechanism, in fact, only to be grasped by the aid of mathematical, mechanistic laws. With the help of these mathematical, mechanistic laws we grasp it magnificently! A student of spiritual science is undoubtedly just the one to value the achievements of a Galileo, a Kepler, and others, but what penetrates human understanding and consciousness through the tenets of these great spirits in human evolution merely shows the universe as a great mechanism.

What this means is only revealed to one who is able to grasp man in his whole nature. It is all very well for astronomers and astro-physicists to present the universe as a mechanism which can be understood and calculated by mathematical formulae. This indeed is what a man will believe in the time from waking in the morning till going to sleep again at night. But in those unconscious depths which he does not reach with his waking consciousness but which yet belong to his existence and in which he lives between going to sleep and waking, something quite different concerning the universe flows into his soul. There lives in the human soul a knowledge which, although unknown to the waking consciousness, is yet present in the depths and moulds the soul—a knowledge of the spirit, of the life of the soul, of the life of the cosmos. And although in his waking consciousness man knows nothing of what goes on there in communion with the spirit, soul and life of the universe while he sleeps—in the soul the things are there; they live within it. And much of the great discord felt by modern man is derived from the disharmony between what the soul experiences and what the waking consciousness acknowledges as its world-conception.

And what does the whole spirit and purport of anthroposophical spiritual science say about such things? It says: What the ideas of Galileo, Copernicus, have brought to mankind is grand and mighty, but not an absolute truth, by no means an absolute truth. It is one aspect of the universe, one side from a certain standpoint. It is only through the arrogance of modern man that people say today: “Ptolemaic world-system—childishness; that is what men had when they were still children. We have made such great strides—right ‘to the stars’ and that is what we now take as the absolute.” It is just as little an absolute as the Ptolemaic system was an absolute, it is one aspect. The only right view—according to spiritual science—is to realize that all that is accepted by way of mere world-mathematics, mere world-schematism of a mechanical order, does not furnish man with absolute truth about the universe, but with illusions. The illusions are necessary because mankind goes through varied forms of education in its different stages of evolution. For modern education we need these illusions of a mathematical nature about the universe, we must acquire them, but we must know that they are illusions. And most of all they are illusions when we transpose them into our daily environment, when, in accordance with the atomic or molecular theories, we even endeavour to create a kind of astronomy for the substances of the earth. A right attitude in regard to the whole of modern science, insofar as it thinks along these lines, will recognize that its knowledge is illusion.

Now, in order that his incarnation may take the most profitable form, it is of the utmost interest to Ahriman that people should perfect themselves in all our illusory modern science, but without knowing that it is illusion. Ahriman has the greatest possible interest in instructing men in mathematics, but not in instructing them that mathematical-mechanistic concepts of the universe are merely illusions. He is intensely interested in bringing men chemistry, physics, biology and so on, as they are presented today in all their remarkable effects, but he is interested in making men believe that these are absolute truths, not that they are only points of view, like photographs from one side. If you photograph a tree from one side, it can be a correct photograph, yet it does not give a picture of the whole tree. If you photograph it from four sides, you can in any case get an idea of it. To conceal from mankind that in modern intellectual, rationalistic science with its supplement of a superstitious empiricism, one is dealing with a great illusion, a deception—that men should not recognize this is of the greatest possible interest to Ahriman. It would be a triumphant experience for him if the scientific superstition which grips all circles today and by which men even want to organize their social science, should prevail into the third millennium. He would have the greatest success if he could then come as a human being into Western civilization and find the scientific superstition.

But I ask you not to draw false conclusions from what I have just said. It would be a false conclusion to avoid the science of the day; that is the very falsest conclusion which could be drawn. We must get to know science; we should get an exact knowledge of all that comes from this direction—but with the full consciousness that we are receiving an illusory aspect, an illusion necessary for our education as men. We do not safeguard ourselves against Ahriman by avoiding modern science, but by learning to know its character. For modern science gives us an external illusion of the universe, and we need this illusion. Do not imagine that we do not need it. We must only fill it in from quite another side with actual reality gained through spiritual research, we must rise from the illusory character to the true reality. You will find reference in many of my lecture-courses to what I am telling you today, and you will see how everywhere it has been sought to enter fully into the science of our time, but to lift it all to the sphere where one can see its real value. You cannot wish to get rid of the rainbow because you know it to be an illusion of light and color! You will not understand it if you do not realize its illusory character. But it is just the same with all that modern science gives you for your imagination of the universe, it gives only illusions and that must be recognized. It is by educating oneself through these illusions that one arrives at the reality.

This, then, represents one of the means used by Ahriman to make his incarnation as effective as possible—this keeping of man back in scientific superstition.

The second means that he employs is to stir up all the emotions that split men up into small groups—groups that mutually attack one another. You need only look at all the conflicting parties that exist today, and if you are unprejudiced you will recognize that the explanation is not to be found merely in human nature. If men honestly try to explain this so-called World War through human dis-harmonies, they will realize that with what they find in physical humanity they cannot explain it. It is precisely here that “super-sensible” powers, Ahrimanic powers, have been at work.

These Ahrimanic powers are working, in fact, wherever dis-harmonies arise between groups of men. Now the question arises on what foundation is most of what we are considering based?

Let us proceed from a very characteristic example.—The modern proletariat has had its Karl Marx. Observe closely how the doctrines of Karl Marx have been spread among the proletariat, with Marxist literature reaching practically immeasurable proportions. You will find all the methods of our present-day science used in the books; everything is strictly proved, so strictly proved that many people, of whom one would never have supposed it, have fallen victim to Marxism. What was the actual destiny of Marxism? It spread at first, as you know, among the proletariat and was firmly rejected by university science. Today there are already a number of university scientists who have veered round to acknowledging Marxist logic. They adhere to it because its literature has proved that its conclusions are in excellent accord, that from the standpoint of modern science Marxism can be quite neatly proved. Middle-class circles have unfortunately had no Karl Marx who could have proved the opposite for them; for just as one can prove the ideological character of right, morality, and so forth, the theory of surplus value and materialistic historical research from the Marxist standpoint, so is it possible to prove their exact opposite. A middle-class, bourgeois-Marx would be fully able to prove the exact opposite by the same strict method. There is no sort of swindle or humbug about it; the proof would work out right.

Whence does this come? It comes from the fact that present human thinking, the present intellect, lies in a stratum of being where it does not reach down to realities. One can therefore prove something quite strictly, and also prove its opposite. It is possible today to prove spiritualism on the one hand and materialism on the other. And people may fight against each other from equally good standpoints because present-day intellectualism is in an upper layer of reality and does not go down into the depths of being. And it is the same with party opinions. A man who does not look deeper but simply lets himself be accepted into a certain party-circle—by reason of his education, heredity, circumstances of life and State—quite honestly believes—or so he thinks—in the possibility of proving the tenets of the party into which he has slipped, as he says. And then—then he fights against someone else who has slipped into another party! And the one is just as right as the other. This calls forth chaos and confusion over mankind that will gradually become greater and greater unless men see through it. Ahriman makes use of this confusion in order to prepare the triumph of his incarnation and to drive men with increasing force into what they find so difficult to realize—namely, that by intellectual or modern scientific reasoning today, one can prove anything and equally well prove its opposite. The point is for us to recognize that everything can be proved and for that reason to examine the proofs put forward in science today. It is only in natural science that reality is shown by the facts; in no other field can one consider intellectual proofs valid. The only way to escape the danger that threatens if one accepts the lures of Ahriman and his desire to drive men deeper and deeper into these things, is to realize through anthroposophical spiritual science that human knowledge must be sought for in a stratum deeper than that in which the validity of our proofs arises. And so, in order to create dissensions, Ahriman also makes use of what develops from the old conditions of heredity which man has really outgrown in the Fifth Post-Atlantean Epoch. The Ahrimanic powers use all that is derived from old circumstances of heredity in order to set men against each other in conflicting groups. All that comes from old differences of family, race, tribe, peoples, is used by Ahriman to create confusion. “Freedom for every nation, even the smallest ...” These were fine-sounding words. But the powers hostile to man always use fine words in order to bring confusion and in order to attain the things that Ahriman wishes to attain for his incarnation.

If we inquire: Who stirs up nations against each other? Who raises the questions that are directing humanity today?—the answer is: the Ahrimanic deception which plays into human life. And in this field men very easily let themselves be deceived. They are not willing to descend to the lower strata where reality is to be found. For, you see, Ahriman skillfully prepares his goal beforehand; ever since the Reformation and the Renaissance, the economist has been emerging in modern civilization as the representative governing type. That is an actual historical fact. If you go back to ancient times, even to those that I have characterized today as the Luciferic—who were the governing types then? Initiates. The Egyptian Pharaohs, the Babylonian rulers, the Asiatic rulers—they were initiates. Then the priest-type emerged as ruler and the priest-type was really the ruler right up to the Reformation and the Renaissance. Since that time the economist has been in command. Rulers are in fact merely the handymen, the understrappers of the economists. One must not imagine that the rulers of modern times are anything but the understrappers of the economists. And all that has resulted by way of law and justice—one should only study it carefully—is simply a consequence of what economically oriented men have thought. In the nineteenth century the “economical” man is replaced for the first time by the man thinking in terms of banking, and in the nineteenth century there is created for the first time the organization of finance which swamps every other relationship. One must only be able to look into these things and follow them up empirically and practically.

All that I stated in the second public lecture here (The Social Future, October 25, 1919) is profoundly true. One could only wish that it were followed up in all details; it would then be seen how fundamentally true these things are. But just because this rulership of the mere ‘symbol for solid goods’ (that is to say, money—quotation from the lecture) has arisen, Ahriman has been given another essential medium for the deception of mankind. If men do not realize that the rights-state and the organism of the Spirit must be set against the economic order called up through the economists and the banks, then again, through this lack of awareness, Ahriman will find an important instrument for preparing his incarnation. His incarnation is undoubtedly coming, and this lack of insight will enable him to prepare it triumphantly.

Such means can be used by Ahriman for a certain type of man. But there is another type—indeed the two are often mixed in one personality—and this also, from a different direction, provides Ahriman with an easy way to success.

Now it is a fact that in real life, total errors are not so harmful as half- or quarter-truths. Total errors are soon seen through, whereas half- and quarter-truths mislead people. They live with them, these partial truths become a pan of life and cause the most horrible devastation.

There are people today who do not realize the one-sidedness of the Galileo-Copernican world-conception, or who at least do not see its illusory character, or are too easygoing to examine it. We have just shown how wrong that is. But there are also people today, numberless people who acknowledge a certain half-truth, a very significant half-truth, and who do not go into the question of the purely hypothetical justification of it. Strange as it may appear to many people, it is just as one-sided to view the world solely through the Gospel and reject any other search into true reality, as it is to view the world from the standpoint of Galileo and Copernicus, or of university materialistic science in general.

The Gospel was given to those who lived in the first centuries of Christianity, and to believe that today the Gospel can give the whole of Christianity is simply a half-truth. It is therefore also a half-error which befogs people and thus furnishes Ahriman with the best means of attaining the goal and the triumph of his incarnation.

How numerous are those who think they are speaking out of Christian humility, but in reality out of dreadful arrogance, when they say: “Oh, we need no spiritual science! The homeliness, the simplicity of the Gospels leads us to what men need of the eternal!” A frightful arrogance is expressed, for the most part, in this apparent humility, which can very well be used by Ahriman in the sense I have indicated. For do not forget what I explained at the beginning of today's lecture, how in the time in which the Gospel falls, men were still permeated by the Luciferic impulse in their thought, feeling and general views, and that they could understand the Gospel by a certain Luciferic Gnosis. But the grasp of the Gospel in this old sense is not possible today. No real understanding of the Christ can be gained if one relies merely on the Gospel, especially in the form in which it has been handed down. There exists nowhere today a less true understanding of Christ than in the various faiths and confessions.

The Gospel must be deepened by spiritual science if we wish to gain an actual grasp of the Christ. It is then interesting to examine the separate Gospels and arrive at their real content. To accept the Gospel as it is and as numberless people accept it today, and particularly as it is taught today, is not a path to Christ; it is a path away from Christ. Hence the confessions are moving further and further away from Christ. To what sort of Christ-conception does a man come who will accept the Gospel and only the Gospel, without the depth given by spiritual science? He comes ultimately to a Christ—but that is the utmost that he can reach through the Gospel alone. It is not a reality of the Christ, for today only spiritual science can lead to that. What the Gospel leads to is an hallucination of the Christ, a real inner picture or vision, yet only a picture. The Gospel today provides the way to come to a vision of the Christ, but not to the reality of Christ. That is just the reason why modern theology has become so materialistic. Theological commentators and expounders of the Gospel have asked themselves: What is to be made of the Gospel? They decide at length that in their view the result is similar to what one gets when one examines the case of Paul before Damascus. And then these theologians, who are supposed to confirm Christianity, but who really undermine it, say: Paul was simply ill, suffering from nerves and he had a vision before Damascus.

The point is that through the Gospel itself one can come only to hallucinations, to visions, but not to realities; the Gospel does not give us the real Christ, but only an hallucination of the Christ. The real Christ must be sought today through all that can be gained from a spiritual knowledge of the world.

These very people who swear by the Gospel alone and reject every kind of real spiritual knowledge, form the beginning of a flock for Ahriman when he appears in human shape in modern civilization. From these circles, from these members of confessions and sects who repulse the concrete knowledge brought by spiritual endeavor, whole hosts will develop as adherents of Ahriman. Now this is all beginning to come into existence. It is there, it is at work in present humanity and one who speaks to men today with the knowledge of spiritual science speaks into it, no matter whether he is speaking on social or other questions. He knows where the hostile powers lie, that they live supersensibly and that men are their poor misguided victims. This is the call to humanity: “Free yourselves from all these things that form such a great temptation to contribute to Ahriman's triumph!”

Many people have felt something of this sort. But there is not yet courage everywhere to come to an understanding with the historical impulses of the Christ, Lucifer and Ahriman in the urgent way that is necessary and that is emphasized by Anthroposophy. Even those who have an idea of what is necessary will not go far enough. For instance, look at examples where there arises some knowledge that the secular materialistic science with this Ahrimanic character must be permeated with the Christ Impulse, and how, on the other hand, the Gospel must be illuminated through the explanations of spiritual science. Consider how many people struggle to the point of really shedding light in either of these directions by means of spiritual-scientific knowledge! Yet humanity will only acquire the right attitude to the earthly incarnation of Ahriman if it sees through these things and has the courage, will and energy to illumine both secular science and the Gospel by the Spirit. Otherwise the result is always superficialities. Think, for example, of how Cardinal Newman—who, after all, was an enlightened man, one who followed modern religious development—at the time of his investiture as Cardinal in Rome stated openly in his address that if the Christian Catholic teaching was to survive, a new revelation was necessary. We have no need, however, of a new revelation; the time of revelations in the old sense is over. We need a new science, one that is illumined by the Spirit. But men must have the courage for such a new science.

Think of a literary phenomenon like the Lux Mundi movement that originated with certain eminent theologians, members of the English High Church, at the end of the eighties and beginning of the nineties of the last century. It consisted of a series of studies, imbued throughout with the endeavor to build a bridge from secular science to the contents of dogma. One might call it a floundering hither and thither, never a bold grasping of secular science, never an illumination of it with the spirit. There was no unprejudiced examination of the Gospel with the knowledge that the Gospel of itself is not enough today, that it must be elucidated and illumined. But mankind must be courageous in both directions and say: secular science by itself leads to illusion, the Gospel by itself leads to hallucination. The middle way between illusion and hallucination is found only by grasping reality through the Spirit. That is the point.

We must see through such things as these today. Purely mundane science would make men entirely subject to illusion; in fact ultimately they would commit only follies. Quite enough folly is perpetuated today already, for surely the World War catastrophe was a great folly! Yet many people were involved in it who were thoroughly saturated with the official secular science of our time. And if you notice what remarkable psychological phenomena at once crop up when some sect or other places one of the four Gospels in the foreground, then you will more easily understand what I have been saying about the Gospels today. See how strongly inclined to all sorts of hallucinations are sects that pay heed solely to the Gospel of St. John, or solely the Gospel of St. Luke! Fortunately there are four Gospels, which outwardly contradict one another, and this has so far prevented the great harm which such one-sidedness would cause. By being faced with four Gospels people do not go too far in the direction of the one, but have the others beside it. One Gospel is read aloud on one Sunday and another on another Sunday and so the illusory power of the one is counterbalanced by that of another. A great wisdom lies in the fact that these four Gospels have come down to the civilized world. In this way man is protected from being caught up by some one stream, which will take possession of him—as in the case of so many members of sects—if he is influenced by one Gospel alone. When solely one Gospel works upon him it is particularly clear how this leads at last to hallucination.

In fact, it is essential today to give up much of one's subjective inclination, much of what one is attached to and thinks pious or clever. Mankind must above all seek universality and the courage to look at things from all sides.

I wished to say this to you today so that you may realize that what one tries now to bring about within humanity has truly deeper grounds than just some sort of subjective prejudice. In fact one can say that it is read from the signs of the times and that it must be brought about.